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The 21-year-old allrounder stroked an unbeaten ODI century after making her presence felt with the ball and in the field

S Sudarshanan15-Feb-2022New Zealand were not meant to chase down the 271-run target at the John Davies Oval in Queenstown. They should not have got closer after having lost the big three of Suzie Bates, Sophie Devine and Amy Satterthwaite inside ten overs for just over 50 runs. After all, since January 2020 New Zealand had won only two of the eight ODIs when chasing. Overall, when the target had been 250 or more, they were successful only three times out of 15.But Amelia Kerr had other plans. It was a day she made her presence felt – with the bat, with the ball and on the field.Related

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Kerr stroked her way to just a second ODI hundred – her first was a mammoth 232 not out against Ireland. Having batted mostly in the middle order in her career, the allrounder has been given a role to bat at No. 3 in the series as New Zealand try to get their combinations right ahead of the Women’s World Cup next month.After a watchful ten deliveries, the 21-year-old got moving rather quickly. Peppering the square boundary on the off side, Kerr kept the scoreboard moving in the company of Maddy Green, who took her time to get her eye in. Pooja Vastrakar’s width was never left unpunished but one of the key characteristics of her knock was against spin.
Kerr made use of the depth of the crease, converting even good length balls from Poonam Yadav and Rajeshwari Gayakwad into shorter ones, enabling her to play the cut and the pull. The use of feet to come down the track also stood out.”As an allrounder, it’s my job to score runs,” Kerr said. “I knew if we could form a good partnership at some point in the innings and keep the required rate under six then it was very doable.”The next part was telling, giving an insight into the young mind of Kerr. “Some of the pockets [at the ground] were quite big out there. I knew if we could hit those pockets hard, we could run back for two and put pressure on their fielding.”That Kerr manoeuvred the field and got her way through after a tricky phase saw New Zealand lose their experienced hands tells a lot about Kerr’s ability. She ran 51 singles, 17 twos and a couple of threes, thereby not solely relying on boundaries.”She’s an athlete and a lot of people see only game days and they don’t see the work that goes in behind the scenes,” her sister Jess said later on. “We come from running background, I think that helped today. We talked about hitting the gaps and running hard. It takes great stamina to do that and is low-risk cricket.”On the field, too, Kerr was at it, running from long-on to deep midwicket between overs as the hosts tried to have one of their best fielders in crucial positions. The result? Two high catches to dismiss Richa Ghosh and Pooja Vastrakar in the death overs.Kerr’s legspin also made its presence felt as she got rid of a set S Meghana for 49. The opener tried to push one down the ground and ended up spooning up a return catch. Such was Kerr’s guile that seven of the nine balls that Meghana faced from her were dots, including a missed stumping chance and the wicket ball.This is Kerr’s first international series after she took the time off for her mental health. And on her return, she has ensured to have her day out almost every single time. Perhaps none more so than in the record chase in the second ODI.

England quick feared she was surplus to requirements before reality of cap presentation

Valkerie Baynes29-Jun-2022Issy Wong is, quite literally, living the dream. Unexpectedly handed her international debut in England’s Test against South Africa, she has twice dismissed Laura Wolvaardt, one of the world’s leading batters, and helped put her side in position to push for victory on the final day in Taunton.A 20-year-old quick who has been on England’s radar for at least the past two years, Wong was again a travelling reserve – a role she has played on several occasions during that time – until Saturday when she was summoned via text to a meeting with head coach Lisa Keightley.”I sat on my bed and I was thinking, ‘oh no she’s sending me home, I’m going to be driving up the M5 tonight’. She said, ‘I’m delighted to tell you we’re going to give you a debut.’ I think my reaction was, ‘yes, sound!’ It was probably something that I wasn’t expecting so I don’t think it’s sunk in yet, to be honest.”From there to an emotional cap presentation by Katherine Brunt, England’s seam-bowling stalwart who has retired from Tests, to taking her maiden international wicket when she bowled Wolvaardt for just 16 in South Africa’s first innings. But capping it all off was her devastating spell late on the third evening after a long day of rain frustrations that could have threatened England’s hopes of pushing for victory.Wong bowled five of the 9.5 overs possible when play resumed at 6.30pm local time following two long rain delays, the second of which lasted nearly three hours. She claimed two wickets in two overs when she had Lara Goodall caught down the leg side and then had Wolvaardt caught at gully by Nat Sciver, whose unbeaten 169 had helped England to a 133-run lead by the time they declared about half an hour before lunch.”I’ve got to say I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I was going to be,” Wong said of stepping onto the field for the first time as an England player. “I actually felt all right. Katherine had kind of used up all my emotions in her cap presentation.

"Take care of this cap because you'll never get a first one again."@KBrunt26 presented @Wongi95 her England Test cap yesterday.

