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.”

England’s utility option is a fine cricketer in his own right, but does he offer enough in each of his roles to be the World Cup stand-by?

George Dobell in Cardiff05-May-2019You can understand why the selectors are so keen on Joe Denly. In theory, he fills several holes in their World Cup squad. He is the reserve spinner, reserve top-order batsman, reserve middle-order batsman and a fine substitute fielder in a variety of positions. He is, no doubt, an admirably versatile cricketer. While England’s final 15 will not be confirmed for a couple of weeks, word from the management suggests he is almost certain to be included; a remarkable situation for a man who has played one ODI this decade.But, as his first two deliveries in Cardiff – both long-hops – were deposited deep into the stand at midwicket, it was hard not to wonder if there might have been some wishful thinking in England’s appraisal of his skills. While he recently gained an unwanted record – he suffered a first-ball duck on debut in the IPL to complement the first-ball duck he suffered on first-class debut in 2004 – he can certainly bat and may yet come in at No. 3 in the Ashes. But expecting him to carry the role of a frontline bowler at the World Cup appears a high-risk strategy.There is no intention to field him in such a role, of course. Denly is in the squad, in part at least, as a spin-bowling cover so will almost certainly only play if either Adil Rashid or Moeen Ali are injured. He is not the first-choice reserve batsman – that is likely to be James Vince – and there is very little chance of England fielding three spinners.But if either Moeen or Adil do suffer an injury, England may well have to rely on Denly’s legspin. And, at least of this evidence, that would be an uncomfortable position in which to find themselves.Perhaps it’s harsh to judge Denly on such a small sample size. These were just two balls, after all. He finished the over well enough and has certainly developed, in T20 cricket at least, as a useful option over the last few season.But the sample size on which his bowling has been judged positively is pretty small, too. He has claimed just 47 List A wickets in his 15-year career and 25 of those have been taken overseas. Only once in an English season has he claimed more than four wickets. It might also be remembered that his maiden ODI wicket – taken against Ireland on Friday – came from a leg-side wide. Not only that, but Ben Foakes’ stumping was so opportunistically delayed, the opposition skipper suggested it should have been a dead ball.So his selection as a spin-bowling all-rounder is based disproportionately on the 2018 summer when he claimed 14 List A wickets. Encouragingly, four of those came in a high-pressure situation – in the Royal London Cup final – and against a good side in Hampshire. But less encouragingly, another four of them came against a weak Glamorgan side who lost seven of the eight matches they played.He enjoyed a decent T20 campaign with the ball in 2018, too. But the role of spinner in that format – essentially much more negative that the wicket-taking approach shown by Rashid, in particular – would require some significant adaptation in the longer format. The worry is, with batsmen given time size him up, he would struggle to get through anywhere near 10 overs without the pace of Moeen or the variation of Rashid.Part of England’s reasoning around Denly’s inclusion centres on the replacement rules at the World Cup. While injured players can be replaced at any time, they cannot subsequently be brought back into the squad. So England are keen to have a ready-made spin-bowling replacement in their 15 who could come in for a match or two as required without weakening the batting or fielding. If everyone is fit, there is no realistic scenario in which Denly plays.On the surface, that makes some sense. Some of the contenders for the third-spinner role – the likes of Lancashire’s Matt Parkinson – would have to be considered specialist bowlers, so having them in the squad would cover fewer holes.But it also ignores the success of Liam Dawson in county cricket. Dawson has claimed 17 wickets in this year’s Royal London Cup – only three men have claimed more – and is conceding just 4.01 runs an over. No one who has delivered 40 overs or more has been more frugal. The fact that he is also averaging 49.20 with the bat – underlines the sense that he can count himself unfortunate.It ignores the depth added by Joe Root, too. Only last June, Root bowled 10 overs for the cost of just 44 against Australia in Durham. And while England would be nervous about going into an ODI with Root as one of a five-man attack, his presence as a sixth option is useful. He might well prove no more expensive than Denly.We may well be on the brink of finding out how Denly would fare as a frontline bowler. There is some concern in the England squad about the fitness of Moeen for Wednesday’s opening ODI against Pakistan at The Oval. While the rib injury is not thought to be a long-term problem, it is highly unlikely England will risk anyone this close to the World Cup. Denly may be given an opportunity to see what he can do. While his selection currently looks all but certain, prolonged exposure in such a role may not do his chances any good.

