All posts by h716a5.icu

Derbyshire will aim to pick up where they left off in 2012 but Division One of the Championship will test their skills, spirit and unity

George Dobell27-Mar-2013Last year Champions (promoted), CC Div 2; Group stage, FLt20; 4th in Group C, CB40.2012 in a nutshell Derbyshire have, for many years, been seen as a symbol of everything that is wrong in county cricket: barely competitive and rarely producing international players. But achieving promotion – the first time they have done so – was a welcome step in the right direction and reward for a club that has been revitalised since the arrival of the new chairman, Chris Grant. Success was built largely upon an excellent start to the season. While their rivals were thwarted by rain, Derbyshire won four of their first seven games and, with Tony Palladino and company exploiting seamer-friendly pitches, stole the march that led them to promotion. They were somewhat overly reliant for runs upon their overseas players – Martin Guptill and Usman Khawaja topped the batting averages – though Wayne Madsen and left-arm spinner David Wainwright also enjoyed solid seasons. They were much less successful in the limited-overs formats, winning two and losing six of their T20 games, but, for the first time in many years, Derbyshire played with spirit, hope and expectation in 2012.2013 prospects Consolidating a place in the top division should be considered a decent achievement. The method that served them so well in 2012 – prevailing on green pitches – may prove high-risk when they come up against the likes of Durham and Warwickshire in Division One. Several of the squad will also be testing themselves at a higher level than ever before and they will need to so without the two overseas batsmen who played such a huge role in winning promotion. They have recruited astutely, though. The batting has been strengthened by bringing in Shiv Chanderpaul – one of the scoops of the off-season – and Billy Godleman, who once kept Nick Compton out of the Middlesex side and may yet, given a more sympathetic environment, turn his undoubted qualities into regular match-defining contributions. The seam bowling depth – with Mark Turner and Mark Footitt continuing to promise a bit more than they have achieved – remains impressive. Turner, in particular, looks to have developed substantially over the winter. More will be required from the likes of Ross Whiteley, Chesney Hughes and, with the bat, from Jon Clare and Wainwright if they are to survive, but all have impressed in pre-season.Key player Dan Redfern is representative of this team beyond the runs he scores. Marooned in the seconds before Grant’s revolution, he is exactly the type of player – young, gifted and, just about, locally produced – the club needs to see prosper in order to both improve and justify its own existence. If he can flourish in the top division, it will go a long to way to helping Derbyshire to survival and showing the club’s strategy is correct.Bright young thing At 24, Whiteley is not that young. But, with only 27 first-class games behind him, he is inexperienced. His current record is modest and does his ability no justice – he averages just 33.27 – but he is capable of timing the ball unusually sweetly and looks to have the class make the step up.Captain/coach The smile has returned to the face of Derbyshire cricket over the last couple of years. Overseen by the calm and benevolent figure of head coach, Karl Krikken, and spurred on by the captaincy of Madsen, a resurgent team spirit has emerged. Whether that spirit is enough to overcome some of the other obstacles the club faces remains to be seen, but the pair have a good record of getting the best from the players at their disposal. You can’t ask for more.ESPNcricinfo verdict Resourceful enough to escape relegation in Division One, although it could be a struggle. Hard to see much one-day success.

