The 2015 champions may have lost their inspirational former captain, but they have gained an enviable roster of homegrown and foreign talent, including T20’s hottest young legspinner

Mohammad Isam01-Nov-2017Previous season: 6th in league stageBig pictureComilla Victorians have put up a strong statement in front of the other BPL teams ahead of this year’s tournament. Their squad brims with T20 stars and local performers, and they start as one of the strongest contenders this year.The way Comilla built their squad has been seen as a reaction from the team owners to their poor performance in 2016, a season they played as defending champions. They want to become champions again. Simple.Comilla’s batting line-up has three of Bangladesh’s current top order – Tamim Iqbal, Imrul Kayes and Liton Das – as well as strong performers from abroad like Fakhar Zaman, Jos Buttler and Colin Munro. The middle order will depend on Marlon Samuels, Darren Bravo and Shoaib Malik, not to forget the allrounders Dwayne Bravo and Mohammad Nabi.They also have Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf and Solomon Mire as allrounders apart from bowlers like Rashid Khan, Al-Amin Hossain and Arafat Sunny. It is a really strong line-up if the team management can put the right combination out on the field. Some really good players have to sit out at times, a situation that will have to be dealt with properly off the field.Key playerIf Rashid Khan can continue his good form from T20 tournaments from earlier this year, BPL batting line-ups are in for a tough time against Comilla. Rashid has proved his worth in every phase of T20 games, and has already taken 68 wickets so far in the format in 2017.CoachMohammad Salahuddin has a great track record with mediocre teams but this time the challenge will be different. He has to handle a team full of stars. What he also has to tackle are young local players, among whom he can only play five in a single game. This campaign promises to be a true test of Salahuddin’s coaching skills.One that got awayDespite the team not doing well in the 2016 BPL, Mashrafe Mortaza finished as the joint highest wicket-taker in the Comilla team with 13 wickets. He will definitely be missed as captain, bowler and six-hitter.Below the radarAmong the few rookies is Mehedi Hasan Rana, a left-arm quick bowler who is said to have a lot of potential. He has never played a T20 and doesn’t have really impressive numbers in first-class and List-A cricket, but he might get thrown into the deep end at some stage of the BPL.SquadTamim Iqbal, Imrul Kyes, Liton Das, Mohammad Saifuddin, Al-Amin Hossain, Arafat Sunny, Alok Kapali, Mahedi Hasan, Mehedi Hasan Rana, Enamul Haque, Raqibul Hasan, Dwayne Bravo, Shoaib Malik, Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf, Imran Khan Jr., Fakhar Zaman, Jos Butler, Colin Munro, Marlon Samuels, Darren Bravo, Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan, Solomon Mire, Rumman Raees, Graeme Cremer.

Could the green Eden Gardens surface make India choose between Ashwin and Jadeja even before they reach South Africa?

Karthik Krishnaswamy in Kolkata13-Nov-2017It’s usually an exaggeration when someone describes a green pitch as being indistinguishable from the outfield. But at Eden Gardens on Monday, when the groundstaff whisked away the white tarpaulin that had covered the Test-match pitch all afternoon, it was close to being the truth. Live green grass covered every inch of the strip, and you had to squint – at least if you were looking at it from the stands – to discern the subtle shift of shade where it bordered the rest of the square.Even though three days remain before the start of the first India-Sri Lanka Test, it’s hard to see it changing too much.While the extent of its greenness may have come as a bit of a surprise, the pitch was always expected to help the seamers. Ever since the square was re-laid in 2016, Eden Gardens has been a fast bowler’s ground. Last year, aided by seam movement and uneven bounce, the quicks took 26 of the 40 wickets that fell during the India-New Zealand Test here, with Bhuvneshwar Kumar picking up a five-for in murky conditions late on day two. Just under two months ago, Bhuvneshwar was at it again, swinging the new ball wickedly under lights to bowl India to an ODI win against Australia.And it isn’t just Bhuvneshwar who’s enjoyed himself at this ground. In six first-class matches here since the New Zealand Test, seamers have picked up 16 innings hauls of four or more wickets, while spinners have only managed four.It was perhaps with this in mind that Sourav Ganguly, the former India captain and current Cricket Association of Bengal president, expressed surprise at the news of India resting Hardik Pandya for the first two Tests against Sri Lanka.”I’m surprised,” he told reporters on Sunday. “I don’t know if he’s injured. He has played only three Tests… This is the age to play. I don’t know the exact reason. Hope he’s fit.”India won’t play with three spinners, definitely not at the Eden Gardens as the pitch here is different. They will play with two spinners and now since they don’t have Hardik Pandya they may have a different combination for the allrounder’s slot.”Against New Zealand last year, India played six specialist batsmen, and a second-innings 82 from that sixth specialist, Rohit Sharma, played a key role in India’s win. India have played five bowlers – or four and Pandya as the allrounder – in each of their last four Tests, but they have been pretty flexible otherwise over the last couple of years, winning Test matches home and away with 3-2, 2-3 and 2-2 combinations of seam and spin.They haven’t used three seamers at home since the rain-truncated Bengaluru Test of 2015, however, and Thursday could give them an opportunity to do so. Having Pandya could have allowed them to do this while still being able to bat deep and play two spinners. In his absence, they will either have to play three genuine quicks and two spinners, or – wait for it – three quicks and just the one spinner.Three quicks, one spinner. It seems outlandish for India to even consider such an idea when their two main spinners are ranked No. 2 and No. 4 in the world, but it’s a move they’ll probably have to contemplate anyway when they tour South Africa in a month-and-a-half’s time – with or without Pandya in their line-up.In his debut Test series in Sri Lanka, Pandya was hugely impressive with the bat, scoring 50, 108 and 20 in his three innings and going at over a run a ball, and useful with the ball, picking up four wickets at an average of 23.75 but only bowling 32 overs across three Tests.In India’s dream scenario with Pandya, he is a good enough batsman to bat at No. 6 while being a good enough bowler to be their third seamer. As of now, he may or may not be a No. 6; he definitely isn’t a genuine third seamer for conditions where third seamers are expected to bowl a lot of overs.And so, even with Pandya in their XI, India might need to pick three frontline quicks outside the subcontinent. And that, more often than not, will mean playing only one out of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.On Thursday, they might just have to make that choice at home, on a pitch that could be, by accident or design, a dress rehearsal for South Africa.

