The good thing for Australia – and Harris – is that the opening slot is one of the few question marks that surround the team

Andrew McGlashan19-Dec-2021Having done the hard work last night under lights, when Steven Smith opted not to enforce the follow-on, Marcus Harris had an ideal opportunity to make his first significant contribution of the series and quieten the debate around David Warner’s opening partner.Australia were already miles ahead, the sun was shining on a clear day, and the ball was nearly 20 overs old. However, he could only add two to his overnight score before edging Stuart Broad, who claimed him again from around the wicket.Related

• Langer: 'We're really confident Marcus has got what it takes'

• Hazlewood returns for last three Tests, Cummins available for Melbourne

• Joe Root's prove the toughest nuts to crack as Australia close in

• Eyes on Warner, but Australia's biggest challenge will be when he's gone

It can so often feel that the players who could do with a little bit of luck don’t get it. Harris has twice fallen to superb catches by Jos Buttler, while Marnus Labuschagne, who can’t stop scoring runs in Test cricket, was dropped twice during his first-innings hundred.Being an opener, it is Harris who has to face the bowlers at their best a lot of times. He has had to contend with two of the better passages England’s same pace attack has put together in this match: the early exchanges on the opening day and then, the opening overs on the fourth. He couldn’t get through either, gloving the pull down the leg side and then pushing forward to get an outside edge that Buttler pouched low to his left.It continued an unconvincing start to the series after he fell for 3 in the first innings at the Gabba – edging into the cordon – and was saved from a duck in the short run chase when he got an inside edge against Chris Woakes.He is highly likely to be given the chance to feature on his home ground at the MCG on Boxing Day. National selector George Bailey has talked of backing players and giving them a sense of stability. Pat Cummins named the first-Test XI three days before the start while the final selection calls were made well in advance, so the players didn’t fret. But after 12 Tests, Harris averages 22.19.Harris did all he could in the off-season to ensure he retained his place after coming into the side for the final Test against India last season by piling up the runs for Leicestershire and started this Sheffield Shield season with a century. If first-class players are to be rewarded, then Harris was – and still is – worthy of his place in the team.However, there is a potentially telling statistic when it comes to Harris’ returns in Australia: on the major Test grounds, he averages 33.47, while on the less used and outground venues, he averages 63.66. Generally, although not always, those smaller venues have slower, lower pitches that do not challenge a batter’s technique the same way as Test pitches can do.Then there is the debate about if it’s not Harris, then who is it alongside Warner (and that’s before anyone starts to think about filling Warner’s shoes when he retires). It is not a golden era for Australian opening batters. Henry Hunt and Bryce Street are in the up-and-coming group; Street, who has shown the ability to bat an enormous amount of time, scored a century against England Lions earlier this month and Hunt is very highly regarded by many after strong returns for South Australia. If Australia had needed cover for Warner in Adelaide because of his damaged ribs, it could have been Street who was called in.But both Street and Hunt are still early in their first-class careers (22 matches each) and there is the balance to strike between promoting players too early and rewarding good form. It could be that if another opener was needed in the Ashes, Usman Khawaja would fill the position despite not having done the role consistently – although he does average 96.80 from five Tests in the job.The good thing for Australia – and Harris – is that the opening position is one of the few question marks that surround the team after the first two Tests. They have coped remarkably well in losing two frontline pace bowlers while Travis Head has cemented the No. 5 position, and Alex Carey looks a ready-made keeper-batter.Yet, as Head and Labuschagne were taking runs off England’s weary attack – which included the rarely seen offspin of Ollie Robinson – Harris would have been forgiven for watching on and pondering what could have been.

Root admits his attack bowled too short and that mistakes were repeated

Andrew Miller20-Dec-2021In the end, England found the will to fight, and dragged the Adelaide Test kicking and screaming into the floodlit session of the fifth and final day. But for all that their 113.1 overs of resistance encouraged a few fleeting thoughts of survival, their all-out total of 192 told a more realistic tale.Not only was it the lowest total of the match, and fewer runs even than England’s eventual margin of defeat, it was also the 11th time in 27 innings this calendar year that England had been bowled out for less than 200.It’s an extraordinary collective failing, especially when you consider that Joe Root, England’s captain, has twice made more runs than that in a single innings this year, en route to his stellar haul of 1630 at 62.69.But with the Boxing Day Test looming in six days’ time, and England already 2-0 down in the Ashes having lost in Australia for the 11th time in 12 matches, Root knows that the lessons of these opening two Tests must be absorbed urgently if they are to avoid this tour heading in the same bleak direction as each of its two predecessors.Related