Five things to look forward to in the fifth edition of the Champions League T20

Rohan Sharma16-Sep-2013Tendulkar, Dravid sign-off in coloured clothes
If there ever was a reason to tune into the Champions League, then consider the fact that this be the last time Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid feature in a limited-overs tournament.Dravid will have extra incentive to sign off on a high, not only for himself, but for his much beleaguered Rajasthan Royals franchise. Tendulkar, on the other hand, will be buoyed for different reasons as his Mumbai Indians franchise enter as IPL champions, and former winners of the tournament. Expect added intrigue when both batsmen mark their guard, with the home crowd leading the tributes.Sangakkara for Kandurata
In what became an extended soap opera, Kumar Sangakkara, who has been an IPL regular since its inception, was put on the spot by the SLC to decide on whether he would represent his Sri Lankan franchise, Kandurata Maroons, or play for Sunrisers Hyderabad. In the end, he appeased the Sri Lankan board by choosing Kandurata.With the addition of Sangakkara, Kandurata now boasts of a strong T20 squad. Nuwan Kulasekera is a dependable opening bowler, while Rangana Herath has experience and guile. Their biggest threat, though, is Ajantha Mendis, who holds the record for best T20I figures.Misbah in a T20 avatar
After being dropped from the national T20 squad following Pakistan’s series loss against England in the UAE, Misbah-ul-Haq has become one of the most consistent batsmen in limited-overs cricket. Since his last T20I in late February 2012, Misbah has scored 1306 ODI runs in 34 matches at an average of 52.24. Prior to that, his average was 10 points lower, at 42.31. He has also hit 13 half-centuries in that period, which is sizable when you consider he has 31 in all.With Faisalabad Wolves qualifying, this tournament will provide a chance for the Pakistan captain to stamp his authority on the shortest format, and hopefully find a route back into Pakistan’s T20I team. His domestic record this year highlights his form, as he finished as top scorer of the Faysal Bank Super Eight T20 Cup. He was the only batsman to crack 200 runs, and managed to score them at a healthy strike rate of 140.Trinidad & Tobago bring the flair
Trinidad & Tobago enter each T20 tournament as one of the favourites. This time, they also possess the number one ranked T20I bowler in Sunil Narine, while also harbouring some dynamic batsmen as well. A top order of Adrian Barath, Lendl Simmons and Darren Bravo can be a handful for any bowling attack, while Samuel Badree, the legspinner, can open the bowling with competence.T&T’s recent tournament record has not been good, having failed to make the semi-finals over the last few years, but they did feature in the inaugural final. With the confidence of West Indies’ T20 World Cup win, and a number of those players representing T&T, they start the tournaments as strong contenders. South African franchises bolsteredWith some premier IPL teams not making the cut, a number of South African players, who would otherwise have been first-choice picks for their respective IPL franchises, now find themselves back in their domestic sides. Titans and Lions represent the South African contingent this year, with both sides featuring a number of accomplished players.However, the failure of Delhi Daredevils and Royal Challengers Bangalore to qualify for this year’s tournament means that players such as AB de Villiers and Morne Morkel are available for selection. Titans will be boosted with the arrival of de Villiers and Morkel, while Lions will enjoy having Quinton de Kock and Lonwabo Tsotsobe back in the fold. This provides a huge bonus to their chances at progression into the semi-finals, as most of these players have the ability to turn the course of a match.

After years of improvement and investment, an ageing England side produced a medley of the bad old days at the WACA

George Dobell15-Dec-20130:00

#PoliteEnquiries: Is Matt Prior’s career over?

Like an ageing entertainer on a farewell tour, England produced a medley of the bad old days of English cricket on the third day at the WACA.They gave us a classic batting collapse, an insipid display of bowling, a couple of dropped catches, a comic missed stumping and that old standard, an injury to a key player, during a performance that underlined the sense that the belief has long since drained from this side.It seemed that all the years of improvement, the investment into central contracts and academies, the input of high-profile coaches and the attention to detail that saw such initiatives as the production of an 80-page cookbook and the appointment of an army of support staff so vast it now comprises a spot welder and a woman who makes balloon animals, had never happened. It could have been 1994-95.It is hard to pinpoint England’s lowest moment on a day so full of them that you could go pot-holing in the ignominy. Might it have been the sight of England’s No 6 flashing at a ball outside the off stump in the manner of a tail-ender? Might it have been the sight of Stuart Broad on crutches? Or might it have been the sight of Matt Prior, for so long a beacon of excellence in this side, flailing around behind the stumps like a drowning man? Or perhaps it was simply the sight of Tim Bresnan taking the new ball. Whatever the plan was when England named three giant fast bowlers in their squad for this series, it surely wasn’t Bresnan taking the new ball at the WACA.But the sight of Graeme Swann and James Anderson carted around Perth by David Warner and co might be considered most dispiriting of all from an England perspective. Both men have long been fine servants of this team and both men are in the top six Test wicket takers in England history. But it is becoming increasingly hard to avoid the conclusion that they are players in decline. Their series averages – seven wickets at 48.85 for Anderson and seven wickets at 74.14 for Swann – are far from the levels required if England were going to win this series.There is no obvious drop in pace from Anderson. There have been times in this match when he has hit 90mph on the speed gun and his control has remained admirable. He is the only member of the England attack to concede fewer than three runs in a series throughout the series to date.But whereas in 2010-11 – the series in which he claimed 24 wickets at an average of 26.04 – he was able to generate lateral movement, here he has struggled to find the seam or swing to trouble batsmen on such good pitches. More worryingly, he has failed to gain the movement found by his Australian counterparts.It may be that England have simply asked too much of Anderson. There was a time when the side were uncomfortable reliant upon him – remember that 14-over spell that sealed the Trent Bridge Test. Certainly the vision of him bowling in Australia’s second innings, with the game long gone and the temperature well over 40 degrees, was like using a sports car to carry scaffolding.It is a similar tale with Swann. On pitches offering him little, he was always likely to struggle for bite. But the fact is, he has been out-bowled by his opposite number, Nathan Lyon and, in conceding nearly four-an-over, has been unable to give his captain the control required to build pressure.It is not just that he has struggled to gain any turn; that must be expected on these wickets. He has also struggled for the dip that used to make him such a dangerous bowler and he has failed to gain the bounce that has, at times, rendered Lyon the more dangerous operator.But the bowlers are not the primary reason for England’s imminent Ashes defeat. It is not the bowlers who have dropped chances or bowlers that have batted so feebly. It is not the bowlers’ fault that they have, in three successive matches, been forced back into the field for the second innings without adequate rest and with the Australian batsmen enjoying an enviable match position. England have hardly given their bowlers a chance.Matt Prior’s missed stumping against David Warner was just one of many blemishes for England•PA PhotosNo, the main reason for England’s defeat will have been their batsmen. First innings totals of 136, 172 and 251 are simply inadequate. At times when England should have showed patience and application, they have tried to hit themselves out of trouble like novices.So it was entirely typical that, of the three remaining top-order batsmen at the start of day three here, two should lose their wickets in the morning session to reckless attacking strokes. Prior and Stokes followed Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen in departing to unnecessary shots that spoke volumes for the pressure built up by Australia’s disciplined attack and the desperation of a batting line-up that have lost faith in their ability to grind out totals from tough positions.The last time – 22 innings and 10 months ago – that England scored 400, against New Zealand at Wellington, England had two centurions: Nick Compton and Jonathan Trott. In the aftermath of the game, there were suggestions that such a pairing in the top three might result in England scoring too slowly. That England might need to score quicker to win games. That England needed to be more positive.At Leeds, in May, England beat New Zealand by 247 runs only to be bombarded by criticism for their slow rate of scoring. Compton was dropped and Trott was described as one-paced and even selfish by some.Right now, such a view looks more than a little foolish.

