Cummins confirmed Hazlewood will be fit for the first Ashes Test, which leaves Australia with a difficult decision to make over the next few days

Andrew McGlashan11-Jun-20231:54

What makes Boland so lethal?

There is surely nothing more Scott Boland can do to become one of the first-choice names in Australia’s attack.So far throughout his stellar eight-match career, which has brought 33 wickets at 14.57, Boland’s opportunities have all come because of the absence of others. However, in the aftermath of securing the World Test Championship final at The Oval, captain Pat Cummins said that Josh Hazlewood, who was ruled out of facing India but said to be “very close” to playing, would be available to face England on Friday.While Cummins was speaking, Hazlewood was completing an eight-over workout on The Oval outfield where minutes before Nathan Lyon had secured Australia the mace.”Josh is in a really good position, so he will be available for selection next week,” Cummins said. “I think he’s had two spells out there today and feeling great, so he’s got quite a bit of work behind him and his body is feeling good.”Moments earlier, in the afterglow of victory during the presentation ceremony, Cummins had called Boland his “favourite” player although such a criteria probably does not carry much weight in selection.Related

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Heading into the final day against India, Boland, the pick of Australia’s pace attack throughout the Test, did not really need to do any more to advance his claims to be a first-choice place in the attack, but he added to his already substantial body of outstanding work anyway.He brilliantly worked over Virat Kohli outside off stump, making him uncertain about what to play and leave, before drawing him into driving at a very wide delivery. The edge flew quickly to Steven Smith’s right at second slip where he held an excellent catch. Any overnight uncertainty (or hope) evaporated.Two balls later and the game was done and dusted when, from around the wicket, he found the outside edge of Ravindra Jadeja. It was the sixth time in his eight Tests that he had taken multiple wickets in the over, a trait which began with that magical debut spell at the MCG. Only Jadeja himself could match that, having also taken multiple wickets in an over six times in eight Tests over the same period.”I feel like we’re starting to become too used to Scotty Boland just doing that,” Cummins said. “He just keeps finding another level doesn’t he? He’s unbelievable. He is just our best bowler all game. Held it together [and] didn’t go for many runs. Always looked threatening. To get two wickets in a row was just reward for how well he bowled throughout the whole game.”1:40

Test mace in the bag, Ashes up next

While Australia have spoken regularly of likely needing to rotate their quicks throughout the Ashes – and therefore the concept of just one ‘first choice’ attack is probably outdated – it would seem extraordinary if Boland doesn’t line up at Edgbaston barring any injury concerns. So the question becomes fitting him in.The feeling before the final was that if Hazlewood had been fit, or if this had been a one-off game for Australia with no Ashes to follow, he would have played. With 222 wickets at 25.83 and 36 in England at 23.58 it’s hard to say that would have been the wrong call. Earlier this year, when he returned from injury against South Africa in Sydney, he played ahead of Boland and took five wickets in the match.So, after all this, it may not be Boland vs Hazlewood. Which brings the spotlight back onto Mitchell Starc. He was the most expensive of Australia’s quicks at The Oval although showed his value by removing Kohli in the first innings with a vicious lifter and helped clean up the lower order in the second.Interestingly, he was demoted from the new ball in the second innings: on only 12 previous occasions in 148 Test innings had he not shared the opening duties. However, Cummins played down any significance over the move.”I don’t think I’d look too much into that,” he said. “We did that last Ashes series as well. We chop and change the opening bowlers depending on gut feel. The ball moves a little bit differently to a Kookaburra. It might swing a bit more after a few overs rather than the first couple.”I thought Starcy bowled well, particularly today. He did a role for us that we know Starcy can do after 80 Test matches. Again, his runs, we were talking about Mitchell Starc the bowler, but he always contributes with the bat as well. He has got a huge tour ahead of him. The English side sets up slightly different as well, there are a few more left handers. Really happy with where Starcy is.”So, either someone who averages under 15 in Test cricket, someone with more than 300 wickets or someone with more than 200 wickets will not be in the XI on Friday. As captains, coaches and selectors like to say, it’s a good problem to have. But it still makes for one of most fascinating decisions Australia have faced in recent times.

