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On pitches changing with every venue, India’s players adapted nicely to fight back from 0-1 for a series win. ESPNcricinfo rates them out of 10

Karthik Krishnaswamy29-Mar-20171:08

Manjrekar: Rahane gets his team to focus on the game

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Ravindra Jadeja (four matches, 25 wickets at 18.56, 127 runs at 25.40)Is he the first name on India’s team sheet? He should be. Tireless, relentless, and simply magnificent with the ball, Jadeja took more wickets than anyone else on either side while being more economical – he conceded only 2.17 per over – than every other regular bowler. Contrary to stereotype, he was India’s first-innings go-to man, even when pitches did not give him much help. If his 6 for 63 in Bengaluru was vital, his 5 for 124 on a flat Ranchi pitch was even better, keeping Australia down to a first-innings total that fell just short of daunting. He scored two fifties too, his 63 in Dharamsala coming exactly when his team needed a score from him, and was superlative on the field, as always; his no-look run-out of Josh Hazlewood in Ranchi was one of the most eye-catching moments of the series.

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Cheteshwar Pujara (four matches, 405 runs at 57.85)Give him a tent, and he will sleep on the pitch, hugging his bat tight, and wake up when it’s time to resume his overnight innings. No one in the world bats time like Pujara. He played two of India’s most crucial innings of the series, overcoming his troubles against Nathan Lyon to score a second-innings 92 that turned the course of the Bengaluru Test, and then making a monumental 202 in Ranchi that enabled India to pass 600 against an Australian attack that almost never lost its discipline and intensity. In all, he faced 1049 balls across the four Tests, and ensured Australia’s bowlers left India at least three times more tired than they may have been otherwise.KL Rahul (four matches, 393 runs at 65.50)Rahul didn’t make a single hundred, but still ended the series only 12 runs short of Pujara’s tally. He batted seven times, and scored six half-centuries, ensuring India got off to starts in all kinds of conditions. He took on the spinners on a Pune dustbowl, curbed those instincts while scoring twin fifties on a tricky, up-and-down Bengaluru surface, and battled hard against Pat Cummins’ short-ball attack to score three more fifties in Ranchi and Dharamsala. Fittingly, he scored the winning runs in the final Test, his celebrations at the end a moment of emotional release for a batsman who desperately wanted to be at the crease at that moment.Umesh Yadav (four matches, 17 wickets at 23.41)Given that India were playing the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th Tests of their home season, and given that Umesh Yadav had played all but one of their Tests before this series, the most remarkable thing about his performance wasn’t his pace or accuracy or swing or reverse-swing or bounce but the fact that he did all those things while looking better and better as the series wore on. Having taken four wickets on the first day of the series, in Pune, Umesh continued to find different ways to get wickets – using cutters to exploit the low bounce in Bengaluru, finding reverse-swing to defy a flat pitch in Ranchi, and harrying Australia’s top order with pace, bounce and swing on the quickest pitch of the series, in Dharamsala. If Matt Renshaw began the series as a thorn in India’s flesh, he ended it as Umesh’s bunny – one of the many small strands that added up to India’s eventual triumph.4:40

Manjrekar: More depth to this Indian team

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R Ashwin (four matches, 21 wickets at 27.38, 53 runs at 8.83)He bowled more overs (225.2) than anyone else in the series, took the second-most wickets, did so at an average below 28, and took a six-wicket haul to help India defend a target of 188 in Bengaluru. He did all of this while looking a little below his best, while perhaps still feeling the aftereffects of the sports hernia that he had suffered towards the end of the series against England. The delicious loop and drift that has been a feature of India’s 2016-17 season weren’t always on view, and the ball did not often hit the splice of the bat when batsmen defended him. But he still plugged away, from over and around the wicket, never making it easy for the batsmen, and, after a largely thankless Test in Ranchi, got back to wicket-taking ways in Dharamsala, where he used the bounce adroitly, dismissing Steven Smith in the first innings and grabbing three in the second innings. His batting, for a man who had begun the season at No. 6, was largely below-par, before he showed signs of a return to form while scoring an important 30 in Dharamsala.Wriddhiman Saha (four matches, 174 runs at 34.80, 13 catches and 1 stumping)Is there a better wicketkeeper in the world at this moment? For a man whose best work often goes unnoticed because his footwork precludes the need to dive unnecessarily, he had a few truly spectacular moments behind the stumps – the flying one-hander to catch Steve O’Keefe in Pune, the leg-side stumping of Matt Renshaw and the dive into the vacant short-leg region to pouch Matthew Wade in Bengaluru, the trampoline leap to pluck an Umesh bouncer out of Dharamsala’s genuinely thin air and save four byes. In front of the stumps, he finished with the third-best average among India’s batsmen, frustrating Australia with vital lower-order contributions in Bengaluru and Dharamsala either side of a classy, accomplished, thou-shalt-not-dismiss-me century in Ranchi.2:03

Chappell: Rahane was aggressive in his own quiet way

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Ajinkya Rahane (four matches, 198 runs at 33.00)Not the greatest series for India’s No. 5 at first glance, but he showed glimpses right through it of why he is such a valuable player. His second-innings 52, which came during the course of a century stand with Pujara in Bengaluru, was full of determination and smarts, his sweep perhaps doing more than any other shot to put Nathan Lyon off his favoured line and length. Then, captaining the side in Dharamsala, he made two small but vital contributions: 46 in the first innings when Lyon was at his most threatening, and an unbeaten 27-ball 38 full of audacious strokes that defused the tension of two quick wickets and hurried India to their target. His catching at slip to the spinners, as always, was breathtaking. It’s a mystery why he doesn’t field there against the quicks, given how many chances India’s other fielders shell in that region.M Vijay (three matches, 113 runs at 22.60)As has been the case right through his career, Vijay made one big contribution to the series – a patient, pressure-absorbing 82 in his 50th Test, which laid the platform for India’s mammoth reply to Australia’s 451 in Ranchi – and did little else besides, while never looking out of form. Having missed the Bengaluru Test, Vijay returned to beef up the solidity of India’s top three, and always made the bowlers work hard even if he didn’t have the numbers to show for it – he was a little unlucky to get out to two excellent deliveries – one from Hazlewood and one from Cummins – in Dharamsala.Ishant Sharma (three matches, 3 wickets at 69.66)Another series, another puzzling set of numbers next to Ishant Sharma’s name. He played the first three Tests, bowled some excellent spells – notably on the second morning in Bengaluru and the fifth morning in Ranchi – but never seemed to get the wickets to show for it. Those two spells coincided with Ishant getting a little worked up by some needle on the field, perhaps a clue that he may be at his best when he’s angry and intimidating – his eight match-winning wickets at the SSC in 2015 also coincided with face-pulling and headbanging – rather than when he is trying to bowl “good areas”.

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Virat Kohli (three matches, 46 runs at 9.20)Judging by how much time the broadcasters spent showing the world his reactions to absolutely everything and by how much he had to say throughout, this may have seemed like Virat Kohli’s series. It wasn’t. He missed the last Test with a shoulder injury after having an exceedingly quiet time with the bat in the first three Tests. He didn’t look out of form, as such, but endured one of those series full of frustrating dismissals that every batsman goes through at some point – out nicking forceful drives on two occasions, leaving the ball on two other occasions, and getting one 50-50 lbw decision. Kohli’s press-conference utterances kept fanning the flames of controversy that flickered throughout the series. While the media themselves were much to blame for shifting their focus away from the brilliant cricket on display, some of it could have been avoided had India’s captain been a little more statesmanlike and magnanimous.Karun Nair (54 runs at 13.50)Having come into the series with a triple-hundred in his last innings, Nair started it promisingly, looking more comfortable at the crease than any other batsman during India’s first innings in Bengaluru, but fell away drastically thereafter. He was bowled by a couple of very good deliveries – from Mitchell Starc in the second innings in Bengaluru and from Hazlewood in Ranchi – but he did himself no favours by playing away from his body on both occasions. He will need to tighten up his defence early in his innings, and will definitely need to work on his catching in the slips.Kuldeep Yadav had one of the most exciting debuts by an India spinner in a long time•Associated Press