South Africa’s Under-19s have always fared a little better than the seniors. And this year they achieved something no senior team from the country has ever done

Firdose Moonda03-Mar-2014Proud. Smiling. Satisfied.South Africa have been crowned world champions for the first time•ICCThese are the things World Cup champions look like. Today, for the first time, South African cricket fans got to see their own.The Under-19 team touched down from the UAE. They brought with them a trophy. An ICC trophy. They took it around Newlands so everyone could see. As they did, a baby monkey leapt off South African cricket’s back.When South Africa last had their hands on one, most of these young men who paraded around today were only just learning to walk. And many would argue the 1998 ICC Knockout Trophy (now called the Champions Trophy) does not rank anywhere near a World Cup crown, something the senior side has not even got close to.The young ones have always fared a little better. They have won knockout games, which the big boys have yet to do, and even reached the final on three previous occasions. Two years ago they had a team that was talked about as good enough to go all the way. Ray Jennings called the class of 2012 his most talented bunch but South Africans have heard that kind of thing before.Jennings didn’t say much ahead of this year’s event, and it kicked off almost unnoticed here. The group stages swept by under the radar, so did the quarter-final, and it was really only when South Africa’s Under-19s were due to take on Australia’s in the semi-final, that some hype was generated. Had Australia’s senior side not been touring the country at the same time, there’s a good chance that match would not have received much attention either, but the combination was too perfect to ignore.The old enemy. The current enemy. And the future enemy. All at the same time. No wonder Aiden Markram, the Under-19 captain, said he could feel the fixture had a heightened sense of importance. “Just knowing our history against them and what was going on at home, that was definitely one of the highlights. We wanted to beat them,” he said.Thanks to Kagiso Rabada’s 6 for 25, victory was achieved by a massive margin, and that’s when Jennings began to worry. He had taken the team to the brink. As much as he wanted to, he knew he could not push them over. They had to do it themselves. But he could take comfort in them being as prepared as they could be in every way.”They’d done a lot of homework. For example, when we did video analysis, the guys sat down and did five hours,” Jennings said. “Not just a few minutes. The guys were really committed. We went to a match, Bangladesh against Australia, because we knew we’d come up against one of them at some stage. Everybody took notes for the whole match. There was a lot of dedication and a real care factor.”Then, there was only a target of 132 to chase. Only 132.There were skeptics everywhere. South Africa are not the kind of team who mess up chasing at less than three runs an over. But in a high-pressure situation, they have become known as the only team who can engineer a defeat from a seemingly straightforward task.Jennings knew that. “I was worried because when you’re chasing 132 and you don’t get there, people will say you choked. If you’re only chasing 280 or something and you don’t get there, people say other things but 130 is different,” he said.He was right. When South Africa slumped to 28 for 2, one of the members of the press corps at Newlands made mock choking sounds. “Just call me when they need 30 runs off the last seven overs with two wickets in hand,” the journalist said. That never happened.But something almost as worrying did. As the chase neared its end, South Africa went from 99 for 2 to 100 for 4. Throats were being cleared violently. They still needed 32 runs but had six wickets in hand and 16.5 overs to do it. Surely, surely, surely, they would not mess it up.Not much time could be spent dwelling on it, though. With Michael Clarke and Morne Morkel tussling in one of cricket’s most intriguing boxing matches, everyone had something else to think about.Somewhere in the middle of all of that, the result appeared on the scoreboard. “South Africa Under-19 win World Cup.” The last three words had to be seen to be believed. Never before had they applied to a South African cricket team. Ever. For the briefest of moments there was a stunned silence which was soon broken by a loud whoop.On the field, Graeme Smith was seen smiling and he soon began the applause. Hashim Amla joined in, AB de Villiers did too. For a few seconds every member of the South Africa squad was clapping while they got ready for the next ball. They didn’t have much to be pleased about with the way their own match was going but at least the future was bright and everybody seemed to know.Before lunch on the third day of the ongoing Test, again, there was not much to shout about for South Africa. But one man was doing a solitary war cry. “Well done, well done,” Makhaya Ntini boomed through the media area. He was the first former international to personally see and congratulate the victorious Under-19s.While the scribes, especially the Australian ones with early deadlines tapped away, Ntini tried to get them to pay attention. “This is my son, you know?” he said. Members of the press looked turned around expecting to see little Thando but found themselves looking up at Ngazibini Sigwili, the left-arm quick from East London . Ntini quickly explained. “We play at the same club. And I am now so proud of him. He is a champion, you know.”So are all the rest of them, and they soon got the attention they deserved. A small press conference was organised, Markram and Jennings spoke briefly about their experiences in the UAE and then appeared on television. At tea time the squad went on a lap of honour around the field, and it was then that the appreciation for what they had done could be seen.The Newlands crowd was on its feet, cheering. The team waved a flag, carried first by Jennings and then handed to Rabada while Jennings filmed the moment. Incidentally, they could be his last as Under-19 coach. Some of them signed autographs. Others posed for pictures, and at the end they were welcomed onto a podium to receive an official congratulations. Some members of the South African Test team were also there to greet them.The national side has other things to think about at the moment but in a few weeks’ time they too will be playing in an ICC event. They might take some inspiration from the men they saw in front of them today and the words of their coach. “Choking is an irrelevant word,” Jennings said. For South Africa’s new World Cup champions, it most definitely is.

