He is a radically different bowler from the one he was before 2015 and the numbers say as much

Himanish Ganjoo06-Sep-2021After being omitted from India’s XI in Adelaide in 2014, a dejected R Ashwin expressed his desire to be the best in the world to India’s bowling coach, B Arun. In the 13 matches India had played outside of Asia since the winter of 2013, Ashwin had played just five, averaging 54.6 with the ball. Spurred by being dropped, he battled an old flaw in his action in net sessions: his alignment at the crease. His front foot was going across his body while delivering the ball, closing off his hip.Biomechanics research confirms how vital the hip is to a spinner’s efficacy. According to a study of the delivery motions of 36 Test match fingerspinners conducted at Loughborough University in 2019, the orientation of the hip at the time of the front foot landing was shown to be the most important factor in how many revolutions the spinner could impart to the ball. Arun gave a detailed account of how this issue was corrected, opening up Ashwin’s hip so he could transfer more energy to his bowling arm, put more revolutions on the ball, and bowl with more control.Related

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This change transformed Ashwin’s strategies and results against right-handers. We have ball-tracking data for about 50% of Ashwin’s deliveries in Test cricket before 2015, and 77% of his deliveries from 2015 onwards. We can use these samples to study this shift.The plot below shows the distribution of Ashwin’s line measured at the stumps during two segments of his career, until the WTC final of 2021. The distribution shifts noticeably after his change in action: while it was peaking on a middle-and-leg line earlier, 2015 onwards it shifts towards the top of off stump, which is the classical attacking line for an offspin bowler. This change was driven by his new, open-hip action. Because of a better alignment, his arm was less likely to fall off towards the leg stump, which shifted his overall line towards off. This off-stump line brings the outside edge into play, opening up more modes of dismissal than just the lbw, bowled or bat-pad that are in play with the middle-and-leg line.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoThe results of this change are clear in the numbers: Ashwin’s average to right-handers dropped from 39.7 before 2015 to 27.1 afterwards. Threatening the off stump also changed the distribution of his wicket-taking modes. Before 2015, 47% of his right-hander dismissals were caught, 23.5% were bowled and 27% were lbw. After the change in action, 60.9% of his right-hander wickets have been caught, 22.5% bowled, and only 14.5% are lbw.Shifting to a line outside the off stump gives an offbreak bowler greater chances of inviting the drive or of making the batter fend slightly away from the body, which results in greater chances of slip- and bat-pad catches. This line also exposes the stumps more often, leading to a higher chance of getting a batter bowled. Before 2015, Ashwin got a right-hand batter bowled every 316 balls; from 2015 onwards, this happened every 241 balls.Against left-hand batters, Ashwin possesses an exceptional record, even for an offspin bowler. Fifty one percent of his career wickets have been left-hand bats, at a strike rate of 45.8, which is the lowest among offspin bowlers to have bowled more than 100 balls to left-handers since 2005 (from which time ball-by-ball data is available). Forty-four per cent of Ashwin’s career deliveries have been to left-hand batters, the highest among offspinners in the ball-by-ball database.What makes Ashwin exceptional, compared to the average offspinner, to left-handers?Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoOverall, Ashwin’s strike rate to left-handers is 45% better than that of the average offspinner in the ball-by-ball database. We can break this down by mode of dismissal: his likelihood of getting a left-hand bat out lbw is 37% better than the average, while his rate of getting left-hand players out bowled is a whopping 92% higher than other offspin bowlers. The key to uncovering the reasons for these numbers lies in the areas Ashwin bowls.The plot below shows distributions of the line of the ball in the plane of the stumps for Ashwin and other offspin bowlers to left-handed batters. Ashwin is much likelier to have the ball end in line with the stumps compared to other offspinners: 52% of his recorded balls end up within the stumps, compared to 36% for other spinners. This translates to a twofold risk: batters are likelier to get bowled or lbw, and likelier to play at deliveries. And if the ball turns to beat the outside edge, there is a higher risk of getting bowled.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoAshwin is not only bowling straighter now but is also deadlier. The plot below shows the bowling strikes rates of Ashwin and other offspinners to left-hand batters, segmented by the line and length of pitching. Only regions with more than 20 balls in them are shown. The values in the cells show the strike rate, and the numbers in brackets for Ashwin are the total balls recorded pitching in that zone.Ashwin generally has a better strike rate in almost every slot, but the difference for full-length balls (three to five metres from the stumps) on both off and leg stumps is stark. Ashwin is much more successful at outdoing the batter on a fuller length compared to other offspinners, who often get defended on the front foot or driven off similar balls. Ashwin bowls more on turning pitches, but the key to this higher efficacy also lies in his mastery over changes of pace, changes in turn, and what the ball does in the air.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoSpinners usually bowl with the seam oriented in one direction. This orientation of the seam not only determines turn off the pitch but also the drift and dip the ball gets. Drift and dip are complementary shades of the same force, and changing the direction of the seam controls the relative amounts of each.Ostensibly, spin bowling is about the changing line of the ball on pitching. The key to playing spin, however, is gauging length effectively. Playing spin well demands a binary strategy: either going fully forward and meeting the ball right after pitching, or rocking back, letting the ball turn and then playing it. The former minimises the lateral deviation of the ball by having the batter intercept it early, giving the best chance at middling it. The latter gives the batter enough time to watch the ball after turning. In between these two lies the danger of getting out – defending the ball while not reaching the pitch leaves the batter vulnerable to the uncertainty of the turning ball, raising the chances of missing it.The statistics support this definition of a “danger zone”. In , a book that describes the mechanics of the game through numbers, Nathan Leamon and Ben Jones use ball-tracking and shot-interception data to conclude about playing spin: “…it is far safer to play the ball within 1.5 metres of where it pitches, or to play it over 3.5 metres away from that point. Those areas both average over 80 for top-order players, whereas the most dangerous zone between 2 and 3 metres has an average of just 14.”Because spinners bowl slower than other bowlers, it is easier for batters to adjust to length. The key to deceiving a batter, then, is hoodwinking them over where the ball will pitch.Here is where dip comes in. The batter estimates the pitching length from the height of the ball and extends their foot forward. A ball with dip drops at the very end of its trajectory, falling shorter than anticipated, in the danger zone.Ashwin uses this dip expertly to beat the bat in two major modes of dismissal. The right-hand batter’s inside edge is threatened by the dipping ball that lands a little farther from the bat than expected, increasing chances of the bat-pad dismissal. A recent instance of this was Steve Smith’s dismissal in the second innings of the Melbourne Test of 2020. Smith extended his front foot to reach the pitch, but the ball dipped and deviated more than he had predicted, making him close the bat face and edge it to leg slip.Another telling example was the wicket of Jermaine Blackwood in the Jamaica Test of 2016. ESPNcricinfo commentary describes the bat-pad catch: “…the ball dips to create a gap between the bat and the pitch of the ball, it then turns to take the inside edge of the bat onto the pad…”The data supports Ashwin’s use of drift to target the inside edge of right-hand batters. The CricViz database records which edge is touched when a batter makes contact with the ball. In Asia, where we have a decent sample size, 39% of other offspinners’ wickets come off the inside edge. The corresponding figure is 51.2% for Ashwin, from a total of 39 recorded wickets.The second form of dismissal is the classical one for an offspin bowler – opening up the batter for the big drive on the off side and sneaking through to hit the stumps. The dismissal of Roston Chase in Rajkot in 2018 illustrates the role of dip beautifully for this case. The ball is floated up, invites a drive, and dips at the very last moment, missing the bat and turning big to hit the stumps.Ashwin got Alastair Cook out twice at Edgbaston in 2018 with deliveries that dipped, then gripped and turned to hit the stumps•Getty ImagesTo left-handers, Ashwin uses dip to threaten the stumps beyond the outside edge off fuller lengths. There are seven bowled dismissals of left-handers in the ball-tracking data for which the pitching line is within the stumps and the length is less than five metres from the stumps. The ESPNcricinfo commentary for six of these mentions either drift or dip. This is what lowers Ashwin’s strike rate in the full-length region for balls pitching on middle and leg to left-hand batters (as the strike-rate plot above shows). A classic example of this was his dismissal of Alastair Cook in the Edgbaston Test of 2018. Anticipating a full ball, Cook extends his foot forward gently. The ball dips at the very last moment, landing far ahead of Cook’s pushed-out pad, turning past the blade and hitting the stumps. Talking to the host broadcaster later, Ashwin confirmed the role of dip.Dip, although essential, is not the only component of a spinner’s threat. In the example of the Cook wicket, the seam is tilted towards second slip. This generates both dip and drift.Drift makes the ball deviate laterally mid-air, deceiving the batter into playing down the wrong line. An offspinner’s ball drifts towards the leg stump of the left-hander in this instance, making them play straighter. In the Cook dismissal, the ball drifts in gently with the angle, and Cook’s push is towards long-on, his chest opened up completely, his off stump exposed.Drift sets the stage for the batter to miss the away-turning ball. Ben Duckett’s wicket in the Vizag Test of 2016 is similar; he is even more squared up by the drift, his front pad moves almost outside leg stump as the ball hits the stumps.Against the right-hand batter, this outward drift invites the big drive, exposing the bat-pad gap, like in the Chase dismissal above. Less conventionally, Ashwin combines it with pinpoint control over the turn he gets to deftly threaten the outside edge of the bat, making the ball drift away and then skid on with the line. The twin dismissals of Ollie Pope in Ahmedabad earlier this year are classic examples – the ball drifts away and beats the outside edge of the right-hand bat, landing on the leather because Ashwin has released it with his palm facing upwards. The same mechanics were at work when Steve Smith was caught at first slip in Adelaide in 2020.In the post-doosra era, Ashwin has found ways to threaten both edges of the bat by controlling turn, drift and dip with subtle variations of his finger positions on the ball and the way he loads and unloads his wrist upon release.

