Our reporters look back on their favourite World Twenty20 matches

Andrew McGlashan17-Sep-2012

England v South Africa, 18th match, World Twenty20 2010

When a batsman takes apart Dale Steyn, however briefly, you know you’re watching something special•Getty ImagesThe warm-up: England-South Africa contests always come with an edge. The reasons why are well documented and the matches rarely disappoint. This was a game with huge significance: a win for either team would virtually assure a semi-final place. Neither side had started the tournament smoothly, with England edging through their group after a rained-off match against Ireland. South Africa, meanwhile, had lost to India and beaten Afghanistan, but the Associate nation had restricted them to 139 for 7. However, an efficient victory against New Zealand at the beginning of the second stage suggested their game was coming together. England, too, had won convincingly against Pakistan. Who would crack first?The match itself: It did not take long for the game to come to life. Johan Botha removed Michael Lumb in the first over but the second-wicket pair of Craig Kieswetter and Kevin Pietersen launched into South Africa’s bowling in a stand worth 94 in ten overs. Pietersen was at his imperious best, winning his head-to-head with Dale Steyn in thrilling style – taking 23 off the eight balls he faced from the fast bowler. Although wickets started to fall, England had a deep batting order and there were useful contributions from Eoin Morgan and Tim Bresnan as they reached a testing 168 for 7.The match swung hugely in England’s favour when South Africa struggled for early momentum with the bat. Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis had added 19 in four overs when Stuart Broad removed Kallis. England were operating finely-tuned tactics in the field and this was a day when they all worked perfectly. Ryan Sidebottom, who had been preferred at the last minute to James Anderson because of the value of a left-arm quick, and Tim Bresnan both conceded less than six-an-over while the spinners, Graeme Swann and Michael Yardy, combined to take five wickets. The pair took wickets in four consecutive overs as South Africa’s top order subsided.Highlight: Kevin Pietersen v Dale Steyn. International cricket at its best. When Twenty20 began there was a suspicion that it would not allow time for duels to develop like in the longer formats. This, however, though a brief contest, was as gripping as you could wish for. Pietersen was off the mark with a crunching straight drive but it was later, when Steyn was brought back for 11th over, that he played the shot of match by dispatching a slower ball onto the roof of the stand and out of ground. This was followed, two balls later, by Pietersen’s ‘flamingo’ flick through midwicket as he reached fifty from 30 balls. Stunning.The aftermatch: Hours after picking up the Man of the Match award, Pietersen was on a plane back to London for the birth of his first child. “It’s my first child, so it’s a hell of an exciting time for me,” he said. “I’ll be dashing across the Atlantic, and hopefully dashing back.”Meanwhile, the ‘C’ word was soon following South Africa around again, when they lost against Pakistan by 11 runs to go out of the tournament. England, though, had the force with them and did not look like losing as they secured their first global silverware. Pietersen, when he returned, flayed Sri Lanka in the semi-final and Australia in the final to be named Man of the Tournament.

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Australia v Pakistan, semi-final, World Twenty20 2010

Michael Hussey resurrected Australia from the dead•Getty ImagesThe warm-up: The two teams could not have moved into the semi-finals in more contrasting styles: Australia were unbeaten – including an opening win against Pakistan – spearheaded by their strong pace attack and muscular batting. It had been the first time Australia had enjoyed consistent success in Twenty20 and there was a feeling that they were finally taking the format seriously. Pakistan, meanwhile, lurched into the knockouts, much like they did in 2009, squeaking in despite losing two of their Super Eight matches. Really, though, anything other than that from them would have been a surprise.The match itself: Was this the ultimate Twenty20 match? Nearly 400 runs, a penultimate-ball result, a late dramatic swing in momentum. Gros Islet is not a big ground and it was filled with 22 sixes. Pakistan had led the charge, the Akmal’s – Kamran and Umar – cracking half-centuries as Australia’s much-vaunted attack was given its first real test. Then David Warner fell second ball of the chase and wickets slipped steadily against a huge asking rate. But Michael Hussey never knows when to give in and launched an amazing assault in the closing overs. When Steve Smith fell Australia needed 48 off 17 balls – Hussey got 37 himself, ending on a phenomenal 60 off 24 balls and carrying Australia across the line.Highlight: The hitting from Hussey was breathtaking. It was the sustained quality of the striking that stood out, under pressure with a place in a final at stake. Saeed Ajmal had been entrusted with final overs during the tournament but, at the crucial time, could not spear the ball under Hussey’s bat and offered hittable length. Still, if any of his shots had gone straight up in the air that would have been it for Australia but he backed himself each time. In a format where matches can quickly fade from the memory, this is one that left a lasting mark.The aftermatch: Amazing game, nightmare to write up. Especially when your laptop picked the night before to blow up and there was a flight to catch to Barbados an hour after the game was due to finish. Hasty writing followed on a colleague’s machine in the departure lounge. Hussey could barely grasp what he had achieved during the press conference while Waqar Younis, the Pakistan coach, just wore a blank expression. After winning a game like that there was a feeling Australia were unstoppable, but a couple of days later they had no answer to England – the other form team of the tournament – during the final in Barbados.