Shamsur Rahman and Imrul Kayes are products of a first-class system that, despite its flaws, is beginning to produce results

Mohammad Isam in Chittagong06-Feb-2014The centuries scored by Shamsur Rahman and Imrul Kayes in the second Test against Sri Lanka showed signs that Bangladesh’s long-derided domestic first-class structure is finally yielding results. But as their dismissals showed, it still breeds a culture of instant gratification, negligence towards fitness, and competence only while batting on featherbeads, all dangerous aspects in international cricket.The two batsmen’s mindsets are a product of the cricket they have grown up playing. They are part of a culture where it is a norm for batsmen to break the shackles as soon as they reach milestones. The staple cricket in the country is of the one-day variety, where becoming more aggressive after reaching a hundred is quite normal.Since 2006, there have been 266 centuries in domestic first-class cricket in Bangladesh. Only 55 of those innings produced 150-plus scores – including seven double-centuries and one triple – while 87 ended short of 110. These numbers indicate a lack of inclination among batsmen to stretch their innings. Shamsur’s slog showed this fulfillment factor. Kayes pulling his hamstring was just another instance of a Bangladesh batsman running out of breath soon after reaching a major milestone.Later, both batsmen regretted playing the shots that got them out. They had laid a solid foundation with their 232-run stand but fell when their team needed more solidity. Bangladesh were well short of the follow-on mark when Kayes followed Shamsur back to the dressing room.”I shouldn’t have played the shot,” Kayes said. “It was a mistake. I tried to cut out the risks before that, but these things creep in. A lot of different things happen, which leads to such shots.”Shamsur spoke in the same tune: “I played a bad shot. There wasn’t much turn in the wicket, so I tried to stay positive. I took a chance but it was a bad decision on my part. We both had thought of lengthening our time at the crease after reaching hundreds, but my dismissal happened suddenly.”Keeping the dismissals aside, recent improvements in domestic cricket can take some credit for the two batsmen’s innings.Till three years ago the National Cricket League, the first-class tournament played between divisional sides, was popularly known as “picnic cricket”. The match fees were laughable to the players who took the lucrative Dhaka Premier League, the club-based one-day competition, more seriously. As the nickname suggests, most of the players would just turn up for their teams, without any intention to force the issue. The BCB took two steps last season that changed the perception considerably: they brought more than a hundred cricketers under their payroll, and they started the Bangladesh Cricket League, a second tournament, akin to the Duleep Trophy in India.The longer version suddenly had more credence, and players took more interest in playing the format rather than just going through the motions. Still, drastic improvements remain to be made in the divisional sides’ management and development, but it is a start, and it has helped two cricketers gain a footing.Shamsur and Kayes have had to take winding paths, but both have scored heavily in the NCL, BCL and the DPL, to give the selectors enough reason to pick them in the Test team. Shamsur’s 267 last month is seen as the catapult that shot him into the senior side, but he has never been out of contention since he got out of BKSP, the national sports institute, in 2007.This was his second call-up to the Test team, after he had gone to England as a back-up for the injured Tamim Iqbal in 2010, and as it had been back then, this time too he was selected on the basis of his dominance over domestic bowling attacks. His desire to stay longer at the crease is an addition to his game, and it has helped him in domestic cricket over the last three years.”In the past, I used to be happy with very little and play bad shots,” Shamsur said. “I have reduced that to an extent. I could score today because of scoring runs in domestic cricket, as well as better mental ability.”Test cricket is obviously much different to the domestic game. I have always wanted to bat in a manner that brings out the positive side in a team, not the negative ones. I hope to score more centuries at this level, play better than I did today.”Kayes partnered him in a 233-run second wicket stand, his third century stand for Bangladesh. He opened the batting from 2008 to 2011, when he was one half of Bangladesh’s most successful opening partnership. But loss of form and lack of big scores after starting well took him out of the reckoning for the next two years. Being dumped out of the Bangladesh team is often the end of international careers, but his reappearance is a tribute to his perseverance amid limited facilities and the value of first-class runs.”First-class cricket is very useful in Test cricket,” Kayes said. “My confidence from BCL really helped me today, because I scored there and that carried over with me. I really needed this hundred, coming back to the side after two years.”During the tea break yesterday, the coach told me that I might open, so I was prepared with that mindset. I had a very clear mindset, and I planned to play exactly as I did in the BCL. If the result is positive, then good, otherwise, so be it.”The final factor, the comfort of batting on too many featherbeds, will come into play in the second innings. Shamsur and Kayes will be asked to bat at a slower pace because the last two days will be all about survival for the home side. If they can control their strokes and emotions and remain the same batsmen out of their comfort zones, it will take them to a different level, and help them return to domestic cricket with a far more progressive outlook.

