They were born months apart and come from the same city, but their careers belong in different universes

Osman Samiuddin12-Aug-2020Azhar Ali’s designation as captain – rather than his batting form – means he will be the first name on a Pakistan team-sheet. But in reality, the first name on any Pakistan team-sheet is that of Asad Shafiq.He will be on that sheet for Southampton, his 71st Test in a row, just as we all live and we all die (but we don’t all pay taxes). It is easily a Pakistan record – before him Javed Miandad, with 53 Tests in a row – and it is also among the longest active streaks. Only Nathan Lyon, with 74 Tests, is ahead of him among current players.No questions asked, he will be there, gliding along far more comfortably than a specialist batsman averaging 38.89 after 75 Tests should. It wasn’t entirely his fault that he was run out at Old Trafford in the second innings, for 29, but it did come just when it appeared as if he might be getting a hold of this game. And that he didn’t has kind of become the point of him.He averages 37.43 since MisYou’s exits which perfectly represents that feeling that he’s going somewhere but not getting anywhere. It’s not bad. It’s not good. If you didn’t know better, you’d argue it’s an average designed specifically to escape scrutiny, sandwiched between the giddy rise of Babar Azam and the dizzy fall of Azhar. He’s never looked as poor as the latter, or as secure as the former.He has two hundreds and nine fifties in that time, which could have been more of one but at least he has a few of the latter, right? Especially as he’s got them in England, South Africa and Australia. But ultimately, all his scores – whatever they may actually be – in value have been like the second innings at Old Trafford.One hundred in a losing chase; in the other he was dismissed four balls after getting there, the second wicket in a collapse of seven for 62 which, ultimately cost Pakistan the game; there’s a 45 in which he fell last ball before lunch, which meant Pakistan hurtled from 130 for 3 and fell short in a chase of 176, losing by four runs; and there’s four 40s by the way, a spate of daddy non-fifties.As for those fifties in South Africa and Australia: one in a chase that was never going to happen; two in Australia where the Tests were as good as lost before he came in; a pristine 88 in Cape Town when he got out with Pakistan still 59 runs short of making South Africa chase, with seven wickets in hand; no runs are easy or pointless in Test cricket, but boy does Shafiq test that truism.There was a period when questions used to be asked about how he – and Azhar, always Azhar with whom his fate is intertwined – had not stepped up after Misbah and Younis left. Yes, yes, it is disappointing, used to come an answer. He needs to step up, but he’s a senior player, we need to back him. He’ll come good.But people have stopped asking, maybe stopped noticing that as Pakistan have now lost seven Tests in a row abroad over two years, he’s averaged 28.28 in them. It’s just assumed he will be there, that he will always be there, being beatifically unfulfilling like it’s a cause.In his stance becoming crabbier and his runs uglier, is Fawad Alam making some small protest about the undue weight given to pretty players?•Getty ImagesAs much as this is about Shafiq, it can’t help but also be a little bit about Fawad Alam. In theory Alam might be a name on the team-sheet on Thursday. There’s speculation about it. Nobody will be surprised if he’s not, though, and nobody needs a reason anymore to not select him. There’s actually a good chance that, at nearly 35, his best days are gone.Now it’s not like it’s Shafiq’s spot Alam has been fighting to get in on all these years, or that he’s competing for on this tour specifically. But you do wonder, in moments such Old Trafford and the last two years of Shafiq, about the stark contrast in how their careers have played out.They were born months apart and come from the same city but we’re talking different universes here. Shafiq made his Test debut exactly a year after Alam played his last Test, and he has coasted along since, through the ebullient promise of the first half with equal grace as through the swamp-water stagnation of the second.All the while Alam has been stewing away in the backwaters of the domestic scene, scoring mountains of runs: 7651 of them since Shafiq’s Test debut alone, at 56.25. He’s scored them when domestic pitches have been diabolically poor and when they’ve been featherbeds, against balls that do too much and balls that do too little, for departments, for regions, in whatever format domestic cricket has assumed that season, with moustache and without.Maybe, in his stance becoming crabbier and crabbier, his runs uglier and uglier, he’s making some small protest about the undue weight given to pretty players such as Shafiq who always look so good but end up so often meaning so little.What must he think of the way Shafiq’s career has played out, with no consequences whether he scores 37 one day or zero the next? Does he derive some perverse solace from it, knowing there is no real consequence to each and every run he scores either? Does he console himself in the knowledge that he has a better Test average?Or does he smile ruefully, put Shafiq’s 75 Tests against his own three, and muse about how unfulfillment has one meaning but can feel so, so different to two people?

With the playoff race heating up, these players have given their teams’ qualification chances a significant boost

Vishal Dikshit27-Oct-2020ESPNcricinfo LtdChris Gayle, Kings XI Punjab (Innings: five, runs: 177, strike rate: 138.28)
The Kings XI Punjab were reeling at the bottom of the table with only one win from seven games when Chris Gayle returned after a stomach bug made him miss two matches. Since then, the Kings XI have won five matches in a row and Gayle has featured in all of those.One of the issues ailing the Kings XI was their middle order either not building on strong starts or not being able to close out chases. By incorporating Gayle at No. 3 – something he had done only five times in 396 T20 innings earlier – they have added both experience to their line-up and fear in the oppositions’ minds.His 177 runs, studded with 15 sixes, have already handed them two eight-wicket wins, one five-wicket win, and two points from the double-Super Over game against the Mumbai Indians, in which he came out with the aim of hitting a six first ball in the second eliminator, and did it in trademark style to clinch victory. With Glenn Maxwell off form, Gayle’s intimidating presence at No. 3 has ensured that once their opening stand is broken, the Kings XI don’t slide and also sustain – if not increase – their scoring rate.Jason Holder celebrates a breakthrough•BCCIJason Holder, Sunrisers Hyderabad (Matches: two, wickets: five, economy: 7.50)Named replacement for the injured Mitchell Marsh early on in the IPL, Jason Holder got a chance only when Kane Williamson picked up an injury after seven games. More than being a handy lower-order batsman, his ability to bowl both in the powerplay and the death has given the Sunrisers the cushion of a solid fifth bowler, which they were trying to squeeze out of their batting allrounders, especially in Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s absence.Bowling in the powerplay against the Rajasthan Royals, Holder first struck by running out Robin Uthappa at the non-striker’s end with a direct hit. He then returned after the halfway mark and for the 19th over, first foxing Sanju Samson with a slow offcutter, and then putting the brakes with the wickets of Steven Smith and Riyan Parag in three balls and conceding just seven in the over and limit the Royals to a gettable 154.Two days later, against the Kings XI, Holder got hit by Gayle in the last over of the powerplay, only to return four overs later and dismiss his West Indies team-mate. With another frugal over in the death and the wicket of Chris Jordan, Holder finished with 2 for 27 to limit the Kings XI to only 126 for 7, but the Sunrisers batsmen were bowled out for much less.Chris Morris has been a valuable addition to RCB•BCCIChris Morris, Royal Challengers Bangalore (Matches: six, wickets: 10, economy rate: 5.74)How the Royal Challengers use their allrounders has always been a big talking point. Chris Morris – who cost them INR 10 crore ($1.4 million) in the last auction sat out the first few games with a strain, and then burst on to the scene to help them fix a long-standing weakness: death bowling.ALSO READ: ‘It’s nice to feel important’ – Chris Morris on bond with RCBMorris has mostly bowled in the phases when batsmen go the hardest – powerplay and the death – and has kept his economy rate well under six despite sending down 17.4 of his 23.4 overs then. He has also picked up ten wickets to finish with figures that read more like standalone spells of outstanding bowling: 3 for 19, 2 for 17, and his best figures of 4 for 26.Morris has been the most economical fast bowler this IPL by a distance, conceding only 136 runs from his 142 balls, while also striking every 14.1 deliveries, only behind Kagiso Rabada and Mohammed Shami (minimum ten overs) among the quick bowlers.He breaches the 140kph mark, and has helped split the fast-bowling workload considerably, which was being carried by Navdeep Saini almost single-handedly.Fast, furious, irresistible – Lockie Ferguson rearranges the stumps•BCCILockie Ferguson, Kolkata Knight Riders (Matches: four, wickets: six, economy rate: 5.93)If fast bowling is the flavor of the IPL, how can you keep Lockie Ferguson away? The Knight Riders did keep him on the bench initially because they were spoilt with their overseas choices, but once Sunil Narine and Andre Russell picked up injures, Ferguson got in, and impressed in his first game in seven months.He delivered fiery yorkers at will and hurt the Sunrisers batsmen with his slower deliveries that also hit the hole to finish with 3 for 15. And once that game when into the Super Over, all he took were three deliveries to clinch victory for the Knight Riders.With his express pace – over 150kph – and target to hit the top of the stumps, Ferguson has managed to stem the flow of runs from one end even though he hasn’t been as regular among the wickets since his first game. His awkward lengths that are mostly short or short of good length make it hard for batsmen to go after him, which makes him the tournament’s second-most economical quick bowler, behind Morris.

