He had moved to the country to pursue a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, but has now become part of USA cricket’s folklore

Shashank Kishore07-Jun-20241:19

Jaffer: Saurabh Netravalkar’s got a great story

In 2010, Saurabh Netravalkar endured heartbreak against Pakistan in the quarter-final of the Under-19 World Cup in Christchurch. Babar Azam was in the opponent’s camp that day, as Pakistan pipped India by two wickets in a rain-affected thriller.Fourteen years later, he had the opportunity to win for his new country, the USA, a T20 World Cup game against Pakistan. Tasked to bowl the Super Over, Netravalkar defended 18 as USA recorded a famous win that gives them a great chance of securing an entry into the Super Eights.If they do – they still have two more games against Ireland and India – Netravalkar may have to extend his official leave at his day job, which is set to end on June 17, by a couple of weeks at the very least. It’s likely he will never have to explain to his American colleagues the reason for it.Related

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A day to believe cricket is not just an American Dream

All he will need to do is direct them to one of the many Instagram reels that have already popped up about this geeky Indian guy who moved to the USA to pursue a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering but has now become part of USA cricket’s folklore.Netravalkar, 32, harboured the dream of playing for India for the longest time. He was a bristling left-arm quick who rattled Yuvraj Singh’s stumps at the NCA in Bengaluru way back in 2009 while on Air India’s sports scholarship. The next thing he knew was that delivery had earned him a ticket to play in the then-prestigious BCCI Corporate Trophy.He was suddenly sharing a dressing room with Yuvraj, Suresh Raina and Robin Uthappa, all India stars by then. A certain Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni were among those in the opponent camp. Netravalkar, not yet 18 then, finished the tournament as the joint-highest wicket-taker and was on the plane with the Indian team for the Under-19 World Cup, alongside the likes of KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Jaydev Unadkat, Mandeep Singh and Harshal Patel.Playing in that tournament meant missing the entire first semester exams of his Computer Engineering degree that he had enrolled for six months earlier. That was the first big call he had needed to make in his cricket career.Netravalkar had hoped his performance in the World Cup – he was India’s highest wicket-taker in the competition – would pave the way for a berth in the senior Mumbai set-up, and perhaps even an IPL contract. The opportunities for Mumbai were few and far between, with Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan, Aavishkar Salvi and a young Dhawal Kulkarni making it difficult for the youngster to break in.Netravalkar finally made his Ranji Trophy debut in 2013. Incidentally, he had just made another tough call only a few months earlier. He had given up a job as a software testing engineer in Pune to go all-in on cricket for the next two years.But being in and out of the set-up even after two years pushed him to make another call when he received an offer for admission from Cornell University in New York in August 2015. His strong academic credentials and keen interest in cricket, which helped him develop a player-analysis app CricDecode, had earned him a scholarship.As he finished graduate school, Netravalkar was offered a job by Oracle in San Francisco. Having moved to the country without his cricket kit, Netravalkar began playing recreational cricket on the weekends as a way to “fit in with the Indian community”.In 2016, he represented the North West Region at the USACA National Championship. He kicked his efforts into high gear, seeking out as many opportunities to play as possible when the ICC lowered their minimum residency for eligibility from four years to three.Saurabh Netravalkar and his family are delighted after USA’s historic win•ICC/Getty ImagesA sensational spell for Southern California Cricket Association XI against a USA XI in a national-team warm-up match in the summer of 2017 impressed then-coach Pubudu Dassanayake. In January 2018, he made his List A debut for USA, taking 2 for 45 against Leeward Islands. It was as if the life had come full circle.Today, Netravalkar is among a few USA national team players who are regulars in Major League Cricket. Last year, he was the third-highest wicket-taker for Washington Freedom at the inaugural edition, which included a sensational 6 for 9 against a San Francisco Unicorns side boasting the likes of Matthew Wade, Marcus Stoinis and Shadab Khan. He would soon bowl to Shadab again: the final ball of the Super Over on Thursday to clinch the win for USA.Next week, Netravalkar will play against Rohit Sharma, his senior in Mumbai cricket at one point. He will also renew rivalries with Kohli, who he tussled with all those years ago. He wouldn’t need to prove to anybody anymore what playing cricket means. He will have videos of him bowling to cricketing royalty to show for it.

With English cricket awaiting the outcome of the Hundred discussions, an ancient corner of the game endures for another day

Andrew Miller11-May-2024By stealth, but with increasing ubiquity, the old distinction between English cricket’s Test- and non-Test venues has been replaced this season by a more stark, faintly grasping pair of epithets: “Haves” and “have-nots”.The “haves” – as epitomised by the likes of Surrey and Lancashire – increasingly have it all. Test matches, Hundred teams. Corporate banqueting facilities and a clientele willing to splash out in them, and now, with a handful of deferred exceptions, even the prospect of Tier 1 Women’s outfits from 2025 onwards (and how quickly that untapped revenue stream has snowballed in value).The “have-nots”, by contrast, have only the power of their collective bargaining as they cling to the coat-tails of the counties that offer the promised Hundred riches, and to the fading glories of the ancien régime that they continue to represent. Not least, here at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury, on the first true day of the English cricket summer.For after five desperately dank rounds in the wettest spring on record – exacerbated by the futility of the Kookaburra’s early migration – here at last was a chance to bask in county cricket as the sport’s forefathers might have intended it.Gareth Roderick’s emotionally charged century was to the fore, as Worcestershire versus Kent served up a day of 308 runs in 96 overs – which seems a brisk enough clip until you recall that, in the IPL on Wednesday, Sunrisers Hyderabad ransacked more than half that many runs (166) in barely a tenth of the deliveries (58 to 576).But this was not a day for such crassly pointed details. This was a day designed to wash over you as a background to your life choices; to exist – as might have been the case when time itself was first corralled at the height of the Industrial Revolution – only as confirmation that this is your moment of leisure, and it’s yours to tailor as you please.Watch the cricket, or don’t watch the cricket – it’ll still be there if you ever look up to check the score. Do the crossword, go for a stroll. Pat a dog, eat an ice cream. Loll on the grass banks while marvelling up at the pointlessness of the floodlights, which on a day like this seem as oblique and immutable as the Easter Island statues.Kent and Worcestershire observed a minute’s applause following the death of Josh Baker•Getty ImagesFor this is what the “Have-nots” have that the “Haves” have not. You simply cannot replicate a scene like this in the high-rise bleachers of Edgbaston or Headingley, which for all the glory that its history confers, remains a carbuncle of a ground whose once-new family stand at the Kirkstall Lane End was memorably said, at its unveiling in 2004, to possess all the charm of “a viewing gallery at a municipal swimming pool”.Nothing about that sentiment, as penned by the professionally dyspeptic former Times man Michael Henderson, has softened one iota in the intervening 20 years. Unlike the once-controversial but now gently massaged rough edges of the St Lawrence Ground, onto which modernity has intermittently dared to encroach, but where – at least when the sun shines – timelessness still manages to shine through.Take the Sainsbury’s supermarket on the ground’s northern corner which, when it first opened in March 2012, was perhaps the most symbolic sell-out in county cricket history. Twelve years later, it’s no longer an affront to the ground’s bucolic sensibilities, instead it’s mellowed to become a convenient – and borderline essential – stop-off for unprepared picnickers, as they make for the ground’s wrought-iron gates, barely five metres from the check-out.Likewise the flats overlooking the square boundary off the Old Dover Road, which were such an affront when the original plans went through a decade ago. They’ve bedded down and blended in since their completion six years ago, with their patios and matured gardens now reflecting the matured residents within, who take in the action with the same keenly ambivalent interest as the greybeards within the gates.And then there’s the replanted lime tree on the boundary’s edge at deep backward point, now 25 years old and an imposing ornament in its own right – albeit not quite as much a feature of the action as its predecessor, which blew down in a gale in January 2005 after 180 years of loitering on the outfield itself. It beggars belief that the Twenty20 Cup began a full two seasons before the death of this monument to amateurism – imagine attempting a relay catch these days, with a three-foot tree trunk waiting to brain you as you dive headlong for the rope. And yet, on this, a day of 26 boundaries in 96 overs, you’d have got reasonable odds that the failure to take on such a half-chance would not have been game-changing.The St Lawrence Ground is, by design as much as circumstance, a ground of ghosts. Everywhere you turn, from the Frank Woolley Pavilion to the Blythe Memorial to the Cowdrey and Underwood-Knott Stands, evokes an era that, once lost for good, will never come close to being recreated.Related

