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Cricinfo presents the Plays of the day from the match between Kings XI Punjab and Deccan Chargers at Dharamsala

Cricinfo staff16-Apr-2010Presenting ‘Tashi Shopa’
A spellbinding performance by the students of the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) was a welcome change in a tournament where the entrees have normally featured the introduction of cheerleaders wriggling to popular Bollywood songs. A group of TIPA artistes slipped in, dressed in fur head to toe, moving in a synchronised rhythm to the Tibetan drum tunes before ending the performance with clockwise and anti-clockwise pirouettes in the air, which brought not only the crowds but also the players to a standstill. Performed by 14 young men, the opera-like act is called ‘Tashi Shopa’, one of the oldest dance forms in Tibet. Literally it means ‘lucky dance’ and is performed occasionally only when the Dalai Lama returns home from a foreign visit.Sanga reverses his own fortunes
Batsmen will tell you the shot that proved fatal would have been successful nine times out of ten. But nine times out of ten Kumar Sangakkara would not have attempted the ill-judged reverse-sweep that cut short a brilliant innings. Thankfully, his long-time ally, pal and countryman Mahela Jayawardene to carry the home team to a strong total.Oops, RP
It was a very high catch, and there were plenty of moths swarming around under the floodlights. But RP Singh never was in a secure position to pouch the skier from Jayawardene as he wobbled at midwicket like the insects around him and finally fell down yards away from the ball’s landing point.Common sense, Yuvraj!

As soon as he hit the shot Yuvraj Singh knew it would land in the hands of the long-off. So he sighed, let out a groan, but forgot that with only one ball left it was important to get the well-settled Jayawardene on strike. Instead he stood his ground for a moment, waved the bat like a hand-fan, completely ignorant, and, uninterested in responding to the desperately charging Jayawardene’s call. In the end the Sri Lankan remained stranded at the non-striker’s end, seven runs short of becoming the only batsman to score two centuries in one IPL.

Yuvraj is stylish and makes batting look easy; Dhoni works hard without bothering about aesthetics. And yet, when they combine, they produce something special

Sidharth Monga at the Feroz Shah Kotla31-Oct-2009Batting together in the middle-order, MS Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh have saved matches, brought about momentum shifts, set up victories and accomplished so much more in only 49 partnerships. They are an odd pair: Yuvraj is stylish and makes batting look easy; Dhoni works hard without bothering about aesthetics. And yet, when they combine, they produce something special. To the list of great middle-over associations – Arjuna Ranatunga and Aravinda de Silva, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Mohammad Yousuf, Michael Bevan and Steve Waugh – Dhoni and Yuvraj can easily be added.When Dhoni joined Yuvraj at the Feroz Shah Kotla, India had slipped from 37 for 0 to 53 for 3, only 16 runs had come from the last 6.4 overs, and the Kotla pitch appeared as devious as it did during the Champions League. Both batsmen looked ungainly and unconvincing initially and scored only 19 in the next six overs. Then Yuvraj broke his shackles without taking any risks by sweeping Nathan Hauritz to fine leg and flicking Moises Henriques to midwicket for fours in back-to-back overs. They were at it again.Then they started running on intuition, turning three-fourths into ones, and one and three-quarters into twos. There were some poor calls too, but that didn’t lead to mistrust between the batsmen. Odd boundaries came but the run-rate was not an issue, sensible batting was. Around the 34th over, they realised the team was out of danger and, even before the ball was changed, Yuvraj opened up. His classy hitting met Dhoni’s awkwardness perfectly as it so often does. Batting together in the middle-order, they have now scored 1991 runs. None of the pairs that have scored more are in business now. Today’s 148 was their ninth century partnership. For a change they were separated before victory, but Dhoni is not the man for late twists.The Kotla pitch took batsmen out of their comfort zones but, with each other, Dhoni and Yuvraj find comfort and in their case familiarity breeds runs. Dhoni has often spoken of the reassurance Yuvraj brings. As a batsman Dhoni knows he doesn’t need to take risks as long as Yuvraj is around. As a captain Dhoni knows Yuvraj is his go-to man, his Powerplay specialist and his finisher. That Dhoni is a surer captain when Yuvraj is playing is obvious.Coincidentally it’s for the same reasons that Yuvraj likes batting with Dhoni. “I am very comfortable batting with him,” he said. “Our running between the wickets has always been good and, whenever there is pressure on me, Mahi [Dhoni] is someone who can get the odd boundary. He has become a bit slow, but he still manages a boundary when the pressure is on. Last game he was fantastic. I think he deserved to be Man of the Match today.”MS Dhoni isn’t the most aesthetic batsman, but he gets the job done•AFPThere share mutual respect, banter and a sense of purpose. One can sense when the other is under pressure and both are capable of doing something about it. As Yuvraj said in jest, Dhoni has slowed down a bit, but he can hustle the opposition; he has strength too, to run endlessly or hit sudden powerful shots. Theirs is an instinctive partnership. “We don’t really assign goals, we play according to the situation,” Yuvraj said.Dhoni has made a lot of his ODI runs in Yuvraj’s presence. But Yuvraj has added more with Rahul Dravid than he has done with Dhoni. When asked to compare batting with both those batsmen, Yuvraj gave glimpses into why he was enjoying batting with Dhoni more. “They are both different types of players,” Yuvraj said. “Mahi is more dynamic … not these days. Rahul was more, you know, picking up the singles, getting into partnerships. Mahi is someone who can obviously make it up in the end. No doubt Rahul Dravid is a great player, but the way Dhoni bats in one-day cricket is something we should all learn from.”There’s a higher level of comfort with Dhoni. In three minutes Yuvraj made three jokes about Dhoni, but paid him three rich compliments too. While Yuvraj-Dravid was a profitable partnership while it lasted, Dravid was a senior and perhaps Yuvraj didn’t express himself as completely as he does in Dhoni’s presence.His relationship with Dhoni could easily have been complex. Yuvraj would have had captaincy ambitions when Dravid resigned and Virender Sehwag was out of the side, but it was Dhoni, about a hundred ODIs his junior, who was chosen to lead India. That doesn’t come in either man’s way.For Yuvraj tonight’s 78, with his team in strife on the slowest one-day surface he has played on, was a personally satisfying performance. “I often get criticism from you guys [the media] that I don’t play well on slow wickets, that I am not a good player of spin, so it’s always a challenge for me to prove you guys wrong, and I did that well today.”It was his day and yet Yuvraj said Dhoni should have been Man of the Match. Had Dhoni been given the award, he would have said the same thing about Yuvraj.

