It all came together for the competition’s entertainers, with Stubbs, Baartman to the fore

Firdose Moonda10-Feb-2024Sunrisers Eastern Cape heard Durban’s Super Giants captain Keshav Maharaj’s assertion that character, not skill, wins trophies and decided to simplify it. “Bowlers win you trophies,” Sunrisers skipper Aiden Markram said on the eve of the final. “But I’m a batter, so I sort of disagree.”Markram was proved half-right when his line-up posted 204 – well above the first-innings average of 172 at Newlands – and more than enough to defeat Super Giants. But his earlier point held too. Sunrisers got to the final on the back of their bowlers and had the top three wicket-takers in the competition in their squad. Their varied and skilled attack had someone for every condition and carried a batting line-up that Markram admitted was “bits and pieces but just found a way to get us over the line” – apart from the day that it really mattered, when they blasted Sunrisers to a second trophy.Over the last month, Sunrisers have played and paced the perfect championship run, in both results and entertainment terms. Of the 11 close games in the competition (matches won by 10 runs or fewer or with six balls remaining or fewer), Sunrisers were involved in five and won four, which meant they were consistently entertaining. But on the flip side, and more importantly, their entertainers were inconsistent. “If you look at our player-of-the-match performances, it’s been a different person every time and that says the environment is good,” Markram said.Related

Keshav Maharaj: 'I believe character wins trophies, not skill'

Sunrisers demolish DSG to claim back-to-back SA20 titles

In each of their seven league victories, a different player was recognised as the game-changer. There can be no better indication of a unit that is more than the sum of its parts than that, and the person responsible for creating that is veteran coach Adi Birrell. He is a crafty campaigner who compiles squads without any stand-out T20 franchise superstars but gets the most out of them. Last season, it was Roelof van der Merwe and Adam Rossington who were among the team’s leading lights; this time it’s Ottniel Baartman, Daniel Worrall and Tom Abell and you’d have to be among the more knowledgeable and passionate fans to know much about them, especially Baartman.A medium-pacer from the Karoo town of Oudtshoorn, Baartman spent the early part of his career in the country’s then semi-professional tiers playing for South Western Districts and Northern Cape. Ironically, it was a move to Durban that put him on the national radar and he was part of the Test squad that traveled to Pakistan in 2021, and recent white-ball squads but remains uncapped. Now, with his haul as the SA20’s second-leading wicket-taker, he has put his hand up as a candidate for the T20 World Cup and with an arsenal of slower balls, South Africa could do worse than give him a run, especially for the Caribbean leg.The same kind of responsibility could now be conferred to Tristan Stubbs, whose match-winning unbeaten 56 suggests he is ready for a bigger role in the national T20 side, where he has yet to kick off. In 17 international games, Stubbs has only scored one fifty and has not gone past 27 in his last 10 completed innings. Over the last year, he has needed a knock that could show he can translate his reputation into important runs in big games and that is what he did at Newlands. His moment came after a mid-innings lull which brought only 44 runs between overs 10 and 16, as Sunrisers entered the last phase of the innings. They scored 59 runs in the last four overs and Stubbs contributed 34 of them.Ottniel Baartman claimed the big wicket of Heinrich Klaasen•SA 20Stubbs had his captain – and the leader of national T20I side – Markram alongside him, and the latter also made a statement about his abilities in this tournament. Markram is an understated but astute leader, who can take charge of a diverse group of players and manage them well both tactically and personally. That’s what he will hope his IPL franchise, Sunrisers Hyderabad have seen because, with the additions of Travis Head, Pat Cummins and Glenn Philips to their books at the most recent auction, Markram is not even guaranteed a spot in the starting XI, never mind his captaincy position. While there’s no arguing with Cummins’ suitability as a skipper or Head’s quality in the line-up, the way Markram led the namesake team in South Africa must have bought him some currency.And if it didn’t, he can take heart from knowing he has definitely won over his own people. Markram’s two wins in two seasons will give South Africans hope he is the right person to take them to the T20 World Cup, evidenced by the warmth with which his team was received around the country and especially at Newlands. Markram thrilled Capetonians when he grabbed a one-handed stunner to dismiss JJ Smuts in the qualifier earlier in the week. Locals were heard calling it the best catch they’d seen at Newlands. And so it’s no surprise that even with the home team out of the tournament, Capetonians packed out the final, largely in orange, and stayed until the very end of a one-sided encounter to celebrate cricket’s resurgence in the country.Overall, the SA20 will remember season two as a success. Data from the South African viewership of the first 17 days of the tournament showed a 36% increase on last year and, surprisingly, that almost two-thirds of the audience is over 50. So much for Gen Z, huh? A quick first-person glance around Newlands this week (over both the qualifier and the final) also revealed an older-than-expected crowd. And only a sprinkling of them took in the displays at the recently created Western Province cricket museum, which occupies the ground floor of the new development in the stadium’s precinct, and presents a sprawling history of cricket in the area. Perhaps another time, maybe even soon.Though all South Africa’s high-profile cricket has been played this summer, including the international fixtures, this week, the domestic four-day competition resumes before the domestic T20 competition (yes, another one!) will be played over March and April. Therein lies the opportunity for CSA to cash in on what they achieved over two seasons of SA20.Although the provincial teams do not have the same brand identities as the SA20 teams, there are geographical links and the interest in the format, along with the fact that it is a World Cup year, should prompt CSA into spending some money on marketing and making sure people attend matches. They don’t need to have the full franchise tournament experience, with stilt walkers and live music and incentives to take crowd catches, they just need reasons to watch the cricket. And South African players, as the SA20 has shown, provide plenty of that.

