Dominant position enhanced by desperate decision-making from opponents

Andrew Miller16-Jan-2021Batsman error is a curious concept. It’s what all bowlers are looking to cause when they turn at the top of their mark, by applying sufficient pressure to force the fatal misjudgement, or by setting a crafty trap and springing it on the unwitting. Because, as Jack Leach finally proved with an outstanding delivery late in the day to Kusal Mendis, it’s only a glorious handful of balls that are genuinely unplayable.So what are we to make of the batsman errors in this contest so far? Specifically the Sri Lankan ones, for England, despite an afternoon of rather harder toil than they might have envisaged after the first innings, still have the first Test at their mercy, with a hefty lead in the bank and two more days on a wearing deck to reassert their authority.But even in the midst of an otherwise valiant rearguard, the one wicket to fall in the first 59 overs of Sri Lanka’s second innings was another self-inflicted wound of the type that came in a torrent on day one. With only one man back on the rope at deep backward point, even England’s unofficial Maker of Things to Happen, Sam Curran, struggled to take the credit for a wide outswinging long-hop to a well-set Kusal Perera, and his coy puff of the cheeks as Leach completed the catch rather gave the game away.Related

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“You don’t take Test wickets for granted but, yeah, that wasn’t the way I expected,” Curran said at the close. “The way things happened for us on day one aren’t going to happen very often, but you don’t take those days for granted because when they do come you’ve got to enjoy them. In the second innings, Sri Lanka fought really hard, which we expected, but we stuck in there as a bowling group, keeping the scoring rate as low as possible in really tough conditions.”To be fair to Perera, his second-innings dismissal was not remotely as culpable a dismissal as his first-day aberration – a second-ball reverse sweep to Dom Bess that set in motion one of the most preposterous five-wicket hauls in Test history. However, it was in keeping with a contest in which England have so far claimed just three wickets out of 13 with good deliveries, and the first two of those might well have been resisted by less skittish opponents.There was Stuart Broad’s legcutter to Mendis, an outstanding piece of thinking against an opponent who at that stage had not scored a run in four innings, but it still required a nervy hard-handed thrust to seal the deal. As for Dilruwan Perera, his second-ball inside-out drive against Bess was perhaps not the ideal response to a well-flighted delivery on off stump.In mitigation for England, this match is effectively their warm-up fixture, because a low-key intra-squad warm-up in Hambantota wasn’t nearly enough of a gallop after nearly five months in mothballs for most of the squad. But with five more Tests to come in the next two months, including four against a ferociously drilled India who are currently dredging new reserves of spirit on their tour of Australia, the worry for Joe Root’s men is that they might not find the freebies quite so easy to come by from here on in.”No-one’s really played much cricket so you’d expect a bit of rustiness and a lack of rhythm, but the guys fought hard in humid, sweaty, hot conditions,” Curran said. “The build-up was what it was, we have no complaints. Rooty was very clear that we need to hit the ground running which we luckily did on day one. But day four is going to be a test for us, because we’ve got a lot of overs in our legs now, and we’ve got to come back and keep fighting.”Sam Curran celebrates his breakthrough with Dom Bess•SLCAnd for that reason, it’s hard to pick too many holes in a team who are still favourites to complete an unprecedented fourth consecutive victory in Asia – all of them in Sri Lanka, following their 3-0 clean sweep two winters ago.They’ve got some significant bench-strength to come as well – for the India leg of the winter, if not before – including James Anderson, who seemed the pick of the bowlers in Hambantota, as well as Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer, two men whose methods might prove especially effective in Asia, not to mention Moeen Ali – now finally released from his Covid quarantine.However, the likelihood of Moeen returning for the second Test is slim, given both his own lack of match practice, but also the fact that Leach and Bess are now finally getting enough overs themselves to start feeling a hint of rhythm. Leach in particular – one of the stars of that last Sri Lanka campaign – had bowled a grand total of 52 first-class overs in the 12 months leading up to this Test, through a combination of illness and life in the England bubble. It’s little wonder he has needed a session or two to locate his range.”Line, length, pace … everything really! I probably came up a little short,” Leach told Sky Sports at the close. “I’ve been short of match overs for a little bit of time. You can do as much as you want in the nets but you need that stuff in games. I found I bowled a little bit short when I tried to bowl quicker, that’s something to think about for tomorrow.”The good news for England is that their game plans, though lacking the requisite meat on the bone, do seem to be firmly in place. In particular, the use of Mark Wood in a series of two- and three-over bursts has been encouraging – and the fierce lifter that slammed into Perera’s top hand was an early example of the shock value of a raw quick, even on an unconducive deck.At the other end, Stuart Broad produced another inventive and economical display of out-of-the-box seam bowling – showing echoes of Darren Gough’s methods from his triumphant tour of 2000-01, going through the wall, round the wall, sometimes even under the wall with an attempted slow yorker to Lahiru Thirimanne late in his second spell, in a bid to prise a rare and precious opening.However, Broad was blowing by the end of his eighth over, and sixth maiden – a state of affairs that reiterated the importance of England’s spinners. It’s all very well inverting the pyramid and turning to your seamers to bowl the spinners’ holding overs, which was a secret of England’s success here two years ago, but it does increase the onus on those spinners to attack with the utmost discipline.Instead, Bess in particular found his good fortune from the first innings being rebalanced in a leaky display, while Leach’s own struggles seemed to have been summed up in his 16th over, when Mendis propped forward to a decent biting delivery and lobbed a simple chance to short leg. Sadly for England, however, that fielder only materialised one ball later – Leach’s economy rate of close to four an over had rather negated the option of being attacking.But late in the day, Leach found his fizz at last, and with a nightwatchman at the crease alongside the steadfast Thirimanne, Root remains confident that his side is on course to close out the contest.”When you come and play here, and at this ground in particular, you’ve got to remember how quickly things can change, and how difficult it can be to start your innings,” Root said at close, after establishing England’s dominance with his magnificent 228.”It’s really important as a bowling group that we remember that. You’ve got to make those first 10-15 balls count against a new batter, and remember you’re always in the game throughout, because there’s always that one ball somewhere if you get it in the right spot and fortune’s on your side.”You’ve just got to work hard and try and be as patient as possible, and keep applying as much pressure as you can for long periods.”