One Test

Jayant Yadav (2 wickets at 50.50, 7 runs at 3.50)Came into the series after a spectacular debut series with bat and ball against England, and had to sit out after one below-par Test in Pune, where his bowling didn’t make an impact in extremely helpful conditions. His batting – like the rest of India’s lower order – was swept away by Australia’s rampant spinners.Abhinav Mukund (16 runs at 8.00)With his Tamil Nadu team-mate Vijay injured, Abhinav came into the side in Bengaluru with a mountain of Ranji Trophy runs behind him. It was his first Test match in nearly six years, and on a difficult pitch he was out cheaply twice. It can happen to anyone, but perhaps he will feel a little cross at himself for missing a Mitchell Starc full-toss in the first innings.Kuldeep Yadav (4 wickets at 22.75)With Kohli injured, India took a punt on Kuldeep’s left-arm wristspin in Dharamsala, and it paid off handsomely with his 4 for 68 primarily responsible for Australia’s slump from 144 for 1 to 300 all out. He deceived batsmen both in the air and off the pitch, and showed, with his press-conference demeanour and cheeky batting, that he didn’t lack in confidence. Though he only bowled five overs in Australia’s second innings, it remained one of the most exciting debuts by an India spinner in a long time.Bhuvneshwar Kumar (2 wickets at 34.00)India’s seaming-conditions specialist all through the season, Bhuvneshwar swung the new ball, slipped in a surprisingly ferocious bouncer or two, and could have had more wickets but for Karun Nair’s slippery fingers in the slips. He did a reasonable job otherwise – and got the fortuitous but key wicket of Smith in the second innings – but every now and then sent down a rank bad ball that suggested he may have been slightly rusty given his lack of regular playing time.

Being consistently attuned to a bigger picture of the world beyond the cricket field has led Andy Flower to putting together a diverse and robust World XI squad to tour Pakistan in September

Osman Samiuddin25-Aug-20172:25

Maharoof: Cricket’s return to Pakistan fantastic news

Until recently, Andy Flower would not have been expected to figure prominently across the radar of most Pakistani fans. Sure they will know of him: former England coach, brother to Pakistan’s batting coach, a legend from a different time, nuggety and determined enough as an opponent to force his way into Wasim Akram’s all-time XI.By the end of next month, by the end of this year, in five years hopefully, in a decade perhaps, if all goes well, they might come to remember him indelibly as the man who led big-time international cricket back to Pakistan.As coach of the World XI side that will face Pakistan in Lahore in three T20Is in September, Flower is not the only one responsible for bringing the highest-profile international games to the country in over eight years. The ECB president Giles Clarke, as head of the ICC’s Pakistan Task Team (PTT), the PCB itself – Shaharyar Khan has gone but left this behind – and the ICC have come together for this.But it was Flower who got a diverse and robust 14-man squad together, with enough established names to make this more than just an invitational XI. Clarke had first mentioned the prospect of such a series to Flower last year, though it only became a more tangible project before the start of this English summer.”Inititally I had to look at who was busy during this period of the year,” Flower told ESPNcricinfo. “And initially we didn’t settle on the dates specifically so it was a little difficult working out exactly who was going to be physically available. Then I started having some phone conversations with players and agents.”Security was a “robust” part of these conversations, according to Flower. But the presence of two experienced and trusted security firms, veteran security officials such as Reg Dickason, as well as a more or less incident-free PSL final in Lahore earlier this year meant players were “comfortable and trusting of the expertise on offer from these companies that will be working closely in conjunction with Pakistanis security experts.””In general the response was very positive. Obviously these are professional cricketers we are dealing with and this is part of their profession but there’s a deeper meaning to this tour and the players will really embrace the spirit with which the Independence Cup will be played. And I also believe they will be surprised and pleased by the reception they get from the Pakistani people.”Flower had no hesitation in wanting to get involved. Part of it stems from being consistently attuned to a bigger picture of the world beyond the cricket field. But it is also because Pakistan and Pakistanis figure prominently through a rich career. He toured Pakistan as a player three times in five years, as well as the 1996 World Cup; in all he’s played across nine venues in the country, “fascinating” experiences as he remembers them.Playing and working with Pakistanis has provided further insight, as well as a stint with Peshawar Zalmi in the first season of the Pakistan Super League (PSL). And, of course, there is his brother Grant, batting coach of Pakistan now for three years, and uniquely placed to provide an outsider’s insider perspective.Andy Flower: “I think everybody involved in the Independence Cup will realise there are bigger issues at stake than winning at cricket.”•Getty Images”I speak regularly with him of course. But I’ve also got some other strong connections. I coached England with Mushtaq Ahmed for a few years. And we became strong friends. And I also played cricket with Mohammad Akram and coached with him at Peshawar Zalmi. So I had very fond memories of Pakistan and some really good relationships with people from the country.”What has driven Flower on as much is that same understanding of the wider world in which cricket operates which led to his famous political protest alongside Henry Olonga at the 2003 World Cup, in which they bemoaned the “death of democracy” in Zimbabwe.Before that, in the late 90s, he had surprised many in Zimbabwe by moving, as the country’s finest white batsman and captain, across a creeping racial divide, to a black club. It was a seminal moment for the game there.Bringing international cricket back to a country pining for it is part of that tapestry. “I think we are all responsible for doing our best for the game,” Flower said.”And if we are lucky enough to be given opportunities where we can make a positive contribution to – it could be your club, school, a representative team, your national team or if you’re really lucky you might be given opportunities to positively affect the world game in some way. We all have our little parts to play. So I’m thankful for the opportunity to come to Pakistan with this team.”Among his players, Flower will have to balance the sense of being part of a bigger-than-usual occasion with the seriousness of competitive cricket. These are international matches after all and Pakistan’s first assignment as winners of the Champions Trophy. Do not expect knockabouts.”I think everybody involved in the Independence Cup will realise there are bigger issues at stake than winning at cricket,” Flower said. “However, I think when these excellent players get together as a team, their competitive juices will undoubtedly flow and they will come together and be doing everything in their power to win those games, I’m pretty certain about that.”But I think it will actually be a lovely experience to be part of something that will be bigger than just winning cricket matches. So yes they will be competitive. The people that come will be richly entertained and that is really important. But it is nice to be part of something bigger than this.”

With a strike rate that’s up there with the very best in ODI history, the left-arm quick brings cutting edge to a New Zealand attack that otherwise relies on building pressure through dot balls. How India negotiate his spells could prove key to the way th