The India batsman recalls his dogged battle with Cummins and Hazlewood on the final day at the Gabba

Interview by Nagraj Gollapudi29-Jan-2021Do you like watching boxing?
(Laughs). Not really. I am not a big fan of boxing, but I don’t mind watching it. Once in a while I watch stories of some boxers – the amount of pain they go through, the kind of sacrifices they are prepared to make, the way they train.On the final day at the Gabba, it looked like the Australian fast bowlers were treating you like a punching bag.
If I’m a boxer, I want to see how much another player can punch me. Once he is done, that’s when I want to start punching back. That is my game plan. You can punch me as long as you can. Then I’ll show my punches. That is how I planned it.We are often told that there is no glory without pain. Tell us about the pain you went through.
The first one hit me just below my shoulder. There was one on the ribs. And one more from [Josh] Hazlewood below the shoulder again. That’s when it started hurting a bit more because it was the same place.The blows on the helmet can look scary, but because you have protection, I wouldn’t call it a major hit. You start feeling a little bit of pain, but it wasn’t very painful.Related

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The most painful one was the ball that hit my finger, because I had already got hit on that finger during practice in Melbourne and had played the Sydney Test with that little bit of pain. I was a little concerned before the game started in Sydney, but things went really well. But the moment I got hit there again in Brisbane, I was in a lot of pain. I thought I had broken my finger.What exactly happened at practice in Melbourne?
I had to come out of the nets. The skin came off near the nail and there was a lot of bleeding. When I got hit in Brisbane, the ball got the same part of the index finger as in Melbourne, it was more on the bone. During the Sydney Test, the laceration on the skin was bothering me even though the impact had been on the bone. By the fourth Test, the skin had healed, but there was still little bit of pain in the bone. And that is where I got hit again.I couldn’t hold the bat and I couldn’t bat the way I wanted to after that blow. I had to hold the bat with four fingers, keeping the index finger off the handle.Girish TS/ESPNcricinfo LtdWhen you walked in to bat on day five, you had already faced 717 balls in the series and scored 215 runs. Clearly, you must have been confident about your role?
Yes, I was very confident that if we bat the entire day, we’ll end up getting the target, without any doubt. There was a possibility of a draw, but I was very confident that on that particular pitch, if we play 97 overs, we will chase it down. I knew that if we didn’t give away too many wickets in the first session, then the only team who can win from there would be India. The majority of overs will be bowled in that session, which was two-and-a-half-hours long, where you face more than 35 overs. So my game plan was very simple: I don’t want to get out in the first session.You left your second delivery and the bowler, Pat Cummins, went down on his knees, thinking it had been close to hitting off stump. The ball had moved in. When the pitch has a few cracks and the bowler is so good, how do you judge what balls to leave?
I told myself that if something happens after hitting the crack, I won’t call it an error of judgement. If I start worrying about the crack, then I’ll end up playing balls I should not be playing. So I told myself that I will just bat as if it’s a normal pitch.That pitch had decent pace and bounce throughout the game, even on the first four days, so I told myself to trust the pitch and bat accordingly.You got off the mark off the 22nd ball you faced. On average, you take half a dozen balls to get off the mark, but it’s not the first time you took a while to get going. In Jo’burg in 2017-18, you took 53 balls to get off the mark. Did not scoring play on your mind?
Not really. As a batsman, you want to get off the mark – the earlier the better. It’s just to get that rhythm, to have some runs on the board. If you are batting on 5 or 10, mentally you know you are calm. You know you have started well and now just have to move on from there. If you take too many balls, you might feel, yeah, it’s better if you get a single. But for someone like me, on day five, I won’t worry about when I’m scoring my first run, because my game plan was not to give away my wicket. As a team, we didn’t want to lose any wickets in the first session. I felt it was a very good pitch, apart from the variable bounce, and that too from one particular end. If you look at the balls that hit me, they were only from one end. I hardly remember getting hit from the other.In all, Pujara spent nearly 23 hours on the crease across eight innings in Australia•Chris Hyde/Cricket Australia/Getty Images The first major hit came on the 62nd delivery, when you were on 6. The ball hit the back of your front shoulder.
I think Cummins was looking to hit back of a length or maybe a little shorter. If the ball takes off from there, it’s good, but if it doesn’t, then he wants the batsman to play on the back foot. I just saw the ball coming at me and I had no other option but to take it on my body, because, on that pitch, it was risky to defend or to try to get on top of the ball. It could have hit my glove or it could have hit the bat and gone to short leg or gully. From the way [Steven] Smith got out in the first innings, I knew you can’t defend on the back foot.Ten balls later, it looked like you took your eye off the ball. You ducked, turned your head, and Cummins’ delivery hit the back of your helmet.
Ah, yes. Most of the times I try and look at the ball, but when it is following you, you tend to take your eyes off it. I knew it was a short-pitched delivery, but on that pitch, you don’t know how good the bounce will be. Sometimes, from the same length, balls were going above my helmet. But this ball didn’t bounce enough.In Cummins’ next over, you were hit on the chest. Michael Hussey, on commentary, thought you were taking your eye off the ball too early.
When you are looking on TV, you feel like I’m taking my eyes off the ball, but I’m actually seeing where he is trying to pitch it, what length it is – so I’m seeing the ball till it pitches. He was trying to bowl the inswinging bouncer repeatedly. After it pitches, I don’t know whether it was because of the crack or the pitch, whatever it was, the ball was following me, and it was very difficult for me to keep my eye on it.Sometimes, if I keep seeing the ball, I feel I end up playing it. If you see the ball well, you end up playing it and then you might glove it or you might try to get on top of it, which shouldn’t happen. So I was prepared to get hit because I knew that the moment it hits that length, even if it is following me, I have to keep my hands down.It was sustained short-pitched and high-pace bowling from the best fast bowler in Test cricket currently. Just before lunch, Cummins pitched it fuller. This time you were hit in the box and then the ribs.
The first one was pitched back of a length. It was little fuller than the other balls and just took off and nipped back in. I was looking to play and suddenly it bounced a bit more and hit the box. That was the ball where I had to be a little careful because there was a leg slip. If you are looking to get on top of the ball, there is a chance of hitting the glove, so I didn’t want to take my hands away from my body. If it’s hitting my ribs, that’s fine, because I’m not going to get caught at leg gully. I just made sure that I kept my hands close to my body.On getting hit on his injured finger: “I had to hold the bat with four fingers, keeping the index finger off the handle”•Tertius Pickard/Associated PressWhat did you do during the lunch break?
I was happy I was still at the crease. I knew that they bowled their heart out and now it will be my time. I was charged up. I knew this is now my session and I will start giving some punches back. That is how we started after lunch.You went to lunch with 8 off 90 balls. That did not bother you?
Not at all.Shortly after lunch, a Hazlewood delivery that didn’t rise much hit you above your left elbow. You walked away, grimacing. Did you call the physio, Nitin Patel?
I was expecting it to bounce a bit more, and usually Hazlewood gets that bounce. If you see a spell from the other end, when he was trying to bowl the same length, it was bouncing. My strategy was the same. I was very confident that as long as it is hitting my body, I’m fine. But this hit was more painful. I had to call the physio because I had already got hit there in the first session. I just needed a break to reduce the pain.And then after Shubman Gill’s dismissal, you got that painful blow on your finger. What conversation did you have with the physio?
As soon as he [Patel] walked in, I told him it feels like the finger is broken. He told me, see, if you want you can take a painkiller, but you have handled this pain pretty well even in the last Test, so don’t worry. You will still be able to bat because you have handled this pain. The only thing he wanted to check was if I wanted a painkiller or a strap.It was a drinks break, luckily, so there was a little bit of extra time to take a decision on how I wanted to approach the injury.Sometimes when I take a painkiller, I am not the same, like I don’t understand how I want to play further. It doesn’t suit me much. So I told Nitin, I’ll bear the pain and carry on playing, because my body was warm. Although there was pain, overall I was charged up.I knew it was an important time in the game, so there was no way I could back out from that situation. Even if it was a fracture, I didn’t want to get bothered about it or think about it. I just wanted to carry on batting. I have played with a fracture in the past. In fact, it happened against Australia in the home series in 2012-13, in Delhi. In Brisbane, we were not yet sure if it was a fracture or not, but I didn’t want to be bothered about it.”If I start worrying about the crack, then I’ll end up playing balls I should not be playing. So I told myself that I will just bat as if it’s a normal pitch”•David Kapernick/AFP/Getty ImagesTell us about that ball.
It was on a fuller length but it hit a crack before it hit my finger. This was the only ball that climbed from a slightly fuller length and I had to play it. I couldn’t control it at all.At one point, while Hazlewood was running in to bowl, you stopped him mid-stride as a butterfly distracted you. Some fans on Twitter said they heard Hazlewood ask you if your vision was impaired.
I don’t know what he said.He then bowled a 140.2kph delivery straight at your face. You lined up to duck it, but the ball hit your grill and the stem guard attached to the back of your helmet flew off. Hazlewood said: “Did ya see that one?” And you stared back at him.
Yeah, I heard that. I just wanted to make sure I make that eye contact [with Hazlewood]. I mean, most of the time, bowlers know the batsman is not rattled. And I wasn’t. I had got hit so many times before. This was maybe a little harder than the other balls, but getting hit on the body is not going to disturb me. That was the body language I wanted to communicate. I’m sure he saw that.Read part two of the interview with Cheteshwar Pujara

