On Tuesday, the two new IPL franchises, Pune and Rajkot, will pick up to five players each from the two suspended teams, Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, in a draft. ESPNcricinfo explains how it will work

Arun Venugopal14-Dec-20153:19

The hot picks among Indian and foreign players

How many players go into the draft?A pool of 50 players from Super Kings and Royals will be made available to Pune and Rajkot. After the two franchises have made their choices of five players each, the remaining players will go into the auction pool. Pune and Rajkot will be allowed to pick a maximum of four capped Indian players each, in accordance with the existing retention rule.Which franchise gets to pick the first player from the draft pool?New Rising, the owners of the Pune franchise, will get to pick the first player since they made the most successful bid at the franchise auction. The Rajkot franchise, owned by Intex, then picks its first player, and then the two franchises will take turns to pick the remaining eight players.What is the purse available to the teams?Each of the two new teams will have a minimum of Rs 40 crore and a maximum of Rs 66 crore to assemble their squads from players available in the draft and at the auction in February. In theory, the franchises can opt to buy fewer than five players at the draft or not pick anyone at all, but that appears unlikely.A franchise official said it wouldn’t make sense for the franchises to not pick anybody. “The idea of the draft is to give the teams a comfort level of five core players around whom they can build the team,” he said. “If you go to the auction, it [the price of players] could be more.”What is the price band for the shortlisted five players in each franchise?The BCCI has stuck to the same contract structure that was put in place two years ago when the franchises were allowed to retain five players. The first player gets Rs 12.5 crore, the second Rs 9.5 crore, third Rs 7.5 crore. fourth Rs 5.5 crore and the fifth Rs 4 crore. An uncapped player stands to earn Rs 4 crore, if picked.The figures, however, are deductions made from the team’s total purse, and are not necessarily indicative of the players’ actual earnings.Will the players earn the same salaries that their contracts with CSK and RR guaranteed?In the current situation, the existing contracts of players who go into the draft will be protected. “For example, if MS Dhoni’s contract with CSK was worth, say Rs 15 crore, the franchise signing him up as the first player from the draft will have to pay him that much,” the franchise official said. “He can’t officially be paid more than what he earned at Super Kings, but only Rs 12.5 crore will be deducted from the franchise’s purse.”Player contracts are normally tripartite arrangements involving the player, the franchise and the IPL.Who are the players likely to be on the franchises’ wish-list?There has been much speculation about MS Dhoni being the automatic first choice for the Pune franchise, which has the right to make the first move. Some of the others considered to be hot properties are the Indian quartet of R Ashwin, Suresh Raina, Ravindra Jadeja and Ajinkya Rahane, and Steven Smith, Brendon McCullum, Dwayne Bravo, Faf du Plessis and Shane Watson.The Rajkot franchise could make an early grab for Jadeja, who could be a big draw as a local player. The foreign players are likely to be attractive propositions given that they are likely to be available for the entire tournament. Only England and Sri Lanka have any international commitments in April and May, as of now.

explores English cricket through some of its nobler grounds

Alan Gardner06-Dec-2015Country houses and cricket pitches. How English. As an idea for a book, it might be in danger of sailing close to caricature. Thankfully, Pete Langman, aka the Country House Cricketer, is a down-to-earth Sunday-sportsman type, who mixes in a little renaissance poetry along with the wisdom of Steven Seagal to describe his summer of playing a humble ball game in less-than-humble surroundings.The simple aim was to create a record of cricket at a selection of rather striking grounds. Alongside the photographs and match reports, Langman wanted to “connect the past and the present, to give some idea of the how and why, not merely the where”. The other goal was to raise awareness, not for a few country piles in need of repair but for Parkinson’s, the disease Langman suffers from. To that end, all profits from the book will go to two charities, Parkinson’s UK and the Cure Parkinson’s Trust.Why not create a collection focusing on (rapidly disappearing) municipal sports grounds and urban playing fields, some might ask? Those are the venues where the game is fighting for relevance. But if the premise of looks a little like pandering to privilege, it is worth taking a moment to consider cricket’s origin story.

At Penshurst Park we come across Sir Philip Sidney, a towering figure of the Elizabethan age, who Langman reckons “would, surely, have captained the England cricket team had there only been one to captain”

The late Brian Johnston is quoted from a souvenir programme for the centenary of Clumber Park CC as saying he liked to come to the ground on the rest day of the Trent Bridge Test, “because this, the village green, is the origin of the game and way it ought to be played”. Clumber, being a country estate, is hardly Broadhalfpenny Down, as Langman notes, but Johnston may have been closer to the truth than he thought.Rather than cricket emerging from some bucolic wellspring for 18th-century villagers to enjoy, it was often the landed gentry who were responsible for establishing the game. Names such as Sir William Gage, Charles Lennox and assorted other dukes crop up regularly through the 12 chapters (the majority of locations are in the south-east, which explains some of the interconnections) and help provide an understanding of what Mike Marqusee called “cricket’s origins in commerce, politics, patronage and urban society”.Langman’s trip to Knole, in Kent, provides a link right back to the very start. The third Duke of Dorset, John Frederick Sackville, employed John Minshull – who is accorded the honour of scoring the first recorded hundred – and the fast bowler Edward “Lumpy” Stevens on his ground staff. Lumpy’s accuracy in bowling the ball clean the wicket was reputedly the spur for a third stump being added in the middle.Marvelhouse WordsAustralians may instinctively bridle at the association of cricket and the upper classes, but a day at Sheffield Park ought to force a rethink. Lord Sheffield might have been a posh Pom but he was also a cricket tragic, it seems. He made a pair on his only first-class appearance and “had no great personal aptitude for the game… but no one could doubt his enthusiasm”; he also loved to host touring Australian teams and even found the money to pay for the trophy that their first-class compeititon is still contested for, 125 years later: the Sheffield Shield. Rather than being situated in Yorkshire, Sheffield Park is in East Sussex and it was there, with WG Grace gazing down from a picture on the wall, that the idea for was formed.History is never far away, even if the changing rooms are rarely as gilded as the adjoining properties. At Penshurst Park we come across Sir Philip Sidney, a towering figure of the Elizabethan age, who Langman reckons “would, surely, have captained the England cricket team had there only been one to captain”. Blenheim Palace, meanwhile, was the birthplace of Winston Churchill. Blenheim Park CC play right in front of the towering edifice, one of the largest houses in England, which unsurprisingly looks on with a “quietly superior air”.It seems English cricket has always been a small, close-knit world and the book emphasises that. Barney, one of Langman’s team-mates when he turns out for Stansted, is also captain of Goodwood and able to get him a game there. At Arundel Castle – which is still a first-class ground – former Sussex captain John Barclay makes an appearance. Then there is the chance meeting with an old friend that leads to the closing chapter at Stourhead (where the Authors XI also make their third appearance).On the same theme, incidentally, I have a suspicion that “Lippy” Lipscombe, the sledge-happy ringer who turns out for an English Heritage XI against Langman’s National Trust XI at Audley End, is the husband of my cousin, though he is currently denying it.There is another connection, too. Langman has written for these pages about the rare experience of being an ambidextrous batsman. He also sheds light on the depredations of Parkinson’s, takes very decent photographs (revealing a particular yen for snaps of old rollers), and tells clubhouse tales with appropriate bonhomie. It is not only the buildings in that have character.The Country House Cricketer
By Pete Langman
Marvelhouse Words
£20, 98 pages