Wisden 2014 gets stuck into the changes in the game’s administration, and picks Dale Steyn as the leading cricketer in the world, but skimps on fun for angst

David Lloyd09-Apr-2014Being spoilt for choice cannot be an uncommon problem for the editor of the . Trying to fit a quart into a pint pot is probably par for the course, text-wise, but this year he might also have lost a minute or two’s sleep over whose picture to put on the front cover.Given that Australia, in the space of just a few months, turned a 0-3 Ashes defeat into a 5-0 victory – “one of the most remarkable and sudden upheavals in cricket history” as Wisden quite properly calls it – Michael Clarke could have been beaming out from the book’s yellow background. Or Mitchell Johnson, who did more than anyone to make it happen.Then again, Dale Steyn – the world’s leading cricketer according to Wisden – would not have been a bad choice. And if the editor had wanted to reflect column inches written, and words spoken, around the globe, rather than runs scored, or wickets taken, Kevin Pietersen could be today’s man of the moment.Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year

Charlotte Edwards became the second woman to be selected by Wisden, following Claire Taylor in 2009. Edwards led England to back-to-back Ashes victories.
Others honoured were Shikhar Dhawan, Ryan Harris, Chris Rogers and Joe Root. Recognition is made of performances influencing England’s international and domestic summer. Dale Steyn was the Leading Cricketer in the World for 2013, a year in which he took 51 Test wickets in nine matches at an average of 17 and, as Wisden concluded, was scarcely less lethal in one-day internationals.

