It took until the final session on the second day at Chittagong for Bangladesh to produce their first disciplined display of Test cricket in this series

Andrew Miller in Chittagong13-Mar-2010It took until the final session on the second day at Chittagong for Bangladesh to produce their first disciplined display of Test cricket in this series, as Tamim Iqbal and Mahmudullah combined in a fourth-wicket stand of 94 that may not be sufficient to change the momentum of this match, but was nevertheless a timely reminder that the side really has been making progress in recent months. Their defeats may still be stacking up, but the small victories are starting to come about more frequently.To call their stand a victory is still being charitable, however, because picking the positives out of the first two days of this match has involved as many forensics as your average LA homicide. When Mahmudullah lost his patience in the final half-hour of the day, to be caught off a top-edge by Paul Collingwood at slip, it left a gap in Bangladesh’s defences from which they are unlikely to recover in a hurry, especially once Shakib Al Hasan had followed in the day’s penultimate over, bowled by his own impetuosity as much as Graeme Swann’s guile.But all the same, Bangladesh can but soldier on and soak up the experiences, good, bad and downright ugly. Mahmudullah was one of their individual success stories from the recent tour of New Zealand, on which he made his maiden Test hundred while batting at No. 8, and today he showed the technical correctness and sufficient cool under fire to prove that his promotion to No. 5 is on merit, rather than out of desperation.”I always enjoy my batting,” he said. “The team want me to bat at No. 5 and I said ok, no problem, I can go for it. In New Zealand a couple of weeks ago there was a situation like this and we made a very good recovery. So I still hope we can make it in this Test as well. We have got our batting depth. Still Mushfiqur [Rahim] and Naeem [Islam] is there, and Tamim is still there. If we are able to bat properly we can achieve a good total.”Batting properly seemed alarmingly beyond their remit in the opening exchanges of Bangladesh’s innings, however. For all the progress that Imrul Kayes has made in one-day cricket, with a century and two fifties in his 13 matches to date, his cluelessness against the short ball was alarming for an international opener. In 18 previous Test innings, Kayes’ highest score was 33, and when Stuart Broad set to work on him, it wasn’t hard to see whyIn the space of three deliveries, Broad clanged a bouncer off Kayes’ grille and away for four byes, tucked him up with a rib-tickler, and then extracted the limpest of pulls for Matt Prior to complete the dismissal. Junaid Siddique was scarcely any more comfortable with the ball spearing into his ribs, while Aftab Ahmed’s credentials have been long under scrutiny. At 51 for 3 in the 12th over, a three-day finish looked to be on the cards.But the gulf in class between Tamim at the top and Mahmudullah at No. 5 was as sizeable as the difference between their scores and the men sandwiched between them in the order. But on the evidence they produced today, not even the harshest judge could question the Test credentials that those two men produced. With the possible exception of Mashrafe Mortaza in 2003 and the 16-year-old Mushfiqur in 2005, their alliance was the most combative performance that England have yet encountered in the course of three Test series between the sides.”Today we lost a couple of early wickets, two quick wickets for us, but Tamim and I had a good partnership, and I think we both enjoyed it,” said Mahmudullah. “I am hopeful, the pitch is still good and I would say we had some poor shot selection. But Tamim is still at the crease and we have a good depth in our batting. I am hopeful that we will be able to avoid the follow-on and get a good score.”Tamim may need to stay at the crease for several hours yet to save Bangladesh from that fate, but the skill and maturity of his innings once again augured well for the future. By smoking Stuart Broad’s first delivery through point for four he sent out a message that he would not be cowed, and it was reiterated soon afterwards when he lifted a Broad bouncer for six. But in between whiles he knuckled down to defend, for 84 dot-balls all told, while ever mindful of the chance to attack, as he did with 13 fours and a six.”Tamim has been batting brilliantly, especially today,” he added. “The moment he went out to the crease, he was positive from the beginning and played some very good shots. That was very good to watch. But since we have been playing on this pitch, we see it offers some turn on the first day and with every passing day it reduces and becomes flat. It is still like that, doing nothing extra. We have to come up with a very good batting performance tomorrow.”

Never at any point did Pakistan believe they could win this Test and for that alone they deserved the sorry fate that befell them at the SCG

Osman Samiuddin at the SCG06-Jan-2010Pakistan’s grip on this Test was going the minute they took a 206-run lead in the first innings. This morning, with Australia effectively 80 for 8 they knew they had lost it. Hollywood rehab clinics have fewer mental frailties than this side.Like in Melbourne last week, never at any point did Pakistan believe they could win this Test and for that alone they deserved the sorry fate that befell them at the SCG. Publicly Australia spoke yesterday as if they could win this. Pakistan, publicly and privately, only wished they could win this.The morning session was bizarre and instructive, possibly the worst session of leadership of a side in such a dominant position. Sides giving up 200-plus leads in Tests had only won five times ever after all. But Mohammad Yousuf thought Michael Hussey was Bradman and Peter Siddle that Bradman of tailenders, Jason Gillespie, and that Australia were 700 for 3. Effectively they were 80 for 8, Hussey had been dropped thrice and Pakistan began with eight men on the boundary. A more winning lost cause is difficult to conjure.Yousuf has surprised people with his leadership here, but today was the worst of him; defensive, unimaginative, sluggish and unwilling to take risk. Inzamam-ul-Haq’s beard is there and maybe the worst of his captaincy spirit was also floating around. From there, whatever the chase, the writing was being written on the wall.And then nothing matters in these chases for Pakistan; people talk of flat pitches, overhead conditions, surviving the new ball and playing out the old. But the only thing that matters is that it’s them. They could be chasing 90 on cement, with a tennis ball and in 45 degrees heat, but this batting line-up will find a way to get out for less. Who the opponent was didn’t really matter. They were called Panickstan here once, long ago. A regurgitation is in order.Three times this year they have done it – in Sri Lanka, in New Zealand and now. This will hurt the most because it isn’t every day that you dominate Australia, any Australia side, for three days and lose on the last. Australia, any Australia side, still know how to win and more importantly they know how not to throw matches away. Their players are brought up doing it. Peter Siddle’s innings is shining testament to that ethic. Pakistan’s tail presents a sorry contrast. Pakistan know simply how to play well every now and again, not to win, or avoid losing. That might never come and if it does it will take time.The Test was lost at many other stages and that is the wretchedness of Pakistan’s cricket that they could’ve won it still. They should’ve shut out Australia with their first innings, instead batting like lemons and not posting an insurmountable lead. Yousuf keeps talking about how much Twenty20 cricket is destroying Pakistan’s batsmen and with the kind of batting seen here – not least his own dismissals – it is a persuasive argument.Kamran Akmal dropped the Test four times himself through the second innings. He has been better this last year but he should’ve been dropped a few years ago; if he keeps getting selected, there is every chance now and again this may happen. His batting was crucial in New Zealand, but it’s been ill-judged here. Misbah-ul-Haq, Faisal Iqbal – should they really be in this line-up?And yet still it boggles the mind. It will do for many days. Knowing all this, feeling all along that they may lose this, to see it play itself out as it did is deeply affecting. To such an implosion, from such a position, can break you. Who knows what living it can do. Still the question: how have they lost it? Everyone knows but nobody understands, least of all the side itself.

