“When we don’t play well, we should be ready for criticism; but we have to start talking about success, we have to believe”

Mohammad Isam05-Oct-2022 • Updated on 07-Oct-2022There is something refreshing about Nurul Hasan. Whether it’s his flat-bat shots down the ground, or the way he handled himself, and the Bangladesh team, after being thrust into the T20I captaincy in July this year.It was a stop-gap arrangement; he was keeping the seat warm for Shakib Al Hasan at the time. *He was expected to do the same in New Zealand, now, for the triangular series, but Shakib has been cleared to make the trip and join the team the day before their first game. Not where he expected to be when, for a long time, he was a giant in the Bangladesh domestic circuit struggling to move up to the next level.That could have pulled Nurul down, but he reinvented himself, and his game, to cater to the needs of top-level cricket. It’s the sort of attitude that’s often lacking in Bangladesh cricket, and exactly what they need after having started the year well but declined quite dramatically since.Related

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Nurul agrees; he feels the right attitude is what the current team as well as future teams need.”Our culture is such that we don’t want to talk about our goals or ambitions, fearing failure,” Nurul told ESPNcricinfo. “If I say today that we want to win the World Cup, we don’t necessarily have to win it right away. But by saying such a thing repeatedly, maybe our next batch will feel more confident about winning the World Cup. Maybe I won’t be around then, but the belief will be there.”We have to create this culture, notwithstanding the negative reactions. When we don’t play well, we should be ready for criticism. But we have to start talking about success; we have to believe it. If three or four of us start getting into form, it could get Bangladesh good results.”When Nurul was made T20I captain after Mahmudullah was sacked, it was a toss-up between him and Litton Das. What worked in Nurul’s favour were firstly the perception, from domestic cricket where he has led Sheikh Jamal Dhanmondi, that he was a good captain, and secondly, that he was a team man through and through.”I don’t think there was a lot of joy [when I became the captain], but I had a duty towards fulfilling the responsibility,” he said. “I like taking on challenges. I didn’t think too much about it, which meant I was not emotional. I think I was mainly thinking about the challenge at hand. I try to enjoy whatever challenge I am facing.”

“Only six-hitting doesn’t bring runs on the board. If I hit a six but play three dot balls, it doesn’t help the team. We have to find our area of strength”Nurul Hasan

Sentiments such as these are unusual in Bangladesh cricket, where players and administrators try not to raise expectations for being ridiculed when results don’t go their way.Nurul’s positive attitude comes from own experiences in the last few years. He impressed in the Dhaka Premier League T20 last year to earn a recall to the T20I squad after close to four years. But despite the early promise, he couldn’t find form at the T20 World Cup in the UAE. An ill-timed shot in the Chattogram Test against Pakistan meant another long pause. But he fought back through another tremendous showing in the Dhaka Premier League, which led to his side Sheikh Jamal winning their first title in the competition.”I have emotions, but I don’t get as excited as I used to,” he said. “Maybe I was different earlier, but now I take it match by match. I am used to a mindset of moving on from one performance to the next. I feel bad when I don’t do well, but it is important to recover well from it.”Part of his secret is his adaptability. Nurul isn’t too bothered by how he looks when playing a shot, as long as he gets the right result. Among Bangladesh batters who have batted at least thrice in the last five overs in T20Is in 2022, Nurul’s strike rate of 160.97 is the best. Since last year, he has also batted at five different positions, a factor that needs to be looked at.”I believe 200% that it is a team-first game. If you think otherwise, the results won’t come”•AFP/Getty Images”To be honest, I don’t think it does any good for the team if my mindset is fixed on a batting position,” he said. “In that case, you are carrying individuals. Situations keep changing, so you have to keep adapting. I believe 200% that it is a team-first game. If you think otherwise, the results won’t come. If [me] batting at No. 11 benefits the team, so be it. The team comes first.”Considering where I bat in white-ball cricket, I think it is important to have more impact rather than just scoring runs. I think it is better to contribute for the team’s win, rather than scoring runs when they lose. I want to work harder at it. I don’t listen to what’s being said or what’s happening outside. Contributing for the team is foremost in my mind.”When the thorny topic of six-hitting is broached – Bangladesh have hit fewer sixes this year than Suryakumar Yadav – Nurul is unfazed.”Only six-hitting doesn’t bring runs on the board,” he said. “I can hit a four, and then rotate the strike. If I hit a six but play three dot balls, it doesn’t help the team. We have to find our area of strength. Other teams are doing it, we should too.When Shakib Al Hasan, Nurul Hasan’s role will change, and he is ready for it•AFP/Getty Images”I also don’t believe in the fuss about big-hitters. Big-hitting doesn’t solely win you games. If you bat according to the match situation, if you can find the gaps and hit boundaries, it will get you close to the target. Six-hitting is easy when you have the right ball in front of you.”There has been a marked shift in Nurul’s stroke-making in the last two years, particularly down the ground and behind the wicket. He uses the pace of the ball more, even though there have been times when he has bludgeoned the ball – more long-on than midwicket.”There was a time when I used to work on my areas of strength in the past, but during a match, a bowler will not allow me to play those shots. I have to be aware of the match situation, what it demands from me,” he said. “Scoring runs and understanding the match situation is more important than playing a nice shot that has no runs or impact from it. My focus is to find runs in the middle.”The bottom line for Nurul is to make the most of his opportunities. Once Shakib returns, Nurul will go back to being the wicketkeeper-batter who has to get Bangladesh big runs in the last five overs.”At this moment, I don’t want to leave anything to chance,” Nurul said. “I don’t want to regret later that I could have worked harder or improved a little bit more through the training that I am doing now. I want to prepare very well. Allah decides all, I will get exactly what I deserve. I want to achieve the team’s goals, and I hope that as long as I play cricket, that’s how I want to play.”

