On a dull day’s play, his agility and expertise in the slip cordon made everybody sit up and take notice

Alagappan Muthu23-Jul-2023Ajinkya Rahane is beside himself which is something of a collector’s item. For the most part, he has resting bored face but here it was all lit up.Rahane’s place in the Indian team is under question. Nobody really knows why he’s vice-captain. And the guy who got injured resulting in an open spot in the middle order has already started hitting balls in the nets.The company line, at the World Test Championship final, when he made a comeback after a year out, was that it wasn’t a one-off. And it wasn’t. He’s here in the West Indies, playing his third back-to-back Test when a lot of people thought his career was over.Related

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He’s got two low scores on this tour and if he gets to bat again in Port-of-Spain it’s likely India will be in a declaration push. Hardly the kind of scenario that helps you find form.But you know what Rahane does with his eyes closed? Catch blinders at slip.On a day where scoring runs was a second thought – West Indies made 143 in 67 overs – and a pitch so slow it made time go backwards, Rahane produced the moment that made everybody sit up and shout.India had to be both patient and inventive to get the four wickets they did. Rohit Sharma played with his field, arranging catchers in front of the stumps. Silly mid-offs. Silly mid-ons. Short square legs. All within 10-15 yards of the batter. He was asking his quicks to make him play – even encouraging them to stray onto the pads if need be – just so an errant flick or a drive that isn’t kept all along the ground could be snapped up.This kind of cricket is inevitable when the conditions offer nothing and the opposition is playing for a draw. It is hard to watch and can’t be much fun to play either. But for it to succeed, everyone has to rise above the boredom. They need to stay alert for every single ball. All for at best a half chance.Jermaine Blackwood offered it by trying to push at a ball from Ravindra Jadeja that had pitched outside leg stump. The edge came first like a red carpet being rolled out. The cameras were ready and waiting. All that was left was for the star to show, and boy, did he ever.Rahane didn’t have a lot of time to react. And even there, he had to account for a deflection.So from the top, his body reacts to seeing the edge, then it has to react again to seeing the ball bounce off Ishan Kishan the wicketkeeper. Now, after processing all this, there’s just the small matter of catching the damn thing.It was flying away to his left. Part of the reason he caught up to it is because of his agility, which he says comes from doing karate when he was a kid. The other part is entirely down to technique honed over years and years.Rahane does two very important things that help him reach the ball. One, he always stands in the slips with his weight on the balls of his feet. That way, he is more mobile, and he loses no time. The moment his brain reads the edge, he can propel himself towards whichever direction he needs to go. If you’re on your heels, you lose time. Rahane is never on his heels.This catch in particular, his right leg propels him to the ball, and his left hand intercepts its flight and cushions it. That’s his other trademark. He never seems to snatch at the ball. His hands are always relaxed which generally helps when it comes to reflex catches; when it comes to them sticking as opposed to bouncing off.Additionally, there’s his positioning. Jadeja was pushing the ball across the right-hander from over the wicket. The angle is already taking the ball outside off, an edge would likely take it every further away, so he knew he had to be wider. And the wider you go, the more you need to turn towards the batter. That’s why first slip stands almost parallel with the batting crease – he’s waiting for the thin edge – but the rest of his companions – who are there for the thick edge – are always at an increasingly perpendicular angle. This is because you want to be on an intercept course with the ball.Rahane also seems to live the ball along with the batter. At first, his hands are on his knees. Then, as Blackwood shapes to play a shot, he brings them up and cups them together. He’s ready to receive the gift. He’s pretty much expecting it.And so after a lifetime’s work played out in just milliseconds, West Indies were 178 for 4 and Rahane had catch number 102.

Najmul Hossain Shanto joined an exclusive list for Bangladesh with his twin tons in Mirpur

Sampath Bandarupalli17-Jun-2023546 Bangladesh’s win margin by runs in Mirpur is the third biggest in the history of Test cricket. England defeated Australia by 675 runs in 1928 at the Gabba, the biggest win by runs in Tests. England were on the receiving end six years later, losing to Australia by 562 runs at The Oval.661 Bangladesh’s second-innings lead against Afghanistan. Only seven times did any team have a higher lead at the end of their second innings in a Test match. It is also the highest second-innings lead for any team in a five-day Test, bettering New Zealand’s 659-run lead against Sri Lanka in the 2018 Christchurch Test.14 Wickets for Bangladesh pacers in Mirpur are the most for them in a Test match, surpassing the 13 scalps shared against New Zealand in Mount Maunganui at the start of 2022. The Bangladesh quick bowlers claimed eight wickets in Afghanistan’s first innings, the most by them in a Test innings at home.Related

