The 25-year old has been able to stifle batsmen even as dangerous as MS Dhoni, at a time when fingerspin is starting to lose ground in one-day cricket

Vishal Dikshit in Rajkot03-Nov-2017While wristspinners have drawn all the attention in the recent past, a quiet figure from New Zealand has made his name as a creative fingerspinner, especially on Indian soil. He has collected wickets, he has been stingy and he has contained one of the biggest names in the history of ODI cricket.When one thinks of Mitchell Santner’s best performances with the white ball, the most obvious one to come to mind would be his match-winning 4 for 11 against India in Nagpur at the World T20 last year. He doesn’t often collect a bagful of wickets, which is why memory can give away for his second-best performance in the country.He is a left-arm spinner, isn’t a big turner of the ball and doesn’t give it too much flight either. Nevertheless, his forte has been his ability to stem the flow of runs when he is introduced towards the end or just after the first Powerplay, and in the middle overs. Santner himself says he does not try to bowl any “miracle” balls.”As a fingerspinner, you obviously don’t turn it as much as a wristspinner. So our main threat is control,” he had said in Mumbai before the ODI series against India began. “If we can control one end, tie up one end and hope for a big shot and get a wicket that way…obviously depending on the surface. If it’s spinning, it’s obviously an asset.”Rewind to October 2016 and a sluggish surface in Delhi. India are 139 for 5 chasing 243, their hopes resting on the shoulders of MS Dhoni, who is batting at No. 5. Santner is brought back for a second spell in the 26th over but gives up 24 runs in his two overs – six off Dhoni’s bat, 18 off Kedar Jadhav’s. The required rate mellows a bit from 5.84 to 5.45 and Williamson is forced to take his spinner off.As soon as New Zealand dismiss Jadhav, however, they turn to Santner again. He sticks to tight lines while bowling at Dhoni from wide of the crease, with a fairly packed off-side field. Dhoni, on 26 off 37 until then, struggles against a spinner at home. He tries to score by going back in the crease, then by coming on the front foot. He attempts to pierce the gap by cutting or by lunging forward to work the ball past midwicket. Nothing works.Mitchell Santner celebrates a wicket•IDI/Getty ImagesSantner bowls 13 of his next 18 deliveries to Dhoni and concedes only seven runs in all. The pressure mounts and Dhoni falls soon after for a 65-ball 39. Santner ends with figures of 10-0-49-1 and India lose by six runs.Six days later, India are chasing 260 in Ranchi, another slow track. They have a slightly better start this time and Williamson brings Santner on as soon as the first Powerplay ends. Santner knows the pitch is to his liking and he slows down some of the deliveries, makes the ball turn, and pulls off a spell of 4-0-16-0 against Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane.Dhoni promotes himself to No. 4 this time but struggles to get going again. In the first over of Santner’s second spell, he delivers five consecutive dot balls to Dhoni. In his next, he tosses one up, darting a couple in, extracts some turn and stymies Dhoni again. Five balls, three runs.The pressure builds again and Rahane and Dhoni fall in alternate overs. The wickets go to Jimmy Neesham but Santner’s figures read 6-0-20-0 and eventually 10-0-38-1 as India fall short by 19 runs.After the match, Dhoni called the middle-order slide a repeat of the Delhi loss because “the bowlers tend to bowl in the right areas so it becomes a bit difficult to freely rotate [the strike]”. This is one of the best middle-order batsmen India have produced and Santner has had the unenvious job of bowling to him in almost every match between these two teams. His record against Dhoni is envious, though.

Santner has bowled a total of 95 balls to Dhoni in ODIs, 58 of those dots. He has conceded only only 54 runs, including two fours and two sixes; that’s a boundary after every 24 balls. Among bowlers who have sent down at least 10 overs to Dhoni in ODIs, he has struggled the most against Devendra Bishoo (42 off 81 balls) and then Santner.While he has learnt a lot from Daniel Vettori on how to tie up batsmen and “wait for them to make a mistake”, Santner also researches India’s bowlers to do well in subcontinent conditions. “Especially on wickets that do a little bit [for the spinners], I watch a lot of Axar Patel and [Ravindra] Jadeja, they just try to bowl very consistent and very good areas and then try and spin it and then wait for batsmen to play a big shot and get out or run past one.”On this tour, Santner was preferred over Ish Sodhi for the three ODIs and he showed why. He took only four wickets, but his economy rate of 4.56 was better than anyone’s in the series. He bowled 33 dot balls in his 10 overs in Mumbai, 30 more in Pune, and another 24 in the high-scoring match in Kanpur, by far the most economical New Zealand bowler on the day with a minimum of two overs bowled.Even in T20s, it is his ability to contain that enables Sodhi to bowl more aggressive lines and lengths. Among bowlers with minimum 10 wickets in T20Is in India, Santner has the best dot-ball percentage of 51.13, followed by R Ashwin (45.45%) and Yuzvendra Chahal (43.26%). His only weakness there lies in the fact that after he sends down those dots, he also tends to give away boundaries. But he has managed to keep his economy rate under 6.50 in the format in India.Even so, his economy rate in the shortest format in India is under 6.5, and if he can put a check on batsmen going for big hits in Rajkot, he may well be able to show up Axar and Jadeja on their home turf.

