All posts by h716a5.icu

India’s three stalwarts will never win a Test series in Australia. How broken they must feel

Sidharth Monga at the SCG06-Jan-2012It’s all over, as Bill Lawry would say. Sachin Tendulkar: 22 years of international cricket, five Test tours to Australia. Rahul Dravid: close to 16 years of international cricket, four tours to Australia. VVS Laxman: same as Dravid. They will never win a Test series in Australia. How broken the three must feel. Australia, the land that loved them and also broke their hearts, had to be part of reason they kept going at their age.Australia, the big tease. Australia, where they came within three wickets or an enforced follow-on of winning a series in 2003-04. Australia, where they played the most bitter Test in recent memory but couldn’t bat out two sessions and a bit. Australia, where Tendulkar is closing in on 2000 runs at an average of 58, where both Laxman and Dravid have more than 1000 at averages of over 45. Australia, where they shall never win a Test series.The dream didn’t even reach Perth. It sounds more natural when Lawry says, “It’s all over at the WACA,” as opposed to, “It’s all over at the SCG”. Well, it was tragicomic in the end, with the Indian tail swinging and reaching scores that have now become milestones for this side. Three hundred was almost slow-clap-worthy. Three fifty surprising. Four hundred unbelievable.It gave you time to forget empathising. To stop wondering what the three would be going through, how they would be taking this. Later on, though, you did. You realised that – and you knew it for a while – the end is near. That the three might not have enough left in them to make it to late 2013, when India start playing away Tests again. They only come to Australia in 2014-15. For non-Australian players of this era, the World Cup and Australia tours have been the big motivation, the events they build up to. Brian Lara managed to win one series here, Jacques Kallis too.Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman came here this final time with their best pre-series chance of winning. Two weeks in, the chance is no more. They were part of the reason this team was expected to do well. They have seen the team through the worst times. Times when the team wasn’t even expected to compete outside India. They played a part in turning the team around. They went through disappointment and despair to finally see a time when they could actually be expected to win matches abroad.They played a big part in this disappointment too. How they must be cursing themselves. Laxman scored 2, 1 and 2 in his first three innings. Dravid was not the Dravid of the last year, but fought to score a fifty at the MCG. He has been bowled thrice in this series. Tendulkar has looked in glorious touch, but was dismissed at the worst times. They are known for converting starts into big innings, for grinding the opposition down. Not a single century between them. Today, though, even the most hard-nosed analyst would have felt bad for them. Sport doesn’t.The Melbourne Test was within their grasp on three occasions, but they watched it slip: twice in the field, once through their collapse. Dravid dropped a catch, too. It was the bad old days of Indian cricket coming back. Too often in the recent past India have been napping at big moments in Tests.The despair was reminiscent of their disappointment in beautiful Cape Town when, a year to the day, India let South Africa escape through defensive fields and uninspired bowling. The three saw their last chance of winning a series there disappear then. At least they came close then. At least Laxman made a big contribution in the previous Test. At least Tendulkar scored a superlative hundred against a red-hot Dale Steyn at Newlands.At least India drew the series in South Africa. Here it will take a miracle for India to even come close to drawing the series. In all likelihood the three will have to live with the fact that their teams never played good enough cricket for long enough periods to win series in Australia and South Africa.Trying to draw this series 2-2 and retaining the Border-Gavaskar Trophy will keep them going. Life will go on as well. In fact it already has. An hour or so after the defeat in Sydney, the BCCI released the next IPL schedule, a whopping 53-day event. It’s all over.

A dramatic slide handed Sri Lanka a match Pakistan had no business losing, and it’s likely the visitors lost the game in the mind rather than on the pitch

Kanishkaa Balachandran in Colombo17-Jun-2012Misbah-ul-Haq couldn’t offer any explanation as to why Pakistan combusted, converting what appeared to be a walkover into an embarrassing defeat. It must have been hard enough digesting the numbers – seven wickets fell for 13 runs inside four overs – and worse would have been the realisation that the collapse actually began with his wicket. Pakistan weren’t supposed to lose this game. With 81 needed off 78, two set batsmen at the crease and eight more to come – including their most experienced at No.6 – it would have taken a lot to bet against them winning. The pressure created by one sharp catch in the infield followed by a bouncer barrage, though, resulted in Pakistan’s crumble.What is more glaring in Pakistan’s defeat is the fact that they cannot hide behind the excuse of being a batsman short. A heavy defeat in the second ODI at Pallekele exposed an imbalance in their line-up, so they sought to rectify that by dropping a seamer and bringing in another batsman. With at least two batsmen struggling for form, including Misbah, it was imperative they played seven batsmen apart from the keeper.Spare a thought for Azhar Ali. A half-century in a format he wasn’t associated with at the start of his career invariably ends up in a losing cause, due to no apparent fault of his own. True, he may never find himself in the league of swashbuckling openers, but that wasn’t the role intended for him in the first place, as his captain reiterated on this tour. As a grafter, he was meant to be the pivot around which others would bat. For the second time in three games, he was ditched by his more experienced colleagues. For the second time, a hard-fought fifty was drowned in defeat.Misbah didn’t extend any excuses. “Having played so many batsmen, each of them realise their responsibilities. We needed a run-a-ball and the batsmen should have taken more responsibility but they didn’t,” Misbah said. “We took it for granted that we had the match in our hands.”While together, Azhar and Misbah had adopted a conservative approach towards the target of 244, grafting the singles and dispatching the odd bad delivery to the boundary. The pair had added 99 – the bulk of it during the non-Powerplay overs – but as it happened, the period in which the field restrictions became mandatory also coincided with Pakistan’s slide.Predictably, the Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene had saved his best bowler, Lasith Malinga, for the batting Powerplay. Pakistan took six off his first over in that spell, but in the following over – the 37th – an incident hampered Azhar’s chances of batting through. Turning back at the crease to avoid a run out, he pulled a calf muscle, and with no runners allowed, the pair had to look for boundaries.Misbah tried exactly that but fell to a sharp catch at mid-off by Kulasekara. Malinga then softened Umar Akmal up with three consecutive bouncers, and the batsman appeared jolted by that barrage. Kulasekara cleverly pitched it up the following over and had Akmal chasing and edging to the keeper. Suffice to say though that Akmal botched yet another opportunity to guide his team home.A wobbly Younis Khan, dropped to No.6 owing to his poor form, also fell edging in a freakish over from Thisara Perera that included a hat-trick and a run-out. Shahid Afridi fell to the poorest shot in that maniacal period, before the pressure got to Sarfraz Ahmed, who steered the hat-trick ball to slip. Sri Lanka were within touching distance of avenging two famous collapses in Sharjah, in 1999 and 2011.It wouldn’t be fair to blame the Pakistan captain for the collapse as there was enough competency in the batting to follow. Misbah admitted his players lost the game in the mind. “It was a simple equation. We should have achieved it easily, without taking risks,” Misbah said. “In my view the batsmen need to have a compact technique in conditions in Sri Lanka, where the ball swings and seams a bit. We need to be mentally strong.”Misbah also defended demoting Younis to No.6, given his average of 44 in 28 innings in that position. “He was struggling at the top. My form too was poor so I promoted myself to No. 4. Asad Shafiq is playing well. Even in Sri Lankan conditions, you need experience even at the bottom. He [Younis] has played at No.6 before, so we pushed him down.”Not for the first time on tour, Misbah admitted that the fielding was a let-down. He refrained from singling out individuals, saying he hoped none of those mistakes will be repeated. Besides the collapse, the other sore point was that this was Pakistan’s 15th defeat in 18 chases of 240-plus in the last three years.Now 1-2 down in the series with a must-win final game on Monday, Pakistan would hope this collapse was just an aberration in their recent impressive head-to-head record against Sri Lanka. Public memory is short, and Pakistan would hope it remains that way.