Jacques Rudolph had five of the best years of his career at Headingley and is hoping to make more good memories this week

Firdose Moonda31-Jul-2012If you didn’t know better, you’d think Jacques Rudolph was a Yorkshireman. When he walked into Headingley, the head steward said hello, the receptionist greeted him by name and a staff member asked him when he was coming through to have a chat. He obliged as soon as he was done with his media arrangements.Rudolph behaves like a local in Leeds because for five years, that is what he was. Rudolph and his wife, Elna, lived in the city from 2006 to 2010. It became so much their home away from home that they considered making it their permanent abode and even though they ended up back in South Africa, they maintain close ties with friends they made here.”I share a lot of sentiment with this place,” Rudolph said, with a smile that spoke volumes of his contentment to be back. “I have some fond memories of playing with some really good people and we’ve made some really good friends over here.”A significant part of Rudolph’s fondness for Yorkshire stems from how the club helped him resurrect what was then a flagging career. Rudolph was dropped from the South African side after a poor nine months in 2006, when he made just one score over 50 in 14 innings.In some ways, it was an end to a period that was destined to be tough from its beginnings. Rudolph was only 20 years old when his Test debut was postponed because of politics in 2001. Instead of play in the starting XI against Australia, Percy Sonn, then president of the South African board, insisted that Justin Ontong, a coloured, play instead.Rudolph only got his turn two years later and scored an unbeaten 222 against Bangladesh. Despite four more centuries in the three years that followed, he was shuffled around the batting order so much that he was never allowed to establish himself and his stint eventually became forgettable.Confused and somewhat disillusioned, Rudolph walked away from everything that frustrated him in cricket. He took up a county deal with Yorkshire, an indication that he had abandoned any hope of representing South Africa and tried his best to move on.”When I decided to come over here, I was in a bit of a tough place in my career and I needed to rediscover my love of the game,” he explained. “I wasn’t too sure what my future would hold in South African cricket and at the time, I considered staying here in England.”With a cricket culture that embraced, rather than dictated to him, Rudolph found himself developing as a batsman in ways he did not think were possible. “I’ve made good friendships with people like Anthony McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Michael Vaughan and it was nice for me as a younger player to learn from them,” he said. “I was thrown into international cricket at a very young age and didn’t always know how to cope with things so it was nice to be in surroundings which made it a little bit easier to learn more about myself and become more mature as a batsman.”Rudolph scored over 1,000 runs in the four seasons he played for Yorkshire and enjoyed great success at the club’s home ground as well. There he scored 1,701 runs at an average of 48.60 in 25 matches, including five centuries and a career-best of 228 not out. He became embedded in the club and formed part of its core after Vaughan’s retirement, which is why they offered him a contract extension and expressed great sadness when he asked to be released from it.Conducting a marriage and a life across two continents had simply become too taxing, especially because Elna was trying to kick-start her career as a doctor. “After three or four years we just decided that it’s difficult from a family point of view to stay over here and we decided to go back,” Rudolph explained. “It was tough going back and forth all the time and I had to take my wife’s career into consideration as well.”Success meant Rudolph had re-entered the South African radar. He maintains that he was not contacted by the national selectors – “if players get promises, that’s a very nice position to be in but I don’t think they do” – but re-entered the circuit at a good time. Neil McKenzie had been dropped during the series against Australia in early 2009, Ashwell Prince did not make any secret of his dislike for opening the batting and JP Duminy’s blistering start to his career had stuttered.South Africa needed a stable presence in the line-up and after his first season back in the country, Rudolph proved he was it. “There was a natural progression from there on. Fortunately I scored some runs and here I am today,” he said. The sum he spoke of was 954 runs in the 2010-11 season, at an average of 59.62, with four hundreds and three fifties. He topped the first-class rankings and, by sheer weight of runs, forced his way back in.Rudolph did not succeed as an opener on his comeback and was moved down the order to No. 6 after four Tests. There, he has scored one century and he now has a marginally higher average, 37.90 compared to 36.21, than he did in his first stint as an international cricketer. He insists he has never felt better about his game and that there is much more to come from him.There would be no better place to open the run-scoring tap than his adoptive home, which he says hosted “five of the most memorable years of my career.” He is careful to add “thus far” in case it gives him another treasured memory in the next week.

What you should know about and watch out for before the Ranji Trophy season begins

Sidharth Monga01-Nov-2012Not many Test players follow up an illustrious international career with a season of domestic cricket. VVS Laxman will, for his beloved Hyderabad. This is what domestic cricket needs: a 134-Test veteran, with no personal goal left to achieve, helping his state side do well. Ranji Trophy as a fulfilment in itself and not just a stepping stone to higher things. Usually when playing Tests, Laxman is on the phone with Hyderabad coaches, following the progress of his side helplessly; now he is going to do something about it.Born on October 11, 1972, Sanjay Bangar is the oldest man in this year’s Ranji Trophy. Shitanshu Kotak, born eight days later, is the only player providing Bangar company on the other side of 40. Sairaj Bahutule, captaining Vidarbha this year, will turn 40 on January 6.Unmukt Chand and Harmeet Singh came back as stars from the Under-19 World Cup. Mumbai’s Harmeet had a stamp of approval from Ian Chappell, and Delhi’s Chand a reputation of being a big-match player. Both will be the youngsters to watch out for. Harmeet, though, hasn’t had an auspicious start to the season: after eight wickets for 278 runs in Irani and Duleep matches, he is out with injury for at least one match.Wasim Jaffer and Amol Muzumdar had been mainstays for Mumbai for ages. Now they are rivals, not only playing for different teams, but also within touching distance of each other as leading run-getters in Ranji Trophy. With Jaffer away on leave for Haj, Muzumdar is almost certain to erase the 83-run lead, but this could be a proper contest once Jaffer is back.Muzumdar is already the most-capped player, his 123 Ranji matches tie with Rajinder Goel. Bangar, at 117, is in hot pursuit.Laxman’s first opposing captain will be Harbhajan Singh. He is stranded on 98 Tests and has watched R Ashwin and Pragyan Ojha usurp him as Test spinners. In the last domestic season, Harbhajan took two wickets for 204 runs and then had an unfortunate injury a day after the team for Australia was announced. He is one of the rest now, and can do worse than emulating Laxman, who scored 1432 and 1420 runs in 1999-2000 and 2000-01 to dare the selectors to not pick him.If he gets a game for Assam, the 26-year-old left-arm quick Hokaito Zhimomi could become the first first-class cricketer from Nagaland. Zhimomi comes from Sangtamtila village of Dimapur district. He played his junior and club cricket in Kolkata, representing Dalhousie Athletic Club. He was also a part of the extended Kolkata Knight Riders in 2009. He has now moved to Assam.Mumbai’s Akhil Herwadkar, who turned 18 on October 31, is the youngest player this year.Every player from India’s last Test XI is playing the season’s first Ranji match except for two. Cheteshwar Pujara won’t be playing because Saurashtra are not playing in the first round, and he will use that time to represent MCA XI against the touring English. MS Dhoni is the only one who has taken a break. He last played a first-class match for Jharkhand in 2004-05, before his Test debut.A total of 103 first-class matches will be played in less than three months.Big transfers and movements. Aakash Chopra, double Ranji champion with Rajasthan, has moved to Himachal Pradesh. Muzumdar has gone from Assam to Andhra. Former India player Venugopal Rao has left Andhra for Gujarat.Ajit Agarkar for Mumbai, Harbhajan for Punjab, Laxman for Hyderabad and Shahbaz Nadeem for Jharkhand are some of the new captains to watch out for.Railways have moved base from the storied Karnail Singh Stadium in Delhi to East Coast Railway Sports Association Stadium in Bhubaneshwar. The testing pitch, which was banned for a year after it was too testing in a match against Saurashtra last season, will be missed.TP Sudhindra, last year’s leading wicket-taker, won’t play any part in this season after having been trapped in a sting operation exposing alleged corruption.Yere Goud and Sourav Ganguly are the big retirees this year. Sunil Joshi, who didn’t play a game last season, also made the formal announcement this year. Goud ended with 119 caps, and Joshi 117.Starting November 2, watch out for the Ranji Trophy Live blog on match days