Every South African fielder has had a role model to look up to: Jonty Rhodes, Peter Kirsten and Sybrand Engelbrecht explain why the country has never lacked fielding talent

Telford Vice05-Apr-2010

When AB de Villiers soared into the Bangalore night to snuff out Praveen Kumar’s innings for the Royal Challengers 10 days ago, he wasn’t only making a seemingly impossible catch spectacularly possible. He was also continuing a tradition of South Africans daring to go where no other fielders, except those from Australia, have regularly gone before.By any standard, de Villiers’ effort shimmered with brilliance. Praveen pulled lustily at the first ball he faced, a short delivery from the Delhi Daredevils’ Umesh Yadav, and sent it arcing towards the long-off boundary. De Villiers scrambled backward and launched his leap with perfect timing. He snared the wannabe six high above his head in his right hand and hung onto the ball as he crashed to earth a foot inside the rope.”Awesome,” was Jonty Rhodes’ description of de Villiers’ catch, and he should know. From 1992 to 2003, Rhodes dazzled opponents and delighted crowds with the kind of catching and fielding that would have won him star billing in PT Barnum’s Big Top. Rhodes was the epitome of the gritty middle-order batsman, and a more treasured team man will never exist. But he will forever be remembered for diving headlong into the stumps to run out Inzamam-ul-Haq at the 1992 World Cup.Click on the first mention of Rhodes’ name in this story, and you will be taken to a profile page illustrated not with a photograph of him playing a fine stroke, but of him flying through the air with the greatest of ease to take another of those impossible catches.This thread can be traced back more than 50 years, at least, in South Africa’s cricket history. Before Rhodes, Peter Kirsten was South Africa’s angel of death in the field. Before Kirsten, Colin Bland, “the Golden Eagle”, preyed on hapless batsmen.”Youngsters tend to look up to their cricketing idols, and in my case that was Colin Bland,” Kirsten said. “Hopefully that means that Jonty was watching me!” Indeed, he was. “Peter Kirsten was my hero,” Rhodes said, unprompted.The modern mantle might just belong to Sybrand Engelbrecht, a 21-year-old blond ghost who haunted backward point with enthusiasm as memorable as his athleticism at the 2008 Under-19 World Cup. He took five catches, some of them positively Rhodesian, in the three matches he played, and added to his value by hurrying and harrying batsmen into and out of singles. If the ball was being hit somewhere he wasn’t, he was in the captain’s ear, nagging to be moved to the hot spot.And Engelbrecht’s hero? “Without a doubt, definitely Jonty. He’s been my role model,” he said.But, according to Rhodes, South Africa’s fielding prowess is more than the preserve of a few shining individuals. “We were untested as an international team when we went to the 1992 World Cup,” Rhodes said. “But [former South Africa captain] Kepler [Wessels] told us there were two areas in which we could dominate: fitness and fielding.”We had Fanie de Villiers out on the boundary and Brian McMillan and Kepler in the slips. They were all excellent fielders. Fielding was something we could compete at even without international experience.” Eighteen years of international experience later that remains true: “You can judge a good fielding side by the fact that they don’t have to hide anyone. That’s the case with South Africa.”Rhodes thinks the reason for that goes down to grassroots level, and he says he has the evidence to back up his claim. “Our fields are just so good and so well-maintained. I wish I could show you the video clip of my son playing in his first outdoor cricket match. There he was, diving and sliding all over the place. And he was five years old!”Fields in Australia are pretty much the same as they are in South Africa, and I think it’s fair to say that those two countries have been at the forefront of fielding over the years.”In other countries, cricket and cricketers could be considered less fortunate. For instance, in India, where Rhodes is part of the Mumbai Indians’ coaching staff in the IPL. “You just don’t get much grass in this part of the world. I was talking to Mark Boucher and he said he can feel the strain on his knees even through his wicketkeeping pads. That’s an indication of how hard the fields are here.”For Engelbrecht, practice makes perfect. “Fielding is about hard work and confidence, and catching hundreds of balls in training,” he said. “People look at someone like Richard Branson and how he makes building a business empire look so easy. What they don’t see is how much time and effort he has put in behind the scenes to make it look so easy.”Rhodes and Engelbrecht belong to a generation of cricketers who don’t need to be convinced of the advantages to be had from superior conditioning and a more intense focus on skills training. Not so Kirsten, who began to make his way in the game when cricket was still something of an amateur pursuit in South Africa. However, early in his career he encountered the forward-thinking Eddie Barlow, who was among the earliest believers in fitness and better training methods for cricketers.