And, having read Wisden’s editorial, there was even a case for plonking the pictures of Messrs Srinivasan, Clarke and Edwards upon the front cover. But happily, Lawrence Booth – the man with the power to decide – rose above all these temptations and went with the final action shot of a player whose incredible career spanned almost a quarter of a century: Sachin Tendulkar. Well played, sir (Tendulkar and Booth).Actually, action shot is a bit misleading. The picture in question is not of a gap-finding drive or pugnacious pull but of a slightly bashfully raised bat and a somewhat wistful upward gaze as Tendulkar walked off the field in Mumbai at the end of his final innings.It is a serious, almost sad photograph – as if preparing the reader for a fair amount of what is to follow. For while all Wisdens are, to a greater or lesser extent, a celebration of cricket, this 151st edition takes quite a time to start putting up the bunting and popping the corks.Why so serious, Wisden? Because there is a great deal to be serious about, might be the reply. Especially, but not exclusively for fans and followers of England. There is the whitewash, cricket that “reeked of attrition” even when victorious in 2013, the resignation of coach Andy Flower, the sacking of Pietersen, the poor selections, Alastair Cook’s unimaginative captaincy – all of this is dealt with in the Editor’s Notes. Just as well, really, the World T20 humiliation by Netherlands came after deadline day.Even the administrators do not escape. Far from it, in fact. The ECB’s decision to go along with Cricket Australia in support of India’s blueprint for world cricket has Booth off his long run even before the Ashes are mentioned.The Notes are, as always, well written and well-argued, and the whole Comment section, which takes up 128 of the near 1600 pages, is packed with wonderfully crafted, brilliantly researched and splendidly presented essays and articles. It’s just that, to this observer at least, a bit more joy, or fun, or even mischief wouldn’t go amiss. That’s enough of the angst, might we give pleasure a go now?It would be wrong to think Wisden doesn’t have a sense of humour or struggles to take delight in the eccentricities of the game. Dreadfully wrong. If any reader is in need of a laugh, or a dose of the absurd, after working through a thorough review of the Decision Review System or The Introvert-Extrovert Balance; Character Recognition (I’m sorry, I didn’t get beyond the headline of that one and may have missed a real rib-tickler), they should turn to Page 1584 and The Index of Unusual Occurrences.Among the items listed therein are “County captain’s wave interpreted as retirement”, “High-five lays wicketkeeper low” and “Jimmy Anderson fixes Lancashire floodlights”. You just have to turn to the item in question to find out more, don’t you?But look, Wisden will delight, entertain and inform those it always delights, entertains and informs. There is everything you could possibly want to read about Tendulkar (and who wouldn’t want to read plenty?) and a brilliant choice in Charlotte Edwards as one of the Five Cricketers of the Year to name just a couple of other things.What, though, of the man or woman, boy or girl, with just a flickering of interest in cricket? What if they happen, by some chance, to fall upon a Wisden and start turning a few pages? Might they just say, “flippin’ ‘eck, this old book needs to lighten up a bit?” Maybe next year, hey?Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, 2014
Edited by Lawrence Booth
Bloomsbury
1584 pages, £50

Plays of the day from the only T20I between England and India

Sidharth Monga at Edgbaston07-Sep-2014The shot
It is your international debut. You are opening the innings. The opposition captain has put you in an unusual position by opening the bowling with a spinner. The two deep fielders are long-on and deep midwicket, covering the shots with the turn of the offspinner. You face first ball with respect, and reverse-sweep the second ball you face in international cricket. For four. Welcome, Jason Roy.The drop
In the fifth over of the match, Joe Root tried to pull one from Mohammed Shami that was not short enough, and managed just a soft top edge. The ball lobbed towards the square-leg umpire, an area Ian Gould vacated in earnest. R Ashwin got under the catch assuredly, but he didn’t seem to call for it. Nor did Karn Sharma, who moved in from short fine leg. Eventually it was left to Ashwin to take it, but he possibly had Karn in his peripheral vision and dropped it. As soon as he dropped it, Ashwin gestured towards the debutant, which meant Karn was a factor in his dropping it.The landmark shot
At the start of the 10th over, Virat Kohli chipped down the wicket and chipped James Tredwell over extra cover for four. A good shot to watch. But there was more significance to it. With that hit, in his 15th international innings of the tour, Kohli reached 40 for the second time. In the 13th over, when Kohli dug one full ball out, he reached his first fifty of the tour.The dozy 12th man
It is almost a custom nowadays, especially in the high-octane Twenty20 format, for the 12th man to run onto the field when a wicket falls. He carries drinks, towels and gloves for the unbeaten batsman. When Shikhar Dhawan fell in the 11th over, though, Kohli had to wave his arms to catch the attention of his 12th man, Sanju Samson. The drink delivered, Samson’s misery hadn’t quite ended. The first ball Suresh Raina played chipped the toe of his bat. As it is, it would have been difficult for him to convince umpire Ian Gould to stop the play to get a new bat, but it turned out the 12th man wasn’t ready with the replacement bats when Raina successfully finished his convincing. Another delay.The double attack
MS Dhoni stepped out and whipped the first ball of the 16th over square on the leg side. Gould at square leg had to take quick evasive action, but he had barely recovered from it when Moeen Ali’s rocket throw from deep square fizzed past his head. A character himself, Gould got into a mock altercation with Moeen, throwing up his arms, and throwing his hat down to the ground.

