The opener was on a run-a-ball 25 before finishing on 81 off 56 to help South Africa notch up their first win on the tour

Srinidhi Ramanujam06-Jul-2024Tazmin Brits wanted to smash the leather off the ball. But she couldn’t find the gears for it when she started in the first T20I against India alongside Laura Wolvaardt.She scored a match-winning 81 off 56 balls, but if one had watched only the first half of her innings, it would have felt like Brits was playing an ODI, despite it being a batting-friendly surface at Chepauk.It took her nine balls to get off the mark and she had moved to a run-a-ball 25 at the end of ten overs. At the other end, Wolvaardt was batting freely, and Marizanne Kapp attacked from the get-go. Brits struggled. Against Pooja Vastrakar in the seamer’s first over, she swung and missed, she was beaten on a loose drive, she toe-ended a heave to mid-on after charging down, she was beaten outside off while looking to go big. Brits just couldn’t get it right.Related

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Having recovered from a knee injury, Brits was playing her first T20I in three months. She had scored 61 runs in the three ODIs earlier in Bengaluru. She missed the one-off Test with an illness. This wasn’t going well either, but she managed to “shift the game a bit”, and it was possible because of advice from Wolvaardt and Kapp.”Kappie just said to me: ‘you are leaning back, your base isn’t strong enough – you maybe should just move your head a bit more forward’,” Brits, the Player of the Match, said after the game. “I was feeling like I was doing that, but if you look at the replays, I was leaning back a lot, so it didn’t allow me to free my hands. I was tucking myself up a bit, and the same thing with Wolf [Wolvaardt]. She said: ‘just stay in there; it’s going to come’.”It’s one thing to know what the flaw is and quite another to rectify it immediately in a T20 game. But Brits is a fighter.Six years after she missed the chance to take part in the 2012 London Olympics as a javelin thrower following a road accident, Brits – who has the Olympic rings tattooed on her right biceps – made her T20I debut for South Africa. Twenty-one days before the next Olympics, her resilience was on display again in front of a 12,000-strong crowd, far away from Paris.

“You got to be fearless. Everyone always says that but to actually do that in a game is always difficult. You fear getting dropped. So you play within yourself”Tazmin Brits

At the halfway mark, South Africa were 78 for 1. They scored 111 runs in the last ten overs with 56 of those coming off Brits’ bat.It began with her coming down the track to a flighted delivery from Asha Sobhana and smashing it over long-on for her first six. That was in the 11th over. In the following over, bowled by Radha Yadav, she muscled one over midwicket while maintaining a still base. Then came Vastrakar, who had conceded just three runs in her first two overs, for the 16th. But this time, Brits’ power game, married with timing, brought her a one-bounce four over extra cover, and with that, her tenth T20I half-century, off 40 balls.”We got into a bit of a hole with the ODIs and coming back from a knee injury and not getting runs…” Brits said. “If you don’t get runs, you’re not doing your job. I tried to hit the ball too hard in the first few overs. I wanted to hit the leather off the ball, maybe send the ball back to South Africa. But I wasn’t getting good positions. There’s a lot of basic things I should have looked at now that I think about it. But we’re human. We struggle. So when you struggle, you got to try to find a way out.”The real fun began after her fifty. That she got a life after being dropped by Richa Ghosh on 50 also helped. But her bat-swing became more refined, evident in the way she tonked Radha for two back-to-back sixes in the 17th over before using her strong wrists to collect two fours off Deepti Sharma in the 18th. This included a reverse hit through to the deep-third boundary.Laura Wolvaardt’s advice helped Brits switch gears•BCCIThen came the final part of the battle between Vastrakar and Brits. In the last over of the innings, Brits crouched low to Vastrakar’s bouncer and pulled it behind square while falling over. On the next delivery, the final ball of the innings, Vastrakar got the better of her as she holed out to long-on but not before Brits had notched up her career-best score in the format.”You got to be fearless. Everyone always says that but to actually do that in a game is always difficult,” Brits said. “You fear getting dropped. So you play within yourself. But we’ve made like a bond between the batters that we’re going to go hard no matter what. We have to represent our badge and we have to win the World Cup, so we’ve got to trust the process.”It does hurt when India beat us 3-0 [in the ODIs]. But at the end of the day, that’s where you rise, and that’s where you become champions. Your mentality needs to shift. You can’t sit in the corner for too long. If you sit in the corner too long, the game might just go by.”South Africa have won just five of their last 14 completed T20Is. But going by Friday night’s evidence, if Brits is consistent with her opening act, she could well be the point of difference at the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh later this year.

