Do match-ups work in T20? The data says yes

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

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

Washington Sundar can bowl to right-handers too

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

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.

Prithvi Shaw and Ishan Kishan, minimalist and maximalist

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

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.

Smriti Mandhana, and the search for the 'feel'

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

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.

Dominic Drakes: 'I don't want to look back and say I had a better 2021 than 2022. I don't want to be stagnant'

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

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.

He’s still in the UAE, now part of the Delhi Bulls squad in the Abu Dhabi T10 league, where he has reunited with his Patriots captain Dwayne Bravo and is eyeing his third title in nearly three months.”I wouldn’t say [I’m] a champion [like Bravo] yet. It’s a stretch,” Drakes says. “If someone told me at the start of the year, you would win CPL, you’d go the IPL, Delhi Bulls, I’d have asked: ‘Are you crazy?’ Everything happens so quickly, and wow, sometimes I don’t believe it, honestly. Even at CSK, I felt so welcomed – like you belong there and you’ve been there for years. Here at the Bulls too, the team environment is amazing.”Ten [runs per over] on a day is going good with the ball [in T10]. If I’ve to bat, I’ve to go for more [boundaries] from the first ball to help out the team. It’s challenging to bowl, but exciting to play and watch.”The temperatures are much cooler now than when I joined the IPL for sure. I’m like: ‘Am I in a different place?’ When I came down for practice the first day, I felt like, is it a little chill here for the first time ().”Drakes can hit sixes lower down the order, like he showed in the CPL final, and he can be a pinch-hitting No. 3, like he showed against Deccan Gladiators in the T10. He can bowl the back-of-the-hand slower ball in addition to the standard offcutter, which often dips. His tall frame and high-arm release enable him to find extra bounce from back of a length or short of a length. Plus, he’s a livewire on the field, often patrolling the boundary hotspots.Related

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Drakes, Narine, Odean make it to CPL team of the tournament

West Indies name new-look white-ball squads for Pakistan tour

Drakes’ multi-dimensional skills prompted Bravo to earmark him as one of the allrounders who could replace him in West Indies’ T20I side.”His skippership is absolutely amazing,” Drakes says of Bravo. “He’s always believed in his players and I really look up to him. How he goes about his training, how he goes about his diet at such an old – I don’t want to call him old, but old in terms of cricket years. He has everything down to a tee. Honestly, I’d love to mimic him – his training and stuff.”He’s always had confidence in me, and once you have that confidence from your skipper, you could do anything. He helped me with little things in my game – not just skills but also the mental aspect of the game. He tells me, ‘Be confident and always know what you’re doing and take it one ball at a time.’ That has really helped me.”Drakes is particularly excited to be playing alongside Romario Shepherd, another seam-bowling allrounder who Bravo believes has the potential to slip into his T20I shoes. After bagging 18 wickets in nine games in the CPL, Shepherd has been lethal with the bat in the T10, clubbing an unbeaten 11-ball 39 against Team Abu Dhabi and an unbeaten ten-ball 26 against Gladiators.”He’s amazing and an extremely hard-working cricketer,” Drakes says of Shepherd. “If you look at his performances in the CPL, he had, like, second-most wickets and every time he had a chance, he contributed with the bat, and he’s a phenomenal fielder. Here in T10, if you look at his bowling, he’s really taken it on. I don’t think he went at over ten [runs an over] yet – maybe the odd game.”Drakes on Bravo (right), who captained him in the CPL and the T10: “He’s always believed in his players and I really look up to him. I’d love to mimic him – his training and stuff”•Abu Dhabi T10Drakes’ calendar may be packed right now, but things were a lot different earlier this year. He played only one match in West Indies’ domestic Super50 Cup for Barbados before being ruled out of the rest of the tournament with an ACL tear. Around the same time, he had to deal with the passing of someone close to him.”It was extremely difficult,” he says. “In February, I felt really good and my pace was up, and I bowled a couple of overs and came back at the death. Then I went to dive at a ball at one point. Going back to the hotel room, the physio was telling me I would need surgery and it will take nine months. That was not a very good place. That was at the height of Covid as well – come home by yourself, quarantine. You had a whole week to think about it.”When Patriots’ team management sat down with Drakes before the start of the CPL, they were impressed with his resolve and desire to get fit and succeed despite his recent turmoil.At that point, Drakes wasn’t a CPL regular either. After failing to defend 16 off the final over for the Barbados franchise (then Tridents) on CPL debut in 2018, with his father watching from the dugout as Barbados’ assistant coach, Drakes featured in only seven matches until the start of CPL 2021.He was picked by Patriots in 2019 and retained as their emerging player despite the uncertainty surrounding his fitness and the CPL in general due to Covid. He overcame those fitness concerns and became one of Patriots’ main players in 2021.”From a physical standpoint, we were not able to do much with Drakes,” says Malolan Rangarajan, Patriots’ assistant coach. “The fact that the CPL was a little bit postponed gave him more time to recover and work on his fitness. We were absolutely certain of retaining Drakes – [it] was a no-brainer. We knew the skills he possesses and how he would be able to provide us with that point of difference. If you have watched him in previous years, even though he didn’t have performances like last season, he did show sparks of his ability, both with bat and ball.Drakes took 16 wickets in the CPL and is currently at the top of the charts for Delhi Bulls in the T10 league•CPL T20/ Getty Images”In one of our get-together sessions mid-season, him and Josh [West Indies keeper Joshua Da Silva] and myself sat together and talked about various things. Drakes was very grounded, and they were obsessed to become better cricketers. Whatever he’s getting today is a by-product of that mindset.”If you’d have told him in August that in November-December you’ll be playing in maroon [for West Indies], he’d have laughed it off. I just credit the guy’s determination and he repaid the faith we had in him.”Drakes repaid that faith in spades in the final against St Lucia Kings. On debut in 2018, it was Allen who laid into him in that final over. Three years later, Drakes was bumped up ahead of Patriots’ gun finisher, partly in order to maintain a left-right combination, with Bravo in the middle. With Wahab bowling into the pitch and firing in yorkers, Drakes sat deep in the crease and, once he got the leverage, maintained a strong base and swung for the hills. When Wahab thumped a heavy length and shifted his lines wide of off, Drakes’ foot was out of position, but he still extended his hands and crunched the ball over extra cover for six – a candidate for the shot of the tournament.Drakes has spent most of his time in the UAE since the CPL final, but ahead of his first T10 stint with Bulls, he returned home to Barbados and relived his CPL heroics with his parents.”He’s always nervous,” Drakes says of his father. “Even coming down to T10, he’s like: ‘Make sure, you got this, got that.’ I say: ‘Yes, Daddy, I understand’ (). We actually sat home and watched [the CPL final] it as a family with my mom. After each ball, he would tell me how he was feeling at that time and stuff like that.”That most exciting part of it was when he said my mom was extremely nervous too (). He said that the one part he could never forget was the last ball, because Roston Chase was playing for St Lucia – he plays for Barbados [in domestic cricket]. So a majority of Bajans were watching the game. He said for that one ball everything stopped in Barbados. He couldn’t even hear a car pass.”While Drakes is currently the top wicket-taker for Bulls in the T10 league, with nine wickets from six innings at an economy rate of 9.81, he is yet to fire like can with the bat.Hitting sixes on demand is a difficult skill, more so in T10 cricket, and Drakes says he just goes back to the basics to get it right.”Even at the nets, I don’t try to smash it from the first ball. I try and make sure I’m in a right position – head over ball – and just try and let the instincts take over.”Drakes is keen to avoid complacency and hopes to build on his gains in the past four months. It may not be long before “Little Vassy” becomes Big Vassy.”For me, it’s always trying to be better and not sit back and relaxing,” Drakes says. “I don’t want to look back and say I had a better 2021 than 2022. I always want to be better than last year and better than my last performance. I don’t want to be stagnant – just want to keep training as hard.”

