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Pakistan’s bowlers were splendid in Mount Maunganui, but Williamson and Taylor were just a little bit better

Danyal Rasool26-Dec-2020This is just about acceptable. Yes, New Zealand are on top, and yes, Pakistan’s answer to Kane Williamson is currently nursing a thumb injury, while Pakistan’s answer to Ross Taylor disappeared down the same cracks as Azhar Ali and Asad Shafiq’s potential over the years. Yes, that means the template New Zealand followed against West Indies is still very much on, particularly given the vulnerability of Pakistan’s batting order and the confidence surging through New Zealand’s quick bowlers. But for all of that, and the frustrations Pakistan will be nursing now that a grinding day is over, few, even in the bitter, scapegoat-y world of Pakistan cricket analysis, could throw much blame Pakistan’s way.Mohammad Rizwan won the toss – the sixth successive time a coin has bested a New Zealand skipper this summer – and bowled on a surface greener than most outfields in Pakistan are this or any other time of the year. Unlike West Indies, Pakistan’s new ball bowlers Shaheen Afridi and Mohammad Abbas took advantage of the grass on the wicket and the new ball, striking to remove New Zealand’s struggling openers early. They did so not because they went in search of magic deliveries, but because they stuck to that niggly line just outside off stump that has brought them success in most places they play.Clip that opening spell, set up a tutorial and use them to teach every visiting side how to bowl on the first morning in New Zealand. In a masterclass of execution, Afridi and Abbas appeared to be exploiting the conditions so expertly they might as well have been raised under the shadow of Mount Maunganui itself, rather than first time visitors to this place. Tom Latham floundered and Tom Blundell fiddled and both inevitably fell to Afridi, though Abbas could claim assists for both dismissals thanks to a six-over spell of metronomic efficiency in which no quarter was given. He might not have known it was one day out from Christmas for the lack of generosity on offer. Or he might have been auditioning for Scrooge’s part.Thirty of the 36 balls Abbas bowled in that opening burst were length balls outside off stump, with only three full deliveries, meaning he hadn’t been fooled by the grass on the surface and gone searching for phantom swing. Twenty-six of Afridi’s deliveries in his first six overs were length balls on or around off stump, with both wickets coming off those deliveries.Shaheen Shah Afridi was a menace throughout the day•Getty ImagesBut this isn’t a story of the ball getting older and the bowlers losing their discipline, allowing Williamson and Taylor to build that attritional partnership that dominated the best part of the day. The figures suggest that Pakistan’s lengths didn’t waver much at all throughout the first two sessions, with Faheem Ashraf justifying his inclusion as an extra seamer by turning in a rigidly disciplined performance, if not quite as penetrative as his more storied counterparts. Williamson left him particularly well, but it was telling that that was the New Zealand captain’s most secure option against a bowler some might have felt the hosts would target. Eighty percent of the balls he bowled targeted that fourth stump, and while the wickets column remained empty, 15 runs in 10 overs in the first two sessions suggested he wasn’t much of a downgrade to Abbas.All of this, as you might have picked up, is really rather good, but so, you’ll likely have noticed, are Taylor and Williamson. Taylor, overtaking Daniel Vettori to become the most-capped New Zealand cricketer in history, demonstrated why he’s hung around so long, taking a more assertive role as Williamson took his time settling in, and pouncing upon Pakistan’s genuine weak link, Yasir Shah, just before tea to secure control of the day for his side. Williamson, meanwhile, left what he could and dead-batted the rest in the first two sessions, undoubtedly only aggravating the frustrations of Pakistan bowlers who would have felt they deserved better for the discipline they showed.New Zealand’s two greatest living batsmen would refuse to leave the crease for the best part of 50 overs, as if having marked out the 22 yards as the place they would squat. They have done that often enough by now to be able to claim ownership rights; this was their tenth hundred partnership together, more than any other New Zealand pair has managed. Few will have felt as much of a grind; equally, few will feel as rewarding.Afridi would return to give Pakistan one more shot in the arm, removing Taylor with a bit of extra bounce, but Williamson was going nowhere. It wasn’t a completely chanceless innings – he was lucky an lbw shout wasn’t sent upstairs – and the two catches Pakistan put down in the slips barely count by their inexorably slipping fielding standards. The strike rate, once languishing around 20, had picked up, and the fluency was returning to his shots. Pakistan’s accuracy after tea had begun to fall away, as Williamson and Taylor will have known it inevitably would. That it lasted two sessions was a fairly impressive feat, one that on another day might have seen them well into New Zealand’s tail by now.Solid bowling performance? Yes. Bowlers dominating batsmen for large periods? Most certainly. The reward? Waking up tomorrow to get ready to bowl at Williamson, unbeaten on 94, with the scoreboard reading 222 for 3. If that’s what a decent day looks like, this short, two-match series might become an interminable one for Rizwan’s side.

Fourth-choice left-arm spinner makes record-breaking start to Test career

Andrew Fidel Fernando01-May-2021Praveen Jayawickrama is essentially Sri Lanka’s fourth-choice left-arm spinner. If Lasith Embuldeniya or Duvindu Tillakaratne had been fit, or if Prabath Jayasuriya had passed a fitness test, he would have struggled to find a place in the squad. But such are the manic, dramatic turns that both engulf and somehow also enliven the island’s cricket, Jayawickrama took 6 for 92 to become Sri Lanka’s most-successful bowler on debut, surprising everyone, but also, in a sense, no one.See, this is the Test team that loses most of its pace attack and has its captain sacked, before going to South Africa and becoming the first Asian side to clinch a series there; the team that collapses twice at home to modest England spin, then defies a decent pace attack and the Dukes ball in the Caribbean; which has a batter with 11 Test hundreds and an average of almost 40 failing to make the XI, while an opener with an average of 26.31 after 41 Tests sits second on the year’s run-scoring list; whose coaches are forever in peril; whose administration has been dominated by the same smarmy figures for 25 years; and yet whose cricket refuses to die quietly, though the situation has often seemed terminal.Jayawickrama’s personal journey is one of steady progress. He would tell his mother that he’d play for Sri Lanka one day at age eight, long before he even took the sport up seriously. He’d rise through the ranks at his school in Kalutara, before being offered a scholarship by a bigger one in Moratuwa in his senior years. He’d make the Sri Lanka Under-19 side, and become a leading bowler in one-dayers in particular.But then in making the Test team, and producing bowling performance, claiming the biggest opposition wickets as he did, Jayawickrama has become the latest partaker in Sri Lankan mayhem. There are only 10 first-class matches on his log book, and somehow, he is already a record-breaking Test bowler. Where Wanindu Hasaranga has been groomed for over a year, and Lakshan Sandakan for several more, Jayawickrama has leapfrogged both and collected better innings figures than either have ever managed.There was no great magic to what he did on Saturday. In his own words, he kept the bowling tight, continued to probe, and had help from the surface, which in its own way has contributed to the chaos in becoming spin-friendly so rapidly, almost overnight. He put good revolutions of the ball, but suggested he was more a disciple of flight and subtlety, than of rapid, rasping turn.Crucially, though, Jayawickrama did not allow Bangladesh’s big-name aggressive batters to bully him off his lines and lengths. Tamim Iqbal lap-swept the first Jayawickrama ball he faced for four, then bashed consecutive boundaries off him next over. But there was no retreating to flatter deliveries, or faster darts. Jayawickrama continued to give the ball air, unperturbed by a batter who was racing at close to a run-a-ball in the first session. By the time Jayawickrama eventually got Tamim out, having him caught at slip with his second delivery to him from around the wicket, Jayawickrama was the frontline bowler Tamim had been most reticent against – his strike rate only 53.Related

