From being put on the backfoot by Nepal, they dragged themselves back courtesy Shamsi and Baartman

Firdose Moonda15-Jun-20242:32

Morkel: South Africa need to have more intensity with bat

Time stopped in Kingstown. The ball Aasif Sheikh top-edged off Kagiso Rabada swirled in the humid island air. Then, like those old slo-mos where you see everything in staccato, Rabada moved to get under it, extended his arms and the ball came tumbling down. And down. And down. And down through his hands and onto the floor. And the clock restarted.Aasif cracked the next ball over cover for his first boundary, with the confidence of a player who was in no danger of being dismissed a minute before. Nepal, chasing a modest 116 for their first win over a Full Member, were up and running.That moment is important, not to isolate Rabada’s error – dropped catches happen to all kinds of players in all sorts of moments – but to highlight how mini-moments change matches. Let’s say Rabada had held on and Nepal were 6 for 1 in the second over, with one of their four most experienced batters dismissed, and suddenly we’d have been looking at a very different situation.Related

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We may even be talking about how, despite how good their spinners had been, they were pinned back too early in the chase to mount a challenge. Instead, Aasif went on to hit two more boundaries in the powerplay, Nepal did not lose any wickets in that period and they were 34 for 0 after seven overs: slow but steady in their reply.

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Time stopped. For Tabraiz Shamsi, it may have felt like it stopped in December, when he last played for South Africa.Granted, the T20 team only played three matches together before the World Cup – against West Indies – but Shamsi was not used in any of them and was also benched for the first three matches of the T20 World Cup 2024. Once the No.1 ranked bowler in the format and still South Africa’s leading wicket-taker in T20Is, Shamsi has found himself sidelined in an XI that prefers the strength of their pace and the guile of Keshav Maharaj. But on a slow Saint Vincent pitch, with South Africa already through to the Super Eight, they thought it would be “a great opportunity for him to get some game time,” as Aiden Markram said at the post-match press conference. What a masterstroke it proved to be.Shamsi’s second ball got South Africa’s first wicket when Kushal Bhurtel saw it tossed up and decided to reverse-sweep but missed completely. His fourth ball was a beauty that spun back into Rohit Paudel’s offstump and removed the Nepal captain for a duck. Just like that, South Africa were on top. Albeit not for very long.Aasif was still there and he shifted momentum in the 13th over, when he took 13 runs off Rabada’s second over, as Markam rotated through his seamers before he gave himself a spell. He conceded that South Africa got their combination wrong and would have played both spinners if they had read conditions better. “Our fast bowling unit has been bowling really well in this competition. You want to back that and give them the freedom to perform but in hindsight, we would have played both spinners.”3:06

Morkel: Nepal’s bowling made life difficult for SA

Shamsi probably did the job of two anyway. He was brought back in the 18th over, with Nepal needing just a run-a-ball, and fired one in down leg, where Dipendra Singh Airee gloved an attempted sweep and then got his last delivery to spin between Aasif’s bat and pad to take the off bail. A second double-wicket over put South Africa in the position to complete a clean sweep of the group stage. But they had to wait, and work, for it.

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Time stopped. After four deliveries in the upper 140s, Anrich Nortje opted for a slower ball at 114kph and Sompal Kami had a little bit – but only a little bit – of time to set-up for a shot that could change the game.Then, like those old fast-forwards when everything moves so quickly that the audio makes a strange, squeaking sound, he swivel-pulled one of the game’s fastest and scariest quicks, over mid-wicket, into the parking lot. Nepal needed 10 more runs off the last seven balls, and eight off the final six.It was over to Ottneil Baartman, who bowled the penultimate over against Bangladesh earlier this week and left Keshav Maharaj 10 to defend. Two dot balls into the over, Baartman looked every bit the bowler for the job. But Gulshan Jha sent the next ball screeching through point for four and Nepal were four runs away from what could have been their first win over a Full Member, perhaps their biggest victory yet.In situations like these, players with more experience of handling pressure win out in small moments, and for decades those players were not South African. Baartman, who had never even travelled or played outside his home country before this event, could have fallen into the category of ‘unsure,’ but he’s had two seasons in the SA20 as part of the winning team and has collected memories of success.So he held his nerve and bowled according to the plan laid out by Markram. “I didn’t want to go too full because then it would be an easy hit. So it was about hitting that hard length and using the short ball to our advantage,” Markram said. Baartman’s last two balls were short and Gulshan could not make contact, but in hope, he ran off the final one in pursuit of a Super Over.In the chaotic seconds that followed, Quinton de Kock collected the ball and threw it towards the non-striker, it deflected off Gulshan towards Heinrich Klaasen, who was coming in from mid-wicket and he reacted quickly to run Gulshan out. “It was a funny ending,” Markram said. “But sometimes you become really grateful to get random victories like this.””Random” is probably the best word to describe how it all played out. Why Gulshan slowed down instead of sped up, we will never know. Maybe it had something to do with his perception of time being suspended in the most surreal of sporting moments.”We were very close but we were a little far,” Paudel said, smiling through his obvious disappointment. Turns out it was distance, not time, that separated Nepal from a historic win.

Accurate and near unplayable, the England spinner played hard on the field but always had room for a beer after a well-fought game

Ian Chappell21-Apr-2024There are some humorous and often applicable nicknames in cricket but none more suitable than “Deadly” for Derek Underwood.Derek was a deadly accurate bowler and a fierce competitor who sadly died recently from dementia complications. Despite being a feared competitor, he was a respected opponent.Always – and I mean every night – Underwood was available for an after-play drink in the dressing room. When it came to cricket, two of his main loves were bowling and beer.He employed an extraordinarily long run-up for a spinner and operated nearer medium pace than the typical speed of a slow bowler, but boy, he was accurate. Too speedy to use your feet to, and difficult to drive, he was the hardest spinner to score off who I played against.Related

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Right-hand batters had to scrounge for every run. The highly skilled West Indian Viv Richards was one of the few right-handers who had the courage and the skill to loft him over cover.Nevertheless batters had one thing in their favour. Underwood wore his heart on his sleeve: you knew when he was pissed off. And he was most aggrieved by the sweep shot.Having retired from first-class cricket, I shared a London cab with him in 1977, when only the players knew about the existence of the highly secretive World Series Cricket (WSC). Without divulging much, I said to him, “It’s on again, mate.”Underwood knew exactly what I meant and replied, “That bloody broom – I thought I’d seen the last of it.”The broom was a reference to my penchant for sweeping Underwood. I discovered that was one of the few ways to score off him and, as I said, it annoyed Deadly.He was deservedly pissed off at the Oval in 1972 but for an entirely different reason. A West Indies supporter of Australia in that game constantly called out when Underwood was operating: “Bad-wicket bowler. Don’t let him get you out.”