Imran was at the heart of shaping modern-day Pakistan cricket, and all we love about the team and their play can be traced back to him

Osman Samiuddin31-Oct-2010There lies, pop stars and politicians will tell you, great reward in transformation. Imran Khan, who hung out with the former and has become one of the latter, will tell you there lies greatness itself in transformation. This is the truth of his life and career. Many are conceived great but it can also be achieved by not necessarily being yourself as at conception, by changing, evolving, renovating.The broad outline is that he went from being a good player to the finest one his country produced, and arguably the finest allrounder cricket has seen in a gathering not involving Sir Garry Sobers. Underpinning this was his real genius: an unbending commitment and a pig-headed focus, a blind devotion, really, to any given single cause – to better himself, to better his side, to better his country, to better the world.So fierce is the single-mindedness that it has often become divisive, as with the 1992 World Cup-winning speech remembered so bitterly in Pakistan. So obsessed had he become with building the cancer hospital in memory of his mother, he didn’t think to thank his own team or anyone else, speaking only of the project. That is the downside; the upside is that the cause drove him, and thus his team, to win the damn thing in the first place. And it isn’t as if he was building something that would devour babies.Details, though, are instructive.His action, for example, when he began in the early 70s, looking like a misplaced Beatle with a mop top, had more windmills in it than Holland, and was as flat. Yet by 1982 it had become such a leaping study in the beauty and grace of the human form, all it needed was a catwalk; to half the human race it was a mating call. Visually it was as unrecognisable from his natural action as the Michael Jackson of 2008 was from the Michael Jackson of 1978. It came about after much consultation with greybeards and contemporaries and defiance of others, but above everything, from an inner voice that told him he could be far more than what he was.His bowling itself underwent several recalibrations of pace, length, attitude and modes. When he began, he couldn’t control big, booming inswingers of modest pace. But when cricket was gripped by a prolonged vogue of bouncers from the mid-70s on, Imran unthinkingly jumped in. When the run-up and rhythm were right, he was sharp, and he targeted heads with commendable indiscrimination.But by the early 80s, a scholarship in Kerry Packer’s World Series with the world’s best to the good, and quicker still, he was hitting fuller lengths and ignoring the surface. He was swinging the new ball but more radically, the old; 40 wickets in the 1982-83 series against India in Pakistan was a mind-altering moment in fast bowling.Then, post shin-injury, another face. The pace came down but the mind remained sharp; nearing 35 he took over 20 wickets in leading Pakistan to their first series win in England; a year later he took 23 in a three-Test series in the Caribbean; even at 37 he bowled a remarkable, long-forgotten two-wicket maiden last over of an ODI in Sydney, which Pakistan won by two runs.Through this immense journey were the imprints of a few minds. Mike Procter and John Snow, Garth le Roux, the Kiwi John Parker, Sarfraz Nawaz, all chipped in, but overseeing it all at each step was Imran himself, pushing himself to whichever point and in whichever direction would bring him success.