Renowned more for his lack of turn, he produced three wickets with ones that went away on a slow, unhelpful track

Sidharth Monga17-Dec-20222:21

Jaffer: Axar’s pace makes it difficult for batters when the ball starts to turn

Coming into this Test, Axar Patel, he of the scarcely believable bowling average and strike-rate, had taken right-hand batters out 28 times out of his 35 wickets. Six of those 28 wickets were aggressive sweeps or catches in the outfield, eight times he took the outside edge or beat it. A staggering 14 wickets – exactly half – had come by beating right-hand batters on the inside edge or taking it.It was neither disparaging nor inaccurate to say that what made Axar so successful was the lack of turn or a smaller degree of turn. Himanish Ganjoo dove into HawkEye data to surmise that the angle that his long arm created by going roundarm was so big that the turn he got there barely straightened the ball, thus making the batter play outside the line.Related

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It is important to notice that a high percentage of these wickets came on tracks that turned a lot. So the ball that didn’t turn or turned less became extra dangerous because the batter’s instinct is reacting to the visual clues of the ball turning and bouncing dramatically. Few of these wickets come from arm balls that can be picked out of the hand. Sometimes, it was natural variation, sometimes the extreme angle created by his roundarm release.Also, batters watch. They watch footage and analyse how a bowler gets wickets. So what do you do if you see a bowler getting most of his wickets through the straighter ones? They become aware of the incoming or the less-turning delivery, and start playing for the angle and not the turn. Basically, play him as left-arm medium.How the batters wish it was so easy. On perhaps the least turning track that Axar has played on, all four of his right-hand batter victims have been done in on the outside edge. The one to bowl Yasir Ali, after only one wicket had come in nearly 50 overs on a slow pitch with little assistance for the bowlers, was a proper seed. Axar went roundarm, pitched it on off, Yasir defended for the angle, but Axar managed to get just enough turn to beat the outside edge and hit the off stump. Because he was stretched full forward, there was no way Yasir could have adjusted to the ball off the pitch.Ganjoo’s study found that on most of the occasions that Axar took the ball away despite than angle, the ball had to turn at least four degrees, which is a significant amount of turn. Quite a few of the balls he turned at more than four degrees appeared to be coming in because of his angle. Now you can’t blame Yasir for playing the angle and not the turn when he saw Axar go roundarm.Axar Patel got rid of Mushfiqur Rahim and Nurul Hasan in one over•Associated PressThen again, this is not the first time Axar has managed big turn with a roundarm delivery. Often in limited-overs cricket, Axar manages that big turn with a low-arm release. It is a testament to the revolutions he imparts on the ball.Axar perhaps bowls too quickly to get any dip, but it is that pace that keeps batters from lining him and stepping out to hit him off his length. His length, Axar hardly ever misses. That is the most important quality in a bowler: to be able to land the ball where you want and to know which length works for you. For Axar, attacking the stumps works the best.That’s what he did with the second new ball, with which things happened quicker. Mushfiqur Rahim saw the trajectory and stayed back, only for the ball to be fullish and then turn away past the outside edge. There was no time for him to do damage control with the bat. The off stump was pegged back.”What really stands out with Axar is pace that he bowls at first [of all],” India’s bowling coach Paras Mhambrey said. “It is not easy for the batsman to step out. Also the angles he bowls. The way he releases the ball, it is kind of very difficult for the batsman to [decide whether to] leave it or play at it. And especially in conditions where the ball is turning a little bit, you have to play at those deliveries. That’s what stands out for him.”Always at you, extreme angle of release, mostly quick in the air, turning the odd ball, Axar gives you no relief as the Bangladesh batters will have realised. His other two victims were stumpings: Mehidy Hasan on a step-out in the first innings and Nurl Hasan on a forward-defensive in the second.In top-level cricket, if someone comes into a Test having a bowling strike-rate of 33.5, you know he is still in the honeymoon period thanks either to the conditions or ordinary batting against him. You wait to see how he will react when he has to bowl in less friendly conditions. The second innings on a dying Chattogram pitch was one such occasion. Axar had to work hard for his wickets. Still, he has taken one every nine overs, and with a delivery that is not supposed to be his main threat. He may not be your conventional loop and dip spinner, but he is doing just well even as the post-honeymoon starts.