Batters had one thing in their favour. Underwood wore his heart on his sleeve: you knew when he was pissed off. And he was most aggrieved by the sweep shot

In his self-deprecating manner, Underwood described spin bowling as “a low-mentality profession: plug away, line and length, until there’s a mistake”.As a batter he was not the most gifted but he was determined. He and England’s Tony Greig had a useful partnership at the Gabba in the first Test of 1974-75 before I turned to our golden arm, Doug Walters.Walters dismissed Underwood with his first ball, and when we gleefully congratulated the bowler, he produced a typically smart-aleck retort: “A lesser batsman wouldn’t have got a bat on it.”However it was Underwood’s bowling that deservedly gained him a glowing reputation. On dampish pitches he was nigh unplayable, and his ally Alan Knott was a master wicketkeeper, especially on treacherous pitches. Underwood specialised in the superman ball – up, up and away – but Knott, in typically expert fashion, handled the difficult task of gathering those deliveries easily.It was on such a pitch at Adelaide Oval in 1975 that he took the first seven Australian wickets. Gritty opener Ian Redpath battled his backside off but eventually was incorrectly given out in the final over before lunch. Sitting in the dressing room an exasperated Redpath spat on his bat. The mirth of that moment did not detract from the fact that it had been an engaging sight to watch two highly competitive players involved in such a herculean struggle.In 1975-76 a mixed team of Australians and cricketers from other countries played in an International Wanderers tour to South Africa captained by my brother Greg Chappell and managed by the revered Richie Benaud. A dignitary at a cocktail function in Soweto welcomed the “Australian” team to the city, so I went to Underwood and said, “Congratulations on finally representing a good team.” His answer was unprintable but it definitely included “piss off”.Underwood later signed for WSC and also represented England on the 1981-82 rebel tour of South Africa. His defiant decisions were a mark of his single-mindedness but also of his belief that a professional cricketer should be paid his worth.In a distinctive life after retiring from cricket, the universally popular Underwood was appointed president of the MCC in 2008.It was a privilege to compete against such a tough but exemplary opponent.

Three things hurt India considerably in the three-match spin-fest at the Premadasa: their luck at the toss, their execution of the sweep, and their resource deployment

Sidharth Monga09-Aug-2024India have just lost an ODI series in what can objectively be termed pretty extreme conditions. In no bilateral ODI series of three matches or fewer have so many wickets fallen to spin: 43 out of 54, which also includes three run-outs, leaving just eight for the quicks. Only once has more spin been employed in a three-match ODI series, back in 1997-98 when Zimbabwe toured Sri Lanka.ESPNcricinfo LtdHaving not won an ODI series against India since 1997, having lost the T20Is 3-0, Sri Lanka took a calculated risk. They were missing a handful of their first-choice quicks because of injuries, and did what they needed to do to make the ODIs competitive. They prepared pitches that would offer appreciable turn and natural variation to spin bowlers, and enjoyed a bit of luck in winning all three tosses and getting the best of batting conditions.At any other venue, batting first in a day-night game is fraught with danger because dew can handicap spinners in the evening, but this is where the R Premedasa Stadium’s history is worth knowing. There was a time not long ago when it used to be impossible to chase in day-night matches at this venue, dew or no dew. The stadium was built in low-lying marshy land, and the underlying moisture would come up to the surface of the pitch in the evening, giving fast bowlers a significant advantage.Related

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In the decade before the 2011 World Cup, 32 of the 45 day-night matches at the Premadasa were won by sides winning the toss. Before that World Cup, though, the playing surface was raised by three-and-a-half feet, and it did the trick. Sri Lanka chased successfully in their quarter-final and semi-final. The relevance of this history lesson now is that if you make a dry track, you need not worry about it getting better to bat on with the evening moisture or dew playing a significant role.Sri Lanka got their strategy right, had the rub of the green, and bowled superbly despite India getting off to three quick starts, thanks almost exclusively to Rohit Sharma, and defeated a side that had gone unbeaten through last year’s World Cup before the final, and one that had been dominating Sri Lanka in recent years.ESPNcricinfo LtdWe don’t have the HawkEye data to back it up, but the commentators suggested that it turned more and more as the matches progressed, and it does bear out in the batters’ output against spin. However, there seems to have been a clear difference between the sides in terms of approach. Sri Lanka seemed to be more conservative against spin while India looked to attack them more. It gave India a slightly better scoring rate but hurt them significantly with the wickets lost.In his analysis of his team’s batting, Rohit made an interesting point. He said India didn’t play the sweep shot as often or as well as Sri Lanka did. His observation was spot-on on both counts. Not only did Sri Lanka employ the various varieties of sweep more often, they also fared much better when they did. There is a good reason why India didn’t try it as often: they a lost a wicket on every fifth attempt.ESPNcricinfo LtdIf played well, the sweep brings more than just the immediate runs scored. It makes the fielding captain defend more areas of the field, opening up spaces elsewhere. That is particularly true if you play the reverse-sweep well. The threat of the reverse-sweep can force captains to deploy a deep point and open up the extra-cover region. It also messes with the spinners’ length.Historically, India haven’t been the greatest of sweepers. Improving on all kinds of sweep was the endeavour when Rahul Dravid and Rohit led the side. As with all things, there is a delicate balance: you improve on this new shot but don’t disregard your traditional strength, which is to get to the pitch of the ball or go right back. That India weren’t excellent on that front in this series is something that will concern them, especially Virat Kohli, who was twice caught on the front foot without getting anywhere close to the ball, giving him little chance to recover against the ball that didn’t turn.ESPNcricinfo LtdThese numbers don’t automatically make India a poor team against spin. Over the same period since 2019, India have the best average against spin in ODIs and only England and South Africa have scored quicker than them. Nor do those numbers necessarily make them the best batting unit against spin. It probably suggests that when there is appreciable assistance for spinners, India perhaps don’t do enough to force the opposition bowlers out of their comfort zones. This is something Rohit has said India will continue to work on.The one other thing that stood about India’s series loss was their less-than-optimal use of bowling resources. Even that possibly came down to their obsession with keeping a seam-bowling allrounder ready should Hardik Pandya not be available. That is possibly why they persisted with Shivam Dube through the series when the conditions called for a spin-bowling allrounder in Riyan Parag. Sri Lanka’s spinners, then, not only fared better but also bowled a lot more than India’s: 81.1% of their team’s overs to India’s 65.3. Some of this might have been down to there being more assistance for spinners in the second innings but the make-up of India’s XI perhaps also had something to do with their willingness to pay a short-term price for what they believe is a long-term pursuit.

