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Plays of the Day from the Asia Cup clash between India and Pakistan

Karthik Krishnaswamy in Mirpur02-Mar-2014The near-collision
During the Asia Cup, fielders seem to have forgotten the law of physics which states that two bodies cannot occupy the same point at the same time. India have suffered two collisions, and Pakistan nearly added another when Mohammad Hafeez and Sharjeel Khan went for the same catch after Rohit Sharma miscued a pull off Mohammad Talha. Hafeez, running back from midwicket, completed the catch, but not before treading on Sharjeel Khan’s toes as he ran in from deep square leg. Sharjeel limped off and didn’t field after the incident, but looked in no trouble when he came out to bat.The angry professor
A skidder from round the wicket hitting a left-handed batsman on the pads – this is the trademark Hafeez wicket. He had dismissed Shikhar Dhawan in this manner earlier in the day, and now he turned around to appeal after bowling a similar delivery, with similar results, to Ravindra Jadeja. Umpire Nigel Llong was unmoved, though, and Hafeez made his displeasure clear. Llong beckoned to Misbah-ul-Haq and had a long chat with the bowler and captain. Four overs later, Hafeez dropped a sitter from Jadeja. Was he still thinking about the lbw decision when the ball came down at him from the sky?Run-out, again
Against Afghanistan, Misbah had responded to a call from Sohaib Maqsood only to end up finishing second in a bizarre race to the same end. Now, it was the turn of Hafeez – yes, he had a pretty eventful match – to push a ball to the off side and call Misbah for a run. Misbah ran. When he was halfway down the pitch, Hafeez sent him back. He turned and attempted to get back to his crease, but a clever little flick from a diving Amit Mishra beat him to it.DK fluffs another stumping
Dinesh Karthik’s missed stumping of Kumar Sangakkara proved crucial to India’s narrow defeat against Sri Lanka on Friday. He now had a chance to make amends when R Ashwin foxed a charging Maqsood with a ball down the leg side. The partnership between Maqsood and Hafeez  – no, this isn’t just a gratuitous reference – had just crossed 50, and this would have been a good time for India to take a wicket. Maqsood was nowhere near his crease when the ball popped into Karthik’s gloves and popped right out.

Yuvraj Singh was hardly convincing to begin with against Delhi, but a big dose of crowd support and a helping of poor bowling meant he had the opportunity to hint at a possible return to form

Karthik Krishnaswamy in Sharjah18-Apr-2014″I’ve got a feeling,” sang the PA system at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium, not long after Yuvraj Singh had walked in to bat. Before the song could proceed any further, and declare that Thursday night was going to be a good night, the DJ stopped it abruptly. He or she was a Yuvraj fan, perhaps, and didn’t want to put a jinx on him.This was Yuvraj’s first innings since that 21-ball 11 in the World T20 final, and his first innings since a group of fans had reacted unreasonably to that 21-ball 11. It was also his first innings for Bangalore, who had paid a not untidy sum of money to buy him at the auction, despite the fact that he hadn’t made a half-century in his last 19 IPL innings.The man at the other end, meanwhile, was Virat Kohli, whom he had denied the strike during that 21-ball 11. Kohli, Bangalore’s captain, had played a persuasive role in signing him.This, then, wasn’t just another innings.Yuvraj couldn’t have chosen a more congenial setting in which to begin such an innings. He had the crowd’s sympathy, yes, but he would have had that at any stadium; only a tiny fraction of sports fans, surely, are mean enough to revel in a player’s house reportedly getting stoned. Sharjah, though, was also showing itself to be a stronghold of Bangalore fans.In India, it’s often hard to get an accurate picture of the extent of home support at the league’s venues. At most stadiums, someone has placed a home-team flag on your seat well before you’ve parked your car. Most emcees, meanwhile, only ask the crowd to cheer for the home team. If you support the other team, you seldom get a chance to voice it. Here, given equal opportunity to cheer for either side, the Sharjah crowd voted with their vocal cords.Granted, for the most part, the spectators did or chanted whatever the emcee asked them to, no matter how ridiculous it made them look or sound. What they didn’t do, though, was chant “Delhiiiiiiiii, Delhi!” Each time the emcee tried to get them to follow his lead, they drowned him out with shouts of “R-C-B! R-C-B!”It was as much a show of approval for Bangalore as it was a sign of Delhi’s lack of appeal. They haven’t tasted too much success in past seasons, and, perhaps because of that, haven’t retained an easily identifiable core group of star players. For Bangalore, on the other hand, the signing of Yuvraj added yet another highly marketable name to an already swollen roster. It cost them a lot of money to sign him and that may well have caused gaps to form in other areas of their squad, but Sharjah didn’t seem too concerned. As soon as Yuvraj had swung Rahul Sharma over long-on for his first six, a bearded man in a red T-shirt held up a hand-drawn banner. “More risk = More profit,” it said. “Great bid Mr Mallya.”There is no doubt Bangalore and Yuvraj had all the support they could possibly hope for. It is far too early to say with any certainty, though, that Yuvraj has turned a corner with his unbeaten 52.At the start of his innings, he was late on a couple of short balls from Mohammed Shami, both of which went whistling off his top edge. Right after that over, Dinesh Karthik, Delhi’s captain, took Shami off when he still had an over left. Having survived those few discomfiting deliveries, life became much easier for Yuvraj, with Jimmy Neesham serving up length balls and Rahul Sharma dropping his legbreaks right into his hitting zone.Sometimes, though, you want bowlers to feed Yuvraj’s strengths, just to marvel at the way he strikes the ball. One pick-up shot off Neesham left you missing your TV, left you wanting to watch slow-motion replays from 15 different angles. Since that wasn’t possible in the West Stand at Sharjah, you wanted the DJ to at least play the rest of that song.