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Controlling the fate of one delivery is just half the job. Wickets in long-format cricket are about set-ups: getting the batter programmed to respond to a certain ball and then bowling something else to catch them off guard. For a spinner, this con is established via variations in turn and pace.The Cook wicket we looked at above is an example of this too. The first two balls in the over are quicker, bowled at more than 90kph, while the third and fourth – the latter of which fetches the wicket – are at 83kph. Moreover, the second ball is shorter and slides on with the arm, seeding doubt in Cook’s mind, setting him up for the wicket ball, which turns big.A more recent example is the wicket of Tom Latham in the second innings of the WTC final. In the 20 balls Ashwin bowled to Latham before getting him out, only two were slower than 85kph, mostly hovering in the late 80s and early 90s. The wicket ball was floated up wide and slow – at 83kph – inviting the drive and creating a catch.The available tracking data does not have information on release points, so turn can be hard to measure, but we can use it to judge how Ashwin compares with other prominent spinners of today in how he uses variations in pace to get wickets. We will consider all of Ashwin’s wickets for which we have tracking data, and for which the previous ball was faced by the same batter. We will then calculate the difference in speed between the wicket-taking ball and the one before it. Although this does not account for longer drawn-out set-ups, it does give us a simple measure of the variation of speed immediately prior to the dismissal.The table below shows a summary of this “speed variation” for seven spinners for whom a large enough sample is available. The third column shows the proportion of instances in which the speed variation between the wicket ball and the one before it was more than 5kph.Ashwin employs this variation of speed for more than a third of his wickets (36.59%). Ravindra Jadeja, who is a phenomenal spinner himself, is the only one who comes close. The fourth column shows the proportion of wickets when the speed variation is extreme: more than 10kph. Here too, Ashwin (and Jadeja) are comfortably clear of the others. Ashwin’s median variation in speed is also much higher than the other five bowlers in the list.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoAs Ashwin took bagfuls of wickets at home, discussions of his place among the pantheon of greats always came with the riders of not having done well in the SENA countries – supposedly similar conditions that are different from his home surfaces. In recent years, pitches in England and South Africa have been exceptionally pace-friendly, and Australian pitches have never been known to be kind to fingerspin. Despite all this, considering the period from 2015 to the end of the WTC final, Ashwin has the best average in the SENA nations for specialist spinners who have bowled in ten or more innings and 100 or more overs. He also has the best economy rate (2.62), which points to him being a controller of runs at one end in support of India’s recently raring pace battery. In addition, he also has the second-highest wickets-per-innings figure (2.0). The label of Ashwin not being good in these select nations is a misconception that has stuck around for too long – and the record needs to be set right. Ashwin has been the best a spinner can be in the conditions given to him, in addition to being unbelievably good in Asia.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoOn his YouTube talk show, Murali Kartik asked Ashwin what had changed after that disappointing Australia tour in 2014-15. Ashwin talked about his inexperience, the “exuberance of youth”, and about how he looked at the result and not the process. He went on to gorge on footage of great offspinners and videos detailing the execution of various kinds of deliveries, to “learn something from somewhere, and identify and piece together the puzzle” for himself. Ashwin explained that he was a completely different bowler – he was in a better state to control the properties of his deliveries as he wanted because he understood the how of his bowling.The result of this obsessive devotion to understanding and honing the mechanics of his bowling has been the elevation of Ashwin to No. 2 in the ICC rankings for Test bowlers. Today he is at the peak of the long-form bowler’s craft: that holy confluence of cricketing nous to construct wickets and physical ability to execute those plans near perfectly. He already knew how to use the pitch; he has now mastered the art of beating the bat in the air as well. The best in the world.

He has made a name with his free-flowing batting, but his game has been built on the other bits, the ones that don’t get spoken about much

Karthik Krishnaswamy13-Jan-20223:29

Cullinan: Pant’s century the knock of the series

Ten members of India’s batting line-up scored 70 runs between them, off 275 balls. These ten included Virat Kohli, who faced 143 balls and scored 29.You could see why it was such a struggle, because it was never quite clear what halfway safe routes of run-scoring were available on this third-day track from which South Africa’s four-pronged pace attack was able to extract both movement and disconcerting bounce on a regular basis. Even Kohli, who had faced 201 balls in the first innings and scored 79, had only shown he could survive. Run-scoring was another matter entirely.On this track and against the same bowlers, the other member of India’s line-up scored an undefeated 100 off 139 balls. Rishabh Pant was batting on the same pitch and against the same bowlers, but it’s possible he was batting in a parallel universe.Related

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Pant’s control percentage eventually dropped to 83%, given the demands of batting with the tail and trying to manufacture boundaries with nearly every fielder in the deep, but until the time India lost their seventh wicket, he had faced 95 balls and played only eight false shots. He had shown this sort of control while breezing along at a strike rate of nearly 79.There are other cricketers, and there is Rishabh Pant.He’d come into this game with the spotlight trained on him following his dismissal for a duck in the second innings of the second Test in Johannesburg. Criticism of his charge-and-swipe at Kagiso Rabada had spanned a wide spectrum, and ESPNcricinfo had wondered if the shot had stemmed from Pant lacking confidence in his defensive game against an angle of attack – right-arm over – that has troubled him constantly over the last few months.Pant’s innings on Thursday featured no such lack of confidence. He’s incapable of looking anything but nonchalant, of course, but any hypothetical lack of trust in his defensive game also seemed to have vanished.Until the time India lost their seventh wicket, Pant had faced 95 balls and played only eight false shots•Gallo ImagesRoughly midway through his innings, the broadcasters showed a beehive plot of his responses to South Africa’s fast bowlers. He had defended most of the balls clustered in the zone around the top of off stump, left his fair share of deliveries outside off stump, and attacked most of the rest. Pant, of course, is never going to leave as many balls as Kohli has in this Test match, but what stood out was the clear demarcation between those zones, suggesting how well he was judging lines and lengths.This clarity of judgment and decision-making stood out right from the start of Pant’s innings. He didn’t chase at balls angling away from his reach, and avoided driving on the up, but he pounced on the short ball whenever it came.The first two boundaries he hit gave shape to his innings. Rabada was coming towards the end of a breathtaking morning spell, in which he’d dismissed Ajinkya Rahane with an unplayable delivery for the second time in the match. He delivered a good short ball to Pant, angling across him and climbing over his back shoulder; it’s never easy to control the pull from there, but Pant did so with a sort of swatting motion, hitting the ball well in front of square. Then Rabada bowled one that angled a touch too far across, and Pant climbed on top of the bounce and slapped the ball through cover point.

Pant is incapable of looking anything but nonchalant, of course, but any hypothetical lack of trust in his defensive game also seemed to have vanished

While Kohli’s first-innings knock was masterful in many ways, it wasn’t free-scoring, and Sanjay Manjrekar had observed that his run-scoring may have been curtailed by a lack of back-foot scoring options. No such criticism could be made of Pant’s innings.The early pull also made South Africa push deep square leg back, and this gave him a means of rotating strike whenever the bowlers erred marginally straight.Leg-side clips and nudges are a lifeblood for left-hand batters, of course, and Pant’s left-handedness perhaps gave him a small but significant advantage over his team-mates in this innings. The angles are entirely different, and bowlers are bound to err in line ever so slightly more often. Thirty-five of Pant’s runs came via singles, twos and threes on the leg side.The busyness was as responsible as the boundary-hitting for the early pace of Pant’s innings. He’d reached 36 off 41 and almost seen India through to lunch when South Africa became resigned to bringing on their left-arm spinner.Keshav Maharaj had three fielders on the leg-side boundary as soon as he came on, but it was only going to be a matter of time before Pant took them on. In the penultimate over before lunch, he stepped out, didn’t quite reach the pitch of the ball, and almost swung himself off his feet, but made sweet enough contact to clear long-on.Rishabh Pant celebrates his hundred•Getty ImagesSouth Africa persisted with Maharaj after lunch, and he got through two quiet overs before Pant got hold of him, clearing the boundary twice in succession with a one-handed sweep and a drive over mid-off.Pant was taking risks against Maharaj with India’s lead still far from match-winning, but they were calculated risks buttressed by the uniquely Pantian cricketing logic that has characterised all his best knocks – even in extreme cases such as in Chennai last year, when he decided that the best way to deal with Jack Leach’s turn and bounce out of the rough was to step out and try to hit him for sixes. Much of the criticism of Pant’s shot against Rabada in Johannesburg stemmed from the idea that that shot, at that stage of his innings, fell outside the scope of even Pantian logic.At the end of that Maharaj over, India were 151 for 4, effectively 164 for 4, and seemed to be on course to set a target upwards of 250. But a combination of South Africa’s bowling, India’s long tail, and at least two loose shots from the lower order ensured that wasn’t to be.Pant made sure they still set a challenging target, however, bringing out the party tricks that the transformed match situation demanded. A front-foot baseball swat off a short-of-length ball from Duanne Olivier, landing on the boundary cushion at wide long-on. A flailing slash that caused his bat to slip out of his hand and travel nearly as far as the ball did, in the opposite direction. An attempted reverse-sweep that left him flat on his backside. An overhead helicopter flick to retain the strike. A scampered double while running perpendicular to the pitch.These are the Pant moments that will live longest in the memory, and go on to characterise him as a batter and a personality. As they should. But he’s a wicketkeeper who’s scored Test hundreds in England, Australia and South Africa, and he has built that record primarily on the back of the other bits of his game, the bits that don’t get spoken about quite as much.

