At the Christchurch ground ravaged by the 2011 earthquake, only memories remain of what was once the city’s sporting hub

Karthik Krishnaswamy07-Mar-2020The ghosts of long-gone landmarks hover around certain neighbourhoods. To get to where I grew up in Chennai, for example, you would get off at a bus stop named Liberty, and walk past a handful of businesses named Liberty, but the movie theatre that gave the neighbourhood its name no longer exists. Similarly, on a larger scale, Majestic in Bengaluru.It’s my last day in New Zealand and I’m in Waltham, an inner suburb of Christchurch, standing next to a used-car dealership named Stadium Cars. Not far away is a sports bar called the Final Whistle.Both are a cricket or rugby ball’s throw away from what used to be Lancaster Park, which was the home of both sports in Christchurch, more or less, from 1881 until its demolition in the wake of extensive damage suffered during the February 2011 earthquake.This was where New Zealand played their first Test match, back in 1930. Sir Richard Hadlee, New Zealand’s greatest cricketer and Christchurch through and through, took more wickets here than anywhere else – 76 in 14 Tests, at 21.51, including six five-wicket hauls. One of them, a match-winning, series-levelling 6 for 50 in March 1987, ensured West Indies never won a series in New Zealand in the 1980s, a decade in which they won everywhere else.Richard Hadlee appeals, fruitlessly, in the only Christchurch Test in which he went wicketless•Karthik Krishnaswamy/ESPNcricinfo LtdA photograph of Hadlee, appealing desperately for a wicket against England in 1988 – his only wicketless Test in Christchurch, ironically – is part of a line-up of pictures on the fence around the levelled ground that was once Lancaster Park. There’s also one of the All Blacks legend Richie McCaw playing for the Crusaders, one of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip visiting the ground in 1963, and one from a Bon Jovi concert.There’s a gate around the corner, and all you see when you peer through the bars is acres of flat, grey wasteland. In which direction, you wonder, did Nathan Astle hit Andrew Caddick for those two massive sixes that ended up on the roof during his incredible 168-ball 222 in 2002?An aerial photograph of the stadium a little distance away doesn’t answer that question, but it contains an incredible level of detail, and you can point, pretty much, to the spot you’re standing at right now. This is where the Lancaster Park Memorial Gates, built in 1924 to commemorate athletes from the province of Canterbury who served in WWI, still stand, and will continue to stand even as redevelopment takes place around them.The building opposite the Memorial Gates still looks as it does in the photograph. It houses Leon’s on Lancaster, a café that its current owner, Leon Yee, has run with his mother Patricia for at least 15 years, and whose previous owner, Yee thinks, had had it for about as long.All that’s left of Lancaster Park now is grey wasteland, but plans are afoot to develop it into fields for cricket, rugby and football•Karthik Krishnaswamy/ESPNcricinfo LtdYee has read about Lancaster Park’s history, and knows of the time during WWII when it became a potato farm for a few years. He has made an effort to retain the old-school vibe of the café, and its walls are full of old Coke ads and rugby photographs. Out in front, above the sunroof, is a sign advertising a Christchurch cookie company; its mascot plays cricket on one side and rugby on the other.”Originally it used to be a bakery, then turned into a lunch bar, and then sort of like a dairy-lunch bar, and I turned it into a lunch bar-café,” Yee says.The earthquake ravaged much of the neighbourhood, but the café remained standing.”Just, everything shook, and yeah, a little liquefaction from this corner and over on that side,” Yee says, pointing to various neighbouring plots. “I had no problems. Because it’s an old building on piles, wooden ones, it just flexes. Not like a concrete foundation. I haven’t really checked properly underneath, but the EQC [Earthquake Commission] people, they had a look and said it’s fine.”Two houses down from the café is an empty lot that serves as an informal parking zone. You see these all over the city, apart from more visible reminders of the earthquake such as the ravaged façade of the Christchurch Cathedral.”There was a lot of industrial [buildings] and offices around here,” Yee says of the area around Lancaster Park. “Everything’s eroding still, a little bit. They haven’t really fixed everything around here, because there’s other priorities in the city, I suppose.”Leon’s, run by Leon Yee and his mother Patricia, weathered the earthquake that Lancaster Park didn’t•Karthik Krishnaswamy/ESPNcricinfo LtdA lunchtime queue from nearby businesses has come and gone, and I ask Yee how his enterprise has changed with no more sport at Lancaster Park.”I get free weekends,” he says. “I used to open up on the weekends – any events on, concerts, rugby, cricket.”Cricket was always good, because [it was on] sometimes during the week as well. Cricket [was] probably the best crowd, actually. People used to come over, it would be summer, so they’d get drinks and everything.”According to the Christchurch City Council, the site of Lancaster Park will be redeveloped and opened “for public recreational use”, with fields for rugby, football and cricket, as well as “informal, public open space and landscaped areas that reflect on the rich history of the park”.Yee suggests this will give the ground something of its original character, before stands came up all around it and turned it into a 36,000-seater stadium.”Not a big stadium, just embankments,” he says. “Going back to probably what it originally used to be. Might have to go back to work on the weekends, might have to give up golf!”And then, perhaps, the ghosts of Lancaster Park will be ghosts no more.