Plays of the day from the IPL match between Delhi Daredevils and Mumbai Indians, in Sharjah

Siddarth Ravindran27-Apr-2014The seven
Mumbai Indians desperately needed early breakthroughs so they brought Lasith Malinga back for his second over as early as the fifth. It didn’t quite go to plan though, as Malinga fired his second delivery well down the leg side. The wicketkeeper dived to his left and got his gloves on it, but couldn’t collect the ball, only deflecting it onto the helmet positioned behind him. The batsmen had scampered a single as well, which meant seven came off the delivery: the wide + the single + five penalty runs.The gamble
With Michael Hussey struggling for form, Mumbai decided to shake things up by sending in their captain and best IPL batsman, Rohit Sharma, to the top of the order. The gamble didn’t work, though, as Rohit went for an ill-advised single in the second over. He dropped the ball to the left of the pitch, hesitated before deciding to go for it. It was much too late a call; the bowler Mohammed Shami got quickly across and threw down the stumps at the non-striker’s end. Rohit’s only chance was if the throw missed. It didn’t, and Mumbai were off to another shaky start.The yorker
Hussey, last season’s highest run-getter, was having another difficult time in the middle. On a slow surface, he couldn’t quite time the ball, and there were plenty of edges in a short innings that consisted only of dots and singles. His struggle came to an end in the 14th over when Jaydev Unadkat delivered a loopy, 104.4kph yorker on offstump. The slower delivery surprised Hussey, who tried to jam his bat down to keep the ball out, but he couldn’t, and lost his offstump. Unadkat was overjoyed at seeing the variation work so well.The over
Laxmi Shukla is not exactly a fearsome bowler, relying on line and length to complement his military medium pace. Kieron Pollard, one of the most fearsome hitters in the world, had serious problems against Shukla though. In the 13th over, Pollard got the strike after the first delivery. The next ball was a loud lbw appeal, but he was struck outside off. The ball after that was also a loud lbw appeal, and he seemed to have been struck in line though the umpire thought otherwise. There was one lofted hit that just cleared the bowler, and another lbw shout to round off a torrid test for Pollard.The flying bat
Even as late at the 18th over, the Mumbai run-rate was floundering well below six. They needed to throw the bat around, which is what Pollard did, literally. An attempted heave sent the bat flying towards the keeper, resulting in a dot ball. He called for a change of gloves, but that hardly improved matters as the bat flew out of his hands again in the next over as he swatted the ball to midwicket.

Some key numbers at the end of the first day’s play of the Lord’s Test between India and England.

Bishen Jeswant17-Jul-201411 Number of times that both Indian openers have been dismissed for less than 25 runs in 18 away Tests post 2010. While the openers have individually made 13 50-plus scores, including four centuries in this period, there have still been numerous twin failures.8 Number of English bowlers who have taken 250-plus career Test wickets. Stuart Broad became the eighth and latest addition on that list when he had MS Dhoni caught behind by Matt Prior.233 Number of wickets that James Anderson has now taken in England, a record. Fred Trueman with 229 wickets, from 47 matches, held the previous record. Anderson, started his 55th match on 229 wickets, and went past Trueman’s record when he picked up the first Indian wicket, that of Shikhar Dhawan.2011 The year which saw the last instance of India’s last three wickets doubling the innings score. In today’s game India were 145-7, and finished the day on 290-9. The last instance of the Indian tail wagging so vigorously as to double the innings score was at Edgbaston during India’s last tour to England, when last three wickets took the score from 111-7 to 224 during India’s first innings.72 Number of Test wickets that Anderson has taken at Lord’s, more than by any other bowler. The earlier record of 69 wickets was held by Ian Botham. Anderson went past Botham’s record when he picked up the wicket of Virat Kohli, caught behind by Prior.106 Ajinkya Rahane’s strike rate once he had crossed 100 balls. Rahane scored 46 runs off his first 100 balls, and 57 off the next 54. During his first 100 balls, Rahane was in control of 91% of the shots that he played. Though he had a higher strike rate after his first 100 balls, his control factor reduced to 81%.4 Number of Indian batsmen who have a scored a century during their first Test at Lord’s, with Rahane being the latest. The other three players are Saurav Ganguly, Dilip Vengsarkar and Ajit Agarkar.6 Number of instances of Indian batsmen scoring a century in England while batting at number five. The five instances apart from Rahane’s knock of 103, involved Mohammad Azharuddin (twice), Vijay Manjrekar, Polly Umrigar and Saurav Ganguly6.51 India’s run rate when the English bowlers bowled a full length. Out of the 116 deliveries that the England bowlers pitched up to the bat, the Indians scored 126 runs. On the contrary, India scored only 61 runs off the 213 balls that were delivered on a good length, at a run rate of 1.71, and even lost six of their nine wickets to length balls.80 Percentage of instances where Bhuvneshwar Kumar was in control of his shots. To put this in context, MS Dhoni was only in control of 70% of his shots, Shikhar Dhawan 67% and M Vijay 63%. Apart from the fact that Bhuvneshwar played a composed innings, this could also be indicative of the fact that the pitch has eased up a little, something that Indians might not have been hoping for.3 Number of instances where the Indian eighth wicket pair has posted a 90-plus partnership in England. Today’s partnership between Bhuvneshwar and Rahane was the third highest. It is interesting that an Indian eight wicket pair has not posted a 100-plus partnership in England despite now getting to 90 on three separate occasions.600 Number of runs that India’s first five wickets have contributed in this Test series. However, the bottom five wickets have more than pulled their weight by scoring 538 runs. Both sets of five wickets have contributed one century partnership and three fifty partnerships each.

