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ESPNcricinfo staff26-Jan-2016Having been sent in, India lost Shikhar Dhawan early to the returning Shane Watson, for 5•Getty ImagesRohit Sharma hit four fours and one six before Watson stuck again•Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesVirat Kohli then took charge of the innings..•Associated Press.. even as Suresh Raina struggled for timing•Getty ImagesThe pair added 134 for the third wicket; India’s third-highest for any wicket in T20 internationals•Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesRaina made 41 off 34 balls before he was bowled by James Faulkner•Getty ImagesKohli powered on to hit 90 not out off 55 balls•Getty ImagesMS Dhoni smacked a six and a four in a cameo as India finished at 188 for 3•Getty ImagesAaron Finch gave Australia a strong start in the chase•Getty ImagesDavid Warner contributed 17 in a 47-run opening stand before he was dismissed by debutant Jasprit Bumrah•Getty ImagesSteven Smith kept Australia ticking …•Getty Images… before Ravindra Jadeja scuppered the chase•Cricket AustraliaR Ashwin also chipped in to hasten Australia’s slide•Getty ImagesAfter a horror first over, debutant Hardik Pandya came back to take two wickets in two balls•Getty ImagesBumrah then returned and cleaned up the tail to seal a 37-run win•Getty ImagesThe Indian fans had plenty to cheer about as their side went 1-0 up under firework-filled skies•Getty Images

The team’s “Indian brand of cricket” – not taking undue risks, and playing largely cricketing shots – was shown up against West Indies’ lethal power-hitting

Karthik Krishnaswamy01-Apr-20162:40

Match Day – India’s lack of boundaries the difference

It is the 17th over of India’s innings against West Indies, and MS Dhoni has just taken a walk across his stumps to paddle a low full-toss from Carlos Brathwaite wide of short fine leg. He meets the ball a long way outside off stump and beats the fielder easily. It is as if he has played this shot all his life.A lot of batsmen around the world played this shot all their lives. Given the state of the game, and given the field set by West Indies, this is a perfectly logical shot to play. But this is MS Dhoni, and this is a moment that makes you rub your eyes and cross-check what you’ve seen with everyone else in the vicinity. Has MS Dhoni just paddled a ball past short fine leg? How many years has it been since he last played such a shot? Has he played this shot before?It is also, perhaps, the first time that any Indian batsman has played this shot all tournament. It has taken until the semi-final stage for this to happen.Of late, India have been quite vocal about their approach to Twenty20 batting: taking time to gauge the conditions, not taking undue risks, and playing largely cricketing shots. They do not move around the crease to exploit the V behind the wicket, they do not switch-hit or reverse-sweep, and they do not hit across the line until the slog overs.After India’s seven-wicket loss in the semi-final, Dhoni even called it the “Indian brand of cricket”, when he was asked how difficult it had been for India to set themselves a target, knowing they were playing a power-packed West Indies team on a flat pitch. West Indies chased down 193 with a flurry of boundaries, getting there with seven wickets in hand.”As I said, we have to keep reviewing [our desired first-innings total],” Dhoni said. “What our strength is, if you see the Indian brand of cricket, we take one or two overs, we see how the wicket is behaving, and according to that we see ‘okay, next five overs, let’s do this’, ‘at the end of this over, if we have not lost too many wickets, this is where we should be’.”What happens is, you evaluate every three-four overs, at times in two overs also, depending on who is bowling. And that has been our strength. We always get a score that is a par-plus score. Right from the start if you think about the big hitters and start looking as 210 as a good score, you may end up getting 160 or 170 and that may not be enough on a wicket like this.”So you always look to back your strengths at the same time, go for a par-plus score, don’t go for a score that is an absolute score. What we have seen in this format is that nothing is a safe score. We have seen 220, 230 also getting chased, so depending on your strength and depending on the wicket, we say this is the score and make sure we reach there.”It is a perfectly logical way of going about an innings. It might ensure you post 192 eight times out of 10, rather than 210 five times and 160 five times. However, it also leaves you susceptible to a chase such as West Indies’ on Thursday. And given the simple arithmetic of T20, where a batting side has 10 wickets to exhaust over 20 overs, it is perhaps counterproductive to bat with such a risk-averse approach. On Thursday, India lost their second wicket in the 16th over of their innings. The batsman dismissed at that point was Ajinkya Rahane, who had scored 40 off 35 balls, having only hit two fours.Yuvraj Singh stuck around in tense chases against Pakistan and Australia, but it was clear to see he was a long way past his best•IDI/Getty ImagesDhoni praised Rahane’s contribution, saying he had given India a solid platform from where they could “launch and score those extra 10-15 runs in the last few overs”. Dhoni said Rahane had done “what he does best” and had been picked ahead of Shikhar Dhawan for precisely this reason.By normal cricketing standards, Rahane played an excellent innings. West Indies made him work hard for his runs, and he stuck it out, ran hard between the wickets, and scored as quickly as possible while not taking undue risks. But is that necessarily a good way to bat in T20s?While India stretched themselves to their limits and scored 192 by playing cricket, West Indies chased it down easily by playing Twenty20, clearing their front legs from ball one and hitting through and across the line with abandon. West Indies’ task was made simpler by the impact of dew, and because India’s bowlers fed them plenty of bad balls, but they would have batted the same way regardless. It felt at times like a clash of ideologies – cricket versus Twenty20.It is a bit of a stretch to call the current Indian side’s risk-averse approach the “Indian brand of cricket”. India have had their share of batsmen who have broken the mould in one way or another, and Dhoni, when he first arrived, was just that kind of batsman. If bowlers around the world have had to rethink the value of yorkers at the death, it is partly because of Dhoni, who would sit deep in his crease and hit them for six with a miraculous whip of his bottom hand. And before his genius for calculation subsumed his genius for instinctive hitting, he would play these shots right from the time he walked out to bat.After India’s T20 series loss to South Africa last October, Dhoni himself acknowledged that his calculated approach might not suit T20s as well as it does ODIs. “Personally,” he said, “I feel I use a bit too much of my brain in this format.”Calling the safety-first approach the “Indian brand of cricket”, perhaps, was Dhoni’s way of deflecting attention from the real reason for adopting it: that the shaky form of the batsmen occupying numbers four and five – for the most part Suresh Raina and Yuvraj Singh, in recent months – would leave India under far too much pressure if they were to play lower-percentage cricket and lose early wickets. India’s openers failed to take off right through the Super 10 stage, and they only scraped through to the semi-finals because of Virat Kohli, Dhoni himself, the bowlers, and Bangladesh gifting them a crucial win.

