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Stats highlights from the Gabba, where India had to field a makeshift team

ESPNcricinfo stats team15-Jan-202120 Number of players used by India in the series – the most any team has used in an away series in the history of Test cricket. The previous most was 18 players used by England in the 2013-14 Ashes in Australia, and by West Indies on a tour to South Africa in 1998-99. The previous highest in a four-Test series was 17 by England in West Indies 1980-81 and by West Indies in England in 2004.2 Number of players from India who played all four Tests of the series – Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara. The last time a team had at most two of its players play in every match of a series of three or more matches was in the Wisden Trophy in 1995, when the series saw only two players from England – Mike Atherton and Graham Thorpe – play all the six matches.1933 The last time India fielded a bowling attack that had lesser experience than the one at the Gabba. This doesn’t include players who averaged fewer than 60 balls per match in their first-class career. In India’s second-ever Test, they had only three bowlers – Amar Singh, CK Nayudu and Mohammad Nissar – who averaged at least 60 balls per match in their first-class career. Each of them had played India’s first-ever Test, at Lord’s, bringing up the sum of the experience of India’s bowling to three matches. The Gabba Test has four bowlers who average at least 60 balls per match in their first-class career – Mohammad Siraj, Navdeep Saini, T Natarajan and Washington Sundar. These bowlers together carried an experience of just four matches to the Gabba Test.Players who took the least time from their debut to play in all three formats of international cricket•ESPNcricinfo Ltd44 Days between when T Natarajan made his debut in ODIs and the time he became an all-format player for India with his Test debut at the Gabba – the least gap in terms of days for any India player. He made his ODI debut on December 2 in Canberra, and his ODI debut at the same venue two days later. Before Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar was the quickest to play in all three formats for India. Bhuvneshwar made his T20I debut against Pakistan in Bengaluru on December 25th, 2012, his ODI debut five days later in Chennai against the same opposition and made his first appearance in Tests at the same venue against Australia on 22nd February, 2013. Among all teams, New Zealand’s Peter Ingram is the quickest player to play in all three formats after making his international debut. Ingram made his debut in all the three formats in a space of 12 days during the Bangladesh tour of New Zealand in 2009-2010.The India bowling attack carried a combined experience of just four Tests to the Gabba Test•Getty Images0 Number of times before this Test that a XI with a combined tally of fewer than 100 wickets played against an opposition with over 1000 wickets between them. The India XI had taken just 13 wickets between them before this Test, whereas the Australia players had taken 1033, bringing the difference in wickets tally up to 1020. The highest such difference, without any qualification, happened in the West Indies tour of Australia in 2005-06 at the Adelaide Oval when Australia’s combined might of 1521 took on West Indies’ combined tally of just 215 wickets. In fact, the India XI’s wicket tally is the lowest since the Lord’s Test in 1946 when the team – thanks to Lala Amarnath’s four wickets and CS Nayudu’s one – had taken only five Test wickets before the match.

It’s Maxwell’s exploits with the white-ball that dominate the narrative, but his first-class record should not be overlooked

Daniel Brettig17-Feb-20212:48

Glenn Maxwell looks back at his first IPL auction experience

Walking onto the MCG for his Sheffield Shield debut a decade ago this week, Glenn Maxwell admits he was momentarily overtaken with worries about whether or not he was good enough to represent Victoria in the competition that had always been the prime pathway to the Australia Test team.At the time, 22-year-old Maxwell was one of the bright young things perceived to be getting opportunities more easily than before as Cricket Australia and the states upped their search for a fresh generation. A few weeks before, Maxwell had set a national record for the fastest-ever 50 in the domestic one-day game, a 19-ball blur against Tasmania that set up his side for a memorable heist at Bellerive Oval.But his returns in the Futures League were more modest, and in many ways Maxwell embodied the type of player perceived to be gaining too much, too soon in the search for youth. Maxwell felt it at the time, and remembers it vividly.”I remember not actually doing a whole lot leading into getting my opportunity. I don’t think I’d made a second XI hundred,” he told ESPNcricinfo from New Zealand this week. “I was a bit nervous coming in whether I’d actually be good enough at that level, but then getting out there I think, my first game at the MCG, it’s exciting, you get to play for your state and make your first-class debut.”Chris Rogers gave me my cap and a lot of his chat was about how ‘people will have their doubts whether this is the right time, but I can tell you from the rest of the group we think you’re ready and we’re backing the fact you’re good enough to play at this level’.Related