Their country is in the midst of political upheaval, the cricket board is seemingly on its way out, and there are batting issues to grapple with; can Bangladesh find their voice?

Mohammad Isam18-Aug-2024If it wasn’t for the heavy security, Bangladesh’s cricketers would have been a common sight in the Islamabad-Rawalpindi metropolitan area. Bangladesh have two teams here – one preparing for the first Test at the Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium and the other, the Bangladesh A team, playing against Pakistan A in two four-day matches at the Islamabad Club. As Islamabad went into a Sunday siesta, the cricketers were out training in the heat of the two venues, located within a 10km radius of each other.It was a rare sensible move from the BCB to have the second-string team shadowing the seniors during a crucial Test tour. It could also be the last move made by the current BCB administration, who are, seemingly, on their way out. The cricketers, however, can’t afford to think about what’s happening at the BCB headquarters in Mirpur. Hard as it might be, they’ll also have to take their minds off the political turmoil and euphoria of the last four weeks back home, because they have a job to do in Rawalpindi.Six players from the Test side have already played in the Bangladesh A team’s first four-dayer. It wasn’t a great outing for the visitors, though. They have already suffered two injuries, with Mahmudul Hasan Joy ruled out of the first Test with a groin strain and Mushfiqur Rahim also picking up a finger injury during the game. There wasn’t much joy for the others either, except Nayeem Hasan who showed great fighting spirit with bat and ball.Related

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The offspinner bowled the most overs of any Bangladesh A bowler in their only innings in the field, finishing with a neat 1 for 88 from 23 overs. What may have enthused Bangladesh even more, however, was his 55 in the second innings. He played that innings after stepping in at No. 5 with the two injured batters ruled out of action on the fourth day. The tenacity he displayed over nearly two hours is exactly what Bangladesh might need in their Test series.The 24-year-old Nayeem is known to be a quiet personality. But he has often shown great presence of mind in the field. Many believe that he is under-utilised, having only played 10 Tests in the last six years. Nine of them have come at home. His only overseas Test appearance, in 2019, ended badly when he had to leave the field due to a concussion. He has, however, developed himself into Bangladesh’s back-up spin option with strong domestic performances, having taken 44 wickets at an average of 17.88 in the 2023-24 season.Nayeem Hasan expects a flat pitch in Rawalpindi and feels patience will be key for Bangladesh’s bowlers•AFPHaving played at the Islamabad Club and after Bangladesh’s first training session in Rawalpindi, Nayeem laid out what he felt would be the theme of this Test series.”From what I have observed here so far, it will be a game of patience,” Nayeem said. “We are going to play on good wickets. It will be relatively easier for batters. A straight bat can be hard to beat but we cannot panic. We have to hold our area. There’s generally not going to be any help for spinners. There will be turn from outside the stumps, so we have to force the batters to make mistakes. As much as we have to attack, we also have to protect.”Having observed how the Pakistan A fast bowlers had operated in the four-day game, Nayeem believes Bangladesh’s quicks could make an impact too.”Pakistan A bowlers reversed the ball. On both sides. They maintained the ball very well [in the four-day game]. Our fast bowlers have done well with the new ball in the recent past. They also know how to reverse the ball. We will all have to make them work hard for runs.”Bangladesh spin coach Mushtaq Ahmed imparts knowledge at a training session•BCBBangladesh’s bowling hasn’t been too much of a worry of late, but the same cannot be said about their batting. Zakir Hasan, Mushfiqur and Mominul Haque weren’t among the runs for Bangladesh A. Mahmudul scored a fifty in the first innings, but he is out injured. Shakib Al Hasan has played plenty of T20s recently, but not a lot of red-ball cricket, while captain Najmul Hossain Shanto and Litton Das must be itching to score runs after going through lean patches this year.Nayeem’s runs may have brought Bangladesh some solace, particularly since they could go in with a longish tail. Nayeem feels he has levelled up with the bat since the Bangladesh Tigers camp in Chattogram in July, which was disrupted by clashes between government forces and student protesters.”It was good to score some runs,” Nayeem said. “Like my bowling, I think my batting has also picked up since the Chittagong camp. I made runs against skillful bowlers, and all three of the fast bowlers are in their Test squad.”I have felt that my bowling has been in rhythm since the Chittagong camp. We played practice matches there. I feel that wickets are not important in these wickets in Pakistan. I must be more focused on bowling well. I have been working with [Bangladesh spin-bowling coach] Mushtaq [Ahmed] . It has been very rewarding working with him.”Bangladesh have two more days to prepare for the first Test, which begins on August 21. The second Test, too, has moved to Rawalpindi, which could play in the visitors’ favour. Bangladesh will know this neck of the woods, maybe not as well as the home side, but at least better than previous touring sides that have struggled to adapt to the pitches and conditions.

