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.

Mumbai Indians kept bowling short and often varied the pace to strangle Kolkata Knight Riders’ chase

Dustin Silgardo06-May-2018How did KKR’s chase fall apart?
After 12 overs, they were going at 9.25 runs an over and needed 8.87 an over to win. With eight wickets in hand, that should have been straightforward. But after losing Robin Uthappa, KKR scored 33 from the next 33 balls and left too much to do in the last two overs. A lot of that was down to intelligent bowling from Mumbai Indians. Hardik Pandya mixed short balls with slower ones and wide yorkers while legspinner Mayank Markande gave the batsmen no room. Mitchell McClenaghan and Jasprit Bumrah also bowled short balls to make life difficult for KKR. But from KKR’s point of view, there are a couple of worrying trends emerging.ESPNcricinfo LtdFirst is Nitish Rana’s habit of slowing down as his innings progresses. He strikes at 142.68 in the first 10 balls of his innings, but that drops to 112 from balls 11-20 and 127.59 from balls 21-30. On Sunday, Rana raced to 22 off 11 balls, but then didn’t hit a boundary for the rest of his 27-ball innings. In his last 16 balls, he faced seven dots, and his strike rate by the end was only 114.81.Second: Andre Russell has been dominant in the death while batting first, but he has not yet fired in a chase. He has been striking at 130.67 in chases, compared to 246.67 in the first innings. In the death overs of chases, his strike rate drops to 78.50. Once Rana was out, Dinesh Karthik looked to rotate the strike and stay till the end while Russell went for the big shots, but he did not find his timing against the slower balls from the seamers and Markande’s legspin. Russell managed only nine off 10 balls before holing out. He has only batted in four chases, so KKR will hope he can buck the trend.ESPNcricinfo LtdShort stuff works for Mumbai
If you were listening to the radio commentary of the first few overs of KKR’s chase, without context, you would be forgiven for assuming this was a Test match at the WACA in the 1990s rather than a T20 game at the Wankhede. Bumrah, McClenaghan and Hardik Pandya hit the deck and targeted the batsmen’s body. The ploy got Chris Lynn to top edge a pull to short fine leg.As the innings progressed, Mumbai’s seamers kept bowling short of a length, often taking the pace off as they dragged the ball in to the pitch. Of the 84 balls they bowled, 69% were short or short of a length. They conceded at 7.75 an over off that length and took three wickets with it. If you take Ben Cutting, whose short balls Uthappa put away, out of the equation, the other three seamers went at just seven an over off short balls.ESPNcricinfo LtdWhy didn’t Mumbai send in Cutting?
The sight of Ben Cutting padded up, helmet on, awaiting his turn in the dug out is becoming an emblem of Mumbai Indians’ problems this season. They have all these dangerous weapons, but can’t seem to find the right moment to use them. Against KKR, Cutting had been ready since Krunal Pandya walked in to bat. But by the time Krunal was dismissed, it was clear Sunil Narine would bowl two of the last four overs. While Cutting strikes at 172.5 against pace, he manages just 118.33 against spin in T20s. And he would be facing one of the best T20 spinners, so Mumbai sent in JP Duminy instead.Why Narine was held for the death?
For the first time this IPL, Sunil Narine was given two overs at the death. KKR have had their problems in that period – coming in to this game, they were the third most expensive team in the last five overs.They also had a debutant fast bowler, Prasidh Krishna, and there was always the chance he would have to be protected from the slog overs. KKR captain Dinesh Karthik knew he could have two overs from Mitchell Johnson at the death, but he did not want to bowl Andre Russell then, because he has gone at 12.50 an over in that period. KKR have been getting one over from Piyush Chawla in the death, but against Mumbai there was the chance he would bowl to Krunal, who smashes legspinners at a strike rate of 200-plus. So, if Karthik wanted to give Krishna not more than one in the death, he had to get two from Narine, who ended up conceding 20 and taking a wicket in the last five.Narine also dismissed Rohit Sharma in his first over to the batsman. Narine had dismissed Rohit six times in 15 innings before this match, so that was clearly a match-up KKR wanted. Had Rohit survived the 12th over, Karthik may have given Narine another over at him, which would have meant changing his death-over plans.

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.

He picked up R Ashwin’s tricks from YouTube videos and went on to become his team-mate and trump card in the IPL. What can we expect from their first Test-match meeting?

