They used to be all the rage in ODIs played in the 90s, but they don’t always work in a data-driven T20 age

Jarrod Kimber07-Apr-2022David Willey is a pinch hitter. I think. It is almost impossible to tell anymore. His batting innings map – a breakdown of what positions in the order he has batted in – is all over the place. He batted between Nos. 7 and 9 in the first five innings of his career, but he was up at No. 3 in his sixth. Two innings later, he was batting at 10.I know much of that sounds like numberwang, but Willey’s batting map really is all over the place. Three years later, he had opened, been a tailender, batted one down, and then opened again. It’s a mess. Willey has a different role every time he turns up for a different team. What is different is Willey’s range: he’s been in the top three over 50% of the time, but also nearly 35% of the time No. 7 or lower – generally you might expect such a spread to be 50% in the top order and 45% from Nos. 4 to 7.Willey either bats at the top or at the bottom. He’s rarely batting at Nos. 4, 5 or 6. He started doing this for Northamptonshire. Before Willey, Northants had a very similar approach with Graeme Swann, who is now commentating on Willey at this IPL.Weirdly though it is at two wickets down that he has entered for Royal Challengers Bangalore in his last two games, as a pinch hitter, but a similar role to what he has done in the past: a powerplay maximiser. It didn’t go well for Willey (even if Royal Challengers won), as he made 18 from 28 balls.Batting up the order has been the way to use Willey through his career because he struggles to score at the same speeds with the field out. He’s at his best when he’s at the top – he averages 27 and hits at 145 in the top three – but he’s not always at the top because, despite that record, he’s clearly a limited batter. The kind who can end up with 18 off 28. And if he wasn’t limited, he wouldn’t be a pinch hitter, he’d be a top-order player.And so, despite the fact that you think we’d see more pinch hitters these days, we see fewer pinch hitters now.

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Wasim Akram was basically a T20 player before we knew it was a thing•EMPICS via Getty ImagesIf you look at the fastest run-scorers in ODI cricket in the 90s (from the top five in the batting order), you won’t find many of the best players of that era. You will find a lot of bowlers, wicketkeepers and a few allrounders.That was the peak pinch-hitter era. ODI sides threw all sorts of players into their top order. Australia were all over this craze, using Peter Taylor, Brendon Julian, Simon O’Donnell, Craig McDermott, Ian Healy, Shane Warne and even noted slowpoke Jason Gillespie as a pinch hitter. That is some dedication to the cause. They tried literally everyone in this weird floating position that was very much the rage.But it wasn’t just an Australian thing. The list of random players tried as a pinch hitter in the 90s is quite something. Nicky Boje, Rashid Latif, Ravi Ratnayeke, Mark Ealham, Chaminda Vaas, Dominic Cork, Anil Kumble, Phil DeFreitas, Pat Symcox, Javagal Srinath and Junior Murray; Wasim Akram averaged 14.5 and struck at 136 (batting in the top five in the 90s). He was basically a T20 player before we knew it was a thing.Barry Richards holds the bat with which he made 325 in a day at the WACA in 1970 in his right hand, and David Warner’s modern-day weapon in his left•Cricket AustraliaThere are many reasons the list of players is the way it is. One is that back then batters weren’t as big as they are now. You may have seen the photo of Barry Richards holding a bat from the old days alongside the modern willow. You could do the same kind of picture pitting Corey Anderson’s biceps next to Don Bradman’s. Batters of the 90s hadn’t optimised their hitting prowess. They hadn’t grown into the massive beasts that baseball’s designated hitters had.So in the 90s, fast bowlers were usually the stronger players and many had the reputation of being the biggest hitters, which is why they went in. Mind you, so did tiny spinners and random wicketkeepers so the idea was quite clearly just to throw someone up the order to cause chaos. And almost all of them failed to do it.They just didn’t make many runs. O’Donnell played one of the great early innings in ODI cricket, scoring 74 from 29 balls in Sharjah against Sri Lanka after coming in at No. 4. Sharma made a better-than-a-run-a-ball hundred against England at No. 4 in the Nehru Cup in 1989. But more often, someone would come in, swing hard, and miss a bit.As a general tactic the bowlers and part-timers didn’t work at all. Shahid Afridi (averaging 25 at a 105 strike rate in the top five in that decade) and Lance Klusener (averaging 36 with a strike rate of 85.5) were exceptions but moving specialist batters up the order changed ODI cricket completely. At the 1992 World Cup, Mark Greatbatch and Ian Botham were promoted and both their sides prospered. But it was really the following World Cup where it all changed.Romesh Kaluwitharana, one of the most successful pinch hitters in history•AFPSachin Tendulkar and Mark Waugh had moved up to open by that point. Still, it really was the pairing of Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana that changed things. The two of them were so interesting. Jayasauriya was a proper batter, who was unleashed against the new ball with the field up and he went on to be a legend. Suddenly, everyone wanted a dazzling middle-order player to start off their innings. But it was Kaluwitharana, the more limited lower-order pinch hitter, whose kind all but disappeared.