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And so, despite the upbeat weather (the type, dare one mention it, that the visitors need even more desperately if their own home at New Road is not to be abandoned to the sport’s rising tides) this was an elegiac day. It began with an emotional tribute to Worcestershire’s young spinner Josh Baker before the start of play, and continued through Roderick’s under-stated pat of the club badge as he reached his century midway through the evening session.Around the boundary’s edge, that sense of transcience continued – from the undercurrent of intrigue about the ECB’s plans for the Hundred, a deal for which seemed to be edging closer with every over, to the chatter in the day’s final hour as word spread of James Anderson’s impending England retirement, a toppling to rival that of even the aforementioned lime tree.It all fuels the sense of a world in retreat, but perhaps that’s simply how county cricket has always framed itself – a sigh of contentment that can’t help but sound like regret to the untrained ear. So much of the talk among the game’s other have-nots centres around the selling-off of their ancient homes and the relocation to purpose-built stadia by motorway junctions in the interests of “future-proofing”. But would it really matter if major-match cricket, whatever that may come to entail, never again sets foot on grounds such as these, just so long as the spaces themselves and the bodies moving within them are saved for the nation, performative-art style, by a deus ex machina equity windfall?Yes, it probably would, as it happens – won’t somebody think of the talent pathways, apart from anything else. But it’s hard to escape the feeling that we are already deep into the throes of this sport’s last stand.Next to the Old Dover Road Entrance, there’s a metal plaque depicting each of the 15 Kent grounds that hosted County Championship cricket between 1890 and 2017, and acknowledging a further 19 that came and went even before then.It’s another parade of ghosts, from the Mote in Maidstone to the Crabble Athletic Ground in Dover, all the way to the Nevill Ground in Tunbridge Wells, which had its most recent festival game cancelled by Covid in 2020 and seems vanishingly unlikely to make a return to the roster. The retreat has already been underway for years, but at least the sun shone. And while it did, this particular have-not seemed to have it all.

The fast bowler talks about how he dealt with discouragement, the loss of a parent, and how his game has grown since he joined Chennai Super Kings

Nagraj Gollapudi09-Sep-2024September 23, 2011 is a day Tushar Deshpande will never forget. He was 16 years old, playing for Mumbai Under-19s for the first time. He had not bowled well in his first match and was dropped for the second. The coach told him to join him for a walk around the ground in Gwalior.”He started by asking what you do for education. Then he asked: what’s your future in cricket? So I spontaneously told him, I’ll play for India. The coach looked at me and said: ‘Do you think you can play for India?’ I said, yes, why not? So he started comparing me with other guys, saying, see how tall Umesh Yadav is, Dhawal Kulkarni, Zaheer Khan – all around six feet. You are just about 5′ 10″.”The coach had more to say. “He then said, ‘So do you feel you can go at that [high] speed and play for India? I again said yes. He said: ‘If you ask me, I don’t think you can go above 125kph with this height. You have good batting technique, you can start batting, or this is a very good age to try out other things.'”I got so pissed [off], very depressed, [had] zero confidence, and I started comparing myself with others. And when you compare yourself with others, you also think poorly about yourself – that I don’t have the height, I don’t have the strength, I don’t have the pace.”Deshpande was sent home the next day and he told his mother, Vandana, what the coach had said. “She told me, this is your choice that you started playing cricket. Never come home crying with what is happening in cricket. This is your own battle. You have to fight it out there. If you can fight it out, continue playing cricket, otherwise you can leave your bag outside and stop playing cricket.”Related

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In July this year, Deshpande, at 29, made his international debut, in India’s fourth T20I in Zimbabwe. “The moment I was informed I was going to make the debut, I first called my dad and asked him: ‘How do you feel that your son is now going to debut for India?’ He got emotional, started to talk about my [late] mother. I tried hard to mask my emotions during the call. And then I got back to my process: that no matter it’s the India debut, I have to give my best and be there for my team, which has been my attitude since I started playing cricket – that I’m on the ground to make a difference for it.”Deshpande’s father, Uday, is his first idol. He was a left-arm fast bowler who played B Division cricket on Mumbai’s professional circuit.”He won’t show his emotion on the face because he has taught me that we should be like soldiers,” Deshpande says of his father. “Whatever we feel should be beneath [the surface] and the outside world shouldn’t know about it. That is [one of] the biggest things he has taught me.”Deshpande is a stocky fast bowler – built like his friend and Mumbai team-mate Shardul Thakur – and his strength lies in his ability to shape the ball away and hit the deck hard, consistently clocking speeds around 140kph. In the last two years he has been the best seamer at Chennai Super Kings, and is in the India D team playing the first-class Duleep Trophy, ahead of India A and India’s tours of Australia starting November.Seven years ago, during his debut first-class season, Deshpande injured his ankle and was ruled out of the Ranji Trophy after playing only eight games. Two months later his mother was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer.In the 2023-24 Ranji Trophy semi-final, Deshpande took 3 for 24 to bowl out Tamil Nadu for 146 in the first innings. Mumbai went on to win the match by an innings•PTI During those days, Uday, on unpaid leave from work, would sit with his wife at the hospital for treatment from 6am to 1pm. Deshpande, after travelling two hours from Kalyan to Andheri to do his rehab, would relieve his father in the afternoon and stay at the hospital for six hours before heading home to exercise some more at his makeshift gym.In June that year, Deshpande had ankle surgery after it was determined he had been wrongly diagnosed with a stress fracture originally earlier in the year. “There were two patients at home, me and my mom. I was on crutches and my mom was having chemotherapy – 2017 was a hell of a year for us,” he says.By December, Deshpande had recovered to play his only match of 2017, an Under-23 game for Mumbai. In 2018, just when the family thought Vandana was responding to chemotherapy, the cancer returned and her health deteriorated. Deshpande says it was dispiriting to see his mother lose weight swiftly, not eat and not speak.”That one and a half years or so taught me a lot. I used to go to the gym at eight in evening after staying with my mom, work out till 10 or 11 at night, run in the night and do all sorts of things. It taught me how to be humble about life.”Deshpande had a fruitful 2018-19 season in domestic cricket, although emotionally he was distraught. In March 2019, Vandana died at the age of 55.Deshpande: “My father taught me that we should be like soldiers. Whatever we feel should be beneath [the surface] and the outside world shouldn’t know about it”•Prashant Bhoot/BCCI”I cried a lot thinking about her,” Deshpande says. “Sometimes I still cry thinking about her. But at that time my dad told me the same thing: ‘We are soldiers in life. You have to prioritise your cricket, which your mom always told you to. And if you do this now, if you play for India later on, that’s how you’ll fulfil her dream also.'”Two days after his mother’s death, Deshpande, at his father’s behest, travelled to Indore to play the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and took four wickets against Delhi. That season he also took 17 wickets at 16.6 in four Ranji games and played a key hand in Mumbai winning the 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy after 12 years.Deshpande says he clocked average speeds of around 140kph in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. “I felt whatever happened way back in September 2011, that is still with me and I have proved myself [worthy].”In the next IPL auction, Delhi Capitals bought him for his base price of Rs 20 lakhs (about US$24,000) for the 2020 season. At the IPL, he met his idol Dale Steyn, who helped him understand the only way to become a good player is to press repeat every day on your basics and your routines and to pay attention to fitness.