Despite being the leading wicket-taker in 2012, Rangana Herath has been repeatedly brought on rather late in the innings by Mahela Jayawardene, and the captain has not attacked enough with him

Andrew Fernando at the SCG04-Jan-2013In Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy ‘Waiting for Godot’, the play’s two protagonists await the arrival of a man named Godot, whom they feel they know and must arrive soon. In reality, neither has ever actually had much to do with Godot, and ultimately, he never comes. For large periods of day two in Sydney, Sri Lanka lingered for magic to materialise, but their passivity did not yield the results they required to become ascendant in the Test. It is a strategy they have persisted with in the last two months despite its failure to deliver a winning position, and at the SCG, Sri Lanka watched and waited until the game began to slip away.Mahela Jayawardene’s conservatism might have been understandable had it only applied to his wayward fast bowlers in the morning session. But while he kept the field up during David Warner’s early salvo, his best bowler was fitted with an unflattering field upon introduction, when the scoring rate had already slowed. Rangana Herath had four men on the fence when he came on immediately after lunch; three on the left-hand batsman’s leg side, and one at deep point. Unsurprisingly, Warner and Phillip Hughes were content to progress risk-free, taking particular joy in the 90-degree arc left vacant for their pushes, square on the off side. Sri Lanka effectively banked on the pair making a mistake, but when the error came in the 35th over, Australia were already well placed to take a sizeable first innings lead.That Herath did not bowl in the first session was itself an odd act of inaction on Jayawardene’s part. In the second innings in Hobart, Herath proved his ability to break through when Australia sought quick runs, yet when Warner and Hughes were doing exactly that in the first session, the leading wicket-taker of 2012 was deemed unnecessary. Even if he did not strike, Herath has been Sri Lanka’s most dependable squeezer since he became a regular in the Test side, but Jayawardene did not stray from his game plan, no matter how ineffective his inexperienced pace attack was at stemming the flow of runs. If there is a queen in the battlements, what sense is it to pursue an advantage with a handful of pawns?Even Tillakaratne Dilshan was tried before Herath finally saw the ball, and it had been so in Hobart as well, where Herath was the sixth to be bowled in both innings. In Melbourne, where Sri Lanka were defending a staggeringly small total, their match-winner came on when Australia had already moved to within 40 of the visitor’s score.”I had a little chat with Mahela about that, and it was a quite a tough call,” coach Graham Ford said at the end of the day’s play. “He really felt that the offspin would cause more of a problem with the left-handers at the crease, and he went with that option. I think it was very close to going with a double spin option in that session, but in the end, we decided to give the young seamers time to settle. They were nervous to start with, and Mahela felt that giving them a reasonable spell would get them into their work.”If it was really believed that Dilshan was more likely to take the wicket of a left-hand batsman than the man Jayawardene believes is the second-best bowler he has ever played with, the decision to leave Suraj Randiv out of the playing XI becomes a baffling one. Dilshan is better than your run-off-the-mill part-time tweaker perhaps, but he is no allrounder. And if Sri Lanka rate offspin so highly against left-hand batsmen, choosing their premier off-break bowler on a dry pitch is not far from a no-brainer against an opposition carrying five southpaws out of their top seven. Instead, both their second string seamers, who average above 55, were picked ahead of Randiv. Sri Lanka already trail Australia desperately in skill and mastery of the conditions. If they continue to give away ground tactically as well, another sound defeat may await them in the next three days.Before the series, Mahela Jayawardene had hinted that Sri Lanka’s plan of attack in Australia would hinge on parsimony and patience because they lacked bowlers capable of venom and verve. It was a fair strategy perhaps, and his assessment of his resources was not far wrong, but Sri Lanka’s bowling situation has changed drastically. Jayawardene is now down to seamoptions number 4, 5 and 6, and his batting unit is only slightly less depleted. If there was ever a time to take a risk with a daring field or an outlandish innovation it is now, when his plight appears so dire. Sri Lanka will bemoan their poor fortune at having failed to send Michael Clarke back when he was trapped in front first ball, or grassed a catch off Matthew Wade at short leg, but it is Rangana Herath who created both chances, and by failing to give him every chance of breaking through, they allow the opposition to coast towards powerful positions.Australia may not be the world’s best team at present, but as even South Africa discovered, it still takes a special performance buttressed by a positive attitude to beat them on their own soil. In Waiting for Godot, Vladmir and Estragon remained eternally unfulfilled. If Sri Lanka’sinertia continues into day three and the second innings, that maiden victory in Australia will remain a dream.