Although South Africa lost a home series to Australia after Jacques Kallis retired, they are unbeaten under the new captain Hashim Amla and have been successfully introducing new batsmen into the side, sans the stumbling other squads go through

Firdose Moonda in Port Elizabeth23-Dec-20140:48

Successful year for South Africa – Amla

From the Summerstrand beach in Port Elizabeth to the Sea Point promenade in Cape Town, the sea looks pretty much the same: sparkling blue and sprinkled with sunlight. Sight alone cannot tell you that one is the warm Indian Ocean, the other the icy Atlantic. And when you visit the point where the two merge, the gentle slap of one wave over another will not convince you that water has a border. It simply flows into itself, like any good transition, especially the one the South Africa team is currently experiencing.It has only been a year and seven Tests since Jacques Kallis retired and nine months and four Tests that South Africa have been without Graeme Smith but the twin departures have not dented the team as severely as the loss of 283 Test caps and 30 years of collective experience should. Although South Africa lost a home series to Australia after Kallis retired, they are unbeaten under the new captain Hashim Amla and have been successfully introducing new batsmen into the side, sans the stumbling other squads go through.Of South Africa’s last six Test debutants dating back to November 2012, four have been batsman, starting with Faf du Plessis. He has already made notable enough performances to be considered a senior and attributes that to a welcoming set-up. “The most important thing for a new guy is the environment and this is the best environment you can ask for,” du Plessis said. “Straight away you feel like someone who belongs. You don’t feel like a junior player who has to score three hundreds before you get accepted.”South Africa have developed a system of identifying the players they believe are close to playing Test cricket and including them in the squad early and du Plessis is proof it works. He traveled to England in 2012, when South Africa took the Test mace off England. Later that year in Australia, he debuted in Adelaide and saved the game.Dean Elgar was the next reserve and made his first appearance in Perth in the game after du Plessis’ debut, where he suffered a pair. He played eight Tests out of his preferred opening position before being moved up on Smith’s retirement and his example proves that South Africa are willing to persist with the players they’ve picked.”Even you if you look at Rilee Rossouw, he didn’t have the best start to his ODI career but we all backed him and if you have that, it’s more important than anything else,” du Plessis said. Rossouw scored four ducks in his first six ODI innings but remains very much in South Africa’s plans and was even brought into the Test squad when Quinton de Kock was ruled out of the West Indies series.De Kock’s injury means it “looks likely,” according to du Plessis, that the next batsman in the squad could debut at St George’s Park because South Africa are unlikely to deviate from the strategy of seven specialist batsmen. Temba Bavuma was the reserve when the squad was first announced and if South Africa follow their pattern of promotion, he will play ahead of Rossouw.Although Bavuma is a regular No. 3, he will likely be deployed in the lower-middle order where South Africa’s debutants have featured. They arrive after players such as du Plessis, Amla and AB de Villiers which should mean they are shielded from the early assault of the opposition attack. But they may still face a second new-ball, which du Plessis explained can be difficult to negotiate on South African surfaces. “The new ball offers challenges. It’s important to be really tight. Once you get through that, that’s when you can score the big runs and so when you get in, you have to make sure you convert.”Stuttering after a start was the theme of the West Indies top-order at Centurion and has also become a trend for one of South Africa’s openers, Alviro Petersen, who has been dismissed under 35 in 19 of his last 24 innings. If he can put that right, du Plessis hinted that South Africa could post a total even higher than the 552 for 5 declared they made in Centurion.”We’ve got a batting line-up that becomes really dangerous when we don’t lose wicket upfronts. We saw in Centurion, West Indies had a sniff with the three early wickets but then we had a big partnership and we blew them away.”Personally, du Plessis is hoping to make a contribution on the ground where he scored his first home hundred, in January 2013. “In the previous innings, I got a good ball. That happens to everyone but I am looking forward to playing here again.”