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He might hide his emotions, but at times when someone has stirred them, it has only managed to bring the best out of Deshpande.Last March, on the first day of Mumbai’s Ranji semi-final , Deshpande prised out the Tamil Nadu middle order with a three-wicket haul. It’s a performance he values dearly and he reveals that the aggressive spell was triggered by the anger he felt towards his own captain, Ajinkya Rahane.Deshpande is currently part of the India D squad in the Duleep Trophy, which kicks off the domestic first-class season•PTI “Suddenly in the morning they tell me that you are bowling first-change. I got angry because I was ready to bowl with the new ball. I had warmed up with the new ball and I was bowling the new ball the whole season. They felt the other guy [another Mumbai fast bowler] had a niggle and dropped his pace and the management thought he would be better off bowling with the new ball [than bending his back with the older one – as Deshpande, with his pace, could do]. They told me later that was the reason. I told him he should have conveyed it earlier.”Rahane told Deshpande to channel his anger into his bowling. “I told him I was definitely going to do that,” Deshpande says, acknowledging that Rahane is, in fact, a very good captain and person, “always putting the team first”, just like his captain at CSK, MS Dhoni.During this time, Deshpande also closely observed how fit fast bowlers like Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammed Shami were, which allowed them to excel on the field. In 2021 he started working with strength and conditioning coach Vidhi Sanghvi and hired a physio and a nutritionist for his needs. Deshpande now weighs 78kg, having dropped nine kilos since 2021. Discipline and fitness have allowed him to build on his pace.The bigger transformation on the field came once Deshpande played for Super Kings in 2022, although the education began right from when he joined the franchise as a net bowler for the UAE leg of the 2021 IPL.”When I joined, my thinking was: if you have to succeed at the international level, you need a lot of variations, lots of skill sets, you need to outfox the batsman, try different angles [from the crease]. But from Eric Simons [CSK”s assistant coach] to Dwayne Bravo [who was playing until 2022 before turning bowling coach in 2023], to Mahi [Dhoni], these guys told me: it’s simple. The more often you hit that length and top of off stump, have a good and accurate yorker and a good bouncer, you’ll succeed in any format. Because these days predictable is becoming the unpredictable. Batsmen want you to falter, want you to try different things. But as a bowler what you can do is bowl that attacking length.”In 31 matches for CSK, Deshpande has taken 39 wickets at a strike rate of 17.2 and an economy of 9.3•BCCIMichael Hussey, CSK’s assistant batting coach, echoed those insights. “I asked him: which was the ball you didn’t expect after hitting a four? He said: the same ball again. He said batsmen feed on chaos in T20 cricket. They want bowlers to bowl on both sides of the wicket. But at CSK, the plan has been always about pitching on the attacking line, top of off stump.”That power of repeatability helped Deshpande during a home game against a rampaging Sunrisers Hyderabad line-up in April this year .”Both [Travis] Head and Abhishek [Sharma] had hit me for a six each [in the first over of the innings]. They might have expected me to change my bowling plan. I didn’t change anything. I bowled an offcutter on the same line – back of length on off stump. Head hit it straight to Daryl Mitchell at deep point. Against Abhishek, I bowled back of a length on off stump at normal pace. Nothing extraordinary. But the field placement was good [Mitchell took it again at deep point].”He got to play only two matches in 2022, but injuries to frontline bowlers allowed Deshpande to be picked for the entire season in 2023.During the preparatory camp in Chennai ahead of the 2023 season, Dhoni took Deshpande on a walk around Chepauk for a chat. Deshpande recalls: “[Dhoni told me]: ‘You have everything to succeed at international level. But you have to be calm during your run-up. Don’t get distracted by the crowd. Just take a deep breath, stay calm and bowl.’ If Mahi tells you that you have everything to be successful at international level, boss, that itself is an achievement.”CSK went on to win their fifth IPL title and Deshpande was their highest wicket-taker and joint fifth-highest overall.Deshpande on MS Dhoni’s advice: “Don’t play cricket in the mind… we keep trying to play ahead of the game instead of staying in the present”•BCCIBut Deshpande’s season was bookended by two blistering assaults against him, both by Gujarat Titans batters in Ahmedabad, in the season opener and the final. In the first match he took 1 for 51 in 3.2 overs.”Mahi came to me and said: ‘You haven’t made any mistakes. You bowled all good balls. It was not your day today. In the next match repeat the same.”The advice was in the same vein as what Dhoni had told him during their first conversation back in 2021: “Cricket is the same at all levels. We just try to complicate it unnecessarily.”Back then Deshpande didn’t quite understand what Dhoni was trying to tell him. They were facing each other in the nets, working on a match simulation.”I was bowling good yorkers, but suddenly I bowled a bouncer and got hit for a 100-metre six. He asked me: ‘Kyun daala bouncer?’ [Why did you bowl the bouncer?] I told him I thought he was expecting the yorker. He told me: Don’t play cricket in the mind. Yorker is a yorker and no one can hit you.”He was telling me we keep trying to play ahead of the game instead of staying in the present. The other thing he told me is to focus on my fitness, which is important for fast bowlers.”In the 2023 final Deshpande finished his four overs with 0 for 56 .”At CSK, the plan has been always about pitching on the attacking line, top of off stump”•BCCI”Mahi told me in that final I had done things that I had not done in the entire tournament. For example, when I was bowling to Sai Sudharsan, I did not place a fielder back to guard myself again the scoop. I had done that against others like Suryakumar Yadav or Jos Buttler. I had underestimated Sudharsan and had placed the fielder inside the ring. Mahi said: Never do that. In a crunch situation like a final, always back your strengths and keep doing what is giving you success.”By the 2024 season, Deshpande had become CSK’s strike bowler and was handling the challenge of bowling in the final four overs of an innings. He had another great mentor to lean on – Bravo, one of the best death bowlers in T20. The introduction of the Impact Player had allowed the use of an extra batter through the 20 overs and teams were regularly breaching the 200-run mark.Deshpande credits Bravo for helping him stay calm in the crucial death overs. “He said to always bowl to the bigger side of the field while always bowling your best ball. The message is: I am going to dictate my plan. If you have the guts, hit me on my plan.”I will cite the example of me bowling to Rashid Khan in qualifier 1 against Titans at Chepauk. Rashid had hit Matheesha Pathirana for six and four in the 16th over. Then he picked me for a six and a four in the 17th, and a four off the first ball of the 19th over.”I stayed focused on bowling the wide yorker towards the bigger boundary, which was our bowling plan. Rashid sliced [the third ball of the 19th over] straight to the deep-point fielder and the match was sealed and we got into the final. If that was the smaller side, it would have ended up being a six.”That is a Dwayne Bravo mantra: under pressure when you are defending a score, there is no need for bluffing – always stick to your plan.”Deshpande has three variations: the offcutter, the conventional yorker and the wide yorker. But with guidance from Bravo, he is learning the art of sequencing his deliveries – a key skill for successful death bowlers. Deshpande says that is why his offcutter is more effective because he uses it alongside his two other variations and attacks the batter when he is least expecting it.He has worked hard to build a career from the day the coach back in 2011 said he didn’t believe Deshpande had the skills to become a fast bowler and play for India. Deshpande says he aims for things that are “difficult but achievable”, words he once had heard a mental conditioning coach say during his U-16 years.His next goal is an obvious one. “Ultimate goal is to play Test cricket. And my aim is to pick up 100 wickets in Tests for India.”

