“We want our top end to get most of the runs, but if we can get that lower order to contribute, then we put ourselves in good positions,” says David Hemp

Mohammad Isam23-Mar-2024Bangladesh’s last five wickets contributed 105 runs to their team total of 188 in the first innings against Sri Lanka in Sylhet, and nightwatcher Taijul Islam’s 47 was the top score of the innings. No. 9 Shoriful Islam and No. 10 Khaled Ahmed struck four sixes between them – the only ones of the innings – while even debutant Nahid Rana, the No. 11, handled a bit of a short-ball barrage.Taijul hung around for two hours and 27 minutes. While his limited ability with the bat and batting average of 8.96 before this Test would suggest that he is a genuine tail-ender, he has stacked up a few rearguard efforts over the years. On this occasion, he brought out his square drives and on drives for four boundaries, while two more came behind the wicket.While the contributions of the lower-order batters was nice to see, the talking point was the specialist batters’ inability to counter Sri Lanka’s fast bowlers. And whether they can get a fix in the final innings where they will have many more to get than they did in the first innings.Related

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Litton Das’ 25 was the top score among the specialist batters. Litton got out inside-edging a ball that pitched outside off and nipped back in, while Mahmudul Hasan Joy and Shahadat Hossain nicked balls going away from them.”I think the three Sri Lankan seamers bowled really well. If you noticed, they bowled really good lengths,” Bangladesh batting coach David Hemp said. “They bowled at an angle, so they challenged the stumps. I think they [the Bangladesh batters] were guilty of getting stuck at the crease or playing at balls that weren’t hitting the stumps. It is something that we will discuss overnight into tomorrow, so that we are really clear about how we are going to set about being aware of how to cope with their bowlers.”More importantly, we have to look at how we can score off their bowlers. We are trying to score runs here. We probably got stuck on the crease a little bit, and got sucked into playing at balls that were a touch wide. Playing at balls that we should have been defending.”

“It is obviously going to be the mentality. [Tajiul’s contribution] is something that we have talked about as a batting group. He faced 80 balls, which was a great effort”David Hemp

Test specialists like Zakir Hasan, Mahmudul and Mominul Haque last played first-class cricket in December. They were involved in the BPL afterwards, and more recently the List A competition, the Dhaka Premier League.”They were playing in the DPL, so some one-day stuff. They came to us before the Test so we get some red-ball stuff into them. That’s where you trust them on getting some sort of preparation. They are playing cricket,” Hemp said. “You can argue either way but I just think it is more about that mindset. I don’t think it is a big problem. The players cope well enough with that. It is about making sure to know where your off stump is, understanding your opposition, what their threats are. Then to be able to deal with it. Schedule is the schedule. You are still playing cricket. You are still playing on a game of cricket.”I don’t want to get too carried away with white- or red-ball cricket. Players are doing well, they prepared well, from what we saw in the first three days leading in. Feet movement and decision-making was good, so we have to keep trusting that preparation. You have to get around the fact that you are playing the longer version.”Shoriful Islam and Khaled Ahmed added 40 off 35 balls for the ninth wicket•AFP/Getty ImagesSpeaking about Taijul’s effort with the bat, Hemp pointed to the fact that the lower-order batters do spend time batting in the nets. Taijul, for example, spends long hours in the nets after his bowling sessions, especially in the days leading up to a Test.”Everyone gets a hit [in the nets] in the two or three days heading into a Test match. I think Nos. 8, 9, 10 and 11 made 84 runs off 137 balls [counting Taijul’s 47 off 80 and leaving out Mehidy Hasan Miraz’s 11 off 34]. That’s a good amount of balls played,” Hemp said. “Most of them was played by Taijul today but, also, Khaled and Shoriful did contribute to that.”We want our top end to get most of the runs but if we can get that lower order to contribute, then we put ourselves in good positions going forward. It is obviously going to be the mentality. [Tajiul’s contribution] is something that we have talked about as a batting group. He faced 80 balls, which was a great effort. It is something that we pride ourselves on.”Bangladesh will hope that their misfiring top-order batters do better in the second innings but if it becomes a close game, the tail-enders too have to contribute. And they have shown that they can.