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Pinch hitter is a baseball term, a player who comes on for someone substituted out of the line-up. We don’t have substitutions in cricket, so our version is to move someone up the order who doesn’t belong that high. And then they’re given a licence.A pinch hitter could be a middle-order player used at the top. It could be an allrounder promoted a few spots earlier. Or it could be a tailender given the role of a lifetime, with nothing but free hits.The middle-order batter who opens is now so common we don’t even call them pinch hitters anymore. Even allrounders going up the order happens often enough, but perhaps not as common as you’d assume in T20s. The most famous recent case is New Zealand’s Daryl Mitchell who had never opened before the last T20 World Cup, but seemed to go ok when he did.Willey is more of a bowling allrounder, but he averages 27 with the bat in first-class cricket. But the tailenders who have a swing have all but gone.

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Mitchell McClenaghan was a pinch hitter in the IPL once. R Ashwin, Jofra Archer and Shardul Thakur have done it as well over the last five years but generally, it’s not really a part of the IPL or wider T20 culture – which is why Willey doing it stands out.Shardul Thakur has been one of the IPL’s more recent pinch hitters•BCCIPart of that is just that teams have specialist batters who hit and have the licence to do so now. Also the business economy of T20 has paid people to hit. The top seven is more flexible than in other formats, so the idea of dropping someone in from outside the hitting group makes less sense. And almost everyone is an opener somewhere now, so it’s actually hard to tell who is and isn’t a pinch hitter when looking at proper batters.After working in T20s one of the questions I am asked the most is why don’t teams use pinch hitters. And I get it, especially from casual fans. We had them in the 90s, and on the face of it, wickets are more disposable in T20s than in any other format. So if your tail doesn’t face many balls, why not throw one or two up the order and let them have fun?There are a bunch of reasons why it doesn’t happen more. Let’s start with the most obvious: tailenders don’t bat down low by accident. They don’t have the batting skills to handle top-level bowling. So throwing them up the order over people who are paid millions of dollars to do exactly that seems like a waste.Also while using all of your wicket resources in a T20 makes the most sense (as in, you really want your team going hard as possible), there are two sets of resources. One is wickets, but the other is balls. And pinch hitters can waste balls.The first way is through swinging and missing. Instead of getting their fundamentals right, setting their base, and playing to their strengths, they’re usually out slogging really hard. So now you have a non-elite batter swinging before they are set, so obviously they often miss a lot.If a pinch hitter enters and is out first ball, the commentators often call that a failure. It isn’t. The biggest crime is when they come in, eat up balls, and then are out. A first-ball duck is a par result for a T20 pinch hitter; making three off eight is the worse failure.And not all of those results come from players swinging and missing. Anyone who has ever played cricket will tell you that batting positions mess with the mind. You can shave a rabid monkey and send it out to bat No. 3 and it will suddenly have a high front elbow as it tries to pierce the offside ring. Many pinch hitters just start acting like batters instead of doing their job.Given the amount of data available on cricketers these days, the effectiveness of a pinch hitter has gone down•IDI/Getty ImagesBut in the IPL – as well as most T20s – we now have something that wasn’t as common in the glory days of the pinch hitter: analysis. A tailender walking out now will be a collection of weaknesses because if they weren’t, they’d bat higher. And before, teams barely knew what a tailender could do. It came as a proper surprise because they didn’t have access to ball-by-ball or Hawkeye data. Now bowlers and captains know all the weaknesses of each of the XI they are facing.Scheming for a pinch hitter is really easy. Chances are you know how to dismiss them, or more importantly, keep them to ones or dots, because that is probably the best-case scenario. Get them to chew up their team’s resources. A pinch hitter can still do damage. If you have a No. 9 who loves hitting offspin, and a wicket goes in the first ball of one of those overs, you can send them in for five balls of free hits. If they get out, nothing is lost.It can be tricky for future overs if they get stuck at the non-striker’s end. And the fielding captain may remove the offspinner as well, meaning you have upset their plans without even hitting a ball yet. Of course, this is nice, but it means less if your pinch hitter ends up making 7 from 11 balls.The best way to use your bowlers who can hit is in the powerplay. There are always going to be dot balls in this period. So a couple more from a No. 10 looking to hit out won’t matter. Plus, if they do connect, even with a mis-hit, they are likely to go for boundaries because the field is up. But teams worry excessively about losing three wickets in the Powerplay and what that means to their chances of winning the game. Surely losing a No.10 should mean less than a real top-order wicket. There is a lot of data floating around in cricket, but I would assume no one has yet looked at whether losing a tail-end wicket matters as much.So we see fewer pinch hitters now because there are just so many more downsides to them, especially in a T20. A pinch hitter isn’t a free hit; it’s usually an unscientific gamble. And the odds are rarely in your favour.

