Despite his immense body of fabulous work, could one say he tends to take out a tenancy agreement with big moments instead of owning them? That might be unfair, but demands on the great often are

Osman Samiuddin22-Oct-20232:06

What’s gone wrong for Babar Azam?

The ball wasn’t as short as you might remember it. It wasn’t as much a half-tracker gimme. It was fuller – a good length actually – and very straight, with some zip off the surface. Also, it was Adam Zampa; so a little respect to the deliverer’s intent and skill please.But still. Here was a moment, a capital M moment in the game that was set up for Babar Azam. Pakistan were 175 for 2, 193 to get from just under 24 overs, on a small ground, a true surface, a lightning outfield and an attack with limited spin options. There’s no cakewalking to a chase of 369 in a World Cup game against Australia ever, but it’s fair to say that last Friday at the Chinnaswamy, with this line-up, was probably Pakistan’s best opportunity for it.Babar was on 18 and this was the third ball he had faced since he hit that ludicrous checked punch through mid-on for four. That was the kind of shot that instantly slices your brain in half, one part wondering about the small stuff like are Australia missing a fielder or two here, and the other big, beautiful things like, is this Babar’s day?Then he cleared his front leg to that Zampa ball, got slightly cramped and pull-whipped to Pat Cummins at midwicket. He could’ve – maybe should’ve – gone over him. He could’ve gone further either side of him. The shot was neither one thing or the other, betwixt and between attacking and milking. More than anything it was a massive anti-climax.Related

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For the second game in a row.Six days earlier, he was on 50 against India in Ahmedabad and Pakistan, 155 for 2, were bubbling. He wasn’t dominating but was set, having taken 24 runs off the previous 15 balls with Mohammad Rizwan. Then he was bowled attempting that dab to deep third, the release shot that he plays unusually late and fine.Those two dismissals are primarily part of an underwhelming run of scores at the World Cup from a batter who is, by official ranking at the time of writing, the world’s best in ODIs. In order, that is 5, 10, 50 and 18, the frustration amplified by the manner of dismissal in each case: out pulling spin to midwicket twice, a leg-side strangle and a failed dab. These are not, I promise, Fortnite moves.Shots like the perfect cover drive make you wonder: Is this Babar Azam’s day?•AFP/Getty ImagesThere’s no real pattern to it other than the obvious pattern that shows he’s getting out for not too much. He’s been dismissed by an offspinner, a left-arm fast bowler, a right-arm fast bowler and a legspinner. He hasn’t visibly struggled in any of the innings (other than perhaps the first against Netherlands).There’s probably something in a recent and prolonged downturn against spin. He averages 46.53 against it since the start of 2022 (and 39 in 2023) with a low strike rate of 70. Until 2022, he was averaging 74.53 and striking at nearly 82 against it. He has fallen to spin 39 times in the last two years; he fell to it 47 times in the six-plus years before that since his debut. Until this year he’d been stumped once in his entire ODI career. In 2023, he’s been stumped four times and it’s worth registering that only once has he been out charging at the spinner.The trend is significant but, in the bigger picture of the batter he is, still a little low-grade.Instead, this being a World Cup by which the big names are (unfairly) judged, there’s this nagging half-sense of a half-formed, circumstantial theory that might not even bear proper analytical scrutiny and is one that requires a pre-emptory spelling out of what it is not. This is not #ZimBabar. Few batters can have produced the body of work that he has, across formats, against quality attacks, against difficult conditions and perilous situations. That kind of work can’t be hurt by a hashtag.But think back to some of the game’s greatest modern batters and how part of their reputations were built on owning precisely these occasions and moments within them, the kind of situations Babar found himself in here. Arriving at a solid foundation, ripping it up as wholly unambitious and building a skyscraper out of it; skipping into a skyscraper of a chase like it’s a couple of steps up to the front porch; surveying a wreck and creating a masterpiece.Think back to early peak Tendulkar, to early peak Kohli, to Ponting, to Lara and remember how they could tear into these moments, impose some big alpha energy. The response would be to attack and pause only to attack harder. The memory no doubt exaggerates these traits more than reality and data recorded it, but it is exaggeration, not mistruth.From the dismissals to Zampa and Mohammed Siraj in Ahmedabad, by contrast, you could draw out a broader equivocation in Babar’s game, a hedging against the more attacking, risk-taking, domineering approach that his game has the tools for and has exhibited, with the low-risk, high-functioning accumulator that he already is. It kind of bleeds through in those stumpings: not fully committing to the charge and yet getting stumped anyway. Especially when he’s come off the back of a couple of failures, to an in-match crisis, to a total to build on, it feels as if Babar’s default option invariably is the conservative one. Come to a moment and sign a tenancy agreement with it instead of owning it.There’s no real pattern to Babar Azam’s dismissals other than the obvious pattern that shows he’s getting out for not too much•ICC/Getty ImagesIt’s all a very arguable and feelsy way of looking at what is a slight dip in productivity, especially in this matrix world where behind the screens increasingly complex and nuanced coding is running everything. Babar still averages 47 in Tests, 43 in T20s and 56 in ODIs, so what guff is this about not owning moments?Plus sizing up risks is exactly what has made him so successful and given he is captain now – and a Pakistan captain at that – building in more risk-aversion is a pre-requisite. Not every great batter has an outsized personality to impose on an occasion, as Kane Williamson might argue (or his fans will, given that Kane Williamson will never knowingly praise Kane Williamson).Yet, put together this World Cup so far with the last two T20 World Cups and there’s one Babar innings of note across the two, the 68 not out in the 152-0. The other abiding memory is of another hedged innings, in the 2021 semi-final against Australia (and another Zampa dismissal).If all of this sounds unfair, then yes, it totally is. That is the price of being as good as Babar is, as great as he can be and of greatness generally. It’s relentless.Scored a hundred yesterday? Why haven’t you scored one today?Won a title last year? Been a year since you won one then.Oh, you won? Great. Shame you didn’t do it in enough style.Scored a great, coming-of-age hundred, on a hellish pitch, against a hellish attack, to keep an improbable (and ultimately doomed) semi-final run alive? Totally owned that moment, did you?Sure. Four years ago. About time for another.