Sidharth Monga28-Oct-2017India’s series-levelling win in Pune was set up by their bowlers who restricted the New Zealand batting to 230, but in chasing the total down without incident, India checked a small psychological box. For only the ninth time in his 53-ODI career, Trent Boult was denied a wicket. New Zealand have won only two of those nine matches.Three days earlier, Boult had been critical to keeping India down to 280. He removed the openers with the new ball, and took out MS Dhoni and Hardik Pandya in his later spells. With New Zealand’s prime enforcer Mitchell McClenaghan all but lost to international cricket, Boult becomes the most important bowler in their attack. The others are steady and disciplined, but Boult brings that bit of magic.Boult takes a wicket every 30 balls, which is inside the top 20 strike rates of all time, among bowlers who have taken at least 50 wickets. The top 20 is an interesting list, largely made up of bowlers currently active, but also with bowlers such as Mohammed Shami and Matt Henry, who have not featured in this series so far. Boult was one such bowler not long ago – he has played nearly as many Tests as he has ODIs – but once New Zealand adopted the “hit hard, hit early” policy in ODI cricket, Boult was back in as an integral part.If there is swing or seam to be had with the new ball, Boult will find it. If there is reverse on offer later, he will extract it. He can change his angles dexterously. He is quick to find the wicket-taking length and bowl it. The six times he has bowled to Rohit Sharma in ODIs, Boult has taken him out three times – with a bouncer, with late swing, and with seam – while only conceding 27 off 50 balls.With McClenaghan out and with Adam Milne playing ahead of Henry, this is perhaps a thinner-than-usual New Zealand attack when it comes to the ability to manufacture wickets. New Zealand are now forced to skin the cat another way. Shane Jurgensen, their bowling coach, said two days before the decider that it was important his bowlers didn’t go searching for wickets, and that they focused on building dots. There is arguably only one man in that attack that can chase wickets. If India can play him out, they are looking at a steady and disciplined attack but not an overly threatening one, an attack that will rely on batsmen’s mistakes for wickets.Virat Kohli, with his impressive record against Boult – 94 runs off 82 balls faced, no dismissals – has shown it can be done without batting too differently to how you do. What India did in Mumbai was completely different. Both Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit went in looking to dominate Boult, perhaps to nip in the bud the one big threat in the opposition attack. If Boult does take an early wicket, Kohli becomes the key man to deny him further inroads. He did this with a century in Mumbai, but a faltering middle order forced him to play with restraint and settle for a middling total.A big play in the decider of this short series will be Boult’s first spell. If it is in the second innings, New Zealand will want to give him considerably more than 230 to defend. They will also want Tim Southee to help him out by creating pressure from the other end. In his first spell, Boult will want to bowl to at least one batsman lower than Kohli in that batting order. It won’t be as hot in Kanpur as it was in Mumbai so he will come back even fresher for his later spells.India will want to score around Boult. The series decider might not be the best time to try to start dominating him. Batsmen will have watched all the videos on their laptops by now. Plans will be in place. Boult will make sure he is fresh and ready – in “peak fitness”, as Jurgensen remarked. Bring on that first spell. And the later ones.

They had found themselves short on captaincy candidates when Graeme Smith retired in 2014 and would rather not go through that situation again

Firdose Moonda03-Feb-20185:28

Cullinan predicts Centurion runfest

Aiden Markram will captain South Africa. No, not just in the remaining five ODIs against India but eventually, he will become South Africa’s permanent leader.That’s the message South African management sent out when they named Markram, he of only two ODI caps, as the stand-in for the injured Faf du Plessis. They have identified him as their future frontman.Never mind that Markram is the least experienced among the capped members of the squad (and there are only three that are uncapped) Never mind that he may not even have played the first ODI if AB de Villiers had been fit. Never mind that he has not even captained his franchise in fifty-over cricket. In Markram, CSA’s administrators have found someone with the qualities they believe will serve the game well. He is a top-performer, he is mature, he works well with others and they want to blood him early.South Africa have gone this route before. Graeme Smith was also named captain at the age of 22, but he had had played 22 ODIs and spent 12 months with the national side by then. Markram has played just two ODIs and has only been around this team for eight months, since the Test tour of England in July last year, but he is only standing in and South Africa do not want to make the mistake they did when Smith was around.Between 2003 and 2014, when Smith retired, South Africa only considered succession once. In 2011, when Smith opted out of leading the limited-overs’ sides. AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla were made captain and vice-captain and the next six years were punctuated with problems. De Villiers missed his first series in charge against Australia in late 2011 with an injury so Amla led but 18 months later when de Villiers was suspended for over-rate violations – something that became commonplace in his captaincy – Amla decided he did not want to be the substitute and gave up the vice-captaincy. Faf du Plessis stepped in on that occasion and again when de Villiers was out in 2017.But in between that, in March 2014, Amla decided he was willing to lead and put his name in the mix when Smith retired from Tests. Amla got the job de Villiers was expecting but again, did not last too long. In early 2016, Amla stepped down, de Villiers became captain despite workload concerns and then got injured, forcing du Plessis to take over. De Villiers stood down in late 2017, after du Plessis had led South Africa to a third successive Test series win in Australia, but returned as one-day captain. It was only after the Champions Trophy in mid-2017 that de Villiers stepped aside and du Plessis took over in all formats.Aiden Markram made a fifty on ODI debut too•AFPEssentially, it took South Africa six years to recover from the loss of a stable leader. In that time, they lost the No.1 ranking and were booted out of another World Cup (2015) in heartbreaking circumstances. A repeat of that would be disastrous, so best South Africa look ahead now, especially since du Plessis was 32 – and not 22 as Smith was – when he became full-time captain.So to Markram, who is best known for taking South Africa’s Under-19 side to World Cup glory in 2014, but who has held other leadership roles since. He was in charge of the South African A side for their four-day matches in England last winter and captained them at home against India. At the start of the season, he was named Titans first-class captain.Markram scored a century in his first innings in charge of a side that included Test opener Dean Elgar, captain Faf du Plessis, wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock and pace ace Morne Morkel. The following week, he made his Test debut alongside the same men and the week after that, he notched up his first international hundred. By the end of 2017, Makram had two Test centuries from three matches and despite the opposition being Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, had already established himself as a permanent partner to Elgar.Markram has since played six Test innings against India, with a top score of 94. But he was not an automatic pick for the ODIs. “Vision 2019” had to come into the picture and South Africa, looking to expand their player pool ahead of the World Cup, found Markram , the man who holds the record for the highest List A score in a franchise cricket in South Africa (183 off 138 balls) He was not an automatic pick for the Durban ODI on Thursday, even with de Villiers injured. Khaya Zondo, whose chance is long overdue after he was picked in the squad to face India in 2015, was expected to be handed a debut. And he was definitely not an automatic pick as stand-in captain, with JP Duminy having done the job before in T20Is and more recently for the Cobras.But South Africa are thinking ahead. Markram is the real deal and they know it. It took him longer than his under-19 team-mate Kagiso Rabada to work his way up in the professional ranks but that time was well-spent. He piled on runs for the University of Pretoria Academy, for Northers and for Titans. He learnt his game under quality coaches including Kruger van Wyk and Mark Boucher and he began to understand what it takes to succeed at the highest level.As a batsman, Markram has wonderful temperament. But as a leader, he is an unknown. The early signs are that he is someone who listens better than he talks, who seeks opinion before giving his, who is measured and considered and understands what is expected of him. That’s the kind of captain South Africa want and his future starts now.

He was involved in more than a third of the balls in a recent T20 game, but sometimes only one counts

Jarrod Kimber11-Jul-2018Rikki Clarke skips – maybe not skips, ambles – down the wicket to Joe Denly. Surrey’s run rate is over 11. In the previous over, Clarke put a spinner into the crowd, and now Surrey need only 39 from 44 balls.When Clarke comes down the wicket, it doesn’t seem important, but the interesting thing about T20 is how important one ball can be. Clarke makes one major mistake in the game, on the 46th ball he has been involved in.Allrounders have the most opportunities in T20 games. The top 20 players in terms of balls they are involved in per match (bowled and faced) is completely composed of players with two skills. Part of this is because when T20 started, we looked more at the skills than the roles. There are plenty of T20 allrounders who are really only good enough at one skill, but they make teams feel better about their line-up or options. At his best, Clarke was a proper allrounder, a front-line batsman and bowler.On average he bowls 13 balls a game and bats for 11.5, meaning he has 24.5 balls per match. It means he’s involved in 10% of the match, but that’s not including his fielding.It is fielding where he first touches the ball in this match.The first ball that Clarke will field is at point. Two balls later he’s in the action again. A more agile fielder stops it. While Clarke is one of the best slip fielders on the county circuit, he’s no longer the great young athlete he once was. He doesn’t seem a natural fit at point. Other than Morne Morkel, there is no real fielder Surrey need to hide. For the other end, Clarke is at mid-on. A mishit goes over his head. He takes a while to turn, but it doesn’t cost Surrey a run.For the fifth over, Clarke comes on to bowl. His first ball is full on middle and leg, with short fine-leg up. It should have been flicked for runs, instead it ends up feet from being caught by the man in the circle. The next ball is short and at a moving Denly, who knocks it behind square for a boundary. The next three deliveries are slower balls. Denly and Heino Kuhn take two singles. For the last ball, with Denly back on strike, there are a few field moves to strengthen the leg side. Denly places the ball in a new hole on the off side to take a single. Kent have scored seven off the over, a win for Clarke.Over the last two years he has bowled 66% of his overs in the Powerplay. There’s a good reason for it – he has taken his wickets there at under 19 and his economy is 5.4.***Clarke is back at mid-on. He’s slow to see that the batsmen want to take a single and he costs his team one. But in the same over a terrible throw comes in and he is very attentive in his backing up, which saves his team four overthrows.For the first over after the Powerplay, he tries a mix of slower balls and full pace. He was quick in his prime, and now he still has enough pace to keep a batsman honest. When he bowls a slower ball, it’s loopy and slow, possibly bowled out of the back of the hand, going by the way the batsmen are beaten as much by the dip as the pace. A single is mistimed because of this; another is scooped safely towards mid-off. The batsmen can’t get on top of him, so towards the end of the over they push hard for two. There is brief confusion and almost a run-out. Four good balls brought about that pressure. Kent take six off the over.Clarke is moved to short cover. The ball reaches him a few times – routine stops. But on one, Denly and Kuhn scamper through for a single. Clarke scrambles over to the ball and then does a near blind turn to throw at the bowler’s end. A few minutes earlier he had saved overthrows; now he gives one away. And while the throw isn’t perfect, the overthrow is less to do with him and more to do with Surrey not being alert to the run-out chance.