Why Garry Sobers is the top allrounder in Tests and Shakib Al Hasan in ODIs

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

Rating the leading allrounders of the two formats

Anantha Narayanan09-Oct-2021A few months back, I did a comprehensive study of Test allrounders. In it, Shakib Al Hasan emerged as the top allrounder, a whisker above Garry Sobers. This article became one of my most discussed ones in recent times. Quite a few of those who wrote to me were not comfortable with giving Sobers second place. However, an equal number were happy that the all-round skills of Shakib, a player from a less prominent team, were recognised.In addition, there were many emails suggesting minor and major tweaks. The range of responses was staggering and these covered every aspect of analysis in both width and depth. I realised I would have to do a comprehensive overhaul of the analysis. I have now finalised the revised Test allrounders’ tables with inputs from various contributors. The changes are summarised below. Also, using the changed parameters as the overall base, and accounting for the nuances of ODIs, I have worked out a list of the best ODI allrounders.Test Allrounders Analysis
Let me first cover the revised basis for the Test allrounders’ analysis. There are four groups of parameters. A move away from longevity-based measures is a feature of the revised analysis.1. Weighted Batting Average (20 points): There was no doubt about the importance of this solid batting measure. The maximum permissible 20.0 points are given for a WBA of 55.0; the figure is proportionately lower for lower WBA values.2. Bowling Average (20): There was also no doubt about the importance of this wonderful bowling measure. This also has a weight of 20.0 points, which is given for a bowling average of 20.0 (it is proportionately lower for higher bowling averages).3.1. Share of team values (15): This recognises the player’s contribution to the team. In order for this measure to be comprehensive, it takes into account runs scored, wickets taken and balls bowled. This ensures that allrounders who carried differing load levels are recognised. No one type of allrounder is favoured. A workload of 20% is allotted the maximum points, 15.3.2. Consistency Index (15): This is the most important new measure added, replacing the concepts of Impact Index and High Impact Index used earlier. Many people felt uncomfortable with the black-or-white treatment of the impact indices, and the double counting, so I have split players’ careers into three-Test blocks, with the last block being three, four or five Tests long. I then looked at what the player achieved in each block. (This is somewhat similar to the E-Runs measure – Equivalent Runs – explained later.)I considered a wicket as the equivalent of scoring between 25 and 31 runs, depending on when the Test was played. Then I determined whether that was a successful block from an allrounder’s point of view. A block should satisfy three criteria to qualify as successful: 300 E-Runs, 100 runs and six wickets (for a three-Test block, and extrapolated, as required, for the last block). This allows the players flexibility to handle lean batting or bowling phases, and for them compensate batting lows with wickets and bowling lows with runs, while maintaining an overall contribution.The percentage of successful blocks is considered; 15 points are allocated for an 80% success rate. A perusal of the related numbers will show you how effective this index is. If an allrounder like Imran Khan or Jacques Kallis did not bowl at all in a few Tests, they might lose a little, but then they were not playing those matches as allrounders.4.1. Delivery of base components per match (10): This is an important new measure based on the average contributions of runs, wickets and catches/stumpings per match. Everything is brought to an E-Runs basis: each wicket is valued at X runs, where X is the exact RpW value across the allrounder’s career. It is low for matches played before the First World War, and reasonably high for the first decade of this millennium, and the range is 25.5 to 33.7 for the set of allrounders considered. Each catch/stumping is valued at 40% of the value of a wicket. The weight for this measure is 10 points, which is allotted for an average of 210.There was little that Garry Sobers couldn’t do perfectly on a cricket field•Getty ImagesThe next two parameters relate to Performance Ratings.4.2. Best Match Performance (5): The best all-round performance gets the player a share out of 5 points. The best here is the famous Ian Botham masterclass in the Jubilee Test in Bombay in 1979-80. This performance gets nearly 5 points; the others get proportionately lower for lower values. This is represented in the tables below by the RPP-Best column.4.3. Average Performance per Test (5): This recognises sustained performance across a career. The weight for this measure is 5 points, which is allotted for an average of 700 rating points per match. In the tables, this is the RPP/T column.4.4. Career length – Years/Tests (10): This was specially requested by many readers. They wanted the ratings to recognise players who performed at the highest level for many years and played many Tests. This is the only non-performance measure, relating rather to a player’s longevity. The allocation of points is based on a combination of years and Tests. Kallis, with a long career on both counts, gets the highest value, ten points.There may seem to be an overlap between 4.1 and 4.3; 4.1 is based on raw, unadjusted, basic runs/wickets/catches per Test – all brought to an E-Runs basis. There is no context there. On the other hand, 4.3 is based on a contextual, complex calculation covering the batting and bowling performances. It incorporates pitch quality, bowling/batting quality faced, innings status, support received, location/result, relative team strengths, target before the team, quality of wickets, and so on. As such, while seemingly there is an overlap, these are two different measures.A simple comparison: Brian Lara’s unbeaten 400 is 247 runs more than his unbeaten 153, going by 4.1, while the 153 gets 150 more rating points than 400 under 4.3. Also, fielding isn’t accounted for in 4.3. In summary, 4.1 covers the standard player delivery of the basics, while 4.3 accounts for the outliers and extraordinary performances.Now the selection criteria, which are the same as in the earlier article. For my first level of selection, I included players who have scored over 1500 runs and taken 50 or more wickets, or scored over 1000 runs and taken 75 or more wickets. This got me a substantial number of players. To avoid including bowlers who have played many Tests and thus accumulated enough runs (like Anil Kumble, Shane Warne, Chaminda Vaas, Stuart Broad, et al), I have set a limit of 22.5 as the lower cut-off for WBA (a batting average of around 25). And to avoid classifying Chris Gayle, Mark Waugh, Asif Iqbal, et al as allrounders, I have excluded those who took less than a wicket per Test. There was a temptation to keep 40 as the upper limit for the bowling average, but I have resisted that since it would mean the exclusion of a few players who are normally perceived as allrounders – prominent among them Ravi Shastri and Carl Hooper. A total of 51 players qualified. All teams, barring Sri Lanka, are represented. This is understandable considering that only Vaas comes closest to being an allrounder for Sri Lanka.With these revised parameters, there has been a slight shift