All posts by h716a5.icu

Paul van Meekeren suggests Dutch warm-ups for other teams in bid to get more international cricket for Netherlands

Andrew McGlashan27-Oct-20221:13

Paul van Meekeren: ‘We’ve got guys who pay to go to their own training’

Netherlands pace bowler Paul van Meekeren has called on the major cricketing nations to use Netherlands as a stopping-off point on their way to England tours, as a way of helping boost the amount of international cricket available to them.The volume of bilateral cricket Netherlands will play against the leading teams in the coming years is uncertain with the discontinuation of the ODI Super League, which has guaranteed them 24 matches in the current cycle. They have played 15 in 2022, their most for a calendar year, including home series against West Indies, England and Pakistan.Related

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While all the games this year have been lost they came close to beating Pakistan, and captain Scott Edwards previously talked about the importance of the Super League in helping develop depth in Netherlands cricket. Van Meekeren believes their competitiveness on the field and the facilities available would make it an ideal lead-in to an England series rather than playing county sides.”There’s no reason why Test teams can’t come to Holland instead of playing the counties,” he said, speaking after the match against India at the SCG. “We’ve got the facilities. I think this year hopefully we showed how good the wickets are in Holland. I think the practice wickets were outstanding back home, and we played some competitive games.”We can be as competitive as playing the warm-up game against other counties. Why not come to Holland for ten days before they travel to England?”Paul van Meekeren had KL Rahul lbw on Netherlands’ big day•Getty ImagesOn the field in Sydney, the result went the expected way, with India coming out winners by 56 runs in the first T20I between the teams, and just the third international meeting overall, but with the ball Netherlands made them work hard.India were kept to 32 for 1 in the powerplay – van Meekeren removed KL Rahul lbw, although replays showed it was missing – and it should have been two wickets in the first six but Tim Pringle shelled Rohit Sharma. After 10 overs it was 67 for 1, and that many only because the 10th over cost 14 runs. Predictably with wickets in hand India accelerated, but they were kept to 26 fewer than South Africa had been by Bangladesh on the same surface although van Meekeren had mixed emotions.”If we’re being honest to ourselves, [we would have liked] probably a little bit less, especially after the first 10 overs,” he said. “Obviously, we didn’t take the wickets that we wanted to, which gives them the freedom to play as they did at the back [end].”Yeah, we’re being hard on ourselves. I guess you can’t miss by a centimetre…you’re in trouble. Bowling against the best players in the world, even if you miss a little bit, you just go.”I personally did it three times, and I’m sure some of the other bowlers might feel the same about their own bowling. But I think, firstly, I’m very proud about how we went about it. Them being one down [at the halfway stage], it could have been a lot more.”We could have panicked and lost our heads, but I think all the bowlers stayed very clear on what they wanted to do. Sometimes you get it wrong and you’re in trouble, and sometimes you execute and it’s only a dot ball no matter how good they are.”On the overall experience of playing India in front of 36,000 spectators, van Meekeren said it would take a little time to process.”I said this would be a day I’d tell my grandkids about, and it is playing against India, but at the end of the day you are playing against 11 other men, they aren’t gods or anything. You just compete men to men and that’s what we tried to do today.”You try to block the noise out. You watch it on TV about 100 times and just to be there is very special. I think in the moment I probably didn’t realise it as much, and it will probably sink in in the next 24 hours.”

His towering frame and ability to generate steep bounce could give NZ’s attack a point of difference in Pakistan and India

Deivarayan Muthu08-Jan-2023Henry Shipley often imagined himself as Shane Bond during Christmas Day clashes with his cousins when he was a kid. Having earned his maiden New Zealand call-up, Shipley, now 26, is on the verge of becoming a Black Cap himself.While Shipley can generate sharp pace, he is more of a bowler in the mould of Kyle Jamieson than Bond. His towering frame (1.96 metres) and ability to produce steep bounce often draws comparisons with Jamieson. It’s something that even selector Gavin Larsen has acknowledged.”Bounce is the key for him, given his height, but equally the reason he gets given the new ball at times for Canterbury is he has the ability to move the ball in the air,” Larsen had said after selecting Shipley in the New Zealand squads for the tours of Pakistan and India. “Anyone that can bowl à la Kyle Jamieson with that sort of a height, swinging in and getting bounce, the potential is there that he will be a handful.”In the absence of Jamieson, who is still recovering from a back injury, Shipley is expected to provide New Zealand’s attack with a potent point of difference on what could be flat tracks in Pakistan and India. Bowling to the likes of Babar Azam and Virat Kohli could unnerve a rookie, but Shipley plans to shut out the outside noise and just do his job.Related