All the ODI records that were broken in Australia’s innings of 367 for 9 against Pakistan in Bengaluru

Sampath Bandarupalli20-Oct-2023259 – Partnership runs between David Warner and Mitchell Marsh, the second-highest opening stand in men’s ODI World Cups. The highest is 282 between Tillakaratne Dilshan and Upul Tharanga against Zimbabwe in 2011.ESPNcricinfo Ltd1 – The Warner-Marsh partnership is the first 200-plus runs stand against Pakistan at the men’s World Cup. The previous highest was the unbeaten 175-run opening stand between Brian Lara and Desmond Haynes in 1992.The 259-run stand is also the second-highest for Australia at World Cups, behind the 260 partnership between Warner and Steven Smith for the second wicket against Afghanistan in 2015.367 for 9 – Australia’s total in Bengaluru is now the highest by any team against Pakistan at men’s ODI World Cups. Sri Lanka’s 344 for 9 earlier in the tournament in Hyderabad was the previous highest. It is also the second-highest ODI total for Australia against Pakistan, behind the 369 for 7 in the 2017 Adelaide ODI.4 – Consecutive ODI hundreds for Warner against Pakistan. He is only the second batter with four straight ODI tons against an opponent, joining Virat Kohli, who did it against West Indies.5 – Hundreds by Warner in ODI World Cups, the joint-most for Australia, alongside Ricky Ponting. Only two batters have scored more than five hundreds at men’s ODI World Cups – Rohit Sharma (7) and Sachin Tendulkar (6).3 – Number of 150-plus scores by Warner at ODI World Cups. No other batter has more than one. He scored 178 against Afghanistan in 2015 and 166 against Bangladesh in 2019. Warner now has seven 150-plus scores in ODIs, only one behind Rohit’s eight.ESPNcricinfo Ltd19 – Sixes by Australia on Friday are the joint-most they have hit in an ODI innings. They also struck 19 sixes against India in 2013 during an ODI at the same ground.These 19 sixes are the most that Pakistan have conceded in an ODI innings and also the joint-second by any team in a men’s ODI World Cup game, only behind England’s 25 sixes against Afghanistan in 2019.18 – Total sixes struck by the Australian openers – nine each by Warner and Marsh. These are the most sixes hit by opening batters in an ODI innings, surpassing the 16 by India (all 16 by Rohit) against Australia in 2013 and West Indies (all 16 by Chris Gayle) against Zimbabwe in 2015.1 – Warner’s 163 is the highest individual score against Pakistan at men’s ODI World Cups. The previous highest was Andrew Symonds’ 143* in the 2003 edition in Johannesburg. Warner is also the first batter with two hundreds at World Cups against Pakistan, as his first (107) came in 2019.2 – Batters with a century on their birthday at men’s ODI World Cups, including Marsh, who turned 32 on Friday with his 121. Ross Taylor was the first to score a World Cup hundred on his birthday – 131* against Pakistan in 2011 when he turned 27.

