And who has the highest batting average at No. 4?

Steven Lynch02-Jun-2020Sachin Tendulkar had 194 when India declared in Multan in 2004. Has anyone else been stranded in the 190s by a declaration in a Test? asked Sarv Kothandaraman from the United States
There have so far been eight undefeated innings of between 190 and 199 in Tests, including two unlucky cases of 199 not out – by Andy Flower, for Zimbabwe against South Africa in Harare in 2001-02, and Kumar Sangakkara, for Sri Lanka v Pakistan in Galle in 2012.Sachin Tendulkar had 194 when Rahul Dravid declared at 675 for 5 against Pakistan in Multan in 2003-04. Dravid did it to have an hour’s bowling at Pakistan on the second evening – and although no wickets went down that night, India did win by an innings in the end. The only higher score in this bracket was achieved by Frank Worrell, against England in Bridgetown in 1959-60. He had scored 197 – in more than 11 hours – when his captain, Gerry Alexander, declared midway through the final day. There was little prospect of a result: England batted again and pottered to 71 without loss in 42 overs. The watching English journalist Alan Ross wrote: “Alexander several times signalled to Worrell for more action but Worrell, off on some pipedream of his own, chose to ignore him. Nelson at the Nile could not have been more disdainful.” And EW Swanton noted: “When Scarlett, by repute something of a hitter, was lbw, Alexander brought Worrell in, three short of his double hundred. It was significant that Alexander’s timing did not produce a dissenting voice.”It was Worrell’s second undefeated score in the 190s in Tests – against England at Trent Bridge in 1957 he had carried his bat for 191.Australia’s Brian Taber made eight dismissals on his Test debut – is that the record for a wicketkeeper? asked Ronald Garside from Australia
The New South Wales wicketkeeper Brian Taber collected seven catches and a stumping in his first Test, against South Africa in Johannesburg in 1966-67, and his mark was equalled by Chris Read, who made seven catches and a stumping too, on his debut, for England against New Zealand at Edgbaston in 1999.Eight remains the record for a player’s overall debut, but South Africa’s Quinton de Kock made nine dismissals – eight catches and a stumping – in his first match as the designated wicketkeeper, against Sri Lanka in Galle in 2014, having made his Test debut as a batsman earlier in the year. Some years ago I came across the comment that Graham Yallop had the highest average of any Australian batsman when batting in the No. 4 position. What is the highest average at No. 4 for other countries? asked Mike Larkin from Australia
I was always an admirer of Graham Yallop, who I thought was an underrated batsman. But this, for once, is overrating him: Yallop averaged 36.76 when batting at No. 4 in Tests, which is solid rather than spectacular. He did better at No. 3, where he averaged 52.42.Leading the way for No. 4s in Tests is none other than Frank Worrell, who by coincidence is mentioned in the question above. He averaged 76.22 in ten innings in this position (I imposed a qualification of ten innings, to exclude any anomalies). Next comes Steve Smith, who so far averages 74.02 from 57 innings at No. 4.Sachin Tendulkar made the most Test runs at No. 4 – 13,492 at 54.40) – while Mahela Jayawardene (9509 at 52.24) and Jacques Kallis (9033 at 61.86) both made more than 9000.Frank Worrell has the highest average for a minimum of 10 innings at No. 4 – 76.22•Getty ImagesWho scored two hundreds in a Test without being dismissed? asked Shanthy Noronha from New Zealand
There have now been 86 instances of a batsman scoring two hundreds in the same Test, 37 of them in the current century. But there remains only one case where the man concerned was not dismissed in either innings: Sri Lanka’s Aravinda de Silva followed 138 not out against Pakistan in Colombo in April 1997 with 103 not out in the second innings.The West Indian Krishmar Santokie has figured in 12 T20Is without scoring a run. Who holds the corresponding record in Tests and ODIs? asked Ricky Dooley from Scotland
The Jamaican left-arm seamer Krishmar Santokie shares top spot on this list with Pakistan’s Shaheen Shah Afridi, who has also played a dozen T20Is so far without troubling the scorers (both have batted once; Santokie did not receive a ball, but Afridi faced two without scoring). Three other current players have appeared in 11 T20Is without scoring a run: Ben Shikongo of Namibia, Hamza Tahir of Scotland, and Mohammed Shami of India. Shikongo was dismissed by the only ball he has faced, while the others have not made it to the crease.There’s a runaway leader in one-day internationals: the South African left-arm wristspinner Tabraiz Shamsi has so far played no fewer than 22 ODIs without scoring a run (he’s faced two balls in three innings). Next is another current player, the Sri Lankan seamer Kasun Rajitha with nine matches – he’s actually faced ten deliveries without scoring a run. Next come the West Indian spinner Dave Mohammed and Indian seamer Jaydeep Unadkat, who both played seven matches without scoring.Three players have appeared in three Test matches without scoring a run. The old Worcestershire seamer Fred Root never even got to bat in his three Tests, while an even older fast bowler, Lancashire’s Arthur Mold, got in three times but failed to score. More recently, the South African fast bowler Mfuneko “Chewing” Ngam played three Tests in 2000-01 without getting off the mark.Use our feedback form or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

The BCB even fired couple of coaches as legspinners kept getting ignored from the set-up