Smart Stats puts Archer well ahead of others, while Trent Boult was the true leader in terms of wickets

ESPNcricinfo stats team13-Nov-2020Jofra Archer is the clear and undisputed MVP of IPL 2020, according to ESPNcricinfo’s Smart Stats. Archer’s conventional numbers speak for themselves: 20 wickets at 18.25, conceding 6.55 runs per over. The economy rate was the best among the 40 seamers who bowled at least 15 overs in the tournament. Archer’s powerplay economy rate of 4.34 was among the best by any bowler in any T20 tournament. As if that wasn’t enough, he also exceeded expectations with the bat, scoring at a strike rate of 179 and hitting ten sixes – fourth-highest for the Rajasthan Royals – off the 63 balls he faced.ESPNcricinfo LtdHowever, even these incredible numbers don’t do full justice to his performances this season. For that, we need to look at Smart Stats, which looks at every batting and bowling performance through the prism of match context, and the pressure on the batsman and bowler at each delivery when they batted or bowled.Archer’s 20 wickets included ten in the powerplay, and among the batsmen he dismissed were Faf du Plessis and David Warner (twice each), Jonny Bairstow, Quinton de Kock, Shikhar Dhawan and Chris Gayle. Fifteen of his 20 wickets were of batsmen in the top three batting positions; eight times he dismissed batsmen for single-digit scores, and 14 times before they reached 20.Because Smart Wickets takes into account the quality of the batsman and the score at which they were dismissed – getting a good batsman out early before he can inflict any damage fetches higher points – Archer’s 20 wickets were worth nearly 27 Smart Wickets.ESPNcricinfo LtdAlso, Archer was incredibly consistent with his economy as well: only four times in 14 innings did he concede more than seven runs per over. While the overall powerplay economy rate in the tournament was 7.46, Archer went at 4.34. All this with hardly any support at the other end.These factors ensured that Archer’s impact per game was 76.2 points, an incredible 47% higher than the second-placed Rashid Khan, who also took as many wickets as Archer and had a fantastic tournament. His economy rate of 5.37 was the best among all bowlers – without any qualifications – while his Smart Wickets tally was 22.5.There is little to separate the rest of the top five, with Jasprit Bumrah, Rahul Tewatia and Sam Curran taking up those positions. The first specialist batsman in the list is Mayank Agarwal at No. 7, with an impact rating of 42.3. Trent Boult, Mohammed Shami, Jason Holder and Pat Cummins are the others in the top ten.ESPNcricinfo LtdWhile bowlers and allrounders took the top positions in terms of overall impact, the match-wise top impact position went to a batsman: KL Rahul’s outstanding unbeaten 132 off 69 balls against the Royal Challengers Bangalore took pole position, followed by the all-round contribution of Ben Stokes against the Kings XI Punjab, when he scored 50 off 26 deliveries and also took 2 for 32. The highest bowling performance is Lockie Ferguson’s 3 for 15 against the Sunrisers Hyderabad: his three victims were Kane Williamson, Priyam Garg and Manish Pandey – two of them for single-digit scores – and he went at 3.75 per over when the other bowlers in the game had a collective economy rate of 8.39.ESPNcricinfo LtdThe list of bowlers with the highest Smart Wickets deviates from the list of top wicket-takers, because Smart Wickets takes into account the quality of batsman dismissed, his score at the time of dismissal and the match context at that point.Taking all those factors into account, Trent Boult, who is third on the wicket-takers’ list with 25, tops the Smart Wickets tally with an aggregate of 31. He is well clear of the others because of his powerplay haul of 16 wickets, which is six more than the next-best in that phase. Powerplay wickets often tend to impact the course of the game significantly, because most of those wickets are of top-order batsmen dismissed cheaply. Of Boult’s 25 wickets, 14 were of openers – and 18 of batsmen in the top four – while 19 of his dismissals were before the batsmen reached double digits.On the other hand, only seven of Kagiso Rabada’s 30 wickets were of batsmen in the top three positions, while 14 were of batsmen batting at No. 6 or lower. While late wickets can sometimes be crucial when the match is in the balance, often they come about when the result is a formality.In Rabada’s case, a couple of examples illustrate this. Against the Royal Challengers, he took 4 for 24, but three of those wickets – of Washington Sundar, Shivam Dube and Isuru Udana – came in the last 25 balls after the asking rate had touched 20 runs per over, and the Delhi Capitals had already pocketed the match. Four days later, against the Rajasthan Royals, he took 3 for 35 in a match that the Capitals won comfortably by 46 runs. Two of those wickets came in the last over, and all three were taken when the Capitals were already well on top. These wickets add to the conventional wickets tally, but don’t add much to the Smart Wickets count.Among those who bowled at least 25 overs, R Ashwin had the highest ratio of Smart Wickets to conventional wickets: his 13 wickets counted for 20.6 Smart Wickets, a ratio of 1.58. That is because the batsmen he dismissed included de Kock (twice), Kieron Pollard, Jos Buttler, Virat Kohli, Nicholas Pooran and Gayle. Seven of his 13 dismissals happened before the batmen reached double digits.ESPNcricinfo LtdSimilar to Smart Wickets, the Smart Runs leaderboard also varies from the list of top run-getters. Rahul got the Orange Cap, but Shikhar Dhawan is the leader in terms of Smart Runs despite scoring 52 fewer runs. That is because Rahul often played the anchor’s role for the Kings XI Punjab; in several innings, he scored at a conservative pace, with others scoring faster than him in matches that the Kings XI lost. Dhawan’s runs came at a faster rate, and in his big innings, he scored a higher share of the team’s runs. Rahul’s opening partner Agarwal is in the top ten in terms of Smart Runs despite being 14th in terms of his aggregate runs, because of his key contributions – both in terms of runs and strike rate – under high pressure.