“Everyone was talking about my form, which I reiterated was not a thing I was worried about”

Matt Roller28-Oct-20214:00

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David Warner’s scores – 0, 2, 0, 1, 14 – in the month leading into the T20 World Cup and in Australia’s opening Super 12s game against South Africa made for grim reading – not that the man himself admitted to any concern.”I actually think people talking about my form is quite funny. I laugh at the matter,” he said on Wednesday. “I’ve played hardly any cricket. I had two games in the IPL and then warm-up games are warm-up games for a reason.”If Warner’s comments were bullish, he had a point: since the end of April, he had faced 29 balls at five different venues. In the spring, six innings had been enough for his IPL franchise, Sunrisers Hyderabad, to decide it was time to axe him as captain. Warner turned 35 the night before Australia’s second game at this tournament and the general consensus – despite a limited base of evidence – seemed to be that he was on the decline.Warner was clearly aware of the outside noise around his shortage of runs but has not let it affect it game – that much was clear from the third ball he faced in Australia’s cruise towards their 155-run target against Sri Lanka in Dubai. Rather than looking to play himself into form by soaking up balls, Warner recognised that the Powerplay was the best time to attack and seized upon his chance: he got down low to reverse-sweep Maheesh Theekshana, Sri Lanka’s fit-again mystery spinner, over short third, the first of ten boundaries in his innings of 65 off 42 balls.Related

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“I got criticised when I got out to Ashwin in the practice game playing the same shot,” Warner said afterwards. “We know which bowlers are bowling what, we know where the fields are and we know how to try and apply pressure. If it comes off, it comes off.”When they’re coming over the wicket, they’ve obviously got their carrom ball to come straight down the line. For me, it’s actually a low-risk shot to go with the spin and because you’ve only got two [fielders] out to protect, you’ve got to back yourself. It’s a shot that I favour. You’ve got to apply pressure and that’s how I start my innings against spin.”Warner enjoyed several early strokes of luck – the sort that may spark his tournament into life after a long run without playing many games. At the end of Theekshana’s first over, he survived a brief mix-up running between the wickets with Aaron Finch; a leading edge off Dushmantha Chameera skewed up and over short cover; an inside-edge off Lahiru Kumara flew past short fine leg.Watch cricket live on ESPN+

Sign up for ESPN+ and catch all the action from the Men’s T20 World Cup live in the US. Match highlights of Australia vs Sri Lanka is available here in English, and here in Hindi (US only).

But the moment that really made it seem as though Warner’s fortunes had turned came in the fifth over. Chameera dug a short ball in down the leg side and Warner mistimed his pull, getting glove through to Kusal Perera behind the stumps. The umpire was already raising his finger by the time the ball was on the floor, after a lapse in concentration and an inexplicable drop. “How did you miss that, Kusal Perera?” Russel Arnold sighed on commentary.From there, Warner was in his groove, pulling disdainfully through midwicket and running hard between the wickets when faced with a bigger leg-side boundary. Theekshana struggled with his lengths – his spell featured several drag-downs, evoking that of Varun Chakravarthy, a similar type of bowler, against Pakistan on Sunday night – and was punished accordingly, while Sri Lanka’s seamers were oddly reluctant to crank the pace up and found their slower balls crunched away disdainfully through the leg side.”Tonight, I had to obviously start fresh,” Warner said. “Everyone was talking about my form, which I reiterated was not a thing I was worried about. It was about going out there and starting well. That’s all we’re trying to do, apply pressure to the bowlers.”Crucially, Warner – alongside Aaron Finch, who raced to 37 off 23 balls – was able to get Australia off to a fast start in their chase. While Dasun Shanaka, Sri Lanka’s captain, would later reflect that they had been 20-25 runs short of par given the dew factor in a floodlit game, Australia knew that they would face a stern test against spin in the middle overs if they had started slowly. As a result – and partly thanks to the safety net of the extra batter they have brought into their line-up for this tournament – they attacked early, racing to 63 for 0 after the Powerplay and immediately removing any scoring pressure.””It was great to get out there in the middle and spend some time there, running between the wickets,” Warner said. “Little things like that just keep your mind ticking. Obviously in the last six to 12 months we haven’t played that much cricket so I haven’t been in those situations too often. It’s not so much about getting runs for myself, it’s about getting us off to a good start and we managed to do that.”Shutting the critics down? No, never. That’s the world of sport. When you ride the highs, you’ve got to ride the lows and you’ve got to stay confident, keep a smile on your face, and never let it get to you.”Warner had practised on polished concrete in the build-up to this game, reasoning that “when you’re practising on low wickets that aren’t great, it gets you into sticky positions in the games when you are on better wickets”. On a relatively flat Dubai pitch, there were glimpses of the power and timing that made him one of the world’s most destructive T20 batters for so many years.”It was shattering to see someone who did so much for a team be spat out like he was,” Shane Watson, his long-time team-mate, said on commentary, “but I’m so thrilled for him personally and for the Aussies as well.” If this turns out to have been the night he clicked back into gear, the rest of the country will echo those sentiments.

In nine completed Ashes tours since 1986-87, England have won one series and lost eight by thumping margins. But which have had saving graces, and which have been unmitigated shockers?