Sidharth Monga12-Jun-20182:11

‘I’d to like to dismiss KL Rahul’ – Mujeeb

In many ways Mujeeb ur Rahman has broken the Afghan prototype. He is among the first few homegrown cricketers to make the international side. He was neither born in Pakistan nor did he learn his cricket there. He doesn’t speak Urdu. But he shares one trait with most Afghanistan cricketers. He has taught himself the game. Off YouTube, no less, bowling and bowling until his fingers hurt badly.Mujeeb does enjoy the privilege of being the nephew of one of the founding fathers of cricket in Afghanistan, Noor Ali Zadran. Noor was born in Pakistan and learnt his cricket there, but, a man of means, he made sure there were facilities at home for future generations. It is not uncommon for families in Khost to own 2000-square-meter farms that house the extended family and have space for guest houses, cattle, and their crop. Noor added his own cricket academy to his family farm.Mujeeb was nine when uncle Noor was representing Afghanistan in the 2010 World T20. “That’s when I picked up the ball,” Mujeeb says. He started bowling with the taped tennis ball in the streets, and did the natural thing to squeeze it out of the front of the hand, giving it a flick with the middle finger. Sometime around 2011 or 2012, Noor got the nets ready, and Mujeeb began to bowl with the cricket ball for the first time.When Mujeeb tried to bowl that carrom ball with the cricket ball, it came out as a slow floaty nothing. That is usually when most street cricketers realise what works on the soft tennis ball doesn’t on the hard cricket ball, and try something else. Not Mujeeb. He knew there were others who had made the transition, but he had no access R Ashwin, Ajantha Mendis or Sunil Narine. Nor did he have a coach who could help him.So Mujeeb began to download videos of the three bowlers on his phone, watch them on an app that would play them in slow motion, and go about trying to do what they did. Nobody told him what to do. He just began to copy what he saw, and bowled all day long. “Just bowl until the fingers couldn’t take it anymore,” he says. “I needed strength in my fingers to be able to do it with the hard ball.”Mujeeb was fortunate that apart from bowling alone in the nets he could bowl to a family full of batsmen. Another of Noor’s nephews, Ibrahim Zadran, plays first-class cricket now. Then there was always Noor batting in the nets when not on tour. He advised Mujeeb to lengthen his run-up. His first manager in domestic cricket, Dawlat Ahmadzai, began to use him as a new-ball bowler in local tournaments. He would tell him how to bowl, how to set batsmen up.One day at a family gathering – and he was about 15 then – Mujeeb batted against a legspinner who bowled a wrong’un. Yes, they play cricket at family unions in the Zadran household in Khost. And he went to the man and learned how to bowl the wrong’un. When uncle Noor saw it, he encouraged him to bowl it. “The carrom ball and the googly are my strong balls now,” Mujeeb says.BCCIWhen Mujeeb was playing the Under-19 World Cup, an India international – another cricket lunatic – watched him while on tour to South Africa. He was impressed with the wrong’un, and the unusual action. He began to ask around, and even procured some videos.When Kings XI Punjab picked him on the first day of the IPL auction, R Ashwin must have known they were looking at him as a potential captain, but couldn’t have been sure. By the second day he was in talks with the franchise and told them he wanted Andrew Tye and Mujeeb. They had the budget. They got Mujeeb for INR 4 crore (USD 630,000 approx).This could have been a movie plot. Mujeeb learns by watching Ashwin on YouTube, and Ashwin – not aware of this yet – picks him as his trump card. On their first meeting, Ashwin remembers, Mujeeb was shy. It didn’t help that he had run into KL Rahul in the nets and caught an early glimpse of his stupendous form.Mujeeb couldn’t speak the language but he understood Hindi/Urdu. Hindi, though, is not Ashwin’s first language. One man barely speaks a language, the other man barely understands it. They spoke a common language, though: bowling. Ashwin soon realised both of them “operated at the same frequency”. He saw similarities outside the carrom ball. Mujeeb was self-taught, which is why he was never averse to trying new things. Ashwin was all about new things.In his early days in the IPL, Ashwin was used mainly as the opening bowler because he bowled alongside Muttiah Muralitharan, who got the middle overs. Everybody told Ashwin Mujeeb was a new-ball bowler but he could see it was because he played alongside Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi for Afghanistan. Before IPL, he hardly used to bowl outside the Powerplay. ESPNcricinfo has ball-by-ball records for only three of Mujeeb’s T20 matches before the IPL; in those three games, he had bowled the maximum possible overs, nine, in the Powerplay.Using spinners in the Powerplay is not new but it is not an aggressive ploy, according to Ashwin. Quite early on Ashwin told Mujeeb he wanted to aggressively control games through him. And it was like there were no language barriers.”More often than not we generally spoke about bowling and not much other than that,” Ashwin says. “And when it came to bowling, he has that innate intelligence. He is quite smart. He is a self-made cricketer. Most of the Afghans are self-made and self-taught. It just becomes that much easier then. If you throw him a new option, he is up for it. He would lap it up.”In the IPL, Mujeeb bowled only 11.2 overs inside the Powerplay. “I wanted to give him the luxury of creating more pressure through the middle rather than at the top,” Ashwin says. “Because we had enough ammunition at the top. We had Ankit [Rajpoot] to swing, I could bowl a few overs, Axar [Patel] could give us a couple, Mohit [Sharma] was there.”I tried to use him in overs that were the impact overs of the game. It was more about trying to create control from him through the middle overs and create opportunities at the other end. It was going to be easier trying to take wickets with him at the other end because people are going to go after safer options. Predominantly use him, if I needed wickets, push the batsmen in the corner and then use him. That was the other strategy. And he has never really bowled beyond the new ball outside the IPL. I knew he was capable of doing it, and he did it really well.”BCCIThis freed Mujeeb up. Ashwin is most impressed with Mujeeb’s temperament despite his feeling a little intimidated by the big IPL crowds initially, which resulted in a few misfields early in the season. Mujeeb came back to provide one of the images of the tournament. In an IPL where great players of spin struggled to pick wrong’uns, his dismissal of Virat Kohli was perhaps the most comprehensive.”Dot, dot, and then play with the batsman,” Mujeeb says when asked how he learnt how to take wickets. “You bowl dots, make them feel restless, and then pack their strength and give them a ball to hit.”The key is in knowing what the strength is and when the batsman is going to play the big shot. In that match, Mujeeb bowled five balls to Kohli. The first two went for singles, the next two were dots. He had shown him the carrom ball and the offbreak.”I felt he felt he had sussed my action,” Mujeeb says. “I had him on two dots in a row. I packed the cover field because that is his strength, and then bowled the new ball. He must have thought it was a legbreak.”This was a generously flighted delivery, Kohli went for the drive, playing for a legbreak, and the ball spun back sharply to castle him.There is a great intuition in knowing when to bowl the sucker ball. “I can feel it when a batsman is not relaxed.”Ashwin was not done with Mujeeb, though. He could see Mujeeb was up to learn more, and has shared with him a new delivery: a slow floater that looks like an offbreak but doesn’t turn. If anything, it drifts away. The lack of pace means the batsman struggles to get under it. He has used it to good effect against MS Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik. “It is not really an attacking ball to be very honest,” Ashwin says. “It is a defensive ball. It requires a lot of practice.”Back in the nets in Dehradun after an injury affected the second half of his IPL, Mujeeb has been bowling that ball. Because his index finger is not as strong as his middle finger, his fingers are hurting. But, as Ashwin expected, he is working on it. “If someone is very keen to learn, as most self-taught cricketers are, he will adapt pretty well,” Ashwin says.If he plays on Thursday, which is likely, Mujeeb will make his first-class debut in his country’s inaugural Test match. He will come up against India and Ashwin. It will be a challenge, but Ashwin knows too much about Mujeeb’s skill and attitude to underestimate him. “I am not expecting any gifts”.