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“What I wanted to do in this match was bowl a lot of dot balls and build pressure,” Jayawickrama said. “My favourite wicket was Tamim’s – I had really wanted that one. I had bowled a lot of balls over the wicket, but he wasn’t playing that many attacking shots to me. So the captain and a few of the senior players asked me to make a change and try it, and I’m very happy it worked.”Mostly, he got his wickets with deliveries that turned more than batters expected – one right-hander caught at slip, another at gully, before Mehidy Hasan was struck in front by a delivery he expected to go on with the arm. But he had Mushfiqur Rahim lbw with a straighter one too. If you’re testing both edges, signs are, you’re a left-arm spinner.But these are signs only. At this venue in 2016, Kusal Mendis played one of Sri Lanka’s greatest innings ever to turn a match against Australia on its head, and five years later cannot find a place in the national team. In that same match, Sandakan took 7 for 107 and has not replicated such success since. The tornado that is Sri Lankan cricket raises you up to dizzying heights occasionally; but for some, harrowing descents can follow.All we can hope for 22-year-old Jayawickrama is that his landings are soft, and his cricket resilient. And that with time, he finds his place in the whirl.

The Fizz had a unique set of skills early in his career but perhaps no one really understood how to make the best of him

Jarrod Kimber03-May-2021At the time of the 2017 Champions Trophy, for those who had seen Mustafizur Rahman, he was close to the most interesting player in the world. For those who hadn’t seen his early Bangladesh games, or his one full IPL season – Jonathan Agnew looked at Rahman’s figures and assumed he was a spinner during the opening broadcast of the tournament – it was easy to assume he was a fingerspinner because that is, predominantly, the kind of bowler that comes out of Bangladesh. And the thing is, Rahman was a spinner. Just that the magic part was he was doing it at 130kph.By then, Bangladesh had not only their brightest seam-bowling talent ever – an incredibly unique player – but also one of the world’s best. In 2015, he was chosen for the ICC’s ODI team of the year. He destroyed India in a series and was picked up for US$200,000 by Sunrisers Hyderabad. When he played in Tests, he could bowl left-arm round the wicket to right-handers and be unplayable. Cricket had not seen a bowler with his skills in a very long time.But that version of Rahman was already over by the time some were learning about him. By that time, Bangladesh had uncovered a remarkable fast, spinning unicorn and his shoulder had already killed the unicorn.

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The 2016 version of Rahman was like an alien. We hadn’t seen a bowler like him in the game in living memory. We’d had cutter bowlers like Chris Harris in the 1990s, and we’d then had Benny Howell and Ben Laughlin, who were trying to deliver medium-paced spin. While they all had success, none stormed through the top level of the game.Bob Appleyard is probably the most recent like-for-like example, and there is no way to do his story justice here. He overcame incredible personal misfortune, including a long hospitalisation losing a chunk of his lung, had his development stunted by World War II, and started playing first-class only when he was 26. But in his first full season for Yorkshire in 1951, he took 200 wickets at 14.14.

It’s clear his arm can still put the revolutions on the ball, especially for the overspinner, but his shoulder can’t handle the sideways spin of before

The next two years he battled serious illness. In 1954, Appleyard returned and took 154 wickets at 14.42. He was picked for England, played nine Tests over two years, and took 31 wickets at 17.87. But by 1956, his shoulder was wrecked, and in 1957 he was being occasionally left out of the Yorkshire team. The next year was his last at Yorkshire. In all, he took 708 first-class wickets at 15.48.Appleyard bowled lots of things. He was never considered specifically a seam bowler or a spinner. Instead he bowled both, and often combined both. He began as a bowler who would bowl the outswinger early, and then an offspinner later. Over time, the two morphed, and he brought in legcutters and inswing. He could move the ball off the straight with an astonishing number of weapons. And unlike many of the English cutter bowlers of his era, he took 26 cheap wickets on a tour of Australia and would bowl traditional offspin with the same action and technique as that with which he had just bowled swing. No one considered him part of the 1950s cutter movement; he was his own distinct creature.Before Appleyard, Sydney Barnes described himself as a spinner, even as cricket writers of the day referred to him as a seamer. Barnes – like Appleyard – bowled a combination of spin and pace. And he took 189 wickets in 27 Tests at 16.43. He would have played more if not for his constant wars with authorities.And that’s it for these hybrid fast spinners. Not to say others haven’t tried it. Some could bowl spin and pace ably, like Garfield Sobers. But we haven’t had many players who use both skills at once, delivering a ball at pace that still turns. But it’s clear from the careers of Barnes and Appleyard, that when you do, batters struggle.Rahman famously tried it after being dared by the wicketkeeper Anamul Haque to try it, and then he wondered if he could bowl fingerspin at a high pace consistently. That was his plan, and for the shortest time, it made him almost unhittable.Mustafizur Rahman was at the centre of things for the Sunrisers in 2016•BCCIA lot of his skill comes from an incredibly flexible wrist, and the ability to impart spin on the ball without losing the pace that other bowlers do. We don’t know if Rahman would have put up numbers like Appleyard or Barnes. He only ever bowled in one Test before he injured his shoulder the first time. And for a while in that debut Test, against South Africa at home, nothing that special happened. Then with the score on 173, Rahman dismissed Hashim Amla, JP Duminy and Quinton de Kock in the space of four balls.We don’t know if he could have kept doing this; his numbers since the injury are not great. But at his absolute best, Rahman could bowl left-arm fingerspin at 130kph. He could have bowled around the wicket to right-handers and moved the ball on any surface, at pace. There was a feeling that he could have been found out, but how do you work out someone who can move the ball at pace from that round-the-wicket angle?In 15 first-class matches before that first injury, his bowling average was 18.38.

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The Mumbai Indians collect overseas left-arm seamers like it’s a hobby.That is why they signed Rahman in 2018. You would assume they had done their due diligence on him, knowing the shoulder was not quite what it had been. But there were few bowlers in the world with a bigger upside as a reclamation project.If you could get Rahman back to what he once was, you potentially had one of the IPL’s best bowlers. And part of the plan was for Lasith Malinga to come in and mentor him.