Jaiswal has taken his Test tally to 971 runs to break Gavaskar’s record

Sampath Bandarupalli26-Feb-202430-0 – India continued their unbeaten record while chasing targets of 200 runs or less in home Test matches. India have won 30 of the 33 home Test matches where they have had to chase a target of 200 or lower, while the other three Tests ended in draws within 70 runs of the target.17 – Consecutive Test series wins for India at home, a streak that began by defeating Australia in 2013. The next longest series-winning spree at home is ten series by Australia between 1994-2000 and 2004-2008.46 – First-innings lead conceded by India in Ranchi. It is the seventh-highest first-innings lead when batting second in Tests that India overturned to win. The Ranchi Test is only the 13th for India that they won batting second, despite conceding a first-innings lead.Related

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2.27 – The ratio between Test caps of England and India’s playing XIs ahead of the Ranchi Test. It is the fourth-highest ratio between the Test caps of the opposition and India’s playing XI, where they won. Three of the top six entries in that list have come in this series against England.971 – Runs aggregated by Yashasvi Jaiswal in his eight-match Test career so far. These are the most runs by an India batter after eight Test matches, surpassing the 938 runs by Sunil Gavaskar. Jaiswal’s tally is also the second-highest by any batter in their first eight Tests, behind only Don Bradman’s 1210.23years, 33days – Dhruv Jurel’s age coming in the Ranchi Test. He is the fifth-youngest wicketkeeper to win the Player-of-the-Match award and the second-youngest India player. Ajay Ratra was 20 years and 148 days old when he won that award against West Indies in 2002.ESPNcricinfo Ltd55 – Rohit Sharma’s score in the chase is his highest in the fourth innings in Tests. He only had one 50-plus score in all first-class cricket in the fourth-innings before this – 52 against Australia in the 2021 Sydney Test.Rohit’s 55 is also the third-highest individual score by an Indian captain in a successful fourth-innings chase, behind Sourav Ganguly’s 98* against Sri Lanka in 2001 and 65* against Zimbabwe in 2000.47 – Runs between Rajat Patidar, Ravindra Jadeja and Sarfaraz Khan – the middle-order batters for India in Ranchi. These are the fewest runs by India’s Nos. 4-6 in a men’s Test since the 45 runs against West Indies in 1983 in Ahmedabad.The 47 runs scored by India’s 4-6 in Ranchi across both innings are the lowest for India which they went on to win and the 11th fewest for any team in a men’s Test win.4 Runs by India’s 4-6 batters in the fourth innings in Ranchi are also the fewest by any team in a successful chase in Tests. The previous lowest was 12 by New Zealand against West Indies in Dunedin in 1980.The trio’s four runs in the 192-run chase are the joint-fourth lowest ever by Nos. 4-6 for India in a men’s Test innings.8 – Reviews that were struck down by umpire’s call in Ranchi – six of them when India took the review and two for England. Four of those eight reviews were by India while batting in the first innings.

Whether it’s the high of a record-breaking domestic season or the low of going unsold at the IPL auction, the fast bowler only feels gratitude for everything cricket has given him

Hemant Brar18-Jan-2024Sandhya was an international-level gymnast. Her husband, Tej, had played first-class cricket for Jammu and Kashmir in the 1970s. Her older son, Uday, had made his Ranji Trophy debut. The younger son, Siddarth Kaul, wasn’t really making the most of his cricketing talent, however, and making excuses to avoid going for practice.”I did not like going to the ground,” Kaul tells ESPNcricinfo. “I loved playing in our street because when you play there, you don’t think you have to achieve this or that. You play for enjoyment, and I had started playing for that enjoyment only.”Sandhya felt Kaul was wasting his time. She knew the importance of the early years in a sportsperson’s life and decided it was time for a now-or-never talk with her son.Related

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“She said, ‘You are not even good at studies, so we cannot even say you focus there. If you are good at cricket, why not start playing at the right platform?”That was just the push Kaul needed. A couple of years later, in 2008, he was India’s highest wicket-taker at the Under-19 World Cup, and lifted the trophy with the likes of Virat Kohli and Ravindra Jadeja.Over the years, Kaul’s wicket-taking ability and death-bowling skills made him a key member of the Punjab team in domestic cricket. He showcased, and further refined, his yorkers and slower ones during his time with Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL from 2017 to 2021.This domestic season, after 16 years in the sport, the boy who “never used to think of playing on a big platform” became the all-time leading wicket-taker in the Vijay Hazare Trophy and the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, India’s premier domestic List A and T20 tournaments. He displaced Piyush Chawla from the top of the charts in both formats.In 75 matches in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, Kaul has 155 wickets at an average of 20.21. His seven five-fors are also a tournament record. In the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, he has 120 wickets from 87 games and an economy rate of 7.02.