Mohammad Isam18-Oct-2020Soumya Sarkar ran back to short third-man from the slips as soon as legspinner Rishad Hossain bowled a short ball. The batsman Sabbir Rahman couldn’t put it away and though it was his first ball, a slip was already missing.Next delivery, Rishad produced a peach of a leg-break that spun just enough after pitching to take Rahman’s outside edge, slipped past wicketkeeper Mushfiqur Rahim and went unharmed through the vacant slip region for a couple of runs. Captain Najmul Hossain Shanto immediately brought back the slip for the next ball and a decent leg-break from Rishad followed, only for Rahman to defend it back to the bowler.This, in a practice one-day tournament where the young legspinner Rishad was bowling at a stage when his side captained by Shanto was in control of the match against senior Bangladesh allrounder Mahmudullah’s side. But this lack of patience by the captain isn’t just Hossain or any other inexperienced spinner’s fault. It is a sharp example of Bangladesh cricket’s inherent caginess about legspinners. Whether it was Shanto or any of the senior captains, they would do no such thing if a young left-arm spinner or an offspinner would bowl a short ball first up.Young Rishad ended up with respectable figures of 2 for 26 from his six overs in the game, and went back to the hotel BDT 25,000 (approx. $US 295) richer. Surprisingly though, he was adjudged the best bowler of the match despite the left-arm spinner Nasum Ahmed getting Liton Das and Mahmudullah among his three wickets and Abu Jayed also finishing with as many wickets. Hossain being given the award was a little patronising, but perhaps that’s the least that can be done to promote legspin in Bangladesh. Time, however, is running out for Bangladesh’s legspinners – all three of them.Legspinners Rishad, Aminul Islam and Minhajul Abedin Afridi – all part of the High Performance programme – were each assigned to the three teams in the BCB President’s Cup, a one-day tournament designed to ease Bangladesh’s top cricketers back into competitiveness after the long pandemic break.But none of the three has bowled their full quota of ten overs yet. Afridi, who was plucked out of a net session in Chittagong two years ago by chief selector Minhajul Abedin, has only bowled one over in the tournament so far. Islam and Hossain too have bowled just 27.1 overs between them, taking seven wickets. That has left them with at most two or three remaining opportunities to remain viable options before the 2020-21 domestic season proper begins. While the BCB President’s Cup has the Bangladesh team management in control of selection, the subsequent domestic tournaments will not.The BCB President’s Cup will be followed by a T20 tournament next month, with the remainder of the 2019-20 Dhaka Premier League likely to be held just after that. There’s no certainty if even one from the trio would be chosen in the T20s, with Islam having played only one DPL match. Moreover, there’s no assurance if any team in the upcoming tournaments would select a legspinner in their playing XI even if any of them bowl well in the ongoing practice matches.The debutant Jubair Hossain struck in his second over•AFPThere is, of course, precedence to such a thing. Back in 2014, after Jubair Hossain impressed in his first international series, he was largely ignored in domestic cricket. Even after he got Virat Kohli bowled with a googly in the Fatullah Test the following season, he could break into neither club cricket nor first-class sides. Some say that Jubair lacked the hunger after that early success, but the overwhelming theory is that without enough competitive cricket, a delicate art like legspin cannot produce elite resultsJubair was marked as a Chandika Hathurusingha favourite because the then Bangladesh head coach had championed his cause to the point that he got into a public spat with Faruque Ahmed, the chief selector at the time, for not selecting Jubair in the 2015 World Cup squad.The Russell Domingo-led team management too wants a legspinner, as would any coach who wants to have attacking bowlers in their line-up. The BCB tried to support him last season by instructing the National Cricket League (NCL) and the BPL teams to pick legspinners. They even fired couple of coaches for not listening to the instruction but largely, legspinners kept getting ignored.One man who also has a lot of interest in bringing in legspinners into the picture is the incumbent chief selector Abedin. He even selected 21-year-old Afridi in a practice match against Zimbabwe two years ago after seeing him in the nets in Chittagong. Abedin also advised Islam to become a full-time legspinner when he was in the High Performance programme last year.Abedin believes that such practice matches are the only place where these bowlers will be given a fair go in match situations, and also feels that they should be given more chances in major domestic tournaments.ALSO READ: Bangladesh’s steep legspin learning curve”Rishad [Hossain] bowled well in this tournament while [Aminul Islam] Biplob will need a bit of time and [Minhajul Abedin] Afridi is injured,” Abedin told ESPNcricinfo. “We want to closely observe their ability. We haven’t been able to arrange these type of matches in the last two years.”They have to play under different managements once they go into competitive cricket, but those don’t usually select legspinners. I have always advised them to give legspinners the opportunities to play but our [DPL] club culture is different. But we will try to ensure that the legspinners get to play first-class matches this season.”Abedin said that they have plans for each one of them, but all depends on how the domestic clubs and first-class sides treat them in the remainder of the season. “Biplob is more of a shorter-version bowler, but I think we can work with Rishad in the longer version. Afridi has to be played in both formats. I think all three must play a lot of matches which will improve their skills. There’s no point in telling them to practice all year if they are not picked in matches,” he said.The other ramification of not having legspinners in domestic cricket is the batsmen not having any practice playing such bowling regularly. Apart from the Afghanistan legspinner Rashid Khan’s 33 wickets at 12.87 across all three formats against Bangladesh in the last five years, even Graeme Cremer, Adil Rashid, Yuzevendra Chahal and Ish Sodhi have done well against them. The lack of legspinners in the circuit is not the only reason for Bangladesh’s batsmen struggling against the best ones, but quality bowling at home is always of help.The main issue, however, remains Bangladesh’s struggle to take 20 wickets in a Test match and attacking batting line-ups in T20Is. It is widely believed that the inclusion of a skilled legspinner can make a big difference, as Bangladesh are over-reliant on left-arm spin in Tests and besides Mustafizur Rahman, remain unsure about their bowling attack in T20Is.But as Abedin pointed out, a wider cultural shift is required, and the way the Dhaka clubs are run, it may take years. Back in the 1990s, Mohammad Rafique changed the thinking about left-arm orthodox spin and a decade later, Mashrafe Mortaza did it with pace bowling. A legspinner making it that big would require a lot of hard work but the good news is that if they can become regulars in domestic cricket, they are likely to be picked more quickly in the national setup.

It was a day on which India’s luck kept them interested, teased them all along, and then disappeared

Sidharth Monga15-Jan-20212:16

Aakash Chopra: T Natarajan has lifted his game to another level

T Natarajan first picked up the cricket ball less than ten years ago. His unbelievable rise in the IPL lifted his family out of poverty. Towards the end of the latest IPL, his daughter was born, but he picked a net bowler’s duty in Australia over going back home to see her. Then an injury to Varun Chakravarthy meant a late call-up into the squad. ODI and T20I debuts followed. Though a limited-overs specialist, he still chose to hang around as a net bowler for the Test matches. Now he is one of only 301 men to have played Test cricket for India.Natarajan has two wickets on his first day of Test cricket. This is no less than a fairy tale, scenarios of dreams for young boys and girls who don’t know the actual route to representing India. It is a great story, but Test cricket doesn’t care for great stories. Stories are incidental.T Natarajan sent back Matthew Wade and Marnus Labuschagne in quick succession•AFP via Getty ImagesThrough an unprecedented combination of the pandemic and a spate of injuries, some of which might be related, India were reduced to playing Natarajan and Washington Sundar in a Test match. They perhaps even had information through their sophisticated tracking devices that an in-game injury couldn’t be ruled out. Which is why they picked four quicks to cover both for the conditioning and the inexperience, and went ultra-defensive with their spinner ahead of Kuldeep Yadav to cover a batting base. With Navdeep Saini getting injured during the day’s play, the selection stood vindicated.Related

