He is small. He is quiet. He is flabbergastingly good. Little in sport is more enchanting than this confluence of raw talent and tireless refinement

Andrew Fidel Fernando23-Mar-2015They speak in whispers across the nation. There is high regard, but it rarely climbs to reverence. His cricket is sensational now, “But wait and watch a few years,” fans say. “Just how good do you think he could be?” No bad words are spoken. The admiration is unreserved, but like the man himself, restrained. He is small. He is quiet. He is flabbergastingly good. Welcome to the cult of Kane.It is a sports following like few others, because although Williamson can rarely be prodded to speak on his likes, his peeves, his desires or his background, his fans feel they understand him. Often, they give descriptions that are at once entirely simplistic, but profoundly appropriate. “Kane just loves to bat,” some say. “He was born to do it,” say others. Many more lead with: “He’s one player that doesn’t just rely on his talent. For a young guy he’s hit so many balls.”Little in sport is more enchanting than this confluence of raw talent and tireless refinement. Williamson is prodigious and professional; the lifelong love of the craft of batting as irrepressible as his century celebrations are muted. In an age in which maiden Test tons spark whoops, hollers, leaps and flailing, Williamson’s trip to triple figures on debut inspired only a bashful bat-raise in Ahmedabad. In 13 hundreds and a match-flipping double-ton since, he has been no less measured. But that cover drive radiates affection for the game. The back-foot punch is simple but well-rehearsed. Fans love that. How refreshing for a sportsman to convey so much while saying so little.Only so much is known of his beginnings, save to say New Zealand’s cricket fraternity was alerted a new star may be on the horizon when Williamson was piling up centuries for his high school in Tauranga. His hometown is beautiful, unassuming and disproportionately favoured by the aged: the perfect setting for cricket’s youngest old soul. “He’s only 24, but in our group, he’s already a leader,” Brendon McCullum keeps saying of him. Williamson’s locker of strokes has begun to expand dramatically. He is becoming an all-format performer of the modern age. But timeless sensibility underpins his cricket. The risks are wise and his go-to shots well worn. This is almost impossible not to appreciate.He plays in a team flaunting impetuosity and skill, but watching Williamson bat is a different experience entirely, because his work always seems a reverie. All the great players of large innings enter a batting trance they say, and when Williamson enters his, little seems to exist for him but the next ball and the next run. Once, while saving a Test against South Africa at the Basin in 2012, Williamson blew a bubble with the gum he’d been chewing all day, just as he stroked Morne Morkel through the covers.And then there is that cover drive•Getty ImagesWilliamson is dropped more often than other batsman, which Martin Crowe feels is a result of passive body language. “Fielding sides are not sharp when he is at the crease, often spilling catches that would otherwise be taken if a sharper focus was created,” Crowe says. Perhaps that is true, but his admirers need no more reason than karma. “Who deserves the luck more than Kane?” they ask.There is the fielding too, which is the surest way into a New Zealand fan’s heart. At gully, Williamson is now almost surely peerless. Fully-flung and airborne, almost every tour he takes a catch there, like a cartoon character clinging to a speeding train. These are the moments in which he is most animated – when his teammates crowd around to ruffle his hair and lift him off the ground. Dwarfed sometimes by everyone but Brendon McCullum, he seems like the beloved kid brother. When he struck that six to win a tight World Cup match against New Zealand’s most rivalrous opponents, he was kid brother to a nation.On Tuesday, as New Zealand prepared for their seventh World Cup semi-final, Brendon McCullum batted away suggestions their opponents were chokers. “Both teams have grown up in the past four years,” he said – their last World Cup meeting in Mirpur having been a dogfight of the cricketing and verbal variety. New Zealand have now embraced a philosophy of respect, selflessness and unrelenting commitment to the team cause. For men like McCullum, Tim Southee, and even Ross Taylor, whose ego had understandably been bruised by the captaincy fiasco, these virtues have been adopted over time; they were not innate.Of all the reasons to admire Williamson, perhaps this is what fans find most compelling: he will be among the youngest to take the field on Wednesday, but he ties together humility and excellence and epitomises this new New Zealand culture. He has not yet played five years of top cricket, but by just being himself, he has shown a struggling team the way.