Clarke was quick in his prime, and now he still has enough pace to keep a batsman honest. When he bowls a slower ball, it’s loopy and slow, possibly bowled out of the back of the hand, going by the way the batsmen are beaten as much by the dip as the pace

It’s clear after two straight overs from Clarke that the batsmen want to take him on. Kuhn gives himself room and smashes a short-of-length ball out to deep cover, where it’s stopped by the sweeper. The next ball is a slower ball that confuses Denly, but it slips down leg for a wide. Clarke gets away with a juicy half-volley for a dot ball. The next ball he bowls a good fast ball at the body. Kent only manage a leg-bye.Denly is seeing them well, but he has struggled to get Clarke away. In eight balls he has taken only eight runs, while at the other end, he has 33 from 21 balls. He goes at Clarke again – it’s another slower ball, and he scoops it back over Clarke’s head. They scamper two. Next ball, Clarke puts more pace on it. Denly pulls and gets it away for only the second boundary off Clarke’s three overs. That is all Clarke will bowl. He has bowled nine slower balls (one a wide) and ten full-paced balls.Out in the field, he finds himself at mid-off or long-off for much of the rest of the innings. Twice he’s doubled over, catching his breath. For some wickets, he takes a chance to catch his breath and doesn’t come in to celebrate them, even when one’s caught not far from him, out at long-on. He doesn’t seem to cost Surrey many runs, maybe one or two, although he doesn’t always pick up the ball that quick. Then a drive is smashed to his left – one of Ravi Shastri’s tracer bullets. Clarke dives, but he’s not close enough to the ball at any point. A quicker, younger fielder stops it. Not long after, Clarke sprints in to restrict the second run brilliantly.The last ball of the innings is hit out to him hard and straight, but he never looks like stopping the two. When he throws the ball, it doesn’t come out of his hand right; it dribbles back to the bowler’s end as Kent complete their two.Kent have made 173. Denly made 102 at a strike rate of 161. The rest of Kent scored at a strike rate of 124. Considering that, it was an under-par score.Surrey lose their second wicket after 8.2 overs, when they had already made 98, well more than half the chase. Clarke doesn’t come in at the fall of the second wicket. In his career of 133 innings, he has only batted 24 of them outside the middle order. In the last three years he has mostly batted at five. The way Surrey are going, it’s not clear if he’ll be needed, but when Ollie Pope is out, Clarke comes in with Surrey needing 65 at marginally more than a run a ball.The game seems over. Surrey’s fans sing “Football’s Coming Home”, and the Kent fans, so excited by Denly, are very quiet.At The Oval, Joe Denly made a hundred and took a hat-trick in Kent’s six-run win over Surrey in the T20 Blast•Getty ImagesBen Foakes is at 42 off 24 when Clarke enters, so Clarke pushes around some singles, using the gaps on the leg side. He is facing Imran Qayyum’s left-arm orthodox and Denly’s long-forgotten legspin.Denly is usually involved in 23 balls per match, 22 as decent opener and one as a bowler. Unlike Clarke, he is not a conventional allrounder. Back in 2010, cricket commentator Nigel Henderson wrote about Denly and his legspin, saying it was a shame Denly had all but given up a skill worth pursuing. It happens a lot at the professional level – David Warner, Steven Smith and Shivnarine Chanderpaul all gave up legspin to focus on batting. When Colin Ingram turned up at Glamorgan, he had turned himself into a keeper despite having started out as a legspinner.For T20, many players, like Ingram and Denly, are bringing back their childhood potential. For a T20 team, having more options with their bowling, especially among their top-order players, allows them to be more flexible. Opening batsmen who can bowl have the ability to have the most significant impact on a game – they can face the most balls and also bowl 24 of them. Meaning, on average, a strong opener who is a front-line bowler can be involved in upwards of 40 deliveries a game.Denly hasn’t been that. In 178 T20s before this one at The Oval, he has bowled 19 overs. But the week before, in the Royal London 50-over final at Lord’s, he took 4 for 57 and was the best bowler for Kent.In T20, legspinners have taken over because of their ability to turn the ball even on flat pitches, their unpredictability, and the fact that they can spin the ball both ways. Denly’s legspin is not revolutionary, but he has the necessary skills. In this situation against a spinner like Denly, it should be easy enough to knock him around for singles.After six deliveries of pushing the ball around, Clarke attacks, but not Denly. It’s Qayyum he hits into the members over long-on. The next ball he faces is from Denly. This is the ball in which he ambles down the wicket. He is nowhere near the ball. It’s premeditated but also half-committed. The ball drops short of him. He flings his hands out but misses and the keeper takes the bails off. Clarke is miles out.This is a regular game for Clarke. He averages 13 balls a game as a bowler; in this one he bowled 18, but his economy was 7.33, which is almost identical to his career rate of 7.29. Perhaps he should have bowled his extra over in the Powerplay. He didn’t take a wicket; he takes one on average every 19.5 balls. But Kent’s total was still under par on this wicket. His fielding saved runs sometimes and let through a couple of other times, but was about par and better than you’d expect from the average 36-year-old. In total, Clarke was involved in 46 balls (including his fielding) and had an overall positive impact for his team.But the other team had Denly moonlighting as their allrounder. Without even counting his fielding, he was involved in 87 balls – 36% of the match – making a hundred and taking 3 for 31; three quick wickets. In the two balls after dismissing Clarke, Denly got rid of Jamie Smith and Mathew Pillans. Clarke’s dismissal was the start of a hat-trick and a fantastic collapse. Surrey needed 39 to win from 45 before Clarke was out. After he was out, they added 32.Clarke bowled well, hit a six, and fielded fine. He more than did his job as an allrounder. But on one ball he made a mistake, and in T20 there is often no coming back. So 45 balls of good work was beaten by one mistake on the 46th , and it’s that ball that leads to Surrey giving away the unlosable game.

It was a case of role reversal on the opening day at Headingley. Did the sun work against Pakistan?