After trying hard but getting nowhere, and being let go by CSK, the keeper-batter decided it was time free himself up and has since been an unstoppable force on the domestic circuit

Deivarayan Muthu09-Apr-20232:21

N Jagadeesan: Was a reality check when CSK released me

In a strange way, N Jagadeesan’s life has come full circle. After struggling to make an impact at Chennai Super Kings – well, which wicketkeeper could thrive in the shadow of MS Dhoni? – Jagadeesan is ready to carve out his own identity at Kolkata Knight Riders, and here he has the help of one of his old coaches.When Jagadeesan was about ten years old, he got an opportunity to train with Chandrakant Pandit at Andheri, in Mumbai, which formed the foundation stone for his cricketing career. His father CJ Narayan, who played cricket for Tata Electric in Mumbai before shifting to Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, had managed to get him to work with Pandit at the time. More than a decade-and-a-half later, Jagadeesan has reunited with Pandit at Knight Riders in the IPL following a record-breaking domestic season with Tamil Nadu.”Definitely I think it [reuniting with Chandrakant Pandit] is very special,” Jagadeesan tells ESPNcricinfo. “When I was in my Under-13 days, my dad always made sure every summer I went to Mumbai since he was a cricketer himself and he knew a lot of people there. For example, Chandu sir and all were his team-mates. He was able to set me up with a camp where Chandu sir was also the coach over there and you know I think it was of immense help to my cricketing journey. At a very young age when you experience red-soil wickets in Mumbai, it’s something that’s different and every time you play, you start learning things and it’s more exposure as well.Related

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“Obviously right now, I’m very happy to be with Chandu sir at KKR. It’s a special feeling because he saw me when I was 11 years old and now I’m at KKR, where he is the coach, and I’m truly excited. We all know the kind of heroics he has done in the domestic circuit where he has won almost all the trophies with different teams. I’m excited to learn how to win.”Having been released by Super Kings, Jagadeesan didn’t expect to be picked at the IPL 2023 auction last December. So, around this time of the year, he had originally planned to play league cricket abroad. But, after a remarkable turnaround, he could well be opening the batting and keeping wicket regularly for Knight Riders.In the domestic-season-opening T20 competition, the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, Jagadeesan had managed only 118 runs in six innings at an average of 29.50 and strike rate of 131.11 and towards the end of the tournament, he was even pushed down the order. The runs didn’t flow in the one-dayers against a touring Bangladeshi side, which included a number of BPL players, at Chepauk in November either, and in the same month, he was let go by Super Kings.Jagadeesan did some soul searching and with nothing to lose now, he felt liberated from the fear of failure. He always had a wide range of strokes in his repertoire – he once switch-hit Shane Watson during an IPL trial at Royal Challengers Bangalore and stunned him – but a safety-first approach often held him back during match scenarios. He let go of that approach during the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy and became the first batter in history to hit five successive List A centuries. The tally included 277 off 141 balls against Arunachal Pradesh, the highest-ever score in List A cricket.A young N Jagadeesan with Chandrakant Pandit, with whom he will reunite at Knight Riders•CJ Narayan/N Jagadeesan”The first thing I had to do was to not have any expectations out of my own game,” Jagadeesan says. “I’ve always had this expectation where I’ve always been this guy who wants to achieve something. Every time I go somewhere I want to go higher and higher. Every time I kept thinking about it, I didn’t realise that it was adding a lot more pressure on me. I’m someone who is a free-flowing batsman, but I kept adding this pressure on me and I somehow had the feeling that I wasn’t able to express my game. Every time I wanted to play a shot – because of all these goals I had in my head – it curbed me.”I had that fear and there was one thing I told myself this year: for all these years, I’ve tried to achieve something, and I’ve gone nowhere and just been stagnant. For now, let me not think about anything and it is okay to get dropped. That was not going to be the end of the road. So, that kind of shift in my mental state was something which gave me a lot of freedom inside and every time I stepped onto the field, it made me express myself.”Jagadeesan wasn’t desperate to impress the IPL scouts and make his way back into the IPL either. He was just at peace with his new-found freedom in the Vijay Hazare Trophy and took the release from Super Kings in his stride.”It was definitely a reality check when they released me and I didn’t want to keep clustering my head saying ‘okay I need to get picked by an IPL team’, but I just faced the reality, looking at the numbers and the way they released me,” Jagadeesan says. “I was very sure that I was not going to get picked for the next IPL and I had other options.”One thing I was sure of was that I will be part of the Chennai league, which is one of the best in the country, so I was keen on playing those matches and once the season got over, I would get a short break where I could play somewhere else. So, it just made me realise that it was not the end of the road if I get dropped in the current side. I can still go to other places and play cricket and I can learn a lot and it can be a different experience. Since then, I’ve just tried to stay in the present and just kept options open without expectations.”

