Dave Roberts Lays Out Possible Postseason Pitching Plan for Shohei Ohtani

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

There's already been chatter about Dave Roberts possibly using Shohei Ohtani in the outfield for the Dodgers during the team's playoff run, and now there's a chance the three-time MVP could be used in another role during the postseason, too.

Ohtani is already expected to be in the starting pitcher rotation for Los Angeles in the postseason, but he could also be used as a relief pitcher, Roberts said on Wednesday. The manager noted that adding Ohtani to the bullpen is "something we're all talking about."

"I know that we are going to be talking about it," Roberts said, via ESPN. "I think the one thing you can say, though, is that we use him once every seven days, eight days, nine days … so to think that now it's feasible for a guy that's just coming off what he's done last year, or didn't do last year, to then now put him in a role that's very, very unique, because he's a very methodical, disciplined, routine-driven person. The pen is the complete opposite, right? You potentially could be taking on risk, and we've come this far, certainly with the kid gloves and managing."

It sounds like Ohtani being put in the outfield goes hand-in-hand with him being in the bullpen. Ohtani himself spoke about the possibility on Wednesday.

"I've had conversations with various people, and the idea of me pitching in relief has come up," Ohtani said. "As a player, I want to be prepared to handle whatever role is needed. If I do end up pitching out of the bullpen, I think that could also mean I'd need to play in the outfield afterward, depending on the situation. So I want to be ready for anything, no matter what comes my way."

This wouldn't be a new situation for Ohtani in his career, though. Back in 2021 while on the Angels, Ohtani pitched in relief and then went to the outfield to remain in the game on seven occasions. When Ohtani enters the game as a designated hitter, he loses that role once he's done relief pitching for the game. The Dodgers could then put him in the outfield to remain in the game.

The Dodgers still err on the side of caution of putting Ohtani on the mound, though, since he returned from the second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament back on June 16. In 13 games this season pitching, Ohtani's posted a 3.29 ERA with 54 strikeouts and 15 earned runs. On the other hand, Ohtani hasn't competed in the outfield all season. We'll see what the Dodgers decide to do once October rolls around.

Red Sox Fail Two Fundamentals Tests, Give Away Game 2 to Yankees

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

The Red Sox will rue losing Game 2 of their wild card series Wednesday against the Yankees, 4–3, because for one night they failed the test of fundamentals. Here are the two crucial seventh-inning plays when the Red Sox let pass their opportunity to advance to the ALDS.

1. Ceddanne Rafaela fails to execute a sacrifice bunt

In a 3–3 tie, Boston had runners at first and second thanks to wildness from Yankees starter Carlos Rodon (who from the first pitch of the inning could not command the ball and kept looking at his hand as if compromised). Red Sox manager Alex Cora called for the right play: a sacrifice bunt. Boston could take the lead with two outs: a bunt and a fly ball.

Rafaela did have three bunts during the regular season. Each time he squared early and properly. This time he stabbed so poorly at the first pitch from Fernando Cruz, it made you think to take the bunt off, especially with the crashing corner infielders opening holes.

Cora kept the bunt on. Rafaela stabbed again. He popped it up to Cruz. Two attempts to bunt. Both poorly executed. Worse, both attempts were on pitches out of the zone. Chasing on bunts? Not good.

2. Nate Eaton hesitates at third base

Eaton stood on second base and Jarren Duran at first with two outs as Masataka Yoshida batted. The count went to 3-and-2.

The runner at second should remind himself not only that he is running on the pitch but also that he should be prepared to continue running on any ball hit in play—not just get to third base. The third base coach also has the responsibility to remind the runner to think two bases, not just one, with the head start. 

On Tuesday we saw Angel Martinez of Cleveland score from second base on an infield hit with two outs—running on contact and never stopping.
Yoshida hit a ground ball that second baseman Jazz Chisholm stopped with a dive. Chisholm bounced his throw to first. The play was close enough that first baseman Ben Rice tried to catch it on a short hop. It bounced off his glove and trickled away.

Eaton should have been well on his way to home. He wasn’t. He stopped around third to read the play. By the time he located the ball, he thought about restarting but it was too late. The moment was gone. The Red Sox would have no more chances. They failed Bunting 101 and Baserunning 101.

Mariners-Tigers ALDS Comes Down to Tarik Skubal—the Tigers Ace With Seattle Ties

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

DETROIT — One game. One pitcher. One legacy. As if using a geodetic coordinate system, the American League division series between the Tigers and Mariners has arrived at a pinpoint of a place. Game 5 Friday in Seattle is about Tarik Skubal.

The Tigers ace has made his case over the past two and a half years that he is the best pitcher on the planet. Great. But it’s not enough.

Now, for the second time in 363 days, he will have the ball in his hands in a winner-take-all game. The last time was a bust.

Given a 1–0 lead in the fifth inning against Cleveland in Game 5 of the 2024 ALDS, Skubal coughed up the game in a horrific six-batter sequence: single, strikeout, single, single, hit by pitch, grand slam. Five runs. Lead and game gone in 18 pitches. Drive home safely.

His teammates rustled up a mulligan for him with a syzygy of a rally in ALDS Game 4 against the Mariners Wednesday. Just when the Tigers appeared dead, looking at a 3–0 deficit and staring at the last 15 outs of their season, they came together as weirdly and powerfully as an alignment of celestial bodies. Out of nowhere, they ran off nine unanswered runs to win, 9–3.

Skubal could join sudden death legends

Game 5 is a career-defining game for Skubal, given his loss last season and that his team is 0–3 this year when he faces Seattle. It’s no longer about “pitching well” or “keeping my team in the game.” It’s about going all Jack Morris on Seattle. On the night Morris’s Twins won Game 6 of the 1991 World Series, Morris, the Game 7 starter, walked into the interview room and announced, “In the immortal words of the late, great Marvin Gaye, let’s get it on!” The following night, Morris put the team on his back, throwing 10 shutout innings while refusing to come out of the game.

It was an all-time double elimination pitching performance by a future Hall of Famer. In more recent years, pitching greats who have risen to greater heights in sudden death games include Justin Verlander (2012 and '13 ALDS), Madison Bumgarner ('14 NLWC and World Series, '16 NLWC) and Gerrit Cole ('19 ALDS). This is Skubal’s moment.

