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Graham Napier boosted his chances of bowing out of the game on a high with a four-wicket haul as Essex moved closer to promotion by crushing Derbyshire.

ECB Reporters Network16-Aug-2016
ScorecardGraham Napier helped finished off Derbyshire•Getty Images

Graham Napier boosted his chances of bowing out of the game on a high with a four-wicket haul as Essex moved closer to promotion by crushing Derbyshire.The allrounder, who is retiring at the end of the season, took 4 for 50 to finish with match figures of 8 for 78 to speed Essex to an innings and 62 run victory 15 minutes before lunch on the final day of the Division Two match at Derby.Although Matt Critchley made 43 and Championship debutant Charlie MacDonell an unbeaten 35, Derbyshire were dismissed for 303 and are still looking for their first four day win of the season.The odds were always stacked against the home side denying Essex a fourth win of the campaign but their chances were dealt two big blows in the first over of another glorious morning when Ravi Bopara struck twice.Nightwatchman Callum Parkinson chipped the fourth ball to midwicket and Alex Mellor was tempted into an edged cut that landed in the hands of second slip.It seemed unlikely that Derbyshire would get through the first half-hour but Critchley and MacDonell at least made Essex work for a 23-point haul by adding 72 in 16 overs.Critchley showed why he has a Championship century to his name and MacDonell displayed good judgement and temperament before the second new ball finally ended the resistance.Jamie Porter persuaded Critchley to hook a short ball into the hands of Napier at fine leg and he had Tom Milnes well caught low down at first slip before former Essex seamer Tony Palladino was trapped on the crease.It was an impressive performance on a flat pitch and Essex captain Ryan ten Doeschate said: “Everyone has chipped in and we are very pleased with how we’ve played over the last four days.”We always knew the second innings would be tough and those two wickets last night just before the close of play made a massive dent in their mindset and certainly lifted us.”Graham has really led the bowling attack and as a captain, he’s the guy who’s the first to come to mind whenever I think I need a wicket. The amount of times he’s delivered and he keeps charging in and has played a big part in us winning this game.”Derbyshire head coach John Sadler said: “After spending a day-and-a-half in the field it was always going to be hard chasing those runs down but we didn’t bat well first innings and we’ve been comprehensively beaten.”We have spoken about first innings runs and we’ve not been good enough really in the first innings in the last few games and that’s what sets the game up so we know that’s crucial and we’ve not fired.”

Dilip Vengsarkar, former India captain and vice-president of the Mumbai Cricket Association, has criticized Sairaj Bahutule’s decision to join Bengal a fortnight after he was appointed Mumbai Under-23 coach, calling the legspinner’s approach “unethical”

ESPNcricinfo staff05-Aug-2015Dilip Vengsarkar, vice-president of the Mumbai Cricket Association, has said that former India legspinner Sairaj Bahutule’s decision to coach the Bengal team is “unethical”. Vengsarkar criticised Bahutule for accepting the role with Bengal only a fortnight after he was appointed coach of the Mumbai Under-23 side and was also one of the coaches in MCA’s new spin-bowling academy.According to Vengsarkar, the abrupt move had shown the former legspinner in poor light.”To put it bluntly, Bahutule has been unethical in his approach, especially when we had appointed him for a salary that was agreed upon and he had been coaching the Under-23 squad for the last two weeks,” Vengsarkar told the .”At the MCA, we were happy when he showed a lot of interest in coming to Mumbai after his stint with Vidarbha and later Kerala as coach. We were keen to have as many former Mumbai players, captains under the same umbrella as we could, for they are very much aware of the work ethics of a Mumbai cricketer.”That he would do something like this behind our back is unimaginable. If he wanted to coach a Ranji team, why did he leave Vidarbha and then Kerala, or was he asked to leave? If he is getting a job to coach a Ranji side, then would he leave the same team halfway through if he is offered to coach say Bangladesh or Zimbabwe? The whole episode has shown him in extremely poor light.”Vengsarkar is not the only one peeved with the incident. Bahutule’s predecessor in the Bengal team, Ashok Malhotra, said the Cricket Association of Bengal could have been “more professional” and informed him directly of his ouster. Malhotra found out about the CAB’s decision through media reports after joint secretary Sourav Ganguly announced Bahutule’s appointment while speaking with reporters in New Delhi on Monday night. Malhotra had coached the side for the last two seasons.”I could have been told by the CAB of their decision personally,” Malhotra told the . “As a former player who has represented the state and also a coach, would that be too much to expect? I learnt about my fate from the media.”I must say that I expected CAB to be more professional. There are no hard feelings, but yes, these things could certainly have been done in a better way.”