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“I think it will just be cool to say [post-tour that] I’ve been over there, and not be too worried about what happens I guess,” Shipley said. “We want to come away with some wins and hopefully win both series, but it’s [about] just getting over there, getting your feet on the ground and doing your job that’s at hand.”Shipley’s national call-up is reward for his remarkable consistency with the ball on the easy-paced hit-through-the-line one-day pitches and small grounds in New Zealand in domestic cricket. In November, he took career-best List A figures of 6 for 40, including a hat-trick in the Ford Trophy opener for Canterbury against Wellington. It was the first hat-trick for Canterbury and only fourth overall in 52 years of the tournament.Shipley continued his rich form in the Ford Trophy and is currently the second-highest wicket-taker in the tournament, with 12 strikes in five games at an economy rate of 4.20. Earlier in last season’s 20-over Super Smash, he had emerged as the top wicket-taker, with 18 scalps in 11 games at an economy rate of 7.25 in Canterbury’s run to the final, where they lost to Northern Districts.Shipley’s Canterbury coach Peter Fulton has had a hand in his progress. “Fulty is a pretty straight up character,” Shipley said. “He tells you what you need to do to get better and he can be pretty black and white. When you don’t have that clarity, it can be quite hard to understand what it is that’s going to get you to the next level. He simplified it from the very beginning and kind of took my thoughts away from it and let me do my work at the domestic level.”Working with international players like Tom Latham and Daryl Mitchell at Canterbury has also helped Shipley. He has now reunited with them in Pakistan.”I don’t know [on what has clicked for him recently]. I think there can be some individual success but on the back of a team performance as well,” Shipley said. “I’ve been quite lucky with Canterbury, and we’ve had a lot of success in all three formats and the guys around you pave the way for the individual side of things.”Shipley hails from a strong cricketing background. His uncle Mark Priest was a stalwart for Canterbury and even played 21 international games for New Zealand while his father James is a “cricket tragic”.”My old man is a bit of a cricket tragic, and my uncle played a bit of cricket for New Zealand and Canterbury,” Shipley said. “So that [cricket] was always around me growing up and I’ve always been involved with Canterbury Country, Greendale and Darefield [clubs]. I guess it was something not I didn’t have a choice, but it was put in front of me from an early age and I kind of just took it from there.”However, the path to the top hasn’t been smooth. Shipley has been on New Zealand’s radar for a while, but multiple injuries have derailed his career. The injuries bothered him so much that at one point he stopped enjoying his cricket. Shipley has now learnt to embrace setbacks and just wants to cherish every moment on the field.Henry Shipley has been at the forefront of Canterbury’s recent success•Getty Images”I guess I’m never really looking to play safe,” Shipley said. “I think injuries are just a part of it and I guess they’re frustrating whenever they pop up and I’m sure they’re going to pop up in the future. It’s one of those things where you try and get on the park and stay there and enjoy it as long as you can.”For a while there, I was probably so conscious of that side of the game that I never really just enjoyed playing and perhaps something in the last 24 months has changed and the attitude has been to just enjoy being out there each game.”Shipley can also give it a good whack with the bat, as his T20 strike rate of 137 indicates. Larsen backs Shipley to become a genuine allrounder.”He’s a player who has been on our radar for a few years now – probably five-six years,” Larsen said. “He has performed really well over the past couple of years. I consider him to be a genuine allrounder. He’s tall and he’s a power-hitter. So, he offers a really good all-round skillset. Genuine allrounders are like gold dust in cricket and we would like to think he will develop his skills on this tour and push hard for us.”Trent Boult, Jimmy Neesham and Martin Guptill have all turned down their New Zealand contracts to become T20 freelancers, but the domestic system is still robust enough to feed promising talents like Shipley to the national side. A strong early impression in Pakistan and India could potentially propel Shipley into New Zealand’s World Cup plans.