“You can judge a good fielding side by the fact that they don’t have to hide anyone. That’s the case with South Africa”Jonty Rhodes

Kirsten also suffered a serious knee injury that required long, lonely hours of rehabilitation. “I used to train hard individually in the 70s and 80s. That made the difference for me,” Kirsten said.”South Africans are naturally athletic people, and since the 90s fitness levels have improved. These days there is also plenty of sports science around for us to make use of.”But certain aspects of fielding would seem to remain in the realm of instinct. “Anticipation is very important, as is peripheral vision,” Kirsten said. “It’s vital to be able to read the batsman. I suppose there are some things you just can’t coach.” Kirsten held more than his share of unforgettable catches, but his trademark as a fielder was the fluid pick-up-and-throw from the covers that cut down many batsmen short of their ground. He was mercury in motion, and just as deadly. Who knows how many run-outs he would have effected had his career fallen more squarely into the age of electronic umpiring?Bland bestrode the covers from the 1950s to the 70s, a lean, grim reaper. He threw down the stumps almost at will, his reward for endless hours spent in solitary practice sessions, and intimidated batsmen with his sheer presence. “He was brilliant in certain positions,” remembered Trevor Goddard, Bland’s captain in 12 of the 21 Tests he played in the 1960s. “We also fielded him at mid-on a lot of the time, and he was so accurate when throwing at the stumps. When he was patrolling the boundary, he would send these underarm throws whistling in. The batsmen wouldn’t dare take two to him.”Goddard recalled the bleak observation made by former England captain Peter May after a 1956-57 rubber in which he was caught seven times in 10 innings and recorded his lowest Test series average, 15.30. “He said that if you hit the ball in the air when you were playing against South Africa, you should expect to be caught.”Praveen Kumar won’t argue with that.

Plays of the Day from the first day of the second Test between India and New Zealand in Hyderabad

ESPNcricinfo staff12-Nov-2010Comforting moment of the day
On the flattest of pitches at Motera, Tim McIntosh had made a pair, falling to Zaheer Khan both times. He had faced no other bowler in the match. Today, on a juicier surface in Hyderabad, McIntosh remained strokeless in the opening exchanges against Zaheer and played out two maiden overs. The moment he finally got to face another bowler, though, off the last ball of the sixth over, McIntosh strode forward and drove Sreesanth through covers for four. The confidence had clearly grown, for when he faced his 15th delivery from Zaheer, McIntosh played a square drive through point – his first scoring shot off the bowler.Let-off of the day
Martin Guptill had blown it. Dropped for the disastrous tour of Bangladesh, and not selected to play at Motera, he had got his chance in Hyderabad and he had blown it, by nicking Sreesanth to MS Dhoni. He had nearly walked off the ground and Ross Taylor had almost reached the pitch when word reached him that Sreesanth had over-stepped and the umpire Kumar Dharmasena had checked with the third umpire late. Guptill wore a sheepish smile as he walked past Taylor towards the middle to resume his innings. He would get another lucky break soon after, when Dhoni failed to catch an edge, and he made his luck count.Unexpected shot of the day
New Zealand had seen off the new ball, hit only five fours and were chugging along at fewer than three an over in the first 20. The discussions had switched to whether the threatening clouds would cause a rain interruption when Guptill put the cricket back in focus by taking a neat step down to Harbhajan Singh and lofting him over the long-on boundary. The attack came out of nowhere and its follow-through was full but not lavish. A graceful pick-me-up the session needed.Nuisance of the day
Play being held up by malfunctioning sight-screens is perhaps the most annoying interruption in cricket. How hard can it be to put a well-oiled sight-screen in place? Before the second over began after lunch, the sight-screen at the North End decided to act up. It refused to change from displaying the sponsor advertisement to white, and at one stage it showed one half of two logos. Having failed to fix it, the groundstaff attempted to move it out of the batsman’s view by wheeling it to one side. It refused to budge though. There was little choice but to turn violent and, with a couple of shoves, the groundstaff toppled the stubborn sight-screen onto its back and out of view. It had served little purpose anyway because the region behind it was draped with white sheets.Over-dressed fielder of the day
In the 60th over during the final session, McIntosh went back to a long-hop from Harbhajan and cut hard towards cover-point, where the ball was intercepted by a fielder. Nothing unusual about it, except the fielder was wearing a helmet and shin pads. Gautam Gambhir had been stationed at short leg for new batsman Taylor and didn’t bother shedding the extra gear when he was moved to cover-point for McIntosh. Just as well he didn’t have to chase anything.Revelation of the day
McIntosh is a big batsman, taller than Dhoni, who was crouched behind him for the entire day. And yet he almost never showed any sign of power. McIntosh scored 25 runs in the morning session, 30 in the second and toiled for them. Virender Sehwag had come close to 100 in the first in Ahmedabad. And then McIntosh played an astonishing stroke. Shelving the steers, glances and economical drives that had brought him five fours, he took two steps forward to Pragyan Ojha and lifted him over the midwicket boundary. At first it appeared as though the ball might just clear the in-field – so light was his touch – but it went the distance.Landmark of the day
When McIntosh drove Harbhajan to deep mid-on to reach his century, the first by a New Zealand opener away from home since Stephen Fleming at Trent Bridge in 2004, there was initially little applause. Only when he raised his arms aloft and celebrated the achievement did the spectators realise and give him a cheer. The fault was not theirs, though, because the scoreboard at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium shows only the team’s total and no scores for individual batsmen. McIntosh was obviously counting.