At the Wynberg Boys’ High School ground in Cape Town, a lot of the greenery has basmen’s names on it

Luke Alfred21-Mar-2018Viewers around the world will be familiar with the magnificent sweep of the Newlands backdrop, referred to as Table Mountain’s “back table” in Cape Town. No more than perhaps five kilometres away from Newlands is an even better example of the natural beauty in which the city’s cricket grounds are set: the Jacques Kallis Oval, located in the sprawling grounds of Wynberg Boys High School (WBHS), Kallis’ former school.Shaped on the site of an old forest and close to the headwaters of a spring, the 1st team oval at WBHS came into use in the 1990-91 season, according to those at the school. The ground is not only closer to the mountain than Newlands, it is sunken into a bowl surrounded by greenery and carefully placed benches, lending it an unusual intimacy.Monkey-puzzle trees stand on a raised bank on one side of the oval, while a line of wind-bent poplars collapses over the pickets directly opposite. Discard schoolboy cricketers’ propensity for mind-bending collapses, misjudged runs and general eccentricity, and a more perfect cricket scene would be impossible to find.Without realising it, spectators who walk slowly around the ground tend to whisper or talk in hushed tones. The chatter inside the pavilion is often muted. It is muttered approvingly by the local cognoscenti that if you can clear one of the old, slightly stunted oaks at cow corner, you can hit a long ball.In 1994, inspired by the tradition at Hilton College in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, WBHS’ headmaster Keith Richardson decided to honour achievements on the recently excavated field by planting trees around it. Those who scored hundreds on the ground were entitled to a tree, as were bowlers who achieved seven-wicket hauls.Richard Levi has 12 trees in his name, while Dominic Telo, a former Cobras player and probably the most naturally gifted cricketer ever produced by the school, has 13. Kallis has only three, all planted retrospectively after he matriculated in 1993. “Jacques wasn’t that physically big at school – he probably took five or six 1st XI games to score his first two in front of square,” jokes Eric Lefson, a former master and first team coach. “His father, Henry, used to watch from the side and sometimes shout instructions.”One of 12: a plaque on a stump next to one of Richard Levi’s trees•Luke AlfredLefson says that only a handful of trees were planted through the nineties, but as the decade approached the turn of the century, so cricket achievements at the school exploded. There are now an estimated 60 trees planted all around, all adding to the oval’s greenery and charm.Of the benches, one of them down in a corner of the field commemorates the double-hundred Kallis finally scored against India – his 201 not out in Centurion in December 2010. Kallis said memorably at the time that the landmark, which he took 242 Test innings to achieve, was less significant than the door it opened – free access to billionaire Johann Rupert’s prestigious Leopard Creek Golf Course. “I’m almost more excited about the golf membership than I am about the double-hundred,” he joked.For all the worth of tradition, the school has encountered a recent problem. Normally a singular achievement would be marked with a fresh tree. Underneath the tree would be a small copper plaque, giving details of the feat. So, for example, we see that Levi scored 148 not out against Punt on 25 November 2004. Similarly, Telo – the first player at WBHS to make ten schoolboy centuries, before finishing with 13 – scored 103 not out against Australia’s Barker College on 4 January 2000.In recent years, many of the plaques have disappeared, leading to the scratching of heads. “We think the plaques have been stolen by guys who sell them to scrap-metal merchants,” says Oscar Nauhaus, the recently appointed 1st X1 coach. “With the money they get for the copper in the plaques, they buy drugs – mainly tik [known as crystal meth elsewhere in the world] which is a real problem down here in the Western Cape.”With the separation of plaque from tree comes confusion about which tree stands for what feat. Both Nauhaus and Lefson believe that there is a master plan in the school museum somewhere. The school is hopeful that before the summer is out, achievements will be reconciled with trees. “Yes, I’ve got two maps, so I’ll be able to sort that out,” says Richardson. “Within the next couple of months we’ll have all the plaques back.”The tradition of planting trees for major cricket achievements at South African schools is itself disputed, and it is therefore difficult to say exactly when and where it began. In his autobiography, co-written with the journalist Lungani Zama, Mike Procter says that Highbury Preparatory School in KwaZulu-Natal had the tradition before he arrived at primary school in the early 1950s, which suggests that Hilton College – Procter’s high school – might have borrowed the tradition from them.The eponymous bench at the Jacques Kallis Oval•Donna HerrOne of Procter’s favourite memories from Highbury was an outsized partnership he shared with Malcolm Glennie against a Transvaal Schools team before he went off to Hilton. “We put on 316 for the opening wicket, with Malcolm notching 100, while I chipped in with 210 not out,” says Procter in his autobiography, . “Highbury had a tradition of planting trees every time you scored a century, and I had a few by the time I was done. That 210 was my fourth century of the season, and I followed it up with a fifth ton the following Saturday.”It is difficult to get a handle on when Hilton’s first tree was planted,but Ant Lovell, a retired master from the school, thinks it was for Derek Crookes, who went on to play 32 ODIs for South Africa. “No tree was planted before 1988 – I have established that,” says Lovell. “I’ve asked around – all I can assume is the custom was discontinued here after the late 1990s.”There is an interesting counter-narrative to all of this. Lefson points out that WBHS’ all-time leading wicket-taker with 312 first-team wickets was Dylan Matthews, a boy who captained the 1st X1 in 2015 and left the school later that year. Despite his prodigious wicket-taking abilities, Matthews, who is studying at the University of the North West in Potchefstroom, and made his franchise debut for Lions against Cobras in Paarl last month, never took seven in an innings. As a result, he actually qualifies for inclusion on the school honours board but not for a tree.A similar story is told about Kagiso Rabada, who only grabbed three- and four-wicket hauls while at St Stithians College in Johannesburg – and so left school with a qualification but no tree. In the Under-19 World Cup semi-final against Australia in 2014, however, Rabada took 6 for 25, an analysis he argued was retrospectively worthy of a tree being planted in his name. In a state of high anxiety – and forgetting the time difference – Rabada phoned his former cricket master, Wim Jansen, from the UAE in the middle of the South African night. He had just bowled South Africa into the final of the Under-19 World Cup against Pakistan and believed (with some justification) he had a claim on a tree. Jansen was slightly taken aback, but promised to see what he could do, given that, strictly speaking, the school only honours hundreds and five-fors achieved at their 1st team ground. In Rabada’s case, however, they made a notable exception.Rabada, the treeless boy, has since bulked up, planted deep roots in the international game and spread his long arms. Tree thoughts are presumably some way away.