Plays of the day from the game between Australia and Sri Lanka in Sydney

Andrew Fidel Fernando, Daniel Brettig and Jarrod Kimber08-Mar-2015The stumping
Aaron Finch has spent an awful lot of time thinking about how to combat the swinging ball lately, given that he was bowled by it in Auckland off the inside edge and was then pouched in the slips in Perth off the outside edge. Sydney presented a rather different challenge: not offering much to the pacemen and causing him to face up to spin early in his innings – the second over even. Having seen off Sachithra Senanayake’s off breaks, the leg breaks of Seekkuge Prasanna posed another question, and Finch presumed a little too hastily to know the answer when he hurtled down to a delivery that the bowler speared down the leg side for a snappy stumping from Kumar Sangakkara. Hobart will no doubt bring Finch another challenge again.The leg-bye
Sitting on 99, Glenn Maxwell had the chance to equal Kevin O’Brien’s record for the fastest World Cup hundred. Virtually the whole of the SCG, including umpire Ian Gould, thought he had done it, when Maxwell appeared to glance a ball behind square leg for the single he required. Spectators roared and rose to applaud, Gould’s leg and arm remained stationary, and Maxwell trotted through. But when he reached the far end without celebrating, he quietly advised the umpire that he had not hit it, and a leg-bye was signalled. This was a level of sportsmanship many a club cricketer would consider too generous by half, and certainly caught out the crowd. Among them was Brian Lara, who could remember not giving Terry Prue the chance to signal the same when he ran through for the runs that gave him 200 on this ground in the first week of 1993. Lara had celebrated before completing the run, but Maxwell did not have long to wait, finding his hundred the next over.The height
So much height. It was like Steven Smith was trying to see how high he could hit Tillakaratne Dilshan. At mid-off there was a dot under the ball. It went back, forward, left, right and pretty much every direction it was possible to move in. As if it wasn’t a fielder, but a kid with a laser pointer. It really was a pretty straight forward catch, that was made better by the 19 changes in direction the ball seemed to make in the air, and Thisara Perera actually did on the ground. When he finally took the ball, his balance was so poor he just fell over. His hands were the real stars.The three pairs of fours
Scoring 24 four runs in an over is no longer particularly remarkable, but unusually, Tillakaratne Dilshan made all 24 runs off boundaries, in Mitchell Johnson’s third over. Even more unusually, the boundaries were all hit in pairs. The first two came down the ground as Johnson overpitched. Then when the bowler tried to bounce Dilshan, he was smashed behind backward square leg twice. Finally, Johnson delivered length outside off, but Dilshan was on to that, too. The fifth ball, slightly overpitched, was creamed through cover. Then, when the bowler pulled the length back slightly Dilshan pushed the ball through the gap, timing it just well enough to beat the fielder giving chase.The headgear
Ireland’s John Mooney has already invented a “gorget” addition to his helmet, which is designed to protect the back of a batsman’s head and neck. On Sunday, at the site of Phillip Hughes’ accident, two Sri Lanka players wore a new factory-made “Stemguard”, made from foam and rubber, which is said to absorb the force of any hits received to that area. Kumar Sangakkara and Angelo Mathews wore the Masuri attachment, and if Sangakkara’s 104 is anything to go by, their movement was seemingly unaffected by the addition.

Jimmy Adams reflects on West Indies v Australia in the 1990s. Featuring star turns from Lara, Pidge, Ambi, Tugga… and Michael Bevan