“I think the knowledge that I’ve gained from Michael Hussey is immense. I just can’t put it in words because a player of his stature and the way he talks to me about the game, it just feels like: ‘My god, how can a guy be like him’.”N Jagadeesan on his former Super Kings team-mate

Jagadeesan’s improved power-hitting was also on bright display during the first-class Ranji Trophy, where he and his opening partner B Sai Sudharsan nearly mowed down 144 in 11 overs against Hyderabad before bad light intervened and the game ended in a draw. The boundaries at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, where that game was being played, are bigger than the ones at Chepauk, but Jagadeesan kept clearing them, despite the presence of a number of outfielders. He attributes his recent power-hitting success to a stint with RX Murali, Mayank Agarwal’s personal coach, in Bengaluru.”I definitely felt a difference when I went there because, at that point of time, I was in a state where nothing was happening for me,” Jagadeesan says. “I was putting in the hard yards, but it wasn’t quite reflecting in the way I was batting. But I just had the feeling that I need to do something different and that’s when I came to train with RX [Murali] sir and worked with him for a week or so in Bengaluru.”That’s when I actually learned a bit more of power-hitting and that just came in very handy; once I got to know what I needed to do for power, I’ve been practicing since. I’ve taken the ingredients that he gave me and was trying to get better each and every day. Power-hitting is something that is very important in modern cricket. So I feel that has helped me a lot.”During his stint with Super Kings, Michael Hussey was Jagadeesan’s sounding board and go-to man. They used to spend a lot of time together at the nets, and even during the IPL off-season Hussey often tracked Jagadeesan’s domestic progress. Though Jagadeesan got just seven games across five seasons with Super Kings, he believes that his training sessions and conversations with Hussey have helped him problem-solve challenges that have come his way.”I think the knowledge that I’ve gained from Michael Hussey is immense. I just can’t put it in words because a player of his stature and the way he talks to me about the game, it just feels like: ‘My god, how can a guy be like him’. He has told me a lot of stuff that he has been through. It’s not like he was always scoring runs and he kept telling me that he made his debut for Australia when he was 30 years old.N Jagadeesan raked in a number of records during his 277 off 141 balls in the Vijay Hazare Trophy•ESPNcricinfo/Daya Sagar”He had to go through a long grind before entering the Australian side and I’ve always spoken to him about how his mindset was and what were the kind of things that he did to not lose motivation – those are the kind of conversations we had. Mentally, the kind of person he is… he is always so strong and told me what has worked for him and how I can prepare before the game. Obviously, some things he has told me I’ve never experienced before and as soon as he told me all this stuff, it was like a different dimension.”As the only frontline Indian keeper in Knight Riders’ side, Jagadeesan is likely to get a decent run in IPL 2023. Knight Riders’ assistant coach Abhishek Nayar acknowledged that Jagadeesan will be a key member of the side after buying him at the auction for INR 90 lakh (USD 109,000 approx).Jagadeesan is excited about playing for a new franchise, but he believes that success or failure in the coming weeks will not define him. He will just play like he has nothing to lose, since he didn’t even expect to be part of IPL 2023 in the first place.

And which players have made the most successive centuries in first-class cricket?