As he wasn’t like a standard seamer, like a pitcher he might have needed more days off between spells. That’s probably why seam bowlers haven’t bowled spin at pace: bowling quick alone is hard enough on the body

“He [Rahman] was really good when he had first arrived in international cricket, but people now are expecting more than that,” Malinga said at the time. “I think he has confused his skill. He has got very good variation, but I think he needs to focus on his game plan. He has got three or four variations, but he needs to think of how to make use of that variation. I think, at this point, he is a bit aggressive and trying a bit too much. I think I can sharpen that for him.”That was a misunderstanding of what was happening. Essentially, at his best, Rahman only needed three deliveries: the fairly fast straight ball and two cutters. One of those was more like the traditional cutter many bowl but which lost little pace; the other one he ripped like an offbreak with more wrist work on it. He was trying all these other balls because the cutter either couldn’t be bowled, or wasn’t working as well. He played seven games for Mumbai, averaged 32.85 with an economy of 8.36.The numbers hint it wasn’t ideal, but you got an idea at Mumbai’s frustration with him in the Netflix documentary . Coach Mahela Jayawardene has a reputation in cricket – well-earned – as a friendly, amiable man but you can see him losing patience with Rahman, eventually lashing out at his translator, suggesting Rahman should learn English. In 2019 they released him. But the IPL still remembered that 2016 season, which meant that any uptick in his form might bring a new contract. Sure enough, the Rajasthan Royals were willing to bid on him after some promising form with Bangladesh and a bunch of wickets in a lower-level local league.It’s worth remembering that breakthrough season in 2016, when he averaged 24.76 with an economy of 6.90. But at the death, where he bowled 144 balls, his economy was 7.83. Only three players have ever bowled more at the death in one season than he did: Jasprit Bumrah, Siddarth Kaul and Dwayne Bravo (on three occasions).The Sunrisers had found a death-bowling star, and they left him there. Teams didn’t go out to him, partly because half the time they couldn’t get near him. To right-handers, he would start the ball way outside leg stump and then drag it across them. That is an angle that does not exist in cricket. Left-arm bowlers almost never swing the ball away from righties – they angle them across – and they certainly don’t start the ball a foot or further outside leg when they do. He bowled 69 balls out of those 180 that ESPNcricinfo recorded as batters not being in control against. Of those – so, more than 11 overs of them – the economy rate was 2.43. Only four other bowlers have delivered 50 balls at the death that batters were not in control of and at an economy of under three. The closest is 0.4 runs an over worse than Rahman that season.He may not have produced the best season ever, but in 2016 he delivered the most unhittable death balls of any season.

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Things were tougher for Mustafizur Rahman with Mumbai Indians•BCCIBaseball pitchers impart incredible revolutions that make the ball curve and slide all over the place. But baseball pitchers don’t play every game, or in back-to-back games unless they are late-innings specialists with low workloads. Clayton Kershaw has won the Cy Young Award for best pitcher in the National League (in North America) several times. He last won in 2014, when he played only 27 out of his team’s 162 games.If you overuse a pitcher, they get injured, because of the pace they throw at, but also because of the revolutions they impart on each pitch. Pitchers commonly undergo ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction – replacing your elbow tendon with a different tendon from your body. It’s called the Tommy John surgery.Pitchers rest, they are looked after by teams of experts, and still some of them need to borrow another tendon to continue. Back injuries are what we get in cricket for bowlers, not the Tommy John surgery (Shaun Marsh had one of those).Rahman’s shoulder, rather than elbow, was the problem, a tear in his superior labrum from anterior to posterior. Appleyard also had shoulder injuries. It makes sense because bowling fingerspin at maximum pace should injure the shoulder or elbow. Those revs at that speed has to be carefully managed.In 2016, Rahman only bowled 120 overs. With the Sunrisers as they won the IPL, some internationals for Bangladesh, and then two games for Sussex. It’s not a lot of balls. A common refrain was that he was being overbowled. But it’s possible he wasn’t overbowled in a traditional cricket sense.Before 2016 he had played 44 professional games. As he wasn’t like a standard seamer, like a pitcher he might have needed more days off between spells. That’s probably why seam bowlers haven’t bowled spin at pace: bowling quick alone is hard enough on the body.

After seven games with the Royals, he is averaging 28 with an economy of 8.30, and that’s down after his 3 for 20 against his old team, the Sunrisers

After Rahman came England’s Pat Brown, a similar bowler. He takes a wicket every 16 balls in T20s. He hasn’t had shoulder or elbow problems, but he’s had stress fractures in his back, which is maybe the most conventional thing about him. Rahman and Brown will be among the many bowlers like this who will give medical teams and coaches as many wickets as they do headaches.

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Ottis Gibson was a brilliant bowler. As Bangladesh’s bowling coach, it wouldn’t have taken long for him to realise that Rahman was one of the best hopes he had with the new ball. The first step towards fixing him was developing a vital left-arm seam-bowling weapon – an inswinger. It might seem odd to turn one of the most innovative bowlers ever into a standard seamer, but Rahman had never really had the chance to learn the basics earlier.We haven’t seen it as much in this IPL, mostly because the Royals have two other left-arm seamers who need the new ball. But he has swung the ball back in a little at times.As for his slower balls, there is no extraordinary sideways movement. He does still have a slower ball, with massive revolutions on it. Whereas before it darted off sideways, now he bowls it like a Murali overspinner. It kicks up and is still hard to hit. But while it’s still a ball only he could bowl, it’s not the kind you can build a career around.It’s clear his arm can still put the revolutions on the ball, especially for the overspinner, but his shoulder can’t handle the sideways spin of before.

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Mustafizur Rahman is playing more than expected due to Jofra Archer’s absence this season•BCCIPlaying against Mumbai, the Royals are way behind. Mumbai have promoted Krunal Pandya to take on some match-ups. The commentators are talking about how the two teams are neck and neck in the chase, but Jasprit Bumrah has bowled some overs to restrict the Royals, so they have to take wickets with de Kock at the non-striker’s end.Rahman comes on to bowl the 17th over. His first ball is in the slot, a cutter but in name only. It doesn’t deviate wildly and it’s not fast either. Pandya smashes it over wide long-on for six. In his glory season, Rahman was hit for seven sixes in 144 balls at the death and in 2018 seven in 51 balls.The next ball is a quick yorker, and Pandya can only edge it onto his foot. Then it’s the offspinning overspinner he now prefers, and Pandya picks it, but is beaten by the bounce. It hits him on the body and goes nowhere. It’s this ball that is still uniquely Rahman’s, a softer, gentler version of the demon offspinner he once delivered. The next ball is the attempted yorker but ends up as a half volley outside off stump. Pandya tries to smash it and drags it onto his stumps.By the following Rahman over, Mumbai need nine from 12. There was a time when Rahman would have made it difficult. He doesn’t here. de Kock and Kieron Pollard take a boundary each, and they only need three balls to finish the game. If the Royals had Jofra Archer, Rahman would probably only play the odd game. Even without Archer, he still may not play the entire season. In fact, he is due back with Bangladesh on May 20. After seven games with the Royals, he is averaging 28 with an economy of 8.30, and that’s down after his 3 for 20 against his old team, the Sunrisers. There have been times he’s looked as good as these numbers, and others whem he’s only just been holding on.There has been no fairy tale in this comeback yet. The magic he once had is gone. He was a cricketing unicorn, and now he’s another battling bowler thrown into the death overs to survive.There are few players with the natural talent of Rahman. There are even fewer who start with that talent, lose the thing that makes them successful, and find another way to stay. He will be hit for more boundaries now but for someone who entered cricket with one of the rarest gifts ever, only to have it wreck his body, just to be back to be hit for boundaries is success.He made it to the IPL twice, as a unicorn first and now as another left-arm seamer. Most people don’t get there even once.