On the day, he made batting look ridiculously easy and brought up his sixth century of the year

Sidharth Monga15-May-20231:34

Bishop on Gill and Titans’ explosive powerplay batting

On a pitch that others managed 219 runs off 182 legal deliveries for the loss of 17 wickets – an average of 13 and a strike-rate of 120, Shubman Gill scored 101 off just 58 balls. Eight of Gill’s team-mates failed to reach double figures. Clearly Gill rose above the conditions while scoring his maiden IPL hundred.What’s more remarkable is he hit only one six even though he got to his fifty in just 22 balls. It is one of less than a handful of T20 fifties that are quick and without a single six. This is one of only three IPL hundreds with one or fewer sixes, and one of 18 in all T20 cricket. Only three of them have been quicker.Related

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Even the fours that Gill hit were bereft of risk. This innings featured the second-highest percentage of in-control runs for an IPL hundred, behind only KL Rahul’s 103 not out against Mumbai Indians last year.This was then a rare innings, but it is not hard to see why. The match was being played on a pitch that hasn’t been used in this IPL. Both sides expected, and extracted, movement with the new ball. In fact, Sunrisers Hyderabad began with two slips in place, and Gujarat Titans did the same a few balls into their bowling innings.Except that SRH came up against one of the best all-format batters who could take a toll of the Test-match lengths they were trying to bowl. Also, as Aiden Markram said, the ball stopped swinging for them earlier than expected, and the attacking fields and lengths allowed Gill to find gaps for fours. Only one of the 13 fours by Gill was hit over the infield. Another one was hit straight to a fielder who misfielded. The remaining 11 he put in gaps.ESPNcricinfo LtdSo you put in a batter adept at finding gaps, show him those gaps by putting fielders in attacking positions, and then also give him loose balls. What else do you expect? You rarely see a batter tucking a ball in front of square on the leg side and taking four for it in T20s. That is a sight reserved for Test cricket. That’s because sides are good at defending where they are bowling in T20s. In this match, you saw it with Gill against more than one bowler precisely because they didn’t quite bowl to their fields.A high control percentage and the ability to hit the ball where fielders aren’t have set Gill apart in most cricket. That’s the hallmark of all excellent batters. However, perhaps there was a small something lacking in the second half of the knock, which turned out to be inconsequential in this match but won’t always be. Once the bowlers got it right and started bowling to their fields, Gill took no risks. His last 19 balls at the wicket brought just 24 runs.It’s possible Titans asked others to hit out while Gill set up to play through the innings, but in the end they did fall 20-30 short of what they looked good for. Perhaps it is Gill’s fault that he made it look so ridiculously easy in the early going that people expected too much. Perhaps it is Gill’s fault that he put too high a price on his wicket when the bowlers began to bowl to their fields.It doesn’t matter at the moment on a night when Gill brought up his sixth century of the year – five in international cricket, one in the IPL. Three of those have come in Ahmedabad where Titans are guaranteed a match after ensuring a top-two finish on the table. Ahmedabad is Gill’s place, 2023 is Gill’s time; little else seems to matter right now.

On Tuesday, in a match India had to win, he seemingly batted without any burden of pressure to script a fairly comprehensive win

Deivarayan Muthu09-Aug-20231:53

‘When on song, Suryakumar Yadav a nightmare for bowlers’ – Wasim Jaffer

Suryakumar Yadav cycled through two shots when he faced Akeal Hosein in the second over of India’s chase on Tuesday. He had originally got down low to sweep Hosein, but the left-arm fingerspinner spotted it, shortened his length and hid it wide of off stump. Despite one knee on the floor, Suryakumar manufactured enough strength from his upper body to scythe the ball flat and hard over point.It was a portent for the carnage that was to follow.Suryakumar went on to smash 83 off 44 balls on a slow, two-paced Providence pitch that was designed to negate most batters. But Suryakumar is not most batters. West Indies’ bowling wasn’t particularly bad, and the pitch kept getting slower, but he made the attack look pedestrian, and made Providence look like Wankhede.Related

