All posts by n8rngtd.top

From “The Demon” Spofforth to Lord Beginner’s two pals and the teenage Ben Hollioake, we offer some inspiration for Ireland

Alan Gardner06-May-2017MCC v Australians, May 27, 1878
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the first major Lord’s upset coincided with the first Australian tour of England. Frederick “The Demon” Spofforth is probably most famous for his 14-wicket haul in the Oval Test of 1882, which gave birth to the legend of the Ashes, but his performance against MCC four years earlier was just as incendiary. He claimed a match haul of 10 for 20, which included a hat-trick, as a side led by WG Grace were dismissed for 33 and 19 to be beaten inside a day. As John Lazenby wrote in his book : “A cannon shell, had it landed on the square, could not have rocked the foundations of the home of English cricket with any more force.”England v West Indies, June 24-29, 1950
Although not technically on debut, Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine had only played one Test apiece before turning out at Lord’s in the second match of West Indies’ 1950 tour. The spin pair proceeded to claim 18 wickets between them as England were crushed by 326 runs to give West Indies their maiden Test victory at Lord’s – and set the team on their way to a first series win in England. Not only was it a defining moment for Caribbean cricket, it inspired Lord Beginner to pen the “Victory Calypso” about “those two little pals of mine”, Ramadhin and Valentine. Sing it now: “Cricket lovely cricket, at Lord’s where I saw it…”Sid Wettimuny on his way to 190 in Sri Lanka’s first appearance at Lord’s•Wisden Cricket MonthlyEngland v Sri Lanka, August 23-28, 1984
Several visiting players have risen to the occasion on their first appearance at Lord’s – from Bob Massie’s 16-wicket haul in 1972 to Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid bossing the show 24 years later – but perhaps none was as surprising as the efforts of a couple of Sri Lankans. Having lost eight out of their first 11 Tests, Sri Lanka were expected to be easy meat but Sidath Wettimuny, who scored a first-innings 190, and Duleep Mendis, with 111 and 94 in the match, scotched that thought. Mendis took on England’s short-ball plan by hooking six sixes and Ian Botham was reduced to bowling offspin.England v Australia, May 25, 1997
One for England fans, since we are approaching the 20th anniversary of a day that still burns brightly in the memory. Ben Hollioake was just 19 when he stepped out in whites (this was before England had adopted coloured clothing for home ODIs) for his international debut at Lord’s. Batting up the order at No. 3, he proceeded to caress 63 off 48 balls, treating Glenn McGrath (also making his first appearance at the ground) with disdain and putting Shane Warne into the stands to help seal victory and a rare 3-0 series win over Australia. Although Hollioake won another 21 caps before his untimely death at 24, his talent was largely unfulfilled and that innings remained his highest score for England.Orange crush: Netherlands celebrate their victory over England•PA PhotosEngland v Netherlands, June 5, 2009
The second World T20 featured an opening fixture of England, the hosts, against Netherlands, one of three Associates at the tournament. Lord’s, previously above such frivolity, was also making its T20 debut but the Dutch were in no mood to be intimidated by their illustrious surroundings. After the opening ceremony was cancelled due to persistent drizzle, Netherlands set about raining on England’s parade as they chased a target of 163. Needing seven off the final over and two off the last ball, Ryan ten Doeschate and Ed Schiferli gleefully scampered through after Stuart Broad’s wayward shy at the stumps to spark a Netherlands pitch invasion and leave England with egg-and-bacon on their faces.

They can’t be satisfied making the final four of the Champions Trophy. They must, instead, look to build on it to achieve something bigger

Jarrod Kimber in Cardiff13-Jun-2017Strapping yourself to the bucking bronco of Pakistan cricket is perhaps the hardest thing to do in cricket. It showed in head coach Mickey Arthur’s face during their chase against Sri Lanka, when he looked like an actor trying to convey the growing of a stomach ulcer. “Emotionally, it’s tough at times, but we’re trying to play more and more consistent cricket. So we’re trying to get better in that department, but it is a tough ride now and again.””I’ve just been buying a lot more chill pills. No, it’s… I don’t want us to be unpredictable. As a head coach, you want the team to have structure. You want the consistency levels to be good. Unpredictability as a coaching staff, we don’t like. We’d like us to do the basics a hell of a lot better, day in and day out, and that’s what we train for every day. So we’re getting better. We’re making strides in that area.” It is hard to see what strides Pakistan are making towards having better structures and being more consistent; they play ODI cricket like they grew up watching their team in the 90s and that is still the blueprint in 2017.”I sit here trying to build a team for the next World Cup,” Arthur said, “And at the end of this competition, we’re going to have to reassess and then decide which of the players we can work with, which of the players we can take forward for the next two years to come here in 2019 and really give the World Cup a proper shake-up.”You look at Fakhar Zaman; you look at Faheem Ashraf, Shadab Khan to a point, Babar Azam, when he came in, Hasan Ali when he came in. So the young guys coming in have taken it as a duck to water, which has been great. They’ve come in with a great attitude. They want to learn. They want to work hard, and we’re getting some results out of them, which is fantastic news.”That there is talent in this Pakistan team is evident: Zaman and Babar, at the top of the order is genuinely exciting, and that Ashraf came in and bowled so well – and quick – is huge. But if the entire team (and PCB) culture doesn’t change, all that talent will go down an ODI sinkhole.”We know that realistically England are playing unbelievably well,” Arthur said. “They’re a really, really good one-day unit with no apparent weaknesses. So we stressed yesterday – at the end of the game when we sat down and had a quick debrief – we stressed that we need to play our best game, and if we play our best game, we can put them under pressure at different points of the game, and then it’s just taking those points, taking those moments, and running with them, like we did this time last year here exactly in Cardiff.”To win, Pakistan might just have to play better than their best game. Some sort of supernatural, spiritual game where Azhar Ali hits gaps instead of fielders, Mohammad Hafeez rags it sideways and they find a real-life, functioning point fielder.”We won ugly yesterday,” Arthur said. “We can’t sugar-coat that fact. And wins like we have – like we did yesterday, when you win ugly, you learn a lot about the team. So I guess it gives a lot of confidence. Yeah, a lot of confidence going forward for the players, really. We’ve got nothing to lose, yes, but we’ve always said we’re in it to win it. When we chatted last night at the end of the game, the last thing I want is for us to go away now thinking that we got to a semi-final, we’re okay, we’ve achieved [something] because that would be a cop-out in my mind.”Pakistan have essentially got to the semi-final thanks to South Africa being horrible, a timely shower and Sri Lanka forgetting how to field. It is not that they haven’t played some great cricket at times, but they have also played some horrible cricket at times. “We were written off totally, and probably rightly so, after the Indian clash because we were shambolic,” Arthur said. “We were terrible.”As Arthur emphasised, they can’t be satisfied with a final-four finish. They should use it to achieve something bigger, like beating England in this form. It would be one of cricket’s great upsets.If England are playing ODI cricket of the future, Pakistan are stuck in medieval times. A few wickets won’t slow England down; you need to take out their entire first nine, and also handle their bowlers who attack throughout the 50 overs. “We’ll be fine,” Arthur said. “You know – we’ll be fine. [Laughter]”. The laughter was added by the ICC stenographer. We will know if laughter actually follows on Wednesday.

