Problems, they say, come in threes and that’s exactly the number of questions still hanging over South Africa’s batting line-up

Firdose Moonda26-Mar-2014Problems, they say, come in threes and that’s exactly the number of questions still hanging over South Africa’s batting line-up. Despite posting their highest total at a World T20 since the 2010 edition on Monday and keeping themselves alive in the competition, the spotlight remains on Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers and David Miller.The concerns surrounding the trio do not concern their quality but question why they are being deployed in their current positions. Amla is seen as too slow a starter to open, de Villiers too explosive a player to be left for the middle order and Miller as too inexperienced to be a come-in-and-tee-off finisher. Despite public protestations Faf du Plessis explained South Africa won’t deviate from where they play de Villiers because they believe he is best utilised at No. 4 but will he rethink the Amla and Miller roles? And does he even have to?An obvious argument against Amla’s inclusion is that he just doesn’t approach the game like a T20 player and specifically like a T20 opener. Unlike David Warner or Chris Gayle, Amla does not make an entrance as excitable as an over-sugared jelly baby, he does not jump about, swing his arms and stretch his legs while waiting for the ball to be delivered and he does not bludgeon anything. The only thing emphatic about him is his wristiness and even that is inherently subtle.Those characteristics point to a slow strike rate, a no-no in this format, but a closer examination reveals Amla does not meander along without purpose. He balances the demands of fronting up first in this format with anchoring an innings, albeit in the shallow waters of a T20 game. The most recent domestic season is clear evidence of that.Amla, in his first summer with the Cobras, was the third-highest run scorer and played fewer matches than anyone else in the top 10. He featured in eight games and accumulated 317 runs with a top-score of 84. His strike-rate was 143.43 and he was able to score at that speed despite losing his opening partner inside the first two overs in five of those matches. That points to Amla’s ability to hold things together and move the team forward when they are in trouble, something he has to do at national level as well.In both South Africa’s matches at this World T20 so far, Amla has outlasted Quinton de Kock and paved the way for the middle-order to strike out. He has done what he said he would before the competition started. “Not a lot changes for me. There might be a few more expansive shots but the basics of the game are still there,” he said when South Africa arrived in Bangladesh. “I’ll just try and fit into my role in the team and play good cricket shots with the odd swipe here and there. We’ve got guys like AB de Villiers and David Miller who can hit the ball a really long way. So, not a lot will change for me, but hopefully I’ll have a quicker strike-rate.”In South Africa’s opening match against Sri Lanka, Amla was the only one of his team-mates with a strike-rate under 100. In the second game against New Zealand, South Africa had only two contributors who scored more than 20. Amla was one, JP Duminy the other and Amla’s strike-rate of 102.50 was little over half Duminy’s, which sat at 200.But it’s not a crisis for Amla because that is the role South Africa want him to play. They need him to provide stability for others to bat with freedom and he admitted he is still growing into the position. “I haven’t played a lot of international T20 games,” he said. “I haven’t quite got the experience so I almost feel every game is a learning experience for me.”Amla, whose international career is a decade old, has only played 23 international T20s, the same number as Miller, who debuted in 2010. Miller was picked on the strength of his ability to accelerate but has yet to do that in a T20 for South Africa. His highest score is 36, made against Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, and he has not gone past 25 in his last six innings.Miller is not fulfilling his obvious potential, something which was again on display in the domestic T20 competition. He was the top-scorer with 383 runs from 12 innings and came at a strike rate of 153.20 and included four fifties, one of which ballooned to an unbeaten 93 and took the Dolphins to victory in their playoff.The bulk of Miller’s runs, including two of his half-centuries, came when he was batting at No. 4 and was not under too much pressure. Apart from one occasion when the Dolphins were 13 for 2 against the Warriors and Miller’s 60 off 40 balls rescued them, when there was a mini-collapse upfront, Miller was caught in it as well. His other three fifties came when there were at least 70 runs on the board and around 10 overs left in the innings.Miller does not get that much time at the crease for South Africa. He comes in at No. 6 and is expected to spend no time having a sighter and just go big. Albie Morkel has shown he can do that to some extent – he has heaved from the get-go in both matches and fallen on his sword shortly after – but Miller seems to a little more time and a little more certainty and he knows it.”I’ve been batting six, and there have been different situations the whole time. It’s difficult to get something going in certain situations,” he said before the tournament started. “I haven’t done as well as I wanted to do but I feel it’s around the corner. If I bat up the order, I want to make a difference with that promotion. If I get two overs, I want to make a difference in those two overs.”Miller has a much greater chance of the latter happening than the former and he will have to work much harder to make the difference he wants. South Africa may be expecting too much too soon from him but if Amla can give de Villiers something to launch from and de Villiers can combine with Miller to set off the fireworks, solutions, like problems, could also come in threes for South Africa.

An international cricketer is exposed to several non-training stresses that could affect on-field performance. Managing physical workload is only half the puzzle

Alex Bowden04-Sep-2014Peter Siddle has lost pace. It was why he was dropped from the Test team – he admits as much himself. But the reasons why he’s lost pace are more contentious. Many believe it is because of his vegan diet, but Siddle disagrees.”People say I’m not as strong. Well, come and watch me in a gym session – I’m stronger than I’ve ever been,” he says. “That is the thing people don’t understand. I’m lifting heavier weights than I’ve ever lifted. I’m moving better. It’s just the fatigue. It gets to everyone.”What do you know about tiredness? Maybe you’ve run a marathon. If so, what did you do the next day? Did you run another one? There’s a good chance you’re in control of the exercise you do and the rest you get. But what if it weren’t like that? What if you were asked to work out while still tired, day after day, for a prolonged period? Do you know what that would feel like, and do you know how long it would take to recover afterwards?Many believe that after a day off, a player should be over any tiredness, but as Siddle intimates, true fatigue is something more protracted. It is cumulative and builds over time. He points to Mitchell Johnson, who has recently been bowling as quickly as ever but only following a lengthy break. Before that, Johnson’s pace had gradually slipped away over several years.Courting overtrainingGetty Images