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After Suryakumar had manufactured a boundary on the off side from him, Hosein adjusted his line and attacked the stumps. But Suryakumar was ready with the flat sweep, and picked him away – both in front of and behind square. Just like that, Suryakumar broke Hosein’s rhythm.He then went about dismantling the best-laid plans of the seamers too. Obed McCoy had drawn a mis-hit from Yashasvi Jaiswal when he banged the ball into the pitch, but when he tried to dig one into the pitch against Suryakumar, the batter swivelled back, held his shape for long enough, and hooked the ball over midwicket for four. This forced McCoy to dart an on-pace full one on the stumps, which was launched over his head for six.But the most extraordinary shot came off Romario Shepherd in the tenth over of the innings. When Shepherd floated a slower offcutter wide of off, Suryakumar walked across off and played a half-scoop and half-sweep to hit the ball over short fine-leg, despite falling on the floor in the process. shot brought back memories of Rohan Kanhai for Ian Bishop, who was on commentary at the time. Suryakumar’s ball-striking in front of square – and gum-chewing swagger – was more Viv Richards than Kanhai, though.After India kept the series alive with their first win in the T20I series, Suryakumar refused to pinpoint the aspect of the game that pleased him more, and simply put down his 360-degree range to practice.”I think it was really important to be myself when I went into bat in the powerplay,” he said after collecting the Player-of-the-Match award. “That’s what the team and the team management demanded from me – to bat as much as possible. I’m very happy with the way things went. I’ve practiced these strokes a lot when I used to practice back home. I’ve loved doing that, and I just stick to my game and just express myself whenever I get an opportunity.”ESPNcricinfo LtdWith Tilak Varma being a stable presence at the other end, Suryakumar continued to do his thing in an 87-run third-wicket partnership off 50 balls. He eventually holed out in the 13th over, but Tilak ushered India home in their chase of 160 with an unbeaten 49 off 37 balls. Suryakumar, who has also worked closely with Tilak at Mumbai Indians in the IPL, was enthused about Tilak’s knock.”I think we’ve batted together for a long time now,” Suryakumar said. “We both understand how we bat together. It was his day to bat with maturity, and the way he batted gave me a lot of confidence. I told him straightaway, ‘Just because you’re batting, it’s giving me an opportunity to express myself’. So it was a great innings from him at the other end, and a great learning as well.”Having lost back-to-back T20Is, and with the series on the line, Suryakumar conceded that India did feel some pressure in the lead-up to the third game. Perhaps, there was some pressure on him too, considering he wasn’t particularly fluent on sluggish pitches away from home in IPL 2023, and on similar tracks during the ODI leg of the West Indies tour.”It [the pressure] was running in the back of the mind – it’s human tendency – but at the same time, we spoke [about it] in the team meeting yesterday,” Suryakumar said. “Our captain said it was really important for someone to put their hand up and show some character, and it was the perfect game.”But Suryakumar batted without that burden of pressure on Tuesday. He batted as if the world was at his feet.

Bangladesh become the latest victims of South Africa’s destructive batting, with Shakib Al Hasan and co powerless to stop an all-too-familiar assault

Mohammad Isam24-Oct-20232:51

Where did it all go wrong for Bangladesh?