in the table positions. First, let us have a look at the revised table of top allrounders.Anantha NarayananFittingly, one of the greatest players of all time, Sobers, is at the top of the revised Test table. He has a reasonable edge over Shakib. This despite the fact that Shakib has the edge on most of the newly introduced measures. Sobers has a substantial lead in the Batting group and a slight lead in the Ratings Performance group. Shakib has an edge in the other two groups but just falls short. However, just as Sobers deserves all the accolades for finishing first, Shakib deserves recognition for continuing to give Sobers such a tough fight. Those who question Sobers’ lead in batting should remember that he is, inarguably, one of the five best players to have touched a bat, irrespective of the basis used. Perhaps if I do this analysis in a couple of years again, Shakib might move to the first place, since he could potentially improve some of his numbers.Imran Khan, Botham, Richard Hadlee and Keith Miller, the next four on the table, will be in anybody’s list of top five allrounders ever. Imran, Hadlee and Miller are strong in the bowling department, while Botham and Hadlee excel in the Rating performance areas. Hadlee is ahead in the contribution-per-Test group. Each of these four has their own spheres of excellence, and that comes out clearly.The great pre-war allrounder Aubrey Faulkner deservedly comes next. He leads narrowly from Trevor Goddard and Kallis. R Ashwin gets a well-deserved place in the top ten.A study of the percentage values is revealing. Sobers and Kallis get nearly 25% of their points from the WBA component. Imran, Hadlee, Miller, Ashwin and Shaun Pollock are bowling allrounders. Shakib, Goddard, Vinoo Mankad, et al derive their strengths from the “Contribution and Consistency” group. Finally, Botham, Hadlee, Ashwin, Pollock and Kapil Dev are strong in the fourth group. That is how it should be. Almost all the 20 players featured are true allrounders, who are likely to shine in different areas.Comparing the previous table with the current table, I have summarised the changes below.Sobers and Shakib have exchanged places at the top. Imran moves up five places, Botham three. Faulkner moves down a little. Jack Gregory drops like a stone. Miller and Chris Cairns drop slightly. Ashwin and Kallis exchange places. Kapil moves up. Tony Greig, Ravindra Jadeja and Andrew Flintoff have maintained their respective places.Anantha NarayananThe table of base values is above. Here are some of the interesting values.- The high WBA of Sobers, which stands at 51.3. Kallis’ WBA is close to 50. Only five players have WBAs over 40.- The sub-25 bowling average of Hadlee, Imran, Miller, Ashwin, Pollock and Jadeja.- Shakib’s high Runs-Wkts-Balls share of 18.7%, followed by Faulkner, with 18.2% and Mankad, with 18.1%.- Shakib’s Consistency level of 73.7% (he is followed by Dwayne Bravo, with 69.1%, and Miller, with at 66.7%). Also, note the relatively low percentage values for the players I call “specialist allrounders” – like Pollock, Kapil, Hadlee, Kallis, etc.- The very high Base components (Runs/Wkts/Catches) per match of Ashwin, Shakib, Botham, Sobers, Hadlee and Imran. All have contributed 180 or more E-Runs per Test.- Botham’s once-in-a-lifetime performance in Bombay, fetched him 2034 Rating points. He scored 114 and took 6 for 58 and 7 for 48 in the match. The next one, some distance away, is Mushtaq Mohammad’s 1798. Mushtaq scored 121 and 56 and took 5 for 28 and 3 for 69 against West Indies in Port-of-Spain in 1976-77. Next on this list is Botham’s 1981 Headingley performance.- Hadlee’s average rating points per match of 666, very closely followed by Ashwin, with 665 points. Sobers and Imran have over 600 points per match.Anantha NarayananThis Ratings values chart is offered with no additional comments. The high values have already been outlined in the previous chart. The corresponding point values can be located in this table.ODI allrounders analysis
The ODI analysis is more or less based on the Test parameters. However, new parameters have been added to incorporate relevant metrics, such as strike rates. To distinguish the Test tables from the ODI tables, I have kept the ODI maximum limit as 1000. The cut-off values are much simpler here – 75 wickets and 2000 runs; 57 players qualify.1.1. Weighted Batting Average (125): There was no doubt about the importance of this solid batting measure. This has a weight of a maximum of 125 points, which are given for an adjusted WBA of 50, and proportionately lower for lower values. The adjustment is by period.1.2. Batting Strike Rate (125): The maximum points here are allotted for an adjusted strike rate of 125. The adjustment ensures that the low strike-rates during the early years of the format are pushed up and vice versa for latter years.2.1. Bowling Strike Rate (BpW-125): There was also no doubt about the importance of this wonderful bowling measure. This too has a weight of 125 points maximum, which is given for an adjusted bowling strike rate of 30 BpW; it is proportionately lower for higher values.2.2. Bowling Accuracy (RpO-125): This is given as much importance as the balls-per-wicket measure; 125 points are given for an adjusted RpO of 3.5.3.1. Share of Team values (125): This recognises the share of relevant team values. In order for this measure to be comprehensive, I have included runs scored, wickets taken and balls bowled. This ensures that allrounders who carried differing load levels are recognised. This does not favour one type of allrounder. A workload of 30% is allotted the maximum points.3.2. Consistency Index (125): I split players’ careers into four-ODI blocks, with the last block being four, five, six or seven matches long. I then checked what the player achieved in each block. This is somewhat similar to the E-Runs metric. This time I considered a wicket as the equivalent of between 25 and 31 runs, depending on the period when the ODI was played. Then I determined whether that is a successful block from an allrounder’s point of view. The block should satisfy three criteria to qualify as successful one: 180 E-Runs, 60 runs, and two wickets (for a four-ODI block, and extrapolated, if required, for the last block). This gives the player flexibility to compensate for batting lows with wickets, and bowling lows with runs, while maintaining an overall contribution. The factor being considered is the percentage of successful blocks; 125 points are allocated for an 80% success rate. A look at the related numbers will show you how effective this index is. If some allrounders did not bowl at all in a few ODIs, they might lose a little, but then they were not playing as allrounders.4.1. Important Tournaments – Batting (50): This measure and the one following it cover performance in the latter stages of tournaments. In general, the Super Eights, Super Sixes, quarter-finals and later stages of ICC trophies, and finals of lesser tournaments, are considered. Since the number of such matches varies considerably between players, an average performance per match is used. Fifty points are given for 60 runs per match.4.2. Important Tournaments – Bowling (50): For bowling, 50 points are allotted for 1.8 wickets per match.The next two relate to the Performance Ratings.5.1. Best Match Performance (50): The best all-round performance gets the player a share out of 50 points. The best is the famous Aravinda de Silva masterclass in the 1996 World Cup final, which got 151 rating points. This