The RCB captain slowed down despite a rising asking rate, but he was doing it to keep his team’s net run-rate up

ESPNcricinfo staff18-Apr-20181:36

Coach’s Diary: RCB can’t rely on just Kohli and de Villiers

Is Umesh smashing it or getting smashed? Within minutes of the match beginning, Umesh Yadav was trending on Twitter. He had taken two wickets off the first two balls. This is the third time this IPL Umesh has taken wickets in quick succession. Against Kolkata Knight Riders, he struck twice in his first nine balls, and against Kings XI Punjab, he took three in his second over. He also managed to keep the batsmen quiet early in those spells, and in this game, he had figures of 2 for 8 after two overs.So how come Umesh’s economy rate this IPL is 9.06? Because after those sensational starts, he falls off, equally dramatically. These are his economy-rates broken down: 3.75 in the first over, 7.6 in the second, 8.67 in the third and 15.75 in the fourth. Against Mumbai Indians, he conceded 28 off his final two overs to finish with 2 for 36.ESPNcricinfo LtdWhy was Chahal v Rohit delayed? Rohit Sharma’s record against legspin is poor. He’s been out to them 22 times in T20s and strikes at just 110 against them. So why did Yuzvendra Chahal only come on in the ninth over when the Mumbai captain walked out in the first? Probably because of the guy at the other end. Evin Lewis smacks legspin at a strike rate of 191.Look at what happened when Chahal did bowl. Rohit got off strike and watched from the other end as Lewis hammered three sixes off Chahal’s first 10 balls. In the end, Chahal, Royal Challengers’ most consistent bowler of the past few seasons, didn’t even finish his quota of four overs. The dynamic could get teams thinking about deliberately having batsmen who have contrasting strengths and weaknesses at the wicket together so the bowling captain doesn’t know whom to bring on.Is millionaire Woakes out of favour?Royal Challengers picked Corey Anderson over Brendon McCullum to get a sixth bowling option. But few would have expected him to bowl his full quota of overs while Chris Woakes, Washington Sundar and Chahal didn’t complete theirs. The decision not to bowl Woakes out was a particularly curious one. He bowled his first two overs in the Powerplay and went for 16 and was then only brought on in the 19th over.Woakes was Royal Challengers’ most expensive buy in the auction, at INR 7.4 crore (USD 1.16 million approx). The decision to bring him on so late despite Mumbai scoring quickly off the other bowlers was either a miscalculation or a sign that Kohli has lost faith in him.Sarfaraz fails againA few eyebrows were raised when Royal Challengers retained the uncapped Sarfaraz Khan ahead of the 2018 season. After all, Kohli did say he needed to get a lot fitter before he could play consistently for RCB. Well, he has now become a regular part of the team, but after three innings, he has managed only 11 runs and has also eaten up too many dots. Against Knight Riders, he took 10 balls to make six runs and against Mumbai, with the required rate at 15.43 when he came to the crease, he took six balls to make five. That released the trolls on social media, though it may have been a case of finding a scapegoat for the whole team’s failure.Was Kohli batting for the not-out?When his team is chasing 214, you don’t expect to see Kohli batting on 40 at a strike rate of 111.11 in the 13th over. But, as he explained after the game, the RCB captain had given up on the chase, as too many wickets had fallen, and was trying to ensure they didn’t fall too far behind on net run-rate. In 10 completed seasons of the IPL, teams have missed making the final four because of net run-rate as much as four times. So clearly Kohli knows what he’s talking about.He started quickly, racing to 18 off 11 balls, but once Quinton de Kock and AB de Villiers fell in the same over, he knuckled down and tried to avoid a huge loss. He got going again towards the end and finished with a healthy strike rate of 148.38. With Royal Challengers reaching 167, they stayed ahead of bottom-dwellers Delhi Daredevils on the points table.Getty ImagesThe young legspinner Mayank Markande also played a part in keeping Kohli quiet, conceding just 15 runs off 14 balls, including five dots. And it wasn’t like Kohli was just blocking him. He played just one defensive stroke, but could not find the gaps with his drives and cuts as Markande showed off his variations and accuracy.Is batting first the new bowling first?Teams batting second won nine of the first 10 matches this season. But just as everyone was thinking here was the secret to winning the IPL, the team batting first has now won four games in a row.This is partly down to the law of averages. While fielding first is statistically advantageous in T20s, numbers suggest it is only slightly so (3429 wins and 3228 losses). In the IPL, the gap is slightly bigger – 354 wins and 286 losses. So you have, approximately, a 10% better chance of winning if you field first.There could be a few other reasons the last four games have gone to the team batting first. There was no dew in Mumbai for the Mumbai v Royal Challengers game, and there wasn’t much in Mohali for the Kings XI v Chennai Super Kings game. This has allowed spinners to have greater impact in the second innings. Also, in all four games, the team batting first put up a big total against sides that don’t have strong middle orders, which made chasing difficult.

A look at fielding and decision review system metrics as we head into the final stages of IPL 2018

ESPNcricinfo staff14-May-2018RCB’s silver lining in the field
Royal Challengers Bangalore may be having issues with their death-overs bowling, but their fielders have done superbly to try and offset that. They have saved a net total of 36 runs in the field.* Kings XI Punjab, who had identified fielding as a weakness, have conceded a net total of 31 runs.ESPNcricinfo LtdMumbai’s safe hands, Royals’ butter fingers
Rajasthan Royals dropped three catches against Mumbai Indians on Sunday, and took six. This was below their normal catching rate this season – 74% – which is the lowest for any team.ESPNcricinfo LtdDRS calls in review
Kolkata Knight Riders have the worst ratio of unsuccessful reviews this season, with 62.5% of their reviews being unsuccessful. Sunrisers Hyderabad are the most successful by the same metric, with a 50% success rate over a relatively large number of reviews.ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Netherlands’ upset win against England in the World T20 2009 spawned untold happiness – and in the case of Bas de Leede, a career in cricket following his father

