Mahmood and Leach dig deep for the cause as they inadvertently troll their own team-mates

Alan Gardner24-Mar-2022At the tail-end of a winter that has said plenty about England’s shortcomings in the arena of Test match batting, this almost comically underscored the point. Jack Leach has previous when it comes to oddball batting heroics, but the sight of the bespectacled spinner coming together with No. 11 Saqib Mahmood to produce by far the highest partnership of the innings told you everything you needed to know about what had gone before.By the end, Mahmood almost seemed to be trolling his more-credentialled team-mates, batting for longer than he had ever previously done in a first-class match, and eventually falling one short of a maiden fifty in any form of the game. On the plus side, England’s red-ball reset has seemingly turned Mahmood into a Test allrounder with a batting average of 49 and bowling average of 19.75 – on the minus, their top six scraped together one run fewer than Mahmood managed on his own.”If you if you listen to me in the dressing room, I always say that, even before this,” Mahmood said with a smile when asked at the close by BT Sport if he would now be claiming allrounder status. “But no, obviously I’ll take today. One of the boys has already said it’s downhill from here. When I went out there I saw a few of the boys in their whites already so it kind of spurred me on a little bit to make sure I was out there for a while.”Related

Debutant Mahmood offers England desired point of difference

Leach, Mahmood find tenth-wicket fight to halt West Indies rampage

West Indies keep it real on not-quite-perfect day

From a parlous position at 114 for 9, England would clearly have grabbed at a final tally above 200, and Mahmood preferred to focus on the advantage that had been wrested back after the team’s highest tenth-wicket stand since Joe Root and James Anderson added 198 against India on a Trent Bridge featherbed eight years ago.”I think it tells you a little bit about the wicket when both sides want to bowl on it, and credit to West Indies I thought they bowled exceptionally well,” he said. “Those first couple of sessions, they didn’t give us a great deal to hit, they were very disciplined and the wicket obviously assisted them as well. But we have a session-by-session mantra in our dressing room and although losing those first couple of sessions, it was nice to bounce back at the end of the day and take that last session as a win.”You can obviously see some of the balls which they got out to, you almost do well not to nick balls like that. Ben Foakes’ ball for example, swing away and nip back, that’s a bowler’s dream. So you could see there was a lot in the wicket early doors and credit to West Indies.”It is three-and-a-half months since Root opted to bat first in Brisbane, only to see Rory Burns bowled around his legs by Mitchell Starc’s first ball of the Ashes. England limped to 147 all on that occasion, the die cast on their fate in Australia, but it looked for a long stretch of day one in Grenada as if they would struggle to get near even that mark, as Root’s much-changed side experienced a very familiar sinking feeling.Ben Stokes played a poor shot to be caught and bowled for 2•AFP/Getty ImagesTo be fair, England had been inserted at the National Stadium in St George’s, with a greenish surface appearing like an oasis in the desert for the bowlers on both sides. “It’s another opportunity for us to take another step forward as a side,” Root said at the toss, having seen his team produce successive scores of 311, 349 for 6 declared and 507 for 9 declared in Antigua and Barbados. But while the pitches for the first two Tests had been widely slated for offering little to batters or bowlers, proof that this was not another pudding came swiftly.With the ball nibbling around laterally and occasionally jumping through or shooting low, the only surprise was that it took 12.2 overs for the first West Indies breakthrough. Kyle Mayers began the mayhem with a spell of 5-5-0-2, Root the big wicket as he felt for one that left him. Amid preparations for the county season back home, the wags on Twitter reached for the obvious gag: perhaps England should be asking for more green seamers in the Championship to help their batters adapt.From 46 for 3 at lunch, the top-order wobble became a full-scale meltdown in the face of a juiced-up West Indies attack finally enjoying their moment. Alex Lees again showed his staying power with a dogged 31 off 97 but he was dislodged during the second-session rout, as England slipped to 67 for 7 and then nine-down shortly after tea – at which point Mahmood walked out for his first Test knock (having not been required in either innings on debut in Barbados).For a while, he and Leach were content to attempt to do what most of the top order had failed to, getting into line and keeping the ball out while picking off runs here and there. Leach steered Holder adroitly through backward point for four, and then produced something a little more impudent with a straight drive that didn’t require any running. At drinks, the pair had eked out 32 precious runs in just over 16 overs of batting.West Indies doubtless consoled themselves with the thought that the pitch was flattening out, but things continued to get weirder and their efforts began to fray. Mahmood was dropped in the covers, a tough chance for John Campbell leaping to his right; next ball, he popped Mayers over the rope at long-on for the first six of his first-class career.The arrival of the second new ball couldn’t change the mood either, Mahmood unfurling a particularly regal cover drive off Alzarri Joseph to bring up the England 200 as the light began to fade. However, with a Test fifty in sight, Mahmood’s cool finally evaporated as he dragged a Jermaine Blackwood long hop on to his stumps.”It’s just basics really, I saw long-on go back and almost had tunnel vision of trying to get one down there,” he said. “But yeah, look, obviously 49 – more important was that 90-run partnership between me and Leachy, I think it’s put us in a fairly decent position after the first couple of sessions we had today.”Once we saw off the burst from Alzarri and Seales it was quite fun to bat out there. It was hard work scoring runs when the slower bowlers came on but we stuck at it pretty well and cashed in in that period before the new ball.”Mahmood pinpointed the need for England to “hold length” when it came to their chance to bowl on day two, suggesting the old ball had become easier to face, rather than the pitch losing its nip. “They still got lateral movement with that second new ball,” he said. “So that first session tomorrow for us will be crucial.”