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.

The 19 runs scored by Australia in the first Powerplay was their fewest in an ODI at home

Gaurav Sundararaman04-Nov-20187 – Consecutive losses for Australia in ODIs – their worst streak ever, beating their six successive losses between September 7 and November 3, 1996. The current streak started against England at the Perth Stadium earlier this year. Australia lost five games to England in England and now have one loss against South Africa.3 – Bowlers to have got to 150 ODI wickets in fewer matches than Imran Tahir. He equals the South Africa record of 87 matches to the milestone. Allan Donald and Morne Morkel also reached this mark in 87 matches. Saqlain Mushtaq (78 matches), Brett Lee (82) and Ajanta Mendis (84) are the bowlers who reached there quicker.8 – Wins for South Africa in Perth. This city has been a happy hunting ground for South Africa; they’ve lost just two games across formats here.124 – Balls remaining for South Africa when they achieved their target – their fourth-largest victory against Australia in terms of balls remaining. Incidentally, three of the top four games have taken place in Perth.1 – Number of totals smaller than the 152 that Australia scored here, while batting first. This is Australia’s fifth-lowest first-innings score at home.19 – Runs scored by Australia in the first Powerplay – the lowest at home and the second lowest since 2001 while batting first. The previous lowest was when they had scored 15 runs against England in 2012. This was also the first instance in which Australia did not score a boundary in the first 10 overs while batting first and third instance overall since 2001.Graphic: Australia got off to a dreadful start in the first ODI against South Africa•ESPNcricinfo Ltd5 – Matches in which Mitchell Starc has not taken the new ball for Australia. The previous such instance was in 2014 in Zimbabwe, and this is the first instance at home since 2012.10 – Losses for Australia in 2018 from 11 matches – the worst year for Australia in ODIs. Even if they win the next two matches, this will still be the worst year for them. In their last 21 ODIs, Australia have won only two matches.

