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And which bowler took at least one wicket in 52 consecutive innings?

Anantha Narayanan08-Aug-2020As I had mentioned in my previous piece, it’s now time for a fun and wacky article, this one on streaks in Test cricket. You might have come across quite a few either in ESPNcricinfo’s huge collection of records, in Steven Lynch’s excellent weekly Q&A columns, or in features written by members of the site’s stats team. But I’ll venture to say that this might be the first time you will see all these 40 streaks in Test cricket grouped in one place.Player combinationSame 11 players: England played the same team in six Tests in 2008. The XI comprised of: Andrew Strauss, Alastair Cook, Michael Vaughan (c) , Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell, Paul Collingwood, Tim Ambrose (wk), Stuart Broad, Ryan Sidebottom, James Anderson, and Monty Panesar. England won four and drew two with this XI. South Africa (on five separate occasions), Australia (three times), England (one other occasion) and West Indies (once) have played the same team in five consecutive Tests.Same opening pair: This is a rarely mentioned streak. Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden opened in 91 consecutive innings between November 2001 and October 2005. They averaged 51.17 runs per completed partnership during this run. After the ICC Test in 2005, Hayden opened with Michael Hussey and other batsmen. Strauss and Cook had two opening streaks of 43 and 45 innings, averaging 43 runs across those streaks. These were separated by two Tests against Bangladesh in which Michael Carberry and Jonathan Trott opened, with Cook. Surprisingly, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe only opened together in 11 successive innings. Hobbs opened quite a few times with Wilfred Rhodes, and Sutcliffe with Percy Holmes.Same opening bowlers: The established fast-bowling partnerships do not rule the roost here. Kapil Dev and Karsan Ghavri opened the bowling in 45 consecutive innings between November 1978 and January 1981. In Lahore, in the Test before their streak began, Sunil Gavaskar opened with Kapil, and in the Test after it ended, in Melbourne, Dilip Doshi opened with Kapil. Anderson and Broad opened in 39 consecutive innings between 2017 and 2018. Pakistan and West Indies generally played musical chairs with their new-ball combinations. Their best pairs were Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis (16 innings) and Malcolm Marshall and Joel Garner (28 innings) respectively.ResultsWins: Between October 1999 and February 2001, Australia won 16 Tests in a row, 11 at home Tests and five away. This streak was ended by India in the Laxman-Dravid-Harbhajan Test in Kolkata. Before their streak started, Australia played out two rain-hit draws in Sri Lanka.

Each of the five dismissals the No.1 Test bowler had of India’s main batting threat in the Australia-India Test series

ESPNcricinfo staff24-Jan-2021Adelaide, 2nd inns
India had a 53-run first-innings lead in Adelaide, but then stumbled to 15 for 2. Cummins got Australia right back in the game by dismissing Pujara for a duck. He bowled a few deliveries on the fifth stump line, which Pujara left, then angled one in that Pujara had to play. It was on the perfect length, which made Pujara play half forward, and he nicked as the ball just straightened a bit.MCG, 1st inns
Pujara had been playing Cummins fairly comfortably off the front foot, but for this ball, Cummins pulled the length back a tad and Pujara was caught on the crease. The ball moved away after pitching, squaring Pujara up and taking a thick edge that Time Paine did well to catch diving to his right. Cummins had Pujara for a second time to leave India 64 for 3.MCG, 2nd inns
India were chasing just 70, but Cummins gave Australia a sniff, dismissing Pujara for 3 to leave India 19 for 2. This was quite wide outside off stump and full, but Pujara poked at it and got a thick edge that flew to gully. It was an uncharacteristic shot away from the body from Pujara, perhaps caused by Cummins making him play so much in the series until then.SCG, 1st inns
Once Pujara gets set, it usually takes a special delivery to get him out, and Cummins produced one in Sydney after Pujara had played 175 balls for 50 runs. It was in that channel outside off again, but this one jumped off a length to hit the bat handle and go through to the keeper. It was the effort ball from Cummins, and the strike gave Australia a dominant position, leaving India 195 for 6 with the tail exposed.Gabba, 2nd inns
India were on course to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after batting out 78 overs on a fifth-day Gabba pitch. Australia’s last hope was to strike with the second new ball, and Cummins did that immediately. Pujara had played 210 balls for 54, but this one came back in sharply and hit him on the back pad in front of middle. India went on to complete an epic win, but Cummins was the one Australia bowler who never stopped looking threatening.

It might not always make sense but special players deserve more chances than others get

Aakash Chopra29-Oct-20201:52

Will Rahul’s IPL form help him in Tests?