Just imagine cricket’s landscape in Pakistan without him. For sure the country would’ve been one of spinners and medium-pacers, no Wasim, Waqar, Zahid, Shoaib and Amir in sight

Nowhere more than in his batting did he inflict – and that really is the word – upon himself such stark transformation. The epiphany came in his very first Test as captain, until when he had been a free, reckless spirit in the lower order. A careless hook off Bob Willis ended a careless innings, and immediately he resolved to become more responsible; there was no harsher critic of Imran than Imran, not even slighted ex-players from Karachi. It didn’t require the structural re-jigging of his bowling, for his batting was built on sounder, correct principles. In his head he had always been a batsman, even if in his blood he felt the flow of manlier pursuits. All it needed was for his mind to win. Obviously it did.A solid 65, batting mostly with the tail in the second innings, was, in his words, a “watershed”. The conclusion cannot be doubted; in his last 50 Tests after that, he averaged twice – nearly 52 – what he did before. He quintupled his century haul and quadrupled his fifties. More immeasurably, by career’s end he was the calmest, most versatile influence on a batting line-up forever a wicket or two from panic.Strictly speaking, these were all personal, isolated transformations. Even off the field he was chameleonesque, unrecognisable from the homesick 18-year-old who first went to England in 1971. A shy, introspective mama’s boy, he became cricket’s James Bond, as smooth on the field as away from it, as easy in whites with 10 sweats gathering round as in a tux with 10 royals, celebrities and the world’s beauties. Some transformations cannot be matched: turning a productive day in the field with Javed Miandad, for example, into a heady evening with Mick Jagger.But it was when he went from being a rebellion-happy superstar to captain that he initiated a process of change vastly bigger and beyond his own person.Cricket in Pakistan probably would’ve become the most popular game anyway – and by the late 70s, hockey was a formidable match – but there was no bigger propellant than Imran’s emergence. He had been at the very centre of Sydney 1976-77 – a triumph as significant as the Oval one of 1954 – in which was conceived modern-day Pakistan: a delicate, easily disturbed balance between fractiousness, indiscipline and supremely gifted athletes, between hostile fast bowlers and erratic batsmen. Thereafter, as the sport burst out of urban Pakistan, pouring out a hurl of talent, he remained at the centre, driving his side forth and, by default, shaping the game as it grew.Imran’s run-up: a mating call to half the world•PA PhotosIf that sounds too much, just imagine cricket’s landscape in Pakistan without him. Might not hockey be the national sport in name and spirit? For sure the country would have been one of spinners and medium-pacers, no Wasim, Waqar, Zahid, Shoaib and Amir in sight. There probably wouldn’t be the modern attacking mores of their play, the gung-ho shot-making, the wicket-taking lengths and stump-hitting lines that were Imran commandments, developed as an antidote to the ennui he felt was drowning him on the English county circuit.Without him they might still be the meek inheritors of nothing that they were in the 60s and early 70s. He was lucky to lead in a time of demographic change, so that for his players, partition and colonialisation were mere words in history books they hadn’t read. But how well he harnessed these players into a new brave, defiant and unbowed visage, much of it still glimpsed today, even though it has since developed a schizoid moue. And almost certainly he was the difference between a mediocre, underperforming cricket nation and an excitable, winning one. Without Imran, Pakistan would not be as we know and love them.This is what made him, to this writer at least, much more than his great all-round contemporaries. Maybe his peak as batsman and bowler didn’t quite coincide to produce the starburst of Ian Botham early on (Imran did, by the way, average more than 50 with bat and less than 20 with ball in the last decade of his career). There wasn’t the early precocity of Kapil Dev. Neither was he as calculatingly brilliant with ball as Richard Hadlee. But to be, at once, the best player in the side, the best leader of the side, and also the man to transform the entire sport in a country, that is some trump.Now awaits the final, logical transformation. This is trickier, philanthropist to politician not being as straightforward a switch as it might appear. Perhaps he is better off sorting out the game first, for upon his own departure in 1992, just as he once wrote had happened on the retirement of AH Kardar, it was thrown to the wolves.

