All posts by h716a5.icu

India are in transition but the leader of their attack in the West Indies stepped up big time

Alagappan Muthu24-Jul-20231:01

Dasgupta: Siraj led the pace attack under pressure

“In the morning, we chatted about it, that the wicket was tough to bowl on. It’s slow and nothing is happening, like seam movement or spin. At the end, there was some turn but overall it was very easy for batting.”Their batting was also very defensive. So there were no chances for us because they didn’t play any attacking shots. To sum up our effort, it was great from our bowlers and each one of them did what was expected of them.”A little over 12 hours after India’s bowling coach Paras Mhambrey said all of that, he was watching his boys cut through the West Indies line-up.The missing link between India needing 67 overs to pick up four first-innings wickets on Saturday but only 7.4 to pick up five on Sunday was the new ball. It swung.This was a significant window of opportunity, which came with the catch that it was likely to be a small one. These are the moments that a good team seizes.India have been at this crossroads many times in overseas Test matches. Two of the more high-profile ones turned on the back of not so much the mistakes themselves but the timing of them. Their collapse on the sixth day of the first World Test Championship final and their letting Travis Head off the hook by never inviting him to hook when he was new to the crease in the most recent World Test Championship final.That hurt will never go away. Like 8-0 in 2011-12 never went away. In fact, a straight line can be traced from there to India having much improved fast bowling stocks. Perhaps in a similar way, the limitations that cost them those two ICC titles will now help them build once again.2:38

Siraj: Taking a five-for on a flat wicket isn’t easy

There were some good signs in Port-of-Spain, particularly from Mohammed Siraj. Did you know that he has been among the toughest quick bowlers to face in the last year? He has induced a false shot 211 times in 13 innings. And that’s while playing on the raging turners of Mirpur and Nagpur. The featherbed at Ahmedabad. And of course, this one here at the Queen’s Park Oval. The other quicks above him – there are 11 – the likes of Stuart Broad and Mitchell Starc and Matt Henry and Kagiso Radaba tend to play at venues much more suitable to their craft.Only a few minutes after Siraj walked back to the pavilion having bowled 3.4 overs for 13 runs and four wickets on the fourth morning, West Indies leaked 100 runs in 12.2 overs. This guy is that good and he has worked really hard for it. He didn’t rest on having a top-notch outswinger to the right-hand batters. He went out and found a way to bring the ball back into them. He knew that in order to be great, he had to test both edges of the bat. He had to create that uncertainty. In some of symmetry’s best work, two of his wickets came from balls leaving the right-hand batters and the other two from balls snarling back into them. Jason Holder’s downfall had the added subtlety of a bowler going wide of the crease to trick the batter into playing the angle, and therefore playing inside the line to be nicked off.Siraj is dangerously close to being a complete fast bowler. And he has only been playing Test cricket for two-and-a-half years.Mukesh Kumar looks a quick study as well. The control he offered on day three was crucial. The wickets he took were also significant. He had Alick Athanaze lbw with conventional swing. He used reverse seam – the ball moving off the pitch in the direction of the shine – to subdue Kirk McKenzie. And he hounded Kraigg Brathwaite on the front foot because he knew that’s the one place on a cricket field he doesn’t feel comfortable. On a quicker pitch, he might have had him lbw too.India have dominated this tour but that was expected when they were up against a team ranked eighth and a batting line-up that has routinely underperformed. Even so, the fact that they made what needed to happen happen – a collapse so that they can get in to bat early and set the pace in order to leave themselves enough time to bowl West Indies out again – will please the team management. They know they are in the middle of a transition but it is entirely possible that they’re relishing the hell out of it. Mhambrey’s smile as he greeted Siraj, who returned to the dressing room with the ball held aloft, was a dead giveaway.

A home World Cup and the conditions that brings mean Ashwin, in the blink of an eye, is back in India’s ODI plans after six years of being on the fringes in the format

Karthik Krishnaswamy06-Oct-2023If you were to compile a highlights reel of R Ashwin’s career, you’ll have no shortage of memorable Test-match wickets to choose from – the pitch-leg, hit-off dismissals of Alastair Cook at Edgbaston, for instance, or the ripping, Muraliesque offbreak with which he bowled Kane Williamson in Kanpur, or these two beauties to Ollie Pope in Ahmedabad. He’s enjoyed a parallel career as a T20 pathbreaker, so you’ll also throw in his first-over arm ball to Chris Gayle from the 2011 IPL final and the carrom ball from hell to Hashim Amla from the 2014 T20 World Cup.It’s perhaps harder to recall, off the top of your head, the magic moments of Ashwin the ODI bowler. It has something to do with the nature of the format and the limited room it has lately had for fingerspin, and a lot to do with the fact that Ashwin has only played four ODIs in the last six years.Just under two weeks ago, though, Ashwin bowled what may have been the ball of his ODI career, a reverse carrom ball that swung into Marnus Labuschagne and straightened off the deck to beat his closed bat face and hit off and middle. An inswinger holding its line, a delivery that’s existed for as long as the cricket ball has had a stitched seam, delivered in a manner that no one had previously even thought to attempt. Not a bad ball to bowl if you’ve played next to no ODI cricket for six years and get a chance out of nowhere to stake your claim for a World Cup.Related