Ashley Giles, England’s new one-day coach, could have been forgiven if he was caught cold in his opening practice in Delhi

David Hopps04-Jan-2013Ashley Giles knows he will be in for a few surprises as he takes over the coaching of England’s one-day sides, but he could have been forgiven if he was caught cold in his opening practice in Delhi.India’s capital is experiencing some of its most-bone chilling temperatures on record and it was 5C at best when he supervised his first session in light fog ahead of a warm-up match against India A in Delhi on Sunday. Back home in Birmingham on Friday, there were prospects of a positively warming 10C with even the promise of a sunny interval or two.Giles faces quite a challenge if England are to win his first series in charge. They have won only one ODI series in India, in 1984-5, and their last two visits have ended in 5-0 whitewashes for the home side.As for the weather, England might not have experienced their coldest day. Two more of their matches are in the northern outposts of Mohali, which they know well, and Dharmasala, in the foothills of the Himalayas. It is a stunning spot, but maximum and minimum temperatures are predicted to vary between -6C and 6C in the next four days – and the match is less than three weeks away.Even in England, an international is not thought to have taken place in temperatures quite as low as that. Kevin Pietersen, who was not always enamoured with the weather in northern England after returning from IPL, could be just one player in for a treat.Tim Bresnan donned a beanie to peer through the fog and predict that all would be well at the start of the Giles era. “He floated in and out during the Test series in his role as a selector, talked to some of the lads and it was good,” he said.”Most of the plans we use for one-day cricket are already in place and I think it will be pretty seamless for him to come in and pick up the reins. He’s quite chilled out but we’ll see what happens. He might fire a few rockets and surprise people. That’s what you get from a new coach and we’re looking forward to it.”One India A name familiar to England will be Sreesanth, the fast bowler, who returned to competitive cricket last month after an absence of a year with a career-threatening injury. Sreesanth spent two months in a wheelchair after two operations on his toes and has called the experience “the darkest phase of my life.”The side will be led by Tamil Nadu’s opening batsman Abhinav Mukund who Bresnan also know from the Test series in England during 2011.

Brad Haddin is set to be stood down from the first bracket of the triangular ODI series against India and Sri Lanka

Daniel Brettig29-Jan-2012Brad Haddin, Australia’s senior wicketkeeper and acting vice-captain, is set to be stood down from the first bracket of the triangular ODI series against India and Sri Lanka, affording the Victoria gloveman Matthew Wade another chance to press his case.Wade will be behind the stumps in the two Twenty20 matches against India in Sydney and Melbourne this week, following Haddin’s international T20 retirement, but he is now expected to also take the role for the first three limited-overs matches by being named in the ODI squad to be announced on Monday.Haddin was due for a rest after playing across the home Test summer, though his questionable form was only just starting to trend back up in Adelaide following some difficult days against New Zealand and India.He is understood to be enthusiastic about playing for New South Wales in a pair of fixtures against Tasmania in Hobart, the first a domestic one-day match on Saturday, with a Sheffield Shield game to follow Monday to Thursday. Those matches would give Haddin the chance to build on the starts he made with the bat in the final India Test.Though there has been much speculation about his future this summer, Haddin remains a highly valued member of the Australian team, and a capable lieutenant for the captain Michael Clarke.Haddin and Clarke have formed a strong leadership duo in the absence of Shane Watson, with the wicketkeeper providing plenty of advice in the field as well as offering a strong voice in the dressing room. His contribution to the team is being measured as much by those attributes as by his performances on the field, which lurched into dire territory earlier in the season before improving. He may remain Clarke’s deputy for some matches to come given the doubts still swirling around Watson’s fitness.Pat Howard, the team performance manager, has said the selectors’ criteria for choosing players include leadership and other additions to the team. The successful Tasmania captain George Bailey’s selection as the national Twenty20 captain provided another example of their thinking.”You need sufficient skills to be within the frame, obviously. No one is picked if they don’t perform to be recognised for their core skills,” Howard said. “But then the selection panel [also] considers their contribution to the team, the effect those players are having on the team – are they coming from winning teams? All those things are important to assess what impact those players are having. And obviously John [Inverarity] being able to sit down with the players to hear about who the good leaders are in other teams and getting feedback can add so much to your selection decisions.”Ricky Ponting has spoken about the value people add outside their core skill. Be it their fielding, be it their character and the sort of leadership they produce, and how much they give to a side. To me, it is fantastic to see players supported [by each other]. You see David Warner score a hundred and the batsman at the other end [Ed Cowan] comes up and embraces him because he sees him as an important part of the team. Inverarity talks about adding to the pot more than you’re taking out, and he looks for those characters that add to that team environment.”