A small group of Bangladesh fans groaned collectively in one corner of the Garware pavilion, next door to their team’s dressing room and right above their dugout at the Wankhede Stadium. Bangladesh had just lost five wickets in the first 15 overs of a 383-run chase in the World Cup. The daytime heat and South Africa’s big hitting had flattened their spirits already, and now this. They hardly said a word. Even the most animated among them slumped to his chair.Captain Shakib Al Hasan and centurion Mahmudullah both said that they lost the game by their bowling in the last ten overs. The three fast bowlers and Shakib conceded 144 runs in the third powerplay, the most Bangladesh has conceded during this period in an ODI. South Africa burst from 238 for 3 to 382 for 5. They had gone berserk against England a couple of days ago, and Sri Lanka earlier in the tournament. Against an underperforming Bangladesh bowling attack at the Wankhede Stadium, such a hammering was always on the cards.Quinton de Kock and Heinrich Klaasen were building up towards a big finish between overs 30 and 40 when they added 73 runs. The Bangladesh bowlers tried every combination of line and length, but once Shakib went for 22, his worst over in World Cups, the floodgates had truly opened.Shakib didn’t bowl another over after conceding two sixes in the 44th over. Mustafizur Rahman also went for two sixes, while Shoriful Islam and Hasan Mahmud got smacked for four sixes each, taking the total to 12 sixes in the last ten overs.Mahmudullah, who made his third World Cup century much later in the game, said that around the second drinks break, the senior players were talking about chasing between 320 and 330.”I was talking to Shakib and Mushy around the (second) drinks break. On a good wicket, we were trying to lessen the damage when they were 238 in 40 overs. I think 320 to 330 was chaseable, but it was a tough ask to chase 380-plus. The bowlers tried hard but when Klaasen and Quinny are in rhythm it is hard to stop them,” he said.Mahmudullah said that the Bangladesh team hasn’t created enough opportunities to get into winning positions in the World Cup, a factor that is hurting them a lot in this campaign.”I think we are not getting that momentum. Whether batting or bowling, you have to create an opportunity to win the game. We haven’t got there. The bowlers made the job easy for us against Afghanistan. We haven’t created those opportunities in the other games. We are discussing, doing meetings, but we haven’t been able to execute it.”On this sort of wicket, you need to create the opportunity to be in a position to win a game. We couldn’t do that today. We have a bit of depth but it depends on the partnership progressing in the middle,” he said.South Africa’s batters left Shakib Al Hasan and Mushfiqur Rahim with much to consider•AFP/Getty ImagesShakib said he had not seen Bangladesh go for so many runs in the last ten overs of an ODI. “I thought we bowled well in the first 25 overs when we got three wickets. They were going at five runs an over, but they kicked on, especially the way Quinton (de Kock) played. He batted really well. We didn’t have any answer to how (Heinrich) Klaasen finished.”We conceded 144 runs in the last 10 overs, probably the most we conceded in the last 10, 15 years. On a ground like this, it can happen like that. We should have bowled better. We lost the game in the last ten overs,” he said.Klaasen and de Kock hardly allowed for the bowlers to settle on a combination of line and length during the third powerplay. The odd yorker kept them quiet but those that didn’t land were duly struck for sixes. Mahmud’s short balls were mostly accurate, as only one of them went for a six.The death overs’ hitting by South Africa is perhaps a blip for Bangladesh. Maybe it won’t happen again in this way for the rest of the tournament. The quicker Bangladesh can move on from this performance, especially the bowlers, the more helpful it will be to their mentality. They should also be mindful of other teams going for the same pace in the last powerplay, so taking their chances early would allow them more confidence at the death.Shoriful, Mahmud and Mustafizur will be smarter bowlers in their next outings if they can pick the positives out of this performance. There’s a lot riding on Bangladesh’s fast bowlers in the remaining matches, and for their future to remain permanent rather than fleeting.

The genius of England’s approach is that it takes the traditional consequences of dismissal out of the equation

Sambit Bal14-Feb-2024Joe Root has left the crease. It has been nine balls since he arrived. England have shaved 154 runs off their 399-run target, their stiffest in the Bazball era, in just under 31 overs, 87 of those ransacked on the fourth morning. Of the three wickets lost along the way, one belongs to the nightwatcher, who helped himself to five sumptuous boundaries.Root is England’s second most prolific Test batter. He started the Test with more runs than the whole Indian XI, and in the first innings he has gone past 1000 Test runs in India. It is a body of work built on traditionally sound Test-match craft, and in another age it would be natural to expect a batter of Root’s pedigree to bed down and take the chase deep on a pitch still comfortable for batting.But they don’t do it that way these days, and certainly not Root, who has embraced the new mode with the adroitness of a late-life convert. The last nine balls to him have already fetched 16 runs, beginning with a reverse-swept four off the first ball, from R Ashwin. The third delivery Root faced produced another attempted reverse sweep that ballooned off the glove for a fortuitous four. The seventh was belted for a six over long-off. Now he is down the pitch, eyeing the leg-side fence, which has been left unguarded.Related