The ace spinner needs to respond to the rule change where third umpires are catching the marginal no-balls he used to get away with

Sidharth Monga04-Mar-2024Ravindra Jadeja has bowled 52 front-foot no-balls in Test cricket since December 2020. Of the 18 overall no-balls he had bowled before that, four had bounced more than once, and seven were detected by the third umpire because they had either resulted in dismissals or were reviewed under DRS. We don’t have records that confirm all of the remaining seven were indeed front-foot no-balls. Be that as it may, you get the gist: Jadeja has been bowling an extraordinarily high number of no-balls since late 2020.In a way, this increase in no-balls has nothing to do with Jadeja. In mid-2020, the ICC handed over calling of all foot-fault no-balls to the third umpire. Before that turning point in cricket, the third umpires used to check for no-balls only if the ball had resulted in a dismissal or if a non-dismissal had been reviewed by the fielding side.Now Jadeja is the perfect illustration for why you need a third umpire, for why it is so difficult to call no-balls on the field. He pushes the line anyway, but to add to that, he doesn’t land flat. His front foot goes well over the line in the air, then he drags it back while still in the air, and the toe makes the landing first. The umpire has to quickly draw an imaginary straight line from his heel to the ground and calculate in their head if it falls on the popping crease or just behind.Related

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That most of Jadeja’s no-balls are only caught on replay means he hasn’t started overstepping in 2020. Just that, he has started getting called for overstepping in 2020. Just imagine how many no-balls were missed before the third umpires started to check every ball for a foot fault. Not just from Jadeja, but especially Jadeja, because his landing is so difficult to work out.In another way, the increase in no-balls has everything to do with Jadeja. Since the third umpires took over calling all foot-fault no-balls, starting with the Test series between England and West Indies in July 2020, Kagiso Rabada and Ben Stokes have sent down the most foot-fault no-balls: 77. They are fast bowlers, and their increase from before third-umpires is not huge – 50s to 77. No spinner, however, comes even close to Jadeja’s 52 no-balls, and he has gone from seven foot-fault no-balls to 52. At No. 5, he is the only spinner among the top 14 bowlers of no-balls since the third umpire started checking every ball.Jadeja is one of the all-time great spinners and allrounders. He is such a gifted athlete that everything on the cricket field seems to come naturally to him. He is like a well-oiled machine on the road: smooth and seemingly effortless. This is not to say he doesn’t work hard, but he does give the impression that he does things the way he knows, and most of the times it just turns out to be too good for most other cricketers.With these no-balls, though, Jadeja needs to put in the extra effort. And it is not a big effort. Most of these are extremely marginal no-balls, and avoiding them requires only a small adjustment. A Test cricketer shouldn’t take so long to respond to a rule change.Known for his glib, funny one-liners on the field, India’s Test captain Rohit Sharma shouted during the ongoing Test series: “This Jadeja doesn’t bowl no-balls in the IPL, man. Jaddu, just imagine it’s T20.”In T20s, with the threat of the free hit around, Jadeja has overstepped just twice since 2020. In ODIs, he has done so only six times. The same should be easy to apply in Tests. In this series alone, Jadeja has bowled 11 no-balls, nearly twice what anybody else has. Luckily none of those has impacted his 17 wicket-taking balls, but it shouldn’t take a no-ball to cost him a wicket to make that adjustment.

