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An extract from a new book on Sri Lankan cricket looks at the chucking witch hunt the team endured on their 1995-96 tour of Australia

Nicholas Brookes09-Dec-2022For Sri Lanka, there was one last test before the 1996 World Cup: a near three-month tour of Australia. Nothing would come easy, but the opportunity to test their mettle down under meant a lot. They knew they would be thrown into a pressure cooker. “I remember on the plane, the senior guys said, ‘It’s going to be really tough. You have to be really tough to beat Australia in Australia,'” Ravindra Pushpakumara recalled. “We thought, what do you mean tough? I don’t know – honestly, what do you mean? We have to sledge? We have to fight? No, you need to be tough mentally.”Pushpakumara sees this toughness as a natural consequence of the Sri Lankan experience. “We tough, mentally tough,” he contests. “Our cricketers come from the villages. They were very tough. I used to go to practice without food – that’s mentally tough. I’d walk six, seven kilometres to go to practice – that’s mentally tough. I didn’t have shoes for the whole year – that’s mentally tough. It comes from our nature.” When you have to prove yourself a survivor day after day, how can something as trivial as cricket lump pressure on your shoulders? Pushpakumara’s “just a game” mentality, seemingly shared by a number of his teammates, no doubt helped Sri Lanka deal with the trials they faced down Under.From the moment they arrived, it felt like all of Australia was intent on destabilising their progress. Sniffer dogs met them at the airport, putting noses out of joint – and the team were shunted from the warmth of Cairns to the colder Tasmania, before being dumped into the cauldron-esque WACA for the opening Test.Related

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• How the cricket world reacted to Murali's chucking controversy

• When Murali bared his soul

Nonetheless, Arjuna Ranatunga remained upbeat. “We are a very young, positive side,” he told the press before the match. “Our fielding has improved and we have three bowlers who can take wickets.” Strikingly, he made sure to remind the world of the significance of cricket in Sri Lanka. “Our players are deeply committed for their country,” he said. “Everyone at home is keen on cricket rather than the other problems we have. If we can do well here, there will be a lot of smiling faces back home – and that is important to us.”Optimism quickly dissipated. Sri Lanka might have been encouraged by the algal virus which slowed the pitch – yet it quickly proved curse rather than blessing. A number of batters got in, but none stuck around; it was a long, hard slog in the field as the hosts pounded their way to 617 for 5. The game was up: though Hashan Tillakaratne’s 119 helped restore a little dignity, it was hard to gloss an innings defeat.Ultimately, the match was defined by an incident that had little to do with cricket. In the 17th over of Australia’s innings, umpire Khizer Hayat examined the ball and said its seam had been tampered with. There were three conversations between Ranatunga and the umpires, but the ball was not confiscated – as Sri Lanka requested and the rules dictate.Umpire Peter Parker and Sri Lanka captain Arjuna Ranatunga discuss the state of the ball during the Perth Test•Getty ImagesThough umpire Peter Parker was initially unconvinced, a report was submitted to match referee Graham Dowling. With little evidence and no thought of consulting the Sri Lankan management, Dowling issued an extraordinary press release, stating: “The Sri Lankan captain, Arjuna Ranatunga, was notified that the condition of the ball had clearly been altered by a member or members of his team during the course of the 17th over.” The Lankans had been branded cheats prior to any proper investigation. Worse, they were effectively gagged by the ICC laws – barred from making any statement to the press.The next morning, the “tampering’ Lankans” name was dragged through the mud in newspapers the world over. Though they had no real reason to manipulate the ball – and certainly no bowlers looking to exploit reverse swing – Sri Lanka held an emergency meeting at the close of play. “I was thinking, ‘What do I gain by tampering if I’m Murali [Muthiah Muralidaran]?'” Chandika Hathurusingha reflected when we spoke on the issue. “And I remember [Michael] Slater hitting one shot down the ground into the concrete stand. I was actually thinking, what would , bowling 110, 120 [kph]?” All 11 steadfastly denied tampering with the ball. A bewildered Ranatunga was seen on the brink of tears.When Pakistan had been accused of tampering in a tour match at the WACA earlier in the summer, it quickly became clear that an algal virus had created an unusually abrasive pitch. Equally, there had been consistent complaints about the quality of Kookaburra balls throughout the summer. Considering the facts alone – an abrasive pitch, a potentially dodgy ball, which the umpires did not confiscate – how could anyone accurately assess the cause of the damage, especially with Slater smiting the ball into the stands?Secure in their innocence, Sri Lanka went on the offensive. The BCCSL threatened the ICC with legal action – and when the second new ball showed similar signs of degeneration, the media began to change tack. Two weeks later, the team were cleared of any wrongdoing. An editorial in the bemoaned the fact the ICC report “expressed ‘sincere regrets’ to the Sri Lankans but did not include an apology. The best that can be said is that the ICC came to the right conclusion, if belatedly, and that the Sri Lankan players conducted themselves with dignity throughout the unfortunate episode.” Some felt the incident had racial undertones; certainly, there was a sense that England or New Zealand might have been treated differently.The tampering scandal was swallowed whole by the circus that engulfed the second Test. In so many ways, this tour revolved around Murali. It changed his life: during the early carefree days of the trip, he would slip out of the team hotel and explore Cairns unrecognised; by the end of the tour, he couldn’t step into open air without flashbulbs bursting in his face. The storm had been brewing. Murali had no idea that his action had been reported twice by match referees prior to the tour; nor that umpires Darrell Hair, Nigel Plews and Steve Dunne had expressed concerns to match referee Raman Subba Row during Sri Lanka’s recent trip to Sharjah.