Rumana Ahmed and Khadija Tul Kubra want to use their WBBL experience to raise the profile of the women’s game back home

Annesha Ghosh02-May-2018Imagine you are on your first visit to Australia and Stuart MacGill has a one-on-one session on legspin with you at the SCG. Then you bump into Mitchell Starc, who, on being introduced to you, says, “Of course, I know who she is.””I didn’t expect such a famous cricketer to have heard of a female cricketer from Bangladesh,” says Rumana Ahmed, Bangladesh women’s ODI captain, who along with her team-mate Khadija Tul Kubra, got to experience the action at last season’s WBBL up close as part of the ICC’s Rookie Placement Programme.Among eight cricketers shortlisted from five member countries of the ICC, Ahmed and Tul Kubra joined Brisbane Heat and Melbourne Stars to see how elite clubs train, play high-intensity T20s, and socialise as teams.”More than just the skill, or the fitness routines, I wanted to tap into their reading of the game, and study their body language – how these top women’s cricketers adapt to the pressure of modern-day cricket,” says Ahmed, as she prepares to lead Bangladesh on the ODI leg of their tour of South Africa.Her side hasn’t played an international match since the World Cup Qualifiers in February last year. “We are No. 9 on the ICC rankings, so unlike our men’s side, our playing opportunities are limited and that has stunted our growth to a great extent. So to train alongside players like [Jess] Jonassen, [Beth] Mooney, DK [Delissa Kimmince] and [Deandra] Dottin is a big achievement.”I met Ahmed and Tul Kubra in Belgaum last December when a full-strength Bangladesh A toured India for one-dayers and T20s against the hosts’ A team, and later spoke to them after they returned from their WBBL stint in January. They talked about how they made it to the national team – two very different stories.Ahmed comes around to the topic of her childhood while describing the pain of “wasted talent”.”I lost my father young, and in a family of four siblings, I started my formal training [in cricket] after my SSC exam in 2008,” she says.”My mother has never liked the fact that I play cricket. Not that she’s ever opposed it; it’s just that she doesn’t like that I play cricket. She barely tells anyone I’m the captain of the national team, you know, unlike what most mothers do.”What about when she was chosen to go to Australia?”When I told her over phone that I would be going to the WBBL, the first thing she said was, ‘Play, but don’t forget to read namaaz,’ Ahmed, 26, recounts with a laugh.Ahmed had a coaching session with fellow legspinner Stuart MacGill in Sydney•Rumana Ahmed”I am her child, so she’s obviously proud of it, but you’ve got to understand much of my mother’s thinking is a result of all the reeti-neeti [traditions] that shape our society.”In a society like ours, and in the subcontinent, it takes a lot of struggle for a girl to get to the field. I like answering people through my actions. All the effort I’ve put in, my team-mates and coaches have put in, I don’t want to let all that go waste.”At this stage of my career, I don’t want marriage to be a point of no return for me. I believe there will be time for me to get married, raise a family, but I don’t know of any female player from my country who gave up cricket for marriage and was then able to return to the game.”For Tul Kubra, 23, breaking the news that she was going to the WBBL to her father went quite differently.”He thought I had got the captaincy for the India tour,” she remembers. “But when I told him what it really was, he didn’t say a word. Not one. All Abbu did was weep for minutes. He had never expected I’d come this far with cricket.”Stirred by the sight of his pre-teen daughter playing cricket with her brother, Jamil Akhter, despite facing severe opposition from his family, felt “cricket could be the gateway to a better life” for her.”He would pack my lunchbox and send me to the camp in Bogra, where Aapu [Ahmed] and the Bangladesh team had been training ahead of the tri-series [involving Sri Lanka and Pakistan in 2009],” says Tul Kubra, who was 14 at that time.”Abbu would say, ‘Academics is important, but what you’ll learn by seeing these girls, you won’t get to read in the books. So go, watch them play.'””None of us ever heard this girl speak,” Ahmed says of first meeting Tul Kubra. “But we could see the eagerness in her eyes – a kind of fascination for what she would see us do.”Rumana Ahmed: “The self-belief can develop only when we play against international sides, understand what they’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, and rectify those mistakes”•Annesha Ghosh/ESPNcricinfo LtdAn offspinner, Tul Kubra was first taught by her father and then coach Muslim Uddin in Bogra. In January last year, she took career-best figures of 4 for 33 while successfully defending a total of 136 against South Africa. However, she says turning out as Melbourne Stars’ 12th man on her penultimate day at the WBBL was just as thrilling as her international four-for.”I had to board an early-morning flight the next day, so I had packed my kit bag and left it in my room before leaving for the match. Just when I was about to get on the bus, the team manager said, ‘You’ll need to get your kit bag, you’ll be the 12th man today.'”When I heard that, my mind raced back to how I had been telling Abbu I needed somebody to accompany me to Australia. I was a little scared about travelling alone. But he said, ‘An airport is a metaphor for society. If you make your way through an airport all by yourself, you will conquer great things in life.'”From there to watching that Super Over [at the Melbourne derby between Stars and Renegades] from the dugout… I’d say I’ve been quite fortunate. Allah gave me the opportunity to watch players like Amy [Satterthwaite], Mignon du Preez and [Lizelle] Lee handle the Super Over the way they did. It’s about fighting to the finish. And that six from Satterthwaite and then our reply – there was so much to learn from their intent, their body language.”Ahmed, a legspinning allrounder, is Bangladesh’s leading run-maker and wicket-taker in ODIs, and the only female bowler from the country to have claimed an international hat-trick. She has played all of Bangladesh’s limited-overs matches since they got ODI status in 2011.On the India tour she was the top run scorer in both the ODIs and the T20s, took five wickets in six matches, and even her fielding stood out, especially one low catch she took, diving full length after running in about 30 yards from long-off.Ahmed with Mitchell Starc•Rumana AhmedAhmed knows Bangladesh can’t progress further without regular games. Although they performed reasonably well in the 2014 World T20 at home – winning two of their five matches – they have only played 12 T20Is since.”If you look at the way Pakistan has improved – they beat New Zealand last year, who would have thought? That’s because regular playing opportunities have injected confidence in these players. Even though they may have lost most of their series, the team has been growing in confidence.”It’s not that we are light years behind, but the self-belief can develop only when we play against international sides, understand what they’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong. That’s where an experience like the ICC-WBBL rookie programme helps.”Seeing her more experienced team-mates at Heat work out problems on the field taught Ahmed a lot about the mental aspect of the game.”When you see a Jonassen care so much about the team – it feels as though she owns the team – you feel like giving that 5% more to your own side as a player and captain,” Ahmed says.”And the way she and Mooney would bail Brisbane out of difficult scenarios – that could be a lesson for not only us but all subcontinental teams on how to stay calm, have a positive body language even when it seems like you are headed for defeat.”Ahmed and Tul Kubra also enjoyed their time with their team-mates off the field, and were touched by the warmth with which they were treated.”DK [Kimmince] and Dottin would pick me up from the hotel and drive me to the ground every day. Everybody knows her [Dottin] for her big-hitting, but she’s also very helpful. I needed a local SIM card, so she drove me to a store far off to get me the SIM.”Tul Kubra remembers the nervousness she felt when she met Stars’ players and support staff for the first time.”[Erin] Osborne treated me like a friend from day one. She would herself come to me, explain the finer details of offspin bowling. She did her best to make me feel at home.Rumana Ahmed: “We are trying to make sure this WBBL experience was as much our team-mates’ as it was our own”•Annesha Ghosh/ESPNcricinfo Ltd”When you think of these big teams like Australia, England, West Indies, you’re always in awe. What you don’t realise is, most of these players are friendly, warm and always willing to help you. They are human beings like us!”I was missing our home curries one night, so my team-mates drove me to an Indian resident’s place for dinner and they decided to use their fingers to eat, just the way people in the subcontinent eat! That was a great moment to be part of.”Ahmed wishes others like her could experience the sort of coaching session she got from MacGill.”That one hour sir spent with me, talking about the variations I could develop, how the courage to give it a good rip alone can fetch you a wicket at times. It’s the kind of experience parents from our society would want their daughters to have, I’d like to hope.”Now, back home, both Ahmed and Tul Kubra are hoping to share what they learnt with their team-mates, starting with the 30-player camp in Sylhet. The national team, staffed with a recently refreshed coaching faculty, including former India allrounder and assistant coach Devika Palshikar, who was recently appointed deputy to head coach David Capel, trained there ahead of their international season: the tour of South Africa is to be followed by the Asia Cup in Malaysia, a ten-day tour of Ireland, and the World T20 Qualifiers in Netherlands.”We are trying to make sure this WBBL experience was as much our team-mates’ as it was our own,” Ahmed says.”If our journey can instill confidence in our team-mates and inspire any girl in Bangladesh to take up sport, make them believe it’s possible to create one’s own identity and go places if you persist with it, we will think we have made decent use of the opportunity the ICC gave us through the WBBL.”

