There might be no kneejerk reactions, but with a tour to New Zealand and the series against India later in the year, Australia would want the question marks to go away

Andrew McGlashan26-Jan-2024It has certainly not been a smooth transition into a new batting-order era for Australia. David Warner’s Test retirement was always going to be a significant moment for the team and the knock-on effect was new roles for two players.The path of least resistance would have been a like-for-like specialist opener replacing Warner and that being the only change. But there was a strong desire to get Cameron Green back in the side with the selectors believing, not without good reason, that he was among the best six batters in Australia. So then it became about finding positions for everyone.After much persuasion from him, Steven Smith moved up to fill Warner’s position with Green returning to the side at No. 4. While a somewhat left-field solution, it was not quite as seismic as was sometimes portrayed despite Smith having never opened in Test or first-class cricket across a 16-year career. As Smith himself said, during one of the most prolific runs he had ever had in the 2019 Ashes, he barely had to wait to get to the crease so was facing a very new ball.Related

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Still, this was a new role and within it some subtle shifts in what was required. Speaking before this Test, Smith was asked what he had done differently in Adelaide when opening for the first time. With a smile, he said the only thing was to leave the field for an over so that he could tie his shoelaces to his socks, which is part of how he kits himself up to bat.Away from the fact it is such a Steven Smith thing to do (he doesn’t like to look down and see his laces) it was perhaps not insignificant because even when coming in early at No. 4, there’s more than ten minutes to get ready. Now, even though he has said he had not enjoyed waiting to bat of late, it is all a bit more of a rush. When Kevin Sinclair was stumped to end West Indies’ first innings at the Gabba, he was sprinting off with Alex Carey barely having completed the dismissal.The confident pull first ball against Kemar Roach and the pleasing straight drive in the opening over were promising signs, although between them he was beaten by an outswinger. However, he then got himself into a horrid position, shuffling across the stumps, and was plumb lbw albeit the DRS was needed to confirm it.While Smith clearly wanted the new challenge of opening, it has come at a time when his batting has not been at its peak. This season, his average now sits at 31.85. Things do not seem quite in sync. In Adelaide, the outside edge was found by Shamar Joseph as he shuffled across the crease, and now he’d been beaten on the inside by Roach. At his very best, deliveries on the stumps have been his meat and drink.”I just need to be a little bit more disciplined,” he had said before the Test. “I have had a couple of nice balls that have just gone away from me but didn’t look like they were going away from me [and] have drawn me in. I think that is one of the big parts of how I have played throughout my career. I have been pretty disciplined outside off stump. When I am disciplined and leaving well there, then I am batting well.”Cameron Green is being asked to resume his Test career from almost a cold start•Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesWhen Marnus Labuschagne soon followed Smith, superbly caught by Sinclair at fourth slip, it meant an early entry for Green. For him, the challenge of the new role (although only at Test level) stems from a lack of recent cricket having carried the drinks against Pakistan. Before Adelaide, he’d had two first-class innings since being left out at the end of the Ashes in July, making 96 against Queensland in the Sheffield Shield and 46 against Pakistan for the Prime Minister’s XI.He is being asked to resume his Test career from almost a cold start. In Adelaide, he did well to survive the first evening and began the second day with a brace of confident boundaries before edging behind against Shamar Joseph. Today, on a ground where he averaged 84.44 in first-class cricket before this match, and after one nicely timed boundary down the ground, he drove to mid-off. Since making his maiden century in Ahmedabad last March, he averages 17.33 in Tests.That is not to say it was wrong to bring him back, but it highlights the challenges that came with the decision, and also why he has not been selected for the upcoming T20s against West Indies to try and get him a Sheffield Shield match before the two Tests in New Zealand.Both Smith and Green could well have the chance for substantial second innings in this match, and if they make runs, the debate will quickly quieten down. And even if they don’t, there is unlikely to be a kneejerk reaction from the selectors, who will give things time to settle down although those two matches in New Zealand – against a good seam attack – would grow in significance. After that it is a long gap until India arrive in November. And that is not a series where you want question marks over a batting order.

Essex allrounder a surprise hit with the ball in Brisbane Heat’s march to the knockouts

Matt Roller18-Jan-2024Australian cricket’s embrace of a new cult hero in “Tall” Paul Walter was underlined by his inclusion in the Big Bash League’s team of the tournament on Thursday, selected by the eight BBL head coaches. It is not long since Walter was a journeyman county stalwart, but a brief conversation with Jos Buttler 18 months ago sparked a career transformation.Walter was recruited by Manchester Originals as a replacement player for the Hundred in 2022 after a 400-run Vitality Blast season and was initially seen as a powerful middle-order batter. He had bowled a solitary over in Essex’s T20 campaign but, after Originals’ first match, Buttler sounded him out.”He was just like, ‘are you still tweaking a few out? What’s the situation?’ And I said, ‘I’m ready to go. Chuck me the ball,'” Walter recalls. “I hadn’t really bowled for two or three years before that and I’d only really just got to being bowlable. But the first time Jos threw me the ball I did well and then I got a roll.”His idiosyncratic left-arm medium pace deceived batters across the country and, from nowhere, Walter emerged as the Hundred’s joint-highest wicket-taker. After losing their first three games, Originals won six in a row to reach the final. “I didn’t even have bowling on my radar when I turned up, to be honest,” he says.Related

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“When I was younger I came through as a bowler, and I went on the ECB pace programme which was a lot of technical work. But then I had injuries around that time and when I was coming back, I struggled with nailing what technique to use and then just fell away. I lost loads of pace and struggled to get the ball to do what I wanted it to do. I’d just lost confidence with it, really.”Walter’s improvement with the bat kept him in the Essex side across formats but he only bowled sporadically. “I just needed to figure out exactly how my body works. I’m a big guy, so it’s not always as easy as going by the textbook: I have to feel things through. It was almost like taking a break gave my body a chance to forget the technical stuff and just run in and bowl how I wanted to, rather than worrying about what was going where.”He credits Mick Lewis, Essex’s Australian bowling coach, with helping him to rediscover his control with the ball. “He’s been a great help to me: simplifying everything, helping me to find my old muscle memory and to trust myself. I started to feel like the ball was coming out nicely, and then it was just a fact of actually doing it.”Walter’s performances in the Hundred across two seasons piqued the interest of Charles Evans, Brisbane Heat’s analyst, before September’s BBL draft and he has thrived over the last six weeks. “I think we’ve got the best bowling unit in the competition,” he says. “I feel like I complement the rest of the attack quite well and we’ve been good at managing games.”