Chris Silverwood insists he's 'right man for the job' as Ashes pressure mounts

Australia reassert age-old dominance of England at home

Hazlewood returns for last three Tests, Cummins available for Melbourne

Joe Root's prove the toughest nuts to crack as Australia close in

“I’m actually very proud of the way that the guys fought today,” Root insisted. “The attitude, the desire – that’s how we need to go about whole Test matches. You can’t just leave it to the last day and expect to pull off an enormous feat, which is what it would have been today.”After the agonies, literal and otherwise, of his final-over dismissal on the fourth evening, Root was particularly pleased for Jos Buttler, England’s embattled wicketkeeper, whose glaring errors behind the stumps had been compounded by his duck in the first innings.Buttler avoided a pair on the final day when his counterpart, Alex Carey, blemished an otherwise superb display by failing to react to an early edge off Mitchell Starc, but seized on that let-off with a doughty 26 from 207 balls – the second-longest innings of his career, behind his century against Pakistan in 2020.”Jos’s innings was outstanding,” Root said, “ably supported by others, Woakesy [Chris Woakes] in particular. But ultimately that is the attitude and the mentality that we have to harness for five days if we’re going to win here.”The disappointing thing about this week is that we made the same mistakes as last week,” Root added. “We just can’t afford to do that. That’s going to be the most frustrating thing about this game, looking back.”Buttler’s innings ended in bizarre fashion, as he stepped back to steer Jhye Richardson into the covers and trod on his own wicket, 12 balls into the final session of the game. And while Root admitted that the team had been “devastated for him” after such a committed effort, he said that the strength of character Buttler had shown was reminiscent of his crucial half-century in the 2019 World Cup final – the sort of big-game mentality for which he had been recalled to the Test team in the first place.”Anyone that can handle a World Cup final – read the situation of the game, and be as composed as he was throughout that – can manage situations like this one within a Test match,” Root said. “He should gain a huge amount of confidence from the way he played today, not just in performing out here in these conditions but in his defence. Hopefully he can take a lot from this into the rest of this series.”Joe Root reflects on another heavy defeat•PA Images via Getty ImagesWhile England’s batting was a recognised concern coming into this Test, Root acknowledged that the bowling had been every bit as culpable in Australia’s first innings. Despite reuniting England’s senior seamers James Anderson and Stuart Broad with a view to exploiting the purported movement of the pink ball, the lengths from all of England’s five quicks were consistently too short to target Australia’s outside edges, as they racked up a formidable 473 for 9 declared.”We need to be braver, and we need to get the ball up there,” Root said. “We were a little bit short with the ball. We didn’t challenge them enough, and they left very well again, which was something that they did in Brisbane as well.”Having witnessed Australia’s success with a fuller length in their own first innings of 236, England’s quicks fared better second time around, particularly on the fourth morning when three wickets tumbled in the first hour. “That’s almost the benchmark for us,” Root said. “We need to look at those passages of play, and do them for longer, and exploit the conditions as well as we did in that period of the game.”Overall, however, England were outbatted, outbowled, and outfielded on a consistent basis from the first ball to last.”That’s the game,” Root said. “You have to be able to put the ball in the right areas for long enough, you have to be able to score big runs, and when you create those chances you have to take them.”I think the frustration within our dressing room is that we did not quite execute very basic things well enough for the second game in a row. First of all, we need to learn, and we need to learn fast. We can’t make the same mistakes that we have done so far.”Despite the 2-0 scoreline, and the knowledge that no England team has ever fought back from such a deficit to win the Ashes, Root remained adamant that all is not lost, and that the gulf between the teams need not be as big as it has seemed in the first two Tests.”With the bat, we have got the ability,” he said. “I don’t think that Australia are that much better than us in these conditions. We are better than how we’ve played and we’ll front up in Melbourne, and put in a performance which is a fairer reflection of the ability in our dressing-room.”We’ve got three massive games with the Ashes on the line now. And if that’s not motivation enough to go there and put performances in, I don’t know what is.”

With rumours swirling, vultures hovering and the sword of Damocles hanging over him, Babar simply batted, and bat well, he did

Danyal Rasool15-Mar-2022The rumours swirled late into a wretched evening for Pakistan cricket, as they stared at just their third ever defeat at the National Stadium Karachi. The vultures hovered on the morning after, as the sun rose on what were to be the finishing touches of a Test match Babar Azam and his side were being taken apart in. This was Pakistan’s immovable fortress, an oasis of stability in a metropolis of perpetual change. And it was here that Australia were outplaying Pakistan, and it was Babar, the man from that other city, who apparently stood so thoroughly exposed in Karachi.What did he know about captaincy, after all? Wasn’t it the bowlers who had spearheaded Pakistan’s Test series victory over South Africa here last year? Wasn’t it Mohammad Rizwan and Shaheen Shah Afridi’s sensational form that had lifted Pakistan to the World T20 semi-finals on a tidal wave of exultant emotion?What, indeed, did he know about batting? Wasn’t he the bloke who played that rather sluggish innings in that semi-final that saw Pakistan eliminated? Isn’t it him who last crossed three figures in Test cricket before the world knew what Covid-19 meant? Didn’t he, one purple six-month patch aside, always struggle in Test cricket anyway? Who, after all, was this man at the helm of Pakistan cricket, given the reins to do as he pleased, projected as the face of a rejuvenated side that has such renewed ambitions to sit among the leaders of the food chain in the cricket economy?Related

• PCB summons ex-MCG curator ahead of Lahore Test

• Ghosts of Sydney cast uneasy shadow over Australia's Karachi quest

• Babar Azam 102*, Abdullah Shafique 71* as Pakistan fight after Australia set them 506

There is a naïve savagery to the way Pakistan cricketers are built up and brought down. There are shades of overbearing smugness in the way we think of Babar, primarily informed by the striking disparity between his suave self-assuredness on the field and its complete absence off it. Behind the mic at presentations and press conferences, there’s a coarseness to his delivery, and in this most English of games, his discomfort in that language can sometimes be confused with a lack of sophistication. He never appears quite at ease in TV commercials, which, as the face of Pakistan cricket, he’s asked to do plenty of. The smoothness that seems to come to Virat Kohli by nature, for example, Babar is frantically learning on the job.And so, when things aren’t quite going his way, the stick to beat him can easily be fetched from the lowest common denominator, and its method of deployment will necessarily be particularly savage. At 27, Babar has been entrusted the role of all-format captain in a country where the position comes with a sword of Damocles that doesn’t even hang over the country’s Prime Minister as ominously.It’s not a role he organically grew into over time, instead finding it thrust upon him by circumstance when first Sarfaraz Ahmed, and then Azhar Ali, were dispatched after loss of form with the bat. The departure of the PCB chairman who elevated Babar with a man perhaps not quite as overwhelmingly enthusiastic was an inevitable added stress. For a man never quite accustomed to the camera as he is to the batting crease, the burden to bear is heavy, the support with which to bear it in Pakistan extremely light.The buzz of activity that currently permeates Pakistan’s political ambience felt like it had infected its cricketing atmosphere as Babar walked out at the NSK. Azhar had just fallen in a manner whose farce was a tidy microcosm of the contest, ducking a Cameron Green bouncer that struck him on the gloves which, for some reason, he didn’t review. Babar was walking out to take his place, but would someone be replacing him soon enough?