He widened the terms of the game’s discourse with his insightful, analytical mind, always upending conventional wisdom

Karthik Krishnaswamy23-Dec-2024When India toured England in the summer of 2018, R Ashwin delivered a masterclass like no other.These masterclasses had been running for years, with Ian Ward, a former Test cricketer himself, coaxing the likes of Shane Warne, Muthiah Muralidaran, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and Curtly Ambrose to give viewers a peek into their inner workings. Ward is an expert at steering players into talking about their craft in a way that straddles the line between nerdy and accessible to regular folk watching on TV.Now Ward juxtaposed two Ashwin deliveries on his screen: one that slid on with the round-the-wicket angle into the left-hand batter, and one that dipped and ripped past Alastair Cook’s groping bat and flicked the top of off stump. Ashwin dismissed Cook the same way in both innings of that Edgbaston Test.Related

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“For a youngster,” Ward asked Ashwin, “what’s the difference between the wrist position and where it’s coming off the fingers, to do those two deliveries?”Scores of current and former greats have given Ward precisely the kind of TV-friendly answer he’s looking for. Warne, famously, put his variations in neat, beribboned boxes: this is how I bowl the big, sidespinning legbreak; this is the one with a bit more overspin; this is the toppie; the googly; and oh, I flick the flipper out with my thumb, like this.Warne, of course, knew and mastered the infinite gradations between the sidespinner and the overspinner, but he also had an intuitive grasp of what TV audiences wanted.Ashwin didn’t give Ward the neatly packaged insight he was after. Instead of showing how he released the undercutter and the big offbreak, he launched into a demonstration of the various ways he cocks his wrist while loading up different deliveries. He even described how he does this for the arm ball, a variation Ward hadn’t even asked about.Viewers who had followed Ashwin’s career for any length of time may have chuckled at this, because this was typical. Among the many things this great cricketer has excelled at over his long career is denying interviewers the answer they’re looking for, while giving them entire chapters of tangential material. Few players have been as generous with their insight, but as with everything else about Ashwin, the generosity has come on his own terms.It has always been this way. The first time I interviewed Ashwin was during a Tamil Nadu-Railways Ranji Trophy game in 2008, a year and a half before his international debut. I asked the questions of a 21-year-old cub reporter, and he gave the answers of a man only a few months older but already nearing elite status in his profession.

Throughout his career, he has been more invested than most in broadening the boundaries of his sport, and more willing than most to throw open the doors of his laboratory

I asked him about his strengths as an offspinner. He told me that his big, strong fingers allowed him to give the ball a rip, and that this, allied with his height, enabled him to generate bounce on most pitches. And immediately, unprompted, he went on to describe the bounce as a double-edged sword, and explain why he often bowled with long-on back even in red-ball cricket, because the bounce made it easier for batters to hit him over the top. “I don’t want to give them that release shot.”It took me years to grasp the wider implications, but it was a valuable early lesson that cricket is all about trade-offs. If you want to strengthen the slip cordon, you’ll have to leave a gap somewhere else. A middled drive off a good-length ball is no less risky than one that’s edged behind. A fielder at long-on isn’t always a sign of defensive thinking. If you want to describe the sport properly, you must look at events in the context of these trade-offs. Never in isolation, never through the binary of good and bad.How Ashwin railed against binaries. After his most chastening home series, against England in 2012-13, he bridled against the wave of criticism that came his way, but what bothered him wasn’t the tone of the criticism but the fact that so much of it was inaccurate. He was happy to admit that he had struggled to control his length during that series, but couldn’t fathom the narrative that this had happened because he bowled too many carrom balls.For all the misplaced criticism he attracted, Ashwin also gained a growing band of admirers who tried to keep up with what he was doing to his craft. Wittingly and unwittingly, he went on to spend his entire career in the eye of a cyclone of narrative and counter-narrative.He came to occupy that space for many reasons. It was partly because he came along when cricket was being recorded at far higher resolutions and far greater frame rates than before, when holes in conventional wisdom were becoming increasingly evident to the viewer. He came along at a time when a significant number of journalists, analysts, commentators and observers on social media – the lines between these categories were also becoming blurry – were making a concerted effort to see the game for what it was, even if the mainstream was slow to respond.Drift into middle, clip the top of off: Alastair Cook was masterfully bowled twice at Edgbaston in 2018 by R Ashwin•Getty Images & PA ImagesBut it was also because Ashwin was a singularly active challenger of conventional wisdom, not just on the field – as no doubt many others also were – but off it too. He cared deeply not just about his game but game too, and how it was described.He went to great lengths to explain the effects of sidespin and overspin, and the typical behaviour of red-soil and black-soil pitches, but would roll his eyes if you generalised too broadly. “Come on, man,” he seemed to tell you. “It’s not that simple!” He contributed greatly to a widening of the terms of cricketing discourse, winced when those terms were misused, and never stopped trying to tell you how things worked. Sometimes, he’d throw in a stunning revelation when you least expected it.Watch that masterclass now, and it’s clear Ward has no idea what’s about to hit him when he asks Ashwin about his carrom ball, summoning onto his screen what he believes is an example of it.Then Ashwin tells him, and all of us: “The one there, actually it’s not the carrom ball.” He explains that he flicks the carrom ball out of the front of his hand, and this variation – he describes it as a “backflipper” here, but will soon begin calling it the reverse carrom ball – from underneath it, with the seam up. He says batters have begun to pick his carrom ball now, so he occasionally slips in this variant; the right-hander shaping to punch with the turn, through the off side, is suddenly confronted with a monstrous inswinger.All this becomes obvious when you watch it alongside Ashwin’s explanation, but it’s far from clear until he’s talked you through it.Ashwin revealed all this unprompted, in a widely televised interview, and along the way revealed something of who he is. Throughout his career, he has been more invested than most in broadening the boundaries of his sport, and more willing than most to throw open the doors of his laboratory. And he’s been entirely secure in the belief that he’ll remain a step ahead of the rest of us, everyone from his opponents to the casual fan, even if he gives away all his secrets.