Dr Winsley plans on using Jonathan Trott as a case study for his students. Speaking to Ian Ward on at the start of the summer, Trott described his exit from England’s Ashes tour in 2013-14 and listed many of the symptoms Winsley has pointed to as being indicative of an overtrained individual.
“I remember day two or day three, it was a bit of a blur. I was getting headaches and all sorts of things and I wasn’t eating properly towards the end and that’s when the sleep started getting disruptive and, emotionally, that was probably when I was the worst and it just boiled over.”
What preceded this explains a lot. Trott said it built up through the end of the Ashes in England and the ODI series. “The three weeks in between wasn’t time off because I was working hard in the nets – two hours, two-and-a-half hours in the nets with Ashley Giles in the indoors, it was pretty relentless.”
In Australia before the first Test, Trott remembered going to extra training in the two days off before the first Test. “After training, when everyone wanted to leave I was still in the nets. Cookie (Alastair Cook) wants to name the team. ‘Trotty’s not here, he’s still in the nets.’ Where does it end?”
Winsley says this is a common response to being in a non-functional overreaching state. “Sometimes the mindset of the athlete is: ‘My performance has suffered. How do I get back to playing how I was?’ And they try and train more.”
Last year, there were two Ashes series. Next year has another, and a World Cup. As we see with Trott, these competitions bring increased stress levels long before they actually take place. Even if a player gets a physical rest in between, the mental stresses could well remain.
Cricket is a sport with a known link to mental ill health – David Frith felt moved to write two books examining the sport’s alarming suicide rates. Is it responsible to play international cricket without an off season, when that may be a player’s best opportunity to get away from the game?

Dr Richard Winsley of the University of Exeter specialises in overtraining, a condition where athletes see a drop-off in performance lasting a prolonged period. While the condition is well known, there isn’t currently an agreed definition.”There’s a suggestion that it’s a continuum,” Winsley says. “The first point would be the fully recovered athlete, where everything’s fine. The next stage would be something considered to be functionally overreached. In cricketing terms, this would be where the athlete has played a Test match and you would expect the athlete to be tired for some days afterwards. Within a number of days, at worst a couple of weeks or so, the athlete bounces back to where they were or even better.”This is a basic principle of training. Stress the body and then allow it the time to adapt. But Winsley points out that while some athletes recover quickly, others can take much longer.”That’s termed non-functional overreaching. Performance is lower for a longer period after the increase in training or competition load. Recovery might be something that’s with the athlete for maybe two weeks to three months or so.”Winsley believes that while some players can cope with frequent matches very successfully, others might find themselves in a non-functional overreaching state after even a small number of back-to-back Tests. It is an individual thing but the more congested the fixture list, the more likely a player will struggle with recovery.”Sometimes people bounce out of it. It just takes them two months, six weeks or whatever and then they’re absolutely fine again.”But what if it doesn’t change?”If they’re presenting with these common symptoms for six months or so, it has gone beyond non-functional overreaching and the athlete would be considered to be overtrained.”The key symptom is that the player’s performance is not as it was. This can be subjective in a sport like cricket, where pure physical has less of an influence than it does in other sports. This may go some way to explaining why overtraining in cricket is not more spoken about. It is not quite so obviously debilitating as it would be for a runner, swimmer or cyclist.Siddle’s drop in speed is a clear example of physical deterioration. While he may be lifting heavier weights, fast bowling hinges on strength endurance rather than absolute force. You can get stronger and simultaneously lose strength endurance.However, Pete Atkinson, the national lead for Strength and Conditioning at the ECB, points out that reduced bowling speed needn’t be an example of overtraining – rather the opposite.”Where we have seen instances of fast bowlers losing pace after an extended competition period, it is often as a consequence of them not being able to train enough. The strength, speed and power work done by modern cricketers builds the engine which enables them to bowl at high speed. Without these underpinning strength qualities the engine can often lose a bit of horsepower.”Such complexities are one reason why Winsley believes it is important to build up a profile with the athlete’s coach and clinician. This is no simple task. Over 90 different signs and symptoms of overtraining have been proposed, although some are more significant than others.”The typical ones you might find are: mood-state change, appetite change, sleeplessness and common cases of upper respiratory tract infections – the cold that just doesn’t go.”What happens inside the body of an overtrained individual to hamper performance? Again, it is not clear-cut.Chronic glycogen depletion is one suggestion. Glycogen is one of the body’s main fuel sources for exercise, a shortage of which has obvious implications for physical activity. Altered cortisol levels may also play a part. Cortisol is the body’s stress hormone and is involved in protein breakdown; persistently high levels of cortisol lead to a situation where muscles are broken down, not built.

Players themselves often do not want to be rested. Their international place has been hard-won, and they may feel there is no guarantee they’ll retain it, no matter the reassurances. The irony here is that being rested could be a source of stress in itself