One man single-handedly carried his team’s batting, another bowled with fire of a different kind

Alagappan Muthu18-Oct-2020KL Rahul batting within himself is like a rainbow with only three colours. It’s nice but you kinda know there’s something missing.This is one of the few Indian batsmen who has a 360 degree game and when he stops the noise that clouds his head and lets his instincts take over, every part of his game levels up His timing. His balance. His shot selection.His chances of victory…Sunday was an excellent reminder – if only to Rahul himself – of why he should always go full VIBGYOR. His 77 off 51 balls was a masterpiece of attacking batting.And in simplicity.Rahul was finding the boundary once every five balls and all he seemed to be concentrating on was keeping a still head.He did give in to one luxury though. Clearing the front leg. It made him a total menace to Trent Boult. When the left-arm quick pitched up, he was lifted over cover for six. When he pulled his length back, he was whacked over midwicket four.That was one cog of the Mumbai Indians bowling machine in ruins. No wickets to the powerplay specialist.”After wicketkeeping for 20 overs, I knew that the first six overs was very crucial,” Rahul said at the presentation. “The wicket was slightly slower and we knew it would get slower after the six and they had decent spinners. It was important me and Mayank (Agarwal) give the team a good start, anywhere close to 50 or 60.”With Chris Gayle coming into the team, I have that freedom to go in the first six and get as many runs as possible because I know Chris and Pooran, I trust them to take down spinners. So yeah, Chris coming in has made my job as a batter a lot more easier.”Rahul hit six boundaries off the first 17 deliveries he faced and for the rest of his innings, he tried his utmost to make Kings XI choke-proof. He didn’t want any more crazy stuff happening to his team in a chase.Cue a 149 kph yorker that shatters his stumps and lets loose the crazy.Mohammed Shami bowled the Super Over for Kings XI Punjab•BCCIKings XI have buckled when things go even slightly off script. But in Dubai, where the script was ripped to shreds, put in a box, strapped to a rocket and sent into space, they found a man who was so profoundly clear of mind.Mohammed Shami was given five runs to defend in the Super Over. That’s nothing. That’s an inside edge for four and game over. Only the most extraordinary of bowlers could make this horrible situation work.Like one who had broken Alastair Cook off stump in two. Or one who reverse swung great big circles around the West Indies on debut. Or one who was India’s pride and joy at the 2015 World Cup as he ignored an ever worsening knee injury to keep charging in for them.Shami has not always hit those highs in franchise cricket, but with no other option, he willed himself to do something big here.Rohit Sharma and Quinton de Kock were waiting. Two batsmen who love getting under the ball and lofting it away.Again no margin for error.Shami put all of that aside and ran in with only one thought in mind. Hit the block hole. (“He was very clear he wanted to go six yorkers,” Rahul said)Mumbai tried everything they could to throw him off. Their captain, who is one of the cleanest hitters down the ground, was desperate enough to try scooping the ball. It was a sign that he couldn’t deal with the relentless, ferocious accuracy.No one in the history of the IPL had ever defended a single-digit score in the Super Over. Then along came Shami.

And who opens with Saeed Anwar? Our panelists discuss in the latest episode of Dream Team

Sreshth Shah03-Aug-202041:19

We pick a post-1990 Pakistan Test XI

In this episode of , Osman Samiuddin, Danyal Rasool and Ahmer Naqvi put their heads together to find Pakistan’s greatest Test XI since 1990. Watch to find out if your favourites make the cut.6:21

Shoaib Akhtar or Waqar Younis?

Nothing shouts “1990s Pakistan” like the image of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis delivering toe crushers in tandem. If their pace and wiles aren’t enough, throw in Shoaib Akhtar with his menacing speed, and the wristy magic of Mohammad Asif. Spare a thought also for Mohammad Zahid, whose brief career was good enough to earn praise from even Brian Lara. Plenty of contenders, but only three make it. Decisions, decisions.5:34

Fingerspinner or wristspinner?

Saqlain Mushtaq was at one point in this era the second-best spinner in the world. In the mid-90s, Mushtaq Ahmed was outstanding in England, New Zealand and Australia. Saeed Ajmal was a late bloomer, making his Test debut at 32, but swiftly rising to become one of the best offspinners of his generation. Danish Kaneria was great at his peak. And Yasir Shah has alternated between sensational and downright ordinary. Plenty of arguments to make for all five. Who do the pick as their chosen one?9:03

Does Babar Azam make it in the middle order?

Younis Khan provided Pakistan their batting backbone in the 2000s. Mohammad Yousuf once scored 1788 Test runs in a calendar year. Inzamam-ul-Haq’s claims cannot be ignored. Misbah-ul-Haq surprised you whenever you weren’t expecting it. Ijaz Ahmed and Azhar Ali are what people call underrated. Asad Shafiq has Sobers-like numbers at No. 6. And of course, there’s Babar Azam, who’s on his way to greatness. Which four from this lot make the team?More Dream Teams

Nobody in the past 20 years has gotten an autograph from Malcolm Marshall, and nobody ever again will