The Women’s World Cup faced several barriers during its three-week duration; administrative apathy in trying to bring people to the ground was, perhaps, the saddest of them

Abhishek Purohit19-Feb-2013A day before the Women’s World Cup final, the Oval Maidan in south Mumbai was the venue of tens of usual weekend cricket games. Among the hundreds of boys and men, close to the walkway that cuts through the central part of the ground, was a group of girls playing underarm cricket. They were colleagues preparing for an office tournament, and clearly most of them were beginners. Being the only women in a sea of men, they did draw a few curious onlookers. Seeing their struggles to put bat to ball, one person remarked sarcastically in Hindi, ” [How will they play?]”This attitude of conservative, patriarchal India was one of the many barriers the Women’s World Cup came up against during its three-week duration in the country’s commercial capital. When you doubt the ability of women to play cricket, you can’t possibly be inclined to bother about a World Cup being played at the Brabourne Stadium, a five-minute walk from Oval Maidan.Not that the host board, the BCCI, and the owner of the tournament, the ICC, were particularly bothered about the near-empty stadium. Even if you walked past the Cricket Club of India, you would be forgiven if you didn’t realise it was the premier venue of the World Cup. There was a lone, unimaginative signboard with a few details of the event just above the boundary wall. Even if you had spotted it – and it would have taken a rather keen eye to – you might as well have been reading the technical details of the latest road repairs tender from the local public works department.Not, it must be said, that the women of the city themselves were particularly interested. Once the IPL starts in April, though, they will be attending in large numbers, ready to scream out the names of “star” players, Indian and foreign, because the yelling DJ at the ground will order them to. As, it must be said, will the men.In September 2012, large cutouts of players greeted arriving travellers in the immigration area of Colombo’s Bandaranaike airport. They were screaming out that the World Twenty20 was in town. There were similar cutouts at major traffic junctions in the city. In Mumbai, there was absolutely nothing of that sort. One understands public advertising space in Mumbai is expensive, but when you have decided to host the tournament in a busy city like Mumbai, and not in some smaller, more curious place, where it would be easier to attract people, you need to realise you can’t get publicity at the rates prevalent in Cuttack.And sorry, “social media buzz” alone just does not work. The real world is still brick-and-mortar, and in the real world, the organisers were found short of putting their money where ostensibly their heart is – in developing and promoting women’s cricket.An ex-colleague at ESPNcricinfo, a man who still covers the odd cricket story, had no clue there was a women’s World Cup on, let alone that some of the games were being played at two grounds in the suburb of Bandra, where he lives.Considered to be India’s most woman-friendly city and also the historical heartland of Indian cricket, Mumbai certainly let women’s cricket down.

Publicity by way of media interviews costs nothing, but the BCCI forbade that for the Indian team, barring the mandatory player appearances at press conferences. Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami are greats of the women’s game but how will an already indifferent public learn more about them if they are not allowed to speak at a time when they are most likely to draw some attention?

Of course, India’s early exit further condemned the tournament to indifference, but even for games involving the hosts, only the upper tier of Brabourne Stadium’s North Stand was close to being full. If that is your idea of tremendous response, yes, there was tremendous response to India’s matches.How expensive would it have been to have a few enthusiastic volunteers stand at Churchgate, the suburban railway terminus nearby, which hundreds of thousands pass through daily, with placards, handouts, what have you, to let people know there was a World Cup on, a five-minute walk away? How expensive would it have been to replicate that in Fort, Nariman Point, Ballard Pier, commercial districts nearby, frequented by thousands of office-goers? How expensive would it have been to replicate that at other high-traffic spots across the city?How expensive would it have been to have some sort of music being played inside the ground to create some semblance of an atmosphere? How expensive would it have been to have the national anthems played for all games, instead of only for the final?It appears that more than being short of money, the ICC was short of intent and will.Of course, the BCCI, as always, had to be a step ahead of the ICC. The tournament was shunted out of Wankhede Stadium because the Mumbai Cricket Association wanted to stage the Ranji Trophy final there. The board that runs the most lucrative T20 league in the world says “it is not all about the money” when it comes to paying its women cricketers better than mere peanuts. Providing facilities at its academies and grounds to the women is talked about not as a prerequisite but a handout.Publicity by way of media interviews costs nothing, though, but the BCCI forbade those for the Indian team, barring the mandatory player appearances at press conferences. The official line was that, apparently, there were so many interview requests from mediapersons that the India players would not have had time to practise and prepare for their games. Australian players and support staff gave interviews stretching up to half an hour each. Their preparation did not seem to be hampered much. They won the World Cup. Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami are greats of the women’s game but how will an already indifferent public learn more about them if they are not allowed to speak at a time when they are most likely to draw some attention?There is no surety crowds would have filled stadiums if the ICC had undertaken an outdoor advertising blitz. India has little sporting culture and most of what masquerades as cricket culture is, in fact, star worship of the male players. But at least it wouldn’t have felt like a tournament that had to be got out of the way.

Kieron Pollard showed composure, common sense and courage during his century against Australia in Sydney; if he can more regularly bat as he did in that game, a Test call-up cannot be far off