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This is what you do with severely limited units, and yet India are not what you might call “blown away” by an Australia side at home, a team that decided to bat first after winning the toss. In years from now, teams will have reasonably and justifiably bad days in the field even at full strength, but this Indian team seems have to have ruined it for them. You will be giving logical reasons for a 3 for 300 day, but at the same time thinking of the time when an attack with a joint experience of four Tests had Australia at 17 for 2, and were a simple catch away from making it 94 for 4. That on a tour in which they were, by this Test, missing seven first-choice players, one certain replacement, one possible replacement, and were still somehow alive coming into the decider.With this attack, which was soon reduced to a total experience of three caps, to come out with the scoreboard showing 274 for 5 after losing the toss is a reasonable return. With some luck with the new ball on the second morning, India could still be in the match, but this was a day on which India’s luck kept them interested, teased them all along, and then disappeared.Washington Sundar bowls with the leg trap lying in wait•Getty ImagesIndia tried to get the better of their limitations with their field sets. The leg trap was in, and it worked for Sundar, who had a wicket – that of a set Steven Smith – even before he had conceded a run. Shardul Thakur had one with a leg-stump half-volley the first time he bowled in a Test since his first ended with injury after ten balls. Matthew Wade and Marnus Labuschagne got out in ways that suggest no planning or build-up.The lack of control began to show in the Labuschagne-Wade partnership with regular leg-side half-volleys for Wade without a leg trap in place. Thakur kept trying to bowl full outside off, which is noble, but he did so without protection, suggesting non-adherence to a plan. Siraj, India’s first-choice replacement for the three quicks they brought to Australia, continued to show the control that has brought him this far. Saini showed improvement from his first outing before his groin strain took him off. Sundar stuck to his middle-and-leg line, but it was soon apparent it is no good if you can’t do the batsmen in the air.The scoreline was better than expected for such an inexperienced attack, but India could have probably done without the teasing thought of what if Ajinkya Rahane had not dropped Labuschagne with Australia still under 100. That’s how Test cricket is, though. You have to be good enough to be at it for hours.Even when Wade and Labuschagne gave India another look-in, it needed accurate and skilful spells to go through Australia’s lower order. That was too much to ask of a bowling unit in which three are not used to long days in the field because of their limited-overs specialisation. It will likely be down to batsmen hanging in for dear life, but it won’t be their fault either if they can’t: the Australia attack has much better experience, conditioning and skill.

How often did India and Australia produce uncertain responses from the opposition batsmen, and how often did that uncertainty result in a wicket?

Sidharth Monga29-Jan-2021This was a freak series
Two events of the sort that ought to occur not more than once in six series of four Tests apiece took place in this Australia-India series: India were bowled out for 36 in Adelaide, and then batted out 131 overs for the loss of just five wickets in the fourth innings in Sydney to draw the Test. On the surface these are rare events but look deeper and they are even rarer.ESPNcricinfo’s control factor metric judges uncertainty in batsmen’s response to bowling. Over time, in aggregate, it is an elegant measure of the potency of a bowling attack and of the luck the teams enjoyed. In the Adelaide 36 all out, their bowlers were potent, but the luck Australia enjoyed to go with it was lethal. In a series where a wicket fell for about every nine balls in which a batsman was not in control, India lost a wicket once every 3.56 such balls in that Adelaide innings. We have control data for 1214 Test innings over the last ten years in which eight or more wickets have fallen. Only four times has uncertainty produced more frequent wickets.The conditions and the Australian bowling made it far worse for India by evoking false responses every four balls. There have been 135 completed innings that have been more difficult than this, but most have featured better luck for the batting side.Related

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The pitch in the Wanderers Test of 2017-18 was treacherous, producing a false response every 3.2 and 3.3 balls in India’s first and second innings. However, in those innings, they lost a wicket every 14.3 and 14.5 such balls, thus posting a combined winning total.During the Sydney escape, on the other hand, there was just enough in the pitch, and the Australia bowlers created enough chances, but India enjoyed more luck. Not in terms of catches (because those owe to the opposition’s mistakes, and often tend to even out) but because indecisive responses did not result in enough dismissals. Australia produced indecisive responses off 135 balls for just five wickets; on the final day, 93 false responses brought just three wickets. In 193 innings played on the final day of a Test in the last ten years, only four have needed more false responses to create a wicket.Unlucky India, lucky India
India were desperately unlucky with injuries both between matches and during them. They were also part of an unlucky once-in-a-generation collapse, but overall, once the ball was in play, India were the luckier side in the series – just like they were the less lucky one in England in 2018.In Adelaide, India lost a wicket every 6.3 false responses to Australia’s 7.8, but in the remaining Tests the indecision created by India proved to be consistently more dangerous. Overall Australia created uncertainty every 6.27 balls and India every seven balls, which is a huge credit to an inexperienced attack.ESPNcricinfo LtdDuring the 4-1 loss to England in 2018, India created indecision once every 4.3 balls – more often than England, who did so once every 4.8 balls, but lost wickets to indecision more often than the hosts: every 10.7 balls of not being in control to every 14 balls for England. That should put numbers to the feeling that pundits and the Indian team had, that the games were much closer than the eventual series scoreline indicated.Australia’s (lack of) depth
On the 2018 tour of England and the one to New Zealand in 2020, India showed they had the resources to get into competitive positions, but were thwarted by the depth of the home sides – which is usually accentuated in such circumstances because the secondary skills of allrounders blossom in familiar conditions. First Sam Curran and then Kyle Jamieson thwarted India with the bat, much like R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja tend to do at home for India at times when the opposition feels they are just one push away from ascendance.On those tours of England and New Zealand, the home team’s bowling allrounders added immensely to their batting depth, but during this series, Australia’s batting allrounder, Cameron Green, couldn’t do much with the bat – except for score quick runs when setting up a declaration – let alone add depth to their bowling.Curran scored 272 runs at 38.85 and took 11 wickets at 23.54 in that England series, Jamieson averaged 46.50 with the bat and 16.33 with the ball, and Green averaged 33.71 with the bat thanks to two no-pressure declaration knocks, while taking zero wickets. That it comes down to contributions from the allrounder shows how well India have competed on recent away tours.Pat Cummins is no slouch against left-hand batsmen, but in this series Jadeja and Pant didn’t lose their wickets to him once over about 30 overs•Getty ImagesIs left right against Cummins?
India had two left-hand batsmen – both in the lower middle order but not restricted to those positions – and Cummins didn’t manage to get either of them out in the nine innings they batted between them. Close to 30 overs of bowling for 91 runs and zero wickets to Cummins is a win for the strategy, but it doesn’t mean Cummins is an easy bowler to face for left-hand batsmen. Coming into the series he averaged 19.6 against right-hand batsmen and 25.1 against left.Even in terms of creating indecision, Cummins was the second best among the Australia bowlers in the series, but while the 30 false responses induced by him brought him three wickets, none of those was of a left-hand batsman. It was a sound tactic for India to introduce left-hand batsmen into the line-up, and then manage a right-left combination, but it took some luck for Rishabh Pant and Ravindra Jadeja.Historically right-arm quicks have had to work harder for the wickets of left-hand batsmen, though not to this extent: a right-hand batsman’s wicket falls every ten balls of indecision versus 12 balls for a left-hand batsman.What do the control numbers say about England in India?
It’s not always that the luckier side wins; rather, luck becomes more crucial when two evenly matched sides face off. The last time England toured India, for example, they were luckier, losing a wicket every 12.5 balls of indecision as against India’s 11.9. However, India’s bowlers were superior: they created a false response every 5.6 balls as against England’s 7.6. That’s 25 more false responses, or two wickets, in a day’s bowling. When India toured Australia, this difference was down to nine balls in favour of the hosts. India created 13 more opportunities in a day’s bowling than England in 2018. These are close enough margins for luck to play a part. Can England come as close to the hosts as India have been doing on their recent difficult tours?