Lions hopeful confident his methods can meet requirements of rebooted Test team

Andrew Miller15-Jan-2023In a parallel universe, Josh Bohannon might already be a part of England’s Test reboot. Last year, it seemed he was the coming man – batting at No.3 for Lancashire, he would end up passing 800 runs for the second Championship season in a row, again compiled with the sort of no-nonsense temperament that belied his 24 years of age. He seemed an ideal candidate for a team that had won one match in 17 and was crying out for new blood.Bohannon was so close to a call-up, in fact, that on the eve of the tour of the Caribbean in March, a Sky reporter erroneously rang him up to congratulate him on his apparent selection. But then Bazball happened, and the narrative changed once again. Now, a settled England team is on the roll of rolls with nine thrilling wins out of ten, and as Bohannon prepares to head off for Sri Lanka for his third Lions tour, the question is whether the attributes that brought him so close to recognition last year are still relevant as the new season draws nigh.”Obviously I was pretty close to breaking in this time last year, but it wasn’t the right time,” Bohannon tells ESPNcricinfo. “And that was almost a blessing, because some of the work that I’ve done since then is really paying dividends. Hopefully when this opportunity does come, I’ll be in a great position to walk in and do some of the things that you see the guys in the team doing.”The Lions programme has long been intended to mirror the experience of playing for England, to enable those who make the grade to slot seamlessly into the senior team when their turn comes. And to judge by the contrasting moods of his previous two trips – to Australia last winter as part of the Ashes preparation, and more recently to Dubai and Abu Dhabi for a training camp ahead of the Pakistan tour – Bohannon has been a privileged witness to one of the most remarkable transformations that the Test squad has ever undergone.”It’s quite evident that people are walking around with a smile on their face all the time,” he says of his most recent encounter in November. “They are enjoying being in the field together for a period of time and doing the job that they love. Everything they do is based around winning a game of cricket. They never take a backward step, in some ways they are happy to lose, rather than draw, in order to win, and for the players that are extremely close to getting in as well, it’s a great environment to be around.”Going to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, I knew what I could do and the skills that I have,” he adds. “But I was almost too scared to, for example, to sweep a left-arm spinner first-ball, in case I miss one and I get an lbw, and all of a sudden we are two-down in the first session. But what that environment has taught me is that, if you practice something enough that it becomes a strength of yours, just go and do it, whether it’s first ball, fifth ball or 100th ball. It’s all about recognising opportunities in the game, and wherever that looks like, go and do it.”And if Bohannon was a beneficiary of that wisdom in Abu Dhabi, then Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum are keen to ensure that the whole of the domestic game is set up to embrace those same possibilities. Last week, the pair hosted a Zoom conference with county head coaches and directors of cricket to pass down their Bazball blueprint (as neither man is calling it, of course). It’s a development that Bohannon welcomes with open arms because, while his progress at Lancashire has been as smooth and settled as any England hopeful could wish for, the relentless nature of the English domestic season, with fewer opportunities for middle practice, makes it harder for aspiring players to adapt their training to meet such fast-changing trends at international level.Bohannon believes a red-ball focus can still pay dividends amid the proliferation of white-ball tournaments•Getty Images”I know I can fit into that environment, but being brutally honest, the one thing I have struggled with is understanding what my [training] role looks like at Lancashire. If you want to play four-day cricket, you have to bat long periods of time, but the way that we train is very different to the way that the England team is training right now. That is definitely feeding down into county cricket. It’s really exciting to see everything as an opportunity, rather than worrying ‘what happens if I do this or do that’, which is the way that I used to think before.”A change of mindset, however, is not the same thing as a change of technique – a point that Bohannon believes he recognises as well as anyone, having worked extensively in recent seasons with Lancashire’s psychologist, Lee Richardson, as well as the club’s assistant coach, Carl Crowe, to give a focus to the fiery nature that had sometimes been his undoing in the early years of his career.”[Crowe’s] been awesome for me,” Bohannon says. “He gets what sort of person I am, and how I think, and turns everything that I say to him in a positive way, and makes me look at stuff a little different.”Take Rahul Dravid,” he adds. “He goes down as a legend of the game, but in almost two-thirds of his Test innings, even he failed to get a fifty or a hundred [187 out of 286]. At the end of the day, you’re batting with a piece of wood that’s four or five inches wide, and the ball only needs to nip or swing a couple extra millimetres from where your eyes see it, and it’s game over.”If bowlers bowl one bad ball, however, they get five other opportunities to get you out. Cricket’s an extremely hard game, so the one thing I’ve learned over the last two seasons is not to be too harsh on myself, because if I take the enjoyment away, that’s obviously not where I want to be.”Despite his delight at being involved in another Lions squad, there is just the sense this time out, however, that the focus for England hopefuls has shifted. More than 70 county cricketers are in action in various T20 leagues around the world this winter, and to judge by McCullum’s willingness to conflate white-ball prowess and Test potential, a winter spent at the SA20 or ILT20 could have been every bit as advantageous in the fight for future recognition.Bohannon, however, still believes that his red-ball focus is the right approach for him to take in the short term.”A lot of people are away with the franchise stuff, and it’s excellent, because they’re outside playing cricket, rather than just stuck in the indoor school, facing a flicker or some spin on a mat. But the way I’m looking at it, it’s an excellent opportunity for me to start the season really well and hopefully show people on the international stage what I can do.Bohannon made a half-century for England Lions on the tour of Australia•Getty Images”For me, the pinnacle is still Test cricket. I hope my white-ball game can kick on in the next couple of years, because people are getting paid a hell of a lot of money to play in these competitions, and everyone wants that in their life.”But I look at someone like Joe Root. His sole focus for a period of time has been on Test cricket, and now he’s looking to extend his white-ball cricket as he moves towards the end of his career, I guess. So that’s the way that I hopefully see my own career going. I want to play as much Test cricket as possible. And while I’m doing that, obviously develop my white-ball game so that hopefully I can be part of these competitions in the long run.”And therein lies the beauty of the new attitude that Stokes and McCullum have inculcated in the Test team. Bohannon is confident that, under the new management, those two ambitions do not need to be in opposition to one another.”I don’t feel like I have to change my game in any way,” he says. “Sometimes I think people are reading into the management a little bit different. It’s not just about going out there and smacking it every single ball. It’s about picking balls, picking bowlers, almost like you would do in T20, when certain people have better match-ups.”You have to recognise periods of the game where you’ve got to soak it up, or when you’ve still got five wickets left and the challenge is to get a certain amount in a session to make sure that we bowl for a period of time. So I don’t think it’s about changing the game, it’s just about working on that mindset and when, hopefully, I get into that set-up, it becomes a second nature.”Related

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For the time being, it’s back to the shadow set-up for Bohannon, as part of a 16-man red-ball squad that is set to play a three-day warm-up in Colombo on January 25 before two four-day Tests against Sri Lanka A in Galle. And while the competitive element of his past two trips has been lacking, first due to the terrible weather that cramped the squad’s opportunities in Queensland, then by the Test team’s decision to cancel the final day of their warm-up match in Abu Dhabi in favour of middle practice, Bohannon is adamant that his experiences have been invaluable.”The trips I’ve been on have been awesome,” he says. “In Australia we’d have liked better weather, but in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, everything was based on scenario practice. If you weren’t on the centre wickets or fielding, you were in the nets, and if you weren’t in the nets you were running, gymming, or whatever. The days seemed to go really fast.”It’s always a pleasure to get picked and it’s obviously really exciting, but I wouldn’t say I feel comfortable within the set-up. Because I don’t want to be comfortable. I just want to give it my best, and push my ambitions to fulfil my dream.”

