The Kaul brothers, Siddarth and Uday, have been integral to Punjab’s success in this Ranji Trophy season

Amol Karhadkar in Rajkot15-Jan-2013There are several noteworthy aspects to Punjab’s journey to the semi-finals of the Ranji Trophy. One of their two captains this season is a match shy of joining the 100-Test club, while the other is only 21 years old. They have an opener who has a fair chance of ending his debut season as the highest run-scorer of the tournament. They also have an impressive battery of fast bowlers. And they have the only pair of siblings to play together in this Indian domestic season.Uday and Siddarth, the Kaul brothers, have been an integral part of Punjab’s fairytale ride, as they approach the semi-final against Saurashtra as favourites. They have completely different skills: Uday, the older of the two, is a wicketkeeper-batsman, while Siddarth is a fast bowler.Both brothers are chasing one man’s dream, that of Tej Kaul, their father, coach and mentor. Tej had kept wicket and opened the batting for Jammu & Kashmir for a brief period during the 1970s before becoming a coach. Uday followed in Tej’s footsteps, while Siddarth, on the other hand, followed his father’s instincts and instructions to the tee.”He [Uday] always wanted to be like dad, but I always followed what our father told me to be,” Siddarth said. “He somehow always saw a fast bowler in me and here I am, doing what he wanted me to do day in and day out.” Siddarth, with 38 wickets in eight games, is the fifth highest wicket-taker this season.Both players earned their accolades in different ways. Siddarth, who was a member of India’s victorious Under-19 World Cup campaign in 2008, was an instant hit at the first-class level. Two months before that Under-19 tournament, he had made his first-class debut with a five-wicket haul against Orissa. Since then it has been a topsy-turvy ride, primarily due to injuries.Uday, on the other hand, had to toil to make a name among his team-mates and in the domestic cricket fraternity. After emerging as one of the most consistent wicketkeeper-batsmen in 2009-10 and 2010-11, a back injury disturbed Uday’s rhythm last season. But he returned and made a big impact. With 614 runs, which include three centuries, he is Punjab’s second highest run-scorer. “We don’t compare each other’s success, in fact we revel in it,” Uday said. “It’s been an excellent season so far. I hope we can carry forward and help Punjab win the Ranji title that has eluded us for 20 years.”Siddarth’s frequent injures were a major reason for Punjab’s opponents’ batting card not having “c Kaul b Kaul” more often, but they haven’t forgotten its first occurrence. “It was [Rashmi] Das from Orissa, in my first game,” Siddarth said.Uday adds: “Even though he got five in his first innings in Ranji, it would have been more had I taken those chances off his bowling. I think I dropped two or three catches off his bowling in that game.”It isn’t dropped catches, though, that lead to arguments between the two. Usually, it is the choice of music. While Siddarth is “not that into English” songs, Uday prefers to listen to English classics. But that doesn’t stop them from sharing a room most of the times when they are on tour.”Being together helps both of us – as individuals and cricketers,” Siddarth, the more outspoken of the pair, said. “When it comes to cricket, it helps me immensely for him to be behind the wickets. There are some observations that only a studious ‘keeper can make about a bowler. And he puts them across time and again to help me become a better bowler.”With the brothers sharing a strong bond, Punjab’s team management is more than happy to let them be together. “Both are serious about the game and take care of each other, so we know that they are looking after each other,” the coach and manager Arun Sharma said. “That in a way means two players less when it comes to man-management.”