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When Kaul began taking cricket seriously, he had three dreams: to represent India in Tests, ODIs and T20Is. But it was not easy to fulfil them. While the talent was always there, he says he made “a few mistakes” that resulted in “some setbacks”.”When you are young, your mindset is different,” he says. “You think you know everything. So I would argue over small, small things. Young blood, you know. So things happened.”It took a decade of hard work after his junior-cricket success to find his direction again. Earlier, it was his mother who had helped him focus. Now, age and experience guided him both on and off the field, and in 2018, he made his T20I and ODI debuts for India.Kaul was a regular member of Sunrisers Hyderabad’s attack from 2017 to 2021•BCCIKaul played only three games in each format before falling out of the reckoning. There was more work to be done and he was back on the domestic circuit, putting in the hard yards.But the boy who thought he knew everything was long gone. A feeling of gratitude – or , as Kaul puts it in Punjabi – is now his default emotion. Ask him about becoming the highest wicket-taker in both white-ball domestic tournaments, and he says:”Every cricketer dreams of reaching a platform where people recognise him and his hard work. So yes, it’s a big achievement, but if the Punjab Cricket Association had not selected me for those age-group tournaments back then, this would not have been possible.”In 2022, Aavishkar Salvi, the former India and Mumbai fast bowler, was appointed Punjab’s head coach. Kaul says Salvi has also helped him hone his skills and mindset.”He is someone who knows a lot about fast bowling, and his reading of the game is outstanding,” Kaul says. “He keeps giving me these little inputs, which have really helped me.”Salvi pointed out to Kaul that depending on his performances, his mindset was fluctuating and this was feeding back into his bowling. Kaul checked his journal, which he maintains regularly, and realised that when he was bowling well, his only thought – irrespective of the match situation – was how to make his team win.”Now, whether I am bowling well or not, I try to make sure my mindset is always positive,” Kaul says. “Be it in terms of my bowling, my routines, or my body language.”In the recent Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, he was the joint fourth-highest wicket-taker as Punjab won a domestic title after 30 years. He bettered this effort in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, where he topped the wicket-takers’ list with 19 from six games.Salvi is all praise for Kaul’s wicket-taking ability. “Every eighth ball he bowled in the [Syed Mushtaq Ali] tournament with the new ball, he picked up a wicket,” he says. “That’s a very difficult task. And it’s not just one season; he has done it season after season. He has been playing regularly for the last 13 years; to maintain that consistency is not easy.”In the lead-up to this season, Kaul also worked on his batting. “It’s not like I could not bat earlier,” he says. “I had scored 47 once. In [first-class] cricket, I have a fifty as well. But in the nets, I would neglect my batting. This time I thought let’s work on it a bit more.”When you are bowling to a lower-middle-order batter, you typically bowl a bouncer and then a full ball to get him out. To overcome my unease against the short ball, I started drills with the tennis ball, then underarm with the leather ball, and then with the sidearm. Avinash, our throwdown specialist, helped me a lot in the off-season. He would bowl to me for an hour, an hour and a half in the nets.”Kaul is 26 wickets away from the 300 mark in first-class cricket•Ishan Mahal/Punjab Cricket AssociationKaul did not get to bat in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy but showed his ability in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. Until the start of the season, he had averaged 7.61 and struck at 58.27 in List A cricket. This season brought him 104 runs in five innings at an average of 34.66 and a strike rate of 97.19.Kaul cherished all this success even more, given that it came after what he describes as the “hardest phase” of his life. In March, a nerve injury in the right leg had left him bedridden. He was part of the Royal Challengers Bangalore squad for IPL 2023 but was unavailable for the first half of the season. By the time he got fit, the team management decided not to disturb the combination that had worked well for them until then.In November, he was released by RCB. And despite all the wickets and runs in domestic cricket, he didn’t get a bid at the 2024 auction. But he shrugs it off.”The show must go on,” he says. “If I get disheartened by this, I won’t be able to play any cricket. When I was taking my class 10 exams, I would pray I pass somehow. My name was on the auction shortlist, so I have passed this exam. If I was picked, then I would have been a topper.”The franchises did what they thought was best for them. Now I have to do what is best for me. There is always a next time. I will get another chance to top, and I am sure I will do that.”Kaul’s immediate focus, though, is red-ball cricket. The Ranji Trophy kicked off earlier this month, and neither Kaul nor Punjab made an auspicious start. Playing against Karnataka in Hubballi, Kaul picked up 1 for 94 in the only innings he bowled and made two ducks with the bat. Punjab lost by seven wickets.He fared much better in Punjab’s second game, picking up 4 for 81 in Railways’ only innings in Mullanpur to take his tally in first-class cricket to 274. He will have at least five more games this season to push towards 300. But Kaul is not worried about this; his main goal is “to take Punjab into the final”.Kaul made his first-class debut in 2007-08. He is now 33 and by far the most experienced bowler in the Punjab side. But, in his own words, he still plays every game as if it is his first. At the same time, he has not given up on his third dream: to play Test cricket for India.”I have seen people who start thinking after one point that an India call-up is not possible, and start taking things easy. But this game has given me a lot. People recognise me because of cricket. So I can never give up. Till I am playing, I will give my 110%.”It’s because of this attitude I played for India in 2018. I stayed true to my cricket and got the chance in both white-ball formats.”And I would love to play Test cricket for India. The other two dreams have been fulfilled, only this one is pending. If I keep performing well, who knows.”