Crohn’s disease made batter consider giving up on World Cup dream but now she has illness under control

Valkerie Baynes26-May-2021After a long battle with ill-health, World Cup winner Lauren Winfield-Hill has set her sights on opening the batting for England again when they defend their title next year.Winfield-Hill was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in October 2019 but it was only four months ago that she found herself in one place long enough to establish a course of life-long medication that she has found to be, quite literally, a game changer.”You have to have regular doctor’s checks, regular bloods, you have to be able to have a chance to see if it’s working,” Winfield-Hill tells ESPNcricinfo. “So basically I just had to go on steroids for a year to tide me over, until it came to a point where you can’t really stay on steroids any longer. [But now] we’ve got a really nice window of three months at home.”It was just finding the window to get set up on the meds and then within six weeks I’m like, ‘holy Hell, I feel so much better’. I didn’t realise how naff I was feeling.”

“We’ve got a really exciting 12 months coming up that I don’t want to be carrying drinks for”Lauren Winfield-Hill

She had become so used to fatigue, vomiting episodes and “feeling sub-par” that Winfield-Hill recalls thinking she would never feel any different. It became so bad that she considered giving up on her England aspirations.”I had a really rough time in one of the bubbles during the West Indies’ [tour],” she says. “I had a real bad flare-up and I was just like, ‘You know what? I don’t think I can keep playing international sport, I’m not well enough, my body just can’t tolerate the workload’.”I remember saying to the specialist, ‘I don’t know about playing sport like this, it’s getting really hard’. He said: ‘Trust me, once we get you on these meds, you will be fine, you’ll be great, you’ll feel good; don’t throw the towel in.'”Not only did she begin to feel better, but her pre-season numbers are proof that she is doing better also.”We did some testing and I punched out some really great scores,” she says. “I’ve always really prided myself on being a good trainer and a good professional and for a long time I was like, ‘why am I plateauing physically?’ I was pretty jaded.”For three years I went nowhere physically. Now all of a sudden I’m up at the front of the pack and it’s like, ‘thank God that’s what was going on, rather than trying really hard and working as hard as I’ve ever worked and getting nothing back’.”Lauren Winfield-Hill has been producing strong pre-season training scores•Getty ImagesWinfield-Hill was England’s leading run-scorer for the T20 leg of the 2019 Ashes series, some distance behind Meg Lanning and Ellyse Perry, batting in the middle-order. She travelled to Malaysia for England’s white-ball series against Pakistan but didn’t get to bat in the one T20 she played.She made 1 and 4 not out in her two innings at the Women’s T20 World Cup at the start of last year, batting at No.8, and was part of England’s squad for their home T20 series against West Indies last summer without playing a match.”You spend a lot of time training for not a lot of output at times in terms of game-time,” she says. “And it’s difficult being a senior player and carrying drinks and not getting an opportunity.”There’s an awful lot of fight left in me. I don’t see myself as a real senior player because I have been out of the team a lot. I’m fairly experienced, but my game-time has not always been that consistent so, in cricket years, I still feel young. Physically I feel better than I’ve ever felt.”We’ve got a really exciting 12 months coming up that I don’t want to be carrying drinks for. I want to be playing in the World Cup. In the 2017 World Cup that we won, I was at the top of the order and I’d like to be there to defend it.”Related