Tony Cozier12-Feb-2013It is a question that still has to be adequately answered five years after Kieron Pollard entered international cricket in the 2007 World Cup, aged 19, a massive unit with a justifiable reputation as an awesome hitter.Literally on the strength of his quick-fire demolition of bowling in the most abbreviated format, he has become a Twenty20 superstar, a multi-millionaire from his contracts in five such domestic leagues, along with his comparatively modest paydays from West Indies.Yet Pollard has repeatedly stated that he won’t be satisfied until he gets the chance to prove himself in Test cricket, with its unrestricted number of overs and field settings, and its changing conditions over five days that examine technique, character and stamina in a way that, for all its fast-moving excitement and popularity, 20 overs-cricket cannot.The intermediate version, the 50-overs-an-innings one-day international, offers a more accurate guide for judging his ultimate desire. If he can more regularly bat as he did in the fourth ODI against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground on Friday, his promotion to a Test team presently without the injured Marlon Samuels, its major batsman of 2012, and with a dearth of other capable candidates, cannot be far off.His athletic fielding (typified by his extraordinary, leaping, one-handed boundary catch in the Canberra match on Wednesday) and his handy medium-pace bowling add to his value. The two Tests against a modest Zimbabwe next month would be as good a chance as any to check his red-ball value.The features of his unbeaten 109 were composure, common sense and courage. It could not prevent another West Indies defeat; it did restore some pride for a team increasingly short of it.It was his third ODI hundred following those against India in Chennai in December 2011 and Australia in St Lucia last March. No other West Indies batsman has managed as many in the same time span (Samuels has two).The problem is that, as so often is the case, his latest effort was counterbalanced by the method of his dismissals in the first two matches in Australia. In the first, his crocked bat was in no position to keep out Mitchell Starc’s third ball; in the second, his approach was typically Twenty20: a failed attempt to hoist his third ball for six that ended in long-off’s lap.By Sydney, though, the Twenty20 cobwebs had been swept away.Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse for West Indies, they did within the first 20 overs in Friday’s game. Once more destroyed by the swing and hostility of a left-arm fast bowler by the name of Mitchell, this one Johnson rather than their earlier tormentor Starc — who was given the match off — the West Indies were 17 for 3 after eight overs.Just to add to the confusing name game, Johnson sent Johnson Charles’ off-stump somersaulting third ball. Kieron Powell, who had a rewarding introduction to Australia (92 retired hurt, 11, 83 and 47 in his previous matches), skewed a skier to cover from the back of the bat; Darren Bravo, his body a target for the Australians all series, fended a wicked bouncer to slip. Tentative, the elder Bravo was lbw in off-spinner Glenn Maxwell’s first over. In his first match of the series, Ben Cutting, the latest in the string of strapping young fast bowlers Australia presently possess as the West Indies once did, quickly took care of Narsingh Deonarine and Devon Thomas to slip catches.At 55 for 6, with an erratic order to follow, another humiliating total to match the 70 in the first match at the WACA loomed. At this point, Pollard took charge with a maturity not always evident.He was prepared for the inevitable bodyline barrage but the chest guard was uncomfortable and he did away with it. A short leg was placed (they might have watched Guyana’s similar tactic in the Caribbean Twenty20), Johnson twice had him diving for cover and Cutting landed a blow to the unprotected thumb on the left glove that required lengthy attention from physio CJ Clark.Still Pollard soldiered on, undistracted from his goal of reviving the faltering innings, as he did with help from Darren Sammy, the free-hitting Andre Russell and Sunil Narine (who could rank higher than No. 10 with more attention to his left-handed batting).Statistics reveal the measure of Pollard’s necessary restraint — 95 balls with four fours to 50, seven fours and two sixes in 59 off the next 41 balls. His contribution was 92 off the 165 added by the last four wickets.Significantly, Pollard embarked on his previous two hundreds with the innings in shambles; 78 for 5 that his 119 pushed to 233 against India, 146 for 5 against Australia that became 294 for 7, mainly through his 104.As much as the selectors should be heartened by such performances, they will be concerned over inconsistency (as with every other batsman save Shivnarine Chanderpaul) and whether his hunger for Test cricket overrides the riches on offer in the Twenty20 leagues.These are the questions they need to settle prior to the Zimbabwe series.

Belonging to the increasingly dying tribe of the artist, was VVS Laxman. Very Very Special, indeed, and a saviour of India on many occasions

VJ Subbu25-Feb-2013Strokes in cricket, nowadays, can be broadly tethered to two camps.One, the butcher’s camp: savage, brutal, marauding, bordering on the malevolent. When the leather is greeted by such a willow, it feels assaulted. And if it’s a case where the shot is mistimed and the ball still reaches the boundary because it is muscled so, the leather feels guilty that it may have betrayed the game’s interest.The other, the artist’s camp: here the ball is caressed, cajoled, stroked … Like Renaissance master Michelangelo reporting for duty at the Sistine Chapel. The field placements are petty challenges to the master at the crease. He unleashes his strokes; a little wristy glance here, a deft flick there, and by the time his work for the day is done there isn’t much difference between his wagon wheel and Michelangelo’s frescos.Belonging to this increasingly dying tribe of the artist, was VVS Laxman. Very Very Special, indeed.My first memory of Laxman is also the most enduring among many Indian cricket fans. I was in high school, taking the ‘all important’ board exams in the March of 2001. The mighty Australian cricket team was touring India and on a great run of wins. India had lost the first Test in Mumbai and in under three full days. The second Test was headed for a similar script and then Laxman conjured that 281 at Eden. The magic was not just limited to the pitch.Before Laxman’s knock, we didn’t care too much about the score. But after Laxman’s classic, I remember students coming out of exam halls shouting, “Hey, what’s the score?” And they were not talking academics; you walk out of supposedly the most important exam of your life, thirsty for a Test match score! Laxman had just got the younger generation hooked to the game’s most pristine format. Dravid and Laxman brought a sense of calm, hitherto unknown, to the Indian middle-order. We celebrated this by pulling off puns and one-liners such as: there is Laxman, so reLAX-MAN.That innings impacted not just a series but played catalyst to shaping mindsets. Indian cricketers became more assertive and Indian fans, less cynical. It is up there with Sunny’s heroics in the Caribbean and the 1983 triumph by Kapil’s devils. It was as good as a resuscitation of self-belief that a country’s sport could get.Blokes in cricket, nowadays, can be divided between two camps.One, the chest-beating kind: they find themselves in the limelight and seem to like it there, but sometimes it’s cast on them for all the wrong reasons.Belonging to the other, are the silent type: they mind their business, their conduct unsullied as the white flannels they don on the opening morning of a Test match. Soft-spoken gentlemen, capable of saving the team the blushes or leading them to triumph from the jaws of defeat, even if they are never credited their due.I’m afraid this breed is heading for extinction and their art, dying. For now, I see cricketers with great techniques and talent, but sport is not always what you play but who you are. This is where we’ll miss the Kumbles, the Dravids, the Laxmans. And somehow that thought leaves me feeling aged, even though I’m just flirting with thirty.