These are profound changes to physiology but in most cases a reduction in training load is all that’s needed for the sportsman to return to normal. But this can take several months, and Winsley has seen cases where it may not happen at all.Atkinson says that he and his team have not detected a pattern of overtraining while working with English players. “The majority of English county pros do between one and three hours of physical training per week with most doing less than 90 minutes in total. If you compare that figure to athletes in sports who routinely do 25-30 hours of intense physical training per week, it is reasonable to conclude that this amount of training, in isolation, is not taxing [the cricketers] too much.”However, he also highlights a fundamental truth about overtraining, which is that it is not just about the training itself. “The biggest risk factor for our players is simply the demand placed on their bodies by playing competitive cricket regularly at a high level.”Atkinson says that he and his team follow advice from the ECB’s fast bowling coaches and operate according to the “7-4-2 principle” when managing a fast bowler’s workload. This dictates that in any seven-day period, the player must bowl on no more than four days and on no more than two days in succession.However, while appropriate management of a player’s physical workload represents a large part of the puzzle, Winsley’s research has found that overtraining is more common at elite levels and he believes that this has a great deal to do with the proliferation of stresses outside of training at that level.Among non-training stresses, he lists frequency of fixtures, delivering to sponsors’ requirements, competition for places, travel, and being apart from family and friends for long periods in foreign hotel rooms away from your social support network – in short, the life of an international cricketer.While resting a player from a given match will clearly reduce training stress, it does little to address these non-training stresses.England are due to play at least one match in every calendar month between November 2014 and September 2017. Without an off season, when can a player truly get away from the game? Winsley highlights one particular danger of such a schedule.”With overtraining we very commonly [know that] the only thing in this person’s life is the sport that they are doing.” It is a challenge for any player to find a way of getting away from the game when surrounded by cricketers for 12 months a year – even in their time off. It also adds to the challenge later of adapting to life after cricket.Like many, Winsley suggests that rotation is the solution. However, this is not easy in practice. Team management must meet the playing schedule but also deliver results, and these goals can conflict.While there will always be some fixtures that are more important than others, can it be stated with any certainty that “must-win games” won’t crop up too frequently for a key performer? For selectors and coaches, there is the temptation to field a top player in just one more match. Operating within the parameters of the fixture lists, are they merely doing their best with a fundamentally unmanageable situation?Compounding this is the fact that players themselves often do not want to be rested. Their international place has been hard-won, and they may feel there is no guarantee they’ll retain it, no matter the reassurances. The irony here is that being rested could be a source of stress in itself.When player, coach, fans and media all want a player on the field, who has the perspective, motivation and clout to say no?

What are India likely to do to rectify their batting horrors? Frown, and let it pass

Andy Zaltzman20-Aug-2014I have been living a strange, almost cricketless existence at the Edinburgh Festival. Perhaps not quite as cricketless as the Indian batting line-up, but disturbingly cricketless nonetheless. As a result, I have seen very little of the supposed Test matches, in which England have emerged from their prolonged funk, and India have achieved the remarkable feat of not only playing even worse than they did in 2011, but also, in the end, doing so by an impressively comfortable margin.After the riveting, undulating classic at Lord’s, the final three Tests were horrifically one-sided, with England exerting total domination, based on the first-session brilliance of James Anderson and Stuart Broad, in the face of opposition resistance as sturdy and steadfast as a jam sandwich trying to stop an elephant stampede.It has all been eerily reminiscent of the famous 19th-century boxing match, in which Erwin “Fists Of Destiny” Wopplethwaite took on Punchin’ Percy Pendelbury. Pendelbury knocked Wopplethwaite down in the second round, and looked well set to finish off his dazed, staggering opponent. Instead, Wopplethwaite got to his feet, dusted himself down, and started landing jab after jab on Pendelbury’s notoriously suspect chin, before knocking him out with an impressive flurry of technically proficient upper cuts. Whilst Pendelbury repeatedly clobbered himself on the head with a heavy-based cast-iron frying pan, and shot himself in both feet with a crossbow.It may prove to be a learning experience for India’s batsmen. However, not all disastrous failures produce wisdom and improvement. As the old saying goes, “Having your leg bitten off by a crocodile does not necessarily make you better at swimming across crocodile-infested rivers, nor more confident whilst attempting to do so”.Faced with high-class swing bowling in helpful conditions, India responded with some of the most miserable batting ever seen on the international stage. Their techniques and confidences were successively demolished, as England’s had been in Australia. India clearly have a talented generation of batsmen. I am sure they want to succeed in Test cricket. But they do not to succeed in Test cricket, as previous generations did, in order to make a good living from the game. It may prove to be a crucial difference.Teams accused of spinelessness in a cataclysmic defeat may well be manifesting an overwhelming individual and collective collapse in confidence and technique, rather than an absence of will. I am sure it is visually hard to tell the difference. It is, after all, impossible to try really hard when you are sitting in the pavilion wondering why your bat does not seem to work any more. How can you demonstrate your determination and resistance when you look more likely to discover the secrets of the origins of the universe than the whereabouts of your own off stump?What will India’s players do to rectify their recurring failures? Forsake the IPL in favour of a couple of full seasons of county cricket? Persuade their board not to lumber them with tour schedules that offer no worthwhile preparation, and no subsequent chance to rehabilitate their broken games? Frown, shake their heads and hope for the best? A bit of extra catching practice? Option C looks the most likely outcome.Objectively, this was one of the most disappointing series to take place in England in recent years. This was partly because it had promised so much more and produced that ceaselessly dramatic game at Lord’s, before ending with three processional hammerings, in the last two of which the outcome was essentially fixed within the first session; and partly because if England, India and Australia are going to carve up Test cricket and shape its future, they need to be able to travel to each other’s countries and play something resembling Test cricket.Since England’s win in India late in 2012, four long series between the self-proclaimed Big Three have produced an aggregate score of 15-1 to the home teams, with three draws. And the “1” – India’s win at Lord’s – proved to be the biggest false dawn since Alphonse The First Ever Zebra killed a lion by making it choke to death on his own mane, before announcing: “Well, I don’t think we are going to have anything to worry about from that particular species.”