It’s been 10 years since the Cronje scandal, but despite preventive measures the threat is very much alive

Osman Samiuddin21-Jun-2010Why should 2010 be treated as a landmark of any significance in cricket’s match-fixing years? The boom years, after all, were over a decade ago, the mid-to-late 90s, when Mukesh Gupta, “John”s and many others led the cricket world in a finely orchestrated but unholy dance of money and greed. And the practice probably began much before that. So why now?For a number of reasons this year is important. A full decade ago now, cricket first began to fight back. Three big names, captains or former captains, were banned for life in 2000, as a result of various investigations and commissions and inquiries. The ICC set up the anti-corruption unit (ACSU) the same year, the first systemic, if greatly delayed, response to the issue. So the year is important, first, in assessing where cricket stands now.Lord Paul Condon, who set up and oversaw the ACSU through the decade, has just left his post, and that is a natural marker. He believes the game is in a healthier state than when he took over, though he acknowledges that new formats and leagues bring greater threats. In that there is now a body in place to investigate and to apply preventive and punitive measures, there has been progress. Players minded to do so can take an official route to report suspicions. And there has been no rash of high-profile cases as there once was. By and large the game appears clean, or cleaner than before.But setting up a police force doesn’t vanquish crime. If you actually scan the last 10 years and put together in one paragraph cricket’s main run-ins with match-fixing and bookies, is there not still danger? Off hand, just tally them up: Maurice Odumbe’s tryst with bookies and subsequent ban in 2004; the panic over Murali’s visit to a dance bar in Mumbai, whose owner was said to have bookmaker contacts; Marlon Samuels and the tapped Indian phone line in 2007; the persistent murmurs about the ICL in its last season; the approach to an Australian player during the Ashes last year; separate offers made to players during the 2009 World Twenty20; the ongoing investigations into the actions of Danish Kaneria and Mervyn Westfield of Essex; the recent development that county cricket might now be attracting more bookies than old men or dogs; Shakib Al Hasan’s recent revelation that he too was once tapped up.And this leaves out Pakistan’s paranoid world, where every match is fixed. But even among that long, crazed list, some genuinely provide reasons for concern. Who did three Pakistanis meet at a function during the 2007-08 India tour, a meeting that prompted the ACSU to interview the players a few months later? And how suspicious were the men who compelled the team to change floors in a Colombo hotel in 2009? All together, the list is of some heft. And it says that bookies never really went away or stopped trying; they merely aren’t as audacious as they were in Gupta’s days. And looking over the Samuels case for example, it remains absurdly straightforward for a bookie to contact a player.Not only are they still around, but it is only over the last decade that our understanding of just how broad their work is has properly developed. At the time the simple and prevalent belief was that match-fixing involved fixing results. In many cases it was true. It was also convenient, for it left open the romantic, blind notion that one guy, incensed by this corruption, could change the tide. Lance Klusener, for example, is said to have deliberately screwed up a good deal for Hansie Cronje in the Nagpur ODI on the 1999-2000 tour by smashing a late, innings-changing 58-ball 75. There was also the neat chestnut with which we comforted ourselves that all bets on India were off until Tendulkar was out.

Cynical the scenario may be, but even a reasonably intelligent bookie might think it worth his while to approach players from cricket’s third world, who also miss out on the lucre of the IPL

Now we know it doesn’t matter what Tendulkar does, for the reality, as the ACSU’s first comprehensive report revealed in 2001, was far more complex. They called it occurrence-fixing, but soon Rashid Latif would give it a far more evocative name: fancy-fixing, which opens up cricket’s vast statistical landscape. With fancy – or spot – fixing, each ball of a match is effectively an event, an opportunity to bet and thus an opportunity to fix. It emerged that bets were being taken on the outcome of the toss, the number of wides or no-balls in a specific over, the timing and specifics of declarations, individual batsmen getting themselves out under a specific score, even field settings.A visit last year in Karachi to an individual familiar with the world of bookies was mind-altering: bets were placed on what the first-innings total in a county match would be by lunch on the first day, or how many overs a bowler would bowl in the first hour of a session or a day, or on how much difference there would be in first-innings totals, or on how many runs a specified group of players would make. It didn’t stop.In a way, fixing entire results was just the very furthest reach of bookies, the most sensational thing they could do; everything beneath that, initially overlooked, was much more doable, less easier to spot and thus more dangerous. The thirst for fixing results, even if diminished, remains, as one English county player approached by an Indian businessman recently learnt, but the far greater problem and more prevalent is fancy-fixing.Moreover conditions today are such that you can’t help but worry. The 2001 ACSU report listed key factors at the time that led to the entire pickle. Cricketers weren’t paid enough money compared to other professional sportsmen; without contracts their careers were less stable; too many ODIs where nothing was at stake were being played; cricketers had little say in the running of the game. Cricket thinks it has moved on from then, but not as much as it thinks it has.Central contracts are now in place across the board, giving the elite international cricketer some security. Players are generally better rewarded financially than they have ever been. Indeed, some of the amounts cricketers received at the time from bookies seem laughable now: $4000 here, $5000 there. The big fish often took around $50,000 for a really big fix; Saleem Malik was said to have offered Mark Waugh, Shane Warne and Tim May nearly $70,000 each during the 1994-95 Karachi Test. Cronje once even agreed on $15,000 for a fix. In the 2009 IPL, Andrew Flintoff’s two wickets in four Twenty20 games fetched him over $166,000 each, legally and above board.But the riches are limited and wealth is spread more unevenly than ever before; players from India, Australia, England and South Africa enjoy far greater financial benefits than ones anywhere else. The IPL has taken the earnings of some players to a different level altogether, but it has also widened the gap between haves and have-nots. Cynical the scenario may be, but even a reasonably intelligent bookie might think it worth his while to approach players from cricket’s third world, who also miss out on the lucre of the IPL. Maybe it explains why county players have been targeted, or Bangladesh’s Shakib was recently, or why Pakistan’s players might be approached.In 1998 it was revealed that Mark Waugh and Shane Warne had taken money from a bookie in exchange for match information•Getty ImagesAbove all, in 2010 there are more games, and more meaningless ones, than ever before. When Cronje discussed with his team an offer to throw Mohinder Amarnath’s benefit in December 1996, it was prompted in part because none of his tired team was keen to play a match that had only hurriedly been given international status. Since then it has only gotten worse. There is an entire new format to deal with, for one. The seven-match ODI series, pregnant with the possibility of ennui and dead games, is not only still around, there are more of them. Before 2000, there had been eight (one was an eight-match series). Since then there have been 10. Every week, the BCCI and Sri Lanka Cricket seem to thrust upon a weary world another tri-series. The push to provide greater context and meaning to ODIs should have begun in 2000. Instead, the ICC has dithered for a decade, only beginning to take it seriously now.And it is all on TV. All matches, from English county cricket to the Australian Big Bash, from the South African MTN40 to Pakistan’s RBS Twenty20, from the Under-19 World Cup to the women’s World Cup, can be beamed into your home, mine, or that of the bookie. Every international game, and an increasing number of domestic games, are potentially a target.So in 2010 the threat is very much alive. Over the coming weeks, Cricinfo will bring you a series of special features on the topic. There will be an interview with Lord Condon as he steps down from his post. We examine the effects match-fixing has had on Pakistan, since arguably the country is the one most scarred by the events. We also look back, through journalist Malcolm Conn, at the breaking of the Mark Waugh-Shane Warne story that Cricket Australia had hushed up for so many years. And at the after-effects of the Cronje revelations in South Africa. There will be much else besides.

