Delhi Capitals have lost three out of their four games so far at the Feroz Shah Kotla, only managing to tie the fourth and win in the Super Over

Srinath Sripath18-Apr-2019Capitals at the Kotla: P4 L3 T1
Delhi Capitals were second on the IPL 2019 points table before Thursday night, and that’s despite their record at home, which now reads: Played 4, Lost 3, Tied 1. It is the tournament’s worst win-loss ratio at home after the bottom-placed Royal Challengers’ Bangalore, who have lost all their games.The Kotla pitch has been a mystery over the years, and Capitals’ coach Ricky Ponting has admitted how visiting sides like Sunrisers Hyderabad and Chennai Super Kings have made use of the conditions much better than they could.Once again, Capitals were out-thought by the visiting side, who seemed to read conditions better from the get-go. Rohit Sharma won the toss, opted to bat first for the first time this season (and only the second time since 2018), a “good move” which left home captain Shreyas Iyer “surprised”.Rohit mentioned how their “struggle to chase 160 [175]” last time as the reason for his decision to set a target. They also picked a fingerspinner in Jayant Yadav to take on Capitals’ left-hander-laden batting order.Delhi Capitals’ poor record at home•ESPNcricinfo LtdMumbai, though, had thought through their plans down to the last detail. Mahela Jayawardene, their coach, said in a chat with , the host broadcaster, that “conditions dictate” plans and selections, and “we use different guys in different scenarios”. They shuffled their batting and bowling line-ups, throwing in Ben Cutting at No.3, Hardik and Rahul Chahar to open the bowling, and at one point, made five bowling changes in five overs to turn the game on its head. Some of them failed, but they always had back-up plans, adapting on the go and eventually sealing a convincing win.What’s the deal with Mumbai holding Pollard back?On what looked like a tricky Kotla pitch, Mumbai Indians got to 168 for 5, thanks to Hardik Pandya’s manic acceleration in the final overs once again. A look down their scorecard, though, and you’ll spot an odd stat at the bottom.Kieron Pollard 0* (0 balls)For the second consecutive game, Pollard finished unbeaten, without facing a ball, having walked into bat with three balls remaining. Why one of T20 cricket’s most prolific strikers has gotten to bat so few balls for Mumbai, has been a question for a while now.This season, though, Hardik’s brilliance has put Mumbai at the top of the run-scoring charts in the final overs. They’ve scored at 12.66 runs an over in the last four overs, powered in large part by Hardik’s astounding rate of 15.12, only behind Andre Russell among batsmen who’ve faced 50-plus balls. Hardik’s consistency and Pollard’s night out against Kings XI Punjab – the one time Hardik failed – have meant Mumbai haven’t borne the brunt of holding their biggest hitter back.Getty ImagesAnd more often than not, their long-standing belief in left hand-right hand combinations has meant Krunal Pandya has batted ahead of Pollard. Krunal has blown hot and cold with the bat so far, but on Thursday night, his 37 off 26 balls did the job on this track: play out the spinners, consolidate and max out in the final overs.Jayawardene admitted as much in a chat with the host broadcaster. Having sent Ben Cutting, their third big hitter apart from Pollard and Hardik, up the order with a view to accelerating early, they switched to their back-up plan of rotating the strike and going big at the death after Cutting fell for 2.Amit Mishra bosses the middle overs but why didn’t he complete his quota?Amit Mishra struck with his first ball – a slow legbreak – to rattle Rohit Sharma’s stumps. It was his 150th IPL wicket, and a reminder of his years bowling for the erstwhile Daredevils at the Kotla, which has always had something in it for the slower bowlers.Mishra was acing the middle overs against Quinton de Kock and Suryakumar Yadav, conceding just two boundaries in his first three overs. With the run rate under control and a new batsman in Krunal Pandya at the crease, Delhi Capitals’ captain Shreyas Iyer took Mishra off and brought seamer Keemo Paul back into the attack.If that was done to hold him back for Kieron Pollard’s arrival, it didn’t come to pass. Mishra finished with figures of 3-0-18-1, not coming back to bowl his final over. Iyer’s use of Mishra has been puzzling at times: against Sunrisers Hyderabad in their last game, he didn’t come on to bowl till the 11th over, after the fall of Jonny Bairstow, who has struggled against wristspin this season.Mishra wasn’t the only one to go with an over unbowled – Ishant Sharma didn’t came back to bowl his final over, after having gone for 17 off his first three.