Five players from the island were in the World Cup squad, but only one – John Campbell – is in the squad for the Tests against India

Aishwarya Kumar in Kingston30-Aug-2019Jeff Dujon was four years old when his father took him to Sabina Park for the first time. There, Dujon would train for hours, as his father sat in one of the colorful chairs set up by the Jamaica Cricket Association beyond the boundary line. It didn’t matter if Dujon was restless or bored. That was how he would learn the basics, his father had decided, and that was what he would do.The youngster was at the park for so much of his time that he would bump into Jamaican Test greats like Gerry Alexander, Jackie Hendriks, Reg Scarlett and Allan Rae at the ground or, sometimes, in the dressing rooms. For the boy, this meant “listening to these guys just talking cricket, and as a cricketer you listen and you learn every little thing you see”.A few years later, Charles Joseph, a former member of the ground staff at Sabina Park, saw Dujon batting. Joseph, who worked at the ground for 49 years, told everybody who would listen that “Jeff is going to play for the West Indies.” Ten years later, Dujon was picked as a wicketkeeper-batsman in the West Indies team.ALSO READ: Krishnaswamy – Kemar Roach 2.0: potential for fast-bowling greatnessThat was the cricketing culture Jamaican kids grew up around in the years leading up to and through 1970s and 1980s, and even in the 1990s, to an extent. Kids hung around and listened to former Test and first-class cricketers of repute, and, more often than not, played with top-notch cricketers.That culture played a role in letting the world watch Michael Holding and Lawrence Rowe, Dujon and Courtney Walsh, and even Chris Gayle. Five players from the island had been part of the World Cup squad – Gayle, Andre Russell, Fabian Allen, Oshane Thomas and Sheldon Cottrell, although Cottrell turned out for Leeward Islands last season. The team currently playing the Test series against India, however, has one Jamaican – opener John Campbell.So what’s gone wrong?Dujon remembered the good old days. “You would have players who were playing Test cricket for the West Indies at the time, and players who had played or were still playing a lot of first-class cricket, and there was that support system, that structure where you could be in an environment where you could learn,” he told ESPNcricinfo.

In a lot of ways, the older players in clubs now are from that era where the club structure starts to break down, so it’s the blind leading the blindJeff Dujon

