Unprecedented scoring rates have been the calling card of the Stokes-McCullum regime

Alan Gardner31-May-2023We don’t know exactly the moment Bazball was born. Was England’s approach to Test cricket discussed in the first meeting between the team’s new coach and captain, Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes? Perhaps we can trace it to the run chase at Trent Bridge, a dizzying 50-over romp to 299 in the second Test of last summer. Or maybe it was a twinkle in McCullum’s eye back when he was still an all-format player.We do know that Friday will mark exactly a year since the pair came together to revive England’s Test fortunes, starting with the home series against New Zealand in June 2022. Never mind the philosophical debates – and the fact that England, and McCullum in particular, don’t like the zeitgeist-surfing nickname for their style of play – it seems a good time to check in on the revolution, with England having won 10 out of 12 Tests and preparing for six more across the next two months, including an eagerly anticipated Ashes series.Stokes the fire
Whatever the effect of Stokes’ captaincy, things couldn’t really have got much worse. England had won one Test in 17 under Joe Root, going back to the winter of 2020-21, and after the failed “red-ball reset” in the Caribbean were ready for a complete reboot.The beauty of Test cricket is that is always more than one way to win – and there is still a place for old-fashioned, copper-bottomed batting, as New Zealand showed when turning the Basin Reserve Test on its head in February, thereby handing Stokes only his second defeat. Australia have already made noises to suggest they won’t be lining up to accept a pasting. Whether Bazball can maintain trajectory into its second year will not be in England’s hands alone.

It is not the average score at a venue. It’s not the scoring rate. And it’s not the perfect winning score

Anantha Narayanan15-Mar-2019

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On a sluggish wicket, he scored 79 off 84 to keep India on track in the chase and showed he can still thrive under pressure

Hemant Brar19-Jan-20222:00

Manjrekar: India must tweak their line-up to make middle order ‘wholesome’

“Champions thrive under pressure.” That was Shikhar Dhawan’s message to India’s Under-19 cricketers ahead of their World Cup campaign in the West Indies. Having struck three centuries in the 2004 edition of the tournament, Dhawan knows what it takes to perform there. But he could have used the same words to motivate himself too.At 36, Dhawan is in the twilight of his career. Last July, he led a second-string Indian side to Sri Lanka and hoped to utilise the tour to make his place “stronger” for the 2021 T20 World Cup. Dhawan has stepped up his T20 game in the last couple of years, but the selectors preferred Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul and Ishan Kishan as their openers for the global tournament.Related

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One justification behind Dhawan’s exclusion could have been that a top three of Rohit, Dhawan and Virat Kohli makes the T20I side too anchor heavy. When Chetan Sharma, the chairman of selectors, was asked about it, he said, “He is a very important player for us… The need of the hour was that we wanted to look at other players while we give rest to Dhawan.”Make of it what you will but the bottom line is ODIs is now the only format Dhawan finds a place in. But in stand-in captain Rahul’s words, Dhawan was “in a great space” coming into the South Africa series.”He’s a senior player, he understands exactly what is expected of him,” Rahul said on the eve of the first ODI. “He has come out here and is really having fun, really enjoying his cricket. For me as a captain, it will just be about trying to keep him in that space, and give him that confidence and freedom to go out there and do what he has been doing for so many years.”On Wednesday, Dhawan did exactly that. Chasing 297 on a sluggish wicket, he scored 79 off 84 to keep India on track. South Africa eventually won by a comfortable margin but Dhawan’s knock once again underlined his value in the ODI side and showed he can still thrive under pressure.Shikhar Dhawan lays into a drive•AFP/Getty ImagesWith the pitch helping spinners and the ball not coming on to the bat, South Africa opened the bowling with part-time offspinner Aiden Markram. While Rahul played Markram cautiously, Dhawan skipped down the track and lofted him over mid-on.From the other end, he hit Marco Jansen to the square boundary on either side of the wicket. That meant despite Rahul scoring 12 off 17 balls, India’s scoring rate hovered around five.Keshav Maharaj was introduced in the tenth over but started with a wayward delivery down the leg side and Dhawan enchased that too for four.Luck was on his side as well. In the second over of the innings, he got inside edge off Jansen but the ball missed the stumps and went for four. Later, when he was on 43, he played back to a fuller delivery from Maharaj and got an outside edge but with no slip in place, it fetched him another boundary.That meant Dhawan reached his fifty off just 51 balls without taking much risk. Along with Kohli, he added 92 off 102 balls for the second wicket to put India in a commanding position.But with the target still 159 runs away, Maharaj got one to turn sharply from outside off. Dhawan was shaping for a cut and was bowled. Kohli fell soon after, which allowed South Africa to wrest back control.