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Winfield-Hill scored an unbeaten 140 opening for England Women A in a pre-season warm-up against England Women at the start of May. Now she is preparing for Northern Diamonds’ first match of the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy against Central Sparks at Headingley on Saturday. Beyond that, she has the Hundred to look forward to in July, where she will represent Northern Superchargers.”I’m a lot more relaxed in knowing that there’s going to be lots of opportunities,” Winfield-Hill says. “Sometimes it can be quite difficult when you don’t have a lot of cricket lined up, to put a lot of pressure on: ‘I’ve got to do it in this next game, I have to perform, it’s not that many games to come’. That mindset can be really crippling.”I’ve just really tried to focus on what I need to do to be a really good solid opening batter that also has versatility to bat in other spots, but knowing what my goals are and being quite focused on that.”But she remains wary of putting too much pressure on herself.”It’s just a big trap, isn’t it, with anything where you set your sights too high and you put a lot of pressure on yourself and you miss the steps along the way,” she says.”So I’m just trying to keep everything really simple. I’m just trying to play as well as I can in the next game I play, or the next time I train.”We’ve got a few domestic games now in the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy. If I manage to continue some nice form in that, then I’ve every chance of being able to achieve those goals in an England shirt.”In that first England internal game… it wasn’t like I was setting out some big stall and this big goal to have a great day out. It was just, ‘play as well as you can, next ball, play as well as you can, try and win the game for the team and keep it really simple’. I’m just trying to strip it all back.”Winfield-Hill played three matches last year in the competition’s first season, when the Diamonds finished runners-up, beaten in the final by Southern Vipers. For the early part of this season, the Diamonds have England stars Katherine Brunt and Nat Sciver in their ranks too.”It’s going to be a dogfight the first few games because it’s not glorious sunshine, rock-hard wickets,” Winfield-Hill says. “It’s not a batter’s paradise just yet but I’m really excited.”It’s amazing to see how, with a proper winter under their belts, how much girls have improved, having never really had the opportunity to train much before.”Lauren Winfield-Hill hopes a good start with Northern Diamonds will lead to England selection•Getty ImagesFive Diamonds players – Hollie Armitage, Beth Langston, Linsey Smith, Phoebe Graham and Jenny Gunn – hold full-time professional contracts under the ECB’s new women’s domestic structure. A number of teams have reported positive knock-on effects whereby players not on full-time contracts are benefiting from working within a professional set-up.”No doubt about it, you’re looking to go one better than last year,” Winfield-Hill says. “We’ve got the talent in the group to be able to do it – you don’t get to the final by accident.”A lot of those competitions – you had the Super League, the Heyhoe Flint Trophy – it’s been dominated a lot by teams from the south and it’s just having the exposure of being in those big finals. The more you do that, the more you learn from those situations, one of these days you’ll get over the line in those big games.”

Professional contracts bring pressure to perform – how one side is meeting that challenge

Valkerie Baynes13-May-2021When Kate Green starts working with an athlete, the conversation usually begins with her asking a question and goes something like this:Green is a trained practitioner specialising in performance psychology and personal development. She works with the Lionesses in football and was recently appointed as Psycho-Social Lead for the Sunrisers cricket team who, regardless of her fascinating job title, just call her “Kate”.It’s all part of normalising conversation about the mental aspects of being an elite sportsperson as much as the physical side of training and it is an area Green and Danni Warren, Sunrisers’ Regional Director of Women’s Cricket, are passionate about.”It’s really about helping each individual in a young team, an inexperienced team, in a world that no one’s been in before,” Warren tells ESPNcricinfo.”We’ve gone from having a purely amateur game to professionalising it and expecting players and staff to be able to deal with those pressures.”Sunrisers are one of eight teams which contested the inaugural Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy last year. The same eight teams will play in that competition again in 2021 as well as the new Women’s Regional T20 after 41 women signed professional contracts for the coming season. Those contracts are awarded in addition to the 17 centrally contracted England Women’s players as part of the ECB’s restructure of domestic women’s cricket.Sunrisers encompass the London & East Region, including Middlesex, Essex and Northamptonshire. Their squad ranges in age from 17-29, five of whom – Naomi Dattani, Cordelia Griffith, Amara Carr, Jo Gardner and Kelly Castle – hold professional regional contracts.”I think back to around this time last year where I had the opportunity to ring a handful of girls and tell them that they were going to get a full-time professional contract,” Warren recalls. “They had worked for many years to get this, and it had been what they were about.”Speaking with some of them it was, ‘we’d achieved what we set out to do’, you felt a weight lifted off your shoulders. Then about a week later you realise now you’ve got to live up to the expectations of that contract.”Cordelia Griffith is one of five Sunrisers to earn a full-time professional domestic contract•Getty ImagesDriving Warren’s vision for helping players develop as people and athletes was the fact that most of the women and girls in the new structure won’t have been through an academy system that supported their personal and professional development in the same way as their male counterparts. That will gradually change with Sunrisers last month announcing a 14-strong academy intake.”In the men’s game, by the time you get a full-time contract at 19, 20, 21 you’ve had six, seven years of support,” Warren says. “So I was really keen and Kate being available gave us the experience level that we needed for this.”During her 18 years in the field, Green has worked extensively with the boys’ academy system, county professional teams and England at U17, U19, Lions and elite level. She held a senior performance role at UK Sport working with Olympic and Paralympic athletes before heading into football and then, last year, setting up her own consultancy.”What we were really keen to do was offer the girls support for them as a person and as a player, and so that’s why it is this more holistic and well-rounded psychological and personal development support,” Green says.What became clear from her early days helping academy players 15 years ago was that these young people needed help as they grew into adulthood in the tough environment of elite sport.”They’re people navigating the world, making sense of life, and then you add in all this complexity of performing under pressure and all the weight that that brings, both in expectation from the badge but also that you put on yourself,” Green says.”I just try and help people navigate that and then try and help teams work better together to try and create that psychological safety that enables you to perform under pressure.”So if the desire for guidance has been there for so long, why is there still a stigma attached to psychology?”In my opinion it’s been not funded equally alongside the physical and technical and tactical development within the games,” Green says. “So we’ve always been the last one at the table.”Psychs are consultants normally or part-time, they’re not a full-time member of staff like others. So it was always seen as an added extra and invariably then it was when there’s a crisis. It’s positioned in a medical framework of when there’s a problem.”For me good, positive psychology and personal development is proactive and it’s done equally to the physical counterparts, so you’ve got a parity between your physical and your mental health. That’s health being the optimal word rather than ill-health. No one wanted to have a problem, and therefore you avoid it or you try and deal with stuff on your own.”And while there’s long been the assumption that this attitude pervades men’s sport, Green has discovered it’s not only among men, or even exclusive to sport.”I think it’s across sport and society,” she says. “If it’s positioned as something you need for help, that’s always [met with], ‘well I won’t go until I need help, until I’m at breaking point’.”So with the Sunrisers and the Lionesses, Green has those conversations about working on mental attributes as well as physical ones. She has agreed with players she works with that regular meetings between them are “normal”.”It’s not like, ‘I’ve been sent to her,’ it’s more, ‘oh yeah you’re catching up with Kate because that’s what we do,'” Green says.Kelly Castle is part of Sunrisers’ innovative set-up•Getty ImagesThe main themes that Green deals with fall into sports and life categories. Issues such as selection and non-selection, injury and performance as well as relationships, education and career options beyond sport. You could call it prevention rather than cure, or simply proactivity and preparedness.”I focus on always be prepared for the unexpected,” Green says. “Never presume if you sit down with a batsman who’s just scored 160 runs, he’s going to be okay. People tend to go, ‘oh he’s scored 160, he must be great, or she must be fine.'”There’s some very secret battles that go on. I’ve worked with numerous players where there’s been all sorts going on and then they still perform, we’re talking about highly functioning people.”That’s where it gets a bit harder for athletes than it does people in society. They’re still functioning in their environment but it is starting to come out. They’re not performing like they want to, or they’re putting their body through the wringer by being sick before every time they go out to bat or bowl, or play a game because the anxiety is so high.”Early on, Green was staggered to discover how common it was for athletes to experience signs of extreme stress and think it was normal.”I do a lot of education on the psych response in the body, so that they understand that if their eyes become a bit more blurry or their sound goes a bit – their hearing – that’s high-level anxiety playing out which is protecting your body under threat,” she explains.”We talk through what is normal but what is also his or her choice. As in, that might be normal in performance, and under stress, but it doesn’t mean you have to live with it.”What I was finding when I first came into the job was more senior athletes have been doing this for years to themselves and thought it was part of performance. I was saying, ‘I know a lot of high-performing people who don’t have to put themselves through that to perform. Is there another way we could do this to make it more sustainable?'”What we don’t want is people putting their bodies and minds through all sorts to get through a career and then have a really difficult time in a big tournament and get sent home, or choose to come home and bow out of the game that way.”Warren is also determined not to see players end their careers in that fashion. On the contrary, she wants to keep them in sport, even after their playing days are over.”In 10, 20 years’ time, I’d like to be able to sit here and see all of these players and staff continuing to be active in the game, continuing to give something back because we gave them the opportunity to survive in the rocky world of professional cricket,” Warren says.And she hopes the benefits stretch beyond the cricket field.”The more we can have these conversations about it, then the general public will be able to hear the stories, they’ll be able to feel comfort in knowing that people that they look up to work very hard at that element of their life,” Warren says.”Hopefully it will make people more willing to reach out when they feel they need to reach out, because they know that you’re not unique, you’re not on your own. Everybody goes through it, whichever walk of life you choose to go down.”

