India A takeaways – Umran needs work, but Patidar and Saurabh look the part

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Tilak Varma and Mukesh Kumar were also impressive in the rain-affected series against New Zealand A

Ashish Pant19-Sep-2022Patidar aces the India A test
It’s been an incredible few months for Rajat Patidar. After good runs for Madhya Pradesh in the Ranji Trophy and in the IPL with Royal Challengers Bangalore, he showcased his knack for scoring big runs for India A, a level arguably between the Ranji and the national side. On his India A debut, Patidar scored two centuries in four innings to finish with 319 runs at an average of 106.33. His tally was only second to Joe Carter’s 347.Related

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Patidar’s ability to convert starts into big ones stood out; it’s always a good sign.”If I have to do well in red-ball cricket, I need to understand its parameters – like the change in bat speed, which is pretty high in T20 cricket,” he said during the series. “So, overall, it’s a mental thing. Depends on how you look at it.”Calmness is another mental thing that he scores high on, across formats. In this series, Patidar looked unruffled at all times, even when tested with short deliveries, and a few verbal volleys, from the New Zealand quicks. And he has the runs to show now.Saurabh’s stocks continue to rise
Saurabh Kumar was in the XI for the rain-hit second game, and ended up doing all his bowling only in the third one, where he picked up nine wickets to end as the joint-highest wicket-taker of the series alongside Indian quick Mukesh Kumar.There seemed to be a buzz around him each time he bowled, and Saurabh picked up crucial wickets. He ended the Mark Chapman-Sean Solia 114-run stand on day two to trigger a collapse, which gave India A the first-innings lead. On the final day, with the game seemingly headed towards a draw, he was at it again, striking regularly to send New Zealand from a stable 197 for 3 to 302 all out with a five-for.On the evidence here, it looks like he doesn’t rely on the surface a lot, and is more the sort of spinner who keeps probing away until the batter makes a mistake. It works for him, as 219 wickets at an average of 24.54 in 51 first-class games show. It’s these numbers that also got him into the national squad for the tour of Sri Lanka in February.Umran Malik was wayward, and didn’t seem to get his lengths right•Manoj Bookanakere/KSCAUmran needs red-ball work
Umran Malik had played just three first-class games heading into this series, and his inexperience showed. There wasn’t much to do in the second fixture, but in the last one, he was off radar by a fair bit.The speed, as expected, was good, but he missed his lengths often, and was guilty of spraying the ball both sides of the wicket. He also struggled with no-balls. Umran bowled six no-balls in ten overs in the first innings – including four in his second over – and ten in the second.”Everybody knows he is not a ready cricketer,” Sitanshu Kotak, the India A coach, said of Umran. “He is here for us to help him develop and get better with the red ball. He is part of the one-day series also. From four overs to ten overs, we’ll see what difference there is. Just by playing Ranji Trophy, he won’t be groomed as well as that support he gets here.”New faces emerge
India A had four debutants during the series: Mukesh, Yash Dayal, Patidar and Tilak Varma. Dayal picked up a niggle and only played the first game. But the other three all had a say at some stage in the three games. Mukesh picked up nine wickets, including a five-for on the first day of the series. Tilak scored 121 in the first innings of the opening game, while Patidar was one of the best performers for India A.”What I felt in the first game, Mukesh looked a bit wayward. Second and third games, he was on the dot, he was bowling on the off stump,” Kotak said. “He got wickets in the first game as well, but he looked much better in the second and third games. Rajat, first time playing for India A, 178 [176], and now hundred [109*] again. Tilak got a hundred in his first game, Yash bowled well [two wickets in his only game].”

Mark Wood feels the ache of satisfaction after providing the speed that England need

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Fast bowler back to Test cricket with a bang after proving he’s not out of road yet

Vithushan Ehantharajah12-Dec-2022On Sunday evening, Mark Wood sat in his room at the Ramada By Wyndnam Hotel in Multan worried.Pakistan had 157 left of a target of 355 going into day four of the second Test, five wickets in hand and a composed Saud Shakeel unbeaten on 54. The pitch was playing truer with every compression of the heavy roller, losing turn and bounce as the match wore on.The result was a coin-flip, though Wood feared Pakistan could have an edge. Not because of a distrust in his team-mates or his own skills. But, after 11 overs in the second innings up to that point, a reverse-swinging stunner to get Abdullah Shafique his one reward for them, he had never felt worse after a day’s play. As ever the spirit was willing, and given the nature of his work, the body understandably was sore. But the tank was precariously close to empty.Earlier that day, as the rest of the team left the field after 64 overs, boosted by Jack Leach’s late dismissal of Imam-ul-Haq, Wood paused his trudge a few feet from the boundary’s edge. There he met the physiotherapist who had brought a few bands and a medicine ball down with him. Wood ignored the apparatus and slumped to the floor. He was stretching out his hip, but who would have begrudged him a kip on the outfield at that point?Less than 24 hours later, he was sat on that same spot again, just to the right of the England dressing-room as you face it. He looked decidedly worse for wear. Like a man who had been bundled into a washing machine and tossed down a hill: dishevelled, battered and a little bit confused. And yet altogether better for it.”I’m absolutely shattered,” he answered, the words tumbling out of his mouth like shopping through a torn carrier bag. The question: With three vital wickets in the final throes of an anxious run-chase, how did it feel to be responsible for a historic series win in Pakistan? A fair response, all told.Mark Wood burst through Zahid Mahmood•Matthew Lewis/Getty ImagesHe had been on the field for all four days, sending down 32.5 overs of immense effort, backing up 2 for 40 in the first innings with 4 for 65 in the second. This was his first first-class match of any kind since injury once again struck – his elbow this time – during the first Test of the Caribbean tour way back in March.Following a couple of elbow surgeries, Wood’s competitive return came in the T20I series in Pakistan only a couple of months ago, then straight into a T20 World Cup before joining up with the Test squad for this series after a couple of weeks at home. That period back at Ashington was spent recovering from a hip injury sustained ahead of the knockout round of that tournament, meaning he arrived back in Pakistan without having bowled a red ball in anger. Even that moment took a while longer yet to come: he had to quarantine in his room at the Serena Hotel soon after arrival in Islamabad due to an illness brought from home. It was an issue unrelated to the virus that upended England’s preparations for the first Test.He missed the victory in Rawalpindi, but Liam Livingstone’s injury, coupled with Ollie Pope’s capability behind the stumps, provided a clean route back into the XI. From that point on, the next thing to figure out was how to use him effectively. Luckily, in Ben Stokes, Wood had a captain who knew him well.Recognising his Durham team-mate and long-time rouser-in-chief had been exclusively on a four-over diet for the past nine months, Stokes utilised his quick in exactly those amounts. Of his 13 spells in the match, five were of four overs (the most he bowled in a row). Each asked something different of him: straight pace at the start, reverse-swing on days two and three, and a two-over burst of short balls before lunch that removed Mohammed Nawaz (45) and then Saud Shakeel (94) in the space of six balls.That last bit was, ultimately, the game. Both left-handers looked at ease, dovetailing expertly for Pakistan’s sixth wicket as Nawaz played his shots and Shakeel stayed level. Wood steamed in from around the wicket and got both caught down the leg side.”What type of bowling does the batter not want to face at these times?” Stokes said, as he reflected on his decision to give Wood the opportunity to close out the session. “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be facing bowlers at 145, 150kph with 20 minutes left, even if I had faced as many balls as those two.”The message to Wood was clear: “Stokesy said to me, ‘make a difference, change the game’.” He obliged, turning a target of 65 to win with five wickets to spare into 64 with just three. Pakistan, deflated by the losses – not to mention the contentious nature of Pope’s catch off Shakeel – emerged from lunch with vengeance on their minds. That soon went the way of Zahid Mahmood’s off stump – flattened emphatically – as Wood picked up where he left off, this time on a fuller length to utilise what late movement was on offer.Related