In the last ten years, excluding Gayle and Marlon Samuels, only a handful of Jamaicans have played Test cricket for West Indies: Jermaine Blackwood (27 matches between 2014 and 2017), Chadwick Walton (two in 2009), Andre Russell (one in 2010), Nikita Miller (one in 2009) and Campbell (four this year). Remove Blackwood from the list and the others have eight matches between them.”That [the tradition] has broken down pretty much now and obviously, more of the longer format of the game was played then anyway,” Dujon pointed out. “So as a young player you got a grounding in the game. Now club structures don’t cater for that. As a result, in a lot of ways, the older players in clubs now are from that era where the club structure starts to break down, so it’s the blind leading the blind.”As a result, that immersive, fly-on-the-wall learning and mentorship has been lost.”The level at which I learned the game from these much older people – there’s nobody now that has that experience to carry that forward,” Dujon said.The shift in focus from red-ball to white-ball cricket, is “not necessarily a good thing”, according to Dujon, who argues that players have become better at the shorter formats because that is what they have been seeing more of from the top international players.”It’s the amount of white-ball cricket that’s played, for one. And secondly, the coaching element in terms of red-ball cricket is deficient,” Dujon explained. “If you look at the more successful white-ball cricketers in the world, with the exception of probably Chris Gayle, they all average in the 40s or 50s in Test or first-class cricket. The development of a limited-overs cricketer should start with the longer format of the game and I don’t think enough emphasis is placed on that now.Jeff Dujon was West Indies’ mainstay behind the wickets through the 1980s•Getty Images”If you look at not just Jamaica, but throughout the Caribbean, we are very weak when it comes to the longer format of the game because they haven’t had the basics inculcated at an early age.”Joseph, who watched Dujon, Michael Holding, Courtney Walsh, Jimmy Adams, and many others grow up at Sabina Park and go on to become stalwarts, goes back to what he heard coaches, fathers and players in the past say often. “Respect the ball.” Looking around, it looks like that is what has gone missing, that respect, what that little phrase represented.”Respect the ball enough to know when you can swing and when you need to block,” Joseph said.There has been a generational shift in the way players approach Test cricket. Derval Green, a 30-year-old Jamaican first-class cricketer, could well be stating the obvious when he says, “Nobody wants to sit here all day and watch their team score 150 runs in all of the overs at the end of the day.”The worldwide shift to the shorter formats – “more opportunity, more appeal” – haven’t helped the new generation players when it comes to Test cricket either, Dujon and Joseph concurred.The last three years have been tough for Jamaican cricket, especially in first-class cricket. The 2011-12 season was the last time the team won the Regional 4 Day first-class Competition. Since that season, they have not won the Regional Super 50, the main one-day competition, either, although they made the final in 2016-17. On the other hand, the franchise, Jamaica Tallawahs have won the Caribbean Premier League twice: the inaugural edition in 2013 and then in 2016. Green, who has played in national-level tournaments, said. “We’re losing the energy of the crowd – I hope it changes really quickly, because energy is everything.”Equally crucial is managing talent, which Jamaica has failed to, according to Dujon. He felt Chris Gayle was the last man from the island to find a way to be outstanding in every format of the game, went beyond just talent, showing patience, fortitude and the tenacity to control, and then expand, the way he played.”You have the cliché about staying in your box, and [the youngsters] I don’t think really identified the dimensions of their box and learnt to play inside their box,” Dujon elaborated. “The youngsters today lack that concentration and control and I don’t know how you teach that.”As a result, when West Indies host India in their second and final World Test Championship Test starting Friday at Sabina Park, only one local player will be around on the field. Not how it was supposed to be all those years ago.

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.

Stats and even advanced algorithms cannot tell you the real story – Jasprit Bumrah has been the difference between the two sides