Our correspondent writes up a report card for England’s not so merry fellows in India, ranking how true they were to the B-word philosophy

Alan Gardner15-Mar-2024Firstly, the Light Roller would like to make a statement to our loyal reader.It has come to our attention that we may have, at various unspecified points in the past, referred to the so-called “Bazball” as the greatest thing ever to happen to cricket, a feat of genius with no parallel in the history of the game, the latest English sporting innovation set to sweep the world, and the only thing worth getting out of bed for in the morning.Regretfully, we must now inform you that these views were, at best, misguided, at worst, deviant. The so-called “Bazball” is in fact an overhyped chimera, a flawed piece of one-dimensional thinking that was destined to fail, the latest blight on England’s much-tarnished sporting reputation, and a very annoying word to boot.This much has become painfully clear in the wake of England’s 4-1 humiliation in India, which differed so vastly from their previous visits to the country – such as in 2021, when they valiantly lost 3-1 despite not having a single batter who had ever faced spin bowling, and in 2016, when they stodgily plodded to a respectable 4-0 defeat (which included twice scoring 400 only to lose by an innings).With the so-called “Bazballers” returning home in order to be publicly flogged/made to practise their forward defence, the Light Roller hopes to help make amends with this special England report card.Related

• A project in the balance as England confront the need to evolve

• Why Baz is more of a cricket god than you think

• Never mind the Bazball, here's the Ashes

• Bazball is a doomsday cult

Ben Stokes
Scored his runs at a strike rate of 54.22. Only took one wicket. Failed to produce any miraculous single-handed match-winning heroics. Has this guy even heard of the so-called “Bazball”?So-called Bazball rating: -1James Anderson
About as funky as you would expect of a man who has seemingly been bowling fast-medium swing since the dawn of Test cricket.So-called Bazball rating: 3Jonny Bairstow
The batter who blew India away with twin hundreds at Edgbaston in 2022 barely blew more than a few raspberries this time around – though he did admirably try to hit the cover off every ball in his 100th Test.So-called Bazball rating: 6Shoaib Bashir
Trust in youth, let players express themselves. Ideally make sure they get issued their visa in time. These are the tenets of the so-called “Bazball”. Loses a mark for being an offspinner, which is quite boring.So-called Bazball rating: 7Zak Crawley
Turns out that when Crawley is consistent, England don’t win Test matches. Chalk that one up to Brendon McCullum’s galaxy brain.So-called Bazball rating: 6Tom Hartley: understood the “Bazball” assignment•BCCIBen Duckett
Scored an 88-ball hundred and not much else besides, but – crucially – wound up the opposition at a key juncture with a textbook bit of needless preachy grandstanding in a press conference.So-called Bazball rating: 7Ben Foakes
So endearingly old school that he rarely hits the ball off the square, never mind in the air. Often seems to be working at deliberate cross-purposes to the so-called “Bazball” agenda.So-called Bazball rating: 0Tom Hartley
Got hit for six from his first ball on debut. Hit the first England six of the tour. Often got out trying to hit the ball for six. Oh yes, and he took quite a few wickets.So-called Bazball rating: 9Jack Leach
As he did in the very first Test under Stokes and McCullum, Leach injured himself in the line of duty and was not seen much from that point on.So-called Bazball rating: 5Ollie Pope
Played the “greatest innings by an Englishman in the subcontinent” in Hyderabad, according to his captain. The rest of his series reminded us more of infinite monkey theorem.So-called Bazball rating: 8Next in the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka rivalry: Sri Lanka fielders welcoming Bangladesh batters on to the field with a rendition of Britney Spears’ “(Hit Me) Baby One More Time”•BCBRehan Ahmed
Made an appearance as the Nighthawk, batting at No. 3 in Vizag and bowled nicely on several occasions without changing anything much. Loses several marks for not liking golf.So-called Bazball rating: 4Ollie Robinson
Can you do the so-called “Bazball” if you are injured/busy recording a podcast? No, it would seem.So-called Bazball rating: 1Joe Root
A series of two halves. Was having an absolute shocker, epitomised by his reverse-scoop dismissal in Rajkot, before remembering he is the team’s best batter and losing all the slap-happy credit he had built up.So-called Bazball rating: 9, 1Mark Wood
Scored 48 runs from 53 balls faced for a strike rate of 90.56, thereby topping the standings for the series in the only metric that counts.So-called Bazball rating: 4

****

Is the rivalry that accompanies contests between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh petty, small-minded and unbecoming? Yes. Is said rivalry the main reason we take an interest in contests between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh? Also yes. After the -dance years, we are now officially in the timed-out era, after Sri Lanka’s players celebrated their T20I series victory by posing with the trophy while pointing to their wrists – a classic bit of banter referencing Angelo Mathews’ dismissal at last year’s World Cup. We can only hope the BCB stands ready to respond and is already in discussions with international watchmakers about sponsoring this timeless beef for years to come.