He does not have a remarkable individual record in the role and will want to take this performance as a launching pad for something special

Sidharth Monga16-Apr-20233:38

Bishop: Great to see Indian players like Shahrukh finish matches

During the innings break, M Shahrukh Khan was interviewed by the official broadcaster. He ended the interview by rubbing his hand on the grass and showing the camera “quite a bit” of dew, which had made batting easier as the game progressed. He expected a straightforward chase after the Punjab Kings bowlers – thanks in no small measure to his two-take catches at the boundary – had restricted hosts Lucknow Super Giants to 159.The ground staff must have run the rope and undertaken other dew treatments during that break, which resulted in the pitch retaining some of the difficulty at the start of the chase. Almost an hour and a half later, Shahrukh walked in with 38 runs still required in 4.1 overs and four wickets in hand.Related

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Ravi Bishnoi, for some reason underutilised by Super Giants behind the two fingerspinners Krishnappa Gowtham and Krunal Pandya, was using the bigger leg-side boundary beautifully with his natural turn in to the right-hand batters.Shahrukh does not make sense if you look at traditional metrics. He has never scored a fifty in T20 cricket. Yet this was his 24th IPL match in two seasons and a bit. He has played 45 other matches. He averages 19.02 and strikes at 130.87. His average innings is a 14-ball 19. Yet he gets picked by his state side and his IPL side regularly as a specialist batter.That is hard data. Visual data of Shahrukh suggests a batter who bats lower down the order, doesn’t get many balls to face and tends to go for it from ball one. Yet, if that doesn’t translate into cold numbers, it points towards execution inefficiency.Ball one on the night for him was from Mark Wood, who at that point had figures of 2.5-0-16-1. He had time to visualise it because the previous wicket had brought on a time-out. Shahrukh’s response was just a natural reaction to the ball. It was in the slot, it deserved to be hit, and he hit it over long-on for six. It is credit to him, and the team management, that Shahrukh had no encumbrance that might come with an unremarkable individual record.Shahrukh Khan’s 10-ball 23 sealed the win for Punjab Kings•BCCIShahrukh told the same commentators later that all he wanted was to be blank and react to the ball, which is what he trains for. “I just wanted to keep my mindset really simple,” Shahrukh said. “I just wanted to react to the ball. I think my practice is paying off. I am reacting properly at practice to each and every ball I play. That’s the reason it’s paying off here.”Shahrukh said his starting point is to hit straight, and if the ball is not there, still try to hit it but adjust accordingly. “[That’s because] I am powerful,” he said. “If I go too cheeky, I don’t think it will work for me. So, I just have one thing on my mind. I look to play straight. If anything is here and there, I try and adjust. It’s good that it’s paying off, though.”To his credit, Bishnoi – bowling the last over because he was not introduced until the 15th over – bowled such a length that Shahrukh could neither hit him down the ground nor go inside-out for five of the six balls he bowled to Shahrukh. It was to what would be the last ball of the match Shahrukh managed to go to wide long-off, the shorter side.Shahrukh’s 23 off 10 drew praise from Player of the Match, Sikandar Raza, who got frustrated with Bishnoi’s bowling and ended up holing out. “When I got out, there were a few demons in my head,” Raza said. “Credit to Shahrukh for the way he finished the game. It would have been nice to get a fifty but had we not won, I don’t think I would have felt this good. Much, much credit goes to Shahrukh for finishing the game the way he did.”It will be a moment of relief for Shahrukh that he has managed to carry his side through to a win. He has won only one Player-of-the-Match award. For an IPL team to be backing him so, Shahrukh surely has the skill and the attitude for this format? He will want to take this performance as a launching pad for something special because this format and IPL teams aren’t really known for patience.

He has all the attributes: pace, bounce, swing, left-arm advantage, yorkers, death bowling, middle-overs wickets, around-the-wicket angle, and more

Sidharth Monga19-Mar-20233:21

Tait: Starc close to being an Australia all-time great

Twice in two innings, KL Rahul has faced a hat-trick ball from Mitchell Starc. On both occasions he has walked out following near-perfect deliveries from Starc to Suryakumar Yadav. In the first match, Starc bowled the hat-trick delivery too full. In the second, he nearly repeated the ball that got Suryakumar out.Rahul kept it out. On the surface it looked like a more accomplished longer-formats batter handling the same ball better than one who is being pushed into the longer formats based on his success in T20s and not in List A or first-class cricket. On closer inspection, though, Suryakumar was done in by a ball that seamed to go with the beautiful swing Starc was getting. The hat-trick ball swung in the air, but didn’t change its direction upon pitching.Not to worry, Rahul got his own version of that Suryakumar ball soon enough. The shortest length with which you can hit the stumps with, swinging in in the air, then pitching and seaming some more to beat the bat, which had hoped to cover the line of the swing. At Starc’s pace. If you were teaching a class the meaning of unplayable, you might use that as an illustration.Related