First hundred as Ben Stokes stand-in reaffirms credentials of England’s No. 3

Andrew Miller06-Sep-2024For three hours on Friday afternoon, the Kia Oval was as dank as dank can be. The weather was as void as a day-five Test ticket; a blanket of moderate, moist nothingness enveloping London even as an apocalyptic downpour rumbled through the Surrey hills, several miles to the south. It was a microcosm of the modern English Test summer, a permanent hostage to more potent weather patterns elsewhere in the globe.For Ollie Pope, however, it proved to be the perfect place to be stuck in the doldrums.Pope was 14 not out from 21 balls when, at 12.18pm, the umpires bowed to the bleakness and pulled the teams from the field. Already he had produced his best innings of the series, not quite in terms of runs (that, for the time being, remained his 17 in the second innings at Lord’s), but in terms of that elusive parameter “intent” – which, as his recent dismissals could attest, can be a fickle, double-headed beast.It had been “intent”, after all, that did for Pope in each of the first two Tests, including the top-edged uppercut that flew straight to deep point as England pushed for quick runs in that most-recent innings. And it was “intent” that lured each of England’s three dismissed batters to their doom at The Oval – including Ben Duckett, who died as he had lived during his anarchic knock of 86 from 79 balls by playing one scoop too many, almost as if it were a tribute to Joe Root’s own obsession with the stroke in recent times.Related

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And likewise, there was Dan Lawrence, onto whom that ever-roving media spotlight is sure now to fall after five increasingly sketchy auditions as a Test-match opener. In fact, Lawrence’s botched pull to gully had an awful lot in common with Pope’s first-innings extraction at Lord’s – “a long-hop that needed to be hit for four,” as Duckett recalled it in his defence of his captain’s up-and-at-’em approach.For some reason, the sins elsewhere in England’s batting approach are considered more forgivable. It’s as if Pope’s flighty footwork early in an innings, and his propensity to make decent deliveries look unplayable, are character flaws rather than technical ones. A manifestation of “weakness” in the literal sense, rather than just a slight deficiency in his alignment.However, the narrative moves almost as quickly as the scoreboard in this England regime, and by the time the bleakness descended over the Oval again, Pope had lifted his own gloom in the manor to which his career has been born. It’s early days to claim he is “synonymous” with The Oval – Jack Hobbs and Alec Stewart won’t be surrendering their gates just yet – but this first Test hundred at his home ground was also the 12th of a first-class career in which he averages in excess of 83.68 at the venue.That’s better than Mahela Jayawardene’s record at the SSC (a venue at which he truly is synonymous), not to mention every other batter to have dominated a single first-class venue since 2000, including Mark Ramprakash, another Surrey and England cricketer whose domestic dominance also attracted askance suggestions that he wasn’t quite cutting it at the highest level.

“As for proving he had the requisite character for this job, even Pope’s hardest-to-please critics would struggle to fault a matchwinning century to cap a 3-0 series sweep”

Reading between the lines, that statistic perhaps explains some of the unsually intense scrutiny that Pope has attracted of late. It was only 24 hours earlier, after all, that Brendon McCullum, England’s Test coach, had been spelling out the real and lasting differences between the requirements at Test and county level, as a means of justifying Josh Hull’s selection on the strength of two Championship wickets at 182.50 this season.Three summers ago, on the other hand, Pope had been averaging a literally Bradman-esque 99.94 at The Oval, only to return from the 2021-22 Ashes with 67 deeply skittish runs at 11.16, a performance that made one of the most visceral cases yet for the extent to which England’s first-class system had been letting down its best young talent. Some of the residual criticism he attracts could well stem from him being a symptom, not a cause, of England’s previous struggles. In an era of renewed batting success, he’s not yet proven which mould he truly belongs to.Roll the tape forward another two years, however, and we’re starting to peer down the other end of the telescope. Pope’s recent “struggles”, if that is even the right word, hark back to the single greatest performance of his lifetime, and many others’ combined: that preposterous 196 in England’s first-Test victory over India in Hyderabad in March, when he swapped his hard-handed defensive prods for swishy-wristed reverse-sweeps for ones, twos and fours, and propelled this regime to one of their greatest overseas Test wins of all time.Never mind that his returns dipped for the rest of that tour as India’s spinners wised up, Pope’s apparent loss of equilibrium since Hyderabad was best expressed by his early-season displays for Surrey right here at The Oval: 156 runs at 26, and just one half-century in seven innings. But, as if to prove that the Hull Paradox is now England’s lodestar, he quickly put all that behind him with a century at the second attempt against West Indies (albeit he still gave the impression that something wasn’t quite right with his game).This, however, is a far more emphatic retort. A first Test century as England captain, and the second-fastest by an England captain too, from a racey 102 balls. Uniquely, it also made him the first player in history to score each of his first seven centuries against different opponents – a sign of his versatility on the one hand, but maybe also of his failure to grasp any single series by the throat, in the manner that might be expected of an international No. 3.Ollie Pope was proactive on the way to his fastest Test hundred•Getty ImagesNevertheless, it’s been a dizzying few weeks for England’s stand-in skipper, who has already led the Test team on three more occasions than he has ever led Surrey in the County Championship. Ben Stokes tried to warn him in advance about the accompanying uptick in press scrutiny, but that reached quite the crescendo during last week’s Lord’s Test, when Michael Vaughan unleashed the sort of character assassination that can be hard to live down – especially if you are, as Vaughan put it, “not the kind of personality” that should be leading his country in a Test match.Unless, of course, you can respond as he did here, on the patch of south London real estate that he knows better than any of his contemporaries. Pope’s internalised response to the moment of his three figures spoke volumes for the pressure he’s been under, as he roared with initial glee before scrunching it down into a deeply relieved, and no doubt satisfied, moment of self-reflection. And much as he’d been leading the glee on the Lord’s balcony for the feats of Root and Gus Atkinson last week, it was left to his team-mates to truly let rip with the celebrations.”Everyone’s so happy for anyone’s success in this dressing room, it’s an incredible place to be,” Duckett said. “It shouldn’t be the case, but there has been quite a lot of noise around Popey in the last few weeks. The only judgment I’ve seen is that he’s taken over as Test captain, and you only have to look at an innings like today [to see] that’s had no impact on him.”Sure, he had some luck – not least with the ropey efforts of a Sri Lanka seam attack that, in the generous assessment of their bowling coach, Aaqib Javed, got “overexcited” by the possibilities on such a dank day. On another day, his misjudged steer through the cordon would have gone to hand, but in riding out three blows to his elbow, the first of which drew blood and required lengthy treatment, he also showed it was no picnic out there, in spite of his fondness for this particular patch of grass. As for proving he had the requisite character for this job, even his hardest-to-please critics would struggle to fault a matchwinning century to cap a 3-0 series sweep.”I know what it’s like at the top of the order, and he’s had a far better summer than I have,” Duckett added. “The fact of the matter is he’s batting No. 3 in England, which is one of the toughest spots to bat in. To block that out and go and score an incredible hundred today was so good, and you could see that from his emotions as well. We’re all extremely happy for him.”

New Zealand see all-format potential in Hay, who comes with a reputation of being a powerful hitter who is calm under pressure

Deivarayan Muthu08-Nov-2024Mitch Hay had missed the first call from New Zealand selector Sam Wells. He was preparing to step out to bat during a Canterbury intra-squad T20 game at Hagley Oval. Just before he went out, he nervously called Wells back and got to know the news of his maiden New Zealand call-up for the white-ball series in Sri Lanka, which will begin with the first T20I in Dambulla on Saturday.When Hay broke the news to his family, his mother wondered whether it had been a prank call, but his Canterbury coach, the former New Zealand batter Peter Fulton, had certainly seen it coming.”After that intra-squad game, I spoke to Mitch and I asked him if he’d had any good news recently and he sort of smiled and said: ‘oh yeah, I’ve had some good news’. I guess as a coach, always a really cool moment when, you know, players that you coach are selected for higher honours,” Fulton told ESPNcricinfo. “Having been there myself and experienced it myself, I know it’s something that most cricketers dream of from a reasonably young age.”Related