There is a naïve savagery to the way Pakistan cricketers are built up and brought down. There are shades of overbearing smugness in the way we think of Babar, primarily informed by the striking disparity between his suave self-assuredness on the field and its complete absence off it

Babar began tentatively, as you might when you need nearly 500 runs to win and almost 150 overs to survive. Besides, Pakistan were slinking along at a run an over, so Babar could hardly be accused of inducing lethargy into the innings. But Mitchell Swepson dropped one short, and in that moment, Babar’s worries melted away. The length was picked up early, and there was a swish and flick of the blade. He might not have muttered an incantation, but as if by magic, the weight of the world on his shoulders suddenly vanished.The conditions might not have been as treacherous as yesterday; the reverse swing Australia’s quicks found yesterday wasn’t as palpable this afternoon. But what was absent in sideways movement was compensated for by a deteriorating pitch, where the uneven bounce and darkening patches of rough lay in wait like freshly laid traps. Australia were cornering Pakistan, who certainly didn’t feel like tigers.But even as Babar gained confidence, there was no guarantee of a rescue act. Babar the fourth-innings batter has been a deceptively ordinary batter, averaging 21.63 across his career. There’s almost no body of evidence to support any hopes that might be pinned on him for a miraculous final-innings rescue act. Time and again, an attack as balanced and potent as Australia’s sniffed around for vulnerabilities.It’s easy to forget how sensitive the shield sportspeople put up to protect themselves can be, and the damage any breach can do•AFP/Getty ImagesBut young men in Pakistan – particularly Pakistani cricket – get a lifetime’s practice of concealing weakness. Australia prowled around. Swepson bowled length, exploiting the pitch’s wear and tear while testing Babar’s footwork and patience; one run in 21 balls showed Babar was up to the challenge. Starc went full, only for Babar to punish him with two boundaries, beating him back. Cummins went short, but only for four balls, because Babar pulled three away for four. Green wandered full in search of the movement he found the previous day. Babar refused to engage, scoring no runs of the nine balls. The weaknesses hadn’t gone away, but for the moment, put to one side, not to be talked about.That shield of self-preservation never quite left Babar throughout the evening as the shadows lengthened. A score of 100 might be an arbitrary figure, but there was nothing arbitrary about the psychological shot in the arm it appeared to give Babar when, five overs out from the end of the day, a sweep off Swepson got him there. Even as the crowd roared, the celebration was somewhat subdued; a man with as many responsibilities as his knows when a job hasn’t yet been done.It’s easy to forget how sensitive the shield sportspeople put up to protect themselves can be, and the damage any breach can do. Pakistan’s best batter in more than a generation might have had his broken recently, but a superb knock from a cricketer still close to the top of his game will have gone a long way towards repairing it.On a day when the rumours swirled and the vultures hovered, Babar simply batted. That may be all he can do, but on days like these, boy can he do it well.

Viv Richards, lion in winter, talks T20 and whether he wishes he was playing in the modern era

Osman Samiuddin16-Mar-20220:59

‘If T20 was around when we were, why not go and have some professional fun’

Last week, as we mourned the tragic loss of one of the game’s greats, so passed a significant life moment for another. Sir Viv Richards, who played his last Test five months before Shane Warne played his first, is now 70 years old.Or, as he is quick to point out, “70 years young”.It’s a bit of a dad-quip but are you not going to laugh when Viv Richards laughs, satisfied with the funny he’s made? We’re talking, as we do now, via Zoom, and Richards, proudly of Antigua, is sitting in a hotel room in Lahore, as a “mentor” for Quetta Gladiators in the Pakistan Super League, talking into a smartphone. This is a very 21st-century scene, although Richards, and those shoulders, bring a magisterial touch to the framing.Related

'The first thing is to think aggression' (2015)

Mark Nicholas: The King and I (2019)

The long, hot summer of Viv Richards (2016)