Even in 1995, there was the stench of something rotten. Robert Craddock reported that “a series of secret conversations between leading umpires, high-ranking officials and disgruntled players preceded the stunning decision to call Murali”

“Chucking” was becoming an increasingly contentious issue – strangely, often couched in moralistic terms. For many, it was a scourge on cricket, a repugnant canker that must be removed. The chucker was a dirty cheat – even today, few acts on the cricket field are accompanied by such a grave sense of wrongdoing. Yet, as Ian Peebles pointed out in his 1968 book on the subject: “Surely the essence of sharp practice of cheating is the covert and deliberate disregard or breaking of a rule or agreement. The suspect bowler subjects himself to the judgement of the umpires and up to eighty thousand people. He makes no attempt to conceal anything, in the confidence that, in his own judgement, he is in no way infringing the letter or spirit of the law.”Perhaps chucking was transformed into a deplorable crime by the way it was framed. As Australian influence grew during the early ’90s, the country’s administrators seemed to declare themselves moral guardians of the game. Just as it was their duty to rid the game of the Asians who would pick at a seam, they felt obliged to crack down on the chuckers who threatened to bring cricket into disrepute. Suspicion surrounding Murali’s action had amped up after he took seven wickets in a warm-up match against Queensland. Now, not only was he a threat to the sanctity of the sport, but to the reputation of this Australian side. Moving forward, TV cameras zeroed in on his action in the nets. Sri Lanka coach Dav Whatmore was troubled, and told Arjuna as much. Together, they decided that Murali should sit out the three-day game in Tasmania before the first Test.Meanwhile, ICC match referee Subba Row had been in touch with the BCCSL, imploring Sri Lanka to take their own look at Murali. Whatmore knew he had to get ahead of the game, so he bought a video camera and began shooting his star spinner. Both he and Murali were convinced there was no problem, but realised that might not be immediately clear to outsiders.After all, Murali’s mechanics simply cannot be replicated – in a sense, it is as though his body was built to bowl offspin. Not only was he blessed with an extremely supple wrist, his right shoulder was flexible almost to the point of double-jointedness; on top of this, he had a slight deformity which meant he could not fully straighten his right arm. Were it not for these physical abnormalities there is no way he would be able to impart such lavish turn. Yet, these elements equally combined to create the illusion that Murali was chucking. Those defending him were clear in their stance: Yes, the arm was slightly bent at the point of release, but only because it straighten. It would take Murali many years to prove he wasn’t breaking the rules.The whole squad woke up with butterflies on Boxing Day morning. This was the big time: 55,000 crammed into the MCG; Australians from Darwin to Devonport gathered around their TVs. Pre-’96, Sri Lanka often struggled to attract broadcasters for their Tests; the marquee sporting event of the Australian summer was a chance for them to prove their worth.Murali undergoing biomechanics testing at the University of Western Australia in 2004•AFPArjuna opted to bowl, turning to his star spinner just before lunch. Murali thought nothing of the fact that Hair stood further back than usual; nor was he concerned when his second ball was flagged. Only when his third delivery was called a no-ball too did he sense something was wrong. He asked Hair if he was cutting the side crease. The umpire’s frank response chilled Murali to the core. “No. It’s your action. You’re chucking.”Arjuna arrived on the scene for a lengthy discussion. Though he encouraged Murali to keep bowling normally, it’s hard to imagine how the spinner found the strength to carry on. “It was so insulting,” Murali told me when we spoke on the matter. Hair called no-ball another five times in his three-over spell. Had a crack burst from the ground and offered to swallow Murali whole, there’s little doubt he would have willingly obliged.Instead, he soldiered on. Ranatunga switched him to Dunne’s end; though Dunne had previously expressed doubts over Murali’s action, he told Hathurusingha, fielding at square leg, that he wouldn’t call him during the Test. In his mind, doing so was tantamount to playing God. Mercifully, his arm remained by his side. But by tea on the second day, Hair decided he’d had enough. Unless Murali was removed, he would call “no-ball” regardless of where he was stood. His sudden strikes as strange, given the fact that he had stood in four Sri Lanka ODIs in the past four months. For many, it is hard to escape the sense that the incident was timed to cause maximum humiliation. Even Steve Waugh later admitted that “it was a bit unfair the way it unfolded”. Murali had been crucified for the whole world to see.His tour, and his whole career, lay in tatters. Privately, Murali planned for the worst-case scenario, hoping legspin could provide a lifeline. But the team stood firm behind him. “Arjuna and Aravinda [de Silva] supported me a lot,” he remembers. “They said, you’re not doing anything wrong; we will challenge this.” Sri Lanka could have easily yielded and sent Murali home, but Ranatunga insisted they rally around him. “If he had any other captain, I don’t think he would have survived,” Pushpakumara opined. The incident was hugely destabilising, but it helped the Lankans develop a sort of siege mentality. As Asanka Gurusinha put it, “We were together [before], but that brought us very, very close.”The ICC were quick to stand behind Hair: the umpire had become judge, jury and executioner. Murali made it through a ten-over spell in an ODI in Hobart, but was called three times by Ross Emerson during his first over in the following match. At least the team had a plan. Sensing Hair had been calling haphazardly, Murali switched to legbreaks – widely considered impossible to chuck. Emerson fell headfirst into the trap, calling one a thrown no-ball.

For many, chucking was a scourge on cricket, a repugnant canker that must be removed. The chucker was a dirty cheat – even today, few acts on the cricket field are accompanied by such a grave sense of wrongdoing