From TS Trudgian, Canada

Cricinfo25-Feb-2013
Ben Hilfenhaus: can swing, and adapt•AFPBen Hilfenhaus may have begun his Test career as a ‘stock’ bowler — an epithet which seems to convey an unfortunate admission of mediocrity — but he has shown, in the Tests against Pakistan in England, and recently against India at Mohali, that he is becoming the weapon of choice, particularly when the ball begins to swing. Australia have been searching for a quality swing bowler, at a reasonable clip, since the departure of Jason Gillespie in 2006 — that will teach him to score a double-hundred.Leaving aside the sorcery of reverse-swing, Hilfenhaus is the best exponent of swing in the current Australia squad. It is said that the high arm of Doug Bollinger induces some reverse-swing, but even the commentators quickest to proclaim ‘Don’t look now, but the ball is reversing’ would agree that 40 overs, or at the very least 30, must be bowled with the ‘mere’ weapon of conventional swing bowling. ‘The slightly pigeon-toed Hilfenhaus’ — words from Christopher Martin-Jenkins, not me — bowling a teasing line with variable away-swing is the perfect start to Australia’s efforts in the field.But he is not a one-trick pony, as some would label Ryan Sidebottom: a great bowler of swing in the overcast north of England or the humid days at the ’Gabba, but a relatively innocuous trundler otherwise. During the recent Test at Mohali, Hilfenhaus did have the ball hooping around from time to time, but when the conditions were less favourable, he was able to temper the little remaining swing with a very consistent line of middle- and off-stump. It is this combination of style and guile that probably has Hilfenhaus pipping his English bowling equivalent (Steve Finn, say) by a nose. James Anderson is a fine proponent of swing bowling, but perhaps as the ‘strike’ weapon he is best contrasted with Mitchell Johnson (see the next volume).The first-order approximation when bowling outswingers is to pitch every ball up to entice the drive and, if you are lucky, the nick. I have lost count of the number of times I heard Boycott on TMS bemoan the attitudes of almost all bowlers (with the noble exception of Yorkshireman R.J. Sidebottom, of course) who bowled at Headingley: they never ‘got it up’. That is something which I can neither confirm nor deny; in any case, pitching the ball up is a good start. One problem arises when you are not permitted sufficiently many slips — perhaps the run-chase is getting tight and the skipper needs to plug holes elsewhere.Another is when the ball stops swinging, or the seam is ill-positioned and the ball doesn’t swing on that particular delivery: then for the batsman it is money for old rope. Both of these ‘problems’ occurred in Mohali: during the fifth day Ponting did not have four slips (nor did he have a third man and there was a small bounty of runs made from edges and steers through the vacant fourth-slip area). Moreover, after the first few overs, the prodigious swing had disappeared. VVS Laxman, who still haunts my dreams as only the second man (the first being Lara) who is destined to snatch an Australian defeat from the jaws of victory, reached forward and pounded these to the cover point boundary. It was Hilfenhaus who led the counter-attack, mixing up his full swing-for-the-nick deliveries with balls short of a length on an off-stump line and the occasional bouncer.That both Sehwag and Raina should be dismissed off short deliveries should not have come as a surprise. Perhaps though, one might have thought these balls to be delivered with the height of Bollinger or the ferocity of Johnson.That it was Hilfenhaus each time emphasises his skill in adapting his bowling to suit the conditions — of both pitch and batsman. It would be silly to blame his figures of none for 100 in the first innings on the pitch alone, but he was bowling great spells of full-pitched outswing, and the edges induced were either not carrying, or going ‘through’ the slips.Certainly he will be a handful in Brisbane, but I am particularly excited about watching him bowl at Perth. Perhaps a further 250 or so for England to chase on the final day, Strauss well set on 50 and Trott in ‘the zone’ (although he takes five minutes to get there after each delivery), the Fremantle Doctor set to operate, four slips and two gullies in place, and the Hilf running in to a packed WACA crowd. . . game on.

Was it visual? A shotmaking feast of such delicious complexity, that one could often taste it in layers? Was it vicarious? The lower middle-class, living its most vivid world-beating fantasies through an aberration within their ilk

Kali Kishore25-Feb-2013I’ve often wondered what the Sachin Tendulkar experience was? Was it visual? A shotmaking feast of such delicious complexity, that one could often taste it in layers? Was it vicarious? The lower middle-class, living its most vivid world-beating fantasies through an aberration within their ilk. Was it a lesson in values and a personal work-ethic? The need to remain rooted to your nature, and never allowing your desire and focus to dip. Was it, dare I say, an advertisement for the pedants? Strike-rate falling as the hundred neared, the obsession with the weight of the bat, the irritation with the slightest movement of the sight-screen.The Sachin Tendulkar experience may not be of a singular nature, but it does exist as a collective summation, having a nature completely of its own in the Indian cricket lover’s consciousness. Breathing collectively