While India stretched themselves to their limits and scored 192 by playing cricket, West Indies chased it down easily by playing Twenty20, clearing their front legs from ball one and hitting through and across the line with abandon

Yuvraj stuck around with Kohli in tense chases against Pakistan and Australia, but it was clear to see he was a long way past his best. Raina made one decent contribution – a jittery 23-ball 30 against Bangladesh that highlighted his discomfort against the short ball – and failed to get past 10 in his other three innings. Neither, in short, gave India’s top order any confidence that they could go out and play their shots from ball one.It would have been unfortunate for India had they only discovered during the World T20 that Yuvraj was no longer the Yuvraj of old or that Raina could be vulnerable against high-quality bowling or in difficult conditions. But that was not the case. Yuvraj had come into the team after two years, at 34, having been dropped following the 2014 World T20 final. The selectors, meanwhile, had left Raina out of India’s last ODI squad and picked him only for the T20s, hardly a vote of confidence in a cricketer who has played over 200 ODIs.That the selectors stuck by Raina despite not being convinced by his 50-overs game, and that they recalled Yuvraj after such a long time out of the team, suggested either that they felt there were no other options, or that the other options were too untested to throw into such a big event. If the latter was the case, then the selectors only had themselves to blame for trying out precious few young batsmen in limited-overs cricket over the last couple of years.Apart from the 23 against Bangladesh, Suresh Raina failed to get past 10 in an innings during the tournament•IDI/Getty ImagesGiven how much credit the IPL gets for “producing” or “discovering” Indian talent, it is curious that none of India’s top six at the World T20 made it on that basis. Even Manish Pandey, who has an IPL century and a match-winning 94 in an IPL final, only got his chance seven years after his first-class debut, after building a solid body of work in the longest format.The selectors have had no qualms in picking bowlers and allrounders based on their IPL performances. Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya and Pawan Negi can all be termed IPL finds. Even Ashish Nehra, who made a comeback at 36, after nearly five years out of international cricket, kept himself in the selectors’ eye only because of the IPL.But they have been rather more conservative while selecting batsmen, even for the shortest format. Since the start of 2014, the only batsmen they have given ODI debuts to have been Kedar Jadhav – who only came into the reckoning after scoring over 1000 runs in the 2013-14 Ranji Trophy season – Pandey, and Gurkeerat Singh – who has a fairly ordinary IPL record, but enjoyed an excellent 50-overs season for India A, last year. The only batsmen they have capped in T20Is in that time are Ambati Rayudu – who has been around since 2001-02 – Jadhav, Pandey and Sanju Samson. Of that lot, only Samson can be termed an IPL product. And he only got one game, against Zimbabwe, before being dropped.All this while, the selectors have shown great reluctance to blood a generation of young batsmen with new-age T20 techniques and excellent first-class records. Karun Nair is a brilliant exponent of the reverse-sweep, Shreyas Iyer upsets bowlers’ lengths by taking stance outside his crease or deep within it, Suryakumar Yadav plays the scoop over short fine leg from the moment he steps into the crease, and Deepak Hooda hits bigger sixes than most Indian batsmen. All have been important cogs in their IPL teams, and all have 40-plus first-class averages, with Nair and Iyer averaging over 50. All are aged between 20 and 25.The 2016 World T20 could have been a breakthrough event for one or two of these batsmen, just as it was for Bumrah, who showed composure beyond his years while bowling at the death, or Pandya, who, though still raw and wayward with the ball, showed glimpses of the exciting allrounder he could become. Instead, India’s batting followed a jaded pattern forced on them by conservative selections, and was held together by a modern great in otherworldly form. With a new season of the IPL only a week away, it is perhaps time for India to tear up the old template and finally, belatedly, rejuvenate their limited-overs game.

Younis Khan’s batting antics had drawn cricket fans into new descriptive heights in this series. But at The Oval he reminded them that he has been one of Pakistan’s most gifted batsmen