Skubal has allowed eight runs in 33 2/3 postseason innings for a sparkling 2.14 ERA—but he allowed five of those runs in the game that sent the Tigers home last year. / David Richard-Imagn Images

Skubal played the preamble to his statement game much differently than did Morris. He walked into the interview room after Game 4 and swatted away a question about personal redemption as if it were an annoying fly.

“I'll let you guys create the narrative,” Skubal said. “I'm just going to do what I do best, and that's play baseball and create pitches. The game is still the game. I'll let you guys write the stories and do your jobs, but you're not going to get anything from me.”

Every game, he said, presents him with an opportunity to compete at his best, no more in Game 5 than it did in the Mariners’ 3–2 win against him in Game 2.

“But the game stays the game, and that’s kind of what you’re going to hear me reiterate,” he said, “[that] is I just need to be focused on pitch by pitch and execute the game plan that we will create. So that’s all I’ve got for you.”

Skubal’s Seattle ties deepen stakes

Another delicious layer to this start is that in happens in Seattle, where a kid from Kingman, Ariz.—a small town in the northwest corner of the state better known for its turquoise lode and its kitschy status as the heart of Route 66 than as a baseball factory—took his 80-something mile per hour fastball to Seattle University, the only school to offer him a scholarship.

“Dad, I'm not going to school there,” he said to his father.

“No, you need to call them, son,” his father replied.

Said Skubal, “And I was like, ‘All right.’ I called them. I committed two weeks later. And the rest is history.”

When he pitched in Seattle in ALDS Game 2, he bought tickets for all 34 players of the Seattle University baseball team and talked to them about following their dreams.

“It’s not a fantasy,” he said. “You can actually accomplish what you put your mind to.”

No, this is not another game, not with what’s at stake and where it is. Skubal may treat it as such from his uber-competitive mind. How, he reasons, can I possibly care or try more than my very best? But the stakes are higher. The venue is more meaningful. The reputation on the line more epic.

“I think it means the world to him,” said pitching coach Chris Fetter. “Especially going back to a place where he went to school and that environment. Yeah, I think it's going to be pretty special. And you're going to see a competitive, fiery guy out there and that’s what we need. And he's going to compete his ass off.”

Said Detroit first baseman Spencer Torkelson, “I don’t have the words. My vocabulary doesn’t have the words to tell you how much this opportunity means to him. If you have one game to win, there’s nobody I’d rather have than Tarik. And if you asked most guys around baseball, not just in this clubhouse, you’d probably get the same answer.”

The Mariners are the only team to beat the Tigers three times this year in games Skubal has started. / Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Skubal made two mistakes in Game 2: two center-cut pitches to Jorge Polanco, who blasted both for home runs. It seems unfathomable that the Tigers could lose four games in one year to the same team with Skubal on the mound. But that is what is at stake.

“I think at the end of the day, he's going to be himself,” Fetter said. “You know, most of the time we're going to go to his strengths as opposed to trying to dissect it too much or overthinking too much. Yeah. Go out and be himself.

 ”And that’s where we talk about not trying to overthink. If you go execute, be yourself, at the end of the day we’re good.”

Skubal wound up at Seattle University only after other schools dropped interest in him after a poor showcase performance on a Saturday morning. They didn’t know that Skubal had played center in a football game Friday night and drove three hours to the Phoenix area the next morning to get on the mound and throw in front of coaches. His velocity dipped to an unappealing 84 mph.

Now Skubal throws a hundred. He has hit 100 mph 43 times this year. Every other lefthanded starter combined has done so eight times. His changeup is the single best pitch in baseball as determined by run value. There is nobody like him. That is not in dispute.

What is in the balance now is whether Skubal can deliver a season-saving, career-defining game. It should require Skubal pushing himself like never before.

Skubal has pitched in 142 major league games, including five in the postseason. Incredibly, he has never thrown more than 108 pitches in a game. His postseason high is 107, in wild-card Game 1 this year. In Game 2 of this series, Skubal threw 97 pitches over seven innings before indicating he was just about done. So, manager A.J. Hinch handed the ball to Kyle Finnegan for the eighth. The Mariners scored three batters later to win, 3–2.

In 1995, in Seattle, a lefthanded, soon-to-be Cy Young Award winner took the ball with his team facing elimination in his first postseason game. Randy Johnson of the Mariners threw 117 pitches over seven innings to beat the Yankees in ALDS Game 3. After one day of rest, he came out of the bullpen in Game 5 to throw three innings and another 44 pitches to win that game, too. It was legendary stuff. They still talk about it today.

Now, 30 years later in the same city, the best lefthander in the game has the ball in his hands for a winner-take-all game. To save the Tigers’ season and to lessen the pain of the last time he found himself at these coordinates, Skubal may have to give more than he’s ever given.

Blue Jays Bounce Back by Proving Ohtani’s Mortality in World Series Game 4

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

LOS ANGELES — The Blue Jays lost a heartbreaker on Monday, an 18-inning slog that tied for the longest in postseason history in which they used every position player and reliever on their roster. Their heart and soul and one of the best October players of all time, DH George Springer, is out with an oblique injury for an unknown period of time. They arrived at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday to face the greatest player who ever lived, a man so dangerous that they intentionally walked him a postseason record four times the night before—and he was also starting the game on the mound. 

So naturally, they won Game 4, 6–2, to even the World Series at two games apiece. 

“There’s no choice,” said righty Shane Bieber, who warmed up on Monday to pitch the 19th inning and instead held the Dodgers to one run in 5 ⅓ on Tuesday. “What, are you going to feel sorry for yourself? It’s the World Series. We’re down one game. So now we find ourselves even, with a chance to take the lead, and take the lead back to Toronto after tomorrow.”

If indeed this is the David vs. Goliath matchup some have cast it as, it might be worth remembering that David won the battle.

In today’s game, there is no greater giant than Shohei Ohtani, and at first, it seemed that Game 4 would only burnish the legacy he is writing. In Game 3, he reached base a record-smashing nine times—three more than anyone else ever had in a postseason game. When most starting pitchers would be resting and studying the next day’s hitters, Ohtani was collecting two doubles and two home runs, then racking up five walks—four officially intentional, one unofficially intentional. 