when he walked out, squealing at the straight drive, laughing at his commercials, using his innings as milestones and checkpoints in life (Where were you when Desert Storm happened?), and clinging on to hope when he was batting.This is, the quintessential, wholesome Tendulkar experience. I wasn’t satisfied with it, however. Call it the unsatisfactory feeling of being part of a crowd, or the refusal to accept that the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts.A huge reason as to why I’m demanding a unique Sachin experience for myself, is because I grew up a stone’s throw away from the MIG cricket club and Sahitya Sahawas, the colony in Bandra East that housed among other poets and authors, Ramesh Tendulkar. If I may be permitted to be foolish enough to cite proximity as a valid reason to count my Sachin experience as unique, I shall proceed.As a kid, I used to play cricket at MIG, and in and around Bandra East for almost the whole of the year, except during the monsoons. As a seven-year-old, I once noticed amidst the Chetaks and Vespas that were parked in one of the building compounds, a black BMW. I stupidly asked who it belonged to, and with a thwack on my head, I was told that it was ‘Sachin ka, aur kiska’ (It is Sachin’s, who else?).Trips to that side of MIG colony became more and more fascinating, because we hoped we’d get to see a silhouette in the window, or get an impromptu batting lesson, who knows? Especially when the Opel Astra from Desert Storm showed up, and we tried to observe from a distance all the dents and bumps from the jumping cricketers in Sharjah. Trying our best to figure out who dented what.A while later, it was all over the papers that he had bought a Ferrari, but it wasn’t parked in Sahitya Sahawas. Reet, whose father worked in customs, claimed to know of its whereabouts, and boasted that Sachin had even taken him for a drive. It became sort of an urban legend in Bombay after that, Sachin’s Red Ferrari, and I would pester my father for late-night rides on Marine Drive in the hope of catching a glimpse.It was then that I nurtured my first wish of actually meeting the man in flesh and blood, and not just in a flash of red. It was ironic, therefore, that when my wish was actually granted, he was in red racing overalls, tearing up a go-karting track. It was 2003, and we had moved to Chennai. MRF was hosting a go-karting competition, and had called in Sachin, Steve Waugh and Brian Lara to kick it off.My father was good friends with TA Sekhar, who oversees the MRF Pace Foundation, and got us tickets for the event. At the end of it all, we were taken to the back of the room where the press conference was being held. Steve Waugh came out first, and dismissed us with a “Fast, guys” as the photographer fumbled with the camera. Lara was next. He kept staring at a photograph of Sachin and himself that I had given him to sign. He was taller than I thought he’d be.Then he entered. I noticed the face first. We get so used to seeing the cheery or poker-faced Tendulkar behind shades, that we don’t often factor in the fatigue he experiences. It was written all over his cheekbones. The collective demands of the nation had manifested themselves as mere hollows in his cheeks. That impressed me thoroughly.Later, we moved to Hyderabad. I was in university in America, when Sachin launched into the Australian attack at Uppal, and my brother was triumphantly texting me from the stadium. It was then that I felt the entire weight of the Sachin Tendulkar experience. There was the breathtaking batting, the overdependence on it, and the eventual collapse after his wicket.But above all, there was the jealousy towards the sibling. Jealousy because he was witnessing something that I wasn’t, and something that I would appreciate in far greater measure. The same jealousy that I felt in Chennai, when the sibling’s cheeks were patted and pulled, and mine were ignored, although I had seen the world in Sachin’s cheeks. The same jealousy that I felt when the sibling was bought Castle Grayskull in a jiffy, because he was younger, whereas I had to beg and plead for a single He-Man toy.Then there was the hunting for the fake MRF sticker to stick on the bat, and the reliving of Chennai, Sharjah, Nottingham and Cape Town in the colony parking decks, and then remembering these names for the Geography exam. There were the family ice cream night-outs to Marine Drive, where eager eyes would look out for a red Ferrari, but would wander towards a bus stand with an Aladdin poster that was there for the longest time, replaying the entire movie with all the songs in my head, while the ice-cream melted insignificantly.My Sachin Tendulkar experience, I then realised, was the experience of my childhood. It is therefore, naturally different from the others, immensely special and the parts themselves, forget their sum, are certainly greater than the whole. It’s no fault of mine that I straddle between my life and his career. They are, but contiguous entities.Sachin himself has straddled between the image of the cherubic sixteen-year-old, and that of the elder statesman. It’s no fault of mine that I hold on dearly to my childhood. It was, but the happiest time of my life. It is, perhaps, no fault of mine that I see his retirement, (or at least the partial announcement of it) as the complete emergence of the elder statesman. I could be wrong here, and I hope to God that I am, but I think it’s time to finally grow up.If you have a submission for Inbox, send it to us here