Sidharth Monga26-Jan-20202:30

Learning how to plan a chases from the Virat Kohli manual – Iyer

Eight overs, two fours, one six, 52 runs. Man-of-the-Match awards won’t tell you the real story: the difference between the two teams has been Jasprit Bumrah.Against any other team, any other bowling attack, on both nights New Zealand were doing just enough to post par totals. Look at these scenarios. In the first match, on a flat pitch, they enter the last three overs just north of 10 an over. With wickets in hand, you expect sides batting first to get upwards of 40, especially on a small ground, and that would have taken New Zealand to a par score. Bumrah bowled the 18th and 20th overs without a boundary, conceding just 16, that too thanks to three overthrows.Two days later, struggling on a slow surface, New Zealand somehow had themselves needing 10 an over in the last four overs to reach 150, which would have tested India. Except that they had two Bumrah overs to contend with, which brought only 12 runs.This match must have felt extra sweet to India because it is their batsmen who have famously been at the receiving end of such an innings. In the final of the World T20 in 2014, it was their batsmen who were stifled by Bumrah’s mentor at Mumbai Indians, Lasith Malinga, and his friends. The last three balls ruined it – a wicket fell and a six was hit – otherwise India looked well on their way to consigning New Zealand to the second-lowest T20I score for just four wickets down. Ross Taylor, who played the kind of hand Yuvraj Singh did in Dhaka for a 24-ball 18, fell to the fourth ball of the last over.Jasprit Bumrah was miserly as ever•Getty ImagesNew Zealand opener Martin Guptill was asked if New Zealand had been too conservative, knowing that they hadn’t lost the wickets and yet failed to score at a high enough rate. An exasperated response followed: “The guys were trying. There was a lot of swinging and missing, and that can happen. Obviously, you’re playing against one of the best death bowlers in the world. He’s got a great slower ball, hits the hole pretty well and he’s got a great bouncer. So it’s pretty hard to get Bumrah away at the end, and hopefully he can have three off nights for us, coming up.”Guptill should know. He and Colin Munro faced Bumrah at the top of the innings, and managed to get just five runs in the third over. It was part of the reason why Shardul Thakur got his wicket: Guptill was forced to take too many risks against other bowlers.Bumrah is the most complete white-ball bowler going around in the world today. Had he been slightly less perfect, he would have got many more wickets. As of now, batsmen know they have no chance against him so they defer the risk-taking to when they are facing the other bowlers. You can’t write this sort of impact into any other advanced algorithm also.Bumrah knows this. He calls it “money in the bank”. He will encash it some day. He knows his worth. His team knows his worth. His opponents know his terror. So deceptive do his hyperextension and his accuracy make him that you have to set up to play one of the two deliveries: slower one or the regulation pace. You have to live with the fact that the best you will get is a single off the other set.A crude way of putting it is this: you are going to be able to set up for only half of his deliveries. Off the other half, you will be lucky to get singles off half of them. So on most nights, one Bumrah over is a write-off on an average. India are playing T20, other teams N19. That is the Bumrah impact, and all you can do is hope and pray he has off nights.

It’s a 20-year-long relationship that’s often been friendly and sometimes fraught, but always intriguing