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2 Batters with centuries in both innings of a Test match for Bangladesh, including Najmul Hossain Shanto in Mirpur. Mominul Haque was the first batter from Bangladesh with twin hundreds in a Test match, a feat he achieved against Sri Lanka in 2018 in Chattogram. Shanto’s 270 runs against Afghanistan are also the second-most runs in a Test match for Bangladesh, behind Mominul’s 281 against Sri Lanka.82.82 Shanto’s batting strike rate in this match is the fourth-highest for any batter when scoring hundreds in both innings of a Test match (where balls-faced data is available). The highest is 90.90 for David Warner during his 135 and 145 against South Africa in the 2014 Cape Town Test.261 Runs aggregated by Afghanistan in this Test are the lowest for any team in a match against Bangladesh while being bowled out twice. The previous lowest was 354 runs by West Indies in 2018, also in Mirpur. Afghanistan’s 261 runs are also the third lowest for a team in a Test match in Bangladesh.151 Test wickets for Mehidy Hasan Miraz. He is only the third bowler to complete the milestone for Bangladesh, after Shakib Al Hasan (233) and Taijul Islam (177).

He’s one away from going 100 Test matches without an absence – and is five away from the 500-wicket club. Quite the cocktail of skill and endurance

Andrew McGlashan25-Jun-2023For all Nathan Lyon’s batting heroics at Edgbaston – his drive through mid-off and flick over mid-on against Stuart Broad will go down in Australian Ashes folklore – he is unlikely to get the chance to raise his bat for a century. However, he can acknowledge such a landmark when the coin goes up at Lord’s, because he will join the small group of players to appear in 100 consecutive Test matches.Lyon will be the first specialist bowler and third Australian after Allan Border (153 Tests) and Mark Waugh (107) to play a hundred Tests without a break. Border didn’t miss a game from his fourth Test onwards, while Waugh went on an unbroken run after being recalled for the 1993 Ashes. The others on the list are Alastair Cook (159), Sunil Gavaskar (106) and England’s current coach Brendon McCullum (101) whose entire Test career was played without an absence.”It’ll be extremely special,” Lyon said after throwing out the first pitch at the MLB London game. “One hundred consecutive Test matches for anyone is a pretty special feat. I hate talking about myself but that’s one record I’m extremely proud of. Especially being a bowler and No. 11 batter that you’re able to get that feat done and tick off 100 consecutive games, that’s something that I’ll be extremely proud of when it happens and more importantly when my career is done.”Longest runs without a break in Test cricket•ESPNcricinfo LtdThis will be Lyon’s 122nd Test overall. With a fair wind, continued fitness and form he could challenge Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh’s Australia record of 168 appearances.There is a symmetry to Lyon reaching the hundred mark at Lord’s. It was in England during 2013 that the run began. With 76 wickets at 33.18 from 22 Tests, including nine in his previous outing in Delhi, he was left out in favour of Ashton Agar at Trent Bridge and Lord’s (both matches which Australia lost) before earning a recall at Old Trafford. Since then he has forged a career where he sits behind only Shane Warne as Australia’s greatest spinner. From when he returned in 2013, he is Test cricket’s leading wicket-taker.Related

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When Lyon debuted in 2011, Australia had cycled through spinners since the retirement of Warne after the 2006-07 Ashes. From that moment, until Lyon took a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket against Sri Lanka in Galle, Nathan Hauritz was the most successful spinner with 58 wickets at 36.22 in 16 Tests. Next came Marcus North with 14 at 42.21. The list includes such names as Cameron White, Beau Casson, Michael Beer and Bryce McGain. There was also some chap called Steven Smith.There is hope that the transition from Lyon – whenever it comes, and he has no appetite to stop – will be smoother with the emergence of Todd Murphy but they will still be huge shoes to fill.If things go well for Lyon at Lord’s – and England will no doubt continue to offer him chances by their aggressive approach – he could also bring up his 500th Test wicket. The eight he claimed at Edgbaston leaves him five short of a milestone only seven players, including Warne and Glenn McGrath, have reached.At times it has been questioned whether Lyon was a true matchwinner as a few opportunities to spin Australia to fourth-innings victories slipped away. But after a trying 2020-21 season where wickets dried up against India, he has entered a golden period. He was the fulcrum of Australia’s attack in their World Test Championship success, taking 88 wickets in that cycle, and has begun the next one productively.