His current game is extremely premeditated, so as to delay taking risks, and it robs the innings of all natural flow

Sidharth Monga in Ahmedabad19-Apr-2015Chennai Super Kings’ first match of this IPL, against Delhi Daredevils. They lose their third wicket in the ninth over, with the score on 71. It is an okay Twenty20 start, far from a disaster. In fact, a proper batsman sees this as a base where he get his eye in and then looks to explode and aim for 180. No proper batsman here. Out comes Ravindra Jadeja. He scores 17 off 18. Super Kings barely double the score at the end of the eighth over, but thanks to a poorly planned chase and some excellent fielding they win by one run.Their second match, against Sunrisers Hyderabad. They lose their second wicket in the 14th over, for a score of 135, and out comes MS Dhoni, the batsman who didn’t walk out at 71 for 3. He scores 53 off 29, par for the course in T20 cricket after such a start. Super Kings win comfortably.It is not as though Dhoni is shrewdly picking and choosing his position – go in early after a great start and late after okay ones – just because he can. In the third game they lose their second wicket at 115, but he doesn’t come out to bat at No. 4. The reason is, the second wicket has fallen before the 10th over. When the third falls, in the 12th over, duly Dhoni comes out to bat.In the fourth, a one-sided whopping at the hands of Rajasthan Royals, Super Kings lose their third wicket for 39, in the seventh over. Out comes a man who has never scored a half-century for this team, Dwayne Bravo. When the next wicket falls, in the 10th over, Dhoni duly walks out.Dhoni is well known, and celebrated, for going blank into matches, not letting meetings and macintoshes cloud his thinking. Of late, though, there is hard to find a more stubborn and premeditated cricketer than Dhoni the batsman. Everything is sorted in his head. Since the start of the last IPL, he has played 26 matches for Super Kings. Only once has he batted before the 10th over, when he has actually taken charge of an innings the way a proper batsman would. That was in the 10th match of the last IPL, when he came in to bat at 64 for 3 in the ninth over against Rajasthan Royals. He scored five off eight.On other occasions, Mithun Manhas, Jadeja, David Hussey, Bravo, even R Ashwin, have batted ahead of Dhoni because he shall not bat before the 10th over. There is merit in having a role, in not batting early if he can help it, but Dhoni has at times gone to unreasonable extents to stick to a fixed strategy. Just extend this to international Twenty20 cricket and ODIs, and you will find he is similarly reluctant to bat with more than half the overs to go. But he is no Kieron Pollard. Once in a while he can expect himself to build an innings. By avoiding it, Dhoni is selling himself short as a batsman.Or is he? Has he seen a fall in his own batting? For a lot of premeditation has crept into Dhoni’s batting nowadays. Just like with the batting order, he has fixed slots of when to attack, when to preserve, when to take singles. Again, if you are able to manage this successfully, you are the most efficient batsman there ever will be. Just flick the switch, and bat in a certain matter. Batting, though, is more instinctive. More worrying than his batting order, he is not batting by instinct.When playing ODIs, Dhoni is bogged down by the fact that India are forced to play five bowlers with new regulations. He forces himself to delay the assault, getting obsessed with being there at the start of the 41st over, in the process robbing the innings of all natural flow. Looking for that elusive efficiency he has delaying taking risks. He only hits bad balls now. Other Nos 6 are hitting good balls for boundaries. He is banking on those bad balls when the pressure is on, when it is one on one in the end. He is looking to bully bowlers with his reputation, which works sometimes. Presence counts sometimes. But he is not batting naturally.Sunday’s premeditation was the charge at the bowler. Dhoni must have seen something sitting in the dugout that impressed upon him that the only way to bat on that pitch was to charge at the bowlers. Fair enough. You have a plan, but when you see it is not working you drop it, and let your instinct take over. He came in to bat 2.5 overs after Bravo did, but at the end of the innings he had played one more ball than Bravo, for exactly half the runs. Both were not out.”I ate too many deliveries,” Dhoni said at the presentation. “I should have rotated more freely.”Dhoni was not asked what went wrong in his opinion.Dhoni backs himself to win matches if he is there at the end, but instances of that not happening are growing with every passing game•BCCIThis is what might have gone wrong. Of the 19 dots that Dhoni played – out of 37 – he was down the pitch nine times. He also took 14 singles, which is not an ideal result if you have played 19 dots in an innings of 37 balls. He had left his crease on seven of those occasions. Some of these deliveries were full tosses that got too big on him because he had left the crease. Some of these were long hops he converted into those cramping short-of-a-length deliveries by walking at them. Even to the penultimate ball of the last over, Dhoni had set his base back and in front of leg to try to get under a yorker, but once the ball was wide he left it alone.Twenty20 is a ruthless format. If you are not getting runs easily, you have to take crazy risks. You can’t back yourself too much. Lesser batsmen fall into that trap fairly early, others hold out for a little longer. Dhoni, though, took no risks. He backs himself to win matches if he is there at the end. Yet, instances of that not happening are growing, especially in T20 cricket. An absence of risks here meant Super Kings had registered the 13th-lowest IPL target for the loss of only four wickets at the completion of 20 overs. Six of those 13 belong to Super Kings. This can’t be a coincidence.There is a lot of merit to what Dhoni does. He has brought his teams a lot of limited-overs success by operating the way he does. It shows he backs himself to finish matches. It shows he doesn’t panic. The game has moved on, though. Bowlers have wisened to him. He has himself reached an age where he has peaked as a pure batsman. It shows in how bowlers know nowadays that if they bowl short of a length, without letting him hit with a horizontal bat, there is little chance of going for a boundary. For other batsmen in the last few overs, this is not the ideal length. They slog those balls over midwicket or punch it over point. Dhoni struggles to do so.Maybe Dhoni has always batted with more than normal premeditation. Even when he was young he used to tell Greg Chappell he will win India the match if he bats, say, 15 balls. Or that they will win if they have reached a certain score at the end of the 30th over. With his game deteriorating a little and with others catching up with him, the lack of instinct has become more glaring.We know he doesn’t like meetings, but Dhoni the batsman can do much worse than sitting with Dhoni the limited-overs captain, a man who reacts purely to situations without any preconceived notions, who sometimes pushes himself up with more than 25 overs to go to seal games with a six. The man who tries things, who takes a risk here or there, before it is too late. That’s what a lot of batting is.