Interview by Scott Oliver03-Jun-20151992-93: Australia 1, West Indies 2
We started the tour with some good performances in the state games. Batsmen got runs, bowlers got wickets, so we were in a good place. There was an immense amount of self-belief in our senior players: people like Dessie, Richie , Curtly , Courtney. I can’t remember feeling any self-doubt from them when we sat and discussed the opposition and what we were hoping to get out of the series. I’d been around the West Indies dressing room in Jamaica in 1990, when they lost to England, and I remember thinking all hell was going to break loose after the game. But Viv and Greenidge and all of them weren’t like that: they just spoke about the next Test match and getting it right.By the end of the first Test we were very well aware that it was going to be a tough series. It ended in a draw, but you’d probably say more points to them than to us. The key factor for us was the strength of our bowling attack, and we had enough performances from the bowlers to suggest that we were in a pretty good place.Warne got wickets, but at the time he wasn’t the focal point of our discussions. We had a lot of respect for the pairing of Merv Hughes and Billy McDermott. I mean, McDermott was an excellent bowler, swinging the ball at his pace, and with consistency.We can look back now at Sydney and just say “typical Lara”: lots of drives and cuts and sweeps, things that we’ve seen a lot of times since then. It was the first time the rest of the world was beginning to see not only someone who scored hundreds but who scored big hundreds.Perth 1993 was the last time West Indies won a series against Australia•Getty ImagesThe senior players weren’t panicking and that had a big influence on everything else. Ambrose and Walsh, Richie and Dessie, they were sort of, “We’re okay, there’s two Tests to go, even though we’re one-nil down.”I guess the team was also on a bit of a high, having won the WSC, and you could argue that that self-belief helped in the last few overs in Adelaide. Ambi and Courtney were just going to bowl until we either win or lose. It gets to the point where there’s no more planning. It’s just two bowlers versus two batsmen and we’ll see where we end up in ten minutes, ‘cos it’ll be over by then.They were 90-odd for 2 at lunch, and the decision was taken to pitch it up a little more and see what happens. It worked in the end, but it was very much a case of not only having the ability to plan but also to carry it out. Take nothing away from Ambi, it was a great spell. From that point we may still have been the No. 1 team in the world but it was very apparent that there was nothing between the two teams. Nothing. As much as you’re going to enjoy a result like that at Adelaide, if Tim May’s clip hadn’t hit Desmond in the shins at forward short leg, those three runs would have won the Test match. Then Australia would have won the series. But going to Perth, we knew we were going to win that Test. Don’t ask me how. We just knew. And it happened.I don’t know if there was any particular animosity in this team towards the Australia team. There could have been. I’ve heard players in my team over the years identify players from the opposition and say, quite plain, “I don’t like that person.” The reverse is true as well, of course. But Merv Hughes and David Boon were in our dressing room almost every day. They came in with two six-packs and they’d just drink them with anybody. Sure, guys would be warring. So you’d have maybe Healy and Brian, or Healy and Dessie, warring. Nobody didn’t pay it any mind. Merv and Boonie – they couldn’t care less.Exit Billy, enter Pidge: In 1995, Glenn McGrath finished with 17 wickets in four Tests•Shaun Botterill/Getty Images1994-95: West Indies 1, Australia 2
I think there were a lot of distracting things happening in and around the team at the time. Maybe that’s just me, but we’d changed the management team before the tour. We’d been travelling with Rohan Kanhai as coach and David Halford as manager for three years, and just before the series started they brought in a new manager and a new coach [Andy Roberts]. They did things differently. And I don’t think the squad was as focused as we could have been. At that level, you’re off by one per cent and sometimes that’s enough. To me it just seems silly. You’re coming into a “world championship” and the management team that has built strong relationships for three years – to sort of disband them just before that series I thought was a bit counterproductive.Also, the whole captaincy thing was going back and forth because Richie had been suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. He’d missed touring India and New Zealand. Courtney had stepped in, filled the gap, and we’d sort of gotten through. Richie comes back, which… every right he should be back as captain. He’d scored runs in regional cricket. But it’s still a different dynamic.I might be wrong, but I don’t think Brian and Carl had many big partnerships. Brian’s big partnerships came with the sort of batsmen who were happy to give him strike and let him dominate. You give him what he wants because if he ends up still there tonight, we’re in a hell of a position. Whereas there might be times – just like Greenidge and Richards, back in the day – when he might have been competing with Carl to get at a particular bowler.Allan Border’s team, when playing well, epitomised what he was like as an individual: very tough, very uncompromising – even more so than your standard stereotype of an Australian. Taylor was probably a more attacking captain. That was the personality he brought to it, I think, but maybe he had more at his disposal. Eras create leaders, and I’m not sure if a Mark Taylor-type captain would have worked in the late 1980s, in the same way that a coach like John Buchanan rather than a Bob Simpson wouldn’t have been what was needed for the team to start making strides forward.By the time that series had finished, we knew that were potentially looking at the next very good Australian bowler. He became great, but at the time we wouldn’t have known how good he would go on to be. But we certainly had an idea. He’d definitely taken over from Billy McDermott as Australia’s No. 1, which was an achievement in itself.It had grass on it. The wicket was such that if it didn’t have that kind of grass, it would have crumbled. I think Shane Warne would have been in his element. But it was a very sporty wicket. I remember batting with Lara and we ended up discussing and agreeing on what for us would have been a pretty unorthodox approach to try and score runs. Maybe in normal circumstances some of the deliveries we looked to score off we wouldn’t have done. I remember Paul Reiffel bowled some impossible deliveries, but your bog-standard delivery was probably one that would get you out on a surface like that, because it was seaming about so much. You had to find a way to cash in before that happened.I don’t think we batted very well in that Test match. And as with most good teams, if you open the door part way, they’ll kick it down. We did that when we beat them in Adelaide. That was like a foot in the door for us, and when we went to Perth and saw that pitch, we kicked the door down. It happens, you