A repeat of chaotic glory like in 1992 and 2017, or a well-oiled team falling short like in 1999 and 2011?

Osman Samiuddin05-Oct-20232:59

Middle order and spin department a concern for Pakistan

Which one is it going to be?Each day that we get closer to the start of any global ICC event, it feels like the most relevant question to ask of Pakistan. Sure, it’s a slightly flippant way to look at it, a little ludicrous even, because this is not how you assess the chances of a team at a world event. Not in this day and age anyway. It’s always the fiddly things you look at, the SWOT analysis – the depth and composition of a squad, recent form, experience, all the stuff that actually wins and loses matches.And of course, all of it is terribly important, and we will get to it. But I know I want to put this out there and I’m pretty sure you do as well, so let’s just get it out of the way.Which one is this going to be?Related

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Which legendary and/or infamous previous Pakistan campaign will this World Cup play out like the most? Are we in for the despair and elation vortex of ’92, ’09 and ’17, with title surges forged from total dirges? The arrival of an unheralded kid, fast bowlers fast bowling, stars starring, Pakistan Pakistaning?Or should we prepare for the unnervingly smooth(ish) ride but knockout traumas of ’99, ’07 (the T20 World Cup obviously, because why would you even want to invoke the other global tournament that year?) and ’11? Pakistan being slightly unPakistan, playing to plans and patterns, maximising skill and talent and OMG they’re going to win this like peak Australia and… oh this feels like South Africa trauma.On the surface, this side doesn’t seem given to the swings and roundabouts of the first type of campaign, or perhaps that’s because of the temptation to see them in the image of their leader. This is Babar Azam’s time and it is Babar Azam’s team and Babar Azam is an unflinchingly equable man, in personality and in performance. History is yet to record an unequable public utterance from his mouth, just as it is yet to record (at least since he broke through in Tests back in 2018) a sustained, unequable run of form. His sides have been ranked No. 1 in ODIs, they have made the semi-finals and the final of the last two T20 World Cups. This side, with a settled core, does consistency, and evenness of performance.Which would leave the second kind of campaign (the 2021 T20 World Cup for example), except… except that at the last ODI World Cup they did the nearly-92, marginally mistiming their surge and little bits of the universe not playing ball in conspiring to get them through to the last four. Six members of that squad are here. Last year, at the T20 World Cup, they did a hybrid version (and you thought you’d heard the last of that word for a while), where a 1992-esque run ended in a final trauma. And remember four members of this squad were part of the 2017 Champions Trophy win, the most ’92 tournament win they have had outside of 1992.But the team is in a weird place right now, and it’s impossible to predict which way they might go. Until less than a month ago, just before the second game against India in the Asia Cup, they looked a proper threat for this World Cup. They had as good a pace attack as any, a top-heavy but successful batting order, six matchwinners, and a fielding unit about which nothing much needed to be said – because it was perfectly efficient.2:52