Steven Lynch26-Sep-2023In the Asia Cup final, Mohammed Siraj took five wickets in his first 16 balls. Was this a record for the quickest five-for in a one-day international? asked Harshad Chaphalkar from India
India’s Mohammed Siraj had figures of 2.4-1-4-5 after he had sent down 16 balls in the Asia Cup final in Colombo earlier this month. With Jasprit Bumrah also taking a wicket, Sri Lanka were reeling at 12 for 6, and unsurprisingly, never recovered, being shot out for 50.Siraj equalled the record for the fastest five-for in men’s ODIs after coming on to bowl: during the 2003 World Cup in Pietermaritzburg, the Sri Lankan left-arm seamer Chaminda Vaas took five Bangladesh wickets with his first 16 legal deliveries (he also sent down a wide, unlike Siraj). Vaas began with a hat-trick off the first three balls of the match, and after a four and the wide, took another wicket; it remains the only time in international cricket that the No. 6 batter faced a ball in the first over of an innings.It also happened earlier this year, when the USA seamer Ali Khan reduced Jersey to 17 for 5 at the start of their match in the World Cup Qualifier in Windhoek in April. He took five wickets in his first 16 deliveries, and finished with 7 for 32.*In Tests, the quickest five-fors after coming on to bowl were completed in 19 deliveries – by the Australians Ernie Toshack against India in Brisbane in 1947-48 and Scott Boland against England in Melbourne in 2021-22 (in the second innings of his debut), and by England’s Stuart Broad against Australia at Trent Bridge in 2015.All 11 New Zealand players got a mention on the scorecard in England’s innings at Nottingham recently. Has this happened before in T20s? asked Kevin Barrett from England
You’re right that every New Zealand player made a contribution to the scorecard as they squared the T20I series against England at Trent Bridge earlier this month – four bowlers claimed wickets, and the other seven players all took catches.This was the sixth such instance in T20Is. England did it when they bowled West Indies out for 55 in Dubai in October 2021, and it was also achieved by Zimbabwe against Nepal (120 for 9) in Singapore in October 2019; by Bahrain against Philippines (100 for 9) in Al Amerat in February 2022; by Namibia against Sri Lanka (108) in Geelong during the T20 World Cup in October 2022; and by Italy vs Denmark (124) in Edinburgh in July 2023 (in the last two cases, one name appears only in a run-out).There are three further instances of 11 names featuring on a T20I scorecard, with one of them being a substitute: by Singapore against Thailand (96) in Bangkok in February 2020; by Germany vs Belgium (168 for 9) in Krefeld in June 2023; and by Tanzania vs Rwanda (118 for 9) in Kigali in December 2022.There are six instances in men’s Tests, five in women’s one-day internationals, and no fewer than 21 in men’s ODIs. In one of those, there were, uniquely, 12 names on the scorecard: a Namibia substitute also made a catch against Nepal in Windhoek in December 2022.Finn Allen and Devon Conway put on the best opening stand in the Hundred in August, 122 against Manchester Originals•Alex Davidson/ECB/Getty ImagesWhat’s the first-class record for double-centuries in successive innings – and does Don Bradman hold it? asked George Palmer from England
No one has ever scored three successive double-centuries in first-class cricket, but there have been 66 instances of two in a row. Don Bradman did it four times, which is indeed the most: Wally Hammond and Everton Weekes managed it three times.The first to achieve the feat was Walter Read of Surrey and England in 1887; KS Ranjitsinhji did it in both 1900 and 1901. The most recent instance was by the Pakistan left-hander Shan Masood, in England in 2022: he made 239 in his second match for Derbyshire, against Sussex in Derby, and added 219 in his next game, against Leicestershire at Grace Road.There have been seven instances of a batter making consecutive double-centuries in Tests. Two of them were by Hammond (251 and 200 against Australia in 1928-29, and 227 and 336 not out vs New Zealand in 1932-33), and one each by Bradman (304 and 244 vs England in 1934), Vinod Kambli (224 vs England and 227 vs Zimbabwe in 1992-93), Kumar Sangakkara (200 and 222, both not out, vs Bangladesh in 2007), Michael Clarke (259 not out and 230 vs South Africa in 2012-13), and Virat Kohli (213 and 243 vs Sri Lanka in 2017-18).I noticed that New Zealanders Finn Allen and Devon Conway had an opening stand of 122 during the Hundred this year. Was this the highest partnership there has been in this competition? asked Barry Graham from New Zealand
Finn Allen and Devon Conway put on 122 for Southern Brave’s first wicket against Manchester Originals at The Oval a few weeks ago. This was the best opening stand in the Hundred (beating 121 by Paul Stirling and Quinton de Kock for Southern Brave against Welsh Fire in Cardiff in 2022), but there have been two higher partnerships for other wickets.Highest of all was the unbroken sixth-wicket stand of 127 by Jimmy Neesham (another New Zealander!) and Tom Curran for Oval Invincibles against Manchester Originals in this year’s final at Lord’s, which put Invincibles back on course for victory after they had crashed to 34 for 5. D’Arcy Short and Dawid Malan added 124 for the second wicket (also unbroken) for Trent Rockets against Southern Brave at Trent Bridge in July 2021. Here’s the list of the highest stands in the men’s Hundred.There has, however, been a higher stand in the women’s Hundred: Shafali Verma and Eve Jones put on 131 for the first wicket without being parted for Birmingham Phoenix against Welsh Fire at Edgbaston in August 2021.Apparently Dennis Lillee once had a spell of six for none in a Test. When was this? asked David Bennett from Australia
This spell from the Australian fast bowler Dennis Lillee wasn’t in an official Test but in an unofficial one against the Rest of the World XI on his home ground in Perth in 1971-72. Working up a great head of steam, Lillee took 8 for 29 – including six for none in the space of 15 balls – as the World XI were demolished for just 59. “It was perhaps the fastest wicket I’ve ever bowled on,” wrote Lillee. “There were some brilliant catches… it was just one of those freakish happenings in sport where everything seems to go right.”Wicketkeeper Rod Marsh had the best view in the house: “It was as fast a spell of bowling as possible, I am sure. He bowled at the speed of light on a fast, bouncy wicket, with a strong wind behind him. The Rest of the World batsmen were not enthusiastic… he was so fast that day he’d have been frightening on a snowfield.”Shiva Jayaraman of ESPNcricinfo’s stats team helped with some of the above answers.*Sep 27, 2023, 05.49 GMT: Details of Ali Khan’s five-for were added to the story.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