“I’ve worked a lot on my defensive bowling, trying to figure out how to get batters off strike and trying to keep the ball away from the shorter pockets”

Heat have used six bowlers with clear roles: Xavier Bartlett and Michael Neser share the new ball, Walter combines with spinners Matt Kuhnemann and Mitchell Swepson through the middle phase, and Spencer Johnson closes things out for them. “Kuhny and Sweppo have bowled so well through the middle that teams have come hard at me, which is probably what you want with my style of bowling,” Walter says.”I’ve worked a lot on my defensive bowling, trying to figure out how to get batters off strike and trying to keep the ball away from the shorter pockets. I normally bowl the overs where the right-handers are hitting to the short leg side, so I’ve had to get quite clever with getting them to hit to the other side of the ground. I do a lot of work off the field figuring out what I’m going to do in different situations.”Walter has performed his trademark aeroplane celebration after each of his 13 wickets and has been a hit with the Heat’s fans. “It was Eoin Morgan who started calling me ‘Tall Paul’ on Sky in the Hundred but it’s taken on a new level out here,” he laughs. “I’m not complaining: if everyone’s shouting that at me on the streets instead of abuse then I’ll take it.”The Heat face Sydney Sixers in the BBL’s qualifier on Friday, and Walter is their only remaining overseas player with Sam Billings and Colin Munro both in the UAE for the ILT20. “We’ve still got our original bowling unit, and the batters that have come in for us have been unlucky not to be playing anyway,” he says. “When you reach the knockouts, it’s just about holding your nerve.”Walter hopes to return to the BBL next year, not least because he got engaged shortly before Christmas to his Australian partner, who is based in Melbourne: “It’s been a busy few months. This is definitely the best competition for my life as a whole, so I’m glad it’s all gone well.” A trophy next week would top it off.

ESPNcricinfo’s writers pick their favourite balls of IPL 2024

ESPNcricinfo staff28-May-2024Starc knocks out AbhishekBy Sidharth MongaWhen you play for as long as Mitchell Starc has, and you are the kind of bowler he is – full, fast, direct – there is bound to be a highlights reel of damaged stumps long enough for a web-series episode. You could narrow it down to the first blows of big matches, and you will still have enough. The yorker to Brendon McCullum in the first over of the 2015 World Cup final at a packed MCG is difficult to beat for an occasion, but the ball to dismiss Abhishek Sharma in the IPL final was a better delivery. It angled into the pads, pitched on leg, swung late and seamed a touch, squared up the left-hand batter, went past the outside edge and took the top of off. The length was just perfect: full enough to hit the highest part of the wicket, but still not something you stride forward to.Jasprit Bumrah leaps in celebration after yorking Prithvi Shaw•BCCIBumrah yorks ShawBy Alagappan MuthuJasprit Bumrah bowled 56 yorkers in IPL 2024. Twenty more than the second highest. He took seven wickets with them. Four more than the next best. Six of them were clean bowled. Each of them too good for the batter to lay anything on it. Because they’re fast. They’re accurate. They swing. They dip. They might even be sentient. Prithvi Shaw had to deal with one and even though he was batting on 66 off 39, he was no match. His first line of defence – the bat – couldn’t come down in time. Shaw thought it could and had moved his second line of defence – his feet – out of the way. Now there was nothing protecting his stumps. Bumrah’s combination of pace, precision and movement had essentially made a human being disappear.Virat Kohli had a lot to say to the umpires on being given out off a high full toss at Eden Gardens•BCCIVirat Kohli c & b Harshit RanaBy Karthik KrishnaswamyIt definitely wasn’t a contender for the ball of the season, but Virat Kohli c & b Harshit Rana was hugely illustrative of where cricket at the top level is headed, for better or worse. A slower ball slipped out of Rana’s hand and ended up as a high full-toss angling into the batter’s body. Kohli, completely thrown by the ball’s unexpected trajectory, popped back a return catch, and there was no immediate celebration from Rana, because he seemed fairly certain this would end up as no-ball on height.So too was Kohli, when he called for a review of the on-field decision that this was a fair delivery. Kohli would probably have got to continue his innings in any other season, but IPL 2024 has made a giant leap towards eliminating subjectivity from umpiring. Is that a good thing? Who knows. On the day, the third umpire made his decision based on two numbers: ball-tracking said the ball 0.92m above the ground it had reached the point of the crease, and Kohli’s waist, measured before the start of the season, was 1.04m above ground level.

Fans and sponsors aren’t coming in and team owners aren’t staying put. The tournament is floundering

Andrew Fidel Fernando21-Jul-2024On Thursday at the Lanka Premier League (LPL), Colombo Strikers played a knockout match in what is ostensibly their home venue.Strikers had beaten their Eliminator opponents Kandy Falcons twice in the league stage and had in their ranks the likes of Rahmanullah Gurbaz (one of the T20 World Cup’s star batters), New Zealand livewire Glenn Phillips, and three-time LPL-winning captain Thisara Perera.The cheapest seats at the Khettarama cost SLR 200 (a little more than the cost of a loaf of bread), slightly better seats cost SLR 600 (about what a posh coffee might set you back), and very good seats cost around SLR 2000 (a fast-food burger meal). Pay these amounts, and you would not only get access to the evening game, in which Strikers featured, you’d also have been able to roll up to Galle Marvels vs Jaffna Kings, the top-two sides from the league stage, playing the afternoon Qualifier that would launch one of those sides to the final.In a tournament in great health, the Khettarama would be brimming with 35,000 fans. Sri Lankan social media would be wriggling with debates, commentary and analysis. Potential sponsors would be clambering over each other to be associated.Kusal Mendis brought up a century off 51 balls, but there weren’t many people in the stands to watch it•SLCIn reality, no more than a smattering of spectators were in attendance, Falcons would continue to play without a sponsor, and though the most faithful devotees of Sri Lankan cricket were tuning in, there was little evidence that these matches were breaking through into the mainstream consciousness. On Saturday, when Kings played Falcons in a second Qualifier, which turned out to be a nail-biter, crowds and interest were only marginally better.Although the LPL had been launched in the depths of a Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, there had been brightness to that first season. Perhaps the strictures imposed by the pandemic worked in its favour. The LPL had a captive audience, for one – Lankans stuck at home with little else to do. There wasn’t much cricket going on elsewhere on the planet at the time, so fans overseas were also drawn in. Having to play at a single bio-secure venue was a bonus too – just one broadcast crew was required, even if costs to maintain the tournament bubble were substantial.When the Jaffna franchise, called Stallions under the original ownership, won, it felt like a tournament that could grow. Jaffna fans are the toughest crowd in the country, for reasons that stretch far beyond sport. And yet many in the northern city, and some in the diaspora, had felt a connection.By the next edition, the winning Stallions team had been terminated by Sri Lanka Cricket to the chagrin of those owners. No serious effort at building a fanbase in their home cities has been attempted since.