Andrew Miller18-Jan-2022Getty ImagesArguably the least-worst defeat of an enduringly sorry era, Alec Stewart’s Ashes tourists not only pulled off a truly stunning Test win in a finish for the ages at Melbourne, they might even have achieved the unthinkable and squared the series at 2-2 in the fifth Test at Sydney, had it not been for one of the most contentious umpiring decisions of the decade – when Michael Slater, whose 123 was more than two-thirds of his team’s runs in their second innings of 184, was reprieved on 36 by the third umpire, Simon Taufel – early proof, as if it was needed, that the introduction of technology would not signal an end to controversy.English griping about that let-off cannot deflect from the fact that, once again, Australia were by a distance the better side. But for a final-day thunderstorm they would have won, as usual, the series opener at the Gabba, and England were 2-0 down by Christmas after heavy defeats at Adelaide and Perth.Their batting, as so often, was flaky at crucial moments – with the honourable exceptions of Nasser Hussain and Mark Ramprakash, whose middle-order alliances would invariably be followed by dispiriting tail-end slumps. Mike Atherton, struggling with a back injury, was a shadow of his usual obdurate self, which encouraged Stewart, the captain, to dump the gloves and promote himself to open midway through the tour – a gamble that paid off with a maiden Ashes hundred at the MCG.The bowling was at times heroic, not least the tireless Darren Gough, who charged in all tour long, and Dean Headley, whose six-wicket spell at Melbourne would be the greatest moment of an all-too-brief career. But the non-selection of Andrew Caddick, and to a lesser extent, Phil Tufnell, robbed England of two vital attacking options in conditions that should have been tailor-made for them. They were deemed too high-maintenance by the dogmatic Stewart, who at least could be said to have run an unusually tight ship, even as Australia’s waves of excellence overwhelmed his selections.ESPNcricinfo LtdNasser Hussain is rightfully considered to have been one of England’s finest Test captains – hard-bitten, personally driven and tactically shrewd. But it was his misfortune – or perhaps his destiny, given the depths from which he helped haul his England side – to run into an Australian team that has perhaps never been bettered in Test history.All such considerations flowed into one on the first morning of the 2002-03 Ashes, when Hussain made a call for which he has, perhaps unfairly, become synonymous. After winning the toss at the infamous Gabbatoir, Hussain shocked the stadium by choosing to bowl first – and then watched helplessly as Simon Jones, his thrusting young quick, suffered a horrible knee injury after sliding awkwardly on the sand-based turf.And in Jones’ absence, England’s remaining bowlers were exposed to ridicule by the merciless Matthew Hayden, whose front-foot tub-thumping racked up 300 runs in the match, including 197 in the first innings as he and Ricky Ponting carried Australia to 364 for 2 by the close of an omen-laden first day.The subtext of Hussain’s toss call had been that he had no faith in his batsmen to withstand an Australian attack comprised of Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie, Shane Warne and Andy Bichel – with Brett Lee waiting in the wings to mug them later in the series. And sure enough, Hussain’s lack of faith would be amply justified by the end of that first Test – 79 all out in the second innings to seal a 384-run defeat.However, one man refused to be cowed. Michael Vaughan, England’s elegant young opener, added grit to his natural flamboyance to compile three sublime hundreds at Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney – each of them lit up by the quality of his pulling and cover-driving, so as to leave Australia’s bowlers with no safe length to attack.Unwittingly, Vaughan’s aggression and style laid the foundations of the strategy that would win back the Ashes, under his leadership, two years later. And, with McGrath and Warne absent for the fifth and final Test, England did head home with a consolation victory at Sydney. But that was as good as it got against, arguably, the best there’s ever been.ESPNcricinfo LtdIn many people’s eyes, Mike Atherton’s Ashes tourists epitomise the nadir of the “Tetley Bitter” era of English cricket – that gloriously inappropriate sponsorship deal that invited a perpetually bedraggled squad to endure predictable jokes about piss-ups and breweries with every new low. And so it was that the 1994-95 tourists came home with their tails between their legs – thrashed 3-1 in a series that exposed the gulf in expectations that had grown since Australia’s own dog days in the 1980s.In fact, some of the most humiliating moments of the tour fell outside of the Tests themselves. A pair of warm-up defeats against the kids of Australia’s Academy were particularly galling, as was the one-day squad’s failure to qualify for the final of the B&H World Series – Australia and their own second-string team competed for the spoils instead.But buried somewhere beneath a glut of damning headlines lay a competitive spirit that bubbled to the fore at unexpected moments. After a Shane Warne hat-trick had put Australia 2-0 up at Melbourne, no-one anticipated that England would boss a thrilling drawn third Test at Sydney, let alone win the fourth at Adelaide, with an unrecognisably patched-up team after a glut of injuries had done for several of their first-choice XI – not least the ebullient Gough, who announced himself as a star in the first three Tests before limping out of the series with a broken foot.Natural order was restored in the fifth Test at Perth, where a certain Glenn McGrath made his first telling Ashes blow by reducing England to 27 for 6 in their final innings. That scoreline was notable for the sad farewells of both Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting – their hefty reputations no match for the reality that this had been a tour too far for both.ESPNcricinfo LtdAn underwhelming walloping, if such a thing can exist. England were outclassed in every relevant department – embarrassed by a lack of pace compared to Australia’s rampant spearheads, incapable of matching the skill and accuracy of Nathan Lyon’s ever-probing spin, and shown up in the batting stakes by Steven Smith’s remarkable Bradman impersonation. His haul of 687 runs in seven innings included three extraordinary hundreds, the best of the bunch coming in rare adversity at Brisbane, when the series was fresh and England’s flaws had not been fully exposed.But Australia’s eventual ten-wicket victory at the Gabba unleashed a different narrative – one in which England claimed 58 series wickets to 89, and scored three centuries to nine. The visitors had their moments – bowling Australia out for 138 at Adelaide, and setting the early pace through Dawid Malan and Jonny Bairstow at Perth – but they were unable to exert anything resembling sustained dominance. Key personnel failed to produce anything approaching their best – most notably Moeen Ali, Stuart Broad and Alastair Cook, whose immense 244 not out on a dead deck in Melbourne could not atone for his technical evisceration at the sharp end of the series.What might the absent Ben Stokes have brought to England’s tour? He’d have stood his ground against Australia’s quicks, that’s for sure, and maybe even provided the hapless Joe Root with the foil he seemed to lack in reaching fifty on five occasions without once going on to a hundred. But it’s hard to argue that Stokes alone was the difference, even if, as the spectre at the feast, he created collateral issues for the squad when the ECB’s paranoia about player behaviour turned two innocuous nightclub incidents in Perth into headline news.In the grander scheme of things, however, England suffered from few friction burns as the size of their defeat became apparent. Arguably that was a tribute to some affable leadership from Root, who retained an impressive team unity in adversity. More worryingly, it was a suggestion that England had given their all, and had no-one to blame for their shortcomings.ESPNcricinfo LtdThe 2005 Ashes may have been a once-in-a-lifetime party for England’s players and fans, but for a once-in-a-lifetime team, it was an affront beyond compare. Australia’s determination to set the record straight after two decades of near-unrivalled dominance turned a hugely hyped Ashes rematch into a savagely one-sided revenge mission.It all started at Brisbane, where Steve Harmison’s jittery first-ball wide telegraphed the anxieties of an England team that was already missing three fundamental components of their 2005 champions. Michael Vaughan, the captain, and Simon Jones had both succumbed to knee injuries, while Marcus Trescothick’s breakdown during England’s warm-up match in Sydney cast another bleak shadow over the tour.But it was the second Test at Adelaide where Australia confirmed that England’s campaign was a lost cause. Resuming on 59 for 1 on the final morning, with a draw preordained and a foothold in the series established, England contrived to lose an unloseable contest, as Shane Warne inveigled his way into their collective psyche to instigate a shocking meltdown of resolve. Nine wickets tumbled for 70 as the office-workers of Adelaide downed tools to troop across the river and join in the gloating, before Mike Hussey led Australia’s final-session rampage to victory.And thereafter it was a procession, as Australia’s greats took it in turns to set the seal on their final Ashes as a team. Adam Gilchrist belted a 57-ball hundred to secure the series at Perth, before Warne said farewell to his Melbourne home crowd with a first-day five-for to make it 4-0. A week later, Warne and Glenn McGrath departed the SCG arm-in-arm, with Justin Langer also bowing out in that match, with glory secured and England crushed.ESPNcricinfo LtdExpectations had been heightened as Graham Gooch’s men headed Down Under after a remarkable nine months in which they’d achieved the unthinkable in beating the mighty West Indies in Jamaica, before wrapping up home series wins against New Zealand and India – the latter crowned by Gooch’s personal zenith, 333 and 123 at Lord’s.But in the final analysis of an unthinkably desperate tour, Gooch would memorably describe his team’s efforts as “a fart competing with thunder”, after being crushed 3-0 by an Allan Border-led team that was still light-years shy of the standards that Australia would attain in the coming decade, but whose professional standards and will to win were unimpeachable.Gooch, to be fair, wished for his England team to attain similar discipline, but his rather hair-shirted attitude to team culture was both ahead of its time, and anathema in particular to England’s star batsman of the tour, and generational Golden Child, David Gower.Their personal fall-out was epitomised by the Tiger Moth episode, a childish prank during an upstate Queensland tour game, but one that surely didn’t warrant a total sense-of-humour failure. Thereafter, Gower was a shadow of the flowing strokemaker who had charmed his way to two hundreds in the first three Tests. His crass dismissal on the stroke of lunch at Adelaide, caught in a transparent leg-trap off Craig McDermott with a thunderous Gooch looking on from the other end, became one of the defining moments of the series.Accidents and injuries undermined England’s challenge, not least Gooch’s absence from the first Test at Brisbane, when he was hospitalised with a septic hand. But ineptitude was England’s most devastating failing. Three devastating batting collapses contributed to each of their three defeats, none more abject than the cascade of wickets at the hands of Bruce Reid at Melbourne, when 103 for 1, and a lead of 149, became 150 all out and an eight-wicket defeat.ESPNcricinfo LtdAfter a protracted will-they-won’t-they in the lead-up to the tour, the first five-Test series to be completed under the shadow of Covid was a desperate and troubling anti-climax. England spent longer on the Gold Coast, in their rain-wrecked quarantine period, than they did in live Ashes action, as the urn was surrendered inside 12 days – not their fastest turnover in recent history, but quite possibly their floppiest challenge yet.The tone – as so often – was set by the very first ball of the series. Rory Burns walked across his stumps to be bowled round his legs by Mitchell Starc, and thereafter, England’s batting was poleaxed. The team failed to pass 300 in ten attempts, and was skittled for less than 200 on six pitiful occasions – including 68 all out in the series decider at Melbourne, where Scott Boland marked his debut with the preposterous figures of 6 for 7, and a final-day collapse of 10 for 56 at Hobart.Silver linings were as scarce as England’s fleeting hours of dominance. Jonny Bairstow made England’s solitary century – a brilliant mind-over-matter 113 at Sydney – while the indefatigable Mark Wood earned overdue rewards with a career-best 6 for 37 in the final innings of the series. Root, however, is still waiting for that elusive maiden hundred in Australia as he faded after a stellar 2021, while Stokes – a shadow of his 2019 self after hurrying back from a mental-health break – was thoroughly outmatched in the allrounder stakes by Australia’s rising star, Cameron Green.Four years on from an identical scoreline in 2017-18, England had clearly taken on board none of the lessons of that insipid campaign. Their selection was baffling – right from the omission of both Broad and Anderson on a Gabba greentop – while off-field reports of excessive boozing and substandard fitness levels harked back to the chaos of the 1990s.Australia were good – some of their spells of fast-bowling, particularly from the new skipper, Pat Cummins, were genuinely great – but England were powerless to make them sweat at any stage. Warner and Smith endured rare fallow series, but Marnus Labuschagne claimed Root’s No.1 batting ranking after surviving three dropped catches in his Adelaide century, while Travis Head and Usman Khawaja – with twin hundreds in a remarkable comeback at Sydney – were the unlikely stars in Australia’s middle order. More than a decade on from England’s last win Down Under, it was all becoming a bit easy.ESPNcricinfo LtdThe shocker to end all shockers. Barely three months after easing to a 3-0 home Ashes win, England were obliterated in body, spirit and scoreline by a vengeful and under-rated Australia team who were fed up of being branded losers. Mitchell Johnson epitomised this revolution of the disparaged, putting aside his miserable past Ashes record to put the fear of God into his stunned and ill-prepared opponents. England had started the tour with realistic expectations of completing their fourth Ashes victory in a row. By the end of two brutal routs at Brisbane and Adelaide, their second whitewash in three tours of Australia was all but assured.It wasn’t simply that England were outplayed – with the ball, Ryan Harris was barely any less immense than Johnson, while David Warner’s succession of second-innings ram-raids trampled their remaining resistance underfoot. It was the collateral damage that they endured which truly marked out this defeat as England’s most crushing for a generation.It started at Brisbane, where Johnson’s searing pace tipped Jonathan Trott, hitherto England’s bedrock at No.3, over the brink. It continued through to Perth, where Graeme Swann, their outstanding spinner, retired mid-tour citing an injured elbow. And it culminated at Melbourne, where Matt Prior, their heart-and-soul wicketkeeper, was dropped due to his collapsing form, before an infamous team meeting vaporised what little squad unity still remained.A prostrate three-day surrender at Sydney completed a sorry tour. But England’s annus horribilis was only just beginning. When Kevin Pietersen, their series top-scorer, was sacked by the ECB for reasons that they chose never to make entirely clear, a toxic post-mortem was set in motion that would destabilise the England dressing-room right the way through to an equally desperate World Cup in 2015.ESPNcricinfo LtdEngland’s struggles to compete in Australia over the years only go to show what a masterful achievement it was for Andrew Strauss’s men to win in Australia for the first time since 1986-87. Alastair Cook took the plaudits with a gargantuan haul of 766 runs at 127.66, as Australia were given an insight into what it must have been to be an Englishman throughout the preceding two decades.But even on that tour, punctuated as it was by three thumping innings wins, England had to battle for the ascendancy throughout the first three Tests. At Brisbane, they were gripped by stage fright on the opening day of the series, and conceded a first-innings deficit of 221 (before Cook turned the tables to stunning effect); at Adelaide, they won the Test handsomely despite the loss of Stuart Broad, who went lame mid-match with a side strain. And at Perth, they were routed by an inspired Mitchell Johnson (in a hint of traumas to come), to leave the series in the balance at 1-1 with two to play.But it was England’s refusal to panic, and their planning for every eventuality, that ultimately seized the day. They had insisted on three fully competitive warm-ups in the build-up to the Tests, which allowed them to parachute in battle-hardened replacements at critical moments of the tour – in particular Chris Tremlett at Perth and Tim Bresnan at Melbourne, who meshed seamlessly with James Anderson, the attack leader, whose 24 wickets included match-shaping spells in the first innings of all three wins.It was as complete an England performance as has ever been compiled on a tour of Australia. But it could so easily have unravelled from the outset. Proof that anything less than the best Down Under will invariably lead to disaster.This article was updated on January 10, 2018 and again on January 18, 2021-22 to reflect England’s two most recent Ashes defeats