Dave Richardson, the ICC’s general manager for cricket, has firmly ruled out the possibility of international cricket returning to Pakistan in the near future

ESPNcricinfo staff14-Jan-2011Dave Richardson, the ICC’s general manager for cricket, has firmly ruled out the possibility of international cricket returning to Pakistan in the near future. Pakistan has not hosted an international series since the Lahore attacks on Sri Lanka’s cricketers in March 2009, and as long there isn’t an improvement in the security situation there was no point talking of bringing international cricket back to the country, Richardson said. Instead, he claimed the way forward was to promote the domestic setup in Pakistan.”It’s useless to talk about bringing back international cricket to Pakistan,” Richardson told reporters in Karachi. “I think once there is an improvement in the security conditions and arrangements then teams can be convinced to start looking at playing in Pakistan again.”Pakistan was stripped of its rights to co-host the 2011 World Cup with India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the aftermath of the Lahore attacks. Amid the decline in cricket in the country, the domestic competitions deserved more attention, said Richardson. “It might take a lot of time but it doesn’t mean that the game cannot progress here. The PCB should concentrate on promoting the domestic structure. According to me, that’s the only way to keep the game going.”Richardson is in Karachi to watch the final of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, Pakistan’s premier first-class tournament, which is being played under lights at the National Stadium. It’s an unprecedented event in Pakistan domestic cricket and one of the ways the PCB is trying to promote domestic cricket in these difficult times.”The ICC is working on several recommendations to make Test cricket more interesting and the day-night option sounds very interesting. I am here to see whether it’s feasible to conduct Test matches under lights using orange balls.”The PCB has taken a good decision to hold the final of the five-day domestic tournament under lights and it will help popularise the sport as well.”

It was another team effort from Afghanistan as they picked up their second win of the tournament, beating Canada by five wickets

Cricinfo staff04-Feb-2010
Scorecard
It was another team effort from Afghanistan as they picked up their first win of the tournament, beating Canada by five wickets. It was still anybody’s game when Afghanistan needed 36 off the final four overs, before Mohammad Nabi’s cameo at No. 6 took them to the brink of victory, and a cool Samiullah Shenwari finished the job with a ball to spare.Choosing to bat, Canada were propped up by a third-wicket stand of 63 between Abdool Samad and wicketkeeper-captain Ashish Bagai. Bagai went on to score 53 off 42 balls, hitting seven fours, as Canada finished on a disappointing total, given the recent high scores at the SSC.Openers Karim Sadiq and Noor Ali, making his debut, ensured Afghanistan made a bright start, putting on 66 by the 10th over. But Canada fought back to take three wickets in three overs to reduce to Afghanistan to 105 for 4 in the 16th over. But three fours in Nabi’s 12-ball 23 tilted the balance and it was left to captain Nowroz Mangal and Shenwari to see them home in a tight finish.