With this one fell swoop, humiliation shifted from bowler to umpire’s shoulders. Clearly, Emerson had no idea if Murali was bowling some balls and throwing others. His calls were coming at random. The incident lifted Murali from his pit of despair. His tour was over, but the injustice he had been subjected to was plain to see. A volley of boos rained down on Emerson, who needed a police escort to leave the field. Standing in his first ODI, he had made himself look a fool – and exposed the sham that simmered beneath the surface of the scandal.Even in 1995, there was the stench of something rotten. On 27th December, Robert Craddock reported in the that “a series of secret conversations between leading umpires, high-ranking officials and disgruntled players preceded the stunning decision to call Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan”. He went on to reveal that “at least one high-ranking Australian official felt strongly Muralitharan be exposed as a ‘thrower’ and had a lengthy bar-side conversation with a Test umpire three weeks ago forcibly expressing this point”. Clearly, such a discussion between a partisan national representative and a supposedly impartial employee of the ICC, saw both men wading into murky water. It suggested collusion: something Steve Waugh hinted at when he later said, “I think Darrell Hair, we all knew, was probably going to make that call.”Dunne subsequently claimed the umpires’ “dressing room was never free of at least one member of the ACB”. The Australian board’s CEO Graham Halbish damningly admitted to telling Hair “that if he called [Murali] for throwing he would have the full backing of the ACB”. Prior to the tour, Australia’s coach Bob Simpson asked the official board photographer to take photos of Murali’s action – even suggesting his preferred angles. This was the antithesis of a fair and balanced trial.Yet shockingly, as the Sri Lankan author Michael Roberts pointed out, all involved felt they were “serving the long-term interests of cricket”. They seemingly forgot that targeting one of the opposition’s stars so forcefully created a serious conflict of interest. Equally, they went about their business without a shred of care for the bowler. Murali was just 23 – a rising star from a fledgling cricket nation; the type of talent that should be nurtured and by those who want to see the game flourish. No one can criticise these men for suspecting Murali of throwing, but did his humiliation need to be played out in front of the biggest TV audience of the year? As Murali put it to me 25 years later, “The only question I have is why didn’t he do it before? Why did he wait for Boxing Day?”India VikingWhile Sri Lanka continued to toil across the country, Murali was sent to Daryl Foster in Perth to prove his legitimacy. This was an ideal solution: the UWA’s department of human movement and exercise science offered facilities, and an air of impartiality, that Sri Lanka could not. Murali bowled under the gaze of high-speed cameras; the footage was enough to convince doctors that he did not extend his elbow while delivering the ball. Murali had been vindicated.Though he was in the clear for now, his trials were far from over. For the next 15 years, Murali laboured under a cloud of suspicion; wherever he went, he had to endure grudging handshakes and brush off unfounded allegations. It must have been tough to carry on. “It made me a very strong-minded person,” he told me. “I will never give up.”An Island’s Eleven: the Story of Sri Lankan Cricket

Suryakumar seemed to have the chase in control for the longest time until Arshdeep entered and changed the game at the death

Sruthi Ravindranath23-Apr-20231:15

Moody: Arshdeep a threat in the powerplay and at the death

Nature is healing. Piyush Chawla is rolling back the years. Suryakumar Yadav is back doing Suryakumar Yadav things. And Arshdeep Singh is back to taking wickets in a bunch – hasn’t been too long since he did that – in addition to defending totals in crunch situations, one game after another.For Suryakumar, though, it has been a long wait. He has endured a rough few months, often not striking the ball as he used to. The guy who pulled a Jofra Archer bouncer for a six on his first ball in international cricket was instead collecting unwanted records – like bagging three consecutive golden ducks in ODIs – during this time. The guy who has been owning the T20 format ever since he made his international debut in 2021 was struggling to even get going. Since 2022, he has had the most runs (1893) and the best strike rate (171.77) in T20s (minimum 20 innings). But it has been a quiet few months for Suryakumar.Related

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• As it happened – Punjab Kings get the better of Mumbai Indians

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Against Chennai Super Kings this season, he nicked one behind while attempting to sweep. Against Delhi Capitals, he helped a short ball to fine leg and fell for a first-ball duck. On any other day, these shots would have produced results in his favour. In the first match of this season against Royal Challengers Bangalore, he played a uncharacteristic innings, scoring a 15-ball 16. It had been a gloomy start in the IPL for him, barring a 25-ball 43 against Kolkata Knight Riders.On Saturday, Mumbai were coming up against Kings’ big total of 214. At the halfway mark, the hosts seemed to be nowhere close to the required run rate. But only two teams have successfully chased down 200-plus targets this season, and on both occasions, the winning team needed about 120 in the last ten overs. A blinder is what Mumbai desperately needed. And it was still doable on the Wankhede surface where dew usually favours the chasing team.Suryakumar walked into the field with Mumbai needing 131 off 63 balls. He swept Rahul Chahar behind square for a four on the third ball he faced. The fun started in the next over when three of Liam Livingstone’s deliveries were swept fine for consecutive boundaries. Until then, the Mumbai crowd had reserved their cheers for Sachin Tendulkar, who turns 50 on Sunday and was interviewed by Ravi Shastri on the sidelines for the broadcaster. Now the whole stadium broke into a “Surya, Surya” chant.Suryakumar Yadav put on a show with his usual mix of innovative shots•BCCIIt was all Suryaesque from then on. Flick-pulling a slower short ball to the shorter boundary at fine leg. Getting on one knee to cut away a Nathan Ellis’ back-of-a-length ball over short third. Falling over while playing the paddle to bring up his fastest IPL fifty – off 23 balls. Showing off his superb wrist work by whipping Sam Curran over fine leg to bring the equation down to 40 off 18. Doing all of it with an air of nonchalance – all in all, it was a classic SKY innings.”Form is a funny thing,” Mumbai head coach Mark Boucher said after the match. “It’s always nice for Surya to get some runs, especially the way that he does, it looks pretty spectacular. Sometimes you judge it by the numbers. He’s been hitting the ball really well in the nets. It was just a matter of time before he translated that into runs. So grateful for having him in some good form, hitting the ball so sweet and playing so devastating just like he did tonight. It bodes well for the future for us going forward.”It was all hunky dory till then in the chase, with Cameron Green also doing his bit with a 43-ball 67. The game was almost in Mumbai’s hands.Enter Arshdeep, the man who’s been tasked with bowling the tough overs for Punjab Kings and India in the shortest format. Around this time last year, Arsheep, who is being touted as the “next big thing” in Indian cricket, bowled a tight 19th over to MS Dhoni and helped Kings defend 188. Since the IPL 2022, he’s risen through the ranks and has done some phenomenal stuff (like this) at the highest level.Arshdeep Singh finished with four wickets to his name•Associated PressEarlier in the chase, he had dismissed Ishan Kishan for 1 for his 50th IPL wicket. In the 18th over, Tim David had just dispatched his low full toss for a six off the first ball of the over. Arshdeep nailed the yorker next ball and landed another low full toss off which David took a single to give Suryakumar the strike. The boisterous home crowd got behind Suryakumar once more. He bowled a low full toss again, but this time, Suryakumar’s flick resulted in a superb catch in the midwicket region by Atharva Taide. Mumbai’s hopes were still not dashed, with David and Tilak Varma in the middle.A 15-run 19th over brought the equation down to 16 needed off six balls. The crowd had quietened a bit at this point, and there was a lot of chatter among Kings players. Just one run came off the first two balls. On the third ball, Varma took a swing at a full ball and missed it, and the ball went on to break the middle stump. The next delivery was again a full ball on middle, this time to Nehal Wadhera, the Impact Player. The new middle stump met the same fate. And that’s how Arshdeep gatecrashed Suryakumar and Mumbai’s party.It was also a game that came alive in the second half of each innings. Kings had slowed down after a decent start, with the run rate hovering around eight until the 15th over. The carnage began in the next over in which Arjun Tendulkar conceded 31 runs, with Curran and Harpreet Singh Bhatia hitting four fours and two sixes. Kings plundered 96 runs off the last five overs; the second-most runs scored in that period in IPL history.