Where organisers may point to some markers of growth, this, right now, is a league that is being out-competed by many others. The concurrent MLC in the USA has pulled the likes of Cummins, Rashid, Pooran, Pollard, Head, Maxwell and Boult – the kind of star list the LPL has never assembled across its five seasons

Since then, the LPL has lurched from season to season, picking up new owners every time it rounds a corner on a new edition, each one stranger than the last. Take the Dambulla franchise, for example. In the inaugural tournament, the team was Dambulla Viiking, owned by Sachiin Joshi, who has since become more familiar to India’s law enforcement agencies. Next year, it was Dambulla Giants, after Joshi divested. In 2022 and 2023, it was Dambulla Aura, owned by Aura Lanka, whose website claims the company is in everything from herbals to helicopters, but which has no products available for wide consumption by the Sri Lankan or any other market. In the approach to this year’s tournament, they were Dambulla Thunders, until one of their owners was arrested just weeks before the tournament. Now it is Dambulla Sixers, owned by a whole different entity.When you see company after company buying up these franchises, then ditching them just as fast while stadiums remain largely empty in a country in which cricket is indisputably the most popular sport, you start to wonder who this tournament is actually for.Organisers have touted broadcast numbers, year after year. But then why is there such horrendous turnover in franchise ownership? B-Love Kandy won last year’s tournament, and yet those owners are not around now. The organisers have had to run the franchise.We say “organisers” rather than Sri Lanka Cricket, because unusually for SLC, they have allowed another entity to come in and run the LPL on their behalf. This is the Innovative Production Group (IPG), which mostly specialises in cricket broadcast.While the organisers had been prepared for the challenges of the Covid era, they could not have foreseen the tanking of Sri Lanka’s economy in late 2021 and 2022•SLCSLC and IPG face substantial economic headwinds, of course. They are operating in a market that is tiny by South Asian standards – Sri Lanka’s population of 22 million, roughly the same as the city of Mumbai. And while the organisers had been prepared for the challenges of the Covid era, they could not have foreseen the tanking of Sri Lanka’s economy in late 2021 and 2022. Significantly less wealth in the country means fans are loathe to part with what little disposable income remains month-to-month, and corporates are cautious with marketing budgets.But even with these allowances and caveats, the LPL is floundering. Mainly this is down to one of SLC’s greatest sins – the board has never sought to meaningfully spread cricket into the provinces it claims to represent. If you grow up playing in Jaffna, Dambulla, or even Kandy, you have no serious local team to represent. You have to come to Colombo to play senior cricket. For most, this would involve leaving their family, finding a job, and a new support network, which in turn means that fans in these cities never really have the opportunity to rally behind local players, as they might at the Big Bash League, or the Caribbean Premier League, or the Pakistan Super League.Where organisers may point to some markers of growth, this, right now, is a league that is being out-competed by many others. The concurrent Major League Cricket in the USA has pulled the likes of Pat Cummins, Rashid Khan, Nicholas Pooran, Kieron Pollard, Travis Head, Glenn Maxwell and Trent Boult – the kind of star list the LPL has never assembled across its five seasons.This is a decent approximation of men’s cricket in Sri Lanka at the moment. SLC officials have been at pains to suggest it is moving forward. In reality, Sri Lanka is being left behind by everyone else.

Pakistan captain also wants to improve her batting ahead of the T20 World Cup, even as she looks up to her coaches’ experience of playing in the UAE

Firdose Moonda03-Oct-2024Fatima Sana has given up and , and taken up weight training. She is now in the process of trying to elevate herself to elite-athlete status, especially now that she carries the extra responsibility of captaining her national side. Sana was named Pakistan captain in August, to add to her all-round role as the premier seamer and a middle-order batter, and understands it will take careful management to perform all three tasks with success.”I have to just be conscious about my diet and workload, and training. When I was young, I used to eat everything, but now everything has changed,” Sana told ESPNcricinfo. “I’ve shifted totally to eating salads and grills. Hopefully, if I try to manage my workload and the diet, it will help me play as best I can. I want to be able to play at my best in bowling, batting and fielding.”Sana was first introduced to the lifestyle habits of sportspeople when she was involved in the Fairbreak Invitational tournament in 2022, where she played with the likes of Heather Knight, Laura Wolvaardt and Deandra Dottin. Then, she told journalists that she noticed differences between the way the Pakistan women’s team approached their overall health and wellness, and how players from countries with more developed women’s cricketing structures did the same.Related

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“We also work on our fitness, but their level is different from ours – maybe due to cultural differences,” she had said at the time. “They take care of their diet, and I saw it during this league.”Ever since, among Sana’s social media pictures are shots of her in the gym, working on her strength, which she believes will give her career longevity. Sana has played representative cricket since she was 13, international cricket since she was 17, and among Pakistan’s seam bowlers, is already their second-highest wicket-taker in ODIs, and third-highest in T20Is. Currently, she is working on getting faster in order to be more of a threat.”My speeds are between 110 or 115 [kph] at the moment. I want to be quicker, but skilful as well,” she said, making sure to add that her small stature and height of around five feet are not a hindrance. “Shabnim Ismail is also small, and she bowled the fastest ball as well. I don’t have an excuse, and in fact, I have a proper example.”