Five questions for India before the ODI series against Sri Lanka

Abhishek Purohit31-Oct-2014Rahane or Rohit as opener
This debate might not have even happened were it not for Rohit Sharma’s finger injury during the ODIs in England. Rohit has been out of action since late August, and Ajinkya Rahane has used the opening at the top of the order to make a maiden ODI century in England and a fifty against West Indies. If one man opens, the other will drop to the middle order, considering Shikhar Dhawan’s ODI spot appears safe for now. Rohit has recently said that opening is what brings the best out of him. He backed his words by slamming 142 off 111 against Sri Lankans in the warm-up match. However, it might not be as simple as reclaiming his spot from the stand-in. Before the West Indies series, MS Dhoni had said that Rahane as opener and Rohit in the middle order gave more depth to the batting. Rohit had a standout series against Australia at home last year and averages 46.34 as opener since the start of 2013, but his strike-rate of 66.03 outside Asia during that period, has often increased pressure on the middle order. Rahane will have at least three more matches to push his claim, as Rohit is not in the squad for the first three games against Sri Lanka.Third and back-up fast bowlers
Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar have been regulars in the ODI side for a while, but the composition of the rest of the pace attack is not certain. Varun Aaron played in New Zealand and in the Asia Cup and hasn’t figured in ODIs since but is part of the squad against Sri Lanka. Umesh Yadav played in South Africa and Bangladesh and also against West Indies at home. Ishant Sharma, whose workload has been steep in Tests, hasn’t played an ODI since January, but has been included for the Sri Lanka series. Among those not in this squad, Mohit Sharma has had injury issues this year, but is also a contender for the World Cup. None of these four have played more than nine ODIs in the past year since the Australia series, compared to Shami’s 22. None of them have taken more than eight wickets, compared to Shami’s 51. While the economy-rates of three of them have hovered around run a ball, Aaron has gone for 7.64 an over.Zaheer Khan’s last ODI was in August 2012 and he hasn’t played at all since his IPL injury, but he had sent down nearly 200 overs on the Test tours of South Africa and New Zealand when he was fit in the past year, and could be a left-field option.Reserve batsman
Baroda’s Ambati Rayudu has been the reserve batsman of choice in recent times, going on several tours with the squad. He could not capitalise on the couple of matches he got in New Zealand, and though he was given a full run in the Asia Cup and in bilateral series against Bangladesh and West Indies, his only notable score was a fifty against Pakistan. It was only in England that he clicked, with a couple of half-centuries. India might feel he has done enough to seal a World Cup berth, or they could give him a few more games to do so. One alternative is the experience of Yuvraj Singh, who hasn’t played for India since the World T20 final in April but was Man of the Series in the previous World Cup.Reserve wicketkeeper
Wriddhiman Saha has been the back-up wicketkeeper in Tests and his selection for the Sri Lanka series suggests he is second choice at the moment for ODIs too. When Saha got injured during the England Tests, Naman Ojha was flown in, while Sanju Samson was preferred for the ODI leg. Saha stands out when it comes to pure keeping, and displayed his limited-overs batting skills with a century in the IPL final. A couple of eye-catching performances with the bat against Sri Lanka could firm up his position. As for the other two, Ojha has been in incredible batting form in first-class cricket, while Samson’s youth can be viewed as either potential or inexperience ahead of a world tournament.Reserve spinner
Apart from lead spinners R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, Amit Mishra and Akshar Patel feature in the squad against Sri Lanka. Mishra is the attacking option, something he showed even in the World T20 when he lured batsmen out with flighted legbreaks. The larger outfields in Australia will provide him more protection, but they will also test his fitness as a fielder. Young Akshar has proved difficult to target in the IPL and in his few ODIs with his control and flatter trajectory. He also offers more as a batsman. Karn Sharma, who was included for the England ODIs but is not in this squad, is a fine legspinning allrounder at domestic level, and also has a strong arm from the deep.

The sickening blow that struck Phillip Hughes is a reminder of the ever-present dangers associated with facing fast bowlers, even while wearing a helmet

Brydon Coverdale25-Nov-2014Nari Contractor
After being struck on the head by a bouncer from the fearsomely fast Charlie Griffith during the Indians’ tour match against Barbados in March 1962, Contractor was led from the field with blood coming from his nose and ears. His skull was fractured and he needed two emergency operations to remove clots on the brain, and West Indies captain Frank Worrell was one of those who gave blood to help Contractor while his life was in danger. Unconscious for six days, Contractor recovered and early the following year was back playing first-class cricket again, although he never played another Test.Ewen Chatfield
The gut-wrenching nature of such incidents was never more apparent than when Chatfield was hit on the left temple by a bouncer from Peter Lever during the Auckland Test between New Zealand and England in February 1975. Chatfield staggered for a few seconds, then fell over, and the England players saw him twitching unconscious on the ground. Bernard Thomas, the England physiotherapist, stopped Chatfield from swallowing his tongue and then realised there was no resuscitation equipment available. “It was the worst case I have seen and I never want to see another,” he said later. “His heart had stopped beating and technically that’s the sign of dying.” The effect on the bowler was enormous. “I honestly thought I had killed him as I saw him lying there in convulsions,” Lever said. “I felt sick and ashamed at what I had done and all I could think when I got back to the pavilion was that I wanted to retire.” Chatfield was rushed to hospital and regained full consciousness half an hour later, although he had a hairline fracture to his skull. Chatfield, who was on debut, went on to play 43 Tests.Andy Lloyd
Like Chatfield, the Warwickshire opener Andy Lloyd was on Test debut when he was hit. Unlike Chatfield, he never played another Test. At Edgbaston in June 1984, Lloyd was struck on the side of the helmet by a Malcolm Marshall bouncer and was hospitalised for more than a week with blurred vision. He did not play first-class cricket again until the following year, and his eyesight was never quite the same again. Although his Test career was over, he went on to play county cricket until 1992.Bert Oldfield
The Bodyline series was at times stomach-turning, but never more so than when Australia’s wicketkeeper Bert Oldfield top-edged an attempted pull off a Harold Larwood bouncer and had his skull cracked. The incident could not be said to be the result of Bodyline bowling, for Larwood was operating with a regulation field at the time, but Bodyline and Oldfield are now inextricably linked. Oldfield stumbled away from the crease and collapsed. He missed only one Test as a result of the incident and told Larwood it was not the bowler’s fault, but his own for missing the ball.Phillip Hughes is the second batsman this season to be badly injured batting in the Sheffield Shield•Getty Images and Cricket AustraliaShivnarine Chanderpaul
When Chanderpaul was hit on the back of the helmet by a Brett Lee bouncer during the Sabina Park Test of 2008, he crumpled motionless to the ground. “I did not know where I was,” Chanderpaul said later. “My entire body went numb. I could not move my hands and I could not move my feet.” Chanderpaul was on 86 at the time and after a few minutes of gathering himself, he carried on batting and went on to score one of his most remarkable centuries. Brain scans cleared Chanderpaul of serious injury.Rick McCosker
One of cricket’s most iconic images is that of Rick McCosker with head bandaged going out to bat in the Centenary Test between Australia and England at the MCG in 1977. McCosker had a broken jaw, courtesy of a Bob Willis bouncer in the first innings, but he came out to bat at No. 10 in the second innings and made 25. “I didn’t feel anything, I just heard this big awful noise inside my head,” McCosker said of the bouncer. “Everything just went numb. Blood everywhere. I walked off by myself. I missed about two days because I was in hospital for a day and a half.”Ben Rohrer
The bouncer that felled Hughes was not the first to cause distress in the Sheffield Shield this summer. In the first round, New South Wales batsman Ben Rohrer was hit on the helmet by a bouncer from Victoria fast bowler Chris Tremain at the MCG. Rohrer tried to duck the delivery but it hit him in the side of the head. After staggering a few steps, Rohrer fell to the ground and left the field sitting on a motorised stretcher. Precautionary scans showed no serious injury but the other players were concerned for his safety at the time. “I was very worried,” Peter Nevill, the non-striker, said. “It looked very nasty. It got him flush. Straight away he was struggling.” Only last week, more than a fortnight after the incident, Rohrer was still affected. “I’m still struggling, it hasn’t been a good couple of weeks,” Rohrer told the on Saturday. “Hopefully I’ve turned the corner, I’m starting to feel a bit better and the doctor thinks it’ll resolve itself soon.”