His unbeaten 106 rescued Freedom from 68 for 4 to an imposing 208 for 5

ESPNcricinfo staff18-Jun-2025Glenn Maxwell smashed an unbeaten 49-ball 106 to set up Washington Freedom’s comfortable 113-run win over Los Angeles Knight Riders. His innings from No. 6 helped Freedom post 208 for 5, after which their bowlers skittled LAKR for only 95.With a second win in three outings, Freedom are third on the MLC 2025 points table. LAKR are fifth with three defeats in three games, with only net run rate keeping them away from last spot.Maxwell walked in at 68 for 4 after Freedom opted to bat and pumped 13 sixes and two fours to score his eighth T20 century. It gave momentum to the Freedom innings with Mark Chapman (17 off 21) and Obus Pienaar (14* off 15) playing second-fiddle to the seventh T20 century in the tournament’s short history. Freedom scored 124 in the final ten on the back of Maxwell’s six-hitting.Freedom opener Mitchell Owen, who scored an 11-ball 32, produced a three-wicket haul in the chase to wreck LAKR’s middle order, which only compounded their woes after they lost their top three of Alex Hales, Sunil Narine and Unmukt Chand all for ducks. It was only the fourth time in franchise T20 history for the openers and the No. 3 to all be out without scoring.Middle-order batter Saif Badar scored 32 and captain Jason Holder scored 23, but they couldn’t bring the margin of defeat to under 100. Jack Edwards – who dismissed Chand, Rovman Powell and Holder – collected a three-for too, while Saurabh Netravalkar took the first and last LAKR wickets to finish the game in the 17th over.

“Prasidh has played a lot of white-ball cricket for us in the last two or three years, and he has shown that he has got a lot of potential”

Sidharth Monga28-Dec-20231:34

Should India be worried about their pace-bowling depth?

India’s Test series in South Africa was being billed as the “final frontier”, but when a team loses the match in 210 overs, questions are bound to be around the preparation. India’s preference for an intra-squad game over a proper first-class match or practice match came into question after their defeat in the first Test by an innings and 32 runs, but their captain Rohit Sharma outright dismissed the idea because it is not in the hosts’ interests to give the opposition the best practice.”We have been playing practice matches for the last five-six years,” he said. “We have even tried first-class matches, but we don’t get these kind of wickets in practice matches. It’s better we prepare on our own, make the pitch we want. When we last went to Australia, when we came to South Africa in 2018, the ball didn’t bounce above the knee on those pitches. In the Test, it flies above the head.”Keeping these things in mind, we decided we would prepare in our own way. If you get the conditions in practice matches that you get in [Test] matches, then it is a different matter. But we have seen on the last three-four tours that we don’t get those conditions in practice matches. Even the bowlers bowl 120-125kph. We have experienced that in the last two-three practice matches that we have played on away tours.Related

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“That’s why it is better we play our own bowlers, and make the pitch the way we want it.”While Rohit’s larger point might stand, on India’s last tour of Australia they faced Sean Abbott and Mitchell Swepson, both part of the Test squad, on a pretty spicy surface where 194 and 108 were scored in the first two innings. India didn’t even play a practice match in South Africa in 2017-18, their first tour there in four years.The annoying fact-check out of the way, it wasn’t probably the batting that let India down, although it always looks so when a team gets bowled out twice in a little over 100 overs. Rohit reiterated the quality of this batting line-up.”We might have put in this performance here, but don’t forget what we did in Australia and England,” he said. “We won the series in Australia on the back of our batting. We drew the series in England through our batting and bowling both. These performances can happen. It doesn’t mean we don’t know how to bat outside India. Sometimes the opposition performs better than us. I think on those terms. The opposition played better than us. That’s why they won. Not that we couldn’t bat even 110 overs. Go and check the results over the last four years or last four tours.”India did, in fact, bat well in extremely challenging conditions to score 245 in the first innings, which many believed was a good total. For a while it looked that way when Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj looked unplayable with the new ball, seaming it around corners, drawing 26 false responses in 11 overs. However, it resulted in only one edge that went to hand, and after that the support bowlers couldn’t keep the pressure up.Shardul Thakur, in his 11th Test, and Prasidh Krishna, on debut, went for 194 runs between them in just 39 overs for two wickets, numbers not par for the course in such conditions as India’s second innings showed. Rohit chose not to be harsh on them. Probably because there is no magic wand to bring other bowlers, who will be successful in a week’s time. It is of course time to back them, at least in public.”Bumrah bowled well,” Rohit said. “We all know his quality. All he wanted was a bit of support from the other side, which he didn’t get. To be honest, that happens [once in a while]. All the other three bowlers, they were trying really hard, bending their back, but it just didn’t work out. Didn’t happen the way we would have wanted to. But again, games like this teach you a lot of things, what you need to do as a group, as a bowling group. Hopefully, they can understand what went wrong, and then try and come back a little stronger from this game.”Shardul Thakur conceded more than five an over and picked up only one wicket•Associated Press