Apart from everything else, interference from the BCB and the team management is something for Gazi Ashraf Hossain to deal with

Mohammad Isam20-Feb-2024Not many chief selectors’ reigns are especially notable. In the modern era, there has generally been a regular turnover, almost everywhere. Some have been lengthy: David Graveney was around for 11 years in England; further back, Lawrie Sawle helped transform Australian cricket as national selector from 1982 to 1995. Last week came the end of another – less radical – long stint, that of Minhajul Abedin, who was Bangladesh’s chief selector for eight years.The BCB has appointed Gazi Ashraf Hossain as Minhajul’s successor, starting March 1. The news was welcomed in Bangladesh, mainly because of the years of talk about Minhajul being a weak selector with little influence – BCB president Nazmul Hassan often talked to the media instead of Minhajul about selection matters.Ashraf has the reputation of being an able administrator, and is known to have one of the best cricket brains in Bangladesh. Ashraf will be the first BCB chief selector with the stature of a board director. This is impressive. Firstly, just that he could arrange such a deal. Secondly, more importantly, because it will allow him the authority a chief selector needs in the BCB, where there is a lot of interference in selection matters by the board’s administrators.

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Without doubt, he will face resistance from the Bangladesh team management and the cricket board – something that was almost institutionalised several years ago.Ashraf led Bangladesh in their first seven ODIs, from 1986 to 1990, also the entire length of his international career, where his top score was a rearguard 18 against Merv Hughes & Co.

“It was really surprising for me. I hadn’t heard his name as a candidate. Many other names were floating around. I am the [BCB’s] vice-chairman of cricket operations, still I didn’t know anything. This is what surprised me the most”Khaled Mahmud on Gazi Ashraf Hossain’s appointment