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“NSW were a good team, I think they had Scott Coyte, Moises Henriques, Beau Casson, Trent Copeland and Stuart Clark who I didn’t get to face, that would’ve been pretty cool. But I remember going out there and I was facing Trent first ball and hit him for four, and thinking ‘hopefully this is the start of a long Shield career’ and been lucky enough to play 10 years.”Incredibly, 10 years later and the debate about Maxwell has not really moved too far from that initial question. Great limited-overs batsman and matchwinner, a hell of a T20 weapon in Australia and around the world, but as a long-form cricketer? Well, the jury of the Australian selectors is still out, and there is a chance it may never deliver a verdict other than by omission.Right from the start, Maxwell appeared to have been identified primarily as a white-ball player, going to the UAE in 2012 and remaining a part of Australia’s limited-overs squads almost perennially since then. Maxwell can’t put his finger on whether or not this trajectory affected how he developed as a red-ball player.The early days: Glenn Maxwell batting in the Sheffield Shield in 2011•Getty Images”That’s a hard question to answer, but I made a really good start to my Shield career,” he said. “I was able to get a hundred in my second game and had some really good momentum towards the end of the season and then the following year being able to get picked for Australia in white-ball cricket, everything went from there. It was a pretty quick transformation from making your first-class debut to playing for Australia. I hadn’t played a whole lot of one-day cricket for Victoria at that stage either. So it all happened pretty quickly at the start.”Never more quickly than a sunny afternoon at the WACA in Perth where Maxwell took apart West Indies with another rapid-fire 50 when promoted to open for the pursuit of a paltry target, and then found himself the centre of attention for the IPL auction two days later. As if to underline the speed of his rise, Maxwell was none the wiser until he walked off, angry, having made a less edifying duck in the second game of the ODI series.”The auction was on the day of game two of that series and I completely forgot about it, that’s 100% honest, I had no idea,” Maxwell said. “I got a first-ball duck, walked off filthy, angry in the change rooms, and there were a few blokes laughing and giggling in the background and I thought ‘what’s going on here’ and had no idea. So I sat down and Mickey Arthur and Michael Clarke grabbed me and took me into the back room and I thought ‘oh they’re going to yell at me for my blow up’ or something like that.

“I know the key for me if I’m not quite feeling my best is to speak up or talk to the right people and actually have the confidence to have those conversations straight away and not have it fester and build into something that can force time away from the game because you’re so flat.”Glenn Maxwell on managing his mental health

“But they go ‘the IPL auction’s on’ and I go ‘okay, didn’t know’, and they said ‘do you want to know what you went for’ and I said ‘yeah, doesn’t bother me, whatever’, and they said ‘oh you went for US$1 million’ and I said an expletive and sort of walked off and just sat there and had no idea how to react, and blokes were laughing in the background.”That was a life-changing amount of money for me and to have the luck to be able to go back there most years and be able to ply my trade has been awesome for my cricket, great to play around the best players in the world and learn off different teams as well.”Maxwell’s opening partner that day in Perth was a young Aaron Finch, who also happened to be captain of Victoria on the day of his Shield debut. The pair have always been close, even living together in Melbourne for a period when both were making their way as young white-ball cricketers for Australia, even as they still aspired to Test matches.”It’s been nice to have someone who’s followed a similar journey and were still going together,” he said of Finch. “I know how happy for me he was when I made my Test debut and vice versa when he made his. But I think we were living together from around 2012, and to be on the same one-day and T20 journey together at that stage and then eventually make our Test debuts was pretty cool. There was a lot of watching cricket in the house and talking tactics and all that sort of thing.”ESPNcricinfo LtdWhile the white-ball highlights are many, whether with Australia, a succession of IPL franchises or the Melbourne Stars in the BBL, Maxwell’s red-ball fortunes can be summarised as a series of brief flirtations with Australia on tours of Asian nations, in between too few Shield appearances for Victoria to change any perceptions about his concentration span, his dealings with fast bowlers, and whether he is a better option than other less obviously talented players.”I’d certainly be open to playing any red-ball if the schedule allows, and I think that’s the main thing at the moment,” Maxwell said. “It’s easy to say ‘yeah, I’ll play all the Shield cricket in the world’, but if I’m playing for Australia in T20 and one-day cricket on tour, it’s just not possible at that time. That’s not to say I’ve given up on my Test dream, I still want to play Test cricket and feel like I’m batting as well as I ever have in my whole career.”It’s probably taken a little bit longer than I would’ve liked as far as working out what I want from my technique and to feel comfortable at the crease, but it’s a nice position. If there was some Shield cricket I’ve no doubt I’d be able to perform and hopefully push my name forward. But with the schedule and the way hubs are and with Covid, it makes it quite difficult at the moment.”Other difficulties have intervened at times, not least in 2016 when he was momentarily left out of the Victorian Shield side after trying to switch states to New South Wales, then publicly criticised and fined by Australia’s team “leadership group” for some honest but not inflammatory comments about finding it “painful” to be batting as low as No. 7 for Victoria.Two years later, with two clear holes opened in the Australian Test line-up by the bans imposed on David Warner and Steven Smith, Maxwell was embroiled in another farrago as he turned down a chance to play county cricket for Lancashire on the premise he would be needed to play for Australia A in India as a trial for that year’s Test tour of the UAE, only to be omitted from the A tour and then left out of the Test team too. The selection chairman Trevor Hohns and coach Justin Langer both professed their ignorance about the “planning email” sent to Maxwell earlier in 2018, before Cricket Australia later conceded its existence.In between times, Maxwell provided the world with one instance to prove he does have what it takes to be a Test batsman, at least on slower surfaces: a superb century in partnership with Smith in Ranchi in 2017, the kind of innings that Australia will be in desperate need of when they begin an intensive series of Test assignments in Asia from early 2022. Trips to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India are planned, totaling eight Test matches in all.Glenn Maxwell has a career-best 278 among his seven first-class centuries•Getty Images”There’s obviously a possibility I could try to find a way over there, we’ve got a bunch of subcontinent white-ball tours where hopefully I can perform well and push my case forward that way as well,” he said. “We know that if you’re batting well in subcontinent conditions, it doesn’t really matter the format, you can still find a way.”I certainly don’t feel like that’s beyond me at the moment. The fact I’m the other side of 30, I’ve got plenty of experience now all round the world and I’ve faced a lot of these bowlers in different competitions, so to have that experience coming into a subcontinent series where there’s going to be men around the bat, plenty of pressure on, I feel I’m well adept to handle that.”The matter of dealing with the short ball is a question Maxwell has faced privately and publicly ever since Langer stated he “needed to work really hard on that area” and that opponents “bring their fast bowlers back on” whenever he walked to the wicket during an underwhelming 2019 World Cup. A more open stance and better focus of both eyes on the ball have helped Maxwell pick it up earlier, leading, he believes, to a less rushed approach.”I’m picking up length far better than I was, I don’t feel like I’m rushed at the crease,” Maxwell said. “I think for a long time there pace probably rushed me, I didn’t feel like it was a short-ball thing, it was probably the added pace of certain bowlers that probably got the better of me.”But it’s more now that I feel like I’m picking up length better and able to deal with high quality fast bowling. Combine that with one of my main strengths in playing spin, and if I can continue to work on the way I play fast bowling out in the middle, hopefully that’s going to put me in good stead in the future.”There has at times been tension between Glenn Maxwell and the selectors•Getty ImagesSomething else Maxwell now has in his favour is a much better sense of his own mental health. A decision to pull out of cricket for a period in 2019-20 was lauded by the likes of Virat Kohli, and has served to aid Maxwell in how he has tackled the continuous cycle of biosecurity bubbles that have emerged as cricket’s response to Covid-19. This has been true as much for Maxwell’s ability to help team-mates as captain of the Melbourne Stars and now a senior member of the Australian white-ball side as it has been for his own wellbeing.”I know the key for me if I’m not quite feeling my best is to speak up or talk to the right people and actually have the confidence to have those conversations straight away and not have it fester and build into something that can force time away from the game because you’re so flat,” he said. “I think the confidence to have those conversations recently has been really good and even more so in quarantine, being able to chat to different staff members straight away if I’m not quite 100%, if I just need a little bit of time.”I hope it’s been good for my group [at Melbourne Stars] that they’ve got someone who will be understanding if something doesn’t feel right, where they don’t feel like they’re having it held against them or going to be used or perceived in the wrong way. I hope that’s the environment I’ve been able to create and not just for my team, hopefully players from all around Australia and the world as well.”All this adds up to a worthwhile re-examination of Maxwell’s capability to add to his seven Tests and one century, part of a mere 67 first-class games since 2011. As ever, this will be as much a matter for the selectors as Maxwell’s own run-making, but he is undoubtedly an older, wiser and more aware figure than the one who sauntered out onto the MCG with Finch and company on that late February morning a decade ago.”100% I’d like to add to both of those numbers,” he said. “It’s not a lot of first-class cricket for someone who’s been playing since 2011 and to have 10 years of cricket and only average six Shield games a year. So it’s been few and far between, but I’d certainly love to get back out there in the whites and try to push my case.”