Osman Samiuddin at Headingley01-Jun-20181. Winning the toss
The toss-winning side has won only once in the last eight Tests at Headingley. Sarfraz Ahmed had not won a toss since becoming Test captain (in four Tests). This was a bad time to start. Poor form.b) Batting first after winning the toss
Ok, so it wasn’t wrong. At the time Sarfraz won it, it was kind of sunny and the surface did look like there might be some batting in it. And in two of the last five Tests at Headingley when the side winning the toss has batted first, they’ve won one and lost one.c) Batting first after winning the toss and batting badly
354, 257, 350, 298, 258, 174: Spot the odd one out.It’s the last one in case you have no idea what those numbers mean. They are the last five first innings totals at Headingley. Win the toss, lose it, bat first, bat second, if you don’t bat well it won’t matter.England bowled well. But Imam-ul-Haq, Sarfraz and Usman Salahuddin (no relation to this writer) made classic Pakistani-batsmen-in-swinging-conditions mistakes. Chasing a drive when leaving would have worked well, and aiming through midwicket when playing straight would’ve worked better.4. Headingley, wearing an ’80s outfit
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Leeds used to be a monster swing ground. You could pitch a ball on a pitch in Sheffield and it would swing back to take middle on the match pitch. Asian batsmen turned up to be shown up.Then it stopped happening which, of course, climate change.Today it decided to swing like the 80s. In fact, since Cricviz’s records began (from 2006) the only time it has swung more in the first innings of a Headingley Test was in 2013, when New Zealand were in town. England made 354.5. England caught
I know right? They really did (well they dropped one-and-a-half catches).f) Shadab Khan is batting too low
He’s not really. He should just be on all lists as a rule.f) i) The sun
All the hours England have put into those sun-harnessing sessions finally paid off.It was out at the toss so Sarfraz decided to bat. About three seconds after he had made the decision, Joe Root manoeuvred it back behind the clouds. They kept it there till Pakistan were 79 for 7. And then it didn’t go back in. Well played England.8) All fortune used up at Lord’sPakistan weren’t lucky at Lord’s. But England did drop more catches than there have been pictures of Harry and Meghan in the last month. And where they somehow managed to not edge deliveries at Lord’s, they edged everything here. In the parallel universe of Lord’s the delivery that dismissed Asad Shafiq would either have missed his bat, or been dropped by Alastair Cook. Here Cook grasped on to it after the juggle.Otherwise, and other than the three poor dismissals, they showed pretty much the same judgment they had in Lord’s. There they left 65 balls in the first 30 overs. Here they left 57. It’s just that the balls didn’t leave them.y) England’s batting started wellSee no. 5. Or belowz) Universities aren’t what they used to be
England had gone 13 innings without an opening stand of 50 before Cook and Keaton Jennings got together. Jennings shouldn’t have been here if the Open University degree he’s studying for had put its foot down and not allowed him to miss an exam to be able to play. He’s studying for an accountancy degree by the way and he did kind of bat like he’s studying for an accountancy degree.

All there has always been is pettiness, politicking, and shameless slinging of mud; what point is there crying out for actual lasting change for Sri Lankan cricket

Andrew Fidel Fernando18-Sep-2018Right. Okay. This is pathetic, isn’t it? Knocked out of the Asia Cup basically before it has even begun. A big 91-run loss to Afghanistan, following an even bigger 137-run pasting by Bangladesh. Appalling. Someone needs to be held accountable for this garbage. How far Sri Lankan cricket has fallen. This is beyond embarrassing. Contracts must be torn up. Changes must be made. Heads surely have to roll.And what better starting point than this Angelo Mathews? When have Sri Lanka ever done well when he was captain? Okay, so there were great bilateral series wins in England across formats in 2014. Also that historic Test series whitewash over Australia at home. And fine, there was an Asia Cup victory under him also. But, let’s see, apart from additional ODI series against South Africa, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, West Indies and Ireland, what has Mathews ever achieved as a leader?Well, what do you mean Sri Lanka have already tried other one-day captains, and it went disastrously? You’re saying that within a space of 12 months, Upul Tharanga, Lasith Malinga, Chamara Kapugedara and Thisara Perera all took the reins in limited-overs cricket, and Sri Lanka were still consistently and emphatically thrashed on a selection of the planet’s continents? That Sri Lanka’s returns in the series Mathews didn’t captain in last year, were 18 losses and two wins?Okay, fine. For the sake of argument, let’s leave Mathews aside then. What about coach Chandika Hathurusingha? He who descended back on the island at the start of the year, charging more than any coach ever has before, promising lasting change and a return to former glory. Of course he should be packed off, right? Surely a coach should know when his players are going out of form, and when he should switch them out for someone else? Just look at what has happened to Kusal Mendis’ one-day form – he’s gone 20 completed innings without a half-century now. Tharanga, Dhananjaya de Silva, Shehan Jayasuriya… these guys aren’t doing much better.Angelo Mathews and Chandika Hathurusingha in discussion•AFPBut I suppose you will make the point that Sri Lanka have already tried changing their coaches? Yes, of course I recall that last year Graham Ford was elbowed unceremoniously out of his job. And that after very few high-quality candidates applied for the job, the board practically had to go to Hathurusingha on their knees. Right, yes, there is also that insane statistic that Hathurusingha is Sri Lanka’s tenth head coach – including interim appointments – in the space of eight years. I guess the Asia Cup was also only his third ODI assignment, and that when Sri Lanka had actually won their first ODI trophy since 2016 earlier this year, it had been under Hathurusingha’s watch.So, great, but if we are reserving judgement on him, what about these useless selectors? Wasn’t it Einstein who said that the definition of insanity was to keep persevering with too many bits-and-pieces allrounders and not enough capable specialists? Now, this is getting annoying. You are saying that even the selectors have been changed within the last 13 months, and that they have tried a new selection philosophy, based on giving players a long run in the side rather than changing personnel every game.Right, look. I see where you are going with this. You are going to sound like a broken record in a minute. You are going to say something like: “Sure, Mathews and Hathurusingha have their flaws, but Sri Lanka will always be inconsistent as long as their domestic cricket is in such rotten shape.” You are going to drone on about how there is no point blaming the bakers, if you are giving them sawdust to make the cake.You will claim the clubs have the cricket administration by the gonads, and that Sri Lanka’s domestic players play months and months of meaningless low-quality club cricket. That what Sri Lanka are reaping now is the result of years and years of profound mismanagement. That even though they have recently started playing these “Super Provincial” tournaments, they are still grossly insufficient – that playing six decent domestic one-dayers in a year is nowhere near enough to start closing the gap on the better one-day teams. And that when players are suddenly asked to make the galactic leap into international cricket, they have repeatedly shown a tendency to make bad on-field decisions, and then quickly get caught up in a vortex inadequacy, which translates into more bad decisions, and acute dips in form.So just save it, no? We’ve all heard it before. You have been going on for years, and yet has there ever been any real political will to change Sri Lanka cricket? Any meaningful effort to take the game properly into the provinces? All there has always been is pettiness, politicking, and shameless slinging of mud; the same eight or so names that have run cricket since 1996, throwing punches at each other in a broken down carousel.What point is there crying out for the actual lasting change?So instead let’s argue again about sacking the captain and the coach.

Even towards the end of his life Packer was influencing selectors and chiding commentators, and would not give in to the T20 revolution

Daniel Brettig15-Feb-2019 Bradman & Packer: The Deal That Changed Cricket,In the days before the final Test of the 2005 Ashes series in England, Bob Merriman was driving home from Melbourne to his Point Lonsdale home when the phone rang. Having served in all manner of roles in Australian cricket since the late 1970s, he had, since 2001, been the chairman of what was now known as Cricket Australia. Not many phone calls surprised him, but this one did: Kerry Packer was on the line.”Get that f***** Hussey in the side, quick,” Packer insisted.”Kerry,” Merriman retorted, “the selectors will pick the side.””They can’t pick a bloody club team, Martyn hasn’t made a run!”Startled by Packer’s adamant approach, Merriman called his chief executive, James Sutherland.”Please remind Trevor Hohns that he can pick any Australian, he doesn’t have to pick from the 17.””What do you mean?” Sutherland asked. “Just let him know that.”
Minutes pass, and Sutherland calls back with a response about the obvious player: “Bob, Mike Hussey’s on a plane now, we can’t get him in.”Hussey was in fact on his way from England to Pakistan for an Australia A tour, alongside the touring party’s reserve wicketkeeper, Brad Haddin. But the fact that his unavailability was dictated less by opposition to Packer’s request than by a previous engagement is as great a reminder as any of Packer’s ability to influence events.At that point Packer was only a few months away from his death on the first day of the 2005 Boxing Day Test, but his final year was among his most eventful so far as Australian cricket was concerned. Packer, alongside Nine’s chief executive David Gyngell and opposite Merriman and Sutherland, had taken on one last television deal for cricket. It took place amid the emergence of Twenty20, and was underpinned by other market factors on which Packer had made his strong sentiments known to the game’s Australian custodians.One such factor was an increasingly motley international schedule, as the bilateral commitments of full ICC nations (such as Australia) were opened up to the likes of Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. These nations toured Australia for Tests in 2003 and 2004 respectively. Packer aired his views to Merriman, calling such series “wallpaper”, and making a particular point about Matthew Hayden’s world record score against Zimbabwe in October 2003, at the WACA Ground. “It was the Matthew Hayden 380 that he claimed had cost him $4 million,” Merriman says. “The match was in the last week of the ratings period and all his good programs weren’t on because of the three-hour time difference. And that week he went down the gurgler on ratings like you wouldn’t believe, and he’s out there trying to sell for the next year. I don’t know how he made up the $4 million, but his ratings figures disappeared, because nobody was watching Australia versus Zimbabwe, even though Hayden was making 380.”