“In the last couple of years it just feels like he gets seven, eight wickets every Test. He’s ratcheted up his wicket-taking ability and that’s testament to the ability to bowl long, quality spells and rarely bad balls. Think that’s the thing that most other spinners admire about him, the pressure never comes off.”Daniel Vettori on Nathan Lyon

Lyon was central to Australia’s three crucial subcontinental wins which got them into the final: five wickets in the final innings in Lahore; five wickets in the first innings in Galle; and 8 for 64 in Indore. He is currently averaging 24.35 in 2023 which is his best year to include more than three Tests since 2017. After Edgbaston, his average has ticked under 31 for the first time since 2012.”You get an appreciation of the skill levels from afar, but to see it day-to-day, to see the amount he works on it and to understand just how good he is, don’t think you think get that privilege unless you are in this setting,” Daniel Vettori, Australia’s assistant coach who took 362 wickets for New Zealand, told ESPNcricinfo.”In the last couple of years it just feels like he gets seven, eight wickets every Test. He’s ratcheted up his wicket-taking ability and that’s testament to the ability to bowl long, quality spells and rarely bad balls. Think that’s the thing that most other spinners admire about him, the pressure never comes off and it’s through a very attacking style of bowling. To marry up that style with consistency, that probably sets him apart.”There is an element of good fortune in the century of consecutive Tests because you are only ever a rapid bouncer away from a broken finger or a sprint from a pulled hamstring but it’s also credit to Lyon’s preparation and professionalism. And while Lyon would have loved to have played more white-ball cricket for Australia, he has probably benefitted from not doing so. His schedule has natural breaks, although he has never shirked from New South Wales duty when available.Yet, though a spin bowler does not put the physical strain on their body that a quick does, it only needs a glance at England’s current predicament to know they can pick up injuries like anyone else. Fingers, shoulders and backs still go through a lot. It is not without reason that on occasions where Lyon has landed awkwardly in the field there have been sharp intakes of breath. In Test cricket alone, and this is only the actual recorded deliveries, he has put his right shoulder through more than 31,000 rotations. His career is a story of great skill and great endurance.

“They are so used to us winning, that at times they forget we’ve seen a lot of change over the last 12-18 months that goes unnoticed external to our group”

S Sudarshanan24-Dec-2023Fans of Australia cricket are so used to their women’s team winning, that every loss raises a few eyebrows. They have won the T20 World Cup six times – including back-to-back ones in 2020 and 2023 – and the ODI version seven times.But in 2023, they merely retained the Women’s Ashes by drawing the multi-format series. They won the one-off Test at Trent Bridge but lost each of the white-ball series 2-1 to England. The year also saw a record chase in a T20I by West Indies at the North Sydney Oval.Related

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After they began their multi-format tour of India with an eight-wicket loss in the one-off Test at Wankhede, you would wonder: are the heydays gone? Are they well past their prime? Has the golden run come to an end?”There is always a lot of expectation and external noise about our team and how they are performing,” Healy said. “They are so used to us winning that at times they forget that we have seen a lot of change over the last 12-18 months that goes unnoticed external to our group. Within the group, we are comfortable about where we are at and the progression we are on.”In the interim, though, their set-up has undergone a lot of changes. Then head coach Matthew Mott moved on to the same role with England men in 2022. Shelley Nitschke, the assistant to Mott, was handed the reins. Meg Lanning, who had an enviable record since being appointed captain at 21, announced her retirement from international cricket this October. Healy was handed the full-time captaincy ahead of the India tour with Tahlia McGrath her deputy.Australia were playing a Test in India for the first time in close to 40 years. They landed in the city last week and underwent training even as India played a Test in Navi Mumbai against England. Last Sunday, they also had a one-day game with the red-ball against a Mumbai XI. Yet, they couldn’t avert defeat in the Test match with India completing the final rites in an hour after lunch on the fourth day.”There is no real time to learn, adapt and find a style of play,” she said. “It was a tough ask but I am really proud of our group and the fight we showed.Alyssa Healy leads her team off after Australia’s loss•Getty Images”Standing there at the [presentation], when Anjum [Chopra, former India captain] asked me a question, I said yup, imagine playing two more of these. That would be an unbelievable experience for our group and probably a true test of both side’s abilities. In a one-off Test [with] India playing in their home conditions, you’d expect them to be heavy favourites. We’d love to see more and more, and it would create a real contest in three games.”Australia played the Ashes Test in Nottingham in June, where the conditions were different. After the Mumbai Test, their next game in the longest format is at home against South Africa early next year. Healy, while fully aware of the packed international calendar, said that it was a tough ask of a team to adapt and win across conditions in a format they play very little of. No team in the world has a multi-day competition for women in the domestic circuit.”We are going to play three Tests over the space of nine months in three very, very different conditions,” she said. “That is probably a big ask for a side to come out and play the way they want to. You think about the way that you want to play but sometimes it doesn’t come to fruition because of the conditions that we are not used to.”I can happily sit here and say, yes sir, I’d love to play more Test cricket. It’s the reality of what that looks like and how we would make that happen knowing that we are white-ball dominant. We have World Cups seemingly every year in the white-ball formats and how would that all fit in and take place when there’s only three-four teams playing [Test cricket].”The Test against India was Healy’s second as a captain. She led Australia in the Ashes with Lanning away on a break. She admitted she was coming to grips with captaincy in the longest format.”I am still coming to grips with it,” she said. “I have played just seven Tests. You wouldn’t see too many captains sitting here that have played those little test matches in the men’s game. For all of us, we are still learning about the game. But in saying that, it is the simplest version of the game and it is a combination of the other cricket we have played. There are parts we can take from the one-day game that we can put in the Test match arena.”When India had toured Australia in 2021 for a multi-format tour including the pink-ball Test, points were at stake throughout the series. A Test match was followed by three ODIs and T20Is each with four points for a Test win and two for each white-ball win. Australia won the ODI and T20I series and the day-night Test was drawn, which meant they took home the multi-format trophy. But the current tour does not have points at stake. As a result, Healy said that the result “feels meaningless to a sense”.”It is a bit easier to move on [from the loss],” she said. “I sit here disappointed that we couldn’t win the Test match. When we were not playing for points, or series points, or for a [specific] trophy, it does make it a little bit of novelty because you just heard me ten minutes ago say that I want to play more Test cricket. The fact that it sort of feels meaningless to a sense feels disappointing to me.”