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But Sana is also hoping to go where Ismail didn’t: up the batting charts. “My first job is bowling, but you may have seen that the Pakistan team is struggling in the middle order. So I have to improve my batting as well.”And she has. On Pakistan’s tour to New Zealand last year, Sana scored an unbeaten 90 while batting at No. 5 in the second ODI, an innings which announced her as more than just a bowler.”After that series, everyone knew that I am also an allrounder,” she said. “I didn’t really perform in batting before that. Even if people thought I was a good batter before, I didn’t show that. After that innings, everyone saw that I can survive in pressure situations, that I can bat and I can bat long as well.”Sana’s challenge as a batter is to provide Pakistan with some impetus after Muneeba Ali, their most consistent player in the top order, as she needs support from lower down. Former captain Nida Dar provides experience in the middle order, and though she has not produced a score above 30 since last September, her strike rate of 101.76 is the highest in the Pakistan side. That is a statistic Sana wants to change.”What we’ve seen is that we struggle with power-hitting,” she said. “My coach has told me that I can hit long. So I will probably be the one doing a lot of power-hitting.”That was evident in Pakistan’s most recent T20I series, against South Africa in Multan. Sana was the leading run-scorer with 101 runs from two innings, had the highest strike rate of 157.81, and hit three sixes, the joint-most in the series.”I will probably be the one doing a lot of power-hitting” – Fatima Sana ahead of the T20 World Cup•ICC/Getty ImagesSana was also leading Pakistan for the first time, and found herself as the only seamer in the opening game. Given Pakistan’s spin-heavy squad, she may find herself in that position again – especially at the T20 World Cup, where dry, slow pitches are expected to greet the teams. Most of the participating sides have no experience playing in the UAE, apart from Scotland and Sri Lanka, who were at the qualifying tournament earlier in the year.Sharjah last hosted women’s T20Is in 2017, while Dubai has only seen one series – between UAE and Namibia – played there, in 2023. Sana apart, Aliya Riaz and Diana Baig from Pakistan were also there at the Fairbreak tournament, which also held in the UAE, but Pakistan’s real advantage may come from the support staff.”Our coaches played here,” Sana said. “Our bowling coach Junaid Khan and our spin coach Abdur Rehman played here. So they will share the experience with all of the team.”Junaid played nine Tests, 20 ODIs and two T20Is in the UAE from 2011-19, when Pakistan were using the country as a home base, while Rehman played eight Tests, eight ODIs and a T20I there. That may give Pakistan a unique perspective compared to their competitors, and Sana will welcome any edge they can get. “We know that our group is the death group, but still we will try our best,” she said.Pakistan are in Group A with Australia, India, New Zealand and Sri Lanka, and they have to go back to 2016 for the last time they had beaten any of these opponents at a T20 World Cup. In that edition of the tournament, Pakistan beat India and Bangladesh. Since then, they have only beaten Ireland and West Indies across the T20 and ODI World Cups, and have only won one match in the last three tournaments.

“Cricket is becoming more common among women in Pakistan. Parents are starting to accept that girls can play… We see a lot of young girls playing in different sports, and this will help us grow as a nation”Fatima Sana and her side are looking to create depth in their country

It’s those kinds of numbers that have prompted so much change – including the new staff, appointed in January, and Sana’s elevation to captaincy, which, at 22, seems like it has come quite early. Her leadership experience includes three tournaments in charge of Karachi women – the domestic T20 tournaments in 2022-23 and 2023-24, and a one-day cup in 2023. They had won both T20 tournaments, and she was able to learn from one of the best.”Bismah Maroof was in my team for those three seasons, so I really enjoyed the captaincy with her around,” she said.Maroof retired from international cricket this April to end a pioneering 18-year career, in which she also became a mother, and travelled with her baby, also named Fatima, on tour. As Pakistan move on from Maroof, they are also looking to create depth, and grow the professionalism of their game, and that is what Sana hopes can be her legacy.”Cricket is becoming more common among women in Pakistan. Parents are starting to accept that girls can play, and that type [of thing],” she said. “[But] we are still far from the mentality that all parents think their daughters can play – and it is difficult – but things are changing. We see a lot of young girls playing in different sports, and this will help us grow as a nation.”

His Old Trafford hundred is just the biggest announcement of his all-round talent

Andrew Fidel Fernando26-Aug-2024If spin bowling had a party, Sri Lanka would be the dude turning up in neon shades, sequined shirt unbuttoned halfway, and technicolour sneakers. Sri Lanka spinners have only really been good in the last 30 years, but right through those three decades, they have peacocked like no spinners have peacocked before.Carrom balls? Check the fridge, it’s crammed with ’em. Seam-up arm balls? Over there, crack one open. Two-finger googlies? Of course. Sliders with underspin? Sure. Huge-turning offbreaks? We’re offended you’re even asking. Doosras? Uhhh, we don’t talk about that so much anymore, but I heard there was a line in one of the rooms.The first big story about Kamindu Mendis, way back in 2018, was that he bowled fingerspin with either arm, so your initial thought was, “Here we go – another one of these guys.” Diamond stud in one ear. A clutch of gold chains. Probably doing shots with Muthiah Muralidaran, Ajantha Mendis, Akila Dananjaya and Maheesh Theekshana, right? He sounds fun. Let’s keep the buzz rolling.In the T20 age, when turning the ball away from the batter is so prized, when teams switch up batting orders to maintain left-right combinations, when captains often adhere almost slavishly to match-up dogma, here was serious potential.In a tour match in October that year, when Kamindu spun it in the approved direction both to left-hander Eoin Morgan and right-hander Joe Root and returned tidy figures, he had his first taste of international exposure. Many overseas publications foregrounded the novelty of his ambidextrous talent.Related