MS Dhoni’s decision to play out Jasprit Bumrah watchfully may have cost Chennai Super Kings as their innings lost steam after a rapid start

Dustin Silgardo29-Apr-2018Why did CSK slow down? Chennai Super Kings scored 91 off their first 10 overs, but then made only 78 off their next 10, an odd deceleration for a T20 match, especially since they did not lose too many wickets. So what happened?ESPNcricinfo LtdAfter Ambati Rayudu was dismissed, Jasprit Bumrah, who had bowled just one over in the first ten, came on to bowl the 13th. MS Dhoni, who had just come in, left one alone and then played three defensive strokes, all for no runs, letting Bumrah complete a one-run over. Those four balls seemed to take the steam out of Super Kings’ innings. Dhoni took his time, getting just four runs off his first ten balls. CSK scored 15 runs from overs 11 to 14 and could not make up for it in the death.It looked like Dhoni had decided to play out Bumrah, whom Rohit had held back for the middle overs and the death. This cost Super Kings, and when they tried to take on Mitchell McClenaghan, they lost wickets and ultimately fell short of a winning total.ESPNcricinfo LtdOne reason for Dhoni’s early struggle may have been that the pitch was a bit two-paced. Dhoni said after the game that it was difficult to score off the Mumbai Indians quicks as they were banging the ball in with pace and it was not coming on to the bat. The statistics seem to back Dhoni up. Over both innings, the fast bowlers conceded only 51 off 49 short and short-of-good-length balls, and even the usually fluent Evin Lewis struggled to time the ball.Rohit moves up and wins itRohit Sharma, who had come in at Nos. 4 or 5 in Mumbai’s four previous games, promoted himself to No. 3 against CSK. Rohit has always been a slow starter – his first-ten-ball strike rate this season was 95.74 before this game – but he can be a match-winner when set. Coming in at three allowed him to bide his time – he scored only six off his first seven balls – and by the time the crunch overs came along, he had his eye in and was able to win the match with four fours in the 19th over. Given his performance, he may even consider going back to the opening spot.ESPNcricinfo LtdWhy Thakur and not Bravo in the 19th?Captains these days rarely save their best death bowler for the final over of a tense game. They usually give him the 19th, so he can create pressure by leaving a big target off the final six balls. But with Mumbai needing 22 off two overs, Dhoni gave the ball to Shardul Thakur rather than Dwayne Bravo, one of the most experienced death bowlers in T20 cricket. The idea may have been to leave Bravo with eight or 10 to defend off the 20th, but the problem was that Thakur came into the game as this season’s most expensive bowler in overs 19 and 20 (among those who have sent down a minimum of 18 balls in this phase), with an economy rate of 14.50 across four overs. His record only grew worse, as he went for 17, leaving Mumbai only five to get from the last over.Perhaps Dhoni was wary that the batsmen could have become used to Bravo, having faced him for three overs on the trot from one end, but given that he had only gone for 21 off those three, it made sense to bowl him before it was too late. As it happened, he didn’t even bowl the final over, which went to Imran Tahir instead.Why isn’t Jadeja bowling?Ravindra Jadeja is the seventh-highest wicket-taker among spinners in the IPL, and has an economy rate of 7.82 in all T20 cricket. But this season, he has only bowled 10 overs in seven games, completed his quota just once, and not bowled at all in two games, including the one against Mumbai.What’s going on? Well, he had a poor 2017 season with the ball, going at 9.18 an over and taking just five wickets in 12 innings. Over the past two years, Jadeja has vastly improved as a Test bowler, but it may have come at the cost of his white-ball bowling. He has lost his place in India’s limited-overs sides, and Dhoni may be concerned about his lack of recent cricket in the T20 format.Super Kings have Imran Tahir and Harbhajan Singh, who both had much stronger IPLs last season than Jadeja, as spin options, so Dhoni has not needed to get too many overs out of Jadeja. He may also be looking for the right match-ups. Against Mumbai, Evin Lewis, who strikes at 157.17 against left-arm spin, batted through the middle overs, so Dhoni may have been looking to protect Jadeja from him.Jadeja hasn’t done too much with the bat either this season, scoring only 47 in six innings while being unbeaten three times on 0, 3 and 11 – which tells you how little time he has had at the crease – but even if he continues to hardly bat or bowl, he will probably remain in Super Kings’ XI given they only have one other experienced Indian batsman on the bench, M Vijay, who is an opener.

A five-Test series between England and India – so much can happen, or not

Andy Zaltzman26-Jul-2018The five-Test series is a curious beast. Eagerly anticipated by devotees of the Test game, fondly remembered for creating some of the greatest narratives and dramas that sport can produce, and, more often than not in recent times, overwhelmingly disappointing. Many five-match rubbers of late have left the fans wanting considerably less, defying the First Law of Showbiz (a regulation that is, admittedly, conclusively superseded by the Second Law of Showbiz – Cash in While You Can).Longer series have often seen one team exert an early stranglehold on readily collapsible opponents, resulting in somewhat predictable, monochrome cricket, often played out on predictable, monochrome surfaces that exacerbate home advantage. Struggling teams have had little time to recover, learn and respond, with modern scheduling intent on leaving glaringly insufficient space between Tests, and making up for it by adding vast, aching, unnecessary voids between limited-overs matches.The much-maligned two-Test series has produced multiple minor classics in its schedule of contractual-obligation fulfilments, but the two most recent five-Test contests between England and India, and the vast majority of Ashes series in the past 30 years, have fizzled towards flumpy denouements. (I know the 2014 series was technically still alive when the final Test began, but India might as well have played it by email.)Cricket could do with a timeless masterpiece. It is under constant assault from its deadliest predator and foe – cricket. Some administrators seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that their sport is rubbish, and that the roaring success and coffer-jangling profitability of (a) intricately plotted long-form TV series, and (b) mind-blowingly complex computer games, is but a commercial blip in humanity’s bobsled-run towards meaninglessness, and that what people really want is facile, forgettable, unengaging gobbets of pre-digested bilge.(Rumours currently circulating in the England area suggest that a new competition is in the pipeline in which the playing area will be replaced by a four-sided giant TV screen showing episodes of , with the winning team to be decided by a randomly selected child picking from one of three different milkshakes: strawberry for the home team, chocolate for the away team, and vanilla for a tie or rain-affected no-result. Scientists claim this could be the most accessible format of any sport yet devised by human beings.)What I hope for from the forthcoming series is for at least six of the following ten things to happen:

• The series to be played on a variety of different pitches, providing a wide range of challenges and opportunities for batsmen and bowlers.
  