Plays of the Day from the fourth day of the third Test between Sri Lanka and Pakistan in Pallekele

Kanishkaa Balachandran in Pallekele11-Jul-2012Poor shot of the day
The sun was out and the fourth day pitch resembled the one at the SSC, with barely any movement on offer. On the third day, Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paranavitana survived a testing morning session without being dislodged, and today, Mohammad Hafeez and Azhar Ali had all but emulated them. The pair had added a fairly chanceless 83, until Hafeez lost his concentration. With another ten minutes till lunch, Dilhara Fernando slipped in an innocuous full delivery outside the off stump, probably wide enough to be penalised, but Hafeez couldn’t resist chasing it. The ball took the outside edge and went chest-high to Paranavitana at first slip. Nearly two hours of hard work was undone by an uncharacteristic shot by Hafeez, and the hosts finally had a breather.Bowling change of the day
Ironically, the most experienced of the Sri Lanka seamers, Fernando, was sparingly used by Mahela Jayawardene. When Sri Lanka took the second new ball, Nuwan Kulasekara and Thisara Perera were the preferred options. Fernando was brought back in the 90th over, with the hope of breaking the stand between Asad Shafiq and Azhar Ali. The partnership had just reached 100, when Fernando tempted Azhar into a slash outside off. It didn’t bounce as much, and Azhar played a tired shot without moving his feet. Like with Hafeez, it was a rare lapse in concentration. Fernando struck again in his following over, trapping Mohammad Sami lbw with a Yorker.Shot of the day
Jayawardene had attacked for most part, packing the slip cordon and keeping most of his fielders in. With the Hafeez-Azhar stand building, he went defensive on the on side, placing a deep square leg for Hafeez. Kulasekara bowled it short and but Hafeez not only controlled the pull, he placed it perfectly in the gap between deep square leg and fine leg for a boundary and made a mockery of the field set.

With his selection uncertain and his role in the side fluctuating, New Zealand selectors are failing to lure the best out of James Franklin