ESPNcricinfo presents the Plays of the Day from the second ODI between New Zealand and Pakistan in Napier

Karthik Krishnaswamy03-Feb-2015A bit of shuteyeBrendon McCullum had given New Zealand a typically brutal start, and Pakistan responded by bringing on Shahid Afridi in the sixth over of the innings. Third ball of the over, Afridi saw McCullum stepping out of his crease and bowled it quicker and a touch shorter. McCullum swung and missed. The ball cleared the top of middle stump by an inch and bounced off Sarfraz Ahmed’s gloves. Sarfraz, unhelmeted, had closed his eyes as the ball passed the batsman, flinching to avoid the possibility of flying bails.The sitting seven-foot duckFourth ball of the 48th over, Ross Taylor pushed Mohammad Irfan into the off side and took off for the single. The bowler, sprinting across from his follow-through, dived but could not intercept the ball, which rolled through to the mid-off fielder. Irfan was just about to get up when he realised that he was right between the fielder and the stumps at the keeper’s end, the target of the impending low, flat throw. Trying to make himself as small a target as is possible for someone who is 7’1″ tall, Irfan ducked into an uncomfortable crouch, just in time to evade the throw.The carveAhmed Shehzad began Pakistan’s chase with a series of rousing boundaries, clearing his front leg and hitting where the line dictated. In the 10th over, Trent Boult went around the wicket and followed him with a bouncer. Shehzad leaned his head out of the way and sliced hard, under the ball, to ramp it over the keeper for four.Shehzad sees the lightFor most part of his innings, Shehzad was batting on a pitch striped by the lengthening shadows of the floodlight towers. In the 20th over of Pakistan’s innings, Shehzad was a touch late on a defensive shot off Daniel Vettori’s bowling. The reason became quickly apparent – Shehzad walked up to the umpire, indicating that he was having trouble seeing the ball in the glare of the sun, which was setting right behind Vettori’s arm. Brendon McCullum walked up to Shehzad and offered him his sunglasses, but the batsman declined and returned to take strike again.

A more structured and in-depth analysis operation overseen by Dene Hills has combined well with the Australian taste for robust debate in team meetings