Bangladesh’s pre-Full Member days are now so removed from the average Bangladesh fans’ consciousness that the likes of Ashraf and Minhajul are sometimes judged only by their poor numbers – Minhajul averaged 18.87 with the bat and 39.30 with the ball in 27 ODIs between 1986 and 1999. But both Ashraf and Minhajul were domestic giants in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively.Ashraf’s peak was from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. After leading Abahani Limited to six Dhaka Premier League titles during his time, Ashraf gained a reputation of being an astute strategist and is regarded as one of the architects of Bangladesh’s 1997 ICC Trophy title win in his role as manager. It is the triumph that started Bangladesh’s ascent towards Test status.As a board director, Ashraf held various roles in the BCB, including being the first BPL governing council chairman. After Khaled Mahmud defeated him in the 2013 BCB directors’ elections, Ashraf became a prominent face in TV talk shows and wrote a newspaper column. But unlike many former Bangladesh cricketers, he offered well-informed views and was usually a voice of reason.Former cricketers, however, rarely get roles in the BCB. Even in selection. Usually, one of the men in the chief’s panel is promoted.There have been exceptions. In 2007, Rafiqul Alam was a chief selector appointed from outside the board bosses’ close circle. But Faruque Ahmed was first made chief selector in 2003 after he had served under Aliul Islam’s selection panel; Akram Khan was made chief in 2011 after serving in Rafiqul’s panel; Faruque returned to the top role in 2013 after his 2003-07 tenure; when Faruque resigned in 2016 after clashing with BCB president Nazmul Hassan and head coach Chandika Hathurusingha, Minhajul, who was part of Faruque’s team, was given the top job.[File pic] Minhajul Abedin [R] was thought of as a weak chief selector•Raton GomesWith Ashraf, there is an argument to be made about his lack of experience as a selector. Faruque, Akram and Minhajul had experience as selectors before they got the chief’s job. Ashraf doesn’t.That the appointment has polarised the BCB became clear less than 24 hours after it was made formal – BCB director Khaled Mahmud, who had defeated Ashraf in the 2013 elections, said that he was surprised. He felt that former captain Habibul Bashar “deserved” the job.”It was really surprising for me. I hadn’t heard his name as a candidate,” Mahmud, also the coach of BPL team Durdanto Dhaka, said at a press meet in Chattogram on February 13. “Many other names were floating around. I am the [BCB’s] vice-chairman of cricket operations, still I didn’t know anything. This is what surprised me the most.”I feel that [Bashar] definitely deserved it. He was a successful captain of the Bangladesh team, he was a successful cricketer, and he also worked with the team for many years. I had hoped that he would be made chief selector if [Minhajul] is replaced.”Mahmud might have a point, but he wasn’t present at the board meeting. He was with the Dhaka franchise and the BCB directors present at the meeting reportedly agreed on Ashraf’s appointment unanimously after the BCB chief had proposed his name.

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There were no such questions about Hannan Sarkar, the other selector appointed alongside Ashraf. Hannan was the BCB’s age-group selector since 2015. It has been one of the best periods for the age-group sides in the country, culminating in the 2020 men’s Under-19 World Cup triumph. Hannan’s progression to the senior selection committee makes sense in Bangladesh’s context, since age-group cricket produces almost all of Bangladesh’s future senior cricketers.Hannan’s promotion seems ideal. But the BCB’s overall structure isn’t really supportive of such a pathway. Selectors have often been picked based on their status as cricketers. Faruque, Akram and Minhajul, and now Ashraf, are all ex-captains, while Rafiqul was a well-established senior cricketer. Those who toil for years in the age-group level and are considered good at scouting or talent spotting don’t get the BCB’s call-up for selection. Like former fast bowler Hasibul Hossain Shanto, who is known in the circuit as an efficient selector but has been kept in age-group cricket. Nazmul Abedeen Fahim, one of the senior-most coaches who is known for his depth of knowledge in age-group and senior cricket, was reportedly part of the discussions this time as a selector, but was passed over.Khaled Mahmud, Russell Domingo and Shakib Al Hasan at a practice session•AFP via Getty ImagesAnd then there is the BCB’s overall culture about team selection. Faruque resigned in 2016 after the BCB put the head coach, team manager, and cricket operations chairman in a “selection panel” to approve the selectors’ selections. Faruque’s exit was seen as a huge blow to the independent selection system. Minhajul, it is understood, worked with the system of interference in place, with Hassan taking on the media’s questions and offering his opinions on selection matters, and the understanding was that the selectors would not be taking the final call.The most extreme example of this came in 2018. Imrul Kayes and Soumya Sarkar were flown in to Dubai for the Asia Cup. It was reported at the time that everyone in the team management, including the captain and the coach, knew what was going on. The BCB’s top brass were fully aware, too, and arranged for the two players to fly in. Minhajul had no idea.Understandably, one of the early questions in Ashraf’s first press conference was about whether he would be allowed to work independently. Ashraf said that he wanted to follow “global standards” when it came to taking suggestions from coach Hathurusingha, but if recent history is any indication, it could be an uphill battle. Ashraf will not only have to change the selection panel’s image, but also put in place the right methods of selection.The new selection committee officially begins work on March 1. They will follow Bangladesh playing against Sri Lanka through the month. The white-ball squad is already out. The Minhajul Minhajul-led panel will be remembered for being weak, taking a backseat to the board and the team management. Ashraf’s stature as a board-director equivalent could help him, but his task is complicated, and it’s not just about selecting the best team for Bangladesh.