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As Starc himself said, he didn’t do much different in these two ODIs. He tried to swing it, he bowled fast, and he attacked the stumps. This direct approach – high pace, hit the stumps – gives him comfortably the best strike rate among bowlers with 100 wickets or more in history of ODI cricket.When it is swinging and seaming – as it has been this series – Starc is a proper nightmare because he can swing it in a way that it still attacks the stumps. He is one of the only four fast bowlers with 100 wickets or more to have taken more than half of their wickets bowled or lbw. The other three – Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram and Mohammad Sami – benefited heavily from the low Asian pitches and reverse swing, which has been practically regulated out of the game in Starc’s time.With the numbers that Starc has – a strike rate of 25.6, average of 21.78, nine five-fors – it is surely time to see where he sits among the greatest fast bowlers in ODIs. He has all the attributes: pace, bounce, swing, left-arm advantage, yorkers, death bowling, middle-overs wickets, around-the-wicket angle, ability to run through line-ups as seen in the 16 times he has been on a hat-trick, more than anyone since he debuted.Mitchell Starc rattled India again•ESPNcricinfo LtdHowever, ODIs are the toughest to compare players across eras because of how much the playing conditions and the tempo of the game keep changing. Starc has played most of his ODI cricket with reverse-swing practically non-existent, on high-scoring pitches with good bounce, but he also has bowled to more trigger-happy batters needing to score quicker and thus taking more risks. That he has taken only 219 wickets can be an argument against him, but if he plays such little ODI cricket, he plays only the “important” tournaments and series, which reduces matches against outmatched opponents.One way to contextualise Starc among the greats of the format is to see how much better he is than the average bowler of his era. Shiva Jayaraman from ESPNcricinfo’s stats team worked these numbers out for me. Starc averages 9.59 less than the average of fast bowlers in the matches he has played. Among those who have taken 100 wickets or more in ODIs, nine fast bowlers have fared better on this metric. Two of these are not full-time bowlers, which might suggest theirs being used only in seam-friendly conditions, thus skewing that number.The leaves us with seven: Jasprit Bumrah, Shaun Pollock, Glenn McGrath, Josh Hazlewood, Joel Garner, Nathan Bracken and Curtly Ambrose. Bumrah’s numbers are phenomenal: an average 16.56 lower than the average of fast bowlers in matches he has played, and an economy rate 1.17 lower.Starc doesn’t quite do that much better than the others on the economy rate front because of the highly aggressive lengths he bowls in order to get the bowleds and lbws. The flip side is the exceptional strike rate. Those traditional stats – average, strike rate – and that he is so much better than the others in his era should be enough to put him among a handful of the greatest fast bowlers in ODI cricket. Once he is back from injury and adds to his body of work, Bumrah could just end up right alongside Starc.The only argument against Starc can be the volume. However, he has topped the wickets chart in both the World Cups he has played. He won one, and ended up a semi-finalist in the other. How much Starc wants to add to the volume of wickets will probably be decided after the World Cup later this year, but if he has a similar World Cup to the last two, there will be very little keeping him from being recognised as the greatest of all time.

Influence of domestic tournament plain to see as homegrown matchwinners come to fore

Mohammad Isam09-Mar-2023It is commonplace for players from India, Pakistan and Australia to feed their form, confidence, planning and attitude from tournaments like the IPL, PSL and BBL into the international game. That has hardly been the case for Bangladeshi players and the BPL. The nine editions to date haven’t produced many players organically, neither have they influenced the playing style or confidence that Bangladesh’s national side has carried into T20Is.Najmul Hossain Shanto and Towhid Hridoy have bucked this trend for once. The pair reproduced their Sylhet Strikers’ form and partnership in the first T20I in Chattogram, resulting in Bangladesh’s maiden victory against England in the format. The BPL ended less than a month ago, with many of its top performers picked in this Bangladesh squad. The policy has paid dividends in several aspects of this win.Shanto was the BPL’s leading run-getter with 516 runs at an average of 39.69, with four half-centuries. Hridoy made one more fifty, scoring 403 runs at a strike-rate of 140.41. They put together 466 runs in 12 partnerships, with one century stand, the best in the BPL this season.At 43 for two in the sixth over, chasing 157, Bangladesh really needed Shanto and Hridoy, on debut, to keep the run-rate up on a pitch that, as England had discovered, got trickier as the ball got older. Shanto responded by hitting Mark Wood, England’s fastest bowler, for four consecutive boundaries in the seventh over.Shanto went on to hit his third T20I fifty in four matches, following on from the two he scored against Zimbabwe and Pakistan in the T20 World Cup last year. He was the team’s top-scorer in that competition, and has now carried that form through the BPL and the ODIs against England.Related

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Bangladesh determined to develop big-hitting skills with an eye on 2024 T20 World Cup

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Najmul Hossain Shanto's 27-ball fifty lights path for Bangladesh to down world champions

Final countdown: How might England line up for their World Cup defence?

“I have been scoring regularly, which allows extra confidence,” Shanto said. “Game awareness gets better. I had a better understanding of building my innings. I wasn’t given a specific plan. We just tried to continue with the momentum from the openers. We stuck to a normal plan, reacted to the ball. We tried to apply the way we batted in the BPL. It was nothing different than that.”Shanto added that Hridoy’s confidence at the other end also helped him play his shots. Hridoy struck two fours and a six in his 17-ball 24, but like Shanto, looked full of confidence from the BPL. “[Hridoy’s] approach and intent, in his first international match, gave me a lot of confidence. He never got nervous playing against such a big team. We just batted the way we batted in the BPL, where we had some big partnerships.”Shanto said that he hadn’t planned to go after Wood, but focused on finding the gaps, and it all came together. “There was no pre-planning. I reacted to the ball. I tried to use the gaps, which is obviously why I could find the boundaries,” he said.Even the opposition noticed how well Shanto played, arguably changing the course of the game with his quickfire fifty. Phil Salt said that Bangladesh completely aced the 157-run chase.”Shanto played very well in the chase,” Salt said. “I think the openers set the chase up very well for them, and I think in the middle they played really well. I think the lads that were in for them, they found a way of getting a boundary early in the over quite a lot of the time. I think they ran pretty well as well. So, they’ll be sitting in that dressing-room right now, thinking that’s as close to a perfect chase as they’d have wanted these conditions.”Shanto said that he sensed that Bangladesh were slowly coming into control of the game from the midpoint of England’s innings. The visitors added only 76 runs in the last ten overs, after they had rushed to 80 for 1 in the first half.”The way we made the comeback in the last ten overs [of the England innings], that gave us the confidence” he said. “Then we started well with the bat. We knew that two more partnerships will get us close to the win.”Bangladesh’s fast bowlers – who only gave away 21 runs in the last four overs – were instrumental in turning their fortunes around, not least Hasan Mahmud, another star of the BPL, whose 17 wickets for Rangpur Rangers had been the joint-most in the competition.”He bowled an important spell. I think his BPL performance gave him confidence today,” Shanto said. “Hasan Mahmud, Taskin Ahmed and Mustafiz bowled really well in the last few overs. They played a big role in closing them down on 156 for 6.”Bangladesh have been a poor T20I team for a long time, but the recent T20 World Cup offered them some timely confidence after they won two games in the competition for the first time. Shanto scored key runs, Bangladesh won some close games, which all added up to their increased self-belief.The talk of impact, a watchword in the latter half of 2022, has finally come through for them. “The batsmen were given freedom in this series,” Shanto said. “Impact can’t happen quickly. It takes time. It depends on wickets, conditions. I think the batsmen have a lot more freedom, and soon there will be more impact.”