By Keith King, South Korea

Nikita Bastian25-Feb-2013By Keith King, South KoreaNew Zealand is such a small country (many cities have more people than New Zealand’s four million-odd inhabitants) that, in many ways, is insignificant on the world stage. Sport is one avenue through which New Zealand and New Zealanders have asserted themselves on the world stage. For a country its size, New Zealand has done remarkably well in many sporting codes, including rugby and rugby league, netball and softball.For those that would argue (with some justification) that these are mere fringe sports in a global sense, New Zealanders have won both tennis and golf majors, made the semi-finals of the basketball World Championships and made the soccer World Cup finals twice (admittedly, they haven’t won a game yet once they have reached them). At the Summer Olympics, New Zealand has won 86 medals (which surprisingly enough is four times the number India, a country with a much greater population, has managed to win).Arguably, though, the one sport at which New Zealanders are not as competitive as they should be, despite taking it seriously, is cricket. Since New Zealand’s introduction to Test cricket in 1930, the New Zealand team (they weren’t known as the Black Caps until much later) has usually been at the bottom or near the bottom of the heap, the worst team going round. It took 26 years and 45 tests for New Zealand to register their first Test win. Australia wouldn’t even play their neighbours for a 27-year gap between 1946 and 1973, which must be rated as the ultimate cricketing cold shoulder.New Zealand has a win/loss ratio of 0.47, the lowest of all test teams barring Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (India has the next lowest win/loss ratio of 0.77, showing that it has not always been the powerhouse it is now). A brief respite was found with the introduction of Sri Lanka to Test cricket (the whipping boys of the 80s and early 90s) and then a more permanent one with the introduction of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, who now seem to be the only teams New Zealand can reliably beat in test matches.New Zealand, of course, has had famous victories, including the one in Hobart over Australia recently, where Doug Bracewell played his second match-winning hand in three Tests. Tests matches are often won on the strength of one innings or one spell, and great players obviously come up with match-turning moments more often than average ones. This led to the observation that New Zealand’s lack of success may be due to the fact that there has been a lack of great players, the type of player that can single-handedly change a match.The Australian team of the early 2000s could claim five or six greats, playing together at the same time. By contrast, only two New Zealanders would push for consideration in an all time World XI. One of them, Clarrie Grimmett, didn’t even play for New Zealand, instead leaving New Zealand as a largely unrecognised and unheralded youngster who eventually made his name in the baggy green of Australia, becoming the first player to take more than 200 Test wickets. It would be a stretch to claim Grimmett, the great Australian leg-spinner, for New Zealand.The other great, of course, is Richard Hadlee, who stands head and shoulders above any of his countrymen. He is a true cricketing great. When Hadlee was at his peak, in the 1980s until his retirement in 1990, New Zealand actually won more games than they lost. He was New Zealand’s greatest match-winner.Hadlee spearheaded a solid bowling line-up, that was described somewhat harshly but with some justification by Graham Gooch thus: it was like facing the “World XI at one end, and Ilford Second XI at the other”. Do any other New Zealanders aside from Hadlee (counting Grimmett as a New Zealander, while true, would be disingenuous in the extreme) qualify as greats?In an attempt to arrive at an answer, first of all, I started with the time honoured equations: a great batsman averages 50.00 or more, a great bowler under 25.00. No batsmen from New Zealand who has played 20 or more matches has averaged more than 50.00. Martin Crowe has the highest average of 45.00, and for a decade (1985-1994), he was considered one of the world’s premier batsmen (he averaged almost 54.00 during this period, the highest for any batsmen who played more than 20 tests in this era).Supporters of Crowe would argue that he was a great batsman and anyone who saw him bat during the 1991-92 World Cup would be likely to agree. Crowe had all the shots (or at least all the shots of that era), possessed a classical technique, was adept off both the front and back foot and was a deep thinker of the game. He was hampered both at the start and at the end of his career – at the start by being rushed into the New Zealand set-up before he was ready (a common occurrence in a country where true talent is so rare) and at the end by a crumbling body that he tried unsuccessfully to push past.Crowe is without doubt New Zealand’s best ever batsmen and as such may be the only New Zealand batsman to be genuinely described as great. There’s been several very good batsmen, like Glenn Turner, Martin Donnelly, Stewie Dempster, Bert Sutcliffe and Stephen Fleming. Turner is probably the next best, averaging 44 in Tests and the owner of 100 first-class centuries. However, a lot of his finest work was done at the first-class level and he missed six years of international cricket at the peak of his powers after clashes with administration (ironically, given his hard-nosed approach to player management during his stints as the coach of the national side).Bert Sutcliffe was a majestic player and played in a weak New Zealand team (he was never on the winning side in 42 Tests) but his average of 40.00 qualifies him only as a New Zealand great, not a great of the game. Fleming was a special player, hindered by a poor ratio of converting 50s into 100s, whose average of 40.00 ultimately meant he underperformed at the Test level. Dempster (15 innings) and Donnelly (12 innings) didn’t play enough Test cricket to be regarded greats, although both had formidable first-class records.On the bowling front, only three New Zealand bowlers average lesser than 25.00, Hadlee being one of them. The other two are potential greats who both had question marks beside their names, due mainly to their longevity.The first is Shane Bond, New Zealand’s best quick bowler since Hadlee, a bowler good enough to have the third-best strike-rate of all bowlers (50 wickets minimum) in Tests – he got a wicket every 38 balls – and, by the same criterion, the fifth-best strike-rate of all time in ODIs. He was on the winning side 10 out of his 18 matches, an astonishing strike-rate for a New Zealand player and a statistic that probably shows his value to the team. Unfortunately, injuries tarnished his legacy and his career probably falls into the category of unfulfilled, rather than great.The other bowler is Jack Cowie, whose career was interrupted by the World War II, a player who only played nine Tests but played them outstandingly well (45 wickets with a strike-rate of 45.00 and an average of just under 22.00). He was praised, at that time, as an outstanding bowler, and in the words of Wisden “had he been an Australian, he might have been termed a wonder of the age”.There are of course allrounders to consider. Allrounders have a special place in New Zealand cricket’s history. Being a cricketing country that shows fight, one more dependent on grit more than ability, New Zealand have often had players who can bat and bowl, reliant on them to do the jobs that other countries would leave to specialists. Apart from Hadlee, three allrounders come to mind: John Reid, Daniel Vettori and Chris Cairns.Reid, who played from the mid-40s to the mid-60s, was a giant of the New Zealand game but his average in both batting and bowling of 33-odd shows someone who was competent at both skills but a true great at neither. Vettori is someone similar; he has shouldered New Zealand’s bowling attack for more than a decade and has done well with the bat. However, one feels that he while he dominates the game in New Zealand, he is not a true great of the international game.Cairns overcame the folk hero legacy of his father and was, for a time, the world’s premier allrounder – one capable of shredding attacks and also capable of bowling wicket-taking balls on a regular basis (his strike-rate was an outstanding 53.00). His talent was so obvious that, at times, it felt like he had underachieved. His stats (batting average 33.00, bowling average 29.00) suggest otherwise and are comparable to Kapil Dev (batting average 31.00, bowling average 29.00) or even Ian Botham (batting average 33.00, bowling average 28.00), and are better than Andrew Flintoff’s (batting average 31.00, bowling average 32.00). Cairns has a valid claim to be one of the game’s great allrounders. What possibly counts against him is a failure to have an outstanding series against Australia, the dominant team of his era, à la Flintoff in the 2005 Ashes.This started as an exercise to try and show that New Zealand has produced more than one great player. Martin Crowe is a probable, Cowie and Bond are both would-have-beens and Cairns is, maybe, under-appreciated. An obvious question would be why has New Zealand only produced one unquestionably great player in 80 years of test cricket?Do all the best athletes in Zealand play rugby, leaving the scraps of the sporting gene pool for cricket? Is it because of the temperamental nature of our climate, the poor pitches that have blighted the first-class game (thankfully, this has improved over the past decade). Is it just representative of our small population base? Is it lower expectations?In New Zealand cricket, the equation for greatness would seem to be a batting average higher than 40.00 and for bowling, an average of 30.00 and below – much less demanding numbers than the standard in other countries. Whatever it is, there’s still the hope that a Williamson, a Taylor or a Bracewell can swell the ranks of genuinely great New Zealand players.