Is it Hadlee’s 9 for 52? Or Broad’s 8 for 15? Or is it neither of those? A comprehensive rating system reveals all

Anantha Narayanan26-Aug-2023This article is a complete overhaul of the historic and epochal Wisden 100 list of best Test bowling performances released in 2001, and the revised version, called the Red Cherry 25, published on ESPNcricinfo in 2018. During the 22 years since the publication of that first list, there have been many insights, suggestions, data revelations, and a far better understanding of this unique concept has been developed. This new list, called Bowl-100, incorporates many improvements, conceptually, contextually, and in terms of coverage, both in terms of breadth and depth.The basic idea remains the same: a bouquet of the 100 best Test bowling performances ever. It is recommended that any reader who has not gone through my last article, which provided a detailed blueprint for the process by which the Bowl-100 list was generated, does so before reading this article. Otherwise they will not know the base on which these lists are drawn up.Let us now move on to the tables. First, the most important one: the revised Bowl-100 table.

He played his shots during his run-a-ball 48 as he looks to bounce back from a poor Test series in South Africa

S Sudarshanan12-Jan-2024The last time Shreyas Iyer played a first-class match for Mumbai, he was yet to play Test cricket, back in the 2018-19 Ranji Trophy. The Iyer that walked out to bat in Mumbai’s latest Ranji Trophy match on Friday is a different person. He has played regularly in all three formats for India, and though he was left out of the T20I squad for the ongoing series against Afghanistan, he is the incumbent No. 5 in Tests.Which is why this game, against Andhra, is significant for Iyer.He had a tough tour of South Africa, where he scored 31, 6, 0 and 4 not out. The two Tests there were his first in over nine months, part of which he was out because of a back problem that required surgery. The match against Andhra gives him a chance to get into his groove ahead of the home Tests against England starting January 25.Related

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Mumbai were asked to bat on a greenish surface on a sunny morning. The openers added 69 in a steady start before Jay Bista and Ajinkya Rahane, the No. 3, fell off successive balls. Bhupen Lalwani, the other opener, and Suved Parkar, the No. 4, then took Mumbai to lunch, giving Iyer some more time.He walked to the nets just outside the playing area with batting coach Vinit Indulkar, left-arm spinner Atharva Ankolekar, and a throwdown specialist in tow. He started slowly, but raised the tempo as time went on, and finished his close-to-25-minute stint with aerial shots in all directions.When Iyer walked in with Mumbai 130 for 3 in the 43rd over, it did not take him time to get going. He is known to be a quick scorer in the domestic circuit, which his first-class strike rate of 78.48 attests to. He is also known to be an excellent player of spin. He put away two full deliveries from the quicks – a flick through midwicket and a loft over mid-on – to get his boundary count going.Andhra mixed it up against Iyer by bowling pace from the dressing-room end and spin from the media end. Medium pacers Penmetsa Raju first, and then his replacement Nithish Kumar Reddy – the most impressive Andhra bowler on the day – bowled from around the wicket to test him. But Iyer’s feet moved nicely, and he kept out the good length and full balls, with a push to the off side or a flick towards midwicket. He was also ready to take on the short ball and punish it, like he did off Raju to beat long leg to his right in the 56th over.Shreyas Iyer had a poor Test series in South Africa, scoring 31, 6, 0 and 4 not out•AFP/Getty ImagesBut nothing perhaps showed that Iyer was switched on and up for the fight like in the 54th over, bowled by Raju. With two fielders deep on the leg side – forward square-leg and long leg – and a backward short-leg in place, he played the perfect pull shot all along the ground for a four. The very next ball was shortish but had just enough width for Iyer to crash it over the covers.This prompted Andhra to go all-out on the mean bouncer – Iyer’s perceived weakness. They had a six-three leg-side field with midwicket, forward square-leg, backward square-leg, long leg, third and point all out on the boundary. There was also a forward short-leg under the lid. That would, however, not prevent Iyer from taking a third four off the over – another pull that sent the ball rolling past backward square-leg – perhaps his best shot of the day. In all, Iyer scored 25 in the 14 balls he faced from Raju, including five fours.Reddy went on to dismiss him caught behind, after he wafted at a fullish ball angling away from around the stumps. Iyer would trudge back with a run-a-ball 48 against his name. But in only his second domestic red-ball game since his Test debut, he had signalled his intent, and readiness.

Mitchell Santner is only the second NZ spinner after his hero, Daniel Vettori, to 100 ODI wickets

Deivarayan Muthu18-Oct-20232:46

India ‘look pretty tough to beat’ – Santner

Mitchell Santner grew up idolising Daniel Vettori and switched from left-arm seam to left-arm fingerspin after watching Vettori make bowling look easy. On Wednesday, when Santner pitched one on middle and leg and got it to rip away past Mohammad Nabi’s outside edge to hit the top of off stump, he became only the second New Zealand spinner, after his hero Vettori, to 100 ODI wickets.”Yeah, it’s obviously nice to get to that milestone,” Santner said after New Zealand thumped Afghanistan and sealed an NRR-boosting win. “Yeah, I guess I wasn’t thinking about it too much leading into the game; it’s just [about] trying to perform my role and do a job out there just like every other game and I think I’m 200 odd wickets behind him (laughs), so it’s going to be a tough challenge to get there.”But yeah, I obviously watched a lot of him do his thing over a long period of time. And I guess with the absence of T20 cricket, they played a lot of one-dayers, so it might be pretty tough to get there now.”Related