He was the captain when India made an early exit from the 2007 World Cup; but in 2023 with Dravid as the head coach, their true potential has been unlocked

Sidharth Monga17-Nov-20235:52

Rohit: Dravid has stood by us, it’s on us to win for him

Players who get affected by trolling, social-media abuse and paid-to-trend hashtags might feel those before them had it easier, but they had their own share of troubles with fanaticism. They might even argue it was more hardcore back in the day. Or even as recently as 2007, when India had just been knocked out of the World Cup in the first round.Effigies were burnt, stones were thrown at players’ houses, and they were forced to alter travel plans at the last moment to escape angry fans waiting for them in their cities and in their towns. Irfan Pathan remembers being physically pushed and sworn at by a man he was sharing an airport queue with. MS Dhoni didn’t go to Ranchi for days after returning to avoid any incident.Rahul Dravid, if you believed what was said and implied in the media, was just a meek yes-man-captain, who let the evil coach Greg Chappell run the team into the ground. There were two assumptions here: whatever happened under his captaincy was bad, and that he was incapable of being bad. His effigy was burnt but he was still the good boy we could forgive once the villain Chappell was gone. A great foot soldier who should never have been a leader.Related

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The day India were knocked out of the World Cup, Dravid sat through a gruelling press conference where he was actually asked if he worried about the security situation back home. It can be argued that you can ignore the memes of today or get off social media to shut off the cyber bullying, but how do you ignore physical threats to your and your family’s physical well-being?Memes needn’t always be hurtful, though. They can be clever storytelling too, as this latest one involving Dravid is. It has all the ingredients to go viral. Emotions, redemption arc, cricket, and the king of Bollywood. The meme draws parallels between Shah Rukh Khan’s character in and Dravid. Both were “disgraced” as captains but redeemed themselves as coaches with world titles. Neither of them had instant success or acceptance as coach.If you show it to Dravid, he’ll likely lament the excessive focus on the coach. He might probably joke about his looks when compared to Shah Rukh. If in a feisty mood, he might also point out to a Test series win in the West Indies when they were strong, a first Test win in South Africa and a Test series win in England under his captaincy. So not exactly disgraced.Memes, though, are not to be taken literally. In reality, neither did Dravid take up a team of nobodies nor did he do it for redemption. He has long forgotten he was a player. He is a professional coach who doesn’t even believe that only cricketers can help his teams. And he took over a highly successful team full of some of the best and most-competitive professionals in the world.Those who know more than just the results say the leadership of Dravid and Rohit Sharma brought about a sophistication and method to preparedness•Getty ImagesIn fact Dravid’s was the unenviable job of being the guy who came in just after India had won the magical Test series without half their first-choice players in Australia and held the 2-1 lead in a Test series in England. The team was going to be in transition under Dravid, and the frequent injuries would make matters worse.Those who know more than just the results say the leadership of Dravid and Rohit Sharma brought in proper processes when it comes to preparation and performance reviews, not in terms of results but execution. They brought about a sophistication and method to preparedness: from data to pitches to techniques, everything was worked on. They brought a level of comfort through proper communication. Players knew much better where they stood, what their roles were, how they could develop.Lest you feel it made people too comfortable, that Indiranagar ka Gunda meme is not completely fictional. He might not be the road-raging madman as portrayed in the commercial, but he is no mollycoddling comforter either. When Dravid has to be stern, you are left under no misapprehension. Ask some of the players who have worked with Dravid at Under-19 and India A levels, and you will know how colourful his language can get. Nor is he averse to gamesmanship or pushing the line to push his side’s advantage; remember he was fined for ball-tampering once.Many of the players Dravid has worked with as India coach have passed through him at the developmental levels. Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, even Kuldeep Yadav when he was down and out, have all worked with him in Under-19 or India A teams. That is where Dravid actually helped lay the foundation of a pipeline of talent for the national team.Some felt perhaps that was the best place for him. One of Dravid’s failures as captain was considered to be his inability to satisfactorily convince Sachin Tendulkar that his batting at No. 4 was the best for the team. Or his inability to shut the tap on incessant media leaks allegedly through Chappell, who was also shooting a documentary on the side while he coached India. Or the handling of the dropping of Sourav Ganguly, which was called for at the time.You see the pattern there: big names, be it the dissatisfied players or the offending coach no matter how noble his intentions. It was felt Dravid was better off developing players before they became superstars.Kuldeep Yadav, when he was down and out, worked with Rahul Dravid•ICC/Getty ImagesHalf of Dravid’s stint has been without a proper captain thanks to injuries. He didn’t mend what was not broken. In a nod to the former team management, he kept playing with four fast bowlers in Tests abroad.From the time Rohit was regularly available as captain, Dravid went ahead with perhaps his biggest contribution to this team, dragging their intent into the modern times. It took some convincing that even when there were collapses while going for above-par totals only rarely did they end up with a complete blowout. The superstars he was working with were no less than Tendulkar or Ganguly.The results of this revolution, which Rohit bought into and then led the rest of the side into, was perhaps best visible in the World Cup semi-final. It is not hard to imagine an Indian team of not long ago settling for 325 in those conditions. It was the extra intent that gave India the cushion to be calm when Daryl Mitchell and Kane Williamson were going.There’s also less of the us-against-the-world edginess in this team. Dravid is not averse to bringing in support from outside the sport. Virat Kohli recently credited the time he spent with mental conditioning coach Paddy Upton, brought in during the last T20 World Cup but discontinued because India didn’t win the title, for the role it played in his revival.All through the World Cup, perhaps the first time they have been at full strength during Dravid’s stint, India have looked like a team whose true potential has been unlocked. If they keep playing similar cricket and the final still happens to be that one rare blowout, it won’t take away from the progress they have made. Still a final win will make it extra special for a team unfairly trolled for not winning knockout matches despite a stellar record in league stages.And perhaps the coach will take some time to remember the scenes from the dressing room while India lost to Sri Lanka in Port-of-Spain in 2007 – the royalty of Indian cricket, Tendulkar, Dravid, Anil Kumble, Ganguly, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh all sat glum, on the verge of tears, as wicket after wicket fell. Tendulkar, Sehwag and Yuvraj got another shot at World Cup glory, and took it. Others didn’t. Not everyone does.And then possibly the coach will just laugh it all off with another meme featuring the king of Bollywood.

Former captain embraces challenge at Essex as he steps into Alastair Cook’s sizeable shoes

Andrew Miller27-Mar-2024As a nuggety, hard-grafting left-hander with a proud Test record, Dean Elgar certainly fits the bill for Essex as they embark on the 2024 season with a gaping void at the top of the order where Alastair Cook once resided.Elgar’s arrival at Chelmsford, on a three-year deal, is South Africa’s loss – or at least, it ought to be, given his fighting qualities were still on full display when, as captain, he made a matchwinning 185 against India in his penultimate Test appearance at Centurion, only three months ago.But, Elgar says, with political pressure mounting from within Cricket South Africa, he already knew that “the writing was on the wall” for his international career when he announced that that India series would be his last, adding that his country’s inexorable drift away from red-ball cricket had led him to believe he was being “wasted as a person and as a cricketer”.”I made a decision last February [2023] already that I was going to retire at the end of the India series,” Elgar said. “My mind was made up long ago about where my future was, or how it looked back home.”It’s maybe not looking as rosy as what it should be looking, but I think after serving the Proteas for 12 years, I maybe had that respect to decide how my career’s going to look.”Related