Andrew Fernando in Pallekele29-Sep-2012James Franklin is one of the most enigmatic figures in New Zealand cricket. When he first made it into the national side 11 years ago, he was a bowler who could bat a bit. Strangely, he was mediocre with the ball and surprisingly talented with the bat.The selectors may have been tempted to drop him for failing to perform in the role he was picked for, but given he became a bona-fide member of New Zealand’s lower-order bailout squad in the mid 2000s, alongside Daniel Vettori and Jacob Oram, they often couldn’t afford to leave him out. Innings like his brilliant unbeaten 45 in Queenstown, where he brought home a difficult chase against Sri Lanka from No. 8 with only the tail for company, prevented him from slipping back down into the domestic circuit completely.Franklin is a polarising figure at home. To some, he epitomises everything that is wrong with New Zealand’s selection policy; another jack-of-all-trades whose lack of consistency continues to scuttle New Zealand’s efforts to become a major cricketing power. The detractors need only to look at Franklin’s numbers to find fuel for their fire. His ODI bowling average is over 40, and his Test and Twenty20 figures don’t inspire a lot of confidence either. With the bat, he averages in the low twenties in all three formats. A few years ago, Franklin was told by the national selectors to put his bowling on the backburner, and focus on his batting, which they believed had potential but was not getting the attention it deserved. He is now picked in the side primarily as a batsman – but his scores have not shot up dramatically enough to justify his selection on that discipline alone.That he was left out of the New Zealand tour of West Indies, so he could focus on his Twenty20 cricket for Essex with the World Twenty20 approaching, then called up for the India Tests after 18 months away, sums up the muddled thinking.But occasionally, Franklin comes off. And to cloud the issue even more, he has lately performed as a bowler. In the Super Eights opener, his 2 for 34 was the catalyst in Sri Lanka’s slowdown. The hosts seemed destined to reel in New Zealand’s score at a canter, but Franklin proved difficult to get away and counted the explosive Thisara Perera among his scalps when it was crucial New Zealand didn’t allow Perera the room to explode. In the recent T20 against India in Chennai too, Franklin failed with the bat, but his 2 for 26 was instrumental in New Zealand’s victory and their taking momentum into the World T20. But with good bowling form behind him, he was not required until the 12th over against England in a crucial match.Franklin’s batting, though, clicked against England, and he played the kind of innings that first marked him out as a batting talent. With New Zealand threatening to collapse at 67 for 4 in the 12th over, Franklin rebuilt alongside Ross Taylor, before letting rip with a spate of boundaries at the death. His 50 off 33 balls will justify his selection on batting grounds, but perhaps it should not gloss over a failure to consistently produce results since being asked to play as a batsman. In his last 30 innings across all formats, Franklin has made fifty only three timesPerhaps this inconsistency is not entirely Franklin’s fault. Eleven years after making his debut, New Zealand’s team management have failed to stick to a clear plan for him. If he is to play as a batsman, is he a finisher, as he was against England, or an opener, as he was against Bangladesh early in the tournament. At other times in his career, he has been given extended runs in the middle order and even higher up.The Franklin detractors will be quietened for a while after a decent all-round showing at this tournament, but they are sure to make themselves known as soon as failures return. The New Zealand selectors have shown they will have Franklin do almost anything to bring him into the team. If they are going to be so persistent with picking him, perhaps they would do well to define what they want from him. If they play him as a batsman, or as a bowler or as an allrounder, rather than all three when it suits, perhaps consistency in their demands will help Franklin build dependability into his own game. As he has proved repeatedly, he has the talent to be successful; it just needs to be pushed in one very specific direction.

Monty Panesar may not be a new man but his familiar methods are perfect for this pitch

George Dobell in Mumbai23-Nov-2012Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as attempting the same action over and over again but expecting a different result. But whatever his excellence in the field of quantum physics, Albert Einstein was surely not much of a bowler.Certainly Monty Panesar has made a career out of repeating the same action over and over and hoping for a different result. While you suspect he might not be much of a physicist – though he would put all his theories in good areas – he has, for more than a decade, made a virtue of his remarkable consistency. He runs in, puts the ball in more or less the same area, and hopes that, this time, it will either spin sharply enough to take a wicket or that the batsman will make a mistake. Some days the ball spin; some days it does not, but Panesar changes very little on any surface and against any opposition. It means that he can, on unsympathetic surfaces, be rendered somewhat lacking in subtlety. But, on pitches such as this one, he is a fine bowler.There were rumours heading into this match that Panesar was a new man; that he had learned a few tricks from net sessions with Shane Warne and that, during the last part of the season at Sussex, he had experimented with a little more variation.It is not so. Perhaps Panesar used the crease a little more than he has in the past but, aged 30, he is not going to learn too many new tricks. He is, by and large, the same bowler who came into the England side in 2006. It is surely time to stop expecting him to change.Panesar’s four wickets on the opening day maintain a fine run of form for England. Indeed, he went into this match having claimed five-wicket hauls in two of his three previous Tests.With such a record, Panesar could be forgiven for questioning why he is not in the side more often. But it is his misfortune to be considered a one-dimensional cricketer in an era where all-round skills are highly valued. With a Test batting average of 5.47 he cannot claim to be anything but a specialist bowler. It is also relevant that, in his last Test, he dropped two chances including one painfully simple effort at mid-on that reprieved, of all people, Mahela Jayawardene. England, understandably, are reluctant to risk him.It is also Panesar’s misfortune to be a contemporary of Graeme Swann. While some will insist that Panesar’s left-arm spin is the more potent weapon, Swann’s record with the ball – 199 Test wickets at 29.79 apiece – remains slightly better than Panesar’s (146 at 32.99). While Panesar took two five-wicket hauls to Swann’s none when they played together in the UAE, Swann actually took only one fewer wickets in 36 fewer overs and had the better strike-rate of the pair. He is also a far better fielder and batsman.It is hard not to warm to Panesar, though. His unabashed delight at taking a wicket is as simple and unaffected as a Labrador puppy taken for a walk. He may be one dimensional but he remains a potent weapon in the right circumstances. And this pitch, worn and tailor-made for India’s spinners, really does offer the right circumstances.It seems unlikely this will be a high-scoring game. This pitch, used three weeks ago for a four-day game, is already providing assistance to the spinners and will surely only help them more as it wears further. A couple of balls have already exploded from the pitch and batting fourth could prove desperately difficult.For all that, though, perhaps only Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni were the victims of almost unplayable deliveries. The rest of the Indian wickets owed more to either pressure – Virat Kohli, tied down for 55 balls for his 19, drove impatiently and Virender Sehwag played across the line – or technical errors: Gautam Gambhir lost balance as he played across one and a tentative Yuvraj Singh missed a straight delivery. England, on the whole, could feel satisfied with a much tighter performance. The substitution of Panesar for Tim Bresnan was a clear success.Yet England will be concerned at India’s fightback. Having reduced India to 119 for 5 and then 169 for 6, they saw Cheteshwar Pujara and R Ashwin take the game away from them with a seventh-wicket stand of 97.Stuart Broad, despite a decent first spell, was disappointing. Conceding five an over in these conditions is damagingly wasteful.