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Santner pushed his ODI career tally up to 102 and tournament tally up to 11. He is currently the highest wicket-taker in the World Cup, with his team-mate Matt Henry just behind him, with nine strikes. Trent Boult and Lockie Ferguson have also contributed handsomely to New Zealand’s unbeaten run so far. Santner shared the spotlight with the seamers.”It’s obviously nice to come here [India] and see the ball spin a little bit,” Santner said. They’re kind of far, you don’t really get those [pitches] in New Zealand. So, yeah, I think as a whole, the bowling, we’ve been bowling in partnerships, that’s what we talk about.”I mean the guys upfront today – [Trent] Boult and Matt Henry did an exceptional job in getting that run rate up and then it kind of makes them [Afghanistan batters] want to play bigger shots. I think as a partnership, as a unit, we’ve been bowling pretty well and I was lucky to chip in today for a few, but I think the way the seam [attack] has kind of set that up was massive for us.”ESPNcricinfo LtdSantner was also involved in what was arguably the play of the day and a bonafide contender for the catch of the tournament. He leapt across to his left from short midwicket and pulled off a sensational one-handed catch to dismiss Afghanistan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi and rouse the Chepauk crowd.Chennai is Santner’s home base in the IPL, but the crowd here isn’t used to seeing Santner in full flight, as Super Kings haven’t been able to accommodate both Ravindra Jadeja and Santner in their XI regularly. On Wednesday, 15,525 spectators soaked in every bit of Santner and cheered him on with gusto.”Yeah, it’s obviously nice to be playing here,” Santner said. “Obviously, watched a lot of games here and played the odd one, and speak for Dev [Devon Conway] as well, it’s pretty cool to play in front of some loyal fans. Downplaying that catch a little bit, but it was pretty good.”Santner, also the leader of New Zealand’s spin attack, was pleased with the progress of Glenn Phillips, the bowler. In the injury-enforced absence of Michael Bracewell, Phillips has slotted in as New Zealand’s offspinner and emerged as a partnership-breaker though he went wicketless against Afghanistan.”He’s been bowling a lot, works on his bowling all the time,” Santner said of Phillips. “And it’s actually been very important for us, especially not having Michael Bracewell here, that kind of offspin option, along with me and Rachin [Ravindra].”So yeah, I think trying to get a few overs out of three of us at certain times through the innings has been [good] and he’s been a bit of a golden arm of late, which is always nice to have.”

Captain calls for improvement as five wins in 13 Tests paints the Bazball era in a less flattering light

Vithushan Ehantharajah09-Mar-2024Arriving in Dharamsala, England’s message was consistent, clear, and, ultimately, simple: 3-2 is a better way to lose the series than 4-1. By succumbing to an innings defeat in just over two and a half days, they somehow found a worse way to lose 4-1.The scoreline reflects the gulf between the two sides, because that’s how scorelines work, as much as England might protest. They have had moments since victory in the first Test, namely in Ranchi and Rajkot, that could have given this game a little more meaning. And yet the scale of this defeat ladles on the unwelcome context for a team that has gone beyond winning, flattering to deceive in defeat, and is now just losing.The caveat is that no visiting team has won a series here in almost 12 years. But India, for all their quality, did not have to be at their very best for most of this series. Since defeat at Hyderabad, they have not needed to seize all the 50-50 moments that presented themselves to restate their dominance, even with superstars absent and debutants in each of the last four Tests.That was until these last three days at the HPCA stadium. Their skill and superiority dwarfed even the Himalayas. Most damning for England is that the last 48.1 overs of the series was a gross mismatch. They were bullied, roughed up and, at their most vulnerable, several individuals were forced to hand over a few of the principles they have tried so desperately to hold dear these last eight weeks.Ben Duckett, who had not come down the pitch to the spinners all series, and had never done so against Ashwin in any previous meeting, decided the second over was the time to break the habit out of desperation. He charged, yorked himself, bat swishing past the outside of the ball, which rattled his off stump.Zak Crawley, in the midst of a Jasprit Bumrah-enforced scoreless stop, could not produce the sort of counterattacking burst that had made him England’s most reliable run-scorer on this trip. A tentative push around the corner to backward short leg – brilliantly taken by Sarfaraz Khan – gave him a 16-ball duck.Ollie Pope, praised by Rahul Dravid for the best “exhibition of sweeping and reverse-sweeping ever” after his 196 in the victorious first Test, then produced the worst example of either. A steady decline since that innings culminated in a panicked reaction to a claustrophobic close-in field, as he took on a delivery that may have bounced more with Ashwin’s over-spin but was certainly too short to be swept.Ben Foakes was one of several players whose dismissal went against type•Associated PressJust like that, England’s top three runscorers coming into this final innings were done and dusted within 56 deliveries for just 36 runs. From then on, an under-firing middle order played to type, with some additional bum notes.Jonny Bairstow peppered long-on before being trapped in front by Kuldeep Yadav, though not before starting an argument with Shubman Gill. It led to the now 100-cap batter asking Gill how many centuries he had made “full stop”. Four is the answer, with eight more needed in the next 10 years to match the 34-year-old’s tally.Ben Stokes wasn’t trapped on the crease this time, but was still turned inside-out by Ashwin’s drift from around the wicket. The captain’s average of 19.90 is the lowest of his 16 away tours and comes with the ignominy of having faced just 367 deliveries – just five more than Kuldeep, who has batted in four fewer innings. Ben Foakes lost his usually ironclad sense of self, bowled attempting a slog-sweep, handing Ashwin a ninth dismissal to mark his century of caps.The end, in particular, carried a unique sadness. Two veritable English greats in Joe Root, defiant for 84, and James Anderson, hours after notching 700 Test wickets, together as the final pair. The two survivors from 2012 in Nagpur, when Root, then on debut, was instrumental in fashioning a draw in the fourth Test to seal India’s last home series defeat.Ever since that success, Root and Anderson’s experience over in India has been a succession of physically wearing, emotionally taxing tours. Ones that have not just made English teams reconsider what they are about, but put their entire professional system in the dock.The difference this time is that the County Championship has not yet been served its papers. But an ethos that, for a period, brought the fun times back to English Test cricket, has now gone three series without a win. A style that lends itself to entertaining play has, since the start of 2023, entertained opponents more, winning just five of 13 Tests.India celebrate their 4-1 win over England, a scoreline that looks very similar to most other recent visits•Getty ImagesWhile positivity has radiated in press conferences, much to the bemusement of local journalists unfamiliar with the “everything is awesome” tact, and the building frustration of England fans, Stokes finally let the shutters up on Saturday afternoon. The introspection and annoyance behind closed doors was brought into the public domain: “If we weren’t disappointed, if we weren’t frustrated at how the series has ended up, I don’t really know what other emotions you could have.”With no next match to move on to until July 10 against West Indies at Lord’s, the England captain asked his players to channel the pain that they are currently feeling – both from grafting for so long and coming away with nothing and, worst of all, having to wear the ignominy of crumbling in precisely the manner that they had set out avoid. He certainly will.”Use it as fuel,” Stokes urged. “I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs–that’s what playing 100 Test matches throws at you. I’m making sure that I use those down moments that I have had to maybe work even harder than I thought I was.”It has been a damning 13 months for English cricket. Since the last six months of 2022, which began with Stokes and McCullum coming together in such spectacular fashion, and included that winter’s T20 World Cup win, things have taken a turn. The Test side fumbled a first series win in New Zealand since 2008, then a shot at reclaiming the Ashes for the first time since 2015, and now nurse a defeat against India that looks on paper to be no different to their previous dud efforts. In between whiles, too, there was a humiliating defence of the white-ball team’s 50-over title.Related