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But Ashwin is bowling round the wicket. The ball has been pushed wide, and it’s going away with the arm. Root is also deceived in the flight, but he is so committed to the shot that bailing out is not an option. He finishes the wildest of flails with his bat over his shoulder, pointing towards square leg, head tilted towards the off side, and with his eyes shut. It is a horror shot that has sliced the ball up towards backward point, and the horror is fleetingly visible, as a reflex reaction, on Root’s face.To suggest that this stroke encapsulated the essence of Bazball – you hit many and miss a few – would be telling only half the story. The reward that comes with the risk is just a part of it, but what enables the approach is that failure comes with no recrimination, and in that lies its real genius. In another age, this stroke would have brought howls of indignation from fans, and analysts would have zeroed in on it as a trigger for England’s collapse.That none of that happened was an illustration of not merely how England under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum have re-engineered their approach to Test batting but also how profoundly they have influenced the game’s discourse. It wasn’t only Root and the England team who shrugged it off as part of the design, but such dismissals from England’s batters have now been so normalised that this one barely registered as a misadventure to those watching. It was a demonstration of England’s success in co-opting mass perception in their repositioning of Test batting as an audacious and gallant pursuit of fast runs irrespective of outcome.This is a fundamental upending of the texture of Test cricket. In that every ball carries the risk of dismissal, batting is the most fraught of sporting endeavours. Test batting is based on the principle of minimising risks. The loss of a wicket, particularly of a top-order batter, is a massive and decisive event in Tests, unlike in the shorter formats, where the restriction on the number of overs makes batting resources seem relatively abundant.Zak Crawley has epitomised the potential of Bazball in this series•Getty ImagesThe liberating effect of the removal – or reduced impact – of the consequence of dismissals is evident in the range of strokeplay in T20 cricket. If the stumps are out of the equation, the crease can become a reference point for positioning to take aim. Being caught is merely an occupational hazard. Hitting on the up is a routine option.It isn’t that good-length balls cannot be driven, or balls cannot be hit square if they are within the line of the stumps, but Test batting is calibrated towards preservation. This gives bowlers larger margins in Test cricket. They can construct spells, formulate plans, set catchers in place, and string together sequences of balls in the knowledge that the construct and rhythms of Test cricket allow them the space to build towards dismissals. Batting is a process of continual risk assessment, but standards of safety are set much higher in Tests, which grants bowlers greater allowance for deviation from the perfect length or line, because batters tend to wait for balls close enough to drive, or short enough to cut or pull.Root’s ten-ball innings in Visakhapatnam might have seemed reckless from the beginning, and Harry Brook’s baseball-style hitting might give the appearance of an absolute disregard of the basic principles of batting, but England’s new batting philosophy is based on reorienting the mind.By removing the fear of consequences and reprisal, the England management have not only unlocked scoring opportunities that always existed but not always been accessed, they have presented their opponents a different challenge. Insouciant strokeplayers have existed through the history of the game, and in Virender Sehwag lies the example of a batter who achieved devastating success by treating every ball as a run-making opportunity, but rarely has a team as a whole adopted this as their approach.Zak Crawley has improved his average by nearly eight runs in the Bazball era, not by swinging wildly but by pouncing more aggressively on scoring opportunities. No one this series has left Jasprit Bumrah as assuredly as Crawley did, and no one has capitalised on marginal errors of length as well as he has done. He is the only top-order batter not to have been dismissed by Bumrah in the series so far. In the second Test he took eight boundaries off him, while the rest managed nine.Just as Crawley has used his reach to maximise driving opportunities, Ben Duckett, his opening partner, has pounced on the slightest offering of width to employ his most profitable shot, the cut. It’s a small sample size but Duckett, who was sidelined after four unimpressive Tests in 2016, which yielded him an average of 15.71, has scored over 1100 runs at nearly 50 since he was rehabilitated as an enforcer by the current management. The most remarkable jump is in his strike rate: to 90.06 from 57.89.

The allrounder was a key figure for Madhya Pradesh after they endured a shift from boiling Puducherry to freezing Dharamsala