• A genuine, series-long contest, ideally building towards a final-Test decider.
• A team recovering from a collapse. At least once.
• No fast bowlers slumping to the turf in an exhausted heap in the fourth or fifth Tests, screaming at the heavens: “Why?”
• No one using the phrase: “Just go out and play his natural game.”
• Bowlers given more respect when it comes to handing out Man-of-the-Match awards.
• When a commentator inevitably says, “Well, that’s all we have time for today, they’ve only managed 85 overs in the six and a half hours’ play, so the remaining five overs will be lost to the game”, another commentator leaping to his feet, ripping his tie off, and shouting: “Why? Why on earth should those overs be lost? And why does no one in cricket understand that the paying punter does not, in general, want to watch advanced-level dawdling?”
• At least one day of the series finishing on time, with all the scheduled overs bowled.
• Home advantage being a marginal gain rather than an insurmountable skewing of cricketing probability. We are close to cricket requiring neutral groundsmen. The surface has more influence on the game than potentially home-favouring umpires. More and more countries have shown they cannot be trusted with the temptation.
• People who are not already cricket fans noticing the cricket.

In terms of the result, I think Jimmy Anderson’s performance holds the biggest of the many keys to the series. In England’s last six home series (from the 2015 Ashes to the two-Test encounter with Pakistan in May), Anderson has taken 88 wickets in 18 Tests at an average of 16.5, with seven five-fors, while maintaining an economy rate of 2.5 per over. If he maintains a similar return, England should win; if India can blunt him to something approaching normality, and ensure the Anderson key does not fit the Indian top-order lock, they could well prevail. Depending, of course, on the unlocking effectiveness of their own principal keys.The hinted-at-but-still-incomplete resurgence of Stuart Broad could also be extremely key-ish. Since his eight-wicket splattering of Australia in the fourth Test in 2015, he has taken 52 wickets in 17 home Tests, averaging a decent 29.6, but with no five-fors and, in the most recent 14 matches, no four-wicket innings.Cheteshwar Pujara might prove to be another significant key, or at least the knobbly bit on the end of the key. He has been a bulwark at home, but has averaged a fraction under 26 in his nine Tests outside Asia since the 2014 England tour, when he began batting as if in a cocoon of immovable certainty, and ended shrouded in befuddlement. If he, and India’s openers, succeed, Virat Kohli has a far greater chance of golden-key-waggling success. India’s captain is more vulnerable against the new, swinging ball – something he has in common with almost every single batsman who has ever played the game. The platform-builders are generally as influential in Test cricket as the platform-bestriders.Other potential key-holders include: whichever of India’s spinners are entrusted with the bamboozlement England’s batting; England’s change bowlers; India’s seamers; England’s top and middle order. In other words, anyone involved. Especially Ajinkya Rahane (who averages 52.6 in 18 Tests outside Asia, the second-best of any Asian Test player who has played ten or more matches outside his home continent, behind the soft-handed, granite-stomached Rahul Dravid [54.5 in 68 Tests]). And Jonny Bairstow – still without a hundred after keeping wicket in a match for England (he has only passed three figures in the opening innings of Tests), but with all the appearance of someone who is on the verge of doing some incredible things in all formats.Such are the excitements and uncertainties in the anticipation of a five-Test series. I hope there are still doubts and unresolved issues as the Oval Test begins in September.Two niche stats to keep an eye on during the second Test, at Lord’s
1. Ishant Sharma, in his two Lord’s Tests, has taken a combined tally of 0 for 189 off 56 overs in the first innings, and 11 for 133 off 45 in the second. Only Ravi Shastri has bowled more balls, or conceded more runs, in the first innings of Lord’s Test matches, without taking a wicket (0 for 202 off 66, in three Tests).One more second-innings victim this year will put Ishant top of the Most Wickets Taken in Second Innings at Lord’s by Visiting Bowlers (he is currently tied with Shane Warne, whose 11 second-innings wickets were taken over four Tests); of the 28 bowlers who have taken ten or more second-innings wickets at Lord’s, Ishant has the second best strike rate (behind Dominic Cork) and fifth best average.2. India could field the exact same top five that played at Lord’s four years ago (M Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Pujara, Kohli, Rahane), a match that was (a) an absolute classic; (b) somewhat bafflingly, the last Test Liam Plunkett played (he took four wickets, all of them top-six players, and scored a match-shifting unbeaten 55); (c) a bizarrely false dawn, as India proceeded to be abjectly thrashable in the final three Tests. If India pick those same five players, they will become the first visiting team to pick the same top five in consecutive Lord’s Tests.

After 13 years as an England cricketer, fast bowler aims to evolve into a genuine allrounder to prolong her career