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Sunil Narine was a No. 10 who suddenly turned into an opening batter•BCCIWilley was pinch-hitting in the same game as Sunil Narine was batting in his normal position. Normal is never the right word for Narine, as he has batted in every position in a T20 match, mocking Willey’s ten-spots career.While Willey has batted down the order at Nos. 9 and 10, that’s been in powerful batting groups. Narine was a genuine No.10 and even popped in at No.11 a few times. And when he started working on his batting, it wasn’t to be a batter but to learn how to hit sixes at the death.Then Aaron Finch threw him to the top on a whim in a Big Bash game. In the PSL that followed he was used in the middle and before long he was Kolkata Knight Riders’ opening batter. Then he wasn’t again and ended up back in the middle. He’s now not really a pinch hitter, he’s a low-scoring, fast-striking middle-overs player sent to maximise the spinners’ overs and disrupt opposition bowling plans.Not as catchy, right?In truth, he and Willey are semi-permanent pinch hitters, which really doesn’t make all that much sense. But they are actually very successful, even if it often doesn’t look like it. The proof is that they keep doing it, the ones who fail to do the job never get seen again.In T20 cricket that is most of them.

As Ben Stokes brought the curtain down on his one-day career, the overwhelming feeling was sadness

Vithushan Ehantharajah20-Jul-20221:59

Ehantharajah – Stokes’ ODI retirement a seismic turn of events

Five tortuous overs, creaking red-faced around a sweltering Chester-le-Street outfield, five forgettable runs and a humbling 62-run defeat to South Africa. A reminder for Ben Stokes, in his final ODI, that cricket does not owe you a thing.Not that Stokes has ever approached the game in that way. Perhaps the closest was here, actually, for number 105, styled as a farewell after his impromptu retirement from the one-day format on Monday. It was a decision clearly made on a whim, which doesn’t make it any less thought out. He was already rested for the T20Is against India that followed the four Tests against New Zealand and India, and was going to sit out the three T20Is against South Africa (and the Hundred) ahead of the Test matches in August.Perhaps if the schedule was skewed a different way, Stokes might not have come to the realisation ODIs were the one to bin. Ultimately, though it was the volume rather than the order of the 12 limited-overs matches spread across 24 days. His statement carried a dagger for the powers that be and the crammed fixture list they have concocted, a point he insisted remained as the ECB were checking and double-checking as they do all released utterances from their players. He reiterated the sentiment to Sky Sports and BBC ahead of play on Tuesday. As ever with Stokes, the power of his words are carried in the fact he can say them, as much as what he said.Related