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“That little burst there is why you want Mark Wood in your team and why you want high pace,” Stokes said, beaming at finally being able to call on him as full-time skipper, after his absence from the first eight games of his reign. “It’s so, so valuable to have out in these conditions, especially when you’ve got the skill of Robbo [Ollie Robinson] and Jimmy [James Anderson] at the other end.”Stokes is right. High pace clutters the mind – neither Shakeel nor Nawaz should have bitten at those deliveries going across their bodies. High pace also makes up for mistakes: the collapse of 5 for 38 instigated by Wood ensured England’s own slump of 5 for 19 on the morning of day three went unpunished.His accuracy was also worthy of praise, and what underlines that most is that Monday’s average pace was the slowest of the four days. It had descended from day one, when he averaged 93.4mph, to 87.7mph on day four. Not that you could tell, given the discomfort of those facing him, particularly when fending off deliveries angling for the armpit and, occasionally, head.”All game I got my bouncer a bit too off-side,” Wood said, recalling his similar barrages earlier in the match. “But in that spell, I got it right.”He was understandably emotional at the end of play. However much he believes in his body, bowling faster than any Englishman has before is a constant dalliance with trauma. Thus, each appearance comes with a sense of gratitude, never more so when it is a Test. Having missed 10 of England’s 14 so far this year, including the entirety of the home summer, this is as much a return to savour as it is a statement from Wood. He’s still here.”My body might let me down,” Wood said to Sky, sweat on his brow, cheeks somehow both ruddy with toil and pale with exhaustion. “But I want to keep coming back, I want to keep trying to play for England. There’ll be one day when my body gives up and I can’t do it anymore. But at the minute, I’ll try my best to just charge in when the team really wants me.”With 27 caps now to his name, and his Test average getting closer to being on the “right” side of 30, Wood’s six victims in the match mean he is now just 12 away from 100. There is more road to come. When he does eventually reach the end of it, even a stop-start career such as his has more to savour than most.The 50-over and T20 World Cup wins. The winning Ashes dismissal in the summer of 2015. That 5 for 41 in St Lucia at the start of 2019, when he first felt like he belonged at this level and when seasoned observers reckoned they’d rarely seen a faster spell from an England bowler. The damned tour of Australia last winter when he was one of the few to stand tall. Now this.Wood’s body will ache so much more on Tuesday than it did on Sunday or Monday. At least, though, he will be soothed by the knowledge that, in bowling England to their first series win in Pakistan for 22 years, he has secured himself, and his team-mates, a permanent place in cricketing folklore.

Virat Kohli is India's slowest-scoring batter in T20 internationals. Should he go down the order?

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In T20, how quickly a player scores depends on how quickly they accelerate, not on their strike rate at the end

Kartikeya Date06-Dec-2022When cricket teams lose, the tendency among supporters is to look for scapegoats. These tend not to have anything to do with the team’s competitiveness, but rather focus on “respectability”. Thus, when India lose a Test match or Test series, attention is inevitably drawn to the batters, though it is the bowlers who couldn’t bowl the opposition out twice. In T20, the blame tends to be directed at the batters who score the fewest runs, though it is the speed of run-scoring that determines competitiveness.In T20 matches the field is spread, and so singles are on offer pretty much on every ball a batter faces. So producing a high average is not very difficult (compared to doing so in Test cricket or even ODI cricket) if a player is prepared to score slow enough.Virat Kohli’s scoring rate after 4008 runs in T20Is stands at 137.96. Let’s say it is 138 runs per 100 balls faced. Compared to other players, that appears to be a healthy scoring rate. That is until you consider how long it takes him to achieve that rate. This is given in the table below. Kohli’s average T20I innings lasts 27.1 balls, from which he produces 37.5 runs. The same figures for the next 14 most prolific T20I batters for India are in the table below Kohli’s figures.Related

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Immediately below Kohli in the table are India’s current opening pair. Let’s say that they both score at the same rate as him. Except, that they survive 20 and 24 balls per innings respectively compared to Kohli’s 27. This means that they get to that scoring rate quicker. The last column below gives the difference between Kohli’s scoring rate and that of other players after the average number of balls of the other player’s innings. Kohli scores 5.7% slower than Rohit Sharma, 5.2% slower than KL Rahul, 27% slower than Suryakumar Yadav, and so on.