Newlands ball-tampering scandal: “We forget the lessons of that time at our peril”

Andrew McGlashan22-Jun-2021What were your thoughts when you arrived in the midst of a once-in-a-hundred-year crisis?
I didn’t have too much time to think about it, if truth be told. At the time, I’d been dealing with the situation around the men’s T20 World Cup, so I was certainly right across all of the Covid-related issues. As I said at the time, it was a complete surprise, quite a shock. Not sure if we spoke too much but I was probably a bit like a rabbit in the headlights. The situation we found ourselves in certainly focused the mind. Very quickly, we established four priorities: get the CA team back to work, to deliver to the summer safely, deliver for our partners, and then bring the game together, whether that was the states and territories or the players’ association. Think a feature of the last summer is that we have all pulled together, everyone has had a hand in delivering the season and, hopefully, that puts us on firm footing as we come out of this situation.There was uncertainty and tension throughout the season, perhaps one of the more visible moments was how the India Test series would finish in terms of venues. Was there ever a moment where you had to be strong on how it would play out?
It was a very uncertain time. What we did very well was bide our time in terms of decision-making. It was a case of every single day; I remember tuning into New South Wales press conferences at 11am [to see the latest Covid-19 numbers]. It was always our intent through the whole summer to play the series as scheduled and that was really because from the outset the lens we looked through was the cricketing public. There were times when there were calls to stay in Melbourne but we couldn’t deprive the public of NSW who were suffering through the Northern Beaches situation through no fault of their own. Similarly, this notion that we wouldn’t carry on to Brisbane, we couldn’t deprive that public. But, by that stage of the season, what was most pleasing was we had relationships with all the jurisdictions, we had very solid bio-security plans, and everyone came together – including the BCCI. What wasn’t so pleasing was the result, but for a Test series to come down to the last 20 minutes is pretty epic.

“It brought back a lot of pain, but it also caused us to reflect that it’s always going to be there. We forget the lessons of that time at our peril”Nick Hockley on the return of the Newlands scandal to the headlines

You have put a figure of A$ 50 million on the cost of Covid-19 last summer. The hopes are the 2021-22 season will be smoother, but how much can the game absorb?
At the moment, we are hoping for the best but planning for the worst. Planning for a continuation of border closures but we are hopeful come the summer, providing there are no cases in the community, that we will be able to have freedom of movement and players will have more freedom. Equally, we now have the intellectual property and the relationships if we need to move quickly to enact contingency plans. I certainly feel for the winter codes; the disruption is extremely costly. Probably the big difference for cricket compared to the winter domestic competitions is the number of international teams coming. Last year, we had two teams, this year we are bringing six teams in. The two weeks’ mandatory quarantine and setting up training facilities so players can train to come out in a fit condition to play, that comes at a cost and is extremely complicated. It requires support of government at every level. It’s probably the biggest summer in the game’s history here; in a normal course, an Ashes is a high-revenue year so that goes some way to offsetting the costs, but the range of cost outcomes is very much dependent on the situation as it unfolds.Now that you no longer have “interim” next to your name, are there any areas you particularly want to focus on?
What Covid has done is shine a light on where capability lies across the whole sport. We were restricted from traveling, so a large proportion of our workforce had to stay at home for the season and that showed that we can work remotely, we can work as a collective across state and territory associations, so certainly look to take that agility and efficiency. And something I’ve spoken very passionately about over time is making sure we are the most inclusive sport we can be, that we continue to invest and aren’t taking backward steps. I’m excited that we have two multi-format series for the women’s team leading into a World Cup and a Commonwealth Games. Think we’ve seen a really rich talent pipeline coming through the WBBL, but it’s making sure we are being very inclusive in the whole pathway and whole sport to make sure it’s really representative of contemporary multicultural Australia. We are also really gearing up around the postponed men’s T20 World Cup in 2022, which I think is a really important event. A bit like the women’s World Cup was a great opportunity to change the game from a gender perspective, the men’s World Cup is a great opportunity to build relationships with the expat communities across Australia.”What wasn’t so pleasing was the result, but for a Test series to come down to the last 20 minutes is pretty epic”•Bradley Kanaris/Getty ImagesHow to do you think Australian cricket has dealt with the broader social issues – racism, diversity, inclusion – that have been at the forefront around the world in the last year?
We’ve made great strides. Our vision is to be a sport for all Australians. If you take, for example, our Reconciliation Action Plan, we’ve grown indigenous participation tenfold in eight years, we’ve got some fantastic role models. We do great work in the all-abilities space, but are we as a sport truly representative of the community we serve? Not yet. And we won’t rest until we are. We’ve made massive strides from a gender perspective. The events particularly in England over the last few weeks [around historic tweets] only serve to emphasize the role sport plays and that the public holds sport to a very high account and we have a real leadership role to play. We must continue to work on ensuring that the game represents the very best of community. That means having respect for everyone and making sure they feel like they belong.One of the key things on the horizon is the next MoU about how the players are paid. Are you hopeful it will be smoother than last time?
Absolutely. When you step back, the entire sport is aligned in wanting cricket to be as strong as possible and to have sustained growth. Both the players and administration have a really big hand in that. While we haven’t been able to spend too much time face-to-face because people have been in bubbles, we have had to work more closely than ever. We are having constructive discussions around what’s important, what are the things that are really going to grow the game and how does the playing group contribute to that, but also how can we support the players throughout their careers. The other thing I would say is I think the MoU has stood up well during Covid because it is in essence self-correcting if we have a revenue impact.

“I’m a great believer that more people playing cricket at the elite level can only be good for the health of the game. It’s exciting that we’ve got an expanded T20 World Cup but equally there are more opportunities to play [the one-day] World Cup”Nick Hockley

Can you update us on the situation with Channel Seven?
We are deep in dialogue for planning for the upcoming season. The discussions that we have had have been really constructive. We’ve had some very honest conversations about the challenges of last 12 months, which were quite publicly documented, but certainly the latest meetings have been all about how we work together to deliver what is going to be a massive summer. We’ve been working through some innovations and ensure how the WBBL and BBL is really relevant to the contemporary youth audience and delivers on its promise to attract a new audience to the game.What do you make of the next ICC calendar with global events now set to be played every year?
I think it’s really exciting that there are more World Cup opportunities for more countries. I’m a great believer that more people playing cricket at the elite level can only be good for the health of the game. It’s exciting that we’ve got an expanded T20 World Cup but equally there are more opportunities to play [the one-day] World Cup. I believe the formats do have a relationship with each other and think if countries can only play T20 at the world level, they are missing out on core skills for the longer formats. What is exciting is the potential to host some of those major world events in emerging markets; they just won’t be limited to the traditional countries.Related