CSK coach feels the only concern for the defending champions is player availability, with four overseas players set to leave during the IPL

Deivarayan Muthu in Chennai20-Mar-20194:02

Workload management has influenced our preparation – Fleming

Last season, MS Dhoni enjoyed his best IPL with the bat. He racked up 455 runs in 15 innings at an average of 75.83 and strike rate of over 150. Thirteen out of those 15 innings were at No. 4 or No. 5, but Chennai Super Kings coach Stephen Fleming has hinted that Dhoni might not bat as high in the line-up and would float in the middle order instead in IPL 2019.At the launch of CSK’s official merchandise in Chennai, Fleming also said that a fit-again Kedar Jadhav, who has slotted into the role of finisher for India, would ease the pressure on Dhoni. In IPL 2018, Jadhav played only the season opener – and won that for the team – before a hamstring injury sidelined him from the rest of the season.”Dhoni batted pretty much [at] No. 4 last year but we do use him in a little bit of flexible role, so that won’t change. His form has been outstanding in the last ten months, so, we won’t be getting tricky because we have a new player as well [Jadhav], which is great. So, we’re really happy with the [batting] order and the thoughts around that,” Fleming said.Suresh Raina gets some pointers from Stephen Fleming and Mike Hussey•PTI Four of CSK’s players – Jadhav, Dhoni, Ambati Rayudu and Ravindra Jadeja – are on India’s World Cup radar, and Fleming conceded that the franchise have to be wary of managing their workloads in the IPL.In addition to these four India players, several others such as South Africa’s Faf du Plessis, Imran Tahir and England’s David Willey are set to play the World Cup and are, therefore, going to leave the IPL early. But Fleming said that the side was mindful of the players’ availability and that managing the workloads of the bowlers would be a bigger challenge.Left-arm spin-bowling allrounder Mitchell Santner, too, just has returned to action from a knee injury, and was even rested for a few limited-overs games against India earlier this year.

When we sit and pick as a team, we were mindful of how many players will be leaving early and what the balance would be like. So, it has had an influenceSTEPHEN FLEMING

“Yes, this [workload management] is going to play a part,” Fleming said. “The reason I say that is England 18 months ago stipulated when their players will be leaving early; Australia are the same. It has had an impact. When we sit and pick as a team, we were mindful of how many players will be leaving early and what the balance would be like. So, it has had an influence.”Jadhav also touched upon the topic of workload management, hinting that he might limit his bowling for CSK.”My workload, I think, is about managing my bowling,” Jadhav said. “In CSK, I don’t think I need to bowl as much as I do in the Indian team. How you recover after every IPL game really matters during this two-month period. You can’t just improve in one training session.”Obviously, it’s up to the individuals and we are smart enough to handle the situation. We will work in tandem with trainers and physios of Indian team as well as the franchise. We have got some notes [from Indian trainers and physios] and we have to follow them.”MS Dhoni limbers up at a Chennai Super Kings training session•PTI Fleming was particularly pleased with the balance of the side and welcomed the addition of Santner, who had missed the entire IPL 2018 due to injury. More recently, Santner played a crucial role – both with ball and bat – in Northern Districts’ run to the final in the Super Smash and later proved his fitness in the four-day Plunket Shield. Santner’s inclusion, Fleming said, would bolster the spin attack of Tahir, Harbhajan Singh, Karn Sharma and Jadeja, on what is expected to be a sluggish Chepauk track.”Yeah, Mitch has a got a great record in the subcontinent and it’s good to have him,” he said. “We obviously missed him last year – so again it’s like a new signing. Just the quality and game plan. We have a strong top order and we have good variations [in the attack].”Fleming also talked up the seam attack that adapted to the quicker, bouncier pitches in Pune last year, and reckoned they might still have a role to play in Chennai.”We backed our pace bowlers last year and they made the adjustment to Pune last year,” Fleming said. “Chennai still has a role for the pace bowlers; we’re conscious of a good balance. Imran Tahir is in good form, Karn Sharma and Harbhajan with his experience – we’ve got most of the bases covered and it’s just about getting the guys to perform and sitting on our game plan, especially at home but when we play away as well. “So, with nearly all the bases covered, can CSK claim an unprecedented fourth IPL title? Fleming isn’t thinking about that just yet, and wants his players to absorb pressure and grab the crunch moments like they did last season.”We don’t talk about defending or retaining the Cup,” he said. “We’re humble enough to know how hard it is to win it. [It’s] not arrogance. Just a case of caring for others and playing along.”Last year we just won big moments. We’re just big on team culture and empowering the players to make decisions and win big moments. And last year was a snapshot of that. Even though the young man [Jadhav] was only with us for one game, he played a huge part in winning that game with Bravo. And Faf du Plessis and [Shane] Watson at the end. And the usual suspects of Dhoni and Raina.”

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.