He went from Wild Thing to nothing to everything a fast bowler should be

Gideon Haigh05-Dec-2010Dennis Lillee still does television advertisements in Australia. There’s more hair under his lip than on his head these days, and it’s decidedly grey. He also has this signature gesture of pointing to the camera no matter what he’s promoting, which he’s been doing at least 20 years. But what’s interesting about Lillee’s ads is that his provenance is never explained. There’s no: “Back in the days when I was bowling to Viv…” Nor is there any attempt at an expository caption: “DK Lillee, 355 wickets at 23.92.” Nope: here is a man who needs no introduction, and he won’t be getting one.Maybe explanation is just too hard. This is the era of the speed gun, yet Lillee wasn’t the fastest of his era by a long way. This is the age of getting it in “good areas”, of just nagging away, of waiting for the batsmen to make a mistake, yet Lillee reminded you always why it is a “bowling attack”, not a “bowling defence”. This is a time of instant and perishable celebrity, yet more than 27 years after bowling his last delivery in Test cricket, Dennis Lillee remains one of his country’s most recognisable cricket faces, despite his having remained a stranger to commentary, and making comparatively few public pronouncements – the ones he does make, like lauding Mitchell Johnson to the skies or calling the Australian top order “Dad’s Army”, tend accordingly to be treated as truths.So why did Lillee capture Australian imagination – and then not give it back? Firstly, he emerged in barren years. For most of the 1960s, Australia got by on the smooth control of Garth McKenzie, with a bit of brawn from Neil Hawke and some persistence from Alan Connolly. The most menacing bowler around was Ian Meckiff, famous for all the wrong reasons. Lillee’s hero growing up was not Australian at all. Just as Ray Lindwall first thrilled to Harold Larwood, so Lillee was inspired by watching Wes Hall bowl for West Indies at the WACA Ground in November 1960. He emerged as a teenager with a marathon run and wild eyes. To watch footage of Lillee in England in 1972 is to see fast bowling at its raw, riotous best. The legs pump, the arms are everywhere, the mane flows. It looks like a brilliant and crazy machine bound sooner or later to disintegrate – which it duly did.This leads to the second aspect of Lillee’s greatness. For fast bowlers these days, stress fractures are almost as hip as tattoos. In those days, they went undiagnosed, usually until it was too late, and when Lillee’s back gave way in the Caribbean in 1973, his spine was fractured in three places. In those days, too, a cricketer’s physicality was his own affair. There was little or no support from the game’s administration. Lillee’s recovery came under his own steam, and by his own resources, thanks to a doctor, Frank Pyke, who had been Lillee’s physical education instructor at Belmont High School.Pyke was a top-class Australian rules footballer, a runner-up in his league’s Sandover Medal, and a first-grade opening bowler at Lillee’s club, Perth. This was important. The treatment and exercise programme Pyke devised was specifically with cricket in mind. It was about rejuvenation as well as healing. It left Lillee aware as perhaps no bowler before him of his body, or its limits and of how to extend them; it contributed also to Lillee’s sense of individuality, and mistrust of authority. Which leads to the third and fourth aspects of Lillee’s significance.In coming back from being perhaps as far gone as a bowler has been without actually quitting, Lillee worked his way towards what he condensed in the title of his second book, (1977). Bradman had defined (1960), but his were batsmen’s parameters. Bowling fast was commonly seen as an act of brute force and ignorance; in writing their book, Lillee, with Pyke’s assistance, was crafting something as improbable as .

For Richard Hadlee, it was a case of WWLD: “When things are going badly I often think, ‘What would Lillee do?’ And the answer is: ‘He would not give up’.”

In the second half of Lillee’s career, he did more than any other to expand the grammar of fast bowling. Having started his career simply with an outswinger, Lillee developed a change of pace, a yorker, leg and offcutters, a fast bouncer and slower bouncer. He perfected a shorter run. He experimented with different angles at the crease. Perhaps the definitive essay in Lillee’s transformation was a Test in February 1980 on a low and pebbly Melbourne pitch, on which he would not have known how to bowl five years earlier, but on which he now obtained 11 English wickets for 138 bowling impossibly accurate cutters. Geoff Boycott, in prime form, shouldered arms to a ball two feet wide of off stump, only to see the width of Lillee’s angle and the wickedness of his cut drag it back to kiss the timber.For fast bowlers the world over, Lillee became a touchstone, in temperament as well as technique. “As far as I am concerned, the sign of an outstanding player is his ability to perform well constantly under pressure,” said Imran Khan. “He must always be a complete team man. The bowler who stands out is Dennis Lillee.” He remembered Lillee coming over to sympathise with and encourage him after a Melbourne Test in which Lillee had bagged 10 for 135 and Imran 5 for 237; Imran bagged a dozen in the next game. For Richard Hadlee, it was a case of WWLD: “When things are going badly I often think, ‘What would Lillee do?’ And the answer is: ‘He would not give up’.”Most interestingly, perhaps, Lillee became a master of concentration, often discussed in the context of batting, almost never as a factor in bowling. He called his first autobiography (1975), and he always made this walk a fascinating sight. He headed back straight, unsmiling, eyes ahead, gazing into a middle distance. He had this characteristic gesture: a single finger to the forehead. It went from the centre to his left, then back to the right, flicking off sweat like a windscreen wiper. The ball by this stage would have been conveyed round the Australian in-field to mid-off, who would be polishing it furiously. Lillee would turn his head just slightly right, and extend his arm just above shoulder height. Mid-off’s throw would have to be timed precisely so that Lillee did not have to alter his stride, and could catch the ball in one hand. The ball would then continue with Lillee the length of his run, being shone meditatively the rest of the way. As he turned at his bowling marker, all was genuinely in readiness.The famous walk back•PA PhotosWith the whiff of a wicket, Lillee then revealed the most minatory appeal in the business, and also the coolest. He had all the moves. He could entrechat like Barishnykov; he could be king of the club like Tony Manero. One personal favourite was the twist in the air to land on spread feet, right index finger aimed straight at the umpire’s heart – perhaps it’s where he got his pitchman’s fingerpoint for advertisements. No wonder that Shane Warne’s hero growing up and playing backyard games with brother Jason was “the great DK”; no wonder the great SK developed an appeal that made umpires quail.Finally, there’s that fourth and final dimension of Lillee’s historical import, his wakening radicalism, his evolving contempt for the administrators of his time and awareness of his growing commercial value, which made him one of the first to take the Packer shilling, and with Ian Chappell probably the most influential. He fitted comfortably into Channel 9’s pantheon of larrikins, lairs and knockabout ockers, as born to television as he was to cricket. “From a shy, gullible bloke when I first met him, he developed an unbelievable supreme ego,” said Greg Chappell of his close comrade. “It’s not a criticism. Most of us were the same.” In “Ego Is Not a Dirty Word”, the title track of a chart-topping 1975 album by the Australian band Skyhooks, the band’s lead singer Shirley Strachan presented the pro argument:

“If you did not have an ego
You might not care too much who won.”