The India batter believes there is still a specific role for him in the national team, one that his time in the IPL has helped him develop

Interview by Nagraj Gollapudi12-Jun-20213:24

‘To try and help India win at least one, if not both, World Cups – that’s the ultimate goal for me’

Dinesh Karthik celebrated his 36th birthday earlier this month in the Serbian capital Belgrade, on his way to England, where he will work as a broadcaster – first for the ICC for the World Test Championship final, then with Sky for the Hundred and the England-India Tests. This will be his second stint as TV pundit after an impressive debut during England’s tour of India earlier this year. While he has successfully dipped his toes into broadcasting, Karthik is confident his playing career is far from over.In your recent stint with Sky for England’s tour of India, you seemed to be enjoying the punditry. Does watching and analysing the game as an expert give you a fresh outlook on it?
I genuinely enjoyed doing it. Watching all my friends play and commenting about them can’t be such a bad thing. Most of the time I speak well of them, but sometimes I have a go at them, like saying what a bad shot they have played when I’ve probably played [shots of that kind] a million times before! That is the beauty of it. I share a great rapport with each and every one I have played this sport with, so I am very confident that even if I have a go at them, they will know I mean no ill. I could speak my mind. I thoroughly enjoyed the little time I spent with [Nasser] Hussain, [Michael] Atherton, David Lloyd, Rob Key, [Ian] Ward.Related