The leggie has honed her wrong’un for years to turn it into a deceptive and deadly weapon

Shashank Kishore18-Feb-2022Amelia Kerr is making her WBBL debut, in October 2019. She comes to Brisbane Heat with a big reputation. Can she live up to it?For a while, it appears as if she might not bat or bowl. And then in the ninth over of the chase, she is thrown the ball. Two uneventful overs pass but she already has the batters wondering: is she a legspinner or a googly bowler? It’s a question that player after player asks for the rest of the evening.In her third over, Kerr makes a splash. Out come three wrong’uns, again. This time, the over reads 0W0WW0 – no hat-trick, but she caps a memorable debut with a triple-wicket maiden.That over in itself makes for absorbing viewing because of her variations. The first wicket is off a googly that dips and spins gently to beat the inside edge and crash into the stumps. The follow-up is a flipper that is left alone on line and length. Then she bowls a fizzing googly that strikes the pad even before the batter has shaped to play the cut.Sydney Sixers are eight down and Kerr has a chance to close out the game in the same over. She brings out a flighted delivery. It drifts in, pitches on off and spins back in to beat a forward prod. Bam! Another googly, another wicket. It’s a dream beginning – a teenager varying her pace and trajectory like an international veteran.The story repeats in the Super Smash final of 2021. Kerr’s high-quality bowling leaves batters unsure of which way the ball is turning. They’re stabbing nervously at her, with leaden feet. They fall like ninepins. Kerr picks up a hat-trick, though Wellington Blaze lose out on the title to Canterbury Magicians, thanks to Lea Tahuhu’s cameo with the bat.”I called her a googly bowler,” laughs Ivan Tissera, Kerr’s childhood coach, who is now in charge of Wellington Blaze, her domestic team. Tissera first met Kerr when she was a ten-year old, who her father, Robbie, wanted to spend summers outdoors. As they began working together, Tissera remembers accuracy being Kerr’s first big strength.”She had a natural legspinning action – clean, good arm-speed, a lot of flight. As kids, the wrists are flexible, so she’d come to the nets and keep bowling, not knowing which way she’s turning the ball. She’d land the ball in the same spot outside off, see the ball rip away both ways and then ask in amazement how it’s happening.”As she grew up and hit her teens, Kerr began to understand the nuances of the googly. She worked on developing a quicker arm. “Initially, I just wanted her to enjoy bowling,” Tissera says. “Then she understood the googly needs to be subtle, but struggled a bit with drift. So the line would end up being middle and leg. It took a good two years of hard practice to get that balance right.”As Kerr began to travel the world and play in the leagues, the realisation dawned that she ought not to be a one-trick pony. She watched Rashid Khan and wanted to fizz the ball around like he did. It was her next project, to get quicker through the air but without losing the bite in her bowling.It’s this awareness of her craft, the ability to understand the subtle differences and work on them tirelessly, that helps her execute unfailingly in a match scenario. It’s also this aspect that sets her apart from the next best at the googly, Poonam Yadav.The India legspinner relies heavily on flight and dip, to the extent that her slower pace and trajectory can sometimes allow batters to line her up. This is perhaps what made her predictable when South Africa toured India last year. She finished the ODI series with no wickets, and managed all of two overs in her lone outing in the T20Is, a far different bowler than the one that bamboozled Australia on that magical opening night of the T20 World Cup in February 2020.”I think bowling at her usual speed, she has dismissed good batters like Meg Lanning, but it’s just that when you play non-stop, you want to pick up aspects of your game you don’t have, and that drives her,” Tissera says. “Now she bowls around 76-80kph, earlier she was around 65-67. Before, when she bowled quicker, she used to lose the shape of the ball. Now, she has lost that bit of extra turn, unless it is a rank turner, but her consistency in lines and lengths are amazing.”Who Does it Best?: The cutter | The pull | The googly | The cover drive | The yorker | The cut | The bouncer | The sweep

