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All the key numbers from the first day of the England vs India Test at Trent Bridge

Sampath Bandarupalli04-Aug-2021183 England’s total at Trent Bridge, the second-lowest by them in the first innings of a home Test series since 1950. Their lowest in this period came when they began the five-match Test series against West Indies in 2000 with 179 all out at Edgbaston.ESPNcricinfo Ltd3 Instances of England getting bowled out for 183 or lower after electing to bat first at home since 2000. They posted 85 all out against Ireland at Lord’s in 2019 and 102 all out against Australia at Headingley in 2009.1 England registered their lowest first-innings total in a home Test against India. Their previous lowest total was 198 all out, which was also in Trent Bridge, in 2007.7 All out totals under 200 for England against India in 2021. Only twice have they managed to cross the 200-run mark across nine innings against India this year. India has not dismissed any other opponent more often below 200 in a calendar year.4 Instances of Indian pacers picking up ten wickets in a Test innings in England, including the latest effort. Three of those four occasions came at Trent Bridge, all since 2014.45 Runs added by England after the fall of the fourth wicket on Wednesday. These are the second-fewest runs England have scored for their last six wickets in a home Test innings against India. Their lowest was 43 runs in the first innings of the Lord’s Test in 2007.4 Ducks in England’s first innings, the joint-most for them in a Test innings against India. Four England batters also got dismissed without scoring a run in the Ahmedabad Test earlier this year.

It isn’t just a question of the next century, the man is now sparring with administrators, unthinkable two years ago

Osman Samiuddin25-Dec-2021Welcome back to the planet, Virat. It’s been a while. It’s not in the best shape it’s ever been right now, but it’ll have to do, because it is where we all eventually end up.Although, for a while, it did genuinely look like earth might never be big enough for Virat Kohli, that Kohli had become so big he wasn’t supranational, it was possible to think of him eclipsing multiverses and not traversing them: think Sachin Tendulkar, add MS Dhoni, times the sum by Bollywood, all to the power West Delhi.Kohli was the barometer through which the health of a game – even the health of a nation – could be measured. If Kohli said he loved Test cricket, then Test cricket was still breathing. If Kohli shook hands with Shahid Afridi, it was possible to imagine harmony between the two countries. If Kohli didn’t play in a series, that country’s cricket economy was doomed. With Kohli, broadcasters happily ripped off the façade that cricket is a team game, training their cameras on him. A Kohli net session became a must-watch event.Related

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For a while, on the field, Kohli was infallible, indefatigable, unquenchable, and above all, inevitable. All the biggest and the greatest go through this one period, and perhaps the only difference ends up being of degrees. We wonder, not only when this greatness will ever stop, but how it can possibly ever stop? With each one of them, we think this one – – will surely be the greatest of them all.And then, without paying it any more attention than what you would to a temporary run of un-great scores, a lean run turns into lean days turns into lean months turns into a lean year turns into the start of the regression back to great, rather than greatest turns into the start of the end. Because – and this is a lesson we happily forget every time – gravity gets us all (the Don excepted) in the end.Massive caveat: this is Kohli, who is 33, and has been the gold standard when it comes to fitness. In a time when more athletes are being great deeper into their 30s, it’s entirely plausible to see a whole new coda to Kohli’s career over the next five, six years. He is Kohli after all, who will never be done with proving somebody, anybody, wrong.But when you burn as intensely as Kohli has done, there’s always the risk that burnout happens quicker. In which light, this phase of Kohli, ticking over two years now, is beginning to feel a little bit more loaded than just a phase. A phase is what a teenager passes through; for adults, it may need a more serious diagnosis.

Kohli is now sparring with administrators. Two years ago, this was unthinkable. He was untouchable. Nobody could have picked a fight with him. They all let him be so that the idea that he would one day have to take to a press conference to fight back against a BCCI press release seemed comically beneath him

Two years without a hundred of any kind, two years in which his Test average has fallen five runs. If he bats every innings this series, is dismissed each time and scores less than 198 runs, his Test average will fall under 50. Meaning that by his 100th Test, Kohli’s Test average could be under 50. Little says batting mortality like an average under 50, in any era.Kind of like age, though, the average can sometimes also just be a number; it’s not always indicative of how one feels, especially when it is flitting around high-end landmark numbers. Still, it is strange to think of Kohli as a sub-50 Test batter; the last time he was that was August 2017, when he’d spent nearly a year hovering around that 50 mark. Two of India’s greatest batters before him, Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, were, by their 100th Tests, both averaging 57.As with everything, though, Covid-19 has warped the texture of this Kohli run. It feels both like it has gone on for a while but also that it hasn’t; two years is plenty of time, but he’s played 13 Tests in that time, whereas he played nearly twice as many – 24 Tests – in the two-year period before that.If it was only a question of his batting, though, it would be simpler because it’s not as if he has looked like some struggling, out-of-sorts batter. His last 11 Test innings include scores of 44, 42, 20, 55, 50, 44 and 36. This is not out of form.But Kohli is now sparring with administrators. Two years ago, this was unthinkable. He was untouchable. Nobody could have picked a fight with him. The Committee of Administrators let him be. The coach let him be. The players let him be. They all let him be so that the idea that he would one day have to take to a press conference to fight back against a BCCI press release seemed comically beneath him.4:52

Kohli: ‘Nothing can derail me from being motivated to play for India’