Harsha Bhogle, Ian Chappell, and Tom Moody discuss the mid-to-long-term concerns for Australia, some of which have appeared glaringly in the defeats against India

ESPNcricinfo staff12-Mar-2013
Is 2-0 a fair reflection of how good Australia are? Plus, there is so much uncertainty about the side. Too many questions and too few answers? (2.02 – 4.29)
Ian Chappell: It’s a fair reflection of how they’ve played. Bear in mind that they probably had the best of the conditions, they won the toss in both Test matches. It’s not a great surprise, perhaps a surprise that they have gone down as badly as they have. If you’ve been watching the Australian batting line-up in recent times, they’ve struggled against good spinners, the sort of pitches they got was no surprise to me, the way they batted was even less of a surprise.TM: I think it’s a true reflection of where Australian cricket’s at at the moment. The lack of depth and the lack of pressure that’s being put on the 11 players that are in the side. Australia are still very uncertain as to what that top six is; the top six boasts a lot of players that would ideally like to bat one, two, and three. There’s one player who is in as good a form as anyone in world cricket in Michael Clarke, who has taken a long, long time to eventually make his mind to move up the order where he needs to be to lead this new Australian side.About time that Clarke went up the order? And what about Shane Watson? (4.30 – 8.52)IC: I don’t think Clarke is the ideal No.3, I don’t think he is the natural No.3, but in this case he is far and away the best-equipped player to play there in the Australian side and he has been for a while. It staggered me that he hasn’t moved up the order. He should have moved up to No.3, probably when Ricky Ponting moved out of there, certainly when Clarke was playing so well against India and making so many runs. In these circumstances, he’s got to get up there and stop trouble.Not a natural No.3, but Australia don’t have a choice•BCCIThe batting order is a mess, and has been in one for a while. It comes about because they haven’t been opening with Shane Watson. When you’ve got a side that is struggling and you’ve got a guy who is pretty decent at the top of the order, leave him at the top of the order and just bowl him for the odd-few overs whenever you needed a change. That’s how they should have been using Watson for quite some time now. Him moving down was a mistake and ever since then, the batting has been in strife.TM: I agree with Chappelli with regards to Watson. The foundation of your innings is so critical, and Australia just haven’t had a foundation for too long. Watson’s best form is at the top of the order – he averages about 43 in Test cricket there and it just falls away in every other spot in the order. The team needs to be built around Watson at No.1. I would want Clarke at No.4. I would be willing to take a mid-term view on trying to get this batting order right, at least 12 to 24 months ahead.We just need to persevere, at the moment we are going with Phillip Hughes. Whether he is the long-term answer , certainly the way he has batted in Indian conditions hasn’t looked to be the case. But outside of India, he’s had a reasonably promising comeback to the national side after being out for a lengthy period. His overwhelming appetite for runs in domestic cricket outweighs all the negatives in my view. The other point is, there are not too many options that are bashing down the door.Is Ed Cowan doing enough to stay in the side? What about the rest of the batting spots? (8.53 – 14.15)
IC: I wouldn’t have had him in the side at the start. I think that’s where they’ve got themselves into trouble. There’s not much choice now on tour. The worst-case scenario for me, always was when they walked out of India if they didn’t have their top four sorted out, with the batting order in a bit of a mess and no opportunities to get it sorted out before going to England. Now they’re in a situation where they’ve got to go in to a holding pattern, do the best they can, but the people happiest about that would be the 11 blokes who are likely to play for England.Tom’s right. The alternatives [in the top order] aren’t great. At some point, as a selector, you’ve got to say, “that’s the young guy, he’s got something about it, you’ve got to put him in there and give him a chance.” Unfortunately, there’s not enough guys banging the door down back at home. You look at Australia’s situation. We’ve got Ponting and Clarke, two young batsmen who had long-term success, but Ricky started 18 years ago. Australia used to produce Test batsmen who were coming in to the side, some of them eve in their late teens, early 20s was just normal. Now, we can’t find one. That’s an indictment on the system that’s producing these batsmen. We had the Argus review after two Ashes losses, if we have four Ashes losses in a row, what are they going to have then? What we got in the Argus report, in my opinion, was pure window dressing.TM: It always makes me laugh, whether it’s an Argus review or whatever an organisation gets reviewed when things are going badly. To me, the time to review your performance is when you’re doing well. When you do that, you tend to discover why you are doing well and what you need to continue to practice to maintain that longevity. We have enjoyed an enormous, successful, period of time, over a decade, and we’ve produced some remarkable players, but during that time we’ve spent too much time looking at the spoils and enjoying the success instead of making sure we maintain that success. That’s what we are paying for now; we haven’t got ready-made players ready to pick up the bat and keep Australia competitive, home and away.Why is there always a new spinner coming to India? You’ve had Jason Krejza, Nathan Hauritz, Gavin Robertson back in ’98 come here. They say they learn a lot, but don’t come back. (14.16 – 19.22)

“These might be conditions that show us in the poorest light, but if they [Australia] haven’t got their confidence back and the batting order is still a mess, then England might not be much better.”Ian Chappell