Peter Della Penna at Lord's29-Jul-20181:46

‘Playing at Lord’s a victory for Associate cricket’ – Pieter Seelar

June 5, 2009, a date etched in Dutch cricket lore. It was the first day of the 2009 World T20 and organisers scheduled England to play Netherlands at Lord’s, trying to turn what normally would have been a low ticket game against unfancied opposition into a sellout by virtue of being the tournament curtain-raiser.Three hours later, the Dutch had pulled off one of the most improbable upsets in cricket history in a last-ball, four-wicket win. Few had expected Netherlands, a group of mostly amateur players, to be able to compete with England. That included a number of the Dutch players themselves.Nine years later, Netherlands captain Pieter Seelaar is leading a near fully professional Dutch side for a T20 tri-series with the MCC and Nepal, the latter of which will be Netherlands’ first T20Is at Lord’s since the group matches played against England and Pakistan at the 2009 World T20. Seelaar and Ryan ten Doeschate are the only two members left from that famous win in a Netherlands side now full of professionalism and expectations, the pre-eminent Associate by virtue of their status as the only one included in the 13-team ODI League scheduled to get underway in 2020. It’s a far cry from how the team turned up at Lord’s nearly a decade ago.”We were back then a very amateur side and we were here more enjoying the experience, whereas now not only us but the whole Associate community, so to speak, expect themselves to put up a big fight against the big nations,” Seelaar told ESPNcricinfo. “Back then we were a very small, small country, as we still are, but we were very amateurish in the way we went about our cricket. We were just hoping to get a good experience out of Lord’s and it actually turned out to be one of the great victories – not only for Dutch cricket but also for Associate cricket.”Leading into the 2009 World T20, there was little indication that the Dutch would have even the slightest chance of standing toe-to-toe with England, let alone slay them. In their first two warm-up matches against Bangladesh and New Zealand, they conceded totals of 206 and 194 in a pair of lopsided defeats. A tied match with Ireland followed, with the Dutch losing in a Super Over after scores were level on 135.But all three of those matches were played without Dirk Nannes, who had recently been drafted into the Dutch squad. In their final warm-up match against Scotland, Nannes took the new ball and turned in a spell of 0 for 13 in four overs to restrict the Scots to 128 in an eventual seven-wicket win. Seelaar says that knowing Nannes was going to be making his official T20I debut at Lord’s gave the side a bit of a spark.”Obviously that gave us a bit of confidence because Ryan ten Doeschate was also in the squad,” Seelaar says. “But we were hoping for an upset because that’s generally what you do. You hope to play well and you never know what happens, whereas nowadays you expect to create an upset somewhere along the line.Pieter Seelaar leads the Netherlands through a training session•Peter Della Penna”What I remember vividly is just walking into the Long Room and you’re playing England. One of the things Darron Reekers mentioned is that, ‘Well, they’re probably going to be as nervous as us because they have to play a minor nation in front of their home crowd in the opening game of the World T20.’ So they’re gonna be as nervous as we were. As the game showed, even the full-time professionals playing the amateurs, it doesn’t matter who is on the field because you’re going to be nervous playing in any World Cup game.”Even though Nannes went wicketless once again, Netherlands managed to tie England down in the second half of the first innings. Despite a 102-run opening stand between Luke Wright and Ravi Bopara, England lacked the ruthlessness down the order they have now. Wright got out for 71 on the second ball of the 18th over, after which England failed to score a boundary.Just three days after turning 22, Seelaar bowled a pivotal 19th over, conceding only six runs and taking the wicket of England captain Paul Collingwood to wrap up his four-over spell of 1 for 33. Nannes then followed up by bowling a very tight seven-run over in the 20th to hold England to 162 for 5.That final over of the first innings was when Seelaar says the Dutch began to sense they might have an outside chance at an upset. It wasn’t until the halfway point of the chase though that those upset thoughts truly started to materialise.”Peter Borren slog swept Paul Collingwood into the second tier and I think from there, because that was such a not only a big six but a massive moment in the game where the slow bowlers were the most difficult to face, we actually started to play some decent shots as well,” Seelaar said. “Tom de Grooth hit a couple of fours off Adil Rashid over midwicket, even reverse sweeping him through point.”I think it was all around the 10th, 11th overs and that’s where we started to feel like we’re actually supposed to win this game now. That’s where it was quite handy that when the [fourth] wicket fell, Ryan came in and he coasted us home together with the other guys coming in.”

“I felt really proud of the Dutch cricketers as they were seen as amateurs back then. I was like, these guys can beat England and if I train more and harder than those guys, I can beat England when I’m big as well.”Bas de Leede

The victory made from page news in the Netherlands, which was quite handy since a nine-year-old Bas de Leede slept through the finish. His mom and dad, Dutch legend Tim de Leede, were at Lord’s that night but because they could only secure two tickets it meant that Bas stayed at home and was sent to bed early by his aunt who was there to babysit. But waking up to the news of the upset was inspiring.”For me, I felt really proud of the Dutch cricketers as they were seen as amateurs back then,” de Leede said. “I was like, these guys can beat England and if I train more and harder than those guys, I can beat England when I’m big as well. So it motivated me to really try and get something out of my cricket, start training harder and play as much cricket as I can because I saw what was possible with guys that to be fair were still amateurs.”The magnitude of such upsets against Full Members is tangible when witnessing an 18-year-old de Leede today, who is in London as the youngest member of the Netherlands touring squad. Seeing Netherlands beat England nine years ago filled him with hope. His burgeoning career as a cricketer today is tangible evidence for expanding the number of teams in World Cups instead of shrinking the numbers.”To be able to play in a World Cup and play against the big teams is more of a motivation. If you pull off a victory against India or England instead of playing World Cricket League matches against smaller sides, which are still good cricket matches but I think it motivates the youth less and makes them choose other career pathways instead of cricket,” de Leede says. “If the highest you can reach is playing against other Associate members, it isn’t what you aspire to be as a cricketer.”You aspire to play the best teams and beat them, and because of the reduction to the World Cup, you don’t get these chances to play the Full Members often anymore and some teams will not play them at all, which is bad for Holland because it’s already a small sport and it was only going to get smaller if we didn’t qualify for the ODI League.”Though he wasn’t at Lord’s for the win against England, he was able to fly in to join his dad a few days later for Netherlands’ encounter with Pakistan. Taking in the occasion of a World Cup match at Lord’s with Netherlands was further inspiration, even in defeat. Now, de Leede is looking to pay that forward with a possible appearance in the starting XI at Lord’s, having made his T20I debut last month in the tri-series against Ireland and Scotland.

