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Touring South African teams don’t generally fare well against spin, but not this one

Firdose Moonda17-Mar-2021It’s rare that a South African team can walk away from a series in India and claim superiority. The men’s side have won one out eight Test rubbers, one out of five bilateral ODI series and one of out of two T20s match-ups. Before Sunday, the women’s team had won one out of two ODI series in India. Now, not only have they successfully secured a second trophy, by the biggest margin a South African team has earned in India (4-1), but they did it by overcoming a national nemesis: spin.In losing 13 wickets to India’s spinners across the five matches at an average of 53.15 and a strike rate of 70.7 (one wicket to every 11.5 overs of spin) South Africa subjected the home tweakers to their worst result in a series where they have bowled at least 100 overs and significantly worse than the last time they played South Africa. Then, in a three-match series in 2019, India’s spinners took 18 wickets at 19.05, struck every 5.2 overs and squeezed South Africa at only 3.53 runs an over.”Two years back when we toured here India demolished us with their spin,” stand-in captain Sune Luus said. “But we had a Pakistan series before this and we played in Durban which is kind of subcontinental in its conditions. India bowled a lot of spin to us but we found ways to attack. We knew they were just going to throw a lot of overs of spin at us and we were mentally ready for that.”In January, South Africa hosted Pakistan for three ODIs and three T20s, all at Kingsmead. Against the likes of Nida Dar and Nashra Sandhu, they won the ODIs 3-0 and the T20s 2-1 and performed well against the spinners. In the ODIs,11 out of 26 South African dismissals in the series came against spin and they scored at 4.01 runs to the over. In the T20s, they lost six out of 11 wickets to spin and scored at 6.01.That preparation has proved invaluable and it also gave South Africa much-needed match-practice and the opportunity to develop the habit of winning.South Africa won the first two ODIs against Pakistan against by slender margins (three runs and 13 runs), both times defending totals. In this series, after two one-sided matches, the results got closer to each other. South Africa had to beat both India and the weather in the third match, recorded their highest successful chase in the fourth and snuck home in a low-scoring thriller in the finale.Sune Luus’ unbeaten fifty included five fours and two sixes•Getty ImagesAfter developing a reputation for falling at the final hurdle in heartbreaking performances like the semi-final of the last fifty-over World Cup in Bristol or the semi-final of the T20 World Cup last March in Sydney, it seems as though South Africa have found ways to hold their nerve in tense situations. “The more games you play, the more you get yourself into pressure situations which you need to get through, We’ve been in enough pressure situations to identify where we are struggling and where we can get better,” Luus said. “If you look at teams like Australia and England, they’ve played a lot of games and been in a lot of semi-finals and finals and they can handle pressure. We need to keep on getting into semi-finals and work through that to get to finals. We are a world class team that have been working hard for a lot of years and we really want to be on top of the world and to compete with Australia and England and I think we are there. The more games you play, especially against teams like India, Australia, England, the more you can learn how to deal with pressure.”All that would be ideal if the women’s World Cup was being played as originally planned, now. Instead, it has been pushed back to March 2022 and South Africa will want to maintain this form for another 12 months. Luus believes they can do that by continuing to find similarities between the matches they play now and big-tournament situations. “If we are looking towards the World Cup next year in New Zealand, they have high scoring grounds and so that’s (like the fourth match) type of totals we are going to be chasing or setting. It was a good experience now to get the feel for it and see how you manage a chase, when you start going, when you hold back and when you just rotate strike,” Luus said. “All five games were different scenarios and that’s the experience we are going to need for the World Cup.”South Africa’s victory in India puts them second on the ODI rankings, their highest to date, with Lizelle Lee on top of the batting charts, Shabnim Ismail and Marizanne Kapp at No.3 and 4 on the bowling list and Kapp the third-highest allrounder, their stocks are rising. This series also showed off several lower-profile players – Lara Goodall, Anneke Bosch and Tumi Sekhukhune – which suggests there’s depth in the talent pool and plenty for South Africa to work with.”We are so excited to win the series in India. It’s a very special achievement for our team. It’s never easy to play here and take the series away from the Indian team like we did.” Luus said. “We can go into the T20 series smiling because our fifty-over game is coming together very nicely.”