“This T20 cricket is no f****** good. When do I make a dollar? The batsmen change on the ground; there’s no time; there’s a small lunch break; there’s no tea break; there’s no drinks break”

Packer wanted to see more of England, India, South Africa and the West Indies, and he was also skeptical of Twenty20 (T20), the “next generation” form of the game that had been unveiled in England during the northern summer of 2003. T20’s arrival has passed into history as a game-changing moment for cricket, but in its earliest days, there was as much doubt among broadcasters as existed among players. For just as Queensland’s then captain Jimmy Maher stated the need to ensure everyone was aware that it wasn’t “real cricket”, in the first season of the Big Bash, so too had media buyers and sellers seen plenty of short-form ventures come and go.Super 8s and Martin Crowe’s Cricket Max (10 8-ball overs per team of 13 players) were two, while the Hong Kong Sixes had not expanded beyond the location from which they took their name. And at a time when rivers of gold were still flowing into pay-TV networks for the game’s conventional forms, many simply did not see the need, Jim Fitzmaurice among them. “T20 crept up on a lot of people, there was a certain amount of cynicism about it from the beginning, and no-one really expected that it would pull the sorts of audiences it did,” he says. “Short-form sport has been around for quite a while, and it wasn’t unusual every few months to have someone coming through the door telling you this was the new format which someone had invented for cricket, golf, rugby. Someone was always coming up with a pattern where they wanted to shorten the game and make it more exciting. And a lot of it didn’t even get tried because you looked at the formula and said, ‘That ain’t going to work’.”When comparing it to the number of hours of programming – and advertising breaks – provided by Test matches and ODIs, Packer soon made clear his attitude: T20 played by Australia was of some interest, but domestic tournaments were of little use to him. By now established as a commentator and having recently joined the Board of what was now Cricket Australia, Mark Taylor discussed the format with Packer after Nine hosted the first broadcast of a T20 game in Australia, between the touring Pakistanis and Australia A in Adelaide, in January 2005. “I had a chat with Kerry not long after and asked him what he thought of T20. He wasn’t a big fan because he considered the game too short and that there was not enough time to make money out of it. He said, ‘Yes, there’s probably a place for it, but it’s not in the place of one-day cricket’, and that was Kerry saying it’s not a bad product, but I don’t want it taking over my one-day cricket. That’s the way I read it.”Packer claimed Matthew Hayden’s world-record score of 380 in 2003 cost him $4 million because of falling ratings•Hamish Blair/Getty ImagesOne-day cricket had not quite lost its lustre, certainly not in the form it took when CA and the Australian Cricketers Association rapidly organised a fundraising match in the wake of the Boxing Day Tsunami, to be held at the MCG in January, 2005. Towards the end of the night, Merriman accompanied Malcolm Speed, by then the ICC chief executive, to announce the amount of money raised by the occasion. As Speed spoke, a figure of $10.5 million turned, in a trice, to $14.5 million via “the Packer family”. The punchline arrived later in summer. “A few weeks later we had lunch with Kerry. James Packer is there, [senior Nine executive] John Alexander’s there, and James Sutherland and I. The first thing I said was, ‘Kerry, on behalf of cricket and everybody, I’d like to thank the family for the $4 million’, and he turns to James and says (sarcastically), ‘How much did you put in James? No f****** money at all’. James just looked at him!”There were more than a few power lunches around this time, and as many revelations. “One day we were talking a little bit about WSC,” Merriman says. “I said, ‘You’re bloody lucky those lights in Sydney stood up – not as good as the lights in Melbourne you paid for’, and James Packer says, ‘You paid for those lights in Melbourne too!’ And Kerry just says, ‘Of course I f****** did’.”While technology was advancing, sport remained a highly reliable source of large audiences, even as other forms of television lost their former attractiveness. “People generally forecast that with the widespread development of other technologies and other methods of distribution, not necessarily through traditional television networks, that the value of sporting rights would gradually diminish because the audiences were going to get smaller and smaller,” Fitzmaurice says. “In Australia the average audiences that networks now attract don’t compare with what they were doing in the 1980s, and the trend is that gradually people and particularly young people look for other sources.”They don’t sit down at their television at a prescribed time determined by the broadcaster. That means that you don’t get the big movie nights anymore, or mini-series, and you’d get really big audiences to them. All that’s gone. However, live sport remains one of the final few products that free-to-air television can get hold of and still get the sorts of audiences they used to get in the 1980s. It’s one of the few things that still attracts a mass audience. That’s why you’ve got a change in the sort of television diet offered by traditional broadcasters.”It was in this climate that Nine and CA commenced negotiations for Packer’s last cricket deal, to run from 2006 to 2013. The groundwork was done with agreement that its many detailed clauses would be worked through by Sutherland and Gyngell, while Merriman and Packer would meet later in the process to haggle over the dollars involved. In late 2004, Packer called Merriman to Melbourne’s Crown Casino to express concern that the chief executives were taking too long sorting through the detail. “I didn’t say it,” Merriman recalls, “but it was obvious his health wasn’t great.” Among the many changes wrought by the deal was the move to live coverage against the gate in Melbourne and Sydney, irrespective of ticket sales. From the beginning of the PBL/ACB deal, only the last session of Tests, and the first two hours of ODIs, were shown live into the city of origin unless a match was sold out.

“Son, stop telling us how f****** cold it is in Hobart and how the fielders are wringing their hands and how people are wrapped in anoraks and having a shit time”