#ENGvSApic.twitter.com/FtXOPJh13L

— England Cricket (@englandcricket) June 28, 2022

By not always being one thing all the time since he retired, he has become omnipresent in a way that contrasts with how Imran Khan is famous

Osman Samiuddin30-Nov-2022In a few months, it’ll be 20 years since Wasim Akram played his last international game for Pakistan. It’s a little past 38 years since he played his first international game. Apologies if this comes across as one of those sobering exercises where the realisation of time’s creep is the splash of ice-cold water on the face first thing in the morning, but it’s impossible not to wilt a little in the knowledge that 38 years before Akram’s debut was just after the end of the Second World War.The way to not let this make you feel old is to watch some of his bowling because that still feels fresh and modern. After all, we’re still cooing at left-armers who can swing the ball into right-handers; still secretly wondering if the yorker is not as effective only because it’s not bowled by Akram; still being struck by the possibilities of the angles he opened for left-armers. His bowling retains currency in a way that batting and fielding from his era simply do not.Akram is now 56, in the whirl of a publicity blitz for his second memoir, . It is warmer, more expansive and less bitter than his first, . That’s no surprise, given was published in 1998, a moment of peaking chaos and toxicity in Pakistan cricket such that it’s a miracle Akram came out of it with diabetes and no other scars.Related

• Match-fixing judge reveals 'soft corner' for Akram

• Wasim Akram reveals he was addicted to cocaine after playing career ended

• Wasim Akram: 'I request everyone to read Qayyum report again and then make up their mind'

As with all autobiographies, is an exercise in legacy, Akram wanting to leave an accounting of his life and career behind for family and for the rest of us. To leave behind sounds too hopeful, though, because it assumes legacies are etched in stone once a player stops playing. It’s much more complicated than that. Increasingly, they are fluid because great players like Akram no longer really exit the stage. Modern athletes live out post-career lives as public as during their careers. Some do so while actively depleting their legacy; others manage to enhance it; all are forever reshaping it in some way. Only a handful in recent memory – Pete Sampras, Steffi Graf – have left their legacies all but unchanged by stepping away entirely from public life, and naturally theirs have tended to feel somewhat overtaken by the likes of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams.Akram has never not been around over the last two decades. He’s not always been a coach. He’s not always been a wrist-whisperer to fast bowlers. He’s not always been a commentator. He’s not always been a sports news anchor (as he was, briefly, with ESPN-Star in the mid-2000s). He’s not always hawking some product. He’s not always hosting game shows with Shoaib Akhtar. He’s not always introducing his own perfume range. He’s not always on your social-media feeds as a doting father, grateful husband or – a favourite – plain grumpy citizen chiding the public into a greater sense of civic duty.But by not always being one thing all the time he has become, somewhat benignly, omnipresent, his playing days receding in the distance, yet up ahead and not signposted, is the envelope of Akram as the horizon himself. The intensity of the public glare is a little weaker but it has not moved away.

Akram will likely never convince doubters of his innocence, though that funnels into a broader truth about him as a very human, very vulnerable – and so, very relatable – sort of hero

Modern day legacy-building can be quite a cynical exercise too, the mining of memories and nostalgia to trigger our dopamine, the entire idea of turning the human into a brand. Somehow it has not felt so acute with Akram, although no doubt we should be thankful that the surrounding PR machinery required for this is not quite as refined in Pakistan as elsewhere. To some extent, it’s also because he never seems to dwell unduly on his own career, almost as if everything he worked more than half his life towards is only of passing import. In , as in , for example, there’s little forensic recreation of his greatest (or worst) moments on the field, or of bowling itself, mostly cursory recollections.It has always been odd, this side of him – for such an exact and exacting bowler to be so unexacting in recall, to celebrate so little his own greatest feats. It’s endearing in a way that he wears his genius so lightly. Imagine not being fussed about that career? Maybe he understands he doesn’t need to because that is what we’re here for.Alas, legacies are also more hotly contested than ever before. They are no longer the sole preserve of the legator. For instance, one of the motivations behind is to set the record straight as Akram sees it over the match-fixing allegations. In truth, it has never appeared like he was much in need of redemption. He had no bans to fight in court, was not barred from official positions, had no asterisk in front of his records. He’s in both the ICC and PCB halls of fame. Work in cricket has been plentiful for him. And being the inspiration for the PSL logo – while still alive – is solid informal validation of his impact.But clearly, it has gnawed away at him, amplified no doubt by social media. The toll of online trolling and abuse weighs heavy on all of us, but celebrities and public figures are at the sharpest end of it. And to read and hear Akram talk about it now is to also be reminded that in 20 years he has never really spoken about it – presumably out of choice – while everyone else has.5:59

Akram on addiction and recovery: ‘The first step is to admit you have a problem, then rehab can begin’