know. The key is not to open that door, even halfway.There was a lot that came out in that particular game, even before the game started. It was a very emotional time. We knew we were up against it. There was a stark contrast between the West Indies team in 1995 going into the final Test at one-all at Sabina Park, versus the West Indies team in 1993, going into the Test at Perth one-all. There was a stark contrast in the whole outlook, in the vibe in the team, probably the self-belief. That was a fact. In hindsight, I would venture to say that the senior players for Australia would have seen and felt that difference. I was still a grasshopper in international cricket, but when I’d just gotten old enough to understand these things, there’s no doubt in my mind that the hierarchy of the Australian team would have been pumping it into them: this is not the same West Indies team that went to Perth one-all two years ago.I don’t think we had a team by the end of that series. Issues which had been floating around started to impact mindsets on and off the field, which, for two closely matched teams, could be a dealbreaker. And this is not to take anything away from Australia. You lose a series after four Test matches, you are not the best team. But collectively there wasn’t the same level of focus. There were contributing factors, but good teams can create that focus if they have to, which we had done in previous competitions, but we couldn’t do it then.Curtly Ambrose’s nine wickets at the MCG was one of the few highlights for West Indies during their series loss in 1996-97•Getty Images1996-97: Australia 3 West Indies 2
Australia at that point were a better team than us. They were getting into the Warne-McGrath-Gillespie era. We had Walsh and Ambrose, but Kenny Benjamin got injured early in that series and Bish had had two stress fractures and was trying to work on a new action, but it wasn’t happening. Our back-up were honest triers but not of the same quality. Australia worked on the premise that they’ll keep Walsh and Ambrose out – which most teams were starting to do.You talk about Test match cricket – it’s about how much ammunition you have. We didn’t have the ammunition we once had, and it was putting pressure on everybody. When I started, Ambrose and Walsh, and then Benjamin and Bishop, would say, “Listen, give us 300 runs and we’ll win you the Test match.” Now 300 runs was sometimes only getting you past the follow-on. And it was .I can’t remember his level of consistency, but there was an acceptance that if Bevan pitches it, you had to play properly, because he bowled pretty quick. If he got it wrong, then he would serve up a bit of hitting material. If he got it right, you’d have to mind your p’s and q’s.If Usain Bolt wins the 100m and slows down at the line to win by a few hundredths of a second, he still has the gold medal and everybody else has silver, bronze and also-rans. The fact is that we were playing with a level of inconsistency that wouldn’t rank you as the top team in the world.You have to be careful not to get into a bowler-versus-batsmen situation, but over the course of a series, if you want to win, you’re going to have to score some runs.By then, no matter how you want to colour it, you’re beginning to see a gap in both teams. Certainly in terms of the ability to play consistent cricket over three sessions times five.The 1999 series was a Brian Lara masterclass times three•Getty Images1998-99: West Indies 2, Australia 2
Coming back from a whitewash in South Africa, Brian was put on probation as captain by the board. They were trying to force his hand. There was a clash of personalities between him and the President of the WICB, Pat Rousseau. There had been a big stand off before we went to South Africa. Big egos rubbing together. But we tended to think they should put a few more scenarios together like that if you’re going to get batting like he gave us as the result, you know!As a player, it was embarrassing. You’d think that even on a bad day you’d be better than 51. But in context, it was a hell of an achievement to have gone from there, to heading to Antigua, where we were 2-1 up against the No. 1 team in the world. But after Trinidad, they literally stripped Brian of selectorial power. They basically told him: “We give you the team, and if you don’t like it, we’ll just find another captain.”We thought anything would be possible while Brian was there. I think that was in the back of everybody’s mind, and we all knew he was in good form. You think, if the great man bats through the day and builds a couple of partnerships, then if we’re not there, we’re going to be close.I can remember Brian heaving a couple of sixes off Warne and Stuart MacGill, and cashing in on whoever would have opened the bowling with McGrath. Brian would log stuff like that and he would be planning his innings half an hour in advance. “Well, if we can get 30, 40 off the next 10 overs, by the time he comes back we’ll be here.” That’s how he works.Everybody was sitting on the verandah outside the old dressing rooms. There was just complete silence for the whole over that Courtney survived. Everybody held their breath. We all knew that if Brian got back on strike, the game would be over. Fingernails, fingernails, fingernails stuff.For all the Test matches that I played in, the strength of the Australians, the relative skill of the West Indies team, the batting line-up that we had, the pressure Lara was under from different quarters within West Indies cricket, I’d have to say that was some of the best Test batsmanship that I’ve seen. There was a double-hundred in Jamaica, the 153, a hundred off 80-odd balls in Antigua.The situation with the board got ridiculous, to the point where they were blaming Lara for us not winning the series because he scored too quickly in Antigua. That’s when you know you’re great: when you score a hundred at a run a ball and they’re blaming you for everyone else’s problems.We were so disappointed. It would have been sneaking a win against the world champions. Truth is, we probably didn’t deserve it if you look at the teams we put out. The standouts were the two old warhorses, and then the genius of Lara over four Test matches really. The series was like a sub-story of those three.The series was huge. When you do get two or three great players playing well – very well, out of their skins – with a little bit of support from the rest, you can compete. For the cricket that Australia were playing at the time, and coming off a whitewash two months before in South Africa, to have held them to a 2-2 draw, and been in a position where we could have won the series, it was a massive, massive performance.2000-01: Australia 5, West Indies 0
For me, personally, I never felt the pressure from the great West Indian players of the past. It was a tough trip for everybody, myself included. Still enjoyed it, though. I’ll always love the challenge of competing against the best in the world in anything. By then, lines were clearly demarcated in terms of where both teams were in the rankings. It was bloody hard work. The result reflected the difference between the teams at the time. West Indies had in times past put whitewashes on different teams, and it happens. It’s part and parcel.