Carlos Brathwaite, who scored a gritty fifty in his first Test innings, talks about having the last say in his war of words with David Warner, West Indies’ unseen hardwork and his stuff of dreams

Brydon Coverdale at the MCG28-Dec-2015Carlos Brathwaite does things his own way. There is the chunky G-Shock watch that he wears, even while batting, because he likes to keep track of time himself and not rely on the backroom staff. There is the fact that he owns his own bat company, Trident Sports, which he hopes will one day dominate the market in the Caribbean. And then there is the way he chose to celebrate his maiden Test wicket, a running slide on his knees after knocking over the captain with a high-five gone wrong.”I just tried to get the slide,” Brathwaite said. “Jase [Jason Holder] came, I tried to give him a touch, he almost took me out. Fortunately I was the one left standing. Then I went and got my slide in. It was just the energy and the adrenaline was pumping at that point in time. It wasn’t a planned celebration but in the heat of the moment I just drew something out of the bag.”What has been most notable about Brathwaite’s Test debut is the exuberance that he has brought, enthusiasm that was not clearly evident in the first Test in Hobart. In scoring 59 in his first Test innings, Brathwaite combined lusty blows and two lucky reprieves off no-balls with solid defence, and he ended up occupying 126 deliveries. And although he is disconcertingly slow for a bowler of near Joel Garner proportions, he is canny, and economical.That his first Test wicket was David Warner is an achievement given Warner’s remarkable recent run of form, the wicket arriving when Brathwaite angled in a short ball that Warner steered to Holder at gully. Asked after the day’s play whether he had engaged in some verbal banter with Warner during the innings, Brathwaite said he did what he had to do in order to get himself and his team into the contest.”It’s been documented I bowl quite slow, which is true, so if the revs aren’t on the ball from my hand then I need to have something inside to try to get myself up, try to show some aggression,” Brathwaite said. “That’s what I tried to do today, thankfully it worked.”I don’t know if it was heated. There’s a war between bat and ball, West Indies and Australia. I don’t take anything off the field personally, so if the opportunity presents itself I’ll still have a drink with them after the Test. But out there representing West Indies and the couple of hundred thousand persons back home, I need to do everything to represent this badge and represent them, because everyone can’t be here to do it for themselves.”To that end, Brathwaite put on a 90-run partnership with Darren Bravo for the seventh wicket and West Indies nearly made it through the first session of play unscathed. Brathwaite was lucky that James Pattinson twice was denied his wicket by overstepping – “I’ll probably play lotto tonight,” Brathwaite said – and their stand at least prevented West Indies from having to follow on, with Steven Smith reluctant to make his bowlers work too hard in one day.”The game is still very, very far out of our hands and it will take a monumental effort to bring ourselves back into the game and even try to draw it or win it, but that’s a challenge we’ll look at tomorrow,” Brathwaite said. “I was just happy that I could contribute to a fighting day’s performance and hope that the fans in the West Indies get to put a smile back on their faces and realise that we’re not just here for being here’s sake, we actually want to compete and do well.”I know I desperately want to represent the West Indies. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. It’s something I will hold dear to my heart every second I’m out there representing West Indies with that maroon cap on. I think the team spirit is there … When performances aren’t going well it’s difficult to see energy, difficult to see how hard guys work. I don’t think the wider public is seeing the effort that we put in, which is unfortunate.”Brathwaite did all of his fighting before lunch with a bat produced by a company that he owns, Trident Sports, its name and logo inspired by the flag of his home country Barbados. The company’s mission statement is to provide quality, affordable sporting equipment easily accessible at all levels of play, and Brathwaite hopes he won a few more followers after his 59 on Test debut.”Ultimately I want it to stand on its own two feet,” he said. “By that I mean for it to be a noticeable brand worldwide. It’s a Caribbean company so hope to conquer that market first, but eventually I’d like to broaden my horizon and be an internationally respected cricket brand.”

Apart from creating awkward angles to right-hand batsmen, Amir, Wahab and Irfan each manage to pose questions with their distinctive skills

Aakash Chopra02-Mar-2016Cricket is a game of angles. Bowlers try to use the crease to create different angles and batsmen try to create angles to place the ball in the gaps. Nothing accentuates this more than a left-arm fast bowler bowling over the wicket to a right-hand batsman. Left-arm seamers challenge the fundamentals of the game on two counts:They force the batsman to discard the notion that cricket is a side-on game, for he must open up his stance from the toes to the shoulders to have a proper view of the trajectory of the ball.They make a straight ball look like it has done something spectacular because of the angle they create. The same is true for a right-arm bowler bowling over the wicket to a left-hander but since the cricketing world is predominantly right-handed, that doesn’t seem like an oddity. Left-hand batsmen grow up playing right-arm bowlers all the time, and though they face similar problems, they seem to handle them much better.Facing a quality left-arm fast bowler is a challenge in itself but if you have to deal with three of them, your problems multiply manifold. Having three quality left-arm fast bowlers is Pakistan’s biggest strength, and that all of them bring something different to the table makes it a rather unique bowling attack too. They all pose the same problem of angles while bowling over the wicket, but their styles are so different from each other that each poses a different problem to address for the batsman.Mohammad Amir