Houston businessman Sakhi Muhammad has poured his heart and soul into making international cricket a reality in the Lone Star State

Peter Della Penna01-May-2022Since the turn of the millennium, cricket facilities have sprouted up in some unusual places around America and generated widespread acclaim. Lauderhill, Florida (the home of USA’s first ODI accredited stadium) and Morrisville, North Carolina (the host of the 2018 ICC Americas T20 World Cup Qualifier and the inaugural championship weekend in 2021 for Minor League T20 Cricket (MiLC) franchise event) have been at the forefront of USA’s cricket revolution.Though it may have been slightly more anonymous over the last decade, Pearland, Texas – a city of 130,000 people in Brazoria County located 22 miles south of downtown Houston – has been a part of that group too. But its low profile may be a thing of the past after USA Cricket announced on Friday that Pearland’s Moosa Stadium will become USA’s second ODI accredited venue, pending a final rubber stamp from the ICC later this month. It is there that USA will host Scotland and UAE from May 28 through June 4, and then Nepal and Oman from June 8 to June 15 for a total of 12 ODIs across a pair of Cricket World Cup League Two ODI tri-series.Related

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“This is a dream come true for someone from Kamoke, Pakistan,” Sakhi Muhammad, a Houston area businessman who is the owner and founder of Moosa Stadium, told ESPNcricinfo. “For people from small places, it doesn’t matter where you’re born, it matters what you want to do in life. If you keep yourself composed, you can get somewhere.””When I go back for my father Moosa who I named this after, he was five years old when Partition happened and migrated from India. He got separated from his parents and was reunited with his mother after two years. I was 12 when he died. As a kid, you always want to do something with your father, but he died when he was 37 in an accident. What we wanted when we started was to bring some kind of reward for him and to bring his name on the world map. It’s very satisfying and very emotional too at the same time.”Muhammad, 55, left Pakistan early in his adult life for a job in Dubai before marrying a Pakistani-American woman from Houston and moved there in 1996. He worked his way up as an employee at a Mitsubishi car dealership to the point where he bought three of his own car dealerships. Adapting to the Houston sports community, Muhammad was a longtime season-ticket holder of the NBA’s Houston Rockets.Moosa Stadium owner Sakhi Muhammad smiles during an interview from the venue’s opening•Peter Della PennaBut Muhammad said he was spurred to go back to his cricket roots following the death of his mother in 2012. In 2013, his Smart Choice Auto Group became a sponsor of the USA men’s national team, and a short time later he spent $2 million of his own money to secure 24 acres and begin constructing Moosa Stadium in a quiet farmland area on McKeever Road/County Road 100. By 2015, Canada became the first international touring side to Pearland ahead of the ICC Americas T20 World Cup Qualifier at Indianapolis in 2015.By 2017, Moosa Stadium was regularly being used as the host site for USA men’s national team training camps and selection trials, and also welcomed former England captain Charlotte Edwards for a training camp with the USA women that same year. But the facility had a setback in June 2018 during a USA national team selection camp. Six days of consistent rain exposed a poor drainage system at the facility. Though the rain stopped in the days leading up to the camp, the field was still waterlogged on the first two days of the four-day trial, rendering it unplayable. It was a wakeup call to Muhammad that further investment needed to be made to rectify the issue.”There were a couple of broken pipes, which if you don’t fix, it doesn’t help,” Muhammad said. “We knew it needed sand work. But when Sam [Plummer, Moosa Stadium’s curator] left, the guy who came temporarily to replace him, he had no idea. He used a lawnmower to push away the water. If you use a lawnmower, you make it muddier.”Plummer is regarded by many as the most experienced cricket pitch curator in America. Prior to coming to the USA, the Jamaica native worked as a pitch curator at Chedwin Park, a first-class ground in Jamaica. His reputation grew in American cricket circles after Plummer orchestrated a dramatic turnaround in consistent standards at Broward County Stadium in Lauderhill, where he began working in 2011.Before Plummer’s arrival in Lauderhill, scraping past 100 for a team total was a challenge and the first T20Is on American soil resulted in ugly cricket played between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in 2010. But after Plummer was hired to take charge of the pitches at Lauderhill ahead of the West Indies first visit in 2012, the reputation of the venue changed virtually overnight from a batting graveyard to a T20 scoring paradise where 200 became a par score.Plummer was lured away from Lauderhill to Pearland by Muhammad in 2014 but left a few years later for another brief stint in Lauderhill before being recruited back following the 2018 USA trial debacle in Pearland. True to his reputation, Plummer has once again begun producing high scoring tracks at Moosa. The best evidence of that came in the MiLC playoff quarterfinal last September when former India U-19 captain Unmukt Chand blasted an unbeaten 132 off 69 balls to help the eventual champion Silicon Valley Strikers chase down a target of 185. Plummer has continued working around the clock in recent months to ensure the wickets, outfields and drainage at Moosa Stadium are in pristine condition.USA men’s national team gathers for a camp at Moosa Stadium under then head coach Pubudu Dassanayake in 2017•Peter Della Penna”When Sam came back, we realized we needed to do a lot of sand work,” Muhammad said. “Last year after MiLC, we brought in 100 truck loads of sand and we kept doing aeration to keep on improving it. That has really helped us. I believe if Sam was there [in 2018] and he knew the problem, it would have not been made worse.”Moosa Stadium was in competition to secure hosting rights for the pair of USA’s upcoming ODI series with Prairie View Cricket Complex, a much larger venue with four turf pitch fields that opened in 2018 located 50 miles northwest of downtown Houston. Though Prairie View is larger and ideal for staging events with four or more teams in order to play matches simultaneously, it currently lacks adequate infrastructure beyond the boundary rope necessary for hosting international teams.By contrast, Moosa Stadium has a pavilion with change rooms that include showers and ice bath recovery facilities, covered nets as well as permanent broadcast facilities. Combine all of that with Plummer’s reputation for producing consistent wickets and that gave Moosa Stadium the edge over Prairie View for hosting the upcoming ODIs.”I always believed that if we want the youth of America to come, those who go to the NBA games and other very well-built structures, they’re used to certain standards,” Muhammad said. “If you want them to have any interest, you have to build something acceptable to their standards. That was one of the reasons we wanted to build all those things. Last year before MiLC, we put in fiber-optic cables all the way around. It means you can hook up any number of cameras now for any international game and it saves money. When we ran an event in 2016, we had to spend $45,000 just in rentals and it’s not practical. It was important to add it for broadcasting because without it, it becomes hard to broadcast or live stream.”All of the recent upgrades that helped Moosa Stadium secure ODI status also makes the venue a strong candidate to be assigned matches at the 2024 Men’s T20 World Cup that USA is co-hosting with the West Indies. The facility has permanent seating for 6,000 people that can be expanded for up to 20,000 with temporary bleachers. But capacity will be temporarily capped at 2,500 for the upcoming ODIs due to municipal permit logistics. Muhammad also owns another 38 acres of undeveloped land adjacent to the current 24-acre location of Moosa Stadium that he has designated to be converted into parking lot space for large scale events.”What we plan to do in the next 12 months, put in bleachers and more parking and additional stuff for the T20 World Cup, I think Pearland will be put on the world map as more cricket comes and it will help Pearland and Brazoria County,” Muhammad said. “If you look at the other major sports, the [NFL] Texans and [NBA] Rockets and MLS soccer, they are all about 14-18 miles away and are very close. Having cricket in the mix with those sports and close to downtown will help Pearland overall.”When I was first building it, people told me I was crazy. But I believed it would happen. When I started building in 2013, nobody knew Houston [cricket] back then. Everyone knew about Woodley Park in California. But Moosa has really changed the cricket future. Especially now after Prairie View has come in, Houston has so much to offer as a cricket center.”