ESPNcricinfo brings you the plays of the fourth day of the third Test between South Africa and India at Newlands

Sidharth Monga at Newlands05-Jan-2011The kindness
It was a hot day with the temperatures reaching 36 degrees Celsius, and Jacques Kallis was struggling with bruised and contused ribs. When he collapsed with pain, waiting for the physiotherapist to arrive, he was flat on his back looking straight at the sun beating down on him. Umpire Simon Taufel provided him some relief, using his hat as a shield between the sun and Kallis.The easily movable object
Hashim Amla was batting in front of the same stumps that refused to let go off the bail on the third day when he tried a premeditated sweep off Harbhajan Singh, who bowls at about 55kph slower than the unfortunate bowler Dale Steyn. More pace was taken off the ball as it ricocheted off the pad onto the arm and then softly rolled into the stumps. And lo, down came the bail. Sometimes, when it is not your Tuesday, it isn’t your Wednesday either.The shot
How many times have you seen Jacques Kallis reverse-sweep? Not often. He is such a correct player he hardly ever needs these frills. Today, though, with two batsmen before him struggling with the orthodox variety of sweep, and with strong leg-side fields, Kallis reverse-swept in a calculated manner. Cutting was not easy with the rough outside the off stump, and behind square on the off side was the one vacant area. So, the third ball Kallis faced from Harbhajan he shaped up for the sweep, then turned the bat the other way around, and got four for it. The desired response was instant as India stationed a deep point, and the 16 runs that Kallis got through 10 reverse-sweeps remained the highlight of the innings.The boundary rider
Sreesanth hasn’t had much fun fielding at the boundary during this series. Harbhajan Singh, though, earned some friends in the crowd on Wednesday. He was seen chatting, posing for photographs, and signing autographs. He even borrowed a fake moustache from someone in the crowd, took it with him when he was going to field inside the ring, and brought it back only when he was sent back again. High fives all round. A completely different vibe from the one he drew from the Australian crowds three years ago.The breakthrough
India were out of inspiration, ideas and imagination during the partnership between Kallis and Mark Boucher when MS Dhoni handed the ball over to Sachin Tendulkar. In his second over, Tendulkar produced one that stayed low and trapped Boucher in front. It was his first Test wicket since April 2009. That didn’t provide India with much inspiration, though, as a 54-run eighth-wicket stand between Kallis and Steyn followed.

Imran Tahir has given South Africa the joker they needed to form a full pack of bowling options, If his injured finger forces him to miss the India game, South Africa might turn back to a more familiar asset – their seamers