This contest brings together a belligerent bunch of brats and braggers from two countries that are so different, yet share rampant egotism and a high opinion of themselves

Jarrod Kimber25-Mar-2015Australia and India are part of the “axis of admin” currently running world cricket. That shouldn’t mean you confuse them for friends.Administrators from both countries happily badmouth each other. Cricket Australia tells people they will hold the BCCI to their ethics. The BCCI tells everyone that they won’t be given moral lessons by the same Cricket Australia that runs the bully Australian teams.On the field, it is often much the same.There was a time when Australians completely ignored India. On the field, off the field, as a country. Australia spent decades without winning a Test series in India, but they also spent decades hardly playing a series there in the first place. Australia toured India five times in their first 50 years. They played for the first time in India 24 years after India’s first Test, which even when the Second World War is accounted for, is quite some time.Even when Kerry Packer went around the world looking for players for World Series Cricket, the Indians weren’t tapped on the shoulder. Sunil Gavaskar and Bishan Bedi could have played, but one was a blocker and the other a spinner; it wasn’t box office. They weren’t playing the game the right way, the Australian way.Before 2001, this was kind of how Indian cricket was seen in Australia. As this effeminate version of cricket that really wasn’t for Australians. They didn’t bowl fast. They didn’t smash the ball. They didn’t travel well. And Australians had to take food to their country just to survive it.Australia hadn’t won in India since 1969, but now it was just a matter of time. Coming into India’s enforced second innings, Australia had won their last 16 and a half Test matches.Then, VVS.VVS didn’t just beat Australia; he beat their entire system•Getty ImagesAustralia first tried to take his wicket driving. He drove, they took no wicket. Australia then tried to take his wicket pulling. He pulled, they took no wicket. Australia then tried to take his wicket with slower balls. He waited, they took no wicket. Australia then tried to take his wicket with ring fields. He pierced, they took no wicket. Australia then tried to take his wicket with bowling in the rough. He smashed, they took no wicket. Australia then tried to take his wicket in the slips. He middled, they took no wicket. Australia then tried to take his wicket by giving up. He batted, they took no wicket.VVS made 281. When India started to follow on, they were 274 behind. VVS beat the follow-on.If you were taking on a team of Don Bradman, George Headley, Barry Richards, Viv Richards, Victor Trumper and WG Grace, you would not be unhappy to take Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Shane Warne with you. By the end, Steve Waugh used every player on his roster other than himself, probably due to health reasons, and Adam Gilchrist. Waugh had one of the greatest bowling attacks in cricket, and he was bowling Justin Langer.VVS didn’t just beat Australia; he beat their entire system. He beat their will. He beat their ego. And he did it in such a way that Australia had to give up. India could no longer be ignored. India didn’t play cricket the Australian way, they played it the Indian way.From there on in, you could buy DVDs of an Indian tour in Australian supermarkets. This was a country that only shortly before were happy enough to laugh, or at least cringe in silence, as former Australian Greg Ritchie did a long-running racist portrayal of Indians on TV. Australia went from a country that called Indians “curry munchers” to a country that was now desperate to beat them.Then there was the money. India meant money. Not DVD sales but TV rights. The money jumped up every time Australia hosted India. Hosting 70,000 people at the MCG was nice, hosting India in a Test series was the greatest show on earth.Then the Sydney Test of 2008 happened. Not many people come out of that Test well. Not either cricket boards or key players from either side. And when India threatened to travel home, Australia for the first time truly realised that they were no longer the masters of their relationship. To use the language of George Costanza, they had no hand.Thanks to the IPL, Australian cricketers are treated like rock stars in India•BCCIThis was India’s relationship, this was India’s sport, this was India’s money.Matthew Hayden had called India third world