Daniel Brettig19-Feb-2015At any Australia net session, a voice will be heard at regular intervals, issuing gruff instructions.”Two minutes batters.”This sergeant-majorly tone does not emanate from the head coach Darren Lehmann, or his assistants Craig McDermott and Michael Di Venuto. Instead it is the preserve of the Australia team’s analyst Dene Hills, who took up the task of running the training schedule soon after he returned to the support staff in December 2010. Hills had worked with England for the previous two years, and saw the need for someone to keep net sessions on course.”A lot of the coaching and support staff were busy doing their stuff and I found myself standing there a little bit,” Hills told ESPNcricinfo. “I like that role, keep everyone organised and everything to a clock. We don’t want to be going too late with things because it can tire blokes out. We make sure our training’s pretty efficient and flexible also. But someone’s got to make sure everything’s going to the clock, otherwise we’d be there all day.”Hills noticed a few other things when he came into the team five years ago, being as it was in the midst of an Ashes hiding at the hands of his former employers. The most important related to his much less visible but far more pivotal role as the man to provide statistical and video support to the coaches, captain and players: while England had an entire department of performance analysts at Loughborough University, Hills discovered that, as far as Cricket Australia’s analysis division was concerned, he was it.His predecessor, Michael Marshall, spent most of his time trying to log video footage and whatever hours were left trying to analyse its value. The team did not have footage of any games other than those they played in, so if they were facing a new opponent, they did so flying blind. If the 3-1 series margin between England and Australia that summer had an off-field equivalent, the field of data mining for plans and tactics was that very chasm.”What I was impressed with compared to Australian cricket at that time, was they had a whole dedicated performance analysis department,” Hills said. “They had a bloke in charge based at Loughborough, and because it was on a university campus they were basically cataloguing every game on the planet. They were also doing a lot of background work at Loughborough and then sending it through [to the team].”Australian cricket at that time, it was pretty much Michael who had to do a lot of manual labouring to generate the stuff you needed to show to the team. In England, a lot of the background work was done away from the team and then an analyst with the team used it. So it was a lot different, they were more resourced than the Australian team was at the time. When I started I was doing a lot of the manual labour stuff, we didn’t have every game on the planet, only who we played. So we were a bit behind the times in regard to that.”They seemed to always have the tools to do the job. They were open-minded to technology and had a lot of good people around. They didn’t seem to spare a cent – you weren’t fussy about how many cricket balls you used, or if you needed to send players overseas you were able to do it. Even when I was in the batting role there they said ‘we’ve got a budget here, what would you like to do’. So it was very open like that, there were a lot of opportunities to do and try things.”Five years on, and Hills oversees a far more sophisticated operation. Staff at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane assist him in collating data and footage, while the Indian consulting company Cricket 21 provides codified and searchable video of “every game on the planet”. The Queensland-based sports analysis experts Fair Play Ltd tweak and upgrade Cricket Australia’s software to their desired specifications.The driver of this evolution was, funnily enough, the Ashes defeat and the Argus review that it spawned. The creation of a new team performance arm at CA had the former rugby executive Pat Howard at its apex, and his budgets were far more generous than anything seen previously. Suddenly, Hills had far more data at his fingertips.”That was a catalyst for it, Pat Howard was a product of that and he had his mandate,” Hills said. “Pat coming along has been very good for my part in this whole production, and we’ve got good support back at the National Cricket Centre who can do stuff for us if we really need to. As soon as Pat came on, he was open to new ideas and now we’ve got a lot of tools available through CA’s desire to be where we need to be.”Through India we now get all the games played in the world, so anything I show the team is the latest stuff. Players have got access online at any time to view whatever they want to view, very specific to their role. So if you’re a left-handed batsman you can go in and watch ‘bowler x’ bowl to a lot of left-handed batsmen.”Because so much cricket is beamed into India, we get it from there and that’s another tool in the shed I’ve got. We use Hawk-Eye, we used Virtual Eye here in Australia, our own stuff, Fair Play Ltd have been fantastic in regards to modernising their software to our needs and state cricket’s needs to grab stuff that we need. We didn’t have a lot of that way back in 2010. We had different things, but it’s been moving forward ever since.”

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At the World Cup, Hills is finding his role to be a little more elevated than it has been in recent weeks and months. Having played a plethora of cricket against the likes of England, India and South Africa in recent times, his video presentations have come to feel a little redundant given how much knowledge has been gleaned from recent meetings between the teams.

“One of the most important things is still the knowledge in the room. I always thought one of my roles is to generate some conversation, to debate plans and find a way forward”Dene Hills, Australia team analyst

But in the case of Bangladesh and New Zealand there is far less. Having not played Bangladesh since April 2011, and not faced New Zealand in a series since February 2010, the players and coaches will be leaning heavily upon Hills’ research, of both the opposition to come and the statistical trends of winning teams at ICC events.”One of the most important things is still the knowledge in the room,” he said. “I always thought one of my roles, and I told the players right from the start, is that I’m here to generate some conversation, to debate plans and find a way forward. Now, as we’ve played England a lot, we’ve used a lot more of that knowledge in the room than we have maybe some of the footage or stats that I’ve got.”As we come into Bangladesh and New Zealand, who we haven’t touched based with recently, it will come back on me a little bit, particularly some of the newer players New Zealand and Bangladesh have got, and I’ll put some things together and say ‘this is what I reckon’. Then someone else will say ‘hang on, he’s played in the BBL or IPL against me, this is what I reckon’, and we go from there.”I’m not there to dictate a lot, but what I’m trying to do is generate some good conversation with statistics, tools, whatever we think. And conversation with the coach and the captain on how we want to do it. For Bangladesh and New Zealand we need to have a look at the players. We’ll go in depth with them – it’s been a little while, and they’re a different beast now, playing with confidence and performing well.”Confidence and performance are of course two words currently being thrown around a lot in relation to Australia. Apart from the sideshow of Michael Clarke’s fight to make a tight fitness deadline after hamstring surgery, the ODI team is presently functioning to a very high standard. Hills believes the right balance has been found between plans based on laptops and more instinctive gambits, while the minds of the players are left uncluttered.”All credit to the players, but I think Darren has brought in a little bit of that too,” Hills said. “He’s asked the players to take the game on and keep it simple. I think they’re great words and the players have enjoyed that with the coaching staff that they can go and play their style and their game. We have our key performance things we need to tick off, they’re always in the background, and we make sure we are doing that.”There’s some outstanding talent there and I think Darren and the coaching staff have really harnessed that talent by allowing them to play their game and keep it pretty simple. Darren’s very open. If someone’s got a good idea, speak up. In that environment, meetings or even training, let’s thrash it out for the betterment of the team.”We don’t want to bamboozle them with too much information, but I want to hear what they have to say, that’s the most important thing. My role is to create that platform. I can tell them exactly how it’s happening for this player or that, but the experience day in day out with them playing with or against them is very, very powerful next to going on what the video’s saying.”Of course there is often tension between the ideas presented by the analyst and those arrived at in a more organic manner. Hills recalled the days before Australia’s critical first Test against South Africa at Centurion last year, when an underprepared pitch seemed ripe for bowling first until match morning. Statistics said bowl, for South Africa had built up a Gabba-like record by doing so. But a hot sun, a drying pitch and some hint of uneven bounce later in the game brought Clarke and Lehmann to a rather different conclusion. Hills, too.Stats say what? Australia were happy to bat first at Centurion in 2013•Getty Images”When we won that first Test against South Africa at Centurion, we knew that the stats were saying you’ve got to bowl first at that ground,” he said. “But we looked at the wicket and it looked like a bat first wicket. At the conclusion of that Test Graeme Smith said ‘the stats said we should bowl first’ but we looked at that wicket and said ‘no we’re going to bat first’. In the end they put us in. That’s probably the best example of the stats saying this, but there’s always exceptions to the rule.”It was a beautiful day, let’s just grind it out to start with and blokes stood up. The stats were definitely saying we should bowl, and that ground was an absolute fortress for South Africa, like their Gabba. I don’t blame them for bowling because that’s exactly how they were winning the games. Two days before that we were saying ‘they haven’t even started preparing the wicket, this is going to be an absolute nightmare to bat on’. But we looked on the day and thought ‘let’s back ourselves’.”There has been talk of other countries, most notably England, allowing data analysis to overrule instinct. Hills is content that for the moment his team have found a middle path. The Australian character and its predilection for robust debate has also helped. “It probably happens every meeting,” he chuckled when asked about what debates take place. “I’ll say ‘we should do this’ and they’ll say ‘no he’s better at that’. But that’s what I’m after.”