The yin and yang styles dovetailed perfectly after Namibia had looked to be taking charge

Melinda Farrell07-Jun-20244:19

Finch: Berrington showed his experience and class

Scotland were in a wee spot of bother, to say the least.George Munsey and Michael Jones, the openers who had fearlessly faced down England’s fastest bowlers and wiliest spinners before the rains came, were back in the dressing room. Brandon McMullen soon followed.Gerhard Erasmus and Bernard Scholtz were threatening to squeeze the life out of the chase with their right and left-arm spinning combination and, with ten overs left and 87 runs needed, the momentum was shifting Namibia’s way.Related

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Matthew Cross attempted to up the ante after a string of dot balls and singles increased the pressure further, but a wild sweep intended to cut the rope was misdirected and he trudged off the field to join the top order as spectators after the ball clattered into his pads.In the three times the two sides had met in T20Is, Namibia had walked away with victory. A fourth would leave Scotland’s hopes of progressing to the holy land of the Super Eights hanging by a fraying thread.Richie Berrington, his right eye blackening from an errant dive in the field, had scratched his way to 5 off nine balls and Scotland were four down, still needing 83 from 54 deliveries, when Michael Leask strode to the crease.Anyone who has seen Leask hold a bat knows he likes to swing it; he swung it magnificently in Bulawayo last July, smashing 48 off 34 to set up Scotland’s victory over Zimbabwe in the ODI World Cup qualifiers. He did the same in losing causes against Namibia and New Zealand at the T20 World Cup in the UAE; his reputation as an aggressive finisher is well earned.

Berrington’s sweet spots are square of the wicket, leaning on the back foot and lacing the ball through point with a kind of ferocious finesse, or timing his sweeps and slog-sweeps with the precision of an atomic clock