Before the second innings in Durban, the South Africa captain had 22 fifties but only two hundreds to his name

Andrew Fidel Fernando29-Nov-2024Yes, it is a bowlers’ era, and sure, this is not the strongest South Africa batting order there has ever been, but eventually people are going to look across your stats, find the column under “Hundreds”, and check.Temba Bavuma is aware of this. Painfully aware.Before the second innings at Kingsmead, he had only two trips to triple figures, compared to 22 fifties. The rock to throw at him is that this is a poor conversion rate, even if many of those fifties came in difficult match situations. Both his team-mates and his opposition, for example, have praised his first-innings 70, for having taken South Africa from a truly modest total to a halfway-respectable 191, given the conditions.Related

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Still, that column on the stats page has eyes on it. And on Friday, at Kingsmead, he raised the count to three, hitting 113 against Sri Lanka. Will people wonder how he has been doing as captain and see that he averages 54.22? Will they wonder how many of his innings have come at No. 6 and lower (51 off 103 innings, by the way), and reason that these are not positions where centuries are harder to come by? Perhaps not many will. Hundreds are kind of a big deal.”Getting to a three-figure mark is always a lot more satisfying, personally,” Bavuma said, about making centuries vs important fifties. “When you bat in positions where the team is in trouble, and you get to a 50 to 60, I guess it’s good in terms of getting the team into a competitive position. But once you’re able to go over, you really get the team into a strong position.”Hundreds are a currency as a batter as well, I guess that increases that value. There’s obviously a lot of confidence that comes from scoring a hundred, and I think in terms of the batting line-up we’re getting to a stage where we’re starting to believe that in each innings, someone is able to go and get a hundred, so it’s good to add to that confidence.”

“Getting to the three-figure mark was quite nerve-racking. I went over to him and said, ‘Stubbo, please get me on strike. I can’t wait on this end'”

Bavuma’s approach to the hundred was fraught, however. Between getting to 80 and getting to triple figures, there was an edge that dropped short of the slips, a ball that jumped up and hit him on the glove, plays and misses, and an lbw shout and a review to the shot (it came off his glove) he got to triple figures off. Bavuma had, in fact, been asking for the strike.”I think I’m not too good when I get to the 80s and 90s. I’m going to try and get there [to a century] as soon as I can. They had the second new ball as well, and there was still something on offer for the bowlers. I was always looking to score.”Then, obviously, getting to the three-figure mark, it was quite nerve-racking. Against the spinner [Prabath Jayasuriya], I got one off the first ball, and then the next two balls Tristan Stubbs blocked. I went over to him and said, ‘Stubbo, please get me on strike. I can’t wait on this end.’ He was able to do that, so I was always going to play that shot.”The shot was a paddle sweep, and he just managed to get a glove to the ball before it hit him on the pads in front of the stumps.”It was a bit high risk, but the way the spinner was bowling, I was thinking of getting to that three-figure mark and then kind of starting again.”Sri Lanka reviewed that lbw, shout, but Bavuma had known he had got enough on it. He politely waited for the big screen to show the little spike as the ball brushed his glove.Then he celebrated his third hundred.

It seemed for an age that his bowling exploits were capped by physical ailments but in Manchester, the Stokes of old turned up and made things happen

Vithushan Ehantharajah24-Jul-2025

Ben Stokes celebrates his five-wicket haul•Getty Images

The raise of the ball was done with all the enthusiasm of a man lifting a plunger out of a blocked toilet.Ben Stokes’ fifth five-wicket haul, completed on day two of the fourth Test against India, means only he, Ian Botham, Garry Sobers and Jacques Kallis have taken as many alongside scoring at least 10 centuries. No cricketer should be shy of entering that kind of club. But Stokes looked a little sheepish.You could understand where Stokes was coming from to an extent. It was likely a mix of not wanting to take the glory – his modus operandi since assuming the Test captaincy – and a tinge of embarrassment that it had been a long time coming. His last five-for, against West Indies at Lord’s – came back in September 2017.Related

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A few weeks on from that career-best 6 for 22, Stokes stayed up late in Bristol and, well, you know how that one went. And that, along with plenty of other situations, many beyond the allrounder’s control, has made days like these seem further away.It seemed his bowling exploits were capped. Some of those have been physical ailments and so, by proxy, all have been mental.But this 5 for 72 has, for now, kept India to 358 and allowed England a handy run out under the sun to trail by just 133 at stumps on day two. It also puts Stokes top of the pops with 16 dismissals this series. And moreover, back in a groove that, up until the last month, had seemed lost to the annals.Three batters trimmed off. Two bumped. Always threatening. Never knowingly under-bowled. All this signposted a return to the Stokes of old. Namely the one he was across 2019 and 2020 – a period he reckons was his peak.2:17

Crawley: ‘Owe it to myself to have a few good performances’

Funnily enough, there were no five-fors during this stanza. But even that was not necessarily about the 41 dismissals at 27.70 across both years, but the skill, control and durability across 368.1 overs.There are a specific 2.2 overs at the end of the final day of the second Test against South Africa at Newlands in January 2020, that Stokes rewatched heading into this summer. Desperate to recapture the perfect rhythm, high pace and immaculate lengths distilled in that match-winning spell of 3 for 1.”I used Cape Town as a visual thing for me,” revealed Stokes in Leeds, ahead of the series opener. “To look back at and go, like, ‘what was I doing there’? Because that’s when I felt really good.”Zak Crawley was in the cordon five years ago, taking a juggling blinder to give Stokes his second of that set, and was in prime position here to admire the similarities.”There’s so many similarities to that,” Crawley said at stumps on Thursday. “He was bowling quickly back then. He’s got that pace back now. And the way he just gets that away movement from the right-hander, that zip, which is as much as anyone in the world really. He gets that bounce.”He’s a proper wicket-taker and he can make things happen and that’s certainly the case when I first came into the side back then (2020). And he seems to have got that back now, which is a phenomenal effort considering the injuries he’s had and, well, he’s a little bit older now.”This summer, Stokes’ average speed – 135.38kph – is the third-fastest he has registered in a home season since 2019. His control evident from the shift from day one to day two, earning his final three wickets for just 25 in 10 overs.Day two boasted the highest degree of swing of any day this series, so Stokes pushed his length forward. Of Wednesday’s 14 overs, 19.7% were full (within 6.25m of the stumps) and the dismissal of Shubman Gill, his opposite number, was at the shorter limit of that threshold. Thursday’s Stokes went further, with 32.2% to fashion what swing there was into a weapon. Shardul Thakur skewed his drive to a diving Ben Duckett at gully, then Anshul Kamboj played down what became the wrong line for Stokes’ fifth.Arguably the more impressive milestone for Stokes had come on day one, ticking over the most he has ever bowled in a series, currently. It will certainly be the most meaningful to him.Previous roles as an enforcer or “break glass for match winner” quick meant he was kept to cameos. But he has always had the skills. The problem soon became his body. Thankfully, we appear to be through the tunnel.0:49

What makes Crawley and Duckett click as a pair?