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The health of the game in Australia is about much more than just the two main national teams, but they are the most visible part of the sport. How would you judge where they stand?
The Australia women’s team are remarkable. This summer they’ll be targeting getting a monkey off their back – I was there in Derby for the [50-over World Cup] semi-final against India in 2017 and I know from speaking to the captain and the coach how much that hurt. Think they are as hungry as ever and they are also very excited about the Commonwealth Games. What is particularly exciting is the young talent, some great young leaders, coming through and challenging what is a very settled side.On the men’s side, this is a really big moment. By their own admission, they were extremely disappointed about the last home summer particularly coming off the back of a previous home defeat against India. I know first-hand when we were unable to tour South Africa just how devastated the players were. It was reassuring for to see that disappointment, they just wanted to get back on the horse so there’s a huge amount of hunger. There’s no better opportunity than this upcoming summer to fulfil their potential as a side.How is the relationship now with Cricket South Africa?
We’ve had lots of constructive discussions around how we schedule moving forward and how we make up for those postponed tours. South Africa were due to tour here as per the FTP this summer [for white-ball matches] but due to logistics around quarantine they are unable to do. All the latest discussions have been entirely constructive and, as we said, we are committed to rescheduling that tour as soon as it’s safe to do so as it fits into the future schedule.Did the return of the Newlands scandal to the headlines recently surprise you?
It really did surprise me. What it did, it brought back a real strength of feeling. It brought back a lot of pain, but it also caused us to reflect that it’s always going to be there. We forget the lessons of that time at our peril. The progress the team under new leadership over the time has been phenomenal, they have really put culture and how they play absolutely at the core. Particularly going into the home summer that we’ve got, think it is better to acknowledge it is there and think about how the group comes together and what they want to be remembered for than forgetting about it. I had many conversations on the subject and went back and restudied the events of the time. We must never forget those learnings.

Coach Pierre de Bruyn elated with the fight shown by his team to make the Super 12 stage of the T20 World Cup

Firdose Moonda22-Oct-2021Namibia is a country of 2.5 million people, nine cricket fields, five cricket clubs and 16 contracted players. And they’ve made it to the Super 12s of a T20 World Cup.Along the way, they’ve won their first-ever major tournament match and they’ve beaten a Full Member. Over the next three weeks, they will play against four others and they have automatically secured a spot at the next T20 World Cup too. Their performances will get people talking about the deserts and the desolate landscapes of the country they call home; a place where you can drive for hundreds of kilometres and not see another soul; of Africa’s last colony, with no major cricketing achievements to its name until now.

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Sign up for ESPN+ in the US and catch all the action from the Men’s T20 World Cup. Match highlights of Namibia’s historic victory is available here in English, and here in Hindi (US only).

“It’s a dream that’s come true. These players were six and seven year-old boys, dreaming of playing against teams like India and Pakistan. That dream has come true,” Pierre de Bruyn, Namibia’s coach said. “All they had in the last few years was to watch these guys on TV and dream about it. They will wake up knowing it’s real. I am just so pleased for them. I don’t think people really know how limited we are. We are not a cricket organisation with a luxury of great resources.”That’s no understatement. Two years ago, the Namibian national men’s team only had three contracted players. When they secured ODI status in April 2019, they were able to get 13 more. They still don’t have a stadium to call their own and play home games at a club ground, The Wanderers (not the one you think you know). De Bruyn, who has been coaching them from the start of that year, still lives in Centurion and commutes to Windhoek as often as needed. They don’t have a full time physiotherapist, a full-time strength and conditioning coach or a full-time team manager and between November 2019, when they qualified for this tournament and April 2021, they had no official fixtures.The Covid-19 pandemic would not have helped, of course, but it meant Namibia had no match-time against the kind of teams they would face at this event. “But, we’ve got a saying that we’ve got to find a way,” de Bruyn said. And they did.One of the first things de Bruyn did was to rope in an old friend, Albie Morkel, albeit also on a part-time basis, to join the coaching staff. “He is a guy I wanted from the start. We’ve known each other for more than 20 years and his expertise and calmness was something I thought we could use.”The next thing was to organise matches as often as they could. In the build-up to the T20 World Cup, Namibia hosted Uganda, a Zimbabwean Emerging side, a South African Emerging side and two South African domestic teams, the Titans, captained by the country’s Test skipper Dean Elgar, and the Knights. Namibia beat all those sides.David Wiese is congratulated by his team-mates•ICC via GettyAnd finally, they sought out a headliner: South African allrounder, David Wiese, who qualified to play for them through ancestry. Wiese’s father was born in Namibia and he had initially thought of playing for them early on in his career. Then, the Proteas happened. He went with them to the 2016 T20 World Cup and thought he would become established in the side but never did. He signed a Kolpak deal and when that system ended, started a journeyman T20 league career earning high status in the Pakistan Super League and the CPL.He had never played for Namibia before this tournament but in three matches, has put in two award-winning performances, though he did suggest that his accolade against Ireland should have gone to the Namibian captain Gerhard Erasmus for his unbeaten 53 off 49 balls. “It was an unbelievable captain’s knock under pressure,” Wiese told the television broadcasters. “I’ll accept it but today’s his moment. They (the team) have put in a lot of hard work behind the scenes and they deserve every success.”Wiese’s modesty does not reflect his value to the team so far. After they were bowled out for their joint-lowest total in a T20I against Sri Lanka, 96, he scored a half-century to help them complete their highest successful chase against Netherlands. Then, he took 2 for 22, to keep Ireland to 125 for 8 on a slow Sharjah track before plundering 28 off 14 balls to accelerate the Namibian chase just as it may have stagnated. There were stages in their reply when it seemed that the pressure was growing on them, but for de Bruyn, the result was barely in doubt.”Our planning going into this game was calm. The conditions suit us. That’s what we get back home. We had a solid game plan and we made sure we stick with that game plan,” he said. “It was quite simple: don’t leave the stumps, play straight and take it deep. I think where Ireland got it wrong was after that powerplay, a devastating powerplay (Ireland were 55 for 0), the next four overs, they fell asleep. We just knew we had to take it deep, rotate hard, we ran much better between the wickets. The planning was something we discussed and also the opposition analysis.”Now, de Bruyn will have other opposition to analyse, a task he relishes as Namibia enter a tough Super 12 group. Although there may not be any expectations that they will progress further, the monetary gains from getting this far will make a significant difference to their ability to develop further. “We didn’t mind that [underdog] tag coming in but we had a lot to lose. We didn’t accept that we would have nothing to lose because financially it makes a big difference. We can upskill and we can invest a little,” de Bruyn said.They can also show some of the bigger nations what they are made of. “We are going into Group B as the underdogs and those guys will look at us and maybe see us as a pushover. We’ve shown the cricketing world over the last week that we are not a pushover. We are going to keep on competing, regardless of the results.”Because they’ve got 2.5 million dreams to live out in a different desert.