The ball-by-ball record of T20 internationals gives each player’s average score after each ball of their innings. All five other batters in the current India line-up accelerate faster than Kohli does. This means that they attempt boundaries more frequently than Kohli does, and that’s why they get out earlier more often than he does.Kartikeya DateThe temptation, especially if one is a fan of Kohli, is to ask, “Why focus on Kohli, who made more runs than anybody else in the tournament?” The above is the answer. T20 is not a game for accumulators. It is a game for plunderers.Teams have ten wickets to spend over 120 balls – 12 balls per wicket, compared to 30 balls per wicket in ODIs, and roughly 62 balls per wicket in Tests (the average Test innings lasts just over 100 overs in the modern era). So we can say that for a player’s innings to not be considered a failure, the player should not be dismissed in their first 12 balls. But we also don’t want the player to score slowly just to survive 12 balls. Which is why we also use the expected runs from that delivery in the comparison.The expected runs from each ball are estimated as the average runs scored from a given delivery. This is defined in terms of three variables at the time the delivery is bowled: (a) the number of balls remaining in the innings, (b) the number of wickets in hand, and (c) the innings scoring rate at the start of the delivery. For example, after 50 balls, with two wickets lost and a current scoring rate of six runs per over in T20, the 51st ball of the innings is expected to produce 1.061 runs. Given a current scoring rate of nine runs per over, the same delivery is expected to produce 1.304 runs. After 80 balls, with two down, a current scoring rate of nine runs per over produces an expected-runs estimate of 1.518 runs per ball.Note that these are actual average runs from such deliveries available in the record. As more and more T20 fixtures are played, this expected runs record will become “smoother”. An alternative approach would be to train a linear model, which uses the same three inputs and estimates outputs for a given (balls, wickets, economy) input, but here I use the average runs from deliveries in the T20 record.

We can now organise T20 innings into four categories:
1. Failures: The player is dismissed within 12 balls and scores fewer than the expected runs from the balls faced.2. Cameos: The player is dismissed within 12 balls and scores more than the expected runs from the balls faced.3. Successes: The player faces at least 12 balls and scores more than the expected runs from the balls faced.4. Under Par: The player faces at least 12 balls and scores less than the expected runs from the balls faced.
The distribution of Rohit Sharma’s T20 international innings according to the classification above is in this graph.Kartikeya DateThe distribution of innings across these categories in all T20 internationals for India’s top six batters in the 2022 World Cup is below. Kohli plays Under-Par innings more frequently than any other player. Note the high rate of Failures and Under-Par innings for Hardik Pandya, who bats later in the innings than players who regularly bat in the top four, and so is at the crease when the expected runs from each delivery are higher than they are in the first half of the T20 innings.

When only 120 balls are available to the team in the innings, acceleration in run-scoring is as significant as scoring. Kohli’s scoring rate in his first 27 balls (the number of balls he faces in his average innings), is 128.6 runs per 100 balls faced. Rohit Sharma’s scoring rate in his first 20 balls is 127.6. KL Rahul’s scoring rate in his first 24 balls is 134.1. Note that this comparison provides a picture that is distinct from the one provided in the first table in this article. In that table, scoring rates are compared relative to dismissal rates (X balls), with faster dismissal rates indicating propensity to take greater risks earlier. Rohit’s scoring rate in T20Is is 139 runs per 100 balls faced, and he is dismissed once every 19.8 balls. But if you consider only his first 20 balls his scoring rate is 127.6. This provides a picture of different rates of acceleration between these players.In the table above, readers will also note that while one in four of Pandya’s innings in which he lasts less than 12 balls are Cameos (Failure and Cameo percentages add up to 45.8, and Cameos are about 25% of that total). One out of five of Kohli’s innings of this type are Cameos (4.7% Cameos, 18.7% Failures). KL Rahul starts even slower than Kohli (4.7% Cameos, 23.5% Failures), but if he lasts 12 balls, the majority of his 12-ball-plus innings are Successes, while only two out of five such innings by Kohli are Successes.However the record is considered, it shows that Kohli is a slow-scoring T20 player as a rule. It is only in the slog that he opens out. A consequence of this is that out of the 120 deliveries available, a large number go uncontested, and are unavailable to other batters. India’s problem here is not as acute as Pakistan’s. Pakistan have both Mohammad Rizwan and Babar Azam who have T20 scoring profiles similar to Kohli’s. Nevertheless it remains a problem for India, much as Kane Williamson’s difficulties remain a problem for New Zealand.There is a lot of discussion in the media about India needing to set up separate squads with separate coaches for each format. As these questions are considered, one issue would be whether players with the scoring profile of Virat Kohli or Kane Williamson are good fits in T20 top orders.India may not be able to match England’s versatility in the short run (England could field six allrounders in their XI in the T20 World Cup final), but they could potentially front-load their hitting talent and use someone like Kohli at No. 6, as insurance, instead of using him to anchor the innings from one end at the top of the order. This will ensure the necessary acceleration, and provide the assurance of there being a backstop in case of early wickets (which is inevitable from time to time). This will reduce the frequency of Under-Par innings from India’s top order and raise the ceiling for the scores India can produce.If the idea is, as many observers have noted, that India need a reboot, then part of this reboot ought to be to take seriously the proposition that T20 is a contest of efficiency. This will require measurements that go beyond basic scoring rates, which can be deceptive, especially for top-order T20 bats.

Stats – Mumbai Indians, masters of the 200-plus chase

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Stats highlights from the Wankhede, where RCB became the first team to concede five 200-plus totals in a single season

Sampath Bandarupalli09-May-20232:04

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21 Balls remaining when Mumbai Indians completed their chase against Royal Challengers Bangalore. It is the biggest win in terms of balls remaining while chasing a 200-plus target in the IPL. The previous biggest win was by Delhi Daredevils, who took only 17.3 overs in their 209-run chase against Gujarat Lions in 2017.1 Number of bigger wins in terms of balls remaining in T20 cricket while chasing down a 200-plus target than Mumbai Indians’ 21-ball win on Tuesday. Surrey won with 24 balls to spare against Middlesex in 2018, needing only 16 overs to chase down a 222-run target.4 Number of 200-plus totals for Mumbai in this IPL, all while chasing. These are the most 200-plus totals for a team in chases in a T20 tournament, surpassing Yorkshire’s three in the last year’s T20 Blast. Mumbai are also the first team to successfully chase 200-plus targets on three instances in a T20 tournament.Related

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5 Royal Challengers Bangalore are the first team to concede five 200-plus totals in a single IPL season. The previous highest was four 200-plus totals by Kings XI Punjab in 2014, and by Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers in 2018. Punjab Kings, Lucknow Super Giants, Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai have also conceded 200-plus totals on four occasions each in the ongoing season.Nehal Wadhera celebrates after bringing up his fifty with the winning runs•BCCI140 Partnership runs between Suryakumar Yadav and Nehal Wadhera, the highest third-wicket stand for the Mumbai Indians in the IPL. It is also the third-highest partnership for the franchise behind 167* by Herschelle Gibbs and Rohit Sharma against the Knight Riders and 163* between Dwayne Smith and Sachin Tendulkar versus Rajasthan Royals, both in the 2012 season.4 Century stands between Faf du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell in this IPL. They are the third pair in the IPL to share four or more 100-run stands in the same season. Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers had five-century stands in the 2016 season, while Jonny Bairstow and David Warner put on four in 2019.260 Runs aggregated for the third wicket in this match, courtesy of the two century stands, the most partnership runs for the same wicket in an IPL match. The previous highest was 257 runs for the second wicket between Royal Challengers and Gujarat Lions in 2016, where 229 of those were added by Kohli and de Villiers.