Before Monday’s win against Sri Lanka, the last time Zimbabwe beat a Full Member in a bilateral ODI series was in 2001

Bharath Seervi10-Jul-20172009 The last time Zimbabwe won a bilateral ODI series away from home, beating Kenya 5-0. Between that series and the Sri Lanka one, they played 12 away bilateral series, with defeats against Afghanistan, a drawn series against Scotland and four series defeats in Bangladesh. Before the start of the series in Sri Lanka, they were ranked 11 in the ICC ODI rankings, with the hosts ranked eighth.2001 The last time Zimbabwe won a bilateral ODI series away from home against a Full Member – in Bangladesh. Earlier that year, they also beat New Zealand 2-1. This win in Sri Lanka is only their third bilateral away series win against a Full Member team out of a total of 29 series.96.16 Strike rate of Zimbabwe batsmen in this series, compared to Sri Lanka’s 88.14. They had a relatively lower average (32.91) than the home team (50.20), and also made fewer 50-plus scores (six against Sri Lanka’s 10), but hit more boundaries: Zimbabwe struck 143 boundaries while Sri Lanka hit 128.3 Consecutive home series without a win for Sri Lanka. They lost 1-4 to Australia last year and drew 1-1 with Bangladesh in March this year before this 2-3 defeat to Zimbabwe. The last time they went three successive home series without a win was from 2007 to 2009, losing to England and India (twice).Getty Images0 Zimbabwe players who featured in the top two run-getters or top two wicket-takers in this series. Sri Lanka players topped both lists but they couldn’t seal the series.4-11 Sri Lanka’s win-loss record in ODIs in 2017. Their win-loss ratio of 0.363 is their third-worst in any calendar year with 15 or more ODIs. The two years with a poorer ratio were 1985 and 1988.4 Consecutive ODIs won by Zimbabwe chasing; this includes all three wins in this series. Before this streak, they had won only one of ten ODIs chasing.42.35 Average runs per wicket in this series – the highest in any bilateral series in Sri Lanka. The scoring rate was 5.86, the fourth-highest in a bilateral tournament in the country.

Mike Procter talks about Monkeygate and his career either side of it in his new autobiography

Firdose Moonda16-Dec-2017Player, coach, commentator, match referee, convener of selectors and passionate fan – there are few roles in cricket Mike Procter has not held. But his autobiography, which appears a bright, breezy read about a life dedicated to the game, is tinged with regret, not only because of his international playing career was limited to seven Tests but because of what might have been in many other spheres.What if the South African Cricket Association had allowed an England Invitational XI that included Basil d’Oliviera to tour the country in 1972? What if Jimmy Cook and Clive Rice had been part of the team Procter coached at the 1992 World Cup? What if Procter had agreed to make Hansie Cronje captain sooner?These are some of the early questions he ponders in the book, in which he comes across as wistful, non-confrontational and liberal.As much as he, like many others, wonders what the South African team of 1970 could have achieved, he is apologetic for what the apartheid system denied non-whites even after it was abolished. “It must have been hard to see to believe that a team that was still almost exclusively white was representing a nation with a rich diversity of people – with white people being in the minority,” he writes of the 1991 tour to India.Procter was South Africa’s first post-readmission coach and he experienced the thrills of the early novelty, including their big-hearted performance at the 1992 World Cup and in England in the summer of 1994, where they won at Lord’s and drew the series. Heavy defeats in the ODIs and a loss to a Netherlands XI led to Procter’s sacking – which he found out about from intensive care in hospital, where he had been admitted with inflammation of the muscles around the heart.From there, he moved to commentary (he was on air when South Africa were knocked out of the 1999 World Cup) and then to match-refereeing. He experienced the bomb blast in Pakistan on New Zealand’s tour in 2002 and the Pakistan team walk-off in The Oval Test in 2006.It’s from this role that the book’s title comes: “As a referee, you were always in the middle, and the decisions you made sometimes had huge implications,” Procter writes. Never more so than in the summer of 2007-08, from where the most compelling story in the book comes.Chapter ten, about Monkeygate and the mess that followed is a detailed account of India’s tour to Australia that season. Procter was excited to be involved in a series that he thought would present a “clash of cultures and playing styles”, and relieved that he could clear Yuvraj Singh of dissent after the Boxing Day Test. Yuvraj was charged by the umpires when he hung around after being dismissed caught behind off Stuart Clark, but Procter thought the batsman had merely shown disappointment and an apology would suffice. The peace did not last long.In Sydney, the goodwill of a new year did not extend to the two teams. Procter can “still see” Ricky Ponting bolting off the field to report that racist abuse had been directed at Andrew Symonds by Harbhajan Singh. The umpires and Sachin Tendulkar, who was batting with Harbhajan, said they heard nothing, but Australia were insistent and a hearing was set for the end of play on day five, where Procter was struck by the disorganisation of proceedings.A videotape of the incident did not have any sound and there was no one present to record the hearing. Over three hours, Procter and Nigel Peters QC, who the ICC had requested to assist in the matter, heard testimony. Ponting said his players had told him they’d heard Harbhajan call Symonds a monkey. India’s manager at the time, Chetan Chauhan, “informed Ponting that the racism charge was completely made up, because as Indians it was just not possible for them to be racist”. Chauhan also produced an album of photos “with princes and princesses in regal dress but with monkey heads”, and said monkeys were deities that could not be insulted. Harbhajan did not testify because Chauhan said he did not speak English.While Procter had been “hoping there would be reasonable doubt that there had been any racial abuse involved”, he concluded that Australia had several “adamant” witnesses and India offered “absolutely nothing in terms of evidence”, and found Harbhajan guilty. The sanction was a three-Test ban, which was overturned on appeal, where Tendulkar revealed Harbhajan had said something unprintable about Symonds’ mother in Hindi and Procter figured that the phrase could have been heard as “monkey”. Procter writes that if Tendukar’s testimony had come at the initial hearing, his decision would have been different.Personally, the repercussaions for Procter were significant. Sunil Gavaskar, whom Procter considered a friend, wrote that Procter was “always going to go against the brown man, when he was up against the white man” – an accusation Procter took personally. “It was a massive generalisation and went against every bit of my moral fibre,” Procter wrote.Procter became persona non grata in India. The Cricket Club of India found no record of the honorary life membership they had awarded him in the 1990s, and he was prevented from officiating as a match referee in the 2009 IPL, which was moved to South Africa.While he did not referee any more matches, Procter went to become convener of selectors for South Africa soon after, and picked the squad that beat Australia in Australia for the first time. That tenure was also marked by a standout low. Procter dropped Makhaya Ntini in early 2009, initially offering the bowler a farewell ODI series, which Ntini declined. “His story was the blueprint for what could be achieved, but the champion had lost his punch,” Procter wrote.As if what followed – a struggle to get work in cricket – is too much to bear for the Procter, the book then goes back in time to reflect on his stints with Gloucester and in World Series Cricket, which he regards as the “toughest level of cricket I ever played”. What if it could have lasted a little longer?There’s also a peep into Procter’s current life, and his involvement with the Ottawa Primary School in Verulam, Kwa-Zulu Natal, where many children are underprivileged and the ramifications of HIV/AIDS are rampant. What if CSA could assist? Procter’s attempts to engage the board has proved futile and he continues to battle on alone. That is essentially the story of his career. The book is available in two editions, a South African one, published by Don Nelson, and a UK one, by Pitch Publishing. The former contains an introduction by John Saunders, Procter’s school coach, an additional chapter on his early years, and a tribute by former journalist Michael Owen-Smith.Caught in the Middle: The Autobiography of Mike Procter
By Mike Procter and Lungani Zama
Don Nelson Publishers