India had more skill and determination than Australia in the conditions in Chennai and Hyderabad and the results reflected that

Sharda Ugra05-Mar-2013After the relief of Chennai, comes the emphatic joy of Hyderabad. India will believe they have the number of the Australians in this series, which cannot be lost from here.When one team scores 500-plus, margins of defeat are likely to be large, but the Australian batting performance, would have indicated to the Indians that the opposition batsmen are, for the moment, in a word, shot.If the Australian response to the deficit of 266 runs was, as many are calling it, un-Australian in its lack of resolve, the Indian reaction arrived at a kindly conclusion – that the Australian second innings batting lacked skill rather than intent. In unfamiliar and difficult conditions, it takes equal amounts of skill and determination, not one or the other, to make contests possible.Hyderabad was not, it must be said, a contest. India were able to bring their skills to work in familiar conditions and to make it count. Along with a Test victory, MS Dhoni’s elevation to the position of India’s most successful Test captain and a 2-0 series lead, there were other less discernible or quantifiable gains that can be considered.The key hand played by their newer and younger players – Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Ravindra Jadeja, five Tests between them – and the return of M Vijay to the front line. While Cheteshwar Pujara and R Ashwin have been making consistent progress in their performances in home series, Bhuvneshwar, Jadeja and Vijay give the selectors and the team management more options than they had three months ago, when England turned the tables on the Indians.Jadeja and Bhuvneshwar offer two sets of alternative all-round options. Jadeja’s role is being treated as a very limited one – that of spin-bowling allrounder in conditions like Chennai and Hyderabad. Yet if he is able to, a la Ravi Shastri, make more of his batting than he has in this series, India can count on his skills in conditions where playing a fifth bowler might make sense, and not just in India. Jadeja’s skills on slow, turning wickets could be made to work outside India too. India have not won a series in Sri Lanka in 20 years, where it’s slow and turning too, and pitches in the West Indies have certainly not been juiced up recently.Jadeja is a radically different fifth bowling option for India, a slot that has been filled by many forms and shapes in the past. In the last 15 years, though, it is the medium-pace variety of Sourav Ganguly and Sanjay Bangar that has been brought into play, Bangar playing a vital role opening the batting for India in Headingley 2002 and taking two second-innings wickets. Players with double skills and resolve are not easily found. Bhuvneshwar’s biggest asset is that he is able to bowl tight, disciplined medium-pace in conditions that do not help his brand of bowling because those are the only conditions he knows.Bhuvneshwar happens to be a like-for-like copy of Praveen Kumar, the rare Indian performance in the tear-jerker that was England 2011. India return to England in a little more than a year and, in Bhuvneshwar, they are presented with a possibility. Between now and mid-2014, enhancing his batting skills for conditions found outside the subcontinent could perhaps end up being an example of genuine “informed player management” for India.In the buzz of victory came Gautam Gambhir’s tweet: “Smells like revenge. Half way there boys. remember Perth? Remember Adelaide? Two more, come on.” Just like India believe Chennai and Hyderabad were victories of more skill over less skill and more determination over less, so indeed were Adelaide and Perth. Ideally, real vengeance means travelling back to Adelaide and Perth and returning the favours of 2012. Talk of payback at the moment remains mere advertising.The last two Tests will be played in conditions that are at least expected to be different to those in Chennai and Hyderabad. Mohali’s reputation as India’s ‘quickest’ wicket has outlived the truth by several seasons. The Kotla in Delhi can offer a 5-o’clock-stubble of grass but it is, as Delhi captain Shikhar Dhawan will confirm, only a means to confuse the batsmen. It is believed the Australian fast bowlers may show up in force but as long as their batsman don’t, the series will remain one-sided.