KL Rahul being picked for India’s Test team for the tour to Australia has produced mixed reactions. Some are of the opinion that picking him devalues the first-class structure because the selection seems to be a reward for his white-ball performances. A few, like me, believe it was only a matter of time before he got a call up for the longer format again. In fact, the absence of Rohit Sharma on the tour to New Zealand early in the year could have been an ideal comeback series for Rahul.Rahul’s Test career stats read: 36 Tests, 2006 runs at 34.5, with five centuries. While these aren’t great numbers, they aren’t abysmal either. The fact that four of those Test centuries have come when he batted as an opener away from home perhaps adds a little more weight to the numbers.The other side of the story is equally compelling: the fact that he lost his place in Tests after a series of low scores; that there were clear patterns developing in his modes of dismissal that only accentuated his problems.Initially he nicked a lot of deliveries outside off – a common problem when the head isn’t on top of off stump, and one that is highlighted more when it happens to an opener. When Rahul tried to correct that, he started going far too across in an attempt to play outside the line of the ball, and ended up getting trapped in front of the stumps. It was obvious that he was trying extremely hard to address the issues, but sometimes the harder you try to get out of a quagmire, the deeper you sink.ALSO READ: Is KL Rahul’s problem technical or mental? (2018)Sachin Tendulkar wrote in his book that a batsman is at his best when his mind is at the opposite end – for that’s where what you have to counter comes from. There’s truth in that: when you focus on your head, feet and hands while standing in your stance, you are guaranteed to be late on the ball. Rahul, like a lot of batsmen going through poor form, was mentally stuck at his end. Lack of runs meant that he was dropped from the Test side, and what started as a very promising Test career, with a hundred in only his second Test, in Australia, threatened to be over well before time.When he wasn’t appearing for India in white flannels, Rahul kept scoring runs elsewhere. He started out as middle-order batsman in T20 cricket but found his real mojo in the format as an opener. He has become the first Indian to score 500-plus runs in three consecutive IPL seasons. He took over keeping duties in limited-overs internationals to fill in for Rishabh Pant, and adapted to the new role of finishing the innings. In fact, he has been India’s standout batsman in white-ball cricket over the last couple of years – both for consistency and impact. But is that enough for a call-up to the Test team?Let me share a story from my life here. The Indian selectors picked 24 probables for India’s tour to Australia in 2007. Wasim Jaffer, Gautam Gambhir and I were on that list. Virender Sehwag had had a very ordinary 2006 as a Test player, and two poor years as an ODI player, and he had been dropped for both formats. He went back to playing for Delhi in the Ranji Trophy to regain form and stake a claim again. Unfortunately, the runs didn’t come in first-class cricket too – his scores in the games running up to selection for the Australia series were 16, 0, 9, 32 and 9. He was so woefully out of form that he told the national selector who had come to watch one of our games to pick Gambhir and me, and to not pick him because he was out of form. That’s what you expect from Sehwag – honesty.Then Gambhir got injured and was ruled out of the tour. There were only two openers left on the list, Jaffer and I. My selection was almost guaranteed, but in the end the selectors in consultation with the captain, Anil Kumble, went for Sehwag.The selection didn’t make cricketing sense because Sehwag hadn’t earned his place back. I was the guy who paid the price for the gamble that the team took. As often happens with players of Sehwag’s calibre, he went on to score a hundred, in Adelaide, and did not look back since. He scored his second 300 in Tests a couple of months after.KL Rahul is the kind of player whose Test match technique is intact even when he is scoring at top speed in T20•Getty ImagesI can be forgiven for holding a grudge over something that didn’t seem fair at that point in time. But was there merit in the selectors picking Sehwag without domestic runs or form behind him? History would suggest that the gamble was worth taking, for Sehwag went on to achieve things that I probably would not have done despite my best efforts. Sehwag was a special player and perhaps deserved special treatment.Before going back to Rahul, let’s look at the other possible contenders for the opening spot in Tests now. Also, please bear in mind that these are extraordinary times and a lot of cricketers haven’t played any competitive cricket for eight months or more. The series against South Africa at home last year seemed like a good time for both Priyank Panchal and Abhimanyu Easwaran to be given an opportunity to open in Tests, but the selectors chose Rohit Sharma instead. And as they say, the rest is history. Sharma piled up the runs and closed the window of opportunity for the domestic performers. Since then, Panchal’s numbers have declined. Abhinav Mukund was the most prolific opener in the last domestic season, with Easwaran second on the list. Considering that both haven’t played a first-class game for a while, what were the realistic chances either would be picked for the tour to Australia? In the ideal world, Sharma, Mayank Agarwal and Prithvi Shaw would be the first-choice openers and Shubman Gill would have been in the squad as back-up. With Sharma’s injury and the lack of clarity about how well or not he is recovering, the selectors had to pick another opener in the side. If it was only about IPL numbers, they would have toyed with the idea of reinstating Shikhar Dhawan too.I must say here that the comparison with Sehwag was just to draw a parallel, but Rahul too is the kind of player who demands a bit more investment. His technical game is intact even when he is scoring at a rate of knots in the shortest format. His game has no obvious flaws that might make him susceptible to the trials of Test match cricket. Whether he will make it big in Test cricket or not, we will find out in good time, but there is merit in getting him back in whites. Players with his quality of skills and talent will get more opportunities than the rest, and while it might seem unfair at the time, like it felt to me in 2007, it might be the right decision for Indian cricket.What if the team management dropped Sharma after he had middling returns in the middle order, ending his Test career without allowing him a shot as an opener? What if Sehwag’s return had been delayed till he got runs on the first-class circuit back in 2007? What if Virat Kohli had been asked to go back to play first-class cricket to regain form after the tour to England in 2014?While I completely feel for the guys, like me back then, who are at the wrong end of these selections, I can now also understand why some players deserve and get an extra chance or two. Rahul has been given another shot at the longest format. Let’s hope he seizes it with both hands.