He hadn’t even read the Qayyum report until he had to when was being written. He is a significant presence through the report, the subject of four specific allegations, second to Salim Malik’s five. He was fined and it was recommended he be removed from the captaincy (though by the time the report was published he had already stepped down). Unsurprisingly, he thinks dimly of the report. This much is true that the Qayyum report is comprehensive in documenting and giving order to the snaking rumours, half-truths and speculation of the time, but is not definitive, hamstrung by its own terms of reference and a fatal lack of hard evidence. Justice Qayyum’s own confession years later that he went soft on Akram did neither of the parties any favours. Ultimately even those who were not heavily sanctioned were left dangling in the perma-hellscape between innocence and guilt.Akram will likely never convince doubters of his innocence, though that funnels into a broader truth about him as a very human, very vulnerable – and so, fairly relatable – sort of hero. More so by contrast to the man he was meant to be succeeding, Imran Khan, whose God complex seems only to have grown since he left the game. Akram has always been more approachable, less prone to taking himself too seriously. If Imran strutted around as if he was Punjabi aristocracy (even when he wasn’t), Akram lolled around with a warmer, earthier Punjabi charm. And it feels relevant to expand briefly that he is charming, rather than a charmer who deliberately uses that charm to manipulate and profit. His friends, he writes, call him – a bumpkin misplaced in the big city – and he doesn’t seem minded to dispute that description.In this light, the revelations about his cocaine addiction, the unsettled early childhood – an openness that is still rare in public figures from South Asia – are a welcome way into him. In some sense the candidness works to ease the burdens of legacy, that it must mean something, that it must be built upon, that it must inspire, that it must emulate and be emulated. Instead, what we are left with is what we have: a 56-year-old man simply coming to terms with the joys and traumas of an extraordinary life.What we also have is the comfort of knowing Akram is still around, which, in a year in which Shane Warne was lost, is not something to undervalue. Life hasn’t yet passed us by to the extent that Akram means nothing. Far from it. But it has passed us by enough so that if you YouTube his finest work – recent enough that we can still understand and appreciate it within the game around us – it hits this sweet spot in the thirst for nostalgia, the quenching of which is as much a part of growing old as reading glasses. It’s sweet refuge, nostalgia, and who doesn’t need refuge these days?

Allrounder completes set of international caps with first List A appearance in four years

Matt Roller02-Mar-2023Twenty-six hours and fifty-two minutes. That is the length of time between Jimmy Anderson strangling Neil Wagner down the leg side to give New Zealand a one-run win in the second Test at the Basin Reserve, and Chris Woakes beating Tamim Iqbal on the outside edge some 7000 miles away in the first ODI at the Shere Bangla Stadium in Dhaka.International teams playing on consecutive days has become all too common in the post-Covid era: last year, I was among the handful of people present as England won their third ODI against the Netherlands in Amstelveen on the evening of June 22, and then again for the first day of their Headingley Test against New Zealand on the morning of June 23. This time, it was physically impossible to be at both the denouement of the Wellington Test and the start of the Mirpur ODI – at least, while using commercial airlines.History will show that one player managed the improbable feat of being in England’s squads for both games. Will Jacks made the journey to Bangladesh on Saturday after he was left out of England’s team for the second Test; he was officially added as cover for the injured Tom Abell, but the ECB had discussed the possibility of him joining the ODI squad even before Abell strained his side in Sri Lanka.Related

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On Wednesday, Jacks was presented with his ODI cap by his Surrey team-mate Jason Roy, completing his full set five-and-a-half months – but only four games – after making his England debut in a T20I in Karachi. In that time, Jacks has started to resemble the personification of English cricket’s scheduling crisis.In September, he played two T20Is in Pakistan while Liam Livingstone was injured and Ben Stokes was being rested, on a tour which represented preparation for a T20 World Cup he would play no part in. In December, he played two Tests in Pakistan, in part because Moeen Ali had retired from the format due to England’s schedule.A month later, he thrived at the SA20 – then missed the final stages in order to travel to New Zealand with England’s Test squad. Now, he is in Bangladesh, again in part due to Livingstone’s injury-enforced absence – and pulled out of a planned three-match stint in the PSL to make himself available. “I’ve had six days at home since the start of November,” he told reporters in Bangladesh, also revealing that his luggage had arrived 48 hours after him.It is a bizarre itinerary, but hardly an unusual one among England’s players. More than 60 have been involved in overseas short-form leagues over the winter, and keeping track of England’s squads now requires close attention: they have played six matches across formats in 2023, and used 26 different players.Jacks made a solid impression on ODI debut. He bowled some hard-spun offbreaks in his role as England’s third spinner, conceding a solitary boundary and picking up a fortuitous wicket: Afif Hossain miscued him to mid-on while hacking across the line. Figures of 1 for 18 in five overs made him England’s most economical bowler.Jacks received his England ODI cap before play in Mirpur•Getty ImagesBatting at No. 6 in the chase, he was frenetic early in his innings: he managed 10 off his first 23 balls, including an edged four, a caught-and-bowled chance off Mustafizur Rahman, and a couple of ugly swipes as he struggled to find his rhythm. He picked up three boundaries in his next five balls, including a lofted six over cover, then picked out deep midwicket off Mehidy Hasan to fall for 26 off 31.The tempo of 50-over batting did not come naturally for him – and why should it have? This was Jacks’ first List A game in four years, a scenario that would have seemed unthinkable for an England ODI debutant in any previous era yet has now become a fact of life, such are the idiosyncrasies of the schedule.Ever since England’s World Cup win in 2019, their domestic 50-over competition has clashed with the Hundred. As a result, a generation of talented young white-ball players have had almost no exposure to one-day cricket since Under-19 level: in Sri Lanka last month, Tom Hartley (10 first-class appearances, 59 T20s) and Tom Lammonby (33 first-class appearances, 62 T20s) both made their List A debuts while playing for England Lions.Players like Jacks have been caught in the crosshairs: after this tour to Bangladesh, he will try to push his case for World Cup selection during two months with Royal Challengers Bangalore at the IPL, then with Surrey and Oval Invincibles during the English summer. Like most of his team-mates, he will not play a 50-over game between the third ODI and England’s selection meeting for the main event.Clearly, the situation is far from ideal. England would not, ideally, be giving Jacks his debut seven months out from their title defence, even if his most likely role in their squad would be as a multi-talented back-up player who could be used as an opener or in the middle order.Ideally, he would be playing more 50-over cricket, too. Andrew Strauss’ high-performance review last year proposed moving the One-Day Cup from August to April. “For England to be winning 50-over World Cups, it needs to provide its highest-potential players opportunities to play the format. This is not possible in today’s schedule,” the review said. But the proposals were rejected by the counties, and the status quo will prevail.And yet, Jacks’ cameo represented a valuable contribution to a scrappy England win, giving them two opportunities to inflict Bangladesh’s first home ODI series defeat since England’s most recent tour in 2016. England’s ODI results have been poor in the last 12 months, but as Moeen Ali said before this series: “We have lost 8 in the last 10 – but we are also the champions of the world.”Even while fielding a half-strength team for most of this cycle, England are second in the ICC’s Super League and are second-favourites for the World Cup behind the hosts, India. It would be a major surprise if they failed to reach the semi-finals.Jacks’ ODI debut is emblematic of the format’s diminished status within English cricket since that day at Lord’s four years ago. Yet he possesses the qualities – adaptability, versatility and, above all talent – which underpin England’s confidence that, come October, everything will fall into place once again.