You might think West Indies are no match for India in their upcoming Test series, but that might not be the case at all

Alagappan Muthu09-Jul-2023West Indies may be back-sliding in limited-overs cricket, but their Test-match game is still on point. Especially at home. Since the last time India came for a visit in August 2019, West Indies have played five series and lost only one of them.They have been pushed to the limit, such as in the one-wicket win over Pakistan, and have pushed others to their limit, like against Bangladesh when they made 408 in the first innings and needed just 13 more to complete victory.India’s tour is likely to be defined by how well West Indies’ bowlers are able to hold India’s batters in check and with that in mind, here are five of their best – bowlers, batters, allrounders – who will be keen to step up and lift the gloom that has fallen over this once-great empire.Related

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Kemar Roach

He just turned 35. And yet, over a quarter of the wickets he has ever taken at home have come over these past four years: 47 out of 180 at an average of 21.3 and strike rate of 45.4. There’s fine wine and then there’s the leader of this West Indies bowling attack. Roach’s ability to still find ways to be useful despite injuries taking his pace away is an inspiration to fast bowlers worldwide, and his bit – going wide of the crease to get the outside edge – never gets old.

Jason Holder

The old-ball specialist. Everybody else gets a go when there’s better chance of taking wickets. But once that’s done and there’s no more help on offer, it’s time to bring in big Jase because he can maintain a line and length and keep the runs down. Holder has clocked 282.5 overs for West Indies in home Tests since September 2019, second only to Roach, and 252 of them have been as a change bowler. Even though he is at his most threatening when he gets movement off the pitch, and that typically happens when that red cherry is still nice and shiny. The only other people who make a living by getting put in such unpleasant situations so often are mothers, teachers and magician’s assistants.Kraigg Brathwaite and Jermaine Blackwood: one old-school, the other quick-scoring•Getty Images

Alzarri Joseph

Since the world is yet to catch up with the science in and human male footwear only lifts a person some two inches off the ground, when this guy goes for the bouncer, you better be wary. Joseph is the enforcer of this bowling attack. Since September 2019, he has bowled 1500 balls in home Tests, and almost half of them (739) of them have been short of a good length or just plain short. They’ve secured 14 of his 28 wickets in this period, and also enable the other strength he has: when he goes fuller, he gets movement off the pitch, and once he has softened his opponent up, the chances of getting an outside edge increase.

Jermaine Blackwood

Back in 2016, he was averaging 40-plus while striking at 60-plus. It was as if his penchant for driving on the up did not come with any consequences. And then it did. His high-risk method led to some low-value shots, and he was left out of the team. “Being dropped helped me to go back and work on my game and my mental space,” he said in 2020 before adding he had found a new way forward. “To bat as long as possible.” Virat Kohli helped him out there apparently. “He just said, ‘What will you do when you score a century? How many deliveries did you face?’ I said I faced 212 balls. He said, ‘That’s it, once you can bat some balls, you’re going to score runs’. So I took a big thing from that.” Blackwood still scores pretty quickly – a career strike rate of nearly 55 – but it’s just one of his strengths now as opposed to being his only strength.