performance gets nearly 50 Best Match Performance points. Other performances get proportionately lower for lower values.5.2. Average Performance per ODI (50): This recognises sustained performance across a career. The weight for this measure is 50 points maximum, which is allotted for an average of 65 points.5.3. Career length – ODIs played (50): This parameter is to recognise players who have performed at the highest level for many years and played many ODIs. This is allotted a maximum of 50 points. Sachin Tendulkar, with a long career of 463 ODIs, gets the highest value here, with the benchmark being 500 matches.Shahid Afridi: a limited-overs giant•AFPShakib has proved that his close second place on the Test allrounder table is no fluke, and that he is the leading allrounder in the world now across formats. He tops the ODI allrounder table by a comfortable margin. As true allrounders do, he does not lead in terms of the base measures, but he is in the top quartile for both batting and bowling. He substantiates this with excellent performances in the other measures and has finished a deserving first. But for his ban in 2019, he might have finished even higher. However, he has come back with a bang and his recent performances have been excellent.A surprise placement in the second position. Not many will have expected Flintoff to finish second. He has achieved this high place through a table-topping combined value of the two basic groups (Batting and Bowling): he has 350 points in these two groups, and that, with his very solid achievements in the other groups, fetches him second place. He is very close to the top in the bowling group. Kallis has had a more balanced all-round career in ODIs than in Tests and this has resulted in his well-deserved third position.Anantha NarayananViv Richards in fourth place? Those who are surprised should know that he has taken 118 ODI wickets to supplement his outstanding batting skills. The bowling numbers are in the lower quartile but his other achievements more than make up for those. Shane Watson comes next and that should not be a surprise since he was a genuine allrounder and a very good fourth bowler. Kapil gets a well-deserved sixth place, aided by the significant upward tweaking of his batting strike rate.Lance Klusener might seem a surprise at No. 7, but a look at his numbers, especially bowling, shows they are almost identical to those of Imran, who appears next. Sanath Jayasuriya’s ninth position should not surprise anyone, since he took over 300 wickets, and nor should tenth place for Gayle. These two were nearly proper allrounders in ODIs.I am extremely happy with the 11th position of Shahid Afridi, whose figures are mind-boggling – over 8000 runs at a near-120 strike rate and nearly 400 wickets. Tendulkar just misses out on featuring in this table. He finished 18th.Looking at the percentage of rating points, Richards is strongly batting-centric, as is Afridi. Flintoff, Wasim Akram and Pollock are strongly dependent on bowling points. Shakib is very strong in the contribution/consistency group and in performances in important matches – where Akram and Klusener are also strong. Finally, Afridi makes his presence felt in the other group, through his rating performance achievements.Anantha NarayananAs I did for the Test allrounders, I am going to look at the highlights of the table above.- Richards has a high WBA of 44.3 while Kallis clocks in at 38.1. At the other end, Akram has a low WBA of 14.8.- Afridi has an excellent strike rate, of 118. Kapil’s already high strike rate, during an era of staid scoring, has been elevated to 111 after adjustment for period. As was Richards’ 103. Jayasuriya clocks in at 93.- Flintoff has a low BpW value of 34. Akram is close behind at 35. Dwayne Bravo, not featured on the table, shares the lowest value with Flintoff. Among the spinners, Mohammad Nabi required 48 balls for every wicket he took.- Pollock had the lowest RpO of 3.8. The only other bowler with a sub-4.0 RpO is Nabi, with 3.9. Richards, Jayasuriya and Cairns were quite extravagant, conceding over five runs per over.- Shakib’s contribution percentage (Runs/Wickets/Balls) was a very high 26.6. He is the leader on this measure, by a mile. Richards, with dominating batting numbers, provided 22.4% of his team’s work load. At the other end, Akram and Afridi had a contribution percentage of around 17.- Shakib’s consistency is amazing. Out of 53 blocks, he met the tough requirements in 39 blocks, leading to a success rate of 73.6%. Flintoff achieved a figure of 65.7% and Kallis 67.1%. Akram was successful in only 18% of blocks, since most times he did not meet the batting standards.- In important matches, Richards averaged 42 runs and Tendulkar 47. Botham took around 1.6 wickets per match in such games. Tendulkar, of course, played a lot of such matches – 111, to be precise.- The best ever all-round performance was de Silva’s 3 for 42 and 107 not out in 124 balls in the 1996 World Cup final, which fetched him 153 rating points. Next comes Afridi’s magnificent performance of 7 for 12 and 76 off 55 balls against West Indies in Providence in 2013, which fetched him 146 rating performance points. He is closely followed by Richards, whose 189 not out off 170 balls and 2 for 45 at Old Trafford in 1984 fetched him 141 rating points.- Shakib averaged 61 rating points per match. Botham follows with 57 points per match.Anantha NarayananAs in Tests, this rating values chart is also offered with no additional comments. The high values have already been outlined in the previous chart. Readers may locate the corresponding point values in this table.Conclusion
Sobers is now, deservingly, placed at No. 1 on the Test allrounders’ table. He performed a triple role – premier batter, seam bowler and spinner – in most Tests he played. Not to mention his outstanding fielding skills. However, Shakib has been outstanding in two formats, and there is no doubt that he is the premier allrounder of the past four decades or so.Calling for an all-time XV
In 2013, I conducted an exhaustive readers’ poll to determine a group of 15 players to be considered for an all-time World team. There was excellent response and the results were very insightful and interesting. I now call for submissions again since new contenders have emerged, as also new measures for selection. You can email your entries through one of three routes with the subject “All-time XV – 2021”.- Send an email to my personal mail id, if you have it
– Send an email to the email id at the bottom of this article
– Send an email to the Talking_Cricket group, more on which is below.When sending in your XV, provide your name, place of residence, and your list of 15 players (no more, no less). The team must be an all-terrain one. A manager/coach is optional. If you send multiple entries from one email id, I will consider the last one sent. Thus, you have the opportunity to change your selections. You don’t have to justify your selections; I prefer short emails. I will include this message in the next two articles. I will write a summary article, which will probably be published in January. The entry that matches the final selection or comes closest to it will be acknowledged.- eight batters/allrounders
– one wicketkeeper
– four pace bowlers
– two spinnersTalking Cricket Group
Any reader who wishes to join the general purpose cricket-ideas-exchange group of this name that I started last year can email a request for inclusion, giving their name, place of residence and what they do.