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Hay is the latest wicketkeeper-batter from New Zealand’s assembly line that keeps churning out talent though they have a limited pool. New Zealand see all-format potential in Hay. He averages 46 after 19 first-class games and strikes at just under 149 in T20 cricket.While New Zealand coach Gary Stead has backed Tom Blundell to bounce back during the home Test season after struggling against spin in India, there’s an opening for a long-term alternative in white-ball cricket, with Devon Conway and Finn Allen both knocking back their New Zealand central contracts.Hay has been considered the next cab off the rank, thanks to his wide repertoire of shots ranging from the thump down the ground to the scoop in the other ‘V’. In June this year, he also came down to Chennai, along with Tim Robinson and Dean Foxcroft, to hone his sweep shot during a camp at the Super Kings Academy.”I wouldn’t say I’m a natural sweeper but having the exposure here is a great opportunity to learn and try to learn from the coaches,” Hay said while in Chennai. “Sri [Sriram Krishnamurthy, the former Wellington and New Zealand A coach] has been amazing with his knowledge of conditions in both India and New Zealand. So it’s been a good challenge to learn some different shots and different strategies on wickets that spin a lot more than at home. We’ve been lucky to be looked after here by the CSK academy in Chennai.”Hay had played some punchy innings in the middle order in the 2023-24 Super Smash for Canterbury, scoring 170 runs in ten innings at a strike rate of 165.04. Twenty-two batters faced more than 100 balls in that tournament and among them only Robinson (187.42), an opener, had a better strike rate than Hay. Fulton delivered a glowing appraisal of Hay’s attacking abilities and even called him a 360-degree player.”He’s got a lot of power and can strike the ball hard down the ground,” Fulton said. “He’s a good player square of the wicket, and he’s also got the ability to play the scoop shot. So I guess he can score 360 degrees around the ground. So yeah, he’s got all the attributes to bat in that position [in the middle order].ESPNcricinfo Ltd”I think probably the other thing that he’s got, he’s pretty calm under pressure. And again, if you’re going to bat in that No. 5 or No. 6 position in T20, then quite often you’re going to be in towards the end of the innings when the game gets tight. He’s got all the attributes and I’m sure he’s going to do well for New Zealand as well.”Hay had demonstrated that power during his unbeaten 73 off 31 balls batting first against Northern Districts in Christchurch and then during his 38 off 28 balls while chasing against a strong Wellington attack, which included internationals like Adam Milne, Ben Sears, Logan van Beek and Rachin Ravindra, in the Eliminator in Hamilton.”I suppose, from a selection point of view, those are the innings and pressure games, which sort of twisted the selector’s arms and they couldn’t ignore him for too much longer,” Fulton said. “It’s just been great to see him develop over the last sort of three or four years while he’s been in our set-up.”The slow pitches in Sri Lanka and their slower bowlers – Wanindu Hasaranga and Maheesh Theekshana in particular – could seriously challenge Hay in his first international tour, but he could fall back on his experience of playing spin on the red- and black-soil pitches in Chennai earlier this year.”The biggest takeaway for me against spin is trying to get low because the bounce can be variable,” Hay said. “We’ve also been trying to use the crease, as Sri alluded to a lot of Indian batsmen are good at that – playing deep but also coming out on the front foot to get really close to the ball. For me, it’s about staying low and when the length is there, get into a strong position on the back foot to manoeuvre the ball. In New Zealand, you can potentially stand up and hit through the line easier.”Tim Robinson, Mitch Hay and Dean Foxcroft at the Super Kings Academy earlier this year•Super Kings AcademyHay is used to keeping wicket against fast bowlers, like most New Zealand keepers, but has been working behind the scenes to improve against spin. “Part of the reason why we wanted him to go to Chennai was also to become a better keeper against spin,” Fulton said. “He’s also done a lot of keeping work with Freddie Anderson, the former Canterbury keeper who is now a specialist wicketkeeping coach. I think he’s improved his work standing up to the spinners and, again, it’ll be a good test for how much work he has done keeping in Sri Lanka as well.”Fulton also believes that Hay has the tools to play as a specialist batter for New Zealand in the future across formats. At one point, Fulton even contemplated having Hay open the batting for Canterbury, but after Cam Fletcher moved to Auckland, he decided to keep Hay in the middle order.”When Mitch first made his debut for Canterbury, it was actually as a batsman,” Fulton said. “Because we had Cameron Fletcher playing for Canterbury at that stage, who obviously is another really talented wicketkeeper-batsman, so, I guess Mitch’s entry into the side was as a batsman.”And, to be honest, if Cameron Fletcher hadn’t moved back to Auckland last season, then Mitch was probably going to be our opening batsman in red-ball cricket. So that, I guess, gives you an understanding of his technique as a batter. I’ll be surprised if in the next couple of years – whether it’s as a wicketkeeper or as a batsman – if he’s not really close to that red-ball side for New Zealand as well.”For that to happen, Mitch will want to make hay in the Sri Lankan sun in white-ball cricket.

Shan Masood was gushing in his praise of South Africa’s quicks, but extreme pace is currently off the cards for his side

Danyal Rasool06-Jan-2025If someone told you Pakistan had lost 20 successive Test matches in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were talking about rugby. But after Pakistan slipped to another Test defeat in the watery evening sunshine of Cape Town, they ensured that ignominious statistic had reached a nice round number.There isn’t a single explanation for a run that stretches back to 2013, but it is possible to be more specific when it comes to this particular Test at Newlands, and Shan Masood certainly was. He paid rich tribute to South Africa’s pace bowlers, acknowledging he was impressed they kept their speeds up, despite bowling 176.3 consecutive overs to dismiss Pakistan twice. Pakistan, meanwhile, had no bowler that truly came close to the pace of Kagiso Rabada, Marco Jansen, and Kwena Maphaka.”SA bowled really well in both innings,” Masood said. “Their pace was up. That has been a key difference in this series. If you look at our first innings, 132-135 [kph] not carrying to the slips compared to 138-144 when Maphaka was bowling. Those are the balls that beat the batter or hit you on the pads. That is a difference and it is something we want to do in Test cricket as well.”Related

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Six years ago in Cape Town, another Pakistan captain sat in the Newlands press box, and was coruscating about his bowlers’ lack of pace. South Africa had just knocked off a routine fourth innings run chase, and Sarfaraz Ahmed compared his own bowlers unfavourably to South Africa’s.”If you talk about our bowling and their bowling, I think there’s a big difference in the two,” Sarfaraz had said. “The way our bowlers are bowling is not up to the mark in this Test match. If you see our bowlers, they’re bowling 128-129, and the average speed is 130, while their bowlers are bowling at 145. If you are going to bowl with that lack of pace here you won’t get wickets.”I don’t know what’s going on there. Previously it happened, too, when I came here in 2013, the same problem occurred. At the time we had [Mohammad] Irfan, Umar Gul and Tanvir Ahmed. Their pace was down too. I don’t know what’s happening here in Cape Town.”But while those comments may have been intended as a public rebuke to Mohammad Amir and Shaheen Afridi, the variance in pace didn’t come as a surprise to Masood. Pakistan opted against playing their only express seamer – Naseem Shah – in Cape Town under circumstances that are, at best, murky, vaguely citing a back issue and chest congestion. It left Pakistan with a bowling attack of four men who could only really be described as medium fast: Khurram Shahzad, Mohammad Abbas, Mir Hamza and Aamer Jamal’s average pace was between 125kph and 132kph, with not a single ball bowled over 140kph.On the second day during the tea break, however, Naseem was on a practice pitch a few strips across from the playing surface, bowling at full pelt – significantly quicker than any of the starting squad, unencumbered by the sorts of fitness issues that ostensibly kept him out. Similarly, Afridi, the other bowler with Test pedigree who could have brought higher pace, was given leave to play the Bangladesh Premier League, despite the PCB insisting national duty took first priority.It remains unclear whether he was dropped or made himself unavailable, but the result remains the same: South Africa had bowlers who ensured their pace remained high, while Pakistan fielded a quartet who physically could not.”The clear difference was the fast bowling where they bowled a lot of overs at decent pace,” Masood said. “We have to look at a lot of other things in our set-up. How to keep the quicks fresh, how to get an extra batter in the squad. Like Aamer Jamal, if we can find another bowler who’s a good bowler and batter. Like South Africa have Marco Jansen. He’s good with the bat and very good with the ball. If we can find a few cricketers like that, it’d be good for our Test make-up as well where we can play that extra spinner.”They were pretty decent with reverse swing, too. Even today, when Maphaka came on before the second new ball, his pace was up. Jansen’s a superb cricketer, Rabada’s one of the greatest bowlers to play the game. On the fast bowling front, in the first Test, they had [Dane] Paterson: a wily customer, clever, skilled and experienced. I thought their fast-bowling department was really good.”It is an unusual position for Pakistan to find themselves in. Having waxed lyrical about the strength and depth of its their pace attack over the years, Pakistan must now contend with the suddenly denuded nature of their Test pace cabinet. While just two months ago, they fielded an electric high pace attack comprising Afridi, Naseem, Mohammad Hasnain and Haris Rauf, they find themselves in a situation where their desire to play Test cricket hovers between varying degrees of reluctance. Rauf pushed that recalcitrance to the extreme when he refused to tour Australia for a three-Test series last year, and briefly lost his central contract, while Hasnain has not played first-class cricket since a county stint in 2022.It makes it tricky to work out what a lost series in South Africa means. Pakistan appear to have shifted away from using pace at home, famously defeating England 2-1 in October with a spin-heavy strategy. When West Indies visit later this month for two Tests, a similar strategy will be followed, with high-pace likely non-existent. It may mean Pakistan have reconciled themselves to opting out of matching countries like South Africa for pace when they show up here, or in Australia.This tour of South Africa could end up being a harbinger of that. It remains to be seen whether such a deal – which with their history and culture may be viewed as almost Faustian – is one their supporters will simply have to resign themselves to.