Aka things we’re anticipating from this edition of the tournament

Alan Gardner and Andrew Fidel Fernando22-Sep-2023Rejoice, the ODI World Cup – the proper one – is almost here! Sure, give it a week and we’ll have remembered that it’s too long, too bloated and way too predictable. But for now, we’re excited enough to have compiled a non-exhaustive list of things we’re looking forward to about the tournament (whether they’re actually going to happen or not…)England getting the band back together
The UK obviously adores its national treasures, such as the Koh-i-Noor, the Benin bronzes, and Kevin Pietersen. Which is why England have stuck with the gang of legends who lifted the trophy in 2019 after their famous victory* at Lord’s, to the extent that pretty much everyone from the squad four years ago who’s still fit and able – sorry, Jason Roy – has been awoken from their cryo chamber and bundled onto the plane for one last tour. Will they smash it in India as well as they smashed it in England? Because so many of them have played in the IPL over the years, they might arguably smash it better. God, how they love smashing.*TieAssociates
Don’t laugh. There an Associate team at the World Cup, despite the best efforts of the ICC to weed out such plucky upstarts. Now all Netherlands must do for the next six weeks is run through fire, dodge swinging boulders and avoid being hit by a volley of poison darts in order not to be cast as a laughing stock whose very presence degrades the tournament itself (not to mention threatens those sweet, sweet broadcasting revenues).West Indies
Seriously, don’t go there. It’s still too soon. Light a candle, put David Rudder on the stereo, spray yourself with a little Daren Sammy 88. We’ll get through this.Related

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India fans rage-quitting the tournament
Never mind that it’s been almost impossible to buy a ticket, with the BCCI employing the methodology of social-media hucksters trying to flog their new energy drink (“Doesn’t matter how we distribute it, or at what price, we know you idiots will keep coming back”) – you can be sure the stands will be emptier than ICC gestures about growing the game just as soon as there’s any prospect of India’s World Cup being over. Sure, the format pretty much guarantees against total disaster – thanks for that, 2007 edition – but India had better make the final or else the swathes of empty stands in the Narendra Modi Stadium () will be visible from space.Stokes’ latest Laws loophole
Like the old secret agent who is asked to come out of retirement to complete one final mission, Ben Stokes is back in one-day pyjamas. His return was described as “a bit me, me, me” by Tim Paine – you remember, the sexting guy – and, to be fair, Stokes did look a bit of a show-off after smacking 182 from 124 balls against those poor schmucks New Zealand the other day. Big-game player, Bazball pioneer, purveyor of outrageous feats, you can see why England wanted him back. But can he still absolutely middle the living daylights out of throws from the outfield through an unprotected fine leg the way he did in the last final? Or was that merely a fluke?Boring middle overs
Do sports really need to be always interesting? Yes? Ugh. We thought you’d say that, you attention-span-of-a-goldfish 21st-century stimulant-chaser. You’re probably reading this on a phone, aren’t you? Of course your kind wouldn’t understand the profound pleasures of watching batters nurdle singles and twos endlessly through the middle overs while the spinners are in operation. Disgusting. You don’t deserve this tedium.How loudly will the echoes ring around the Narendra Modi Stadium if India don’t make it to the World Cup final?•Robert Cianflone/Getty ImagesBoundary countback
Just kidding, New Zealand fans. Sorry, this one should have come with a trigger warning. The ICC, in all its wisdom, has of course done away with using boundary countback as the tie-breaker in knockout games. But just as with the rain rules used in 1992 or the farcical end to the 2007 final, cricket’s pinnacle event (outside of every IPL season ever played) is bound to come up with some dumb new way of looking stupid, and we can’t wait to find out what it is.The Modium
The 2015 World Cup memorably gave us the #MCGsobig hashtag on Twitter, amid suggestions New Zealand might be overawed by the size of the venue for the final (and boy, did they put paid to that idea). But anyway, stick this in your pipe and smoke it, MCG – because the Narendra Modi Stadium is just about the biggest thing cricket has ever seen. And like a divorced uncle with a brand-new Ferrari that definitely isn’t compensating for something, the BCCI is very keen for you to see the Modium. They’ve made it the venue for the opening game and the final, as well as the in-no-way-small group fixture between India and Pakistan. The “New Home of Cricket”, you might say. Or you will if you know what’s good for you.Sri Lanka being the new Pakistan
This trend was apparent four years ago, but Sri Lanka have really been nailing the geniuses-one-day-doofuses-the-next routine. From a record-breaking run of 13 consecutive ODI victories – behind only the great Australian meat-grinder of 2003 – to facepalming their way to 50 all out in the Asia Cup final, they have displayed a range that even the most mercurial mavericks would struggle to match. Expect them to lose their opening four games before unleashing a Mary run to the final that would make Pakistan proud.RONSBU
This has to happen. India is the spiritual home of running-out the non-striker backing up. There have been high-profile recent examples at the IPL and the Asia Cup, and there are a number of candidates to be the first to do it in a World Cup – R Ashwin (if he squeezes into India’s squad), Fazalhaq Farooqi, even Mitchell Starc, despite confusion in Australian circles about which side of the Line RONSBU falls. Ideally, it will happen against one of those countries who moralise and wring their hands about not doing it. Maybe at a crucial moment in the final, say, causing the defending champions to unravel… Sorry, England, it’s only fair after last time.