Young batter’s non-conformist approach offers glimpse of radical future for Test side

Andrew Miller22-Mar-2022“Mystery spinner, mystery spinner… my kingdom for a mystery spinner!”The storied reign of Nasser Hussain, England’s finest Test captain of the 21st century, essentially boiled down to this lasting and tacky residue… a realisation that he could, and did, haul England’s standards up by their bootstraps, and deliver successes that could not have been contemplated even 18 months before he took charge, but that when it came to beating the very, very best, there was only so much he could ever dredge from the personnel at his disposal.It was, in fact, a lament in stereo throughout that era of awakening. England beat West Indies at home and Pakistan and Sri Lanka away in 2000-01, but were then trounced 4-1 in consecutive Ashes campaigns in 2001 and 2002-03. With a tough tour of India in between whiles, Hussain found himself yearning for a spinner to turn it at complex angles like Shane Warne and Muthiah Muralidaran (while doing his best to be grateful for Ashley Giles). And at the same time, his sidekick Duncan Fletcher was obsessed with creating an attack filled with 90mph bowlers – and for that fleeting moment of glory in 2005, his monomania was amply born out.But yes, here England are, two decades later, still trying to solve that apparent riddle of the Sphinx, even as they still find themselves endlessly drawn towards conformity – from the preponderance of right-arm medium-pacers who were chosen to lead the line in Antigua, or the continued inability to trust their legspinner Matt Parkinson for a Test debut, despite dragging him around the globe like some weird novelty baggage-tag that you’re too superstitious to do away with.And yet, there have been glimpses in these last two Tests of a welcome new radical streak to England’s cricket, stilted and uncomfortably implemented though it may have been. After all, it was injury and illness, rather than any specific selection U-turn, that earned both Saqib Mahmood and Matthew Fisher their Test debuts in Barbados. And all the while, overseeing the process is Joe Root’s captaincy, which clearly engenders deep loyalty, but really isn’t given to flights of tactical fancy.Related

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Even so, twice in as many bore-draws, England have made all the running going into the final day of the Test; twice they’ve thrown the bat with abandon in the third innings to give themselves a chance, and twice they’ve bowled with spirit and early optimism, only for the realities of the surface and West Indies’ proud resilience to grind them down in the final hour.And that if that new-found lack of conformity has had a focal point, then it has arguably come in the guise of Essex’s Dan Lawrence, perhaps the most homespun cricketer that England have fielded in a generation. In four consecutive innings, Lawrence has latched on to the responsibilities of his new No. 4 berth, batting with a notable selflessness, especially in the second innings, that has had distant echoes of Graham Thorpe’s attempts to seize the initiative on England’s 1993-94 tour of the Caribbean – another campaign that promised new beginnings after a familiar Ashes trouncing.”It was a joy to bat with him out there,” Root said, after Lawrence had made a career-best 91 in their 164-run stand in England’s first innings. “He just seems to be growing in confidence all the time. If he plays as he is, it’s not going to be long until he gets a big hundred. He was very selfless this week, even in the first innings. The tempo increased, he pushed it along.”After the awfulness of England’s Ashes batting, in which they were let down time and again by a failure to embrace the game’s fundamentals, Lawrence’s approach in this series has offered a very postmodern route to rectitude. On the final morning in Antigua, before England’s declaration intentions were clear, it seemed debatable whether his diet of inside-out drives over extra cover was really the best use of a rare chance for Test-match practice. By the time he’d racked up 131 runs from 189 balls in Barbados, however, the methods to his madness were plainer for all to see.

For it’s hard to judge Lawrence by the same standards as his contemporaries. Unlike Zak Crawley, for instance, who – through no fault of his own – epitomises the public-school pipelining that is so prevalent among the coming generation of England batters, Lawrence is the son of the groundsman at Chingford CC in East London. His path to cricket has been, in its own way, every bit as exclusive, but so much less regimented; less time spent with the MCC coaching manual in youth-team clinics, and more time with his own whims in the very nets that his dad prepared, and which backed onto his garden.The upshot is a player who, instead of having his quirks beaten out of him before they could take on any lasting expression, had them hard-coded by his early induction into men’s league cricket – he made his debut for Chingford aged 9, and was opening the batting at 14. And while that may be a familiar story for any number of prodigies in the subcontinent in particular (and one of innumerable reasons while English cricket’s failure to tap into its vast British Asian demographic has been so self-defeating) it is virtually unheard of in England’s more cloistered pathways.Lawrence came through at Essex after learning his game with Chingford CC•Getty Images”I do play the odd shot sometimes, and then watch it back and I’m like, ‘wow, that looks … strange’,” Lawrence told Wisden Cricket Monthly last year. “I learnt quite a lot myself growing up and surrounded by adults you grow up faster, learning how to play against people who are bigger and stronger than you. A lot of my best mates still play at Chingford, so who I am as a person has been moulded by the people at the club.”And yet, for all his batting success, it was arguably with the ball that Lawrence made his most radicalising impact in Barbados. It wasn’t that his match figures of 21-6-57-1 were especially game-changing, or that they put Jack Leach’s marathon efforts to any shame, as Leach ploughed his way through 94.5 overs in the match, the most by any England bowler since 1962.Rather it was his optimistic, angular lines of attack that caught the eye, as Lawrence tossed his offbreaks up with that extraordinary, uncultivated, limbs-akimbo action, and ripped them repeatedly off the seam with a wristspinner’s verve. Each of his two wickets in the series have come late in the day, against well-set centurions – Nkrumah Bonner in Antigua, and Jermaine Blackwood in Barbados – and in that respect at least, he showed Leach a thing or two about the risk-reward of flight and bite. Maybe, by extension, he also made it easier for England to understand why Parkinson’s legbreaks could be the missing link in their attack in Grenada next week.”He gets so much overspin, and on wickets like this where you get funny bounce and you need to hit the seam to get it to react, he does that very well,” Jeetan Patel, England’s spin coach, said of Lawrence’s bowling. “He offers uniqueness. Everyone can see his action is a bit different, but what he does with the ball is different from other guys as well.”For the time being, though, England’s learning curve remains a delicate one. Lawrence, after all, is just two matches into his recall, having twiddled his thumbs in Australia even after the Ashes had gone down the pan – a notable lack of coherence from the selectors given that, only two years beforehand, he had emerged from the 2019-20 Lions tour of Australia as perhaps the surest thing since Kevin Pietersen tore a swathe through India with England A in 2003-04.Dan Lawrence bowls during West Indies’ first innings•Getty ImagesOn that trip, Lawrence made a brace of centuries in the Lions’ four-day games, including a matchwinning 125 in the unofficial Test in Melbourne – their first such representative win in Australia in seven previous campaigns. But the pandemic struck a few weeks later, and despite some sparky displays – not least on debut in Sri Lanka – he’s struggled like many of England’s young guns to make genuine strides in an environment specifically designed to prevent tight-knit units from forming.Now, however, there’s just the germ of a new dynamic. “It’s not a win, but it feels like another step forward as a team,” Root said. “We’ll keep pushing very hard but there’s a number of things that were really promising again. The young guys have enjoyed taking on new roles, and we’re finding positions where we’re on top and commanding the game. I’m feeling quite confident about certain aspects of how we’re playing.”Whether Root has full confidence to embrace non-conformity, however, could define the real strides that this team is able to make.