In the moments after Freddie Freeman hit a walk-off homer to bring the game to a merciful end, the Dodgers gathered in the clubhouse, almost punch-drunk. Manager Dave Roberts told them he had never been more proud of them and reminded them that it would take the entire roster to win a World Series. He referenced the way Ohtani had insisted that his masterpiece in Game 4 of the NLCS—six scoreless innings, three home runs—had been a team effort. “Enjoy the s— out of it,” Roberts encouraged. As they cheered, he pointed at his wrist. “Hey!” he added. “We got a game later today!” Behind him, the most important person on that roster giggled as he raised his arms skyward and pantomimed his pitching motion. 

Then he got out of there. Immediately after the game, he had told SI’s Tom Verducci, “I need to go to bed.” It was perhaps the only relatable thing Ohtani has ever said. 

He left the ballpark at 12:10 a.m., sipping a sports drink, and he was guzzling another 16 ½ hours later as he warmed up in left field. He worked around a walk and a single in the first. 

Four and a half minutes later, he was standing on first base. Blue Jays manager John Schneider acknowledged after Game 3 that he did not see much point in pitching to Ohtani going forward, and indeed, even to lead off the game, Bieber walked him.

Finally, in the third, Bieber pitched to him—and by staying low and tight to the zone, he got Ohtani to strike out on a foul tip. 

It marked Ohtani’s first out at Dodger Stadium since Oct. 16. In the meantime, he hit three home runs and walked in NLCS Game 4; hit those two homers and two doubles and took those five walks in World Series Game 3; and walked in the first inning of Game 4. He struck out again, this time looking, in the fifth, and grounded out in the seventh. 

Shohei Ohtani, left, went 0-for-3 with a walk and two strikeouts at the plate in Game 4, and took the loss on the mound by allowing four runs in six innings. / Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

Meanwhile, the Blue Jays looked fresher than the Dodgers. L.A. put a runner on base in five of the first six innings but only scored once, fooled by Bieber’s ability to spin and locate the ball.

“He made pitches, man,” said Schneider. “It was fun to watch him navigate that.”

Ohtani the pitcher made his first mistake in the third when he threw a sweeper that didn’t sweep to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. with a man on first. Guerrero whacked it into the left-center field stands. 

“I get that it’s easy to write Ohtani versus Guerrero,” said Schneider. “To us, it’s Toronto versus Los Angeles. But that swing was huge. A sweeper is a pitch designed to generate pop-ups, in my opinion. And the swing that Vlad put on it was elite. After last night and kind of all the recognition that went into Shohei individually and he’s on the mound today, it’s a huge swing from Vlad.”

The score remained 2–1 until the seventh, when Daulton Varsho lined Ohtani’s 90th pitch into right field and Ernie Clement followed with a ringing double to center. That was the end of the night for Ohtani the pitcher, who acknowledged after the game that given the state of the bullpen after Game 3, he had put extra pressure on himself to go seven. “It was regrettable that I wasn’t able to finish that inning,” he said in Japanese through interpreter Will Ireton. Indeed, in the sixth, Ohtani told pitching coach Mark Prior he had three more innings in him. After the game, asked multiple times, Ohtani refused to say he had been tired. 

Besides, as Roberts pointed out, "Those guys went through the same thing we did."

Roberts summoned lefty Anthony Banda to face the left-handed Andrés Giménez, who worked a full count and then singled in an insurance run. Two batters later, pinch hitter Ty France managed an RBI groundout, and after the Dodgers intentionally walked Guerrero, righty Blake Treinen gave up consecutive run-scoring singles. It was a classic Blue Jays inning: four singles, a double, no strikeouts, two runs scored with two outs. 

Roberts spoke of it almost longingly. “You see these guys grinding and using the whole field and putting some hits together and, obviously, the homer by Vlad and, you know, that seventh inning, they built an inning right there,” he said. “We just didn’t have an answer.”

The Dodgers attempted a rally in the ninth when Louis Varland, pitching for the 13th time in 15 Toronto postseason games, allowed a walk, a double and an RBI groundout, but he retired the next two hitters to end it. The win guaranteed another two games—but fortunately for everyone, those will not come until Wednesday and Friday. 

Talking Points: Why has it taken Kolkata Knight Riders so long to play Lockie Ferguson?

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

Also, why did Kane Williamson open for the Sunrisers Hyderabad?

Karthik Krishnaswamy18-Oct-2020Why has it taken Knight Riders so long to play Ferguson?The ability to bowl 90mph yorkers as well as slower, into-the-pitch legcutters, without a discernible change in action. Three wickets in regular time, two in the Super Over. An economy rate of 3.75 in the regular time.Why did the Knight Riders wait so long before unleashing Lockie Ferguson?The reason is fairly simple. You can only play four overseas players in your XI, and when everyone’s fit and available and their actions aren’t under suspicion, it’s hard for the Knight Riders to leave out either Eoin Morgan – who’s now their captain – Andre Russell, Sunil Narine or Pat Cummins.Cummins hasn’t lit up the tournament with the ball, yes, but he provides lower-order hitting ability that the Knight Riders – who often pack their team with bowling options – definitely need. Cummins has even batted at No. 7 on occasion this season, including in the Knight Riders’ previous game against the Mumbai Indians, in which he came in at 61 for 5 and top-scored with an unbeaten 53 off 36.Ferguson doesn’t have a single fifty in either first-class, List A or T20 cricket, so he wouldn’t be a like-for-like replacement in this Knight Riders line-up. And he didn’t have a particularly good IPL in 2019, playing five games, picking up just two wickets and conceding 10.76 runs per over.The issues around Narine’s action have given the Knight Riders an opportunity to pick their other overseas players, and after trying Tom Banton and Chris Green for a game each, they finally gave Ferguson his chance on Sunday.Why didn’t Narine play?With the IPL’s Suspect Bowling Action Committee clearing his action, the Knight Riders did have an option to play Narine, but they chose not to. This was probably because the committee’s decision was only communicated to the team hours before the match. By then, the Knight Riders would probably have already decided on their combination and drawn up plans for the game.Why did Williamson open for the Sunrisers?When the Sunrisers chase began, they threw what seemed a curveball by sending in Kane Williamson, rather than David Warner, to open alongside Jonny Bairstow. It soon emerged that Williamson was carrying an injury that he sustained while fielding, and wasn’t able to run quickly between wickets.With field restrictions in place for the first six overs, the Sunrisers had an opportunity to bat Williamson in a phase that allowed him to look for boundaries constantly without having to worry too much about running between wickets. He did exactly what he was sent out to do, smacking 29 off 19 balls and getting the Sunrisers off to a flier.Why did Russell bat at No. 4?The Knight Riders have played a fairly settled top three through the tournament, but have rotated their three big-name middle-order batsmen – Dinesh Karthik, Eoin Morgan and Andre Russell – according to the match situation and match-ups with the opposition’s bowlers.On Sunday, the Knight Riders sent in Russell when they lost their second over, with their score 87 for 2 in the 12th over.With Shubman Gill having struggled to force the pace while scoring 36 off 37, the Knight Riders possibly felt the need to send in their biggest hitter at that point. Russell hadn’t had a great tournament with the bat before this game, only managing one 20-plus score in seven innings, and perhaps his team felt it would help him to have a bit more time than usual to play himself in.And as for match-ups, the Sunrisers didn’t have any outright quick bowlers who could have potentially discomfited Russell with the short ball, and they had already used up three overs from Rashid Khan, their most dangerous wicket-taker.On all these counts, it was a punt worth taking, but it didn’t quite come off, with Russell dismissed early, hitting a powerful shot straight to deep midwicket.Why did Russell bowl the last over despite being injured?Russell has been a key death bowler for the Knight Riders, and they suffered a major blow when he injured his hamstring while swooping to field a ball during the 12th over of the Sunrisers’ chase. He hobbled off the field, and returned at the start of the 17th over but didn’t look particularly comfortable moving around.When the final over began, the Sunrisers needed 18 runs, and the Knight Riders’ other fast bowlers had all finished their quotas. The only options left were Russell and left-arm wristspinner Kuldeep Yadav. Most teams don’t bowl spinners in this situation, and the pitch in Abu Dhabi, though slow, wasn’t offering much turn, so there was a distinct threat of either Warner or Rashid Khan – both capable six-hitters – taking Yadav apart.The Knight Riders, therefore, went with Russell even though he was clearly not fit to bowl at full pace. He hobbled in and bowled at just about medium pace, and the move seemed to backfire when Warner hit him for three successive fours, but two decent deliveries at the end ensured the match went into a Super Over.