ESPNcricinfo’s writers pick their favourite spells of IPL 2024

ESPNcricinfo staff28-May-2024

Can’t touch this: Mayank’s 3-14 vs RCB

By Alagappan MuthuReally fast bowlers make the speed gun seem like what it is meant to be – an accessory, even a gimmick – because they are just numbers on a screen. 155 kph. What does that even mean? Planes go faster than that at takeoff, but sitting inside, it feels quite serene. Shouldn’t we be hurled into the backs of our seats, our faces peeling off like in those old cartoons? Speed is nothing without the accompanying chaos. So next time Mayank Yadav bowls, don’t look at the screen for the numbers, look at the batter. Look at them standing leg side of the ball. Look at them being rushed into the shot. Look at the ball crashing into stumps and flying off to the deep-third boundary without pitching. Look at his 3 for 14 against RCB over and over and over again.Kuldeep Yadav spun out LSG on their home turf•BCCI

Kuldeep derails LSG with 3 for 20

By Karthik KrishnaswamyLucknow Super Giants were 64 for 2 in seven overs, with KL Rahul and Marcus Stoinis at the crease, and ESPNcricinfo’s forecaster suggested they would go on to make 183. Then Kuldeep Yadav did what the very best wristspinners do. In the space of an over he brought the forecasted total down to 171, which contained a pair of dangly, dipping wrong’uns that sent back Stoinis and Nicholas Pooran, the latter bowled between bat and pad for a golden duck. As it happened, LSG only got to 167. Kuldeep’s over had all kinds of far-reaching consequences. Pooran’s departure allowed Axar Patel to bowl alongside Kuldeep and dominate a succession of right-right pairs. It forced LSG to change their Impact Player strategy and bring in an extra batter and weaken their bowling. It all added up as DC ended LSG’s run of 13 straight wins while defending 160-plus totals.Ishan Kishan was one of Matheesha Pathirana’s four wickets in Mumbai•BCCI

Pitch-perfect Pathirana: 4 for 28 vs MI

By Sidharth MongaDefending a target on a Mumbai night is among the least favourite things for an away bowler. There is dew, the ball is wet, the pitch loses its grip, the boundaries are small, and the home crowd can be intimidating. On this particular night, MI were cruising, having scored 70 in seven overs without breaking a sweat. Then came on Matheesha Pathirana. In the land of Lasith Malinga. He bowled a 151.2kmph yorker to Suryakumar Yadav first ball, then the wide bouncer with deep third fine for the catch. The two-ball duck for Suryakumar stunned the Mumbai crowd, and then he came back to bowl three out of the last seven overs for the wickets of Tilak Varma and Romario Shepherd. He would have won CSK the match with just his accuracy even if he had not picked up the wickets, but the celebrations with his spooky eyes were a bonus.

The pick of the stats from an enthralling second Test between England and West Indies at Trent Bridge

Sampath Bandarupalli21-Jul-20241 England registered their first-ever instance of 400-plus totals in both innings of a Test match with 416 and 425 at Trent Bridge. There had been 11 previous instances of a team posting 400-plus totals in both innings of a Test match, with India’s effort against England in Rajkot in February this year being the recent most.2 Number of Test totals by West Indies, higher than their 457 on the losing side. West Indies made 526 for 7 against England in 1968 at Port of Spain, which they lost by seven wickets following an aggressive second-innings declaration. They were bowled out for 463 against India in Kolkata in 2011 while following on with a first-innings deficit of 478 runs.1441 Runs aggregated by England and West Indies at Trent Bridge are the third-most for a Test match since 1980, where all 40 wickets fell. The 2015 Lord’s Test between England and New Zealand saw 1610 runs, while there were 1553 made between England and Pakistan in the 2006 Leeds Test.10 Number of Test matches with three 400-plus totals, including the Trent Bridge Test. The last of the previous nine was the 2009 Ahmedabad Test between India and Sri Lanka.20y 279d Shoaib Bashir’s age coming into the second Test. He is now the youngest England man to bag a five-wicket haul in a home Test. James Anderson, who retired last week, was the previous youngest, at 20 years and 296 days old, going into his Test debut in 2003 against Zimbabwe, where he took a five-fer in the first innings.3 Number of five-plus wicket hauls for Bashir in the five Test matches he played, all at the age of 20. There have been only three Test five-fers in total by other England players under the age of 21 – one each by Bill Voce, Anderson and Rehan Ahmed.2013 The last instance of West Indies getting bowled in a session before Sunday was against New Zealand in December 2013. West Indies were bowled out for 103 in 31.5 overs in the post-tea session on the third day in Hamilton.In contrast, the 457 all-out in the first innings by the West Indies was their first 450-plus total in Tests since September 2014.241 West Indies’ losing margin at Trent Bridge is the second-highest in terms of runs despite a 400-plus total in the match. India lost to England by 247 runs in 1990 at Lord’s despite a 454-run first-innings total.There have also been 16 instances of a team losing by an innings margin despite a 400-plus total in the match.

The teams, the format, the big names, and everything else you might have been wondering about

Abhimanyu Bose05-Jul-2024

First things first. When does it start?

The first match is on Friday, July 5, with MI New York taking on Seattle Orcas in Morrisville. The tournament will go on till July 28. There will be a total of 25 matches.

So who are the teams participating? And who won it the first time around?

The six teams are Los Angeles Knight Riders, MI New York, San Francisco Unicorns, Seattle Orcas, Texas Super Kings and Washington Freedom.It was MI New York, inspired by a whirlwind Nicholas Pooran century, who beat Seattle Orcas in the final to win the inaugural title.

Are you sure it’s the MLC and not the IPL? There seem to be a lot of familiar names…

That’s because IPL franchises have invested in most of the teams in the tournament, as they have in other franchise leagues like SA20, ILT20 and the CPL. IPL franchises own four teams in the MLC. Apart from the three obvious ones, Seattle Orcas are owned by the GMR Group, who co-own Delhi Capitals.Washington Freedom, owned by Indian-American entrepreneur Sanjay Govil, have Cricket New South Wales as their high-performance partner. San Francisco Unicorns, owned by Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan, have a partnership with Cricket Victoria.

We saw games in New York and Lauderhill in the T20 World Cup, apart from Dallas. Will the MLC also be played in those grounds?