This match was lost in its first half hour, irrespective of “positives” Root says can be gleaned from the wreckage

Andrew Miller11-Dec-2021Eleven Tests, ten defeats and a draw, and scarcely a whiff of an upset in any of them. Since their last series win in Australia in 2010-11, England’s record Down Under has been abysmal – so poor, in fact, that it was hard to feel especially moved by the totality of this latest loss at Brisbane.When a side has slumped to 11 for 3 inside six overs after choosing to bat first, it’s hard to muster much more than a shrug of recognition when the same outfit squanders its final eight wickets in an unseemly rush for the exits. This match was lost within half an hour of its beginning, irrespective of the “positives” that Joe Root, England’s captain, is adamant can still be gleaned from the wreckage.”We’re game-hardened now,” Root said, after England’s Covid- and rain-wrecked build-up to the first Test. “We’d not had that going into it, so we’ll be better for it. Those guys that have not experienced [the Ashes] before know what’s coming now, and sometimes that [next] game coming around quite quickly is exactly what you need, to get straight back out there and put things right.”Related

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It’s not that Root does not have a point. With the ball, Mark Wood and Ollie Robinson were outstanding in contrasting yet complementary ways, while Root’s own reaction to his first-innings duck was reassuring confirmation that the world’s No.1 batter has not mislaid his touch in the four months since his last competitive outing. His partnership with Dawid Malan was in-game evidence of the strides that this team can make, while Haseeb Hameed and Ollie Pope are among a cast of players who may feel better orientated for their incomplete displays.And yet England, by dint of their glaring inadequacies in Australian conditions, have now set such low expectations that all manner of bouncing dead cats could be mistaken for signs of an impending recovery – maybe even Rory Burns’ triumph in avoiding a king pair, a feat he achieved by avoiding the first ball of the innings for only the fourth occasion out of 264 in his first-class career. Even then, he had to rely on the lottery that was the Gabba’s technology back-up to overturn an lbw verdict two balls later.No amount of marginal gains from first innings to second can disguise England’s current run of 11 Tests – and 11 years – without a victory in Australia. It is a longer run of failure than they managed even in an era commonly recalled as the team’s nadir – the ten-Test stretch from January 1987 to January 1995, which began with Mike Gatting’s Ashes-winners being spun to defeat at Sydney by an unknown debutant Peter Taylor (whom legend has it owed his call-up to a case of mistaken identity) and ended with an extraordinary win against the head at Adelaide – one of those glorious 1990s flashes-in-the-pan that somehow made all of the team’s other indignities worthwhile.In between whiles, those indignities included Graham Gooch “farting against thunder” during a supine 3-0 loss in the “Tiger Moth” tour of 1990-91 – a series in which England managed to take a first-innings lead in each of the opening two Tests, only to then lose them by ten wickets (at the Gabba, natch) and eight wickets respectively. Thereafter, Shane Warne’s supremacy opened such a baffling new dimension in Ashes combat that England could hardly be blamed for taking an entire generation to work out how to play him.Rory Burns trudges off after a second failure•Getty ImagesThere’s no such mystery about Australia’s dominance these days. They have a mighty roster of fast bowlers, and a spinner in Nathan Lyon with sufficient guile to claim 403 Test wickets and counting. And while Steve Smith is a freak of nature who had been averaging 120 in Ashes Tests over the past four years, he’s still not quite Don Bradman – on whose watch England’s record barren run in Australia was recorded: 12 Tests (punctuated by a World War) between 1937 and 1951.Some might counter that Australia’s recent record in England isn’t so flash either. They haven’t won an Ashes series there since 2001, which – on the face of it – goes to underline the suspicion that home advantage is half the battle won in modern-day Test cricket. And yet, that doesn’t square with Australia’s impressive haul of four wins and a draw in their last ten away Ashes Tests.Nor does it square with the fact that there has been just one truly close contest, home or away, since Australia launched their 5-0 whitewash at the Gabba in 2013. Ben Stokes’ miracle at Headingley in 2019 was precisely the sort of heist that encouraged the fallacy (and everyone bought into it to a greater or lesser degree) that there could yet be a twist to this latest tale, despite all reasonable Test-match precedent stating that, when a team trails by 278 runs on first innings, there’s really no hope of salvation.But it’s an addictive narrative nonetheless, and one that England were leaning on during the summer as well, when they lost two series on home soil for the first time since that aforementioned Ashes summer of 2001. And yes, we know that – technically speaking – the India series isn’t over yet. But anyone who witnessed England getting mangled at Lord’s and The Oval knows where the balance of power lay going into the fifth Test at Old Trafford.Everything about England’s Test cricket at present is focused on the individuals within fronting up and giving more to the cause – be it Stokes, only just returned from the abyss after fearing his badly mended finger might prevent him from playing ever again – or more recently Root, on whom English cricket’s every expectation is currently piled. The moment he failed to reach his elusive maiden century in Australia was the moment that the scales fell from the optimists’ eyes. This year’s monstrous haul of 1544 runs at 64.33 could grow larger still at Adelaide and Melbourne, but even Root’s lifetime best hasn’t been able to prevent England from losing seven and winning one of their last ten Tests.But miracle-working is a tenacious narrative – just ask the Bible’s publishers. For Root in this contest, and Stokes in general terms, read James Anderson’s recall under the Adelaide lights next week. While there’s individual brilliance in England’s ranks, there’s always reason to believe that the collective can surge as one. But just don’t look too closely at Anderson’s overall win-loss record in Australia. Nor, for that matter, at the England Lions’ batting card in their unofficial Test against Australia A, which is taking place just down the road. The rot, it seems, is set deep into the system, and not simply restricted to those who’ve been outgunned at the Gabba.

Our list includes a left-hand batter with boundless potential and an allrounder who shares Andre Russell’s birthday and some of his skills as well

Deivarayan Muthu14-Aug-2023Alick Athanaze (Barbados Royals)
When Alick Athanaze was on his way to the joint-fastest half-century on ODI debut, Carlos Brathwaite, who was on TV commentary at the time, dubbed him the “future of West Indies cricket”. Then, after the left-hand batter made his Test debut against India at his home ground in Dominica, in front of his family, R Ashwin picked him among a group of players who could dominate the next decade in cricket. A CPL debut for Barbados Royals this season will only embellish his CV.Athanaze hasn’t played any official T20 cricket yet, but showed during the ODIs against UAE and India that he has a variety of shots in his repertoire, including the reverse-sweep. He also has the experience of having featured in Global T20 Canada and the Vincy T10 league. His ability to bowl offspin and patrol the infield as the outfield makes him a particularly attractive package.Related