He’s no longer captain of all formats. And because he’s been pushed out in one, it allows the germ of another previously unthinkable thought to slip in – that there may even come a time soon when he is no longer a part of at least one white-ball side. Hell, if the BCCI wants to get vindictive, he may no longer be part of the other. Far-fetched still, but then this is now a regular, worldly situation, a scrap between a board and star player. This has happened before. To other stars. Kohli was going to be the one who transcended all this and now he’s just another star.It says something about his impact that he’s still likely to achieve something no Asian captain has if India win in South Africa and he then avoids defeat next summer in the re-scheduled Test against England – if he’s still captain, no longer perishing that thought. He’ll become the first Asian captain to have won Test series in England, Australia, and South Africa.But the sharpness, the bristle, can’t help but be somewhat blunted now. In a happier way, from the other end of the spectrum of life experiences to a workplace scrap, parenthood cannot help but have done the same. Few things can cause a razor-sharp, myopic focus to be diffused as a child can.This is Kohli’s new world, one in which it’s possible to see him no longer as the essential figure or as clearly defined against the background. For more or less three decades, Indian cricket, and by extension world cricket, has had one global star. Through Tendulkar, then Dhoni and then Kohli, the game has tried to explain itself to the outside world. Through each it has sought to measure itself against the outside world, to sell itself to the outside world, to find its place in the outside world. Each one has been more burdened than the last. Maybe, the time is coming to start thinking about the next in that line.All of which, of course, is exactly what Kohli needs, to think that he’s being written off, to think that he has enemies to slay. No better time than now, in this new world, to find that old motivation.

Surrey coach on his “progressive” outlook, improving county standards and why Will Jacks could be the next Moeen Ali

Alan Gardner20-Apr-2022″I’m very confident in my skills as a coach, I really am – far much more than I ever was as a player. I always had doubts as a player, and I suppose that was the thing that sort of drove me, it was fear of failure – which is probably why I was pretty bang average. But from a coaching perspective, I’m relatively confident…”It doesn’t seem long since Gareth Batty was scrapping for every inch in a Surrey shirt – mainly because it isn’t. Last summer, the former England offspinner was still leading Surrey’s T20 side, at 43 one of the oldest players on the circuit. Now he is suddenly one of the younger head coaches going, having moved swiftly on to the Oval backroom staff – initially as an assistant coach, then as Vikram Solanki’s successor (albeit in an interim capacity).He has hit the ground running, with Surrey collecting 35 points from their opening two fixtures to sit top of Division One; victory by an innings over Hampshire, who had begun their season with an equally emphatic win against Somerset, was particularly impressive. Not that Batty will be getting too up or down about results at this stage. “When we win like we did the other day, it’s all down to the players,” he says. “When we lose it’s down to me for getting it wrong.”A healthy dose of self-deprecation sums up Batty’s approach to most things, including overseeing the fortunes of a club he served with distinction for 16 seasons – either side of a spell at Worcestershire – during a career that also encompassed representing England in all three formats. Having retired towards the end of 2021, he joined the coaching set-up with an expectation of working with Surrey’s spinners and strengthening ties with the academy, before Solanki’s departure to IPL franchise Gujarat Titans opened up further opportunities.”Being offered interim at Surrey was not something particularly that I wanted, or was aspiring to, I was genuinely happy with the second team work I would have been doing,” Batty says. “It was the vocational part of it: okay this is going to be some graft, it’s not the prettier side of things. A title [that of head coach] is a title, it’s very pleasant, but with titles come responsibility. I still very much see that it’s about the players, about whatever I can possibly do to make it about them. They’re the ones that do the work on the field.”Related

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But he has been busy off it, throwing himself into the role, and ready to seek an advantage wherever he can – discussing philosophies with those working in other sports, including rugby, golf and football. Sean Dyche, until recently the longest-serving manager in the Premier League with Burnley, “gave me some wonderful information,” Batty says. “I’ve definitely taken a few things and popped them down and tried to transfer it into cricket.”Surrey were County Champions as recently as 2018, but have not always managed to convert their strong playing resources into a consistent challenge for silverware. In recent times, that has arguably been as much down to England call-ups – and Batty is pushing for a “progressive” focus on how the entire squad can contribute, rather than relying on the old-fashioned notion of a best XI. That was in evidence at The Oval last week, as Jamie Overton came into the side, having sat out for “tactical” reasons at Edgbaston, and proceeded to take a career-best eight-for as Surrey won inside three days.”We have to be progressive, we have to be thinking balance of teams,” Batty says. “If we’re saying back in the day, people used to bowl 500 overs, but they can only bowl 360 because of the other workloads, and other expectations, do we need to have more allrounders in the team to get more bowling options, so we’re not going to deplete our best bowlers by bowling them into the ground? We need to look at everything.”We have to have our eyes open, the world has changed, the world is changing, we need to be on the front edge of that – not copying somebody that is No.1 now. If we’re just doing what they’re doing, they’re going to keep moving forward, we’re not going to get to that level. We have to be doing more. And this isn’t trying to change the wheel, most of it is really simple stuff, but sometimes in cricket we get a bit stuck in our ways and talk like it’s always been talked. Well, if we talk how it’s always been talked, we aren’t going to get much better. We have to keep pushing the boundaries.”That pragmatic approach has manifested itself in a slightly unexpected area: in their opening two Championship fixtures, Surrey have lined up without a frontline spinner, Will Jacks taking on slow-bowling duties while stiffening the batting at No. 7, in preference to playing Amar Virdi, who toured India and Sri Lanka as an England reserve in 2020-21, or Dan Moriarty. Jacks has taken seven first-class wickets at 69.57, from 32 matches, but helped break Hampshire’s first innings open on a green-tinged surface by bowling Ben Brown through the gate, then having Felix Organ caught off an inside edge.