Records tumbled in Multan, with Pakistan becoming the first team to score 500 in a Test and lose by an innings

Sampath Bandarupalli11-Oct-20241 Pakistan are now the first team to lose a Test match by an innings margin despite scoring 500-plus runs in an innings. The previous highest total to end up in an innings defeat was 492 by Ireland against Sri Lanka in Galle in 2023.2 Pakistan are only the second team in all first-class cricket to lose by an innings despite a 550-plus total. Leicestershire were the first such team, losing to Glamorgan by an innings and 28 runs despite a first-innings total of 584 in 2022.3 Instances of England conceding 550-plus in a Test innings since Brendon McCullum became their head coach in May 2022. England won all three Tests, with the previous two in 2022 – the Nottingham Test against New Zealand and the Rawalpindi Test against Pakistan.Pakistan’s 556 all out in their first innings in Multan is now the joint-fifth highest total to end up in a losing cause in Test cricket. Two of the top four Test totals in defeats also have been by Pakistan.2 Innings wins for England in Tests in Asia, including this latest win in Multan. The other instance was against India in 1976, when they won by innings and 25 runs in Delhi.6 Consecutive Test defeats for Pakistan, a streak that began in December last year. It is their joint-longest losing streak in Tests, alongside the six consecutive losses they sustained in 2016-17 and 2018-19.ESPNcricinfo Ltd11 Consecutive Test matches at home for Pakistan since their last win in 2021 against South Africa. It is now Pakistan’s joint-longest streak without a win at home, equaling their 11-match streak without a win between 1969 and 1975.6 Test matches as captain for Shan Masood – Pakistan have lost all six. Only four other captains have lost six or more consecutive Test matches from their captaincy debut – Khaled Mashud (12), Khaled Mahmud (9), Mohammad Ashraful (8) and Graeme Cremer (6).2004 Last instance of Pakistan losing a Test by innings margin in Pakistan – against India in Rawalpindi. Pakistan’s last innings defeat at home (in Pakistan or the UAE) came in 2014 against New Zealand in Sharjah.2.87 Partnership average of Abdullah Shafique and Saim Ayub in Test cricket, the lowest for any opening pair in the format with a minimum of eight innings.Four of the eight partnerships between Shafique and Ayub have been nought, the most for an opening pair for Pakistan in Test cricket.41 Babar Azam’s highest score across 17 Test innings since 2023. Babar is the only batter without a score of fifty-plus among the 38 players with 15 or more Test innings while batting in the top six since 2023.1379 Runs scored by Pakistan and England in their respective first-innings in Multan. It is the third-highest first-innings aggregate for a Test match and the highest to have ended with a result.The previous highest first-innings aggregate to produce a result was 1236 runs in the 2016 Chennai Test between India and England, and the 2022 Rawalpindi Test between Pakistan and England.

Two stars of West Indies’ Under-19 side have made it to the senior team, where they’re hoping to make a splash while enjoying their cricket

Firdose Moonda10-Oct-2024Allrounder Zaida James’ first match of this T20 World Cup was going pretty well. Batting at No. 8, she joined Stafanie Taylor in the 16th over, with West Indies 83 for 6 against South Africa. She hit the fourth ball she faced, off the notoriously difficult to get away Ayabonga Khaka, for four over extra cover. Then she sent the penultimate delivery of the innings over cover point to finish unbeaten on 15 off 13 balls and give herself something to bowl at with the new ball.Her first delivery was full on the stumps, just where South Africa’s captain, Laura Wolvaardt, likes it. She drove it back to James, who saw a catching opportunity and put her hands up to take it, but the ball hit her thumb and ricocheted onto her jaw. James was sure something was broken.”It was scary. I didn’t really expect it to come that hard because I was literally settling to just hold the ball, but all of a sudden it just hit me,” she says in Dubai. “I knew it was my chin and I was pretty scared that it was broken, because when I went out to sit down I could not even open my mouth. Then, I also realised my thumb is hurting me and I saw my thumb is huge.”Related