Plus, the method behind Rashid Khan’s mastery over Ishan Kishan

Hemant Brar17-Apr-2021Are quick singles really worth the risk?
Rohit Sharma vs the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Rishabh Pant vs the Rajasthan Royals. KL Rahul vs the Chennai Super Kings. And now David Warner against the Mumbai Indians.That’s four key batters, coincidentally all of them captains, going for quick singles and getting run out in the process. Except Rahul, the other three were not even close to making their ground. On all four occasions, their side went on to lose the match. It begs the question: are singles really worth risking one’s wicket, when plenty of overs are still left?At the recent MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, the former India captain Rahul Dravid, who has also led and coached in the IPL, said: “The day is not far when people are going to turn down a single because the match-up suits them to hit a six in the remaining two or three balls [of the over].”Turning down a quick single that risks a run-out is, you would think, an even easier decision.Why run quick singles at all?•ESPNcricinfo LtdWhy did Mumbai hold Chahar back?
Rahul Chahar picked up 4 for 27 at this very venue in Mumbai’s previous match, turning the game around just when the Kolkata Knight Riders seemed to be cruising to their target of 153. Chahar eventually won the Player of the Match award as Mumbai registered a last-over win.On Saturday, despite Warner and Jonny Bairstow going berserk while chasing a similar target, Chahar didn’t bowl a single ball until the ninth over. This may have been because Chahar has a bad match-up against Warner. Before this match, Warner had ransacked 40 off 22 balls from Chahar without being dismissed. Mumbai didn’t want to take that risk.When Chahar eventually came on, Warner took ten from the six balls he faced from the legspinner before being run out. Against the rest of the Sunrisers batters, Chahar conceded only eight from 18 deliveries while dismissing three of them.Have Rohit Sharma’s middling returns gone under the radar?
He is the most successful IPL captain, having won five titles with the Mumbai Indians, but over the last few years, Sharma the batter has been sub-par.Since the start of the 2017 season, Sharma has batted 57 times in the top four in the IPL and scored 1413 runs at an average of 26.66 and a strike rate of 127.52. Generally, top-order batters with such numbers don’t get a long rope. The only other batter to have played more than 25 innings in the top four in that period with an average below 30 and a strike rate under 130 is Ajinkya Rahane.But apart from his exceptional record as captain, Sharma also benefits from a batting line-up brimming with match-winners. His middling returns, therefore, haven’t necessarily hurt Mumbai, and when the stakes have been high, like in the final of IPL 2020, Sharma has often stepped up.When wrong (‘un) is right•ESPNcricinfo LtdHow Rashid Khan aced his match-up against Ishan Kishan
In IPL 2020, Ishan Kishan had dominated Rashid Khan, smashing 33 runs off 20 balls without a single dismissal. No other batter took more runs off Khan last year. Among those who faced at least ten balls from him, only Shane Watson and Nitish Rana scored at a higher rate.On Saturday, though, Kishan could manage only six runs off 10 balls against Khan. What changed?In 2020, Khan had bowled 11 legbreaks to Kishan, off which the left-hand batter took 23 runs. The remaining nine were googlies; Kishan scored only ten off those. This time Khan bowled almost exclusively googlies against Kishan. Of the ten balls he bowled to Kishan, nine were wrong ‘uns. Only one was a legbreak. Kishan scored only six runs off the googlies, while the legbreak was a dot.In all, Khan bowled 22 googlies in the match (one was a wide), the second-most by a bowler in any IPL game for which ESPNcricinfo has bowling-variations data. Only Ravi Bishnoi has bowled more: 23 (two of them were wides) against the Royal Challengers last year.Khan may have bowled as many googlies as he did because he predominantly bowled to left-handers. He bowled nine googlies in ten balls to Quinton de Kock as well, and those nine balls went for just 10 runs. While Khan failed to pick up any wickets, he was miserly as usual, conceding only 22 from his four overs.