A symbol of West Indian supremacy

Nowadays this commitment is his most active involvement in the game. And while a T20 franchise mentor is totally the same energy as a company’s Chief Happiness Officer, somehow Richards’ role at Quetta has not only appeared organic, it has also been substantive.His presence in the dugout at PSL games has often been the game to watch. Even now, there’s little doubt he is – was – an athlete, the vibe he always brought, that there is nothing more serious in his life than that to which he is presently deployed. He chest-bumps, he fist-pumps, he high-fives, he grooves. In the first PSL, when Quetta reached the final, he charged on to the field to celebrate, with the same conviction with which he once celebrated a Rob Bailey dismissal. That was five years go, but he’s still so clearly into each moment of a game, you can’t help but wonder: 30 years from his last game, how much is he missing it?”Not really,” he says. “What I’m seeing is a lot of individuals who have done the game in itself proud. The magnificent players that you’ve seen, certainly the game has improved somewhat. The bats, the power-hitting, you know, most certainly the T20 stuff wasn’t around when we were playing.”With old chum Ian Botham at the unveiling of the trophy named after the two of them earlier this month in North Sound, Antigua•Gareth Copley/AFP/Getty ImagesSurely, though, there have been times where you’ve sized up some poor bowler, clocked the boundary sizes, felt the heft of that bat and thought: pad me up now?”Well, yes, I would say this, that sometimes there is a little urge… why the hell didn’t T20 come a little earlier, you know?” There’s a little shimmying of those shoulders as he says this, just one of the physical manifestations of that gold-dust swagger.”One of the things I am pleased and very happy for is that the pioneers that graced the field over the years, they would’ve set the foundation for what’s happening today. I’m just hoping that the individuals who are playing today and earning whatever, appreciate the fact that there were pioneers before who obviously led the way for what’s happening today.”A wider theme can be parsed from these lines, in which, broadly speaking, the supremacy of red-ball cricket is paramount. T20s cannot be the judge of a cricketer, Richards says. Red-ball remains “the real baptism where cricket is concerned”. Boundaries are too small. If helmets weren’t around, neither would modern batting’s derring-do be. “Suits of armour” makes an appearance, and he frets players are too readily forsaking national teams for franchises. In referring to T20s as “professional fun”, moreover, he fairly harrumphs “professional”, as might a man from a time when being a professional cricketer was not inevitable.This is a generational cleft, although it doesn’t come across as bitter as much as it does cautionary. It is to say that a world existed before yesterday, that people strived hard in it; in it people failed and excelled, in it people innovated, in it there were greats who were shaped by the circumstances of their time. It is to say that as we move ahead, we can only do so by remaining mindful of where we are coming from. Which is no bad plea.And he kind of have a point about bowlers in T20s.Richards obliges with selfies and autographs at the West Indies-Pakistan game in the 2019 World Cup•Gareth Copley/ICC/Getty Images”What I would say is that there are times when I think bowlers are taken advantage of.” He pauses, then laughs at the words that are about to come: “And I say that mildly.”You know, when you look at some of these T20 tournaments, you see the small boundaries, these huge hitters, the improvement in the bats, you know, as a batsman I shouldn’t be saying this, but I believe that the bowlers sometimes have been taken for granted. Especially when you have batters making mistakes, top-edging stuff for sixes. I believe the boundary sometimes could be a little bit bigger. Just making the playing field on the whole much more enjoyable for everyone to participate and compete.”When asked what his one wish for the game would be, he asks for bigger boundaries. It is hardly a radical manifesto, but this note of sympathy from a batter who displayed little of it to bowlers when playing adds a little gravitas.That had everything to do with the bowlers he came across, the Lillees and Thommos, the Imrans and Hadlees, as well as his own team-mates. The one thing he couldn’t dare give them was sympathy.We are currently passing through an era that might, in time, be remembered even more favourably for fast bowling. Richards watched the Ashes – it is not clear why – and, unsurprisingly, liked what he saw from the hosts.”When I looked at Australia, I felt that was the perfect example. You have four guys coming at you all day and you’ve got to survive that, your technique on the line. Testing times. The leaving of deliveries outside off stump. The concentration factor.I and I: Richards holds up a portrait of him by artist Brandon Kelly•Randy Brooks/AFP/Getty Images”Yes, you look at even Shaheen [Shah Afridi], he has come on in leaps and bounds. Ever since I’ve been coming here to Pakistan, this is one of the things I have noted – the finds in terms of fast bowlers. Guys are clicking at 145-150kph on a regular basis, which means that it is healthy in that category.”As I said, some of the things that have not changed, in my opinion, is proper fast bowling. I could call on a few from yesterday, you know, who were fine exponents. I could give you four who I played with. And the count could go on and on. But in a big way, I believe that never changes.”The fastest bowler he says he faced was Jeff Thomson, which is not surprising. The fastest ball he ever faced is, but also isn’t: a bouncer from Wasim Akram in an ODI in Hobart in late 1988. It could be recency bias of one kind – on the morning of this interview, Richards had inducted Akram into the PCB’s hall of fame. But everyone knows that though Akram operated as a sculptor, he could be a wrecking ball when the mood gripped him.”One of the quickest deliveries I have ever, ever encountered, and I believe there was someone upstairs looking after me,” he recalls. “I had some hair left then, somewhat of a mini-Afro and this one went by so quickly, I could hear it hitting the wicketkeeper’s gloves and I said, ‘Wow, wow.’ Wasim was a young man, coming on to the scene, and I was heading towards the exit door so I was glad that while he was coming then, I was going.”I can remember also that I did say to the individuals, the batsmen in the West Indies team at the time, I said, ‘Hey man, good luck to you guys, having to encounter that guy on a regular basis man.’ Wasim, he was very, very special. Up to this day, I still see that particular delivery. I have nightmares about it every now and again.”It is from a great contemporary of Richards’ that we have heard on racism over the last couple of years, since the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Michael Holding has become a prominent and powerful voice on racism. For those who followed the great West Indies sides of that era, it might seem an unexpected development; even Holding himself admitted in 2020 that Richards was more politically active than he was during their playing days.Second life: Richards is probably found more often on golf courses than at cricket grounds these days•Hannah Peters/Getty ImagesThere would appear to be no specific reason why we have not heard Richards as much. It could be visibility – the pandemic has meant that the first time he travelled outside the Caribbean in recent years was for the T20 World Cup last year. It’s definitely not because he has suddenly not been subject to racist behaviour anymore. In fact, he was, as recently as when returning from the T20 World Cup, on a flight in the Caribbean. It should be getting better, he says, but it isn’t.And he is exactly as you imagine he might be on the issue.”Well, what I know for sure is, the way it should be is that all lives should matter. You know, that’s the way I look at it. All lives should matter. But in some cases, take, for instance, America, the racism we have seen on a regular basis, innocent folks being gunned down by the police, it doesn’t seem like that is the case.”So this is why I will always be an advocate in a big way. Why is it that it just keeps happening to this particular colour?” He points to his forearm. “Because I myself have gone through that sort of stuff, the racism, at some point. I’m a pretty conscious guy. I’ve always believed in my colour, my race. And anyone, in my opinion, who wants to shoot you down, to stamp on you because of your colour, he doesn’t have a divine right to do that.”This is why I would always believe in the Malcolm X factor: by any means necessary, if you need to survive some of the thinking of individuals around the world, like the National Front, the Klan. I’m for anyone of this colour, whoever is being persecuted, whoever is facing race issues, anyone on this earth who is going to say to me as a human being that I haven’t got any right to survive because of my colour – wow, I will do what it takes, what is necessary, in order to survive.”The only sour note, really, is that we’ve lost Richards to golf. That’s how he now spends his days, hanging on courses with Richie Richardson and Eldine Baptiste. Playing a fair bit too, as a handicap of seven indicates. Not bad, he says, for a 70-year-old.