While there are plenty of right-arm outswing bowlers, we don’t see as many left-arm pacers who can swing the ball away from left-hand batsmen. And if they are able to do so, they aren’t as competent at bringing the ball back into the right-handers. The reason for this is the positioning at the crease and the line that they have to start with while bowling to right-handers. To bring the ball back into right-handers and finish within the stumps, they must start from slightly outside off. If they start within the stumps, the ball will end up missing leg stump. In order to start from outside off, they must come really close to the stumps, because it’s impossible to bowl the outside-off line and bring the ball back in while bowling from far out on the crease. Amir comes close to the stumps, starts from outside off, and since his wrist is firmly behind the ball, it tails back in sharply. In addition to that, he bowls in the high 140s and has the ability to pitch the ball fuller.Wahab Riaz makes up for his lack of swing with a sharp bouncer that keeps following the batsman•Getty ImagesThe trick to playing against Amir is to not commit too much. One must make sure that the front foot is not planted too early or too far across, for that makes you an lbw candidate. But is this straightforward to achieve? It isn’t, for whenever he starts off from slightly further outside off, the ball goes straight instead of tailing back in. So if you haven’t gone across and are playing inside the line, the one that holds its line could take the outside edge.In his four-over spell against India, Amir didn’t just showcase the quality of his bowling skills, he showed that he knows how to take wickets. Most bowlers will tell you that there’s a subtle difference between bowling that looks good and the sort that takes wickets. The only thing that’s noticeably missing in Amir is the fact that he’s bowling from at least a foot behind the crease and so he’s missing out on a yard of pace. The corollary is that it allows the ball to stay in the air that much longer, which means more swing. It’ll be interesting to see how for long he’ll be happy with this trade-off.Wahab Riaz

On his day, Wahab can be the quickest of them all. He’s the kind of bowler who is associated with bowling a “heavy ball”, that hits the bat harder than expected. But while pace is his great asset, he doesn’t seem to have the ability to swing the ball in the air. His wrist is not behind the ball at the time of release. If Amir’s wrist is at 90 degrees at the point of release, Wahab’s is at 45 degrees, and though the ball doesn’t wobble after release, it doesn’t swing either, because the seam isn’t upright.He takes it away from right-hand batsmen, and that makes him slightly predictable. As a batsman you need not worry about getting lbw, because if the ball is hitting the stumps, it won’t pitch within the stumps and if it’s pitching within the stumps, it’s likely to miss them. The exception being when the ball is really full.But Wahab has two potent weapons to make up for the lack of swing – a good bouncer and the ability to take the ball away from the right-hander after pitching when bowling from round the wicket. Since his stock delivery moves away after pitching, he can happily start his bouncers from outside leg when bowling over the wicket and have them follow the batsman. And when he bowls from around the wicket, the natural angle brings the ball in to the batsman but the seam position takes it away after pitching, and that’s a tough ball to handle if there’s some reverse swing available too.The art of facing Mohammad Irfan: prepare for the full ball and react to the short ball•AFPMohammad Irfan
As expected, the tallest of them all gets the maximum bounce too. Irfan’s strength is to get extra bounce from a good length. The biggest challenge for a batsman facing him is that he’s forced to recalibrate his eyeline. As a batsman you’re conditioned to keeing your line of sight almost parallel to the pitch, for that allows you to follow the full trajectory of the ball. If you’re looking slightly high, you may not be in the best position to play full balls, and if you’re looking slightly low, you may misread short balls. In Irfan’s case, you’re forced to look higher, and so you start to think that every ball is a lot shorter than it actually is. In addition, the extra bounce he extracts also fools you into believing that you aren’t actually misjudging the length, and that’s when you end up going back to the ball that’s pitched fairly full. Or you’re so keen to go on the back foot that you’re too late on the balls that you should be getting forward to. While facing him, you must remind yourself to prepare for the full ball and react to the short ball. Also, you must keep the hands and bat higher than usual, even on low, slow subcontinental pitches, to deal with the bounce.The only thing that’s preventing Irfan from wrecking more havoc is the fact that the ball doesn’t come out with the seam upright from his hand. It wobbles, which in turn prevents it from swinging in the air and landing on the seam. The wobbly seam does get some lateral movement from the pitch every now and then but it’s not consistent enough for Irfan to use it to his advantage.

For a long time, Shikhar Dhawan struggled to put balls away off the pads, and though he is still not a classic on-driver, his leg-side play has improved considerably over the past year

Sidharth Monga in Ranchi12-Feb-2016In scoring his maiden Twenty20 international fifty, Shikhar Dhawan has placed one of the final pieces in the jigsaw of India’s World T20 team. Do not go by India’s score, Ranchi was a tacky surface where the ball did not come on to the bat. Around Dhawan, two other top-order batsmen just about to managed to stay around a run a ball.Dhawan scored 51 at more than two runs a ball. More than that number, though, and more than the fact that he might put to rest some of the concerns about his T20 batting, it was striking how fluently he played through the leg side, scoring 27 runs in seven shots into that region.For long, Dhawan has been a batsman bowlers have tried to tuck up because while he is a master through the off side, he tends to get cramped when looking to put balls away off the pads. Recently, though, he has put this into the past tense a bit. One of the more remarkable aspects of India’s batsmen over the recent years has been that they have kept evolving, not shying from introducing new shots or making technical changes even during a series. Dhawan, too, has slowly added leg-side play to his game over the last year or so.It was most striking in Dhawan’s hundred in Canberra last month. In his century during the chase, Dhawan scored 55 off 27 shots. These numbers do not include the dot balls, which make them a slightly skewed measure, but the fact is he is playing more shots on the leg side. Two of the more notably fruitful shots have been the slog and the sweep. Today, he played the slog for a six off Thisara Perera, and also swept Sachithra Senanayake for a six pretty early into his spell.Dhawan is clearly not the classic on-driver, but he has found a way around it. In ODIs since April 2015, Dhawan has been hitting a boundary per 5.71 shots through the leg side, which is better than 6.3 until then. In T20 cricket, that rate has improved from 4.3 to 3.9.Thisara, who took a hat-trick later in the innings, said the plan was to cramp Dhawan up, but the batsman was equal to it. Not to mention the bowlers did not quite execute the plan well enough. “We tried to cramp him up, but this time he played really well,” Thisara said. “But the thing is our bowlers didn’t bowl well also.”