Lancashire legspinner eager to play after winter spent netting in England’s touring bubble

David Hopps06-Apr-2021When the next history of international cricket is written, it is fair to say that Team Buttler vs Team Root on January 8-9 in Hambantota, won’t manage a mention.But don’t knock it. Matt Parkinson’s five overs without a wicket in an England practice match, under a broiling Sri Lankan sun, represents his only competitive bowl since October. After that little outing, the only England team he was confident of forcing his way into for the next three months or so was the card school.After an inactive winter in biosecure bubbles in Sri Lanka and India, he is itching to start the Championship season, his enthusiasm not even tempered by Old Trafford fielding drills in temperatures of 7C and with driving sleet strafing across his Lancashire woolly hat.A wintry April hardly makes legspin a precious commodity for the start of the Championship season, but more inactivity in the bubble would be tantamount to an act of cruelty and Lancashire’s Championship captain, Dane Vilas, has observed Parkinson’s spell of netting in warm-weather climates and suggested that it must make him the best prepared county cricketer in the land.Will he face more weeks of enforced idleness? “If you dwell on it too much it might get you down,” Parkinson said. “I don’t want to be sat in a bubble for a couple of months and not playing. I’m looking to play in all formats. It would be quite an odd feeling to do that coming off the back of not too much cricket.”Related

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Parkinson is not the first cricketer to be surplus to requirements on an England tour, but the mental pressures are much the harder when there is no means of escape, not even the ubiquitous round of golf to alleviate three months of net practice and hotel confinement.Ashley Giles, the managing director England men’s cricket, was keenly aware of the pressures on mental health because of Covid restrictions and multi-format cricketers were given a break during the tour for their own wellbeing.Parkinson, though, a sort of multi-format non-cricketer, was a rare example of someone who remained throughout – the head coach, Chris Silverwood, being another. Parkinson’s general bonhomie, hard work and team ethic led Silverwood to call him “an absolute delight”.Giles emphasised on BBC radio last week that Parkinson was far from forgotten. “It was a great experience for him to be out there bowling day in day out. Being in hotels, being in quarantine, is hard but we keep constant mental health checks on these guys and if at any point we felt that we needed to get him out we certainly would have done. Don’t be afraid to get your hand up and we’ll get you out.”Parkinson makes light of the challenge he faced. “I just sort of cracked on with it,” he said. “The card school kept me going most nights. There was no offer on the table from the Big Bash or the Pakistan Super League so it was either the nets with England or the Lancashire indoor school.”I was disappointed that I didn’t play any games but I like to think that the work I’ve done will seep into my game and that after bowling to the likes of Joe Root and Ben Stokes in the nets all winter I’ve got better.”Those net sessions allowed him to reflect – although not too much – upon the debate about his bowling speed. He is one of the slowest spin bowlers around and, although the likes of Rob Key have advised him not to change, others believe his effectiveness at the highest level will be limited as a result.Prior to the tour had worked with two spin-bowling coaches, Carl Crowe and Richard Dawson, to try to bowl a little quicker without undermining his trajectory. “I’ve tried not to get too far away from what I do, to stick to the skills that have got me so far,” he said. “Maybe we’ll see another 3 or 4kph but I won’t know until I play a game.”Matt Parkinson, along with Mark Wood and Jake Ball, heads to the Ahmedabad nets•Getty ImagesAt least he had a close-up view in India of one of the most spin-intense Test series of modern times as R Ashwin and Axar Patel took 59 wickets between them in the four-Test series (of which Patel missed the first Test). But even then, the direct comparison for Parkinson would be to Kuldeep Yadav, as another wrist spinner, and he did not fare as well.With Eoin Morgan, England’s T20 captain, in somewhat experimental mood ahead of the T20 World Cup in India later this year, Parkinson hoped for a game in his strongest format, but even that was denied him. All England’s emphasis, when it comes to legspin, rests with Adil Rashid. He likes to think he “remains in the mix”, a back-up to Rashid, but as much as he concedes that it would be wonderful for them to play in the same side, he does not really believe it.It would have been intriguing to see him get a game, especially as the sort of modern journalism that relies upon intense checking of Twitter timelines had revealed that there was a time when the teenaged Parkinson was not exactly enamoured of India’s captain, Virat Kohli. Those papers who carried his intemperate comments of youth had to use a lot of asterisks.If he achieved anything this winter then it was to become a case study in the dangers of social media. He can expect to be on an ECB PowerPoint presentation for years to come.”I don’t do much social media as it happens,” he said. “I was just a young cricket fan and got it wrong. It was a good lesson about social media.”How does he think he would have fared if he had come up against Kohli, eager for retribution?”I think I would have struggled,” he grinned.It takes more than a winter’s confinement to knock the spirit out of Matt Parkinson.