Samarth Shah04-Feb-2021Among my treasured cricketing memorabilia is a tie embroidered with the Lord’s logo, a USA cricket jersey, a photo with AB de Villiers at Kingsmead and a pavilion pass to the fifth day of the 2008 Chennai Test. However, my most prized cricketing possession is a simple piece of paper with a name written on it with a blue ball-point pen. And that name is Malcolm Marshall.Marshall was the most fearsome cricketer of my youth – a nightmare for opponents and an absolute terror to behold. I never saw Dennis Lillee or Jeff Thomson live. The great West Indies pace quartet of Andy Roberts, Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Colin Croft was before my time. I’ve also heard that the Indian spin quartet gave visiting batsmen sleepless nights. But I never saw any of those famous spinners in action, either. Viv Richards was the most intimidating batsman of my youth. He could pummel the ball and shatter a bowler’s ego, but he wasn’t out to cause you bodily harm. Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee and Ian Botham were all tremendously skilled, but not scary. No, to me, the most intimidating cricketer of the 1980s was Marshall.It’s hard to describe to a modern cricket-viewer what a terror Marshall was. In this T20 age, with sculpted batsmen, gigantic bats and all kinds of protective gear, there really doesn’t seem to be that intimidating a bowler. Sure, they may be quicker. They are most definitely taller and stronger. But they all go at eight-an-over in the IPL. Somehow, it’s hard for a viewer to feel the palms getting clammy when batsmen are dancing down the track to fast bowlers and when the scorecard reports how many sixes a bowler has conceded. It’s a different era: there are impressive bowlers, but none that send shivers down a lay viewer’s spine.Marshall wasn’t physically intimidating. He was about the shortest West Indies fast bowler there ever was. He was athletic, but not the fittest bloke in the West Indies team, let alone in world cricket. He was quick, but there were quicker bowlers before him and there have been quicker bowlers since. He wasn’t verbally menacing. Indeed, he rarely said a word to an opponent on the field. Marshall’s intimidation was through sheer skill and attitude. It is hard to put that fear into words, but I’ll try. The fear was that if he had a ball in his hand and you had all the batting gear available on earth, he could still ping you between your eyes if he wanted to. And he often seemed like he wanted to. Mike Gatting knows what I’m talking about. If your nose was such an easy target, your wicket was simply no match for him.”There are no cricketers like those seen through 12-year-old eyes,” wrote cricketer and author Ian Peebles. I met Marshall when I was 12 years old. He was hardly seven or eight inches taller than me. I stood straight, out of sheer respect. He leaned casually against a desk, a black bag slung over his shoulder. Since we were almost level, I could look him straight in the eye. He had joyful, dancing eyes and a wide, lop-sided smile on his face. He didn’t have a ball in his hand, and I wasn’t holding a bat. There was no intimidation, even though he was the greatest fast bowler in the world and I was a gawky Indian kid.Malcolm Marshall’s autograph•ESPNcricinfo LtdHe carefully put down his bag, gently took the autograph book and pen from me with each hand, and proceeded to slowly write his name in the book. He didn’t carelessly scrawl his name. He didn’t look elsewhere as his hands moved. He looked squarely at the target. He pressed the pen firmly down on the book. No half measures: the right hand that smashed a one-handed boundary at Headingley in 1984 – one-handed because the left hand was broken and in a cast – and then took 7 for 53 with the ball didn’t do half measures.Marshall’s autograph wasn’t a scribble: his handwriting was proud and neat. The autograph was so firmly signed, I couldn’t use the next page of the book because his writing got etched on that one as well. This, too, was reminiscent of his bowling. When he blew one batsman away, the next one entered the field shell-shocked, the previous ball etched in his mind. Ravi Shastri, who once walked in to face the ball after Yashpal Sharma retired hurt, knows what I’m talking about.Marshall returned the autograph book and pen, saying, “You’re welcome,” in response to my thanks. Still smiling widely, and lop-sidedly. If his autograph was reminiscent of his bowling, his manner was its exact opposite: slow and gentle. That evening, I showed my father the autograph book, with Marshall’s name slanting across the page, much like his bowling run-up. My father ran his fingers over the two heavily stressed capital s and remarked, “He puts more effort into his autograph than you put into your cricket practices!”Years later, my sister got an autograph from the great Carnatic classical singer MS Subbulakshmi, who was over 80 years old at the time. Her autograph reminded me of Marshall’s: it was meticulously inscribed, gouging a deep rut in the paper and in a handwriting so neat that it could have been print. My sister was, to borrow a phrase, bowled over by how polite and gentle the great singer had been to a teenaged girl.A decade after he signed my autograph book, Marshall was no more. He died of colon cancer at just 41 years of age. It was so sad that the most fearsome cricketer of his era was reduced to 25 kilos in the days preceding his death. I tried to imagine what a fully-grown man weighing 25 kilos looks like. Let alone wield a cricket bat or a 5.5oz ball, I imagined he might not have been able to write his full name with a pen. Never mind immaculate control over line and length, seam and swing.Nobody in the past 20 years has gotten an autograph from the late, great Malcolm Marshall, and nobody ever will again. My drawer of memorabilia might get another t-shirt or a tie with some logo or the other. Maybe someday a picture with Sachin Tendulkar or Shane Warne might be added to it. But its most precious contents will always remain that old piece of paper with the two blue Ms pressed deep into it.

The LPL doesn’t need to be an overwhelming success as long as it provides a foundation to return year-on-year

Andrew Fidel Fernando25-Nov-2020It seems almost ludicrous now, but between 2009 and 2014 no T20 team was more dynamic than Sri Lanka. Their win/loss record during those five years (34 wins, 19 losses) was comfortably the best in the world. In World T20 tournaments, they were the most dominant, making three finals in four campaigns, before winning in 2014.And there was an innovative magic here. A sense that as even Tillakaratne Dilshan reverse-slapped his way through the powerplay, or Ajantha Mendis bewitched an opposition top order, yet more adventure lay in wait. Often it did. Rangana Herath, though almost rigidly orthodox on the surface, would make abrupt appearances in must-win games to wrestle oppositions to the ground. Test-match fields (short leg, slip, leg slip) and would be transposed so exactly on to a T20 field, it felt like the whole stadium had entered a fever dream. Sri Lanka were not unbeatable, but damn were they good. And man were they good to watch.ALSO READ: LPL 2020 ready for take-off – powered by stars, riding the crest of chaosHow much they have slipped in six years. Sri Lanka would have had to qualify for this year’s T20 World Cup, had it been played in October as originally scheduled. Since the start of 2017, they have lost twice as many T20 matches as they have won, and a good portion of even these victories were built upon the bowling of Lasith Malinga, who has increasingly seemed a weathered monument to the golden age. In too many matches, Sri Lanka are not only outgunned on paper, they are also out-scrapped, and – here is the clearest sign of decline for a Sri Lanka side – out-thought.That Sri Lanka’s domestic cricket is poor preparation for international cricket is known, but of the three formats, none has been so wantonly neglected as T20. In some years – as in 2018 – Sri Lanka Cricket has organised club-based T20 tournament contested by as many as 23 teams, meaning no fewer than 243 players featured in each round. The result was a competition of embarrassingly diluted quality.In years in which more of an effort has been made, the pinnacle T20 competition has been a hastily dashed together “provincial tournament” in which 60 players are more-or-less haphazardly funnelled into four teams. When these tournaments happen, they last less than two weeks. While almost every other major league in the world, from the Caribbean Premier League to New Zealand’s Super Smash has grown in either length, quality or both, Sri Lanka has persisted with what are essentially glorified intra-squad practice matches of vanishingly modest benefit to both board and players. Overseas, the likes of Jasprit Bumrah, Shadab Khan, Adam Zampa, Evin Lewis, Hardik Pandya and Tom Banton have built careers on the back of T20 league performances. In Sri Lanka, national selectors have largely ignored the results of whatever competition had been cobbled together that year.The Sri Lankan team lifts the World T20 trophy•ICCThat Sri Lanka will finally get a T20 franchise tournament off the ground in 2020 of all years, epitomises the nation’s cricket. Baffling as it is that it has taken this long for a franchise tournament to be attempted, there is also appreciation of the slap-dash brilliance in having organised one in the year a pandemic rips across the planet.There must also be managed expectations, however. The Lanka Premier League will not suddenly undo years of active harm on the domestic cricket front. This league is only 21 days long, has a hectic schedule with double-headers on most days, and will all take place on a single ground. Teams have had practically no time to prepare and plan, and the best on-paper side – Colombo Kings – only got their coach in the week before their first match. Many foreign players may be walking straight out of quarantine into their first match. And the tournament is almost certain to lose money.But then, so what? The first rains after a drought don’t have to bring a downpour. That such a tournament is even starting is enough, for now. Sri Lanka stood on the brink of T20 oblivion, driving bullock carts while other teams rode bullet trains, the format’s data revolution having almost totally passed them by. Now, finally, the island’s cricket is being invested in – franchise owners hailing from as far afield as Canada and the United States, in addition to UAE, Pakistan and India.Whatever its cricketing quality, there are two areas in which the tournament cannot compromise. It cannot be tainted with corruption, for starters. Not only has Sri Lankan cricket been subject to a substantial anti-corruption investigation over the last five years, SLC’s previous T20 franchise tournament – 2012’s Sri Lanka Premier League – had been riddled with credible corruption allegations, which led to the downfall of that league after a single iteration. Second, it is vital that cricketers are paid the fees they expect, for without buy-in from foreign players, future versions of the LPL will not draw the funds from sponsors and broadcasters that will sustain the league.And this year, putting down that bedrock of trust this is really what the LPL is about. It does not necessarily have to be a stellar tournament. It only has to ensure it returns next year, and then the year after that, to stand a chance of reversing Sri Lanka’s T20 descent.