Talking Points: What is the secret to Devdutt Padikkal's success this IPL?

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

Also, why didn’t the Capitals try to knock the Royal Challengers out?

Alagappan Muthu02-Nov-2020What is the secret to Devdutt Padikkal’s success this IPL?The basics. A tall left-hand batsman with quick feet and outstanding timing, he has made 472 runs in 14 matches so far. No uncapped Indian in his debut season has made more.Padikkal’s success is built on his off-side play. And in case anyone’s forgotten, bowlers still target the top of off stump with the new ball, even in T20 cricket.Anrich Nortje tried to do that and was lofted for a one-bounce four over cover point. The shot brought Virat Kohli up to his feet, his eyes bulging out of his head. It was hit that cleanly.No left-hander has made more runs (236 at a strike rate of 136) through the off side than Padikkal. His weight transfer into the ball, his balance at the crease and his timing are all great assets for him going forward.Why didn’t Capitals try to knock Royal Challengers out?If you make the playoffs, wouldn’t you rather play a team that didn’t have Kohli and AB de Villiers in it?And when all you need to do for that is score 153 in 17.3 overs – that’s a run-rate of 8.7 – it seems a worthwhile pursuit.But remember, the Capitals were coming off four back-to-back losses. A theme of those losses was their batting malfunctioning badly.They couldn’t afford that in this must-win game. They had to ensure their own qualification first. And to do that, they simply had to win the game.That’s why they never really went after the target with the intention of knocking their opposition out of the IPL.Is the outswinger a weakness for Prithvi Shaw?His game is about hitting the ball on the up. When he is in form, he simply times the ball. When he is not, he looks like he’s trying to hit it too hard. And that’s where the problems begin.Since Shaw likes room to hit through the off side, he usually stays leg side of the ball. Since he’s more of a back-foot player, he can also at times be stuck on the crease. And with his bat starting around second or third slip as it comes down, he also has a tendency to get squared up.The outswinger can exploit all of these tendencies, whether it is by getting a nick through to the keeper or by beating the edge and knocking back the off stump as Mohammed Siraj did in the second over of the chase.According to ESPNcricinfo’s data, he has made 21 runs off 20 outswingers this season and lost his wicket to them three times. That translates to an average of 7 and a strike rate of 105.ESPNcricinfo LtdAre there better end-overs options than the wide yorker?On a slow pitch? Possibly.There was an offcutter that Daniel Sams bowled to Padikkal in the 15th over that didn’t just grip in the pitch. It almost refused to go to the other end.Eventually it did, but only so it could give the batsman three different headaches. Extra bounce. Lack of pace. And turn like a Muralitharan offbreak.Padikkal tried to scoop it, but the ball popped out to where short square leg would have been.Given that evidence, Sams should have been concentrating on hitting just back of a length with his slower balls. So long as he didn’t give any room, he would be golden. Instead he went for those wide yorkers in the 18th over and got whacked around by de Villiers and Shivam Dube for 18 runs.

How Hardik Pandya turned from being an allrounder to a proper, game-changing batsman

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

He can adapt to different situations and mould his game accordingly in both forms of white-ball cricket

Aakash Chopra10-Dec-20201:49

Moody: ‘Hardik Pandya has emerged as a genuine top-order finisher’