Wearing blue and facing a side in yellow led by an Australia legend, the England allrounder was in her element

Vishal Dikshit25-Mar-2023Nat Sciver-Brunt has done it plenty of times before. Donning the blues, against a side in yellow, in a crunch game, with the bat especially. And against several other teams too.Just last year, she started the ODI World Cup with an unbeaten 109 off 85 against arch-rivals Australia that took England from 177 for 5 to the brink of their target of 311. A month later, England were chasing a massive 357 in the final – yep, against Australia again – and Sciver-Brunt stood tall amid the wreckage with an unbeaten 148. No other England batter got to 30.Related

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When she returned from a three-month mental-health break later in the year, she was Player of the Series in the ODIs against West Indies, the second-highest scorer in the T20 World Cup last month with 216 runs at a strike rate of 141.17, and struck two scintillating knocks – a rescue act after England were 29 for 3 against India that ultimately set up an 11-run win, and a 29-ball fifty in a record-breaking win over Pakistan.The WPL eliminator on Friday evening at the DY Patil Stadium was a knockout game for two teams but it seemed like just another evening for Sciver-Brunt. She was wearing blue against a UP Warriorz side in yellow led by Australia’s Alyssa Healy, and she hammered an unbeaten 72 off 38 balls – she reached her fifty off 26 balls – that gave Mumbai Indians a total of 182 that they wouldn’t have reached without her.Sciver-Brunt also owes one to her England team-mate Sophie Ecclestone, who put her down at mid-off when she was on 6, off the last ball of the powerplay. Sciver-Brunt thanked Ecclestone after the game, but she first made Warriorz pay for the missed chance.Sciver-Brunt’s batting style doesn’t get the kind of attention that those of Healy or Shafali Verma do because she doesn’t hit as many sixes or go aerial as often, but her near-effortless ability to pick gaps and find the boundary regularly deflates oppositions in a very similar manner.The field spread after Sciver-Brunt was dropped, but short third and short fine leg were in the circle, and she scooped Ecclestone fine on the leg side for four in the seventh over. Top-order wickets often bring the pace down – even in T20s – but not in Sciver-Brunt’s world. Her confidence and self-belief were such that she hit the pedal harder after Hayley Matthews holed out in the 10th over. Sciver-Brunt unleashed her A game when she saw Warriorz’s most inexperienced bowler, the teenager Parshavi Chopra, come on in the 12th over.Sciver-Brunt has also picked up 10 wickets this season•BCCIShe grabbed the initiative off the first ball of the over, pulling a marginally short ball between long-on and deep midwicket for her fourth four. Chopra was going to go fuller now, and probably toss it up too because that’s her strength, and predicting that, Sciver-Brunt danced down to the next ball and lofted the converted half-volley over long-off for six. That forced Chopra to go a little short again, and Sciver-Brunt quickly rocked deep in her crease and swatted the ball past short fine leg for four more. The 16-year-old Chopra’s 16-run over lifted Mumbai’s run rate from 7.45 to 8.16.Once she crossed 50 and Mumbai entered the death overs, Sciver-Brunt took on the experienced left-arm spinner Rajeshwari Gayakwad. With nifty footwork again, she skipped down for an elegant inside-out drive over the covers and followed up with a short-arm pull off the next ball, inevitably flatter and shorter.Sciver-Brunt later said she had “surprised myself with a couple of shots”. Healy, who has seen her collect runs in this fashion plenty of times from behind the stumps, was a spectator again.”She’s a class player and I think she’s the No. 1 allrounder in the world at the moment,” Healy said at her post-match press conference. “There’s no secret to why that is, she plays good cricket shots and she bowls and fields really well as well. Yeah, I’ve been at the other end of a couple of her knocks which has been great to watch.”She’s a classy-looking batter, she doesn’t ever try anything too outlandish, she just plays nice and straight, plays along the ground most of the time and gets the job done for her team, which is probably the most amazing aspect of her cricket, that she stands up for her team in those big moments.”Sciver-Brunt topped her innings off with a fairytale last-ball six off Deepti Sharma. Her innings put her on top of Mumbai’s run charts for the season, and she also has the best strike rate in the side (149.45) as well as 10 wickets – she’s more than lived up to her billing as the joint-second-most-expensive buy at the auction. And if this yellow-blue rivalry is going to become a thing in the future – like Australia vs England or Chennai Super Kings vs Mumbai Indians in the IPL – the WPL will always remember who wrote its first chapter.

Coach Andrew McDonald hopes the batters can tire out England’s quick at Old Trafford

Andrew McGlashan11-Jul-2023Mark Wood has changed the mood around this Ashes and Australia know they need to find a way to exhaust him to nullify his impact.Wood claimed seven wickets at Headingley, including 5 for 34 in the first innings, and touched speeds of 96mph as Australia faced an entirely new challenge to one that confronted them in the first two Tests.At Edgbaston and Lord’s, Australia managed to put considerable overs into England’s quicks but at Headingley their two innings lasted for 60.4 and 67.1 overs. Wood did extend himself into a seven-over spell at the back-end of Australia’s second innings, but Ben Stokes was largely able to use him for maximum impact.Related