But coming into this tournament his form was somewhat patchy. Across six innings in Scotland’s series against UAE and the tri-series with Ireland and the Netherlands he had scored 81 runs, passing 20 just once. At Kensington Oval, his captain and his country needed him to unlock the best he had.Leask has a kinetic, frenetic energy, both on and off the field; a “hyper dafty who puts his heart on his sleeve” is how he describes himself. He’s a friendly chatterbox and a cricket badger who is, at the very least, as fiercely proud of his Scottish heritage as anyone in the squad.You see it in the field as he attacks every ball and screams encouragement, when he’s appealing for an lbw or celebrating a wicket, a jack-in-the-box bursting with fireworks.But the ignition spark is hard to find as he begins his partnership with Berrington and the required run rate is climbing steadily.Berrington is Leask’s polar opposite in character and style. Scotland’s captain is measured and reserved; he speaks softly and is a shrewd observer of people and match situations alike. When he does speak, his team-mates listen and he inspires fierce loyalty among them. He’s borne the responsibility of being the most public face of cricket in Scotland through the game’s most tumultuous off-the-field turmoil and has done so with a quiet dignity.Richie Berrington and Chris Greaves celebrate victory•AFP/Getty ImagesTheir contrasting personalities are epitomised by the way they bat. Leask is a v-man, his slender frame generating colossal power through a straight bat as he plunders the ball in front of the wicket. There is nothing of fancy or fuss, just the sheer bloody-minded determination to send the ball packing to another time zone.Berrington’s sweet spots are square of the wicket, leaning on the back foot and lacing the ball through point with a kind of ferocious finesse, or timing his sweeps and slog-sweeps with the precision of an atomic clock.In the 13th over it was Berrington who dropped the hammer and dropped to one knee, the favoured slog-sweep launching Tangeni Lunganeni’s over the deep-midwicket fence. The next ball was lofted over the covers for four and the momentum marching Namibia’s way paused and looked back over its shoulder.What it saw was Leask, locked and loaded and always trigger-happy. The merest hint of width was all he needed to smash the shackles and the ball from Erasmus into the Bridgetown sky and over midwicket to land on the groundsman’s shed. At least it was still in the Caribbean time zone.Light and dark, night and day, Berrington and Leask yin-and-yanged Scotland towards victory. They found gaps in their own peculiar ways and ran hard to eliminate the deadly dots.Scotland had been under significant pressure•Getty ImagesIn their individual fashions, they took to David Wiese, Namibia’s Super Over bowling hero against Oman four days earlier; laser calibrated, Berrington’s swipe across the line that crossed the rope between two boundary riders was bookended by a brace of Leask bludgeons over his beloved deep-midwicket for six.The longest blow of the afternoon was Leask’s, of course, a 101-metre monster off Ruben Trumpelmann over wide long on. It was into the wind, it was in the stands and the crowd was in a delirious rapture.When he holed out four balls later the damage was done, his 17-ball 35 ensuring momentum was encamped in Scotland’s corner, wrapped in the Saltire and taunting Namibia .The shiner didn’t impede the skipper’s vision as he sealed the chase with a final, emphatic, six that catapulted Scotland to the top of Group B. From there they can glimpse the knockouts on the far horizon; it will take more heroics to bring them more sharply into view.But if ever there was inspiration to be found, a reminder that the sum is greater than its parts, Scotland can find in the deeds of their own odd couple. The classy Berrington and the mighty Leask.

All the gory numbers from the eight T20 World Cup 2024 games hosted by the Nassau County International Stadium

Sampath Bandarupalli13-Jun-2024137 for 7 Canada’s total against Ireland was the highest across the eight matches in New York. Ireland’s 125 for 7 in the chase during the same game is the only other instance of a team scoring 120-plus at this venue.Nassau County Stadium became the first venue without a 140-plus total after hosting eight or more games in a men’s T20 tournament. The previous lowest ‘highest total’ at a venue was 141 at the Desert Springs Cricket Ground, which hosted twelve matches of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Europe Region Qualifier in 2021.7.86 India’s run rate during their successful chase of 97 against Ireland. It was the only time a team had scored at above seven an over across the 16 innings in New York.113 The total South Africa defended successfully against Bangladesh, the lowest successfully defended total by any team at the Men’s T20 World Cup in a full 20-over game. India successfully defended 119 a day before South Africa’s effort. This was the joint-second lowest total defended, alongside Sri Lanka’s 119 against New Zealand in 2014.82-15 Wickets taken by fast bowlers and spinners at the Nassau County stadium. The fast bowlers bagged 82 wickets in 236.1 overs, averaging 15.71 and taking a wicket every 17.2 balls, while the spinners bowled only 61.2 overs across the eight matches, taking 15 wickets at 25.46 while striking once every 24.5 balls.