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What is the one thing you have learned from this experience that will help with your game?
As a cricketer sometimes you tend to take opinions a touch too seriously. You are not as important as you sometimes think [you are]. It is not as bad as it sounds, sometimes. You need to take a chill pill as a cricketer and focus on trying to get better at your game. As a commentator you speak about so many things, and sometimes things don’t exactly come out the way they are supposed to. So I have realised that [as a player] you should never think that people are thinking about you all the time and take yourself that seriously.You just turned 36 recently. How did you celebrate?
I had the privilege of spending some time with Mr [Sunil] Gavaskar. We had a meal, cut a cake. It was fabulous.You are a veteran of the game now. How different is the challenge ahead of you at this point and what are you looking forward to?
You keep evolving. You are not the same person you were at 21 or 22. You look at things differently – the way you play the sport changes, the way the sport is played changes.It is just beautiful to have been part of the journey. Right now my ambition is to be part of the next two World Cups [2021 T20 World Cup and 2023 ODI World Cup] and try and help India win at least one, if not both. That’s the ultimate goal for me and I am doing everything I possibly can to be part of that team.In the 2021 IPL, against the Sunrisers Hyderabad, Karthik struck a struck a nine-ball 22 to help KKR to a ten-run win after they slid from 146 for 1 in the 15th over to 160 for 5 in the 18th•BCCI/IPLOtherwise I live a very simple life in Chennai. I want to be part of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, which Deepika [Pallikal, squash player and Karthik’s wife] will be going to, in Birmingham. If I can be part of her journey that will be great. Other than that I have no big ambitions per se at this point of time apart from doing well for my [IPL] franchise and my country.What role do you believe you can play in the Indian team?
I believe there is a middle-order slot right now, at Nos. 5, 6, 7. And I can slot into any of the three. For the top four slots, there are way too many players who have done phenomenally well and who keep batting in [IPL] franchises at that position. My specialty is that I can bat at five, six, seven and help India in setting up the best score possible or in winning games, which I did in the short while before the 2019 World Cup in the T20 format. The fact that I have played 150 games for my country is the experience I will look back on every time I play.You have spoken about being a clinical finisher rather than a power hitter like Andre Russell. Do you believe there is such a role for you in the Indian team?
Look, at this point of time, we have Hardik [Pandya] and [Ravindra] Jadeja [in the lower order]. Otherwise you always try and fit somebody in who has batted in the top four in franchise cricket or for their states at five, six, seven. In an ideal world you ask a KL Rahul – he comes in at No. 5 in ODI cricket – where he likes to bat and I’m sure he will say “opener” because he has done it over and over again. It is a hard job for him [to bat lower] but he has done it with a fair amount of success in ODI cricket. I am sure he will get his opening slot very soon and he is too good to be stopped.In the T20 format, it is a far more niche slot, something that you need to have done over and over again. And that’s why you have the Pollards and the Russells or the Dhonis, who have done this over a period of time, who have helped play so many of these impact innings.You don’t want to go to a World Cup with people who have batted in the top four consistently and throw them in at five, six, seven and expect them to do well. You definitely expect a Hardik or a Jadeja to do well. Who else is there who bats at those numbers for their franchises? So when push comes to shove, and the game is on the line, they know there is a middle-order batter who has been in that situation.In the 2020 and 2021 IPLs, your best batting position was No. 6, where you have scored 145 runs at an average of 48 average and a strike rate of 156 in seven innings. Which is a favourite innings of yours from the recent past where you played the role you spoke about?
If you take this last IPL, in the game against the Sunrisers Hyderabad, it was a slightly low-scoring game. I thought it was a key innings [22 off nine balls] in the way we won the game – we won it by ten runs. The game would have looked very different had that small impact innings not been played. That’s what I pride myself on. And you don’t get the opportunity to play these impact innings every game; it comes every four to five games. So every time you get an opportunity like that, as a middle-order or lower-order finisher, you should be looking to do that. That’s where the skill is.ESPNcricinfo LtdThere was also the game against Mumbai Indians in 2019 in Kolkata, when you played a cameo while Russell was hitting big.
Correct. I’m happy you brought up that innings – a different type, different situation, batting first so you are trying to set up a big score there. When a [Jasprit] Bumrah is bowling or when a Mitchell Starc or a Pat Cummins is bowling, you want somebody who has consistently hit in those death overs and made an impact there. Whereas you take a No. 3 or No. 4 batter, they come in a lot of times, they play the powerplay, more often than not they get set and if they are at the back end then they will probably score runs.For me I don’t need to be in the middle or in the powerplay to do well [at the death]. I can walk in in the 16th over and find the areas to hit the boundaries. That is one of the reasons when I started [in the IPL] I used to bat at three or four, but now I am batting at five to seven consistently because they feel it is a very important place and you need to stay not out a lot, in terms of helping teams cross the line with a good strike rate while chasing totals.It would be very silly for people who are selecting teams to only look at the numbers. I think in the 14 years the IPL has happened, the orange cap has always belonged to the top three batters of any side. It has never been given to a No. 5 or No. 6 batter, which is a big giveaway. If you bat in the lower order and play 14 games, you will score 200-230 – 300-350 if you have a great season, which is very rare. The moment you cross the top four batters, you need to stop looking at the quantum of runs and averages. It is a very archaic way of looking at batters. There are various other parameters to judge them. That is where the game is moving forward.In the 2018 IPL, I batted at No. 5 and I got 497-500 runs. Even if you take a [Kieron] Pollard or a Hardik Pandya, what are the kind of scores that they rack up? It is not the average that matters there, because eventually you are going to get out. When you play in those slots, you are always looking to hit big shots. Strike rate and the impact innings, these are the two things that are key for a batter who bats at that [position].ESPNcricinfo LtdYou had a lean phase, in terms of runs, in the 2020 IPL as well as in the first half of the 2021 edition. You scored 292 runs in 21 innings at an average of 18 and a strike rate of 131, with one fifty. In 2021, you made 123 runs at an average of 31 and a 138 strike rate. Would you agree or disagree that you have been struggling with consistency?
See, at Nos. 6 and 7, to be consistent would mean being consistent with strike rates. What’s most important is the impact your innings create. You can’t look at the scores per se because the amount of balls you face is very few. If you take the scores you will see they will be around 18, 22 not out, one game will be 4, one game will be 8, and then you make a 14 not out from four balls. So if your team is doing well, that means you are playing fewer balls a lot of the time, because the bulk of the batting is done by the top order. Then you create an impact as much as possible at the back end with as many balls as you get. Not every time that you walk in you are going to score runs, especially when you bat at the back end where you are expected to play the high risk shots right at the outset.Was it an easy decision to bat down the order at the Knight Riders?
It was a calculated gamble. I have always been a top-order batter. All my career I batted at three and four for my state. When I played for the country, I batted at [those] positions and even opened at times. So when you move to the middle order you have to change certain aspects: you start focusing more on your ability to hit boundaries, your ability to think on your feet. These are the kind of things me and Abhishek [Nayar, personal coach and assistant coach at KKR] have focused on over a period of time. We have worked on my ability to hit a boundary in the first three or four balls I face, whoever is bowling. Until 2019 you averaged 33 against spin in the IPL. Since 2020, though, you average under 10. Since 2019 you have had the worst average against spin in the IPL among 50 players who faced at least 100 balls against spinners. In the same period, legspinners have got you out nine times. Have you worked out the reasons?
Last year we sat down and discussed the times I got out early against legspin. These days the way they [wristspinners] have started bowling googlies is a lot different to what it used to be before. Previously you used to get to watch the back of the hand – now they have changed that. As a batter I have worked on that aspect to figure out what’s the best way to counter it. This year, luckily, in the seven games I have played, I got out to [Yuzvendra] Chahal once, and in between I played a lot of legspinners and it was okay.Karthik believes his role in T20s is as an impact finisher, rather than a big hitter like Andre Russell•BCCIIt becomes a lot easier to play once you get set, but when you just walk in and you see a legspinner bowling, at the back of the mind you think: “I have not done really well against them at the start.” But this year I went in and found ways to answer those questions, so I am a little more confident than I was last year.Not just you, top batters like Virat Kohli have also struggled facing legspin. So you say it about reading the legspinner’s hands?
In a day game it is very different. You are able to see the release a lot more clearly and it is much better facing legspinners. But in day-night games you see a lot of wristspinners being very effective because most of the guys can’t pick the googly. You have someone like Rashid Khan who has brought a certain difference in the way legspin and the googly is bowled [with his wrist position]. A few of the other legspinners have seen that and copied it in terms of their wrist position and the way they deliver the ball. The disadvantage of bowling with that wrist position is you can’t spin the ball much – there is very little dip – with the googly or the legspinner. When you release the ball the new ways the guys are delivering, there is more topspin on the ball.Last IPL you stepped down from captaincy at the Knight Riders. Has it had an impact of any sort?
A little bit, initially. I don’t want to delve deep into it. It was a decision I took then, but now with the way the scheduling is currently, suppose if Eoin Morgan and Pat Cummins don’t come [for the second half of the IPL] – I hope they do come – and the franchise wants me to lead, I am more than happy and open to it.For a non-contracted cricketer, the challenge is to keep active. Do you think in the long-term the BCCI could allow players who are not contracted to play at least one overseas franchise tournament?
Yeah, I think so. It would be a good thing. It would help a lot of players expand their games, get better. But it is a decision completely in the hands of the BCCI.You will be in England broadcasting from the WTC final to the Hundred and then the Test series. Are you carrying your kit bag just in case you get a national call-up suddenly?
Yes, I am. I have already got a schedule where I am going to practise during my stay in England. I will be at 100% in case the call-up comes.

With a depleted squad, on a spinning pitch, they chased 395 with two debutants the heroes

ESPNcricinfo staff08-Feb-2021
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They were without six first-choice players
Ten West Indies cricketers opted not to travel to Bangladesh amid Covid-19 concerns, including their Test captain Jason Holder, and vice-captain Roston Chase. Shai Hope, Darren Bravo and Shamarh Brooks, all likely to have made the XI, also opted out of the tour, as did first-choice keeper Shane Dowrich, for personal reasons. Shimron Hetmyer, who could have made the Test team for the first time since 2019 as a replacement batsman, also missed out.They fielded three debutants
All the absentees meant West Indies had to field three debutants in the first Test in Bangladesh: Shayne Moseley, Nkrumah Bonner, and Kyle Mayers, who batted from No.3 to No.5. Their wicketkeeper Joshua Da Silva was playing just his second Test. Kraigg Brathwaite took over from Holder as captain.West Indies had lost 0-2 on their previous tour to Bangladesh
Even with a full-strength side, West Indies would have been underdogs in Bangladesh, having lost both Tests there on their 2018 tour. They had a near full-strength squad for that series, but their batsmen struggled on the turning tracks, only once getting a total of more than 250.They had been swept in the ODI series of this tour
Those vulnerabilities against spin were apparent on this tour as well, as West Indies’ ODI batting line-up crumbled for scores of 122, 148 and 177 in the three-match series. They could not get to 300 in either innings of the tour match before the Tests, and when they were bowled out for 259 in the first innings of the first Test, it looked like it would be another long series for their batsmen.The heroes of the win were two debutants
Left 395 to chase on a fourth and fifth-day pitch, West Indies would have had most of their hopes pinned on their captain Brathwaite, and more experienced batsmen, John Campbell and Jermaine Blackwood. Instead, the two heroes were debutants – Mayers, who scored an incredible 210 not out, and Bonner, who got 86; the pair put together 216 for the fourth wicket. Mayers is 28 and Bonner 32 – both have been on the first-class scene for a while, and when finally given the opportunity, produced memorable knocks.