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James took no further part in the game and spent the next three days recovering, mostly nursing the thumb. Four days later, all that remained were faint scratches on her chin and a bruised ego. “I couldn’t really eat,” she says. “I had to be drinking food, getting smoothies, but now I can actually talk. It’s still kind of sore, and sometimes I have to talk from my right side, but it’s getting better every day. The thumb is what’s keeping me out at the moment, but I just want to fight it out and try to get into the next game.”You’d think she’d have received some extra TLC from her team-mates but it’s been quite the opposite. “Her new name is Chinny Chin Chin,” Ashmini Munisar, who played the second match against Scotland says. “We’ve just all been having a giggle at her.”Under Munisar’s captaincy, West Indies women won two of their five games at the Under-19 World Cup•Matthew Lewis/ICC/Getty ImagesJames shakes her head at the lack of sympathy from all quarters. “All my team-mates, they always make fun of everything,” she says. “Ashmini says she’s my friend but I don’t know what to consider her right now.”The pair dissolve into peals of laughter and it becomes apparent how young they are – one, James, still a teenager, and Munisar not yet 21. Both still see cricket as a game that consumed them as kids and only emerged as a viable career option much later.”For me, it was just about falling in love with it,” Munisar says. “I started playing with my neighbour in our yard. He was a U-19 player, Kassim Khan. Anytime he would be practising, I would join him just to get a knock. And then I started playing too.”James’ path, and that of her twin sister Janina, was slightly more structured. “I have a pretty sporty story,” she says. “First of all, I did swimming and also track and field in primary school and tennis. So in the morning I had cricket. And in the evenings I had tennis. Right now I don’t know how the hell I did that.”We used to play everything in the house. We used to use water bottles as stumps. I’ve broken TVs and windows. Probably the most expensive thing was the TV.”Both remember watching the 2016 T20 World Cup on the television – the James family had to purchase a new one. “I remember I was up really early in the morning and we were in the room watching the game, jumping up and down, but I wasn’t really focused on trying to get to be like them. I was just playing the game for fun,” James says. “Looking back, I really noticed that I wanted to be there in 2018, when we had the World Cup in the Caribbean. I picked myself up and thought, ‘I have to start working just like them.'”At that tournament both James sisters were flag bearers and Zaida then became the youngest player to appear for Windward Islands, at the age of 14. A few years later she met Munisar, who was playing for Guyana. The two were part of the West Indies side that played in the inaugural U-19 World Cup in South Africa last year, and were the two standout players in the side. Munisar captained the team and was their second-highest wicket-taker, while James was their most successful player – the only one to score more than 100 runs, and the leading wicket-taker. “It was definitely a cool experience, it being the first U-19 World Cup,” Munisar says. “We knew we would set the stage for many more girls to come, so it was really exciting.”A young James (far right) was flag bearer at the 2018 Women’s T20 World Cup held in the Caribbean•Matthew Lewis/ICC/Getty ImagesIt was also an excellent shop window for the young players and James benefited immediately. Five days after West Indies’ tournament ended, she made her senior international debut, and she was immediately included in the 2023 T20 World Cup squad, where she played against Ireland and Pakistan. Munisar had to wait six months for her call-up, but it came in June last year.Now both are establishing themselves in the side and spending time with the players they grew up idolising, the likes of Stafanie Taylor, Hayley Matthews and Deandra Dottin. What’s it like sharing a dressing room with those big names? “Legendary is the word,” Munisar says. “Superior.”That sums up a lot of the experience so far for them. James played West Indies’ opening game against South Africa in the ongoing World Cup, which Munisar sat out, so things only got real for Munisar when she was included in the XI to play Scotland while James nursed her injuries. “Zaida and I talked about this when we played South Africa because before we went out, I told her, ‘Z, I’m not feeling it yet. It hasn’t sunk in as yet,” Munisar says. “And then I remember at the Scotland game, we were going out for the anthem and I told her, ‘Now, I can feel it. I’m so nervous right now.'”The sense of occasion, despite the stadium having all but emptied out after an almost 16,000-strong crowd for the India-Pakistan game just before, almost overwhelmed Munisar. “I was at cover and one went flying through point. I went trying to catch it and I was like, ‘Yeah, boy, I’m here on the big stage. I got to do my best, right?’ I remember fielding the ball and I was shaking. I was so nervous,” she says. “I picked up the ball, threw it back and glanced at Hayley, and she had a laugh at it. And she was like, ‘You good?’ And I just nodded and quickly said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.'”By the time Munisar was called on to bowl, in the eighth over, the nerves were gone and she felt, “I’m good now. I can do this.”She only bowled that one over but was part of West Indies’ first win of the tournament, which kept them in with a shot at the semi-finals. “For us, it’s just about going out there and taking it,” James says. “Obviously, we want to get out of our group, but I think for us it’s just going out there, playing our best cricket and taking it one game at a time. We’re not overthinking it. We’re just enjoying it.”Enjoying it even if it involves body blows, time on the sidelines, and being ragged by team-mates, because at the end of the day James and Munisar are just two kids living their dream.

With the management needing to decide between Taskin and Nahid for the second Test, it shows that pace bowling in the country is currently in a good space

Mohammad Isam29-Aug-2024It says a lot about a pace attack when the fastest bowler in the group, who took out the opposition’s best batter in a crucial moment in the first Test, is the one most likely to sit out for the next match. It also speaks richly of a pace attack when the top two wicket-takers of the last three years aren’t part of a match-winning overseas Test. There is enough ammunition with Bangladesh right now that they are not missing those sidelined by injury or those who need workload management. Welcome to the new-look Bangladesh pace attack.The man who changed that perception was Taskin Ahmed. His comeback story in 2021 was so inspiring that the rest of the pace attack followed in his footsteps. They started to win matches, which prompted the team management, hitherto so reluctant about pace, to build the attack properly. Taskin was picked in this Test squad with the caveat that he would only be available for the second Test. He is recovering from a long-standing shoulder injury and could replace Nahid Rana in the second Test in Rawalpindi.The tearaway Nahid, the first Bangladeshi fast bowler to reach speeds of 150kph in a Test match, removed Babar Azam to rock Pakistan on the fifth day. The hosts were 146 all out, their lowest total against Bangladesh.Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto had given Nahid a relatively free hand to use his pace to his best advantage. When asked after the win about this particular facet, Shanto said: “We let him go. We allowed him to bowl fast, without worrying about leaking runs. Look who he got us. Babar Azam. So we were okay with his runs per over.”Taskin, more experienced than Nahid, could offer much more to Shanto. He is a proven force with the new ball, while also developing the delivery that wobbles. He has been known to bowl a hard length, but can often slip in the yorker, or bowl the bouncer at will. Taskin is the complete package, one who has been excellent in white-ball games too this year.Nahid, meanwhile, is still new but has already turned heads with his pace. However, his inexperience of playing only his second Test did show in the first innings when he leaked runs after Shoriful Islam and Hasan Mahmud had reduced the hosts to 16 for 3. He is, however, a long-term prospect, and Shanto had enough faith in him to be the one bowling at Babar in the second innings.Nahid Rana clocked 149.9kmh in the same over in which he dismissed Babar Azam•Associated PressHailing from Chapainawabganj, Nahid is the second product of former fast bowler Alamgir Kabir, after Shoriful. Nahid didn’t take the conventional Under-19 route in Bangladesh cricket but has instead made his place after a superb season of first-class cricket, before getting a break in the BPL.But Bangladesh’s pace-bowling attack is more than just about speed. Shoriful has developed to become a mainstay in the attack, often using his angle with the new ball, and then coming around the wicket to strangle batters when the ball gets old. He is a workhorse too, and is already being talked up as Taskin’s heir.Mahmud is not far behind either. To his credit, he has improved across formats and his ability to move the red ball was impressive in his Test debut against Sri Lanka this year. Khaled Ahmed, the most experienced of Bangladesh’s fast bowlers in Pakistan, is missing out, but he cannot play himself down either. Khaled held his own in Bangladesh’s last overseas tour, in the West Indies, and is not far behind in the pecking order.In Islamabad, there are more fast bowlers with the Bangladesh A team. Tanzim Hasan Sakib, who left a mark during the T20 World Cup and kept Shoriful out of the XI is around. As is Rejaur Rahman Raja, having warmed the bench for Bangladesh several times in the last couple of years. That he is still uncapped is a surprise given the number of squads he made it to. The selectors are also giving a run to left-arm quick Ruyel Miah, who can be called a late bloomer. He has toiled for several years in domestic cricket before finally getting this second-string call-up.The fact that Ebadot Hossain doesn’t even make the first half of the conversation is a testament to the fast-bowling group that is expanding every few months. Ebadot is still Bangladesh’s highest wicket-taker in the last three years in Tests, but he is still recovering from an ACL surgery and last played a Test in December 2022. For long, he had a very ordinary average and strike rate in Tests but has improved so much that he also made the white-ball set-up before his injury.With Bangladesh now eyeing an outright Test series win in Pakistan, they have a tough decision to take. Picking Taskin isn’t a difficult choice, but dropping Nahid most certainly will be. Still, they are likely to do it since Taskin is more than just about pace. But that Bangladesh have the luxury of making such decisions shows how much their pace unit has grown in recent years.