Head coach Jon Lewis challenges his players to dominate the Hundred as T20 World Cup looms

Valkerie Baynes18-Jul-2024After an undefeated home summer, England’s greatest challenge will be keeping the good thing they’ve got going during what head coach Jon Lewis describes as a “tricky” time before launching their T20 World Cup campaign.England won 13 of their 14 fixtures – with a wash-out the only exception – against Pakistan and New Zealand during a home international season which is already over in mid-July, illustrating the volume of cricket on a 2024 international schedule featuring men’s and women’s T20 World Cups.Just as England men begin – they are one match into a Test series against West Indies with Tests against Sri Lanka and two white-ball series with Australia to follow – the women have finished, their only competitive cricket left before the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in October being the Hundred and a tour of Ireland which is unlikely to feature many, if any, tournament squad members.”My preference would be we get on the plane tomorrow,” Lewis admitted at Lord’s, after his side’s 20-run victory secured a 5-0 sweep of the T20Is against New Zealand on Wednesday. “But we don’t. We’ve got eight weeks between now and then. That’s a tricky period for us to manage.”I’ve just spoken to the players there in the dressing room and talked to them about my desire for them to go out and dominate the Hundred and actually show what brilliant players they are. Having a different captain, a different coach, a different coaching team giving different messages and then trying to make sure that they’re able to continue to do the things that we’ve been working on as well at the same time is really tricky for the players.”Related

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Lewis couldn’t put his finger on exactly what had clicked between England’s sometimes scrappy wins against Pakistan, whom they beat 2-0 and 3-0 in T20s and ODIs respectively, and their more clinical displays against the White Ferns, who also lost the ODI series 3-0.It could be a simple case of eradicating some winter rust and building confidence as individuals and as a team. There has also been marked improvement in consistency among the batting line-up and skill level in the field.England’s world-class spin attack of Sophie Ecclestone, Charlie Dean and Sarah Glenn, the player of the series with eight wickets at an average of 6.87 and economy rate of 4.34, have imposed themselves on the opposition while the seam ranks are starting to see the benefits of Lauren Bell’s remodelled action, Lauren Filer’s growing experience and Freya Kemp’s return from a back injury.Back to playing her allrounder role, Kemp also impressed with the bat, particularly during the pivotal 3rd T20I in Canterbury where she supported fellow teenager Alice Capsey’s unbeaten 67 with an eight-ball cameo of 16 not out as England took an unassailable lead in the closest match of the series.”We’ve batted 360 degrees of the ground during this series and hit boundaries all around the ground and most of our players can access all the areas of the ground, I want that to continue,” Lewis said.”Our fielding has improved. I think New Zealand came over here and when they started this, in the 50-over series, were a better fielding side than us and over the course of the last three or four weeks we’ve really improved our fielding, from probably quite unlikely places, places that you wouldn’t expect.”People like Sarah Glenn for example, when I turned up here, we were hiding her in the field and now she’s making an impact, taking diving catches and diving stops all over the place. That’s someone that really has been able to shift their game forward in the field, but also our athleticism and our physicality is getting better. That happens when you have a group of young players and they’re all developing really fast.”All our bowling attack is pretty much, with the exception of Nat [Sciver-Brunt], 25 and under. We had two teenagers finishing the game off at Canterbury the other day, which it is really exciting. I feel that English cricket is in really safe hands for a long period of time to come.”Legspinner Sarah Glenn was player of the T20I series against New Zealand•PA Photos/Getty ImagesBut Lewis has also noticed a sense of calm and growing confidence within a group that he says is playing more intelligent cricket than before. “The hardest job for now is that the players will leave us for a four-week period and they’ll go into situations that are the same but different and so at times their confidence can go up and it can go down,” he said.”What we hope is we get back a group of players that are as confident as they are now leaving us when they come back to us. That’s not guaranteed. We’re going to have to work really hard when they come back to us to try and rebuild some people, but also to keep some people level and calm.”We know that there’s bigger challenges ahead. The conditions will be the biggest challenge in Bangladesh and understanding how to play those the best. The team that plays the conditions the best over in Bangladesh will win that tournament.”To teach that sense of calm and how to deal with different conditions, Lewis told his squad he was going to try and disrupt them during New Zealand’s visit. England played around with selection, rested experienced players – including captain Heather Knight in Canterbury – and altered batting and bowling roles to keep players on their toes.But for the most part, Lewis believes it was the fear of the unknown that was most valuable. “I just told them there would be distractions: that’s a distraction in itself,” he said with a grin. “They’re waiting, ‘what’s going to happen?’ They’re not sure what’s going to happen, so that creates pressure, it creates anxiety, creates thinking.”I didn’t really do too much to be honest, apart from telling them that. If you sow the seed then people generally overthink things… We got stuck on the bus today. I didn’t plan that. That in itself is a distraction. People were talking about getting off the bus and getting the tube to get here to make sure they can get their practice in before the game.”You just try and raise the level of anxiety within the group to a place where they were able to bring themselves back into a calm place and communicate well with each other and talk their way through situations.”The Hundred, starting on July 23, looms as another distraction. How players navigate it could go some way to informing how England show up for the World Cup.