239 pages, 2017

Faith, family and friends have kept the South Africa A captain going despite setbacks – and he now has a chance to stake his claim for higher honours

Deivarayan Muthu09-Aug-2018The Undertaker’s theme, based on Chopin’s , is arguably the most iconic piece of music in professional wrestling. Its special effects evolved over the years – the death knell, the billowing smoke and fire, the badass customised chopper, the bandana, heck the Undertaker once had a real vulture flapping its wings next to him. It defined attitude in the Attitude Era of the WWE. Now, imagine music playing when you walk in to bat. Khaya Zondo could not have asked for a better walk-in theme in South Africa.”When I asked one of my team-mates at Dolphins about it, he said that’s the best theme song I could get,” Zondo told ESPNcricinfo. “Isn’t it cool? (laughs) I just went with it but I need good lights for it to happen.”South Africa are 43 for 2 in the 10th over in the Centurion ODI against India in February. Hardik Pandya straightens one past the outside edge of Zondo, who is playing only his third international. Later, Zondo surges down the track against left-arm wristspinner Kuldeep Yadav, manufactures a full-toss, and hoists it over mid-off. The next ball is pummelled to the square-leg boundary. He then carts Yuzvendra Chahal for a brace of sixes, perhaps the cricketing equivalent of the double-chokeslam. Zondo’s 54 is only the fourth 50-plus score by a South African batsman in a series they lose 5-1.

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Zondo is dropped from the national team for the subsequent ODIs in Sri Lanka, and is now in India hoping to reclaim his spot. He is on his fifth trip to India, this time as the captain of the A team. He had been part of a nine-day, spin-training camp in Bengaluru in 2012, he played for Dolphins in the now-defunct Champions League T20 in 2014, he made a 60-ball 86 in a tri-series involving India A and Australia A in Chennai in 2015, and later that year he broke into the South Africa limited-overs squads for the India tour.When JP Duminy was ruled out of the last two ODIs in India in 2015, Zondo, who was the reserve batsman in the squad, was anticipating his international debut. Instead, South Africa flew in Test opener Dean Elgar, who hadn’t been in the limited-overs squad in the first place, to fill that void. Zondo was hurt and he turned to his former Dolphins coach Lance Klusener to help him overcome the rejection.

“Not being picked for the last two ODIs in 2015 in India, when I was in the squad, was one of the toughest phases in my career. But I believe now that it happened for a reason.”Khaya Zondo

“Not being picked for the last two ODIs in 2015, when I was in the squad, was one of the toughest phases in my career,” Zondo said. “But I believe now that it happened for a reason and it took a lot of effort and support from my family and Lance to bounce back from it. The fact that he was the coach at that tough period for me was a God-destined thing, and he has handled a lot of similar pressures in his career. When everyone else did not back me, it was Lance who backed me. That went a long way for me.”Zondo is in a better space now, having become Dolphins’ first-ever black captain, in addition to leading South Africa’s A sides. He admitted that captaincy was a “great eye-opener” and relished the support he received from his team-mates both at Dolphins and South Africa A.”South Africa, coming from the past, was very segregated and I’m honoured to be the captain of both Dolphins and SA A and lead this group of professional cricketers,” Zondo said. “Considering the dynamics in South Africa, being a black captain is a big thing. More than that, it’s special when team-mates enjoy and say they want me to lead them. So, it’s not about the title of captaincy, it’s about the people around you who believe you’re the one to lead them.”Captaincy has made me a more compassionate person and what you need is good man-management skills. I noticed that the higher you go, your man-management skills need to be higher. When you play for South Africa, you don’t need to say much, however. At the lower levels, you need to understand players’ skills and help them around. Faf (du Plessis) and MS (Dhoni) are top man-managers, I did not have a chance to chat with MS in 2015 but I have spoken to Faf about captaincy and even Lance about leadership.”

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Zondo began his fifth tour of India with a fluent 67 in a three-day warm-up fixture against Indian Board President’s XI at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. He then flickered briefly, scoring 24 in the first innings in the four-dayer against India A, but was trapped lbw for a duck by Mohammed Siraj in the second dig.Khaya Zondo rocks back to pull for a six•BCCIZondo has fond memories of his rapid 63-run stand off 34 balls with his childhood friend and former house-mate Andile Phehlukwayo against Kolkata Knight Riders at this venue in the Champions League T20.”That match was Andile’s debut in the CLT20 and we had some fun. I met Andile when he was about 15 and I remember a photo we have together, when I gave him his cap for KwaZulu-Natal Under-19s at a ceremony in Kingsmead. The next time we took a photo was at the CLT20 in Bangalore, when it was Andile’s first game. Then, when I got my first international fifty for South Africa, Andile was at the other end. He’s always been there, when something special has happened to me.”When asked about his brother Dudu Zondo, who has a semi-professional contract at KwaZulu-Natal and currently plays club cricket for Hatherleigh, a small market town in Devon in England, Khaya blushes. Is he the overprotective brother?”I’m not the protective brother (laughs). I’m just guiding him. I have some experience, having done it before him,” Zondo said. “I don’t want his road to be as difficult as mine was. I started out with Bakers mini-cricket, which was incidentally run by my mother, who is a teacher, and worked my way through Natal Under-13s, Natal Under-15s, Natal Under-17s, Natal Under-19s, and finally South Africa Under-19s. I just want him to listen to me and I’m always there to help him out.”As for Zondo’s father Ray, he was appointed a judge of the labour court by Nelson Mandela in 1997, and two years later he took over as judge of the North Gauteng high court. In 2017, he was appointed deputy chief justice of South Africa. “My father is the deputy chief justice now but he wasn’t that strict growing up,” Zondo said. “He used to come home once in every two weeks but he and mom told me what’s right and what’s wrong. That’s the reason why I’m here as the captain of the A team. I was blessed to grow up like that. I’m also very spiritual and find strength from Jesus and the Bible.”