Jarrod Kimber12-Aug-2016It is calm, there is no bunny hop, no bucking bronco, the cat is not on a hot tin roof, and the goat has left the trampoline. Younis Khan looks like Younis Khan again. Younis Khan, the Pakistani batting legend.Earlier in the tour it hasn’t been like this, it has been a horror comedy. At times it was as if gremlins were biting him, he was hopping across a road dressed as an elf, he had fallen off the back of a truck, a man who has forgotten how gravity works. He has five limbs, his left and right feet are in an eternal dance off against each other, and he’s auditioning to play the plastic bag in the American Beauty reboot. That’s what Twitter thought. Batting coaches and cricket analysts probably just combusted upon watching it.In one shot his back foot was dragging towards square leg as his front foot went forward and across in the other direction; his bat was in the middle of this, missing the ball. There were leg glances that even if he had middled the ball he had jumped so far across the wicket he could have middled them onto his stumps. A simple forward defence turned into a weird dance move with a kicking back leg. Another delivery and his hands are thrusting out as if he is trying to punch the ball, not hit it, and his feet go backwards. Another leg glance ends with him using his bat as a crutch so he doesn’t fall over.And that is just a taste of how bad Younis had got. At Lord’s, even his leaves were an extraordinary dramatic contemporary dance move that conveyed emotions of worry and doubt. It was a trigger movement that was squat, charge and hope.Either Younis Khan, the Pakistani batting legend, had been replaced by some eager frightened replica, or Younis Khan, the Pakistani batting legend, had convinced himself that this was a batting method that could somehow work. Both didn’t make sense. Younis found it hard to play his regular shots as he propelled himself at the ball like he was a secret service agent and the ball was a bullet.33, 25, 1, 18, 31 and 4 were all he had to show for it on what have been tracks that several other Pakistani batsmen have been good on.Was he over thinking it, trying to get in line so much that he was jumping there? Were the pitches outside Asia getting to a man who didn’t have young reflexes? Had no one in the changeroom taken him aside and said: “Um, Younis, dude, what’s going on?” Was this the end, how the great man would go, launching himself to his own doom?At Younis’ age, the slightest sign of weakness is seen as the end. This wasn’t a subtle sign; it was a massive jumping neon one. But every Test Younis had been paring back his kangaroo technique a little. By the time he got to Edgbaston, he might not have been making runs, but at least he was trying to get there.Today he got there. There was still the Younis squat, but there wasn’t the Khan thrust. He stood in his crease, waited for the ball, his legs usually stayed where he wanted them, and when the ball came he played a Younis appropriate shot to them. He might have still gone across his crease, but he did it with his head screwed on and his feet often (as much as he ever does) touching the ground.It was a batsman of balance, patience and skill, making runs when the conditions were in his favour and his team needed a lot of them. He played all his classics, strike rotated, spinner milked, and quicks handled. He held his batting partner’s hand as he got nervous and went about building a total that Pakistan would need to win the game.Younis’ form was so good and off-putting to England that they reviewed a ball he middled. And compared to every other day in this series he middled a lot. A sweep off Moeen was so muscular it had its own throbbing bicep and a six went further than a 40-plus man should be able to hit anything.When he brought up his 50 it was a shot the Younis of Lord’s would have struggled to play. It was short and wide from Anderson, Younis waited and pounced, instead of pouncing and hoping. The ball disappeared through point. It was a shot so Younis, the Pakistani batting legend, it was practically autographed.Later he would play another, even better. As the ball cracked through backward point you couldn’t help but wonder where this calm, skilful, and patient batting had been all series. Pakistan have been so close to winning this series, what they really needed was this Younis, the Pakistani batting legend, to arrive.Asad Shafiq made being on 99 look like a Japanese horror film; Younis made it look like a Sunday afternoon walk. This despite a new ball for England that was moving. The wicket of his captain Misbah. And the gift from Iftikhar. Younis was on 99 for all of it. And yet at his end, it was serene. When Stuart Broad bowled a searching ball in and around off stump, Younis moved smoothly into the line, dropped his hands softly, middled the ball and wandered up the pitch like he was checking on his azaleas.Even when he celebrated his hundred there was no leap of joy. The leaping had gone, this was just batting. His team needed him, so he made a hundred. It was no different to the other 31 Test hundreds he has made. It was just number 32 for the Pakistani batting legend.

ESPNcricinfo presents plays of the day from the second match of the series

Mohammad Isam09-Oct-2016The belated wisdom (which was still useless)Adil Rashid had struck Mahmudullah on the side of his front pad, and umpire Sharfuddoula raised his finger. Mahmudullah was on his way out, showing anger at himself by punching his bat. But suddenly he looked at the dressing room, turned around and took the review. On first view, it would look as if the ball had struck Mahmudullah’s gloves in his attempt to paddle Rashid, but a side-on view confirmed why Sharfuddoula and Mahmudullah were right. The ball struck his pad and would have hit between middle and leg.The swatMashrafe Mortaza’s trouble facing the short ball has been around for more than a decade, and he has found different ways to combat this problem. Today, he employed the swat against Chris Woakes when Bangladesh were in desperate need of boundaries. But it was a shot that even he didn’t think would end up where he intended: deep midwicket. He was looking behind him, thinking it had taken the top edge and gone behind the wicketkeeper. It went to midwicket where Jonny Bairstow’s misfield gave them the required boundary.The victims of the lengthEngland bowlers picked up several wickets using the shorter length. Chris Woakes removed Tamim Iqbal and Imrul Kayes while Jake Ball and Ben Stokes removed Mushfiqur Rahim and even Shakib Al Hasan with deliveries of similar length. And so did Rashid, though he was fortunate to have Mosaddek Hossain’s wicket with a slow, short ball. The batsman tonked it right down deep midwicket’s throat.The confrontationBangladesh awaited the third umpire’s decision on Jos Buttler, who was struck in front with the leg-stump exposed. The batsmen and the fielders awaited the call. The Bangladesh dressing room started celebrating and from that the players in the middle started too. Mahmudullah was standing towards the batsmen, when he turned towards them and clenched his fists. After the on-field umpire made the signal, Buttler started to walk towards the Bangladesh fielders angrily. Gone was the happy expression that was Buttler’s regular outlook throughout this tour so far.

ESPNcricinfo staff04-Sep-2016Gunathilaka and Dhananjaya de Silva added 73 runs together, their best opening stand of the series•AFPHowever, Australia hit back by picking up three wickets in 10 balls and Sri Lanka stumbled to 78 for 3 in the 16th over•Associated PressIn an effort to stabilise the innings, Upul Tharanga and Kusal Mendis added 43 runs for the fourth wicket•Associated PressBut Australia’s spinners – Travis Head and Adam Zampa – would have none of it and ripped through Sri Lanka’s middle order•AFPMitchell Starc nearly picked up a hat-trick in the 38th over. His 3 for 40 helped bundle Sri Lanka out for 195 with 58 balls left unused•AFPDefending 195, Dilruwan Perera kept Sri Lanka in the hunt by removing both Matthew Wade and Usman Khawaja early•AFPDavid Warner, however, stabilised Australia’s innings by making his first fifty-plus score of the series•Associated PressGeorge Bailey and Warner added 132 for the third wicket as Australia cruised towards the target•Associated PressWarner completed his seventh ODI ton, and the first by an Australian in Sri Lanka, but chipped a return catch to Dhananjaya de Silva with seven runs to win•Associated PressAustralia completed a 4-1 series win with five wickets in hand and seven overs to spare. Bailey was awarded the Man of the Series for topping the run-charts with 270 runs at 67.50•AFP