The Mumbai Indians captain picked up 3 for 31 on Monday night, and has bowled his full quota in three successive games

Vishal Dikshit07-May-20241:14

‘Hardik’s bowling a positive sign for India with the World Cup coming’

A strange trend had emerged soon after India’s T20 World Cup squad was announced. Of course, it was more for the LOLs on social media and WhatsApp groups, but a number of players in that squad of 15 began going through lean times in IPL 2024. Hardik Pandya, Sanju Samson and Shivam Dube bagged ducks; Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja and Suryakumar Yadav fell cheaply; and Yuzvendra Chahal and Arshdeep Singh leaked over 50 runs each in the games that followed the squad announcement. There too, like he has been all season at Mumbai Indians, the outlier was Jasprit Bumrah.Until Monday. Until then, Suryakumar had scored a not-so-inspiring 232 runs from eight innings. Then he unfurled his scintillating, vintage boundary hitting against Sunrisers Hyderabad, putting to bed all kinds of questions around his form heading into the T20 World Cup 2024.The real reversal of that World-Cup-bound players’ trend came before Suryakumar’s fireworks, when Hardik took the best figures of the night with 3 for 31. That showed promising signs of his wicket-taking ability and his fitness and the possibility that he could play the fifth bowler’s role in the India XI come the World Cup next month. Just like he was in the ODI World Cup six months ago, Hardik will again be a crucial cog in the India XI as finisher and third pace-bowling option whenever India play two spinners and two quicks. For someone who has “no replacement” in the words of chief selector Ajit Agarkar, Hardik’s bowling form and fitness would have given him and the team management bundles of confidence.Related

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Monday was the third game in a row in which Hardik bowled his full quota of overs, which bodes very well for the allrounder, who came into the competition after a long ankle-injury layoff. In those three games, Hardik has picked up seven wickets across all phases of the game: one in the powerplay, five in the middle overs (7 to 16) and one in the death overs (17 to 20). And he has done that by bowling a variety of deliveries from his repertoire, depending on the conditions and the batters.Hardik Pandya picked up 3 for 31, the best figures of the night in Mumbai•BCCIAgainst Kolkata Knight Riders, he first sent Sunil Narine back in the powerplay before dismissing a set Manish Pandey by taking the pace off off a cutter that the batter miscued to extra cover. While bowling against Lucknow Super Giants a week ago, Hardik kept going for the hard length with a fairly new ball that made KL Rahul and Deepak Hooda miscue their shots. Hardik’s three-for against SRH, however, would have been much sweeter because it set up a thumping win for MI after four losses on the bounce. Hardik came on as soon as the powerplay ended, and on seeing the movement on offer, he tried to hit tricky lengths and get the ball to nip around.”I like bowling to the areas and see what the situation requires [me to do],” he said at the presentation. “If the wicket has grip, I do it, if not, like today, I thought the ball was nipping around and bowling at the right areas would be a right option and I think it worked.”Hardik brought himself into the attack after six overs when SRH were 56 for 1. MI had fielded a thin pace attack that started with Nuwan Thushara and IPL debutant Anshul Kamboj, who leaked 32 runs in his first two overs. If Hardik had not stepped up on the night as the fifth bowler, SRH might have scored a lot more than 173.”It is good for him and obviously good for Indian cricket. Obviously, he’s been selected in the World Cup team,” Kieron Pollard, MI batting coach, said of Hardik’s recent bowling displays. “It’s all coming at the right time, though one thing for us is that we’ve never doubted the ability and the talent in that individual.”MI have two more games to go – against KKR and LSG – and if Hardik can bowl eight more overs while collecting some wickets and not going for too many, he might be among the most confident Indian players flying out to New York.