He can score runs up the order. He can take wickets at the death. Where would Delhi Capitals be without him?

Karthik Krishnaswamy09-Nov-20201:51

Ponting spoke to me a few times before about opening – Marcus Stoinis

Where would the Delhi Capitals be without Marcus Stoinis?It’s a rhetorical question, but if you really wanted an answer, they probably wouldn’t be in the IPL final without him. He has brought explosiveness to a batting line-up that has often struggled to get out of second gear, and he has been a handy plugger of gaps with the ball, regularly bowling the difficult overs.On Sunday, against the Sunrisers Hyderabad, Stoinis pulled off yet another hugely influential all-round performance, and he did not just score runs and take wickets. He also made the Capitals look like a better-structured, better-balanced team.It began with Stoinis opening the batting, which he has done before – most notably on his way to topping the BBL run charts last season – but only three times in the IPL, back in 2016. At the start of the season, it had seemed unlikely that he would get a chance in that role again, given the Capitals’ wealth of top-order options. However, with Prithvi Shaw’s form falling away and Ajinkya Rahane not providing the necessary dynamism when he opened, the possibility opened up.It might have come to nothing if Jason Holder had caught Stoinis off Sandeep Sharma when he was batting on 3 off 5 balls. The move might have gone the way of the Royal Challengers Bangalore opening with Virat Kohli in their Eliminator on Friday – a good idea that got just one, belated chance, and didn’t come off.But Holder couldn’t hold on, and we got to see exactly what Stoinis the opener can do. It was much the same as Stoinis the end-overs hitter, as it turned out, but with the added benefit of powerplay field restrictions. The baseball-style swat over midwicket in the fourth over, off Holder, would have brought him six runs in any phase of the game, but the field restrictions also allowed Stoinis to pick up boundaries in other situations that might have only brought him singles or twos outside the powerplay.Sandeep, for instance, bowled inswing to him with a 5-4 leg-side field, but with only two fielders allowed on the boundary, he had fine leg and midwicket up in the circle. When he strayed off-line in the third over, Stoinis could flick him for back-to-back boundaries. In the fourth over, Holder bowled with his mid-on up, and Stoinis gave him the charge and clubbed him to the left of that fielder even when he tried to pull his length back.The stillness and balance that have characterised Stoinis’ batting right through the season pervaded his game on Sunday too, and that form combined with serious attacking intent to create a potent cocktail.Stoinis did not survive for too long against Rashid Khan, though, and that was not unexpected. In the IPL, Stoinis’ record against spin (average 26.08, strike rate 123.71) is significantly worse than his record against pace (32.00, 147.55). But by opening with Stoinis, the Capitals can ensure he faces less spin early in his innings, or force their opposition into bowling spin at him and shield other batsmen down the order from unfavourable match-ups.Marcus Stoinis biffs one through the on side•BCCIStoinis has performed this shielding role quite often with the ball – in the game against the Kolkata Knight Riders, for instance, Axar Patel bowled just one over against a left-hander-heavy line-up – and he did so again on Sunday, when the Sunrisers had two right-handers at the crease for long periods and R Ashwin bowled just one of the first 14 overs.When that happens, one of the fingerspinners often does not complete his quota, leaving Stoinis to bowl at the death. His economy rate has suffered as a result, but he has also made crucial interventions – the miraculous (or lucky, depending on your point of view) final over against the Kings XI Punjab in the Capitals’ season-opener, for example, or the final-over yorker to bowl Rahul Tripathi in a high-scoring contest in Sharjah. Stoinis, in fact, has taken wickets this season in the last over of the innings – only one other bowler from any team, Kagiso Rabada, has taken as many.Stoinis did not have to bowl the 20th over on Sunday, but of his three overs, one was in the powerplay, and one at the death. It was in those two pressure overs that he made his biggest impact.When he came on to bowl the fifth over, the Sunrisers seemed to be shrugging off the early loss of David Warner, with Priyam Garg and Manish Pandey having put on 24 in 17 balls. By the end of that over, Stoinis had dismissed both of them.Marcus Stoinis celebrates a wicket•BCCIWickets often fall for no rhyme or reason in T20s, but Stoinis can take some credit for those two dismissals. Garg had looked comfortable on the back foot through his brief innings – he had even hooked Anrich Nortje for six – but his front-foot stride had been minimal when the ball was pitched up. Stoinis tested this with a full ball delivered at 135kph – a significantly quick delivery by his standards – and burst between bat and pad.Pandey looked to loft Stoinis straight and ended up hitting straight to mid-on, and this was at least partly because Stoinis had bowled an offcutter that gripped and deviated into the batsman, causing him to hit the ball with the inside half of his bat.When Stoinis began the 17th over, the Sunrisers needed 51 off 24. Kane Williamson and Abdul Samad had put on 49 in 26 balls. Off the fifth ball of the over, Stoinis made his most decisive breakthrough, with a full, wide slower delivery that began just inside the tramline at his end and finished just outside the tramline at the other. The ball was floating away from Williamson throughout, and if he had left it alone, it probably would have been called wide.Williamson did not leave it, though. The required rate in such situations often compels batsmen to keep going hard, and Williamson reached out to try and pick the gap to the left of deep cover. In reaching out so far from his body, however, he lost control of his shot, hitting it straighter than he wanted and too close to the man on the boundary.Stoinis roared, arms in the air, fists clenched, veins popping in his granite forearms. He looks like a comic-book superhero, and sometimes he bats and bowls like one too.