From Ashwin’s technique against spin to the drawback of Rashid’s run-up, Aakash Chopra examines the technical talking points from day four in Rajkot

Aakash Chopra12-Nov-2016The pitch
Indian pitches with relatively bigger spaces between cracks don’t crumble; this pitch has proved that theory right, once again. While the cracks have become wider and the edges have become a little loose, the deterioration isn’t something worth losing sleep over if you’re a batsmen.The Stokes factor
England’s resources allowed them to play six bowlers and that has put them in an envious position. Reverse-swing is at its best when the ball moves late in the air, that happens only when you have extra pace, and for that you need to be reasonably fresh. You can’t expect a bowler to be really sharp if he has already bowled 30 overs. Stokes had bowled only 10 overs at the 126-over mark and that allowed England to have a fresh bowler at such a late stage in the innings.Pitch map: Amit Mishra and Adil Rashid to right-hand batsmen in Rajkot by the end of day four (white=wicket; red=dot ball; blue=1-3 runs; yellow=boundary)•ESPNcricinfo LtdRashid v Mishra
If you were to err as a legspinner, you must err on the fuller side. The moment you allow the batsman to play off the back foot, you make his job a lot easier. Barring a freak hit-wicket dismissal, you aren’t likely to get many batsmen out off short-pitched deliveries. Adil Rashid’s pitch-map suggests that he has bowled shorter a bit too often and the reason for that, in my opinion, is his delivery action. All spinners are told to have a “pause” before delivering, for that allows you more control. Rashid runs through the crease. Amit Mishra, on the other hand, take a fraction longer than Rashid from the time he lands his back leg in his delivery stride to the time he releases the ball. While this affects his consistency, it does give him fizz off the surface.Does nobody hide the shine anymore?
As a batsman, you rely on spotting the shine to play reverse-swing. If you’re able to see it, you plan your response well in advance. You stay inside the line for the balls coming back in and leave the balls that are expected to go away. In the ’90s Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis wrecked havoc with reverse-swing for a few reasons: they were sharp in the air, they maintained the ball better than many and, also, they were able to hide the shine on most occasions. While the ball has been reverse-swinging in Rajkot, nobody has tried to hide the shine. In fact, it is not limited to just these two teams and Rajkot; hiding the shine of the ball seems no longer in vogue. I wonder why.R Ashwin the batsman puts spinners on the back foot with his back-foot play•Associated PressAshwin on the back foot
Batting against spin becomes easier if you get to play it off the back foot. Ashwin has the unique ability to play perfectly good-length balls, ones that others lunge forward to, off the back foot. This approach to spinners forces them to bowl even fuller and he is equally adept at driving off the front foot.Haseeb Hameed’s adjustment
How do you judge a developing career? The best way is to look for evolution, if there’s any. In the first innings, Hameed was trapped leg-before by Ashwin, when he went around the wicket, with the front foot landing pretty straight. In the second innings, when Ashwin tried the same ploy, Hameed had a different plan; he stood on middle stump instead of on leg stump and then shuffled a little too. Therefore, when he got beaten the same way in this innings, the ball was missing the stumps. He has shown the awareness to address a concern, and the aptitude to make an overnight adjustment.

At a level of cricket where survival is not guaranteed, the game between Hong Kong and Netherlands had more riding on it than most international matches – and both teams played that way

Jarrod Kimber in Hong Kong16-Feb-2017At one point, it didn’t matter that each Kookaburra international ball costs around HKD1000 (USD130 approx). When Anshy Rath put one into a tree of a private residential block that Hong Kong Cricket has no access to, it meant they had to eat the cost of that ball. But that six was good news for Hong Kong, because it came in the over after losing their captain, Babar Hayat, to a brilliant leg-side stumping by Wes Barresi, and it meant that they needed only 66 from 49 with seven wickets in hand.Things like the cost of balls matter at this level, as Associate games aren’t like the top flight of international cricket. This game was played on a ground that neither side has access to train on tomorrow, as Hong Kong Cricket only get so many hours a week they are allowed to use this oval for. The square has turf wickets along with a synthetic wicket. The ground is no different to any suburban cricket ground anywhere in the world. And when these national sides play on it, they aren’t playing some meaningless rubber, as with almost every game of cricket an Associate team plays – this means everything to them.You don’t play for pride at this level; you play for funding, and survival.On the ICC WCL table, the Netherlands were one point clear of Hong Kong, making them tied first with Papua New Guinea. But that essentially means they are 13th in the world. That number is important, as the 13th best ODI side (according to what the Associates believe) under the new ICC proposal is due to make millions more than the 14th ranked side. Not to mention that not being 13th in the world might mean that Hong Kong lose their ODI rating, and the Netherlands will remain without theirs.So this match on this borrowed ground, in a city that almost entirely ignores cricket, which started at 9 am with no spectators, has more riding on it than almost all the international ODIs played. And both teams played like that.The Dutch top order rode their luck a bit, but Ben Cooper played some quality drives, and Stephan Myburgh went on to 88. Then their experienced middle order of Roelof van der Merwe, Peter Borren and Pieter Seelaar pushed the score well over 300. Had van der Merwe not holed out with more than six overs to go, he might have shattered the windows of the apartment block next door. Instead, the score was something that Hong Kong could chase, everything went right.Paul van Meekeren hastened Hong Kong’s defeat with two wickets in the 48th over•Panda ManFor the longest time, in the longest partnership of the match, it did. Rath and Hayat took the score from 53 for 2 to 250 for 3. Hayat by muscling the ball, and occasionally just destroying it, while Rath did it by smart batting. Even when Hayat went out and later when Rath went out, Hong Kong had the match, the money and the ranking in their grip.But as they so often do, they panicked. Rath was caught for 134 trying to hit the Netherlands quality young left-arm wrist spinner, Michael Rippon, out of the ground. But even his wicket shouldn’t have been the difference. The over before, Nizakat Khan had hit Paul van Meekeren, one of the best bowlers in Associate cricket, back over his head for a six, losing another ball. All Nizakat had to do was stick around for the next five overs or so and the game would be iced. Instead the ball after Rath’s wicket, he gifted Rippon his fourth scalp.Within a few moments 285 for 3 became 285 for 5, and the Dutch team suddenly found full voice as they put pressure on Hong Kong with solid defensive bowling and attacking verbal warnings. Despite Hong Kong cruising, there had always been a sense – to the Dutch – that they believed a collapse was coming, that if they kept pushing, they would get it. But even though they saw it coming, when it did, it came every more dramatically that they had been expecting. Wickets came with Hong Kong at 308, 311 313 and then 315. It was a collapse of 4 for 7 – and 6 for 30 overall. Against Kenya, in the last game of this league they lost, they had lost six wickets for 29 runs.In the end it was their tail, who bumbled their way to a last over needing ten. They knocked back singles, cramped themselves up, seemed confused at what boundaries to target, and ended up only taking four runs from the over, despite it being an eight-ball affair as two of them were wides.There was not one Hong Kong player who left the field thinking that they shouldn’t have won it, and not one Dutch player thinking that they hadn’t done it the tough way. But the Netherlands are now leading the World Cricket League, and with their decent quicks, good-quality spin, classy batting order and only one loss in nine games, they would back themselves to go on and win the whole thing.Hong Kong had to use three replacement balls in their innings, but worse than that, this is a loss that might have cost them millions.