Need 195 off 87 balls? Get yourself a beefy New Zealander who can do the job

Hemant Brar05-Apr-20213:35

Mike Hussey, James Faulkner and Aditya Tare on Anderson’s innings

We polled our staff for their picks of the top ten best batting, bowling and all-round performances in the IPL through its history. Here’s No. 9Mumbai Indians vs Rajasthan Royals, 2014“It was basically an impossible feat to do.”That’s Corey Anderson recounting what the Mumbai Indians were faced with against the Rajasthan Royals in IPL 2014. With a playoff spot at stake, they needed to chase down 190 in 14.3 overs for their net run rate to get where it needed to be. It was an asking rate of more than 13 an over. No wonder it felt impossible.The abiding memory from this game will always remain that of Aditya Tare – his face covered with his shirt – going berserk after hitting the winning six, and the Royals’ mentor, Rahul Dravid, flinging his cap down in the dugout in disgust. But the man who did the impossible was Anderson.Before this match, he had scored only 150 runs in nine innings that season in the tournament. An average of 18.75 and a strike rate of 118.11 meant he had lost his place in the playing XI. But this was the last league game of the season and knowing they needed more batting firepower if they were to get to the required net run rate, they replaced fast bowler Marchant de Lange with Anderson.One thing with impossible-looking tasks is that they are also liberating in a way. When failure is almost certain, there is no pressure to succeed. Anderson benefited from being in that sort of situation. Vindicating Mumbai’s decision to bring him back, he smashed an unbeaten 95 off 44 balls to help them pull off arguably the biggest heist in IPL history.Neo is that you? Mr Anderson goes ballistic•BCCIEarlier, the Royals had ransacked 130 in the last ten overs of their innings, with Sanju Samson and Karun Nair scoring half-centuries, and Brad Hodge and James Faulkner applying the finishing touches. Watching them would have given Anderson some ideas about how to bat on that pitch.The Royals didn’t have an enviable bowling attack but the equation for Mumbai was bizarre. How bizarre? Lendl Simmons struck three fours in the first over of the chase, and they were still below the asking rate.Coming in at 19 for 1, Anderson struck the first ball he faced for four and the next for six. Soon after, Kevon Cooper dismissed Mike Hussey and Kieron Pollard in the fifth over but Anderson was unstoppable. With a six off Dhawal Kulkarni, he raced to 52 in just 25 balls; 42 of those runs came in boundaries.What followed was an even more extraordinary phase of hitting as Ambati Rayudu and Anderson added 81 in just 31 balls for the fifth wicket. Anderson’s contribution was 49 off 21 balls, Rayudu’s 30 off ten.In all, Anderson struck nine fours and six sixes. His method was simple: clear the front leg and swing through. Anything pitched fuller than short of a length fell right into his hitting arc. And when he swung, the Wankhede looked the size of a matchbox.

The numbers

75.79 Percentage of Anderson’s runs that came in boundaries (72 out of 95)

11 Number of Anderson’s runs that came behind the wicket

13.29 The Mumbai Indians’ scoring rate; still the highest for a 20-over game in the IPL

Two fours off Faulkner and Pravin Tambe in the 11th and 14th overs exemplified Anderson’s power. Faulkner bowled a slower ball on leg stump; Anderson backed away and belted it past the bowler. Tambe bowled a faster one and was thumped over his head. Both bowlers tried to stop the ball but must have considered themselves lucky not to have come in the way of it.Apart from the clean hitting, Anderson picked his spots well. Against Pravin Tambe, he mainly targeted the midwicket region, while the seamers were largely pummelled down the ground.When you’re looking to hit each ball to the boundary, mishits are almost inevitable: Anderson wasn’t in control of 16 of the 44 balls he faced. But he scored 87 off the 28 balls in which he was in control – which means there were hardly any lucky runs.Despite Anderson’s onslaught, Mumbai had only brought themselves level in 14.3 overs. There was a sigh of relief in the Royals camp; some in the dugout began to celebrate too. But there was a twist left.It turned out Mumbai could still qualify if they hit a boundary off the next three balls, and Tare launched the very next one, a leg-stump full toss from Faulkner, over deep-backward square leg, resulting in frenzied scenes.Suddenly, Mumbai had a shot at the title.The Greatest IPL performances 2008-2020