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From now on, these are no longer Stokes’ problems. Nor is it his job in the immediate future to work out just how England turn around what has been a dire nine days in the 50-over format, with three pretty comprehensive defeats out of four. This 62-run defeat to put them 1-0 down against South Africa was all the more dispiriting given they were never quite in it, aside from when Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow reprised their century-addled partnership to bring us back to those glory days of 2019. That proved to be the only throwback tribute this Tuesday.The one the Durham faithful truly wanted didn’t come, especially given this was only Stokes’ fourth international appearance out of 222 at his home ground. The situation set before him was a familiar one, requiring the kind of rescue act that has him regarded as the fourth emergency service. Roy and Bairstow’s demise within six overs of one another gave Stokes a chance to bat one last time in coloured clothing with good mate Joe Root, and 209 to get of the 334 target and 26 overs to do it in.He could only manage 5, trapped in front attempting the same reverse sweep that brought about his downfall at Lord’s against India. Then it was leg-spinning force Yuzvendra Chahal, here it was bit-part offspinner Aiden Markram. This would usually be the place for some extrapolation about his headspace had he not told us already.Arguably the most dispiriting parts were in the field. He was as valiant as ever, rushing at the ball to such an extent that he was chewing turf two deliveries from the end of South Africa’s innings after throwing himself head first at a shot down the ground that eventually went for four. His five overs were expensive (0 for 44), though featured the odd delivery – such as the one that struck Janneman Malan – that belied a surface slowly baking in the 37-degree heat.A dejected Ben Stokes walks back after his final ODI innings•AFP/Getty ImagesWhile others took time off the field, he remained on throughout, at times limping after his overs or after a particularly full-blooded dive. Again, we know his body can only take so much, but it was hard to shake the strangeness of seeing Stokes like this. These flashes of vulnerability that would come and go in an instant, as if he were Superman puffing occasionally of a Kryptonite vape.Of course, it is dangerous to refer to any athlete in terms that put him above the physical and emotional toil of a regular person. And certainly after his mental health break last year, Stokes is now more au fait with his internal rhythms than ever before. But it was in ODIs that, really, the legend of what we know of Ben Stokes came to be.Broadly, it is the format where he has the best record: an average just under 40 with the bat (strike-rate of 95), 74 dismissals and 49 catches, with a few worldies dotted about in there.His omission from the 2015 World Cup squad drew criticism, even if justified given he averaged just 16.25 across 14 innings in 2014. The crux of the derision, however, was not based on form but what his non-selection said about a cautious attitude. That a pugnacious 23-year-old with a high ceiling and lust for the grander stages was not to be trusted.In hindsight, Stokes might be regarded as a totemic figure in the revolution that followed. In the 71 ODIs played between his readmission in 2015 to the end of the 2019 World Cup, he averaged 50, scoring 2400 of his overall 2924 runs, along with three hundreds. There were also 50 wickets.The Lord’s final and an 84 not out to take England home from the brink of defeat was the true legacy maker, capturing the country’s imagination as it played out in front of a free-to-air crowd. But the tournament as a whole – 465 runs at 66.42, seven dismissals and an economy rate of 4.83 – confirmed the arrival of a global talisman who had that rare, oxymoron trait of delivering rarely seen brilliance on demand.Even that remarkable stanza in his career had an ODI-adjacent origin story. After all, it was following a 50-over win against West Indies back in 2017 that he embarked on that ill-fated night out in Bristol that cost him the best part of a year in his career and a whole heap of goodwill. Both of which he made up for in 2019.”Probably, as with every England cricket fan, there’s a bit of sadness that Ben is no longer available in this form of the game,” captain Jos Buttler said after the match. “He’s been an ambassador for us as a team. You know you get 100 percent from him, he’s been a real leader in this team, to take it [to] where it is now from where it was. Guys who play like Ben are once in a generation players. It’s a good challenge for us to work out our best way forward as a team without him.”Buttler’s sadness will no doubt also come from losing a general and a totem for excellence out in the middle and in training. You wonder if he ever thought he would have to do without him when taking the job in the first place. Not that it would govern his decision to take on the limited-overs role, but he’ll now be the first England captain for a while who will have to move forward without Stokes to call upon.The real sadness to all this is Stokes has never been one to leave his team in the lurch, but has seemingly been forced to. And England look decidedly mundane, desperate for more X-factor cricketers like Ben Stokes. Not fewer.

All the numbers from Sri Lanka’s series-levelling Test win against Australia

Sampath Bandarupalli11-Jul-20221 Sri Lanka’s win in Galle was their first-ever innings victory in Test cricket against Australia. It was also the first time Australia lost a Test by an innings since losing to South Africa in November 2016 at Hobart.2 Previous instances of Australia losing a Test match in Asia by innings margin after batting first. They lost against India by an innings and 219 runs in Kolkata in 1998, and by a margin of an innings and 135 runs in Hyderabad in 2013.12 for 177 Prabath Jayasuriya’s match figures in Galle are the best for Sri Lanka on Test debut and the fourth-best overall. Praveen Jayawickrama’s 11 for 178 against Bangladesh were the previous best figures on debut for Sri Lanka.Jayasuriya’s match figures are also the second-best for Sri Lanka in a Test match against Australia. Only Rangana Herath returned better figures, as he took 13 wickets for 145 runs in the 2016 Colombo Test.ESPNcricinfo Ltd2 Number of players with ten or more wickets on Test debut against Australia since 1900, including Jayasuriya in Galle. Ken Farnes was the other bowler, with figures of 10 for 179, way back in 1934 at Trent Bridge. Jayasuriya’s 12 for 177 are also the second-best for a debutant against Australia behind the 12 for 102 by Fred Martin in 1880 at The Oval.6 for 59 Jayasuriya’s bowling figures in the second innings are the best for a Sri Lankan on Test debut. Jayawickrama’s 6 for 92 against Bangladesh last year was the previous best for Sri Lanka. Jayasuriya had figures of 6 for 118 in the first innings is third on this list.ESPNcricinfo Ltd206* Dinesh Chandimal became the first Sri Lankan to score a double century against Australia. Kumar Sangakkara’s 192 in the 2007 Hobart Test was the previous highest individual score for Sri Lanka against Australia.17 Consecutive Test matches with a result in Galle, a streak that began in 2014. Only two venues stood host for more consecutive Tests producing a result – 37 by Sydney Cricket Ground (1882 to 1947) and 31 by Melbourne Cricket Ground (1882 to 1937).