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Four days after he’d bowled that ball – and made David Warner bat right-handed, without much success, in an effort to counter his threat – Ashwin was in India’s World Cup squad.On Friday evening, two days out from India’s tournament-opener against Australia, Ashwin was bowling at the Chepauk nets. The scene already resembled a lurid fever dream thanks to the floodlights and India’s orange training kit, and one delivery to Suryakumar Yadav heightened this feeling: he went back, looking to work it into the leg side, only for the ball to leave him and square him up.From the outside there was no way to tell what ball Ashwin had bowled. It may have been a carrom ball, a reverse carrom ball that found a bit of grip, an arm ball, or a drifting offbreak that didn’t turn.Whatever this ball was, it had done the unexpected. Much like Ashwin over these last few weeks.Six years ago, Ashwin was out of India’s ODI squad, seemingly for good, because he and Ravindra Jadeja weren’t giving India wickets in the middle overs. If he’s back now, it isn’t so much because he’s turned into a different bowler but because India’s needs have changed, and they’ve moved other pieces of their jigsaw to create room for his skillset.It’s a skillset that might not make too much of an impression on the kind of pitch that The Oval produced for the 2017 Champions Trophy, or the English pitches that India expected at the 2019 World Cup. The same skillset, though, is just what India needed ahead of a World Cup in home conditions, where their combination, at certain venues, could have room for a third spinner.Australia will face India at Chepauk – no doubt much to R Ashwin’s delight•TNCAChennai quite likely is one of those venues. Its outfield isn’t massive, but it’s bigger than those at most Indian grounds, and the pitch tends to provide a fair amount of grip. It’s harder here than at most other grounds to hit spinners out of the attack. The most recent ODI here, in March, told quite a story: Australia batted first and were bowled out for 269, with India’s three spinners combining to take 5 for 147 in 28 overs. India’s chase began promisingly but fizzled out, with Australia’s spinners bagging 6 for 86 in 20 overs.The pitch for Sunday’s clash between the same sides is likely to be similar. Chennai’s square has both black- and red-soil pitches, and the pitch selected for the game is a black-soil one. While soil type isn’t a foolproof indicator of a pitch’s character, black-soil pitches in India tend to play slower and lower than red-soil pitches.India will have quite a few difficult selections to make as they journey through the league phase of this World Cup, meeting nine different opponents at nine different venues. The most conditions-dependent choice they’ll make is likely to be the one between Ashwin and Shardul Thakur: third spinner who bats a bit versus third seamer who bats a bit.That choice could be exceedingly tricky on some occasions. It might be rather more straightforward at Chepauk. This is Ashwin’s home ground, a ground where he once said, after running through Australia in a Test match, that “the air is talking to me, each man sitting in the stands is talking to me”.Ashwin’s ODI journey has been long and circuitous and full of unexpected turns. It makes sense that it brings him here now, back where it all began.

And are Geoff and Mitch Marsh the only father and son to win World Cups?