Shastri and Harbhajan predict their World Cup semi-finalists

Since that game, though – and how much that reserve day their board fought for has cost them – it feels like a different side, a little less sure of itself, a little more in flux. Those little fiddly details, a key player not firing, another one missing, holes that still need plugging elsewhere, are all looming slightly larger now and more urgently, a day out from the start of their campaign.Forget which one this will be and maybe start panicking that it may be neither?Well not just yet because it is worth putting some of the details into perspective. Fakhar Zaman’s loss of form, for instance, is not, strictly speaking, a loss of form. For a start, as recently as April he hit three hundreds in consecutive ODIs. Since then, in ten innings, he is averaging 19 but he’s only been out in single figures twice; he has five scores between 20 and 33. A plummeting strike rate during that run suggests doubt has crept in, but the sense remains that if he can get himself to some kind of a landmark, say a scratchy, lukewarm 50, there could be riches on the other side.In any case, Pakistan will need to show faith because he is the wildcard in what is a pretty straight-laced if high-functioning top order. It’s not rocket science: Fakhar’s the man who turns 280-300 into 330-350. Pakistan have scored 330-plus 12 times in ODIs since Fakhar’s debut in 2017. He’s hit four hundreds and three fifties in those games, averaging 92.30 with a strike rate of 114.80.On the other hand, putting Shadab Khan’s recent form into perspective is not going to lessen that panic. Not least because over the last couple of years, he has been the absolute barometer of Pakistan’s white-ball teams. If he is having a good day in the field, Pakistan soar. A bad one, as at the Asia Cup, and Pakistan flounder. He bowled as poorly in that tournament as he has at any stage in his career, but even if it is unlikely he will be that poor again, the most striking impression was that his bowling has perhaps not evolved in the 50-over format in the same way it has in T20s.In large part, put that down to cricket’s wonky scheduling in these pandemic years. If Shadab has not grown, it could be because he’s barely played any ODI cricket: only 23 matches since the last World Cup. Tom Latham has played 17 this year alone. Shadab himself played nearly twice as many ODIs in the first bit of his career, two years from his debut to the 2019 World Cup. But after that World Cup he’s played nearly six times as many T20s.Has Fakhar Zaman really lost his form?•Associated PressThe conundrum for Pakistan is that he is, by default, their lead spinner without being the kind of specialist, wicket-taking spinner – at least not yet – that almost every other successful side possesses. He’d make for a great second spinner except Pakistan have rarely played a specialist spinner alongside him. Usama Mir, who is in the squad, is the only one since the last World Cup and he’s only played three ODIs alongside Shadab. All of which is why Abrar Ahmed could have been a big, but very tantalising, punt.The steadier uptick in Shadab’s batting is why he should play though. He’s gotten relatively more opportunities to bat since the last World Cup and though his average has only inched up (25.92 to 26.46) the strike rate has bolted (68.63 to 102.84). Plus, he makes it to the side for his fielding alone.For the loss of Naseem Shah, it’s difficult to keep any perspective. It is a deep wound for Pakistan, made deeper still by persistent muttering that it was preventable, that he had been complaining of shoulder pain and in need of rest. Shaheen Shah Afridi is the bigger star but, across an entire innings and across formats, Naseem has been the bigger bowler this year. Mohammad Wasim and Hasan Ali are capable, and their good days can be electric, but hope currently outweighs expectation with both.Anyway, the optimist will see the signs they want to see from this. Waqar Younis on the eve of the you-know-which World Cup. Poor warm-up games back then as well. A little bit of disarray on the field. Plenty off it back at Gaddafi Stadium. Two new balls, the same format as that World Cup (with one extra team), you know this drill.And it’s ok to admit this is the campaign we’re all rooting for, even if it means there will be pain before the possibility of joy. Even if it feels churlish, at this stage, to point out that with the cakes that keep on coming and all that Hyderabadi biryani, it’s clearly not Ramadan. Which, IYKYK.

The Women’s T20 Challenge opener pits the two teams to have combined to win all the editions so far, and promises big entertainment

Annesha Ghosh23-May-20223:26

Harmanpreet: Difficult to get balance right in a short tournament

Who are playing
Defending champions Trailblazers, led by Smriti Mandhana, take on Harmanpreet Kaur’s Supernovas, two-time champions in what is a three-season tournament. Play begins at 7:30pm local time at the MCA Stadium in Pune.Head to head
Since locking horns in the inaugural edition, held as a one-off exhibition game in Mumbai in 2018, the two sides have faced each other a further four times, including in two finals. While Supernovas rode Harmanpreet’s 37-ball 51 to win the title clash in 2019, Mandhana’s 49-ball 68 gave Trailblazers the trophy in Sharjah in 2020.How the squads stack up
Supernovas: Harmanpreet Kaur (capt), Taniya Bhatia (vice-capt), Alana King*, Ayushi Soni, Chandu V, Deandra Dottin*, Harleen Deol, Meghna Singh, Monica Patel, Muskan Malik, Pooja Vastrakar, Priya Punia, Rashi Kanojia, Sophie Ecclestone*, Sune Luus*, Mansi Joshi.Trailblazers: Smriti Mandhana (capt), Poonam Yadav (vice-capt), Arundhati Reddy, Hayley Matthews*, Jemimah Rodrigues, Priyanka Priyadarshini, Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Renuka Singh, Richa Ghosh, S Meghana, Saiqa Ishaque, Salma Khatun*, Sharmin Akhter*, Sophia Dunkley*, Sujata Mallik, Shradda Pokharkar.
2:15