Until Sunday, he had gathered consistently. Then came that one barnstorming performance

Saurabh Somani02-Nov-2020After their last-ball defeat against the Chennai Super Kings on October 29, the Kolkata Knight Riders had done a dance routine down the IPL 2020 points table going 5, 6, 7, 8 after every subsequent game because while they had lost, the teams clustered around them were winning. Before their last league match, against the Rajasthan Royals, it didn’t seem anomalous that the Knight Riders were at the bottom of the table, even though five teams were on 12 points.In a way, the Knight Riders’ position mirrored that of captain Eoin Morgan, who had become the batting mainstay of his side almost seamlessly. His team had gathered as many points as the others, but without quite as much of a flourish. Morgan had gathered runs as consistently as anyone else, but without that one barnstorming performance.It took one match, for both perceptions to course correct. The Knight Riders needed a spectacular win, and it was delivered on the back of a spectacular innings against the Rajasthan Royals.Morgan almost downplayed his 68 off 35 that drove the Knight Riders to a total of 191, saying dew had set in early which meant the ball was coming on to the bat better from the first innings itself. The facts are, that in a must-win game for both teams in which both came out swinging hard, only Morgan could score at the pace at which he did, for the length of time he did. Nobody else on either side made more than 40. Nobody who faced at least 20 balls approached his strike-rate. Pat Cummins’ bowling played its part in an eventual 60-run win for the Knight Riders, but arguably, Morgan’s contribution was even more important.His innings ticked some minor boxes in getting him a first half-century in IPL 2020, but that was incidental. Measuring the number of half-centuries for a batsman without context is anyway archaic in T20 cricket.But even by conventional measures, Morgan has had a quietly standout season for the Knight Riders. He’s crossed 400 runs, and in 14 innings, failed to go beyond single-digits just twice. Half of his innings have been scored at strike rates above 140. He’s been the team’s best batsman by some distance. And he’s done all this in a season where he was part of a captaincy change midway through the tournament.Before 2020, Morgan’s record in the IPL was decidedly tepid: an average of 21.35 at a strike rate of 121.13 across 52 matches. This year, the average has been 41.80 and the strike rate has jumped to 138.41. The value his batting has brought for the Knight Riders is understood better when seen through ESPNcricinfo’s Smart Stats, which give weightage to performances based on oppositions, match situations and the period of play in which runs are scored. Morgan’s Smart Runs tally is 445 – the highest in the league. Only KL Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, David Warner and Mayank Agarwal have more Smart Runs than Morgan.ESPNcricinfo LtdIt’s illustrative of just how valuable Morgan’s runs have been that the four men ahead of him are all openers, the position that has the maximum opportunity to pile on big scores in T20 cricket. Morgan has come in to bat on an average in the tenth over this IPL. If he has come in earlier, it’s because there has been a top-order failure. To still outscore a whole bunch of pedigreed batsmen who bat from Nos.1 to 4 in various teams, speaks to the dual aspect of Morgan’s batting this season: he’s got runs consistently, and he’s got them at rates that have been above-par for the match.Sometimes, like on Sunday against the Royals, stunningly above par.Morgan himself focussed more on the collective effort than his own knock. “Given the conditions, how good they were…. everybody in the middle order felt that you had a few balls to take your time and then you could hopefully take advantage later on in the innings,” he said at the press conference after the game. “Managed to do that, Andre Russell managed to do that, and a number of our other batsmen managed to contribute in posting a score of 190.”The words were understated, much like his tournament has been. It could be the way the tournament ends for Morgan and the Knight Riders, with their progression now dependent on the results of the two league stage matches that remain. Morgan himself didn’t appear too fussed, saying he was satisfied the Knight Riders had done all they could to stay in contention with that dominant show against the Royals.”I’ll have an eye on it in the background, but there’s nothing that we can control in that, so what will be, will be,” he said.Regardless of whether the Knight Riders make the playoffs or not, it’s been a breakthrough season of sorts for Morgan, the batsman. He has had sustained success in a competition he hadn’t cracked previously. He’s handled a transition of leadership mid-season, a tricky enough thing to manage on its own. And he’s done it when two of the greatest T20 players of all time in Russell and Sunil Narine have been unavailable for selection at various points.If the playoffs happen, he’ll get another chance to add a striking innings to the IPL 2020 memory bank. If not, he’ll have to wait and see if this batting upswing can be carried over when the IPL is played in India. Either way, what will be, will be.