Mushfiqur’s day with the gloves, Thisara’s absent-mindedness and Taskin’s shoulder catch form part of our plays from the second ODI in Dambulla

Mohammad Isam28-Mar-2017The catchIs it a mere coincidence that Mushfiqur Rahim’s work behind the stumps has improved following the team management’s decision to remove him as permanent Test wicketkeeper? He did miss a stumping during this game but he showed fine awareness for most parts, as he did during Bangladesh’s historic 100th Test in Colombo where he was a last-minute wicketkeeping replacement. In the third over, he called loud and early, and seemed to endlessly chase a top edge from Danushka Gunathilaka. He ended up around square-leg, where he needed to dive to his right to complete the dismissal. Two other fielders had converged but fortunately they stopped and watched their Test captain take a fine catch.The fatal venture-outUpul Tharanga needlessly ran himself out while trying take a single after Mustafizur Rahman bowled a beamer down the leg side. But Thisara Perera did something worse: he ran down the pitch aimlessly after being struck on the pad by Mashrafe Mortaza. Mushfiqur showed alertness by removing one glove, aiming at the stumps and hitting it to catch Perera well short of the crease.The double hitBatsmen find it hard to pick Mustafizur Rahman. It wasn’t too different for Upul Tharanga, who decided to invent a new way to get runs off him, albeit inadvertently. Tharanga pulled Mustafizur’s first ball of the 25th over to the midwicket boundary. Replays showed the ball struck high on his bat, before meeting the middle and racing away. This might not happen regularly, but when Mustafizur is bowling his cutters and varying his pace, all bets are off. If Tharanga had done this in cricket, chances are he would’ve been given out.The awarenessKusal Mendis hammered Taskin Ahmed’s slower delivery back at him. The blow, on Taskin’s left shoulder, may have been a stinging one. He could have keeled over in pain and no one would have said a thing to him. But Taskin showed awareness by turning back quickly, taking a couple of steps backward to complete a catch off the rebound. It was only after exchanging a high-five before he finally winced and asked his teammates not to touch his shoulder.

India’s Harmanpreet Kaur talks about her hard-hitting style, her stint at Sydney Thunder, and the various captains she has played under

Annesha Ghosh16-Jun-2017Describe your first day at work with Sydney Thunder. Was it a training session, a squad meeting or an ice-breaking session?
My flight to Sydney was scheduled the same evening we [the India women’s team] landed in Mumbai after winning the Asia Cup in Thailand. So I missed all the ice-breaking and training sessions with the Thunder girls and was due to play a match the very next evening. I landed there and did a few pressers and the team meetings. Was dog-tired after that but excited to hit the ground running in a few hoursYour 28-ball 47 on your WBBL debut featured a lofted cover drive for six that was described by Adam Gilchrist on live commentary as “as good a cricket shot as you will ever see”. Is that the best shot you’ve played till date?
One of the best, surely. I was pleasantly surprised to learn he was on air at that point. He even tweeted something after the game. [It’s] always nice when a legend like him appreciates your game.How did you feel when you had the bowler, Gemma Triscari of Melbourne Stars, in splits with that shot?
My first reaction action after hitting that six was… umm… confusion. I was like, “Hey, I smoked that one, and all she does in reply is burst into laughter!” The next match, which was also against the Melbourne Stars, and we needed 13 off 12, I remember I had closed out the game in the 19th over, with one four and two sixes. After I hit that winning six, I spotted Triscari laughing at short third man. I told myself, “Well, maybe, that’s her way of reacting to sixes!”How well did you get along with your team-mates?
Oh, it took me a while to remember the names. For the initial few days I wasn’t able to tell their faces apart. I would think, “Wasn’t this the same girl I was introduced to a few minutes ago?” But the first fielding session I had with them on match day was real fun. I had only four-five hours of sleep and was tired but the enthusiasm of the girls was infectious.Their English is starkly different from what we speak here in India. I would have to strain my ears to make sense of what they spoke. I would focus hard on a few words when the Aussie girls would interact with each other and then pick a few up from there. I guess I did pretty well as a student ().