Dhawan was playing proper shots, but at the same time whenever he got boundaries, if the ball was not there he was not hitting itMS Dhoni

MS Dhoni said Dhawan has been in the form that has been putting pressure on the bowlers, which increases the number of the kind of mistakes Thisara mentioned. “He is playing proper shots,” Dhoni said. “At the same time he is not trying to over-hit. The good thing with him is he is getting a boundary in the first couple of balls in the over so that he doesn’t need to take the risk later. The good thing especially about today’s innings is something he has done brilliantly: if there is an opportunity to hit one more boundary he is playing to his strengths.”At times in the shorter format when you get boundaries you often try to be always in the fifth gear. What is important is to see how many runs are good enough. If you have already got 10 runs in the over, 12 in an over, and if the ball is not there, you don’t really need to manufacture a shot. Everybody has shots that are their good shots, that they can always play. He doesn’t need to manufacture shots. This is what he did really well.”He was playing proper shots, but at the same time whenever he got boundaries, if the ball was not there he was not hitting it. But if it was there, even if it was the fifth or the sixth ball of the over, he was playing whichever his strength is. This is very important in the shorter format, and he has been doing it really well. More often than not as an opener you have to take the risk but once it pays off it is important to go back and play your natural game. At the same time if the ball is there, because there is pressure on the bowler to execute their plans.”The six off Thisara is an illustration of Dhoni’s assessment. It came off the last ball of the second over, when Dhawan need not really have taken the risk, but he saw the ball on the pads and made the statement. Then, in the fourth over, Dhwwan kept going after Kasun Rajitha because he kept getting the balls that could be hit for boundaries without taking too big a risk.His task now is to repeat it against better and more experienced attacks who will not be this easy to put under pressure.

Certain multi-format players have surprisingly underachieved in T20Is. It’s because they haven’t played enough of such matches to develop a rhythm

Tim Wigmore31-Mar-2016Lionel Messi is not merely the greatest footballer of his generation but perhaps the greatest that there has ever been. Balletic when dribbling the ball, he marries agility with a knack for the killer pass and is remorseless when handed a goal-scoring opportunity. And yet, his record for Argentina has been comparatively underwhelming. He scores 0.86 goals a game for Barcelona but only 0.46 a game for Argentina, and has never been victorious in a World Cup or Copa América.When discussing AB de Villiers recently, Harsha Bhogle likened him to Messi. It was only half a compliment. For in T20 cricket, de Villiers’ career is panning out like Messi’s: outstanding in domestic matches but underwhelming on the international stage.”AB de Villiers: wonder of the world” read a sign in the crowd during South Africa’s game with Sri Lanka this week, accompanied by a picture of de Villiers dressed as Superman. So it has often seemed in the IPL, where de Villiers averages 36.70, at a strike rate of 144.73.But de Villiers averages only 23.58, with a strike rate of 131.91, for South Africa: hardly Superman numbers. Little wonder that South Africa have yet to reach the World T20 final in six attempts.Paradoxically for a 32-year-old international captain, inexperience is part of de Villiers’ problem. He has played 71 T20Is, but that only amounts to seven a year. And he has only played in 41 matches outside the World T20: a puny four games a year to try and work out his best role. Whereas the norm for de Villiers in red-ball cricket or the 50-over game is playing for his country – 106 of his 132 first-class games have been Tests and 200 of his 232 List A games have been ODIs – in T20s it is the exception, and almost two-thirds of his matches in the format have been domestic games.After the 2015 IPL, David Warner played two T20 matches in 292 days•IDI/Getty ImagesAfter the last WT20, de Villiers went 15 months until his next T20I, being denied the intensive period of concentrating on T20 cricket and the role within a side he is afforded during the IPL. For batsmen, the lack of T20Is means “cohesion becomes an issue – batting partnerships and running between the wickets, knowing when your batting partner is going to ‘go’,” says Trent Woodhill, batting and fielding coach for Royal Challengers Bangalore.In T20, de Villiers is a victim of his own gifts. “I haven’t really found a rhythm yet in T20 cricket,” he said in 2013, seven years into his T20I career. “I’m still finding my way… exactly where I’m going to bat, whether I’m a finisher, in the middle order or in the top three, maybe.”Is he an opener, a middle-order accumulator or a finisher with only sixes on his mind? De Villiers has spent his entire T20I career oscillating between all three. A decade into his South Africa T20 career, he has never batted more than six matches in the same position. Before the tournament, Faf du Plessis declared: “We decided on AB at the top a while ago, and to change that would be a sign of panic.” Two