Firdose Moonda in Nagpur12-Mar-2011Johan Botha and Robin Peterson and have always been very handy cards to have in South Africa’s pocket. They typically perform the holding role, controlling the mid-sections of an innings and taking wickets when needed. Both can also bat a bit. Usually though, only one of them has played at a time and most of the time that has been Botha. They tended not to operate as a pair, one being a left-arm spinner and one an offspinner.Then the joker came along in the form of Imran Tahir, and suddenly the spinners formed a complete pack. Tahir did for them what the right colour scarf does for someone’s eyes. Peterson and Botha, already good spinners in their own right, somehow seemed to be spurred on by his presence, and their own wicket-taking abilities grew. Tahir has emerged as the leader and those who follow him, including the part timers, JP Duminy and Faf du Plessis, have been able to bowl around him with much more success than South Africa has ever had with spinners before.The reality, however, is that the joker has to disappear for ten days and there is a very, real possibility that those ten days have already started, and that he will not feature in the game against India. The challenge for the other spinners, and the bowling attack as a whole, will therefore be to make sure their house of cards doesn’t collapse in his absence. Much will depend on the combinations that are selected for the two matches that Tahir does not play in. It’s unlikely that anyone can replace him as the joker but the king, queen and jack have to be able to devise a plan to make up for what South Africa will lose by not having him.”Now that Imran is out for ten days, they will more than likely play both Johan Botha and Robin Peterson,” Paul Adams, the former South Africa left-arm spinner, told ESPNCricinfo. It would mean a confidence-boosting recall for Botha, who was left out of the last two matches, after opening the bowling against the West Indies. Before Tahir arrived, Botha was South Africa’s premier limited-overs spinner and although he was never as attacking as Tahir, he brought his own brand of aggression.His chief role, as Graeme Smith once outlined, was to control the middle of an innings. It was something Botha had made his own and it has worked for him since South Africa beat Australia in home and away series in the 2008/9 season. At times, it may have been formulaic, with most opposition knowing when to expect Botha to come on, knowing that they would have to work harder for their runs in that period and knowing that he may snag a couple of wickets, but it was a formula that worked.Botha’s job changed with the opening act of South Africa’s World Cup, when he was made to open the bowling. “Botha was used because of number of left-handers in the West Indies team,” Adams said. “It’s a sign that South Africa are selecting their attack according to who they are playing.” It’s that specific selection for the opposition that resulted in Botha missing out on the last two matches, if the logic follows, and because South Africa needed an extra batsman and a backup wicket-keeper, Morne van Wyk, both times. Botha is widely regarded as South Africa’s captain-elect, but the new thinking means that not even the man next in line for the throne is assured of a spot in the starting eleven.Peterson’s journey has not been as clear cut as Botha’s. Usually a fringe player in the side, having been around for almost nine years and only playing in 43 ODIs, his critics believed his job was more to carry drinks than responsibility. In this World Cup, however, he has not only pressed the mute button on them but thrown the remote control away, featuring in all three games and been given the most strategic job of the competition so far – opening the bowling against England. Peterson was the most important part of Smith’s trap that was set up for Kevin Pietersen. The plan worked in more than ways than one and at the end of his first spell, Peterson had figures that read 4-2-4-3.In the games against West Indies and England, it was Tahir who was the highest wicket-taker with four scalps, usually getting a crucial breakthrough in the middle order and then helping to mop up the tail. “Imran has been used particularly to strike at different stages of the game, in the powerplays and at the back end when the batsmen are wanting to more attacking. With his variation and difficulty to read, he becomes more effective in taking wickets then,” Adams said. Without that, the striking job has to be done by someone else.This is where the bowlers that have gone unnoticed at this tournament may come back into play in a big way. The quicks, Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, who have been outshone by the spinners, have an opportunity to show they are still here, on a surface that should favour them, especially Steyn and his reverse swing. It could even open the door for Lonwabo Tsotsobe, who was the leading wicket-taker in the home series against India over the summer, and who has yet to have a run in this tournament.It could well be a case of normal service resuming for the South African attack in Nagpur – with the seam bowlers opening and looking to create early breakthroughs. “Robbie also brings a wicket-taking option in those middle overs,” Adams said, a statement that illustrates that the spinners may be back to the task of controlling the innings from a certain point. It will again, have to be carefully thought out, but being the usual way that they go about things, it may not seem so. With the number of options South Africa have it’s something that speaks about the strength of their attack that that they can “build a specific plan with each game they play.”

After Simon Katich’s axing, Australia must find a long-term opening partner for Shane Watson. ESPNcricinfo runs the rule over the candidates who could be given chances in the next couple of years

Brydon Coverdale10-Jun-2011Phillip Hughes, 22 (NSW)
Certainly the first in line, although he failed to have any impact during the final three Tests against England last summer when he replaced the injured Katich. However, the selectors were impressed by his 138 and 93 in the Sheffield Shield final in March, and he also made a century in the last Shield game before the decider. His technique will always be questioned, but twin hundreds in his second Test, in tough conditions in Durban two years ago, show that he can score at the highest level. One of the most fascinating subplots in Australia’s next two Test tours, to Sri Lanka and South Africa, will be whether Hughes can grab his opportunities. If not, he’ll be under enormous pressure come the home summer.Usman Khawaja, 24 (NSW)
A fine young batsman who the selectors want to embrace, Khawaja’s main issue is that he doesn’t open for New South Wales. But then, Katich wasn’t opening for his state when he was thrust into the role in Test cricket in 2008, and nor was Justin Langer when he suddenly became a champion Test opener in 2001. Khawaja’s poise was on display in the Sydney Ashes Test when he replaced the injured Ricky Ponting, and with Ponting likely to stay at No.3, Khawaja would need to drop down or move up if he is to keep his place in the side in the immediate future. In 33 first-class games he has made seven hundreds and averages 47.30, and one way or another, he should become a permanent part of the Test team over the next few years.Shaun Marsh, 27 (WA)
Like Khawaja, Marsh doesn’t typically open for his state in the longer format. Unlike Khawaja, his record at first-class level is a fraction disappointing. For a batsman of Marsh’s talent, six tons in 60 first-class appearances is below par, although last season he managed one century and three fifties in only four games, his season having been disrupted by injury. In Marsh’s favour, he has proven himself capable of performing at international level, and his ODI record is strong. In 2009, the selectors made Watson a Test opener based in part on the fact that he had shown ability against the new ball in one-day internationals. It’s not out of the question that Marsh might win a similar vote of confidence.Nic Maddinson, 19 (NSW)
He might not be ready just yet, but expect Maddinson to put his hand up for higher honours over the next couple of years. In October, he became the youngest New South Wales player to score a century in his first-class debut, and he had added a second ton by the end of the summer. Importantly, both came when he was opening the batting. A highly-talented left-hander, Maddinson could very well become part of Australia’s plans for the 2013 Ashes, and if he thrives during this winter’s Australia A tour to Zimbabwe, there could even be a call-up sooner rather than later.Ed Cowan, 28 (Tas)
A solid domestic performer over the past couple of seasons, Cowan opened for Australia A in Hobart last year during England’s first warm-up match of the Ashes tour. He made thirties in both innings and finished the Australian summer with a century in Tasmania’s Sheffield Shield final victory, which earned him the Man of the Match award. However, he turns 29 next week and is perhaps not the young up-and-comer the selectors want, although if he can manage a huge domestic season in 2011-12, he won’t be out of contention.David Warner, 24 (NSW)
Along with Maddinson, Hughes and Khawaja, Warner is heading to Zimbabwe later this month as part of Australia A’s four-day squad. It’s a big step forward for a man who had been viewed as a short-format slogger, so much so that he made his Twenty20 international debut before he’d even played a first-class match. He still has only seven first-class appearances to his name, but posted a mature century while opening in the second-last match of the Sheffield Shield season. A year ago, Warner playing Test cricket seemed about as likely as Katich making Australia’s Twenty20 team. How times change.And who won’t get the job?