We pick 11 under-25s who we think are destined for great things

Sreshth Shah20-May-202145:27

A Test team for 2031

In ten years, when Kane Williamson has retired to become a surfer, Steve Smith a folk singer, and Virat Kohli the star of an eight-season documentary on his life, who are the players who might be bossing Test cricket?That was the brief given to our panelists – Raunak Kapoor, Alan Gardner, and Danyal Rasool – as they looked to select a Dream Test Team circa 2031. The only criterion? The players should all be under 25 as of May 20, 2021.10:39

Who partners Shubman Gill in a future side of world beaters?

The openers debate
The list of prospects is long but only two spots are available. India have Shubman Gill and Prithvi Shaw. New Zealand have Test-squad breakout Rachin Ravindra and future superstar Finn Allen. In county cricket, James Bracey has been making heads turn and Haseeb Hameed has found his hands after a few poor seasons. And down under there’s young Will Pucovski, who has already been heralded as the next great Aussie Test sensation. Which two make the cut?8:16

Crawley or Pope? Nissanka or Shanto?

A middle order to envy
In first-class cricket, England’s Ollie Pope averages over 52 and Sri Lanka’s Pathum Nissanka nearly 65. Zak Crawley has a Test best of 257. Sam Curran was Player of the Series in his debut Test outing against India. Washington Sundar has shown how to get on top of Australia’s fast bowlers. Rishabh Pant is a superstar already. Then there’s Australia’s Cameron Green and South African Raynard van Tonder to consider. Eight great options, a few of them allrounders – which five make the XI?8:34

Who joins Shaheen Afridi in the World Test XI of the future?

The fast-bowling superstars
While the names of Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan, Bangladesh’s Mehidy Hasan Miraz and Sri Lanka’s Lasith Embuldeniya were thrown in the ring for the spinner’s spot, our panelists perked up when it came time to discuss the fast-bowling stars of the future. With Green, Curran and Wiaan Mulder in the mix, who will the out-and-out quicks in this XI be? Pakistan’s Shaheen Shah Afridi was a unanimous choice, but can his countryman Naseem Shah maintain his pace as the years roll on? Then there’s South Africa’s Gerald Coetzee, one of the players expected to dominate the next decade and Zimbabwe’s line-and-length specialist Blessing Muzarabani. Eventually the panel went for a mix of speed and accuracy to close out what looks like a devastating XI for the future.

Australia needed some luck to secure an incredible victory, but to even have a chance said a lot about their game

Andrew McGlashan25-Sep-2021Was the delivery to Nicola Carey a no-ball? You aren’t going to find a unanimous view (although it’s only what the umpire decided that matters). Was Australia’s victory in Mackay a remarkable chapter for a brilliant team? Of that there is little doubt.Beth Mooney, who was on the field from first ball to last, played the innings of her life. They needed some fortune to finally get the job finished, but she produced a textbook display of calculating a run chase from a long way out. As the latter stages unfolded, Meg Lanning revealed they had wanted to get it down to 90 off the last 10; in the end they needed 87.Yet while Mooney was the standout statistically, it was the supporting cast that was just as significant. Australia were without three first-choice players – Rachael Haynes, Megan Schutt and Jess Jonassen – with another likely starter in Tayla Vlaeminck sidelined and Georgia Wareham injured early in the game and unable to bowl. The talk before the series had been Australia’s much-vaunted depth. Here it was, again.In the opening match teenagers Darcie Brown and Hannah Darlington shared six wickets and now in the second game Tahlia McGrath, playing her seventh ODI, and Carey who has precious little chance to show her batting credentials at the top level combined with Mooney to lift Australia form 52 for 4.Related