The Namibia opener is hoping the team’s success will inspire people to pick up the game outside the capital city

Firdose Moonda28-May-2024In the 35km stretch between Namibia’s coastal cities of Walvis Bay and Swakopmund, there are endless sand dunes (including the world’s seventh largest, creatively named Dune 7) and about 100,000 people. Only one of them, Michael van Lingen, is an international cricketer, and these days he is instantly recognisable in the area.”I stay at Long Beach and I see a lot of youngsters that have never played cricket and never even heard of cricket – and they’re now interested in the game. When I’m there, I train in my Namibian kit and that’s how I try and inspire the guys,” says van Lingen, a top-order batter.”Cricket Namibia have got guys going into rural areas. They get the children involved and they get the parents involved. Because cricket is not an older sport like rugby in Namibia, people don’t know cricket. Lots of the parents are a bit sceptical and ask: ‘What is this sport? What’s this bat and ball?’ And then they realise it’s a great sport. It’s grown so much in the last two or three years.”Where the 26-year-old van Lingen lives is important because although Namibia itself is huge – at more than 800,000 square kilometres – its population of just over 2.5 million people is tiny. Almost anything of significance that happens in the country takes place in the capital, Windhoek (400km east of Walvis Bay), including most elite sport, and it’s rare to find someone who still lives in what could be called the wilderness involved in something as high-profile as cricket has become.Just his presence could help grow the game that he had to learn through television, and later in South Africa.Related