While Ed Cowan has found the answer to what works for him in spinning Indian conditions in this Test series, Phillip Hughes seems to have less and less of an idea of the same with every passing innings

Brydon Coverdale15-Mar-2013The past few weeks in India have been a learning experience for Ed Cowan. For Phillip Hughes they have just been an experience. It is okay for Australian batsmen to struggle on their first tour of India, as long as they show signs of improvement. As long as they prove they are absorbing the lessons as they go. Cowan and Hughes began this tour as novices in India. Cowan has progressed to become Australia’s second-best batsman in the series. Hughes has not only failed to improve, he has gone backwards.It is a startling comparison. Aside from a cheap first-innings lbw to a delivery that pitched outside leg in Hyderabad, Cowan’s scores and balls faced have grown in every innings: 29 off 45, 32 off 97, 44 off 150, 86 off 238. Meanwhile, Hughes has looked worse and worse against spin and his only double-figure score came because fast men were operating. He scored six from 15 balls of spin in his first innings of the series and since then has managed two runs from 67 deliveries of spin. He did his homework during the week but couldn’t put theory into action.Whatever plan Hughes is working to has failed. Perhaps it is a failure of the coaching staff, but then he has looked much better in the nets than in the Tests. After five innings in India he is still as shaky using his feet as a newborn calf. The team’s batting coach Michael di Venuto noted during the week that it’s easier to advance when the ball is spinning in than away as the body can provide a second line of defence. But Hughes remains glued to the crease against left-arm orthodox bowlers. He was also unable to pierce the stacked leg-side field and unwilling to hit against the spin to off, perhaps rightly so.His judgment of length and drift is poor and he struggles to pick the ball out of the hand: he left a carrom ball from R Ashwin on the second day in Mohali that fizzed perilously close to his off stump. Hughes did show patience and eventually nudged a couple of singles but the way he looked, it was only a matter of time until the spinners got him. In the end it was a ball turning down leg that he gloved behind that cost him his wicket, not the most lethal of deliveries but one that, in this form, Hughes was unable to put away.It left Hughes with 27 runs at 5.40 in this series. He would almost certainly have sat out this match but for Shane Watson’s departure and Usman Khawaja’s detention. His lack of improvement makes it impossible to see how he can be picked for the next Test in Delhi, given the likelihood of a raging turner. However, he creates a dilemma for the selectors, because he should be of more use in the Ashes in English conditions. But will he get there or will his replacement thrive – as Steven Smith has done in Mohali – and keep him out?At least the visible improvement from Cowan has relieved the selectors of any doubts about his position, although he is so well-regarded by John Inverarity and Co that they had few anyway. Still, a lean Indian series and an average dipping down into the 20s might have tested their patience.