Our expert panel make their picks ahead of the 20th season of English domestic T20

ESPNcricinfo staff23-May-20221. Alex Hales (Nottinghamshire)

Hales has been among the Blast’s most destructive batters for more than a decade, earning his first England call-up on the back of his T20 form for Notts in 2011. He is the club’s all-time leading run-scorer in the format and is the only man in the top 50 run-scorers in the Blast’s history with a strike rate above 150 in the tournament.Luke Wright is the Blast’s all-time leading run-scorer•Getty Images2. Luke Wright (Sussex, captain)

The Blast’s all-time leading run-scorer and the captain of this side, Wright joined Sussex in 2004 and has been a mainstay of their T20 set-up ever since, captaining them from 2015 to 2021. He was part of their title-winning 2009 team but has got better with age and has become increasingly reliable as an opener since giving up bowling.3. Moeen Ali (Worcestershire)

A prolific allrounder throughout his domestic T20 career, ruthlessly taking down county spinners and reliably chipping in with the bat. Moeen became Worcestershire’s captain in 2018 and immediately led them to their first-ever title; the following season, he hit one of the Blast’s great hundreds in the quarter-finals against Sussex.Moeen Ali captained Worcestershire to the 2018 title•Getty Images4. Samit Patel (Nottinghamshire)

The Blast’s ubiquitous presence: six men in the tournament’s history have more runs, only one has more wickets and nobody has played as many games. It seemed a far cry when his first over in the competition went for 28 back in 2003 but Patel has become a domestic T20 legend, winning two titles on top of his remarkable individual success.5. Jos Buttler (Somerset/Lancashire, wicketkeeper)

It has become rare for Buttler to play more than a handful of Blast games in a season due to his England and IPL commitments but he was one of the competition’s stars as a young player. His 55 not out off 23 balls in Somerset’s 2010 semi-final was his first major televised innings and he continued to thrive after moving to Lancashire, playing a walk-on role in their 2015 title. Now one of the world’s best T20 openers but No. 5 in this team, having spent the overwhelming majority of his domestic career in the middle order.Buttler announced himself as a T20 cricketer at Somerset•Getty Images6. Ravi Bopara (Essex/Sussex)

Like Patel, Bopara has been an ever-present in the Blast, making his debut as a non-bowling No. 9 as a teenager in 2003; it was an inauspicious start but he has thrived in a number of different roles at both Essex and Sussex. He has batted everywhere from No. 1-10 but is a finisher in this side – the role in which he thrived for Essex when taking them to their only T20 title in 2019.7. Dan Christian (Hampshire/Gloucestershire/Middlesex/Notts)

One of four men to win three Blast finals, including two as captain. Christian’s first experience of the Blast was as a jobbing allrounder for Hampshire in 2010, a stint remembered for the chaos induced by his hamstring injury in a dramatic ending to the final. He returned with Gloucestershire and Middlesex – where he once hit 129 in a losing cause – but has flourished at Notts, leading them to two titles and living up to his mantra that “old blokes win stuff”.ESPNcricinfo’s all-time T20 Blast XI•ESPNcricinfo Ltd8. Benny Howell (Hampshire/Gloucestershire)

Howell is Gloucestershire’s magical mystery man. Described by his ESPNcricinfo profile as a right-arm medium-pacer, he identifies himself as a ‘fast spinner’ who bowls quick cutters and knuckleballs – and few on the county circuit have found a reliable way to counter him. He is the only player in this team without a Blast winners’ medal, his only T20 appearances for Hampshire coming in the year between their two titles.Azhar Mahmood’s clinches a Surrey win•PA Photos9. Azhar Mahmood (Surrey/Kent)

Mahmood was part of the Surrey side that won the inaugural Twenty20 Cup back in 2003, finishing the season as the second-highest wicket-taker in the country, and was still an effective bowler by the time he played his final Blast game in 2016 at the age of 41. He was also prolific playing for Kent and spent half of his county career as a local player by virtue of his British citizenship.10. Danny Briggs (Hampshire/Sussex/Warwickshire)

Briggs’ emergence as a fresh-faced left-arm spinner coincided with – and contributed to – Hampshire’s T20 glory years: they won the title in his first and third seasons, in 2010 and 2012. His performances earned him a brief England call-up and he has continued to impress while flying under the radar since moving counties, first to Sussex, then to Warwickshire. He retains top spot in the all-time wicket-taking list.Danny Briggs is the Blast’s all-time leading wicket-taker•Getty Images11. Harry Gurney (Leicestershire/Nottinghamshire)

Gurney was Leicestershire’s leading wicket-taker when they won their record third title in 2011 – though missed Finals Day with a side strain – and developed into one of the country’s leading death bowlers at Notts, mixing up his pace and angle of attack and nailing his yorkers. He was key to their 2017 title, closing out the final with 4 for 17 to earn himself a second career on the franchise circuit.Other players who received votes:4 votes: Graham Napier, Adil Rashid, Jason Roy, James Vince, David Willey
3 votes: Yasir Arafat, Michael Klinger
2 votes: Andrew Flintoff, James Foster, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Tymal Mills, Phil Mustard, Jeetan Patel, Imran Tahir, Marcus Trescothick
1 vote: Shahid Afridi, Mushtaq Ahmed, Jofra Archer, Pat Brown, Rikki Clarke, Ian Cockbain, Steven Croft, Steven Davies, Ian Harvey, Adam Hollioake, Colin Ingram, Rashid Khan, Adam Lyth, Darren Maddy, Brendon McCullum, Paul Nixon, Kieron Pollard, Jimmy Ormond, Owais Shah, Jeremy Snape, Darren Stevens, Andrew Symonds, Max Waller, Chris Wood

A look at how each playoffs team has fared in the tournament so far

ESPNcricinfo stats team, Mathew Varghese, Illustration by Kshiraja K24-May-2022ESPNcricinfo Ltd

The lack of shouting and screaming after the result last Sunday has led to a very different mood ahead of this Sunday’s marquee contest

Shashank Kishore03-Sep-20228:34

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Can you keep history away when it’s India vs Pakistan? Turns out, you can.Unlike before their first meeting last Sunday, where the talk was around a “friendly rivalry” and the “lovey-dovey” nature of it, this one feels different.India-Pakistan contests have become so one-sided now that there is this feeling that the build-up is bigger than the match itself. If Pakistan’s spree of World Cup losses over the years played into India’s chorus of “” prior to every ICC event, Pakistan’s “” chants after the ten-wicket dismantling of India at last year’s T20 World Cup was a strong riposte.But all that seems to be in the past now. Because Round 1 produced such a compelling contest, the cricket itself has taken centre stage ahead of Round 2. And no one is complaining.Related