No. This year’s MLC, like in 2023, will only be played at the Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas in Texas and Church Street Park in North Carolina’s Morrisville.Last season, the first eight league games were played in Dallas and the next seven in Morrisville, before the tournament shifted back to Dallas for the knockout rounds. This year, however, both stadiums will host games throughout the season.Nicholas Pooran’s 137* in the final helped MI New York win MLC 2023•Sportzpics

So you said Pooran played the last season. Who are some other big names that were there last season and will play this year as well?

A total of 23 overseas players who turned out in the inaugural season will be in action in MLC 2024 as well. Among them, some of the big names include Rashid Khan, Trent Boult, Heinrich Klaasen and Kieron Pollard.Afghanistan’s left-arm wristspinner Noor Ahmad will replace Daryl Mitchell – who has been ruled out by an injury and is currently doing rehab in New Zealand – for Texas Super Kings. You can find the full list of retained overseas players here.

And any exciting new additions this year?

Yes indeed. Pat Cummins, Travis Head and Steven Smith are some high-profile Australian signings, while Daryl Mitchell, Shakib Al Hasan and Romario Shepherd are some of the other new signings. You can see the full squads here.

USA pulled off a surprise and made it to the Super Eight stage of the T20 World Cup. So who will their local heroes line up for?

USA did have an impressive showing at the T20 World Cup, with a Super Over win over Pakistan the highlight. Their captain Monank Patel, Noshthush Kenjige and Shayan Jahangir will be representing defending champions MI New York, while last year’s runners-up Seattle Orcas have USA vice-captain Aaron Jones and Harmeet Singh in their ranks.Milind Kumar, who took a blinder against Pakistan as a substitute fielder, will play for Texas Super Kings, while Andries Gous and Saurabh Netravalkar will play for Washington Freedom.Saurabh Netravalkar, who was impressive in the T20 World Cup, will be playing for Washington Freedom•AFP/Getty Images

All this sounds good. So, what is the format of the league?

Like most franchise leagues, the MLC will first have a round-robin league stage. Last year, each team played the other once, but this time every team will play seven matches each in the league stage. This has contributed to the tournament growing from 19 games last year to 25 this season.The top two teams will meet in the Qualifier, with the winners of that match advancing to the final.The third and fourth-placed teams will meet in the Eliminator. The winner of the Eliminator will face the team that loses the Qualifier in the Challenger, where the second finalist will be decided.You can see the full fixture list here.

But the MLC games don’t count as official T20s, right?

That was the case last year, but the tournament has been given List A status by the ICC. It has become the second Associate-run franchise competition to acquire List A status from the ICC, following the UAE’s ILT20 earlier this year.This means MLC will now be recognised as an official T20 league, with tournament playing records now counted as official format statistics.

And with the packed cricket schedule, is it not clashing with any of the several other T20 leagues around the world?

The Lanka Premier League is on till July 21, so Matheesha Pathirana will remain unavailable till Colombo Strikers are knocked out.There will also be a six-day clash with the Hundred , which means that 12 players who are part of the MLC could arrive late at the UK.

A dramatic game came down to the final ball, with South Africa’s captain taking on India’s key death bowler, and there could be only one winner

Srinidhi Ramanujam20-Jun-2024Imagine being in Laura Wolvaardt’s place.Wednesday night. Bengaluru. A young captain, she had been on the field for more than seven hours – first marshalling her troops on a sunny afternoon and then getting all the gear on and batting through the chase of 326.After 99 overs on the field, the job – her job – was not done yet. It looked like it would be, though.South Africa needed 11 runs to pull off the highest successful chase in women’s ODIs and stay alive in the three-match series against India. The memories of the landmark Potchefstroom game, where she made 184 not out and yet ended up losing after a Chamari Athapaththu epic, must have been fresh in the mind. But, in Bengaluru, she was all set to rewrite the record books. She was on the cusp of something special.Related