Trent Rockets men’s coach on tactical differences of new format and England’s need for a premier short-form competition

Matt Roller19-Jul-2021Covid-19 cases are on the rise in the UK and on Monday, government restrictions were eased even further. Entire teams have been forced into self-isolation in county cricket, with Derbyshire forced to cancel their final two T20 Blast group games due to a lack of available players. Tom Harrison, the ECB’s chief executive, was firm in emphasising last week that the mental toll of bubbles meant they were no longer feasible, but the Hundred – which starts on Wednesday night – can ill-afford a spate of cases over its four-week group stage.It is a familiar scenario for those involved in the competition who have worked in franchise cricket over the last six months. Andy Flower, who will coach the Trent Rockets men’s team, is one of them: he was in India working as Kings XI Punjab’s assistant coach when the IPL was curtailed in May, either side of which he coached Multan Sultans to the PSL title, initially in Pakistan and then in the UAE after an outbreak among players caused a postponement.”I’ve been away from the UK for three-and-a-half months,” he tells ESPNcricinfo via Zoom, shortly before finishing his 10-day hotel-room quarantine period. “We talk about adaptability being really important for players in the short formats of the game and it’s equally important for us on the coaching or leadership front. One of the most important aspects in having a good chance in a franchise competition is adaptability.Related

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“Almost every franchise in every competition is being affected by late pull-outs – the Hundred is obviously being seriously affected at the moment. We had a recent situation where Wahab Riaz – who came in for Nathan Coulter-Nile – had a visa problem and won’t be available for the first few games [Marchant de Lange has been signed as his replacement]. That’s an obvious example of having to be flexible and understanding at this time.”Not that it has affected Flower’s success. He comes into the Hundred on the back of a remarkable run of results coaching franchise teams, just under two years after leaving his role at the ECB: he has won the PSL, taken St Lucia Zouks to their first CPL final, and led teams to first and second-placed finishes at the Abu Dhabi T10.Success with Multan was unexpected after they had started slowly in the Karachi leg of the PSL. “We did come from almost nowhere,” he says. “The conditions in Abu Dhabi were much fairer and made for better, more interesting cricket and suited our attack more. [Blessing] Muzarabani, the tall fast bowler from Zimbabwe, was central to our plans and was a revelation for us; Imran Tahir was solid as a rock and generally inspirational; and Sohaib Maqsood was a major difference in our fortunes.”His role at Trent Rockets, he admits, is “a bit of a play to nothing”. As things stand, he is only due to coach them in the first season of the Hundred following Stephen Fleming’s withdrawal for family reasons, and has inherited a squad already picked by Fleming, Mick Newell (general manager) and Kunal Manek (analyst). He had a meeting with Lewis Gregory, the Rockets’ captain, during the Karachi leg of the PSL about the tournament and has been in regular contact with him throughout England’s white-ball series against Pakistan.He has had some time to think through the nuances of the new format, but expects tactical trends to evolve gradually through the group stages. “I’ve been involved in T10 as well so I’m used to an even quicker, more attacking form of the game but I’d imagine it’s going to be similar to T20 – though might feel slightly different in that we’ve got these 10 balls from one end. There might be a few tactical differences and if you can get the edge on the opposition through understanding those better and quicker, then that’s what we need to do.”An area where it will feel different to T20 is the option [for one bowler] to bowl 10 balls in a row, so how do you deploy some of your more powerful resources like Rashid Khan? When he operates for his IPL side, he bowls overs 8, 10, 12 and 14 in the middle and usually people find it hard to attack him. Getting a feel for the Hundred and what it’s like to bowl 10 balls in a row and how effective that is, we’ll have to assess that in real time.”

“I’m a very big supporter of a premier short-format competition for England. We all know the power and reach of the IPL, various other countries have excellent franchise competitions. England needed its own”Andy Flower