Steven Lynch28-Nov-2023I noticed that ten of Virat Kohli’s 50 ODI centuries have come against Sri Lanka. Is this the most by anyone against one opponent? asked Malcolm Anderson from England
That’s a good spot, as it is indeed the record: apart from Virat Kohli against the long-suffering Sri Lankans, no one has scored as many as ten centuries against the same opposition in one-day internationals. Kohli has also scored nine against West Indies, and the previous overall record-holder Sachin Tendulkar made nine against Australia. Tendulkar also hit eight hundreds against Sri Lanka, while Kohli and Rohit Sharma currently have eight against Australia.The Test record is held by Don Bradman, with 19 centuries against England. Sunil Gavaskar made 13 against West Indies, and Jack Hobbs 12 against Australia; Steve Smith currently has 12 against England.In women’s ODIs, Australia’s Meg Lanning scored six centuries against New Zealand, while the England pair of Tammy Beaumont and Nat Sciver-Brunt have made four against South Africa and Australia respectively.I noticed that Shadab Kabir played three ODIs for Pakistan and was out for a duck each time. Has anyone else done this (or done even worse? asked Riaz Siddique from Pakistan
The unfortunate Shadab Kabir played three ODIs in September 1996, bagging a duck against England at Trent Bridge and two more against India in Canada. He didn’t bowl, and held only one catch – but he did finish up with a Man-of-the-Match award. Perhaps we should really say that he shared an award, as the entire Pakistan team was given the award for a good all-round display in his debut match at Trent Bridge!Two other men started their ODI careers with three ducks – Nicholas de Groot of Canada during the 2003 World Cup, and Ireland’s Peter Gillespie in 2006. De Groot made 11 in his fourth match, and Gillespie (who had been dismissed third ball, second and first) finally got off the mark with two in his fifth and last game, after not batting in the fourth.A left-hander, Kabir did score some runs in Tests. He won five caps, and his 148 runs included 55 against Bangladesh in Dhaka in 2001-02. In first-class cricket, Kabir made 11 centuries, the highest his 176 for Karachi Port Trust against Sui Northern Gas in a Patron’s Trophy match in Peshawar in 2003-04.Are Geoff and Mitchell Marsh the only father and son to win the World Cup?asked Kelly Livingstone from Australia
Geoff Marsh was part of the Australian side which caused something of an upset by winning the 1987 World Cup. Marsh scored 24 as they beat England by just seven runs in the final in Kolkata.Geoff’s son Mitchell Marsh was out for 15 as his side made a hesitant start to their chase in the recent World Cup final in Ahmedabad, but it all came out right in the end for the Australians, enabling Marsh to complete this unique family double. Actually he already had a winners’ medal, as he was part of the squad that won at home in 2015, although he didn’t play in the final against New Zealand after appearing in three of the group games.His brother Shaun Marsh played two matches in the 2019 World Cup, before a ball from Pat Cummins broke his forearm in the nets. For the full list of related ODI players, click here.Geoff Marsh played the 1987 World Cup final, while his son, Mitchell, featured in the 2015 World Cup squad and played in the 2023 final•Ryan Pierse/Getty ImagesIndia beat England by 100 runs in the World Cup even though they scored only 229 themselves. Was this some sort of record? asked Mohan Chowdhury from India