Rahane, Chawla, Mishra and others with surprise comebacks at IPL 2023

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Five players who were almost forgotten but are now putting in match-winning performances

Deivarayan Muthu20-Apr-2023Ajinkya Rahane (Chennai Super Kings)He had struggled to keep pace with T20 cricket in the past. More recently, he was dropped from India’s Test team. But Ajinkya Rahane has scripted an unexpected turnaround in IPL 2023 – his strike rate of 222.22 in the powerplay is by far the best among those who have scored at least 100 runs during that phase in an IPL season.After a hamstring injury had curtailed his stint in IPL 2022, where he managed just 133 runs in seven innings at an average of 19.00 and strike rate of 103.90, he was bought by Chennai Super Kings in the IPL 2023 auction for his base price of INR 50 lakh. Rahane didn’t start for Super Kings this IPL, but after Moeen Ali was sidelined with a stomach bug, he dashed out of the bench and regularly hit over the top against both pace and spin in the powerplay.ESPNcricinfo LtdSuper Kings would have expected Rahane to perform the role Robin Uthappa used to do before his retirement from international and Indian cricket. But, with his high intent and role clarity, Rahane has exceeded all expectations so far.Rahane hasn’t been fielding at slips – MS Dhoni has often posted Moeen in that position – but he has been manning the hotspots in the outfield. His spectacular leap right at the edge of the long-off boundary at the Chinnaswamy Stadium denied Glenn Maxwell a six and saved five runs for Super Kings. Royal Challengers ended up hitting one six fewer than Super Kings’ 17 and losing by eight runs.Sandeep Sharma (Rajasthan Royals)After having played every IPL season from 2013 to 2022, Sandeep Sharma went unsold in the most recent auction. However, after Prasidh Krishna was ruled out of the entire IPL 2023 with a stress fracture, Sandeep joined Rajasthan Royals as his replacement and has been a reliable bowler in both the powerplay and at the death.Sandeep Sharma nailed yorkers in the final over against MS Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja to seal a tense win at Chepauk•BCCITasked with defending 20 in the last over against Dhoni at Chepauk, Sandeep started the over with two wides and then conceded back-to-back sixes, but he held his nerve to stop Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja with back-to-back yorkers. Sandeep had also set up Royals’ defence of 175 by dismissing Ruturaj Gaikwad in the powerplay. After the game, Sandeep said that he had been nailing his yorkers at the nets and perhaps that’s why Sanju Samson backed him to bowl the final over to Dhoni ahead of Kuldeep Sen, who can generate extra pace and bounce.After Sandeep helped Royals breach CSK’s fortress, he took the key wickets of Shubhman Gill and David Miller to set the scene for another away win, this time against Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad.Related

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Piyush Chawla (Mumbai Indians)Piyush Chawla was ignored at the mega auction in 2022. In the next auction, the 34-year-old was the last player to be bought by Mumbai Indians for his base price of 50 lakh before the start of the accelerated rounds. Chawla is currently Mumbai’s highest wicket-taker this season with seven strikes in five games at an economy rate of 7.15.He rolled back the years against Delhi Capitals , when he took 3 for 22, including the wickets of Rovman Powell and Manish Pandey, at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. Chawla also got his legbreaks and wrong’uns to rip against Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Rajiv Gandhi International stadium, where he sent their chase into a tailspin with the wickets of Abhishek Sharma and Heinrich Klaasen.Piyush Chawla is currently the leading wicket-taker for Mumbai Indians•BCCIAmit Mishra (Lucknow Super Giants)Just like Chawla, Amit Mishra had gone unsold in the IPL 2022 mega auction. Just like Chawla, he got a gig this year and has proved once again there’s still room for old-school flight and dip in the age of fast legbreaks and mystery spin.Mishra, 40, was the oldest player at the auction, where Lucknow Super Giants snapped him up for his base price of INR 50 lakh. Super Giants unleashed him on Sunrisers on a black-soil turner at the Ekana stadium, where he came away with 2 for 23 from his four overs. He could be a regular feature for Super Giants at home, especially if they continue to use black-soil pitches. Plus, the introduction of the Impact Player rule means he doesn’t have to toil in the field like Rahane and can just put his feet up in the dressing room after finishing his bowling shift.Mohit Sharma (Gujarat Titans)Before IPL 2023, Mohit Sharma’s last season as an IPL regular was in 2018. Before that, he was the Purple Cap winner in 2014 and was part of the India team that reached the semi-final of the 2015 ODI World Cup.Injuries then ravaged his career, but a net-bowling stint in IPL 2022 with the eventual champions Gujarat Titans paved his way back. Ashish Nehra, the Titans coach who had also worked with Mohit at Super Kings, liked what he saw in the nets and Titans bought him at the IPL 2023 auction for his base price of INR 50 lakh. He was then brought into the XI ahead of Shivam Mavi and R Sai Kishore, after Yash Dayal was smashed for successive five sixes by Rinku Singh in the final over the match.Mohit marked his return, against Punjab Kings, with into-the-pitch offcutters and back-of-the-hand slower ones that had once impressed Dhoni at both CSK and India. He conceded only 18 runs in his four overs to go with the wickets of Jitesh Sharma and Sam Curran in a Player-of-the-Match-winning performance. Comebacks don’t get better than this.