Mandhana on Shraddha: Really looking forward to how she progresses

Form guide of key players
Smriti Mandhana: The opening batter struck one half-century in her 236 runs in eight innings at the recent Senior Women’s T20 Trophy, where she led Maharashtra to a runners-up finish. Her highest score in the tournament, 84 against Railways in the final in Surat, came in a losing cause.Earlier this year, she missed the one-off T20I against New Zealand, the only game in the format India have played this year, because of her delayed arrival and quarantine in the country. Before that, in the 2021-22 WBBL that ended in November, Mandhana, playing her first season for Sydney Thunder, smashed a 64-ball 114, the joint-highest score in the competition’s history.Harmanpreet Kaur: The India T20I captain scored 121 runs, two half-centuries included, in three innings for Punjab in the domestic T20 tournament. Against New Zealand, she made a 13-ball 12. She had a prolific WBBL last season, and was named the Player of the Tournament after topping the batting and bowling charts for Melbourne Renegades. She made 406 runs at a strike rate of 130.96, including three fifty-plus scores and 18 sixes, during Renegades’ dominant run to the playoffs.She reinvented herself into a powerplay bowler there, dealing precious blows at the death, taking 15 wickets at 7.45 with her fingerspin.Sophie Ecclestone is in the building, and no batter is safe•BCCIWhat to look forward to
Sophie Ecclestone vs the rest of the world: The No. 1 bowler in the women’s game comes off a blockbuster FairBreak Invitational and ODI World Cup, finishing atop the wicket charts in both tournaments. Having played for Mandhana’s Trailblazers since her Women’s T20 Challenge debut in 2019, the England and Supernovas left-arm spinner could well have serious questions to ask of her former captain (as she likely will of anyone given her red-hot form). Also, if Ecclestone’s newly cultivated boundary-clearing prowess is anything to go by, on view in ample measure at the nets on Sunday, she could be a threat with the bat, too.Deandra Dottin vs the lesser mortals: Harmanpreet, just let the World Boss from Barbados bowl the 20th over already! Regardless, spectators at the MCA Stadium, be on your feet when Dottin is batting because you might have to do a lot of catching in the stands. In between, you can just marvel at how acrobatic she is on the field.Salma Khatun applying the choke: Don’t be surprised if the Bangladesh and Trailblazers offspinner picks up wickets in a heap for not too many. Her knack for taking wickets in a pile almost finished Australia off in the ODI World Cup in March-April. The only glimmer of hope for Supernovas is they are unlikely to slot in a left-hander in their top five.

Deepti Sharma, India’s 26-year-old “senior”, opens up on the progress of the women’s team and the unfinished business at global events

Ashish Pant19-Sep-20232:55

Deepti: ‘I enjoy the finisher’s role because it puts responsibility on you’

It’s an early August afternoon in Bengaluru. The sun is trying to peek through the clouds, and a gentle breeze is around – the famous Bengaluru weather is showing off. Meanwhile, the infamous peak-hour traffic has just about eased. Away from all the hustle, WPL franchise UP Warriorz are holding a week-long off-season camp at a private sports complex in the eastern suburbs of the city.That a women’s cricket team is conducting a camp of this kind is a rarity in India. It merely underscores the importance of having a professional structure, which makes opportunities trickle down to the grass roots.More than a decade ago, Deepti Sharma was a starry-eyed kid trying to make her way up the ranks, a path strewn with hurdles, the lack of opportunities and exposure foremost among those. Today, Deepti is a veteran trying to help unearth young talent at a scouting trial, apart from fine-tuning her own skills, which have made her a key member of the India team.Related