and he had called one of their players an obnoxious weed. Yet, in the corner of N Srinivasan’s India Cements office there is a bat given to him by Hayden. Now Hayden can be seen doing embarrassing video selfies for an Indian TV company.Thanks to the IPL, Australian cricketers were treated more like rock stars in India than they ever had been at home. At the Wankhede stadium there was once a 30-foot-high picture of Aiden Blizzard. In Australia he could wear an “I am Aiden Blizzard” sandwich board in Bourke St and not be recognised. Before most Australians knew who Aaron Finch was, he could be seen in hair product ads in India.Steve Waugh had taken to India out of love for the country. And Australian cricketers had always felt much love from Indians. But now they felt it in their wallets. Brett Lee ended up in Bollywood films. Even John Buchanan has given speeches on business in India.Then there is the Australian success in the IPL. They win a lot of titles, as captains, as coaches. Their players win a lot of personal awards. Many have pointed to the amount of useless Australian players in the IPL as a weakness of the tournament, but they are there because they have shown a lot of success. The IPL rated David Warner and Glenn Maxwell as much as, or in some cases long before, the Australian selectors did.These same players are often now team-mates one week, adversaries the next. It has forged strong friendships and epic feuds. The more you know someone, the more chance you will like them or despise them. And with the IPL, Champions league and Australia v India matches being seemingly played 11 months of the year, it can brew a lot of hate.You could see that when India lost the last Test series. Even during the Test that was as close to a memorial game as Test cricket has produced, the players got in each other’s faces. Some former team-mates, others constant rivals.India were easily beaten on the field, but with their mouths they fought out more than the two draws they managed. They didn’t seem to even turn up for the ODIs in the tri-series; they even lost to the second-tier ODI side England. They haven’t lost since.Team-mates, constant rivals•Getty ImagesThis is all different. This is a bragging right over your friends and enemies for life. This can help a cricketer turn from a hero to an immortal. Madan Lal played 39 Tests, but he is remembered for one ball in a World Cup. This matters to virtually all fans. Even the Test fans who still look down on ODIs. This is a World Cup semi-final. Australia are playing for a home final. India are playing for back to back. And they are playing each other.For years India wanted to prove they could be the best. Now they want to prove they are better than the best. They’ve won three ICC tournaments since their World T20 in 2007. They probably should have won more. Last World Cup they lost to South Africa and tied with England. This time they have been magnificent. So a loss now, as champions, to Australia, is unthinkable.For Australia, this is their World Cup. Even the promos have sometimes forgotten that New Zealand existed. Even their loss to New Zealand was so tiny, dramatic and chaotic that it was seen more as a great bad game of cricket than an actual loss. But a loss to India, at the SCG, will not be explained away, it will fester.Australia are attacking with bat and ball. Their only spin option is a batsman who often talks better than he bowls. They have so many players who can hit sixes, a few of whom do it better than they rotate the strike. Their fielders are loud and athletic. Their bowlers are fast and aggressive. There is no doubt, even at a glance, that this is an Australian ODI team.India are batting slower than they did last tournament. They seem to be backing themselves to get near 300 on autopilot. Their batsmen are almost all below 100 strike rate. Their fast bowlers seem excited by the two new balls and the bounce in the tracks. The rest of us are excited by their wickets. R Ashwin is in control. MS Dhoni wrote the program on modern ODI cricket. It’s sensible caution with flashes of all-out attack.This is a clash of strategy. And of methods, culture and politics. This is a new-era rivalry. Not as ancient as the Ashes, or as passionate as India-Pakistan. Two countries that are so different, yet share rampant egotism, high self-opinion and a belief that being born in their country is superior to other births. This brings together a belligerent bunch of brats, bullies and braggers.This is the “battle of the bullies”.