India are ticking a lot of boxes in white-ball cricket at the moment. They are spoilt for choice when it comes to the opening pair, with Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul. Virat Kohli at No. 3 is arguably the best batsman in the world. The bowling, with Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Yuzvendra Chahal, gives them plenty of game-changing options to exercise in different phases of a match.The only place where India lag behind other teams is in finishing the innings with the bat. Not too long ago it was felt that Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja could bat Nos. 5 through 7, but Pant falling by the wayside has thrown a spanner in the works. That brings the spotlight onto Pandya as a batsman.His ability to hit the long ball has never been in doubt. Ever since the time of his early appearances for the Mumbai Indians in the IPL, he was earmarked as India’s next finisher, after MS Dhoni. While he has played about a dozen Tests, and scored valuable runs in the format, his batting style is more suited to the shorter formats. He has been exceptionally brutal against spin, and his ability to clear the rope consistently without stepping out of the crease has made him a player to watch.ALSO READ: Virat Kohli: Hardik Pandya must bowl to be a Test option againThe difference between someone who can hit sixes against spin and someone who is dangerous against spin is that: the ability to hit sixes without stepping out. All spinners have tuned their game to counter the assault in white-ball cricket and so have started bowling a lot flatter and faster. These days, if you rely heavily on stepping out to go aerial (like Kohli, Kane Williamson, Joe Root and Steven Smith do), you won’t much be thought of as a finisher. That’s where Pandya was different and still is.When you play a lot of competitive cricket, teams will find ways to negate the threat you pose. The first chink in Pandya’s armour was against short fast bowling. Those are always tough balls to negotiate, and even tougher to score off, especially for batsman from the subcontinent, who don’t grow up on a heavy short-ball diet, and so aren’t natural players of the pull and hook.There was one season in the IPL where Pandya seemed to have sorted out that issue too. He started going really deep inside the crease, as if to tell the bowler that he was anticipating the short ball and was ready for it. The problem with going deep inside the crease even before the ball is bowled is that you leave no further room to move, and that leads to the back leg collapsing quite often. That didn’t happen with Pandya, though, for his weight was always on the front leg, and that allowed him stay tall. Later that season, he revealed that he had acknowledged that shortcoming in his game and was aware of bowlers’ plans and had left no stone unturned to develop his game against bouncers. Incidentally, that tactic of going deep inside the crease also helped him respond better to attempted yorkers.

Pandya is no longer playing the bowler but the situation, and that is something we associate with quality batsmen.

Pandya was still an allrounder – someone who would bat in the dying overs of a game and bowl a few overs. And that role had become his identity. While there’s nothing wrong in assuming that role and playing it perfectly, when injury prevented him from bowling, the dynamic changed completely. There were even question marks over his place in the side purely as a batsman – though that was just what he was for the Mumbai Indians in a trophy-winning campaign. Still, the balance of Mumbai was such that they could afford Pandya as a pure batsman, but could India afford that luxury? Was he ready to upgrade himself into a pure batsman at the highest level?He has answered both these questions in the affirmative. His batting software has been updated to merit him a place as a pure batsman, who is capable of batting in the top five in both ODIs and T20s. In Australia, the biggest difference in his batting has been his confidence in his ability, which in turn allowed him to stay calm under pressure. Instead of manufacturing shots, Pandya chose, successfully, to wait for balls to land in his zone.ALSO READ: The art of T20 six-hitting: Why Pollard and the Pandya brothers are key to Mumbai Indians’ dominanceHe is no longer a uni-dimensional batsman who only goes after spinners, and that has changed his approach radically. It is reflective of his growth as a reliable batsman who can adapt to different situations and mould his game accordingly. He is no longer playing the bowler but the situation, and that is something we associate with quality batsmen.Pandya isn’t a 360-degrees player but he does have shots for most balls, and against batsmen like that, bowlers tend to err more often than they do against more limited players. Pandya’s stable base has been his strength all along, and while he has added shots through the off side, both off the front foot and back (his sixes over point to wide bouncers, slow or fast, are outrageous), he hasn’t compromised that innate quality of keeping a good body shape.He is no longer only a finisher, and it’s only fair India start investing more faith in his abilities as a batsman. The day he starts bowling again, he will become India’s most valuable player in white-ball cricket.

Dan Lawrence lives up to expectations as England's hot-house bears fruit again

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

Nurtured like a tropical plant, Lawrence’s maiden innings may herald the start of a long career

Andrew Miller15-Jan-2021″The exciting thing for me is that this is the beginning of a very successful, long international career, where you’ll be winning many, many games for England.”Individual batsmen may still harbour their superstitions, but the England management clearly doesn’t believe in tempting fate these days. For these were the very words uttered by James Foster, the team’s wicketkeeping consultant, in the minutes before the start of the Galle Test, as he presented Dan Lawrence, his former Essex team-mate, with his maiden Test cap.No equivocation, no doubts, and only a fleeting nod to “luck” as Foster walked over to shake the youngster’s hand and confer on him cap No. 697*. And sure enough, it has taken just two days for Lawrence to live up to those eagerly-expressed expectations, with a thrillingly sure-footed maiden fifty that leaves few reasons to doubt there will be much more to follow.