Not only was this Prasidh’s debut but also his only 13th first-class match. He had probably been earmarked as an Ishant Sharma-like tall bowler you need to hit the deck hard, but he spent most of the year on the sidelines with an injury. When Mohammed Shami injured himself during the World Cup run, it left India with no choice but to take a punt on him. Prasidh bowled like, well, someone playing his 13th first-class match and only his second in 21 months.”Look, a little bit inexperience, of course, but he has got the tools to come out here and play the game,” Rohit said. “The bowlers that we have back in India, some of them are injured, some of them are not available. So we try to pick the guys who are available and we see the conditions that we are coming up against and try to pick the bowlers based on that. I completely agree that he has not played a lot of cricket, but there are three guys in their team as well who have not played a lot of cricket; they came here and showed what it takes.”More than the work in the legs, I think it is in the mind. How you treat your mind and how you want to play the game is more important. If you keep thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve not played a lot of Test matches, I’ve not played too many first-class games’, it’s not going to help. When you get an opportunity, obviously you should be grateful and come out and do the job for the team.”Prasidh has been with the Indian team. Not around the Test team, but he has played a lot of white-ball cricket for us in the last two or three years, and he has shown that he has got a lot of potential. Obviously, it didn’t work out well for him playing his first game, but we all were nervous when we played our first game. He would have been nervous as well.”These things happen, but the guy definitely has the game to excel in this particular format. So we are going to back him because he definitely has the potential and he has got a great attitude as well about his game, which probably will hold us in good stead moving forward.”

England captain challenged for backing up too far during washed-out third T20I

Andrew McGlashan14-Oct-2022Aaron Finch stopped short of confirming if he would endorse one of his bowlers running out a batter backing up, after Mitchell Starc appeared to warn Jos Buttler during the rain-interrupted third T20I in Canberra.After sending down the fourth ball of the over to Dawid Malan, which was jabbed back towards him, Starc turned and pointed at Buttler and the crease.He appeared to say something to Buttler which was not audible, but the stump mic did pick up Buttler saying, “don’t think I was”.Screenshots posted on social media of the delivery in question suggested Buttler was just out of his ground before the ball was released and, after Starc’s words, he was clearly in his crease.Finch said he had not seen the moment occur in the middle but that a first warning was probably the way to go, although he was not broadly in favour of the mode of dismissal.”I wasn’t aware, had no idea about that,” he said. “I think if batters get a warning then it’s fair game after that. That would go for most teams, I assume, if you give the batter a warning that they are getting a little too much ground before the ball is bowled. But I’m not a big fan of it, to be fair, personally.”Asked if he would be comfortable with a bowler completing a run out, Finch said: “Great question…”England allrounder Chris Woakes expressed a similar view on the use of a warning. “In my eyes that’s the best way to go about,” he said. “I’ve got no issue with warning guys. I personally wouldn’t run someone out [like that] but a warning, no issue with that.”Buttler has twice been run-out backing up. The first occasion was in an ODI against Sri Lanka in 2014 after two warnings from Sachithra Senanayake and again in the 2019 IPL when R Ashwin was the bowler.