“If we are saying that we want Will to emulate Moeen Ali, then we are asking a lot of him. Moeen is a wonderful cricketer, there aren’t many who can do what he can do. So we’re asking a lot”Gareth Batty on Will Jacks

Batty raises the subject himself when discussing the need for better pitches to help improve England’s Test standards.”There needs to be a reset, and hopefully we’re making that in county cricket, which will bring spin back into it. And I know damn well people will look and go, hang on a minute, you’re not playing Virdi and Moriarty, your out-and-out spinners. [But] I genuinely think that Will Jacks is a genuine allrounder. Anybody that doubts that, just get them to look on a livestream, or on Twitter, and get them to look at the wickets [against Hampshire]. It was only two wickets, but it was a pitch with grass on it, and there was real quality in those balls. There is a real skill, and until people play, we’re not going to know how good they possibly could be.”So while Virdi has been challenged to win selection on performances with the 2nd XI – “Knock on the office door and go look, I should have been picked, because I played my first game and got wickets” – Batty says Jacks currently has the spot on merit. “At the moment it is balance of team, but Jacko has bowled beautifully in pre-season, he really has. He bowls wicket-taking balls. I don’t think we’re being diluted in the spin department on that front.”He also suggests that Jacks could offer Surrey the sort of multidisciplinary impact afforded by Moeen Ali with Worcestershire, England and, currently, Chennai Super Kings at the IPL.”Skillsets and development, there are parallels there, there really are,” he says. “Moeen, I knew from back at Worcester. You could see for all that he was a very talented batter, wow, did he bowl a beautiful stock spin ball. His offspinner had lovely shape. The good and the bad of being such a good batter, is sometimes you bowl a bit like a batter, and you don’t bowl like that frontline spinner. Moeen grew into, pretty quickly, the frontline spinner that could also get you a hundred. Tell me a team that doesn’t want that asset.”I don’t say this lightly. If we are saying that we want Will to emulate Moeen Ali, then we are asking a lot of him. Moeen is a wonderful cricketer, worldwide there aren’t many who can do what he can do. So we’re asking a lot of him [Jacks], which possibly shows where I’m coming from with the perception that he’s our lead spinner right now.”Surfaces at The Oval mean there is every chance Jacks and Virdi will end up in the same team as the season wears on; and that ties into Batty’s view on how the Championship can better help to produce England Test players (though he declines to comment on the clatter of wickets that accompanied Essex’s win at Taunton in the second round).Batty hung up his playing boots last year, at the age of 43•Getty Images”I think the biggest fix for English cricket is we get rid of these two-and-a-half day finishes, six-session finishes – it’s a nonsense. The odd time, it’s fine. I understand it, and we will be part of one this year. But it can’t be a consistent thing, because we’re saying that 40 wickets in six-to-seven sessions, that isn’t promoting an equal field for both bat and ball. It’s loaded somewhere.”I think we need games getting either into day four, or ideally – like Warwickshire winning it [Division One] last year, they won a lot of games with a session to go, the last session of the game. That is what is going to promote better international cricket. There’s no quick fix from players, they have to work hard, they put their bodies on the line and they have to have a skillset that’s enduring, which is four-day cricket.”Having spent time in the commentary box with talkSPORT as part of his transition from playing, Batty has a more rounded view on the game than most – and despite the doom and gloom around the national set-up, with Joe Root’s resignation last week adding to the list of vacancies at the top of the men’s game, he insists there is plenty to be positive about.”I truly believe we have a wonderful product,” he says. “I can’t think of any other sport that has three facets to it. We have Test cricket/first-class cricket, a 50-over game and a 20-over game. And now even a 10 and a Hundred. No other game can flick between the different formats and touch different levels of people that want to support it. We should be able to touch everybody, but we have to champion everything. What I saw this week, 4500 people in at The Oval on a beautiful day, enjoying cricket. Yes, they’re enjoying the social as well, and having some fun with their friends, but fundamentally it’s at a cricket ground, and their kids are playing on the outfield. I don’t see there’s a better message.”His own coaching ambitions, for now, extend no further than Surrey and “trying to repay the faith that Alec Stewart and the club have put in me”. Thoughts of whether England might one day want to draw on his nous can wait – as can the question of whether he might want to follow Solanki to the IPL.”I like the graft,” he say, deliberately. “I’m not bothered about the razzamatazz. I’m all about the graft.”

Often seen as a stylist, the Sri Lanka batter produced an innings of rare substance in Galle

Danyal Rasool27-Jul-2022It was a damp December week in Rawalpindi in 2019, one of myriad rain delays in Pakistan’s first home Test match in a decade. It was the fourth day, with the first innings of the Test still only halfway through. That particular morning had seen no play at all, and none was expected for the foreseeable future, so there wasn’t much to do, and plenty of time to do it in.”Who’s the most elegant batter from either side,” we wondered idly. Before long, the poll was up on ESPNcricinfo, with followers from both countries weighing in animatedly. To avoid ending up with one of the more obvious results, Babar Azam was excluded from the poll altogether.It was Dhananjaya de Silva who topped that poll for Sri Lanka, no doubt having won over a fair few Pakistanis across the previous three days. He’d come in with his team struggling on day one, and immediately set out imbuing the innings with the sort of delicate grace that almost felt indecently out of place in any attritional innings.Related