Tidy Faheem Ashraf gives Pakistan an opening, but floodgates stay shut

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

Just when it seemed like Australia’s soft underbelly could be exposed, Pakistan inexplicably moved away from seam bowling completely

Danyal Rasool12-Mar-2022The National Stadium in Karachi might not quite be the MCG, but it’s certainly a big ground. So when David Warner danced down the wicket to wallop Sajid Khan over mid-off for six – as if he hadn’t yet left Rawalpindi – as early as the 11th over, the visitors’ intentions seemed fairly obvious. Hasan Ali had just been prised out of the attack as Usman Khawaja punished any deviation in line, and the early jitters a new ball naturally spawns in Pakistan had begun to vanish.Sajid had spoken about how he set Warner up in Rawalpindi, observing how the Australian opener kept going back no matter how full he bowled. Well, Warner made sure he couldn’t say that today. A few overs later, he danced out of his crease, and despite not getting to the pitch, creamed Sajid over mid-off for six more. Two balls earlier, it was Khawaja who had taken the attack to Sajid. Slithering out of his crease with the quiet elegance of a synchronised diver breaking a pool surface without making a splash, he targeted that well-peppered mid-off region beyond the boundary, and the openers were blasting Pakistan’s premier spinner out of the attack.Related

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So Babar Azam did what he didn’t have the luxury of doing in Rawalpindi and turned to Faheem Ashraf. It’s been an odd start to what still feels like a budding Test career for Ashraf, who spent the best part of the first three years of his Test career out of the side. Which is bizarre because Ashraf is yet to play a Test match he hasn’t substantively contributed in, either with bat or ball. Quietly, almost by default, a man who broke into the national side through his white-ball prowess has manoeuvred himself into a position of indispensability in Pakistan’s Test match side.Ashraf was the man whose unavailability appeared to spook the hosts so much they all but admitted to neutering the liveliest deck in Pakistan in the first Test. So eager were they to have him available he was brought back a day after he tested positive for Covid-19, with a subsequent negative test the following day putting him in the clear.Six balls after that Sajid mauling, Ashraf, in the middle of a typically tidy spell, made his mark once more. On a pitch that looked like it was flattening out under the baking Karachi sun, he found enough deviation of the seam to kiss Warner’s outside edge through to Mohammad Rizwan. As so often, once the door appeared shut on Pakistan, Ashraf was the locksmith who had worked them back in. Of his 23 Test wickets, more than a third – eight – have broken partnerships of 50 runs or more.So when Australia’s third wicket partnership surpassed 50, Babar’s thoughts turned to his partnership-breaker once more. Australia had been ticking along at nearly four, so with potence and economy both required, Ashraf was pressed into service once more.