Ajaz was persistent in his 10-for much like his immigrant family has been, but he would have probably liked more from his team-mates

Sidharth Monga04-Dec-20214:11

Daniel Vettori: ‘Rare’ Ajaz Patel 10-wicket haul is greatest individual feat in NZ Test cricket

Ajaz Patel arrived in New Zealand in an oversized double-breasted blazer, matching loose suit pants and a hat. He was eight years old, and his parents from Mumbai were looking for a better life. Like Indian parents who put a lot of stock in education because of the high level of competition for a livelihood in India, the first thing they did was put young Ajaz in a school. And he went in and wondered why the New Zealand kids his age couldn’t do multiplications.

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Back in Mumbai for a Test match 25 years later, while Ajaz might be slightly thankful for it, New Zealand must be wondering why the other kids can’t hold their length. It is a bittersweet feat. Only the third man to take all 10 wickets in a Test innings in 144 years of Test cricket, Ajaz wheeled away for 47.5 overs in the first innings of the match, but he is likely to be the only one of the three to be on the losing side.While Ajaz took 10 wickets for 119 runs at his end, the other end leaked 188 runs for no wicket in 62 overs. You look at the overall chances created by New Zealand, and you would think this Test was being played on a flat track. At 88.1%, India batted with much better control than any of the innings in the Kanpur draw. However, against Ajaz, their control percentage dropped to 81.46. While Ajaz drew a mistake once every 5.39 balls, the others troubled India once every 13.8 balls.Related

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Taking 10 wickets in an innings is a freak effort, which takes either big amount of luck to deny others or this kind of difference in the quality of bowling between one bowler and the rest. And Ajaz’s quality was superlative, his endurance remarkable.After the New Zealand seamers kept them alive in the first Test, Kane Williamson was asked if it was better to pick their best bowlers and not two specialist spinners just because the match was in India. Williamson’s defence for his spinners was that they had hardly bowled in the lead-up to the Tests because they had been locked up in their houses in Auckland.Come Mumbai, and the difference showed. Now Ajaz didn’t miss his length as often as he did in Kanpur. He got the ball to drift in and dip too. The revs were on, the pitch helped him. Some balls turned from even the good part of the pitch, some went straight on.ESPNcricinfo LtdUnlike his multiplications, spin bowling is not something Ajaz took with him from India. He started out as a left-arm swing bowler, and even finished an Under-19s season in Auckland as the joint-highest wicket-taker along with Tim Southee. At 5’8″, though, Ajaz lost pace when he looked to hit the deck, and soon realised he was never going to get selected for any high level of cricket if he kept bowling pace.In a touching piece Ajaz wrote for , he details how much persistence and hard work it took. Former New Zealand Test cricketer, Dipak Patel, guided him through the transition. At the start of every coaching session, Dipak would ask Ajaz, “What do you know?” Every time Ajaz realised he didn’t know enough. Hour after hour of getting every little aspect of spin bowling right, and not moving to the next step until he did so, Ajaz knows what Test bowling is all about.Put high revs, vary angles and lines, vary how you hold the ball in your hand, vary the release, get varying degrees of turn from the pitch, but never miss your length. Keep doing it ball after ball for long enough periods. In a spot interview, Star Sports asked him to pick one of the wickets as the most special. Like a true spinner, Ajaz said it is not about the wicket balls, it is about the good balls. And he bowled enough of them.Ajaz did all that in a city that his extended family wouldn’t give them a fair break. The Patels are quite a religious family who believe in destiny. Twenty-five years after they left Mumbai to build a dream, the city of dreams asks them, “What do you know?”Not enough, it turns out. Not enough.