And who is the youngest batter to make a first-class double-hundred?

Steven Lynch29-Mar-2022Kraigg Brathwaite now has 25 Test wickets, with each one being a different batter. Who has the most Test wickets without dismissing the same man twice? asked Lachlan McBeath from Australia

That’s a nice easy one, as those 25 different wickets by Kraigg Brathwaite is the Test record. Next comes Mohammad Ashraful, whose 21 wickets for Bangladesh were all different people. The Sri Lankan left-arm seamer Sajeewa de Silva follows him with 16, one more than the Surrey and England pair of Gareth Batty and Mark Butcher.In all international cricket, Ashraful took 47 wickets, again without ever dismissing the same batter twice. He’s well clear of a trio on 28 – Dillon Heyliger of Canada, Oman’s Fayyaz Butt, and Mark Jonkman of the Netherlands.When was the first-ever first-class match? asked Simon Duke from England

The match that the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians considers to be the inaugural first-class fixture was played 250 years ago this year: on Broadhalfpenny Down in Hambledon, Hampshire beat “England” by 53 runs in a two-day game that started on June 24, 1772. John Small, one of the game’s first notable batters, made 78 for Hampshire; the might of England managed only one run more between them in their second innings. Three years later, also at Hambledon, Small made what is now recognised as the maiden first-class century – 138 for Hampshire against Surrey.Both captains scored 150s in the Bridgetown Test – how rare is this? asked Ahson Atif from India

That double by Joe Root (153) and Kraigg Brathwaite (160) in the second Test in Bridgetown was the eighth time both captains had made a score of 150 or more in the same Test. The first such double was at Old Trafford in 1964, when Bob Simpson amassed 311 for Australia and Ted Dexter responded with 174 for England. The most recent instance before last week came in Abu Dhabi in March 2021, when Asghar Afghan made 164 for Afghanistan and Sean Williams 151 not out for Zimbabwe.Kumar Kushagra is the sixth youngest batter to score a first-class double-hundred•PTI Has there been an ODI innings in which all 11 players made it into double figures? asked Mahesh Siddique from India

Unlike in Tests (15 instances so far), there hasn’t yet been a one-day international innings in which everyone reached double figures. There are four cases of ten getting there. When West Indies made 246 against Australia in Bridgetown in 1990-91, everyone reached double figures except last man Courtney Walsh, who was out for 4. Pakistan’s 259 for 9 against West Indies in Dhaka in 1998-99 included ten double-figure scores, plus 4 from Shahid Afridi, who opened. When Zimbabwe scored 262 against India in Rajkot in 2000-01, last man Brian Murphy was out for 1. And Robin Uthappa also made 1 as India totalled 275 against Pakistan in Jaipur in 2007-08.There have also been two innings in men’s ODIs that included no double-figure scores at all. When Zimbabwe slipped to 35 all out against Sri Lanka in Harare in April 2004, the highest score was 7, by Dion Ebrahim and Mr Extras. (That was a record low for ODIs at the time, since equalled by the USA against Nepal in Kirtipur in February 2020; Xavier Marshall made 16 of those.) And when Canada slumped to 36 all out – the lowest World Cup total – against Sri Lanka in Paarl in 2003, the highest contributions were a pair of 9s, by opener Desmond Chumney and skipper Joe Harris.A couple more thoughts about that Ranji Trophy runfest between Jharkhand and Nagaland, that was mentioned in last week’s column. Kumar Kushagra, who is only 17, scored 266. And Sushant Mishra bagged a pair despite his team amassing more than a thousand runs. Were either of these records? asked Shreyal Bose and Divyanand Valsan from India

Both of these things were records, depending on how you define them. At 17, Kumar Kushagra was the sixth youngest to score a first-class double-century – Hasan Raza, whose age is disputed, was reportedly only 15 when he scored 204 not out for Karachi Whites against Bahawalpur in Karachi in 1997-98. The others were Ijaz Ahmed (16 in 1984-85), and 17-year-olds Reetinder Sodhi (1997-98), Ambati Rayudu (2002-03) and Johann Myburgh (1997-98). But none of those younger than Kushagra made it to 250, so he is the youngest to reach that particular milestone.The unfortunate Sushant Mishra collected a four-ball pair in the match in Kolkata, despite his side piling up 1297 runs in all. The only other man to bag a pair of ducks in a match in which his side scored more than 1000 runs did it in a Test: the Pakistan legspinner Danish Kaneria, while his side amassed 1078 runs against India in Faisalabad in 2005-06.Shiva Jayaraman of ESPNcricinfo’s stats team helped with some of the above answers.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

Two batters walked two different kinds of tightrope, and there was room for only one of them on the other side

Karthik Krishnaswamy26-May-20222:53

Manjrekar: Patidar’s innings not a flash in the pan, there were signs

Existence can feel like a bleak and terrifying ride down a dark and twisty tunnel with only a wonky steering wheel for company, but there are days when everything is bathed in a golden light and it almost, almost feels like you’re in control of your own destiny. Wednesday was such a day for Rajat Patidar.He might have sensed this as early as the third ball of his innings at Eden Gardens. Dushmantha Chameera bowled him a fast, good-length ball that finished on a tight, off-stumpish line, the sort of ball that keeps batters honest even on the flattest of pitches.Patidar stood where he was and punched the ball, meeting it under his eyes with a vertical bat, making contact just as he shifted his weight from front foot to back. The ball sped downwards, into one of the pitches adjacent to the match strip, and bounced over the right hand of the backward point fielder as he threw himself sideways and upwards at full stretch. His colleague from cover point then gave chase, and the ball kept him interested for long enough to attempt a sprawling, stomach-first dive before it eluded his fingertips and skipped over the boundary cushions.Related

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It was a shot of pure timing, with no need for accoutrements such as footwork or follow-through.Batting can be a complicated thing full of interconnected moving parts that only need to fall slightly out of sync for the whole mechanism to collapse. On a day like the one Patidar was having, however, it can feel like all you need to do is stand there, watch the ball, and let your instincts take over.His feet moved when they had to, of course, nimbly and precisely, allowing him to do absurd things like step away from leg stump and carve a low full-toss over cover, one-handed. Or to skip across in the other direction and deflect a yorker over short fine leg, against the around-the-wicket angle. Or, more subtly, to unweight his front foot and pivot on his back foot to hook a short ball – a short ball designed to cramp him for room – over long leg for six.Patidar’s feet moved when they had to, but never more than strictly necessary, and the overwhelming sense that the innings radiated was of stillness. The stillness of the blessed few who have that extra split-second of time – or the illusion of it – to play their shots.KL Rahul is one of those blessed few, and, in the sixth over of Lucknow Super Giants’ innings, he hit a pair of pulled sixes off Mohammed Siraj that suggested he had minutes rather than split-seconds in which to react to the ball. Like Patidar had done time and again during Royal Challengers Bangalore’s innings, Rahul simply stood still and dismissed the ball from his presence.4:28

Daniel Vettori: Coaches need to ‘destigmatise risk’ in KL Rahul’s mind

When he plays shots like these, Rahul looks capable of anything. It’s as if he knows in advance what the bowler will bowl. Presentiment to be involved, surely, when he reverse-lapped Shahbaz Ahmed over his right shoulder in the 11th over, his hands so quick you barely saw them move.Rahul makes these shots look so easy that you begin to wonder why the intervals between them are so often spent so watchfully, full of strolled singles to deep fielders. And on a day like Wednesday, when Super Giants were chasing 208, you wonder even more.There were no such lulls during Patidar’s innings. He hit a four or six every 2.8 balls, and if he hit a boundary early in an over, it was only a prelude to piling more pressure on the bowler with undimmed intent.With that innings fresh in the mind, it was natural to make comparisons when Rahul was batting. Patidar brought up his hundred off his 49th ball, for instance, and Rahul hit a six off his 49th ball to go from 58 to 64.But here’s the thing. Patidar was playing a blinder of an innings on a day when everything went his way. He timed the ball like a dream, and on the rare occasions when he didn’t, luck smiled on him.Patidar was on 59 off 34 when a top-edged swipe off Krunal Pandya ballooned and fell just wide of a diving Mohsin Khan at short third man. He attempted a slog sweep next ball and the ball beat his inside edge and missed leg stump by an inch. Then, when he was on 72 off 40, he mis-hit a pull off Ravi Bishnoi and Deepak Hooda missed a sitter at deep midwicket.And Patidar’s team was batting first. Rahul’s team was chasing. Rahul wasn’t chasing 112 off 54 balls; Super Giants were chasing 208.There is often criticism of Rahul’s conservative middle-overs approach – much of it justified – when his team bats first and ends up with totals that aren’t as far above par as they may otherwise be. But this innings wasn’t the same thing.And it wasn’t entirely about intent or its absence. There was a seven-over period immediately after the powerplay during which Rahul hit just the one boundary, but this was at least partly down to genuinely good defensive bowling, particularly from Harshal Patel, who got more purchase out of the pitch with his cutters than any other fast bowler on the day.”Yes, I think now, looking back, yes, it was just about two big hits in the middle overs and that could have gotten us over the line,” Rahul said in his post-match press conference. “It’s not that we didn’t try to hit those fours or sixes. We were trying, but in the middle they bowled really well. I think Harshal’s two overs in the middle were what pushed us back a little bit, because he went I think two overs for seven or eight runs [eight runs], he didn’t give away much, and he really changed his pace well. He bowled to the field, and that’s where we were pushed back a little bit.”After that quiet period, Rahul, Hooda and Marcus Stoinis hit seven sixes in the space of four overs to bring the equation down to 41 off 18 balls. If Super Giants had been offered this equation – that too with Rahul and Stoinis at the crease – at the start of their innings, they would probably have taken it.When the 18th over began, the predominantly Royal Challengers-supporting crowd were the quietest they had been all evening.1:48