Andrew Miller28-Jun-2018Over the past fortnight of international action, in both men’s and women’s cricket, there’s been no place to hide if you are a toiling fast bowler. Records have been obliterated wherever you care to look – from New Zealand women’s 490 against Ireland, to England men’s 481 against Australia, to England women’s 250 in a T20 against South Africa at Taunton last week.”Yeah, it does make you question why you do what you do,” says Katherine Brunt, England’s veteran quick bowler, with the sort of lugubrious air that Angus Fraser might have cultivated in his pomp.”There’s not much fun in it any more. One of the main things our coach tells us now is accept you are going to get hit, the pitches are that good and the balls don’t move off the straight so you have to be very highly skilled at variations and consistent lines and lengths.”You mainly have to accept the fact that you are going to get smashed a few times, you have to keep working hard and you’ll get your rewards that way.”However, Brunt, who turns 33 next week, is not half as downcast as she might like to let on – not even when the conversation turns to the astonishing wicketkeeping skills of Sarah Taylor, whose half-volleyed leg-side stumping off Dane van Nierkerk at Taunton was a bittersweet moment for the fastest bowler in England’s ranks.”It’s actually demoralising,” she says. “It makes me think I can’t be that quick if you can just do that! But I’ve played with Sarah since she was 16, so I know what she’s capable of. It wasn’t a massive shock to me, but for people watching it’s jawdropping. You do have to take a moment to say that was pretty special, but I bet if you asked her, she’d say it’s not as hard as you think.”But realistically there is little reason for Brunt to grumble at present. England’s women are riding the crest of their post-World Cup wave, having out-muscled South Africa in a closely fought ODI series before providing some quality entertainment in the opening rounds of the T20 Triangular, for which they are virtually guaranteed a berth in Sunday’s final at Chelmsford after a pair of hard-hitting wins over both opponents.”The venues have been great, the crowd attendance has been great, the feedback’s been brilliant, the media support too,” says Brunt. “And the weather has been incredible, we’ve been melting down in Bristol for the past two days. All of our games seem go down to the wire at the moment because the teams are so evenly balanced, and that makes for really good entertainment. But it doesn’t work quite so well for the state of my nails, or getting heart attacks midway through games!”With three wickets at 19.66 in the campaign to date, Brunt has done her bit for the cause with ball in hand. But increasingly, she is being trusted as a frontline batting option – not least in the world-record 250, when she was pushed up the order to No.4 with licence to give it some humpty, and duly walked off the field 16 balls later with 42 not out to her name.Katherine Brunt rocks back to cut•PA Images via Getty Images”I’ve been working on my batting a lot recently,” she says. “I used to be a bit of a slogger but I’ve turned myself into a genuine allrounder. My skill has come on a bit, I can hit balls in different areas now rather than just being a one-track batter, so I’ve got Robbo [coach Mark Robinson] to thank for that, and hopefully I can keep getting better.”Brunt’s innings on that day at Taunton included three fours and three sixes, and followed another fine performance in the first ODI of the summer against South Africa, when she produced a career-best 72 not out to double England’s total after they had slumped to 97 for 8.”It’s mostly a mental thing,” she adds. “The hardest thing about batting is that you have to believe it yourself, and then I needed someone else to believe it too, not just me. It’s always been a bit of a ****-take, for want of a better word. People would laugh at me if I said I could bat, and they’d just say ‘no’.”So once people started to take me more seriously, I was allowed to take myself more seriously, and spend a bit more time on it, and I could see the improvement from where my game was.”The development of an extra string to Brunt’s bow is a vital aspect of her career evolution, as she begins to accept the inevitability of time creeping up on her 13-year England career.”I ask myself this question in two-month intervals,” Brunt says on the subject of her eventual retirement. “It’s just where my body’s at really. I did used to say I’d quit when I didn’t love it anymore, but I can’t see that happening because my passion will always be there.”I’m very stubborn and a perfectionist. There’s always more I can do to be better, It’ll be my body that caves in in the end, and I don’t see that happening yet, but I’ve got too big a drive to stop. The choice will have to be taken out of my hands in the end, but women’s sport is going places, with different formats and competitions taking place, which make it harder to walk away.”As and when she does depart, however, Brunt will be able to reflect on a career that has spanned two distinct eras of women’s cricket – and while the professional era is still in its infancy, the standards have been rocketing in recent months, not just out in the middle where no total seems safe anymore, but in the nets where the next generation are developing rapidly.”We’ve never really been challenged in the nets on tours until recently,” says Brunt. “Now a few girls have turned up with a yard or two of pace or a bit about them. These are 16-17 year olds with variations from nowhere, and they do open your eyes and make you think ‘blimey!'”Five or six years ago, kids coming into the nets as net bowlers weren’t very good, you’d have to get the coach to give you throwdowns because the standard wasn’t good, but now they are getting you out every other ball.”There’s some real good talent coming through from the counties, lots of girls with the skills to bowl yorkers and out of the back of the hand. The likes of our performance squad girls, who unfortunately miss out a lot of the time like Beth Langston and Kate Cross, and Katie George, who’s just on the scene with pacy left-arm inswing. There’s a lot to be excited about, for now and in the future.”Kia Motors is the official title sponsor of the Kia Super League, for more information please visit www.kia.com

The opener has scored a third of his team’s total runs in IPL 2018

Dustin Silgardo16-May-20182:08

Top five reasons why Mumbai beat Punjab

Poor KL RahulWith 20 runs required off 10 balls, KL Rahul tried to hit a full, wide ball for six over long-off. He miscued it and was out. While walking off, he held in his face in his hands and shouted at himself. Perhaps Rahul was angry that he tried to attack Bumrah, Mumbai Indians’ most economical bowler. Perhaps he felt he should have waited for a better ball to hit. If that was the case, Rahul was being very hard on himself.KL Rahul has scored a third of Kings XI Punjab’s runs off the bat this IPL season•ESPNcricinfo LtdThrough this IPL, no team has been more reliant on one batsman than Kings XI Punjab have been on Rahul. He has now scored a third of his team’s total runs off the bat. Given that, he should have been the one trying to stay till the end while the batsmen around him attacked. But, during a crucial 16th over from Mayank Markande, Aaron Finch couldn’t time the ball, so it was up to Rahul to attack the last two balls. He hit them both for sixes. Once Finch was out, Marcus Stoinis and Axar Patel should have gone big from ball one, but they consumed four balls for only two runs before Rahul took strike in the third ball of the 18th over. So Rahul had to go after Ben Cutting. He hit him for three consecutive fours. Now, surely, it was Axar’s turn to take some of the pressure off. But again, in Bumrah’s over, he managed just a single off the second ball. It was all up to Rahul. He had to go for the big shot.How Mitchell McClenaghan’s season turned aroundAfter Mumbai’s match against Royal Challengers Bangalore on May 1, Mitchell McClenaghan had a smart economy rate of 9.07 and cost his team 8.5 runs over six games. Since then, he’s bowled in five innings and gone at a smart ER of 7.42, saving his team 9 runs. He’s also picked up five wickets, many of them crucial. The key to McClenaghan’s turnaround has been when he has bowled. Till May 1, he was regularly used as a death bowler. He had delivered four overs in the last four and had a smart ER of 17.95 in that phase. Since then, he has become a specialist Powerplay and middle-overs bowler and has been used for only two overs in the final four.Why Rohit bowled out HardikIn Mumbai’s last four games, Hardik Pandya had been a regular death bowler. But against Kings XI, Rohit Sharma bowled him out before the 16th over, and in the end had to bowl Ben Cutting in the 18th and McClenaghan in the 20th. It was an attacking move from Rohit. He knew how dependent Kings XI were on their top three and wanted to dismiss them early. In the middle order, Kings XI had Marcus Stoinis, Yuvraj Singh and Manoj Tiwary, all of whom have struggled this season. So, Rohit was confident that his back-up bowlers could do the job against them in the death if Hardik, his top wicket-taker, could dismiss Rahul or Finch. He didn’t, and having to bowl Cutting at the death almost cost Mumbai.Why was Yuvraj not sent in earlier?Yuvraj had been padded up since the fifth over of Kings XI’s chase, but when the second wicket fell in the 17th over, it was Stoinis who came out. When he was dismissed off the fifth ball of the same over, Axar Patel walked in, and Yuvraj arrived at the crease with only nine balls left in the innings. There were several reasons for this decision.First, Yuvraj has never been someone who can get going from ball one. This season, his strike rate off the first five balls he faces has been 77.77. Even over his entire T20 career, he scores at just 86.80 off his first five and 109.32 off his first ten. With 42 required off 23 balls, Kings XI couldn’t have someone come in and get 11 off 10. Second, Yuvraj has been in woeful form this season, striking at less than 90. Third, he has particularly struggled against 140-kph bowlers, often bringing his bat down late when playing shots against them, and Kings XI knew Mumbai had two overs from Bumrah and one from McClenaghan to come.Why didn’t Ashwin bowl till the death?While Kieron Pollard and Krunal Pandya blazed to a 65-run fifth-wicket stand, R Ashwin stood at mid-off looking tense. But his own figures at the time read 1-0-5-0. It seemed bizarre that Ashwin was not bowling, given Mumbai were four down and had left-hander Krunal and Pollard, who prefers pace to spin, at the wicket.ESPNcricinfo LtdIt turned out Ashwin was saving his overs for the death. Mohit Sharma had gone at 12.82 an over in the death before this game and had got hit for 25 in his first two overs, so Ashwin did not trust him to bowl two overs in the death. That meant he had to bowl from the other end while Andrew Tye bowled the 17th and 19th. Also, Ashwin may have been waiting for Ben Cutting to come in, so he could expose his weakness against spin.Had Ashwin bowled earlier, Mumbai may have decided to milk him for singles and wait for Mohit, and possibly Marcus Stoinis, in the death. Still, with Mumbai gaining so much momentum in the middle overs, it is surprising Ashwin didn’t give himself at least one in that period.So then why didn’t Ashwin bowl the 20th?Having come on in the death, Ashwin bowled two overs for 13 runs and took two wickets. He was eligible to bowl another, but gave Mohit the 20th – another surprising decision. The only explanation is that he thought pace was a better option than spin to the No. 9 and 10 at the crease.At the end of Mumbai’s innings, Ashwin and Axar Patel had bowled just six overs between them for 42 runs, while the seamers, apart from Tye, had conceded 123 in 10. So Ashwin may be left ruing his bowling changes.