“There’s obviously quite a few sportsmen who know what it is to create an upset like that but for me it was just pure emotion, happiness. What do you remember? Not a hell of a lot. I know after that we watched the highlights on the screen. That’s when I came to realise we actually won.”Pieter Seelaar

“When I was sat in the stands, I didn’t even think about playing at Lord’s one day,” de Leede says. “But now that the opportunity is there, I’d say it’s every cricketer’s dream to be able to play at Lord’s and if it comes true, then it’s one of the greatest moments of my cricketing career but if it doesn’t, I hope there’s plenty more chances to come.”I’ll definitely keep pushing myself until I reach the level to play at Lord’s more often. I remember the image of me sitting in the stands as a young kid and I hope to be playing out there for a lot of young kids as well and inspiring them to grow up playing cricket, be the best they can and try to play for their country.”In a summer that has seen record heat wave roll through the UK, the return for Netherlands has been spoiled somewhat by rain returning on Sunday morning at Lord’s, causing the scheduled T20 tri-series fixture with an MCC side captained by Mahela Jayawardene to be shortened ahead of the scheduled T20I vs Nepal. But it hardly dampens the impact of the occasion in de Leede’s life, nor the memories Seelaar has of the final moments of victory.”It was pure emotion that came out. What I know is it was a long sprint and after it was a lot of hugs,” Seelaar said. “I mean there’s obviously quite a few sportsmen who know what it is to create an upset like that but for me it was just pure emotion, happiness. What do you remember? Not a hell of a lot. I know after that we watched the highlights on the screen. That’s when I came to realise we actually won and it was a good day but in between that it was pure happiness.”

The stats highlights from Bangladesh’s extremely short innings

Gaurav Sundararaman04-Jul-2018All-time low for BangladeshBangladesh hit an all-time low when they were dismissed for 43 – their lowest score in Tests, and the lowest by any team since India were dismissed for 42 in 1974. The previous lowest score by Bangladesh was 62 against Sri Lanka in 2007. This is also the lowest score for which West Indies has dismissed any opposition in Test cricket, and the lowest score in the Carribean. In 1994 they dismissed England for 46 at Port of Spain.ESPNcricinfo Ltd Roach enters the record books Kemar Roach entered the record books by becoming only the third cricketer alongside Monty Noble and Jacques Kallis to take five wickets in a span of 12 balls. These are the fewest balls that any bowler has taken to pick up five wickets. Incidentally Kallis also achieved this feat against Bangladesh in October 2002, while Monty Noble did it against England in 1902. Four of the top five instances are against Bangladesh.

Fewest Balls to take five wickets Balls Opposition YearMonty Noble 12 England 1902Jacques Kallis 12 Bangladesh 2002Kemar Roach 12 Bangladesh 2018Waqar Younis 13 Bangladesh 2002Jim Laker 13 Australia 1956Roach took a wicket once every six balls, making it the joint-fifth best strike rate in an innings when a bowler has a taken five or more wickets in an innings.Short but not sweetBangladesh and West Indies are meeting for the first time since 2014 in a Test, and only the seventh Test in West Indies. However, it did not go very well. Bangladesh were dismissed in 112 deliveries – the second-shortest first innings in a Test. Australia hold this dubious record having been dismissed in 111 deliveries against England at Nottingham in 2015. Only Liton Das managed to enter double figures with a score of 25, scoring 58% of the team runs – a record for Bangladesh in Tests. This was also only the sixth instance ever in Tests when the fourth, fifth and sixth batsmen were dismissed for a duck.

St Lucia Stars are stuck in a rut, while Colin Munro has set the early pace with the bat and David Warner has kept finding bizarre ways to get out

Deivarayan Muthu15-Aug-2018Dre Russ’ perfect captaincy debut
A breathtaking catch to dismiss Chris Lynn. A hat-trick – only the second in the CPL. A 40-ball hundred – the fastest in the CPL. Jamaica Tallawahs’ Andre Russell marked his captaincy debut with perhaps the greatest all-round performance in T20 cricket.ESPNcricinfo LtdRussell’s athletic intervention at extra-cover first snaffled his Kolkata Knight Riders team-mate Lynn for 46. Then, a ball after Trinbago Knight Riders had muscled their way to 216, the highest total in the league, Russell dismissed Brendon McCullum, Darren Bravo and Denesh Ramdin in a hat-trick.Russell, however, saved his best for the chase. All right, he was dropped off the first ball he faced, but securing a 224-run chase from 41 for 5 with three balls to spare takes some doing. He shellacked 13 sixes, including a monster blow off Sunil Narine that disappeared over the Carib Beer stand and out of the Queen’s Park Oval. That’s how you ace your captaincy debut.No way out for St Lucia Stars?
Is there any bottom to the abyss St Lucia Stars are hurtling into? They are winless in their last 14 matches, a streak stretching back to CPL 2016, and even their ever-smiling former captain Darren Sammy looked despondent after they botched a chase of 142 from 113 for 2 in the 17th over against Guyana Amazon Warriors. In all, St Lucia have lost three matches so far in CPL 2018 and are the only side with a negative net run-rate.ESPNcricinfo LtdWhether it’s the curse of the Zouks, St Lucia’s former moniker, or a lack of confidence, Stars to find a way out of this rut, if they are to salvage this season.Warner, Smith watch
David Warner had found bizarre ways to get out in the Global T20 Canada, and managed only 109 runs in eight innings at an average of 13.62 and strike-rate of 114.73. He fell to another bizarre dismissal against Guyana Amazon Warriors at Providence. When Imran Tahir bowled a full-toss on middle stump, Warner shaped to reverse-sweep but instead only gloved the ball towards point. Umpire Nigel Dungid, however, gave him out lbw, despite the tickle and the impact with the gloves appearing outside the line of off stump. The ball might have missed off stump too. In all, the decision left Warner peeved.Steven Smith, on the other hand, had a more encouraging start to CPL 2018, with a match-winning 41 off 37 balls for Barbados Tridents against Guyana. After crawling to 17 off 21 balls, he made 24 off his next 16 balls.Best batsman of the week
TKR’s Colin Munro has set the early pace with back-to-back fifties. We all know of his might against the seamers, but he was also fluent against Imad Wasim’s left-arm drift and Adam Zampa’s legbreaks on Friday. He read a wrong’un from Zampa, forayed down the track, and pinged the sightscreen with a six. He also took Imad for a brace of pulled boundaries in the arc between midwicket and long-on. So far, Munro has hit 164 runs in three innings at a strike-rate of 153.27; Russell is hot on his heels with 124 runs in two innings.Best bowler of the week
After impressing his captain Dwayne Bravo at Winnipeg Hawks in Global T20 Canada, USA quick Ali Khan was called up to replace Ronsford Beaton at TKR, who are also captained by Bravo. He has caught the eye in the CPL as well, with his skiddy pace and dance moves that aren’t too far behind those of Bravo and the franchise’s owner Shahrukh Khan, who was in attendance for TKR’s match against Tallawahs.Ali Khan hit a hard length – neither driveable nor pullable – with the new ball and claimed three wickets in six balls to set up his side nicely against Tallawahs before he dropped Russell first ball and watched him unleash an unrelenting assault.ESPNcricinfo LtdAli Khan, however, put that drop behind him in the next match against St Kitts & Nevis Patriots and took three more wickets, including that of Carlos Brathwaite. In addition to being the top wicket-taker with seven scalps, Ali Khan has saved 29.37 runs, the most by a bowler this CPL, according to ESPNcricinfo’s Smart Stats.