Mohammad Amir makes his first-class return and Hasan Ali bags another five-for

Matt Roller02-May-2022

Division One

Mohammad Abbas
Mohammad Abbas has been relentless and consistent in his time as Hampshire’s opening bowler and proved his value again this week, taking 3 for 59 in Lancashire’s first innings with all three dismissals caught in the slips. He would not have been as pleased about his batting: he bagged a pair, including a first-innings lbw to compatriot Hasan Ali while leaving the ball alone.Hasan Ali
Another week, another five-for. Hasan Ali struck twice with the new ball to reduce Hampshire to 40 for 5 against Lancashire at the Ageas Bowl, and returned to finish off the tail and ended with 5 for 45 from his 15 overs in the first innings.

Another day, another @RealHa55an wicket haul #LVCountyChamp pic.twitter.com/C7pxBIlAMF

— LV= Insurance County Championship (@CountyChamp) April 28, 2022

ESPNcricinfo experts Vettori and Chawla say they need to bat Stoinis higher, and Rahul says it could happen in coming games

Vishal Dikshit16-May-20226:49

Should Rahul bat more freely while chasing?

The last time Lucknow Super Giants won a game while chasing was more than a month ago, on April 7 , when it was only the second week of IPL 2022. Now with barely a week left for the league stage of the tournament when teams are expected to fine-tune their plans for the playoffs, a glaring weakness has emerged for Super Giants: they can’t ace their chases.Even though Super Giants were chasing 179 on Sunday, which might have appeared to be below-par because of how Rajasthan Royals were looking set for 200-odd at one point, KL Rahul ‘s team stumbled to 34 for 3 in the powerplay and left too much to do for the middle order that neither had the experience like their top order nor the hitting abilities of their lower order.Related

• Scenarios: Despite losing to Royals, Super Giants comfortably placed for playoffs