England may have lost the third Test to India, but they won the hearts of stats fans everywhere

Andy Zaltzman24-Aug-2018India jolted the series back to life with a performance that showed the cricketing value of Learning Lessons From Your Mistakes. It was a superb victory that highlighted the tactical folly of England’s batsmen practising in the nets with an elephant as a set of stumps. As a result, when returning to conventionally sized stumps, they have been routinely playing at balls that might have clonked the ECB Nellie on the trunk, but were surely wide enough to leave.Momentum in cricket often seems to be won and lost in the space of a coin toss, so whether India’s all-round brilliance in Nottingham presages a full, series-snatching resurgence remains to be seen, especially as England’s full and heroic commitment to the art of inconsistency in home conditions has often enabled them to spring back from an apparently cataclysmic defeat.(I followed the Test from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where I have been performing a stand-up comedy show every day at 3pm. Audience members have occasionally been providing me with score updates from the cricket, and I am pretty sure that during last Sunday’s show, England lost four wickets during the time it took me to deliver the set-up to a joke, and another during the punchline.)Here is The Statistical Take-Away Set Menu from the third Test.STARTERS
Struggle of English Openers, served in a confused broth
or
Succulent Kohli ImprovementsIt has not been a good time to be an England opener. Keaton Jennings has scored no fifties in his past eight Tests; Alastair Cook has one in his. It is fair to say that the Cook-Jennings partnership has yet to fully blossom into a union of HobbsicoSutcliffian splendour.Jennings is the first England opener to go eight Tests without a half-century since Mark Butcher, who failed to reach 50 in 12 consecutive Tests as opener (although this sequence was interrupted by a considerably more successful run batting at No. 3).The only other England openers with an eight-Test fifty-free sequence are John Edrich (nine matches, 1971-1975), Alec Stewart (nine matches, 1994-1995) and Mike Atherton (eight matches 1997-1998). Jennings is in esteemed company, although the others had all enjoyed notable and prolonged success before these fallow stretches.Cook has reached 50 only five times in his last 40 innings (since the third Test in India late in 2016). Of the 21 men to have opened the batting in 40 or more Test innings for England, only Mike Brearley has made fewer 50-plus scores in a 40-innings sequence (four fifties, 1976-1981). Atherton also had a period in which he reached the half-century mark only five times in 40 innings (1997-1999). As the Trent Bridge Test showed, opening batsmen can have a significant impact on a Test match without making a half-century, but the irregularity of Cook’s successes has become an increasing concern.(This is also the first time since 1981 that there have been four consecutive Tests in England in which none of the openers on either side has made 50.)Virat Kohli, meanwhile, has achieved the goal of having a better tour than he did in 2014. India’s skipper could have improved on his 2014 performance simply by appearing at the top of the aeroplane steps at Heathrow, singing a karaoke version of the 1980s pop hit “Walk The Dinosaur”, and flying back to India.In 2018, through a combination of otherwordly skill, granite resolve, and some frying-pan-fingered England catching, Kohli has not merely put the ghosts of 2014 to bed he has held a statistical pillow over their faces until the twitching has stopped.He has now scored 1006 runs in his last seven Tests against England, including four centuries and four more 50-plus innings, becoming the sixth player to make 1000 runs in seven matches against England. Mohammad Yousuf (2005-2010) was the most recent, preceded by Brian Lara (1994-1995), Viv Richards (1976-1980), Arthur Morris (1947-48), and Don Bradman, who did so in three separate non-overlapping sequences during his two-decade torturing of English bowling.Before these seven matches, Kohli had played ten Tests against England, in which he had reached 50 once in 19 innings (a century on the comatose Nagpur pitch in 2012-13).MAIN COURSE
Duo of Unnoticed Historical Moments
or
Smashed Records of Squandered Starts
Ben Stokes was understandably careful in his second innings, not only due to the match situation but also because of the weight of statistical history bearing down on him. As he strode to the crease, he would have been burdened with the onerous pressure of knowing that he needed just ten runs to ensure that this became the first Test in which the top fives of both teams have reached double figures in all four innings.With due care and attention, amid scenes of wild celebration in cricket-statistics communes around the world, Stokes successfully nudged his way to history. (India, in the process of this epoch-defining statistical quirk, became only the third away team in England whose top five have made double figures in both innings.)Stokes, moving on from the legal squibblings and squabblings over his fistical contretonks last September in Bristol, then saw another nugget of history beckoning him. Painstakingly eschewing all risk, he accumulated his way to a half-century – the 3000th score of 50 or more in England’s Test history.Perhaps this looming milestone has been constricting England’s top order. As Oscar Wilde once wrote during his early days as a cricket hack for the Snoutshire Gazette in the 1870s, “To lose four consecutive top-order batsmen who have reached double figures before they make it to 20 may be regarded as a misfortune. To do so twice in one Test match looks like carelessness.”2014 Kohli to 2018 Kohli: “Thank me you fool, I make you look like a freaking god”•Getty ImagesIn the first innings, England’s Nos. 3 to 6 made 16, 10, 15 and 10. In the second, their Nos. 1 to 4 made 17, 13, 13 and 16.This constitutes a world record, an untouched peak on Mt Failing-to-Consolidate-an-Adequate-Start, new frontiers in the art of 20-avoidance. Never before, in the history of Test cricket, has a team lost eight top-six batsmen for scores in the 10-19 bracket. Only five times had any team had seven top-six players for double-figure scores under 20.England’s top order have proved persistently good at playing themselves in as a prelude to getting themselves out. In three consecutive innings, at Lord’s and in both innings in Nottingham, England’s top four all made it into double figures, but were out before reaching 30.In England’s first 1000 Test matches, they had had only ten such innings (out of a total of 454 innings in which the top four had all made double figures). The most recent of these was in 1996-97, against Zimbabwe in Harare. In England Test matches No.1001 and no.1002, they have added three more, in three innings.DESSERT
Deconstructed Captain’s Innings
or
Sweetly snaffled slip catches
Joe Root has been criticised of late for his failure to convert fifties into hundreds. He has successfully addressed this issue in his last four innings by, instead, failing to convert his 10s into 20s.He thus became the fourth Test No. 3 to be out between 10 and 19 (inclusive) in four successive innings at first drop, after South Africa’s Dave Nourse (in the triangular tournament of 1912), and Pakistan’s Zaheer Abbas (in 1975 and 1976, a sequence interrupted by a score of 2 batting at No. 1; and part of a longer sequence of seven scores between 10 and 19 in nine innings at No. 3), and Ijaz Ahmed (1998-99).Before his current four-innings-in-a-row glitch, Root was a master at converting 10s into 20s – he had failed to reach 20 in just four of his previous 51 double-figure innings, dating back to August 2015. His lack of centuries has been widely commented upon. At least he has taken a step in the right direction by once again familiarising himself with the art of being out for a score beginning with 1.England’s slip-catching this series has been as impressive as a roadkill rabbit on a motorway. Rumours abound that Theresa May could use the current uncertainty over Brexit to sneak through a new law introducing a conscription system for the England slip cordon, whereby members of the public will be randomly selected to field in the slips for one Test at a time (based on the system used to select England batsmen in the late 1980s).India had their troubles earlier in the series, but at Trent Bridge, KL Rahul brought some silken-handed edge-snaffling skills to the party. Not only did he, with Shikhar Dhawan, became one half of only the third pair of Indian openers to add 50 in both innings of a Test in England (after Sunil Gavaskar and Kris Srikkanth at Edgbaston in 1986; and Vijay Merchant and Mushtaq Ali at The Oval in 1936), he also showed England how preferable it is for your slips to catch their chances, rather than to fludge them to the ground like unwanted sausages in a vegan kitchen.Rahul’s seven catches put him second on the all-time list for most catches by a non-wicketkeeper, and, importantly, six of his seven victims were top-six batsmen (Root and Stokes in both innings, plus Jonny Bairstow and Alastair Cook). Rahul thus became, by my calculations, only the second non-wicketkeeper ever to pouch six top-six batsmen in the same Test match, after an Indian predecessor, Yajurvindra Singh, who caught six top-sixers on his Test debut, against England in Bangalore in January 1977.COFFEE
PETIT FOURS
NOT-SO-PETIT SIXES