In the 2000s, the fall of Australia’s fifth wicket would mean the fun was just beginning. It looks like those days might be back again

Alex Malcolm22-Mar-2022There was once a time in Australia’s golden age at the start of the new millennium when their fifth wicket fell, the fun would begin.No matter how many or how few the much-vaunted top order had compiled, Adam Gilchrist waltzed out to join Damien Martyn, as Australia’s Nos. 6 and 7 produced either a fearsome counterattack, or mercilessly piled on the pain. Four times they piled up century sixth-wicket stands, including a double and a triple.But it has been a while since a lower-order pairing has been so prolific. Leading into Lahore, Australia had produced just two century stands for the sixth wicket since the 2019 Ashes, and just two away from home in the last decade.Related

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The last time Australia had a century stand for the sixth wicket in Asia was in Chennai in 2013 between Michael Clarke and Moises Henriques, when Cameron Green was barely in high school and Alex Carey was making his first-class debut for South Australia.All that changed on Tuesday, and this Australia side looks far stronger for it. Green and Carey combined for an eye-catching 135-run stand that not only dug the visitors out of a precarious position at 206 for 5 prior to stumps on day one, but also pushed the game forward at a pace that has rarely been seen in this series to date.Australia’s first foray into Asia in four years is not only a fact-finding mission, but also a sink-or-swim exercise for the likes of Green and Carey, who had each never played a red-ball game in Asia prior to the first Test of this series against Pakistan. But both have proven themselves as fast learners, and are swimming proficiently by the third Test, albeit on surfaces that have not been technically demanding for batters.”Over in the subcontinent you don’t get caught behind as much,” Green said. “The main learning curve I’ve had to do was to bat on leg stump – and learn to feel comfortable with that. Obviously, if you do that in Australia, you probably can nick off a lot more and you’re not too worried about getting lbw because it’s probably going over.”But over here, everything goes underground. So the main learning curve is trying to get used to batting on leg stump – and then obviously with the spin bowlers, how you play them with the ball keeping a bit lower and turning a bit more.”The pair looked every bit as assured as Usman Khawaja and Steven Smith had on day one. They took advantage of the second new ball’s hardness and prospered.Alex Carey played a mix of slog sweeps, reverse sweeps and cover drives against the turn•AFP/Getty ImagesGreen’s patented early nerves were nowhere to be seen. He sent hearts fluttering with one of the shots of the series off Shaheen Shah Afridi. Standing tall, using all of his 200cm, he crunched the left-armer off the back foot through cover-point. It was a shot his batting coach Beau Casson had been encouraging him to play on slower pitches, and he unfurled it in a statement of intent.Carey, meanwhile, produced some stunning cover drives on the up to continue with the form he showed in Karachi.The pair was not bogged down against spin too. Green was light on his feet and more decisive than he had been in the previous two Tests, while Carey took to Nauman Ali and Sajid Khan with a mix of slog sweeps, reverse sweeps and cover drives against the turn, as they raced to fifty apiece and a century stand inside the first session. Green gave a unique insight as to why the pair had worked so well together.”It’s something I’ve found recently that I look at the partnership score instead of my own score,” he said. “Firstly, it takes a bit of pressure off myself when I look up the scoreboard and I’m only on 12 – let’s say – but if the partnership is on 30, you feel a lot calmer.”So that’s kind of what I’ve been trying to do recently to focus on the partnerships and then your own score will obviously gradually increase. So that’s kind of what me and Alex did. Obviously, at the time we needed a big partnership. Kez batted awesome.”

“Unfortunately, just lack of concentration… I thought I saw the ball go away from me, but it came back in”Green on how reverse swing made him miss out on a century

But the game changed after lunch. Carey had a lapse in concentration and was trapped lbw to Nauman for 67, leaving Green with the tail as the ball was starting to reverse. Green had negotiated Hasan Ali well with the ball tailing in, striking two boundaries in one over. But Babar Azam turned back to Naseem Shah, who made the ball talk at 140kph.”He bowled really well all day, Naseem,” Green said. “He was getting the ball to reverse pretty largely both ways. Basically what I’ve been doing is obviously a bit different to what Smudge [Steven Smith] does. Smudge tries to get really far across and negate lbw, where I’m trying to get my legs out of the way and just play with my hands basically.”It worked for four balls against Naseem in the 125th over, but not for the fifth, as a 140.9kph length ball veered back through the gate to clatter into Green’s middle stump.”Unfortunately, just lack of concentration when you’ve been batting out there for a while,” Green said. “I thought I saw the ball go away from me, but it came back in.”It is a steep learning curve for Green, as he fell between 74 and a coveted Test century for the fourth time in his short career.”Unfortunately, I keep having thoughts go through my head when I’m out in the middle,” Green said. “It’s starting to get a bit of an issue now because it keeps popping in so I’ve got to keep working on that, feeling comfortable when you get close to it and hopefully it comes one day.”If he and Carey keep their minds on the partnership, their day will come.

The Madhya Pradesh and Mumbai Indians bowler talks about how he developed his craft to become a jack of all spin trades

Shashank Kishore01-Jul-20225:17

Kumar Kartikeya: ‘One big thing I’ve learnt is: when bowling, don’t go by the batter’s reputation’

“It was on April 1, 2013, that I left my home in Kanpur. That’s nine years, two months, and some days. I can’t wait to go home and give my parents a hug.”It’s as if Kumar Kartikeya has a counter in his head reminding him of his self-imposed exile: he vowed to go back home only “after becoming something in life”. It’s unlikely he will have imagined he would accomplish that goal as quickly as he has, though.”Whatever I expected, I’ve achieved somewhat,” he says. “I’ve not yet reached where I ultimately want to, but I’ve come to a certain point, where people recognise me now.”Related

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• High-flying Kartikeya believes Madhya Pradesh have the ability to 'go all the way'