India’s 229 for 9 against England in Lucknow was the second-lowest total to result in a win by 100 runs or more in a World Cup match: South Africa (225 for 7) beat England (103) by 122 runs at The Oval in 1999. The lowest total in any one-day international that resulted in a win by 100 runs or more remains England’s 171 at Edgbaston in 1977 – they then bowled Australia out for 70. That was the match in which both Greg Chappell (5 for 20) and Gary Cosier (5 for 18) took five wickets for Australia, still the only time this has happened in an ODI.Don Bradman took two wickets in his Test career. Is it true that he dismissed the same batter both times? asked Mustafa Al Sharif from the United Arab Emirates
I’ve answered loads of questions on here about Don Bradman’s batting – see above for a start – but I can’t remember very many about his bowling! Bradman very occasionally sent down some optimistic legbreaks. He bowled in only nine Test innings, his most famous spell arguably coming at The Oval in 1938, when he badly injured his ankle during his brief spell and couldn’t bat. It’s said that England’s captain Wally Hammond only called a halt at 903 for 7 after he’d been assured the Don would not be able to go in.Bradman did take two wickets in Tests, as you said, but they weren’t the same person. In Adelaide in 1930-31 , he trapped the West Indies wicketkeeper Ivan Barrow lbw for 27. Bradman’s second victim, two seasons later in Adelaide again, was none other than the aforementioned Hammond, who missed a full toss and was bowled for 85. It didn’t matter much overall – England went on to a 338-run win and took a 2-1 lead in the Bodyline series – but Hammond was furious at getting out to his rival, who had supplanted him as the leading batter in the world.In all first-class cricket Bradman took 36 wickets, with a best performance of 3 for 35 for the Australian tourists against Cambridge University at Fenner’s in 1930. He took three more wickets in the second innings, finishing with match figures of 6 for 103.Shiva Jayaraman of ESPNcricinfo’s stats team helped with some of the above answers.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

With both KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja ruled out of the second Test, the hosts have to make some big selection decisions

Alagappan Muthu29-Jan-202411:42

Newsroom: How do India replace Jadeja and Rahul?

On the back of a loss to start the series, India have lost their best batter from the Hyderabad Test and one of their biggest match-winners at home to injury. KL Rahul and Ravindra Jadeja have been ruled out of the second Test in Visakhapatnam which starts on Friday and India face a bit of a challenge in balancing their XI, starting with…Who is the new No. 4?Shreyas Iyer, probably. He did not cover himself in glory in the second innings – but then again none of the Indian batters did. When the loss became a possibility, the pressure seemed to get to them and the aggression that they showed that threw England spinners off their lengths in the first innings vanished. India will need someone in the top four who can do that and Iyer is as good an option as they’ve got right now. Because all of a sudden, after Rohit Sharma at the top, the experience that India can call on in their batting line-up has fallen into a crater.Who replaces JadejaKuldeep Yadav is the frontrunner. He has three five-fors in eight Tests. He has been in fine form in limited-overs cricket, displaying the very trait that is essential in the longer format – accuracy. That along with the X-factor of his wristspin made him a tempting option even in Hyderabad but India went with Axar Patel because they wanted the batting depth. Now with Jadeja out, their hand has been forced.Related