With which Lillee would hardly have disagreed. The ad men are right. Dennis Lillee’s need for an introduction, professional or personal, has long since past.

New Zealand are not a team of superstars, they’re a team of working-class heroes, like Nathan McCullum, who have built a reputation of being scrappers and in the scrap of their lives sent South Africa out of the tournament

Firdose Moonda in Colombo27-Mar-2011Two starry-eyed teenage girls sauntered up to Nathan McCullum to ask him for his autograph. They handed him a pen and some paper and just as he was about to make his mark, they pulled it away. One of them had realised that they didn’t want his signature anymore, because the man whose scrawl they did want, younger brother Brendon, was seated a little further away. “Sorry,” they said sheepishly to Nathan, who grinned knowingly. “It’s ok,” he replied.It’s no secret that Brendon is the rock star, not just of his family, but of the team. He’s the one who all the girls want to see and all the boys want to be. Almost everyone else is just another New Zealand cricketer. But it’s this bunch of AN Others who have made it as the only non-subcontinental team in the World Cup semi-finals. They are not a team of superstars, they’re a team of working-class heroes, who’ve built a reputation of being scrappers and in the scrap of their lives sent South Africa out of the tournament.McCullum senior was very much a part of that victory, getting the wicket of Hashim Amla thanks to a bit of luck and then playing an integral part in South Africa’s collapse, by bowling JP Duminy. He showed just how well he could play his role as a spinner with Daniel Vettori at the other end, someone he has been without in the last two matches, against Canada and Sri Lanka.It’s the presence of these senior players that Nathan thinks has made the difference at the business end of the World Cup. “We have to admire the way that the leaders in the team have been standing up in this competition,” he said in Colombo. “Ross Taylor, Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori and Jacob Oram – they are the four biggest guys in this team and they’ve been leading from the front so it makes it a lot easier for guys like myself and Tim Southee and everyone else to come in and try and keep up to their standards.”Oram led the charge against South Africa, with a performance as big as he is himself, snatching the catch of Jacques Kallis that turned the game on its head and taking four wickets. As one of the elder statesmen of the side, Oram’s inspired showing has fuelled New Zealand’s belief, that anything is possible, especially in the knockout stage of the competition. “The guys showed a bit of Kiwi fight and really believed we could win from any position,” Nathan said. “The difference between that and other games is that no matter what the situation we thought we could win and as soon as we took one or two quick wickets it was more apparent that there was an opportunity and we sort of drilled it home.”The win represented more than just a ticket to the semi-finals for New Zealand. They have been through a tough period. Apart from three wins against Pakistan, one in this World Cup, New Zealand had not beaten a top level side in 12 months, apart from beating India in August 2010.Their preparations for the World Cup, while well thought out, with them spending large chunks of the last nine months in the subcontinent and only playing against sub-continent sides in that time, had been demoralising. They didn’t make it to the final of a tri-series in Sri Lanka, which included India, lost 4-0 to Bangladesh, 5-0 to India and 3-2 to Pakistan at home. “It was tough at times touring and not winning but I think we have learnt along the way,” Nathan said. “We’ve made a lot of inroads in our performance and if we can just keep trying to improve and put our plans in place then hopefully we can go forward in this tournament.”To go further they will have to topple giants again – giants that have not looked like being toppled. Sri Lanka are in menacing form, coming through the quarter-final with a 10-wicket triumph over England and are, without doubt, the favourites. Nathan has identified one area where New Zealand can look to make a mark. “The big thing for us is taking wickets at the top. Their middle order is a little fragile at the moment, they haven’t had a lot of batting. It’s been almost two weeks since they’ve had a bat, we’re hoping to get a few wickets early and then get into their longish tail.”The Sri Lankan middle order last batted in a match nine days ago against New Zealand. Only Mahela Jayawardene and Angelo Mathews got into double figures. Against Zimbabwe, 17 days ago, only Kumar Sangakkara did. Their middle-order woes are similar to South Africa’s and after the performance New Zealand put in to cripple South Africa, Sri Lanka will do well to be wary of an attack that thrives on patience and pressure-building.There’s also something else they now base their game on, which Nathan said is renewed passion, the feeling that has turned the whole team into rock stars, even if it’s only to themselves. “The passion and the pride and the emotion of how we finished it [the game against South Africa] off and every wicket meant so much. If we can keep working on that pride and that emotion then I think everything that we do will be from the heart. If we can keep fighting and keep working our butts off then hopefully things will come our way.”