A note of caution is obligatory at this stage. There have been 103 debut half-centuries in England’s 144-year history, and while David Gower and Peter May are notable examples of players who shone as brightly from the outset as they did in their pomp, Paul Allott and Liam Dawson also exist as proof of the old adage about all penguins being birds, but not vice versa.But if you reduce that sample size to the dawn of the millennium onwards – which also happens to be the dawn of England’s central contracts era – then a more focused picture appears. From the moment that England’s 20th century survival-of-the-fittest mentality was ditched in favour of a mutually supportive team ethic, a total of 21 England batsmen, or one a year, have landed on their feet at the first time of asking (as opposed to just three in the whole of the 1990s – the ebullient Darren Gough, whose self-belief could launch armadas, and a pair of more designated allrounders in Dermot Reeve and Mark Ealham, both of whom, you sense, probably benefited from the job security that their second string offered).That post-2000 list does include some curios, not least the current national selector Ed Smith, while likely lads of the future such as Ollie Pope and Zak Crawley are obvious absentees. But more relevantly for Lawrence’s prospects of living up to Foster’s lofty billing, it also features each of England’s six highest run-scorers of the century.There’s Alastair Cook at Nagpur in 2006, of course, parachuted into a chaotic debut after hot-footing it from an A-team tour in the Caribbean. There’s Kevin Pietersen at Lord’s in 2005, whose unfettered assaults on Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath sowed the seeds of a fightback yet to come. In 2004, Andrew Strauss’s Lord’s debut was so unwavering that Nasser Hussain, a fellow century-maker, instantly knew his days were done.ESPNcricinfo LtdBefore that, came Strauss’s long-term opening partner, Marcus Trescothick, whose demons may have curtailed his England career at the age of 30, but not before he’d chalked up 5825 Test runs at 43.79. And if Ian Bell faltered at times on his own path to the upper echelons of England’s run-makers, then his average after three Tests, an unwieldy 297, was a clear sign that his class was worthy of investment.And last but clearly not least, there’s Joe Root, the current England captain, and Lawrence’s partner throughout a fourth-wicket stand of 173 at Galle on Friday. He turned 30 a fortnight ago, he’s likely to reach 8000 Test runs before this match is over, and he’s set to play his 100th Test when the tour moves to India in three weeks’ time. But it feels like only yesterday that Root himself was also making 73 on debut, in the fourth Test at Nagpur at the culmination of England’s epic series win against India in 2012-13. Pietersen and Cook had bossed that campaign for England, but with a draw sufficient to seal the series, Root rocked up with an apprentice’s performance of such mastery that few onlookers had any lingering doubts that they were witnessing the real deal.So… expectations? Yep, there are a few bubbling below the surface for Lawrence. And yes, there will be tougher days in prospect that the one that he has just encountered. While batting in Asia is never an easy challenge, especially when the ball is spinning quite as sharply as it was when Jonny Bairstow was extracted without addition in the opening moments of today’s play, Sri Lanka’s performance with the ball was barely any more continent than their own batting had been on day one. Only the admirable Lasith Embuldeniya posed a consistent wicket-taking threat, until he too got collared as the hardness of the second new-ball backfired on a toiling attack.And yes, there were flaws in Lawrence’s maiden innings – a spilled nudge to gully, and a brace of missed stumpings, one of which drew a grin of amusement from Root as he all but hauled himself off his feet. But the most telling feature of his performance was the poise that he projected, right from the moment of his first two deliveries – a quick-wristed cuff into the covers to hustle off the mark first-ball, then a compact thump through the same region for his first boundary as Dilruwan Perera over-pitched.There’s something about Lawrence which evokes Kevin Pietersen•SLCWhatever nerves may have existed had vanished in a trice, and suddenly Lawrence was batting as an equal partner to his skipper. If Root’s ruthless sweep-shots were the bread-and-butter of their stand, then the cream was provided in no uncertain terms by the new boy, who blatted Embuldeniya for a hold-the-pose six over cow corner, a shot that screeched of the sort of belonging that entire generations of England cricketers never dared to feel in years gone by.It was a familiar brand of audacity, and one that many observers had probably been craning their necks to witness from the moment that Lawrence came to the crease. Comparisons with Pietersen don’t have to be odious (although you wonder if Tom Banton, for one, might wish they weren’t thrown his way quite so frequently) but there’s something about Lawrence’s imposing frame, meaty strokeplay, and preternatural confidence that evokes KP’s arrival in the side in the 2005. There might even be something about his catching too, to judge by his first visible act as an England player, although hopefully he’ll cling onto at least one of the first five chances that come his way.There’s something, too, about the selectors’ eureka moment in the final months before their senior call-ups, when both men produced an acceleration of intent to prove beyond doubt their worthiness. For Pietersen, it was a run of performances on the England A tour of India in 2003-04 that, even to this day, stand out from the scorecards; for Lawrence, it was a match-winning century at the MCG back in February 2020, as England Lions completed their first victory in an unofficial Test in Australia, after seven blank campaigns.Related

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For that’s the thing about England’s expectations these days. It’s no longer simply that a good player rocks up with a reputation after a handful of county knocks, and gets the cocksuredness knocked out of him by team-mates and opposition alike. As alluded to by Foster in his capping ceremony, Lawrence is a pathway player, identified as a 15-year-old as Essex’s Next Big Thing, and nurtured like a tropical plant thereafter. So too is his likely rival for selection in the short term, and likely sidekick for years to come, Pope – injured at present, but gunning for full fitness in India next month, the team against whom he debuted at Lord’s in 2018.Since then, of course, the world has turned upside-down, and Lawrence is the first England debutant of the Covid era – a player who has been part of the Test bubble since last June, a period of dressing-room hot-housing like no other in Test history. For months at a time, the players have been cooped up like contestants on Big Brother, and behind those closed doors, their characters – good, bad and insidious – will doubtless have been scrutinised by players, management and psychologists alike, and with every bit as much intensity as a high-octane passage of Test cricket.Lawrence’s apprenticeship has encompassed tragedy too, with the death of his mother in August leading to a spell of compassionate leave during the Pakistan Tests. But as Root reiterated at the close – and as frequently mentioned by James Anderson, the last man with a true insight into England’s dog-eat-dog days of yore – the current dressing-room atmosphere is more accommodating and supportive than at any stage in its history.”You just want them to feel as at home as possible,” Root said at the close. “We have got a very good environment. We’ve got some really good senior players, a good group of lads who enable that process of coming into the team to be a smooth one and a nice one. If you feel comfortable in the environment, I do think it probably feeds into your game, but the most important thing is that they see that as a start of something very exciting to build on.”* Alan Jones was retrospectively awarded England cap No. 696 in June 2020 after playing against Rest of the World in one-off Test in 1970

'I knew it was the end of my series; whatever impact I'd have, it had to be then'

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

Hanuma Vihari relives his incredible SCG rearguard with R Ashwin, when he batted with an injured leg he couldn’t feel and a mind focused on playing out six balls at a time

Sidharth Monga21-Jan-2021What were you feeling when you were limping up the stairs at the SCG after saving the Test?
Two feelings came to mind. One was pain, the other was relief. The pain was there and sigh of relief that I could do the job for the team. It was sweet pain. The pain was all worth it at the end of the day. If I hadn’t been able to save the match, it would have hurt more. But because we saved the Test, the pain was not so painful.Did memories of Adelaide flash back at this time?
After the Adelaide Test, you won’t believe, we as a team we never spoke about the game. We only felt that it has never happened before, I don’t think it will ever happen again. It was a freak innings. So let’s move on and let’s look at it as a three-Test series from Melbourne. Now if you look at it, we have won the series 2-0. The Indian team, the character and the fight we show, we leave everything on the ground. That’s the hallmark of the Indian team. That’s exactly how we played.We looked at the number of times you were not in control while playing a delivery. In this series, it has taken, on an average, nine to ten not-in-control balls for a wicket to fall. In that innings [36 all out], it took just three to four. I am sure you know this instinctively as batsmen, but did you need such numbers to reinforce the fact that it was a freak innings that day?
I read that article but we knew it, that every time that a good ball came, we edged it and it went straight to the fielder. It doesn’t happen in cricket that way. If it does on a freak day, you accept it and move on. That is Test cricket at the end of the day. You can have days like that also. But we knew this would not happen very often – once in 60 years or so.Related

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Reactions to SCG: 'Bruised. Broken. Never short of character'