If they had T20 in 1998 and not 2008, Jarrod Kimber wonders, what on earth could he have done?

Jarrod Kimber15-May-2022Andrew Symonds fielded differently to others. He was a ring-fielding predator. Proactive, with otherworldly athletic gifts, he was like an oppressive force at cover.One game towards the end of his career he was mic’ed up and he took people through his methods. And you saw how his mind, body and desire came together to make him one of the world’s best inside the circle.Related

Roy 388: Townsville pays tribute to Andrew Symonds

Andrew Symonds dies in car accident aged 46

'This really hurts'

Seven innings that defined Andrew Symonds' career

Ricky Ponting: Andrew Symonds 'an extraordinary player and even better human being'

The first bit was how much he actually wanted the ball because he believed through that he could keep himself in the game. For all his technical and physical gifts, this was the most important one. He was desperate to be involved. Some players don’t want the ball; Symonds needed it.Then there was the physical prowess. He could change direction like someone far smaller. He was swift across the ground and had a rocket arm. Australia turned Mike Young, an American baseball coach, into a fielding specialist, and paired him with Symonds, which took his fielding to another level. For years when he talked about his fielding, Young’s name would often come up.And then there was his brain. That is what you saw in this on-field masterclass. He was talking about bat faces, areas batters wanted to score in, and his own intuition. You can be the fastest fielder in the world, but it doesn’t help if you are waiting for the ball to be hit. Symonds would read the bowler and batter and proactively stop runs.And in that way, and almost every other way, he was always ahead of the game.If they had T20 in ’98, not ’08, what on earth could he have done?•PA Photos/Getty ImagesOne of the big technical changes that he made as a batter was to stop trying to hit every ball as hard as he could. The reasoning was that because he hit the ball so hard naturally, a swing at three-quarters power, off the middle of his bat, could clear the boundary anyway.In the era of ODI cricket Symonds played, the average strike rate was 74, and a six was hit every 109 balls. His strike rate was 92.5 and he hit a six every 53 balls. Despite retiring before ODI cricket got a lot faster, he still has the 11th-best strike rate of all time of those with more than 5000 runs.But the interesting thing is how much Australia tried to rein all that in. We know how much faster he could have scored if they had ever let him off the leash. He averaged a very respectable 40 in ODIs. But what kind of player could Australia have had if they just let Roy be Roy? There are only three players with a career strike rate of over 100 with that amount of runs: Shahid Afridi, Virender Sehwag and AB de Villiers. Symonds held himself back to a strike rate of 92 and an average of 40 and he won twice the number of World Cups as that trio combined, as well as a Champions Trophy. Across two World Cups and two Champions Trophies, he averaged 76 at a strike rate of 95. But what could his ceiling have been had he been truly let loose?The game was different then. The free market wasn’t dictating what you did, and so Symonds had to conform to what Australia wanted. But ultimately you couldn’t really make him a normal cricketer because it wasn’t how he thought. And so with his bowling, Symonds was two bowlers depending on how he felt and what the team needed.He wasn’t the first allrounder to bowl pace and spin, but he was perhaps one of the first to do it slightly more tactically. Symonds’ offspin was very much like the canny part-timers you get in club cricket. It came from a powerful arm, and it wasn’t about spin, it was about accuracy and intelligence, and he bowled the ball where he felt it was hardest to hit boundaries from. His medium pace could wobble the ball around and, occasionally, get a bit more out of the deck than others. Neither were frontline skills on their own, but he made them work when he needed to. He was a match-ups bowler before the term existed in cricket. Without being a full-time fifth bowler for Australia in ODIs – they often split his overs between him and Darren Lehmann or Michael Clarke – he still took 133 wickets at 37.By 2016, when T20s had changed the game, quite a few coaches stopped using the term allrounder as much. Instead, they used something from baseball, referring to a player as a two- or three-tool player: bats, bowls, and fields. Symonds was so far ahead of his time he was a four-tool player: bat, bowl offspin, bowl medium, and field.Over 26 Tests, Symonds showed he had the game for red-ball cricket too•AFPAnd we did see just the smallest amount of what he could have done in the format of cricket that best suited his skills. In 2003 he played five T20 matches for Kent, scoring 170 runs off 75 balls. In fact, over his first 16 games at the back-end of his peak, he made 529 runs from 260 balls while averaging 44. Sadly, the IPL came just after his peak, but he made a hundred in his first year, and over the first two seasons averaged 45.5 while striking at 150.He got two more years, but one was his 2011 campaign, in which he struck at 97 over 11 matches. He was still playing because he still had so many useful skills. But he was gone as a batter then. Yet his career numbers still look incredible, averaging 32 with a strike rate of 147. It is a badly drawn picture of what peak Symonds could have been. If they had T20 in ’98, not ’08, what on earth could he have done? It’s just sad for him that he was a T20 player before there really was T20. He showed people how to play it and then had to watch others do it.You can see patterns among the great white-ball players linking different eras. Javed Miandad led into Dean Jones who became Ricky Ponting, and then we had Virat Kohli. Michael Bevan had MS Dhoni follow him. Viv Richards’ closest copy is AB de Villiers. Symonds was really very much like Kieron Pollard, a power player with a brain, one who broke chases and bowlers early on, with a freedom that other batters found unnerving. And he continued to bother people with bowling, whatever he could to be effective, and incredible fielding efforts.Symonds wasn’t just some white-ball wizard either; remember he played 26 Tests in a solid era of Australian cricket, often keeping Shane Watson out of the team. And in those matches he averaged 40.5 with the bat while also adding almost one wicket every game with whatever bowling he thought would work best. In a 14-year first-class career Symonds hit 40 hundreds.He was often wrongly perceived as a slogger, because he was so different. But he was more than that. He was exciting, unique and powerful. He was a player who came from the future. For crowds in the 90s, used to batters pushing the ball around in the middle overs, one-dimensional bowlers and fielders who reacted to the ball, he was thrilling. And we didn’t always know how to process that.Watching him bat was always a bittersweet experience because the thrill was in him pushing too hard, but the fear was that would get him out. And the feeling that no matter what he did on the field, it would always end too soon. Today, I feel that again, only it’s far worse.