Despite defeat, Kapp focuses on learnings with ODI World Cup in India next year

Stats – Mandhana, Harmanpreet, Wolvaardt, Kapp combine to break ODI records

Mandhana and Harmanpreet top Wolvaardt and Kapp in landmark 646-run contest

Arundhati Reddy 2.0 – stronger, calmer, ready for all formats

It had looked improbable at the halfway stage with South Africa at 120 for 3. But Wolvaardt and Marizanne Kapp took the game deep, both scoring centuries.Coming into the final over, Wolvaardt was on 134 off 133 balls – after scoring 46 off her first 66 deliveries. Kapp was gone, for a 94-ball 114. They had brought the team here from 67 for 3 in the 15th over. It was 315 for 4 with one over to go. Wolvaardt had to finish the game.And she might have, too…The final over from Pooja Vastrakar, India’s key death bowler, captured the seesawing emotions of one of the most dramatic women’s ODIs.Vastrakar, who had conceded 15 runs in her previous over – the 48th – began with a juicy full toss. Wolvaardt would have and should have put that away for a boundary. All she could do was squeeze it out to deep midwicket for a single to give strike to Nadine de Klerk. At this stage, de Klerk had hit a six and a four in her 20-ball stay. She had done it before, including at the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy last month, where she had blazed an unbeaten 106.Wolvaardt could trust her.Vastrakar bowled another full toss, and de Klerk backed away on the drive, and got a thick edge past the keeper. With short third inside the ring, the ball raced away to the boundary. The crowd was stunned into silence. It was still a thriller, but it wasn’t going the way of their team.South Africa were on top. But Vastrakar took pace off, bowled it full and outside off stump, and de Klerk fell into the trap. She couldn’t get the timing right and ended up dragging it straight down to long-on where Arundhati Reddy completed the catch.Twist in the tale. A dot too.Nondumiso Shangase was out there next. All she had to do was take a single and give the strike back to Wolvaardt for the last two balls. Dab and run. Vastrakar went with a back-of-the-hand slower ball, short and wide, and with no pace to work with, Shangase made contact high on the bat while looking for a cut shot and the ball looped straight to Harmanpreet Kaur at cover point.The previous wicket hadn’t done enough, but this did. Not because it was a wicket, but because it was a dot. The Bengaluru crowd now found its voice.Wolvaardt was still at the non-striker’s end. Stranded. Watching it go up in smoke.Laura Wolvaardt became the fourth batter to score a century in the game, but couldn’t take South Africa over the line•BCCIWolvaardt had to get on strike. She walked up to Meike de Ridder, the new batter, a debutant, and told her what she expected from her.In came another slower delivery. De Ridder was looking for a reverse lap but failed to connect. Wolvaardt had already started running. Wicketkeeper Richa Ghosh took a bit of time to collect the ball and throw it at the striker’s end, and Wolvaardt had scrambled home by then.After 437 minutes of riveting battle, it all come down to this, the last ball. Vastrakar. Wolvaardt. Five (or six, really) for a win and four for a tie. Anything less wasn’t enough.Vastrakar ran in for one last time. Wolvaardt waited.Would it be the yorker that she had missed twice earlier in the over? Or one of the short balls Vastrakar bowls at the death? Or another slower one?It was a short-of-a-length slower, wide of off stump. Wolvaardt swung hard. She missed.A moment’s hush, and then the Chinnaswamy crowd and the Indian team erupted.Wolvaardt was distraught – from the moment she knew she had failed.Harmanpreet ran out of India’s huddle to shake her hand. Wolvaardt had now been on the wrong end of a brutal chase twice, first in Potchefstroom and now in Bengaluru.It was one of the greatest ODI games in recent times, with four extraordinary centuries and 646 runs. Smriti Mandhana picked up a wicket off her first over in ODIs. India posted their highest ODI total at home. There were many records. And that last over. And the last ball.But imagine being in Wolvaardt’s place. That would have been an emotional rollercoaster like no other.

Series has been marked by Sri Lanka fightbacks, but only because of catastrophic top five

Vithushan Ehantharajah30-Aug-20240:59

Kamindu Mendis hasn’t given up hope of Test fightback

Milan Rathnayake dropped his hands, crouched, swayed and did not turn his back on the ball. And yet having done pretty much everything right, he still ended up wearing Olly Stone’s bouncer flush on the grille.Stone, closely followed by the rest of the England team, checked to see if he was okay before the Sri Lanka physio ran on for a more thorough assessment. Once the concussion protocols were administered – and passed – Rathnayake shaped up again. Stone bumped him again. This time he ducked, turned his head, closed his eyes and prayed as the ball cannoned into his gloves.The bowling allrounder lasted just two more balls, eventually walking back up to the away dressing-room in the Lord’s pavilion, to which Sri Lanka’s top six had already returned the best part of 10 overs beforehand. This is Rathnayake’s second Test, and so the experience probably still fresh, new and exciting. But he would have been within his rights to throw his arms in the air once he got back to his senior batters and ask, “lads – any chance?”Sri Lanka’s first innings was only 29 overs old with his dismissal, but they were already seven-down and trailing by 309 runs. Rathanayake had arrived at six-down, with just 87 on the board. Though he was unable to do as he had done in last week’s first Test, Kamindu Mendis, their second-innings hero in Manchester, mustered 74 to provide the faint silver lining on this particular mushroom cloud of a batting performance. That England did not enforce the follow-on with a lead of 231 was out of comfort for their bowlers rather than convenience.Nothing, though, was ever going to cover for yet another top-order failure. One that looks a whole lot worse when you win the toss and decide to bowl in pristine batting conditions, asking an attack who had never previously toured England before to take ten wickets when the sun is out and the cloud spotless. Oh – and having dropped the only bloke with any previous experience on these shores. The least you could do in that situation is give them a bit of time off and get somewhere near 400. That was the whole point of asking the hosts to go first, right?Dimuth Karunaratne was out chopping on, for 7•Getty ImagesThe small crumb of comfort for Dhananjaya de Silva , who made that call at 10:30am on Thursday morning, was that at least his dismissal for a four-ball duck was one of the more excusable. Even so, as the skipper was squared up by Matthew Potts on the downward slope, you did wonder if he had to commit as much as he did to an attempted push into the leg side. Some of his fellow experienced batters, however, warrant further scrutiny.Dimuth Karunaratne, an opener regarded as one of the steadiest accumulators in the game, has been collecting only regrets these last two weeks. The latest being diverting a delivery from outside off onto his own stumps when it was always going across him, with lunch due at the end of the over. Angelo Mathews, while brilliantly picked off by Potts, had been too accommodating to the Durham quick. Four of the seven dot-balls he faced, before the knockout blow that squared him up to clip the top of off, could have been worked away for singles, either through cover or off the legs. Something – anything – to elicit a change in length. As for Dinesh Chandimal, only a note on his pillow last night would have offered him more notice than Ollie Pope waving Dan Lawrence into a catching position just behind square leg.That trio were not the only ones deserving of criticism. Pathum Nissanka was also guilty of failing to clock a field shift, working the ball so confidently to leg slip that he even added a little flick of the wrist as a flourish. But Karunaratne, Mathews and Chandimal are all on their third tour of England. And while you can talk about gaining experience in county cricket, playing more warm-up matches and addressing financial inequality, sometimes it’s just about doing better because you really should know better.Even with only one match against a mish-mashed England Lions – which they lost, by the way – the squad has had a decent build-up to this series, with some in situ as early as August 6. Other decisions also warrant an explanation. It’s one thing to give Nishan Madushka the gloves – even if he is only the third-best keeper in the squad – but persisting with him as an opener, despite the fact Nissanka is better equipped to do so outright, was a tad confusing. When Madushka walked out at 12:18pm to start the reply to England’s 427, having kept for 102 overs, it looked like an elaborate joke.Milan Rathnayake ducks into a short delivery from Olly Stone•AFP/Getty ImagesEven as you are reading this, there is probably some pen-pusher at Sri Lanka Cricket’s head office, inside the Sinhalese Sports Club in Colombo, who has been ordered to fire up his computer and open that file labelled “Guys, what the hell? – Bad Tour Review Template, DO NOT DELETE.doc”. A few of those columns have probably already been filled.Sri Lanka’s top five are currently boasting a combined average of 19.26, the third-lowest for a visiting side to England in 50 years. In that same period, across first innings alone, only Bangladesh’s top five in 2005 have averaged less than Sri Lanka’s 11.80 in 2024. Unsurprisingly, this is the worst first-innings performance from a Sri Lanka top five in any series of two Tests or more.We are only halfway through this series, even if it feels like this second Test – and series – has just one more meaningful day to go. And there is a world where Sri Lanka fight back in their second innings as they did last week.But just as was the case then, they probably won’t as far as the result is concerned because of how badly their most trusted batters have botched the first.