They were ahead of the curve over a decade ago, but haven’t quite followed that blueprint since

Hassan Cheema02-Nov-2022As Pakistan have stumbled their way through the back end of the Asia Cup to two heartbreaking losses in the World Cup, every aspect of the team has been debated over. Yet this World Cup has been defined by a question that is ever more familiar in non-sports discourse in Pakistan: why don’t we have what others do? What does a Pakistani T20 side that’s up with the zeitgeist even look like?If we were to create the ideal, data-driven T20 side, it would have: two to three top-order hitters, two to three middle-overs specialists who are good spin-hitters and bat deep, followed by allrounders who create the depth that allows those above them to play with freedom. For pace, you’d want a powerplay specialist fast bowler, a death-overs specialist, and another fast bowler who can do both. Among these three, you’d want express pace and a left-armer. For spin, you’d want bowlers who turn the ball either way and can bowl across phases, plus additional bowling options to create positive match-ups. Six or more bowling options and batting that lasts till eight.In other words, the ideal T20 team today would look almost identical to Pakistan’s 2007 (runners-up) and 2009 (winners) T20 World Cup sides.The late 2000s are a dark period in Pakistan’s cricket history. They went four years without winning any Test series. They lost ten of their 15 bilateral ODI series, with four of their five wins coming against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and West Indies. They dealt with the death of a beloved coach during a World Cup, lost hosting rights, and had their players banned for, variously, using performance-enhancing and recreational drugs, spot-fixing, scuffing up the pitch, and conspiring against their captain. The 2007 World Cup was a forgettable experience, and while they made it to the knockouts in the 2009 Champions Trophy, the semi-final loss led to fixing accusations.
Yet in the middle of all this, Pakistan stumbled upon the perfect way to play T20 cricket.The top order: hitters over anchors, please
There are a handful of players from those Pakistan teams who would have had different careers if they had been ten years younger, but no one more so than Imran Nazir, who was the lynchpin of the 2007 T20 World Cup side. He finished with a career strike rate just shy of 150, a figure that would have made him a franchise globetrotter today. A lot of those runs were made in the lower-quality Indian Cricket League and on the Pakistan domestic circuit, but even at the highest level, Nazir’s method was successful. Until 2010, for example, only Yuvraj Singh and Andrew Symonds scored more T20I runs at a higher strike rate than Nazir.

They scored some landmark wins, but also found themselves unravelling at key moments – especially after having questionable decisions going against them

Mohammad Isam06-Nov-20223:07

Moody: Shakib was clearly not out

Even before they had a direct shot at making the semi-finals, Bangladesh were pleased with their 2022 T20 World Cup campaign. They were happy beating the dangerous Netherlands and Zimbabwe, their first-ever wins in the main round of the tournament. They nearly beat India, which they also counted as progress.Forty minutes before the start of their match against Pakistan, Bangladesh’s time in Australia got even better. Netherlands’ unbelievable win against South Africa at the Adelaide Oval opened up an unlikely opportunity for them to reach the semi-final of a major tournament for the first time. They bossed Pakistan for the first ten overs of this virtual quarter-final, but that’s when their little mistakes, those that have been bothering them for the last two years, crept in, and effectively took them out of the tournament. Still, all of this put together is a better showing than the 2021 T20 World Cup.Related