Andrew Strauss: 'How you win is as important as winning'

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

Former England captain admits personal tragedy helped change perspective, as he prepares for Red for Ruth Day at Lord’s

Matt Roller28-Jun-2023Andrew Strauss has a strong claim to be England’s most successful Test captain of the modern era: Ashes victories both home and away, more than twice as many wins as losses in charge, and a rise to the top of the ICC’s Test rankings clinched with a whitewash against India.And yet, as Strauss reflects on his career, he has a lingering sense that his team could have achieved more than they did. “We felt like we’d achieved everything we wanted to,” Strauss said, “but there was something slightly missing. And it was that excitement, that feeling of pioneering, trying new things. If I had my time again, maybe I would do things differently.”That view is informed, in part, by Strauss’s career since his playing retirement in 2012. As England’s managing director, he was an instigator of their white-ball revolution. Last year, back in the role on an interim basis, he appointed Rob Key to his old, position, and Key in turn then chose Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes as Test coach and captain.”That’s a reflection I’ve had for many years, starting with the white-ball revolution in 2015: that there are different ways to play the game,” Strauss said. “As I’m a bit older and have less hair now, my thinking on this has changed a bit from, ‘It’s only about winning’ to, ‘It’s also about how you win’.”That’s what Stokes and McCullum have done now: they’ve won, but they’ve won with style. They’re questioning centuries-held conventions in the game – and doing it with good reason. The game has evolved and changed dramatically over the last few years.”Strauss admits his glory with England was about personal goals and ambitions, whereas the foundation is about ‘something greater than me’•Getty ImagesBut Strauss’s perspective has also changed by events in his personal life. Five years ago, his wife Ruth was diagnosed with an incurable lung cancer that affects non-smokers. She passed away later that year, survived by her husband and their sons Luca and Sam.Strauss set up the Ruth Strauss Foundation in 2019 to provide support for families and raise awareness of non-smoking lung cancers, and Thursday marks the fifth annual Red for Ruth Day at Lord’s.”Seeing her courage and her bravery, you completely change your perspective in life about what’s important, where you get fulfilment and where purpose lies,” Strauss said. “I was very proud of what I was able to achieve in an England shirt but, in many ways, that was about me achieving my own goals and ambitions.”This is something much greater than me. I know how hard it is for all those families. It just breaks my heart that every day, there are hundreds of kids being put in the situation that my kids were put in. We can’t change that, but we can make it a little bit easier. If we’re able to do that, that warms my soul and I know it’ll be warming Ruth’s soul too.”The foundation has raised millions of pounds through previous Red for Ruth days, but the money itself is not the point. As Strauss puts it: “The Ruth Strauss Foundation is not here to raise money. The Ruth Strauss Foundation here is here to help as many people as possible.”But the Ashes provides an opportunity that other series do not: “People are going through this from all walks of life in all parts of the country, many of whom have never heard of Cricket or the Ruth Strauss Foundation. The Ashes Test match is hopefully a time when people that perhaps aren’t always watching cricket are suddenly tuning in.”Related

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In the past 12 months, the foundation has rolled out peer support groups for both the children and surviving spouses of people with incurable cancer. “People feel a really strong kind of desire and yearning to talk to people who’ve been through something similar to them,” Strauss explained.”It’s great having professional help, but it’s equally powerful just to talk to other people who’ve gone through it. And I think that’s even more the case for kids: kids find it hard to speak to adults, but they find it easier to speak to other kids. More broadly, [it’s about] having a conversation about death, which we’re just not very good at in this country.”In Strauss’s own case, “It was one of those situations that my friends and family, they just weren’t qualified to help me. And so I did reach out to people that had been through something similar; I hung on their every word. And of course for people that have been through it, it’s a lovely thing to share their experiences but also to remember their loved ones.”There was no shortage of criticism for England on Wednesday: for their selection, their catching, their lengths, their body language, their willingness to speak to Australia’s players. As Lord’s turns red on Thursday, perhaps it will provide an opportunity to remember that there are more important things to worry about.For more information and to donate to the Red for Ruth Foundation, click here.

Texas brings the vibe and welcomes franchise cricket to America

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

There was music, fireworks and top-notch on-field action as a sell-out crowd braved the searing heat, with MLC making a grand debut

Peter Della Penna14-Jul-2023The sun began to set behind the luxury suites on the west side of the Grand Prairie Stadium on Thursday night, to the sound of 2000 yellow whistles handed out to fans coming through the gates. Members of the Grand Prairie fire and police departments began to take the south side of the field, opposite the Texas Super Kings (TSK) and LA Knight Riders (LAKR) squads lined up on the north.Moments later, a Texas-sized American flag was unfurled by Grand Prairie’s first responders ahead of a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner, as the sound of cricket married the sights of American sporting pageantry. The first night of Major League Cricket (MLC) was here.”The American flag, I think was massive. It was half the field,” said TSK’s David Miller in the post-match press conference, when asked what he’ll remember most on a night where he was named Player of the Match for a 42-ball 61 in his team’s 69-run win over LAKR. “We’ll look back on this day one day and there was a lot to it. Just taking in everything and being really welcomed and really loved. Probably the win was to top it off.”Related