We can calculate how effective a batter or bowler is against a specific type of opponent in each phase of a game

Himanish Ganjoo17-Apr-2021In the 54 matches in which he has bowled for England in a T20, Adil Rashid has opened the bowling four times. All four were in the recently concluded five-match series against India. While opening with a spinner in the powerplay is no longer novel in the shortest format, this move was prompted by specific knowledge: googly-wielding legspinners spell trouble for members of India’s top order.In the first T20I, Virat Kohli holed out to a rash shot against Rashid. In the third, Rashid’s googlies kept Rohit Sharma circumspect in the very first over. In the fourth game, he had Kohli stumped, and in the fifth, he troubled Sharma with the wrong’un once again.Rashid’s promotion to open the bowling to counter Kohli and Sharma was the most recent instance of match-ups being used in T20 cricket. In Tests, each strategic play unravels over a long time. In contrast, because time is so limited as a resource in T20, each ball is a substantial determiner of the result. Teams look to optimise every moment to squeeze out the tiniest advantage, making T20 the format where gameplay is most closely “managed”.Related

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Using the bowler who takes the ball away from a batter, or sending a left-hander in ahead of schedule to counter a certain bowler can be the ten-run difference that massively tilts a match in your team’s favour.In Tests, “how” you execute is important, while in T20 the “what” and “when” gain equal importance because each play has a major bearing on the course of the game.With match-ups attaining ubiquity in the T20 landscape, it is important to look at statistics contextualised by various batter-bowler combinations. It is well known that the ball turning in to the batter is advantageous for him. Do the numbers bear that out?
If you look at the baseline run rate and dismissal numbers from the last three years of the IPL, they do.The following table shows you the run rate (runs per ball) and dismissal rate (probability of being dismissed) for left- and right-hand batters against different styles of bowling. (Left-arm wristspin is excluded because of very small sample sizes.)Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoFor left-hand batters, their overall dismissal rate facing offbreak bowlers is 4.3 compared to just 3.6 versus slow left-arm. The run rate is also lower against offspinners, by 0.26 runs per ball. Similarly, for right-handers, the runs-per-ball figure is almost 0.1 runs higher when facing offspinners as compared to against legbreak bowlers and slow left-armers, both of whom take the ball away from right-handers.Legspinners concede fewer runs to right-handers and are also likelier to get left-handers out. This can be illuminated by further splitting their performance by innings phase. Phase one is the powerplay (overs 1-6), phase two the middle overs, and phase three the death overs (17-20).Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoThe table above shows that right-handers play legspinners more conservatively in the middle overs, possibly “playing out” the dangerous match-up while conserving wickets for the end overs. Left-handers try to utilise the advantageous match-up by going harder in the middle overs – scoring quicker but also getting out more often.It’s a similar story when you look at slow left-arm numbers by phase. In the powerplay, right-handers score much slower compared to left-handers and get out more frequently. In the middle overs, they moderate their approach, scoring slowly while preserving wickets. In comparison, left-handers score faster but get out slightly more often.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoThe data shows that match-ups work in a broad sense, but what happens when you look at players individually? Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar are both classified as right-arm fast bowlers, but they execute their skills very differently. A right-arm seamer is expected to perform at a certain level versus right- and left-hand batters, but how much does an individual deviate from that baseline?This can be quantified by dividing their rates of conceding runs and taking wickets by the average runs per ball and wicket probability for each match-up. For example, right-hand seamers overall concede 1.27 runs per ball to right-hand batters in the powerplay while picking up wickets 3.61% of the time. In comparison, Bumrah concedes only 1.1 runs per ball and 4.1% of his deliveries get wickets. We can condense these facts into two simple ratios that tell us how well a bowler (or a batter) performs compared to a particular match-up in a given phase of the innings.Match-up Run Index (MRI) = (runs per ball by a player for given match-up) / (overall runs per ball for given match-up)Match-up Dismissal Index (MDI) = (dismissal rate for a player for given match-up) / (overall dismissal rate for given match-up)An MRI value of 1 means a bowler is as expensive as the average bowler of his kind for a given match-up. A value lower than 1 means he is economical. On the contrary, a higher MDI value than 1 means he is more likely to pick up wickets given that match-up. Continuing from our example, for Bumrah in the powerplay, the MRI is 0.86 (1.1/1.27) and the MDI is 1.14 (4.1/3.61). Here is a breakdown of Bumrah’s performance on these metrics:Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoFrom a strategy perspective, this shows that Bumrah is exceptionally miserly versus left-handers in the powerplay but not a great wicket-taking option. He is exceptional against both batting styles in the middle overs, and especially effective against left-handers in both run-saving and wicket-taking skills.Because spinners work with lateral deviation off the pitch, match-up indices are much more relevant for assessing their roles. Here is the same match-up-based performance table for Yuzvendra Chahal, which shows that he is a defensive option compared to other legspinners in the powerplay, but a wicket-taking one in the middle overs, with MDI values of more than 1 against both left- and right-handers, which means he is better at taking wickets than the average legspinner against both batting styles. In terms of economy he is almost as expensive as the average leggie to both kinds of batters (MRI values close to 1), but he is a lot more expensive against right-handers in the death overs.