Unbroken partnership with Nat Sciver underlines current gulf between 2017 World Cup finalists

Valkerie Baynes27-Jun-2021″You have a choice.” It’s a mantra that has served Tammy Beaumont well this year and the benefits were there for all to see again as she guided England to an emphatic eight-wicket victory in the first of three ODIs against India in Bristol.Beaumont scored 87 runs off as many balls, having shared an unbroken partnership worth 119 for the third wicket with Nat Sciver, whose run-a-ball 74 was as brutal as Beaumont’s was clinical.It was the fourth consecutive ODI innings in which Beaumont had passed fifty after scores of 71, 72 not out and 88 not out on England’s winter tour of New Zealand and followed her 66 in England’s only innings of the drawn Test between these two sides at the same ground just over a week ago.Related

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Beaumont has also scored two centuries in her past 10 ODI innings, against Pakistan in December 2019 and during the Ashes series the previous English summer, but she said her work with Phoebe Sanders, the team’s sports psychologist, earlier this year proved a turning point.”The day before the first game in New Zealand she said to me, ‘you know you have a choice how you go about it’,” Beaumont said on Sunday. “Ever since then her voice has been in my head as I’m walking out, ‘you know you have a choice how you approach it, you can kind of go with the flow and see what happens or you can go out and try to dominate and try to be relentless’.”And it’s not about dominating like how other people might do it, my dominating is making sure that I put away every bad ball I get and make them really work hard to get me out and it seems to be working so hopefully it’ll continue.”There was a period during her latest innings when it seemed like Beaumont only dealt in fours.She survived almost being run out on nought when she set off for a run after being struck on the pad and Ekta Bisht’s throw to the non-striker’s end from cover point was wayward, then an India review when she was given not out lbw on the same ball – the DRS showing Shikha Pandey’s in-ducker was sliding down the leg side.After Lauren Winfield-Hill’s campaign to cement a place as opener ahead of next year’s World Cup was off to a fleeting but entertaining start when Jhulan Goswami had her edging behind, Beaumont seemed to continually find the boundary.She struck back-to-back fours off Pandey, through point and driven in front of square, and then off Pooja Vastrakar with a wonderful straight hit back over bowler’s head followed by a precision cut through point as she and Heather Knight took 13 off the over.Beaumont then hit twin sweeps to the boundary off Bisht so that at the end of the first Powerplay, England were 61 for 1 compared to India’s 27 for 2. By the time Beaumont had racked up 39 runs off 30 deliveries, she had eight fours to her name.Even with spin stemming the flow of runs somewhat, and Bisht ending a 59-run partnership with Knight with a beautiful delivery that took the top of off stump, Beaumont’s strokeplay was all class. She brought up a 48-ball fifty with a four swept off Deepti Sharma and struck Vastrakar to the point boundary with perfect poise and timing.”The main thing is I’ve stopped believing in form,” Beaumont said. “Once you get to a certain age you’ve worked on your technique, you know what works and it’s just a case of sticking to it and doing the tinkering with it if something’s going wrong.”But if it’s going right then for me it’s all about your mindset… that’s what I’ve really been working on, being ruthless and relentless as much as possible and it seems to be working at the moment.”Nat Sciver pulls one away•PA Photos/Getty ImagesSciver settled in with a couple of fours off Bisht before being dropped on 12, off Harmanpreet Kaur, and beaten four times in succession by Pandey.Appointed permanent vice-captain ahead of this multi-format series after standing in for the injured Anja Shrubsole on the tour of New Zealand, Sciver scored a valuable 42 in the Test and the runs came in abundance on Sunday as she punished bad balls and good in powerful fashion.With the rain that had been threatening to arrive all day starting to fall in a sparse drizzle, Sciver struck the tenth four of her innings off Kaur followed two balls later with a thumping six down the ground as it looked like she might overtake Beaumont.”Once Nat starts to unleash there’s no stopping her and at one point I thought I wasn’t going to get to face another ball,” Beaumont said. “But she was very kind to me in the end. For me, today was all about getting the job done and being not out at the end. If I tried to keep up with Nat there’s no chance, she’s just an unbelievable talent.”After pulling Goswami for four, the petite Beaumont, who stands about a foot shorter than Sciver, weighed in with a six of her own, launching Kaur over long-on to level the scores. Kaur’s next ball was a wide to seal the result in something of an anti-climax, given the batting display by England to that point.The margin of defeat was also something of a let-down for India, who had lost a thrilling World Cup final by just nine runs the last time these two sides met in an ODI on English soil, in 2017. And as preparations for the next World Cup begin in earnest, this match gave both teams plenty to ponder.