In the ECB’s new competition you are free to support who you want – even if it’s just your favourite player

Cameron Ponsonby27-Aug-2021During the early stages of the Hundred I got chatting to a Southern Brave fan named Shilly.Shilly was from Leicester but had no interest in her more local side, Birmingham Phoenix. So why Brave?”Jofra! I’m in love with Jofra.”And if Jofra Archer moved?”I would move with him.”This phenomenon of supporting an individual (and in this case an individual that didn’t even play in the tournament) as opposed to a team has been arriving steadily across sports over the last decade. But not in the UK. It’s been a very American thing, or Asian, or somewhere else. But not us.Here in England we thump our chest and pronounce that we will support our local team till the day we die. Cut me open and I bleed the blue-and-white hoops of Queens Park Rangers. Always have, always will. “We hate Chels…” you get the point. You Rsssssss!Related

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But a new competition brings new opportunities.You can still support your local team if you want to, but you don’t have to. Those historical ties aren’t as strong and households aren’t going to be divided when a child walks cap in hand to their parents to announce they are now in fact a Trent Rockets fan and not a Birmingham Phoenix one.”Get out,” says dad, crying. “Get out. After everything Benny Howell has done for you and you come in here and say you’d rather support a team with Tom Moores in.”All this means that people can choose. And the way that people make that choice is different now to how it used to be. And it seems that the pull of a specific individual is far stronger than it ever has been.But why has this trend begun? And what does it mean from a business point of view for the Hundred in the future?You need only look at La Liga having lost Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi to see the pitfalls of individual branding. La Liga was Ronaldo vs Messi. And now they’re both gone. Individuals leave, teams don’t.So is it something the ECB should be wary of, if the pull of an individual becomes greater than the competition itself?Simon Chadwick is a Professor of Eurasian Sport at Emlyon Business School in Lyon. He is recognised as a leading voice on commercial issues regarding elite sport and regularly contributes to CNN, Al Jazeera, and the .”It’s a really good question and it’s actually quite a profound question because I don’t think it’s necessarily associated with sport,” Chadwick says.Chadwick points to the late 19th century and early 20th century as being the general time that sports in the UK were being codified and subsequently professionalised. Teams and leagues were being created and fans began to associate themselves with particular sides.

“The place that you were born was normally where you died and in between times you went to school, you got a job and you engaged with the local sports team. Locality was a crucial part of your identity”Simon Chadwick

“But that took place at a time when, not just in Britain, but I think globally, we had a relatively static population,” he said.”So the place that you were born was normally the place that you died and in between times you went to school, you got a job and you engaged with the local sports team. And locality, that’s the crucial thing, locality was a crucial part of your identity – it was programmed into your DNA.”What’s happened since then is that the world has become both bigger and smaller. Smaller, in that advances in transport and technology means we can travel long distances to work and talk to people across the globe as if we were sat next to them. And bigger, in that those changes mean the world extends beyond the four walls of your hometown. You can move. And people, including Chadwick, do.”Demographically, we’ve got a more transient population,” he says. “So then, when people like me are moving around the world and having children, our children are not wedded to a particular geographic location. So their notion of nationality and ethnicity and locality I think are more fluid.”Meanwhile, at the same time as traditional notions of locality and geography and identity are starting to dissolve, new notions, such as celebrity and influence within the modern digital environment, are on the rise.”So I think when you add all of those things together, it means that now, younger age groups and, kind of Generation Z and Generation Alpha are identifying with individuals rather than teams of their geographic location,” Chadwick said. “And this is not just cricket, we see the same thing in football [Messi to PSG] and we see the same thing in basketball [LeBron James to LA Lakers].”Chadwick is keen to express that while the reasons for this happening are in fact quite profound – “What we are experiencing and what we’re commenting on is a reflection of the ideological context within which we live” – the answers to what it means, are entirely practical.In short, individuals can transcend boundaries. So if you can sell Jofra Archer in one market, you can sell him in two markets. And if you can sell him in two markets, you can sell him in three and so on.And this is where the commercial potential of an individual holds an advantage over that of a team anchored to a location.”Short-to-medium term [that’s] great,” Chadwick says. “Our fans are in Wales, our fans are in London, our fans are wherever else they might be. But medium-to-long term, that’s a relatively finite market. And that market will mature, and you’re not necessarily going to get people switching from one team to another or one player to another.”So it’s at that point you then start thinking medium-to-long term and thinking, okay, how do we engage audiences in India or audiences in Australia and it’s at that point I think where the notion of locality becomes a more problematic one.”Brave 4 life? Or just here for Jofra?•Harry Trump/Getty ImagesWhilst not a direct analogy, an example of this can be found in IPL teams purchasing majority stakes in Caribbean Premier League sides. Most recently, the owners of Rajasthan Royals bought a controlling stake in Barbados Tridents in a move that will see Barbados rebranded as Barbados Royals. Rather than needing to be from Rajasthan to support the Royals, you simply support the Royals. And if you support the Royals, you can now support the Barbados Royals too.The emphasis on locality has been diminished and in turn the opportunity to support the team year round, and also to build the brand, has increased.Overall, Chadwick emphasises the fact that all the research over the past 30 years has shown that individuals are important. It’s just that now we are elevating them higher than we ever have before.From a commercial standpoint, it is both lucrative and also dangerous if done incorrectly. For it to be the former and not the latter is to “embrace the notion of succession”. Have your stars and lift them up in front of the rest of the world, but also have an eye on who is coming through next. And if played correctly, you can then have the best of both worlds, the strength of loyalty through locality, and also the reach of the individual to grow the game across markets.”The cricket authorities can’t just leave consumers, leave fans, for their minds to work and for them to get used to it,” Chadwick said.”They have to continue to reassure older viewers that ‘hey, you know this is still cricket, this is still the cricket that you love’. But at the same time they’ve got to assure new consumers that they’re not going back to the old times and this is modern and vibrant and lively and exciting and it’s going to stay that way.”And that requires really, really good leadership and good management and it requires strategy. So I think there is something about that which is walking a fine line between history and heritage and contemporary relevance.”Balancing history and heritage with contemporary relevance. Welcome to the Hundred. You Rsssssss!The Hundred Rising is providing eight aspiring, young journalists the opportunity to tell the story of the Hundred men’s and women’s competitions through their own eyes

The allrounder has evolved into a consistent scorer of Test runs, a run-out specialist, and is possibly the second-best spinner in the format