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It made the double loss of Marnus Labuschagne and Steven Smith even more of pivotal moment, especially given England were a bowler down with Ollie Robinson having suffered back spasms.Wood’s performance continued an impressive record against Australia which has now brought him 34 wickets at 27.76, although prior to Leeds the majority of that had come from the 2021-22 Ashes tour where he claimed 17 at 26.64, a rare bright spot in a forgettable series for England.He caused Labuschagne and Smith uncomfortable moments, removing them a combined five times in the four matches he played. Both were again rushed by Wood’s pace at Headingley and this time his efforts at hurrying up Australia’s top order and cutting through the tail in the first innings ended with victory. He also brought wickets at the other end; it was no coincidence that he was bowling when Moeen Ali claimed his double.”I think the plans we had leading in, they’ll remain the same,” Australia coach Andrew McDonald said. “In the first innings he was swinging the ball at pace and that’s a challenge for top order, lower order.”You can plan for things but when you get out there you’ve got to be able to adapt and adjust. And maybe we didn’t do that in the first innings of the game.”Going forward, we’re going to be challenged with that. He’s a good bowler, he gives them variety in their attack and I think if we can put a few overs into him we saw that the ball speed can drop off a little bit.”But when he’s got his tail up he’s going to be a handful, so I think deny him any opportunities to make inroads and keep him out there a bit longer.”When Wood knocked over Australia’s tail in the first innings it was largely with the fuller delivery, crashing into the stumps of Mitchell Starc and Todd Murphy while pinning Pat Cummins lbw. In contrast, Australia bowled shorter at England’s lower order when they helped add 95 in 10 overs after lunch on the second day, and used a similar approach in the chase.By way of comparison, Australia bowled 52 deliveries classed as short or short of a length to England’s Nos. 8-11 in the Test, which brought three wickets but cost 65 runs. England bowled 40 balls classed as good length or full at Australia’s tail, taking four wickets and only costing 21 runs.McDonald believed that conditions played a big part in what tactics worked well, but added Australia would assess how they went about it.”The short ball’s been used more regularly in this series than I’ve ever seen before,” McDonald said. “And with the short ball comes the risk of runs, and that sometimes happens – shorter boundaries, faster outfield and the short ball probably didn’t reap the same rewards with the lower order as it has.”But I still think it’s going to be a plan that’s employed throughout the series. I think if it works you say that it works, and if it doesn’t then you’re probably on the opposite side.”Day one Mark Wood had ball speed and the ball was shifting, the overheads were pretty thick and you tend to pitch the ball up a lot more in those conditions. When the sun comes out and the ball’s not shifting as much, you’ve probably got less options on the fuller side so we’ve got to always balance that. We critique ourselves pretty harshly so we’ll be looking into that no doubt.”Ultimately, McDonald felt it was the two-hour session late on the third day after rain where the game took its decisive swing as England worked through Australia’s middle and lower order although Travis Head’s 77 gave the visitors a chance.”[There are] some areas where we can no doubt improve and a little bit of credit goes to England,” he said. “At certain times they got the conditions in their favour and they maximised those, and I thought [Saturday] went a long way to deciding the fortunes of today.”In difficult batting conditions, they maximised them with the ball and put us probably in a position where we didn’t have enough runs to be as creative as we would have liked.”

Australia’s No. 3 finds form at crucial juncture to move side a step closer to retaining the urn

Matt Roller22-Jul-20232:13

Labuschagne: For Australia it’s all about retaining the Ashes

Two balls into the 58th over of Australia’s third innings, Marnus Labuschagne made an unusual request. He was standing at the non-striker’s end and Stuart Broad had finally convinced umpire Nitin Menon that the old ball had gone out of shape. It no longer fit through the metal gauge, so Menon and Joel Wilson called for a box of alternatives and picked out a replacement.Before Menon threw the ball to Anderson, he granted Labuschagne’s request to study the ball himself in order to pick up clues as to how it would behave. “You could feel it straightaway… it was a harder ball, and the seam was a little bit bigger,” he later said. England’s fielders were bemused by what they saw as a characteristically eccentric demand, and Ben Stokes let him know as much.”They weren’t happy! They weren’t happy that I wanted to have a look at the ball,” Labuschagne said. “In this country, it’s pretty clear: if you look at the ball once you can tell straightaway what it’s going to do. I looked at the ball and was like, ‘Well, this is going to swing’ and I threw it back. They were obviously not very happy with that.Related

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“I said it to Ben out there. ‘Why do you want to look at the ball?’ he asked me. I said, ‘To see if it’s going to swing.’ Jimmy Anderson, first ball he bowled to me, big inswinger. It just helps you prepare. The ball before was reversing slightly. It’s just being meticulous. For me, it was pretty common sense: why would I not want to have a look at the ball?”It was a moment that highlighted Labuschagne’s painstaking attention to detail. He is notorious for his work ethic, and is the hardest trainer in an Australia side that also features Steven Smith; he has spent hours upon hours in the nets on this tour, using Andy Flower – who is working with the squad as a consultant – as a personal batting coach.This has not been a straightforward tour for Labuschagne. He made starts in both innings of the World Test Championship final, with 26 and 41, but then managed only 144 in his first six hits of this series. He reflected that his batting was “a bit of a rabble” at Edgbaston, but he has finally found his rhythm and form to deliver a fifty and a hundred when Australia needed him to step up.”In the first innings, I felt really confident in my decision-making, leaving the ball outside off, being able to make really good decisions when it comes straight,” he said. “I felt confident when they did go short that I could make really good decisions there. I felt it was all coming together and it was nice to get a bigger score today.”ESPNcricinfo LtdLabuschagne has been the only Australia batter to successfully negate Mark Wood across the last two Tests, a stark contrast to 18 months ago when he was dismissed by him three times in 61 balls. He was wrapped on the gloves on this abbreviated fourth day but has largely stayed in control despite Wood’s extra pace.”A lot of my stuff I [put down] to technique,” he said. “I feel like my game is in a really good space to be facing him, the technical changes I’ve made. It allows me to make really good decisions and get into positions to be able to either pull, duck, leave, sway. I think the key to batting is having as many options as you can for a delivery.”Shortly after the ball change, the umpires decided that it was too dark for England’s seamers to bowl, instead forcing them to bowl spin. Labuschagne seized on the opportunity, running down the pitch to launch Joe Root for back-to-back sixes over long-on.It was a calculated gamble, recognising the opportunity that Australia had to make a dent in the deficit and thereby force England to bat again if the rain holds off on Sunday. “Having two spinners coming on, it was an opportunity for us to put a little bit of pressure back on them,” he said.Marnus Labuschagne goes on the attack during his century•Getty ImagesLabuschagne eventually fell to Root, mistiming a cut shot having earlier outside-edged an arm ball past slip, but not before bringing up his second overseas century and his first in England. He was convinced he had not hit the ball and had to drag himself off after UltraEdge said otherwise, but his two innings have kept Australia in this game.”If we end up saving the match then it’ll be a pretty good moment but until then it’s sort of sitting on the edge,” he said. “It’s always a privilege to score a Test hundred and you have to recognise that, it is special. But currently, sitting here, it’s still a bit bittersweet with the circumstances of the game.”Labuschagne has not had the tour he wanted in England: he has been getting himself out to balls he should have put away, and shown little of his usual ruthlessness. But this week, he has made Australia’s highest and joint-second-highest scores of the match; if they escape with a draw, they will have him to thank for it.