• Padikkal, Boult and Ashwin help Royals leapfrog Super Giants to No. 2

Rahul admitted after their loss that they had to get “smarter” while batting and “needed to work hard” on their game because it was the fourth time in a row that they went down in a chase.”It was a gettable target. It was a good pitch, there was a bit in there with the new ball. We were backing ourselves to get that target, but we couldn’t execute our plans and once again the batting group…we haven’t been able to collectively perform as a unit in a few games,” Rahul told the host broadcaster at the presentation. “We need to go back and work on our game, work on being smarter when we’re in the middle and try and get a win for the team.”Pune was a lot harder, there was a lot more on the pitch there. This (Brabourne Stadium) was a really good pitch, there was seam movement early on, quality bowlers like Trent [Boult] and Prasidh [Krishna] were hitting hard lengths, getting to move it just a little bit. They bowled in good areas and when you lose two wickets in an over that puts pressure on you and it has happened a couple of times with us where we’ve lost the game in the powerplay, as a batting we’ve lost three-four wickets which is obviously very hard to come back from. We need to work hard on our game and make sure when the ball is moving and when there are quality bowlers, you find a way to stay in the game and give your team a good start so that in the back end, we can always get runs.”Super Giants are now second on the list to lose the most number of wickets in the powerplay in this IPL, only behind Kolkata Knight Riders. On Sunday, Boult and Prasidh rocked Super Giants early with the back-to-back wickets of Quinton de Kock and Ayush Badoni in the third over followed by Rahul’s departure for a laborious 10 off 19 in the sixth over.Deepak Hooda struck a 33-ball fifty at No.4 on Sunday•BCCI”If we can hold our nerve in the middle while we’re batting and give ourselves a chance to play out the new ball or play out a good spell even when there are just 120 balls,” Rahul further said. “If you can get through that spell then you always have enough time to make up and win the game from there. We’ve got power in our batting; people do hit the ball really far, and they can hit sixes and get a big over, so it’s just about being smart and playing out the good spells.”One way for Super Giants to succeed on Sunday would have been to take the game deep because Royals have had issues with their death bowling and still have the worst economy rate in that phase. Maybe, the Super Giants think-tank held Marcus Stoinis and Jason Holder back for that phase, but their decision to promote Badoni to No. 3 backfired as he fell for a golden duck.Their bowling coach Andy Bichel told the host broadcaster Star Sports early in the chase that Badoni was promoted because he had been batting well in some of their practice games, and Rahul revealed after the game that they could bat Stoinis up the order in the coming games.”He (Badoni) has been batting well,” Rahul said at the press conference. “In the last four-five games, we felt like we could have used him slightly differently, so we tried playing him top of the order.”On Stoinis’ batting position, Rahul said: “What we’re trying to do is utilise players who will best suit the situation and for us, Marcus is one of those players who has brute force, and we know that he can be really dangerous at the back end, so we’ve tried to hold him back a little bit. We’ve kept it slightly flexible with the batting roles, and this is the role we’ve picked him for, the finisher for us and even today, he batted really well.

“We need to go back and work on our game, work on being smarter when we’re in the middle and try and get a win for the team.”KL Rahul

“He’s showing that he can really win us games single-handedly, but you need someone to support him at the other end and he needs, and the team needs the top order to set up the game for someone like Stoinis and Jason to come in and finish games which hasn’t happened, unfortunately. Having said that, we might even see Stoinis batting up the order in the next game or the coming games where we give him more overs to play and give him a chance to go out there and be the dangerous Stoinis that he is.”Daniel Vettori and Piyush Chawla, experts on ESPNcricinfo’s show T20 Time Out also expressed that Super Giants need to bat Stoinis and Holder higher, before Krunal Pandya, who batted at No. 5 on Sunday.”Honestly, they are heavily dependent on their top three,” Chawla said. “In the middle order, you just have Marcus Stoinis, who comes quite late, and if you see the other batters, they don’t have much experience. The whole middle order has been exposed for Lucknow in a couple of games especially.””We’ve had it on numerous occasions that quality, proven, generally international batsmen have been left to Nos. 5, 6 and 7 or left too late and then unproven domestic batsmen or even unproven international batsmen are batting ahead of them,” Vettori said, “and it seems to be counterintuitive to have that kind of set-up because Stoinis has batted on numerous occasions up the order and Krunal Pandya hasn’t; he has mostly batted at No. 6 or 7. It feels like they’ve got their roles mixed up, and also Jason Holder, who is one of the best middle-order batsmen, has the potential to go up.”Vettori further said there was no need for Super Giants to experiment with Badoni at No. 3 when Deepak Hooda had been excelling there earlier. “You want your best batsmen out there to take it on because Hooda has batted at three on numerous occasions now, and he has looked like KL Rahul in a lot of ways. I don’t believe there’s any need to protect your best batsmen.”