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There was, of course, a buoyant Pakistani pace bowling attack on the prowl, but he didn’t so much tame them as draw them into an orchestra only he seemed to be conducting. Their quality, their menace, was simply the backdrop against which he was doing his best work, with a liquid ease that didn’t make it feel like work at all. Even with the frequent rain and bad light interruptions which made the accrual of any rhythm impossible.Praising a cricketer for being elegant can often sound like a backhanded compliment, as if there’s a concomitant lack of substance that must necessarily accompany the style. (To further drive that point home, it was Asad Shafiq who won the poll from the Pakistan side that day). Such players, it is easy to think, exist to decorate rather than influence games, to adorn instead of win them. They are thought to lack the grit to get down and dirty and the heart to claw out results.When de Silva walked out to bat on Tuesday in Galle, he had just watched half his side fall for 117, the lead still a precarious 264. In the last six weeks, five totals in excess of that have been comfortably chased down in Test cricket. Just last week alone, at this very venue, Pakistan stunned Sri Lanka by gunning down 342 in the fourth innings, and looked very much on track to repeat the feat with a Test that was shaping up similarly here. This was time for a craftsman, and here Sri Lanka were, sending out an artist.Dhananjaya de Silva brought up his ninth Test century•AFP/Getty ImagesNaseem Shah was steaming in, the only fast bowler who has threatened with both old ball and new. In front of him was a batter who, in 13 innings this year, was averaging just over 26, managing only one half-century. De Silva wasn’t favourite to win this battle, especially when he was in the middle of his most significant drop in performance levels since 2018. Plus, in all three prior innings this series, his method of dismissal has been bowled, with Naseem the man to uproot his middle stump with the ball of the series on the first day.Against Australia the previous game, he fell cheaply to first Mitchell Swepson and then Travis Head. They might be tricky enough bowlers on their day, but self-respecting South Asian batters don’t want to give wickets away to middle-of-the-road spin bowlers. The Test before that, he had Covid-19, and missed entirely. It has not been an easy time for a man to whom everything tends to come so easily.De Silva was in a scrap. He saw off that early threat, but as in Rawalpindi three years ago, there were stops and starts. Poor light ended the third day off early, and back he came the next morning to begin all over again. He worked Hasan Ali away off the first ball for a single, and then didn’t score a run for the next 8.4 overs. A dab off Yasir Shah to third man was his next productive shot more than half an hour later. All the swishes and flicks put away, the wizardry set to one side as de Silva went into hand-to-hand combat for his side.The lead inched past 300, and then 350. Dimuth Karunaratne, with a significantly loftier reputation for attrition, departed before lunch, but de Silva plugged away, leading his side out of Pakistan’s reach. The bowlers that had prowled under the gloom the previous evening, and schemed their way through the fresh optimism of a crisp Galle morning, were beginning to recede into the backdrop. De Silva pranced down the ground, whipping Mohammad Nawaz through midwicket with the footwork of a dancer and the jab of a flyweight boxer. He got down on one knee to sweep Agha Salman for four, before beating point for yet another to bring up his ninth Test hundred.It was his orchestra once more, and he had Pakistan playing to his tunes. By the time he raised his bat to acknowledge the crowd, he looked once more like a maestro soaking in an enchanted audience’s applause. There was no mud on his shirt, no sweat on his brow. At that moment, it was so easy to forget that Dhananjaya de Silva had gone into battle, and controlled a game all the while looking as if he were merely embellishing it. You don’t just get there by playing pretty cover drives and winning ESPNcricinfo polls.

While Mandhana has expanded her repertoire of strokes, Rodrigues has come out of a career slump with heightened self-awareness and clarity

Shashank Kishore06-Aug-2022When Smriti Mandhana started playing cricket as an 11-year-old, she wanted to bat like Matthew Hayden. However, she quickly remodelled herself around Kumar Sangakkara and Sourav Ganguly once coaches told her that timing, and not brute force, was her forte.The same coaches would have watched Mandhana’s daredevilry at India’s CWG 2022 semi-final against England with delight.Related

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Take for example that six off Issy Wong in the third over. A pull in front of square to a short ball whose length she picked up in a jiffy. Even though the boundaries at Edgbaston had been brought in considerably, the shot would have gone for six at most grounds.It was another example of the transformation Mandhana’s has undergone. She has tried to consciously work on her power-hitting, ever since becoming a regular in the WBBL. A debut season for Brisbane Heat in 2016-17, in which she managed all of 89 runs in 10 innings, proved to be an eye-opener.On surfaces with bounce, Mandhana realised she needed to find new ways of scoring, and not just trust her on-the-up drives. She began working hard on her pull. Her height would allow her to get on top of the bounce most times; it was just a matter of having control over the stroke without losing her balance. Today, Mandhana has one of the best pull shots in women’s cricket.And as with most good players, she has expanded her game in multiple directions. She has frequently brought out the conventional sweep, and on Saturday, perhaps for the first time in a big game, you saw her playing the scoop and the delicate paddle.Smriti Mandhana has turned herself into one of the best pullers in the women’s game•Getty ImagesYou may ask why a player of her calibre needs to try and get inventive behind the stumps when she has all the shots in front of it. Well, according to her captain Harmanpreet Kaur, this was Mandhana’s way of pushing boundaries and trying to “think out of the box” for the team’s benefit.Mandhana’s 23-ball half-century against England spoke of her intention to dominate from the get-go. Her assertiveness in the very first over, against Katherine Brunt, laid down a marker. England may have expected Shafali Verma to take the attack to them. Instead, Mandhana decided this was her stage to set on fire with some breathtaking shots – none played in anger.This meant Shafali quickly slipped into a support role, flipping the script of several of her earlier partnerships with Mandhana.It isn’t just Mandhana who has grown significantly as a batter over recent months. India’s innings against England also showcased the evolution of Jemimah Rodrigues, who gave the innings its finishing touches.Rodrigues’ career has hit a number of speed bumps since she broke through as a prodigiously talented 18-year-old. When she was in form, there were no vacancies in the middle order. And when she went through a prolonged run of poor scores, she admitted to being lost.When the pandemic set in and threw cricket calendar off the rails, Rodrigues was a constant presence on the internet with her smash hit YouTube show along with Mandhana. The pair interviewed several sports personalities and added their own touch of humour and colour to long lockdown hours.It was during one such conversation with Rohit Sharma that Rodrigues happened to touch upon the topic of consistency. Rohit spoke of his struggle to deal with expectations in the first 5-6 years of his career, and how he overcame that by building a “shield” around himself, and on relying on family and friends to distract him from the game.A defining feature of Jemimah Rodrigues’ unbeaten 31-ball 44 was her inside-out hitting through the covers•Associated PressRodrigues has since spoken about how this chat with Rohit – and other conversations with others including Rishah Pant – helped her deal with her own struggles.The current version of Rodrigues is defined by her awareness and clarity of thought, which she has shown right through the past week at the Commonwealth Games. In a must-win game against Barbados, she anchored India’s innings with an unbeaten half-century. Against England, with the stakes even higher, she produced a masterclass in strike rotation to make an unbeaten 31-ball 44. At frequent points during her innings, she stepped to the leg side to hit inside-out and access the cover region, both off spin and medium-pace.Rodrigues knows she isn’t a power-hitter, but she is aware of the damage she can inflict by relying on her old-school virtues of timing and hand-eye coordination, which she attributes to her fondness for hockey.India may have been dreaming of at least 180 when they were 64 without loss after the powerplay, but those hopes quickly hit a roadblock. Rodrigues was in the middle at a stage where the innings needed calm. She provided that, and when it was time to tee off, she did so while trusting in her own methods. It proved to be the difference between India finishing with 145 and making 164.The contributions of Mandhana and Rodrigues, good friends and team-mates at West Zone long before they played for India, have provided a glimpse into a potential shift in India’s overall T20 game, away from conservatism and towards a more forward-looking approach.This approach has taken them into the gold-medal match; if Mandhana and Rodrigues can deliver in that game on Sunday, they may just usher in a new chapter in Indian women’s cricket.