Australia might have been 160 for 2, but like a boxer awaiting the bell, they knew for now, they needed to hang on till tea. Ashraf was sniffing closer and closer, and with Shaheen on from the other end, Australia had no respite

What followed was an intoxicating hour of Test match cricket under the blazing Karachi sun. The energy levels hadn’t yet sapped, and as Ashraf and Shaheen sent down three successive maidens, the whiff of an opportunity began to waft through the field. Khawaja and Steve Smith were set, yes, but as they battled and scrapped, they suddenly appeared vulnerable. The scoring ground to a halt, and Ashraf – that white-ball specialist, the occasional dibbly-dobbler – suddenly had two of the world’s leading batters on the ropes. There was some tail-in to Smith that, even by Smith’s standards, had him fidgeting about, while there was enough flirting with Khawaja’s outside edge to suggest further dalliances would be forthcoming.The nervous energy crept through the Karachi crowd. Not the sort that has you leaping from your seats, more the kind that tantalising anticipation of a payoff can produce. Australia might have been 160 for 2, but like a boxer awaiting the bell, they knew for now, they needed to hang on till tea. Ashraf was sniffing closer and closer, and with Shaheen on from the other end, Australia had no respite. With the relative inexperience of Travis Head, Cameron Green and Alex Carey in these conditions, Pakistan felt the visitors had a soft underbelly, and a wicket could open the floodgates.The value of that session perhaps truly became clear in third session that would have been soporific if it wasn’t so bizarre. Like the plot device of a convoluted mystery novel where the more outlandish points are never quite explained, Pakistan, for no discernible reason, turned away from seam bowling completely until the second new ball. Babar turned to himself and Azhar Ali before he’d resort to the seamers as the session threatened to descend into farce.Even Ashraf, given the second new ball ahead of Hasan Ali, for once lacked teeth as Khawaja, now past a hundred, and Smith, stuck in. But there was time enough for yet another facet of Ashraf’s all-round game to come to the fore, as a left-handed pluck, seemingly out of thin air, sent Smith on his way seven balls before the end of play.The payoff might have come too late to offer Babar’s side much satisfaction. Ashraf, who Test cricket has kept waiting for so long, will know that more than most.

Death bowling could be a worry for Rajasthan Royals

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

They have the option to play Nathan Coulter-Nile instead of James Neesham, but that would weaken their batting

Sruthi Ravindranath22-Mar-2022Where they finished in 2021They failed to make the playoffs for the third consecutive season, finishing seventh with five wins in 14 matches.Potential first XI1 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 2 Jos Buttler, 3 Devdutt Padikkal, 4 Sanju Samson (capt, wk), 5 Shimron Hetmyer, 6 Riyan Parag, 7 James Neesham/Nathan Coulter-Nile, 8 R Ashwin, 9 Yuzvendra Chahal, 10 Trent Boult, 11 Prasidh KrishnaRelated

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BattingRoyals are likely to go with a mix of youth and experience at the top of the order and opt for the left-right combination of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jos Buttler – both of whom were retained ahead of the mega auction. This would mean Devdutt Padikkal, one of the new entrants who is coming off two superb seasons with Royal Challengers Bangalore, is likely to bat at No. 3 instead of his usual opening position. With two big hitters in captain Sanju Samson and Shimron Hetmyer to come in next, their top order looks power-packed. And they have Riyan Parag and James Neesham to further bolster their line-up.Royals have been marred by inconsistency with the bat, and have resorted to constant chopping and changing, which has been one of their biggest issues in the last few seasons. They’ve had several individual performers but haven’t always been able to click as a unit. So this time, they will be keen to pin down batting positions. The team will be one to watch out for if the top five play true to their ability.There is also a bit of pressure on Parag – whom they bought back in the auction despite his lukewarm performances in the last two seasons – to step up in the role of finisher.If required, they also have the option of slotting in Rassie van der Dussen, who has been in sublime form across white-ball formats for South Africa in the last year.ESPNcricinfo LtdBowlingOne of the biggest pluses for Royals at the auction was their putting together of a strong Indian core, with the additions of R Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal in the bowling department being key to this. Given their experience, the two will be expected to keep the opposition in check in the middle overs.They also have a potent new-ball duo in Prasidh Krishna – their most expensive buy (INR 10 crore) at the auction – and New Zealand’s Trent Boult to handle the powerplay.One point of worry could be their death bowling. They have the option of playing Nathan Coulter-Nile instead of Neesham at No. 7 to bring some control at the death. But that would weaken their batting. They’ll want to take some notes from Lasith Malinga, their newly appointed fast-bowling coach, and one of the best death bowlers in T20 history, to prevent those issues.Can Yashasvi Jaiswal repay the management’s faith?•BCCI/IPLYoung player to watch out forThat Yashasvi Jaiswal was one of three players to be retained by the franchise should say a lot about his calibre. The top-order batter who rose to prominence with his U-19 performances was snapped up by the franchise in 2020. He was given a chance to open that season, and while he impressed with his cameos in the second half of IPL 2021, a return of 289 runs at 22.23 over two seasons, with a strike rate of 136.32, suggests he hasn’t found consistency yet. If he can add that ingredient this season, he will have repaid the management’s faith in his ability.Coaching staffKumar Sangakkara (head coach and director of cricket), Lasith Malinga (fast-bowling coach), Steffan Jones (high-performance fast-bowling coach), Paddy Upton (team catalyst), Trevor Penney (assistant coach), Zubin Bharucha (strategy, development and performance director), Dishant Yagnik (fielding coach)Poll