Mohammad Isam21-Nov-2019

Late 1990s: The Dalmiya touch
When we discuss the history of Bangladesh cricket, the late Jagmohan Dalmiya features prominently.Between 1997 and 1999, Bangladesh Cricket Board bigwigs Saber Hossain Chowdhury and Syed Ashraful Haq spoke to Dalmiya again and again, explaining their ambition of becoming a Test-playing nation.Dalmiya first agreed to send India to play the 1998 Independence Cup tri-series in Dhaka, before inviting Bangladesh to a tri-series in India a few months later. Dhaka soon became the venue for the ICC Knockout Cup (later the ICC Champions Trophy), and soon after their participation in the 1999 World Cup, the ICC sent a team led by Dr Ali Bacher to take stock of the situation in Bangladesh. The report was a favorable one, and with cricket diplomacy on in full swig, the vote in June 2000 went Bangladesh’s way and they became a Full Member.Were Bangladesh ready for Test cricket? Did Dalmiya do what he did for political gains? These are questions that have done the rounds endlessly over the years – especially when Bangladesh have faltered at the highest stage – but it’s true that Dalmiya became such an important part of Bangladesh cricket that he was accorded motorcades more than once during his visits to Dhaka those days.After England refused to be part of Bangladesh’s inaugural Test, the BCCI stepped in and a match was set for November 10, 2000, in Dhaka.Jagmohan Dalmiya played a crucial role in Bangladesh earning Test status•Getty ImagesNovember 2000: Ganguly, also at the beginning
Bangladesh’s entry to the Test arena took place at a time of great upheaval in Indian cricket, with the corruption scandal hogging the headlines. Ganguly, just four years old in Test cricket, became the captain, and the Dhaka Test was his first as leader. He strode out for the toss with Bangladesh captain Naimur Rahman, with Sheikh Hasina, then in her first term as Bangladesh’s prime minister, present on the first day.Now the BCCI boss, Ganguly, arguably the most popular Indian cricketer in Bangladesh, has made the pink-ball Test happen within days of taking charge, and in attendance at what is a historic occasion will be Hasina, also the current prime minister, as well as a number of Bangladeshi players who were a part of the 2000 Test.The new FTP: Finally, a Test match in India
For much of Bangladesh’s existence as a Test-playing nation, they have had to wait to play Test cricket in India. Particularly when India toured Bangladesh for bilateral series in 2004, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2014, the question of “when will Bangladesh tour India” was a running track. The BCCI never said it explicitly, but it was understood that they were not keen on hosting a side that didn’t promise much on the field, or in terms of commerce.But the 2014 agreements vis-a-vis the future tours programme effectively put the BCCI in a commitment to host Bangladesh, and by mid-2016 it was announced that in February 2017, Bangladesh would be playing their first Test in India. It was played in Hyderabad, and India won by 208 runs.Mushfiqur Rahim celebrates Bangladesh’s maiden T20I win over India•BCCI2014: How India changed its stance
Five years before Ganguly’s ascension as the BCCI head, Bangladesh’s first proper bilateral tour to India took shape as part of a deal between the two cricket boards. Although it was much later that the schedule was set for November 2019, BCB chief Nazmul Hassan had confirmed in February 2014 itself that the board had signed a members’ participation agreement with the BCCI for four India tours.It was part of the negotiations that most boards had with the BCCI, Cricket Australia and the England and Wales Cricket Board after the Big Three developments came out in January that year. The BCB didn’t immediately take sides and were initially very apprehensive of what appeared to it as something that wouldn’t end well for Bangladesh. But in the weeks that followed, the negotiations resulted in agreements – and the BCCI has lived up to its promise on all of them.The last few years: An off-field rivalry
Until their 2-1 ODI series win in 2015 at home, Bangladesh were down 33-3 in all international matches against India. The Mustafizur Rahman-inspired series win in Dhaka, however, remained a one-off as India have continued to be dominant in these contests. Still, Bangladesh have pushed them in the last three years, mainly in white-ball cricket, and there have been a number of last-over finishes – in Bengaluru, in Colombo and in Dubai, and they beat India for the first time in a T20I earlier this month.But the improved on-field competition has resulted in somewhat nasty exchanges, at times, between the cricket fans of the two nations. Social media is often inundated with abuse between the two sets of supporters, so much so that Bangladesh ODI captain Mashrafe Mortaza had to call for calm ahead of their 2019 World Cup match in Birmingham.2019: History in Kolkata
Virat Kohli, reportedly, agreed to play the day-night Test in Kolkata within “three seconds” of Ganguly speaking to him about it, and Hassan didn’t take much longer after his first conversation with his BCCI counterpart. But, while Hassan agreed in principle, he – and the board – left it to the Bangladesh players and team management to take the final decision during their training camp in Mirpur in late October. Within 24 hours of huge upheaval in Bangladesh cricket, the team came on board.

Meanwhile, Hetmyer smashed Jadeja for 85 runs off 50 balls including nine sixes in three innings on this tour

Bharath Seervi15-Dec-2019198 – Deliveries bowled by spinners in this match without picking any wicket, which is the most in an ODI in India. India spinners bowled 126 balls and West Indies 72 balls. There have been only four ODIs overall where spinners bowled more deliveries without finding any wicket.2 – Number of higher individual scores in successful chases against India than Shimron Hetmyer’s 139 in this Chennai ODI. The highest is Sanath Jayasuriya’s 151 not out at Wankhede in 1997. The previous highest by a West Indies batsman in a successful chase versus India was Ricardo Powell’s 124 in the final of Singapore Challenge in 1999.2 – Instances of two batsmen scoring centuries in a successful chase against India. The first was by Australia in 2016 in Perth where Steven Smith and George Bailey scored hundreds. It was the third instance of two West Indies batsmen scoring centuries in a successful chase.