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India have called up two other spinners to the squad as well – Saurabh Kumar, a veteran from domestic cricket and an ever-present in the India A squad, and Washington Sundar, a decent left-hand batter which helps when you’re playing an opposition with two left-arm spinners, one of whom has just made history.The trouble with replacing Jadeja is that he is among their best bowlers and their best batters in the recent past. Kuldeep and Saurabh will give India reliability in one discipline – at least in terms of trusting them to bowl a ton of overs – but not in the other. Washington is the other way around. He has almost as many fifties as he has wickets in Tests.Rajat Patidar vs Sarfaraz KhanPatidar would be the front-runner considering he was already in the squad as Virat Kohli’s replacement, but is there place for Sarfaraz as well in the XI? India need batting depth and those two have been on the fringes of selection for a while.Patidar is known for his big-match temperament. And Sarfaraz, who was due in Bengal to play for Mumbai in the ongoing Ranji Trophy but is now another step closer to making his long-awaited international debut, tends to score lots of runs quickly. One of them is almost certain to make it to the XI in Visakhapatnam, but if India choose to replace Jadeja with Kuldeep then they might consider picking both Patidar and Sarfaraz to shore up the batting.Playing both of them, though, will mean India have to drop the fifth bowler and go with a four-man attack. Mohammed Siraj bowled only four of the 64.3 overs in the first innings and seven of 102.1 in the second, so will India borrow from England’s playbook and pick just the one fast bowler?

It would have been easy for a captain to burn through his key bowlers too early, but Rohit Sharma got the balance spot on

Sidharth Monga10-Jun-20241:17

Kumble: ‘Pant has been the best player in India’s line-up’

“You can’t defend this total. You have to get them out.”Falser words have hardly ever been spoken about low scores in T20s. If India, playing their third match at a particular ground, get bowled out for a low total, there’s a high chance that particular ground is not conducive to a bigger score. There is a higher chance they might end up with a below-par total at a high-scoring venue than at a low-scoring one. So if the ball is seaming and bouncing unevenly, you don’t really need to bowl them out.There are a few IPL captains in this India team. They have all been at either end of such low defences, albeit on a slow, turning tracks. The principle is the same: unlike in ODIs, T20s are a short enough period for you to be able to defend. In fact, it pays to not go searching and offering the opposition easy scoring opportunities in the process.Related

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Old debate, simple answer: Pakistan's batting just not very good

T20 is a highly-strung game. It doesn’t react well to high variance in conditions. You cannot score much higher than a run a ball if the ball does as much as it has done on Long Island. If you try to, you take a big risk.Rohit Sharma has been part of four successful defences of low totals (between 129 and 149) in IPL finals alone, one as a player for Deccan Chargers and three as Mumbai Indians captain. Only one of these wins came through early wickets; in the other three, Rohit’s team hung in for long enough.All that experience came into use in defending 119 against Pakistan. Rohit didn’t want to burn through Jasprit Bumrah’s overs looking for wickets. Even when Pakistan had partnerships going for the second and the third wicket, he didn’t become desperate for wickets. He just wanted to stay in the game long enough.Strike bowler and captain: the experience of Jasprit Bumrah and Rohit Sharma combined•AFPOn such pitches and outfields, you can set fields relatively easily. Even though the ball seamed less for India, it did enough to keep the other bowlers in it. When the opposition are 72 for 2 chasing 120, it is easy to make it a final roll of the dice and bring back your No. 1 bowler too early. Rohit didn’t. Perhaps on a flatter pitch, he might need to.”Even when there is help, you can be desperate, and you can try to go fuller and try to pull that magic delivery,” Bumrah said. “I tried not to do that but when we came, the swing and seam had reduced. So, we had to be accurate because if we go for magic deliveries and try to be too desperate, run-making becomes easy and they know the target. So, we had to be very mindful of not overdoing it and, yes, add up pressure, use the big boundaries, try to use things to our advantage. That is what we were doing. So, in that we created pressure and everybody got wickets.”India were helped in part by some docile batting from Pakistan. Take the 16th over, for example. This was going to be the last over of spin, and they had a left-hand batter on strike with a small leg-side boundary facing a left-arm spinner. Imad Wasim even had the wind going for him. Axar Patel bowled wide first ball, fully expecting Imad to shuffle across and try to hit to leg. Imad, though, tried only the late-cut and the cut, which could get him only singles on this outfield. If connected, that is. Axar bowled that over for just two runs, leaving Pakistan 35 to get in four overs.ESPNcricinfo LtdWhen Naseem Shah ramped Arshdeep Singh in the 20th over, it was the first unconventional shot Pakistan had played. Again, in conditions that allow bowlers to set fields for conventional shots, you have to play the unconventional ones.Not for nothing is Rishabh Pant the most successful batter in the New York leg of matches. He knows it is difficult to time the ball when going against its force. He knows the outfield is not his friend. So he has been hitting in areas where the bowlers don’t expect the ball to go. India won by six runs; they scored 12 more than Pakistan in ramps and reverse-sweeps. In the field, India were allowed to do what they wanted whereas Pakistan were put under higher pressure.Once the thought leaders of T20 cricket, among the early acceptors of the format, Pakistan are now playing T20 cricket from an era gone by. Not long ago, you could speak of Babar Azam and Virat Kohli the T20 batters in the same breath. Kohli, though, has gone on to work on his game, started slogging left-arm spinners, puts a lower price on his wicket, and has stayed relevant. Babar is stuck in a time warp. Awkward as it may be for him, Rohit has started playing the reverse-sweep. Pant and Suryakumar Yadav have been encouraged by the system.Given the limited scoring options the Pakistan batters have, at no stage did they look like the favourites to complete the chase. That Pakistan are being left behind is possibly down to their T20 isolation and also the stubbornness of their senior batters. Either way it is a waste of bowling talent.It might not have shown in the end because the toss advantage reduced the difference between the sides, but the difference between the sides was vast. Also, while they might have lost wickets at wrong times, India kept putting themselves in a position to get to a total that could bat Pakistan out of the game. That is something you can’t always say that of them: since 2014, the only teams India had defended successfully against in T20 World Cups were Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Netherlands and Zimbabwe.