Familiarity of Fire’s self-immolation is admirable amid competition’s inherent volatility

Cameron Ponsonby24-Aug-2022I would like to announce that records have, indeed, begun. A new competition breeds opportunities for many: players, coaches, scouts, and most importantly, the fine people at the Guinness Book of World Records. As with every passing match a new best or worst of all-time is logged.The highest total in the history of the Hundred. The highest-ever chase. The best figures. Everything record-breaking, all of the time.But, unfortunately for Welsh Fire, amid a sea of volatility and variance, their record-breaking nature has so far come through unwanted consistency.Heading into Wednesday night’s fixture at Lord’s, they were the only team in Hundred history to have lost five games in a row. And despite only playing 13 matches in the competition in total, they had managed the feat twice. London Spirit last season went six without a win, but were spared that ignominy by a no-result.And now, following their 17-run defeat to Spirit here at Lord’s, they have become the only team to have lost six in a row. Welsh Fire, record-breakers.Related

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“We had a tough chat after the last game,” Josh Cobb, their captain, said at the toss. “We have three opportunities to put some personal pride on the board.” Unfortunately for Fire, the pride did not appear.Ish Sodhi, who only arrived in the country last night, was the only man to impress with the ball claiming 2 for 19 off his 20 deliveries. And among their top order, it was just Ben Duckett who showed any glimpses with the bat: he struck five boundaries to drag Fire into contention before ultimately falling to the spin of Dan Lawrence, like surviving a fight with a lion only to be killed by a kitten.This season, Fire have used 18 players, a remarkable feat given a squad can only contain 17 at any one time. Their bankers in Duckett and Joe Clarke have failed, which happens. Their £125,000 punt on Tom Banton hasn’t come off either, which can happen too. And their England superstar Jonny Bairstow pulled out of the competition in order to rest for, err, England. It happens, mate. It just happens. What can you do?

“When I don’t necessarily know where it’s going all the time, the batter doesn’t really know either.”Dan Lawrence explains the secret behind his success with the ball

“We’re not a bad group of individual players,” Matt Critchley said in the aftermath of their defeat. “We’re just not playing well as a team which is quite evident to see. And today could’ve easily got a bit embarrassing, but at least we managed to salvage something to take it into the last over.”It’s a series of unfortunate events that no one party can really be blamed for, and yet, enough time is beginning to pass in this competition where blips are becoming patterns. And longer-term concerns are taking hold.”I don’t really know how the draft works and how many you can retain,” Critchley added, “but the quality of individuals is quite apparent in what the guys have done for their counties and their franchises. It’s just a case of trying to learn to play as a team.”Where Fire may hold some hope is that the team that beat them today and that now sit top of the table were last season’s whipping boys. Spirit, with the same core group as they had last season, have turned their fortunes around in a way that even they don’t have an answer for.”Not at all,” Lawrence replied, when asked whether anything had changed from last year to this. “The thing with T20 cricket is when you get on a roll of winning games, it’s really easy to find a formula and keep doing it over and over again.”I think we’ve got a team of people who are confident in all aspects. Maybe they [Fire] are not so much at the moment.”Dan Lawrence rattled through Welsh Fire•Alex Davidson/Getty ImagesLawrence starred with both bat and ball, making his top score of the competition as well as claiming his best ever T20 figures (4 for 20) with the ball. Lawrence has one of the more eccentric actions on the circuit, arriving at the crease with a leap and grace that is more Pigeon Pond than Swan Lake. Critchley, his Essex teammate but Fire opponent, described it as “dodgy”, while his Spirit captain Eoin Morgan said he was more like Murali.”They had a lot of left-handers in their top five”, Lawrence, after snaring the wickets of three lefties in Jacob Bethell, Duckett and David Miller. “So whenever they came on I was always going to twist a few out. When we had Maxwell for the first few games he did a similar role and now that he’s gone, thankfully, I’ve taken over and done a good job.”It’s a bit of a Brucie Bonus, the bowling. It was a really nice wicket to bowl spin on. I love my bowling, and it’s something I take really seriously. When I don’t necessarily know where it’s going all the time, the batter doesn’t really know either.”An unexplained return to form and a bowler crediting a scattergun approach may give cause for optimism for Fire that the slot machine lifestyle of T20 cricket may finally land them on jackpot. But as Critchley said of the brief moments that Fire looked in the game this evening, “it’s the hope that kills you”.