On the fifth day of the Rawalpindi Test, Shakib changed his bowling approach, and changed the game altogether

Mohammad Isam27-Aug-2024Nine wickets left to play with on a fifth-day pitch. It had mostly been unresponsive to spin – not unexpectedly, since Pakistan, more aware of conditions in Rawalpindi, didn’t pick even one frontline spinner in their XI. But what Shakib Al Hasan and Mehidy Hasan Miraz did in the three hours that followed put all predictions to waste. Mehidy topped his first-innings fifty with a four-wicket haul, but it was Shakib’s early blows that prised open Pakistan’s gate of misery. It was a show of left-arm spin mastery, what we have come to expect of Shakib but see so little of these days.It wasn’t just the mastery over his craft, but also over the circumstances.There was a murder charge in the air. Sure, not directly implicating him, but it was there. And there was talk that he would be withdrawn from the tour.It couldn’t have been easy, but Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto suggested that Shakib has the ability to compartmentalise his life and career so well that he can come out to the field with only cricket on his mind. Thus came the wickets of Saud Shakeel, Abdullah Shafique and, later, Naseem Shah.

****

It hasn’t been a great few weeks for Shakib. During the student-led protests in Bangladesh, Shakib, a member of parliament of the now-overthrown Awami League government, argued with fans in Brampton when confronted over his silence on the developments. This was when Shakib was playing in the Global T20 Canada league while there were protests going on back home.Related

• Shakib, from darling of the masses to enemy of the people

• Bangladesh's chance to build on Rawalpindi miracle

• Shakib picks up fine and demerit point for throwing ball at Rizwan

• Bangladesh dig deep to find glory in a time of upheaval

Shakib hasn’t been to Bangladesh since. He went from Canada to Pakistan to join the Test team. On Sunday in Rawalpindi, when he sent back Naseem, he became the highest wicket-taker among left-arm spinners in international cricket.They might still be expecting Shakib the politician to speak on the upheaval back home, but Shakib the cricketer certainly reached another high, this time leading his side to a rare Test win overseas.He started the fifth day in Rawalpindi with a disciplined line of attack, at the stumps, before deceiving Shakeel with flight, sending the ball well outside off stump as the left-hand batter gave him the charge, Litton Das completing the stumping.Shafique was kept tied up with plenty of dot balls before he, too, jumped out of the crease, and top-edged a swing, to be caught at backward point.Both were wonderful deliveries – there was flight, dip and slight turn, and smart lines.

Perhaps it is now time for Shakib to speak, open up about the death of scores of students and innocents at home

Shakib hadn’t bowled like this in a while. T20s have – or had – reduced him to a dart bowler, one who just aims at bowling full, ideally under the bat, to get away with a decent economy rate. That’s what he did in the first innings in Rawalpindi – quick and full. Mohammad Rizwan attacked him, while Shakeel stepped into drives quite frequently.There used to be a body rotation at the moment of release that Shakib had mastered, but a more open-chested action – blame T20s – meant that the famous Shakib twist of the front toe was mostly missing.The second innings was a different affair altogether. He was visibly slower through the air, and his action was just that little bit slower too. At his release point, Shakib was quite clearly trying to work the ball with his fingers, rather than sliding them out or darting them into the batters’ pads. And in no time, he had broken the back of Pakistan’s batting, before Mehidy ran through the tail.It was a comeback of sorts from a cricketer who had become a peripheral figure in the Bangladesh Test side in the last seven years. Shakib has skipped many Test tours since September 2017. The ICC ban kept him out for three Tests, but the rest were voluntary. So, when Shakib informed the BCB a few weeks ago that he would be available for Bangladesh’s eight remaining Tests in the current WTC cycle, it was a bit of a surprise.1:44

Isam: Shakib stepped up during a tough phase in his life

Heading into the Test match, the team might have expected more from Shakib the batter than Shakib the bowler. He missed out with the bat the only time he batted. Instead, Shakib bowled 44 overs in the game, the most in an overseas Test (except against Zimbabwe) for six years. In Rawalpindi, it was a different Shakib, and a different Bangladesh, who didn’t give into pressure before and during the game as they often have in the past.