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McGrath, who made her debut in 2016 before having three years away from the side, had an outstanding all-round day – becoming the seventh Australian female player to take three wickets and score a half-century in an ODI – with her bowling helping cover the expensive performances of Ellyse Perry and Darlington.She had an underwhelming 2020-21 season with the bat (averaging 16.21 in the WBBL and 27.80 in the WNCL) but Australia have shown faith. It was the early stages of McGrath’s innings which were key to the revival with Mooney yet to find fluency having fought to survive the new ball. When the fifty partnership was raised, McGrath had 34 of them and finished with two-thirds of the 126-run stand.”A lot of credit has to go to T-Mac,” Mooney said, “she came in and looked like she was batting on a completely different wicket. Just goes to show in the investment you make in players like T-Mac, think she has evolved her game massively in the last couple of years.”Nicola Carey drives down the ground•Albert Perez/Getty Images”Motty [Matthew Mott] made the comment before I went out that this is your opportunity, you haven’t really had a good crack at it,” McGrath said. “So I just had to keep us as close to run rate as possible so left with no choice but to play like that and luckily it came off.”For me it’s about being brave in my ability and that’s something, again, that the Australian team is really good at, making sure that you are fearless and back yourself. It’s believing in my ability and showcasing what I can do.”When McGrath fell, pulling a short delivery to fine leg, the job was far from done with Australia still needing 97 off 69 balls and an injured Wareham, herself an ever-improving batter, unlikely to be able to play a role. But up stepped Carey with the most significant innings of her international career – she had never previously faced more than 22 balls and it was just the tenth time in 19 ODIs that she had batted – which included a horrid hit to the helmet from a Jhulan Goswami beamer in the dramatic final over. Australia’s middle order are sometimes left kicking their heels. They were needed on this occasion and delivered.The contrast between how Australia responded to pressure and how India, albeit hampered by a wet ball, couldn’t close out a game they had dominated for so long was stark but also a reminder of how India’s players are being expected to developed with one hand tied behind their back. The role of the WBBL and the strong WNCL should not be understated in Australia’s success.The likes of Carey, who averaged 47.50 for Tasmania in the WNCL last season after a poor WBBL for Hobart Hurricanes, and McGrath bat high up the order so know how to build innings and the players are exposed to pressure situations. Only English cricket currently comes close to providing a comparable platform in the female game.”Experience is pretty valuable and I’ve played a lot of cricket – not so much at this top level – so was backing myself that it was just another game,” McGrath said. “We were really calm, really clear about what we needed to do. We have so much belief in the squad that no matter who is at the wicket we can do a job.”Someone, eventually, will beat this Australia side. But they will have to play the perfect match.

Recalled David Willey and Chris Woakes can stake long-term case with new-ball wickets

Matt Roller22-Jun-2021A dozen games into his T20I career, Jofra Archer is already England’s most important bowler in the format by a stretch. England win twice as often as they lose with Archer in the side and can rely on him both to take wickets and stem the flow of runs: in their 3-2 defeat in India in March, he was both their leading wicket-taker and their most economical bowler – despite playing through an elbow injury and with a fragment of glass lodged in his hand.While Archer’s inclusion in the ODI side ahead of the 2019 World Cup brought much-needed quality at the death, it is in the powerplay that he is crucial to the T20I set-up. In 12 appearances to date, 23 of Archer’s 47 overs in the format have been in the first six, and while he has only taken five new-ball wickets, his economy rate in the powerplay (7.08) has stopped teams getting off to fast starts and forced them to take more risks against other bowlers.But Archer excepted, England have struggled with the new ball in T20Is over the last two years. They made significant improvements in India, opting to frontload by using Archer, Mark Wood and Adil Rashid in the first six overs, but were among the least effective sides in the phase in the world in the 18 months prior; out of full-member nations, only Ireland leaked more runs per over, and only South Africa took wickets less frequently.So Archer’s injury-enforced absence from their six T20Is this summer, three each against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, will provide England with a significant test of their short-form seam-bowling depth. It starts with back-to-back games on Wednesday and Thursday in Cardiff, one of the few grounds in the country where spinners have been more expensive than seamers in T20 in the Blast this season.Related

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They are almost certain to pick Chris Jordan – who has played in 52 of England’s last 53 T20Is – despite him leaking 10.51 runs an over in India and it would be a surprise to see either Wood or Sam Curran miss out, but there is room for one more seamer, with the recalled Chris Woakes and David Willey competing for a chance with the new ball ahead of the T20 World Cup in the autumn. A schedule including two games in the space of 24 hours and three in four days will undoubtedly lead to some rotation, too.Curran has shown glimpses with the new white ball, but he played only a bit-part role in India, bowling an average of two overs per game and primarily in the middle overs, while Jordan generally bowls one in the powerplay, one in the middle and one at the death, and with middle-over ‘enforcers’ on the rise in T20, Wood seems best suited to that role. That means that whichever of Woakes and Willey plays could bowl as many as three powerplay overs, depending on how Morgan opts to use Rashid.Willey’s inclusion is particularly intriguing. He was England’s player of the series when recalled for three ODIs against Ireland last year, but was an unused squad member against Pakistan later in the summer and left out entirely for the Australia series that followed. A stress fracture ruled him out over the winter but his return suggests he is a genuine option for the World Cup, swinging the new ball, providing variety with his left-arm angle, and adding batting depth from the lower order.Woakes, meanwhile, has won a recall after six years in the T20I wilderness. It is an intriguing call to bring him back, given he did not bowl a ball in the format between August 2018 and the start of this year’s IPL, and the decision may well be linked to his “wasted” winter on the sidelines while earning nearly seven figures a year thanks to his all-format central contract. Woakes has shown in ODI cricket that he is capable in the middle and death overs but the powerplay is his strongest phase by a distance, nipping the new ball around off the seam; this is an unexpected chance but it would be no great surprise to see him take it.Chris Jordan was expensive at the death in India•Getty Images”Both Dave and Chris have played a lot for us in the past in both 50-over and T20 [cricket],” Eoin Morgan, England’s limited-overs captain, said on Tuesday. “We know the potential that they have, and it’s great that they’re back involved specifically in the build into the World Cup.”There’s been a drastic improvement [with the new ball] – when we were in India, we did take wickets earlier than expected and it’s probably been our marked improvement over the winter. Hopefully we can build on that and look at other areas of improvement alongside it.”England have further calls to make regarding death bowlers and the balance of their side. With Ben Stokes only returning from injury on Sunday and not part of this squad, Moeen Ali is likely to play as the second spinner and bat in the top six. Morgan explained that Liam Dawson’s ability to bowl in the powerplay was a major factor in his inclusion as the third frontline spin option ahead of Matt Parkinson, and while Liam Livingstone could offer another option, Cardiff’s short straight boundaries are usually unkind to spinners.As for the death options, Wood and Jordan both leaked more than 12 runs an over in the final five in India, while Tom Curran struggled badly in South Africa at the end of last year. With Sri Lanka relatively light on finishers, not least after Thisara Perera’s retirement, England will doubtless aim to take early wickets and be bowling at the tail by that stage of the innings – but without Archer to call upon, that is easier said that done.