• Six stars from Madhya Pradesh's Ranji Trophy winning season

He made his first-class debut in 2018, bowling traditional left-arm spin, but it wasn’t until Mumbai Indians signed him midway through IPL 2022 and he switched to bowling left-arm wristspin with an array of variations, that his career hit another gear. In the four games he played in the tournament, Kartikeya’s confidence and skill, much of it self-taught, stood out.When he returned to Bhopal, where he lives, from the IPL, an airline official recognised him and gave him a ride home. It was a small validation of the notion that he had indeed become “something”.The IPL might have brought Kartikeya recognition, but the pinnacle of his career so far came last week in first-class cricket, when he scripted a fairy tale, bowling Madhya Pradesh to their maiden Ranji Trophy title with his left-arm spin. He ended up taking 32 wickets in the season, finishing in second place on the wicket-takers’ table.The red-ball success was massive because it proved he isn’t a one-trick pony.Kartikeya with his coach Sanjay Bharadwaj: “Where he stands for me, nobody else does. He is everything for me,” Kartikeya says•Sanjay BhardwajNext up on the agenda is a tour of England with his IPL franchise, where he will be pitched against top T20 club sides.But while his homecoming will have to wait, his family has been in his thoughts. In his hour of glory, as he lifted the Ranji Trophy, he missed his grandmother most.”My grandmother didn’t like my [father’s older brother] naming me Kartikeya,” he says. “She asked him if he knew who Kartikeya was. He said, ‘Yes, I know, he’s Lord Shiva’s son.’ She said, ‘Not that. Kartikeya always stayed far from his father. If you give him such a name, he’ll have the same characteristic.'”My grandmother kept telling that it was because of the name he gave me that my life turned out in such a way that I needed to be away from home.”She always wanted to watch me on TV. She did see me in a Ranji match but passed away last year.

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Kartikeya’s dreams first took wing when he was a 16-year-old new to Delhi, under Sanjay Bhardwaj, the Dronacharya Award-winning cricket coach who runs the famous LB Shastri Cricket Club in the city. Bhardwaj was convinced of the boy’s talent after one net session. And when he learned about how Kartikeya travelled 80km a day to train, while holding down a day job as a mechanic at a tyre factory, he was struck by his dedication and offered to train him for free and to take care of his day-to-day needs.Imitation game: Kartikeya built up his repertoire of spin deliveries watching clips of the world’s top spinners on YouTube•BCCI”The first day I met him, he told me that whatever expenses I had, shoes, clothes, whatever is needed for your cricket, I will provide,” Kartikeya says. “I started weeping. Who does this in Delhi? He said, ‘Just think that I’m like your father.’ I got very emotional then. Since I had come to Delhi, everyone just wanted to take from me. ‘Give me this much and I’ll do this for you.’ He spoke only about giving. I felt so nice. Even now, where he stands for me, nobody else does. He is everything for me.I was not the only one – he did it for a lot of players. Some 70 players have played with him, of whom 30-35 have played the Ranji Trophy, 10-12 have played in the IPL, and a few have played for India, like Gautam Gambhir, Amit Mishra, Joginder Sharma. Among the women, Reema Malhotra. Whichever player he thought was hard-working and honest in his work, he helped them with everything he had.”When Kartikeya had put aside some savings from his cricket earnings, he wrote a cheque out to Bhardwaj – who refused to take it. “I had told him that whatever I earn throughout my life, I’ll give you 30%,” Kartikeya says. “When I first offered it to him, he didn’t accept it,” he says. Then I said, ‘Sir, there are many kids like me who come to you. This will help them.’ That is when he accepted the money.”It was Bhardwaj who impressed upon Kartikeya the need to be different to stand out. That drove his transition from left-arm orthodox to left-arm everything, especially in T20 cricket.”In the T20 game, if I bowl normal left-arm spin, there is a greater chance of being hit,” Kartikeya says. “But if I bowl deliveries that batsmen can’t read which way it’s turning, then it’s not so easy to hit.”He learned by spending hours and hours on YouTube, picking up the mechanics of the carrom ball from watching Mujeeb Ur Rahman, and developing his googly off what he saw Akila Dananjaya and Rashid Khan bowl. Likewise, Yuzvendra Chahal and Adam Zampa were the templates for his left-arm wristspin. The flipper was taught to him by former India and Madhya Pradesh bowler and one-time national selector Narendra Hirwani.Against Punjab, Kartikeya picked up six wickets in the second innings to see MP through to the knockouts of this year’s Ranji Trophy•ESPNcricinfo Ltd”I studied their grips and fitted them to my action with the same grip,” he says, demonstrating. “I can bowl with the normal grip but that will be easy for batsmen to pick. So now I bowl left-arm spin, legspin, googlies, carrom balls, all with the same grip.”I have one thing, with regards to bowling – my mind is sharp. I can pick some things up very quickly.”After watching his role models intently, he put what he picked up into practice, bowling marathon sessions in the nets. “I’ve practised for this a lot. I mean, I over-practised,” he says. “When the IPL started, I had done six months of practice with legspin and carrom balls. I used to do single-wicket practice for three-four hours daily. I would bowl six variations in six balls and continue that for three-four hours.””I spoke to my coach also several times, because at the back of my mind I did have doubts that if I try these variations, it could spoil my left-arm spin. But he told me, ‘Left-arm spin is in your blood. You’ve been bowling it for ten years. If you bowl legspin for a couple of months, nothing will change. So if you think you can bowl it, do it.'”When he told me that, I felt more secure. Earlier when I used to practise this on the ground, several people told me not to do it, that my left-arm spin will get ruined. They said I was established in the Ranji Trophy team, and asked why I wanted to try this.”I kept all this to one side and kept the belief in myself that I can do it. I used to speak to my coach, and he told me that there’s nothing that I cannot do. If I decide to do something, I will do it. So whenever I thought it’s not happening, I would speak to him for ten minutes. It would give me a kick.”Kartikeya played four games for Mumbai Indians in the 2022 IPL, having made the side as a late addition after the season got underway•Mumbai IndiansKartikeya takes great joy in narrating his experiences, and he writes about them as well – in journals he keeps. Chances are, even this interview might find its way into an entry. “If I fumble, we can retake, right?” he asks with endearing earnestness, before talking about his writing habit.”If someone tells me something, I write it down in a diary. I have three-four diaries, and one of them is for noting down who has told me what. In one of them, I note down the good things people tell me – if there’s something motivational that I want to always remember. Then there is one diary in which I write down what happens in my life. Everything that has happened to me so far is written there.”I don’t write every day but at intervals.”Has he written about particular challenges he has overcome?”Of course,” he says, and gives the example of facing MP team-mate Venkatesh Iyer in their first meeting in the IPL.A few days before the game, Iyer ribbed him with, “Pray to God that I don’t play the match.” “I told him, ‘It’s fine,'” Kartikeya says, laughing. “‘I’ve got my planning done for you.’ He said he wouldn’t spare me, and I said, ‘We’ll see.'””I’ve always felt that on a good wicket, he can easily hit me. So I had it in my mind that I can’t let him smash me, and I need to bowl a delivery he wouldn’t understand. I bowled legspin to him. The first ball was a carrom ball and it went for four from the outer edge. Next ball, I bowled a googly and he hit me for six. Then I bowled a legspinner. He thought it would be a googly and he got a top edge and got caught.”So long, bro: Kartikeya celebrates the wicket of friend Venkatesh Iyer in the IPL•BCCIIyer and he get along well, Kartikeya says. “When I did well in the Syed Mushtaq Ali [domestic T20s] this year, he told me that I’m such a bowler that I can play at a higher level anytime, but I need to concentrate on my fitness and diet.” Iyer said that he needed to stop giving in to his sweet tooth if he wanted to play top-level cricket.”I don’t eat sweets now,” Kartikeya says. “When I go home now, I’ll tell my mother in advance that I can’t eat , because right now it’s more important that I play! As long as I’m playing I won’t eat sweets. Yes, it will be difficult to tell her, of course. But if she insists on making it, I’ll tell her to make it sugar-free.”Does his diary include entries about tongue-lashings endured from his MP coach Chandrakant Pandit? You bet.On the last day of their Ranji season opener against Gujarat, MP were defending just 196. Pandit thought Kartikeya had been overconfident and conveyed as much without mincing his words. Kartikeya took it in his stride but left the meeting saying, “Sir, don’t be tense. I will win this game for you. If I don’t, you can leave me out of the side.” He picked up 5 for 34 in his side’s 106-run win, which set the tone for their campaign.Kartikeya is clear he has miles to go before he can dream of resting on his laurels. Bhardwaj’s first message when he returned from his first IPL season was, “You have one blue jersey [Mumbai Indians] now. The main blue jersey [India] is still left. Don’t think you have achieved something big. This is just the start. You have a ladder, climb it. Always respect the game.”Recently a Bollywood film-maker approached Kartikeya with an offer to make a film about his life and career, much like the recent Pravin Tambe biopic. Kartikeya politely refused. “There is so much to achieve still,” he said. “Let’s see after I become ‘something’.”