****

As he completes 17 years in international cricket, Shakib has ticked more boxes than he hasn’t as a cricketer. He is a bona fide legend of the game. The Rawalpindi performance also drove home the point that he has that rare ability to master adversity in a way few can.Perhaps it is now time for Shakib to speak about the death of scores of students and others at home. His silence during the July revolution can be explained away as duty as a politician. His disconnect with his country was also exposed when he asked the fan in Brampton, “What have you done for your country?” It was mean-spirited. Now, he has the opportunity to change that. Connect with his people. Change tact.

Sans Naseem and Afridi, Pakistan’s pace attack failed to inspire on a surface where elite quicks will get wickets

Danyal Rasool04-Jan-2025It would not strictly be true to say no Pakistan bowler delivered a single ball over 140kph today. The broadcasters have recorded it as such, and it’s certainly a fact South Africa did not have to face a single delivery which challenged them at that pace. However, it probably wasn’t just Kagiso Rabada and Marco Jansen, whose high pace was so potent it produced three wickets in under nine overs, who cranked it up to 140kph today.When tea had been taken and Pakistan were resting indoors, having been ground into the dust under a blistering Newlands sun, Naseem Shah was on a practice pitch a few strips over from the real thing, new ball in hand. There was no speed gun to monitor him, but it didn’t take one to know no Pakistan bowler who actually started this Test matched that speed. The action was regular, the follow-through earnest, the shape on the ball exquisite. One delivery landed on a length, moved late at speed and knocked back the solitary stump at the other end. Even if there was a batter stood there, it might have been tricky keeping that out.For a bowler who’s officially out with back stiffness and chest congestion, Naseem – who has also been out there as substitute fielder and helped Saim Ayub onto a stretcher yesterday – wouldn’t exactly have been a liability to this attack.Related

• Upgraded Verreynne becomes Conrad's beloved devil

• Rickelton's marathon 259, Verreynne century thump hapless Pakistan

• Stats – Verreynne emulates de Villiers; Rickelton follows Amla

• Ayub ruled out of Cape Town Test after suffering ankle injury

But this is not an individual selection gripe. Naseem was, after all, part of the side for the first Test, and while he sent down a long, impressive spell in South Africa’s first innings, he never truly came close to matching Rabada or Jansen’s threat. As Shan Masood has said in the past, Pakistan don’t often take 20 wickets, and though they managed 18 in Centurion, it didn’t quite get them over the line.At the same time, though, when Pakistan selected this attack, it is difficult to imagine they truly believed they had a realistic shot of 20 wickets on this surface. For clarity, Pakistan were remarkably open about the tradeoffs they had to assess before naming a squad, which they waited right to the morning of the Test to do. Any XI they named, spinner or not, Naseem or not, will likely have found wicket-taking hard inserted in to bowl for two hot sunny days.And, in truth, each of Pakistan’s four seamers did what they had been asked to do. They bowled hard lengths; it was the most common delivery for every one of the four bowlers by some distance. They resisted the temptation to pitch it up, as they might have done in Pakistan. They picked up two early wickets with the new ball, and another one with the second new ball. South Africa may have taken them to the cleaners once the scorecard had soared into silly numbers by the afternoon of the second day, but it was a product of the lack of pressure and a flatness of the wicket rather than a drop in Pakistan’s efforts or quality. And Pakistan continued to take it seriously to the last, at no point did we see them go through the run order for who else could bowl; one over from Kamran Ghulam aside, every over was bowled by a specialist quick or their assigned spinner, Salman Agha.Pointing all that out doesn’t add to the mystery of how an under-scrutiny South African top six ended up with 615; it strips away the veneer, leaving you looking directly at the answer. A Pakistan attack that lacks high pace on a pitch that doesn’t offer the bowlers assistance will not get on top of an international batting line-up, no matter how well they might do whatever they can do. Much like expecting to win a marathon when you can’t afford running shoes, Pakistan found themselves compromised in fundamental non-negotiable ways, and no change in extraneous reality could have compensated for that.Shaheen Afridi, arguably Pakistan’s best bowler in the ODI series last month, was not selected for the Tests and allowed to go off to play the Bangladesh Premier League; he has played two games in Mirpur in the past week. Naseem, as we saw, couldn’t quite make the cut for this Test, and there are no other bowlers at high pace, in this squad or indeed in all of Pakistan, who the selection committee truly feel comfortable throwing into a Test match. There may very well be merit to that position, but it meant Pakistan had a bad hand, and South Africa were aware of it. What followed for over the last two days was merely an inevitable consequence of it all.Perhaps that was more instructively obvious in the 21 overs South Africa bowled than the more than 141 Pakistan did. The pitch was just as flat when Rabada and Jansen bowled but you might have been fooled over ten overs of high-class, high pace bowling. Pakistan had to battle to keep them at bay every delivery, without success; they were 20 for three on a surface where, just yesterday, South Africa were 307 for three at one point.But when Wiaan Mulder, operating around the high 120s, and debutant Kwena Maphaka, not quite at Rabada and Jansen’s level, entered the attack, this Newlands strip reverted to its bashful, docile self of the last two days. Babar Azam had done well to dig in, and for the last half hour, he and Mohammad Rizwan had little trouble keeping South Africa out, or scoring runs at a decent clip.But on a surface where elite, fast bowlers will get you out, South Africa have at least two of them, and Pakistan none. With Pakistan still 552 runs behind, this Test match hasn’t exactly kept its cards hidden.