There are a few details to iron out within the squad. Joe Root is likely to be available for the opening rounds and Flower is yet to decide which order the top four – Root, Alex Hales, D’Arcy Short and Dawid Malan – should come in. He is hoping that the strong Notts core of five players plus assistant coach Paul Franks will be able to exploit their high-scoring home ground to their advantage, though cautions against the idea that every game will be a run-fest. Franks will be joined by Mal Loye (batting), Tom Smith (bowling) and Nic Pothas (fielding) on the coaching staff, while Flower is particularly pleased that Jonathan Trott – a mainstay of his successful England side – has recently been appointed in a backroom role.As for his star batters, Flower is enthusiastic about the opportunity to deal with Hales again, having worked closely with him as a young player making his way in international cricket during his time as England’s head coach and tracked his recent progress in franchise leagues. “I’ve always been a real fan of his batting,” he says. “His skill against spin is undervalued; not only the power game, but he’s a good off-side player, and willing to sweep against spin when he needs to.”I feel for him, actually, because we all deserve second chances in my opinion. I’d don’t know what goes on behind closed doors with England but I can’t see why he would be ostracised any longer. One thing he’s done pretty well is that he hasn’t let it affect his form and I applaud him for that – he’s able to focus on what he needs to, as opposed to being distracted by the topic.”I’m not quite sure how we’ll go with the top four but they’ll all had lots of success. I think Root is an excellent T20 cricketer, actually – one of his greatest strengths, ever since he first played for England, has been that he plays at a tempo that the match or situation or his team requires. His understanding of the game is that good that he can do that. [Root and Malan] are both intelligent and skilful cricketers who will do what’s required of them.”And as for the ? Does Flower think English cricket needs the Hundred? “Without a doubt,” is the unequivocal response. “I’m a very big supporter of a premier short-format competition like this for England. We all know the power and reach of the IPL and there are various other countries that have excellent franchise competitions. England needed its own. It’s really important financially for the ECB and for the future of the game in this country that it works.”It’s great that a women’s competition is operating at the same time with the growth of the popularity of the women’s game in the UK. And the better standard of cricket is good for the future of English cricket: playing under pressure in a competition with a global reach is good for all these young English cricketers. We’ve seen what it’s done for young Indian cricketers, and I can only imagine that this is going to be a very good thing for English cricket.”

After another forgettable year for Melburnians, 12 pulsating overs by the Australia quicks was something to savour

Alex Malcolm27-Dec-2021Test batting doesn’t get any harder. Test cricket doesn’t get any more compelling.In one glorious hour, in one of world cricket’s great amphitheatres, on a day of Test cricket threatened by Covid-19, in the world’s most locked-down city, the MCG, which has been silent for almost two years, found its voice again as Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Scott Boland delivered a brutal, pulsating spell of fast bowling, the equal of any, to put England on their knees again.Related

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A crowd of 42,626 sounded like double that number as Starc went within millimetres of a Test hat-trick and England slumped to 7 for 2. That soon became 22 for 4 when local hero Boland got in on the act, striking twice in his first over, the second last of the day. England finished 31 for 4, 51 runs behind with just six wickets in hand in their second innings trying to avoid a 3-0 series defeat inside 12 days of cricket.England will lament their batting woes, but Australia’s attack is ruthless and irrepressible. The sheer quality of the fast bowling on display was something to behold, and the cacophony that accompanied it made it appear gladiatorial. Except this wasn’t a fair fight, it was lambs to the slaughter.Cummins nearly took Haseeb Hameed’s head off with his first ball, Hameed fending it in hope just over David Warner in the slips.Cummins made mincemeat of Zak Crawley. Every ball was a step in a slow torturous march towards an inevitable conclusion. A legcutter nipped past the groping edge. An offcutter thundered into the thigh pad. Another one cut him in half. He survived one nick, as Alex Carey opted not to dive in front of first slip for the second time in two Tests and it clean bowled Warner on the half-volley for four desperately needed runs.At the other end, Starc’s searing pace whistled past Hameed’s low hands time and again. England’s two youngest batters were rabbits in the headlights, all hands and no feet, hopelessly trying to survive as every ball seemed to have one of their names on it.Pat Cummins bowled beautifully, but hasn’t picked up a wicket yet•Getty ImagesThe crowd sensed the moment. Starc gave them what they came for. A perfectly pitched delivery that threatened to shape in and held the line scratched Crawley’s outside edge and handed Carey a simple catch. Dawid Malan entered the cauldron and departed one ball later. Another 140kph missile darted in off the seam and thundered into the pads. Umpire Paul Wilson went up with the 40,000-strong appeal. Malan reviewed in hope, ball-tracking sided with the umpire to have it clipping the top of the leg stump.England’s talisman, Joe Root, walked out with the weight of a nation on his shoulders again. Starc’s hat-trick ball was as good as anything he’s faced in this series, full and threatening to shape back into off and zipping away at the last moment to beat the edge by a hair’s breadth.The threats kept coming. Hameed was hit twice on the pad by Cummins, but the steep bounce in the MCG track saved him on both occasions. Starc continued to torment Root. He edged one between third slip and gully. He edged another short of Carey, who dived full length to his right this time.Respite finally appeared to have come in the 11th over when Boland replaced Starc. No chance. The Victorian sent the home fans into raptures as Hameed nicked a peach to Carey to end a tortured 31-ball 7. Jack Leach was sent out as nightwatchman but he nearly played on first ball from Boland and then allowed the second to hit the top of off stump.The frenzied Melburnians were restless and vociferous, hungry for another victim, as Ben Stokes took an eternity to emerge from the bowels of the MCG to face the final ball of the over. Boland received a standing ovation from Bay 13, much like those reserved for Merv Hughes in his heyday, as the Australians sprinted around to allow Cummins six more balls.Mitchell Starc was on a hat-trick after removing Dawid Malan, and missed the mark by a whisker•Getty ImagesRoot was beaten again and then forced to wait, as the opposing skipper sensed the mood, pausing for an age before the final ball to let the crowd noise crescendo as they thumped their hands on anything within reach.But Root kept it out. According to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, England were in control of just 44 of the 72 balls bowled in the final hour. At the ground, it felt like it was just two: Root’s final straight drive for three only bettered by a stunning off-drive off Cummins to get off the mark.”That was absolutely bouncing,” Marcus Harris said after play. “For 40,000 it felt like there was 100,000. When Starcy was on a hat-trick, it was unbelievable. And then when Scotty Boland ran down to Bay 13 at the end then after those two wickets in the over, that was brilliant. That was a great atmosphere. That is something you dream of as a kid to be a part of.”James Anderson was left in awe of what the Australian quicks had produced. “I thought the spell from Starc and Cummins was outstanding,” Anderson said. “But that’s what you expect. They’re world-class bowlers. They’ve done it in Test cricket for many, many years. So it shouldn’t take anyone by surprise that they bowl like that. And it’s just disappointing to lose four wickets in that period.”It was another forgettable hour on another forgettable tour for England. But after another forgettable year for Melburnians, one pulsating hour of cricket was something to savour.