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But just like the last campaign, where they lost all five games in the main round, Bangladesh once again made the same old mistakes. Dropping catches and losing wickets in a bunch were the major ones, but also missing direct hits, and reacting poorly after a bad decision to give away the momentum. Many say it is an emotional team. But it is also a team prone to too many small errors.Against Pakistan too, a couple of dicey moments took out the sting from Bangladesh. Shakib Al Hasan’s lbw decision, contentious as it may be, ended up derailing the innings altogether. Shakib threw his arms up in frustration, and spoke to the umpires about the decision. It was controversial but elite athletes are expected to move past the moments that can break their concentration. Bangladesh instead slipped from 73 for 2 to 109 for 7 in the space of seven overs. They made only 57 runs in the second half of their innings after an impressive first ten overs.Najmul Hossain Shanto, who was batting at the other end when Shakib was dismissed, agreed that Bangladesh didn’t think it was the correct decision by the umpire but he felt it did not break their concentration, seeing Shakib all worked up.”There was confusion for everyone,” Shanto said. “Don’t think that happens normally. But we were not focusing on that wicket… I was in the middle when it happened. We were quite sure that it wasn’t out. But we can’t really say anything about the umpire’s decision.”I don’t think our concentration wavered [after that], but we didn’t play well in the middle overs.”Shakib is a top player who plays impactful knocks. It helps our team. But the other batsmen were quite capable, and have done well in the past. We were not focused on the dismissal. He could have got out in another way. We believed that all our batsmen are capable to bat in any situation.”Either way, the incident led to a batting collapse, and the loss of momentum seeped into their fielding. Wicketkeeper Nurul Hasan dropped a straightforward chance in the first over of the chase, giving Mohammad Rizwan a life. The dropped catch, Bangladesh’s sixth in the tournament, set off a string of misfields in the field. Shortly after Rizwan got out, Shanto missed a direct hit from short third with Mohammad Nawaz halfway down the pitch.There was a more pronounced string of mistakes against India too. And there were emotions at play then too. Bangladesh accused the umpires of not penalising India for Virat Kohli’s fake-fielding attempt, and Shakib did seem very animated when the umpires went to inform him about the resumption of play after the rain. Litton Das, playing the innings of his life, hurt his wrist when he slipped trying to take a single. Having found out how wet the grass was next to the pitch, he was perhaps a bit circumspect next ball. Going for the second run, he took a circular turn but stumbled and was short of his ground by a metre as KL Rahul nailed a direct hit from the deep.When the play had resumed after the rain break, Bangladesh needed another 85 runs from nine overs with all ten wickets in hand. Most teams would have fancied their chances, especially against a potentially wet ball, but Bangladesh’s batting collapse was baffling.Shakib Al Hasan was not impressed with the lbw decision against him and had to be forced off•Getty ImagesWhile many believe Bangladesh did not properly prepare for the last year’s World Cup, even then they had moments when avoiding small mistakes could have given them important wins. They reduced Scotland to 53 for 6 in their opening match but allowed them to reach 140 for 9, and ended up losing by six runs. Dropped catches and wrong match-ups cost them against Sri Lanka. A similar story unfolded against West Indies too.While they have notched up some landmark wins this time around, their T20 form overall has been quite ordinary: before the World Cup, they won four out of 16 matches in 2022.So, when these small mistakes aggregated to make a big difference in almost every game in this World Cup, it posed the question as to whether Bangladesh have indeed “progressed” in this World Cup.Netherlands’ win over South Africa gave Bangladesh one last chance, but another middle-order collapse crushed it.”We stuck to the same style of planning like in every game,” Shanto said. “We knew about the opportunity when we went to play the game. We wanted to win this game. We gave our 100%, but it didn’t happen.”We don’t even have to mention about the lower middle order. We didn’t play well as a team. The matches we won, we won as a team. It was everyone’s responsibility to do well, regardless of the middle order or openers. We didn’t do well as a team today.”All these mistakes should rankle as Bangladesh head back home. Captain Shakib and technical consultant S Sriram have tried to downplay the expectations from their first press conference of the tournament, right up to Sriram saying that the team should be happy with just beating Zimbabwe and Netherlands.Glass half full it is then, but will anyone with some authority in the BCB find out why the glass has so many tiny leaks?

A lot of things are in flux right now but their batting leaders are still churning out those tough runs

Deivarayan Muthu28-Dec-20222:26

Latham: ‘It’s not going to get any easier for us to bat on’

In 2021, Kane Williamson staked his claim to be New Zealand’s greatest ever captain by leading them to the inaugural World Test Championship (WTC) title and final of the T20 World Cup. However, his long-standing elbow injury and a slump in form – both in international cricket and IPL – put his future under scrutiny. Given the congested cricketing calendar, Williamson was expected to give up white-ball captaincy and continue to lead New Zealand in Test cricket. Except that didn’t happen.When the time came, Williamson stepped down from Test captaincy but kept hold of the white-ball sides, perhaps fueled by the dream of going one better at the 2023 ODI World Cup. Even in this unlikely event, it was thought that Tom Latham would be his successor. He had stepped in for him often enough. But New Zealand Cricket (NZC) felt differently and appointed Tim Southee to the post.Related