The light was seen by Stokes back in 2023. An overdue left knee operation after the ODI World Cup cleared up what was threatening to become a chronic mess. And though two right hamstring tears in six months followed, the lessons from that first procedure – specifically, how much easier rehabilitation was with a sleeker physique – had already been learned.The biggest benefit for Stokes has been around recovery. Not only have performances been backed up, but the speeds have been consistent. The first innings averages tell the story; 134.3kph (Headingley), 135.59kph (Edgbaston), 136.71kph (Lord’s) and 135.2kph here.The gap between Lord’s and Manchester is probably the most insightful as far as where Stokes is at right now.After bowling 44 overs in the victory at Lord’s, including 20 on day five to help bag that 201 lead, Stokes spent the next few days in bed. As such, when it came to training on Monday at Emirates Old Trafford, he was ready to get back on the grind, even if he was still feeling a little tired.Two days out from the first Test at Headingley, Stokes had wowed his team-mates by bowling a mammoth 11-over stint. And while he was not going to do the same here, he did want to get the wheels turning. Unfortunately, the Manchester weather got in the way.Instead, Stokes beasted himself on Tuesday. After a gym session in the morning, he bowled in the Trafford Cricket Centre – Lancashire’s onsite indoor nets – which is by no means the done thing for a bowler on the eve of a match because the indoor surface is unforgiving on the joints. Not only did Stokes get through that, he followed it up with a long batting stint. Then he sent down 24 of the first 114.1 overs of this match.Without question, Stokes’ renewed fitness drive has allowed him to stitch together a series like this. He sensed it himself, which is why after 11.2 overs against Zimbabwe, back in May, he felt he did not need to play for Durham or England Lions to be right for India.At the same time, all this has come with a bit of balance. Captaincy, at least from the outside, feels a little easier. Given the fear at the start of his tenure centered around marrying those duties with his all-action nature, he seems to be at his most switched on while carrying the bowling burden.It’s worth noting that on day three at Lord’s, when Brendon McCullum sent over bowling consultant Tim Southee to suggest Stokes cap a spell at seven overs, Stokes had already decided that was that. He knew he had run that particular race. That he went on to bowl 9.2- and 10-over spells two days later owed more to a sense he had the wares to crack the game open than simply indulging a hero complex. Vindication of both came with the removal of KL Rahul in the former and a belligerent Jasprit Bumrah in the latter.On the subject of balance, Stokes seems to have found a sweet spot. The graft away from the field to allow the gut-busting on it is tempered in various ways. Though he stopped drinking alcohol as he recovered from a hamstring operation at the start of the year, he sups the occasional drink as a reward following a satisfying day’s play. Everything in moderation, including moderation.At 34, you might term this all as growth, and in some ways it is. Of a man getting better attuned with his body and still developing a greater affinity for the craft of bowling.It used to be said of Stokes that it was hard to discern what kind of allrounder he was, beyond one with an appetite for big moments. Detractors would say that was down to neither-here-nor-there numbers with bat and ball.Now, entering the twilight of his career, Stokes is, emphatically, a bowling allrounder. And that’s not because the batting numbers are taking a dip, but because he has never been a more complete bowler than right now.

Stats highlights from a historic day in Ahmedabad for Royal Challengers Bengaluru

Sampath Bandarupalli03-Jun-20251:27

Moody: Krunal Pandya screams character to me

6255 – Days since Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) played their first IPL match – on April 18, 2008 against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Tuesday marks the end of their wait for a trophy, after playing 286 games across the IPL and the CLT20.RCB had played four T20 finals before this season – three in the IPL and one in the CLT20, losing all of them while chasing a target. Delhi Capitals (DC) now hold the record for playing the most men’s T20 matches (274) without winning a title.8 – Teams to win the IPL trophy, including RCB. They leave Punjab Kings (PBKS) and DC as the only IPL franchises from 2008 not to have won the trophy. Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) are the only other active franchise not to have won the title.1 – Krunal Pandya became the first player to win the Player-of-the-Match award twice in IPL finals. He had won the award in the 2017 final against Rising Pune Supergiant/s.Related

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4 – Players who have won the IPL title in their maiden season as captain, including Rajat Patidar. Shane Warne won the inaugural edition in 2008 for Rajasthan Royals (RR), Rohit Sharma won with Mumbai Indians (MI) after taking over captaincy mid-season in 2013, and Hardik Pandya led Gujarat Titans (GT) to the title in their debut season in 2022.Patidar had played only four international matches before his IPL captaincy debut, the second-fewest for any captain in the IPL behind Nitish Rana (three).4-0 – Krunal’s win-loss record as a player in IPL finals. Krunal won all three IPL finals he played for MI – in 2017, 2019 and 2020. Only Rohit has a better record than Krunal in finals, having won each of the six he has played. Overall, Krunal is one of eight players to be part of four or more IPL final wins.10 – Different players to either score 20-plus runs or take a wicket for RCB on Tuesday. The only exceptions were Phil Salt, who scored 16 runs and took a catch, while Suyash Sharma, who came in as the Impact Player, bowled two wicketless overs.Only one team before RCB had ten players with 20-plus runs or a wicket in a men’s T20 final – Delhi against Rajasthan in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in 2017-18.771 – Fours hit by Virat Kohli in the IPL, the most by any batter, surpassing Shikhar Dhawan’s tally of 768.