Pakistan captain faces whitewash but fails to recognise own part in team’s downfall

Danyal Rasool19-Dec-2022″The last few Test matches we’ve played we’ve dominated.”Babar Azam looked down at the press pack on the eve of the third Test, and then he said it. It was the nonchalance with which it was said, just as much as the substance in the words that had just escaped his lips. Much like a comedian always ready with a follow-up in case the punchline doesn’t land, the Pakistan captain insouciantly glided over his words, moving on as if it were filler material for his main point. It was a statement of such staggering delusion it might have been delivered from a Bucharest balcony in December 1989 than a Karachi press conference room in December 2022.It would, of course, be outrageous to compare Nicolae Ceausescu with Babar Azam. (Ceausescu, after all, never led his country to four successive home Test defeats.) But it took only four days from that balcony speech in Bucharest for reality to cut through 33 years earlier, and it will take exactly four days to avenge the affront it caused in Karachi. England might still need a further 55 runs to officially secure an unprecedented 3-0 whitewash on Pakistani soil, but this fortress has already been breached.Pakistan haven’t been a world-beating Test side for quite a while now. Since ascending to the top of the Test rankings in 2016, they have the worst win-loss ratio in the format after West Indies; once Tests against Zimbabwe, Ireland and Bangladesh are excluded, they have won 10 and lost 25 of their last 42 matches. But that cannot exculpate the malaise they find themselves in during this Babar era, when, having seemingly adapted smoothly to cricket back home in Pakistan from the UAE, they have now lost four home Tests for the first time ever.The bigger issue Pakistan have, perhaps, is not their failure to accept how much this Test side has decayed, but their seeming inability to do something about the things they can control. Bereft of their first-choice fast-bowling attack, Pakistan spent the entire series trying to balance their side in three different ways. They had about as much success as a sixth-former riding a see-saw with a toddler at the other end.Pakistan have never before lost four Tests in a row on home soil•AFP/Getty ImagesThey would do without their allrounders altogether in Pindi, insisting Salman Ali Agha was – in Saqlain Mushtaq’s words – “80% batter, 20% allrounder”. In Multan, both Faheem Ashraf and Mohammad Nawaz were drafted in, before, like a bear in a Grimm Brothers fairytale, they found a combination they believed was just right. However, on a spinning track in Karachi, they decided to drop spin-bowling allrounder Mohammad Nawaz. That might have meant they really, really valued Faheem’s contribution with the ball, only for him to send down just one over out of 82 in England’s first innings. And Salman Ali Agha, that 20% allrounder? Ditto.The picture the past year or so paints is a particularly bleak one for Pakistan’s selection woes, but also, specifically, for Babar’s in-match captaincy. Turning to Mohammad Wasim on the second morning ahead of Faheem with England on the attack appeared to fly in the face of received wisdom around what each bowler’s respective strength is. Faheem’s unerring lines and lengths have tied down opposition batters, even against this otherwise belligerent England side, while Wasim Jnr’s reverse swing with the aging ball made him an ideal candidate for the back-end. Sure enough, Wasim’s first two overs went for 19; despite a fine old-ball spell, he would end up being Pakistan’s most expensive bowler of the innings.Babar’s use of spinners, meanwhile, has also come under scrutiny, particularly in an away defeat in Galle, as well as the drawn Test against Australia in Karachi this year. It’s thrown in sharp relief by Ben Stokes’ management of his own bowling resources, because it isn’t as if England’s team selections have made for straightforward decision-making. In Pindi, armed only with a 40-year old James Anderson and Ollie Robinson for pace resources and spin proving less venomous on the final day than England might have hoped, he would send down 20 overs by himself, dodgy knee and all.Stokes’ use of the part-time spin of Will Jacks, and more recently Joe Root – extending even to opening with the former England captain on Sunday – has yielded 11 wickets this series. Rehan Ahmed, meanwhile, was held back for 41 overs on the third day before being unleashed in the second hour of the afternoon; the teenager would end up becoming the youngest debutant to take five wickets and lead England off the pitch.Related

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Stokes opened the first-innings bowling with Jack Leach in the third Test – the first time in 101 years England have thrown their newest new ball to a spinner. Mark Wood – needing nursing in his own way – has been deployed to devastating effect in bursts through the last two Tests, most notably with a short-ball barrage in the final session in Multan. While Babar, seemingly on autopilot, continued to plug away at England’s lower-order with spinners that the visitors treated with disdain, Wood has been used to mop up Pakistan’s tail with clinical success.England’s position of strength on the final night of this series shines an even greater light on the gap between these two Test sides at the moment, one that – with the different directions these two are pulling in – is fast becoming a chasm. It is perhaps crueller to be played than killed off; perhaps even Babar would have preferred being put out of their misery today instead of having one more night to think about where this team – his team – is at, where he’s led them to.It’s difficult enough to solve problems in Test-match cricket, but infinitely harder when the existence of those problems is never acknowledged. Pakistan have not dominated the last few Test matches. But the problem with going to war with reality is the only weapon you have is your determination to shield yourself from it. Just because you refuse to see it does not mean others fail to see it, either, and certainly does not mean you’re inoculated from its consequences. It need not take a revolution for that basic fact to be acknowledged.

And who has the highest individual score on IPL debut?