Sikandar Raza: 'Nightmare of not qualifying for 2019 World Cup never went away'

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

Zimbabwe have made the cut for the T20 World Cup 2022 after getting through the qualifiers at home

Mohammad Isam27-Jul-2022Cricket in Zimbabwe is looking up. Bangladesh and India are set to tour the country before they head to Australia for the T20 World Cup. Zimbabwe will be there too; a dominant performance in the global qualifiers has ensured that. The moment was four years in the making. They had missed out on the last two global events, having suffered the heartbreak of missing the 2019 World Cup after a narrow loss in the qualifiers at home. Understandably, then, Sikandar Raza, and others, are “more relieved than happy” at this point.Related

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It was a difficult period, with many of their senior players unsure about their future. Raza was one of them. In the recent qualifiers, he had figures of 4 for 8 against Netherlands in the final. Each time he took a wicket, the Bulawayo crowd went wild. Qualification for the World Cup, of course, had been ensured for both teams once they won their semi-finals.”It is nice to be playing one more World Cup before I hang up my boots,” Raza told ESPNcricinfo. “It was tricky to miss out on the last 50-overs World Cup. It was disheartening and painful not to be playing the last T20 World Cup as well. I think the senior players were more relieved than happy [to qualify for this year’s World Cup]. There was a lot on our shoulders. There was a lot that was to be done by the core group of players. To see all of us achieve that is the most satisfying part of going to Australia.”Raza said the target has been to do more than just qualify. They wanted to be the best among the teams in the qualifiers in order to be ready for bigger things. Much of that also came from the big crowds that turned up to watch them get back where they believe they belong.”We would have never settled for only qualification,” he said. “Our first target was to qualify, but we targeted winning five out of five games. Without a question, we wanted to win the final. It was very important for us to become champions. It is a different feeling to be champions of some tournament. It was amazing.Sikandar Raza scored the most runs and picked up the joint-most wickets for Zimbabwe in the T20 World Cup Qualifiers•AFP/Getty Images”The crowd on the weekend has always been brilliant in Bulawayo and Harare. Hands down, this was the biggest and loudest crowd I have experienced in Bulawayo. Every time we took a wicket, the crowd just erupted. It was unbelievable.”The satisfaction also brought back memories of a similar time four years ago when Zimbabwe missed out on qualification. Raza was in the thick of things back then too.”Those emotions were always there. We couldn’t go to the World Cup by a margin of two [three] runs,” he recalled. “The nightmare of not being able to make it through the last qualifiers were always at the back of the head. The guys who were there in the previous qualifiers and now in the core group, tried to stay in the present.”We tried to prevent those feelings from affecting us. Those feelings were there. We didn’t deny its presence. We just had to find a way to deal with them. Everybody had different ways to deal with them. The fact that we could do that and ended up qualifying, is relieving.”Some of those who played in 2018 have settled into bigger roles within the Zimbabwe team. Fast bowler Blessing Muzarabani is knocking on plenty of doors in the T20 arena, while young Wessly Madhevere graduated to the senior side within a month of their Under-19 World Cup campaign in 2020.

“It was tricky to miss out on the last 50-overs World Cup. It was disheartening and painful not to be playing the last T20 World Cup as well. I think the senior players were more relieved than happy [to qualify for this year’s World Cup].”Sikandar Raza

“He [Muzarabani] came from very humble beginnings. He has tasted success but he is still a very humble boy,” Raza said. “He is very respectful. He will get better and better, and I believe he will be rewarded because he is such an honest worker.”Richard Ngarava had a few setbacks due to injuries, but I believe he will follow Blessing Muzarabani sooner or later. He has good work ethic. He will be exposed to different T20 competitions.”Wessly Madhevere is rising. Performances go up and down but I genuinely believe that he is growing as a cricketer. He will take Zimbabwe cricket forward. He will take it in the right direction. He is a very good kid. I will also mention Milton Shumba, a smart cricketer. He will have a role to play in the future.”Zimbabwe also have a strong group of experienced cricketers in the mix, thanks to Craig Ervine, Sean Williams, Regis Chakabva and Tendai Chatara, who is sidelined because of a shoulder injury, apart from Raza.”Chatara has been the spearhead of the bowling department,” he said. “Unfortunately, he has broken his collarbone but we are praying that he is fit for the World Cup. Regis Chakabva is a senior guy as well. Very calm guy. We need him.”We are happy to have Sean Williams back in the team. Craig is a silent soldier. He is calm and composed, a team man.”Zimbabwe also have a new entrant in their coaching setup. Dave Houghton has returned to coach Zimbabwe and Raza said that he was already gelling with the team.”Blessing Muzarabani will be rewarded because he is such an honest worker”•AFP/Getty Images”My first experience with Dave has been brilliant,” he said. “He has a lot of trust towards his players. He has confidence in our abilities. Zulu [Lance Klusener, batting consultant] has been brilliant with us throughout. It is great to have him back. He has made a lot of difference in my career. Shepherd [Makunura, fielding coach] and Stuart [Matsikenyeri, assistant coach] are fantastic too.”Raza himself has done well over the last few years. A bone-marrow infection last year meant that he had to resort to a new bowling action. Luckily for him, it clicked.”I thought with my old action it was slightly difficult to bowl variations,” he said. “I figured out that I lost a lot of strength in my shoulder following the surgery. Maybe it is a blessing in disguise. I hope I have better control of my variations in a year’s time. I also realise that my career economy in T20s and T20Is have come down.”For now, Raza is looking forward to a busier phase for Zimbabwe. They first play Bangladesh – an opposition that has got the wood on them in recent times – in three T20Is starting July 30 followed by as many ODIs. India will be there too.”It is a very exciting because now we are looking forward to something,” Raza said. “Everything we do now is a build-up to Australia. We want to be in the main tournament. We want to cause a few upsets.”We are trying to beat all these teams so that we can form a culture, so that when we get to Australia, we have a winning changing room. It was lovely to see all the senior guys there [in the qualifier].”