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Around the time New Zealand desperately needed a wicket on the opening day of the Karachi Test, Trent Boult was in action for Melbourne Stars at the BBL. Then, on the second, Martin Guptill, was making his BBL debut for Melbourne Renegades. Colin de Grandhomme has retired from international cricket, as has Ross Taylor. New Zealand’s cricketing landscape is in flux, but there is still one constant: Williamson and Latham are still the batting leaders of the Test side.The cracks on the Karachi pitch are opening up. The ball landing in the rough was routinely drawing puffs of dust, and towards the close, Pakistan’s spinners were getting turn even off the straight. But it was slow turn. Batters don’t mind that. What did bother them was the low bounce.Kane Williamson made his 25th Test century•AFPWilliamson, in particular, relishes standing up tall and dinking the ball down to third man on true pitches. This one was anything but. So he had to lower his stance, tighten his defence and play as straight as possible. That naturally messes with your chances of scoring quick runs, which is why, at one point, he was just 7 off 45.Latham followed a similar template. It’s funny, the son of Rockin Rod doesn’t even have a franchise T20 deal, but when his team need him he’s always there. He blunts the new ball across conditions in an era where opening the batting in Test cricket is a difficult job. He has vastly improved his keeping to become New Zealand’s frontline ODI keeper and offer the team balance. Rahul Dravid selflessly did that back in the day for India. And whenever Williamson has been unavailable, Latham has always been ready to captain the team. He will lead the side in India in January 2023, when Williamson and Southee will rest at home after the Pakistan tour.It is too early to tell what impact these two centuries have on the Test but one thing is for certain, this was Williamson and Latham at their calculative best. They took great care not to be caught at the same end for a long time, using something they have in common – a strong back-foot game – to keep piercing gaps on the leg side. Their boundaries, though, were the result of special skills.Latham is one of the best sweepers in the modern game and he used it to great effect en route to becoming the most prolific century-maker among New Zealand’s openers, surpassing John Wright with his 13th Test hundred. Williamson, on the other hand, just extended his impeccable defence whenever there was too long a lull. His down-the-track lofts against Nauman Ali were all virtually perfect, giving no warning that he would be on the charge, reaching the pitch of the ball every single time and taking the most risk-averse route to the boundary. Straight down the ground.This has been a slow-burning Test match on a slow pitch where it hasn’t been easy to score freely or strike quickly. But it has produced an image that lingers. That of a long work day ending – and perhaps a new era in New Zealand cricket beginning – with Williamson walking back to a warm reception from Latham and Southee in the dressing room.

Perhaps the true miracle of Crawley is that he’s willing to keep driving into the abyss

Andrew Miller01-Jun-2023Bazball, Schmazball, call it what you will. England’s new team philosophy is based on the premise that, contrary to everything you have ever been brought up to believe, Test cricket really doesn’t matter. Instead of allowing its infinite possibilities to overwhelm you, your truest route to success is to channel that inner child that grew up thumping tennis balls in the back garden, and treat it all as one big jape.Which is all well and good, but how does such a fascinating thought-experiment survive contact with a contest that even the opposition has intimated is a bit of a waste of their time? Does that double-dose of nihilism end up cooking those newly liberated minds, as if they were Timothy Leary’s psychedelic disciples of the 1960s, many of whom soon discovered that their LSD-fuelled quest for true meaning merely hastened their recognition of the dark futility of existence?Too heavy (man…) for the first day of an Ashes summer? Probably. But as Ireland rest their weary limbs after an opening day that lived down to several of their most deep-seated fears, there may be one or two players in that away dressing room who are already thinking that Test cricket is not the drug for them. “It was not our best day,” as Heinrich Malan, Ireland’s understated coach, put it. “We didn’t necessarily cover ourselves in glory.”There’ll be no such unpleasant flashbacks for England’s Ashes-bound entertainers, however. For within their ranks there was, is, and seemingly always will be, an antidote to the dangers of over-think.Zak Crawley doesn’t care what you think. He doesn’t care about the match situation. He doesn’t care for the suspicion – right from his second-ball spank through the covers – that this particular contest might be a little too easy, even for a man whose Test average of 27.60 gives off an implication of vulnerability.Crawley frees his arms to try and access the off side•PA Photos/Getty ImagesInstead, he simply bats like a boy thumping balls in his back garden. Specifically, a boy who’s been brought up on bucket-loads of driveable half-volleys on a personal bowling machine, which is more or less the life story of an undeniably well-heeled alumnus of Tonbridge School, whose old flat in Canterbury quite literally backs onto Kent’s St Lawrence Ground itself.As he once told The Times, the inspiration for that particular career move came from reading about Johan Cruyff living on site at Ajax. “Practice is so easy,” he said. “You just walk down, whereas others have to drive in or get a lift.”Related