Shreyanka Patil, Phoebe Litchfield and Seshnie Naidu are just some of the rising stars set to shine in the UAE

ESPNcricinfo staff30-Sep-2024AustraliaPhoebe Litchfield
Litchfield will be playing in her first world event having only debuted for Australia in 2022. As recently as late September she was unsure if she would make Australia’s best XI but a stunning half-century in a nervy chase against New Zealand all but secured her place in Australia’s middle order. She is one of the most exciting and innovative young batters in the world and she will have an important role as one of the few left-handed batters in Australia’s line-up.BangladeshShorna AkterThe legspin allrounder doesn’t have the power game but can clear the gaps and keep the scorecard moving at pace. She was part of the Bangladesh side at the Under-19 World Cup last year and finished as the team’s top scorer, striking at 157.73. That earned Shorna a call-up to the senior team at 16 and she was straightaway added to the T20 World Cup squad. A 22-ball 31 against New Zealand at No. 5 made her presence felt on the international circuit. Later that year, she stunned South Africa with 5 for 28 to add a glorious chapter in Bangladesh Women’s cricket. Recently at the Asia Cup, she blazed a 14-ball 25 against Sri Lanka, at No. 8. Though she can be a bit expensive with the ball, Shorna’s batting approach is a refreshing change in a line-up that struggles to score quickly.IndiaShreyanka Patil
She may be only 12 T20Is old, but Patil, 22, has quickly established herself as one of the key cogs of India’s spin attack despite making her international debut only last December. It is no secret that she thrives under pressure and is adept at bowling across phases. Her ability to bat lower down the order only adds to her value. She hasn’t got enough chances to bat for India yet but has shown glimpses of what she can do with the bat in the WPL. She could be just the bowler batters would not want to come up against in conditions in the UAE.New ZealandFran Jonas
The 20-year-old left-arm spinner already has an ODI and T20 World Cup under her belt having featured in the 2022 and 2023 events. She was also part of the Commonwealth Games so has considerable experience for someone so young. The results have been promising, too, with her career-best 4 for 22 coming against England at Lord’s earlier this year. There is every chance she forms a frontline spin trio with Amelia Kerr and Eden Carson. “I’ve been really impressed with a lot of the work our spinners have done,” captain Sophie Devine said ahead of the Australia series. “They are going to have a big role moving ahead…in the UAE so for us Fran Jonas, Eden Carson will play critical roles for us.”PakistanSyeda Aroob ShahAroob offers hope for Pakistan’s future. The legspinner was only 16 when she made her international debut across formats, in 2019. She soon lost her place in the senior side the following year after playing just five T20Is, which included a stint at the 2020 T20 World Cup in Australia. However, she proved her worth in domestic tournaments and was part of Pakistan’s emerging team last year. She was then made the Pakistan captain at the 2023 Under-19 World Cup and a few months later, was also brought back into the senior team after three years. Despite limited success with the senior side, Aroob’s conventional legbreak and a good flipper can trouble batters.South AfricaSeshnie Naidu
Good legspinners are among the most valuable players in the game and South Africa have found a specialist in Naidu, who is 18 years old, completing her final year of high-school and already has significant big-tournament experience. Naidu played at the under-19 World Cup last year and for the South African Emerging Side at the Africa Games, where took five wickets at 11.00. She was uncapped when she was selected in the T20 World Cup squad and made her debut in Pakistan, where her first act of note was to take a blinder of a catch at short fine leg before she got a wicket off her second ball in international cricket. The early signs are that she backs her variations, even if she gets hit, and as part of a dynamic attack, she could be the missing piece.Seshnie Naidu made her T20I debut in Multan•Pakistan Cricket BoardSri LankaKavisha Dilhari
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Dilhari is among the most improved allrounders in the women’s game this past year. There was no doubt over her utility as a bowler; she has been constantly among the wickets with her offspin. She picked up wickets in each of the T20Is in England last year, and in each of Sri Lanka’s T20I wins in South Africa this year. But by stepping up with the bat she has given the middle order a boost. She helped see off the chase against India in the Asia Cup final, hitting her first two sixes in T20Is. Against Ireland, she brought up her maiden half-century in the format and has begun to show the mettle which made her one of ESPNcricinfo’s 20 picks for women cricketers expected to dominate the 2020s.West IndiesZaida James
The teenage allrounder from St Lucia has always done things long before she was expected to. She was 14 when she was called up to the Windward Islands senior team and the youngest woman to do so, and 16 when she was part of a West Indies training camp in Antigua in 2021. Now, 19, she already has major accomplishments to her name. James was the standout performer for West Indies at last year’s under-19 World Cup; their highest run-scorer and only player to score more than 100 runs and also their highest wicket-taker. She made her senior debut in the same month and, although she didn’t make the World Cup squad then, fast-forward 18 months and she has played 12 ODIs and 14 T20Is and seems to have a bright future ahead of her.Zaida James has shown a skill for exceeding expectations•ICC/Getty ImagesEnglandFreya Kemp
Talented allrounder Kemp made a splash in 2022 against India when she became the youngest England player, female or male, to score fifty in a T20I, aged 17 years and 145 days. But a back stress fracture later that year ruled her out of the 2023 T20 World Cup. A flare up of the injury at the end of last year further delayed her return to bowling her left-arm seam until New Zealand’s visit in July. A quiet Hundred led England to select her for the recent tour of Ireland while the majority of the World Cup squad trained in Abu Dhabi and there she found some good form in three ODIs with a 47-ball 65 and taking 2 for 7 from three overs in the second game. To complete her comeback with a strong World Cup debut would no doubt mean a lot to Kemp, and England’s prospects.ScotlandRachel Slater
The leading wicket-taker from the Qualifiers, 22-year-old left-arm seamer Slater was crucial to Scotland’s maiden appearance at a Women’s T20 World Cup, taking 11 wickets at 13.81 and with an economy rate of 7.60. That included a career-best of 5 for 17 against Uganda. Slater took 12 wickets for Northern Diamonds in the Charlotte Edwards Cup and five wickets at an economy of 6.51, including bowling England star Nat Sciver-Brunt, during her nine appearances for Oval Invincibles in the Women’s Hundred. Having played top-level cricket in England should stand her – and her team – in good stead on the big stage in the UAE.

Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia came away with victories as the selectors watched closely

Andrew McGlashan24-Oct-20240:56

Steven Smith: ‘Bumrah is the complete bowler’

Openers stallYou may have noticed, but Australia’s specialist openers are not banging down the door. Marcus Harris dug in for two hours at the MCG but was then undone by Mitchell Starc. Cameron Bancroft’s nightmare start to the season continued and his returns now read 0, 0, 8 and 2 – three times caught behind nibbling outside off then top-edging to fine leg. Matt Renshaw collected 2 and 21 against South Australia. Sam Konstas showed some promising signs in the second innings against Victoria before giving it away against Todd Murphy. It’s hard to know who, if anyone, is leading the race.Related

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David Warner's latest headline grab has underlined Australia's opener problem

Labuschagne: 'Anyone's guess' who will open, but Smith at No. 4 'pretty simple fix'

Steven Smith’s lean outingWe know he’s moving back to No. 4, but Steven Smith cut a frustrated figure at the MCG. Caught down the leg side off Fergus O’Neill in the first innings he was then less-than-impressed by the lbw decision against Scott Boland although there didn’t seem much wrong with it. “I actually felt pretty good out there, to be honest, for the 3 that I scored,” he said with a hint of a smile after the first innings. It now seems likely that the rest of Smith’s build-up to India will be against the white-ball with a One-Day Cup match against Victoria then the ODI series against Pakistan.The McSweeney solutionNathan McSweeney has made an excellent start to the season – scores of 55, 127 not out, 37 and 72 – to build on his success of last summer when runs were hard to come. He is certainly in the mix for Test selection; beyond who opens there will also need to be a spare batter in the squad. Despite the quick abort of Smith opening, there is a world where the selectors again go down the route of non-specialist which could open a space for McSweeney in the XI. He captains Australia A next week against India A.Nathan McSweeney has started the season strongly•Getty ImagesKeepers flyingMight Australia’s most in-form player heading into the Test summer be their No. 7? Alex Carey is churning out the runs following his successful return to the ODI side in England last month. He has now crunched two centuries and a 90 in four innings this season. Remember he also finished the New Zealand series in March with an unbeaten 98. Talk about his form feels a long time ago. But he’s not the only gloveman in fine fettle.Josh Inglis has played superbly for Western Australia and, like Carey, has two hundreds in two matches. If you were looking at the best six or seven batters on form, he’d be there. There is recent precedent for Australia playing two wicketkeepers in their Test side: Matthew Wade featured alongside Tim Paine from 2019 to 2021, including during India’s last visit when he also opened the batting for two Tests.Josh Philippe (45 not out and 88) also continued his impressive start to the season on a tricky MCG pitch after the move to New South Wales and Jimmy Peirson (94) led a Queensland fight back against South Australia. Both are in the Australia A squad.Starc looking goodNow, this looked encouraging. Mitchell Starc hit his straps at the MCG, finding swing at high pace. He could easily have had more than one wicket in the first innings then collected six in the second, although it wasn’t enough to turn things around for NSW. However, he produced some crackerjack deliveries and was gliding smoothly to the crease in his first red-ball outing since March. “Wickets aside, I think the rhythm was there,” Starc said. “I felt probably the best I have felt for a while actually. Across the two innings, it feels like it’s in a good spot.” In the last series at home against India he averaged 40.72 so will hope to improve on those numbers.Alex Carey has been prolific early in the summer•Getty ImagesThe ones we aren’t talking about (much) – Khawaja, Labuschagne, Marsh, LyonIt’s easy to forget, given all the chatter, that most of Australia’s squad for the first Test is locked in. It was a relatively lean week for Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne (who is bowling a lot of medium-pace bouncers) although the pair made runs in the opening round. Mitchell Marsh fell cheaply twice against Tasmania and didn’t return to the bowling crease as he had previously suggested he would. Nathan Lyon got through another 41 overs of work against Victoria. In the same game, Boland finished with the fewest wickets of the home side’s quicks (three) but was shaking off the early-season rust nicely. His around-the-wicket spell to Nic Maddinson was classy. His likely challenger as the back-up Test quick, Michael Neser, picked up four wickets against South Australia while Sean Abbott produced a reminder that he should remain in the conversation. Nathan McAndrew may not be a million miles away, either.What’s next?Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood will feature for NSW in the One-Day Cup match against Victoria on Friday. Then the focus turns to the first Australia A vs India A match in Mackay which begins on October 31 and runs concurrently with the next round of Shield. Konstas, Harris, Bancroft and McSweeney are in the Australia A squad as is allrounder Beau Webster. Boland and Neser will also suit up in one of the matches. Of those left in Shield cricket, Renshaw and Maddinson will be in action in Sydney as NSW face Queensland. Lyon is expected to play that game, too, as his last outing before the Test series.

The internet was all praise for New Zealand following their historic series win in India

ESPNcricinfo staff03-Nov-2024

Losing 3-0 at home is a tough pill to swallow, and it calls for introspection.
Was it lack of preparation, was it poor shot selection, or was it lack of match practice? @ShubmanGill showed resilience in the first innings, and @RishabhPant17 was brilliant in both innings– his… pic.twitter.com/8f1WifI5Hd

— Sachin Tendulkar (@sachin_rt) November 3, 2024

Head coach returns to county cricket after two decades, with a focus on high standards and no excuses