The Australian players reflect on their title win and what it means to them

ESPNcricinfo staff14-Nov-20213:12

Moody: Credit to Langer and Finch to galvanise this Australian team

Matthew Wade: Huge [on what does this win mean]. At first, T20 World Cup coming in, felt like a lot of people maybe wrote us off and didn’t expect us to get to this moment. But internally we spoke about how we’re going to be the first team to achieve this for Australia. [It’s] something really, really special.

Cricket on ESPN+

Match highlights of the Men’s T20 World Cup final is available in English, and in Hindi (USA only).

[On his innings in the semi-final] When we sit down, I will reflect probably closely on that. I think more than my innings, the partnership, we spoke about me and [Marcus] Stoinis in the rooms when we’re chasing, just saying that we probably didn’t realise that we scored as many runs as we did the other night. And then coming into this game, we felt really confident that if the boys could get off to a good start, then we could contribute at the end, but thankfully Mitch [Marsh] and Davey [Warner] and Maxie [Glenn Maxwell] at the end there did the job for us. As Stoinis said, just so proud of this group. Yeah, we’re stoked.Marcus Stoinis: The key…this group of boys, we absolutely, we actually love each other. It is beautiful. I can’t wait to keep playing with this team. I’m so proud of them. You won’t find bigger supporters of Mitch Marsh than right here and probably his family. We’re so happy for him.Adam Zampa: I just tried to use my strengths to the best of my ability. I knew the wickets were going to be pretty low. I bowled at a good time; we won the toss and bowled first. So it was probably a little bit drier when I was bowling, so I tried to use that to the best of my ability, tried to get tickets when we needed them and tried to defend when we need to do that as well.2:47

Moody: Can’t underestimate Australia as they don’t often play T20Is at full-strength

[On backroom staff] A lot of credit goes to those guys. We’ve been in bubbles for almost two years now. And that takes a toll on everyone, including the staff. Our preparation from their side of things has been great. And it’s their win as well.Glenn Maxwell: He [Zampa] has been a superstar in this format as well as one-day cricket for a long period of time. I’ve had the pleasure of having him at the [Melbourne] Stars and watching him go about his work for a long time. So to watch him bring it straight into international cricket, like there’s absolutely no edges whatsoever. He’s just fitted in so well and last three years as a legspinner, I don’t think there are many better in the world.I was able to give myself a few days off before the tournament to really freshen up and I felt like I was hitting the ball really well. Luckily, that wasn’t really required a whole heap. But it was nice to be out there at the end and get the winning runs.Steven Smith: [This win means] a lot. We’ve worked hard for a long time. This is a trophy that has eluded us for a very long time. So it’s an honour to be out here with the boys and to be able to take that trophy home, it’s exceptional.His [Warner’s] last two weeks have been amazing. A lot of people were writing him off at the start, saying he was out of form but it took one good innings and he was away. Today, I thought he came out with exceptional intent again. Him and Mitchell Marsh, that partnership really set us up for the game. I am really proud of those two boys. I think they’ve had great tournament, both of them.Josh Hazlewood: There’s always pressure, the batters are coming at you from ball one basically. But we started really well, we kept the powerplay to I think around 40. Some pretty good effort there and I obviously got away at the end. But we saw the wicket was pretty good and the exceptional chase from our guys.[On Williamson’s knock] He’s a superb player and he has been for a long time now. Another classical Kane innings really, scored all around the ground and hurts you when you bowl poorly.Justin Langer: I suppose everyone who wins a World Cup says it’s hard to process, it’s hard to put it into words. But this is such a special group of people. I know every coach, every captain says the same thing. But we’ve got some amazing cricketers here, we haven’t had a chance to play together because of different reasons for last 12 months. So when we all got back together, it was almost like a reunion. And they’re such close, there’re so many close relationships there. It’s a very, very special moment for everyone.Mitchell Marsh and Pat Cummins celebrate with the trophy•ICC via Getty ImagesWe knew that when we came back together how much talent we had. That’s for one. I mean, there’s enormous talent in this team. When we’re in the West Indies and Bangladesh leading into this series, there were a few missing pieces. And Mitch Marsh took one of those pieces. And he’s been brilliant. And we also embraced fun. In this situation, where everyone talks about bubble, these guys had so much fun on and off the ground. In this form of the game, actually in the game of cricket, it’s important to have fun and enjoy it, and the guys have done that. I think it was a really important part of our success here.Zamps puts a smile on my face every time because he’s a little bit different. He’s a little hippie, but he’s so competitive, and he’s been so good in this form of the game. We see legspinners have an impact around the world and he’s doing that for Australia now.And Josh Hazlewood, well, he didn’t play the last one-day World Cup because he had some issues with his back. He has come in here, he’s been sublime, so it’s just been a great team effort.Pat Cummins: Pretty pumped. I think once we get back home and get back in there, will it only sink in. A lot of support from back home, like getting up at 1am to watch this game, so a great feeling.It was a good thing playing a little bit of the IPL over here. Even someone like Joshy Hazlewood coming straight from the IPL, here he is seeing to adapt really quickly and I mean, you don’t have to get too funky. It’s just part of what we do again more with the red ball stuff with a few slower balls thrown in there. This is really great, it’s such a complete squad of 15 guys here, so really happy.Mitchell Starc: It’s not been the ideal lead-up, but I think just the closeness of the group, we had a great time here. We’ve had some great times off the field, getting around one another. And I think that showed in the way we played our cricket. We’ve had everyone contribute, guys off the field, on the field, different guys in different games. And we saw that again tonight. So I think that the closeness of the group is what really got us through this tournament, and then hopefully that leads into the summer as well.He [Zampa] has been fantastic. He’s been our best bowler, I think, by far for the last couple of years with the white ball. And he made it really easy for us quickies to work around him. I think we’re pretty confident in what we do and run off the back of each other when Zamps is doing what he does. I think it just makes the bowling group, their role a lot clearer and we can do our job quite easy I guess.