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Zondo has swept India’s third-string spinners – Jalaj Saxena, Mihir Hirwani and Dharmendrasinh Jadeja – with authority. He is familiar with Indian conditions and has a variety of sweeps in his repertoire, which is likely to come in handy in the quadrangular one-day series, involving India A, India B and Australia A, in Vijayawada after the four-day matches. Zondo’s immediate goal is to stake his claim for a middle-order role as South Africa build towards Vision 2019.”I think this tour is a great opportunity for all the batters to start getting their names out to the selectors,” Zondo said. “If you perform here and the team does really well, I believe you can elevate to the national team. The South Africa selectors, I’m sure, have their eyes on a few boys already.”

The coach made a significant departure from his “character over cover drives” mantra, homing in on issues of batting technique

Daniel Brettig in Abu Dhabi20-Oct-2018For all the statistical measures of Australia’s batting decline, nothing has spoken as loudly as the philosophical shift in focus suggested by Australia’s coach Justin Langer at the conclusion of his first Test series in charge. Talking technique may not sound like a big deal for the head coach of the national team, but coming from Langer it was a marked departure from much of what he is known for.Over comfortably more than a decade, Langer has been synonymous with the phrase “character over cover drives”. So much so that it could easily be the title of one of his books. His achievements as a batsman and as a coach of Australia’s domestic sides have appeared to go hand in hand with a philosophy grounded in personal discipline and growth, as much if not more so than the MCC coaching manual.But since his appointment as the national coach in May, Langer has seemed to be wrestling with the loss of plenty of former certainties as the sheer complexity of his task has become clearer. In the aftermath of Australia’s 373-run hiding in Abu Dhabi to lose the UAE series to Pakistan, he made a significant departure from that “character over cover drives” mantra, homing in on issues of batting technique as the key to arresting Australia’s wretched recent history of collapses.In assessing how the touring team’s two first innings in Dubai and Abu Dhabi essentially cost them any chance of winning the series, Langer pointed out that in the concurrent Sheffield Shield round, a host of other batting collapses had also taken place, and recalled a conversation with the former professional golfer Lyndsay Stephen about mental skills being subservient to technical limitations.
“If you look at this round of Sheffield Shield cricket, I know a number of the states have also had some big batting collapses as well,” Langer said in Abu Dhabi. “I’ve been in the State system for a long time and I’ve watched this and I think what I’m really intrigued about is you’re not allowed to use the word technique anymore.”Lyndsay Stephen, the golfer, I remember having dinner with him and everyone says it’s all mental, it’s all mental. It’s all about the mental side of the game and I thought that’s interesting, yeah that’s what everyone says. But Lyndsay Stephen told me, ‘I’d rather have a guy with a good technique who is a bit softer mentally, than a guy who is really mentally tough with a really bad technique’. This is in golf. I said ‘what do you mean?'”He said, ‘If you’ve got a good technique, you’ll hit most balls down the middle of the fairway and over time you’ll develop some confidence and you can learn concentration and that’s how you get mental toughness. If you’ve got a bad technique and you’re hitting the ball behind the trees or in the rough, it doesn’t matter how mentally tough you are, eventually you’re not going to be able to hitting it into the hole that often’.”Haris Sohail takes a catch at first slip to dismiss Shaun Marsh•Getty ImagesTurning his focus from golf to cricket, Langer indicated that it was now necessary for many Australia batsmen to look more closely at the technical underpinnings of their approach to batting, in a manner that would allow them to retain the skills that would keep them in the middle for long periods against a moving ball. In this, Langer essentially suggested that many players in the current system were playing for their state and country without the basic fundamentals that were once self-evident.”I was brought up in Australian cricket where we did a lot of bowling machine work and we did a lot of talk on technique,” he said. “Technique to me is about footwork patterns and playing forward when it’s full, and [playing] back when it’s back. So they’re just really basics of the game particularly in footwork patterns and you talk about the great Australian players [how] they moved their feet like boxers, every one of them. They had footwork patterns and then from there you have the skill of run-scoring. And it’s a really important thing.”The technique is really important and I think now there’s a lot of talk because of white-ball cricket that you just have wide stances and you just stand and deliver. Well that’s okay, but even in T20 cricket or one-day cricket and most certainly first-class cricket and Test cricket when the ball starts moving around, if you don’t move your feet, then you’re going to come unstuck. And that’s something we all have to do in Australian cricket. There wouldn’t be a state coach out there who would be saying it’s all rainbows and butterflies out there after this weekend’s cricket, because of the collapses.”In charting a path forward, Langer argued that all players needed to learn to become better problem-solvers, aware of the intricacies of their own methods and able to tinker with them whenever problems arose. “After day two, I was up until about midnight watching batting videos, looking at ways we can get better,” he said. “What I know about Test cricket, I’ve been through all this before in a sense as an individual player. You come in, it’s really hard, and the only way you work it out is by problem-solving, and working hard.”That was my formula as a player, and all the great players, the great players I’ve been lucky to play with, they’re just really good problem-solvers, they work it out, they work really hard, and they’re brilliant at concentration, so if I can take the lessons I learnt as a player into problem-solving of making the team better, then hopefully we’ll go okay.Aaron Finch gets forward to defend•Associated Press”There’s certainly some focus we have to have. As we see just this week. We’ve got to work out, we’ve got a Test match here, first-class cricket, some T20s coming up. Then there’re some one-dayers. So the schedule is what it is. But the great players are able to adapt and most of them have got a good batting technique and the skill of scoring runs, so we can’t sugarcoat it any longer. If I’m a young batsman in Australia, it’s a pretty exciting time. If you work really hard on your basic game and you learn how to make runs, then there will be a huge opportunities in the Australian cricket team.”Assessing the performances of Australia’s batsmen, Langer was warm in his praise of Aaron Finch, Marnus Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja in particular. We’re in a much different stage of Australian cricket history, aren’t we,” Langer said. “You guys have heard me say it before, it’s usually harder to get out of the side than it is to get into the side. It used to be a beautiful thing, if you were the hunter, it used to be a shocking thing when you were playing. If you were the hunted, well that’s sort of good, but you knew there were hunters coming at you all the time. There was always pressure.”And in this instance, I thought Finchy played pretty well, he did really well, and he’ll learn a lot from this series. I was really impressed with Finchy. I thought Marnus played particularly well in this innings. He had a brainfade in the first innings. You’ve never seen anything like it. Two in two days. I’ve seen some stuff on the cricket field, but I’ve never seen that ever.”And Marnus knows, so I’m not burning him, it was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life until what happened yesterday. I thought Marnus played well, and his leg-spin was a real revelation for us. As a young leg-spinner, there’s huge upside to that. Obviously Uzzy played really well, and he’ll have his knee operated on, hopefully sooner rather than later, so hopefully he’ll be right for the first Test match [against India in December].”When he reached Travis Head, one of three Australian debutants in Dubai, Langer returned to his technical theme, by noting how much he could see the young South Australian evolving in his first Test series. “What I liked about Travis Head is his development – he’s working hard on his game,” Langer said. “The way everyone used to say he can’t play spin, well he has worked hard on that. He played a cut shot today. I’m getting a bit technical here, but we’re talking batting here, which I love.”I love batting, that’s why it’s killing me at the moment. But he usually plays his cut shot from leg stump, today he played a beautiful cut shot, [like] Sir Donald Bradman, he got right across, he played that late cut for four. And obviously Shaun [Marsh] and Mitch [Marsh] haven’t had their best series, but we also know they’re good cricketers who have had a tough time. So there are opportunities for guys in the team, and there are opportunities for guys who are good blokes and make a lot of runs.”