Andrew Miller17-Mar-2025The first thing that strikes you, on seeing Adam Hollioake in the flesh for what feels like the first time in two decades, is his breadth. He fills the doorway with the stature of a bouncer, a neck the size of an average person’s waist, and a gruff Aussie voice that is the very epitome of no-nonsense.”G’day … Adam Hollioake,” he intones, as if any sort of introduction is necessary. Despite his long years away from English cricket, it’s striking how ubiquitous he remains – for his stature, his back story, and his litany of achievements, most of them as captain of one of the great Surrey teams, but also as one of the great leaders that England didn’t quite have.And now he’s back, after 20 extraordinary years of self-imposed exile in Australia, as head coach of Kent – a fact that seems to have caught him as much by surprise as it did the rest of English cricket, when word of his appointment first circulated in December.”The way I’ve lived my life, I’ve kind of … what’s the right word? … free-styled, and just accepted whatever’s come my way,” he says in Canterbury, on the club’s pre-season media day. “I’ve just seen where life’s taken me, and in this instance, it has brought me down here today. I don’t know why, because the crowd always hated me down here. So not sure why God’s sending me down this way, but he’s done it.”Hollioake’s referencing of his faith is fleeting but instructive. Twenty-three years ago this week, English cricket was rocked by the death of his brother Ben, in a car-crash in Perth, and Adam’s own world was turned upside-down. The journey he’s since been on has seemed, from afar, like his personal Calvary. He’s accumulated his scars like badges of honour – including those earned during his brief pivot to cage-fighting – while the collapse, in the mid-2010s, of his £13 million property empire was another crushing experience that, if nothing else, reinforced that vital recognition that real life is what happens away from the field of play.Hollioake’s CV includes a brief stint as an assistant coach with England in 2017•Getty Images”Everyone always says your school years are the best years of your life,” he says. “I don’t think so. I’m 53 now and the best years of my life were playing professional cricket. Those years come and go very quickly, so make the most of it, give it your best shot, enjoy it along the way because, at the end of the day, it is just a game.”Whatever we do in life, some things are transferable back into cricket. When I went into fighting, everybody said, ‘what’s cricket and fighting got in common?’ And it turns out there’s a lot of things, like discipline, controlling your arousal levels, preparing and getting yourself into the right shape for an event. It just emphasises to me that there is a process to go through to have success back here in cricket, which is where I began.”I’ve always felt like my destiny is to be a head coach, but my first priority over the last decade has been bringing my children up,” he adds. “The most important thing in life was to be a dad and give them the best start in life, but now I’ve got to the point where, thankfully, they’ve left [laughs]. Now it’s my opportunity to bring on some of these guys and hopefully turn them into better players and better men. And do some stuff for myself.”Related

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Perhaps it’s glib to make the comparison, but the parallels with England’s unveiling of Brendon McCullum in 2022 are striking. Each man arrived in their respective roles with little by way of a conventional coaching CV – McCullum had before never overseen a red-ball team, while Hollioake is embarking on his maiden head-coach role – and each entered a dressing-room that was visibly down on its luck.”I know about Bazball and I love the idea of Bazball,” Hollioake says. “I haven’t analysed in depth what his message is with the England team, but I like it, so if you’re comparing me, that’s a compliment.”When I saw it, I thought ‘this is really smart’, not because tactically it’s wise, but what it does is remove the fear of failure which, historically, English players are handcuffed by.”That certainly seemed to be true for Kent in a grim 2024 campaign. Their relegation in the County Championship was compounded by a rock-bottom finish in the T20 Blast South Group. But, if there’s any sense that the players are still feeling sorry for themeslves, then as Sam Billings, their T20 captain, acknowledged, a 10-minute chat with the new coach is as likely as anything to snap them out of it.”I don’t necessarily deserve respect. I’ve got to earn that every day, just like when I was [Surrey] captain,” he says. “I’ve no idea what they did last year, I don’t concern myself with the past. It’s just about turning up with a good attitude, wanting to play hard and work hard. If that’s a shift, then they were obviously doing something wrong in the past.Hollioake (left) with his mixed martial arts coach Stephen Ng”What I can do is be clear with my messaging, and the standards that I expect. Just simple things like the state of the balls we were warming up with. We had white balls, red balls, old balls, new balls, all in the same bag. Our kit was all over the place. The standards of what we expect was just not good enough.”We need to respect ourselves and expect more from the club. If that message is helping them, then great. If it’s not, then they’ll learn.”Although Hollioake’s appointment has brought with it a tangible level of excitement and interest, it’s also hard to ignore the realpolitik at play where clubs such as Kent are concerned. They are due their share of the Hundred windfall, as and when Surrey complete their negotiations with their new partners at Oval Invincibles, Reliance Industries Ltd, but that deal in itself merely exacerbates the sense of them and us that is a growing feature of English professional sport.Hollioake, however, has a terse opinion of such navel-gazing. “The first thing we’ve got to do is stop using that as an excuse,” he says. “Money can be important, but it doesn’t mean that if you haven’t got it, you can’t be successful. I’m happy to acknowledge that sides like Surrey might have more money than us. That doesn’t give them a right just to come out and beat us. Hollywood’s littered with stories of underdogs. So let him make some movies about us.”It’s a variation on a theme he has encountered before – back at Surrey, no less, who had waited 18 long years for a County Championship title until Hollioake helped guide them to three in four years from 1999 to 2002, plus four further white-ball trophies.”We had a big excuse culture back then,” he recalls. “It was like ‘everyone cheats and changes the pitches against us’, or ‘the umpires don’t like us’. I find that when you start complaining or moaning about stuff, it gives you an excuse to lose. It’s subconsciously giving yourself a soft way out, or you can use it as a motivation. Certainly in my time at Surrey I did. I was like, ‘everyone hates us. Good!’ Let them hate us. I don’t care. We’re not here to be liked.”It’s the same here. No one’s going to look back in a hundred years’ time, and look at who won the Championship or T20 cup, and say, ‘well, how much money did you have?’ You don’t. It’s all about who wins.””We’ve got 11 guys that go out on the pitch. Two fists, one heart. They’re the same as the opposition.”