In television studios across the country, the IPL came in for the harshest criticism from anchors and talking heads. On the ground in Hyderabad, people were determined to have a good time at the game

Abhishek Purohit in Hyderabad17-May-2013Standing outside gate number three of the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad, Ramesh Sharma fretted. He and two of his friends, probably in their late twenties, had painstakingly procured passes from one of the sponsors’ quota for the IPL game between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals. The three were waiting for a fourth friend to arrive so that they could all go in together and at least “listen to some songs” till the game started, but the friend was stuck in the swarm of cars and bikes heading towards the stadium. Chatting randomly to pass time, someone mentioned bookies and how they made a killing on the tiny time lag between actual play and live broadcast. Then someone mentioned the latest spot-fixing controversy to hit the IPL, and pointed to the thousands of people streaming towards the stadium.”Nobody cares that much,” Ramesh said, with a helpless, yet accepting, tone. “People know it happens. It happens all the time. It happened in 2000 on a huge scale at the international level. What resulted [from it]? Did people let go of the game? In fact, the following has only exploded over the years after that.”And this is the IPL. This is pure entertainment, everything else be damned. People come to the ground and pay money to be entertained for three hours. The tournament has become too big now to suffer.”Heads suddenly turned. A team bus had been spotted coming down the road leading to the stadium. It turned out to be Rajasthan Royals. Three of the team’s players, including a Test cricketer and a double World Cup winner, had been detained by police for alleged spot-fixing a day ago. This was the moment. Had all these fans turned up to cheer just for their home franchise? How would they react at the sight of a team that, only a day before, had questions being asked about its players and matches?Hundreds of people jumped as one. They raised their hands, clapped and cheered. Their evening had begun well. Wherever you looked, you saw normalcy. Well, IPL-time normalcy. Boys asked strangers in hope, ” (Do you have any extra ticket?)” Boys sold tickets at double the printed rates metres away from policemen. Middle-aged ladies had their cheeks painted in their choice team’s colours. Groups of girls laughed and waved team flags. Children tripped over their feet in excitement. Mothers tripped, trying to keep pace with their children. Fathers sternly led their little boys into the stands. A childish smile was on almost everyone’s faces. Take that, spot-fixing. IPL fans seemingly don’t care. Nothing comes in the way of their entertainment on a Friday night.”Not really. Why should it be?” a young woman said, rather dismissively, when asked if her support for Royals – she was carrying their flag – would be affected by the controversy. Almost angrily, she whizzed past, her mother behind her.The match began. The DJ worked the nearly-packed stadium into a frenzy without much effort. People chomped on their food, waved their flags and screamed almost every other minute at the slightest provocation.

Children tripped over their feet in excitement. Mothers tripped, trying to keep pace with their children. Fathers sternly led their little boys into the stands. A childish smile was on almost everyone’s faces. Take that, spot-fixing. IPL fans seemingly don’t care. Nothing comes in the way of their entertainment on a Friday night.

“Cricket is a religion,” Kiran Babu, a marketing manager, said, as he stood next to the food stalls with his son, possibly 12 or 13, and two glasses of soft drink in his hands. “People can take anything. For instance, these overpriced colas and chips. That is what enables looters to loot. And there are all kinds of them, including some players, who are fleecing people in the name of cricket.”But I think people, especially women and children, come to the ground for the sheer experience. It is very hard for the general public to get tickets for international games. There are so few available. Even my last international game was a decade ago, when I saw New Zealand play at the old Lal Bahadur Shastri Stadium in the city. At least during the IPL, people can experience cricket at the ground.”Different people have different reasons why they need those experiences. Some parents are dragged to the ground by demanding children. Some want to give their children a good time. For many couples, the IPL experience may compete with going to the multiplex to catch a movie. With its expensive tickets, the IPL comes at a steep price, and people at the Uppal stadium didn’t seem to let things such as spot-fixing controversies dampen their desire to have a blast.”We had booked tickets in a large group for this game many days ago,” said Manish, who had come with his wife and several other friends and their spouses. “How could we have known this was to happen? And even then, what is our mistake? Why should we give up our enjoyment? Frankly, these things keep happening and don’t really surprise me anymore.””You have to also consider that this was a big game for Sunrisers,” Sreejit, another spectator, said. “And the fans had come expecting a lot from their home team. This match was sold out days in advance.”Probably, this was to be expected. After looking at the ESPNcricinfo entry in the register, on arrival in Hyderabad earlier in the day, the man at the reception counter asked immediately, “Can you please arrange some tickets for me? I want to take my kids to the game.” He only smiled in a matter-of-fact way when spot-fixing was mentioned. On the way back to the hotel after the match, the autorickshaw driver was eager to know which team had won. He was glad to know Sunrisers had, and wanted them to qualify for the playoffs.”I am telling you, some massive, unheard of corruption is going to be revealed one day soon in Indian cricket,” Ramesh warned suddenly. “But will that impact the following of the game in the country? I don’t think so. Now where is our friend? I really did not want to miss out on the early music.”Unknown to Ramesh, there was one lone voice of protest in the stadium. “Sreesanth, U Suck,” read a placard held up by a thin boy barely into his teens. People noticed it, it was too big to be missed. Some acknowledged it. Some cracked a few fixing jokes, and then returned to the entertainment. One tried to get hold of the boy, but he had disappeared into the screaming thousands. In television studios across the country, the IPL came in for the harshest criticism from anchors and talking heads. On the ground, it was business as usual.