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“The skill and everything I’ve learned was through TV because the facilities [in Namibia] weren’t great. We had only one field and a cement pitch and the coaches were minimal.”I would look at guys like Jacques Kallis and Ricky Ponting and all the top players,” he says. “I used to like Michael Bevan even though he was a bit before my time. He was one of my favourite cricketers because he’s left-handed and was a finisher and I also used to be a finisher when I was young, so I would try to replicate what I saw him do.”When he was in his second year of high school, van Lingen and his family moved to South Africa’s Western Cape, where he attended one of the country’s best-known sporting schools: Paarl Boys, whose alumni include England international Dawid Malan.”I went to the school for squash, actually,” van Lingen says. “But then cricket started to take over.”At the outset van Lingen was a middle-order batter who only bowled in the nets. “I actually started off bowling left-arm wristspin and it came out well, but obviously that’s quite a hard skill if you haven’t been doing it for years. I sort of put that in my back pocket and I guess I could bring it out again, but I can’t promise it will be any good.”Instead, he made his name as a seamer and was picked in Namibia’s squad for the 2016 Under-19 World Cup. “We lacked bowlers at that time, so I thought I would make sure it was something I did.”A view of the Atlantic Ocean from Long Beach•Michael van LingenAt the tournament, van Lingen took 4 for 24 against South Africa, dismissing future internationals Kyle Verreynne and Tony de Zorzi, and finished as Namibia’s second-highest wicket-taker. Less than two months later he made his first-class debut, but went wicketless. After that, he did not play any cricket for the next five years.”My studies took over and then it was Covid, but I also had injuries,” he says. “The reason I stopped bowling in the first place was because I had a stress fracture in my lower back. I was out for a year, and then when I started playing again, two weeks in, I tore my hamstring. I just decided to step away from cricket.”He finished his studies at the University of Pretoria and moved back to Namibia to help with the family business. “I just started playing for fun and before I could wipe my eyes out, I made my [international] debut.”In that first T20I, against PNG in Dubai in October 2021 , he didn’t bat and bowled only one over – of orthodox left-arm spin.”My mechanics were awful and I was very injury-prone, so I sort of stepped away from bowling because there would always be some niggle that held me back. I decided to start focusing on my batting instead.”Van Lingen on Namibia’s chances in the 2024 T20 World Cup: “We think that if we play good cricket on the day, we can take any of the four teams [in Namibia’s group] out”•Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty ImagesIn his fourth match, against Scotland at the 2021 T20 World Cup, van Lingen opened the batting and scored 18 off 24 balls.”We only had one or two guys that wanted to open the batting, and because I played squash, I’ve got a good eye and good reflexes, so I said, I’ll give it a go, I don’t think I’ll be too bad at it.”He wasn’t. In his first ODI, a month after his T20I debut, van Lingen scored 51 off 48 balls from No. 3 as Namibia beat Oman by 40 runs in Windhoek.Since then, he has scored four ODI hundreds and two T20I half-centuries, but he hasn’t quite nailed the kind of power game the 20-over format demands. Van Lingen thinks he knows why. “I’m a bit more technical, I focus on timing the ball and I wouldn’t say I’m a big six-hitter, especially in the beginning.”I don’t really like to compare myself to guys like Travis Head and all those players. I just try to focus on my own game and make sure that I nail my skill as a solid opening batter. One of my goals for this World Cup is to lay a strong foundation in the powerplay for the team.”In the Namibian set-up, van Lingen feels that a slightly more circumspect approach works. “We’ve got a very strong finishing team. JJ [Smit], David Wiese and Gerhard [Erasmus, the captain] can come in later if we’ve set that strong foundation in the powerplay and just finish it. They can take games away from teams.”Namibia beat Sri Lanka by 55 runs in the 2022 T20 World Cup•Daniel Pockett/ICC/Getty ImagesIn the 2024 T20 World Cup, Namibia are slotted in Group B, along with Oman – whom they beat 3-2 in a T20I series in April – Scotland, England and Australia, and it’s the big guys that they are gunning for.”We want to be playing against England and Australia and the likes of South Africa and New Zealand. We’re very excited and very, very positive,” van Lingen says. “We think that if we play good cricket on the day, we can take any of the four teams out. We’re very optimistic in making it through the group.”That’s fighting talk from a side who have never played England or Australia in T20Is, and have only ever beaten three Full Members in the format – Zimbabwe, Ireland and Sri Lanka. No member of the current side has played in the Caribbean before either, save for Wiese, who has featured in the CPL.Their win over Ireland came during a dream run at the 2021 T20 World Cup, where they progressed from the first round to the Super 12s. Van Lingen was part of that squad and remembers it as life-changing.”There’s not much of a better feeling. I I never thought I would be able to feel so much joy and see so much passion and love for the sport and for the country.”For me, the biggest thing about qualifying for the Super 12s was the inspiration that the youngsters had. That was huge. After that World Cup, I think cricket increased tenfold in Namibia. People suddenly started asking questions and wanted to get involved. Before that, people didn’t even know Namibia played cricket, especially people at the coast.”Now they do and it’s a big deal because Cricket Namibia is trying to grow the game outside of the capital ahead of the 2027 ODI World Cup, which the country will co-host with South Africa and Zimbabwe.Namibia still have to qualify for that tournament, but van Lingen is confident they have the inspiration and plan to get there. “There’s still a lot of time, so there’s still a lot of upskilling that we can do. And we want to get there. We’ve seen the stadium [in Windhoek] getting built and the other preparations and it’s such an exciting time for the whole country to be hosting the event.”By then, if all goes well, there may also be more national cricketers living at Long Beach.

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