IC: It’s symptomatic of the fact that we haven’t had much in the way of spin bowling since Shane Warne and Stuart McGill. They might say, “we’ve learnt a lot in India,” but if that doesn’t produce results in other places, you don’t get picked, that’s tended to be what has happened. It was interesting to see Hauritz’s quote the other day where he was encouraging Nathan Lyon not to make too many mechanical changes to his action. That’s what stuffed him up, he reckons in India. I think what also stuffed him up were the field placings Ponting gave him, they were horrible. By the look of Ashton Agar, he and Lyon are probably the best two spinners going forward for Australia.What they did with the whole selection with the spin bowling was a muddle to me. Agar went there to fill in until the main party came over, played quite well, and they said, “oh, we better keep this guy.” There was always talk about what Glenn Maxwell can do, he didn’t even play in the second tour game. You had the feeling if Agar had a good match there, they’d play him in the first Test. But he didn’t have a good game, suddenly he’s gone. Maxwell doesn’t play in the first Test, Lyon has a bad first Test, he’s gone, Maxwell’s in and Xavier Doherty’s in. It can’t do a lot for Lyon; I still think he is the best spin bowler in Australia, and having given him that mantle for this tour, I thought you had to certainly stick with him a little bit longer.TM: Lyon’s numbers in the early part of his career for a finger-spinner are excellent, he averages in the low 30s. He is young, at a development stage. To lose patience as quick as they did I thought was very short-sighted. The non-selection of Lyon for the Hyderabad Test is a significant derailing of his progress and undermined the investment that had been made in him. For Hyderabad, I would have played Doherty and Lyon, who I would have played in the first Test as well. You need to show faith and confidence in your players. Lyon is not the only spin bowler to struggle in Indian conditions – Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan don’t have great records in India.’Nathan Lyon and Ashton Agar are probably Australia’s two best spinners going forward’•Getty ImagesAre the conditions making Australia look worse than they are? And what can we expect in Mohali? (21.00 – 26.02)
IC: The bonus for Australia is it’ll be a pretty decent pitch in Mohali and there’ll be a bit of encouragement for the quickies. That’s where Clarke has got to put his focus and say to these guys, “alright, conditions haven’t really suited us in the first two, they’re going to be more in our favour in the next one, and that’s when we’ve really got to play well.” That’s the opportunity to get some confidence back. The big concern will be, how much confidence the batsmen have lost.The conditions in India are conditions that suit Australia least of all. I’d still be concerned about England, but there’s a bit of history there of trouble with the seaming and swinging ball. If Graeme Swann is fit after his elbow operation, off-spin has trouble Australia for some time now and is troubling them in India, Swann has a history of gobbling up left-handed batsmen and we’ve got a hell of a lot of them at the top of the order. Yes, these might be conditions that show us in the poorest light, but if they haven’t got their confidence back and the batting order is still a mess, then England might not be much better.TM: Yes, it is making us look worse, but what it’s highlighting is we have some serious issues and we have to make consistent selection decisions for the long term. Otherwise, in 12 months time, we will be in exactly the same position as where we are today. I’m still trying to get my head around Matthew Wade batting at six and Moises Henriques at seven. I believe in your Test side you need your best six batsmen. I don’t think Wade or Henriques are among your best six batsmen in Australia currently.Mohali also turns. From my experiences up there, if it’s left dry, it will turn and turn quite sharply. I think there is going to be a bit of a drought up there, for sure. That’s the contest we’re in and you’ve got to be up to it.Numbers Game (26.07 – 28.41)
In the last three years (since March 2010), England had 22 century partnerships for the second and third wickets out of 114 for those wickets; South Africa 14 out of 93. How many century partnerships have Australia had for the second and third wickets in that period, out of 118 in all?

Since the inception of the IPL, Sehwag has been a constant source of inspiration and big runs for Delhi Daredevils, but not this season

Abhishek Purohit04-May-2013Two years ago, in Kochi, Naman Ojha was caught boot before wicket by a Sreesanth delivery that pitched good length and just rolled along the ground. Three balls earlier, David Warner had been bowled, trying to play a shorter one off the back foot. The ball had gone through at shin height. It was the seventh delivery of the game. Difficult pitch. Difficult situation. Virender Sehwag had watched those dismissals from the non-striker’s end. He’d responded with a masterly, match-winning 80 off 47, after saying at the toss the soil was coming off the pitch whenever someone walked on it. The next highest score in the game was Ravindra Jadeja’s 31 when the chase was all but over.The Hyderabad surface tonight was nowhere close to that Kochi one on the difficulty scale. Yes, it was by no means a stand-and-hit pitch. Yes, a few kept very low. But there was as much chance of getting a boot before wicket as there is now of Delhi Daredevils making the playoffs. One of the highlights of Sehwag’s Kochi innings had been his late-cutting from close to the stumps on a pitch where survival was a lottery for others. In Hyderabad, he didn’t even try to late-cut; he tried to dab a Darren Sammy delivery to third man. It came in, stayed slightly low and hit off. More worryingly, it hit off when Sehwag’s bat was still to complete its downward swing. This has been some decline for one of the most destructive batsmen in the history of the game.To be fair to Sehwag, he hadn’t thrown it away, like he did so often in his prime when the runs used to flow. In fact, his 8 off 17 was the slowest among the Daredevils’ top seven. It just wasn’t happening for him. As it hasn’t at the international level for some time now. There too, it wasn’t as if he was giving it away. He had tried to rein himself in, played more circumspectly, but was getting dismissed trying to defend.Tonight, he saw Dale Steyn toying with Mahela Jayawardene in the opening over and played out a maiden to Ishant Sharma next. He took nine deliveries to get off the mark. He didn’t attack when he was offered width, and was so stunned by a Steyn bouncer, he fended it painfully off the forearm.Sehwag’s strike-rate this IPL season is a completely unSehwag-like 123.62. The lowest before this was 143.47 in 2009, when the tournament was played in South Africa. In the remaining four seasons played in India, it had never gone below 160.Six days after that Kochi knock in 2011, Sehwag came to the same ground on which he struggled tonight and blasted 119 off 56 to chase down 176 with an over to spare. The next-highest score for Daredevils was James Hopes’ 17, showing what kind of support Sehwag had had. “That’s the kind of player he is,” Hopes had said. “He is as good as it gets in world cricket.”This season, the same player has had one innings of note in half the season. That, too, was not the single-handed demolition Hopes had witnessed, with Jayawardene also making a half-century in a 151-run partnership against Mumbai Indians.Sehwag is one of the few players who have been with the same franchise since the IPL started. Daredevils have been probably the most excruciatingly inconsistent side in the IPL, finishing top of the table one season and plummeting to the bottom next. But Sehwag’s presence has been one constant. In a way, they have ebbed and flowed with Sehwag. He produced five successive fifties in their run to the top of the league stage in 2012. He’s dragged them to victory when they have stumbled, inspired them when they have stalled. Precious little of that has happened so far this season, and none of it, even if it happens, will make a difference to Daredevils’ prospects now.This is the same man who once smashed 94 of 41 against Deccan Chargers, again in Hyderabad, to finish a chase with the small matter of seven overs to spare. But it was so far back in time, Glenn McGrath and Mohammad Asif bowled the first seven overs of the game. Those two, for different reasons, belong to an era gone by. So does Sehwag, increasingly so.