Things didn’t quite go to plan, however, as Bangladesh’s old-fashioned crease occupation and spin bowling had the last laugh

Danyal Rasool25-Aug-2024With its network of surveillance cameras, airtight security, and heavy police and military presence, it can feel like there is no hiding place in Rawalpindi. This was felt particularly keenly on Thursday, when a combination of the Bangladesh cricket team’s presence and political rallies made any kind of commute an impossibility, with shipping containers, sniffer dogs and armed security men overwhelming the twin cities, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.Equally, there was no hiding place at the Pindi Cricket Stadium, partially because, alarmed by very few spectators on the first two days of the first Test against Bangladesh, the PCB announced free entry to the stadium over the weekend. What a larger crowd that turned up on the last two days saw from their side, however, might have left them feeling shortchanged.

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Pakistan just couldn’t stop talking about the pitch. What they wanted to do with it, who they had hired to take care of it, how it would come of age over the next five days. Close-up, high-definition shots of a surface laced with grass were shared excitedly by the PCB, with experienced curator Tony Hemming’s arrival announced equally prominently. They announced, more than a day out from the game, that an all-pace attack would line up for the first game.Related

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After three days of cricket where Pindi played as Pindi usually plays, Pakistan’s assistant coach Azhar Mahmood, who grew up and learned his trade in this city, said the behaviour of the surface had totally taken his side by surprise. He epitomised the confusion with this memorable line: “We didn’t read the pitch wrong, it just didn’t do what we expected it to.”Things seemed to go well at first. With the pitch at its conventional day-two flattest, Pakistan cruising at 448 for six, and Mohammad Rizwan unbeaten on 171, Shan Masood called his side back, presumably to make hay of all that pace-friendly goodness Bangladesh had spent 113 overs mostly failing to extract. It was the optically aggressive move – all the overs lost to the weather on day one may have also played a part – and Masood is an optically aggressive captain.Masood admitted Pakistan would have “liked another 50 to 100 runs”. But it wasn’t long before shades of the Shan-ball brand appeared. “We were the ones that were very proactive. We were trying to take decisions. We declared quite early. We scored at a quicker rate.”Shakib Al Hasan and Mehidy Hasan Miraz starred while Pakistan chose not to field a frontline spinner•Associated PressBangladesh were making no such concessions to entertainment. On the day Mahmood wondered why the pitch didn’t behave as he thought it would, Bangladesh’s run rate scarcely tiptoed above three an over. The following day, when a frustrated Naseem Shah called for an overhaul in the way Pakistan should look to exploit home advantage, his frustration partly stemmed from the fact Bangladesh had kept him and his team-mates out for the best part of 170 overs.The seventh-wicket pair put on 196 runs, but there was never any hint of a declaration, Bangladesh ensuring Pakistan squeezed every last drop of effort from their four-man pace attack in searing August heat in Pindi. Mahmood expressed mild frustration at Bangladesh’s indolence in a TV interview later, upset that it deprived Pakistan of the chance to prevent a draw. If only the opposition would play the way Pakistan wanted them to.