When the time came in early May, 2005, to conclude the deal with a final day’s negotiation, Merriman got an unpleasant surprise. Packer did not want Nine to have to broadcast the Twenty20 Big Bash, a new, state-based tournament, that CA had scheduled for the following summer. “This T20 cricket is no f****** good,” Packer declared. “When do I make a dollar? The batsmen change on the ground; there’s no time; there’s a small lunch break; there’s no tea break; there’s no drinks break. When do I make my f****** money?””Oh, so you don’t want it,” Merriman replied.”No, no, 50-over cricket is the thing I want.” 
Suddenly worried by the scene unfolding, Merriman called for a break. “So James [Sutherland] and I and Gyngell went out of the room and I said to James, ‘Go and make a couple of calls to see if pay-TV want T20. See what you can do – the Shield final has got to be in it’, and Fox got it,” he says. “Even though we only got about $6 million for it, we got an opening for it. We were going to have no-one to telecast it, that was the biggest thing.” This separate deal, pulled together quickly as Fox Sports also gained non-live highlights to international matches, meant that Merriman could return to dealing with Packer on more comfortable ground.”That’s off the table, you don’t need to worry about that,” Merriman told Packer about the Big Bash and the Shield final.”What do you mean?”
”You don’t need to worry about that. I give in.” The afternoon was now wearing on, and Packer eventually met the figure Merriman was seeking: $275 million over seven years. “The clock was up on the wall and I said to him, ‘What time’s that?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘What time’s that?’ And he said, ‘It’s five to five, what do you mean?’ And I said, ‘We’ve got a deal,’ and shook his hand. He said, ‘You’re going to go out there, and you’ll have grog, and you’ll say how you did Kerry Packer’.” But Packer had, in fact, wrested back one clause given up by James Packer when dealing with Speed in 1998: the requirement for Nine to underwrite at the end of the deal. “It was in the last bloody deal and I didn’t like it,” Packer told Merriman. “I was sick in hospital and bloody Denis Rogers put it over James’.”Merriman and Sutherland got a brief fright in the following weeks when Packer re-hired Lynton Taylor to work alongside Gyngell, who soon quit in frustration at being watched over in such a way. But the deal stood, and so too the split of domestic T20 away from Nine. The tournament remained a Fox Sports property when it was relaunched as the Big Bash League in 2011, and then became critical extra ballast for the first post-Packer deal in 2013. Nine was pushed to a still higher figure by the added interest of Ten, which failed to claim the whole cricket package but still walked away with the BBL for $20 million a season. Together, the new agreement was worth $590 million to CA over five summers.”We used to always do the international T20 matches but a lot of that domestic stuff Nine didn’t pick up,” Mark Taylor says. “You can say that’s a mistake, but as Kerry would’ve pointed out if he was around, it’s not just about the cricket, it’s also about the business. Whether he would’ve made enough money out of it, I don’t know. I wasn’t privy enough to what was going on behind the scenes then. It would’ve been interesting had Nine picked it up, even in 2013 when it went to Ten from Fox; if Nine had done the whole lot, where we would have landed today.”Packer with son James•Associated PressAlmost forty years after the first deal between Nine and the ACB, that landing resulted in the shift of cricket away from Packer’s old network to the pay-television wing of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, with free-to-air rights to Tests, BBL and WBBL on-sold to Kerry Stokes’s Seven Network. In turn, Nine took over Seven’s grip on the Australian Open tennis tournament. In April 2018, Australian cricket’s domestic TV rights deal topped the $1 billion mark for the first time, as Fitzmaurice’s view of sport’s broad-based attraction to television held true, despite the Newlands ball-tampering scandal. For the first time, too, the women’s game made up a substantial part of the deal, thanks largely to the persistent lobbying of CA’s head of media rights, Stephanie Beltrame. The third major broadcasting deal of his 18 years as CA’s chief executive was also James Sutherland’s last.Kerry Packer made a lasting impression on Sutherland. “He wanted Nine to own the big stuff, the really important stuff, and he was a great traditionalist when it came to international cricket,” Sutherland says. “Nine was broadly suspicious of T20 cricket and state cricket. Even this year [2018], when we did the TV deal, Nine was very much about Test cricket. They wanted international cricket, but once they got the tennis they were still very much in the game around Test cricket, and had a really strong view and belief in its longevity and importance.”No organisation has put more into cricket financially or promoted it more than the Nine Network, and Australian cricket should always be incredibly grateful for that. That’s Kerry’s legacy – World Series Cricket and then owning the rights when he was the principal of Nine. But beyond that, if you really love the game you should be positive about the game, and promote the game. Kerry was very strong on that, so much so that as folklore has it he’d ring the commentary box and have people talk the game up, to the extent he’d give them one warning and might not give them two.”Sure there are things to be critical of, or things that may be different, but it just concerns me when some people get to the stage in life where, even though they proclaim to be genuine lovers of the game, all they can do is criticise. I think it’s sad that it’s come to that, and maybe they’ve just done one too many laps.”

“You’re going to go out there, and you’ll have grog, and you’ll say how you did Kerry Packer”

Former Nine commentator Mark Nicholas has chronicled his own phone call, received in the summer of 2004-05, after he had gone to some length describing how cold and dank it was in Hobart, how the crowd was rugged up and how the touring Pakistani team was trying as best it could to keep warm.”Son, stop telling us how f****** cold it is in Hobart and how the fielders are wringing their hands and how people are wrapped in anoraks and having a shit time,” Packer ordered. “The only people having a shit time are those of us at home who have to sit here f****** listening to you. And son, we’re a commercial network. We sell the game. It’s not over ’til it’s over. I don’t care how far in front the Aussies are, it’s never over. Our business is numbers, son, eyeballs.”This led to a swiftly-booked flight to Sydney, first thing the next morning, and a meeting with Packer at Park Street, where Nicholas was accompanied by co-commentators Mark Taylor and Ian Healy. Beginning with a wider harangue of their commentary, Packer kept the trio in his office for three and a half hours, gradually working his way from the hard messages to quizzing Taylor about the CA Board (Taylor was on the Board from 2004-2018) and Healy about the Australian Cricketers’ Association, and then the state of the game in general, batting techniques, golf and tennis. Finally, he left them with a message to remember him by: “Take care of the game, because it won’t take care of itself”.The last time Merriman saw Kerry Packer was at the one-off match played between Ricky Ponting’s Australians and a World XI at the SCG in October 2005. “I was lucky enough to have Clive Lloyd there, and Tony Greig and Ian Chappell,” Merriman says. “Kerry was terribly sick – he hardly ate anything at lunch. In fact, I had to get the car all the way up to where the door was. ‘I’ll be right son. I’ll be all right son,’ he said. So I sat with them for a couple of minutes, but thought, ‘Hang on this isn’t where I should be.’ There’s Clive Lloyd, Tony Greig, Ian Chappell and Kerry. We didn’t get a photograph of it but we should have. And then about half an hour later he came up and said, ‘Son, seeya ’round’, then he just went off, and I never spoke to him again.”With Packer’s death that December, a link to cricket’s past was severed, but not forgotten. The Bradman and Packer names were intertwined again in 2013, when a permanent exhibition on WSC was opened at the Bradman Museum, also known as the International Cricket Hall of Fame, in Bowral. On the day that the exhibition opened, Richie Benaud spoke at length about the period between 1977 and 1979, working his way through many of the familiar tales explaining how the war began. Then, with a typical pause and the hint of a grin, he let his audience in on a secret, too. “Many people,” Benaud began, “know the story of how World Series Cricket began. But let me tell you how it ended…” is published by the Slattery Media Group

England’s squad candidates have done all they can, now it’s over to the selectors to make one of the toughest calls ever

George Dobell at Headingley19-May-2019The majority of places in England’s World Cup squad are certain. But four or five players may be sitting nervously ahead of Tuesday morning’s announcement. We look at the contenders for that final positionTom Curran

The fact that Curran’s batting appears to have improved considerably of late – he has scored 47 not out, 31 and 29 not out in his last three ODI innings, demonstrating an ability to bat in different styles in the process – should cement his place. But his real skill remains his death bowling, where his well-controlled variations offer his side some hope of restricting batting units on the excellent batting pitches anticipated in the World Cup. Coaches and team-mates often mention his character, too: his apparent relish to be involved in the tense moments, which some players might prefer to avoid. It’s an attractive combination. All but certain to be included.James Vince

The figures are unexceptional – Vince has failed to pass 43 in three ODI innings since his recall as a result of Alex Hales’ ‘deselection’ – but the style with which he has made them has been encouraging. Much the same could be said about Vince’s entire international career to date, to be fair (he has invariably looked classy in Test and ODI cricket, but averages of 24.90 and 28.12 do him few favours). But he has demonstrated a range of strokes and an ability to play in the fearless, positive style required by England. With Joe Denly not having been given an opportunity at the top of the order, it suggests nobody else is seriously under consideration for the role of reserve batsman. Vince is all but certain to be included but unlikely to play unless a first-choice batsman is ruled out.Liam Plunkett

Plunkett’s record of taking wickets in the middle-overs – only ten men with more than 100 ODI wickets have a better strike rate in the history of the game – probably gives him an advantage over his fellow seamers. While there’s little doubt he is, at 34, in gentle decline, he has the benefit of experience to mitigate against his drop in pace. Only Chris Woakes of the seamers in England’s current squad has taken more ODI wickets and he continues to present an awkward challenge to batsmen with his cutters delivered from height and thumped in just back of a length. In a squad full of new-ball and death bowlers, he offers a point of difference and has earned the trust and respect of his team-mates and management over the last few years. He’s not the most mobile in the field these days, but he still has a safe pair of hands and a strong throw. All but certain to be included; less likely to make the first-choice team.David Willey