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Kevin Wickham (Barbados Royals)
Another former West Indies Under-19 player and another Royal, Kevin Wickham is also set for his CPL debut. Wickham, now 20, has played just six first-class and six List A games so far, but has already been part of CWI’s Emerging Players camp and was recently name-checked by Ian Bishop during an interview with ESPNcricinfo.Like Athanaze, Wickham is yet to play any official T20 cricket, but he did produce a Player-of-the-Match performance in the Barbados T10 final, which Settlers won. Opening the batting, he cracked 45 off 21 balls in that final, and could be among the top-order options for Royals too in the CPL. Wickham had also been on St Kitts & Nevis Patriots’ radar and even played for their developmental team against a visiting Scotland side earlier this year.Matthew Forde (St Lucia Kings)
Matthew Forde shares a birthday with Andre Russell and has modelled his game on the T20 phenom. He can launch sixes down the order, hit hard lengths with the ball, and also bowl deceptive slower cutters, skills that have put him on the radar of T20 leagues even outside the Caribbean.Most recently, he finished Global T20 Canada as the tournament’s highest wicket-taker, with 15 wickets in eight games at an average of 10.80 and economy rate of 6.43 in Surrey Jaguars’ run to the final. Though his hero Russell had the final say in that final for Montreal Tigers, Forde did well enough to keep Chris Lynn and Sherfane Rutherford quiet. Forde was also impressive with the ball during the Cool & Smooth T20 tournament, conceding just five runs an over across seven matches.Forde played only seven games for Kings last season but could have a bigger role this CPL after having proven his white-ball chops in the LPL and GT20 Canada.Nicholson Gordon can leak runs but has the knack of picking up key wickets in pressure situations•CPL T20 via Getty ImagesKofi James (St Kitts & Nevis Patriots)
Kofi James was part of Patriots’ development sides and is a product of their extensive scouting system. James started his career as a lower-order batter but has now slid up the order after having expanded his range. It was on display during the Cool & Smooth T20 tournament, where he was the top-scorer with 330 runs in nine innings, including a century, ahead of Scotland internationals like Richie Berrington and Matthew Cross. James’ dart-it-in offspin has also attracted the attention of Patriots’ new head coach Malolan Rangarajan.”Adhishwar (The director of cricket at St Kitts) was on ground during our scouting camps, and he was speaking very highly about Kofi’s potential,” Malolan told ESPNcricinfo in the lead-up to CPL 2023. “I would term him under the ‘potential’ category. He has tremendous potential, but if given an opportunity, he has the tools to come up and produce the goods required.”He is someone who bowls real fast offspin and his batting has improved leaps and bounds. He’s batting at one-down and scoring hundreds in T20 cricket. So that’s the amount of work he’s put in, in his game. Also, he’s a brilliant fielder, so I think the world is his oyster now and he will only get better playing with experienced players at St Kitts.”Nicholson Gordon (Jamaica Tallawahs)
Nicholson Gordon, 31, is the oldest among the five players in this list but is young in terms of T20 experience. The fast bowler hadn’t played an official T20 until CPL 2022 and ended up winning the tournament with Jamaica Tallawahs. In the final against Royals, Gordon stepped up in the absence of the injured Mohammad Amir, taking out Najibullah Zadran, Corbin Bosch and Devon Thomas.Gordon is a bit like India’s Shardul Thakur. He has a tendency to leak runs but also has the knack of taking key wickets under pressure. And going for boundaries doesn’t prevent him from exploring attacking lengths. Gordon suffered a thigh injury earlier this year but is fit now and ready to bowl the difficult overs for Tallawahs once again.

All the interesting numbers about the close finishes, scoring rates, and more from the Women’s World Cup 2022

Sampath Bandarupalli05-Apr-20225:47

#PoliteEnquiries: Has there ever been a better ODI team than Meg Lanning’s Australia?