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Bangladesh never uttered a peep in complaint about the surface – a member of the camp even privately expressed a desire for the opportunity to play on similar strips back home. Having watched Pakistan go spinner-less, they played the conditions like a fiddle, perfectly clear on how to go about pushing for a result in these conditions. They had a big lead, an early overnight scalp, and a day to make Pakistan pay.By this stage, Pakistan were as convinced about the flatness of the pitch as they had been a few days earlier of its spice. Still not flat enough, as it turned out, for embattled captain Masood, or his equally beleaguered predecessor Babar Azam, to put any runs of consequence on the board. Masood threw his bat at one, ironically ending up undone by extra pace and bounce. Babar, meanwhile, squandered the fortune of avoiding a king pair by throwing his bat at a wide half-volley with no foot movement, unable to execute his trademark cover drive as resplendent bails danced behind him.Having made mistakes throughout the game – as Masood would acknowledge post-match – Pakistan were in no mood to stop just now. Saud Shakeel, whose predisposition towards conservatism would have been welcome now, skipped down the pitch to counter spin that there had been little sign of up till now, allowing Shakib Al Hasan to slide one past his edge as Litton Das whipped off the bails. Abdullah Shafique, whose 37 off 85 was doing its bit to neuter Bangladeshi interest, suddenly found himself down the pitch, too, only for backward point to nestle underneath the top edge. Salman Ali Agha nicked a straight one first up off Mehidy Hasan Miraz, and – who knew? – spin was finding a way of making its mark on the final day of a Pindi Test. Pakistan had made clear all Test they didn’t want a draw, but it wasn’t always obvious they were this keen to avoid one.A dejected Abdullah Shafique walks back after skewing a top edge towards backward point•Associated PressSince the start of this Test, Pakistan had been vocal about the wisdom of going in all-pace. We were told if the seamers weren’t getting any assistance, neither were the spinners. That Pakistan were so confident of getting 20 wickets this way that they might do it against England in October, too. That Salman Ali Agha was bowling so well he was effectively a specialist spinner. Around the same time, Abrar Ahmed, Pakistan’s only real attacking frontline spinner, took four wickets for Pakistan A against their Bangaldeshi counterparts in the same city.All while Bangladesh kept Pakistan out on the field for so long they would be forced to bowl 50 overs of Agha and makeshift spin themselves, getting a single wicket for those efforts. Bangladesh’s own spinners were responsible for seven of the nine wickets that fell on the final day. Quality spin bowling, as it turns out, has a way of scrambling minds even without a great deal of assistance from the surface, with high-quality slower bowlers as lethal with the straight one as the ones that turn.They can toy with batters’ crease positions, test their patience, and awaken all the psychological demons that players work hours putting to bed. Shakib and Mehidy have spent a career establishing reputations that give opposition batters’ such pause; merely rocking up and attempting to lump Agha in the same category is unlikely to have a similar effect.That the game ended with Zakir Hasan sweeping Agha, whom Masood had turned to just four overs into Bangladesh’s nominal chase, was perhaps a fitting way to seal a result both sides deserved. Pakistan had made clear all Test how much they’d hate a pitch that gave them a draw. On that note, at least, Rawalpindi’s surface found a way to avoid disappointing them.

The allrounder continued her stellar year with the ball in women’s ODIs as she helped India sweep West Indies 3-0

Namooh Shah27-Dec-202412 – the number of times India have swept the opposition in a bilateral women’s ODI series of three or more matches now, equalling England’s record in the process.3 – five-fors taken by Deepti Sharma in women’s ODIs is the most by an Indian bowler, with Ekta Bisht, Neetu David and Jhulan Goswami the next best with two each.3 – occasions when only two bowlers (Deepti and Renuka Singh) picked up all ten wickets in a women’s ODI. The other two pairs are Khursheed Jabeen and Sajjida Shah of Pakistan, and Shabnim Ismail and Moseline Daniels of South Africa. This is also the first time it has happened since 2011.Related

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6 for 31 – by Deepti makes her the second player to claim a six-for twice in women’s ODIs. Sune Luus is the other.10 – wickets by Renuka in the series is the joint-second-best for a fast bowler in a three-match bilateral women’s ODI series, bettered only by Ellyse Perry and Ismail, who have had 11 wickets each. It is also the second-best by an Indian with Deepti at the top with 12 wickets in a series.24 – wickets by Deepti are the most by any player in 2024 in women’s ODIs, with Sophie Ecclestone second in the list with 21 wickets. It is also the most wickets Deepti has taken in a single year, bettering the 22 she took in 2017 and 2022.2006 – the last time when an Indian was the leading wicket-taker in women’s ODIs in a calendar year, when Nooshin-Al-Khadeer and Jhulan Goswami both took 23 wickets.