A look back at the overs that provided the biggest fluctuations as per ESPNcricinfo’s Forecaster in teams’ fortunes

Yash Jha25-Apr-2022
Punjab Kings vs Gujarat Titans, Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai: 20th over

Rahul Tewatia’s miracle finish expectedly finds a place right at the top. The final over of their 190 chase began with Titans needing 19. A set Hardik Pandya at the crease along with David Miller meant they still had a fair chance of getting there.Related

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But it only got worse before it got better: after a wide to start from Odean Smith, Pandya was run-out off the first legal ball of the over. With the equation down to 13 required off three balls, an avoidable overthrow from Smith brought Tewatia on strike. Down to 12 to get off the final two deliveries, the Forecaster gave Titans an 8.07% chance of winning, before Tewatia – not for the first time – did the job against Kings.MS Dhoni plundered 16 runs off the last four deliveries to finish the chase against Mumbai Indians•BCCIMumbai Indians vs Chennai Super Kings: DY Patil Stadium, Mumbai: 20th over

Super Kings required 17 to win from the final over with four wickets in hand. Dwaine Pretorius had taken two key boundaries off Jasprit Bumrah’s 19th over. MS Dhoni was batting on 12 off nine balls, but importantly, he boasted of a strike rate above 230 against Jaydev Unadkat, who was to bowl the final over. All this combined to give CSK a 22.27% chance of victory.With Unadkat trapping Pretorius lbw first ball, and the incoming Dwayne Bravo taking a single, the Forecaster fell below 7% for the defending champions. Enter Dhoni with 16 to get off four balls. First a six and four took Super Kings’ chances up to 20.47%; it then slipped to 15.69 with four needed off the final ball, but the ultimate finisher finished things off.ESPNcricinfo LtdPunjab Kings vs Royal Challengers Bangalore: DY Patil Stadium, Mumbai: 18th over
Kings’ win probability at the start of the over: 22.17%

Maheesh Theekshana and Bravo’s exceptional performances had made Super Kings favourites going into the last three overs. With Titans still 48 away and not much batting to follow, the scales were clearly tilted in favour of Super Kings.That is when Rashid Khan, the stand-in captain for the day, took apart Chris Jordan with 6, 6, 4 and 6 off the first four balls of the 18th over. The over fetched 25 and flipped the game around. Titans now had a just-over 56% chance of going over the line, but there were yet more ebbs and flows – Bravo bowled a brilliant 19th, and Jordan began the final over with two dots to take the equation to 13 off four, with the Forecaster having Titans at 17.05% at this stage. But nerveless Miller sealed the chase with one ball remaining.Evin Lewis and Ayush Badoni smacked 25 off Shivam Dube, as Lucknow Super Giants ended as winners•BCCIDelhi Capitals vs Mumbai Indians, Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai: 18th over