It was a deeply physical Test that stretched these modern-day gladiators to their limits, till India experienced heartbreak in slow-motion and England celebrated a win that might not have been

Sidharth Monga15-Jul-2025

Shoaib Bashir is engulfed by team-mates after he picked up the last wicket•Getty Images

It is nearing 7pm on a balmy London evening. The sun is shining bright on Lord’s. Water sprinklers are on. The ground staff have dusted off the pitch all the loose dirt and debris and the pieces of spirit and heart left on it. It is covered now.It is a little over two hours after the epic finish to the Test between England and India, witnessed by a raucous day-five crowd built not of rich patrons and MCC members only who can afford tickets starting at 170 quid, but ordinary-class folk taking advantage of tickets worth 25 quid.The Indians’ balcony is deserted. Shoaib Bashir still sits in the England balcony, looking out at the stage of the great Test. At 4.53pm, Bashir bowled the ball to break India’s hearts. With a broken finger on the left hand, sustained when trying to stop a powerful straight hit from Ravindra Jadeja in the first innings, he came out to bowl as a last resort.Related

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India’s last two wickets were threatening to break England down. Ben Stokes had bowled spells of nine and ten overs. Jofra Archer, playing his first Test in four years, had roused himself to bowl arguably the ball of the series to get rid of the biggest threat, Rishabh Pant. Stokes had bowled one to match it, nipping it up the hill to get rid of the wall, KL Rahul, who scored 100 and 39 in the Test.Jadeja, though, was threatening to do the improbable. Whittle down the target one run at a time in the company of Jasprit Bumrah first and Mohammed Siraj later. Siraj had been there in England’s faces all Test. He was putting his body on the line now. He stood resolute with Jadeja. When an Archer short ball stayed low, he wore it on his left biceps. And there wasn’t enough pace in the pitch to regularly threaten him of physical harm.And then, 5.2 overs before the second new ball and 22 runs separating the two teams, the lethal blow came. In slow motion. Siraj defended the offbreak fairly well, off the middle of the bat really, but he played it with such soft hands that it topspun after dropping on the pitch towards the wickets. Immediately I texted “Srinath 1999” to those not at Lord’s. They had visualised the heartbreak even before they saw it on the telly.Siraj instinctively stuck his left leg out to try to kick it away, but missed. A football fan missed. Hawk-Eye doesn’t provide you these trajectories. Had it continued in a straight line, the ball would have missed the leg stump, but it turned the other way on the second bounce, then slowly tickled the leg stump with just enough force to knock one bail over.A soft, delicate end brought to a violent Test match where Pant nearly broke a finger, which ended Bashir’s series, where Ollie Pope and Siraj copped blows, a reminder of the irony of how hard the “soft” cricket balls still are. Stokes would later say the celebrations were most subdued for a Test that went into the final session of the final day and one they won by just 22 runs.Zak Crawley and Joe Root console a distraught Mohammed Siraj as India fell 22 runs short•Getty ImagesIn what seemed like just 30 seconds, they turned their attention to Siraj, who would go on to punch his bat hard. Siraj, who had earlier been booked for a send-off to one of them. Siraj, who was leading the sledging when Zak Crawley tried to run the clock down on the third evening. Siraj, who now had a tear in his eye. Siraj, now being consoled by them. Joe Root, whom he drew nine false shots out of in one spell without taking his wicket, was among the first ones to go to him.It was as much exhaustion as it was empathy. A competitor they respected, one who had got out in an unfortunate manner. Two marathoners in a photo finish. The winner checking on the one who came second, almost thankful that they pushed each other.

****

It is 8pm, and the sun is still out, although there have been patches of cloud in between. The sprinklers have stopped. England are still there celebrating although not out on the balcony. The ground staff are over by their shed, celebrating rolling out a pitch that has been as much a hero as the main cast. The first two Tests contrived to produce excitement in the end. This one had just enough in it for the bowlers to make each day exciting without making batting perilous.Runs came at only 3.08 an over. There was a session of just 51 runs and one wicket that had more tension and drama in it than a day full of runs on a flat pitch can have. There were moans about over rates and player behaviour, but these are elite cricketers just competing at their fiercest and most intense in one of the hottest Tests at Lord’s.It was a deeply physical Test played by some battered players. Bumrah, who must preserve his body if he wants to continue playing Test cricket, bowled 43 overs in the match, only behind Stokes, only by one over. Stokes, about whom his team worries he gets carried away and bowls spells that are too long. Archer, with no miles in his legs, struggled to hold length, but showed what raw pace can do: when he got it right, he took five wickets in just 36 false shots.Tempers frayed more than once, but that can happen when alite players are giving it their all•Associated PressJust like life, the game can be unfair. India created more chances throughout the match, which is often enough to win Tests. Bumrah bowled more good balls than anyone, but ended up with just seven wickets in 82 false shots.India swung the ball more, bowled a higher percentage of high-seam deliveries, stayed on good lengths for longer, kept England in the field for longer, but England seized the brief windows of opportunities to inflict maximum damage. Just like India were on day four, England’s bowlers were relentless on day five. They didn’t have the added threat of spin that India had with the old ball, so it was imperative they got into the tail before the ball went soft.On the fourth evening, Brydon Carse sensed India were not quite picking full lengths early enough, and bowled 63% balls fuller than good length to take two wickets, one of them Shubman Gill. Archer, dismissively charged at by Pant, channelled his anger to find the perfect length and just enough seam against the angle from around the wicket. Running on fumes, Chris Woakes produced a peach to get rid of Nitish Kumar Reddy in the last over before the final lunch break, with the ball beginning to go soft.When the ball did go soft, India just didn’t have enough batting to punish the bowlers, who kept coming hard at them, over after over, even when they knew they had a wicket-taking opportunity for one or two balls every over. In that session, they just outlasted Jadeja.There was a time when India had lost seven second-innings wickets in just 30 false shots, reminiscent of the 36 all out in Adelaide when they were bowled out in 32.1:07

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Then again, they should never have been in this position. Fourth innings on deteriorating pitches are often lotteries. In the second innings, they had England where they wanted them, but the pursuit of a personal milestone before a break got the better of them.It was not necessarily selfish. It was an error. A human imperfection. A reminder that the game is not played by robots. India will acknowledge they need to learn, but must the lessons always be this harsh?

****

It is almost 9pm. The teams have left. There is a ceasefire for a week. As there is every evening actually. It is this break and then the resumption of the contest from the same position that makes Test cricket special.On the third evening, the two sides were going at each other as though they might need an actual ceasefire. Only for Rahul to say minutes later that he could empathise with what Crawley was doing: running the clock down to play as few balls as possible when India tried to get as many in as possible before stumps.Hostilities resume and cease, flow of time has its say on conditions, human imperfections and brilliance dance together, endurance and sharp bursts both matter. Every once in a while, they all conspire to create a result as magical as the one at Lord’s: only the ninth Test in 2594 to be tied on first innings, two teams separated by just 22 runs after 15 sessions of attrition, ending in the most poignant and chaotic of manners, a solid defensive shot by a No. 11 rolling onto the stumps.Outside Lord’s, nothing much has changed. The No. 13 to Baker Street Station is not on time but it does arrive. It marries seamlessly with the Metropolitan Line tube to Farringdon and the Thameslink from there to Herne Hill. It doesn’t feel like the usual long journey. The mind is engaged. It is basking in the Test. It will take a while before it stops doing so.