Mark Cosgrove, 26 (Tas): Has time on his side but is unlikely to win a baggy green unless his fitness improves dramatically. Has opened at domestic level and topped the Sheffield Shield run tally last summer.Michael Klinger, 30 (SA): Realistically, has probably missed his chance. Had two huge summers with South Australia but fell away last season when given the state captaincy.Phil Jaques, 32 (NSW): The forgotten man. Three hundreds in 11 Tests was a fine record but he has not been the same after a severe back injury, and at 32 his ship has sailed.Chris Rogers, 33 (Vic): Like Jaques, he has had a taste of Test cricket. But will be 34 in August, and is therefore too old for a selection panel looking to the future.

Nathan Lyon’s emergence from the Adelaide Oval groundstaff to join the ranks of young Australian spin bowlers is a tale drawn from another age

Daniel Brettig03-Jun-2011Les Burdett’s retirement as the Adelaide Oval ground manager had a most unexpected benefit. The man who filled his place on the groundstaff was Nathan Lyon.Plucked from the ranks of those who tend the turf by South Australia’s Twenty20 and now state coach Darren Berry, Lyon made an immediate impression as a classical offspin bowler, in a Redbacks team that hoisted aloft the state’s first domestic trophy since 1996. By the end of the summer he was in the Sheffield Shield team, and he is soon to travel to Zimbabwe with Australia A.Lyon’s is a tale drawn from an earlier age, when first-class cricketers held jobs and were chosen from far more varied stock than the conveyor belt of under-age and “high performance” cricket that typifies the experience of most aspiring players in 2011.As Lyon sees it, his twin careers in bowling and curating gave him the best chance to make something of himself in either discipline. A rapid elevation to the Cricket Australia stable has left him excited but also somewhat breathless. And he has quickly discovered that bowling spin on Australian pitches can be a more thankless task than preparing them.Told in Lyon’s simple words, his journey from Canberra to Adelaide and now the Centre of Excellence in Brisbane is extraordinary. This sort of thing does not happen too often anymore, though the man himself makes sure to preface his story with plenty of self-deprecation.”Oh, it’s nothing exciting,” he told ESPNcricinfo. “I moved to Canberra [from country New South Wales] when I was 18 and took up an apprenticeship at Manuka Oval. I did four years there and just went over there to give cricket a crack with the under-age competition, the Under-17s and -19s for the ACT. I did that and then played a couple of years in the Comets.”Then about 10 months ago a job came up. With Les retiring, they were looking for someone to curate [working under the new oval manager Damian Hough]. I applied for it and had the opportunity with the cricket to train with the Redbacks. I was pretty stoked to be working down there, getting the opportunity to train now and again, just basically be a net bowler and still play for ACT Comets.”But Darren Berry looked at me in the Baby Bash when I was playing it, the Under-23 competition in Melbourne, and he said ‘You’ve been picked in the Redbacks Big Bash squad. Turn up expecting to play, and train hard and see where you get to.'”Where Lyon got to was a key place in the team that won the Big Bash, teaming up with the English legspinner Adil Rashid and the left-arm spinner Aaron O’Brien to spin South Australia to success. The spin trio was Berry’s brainchild, and it reaped handsome results to prove Shane Warne’s theory about the role of slow bowlers in Twenty20 – provided the conditions suit.”Having three spinners, we all got along quite well – that was quite enjoyable, going away with those lads, rooming with ‘the Rash’ was quite a good experience, and we get along quite well, so it was good fun,” Lyon said.”I learned a lot listening to the Rash talk about all the different ways of bowling. But we’re both attacking spin bowlers in our own right, which was a good sign for the Redbacks and really paid off. Darren Berry’s quite intelligent too, the way he kept to a lot of the best spinners in the world, especially Warne, so Darren’s got a lot to offer and I’m really looking forward to working with him for the next few years down in Adelaide.”Lyon’s influences include Warne, whom he “idolised” in his youth, but also the enigmatic figure of Mark Higgs. Flirted with briefly by the Australian selectors a decade ago as a hard-spinning left-arm orthodox and free-wheeling batsman, Higgs had moved from the ACT to New South Wales to South Australia. He eventually found his way back to Canberra, where a young Lyon hung on his advice.”Back in Canberra, working with Mark Higgs was a big thing for myself, working on spin bowling,” Lyon said. “Higgsy’s really tried to help me become an offspinner who hopefully bowls similarly to himself and learns that way. He took me under his wing and really showed me the ropes, especially in the Futures League with the ACT Comets, the whole mental side of spin bowling, but also at training with the technical side and all the different types of balls that a spinner usually has in their equipment bag.”Thus equipped, Lyon caught the eye of most who saw him bowling once he arrived in Adelaide, where he also had the chance to meet and bowl alongside the England offspinner Graeme Swann when the tourists played a pre-Ashes tour match in Adelaide. There are elements of Swann in Lyon, his loop and spin, plus the subtle variation in pace that can cause a batsman to err.”I’m definitely trying to entice the batsman to drive and toss the ball up and give the ball a chance to spin,” Lyon said.Promoted to the SA first-class side, Lyon returned a very promising 4-81 and 2-119 against Western Australia at the WACA in his first match, but he found the going harder in a final trio of three Sheffield Shield fixtures. Having become used to the constraints of the Futures League (the Australian under-age/second XI competition, in which the first innings is capped at 96 overs and the second at 48), Lyon’s arms, legs and fingers were not used to the strain, and his form dipped towards the end.

When Lyon returns to Adelaide Oval after Zimbabwe, it will not be merely as a groundsman but as an SA contract-holder, an Australia A representative and an international traveller. But he retains his place on the groundstaff, and the sense that spin bowling is fickle enough to mean that later in the summer he could just as easily be rolling a fourth day Sheffield Shield pitch as bowling on it.