And other lessons learned from the quarter-finals, including the fact that the waist is a philosophical concept

Andy Zaltzman24-Mar-2015Things we have learned from each quarter-finalSri Lanka v South Africa
1. Just because you grew up in Asia, does not mean you can play spin.When JP Duminy woke up on the morning of March 18, he was, one assumes, not expecting to end his day having to answer the question, “So, JP, what is it like to take a hat-trick in a World Cup quarter-final?”Sri Lanka made almost every form of individual and collective batting error it is possible to make during their crushingly inept innings at the SCG, and losing three wickets in three balls to Duminy’s competent probers was the biggest of them.The combined figures of Duminy and the excellent Imran Tahir were 7 for 55. These represented:(a) the fourth time South African spinners had taken seven wickets in an ODI;
(b) the second-best innings analysis by a South African spin attack in an ODI, after the 7 for 50 taken by Duminy and Botha against the rather less mighty Kenya in a rather less important ODI in a bilateral series in 2008-09;
(c) the fourth-best figures by a spin attack against Sri Lanka (who have played almost 750 ODIs);
(d) the first time South African tweaksters have taken more than four wickets against Sri Lanka in a one-dayer; and
(e) a ticket to Colombo.2. When you are playing against a team that has been repeatedly accused, with some justification, of choking under pressure, including in almost every interview and press conference leading up to the match, do not lose two early wickets, then throw away any chances of rebuilding with a succession of batting bloopers.South Africa played very well in their 2011 quarter-final defeat against New Zealand. For several hours. They started well, took early wickets, restrained New Zealand’s batsmen throughout, and were in calm control of the game from the start. Until things went terminally wrong in the space of about 15 head-scrambled minutes. Crucially, New Zealand remained competitive, posted a moderate but workable score, and when Jacques Kallis’ dismissal opened up the opportunity for a panic, New Zealand were able to apply the requisite pressure and exacerbate the mayhem.Perhaps this South African team is not susceptible to that kind of meltdown. Perhaps they are, but will prove good enough in these knockout games not to let themselves be dragged into a SPAM (Scenario of Potential Aggravated Meltdown). They may well win the entire tournament despite suffering some form of choke, or lose it without choking at all. Chokes, stumbles, panics, or whatever term you wish to use for big-game fragility, are mostly not as inevitable as they are retrospectively described, and are often reactive to the match situation.Sri Lanka were unable to put the slightest of strain on any potential South African doubts, whilst the South Africans ruthlessly exploited the growing tension of the Sri Lankans during and after their bad start.3. Imran Tahir needs to stop taking wickets.At the end of a long, long, long, long tournament, the teams with most in the tank physically could have a crucial edge. Whilst Tahir’s wickets have been of vast value to South Africa in this (and the last) World Cup, his wicket celebrations – glorious explosions of delight covering between 50 and 300 yards – could result in Steyn and Morkel running out of energy before the final. South Africa need to ban their pacers from attempting to join in Tahir’s moments of triumph, or instruct the legspinner to take a quiet 0-40 and not risk pulling other bowlers’ muscles.”Irfan says hello”•Getty ImagesIndia v Bangladesh
1. The waist is a philosophical concept, not a physically definable body part.2. Bangladesh have been significantly better than they were in the last World Cup. India have also (thus far) been significantly better than they were in the last World Cup.3. Until boundary ropes are replaced with a sheer drop into a crocodile pit, it will be hard to adjudicate definitively on near-rope catches. It would simplify things dramatically. If the player falls into the crocodile pit whilst taking a catch – six. If he stays on the outfield – out. That change should be made. It would ensure fairness and boost TV ratings.4. When India bowl teams out, World Cups generally go well for them.India have bowled at seven teams, and bowled out seven teams. Only one side has bowled out more teams in a World Cup – the 2007 Australians, who took all ten wickets in nine of their 11 games.In the first two World Cups, India managed to take ten wickets only once – against the hapless East Africa in 1975. In 1983, they bowled their opponents out six times in eight matches, and had them nine down in the other two games. They won the tournament. From 1987 to 1999, they took all ten in just nine of 29 games, and failed to reach a final. In 2003, they dismissed the opposition in seven out of ten matches to reach the final (all for under 200), where their bowling failed against the might of Australia. In 2007, they bowled out Bermuda, but neither of their other two opponents, and departed after the initial group stage, some seven or eight months before the final. (It seemed.) In 2011, for only the third time in ten World Cups, they bowled out their adversaries in at least half of the matches – four out of eight – and lifted the trophy again. When India’s bowlers fire, or at least partially fire, India do well in World Cups.In all, India have bowled their opponents out in 35 World Cup matches. They have won 34 of them. Overall, teams who get their opposition all out have won 92% of World Cup matches, and 90% of ODIs. It is obviously possible to win World Cups without taking all ten wickets, but, not unexpectedly, it certainly helps.Australia v Pakistan
1. Fast bowling is awesome.Mitchell Starc’s first 22 balls were all measured by Hawk-Eye at more than 90mph. In his ten overs, he bowled only six balls below 90mph, only two of which were slower than 89mph. He ended with a very unlucky 2 for 40. Mitchell Johnson was not far behind. Wahab Riaz returned the most memorable 2 for 54 in cricket history. This game was royally enlivened by thrilling pacemen whom the ECB must dream of being able to transform into much more reliable 83mph naggers.2. Shane Watson can play the short ball.Wahab’s thunderous spell to Watson almost turned the game towards Pakistan, possibly decisively. The fact that Rahat Ali’s heavily buttered fingers reprieved the Australian meant that instead it turned the game towards Australia irretrievably. Wahab gave the impression that Watson struggled against bouncers. Therefore, in the 22nd over, after Wahab’s onslaught had ended, Sohail Khan tested Watson out with bouncers. Six, in an eight-ball over. Watson spanked two fours and watched two more sail over his head for wides, and kept out the other two comfortably. Watson was not struggling against bouncers. He was struggling against Wahab’s bouncers. He might well also have struggled against Mohammad Irfan’s bouncers, but the big man’s pelvis denied the cricketing world what could have been one of the fiercest trials by pace in ODI history.New Zealand v West Indies
Nothing was learned from this game that was not already known. About either side.