Warner, Babar, Pooran among overlooked contingent as lack of availability dents tournament’s quality

Matt Roller05-Apr-2022’Buy British’ was the mantra for teams in Monday’s men’s Hundred draft. When governments use that slogan, it is a tacit admission that foreign goods have offered consumers better value for money than their domestic alternatives. For the Hundred teams, however, it was a scarcity of overseas options that drove them to make picks as they did.The Hundred’s organisers have consistently promised “brilliant overseas players” and “world-class cricket” but this year, the competition’s month-long window from August 3 to September 3 clashes with several men’s bilateral series, the Asia Cup and the start of the Caribbean Premier League.In the draft, five of the eleven vacant slots in the top £125,000 salary band were filled by domestic players: Joe Clarke and Tom Banton (Welsh Fire), Tom Kohler-Cadmore (Trent Rockets), Laurie Evans (Manchester Originals) and Liam Dawson (London Spirit). Uncertainty over the availability of leading overseas players was always expected to see domestic players do well, but even Dawson himself admitted he was “surprised” to have been picked at the band he was.Each pick made sense at a micro level, with teams looking to fill gaps in their squads by recruiting the cream of the English crop, but the bigger picture is that the ECB will pay £625,000 in wages to a group of players who, for all their respective talents, have 34 England caps between them. That figure represents just under a third of the total wage bill across all eight teams in the women’s competition, despite women’s salaries doubling over the winter.Babar Azam, Lockie Ferguson, Nicholas Pooran and David Warner were among those unsold due to uncertainty over their availability.”Availability is a big issue for the overseas guys throughout the whole tournament,” admitted Eoin Morgan, London Spirit’s captain and a prominent advocate for the Hundred, speaking to ESPNcricinfo in a forthcoming interview. “I think you can go through every team and who they selected and there are actually very few overseas that are available throughout the whole tournament.”As a result, several men’s sides have opted to use at least one of their overseas picks on cheaper options, with seven of the twenty-four foreign players signed for £60k or less (each men’s team will add a fourth ‘wildcard’ overseas player to their squad in June or July for £50,000, with a maximum of three permitted in the same XI). While their selections make sense for an Oval Invincibles side looking to add power to its middle order, Rilee Rossouw and Hilton Cartwright were not the overseas draw-cards that the ECB had envisaged when they came up with the Hundred.Related

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Perhaps the problem is the conflict between the tournament’s overall aims and the disparate, individual ambitions of those involved in selecting the squads. The ECB would love teams to sign players based on their reputation – it seems like a missed opportunity that Chris Gayle has twice registered for a draft without being picked – in order to shift tickets and merchandise, but an analyst hoping to impress a coach in order to keep their job would rather prove their worth by signing a hidden gem.The decision to stage the draft behind closed doors for a second year in a row added to the sense that nobody is quite sure what this tournament is, or who it is for. Back in 2019, the draft was hailed by the ECB as “an historic occasion in British sport, as the first major UK sport competition draft to be held in this country,” shown live in a prime Sunday night slot on three Sky channels and online. Two-and-a-half years later, it took place remotely on a Monday morning before being drip-fed out through press releases and live blogs on a Tuesday afternoon, after most of the main cricketing stories had already been broken.Showing the draft live would have presented expensive logistical challenges, not least with most head coaches based overseas and working in Mumbai during the IPL, but they would not be insurmountable. Even if the Hundred is pitched at new fans, existing ones are always intrigued by team construction: the most recent PSL draft had over a million views on YouTube, and viewing figures for the IPL auction regularly dwarf those for actual games.By contrast, the women’s competition continues to attract the best players in the world. Meg Lanning leads a contingent of eleven Australians who will stay in the UK after the Commonwealth Games and despite the salary discrepancies – Lanning will earn just £1,250 more than the lowest-paid men’s players – the prevailing sense is that the women’s Hundred is working better than the men’s.The ECB claimed with some justification that the tournament’s first season was a success, emboldened by strong viewing figures and ticket sales in its first season, but the question that its many critics continue to ask is: at what cost? As Andrew Strauss’ high performance review into the structure of the English game looms, the Hundred still resembles a speculative venture.