games after a 29-ball 71 opening against England, de Villiers was shuffled down the order; in his last five games alone, he has opened, and batted at three, four and five.South Africa have given ample thought to trying to maximise de Villiers’ effectiveness. Yet in the process they have failed to ensure he, their outstanding batsman, bats in the top three. After their exit from the 2014 World T20, head coach Russell Domingo justified the tactic of holding de Villiers back – he batted at five in the semi-final defeat to India, and did not come in until the end of the 14th over – because the data showed he was more effective coming in after the tenth over. But the sample size in T20 cricket, especially internationals, is so small that such numbers should be used with care. Where Domingo said de Villiers thrived coming in late in an innings, he was referring to nine innings played over eight years.One case of a player floundering in international T20Is is even more perplexing than that of de Villiers. When he was selected to play South Africa in a T20I in 2009, David Warner became the first man since 1877 to debut for Australia before playing first-class cricket. He is a poster boy for the notion that modern players can emerge in T20 cricket and then thrive in Tests too.There has just been one snag: as his Test form has soared, so Warner’s returns in T20I cricket have plummeted. A lack of matches is at the heart of his problem: while excelling in 50-over cricket and Tests, Warner played just six T20Is between the 2014 and 2016 WT20 tournaments, and only had three games to get accustomed to his new role in the middle order. Thirty-eight runs in four innings in India were the result.Grant Elliott has no IPL contract, but he has been very effective for New Zealand with his all-round skills•Getty Images/ICCMulti-format players like de Villiers and Warner also arrived at the WT20 less fresh, the result of years of touring in all forms; while many T20 specialists are on the road nearly as long, Tests are far more draining. And de Villiers and Warner also practise far less in T20: after last year’s IPL, Warner played two T20 matches in 292 days. Returning to T20, he has felt like a rugby union star out of sync with the demands of rugby sevens. His predicament risks becoming a common fate until countries block off several months before the World T20 to focus exclusively on the format.While de Villiers and Warner departed in the Super 10s, the World T20 has been a triumph for the anti-Messis. These are cricket’s equivalent of David Healy, who scored just four goals in 44 Premier League appearances but, with the side designed around him, was a man transformed for Northern Ireland, scoring a national record 36 international goals, including a hat trick over Spain and the winner against England.In keeping with the country’s tradition of rising to more than the sum of their parts in world events, several Healy impersonators have emerged from New Zealand. None have been better than Grant Elliott, who has defied a lack of T20 pedigree; he has never been bought by an IPL side. While other players have suffered from a lack of clarity about their roles, Elliott finishes innings with a combination of canny placing, hard running and selective hitting. With the ball he has found the slow pitches in India well suited to his undemonstrative wicket-to-wicket bowling, normally coming in at the end and just after the Powerplay. Elliott has been adept at honing these roles not merely because of his experience and skill but because of the experience afforded by being a white-ball specialist for two years.The same is true of Ashish Nehra, who has not used a red ball in international cricket since the start of 2014. Recalled after five years away from international cricket, Nehra has thrived with swing, accuracy and cutters. He has been allowed to replicate his IPL role, typically bowling three overs during the Powerplay and has settled seamlessly back into the side during India’s intensive lead-in to the WT20: they played ten T20Is in six weeks before the tournament, preparation far exceeding that of Australia and South Africa.Yet it is West Indies who provide the greatest example of a cricketing David Healy. Eighteen overs are the sum of Samuel Badree’s IPL experience, and it has been seven years since his last first-class match.Badree is not a huge turner of the ball, but it has proved no barrier to T20I effectiveness: his 26 games have brought 37 wickets at under 15 apiece, conceding less than a run a ball. He delivers legspin with accuracy, pace and bounce, equally comfortable against left- and right-handers alike. Even his lack of spin is arguably an advantage in T20, rendering it harder for batsmen to open up angles.When Badree arrived in India, he had not played for West Indies since 2014. Yet he returned to find his role opening the attack, normally bowling out within ten overs of the innings, unchanged: he has opened in all four West Indies matches at the World T20 so far, and in all 26 T20Is of his career.At 35, Badree would seem an unlikely trendsetter. But he points to a future in which, unless countries embrace the need to adequately prepare their dwindling band of three-format players for T20 tournaments, international T20 success could become largely the preserve of short-format specialists.