After going wicketless in the first two sessions on a flat pitch in inhospitable weather conditions, the bowlers hit back to make inroads into Pakistan’s line-up

Daniel Brettig in Dubai07-Oct-2018″Everyone has a plan ’til they get punched in the mouth.” Mike Tyson’s succinct summary of boxing came easily to mind as Australia toiled on the flattest of Dubai pitches, after losing the toss and being sentenced to a day or two’s hard labour against a Pakistan side well versed in batting time on slow, low surfaces.In fact, it cannot have been far from the thoughts of the new coach Justin Langer, a renowned pugilist who once sparred with the former world champion Vic Darchinyan in the Sydney gym of Jeff Fenech. The shock of a Pakistan opening stand lasting all of 63 overs and 205 runs resembled that of a near-knockout punch in round one of a bout, but Langer had to be heartened by the way his team persevered, refusing to yield and even landing a blow or two of their own in a final session of enormous effort.”Inside the boxing ring it’s the same as when you’re playing Test cricket–nowhere to hide,” Langer had said at the time he met Darchinyan. “You’ve got to face a lot of your own fears. If you punch someone properly it’s like hitting the ball in the middle of the cricket bat–it’s a really nice feeling.”Emotional addresses to debutants

Australia’s three debutants, Aaron Finch, Travis Head and Marnus Labuschagne, were each handed their baggy green cap by a more senior member of the same exclusive club, with the South Australian captain welcomed by an emotional address from his former Redbacks team-mate Nathan Lyon.
Allan Border presented Finch’s cap and Mike Hussey did the honours for Labuschagne, but it was Lyon’s words, as the spin bowler fought back tears, that left the most striking impression. “I was there for your SACA debut, cap No. 609, I’ve looked at you as my little brother that I never had,” Lyon said in a huddle of the Australian squad, support staff and multiple family members. “This cap means more than just a game of cricket. It impacts your family, it impacts your friends, and it makes me extremely proud to hand you No. 454.”
While Border spoke about Finch’s opportunity arriving after years in which it seemed this might never occur, Hussey’s words to Labuschagne could have applied equally to all three batsmen. “It is a great honour to wear this baggy green cap, but with a great honour comes great responsibility,” Hussey said. “And I guess what’s most important for you is to just focus on that next ball, play that next ball as best as you possibly can.
“And the second piece of advice I have for you is how you view pressure. I can assure you you’ll be under enormous pressure pretty much every day of your Test cricket career, but some succumb to the pressure, and some see it as a privilege. And pressure is a privilege because it gives you the opportunity to do something really special. So good luck, I hope you enjoy your journey with the Australian team, and I’ll certainly be the first and the loudest to cheer when you score your first Test hundred.”