He’s only 21, and he’s only just starting his career, but his searing pace has made some of the world’s best sit up and take notice

Sreshth Shah in Kolkata05-Nov-2018Oshane Thomas has a habit. The habit of turning heads with his fierce pace. It has already hooked Chris Gayle, who picked him for Jamaica Tallawahs when he was 19, and Tom Moody, who has signed him up for his BPL team Rangpur Riders. On Sunday, it made a big impression on India’s stand-in T20I captain Rohit Sharma, who was stunned by a 147kph inswinger.On a sticky Kolkata evening, India seemed assured of victory, set a target of just 110. But on an Eden Gardens pitch where dew made the ball skid on much more than usual, Thomas cleaned up India’s openers. He forced Rohit to inside-edge to the keeper before flattening the middle stump of Shikhar Dhawan, his bunny on this tour, as he left a gap between bat and pad while looking to drive one that swung back into him.Dinesh Karthik and Krunal Pandya repaired the early damage, but Thomas had done enough to earn Rohit’s praise. “Oshane is a really exciting talent without doubt,” Rohit said at the post-match presentation. “He’s got good height, plus that jump he takes, if he bowls in the right areas, it won’t be easy for any batsman in the world to counter that. He’s really talented, and he also has the advantage of height which gives him the extra edge. I wish him the best in the future.”At 21, Thomas is the youngest fast bowler in the West Indies squad. He has had a very short career so far. But within that time, he has shown plenty of promise. He got into the West Indies team after finishing CPL 2018 as the tournament’s highest wicket-taker among fast bowlers, and second-highest overall behind the legspinner Fawad Ahmed.More than just the number of wickets he’s taken, it’s the quality of batsmen he has rattled. In last year’s CPL, he bowled Gayle – who had moved to St Kitts and Nevis Patriots – with a 150kph yorker. And on this tour he has continually troubled India’s top three. How many other bowlers in world cricket can stake that claim?Thomas has dismissed Dhawan, bowled each time, three times on this tour. Twice in the ODI series he inside-edged him while playing with an angled bat, misjudging the pace off the surface.Virat Kohli rarely plays an false shot. And yet, in the fifth ODI in Thiruvananthapuram, Kohli sparred uncertainly at a nasty lifter from Thomas and edged to first slip, where Jason Holder failed to hold on to the chance. A few overs later, Rohit edged one that left him off the pitch, into Shai Hope’s gloves, only for the umpire’s signal of no-ball to halt Thomas’ celebrations.Kohli and Rohit would eventually settle down and eventually steer India to a breezy nine-wicket win. Had Holder held on, and had Thomas not overstepped, things might have been rather different.Oshane Thomas in his followthrough•AFPOn his ODI debut in Guwahati, Thomas clocked 147kph, 147kph, 140kph, 149kph, 147kph and 147kph in his first over. That speed comes from his run-up, which accelerates gradually as he approaches the crease, and a big jump just before his delivery stride. That jump, coupled with his height, gives him bounce to go with his pace, and this combination can unsettle any batsman, particularly early on while still coming to grips with the pace of the surface.Thomas knows pace isn’t enough. In a recent conversation with , he spoke of the importance of guile to go with it.”Bowling the short ball is the easiest to do for a fast bowler,” Thomas said. “But I don’t use my bumper to scare batsmen, I only use it to get batsmen out.”It’s a distinction fast bowlers often forget when adrenaline takes over in an international game, but Thomas has shown he’s a thinking cricketer. When he yorked Shai Hope with what was arguably the ball of CPL 2018 to send his stumps cartwheeling, Moody gushed in the commentary box at what he was seeing in front of him. It was no surprise that Moody snapped Thomas up for his BPL franchise a few weeks later.Carlos Brathwaite, West Indies’ T20I captain, says Thomas has the potential to emulate the West Indies greats of the past.”We’ve had a few chats with him, and he’s in the best place he could be,” Brathwaite told . “He understands the opportunities he has, he has to continue to get fitter and stronger. The world is at his feet, it’s for West Indies to help him become another Joel Garner or Michael Holding.”Those are huge names to live up to. At Eden Gardens, where Thomas was scaring India’s top order with his new-ball spell, some viewers were reminded of another legend, Malcolm Marshall, whose 19th death anniversary happened to fall on Sunday.Thomas has only just begun his career, and it’s clearly too early to burden him with such comparisons, but if he keeps learning and adding to his repertoire, West Indies will have quite a bowler in their midst.

Suryakumar Yadav’s anchoring knock, Jason Behrendorff’s new-ball burst and Hardik’s all-round show broke Super Kings’ unbeaten three-match streak