Return to the Wankhede brings memories of record World T20 chase against South Africa in 2016

Andrew Miller20-Oct-2023There’s been a strange and unfamiliar intruder in England’s dressing-room over the past few weeks. A haggard old demon of doubt, sitting on the shoulders of some of the most unfettered cricketers of their generation, and cramping their style with whispers of impending doom.Perhaps it’s not a fear of failure per se that’s been holding England back in their anodyne displays against New Zealand and Afghanistan, but a recognition of finality – an unconscious acceptance among this remarkable group of players that the end is nigh, no matter how well or badly they play.After November 19, come what may, many of these players will never play another ODI, let alone feature in another 50-over World Cup. Some, like Liam Plunkett after the 2019 triumph, may never play for England in any format again.Related

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As such, it would be understandable if a few real-world concerns have overwritten the team’s keenest exhortations to “play our way” and “attack” the World Cup, as per Jos Buttler’s oddly manic pre-tournament pronouncement.And as the squad gathers in Mumbai ahead of Saturday’s immense clash with those inveterate World Cup worriers South Africa, the shrinks have been out in force, seeking to defankle the knots in England’s psyche.There’s Ben Stokes, the team’s “spiritual leader” in the words of head coach Matthew Mott, calling for England to “go down doing what we’re known for”. And then there’s Brendon McCullum, whose role as an ambassador of the New Zealand meat-exporting industry just happens to have given him an excuse to stay in the team hotel in Mumbai this week.England “need to stay true to their method which has brought them so much success,” McCullum told the Times this week, and seeing as it was his influence, way back at the start of their journey in 2015, that instilled the method in the first place (long before he transferred it onto the Test team), no one’s better placed to preach that particular message.Without wishing to get reductive about the mindset that has given England their superpowers across formats in recent years, the broad thrust of “Bazball” (as no one in McCullum’s presence will dare to call it) has been about embracing the joys of playing sport for a living – of casting aside the doubts and cynicism that come with age and wisdom, and just remembering how much fun it used to be to play the game as carefree kids, without a jot of expectation about the endgame.

For it was at this venue seven-and-a-half years ago, and against the same opponents too, that England’s white-ball thrusters took their first steps towards immortality