The slowest T20 World Cup but with the most sixes, an unbeaten champion, and much more

Sampath Bandarupalli30-Jun-20247.09 – Overall run rate, which was the lowest at a men’s T20 World Cup. The previous lowest was 7.43 in the 2021 edition, played in the UAE.517 – Sixes hit in the tournament, making it the first T20 World Cup with 500-plus sixes. The previous highest was 405 in 2021.The balls-per-six ratio was 21.35, the best ever. Also, the ratio between fours and sixes hit at this World Cup was 1.86, the lowest across all the editions.Related

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History weighs heavy as South Africa die another death

Bumrah, Klaasen and SKY go flash, bam, alakazam

1 – India became the first team to win the men’s T20 World Cup without losing a game. India won all eight matches they played, with one – the group-stage game against Canada – abandoned without a toss.2 – Editions of the men’s T20 World Cup without an individual century: 2009 and 2024. The highest score in 2009 was an unbeaten 96 by Tillakaratne Dilshan in the semi-final game against West Indies, while Nicholas Pooran’s 98 versus Afghanistan was the highest in 2024.19 – Four-plus wicket hauls in 2024. That’s the highest at a men’s T20 World Cup, going past 14 in 2021.4.17 – Jasprit Bumrah’s economy rate at this World Cup, the best for anyone who has bowled 100-plus balls in a single edition of the men’s T20 World Cup. The most Bumrah conceded in the eight matches he played was 29 runs against Australia.3 – Difference between wickets taken and boundaries conceded by Bumrah at this World Cup. He took 15 wickets in the 29.4 overs he bowled, but only 12 boundaries, including two sixes, were scored off him.1 – Bumrah became the first to win the Player-of-the-Tournament award at a T20 World Cup – for men or for women – without scoring a run. Bumrah bagged a golden duck against Pakistan, the only time he had to bat in this tournament.Two players have done the same in ODI World Cups: Glenn McGrath in 2007, where he did not bat even once in 11 matches, and Mitchell Starc in 2015, when he faced three balls across three innings and did not score a run.14 – Number of dismissals for Rishabh Pant as a wicketkeeper. He took 13 catches and effected one stumping. No wicketkeeper (or player, for that matter) other than Pant has had even ten dismissals in a men’s T20 World Cup.ESPNcricinfo Ltd17 – Wickets for Arshdeep Singh and Fazalhaq Farooqi in this World Cup, the best ever. Both of them topped Wanindu Hasaranga’s mark of 16 in 2021.5 – Instances of teams winning despite scoring 120 or less in a full 20-over first innings at this World Cup.That had happened only once in the men’s T20 World Cup before 2024 – by Sri Lanka, who won after being bowled out for 119 against New Zealand in 2014.1 – Rohit Sharma is the first to win the men’s T20 World Cup both as a player (in 2007) and as a captain (in 2024). Daren Sammy won the title twice as a captain – in 2012 and 2016, while seven other West Indies players were part of those two wins under him: Marlon Samuels, Chris Gayle, Johnson Charles, Dwayne Bravo, Samuel Badree, Andre Russell and Denesh Ramdin.109.52 – Percentage increase in maiden overs at this World Cup and the previous highest. A total of 44 maiden overs were bowled in the 52 completed matches at this World Cup, while the previous highest was 21 across 27 games in 2012.The 44 maiden overs in the 2024 edition account for 28.95% of the total maidens bowled in men’s T20 World Cups.25 – Difference between balls taken for the two individual fifties in the final – Virat Kohli took 48 balls and Heinrich Klaasen took 23 balls. Klaasen’s 23-ball fifty is the fastest in an ICC tournament final, while Kohli’s 48-ball fifty was the slowest of his T20 career.5-3 – Afghanistan’s win-loss record at this World Cup. They bowled out their opponents in all five matches they won, the joint-highest for a team at a men’s T20 World Cup alongside Australia in 2010.Afghanistan were themselves bowled out in all three matches they lost, the joint-highest for a team at a men’s T20 World Cup.Hardik Pandya and Rahul Dravid lead the celebrations after India’s second T20 World Cup win•Getty Images0 – Sixes hit in the match between New Zealand and Uganda. It was only the third men’s T20 World Cup match (discounting shortened T20 games) where no sixes were hit. South Africa vs Zimbabwe in Hambantota in 2012 and Netherlands vs Pakistan in Perth in 2022 were the others.4 – Papua New Guinea and Oman were the only teams in this edition without a point to their names. The four matches they played were the most without a win in an edition of the men’s T20 World Cup. PNG lost all four matches. As did Oman, but they took their first game against Namibia went into a Super Over.171 – Runs scored by Pant in this World Cup are the second-highest in an edition without a half-century. Anamul Haque scored 184 runs for Bangladesh in 2014 with a highest of 44*. Pant’s highest score was 42 against Pakistan.Tristan Stubbs scored 165 runs with a best of 33, the fifth-highest in a T20 World Cup without a fifty.96 – Balls Mohammad Amir bowled in this World Cup, the most without conceding a six. Amir is now the first bowler to not concede a six in two different editions of the men’s T20 World Cup (minimum of ten overs).He bowled 139 balls without being hit for a six in 2010, the second-highest by a bowler in an edition behind Umar Gul’s 147 balls in 2009.2 – Fours hit by Kohli in his first seven matches in this tournament, till the final. He went past that tally in the first over of the final itself, when he hit Marco Jansen for three fours.