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Transitions are incoming across both formats. The difference is, while the white-ball side faces an overhaul of youth after this summer’s T20 World Cup, the red-ball side must embark on an evolution with many of the same faces. Thus the onus is on those involved over the last two months, many of whom have been ever-presents of the Stokes-McCullum regime, to dig deeper.It was fitting that, after all the critiquing of how England have gone about things on this tour, Stokes grabbed the nettle on a topic that has been a nuisance to many.”The media name Bazball – everyone says ‘what is it?’ In my opinion it’s wanting to be a better player. In the face of defeat and failure, Bazball will hopefully inspire people to become better players and become even better than what we are.”Of all the definitions ascribed to a term that had previously been rejected by the England dressing-room since its inception, this is the one they must embrace.

Australia will want David Warner to get back to playing attacking cricket ahead of the T20 World Cup, for which Spencer Johnson is also making a case

Alex Malcolm22-Apr-20244:30

How to bowl to Travis Head?

Head’s hot streak bodes well for World Cup

Travis Head has IPL bowlers shaking in their boots right now. In the past week, he has smashed a 39-ball century against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and then 89 off 32 balls against Delhi Capitals to help Sunrisers Hyderabad to two wins while shattering scoring records and threatening to break the 300-total barrier.Head feels empowered by Australia and Sunrisers captain Pat Cummins, and Sunrisers coach and Australia assistant coach Daniel Vettori to go out and tee off without fear. He spoke glowingly of Cummins’ leadership in terms of allowing him to stop worrying and play his way. Earlier, Head’s name was only pencilled in to open in the T20 World Cup, and there was little doubt that wouldn’t happen. But his name is in permanent ink now, and he looms as a key match-winner for Australia – just like he was at the ODI World Cup last year.Related

• When Head stopped worrying about his career and turned a corner

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Fraser-McGurk fires to get selectors thinking

Jake Fraser-McGurk made an impressive IPL debut ten days ago to give Indian audiences a glimpse of what he had already shown domestically down under, and in his initial ODI appearances. However, even with that innings, he remained a fair way down Australia’s pecking order in terms of Australia’s World Cup 15.But what he has done in the last week will make Australia’s selectors consider whether he could be of value. He smashed 20 from ten balls against Gujarat Titans, and then a 15-ball half-century – including seven sixes – against Sunrisers Hyderabad to finish with 65 off 18.Jake Fraser-McGurk clattered a 15-ball fifty•Associated PressWhat would have made the selectors sit up and take notice was Fraser-McGurk’s treatment of the in-form Cummins, thumping him for a six and a four. But more impressively, he launched six of his seven sixes off the spinners Washington Sundar and Mayank Markande. Admittedly, it was on a pristine batting strip. But he was able to take down Markande outside the powerplay three times with five men out before he holed out trying for a fourth as Capitals briefly gave themselves a chance to chase down even 267.Australia’s top three for the World Cup is set, with Head to open with David Warner, and Mitchell Marsh to bat at No. 3. But the one glaring area of weakness in that top three, outside of Warner, is spin hitting. Fraser-McGurk has not played a T20I yet, and it would be unlikely that he would make Australia’s squad for the World Cup, as using a slot on a spare specialist top-three batter with no international experience would be a risk, given the selectors will prefer versatility on the bench. But he’s still making a case.

Warner wobbles; Maxwell’s unusual move

While Head and Fraser-McGurk are making statements, two of Australia’s best T20 batters in Warner and Glenn Maxwell aren’t in peak form. But any suggestion that Warner’s World Cup place is under threat due to a slightly lean IPL would be ill-conceived. He was controversially dropped by Sunrisers in the lead-up to the 2021 T20 World Cup and had his position questioned, only to come out and be named as the Player of the Series as Australia won the title.Warner’s form at present isn’t alarming, and he is still recovering from a finger injury that caused him to miss the match against Titans despite playing in Capitals’ most recent match against Sunrisers. But there’s no doubt Australia’s hierarchy would like him to recommit to the aggressive, fearless method he had in the ODI World Cup last year. Warner has not played an innings in this year’s IPL where he has struck at more than 149, in a tournament where the average scoring rate is above 150. In his last three innings, he has scored just 19 runs off 20 balls, including 12 dots, and been dismissed three times.5:49

Why did Glenn Maxwell ask to be dropped by RCB?