After a decade spent enduring questions from a vocal band of doubters, South Africa’s captain stepped up and let his bat speak for him

Firdose Moonda09-Dec-2024It’s taken 10 years but finally, Temba Bavuma can just talk about his cricket. Or rather, let his cricket do the talking about him.As Player of the Series against Sri Lanka, with 327 runs at an average of 81.75, and as captain of a team that is now one win away from the World Test Championship (WTC) final, Bavuma, for the first time in a long while, does not have to defend either himself or his team in a post-match engagement. Instead, he can soak in the admiration that four back-to-back fifty-plus scores have earned him and the awe of a third successive series win, which has set South Africa up to have their most successful WTC cycle.Related

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That’s a remarkable feat considering that South Africa effectively conceded a series earlier in the year when they sent a makeshift side to New Zealand because their front-liners were contractually bound to the SA20. And that’s not the only reason it’s extraordinary. Of all the underdogs at the start of this WTC cycle, South Africa were the runts. Their reputation had diminished from the glory days of the early 2010s, and they were perceived to have lost interest in the longest format because they only had two-Test series scheduled. Bavuma was questioned as a leader because of his persistent run-ins with injuries. Of their eight Tests before this Sri Lanka series, he had only played in three and batted in two. Of the five matches he missed, three were because of injury, and he came into this contest relatively cold, having not played competitive cricket for two months.Against that backdrop, Bavuma reeled off an innings-saving 70 and match-winning 113 at Kingsmead and an energetic 78 and 66 at St George’s Park. What does he say to those who doubted him?”I’m not a vocal person,” he said afterwards. “I believe in letting your bat do the talking, or if you’re a bowler, letting the ball do your talking. I don’t think that will ever change.”When he was out of action with his elbow injury, Bavuma sought out AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan for advice•AFP/Getty ImagesBavuma’s personal victories in this series were the result of a kind of preparation which was “a lot different to what I’ve been accustomed to”, he explained. After hurting his elbow when completing a run in an ODI against Ireland on October 4, Bavuma’s first focus was “rehab, proper rehab”, which he described as “quite painful” when he got back to South Africa. He also reached out to “guys like AB [de Villiers] who I know later part of his career had injuries that he had to deal with”, as well as “Chris Gayle and Ramnaresh Sarwan to just understand how they do things differently.” De Villiers also had an elbow injury in the last year of his international career while Gayle and Sarwan are players Bavuma knows from touring West Indies, and he wanted their perspective.Then, because he continued to feel discomfort from the impact of ball on bat, he couldn’t immediately get into the best rhythm but had to find other ways to get ready for a must-win series. “From a mental point of view, I tried to find time in between the day, sitting, visualising myself when I’m playing well, how things feel, and then finding a way to live in that feeling and in that energy. And then trusting that when you’re able to hit balls, things will come as they should.”Initially, they didn’t. When Bavuma first picked up his bat, he was still unsure. “My first couple of nets weren’t that great, to be honest,” Bavuma said. “I was quite doubtful of myself, not just physically but also from a pure form point of view. And I think then you’ve just got to trust yourself, you’ve got to trust what you’ve done.”The problem, perhaps, is that when people think about what Bavuma has done (before this series), they look at things like a 10-year career with an average that has never reached 40, and an 8.7% conversion rate of fifties to hundreds. They don’t consider how many of those half-centuries were scored under extreme pressure, with a brittle batting line-up around him. So when Bavuma needed reminding of what he is capable of, he had to look inwards, to the small group of people who know him best.”For support, I lean on my family. They are my source of strength. They are people who see me as Temba the person, not Temba the cricketer or Temba the captain,” he said. “It also about having good guys around you within the team from a coaching and a playing perspective; guys who give you that belief in what you want to do.”Against Sri Lanka, Bavuma batted with an assertiveness that he hadn’t always shown earlier in his Test career•Gallo Images/Getty ImagesTest coach Shukri Conrad has repeatedly called this “Temba’s team”, and kept him in the touring party in Bangladesh even when he was ruled out of the second Test and could have returned home early. Keshav Maharaj, who took his 11th Test five-for in Sri Lanka’s innings in Gqueberha, repeatedly pointed to Bavuma in celebrating his wickets and explained that as an acknowledgement of their shared strategies working. Among his peers, who call him Malume (the isiXhosa word for uncle), there is no doubt that Bavuma is highly regarded. What this series did was also enhanced that regard for him within himself and outside of the change room as he lived up to his batting potential in particular.”It probably just strengthened the belief that I have in myself as a player,” he said. “What helped me is that there was a lot of hunger and desire from my side to put in winning performances for the team. Fortunately, the opportunity was there throughout the series and I was able to make use of it.”After a hard grind in stabilising South Africa in the first innings in Gqeberha, the rest of Bavuma’s innings took place in what felt like pockets of sunshine. He was more assertive in his strokeplay and drove, swept and hooked with confidence. As a result, his scoring rates were higher than usual and he never got into the kind of rut that had previously caused so many of his innings grind to a halt. In Durban, he said he felt he had worked out a formula to push on past fifty and all his innings seemed to show that.The next question (perhaps an unfair one in the immediate aftermath) is how does he keep that going into the festive season when South Africa take on Pakistan and beyond? “It’s also respecting the space that you’re in,” Bavuma said. “Don’t take it for granted, but also kind of enjoy it. Something that I’m also trying to learn is that even when things are not going well, to still find ways to keep enjoying your bad performances. Then, the good performances don’t shoot your emotions through the roof. Easier said than done, but that’s something that I’m trying to do.”But no one will begrudge Bavuma if he allows himself this time to feel the high as South Africa summit the WTC rankings (albeit perhaps temporarily) and soak in their success. They’ve already made sure they enjoyed the first win of the summer for as long as possible. Five hours after the Gqeberha Test ended, the team bus was still parked at the ground and the happy sounds of spontaneous whooping could be heard. It will likely go on long into the night, with the Test players off for two weeks before their next assignment, when they can start to think of how much more they can achieve.