Indefatigable fast bowler channels spirit of Larwood to end frustrating tour on personal high

Andrew Miller16-Jan-2022Mark Wood targeted two things in the build-up to this Hobart Test, over and above the helmets of Australia’s batters: “wickets and wins”. Thanks to England’s miserably frail batting, the latter notion proved to be a pipedream, but thanks to the former, it had been a whole lot more plausible in this contest than any other stage of this series, after one of the most richly merited five-fors in recent Test history.It’s rare to be able to say definitively that a bowler has “deserved” better rewards – how often has an English seamer, in particular, beaten the outside edge time and time again, only for their pitch map to suggest that they were half a yard too short to truly challenge the bat? That was arguably the defining theme of England’s loss in their last pink-ball match at Adelaide – which also happened to be the one match of this series in which Wood was an absentee.For Wood, by contrast, it’s been a case of the shorter, the nastier, the better – and now, at the very last gasp of an indefatigable campaign, his efforts have earned him his very own step on the way up to the Bellerive pavilion, after he produced the best figures by a visiting bowler in Hobart’s brief but proud Test history.Related

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England have not dispatched a quicker bowler to Australia since Devon Malcolm’s two tours in 1990-91 and 1994-95, and like Malcolm – whose career average of 37.09 did little justice to the raw hostility that he brought to his best spells – Wood looked set to depart with the admiration of his foes, but nothing tangible to show for it.Prior to this match, his eight wickets had been bludgeoned at a Malcolm-esque 37.62, but in a hint of what might have been feasible with better support and more England runs to defend, five of those scalps had been a combination of Australia’s big three: Steve Smith, David Warner and Marnus Labuschagne, all of them extracted before they had reached 30, and in Labuschagne’s case, three times in as many innings after his ascent to the No. 1 Test ranking.Wood’s speeds, meanwhile, have been heroically unyielding – he’s busted a gut to push 90mph in every spell, no matter how dog-eared the ball or tattered the match situation. And in that respect, he’s emulated another lion-hearted performer of yesteryear, Darren Gough – whom Mark Taylor memorably said he would take as Australia’s 12th man in that 1994-95 series, given how ebullient he had remained in the midst of another traumatic Ashes tour.There were concerns, however, that even Wood had finally run out of steam in the opening exchanges of this contest – his third Test in a row, after years in which he had rarely been risked even for back-to-back encounters.In a profligate first-innings display, Wood’s first ten overs were panned for 74, including 31 in three pressure-releasing overs straight after the morning drinks break – and given that Australia had been 12 for 3 after the first ten overs of the match, it turned out to be a critical passage of play.Wood took his maiden Test six-for•Getty ImagesBut the reality was that the conditions on that seethingly green first day called for a subtlety that Wood – to his credit, more often than his detriment – does not possess. Like New Zealand’s Neil Wagner, Wood is a man with sledgehammer attributes, but the conditions that morning demanded a scalpel that he is not accustomed to handling. Had James Anderson been available, he surely would not have been used as first-change; had Jofra Archer not been broken before the series had started, he too might have possessed the versatility to thrive on that fuller, more forensic length.Wood tried to oblige – he has not wanted for trying all tour – but instead, he was punished for his probing, most particularly by Labuschagne, the man over whom he had previously exerted a hold unlike any other bowler in world cricket.According to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, Wood bowled 46 balls on a good length or fuller across the two innings, and got clobbered at an economy rate of 7.69, with just the wicket of Australia’s No. 10, Pat Cummins to show for it. In the first innings alone, half of the balls in that first spell were full: 21 out of 42. They vanished for an eye-watering 36 runs.However, once he made the decision to drag that length back, for his post-tea spell on the first afternoon, Wood’s returns were transformed – 3 for 41 in his remaining eight overs of that innings, all of them caught on the pull, and 9 for 78 in his final 24.3, with a succession of battered batters finding no answer to his line, his lift, and most of all, his stamina.In that respect, Wood’s methods have evoked another indefatigable Northerner – his near-namesake Harold Larwood, whose exploits were not exactly cheered to the rafters while he was zoning in on Don Bradman’s forehead during the 1932-33 Bodyline series, but who came to be appreciated in hindsight, not least when he emigrated to Australia after the war. It’s a stretch to suggest that Wood might set up a new home in Hobart after this performance, but he’d certainly be welcomed.As for the Aussies in his sights, they may be grateful that, at 32, this is probably Wood’s final appearance in a Test in Australia. Usman Khawaja may well suffer flashbacks from the bouncer that all but decapitated him as he gloved one off his throat, while the sucker-punch pull that Steve Smith hoisted to fine leg on the third morning was not only the moment that England truly knew they were back in with a chance, it was also the moment that Smith’s average dipped below 60 for the first time since 2017.Such pyrrhic victories have abounded in this contest – Warner’s pair being another case in point – but Wood’s refusal to let up at any stage of a desperate campaign has been a rare and precious joy for England’s success-starved players and public. Thanks to his wickets, that win seemed, ever so fleetingly, to be a realistic prospect.