Capitals mounted an impressive recovery in their season-opener: they were 113 for 6 after 14 overs in reply to Mumbai’s 177, and needed 56 to win from the last five overs with Lalit Yadav and Axar Patel in the middle. That is when the seventh-wicket pair took 28 runs from the next two overs, as Capitals’ chances climbed from 13.40% to 54.58% with three overs left.But Mumbai’s half-chance was quashed in the 18th over, where both Lalit and Axar feasted on Daniel Sams. They combined to pick 24 off him, as Lalit hit 6 and 4, while Axar cracked two sixes, thus leaving Capitals with just four to get off 12 balls. Eventually, the job was done when Axar clipped Bumrah with ten balls left.Lucknow Super Giants vs Chennai Super Kings: Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai: 19th over

Chasing 211, Super Giants were still 34 adrift of the target with just two overs to go. But by then, Super Kings had bowled out Bravo and Pretorius, and had a tricky decision to make: risk one of the spinners bowling with a wet ball due to the dew present, or try and find some other alternative. Still, given the steep asking rate, the Forecaster had Super Kings as 92.14% favourites.The alternative they found was Shivam Dube, who hadn’t bowled on the day yet.His first ball saw Ayush Badoni get down on one knee and pummel one over square leg for six. Two consecutive wides gave further hope to Super Giants, and Evin Lewis belted 4, 4, 6 off the last three balls to make it a 25-run over. With only nine runs left to get it in the final over, Badoni hit a six after two further wides, as he and Lewis took them over the line with three balls to spare.

He’s no Shoaib Akhtar but one had to watch him close to notice how good he was, and his very few magic balls

Andrew Fidel Fernando10-Mar-2022Did you watch Suranga Lakmal bowl? No, really. Did you watch him closely? It’s ok. It’s human. Be honest. If anyone wouldn’t really mind, it’s Lakmal.Our man captained five Tests for Sri Lanka. In the third of these, he did not bowl at all in the first innings. In the second innings, he sent down just two overs.Related

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Why? Because he is who he is, and felt largely surplus to requirement. In this 2018 series, South Africa had surrendered en masse to Rangana Herath and Dilruwan Perera in the first Test. They were nosediving spectacularly again on a bone-dry SSC pitch, until, inside 35 overs, they were all out for 124, three spinners having bowled right through the innings. Lakmal’s two overs in the second dig were mainly to give the spinners a break.That’s Lakmal concentrate. Rational. Ego-free. Almost invisible. Bring a great ball of his to mind? Yeah, neither can I. Great bowling performances, though, there’s the thing. You don’t have to bowl magic balls to bowl a good spell. And that is where Lakmal lived. Draw a venn diagram. The space common to “bowls line and length”, “swings it a bit”, “seams a little”. Colour that segment in. That’s Lakmal territory.Perhaps, you’ll look at that Test average of 36.38, and think he was just a plodder. If you were being unkind, you’d say he one. Long of hair, longer of face, a gangly tumbling of over-long limbs – he’s no Shoaib Akhtar. He’s not even on that spectrum. He never tried to be. A gentle away-seamer, a smirk when the batter misses it. A turning of the heel, returning to his crease, a doing of all of the above again. You had to watch him to notice how good he was. Otherwise, he was almost invisible.Almost invisible to the Sri Lanka public, because his bowling only really got to really fly overseas, where Sri Lanka generally lost. A 5 for 63 in Port Elizabeth, 5 for 54 in Christchurch, 3 for 25 in Bridgetown, 4 for 39 in Port Elizabeth again, 5 for 47 in North Sound. Since 2016, he’s averaged 28.74 away from home.In that 2019 series that Sri Lanka won in South Africa, which perhaps should go down as their greatest Test triumph ever, there he was, averaging 25.5, keeping a lid on the opposition scoring while the younger bowlers hunted (successfully) for wickets around him. Not a man for the glory spells. The hard ones. In Galle, when nothing was happening, and there was a mild hope the ball would reverse. At the SSC, when the batters have started sweeping well, and the runs are flowing too quickly, and you need a guy to bring the rate down again, even if there’s no real chance of a wicket.When all you want is for balance to be restored, which for Sri Lanka, is a lot of the time in overseas Tests, it is where he shines. Those are the Lakmal overs.He probably would have got more overs if other fast bowlers had stayed with him. Sri Lanka would have prepared some slightly seamer-friendly tracks, if they had a seam attack, instead of a lone, reliable seamer. What could have he been if Nuwan Pradeep didn’t injure his hamstrings that often, or Shaminda Eranga didn’t have a kink in his elbow, or Dhammika Prasad’s shoulder hadn’t fallen apart, or even if Lahiru Kumara had delivered on his early promise?Instead, what Lakmal got at home were intensively spin-friendly pitches, on which he, and most others who bowled at more than 110kph, were sometimes redundant. In some ways, it is typical that Lakmal is right at the centre of an intentional erasure of seam bowling in Sri Lanka’s home Tests.He may get a fair showing from the pink ball, though. Across the two day-night Tests Sri Lanka have played, the first in Barbados, the second in Dubai, Lakmal averages 19.13, playing a significant role in winning both matches.At 35, he’s choosing to look after his financial future, moving to Derbyshire, instead of staying with the Sri Lanka national side, who pay him less than $60,000 a year, not including match fees. Here, for the first time, he appears to be acting in (understandable) self-interest.But in this last Test that he will play – against India – however, remote Sri Lanka’s possibility of pulling off an upset, we should do something most of us don’t really do with Lakmal. Watch him. Watch him close. There are very few magic balls. Only good spells. We can meet him there. He deserves that much.