Returning from injury, with his favoured spot at the top of the order under threat, Rohit Sharma emphatically ended the opening debate

Abhishek Purohit13-Nov-2014Rohit Sharma reached his fifth ODI century with a single to deep square leg. He raised his arms, pointed to the sky and went down on his knees to complete an extended celebration. He was soon driving his 25th four of the innings to the deep extra cover rope to become the first man in the world to make two ODI double-centuries. This time, the celebration was a roar that went on and on. Both celebrations spoke not only of the landmarks, but also in what context they had been achieved, and how important they were for Rohit.Rohit’s timing with injuries has been as bad as it is good with the bat. He hurt himself on the morning of what would have been his Test debut in 2010, and had to wait three more years for another chance. Then, on successive tours to England, in 2011 and 2014, he got injured again. This August, Ajinkya Rahane replaced him against England and made his maiden ODI century. Even as whispers grew about whether Rohit should drop down to the middle order on comeback, he kept saying that it was opening that got the best out of him.When asked in an interview whether there was a healthy rivalry between him and Rahane now for the opening slot, Rohit retorted by asking whether the same question was put to Sachin Tendulkar on his injury comebacks. The opening slot has made Rohit. No wonder he is so keen to retain it. No wonder that roar lasted so long.Rohit Sharma’s last eight innings in completed ODIs at home have included two double-centuries, one big hundred, and two half-centuries at an average of 113. Since the start of 2013, when he was moved up to open, Rohit has made 1765 runs in 38 innings at 53.48. For openers with at least 1000 runs, only Hashim Amla averages more in the history of ODIs. Before 2013, he had a middling average of 30.84 which has now shot up to a very respectable 38.19.This was Rohit’s first international match since August, when he broke his right middle finger in the second ODI against England. It was only around October 20 that he started batting again in the nets, wrist taped heavily. For about a week or so, he could not sense the ball properly on bat.But when he scored 142 off 111 for India A against the Sri Lankans in the warm-up game in Mumbai, things fell into place. There was still a need to guard the finger while fielding, but the feel had returned with the bat.Feel is crucial for an instinctive, flowing batting style such as Rohit’s. It didn’t seem to be with him at the start at Eden Gardens, when he was on 4 off 16, and Rahane was cracking boundary after boundary at the other end. “I am coming back after an injury so, I will be a little nervous to see how I bat,” he had said.Then he charged out at Shaminda Eranga and was dropped at third man. He wasn’t giving another chance till he had gone past the double.He got to his 50 off 72 deliveries, 100 off 100, 150 off 125, 200 off 151 and 250 off 166. The Bangalore double had been a late explosion of sixes – 96 of his 209 then had come that way. This was a case of a batsman who had found his touch immediately on comeback, and was just refusing to give it away with a rash shot, his desire to reclaim that opening position an added motivation. After he went past hundred, there was a kind of inevitability in Rohit’s approach that told you this was going to be a really, really big one.To bat more than 18 overs till the end of the innings after you have reached your hundred in a one-day match requires some application, and fitness. Even as his boundary count and strike-rate was going berserk, there was still a certain safety to Rohit’s game. There were no high-risk strokes like reverse-sweeps or scoops.He kept exploiting the field intelligently throughout his innings. When there was no deep midwicket, he swung safely in that direction. When there was no sweeper, he lofted repeatedly over cover. When there was no mid-off, he lofted cleanly down the ground. He made sure he hit the gaps with his drives and cuts.”I have worked on the mental aspect (during the injury break) and that will hopefully help me not just for the next five months but the next five years,” Rohit had said. At this rate, an ODI triple-hundred does not seem impossible any more.

Back in the day, there was a certain audacity and spark to the Australian triangular; now, though, cricket seems to have outgrown the genre