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It’s fair to surmise, therefore, that Crawley has long since waltzed past Malcolm Gladwell’s benchmark of 10,000 hours of practice making perfect. And when, in Fionn Hand’s second over of his debut spell, he unfurled his exquisitely honed levers through a brace of off-side boundaries – the first off the front foot, the second pinged off the back – it was plain to see why England’s faith in his methods remains entirely unshakeable.Yet for all the purity of those high notes, there were plenty of duff moments too from a player who, perhaps crucially, doesn’t care where he gets his runs either. Four times in nine balls, he survived an inside-edge, three of which skittered away to the fine-leg rope. A fourth of his 11 boundaries zipped off the outside edge, too, past the cordon to deepen the gloom of the toiling Mark Adair.The upshot was a 39-ball half-century, the sort of tempo that might once have left MCC’s members feeling giddier than their gin, but on this occasion, it wasn’t even the fastest half-century Crawley’s made in his last two Test innings in England. At the Kia Oval last September, he once again rose above the doubters to pass his landmark in a mere 36 balls as South Africa were hustled to defeat in a total of 909 balls, for the shortest completed Test in England since 1912. (This one, incidentally, is 488 and counting …)”Baz just wants batters who have got that X-factor and that sort of innings in them,” Stuart Broad said at the close, “because two or three will come off on a day when you need them. Zak showed that again today. He hit some eye-catching shots, got a brilliant fifty, and got us off to the perfect start.”And by the close, it was three from three that had romped along at that Baz-prescribed tempo, with Ollie Pope easing into his work on 29 from 35 and Ben Duckett alongside him on 60 from 71.Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope walk off at stumps•PA Images/GettyIn more ways than just his superior and undefeated total, Duckett’s was the better and calmer of the two innings – and it was remarkable too for being his very first for England in England, after 26 previous matches across formats, dating back to 2016. While the pair were clattering along to an opening stand of 109 in 99 balls, it was as if they were reliving their perfectly dovetailed alliance on that crazy day in Rawalpindi in December – their very first as a partnership – in which they both made centuries in a first-day total of 506 for 4.Duckett ducked and dived while Crawley stretched and eased, the former using his lack of reach to lever length deliveries on the up through point, or haul the shorter ones in front of midwicket, finding angles that his taller, right-handed, team-mate seldom needs to use. It’s a chalk-and-cheese alliance that has and will mess with more experienced attacks than Ireland, a point which Broad acknowledged with reference to a segment on the Sky Sports broadcast from Mike Atherton.”I love that dynamic with Ducky and Creeps up the top,” he said. “Athers did a piece showing the use of the crease [for bowling angles] and that is really difficult for any bowler to bowl that when the same ball you bowl can go in different areas.”Duckett’s drug of choice, incidentally, would appear to be endorphins – “Benbuzz”, maybe, to use Mike Brearley’s accidental phrase in a recent Guardian interview – given how good he’s been made to feel in every England set-up since his recall in October. For the Test team, he’s now made 568 runs at 63.11, with a strike-rate of 94 and rising, and a clear shot now at a second hundred in his last six Tests. And though his opportunities with the white-ball have been more limited, his peerless prowess on the sweep in Asian conditions surely makes him a World Cup bolter in Matthew Mott’s eyes.He, for one, could not be better placed going into a Bazball Ashes summer. But riding the crest of a wave is the easy part for this team of thrill-seekers. The miracle of Crawley, on the other hand – and something that is perhaps a touch easier to see after this latest romp – is that he’s willing to keep driving into the abyss that the rest of the team are encouraged not to notice, and maybe in the process serve as a bridge to those good times beyond.

Stats highlights from Kolkata where Rajasthan Royals needed just 13.1 overs to chase down 150

Sampath Bandarupalli11-May-2023187 – Wickets for Yuzvendra Chahal in the IPL, the most by any player in the league’s history. Chahal went past Dwayne Bravo’s tally of 183 during his four-for against Kolkata Knight Riders.13 – Balls Yashasvi Jaiswal needed for his fifty, the fastest in the history of the IPL. The previous quickest was 14 balls by KL Rahul against Delhi Daredevils in 2018 and Pat Cummins against Mumbai Indians last year.ESPNcricinfo Ltd3 – Number of fifties in men’s T20 cricket, that came in fewer balls than Jaiswal’s 13-ball effort. Yuvraj Singh in 2007, Chris Gayle in 2016 and Hazratullah Zazai in 2018 had fifties from only 12 balls.Related

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2.5 – Team overs needed for Jaiswal to reach his fifty, the earliest instance of a batter reaching a fifty in an IPL innings. Rahul also completed his 14-ball fifty in 2.5 overs of Kings XI Punjab’s innings against Delhi Daredevils in 2018.