Australia have dominated, and the home side has been in disarray. Shoes have switched feet, and tables are upturned

Andrew Fidel Fernando08-Jul-2022[Start of match report]Marnus Labuschagne and Steven Smith made important centuries in Galle, as Australia continued to torment visitors Sri Lanka, moving to 298 for 5 by stumps on day one.For Labuschagne, who had passed fifty only once in Pakistan, this return to home soil brought a particularly welcome century, as he used his know-how on spinning pitches to hit 104 off 156.He swept often, and frequently made trips down the pitch.Smith, perhaps even more impressive during his 109 not out, pounced on anything full from the Sri Lankan spinners, sending them repeatedly through cover, while also flicking beautifully through midwicket.Smith only occasionally employed the sweep – the most talked-about stroke of the series – preferring instead to trust his own strengths on a familiar track.The paucity of Sri Lanka’s spin stocks, meanwhile, was exposed.With left-arm spinner Praveen Jayawickrama ruled out due to Covid, and with Lasith Embuldeniya having been dropped on account of his poor form, Sri Lanka were forced to field two debutants in their attack, who each took time to settle at the Test level.Given the illness ripping through the squad, and the drubbing they received in the first Test, this is increasingly beginning to seem a torrid away tour.

****

It’s a match report from a parallel universe, but the way this series has panned out, Australia have dominated, and Sri Lanka have been in disarray. Shoes have switched feet. Tables are upturned. If you’d watched Australia basically vomit their way through that 2016 series in Sri Lanka, this is basically the Upside Down.Some of the hardship is of Sri Lanka’s own making, and we will get to that. But some of it is just the kind of bad luck that hits touring teams that are already down. When it rains, it pours so hard, it floods the living room and ruins the furniture.Sri Lanka desperately needed the likes of Dhananjaya de Silva in the side, for example. Aside from having hit a match-winning hundred in Sri Lanka’s previous home series, he is an increasingly wily offspinner, and an excellent slip fielder, particularly to spin. Kamindu Mendis, his replacement, bowls with both arms, but is essentially a part-timer in both his finger-spin disciplines. He didn’t bowl an over on day one, which considering he has only 19 first-class wickets, is not particularly surprising.And yet the ease with which Australia have overturned the narrative from 2016 has also been staggering. “Bat big in the first innings, and let the spinners loose” has been Sri Lanka’s go-to Test strategy at home for decades. In this match, Australia are in the process of batting big, and have the best spinner in the series in their dressing room. Mitchell Swepson is being guided through a series by a senior spinner. Part-timer Travis Head wreaked havoc in the second innings of the first match. All these are the kinds of tropes and hijinx you expect from a home side thoroughly at ease in their environment.Marnus Labuschagne and Steven Smith put up a dominating stand•AFPSri Lanka, meanwhile, have seemed confused. Should we sweep? Should we not sweep? Head coach Chris Silverwood says one thing. Captain Dimuth Karunaratne another.Australia’s bowling was always shaping up to be excellent, but it is with the bat with which they have truly surprised, making a turning Galle pitch that terrified them last time, seem like a jacuzzi in which to settle and soak.Where it’s the visiting team that should by rights be scrambling for batting theories in conditions they do not fancy, Smith and Labuschagne charted their own confident courses through much of their 134-run stand. Smith favoured leaping forward to get to the pitch of the ball, hitting early boundaries to create single opportunities for himself. Labuschagne swept liberally, and maintained a much higher tempo through his century than Smith.Although much has been made of Labuschagne’s mimicry of Smith, these were substantially different innings – two batters, sticking to their own strengths, feeding off each other at times, but never treading on one another’s toes. Perhaps it is in his negotiating of spin that Labuschagne diverges most markedly from the batter on which he once modeled his game.Like home-side batters who possess the nimbleness to adapt to varying conditions even at the same venue, both Australia’s No. 3 and 4 recognised this was a much better batting surface than the dust carnival the last Test had been played on. Each of them was secure in defence.”Last week’s game, I think the forward defence was the shot we talked about as being the toughest on that wicket,” Labuschagne said at the end of the day. “You felt like every time you were defending, one was going to explode or beat your outside edge or take your outside edge.”That was the one shot you could play today and you could trust a little bit more. You were just able to build an innings more regularly. Last week you had to be proactive, especially at the start of your innings, to get yourself in the game, put some pressure on the bowlers to get those freebies.”While Australia’s batters play and talk as if they were made out of Galle clay, Sri Lanka are rifling through spinners, desperately seeking a match-winner. Only one of their leading spinners is out through Covid (Jayawickrama), but in this match, they are fielding a spin attack comprised of a bowler playing his eighth Test, and two debutants. For Maheesh Theekshana, this is his first Test ever, and his fourth first-class match, the three previous having come in 2018.Theirs is not a desperate match situation yet, but it is nevertheless a difficult road back into the game. Australia, who have resoundingly won each of the Test-match days in this series, are poised to pounce again.