Fearful or not, no-one imagined the first Test match for Tim Paine’s team since the Newlands ball-tampering scandal would be a simple task, particularly given the trouncing of a far stronger team in these parts four years ago. There have been oodles of meetings, plans and what Mitchell Starc termed “really, really constructive conversations” about how Australia would tackle this assignment, focusing as much on how the bowlers would work in concert in adverse conditions as how the batsmen would deal with spin and reverse swing.Equally, Cricket Australia as a whole and the men’s national team, in particular, have been subject to dual reviews of their culture and behaviour, the better to ensure that the events leading to the banned trio of Steven Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft watching this match on television at home are never repeated. All those high-minded intentions and aims are undoubtedly harder to think about when the thermometer reads 39 degrees Celsius in the shade and Imam-ul-Haq has just clouted the last ball before tea into the all but empty stands at Dubai International Stadium.The way Australia started certainly suggested a team finding their way. Paine posted only two slips in acknowledgement of the conditions, and the early overs from Starc and Peter Siddle were serviceable rather than fire-breathing. Nathan Lyon similarly dropped onto a length without being able to draw too much in the way of false strokes, and at the other end Jon Holland experienced some struggles with finding the right rhythm in the face of batsmen seeking to attack him, a sight familiar to those who watched him bowling, albeit with far inferior preparation, in Sri Lanka two years ago.Scarcely a ball beat the bat as Mohammad Hafeez provided a masterclass in how to sculpt a bowler-blunting top-order century. His only misstep along the way had been a skier to long off from Holland’s bowling, whereupon the vice-captain Mitchell Marsh tried to leap for an AFL-style mark rather than a catch and saw the chance slip through his fingers – in fairness, the Grand Final at the MCG was only a week ago. Otherwise, glimmers of a wicket were as rare as Dubai raindrops.The first signs a change was going to come did actually appear in the overs before tea, as Starc began to gain sharp reverse swing, and created what should also have been a chance. Leaning forward, Hafeez edged one tailing away from around the wicket, but Paine had dispensed with all slip fielders and could only dive helplessly as the ball sailed into the position Aaron Finch would somewhat belatedly occupy in the following over.Getty ImagesNevertheless, that over was a source of possibility for the Australians when the final session began, and it was Siddle who led the way with a spell of grinding discipline and sometimes fiendish curve. After Lyon had managed to coax an edge from Imam that slapped straight into Paine’s gloves, Hafeez’s stay was ended by an inswinger that swerved into his pads and, on the DRS ball-tracker, the outside of the leg stump after Richard Kettleborough raised his finger.Siddle’s spell was ultimately worth 5-4-4-1, with a single boundary being the only scoring shot off the bat, as the tourists began to climb back into the contest after surrendering what in the boxing ring would have been a lengthy points deficit after a few rounds. The high level of fitness insisted upon by Langer, and the acclimatisation provided by two weeks in the UAE, were proving their worth.”We were still positive, still up and about,” Siddle said of the tea break. “We knew that they’d batted well, the wicket hadn’t offered a lot, there wasn’t a lot of movement as such yet, so we knew we had to keep grinding and we got close to that reverse swing early on, but it probably took a bit longer being a day-one wicket, it’s always a lot harder. As we saw this evening once that ball started reversing, yes it was a little bit soft, but we saw some inroads, the boys stuck together and we had some really good partnerships to be able to maintain that through the whole session.”It’s always a tough challenge going over to the different Asian conditions and digging in with the heat but the boys handled it really well – today was one of the cooler days we’ve had since we’ve been here, so that was quite refreshing actually walking out this morning and a little less humidity, so that was nice for the boys. But it’s going to be about how we back up tomorrow, we’ve got the new ball ready to go whenever we want to take that, so we’ll have some discussions whether we want to stick with this one for a little bit or take it straight away. But it was well toiled by us and you look at it at tea time, it could’ve been a lot worse.”Others rallied to join in the fight in the final hour, as Holland crept closer to his best and Starc summoned a swift final spell, despite the obvious discomfort of cramp. Siddle, a longtime team-mate of Holland for Victoria, observed the left-arm spinner’s day with plenty of empathy. “I’ve played a lot with him over the years and watched him bowl,” he said. “He wasn’t far off bowling his best, but it did look like they were a lot more aggressive against him and sitting on Nath a little bit.”Once we saw later in the day there it was starting to grip a bit more, a little bit of spin and bounce, he started to trouble them. That showed with the wicket he got, a couple of close calls along the way, it isn’t going to be as easy to do that in the rest of this match. The way he dug in, you have to, but sometimes it can be hard and you lose your way, but he kept going and to get that breakthrough at the end was a great reward for us.”At final drinks, Pakistan had added a mere 25 runs to their tea-time tally, and by the close it was still only 56, at the cost of three wickets. The Australians were tired and sore but far from despondent, knowing they had fallen behind on the day but won the session that looked at first glance to be the hardest proposition of all three. In doing so, they walked much of the talk of the past two weeks – and indeed the past seven months since Newlands – a team that toils hard and can win admiration as well as cricket matches.”Everyone around that last session bowled superbly. Building pressure, bowling in partnerships, things we’ve spoken a lot about in the lead-up, that last session summed up what we’ve been working on,” Siddle said. “To only go for 50 runs at the back end of a day when a team is none down at tea, I think that’s a tremendous effort from the whole group to be able to restrict them to that, but get wickets along the way it showed the hard work’s paying off.”After his 2006 meeting with Langer, Darchinyan had expressed surprise at how well the batsman had boxed. “I was quite surprised,” Darchinyan said. “He can hold a punch. I did not go very hard because he is not boxer, but he is fit, I can see. He’s not scared, coming forward. Not punching hard, but he’s good.” There will, undoubtedly, be harder punches thrown in this series, but Australia have already risen once from the canvas.

Stats highlights from day three of the Bangladesh-West Indies Test in Chattogram

Bharath Seervi24-Nov-20184 – Victories for Bangladesh in their last eight home Tests – the wins have come against England, Australia, Zimbabwe and now West Indies. Prior to these eight Tests, they had won only four out of 52 home Tests.2009 – The last time Bangladesh beat West Indies in Tests, before this 64-run victory in Chattogram. After their 2-0 win on 2009 Caribbean tour, they had met West Indies eight times before this game, losing seven times and drawing once.54 – Tests taken by Shakib Al Hasan to complete the double of 3000 runs and 200 wickets, which is the fastest by any player. He edged past Sir Ian Botham, who had got there in his 55th Test. Overall, Shakib is the 14th player to score over 3000 runs and take 200-plus wickets in Tests. Shakib also became the first Bangladesh bowler to 200 wickets in Tests and only the fifth left-arm spinner overall.11 – The score at which West Indies lost their fourth wicket. Only twice have they been four-down for a smaller score and both times were against Australia – 9 for 4 in Brisbane in 1992-93 and 10 for 4 at the MCG in 1981-82. It is also the lowest score at which Bangladesh have got their opposition four down.ESPNcricinfo Ltd6 for 33 – Taijul Islam’s figures, the best by a Bangladesh bowler in the fourth innings of a Test. The previous best was Enamul Haque Jnr’s 6 for 45 against Zimbabwe in 2005. Taijul already has the best figures by a Bangladesh bowler in Tests – 8 for 39 against Zimbabwe in Dhaka in 2014.4 – Five-wicket hauls for Taijul in Tests this year – the joint-most among all bowlers. Jason Holder also has four five-fors. All of Taijul’s four five-fors have come in his last three Tests. With 40 wickets in six Tests, Taijul is now the fourth-highest wicket-taker this year.2 – Instances of Bangladesh spinners taking all 20 wickets in a Test. They first did this against England in Dhaka two years ago. Overall, 34 wickets fell to spinners in this Test, the joint-most in a Test in Bangladesh. Spinners took 34 wickets in the Dhaka Test last year involving Australia.2005 – The last time seven of West Indies’ top nine batsmen were dismissed for single-digit scores in a Test innings, against Sri Lanka in Colombo. Apart from Sunil Ambris (43) and Shimron Hetmeyer (27), none of the other players in the top nine got to double figures. The other seven combined for just 19 runs.1 – West Indies’ Kieran Powell became the first ever opener to be stumped for a golden duck in Tests. Two others, however, have been stumped for ducks in the pre-World War I era, when ball data was unavailable.