KL Rahul: Harshal’s two overs in the middle pushed us back

On this overcast Kolkata evening, two batters performed very different high-wire acts. Patidar risked his wicket with every audacious shot he attempted, and the shots didn’t look all that risky when they came off because he was batting in a bubble of pure timing. And luck saved him each time he threatened to slip off the tightrope.The risk Rahul took was to minimise the risk of losing his wicket, and to back himself and his colleagues to deal with a steep asking rate in the closing overs of the match. He risked losing and having his approach criticised widely, when he could have gone harder, scored quicker, been out for 28 off 16 balls, say, and earned praise even if his team had lost by a bigger margin.The argument that a 16-ball 28 is a better innings than a 58-ball 79 in a chase of 208 is, of course, a valid one, and the argument won’t need to be made any longer if T20 evolves to the point where most teams have quality hitters batting from Nos. 1 to 8. But Rahul – a T20 player capable of every shot, but also one with hardwired longer-format instincts – was batting on the evening of May 25, 2022, for a team that has had middle-order issues all season, and he was trying to win them a match in what he felt was the best possible way.It came down to 41 off 18 balls, then 33 off 12, and then, after a spate of wides from Josh Hazlewood, 28 off 9. Then Rahul shuffled across his stumps, expecting the bowler to attempt a wide yorker, and got what he was looking for, misdirected so it was a full-toss. He looked for the lap over short fine leg, a shot he plays as well as anyone in the game.There are days when everything goes your way, and there are days when they don’t, but you battle your way through it and hope things work out. Rahul middled the ball, timing it reasonably well but not perfectly, getting a decent amount of power on the shot but not the elevation he desired to safely clear short fine leg.On another day, the ball may have travelled a couple of yards either side of where it ended up, and eluded the fielder’s fingertips. On this day, Shahbaz Ahmed leaped diagonally to his left, reached into the air, and landed with the ball nestled between his hands. On this day, two batters walked two different kinds of tightrope, and there was room for only one of them on the other side.

He scored heaps of runs in age-group cricket, but had only 55 runs to show for his five Ranji Trophy matches before this season

Srinidhi Ramanujam17-Jun-2022Armaan Jaffer has always had an appetite for runs and long innings. At the school level, at the Under-19 level, at the Under-25 level. And now, it was visible at the senior level too, when he scored his second century of the Ranji Trophy season, on day four of the semi-final and blunted Uttar Pradesh with centurion Yashasvi Jaiswal to take Mumbai close to their first final in five years. Mumbai now lead by 662 runs.After a long gap, this hunger for runs reflected in tangible terms only recently. Having started his age-group cricket alongside Sarfaraz Khan and Prithvi Shaw, he was tipped to be the next big thing with them from Mumbai.But it was a stop-start career for Jaffer after his first-class debut in the 2016-17 season. He missed the following season due to a knee surgery but made his way back into the Mumbai squad in the 2018-19 edition after an unbeaten 300 off 367 against Saurashtra in the Under-23 CK Nayudu Trophy.However, his career never really took off at the senior level as he would have wanted it to.Before this Ranji season, Jaffer had played five first-class matches and had scored a mere 55 runs.Self-doubt started to creep in and “people also started doubting” him. It was because of the reputation he had earned and the expectations he had set after being prolific in age-group cricket. The ‘Jaffer’ tag also had its own share of pressure.Jaffer first hogged the limelight with a record 498 runs in the Under-14 Giles Shield tournament – the highest individual score in Indian school cricket in 2010. He was then picked for the 2016 Under-19 World Cup on the back of three consecutive double-centuries in the Under-19 Cooch Behar Trophy. In the same year, he was added to the Kings XI Punjab squad for INR 10 lakh.But this drive to play long innings was rekindled by Abhishek Nayar, former India and Mumbai batter, post his 2019 ACL surgery.”I didn’t want to take any innings for granted,” he said of his changed mindset.During his rehabilitation in Mumbai, Jaffer trained with Nayar for six months and those interactions helped him get into a better mental state and “not focus on personal goals.” That was a bit of a “different preparation,” he would say.”Talking to him, him sharing his experiences…that motivated me a lot.”On my chat with Nayar, I came to know that it was his dream to hit a six off the first ball on debut like Vinod Kambli did, but that could not happen because he was under so much pressure. Then he could not string good performances, he got out for consecutive zeroes, and he was left out of the team. But he did not lose his hunger of coming back into the team and playing Ranji Trophy for Bombay for many years. Eventually, he made a comeback and went on to play for India as well. That was quite motivating for me.”For me, there was a time when I played five [Ranji] matches, and post that, I did not do anything.”I had scored so many runs in age-group tournaments that there was so much expectation from everyone, and that could not be fulfilled. So there was a lot of self-doubt, but when I spoke to him [Nayar], my dad, then my mindset changed a bit. This season I think my mindset has been better. There has definitely been hard work, but I think my mindset has been better. And that is paying off through my performances.”This clarity was visible in all the three Ranji games he has played so far. In his first match this season, against Odisha in the group stage, coming in at No. 3 and witnessing Mumbai slip from 73 for 0 to 76 for 3, Jaffer cracked a 223-ball 125 and stitched 277 runs with Sarfaraz to help Mumbai take a big lead. The next opportunity came a few months after the IPL, in the quarter-final against Uttarakhand and he scored 60 and an unbeaten 17.On Friday, in the semi-final, Jaffer scored a breezy 127 in the second innings on a flat pitch at the Just Cricket Academy and put on 286 runs with Jaiswal for the second wicket to further close in on the final spot. Mumbai ended the day at 449 for 4 with another massive lead. Jaiswal made his career-best first-class score of 181, his third consecutive century in the format.”The match was on our side, especially after they got out in the first innings,” Jaffer said. “But personally, I did not want to take any innings for granted. Regardless of the match situation, I did not want to take any innings for granted and did not want to waste any innings. My focus was to score runs. That would have helped the team and me.”In general, I haven’t made too many changes to my preparation. What I was doing at the time, I am continuing with the same now. Maybe, it was not destined to happen at the time, but now it is happening. The hard work that I have put in these years is paying off now. My preparation has been normal, I train with my father.”Mumbai might be closing in on a final spot, but Jaffer still has some unfinished business.”Before the season, the message from our coach [Amol Muzumdar] was that Bombay has won the trophy 41 times, so we have to win the Ranji Trophy anyhow. That was the goal right from the beginning,” he added.The senior Jaffer – Armaan’s uncle – has won 10 Ranji titles in his career. The junior may not be far from adding one to his name.

The numbers for batters four to eight are impressive, but the top three probably don’t trust them enough

Danyal Rasool26-Aug-20222:15

Babar: ‘Injuries are part of the game, Pakistan’s bench strength is good’

At first glance, Pakistan’s over-reliance on their top three in ODIs appears to bleed over into T20I cricket, too. Not unlike in the 50-over format, top three are responsible for roughly two-thirds – 67.5% – of Pakistan’s runs in T20Is since the start of the 2021 World Cup. As in ODIs, this figure is by some distance the highest among all sides, India’s top three a distant second, responsible for 58.4% of their team’s runs.And there isn’t much evidence of runs coming from further down for Pakistan either. Since the last T20 World Cup, only two players outside the top three have scored 100 runs in the format, and there’s little clarity on the personnel that make up Pakistan’s best middle order. Take that to the start of 2021: no one from the middle order has managed 200 T20I runs. What Fakhar Zaman, Imam-ul-Haq and Babar Azam do for the ODI side, Babar, Mohammad Rizwan and Fakhar do in T20Is.Related