Willey’s unique selling point is the left-arm variation he offers and his ability to gain some swing with the new ball. But it is his misfortunate that England are, all of a sudden, pretty well covered in the area of new-ball bowling. With Mark Wood, Woakes and Jofra Archer all offering strong alternatives in that position, it seems Willey – who did not take a new-ball wicket in the Pakistan series – could be struggling to gain an opportunity. And while he is also good at the death – it’s only a few days since his spell in Southampton all but settled a well-contested match – he might not be as good as Curran, Woakes or Archer. He is an improved cricketer over the last year or so, however – he has bowled his full allocation of ten overs in three of his six most recent ODIs, having not done so in 22 of his 23 ODIs before that – and decent with the bat and in the field. Could count himself desperately unlucky if he misses out but, realistically, the final place in the squad may be between him and Denly. And if England leave out a seamer, it’s probably him. Faces a nervous wait.Joe Denly

Like a carpenter employed to do the plumbing, Denly’s problem is that he is under consideration for a role – spin-bowling utility back-up – that doesn’t really suit him. He has taken just one ODI wicket – and that was a stumping off a wide in the match in Dublin and has never bowled more than five overs in an ODI innings, either; he’s only bowled 11 overs in total. In theory, he could offer top-order batting cover, but the fact he has twice been scheduled to come in at No. 7 and once at No. 5 does not suggest he is being seriously considered for it. Denly is, without doubt, a fine cricketer who would make a low-maintenance, high-quality substitute fielder as required in this squad, but he doesn’t seem an especially comfortable alternative for any of the first-choice positions. Liam Dawson arguably remains a better fit for the role available – he is certainly the better spinner …Liam Dawson

Bearing in mind that he has not played for England this year, Dawson must be an outsider for a place in the squad at this stage. But it is worth remembering that he was in the squad in Sri Lanka until injury intervened – Denly was his replacement – and that, only a week ago, Trevor Bayliss, the England coach, confirmed that he was still in contention. He has enjoyed an excellent season in domestic 50-over cricket – only six men have taken more wicket in the 2019 competition; none of them can beat his economy-rate of 4.11 an over – and is a decent lower-order batsman in this form of the game. Looks unlikely to be included on Tuesday, but could still be called-up if Moeen Ali or Adil Rashid suffer injury.

The left-arm spinner opens up about what makes him tick and how he’s prepared for this India tour

Karthik Krishnaswamy in Visakhapatnam01-Oct-20193:15

Maharaj as good as any spinner in the world – du Plessis

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Your first Test wicket – did you think Aleem Dar would give it out, with Steven Smith so far down the track?
So, funny story. We were bowling in the nets the day before [the Test match], and I’m not sure who I was bowling to. Aleem came there, to get into his routine of seeing how the bowlers are, and the guy came down the wicket and exactly the same thing happened, and he was like, you know what, I’d give that out, it looked adjacent to me.I’m sure he must have been thinking about that when you appealed for the Smith wicket.
I’m not sure if he thought about that. I did, definitely. I didn’t expect him to give it out, but luckily he did.Do you know that, since your debut, 11 spinners have taken 50 or more Test wickets, and you have the second-best strike rate among them, behind Rangana Herath?
Yeah? To be honest, I didn’t know about that at all. I’m not very much a stats person. I’m trying to do the best I can, wherever I go in the world, whether it’s international, domestic, club cricket or just some local Sunday league that you go play. I’m very fortunate and blessed to be able to do something I love and see other parts of the world, so if I can do well, I’ll get many more opportunities to do that.Keshav Maharaj registered the best figures for an SA bowler outside home•AFPThe reason I brought up the strike rate was this tendency, maybe, to look at this South African attack and see all these fast bowlers and think they’re the strike bowlers, and see you as doing the holding role, but your strike rate says you’re an attacking bowler too.
Yeah, but let’s not forget, fact is that we have a wealth of fast bowlers and I’m fortunate enough to have such a world-class attack around me, and it allows me to settle in and things like that.

I’m blessed to be able to do something I love and see other parts of the world, so if I can do well, I’ll get many more opportunities to do that

Do you feel that batsmen feel under pressure to come after you, because there’s not really much they can do at the other end, sometimes?
Yeah, sometimes it works out that way. Conditions dictate how the batsmen also identify avenues to score, like you said, and I suppose when you have a world-class bowling attack, seam attack, you’re going to have to target someone, and that’s an opportunity for me to get wickets.When do you know that you’re bowling well? What are the signs you look for?
It’s just the feel for me, I think. If I’m not bowling a cut ball or anything, then I know I’m in my rhythm and things are going okay, but as a spinner, I know it’s just a feel thing. You’ll have days when you’re bowling well and it just doesn’t go your way in terms of outcomes, but I judge myself basically on the fact that I must not bowl a cut ball during my spell. If I do that, I know how well [I’ve bowled], regardless of what it says in terms of figures.No one matches up to South Africa’s quicks at home, but overseas their best bowler is left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj (third from right)•AFP/Getty ImagesIn your lifetime, South Africa hasn’t really had a spin-bowling culture. There have only been three other spinners since readmission who’ve got 100 Test wickets, and you’re on 94 now. How significant is that milestone?
Yeah, obviously it’s a big accolade. I mean, looking back three years ago, I wouldn’t be able to say that I thought about being in the position that I am today, in terms of how far I’ve come along. But yeah, coming from a country of fast bowlers, it is difficult, but I think when you persevere with something you love, you will go places. It’s not always the easiest road. You may only get it once, you may get it a hundred times, but you know, you’ve still got that chance to do something. I’d like to think that, if I can have a successful career in international cricket, it does pave the way for the younger spinners in terms of opportunity coming through.You’ve played two Tests in the subcontinent so far, in Sri Lanka. You went wicketless on the first day of that tour, but you came back after that, and picked up that nine-for in the second Test. What were the things you learned about bowling in the subcontinent, on that tour?
I fell sick, so I couldn’t play the warm-up game, so obviously I had to feel my way into subcontinent conditions, that’s why the first innings was… it felt weird for me, but, you know, people say [on the subcontinent, it’s about your] pace and things like that, but I also think it’s about your consistency, your lines and lengths. The best in the world, your Ashwins, your Jadejas, your Lyons – they’re all just consistent bowlers. Yes, they have subtle variations, some of them have more, but I think it’s just the consistency and ability to just sort of test the batsmen’s patience and things like that. They’re also very clever as to how they want to bowl, but if you’re consistent, you can bowl any way you want and know you’re going to get someone out.

At least 40 percent of my wickets, probably, are dictated by the way Faf’s read the game, on the field

Before coming to India in 2016-17, Nathan Lyon and Steve O’Keefe did quite a bit of work on how they spun the ball on Indian pitches. Where they’d bowl with more overspin back home, here they were trying to mix it up with sidespin. Is that something you’ve worked on too?
Yeah, everyone who comes here says that you need to work on your sidespin and stuff, it’s a very, sort of unnatural thing for me to do because I’m more overspin, but I’ve been trying to play around with the SG ball to find where you can get some assistance off the wicket when it is not turning, you know, that sort of thing.Keshav Maharaj gets a hug from his captain Faf du Plessis after a wicket•Getty ImagesWhat’s it like, as a spin bowler, to have Faf du Plessis as your captain?
I think he’s very encouraging. He’s a captain who lets you dictate what you want, and then he comes in, rather than telling you what to do, and then you give your opinion. Also the way he reads the game, his ability to read the game, is phenomenal. At least 40 percent of my wickets, probably, are dictated by the way he’s read the game, on the field.Could you give some examples of that?
One that stands out is in England, we were playing the second Test in Nottingham. Moeen was batting, and he kept sort of trying to sweep me and sweep me, and then we kept moving, moving (the fielders), and Faf said, you know what? Have the guy at catching square leg, let him try and fine sweep, and literally we had the guy, not even the next ball, tried to fine sweep and it went straight to short square leg.Another one was at Colombo [the nine-for Test]. Dilruwan Perera was batting, and it wasn’t probably my best delivery, but Faf says, you know what, if he does sweep, it’s not going to go the whole way, and he sweeps up, so we put the man halfway [back], and Ngidi caught it at backward square leg.