Charlotte Edwards has seen a transformation in England women’s cricket and remains at the helm at the start of the multi-format Ashes series which begins with three Royal London ODIs – the first in Taunton on Tuesday

Tim Wigmore20-Jul-2015″My first Test Match was in a skirt and now I’m a professional cricketer. And that probably says everything.”Charlotte Edwards’ career embodies the transformation in women’s cricket. She made her international debut in 1996, at the time becoming the youngest ever woman to play for England. In 19 years since she has become one of the most significant women in the history of the game, being named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year, winning an MBE and, perhaps most significantly of all, being included in the first batch of England female cricketers to be awarded a central contract last year.”Now there is a career in cricket for any young girl,” she says. “It’s unrecognisable to the game I first started playing. “You just see so many girls now interested which you couldn’t have said before. I didn’t even know a women’s team existed when I was 11 – I thought I’d have to play for the England men’s team!”It’s been a wonderful journey and I’m so pleased I’ve been on that journey. I’m so lucky I can tell young girls about that journey and make them realise how lucky they are.”Edwards’ achievements are worth recounting. She has played more women’s internationals than anyone else in history. She has captained England in over 200 internationals, including Ashes wins at home and away and World Cup and World T20 triumphs. And, after over nine years as full-time skipper – a longer time span than Andrew Strauss’ entire international career – her zeal for the job has not diminished.”There is so much more I want to achieve in the game – more World Cup wins, more Ashes wins. I wish I had a pound for every time I’m asked about retirement. That is not on my mind at all. You can play for longer these days. Every older player tells me to keep on. As long as I can do the training that’s the hard part.”You’ve got to have the passion and desire to get up and do the training, and I’ve got that in abundance. I never thought I’d play for this long and now I’m just enjoying every year as if it’s my last.”Now Edwards again has the Australians in her sights. “It’s going to be a great series. You’ve got the two best teams in the world – we’re desperate to keep hold of the Ashes, and they’re desperate to win them, so it’s going to be set up for a great contest. We’re on home soil so I’m confident – we’ve done well against them here in previous Ashes series and I’m confident we can do it again.”2015 marks a landmark in women’s Ashes cricket: the first time that every England-Australia clash will be played at a regular county ground. “There’s going to be a lot of extra media scrutiny for us around our Ashes which is obviously fantastic.”After winning the last women’s Ashes Down Under in 2013/14, Edwards had to endure some unwelcome extra scrutiny when she was criticised for her intention “to get absolutely smashed tonight.” She laughs when she is reminded of these comments. “I probably shouldn’t have said what I said. It reflects where profile of women game has got to, people were listening to what was being said. I took it as a compliment really.”The latest manifestation of the improvement in the women’s game is the success enjoyed by one of Edwards’ teammates, Kate Cross, in the Central Lancashire League this season, including taking 8 for 47 in one game.”I’ve told her it’s great but she needs to save some wickets for the Ashes.” Edwards herself is testament to the virtues of the best female cricketing talent playing extensively with men.”Without a shadow of a doubt me playing boys’ and men’s cricket until the age of 17 has enabled me to go on and play for England. You have to play some women’s cricket, but I’ll tell any young girl to play boys’ and men’s cricket for as long as you want – it only helps you, more mentally than anything, and the step to women’s international cricket is quite an easy one once you’ve had loads of stick playing men’s cricket.”It is a different game – as a batter I wouldn’t want to go and play league cricket six weeks before the Ashes,” she says, envisaging a battery of deliveries coming through at shoulder height, which she would seldom face in the women’s game.While Edwards welcomes the profile of the women’s Ashes, and the format whereby every game across the three forms of cricket counts towards the series result, she would like the format used in all bilateral series.Yet few other series involve any Tests at all: over 19 years Edwards has managed just 22 Tests, barely more than one a year. She has only played ten Tests against teams other than Australia.”We have to play more of it. It just teaches you more about the game. There is too much emphasis on T20 for women. You can learn so much from the longer format.”Edwards, who will play for Perth Scorchers this winter, also thinks that domestic cricket in England, which will include a six-team Women’s Super League from next year, could learn from Down Under. “Hopefully we will get more England players in that competition. It’s the best in the world at the moment and that is where we should be aiming. I learned a lot out there in terms of my leadership as well as improving as a player and learning a lot about the Aussies.”Australia might not feel inclined to give Edwards any assistance, giving her outstanding record in Ashes cricket: she averages 52.36 in 12 Tests, and needs just 30 more runs to become England’s highest ever Test runscorer against Australia. The records change, but Edwards’ determination to break them remains undimmed.

Zaheer Khan was opening bowler, reverse-swing bowler, strike bowler, containing bowler, bowling captain, and bowling coach, all rolled into one; he made India’s bowling units complete