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He’d always been a better batter than a bowler, of course, but just 20 at the time, he could have easily gone in this flashy direction and become an ultra-modern product of the big-data age – a T20 bowling disruptor.Hone that accuracy with both arms, pick up a few variations of the slider, learn to swing it in the powerplay. He’d always been electric in the field, and could obviously bang boundaries to boot. There exists a timeline in which Kamindu is a white-hot T20 asset, flitting between continents by the month, dripping Lankan spin swag around the planet.Six years later, what he has become instead is a batter who has made the brightest start to a Test career for his country in decades. In his seven Test innings so far – with only one at home – he has two half-centuries, three hundreds, a top score of 164, and an average in the 90s. All of this batting at No. 6 or lower.Scores of 102, 164, and 92 not out in Bangladesh were impressive, but the conditions were typically Asian, and the attack – missing Shakib Al Hasan in the match in which Kamindu hit twin hundreds – was off-colour.But now he’s hit a hundred at Old Trafford in testing conditions. There was style to this innings – his cuts were elegant, his pulls were controlled, and he has an extra-cover drive you’d be happy to introduce to your parents. But there was also the old-school self-denial that you need in this format. If you have ever watched one of his limited-overs innings, you’d know he drives like a dream. Here in Manchester, he hit only one of his 16 boundaries in the V – choosing to defend or leave most balls pitched right up to him, this being his first Test outing against the Dukes ball in English conditions.Batting at No. 7 at Old Trafford, Kamindu showed off a range of strokes against England’s fast bowlers and spinners•Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty ImagesThere is spectacular talent here, but in this era of Sri Lankan cricket, developing the raw materials often proves most challenging. But Kamindu is a disruptor, perhaps even of dysfunction. He’s a top-order option in T20Is, having been outstanding in the Lanka Premier League in July. Earlier this month he hit a vital 40 off 44, then a sparkling 23 not out off 19 in ODI wins against India.And he is as reliable in the slips as he is dynamic in the covers as he is proactive in the outfield. You see an aerial shot heading in his direction and you suspect he will do more than most to turn it into a wicket. He will then celebrate with a grin, and little more, as he did after scoring his best hundred on Saturday.You sense, most of all, that he has this inner drive to never be out of the game. Top-order hitter? Yeah, he’ll do it. Middle-order stabiliser? Cool, he has the game to accumulate. Lower-order thorn in the opposition’s side? He’s all over it. There are two left-hand batters in? He’ll learn how to bowl with his non-dominant arm, so no captain can ever seriously sideline him.Test cricket right now is not always a party, particularly if you’re from a nation not named England, India, or Australia. It does not always feel fun. But Kamindu has strapped on his best shoes for every possible occasion, And right now, this is the joint he’s dancing at.

Two teams, who have struggled in the last two cycles, are now pushing for a final spot in this cycle

Firdose Moonda26-Nov-2024It could not be more deliciously set up. South Africa and Sri Lanka will play in what is effectively a quarter-final of the World Test Championship (WTC) over the next two weeks. Both believe they have built outfits that could challenge for the title next June.If that sounds like an obviously optimistic thing to say, consider who we are talking about. Over the last two WTC cycles, South Africa lost more than half the series they played in, while Sri Lanka finished in the middle and in the bottom half of the points table. These are teams that have spent a significant amount of time, especially recently, talking about transition phases and building blocks. Now, it sounds like they are ready to move off the ground floor and potentially catch the elevator to the roof if they make it to Lord’s next June.Both captains spoke about their current teams as “the best we have after a long while,” as Dhananjaya de Silva put it, though for vastly different reasons. For Sri Lanka, who have won six out of their last eight Tests and crossed 400 four times in that period, they have the makings of a batting line-up they can trust to perform in various conditions and the numbers to prove it.Related

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Kamindu Mendis is Sri Lanka’s leading run-scorer of this WTC cycle, and seventh overall, while Dhananjaya is 11th, with three hundreds and six fifties. For context, South Africa only have one batter in the top 40, and he is in 39th place: David Bedingham. Mendis also leads the averages in this edition of the WTC (with a cut-off of 10 innings), with Dhananjaya in fifth place. Between them, they have scored eight of Sri Lanka’s 11 hundreds; the other three have come from three different players. Mendis’ hundreds have come in Sylhet, Manchester and Galle, which speaks to the ability to transfer talent across what Dhananjaya called increasingly tough conditions for run-scoring everywhere.”It’s hard to get runs anywhere in the world,” he said. “If you go to Sri Lanka, it’s spinning. And if we go to England, it’s going to seam. When we come here [to South Africa], it’s going to bounce. It’s hard work always for the batsman. But we’ve got some experience, people who played a lot of cricket here and a lot of cricket in England, a lot of cricket in Sri Lanka. In this team, there’s experience and youngsters; we’re a mixed side. So I think this is the best team after a long while and we have to make the most of it.”South Africa have something similar, not in numbers necessarily but in sources of their achievements, which come from a wide spread of players. The seven hundreds they have scored in this cycle have each come from a different batter and five of those are from batters scoring hundreds for the first time. For a line-up without any standout superstars (and you may argue one that overly relied on Dean Elgar most recently but AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla before that), that shows progression in both domestic depth and their ability to make the step up.Kagiso Rabada has been in terrific form in Test cricket•AFP/Getty Images”We’ve had different players putting in performances,” Temba Bavuma said. “Younger guys have come into this space and they’ve started putting in performances. With me being a senior player, I take a lot of joy from seeing the young guys coming into the team and I try to contribute to them becoming as good as they can be.”It will probably come as no surprise to hear that what South Africa lack in batting, they make up for in their bowling. Kagiso Rabada is top of the bowling averages among bowlers who have bowled more than 100 balls in this cycle, with Keshav Maharaj not too far behind. Overall, South Africa have the second-lowest bowling average, of 24.13, of this WTC. Yes, Rabada steals the headlines here but with good reason. His career wickets of 313 are only 16 fewer than Sri Lanka’s entire six-man pace attack, and we can’t forget that he has always had strong support. It’s not Lungi Ngidi and Anrich Nortje this time but Marco Jansen and Gerald Coetzee, who are two of the quickest going around.All this makes the battle lines clear: this series will be decided by how Sri Lanka’s batters take on South Africa’s attack, even on surfaces which are not expected to be overly seamer-friendly. Given the way they played in England, where they won at The Oval, Sri Lanka have every reason to believe they will be able to challenge South Africa at two venues where they have had success before. “We didn’t have a bad series in England, but results didn’t come our way. We played good cricket, and we pushed the England team,” Dhananjaya said. “We’re going to push the South African team to the very end.”And South Africa, after winning their first series in the subcontinent in 10 years last month, also have cause to be bullish as they keep faith in a group of players who will form the core of the future of the Test team. “In this series, there’s no new faces, so we’re definitely settling in as a team and guys are very comfortable with each other,” Bavuma said. “It was all about putting together this team of personalities, guys who effectively can do something special for the team. For me, there is a sense of something special that can come about this team. And I guess we have four or five games to kind of do that.”Four? Definitely because that’s the number of matches both South Africa and Sri Lanka have left in this cycle.Five? Whoever wins at least one of the next two can start to realistically dream of that finale next year.Let the Test summer begin.