Jarrod Kimber07-Aug-2021People made fun of Ravindra Jadeja for making three first-class triple hundreds. It’s not easy to make one and he got a few; that only intensified the jokes. They called him Sir Ravi J, mockingly. It’s easy to dismiss those triples (Kerry O’Keefing is the technical term) as the teams he played against weren’t always strong. Still, there are some interesting bits to those innings.Before the triples there was a double. In that match, only one other batter scored over 80 runs, and that guy turned out pretty handy.His second triple century was almost 60% of his team’s total, and no one else made a hundred, even though it was a two-innings game.The 331 against Railways was out of a total of 576 runs and, in Murali Kartik and Sanjay Bangar, it came against a pair with nearly 1000 first-class wickets between them. Railways made just four more runs than he did in their first innings.In his first 36 matches for Saurashtra, he made six centuries, which is an okay conversion rate for a player with a second skill, but four of those were 232 or higher.After those seasons, as you would expect given that he could bowl, he didn’t stay with Saurashtra and ended up with India. And while he never became the triple-century Goliath, he was a top-quality international bat for the position he played from 2013 to 2017.

Jadeja is the second-best spinner called Ravi (incorrectly in R Ashwin’s case) in his team. Jadeja is playing like a build-your-own computer character, but Ashwin is a supervillain

It’s just that if you have built up this narrative of huge scores, averaging 29 in Tests (until the end of 2017) didn’t quite cut it. But it’s quality for a guy who batted eight or below more times than he didn’t. And 34 in ODIs with a strike rate of 92 batting at seven.These may not sound like inspiring numbers, but those are outstanding records for where he batted. No. 8s in Tests averaged 23 with the bat for this era, so he was well above normal. In ODIs, No. 7s score at the same rate as Jadeja, but he was averaging eight runs more.But, he was being compared to himself, and in India, where the only averages that are respected are the over-50 kind, he wasn’t popping.This, the IPL suspension, the moustache, the celebrations, the underserved (to some) arrogance, and the fact it seemed like MS Dhoni was operating him by remote control all meant that Jadeja was seen as a comedic figure, instead of the incredible player he is. He had a few runs, but more memes.Ravindra Jadeja’s first-innings half-century at Trent Bridge was the difference between India having a lead and not•Getty ImagesBut things have changed. Many like to look back at the Sanjay Manjrekar bits-and-pieces remarks as the point his career turned. Before it he averaged 31 across all forms of cricket with the bat, and after it has been 54. In truth, though, his form with the bat in Tests had already turned, so that theory doesn’t hold up.In fact, just as the global batting averages were about to drop, Jadeja took an enormous leap.Let me put it this way, when the global batting mark was a normal 31.76 from 2013 to 2017, Jadeja averaged 29.40. Since then a global pace-bowling pandemic has dropped the averages down to 28.08, and he has upped his average to 50.88.No one around the world can make a run right now, and a No. 7 everyone used to laugh at is averaging 50.It’s such a good record some fans want him batting up the order. Yet as good as he has been, he feels more like a No. 7 doing well rather than a top-order player. A bit like Daniel Vettori; his batting had a homespun nature to it, a by-any-means necessary style. And if you throw them up the order, with newer balls, and more pressure to build long innings, you can’t guarantee success.Related

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Vettori averaged 39 with the bat at No. 8, and when he went up the order to No. 6 and 7, he was just under 30. So far Jadeja averages 31 at No. 7. Most of his runs come at No. 8 (a bit low) or No. 9 (that’s some batting order). But from eight innings at No. 6, he’s managed three fifties.Vettori struggled up the order because while he was good at making runs, he had never learned how to build an innings like a batter. He just hung around incredibly well. Jadeja certainly had the construction skills as a young man, even if he’s only managed one hundred (exactly 100, in fact) in Tests.But batting up the order is different to what he’s been doing. And there’s no reason for him to be promoted. While Rishabh Pant is batting at No. 6, Jadeja at seven unlocks what allrounders should; the ability to have seven batters and five bowlers. That’s the dream.And this has got the feel of a wonderful dream.ESPNcricinfo LtdIf you look at Jadeja’s figures since the start of 2018 in Tests, he looks like the most valuable player on paper. India loses nothing with the bat. In fact, he’s miles ahead of most top-order players in terms of average. He’s going at 26 with the ball; not quite the silly numbers of some seamers going around, though he could have surely lowered that had he bowled against England at home this year.Put it this way: if you were drafting players to put in your Test team right now, and you could pick anyone, who would you take before him? Because he bowls spin, you can use him far more with the ball than Ben Stokes, and while he’s not in that class as a batter, he’s making more consistent runs. Jason Holder has been incredible with the ball and played some strong innings at home. Still, Jadeja probably has him beat and can bat higher right now. What of the specialists? Well, Jadeja has the fifth-best batting average (for a minimum 750 runs scored) and the 20th-best bowling average (with a minimum of 50 wickets) in this time. And he’s a run-out specialist with his arm.You may not still draft Jadeja at No. 1, but as far as allrounders go, the only one better in the world than him right now is Shohei Ohtani.It’s hard to get your head around all this because it is possible Jadeja is the second-best spinner in Tests, and also the second-best spinner called Ravi (incorrectly in R Ashwin’s case) in his team. Jadeja is playing like a build-your-own computer character, but Ashwin is a supervillain.Go to YouTube any day ending with ‘Y’ and some cricket nerd has made a new video about how Ashwin moved his pinky finger a millimetre and has thus changed reality as we know it. And there is a more prosaic wind-up toy nature to how Jadeja bowls. According to Cricviz, he doesn’t vary his pace much at all compared to high-class spinners. That means that Ashwin is the thinking cricketer we all wish we could be, and Jadeja is the bowling automaton who delivers through physical gifts.Actually, as much as anything, Jadeja has worked out how not to be dismissed•Getty ImagesBut, then, what of his batting? Where he went from a handy lower-order player who chips in, into a constant scorer of Test runs? Right now he looks like a player who can bat for any situation that’s thrown at him lower down the order. He’s worked on his game, tightened what was more of a wild-axe swing, taken batting up the order more seriously, and is now making regular runs.Actually, as much as anything, Jadeja has worked out how not to be dismissed. Batting at seven is a pretty simple job if you can bat. There are more not outs, and the new ball is a long distance from you. Jadeja has five not outs in 23 innings at No. 7. But he’s had four not outs batting at six as well. No matter where he enters, he’s got a huge amount of red ink. This isn’t just outlasting a shambolic tail. This is him being harder to dig out than an Alabama tick. This is Imran Khan of the 80s or late-career Vettori.It is only 23 innings, but almost a third of his career knocks. And that is one of the weirdest things, that he’s clearly close to the most complete cricketer in the world, and perhaps the most valuable. But he’s 32, and because of circumstances, he’s only played 53 Tests.On Friday, his dismissal was the only surprising thing. He negated England’s swinging ball, built a partnership with KL Rahul, and then squeezed runs out of the tail with the sort of exciting batting he showed when he was younger.It will go down as another fifty, a handy knock but it was more than that. His innings was the difference between India having a lead and not. Sometimes a fifty is worth more than 300.If you’re still making jokes about Ravi Jadeja’s batting, then you’re just not paying attention. Arise, Sir Ravi J, the quality No. 7.