Stats highlights from an absolutely riveting day of Test cricket at the Wanderers

S Rajesh21-Nov-2011

• Australia’s score of 310 is the highest in a successful chase at the Wanderers, and the fourth-highest in South Africa. Australia have been the winning team on three of those four occasions.
• Ricky Ponting’s 62 is his highest Test score in more than a year. During this period, he has averaged 20.46 in 16 innings, with only two fifties. Before this knock, he had gone 13 innings without a half-century.
• Similarly, Brad Haddin and Mitchell Johnson saved their best for this key day as well. Haddin played 106 balls for his 55 – it was the first time he’d faced more than 100 deliveries in a Test innings in 17 innings, extending over almost a year. Johnson had a poor game with the ball, but as a batsman he made significant contributions in both innings, remaining unbeaten on 38 and 40. His match aggregate of 78 runs was his highest since March 2009, when he’d scored 35 and 123 not out in Cape Town. This was his 26th Test since that game.
• For South Africa, Vernon Philander was the undoubted star of the series. He finished with 5 for 70 in the second innings, and thus has two five-fors in his first two Tests. The last two bowlers to achieve this were Fidel Edwards and Richard Johnson, both in 2003. Before that, it was Narendra Hirwani way back in 1988. Philander is also the fourth South African to achieve this. The others – Peter Heine, Lindsay Tuckett and Norman Gordon – all achieved it before 1956.
• The result will hurt South Africa’s aspirations to take the top spot in the ICC Test rankings. The defeat pushes South Africa down to 115 points, well behind England’s 125. Had South Africa won, they’d have moved up to second place with 120. Had they then beaten Sri Lanka 3-0 in the home series to follow, they’d have moved to No.1 with 126 points. Even if they achieve that margin against Sri Lanka now, they’ll only have 119 points.

The opening day of Asia Cup’s 12th edition in fact remained as exciting as the corresponding game from 2010, when a scintillating Shahid Afridi century almost overturned the hosts Sri Lanka

Mohammad Isam at the Shere Bangla Stadium12-Mar-2012Three men made very different comebacks and another issued a scathing response on a day when two excellent allrounders and a potential allrounder kept everyone on their toes.It was that sort of a day in Mirpur. Mashrafe Mortaza returned to international cricket after almost a year while Shahadat Hossain and Nasir Jamshed were playing ODIs after two and three years respectively. Tamim Iqbal made a statement with his bat and Shakib Al Hasan, Mohammad Hafeez and Umar Gul manoeuvered the tail end of the match to a finale that did justice to the entire game, much like what had happened in Dambulla two years ago.The opening day of the Asia Cup’s latest edition in fact remained as exciting as the corresponding game from 2010, when a scintillating Shahid Afridi century almost overturned the hosts Sri Lanka.Afridi though had nothing to do with the bat on Sunday while his bowling became less of a mystery to the Bangladeshi batsmen. Hafeez however remained a tough proposition with the ball, despite Nazimuddin and Tamim handling him confidently in the early stages. The man known to his team-mates as the “professor” came back for a third spell to remove the left-handed opener Tamim and Mahmudullah off successive deliveries. Though the latter can count himself unlucky as the ball appeared to be going down the leg side as the television replays suggested, Tamim’s dismissal was vital.The delivery was the sort of a slider that Hafeez often bowls to left-handers while coming from round the wicket. This one appeared to be dipping less but Tamim under-edged his attempted dab onto the boot and it ricocheted onto the stumps.But before his innings ended on 64 off 89 balls, the Chittagong batsman played a measured knock that immensely helped him make a point. As he reached the half-century off 75 balls, Tamim pointed towards to someone in particular towards the dressing-room as an acknowledgement. The celebration was of relief as it brought him a 50-plus score in ODIs after seven months, but more importantly it silences some of his critics for the time being.After Tamim and Mahmudullah exited, it was once again down to Shakib, the man who has routinely stood firm in adversities. He is one of the very few middle-order batsmen in this team who understands the importance of the single. He doesn’t only rely on them, he uses it as his strength to move the fielders around to his liking.With Nasir Hossain for company, a crisis man at the tender age of 21, the pair added 89 for the sixth wicket in 14.5 overs, keeping Bangladesh within striking distance. But that hope was ended by Gul, whose accuracy makes him Misbah-Ul-Haq’s most reliable weapon at the death. After Nasir had struck him for two successive boundaries to reduce the margin to 39 runs, the next ball was a straight one that found the batsman leaving a slight gap where it matters; lazy footwork for one but finding that little breach takes a lot of skill.Gul’s batting too was vitally important at the stage he came in. As Misbah left on 198 for 7, Pakistan were in danger of getting bowled out for less than 220, but the fast bowler forged a feisty stand with Sarfraz Ahmed. Gul was severe on Mortaza, hammering 16 off his final over to spoil the returning fast bowler’s figures, which had promise to remain as miserly as his opening spell.Jamshed and Hafeez hardly made a dash for the big shots as they built a steady partnership, which ended in the 28th over with Jamshed’s run out. Shahadat too showed some verve and he was lucky too, picking up three wickets in his second spell. Hafeez, who batted so correctly to make 89, fell to a pull shot (as did Asad Shafiq) while Younis Khan skied a ball that he had readied himself to hit towards midwicket. After Shahadat’s strikes, Shakib was on a hat-trick by removing a careless Umar Akmal and by his presence of mind when Afridi chipped one back at him.Shakib’s successful juggling act, aided somewhat by Misbah’s helmet at the other end, should have been the turning point from where Bangladesh should have pressed their authority. Instead, it was probably Nasir’s dismissal that took the game away from the home side.Hafeez and Shakib ultimately held a showdown of a potential rivalry while Mashrafe, Tamim, Shahadat and Jamshed chose the occasion to justify their inclusion. One of them got to prove a board president wrong.