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As the first responders and colour guard left the field before the first ball, there was still a bit of uncertainty as to how the night would unfold. In terms of on-the-field historic firsts, USA star and Texas local Ali Khan had the distinction of bowling the MLC’s first ball. It was something that team-mate Andre Russell said afterward was a conscious decision by a team leadership cognizant of the historical significance of the moment.But as Ali charged in from the southern end, the stadium was half empty. On a night billed as a sellout for the last week, there was a slightly peculiar vibe. That got slightly more awkward when the very partisan Texas crowd saw their captain and birthday boy Faf du Plessis caught driving the first ball of the second over from Lockie Ferguson straight to extra cover, a moment that silenced most of the whistles temporarily.”Oh, my God! Faf got out first ball?!” shouted Ruhaan Oberoi, a 12-year-old from Dallas who is part of the MLC-affiliated Mustangs Academy. Oberoi was there with his sister Alisha, 15, as well as mom Jess and dad Ankit. He was decked out in a new TSK “Whistle for Texas” t-shirt, one among a number of promo giveaways on the night, along with yellow flags as well as TSK bucket hats emblazoned with “GO. BIG. TEXAS.””Some guy I’ve never heard of is coming in,” Oberoi said of Texas No. 3 Lahiru Milantha, who was one of the highest domestic scorers in the 2022 Minor League Cricket tournament, the local feeder competition for MLC. “So… that’s good… I’m supporting CSK today.” A few seconds later, someone nearby reminded him that it was TSK on the field, not CSK. Most of the fans interviewed at the final training day in Grand Prairie who came for a glimpse of du Plessis and Dwayne Bravo identified themselves as fans of the Chennai parent franchise. Autograph and selfie seekers of the local American players were in far less demand.It was fitting that Ali Khan, a USA star and Texas local, bowled the first ball in MLC history•SportzpicsSoon after du Plessis got out, Milantha gave Oberoi and others a reason to follow him a bit more closely as he flicked the first six of the tournament into the stands. The moment popped literally and figuratively as fireworks burst into the sky behind the Race Track End, as fans continued to steadily trickle in.At this stage, a few thousand were still stuck in a bottleneck at the lone entrance gate on the west side of the ground. It wasn’t just that fans were desperate to get in to watch the cricket; the temperatures near the entrance gate, with the sun bouncing off the concrete, touched 103F (39.45 degree Celcius) and felt like 115F (46.1 degree Celcius). MLC organisers and Grand Prairie Fire and Police collaborated and made the call to stop scanning ticket barcodes and let everyone inside.”Today’s experience on match day is probably the most intense, draining and fulfilling but certainly full-on day I’ve had in nearly 100 matches I’ve done,” MLC Tournament Director Justin Geale told ESPNcricinfo at the end of the night. Geale arrived in the USA three years ago, hired by MLC with a track record of operations experience at the IPL from his eight years at IMG. “We were out here until 4am last night. We had an emergency alarm drill at 5:30am. The stadium was just in time delivery and we were still bolting down seats at 3:30 in the morning.””I think from a broadcast perspective, everyone is relatively happy. It is really hot here. Logistically, we probably need to look at our entry. The lines to get in today were a bit too long and we acknowledge that. I will say the local police have been fantastic here in Grand Prairie. We can adjust. Ultimately, a good problem to have is too many people. But we don’t want too many people having a bad experience. I think overall, the feedback I’ve had has been fantastic. I think it’s a fantastic base. I pinch myself a little that we’re sitting in a ground here in Texas, in a baseball stadium, watching cricket. We’ve dressed it like you would anywhere else in the world.”Fans line up to enter the Grand Prairie Stadium•SportzpicsOnce all of the fans in the 7200-capacity venue jammed in, the noise was immense. And not just from the yellow whistles. The fans were jumping out of their seats early and often at the boundaries coming off the bats of Miller, Devon Conway and Mitchell Santner. A pair of sixes were flicked high over cow corner that landed within 20 feet of each other in the same section. A mad scramble for the ball from fans ensued, including first-time cricket watcher Jason Adams from Thibodeaux, Louisiana, a small town of 15000 people located 500 miles southeast of Grand Prairie.”I’m gettin’ that ball!” Adams replied in a thick Cajun accent when asked what was going through his mind as the first six in the sequence in the 17th over came screaming toward him off Miller’s bat. “It’s exciting for the amount of fans that they have. It reminds me of… what we used to is college football.”Adams is a season ticket-holder for LSU college football, who play at 102,000 capacity Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge and won the CFP National Championship in 2019. Like most fans to his left and right, Adams was enjoying a few beers with the action, and the only thing that could make the night better in his eyes would be Mike the Tiger, a real-life Bengal that lives in a habitat on the LSU campus as their official mascot, and of course, “we need some cheerleaders. That’s what we need!””I’m Indian-American and I never thought I’d see a Major League Cricket match in my lifetime here,” said Ashish Cheerath, from Houston, Texas, who was sitting next to Adams along with a group of friends who flew in from southern California. “It’s awesome to see the Commonwealth community in the USA – the UK community, Indians, Brits, Aussies, all together here. It reminds me of the same kind of crowd feeling of the Houston Rodeo. Everyone’s happy to be here. Everyone’s excited.”MLC Tournament Director Justin Geale (middle) mingles with some new fans in Texas•Peter Della PennaThat excitement in the first innings was capped off by a six from Dwayne Bravo, a moment which might have been almost too on the nose for any scriptwriter. It sent the fans into the biggest frenzy of the night. While the night was a special occasion for all fans, it took on special significance for coaches and players who are embedded in American cricket culture. Numerous former USA players were in attendance, such as Houston resident and former USA captain Sushil Nadkarni as well as Amer Afzaluddin and Abhimanyu Rajp, who flew in from Michigan and Los Angeles respectively, to take in the festivities.Out of all of them though, former USA captain and current USA men’s national team selector Orlando Baker, a longtime resident of Fort Worth – the sister city of Dallas in the metroplex – had a bigger grin than usual. A former Jamaica player before migrating to the USA in the early 2000s, Baker’s appreciation for everything unfolding in front of him took on greater value, knowing the struggles that players like himself have had to deal with in the USA cricket ecosystem, whether playing in front of a handful of fans or struggling to get support from the home board to fund tours. There was deep inspiration to be drawn from the way Baker, and several other USA players and local officials, continuously talked about the occasion.”Everything is big in Texas and it’s a big thing happening tonight,” Baker said. “This opens doors for a lot of kids. Kids who are in the academies, they could see where they can play at the highest level without going outside of America. I’m really happy to see something new. I just want people to come out and enjoy it and I want kids to come out and take a look and see what it’s like to play at a high level.”

Green's big year catches up with him, and there's more to come

by h716a5.icu Uncategorized

The allrounder has now lost his place in the ODI and Test teams in the space of a few months, but he could yet make an impact at the World Cup

Alex Malcolm12-Oct-2023It’s not easy being Cameron Green. Australia’s star allrounder has lost his place in the ODI side in just the second game of the World Cup, less than three months after losing his spot in the Test side for the final match of the Ashes series.It is far from doom and gloom for a player as young and gifted as Green. He could well play in Australia’s next World Cup match against Sri Lanka given the schedule and the tenuous fitness of Marcus Stoinis. Stoinis has been unavailable for Australia’s last five matches, including the two warm-up games, due to a hamstring problem and has not bowled in back-to-back internationals this year. If Green were to regain his place, he could still have an impact for Australia in the tournament.But it is worth noting how Green has gone from almost irreplaceable in all three of Australia’s sides at the start of the year, and a three-million dollar man in the IPL, to being left out of the team on form in a deciding Ashes Test and the second game of a World Cup.Related