India have been the best and West Indies the worst when it comes to completing their overs on time

Sidharth Monga and Shiva Jayaraman12-Feb-2019There have been 485 of them since 1992; most have been brushed aside with a gentle rap on the knuckles, some have resulted in match bans, a few of them have brought about the threat of lawsuits, and a rare one was responsible for a mid-tournament captaincy switch that has since been outlawed.We are talking about punishments for over-rate offences, for which the ICC invariably gets criticised: “too soft” when overs are lost but allowances are made, “too officious” when a captain gets banned despite allowances. The ICC finds itself in a bind over a breach-related incident again, this time being criticised heavily with West Indies playing their ongoing third Test against England without captain and talisman Jason Holder.ALSO READ: Jason Holder slow-over ban is just ICC killjoys at workThe first thing to know on the subject is that the process is subjective but not arbitrary. In a Test match, you are expected to maintain a rate of 15 overs an hour; in an ODI, you are expected to bowl your 50 overs in three-and-a-half hours or bowl the opposition out before that; a T20I innings should go no longer than 90 minutes. There are allowances made: injury timeouts, DRS reviews, sightscreen problems, longer drinks breaks in hotter weather, any external delay beyond the control of the fielding captain.In April 2003, the ICC took the drastic step of bringing the captain under the ambit of match bans. In the six years leading up to that, starting 1997, international cricket lost 73, 59, 60, 77, 78 and, in 2002, a whopping 120 overs. On the final day of the Port-of-Spain Test of 2002, a fifth-wicket stand of two hours for just 73 runs frustrated India. There was still time for both outright results, but the draw became a real possibility. Now, imagine the situation if West Indies had not been caught short by 18 overs across their two bowling innings.Such were the matches that eventually resulted in ICC getting stricter. Even as the amount of cricket has only increased since, there has never been a year since 2003 in which 60 overs have been lost. The data available – on the ICC website for all to see – is not always complete, but here are a few trends that might reinforce certain views and surprise you too.West Indies are the slowest
This is perhaps no surprise. They bowl a lot of fast bowlers, they haven’t had a great spinner since 1992 to build an attack around, and they have not been the most disciplined side. Since 2003, West Indies have been 88 overs short in a total of 45 over-rate breaches. Pakistan – 32 breaches and 69 overs lost – are a distant second.Data for over breaches and overs short•ESPNcricinfo LtdRicky Ponting, Graeme Smith and Sourav Ganguly are the captains under whose watch a high number of overs were lost. However, while Ponting and Smith captained 287 and 286 matches to be short by 36 and 34 overs respectively, Ganguly captained in only 64 matches since April 2003, but was in charge of a team that was short by 31 overs. Virat Kohli’s side has been short by only one over in 129 matches played under him.Captains with no over-rate violations•ESPNcricinfo LtdIndia’s transformation
India began to transform as they became more and more spin-oriented under MS Dhoni, and then as a disciplined bowling unit on the whole, that still had enough spin, under Kohli. It might surprise you if you have seen a lot of Indian cricket in the 2000s, but India hold the longest streak without an over-rate offence. The last time they were found short was at The Oval back in 2014. Ravindra Jadeja has never been part of a side found short on overs. India’s is a streak of 216 matches, comfortably ahead of Bangladesh’s 190 at second spot. West Indies’ best streak has been 48 matches.Longest streaks without a breach•ESPNcricinfo LtdTeam-wise data for longest streaks without a breach•Getty ImagesIt’s not always pace
As you would expect, most of the breaches happen when a high proportion of overs is bowled by the quicks – when Faf du Plessis was banned recently, he bowled no spin – but there have been a few instances when sides have failed to maintain the acceptable rate even with spinners on. Rahul Dravid once bowled only 16 overs of pace in an ODI innings, and yet fell short by two overs – against Australia in Gwalior in 2003.Captains with the most overs short per match•ESPNcricinfo LtdDo Big Three players get away with it?That is the question always asked because the last few captains to be banned have been from West Indies, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies again, Sri Lanka again, Sri Lanka yet again, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Pakistan again. This is a question difficult to answer unless you sit with a stopwatch and note every allowance made for every delay during every match. If you agree, though, with match referees – and that’s their job so there’s little point doubting them without evidence – the penalties sound about right.Since 2003, in all formats put together, West Indies have been short in 6.45% of their matches, Pakistan in 4.38% and South Africa in 3.69%.Sri Lanka are an interesting case study. Their overall rate of breaches since 2003 – 3.24% – is close to India’s and Australia’s, but they have a big variance: excellent when at home, with the vast majority of the bowling done by the spinners, but slow when using quicks.Who goes over most often•ESPNcricinfo LtdDo over-rate penalties in Tests need a rethink?
Now to the biggest gripe among fans with these over-rate penalties. When Holder was banned, his side was short by two overs, in a Test ended in three days. Is the over-rate relevant then? Once the rule is in place, you can’t ask the match referee to be subjective in its implementation based on the number of days there were in the Test. So this has to be a question for the lawmakers. Also, even in a shorter game, if one side is bowling at a prescribed rate and the other not, there is a possibility the offending side’s bowlers are taking extra time to recover between overs and between balls.

For what it is worth, this is a poser for the lawmakers: in Tests with results, since 2003, there have been 62 over-rate breaches. Only 28 – fewer than half – of those matches went into the fifth day. Shane Warne recently suggested there should probably be no over-rate penalties if a Test ends in fewer than 225 overs, which is under half of the stipulated overs. Should the ICC make some allowance for matches that don’t go the distance or end in fewer than a certain number of overs?