Trio hasn’t played long-form cricket since March, and weren’t included in the XI for the second T20I either

Sidharth Monga06-Dec-2020T20I > Test warm-upTouring teams often complain these days that they hardly get decent opposition during tour games, which makes them less preferable to intense training sessions within the team. This Australia A side, though, was way better than just decent. It included Test captain Tim Paine, regulars Travis Head and Joe Burns, squad members James Pattinson, Will Pucovski, Michael Neser and Cameron Green, and also Jackson Bird, good enough to walk into this Indian side as the third seamer.However, India chose not to release any of the Test players in their T20I squad though none of them has played multi-days cricket since March. Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami and Mayank Agarwal didn’t even feature in the second T20I at the SCG. It is not like they were overworked: Agarwal and one out of Bumrah and Shami had missed each of India’s last two limited-overs internationals.Navdeep Saini, who had two disappointing ODIs before being dropped, could have used this opportunity to stake a claim for the format experts feel he is best suited to, especially at a time when India are scrambling for a third seamer in Ishant Sharma’s absence.Not sparing KL Rahul is understandable with an international series there for the taking, but could India have given one or two of the other Test regulars game time instead of them just sitting and watching a T20 international?Prithvi Shaw started his Australia tour with a duck•Getty ImagesDucks for both openersThough it is assumed that Agarwal is a lock in the opening role, there are question marks over who his partner will be. The incumbent Prithvi Shaw has had an ordinary year throughout, although that included only three first-class matches before this one. His IPL form might be in a completely different format, but he now has four ducks in his last seven innings. More than just the score though, what will worry India is the shot he played to get out today: a nothing push to a wide delivery, which even when middled wouldn’t have fetched a run. That is nothing but a recipe for disaster against the new ball in Australia.His competitor by the looks of it, Shubman Gill, faced only one delivery which seamed back in to take a healthy inside edge onto the pad only to be ballooned for a catch to slip. It wasn’t what anyone would call a bad shot, but he didn’t bat long enough to see what kind of form he is in. In theory, there are three more innings left before the first Test for both Shaw and Gill to impress the team management.Hanuma Vihari ahead of RahaneRahane will – by virtue of being appointed vice-captain – lead India once regular captain Virat Kohli leaves for paternity leave after the first Test. That makes his form further more important after starting his last few series with a question mark over his place in the side. He began nervously, playing and missing and even edging the medium-pacer Mark Steketee, but got into his work even as wickets fell at the other end. Whenever he got the opportunity, he transferred the pressure back by punishing every loose ball. The short delivery asked a few questions of him even when he was set, but overall the unbeaten 108 will lend him good confidence going into the Tests.However, there was another possible pointer: he didn’t promote himself to No. 4 in Kohli’s absence. Usually you see batsmen go one position up when someone is missing, but the Indians instead promoted Vihari for this game. Possibly Rahane is comfortable with his No. 5 spot with Vihari moving above him once Kohli leaves, leaving the No. 6 for one of Gill, Rahul or even Rohit Sharma to grab.Leg gully for PujaraAustralia’s Test captain Paine would have started getting déjà vu of the disconcerting sight of Pujara’s backside as he got into his usual attempt to grind out the bowling: 167 balls for his 69. However, this time there were slightly funky fields in place to test out certain plans: leg gully at first followed by silly mid-on later. Then something rare happened: a well-set Pujara fell against an Australian side without maximising the start when Pattinson had him gloving a short ball to leg gully. The short ball did trouble Pujara in New Zealand, but that is a side equipped with an attack – thanks to left-armer Neil Wagner – that can bother nearly anyone with the short ball. Do watch out, though, for the leg gully if Pujara gets in during the Tests.Travis Head celebrates a wicket•Getty ImagesWriddhiman Saha preferred to Rishabh PantPant has been India’s first-choice wicketkeeper in overseas Tests for his batting ability as well as because teams don’t need the purest of wicketkeeping on pitches that don’t turn. However, India chose to go with Saha in the tour game. This could change by the time the first Test arrives, though tour games have often been good indicators of what India intend to do in Tests. In New Zealand, for example, Pant batted ahead of Saha.Be that as it may, Saha managed just a duck here, thanks to what seemed a dubious lbw call to an offspinner from around the wicket as the ball might have pitched outside leg.Pattinson stakes a claimEither through injury or due to plenty of fast-bowling riches, Pattinson having played only 21 matches so far is a loss to Test cricket. Among those who have taken at least 80 Test wickets, Pattinson’s strike rate of 48.9 is No. 16. It is just that two men ahead of him are also part of the current Australian attack: Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc. However, Starc has taken leave to tend to an illness in family and has not been in great form in the internationals so far this summer. If Starc doesn’t make it to Adelaide, Pattinson has made a right claim to that spot with a three-for, including the wicket of a well-set Pujara.Head captains PaineIt is interesting that Australia’s Test captain Paine was on the field but was led by Head. An equivalent of that would be Vihari leading Kohli in a match. There is already talk of Australia grooming Head for a possible leadership role in the future, but in the here and the now, at some point in the series, Head and Matthew Wade might come under pressure from Green to even keep that middle-order position.Green is a bowler who gets disconcerting bounce not much unlike Kyle Jamieson, who troubled India earlier in the year in New Zealand. However, Green’s bowling workload is being micro-managed: spells no longer than four overs, not more than eight overs in a day. And Head himself made an audition for the role of a part-time – and the only – spinner in the Australia A XI today, bringing himself on to relieve the fast bowlers and even ending up with the wickets of Saha and Kuldeep Yadav.