In the futuristic ODI world, England can only have tools from the Stone Age

Timothy Ellis09-Mar-2015The current Disney film Big Hero 6 involves a bunch of normal kids who suddenly attain superhero strengths. When looking at the English top six batting order, it is hard to see how they are capable of any such animation. James Taylor and Gary Ballance don’t really look like they could destroy the forces of evil either. Charisma? Forget it. The creators of Big Hero 6 also made Frozen. The latter would be a far more suitable moniker for England’s performances so far in Australia and New Zealand.In the futuristic ODI world, England can only offer tools from the Stone Age. Their one modern day superpower, KP, came with a computer glitch that would eventually turn him into a felon. Their one-day batsmen (and bowlers) seem to suffer stage fright. Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad look like they are taking on any role just to get the pay cheque. The auditions are one-paced and boring, full of management talk and robotic drills. The players can’t deliver their lines “live” on the pitch, even though the ECB has a budget that should be churning out A-listers.It all goes back to a defensive mentality. Even when they had “successful” World Cups (runners-up in three of the first five tournaments) there was a mechanical way about England. In the Lord’s final of 1979, Viv Richards and Collis King embarked on an assault to get West Indies up to near 300. The home team responded by opening up with Mike Brearley and Geoff Boycott. Hollywood stroke-makers are eviscerated. In a must-win match against South Africa during the 2007 tournament, Michael Vaughan and Ian Bell put on nine runs in the first seven overs. There is something clinically wrong with England in the 50-over format.The Sri Lankans have now handed out two of the most horrible tonkings to England in World Cup history, after the 2011 quarter-final when Jonathan Trott hit two boundaries in his 86 as they crawled to 229. On that day, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Upul Tharanga smashed their way home with 10 overs and 10 wickets to spare.England were thumped by nine wickets on March 1 in Wellington. Bell started positively but slowed down and perished on 49. Gary Ballance’s arrival slowed England down further before Joe Root broke the shackles. Buttler provided some late boost as England reached 309. Anderson and Broad have failed to make early inroads, exposing Chris Woakes as a jobbing actor.The truth is that England are down on confidence. They fell flat against New Zealand, Australia and Sri Lanka, with the bat, ball and also on the field. They are in danger of not making the quarter-finals: A horror movie looms.

ESPNcricinfo staff15-Apr-2015Delhi Daredevils knew that defeat would make them holders of the longest IPL losing run (12), and gave it their all on the field•BCCIVijay was dismissed for 19, but Virender Sehwag’s aggressive 47 kept the run-rate at over seven an over•BCCIHe shared a 71-run, second-wicket stand with Wriddhiman Saha, who slammed three sixes during his 39 off 28•BCCIKings XI were 104 for 1 in the 14th over when the Daredevils spinners clawed the visitors back into the game. Saha perished after lofting JP Duminy to Nathan Coulter-Nile at deep cover•BCCISehwag fell in the very next over, and though Glenn Maxwell hit Imran Tahir for two sixes, he was bowled off a legbreak from the spinner. Tahir ended with figures of 4-0-43-3•BCCIAxar Patel and George Bailey tried to accelerate at the death, but Daredevils fought back to keep the hosts to 165. Kings XI’s innings ended with Axar’s slog safely pouched in the hands of Angelo Mathews•BCCIKings XI got an early breakthrough in their defence when Sandeep Sharma dismissed Shreyas Iyer for 6•BCCIBut Duminy was fluent, stroking his way to 21•BCCIUntil his innings ended in unfortunate fashion when he was run out after colliding with Axar•BCCIMayank Agarwal was unfazed, though, his 48-ball 68 featuring seven fours and two sixes•BCCIDaredevls’ record buy Yuvraj Singh also rose to the occasion, flicking three sixes over the leg side. He smashed 54 off 39•BCCIThe pair added 106 in 11 overs, as the visitors closed in on victory•BCCIHowever, neither batsmen could quite complete the chase, as two wickets in two balls injected gave Kings XI a glimmer. Yuvraj was the first to go, dismissed after Sandeep Sharma pulled a blinder from midwicket…•BCCI… and when Agarwal was bowled off a full toss from Anureet Singh, Daredevils were left needing seven off nine balls•BCCIMathews, though, ensured his team’s losing run wouldn’t stretch any further, sealing the win with a four down the ground with one ball remaining•BCCI