Annesha Ghosh in Mumbai04-Apr-2019Five in a flurryFor all the criticism he might have copped for slowing down in the middle overs, the first five fours in Suryakumar Yadav’s 43-ball 59 were key to changing the complexion of Mumbai Indians’ Powerplay. Pegged back by Quinton de Kock’s early departure, the first three overs yielded only nine runs for the hosts. But they scored 31 off the next three, the turnaround beginning in the fourth over with Suryakumar carting Shardul Thakur for back-to-back fours.In the following over, he hammered Deepak Chahar, who had not conceded more than one four in an over in the combined 13 overs he had bowled up to that point, for three consecutive fours. A blend of timing and technique, the medley of boundaries off Deepak included an exquisite punch on the up, a straight drive past mid-on, and a crisp flick behind midwicket – all off back-of-a-length deliveries.While Suryakumar slowed down in the middle overs, his 62-run fourth-wicket stand with Krunal Pandya lifted Mumbai from 50 for 3 to set them up for a final burst.Hardik Pandya and Kieron Pollard added 45 runs in the last two overs•BCCIHardik rises as Suryakumar fallsWith Mumbai on 125 for 5 in 18 overs after Suryakumar’s dismissal, Hardik, who had faced only two deliveries till that point, had little choice but to go big. And big did he go, scoring 24 off the next six balls he faced that included three sixes and a four.
Hardik’s fireworks lent credence to Super Kings head coach Stephen Fleming’s assessment that “if you can keep him out of the game, you often go close to winning.”The start of the 19th over of Mumbai’s innings dented that possibility for Super Kings to a large degree. With Kieron Pollard keeping him company, the pair’s end-overs offensive – including Pollard’s seven-ball 17 – capped off the innings that began with the second joint-lowest run tally in IPL history – of three runs – in the first two overs of the innings but ended with the joint-most – 45 runs – off the last two.Jason Behrendorff is pumped after taking a wicket•BCCIBehrendorff’s landfallAfter Mumbai’s win on Wednesday, Jason Behrendorff said, “My main strength is swinging the ball upfront and taking wickets.” If these were the standout features on Jason Behrendorff’s resume that earned him a contract in the January 2018 IPL auction, he delivered exactly that on his IPL debut, on a surface that had a little bit of bounce and seam.Completing his quota inside the first nine overs of the innings, he demonstrated why “hitting the top of the stumps was quite effective.”Behrendorff’s 2 for 22 saw him square up both right- and left-handers and put them in two minds with his steep bounce and away-going deliveries. With a Smart Economy of 3.00 to boast for the 12 Smart Runs he conceded, the left-arm quick, according to , elicited 32% false shots from the Super Kings batsmen, allowing them to attack only 24% deliveries.The rub of the green Behrendorff had in the form of that one-handed screamer by Pollard to dismiss Suresh Raina in the fifth over was in part down to his own execution of a “plan [we set] for that, knowing that he [Raina] likes to back away and he’ll look to go over the off side.” For a debutant who had dismissed Ambati Rayudu for a first-ball duck with a moving ball that rose delectably after hitting the deck, the Pollard stunner was a befitting bonus.Rapid, on fire, Hardik signs off with the ballIt hadn’t been three complete nights since Dhoni struck that match-winning 75 not out. Although the asking rate heading into the 15th over of Super Kings’ chase on Wednesday was 14, with Dhoni on 12 off 20 balls, the threat of yet another special at Wankhede was still alive.So when Hardik ambled in to deliver his third over, having conceded only six off his wicketless first two, there wasn’t anything particularly menacing about him. But that, and the course of the game, changed decidedly in the space of the next four balls. Eliciting a mistimed pull off Dhoni and having Ravindra Jadeja caught behind, Hardik lent an air of finality to Super Kings’ chase.As a result, Super Kings’ chances of winning fell drastically on ESPNcricinfo’s Forecaster tool, with the win probability dropping under 4%, despite Kedar Jadhav and Dwayne Bravo – the chief orchestrators of Super Kings’ miraculous one-run win in the 2018 season opener at the same venue – still at the crease.To sign off proceedings in what imminently appeared to be shaping up as Mumbai’s 100th IPL win, and their first at home this season, Hardik returned to dismiss Deepak to finish with figures of 3 for 20 to seal Mumbai’s 37-run win.

After an 18-month battle with injury problems, and with another Ashes on the horizon, Steven Finn is aiming to prove he’s not yet past it

Andrew Miller04-Apr-20190:45

‘Jimmy could play for England until he’s 45!’ – Finn

Can it really be that Steven Finn is turning 30? Few fast bowlers in English cricket have been so talked up and talked down in the course of a single career. From the precocity of his maiden tour of Bangladesh in the spring of 2010, to the biomechanical misery of his second Ashes campaign four years later, perhaps the one thing that has kept Finn so firmly lodged in England’s peripheral vision has been his seemingly eternal youth, and the promise of a better future.Well, without labouring the point, big birthdays have a habit of bringing that future rushing rather rudely into the here and now. Is there still time for the real Steven Finn to please stand up, before it’s all too late?”I had a party about two weeks ago and I think about 30 people wished me happy birthday, so I was very keen to tell them I still had two weeks of my 20s left!” Finn tells ESPNcricinfo on the eve of Middlesex’s County Championship campaign. “So yeah, turning 30 … it’s nine years now since I first played cricket for England, so it’s starting to feel a long time ago, but I certainly don’t feel old by any stretch of the imagination. Hopefully there’s some life in me yet.”Fitness permitting, there’s no reason why there should not be plenty of life left in Finn. The last 18 months of his career have been eaten up by a knee injury that ruled him out of the 2017-18 Ashes tour after the first nets session of the tour, and following a hampered 2018 summer, he underwent surgery in the winter just gone to remove a benign tumour.But assuming all that is behind him – and, touch wood, the prognosis is encouraging – Finn’s natural attributes remain every bit as alluring as he enters his fourth decade. When on song, reaching high with his beanpole frame and pushing 90mph with that awkward kick from a good length, Finn has always had that rare and enviable ability to rattle the very best, and so keep himself lurking on the fringes of another recall.ALSO READ: Wounded Lion Coughlin looking to make up for lost timeIt’s been the bits in between whiles that have always been the problem, such as his perceived failure, on his maiden Ashes tour in 2010-11, to keep the runs down at the same time that he was scalping 14 wickets in the first three Tests of the series – more than any other bowler on either side. And the expectation thereafter that he could iron out those aberrations and turn himself into England’s answer to Glenn McGrath, a line-and-length merchant with an ugly bouncer up his sleeve.It was, in hindsight, a ridiculous expectation, but one that had seemed attainable at the time, because the one thing that Finn has always had on his side was time.In 2011, at the age of 22 years and 63 days, he became the youngest England bowler to reach 50 Test wickets, breaking Ian Botham’s record along the way, no less. And even when his career, and technique, tumbled down the rabbit-hole in his lost years of 2013 and 2014, the manner in which he roared back to action in the 2015 Ashes – ripping up second-innings figures of 6 for 79 at Edgbaston to seal a 2-1 series lead – suggested that it could all come back together again as quickly as it had fallen apart.”I think that my goal has always been to bowl as quick as I can, but accurately,” Finn says. “I’ve never looked to take my foot off the throttle, but there’ve been times in my career when I’ve been criticised for being too expensive and that’s when I probably did bowl quicker.”I leaked runs but I took wickets, so then I tried to focus on where the ball was going and probably lost five miles an hour of pace. So then you’re a bit more consistent but not as threatening … so it sounds a bit clichéd but balancing the two would be great. Obviously not many people in the history of the game have been able to do that, and that’s why it’s so challenging, and why you do have ups and downs with it.”Getty ImagesRight now, however, the word from the shires – or more specifically, from Mike Selvey, Middlesex’s new club president, who was watching approvingly from the sidelines during the club’s warm-up against Oxford MCCU last week – is that Finn is looking fast and nasty again. And, irrespective of circumstance, there are few sightings on the county circuit more certain to get the pulses of the faithful racing.”Selv wasn’t wearing his glasses though, which worries me, I don’t know if he could see that far!” Finn jokes. “But yeah, I do feel in a good place. I’ve had a good opportunity to work on some things that, when you’re on the treadmill of playing cricket 12 months a year, you don’t actually get the opportunity to do. And now that my knee feels better, I can put in some really good work on it, but the proof it will be in the pudding, it will be in the results.”The simple focus for me this year is just hit the track as hard as I can. If I’m slightly shorter of a length, or fuller of a length, I don’t actually care because it means I’m hitting the deck hard, and that’s the one simple goal that Stuart Law [Middlesex’s new head coach] has given me this year, to be that guy that hits the deck hard.”If I do bowl slightly shorter, then so be it. I think that floating it out there and trying to swing it, or trying to be pretty and get outside edges all the time, probably isn’t the way I’ve got my wickets over the course of my career. But now that I’m a little bit older and understand where my strengths lie, I think that gives me a goal for the summer. Hopefully, it’ll bring me wickets, and bring us wickets as a team.”It’s the continuation of a promise that Finn seemed to make to himself in the wake of his Ashes setback in December 2017, when he spoke of how the county grind can “suck the pace” out of fast bowlers, turning the season into a war of attrition in which survival can sometimes feel more important that making a telling impact.”If I was going tell myself anything if I was younger again,” he had said at the time, “it would be keep bowling as fast as you can, because if you take wickets that’ll look after itself.”