The Women’s World T20 has been far from ideal but the semi-finals provide a chance to put on a much-needed spectacle

Andrew Miller in Delhi29-Mar-2016As an opportunity to showcase all that is best about women’s international cricket, the World T20 in India has been an uncomfortable anticlimax. The itineraries have been stretched, the pitches have been poor, and though the tussle to reach the knockout stages was a lively affair, with India and South Africa both falling short of their own expectations, the dearth of outright quality has been hard for any team to deny.But the sharp end of the tournament is now upon us, and as has been customary since the inaugural Women’s World T20 in 2009, the double-header format means that the focus can finally fall on the hardy itinerants of England, Australia, New Zealand and West Indies, whose travels (and travails) have had them criss-crossing the country from Bangalore and Dharmasala to Chennai and Nagpur, but with none of the fanfare and entourage that the men’s event has generated.They’ve been out of sight and out of mind in too many cases, and in New Zealand’s case, out of luck with their internal flights as well – a 12-hour journey from Chandigarh to Nagpur required two aeroplanes and three stop-overs before they finally arrived to beat Australia in one of the key match-ups of the opening rounds.But as Charlotte Edwards and Meg Lanning faced the media in Delhi, the sense of occasion was, at long last, unmissable. The game’s two oldest rivals are set to battle for a solitary slot in Sunday’s final in Kolkata, and there’s far more at stake than simple bragging rights.For England, an ageing team led by a legend in her own lifetime, there’s a palpable sense of change in the air. Mark Robinson, newly installed as head coach after making his mark in a decade at Sussex, has brought with him new ideas and new impetus, but for the time being, no new blood.Since the 2014 World T20 in Bangladesh, in which England lost to Australia for the second final in a row, England have played 16 further 20-over matches and handed out not a single new cap. Moreover, with no global trophies in the ECB’s locker since the heady days of 2009, there’s a creeping sense that a golden generation must front up now or face the call for change.”The depth is there, but your best players are your best players,” said Edwards, who is now fast approaching her 20th anniversary as an international player. And seeing as she goes into the semi-final with a tournament-leading tally of 171 runs at 57.00 in her four games to date, it was a point she was able to make from a position of some authority.Besides, she was adamant that Robinson’s impact was already being felt by her squad. “He’s come in and he’s got his own take on women’s cricket,” she said. “He wants us to be more aggressive, he has asked for more from me at the top of the order and has put me in with Tammy Beaumont, who has been brilliant.Charlotte Edwards is currently the joint-leading run-scorer in the tournament•International Cricket Council”He’s very relaxed, but wants us very focused in terms of training. It’s a really good environment, we have grown as a team in every single game, and the two coaches with him, Ali Maiden and Ian Salisbury, have been brilliant. They are quite a calming influence around the group, they’ve taken pressure off me and that’s certainly shown in my cricket.”But that does not deflect from the need for England, in particular, but also the women’s game as a whole, to put on a performance to savour tomorrow. Edwards was content to concede that Australia are favourites, but she won’t be content with the current state of their rivalry. The Aussies hold every trophy for which the two sides are capable of competing – the World Cup, the World T20 and the Ashes to boot, surrendered rather meekly last summer after a heady defence Down Under in 2013-14.”We are not putting too much pressure on ourselves,” said Edwards. “One learning of the summer was dealing with expectation, which we didn’t do very well. But Australia are favourites for tomorrow and we’ve taken a bit of pressure off ourselves. That will help us going into the game.”Lanning, Australia’s captain and star batsman, wasn’t quite so convinced of England’s underdog status, however, pointing to the fact that they finished top of their group – albeit after a couple of serious scares along the way.”I’m not sure we’d be favourites,” she said. “England are unbeaten in this tournament and finished on top and we finished second. World Cup games are always very close and tough contests, so it’s going to be no different tomorrow. We usually play in finals, but we’re playing in a semi this time around, but we always look forward to playing against England because of the rivalry there, which has built up over a long time.”One match in particular stands out where their rivalry in T20 cricket is concerned – England’s astonishing run-chase at The Oval in the corresponding semi-final of 2009. It was a match of utmost quality, played in front of a steadily growing crowd and an increasingly absorbed media who had initially been gathering ahead of that evening’s showdown between West Indies and Sri Lanka, and by the time Claire Taylor and Beth Morgan had sealed their pursuit of 164 in the final over of the game, the cause of women’s cricket had gained a whole new bandwagon of supporters.”It has quite a similar feel to 2009,” said Edwards, who made 25 from 23 balls in that match. “We didn’t play that well through the group stages and got Australia in the semis, which wasn’t predicted at the start of the tournament. But we hope for a similar result, and to put on a good spectacle for the game, because so far this tournament the wickets haven’t been particularly great and conducive to proper strokeplay for women’s cricket.”It is a valid and vital point that can be overlooked when trying to judge the women’s game by the same standards as the men. The absence of raw power as a factor in scoring runs and taking wickets means pitches have to offer something for bat and ball. But all too often in the tournament to date, scores of barely a run a ball have been standard, with sluggish surfaces drawing any sting that the contests could have hoped to generate.That’s not to say that such wickets don’t create dramas of their own, and England’s extraordinary malfunction against West Indies at Dharmasala last week was a case in point – at one stage they were cruising on 63 for 1, needing 46 runs from 66 balls. Then, after a collapse of 8 for 43, they were relying on a scrambled leg-bye from the final ball of the game, with only the No.11 Rebecca Grundy keeping Natalie Sciver company.”You want a bit more in the wickets than there was up in Dharmasala,” said Edwards. “You can’t have 18 overs of spin, which happened up there. There’s got to be something for the seamers, that’s what we’d have liked to have seen. The Delhi wicket probably has something in it for bat and ball.”A further subtext to the contest lies in the players’ experiences at the inaugural Women’s Big Bash League in Australia this winter. Many of England’s finest – Edwards included, as well as Sarah Taylor and Katherine Brunt – took part in the franchise league and played alongside tomorrow’s rivals. There were few secrets between the two sides before this winter, but the relationships have got just that little bit more tangled in the interim.”Frenemies we are now,” said Edwards. “It’s been brilliant to go out and play in Australia with a lot of the Australia girls, we’ve gained a lot from that experience. It’s been a long winter but a lot of our girls performed brilliantly out there so they are going in tomorrow very confident, both teams know a lot about each other. It’s all about who plays best tomorrow.”

Legspinner M Ashwin talks about his journey to the IPL and learning from his offspin namesake

Arun Venugopal02-Jun-2016Before this IPL not many may have seen much of M Ashwin, who played all three of his first-class matches so far in 2012. He didn’t get to bowl in his debut game, a rain-hit affair, and took only one wicket from the 67 overs he bowled in the next two. While he remained active on the Chennai league circuit, he didn’t resurface on the Ranji scene till the end of 2015.Given his scant visibility at the domestic level, with only two List A and six T20 games, he had to take the unconventional route to the IPL. Ashwin attended selection trials for Kings XI Punjab, Delhi Daredevils and Royal Challengers Bangalore, but in the end it was Rising Pune Supergiants who picked him up for Rs 4.5 crore (US$668,000 approx) at auction.Unbeknownst to him, his actual audition had probably taken place when he was called to bowl in the Chennai Super Kings nets during the 2015 IPL. Stephen Fleming and MS Dhoni, coach and captain at Super Kings, and later at Supergiants, were impressed with what they then saw of Ashwin, who further boosted his chances by taking ten wickets at less than six an over from six Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 matches in January this year.Having registered figures of 4-0-16-1 in the opening game of the IPL, Ashwin went on to play nine more before he suffered a side strain, which, along with the rise of Adam Zampa, played a part in ruling him out. He finished with seven wickets at 8.45 an over, but he thinks he did better than those numbers suggest.”For a first IPL it was a good learning experience, and I think I did fairly well,” he says. “I didn’t think about the price I was bought for. From a team point of view, though, it would have been good had we qualified for the playoffs.”

“During the Delhi Daredevils game I had a long chat with Imran Tahir, and I asked him how he bowls the flipper and the slider. He is very generous. He doesn’t mind sharing his tricks”