A short quiz to test your IPL 2015 quotient

27-May-2015

A new book tries to unravel the secret behind the city’s extraordinary cricket legacy, with anecdotes about the passionate following the domestic game has had there

V Ramnarayan23-May-2015At one time, to play a first-class match in Mumbai, whether at the Brabourne or Wankhede, before television brought cricket into our drawing rooms, was to be watched by some of the greatest names in Indian cricket – Vinoo Mankad, Polly Umrigar, Vijay Manjrekar, Madhav Apte , Hanumant Singh, to name a few. There were other cricket fanatics like Raj Singh Dungarpur, with his exuberant passion for the game, and Vasu Paranjpe, whose acute observations from the pavilion on the technique and methods of individual players and on team strategies added a touch of drama to the proceedings.To a visiting cricketer, all this could be morale-boosting and exciting, imparting a new spring in his step. Not only that, if he was a good learner, he invariably went back a wiser cricketer, enriched by his contact with these greats of the game. Imagine how much richer the experience of a cricketer brought up in Mumbai cricket, reared on good turf wickets, taking part in tournaments, rubbing shoulders with stalwarts of Indian cricket from Vijay Merchant and Mankad down to Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane, living and playing through the Sachin Tendulkar era.In his , Makarand Waingankar – journalist, talent spotter, administrator and former cricketer – tries to explain what lies behind the extraordinary success of the city. While the title of the book is probably the result of a copy editor’s fantasy, Waingankar brings an altogether more clinical eye to bear on his subject, while unravelling the factors underlying the phenomenal success and durability of Bombay cricket. He confesses to finding the task beyond him, but the many stories from local cricket and first-class matches, and the many personalities and anecdotes featured, more than do the job. The book also rues the falling standards over the last decade, and tries to understand why Mumbai rarely produces world-class bowlers.HarperCollinsParticularly illuminating are the chapters on the Kanga League, played during the monsoon in soggy, unpredictable conditions (a seemingly bizarre innovation by Merchant that gave Bombay cricketers a taste of English conditions before covering of pitches became mandatory), and Ranji Trophy matches in which the gallant, never-say-die spirit of Bombay cricket comes to the fore. Time and again we have watched in awe as the city’s cricket team turned hopeless situations around to win. This reviewer was at the receiving end once, in 1976 – and the chapter is an inspiring retelling of a number of such games. In the midst of these heroic tales glitters the story of Dilip Vengsarkar’s epic failure to win a Ranji Trophy final, by just two runs, against Haryana, after a 45-run partnership with the No. 11, Abey Kuruvilla, that ended in Kuruvilla getting run out.MAK Pataudi, one of many cricketers whose thoughts on Mumbai cricket figure in the book, refers to the structure of school, college and club cricket in the city, as well as to the inter-corporate tournament that helped a cricketer’s livelihood. In these games, he found the cricket “tougher than some of the Ranji Trophy matches”. Rahul Dravid attributes Mumbai’s longevity as a cricket centre to its cricket culture, its excellent facilities, and the good turf wickets a Bombay player grows up on. Nari Contractor describes the qualities a player needs to succeed in the Kanga League: “To survive on those sorts of wickets, a batsman had to adjust all the time. You had to play with soft hands. Since there was tall grass, we had to run quick singles because you just couldn’t hit a boundary.” (Unless you were Sachin Tendulkar, as the book reveals elsewhere.)While the most poignant stories are about the kind of team men Bombay cricket has produced, like Eknath Solkar and Wasim Jaffer, who put personal tragedy behind them to serve their team, there is at least one that brings a smile to the reader – that of Sudhakar Adhikari, who rushed straight from the of his wedding to the stadium to play a Ranji Trophy match. is as much about the VS Patils, Paranjpes, Amol Muzumdars, Milind Reges and other fine players and coaches below Test level, as it is about Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar. It is a fascinating celebration of the Bombay brand of cricket – (win at all costs), shrewd, indefatigable. It may fall short of expectations in terms of style, but offers substance in good measure.A Million Broken Windows

The Magic and Mystique of Bombay Cricket
By Makarand Waingankar
Harper Collins India
288 pages, Rs 399

Plays of the day from the third ODI between Zimbabwe and India

Liam Brickhill in Harare14-Jul-2015The dropElton Chigumbura usually has one of the safer pairs of hands in Zimbabwe’s XI, but he dropped the easiest of chances off Kedar Jadhav in the 41st over, with disastrous consequences. The error did nothing to help Graeme Cremer’s figures, but worse still Jadhav, who should have been out for 41 off 57 deliveries, added a further 64 runs in his innings to rush to a maiden ODI century. He lead India’s charge at the death as they plundered 106 off the last ten overs, ruining what had been a spirited start by Zimbabwe.The sixJadhav’s innings wasn’t short on boundaries, and he found the area between backward point and third man particularly profitable. A deftly angled bat allowed him to collect six of his boundaries in that area, off both spin and pace, but the stand-out shot was the one that took him to his hundred. An attempted yorker from Neville Madziva slipped out as a full toss, and Jadhav helped the ball on its way with impeccable timing, clearing the boundary for his only six. It was a fitting way to go to a hundred, and his ecstatic celebration was also in keeping with the occasion.The first-ballerM Vijay had a forgettable day with the bat, falling early via an outside edge, but he’ll have rather fonder memories of his efforts with the ball. Vijay had only bowled three overs in 16 ODIs before today, and with just eight wickets in 70 List A matches he might have seemed an odd choice to be brought on to bowl at Chigumbura, who had gotten off the mark with a rasping cut off the left-arm spinner Axar Patel two overs previously. But Vijay’s first ball spun in to rap Chigumbura on the pads, and when Umpire Simon Fry upheld the appeal Vijay had his first ODI wicket, celebrating the landmark with a leap and a click of the heels.The drop, part IIAny sense of achievement Vijay may have felt after his wicket will have been dented by his lackadaisical attempt to take a simple catch at long-on in the 35th over of Zimbabwe’s innings. Chamu Chibhabha was the batsmen to be reprieved, as he punted a length delivery almost straight at Vijay only for the ball to bobble out of his hands. A distraught Stuart Binny recovered to nip Richmond Mutumbami out lbw at the end of the same over, though that dismissal did require a second look from the umpires as Binny’s heel was only just behind the line…The no-ball… Which wasn’t the case when he might have had Malcolm Waller caught behind for a golden duck. Binny had found some wobble through the air throughout his spell, and Waller poked nervously at an outswinger to send a thin edge straight through to Robin Uthappa behind the stumps. It seemed a foregone conclusion, and Waller was walking off when the umpires again asked for a review of the no-ball. This time Binny had landed his foot well over the line, but Waller couldn’t make anything of his second chance. A free hit resulted only in a wild swing at fresh air, and in Binny’s next over Waller nicked a regulation catch to Ajinkya Rahane, Zimbabwe’s chase ending swiftly in a flurry of wickets.