I’d love to play for England again. I look at myself in the mirror and if I wasn’t motivated to do that, then I’d question what I’m doing

And he ought to be aided in that quest this summer by the enviable depth of seam-bowling options in Middlesex’s ranks – with Toby Roland-Jones returning to fitness after his stress fracture of the back, and the likes of Tom Helm, Martin Andersson, Tim Murtagh and James Harris all competing for selection as well.”I think treadmill’s a funny word to use because we’re very blessed to be able to play a game that we love as a job professionally,” Finn says. “But that freshness is a very important thing. And I think for everyone as fast bowler, when you are tired, you do groove bad habits”So, if you look at our top-strength line-up, there’s probably seven or eight guys who could play first-team cricket, so I think that gives everyone confidence that it’s a squad effort.”There will be frustrations that come with that, because there will be times you feel great and you’re told you’re resting, but I think we realise here this year though, no person is bigger than the communal goal, which is winning trophies at the end of the year.”The individual goal, however, cannot be discounted in Finn’s case, particularly given that England’s hosting of the World Cup in June and July has delayed the Test leg of the summer by two months – ample time for any number of candidates to make a strong case through the power of their performances, but particularly one with a proven track record at international level.”There’s going to have been lots of cricket played by the time the Ashes come round,” says Finn. “It’s such a big series that I think it will be a horses-for-courses selection, with whoever’s doing the best at the time in with a chance.”If I put my focus on that, I think that’s a bad thing, but I certainly think I’m capable of doing a job for England, as I have done in the past. It’s my ultimate goal because I love representing England. Getting that buzz, and being in that environment for your country is something I’m very passionate about still.”But there are a lot of bridges to cross until we get to that stage. And that first one, is this week against Northamptonshire.”Steven Finn kicks away his cap in frustration•Getty ImagesWhatever Finn’s fate may be in the course of the 2019 season, the identity of the men ahead of him in the England pecking order remain exactly the same as they’ve been for the entirety of his international career. At some stage, surely, England will need a new pace spearhead to replace James Anderson and Stuart Broad, but the fact that they are still both going strong at the respective ages of 36 and 32 both confirms how many years Finn could yet have left in his career, but also how hard it may be to get back into the mix.”I feel like we’ve been talking about this for last three or four years, and they just keep going and going,” he says. “With his action and the way that he’s done it so far, Jimmy could keep playing for England until he’s about 45, he could have 1000 Test wickets by them. Those guys have been outstanding servants and whoever has to fill those boots it’s going to be a very tough job to do.”I’d love to play for England again. I look at myself in the mirror and if I wasn’t motivated to do that, then I’d question what I’m doing, especially at the age that I am. But I’ll just keep hoping that my knee feels good as the season goes on, and that hopefully I’m building up a head of steam by the end of it.”But we’ll see what happens. I’m certainly not pinning my summer on being selected for that Ashes series. At the moment, my focus is very much just Middlesex, helping this club that I have played for for the last 14 or 15 years, helping us to achieve the things that we should be capable of with the squad of players that we have.”

The best batting, bowling and all-round performances from the tournament

Anantha Narayanan20-Jul-2019This is an analysis of the leading performers of this year’s World Cup, based on my ODI performance-ratings methodology. The complete details of the methodology can be perused here – click here for the batting methodology, and here for the bowling one.A significant tweak for the World Cup
Readers might remember that I use the par score values, both batting and bowling, extensively in my performance-ratings work. I determine the par scores based on a comprehensive analysis of the decisive matches, by period. For the last period, i.e. 2014-19, the batting par score was 300 and the bowling par score 233. All my initial work was based on these values. However, as we came up to the knockout stages of the World Cup, it was clear that the scores were nowhere near as high as expected; the tournament had many scores below 300.I also did a complete analysis for the World Cup itself. Lo and behold, what did I find out? The batting par score was 268 and the bowling par score 222. I could not just ignore these significant variations, especially considering it was such an important event, so I made a tweak, only for the World Cup. Once I applied these tweaked par scores, the batting points moved higher and the bowling points lower. Now that the World Cup is over, I am going to completely overhaul my ODI ratings system, based on ideas offered by readers and my exchanges with them.One important point: for the purposes of the performance ratings analysis, since the final was a tie, the players get credit for a tied match, which is two-thirds of a that for a result match. What happened afterwards, in the Super Over, is not part of this analysis. More on that later.

The best innings of this World Cup was played early in the tournament. The Indian bowlers kept South Africa to a sub-par 227. It was not going to be an easy chase, considering the quality of South Africa’s bowling. Rohit Sharma played a mature, measured and beautifully paced innings of 122 not out to take India to a comfortable win.For New Zealand against West Indies, Kane Williamson came in at 0 for 1 and saw the score slump to 7 for 2. Few would have realised that the match would hang in balance till the last ball, about seven hours later. Williamson scored a truly magnificent 148 at almost a run a ball and took New Zealand to a match-winning 291. The importance of Williamson’s innings, and of this particular match, cannot be over-emphasised.Bangladesh have a world-class bowling attack. When Australia played them at Trent Bridge, David Warner was in blistering form and scored a quick-fire 166, the highest score in the tournament, and took Australia to 381. All those runs were needed since Bangladesh scored well over 300 in the chase.Ben Stokes played arguably his greatest ODI innings in the final, against New Zealand. Coming in at 71 for 3, he stayed till the last ball, scoring 84 priceless runs to tie the match. What he did in the Super Over is outside the purview of this analysis. His tour de force ultimately proved to be a World-Cup-winning effort, if not a match-winning one. Since the match was a tie, Stokes only gets tie-related points. Else, this would have been the best innings of the World Cup.Aaron Finch‘s 153 against Sri Lanka was almost identical to Warner’s effort and gave Australia an easy win.Readers can see that the top six innings are all within a point’s range. Two innings deserve mention. Ravindra Jadeja‘s 77 in 59 balls, which almost took the semi-final away from New Zealand, and Nathan Coulter-Nile‘s masterly 92 at a strike rate of 153.33, which lifted Australia from 147 for 6 to a match-winning 288 against West Indies. Jadeja’s was in a lost cause, but Coulter-Nile’s innings saw Australia narrowly sneak home.