Kraigg Brathwaite

He is West Indies’ batting. He is the reason they work in Test cricket. Without his runs, without the time he spends in the middle, allowing others to do their thing, without his stubbornness, there is nothing. Brathwaite is quirky. He gets squared up. A lot. He gets beaten. A lot. He would sooner bite the cricket ball than drive it on the up. His best shot is the most unobtrusive one in the entire game. The flick. And yet, this hard-nosed, old-school opener stands on the shoulders of giants. He is No. 4 on the list of West Indians to have faced the most balls in Test cricket, well above Sir Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge and Chris Gayle. That batting crease out there, that’s his home.

From playing for Kenya to moving to India in search of the bigger prize, it’s been a long journey for the batter. But his eagerness to contribute remains intact

Ashish Pant29-Nov-2023Tanmay Mishra was a starry-eyed youngster, part of a strong generation of Kenyan cricketers that had the promise of a new era. They had just made the 2003 World Cup semi-final, and talk of Full Membership was gathering steam. Then Kenyan cricket was driven into an abyss by power-hungry administrators.Two decades later, the veteran of three World Cups – two ODIs (2007 and 2011) and one T20 (2007) – is trying to rediscover his glory days in India’s far-east, in Meghalaya, after several attempts of breaking into India’s domestic system.His first opportunity came with Tripura in 2019. In just his second game, Mishra smashed his maiden List A century – a 101-ball 102 against a strong Madhya Pradesh attack that had Ishwar Pandey, Kuldeep Sen, Kumar Kartikeya and Venkatesh Iyer. He followed it up with three back-to-back fifties and finished the 2019 Vijay Hazare Trophy as Tripura’s second-highest run-getter. He also made his T20 and first-class debut during the season. It promised a bright, new beginning, but as fate would have it, Covid-19 struck, and Mishra’s career hit a snag.Once the domestic season restarted, budget constraints at Tripura meant he didn’t receive a callback, and it took him close to four more years before Meghalaya came calling. He hopes to cash in again, even though he hasn’t started as well as he would have liked.”One of the things is the learnings over the years, I want to sort of help the guys when I can,” Mishra tells ESPNcricinfo. “I just want to try and contribute to winning for the team. I know the sort of opportunity I have and I am grateful for this opportunity.”At times, though, Mishra can’t help but wonder what could have been.

****

It’s August 2007. India A are in Kenya for a series. Rohit Sharma, fresh off an India debut, is on tour. As Mishra takes strike, Rohit dishes out a few verbal volleys.”He was just swearing at me, saying a lot of nasty things when he was standing at third slip,” Mishra recalls with a laugh. “And later that evening, after all the things he said, he came up to me and asked me about the places you could visit.”I just said to him, ‘you’ve been giving me such a tough time in the day and now you want me to host you’. So, like a proper Mumbaikar, he went , match (it’s a match, you’ve got to do it). We are here to win, you are here to win.

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India conceded 145 in the middle session, and it looked like they were lacking the depth they had developed in the preceding years

Sidharth Monga27-Dec-2023That middle session of 2 for 145 is perhaps the most ordinary India have looked with the ball in the first innings of a Test match since Lord’s 2018.Back then they had been rolled over for 107, which does reduce the control you can exert on the opposition by a significant measure. Here India’s 245 seemed above par at the moment the innings ended because even the 67-over ball seamed around and went past the inside edge of a batter, who was on 101 off 137.Even when India started with the ball, it moved around heaps. Jasprit Bumrah had to keep starting further and further down the leg side because the ball was moving so much it was missing the edge of the left-hand batter. Mohammed Siraj replicated to Aiden Markram the unplayable delivery Kagiso Rabada bowled to Virat Kohli.Related