Shashank Kishore06-Feb-2024Venkatesh Iyer can’t remember playing a game in India in sub-zero temperatures. That’s until earlier last week, when he landed in Dharamsala for Madhya Pradesh’s Ranji Trophy Group D fixture against Himachal Pradesh.”My first thought was: I shouldn’t be out here playing,” Iyer tells ESPNcricinfo.The HPCA Stadium was covered in snow. There were sheets of rain and icy-cold winds. A day earlier, Madhya Pradesh had finished a game in 32-degree Celsius heat with over 90% humidity in Puducherry.”Temperature-wise, the chill in Ireland two years ago [when Iyer was part of an India squad that toured the country for a T20I series] was a lot more, but this was unique, a first for me in India. Even three layers of sweaters didn’t help,” Iyer says. “It was freezing, the entire ground was covered in snow. There was heavy rain as well.”MP’s situation was compounded by logistical challenges. From Puducherry they had to drive down four hours to Chennai and board a flight to New Delhi before reaching Dharamsala. A three-day break between games was whittled down to two.”From extremely hot, we came into freezing conditions, but weather can’t be an excuse for poor performance,” Iyer says. “That said, it was tough. That’s why we had to go there a couple of days prior to know how the body is going to react, how we’re going to recover. Else we would have been caught completely off guard. The two days of training was very crucial to our conditioning.”So what did it entail?”It was more about mobility exercises and warming up our muscles,” Iyer explains. “We also tried to leave the hotel for the ground a lot earlier than usual. If we used to leave usually at 7.45am, we left for the ground at 7.30.”Even 15-20 minutes of extra warm-up time was massively important in that weather. You can’t enter the ground and immediately start running in that weather, it can take a toll on your back. The entire schedule was superbly planned by our trainer.”What were the key aspects to training in such weather?”A lot of stretching for starters,” Iyer says. “It’s normal for muscles to cramp, they tend to become stIff, so it was important to keep them loosened in that cold. Even whe we were in the hotel, we were called to the gym for stretching more than any other form of conditioning because you never know which muscle you will end up pulling.Venkatesh Iyer missed MP’s journey to the 2022-23 Ranji title due to a combination of injuries and India duty•Getty Images”In the room, we were advised to use heaters at all times, and keep our bodies warm throughout.”On the field, Iyer had a memorable performance. He first picked up a three-for to help skittle Himachal out for 169 and then contributed a vital 72 in tough conditions to help MP eke out a first-innings lead. This earned him the Player of the match award in a drawn, weather-impacted fixture during which no play was possible on days two and three.”The forecast is very accurate there,” Iyer says. “The first day we arrived, the ground was covered in snow, but the first day’s play, the sun was shining bright, and we got in a full day of cricket. Overall, we knew we’d get probably 2-2.5 days to try and push for an outright result.”They got a good partnership lower down the order [Himachal recovered from 36 for 6 on day one]. Had we bowled them out for 70-80, and we got what we did, it would have been game on.” As it turned out, Himachal were 42 for 5 in their second innings, still six runs short of making MP bat again, when the game was called off.”Batting-wise, this is an innings I’ll remember for a long time,” Iyer days. “I had to battle the conditions. It was so difficult that you were never set. But once you know which direction you need to head to, the clarity makes this slightly better. I knew we had to make 170-180, that gave me increased focus.”Iyer found himself struggling at different times. He was recovering from a back spasm, which made it tougher given the conditions.”There was genuine travel fatigue” he says. “You’re on the bus for a long time. And then with the distances we had to cover, it took a toll, but you have to take care of it as a professional and ignore things you can’t change.”Iyer is driven by the desire to win the Ranji Trophy, having missed out on the team’s journey to the title in 2022-23 due to a combination of injuries and being on India duty.”We now know what it takes to be champions, we have the ability to win,” he says, with MP potentially one win away from entering the knockouts. “That belief has come since our win. For someone not part of the set-up there, to come in here, I find this an amazing place to be.”More than the team goal, it’s my burning desire to do something special to help us win the Ranji Trophy. Some things complete you as a cricketer. A Ranji Trophy win will complete it for me.”

Team’s valiant efforts on first three days undone in 23.1 overs on fourth afternoon