Which of India’s young Test hopefuls will make the step up with the bat during the A-team tour to the West Indies?

Sidharth Monga01-Jun-2012From Delhi to Bridgetown, it’s a 22-hour journey by plane. Three days ago 15 young Indian men came together on that flight. By the time they take the return flight in early July, a few – at least two – of them will have done enough to be on many more flights, with the Indian Test team. The three first-class matches that India A will play in the West Indies will be the last any Indians play before they get into a long home season of 10 Tests. Rahul Dravid has retired, VVS Laxman not guaranteed to last the season and the Indian bowling is one window that never shuts, retirements or no retirements … what a strong whiff of opportunity would have existed on that flight.Imagine the 15 exchanged notes on the 22-hour flight. Three of them, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara and Manoj Tiwary, would have similar stories. Rohit has the story of February 6, 2010. Laxman was not well then, the Indian selectors had not picked a back-up, and Rohit was produced out of nowhere for the Nagpur Test. Minutes before the toss, he injured himself during warm-ups. Laxman was fit by the next match, and the closest Rohit has come to a Test cap since then was the frustrating wait in Australia earlier this year, when he was not considered good enough for a side that lost eight straight Tests away from home.Rohit has been criticised by many for being casual, but it is good to see he is not looking to rest despite having been on the road since the start of that Australian tour. He has been close to it, he wants to taste Test cricket. Pujara, his captain, has had a taste of Test cricket, and might tell his team-mates he loves what he has seen although it can get tough.Pujara twinkle-toed to 72 on his debut against Australia, turning into a cake walk the kind of chase the India of old used to mess up. His next Test came on a green mamba in Durban, where he fought for 81 crucial minutes as Laxman batted India to a defendable target. In the next Test he got a vicious outswinger from Dale Steyn that swung late and alarmingly.Pujara didn’t do anything to play himself out of the role of first-choice Test back-up, except dive for a ball. On May 8, 2011, at the same Chinnaswamy Stadium where he debuted, during the IPL, Pujara went in for a slide at the extra-cover boundary, and his knee stuck in the outfield, injuring it badly enough to require a surgery. The recuperation period was long enough for Virat Kohli to come in and claim a place in the Test side.Tiwary’s fateful dive didn’t come in a match. It was May 9, 2007, India’s warm-up for their first game on the Bangladesh tour. Tiwary was coming off a Ranji season during which he broke long-standing Bengal records. He had impressed both captain and cricket manager on the tour, and was sure to debut in an ODI the next day. During fielding practice at the boundary, he dived, and didn’t come up for minutes. The shoulder injury sent him home. More than four years of sporadic chances and finally an one-day century later, Tiwary has yet to become a certainty in ODIs. On that tour, in that form, given that uncertainty in India’s batting line-up post the 2007 World Cup debacle, who knows what could have transpired?Ajinkya Rahane might not have any such story of misfortune while on the brink, but he might tell them how despite 18 first-class centuries and an average of 60 over 50 games, it’s one IPL century that has made him a box-office hit. He might also remember often being consigned to a corner in the nets in Australia, he and Rohit bowling to each other, not a chance in sight.With Suresh Raina not part of this tour, it is almost certain two of these four batsmen – Tiwary being the least likely, unless this tour suggests otherwise – will be part of the squad against New Zealand in August. When Laxman retires, a third man will be picked. The four might have been kept from a Test spot for a while now, but they are all still young, and will now appreciate the struggles of the likes of Laxman before they became full-time India Test players. A Test spot is knocking at their doors, and they will all want to be the first one to open the door. Over to the West Indies, then.

Plays of the Day from the fourth one-day international between England and South Africa at Lord’s

Andrew McGlashan at Lord's02-Sep-2012Drop of the day
England’s poor catching has been a feature of South Africa’s visit. The latest culprit was James Tredwell who shelled Hashim Amla at second slip when the batsman had 4. The edge flew high and fast – but they often do from a bowler like Steven Finn – and Tredwell was in a tangle about whether to have his hands pointing up or down. It was not what brittle catching confidence needed and it was not a huge surprise when another catch, again by Tredwell, was dropped off Graeme Smith, although on this occasion Craig Kieswetter’s dive did not help.Costly review of the day