Bangladesh finally found a way to bat like a confident unit and that only happened because they realised they should always be looking for runs, even on tough pitches

Mohammad Isam in Dhaka11-Nov-2018One of the areas that Tamim Iqbal discussed with the Bangladesh batsmen during and after the first Test against Zimbabwe was the pace of their innings. He isn’t a big believer in defending too many deliveries for the sake of survival, which is what Bangladesh tried to do in Sylhet. Tamim feels batting becomes easier when you’re always on the lookout for runs, regardless of the match situation.Bangladesh suffered a familiar top-order collapse on the first day of the Dhaka Test but their recovery from that was simply excellent. They even crossed the dreaded 169, having failed to do so in each of their last eight innings. The 266-run partnership between Mushfiqur Rahim and Mominul Haque is the fourth-highest by a Bangladeshi pair. Mominul became the first batsman from his team to get to three 150-plus knocks, while Mushfiqur became only the 10th wicketkeeper to score six Test hundreds.

I found out why he is one of the top five players in Bangladesh. It really affected me. I think his input was important for me. I think it is one of my best hundredsMominul on Mushfiqur’s influence and making runs on a tough pitch

The change in fortune, particularly on an “unpredictable” pitch, was down to Mushfiqur and Mominul recognizing quite early that scoring runs will bring them comfort at the crease and in turn have the opposite effect on Zimbabwe’s bowlers.Mominul was the first to hit a boundary; by lunch he had four – one skewed over gully but the other three timed through midwicket, cover and mid-off. Mushfiqur was more careful, only looking for boundaries after the first interval. He had four fours when he reached his fifty.The pair had a great time in the middle session, scoring 151 runs in 32 overs. Mominul reached his century during this time, and as the partnership went into a higher gear, it became evident that they had cut out the risks and were working hard to grind down the Zimbabwe bowlers.In the last eight innings, the last of which was in Sylhet, the same batsmen had a hard time avoiding loose strokeplay. But here, there was a fine mix of deliveries left alone throughout their long partnership, with Mushfiqur especially careful against the fast bowling of Kyle Jarvis and Tendai Chatara. He reached his hundred after the tea interval, his first Test century since February 2017, against India in Hyderabad. The former Bangladesh captain has been very consistent in ODIs and T20Is during this period, but in Tests, especially with Tamim out injured, he needed to do better. And on Sunday, he most certainly did.Mushfiqur Rahim is pumped up after reaching his hundred•AFP”Mushfiqur bhai guided me throughout my innings,” Mominul said. “I found out why he is one of the top five players in Bangladesh. It really affected me. I think his input was important for me. I think it is one of my best hundreds. It was an interesting innings. It was tougher than some of my other hundreds.”Mominul is an instinctive top-order batsman. He made a good start to the year with his hundred in each innings against Sri Lanka. But apart from a 182 against Ireland A in August, he has had a lean time in 2018. But despite getting out to loose strokes several times in the last eight months, his confidence was evident even in Sylhet. Here in Dhaka, on a far more challenging pitch, Mominul scored freely but always made sure to pick the right balls to hit.”I didn’t see much of a difference [between this innings and the previous Tests]. I should have scored in the last five or six innings. You get out of the rhythm sometimes. Maybe something goes wrong with the routine, which I try to maintain.”I don’t try to complicate my batting. It is easier if you focus only on seeing the ball and playing the ball. You have to be mentally strong. Sometimes people say things when I am not scoring runs but that’s normal. Everyone would.”Still, there were the odd silly mistakes. Mominul survived dropped catches (albeit tough ones) on 9, 25 and 120 leaving no doubt that Bangladesh have a long way to go to become a fully confident Test batting unit. The three early wickets they lost also suggested the same. They were at a virtual standstill with Imrul Kayes and Liton Das finding it hard to get scoring opportunities in the first 11.1 overs. Imrul got out to a fine delivery but Liton and then Mohammad Mithun played poor shots after struggling to get the ball off the square.These were silly mistakes that could have cost Bangladesh heavily. Instead, through the Mushfiqur-Mominul record fourth-wicket stand, the home side have a stronger foothold in the contest.