India A’s tour to South Africa offers many India hopefuls a good chance to stake a claim for batting and bowling slots in the senior side

Abhishek Purohit08-Aug-2013The LC de Villiers Oval in Pretoria is about an hour’s drive from the Wanderers in Johannesburg. Most of the 16 India A players will be hoping they can perform impressively enough at the former over the next three weeks, so that they can make it to the latter for a Test match three months later. The hopes will be highest for a bunch of middle-order batsmen, all of whom have played international cricket, but for whom a Test spot remains an uncertainty, despite at least two vacancies.Leading this bunch will be a man who, just over a year ago, was part of a similar group of hopefuls on a plane to West Indies, and was looking to restart his international career that began with a lot of promise but had been halted by injury. Cheteshwar Pujara had won a Test debut for India in 2010, impressing the selectors enough to make India’s previous trip to South Africa but had required surgery after a knee injury in the following IPL.There were ten home Tests lined up in 2012-13. That was as good an opportunity as he would ever get to establish himself, but Pujara had missed over a year, his debut now only a memory. The A tour to West Indies in June 2012 was his chance, just like it was for many others. A superlative effort arrived in the first unofficial Test – 50 followed by an unbeaten 96 in a chase of 186, after India A were 77 for 6 and 115 for 8.The Test recall came, and Pujara has averaged 82.53 since, with two double centuries, and two big hundreds. While the Caribbean experience may not have helped much in tackling the attacks of England, Australia and New Zealand, West Indies was where Pujara began his comeback. He’s now India’s first choice as Test No 3, and surely has to be the leading example and motivation for those still on the fringe. The man who has been rested for this A tour, Virat Kohli, is first choice as Test No 5. The No 6 position is still open, as it has been since Sourav Ganguly’s retirement in 2008. If no one has claimed No 6 as yet, it also leaves the reserve middle-order batsman’s slot open.India A squad

Cheteshwar Pujara (capt), Shikhar Dhawan, M Vijay, Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Dinesh Karthik, Ajinkya Rahane, Wriddhiman Saha, Parvez Rasool, Shahbaz Nadeem, Shami Ahmed, Stuart Binny, Ishwar Pandey, Jaydev Unadkat, Siddarth Kaul

There are as many as five batsmen who would want to stake claims for both vacancies in Pretoria, with an eye also on the No. 4 spot that will fall vacant, after decades, in the near future. Ajinkya Rahane and Rohit Sharma were among the hopefuls along with Pujara last year in West Indies. Both remain hopefuls as far as Tests are concerned, and in Rahane’s case, limited-overs as well. Ambati Rayudu has finally discovered there are no easy international runs, even if the opposition is Zimbabwe. The first ball to Suresh Raina is still invariably short, but somehow he still finds himself in contention for a Test berth.MS Dhoni’s leviathan presence has left Dinesh Karthik with no choice but to compete as a specialist batsman, but with Wriddhiman Saha also in the squad, it is to be seen who will be preferred for the two unofficial Tests.The openers may appear to have much less at stake in Pretoria. M Vijay had two centuries in his previous Test series. Shikhar Dhawan’s form has continued unabated ever since his unforgettable Test debut in March. However, Vijay’s record in Tests outside the subcontinent is a highest of 45 in eight innings. Dhawan has played one Test, at home, and his run in limited-overs has been aided by missed chances in several innings. Gautam Gambhir was recalled for the final Test against Australia before being ruled out due to jaundice, and there will ideally be space for three openers on the tour to South Africa in November, but Vijay and Dhawan could not have asked for a better chance to seal the first two spots.India know it is the batsmen who need the reconnaissance sojourn more than the bowlers, and that is why three frontline fast bowlers and spinners are not part of this squad. The selectors may or may not go back to a reportedly rejuvenated Zaheer Khan. Moreover, given how frequently someone like Umesh Yadav breaks down, this might even mean two spots opening up in November for Jaydev Unadkat, Mohammed Shami, Ishwar Pandey and Siddarth Kaul.After South Africa, the senior India side tours New Zealand, England and Australia in 2014. Who knows who might do a Pujara in Pretoria, push his way into the Test side and go on to establish himself over those four overseas contests? It could be a batsman who has been as overdue for runs as Rohit is, or someone as raw as Pandey and Kaul are. Therein lies the beauty of these A tours.