Missing stars, a lack of boundaries and no tension in the result. This wasn’t the opener the ECB was after

Matt Roller03-Aug-2022The opening night of the Hundred’s second season launched with a fireworks display so extensive that the smoke took nearly five minutes to clear. It felt as though a member of the Ageas Bowl’s events staff must have pushed the wrong button, using up all the pyrotechnics for the evening.So it proved. Over the course of 169 balls, Southern Brave and Welsh Fire hit only two sixes, one from Noor Ahmad, the 17-year-old Afghanistan wristspinner, and the other by James Vince off Noor’s bowling. Brave, the defending champions, cruised home with 31 balls to spare in pursuit of 108; Fire’s hopes were extinguished before the end of the powerplay.The shadow of the absent Jonny Bairstow loomed over their innings, after the ECB finally confirmed on the eve of the tournament that Fire’s marquee player would not be taking part in order to manage his workload. They were not short on batting power, with a stacked top order on paper, but any team in the world would feel his absence keenly given his recent form. “It’s huge,” Ben Duckett said. “He came in and won us two games last year.”Related

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Bairstow’s decision to withdraw was the obvious move, the only window in his jammed schedule for him to take a rest, but by making his decision public at the 11th hour – his decision had been communicated internally 48 hours before the announcement – the ECB ensured his absence would be one of the evening’s main talking points.In fact, both sides were missing key men and neither managed to fill their quota of three overseas players: Brave were without Quinton de Kock and Finn Allen while Fire had to cope without David Miller and Naseem Shah, all on international duty. The opening night showed why the ECB have ensured the Hundred has a clear window of availability from next year: the names that had been used to sell tickets were nowhere to be seen.”We’re not quite sure what a good score will be,” Vince had said at the toss, and 107 for 7 was not the answer. Fire lost Joe Clarke, Tom Banton and Ollie Pope inside the first 22 balls for 16 runs between them, and despite Duckett’s valiant 40 off 31 and two drops from Vince in the field, they were a long way short of a competitive total.Vince sparkled in the chase after an early reprieve, dropped by Ryan Higgins at deep backward square leg. He has been seeing the white Kookaburra like a watermelon all summer, leading the run charts in the Blast, and his cuts for four through backward point off Adam Zampa tasted like strawberries on a summer evening.Vince apart, there was limited excitement on the pitch. Brave’s new-ball bowlers, Craig Overton and Michael Hogan, used the pace and bounce of a fresh surface to good effect and Fire’s top order self-destructed against the moving ball, epitomised by Pope losing his off stump while attempting to reverse-lap Overton over short third.The Ageas Bowl was sold out, though not quite at full capacity with two of the temporary stands for England’s T20Is against India and South Africa covered and unused, and felt subdued for much of the night. A clash with the Commonwealth Games means that the first eight days of the tournament will be standalone men’s games, and the ground was noticeably emptier – and quieter – at the start of the game than it had been last year.That also exacerbated the impact of the toss, with conditions significantly harder for batters in the first innings than the second. In the Hundred’s first season, teams taking more powerplay wickets won 68% of games in the men’s competition; on Wednesday night, Brave took three and Fire none. They will lose Overton to England duty soon, but have Tymal Mills and George Garton waiting in the wings.”The bowlers did a fantastic job and from there the gameplan was fairly simple,” Vince said. “The only way we would let them back into the game was to lose early wickets so there wasn’t a huge amount of scoreboard pressure. Our new-ball bowlers bowled really well and found a little bit of seam movement early on. We took early wickets and stayed in control.”The Hundred’s organisers openly admit that the first season, launched amid Covid restrictions which impacted the offering both on and off the pitch, had the feeling of a trial run, one which was generally considered to be a qualified success. This year will be the acid test at a time when domestic leagues are threatening to subsume the international game, but the tournament needs an injection of life after a quiet opening night.As the ECB found when they launched the Twenty20 Cup 20 seasons ago at this same venue, gimmicks and marketing can only take a competition so far. In time, the cricket will have to stand on its own two feet.