Rohit’s early agression didn’t come off, again. Kohli fell to left-arm spin, again. And India stumbled to the most unimaginable of scorelines

Alagappan Muthu03-Nov-20241:57

Manjrekar: First six wickets were painful to watch

Rohit Sharma walks across his home turf with his head bowed. There was a weight dragging him down. He had no more defence against it.At the same time, over his left shoulder, the New Zealand players had all piled in together. They looked like they’d worked out the secret to human flight – which three weeks ago seemed a more amenable task than what they were setting out to do and now had done.The contrast was powerful. A team together. A man lost.Related

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At 9.59am, there was hope.Rohit felt the ball on the middle of his bat. He walked off to the side and mimed the way it had reacted off the pitch. Just the slightest little nip away. And he had accounted for it. Getting in line behind it and blocking it with soft hands.Rohit has shots and he plays them in a way that makes you wonder why other batters don’t play them too. It looks so easy when he does it. Maybe that’s why it took him a while to acquire a taste for defending. For a while it worked. In September 2021, two years after making a comeback into the Test team, he scored his first century away from home.This was a brief sight of that Rohit. At 10.00am, that Rohit was gone. Replaced by one who miscued a pull off a ball not short enough. This has been his way of late, and it hasn’t been coming off.Rohit Sharma has tallied 133 in ten Test innings this home season•AFP/Getty Images”As you grow, you try and evolve and I’m trying to evolve as a batter as well to try and see what else I can do,” this Rohit said. “So in that, there is a chance that you can fall on the other side of it, which clearly I have. So I will re-look at my game and see what best I can do.”But I don’t see that I have lost faith in my defence. It’s just that I need to spend more time to defend balls, which I haven’t done in this series and I accept that I haven’t batted well in this series.”On Sunday, this Rohit was dismissed by the 11th ball he faced. He had got to 20 balls in just one of his last 10 innings.

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At 10.06am, there was joy.Virat Kohli was coming down the Wankhede stairs. When he was fielding in the slips, and the crowd was roaring his name, he had turned to them, raised a hand up high, and brought it to his chest. They have never lost faith in him.Just before play, he had had a line of net bowlers all preparing him for the threat of Ajaz Patel. He launched a series of inside-out drives against them. He used to eat up left-arm fingerspin. Averaged 123.80 against them in all home Tests till the end of 2019. In the years since then, he’s gone at 23.08.Shubman Gill walks out, Virat Kohli walks in. He eventually lasts seven balls•AFP/Getty ImagesThe fans don’t really see these numbers. But they remember how he’s made them feel. And so they believed. New Zealand had probably seen these numbers. Their lead spinner was a left-armer and he had two others for company on this tour. It’s not like they had other options queueing up, so this might just be coincidence but, barring the first innings in Bengaluru, every time Kohli has come out to bat, he’s had to start against a left-arm fingerspinner.Now there’s this thing he does to feel good at the crease. He likes to get forward. And these aren’t small strides. They’re gung-ho with a capital G, U, N and so on. It works really well enough on flat pitches. Or when he’s got his eye in on a not-so-flat pitch. Mumbai ticked neither of those boxes. New Zealand definitely played a hand here. Having often used in-out fields for other batters, they had short cover, backward point, mid-on, midwicket and square leg up for Kohli. They were blocking his other great strength – stealing singles to get himself going.Now it was all up to Ajaz. When he looped one up, made sure it wasn’t a half-volley, and found turn off the straight, there was only one outcome. At 10.13am, one of India’s greatest batters fell to one of the most basic traps, and all around the stadium there was silence.

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At 11.10am, a fightback began.Rishabh Pant defended Glenn Phillips but he wasn’t to the pitch of the ball. Mindful of that, he played the original line, softened his hands and opened the face ever so slightly. So now if there was turn, he would have it covered. If there wasn’t, he’d plonked his bat in front of the pad so he was unlikely to be out lbw.The crowd roared their approval. A forward defence sent the Wankhede into raptures.Pant made 64 off 57 because he found a way to put pressure back on the spinners. He was brave enough step down the pitch when he saw a ball that was tossed up. It forced the bowlers off their length. Both Ajaz and Phillips went shorter on more than one occasion because they were worried about being whacked down the ground, except they were coming off worse now because the shots Pant could now play – cuts and pulls – were riskless.1:16

Manjrekar: ‘With Pant, the word genius came to mind’

It was a high-wire act. On day two, Rachin Ravindra had tried stepping down to a spinner in order to mitigate the threat they posed on this surface and ended up looking desperately out of place. Pant might be one of the few players in world cricket capable of pulling something like this off. Taking a team that was 29 for 5 in conditions that nobody could trust and keeping them alive, because he has this innate and outrageous understanding of how to play attacking shots. He sacrifices his body to achieve this objective. That’s why he ends up in all those weird shapes when he’s at the crease.New Zealand were getting desperate. They’d missed out on Pant’s wicket when India were 59 for 5 because they failed to review an lbw appeal. So in the 22nd over, they were prepared to burn the two they had left if it meant they could get rid of him. It worked, though there are people still wondering if the umpires had made a terrible mistake.At 12.24pm, the big screen flashed the letters O-U-T and it prompted a chant of “Cheater! Cheater! Cheater!”

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India going down to New Zealand at home was an improbable outcome. But being swept 3-0? On pitches they had asked for? With the batters they had? Kohli has 10 times the runs that Will Young does in Test cricket. The bowlers they could unleash? R Ashwin has taken twice as many wickets as Glenn Phillips has bowled overs. The first session in Bengaluru caught them off-guard but everything that’s happened from there on has been on their own terms, in conditions loaded in favour of their strengths. And yet there they were, brushed aside at 1.03pm on the third day. An invincible aura, built over 18 series spanning nearly 12 years, had come apart in less than nine days of cricket.This can’t be wished away now. This can’t be set right with perspective. This will have to be dealt with. And the fall-out could be far-reaching.