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In such conditions, looking at the strength of India’s attacks in recent years, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to expect them to get India a first-innings lead. And yet here they were, conceding all but 100 of their runs in one session without looking threatening.Let’s firstly look at all that has not gone India’s way. The toss gave South Africa the best conditions to bowl in, and the pitch did seem to ease out in the second session of day two. India still bowled much better with the new ball than the hosts. In their first spells, India’s new-ball bowlers went past or took the edge of the bat 26 times in 11 overs. It takes an extraordinary amount of luck to be just one down amid such persistent interrogation of your technique.It can be argued that India perhaps didn’t bowl full enough and thus kept missing the edge, but these were also conditions where the ball didn’t quite nip from a full length. South Africa, by comparison, hardly bowled full with the new ball, drew just 17 mistakes in the first 11.1 overs, and had three wickets to show for it.If anything, you could perhaps fault them for not moving around the wicket sooner than the seventh over and tenth over in the cases of Bumrah and Siraj. That angle, and the seam movement against that angle, makes it difficult for the left-hand batters to leave the ball. Finding faults with that spell of play is also like splitting hairs because India have had similar phases in the recent past, but the bowlers who follow have been relentless and the wickets have come sooner or later.That depth of the attack suddenly went missing in Centurion even though India did play four seamers. It has been a weird Test in that regard. There has been some ordinary bowling from both sides in conditions heavily loaded in favour of the bowlers. For some reason, bowlers have struggled to find the right areas, and the batting from both sides has been top-class, punishing every little error.Bumrah and Siraj had combined figures of 75 for 3 in 21 overs in the middle session•AFP/Getty ImagesIndia curiously started the second session with Shardul Thakur and debutant Prasidh Krishna, inverting the age-old wisdom of opening every session with the two likeliest bowlers to take a wicket. The first one being a shorter session of bowling, the lead bowlers had only a half-hour break before lunch, but 70 minutes off in all should be enough to have them fresh and ready to harvest the rewards for spells that weren’t duly rewarded earlier.Now, India haven’t played a Test in five months, and Bumrah has not in a year and a half. So India probably wanted to ease their bowlers into their full workload or perhaps they expected things to happen even for change bowlers because of the conditions. Yet they could have had at least one of the two best bowlers starting the session. By the time Bumrah brought some control back, India had conceded 42 runs in eight overs at a crucial juncture of the Test.Then again, at some level, it can also be argued that the choice of the bowler shouldn’t matter at this level. If you are playing as frontline seamers, you should be able to do well. This is where it might be time to realise how lucky India have been with the supply of fast bowlers in recent years. Bumrah and Siraj broke a long streak of unsuccessful overseas debuts for India bowlers. It should perhaps be no surprise that Krishna took a while to find his bearings, but India have been spoilt on that count in recent times.With Thakur, a course correction seems to be taking place. He started out as a dream player in Australia, scoring fighting runs in tough conditions, bowling with the licence to attack and coming out on the right side of the ledger. He took 24 wickets in his first six Tests at 20.33, but since then he has averaged 58 for his six wickets despite only playing in seam-friendly conditions. India will probably need to look at this arrangement after this tour.In that session, it looked like India were now lacking the depth they had developed in the preceding years. At tea, the change bowlers had conceded 100 runs in 20 overs to offset Bumrah and Siraj’s combined figures of 75 for 3 in 21 overs.India came back with better plans. They staggered the lesser bowlers, and asked Thakur to bowl short, and Krishna finally found a rhythm. India drew two wickets for 62 runs in 17 overs, but the bad light denied them a half hour in helpful conditions, which would have also taken them closer to the new ball in the morning session. That post-tea phase has kept India in the game, but they will know they can’t afford indifferent sessions of tactics and execution in such seamer-friendly conditions.

Her heroics at the top set the platform for Radha Yadav to take four later and set up a big win for Delhi Capitals

Ashish Pant27-Feb-20240:59

Kapp: ‘I’m better off bowling with the new ball’

Four overs, 19 dot balls, five runs, and three wickets.On Sunday, when Shabnim Ismail ripped through Gujarat Giants’ top order, Marizanne Kapp sent out a post on social media saying how much she missed sharing the new ball with her former South Africa colleague. On Monday, Kapp seemed to draw inspiration from Ismail as she conjured up some magic of her own in a riveting spell of fast bowling for Delhi Capitals that left the UP Warriorz top order in a daze.It was a spell of new-ball fast bowling right out of the top drawer: the perfect Test match length – the kind where batters aren’t sure whether to come forward or go back and are stuck in the crease – with the hint of nibble in the air compounding the batters’ woes. She bowled four overs on the bounce, three of them in the powerplay, and by the time Kapp was done, she had the joint-most economical spell in the one-and-a-bit seasons of the WPL – 4-1-5-3.