With the T20 World Cup looming, the performances of Hendricks, Stubbs, Ngidi and others have made the selectors’ job exceedingly tricky

Firdose Moonda01-Aug-2022South Africa have five more T20Is to play before the World Cup, but just two more in which to finalise their squad (their three in India in October come just before the tournament) and there’s no better place to assess themselves from than the perch of a series win. From Rilee Rossouw’s comeback from Kolpak to Andile Phehlukwayo’s comeback from concussion, South Africa demonstrated what stand-in captain David Miller gleefully referred to as “great bouncebackability and character”, and found match-winners in different individuals.Only 15 can go to the T20 World Cup, though, and performances over the last 12 months mean South Africa will find themselves with several selection conundrums, though Miller doesn’t mind. “Its a great healthy space to be in,” he said. “We’d rather have those headaches than having no options.”With matches to play against Ireland in Bristol next week, we take a look at the main talking points ahead of the World Cup squad selection and some of those who’ve made strong cases to be included.Reeza Hendricks’ hot streak
In an opening partnership so often headlined by Quinton de Kock, Reeza Hendricks does not often get to stand out but in his series, he has. Hendricks reeled off three successive half-centuries to finish as the leading run-scorer in the series ahead of much more well-known names on either side including the returning Rossouw and England’s man of the summer Jonny Bairstow. And he did it without much bludgeoning but with plenty of class. Hendricks is a smooth timer of the ball, has quick wrists, and is speedy between the wickets. He brings a sense of calm to the crease and allows the bigger hitters, like Rossouw, to bat around him, and on form should be part of the T20 World Cup group. Bur the reality is that Hendricks has often been a reserve. It’s only the ninth time in South Africa’s 18 series since 2018 that Hendricks has had the opportunity to play in all the matches in a series, and South Africa may need to start asking themselves why. The answer lies in the top-order bottleneck in the squad, and that will only become more complicated when Temba Bavuma returns from injury.Stubbs a shoo-in for the World Cup