He had gone for more than a run-a-ball in the first innings but found his length second time around

Alex Malcolm23-Nov-2025There were fears for Scott Boland after the opening day of the Ashes series.The pre-series assertion of former England captain Michael Atherton that England did not fear him proved prophetic as they clattered him for 62 from 10 overs on a surface where 19 wickets fell in a day and Mitchell Starc took a career-best seven-wicket haul.With Pat Cummins still a 50-50 proposition to play in Brisbane, as well as doubts over his ability to play in consecutive Tests, and fears over Josh Hazlewood’s involvement in the series at all, their would have been genuine questions about where Australia’s selectors could turn if Boland was Bazballed out of the series inside two days.Related

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But all fears were quelled with a match-turning spell on day two, taking 3 for 3 in 11 deliveries including the prized scalps of Ben Duckett, Ollie Pope and Harry Brook, on his way to figures of 4 for 33 that silenced the doubters and restored his astounding home average to 13.47.”I thought Scotty got his line and lengths and movement right today,” Steven Smith said post-match on Saturday. “That’s the Scotty Boland that we’re used to. And he took some really key wickets.”There was a sense, which was backed up by Ben Stokes in the aftermath, that England had let Boland back into the series via timid batting that was the complete antithesis of what their approach stood for, and what had kept Boland under the thumb previously.That may be true. But England hardly needed to whack Boland off his length on the opening day because he never found it.Bowling for the first time at Perth Stadium, Boland had strayed way too full and straight in his first spell with the new ball. Duckett hadn’t needed to charge at him. He merely stood still and drilled half-volley after half-volley down the ground. It was only later when the ball was softer, and had turned into a “hockey puck” according to Starc, that Brook charged at him to launch him over wide mid-off.It could well have been nerves for Boland. He had admitted to a large media gathering in the build-up that he had been thinking about this series for two years, having ruminated on what happened in 2023 for a long time. Boland is an introvert. It is easy to see how he may have overthought the moment.He also hadn’t been bowling quite at his best in Sheffield Shield cricket in the lead-up. He did take five wickets in a victory over New South Wales, but that had come after he was clattered at a run-a-ball in his first couple of spells, with discarded Test opener Sam Konstas reverse ramping him for six and Ollie Davies thumping him repeatedly through cover. Boland admitted he had struggled for rhythm that day, explaining that he can occasionally get out of sync in his run-up which can then get in his head.Scott Boland removed Ben Duckett straight after lunch to spark a collapse•Getty ImagesBut like he did at the Junction Oval, he made the adjustment on the second day in Perth. England did try to unsettle him but Boland unsettled them.His first ball of the second innings to Duckett reared from a length and thudded into his gloves. Duckett charged at the second and edged it along the ground to third slip. Duckett charged at the fifth at very nearly chopped on.Against the last ball over Boland’s second over, Duckett charged again and swung wildly with the thick edge flying safely over gully. Boland could claim a “moral victory”.A switch of ends brought more close calls but no wickets before lunch. Duckett charged again and got hit on the bottom glove by one that nipped and bounced at him. Pope played and missed trying to drive on the up. It would be the first of six such drives from Pope at Boland, all of which beat the edge.England were hardly timid to him. Boland had adjusted his lengths and lines to ask them to hit more difficult deliveries. The pitch, the overheads, and potentially a better ball all helped to make that task a challenge.Boland thought he had Duckett on the stroke of lunch, pinning him on the crease to see umpire Adrian Holdstock raise the finger. But Duckett was rightly reprieved by the DRS as it had pitched outside leg.Boland was finally rewarded post lunch. Duckett was stunned when he nicked a ball that pitched well outside his leg stump and nipped across him. The floodgates opened.Pope finally nicked one two overs later. Brook did not get six play and misses before he nicked his second ball attempting another booming drive on the up. The game swung wildly in the space of 11 balls. Boland returned to hero status in the eyes of the home fans.”Scotty started getting one of his rolls again,” Jake Weatherald said on Sunday. “[He] obviously gets it right very often in first-class cricket, and he got it right in that second innings for sure. And he understood what he need to do. He bowled more of a back of a length and a bit wider and really challenged their ability to drive the ball and make good decisions outside off stump.”England might blame themselves for letting Boland into the series, but take nothing away from a spell that added to his extraordinary record on home soil.

MCC’s incoming president on the challenge of engaging with Tech Titans, and opening Lord’s up to state schools

Andrew Miller11-Nov-2025″For a lot of my life, I’ve been a little bit unsure about spending so much time thinking about sport,” says Ed Smith, the newly installed president of a 238-year-old sporting institution. “Is it disproportionate, should I do something else? Actually, the way things have gone in the last 15 years, I feel that sport really has never been more important, more useful, if that doesn’t sound too utilitarian.”There’s plenty to unpick in that soundbite from Smith, the former national selector whose latest role in cricket would appear to be rather more ceremonial in nature. After all, the list of his predecessors as MCC president reads like a print-out of Burke’s Peerage – among them, the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who served two terms in 1949 and 1974. With the greatest respect to the status of Smith’s new office, utilitarian principles haven’t traditionally seemed like a key criterion at Lord’s.And yet, it’s hard to imagine many more fascinating years to be at the helm of Marylebone Cricket Club, the modernisation of which has been one of English cricket’s subplots for decades. The club’s reputation may have been built on exclusivity, but the current remit is to broaden its appeal – and 2026 promises progress on two distinct, but complementary, fronts.First, there are the implications of the Hundred equity sale. In commanding an astronomical valuation of £295 million, MCC’s co-owned franchise, London Spirit, has demonstrated – in stark, financial terms – the central importance of Lord’s to the whole edifice of English cricket. Without the history and prestige of its grandest ground, the sport in this country would be significantly diminished.At the opposite end of the pyramid, meanwhile, there is next year’s maiden staging of the Barclays Knight-Stokes Cup, a newly conceived state-schools competition that will culminate in a Finals Day for boy’s and girl’s teams at Lord’s in September, and has already attracted entries from 1,084 teams across 750 schools, or one in five in the country.Smith served as England’s national selector from 2018 to 2021•Getty ImagesBetween these two apparent extremes sits Smith, with his remit to be a forward-facing, welcoming ambassador for the club – very much a non-executive, but a potentially crucial executor of MCC’s soft power, as it were.”I don’t like the word brand, but there is a brand power to Lord’s, and I would love that to be used for good and to widen access to cricket,” Smith tells ESPNcricinfo. “I’m very excited to do what I can do, and hopefully we can do a little bit of good in a year.”He pushes back at the suggestion that his role will mainly entail “pressing flesh” with the rich and famous who cross his path in the pavilion and president’s box. However, he doesn’t entirely dismiss the importance of his hosting role, particularly when it comes to engaging with the tech entrepreneurs who coughed up £145 million for their 49% share in London Spirit, and who are likely to pop along at some stage next summer to savour the spoils of their investment. To give him the credit that his intellectual reputation has earned, he potentially offers a higher-brow level of small talk than some of his forebears.”Yes, watching cricket at Lord’s with very interesting people is one of the things that happens in a president’s year,” he says. “People love coming to Lord’s – its draw has been clear in the partnership with the Tech Titans – so that’s not to be underestimated, even though there’s more to it than that.”Having spent a bit of time with some of them over the summer, I think they’re keen on winning and growing the franchise, and having some fun too. And there’s a fast-tracking potential here for some really exciting innovations, just because of the people involved and their opportunity to have a canvas.Related