Phillip Hughes scored six from 15 balls of spin in his first innings of the series and since then has managed two runs from 67 deliveries of spin. He did his homework during the week but couldn’t put theory into action

Cowan has altered his plans since the start of the series, eschewing the aggressive approach that he used in the first innings in Chennai and instead placing a million-dollar price on his wicket. It was a conscious shift. Cowan’s response to the coach Mickey Arthur’s now infamous homework task was to explain that he wanted to be accountable for batting a long period of time. The team has enough stroke-makers. A crease-occupier, which is a role that comes more naturally to Cowan, provides important balance.By surviving for 238 deliveries in the first innings in Mohali, Cowan lived up to his words. He has now faced 543 balls in the series, more than any other batsman from either team, including his captain Michael Clarke, who has faced 515. Some critics will argue that Cowan’s slow tempo did not suit a match Australia must win to keep the series alive. But that ignores the basic tenet of playing your own game. The rest of Australia’s order is filled with faster scorers. Cowan has done his job if he gives them a stable partner.Certainly he had his share of luck in this innings, although he was due it. A couple of edges evaded first slip and Cheteshwar Pujara at silly point couldn’t hang on to another chance. But at least those chances came from Cowan playing his natural style, not trying to be something he is not. That brought him undone in the first innings of the series, when he lofted Harbhajan Singh for six down the ground and then was stumped dancing down the pitch to attempt another.”My plans have almost come full circle,” Cowan said after play. “Coming over here I had it in my mind that I needed to put pressure on the spinners by attacking them … my game plan has changed from putting pressure on them to putting pressure on them by not letting them get me out. I’m not saying that attacking the spinners wouldn’t have worked but I don’t think that’s my job. I’m at peace with the fact that I’ve got to grind them out over here.”Cowan guards his stumps carefully. He doesn’t mind if dots build up, but when loose balls arrive he dispatches them. He contributes to his own luck by challenging India’s fielders to stay alert for long periods. When Hughes is in, they are on guard every delivery, confident that a wicket is imminent. Hughes tries to be patient but cannot get the bad balls away.In other words, Cowan has discovered what works in the challenging Indian conditions, and the answer is his natural game. Hughes appears not to have a natural game against spin. He cannot regress any further. The question is, will he ever learn?

The reason English viewers aren’t all that interested is not because the IPL is Indian

Andy Zaltzman25-Feb-2013Kevin Pietersen clobbered his first Twenty20 hundred yesterday, clinching the match for the Delhi Daredevils, and passing three figures with a characteristic six. It was a startling innings by a startling player, although startling things happen so often in the IPL that their startle capacity is less startling than you might expect of cricket so startlingly startling.Last week Pietersen, who is admirably open, passionate and forthright in his media utterances, bemoaned the lack of English interest in the IPL, and the sometimes negative publicity it receives in the press here, attributing some of these problems to “jealousy”. From the selected quotes reported, it is hard to know who is supposed to be being jealous of the IPL – ex-players in the media who missed out on its glamour and financial bounty, or supporters who feel it takes the sun-kissed multi-million-dollar glitz and glory away from the April skirmishes in the County Championship, or the prime minister, who secretly wishes he was an IPL dancing girl.However, the reason for any lack of English interest in the IPL is simple. It is not because the “I” stands for Indian. The same would be true if it was the Icelandic Premier League or the Idaho Premier League. More so, probably. Idaho has no business muscling in on cricket. They have snowmobiles and processed cheese. They should leave cricket well alone.Nor does this relative lack of interest have anything to do with the format of the cricket and England’s general national preference for the longer game. Nor does it reflect on the quality of play, which although variable (as in any league in any sport), is often spectacular and dramatic. Nor even is it because the rampant hype and commercial insistence of the IPL might grate with a sport-watching public unaccustomed to having branded excitement blasted into their faces with the relentless determination of a child who has just discovered the joys of banging an upside-down cereal bowl with a spoon.It is simply that, in an already saturated sports-watching market, the IPL does not, and I would argue cannot, offer enough for the English fan to actively support.As a sports fan, you cannot force an instant emotional attachment to and investment in a team with which you have no geographical or familial link, and which has little history or identity with which to entice you. A Mongolian football fan might support Barcelona, or a Tanzanian baseball nut could develop a passion for the New York Yankees, for what those clubs are, what they have achieved, and what they stand for, and be drawn into their historic rivalries that have evolved over 100 years or more; but an English cricket fan is, as yet, unlikely to find the same bond of attraction to the five-year-old Chennai Super Kings. Supporting sport requires more than guaranteed entertainment and being able to watch great players competing.Perhaps, in time, this will develop. The process was probably not helped by the franchise teams being largely disbanded and reconstituted before the 2011 season, so that any identity that had been built in the first three IPL seasons was fractured or destroyed.It is also not helped by the fact that the star players might represent three or four different T20 franchises, and a country if time allows, over the course of a year. What if I love the Barisal Burners but am non-committal about the Sydney Thunder, scared of the Matabeleland Tuskers, unable to forgive Somerset for a three-hour traffic jam I sat in on the M5 ten years ago, and absolutely viscerally hate the Royal Challengers Bangalore (how dare they challenge our Royals, in Jubilee year especially) (despite any lingering historical quibbles)? What am I supposed to think about Chris Gayle? Is he hero or villain?English cricket fans, even if sceptical or ambivalent about Twenty20, can admire the range of skills on display, appreciate how the format is expanding human comprehension of what mankind can and will do to small round things with flat bits of wood, and relish the high-pitched drama and tension of the endgames. They can simply enjoy seeing dancers jiggle their jiggly bits for no obvious reason, and be moved and uplifted by the sensation that unbridled commercialism is slowly destroying everything pure about sport and the world.But, without teams and identities for which English supporters can root, and thus the emotional commitment that makes supporting sport such an infinitely rewarding experience, the IPL will continue to struggle to find active support in England. Not that the IPL, or Pietersen, or any of its other players and protagonists, should give two shakes or Billy Bowden’s finger about that.I’d be interested to know your views on this, from English, Indian and other perspectives. I love cricket. I think I have probably made that abundantly clear in the three and a half years I have been writing this blog, and in the 30 years I have been boring my friends and, latterly, wife about it. I have tried watching the IPL, I have enjoyed some of it, but it just does not excite me. Am I normal, or should I see a shrink?● At the opposite end of the scoring-rate see-saw, a curious but increasingly intriguing Test match in Trinidad found itself donning its Wellington boots and staring forlornly at a dark and soggy ending. Not for the first time in its annoying history, The Weather intervened to spoil a potentially thrilling Test match denouement.Much of the cricket had been on the stodgy side of gloopy, and the seemingly endless behavioural idiosyncrasies of the DRS continued to irritate more than resolve, but another trademark jaunty Michael Clarke declaration had set the West Indies 215 to win in 61 overs. The stage was perfectly set for Chris Gayle. Or Dwayne Bravo. Or, at a stretch, Marlon Samuels.They were, regrettably for Test Match fans, otherwise engaged. A full-strength West Indies would not be world-conquering, but they might at least conquer the occasional Test match. Selectors, schedules and squabbles look set to conspire to ensure that the world waits an extremely long time to see a full-strength West Indies Test XI again.In the absence of proven hitters, Darren Sammy, the West Indies captain, after a largely ineffective match in which he had raised further questions about his suitability as prong four of a four-pronged bowling attack, promoted himself from 8 to 3 in an effort to kickstart the chase. Many things have been written about Sammy as a cricketer, but the words “reliable batsman” are not amongst them. At least, not unless preceded by the words “no one’s idea of a”. He is, however, a potent thwacker of a cricket ball, and knew that, on a pitch that had been a connoisseur of slow-scoring’s dream, a swift blast from him could potentially enable the eternally crafty and virtually impregnable Chanderpaul to shepherd the rest of his fragile team to victory.Sammy promptly clonked a rapid 30 before the gloom intervened. Victory was still distant, but had become possible, and it was refreshing to see both captains striving to concoct a positive result from a somnolent surface.● If Clarke’s declaration was enterprising, his team’s batting had lacked the positivity that had become its trademark in the early part of the millennium. The Baggy Greens plinked their runs at 2.39 per over – their slowest batting match since the Galle Test of 1999. In their 147 Tests since then, Australia had averaged 3.59 per over. Their first innings of 311 in 135 overs was their slowest score of 300 or more since 1989. During it, four different West Indies bowlers bowled more than 15 overs for less than two runs per over – the first time any team had done this against Australia since 1961. Watson’s 56 off 172 and Hussey’s 73 off 207 were respectively the second-slowest 50-plus and 70-plus scores by Australians in Tests this millennium.The pitch was awkward and the bowling admirably disciplined, but Australia plodding along at under 2.5 runs per over is further proof that the apocalypse is nigh ‒ alongside economic collapse in Europe, political upheavals around the world, the unstoppable rise of reality television, the branding of time-outs in the IPL, anything to do with Silvio Berlusconi, Vernon Philander’s Test bowling average, and the current state of the world cricket calendar.