How did the evening after the SCG Test go?
I hardly had any sleep. Again, with pain. One thing was pain and the other thing was I was happy and overwhelmed with the respect and love I got on the internet, in the messages I got. I think I slept for one hour and got up again at 6 in the morning. That is the kind of feeling I got. I would say for all the years of hard work I had done in first-class cricket, where there are no people watching you play and you have to go through the grind and struggle, and to have 1.3 billion watching back home and all the people in the world watching you save a Test match… That was the thought that came into my mind. Real satisfaction of going through the grind in the first-class arena and then achieving this, the satisfaction was really amazing.Have you ever been, at any level, in a match where your team has had so many injuries?
Never. This series has been a ride of emotions. We have been through the ups and downs, we have seen everything you can see in sports in one series. The way the support staff handled it… at no point were they panicked. At no point did they lose hope. They believed that whoever walked onto the park, we are “Team India” and we will get 100% on the ground.Because of the Covid situation, the squad was big. But losing players still upsets the balance of the team. Sometimes you don’t get the right combination. If you look at the Gabba Test, they took a punt on Washi [Washington Sundar] who never played first-class cricket in the last three years. Still they believed in the player. They knew his capability and ability. They have seen us play, they have seen us in the nets, they knew what we could do. Their task was to choose the right combination of players, and they believed whoever played could go and perform.

“At one point we joked that it felt like we were in a war with wounded soldiers. We will play the fourth Test with whoever is left standing. At one point it felt like that, but jokes apart the medical team did a tremendous job”

The actual physio and trainers, what all did they have to go through? What were the scenes in the dressing room?
Huge credit to the physios and the trainers. They had a tough time dealing with so many injuries. At no point did I feel they were panicked or worried or anything like that. They were quite calm. Both the physios and both the trainers. At one point we joked that it felt like we were in a war with wounded soldiers. We will play the fourth Test with whoever is left standing. At one point it felt like that, but jokes apart the medical team did a tremendous job.But seriously, when did the team start believing you could save the Sydney Test?
If you look at the first session and most part of the second session, we were looking good for a win. The way Rishabh [Pant] and [Cheteshwar] Pujara played. To be honest, once they got out, I don’t think a win was a possibility. Even before my injury, Ash [R Ashwin] was struggling with his back, [Ravindra] Jadeja could have played only a few overs if needed. The draw came in when we knew that Ash couldn’t run, and then when my hamstring injury happened, we knew we just had to bat out time. And it is not an easy task [for one partnership] to bat out 43 overs. Australia, day five, against that attack.We batted one ball at a time, one over at a time, me and Ash. We had a conversation every over about what we needed to do. The strategy also helped. We got messages from outside but we had already decided that he was going to face [Nathan] Lyon and I would face the fast bowlers. One he was batting well against Lyon and also I couldn’t stretch against the spinner with my hamstring.It panned out well. He was facing Lyon with ease on a day-five pitch, and I was pretty comfortable against the fast bowlers.So before Pant got out, were you just batting normally or would you say you were actually going for the win?
No, no, not really. The talk in the huddle was let’s bat normally. If we get close, then we will look at it. Never thought of chasing the target or anything.But that’s how Rishabh plays, isn’t it? He just played his natural game. Other than that we were not thinking of drawing the game or winning the game. Ninety-eight overs is too long a time to plan or predict what will happen. We just have to see how the game will take its course and then react to the situation.”I knew straightaway that I had torn my hamstring”•Getty ImagesI mean if Pant plays defensively, he will likely get out. He also must know that…
You can’t play for a draw from the first session. You must remember he still played 130 balls. If he doesn’t play that way [his natural game], the bowlers will be on top from the first session. So really good on him to play the way he did.Did you immediately know your injury was bad and you could put yourself out for a long time if you pushed yourself?
I knew it then and there that it was the end of my series. I knew it wasn’t a cramp or anything minor. I knew straightaway that I had torn my hamstring. Because I have done that before, I knew how it feels. I couldn’t walk or run. I knew it was a tear.I knew whatever contribution I could make, whatever impact I had to have, it has to be in this time. In one way, the injury helped me with clarity of mind. I knew I just have to play close to the body and not try anything fancy because I am not looking for runs and I can’t run anyway. It made things simpler for me to just be there and block balls that come my way.When Ashwin got off the mark, he made you run that quick single. You were nearly run out…
Before that also I had told Ash I can’t run. Instinctively he ran and I didn’t have a choice. Before that run I didn’t know if I could jog, but when I took that run I told Ash, see, I can’t even jog. I can only walk. That too with pain. So he said, ‘Okay, let’s not run and play out the overs.’Does he speak better Telugu or do you speak better Tamil?
He can speak better Telugu. I can’t speak Tamil. I can only understand Tamil.But we could pick up only Tamil on TV.
He spoke Telugu too. In Tamil he said, “” is like play, play. He was speaking both. Main thing was . Think of ten-ten balls.Were you counting “ten-ten balls”?
I was counting my six. So if I play my six, I was waiting for Ash to play his six. I knew if I played my six balls, I would get four minutes of rest where he plays the other six. Six balls of my strike, six balls of his strike. We believed once when the session started, we just batted. But after that, in the mandatory overs in the last hour, we said we will focus even harder. We believed then that we could actually do it. Before that we were just batting and taking our time and making sure we get as close to 6 o’clock as possible. In that last one hour, we knew we could achieve something special.

“In the tea break I took the injection. After tea… I couldn’t feel my right leg at all. The numbness of the painkiller meant I didn’t have any pain when standing, but I couldn’t even feel my leg. And then when I ran it hurt.”