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“It’s a really exciting partnership, but I’m just keen to get stuck in and do some hard graft behind the scenes, and not just on the major match days.”It’s clear, however, that Smith’s main passion for the coming year lies at the grassroots end of the club – in particular, making sure that the inaugural Knight-Stokes Cup is as much of a success as it needs to be.”I come from a family of teachers,” he says. “Both my grandfathers were state-school head teachers, and my mum’s dad founded a secondary modern school in 1953 outside Bristol. He’d lock his office door and go and roll the cricket square, because he believed you build a school’s community and identity through doing things together. Sport is one of, if not the pre-eminent, way of coming together as a community.”He accepts, however, that the world has moved on since the 1950s, and that harking back to times long gone is clearly not the way to resolve the disconnect that has opened up between the nation’s summer sport and its largest pools of future fans and players.”There are all sorts of ways in which teachers’ time has become precious,” Smith says. “Their roles have become much more regulated, what they do is much more scrutinised by the state. However, the need for them to do lots of different things hasn’t gone away, and amid the rise of smartphone addiction and social media, I think this is the moment for us to restate the case for sport in education.London Spirit was the most sought-after franchise in the Hundred equity sale•ECB/Getty Images”People being distracted is a commercial driver of a lot of modern life. Sport is a way that we can lose ourselves in play, while also pursuing mastery. Whether you end up being very good or no good at all doesn’t really matter. If you’re lost in doing something, and the concentration and the absorption that comes with that, then you’re probably going to get an awful lot out of it.”Smith has a vested interest in the debate, seeing as his own son and daughter, aged 12 and 9, are budding cricketers whose school was one of the first to sign up for the regional qualifiers.”It was great to see the excitement that comes from a good idea that’s been well launched,” he says. “To see that interest and excitement in young peoples’ faces at home on that first day was great, and shows what can be done.”Let’s be realistic. No one believes it’s the total solution to nurturing, reigniting and elevating cricket in state schools. There need to be other contributions from other perspectives, whether that’s the state, whether that’s the schools themselves, whether that’s counties running their pathways.”There’s lots of different pieces that have to come together if there’s going to be a real transformation. But this is a very good contribution, it’s a start that everyone at the MCC is really determined to build on, and I’ll be doing everything I can to support it this year.”It should be said, there has been a certain degree of revisionism regarding the origins of the Knight-Stokes Cup. From the outset last summer, and in subsequent communications from the club, the project has been framed as an MCC-led initiative when, in fact, the creation of a “national Under-15 state school finals’ day for boys and girls” was one of the specific recommendations of the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC), whose damning report in 2023 castigated English cricket in general, and MCC in particular, for institutional “sexism, classism and elitism”.Smith doesn’t dispute that the club is still playing catch-up in terms of its public image (he unapologetically ducks the thorny issue of Eton-Harrow, stating that it falls outside the remit of his one-year term). He does, however, point out that MCC has long had genuine advocates for state-school cricket among its leadership: most notably, Mark Nicholas, the club chair, and Lord King of Lothbury, his own predecessor as president.In 2005, those two (along with the former Worcestershire chair Duncan Fearnley) were co-founders of the charity Chance to Shine, which has taken cricket back into hundreds of primary schools in the intervening 20 years, and given a first taste of the sport to literally millions of pupils.

“Amid the rise of smartphone addiction and social media, I think this is the moment for us to restate the case for sport in education”Smith is an enthusiastic advocate of MCC’s new state-schools competition, the Knight-Stokes Cup

“There’s obviously a huge amount more for the game to do, I don’t think anyone doubts that,” Smith says, “but they’ve done so much to get cricket bats into the hands of boys and girls at a really young age, and help them fall in love with the game.”We often talk about sport at the sharp end – what it looks like by the time it’s very visible to us, and when it’s manifested as elite teams and national teams. But of course, all that relies on what happens beneath the waterline of the iceberg, and the health of the game more generally.”Some of that, Smith adds, was on display at the MCC Foundation’s national hubs final in September. It was the fifth such staging of a competition that attracted teams from 164 regional sites across the country, and for whom the prospect of competing at such a prestigious venue was a significant drawcard.”I attended the finals day at Lord’s with my family, and I was partly watching the cricket and partly watching the crowd,” he says. “Whether it was a player or a parent, or a sibling, or a supporter, I watched them file out of the ground, and I saw a lot of smiles on a lot of faces. Your expectation is that their love of cricket would be deeper and stronger after that day. That’s one of the things that Lord’s can do.”Plenty other issues will fall across Smith’s desk in the course of his presidency. In particular, there’s the juicy prospect of the maiden Hundred auction in March – an event that surely cannot help but whet the appetite of a former England selector? On the contrary, he’s keen to be respectful of his designated place within the club structure.”I’m very interested in recruitment and selection, but the people who are living it every day are the best in the business,” he says, deferring to London Spirit’s management duo of Mo Bobat and Andy Flower, who will take charge of all such matters. “I’ve got a lot going on, and hopefully I can add value as president, but in a good organisation, you want people to be given clear authority and role clarity about what they’re up to.”