Rub of the green, invisible heroes, plants in rival teams… is it too early to say ?

Sidharth Monga26-May-2022Forget the role clarity. Never mind the death bowling of Harshal Patel and death batting of Dinesh Karthik. Leave aside Wanindu Hasaranga in the middle overs. If you are a Royal Challengers Bangalore fan and believe in signs, you are probably already playing “” at wedding celebrations. For it looks destined right now that this is Royal Challengers’ year. You probably know more signs than us, but here are a few that are staring us right in the face.If you haven’t noticed these, you either don’t follow IPL or are just trying to be a hipster by following only teams that have no connect with the geographical units they claim to represent: Rajasthan Royals or Punjab Kings or whatever their name was last week or Delhi Capitals.

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DRSYou probably get nightmares of the marginal calls gone against your team or that erroneous short run that you believe ended up costing you a playoffs spot, but this year the rub of the green has been on Royal Challengers’ side. Remember the second ball Karthik faced in the Eliminator? Looked gone for a duck. Not given. Saved by an umpire’s call on the review.Who will forget Rishabh Pant, so trigger happy on most days with DRS requests, being conservative in a match that Royal Challengers desperately needed Mumbai Indians to win against Capitals?All these marginal calls are going against Royal Challengers’ rivals elsewhere. Capitals’ Rovman Powell not getting the no-ball, for example. Gujarat Titans’ Matthew Wade hitting the leather off the ball only for Ultra Edge to not show a sound signature. With some luck, we might even have a year when Royal Challengers don’t demand for an aspect of decision-making to be taken away from the umpires.Related

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They are dropping your match-winnersBoth Rajat Patidar and Karthik were dropped when the partnership was hardly past 10: in the end they end up with 92 in 41 balls.Also before we let Pant go, he dropped Karthik on five in the league game against Royal Challengers only for Karthik to score 66 off 34 that buried Capitals.Speaking of match-winnersShouldn’t they be Faf du Plessis, Glenn Maxwell and Virat Kohli? Between them, Maxwell and Kohli have played three innings of 40 or more at a strike rate above 140. du Plessis last had such a big impact on May 8. It’s the others who have been carrying them. You would think with two matches remaining the big three are due according to the law of averages.He’s won it with Mumbai. He’s won it with SRH. He’s won it with CSK. This year, Karn Sharma is with RCB. Should we say more?•BCCIWhat are the odds?Patidar was supposed to be getting married during this IPL. It was only an injury to young Luvnith Sisodia – an event so unremarkable that the IPL release doesn’t even mention what injury – that brought Patidar in as replacement after Royal Challengers had let him go. He spent more than 20 days on the bench, and came in only when others played them out of contention. Now he won you the Eliminator with his first century in T20 cricket.Plants in rival teamsIf Patidar is an example of a lost soul finding its way back, another lost soul helped them from the outside. Tim David was part of Royal Challengers last year but they made not a single bid for him at the auction table this year. Only for David to score 34 off 11 in Mumbai’s final league match to make sure Capitals finished below Royal Challengers.The invisible heroStarting 2016, only Mumbai have been able win the IPL without Karn Sharma in their squad even though Karn has played only four matches in the playoffs. That’s four titles in four playoff matches, one with Sunrisers Hyderabad, one with Mumbai, two with Chennai Super Kings. In one of the title runs, he didn’t play a single game.If you think all of Royal Challengers’ calls at the auction table have worked only in a circuitous way, you have another thing coming. They managed themselves a steal deal this year: Karn Sharma at the base price of INR 50 lakh.The captainThe last time a team won the IPL from outside the top two, it was an overseas captain leading them. du Plessis is the only overseas captain in the playoffs this year. Okay now we are taking it too far but you get the drift.