How much fun it was, to use a random example, when Joe Root sidled up to Buttler in the middle of the Wankhede on March 18, 2016 and – with 82 runs still needed from 48 balls – declared to his team-mate: “We’re cruising this – we’re absolutely cruising this.”For it was at this venue seven-and-a-half years ago, at a similarly make-or-break juncture of their first major tournament of the post-2015 era, and against the same opponents too, that England’s white-ball thrusters took their first steps towards immortality.”Embrace the naivety” was Eoin Morgan’s rallying cry in his team’s unlikely run to the final of the 2016 World T20, a seemingly throwaway slogan at the team’s arrival press conference in Mumbai, but one that took on a life of its own as his greenhorn charges defied expectations time and again (at least until their fateful ending in Kolkata, when the limits of winging it finally caught up with them).Going into that tournament, Morgan had been the only member of England’s squad with prior IPL experience. Under the directorship of Andrew Strauss, the ECB were on the brink of a new, more laissez-faire attitude to overseas franchise leagues, and in February that year, Buttler had become a notable signee for Mumbai Indians.But until that moment that Carlos Brathwaite launched Stokes’ final over of the tournament into the history books, England had cast aside any doubts about their readiness for the challenge, and simply set about enjoying the ride of their young lives. And never more so than in their group-stage clash with South Africa, where they hunted down a massive target of 230 – still to this day the highest chase in T20 World Cup history.Then as now, England’s backs had been against the wall after a shellacking in their previous group game – albeit there is a world of difference between being bested by arguably the greatest exponent of T20 batting, Chris Gayle, in an 11-sixes onslaught, and being hounded out of Delhi by Afghanistan.England must lift themselves for South Africa after a shock defeat to Afghanistan•Associated PressNevertheless, as many as ten survivors from the South Africa contest might find themselves locking horns once again this weekend – a remarkable seven from England’s ranks alone, with Root, Buttler and Stokes returning alongside Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid, David Willey and even a young Reece Topley, whose second and final appearance of that campaign comprised two overs for 33 runs, and would be his last in England colours for four injury-plagued years.For Root, however, the South Africa match was his single finest hour as a T20 batter. He would play six matches in that campaign, and had the final gone England’s way, he would have been a shoo-in for Player of the Match and Tournament. And yet, for reasons of raw power on the one hand, but moreover the time constraints of his Test captaincy and ODI pre-eminence on the other, he’s only ever featured in 12 subsequent T20Is, and none since 2019.But on that night of nights, Root’s 83 from 44 balls was a declaration of his genius – a performance of incredible stillness, not unlike Aiden Markram’s recent 49-ball century against Sri Lanka in fact, in which the virtues of placement and poise transcended the blood and fury of headlong attack. In fact, until the moment of his dismissal, with 11 runs still needed from 10 balls, Root faced a mere two dot-balls out of 43 – and the first of those he would swear blind was a wide.In the course of his innings, Root even unfurled a prototype Root-scoop – a startlingly effective inverted ramp over third man for six, to bring up a 29-ball fifty. “How do players think of shots like those? Let alone execute them. What a world…” wrote Will Luke on ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball commentary. Root for his part later admitted in White Hot, the recent book about the team’s rise and rise, “my heart felt like it was pounding out of my chest … thankfully it was exactly where I wanted it”.The first sighting of Joe Root’s reverse-ramp came at the Wankhede in 2016•AFP/Getty ImagesThis contest was not the first stirring of England’s bold new approach – that had come the previous summer against New Zealand and Australia, a thrilling pair of seat-of-the-pants rides that would finish 5-5 across the ten ODIs but later be recalled by Morgan as his favourite games in their run to the 2019 title. And to all intents and purposes, the World T20 had arrived too soon to draw any long-term conclusions about England’s new-found aptitude. Even so, an early elimination from yet another global tournament would have done the rebooted project no favours whatsoever. Whether they embraced the implications or not, the Wankhede chase was a de facto stress test of their no-consequences attitude.In the final analysis, they passed it with flying colours, with Jason Roy’s thrilling powerplay onslaught providing the bugle blast. He cracked 43 from 16 balls, including five fours, three sixes and – in league with Alex Hales – 44 runs from the first two overs of the chase.Kagiso Rabada bore the brunt of the first of those – he disappeared for 21 runs, including one of the most rifled straight drives that has ever been executed on the world stage – and he’ll be one of three South Africans back for the rematch on Saturday. Neither Quinton de Kock (52 from 24 balls) nor David Miller (28 not out from 12) has any personal reason to regret their efforts on the night, and the presence of each of them will be a reminder of quite how much situational knowhow will be distilled into the coming contest.”It was a fantastic game, one of my favourite games,” Buttler said in Mumbai on the eve of the rematch. “It had a lot of value in terms of where we were going as a team. It’s a long time ago, and that style is a different format, but we want to find different ways to put the opposition under pressure. It doesn’t always mean fours and sixes, it means can we push back when the opposition is on top, or take the initiative in different ways? That’s what we want to live by as a team, and when we commit to that, that gives us the best chance of positive results.”The challenge for both teams, therefore, will be to play without fear – like the kids that they used to be – yet manage the clutch moments with the wisdom that comes from such vast tournament experience. In terms of accessing such an elusive mindset, therefore, “embracing the naivety” is clearly no longer an option for England’s weary worldbeaters, although the manner of their eventual defeat in that year’s final might yet offer them some solace in their current plight.With two global titles in 2012 and 2016, and a further run to the final in between whiles, West Indies’ T20 team of the mid-2010s is perhaps the only recent international dynasty to rival the side that England have compiled over the past eight years. And the cool-headed mugging that they instigated in the heat of the moment in Kolkata serves as timeless evidence that – contrary to the impression that England’s frazzled veterans are currently giving off – experience when the going gets tough actually counts for everything.

The Pakistan top-order batter talks about his Test debut, the BPL, and what he needs to become an established international player

Mohammad Isam09-Feb-2024On a crisp Monday morning, Saim Ayub spoke of what he has to do to be a successful international cricketer. A soft-spoken 21-year-old, who seems to be in a bit of a pickle with his batting form, Ayub talked of the importance of the mental aspect of the game.We sat in the reception of the academy building at the Shere Bangla National Stadium in Dhaka. Ayub is playing for Durdanto Dhaka, and when we met, he had only scored 65 runs over three BPL knocks. He added 12 runs in his two remaining innings, finishing on a batting average of 15.40 for the tournament.He didn’t bring great form into the BPL. Ayub had scores of 0 and 33 in his only Test appearance, against Australia, followed by 39 runs in four T20Is against New Zealand.That didn’t stop Mohammad Rizwan, the far more established Pakistan cricketer, who plays for Comilla Victorians in the BPL, from lavishing praise on Ayub, predicting that he would be the next big thing in Pakistan cricket.”These leagues always help young players,” Rizwan said in a press briefing before a Comilla match the day I met Ayub. “We believe that Saim Ayub is the next superstar from Pakistan. If he goes to CPL or plays the BPL, he will be used to those conditions [and] get confidence from here, [read situations] well. If he learns from here, it is fantastic. He can apply it in the Pakistan team as well.”Related