England’s judgement of the DRS has not been great in this series and it has cost them two wickets. At West End, in the second ODI, they did not have a review left when AB de Villiers toe-ended a catch which was not given on the field and at Lord’s they could not ask to check an lbw shout by Ravi Bopara against Amla. In the ninth over of the day they had used it for an appeal by Finn against Amla that never looked out (it was well over leg stump) so when Bopara nipped one into Amla’s pads on 14 they had to live with Richard Illingworth’s not-out decision. Replays showed it was taking out leg stump flush on.Spell of the day

Strictly, this should be spells and it goes to Bopara. After bowling his full complement of ten overs at The Oval he produced another valuable nine in this match and, even more, claimed two key wickets – his first none other than Amla who had again set himself to bat the innings. Like at The Oval, Amla was bowled through the gate and then Bopara benefited from the pressure building on the middle order when Faf du Plessis made a mess of trying to guide to third man. The problem is, he cannot score runs at the moment.Shot of the day
It had been a very subdued innings from South Africa, at least until Robin Peterson came to the crease. He immediately targeted Tredwell by switch-hitting him towards the Grandstand. The first attempt skimmed away for four but the second came out of the screws and travelled many rows back. It was a fine Pietersen impression by Peterson.Record of the day
The pressure is on Kieswetter, with Jonny Bairstow and Matt Prior making strong claims for his place, so it is only fair to reflect on a notable achievement for him. When he whipped off the bails with Wayne Parnell well out of his crease he became the first England wicketkeeper to make three stumpings in an ODI. He previously jointly held the record of two alongside Chris Read, James Foster and, slightly surprisingly, Graeme Fowler.Throw of the day
England’s fielding continues to be a problem (see the first entry on this list) but Jade Dernbach produced a moment of brilliance to run out Ryan McLaren with a direct hit from third man. The ball deflected off McLaren’s pads – Finn was in the process of a big lbw shot – and the batsman decided to chance a second late in the innings but Dernbach’s rifled throw caught him well short. Simon Taufel did not even call for the third umpire.Ball of the day
Dale Steyn does not often need many looseners and he was right on the mark throughout his first over. The last ball was the best of the bunch as it nipped back in at Alastair Cook and caught the England captain plumb in front of off stump. It was very similar to the manner of Cook’s dismissal against Vernon Philander in the Lord’s Test and continued a lean series for Cook after his second-ball duck and a laboured 20. It also meant that, from the completed matches in this series, England’s opening stands read 0, 14 and 2 compared to South Africa’s 89, 50 and 68.Pain of the day

Steyn did further damage to England when he struck Jonathan Trott on the glove in his fourth over, during which he regularly touched 90mph. Trott called the physio on who used the magic spray but a couple of overs later the batsman needed further help, this time swallowing a couple of painkillers. He continued to battle his discomfort but each time he hit the ball the bottom hand would come off the bat and he grimaced in pain until given lbw against Dean Elgar after South Africa successfully reviewed.

The first of our four-part series of statistical analysis on the 2012 County Championship

David Hopps and Neville Scott05-Nov-2012Nottinghamshire have ample excuses for the collapse of their Championship challenge according to a statistical study of the 2012 season.Records drawn up by Neville Scott, a freelance cricket journalist who specialises in analysis of the county game, show that Nottinghamshire were more badly hit than any other county by the combined effects of the absences of first-choice players and one of the wettest summers ever endured.For much of the season, Nottinghamshire were the closest challengers to Warwickshire, eventual winners of County Championship, until a late slide saw them finish fifth as another high-profile dip into the transfer market, this time for the England batsman James Taylor, failed to bring immediate rewards.But statistics show that Nottinghamshire lost an average of nearly four players per match to injury or international calls, more than any other county in both divisions, and also potentially lost more points because of rain than any of their Division One rivals.Scott’s study aims to show not just a simple record of hours of play lost to rain but the maximum realistic number of extra points which they might have gained but for rain – a somewhat notional figure but one which seeks to provide a more accurate assessment of a county’s ill luck.Not only did Nottinghamshire miss the chance to gain a maximum of 120 extra points because of the dismal weather, nine of their 16 Championship matches were affected.Three Division Two counties – Yorkshire, Essex and Gloucestershire – were more badly affected by the weather than Nottinghamshire. For Essex, who can normally rely on drier weather than most, it was an unusual situation.Yorkshire’s Australian coach, Jason Gillespie, bemoaned the weather on an almost daily basis and he had reason, despite their success in sneaking promotion in the last game of the season, as rain had robbed them from contesting 151 additional points – the worst luck in the country.Those who regarded Derbyshire’s promotion with surprise will notice that they shared with Sussex the best fortune with the weather.

Absent: Average number of first-choice players absent per match through injury or by England orders; excludes IPL absentees or overseas players who could have been replaced
Rain: Max. realistic number of extra points which might have been gained but for rain. Number of affected games in brackets.More than half the Championship matches played were interrupted by rain to an extent where stoppages affected points gained – comfortably the highest number since Scott began his study 13 years ago.

Tomorrow: In the second of our four-part series, we reveal the only county that fielded a majority of players in 2012 who learned their cricket outside the UK; and why Yorkshire can no longer regard themselves as more homegrown than most.