From being five down for next to nothing, the two rescued Bangladesh in what has been a year of miracles

Mohammad Isam23-May-2022Prior to Monday, you have to go as far back as 1959 to find a rescue operation in a Dhaka Test that was as backs-to-the-wall as the one that Mushfiqur Rahim and Litton Das pulled off against Sri Lanka. At the Bangabandhu National Stadium, Wallis Mathias and Shujauddin added 86 runs after Pakistan, the hosts, had slipped to 22 for 5 on the first morning against West Indies.Pakistan’s 145 and 144 was still enough for Fazal Mahmood, the fast bowling star of the era, to demolish the West Indies with a 12-wicket haul using all his crafts on Dhaka’s famous matting pitch. Although the current Dhaka Test is only a day old, the big difference between the two sixth-wicket stands already is the amount of runs. Mushfiqur and Litton have put on an unbroken 253 runs for the sixth wicket. This is the first time a team has put up a 200-plus stand after losing their first five wickets for 25 runs or fewer.There’s little memory of the 1959 Test except for a Wisden report that understandably praises Mathias and Shujauddin.Usually, a lower-order revival like this involves an underrated batter stepping up but neither Mushfiqur nor Litton fits that category. One is Bangladesh’s most capped Test cricketer, who last week became the country’s first batter to reach 5000 runs. The other is the form batter, scoring his third Test century in the last six months. He averages 50-plus in both Tests and ODIs during the period.Given his current form, it seems as if Litton is batting one place too low. He is the sort of player who should be part of the engine room of a batting line-up, i.e., the middle-order. So when Bangladesh collapsed in a heap in the seventh over, the belief that this in-form duo can stem the slide wasn’t really all that far-fetched.Sri Lanka’s pace duo of Asitha Fernando and Kasun Rajitha rattled Bangladesh with their accuracy. Rajitha caught Mahmudul Hasan napping with the second ball of the day, before his twin blows – Najmul Hossain Shanto and Shakib Al Hasan – reduced Bangladesh to 24 for 5. In between, Fernando removed Tamim Iqbal and Mominul Haque with deliveries that left the two left-handers befuddled.It meant Shanto and Mominul’s downturn continues. Mominul, especially, is slowly sliding into a situation where his captaincy and his form are being openly questioned. Young opener Joy getting his third duck in the last four innings has also contributed to the frustrations around this batting line-up.The big scores from Chattogram now appear to be an anomaly. Only in their previous Test series in South Africa, Bangladesh were shot out for 53 and 80. Prior to that, right here at Shere Bangla National Stadium, Pakistan beat them in a game reduced by rain to effectively two and a half days.Mushfiqur went past 5000 runs in the first Test•AFP/Getty ImagesBangladesh head coach Russell Domingo however chose to look at the positives and said he has never seen a team recover so well after being put in such a difficult position.”It is one of the best partnerships I have seen as a coach in Tests,” he said. “We were 20 odd for 5. Under a lot of pressure. It was an amazing effort by those two batters. Obviously we didn’t start well this morning. Couple of false shots. Couple of good deliveries. Test cricket is hard but those guys showed amazing skill and character to get us in this good position.”Mushfiqur has been the architect of many Bangladesh rescue acts. His ability to tune out everything else – especially the criticism that hounds this side – and just focus on the job at hand continues to stand out.”Mushfiqur hits more balls than anybody I have ever seen,” Domingo said. “He has amazing determination and desire to do well,” he said. “I think a lot of the players want a little bit of love and support particularly when things are not going well for you. For sure, he has worked a little bit on his technique in the last couple of games, but he knows how to get runs.”Litton too is growing in stature and his coach expects him to keep going and become Bangladesh’s Mr Dependable.”I think Litton has evolved his game,” Domingo said. “He has developed a very good batting technique, which is very important in international cricket. He has a found a good way to prepare for Tests in the last year and a half. Knowing when to do the work, and when not to do the work. He has developed a good routine.”He has taken his game to the next level. I think batting lower down the order has helped him. He will definitely become Bangladesh’s No 4 or 5 in time to come. At No 6 and 7, takes the pressure off him. He can play with intent and positivity.”Bangladesh have put together some amazing comebacks in 2022. They beat New Zealand in their own conditions for the first time, after a difficult period leading up to that tour. Then they beat Afghanistan in an ODI in Chattogram, literally coming back from the dead. They trounced South Africa in their own backyard. This one in Dhaka is still ongoing but that is just what makes it special. It’s proof that Bangladesh are a different breed now. You can’t count them out anymore. Not even when the chips are down.