Family illness might have swept Brad Haddin away from cricket altogether, but he has returned to Brisbane in search of the Ashes win that has always eluded him

Daniel Brettig20-Nov-2013Brad Haddin looks out across the Gabba with the hunger of a desert traveller happening upon an oasis. The first Ashes Test is also his 50th and his first at home in near enough to two years.There is a streetwise manner to Haddin that conveys his age and his awareness – at 36 he is old enough to have been playing for Australia at a time when defeat was unthinkable. But surveying the home of summer’s first Test, all verdant turf and sunshine, he is happy to lapse into the lyrical.”Matthew Hayden always used to say there’s no better place to be than the first Test of an Australian summer at the Gabba,” Haddin told ESPNcricinfo. “The excitement about it is just massive and that’s how I feel leading into this.”Usually such lines can be ignored as mere hyperbole but in Haddin’s case the journey back to Brisbane has given them plenty of meaning. For six horrible months in 2012 he cared not a bit for cricket, as he sat at the hospital bedside of his seriously ill daughter, Mia. Haddin was in the West Indies when word reached him of her worsening condition; he flew home immediately and would not countenance another day in the game until she began to stabilise.Even after returning to play for New South Wales, he spent as much time with Mia in hospital as he did on the field, sleeping by her side more than once during domestic fixtures with the Blues. Eighteen months on from the episode, Haddin still baulks at speaking about it, but is happy to admit the milestone of 50 Tests has been made richer by the personal battles he fought along the way to get there.”I’ve always said I never doubted I could come back to this level, and if I did have any doubts about it I wouldn’t have come back to play,” Haddin said. “Circumstances allowed me to come back to cricket and I never had any doubt I’d be back here.”I still think my best cricket’s in front of me – if I didn’t think it was I wouldn’t have pushed to come back. Personal milestones are something you think about more as your time’s done, but I’m proud of that. It’s been a big 18 months for myself and my family, so it’s going to be an exciting day.”Haddin’s return to the Australian team was no easy road either. His batting and wicketkeeping form had been ebbing away before the short-lived visit to the Caribbean, and remedial work on both took place as he established himself once more with New South Wales. The incumbent Matthew Wade was doing well against South Africa and Sri Lanka, though his errors behind the stumps left a slight avenue open to the older man. That avenue became wider with the retirements of Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey, and the weight of experience they took with them.Even so, Haddin was not called up for the fateful tour of India earlier this year, biding his time at home until the call came to fly over as injury cover on what had become an increasingly dysfunctional traipse across the subcontinent. Haddin flew into a team riven by the decision to suspend four players in Mohali. When Wade’s ankle injury necessitated another change to the team, Haddin kept wicket neatly in the third Test, while in the evenings younger players gravitated towards him, a figure of honesty and perspective but also humour.The Indian crucible showed the team still needed a senior man like Haddin, irrespective of longer-term plans for Wade to retain the gloves. He was reinstated for the Ashes, not only as wicketkeeper but also vice-captain. In England his role covered the numerous facets required of a strong deputy, from tactical assistance for Michael Clarke on the field and in the team room, to off-field responsibility for keeping team-mates relaxed and grounded.”I think we’re a pretty good mix. I don’t want his job I can tell you that,” Haddin said of Clarke. “I feel now the role I have in the Test team coming back from England and now, I feel you can put your mark more on this group and I’m enjoying that role. I have no intentions about trying to become a captain; I’m comfortable with my role as vice-captain and helping the team in that way.”Haddin’s thoughts on…

An apprenticeship among the best: “I was lucky because I’d been around the one day team touring for a long time before playing a Test and I was able to have that education about what standards were required once you got to Test cricket. I was around guys like Punter, Haydos, Damien Martyn, Justin Langer around the start of my career, and they created a great environment for the baggy green.”

Succeeding Adam Gilchrist: “I never compared myself to anyone. I’ve only ever challenged myself to be the best cricketer I possibly can be and it’s the same message I would give any cricketer coming through. Whether the best you can be is a third grade cricketer at your club or a state cricketer or be lucky enough to get to Test cricket, you’ve just got to keep challenging yourself and have no regrets when you’re done.”

His most treasured series: “One of the best moments we had was taking that young team to South Africa after they beat us here in 2009 and being 2-0 up in the three-Test series. That was special. We were playing with guys I’ve played all my cricket with like Andrew McDonald, Marcus North. That was a fond moment.”

That shot in Cape Town: “It was a unique Test. After a loss like that you can overanalyse things and look too much into it. The pleasing thing was the way we came back and personally the way I came back and performed well in the next Test at Jo’burg to level the series. It showed we had some good character there.”

Having been through what he had with Mia, the tense insularity of the team he re-joined was anathema to Haddin, and he set about rekindling the sorts of constructive relationships and attitudes that define strong teams almost as much as on-field success. On plenty of occasions during the Ashes tour, Haddin could be found guiding younger players, including David Warner, Steven Smith, Nathan Lyon and even Clarke, who learned much from Haddin’s earlier freewheeling stints as captain of New South Wales.Haddin does not suffer fools, though he has found time for rascals. His support of Warner through a year of tribulations, many of them self-inflicted, has demonstrated a rare degree of care and attention for a player who may yet prove critical to Australia’s Ashes chances. Though uneasy about suggestions of keeping watch over Warner by day and by night, Haddin is happy to quantify the value he sees in a man so nearly sent home from England.”I don’t think David needs anymore looking after than anyone else in the team,” Haddin said. “But he’s a fierce competitor out there and we’re a better team for having him around. He brings that passion for winning cricket games. He’s great for our group and rascals win you comps as well. They’re not scared; they enjoy the game and enjoy competing.”Off-field is a massive part of being vice-captain, the stuff out on the field is the easy stuff. Behind the scenes you’re making sure your group’s got a smile on their face, they’re not worrying about things they don’t need to worry about and they’re just enjoying the game of cricket. You’re looking after your mates, and that’s a big role of the vice-captain, to make sure come game day there’s no baggage and we just get out there and play the game for what it is.”The battle for the Ashes will define the careers of many players, not least Haddin himself. Contests with England have drawn out Haddin’s best, from a century at Cardiff in 2009 and Brisbane the following year, to a memorable bid for victory at Trent Bridge five months ago and the record for most dismissals in a series. He winces when reminded that Brisbane means he will have played 50 Tests without once being part of a winning Ashes team, as telling a statistic about Australia’s recent years of decline as any other.”It does make the goal pretty clear,” he said. “Ashes campaigns are great to play in and I’ve been privileged enough to play in three of them now. The hype and theatre is outstanding, and this one’s no different. It’s a good feeling; it’s a lot more settled than it was last time going to England.”We can talk about saying we got close and we played better cricket in that series, more a brand of cricket we wanted to moving forward in the series, but the bottom line is England won 3-0, and we’ve got to come out here on our home soil and find ways to up the ante in our game and compete for longer periods to turn that result around.”As for how Australia can get there, Haddin proposes a simple method and attitude for each member of the Australian team: prepare thoroughly, do your job, and show as much joy in the success of others as your own.”You can overcomplicate it and use fancy words and analyse things too much, but everyone’s got to do their job,” Haddin said. “Guys will have good days, guys will get hundreds or five-fors, but you’ve got to enjoy the moments when your team-mates do well. Your turn will come around and you’ve got to enjoy the success of your mates in your own hard times. Do your job and create that environment that allows you to enjoy the success you have.”Given the trials, trips and snares Haddin has encountered on the way to the Gabba, few could possibly begrudge him and his family a belated Ashes triumph.