The leadership has plotted and planned and pulled off some extraordinary things of late, the enormous weight of the missing trophy evident at every stage of their run

Sidharth Monga19-Mar-20253:33

Aakash Chopra: India have now moved far ahead of other teams

India needed to lose control.It’s not that they were a bad team. They had lost just three matches in the last two ODI World Cups. Two matches in the last two Champions Trophies. Three matches in the last two T20 World Cups.This was an enviable record, but also a record that kept India from pushing the boundaries of what this extremely talented side was capable of achieving. Then came the early exit at the T20 World Cup of 2021. It brought about a reset in the leadership – they perhaps would not have had the freedom to challenge the batters had India made another semi-final.One of the effective tools used by the management to get the point across was control percentages when attacking. They were unusually high. It told the batters two things: they were not attacking enough good balls, and they were not giving the opposition chances when they attacked. There was clear room for more risks.Related

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The intent changed to an extent, India began to put up above-par scores in bilateral series, but as the 2022 T20 World Cup approached, the ideal combination became elusive. Jasprit Bumrah was injured beforehand, and Ravindra Jadeja joined the list as India went to the dress rehearsal, the Asia Cup in the UAE.As Hardik Pandya’s fitness could not always be relied upon, Rohit Sharma, the new captain, wanted to play two spinner-allrounders to provide for contingencies. The injury to Jadeja denied him that experiment. Axar Patel took Jadeja’s place when Rohit wanted him for the slot that they kept trying to fill with Washington Sundar and Deepak Hooda. With Kuldeep Yadav still only coming back from injury, they settled on R Ashwin as the spinner for left-hand batters. They didn’t make it to the final of the Asia Cup.By the time India reached Australia, sans Bumrah, their other main death bowler, Harshal Patel, coming back from injury, had completely lost form. In an ideal world, they would have played Harshal at No. 8 and Yuzvendra Chahal, Bumrah and Arshdeep Singh as bowlers who couldn’t bat. Bumrah could be replaced with Mohammed Shami, but Harshal’s replacements couldn’t bat, which meant India had to sacrifice the wristspinner.

The intent had to be initiated by players whose places in the side were certain and not by those who would be disposed if they failed in pursuit of quick runs. Too much of that had happened in the past. It also meant that the combinations and tactics had to be much better

Again, whenever the stakes grew or whenever the conditions were tricky, the batters fell back to the default options. It happened against South Africa in Perth, and it was repeated against England in the semi-final when India fell woefully short. The Adelaide semi-final was stark. England handcuffed them with spin. They just had the wrong guys batting together all through the start and the middle. At the end, did we see Rohit wipe a tear or two?The revival would have to start with Rohit. The feedback the leadership got from the players was that they needed the leaders to first walk the talk. That meant the intent had to be initiated by players whose places in the side were certain and not by those who would be disposed if they failed in pursuit of quick runs. Too much of that had happened in the past. It also meant that the combinations and tactics had to be much better. For example, there was no way Rohit and Virat Kohli should bat together for too long outside the powerplay.With the onus on himself, Rohit doubled down on his need for depth, the 8-6 formula. He wanted to play every game with eight batters and six bowlers so that the batters could be freed, so that they had options to counter match-ups.India have achieved the cheat code of three allrounders in the XI whenever Hardik Pandya is fit•CREIMASA sting operation on the then chairman of selectors brought into the frame Ajit Agarkar. Now the team management included three men who could healthily challenge each other without any mistrust: Agarkar, Rohit and coach Rahul Dravid. Tough calls were now taken and explained properly to the players. Shubman Gill replaced Shikhar Dhawan in ODIs even though the players still rated Dhawan highly. KL Rahul was trusted as the middle-order rock. He and Shreyas Iyer were given until the last possible moment to prove their fitness for the ODI World Cup.The intent began to bleed into the ODIs as well. India were a solid ODI team previously too, but you could close your eyes and predict a score of 51 for 1 in the powerplay, and you wouldn’t be off by more than 2%. It worked great when the top three scored all the runs, but it didn’t give the others any breathing space when they went to bat. Rohit became the intent bunny in ODIs as well.It was a rained-out match where the teams shared points, but in Pallekele in the Asia Cup, the leadership knew the team had turned a corner. In an eerie resemblance to the T20 World Cup match against Pakistan, India lost the early wickets of Rohit and Kohli to Shaheen Shah Afridi as the ball moved around in humid conditions. Even at 66 for 4, Ishan Kishan and Hardik counter-attacked. India went on to score 261 for 8. When they came up against Pakistan next, they all went hammer and tongs to end with 356 for 2.Quality was meeting intent in the batting. Kuldeep was back to his best, and Bumrah was fit. Everything was looking great, but then Axar got injured again. Axar as the second allrounder had been in India’s plans for a while as they knew the next two World Cups would be in India and the West Indies, both places where they could afford to play two spinner-allrounders. Kuldeep’s return meant they had a spinner to take the ball away from left-hand batters unlike Chahal earlier.2:43

Harbhajan Singh: 2027 World Cup might be too far for Rohit Sharma

This combination of unique circumstances would let India achieve the cheat code of three allrounders in the side whenever Hardik would be fit. They tried to promote Axar in the batting order every now and then, notably against Pakistan in Melbourne and once in an ODI loss to West Indies in July 2023. In Axar’s absence, though, India relied on Shardul Thakur to be the eighth batter.When Hardik went down during the ODI World Cup, India had to leave Thakur out for a more specialised bowler in Shami. Only Rahul and Kohli will know if that lack of depth played a part in their back-to-default conservatism in the World Cup final in Ahmedabad, where, throughout the tournament, there were clear signs that batting becoming much easier under lights.This was only their fourth defeat in the last three ODI World Cups, but one that stung them the most. They had played fearless, attractive and dominant cricket to get to the final. Their narrowest wins were by four wickets and 70 runs. The defeat in the final left everyone too shocked to react, let alone analyse or think of the next World Cup, barely six months away.The T20I captain, Hardik, was injured with no timeline for a return. The ODI captain hadn’t played a T20I since the Adelaide debacle two years ago. The coach’s tenure was over, and he was happy to walk away without a world title. The selectors now had to take the less-than-ideal route of selecting the captain first and then the team. Not least because the captain could convince the coach to come back for one last ride. Had any of the three men been different, the band wouldn’t have come back together.1:21

Is Shreyas now India’s most reliable ODI batter?