100 T20Is and counting for Virat Kohli, making him the second cricketer to complete the treble

ESPNcricinfo stats team, Mathew Varghese, illustration by Kshiraja K28-Aug-2022ESPNcricinfo LtdNote: Stats updated till the end of the India-Pakistan Asia Cup game on August 28.

The northeastern state has barely any cricket infrastructure, but its players have fought their way to promotion

Himanshu Agrawal23-Jan-2023The state of Manipur, in the northeastern corner of India, has a rich history and tradition in sport; even the state’s current chief minister, N Biren Singh, is a former Border Security Force footballer. But amid all the success in boxing, weightlifting and football, cricket has barely had any presence.It is still, as Rajkumar Imo Singh, the president of the Manipur Cricket Association (MNCA) puts it, “in its infancy stage”. But infants grow quickly. Manipur have made the final of the Plate Division of the Ranji Trophy, where they will meet Bihar starting January 25, and have earned a promotion to the Elite Division next season. Manipur have done this with barely any infrastructure – their “home” games were played in Gujarat – and with a team full of homegrown players.”We have a team born and bred in Manipur – a totally indigenous team,” Imo tells ESPNcricinfo. “With the talent we have, we pushed forward only those who are actually from Manipur.”It was only before the 2018-19 season that nine new teams – including Manipur and five others from the Northeast – gained full-time BCCI membership. Until then, these associations received vastly less funding from the BCCI than the older full members. Though this has changed, Manipur continues to lag behind in infrastructure, grounds and support staff. That the wet weather in the state lasts five or six months a year doesn’t help either.But there is talent, and that talent is learning on the job.”The key is to keep it simple,” says Rakesh Sharma, Manipur’s coach – he formerly played for and coached Oman. “If we feed them with too much information or even stats, they might get confused.”Rakesh takes the example of the successful chase of 337 against Sikkim in the Plate semi-finals.”I broke it down into blocks of 50 runs each because 337 is a huge target. The boys kept believing, and kept growing in confidence as the chase moved on.”We played friendly matches in the build-up [to the Ranji Trophy]. Special thanks to our trainer [Raajoo Bhatkal], who keeps pushing them, since our players barely play ten matches a year. But they have played so much in the last five months that their bodies have taken a lot of load. Our physio has also worked very hard to make them match-ready.”The floodlights at the Luwangpokpa Cricket Stadium in Imphal are soon to be inaugurated•Manipur Cricket AssociationBefore the start of the Ranji season, camps in Noida helped players develop their fitness for four-day matches. Simultaneously, the focus was on developing the right environment for players to prosper no matter the problems they faced.Ronel Singh, the MNCA secretary, says the players gelled well because most of them had played together over he last few seasons.”My priority was strong team bonding,” Ronel says. “We emphasised on players below 30 years of age. We told them, ‘You will be given ample opportunities to showcase your skill’.”While he’s proud of what the players have achieved, Ronel sees room for improvement. “We seem to be low on patience with the bat,” he says. “We are almost always in T20 mode!”