David Miller’s ability to hit boundaries in clusters on his way to a 38-ball century led to panic among the RCB bowlers

Abhishek Purohit07-May-2013A sense of inevitability had come over the PCA Stadium midway through the Kings XI Punjab chase. Sitting in the dugout, Adam Gilchrist, amid helpless glances at the scoreboard, was complaining about poor umpiring decisions his side had received over the season. Royal Challengers Bangalore were bowling and fielding with the look of a side that puts up a monstrous total in a Twenty20, strikes early in the chase and then waits for the remainder of the game to play itself out. The usual questions were being asked. Did Kings XI have the pace to bowl short at Chris Gayle? Was it possible to stop AB de Villiers at the death?David Miller hit many of his boundaries in the ‘v’•BCCIRoyal Challengers had reason to feel safe. The last proper batting pair was at the crease, to be followed by a bowling allrounder who had had about the worst tournament debut you could imagine with the ball. Situations can approach the improbable quickly in T20. Nearly 14 an over needed from the last seven. What do you do? If you are David Miller, you hit the cover off the ball, mostly in the ‘V’, and hand out rhyming threats to bowlers – V, tree, arc, park. If you are Royal Challengers, you do not drop him.Miller had taken 14 off his previous three deliveries when Virat Kohli missed a skier and copped a blow to his jaw. Soon, the RCB big three were feeling the pressure. De Villiers, of all fielders, fumbled in the deep to allow a second, and his throw arrived exactly in the middle of the pitch. Gayle took a couple of steps and floated his first delivery down the leg side. Kohli argued with the umpire about calling a no-ball that wasn’t.Hard as it was to take your eyes off Miller’s assault, you couldn’t ignore the panic spreading like wildfire among the RCB bowlers. Three successive boundaries hemmed in by two dropped chances were enough to start it.Allan Donald had said that Gayle’s 30-ball century left his Pune Warriors players scared. That was the first innings of the game and Gayle went after Warriors without a care in the world. This was a chase that began at nearly ten an over. Royal Challengers were not far away from getting into the Kings XI tail. Instead, within a few minutes, theirs was between their legs.The more RP Singh caves in under pressure, the farther he seems from the bowler who shone briefly in India colours. The more Vinay Kumar bowls short with absent venom, the harder it seems to fathom how Praveen Kumar continues to get ignored.Perhaps Royal Challengers were unlucky to run into Miller on the night he finally pulled off what he had been threatening to in the past couple of games. He had half-centuries in unsuccessful, but close, chases against the might of Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings. He was Man of the Match when Kings XI chased 186 in Mohali against Warriors, coming in at 58 for 3 and blasting 80 off 41. It hadn’t been all power-hitting, though. He’d also guided a modest, but tricky, chase against Delhi Daredevils with an unbeaten 34. In August last year, he almost single-handedly clubbed Yorkshire to the Friends Life t20 title.Miller has this ability to hit boundaries in clusters. It can quickly unnerve the fielding side, as Royal Challengers found out. Not only does it make the bowlers lose their lengths and feed Miller, but the odd good delivery also gets taken for runs. There was nothing wrong with a shortish Ravi Rampaul ball on off, but amid all the straight sixes, Miller was able to wait on it and guide it very late past short third man. By the time RP Singh came on, Miller had hit the zone. When you can stand in the crease and drive a short of a length ball for six over long-off, you are really killing it. “Killer Miller” fittingly read a placard in the crowd.It’s been three years since Miller made his international debut for South Africa. Though always noted for his big-hitting, he is not exactly a regular yet. He wasn’t part of the squad for the World Twenty20 last year but has made it to the Champions Trophy side in the absence of Jacques Kallis.Tonight, he used his father’s advice about hitting in the V to make a hundred in 38 balls and dedicated it to his cousin on her birthday. Yusuf Pathan took one delivery less to make one in 2010, an innings that drew extraordinary praise from his captain Shane Warne . Gayle took eight less to get one, and a cartoon suggested a radical new field setting, with players flying around quidditch-style on brooms to stop Gayle’s monster sixes. That won’t be out of place for Miller, too, only the area above the V would be crowded with flying brooms.

Last year, when England faced South Africa, Graeme Swann was at a campsite having been left out but this time he finally gave himself a performance to remember at Headingley

David Hopps at Headingley26-May-2013Graeme Swann had never previously taken a wicket in a Headingley Test and he had never taken a Test wicket against New Zealand, but he needed only 12 minutes to despatch three New Zealand batsmen, put his elbow operation behind him and tick another box in England’s pre-Ashes preparations.These are the pre-Ashes Test preparations, it should be remarked, that England’s players have been told not to dwell upon, for fear of not living in the here and now, but as well as putting England on the way to winning a Test against New Zealand, Swann was honest enough to know his spell had a deeper significance.”It’s only the third time I’ve bowled since the op and it’s definitely the best I’ve bowled,” he said. “Having had the operation and with such a big summer ahead, it was always important to get some wickets under my belt.”I was always optimistic I would be able to perform but whether you have the rhythm and spin in the fingers you are never too sure so I’m delighted. It just feels like it did 18 months ago again.”Living in the here and now, of course, is impossible. It presumably means that you have no past and no future. You can’t remember where you parked the car and, even if you so happen to find it, you are not allowed to think about where you want to drive it.If there were any lingering concerns about Swann’s effectiveness after his elbow operation, they were surely banished when Dean Brownlie, Martin Guptill and Kane Williamson were blown away between 2.20 and 2.32pm and England’s sense of well-being ahead of the Australia Test series, and before that the Champions Trophy, became a little stronger.No England spinner has taken five wickets at Headingley for 28 years and New Zealand’s last man, Trent Boult, thrashed him for three sixes to ensure he had to settle for 4 for 42, rather than emulate John Emburey’s achievement against Australia in 1985.He failed to take a wicket against Australia in 2009 and he was omitted against South Africa last year, a decision which was revealed as folly when Kevin Pietersen, a bit-part spinner, found extravagant turn with his offbreaks.Headingley was therefore an unlikely venue for any spin bowler’s resurgence, as Swann recognised. “Belly asked me ‘what end do you normally bowl here?’ I said ‘I don’t normally play.’ I was in North Wales on a campsite last year when the game against South Africa was going on.”With every year that Andy Fogarty remains head groundsman at Headingley, the pitches look more like those he helped to prepare in his time at Old Trafford. They are not as quick, or as scruffy, but they have improving bounce and carry and, as Swann has again emphasised, they are not averse to turn, especially when New Zealand are fielding two left-armers and Swann has some footholds to aim at.That being so, as the sun blazed down upon West Yorkshire for the second successive day – and the pilots of the flights above were again startled to discover that they could actually see the runway at Leeds Bradford Airport – English cricket had the feel of summer with Swann dancing in to bowl in dark glasses before springing round to deliver his crouching appeal. It is repeated so often, whenever he does it he looks like a Christmas wind-up toy.Swann has been insisting from the outset that his elbow is fine, but he is a garrulous, optimistic sort and not everybody can wake up in the morning with his brand of sunny optimism. Everybody knew he could spin a yarn; they needed to see that he can still spin a cricket ball.On what was essentially a second-day pitch, his intervention came as some surprise. Nobody thought to question Alastair Cook’s decision to delay his appearance until the 27th over. At lunch, the pitch looked flat enough for New Zealand to press for a first-innings lead. After two overs from Swann, they were out of the match. This performance was considerably worse than their collapse to 68 all out at Lord’s. A run of five successive Tests against England is ending meekly, good impressions undermined.Brownlie and Guptill were both bowled through the gate as the ball turned out of the rough, Brownlie from the sixth ball he bowled, Guptill from the 12th. Neither shot had much to commend it. Brownlie had the alibi of surprise; Guptill missed the first Test at Lord’s and so could plead inactivity for his cumbersome prop forward. Williamson did at least try to move across his crease and play Swann with the spin, a method adopted brilliantly against Swann by South Africa’s Hashim Amla, but he was struck on the pad and England won an lbw decision on review.Until now, proof of Swann’s well-being had not been extensive. He bowled only eight overs in the first Test in England’s innings victory at Lord’s and went wicketless. He did take four wickets in his only first-class match of the season, but even they were in the face of a Durham second-innings slog which brought them a last-gasp victory against Nottinghamshire.If England do retain the Ashes then Dr Shawn O’Driscoll, who operated successfully on the elbows of Swann and Tim Bresnan will deserve some of the recognition. He is based in Minnesota, he will will not qualify for an OBE – although there are Australians who will tell you that as the Poms gave a gong to everybody in 2005, they might well find a way to bend the rules.