“Sandwiches were a constant feature in breakfasts [at Sydney Thunder], and I absolutely hate sandwiches. I would be really annoyed every time I found it on the menu”

Were you able to rub off a bit of Hindi or Punjabi on your Thunder team-mates?
Oh yeah, I did, but only a smattering. They seemed to be already familiar with “” (let’s go), and it was kind of nice the way most of the girls used it while heading for the ground. I also remember many of them showing particular interest in the song from . Many a time, I would enunciate the words, explaining the lyrics to them, and to their credit, they were pretty quick at getting the pronunciations right. But they would also put me on the spot, asking me to translate words like “breakfast” into Hindi. I would wonder, “, India breakfast breakfast !” (Oh man, we call breakfast breakfast in India.)Did you develop a liking for Australian food?
Sandwiches were a constant feature in breakfasts, and I absolutely hate sandwiches. I would be really annoyed every time I found it on the menu. And then there was also bacon. I wasn’t accustomed to eating bacon before my WBBL stint. I don’t even like fish much. I have always been an all-things-chicken aficionado, as you’d expect of a Punjabi. But my room-mates would insist I tried a bit of bacon. I kept refusing for the longest time – and succeeded in doing so too. Thankfully, though, the Thunder manager, Merv Pereira, turned out to be an Indian. That was the biggest plus point (). He was almost like a godsend. And a lot of Punjabis based in Sydney would come to watch our games. My cousin lives in Sydney too. So, getting “” (home-style food) wasn’t much of a problem.You have been signed up by Surrey Stars for the upcoming season of the Kia Super League, England’s domestic T20 tournament. Were you offered a contract by any other franchise?
No, it’s only Surrey [Stars]. The BCCI informed me that the franchise wanted to rope me in for the tournament. Given that I don’t have any cricketing commitments during that time of the year, and the World Cup, too, will have been over by then, I decided to give it a shot.Batting for Sydney Thunder? Not a problem. Adjusting to the accents? Far trickier•Getty ImagesWith one wicket in hand, and eight runs needed off the last two balls in the final of the Women’s World Cup Qualifier, against South Africa, in February, you hit a six off the penultimate delivery and ran a couple the next ball to hand India the title. Talk us through that final-over finish.
We needed nine off the over, so I had made up my mind early that I would face all six deliveries. Raja [Rajeshwari Gayakwad], the No. 11 batsman, was at the other end, and knowing our tailenders rarely get to bat in matches, I was clear in my head I didn’t want to give her the strike, because doing that would have meant I had to hope for her to take a single.In such situations, you can’t hope for things to happen – you’ve got to make things happen. The South African quicks were also keeping it really tight in the end overs. We had lost the last few wickets to yorkers. My target was to hit at least two fours or one six, and I was anticipating where the ball would be bowled according to the field placements. But after I failed to execute in the first three balls, I realised perhaps the bowler was trying to out-think me by bowling completely opposite to the field setting. So, I decided to play the last two balls purely on their merit, and luckily, I connected the penultimate ball for a six. Whew!And what about the celebration that followed? Were you even aware your bat was on the verge of skyrocketing into outer space?
Such was the thrill of that win. Normally I wouldn’t even let my bat drop to the ground, forget hurling it up in the air. My bat means the world to me, so after the excitement tempered down, I kept apologising to my bat for hours on end. But yeah, I did watch replays of that frenzied celebration on social media and, as I said, it was frenzied.How was it being room-mates with West Indies captain Stafanie Taylor and batting in her company during the WBBL?
It was fun. Since most of the [Thunder] girls hailed from Sydney, they would travel from home. A few of us lived in the same apartment – Taylor, I, Sam [Bates], Cheats [Lauren Cheatle]. Taylor is a chilled-out girl – doesn’t talk much and mostly likes to keep to herself. But I thoroughly enjoyed batting with her. We would share our individual understanding of a bowler’s gameplan, share our views and experiences with each other. I got to learn a lot from her in terms of assessing tactics of opponents. She’s really good at that: 70-80% of her predictions about the bowlers’ lines and lengths would come true.Tell us one trait you admire the most in each of the captains you’ve played under – Mithali Raj, Jhulan Goswami, Anjum Chopra and Alex Blackwell, the Thunder captain.
Mithu has been immensely calm and focused as the leader of our side. Her experience as a top batsman for all these years reflects in her sound awareness about responding to a particular situation.Jhulu was as aggressive as captain as she’s always been as a bowler. I’m an aggressive player myself, so I like that trait in her.

“Normally, I wouldn’t even let my bat drop to the ground, forget hurling it up in the air. My bat means the world to me, so after the excitement tempered down, I kept apologising to my bat for hours”Harmanpreet on her bat-hurling celebration after hitting the winning runs in the Women’s World Cup Qualifier final

Anjum was a cool-headed skipper. She would underline that there were no hierarchies in the team, no senior-junior classifications. She would often say, “Irrespective of age and experience, all players representing the national side, even the debutant, are on the same plane.”Blackwell is an out-and-out team player. Often after the end of a match she would seek our opinion on the choices she had made in the field that day and ask us how differently we would have reacted had any of us been in her position. It was nice to see the importance she attached to the perspective of every player.The ideal way of describing your bowling style would be: right-arm everything. Your spin variations are marked by a deceptive use of pace and flight. How did you develop this brand of bowling?
It’s only been two or three years since I switched from medium pace to spin. I don’t focus much on the technicalities of the craft, to be honest. I just make sure I enjoy my bowling, which is what I’m glad I’ve been able to do so far. Much of the effectiveness of my spin bowling – offspin, legspin, wrong’uns or quicker ones – has its origin in the nets sessions I used to have in Moga.During my early years of formal training, my coach, Rupchand Sir, would make the girls try out all types of bowling. I’m happy those experiments – the looping, darting and all that – are coming to good use now.You’ve always said Virender Sehwag is your cricketing hero. How much of an influence has he been?
I grew up watching Sehwag, and he was the only reason I followed matches on television as a kid. I never had any other cricketing idol. I would meticulously follow his style of batting – his liking for scoring runs in fours and sixes, his approach in high-pressure situations. During my growing-up years, I would often try and execute some of the trademark Sehwag shots while playing with the boys in the neighbourhood. Even now, whenever I get to meet him, I discuss my game with him and try to learn something new.Is your on-field aggression a reflection of your admiration for Sehwag’s strokeplay?
Not really – the aggression is in my genes (). It’s been handed down by my father, Sardar Harminder Singh. I would tag along with him when he used to play club-level games. I think I picked up the hard-hitting style from him.Harmanpreet (right) with “firebrand and great dancer” Veda Krishnamurthy•IDI/Getty ImagesWhat is it like to be the connecting link between the two veterans – Goswami and Mithali – and the younger crop of players in the Indian team?
Spending considerable time over the years with Jhulu , Mithu and now with the youngsters as well, has helped me understand their mindsets. At times, when either side is not able to convey their thoughts to the other, I can play the communicator between them. The youngsters coming into the team may feel shy about discussing certain things with the two legends, while for them [Raj and Goswami], the concern may be to ensure their feedback is not misconstrued as putting undue pressure on the girls. That is where I can chip in and bridge the gap, if any. [It] helps the team-bonding too.What’s the worst sledge you ever copped on a cricket field and what was your response?
I’m not sure if I can recall the worst sledge but I do remember getting one from [Alyssa] Healy during the WBBL. I was at the non-striker’s end and the noise in the stadium was quite deafening, so I couldn’t hear what she said. But my partner told me between overs that Healy had uttered something unpleasant. Since I hadn’t heard it myself, I chose to ignore it and carried on with my game. However, after the end of the match, Healy came up to me and apologised.If there were a contest to publish most Instagram stories in a day, who among your India team-mates is likely to win?
Sushma Verma [the wicketkeeper] – hands down. No one in the team is a patch on Sush.Who’s the most fun on a night out?
I think it’s Veda [Krishnamurthy]. She is a firebrand and a great dancer too.Who’s the worst?
It has to be Smriti [Mandhana]. You know how graceful she is as a batsman. But, unfortunately, I can’t say the same about her dancing skills ().A catch goes up to win the World Cup final. Who do you want under it?
Myself. I trust my abilities the most.