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Prior to last Sunday, you would have to think hard to remember when an India-Pakistan result had been accepted with such magnanimity by those on the losing side (at least in public). It almost seemed like the unity and brotherhood is what it really was about, and there was no need to let one result trigger over-the-top reactions.Ahead of the first game, Babar Azam must have felt a bit tired after stressing, repeatedly, that Shaheen Afridi’s absence was a big loss indeed. It wasn’t too different for Rohit Sharma, who had to do the same when it came to Jasprit Bumrah.A week on, the focus and hype from the outside seems to have veered towards the teams, not just individuals, or the camaraderie they share and show. There is the realisation that all the ingredients have come together to make one more fascinating T20 contest. Sample these: Virat Kohli vs Naseem Shah. Babar vs Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Hardik Pandya vs Fakhar Zaman. These are fascinating subplots to the game.Kohli has had two starts and is looking build on some fluency. On Friday, two days out from the match, he had a lengthy chat with head coach Rahul Dravid during a training session. He then batted for a long time. Towards the end, he mimicked Suryakumar Yadav’s 360-degree game, much to everyone’s amusement.On Saturday, India had an optional nets session, but Pakistan didn’t train at all, owing to a short turnaround from their game against Hong Kong in Sharjah on Friday.Haris Rauf talked about the calmness in the camp; he spoke of how individuals are preparing for a big game in their own ways – mixing rest and recovery, with some fun, and not fretting over this being “another big game”.6:11

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But there are questions for both teams to answer.How will India deal with the absence of Ravindra Jadeja? And will KL Rahul find his old form? Pakistan, meanwhile, won’t have Shahnawaz Dahani either. Which means Axar Patel and Hasan Ali could get in.Naseem is every bit that kid in a sweet shop, who has been given the new ball and told to simply do his thing. Babar is looking for a score of substance, while Fakhar’s effectiveness has everyone, including their former coach Mickey Arthur, wondering about the kind of damage he could do if he opened the batting.India’s focus has firmly been on the present. Pakistan haven’t once spoken of the banana peel their game against Hong Kong had the potential of being. There’s a sense of assuredness about Babar’s men that hasn’t come easily. For this, much of the credit should go to the captain and the coaching staff.If Round 1 was exciting, Round 2 offers more of the same. High stakes, high pressure. Yet, it feels different because of the calm – far removed from the chatter that usually dominates the narrative.

This stint as Bangladesh coach comes with a firing pace attack and several familiar faces, but it also brings with it a heavy weight of expectations

Mohammad Isam06-Feb-2023Chandika Hathurusingha’s return as Bangladesh men’s head coach, on a new two-year deal from February 20, has been the talk of the country’s cricketing circles. He held the position from June 2014 to October 2017, a ground-breaking period for the team. But then he left in a huff, taking on the Sri Lanka job soon after and going on lead his new team to victory over Bangladesh. Hathurusingha, however, is a BCB favourite and now makes his return, taking charge across formats, as confirmed by board president Nazmul Hassan. What lies ahead of him? Here’s a run-through.

What hasn’t changed

The administration: The BCB set-up remains the same, which is the main reason why Hathurusingha is back. Hassan, who has been at the helm since 2013, said last week that he had been in touch with Hathurusingha about the Bangladesh job since the men’s T20 World Cup in Australia in November last year. At the time, S Sriram was the technical consultant, effectively the T20 head coach, while Russell Domingo was the Test and ODI coach.ESPNcricinfo understands that Hathurusingha had to give two months’ notice to leave New South Wales – where he was batting coach – which means he had some sort of deal in place with the BCB as early as November 28 last year.Meanwhile, Sriram was in discussion with the BCB for a long-term deal as T20 coach but the talks fell through mainly because the BCB wants a coach to be fully available and Sriram’s IPL commitments worked against him. And so Hathurusingha takes charge across formats.During his first stint, he had a strong relationship with the BCB, particularly Hassan, and the two have reportedly been in touch ever since Hathurusingha had resigned. The two had formulated a two-tier selection panel, which saw Faruque Ahmed leave as chief selector in protest in 2016. But, as Hathurusingha returns, two out of the three selectors during his reign also remain: chief selector Minhajul Abedin and Habibul Bashar.The players (mostly): Usually a new coach takes a bit of time to understand the culture in Bangladeshi cricket, but that won’t be too much of a problem with Hathurusingha as he already knows at least a third of the players who are still highly relevant to the senior team – they played under him in his first stint as well. For example, some of the players who debuted under Hathurusingha are Litton Das and Mehidy Hasan Miraz, who are now the men in form, key to the team’s fortunes.Where things might change is the exact role he plays as coach. The core group of senior players from his last stint has broken up somewhat. Mashrafe Mortaza, who captained two-thirds of all international matches during Hathurusingha’s first stay, is no longer part of the senior side; Mahmudullah only plays ODIs now after retiring from Tests and being kept out of T20Is; Tamim Iqbal and Mushfiqur Rahim have retired from T20Is. Only Shakib Al Hasan still plays all three formats.And with so much change in the experienced core, comes different demands of the coach. The Bangladesh team now has several players trying to find their feet at the highest level – young batters like Zakir Hasan, Afif Hossain and Yasir Ali. The likes of Najmul Hossain Shanto, Anamul Haque and Mosaddek Hossain, too, are at a complicated point in their career. Hathurusingha will likely have a lot more career-moulding to do in this stint.The favoured format: Bangladesh remain an ODI-loving team, having won 70% of their 50-over matches during Domingo’s reign from 2019 to 2022. In fact, performances in ODIs have steadily improved since Hathurusingha’s last stint – they had won 48% of their ODIs under him from 2014-17, followed by 57% under Steve Rhodes, before Domingo took over.The bigger challenge for Hathurusingha will lie in Tests and T20Is. He had formulated the plan to play on raging turners in home Tests, resulting in wins against England and Australia. But those pitches also helped Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, West Indies and India to beat Bangladesh at their own game. There remains plenty of work to be done if Hathurusingha is to slowly change Bangladesh’s mind about which their favourite format is.

What has changed

The pace attack: Bangladesh now have a strong pace-bowling unit. During his first stint, Hathurusingha was more interested in spin, almost killing off fast bowling. He hardly picked a fast bowler in home Tests, which left them with a mountain to climb in overseas conditions, with little game-time under their belt to be consistent.But now fast bowling is winning the team matches across formats. Taskin Ahmed, very consistent since his comeback in 2021, is the leader of the pack, having helped the team win an ODI series in South Africa last year. He is backed up well by Ebadot Hossain, whose 6 for 46 was the decisive blow on New Zealand in the Mount Maunganui Test. Khaled Ahmed is building himself up as a Test specialist, while Mustafizur Rahman is strong in white-ball cricket.There’s also Shoriful Islam, Hasan Mahmud, Rejaur Rahman Raja – who is long waiting in the wings for an international debut – and Mrittunjoy Chowdhury – who has done well in the last two BPL seasons. Fast-bowling coach Allan Donald recently held a clinic for the next batch of fast bowlers, where the likes of Musfik Hasan and Nahid Rana impressed him. All this progress in the pace department calls for a change in mind-set for Hathurusingha.The expectations: The expectations will certainly be much higher than in 2014, when Hathurusingha first came to the job as a virtual unknown. He was recommended by Khaled Mahmud, but few others in the BCB set-up knew him well. Now, he is regarded as one of the key engineers of Bangladesh’s road to greater consistency, and has a reputation in cricketing circles as a hard-talker. All this, added to the fact that the next ODI World Cup just eight months away.Rhodes and Domingo were often matched up to him. Now, he will not only be matched up to them, but also to Hathurusingha 1.0.