He says the only brief he was given was to take wickets and he tailored his preparation to suit. Since there was no designated phase of play where he would be introduced, he learned to enjoy the dynamism that came with bowling at different stages.”At practice, I was working on my variations and was planning which lines to bowl, which lines to bowl in the slog [overs]. I bowled in the Powerplay in one match, and I also bowled in the 18th over in another game. I felt they used me whenever they needed a wicket.” So much so that he was often brought into the attack ahead of his more famous namesake, R Ashwin.The similarities between them piqued interest, especially among headline-writers and meme-creators looking for wacky puns and trivia. The Ashwins went to the same engineering college, spoke the same language, Tamil, played for the same state, and were now turning out for the same IPL franchise.M Ashwin, however, doesn’t think Dhoni preferred bowling him over the other Ashwin, and calls it a “legspinner-offspinner, horses for courses kind of decision”. He talks of the example of the game against Sunrisers Hyderabad where he bowled only one over as opposed to the offspinner, who bowled four.What M Ashwin cherishes most are his off-field conversations with R Ashwin, who had praised his younger team-mate’s ability to spin the ball appreciably both ways.”This is the first time I had the opportunity to have a lot of conversation with him,” M Ashwin says. “We used to have breakfast together, and we would watch other games together during dinner. I was lucky to have actually watched the game with him, and discuss other teams – why a bowler was successful, what length and line he was bowling. We used to talk cricket like how people would normally discuss stuff over the dinner table.”Having never played in Pune or at the Wankhede or Eden Gardens before the IPL, M Ashwin received valuable input from his senior colleague on how the pitches behaved there, and on the overall dynamics of the grounds. “He would also tell me about the preferred hitting areas of guys like Brendon McCullum and Dwayne Smith.R Ashwin (left, holding mike) gave his younger team-mate tips on the various grounds they bowled in and the players they played against•BCCI”It’s not like we always discuss [plans] for every batsman. I do my own homework. With aggressive batsmen like McCullum or Smith, I generally bowl a wider line so that they don’t reach for the ball. But you can’t go in with fixed ideas. I can’t simply keep bowling wider lines to all batsmen at all times.”Ashwin, however, admits to having made mistakes under pressure on occasion, recalling in particular the game against Kolkata Knight Riders where Yusuf Pathan lined him up for two sixes over long-on in successive overs. In hindsight, he says bowling full to Pathan was an “executional error”.”He is a very strong player, and I knew I shouldn’t bowl there,” he says. “Execution comes with experience, but at this stage you have to absorb that pressure and perform.”Ashwin quickly learnt to insulate himself from the pressure and to instead focus on putting into practice the plans he had drawn up. Suryakumar Yadav’s dismissal in the same game – Ashwin’s favourite moment in the tournament – is a perfect illustration of his preparation and his awareness of his strengths.In the 16th over, after Yadav misread a googly that spat past the inside edge, Ashwin beat the batsman with a legbreak and then bowled another googly to nail him in front. This strategy of sandwiching a legbreak between googlies, Ashwin says, has been one of his key wicket-taking set pieces at the domestic level.”He [Suryakumar] wasn’t able to pick my googly,” he says. “If you see, he missed the googly the first time I bowled it, went for the cut and it almost hit the stumps. Since my googly is good, I think I used it well, and I was fortunate it came out well.”That googly has a fan in South Africa legspinner Imran Tahir, who bowls a mean one himself. Ashwin first met Tahir during the India-South Africa ODI in Chennai last year, where Ashwin was a net bowler, and they continued to swap notes during this year’s IPL.

“At practice, I was working on my variations. I bowled in the Powerplay in one match, and I also bowled in the 18th over in another game. I felt they used me whenever they needed a wicket”

“During the Delhi Daredevils game I had a long chat with Imran Tahir, and I asked him how he bowls the flipper and the slider,” he says. “He is very generous. He doesn’t mind sharing his tricks. During the net session in Chennai he had asked me how I bowled my googly. He gave me feedback this time, saying he tried it and it didn’t work for him.”Ashwin has also benefited from inputs from the likes of Dhoni in the nets. “If I bowled too slow, Dhoni would come and ask me to vary my speeds. He would also tell me which line worked better – outside off or at the stumps.”Of course, everyone told me it was my googly that troubled them the most. But the ideal wicket-taking line would be [the ball spinning away] from the stumps off a good length. Looking back, I feel I should have probably done that a lot more.”

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Ashwin’s arrival on the Tamil Nadu scene in 2012 was greeted with mild excitement, given the side had lacked a legspinner for quite some time. But that first coming didn’t last longer than a month, during which he conceded 176 runs in 48 overs and bowled 14 no-balls in his second game, where Karnataka easily went past Tamil Nadu’s first-innings total of 538.The Ashwin of three years ago was, in his own words, a diffident character prone to nervousness. But he retraced his steps, identified the problem and found a solution. He realised his head was falling away in his action and he wasn’t using his non-bowling arm optimally.He bowled at a single stump for several net sessions and then to a batsman. He mostly worked alone and made mistakes along the way, occasionally seeking advice from coaches at the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association academy. It took him a long time to settle on a stable, rhythmic action. The three years on the periphery became an attritional cycle of spotting mistakes, unlearning the routines that led to them, and learning the right technique.Ashwin speaks matter-of-factly about the inevitable frustrations that crop up during such a phase. “I think every cricketer has to deal with such frustrations,” he says. “Unless you taste success, whatever you do you are bound to be irritated.”It helped to have a supportive wife and father. In 2014, he married Aishwarya after five years of courtship, and he believes marriage has made him a more composed individual. He discussed his practice sessions with her every day to gain perspective on the “incremental improvements” he was making.M Ashwin took seven wickets from ten IPL games this season•BCCI”She is a much more positive person than I am, so I think that has rubbed on to me,” he says.His father, Era Murugan, is a popular novelist and a writer of dialogue for Tamil films. “Although I don’t read my father’s books, I have always been inspired by his ability to work tirelessly. He does not watch cricket, but during this IPL he watched all the games, not just the ones Supergiants played.”Ashwin believes making qualitative changes to his cricket without worrying about the result helped him. “When I say negative mindset, it is more nervousness. At a young age, every cricketer has it. But if you are prepared then you can go to a game with confidence. I just changed the way I think.”Probably I improved my practice ethics, and I think that helped my confidence. I wasn’t consciously trying to be positive. I worked a lot on my bowling, which made me confident in return. More than the number of hours I trained, I improved the quality of my practice and my analysis.”Ashwin, who has an excellent academic record, also thinks his engineering background brought intangible benefits to his bowling. “Even Anil Kumble has said engineering helped him. I don’t know in exactly what way, but subconsciously it maybe has helped me – probably in being analytical.”He says the IPL has provided him a window on the standard of cricket played at the international level. “Bowling in the CSK nets last year was a trial for the IPL. It gave me a lot of confidence,” he says. “[This year] I was able to gauge myself at the international level. Now I have a better idea of where I could go wrong and how I could possibly rectify [those errors].”If I go to the nets and practice, I know the results I can achieve by bowling in a certain manner. The quality of batsmanship in the IPL is much better, so you need to up your level to succeed.”