Few would have expected him to be at the T20 World Cup, but he’s shown he belongs

Matt Roller30-Oct-20214:00

Jayawardene: Batting depth allows Buttler, Roy to go hard in the powerplay

Chris Woakes is not meant to be at this T20 World Cup. He went five-and-a-half years without playing for England in the format before his recall earlier this year, with his focus instead on ODI and Test cricket. If Jofra Archer had been fit, there is every chance Woakes would have spent the past week training at Loughborough in a marquee before flying to Australia next week.There was a point, long ago, when this seemed like it might be Woakes’ format. In the first appearance of his international career, back in 2011, he dragged England to a last-ball, one-wicket win in Adelaide; at the time, his package of top-and-tail bowling and lower-order hitting made him a modern T20 allrounder. Even during his effective sabbatical from England’s plans, he remained an in-demand player at the IPL auction – but he had never considered a World Cup appearance likely.

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“Having not playing international T20 cricket since 2015, to start thinking about being selected in a World Cup squad would have been a bit ambitious,” Woakes said on Tymal Mills and Mark Wood’s BBC podcast this week. “It was never really fully on my radar. I obviously got the call-up in the summer when there were a few injuries knocking around… but I still didn’t really expect to be in this squad, by any means.”But Woakes is here regardless, determined to make the most of an unexpected opportunity as a new-ball specialist. Three games into the tournament, he has bowled 48 balls in the Powerplay, conceded 28 runs and taken four wickets. On Saturday night in Dubai, he bowled his first three overs off the reel, removed David Warner and Glenn Maxwell, and conceded runs.The secret to Woakes’ success is his length, made possible by a lethal cocktail of control and patience. According to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, only one of his 18 balls in the Powerplay against Australia was full, the other 17 pitching at least six metres from the stumps; it was his only second full delivery in the Powerplay in the tournament to date. “I didn’t feel like it swung much today so I just tried to find a length and find a bit of movement off the seam,” he explained.Chris Woakes celebrates Glenn Maxwell’s wicket•Getty ImagesThere were uncanny parallels throughout this game with England’s thrashing of Australia at Edgbaston in the semi-final of the 2019 World Cup, a fixture that Woakes has described as “one of my favourites moments on a field”. On both occasions, he took the key wicket of Warner – bouncer out two years ago, nicking off while shuffling down on Saturday night – and set the tone for England with two Powerplay wickets.This time, the second was Maxwell’s, pinned in front by a nip-backer which he played all around; between the two was a spectacular catch, recovering from an initial misjudgement by diving back and taking a one-handed grab to see off Steven Smith. Throw in Marcus Stoinis being pinned lbw by Adil Rashid’s googly and England’s belligerence while hauling in a low total and the similarities were obvious.It was a measure of Woakes’ skill that Australia hardly attacked his third over – the sixth of the innings, on average the most expensive outside of the death as batters look to exploit the end of the powerplay – taking only two runs and a leg-bye from it. The contrast between the two teams’ approaches with the bat was stark: Australia’s top order respected England’s new-ball attack, hitting a single boundary and hardly playing an attacking shot; England treated Australia’s with disdain, taking at least one boundary off each of the first six overs.”Wickets in the powerplay give you a few balls’ grace,” Woakes had said on that podcast, “and almost a honeymoon period of just a few balls – which in T20 cricket is a lot – where you feel like you’re on top of a team and on top of a batsman, and can just do what you want to do for a change.”

“He’s one of the best new-ball bowlers in white-ball cricket in the world. He’s accurate, his pace is up, he’s confident in his all-round skills.”Eoin Morgan on Chris Woakes

“Woakesy has been excellent,” Eoin Morgan said after England’s convincing run chase. “I think over the years his strengths have been epitomised tonight. He’s one of the best new-ball bowlers in white-ball cricket in the world. He’s accurate, his pace is up, he’s confident in his all-round skills.”It’s not about hitting a line and length or getting the ball to move. In our first game that we played here he bowled a beautiful slower ball to dismiss Evin Lewis so the growth within his game is huge, even though he’s been right on top of it over the last four or five years.”The one warning sign for England arrived in Woakes’ fourth over, held back until the 17th with Morgan left covering gaps in an attack featuring only three seamers. The over cost 20 runs, 16 off them off the bat as Ashton Agar carved two sixes over midwicket – the first off a slower ball, the second when Woakes missed his length looking for a yorker. It did not prove costly, but might cause a re-think in how Morgan uses his new-ball specialist.But those are not questions for tonight. Few saw Woakes’ second marriage with T20 coming, least of all himself – it would be wrong to deny him the chance to bask in his honeymoon period.