England spinner stepped into big shoes for the Hundred, but has guided her side to the Eliminator

Andrew Miller30-Aug-2025Twelve months on from London Spirit’s victory over Welsh Fire in the 2024 Women’s Hundred final, Charlie Dean breaks into a grin as she recalls Deepti Sharma’s winning six over long-on, and her team’s agog reactions in the dugout by the boundary’s edge.”Every time you look at that clip, you see something different,” Dean tells ESPNcricinfo, thinking back to Spirit’s tightly fought four-wicket win, sealed in euphoric style with two balls to spare, and with Dean herself 1 not out at the non-striker’s end.Cordelia Griffith was the star of the subsequent meme: eyes out on stalks as she tracked Deepti’s shot, all the way off the bat and just out of the reach of a backpedalling Shabnim Ismail, but every player in the frame lived the moment in a different way.”There’s Eva [Gray] taking her helmet off, then putting it back on, then throwing it away,” Dean recalls. “I’d faced one full-toss and hit it straight to the fielder, so when Deepti hit the ball over the boundary there’s just a lot of relief. I’ve seen so many replays of the girls celebrating off the bench. It brings back a lot of good memories, a lot of good feelings. That’s why you play the game, isn’t it? To win big games like that. If we can replicate any of those feelings again this year, that would be amazing.”Spirit have certainly done the needful to give themselves a shot at back-to-back titles. For the second year running, they have qualified third in the table, meaning they will once again have to come through Saturday’s Eliminator at the Kia Oval to give themselves a chance to face Southern Brave in the Lord’s final.If there’s a slight nervousness about the weekend’s weather forecast, and the danger that a washout could send second-placed Northern Superchargers straight to the final without a ball being bowled, then Dean is unfazed. Not only has her team been in this position before, but now – as captain, in the wake of Heather Knight’s season-halting hamstring injury – she feels all the more ready to cope with whatever circumstances crop up in the coming days.Grace Harris opened the tournament with a blistering 89 not out•ECB via Getty Images”I’ve really enjoyed this year,” she says. “I’m in a place where I know my game quite well, and I can think about other people, and I feel like I’ve had a lot of personal development. I’ve gained a bit more confidence with my public speaking, and bits like that … things that would probably have challenged me a lot more in previous years.”The core group of girls is pretty similar to last year and the year before, with a few brilliant changes, so be able to lead this group is a bit of an honour,” she adds. “It’s lovely to have Heather still here with us, offering a bit of guidance and advice, then there’s Chris Liddle – it’s his first time being head coach, but you wouldn’t know it – so I’m incredibly lucky that I’m really well supported.”We work really well as a core leadership group, and that just makes my job so much easier. I trust my gut and go with how I see the game playing out on the pitch. The girls have performed really well, and different people have stood up at different times, so it certainly makes a captain’s job easier when that is the case.”The chance to captain Spirit – untimely though it has been for Knight – has the potential to transform Dean’s standing within English cricket. Back in March, when Knight left her role as England captain, Dean’s name had been one of many tentatively mentioned for the succession, but everywhere you looked, the problem was the same. Knight’s sheer longevity – eight years in the role – had inadvertently prevented anyone else within the England set-up from honing their leadership skills.Related

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It’s an issue Dean recognises and accepts. “It’s hard, as an England player, to be in and out of domestic teams and still be a leader. You can’t captain a domestic team if you’re not there all the time. So opportunities to captain are few and far between, but I always relished the chance to step up in other leadership ways. This has been a perfect opportunity for me to test out how I’ve grown, and see where it takes me.”In the immediate future, Dean hopes it will take her north of the river once again, after this afternoon’s Eliminator, and back to the base-camp that she has been proud to call her midsummer home for the past five seasons.”Lord’s massively feels like home for us,” she says. “It really does feel like the norm to be able to go out and play there, which is crazy when you think, 5-10 years ago, you really wouldn’t be able to say that at all. Women’s cricket deserves that platform … the skill levels are increasing, day in, day out, with more professionalism and the chance to showcase our skills.”Even so, the Lord’s factor is a very real aspect of Finals Day, and so the chance for Spirit to have familiarised themselves with the surroundings, and the ground’s idiosyncrasies (“I don’t know if you know, but there is a slope here,” Dean jokes…) is undoubtedly a bonus.Lord’s ‘massively feels like home’ for London Spirit women, Dean says•ECB/Getty Images”It does give it a little home advantage, but a final is a final,” she adds. “You have to be the better team, but you also have to be smart. It’s not like The Oval or Headingley, where it’s a batter’s paradise most of the time. But equally, those are the games of cricket that really excite you as a player, when you have to engage a bit more, and plan for different scenarios – left-hand, right-hand, a smaller boundary, or whatever it is. Those are the things that really excite me as a player. It gets the brain ticking.”As Dean acknowledges, many of the same characters from the 2024 victory are still present in the Spirit dressing-room, from Georgia Redmayne at the top of the order, via Griffith and Dani Gibson in the middle, through the spin duo of Dean herself and Sarah Glenn, and with Gray topping their averages with nine wickets at 17.77.But Kira Chathli’s arrival as Knight’s replacement has been a revelation – 214 runs at a strike-rate of 150 has helped to propel their powerplays – while the return of Grace Harris alongside the marquee signing of Issy Wong has given Spirit a sprinkling of extra impetus as they seek to become only the second team after Oval Invincibles to land back-to-back women’s Hundred titles.”We picked up Kira before the wildcard draft, and that was gold-dust, really,” Dean says. “She’d had brilliant form in the Vitality Blast for Surrey, so it was a no-brainer for us to promote her to the top of the order and just encourage her to play the way that she’s been playing for Surrey.”As for Harris, she announced her return in irrepressible fashion in the tournament opener against Invincibles, where she clubbed a matchwinning 89 not out from 42 balls. Her returns since then may have been more hit-and-miss, but her threat has been ever-present, along with her indefatigable dressing-room attitude.”She’s a fantastic cricketer to have in your team,” Dean says. “The energy that she brings and the way she goes about her business, she just cracks on and gets it done. She set the tone with that opening game, and has been just fantastic for us. We let her go and express herself. And she does it really well, even though at times you may be like, ‘Wow, she really doesn’t stop!’ But it is fantastic to have someone in your dressing-room who just exudes energy, because it really brings everyone up with her.”And then there’s Wong, a player whose personal journey in recent seasons has arguably epitomised that of the women’s game as a whole. The huge promise, the inflated expectations, the inevitable dip in performance amid the glare of ever-building scrutiny. But now, still only 23, she’s been on the comeback trail for Warwickshire, England and Spirit all season long, and after a series of critical contributions with bat and ball alike, Dean believes she’ll be ready to deliver when her team needs it most.”Issy is someone that will always stand up under pressure,” she says. “That’s one of the qualities you really want in a player. She thrives in the battle and she’s really become resilient, and developed ways of bouncing back, because she’s had a few struggles.”She’s a fantastic bowler to have in our armoury. She’s come in and really owned what she’s doing, and she’s back with a bang, which is so exciting for English cricket. And for her, on a personal level, knowing how much work that she’s put in over the past couple of years.”