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoSplitting open a batter’s performance in terms of MRI and MDI is also useful – it shows their relative strengths against particular bowling styles. For instance, here is Kohli’s record in the powerplay and middle overs the last three years:Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoEngland’s decision to bowl Rashid to Kohli is vindicated, albeit with a small sample size. Kohli scores at the par rate for a right-hander facing a legspinner in the powerplay, as evidenced by his MRI of 1, but with an MDI of 1.15, he is likelier to get out than the average right-hander.But a closer comparison within Kohli’s own record split by match-ups reveals that his real kryptonite might be offbreak bowling. In both the powerplay and the middle overs, he scores slower and gets out slightly more frequently than the average right-hand bat versus offspinners. He falters in a match-up that should be advantageous to him.Last year AB de Villiers, Kohli’s partner in the Royal Challengers Bangalore middle order, was shunted down the line-up to avoid facing legspinners, but he has an MRI of 1.09 and an MDI of 0.79 facing that style of bowling in the middle overs in the past three seasons, which signals that he is less likely to lose his wicket to them compared to the average right-hander.Sharma, Kohli’s partner in the Indian top order, has scored nine runs for two dismissals against legspin in the powerplay, but plays it much better when he’s settled in the middle overs, with an MRI of 1.06 and an MDI of 0.55.Different varieties of spin to differently handed batters are match-ups often used by bowling sides. To find out who is the best at run-scoring and wicket preservation for a match-up, we can calculate the MRI and MDI values for each batter in every phase and take a weighted average of these values to find a combined MRI and MDI for a batter.For instance, the following graphic shows the average MRI and MDI values for all batters who have faced 60 or more balls from legspinners in the last three IPL seasons. The average MRI and MDI account for the match-up and the expected scoring rates in each phase of the innings. Both batting hands can be combined on one plot because the MRI and MDI already account for match-up strength.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoAn MRI of over 1 and an MDI of under 1 are better for a batter; a value of 1 means the player is average.The best batters are in the lower-right quadrant. Nicholas Pooran with his middle-overs aggression and Chris Gayle with his disdainful six-hitting are the best against legspin. A bunch of right-hand openers, Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw and Robin Uthappa, form a high-risk high-reward group in the top-right quadrant with high MRI and MDI values. Surprisingly, Krunal Pandya occupies the dreaded top-left quadrant, which implies slow scoring and a high risk of losing your wicket.How do batters do against offspin? David Warner outshines his left-hander peers in terms of strike rate and preserving his wicket, while fellow southpaws Gayle and Ishan Kishan are weaker than the average left-hander against offspin when it comes to striking the ball. Hardik Pandya is in a league of his own, with a high MRI and low MDI. MS Dhoni manages to not get out too often, but fails to score against offspin, his numbers heavily influenced by his match-up against Sunil Narine, who himself perches on the far right of this plot, fulfilling his role as an attacker of spin who does not need to value his wicket too highly.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoPlotting the MRI and MDI values summed across phases for a bowler can tell us the kind of role he should play in a bowling attack. As an example of how this can be used, the following plot shows the aggregate MRI and MDI values for spinners who have bowled more than ten overs to left-hand batters in the last three seasons of the IPL. A higher MDI and a lower MRI is better for a bowler.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoPlayers in the bottom-left quadrant are holding bowlers who concede fewer runs than one would expect given the match-ups they face, but who are less likely to get wickets. Such a bowler could be brought on as a defensive play to stem the flow of runs and force the batter to “play out” his overs, as teams have tended to do against Rashid Khan.The tactic of using Washington Sundar as a run-stopper in the powerplay is another great example visible on the plot. Moeen Ali has a small sample size of 108 balls over three seasons, but his high MDI indicates he fares well in comparison to the average offspinner against left-handers.Here is the same plot for spinners bowling to right-handers:Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoSurprisingly, R Ashwin is better bowling to right-handers than to left-handers in T20, opposite to his Test bowling strengths. Narine too fares better against right-hand batters. The four best legspinners – Rashid Khan, Chahal, Rahul Chahar and Amit Mishra – are expectedly in the top-left quadrant. Krunal Pandya was slightly high on the wicket-taking MDI against left-handers, but becomes a run-saving bowler facing right-handers.This method of summing MRI and MDI values over different phases is an attempt to integrate context into raw cricket numbers. The aim is to split the ball-by-ball records of each batter or bowler by the phase of the innings and the match-up, and then scale their run rate and dismissal rate by the par rates for that “context”.This adjusts rudimentary statistics by accounting for what the average player does against the same type of bowler. We can then take averages of these scaled numbers to find combined statistics, and then calculate MRI and MDI values for each combination of phase and match-up. We can then add these numbers up across phases and batting styles to get overall MRI and MDI values for each player. This pair of numbers tells us their run-scoring/saving and wicket-preserving/taking ability while accounting for the handedness of the batters and the style of bowler.The concluding plots show aggregate MDI and MRI values for both batters and bowlers in the last three seasons.Himanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfoHimanish Ganjoo/ESPNcricinfo