We may have come to take the shot for granted, but some of the ones in this World Cup have had astonishing visceral impact

Osman Samiuddin05-Nov-2021At one point in his life a decade ago, Asif Ali was faced with a stark choice. He’d just hit a 59-ball hundred on his T20 debut, for Faisalabad Wolves. Great feat, but the downer was that he was essentially a part-time cricketer. He had only just broken through; until then, he was a gun on the tape-ball circuit, making some money from it but still needing a full-time job in a steel factory to make ends meet.He took leave to play in the Super Eight T20, Pakistan’s premier T20 tournament at the time, and when he came back, his employers said they couldn’t afford for him to be taking so much time off in future. They gave him a couple of days to make his decision: leave the job to risk pursuing a professional cricket career, or stay and keep making some extra money as a tape-ball star. Dream big, in other words, or live modest.He made his choice and, not without hardships and tragedies and sacrifices along the way, here he is, dreaming big still. Except, it turns out, he’s still making these cut-throat choices every day. In fact, he does it for a living.Related

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Such as choosing to forego a single off the last ball of the 18th over against Afghanistan and finishing the game himself with sixes instead. Imagine getting that wrong. Then the four sixes themselves, each the result of a similarly stark micro-choice: swing out or get out. Swing out, become a hero; get out, end up the villain.Swing out or get out is what Brendon McCullum thought to himself, six balls and zero runs into innings all those years ago, the one that launched the IPL, the one that underpinned his batting and is increasingly thought to be the platonic ideal for T20 batting. Go hard every single ball; hit a boundary, don’t take a single next ball, hit another boundary; don’t worry about losing a wicket.Not that we’re there yet. There are only a limited number of batters out there who get to play in environments where getting out in pursuit of swinging out is not considered problematic. For everyone else there is still usually a price to pay for getting out too often. That remains the context that underpins not only the batting of an Asif Ali but also, at a narrower level, the hitting of each six, that there are consequences to failing: if it’s not six, the cost is the wicket, which could be the game, which could be a career.We’re still not entirely beyond the moment Adam Gilchrist described with startling clarity after hitting his 100th Test six. “There is a point in time when you and you only know – the rest know it a second later – and it’s the best feeling as a batsman. You know you took a risk. If it pays off it usually pays reasonable dividends and is satisfying.”A flick of the wrists and we’re away•Getty ImagesWhen it does come off, as with Asif, it is more than satisfying. It’s a ride comparable to the best of any sport. Those rare, pure moments when sport imitates life in its crudest formulation: win, don’t lose; do, don’t die; kill, don’t be killed.There are so many of these moments but Novak Djokovic’s forehand cross-court return winner two match points down in the 2011 US Open semi against Roger Federer springs to mind. Like Asif’s sixes, or David Miller’s two last-over sixes the day after to win South Africa a thriller, this was one of those last-gasp convulsions where instinct, shaped by thousands of hours of training, muscle memory and skill, all come together to produce something so powerful, it needs bottling up and injecting straight into the bloodstream.Not every six carries that force. But there has been something more visceral about some of the six-hitting in this tournament. Some have struck deeper inside, like they used to in the days when there were fewer of them. Think of some Jos Buttler hits, which haven’t conveyed the same sense of risk and reward as Asif’s but compensate by carrying the distinct sense they are at the forefront of batting’s giant leap forward.Think of the two off Mitchell Starc. The lengths were hittable, sure, though plenty of times in such cases the pace – 89mph both times here – allows a bowler to get away with the error. And if the first ball was wide enough, Starc got much tighter with the second. But at the point of impact both times, Buttler’s position was such that he could have hit them anywhere between point and long-off. Instead, hello wrists, and hello Row Z behind long-on. The mastery is in the options he made for himself because it happened in less than half a second.Buttler vs Starc: over long-on you shall go•ICCThe ones he hit against Dasun Shanaka and Lahiru Kumara in Sharjah, during his hundred, were even better. Same set-up – deep in the crease, front leg out of the way, back leg and hip primed to power through – except, this time he’s contending with a surface on which timing has been difficult all evening. And both times he’s adjusting to big drops in pace: Kumara from 88mph the same over to 61mph and late dip; Shanaka from 81mph to 62mph next ball and also late dip. Buttler holds himself an extra millisecond – a skill in itself – and snaps the wrists to lift Kumara straight and high back over him and into the stands, and Shanaka over long-on; subtly different shots, identical strand of genius behind them.One of the reasons they have registered more emphatically is because it has not been a big six-hitting tournament so far. Until the end of the West Indies-Sri Lanka group game, the tournament has seen a six hit every 26 balls, the second lowest rate since the 2009 T20 World Cup – and that’s by a hair: it could well end up the lowest. Which, given it’s the UAE, is understandable; in all T20s since the last T20 World Cup, a six has been hit there every 22.3 balls, placing it 16th among all host countries in terms of the frequency of six-hitting.