Firdose Moonda at Johannesburg28-Dec-20130:00

Kallis played the almost perfect innings – Petersen

Beyond the guard of honour, the handshakes, the hashtags and the heavy hearts, there was a Test to win. The most important person knew that. Jacques Kallis, who all the above gestures were for, blocked out the occasion and batted in his bubble. The same one many thought he had left when he announced his decision to retire from Test cricket. Kallis showed them he hadn’t, because there was a job to be done.He constructed an innings that Alviro Petersen described as being the antithesis of someone on the verge of the end. “You wouldn’t say he was playing in his last Test match,” Petersen said. In fact, because of its cautiousness, this knock was befitting of someone at the start of his career.At first, the wariness was out of necessity. South Africa had lost Graeme Smith and Hashim Amla within six overs of each other, Ravindra Jadeja had found turn and India’s seamers were searching for reverse swing. “Even before he faced a ball, there was a wicket,” Petersen remembered. He was the man out, which meant Kallis was one of two new batsmen and, like he has often had to do, needed to provide South Africa with backbone.With that responsibility, Kallis took 16 deliveries to score his first run. In that time, AB de Villiers got off the mark and Kallis got hit on the hand by Zaheer Khan. It wasn’t a body blow like the one Dale Steyn gave Ajinkya Rahane on the second day. Neither was it a delivery that exposed Kallis’ reactions, like the one he bowled to Ricky Ponting in Adelaide last year, which literally floored the Australian batsman.Ponting had said he was “embarrassed” by that ball, so much so it confirmed in his mind that his time was up. Something similar could easily have happened to Kallis, which would have vindicated and even explained the reason for his retirement. There would have been proof to back up the whispering, a result of the number of times he has been lbw playing across the line recently, that his technique was waning. Kallis seemed to be consciously guarding against that. He concentrated on solid defence, for the team and himself.Jacques Kallis batted in his final Test like he had done early in his career•Neil Lane/ESPNcricinfoZaheer got the ball after the blow to the hand to bounce more but Kallis was prepared. He pushed the delivery behind point for his first run. Four overs later he had added only one more, when he changed tack. He charged Jadeja and lofted over mid-off for four, twice. The Kallis who could entertain had arrived.De Villiers, as expected, played the more adventurous innings but Kallis grew in confidence too. He had not passed 40 in seven innings before this, stretching back to February, but as he spent time in the middle he brought out the sweep and the cut.By lunch, de Villiers had overtaken Kallis and after the break Kallis needed to resettle again. He outside edged Mohammad Shami but with no slip in place, he was safe. It was only when the afternoon wore on that Kallis brought out the drive he has built his reputation on. He treated the crowd of 6900 to a couple against Zaheer, one off the back foot and one off the front, to enter the 40s.For the next 46 deliveries, Kinsgmead waited as Kallis retreated further. In that time, de Villiers put in a dive that might have given him a painful grass burn to avoid being run-out, and was later dismissed. After what seemed an age, Kallis punched Jadeja through point and a misfield brought him his half-century.There was a roar of appreciation, enthusiastic applause and for a moment, Kallis allowed himself to enjoy it. He removed his helmet and whirled around to acknowledge the crowd, which included his sister, and his smile spoke of satisfaction and relief. “With all the pressure of the last Test, he stood tall,” Petersen said.After that, Kallis stood firm once more, firmer than before. With India getting a fair amount of turn with the old ball, he focused on defence, and South Africa’s run rate slowed dramatically after tea. In the 15.5 overs before bad light and drizzle stopped play, they scored only 32. Although the pitch may not have facilitated a run-rate of four an over, like South Africa had on day two, such a go-slow may not have been needed for survival.Everybody noticed Kallis’ introverted approach, including Mark Boucher who thought he looked “more focused than before.” With Kallis in his zone, comparisons were drawn between this innings and his maiden Test century at the MCG 16 years ago.It speaks of the consistency of the man that he can go out in a way that is eerily similar to the manner he came in. But there is a difference between what was needed in Melbourne in 1997 and Durban today. Then, there was a Test to be saved. Now, there is a series to be won.Some are of the opinion that Kallis slowing down could have hurt South Africa’s chances of winning. Others believe he has given them the platform to push for a result. Petersen believes Kallis played “the perfect innings for the situation we were in,” but that his job was not done.”If Jacques thought he could just cruise through his last Test match, he was wrong,” Petersen joked. “We are really going to need him tomorrow.”It is the last time South Africa will be able to say that and know Kallis will be able to respond. That is still sinking in. “We haven’t really thought about this Test team without Jacques Kallis. But lucky, it’s not quite here for us yet,” Petersen said. “We’ve got two more days to focus on.” The most important person knows that.