His all-round ability with the ball, bat and on the field has proven invaluable throughout the series

Sidharth Monga08-Jan-2021Ravindra Jadeja replaced Virat Kohli in this Indian XI. When it was done, it seemed – and still does – a move from a side that knew its attack was thin and was picking players to cover too many bases. India were hedging their bets a bit by replacing a specialist batsman and a pure wicketkeeper with a bowler who could bat and a wicketkeeper in Rishabh Pant who could bat too.While it can be called hedging the bets, there probably wasn’t an option available to India at that time. They had lost Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Shami, and would not want in their attack a debutant seamer and Umesh Yadav, who is not renowned for his control. They needed some bowling cover so they showed they had the courage to not reinforce the batting in a traditional way after the 36 all out in Adelaide.Ravindra Jadeja bagged 4 for 62 before also running out Steven Smith•Getty ImagesIt looked a little like England on tours of Asia, where their frontline spinners aren’t incrementally that good over the bits-and-pieces spinners to forego their batting. This was a different case, though. This was more like England playing Chris Woakes in place of a specialist batsman in Asia, which they rarely do.Related

He has barely warmed up, and Ravindra Jadeja is already changing games – in 3D

It's not lack of intent, it's Cheteshwar Pujara's method and it works for him

Australia's batting ills continue despite Smith ton

Six days of Test cricket later, Jadeja has scored a crucial half-century at the MCG, taken seven wickets including a four-for at the SCG at an average of 15, taken an exceptional catch to start an Australia collapse in Melbourne and also run Steven Smith out when he finally got back in the runs. Even though Jadeja has not bowled as much as the first-choice spinner R Ashwin, he has been in the game almost all the time. The impact that Jadeja has had almost makes you want to reassess the “hedge” category initially assigned to his selection.The big difference between someone like Woakes and Jadeja, though, is the vast improvement in Jadeja’s batting. He is likelier to score runs against fast bowlers than Woakes is against spinners. Jadeja is not quite a No. 5 batsman, but has begun to push from the Woakes category towards the Ben Stokes one.Since the start of 2016, only Quinton de Kock averages more than Jadeja’s 43.92 batting at No. 7 or lower. In the six Tests he has played outside Asia and the West Indies, he has averaged 45.16. Granted that Cheteshwar Pujara bats in tough periods, but since the start of 2018 Jadeja has more runs per innings than even Pujara. The big difference now is that he trusts his game and doesn’t back away and hit as he used to at the start of his career.At the press conference after day two in Sydney, Jadeja was asked if this change in approach to batting over the last 18 months or so meant he had started to think of himself as a genuine allrounder. “Not just the last 12-18 months,” Jadeja said. “Long before that – and in all three formats – I have to perform both in batting and bowling department. Since the day I have started playing, that has been my role. But it is all about getting the opportunity; whenever I have got the opportunity to score runs or take wickets, I have done that. Especially when I score runs outside India, it gets talked about more. But, according to me, I have always considered myself an allrounder.”The team management has recognised it and started to give him more responsibility. “The higher I bat, the more responsibility I take,” Jadeja said. “Batting with a batsman, you talk to them, [and] get the confidence. And most importantly, I have time to play a proper innings. If I can initially get that start with a batsman, I can play in my flow. The more I bat higher up, the better it is.”So far on the Australia tour, Ravindra Jadeja has a half-century, a four-wicket haul and some brilliant fielding to his name•Getty ImagesStill, he was batting at No. 7, which meant India were replacing a batsman with someone who was a bowler first, someone who wouldn’t ideally be playing, especially with another spinner in the XI, in Melbourne of all places. The last time two spinners played in a Test XI in Melbourne was when India went in with both Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh in 2007-08. The idea behind that selection was for India to choose their four best bowlers no matter the conditions.Ashwin averages 25.20 and Jadeja 24.50, but so good have India’s three quicks been that it has rarely been the case where they consider both of them to be along the four best bowlers for conditions outside Asia and the West Indies. Even when they have played two spinners in Tests outside Asia and the West Indies under this team management, the second spinner has been Kuldeep Yadav, who brings in the wristspin variety.The real merit in this selection of Jadeja has been that not playing both Ashwin and Jadeja together has been a perfectly reasonable thought process. To go against that is a bold move, one that the conditions demanded. Now it was up to Jadeja to vindicate that trust.Jadeja is a bowler who is slightly unfortunate to have operated in the times of Ashwin. With the more apparent guile of Ashwin, Jadeja’s bowing can tend to go unnoticed. His numbers are not too far behind either; in fact, his average is better. Jadeja has only one fewer Player-of-the-Match award than Ashwin, although the senior spinner has more series awards. Only ten Indians have won more Player-of-the-Match awards than Jadeja’s six. No one has a better rate than his: one every six Tests or so.It was perhaps fair that he enjoyed some luck on the crucial second day of the Sydney Test, which Australia started at 166 for 2 with the threat of batting India out of the game. There will be days when Jadeja will bowl much better than he did on this day and not end up with a wicket. Here he got four despite being cut away for four often and conceding an un-Jadeja-like 3.44 an over. This is perhaps a reward for someone who always stays in the game and keeps bowling at the wickets all the time.And in the game Jadeja well and truly was when he ran in about 25 yards for a one-handed pick-up and direct hit from about 35 yards to hit the only stump visible to him to run Smith out. He rated that higher than the wickets he took. Thanks to the extra dimension Jadeja’s inclusion has added, India too are in the game and the series.