England’s incumbent has been given the backing of his captain for now, but he knows he needs to produce

Vithushan Ehantharajah19-Jun-2025Ollie Pope’s journey as an England cricketer began against India in 2018. Seven years on, as he prepares to lock horns with them once more, we might finally be about to find out what he’s about.There’s an important differentiation. Because after 56 Tests, all we know of Pope is what he does. A bit of everything, really. Some bits he’s done before, others he has not. He’s become English cricket’s own handyman. And a damn good one.That debut at Lord’s came at No.4, despite having made his case at No.6 for Surrey. The selectors saw a 20-year-old wunderkind and sought to let him loose. His first walk out to the middle in England creams was also the first time he had gone into bat in the first 20 overs of an innings.He is by no means a full-time wicketkeeper, yet he donned the gloves in Pakistan in 2022 and New Zealand in 2024 to help the team out of issues of illness and injury. He has deputised for Ben Stokes as captain on four occasions and won three.His recent active, altruistic service has included three years (and counting?) at No.3, smoothing over a problem position by being the responsible one when, deep down, he’d much rather hang with the rest of the dashers in the middle order. And it is this reason that even external talk of jeopardy around Pope’s position, ultimately triggered by the internal temptation to throw the latest wunderkind, Jacob Bethell, into the mix, had Stokes on the front foot a day out from Headingley’s series opener.”It would be remarkable to choose someone else if their last knock was a one-seventy (171),” Stokes said, thrusting Pope’s last knock against Zimbabwe like a shiv, in response to a question on whether there was a decision to be made at first drop. “And that’s pretty much all I need to say on that.”Ollie Pope received his Test cap from Alec Stewart at Lord’s in 2018•Getty ImagesStokes’ admiration for Pope developed before his tenure as captain. He has always rated him, and took him under his wing during the 2021-22 Ashes when Pope was in a rough patch of form. Stokes even negotiated with then-captain Joe Root to fix Pope at No.5 for the third Test of that Australia tour, with Stokes volunteering to move up to four. He went as far as telling Pope the plan had been agreed, only for the management to drop Pope for the next two Tests.Pope was also the first Bazball “project player” – the first raw talent hot-housed in the greenhouse of good times. As newly appointed managing director Rob Key explained in May 2022, Pope’s placement at No.3 came in a bid to “unlock him”. You could argue they’ve done that – an average of 28.66 across 40 innings leading into that summer has been followed by 39.80 (and seven centuries) in the next 58 knocks.Pope’s specific No.3 average is 43.06, though this figure includes the 205 he made against Ireland in 2023, as well as the recent Zimbabwe 171. Without those knocks, his average slips to 36.62, which puts us back in the zone of yearning for a little more, as do his averages of 24.60 and 15.70 against India and Australia respectively. And so the allure of Bethell’s remarkable talent and unblemished (almost empty) record comes back into the frame.There’s an argument to say Stokes and Brendon McCullum have played it safe behind closed doors. For all Stokes’ bolshiness in his press conference, picking Bethell would sit neatly alongside the various calls over the last six months – the selections of Shoaib Bashir and Jamie Smith at the expense of Jack Leach, Jonny Bairstow and Ben Foakes. Even McCullum left last year’s New Zealand tour admitting a serious decision needed to be made after Bethell’s impressive showing. Well, the decision has been made and, surprisingly, it is a safe one.Perhaps that reflects the life cycle of this team. An initial period of wild, enthralling adolescence, followed by the familiar lurch into conservatism with age. A group of one-time free-spirited vibe mongers are now, on the eve of a five-match series against India that leads into a winter Ashes, considering things like “consequences”.Related

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Ironically, Pope’s life under Baz and Ben has almost entirely been about dealing with the consequences of his various roles, or at least minimizing the fallout that they caused. When Stokes took the job and spoke of wanting to be flanked by 10 selfless cricketers, Pope stood tallest. It is no coincidence Stokes chose him as his deputy.And look where that got him? Under-appreciated and under pressure. Had he not put team balance first and assumed the gloves in New Zealand, Bethell would not have got the opportunity to strum 260 compelling runs. This conversation would not be happening, and Pope could be looking ahead to the 10 legacy-defining Test matches to come. Now, even this first one feels tetchy.Of course, Pope still has a say here. He might not have had it in him to say, “you know what Jacob, settle down, I’m at 3” six months ago. But here and now, as the man in possession, he can make a statement.Does he have it in him? Maybe, you know. It is clear Pope’s patience for the discussion around his position has, naturally, diminished. He appreciates this is the lot of an international sports star, but there is a growing annoyance – and it’s spilling into anger – at the lack of respect given to his name and what he has done for this team.Rather than ignore it, he could do with harnessing some of that negative energy. One of England’s most selfless cricketers needs to be a lot more selfish, and seek the “I’m him” glory that came with that incredible 196 in Hyderabad.Even the babiest of baby faces need a heel-turn once in a while. Now is the time for his. With his Test future still in the balance, he should remember there’s a “me” in team, and an “I” in Ollie Pope.

Early next year the selectors will need to decide if there’s a spot in a 15-player squad for a reserve keeper

Andrew McGlashan13-Aug-2025

Alex Carey completed an unusual stumping on his T20I return•AFP/Getty Images

The second T20I in Darwin was lit up by Dewald Brevis’ century, but it also highlighted a question Australia have to answer before the T20 World Cup: do they need to have wicketkeeping cover in their 15-player squad?With Josh Inglis suffering from flu which he had played through in the opening game, Alex Carey was flown in ahead of schedule and earned his first T20I since 2021. He pulled off one of the more unusual stumpings to remove Lhuan-dre Pretorius and was Australia’s second-highest scorer with 26 off 18 balls.Related

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In a home bilateral series it was easy enough for the selectors to make a quick phone call to Carey and have him fly up to Darwin at short notice. But things are trickier in global tournaments where squad sizes are restricted, replacement players need approval and once a player is removed from the squad they can’t return.Inglis is locked in as Australia’s white-ball keeper but there would be a risk of entering a World Cup without another option on hand to take the gloves, particularly with Inglis managing ongoing back problems. None of the other batters in the current T20I squad, which seems likely to form the core of the World Cup group, are viable alternatives behind the stumps.Australia nearly found themselves in such a situation at the 2022 T20 World Cup when Matthew Wade came down with Covid prior to the game against England. Inglis, who was in the original squad, had suffered a hand injury playing golf prior to the tournament and been replaced by Cameron Green. As it was, the match was washed out although Wade would likely have pushed through and played. Australia’s contingencies on that day were potentially David Warner, who once took the gloves in a Test match, and captain Aaron Finch.In Darwin, Alex Carey batted as low as No. 7 in a T20 only for the seventh time, and the first since 2018•Getty ImagesAt the most recent T20 World Cup in the Caribbean last year, Wade and Inglis were both in the 15-player squad, as they were for the 2021 edition in the UAE that Australia won. At the 2023 ODI World Cup, Inglis was in the squad and replaced Carey after one game. Now the duo feature together in the one-day side, with Carey playing as a batter in the Champions Trophy earlier this year.In the 50-over format they can both carry themselves as frontline batters, but that is not so clear cut for the T20I team. Tuesday was only the seventh time Carey had batted as low as No. 7 in a T20 and the first since 2018, with everyone else moved up a place in Inglis’ absence. His two BBL hundreds have come as an opener while he also has a solid record at No. 4. Overall in T20, Carey’s strike-rate is 129.04 compared to Inglis’ 150.98. However, in limited BBL appearances over the last three seasons, Carey has lifted his strike-rate to 146.52, which is higher than Inglis’ 138.57 over the same period.The issue the selectors will need to ponder early next year is whether there’s a spot in a 15-player squad for Carey, where the choice could come down to between him and another frontline batter, to cover for the eventuality where Inglis is unavailable for a game but hasn’t suffered a tournament-ending injury.On the recent tour of West Indies, a key reason Jake Fraser-McGurk was called in as a replacement when Spencer Johnson was ruled out was because the selectors are looking to build on the wicketkeeping side of his game and they wanted cover for Inglis in a condensed series.There is a chance he will have the gloves at some point for Australia A in the one-day series against India A in late September with him and Lachlan Shaw the two keeping options in that squad. But currently Fraser-McGurk doesn’t warrant a place as a batter in the national side – he made 2 in his one innings in West Indies to continue a lean year in T20s where he is averaging 19.41 albeit with a strike-rate of 150.22.