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Ayub himself would demur. He certainly doesn’t think he is the next big thing in Pakistan right now – or anywhere close to being it. He just wants to get it right, and soon, for Pakistan.”All I know is that I have a lot left to do at the international level,” Ayub says. “I have a lot to learn. I need to improve my game a lot, which will help me dominate. I am working on those things.”I learned a lot from failures. Top cricketers told me that you learn more from failures than you learn from success. I am happy that I got failures in my early stage. Now I know what standards I have to reach. If I had early success, I wouldn’t improve in those important areas.”For the Test debut in Sydney, Ayub says he didn’t quite expect to play after missing the first two matches of the series. Now that the debut is out of the way, he has much to ponder.”One and a half years ago, I was watching [the Pakistan team] on TV. I never thought I would play with them so soon. Especially in Tests – I didn’t think it would happen. I had only played 14 first-class matches up till then. I thought I might need a few years to get into the Test team. I thought I’d be working on my technique and mentality.”By Allah’s grace, I got into the team. The Test cap is the most valuable thing to me. I was very excited about it. They suddenly told me. I was surprised. I was ready mentally. I was really happy.”The debut doesn’t happen again, so you have to now look past it. You have to dominate international cricket. There are no more excuses. You have to do it,” he says.”One and a half years ago, I was watching [the Pakistan team] on TV. I never thought I would play with them so soon. I thought I might need a few years to get into the Test team”•Getty ImagesTo that end, he has been widening his range of shots. There was a pick-up off the hips against Matt Henry that went for six – a no-look pull shot over fine leg in the Eden Park T20I.”[A range of shots] is needed in modern cricket. If there are eight zones in the field, I want to be able to hit the ball in all of them. There’s so much analysis in the game these days that you have to stay ahead of it. I want to prepare myself that way.Ayub says that playing Test cricket is his main goal, which he believes will help him as a limited-overs cricketer.”I have the same level of interest in all three formats. I love Tests as much as I love playing T20Is and ODIs. I want to play all three formats. Legends play all three formats. Your white-ball game becomes slightly easier when you play red-ball cricket.At the start of his career too, he was slightly rushed into action. After his time in the Under-19s, the PSL came calling in 2021. It wasn’t quite an auspicious start: he got 114 runs in seven innings.”When I first played PSL, I hadn’t played any domestic T20s. I didn’t play the U-19 World Cup due to injury, so I went directly from U-19 cricket to PSL. It is a big jump. PSL level is almost like international cricket. I would have got some idea about T20s if I had played some domestic [T20] matches. It was three-day and one-day cricket in our U-19 level,” he said.Ayub was starstruck by the big-name players in the PSL. He realised quickly that he needed to change his mindset to do well at that level. “I couldn’t believe I was playing in the PSL, especially when someone like Chris Gayle batted at the other end. I didn’t know what to do. It took me a bit of time to adapt.Ayub is lifted up by his Guyana Amazon Warriors team-mates after he hit the winning six in the 2023 CPL final•Getty Images”At 18 or 19, you can change and adapt quite easily. When you turn 25 or 28, changing something in your skill set becomes difficult. You have to make that change early. It is the mentality that needs enhancement.”It wasn’t that I totally changed my batting. I enhanced some of my skills. I had a bit of skills to work with. I did strike a few fours and sixes in that PSL. I could play a bit. But I didn’t have the mindset about how to think, how to play. My coaches helped me get that focus. Basically I enhanced my mentality about 90%. The other 10%, I worked on my skills,” he says.Ayub says playing the first two seasons of the PSL gave him a better understanding of what playing at the highest level of cricket involves.”You can say that PSL lets you play with similar level of cricketers. You have overseas players as well. You get to practise how to handle pressure. When you get used to it in the PSL, you know what you may be facing at the international level.”Otherwise, cricket-wise it is similar [to the lower levels]. Bowlers and conditions are almost similar. If a bowler is bowling at 150-plus kph [in domestic cricket], he won’t bowl at 160kph at the highest level. It is almost the same, except for handling the pressure,” he says.Although under pressure for his lean batting patch, Ayub has come across as a well-rounded individual. This is his second season in the BPL. He also played in the CPL last year – hitting the winning runs in the final – and is looking to learn from these experiences: not just how to be a better cricketer but to understand and communicate with all kinds of cricketers.On the field with Mosaddek Hossain (left) in the BPL: Ayub managed only 77 runs from five matches for Durdanto Dhaka•Durdanto Dhaka”For me, going around the world to play cricket, I want to experience different conditions, people, situations, grounds. To play in new places, [under] new coaches and meeting new people. It gives new challenges to win matches in different scenarios. It also develops my personality to know how to communicate with people from England, Australia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and West Indies. I am very interested in all this, which will allow me to grow.”I like it when people give me love. I was like them, so I shouldn’t forget where I have come from. I never will.”I don’t use my social media. Someone else manages my account. I don’t have social media on my phone. I don’t use it. I am done with it. I don’t like it,” he says.Ayub will find as he goes along that social media is unavoidable. He will find out that on-field pressure sometimes gets mixed up with off-field drama. And that that is not confined to Pakistan cricket alone.Rizwan may have billed him as the next superstar, but it’s not an assessment Ayub shares. Still, he is at a point where he is assured about his talent. Now it is up to him to convert it to big runs.It all starts from zero, even for the biggest cricketers. Saim Ayub can give it a try too.