Leading the middle order in the former Australia captain’s Ashes XI: a dashing batsman from England (or South Africa)

Ricky Ponting09-Jul-20151:59

Kevin Pietersen

“He was a match-winning player and the tougher the situation, the better he played: a bit like Glenn McGrath. He was one of those guys who loved to win the defining moments that decide a series like the Ashes”

StatsOVERALL: Matches 104 Innings 181 Runs 8181 Average 47.28 100s/50s 23/35
ASHES: Matches 27 Innings 50 Runs 2158 Average 44.95 100s/50s 4/13Best performance158 at The Oval, 2005
The final day of the final Test of an Ashes Test, and England’s batsmen had one simple task against McGrath, Lee, Warne and Tait: make sure not to lose the Test. Kevin Pietersen’s first ball – McGrath was on a hat-trick – looped to the slips off his shoulder and umpire Bowden correctly ruled not-out. He survived two more chances and at lunch, England were only 133 ahead with five wickets left. Post lunch, it was Pietersen’s session as he raced to his maiden Test century off 124 balls. Brett Lee pumped up the pace, but Pietersen pulled off some outrageous shots. His 158 effectively sealed England’s conquest of the Ashes in 2005.TriviaKevin Pietersen has twice made scores of 158 in the Ashes.

Some easy ones were put down, some cost their team a lot, and some came with a second chance. A few drops from the three Tests between Sri Lanka and India

ESPNcricinfo staff02-Sep-2015Saha puts down a sitter
Sri Lanka were already reeling at 66 for 5 in Galle, and it would have become 66 for 6 had Wriddhiman Saha held on to a simple chance after Dinesh Chandimal edged one off Ishant Sharma. Boosted by the drop, Chandimal went on to score 59, putting on a stand of 79 with Angelo Mathews to steer the team to relatively safer shores.Mubarak drop makes Rahul a centurion
Probably the costliest drop of the series. Sri Lanka had taken two wickets within five overs on the first day at P Sara Oval before Dushmantha Chameera had KL Rahul edge one straight to gully, but Jehan Mubarak let this one pop out of his hands. Rahul, then on 11, scored his second Test hundred and earned himself the Man-of-the-Match award.Dhawan drops Silva before catching Silva
A straightforward catch to Shikhar Dhawan at first slip, in Galle, which didn’t cost India much. Kaushal Silva sent an outside edge flying to Dhawan, who tried to pouch it with his fingers pointing up, but did not succeed. Thankfully for India, Silva fell in similar fashion, caught by Dhawan off Varun Aaron, soon after.Rahane’s rare drop
Ajinkya Rahane was having a dream run in the slips. Then, in Sri Lanka’s first innings at the P Sara, Sangakkara edged a ball off R Ashwin that flew to first slip where Rahane tried to grab it with his left hand and then again on second attempt, but failed. Sangakkara, however, added only eight more before edging another one from Ashwin to Rahane.Thirimanne gives Dhawan a life
Dhawan had marched on to his hundred in Galle and was on 122 when he struck a full toss firmly into the covers towards Lahiru Thirimanne. The fielder leapt to his left, went almost parallel to the ground, and got both hands to it, but it wasn’t enough.

As the Dukes cherry gains popularity for its hardiness, its makers are looking to spread to markets outside of England