Former England fast bowler on a new diversity and inclusion initiative at Middlesex

Andrew Miller06-Apr-2021Norman Cowans, the first West Indies-born fast bowler to play Test cricket for England, hopes that a new initiative from his former county Middlesex can help to reignite a passion for the game in the inner-city London communities where he learnt the sport as a teenager.Cowans, who played 19 Tests and 23 ODIs between 1982 to 1985, was an integral member of the most successful Middlesex team of all time, as well as its most ethnically representative. During his 13 years at the club, he helped secure ten trophies, including four County Championships, and claimed 532 first-class wickets in that period at 22.57.Alongside his fellow England cricketers, Roland Butcher, Wilf Slack and Neil Williams, as well as the West Indies fast bowler, Wayne Daniel, Cowans frequently took the field for Middlesex as one of five black cricketers – a ratio that reflects the ethnic mix of such boroughs as Haringey, Harrow and Brent that fall squarely within the club’s catchment area.And it is those parts of London that Middlesex will be reaching out to with their new Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan, as they seek to address the decline of interest in cricket among black communities since the heyday of the 1980s, and address the biases – conscious or unconscious – within the county’s structure that have contributed to that drop-off.”Middlesex is one of the most diverse counties around, and for many, many years the club was very successful,” Cowans told ESPNcricinfo. “We want to try and bring that diversity back to the county, by reaching out to different communities, and making them feel more a part of the club.”When I was playing, back in the day, we had five black guys in the team, plus Raj Maru who was Asian. We had a very diverse team, and it encouraged others to come forward and think, ‘yeah, we can be part of that team as well’.”Obviously, since then, there’s been a decline in diversity, and Middlesex has realised that we need to reach back into those communities and make them feel more welcome, because the talent is always out there. They just need a pathway, and a feeling that they too can belong, and that there are no barriers to what they can achieve.”A series of roadshows are planned in 2021, which will take the club out to community centres throughout North-West and East London to renew those neglected ties, while the club will also promote a Thursday-evening T20 competition from 2022 onwards that will be open to all clubs in the county, with an equivalent competition for schools too.Norman Cowans in action against New Zealand in 1983•Getty Images”Sometimes cricket can look a bit snobbish and expensive,” Cowans said. “Football is so much cheaper, guys can just get a ball, have a kick-around, work on their skills, and they might get spotted by a coach while playing in a park on a Sunday.”It’s not so easy for cricket. Just the cost of the equipment can put people off, let alone the facilities. So we’re looking to try and address that, and provide some funding for people who are less fortunate, rather than those who went to private schools where everything was paid for. It makes a huge difference, because that’s what will get the talent coming through.”Cowans knows from personal experience how quickly a passion for the game can take hold, having managed to persuade his maths teacher to lay on lunchtime lessons at his school in North London in the 1970s. Within a couple of years, the team that he helped set up was good enough to reach the finals of the Harrow Schools competition, and his pathway into the game was set.However, Cowans also acknowledged that, to grow up in a Caribbean community in the 1980s, with West Indies the pre-eminent team in the world, and Test matches available on free-to-air TV, also had a huge impact on his interest in the sport.”If people see themselves being represented in the media, it just feels more attainable and accessible,” he said. “Kids love to imitate their heroes, so to actually see successful people on TV looking like yourself, they are bound to think they can do that as well.”And that was the example I felt when Roland Butcher played for England,” Cowans added, recalling his pride at watching his Middlesex team-mate become England’s first black Test cricketer, at Bridgetown in 1981.”I said to myself, if Roland can do it, I can as well, because if you had the talent, there was no barrier at Middlesex. Mike Brearley was captain when I started, and he was very encouraging to players with ability. No matter your age, colour or creed, you would be in the team.”Cowans’ own England career started with a flourish the following year, with a starring role in England’s thrilling three-run victory over Australia at Melbourne in 1982-83, but it would end abruptly in the summer of 1985, when – after managing a long-term hernia issue – he was dropped after the first Test of that summer’s Ashes series in spite of England’s five-wicket win.”It’s a mystery to me why my international career was not prolonged,” he said. “But what can you do about it? I know that I was good enough and maybe should have played ahead of many other guys. But that was the way things were in those days.Related

Surrey recruit Sean Abbott for 2021 season

Head, Handscomb turn thoughts to England

A thriller turns 30

“I played one Test against Australia in 1985, which we won, and I was dropped and never played again, which is ridiculous. All that experience wasted.”But I am very proud of what I’ve achieved in the opportunities that I was given,” he added. “I was proud of going to Australia as an unknown, and helping England to win a Test match. I took a five-wicket haul in Pakistan, which was a great experience, and I played in all of the Test matches in India in 1984-85, which was one of my most satisfying tours. We were given no price but came back to win 2-1.”I remember coming off the pitch in the first Test in Mumbai. Kapil Dev came up to me and said, ‘Norman, West Indies were over here in the series before this. The way you bowled today, you were as fast as any of them’. To get that from Kapil Dev, that’s good enough for me.”I think people recognise that you have to look after the players more now. And fast bowlers, when they tell you they are injured, you really need to investigate it. Because you want them to maintain their pace.”In spite of the brevity of his England career, Cowans knows that he made a lasting impact for the British Caribbean community, and paved the way for several players who would go on to be household names throughout the 1990s.”I remember Devon Malcolm telling me how he came up and asked for my autograph when I was playing against Yorkshire at Abbeydale Park,” Cowans said. “‘When I saw you playing for England,’ he told me, ‘I thought I could do it too.'””It has a knock-on effect. And it’s the same at counties and in communities in club cricket. If people are encouraging youngsters to take part in the sport, they will feel they belong to the club. We want to roll this back across the county, and give kids the opportunity to progress.”