His besting of Roy and Bairstow showed India shouldn’t just let match-ups dictate how they use their offspinner

Deivarayan Muthu15-Mar-2021In a time when T20 is all about match-ups, there’s sometimes a danger that teams can use bowlers in a formulaic way. Offspinner to left-hand batsman, left-arm orthodox to right-hander.In the first match of India’s T20I series against England, Virat Kohli held Washington Sundar back until the 12th over of England’s chase, and he struck immediately to pin Jason Roy lbw, but the game was already up by then. Axar Patel had taken the new ball against the right-handed pair of Roy and Jos Buttler, while Sundar was reserved for England’s left-hander-heavy middle order.Having slipped to a heavy defeat in that game, India put all their eggs in one basket and picked just five bowlers, including the allrounder Hardik Pandya, for the second.Sundar got to bowl in the powerplay role he so relishes, but it was in the middle overs that he made a stronger impression, and he did so by taking out two of the most dangerous right-hand batsmen going around in T20, Roy and Jonny Bairstow. Those two strikes set the scene for a slower-ball masterclass at the death from Shardul Thakur and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, as India went on to level the series with a seven-wicket win.Related

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The evening, though, didn’t begin well for Sundar. He prides himself on hitting an awkward, in-between length, and threatening the stumps with the new ball, but on Sunday he marginally missed his length and watched Roy plant his front foot and clout him over long-on for a first-ball six. Sundar immediately began hitting the pitch harder and dragged his length back to give up just a single off the next five balls of the over.In his next over, Sundar applied greater pressure and made Dawid Malan manufacture shots. Malan took a little trip down the pitch, but Sundar dug one right into it, hitting that in-between length and drawing an inside edge to the leg side. Malan then searched for one of his go-to shots – the slog-sweep – but then Sundar doesn’t offer you the length or time for that shot. He speared a non-turning offbreak into Malan’s pads from round the stumps at 103kph, with that sharp angle pushing the ball past leg stump.All of his six balls in Sundar’s second over were over 100kph, cramping the batsmen for length or room. Dinesh Karthik, Sundar’s captain at Tamil Nadu, speaking to reckoned that the spinner “looked like the fastest Indian bowler on display” on an evening where Thakur, Hardik Pandya, and Kumar all regularly took pace off the ball.When Sundar returned for his second spell, he didn’t have a left-hander to work with. Instead, he was up against Roy and Bairstow, who has been shifted down to the middle order to thrash any variety of spin. England were well-placed at 91 for 2 in 11 overs before Sundar slowed it up to 95.8kph and dared Roy to clear the longer square boundary on the leg side. The opener couldn’t get underneath it and holed out to deep square leg.Bhuvneshwar Kumar took a sharp catch in the deep to remove Jason Roy•Getty ImagesThen, in his next over, Sundar slowed it up further to 85.6kph, shifted his line wider, and found extra bounce from a length to have Bairstow skying a slog-sweep to Suryakumar Yadav at deep square leg. Eoin Morgan’s England are pretty big on match-ups, so they probably felt that their right-handers could go after Sundar, but the spinner had trumped them.Sundar is a fairly traditional offspinner without a variation that goes the other way, but his T20 smarts allow him to hold his own even without a ball that turns away from the right-hander.”Definitely, the mindset [while bowling to a right-hander] differs for me,” Sundar had told ESPNcricinfo in 2019. “And it varies from batsman to batsman as well. One might be strong on the off side and the other maybe strong on the leg side. Especially at this international level, there’s no margin for error and it’s important to do your homework. You need to be really precise with the lengths and lines you want to bowl.”Contrary to expectations, he actually boasts a better overall T20 record against right-handers than left-handers. He has 28 wickets at an average of 24.39 against right-handers as against 21 at 34.61 against left-handers. His economy rates – 6.92 against right-handers and 6.86 against lefties – are near-identical.On Sunday, Sundar’s middle-overs besting of two big-hitting right-handers from the No. 1-ranked T20I team made a big impression on his captain.”Special mention to Washi,” Kohli said at the post-match presentation. “He bowled to only one left-hander in the middle, and to all right-handers, used the big boundary really well, changed pace.”The series had begun with Kohli saying there was no room in India’s T20 plans for R Ashwin as long as Sundar was bowling well. He didn’t have much of a role to play in the series opener, but handed extra responsibility in the second game as one of only five bowlers, he rose to the occasion, in both the powerplay and the middle overs.

Their contrasting methods, both utterly devastating, gave India a glimpse of an exhilarating ODI future

Saurabh Somani19-Jul-20215:10

Muralidaran: India’s ‘fearless’ batters went after ‘not very good’ SL attack

“They were bowling some good balls which I converted into boundaries.” That was Prithvi Shaw at the post-match presentation, after India had romped to a seven-wicket win with 80 balls to spare against Sri Lanka.Shaw had jump-started a chase of 263 as if India had to get them in 20 overs and not 50. Ishan Kishan, on debut, made more runs and wasn’t tardy either, with a 42-ball 59. Shikhar Dhawan top-scored, anchoring the chase smoothly with 86 not out off 95. And yet, it didn’t feel out of place that the Player-of-the-Match award went to Shaw for his 43 off 24 balls. The remarkable aspect of India’s chase was, it would have felt just as right if it had gone to Kishan.A right-hand opener from Mumbai with a Test century on debut, Dhawan, and a left-hand batter earmarked for bigger things since his days as Under-19 captain. That was India’s top three. Not Rohit Sharma, Dhawan and Virat Kohli – this was Shaw, Dhawan and Kishan.Shaw and Kishan might never fill the big boots their batting positions have been occupied by for so long and with such success. But that isn’t the expectation placed on them either, anyway. They came with license to thrill, and delivered on that promise spectacularly.India’s chase was done in 36.4 overs, and both Shaw and Kishan were out less than halfway through it, but the memories of this game will be formed by their batting. Shaw was all pristine timing, seemingly finding the boundary without even trying to. Kishan, on the other hand, was very visibly trying to find the boundary, and succeeding.When Shaw gets his bat flowing smoothly, the runs come almost effortlessly. One of his checked drives to a Dushmantha Chameera slower ball raced to the long-off boundary. He didn’t have pace on the ball to work with, he had virtually no follow-through, and yet he found the boundary. Pure timing. In his first 22 balls, Shaw hit nine fours. And it would be ten in 23 balls if you attribute the bouncer that rattled his helmet and went for leg-byes to him too.It was glorious, I-don’t-care-what-the-target-is-I’m-having-a-net batting. Within five overs, Shaw had driven India to 57 without loss. An outstanding score in a T20 start. The kind of ODI start you want when your team is chasing 350-plus. A ridiculous shutting out of the opposition when the target is 263.No follow-through, no problem for Prithvi Shaw•AFP/Getty ImagesWith Sri Lanka already pounded by Shaw, Kishan came out and enjoyed the most glorious first two balls anyone could have wished for. Skip, dance, swing, six. Lunge, transfer weight, lash, four. He might be the only player in ODI history to have seen his career strike rate dip by a 100 points, from 600.00 to 500.00, in one ball, despite hitting it to the boundary.Where Shaw’s economy of movement caught the eye, Kishan’s extravagance was the kind you couldn’t tear your gaze away from. He seemed to be operating in a crease that was twice the normal size, twinkling down the track as frequently as he stayed put, swishing his bat in arcs well away from his body. If Sri Lanka had only a glimmer of still making a contest of this game post-Shaw, Kishan stomped on those hopes forcefully.Shaw might have got runs without going looking for them. Kishan went looking, and was just as successful.It was exhilarating batting because this has not been India’s start-of-innings template for the most part in ODIs. Not that they have been slow – they couldn’t have been and had so much success in the format – but the prototype of an Indian innings is one that gathers steam. This one began with an explosion.The lull that followed Kishan’s wicket was brief, the pace picking up again when Suryakumar Yadav – also on ODI debut – walked in at the fall of the third wicket.”I was telling them to take it easy actually,” a beaming Dhawan would say after his captaincy career got off the blocks with an emphatic win. “The way these young boys play in the IPL, they get lots of exposure and they just finished the game in the first 15 overs only. I thought about my hundred but there were not many runs left. When Surya came out to bat, I thought I need to improve my skills!”All said with a guffaw and disarming candor. Taking it easy is not the natural style of Shaw or Kishan. Or Suryakumar for that matter. In a year that will have the T20 World Cup, this frenetic approach in ODIs might not be a bad idea.