A decorated practitioner yet part of the furniture, Southee could shine solo and also be the glue in the bowling attack

Andrew Miller13-Dec-2024Last week, the world of heavy metal was rocked by the retirement of Iron Maiden’s legendary drummer, Nicko McBrain, whose borderline-deranged repertoire of rolls, fills and syncopations earned him the occasional nickname of “The Octopus”, as he left barely a beat unstressed in 42 years of timekeeping for his behemoth of a band.This week, another titan of the global touring lifestyle will say his own farewell to the big stage -though it’s hard to imagine the grass banks at Hamilton’s bucolic Seddon Park will throb with quite the same acclaim as a Sao Paulo stadium packed with 50,000 metalheads. There will at least be a life-size “Sexy Camel” in attendance, for Tim Southee – much to his own bemusement – was also known to answer to an unlikely animalistic alias.Either way, Southee’s mighty New Zealand career has had plenty in common with that of a drummer, albeit one of a less frenetic variety. A good ball on a good length. From a good height, at a good pace. With a good amount of movement – predominantly away but, occasionally, back in as well. Maintain that beat for 774 wickets across 35,000 deliveries, three formats and 16 years. Thank you and goodnight.Related

Tim Southee joins England set-up as 'special skills consultant'

Tim Southee in line to replace Anderson as England bowling coach

Potts grinds away with the right attitude and skill, and a smile

'Almost the perfect performance' – Southee

Team-man Tim and the art of letting go

He’s had some glorious moments when he’s truly stolen the show, and some of the records he’s racked up along the way have long since gone platinum. Moreover, he’s been integral to the most sustained era of excellence in New Zealand’s cricketing history. And yet, Southee’s lack of a defining feature has been perhaps his most remarkable feature. When all is said and done, he is just as likely to be remembered for the space he left between his notes, for the room that his matchless rhythms granted for his team-mates to revel in the limelight.”I’ve had the privilege of playing pretty much all my Test matches with Timmy,” Tom Latham, New Zealand’s captain, said on the eve of his farewell match. “To see how he goes about things, day in day out, the longevity that he’s had as a seam bowler in New Zealand, to play the amount of Test matches that he has … we’ll certainly miss him, the dressing-room will miss him, but he is going to leave a legacy that I’m sure will go on for a long time.”Foremost among those who were elevated by his endurance, of course, was Trent Boult, the Broad to Southee’s Anderson, and New Zealand’s richest source of “look at me” displays throughout their combined haul of 541 wickets from 65 Tests. Never was this more telling than in March 2018, when Boult claimed four of the first five wickets, and six out of ten all told, as he and Southee combined to rout England for 58 at Eden Park.Try naming a better duo… if you have time for futile exercises•Hannah Peters/Getty ImagesAnd if that left-arm-inswing, right-arm-outswing alliance wasn’t enough of a challenge for opposition batters, there was Neil Wagner too (now there’s a heavy metal cricketer if ever there was one …) pounding the areas of the pitch that Southee’s full and probing methods had little reason to visit. Between that trio, and the freakish trajectories of Kyle Jamieson, now sadly hors de combat with a stress fracture, New Zealand’s seam attack was briefly the most complete in world cricket, and at precisely the right moment to land the inaugural World Test Championship in 2021.Perhaps it’s doing Southee a disservice to consider him, first and foremost, as a cog in New Zealand’s over-achieving machine. But in so many ways, his absences from the narrative are the killer details of his career. They speak volumes for his drive to stay competitive in the first instance, but also of his acceptance – particularly in white-ball cricket – that there were moments in his career when other players were simply better placed to take on that starring role.Take his two-year absence from New Zealand’s T20I plans between 2015-17, for instance – precisely the same timeframe in which both Broad and Anderson were binned off from England’s white-ball plans, never to return. Not only did Southee regain his place for 88 subsequent T20Is, up to and including the T20 World Cup in the Caribbean just gone, he bows out with a record 164 wickets in the format, a tally that only Mustafizur Rahman among seamers looks likely to challenge in a hurry.Test regulars on the motorway, T20 stars on the fast lane•Getty ImagesAnd similarly, when he was limited to a squad role for both the 2019 and 2023 50-over World Cups, despite having been one of the stand-out performers in New Zealand’s glorious run to the 2015 final, it was a testament to the standards that he’d inspired in his peers – most particularly Matt Henry, for so long the team’s understudy, but a man who is now set to inherit his Test mantle too, having racked up 61 Test wickets at 21.93 since taking over as Southee’s regular new-ball partner at the start of 2023.”If you sit still, the game will pass you by,” Southee told ESPNcricinfo in October last year. “You’re always looking at ways to continue to improve, so you can continue fulfilling the dream of playing this game. For me, I obviously don’t have out-and-out pace, so you need to stay with the game and figure out ways you can still be effective in all parts of the world.”He fulfilled that ambition magnificently, with his accolades including a ten-wicket haul against England at Lord’s in 2013, and career-best figures of 7 for 64 in Bengaluru some ten months earlier. His white-ball honours include two T20I hat-tricks, as well as New Zealand’s best figures in each of the shorter formats – including, at Wellington in the 2015 World Cup, a stunning haul of 7 for 33 to rout England, surely the most storied solo of his career.And yet, it’s arguably only now, as Southee’s career winds down and his lacking of cutting edge is exposed by the indefinable lack of “snap” in his action that has limited him to 15 wickets at 61.66 since the start of 2024, that the true extent of his influence can be appreciated. After all, there cannot be many players who arrived at international level quite so fully formed as Southee did, at Napier in March 2008. Hence it’s been nigh on impossible to judge him against the standard narrative arc that govern such long-term performers (including, it should be said, Anderson and Broad, whose own Test careers had begun in earnest just one Test earlier in Wellington).

“You couldn’t find one a bit more sexy?” The Sexy Camel Tim Southee meets the other “Sexy” Camel… #cricket #timsouthee #blackcaps #sexycamel pic.twitter.com/EZ4yR5VfAN

— The ACC (@TheACCnz) December 12, 2024