Did that change your mindset now that you knew you were on the brink of something special?
Exactly. That’s when the communication was even more important. That’s when the Tamil and Telugu conversation happened. We hardly spoke before that. After that we knew we were getting close, we were pepping each other up, it was only a matter of time. That is when conversations happened.What did you do during the tea break?
I got a painkiller injection. And got taped up. In my mind, I knew this is the innings I have to give it back to the team. I was thinking in my mind I have to do something and show the character and grit and determination. That I have to go and bat for two-and-a-half hours.How many painkillers did you take?
One tablet when I first got injured and then the injection during the tea break.It takes 15-20 minutes for it to kick in, right?
Yes. In the tea break I took the injection. After tea, it stopped hurting me but I felt a weakness in my right leg. I couldn’t feel my right leg at all. The numbness of the painkiller meant I didn’t have any pain when standing, but I couldn’t even feel my leg. And then when I ran it hurt.Was there a phase when it felt like it might be slipping away?
Only towards the end when I was dropped [by Tim Paine]. Mitchell Starc bowled a brilliant spell. He was reverse-swinging the ball, and it was moving late. That was the only phase I thought I have to focus a little bit harder. If you look at the match, that was the only phase where they troubled us. Initially, Ash had trouble with the short ball but after that he was comfortable.Just overall, how difficult is it to face this Australian attack?
The thing is, the height they release from, and their pace, they hit the wicket hard. It is challenging but we showed in this Test series if you take up the challenge, then you can wear any bowler down. That’s exactly what we did. We wore them down and we capitalised on any loose balls we got. That is very rare from them. Only when they are tired or once you have batted 70-80 overs, then you tend to get some runs out of them.Especially Pat Cummins, he is like a machine. He gave nothing on the pads.
And he bowls those lengths. He bowls hard lengths. Not like he is coming and releasing it on a length. He hits it really hard. And it hits high up on the bat. So you have to be doubly focused on him.But people talk about strike rates and strike rotation. You must tell people what a big risk it is to force the pace against them.
You can only experience it. You can’t explain it. You can’t explain how it feels facing up against them.R Ashwin embraces Hanuma Vihari after the match ended in a draw•AFP via Getty ImagesAny technical adjustment you made during the series?
In the last [third] Test, against Josh Hazlewood, I made a small adjustment to bat outside the crease. He is someone who hits the length consistently, so I wanted to make him bowl a different length. That was a tactical change. But other than that I batted the way I did in West Indies and New Zealand. I always felt I was batting well throughout the series but the runs never came in the first two Tests – I got a pretty good ball in the first Test, threw my wicket away in the second and then got run out in the first innings in Sydney. That didn’t really help with the amount of runs I scored, but I always felt I was batting well.In hindsight, do you feel that run in the first innings in Sydney was on?
In hindsight, I wouldn’t say the run was on. It was an extraordinary piece of fielding from Hazlewood but still it wasn’t necessary on my part to take a risky single. The wicket was playing so well that I could have waited and ground them, had a partnership with Pujara and got a big score. But yeah that was a brain-fade moment for me.But if you think about it, can you find an explanation as to why this [being run out going for a quick single] happens in Test cricket?
I don’t think I can. Sometimes you feel there is a run. In a split second you make the decision. Because I have stepped out and the momentum was there and the danger end was also mine. I thought I could reach. I didn’t expect that kind of fielding from Josh. He was in the middle of a spell. He had bowled three-four overs in the spell and to come out and do that, we have to give credit to him as well. But as I said it wasn’t unnecessary.But when you pick out a fielder, even in that split second, do you know this guy is in the middle of a spell?
Yes. Exactly that is what I thought. But it didn’t pan out well.Just overall you have played only one Test at home, you are again missing a home series [against England], and you just get challenging assignments. Do you feel satisfied with what you have done at this point of your career?
I am really blessed to be part of this side. To be part of an Indian side winning abroad, winning twice in Australia, and the team management showing so much faith in me… The faith they show in me, I am really blessed and happy. I just want to repay that faith with good performances, whether it is home or abroad.Did you watch the whole final Test?
Yeah, yeah, I was waking up at 5am and watching it on TV. I didn’t miss a single ball. I was really happy and rooting for us to win.It must have been tough coming back alone after having been part of such a great series.
I was gutted that I wasn’t part of the historic Test at Gabba. You feel disappointed, but the reason I came back was I want to get fit as soon as possible and make sure I am available for selection for the last two Tests [against England]. That was why I came back.So you have to go to the National Cricket Academy (NCA)?
I am in NCA [in Bengaluru] already. I reached yesterday and will start rehab tomorrow.

Stats: England's winning streak in Asia, and the ageless James Anderson

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

Anderson has the most Test wickets for a fast bowler after turning 30

S Rajesh09-Feb-20211:43

Did England play spin better than India in the first Test?

6 – Consecutive wins for England in Asia, following their 3-0 and 2-0 series wins in Sri Lanka in 2018 and earlier this year. Their recent record in Asia contrasts sharply with that of South Africa, who lost their ninth Test in a row in the continent when they were beaten by Pakistan in Rawalpindi on Monday.ESPNcricinfo Ltd11 – Test wins for England in Asia since January 2010 – they have a 11-12 win-loss record in the continent during this period, which is easily the best among the non-Asian teams. No other team has won more than half the number of Tests that they have lost: New Zealand and West Indies have a win-loss ratio of 0.5. Australia have a 3-15 record during this period. In fact, England have won more Tests in India during this period (three) than all other teams put together (two).
Of the nine series England have played in Asia during this period (excluding the ongoing one in India), they have won four, lost three, and drawn two.343 – Test wickets for James Anderson after turning 30, which is the most for a fast bowler. He went past Courtney Walsh, who has 341. Among all bowlers, only three have more wickets after turning 30: Rangana Herath (398), Muttiah Muralitharan (388), and Shane Warne (386), while Anil Kumble has 343 as well.ESPNcricinfo Ltd26 – Test wins for Joe Root, which equals Michael Vaughan’s record for an England captain. Root has a 26-15 win-loss record in 47 Tests, compared to Vaughan’s 26-11 in 51 matches.ESPNcricinfo Ltd1 – India had lost just one home Test in their last 35 games before this one, going back to the beginning of 2013. They had won 28 games during this period, and were easily the most dominant home team in these eight years.3 – Consecutive Man-of-the-Match awards for Root – he had won the award in the two Tests in Sri Lanka as well. There are only six other instances of a player winning three or more successive awards: Muralitharan (four), Ian Botham, Wasim Akram, Kallis, Michael Hussey, and Steve Harmison.2010 – The last time India bowled more no-balls than the 27 they did in this match. That was against South Africa in Kolkata, when India bowled 29. Just two bowlers contributed to all the no-balls: Ishant Sharma (16) and Amit Mishra (13).4 – Wins in India for Anderson. Since 2000, only two other overseas players have won as many Tests in India: Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis.1999 – The last time India lost a Test in Chennai. It was an epic encounter, which Pakistan won by 12 runs. Since then, India won five out of eight Tests here before this defeat to England.

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