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Deepti is at the front and centre of the camp, where the coaches have set out specific tasks for the players. Deepti, who was signed at the auction ahead of the inaugural season for INR 2.6 crore (US $312,000 approx.), may have been back in rainy Agra training on cement surfaces. Instead, she’s going through the paces, both fitness- and cricket-wise. Be it timed sprints or precision-specific range-hitting topped with a technical breakdown of what she did right and what she didn’t.Such critical feedback from coaches in women’s domestic cricket, heavily dominated by the star-studded Railways team, is rare. Which is why the camp is already a massive step-up for the players who have assembled.As lunch time nears, Deepti gears up for a fresh round of match simulation. Many starry-eyed youngsters, who have been called up for trials, are keenly watching the team’s vice-captain. There’s a sense that everyone involved is keen to see what she does.Of course, the Warriorz are looking to get out as much as they can from the week-long camp. For Deepti, personally, this is a welcome opportunity to push herself hard ahead of a busy few months, having not played much since the WPL. All India have had in the interim is a short tour of Bangladesh, a low-scoring series marred by talk about the surfaces and the fracas over the umpiring.It starts with the Asian Games in Hangzhou, where India have secured direct entry to the quarter-finals beginning September 21. Having fallen short of the final hurdle several times, India have an opportunity to push for gold and establish themselves as the Asian powerhouses they are. It will set them up nicely for incoming tours from England and Australia in the coming months.Though just 26, Deepti Sharma is already something of a veteran•BCBDeepti has been part of all the recent heartbreaks, including T20 World Cup final at the MCG in front of 86,174 spectators. “Earlier, we never used to even qualify [for big-tournament finals]. Now we qualify, play the semi-finals, finals… it’s not easy,” Deepti tells ESPNcricinfo. “The more matches we play, the more experience we gain. We are falling short by a small margin. I am hopeful that we will cross the line very soon.”The experience bit is pertinent, because that is exactly what the WPL aims to achieve: to give Indian players a platform to train and play with the world’s best, adopt best practices and introduce them to modern training methods. This could go a long way towards bridging the gap from being second best to best.”We were waiting for so long for this [WPL], and it finally started. It has been great, experience-wise,” Deepti says. “We have played against some of the [overseas] players for so long, and now we are playing in the same team. It feels nice – different, because everyone backs each other. That is one good thing. You just need that support from the team. I feel this will go to a completely different level and it’s going to be a lot of fun going forward.”Deepti is only 26, but already a senior in Indian cricket. She made her ODI debut as a 17-year-old in 2014 against South Africa before getting her T20I cap 14 months later against Australia. No other Indian bowler has picked more wickets than Deepti since her debut in T20Is (105) and ODIs (93). In February this year, she became the first Indian bowler across men’s and women’s cricket to get to 100 T20I wickets.Deepti was part of the team that lost the 2020 T20 World Cup final•Getty ImagesDeepti’s numbers with the bat are decent too – 1912 runs in 74 ODI innings at 34.76 and 955 runs in 68 T20I innings at 24.48. What makes Deepti a perfect fit in any line-up is her versatility. She can bowl with the new ball and at the death in T20s and is often used to choke the opposition in the middle overs of an ODI. With the bat, Deepti has batted in every position from No. 1 to No. 9 in ODIs and No. 3 to No. 9 in T20Is. It’s this prospect of taking up new challenges that drives her.”Whatever the situation, if have to bowl or bat I like taking up the challenges in front of me,” she says. “These challenges help me get my mind stronger. It’s not easy to play in any condition, but if your preparation is strong, you can overcome any challenge.”I do my practice sessions in a way that I remain mentally strong, so that whatever I have in front of me gets easier.”

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Hrishikesh Kanitkar, who will be travelling to Hangzhou as the head coach of the women’s team, had recently spoken about how Deepti keeps her “training levels very high”. This is one aspect Deepti says she focuses on keenly.”The mindset I have during a match, the same mindset I try and carry when I practice,” she says. “I have been trying to increase the number of balls that I face during a practice session. If I used to face 500 balls, now I am trying to up that by 100 to 150 so that I get better at my shot-making.”My preparation is always keeping in mind a match scenario. I keep practicing with the new ball, old ball, semi-new ball. Those sessions help me during a match. In a match situation, I can be asked to bowl at any given time, so I try to keep myself ready and try to replicate whatever I have done in practice in a match scenario.”Deepti Sharma celebrates a wicket during the WPL; her batting during the tournament, however, was below-par•BCCIWhile Deepti has had success with the ball, she had a below-par WPL with the bat, scoring just 90 runs in eight innings at a strike rate of 83.33. Her overall T20 record too points to her having underachieved with the bat. In 107 innings, Deepti has hit just two fifties, and her career strike rate reads 105.71.With the likes of Shreyanka Patil, whose stocks have risen rapidly in recent months, breathing down her neck, Deepti knows her T20 numbers with the bat need improvement. She has recently been the designated finisher for both India and her franchise. And she needs to work on her power-hitting, which she reckons she has been doing at training.”Power-hitting is an ongoing part of my practice routine,” she says. “I have started practicing with heavy balls. I make sure when I am facing the bowling machine, I try to step out and practice my lofted shots.”The balls are a bit heavier than the normal Kookaburra balls. So when you practice, say, ten balls with the heavier ones and then switch back to the Kookaburra, the shot-making becomes a bit easier.”I like playing as a finisher as it requires more responsibility and finishing a game for your team is a feeling on a totally different level. There is so much positivity within you when you finish a game for the team.”The next T20 World Cup is still a year away and Deepti remains a key part of India’s plans for now. The Asian Games presents a good chance for her to maximise her potential and build on her off-season gains. It could set her and India up nicely for the next several months.

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