The last time he played against India in a World Cup game, Jansen leaked runs. But things have changed since then

Sidharth Monga28-Jun-20242:45

Jansen a ‘real nightmare’ with bounce and movement

It was hyped as the final before the final. At a ground that many believe should have been hosting the final anyway. India had won seven out of seven, South Africa had won six out of seven. With Australia starting slowly, and with Pakistan not turning up at all, this was supposed to be the match of the league stages. Eden Gardens was all decked up and fully packed. This was the biggest occasion outside India vs Pakistan and the knockouts.Marco Jansen had been South Africa’s highest, and the tournament’s third-highest, wicket-taker. All his 16 wickets had come with the new ball: in the powerplay. He was supposed to set the tone once India decided to bat first. What followed was an extremely inaccurate first spell of 2-0-27-0 during which he bowled five wides, one of which went to the boundary too. The tone was set but not in the manner South Africa wanted it set.At his best, Jansen is a menacing quick who has pace, height (thus bounce) and movement both in the air and off the pitch. When he is good, he is irresistible, but it is believed that when he is bad he is awful. In April 2022, he went from 3 for 25 at Brabourne Stadium to 0 for 63 three days later at Wankhede Stadium a few hundred metres north of it. In the process, failing to defend 22 in the last over, raising question marks over his “mental strength”. Something that got reinforced during that “big match” against India in the ODI World Cup at Eden Gardens.Related

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Data does back the instinct, though. Not mental strength because that is for experts in psychology and psychiatry to speak about but about the wild fluctuations in Jansen’s returns. ESPNcricinfo’s Shiva Jayaraman worked out numbers that are instructive. A total of 132 bowlers have bowled 600 or more balls in T20s since the start of 2023. Among them Jansen is the only one to have gone at under seven an over in more than 30% of his bowling allotments and at over 10 an over in more than 30% of spells: 30.43% under seven an over and 32.6% at over 10 an over. “Big variance on either side,” Jayaraman says.There is more than mental strength to it, though. Mental strength is nothing but your technique, physical fitness and tactical sharpness put together. Just after Jansen led South Africa into their first men’s World Cup final in any format, I asked Jansen to revisit that Eden Gardens nightmare and what was going through his mind that day.”Ja I think a lot of things came into it,” Jansen said. “One of them probably being a long time away from home and then also physically being drained because 50-over cricket and playing it in India, I am sure everyone that played at World Cup was physically tested, especially at the back end of that tournament. India’s known for heat and for humidity at certain places. So I think it was a mixture of both.”I just think it was one of those days where it’s not your day. You have those days and at the end of that game I realised that, ‘okay, cool, today it probably wasn’t my day where nothing was going my way,’ if it makes sense.”3:20

Moody: We haven’t seen the best of South Africa yet

That is the kind of an insight active sportspeople rarely share. That possibly his conditioning wasn’t at its peak for this particular match.The T20 World Cup 2024 is not too dissimilar in terms of humidity and the off-field fatigue. Apart from the short turnaround between matches, South Africa have not been on a single flight that has left on time. They spent one whole night at an airport in Florida along with Sri Lanka and Ireland teams. Before the final they endured a seven-hour delay at the Trinidad airport.Then again, Jansen is an elite professional, and has learnt lessons from the past. “It’s almost similar here also with the humidity and the heat,” he said. “I just think personally for me, I’ve been really doing well in terms of my nutrition and what I eat and when I eat it and what I drink. I’ve made conscious effort to drink a lot of water, especially on off days and travel days. And then on game day I just try and switch my physical fatigue off, if it makes sense. I try and not think about it, which I think I’ve done pretty well.”Unbeaten so far, South Africa have ridden on the starts Jansen has given them. He has conceded at just over a run a ball even though the wickets column reads only six, three of them in the semi-final against Afghanistan. In the final, he will be up against what has proved to be the best batting order of this tournament, adjusting superbly to the varied conditions without compromising on their attacking intent. Jansen is going to be extremely important because teams have used left-arm pace to try to shut off the Indian batters, especially Rohit Sharma, who has found red-hot form and that little bit of luck you need in T20s just at the right time.These two teams are unbeaten in the tournament. This is the big final likely to be played in the most balanced of conditions of the tournament. Rohit will be looking to take Jansen down like he did Mitchell Starc, another tall left-arm quick. For two teams that have lived with the popular tag of not doing well in the “matches that matter”, the tone that Jansen sets will be crucial.The difference here, though, is Jansen is wiser than he was last year, is better conditioned, and South Africa are a more rounded team that has potential to recover from a bad day for one individual. Then again, India are utilising their resources better and not relying on any one batter to take it upon himself to get them a total. No wonder this is going to be the showpiece contest in the showpiece match of the year so far.