Scott Oliver25-Nov-2015They say the best form of advertising is word of mouth. If those mouths happen to be in front of a TV camera or microphone, then so much the better.For cricket ball manufacturer Dukes, the fallout from the summer’s Ashes was pretty good. First Ricky Ponting – lifelong user of Kookaburra kit, whose balls are used in Australia’s domestic first-class cricket – proposed that the Dukes should be used in all Sheffield Shield games. Then Shane Warne weighed in: “The Kookaburra ball goes soft, it’s no good, it doesn’t do enough. We need to use the Dukes ball, it does more. It swings more and it seams more, so why aren’t we using it?”Of course, it was all music to the ears of Dukes owner, Dilip Jajodia, although he is keen to proffer an important caveat: “It’s nice of Shane to suggest that, but I would add [that the balls need to be] produced to cope with the general playing conditions in a given country. It can’t be the same surface finish for all countries. We do have the ability to adjust the surface protection according to what’s required.”These comments appear especially pertinent now, with cricket on the cusp of its brave new world of day-night Tests and with concerns over the durability of the pink Kookaburra ball on abrasive Australian pitches.Jajodia believes that for day-night cricket, the white ball is best for visibility, as opposed to the pink variant•Scott OliverTwo years ago, Jajodia attended a set of tests conducted by Cricket Australia under lights in Melbourne, the upshot of which was that an orange ball with a black seam that he provided was deemed the best by the players involved in the experiment, although it was ultimately rejected due to “a myth that the orange ball leaves a ‘comet trail’ on the monitors of cameramen”. Even so, he believes neither pink nor orange is optimal for day-night Test cricket. “You cannot dye the cricket ball any other colour than red for it to be effective for cricket,” he points out. “When you dye the ball orange, you lose the fluorescence when it goes into the pores. It becomes a ‘dirty’, burnt-orange colour.”If you want a ball that’s really visible in day-night conditions, obviously white is proven to be the best. The traditionalists say you can’t wear coloured clothing for Test cricket. I think that’s over-exaggerated.”Jajodia is trying to get his products into more umpires’ rooms, to increase his market share (currently, his Dukes County Grade A red ball is used for all Tests and first-class cricket in England and the West Indies; boxes have been sent to the boards of Sri Lanka and India for testing; he supplies balls for grass-roots cricket in Auckland, Gauteng, Queensland and elsewhere).Jadojia moved to England from Bangalore as a qualified insurer in his twenties, and started his own sports mail-order firm, Morrant, in 1973. His success selling balls to league cricket led to an invitation to do the same at Dukes, and Jajodia bought the brand outright in 1987 when “it was at a low ebb”. By then, with the skilled workforce retiring or dying off and no one willing or able to replace them, the factory was relocated from Tonbridge in Kent, where it had been established in 1760, to Walthamstow in east London. Experienced stitchers from the subcontinent were brought in on six-month contracts, until visa restrictions were tightened in the wake of 9/11: “The Home Office said they needed a university degree. I said: ‘No, these blokes are craftsmen. They haven’t been to college!'”James Anderson: a fan of the Dukes ball, but only if it swings straightaway•Getty ImagesAlthough the “skilled part of the manufacturing process”, the hand-stitching, is now all done abroad, there is still a great deal of native know-how and discernment brought to bear on the UK side, beginning with the selection of the hides in the tannery: “You use the middle four strips of leather from the back [of the animal] – the middle two for the Test balls – and when you cut the four quarters, you ensure they’re consistent for density and strength. If you didn’t have a factory that went into so much detail – if you were just cutting out strips and knocking out quarters – then you could have three quarters from the back and one from the belly, which is weak and stretchy. They look pretty similar but the composition is different. All the natural pressure will be pushing that quarter out, separating it. After a while, the ball will be out of shape.”We’re dealing with natural materials: the leather, the cork and latex used in the centres. They could all vary slightly – What did the animal eat? Was it sick? – and they could all react slightly differently to different conditions. We have to try and be as consistent as possible, but no two balls are exactly the same.”Of course, given all the interacting variables in the selection, cutting, dyeing, stitching and moulding (or “milling”) of the leather, and in the subsequent stamping, lamping, greasing and lacquering, standardisation can never be absolute. In fact, a ball’s individuality extends to “tolerances” in its dimensions: a circumference of between nine and eight-and-thirteen-sixteenth inches, with the weight between 156 and 163 grams. Jajodia’s personal feeling is “that a cricket ball isn’t a product where you can just mass-produce it at the top level. That personal magic can’t be put into it.” Not only does the hand-stitched seam keep its proudness for longer, helping maintain the rudder effect, the quarter-seam is always closed tight, giving the ball a smooth surface, both of which assist swing.While Jajodia claims he can spot who has stitched a ball from the thread on the seam – “It’s like a person’s handwriting: each guy has his own technique” – he cannot say exactly how he comes to pick out the sets of 12 balls – each of which takes four hours of craftsmanship – that are set aside for a Test match. “I’m a self-appointed feeler of cricket balls, but don’t ask me how I choose. There’s no precise formula. It just has to feel right, as Jimmy Anderson would tell you. He’s just got to feel happy about it. He can be a little moody about it if it doesn’t behave exactly how it wants it to. If he gets a wicket in the first over, he’s the best ambassador I’ve got, but if it doesn’t swing straightaway, well…”A craftsman at work in the Dukes factory in Walthamstow, east London•Scott OliverJajodia is grateful for the feedback from the likes of Anderson, much as he seeks the feedback of batsmen, to be sure the ball has the right feel on the bat. Yet the individuality of each ball, and the variability within each model, means the testing process is imprecise. And there’s the rub with handmade balls: you never know how good an instrument they are until a virtuoso such as Anderson starts to play them.”The problem with a cricket ball is, it fails in use,” Jajodia says. “You can’t test it. You can’t bounce it like a tennis ball, then put it on the market. If you bounce it a couple of times, it’s second-hand. Despite that, you’ve got to try and produce perfection – and that includes deterioration.”Ultimately it’s the widespread sense of a skewing of the balance between bat and ball – cricket administration’s eternal problem – that motivates Dukes to get their white ball introduced to international limited-overs tournaments, to be ready to provide a ball for day-night Tests, and to drop their red leather cherry into more and more Test-playing territories.That said, Jajodia remains mindful that there is no perfect balance. “The ICC and the MCC are expressing concern with the balance between bat and ball, but I couldn’t get out of them what the concern was. Was it that the ball was too effective? Or is it that the bats are too good and the ball’s being whacked out of the park? If you had a Test match that goes on for five days, they’d say, ‘Oh, this is boring. Nobody wants to watch them anymore.’ If you had a game that was over in three days, they’d say there’s something wrong with the ball: the game’s over early, and they’re losing money. You can’t tinker all the time. You’ve just got to accept that the odd game will be finished in two days, and the odd game will be a boring draw. It’s not always about the ball.”