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The bare bones of Elgar’s career change, he says, were put into place by Essex’s resident South African, Simon Harmer, who had picked up on his captain’s dissatisfaction amid the political wrangling, and set about greasing the wheels for a new beginning.”Me and Harmy have known each other for well over 15 years,” Elgar said. “Obviously we were team-mates back home when he was in the Proteas squad as well. And the whole conversation came about when we’re having a braai at my house.”For me that was a direct line of communication. When he heard the prospect of me retiring, he brought it to Essex and spoke to the powers-that-be about what my plans were looking like. It was just an easy, direct conversation to have with him.”As a young kid playing professional cricket, I always had a vision of ending my career playing county cricket. I’m a British passport holder – my mum and brother live in Sussex – so that was always something that I that I was looking to do, irrespective of how things look back home. So I’m really excited to be here with the bunch. We had a good preseason in Abu Dhabi, and I’m looking forward to the season.”The prospect of Elgar’s arrival had been so long in the making, in fact, that he had initially hoped to open the batting alongside Cook, rather than having to step into his sizeable shoes. Instead, Cook slipped quietly into retirement at the end of the 2023 season, taking with him a first-class haul of 26,643 runs, including 11,337 at 45.16 in two decades at Essex.Dean Elgar raises his bat to the Newlands crowd after his final Test innings•AFP/Getty Images”Batting alongside Chef would have been a bit of a dream, but in saying that he’s allowed to make his own decisions and rightly so,” Elgar said. “I can’t play the way he does. I mean, he’s a ‘Sir’ for a reason. Rightly so and well deserved. But if I could get everything even 80% close to what he’s done, I think Essex cricket would be in a good spot.”Nevertheless, it’s hard for Elgar not to look back on his South Africa exit with a hint of bitterness, especially given the circumstances of the country’s only subsequent series since his retirement. With the SA20 taking precedence in the home season, a squad of seven debutants including the new captain Neil Brand were dispatched to New Zealand in February where they slumped to two uncompetitive losses.”I don’t think I need to elaborate on that, because it was pretty s***,” Elgar said. Next on South Africa’s Test agenda is a tour of West Indies in July, when Major League Cricket is likely to impinge on the teams’ availabilities, and though Sri Lanka and Pakistan are due to visit next year, the team currently has no home Test matches scheduled between January 2025 and September 2026.”I always want to play and challenge myself at the highest level, but we didn’t have enough Test matches and that’s where I felt I was actually getting wasted as a person and as a cricketer,” Elgar said.”I saw the writing on the wall a year ago. It’s got nothing to do with the SA20, I think that’s a great tournament for us for SA cricket, because I know it brings in good money. Unfortunately, it does take away international duties. And it’s a balancing act of what the administrators want.”I am not an administrator, I’m a player. I know what I want as a player. But I’ve also been part of the system in South Africa long enough to get a sense of potentially where things are going.Alastair Cook bowed out at the end of the 2023 County Championship•Getty Images”I’ve missed a lot of cricket in the last few years, starting from the Covid times. And going forward, it looks like there’s not going to be a lot of competitiveness in that respect. So, for me, the next best was this.”Like I’ve said, I’ve always wanted to finish my career playing county cricket. And I want to win trophies, by the way. I play cricket to win. I was born a winner. I don’t play this game to be second-best.”To that end, Elgar is joining a club that, for four seasons up to and including the Covid summer of 2020, was rightly regarded as the best red-ball outfit in the country. Surrey have since taken that crown, along with another of their marquee players, Dan Lawrence. But Elgar is confident, thanks to his five previous stints with Somerset and Surrey, dating back to 2013, that he has the wherewithal to maintain those high standards.”April and May is not the easiest time to play cricket, it’s cold and you can have a four-seasons-in-one-day kind of vibe. I can’t promise runs. I can only promise the process that I feel works in these conditions, and luckily I’ve been exposed to these conditions early on in my career. So I can draw on that reference. For me, it’s not foreign.”I’ve always felt county cricket is up there with the toughest four-day cricket in the world. It’s not just the cricket, it’s the way of life. Some guys come here and they’ve got to do their washing for the first time. You’ve got to clean your own house, you’ve got to fight the weather. There will be times where it’s going to be pretty s*****.”But the biggest thing about four-day cricket is you got to find a way to make it work, and find the best mindspace to win that moment.”