She seemed like she had thrown her wicket away in the 80s again, but a stroke of luck saved her and she brought up her first hundred since 2019

Annesha Ghosh01-Oct-2021WV Raman, who was India Women’s head coach until earlier this year, remembers Smriti Mandhana as a “very chilled-out character” who didn’t overthink her game, or “talk cricket” too much, or overdo things at training.”She had it in her head all that time that ‘I need to provide a good start, I need to contribute a lot being a senior cricketer’ and stuff like that,” Raman recalled when speaking on Sony Sports India on Friday about Mandhana’s mindset when going through a dry run.He was alluding to the up-and-down phase after Mandhana’s breakout 2018 following the middle-to-late-tournament lull at the 2017 ODI World Cup. After racking up runs for fun and becoming the 2018 ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year, Mandhana kicked off 2019 with the promise of plenty, even hitting a blistering 105 in India’s very first match of the year. But in the 48 innings since, before Friday, not once could she get to three figures. In 12 of those innings, Mandhana lost her wicket after reaching a half-century. And had a front-foot no-ball – which also happened to be a full toss – by Ellyse Perry on day two of the ongoing pink-ball Test against Australia not ruled out a catch, Mandhana would have had a 13th missed hundred to her name.”I actually get scared of bad balls quite a lot. When that happened on the second ball of the day [I faced]… I got a full toss and I was like, ‘Oh, s***!’ I was like, ‘Oh, God, what is this! I prepared so much overnight, and I have got out to a full toss!’ For us, we thought the catch was taken and the no-ball came out of the box,” Mandhana said of the lifeline, regaling reporters with her animated narration after the truncated second day’s play at Carrara Oval.Related

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On a day when she hit 127, breaking the 72-year-old record for the highest score by a visiting batter in women’s Tests in Australia, Mandhana mostly looked the part of the “determined” batter she had set out to be, after finishing overnight on 80.In an in-play interview with 7 Cricket, she also acknowledged the mental hurdle that the protracted spate of near-misses had become: “Really happy that finally I got through this 80[-run] period because I keep getting out in 80s and 90s, so I was really focused and wanted to at least cross that and try and get to three figures… Disappointed I gave it away towards the end. Nevertheless, I am happy with the performance.”

“From 2018 to this year, the way I would have loved to bat, I was not able to. Even though I was getting the fifties or whatever scores I was getting, I was still trying to search the kind of feel I wanted to search”Smriti Mandhana

The monkey off her back, Mandhana opened up on what the anguish of losing her ability to bat the way she visualised felt like. This, especially when going through her past performances with elder brother Shravan and longtime personal coach Anant Tambvekar back at home.”From 2018 to this year, the way I would have loved to bat, I was not able to,” she said. “Even though I was getting the fifties or whatever scores I was getting, I was still trying to search the kind of feel I wanted to search. With family also I just kept asking about… we kept checking the videos of what has gone different. The only thing which I was working on was to try to get the kind of feel I wanted to get as a batter.”Whenever the tours were coming, I was not thinking about that because at the end whatever you bat at that time, you have to deal with it and just go forward and try and look to play the match. But, definitely, this series I was feeling much better as a batter and definitely wanted to make it count because of the few chances I had lost in the last two years [because of the lack] of my feel. So, I wanted to try and make it up and still want to try and make it up.””Runs will keep flowing – whether you go for them or not,” WV Raman recalls telling Smriti Mandhana•BCCI/UPCAMandhana had batted all of “two nets sessions” with the pink ball before opening the batting for India on Thursday. But it was down to her that India, despite the lack of familiarity with the pink ball or long-form cricket in general, had got into a position of strength, the opener laying the marker with her “tempo”, as Meg Lanning described it.On Friday, Mandhana added seven fours to take her tally to 23 boundaries in a 216-ball knock. And when the milestone came on the back of two fours – the second a deceptively languorous short-arm pull – off Perry in the 52nd over, an uncharacteristically energetic celebration followed.”In the 14-day quarantine [in Brisbane, ahead of the start of the series], I was doing all of that only: I was trying to visualise me batting and trying to celebrate my century,” she explained, deconstructing the celebration that saw her take the helmet off, raise both arms and tap her name on the back of her shirt with the bat, as if to make a statement.In his evaluation of Mandhana’s 127, Raman jogged his mind back to conversations when he would insist she “consumed overs”, for staying in the middle alone would be enough for her naturally fluent style of run-scoring to dictate the pace of her – and India’s – innings. “Runs will keep flowing – whether you go for them or not… even if you take some time, you will always make up,” he remembered saying.On the evidence from the first two days of the Test, she might be on her way to making up for the missed hundreds too.

The CPL winner, who’s hoping to make his West Indies debut next month, wants to build on his experiences in the IPL, the T20 World Cup, and the T10

Deivarayan Muthu29-Nov-2021″Little Vassy, you think you could bat here?”This was Chris Gayle to Dominic Drakes after St Kitts and Nevis Patriots were reduced to 75 for 4, chasing 160 in the CPL final in September this year. Drakes, promoted ahead of Fabian Allen, took on the likes of Wahab Riaz and Kesrick Williams, scoring an unbeaten 24-ball 48 to steer Patriots to their first CPL title. At the post-match presentation, Drakes said that his dad, Vasbert, the former West Indies allrounder, had been more nervous than himself while watching the action from Barbados.Drakes has enjoyed a whirlwind rise in the past few months and is set to become a West Indies international after being called up to the T20I squad touring Pakistan in December.A day after his CPL title-winning exploits, Drakes flew to the UAE to join Mumbai Indians as a net bowler for the second leg of IPL 2021. While he was there, Chennai Super Kings roped him in as a late replacement for the injured Sam Curran, and Drakes went on to win another T20 title in the space of a month (although he didn’t feature in any games). And then he joined West Indies’ T20 World Cup squad as a net bowler.

Vasbert Drakes shirt number 48

Dominic Drakes 48* to win the final of the @CPL 2021

What’s story – injured in Super50 and what a redemption.
Congrats young man pic.twitter.com/wKQU02jxP7

— Carlos Brathwaite (@CRBrathwaite26) September 15, 2021