Paul Marsh, the former Australian Cricketers’ Association chief executive, shares his views on the pay dispute between CA and Australia’s players

Daniel Brettig21-Jun-2017Having just completed the AFL deal, what’s your perspective on where the cricket negotiation is at?They don’t even appear to be at first base from my understanding of it. With CA not supplying financial information to the ACA it is very hard for them to negotiate a deal. That’s how I see it at the moment.The AFL deal has been reported as being imminent for a long time yet it still took time to finalise. What are your thoughts on CA’s lead negotiator Kevin Roberts going on a roadshow to state squads less than two weeks from the expiry of current MOU?Wouldn’t you think his time would be better spent getting in a room with the ACA, giving them the information, and actually start moving on this? Our agreement has taken a long time to get to where it has got to, and it’s taken us five weeks just to draft the agreement – how these guys get this thing done in the next nine days and mitigate all the risks that come with it not being done, it’s hard to comprehend how it could happen.You mentioned financial information as an issue – how is that a problem for the ACA in trying to reach a deal?No players’ association can responsibly represent its members if you don’t understand what the financial forecasts look like. Historically CA – and the last MOU in 2012 was the best – gave us incredibly detailed and rigorous financial forecasts for their business, for the state associations and for the BBL teams. The reality of it is that your forecasts will end up being different to your actual results, almost by definition it is impossible to look five or six years into the future and get that absolutely right.But in CA’s case they have to be accountable to something, and that’s why the percentage model is so important. If the actual revenues of the industry end up being different to what the forecasts are, then you’ve got something you can tie the players’ payments to. A share of revenue could be more or less than what it has been, that’s all part of the discussion, as is what goes in and what goes out, but it’s about tying what the players get to the actual revenues of the game rather than what the forecasts are.There’s no accountability for CA if they don’t. They can give you whatever set of numbers they want to give you, and if they end up being significantly inaccurate – as they have been for every MOU negotiation since 1998 – then the players are getting shortchanged. Right now CA aren’t even giving the ACA a set of forecasts. That to me is fundamental, and all CA have done is lost the trust of the entire playing group because it looks like they’re trying to hide something.What was the AFL’s attitude to information sharing?I think there’s an acknowledgement from the AFL that they want to do a long-term deal with us for industry stability, but they understand it is impossible for us if we’re being responsible to tie what the players get just to a set of forecasts. They understand that point, and the second that players keep talking about in both sports is partnership. Incentivise us with a model that helps us to both grow the game together. Our model isn’t where the cricket model is currently at because we’ve got 28% of forecast revenue, 28% of the AFL upside and only 11.2% of the clubs’ upside. The ACA at the moment have roughly a 26% share of everything.The club piece is a bigger challenge in the AFL but that’s all up for discussion. The principle of tying player payments to the industry is common to both models now. We think we’ll end up getting a better result for the players and the game, and that’s the galling part of what’s going on at the moment in cricket. Surely the players are going to get a lot more money in this MOU through the percentage model, or the review mechanism as we’re calling it in the AFL, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that for every dollar the players get, the game gets three. Why are they [CA] trying to strip that off? It smacks of pure greed.

I’m incredibly frustrated, as someone who did the last deal and helped convince the players to put $20 million of their own money [from the 2015 World Cup] back into growing the game. Yet the very next MOU the players are told ‘we don’t want to give you this revenue percentage anymore’.