Allrounder confirms he will join Sharjah Warriors in ILT20, despite signing for Joburg too

Vithushan Ehantharajah31-Aug-2022Moeen Ali has confirmed that he will be joining Sharjah Warriors in the International League T20 this winter, following a tussle for his signature that may yet result in him appearing in South Africa’s new competition as well, the dates of which are set to overlap with the UAE-based franchise league.Speaking on Wednesday, Graeme Smith, the league commissioner of South Africa’s newly named SA20, acknowledged the England allrounder’s complicated situation, given that he had been announced in the squads for both the Johannesburg Super Kings and the ILT20’s Sharjah Warriors. Later the same afternoon, Moeen confirmed in an a announcement on Twitter that he would be choosing the Warriors as his primary destination.”We have aligned on a strategy in terms of allowing the player to feel comfortable in terms of what he does and where he decides to play,” Smith said when asked about Moeen. “I am dealing with the UAE league in that.”I was in the UAE last week and met with them and that will play itself out over the next few days. We have agreed a way of handling it. There needs to be a way that both of us can co-exist.”There is a relationship that’s opened up there in terms of finding a way forward. I am looking forward to further engagements with the UAE league on that.”The uniqueness of Moeen’s situation had centred on the agreements he entered into with both leagues. Having given commitments to both with an understanding he would pick the tournament he preferred, it turns out Moeen had signed directly with the Warriors. Thus, the ILT20 believed they have a greater claim to him than the SA20, given he had only signed with Cricket South Africa rather than a direct team. The issue was further complicated by the fact the Johannesburg team are a sister franchise of Chennai Super Kings, whom Moeen plays for in the Indian Premier League. Capri Global, who own the Warriors, are partners with IPL side Gujarat Titans.Andre Russell withdrew from the BBL after missing out on a top-bracket deal, and could be a key target for the newer franchise tournaments•Cricket Australia via Getty ImagesIt was confirmed to ESPNcricinfo that Smith spoke to Rob Key, England men’s managing director, to enquire about the availability of England players during the SA20. There will be no restrictions on England players putting themselves forward for that or the ILT20 this season. The Test series against Pakistan concludes on December 21, though a white-ball tour of South Africa is scheduled for the end of January, just before the knockouts of the SA20.There will be the usual provisos on managing workloads, though that will understandably be more on pace bowlers rather than batters. While there is also an England Lions tour to Sri Lanka mooted for the start of the year, it is understood taking players out of franchise commitments will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Players like Ben Duckett and Will Jacks could feel the pinch and may find themselves at a crossroads with their Test and white-ball ambitions, certainly in the short term.

Welcome to the Sharjah Warriors family, Moeen Ali!

The spin wizard from England is all set to wreck havoc in #ILT20!#SharjahWarriors #CapriGlobal #Internationalleaguet20 #ilt20 #uae #cricket #uaecricket #sharjah @ILT20Official pic.twitter.com/ySwPeAtXsZ

— Sharjah Warriors (@SharjahWarriors) August 31, 2022