“First-class cricket’s a lot harder than the Futures League – just the intensity and the sheer talent of all the players you play against,” Lyon said. “It was a big ask and I really enjoyed every moment of it, but it was quite tiring in the end there, playing so much cricket. Not having played and trained at that intensity or that level of standard before is quite interesting and a massive learning curve for myself.”I’ve never done a full pre-season in my life, so I’m working pretty hard in the gym at the moment and getting a few more kilometres in the legs to help me out throughout next season. My main goal is to hopefully play all the Shield games for South Australia, do well and hopefully learn about this first-class cricket environment.”When Lyon returns to Adelaide Oval after Zimbabwe, it will not be merely as a groundsman but as an SA contract-holder, an Australia A representative and an international traveller – he has never ventured further afield than New Zealand, and is inquisitive about Africa. But he retains his place on the groundstaff, and the sense that spin bowling is fickle enough to mean that later in the summer he could just as easily be rolling a fourth-day Sheffield Shield pitch as bowling on it.”That’s the beauty of my job,” Lyon said. “The cricket comes along with the work, so in that respect I’m pretty lucky. ACT cricket were really good to me, gave me enough time off work to concentrate on my cricket, and so have the SACA. My whole goal’s been to play first-class cricket.”

This series might actually be the best way to get the Indian Test team breathing back to normal and ensure that they digest the rest of what awaits them

Sharda Ugra05-Nov-2011When the India v West Indies series, which begins at Feroz Shah Kotla on Sunday, first turned up on the calendar, there was much mumbling and grumbling from the hosts. Sandwiched between the tours of England and Australia, it was given the status of a meaningless shred of lettuce in a double cheeseburger. West Indies are amongst the game’s contemporary strugglers (a fact that is easy to understand but hard to keep writing about), they have not been on a full Test series in India for nine years, during which India toured the Caribbean thrice.To mark the moaning and mourning, the Kotla Test will be the first of three week-day specials, from Sunday to Thursday. Eden Gardens runs Monday to Friday game and Mumbai begins on a Tuesday and ends on a Saturday.Yet, suddenly the lettuce is not quite so meaningless for India – because the first of that burger led to a bout of coughing and choking (no pun intended, honestly) that lasted three months. This series, then, might actually be the best way to get the Test team’s breathing back to normal and ensure that they digest the rest of what awaits them.If England became a case study of the “everything that could go wrong did go wrong” tour for the Indians, the three Tests against West Indies will be a check of whether all their best parts can get back to working order. Had this series not been around, the R&R available for the Indians after the bruises in England would have consisted largely of a few first-class cricket games for every player. West Indies, despite all their recent struggles, are an opposition that will ask far tougher questions.India’s comfort at home is expected to give its injured players a chance to test their recovery, their out of form batsmen a much-needed inner kick of confidence and also a return to even keel, the team’s faith in its ability to create and seize opportunities to win five-day games. For the moment, it has certainly given India’s selectors, a chance to offer proof of their bravado before they actually pick the 15 for Australia.That, however, is weeks ahead. Which is where West Indies want India to be looking, far ahead of them, ahead even of themselves. Captain MS Dhoni was not about to be distracted. When asked about the dramas of England, he said, “There’s no good reason why we should be thinking about England. It is all about looking ahead, that is what we have done.” A few minutes later, a query popped up about the Australia tour, to which he said, “the Australia series is too far away, no point thinking about it.” The immediacy of India’s present involves being up against a team to whom this series is quite completely, the real deal. In the time that West Indies have been kept away from a tour of India, the game’s goalposts itself have shifted. Darren Sammy’s men now know where it’s at.

Sandwiched between the tours of England and Australia, it was given the status of a meaningless shred of lettuce in a double cheeseburger

The Tests against India are not about trial-error-tinkering of any kind. When the captain Sammy called the series, “the biggest” for most of his team, it was not as if he was merely talking the series up. The three Tests will be a demanding examination of West Indies’ capabilities as travellers. Victory in Bangladesh, they know, was enjoyable, welcome, rousing even but not exactly the Normandy landing. Bangladesh is one of only three countries where West Indies have won an overseas Test in the last 10 years, South Africa and Zimbabwe being the other two.The big benefit from the West Indies win in Dhaka is that they travel to India with match-winning performances from some of their inexperienced players, particularly legspinner Devendra Bishoo, and top order batsmen Kirk Edwards and Darren Bravo. They bring with them a frontline bowling attack – Fidel Edwards, Kemar Roach, Ravi Rampaul – with more Tests between them than India’s main bowlers have played. (Ishant Sharma and Pragyan Ojha are still one short of a combined experience of 50 Tests and Dhoni has promised two debuts at the Kotla).Outside the more familiar parameters of an Indian home series – slow, flat wickets, heaps of runs – the series will test the resolve in the younger West Indian batsmen and the strength of India’s bowling bench. Even without the presence of Chris Gayle, a series once glumly considered of as a mundane afterthought, is now full to the brim with individual stories. The question about the Tendulkar Hundred is the least of them, at the moment, even to the man himself. What is of greater interest is whether he will be back to the match fitness that makes him both confident and relaxed. Virender Sehwag’s shoulder has to be worked to full stretch, his collective with Gautam Gambhir needs to get going again. Darren Bravo must prove that he is a worthy successor to Sir Brian Charles. Marlon Samuels must make himself truly valuable to the West Indies again. Ishant must be ready to lead the bowling regardless of Zaheer Khan’s medical condition (for the moment, reported to be improving) and ankle-muncher wickets.This week, Delhi’s winter suddenly set in with foggy skies, weak dawns and early sunsets. It is exactly what the India v West Indies series had promised to be when first announced: bleakly grey, largely uneventful, predictable even. On the eve of India’s first Test at home versus West Indies in almost a decade, a series of revelations await. Who knows, we may even be witness to a burst of winter sunshine.