Franchise cricket has proliferated over the last few years, but there are only a handful men taking charge of multiple teams across leagues

Matt Roller17-Sep-2024When Liverpool FC hired Arne Slot as their new manager, many of their supporters would have known very little about him. Some would have read newspaper articles explaining his background, others would have done the research themselves, using football’s vast statistical databases to learn more about him.Finding out where his last club, the Dutch side Feyenoord, finished in their league last season is straightforward enough, but it is not much harder to find out – using the free website Transfermarkt – that Slot averaged 2.15 points per game across his tenure; or that his average points per game across his career makes him the Dutch league’s fifth-most successful manager.There is a misconception that cricket is a sport saturated with statistics, but in practice, it rarely is. In the equivalent scenario – a T20 franchise hiring a new head coach, say – tracking down their career record is almost impossible. ESPNcricinfo does not keep records of coaches’ win percentages, and there is a scarcity of publicly accessible data.It is left to a few analysts to keep their own individual databases. These include CricViz’s Kieran Parmley, who has worked with Desert Vipers and Islamabad United. He has logged head coaches’ records across more than 2000 T20 matches spanning the ten major short-form leagues* over the past six years. Parmley kindly shared his data set for this article, and the details are intriguing.Franchise cricket has created a group of players who travel the world, jumping from one league to another at short notice. Alex Hales, for example, has represented 11 different short-form teams in the last year. For coaches, the demands of the job – and the need to commit to an entire tournament – mean the picture is a little different: there are only a dozen men who have spent at least one season as a head coach in three or more of Parmley’s top-ten leagues since the start of the 2018-19 season.Related

• Jayawardene: 'I back players to the hilt, whether I'm captain or coach' (2020)

• The tough, uncertain life of an assistant coach in T20 (2020)

• Flower: 'Looking after the person is more important than developing the player' (2020)

• Kirsten: 'T20 is taking cricket closer to modern sports like baseball' (2018)

• Moody targets back-to-back titles for Oval Invincibles

T20’s inherent volatility and the mechanisms that most leagues have in place to ensure competitive balance – annual drafts or auctions, plus strict salary caps – mean that most of those 12 coaches have similar numbers of wins and losses. There is one outlier at either end of the scale: Andy Flower (W101, L68) and Trevor Bayliss (W49, L69).Flower only joined the franchise circuit in 2020 after 12 years at the ECB but has been involved in five major leagues – PSL, CPL, IPL, ILT20 and the Hundred – and has won titles in three of them (PSL, the Hundred and ILT20). He also has a remarkable record of taking his teams into the knockout stages, only failing to do so in two of the 15 seasons he has overseen in total.It invites an obvious question: what sets Flower apart from other T20 coaches? He has finally started to shake off the tag of being “intense” that he gained during his tenure with England from 2009 through 2014; now, the word that comes up most often in conversations about his coaching style is “thorough”.”Wherever he goes, there’s success,” Lewis Gregory, who has worked closely with Flower as Trent Rockets’ captain, says. “You can see why: he’s very diligent with the preparation and work that he puts in before a game, and he’s constantly testing guys in training to get better – whether that’s about small margins, working on new shots, or just simple things about their game plan.”It all starts in recruitment. Flower is renowned for extensive preparation ahead of drafts and auctions. His teams often feature multi-skilled players. “I have read that occasionally, about me going for a bank of allrounders,” Flower told me in 2022, when he led Trent Rockets to the Hundred title. “It’s not as black and white as that, because each recruitment situation is different.”