New stars in the making

Rex Rajkumar was one of Manipur’s early bloomers, making the headlines when he picked up all ten wickets in an innings in an Under-19 Cooch Behar Trophy match against Arunachal Pradesh in December 2018. Cut to the 2022-23 season, and Manipur’s list of impressive performers is growing.Pace bowler Pheiroijam Jotin, all of 16, made his first-class debut against Sikkim last month, and immediately grabbed attention with 9 for 69 in the first innings. He then took a nine-wicket match haul against Sikkim in the Plate semi-finals. So far, Jotin has 33 wickets at an average of 13.81 in six games this season.Left-arm spinner Kishan Singha has also taken 33 wickets this season, at 15.42, while seamer Bishworjit Konthoujam has 20, at 21.00.Konthoujam is currently Manipur’s leading wicket-taker in first-class, List A and T20 cricket.

Manipur pacer Bishworjit Konthoujam set the stage on fire against Arunachal Pradesh and scalped five wickets. #ARPvMAN #VijayHazareTrophy

Watch his superb bowling displayhttps://t.co/5Vy9UtxGYJ pic.twitter.com/4Q1px1XiD8

— BCCI Domestic (@BCCIdomestic) December 12, 2021

Cricket wasn’t Konthoujam’s first love – he was once a national-level boxer. And he’s not alone among Manipur’s players in having played other sports at a high level.”He is very tall, and has a fighting instinct,” Ronel says of Konthoujam. “We had just asked him to bowl for a few months, and he has now completely turned to cricket. Also, Johnson Singh played football at the representative level; he is still a very good footballer.”Incidentally, such is the quality of football in Manipur that 38 of their players – the most from any state – featured in the Indian Super League’s 2022-23 season.

The road ahead

Performances on the field have been encouraging, and there is now ample funding from the BCCI, but concerns linger.”The playing season is pretty short [due to the rainy weather], so we have to take that into consideration,” Imo says. “We need the expertise which BCCI has.” He suggests that indoor training facilities will help.But there are positive signs for the future. The Luwangpokpa Cricket Stadium in Imphal, the capital of Manipur, will soon inaugurate its floodlights. And Imo, who has been with the association for six years now, sees an appreciable increase in youngsters taking to cricket, and he has approached the state’s education directorate to request school and college students to be actively involved in the sport.Imo recalls his father, the former Manipur chief minister RK Jaichandra Singh, taking him to the Khuman Lampak Stadium – a multi-use stadium that’s mainly used for football and athletics, to play cricket. Imo hopes that budding cricketers in Manipur will have enough cricket grounds to play in. More and better infrastructure can only speed up the growth of cricket in the state.And there will be accelerated learning for Manipur’s players next year, when they face India’s domestic heavyweights in the Elite Division next year.”We follow Mumbai and Tamil Nadu a lot,” their captain Langlonyamba Meitan Keishangbam says. “And we admire Sai Kishore, Cheteshwar Pujara and Jaydev Unadkat the most.”The ambition, hunger and willingness to grow is already visible. If that desire is matched by performances on the field and the growth of the game in Manipur’s grassroots, there will soon be space for a bat and a ball alongside the football that sits in a corner of every household in the state.

He has a bunch of variations, can touch 150kph, specialises in bowling in the end overs, and has even impressed the OG, Lasith Malinga

Deivarayan Muthu06-May-20231:10

Ruturaj: I don’t want to face Pathirana in the nets

He doesn’t have blonde-tipped curls, but the slingy action, yorkers, dippers and the smile are all reminiscent of Lasith Malinga.Chennai Super Kings have bad memories of Malinga – he broke their top order in the 2013 IPL final, then in the 2015 final, he tricked MS Dhoni with a slower dipper, and more recently in the 2019 final, he broke their hearts with a sequence of five 140-plus-kph yorkers and a deadly slower ball. Malinga was also part of Mumbai Indians’ six-match winning streak against CSK at Chepauk between 2011 and 2019.But CSK now have their own Malinga, or (Little) Malinga: Matheesha Pathirana. For a change, a slinger in yellow spooked the team in blue on Saturday – Pathirana bowled the 13th, 15th, 18th and the 20th overs for just .

I see continuous improvement from Matheesha.
Good gas
Better control@matheesha_9 | #IPL2O23

— Lasith Malinga (@malinga_ninety9) May 6, 2023