GT have assembled a squad of neatly interlocking parts, with a bowling attack that allows their top order to play to their strengths and maximise them

Karthik Krishnaswamy18-May-20251:21

Moody: Gill, Sai Sudharsan now have five gears

On Saturday night, Bengaluru’s cricket fans paid tribute to Virat Kohli’s Test career when they poured into the M Chinnaswamy Stadium for a T20 game that never happened. On Sunday night, another man from Bengaluru paid his own tribute to Kohli – in Kohli’s hometown, no less – though this was a T20 tribute in a T20 game.It came in the 19th over of Delhi Capitals’ (DC) innings against Gujarat Titans (GT), and it came off a ball that pitched 8.7m from the stumps. That’s solidly back of a length, a length that’s incredibly hard to hit down the ground for six, especially off a rapid, hit-the-deck bowler, with a bat not quite vertical but certainly more vertical than horizontal.Kohli famously hit a 19th-over six like that, off Haris Rauf at the MCG. Sunday’s effort at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, from KL Rahul off Prasidh Krishna, was similar in conception and mechanics, even if it went over long-off rather than back over the bowler’s head.Related

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Stats – GT second team to pull off double-century chase without losing a wicket

Rahul hit GT’s fast bowlers for three sixes over long-off during his unbeaten 112 on Sunday, and none of them was straightforward. The one off Prasidh took the prize for difficulty level, but the two off Kagiso Rabada didn’t come off slot balls either. In the sixth over, he used his reach to extend his arms through a lofted front-foot drive off a 6.75m ball – 6-8m is the fast bowler’s good-length band. In the 11th over, Rabada followed his movement away from leg stump with a 6.99m ball, seemingly cramping him for room, only for Rahul to manufacture a straight-bat jab down the ground.There were only four sixes in Rahul’s innings – that’s the joint-fewest he’s hit in his seven T20 hundreds. That he hit only four sixes, and that three of them came off genuinely hard-to-hit balls, told a tale – an important tale in the context of this match and of IPL 2025 on the whole, but one that won’t immediately leap out of the scorecard.That scorecard is dominated by three big innings from opening batters – Rahul’s 65-ball 112, B Sai Sudharsan’s 61-ball 108, and Shubman Gill’s 53-ball 93, all three unbeaten, all three scored at strike rates between 172 and 178.GT won by ten wickets, with an over to spare, and they romped home in a manner so clinical that the target they were chasing, 200, seemed inadequate. It probably was, but the story of this match wasn’t the usual story of matches like this, of the team batting first showing too little ambition and ending with a below-par total, of the first-innings centurion ending up with question marks over his intent or lack thereof.1:13

‘DC got it wrong with their bowling match-ups’

Those questions have been asked of Rahul numerous times in his career, but Sunday’s innings wasn’t that sort of innings. If DC only made 199 despite losing just three wickets, they did so not because they didn’t take enough risks with the bat but because GT tied them down with the quality of their bowling.And that quality, though apparent if you watched closely, only really began to stand out when it had something to stand out against. And that something was the opposition’s bowling.Sai Sudharsan and Gill batted brilliantly, in a manner we have come to watch with open jaws, putting on an unbroken 205, their highest partnership in a season that has so far brought them 839 runs as a pair, at an average of 76.27, with seven 50-plus stands of which three have gone past the century mark. It’s almost unheard of for an opening pair to score so consistently, with such control, while seeming to take so few risks, without leaving you wondering if they left ten or 15 runs out in the middle.It’s a neat trick, and it’s partly explained by the quality of batsmanship: you only need to watch Sai Sudharsan’s no-look flicked six off T Natarajan, or Gill’s flicked six off the same bowler, hit nonchalantly against the angle, to know that these are hugely gifted strokemakers.But that’s not the whole story. The other thing that makes this trick possible is GT’s bowling attack, which gives Sai Sudharsan and Gill the luxury of taking chances less frequently than opening pairs who play for teams with inferior attacks.Watch the highlights of Rahul’s innings and count the boundaries off hit-me balls. Do the same with the highlights of GT’s chase. Compare.1:07

Moody: ‘Rahul has managed to adjust again to a different role’

Sai Sudharsan hit four fours and a six off the first nine balls he faced, and four of them came off hit-me balls: two hip-high balls angling down the leg side, two short balls offering room to free the arms.There were periods when DC managed to string together sequences of quiet overs – they only conceded 27 from the fifth to the eighth overs, for instance – and neither Sai Sudharsan nor Gill tried to break free by manufacturing a boundary. But DC simply couldn’t sustain that pressure for long enough, and this is how most IPL attacks operate.And GT, at all times, were only chasing 200, because their attack hadn’t operated like most IPL attacks. They operated, instead, like an attack that had Ashish Nehra’s eyes on them at all times.As GT’s head coach, Nehra’s bowling philosophy is simple: bowl good lengths, bowl to your field, and keep at it; if the batter still manages to find the boundary, say “well done, let’s see you try that again”. A lot of coaches talk the same game, but few keep their bowlers on as tight a leash as Nehra does, screaming instructions from the edge of the playing area.And it helps when those instructions are carried out by fast bowlers as good as Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh – both of whom have benefited immensely from the simplicity of Nehra’s stick-to-your-strengths philosophy – and spinners as good as Rashid Khan and R Sai Kishore. All four have featured in all of GT’s matches this season.2:40

What could DC have done differently?