Yeas partner!!!! How I miss opening the bowling with you! https://t.co/CVC6VuiZpF

— Marizanne Kapp (@kappie777) February 25, 2024

It’s the least Indian of all Indian grounds at least at a conditions level, as the pitch is fast and bouncy

Karthik Krishnaswamy05-Mar-20247:09

Ashwin picks the best batters he’s bowled to

Just over three weeks ago, the HPCA Stadium hosted a Ranji Trophy match between Himachal Pradesh and Delhi, where seamers took all 36 wickets that fell over its four days.This was far from unusual. In four Ranji games at the venue this season, fast bowlers have bowled a combined 814 overs and taken 122 wickets at an average of 23.17. Spinners have sent down 122.2 overs, and taken seven wickets at 58.42.The fast bowlers, in short, have taken as many wickets as spinners have bowled overs.Welcome to Dharamsala. It’s cold here, it’s high up in the Himalayas, and it has what may well be the most spectacular backdrop of any sporting venue in the world. It’s only natural to come here to watch cricket and go back having spent more time gazing upon the snow-veined Dhauladhars and pondering your own insignificance in the grand scheme of geological space and time.Related

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It’s also the least Indian of Indian grounds at a conditions level: the pitch here is fast and bouncy, and during the winter months when cricket is played in India, it doesn’t bake under the sun and deteriorate in the way Indian pitches tend to. Fast bowlers like it here.Spinners? Well, it’s complicated.It’s clearly not a ground for spinners during India’s domestic season. Over the 49 first-class games that have been played here, they have averaged 41.02 to the fast bowlers’ 27.90.But there’s only so much extrapolation you can do when a Test match rolls into town.Dharamshala has hosted one previous Test, back in March 2017, and while it’s fondly remembered by India fans for Umesh Yadav’s third-innings spell of new-ball venom, it was also a match where spinners took 18 of the 30 wickets that fell to bowlers. Kuldeep Yadav made his debut and took a first-innings four-for; Nathan Lyon picked up five in India’s first innings; R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja shared six in Australia’s second.Before that Test match, the pitch had worn a tinge of green, and the curator had said it would offer something to all four disciplines: pace, spin and batting, of course, but fielding too, with good carry to the slips cordon.Axar Patel, Shubman Gill, R Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Sarfaraz Khan and Rajat Patidar in training•AFP/Getty ImagesThe pitch delivered on that promise, and it helped that the match was played in the end of March, by which time warmer weather had arrived in Dharamsala. The sun helped turn the surface into something like day four in Australian conditions- fast and bouncy but with plenty of cracks for the spinners to work with.It’s a little different now, as Dharamsala gears up for its second Test match. It’s still the first week of March, and there has been rain in the weeks leading up to the game. Rain is forecast for Thursday, day one of the Test match, and maximum temperatures on all five days are likely to hover in the early to mid-teens (Celsius). It’s not the kind of weather for cracks to open up.Against that, though, is the look of the pitch itself, two days out from the match. It seemed to be a pale brown rather than green – the pitch that hosted the third Test in Rajkot had looked significantly greener in the lead-up – and Jonny Bairstow called it a “used pitch” in his press conference on Tuesday. He was not wrong, since it’s the same pitch that was used in that HP-Delhi game, but that was three weeks ago – how much time must elapse between matches for a used pitch to cease being one?James Anderson bowls with the Himalayas in the background•Getty ImagesEven so, it seemed fairly evident that the powers that be have made an effort to get this pitch to play in as Indian a way as possible, and minimise the advantages it bestows upon fast bowlers through its soil and location.It could still be fast and bouncy, then, and there could be swing if it’s overcast – as is likely to be a case for at least parts of the Test match – but it’s not a green seamer. The fast bowlers could still have a big influence, but the spinners could enjoy the bounce too. The lack of grass on the surface could help it wear a little quicker, though how quickly, in these conditions, remains to be seen.The outfield – a distinctly different and darker green to the square – is lush. Reverse-swing, if it happens, may take some time to happen.From England’s perspective, any help for the fast bowlers is welcome, potentially even-ing the battle between the two attacks. There is every chance they will play three quicks.It’s a little trickier for India to play an extra seamer, though. Any Indian pitch that’s not an outright greentop – and this one isn’t – is one where Ashwin. Jadeja and Kuldeep can find a way to take wickets. They’ll certainly enjoy the bounce, particularly if England keep sweeping and bring the top edge into play. And cooler weather allows fast bowlers to extend their spells; Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj, used judiciously, could still deliver enough overs to ensure India don’t waste windows of fast-bowling opportunity.The question for India is whether a third seamer – likely Akash Deep – could get them more wickets, and get them quicker and cheaper, than a third spinner. It’s a question they’re likely to spend a lot of time mulling over, over the next day-and-a-half. It’s the kind of question they rarely have to ask themselves when they’re playing at home, but this is Dharamsala. Everything is different here.