Also: what is the lowest run-aggregate for a completed first-class match?

Steven Lynch06-Apr-2021 There were 651 runs in the final ODI at Pune. Was this a record for a match without an individual hundred? asked Ray Penson from South Africa

The highest score in that exciting one-day international in Pune last week was Sam Curran’s unbeaten 95. There has been only one ODI that produced more runs but no individual centuries: in Port Elizabeth in 2001-02, Australia (330 for 7) beat South Africa (326 for 3) in a match that produced 656 runs but a highest individual score of 92, by Ricky Ponting. There have been 23 other ODIs with a total of 600 or more runs, but no centuries.Curran’s score equalled the highest by a No. 8 in one-day internationals, set by Chris Woakes for England against Sri Lanka at Trent Bridge in 2015.Both Tests in the recent West Indies vs Sri Lanka series were drawn – when was the last 0-0 draw in a Test series? asked Rishi Ramaswamy from the United States

It has been nearly six years since all the Tests in a series have been drawn – in the rather soggy two-match encounter between Bangladesh and South Africa in Bangladesh in 2015. The last three-Test series to comprise three draws involved New Zealand and England, in 2012-13.In all there have now been 40 Test series which ended up 0-0. That includes 17 of two Tests, 17 of three, and two of four matches. There have even been four five-Test series in which all five games ended in draws: India vs Pakistan in 1954-55,
Pakistan vs India in 1960-61, India vs England in 1963-64, and West Indies vs New Zealand in 1971-72.Seven different England bowlers took wickets in India’s innings in the last of the recent one-day internationals – was this a record? asked Alan White from England

You’re right that seven England bowlers claimed wickets in the third ODI in Pune last week: Mark Wood took three and Adil Rashid two, while Moeen Ali, Sam Curran, Liam Livingstone, Ben Stokes and Reece Topley had one each.This actually equals the record for an ODI innings: there have been four previous instances of seven wicket-takers, by New Zealand against India in Auckland in 1975-76, New Zealand vs Sri Lanka in Dunedin in 1990-91, Netherlands vs Bermuda in Rotterdam in 2007, and Australia vs Scotland in Edinburgh in 2009.The 1878 Australian team that skittled MCC for 33 and 19. Fred Spofforth (seated, extreme left) took 6 for four in the first innings, Harry Boyle (seated, extreme right) 6 for 3 in the second.•The Cricketer InternationalWhat is the lowest run-aggregate for a completed first-class match? asked SM Nazmus Shakib from Bangladesh

The fewest runs in a first-class game is 85, in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy match between Quetta (41 all out) and Rawalpindi (44 for 1) in Islamabad in 2008-09: it was all over in 20.1 overs. There were unusual circumstances: bad weather had prevented any play on the first two days, and both sides forfeited their first innings.The lowest for a game in which all four innings were played is 105 runs, in the match between MCC (33 and 19) and the touring Australians (41 in 66.2 four-ball overs, and 12 for 1) at Lord’s in 1878. It was all over in one day – Fred “The Demon” Spofforth took 6 for 4 in MCC’s first innings, and Harry Boyle 6 for 3 in the second. WG Grace was out second ball in the first innings, for four, and made a duck in the second.”One of the most remarkable matches ever played at Lord’s was commenced at three minutes past 12, and concluded at 20 minutes past six the same day,” said Wisden, which went on to report that at the end, “a stream of at least one thousand men rushed frantically up to the pavilion, where they clustered, and lustily shouted ‘Well done Australia’, ‘Bravo Spofforth’, ‘Boyle, Boyle’ &c, &c; the members of the MCC keenly joining in the applause of that ‘maddened crowd’, who shouted themselves hoarse before they left to scatter far and wide that evening the news, how in one day the Australians had so easily defeated one of the strongest MCC elevens that had ever played for the famous old club.”How often has a first-class hat-trick involved three catches, all by the same fieldsman – not a wicketkeeper – which just happened in a match in Dunedin? asked Russell Smith from New Zealand

The instance you’re talking about was achieved by Otago’s Dale Phillips, off the bowling of seamer Michael Rae, in the Plunket Shield match against Central Districts at Dunedin’s University Oval last week. Phillips, the brother of the New Zealand Test player Glenn, was fielding at short leg.There had been four previous hat-tricks in first-class cricket involving the same fielder. The first was by George Thompson off the bowling of Sydney Smith for Northamptonshire against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in 1914, and they were followed by Cyril White (off Raymond Beesly) for Border vs Griqualand West in Queenstown in South Africa in 1946-47. More recently, Ali Waqas caught three in a row off Samiullah Khan for Sui Northern Gas in Peshawar in 2014-15, and Marcus Trescothick took three in a row off Craig Overton for Somerset against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge in 2018.There have also been five wicketkeeping hat-tricks, all of them caught, apart from Sam Brain’s three successive stumpings off Charles Townsend for Gloucestershire against Somerset at Cheltenham in 1893.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

On Sunday, the cricket at Sabina Park echoed some of the very best West Indies-Pakistan contests there have ever been