Watching Ashton Agar bat in his debut innings and MS Dhoni win a final for India can re-affirm one’s love for cricket

<b>Apoorv Sardeshmukh, India</b>13-Jul-2013Every once in a while, there comes a day that makes me fall in love with the game of cricket all over again. Thursday, July 11, 2013 was a day like that. It was a day when a young man batted fearlessly, threw caution to the wind and played a Test match as if he was playing with his friends in his backyard. Late in the night, a not-so-young man played the most amazing limited-overs innings in a long, long time and made sane grown-up people jump around and dance at 3.15am.These have not been the best of times for a cricket lover. In April and May, bookies and fixers were discussed more than cricket and cricket teams. Board appointments were given more prominence than team selections. The Champions Trophy was a welcome relief and the Indian team’s performance brought a lot of joy. But this was followed by a triangular series in West Indies, which was so irrelevant and whose coverage was so bad, that one often wondered if the broadcasters actually wanted you to switch off the television and go to sleep.Then the Ashes arrived. Australia picked a rookie 19-year-old left-arm spinner. He bowled seven overs and looked innocuous on day one. Bad, desperate selection, one thought. Jimmy Anderson then bowled a spell which only confirmed the long held belief that he is the best fast bowler in the world. On the second day, Australia were nine down for 117 and looking down the barrel.Ashton Agar, batting at No. 11, then played such a refreshing innings that everybody, including the English fans, wanted him to score a hundred. Batting at No. 11, yes No. 11, he made Test cricket look ridiculously easy. He smashed the best fast bowler in world all over the park, and Graeme Swann, who was supposed to gobble up left-handers, was dispatched out of the park. All this was done with a smile on the face. When he fell on 98, scored with the enthusiasm of a school boy playing his first inter-school match with a new bat, the entire cricketing world was applauding. The sun was shining, cricket was played in whites and everybody had a smile on their face. Life could not be better.But it got better. A few hours later, MS Dhoni scripted a victory that, at one stage, looked beyond him. Sachin Tendulkar fans might disagree, but MS Dhoni is possibly India’s greatest limited-overs cricketer. The number of impact performances and match-winning efforts he has put in have taken him to a level much higher than anyone else. On Thursday night, he had the game measured to the last possible decimal. You often wondered what MS Dhoni was doing, but in his mind he was clear on how the target was to be achieved. One mis-hit, one unplayable delivery, one mix-up and it was all over. But Dhoni played almost the perfect innings and guided his team to an unforgettable victory. Only Javed Miandad can claim to understand one-day batting better. When he smashed Shaminda Eranga for a six to seal victory, one had to stand up and applaud, even though it was 3.15 am.Days like Thursday make it worthwhile to be a sports fan. Call it paranoia, stupidity or as my wife often says, an unhealthy obsession, but there is no greater high in the world than watching a good performance on the sports field. There is no greater joy than watching your team achieve sporting success. Forget sponsors, forget players, forget officials – the game is played for the fans. Sport makes you the experience the worst lows and the most incredible highs. No sporting contest is ever irrelevant because someone somewhere is going to be happy or sad based on the result of that contest.With his simplicity and boyish enthusiasm, Ashton Agar made us fall in love with cricket again. With his absolute brilliance, MS Dhoni made us sing and dance in love.Such days are rare.If you have a submission for Inbox, send it to us here, with “Inbox” in the subject line

The best way to survive and flourish on a pitch with variable pace and bounce is to adopt a more aggressive approach