The tournament of close games
One of the biggest talking points of the tournament was how a number of matches went down to the wire. Teams batting first won five times by a margin of fewer than ten runs, while the chasing teams got over the line in the final over four times. Nine of the 30 completed matches in this edition were either won in the last over by the chasing side or by a margin of fewer than ten runs. Before the 2022 Women’s World Cup, there have been only 12 such results, and no more than three in any edition.Related

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The only previous instance of a team either reaching the target on the last ball of the chase or winning with only one wicket in hand at a World Cup was by Sri Lanka in 2013 against England, when they reached the 239-run target on the last ball of the 50th over, having lost nine wickets. In the 2022 edition, there were two similar results – England beating New Zealand by one wicket at Eden Park, and South Africa completing a chase on the last ball against India in the final league game.Australia’s dominance
Australia started the tournament as clear favourites on the back of an impeccable record in the format since the previous World Cup. Between the 2017 and 2022 editions, Australia won 31 of the 33 ODIs they played, including a record of 26 consecutive wins. Their performance was no less than the expectations from them, as they ended up winning all nine matches on their way to the seventh ODI World Cup title.

As his time comes to a close, the opening batter, despite his recent struggles with form, will be remembered for his courage to play his own way

Ian Chappell10-Sep-2023The modern tendency is to favourably recall the last occurrence in a player’s career. Consequently, Australia’s opening master blaster, David Warner, will often be remembered as having a desire to finish his spluttering Test career at the SCG.Barring injury, Warner’s excellent form in Australia should allow him to achieve his ambition.However, it’s a mistake to only recall his overseas struggles. There’s a lot more to him than those recent setbacks.Warner is definitely not a T20 hitter who happened to make it in the Test arena. He is foremost a batter capable of performing well in any format.Related

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I first saw him play against a strong South Africa attack, which he blasted to all parts of the MCG in his debut T20 international. My wife placed dinner on the table and I said, “Sit down and watch this kid, he can really play.””What,” replied Barbara-Ann, “all the fours and sixes?””Not just them,” I answered, “the way he handles all deliveries – the excellent and the hittable ones.”Shortly afterwards Warner carried his bat, making a scintillating Test century against a good New Zealand attack where the other Australian batters struggled on a tricky Bellerive pitch. That cemented his place as a Test opener and it confirmed his all-round batting ability.It also heralded one of Warner’s biggest attributes – the courage to play his own way. He had the guts to take on the pace bowlers with the new ball and that is no mean feat. It’s something that he should be remembered for – not many have the courage to not only do it but to maintain that approach throughout a lengthy career.A look at Warner’s overall career strike rate in all formats confirms he favoured that approach.

There are very few aggressive batters who keep an opposing captain awake at night with their ability to virtually win a match in one session. Warner is one of that rare breed

Not long after the explosive opener blasted an exquisite 165 not out in a 50-over match for NSW, a coach wanted Warner to bat at No. 7. He reasoned Warner could take advantage of the five late-innings powerplay overs that were then available to the fielding side.This was stupidity on two counts. As an opener, Warner had a guaranteed ten powerplay overs, with another five likely. More importantly, it detracted from Warner’s amazing ability to win a match in quick time with his belligerent stroke play against the new ball.There are very few aggressive batters who keep an opposing captain awake at night with their ability to virtually win a match in one session. Warner is one of that rare breed.He is also a smart, aggressive cricketer who would likely have made a tactically good captain. When a broken thumb on the 2015 tour against England forced him to do a short commentary stint for Channel 9 back in Australia, it soon became apparent he knew a lot about batting and what bowlers were doing to try and claim his wicket. He was also well aware of how he could overcome their tactics.It would have been preferable if Warner had avoided the “attack dog” reputation he gained for on-field verbal jousting in his prime. However, I often wonder how much of that reputation was gained at the behest of the hierarchy.Importantly, Warner hasn’t forgotten his early days of stacking supermarket shelves. He’s well aware of what his calling could have been if he hadn’t been a talented opener. When that batting talent earned him good money early in his career, he set about looking after his parents financially.In another admirable example of his ability to learn from life, he has forged a very strong family life, with his helpful wife Candice, and his beloved daughters.Sure, Warner, like us all, has made some mistakes. The important thing is, he has learned from them and is a better person for those experiences.Fans will have their memories of Warner, both good and bad. However, they should always remember that he had the courage to be an aggressor against the new ball and was a rare match-winner for his team.

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