R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja have taken the bulk of India’s wickets against South Africa, but Amit Mishra has played an important role too, chipping in with key strikes at important junctures

Sidharth Monga in Delhi01-Dec-2015On pitches straight out of spinners’ fantasies, the record book shows that Amit Mishra has taken only seven wickets in the series, which is only two more than South Africa’s opening batsman Dean Elgar, and puts him fifth on the list of wicket-takers so far. Mishra is not getting fooled by cold numbers, though. In the four innings he has been used in, he has taken out the South African innings’ top-scorer three times, and the best-looking batsman on the other occasion. He has bowled only half the overs sent down by Ravindra Jadeja, who has taken two more than double Mishra’s wickets. There is a role for him in the team, and he is quite aware of it.Mishra’s wickets are: AB de Villiers twice in Mohali, JP Duminy in the first innings in Nagpur, and both Hashim Amla and Faf du Plessis at the end of South Africa’s longest partnership of the series. On pitches where flight and guile in the air hasn’t been mandatory, teams rely on bowlers who can spear the ball in accurately. That R Ashwin has been just as effective while continuing to flight the ball speaks volumes of the form he is in, but the pitches have led Virat Kohli to be judicious with using Mishra. He is usually called upon when more is required than just the misbehaviour from the pitch.Mishra is proud he has delivered. In Mohali he bowled de Villiers with a legbreak that was flat, giving him the impression it might be pitched short and sending him back into the crease, and turned little, enough to beat the bat but not too much, thus not missing the off stump. It is a variation he has developed in his time outside the team. He says one big legbreak is not enough at Test level. You need those less-turning legbreaks to take the edge or hit the stumps.”In the second innings in Mohali when I bowled AB de Villiers, that was the best wicket I took,” Mishra said, two days before the start of the last Test of the series. “At that time we had a small total to play with, and they had wickets in hand.”Mishra was actually asked if the Amla wicket in Nagpur was his best. “That was my second-best. If we hadn’t taken that wicket we could have lost the match or it could have been drawn,” Mishra said. Drawn? Perhaps Mishra has taken to heart team director Ravi Shastri’s comments of “to hell with five days” and thought it was a three-day Test.Kohli had said earlier how Mishra had asked to bowl him when India were struggling to find a way past Amla and du Plessis. “Virat came to me and asked me what we should do,” Mishra said. “I said let me bowl, I feel like I can get a wicket here. He said okay. I was already confident, I knew we needed to get a wicket there and I felt I could use my variety.”Mishra then got the wickets, Amla with a legbreak that took the shoulder of the bat, and du Plessis with a wrong’un that shot along the surface. That he has been striking at key moments has given Mishra satisfaction despite being left out of the side when the team management felt it needed just two spinners in Bangalore. “It is more important to take wickets when it matters,” Mishra said. “When you take important wickets and your team wins, it gives you more satisfaction rather than bowling 15-15, 20-20 overs [for more wickets]… If in short spells you bowl well, say six to seven overs and take one or two wickets, it helps the team a lot.”Mishra says he understands his role in his team, a smaller team of three spinners within the big team. That is one of the big reasons why India have done so much better than South Africa in the series, he said. “Not only are we bowling well, we are bowling well at the same time,” Mishra said. “We have a great combination going. We understand each other’s games and game plans. We are sharing our knowledge and our ideas. It is important for any team to win matches and series, for bowlers to trust each other, to keep talking to each other and helping each other.”There has been one big disappointment for Mishra, though: that with all the talk around the kind of pitches prepared for the series, the success of the spinners is not being celebrated as much as it would have been otherwise. “If the spinners are bowling well then the talk should be that spinners are bowling well,” Mishra said. “Rather than focussing on the pitches. We can bowl well outside too.”