In his second IPL stint, the wicketkeeper-batter has turned matches around for Punjab Kings. He believes his middle-order prowess means he’s here to stay

Interview by Sreshth Shah12-May-2022Punjab Kings and Vidarbha wicketkeeper-batter Jitesh Sharma has been in the spotlight this season for his stylish shot-making and his ability to take his team over the line at the death. His agility behind the stumps has also seen him retain his wicketkeeper position, though he did not start as one.But this isn’t Jitesh’s first year in the IPL; he was part of the title-winning Mumbai Indians squad in 2017 though he didn’t play. Here he speaks about his late start, his breakthrough year, and finding an unusual path into cricket.You’re one of IPL 2022’s breakout stars of the season, but you have been part of the tournament in 2017 as well. Where have you been for the past five years?
Obviously in my career there have been ups and downs. In 2017, I was with Mumbai Indians when they won the tenth season. I didn’t get a chance then because Jos Buttler, Nicholas Pooran and Parthiv Patel were there. But Mumbai were clear to me that I was the back-up Indian wicketkeeper in the side. I totally understood, because all teams want to win. But it was a chance to learn from Buttler, since I was an opening batter at the time. I would look up to him, notice the way he bats and how calm he stays while batting. I still admire him a lot.Then I came back to domestic cricket and even though I was performing well, I wasn’t getting an IPL spot. Well, every team has a different demand. Maybe I wasn’t fitting in, or maybe this was God’s plan.You were picked up at a base price of Rs 20 lakh (US$ 26,600 approx) at the auction by a team that had Jonny Bairstow and Bhanuka Rajapaksa as wicketkeeper options. Did you think, “There goes my season”?
They are top-order batters, I am a middle-order batter, and that’s why we are not competing for a spot. Punjab wanted an Indian middle-order batsman.I am actually okay not keeping, but I got a hamstring injury midway through a game against Chennai Super Kings and therefore they asked me to keep. The team was impressed with me as a wicketkeeper and then Jonny [Bairstow] said that I should continue keeping.Franchises always have to see the bigger picture because they need back-ups. They look at me as a middle-order batter a wicketkeeper.Is there anything you did in the last 12-24 months that made teams look at you as a viable first-team option?
My consistent performances have always kept me in the reckoning, since I have been scoring in corporate tournaments and the Vijay Hazare Trophy. But this year I made a huge impact in the middle order, and it was the first time I was playing properly in that position – I hit 18 sixes [at a strike rate of 235], the most in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in the season.”Franchises always have to see the bigger picture because they need back-ups. They look at me as a middle-order batter and a wicketkeeper”•BCCIYou’re playing the same role here. You faced only 97 balls in the seven innings you’ve played for Punjab Kings, but your strike rate of 167 has helped the team in crucial situations. Do you want to start making your way back up the order?
As you said, I am a match-winner. I am happy that I am making a difference in the match. If I can make 20 and get a win instead of scoring 60, I am happier, because that responsibility of finishing is huge and not everyone has the capability to pull it off.What is your batting mantra?
Basically, the position in which I bat is a situation-dependent one. The middle order is not an easy place to walk in and score boundaries. You have to be flexible. If I come in in the 19th over, I need to start hitting from the top. If I come in the tenth over, then I have to play long. That’s what it boils down to.Who do you discuss cricket with the most?
Nobody, really. I don’t have a personal coach like most others. I talk cricket with my friends. But I’ve always admired and been close to Ambati Rayudu. I love his batting. The way he plays is so easy.Ambati had come to play for Vidarbha for one year. It was there that he taught me a lot, changed my technique a little bit. The way he looks at the game, the way he handles his cricket is nice, and I’ve picked it up from him.Most of the breakout stars of this year’s IPL are very young. But you made your senior cricket debut at age 20 and now you’re making heads turn at 28. What are your thoughts on getting a late start to your IPL career?
Franchise cricket is a kind of business. It’s about who can give you profit. It doesn’t matter if it is coming from a 20-year-old boy or a 28-year-old man. If a 20-year-old is doing the same, then so be it. If a 40-year-old also makes them win, a team doesn’t bother [about age]. That’s the reality.How do you approach the game? A 20-year old will not have the baggage that comes with experience for a 28-year-old.
I am totally chill because I have that seven-year experience. The 20-year-olds don’t have that. They may be more fearless, but knowing what shot to play at what point of the game comes with experience. I know my areas, how to run the game, that’s the difference. They have lots of scope to improve, which is a positive, but my positive is that I have the experience to enhance my performance.When I first came to the camp, Anil Kumble sir spoke to me. He told me I was likely for the playing XI. What I did was focus on my fitness, diet and sleep. I have been taking every session as a chance to give 100%.Against Mumbai Indians, Jitesh walked in in the 18th over and flayed 23 runs off Jaydev Unadkat to help Punjab Kings post an eventually insurmountable total•BCCI…and then came your debut, against Chennai Super Kings, after six years of waiting. Do you remember how it all played out?
A few sessions into our Punjab Kings camp, Anil sir said he found my net practice impressive. He told me to always be ready, and made it clear that my role is to bat around Nos. 5 and 6, and that I needed to prepare like that.In practice games I was given the opportunity to play differently – one game attacking and another slightly defensive – so I probably showed I have both temperaments. And when Raj Bawa did not perform well for a few days – he was unlucky – Anil sir came to me and said, “Jitesh, your wait is over now. You are going to get your chance. I know you’ve been hungry for your chance for a long time.”Everyone knew I was hungry because of how I was approaching my preparation and practice in training sessions. I was excited but also well prepared. My confidence was backed by my preparation. At match time, everyone wished me good luck. They told me it didn’t matter how I got out, and that I would be backed.You have a unique reason for playing cricket. Can you share the story?
I actually wanted to go into the armed forces. In Maharashtra school cricket, you get 4% grace in army tests if you play state cricket. I joined my school team because they played around the state level. I decided I’ll give a trial, and that’s how I started playing the sport. My dad never questioned me, and funnily enough my mother still doesn’t know that I am playing at a level like the IPL. None of my cricket friends from those days play the sport – they all have normal jobs now.Somehow cricket has followed me. There were state trials once, for the BCCI U-16 tournament, and I scored runs there. But even then I had the air force as my first option, and I told my father that again. He agreed with my ambition but just asked me to keep playing cricket to keep my fitness levels up. Next year I wanted to keep playing so I went for U-19 trials, and once I got selected there too, I thought, “I can make something out of this cricket.”