Sidharth Monga15-Jan-2015There is this honest moment during the extended version of – the concert film during whose interviews Pink Floyd basically bully the interviewer most of the time – when Nick Mason goes, “We mark a sort of era. We’re in danger of becoming a relic of the past. And for some people we represent their childhood: 1967, Underground London, the free concert in Hyde Park…” You can imagine, at some point during the 2000s, when life and sport moved on to T20 and other things, the ODI triangular – or World Series Cricket as it was called in Australia – said: “I am becoming a relic of the past. For some I represent their childhoods of the ’90s and ’80s: best-of-three – sometimes five – finals, catches taken behind the sightscreen, the best jerseys…”The triangular series in Australia for years broke the rules, or convention at least. They dressed Pakistan in blue. They used to play ODIs between Tests at times. In 1991-92, India played a Test, then came five triangular matches, then two Tests, then the rest of the triangular, and then two more Tests. All the while West Indies remained in Australia. Hrishikesh Kanitkar once leaned against the fence and pulled the ball out of the crowd to take what then constituted a legal catch. For two years they had best-of-five finals. In 1980-81 they had teams playing each other five times before playing best-of-five finals. No wonder Greg Chappell asked for an underarm delivery.The triangular series in Australia was all the more awesome in the ’80s: West Indies used to show up every other year. They went there seven times for ODIs tournaments in the ’80s. A cigarette company used to sponsor the triangular, and fans could be seen smoking in the open.There was a certain brashness, audacity, to the triangular. One year they put together a group of players who couldn’t make it to the Australia 1st XI and introduced them as the fourth team because Zimbabwe were not expected to draw crowds. Guess who made it to the final? Australia and Australia A. The finals back then were not even ODIs but List A games – which Australia said and proved were more competitive and financially attractive than ODIs.The coverage of the triangular series was innovative. From the khhraaasssh sound the amped-up stump mics broadcast when someone got bowled to the initial stages of day-night cricket with white balls, to those weather walls that Tony Greig used to carry to the pitch report, to Dawdles the Duck, who accompanied batsmen who failed to score on their walk back. Even the peddling of the overpriced memorabilia seemed bearable. I was a kid. For a long time I didn’t realise the Bush in “Bush Great Catches” was Bush TV. Or that Benson & Hedges was a cigarette brand.The cricket wasn’t without innovation either – remember Adam Dale, who used to bowl nine or 10 overs at one go at the top of the innings? The critics of the Australian triangular, though, will say it was all too gimmicky, like a band relying too much on the instruments. To which the triangular’s response always was, like Roger Waters’ in to the contention that they relied too much on instruments: “It’s like, you give a man a Les Paul guitar and he becomes Eric Clapton, and of course that’s not true. And if you give a man an amplifier and a synthesiser, he doesn’t become, you know, whoever; he doesn’t become us.”And so we kept waking up early – in India’s case – to see what the new innovation was going to be this season, what new jerseys the triangular would come up with, and we enjoyed the cricket. Asif Mujtaba tying a match where 17 were required in one over, Sachin Tendulkar tying one with the ball where India defended 126, Michael Bevan’s last-ball four off Roger Harper, Dion Nash’s aerial hit landing on the overlapping rope and New Zealand losing by one run.Slowly cricket outgrew the Australian triangular. For a long time, the non-Australia matches remained a problem for the broadcasters. T20 came in. Demands made of the players became more specialised. There is an increasingly disturbing notion now in Australia – at least among those who make decisions in this regard – that the public is not interested in anything that doesn’t involve Australia. Apart from ABC, few news channels bother with world news. Big news loses out in prominence to the premiere of a Hollywood movie that features an Australian actor. James Brayshaw, for example, a Channel Nine commentator through the Test series, knew nothing about the Indian team. It’s apparent the public doesn’t like his commentary, but those who are making decisions don’t seem to see it.So even if there might have been some life in the relic, the triangular era was duly ended. Except once in a while, when the broadcasting money from India’s visits revived the triangular. India and Sri Lanka played the last triangular here, three years before now, and four years after the previous triangular, which also involved India. Even in 2011-12, Channel Nine was not too keen to telecast the India-Sri Lanka matches. Some of them were shown on Gem, a free-to-air channel.For one last time, perhaps – since there is unconfirmed news that India will next travel Australia for a seven-ODI bilateral – the triangular has come back, featuring Australia, England and India. There is no best-of-three final, though. And the teams face each other only twice each. And it is just a warm-up to the World Cup. More than the Floyd reunion for Live 8 at Hyde Park.

ESPNcricinfo staff26-Feb-2015Tillakaratne Dilshan also got among the runs, unleashing several blistering strokes•Getty ImagesDilshan and Thirimanne added 122 runs for the first wicket•Getty ImagesBangladesh captain Mashrafe Mortaza bowled an impressive opening spell but without any luck. He nursed figures of 10-0-53-0•AFPBangladesh’s first, and only, wicket arrived in the 25th over when Thirimanne hit Rubel Hossain straight to third man•AFPKumar Sangakkara, playing his 400th ODI, ensured the momentum wasn’t disrupted, muscling 13 fours and a six•AFPIt gave Dilshan the space and freedom to bring up a 21st century•Getty ImagesThere was no end to Bangladesh’s fielding woes, as Taskin Ahmed dropped a return chance offered by Sangakkara•AFPAnd the batsman took full advantage, completing his 22nd ODI ton, the fastest in his career•Getty ImagesDilshan and Sangakkara shared an unbroken partnership of 210, as Sri Lanka posted a total of 332•Getty ImagesBangladesh started the chase poorly, with Lasith Malinga bowling Tamim Iqbal in the second ball of the innings. Soumya Sarkar counterattacked with a quickfire 25 but was dismissed by Angelo Mathews in the sixth over•AFPSri Lanka’s fielding, though, was just as shoddy as Bangladesh’s; Suranga Lakmal cut a dejected figure after Dilshan put down Anamul Haque•Getty ImagesShakib Al Hasan, who scored 46, put on 64 runs for the sixth wicket with Mushfiqur Rahim•Getty ImagesBut they were unable to push on and really threaten Sri Lanka’s score. Sabbir Rahman, coming in at No.8, was the only Bangladesh batsman to pass 50•Getty ImagesMortaza was the eighth batsman to be dismissed with the score on 228•AFPDilshan finished with two wickets to top up a great day with the bat, and was adjudged the Player-of-the-Match. Malinga picked up three wickets, too, as Sri Lanka won by 92 runs, their second victory of the tournament•AFP