Steven Lynch04-Apr-2023Mark Wood took five wickets in his first IPL match the other day. Was this a record? asked Brian McMaster from England
The England fast bowler Mark Wood took 5 for 14 – his best figures in all T20 cricket – for Lucknow Super Giants against Delhi Capitals in Lucknow last weekend. However, it wasn’t Wood’s IPL debut – he played one match for Chennai Super Kings against Mumbai Indians in 2018 (he failed to take a wicket, and his four overs cost 49).In any case, the best figures on debut in the IPL are 6 for 12, by the West Indian Alzarri Joseph for Mumbai Indians against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Hyderabad in 2019. Those are actually the best figures overall in IPL history: Wood currently sits joint eighth on that list.There was one notable record though: Wood’s figures were the best by an English bowler in the IPL, beating 5 for 25 by Dimitri Mascarenhas for Kings XI Punjab against Pune Warriors in Mohali in 2012.Has anyone made a higher score in the IPL season curtain-raiser than Ruturaj Gaikwad’s 92? asked Nilu Banerjee from India
That six-packed 92 from Ruturaj Gaikwad for Chennai Super Kings against Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad the other day was actually the third-highest individual score in the opening match of an IPL season. Back in April 2008, in the very first IPL game of all, Brendon McCullum lit up the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru with an undefeated 158 (still the second-highest in IPL history) for Kolkata Knight Riders against RCB. And in 2015, Rohit Sharma made 98 not out in the opening match for Mumbai Indians against KKR in Kolkata.Kyle Mayers hit 73 in his first IPL match the other day. What’s the highest score on IPL debut? asked Joseph Findlay from Barbados
Kyle Mayers hit 73 in his first match for Super Giants against Delhi Capitals in Lucknow at the weekend. That’s the highest score on IPL debut by anyone since the Brendon McCullum innings mentioned above – 158 not out for KKR against RCB in Bangalore in 2008, in the very first IPL match of all.Two others have made higher scores on IPL debut than Mayers’ 73 – both Australians, and both also in that inaugural season of 2008. The day after McCullum’s blitz, Michael Hussey hit 116 not out for CSK against Kings XI in Mohali, and a few days later Shaun Marsh made 84 not out for Kings XI vs Deccan Chargers in Hyderabad. So Mayers’ 73 was the fourth-highest individual score on IPL debut, and the highest since the first season.Travis Head is one of three batters to make five hundreds at home and none away•Getty ImagesI noticed that Mayank Agarwal has scored four Test centuries, all of them in India. What’s the most that one batter has made without any away from home? asked Devang Patel from India
At the moment there are three men who have scored five Test centuries, all of them on home soil: the old England captain Stanley Jackson, whose five hundreds all came against Australia, India’s Chandu Borde, and the current Australian batter Travis Head, who will no doubt be hoping to escape this particular list during the Ashes series in England later this year.Mayank Agarwal is one of five batters whose four Test centuries all came at home, along with Joe Hardstaff junior of England, Zimbabwe’s Guy Whittall, and the Sri Lankan pair of Roshan Mahanamaand Arjuna Ranatunga.What’s the lowest highest score in a completed Test innings? asked Jamie Lewcock from Ireland
If I’ve understood the question correctly, the answer is 7 – when South Africa were bowled out by England for 30 at Edgbaston in 1924, the highest individual contribution was 7, by their captain Herbie Taylor.The only other completed Test innings to include 11 single-figure scores was India’s 36 against Australia in Adelaide in 2020-21, when the biggest contribution was Mayank Agarwal’s 9.There have been several instances of ten batters failing to reach double figures in a Test innings. It includes Australia’s 35 for 8 at Old Trafford during the 1953 Ashes series.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

The South Africa batter says he finds the format “tiring”, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it means nothing to him

Firdose Moonda11-Oct-2023If you want to know whether Quinton de Kock cares about ODI cricket, watch his reaction after he scored his 50-over World Cup ton against Sri Lanka. There’s the power of the pull shot and then the passion of the wide-legged stance, the fist pump, the raised bat and the roar, followed by the pathos of the glint in the eye. Was it sweat or a tear? We may never know but we know enough: that hundred meant .”It was big,” de Kock said, typically poker-faced in Lucknow, ahead of South Africa’s next match against Australia. “Not just because it was a World Cup, but because I’ve been wanting a hundred for a while. I’ve got a couple of starts and then obviously I was not capitalising so just to get one again was pretty nice.”Before South Africa’s tournament opener, de Kock’s last ODI hundred came 20 months and 18 innings ago. Since then, he has scored three fifties, reached double figures 13 times, notched up a first T20I century, signed up for leagues including the MLC and the Big Bash and announced his retirement from the 50-over game. This World Cup is his last dance in the format in which he is, by a distance, the leading run-scorer of this generation of South Africans. He has 6276 ODI runs; the next most in the squad is David Miller, more than 2,000 runs behind. Overall, de Kock is seventh on South Africa’s all-time list and only Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers and Herschelle Gibbs have more ODI hundreds than him. Whatever else happens in this World Cup, de Kock will go down as one of South Africa’s most celebrated white-ball cricketers.Related