Meanwhile, Head is striking at 216 for the tournament and Fraser-McGurk is going at 222. Maximising the powerplay at the T20 World Cup is going to be crucial. Warner knows how to switch it on for the big occasion, and Australia would like him to get back to that brand at the back-end of the IPL.There also aren’t many concerns in Australia over Maxwell’s decision to drop himself from the RCB side last week due to a horror run of form. He did clarify that he wasn’t seeking an extended break due to fatigue, given he has had two extended three-week breaks from cricket already this calendar year.Maxwell wasn’t selected again on Sunday night against Kolkata Knight Riders when Cameron Green was recalled to bat at No.5. With RCB’s tournament all but over, it will be intriguing to see if Maxwell can find his way back into the XI or whether they choose to use the remaining matches to develop some younger talent. But both Maxwell and Australia would almost certainly feel more comfortable ahead of the World Cup if he got some more game time and found a little bit of confidence with the bat.1:17

Moody on Mitchell Starc’s final over against RCB, which went for 19

Starc’s roller-coaster IPL continues; Johnson shows promise

It appeared that Mitchell Starc had turned a corner at the IPL with three solid outings following his difficult start. But his last two games in the past week have been poor. He conceded 50 from four overs against Rajasthan Royals, as Jos Buttler peeled off an unbeaten century to run down 224. Starc then conceded 55 in three overs on Sunday night against RCB – including 19 off the final over – but somehow survived as he had 20 runs to play with.He spoke last week of not being tactically up to speed with T20 bowling after not playing the format for 16 months prior to the IPL. Execution is now the issue for Starc as he continues to bowl the hardest overs on batting-friendly pitches. KKR are still playing well despite his fluctuations in fortune. He will have seven games plus the playoffs, if KKR get there, to get his execution where it needs to be for the World Cup.Meanwhile, with Starc’s recent form, Spencer Johnson could edge into Australia’s final 15 given he has been playing regular cricket for Titans, while Nathan Ellis hasn’t for Punjab Kings. Australia will want a left-arm pace option in their XI at the World Cup. Johnson has been much more economical than Starc across the tournament, although he has been playing on lower-scoring pitches. His overall bowling impact is only marginally better than Starc’s according to ESPNCricinfo’s Smart Stats.

Hit-the-deck seamer impresses in Multan after long wait for Test debut

Matt Roller12-Oct-2024Mark Wood’s pace was instrumental to England’s win in Multan two years ago but they hardly missed him this week, such was Brydon Carse’s impact. Carse replicated Wood’s role on Test debut, bowling at high pace with the old ball to finish with match figures of 4 for 140 – which would have been even better but for two dropped catches off his bowling.Wood, who is stuck at home recovering from an elbow injury, sent Carse a WhatsApp message to wish him luck the night before the Test, and another after the second day to reassure him that conditions do not get much tougher for fast bowlers. Carse admitted it had been “a long slog” at times, but the early evidence is that he has the raw materials to make him a success.He has already impressed in white-ball cricket, taking eight wickets in last month’s ODIs against Australia in vastly different conditions. “Playing one-day cricket in England in seven or eight degrees is very different to coming out here, and it’s had its different challenges,” Carse said. “But I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and the role that I’ve played this week.”Related

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Carse took four wickets at 106 in his four Championship matches for Durham this season, but England’s management viewed those performances as utterly irrelevant. They pick on attributes, not averages, and believed that Carse’s bustling pace and endurance would enable him to withstand the rigours of playing Test cricket overseas.And Carse’s record alone did not tell the story of his summer: three of those four matches came shortly after he found out that he was the subject of an investigation by the Cricket Regulator into a series of bets he had placed as a young professional. It led to a three-month ban, ending his hopes of making his Test debut in the English summer.The prospect of days like Friday – completing and then celebrating his first Test win – helped him through some dark moments. “I had some time off to work on a few things that I wanted to and improve my fitness in certain areas,” he said. “I’ve come back refreshed and just wanting to do well and play as much as I can for England.”Carse was picked for the first Test ahead of Matt Potts, his Durham team-mate, because England want at least one genuine fast bowler in their attack every time they take the field. He regularly hit 90mph/145kph on the first day of the Test, and sustained his pace through the match enough to strike Aamer Jamal on the helmet with a short ball on the final morning.Brydon Carse had to put in the hard yards on Test debut•Getty ImagesHe batted at No. 9, and hit his second ball for six to take England past 800. “I was winding the lads up saying, ‘I don’t think many of you have got off the mark with a six,'” Carse joked. Down the line, he could be a viable No. 8 – as evidenced by a pair of first-class hundreds, most recently against Somerset in August.Carse has been on England’s radar for some time: born and raised in South Africa, he toured with the Lions in 2019-20, shortly after qualifying. He made his ODI debut in 2021, when England’s first-choice squad were decimated by Covid protocols, and impressed some senior players that winter when part of the Lions squad which shadowed England’s Ashes tour.”He got injured quite early on… But you got the impression he could have been added to the squad and actually done a job,” James Anderson recalled on the podcast. “I just really like him: he bowls quick, he can move the ball, and he’s got that sort of action where he almost pauses in his delivery stride and then really snaps at the crease, so it makes it feel even quicker for the batters.”On the fourth evening in Multan, Carse demonstrated that he has skills as well as stamina. He had been gifted a wicket with his first ball of Pakistan’s second innings – Saim Ayub wildly slogging to mid-off – and was bowling in tandem with Chris Woakes, who had started to get the ball reversing. Woakes passed on the message, and Carse pounced.”I joked with him and said, ‘Here we go, right, I’m going to target the stumps,'” Carse said. “And the next ball, it reversed back in.” The ball tailed back late, flicking the top of Mohammad Rizwan’s back pad before cannoning into the top of middle stump. “I felt like I was bowling quite nicely to him in the previous over, so to get him out was a nice feeling.”Along with Potts, Gus Atkinson and Josh Tongue, Carse was one of the fast bowlers that England invested heavily in last winter, awarding them two-year central contracts as they look to build a stock of fast bowlers ahead of next year’s Ashes tour. They share a similar profile: they are all seamers rather than swing bowlers, whose stock balls nip back in.Carse, at 29, is the oldest of those four. After his ban this summer, which reinforced the temporary nature of an athlete’s career, he exudes the sense of a player determined to grasp his opportunity. “It’s been a special five days,” he said. “It’s been hard graft, and it was difficult at times today [Friday] but it’s very rewarding to come away with a win.”

Jadeja dominated England’s batters, Axar disrupted their spinners. It added up to a fine match-winning combination in Nagpur, but what if they have to pick between them at the Champions Trophy?