The league match between Australia and England was a curtain-raiser to the semi-final a couple of weeks later. England needed to win to comfortably qualify for the semis and they looked to be on track when they restricted Australia to a good but not imposing total of 285. Then left-armer Jason Behrendorff took centre stage, dismissing both openers and later taking three wickets when Stokes mounted a counterattack. His 5 for 44 takes pride of place.Four days before the Australia game, England had lost unexpectedly to Sri Lanka, though they kept them to a middling 232 for 9. They had no answers against Lasith Malinga, who took everyone back a decade with a devastating spell of pace bowling, eventually finishing with 4 for 43 in a 20-run win.In third place is Mitchell Starc, for his 5 for 26 against New Zealand. Australia scored only 243 and New Zealand seemed well on their way when Starc produced a masterclass of left-arm seam bowling. His five-for bowled New Zealand out for 157.The theoretical chances Pakistan had of qualifying depended on their defeating Bangladesh by over 300 runs – an impossible task. However, they started well and put up 315. Then Shaheen Afridi ran rings around the Bangladesh batsmen, taking six wickets for 35, which included four top-order wickets.In the final, Lockie Ferguson produced a bowling masterclass of 3 for 50 – two top-order wickets and the timely dismissal of Chris Woakes took this spell into the top five. If New Zealand had won, this might have been the best bowling performance of the World Cup.The other performance worth a mention is Matt Henry‘s match-winning burst at the top of the India innings in the semi-final. This spell of 3 for 37 fetched more points than many four- or five-wicket spells.
Let us also not forget Liam Plunkett’s three top-order wickets in the final.

This table is led by two magnificent performances by Shakib Al Hasan. The first was against West Indies. He took 2 for 54 in the huge West Indian total of 321 and then scored a blinding 124 to take Bangladesh to a comprehensive win, with nearly nine overs to spare. Against Afghanistan he made a half-century in Bangladesh’s 262 and then took 5 for 29 to defend the middling total.Joe Root and Stokes just about did enough bowling to qualify for this table, and their batting-dominant performances take them into the top five. (I recognise either five overs or two wickets as a “valid” spell.)Mohammad Hafeez‘s lovely innings of 84 and a controlled bowling performance against England gets him the fifth place.Jadeja, in addition to his brilliant innings, had an excellent run-restricting spell of 1 for 34 in the semi-final against New Zealand and gets into the top ten.Ben Stokes made five scores of 50-plus in the World Cup and turned up to bat in the Super Over in the final after making an unbeaten 84 earlier in the innings•Getty ImagesMy takeaways from the tournament
My favourite batting performances were Coulter-Nile’s attacking match-winning innings against West Indies and the two equally stirring innings by Carlos Brathwaite and Jadeja, both in losing causes. If Brathwaite’s shot against New Zealand had travelled a metre further, the story of the World Cup might have been different. In Jadeja’s case, India’s chances always looked difficult. Coulter-Nile’s innings tops it for me, then, since it was in a winning cause.On May 27, 1999, Australia looked forlorn and listless at Chester-le-Street, staring at the stark reality that they needed to win every one of their remaining matches to win the World Cup. Starting with Bangladesh, they did just that, also sneaking in a tie in the semi. The two players who contributed the most towards this resurrection were Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne.On June 30, 2019, England looked similarly forlorn and listless, needing to win every one of their remaining games to win this World Cup. They had a tougher task than Australia did, having to face the mighty Indians at Edgbaston. They duly beat India and all their other opponents, and the batsmen who contributed the most towards this resurrection were Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow, who added 160, 123, 124 and 28 for the first wicket. It is no wonder that they form the most formidable pair of the 2019 World Cup.My favourite bowling performance was Matt Henry’s burst at the beginning of the India innings in the semi-final. Looking at what transpired later, if New Zealand had not struck a few times during the first ten overs, the match would have slipped out of their fingers. It was great bowling but also nothing short of a miracle. Henry did something similar against Sri Lanka, but this performance came in a semi-final.The match of the tournament was, arguably, this semi-final. The tactical awareness of Williamson and Ross Taylor, the situation-inspired batting in the later stages, the opening burst, the brilliant catching and fielding, the quality of India’s bowling, and the mercurial, never-say-die batting of Jadeja all made me think back to the Edgbaston semi-final 20 years ago, which was one of the greatest World Cup matches ever. The other semi-final was a romp in the park. I have chosen to ignore the final because the excitement of the match does not hide errors of umpiring and shortcomings in the tournament guidelines relating to the second level tie-break.The player who changed the course of the tournament has to be Stokes. Just consider the following:Five scores between 79 and 89. Each of these innings came when the chips were down and the runs were good as gold. The 84 in the final was followed by key strikes in the Super Over. The blistering 79 in the league game against India was the real match-winner. Then there were the magnificent 89 and 82 in losing causes against Australia and Sri Lanka; and his 89 against South Africa, which won the match for England. Add to these the key wickets he took and his superlative fielding efforts, and it is clear no other player had a greater impact on the World Cup.Trent Boult might be a contender. He had several highlights – the hat-trick against Australia, the catch off Brathwaite, the ball that dismissed Virat Kohli – but unfortunately he went wicketless in the final.The final: Two teams fight tooth and nail for eight hours and score the same number of runs in 50 overs. Then they get into another contest for an over each and score the same number of runs. What is the need to decide the winner based on the quirky and unfair number-of-boundaries rule? Why could the ICC not have declared the two teams joint winners? That was the option, after all, if the match day and the reserve day had been rained off.I would have said the same thing if “wickets taken” had been the second-level tie-breaker. How would England and their supporters have taken that loss? This is said while acknowledging that England had the best credentials to be named the winner of the World Cup. They are not responsible for the ICC’s rules, decided a few years back. “Neither team deserved to lose” should not just be a phrase in passing; it should be backed up by the rules. What happened was not anticipated but should have been.The DRS: In the semi-finals and final, there were some tricky DRS situations. Roy’s dismissal did not matter but Ross Taylor’s was crucial, and New Zealand didn’t have a review to appeal the wrong decision. A solution has to be found to avoid umpire howlers. One option is to give a team two DRS referrals per match instead of one per innings. If a team uses both referrals in the first innings, they have no referrals for the second. If they do not use one in the first innings, they have two for the second.A poignant tale to end this article
I was in touch with Martin Crowe between 2013 and 2015, after he contacted me to express his happiness at seeing the recognition received by iconic New Zealand players in my analyses. After New Zealand lost the 2015 World Cup final, I emailed him, and this is a relevant extract from that mail. “Four years from now, New Zealand would enter the World Cup final and I am sure you would be at Lord’s to wish and cheer for them. All my prayers and best wishes to you for this.” His reply was immediate and it read: “Many thanks, Ananth, for your wishes and prayers. I do not know how much time I have and whether I have enough days available to see the 2019 World Cup. I hope your wish comes true.” Sadly, that was his last mail to me. He passed away a year later.For the past year, I have been expressing my wish in various fora that I would really like two teams from either of South Africa, New Zealand or England to contest the 2019 final. No disrespect or lack of patriotism, simply a wish to have a new deserving winner, and a part of this was also influenced by the above-referenced correspondence. Martin would have wanted New Zealand to win the World Cup, and for his sake, I hoped they did, although I have no problems about the outstanding England team having won. This is not a heart v mind situation. I like both teams.My next article will be on my favoured format – Test cricket. My ideas plate is full and the problem I have is to select which idea to cover.