Sidharth Monga15-Oct-2015MS Dhoni hardly ever comments publicly about a cricketer outside of their bowling, batting or fielding skills. He talks about their ability to play shots, or to move the ball, but he does not easily call any cricketer “clever”.So when Dhoni, your captain in 31 Tests and 63 ODIs, says you are the “most clever fast bowler” he knows, there can be no better praise. It is praise that goes beyond stats, which sadly do not do Zaheer Khan justice. It goes beyond calling him the Tendulkar of Indian bowling, which Dhoni did once. This is despite all the frustration Zaheer’s fitness battles have caused Dhoni over the years.In England, in 2011, Zaheer walked off on the first day to herald India’s depressing sequence of eight straight away defeats. On his comeback, he was even less fit, and operated with zero responsibility with the bat. His fielding had become abysmal and he had to be dropped. Despite all that, when Dhoni – not given to effusive praise – says Zaheer is the cleverest fast bowler he has known, you know the captain’s earlier gratitude exceeds his recent frustration.Dhoni will never contest that Zaheer made him. A major part of Dhoni’s captaincy was devoted to fighting Indian curators who kept rolling out slow and low tracks, when sides stopped fearing travelling to India. This was also the time that Harbhajan Singh was on the decline and Anil Kumble had retired. Zaheer’s Trent Bridge 2007 revenge for jelly beans might be his finest moment in Test cricket, but as a complete bowler, he gave his best to Dhoni the captain.In fact, Dhoni remarks that he hardly had to captain when Zaheer was at his best. Imagine Wasim Akram’s mind in a slightly unfit, brittle body. That was Zaheer at his best. He was opening bowler, reverse-swing bowler, strike bowler, containing bowler, bowling captain, and bowling coach, all rolled into one. You could enjoy Zaheer’s spells in isolation from the matches in which they occurred. India could be losing, but they way Zaheer delightfully set batsmen up was an essay in itself.Trent Bridge 2007 remains the high point of Zaheer’s career•Getty ImagesEvery body movement, every mental move, was deliberate. Like the finest of predators, he did not move a finger in vain; towards the end he hardly had a follow-through. There was always something up, some purpose to what Zaheer at his best did. Even at press conferences, he did not waste his breath. Once, when asked about new plans for Graeme Smith, Zaheer, smiling, said, “I just have to turn up.” It was a measured smile. Not a wide, self-congratulatory smile, but a menacing, narrow one.Zaheer remembered batsmen’s weaknesses for years. He once played Smith three years after he had last played him, but it was as if he had never stopped working at Smith. Or Kumar Sangakkara. Unlike Akram, Zaheer could not swing the ball back into right-hand batsman consistently, but he somehow would manage to get one to move back in, and that was enough for him in a spell. He would sometimes bowl a legcutter to create the illusion of swing, and then prey with the ball going straight on. Smith always had both his edges vulnerable to Zaheer.Then came the old ball. Once it got heavier on one side Zaheer became lethal. That is how he gave Dhoni control. That is how he won India Tests at home, making up for the lack of a match-winning spinner or desired pitches. It is one thing to be able to look after the ball and get it to reverse but another to know what to do with the reversing ball. Zaheer did the latter with precision.Zaheer did what not many modern bowlers can claim to have done: master all three balls – SG, Dukes and Kookaburra. Only Dale Steyn has outdone him on that count. James Anderson is perhaps an equal. Mitchell Johnson has struggled with the SG, as did even Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan. Zaheer did it with the SG in India, with the Kookaburra in South Africa and Sri Lanka, and with the Dukes in England.Still, his biggest contribution perhaps was invisible. He made India’s bowling units complete. He set fields for other bowlers. Sreesanth had that lovely seam position, but his seam and swing without Zaheer counted for little. This aspect of Zaheer’s contribution made itself apparent in South Africa in 2010-11, when he missed the first Test and India got walloped, looking toothless with the ball after having been bowled out for 136. In the second Test, which India won, Zaheer took just six wickets out of 20, but Harbhajan, who had earlier insisted losing Zaheer in that first Test was not a big loss, said Zaheer had proved him wrong. He helps others take wickets, he said. He is the man.Zaheer’s knuckled slower balls during the 2011 World Cup fooled many a batsman•AFPAsk Shoaib Akhtar where he learnt to take wickets, and he will tell you it was from Akram or Waqar Younis at mid-off or mid-on. Ask Akram and Younis and they will point to Imran. You look at India’s fast bowlers today, and you see the bowling coach showing them the techniques, but there is nobody at mid-off showing them how to take wickets. Zaheer bowled off 13 paces when at his best, had zero follow-through, stayed around 130kmph, but knew how to take wickets. There was a Pakistani bowler somewhere inside him.That he did not play the first Test of a series was a regular theme in Zaheer’s career. He was crippled by injuries. It was frustrating. Not least for him. Shoulder, hamstring, back, mysterious injuries whose root cause took a long time finding, Zaheer had to counter all. It did not help that his work ethic was questioned in the first half of his career. Indeed, in 2012, when he went to France to become fitter, he did so only after he was sacked, not during an off season. He is now ending on 92 Tests after having mounted yet another comeback that ended in his being dropped.The final memories – although not the enduring ones – will be his inability to lead the attack to what seemed like inevitable wins, in Johannesburg and in Wellington. It may not be a perfect ending, but only Zaheer knows what his body went through when it could not match his ambition. He never openly talked about his skill, which was immense. We would have loved to hear, for instance, how he developed the knuckle-ball slower ball that was unleashed on England tied match in the 2011 World Cup. Between Trent Bridge and that World Cup, Zaheer was arguably India’s biggest match-winner, but to not talk about how he developed his various skills was un-Pakistani of a very Pakistani Indian bowler.For an Indian fast bowler to be compared to his Pakistan counterparts is a big compliment. Not even Kapil Dev drew such comparisons. That Zaheer has outdone and outlasted all his Pakistani contemporaries, even Akhtar, should bring ultimate respect.

ESPNcricinfo staff07-Jan-2016Both batsmen scored fifties as they added a 101-run opening stand inside 11 overs•Getty ImagesSri Lanka then pulled things back by dismissing both batsmen soon after they had reached their fifties•Getty ImagesCorey Anderson – playing his first international game since May 2015 – failed to make an impact, as Sri Lanka’s bowlers thwarted New Zealand’s momentum in the death overs•Getty ImagesNuwan Kulasekara was Sri Lanka’s best bowler, with returns of 2 for 26, as New Zealand were pegged back to 182 for 4•Getty ImagesTrent Boult and Matt Henry gave New Zealand the upper hand in chase, with four wickets in four overs to reduce the visitors to 42 for 4•Getty ImagesDanushka Gunathilaka, however, kept Sri Lanka’s runs flowing, taking his side to 84 before he fell in the tenth over•Getty ImagesSri Lanka’s lower order, steered by Milinda Siriwardana, then took the visitors closer to the target with handy contributions…•AFP… as the equation was reduced to 13 off the last over•Getty ImagesGrant Elliott, however, pulled it off for the hosts, giving away just one boundary, to seal a three-run win•Getty Images