Danyal Rasool16-Aug-2021Port-of-Spain, 1988. Curtly Ambrose has just got rid of Javed Miandad for 102, Viv Richards taking the catch to deal a potentially lethal blow to Pakistan’s hopes of a stunning fourth-innings chase. Soon after, Malcom Marshall traps Wasim Akram in front. Richards removes Saleem Yousuf, and it’s down to the last man Abdul Qadir to survive the final five deliveries. He keeps Richards, soon to be declared the Player of the Match, out. Pakistan have drawn a classic in Trinidad, in what will go down as one of the classic series of the era.The Sisyphean task of following those two divine cricket sides has been a ball and chain around West Indian and Pakistani necks in the decades since. The decline of what were then cricketing behemoths has been well-documented and, for dramatic purposes, sometimes overblown. Players from both sides of that era relish opportunities to dig the boot in, making unfavourable comparisons between their teams and the pale imitations that have followed in their footsteps. West Indies will shrink into cricketing obscurity for a while, and Pakistan descend into farce. They might be on opposite sides of the world, but somehow the sun has set on these two giants simultaneously.Thirty-three years later, the sun rises once more. Not in the Caribbean, nor in Karachi, but where it never used to set. Lord’s, 2021. The traditional home of cricket is at the centre of the cricketing world’s attention, not just because of England, but the team they host. India leads cricket’s attention economy now. It’s an absorbing Test match in its own right, in a packed stadium, and when old memories begin to stir 5000 miles away in Jamaica, barely anyone notices.West Indies and Pakistan are playing Test cricket once more, empty stands their backdrop. That might be because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the days of full crowds and global attention for West Indies-Pakistan contests have long gone anyway. With quiet dignity, West Indies are trying to reignite the dying embers of the Fire in Babylon, while Pakistan, equal parts inspirational and cack-handed, search for stability and try to steer themselves back to something approaching that 1980s unit.There are no Marshalls or Imran Khans here but only those held hostage by nostalgia would insist the denouement at Sabina Park wasn’t worth watching in its own right.Antigua, 2000: An inspired Wasim Akram couldn’t quite prevent West Indies from sneaking a one-wicket win•AFPBabar Azam is crucial for Pakistan at the start of the final day, West Indies sniffing menacingly at the tail. But the vagaries of Test cricket kick in. Early in the day, a Kyle Mayers delivery hits a crack nowhere to be found for the remainder of the day. It grows big on Babar, and goes to slip. Jayden Seales, far from being alive in 1988, was not even born when, in 2001, a Jimmy Adams-led West Indies side stole a one-wicket win over Pakistan in Antigua. He runs through the tail, casually tumbling over an Alf Valentine record in the process.Pakistan set a target of 168. Forget 1988: this is the same target Abdul Hafeez Kardar’s team had set in 1954 at the Oval. The total that Fazal Mahmood defended for him exactly 67 years ago to the day, running through England in England to produce perhaps the most inspirational origin story in Test-match cricket. The baton has now passed to Babar and Shaheen Shah Afridi, each born more than four decades after that triumph.History can weigh you down, but Afridi seems uplifted. He tears through the West Indies top order. Jermaine Blackwood, born in Jamaica, comes to the crease. He’s been under pressure because of his ostensibly cavalier approach to Test batting; many of the traditional old guard might almost view it as iconoclastic. But in a low-scoring match, quick runs are gold dust, and he gets 55 of them.The shadows lengthen, the skies darken, and the sun really does begin to set. It’s perhaps setting on the West Indies, a middle-order collapse having left the last three surely too much to do. But Kemar Roach is raging against the dying light. The most experienced player out there for West Indies, he will later say it was the first time he’d found himself in such a situation.It doesn’t show. As the runs tick on and Pakistan begin to panic, the ghosts of Antigua are hard to dismiss. There was much bitterness from Pakistan after West Indies’ one-wicket heist on that day, fans to this day adamant it was the umpiring that cost Pakistan the game. There was some truth to that, and had that Test been played with DRS, both Adams and last man Courtney Walsh might not have survived to hit the winning runs. But Pakistan, as ever, had their own chances too. A couple of run-outs, farcically missed, meant it needn’t have come to that at all.Jayden Seales became the youngest West Indies bowler to take a Test-match five-for•AFP/Getty ImagesIn the present, in Jamaica, Pakistan are playing without DRS once more, having frivolously burned all their reviews. But with the game coming to an excruciating end, both sides are having trouble holding their nerve. Roach goes after a short ball and sends it straight down Hasan Ali’s throat at midwicket. Hasan drops it. Pakistan might have blamed the umpires in Antigua, but they have only themselves to castigate here.Roach repeatedly trusts the teenager Seales with plenty of the strike, and much as Walsh kept Akram out in Antigua, Seales is up to fending Afridi off. It’s down to the last rites now. Hasan to Roach is not Marshall to Akram, but it’s difficult to imagine the viewing could have been more compelling. An edge evades a desperate dive from Mohammad Rizwan, and scampers away for four. A few minutes earlier, Rizwan had bucked the trend of Pakistani fielding ineptitude, sprinting half the length of the ground at a pace that might have impressed Jamaican sprinters, taking a sprawling catch close to the boundary. But against this West Indies side, one moment of magic wasn’t enough, and Pakistan desperately needed him to pluck that nick out of thin air, too.Roach knocks off the final runs, and this West Indies side has done what Richards’ men failed to do in Trinidad all those years ago. In an empty stadium, the groundstaff, the production crew, make no pretence to neutrality, bursting into yelps of glee as the West Indian players storm the pitch. Hasan sinks to the ground, his eyes beginning to shimmer, and Roach reaches out and helps him back up, enveloping him in a warm embrace. There’s no crowd to be heard, but you can feel the roars across the Caribbean filling your ears, the perfect soundtrack to nigh-on the perfect Test match.The sun sets, and the world’s attention, for the most flickering of moments drawn to Jamaica, will invariably switch to London overnight. But in crystal twilight at Sabina Park, two cricketing nations tethered to historical successes have broken free to produce a modern classic fit to stand on its own.