Now, finally, the blueprint of eight batters and six bowlers could be put in place. Everyone was fit, and the West Indies pitches always have some grip. Except that the selectors wanted an offspinner-allrounder in the squad because they envisaged the XI would include Jadeja this allrounder. Rohit and Dravid pressed for Axar because they wanted to go with Jadeja Axar.With Shivam Dube’s emergence and the Axar gambit, Rohit and Dravid had enough options to deny oppositions a match-up at both ends. They could split right-hand batters, they could split those who struggled against spin, they had six bowlers plus Dube to choose from. As some of us suspected before, and the rest of us have learned since, this was still not India’s optimal T20I XI. Even if you disregard the belated emergence of Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson, Yashasvi Jaiswal was clearly the best opener out there at that time, and a left-hand batter to boot.Even at 34 for 3 in the final, India could pair Kohli up with Axar and Dube, and give India a target to bowl to. India were either due some luck or used up a year’s worth in the climax of that match – a six goes out of the ground and the replacement ball reverses, David Miller mistimes a full toss even when hitting downwind – but now they finally had a trophy to show for their processes and their dominance.The enormous weight of the missing trophy became apparent only during the celebrations back in Mumbai. Deep inside, the players and the management knew they were an exceptional side with two exceptional campaigns behind them, but they still felt what they felt: horrible after Ahmedabad, overjoyed after Barbados.In the following months, the Test transition arrived in earnest, but the T20I and the ODI sides remain formidable. The new management not only carried forward the Hardik-Jadeja-Axar cheat code, but they were shrewd enough to change the Champions Trophy squad at the last moment to include another wicket-taking spinner because they knew all their matches would be played on a tired Dubai square that had just hosted a T20 tournament. There is no evidence to suggest India would not have won even if they were playing on 350 pitches, but the Dubai conditions did make their job easier.Now, India are a team that have lost only one match in their last three ICC tournaments. From 2013 Champions Trophy onwards, they have missed out on the knockouts of only one of the 11 ICC tournaments. Of the other ten, only four have been semi-final defeats.Moments after winning this year’s Champions Trophy, Rahul perhaps summed up the reasons behind this dominance best.”It’s just pure skill and the way we’ve all played our cricket growing up,” Rahul said with unusual clarity for such a heady moment. “We’ve had to face a lot of challenges. We’ve had to face pressure from the time we held the bat and from the time we decided to be professional cricketers. I think it’s just the first-class cricket, BCCI, how they’ve groomed every player, every talented player that comes around. They’re giving us opportunities and platforms to showcase our skills and to put ourselves under pressure and keep challenging ourselves and getting better.”The leadership needs to already start thinking of the next two years if they want to continue celebrating•ICC via Getty ImagesThe talent pool is vast and, consequently, the pressure they face at every step on the way to the top is immense. That is also perhaps why they hold onto their places at the top a little too tightly. That is why the leadership constantly needs to keep making them feel secure enough to keep pushing their boundaries.There is still one final step to go to earn comparisons with the best-ever sides. If they can defend their T20 crown next year, India will be regarded as the best T20I side of all time. They will start as the favourites for it, but this dream team with all kinds of cheat codes will not be easy to replicate in the 2027 ODI World Cup, a title only Kohli among the current players has won. Compare this to the Australia of 1999 to 2009: they always had a well-rounded ODI attack to outperform their opposition in conditions as diverse as South Africa in 2003, India in 2006, the West Indies in 2007 and South Africa again in 2009. They also almost always had at least two allrounders who almost never broke down. Even they have never been able to crack both ODIs and T20Is at the same time.India will not magically find a strike bowler with the batting ability of Brett Lee or Andy Bichel. That means at any given point of time only three of Kuldeep, Bumrah, Varun Chakravarthy, Mohammed Siraj and Shami can play. Axar and Jadeja, if the latter is still around, won’t make for an optimal combination on your usual South African tracks. Hardik’s body is what it is. Gill, Kohli, Shreyas Iyer and Rahul form a formidable batting core even if Rohit doesn’t make it, but some work will be needed to attain this kind of balance in South Africa.There has been cause aplenty to celebrate over the last two years, but the leadership needs to already start thinking of the next two years if they want to continue celebrating. With all the talent in the country, it won’t take much to remain very good, but excellence is what they want to continue aiming for.

Jimmy Adams upstaging Wasim Akram in St John’s or Pat Cummins’ Australia beating Bazball? Pick between two classics

Deivarayan Muthu08-May-2025Update: This poll has ended. The ENG-AUS 2023 Birmingham Test moves to the round of 16.West Indies’ one-wicket jailbreak vs Pakistan – St John’s, 2000After more twists and turns than a whodunnit, Jimmy Adams upstaged Wasim Akram to complete a one-wicket heist with a healthy helping of luck. West Indies benefited from two umpiring errors and Saqlain Mushtaq fluffing two run-out chances, including one when Adams and No. 11 Courtney Walsh were both stranded at the striker’s end.When West Indies were 202 for 9, still 14 runs away from victory, Saqlain panicked under pressure and failed to gather the throw cleanly at the bowler’s end. Adams and Walsh eventually scrambled a leg-bye, leaving Pakistan wondering what might have been. Walsh held on limpet-like for 72 minutes with his captain Adams, who remained unbeaten on 48 off 212 balls, as West Indies clinched one of their most memorable and dramatic wins in Test cricket at the turn of the century in St John’s.Despite the lapses in the field, Akram had kept Pakistan in it by taking out four of West Indies’ top six – he came away with a match haul of 11 wickets – but Adams had the final say when he squeezed a single to point off Akram.Australia beat Bazball – Birmingham 2023″Boring, boring, Aussies” was the chant from the Hollies Stand at Edgbaston on the fourth afternoon when Usman Khawaja was digging in and slowly building for Australia in their pursuit of 281. By the fifth evening, the crowd was stunned into silence as Australia aced the old-school long game to beat England’s new-age fast play.When Khawaja fell for 65, with Ben Stokes ending his near-five-and-a-half-hour vigil, Australia had slipped to 209 for 7. Then, when Alex Carey’s wicket left Australia at 227 for 8, it certainly felt like England’s Bazballers were on their way to another famous win. Australia captain Pat Cummins, though, flipped the mood and result with an unbeaten 44 off 73 balls, with No. 10 Nathan Lyon hanging on in an unbroken 55-run partnership for the ninth wicket.After having come under fire with his defensive fields on the opening day, Cummins played the decisive hand on the final day, absorbing good balls from Stokes and Ollie Robinson and lining up Joe Root’s part-time offspin for a brace of sixes. After sealing the deal, Cummins let out a big roar, threw his bat and punched his fist in a rare show of emotion that summed up how much this win meant to him and Australia.