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Potentially, his farewell in the format also puts a(nother) question mark at the end of the sentence about the future of this format, although the man himself believes there is life in it.”I’m not going to speak on behalf of everyone. For myself, I find it quite tiring, but I’m sure there’s still a lot of guys, a lot of youngsters coming through from school, who would love to play this format,” he said. “I highly recommend that they find a way to keep it going, because there are a lot of guys with big ambitions who want this format to carry on. I think they need to find a place and a time for it to happen.””They” are the administrators, with whom de Kock has not always had the best of relationships but who may still be interested in his thoughts over the longevity of ODI cricket and the value of it. Ultimately, it was ODI cricket that made de Kock, after his three centuries against India in 2013, long before he was a T20 star. The longer limited-overs version allowed him time to build both his innings and his confidence and though cricket and its skills development has changed in the decade since de Kock debuted, he is an example of the kind of player ODIs can produce. He is also an example – maybe one of the last ones – of what ODI cricket can mean to players.For de Kock and this generation, a 50-over World Cup trophy is still the ultimate prize, even as the lure of T20s grows stronger. De Kock is one of those who have hung around, hoping for success in ODIs, when he could have walked away. He cares about it, even though his usually deadpan expressions and monotone and sometimes monosyllabic answers to questions, make it easy and lazy to assume he doesn’t.Aiden Markram, Rassie van der Dussen, Quinton de Kock – the three centurions against Sri Lanka•ICC via Getty ImagesDuring the recent series against Australia, de Kock spoke to the host broadcaster about his decision to focus solely on the shortest format and said that his loyalty to the national cause was what kept him on the ODI stage for the last five years. By his calculations, he could have walked away in 2018, cashed in on the T20 circuit and had his feet up by now.Instead, he is putting the fishing on hold to play his third 50-over World Cup and has started by showing he is willing to give it his all. His hundred against Sri Lanka laid the foundation for South Africa to break the World Cup batting record and, along with Rassie van der Dussen, provided the stability for Aiden Markram to score the fastest tournament hundred. And de Kock wasn’t the only one who let his emotions out that day.

“We’re doing really well as a batting unit and we’ve worked really hard on our game over the last couple of years but it’s only one game into the World Cup”de Kock doesn’t want South Africa to get too carried away by their start

All three South Africans who scored centuries against Sri Lanka were more animated than usual. That may be because the sense of belief in their own abilities is building but de Kock is still cautious.”We’re doing really well as a batting unit and we’ve worked really hard on our game over the last couple of years but it’s only one game into the World Cup,” he said. “So it’s hard to say how we are really going even though we managed really well in our last couple of games. The batting form hasn’t been over the course of years, it’s only been over a month or a couple of months. In order for us to be the best, we still need to be a bit more consistent, especially in tight games, like World Cups. That will determine how good we actually are.”South Africa’s only measure for how good they actually are, so far, is that they have not won a World Cup. For a squad that has always oozed talent that is something they want to change, especially as their most talented players, like de Kock, may not play in this format for much longer. Does that add extra motivation to this campaign? De Kock was not convinced.”I’m pretty much the same whether I’ve announced that I’ve retired or not retired,” he said. “I don’t really know how it happened. It was just a matter of working on one or two things and going out there and getting it done.”As simple as that.

Amrit Mathur’s book offers rare behind-the-scenes glimpses at the highs and lows of three decades of the game through his time as journalist, administrator and team manager

Debayan Sen01-Sep-2023If you’ve ever wondered what pre-match routines Sachin Tendulkar or Sourav Ganguly typically went through, or how chaotic the initial years of the IPL were, or how cannily the best cricket administrators work out the arithmetic during BCCI elections, you will get a lot of insights in Amrit Mathur’s Pitchside: My Life in Indian Cricket. Mathur is the ultimate Indian cricket insider, having spent time in the system as administrator, journalist, manager on several historic tours, as a member of organising committees in World Cups, and advisor to IPL teams. He has also held several posts in the BCCI.By his own admission, he was fortunate to be handpicked – “I think of myself as a concussion sub, someone not supposed to play but unexpectedly pushed into the middle” – first by erstwhile BCCI president Madhavrao Scindia, and then several others, as a young bureaucrat with Indian Railways.The good thing about Pitchside is that Mathur stays true to the title and presents us with an objective view of what he saw and heard. There are great anecdotes from some historic India campaigns that fans will lap up – the tour of South Africa in 1992, the 2003 World Cup, the 2004 tour to Pakistan (including the political ambivalence right up until Sourav Ganguly’s team set off, with then board president Jagmohan Dalmiya standing up to an unnamed senior minister and refusing to pull the plug on the tour on the government’s behalf), and also from his time with Delhi Daredevils (now Capitals) in the IPL.In Mathur’s telling of his early days in the game, of his all-star St Stephen’s College team-mates (Arun Lal, Piyush Pandey, Rajinder Amarnath, Ramchandra Guha) and Delhi University colleagues (Kirti Azad, Sunil Valson, Randhir Singh), I found parallels in my own life. When I went to the same college two decades later, any inter-departmental cricket game pitted you against Ranji Trophy players from Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab. Hindu College, rivals from across the road, acquired the services of Gautam Gambhir during my final year there.This star cast also makes routine appearances in his stories. The writing style is informal, with the private thoughts of titans of the sport, gleaned in conversation, appearing as bullet points at the end of several sections. The descriptions of the 2002 tour of England, capped by the NatWest Trophy win, and a stirring fightback in the Test series, give a fine picture of how the meticulous John Wright and the erratic Ganguly forged a coach-captain combination that had its share of highs and lows.Westland BooksI did, however, have two minor quibbles with the book. First, Mathur had a ringside view of two of Indian cricket’s greatest match-fixing scandals. He steers clear of the whole subject, which feels a bit like shortchanging the reader. Given his deep roots within Indian cricket, he may not have felt comfortable revealing ugly secrets about players and officials he has admired. There is also the possibility that he may not have known enough to talk with any authority.He also provides detailed pen sketches of various characters in Indian cricket right at the end. Interestingly, second mentions of characters are first names for various players and functionaries – see Sachin, Sourav/Dada, Gavaskar, Lalit, Jaggu-da – but for others, he uses Mr Scindia and Mr Jaitley. This might be out of reverence for the deceased, but it confirms that in Indian cricket the politician has an unjustified pride of place that the best players cannot quite aspire to yet, even in the words of one of the most honest and upright servants of the sport.