Since their inception, LSG have won 15 of the 18 matches in which they batted first

Karthik Krishnaswamy08-Apr-20242:10

Rapid Fire Review: What made Krunal so difficult to play?

How good are Lucknow Super Giants at defending totals? Since their inception in IPL 2022, they’ve batted first in 18 games, winning 15 of them and losing just two, which gives them an absurd win-loss ratio of 7.500. Rajasthan Royals, the second-best team at defending totals by that metric, are way behind them at 1.444, with 13 wins and nine losses.And LSG have never lost when they’ve batted first and got to 160. Sunday night’s game against Gujarat Titans was the 13th and latest example of this, and the win typified, in many ways, just why they are so good at defending totals.Find the perfect home groundIt’s never easy to build such a formidable bat-first record, but it gets a little easier if you play your home games at the IPL’s most challenging batting venue. Whether it’s the low, grippy black-soil pitches LSG usually play on or the quicker, higher-bouncing red-soil surface they occasionally use, Lucknow is seldom a straightforward ground to bat on, and consequently to chase on.ESPNcricinfo LtdLSG captain KL Rahul is aware of this.”Yeah, it’s a good record to have, obviously, but also it’s where we’ve played, the conditions we’ve played [in],” he said at the post-match presentation on Sunday. “The last time we played here in Lucknow we all saw how the wickets were, it’s a very low-scoring wicket, low-scoring ground, so we’ve defended quite well there, and having that home advantage obviously helps a little bit.”And yes, the bowlers have come through the ranks in the last couple of years. You’ve seen the same guys playing last season as well, and they’ve adjusted to their roles, and they’re reading the wickets really well, and that’s something that I try to speak to them a lot more off the field, and even at practice and even in the nets, just to try and get them ready to make the right choices in the ground when the pressure is on. I think they’re doing that really well, so yeah, hopefully we can continue this.”But this is not even half the story, because only four of LSG’s 15 bat-first wins have come in Lucknow. They’ve defended and won on a variety of away and neutral grounds as well.Make par-plus totalsMS Dhoni coined the term “par-plus total”, and it came to stand for something of a defining philosophy. The teams he captained at Chennai Super Kings tended to have strong spin attacks suited to the conditions at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, and they tended to bat in a way that made sure they usually put up totals that their bowlers could work with, even if their batters didn’t always set your pulse racing.LSG, whose reliance on spin at their home ground is an ongoing tribute to Dhoni’s CSK sides, have tended to be very good at getting to the par-plus total. Out of the 18 times they’ve batted first in the IPL, they’ve only crossed 200 twice, but they’ve only ended up with less than 150 on one occasion – in a rained-out game.Often, LSG’s totals have been built on an old-fashioned and increasingly polarising approach, with Rahul setting the tone as their polariser-in-chief: he’s their leading bat-first run-getter with 626 at an average of 52.16 and a strike rate of 139.42. He played another old-fashioned innings on Sunday, a 31-ball 33 that helped stabilise LSG after they had lost two early wickets, with Marcus Stoinis going only slightly harder while scoring 58 off 43.Is it the ideal approach to batting first in T20? Probably not, but if you have a bowling attack designed to defend par-plus totals – as LSG do, and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (for whom Virat Kohli often plays a similar, and similarly polarising role) do not, particularly in their home conditions – it has its merits, especially in a tournament where you can be the fourth-best team and get into the playoffs.Krunal Pandya has been a key contributor with the ball for LSG•BCCIBuild a smart, skillful bowling groupIn their first season, LSG often stacked their line-up with allrounders – they had Jason Holder, Marcus Stoinis, Krunal Pandya and K Gowtham in this game against Rajasthan Royals, for example – and while it sometimes left them with too flexible a batting order, with their middle-order batters never really settling into defined roles, it made their bowling extremely versatile. Given their plethora of options, they could, for example, easily hide the left-arm spin of Krunal if two left-handers were at the crease.The introduction of the Impact Player in IPL 2023 reduced the value of having so many allrounders, but it has helped LSG’s quest to always have a plethora of bowling options. It has, for instance, allowed them to play three spinners without compromising on their seam attack – Amit Mishra made a few appearances as their third spinner last season, and M Siddharth has been their powerplay spinner this year.Siddharth is an interesting bowler, a left-arm spinner whose stock ball with the new ball is the swinging arm ball. It’s a hugely useful defensive weapon against both the right-hand batter (whom it can cramp for room) and the left-hand batter (against whom it can be used to shut out the leg side, especially while bowling from around the wicket).All this makes Siddharth a typical LSG bowler. Their lead spinner Ravi Bishnoi is a unique legspinner who loves bowling to left-hand batters, and Krunal is a non-traditional left-arm fingerspinner who has mastered the art of survival via clever use of angles and speed of delivery.”All three spinners have been key for us,” Rahul said. “Sid coming in this season has done really well, plays a really crucial part when he bowls with the new ball. It’s obviously not going to be easy for a youngster to come in and bowl in the powerplay, and he can go for a bit of runs, but he’s shown great temperament and he’s given us that steady bowling in the first 2-3 overs in the powerplay and picked up one wicket, but his job is more to restrict the batsmen and not let the team get off to a flying start, which he’s doing really well.”KP obviously is very experienced – he’s played IPL for so many seasons and he’s a very very smart bowler, he knows what to do – and Bishnoi obviously, played with him for so many years and he just keeps getting better and better.”LSG also tend to pick seamers with solid defensive traits – Naveen-ul-Haq and Yash Thakur, for example, like bowling cutters and cross-seam deliveries into the wicket – while also usually being able to call upon one or two with genuine wicket-taking ability – Mark Wood, Dushmantha Chameera and Avesh Khan in the past, Mohsin Khan and Mayank Yadav this season.The nature of bowlers LSG have makes them particularly good through the middle overs, as the above graphic suggests (this is across all matches, whether batting or bowling first). Controlling this phase is often vital while defending totals, as LSG showed on Sunday too. Having got to 54 for 1 at the end of their powerplay in their chase of 164, Titans collapsed through the middle overs on a tricky pitch, against the constricting bowling of Krunal, Bishnoi and Thakur.Be luckyIt’s important to remember, of course, that four of LSG’s 15 bat-first wins have been achieved with a margin of six runs or fewer – one hit, in other words, could have changed the result – and two others by margins of 12 and 10 runs.LSG’s win-loss ratio of 7.5, then, is slightly deceptive, and a reversion to the mean can’t be too far away. But there’s no denying their excellence at defending totals, and the method behind it.