This is the format they are least strong in and it is because they haven’t adapted to its run-scoring needs as much as the best teams

Sidharth Monga07-Dec-2023If, as expected, Rohit Sharma joins Rahul Dravid as the leader of the Indian cricket team until the T20 World Cup in June, there will be an element of personal pursuit to it: a final attempt at a world title perhaps, both for captain and coach. They could have walked away with heads held high, even if not on the ultimate high, after winning 10 straight matches en route to the 2023 ODI World Cup final, but there must have been that temptation to try to complete the story once the offer was made.To be fair to Rohit and Dravid, this is not exactly an easy assignment, which is probably why they have been asked to continue in the first place. It points to a lack of planning from the decision-makers who had neither thought of a succession plan nor asked the current leaders if they wanted to continue until four days after the World Cup final.They had put everything in the ODI World Cup basket, then realised they had to start gearing up for a T20 World Cup. By the time they would have advertised for coaching candidates, interviewed them and then got someone on board, India wouldn’t have any matches left to try and build a combination. And this is not just any format, but the one India are least strong in.Surely Dravid and Rohit know what a risk this is to their legacy? India are not laggards but they are nowhere close to dominating the T20 format as they do Tests and ODIs. At full strength, they are the team to beat in ODIs as we saw in the World Cup. In Tests, it still looks like it will be a while before any side can threaten to take a home series off India while they themselves continue to be competitive wherever they tour. In T20Is, even at full strength, they are, well, on the top end of the mid card.There are a couple of structural issues with the composition of the XI. Despite being home to the biggest T20 league, despite being the biggest cricket country, India doesn’t produce enough allrounders to give them the kind of depth that allows them to play freely. One of their two allrounders is injury prone, the other one easy to contain when he bats against spin. They ideally need more batting power, which can leave the bowling thin, a risk they have not been prepared to take even though the quality of bowling has less incremental advantage in T20 cricket than in longer formats.The other issue is that in T20s, India is largely a country of top-order batters who set up to bat through an innings. There is not enough reward internally, not enough recognition externally, and thus not enough cushion to fail, for batters who hit out selflessly in the middle order.Accumulation is perhaps too ingrained in the DNA of batters, who have had to show volume and averages to get selected right from a young age through every level before they reach the IPL or international cricket. All of India’s previous three knockout defeats in T20 World Cups can be, and should be, put down to conservative batting, but what is remembered? The no-ball from R Ashwin and the dropped catch in the 2016 semi-final, and captain Rohit’s words that India should have bowled better in the 2022 semi-final.Can Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid take India to glory in the T20 World Cup?•AFP/Getty ImagesWith Rohit’s likely replacement as captain, Hardik Pandya, being injury-prone, the move to ask Rohit to continue seems to have as much to do with his captaincy as his newfound form in the ODI World Cup, which finally matched the exemplary intent he has been showing over the last two years. That, then, creates another issue: if India decide they need a more dynamic No. 3 than Virat Kohli, do they have it in them to make an unpopular decision, which becomes even more unpopular if they retain one and drop the other?Also what’s best for the Indian team is not always best for the IPL team, which is the only non-international T20 cricket for most of India’s players. Take Liam Livingstone’s example. He was too good to not be playing for England, but there was no room at the top of the order, where he used to bat. So Livingstone made sure he batted in the middle order in every league he played, bowled a lot of legspin and offspin in the nets, and he presented himself as a middle-order option capable of bowling an over or three when required.A similar scenario for India is KL Rahul, who is a good enough wicketkeeper-batter in the middle order as he showed for Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2016, but he can’t be asked to play an IPL season in that role for Lucknow Super Giants just because that will help India in the T20 World Cup. Forget co-ordinating priorities with an IPL team, there wasn’t enough continuity in India’s interim team management who took four matches to give Jitesh Sharma a go when it is clear that India need a wicketkeeper in the middle order and not in the top three, where Ishan Kishan kept batting.Hardly has an India player emerged and added as much to his game as Livingstone or New Zealand’s Glenn Phillips to make himself a better fit in a team combination. They are all near perfectionists at their core skill and obviously work hard on their fielding, but you rarely see a batter bowl in India’s nets, for example. Phillips spends close to an hour bowling alone before a New Zealand net session.It is still a testament to the strong basics of India’s cricketers that they are dominant in two formats and there or thereabouts in the third. Starting this Sunday in Durban, India have six internationals – three of them against Afghanistan – and possibly half the IPL to see what they want to see before they select their squad for the T20 World Cup.That the conditions for the tournament, to be played in the USA and West Indies, are largely an unknown will probably make it a slightly more level playing field for India. Also the beauty of T20 cricket is that form and momentum matter less in it than in other formats. You can outsmart or upset any team on a given day.Dravid and Rohit, or whoever the captain is, don’t really have time to bring about a culture change in India’s T20 cricket, but if they manage to make a bold move or two and manage to succeed, they could create a blueprint for the future.