The two batsmen showed the kind of fight that only Kohli and his fast bowlers had shown throughout the series

Nagraj Gollapudi at The Oval11-Sep-2018On his way to his first century of the tour, KL Rahul was cruising. KL Rahul must also be cursing.It had been a tour full of agony for him until Tuesday morning. In Southampton, Stuart Broad had beaten Rahul with two inswingers: one uprooted his stump, the second, a grubber, trapped him plumb. At Trent Bridge, his best showing before Tuesday, Rahul fell to the set up by Chris Woakes to be trapped by an inswinger, and was bowled in the second innings by Ben Stokes.At Lord’s, Rahul nicked at a delivery from James Anderson that was leaving him. In the second innings, Anderson brought the ball in and trapped Rahul.At Edgbaston, in the first innings of the series, Rahul had played-on against Sam Curran, trying to play at an angled, fuller ball, wide outside off stump. In the second, Stokes defeated him with a jaffa as the ball swerved in to begin with, luring Rahul to play and then opened him up while moving away after pitching, taking the outside edge.Rahul had been bowled five times, the most for an Indian batsman this series. Include the two lbws, that would make it two more than any other player across both teams to get out to those two modes of dismissals. Rahul’s average before this Test was 14.12.So, by the time Rahul arrived for the final Test, he had been rattled. He had tried everything: playing time, playing as late as possible, defending as many balls possible, but nothing worked. He was even lucky to be picked for the final Test, but his ace slip catching and belief of the team management allowed Rahul one more chance. He had to take it, otherwise the probability of him being dropped for even a home series were rising.Already on Saturday, Rahul had showed that he was going to hit himself out of a troubled summer. It was no doubt a risk-laden ploy, but if that was the only way he could wipe out the mental cobwebs, then why not. This confident mindset was allowing Rahul to think runs and not how to make runs as was the case in the preceding four Tests.On Monday evening, Rahul walked in with similar attitude. He was going to defend himself by attacking and it worked. Tuesday morning, he set the day rolling with a flicked boundary off Anderson. It brought him his first half-century of the series, also the first by an Indian opener. He would finish the first hour on an anxious note, having just survived a review after Moeen Ali had hit him on the shin as the batsman attempted to flick by going across. The impact was outside the line. Rahul was on 62.Off the first ball in Moeen’s following over, Rahul lined up nicely for an inside-out drive for a four. He would skip into the 80s and then into the 90s sweeping, reverse-sweeping. Then he would blast Stokes over the cover boundary to remind the bowler and the fans of why he owns the record for the fastest IPL fifty earlier this year, off 14 deliveries.A top-edged hook would get him another four and three short of his fifth Test century. Stokes would fire two more short-pitched deliveries. Rahul would not bother reacting. But as soon as Stokes bowled a short one on off stump, Rahul flat-batted the ball down the ground for his first century of the series.He would celebrate quietly, barely raising his head and the bat. Rahul realised what mental toughness, discipline, rigour meant in this innings. He might be cursing himself why he did not exercise all this in the past month.

****

Rishabh Pant scored 89 runs off 96 balls in the second session. Sixty of those 96 balls were dots. He had 13 fours and two sixes – the first of which took him into the 90s, the second brought up his maiden Test hundred, making him the first Indian wicketkeeper to score a Test century in England.Pant was under pressure. A 29-ball duck in Southampton, after unleashing a six as his first scoring shot in Tests, showed he was shackled. But on Tuesday Pant played with freedom. It did not matter that India had just five more wickets to lose 4-1. Ravindra Jadeja was the only batsman to follow him.But the pitch was as flat as it could get. Just like Rahul, Pant got bolder every ball. Stokes kept firing short stuff. Pant kept cutting and pulling him for fours. He did not care if Moeen or Adil Rashid pitched the ball on the rough or bowled the wrong’un. He lofted Rashid for a six just before and after tea.In the last over before the second new ball was available, Pant went for a wild hoick against Rashid, but he was beaten by the wrong’un. But Pant was not embarrassed. The ball also beat both wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow and Stokes at first slip, and fetched India four byes. Pant was smiling.Incredibly in the wicketless second session, the third time Indian batsmen achieved that feat in the series, Rahul faced 84 balls to score just 34 runs. But Rahul was playing the holding role in the second session. He looked in command now while defending too. Of course, the ball was not darting, swinging, even shooting along the pitch. Rahul was knocking the ball as if he was taking throwdowns in the nets. Both those batsmen built pressure in different ways at the two ends.This was exactly the style of cricket professed by Kohli and the coach Ravi Shastri, who both wanted their batsmen to play fearless cricket. Root did not take the new ball for 10 more overs. He did not want to blink, too. He wanted to test Pant’s ego. Despite the target being reachable in T20 terms, it was still India that needed to go for victory.The pressure built as the minutes ticked. The Indians fans screamed, “come on, Rishabh.” The English fans clapped and urged their team on, chanting “come on, England.” Throughout the day sighs like “ooh, ho, ho”, “aaaahh”, “ooh, ooh” ebbed and flowed from across the ground as Rahul and Pant battled with Root’s men. Emotions flowed on the field, too.Rashid had bowled a ball into the rough behind Rahul’s legs. Bairstow did not even move and Root, who went to retrieve the ball was anguished and waved his arms to express it. But Rashid finally started to get his length right for the first time in the match. That was also because he was being given to build a spell instead of the handful of overs previously.The ripper that eventually burst through Rahul’s defence was extraordinary. Delivering from the very edge of the popping crease, Rashid flighted the legbreak, on the edge of the foothole. Rahul turned to play it, opened himself up and the ball ripped past him to clip the top of off stump. He was bowled for the sixth time in the series, more than any batsman on both sides. Rashid deserved the wicket. Anderson had kept the batsmen quiet at the other end and now it was his turn to challenge the Indians and he did that.Pant was talking to himself now to keep his head. But the pressure was too much and he slogged Rashid into the hands of Moeen at long-off. The Oval erupted. At 20 years old, Pant had created a contest in a matter of a session.In the end, there was no grandstand finish. In the end, India did finish with the fate they had feared they would confront at the start of the day: 4-1.However, Rahul and Pant lit up the contest with bravado that only Kohli, and Pujara on a couple of occasions, and his fast bowlers had shown this series. Rahul and Pant showed what desire, motivation, guts, the ability of playing to the situation, absorbing, sustaining and creating pressure can do – enliven the theatre of Test cricket. They made Anderson wait almost until the last ball of the day to enter history books. They made things that looked improbable happen.