Why Carlos Brathwaite and Samit Patel retired out tactically in the same game

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

Match-ups, quick runners and rain create “unique set of circumstances” in T20 Blast fixture

Matt Roller06-Jun-2022Tactical retirements in T20 cricket are like London buses: you wait forever for one, then several arrive in quick succession. A batter had never retired out in the first 19 seasons of English domestic T20 cricket, but Carlos Brathwaite and Samit Patel both did so in the same rain-reduced Vitality Blast fixture between Birmingham Bears and Nottinghamshire on Sunday.When R Ashwin retired himself out playing for Rajasthan Royals against Lucknow Super Giants in IPL 2022, it quickly became apparent that his decision would be a seismic moment in T20 strategy. Analysts and coaches have long debated the merits and drawbacks of tactical retirements, but a high-profile player making a high-profile call has helped to destigmatise the move.Brathwaite and Patel’s retirements were only the fifth and sixth such dismissals in T20 history, according to ESPNcricinfo’s extensive database, and none of the previous four had happened in the same match. With the game shortened to eight overs a side, wickets were significantly devalued and both teams were willing to adapt accordingly.R Ashwin retired out in the IPL two months ago•BCCIBrathwaite, the Bears’ captain, was working as a pundit on ESPNcricinfo’s T20 Time:Out show when Ashwin opted to retire and declared his support for the move at the time. “How often have we thought, ‘yeah, he’s batted five balls too much, couldn’t get it away, couldn’t get out, and as a result we’ve lost a bit of momentum’?” he said. “I think it was gutsy from Rajasthan. Moving forward, it’s something we’ll probably see a lot more of… it’s something that will become a part of the game.”On Sunday, Brathwaite was 17 not out off 11 balls – and had hit the final ball of the seventh over for six – when he saw that Calvin Harrison, Notts’ legspinner, had been given the eighth and final over of a shortened game. Harrison’s first over, bowled exclusively to Brathwaite, had cost only six runs and he had beaten him outside off stump three times.Brathwaite was clearly aware of his own struggles against legspin: since the start of 2020, he has faced 98 balls from legspinners in T20 cricket, from which he has scored 67 runs and been dismissed eight times. He walked off and called for Sam Hain – who has averaged 57.50 against legspin with a strike rate of 135.29 in the same period – to replace him.”Carlos isn’t a big sweeper and I think he felt that someone else might have attacked it a bit better,” Peter Moores, Notts’ head coach, told ESPNcricinfo. “It’s a pretty selfless decision by a captain because everyone wants to be the man to bang it out the park but he’d faced the over before and found it tough – Calvin bowled a really good over at him – and I think he decided to give someone else a crack at it.”We could have bowled someone else if we wanted to – there’s nothing in place to stop that. It doesn’t happen very often. We know Carlos is a fantastic striker of a cricket ball so it’s quite a big decision but I think most of these decisions people make on instinct, and he clearly felt that he would give somebody else a go.”The final over cost 18 runs, though Hain (batting at No.6) did not face a ball: Chris Benjamin was dismissed off the second ball after hitting the first for four before Alex Davies, in at No. 7, hit a six, two twos and a four to finish on 14 not out off four balls.

“The rule is there and so I think it’s fair to use it. People make comments about this, that and the other but for me, when Carlos walked off, there’s no problem with that at all.”Peter Moores, Nottinghamshire’s coach

In the run chase, Brathwaite conceded only eight runs from the penultimate over to leave Notts needing 15 off the last, an equation which became six to win off the final ball. Craig Miles bowled a high full toss which Patel plinked into the leg side for only a single and the Bears started to celebrate, only to see that it had been given as a no-ball for height.That left three to win off one with Tom Moores back on strike (no-balls are worth two runs in English domestic cricket rather than the usual one) and Patel, at the non-striker’s end, walked off to be replaced by Harrison, a quicker runner. He charged through for one but Moores could only dig Miles’ yorker out to extra cover, sealing a one-run win for the Bears.”Calvin was still in the dressing room because he wasn’t next in and with six off the last ball there was no relevance,” Peter Moores explained, “but with the no-ball, Alex Hales walked outside on the balcony and looked across at me and Dan [Christian, Notts’ captain] and we shouted up and indicated for Calvin.”Samit realised what was going on and we swapped it around. Calvin’s got a few years on Samit and we know that an extra yard is quite a bit when it comes to a run-out. It seemed to make sense at the time. It’s a quirk in the rules but it made sense at the time.”Patel’s retirement was reminiscent of another incident earlier this year which saw Jordan Silk retire hurt in similar circumstances. Silk had been sent out to target a short leg-side boundary in the final stages of Sydney Sixers’ BBL Challenger final game against Adelaide Strikers having earlier pulled a hamstring in the field.Related

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Silk taken out retired hurt with one ball remaining and two runs to win

When he found himself off strike ahead of the final ball with two runs required, he was replaced by a fully-fit batter in Jay Lenton; while Silk was officially retired hurt, due to his injury, the situation was effectively the same as the one at Edgbaston. Incidentally, Christian was in the batting team’s dugout on both occasions.”It’s one of those quirks that really you could only see being used in the shorter formats because otherwise wickets are too valuable,” Moores said. “It’s got to be a unique set of circumstances and a shortened game like that has more chance of throwing it up than a full T20 game. I don’t think we’re going to see lots of it because I don’t think the circumstances are going to happen very often in a way that feels like there’s going to be a competitive advantage.”The rule is there and so I think it’s fair to use it. People make comments about this, that and the other but for me, when Carlos walked off, there’s no problem with that at all. I don’t think it will happen very often. If it’s going to happen, it’ll be in those really short games because otherwise the value of people that are in is too high.”

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