They have waited a long time to strut their stuff on the world stage; now their chance has come

Firdose Moonda01-Jun-2024Forty-three year-old Frank Nsubuga, the oldest player at this year’s T20 World Cup, has been playing high-level cricket for around 27 years, and he’s willing to share the secret to his longevity.”Every morning, I wake up and do my own jogging, maybe above 10km. Then I stretch and we train together [as a team] from about 10am.”He stays away from alcohol, and thinks that keeps him going. “I am happy with my cup of tea or coffee or juice,” he says.Nsubuga made his debut in 1997 at an ICC Zone 6 tournament as a teenager and he remembers a time when Afghanistan were still battling in the lower rungs of the international game.In fact, Nsubuga played the decisive hand in a Division Three match between Uganda and Afghanistan in 2009. Batting at No. 7, he scored 62 off 44 balls and took 1 for 29. Uganda won by 14 runs. They and Afghanistan ended the tournament tied on points, but Afghanistan’s higher net run rate allowed them to advance further and eventually join the big boys at the top of cricket’s pyramid.Related

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Uganda had to wait another 15 years for their chance to compete on the global stage. Finally, their time has come. And though they may be an unknown quantity to many in the cricketing world, they have a rich history in the game, full of characters. Nsubuga is just one example.Circa 1940, when Uganda was a British colony, some cricket was played in the country, between the settlers and a growing Asian trading community, but it really took off after Prince George Mawanda, a member of the royal Buganda tribal household, who was exposed to cricket during his education in the UK and at Trinity College in Sri Lanka, founded the African Cricket Club.The club gave the local black population an opportunity to compete against members of other communities, and throughout the 1950s and ’60s, a pentangular tournament, organised on ethnic and religious lines, was played in Uganda among the British, the “Indians” (mostly Hindus who had come to work on the East Africa Railway), the Goans (Catholic settlers from western India), the “Moslems” (who were largely traders), and the locals.The different teams also played in exhibition matches, including a famous one between an All-African XI and a Uganda Police side in 1959 to inaugurate the Lugogo Cricket Oval in Kampala. That game was attended by Britain’s Queen Mother. Mawanda was the star of the match, taking 6 for 21 and then hitting a six to win for his team.

To win the game, Prince George Mawanda hit a landing of the stadium onto Jinja road totalling the score of 106, beating the Police 11s by 3 wickets. (Newspaper article added below)

: @CricketUganda through Mr. Bessel, who was a part of Uganda Police Team. #BATBALL pic.twitter.com/Iny1g2B14o

— BATBALL Global (@BatballO) July 23, 2022