Alan Gardner21-Jul-2024They had kept at it throughout the morning and afternoon, despite the inhospitable conditions and the odds stacked against them. As England’s fourth-wicket pair pressed towards a double-century stand and the chances for their side apparently receded, spirits remained high. “Baby don’t worry, ’bout a thing, cause every little thing, gonna be all right…”Perhaps it was due to Trent Bridge only being half full for this fourth day that the support for West Indies was more visible – certainly more audible. A clutch had banded together in the lower west terrace of the Radcliffe Road Stand, maroon shirts and funky headpieces, the colours of Dominica, Barbados, St Kitts and Nevis on display. Regular calls of encouragement floated across the ground, with Jason Holder turning on more than one occasion to acknowledge their enthusiasm.Sometimes a Test match resembles a tug of war. One team flexes their muscles and pulls the game their way, only for the opposition to dig in with their heels and start inching the rope back towards them. West Indies may have collapsed in an ungainly heap at the end, but they had made England sweat and strain throughout, at times threatening to pull the contest from their grasp.Few gave them a chance of competing on level terms after defeat inside seven sessions at Lord’s. Few will say, certainly with hindsight, that West Indies had much of a shot of chasing 385 to win in the fourth innings here. But neither did it look like a done deal for England, as Joe Root looked to chisel out as many extra runs as possible with the tail, Jayden Seales hustling through the crease to the end to claim a deserving four-wicket haul.The chase began in confident mood, England again denied early success with the new ball. Kraigg Brathwaite had exhorted his players to “find a way” with the bat before the game and he set the tone in the opening over by calmly drilling Chris Woakes through cover point for four. As Brathwaite cracked along at a run a ball, the West Indies openers put on 50 together for the second time in the match – the first time they had achieved such a feat in England since 1991.Then came the drinks break, a third of the way through an extended evening session that was theoretically set to see 48 overs bowled. West Indies were 61 without loss and seemingly building a sturdy platform from which to carry the fight into day five. Who knows, on a flat pitch, against an attack playing together for the first time, maybe history could be made?Few thought they were capable of levelling the series against Australia at the Gabba in January. Few thought they would pull off a 300-plus run-chase against England at Headingley in 2017, a game in which Brathwaite notched 134 and 95 after the tourists had been pancaked at in the first Test.Jamie Smith and Joe Root go up in unison to celebrate Kirk McKenzie’s dismissal•Getty ImagesBut the naysayers, it turns out, had this one right. The reversal was as swift and brutal as it is possible to be in cricket, where three-and-a-half days of graft can be rendered futile in 23.1 overs of spiralling madness. A punch to the gut just as West Indies fans might have been daring to dream.Brathwaite said afterwards that disappointment was the overriding emotion. “But the main thing is to learn from it,2 he said. “It’s gone, it’s history, we can’t bring it back. Test cricket will always bring challenges. There were positives in the game we can speak about and it’s important that we just learn, learn from different scenarios, different situations in a Test match. Because with 240-odd runs remaining, potentially if we had six/seven wickets in hand on day five, you can think about these things and say we’re not far away. But it’s important to learn.”A Test that had seen West Indies seemingly take a great leap forward with their batting was summed up by one cruel juxtaposition. While the first-innings 457 at Trent Bridge, underpinned by Kavem Hodge’s maiden century, was their highest Test total since 2014, the second-innings implosion marked the first time they had been bowled out in a session since 2013.For Brathwaite, the urge was to make building blocks from the rubble. The next few months amount to a rare period of concentrated cricket for his side, with a third Test against England to come ahead of visits to the Caribbean by South Africa and Bangladesh.Related

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“The big positive was our first innings, scoring 400 runs was great,” Brathwaite said. “A guy scoring his maiden hundred as well, that was good. I think with the ball we weren’t as good as we were supposed to be in the first innings. We dropped a few chances, which will happen, but I think we need to be a lot more disciplined. We went both sides of the pitch a little too much, too easy at times. That’s one thing we’ve got to get better at. They made 100-120 too many first innings, especially if we caught better.”The more you play, the more you’re in these type of pressure situations in international cricket, once you’re learning and thinking about how to get better, it can only be beneficial for us. The two defeats are gone but we still have five Tests matches remaining for this year. So we keep learning and by the end of the year we’ll be better off, once we have that correct mindset.”The problem for West Indies is that the learning curve is so steep. With the Richards-Botham Trophy back in English hands, there is only pride (and World Test Championship points) to play for at Edgbaston next week. But as those fans in the Radcliffe lower would tell you, pride is no small thing. Time to get up, stand up, and give them something to sing about once again.

ESPNcricinfo staff12-Oct-20249.1, Rishad Hossain to Samson, no run
Good length, no turn, beats his slog, hits the pad, but headed down leg9.2, Rishad Hossain to Samson, SIX runs
Too full as he often was last match. Samson clears the front leg, and eases him back over his head for another nonchalant-looking six9.3, Rishad Hossain to Samson, SIX runs
He is having his way with Hossain. Again, right in the drop zone. This is poor spin bowling. You can’t bowl so full that a batter can hit you down the ground without using his feet. Goes over long-off this time9.4, Rishad Hossain to Samson, SIX runs
Dead straight, lower in trajectory, but a third straight six. Again Samson doesn’t even have to stretch himself. Not a half-volley but this is a true pitch9.5, Rishad Hossain to Samson, SIX runs
Goes slower in the air, but gives him another half-volley. This is just average bowling. He clears the front leg, and goes over long-on for the fourth six in a rowAround the wicket.9.6, Rishad Hossain to Samson, SIX runs
That is five sixes in a row. Not a bad ball, but Samson goes deep in the crease to manage to pull it with a vertical bat, and goes over deep midwicket for a small six. Does that matter when it is the fifth in the over? Samson into the 90s