When you left the ACA in 2014 the game’s landscape had already changed enormously due to Twenty20 tournaments and that process is only getting faster. Are you surprised to see this sort of dispute arise when players have more choice than before? Certainly more than AFL players have.I think it’s crazy. For the services of players, cricket is now a seller’s market. The players can choose where to go, and that’s a reality the AFL doesn’t have, players can’t pick up their trade and go somewhere else. But the cricketers can, and for the majority of countries now they can make a lot more money doing that than playing international cricket. I think international cricket is at risk of falling over if the big countries have a period for whatever reason where they don’t play international cricket.Nearly all successful professional sports are club-based, cricket is now half-and-half and could very quickly become a club-based sport. There are some parts of the cricket model at the moment that don’t work for players – say the best player in the world is a West Indian or a New Zealander, what they get for playing for their country may well be less than what an Australian state cricketer gets. So to think they are not going to chase the T20 dollars and get paid what they’re worth is just complete naivety. It seems to me that CA are at risk of pushing the players down that path.The other thing I find incredible is that CA relies on its commercial partners to generate income, and they as of next week no longer have the players locked away from the perspective of protecting their commercial partners. It’s a slippery slope to companies saying ‘we don’t want to invest in cricket because of the risk here, because players can go off and do things with our competitors’, then the whole business model of cricket falls over. Stability and certainty means everyone knows where they stand, CA can go away and do commercial and broadcast deals and organise tours. If they haven’t got that, from a business standpoint it’s chaos. That’s the thing where you look at it and think ‘how could it get to that point?’.One of CA’s major arguments against revenue sharing is that they say it becomes very difficult to invest in new projects when a percentage of all investment must go to players. How can that issue be addressed?The ACA has historically been responsible. If CA have put arguments around needing flexibility around the revenue-sharing model in order to invest in the game, all I’m hearing from the ACA is ‘we’re happy to talk about that’. And it can be negotiated, you can exclude certain revenue streams, and we’ve done that with the AFL deal like in the case of Etihad Stadium. We’ve given the AFL a six-year exclusion to take any money they generate from Etihad that won’t go into our pot.If the clubs make money from it that will be included, but that’s giving them [the AFL] a chance to pay off that investment, and hopefully beyond six years everyone will benefit from that. I think any players’ association will look at good arguments and work those things into the model. But the argument is ‘we don’t want to give you a share of the upside because we might want to spend it, and we’re not going to give you the forecasts because we don’t want to’.I think it is impossible for a responsible players’ association to do a deal on that basis. Certainly if I was in the ACA’s shoes I couldn’t possibly consider anything more than a one-year deal, and even that would have to be under the principle of revenue share – it is just too open to be gamed. CA have all the information, they know what the future looks like as their best guess, and they won’t even share that. It is incumbent on CA to put the details to the ACA to try to work through what sorts of investments they want to make.Another issue is the adjustment ledger. CA have said it is reasonable to take adjustment-ledger money from the current MOU into the next one because that is what happened in 2012. Why was it done then?We did a one-year rollover deal for 2011-12, and it was a season with an India tour. We could have paid the players 26% of the money from that year, but what would have happened was a massive increase for that one year, and then a decrease for the next year and so on. It was only done that way so the player payments were evened out rather than what would have been irresponsible and unfair to most of the players, spiking one year then going down the next.’As much as CA will claim it is Australia’s favourite sport and all that, now I’ve been removed a bit, it doesn’t get the column inches that other sports get, it isn’t necessarily in the consciousness of the Australian public like it used to be’•John Walton/PA PhotosI’m incredibly frustrated, as someone who did the last deal and helped convince the players to put $20 million of their own money [from the 2015 World Cup] back into growing the game. The players took a very responsible decision to invest back into the game. There wouldn’t be another professional sport in the world where the players took that decision, yet the very next MOU the players are told ‘we don’t want to give you this revenue percentage anymore’. I find that incredibly disrespectful and unprofessional in my view.We negotiated that share of revenue fair and square, and the players could have put all of that money in their pocket, and they didn’t. That shows how serious the players were about this partnership, so to then have that thrown back in their face… For CA to use money from this MOU that the players have earned – despite the fact they’ve given $20 million back – and then try to say ‘we’re going to take more money out of what we have to pay you and put it into the next deal’, it’s just contemptible from where I sit.When you left cricket in 2014, did you have much of an idea that CA was moving in this direction in terms of what it wanted out of the next MOU?I was certainly conscious of [CA chairman] David Peever’s business history. I knew David’s philosophies were anti-union, or not seeing the need for a union, which perhaps is a lack of understanding for the difference between a players’ association and a normal employee-type union. There’s differences in 100% membership, players being through these fights before and being incredibly united. I had an inkling there may have been a change coming from CA, but there certainly won’t be one from the players. The irony of what’s going on right now is it will only make the playing group stronger and more united.In terms of the changes CA are seeking, the AFLPA was coming from a similar perspective in terms of wanting to change a system that had existed fairly consistently for a number of years. How did you go about that?CA wanted to change the model, as we [the AFLPA] did, and we had to take the AFL on that journey together. I don’t think CA have done that at all with the players. You’d think they’d be saying ‘guys this is what it all looks like, these are our concerns with the model, we want to meet with you and discuss it’. Instead it looks like ‘here’s our deal, we’re not going to discuss the financials, take it or leave it’. It’s laughable, and if they think they’re going to change the players’ minds now, it just shows how far removed they are from the players’ psyche. By trying to work around the ACA, all they’ve done is make the ACA stronger – the players appoint them and pay them to look after their interests so they don’t have to get involved in all this. By going to the players direct they’ve almost done the ACA’s job for them. It defies belief.So what do you think happens next?There’s no doubt the players have got very strong resolve here. I can’t see a deal done before June 30, so from that point the players become uncontracted, the commercial rights fall away, and potentially we’ll see players going off and doing their own commercial deals, looking for opportunities in tournaments overseas. I think the big tipping point here will be the India tour. If the players haven’t got contracts then, from where I sit that would be one they shouldn’t go on. They’ll effectively be locked out, it won’t be a strike.CA’s approach here is purely and simply trying to bully the players into an outcome that CA want. ‘We won’t give you the financial information, we won’t give you this model, here’s our deal, take it or leave it’ – that’s been the approach to this point. How can it possibly be seen as a ‘win/win’ here? I can’t see how, and from a human-behaviour perspective you just ask who’s going to agree to that then, how will the players say ‘we’re happy with that deal’ and the same for CA. It’s now a win/lose scenario and in my experience, if you’re going to have a relationship with someone, win/lose just doesn’t work.Do you have a different perspective on where cricket is at having been removed from it for a few years and involved in a rival sport?Cricket’s not going that well that it can afford to throw itself open to this. As much as CA will claim it is Australia’s favourite sport and all that, now I’ve been removed a bit, it doesn’t get the column inches that other sports get, it isn’t necessarily in the consciousness of the Australian public like it used to be, and I just think it is a very dangerous game to play.