There’s been plenty of hype around Tristan Stubbs – that’s what an IPL contract will do for you – and he lived up to it in this series. Stubbs is a big hitter in the truest sense of the words and has the power and the shots to clear the boundary. He is fearless against spin – long considered a weakness among South African batters – and earned the praise of Moeen Ali for being a “very, very good player”. With David Miller and Stubbs in the middle order, South Africa could have a threatening pair of finishers for the T20 World Cup, with the potential of more to come. They’ve so far resisted the urge to pick Under-19 World Cup record-breaker Dewald Brevis (who has yet to play a domestic first-class or List A game) but Dale Steyn reckons that in Stubbs and Brevis, the next decade of South Africa’s batting is safe.Tabraiz Shamsi overcame a difficult start to the series to end it as its highest wicket-taker•Getty ImagesThe case for Phehlukwayo
Dwaine Pretorius has proved his ability when there’s seam movement on offer but Phehlukwayo offers South Africa a point of difference when it comes to selecting one seam-bowling allrounder in their T20I XI. Given the pace of South Africa’s other specialist quicks, Phehlukwayo’s testing length – back of a good length but not short enough to be short – and his cutters are good variations to have in the attack. His challenge is consistency and he will want to to be able to string together several solid performances to secure the allrounder spot He didn’t get much opportunity to bat in this series but has shown he has big-match temperament in the past and a good return against Ireland could help him seal a spot in the T20 World Cup squad.Ngidi to lead the attack?
It seems impossible that Lungi Ngidi will warm the bench at this T20 World Cup, as he did in the previous one, after the way he has performed in the last few months. He only played in two of the five T20Is in India, and only bowled 4.3 overs, but was the leading wicket-taker among the fast bowlers in the England series. Ngidi, like Phehlukwayo, has a mix of slower balls at his disposal but can also turn up the heat to 140kph-plus, and has proved particularly difficult to get away, boasting an economy rate of 6.53 and an average of 7.81 this year. He is noticeably more agile in the field now, has been installed at backward point on occasion, and took two fabulous catches to dismiss Jonny Bairstow in the second T20I and Jos Buttler in the third. With Kagiso Rabada having two quiet series, Ngidi has stepped up and could be the bowler to lead South Africa’s quicks over the next few months.Shamsi still has it
After being spooked by short, straight boundaries in Bristol, Tabraiz Shamsi stormed back to finish as the series’ leading wicket-taker by trusting in his own game. Instead of rushing through deliveries and bowling quickly and flat, Shamsi returned to the fuller, slower approach that has worked for him in the past and it paid off. Shamsi grew more confident as the series went on, after he was reminded of what he was capable of by his team-mates.Miller said there were no major discussions over what went wrong in the first game but emphasis was placed on how Shamsi has elevated himself to the best in the world. “There were one or two pointers to remind him what he can do and what he is capable of, to build up his confidence rather than tell him what to do,” Miller said. “He knows what to do. You don’t want to harp too much on the negative but mention what his strengths are and remind him what he is capable of.”Shamsi remains focused on the dual role of wicket-taking and holding the game, as South Africa’s attack evolves from all-out pace to greater variety. “There was a big talk about Immi [Imran Tahir] retiring and I was expected to fill his shoes but I don’t see things that way,” Shamsi said. “Sometimes the captain wants me to hold the game. I don’t see it as a disappointing game if I don’t take wickets. We are all capable of taking wickets. We are also all capable of holding the game.” The return to Bristol will be a great test to see how he does.

India scored 48 from final three overs in pursuit of the 160-run target against Pakistan, as Kohli finished on 82*

Sampath Bandarupalli23-Oct-20225 Instances of a team completing a successful run chase on the last ball in the men’s T20 World Cup, including India in Melbourne. The previous occasion was by Zimbabwe against Netherlands in 2014, only two days after they were themselves on the receiving end against Ireland. Sunday is the fourth time where India won a T20I chase on the last ball, which the joint-most alongside Sri Lanka.48 Runs scored by India in the last three overs, the joint-most target runs chased by any team in the final three overs at the men’s T20 World Cup. Australia also won against Pakistan in the 2010 edition, needing exactly as many with three overs remaining. The 48 runs by India are the joint-second most target runs chased in the last three overs in men’s T20Is, behind the 59 by Sri Lanka against Australia earlier this year in Pallekele.ESPNcricinfo Ltd129 Runs scored by India after the fall of the fourth wicket. These are the fifth-highest runs scored by any team after the fall of the fifth wicket in a successful run chase in men’s T20Is. India’s 31 for 4 is the lowest total at the fall of the fourth wicket from which any team has won in a run chase in the men’s T20 World Cup.81.33 Virat Kohli’s batting average in T20Is against Pakistan is the highest for any player against an opponent in the format with a minimum of ten innings batted. Kohli has scored 488 runs in ten innings against Pakistan – including five half-centuries – and won the Player-of-the-Match award four times.ESPNcricinfo Ltd3794 Runs by Kohli in his T20I career, thus becoming the leading run-getter in the format by leapfrogging his team-mate Rohit Sharma’s 3741 runs. Out of those, 927 runs have come in the T20 World Cup, the third-highest by a batter in the competition.113 Partnership runs between Kohli and Hardik Pandya, the fifth-highest stand for the fifth or lower wicket in men’s T20Is. It is also the highest for India, surpassing the 102* between MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh against Australia in 2013.