Aakash Chopra at Sabina Park 01-Jul-2013Sample this – 11 maidens out of the 97 (completed) overs and 347 dot balls (59%) out of the 586 bowled in an ODI. Those are appalling stats coming from a match played between two sides that boast of the world’s most dynamic players. Was it poor batting, were there demons in the pitch, or was it simply exceptional limited-overs bowling?If it was poor batting then what explains 46 boundaries, including as many as 11 sixes, in the interim? Who was hitting those big ones? If there were indeed demons in the pitch, then it’s difficult to fathom how batsmen from both sides lasted that long. And, it wasn’t the last option either: the bowling, at no stage, looked menacing enough to architect those statistics.So, what was the mystery behind some of the better stroke-makers of the cricket ball playing an altogether different brand of cricket? Well, it was indeed the pitch that dictated a certain kind of play, at least till the batsmen chose to take a little bit of risk. While there were no apparent demons in the pitch, the variable pace and bounce off the pitch ensured that getting away was really difficult.Believe it or not, at Sabina Park during the second ODI between India and West Indies, hitting a four or a six was a lot easier than taking a single to rotate strike. The moment the batsman tried to place the ball in the gap, he ended up either offering a dead bat because the ball either arrived a little quicker or later than he expected or he couldn’t hit the ball hard enough to beat the inner ring. Also with the new laws, the mandatory extra fielder inside the 30-yard circle added to the misery.This pitch reminded me of the one I batted on in the Dhaka Premier League, a 50-overs-a-side tournament between clubs. The team batting first struggled through their quota of overs and managed only 175 runs on a slow and sluggish pitch that offered spinners a fair amount of assistance. Still, chasing less than four-an-over might stretch us a bit but should be achieved, or so we thought.I opened the batting with the knowledge that scoring was going to be a little tricky, yet I knew if I spent time on the pitch, batting would eventually become easier for that’s what I’d been conditioned to believe. I waited for the loose balls to come my way. On a pitch that offered variable bounce and pace, the margin of error was larger for the bowler, resulting in fewer hittable balls. My plan B was to take singles and rotate strike till I gauged the pace and bounce but that didn’t happen either. I kept finding the fielders instead of gaps.Then came the trickiest bit – a first in my career. Even when the loose balls were bowled begging to be punished, I couldn’t hit them for boundaries. I was playing proper cricketing shots but the rewards weren’t proportional to the effort. The cover drive wasn’t traveling quick enough and the cut wasn’t piercing the off side field either. I scratched around for a little longer before perishing.That innings and the subsequent chat with a few players who were regulars in the Bangladesh circuit did much to decode these sort of pitches, and of course the way to deal with them. On such batting surfaces, rotating strike is difficult because the pace and bounce off the pitch is so inconsistent that you don’t know when to bring the bat down to find the right timing or control the pace and direction of the ball off the bat to hit the gaps. If you keep trying to play the ball on its merit, you’ll end up hitting it directly to the fielders all the time unless it’s a rank long hop or a full toss.The only way to score on such pitches is to adopt a slightly more aggressive approach and shelve the percentages on the balls that are in your hitting zone. You ought to take the odd risk, take the aerial route and hit a few boundaries to not only release but also transfer the pressure to the bowler; just sticking around will be playing into the bowlers’ hands. That’s exactly what Dinesh Karthik did against Marlon Samuels.Rohit Sharma in the first innings and Johnson Charles in the second showed that if you are willing to take calculated risks, the rewards were forthcoming. Of course, you would also need a bit of luck to succeed but taking that punt is the best and perhaps the only way to succeed on such a pitch.The pitch for the second ODI was the same one on which the first match between West Indies and Sri Lanka was played. If the same pitch is going to be used for the last match of the series in Jamaica on Tuesday, another laborious day for batsmen is in the offing.

Plays of the day from the first ODI between India and West Indies in Kochi

Devashish Fuloria21-Nov-2013Heavy load
It’s not often that you see a player being hauled off the ground on a stretcher, unlike, say in football. So it is understandable that the two paramedics who ran in after Chris Gayle had gone down on the pitch were a bit underprepared for the task. The two men had walked only a few steps before one of them realised that Gayle was not an average-sized cricketer, and had to quickly ask the two West Indies players, who had come from the dressing room, to give them a hand.Grubber – I

Marlon Samuels had been introduced to the dual nature of the pitch early. In the first three overs, he saw a couple of deliveries reach MS Dhoni on the second bounce before being hit on the gloves by one that reared up from a length. But even that didn’t prepare him for the shock that he got from Suresh Raina. As he went back to cut a shortish delivery in the 14th over, the ball almost scooted along the floor to strike the middle stump only a couple of inches above the base. A flabbergasted Samuels waited for a few seconds before slowly trudging off the pitch.Grubber – II

By the time Mohammed Shami was brought back to bowl the 38th over, 69 out of the 75 deliveries Darren Bravo had faced were from the spinners, and he had done well against them. The assured footwork he had shown against spin, however, went missing when he stayed rooted to the crease off the second delivery he faced from Shami in that over. The ball stayed low and uprooted the offstump.The first-ball surprise

All day, it was the lower bounce that had been causing batsmen problems. Rohit Sharma immediately checked the toe of his bat after defending the first ball of the second innings from Ravi Rampaul, but it was the first ball from Jason Holder that surprised everyone. First, Rohit, who was squared up as it bounced extra and flew past the shoulder of the bat; then the keeper, who was not able to hold on to the ball as it swerved away after crossing the batsman and went to the boundary; and finally, the slip fielders, who were perplexed by where that came from.The sweepsOn a pitch that had afforded generous help to the Indian spinners, Sunil Narine was expected to play a part too. He did get a few to turn sharply during his spell. But with Rohit in the form of his life, that wasn’t going to make a difference. Twice, in Narine’s first two overs, Rohit intentionally swept in the air. The first one was behind square and it spun past the fine-leg fielder; the second was a dare to deep midwicket which went over the fielder for a six. The mini-battle was won by the batsman