Karthik Krishnaswamy06-Feb-20252:41

Manjrekar: Axar’s promotion could keep Pant out of XI

From a philosophical point of view, umpire’s call is among the most fascinating things in cricket. It lends the same ball a Schrodinger-esque duality: it could, with equal validity, be out or not out.Ravindra Jadeja got Joe Root lbw on Thursday afternoon with one such ball, and this one came with an extra layer of duality.It was a classic Jadeja dismissal, the batter beaten on the back foot by the ball turning less than expected and hurrying onto him, and ball-tracking suggested it would have gone on to clip the top of the bails. At the first level of duality, it could have been out or not out, depending on what umpire KN Ananthapadmanabhan thought of it.Related

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At a level beyond that, this was a ball that almost had to be an umpire’s call kind of ball to give Jadeja the chance of beating Root in this way. It was the shortest possible length that could still threaten the stumps, and perhaps the fullest possible length that could make Root go on the back foot. Any shorter, and the ball would likely have bounced over the stumps. Any shorter, and Root may have had more time to adjust to the lack of turn. Any fuller, he might have elected to get on the front foot.This was umpire’s call, and it could have been not out on another day. But in order to be out, it kind of had to be umpire’s call.This was the 15th ball Jadeja had bowled in this match, his first ODI since the World Cup final of 2023. And he was already all over it. This was the fourth time he had dismissed Root in ODIs, and the 12th time across formats. Jadeja has now dismissed Root more often than any other batter. And no spinner has dismissed Root more often.Soon after this lbw, the broadcasters played back footage from the Kochi ODI of 2013. This was the first time Root had ever batted in the format, and he made 36 before being bowled by the curly-mopped, 2013 version of Jadeja. Different hairstyle, same bowler: a skidder sneaking past the inside edge as Root unwisely aimed square of the wicket with an open bat face.

Axar and Jadeja are both allrounders who bowl left-arm orthodox and bat left-handed, but they’re very different in some ways. Jadeja is a more rounded bowler, and he’s scored Test-match runs all over the world, but in any format, in situations where you want one of them facing spin, it’s likely Axar you’d turn to.

All these years later, Root was vigilant enough to try and play him down the ground, but sometimes that makes no difference when Jadeja is hitting his lengths, attacking the stumps, and getting variable turn off the surface.On Thursday in Nagpur, Jadeja put on a masterclass of stump-to-stump bowling and finished with figures of 3 for 26 in nine overs. Bowling from around the wicket to both the right- and left-hand batters, he kept the stumps in play in hypnotically relentless manner, narrowing the batters’ shot choices, giving them a judiciously curated list of scoring options. If they wanted anything beyond that, they’d need to take chances.This was the kind of ODI pitch where there was turn, but you needed to give the ball a rip to find it. The kind of pitch where batters worried about both edges of their bat while facing Jadeja, but not necessarily when they faced Axar Patel.Their respective abilities to extract turn from this pitch, and the specific geometries of their bowling styles, also influenced the lines Jadeja and Axar were able to bowl. Axar also bowled from round the wicket to England’s left-handers, but with his wider arm at release, and with the smaller amounts of turn he was able to generate, he had less of a chance of hitting the stumps with balls pitching in line with the stumps.3:18

Manjrekar: Harshit Rana is a great wicket-taking option

And this opened up more scoring areas for England’s batters. Nowhere was this more apparent than in how often, and how effectively, they were able to sweep India’s spinners. They played variants of the sweep or reverse-sweep 10 times against Axar and scored 15 runs without losing a wicket. They also scored 15 off six such shots against Kuldeep Yadav’s left-arm wristspin.Against Jadeja, however, it was a different story. They attempted three sweeps, scored one run, and lost two wickets: Jacob Bethell lbw and Adil Rashid bowled. To borrow from : come at the stump-to-stump king, you best not miss.It’s been nearly 16 years since his ODI debut, but Jadeja endures.The remarkableness of this feat became more apparent as the day wore on, and India got into their chase of 249. It became especially apparent when they lost their third wicket with 113 on the board, and sent Axar in.This was precisely the sort of situation that makes Axar so valuable. There was just one left-hand batter in India’s regular top six, and the situation called for a left-hander, with the legspinner Adil Rashid beginning to find generous amounts of turn and the left-arm spinner Bethell having just dismissed a dangerous Shreyas Iyer in Jadeja-esque manner, lbw sweeping a stump-to-stump ball.Axar and Jadeja are both allrounders who bowl left-arm orthodox and bat left-handed, but they’re very different in some ways. Jadeja is a more rounded bowler, and he’s scored Test-match runs all over the world, but in any format, in situations where you want one of them facing spin, it’s likely Axar you’d turn to.Axar Patel did the job with the bat•MB Media/Getty ImagesAnd you soon saw why. The second ball he faced from Rashid was dangled well outside off stump but dropping onto a dangerous sort of length, and Axar took on the invitation. The length made him reach for the ball, but he used his long levers expertly to control his slog-sweep, prioritising placement – there was a deep square leg but no deep midwicket – over power.Soon after, facing his eighth ball, he saw another opportunity for the slog-sweep, with Bethell on this occasion tossing one right up in his arc. This time he went with a full, unfettered bat-swing and cleared the boundary with ease.And just like that, Axar was well into his job of disrupting England’s spin plans. By the time he was bowled by a ripping Rashid legbreak, he had scored 52 off 47, put on 108 with Shubman Gill for the fourth wicket, and taken England’s spinners for 33 off 30 balls.There couldn’t have been a better illustration of the quality, and specific qualities, of India’s two left-arm-spin-bowling allrounders.This, of course, was always set up to be a game for both Jadeja and Axar: a pitch that allowed India to play three spinners, and an opposition line-up, dominated by right-hand batters, that allowed them to play two left-arm orthodox spinners.There will likely be pitches and oppositions during the upcoming Champions Trophy that will allow India to pick this combination again. There may also be times, though, when they might have to leave one of them out: either to pick Washington Sundar (or possibly even Varun Chakravarthy) or an extra fast bowler.Who do India play then? The better bowler or the more versatile batter? To quote once again: it sounds like one of them good problems.