As a young batsman, he stands out for the way he has adapted to suit the contrasting demands of Tests and T20s

Aakash Chopra18-Aug-2016The IPL is now nine seasons old. Having spent a few seasons in an IPL dressing room, I was soon convinced that T20 was here to stay, and second – a not-so-healthy upshot – that the format would seriously affect the growth of Test openers and spinners in particular. This because no other players are forced to change their basic game to suit the demands of the shortest format as much as Test openers and spinners.A Test opener is a skeptic by nature. He is trained to distrust the ball till it reaches him. Early signs can be misleading; the ball might appear to be traveling in a straight line after the bowler releases it, but it’s wrong for the batsman to assume that it will follow the same path till it reaches him. The new ball could move very late in the air or off the pitch, and so openers are hardwired to view it with suspicion. They are also trained not to commit early to a shot because that can leave them in a tangle. They’re told to wait till the ball gets to them and play close to the body. Reaching out with the hands is a temptation a Test opener must guard against.But in T20 cricket, an opener’s role is to set the tone. Go really hard in the first six overs, which is when scoring is considered to be easiest. If you can’t find the gaps, go aerial. If you can’t go down straight, trust the bounce and go across. Don’t get too close to the ball, as that will block the bat-swing. Stay away from the ball and use the arms and hands to reach out and hit. A spell of 12 balls without a boundary in the first six overs is considered to be pushing the team back. Patience might be a virtue in Tests; it’s a liability in T20.The same is true for the spinners. Flight, dip, guile and deception aren’t the most sought after virtues in the world of T20. Instead, the focus is on keeping the trajectory low and bowling it a little quicker to discourage the batsmen from using their feet. Bounce is revered in Tests, but the lack of it is a boon in T20. We have seen spinners go extremely roundarm (remember Ravindra Jadeja in the IPL?) to prevent the batsman from getting under the bounce.It takes a long time to master the art of bowling long spells to plot and plan dismissals in Test cricket – a tactic that’s alien to T20 bowlers who are used to bowling four overs across two or more spells. You can’t practise crossing the English Channel by spending 30 minutes in the swimming pool everyday. T20 cricket has challenged the fundamentals of spin bowling.

To shelve a shot that’s dear to you in one format and play it in other formats shows discipline and patience

The reason I think middle-order batsmen and fast bowlers haven’t been forced to change their game is because T20 hasn’t demanded they do anything that they weren’t already doing. A middle-order batsman in a Test side, as in a T20 game, is allowed to rotate the strike and play along the ground before accelerating the scoring. He does the same in Tests and ODIs, albeit later in the innings. The only adjustment he is called on to make is to shift gears a little sooner. That’s easier to do than being asked to move from riding a bicycle to driving a sports car, as spinners and opening batsmen are.Similarly, fast bowlers aren’t pressed to do anything radically different either. Make the new ball swing, change lengths and pace regularly, and find the blockhole on demand. It’s challenging for sure but not a skill-altering demand.After weighing in these factors, it is only fair to assume that the next generation of spinners and openers for the longer format might take a lot longer to come to the fore, or worse, not do so at all. After all, why would somebody invest in the skill set required to play the longest format given the huge rewards on offer in the shortest format? Unless you just can’t cut it in T20, leaving you with no choice whatsoever.While the likes of David Warner and R Ashwin excel equally in both formats, it’s worth noting that both honed their skills as youngsters when playing the longer format was still the way up. Also, both are aberrations and not the norm. Increasingly, Test teams are forced to pick specialists in these two departments.KL Rahul comes across as the first to challenge my hypothesis, and perhaps he provides an insight into how cricketers of the future will be.Things that look improbable now, both physically and mentally, could become reality in the near future. And Rahul’s early success across formats offers proof. He was only 16 when the IPL started, in 2008, and his first-class debut came two years later, which makes him a wonderful case study.Never satisfied with just a fifty: Rahul has set an example with his conversion rate in Tests•AFPRahul is happy leaving the ball that is only a few inches outside the off stump in Tests, and equally adept at flaying anything wide. He puts in a long stride to get close to the ball and then lean into drives in the longer format, but in T20 he doesn’t mind staying away from a ball pitched on the same length, the better to allow his hands to go through. Like a true Test opener, he is skeptical at the beginning of a Test innings, but he doesn’t mind going down on one knee to scoop the first ball he faces in the shortest format.He got out pulling from outside off in his debut Test match and since then he hasn’t played that stroke early in his innings. By his own admission, he really enjoys playing the pull and hook to anything that is short. To shelve a shot that’s dear to you in one format and play it in other formats shows discipline and patience. That’s a virtue the new-age opener wasn’t mastering, or so I thought.Most importantly, a fifty or an eighty isn’t enough for Rahul. In fact, save for one occasion, he has scored a century every time he has passed 50 in Tests. He has shown that if you train the mind as much as you train the body, it’s indeed possible to find a game that’s suited to Test cricket without compromising on success in other formats.Over on the bowling side, we are still struggling to find spinners for the longer format. I won’t be surprised if some boards decide to keep young spinners away from T20 cricket till a certain age, for it is widely accepted that the shortest format is affecting the development of young spinners.Perhaps I’m taking Rahul’s initial success too seriously. After all, he could be just like Warner, an aberration. But his style of play is reassuring and has given me hope. Maybe he’s the first of the new breed of Test openers. Amen to that thought.

ESPNcricinfo staff24-Sep-2016Kane Williamson was undone by one that ripped back in sharply from R Ashwin. New Zealand had slumped from 159 for 1 to 170 for 4•BCCIAshwin and Jadeja led India’s fightback, splitting the four wickets to fall in the first session•Associated PressLuke Ronchi and Mitchell Santner made 38 and 32 respectively to help reduce New Zealand’s deficit•BCCIBut Jadeja picked up three wickets in an over after the lunch break to dismantle New Zealand’s lower order, helping India earn a 56-run lead•BCCIBCCIKL Rahul struck eight fours, including a few delicate reverse sweeps, in his 38 before falling to an attempted cut that was brilliantly pouched by Ross Taylor at slip•BCCICheteshwar Pujara continued from where he left off, defying New Zealand’s spinners with swift footwork•BCCIVijay, who showed restraint against the pacers, opened up to play some delightful strokes and bring up his second half-century of the Test•BCCIAs the partnership flourished, New Zealand went on the defensive in an attempt to limit the damage as India ended the day 215 ahead with nine wickets in hand•BCCI