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Anyone with even a passing interest in Pakistan cricket doesn’t need numbers to know this. Babar’s T20 consistency and Rizwan’s sensational rebirth in the format at the top of the order, combined with Fakhar’s brute force at one-drop are what form the base of a Pakistan T20I innings now. The middle order is unreliable, players picked and dropped after a few games, most likely failing to have any discernible impact. Azam Khan came and went, Khushdil Shah hasn’t really taken to the format, and, perhaps too often, Shadab Khan, Faheem Ashraf, Iftikhar Ahmed and Asif Ali have flattered to deceive internationally. So, naturally, the top three make most of the runs, are top scorers in most games Pakistan win, and have to face most of the overs.That last bit is crucial, and often overlooked. While Babar, Rizwan and Fakhar have scored 67.5% of Pakistan’s T20I runs since the last World Cup, they have faced an incredible 72% of the deliveries. Of course, no other top three has faced even 60% of deliveries internationally, and this is also the largest negative variance – 4.5% – for any top three between runs scored and balls faced in that period. South Africa’s top three at the second least productive, facing 3.5% more balls than the runs they score, but unlike Pakistan, they do leave 51.3% of balls for the middle order to make up the shortfall.Pakistan’s top-order batters rarely allow the middle order in early, and almost never in the powerplay, where the intent has been most notably lacking. Since the start of January 2020, Babar, who has faced more balls as opener than anyone else for Pakistan in this period, has scored at just 6.72 runs per over in powerplays, averaging around 20 off 18 balls. Rizwan scores at 7.20, and while Fakhar is well ahead at 7.80, his powerplay exposure is lower, because he comes in at three. Whether he should open, particular when Pakistan bat first, has been looked at, but those numbers inevitably result in Pakistan leaving most of their aggression for the latter stages of an innings.ESPNcricinfo LtdOne might think the top three are forced into this approach because of the instability lower down, but that might not be quite on point. It’s true there’s a game of musical chairs on there, but whoever gets in there tends to produce the firepower Pakistan invariably need. Surprisingly for a middle order as wobbly as Pakistan’s, in 13 matches since the last World Cup, batters from No. 4 to No. 8 have scored at 152.18, the highest among all T20I sides since then.While Pakistan generally do not begrudge Babar and Rizwan opening in a chase, it can be especially jarring to see Babar using up vast numbers of deliveries in the first innings. For all of Babar’s qualities, he’s not quite proven himself to be the best judge of what a good first-innings score is, and if he has, his ability to bat accordingly is questionable. In all T20s for Pakistan or Karachi Kings since January 2020, Babar’s first-innings strike rate is 123.02. This jumps to 133.42 batting second, with the average ballooning from 36.56 to 61.70.Moving Fakhar up to the top when Pakistan bat first is a statistically sound option: since January 2017, Fakhar’s T20 strike rate as opener is 139.65, the highest among Pakistani openers besides Kamran Akmal, but the solution can extend beyond just the one switch.Curiously, Pakistan’s middle and lower-middle order are more effective when they bat first. Since the last World Cup, Pakistan batters outside the top three manage a strike rate of 161.11 in such situations, the highest once more. South Africa are next at 159.07, but after that, England’s 141.37 is as good as any side has mustered. That number drops to 142.19 when Pakistan chase, higher than all sides bar India, whose middle and lower-middle order are prolific in a chase, striking at 157.79.ESPNcricinfo LtdSo what does that tell us, apart from telling us that Pakistan should try and avoid batting first against India in their Asia Cup games?The way a Pakistan batting unit behaves depending on when they bat means a one-size-fits-all approach cannot be the most efficient way to wring the last run out of their T20I innings. The status quo might well be fine when they chase; it is probably the best way to get the most out of this outfit. But when Pakistan bat first, Babar, and to a lesser extent the other two at the top, simply cannot consume the number of deliveries they do, when statistically the world’s most explosive middle order sits in the dugout, powerless to have the impact on the game the numbers show they can.Perhaps Pakistan’s two most consequential T20I games in the last decade crystallise this side’s batting ability perfectly. Against India in their World Cup’s opening game, they played to their strengths, and there’s arguably no better pair than Babar and Rizwan when chasing a total – especially a below-par one. Against Australia in the semi-final 16 days later, that same reliability became a crutch that hobbled the innings right to the end. Pakistan left runs out there, runs that mattered when Matthew Wade scooped Shaheen Afridi over fine leg 90 minutes later.Babar and Rizwan may have felt justified in their conservatism during that semi-final. If you don’t quite trust your middle order, the value you place on your wicket rises exponentially, especially in key games. It was perhaps reasonable for the openers to be sceptical on that occasion. But, in a format where all sorts of risks need to be taken, lending the middle order that trust is just another one that might be necessary. Because Rizwan and Babar batting together might be a beautiful sight to behold, but when they are setting a target, it can also be a worrying one.

Phoenix victories and success of home-grown stars are helping to draw in new fans

Matt Roller16-Aug-2022There is a huge cheer as Moeen Ali walks towards the South Stand at Edgbaston. A sprawling queue has formed at the end of Birmingham Phoenix’s seven-wicket win against Trent Rockets, all desperate for an autograph or a selfie with the captain and talisman. “Super, super Mo, Super Moeen Ali,” has been ringing out around the ground all evening.Half an hour earlier, Moeen’s devastating assault on Lewis Gregory – whose third set of five cost 23 runs – had removed any scoring pressure from Phoenix’s chase as the men closed out their sixth win from six at Edgbaston. The result completed a Phoenix double after Amy Jones – like Moeen, born and raised in the West Midlands – closed out the women’s chase alongside Ellyse Perry.”It’s something that we thrive off and buzz off,” Moeen says, after being pulled away from his fans to speak to the media. “It gives you a lift as a team. When the crowd is chanting your name and you get that support, it is awesome.”The reason we’re playing the Hundred is to attract a new audience and to make it simple for them to understand and enjoy games like this. Our jobs are not just about trying to win games – it’s about trying to inspire the next generation.”The West Midlands is home to a number of the UK’s bellwether political constituencies, where local results over a number of general elections have been mirrored by the outcome at a national level. Nuneaton, 25 miles east of Birmingham, has voted in line with the country as a whole since 1997; Worcester, 40 miles south-west, has done so since 1979.In a similar vein, the West Midlands might be seen as a bellwether for the Hundred. A short-form competition at the height of summer was always going to work in London, where there is always a huge demand for tickets, but Birmingham is a different kettle of fish. Edgbaston has hosted – and sold out – T20 Finals Day every year since 2013 but the Blast’s group stages have proved a harder sell.In 2019, the final pre-Hundred season with full crowds permitted, their average attendance across seven home games was around 9,500. “It’s a very diverse, industrial city,” Stuart Cain, Warwickshire’s chief executive, says. “You have to work hard to get people to spend money. Not because they’re tight, but it’s well-earned money. You have to give them a good day out.”The kids at Edgbaston get into the action during the Men’s Hundred•PA Images via Getty ImagesIn its first season, the Hundred came to life at Edgbaston. Phoenix’s women came from nowhere to qualify for the knockout stages, while the men were unbeaten at home on their way to top spot in the group stages. The second season has started brightly, too: Will Smeed hit the Hundred’s first hundred last week and so far the home teams have won three out of three.Crowds last year were significantly higher than in the Blast, with an average attendance of 15,500, and the Hundred managed to draw significantly more interest from Birmingham’s South Asian communities than the Blast ever had. “The new concept and the freshness has appealed to everyone,” Cain says, “so by default, if 40% of your city is South Asian, you’re going to get more people coming in from those communities.”Whether by chance or design, Phoenix’s squads have featured several British Asian players who have become an integral part of the new teams’ attempts to create an identity: Moeen, Issy Wong and Abtaha Maqsood. “Moeen is a local lad and Issy has come up through the ranks from the age of 10 or 11,” Cain says. “Abtaha was recommended to us and it has been awesome to send out the message that you can be a practising Muslim, wear the hijab, and be a professional cricketer.”Warwickshire have taken significant steps to make Edgbaston a more inclusive ground, particularly in its attempts to crack down on crowd abuse. “I think that’s the best way to give any community faith that it’s OK to come here,” Cain says.The Edgbaston app has been updated to allow quick, anonymous reports if fans experience any issues, while the installation of a high-definition camera facing the Eric Hollies Stand facilitated an arrest after allegations of racist abuse during the England-India Test earlier this summer. A man has since been charged with a racially-aggravated public order offence.The attendances for Monday’s double-header were impressive – 9,859 for the women’s game (on a weekday afternoon) and 15,800 for the men’s – not least given the numbers of events Edgbsaton has hosted this year: a Test, a T20I, seven Blast group games, Finals Day, and the Commonwealth Games. The swathe of bright-orange merchandise in the crowd suggested an affinity with Phoenix, even at an early stage of their existence.Related

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Crucially, some of the Hundred’s audience appear to have become hooked. Blast crowds this season were “slightly ahead” of 2019 figures despite the tournament being played earlier in the summer, and Edgbaston sold over 1,000 white-ball season tickets, granting access to every Blast and Hundred matchday.”This debate about ‘is the Hundred going to kill the Blast?’ is the wrong one: the genie is out of the bottle,” Cain says. “”I don’t agree that the Blast is for one audience and the Hundred is for a different one. There are people that love cricket and are coming to both, but there are some that love the Blast and will never come to the Hundred, and some that will come to the Hundred and will never come to the Blast.”Any new concept that brings in new crowds, new sponsors, free-to-air broadcast – I can’t see what there is to dislike. If you look at other sports – golf, tennis, hockey – they must be sitting there now in absolute envy about what cricket has done, to find a format that the BBC, Sky, fans and sponsors are all engaged in.”You’ve got to respect members’ opinions. Our job is to make sure we don’t lose the history and tradition of red-ball cricket but, at the same time, try and move the game on in a way that acknowledges the world is changing. We’re not trying to downgrade Championship cricket. We’re trying to find new ways of reaching audiences in a world where time, money and attention spans are tight.”The Hundred and its knock-on effects on the rest of the summer schedule remain hugely divisive, but it is clear that in its bellwether region, it is doing something right. As Cain summarises: “the second the sport stops criticising itself and doing itself down, the better off we’ll be.”