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It is clear Green is physically and mentally exhausted. No player in Australia’s World Cup squad has spent more time away from home this year than Green. Since Australia’s Test group departed for India on January 31, Green has spent just a month in his own bed. That is the price of being a three-format international allrounder, and it’s something Green is going through for the first time over such a sustained period.But for a cricketer who has had his whole professional career carefully mapped out in terms of when he plays, when he trains and when he rests, the addition of the IPL to his schedule in a year where Australia had away Tests tours in India and England, a World Test Championship final, and an away World Cup looks like a workload too big for even his broad shoulders to carry.It was long forecast within the Australian camp that this would be a possible outcome. But it is also partly their own doing. Green is unlikely to have been on the IPL’s radar had he not played in a bizarrely scheduled three-match T20I series in India this time last year when David Warner and Mitchell Marsh were both rested.No one could begrudge him entering the auction that followed given his two blistering half-centuries in that series, and no one in their right mind could ask him to forego the life-changing AUD$3.15 million to rest during April and May and make the WTC final, the Ashes and the World Cup his priority.However, what has unfolded since has been a valuable lesson in workload management. Between February and May he spent four months straight in India without returning home, then he had just two nights at home in Perth between the end of the IPL and the start of the tour of England.Only three other Australian players went from the IPL on the Test tour of England. During the same four-month period, Warner had spent three weeks at home in late February and early March after fracturing his elbow in the second Test in Delhi. Josh Hazlewood did not play a match in India having gone home after the second Test in Delhi and did not return until halfway through the IPL. Marsh was not a part of the Test tour to India and went home to Western Australia for a week in mid-April during the IPL to get married.Cameron Green’s IPL was life-changing, but it brought new challenges•BCCIGreen, who has been a notoriously slow starter when it comes to switching between formats, then struggled on his first tour of England having never played there before at any level. His first match in England was a WTC final against India, where most of India’s IPL players also struggled.And Green never got himself into the Ashes with either bat or ball. A hamstring niggle kept him out of the third Test at Headingley where Marsh stepped in and starred. He returned for Old Trafford but was dropped for the first time in his Test career at The Oval.He then had four weeks at home, resting from the T20I series against South Africa, before returning for the ODIs. But after making the most of his break by barely picking up a bat, he was hit in the head by the second ball he faced in South Africa and missed the next three matches with concussion.Having been slated to bat No. 4 in the ODI side with a view to potentially playing a part higher up the order in the World Cup, Green returned to find himself without a defined role and was forced to act as a finisher and has battled for form and rhythm.Now he finds himself out of the ODI side, replaced by Stoinis who has not made an ODI half-century since March 2019 and has averaged 16.80 across 32 innings in that time, not to mention his injury issues.The challenge for Green is how he regains some form either on the sidelines or in high-pressure World Cup matches, and where he can get a rest given Australia’s schedule after the event.Australia have a five-match T20I series in India straight after the World Cup that he will likely be rested from. But if he wishes to regain his place in the Test side, he might want to play in the last Sheffield Shield game for Western Australia before the BBL break in late November or the Prime Minister’s XI match against Pakistan, both of which are not in his home state.Australia then play five Tests between mid-December and late January. Even if Marsh remains the incumbent Test allrounder, Green will likely travel with the team given Marsh’s injury worries. His ankle flared up during the Ashes and he has hardly bowled in the limited-overs matches since. Australia then tour New Zealand in February and March before the IPL starts again. The T20 World Cup follows in June next year.It is a never-ending treadmill that Green is on with nowhere to step off.

Travis Head defines another day of Ashes cricket

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

No batter in the world thrives more against flagging bowlers

Matt Roller28-Jun-2023You might have heard the whispers about Travis Head. He doesn’t like it up at him. India’s fast bowlers worked that out at The Oval, when Head was making a match-defining 163 against them in the World Test Championship final. A few weeks later, on the other side of the River Thames, England’s bowlers tried to prove the same.Just after six o’clock, Ben Stokes set a short-ball field, with catchers back on the leg side, and threw the ball to Josh Tongue. Tongue was the point-of-difference bowler in his otherwise samey attack of right-arm, medium-fast bowlers, and the man tasked with testing out Head’s apparent vulnerability against the quick and nasty stuff.Tongue banged his first ball into the pitch, halfway down and wide outside off stump. Head didn’t flinch. He stood tall, lifting his feet off the ground a touch as he flat-batted through straight mid-on, tantalisingly out of Stuart Broad’s reach as he wearily gave chase.Four balls later, Head anticipated another short ball. He shuffled outside his leg stump to give himself room to free his arms, and took on the men in the deep on the hook. This time, he cracked Tongue away for four over Stokes’ head at deep backward square leg. Head had walked out at No. 5 with Steven Smith unbeaten on 43. Now, both batters were on 71.Related

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Stokes applauded, as if to suggest that it was a matter of time before England’s ploy worked. It never did: instead, he fell to Joe Root’s offspin shortly after. In total, England’s seamers bowled Head a dozen short balls; he scored 21 runs off them, including four boundaries. It was hard graft, for no obvious reward.England only went short to Head in the second half of his innings, after their more orthodox plans hadn’t worked. He thrived on any width, playing his trademark half-punch, half-cut where he combines fast hands and whippy wrists to slap through the off side; when they went straight, he flicked nonchalantly off his pads.They have been dreading the prospect of bowling to him again ever since he finished the reverse series as the leading run-scorer on either side – despite missing the Sydney Test through Covid. At the start of this summer, Stokes described him as “so hard to bowl to” and “really hard to set fields to”.Head is Australia’s werewolf. He is a different beast once evening descends. Since his return to Australia’s Test team ahead of the 2021-22 Ashes, he has scored just under half (46.7%) of his runs in the final session. There is no batter in the world who thrives more against flagging bowlers.That might sound like damning him with faint praise but consider this: there is no batter in the world that has scored more runs in a certain session than Head in the third since his recall 19 months ago. He has averaged 89.37 in the third session, and struck at 93.70.!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<e.length;r++)if(e[r].contentWindow===a.source){var i=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";e[r].style.height=i}}}))}();

“Trav is Trav,” David Warner said at the close. “It’s the way he plays. It’s exciting. He’s going to come out there and to be honest, we’re lucky he’s in our team because he can take it away from you in that half an hour patch. Striking at over 100 on that wicket is exceptional – and that’s what you get from Trav.”Head has been a revelation since coming back into the Australia side, liberated to play like he did in Sheffield Shield cricket for South Australia. In his first 31 innings as a Test batter, Head averaged 39.75 and struck at 49.65; after a year’s gap, he has played another 31 since, averaging 54.71 and striking at 82.45.On the morning of his career-reviving hundred at the Gabba at the start of the last Ashes series, Head bumped into Adam Gilchrist, who was working as a broadcaster. “He said, ‘If you get the chance, fight fire with fire. Play your way,'” Head recounted in a recent interview. There is, undeniably, a shade of Gilchrist in his style.”He applies the pressure back onto the bowling unit,” Warner added. “I felt they bowled pretty good to him first up. The ball was moving a little bit and then he countered. He just manages to hit them through backward point or get on top of the ball that’s rising off the wicket. He just finds a way.”Head was out for 77 off 73 balls while falling on his backside. He charged down the pitch to swing Root back over his head into the Pavilion, and toppled over as Jonny Bairstow whipped the bails off. It was a comedy dismissal – but by that stage, England weren’t laughing.In all probability, Smith will convert his 85 not out into a 32nd Test and 12th Ashes hundred on Thursday morning; in years to come, it will be his innings that stands out on this scorecard. But make no mistake: this was a day of Ashes cricket defined by Travis Head. Another one.