The moment that best illustrated GT’s bowling quality on Sunday came from their one questionable tactical call, giving Sai Kishore the 16th over when Axar Patel was at the crease. That over, pitting a left-arm fingerspinner against a left-hand batter known for his prowess against spin, brought DC 15 runs, but Sai Kishore really made Axar earn his runs. Both the four and the six he hit in that over came off quick, good-length balls angled away from his hitting arc; both times, Sai Kishore forced Axar to use all of his immense reach to find a way to hit down the ground.The contrast between that over and the big overs that littered GT’s innings was stark, the latter invariably chock-full of slot balls or balls offering width.And this wasn’t just the story of this match. It’s been the story of IPL 2025. GT have assembled a squad of neatly interlocking parts, with a bowling attack that allows their top order to play to their strengths and maximise them. DC have never quite found that sort of structure or coherence – they didn’t have it even during their run of four straight wins at the start of the season.It’s why the two teams are where they are right now. GT are into the playoffs, and DC need other results to go their way to have a chance of joining them. And while the top order will take a lot of credit for how GT’s season has gone, they will know that their bowlers have made things a lot easier for them.

Their weakness is the middle order which puts the pressure of scoring on their opening pair of Gurbaz and Ibrahim

Nagraj Gollapudi14-Feb-2025

How do they look?

Having accounted for Pakistan and England among the major teams at the 2023 ODI World Cup, followed by a historic run to the semi-finals in the 2024 T20 World Cup – where they beat Australia and New Zealand – Afghanistan enter the Champions Trophy as strong contenders to make the semi-finals. Such a prediction is backed by their recent record in bilateral ODIs (see below) which highlights their rich form.What’s in their favour is the familiarity of the terrain: Afghanistan play all three group matches in Pakistan (Karachi and Lahore) where spin will play a critical role. Despite the back injury that ruled out their mystery spinner AM Ghazanfar, the leading wicket-taker for them since the 2023 World Cup, Afghanistan possess a rich variety and balance of slow bowlers led by the experienced Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi along with the youthful left-arm pairing of Noor Ahmad and Nangeyalia Kharote.Related

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If there is a weakness, it is the middle order (see below) where Afghanistan have dawdled and struggled, which puts pressure on the opening pair of Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran, their two best batters in the last three years.

Who are their first-round opponents?

Feb 21 – Afghanistan vs South Africa, Karachi
Feb 26 – Afghanistan vs England, Lahore
Feb 28 – Afghanistan vs Australia, Lahore

Best XI

1 Ibrahim Zadran, 2 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 3 Rahmat Shah, 4 Hashmatullah Shahidi (capt), 5 Azmatullah Omarzai, 6 Gulbadin Naib, 7 Mohammad Nabi, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Noor Ahmad/Nangeyalia Kharote, 10 Naveed Zadran, 11 Fazalhaq Farooqi
Rest of the squad: Sediqullah Atal, Ikram Alikhil, Fareed AhmadESPNcricinfo Ltd

Players to watch

At 40, Mohammad Nabi, who has said that he will retire from ODIs after this tournament, is the oldest player in the Champions Trophy. Incredibly, since April 2009, when Afghanistan started playing ODIs, Nabi has played all but five of their 175 matches. Having played every role possible for Afghanistan – he was the captain, he is the second-highest wicket-taker and run-scorer, a leading allrounder and mentor to the players – Nabi wouldn’t mind signing out on a high.Like Nabi, Gulbadin Naib, 33, has been a veteran of Afghanistan cricket who started playing for the country from the ICC Division 5 in 2008. An extremely fit allrounder, Naib recently was a key architect in Dubai Capitals winning the ILT20. Among the top-six run-scorers in that tournament, Naib hit the third-highest sixes (19). Such an aggressive mindset could see Naib playing the critical role of the finisher for Afghanistan.

Key stats

Afghanistan have a chronic soft underbelly problem. In the 2023 ODI World Cup, their middle order (Nos. 4-7) scored the least number of runs (849 off 1001 balls) at a weak strike rate of about 85, despite being mid-table in terms of average (40.42). At the 2024 T20 World Cup, their Nos. 3-7 had a combined tally of 360 runs at an average of 12.

Recent ODI form

Since the 2023 World Cup Afghanistan have won four out of their five bilateral series. This included beating South Africa 2-1 in the UAE, which was the first time Afghanistan had got the better of a top-five opponent in the ICC ODI rankings.

Champions Trophy history

Afghanistan have never featured in the tournament before.

India kept the series alive with a heroic draw at Old Trafford. Alan Gardner hears from Sid Monga and Vish Ehantharajah about a fractious finish and what to expect at The Oval

ESPNcricinfo staff29-Jul-2025India fought their way to a valiant draw at Old Trafford, although most of the headlines revolved around England’s frustration at not being able to call the Test off early as Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar batted on to centuries. On this week’s Switch, Alan Gardner was joined by Sid Monga and Vish Ehantharajah to look back on the fourth Test. Among the topics discussed were England’s petty reaction, the character shown by India, significant milestones for Joe Root and Ben Stokes, and how the two teams are shaping up ahead of the final Test of a gruelling series.