Seventeen-year old who hit a match-winning, 36-ball fifty against South Africa says she’s just “kind of doing my thing”

Valkerie Baynes02-Aug-2022We all long, at some point, for our childhood days when fear was an alien concept and we dived into whatever we were doing with no inhibitions.So it’s impossible not to feel a pang of envy watching Alice Capsey bat with all the courage in the world to set the foundation for yet another England victory over South Africa which put the host nation on the cusp of the Commonwealth Games knockout stages in Birmingham.A savage-looking black eye suffered moments before England’s first-up victory over Sri Lanka? Worse than it looks, apparently. Facing the fire and pace of Shabnim Ismail? No problem, just walk down the pitch to her. A half-century in your third international innings? Child’s play.Capsey’s seamless transition to the senior ranks could not have come at a better time with Heather Knight, the England captain, yet to make an appearance at the Commonwealth Games because of a hip injury that has her in doubt for the final group game against New Zealand on Thursday.Acting captain Nat Sciver said after England’s 26-run victory over South Africa at Edgbaston that Knight had undergone further scans on the injury she suffered during the first T20I between the sides during their bilateral series on July 21.”She’s not in a good place,” Sciver said. “She’s better than she has been in the last few days, still in a bit of pain with her hip.”It’s probably going to be a bit quick to play against New Zealand. She went and saw our team doctor and had another scan. She’s waiting on the results of that.”Capsey, meanwhile, reached her maiden international half-century in 36 deliveries on Tuesday and then fell on the next ball she faced, spooning a return catch Nonkululeko Mlaba.Hers was the second of three England wickets to fall for five runs in the space of nine balls as they slumped to 94 for 5. But then an unbroken 73-run partnership off just 43 balls from the vastly experienced Katherine Brunt and Amy Jones set South Africa a target of 168 before England’s bowlers restricted them to 141 for 4. It was England’s seventh victory over South Africa in a white-ball match this summer.”It just ticks off a landmark, doesn’t it?” Capsey said of her fifty. “But in the game, it’s not really about that, it was more just setting myself a platform to try and push on for the team, which unfortunately, I didn’t.Alice Capsey gave the England innings momentum after they lost their openers early•Getty Images”But you saw the brilliance of Jonesy and Katherine coming in at the end and putting on a real show for the crowd, which was amazing to watch.”Capsey, who wasn’t required to bat in her debut match, England’s second T20I against South Africa in Worcester, got her chance in the third match of that series in Derby and smashed four consecutive fours on her way to 25 off 17.After passing a fitness test in the immediate aftermath of copping a ball to the face during the warm-up for England’s Commonwealth Games opener against Sri Lanka, she scored 44 at just over a run-a-ball to top score in a five-wicket victory.While she said her vision had been impaired somewhat during that knock as her eye swelled up while she was batting, Capsey said she didn’t feel any other ill effects and, by the time Tuesday’s match rolled round, it looked worse than it felt on account of the bruise coming out.”Everyone kind of expected some concussion symptoms to start to grow over the next couple of days, however I’ve been absolutely fine which for me, that’s perfect, it’s allowing me still to play and kind of do my thing,” Capsey said.”I’ve felt in really good touch, especially coming into the South Africa series as well, so it [reaching fifty] was a real positive for me and I’ve really enjoyed the role that they’ve given me.”I feel quite comfortable and I know what I’m doing, it’s great to come into the team and for them to trust me with that role.”In Derby, Sciver had told Capsey she would come in at No. 3 if an early wicket fell. As it happened, opener Sophia Dunkley was out for a first-ball duck and Capsey has held her place since.This time, Ismail, Capsey’s Hundred team-mate at Oval Invincibles, removed Dunkley for 1 with her first delivery, an excellent yorker on the seventh ball of the match. When Ismail returned in the sixth over, she had Dunkley’s opening partner, Danni Wyatt, caught behind by Sinalo Jafta for 27 from 20 balls.Her next delivery was back-of-a-length and steered through third by Sciver for a single before she unleashed a short ball which Capsey failed to connect with as she attempted to pull. Then, as calm as you like, Capsey advanced on the next one and dispatched it over cover to the boundary.”Me and Shabs are are good mates so it was a bit of a cat and mouse that over,” Capsey said. “It’s the adrenaline, I think, for me, also being smart with my options.”She bowled a bouncer so you kind of can guess what’s coming. But it’s just about being brave and I think that’s kind of the message that we really got from the coaching staff and Nat and Heather.”As for being part of a bigger, multi-sport event where women’s cricket is making its Commonwealth games debut, Capsey was all about soaking up he experience.”My family’s come to every game, which has been lovely,” she said. “For me, it’s just about taking everything in, really enjoying it. It’s such a rare occasion that you’ve just got to make the memories.”