Elgar's retirement draws curtains on a 'certain era' of South African cricket

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

His place in the side coincided with South African Test success, and his personality always made him stand out

Firdose Moonda22-Dec-2023There goes Dean Elgar and with him, the last link South Africa have to the team that became and stayed world No.1 in the early 2010s.There goes Dean Elgar, who scored his first Test runs at Newlands and plans to score his last there, a tribute to the format he has excelled in at the ground that hosted South Africa for more Tests than any other.There goes Dean Elgar, and with him a particular kind of cricketer from a particular period in time, the likes of which we may not see again.To call Elgar one of South Africa’s post-readmission OGs is not an exaggeration. His entire professional career coincided with the country’s golden age in Test cricket and when the gloss faded, he still shone. He will walk away from the international stage among his nation’s top 10 batters with hundreds against all but two of the opposition he played against, contributions to some of the team’s most celebrated victories and a member of the generation that were the best to represent South Africa in Tests.Between December 2006 and November 2015, South Africa played 30 Test series and only lost two, both to Australia at home. In that period, they beat England and Australia in away series twice. Elgar made his professional debut in 2006 and his international debut in 2012, in the second of the wins over Australia. By the time he and South Africa got to India in late 2015, the team had gone nine years unbeaten on the road. Kagiso Rabada, the next most capped player after Elgar in the current set-up, made his debut in that series, which South Africa lost 3-0 to begin an unravelling that some would argue has not yet ended. Though Temba Bavuma, the third-most experienced in this outfit, first made an appearance the summer before, it was in fact in that year – 2014 – that South Africa briefly lost their grip on the No.1 rankings.Elgar was the last to taste the real success of being on top even though his participation was limited to only two of their nine magical years. Still, his emergence on the international stage was evidence that South Africa’s domestic system produced high-quality players, who could have long, successful careers. As evidence of that, in the 2009-10 season, Elgar topped 1,000 first-class runs in the domestic competition but he was not the leading run-scorer of that summer. Rilee Rossouw scored 129 runs more than him and Stephen Cook just 47 fewer. Elgar is the last of the generation of players who played enough first-class fixtures to be able to accumulate numbers like that.As Elgar’s Test career matured and his seniors retired (and there was one in every year of Elgar’s career starting with Jacques Kallis in 2013), they were replaced by players who did not have his depth of experience. So the onus was on him to carry the responsibility of anchor and aggressor. He did both and he did it well. The lack of depth was evident on the domestic scorecards too as the last time anyone crossed 1,000 first-class runs was in 2015-16 (Heino Kuhn). That same summer, South Africa lost the No.1 ranking definitively when they were defeated by England at home. They have not got it back since.File photo – Elgar receives treatment after a blow to his helmet•Marco Longari/AFP/GettyBeing a left-hand opening batter, comparisons to Graeme Smith were unavoidable, especially as there were more similarities. Like Smith, Elgar’s technique was not aesthetic and the joy of watching him play was in seeing the success of the struggle.At the crease, he was stubborn and streetwise and when he decided to have a say on a game, he did. His most decisive statements came in Galle in 2014 when his 103 set up a first series win on the island in more than 20 years, and in Perth in 2016 when a defiant second-innings hundred set Australia an unchaseable target. That knock saw the ‘baby-Smith’ rhetoric soar but Elgar was always his own person. His most successful Test year was in 2017 when he scored five hundreds, including a 199, and finished as the world’s third-leading run-scorer. Like Smith, Australia was a favourite foe of Elgar’s and his 141 at Newlands was one of the final nails in the coffin of their misery in that series. His last great knock – 160 in Visakhapatnam – provided a sliver of hope on another South African tour of India that went horribly wrong.India were also an opposition Elgar thrived against. He led South Africa to a home series win over them in the 2021-22 season, one of the many false dawns that suggested things were getting back on track. By then, South African cricket was on the verge of complete derailment. The COVID-19 years and the Social Justice and Nation Building (SJN) hearings ravaged the game and in that time, Elgar was a symbol of consistency.Apart from his runs, he offered honesty from a player’s perspective at a time when Cricket South Africa (CSA) was trying to recover from an administrative upheaval that left it without sponsors or public confidence. Elgar spoke his mind about what he thought was a lack of support for team management during the SJN and later called the emphasis on the disciplinary proceedings which instituted against then-head coach Mark Boucher and director of cricket Smith as bullshit.His defence of Boucher came not because he had played with him, but because he played for him. Boucher was the Titans’ coach from 2016 to 2019; Elgar moved to the franchise in 2014 and played under Boucher’s guidance throughout his time there and the loyalty Elgar had towards him appeared immense. Not to mention that they were cut from similar cloth. Boucher, like Elgar, was known for being hard and uncompromising. Elgar seemed the same when he told Bangladesh to harden up after they complained of excessive sledging in 2022.”It’s a man’s environment,” Elgar said then, and it was the kind of mantra he lived by. He may also be among the last of this kind of boys’ club, one that creates old-fashioned environments of hierarchy and cliques that are becoming relics of a time before the T20 league circuit, which promotes camaraderie and skill-sharing.Why Elgar never made it on the white-ball stage remains a bit of a mystery. He was often among the top batters in the domestic scene, and the leading run-scorer in the franchise one-day cup in 2011-12. That earned him an ODI debut but modest returns against India meant he was dropped. But the runs kept coming. In the 2014-15 one-day cup, he was sixth on the run-charts and scored back-to-back centuries in the semi-final and final in the Titans’ run to the trophy.As recently as this season’s domestic one-day cup, Elgar was among the highest run-scorers and came in seventh but he has attracted no interest in T20 leagues, including the IPL. Perhaps it hasn’t helped that he was once quoted as saying he didn’t put his name in the auction because he couldn’t stand the “satisfaction of retiring in a few years because of a million dollar contract.” Neither did he get a team in South Africa’s SA20. Elgar always said he’d finish his career in England; with talk of a deal with Essex, he looks set to do exactly that.So there goes Dean Elgar, who may be among the last of those who will look for their final cricket-playing pay cheques on the county circuit as more and more players turn to T20 leagues instead. He is a certain kind of player, from a certain time, and the end of his international career marks the end of a certain era.

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