Life has taken a turn for the better for the 18-year-old fast bowler from Bangladesh in the last two months

Firdose Moonda14-Feb-2023When Marufa Akter was ploughing a field on the farm her father works on during the Covid-19 pandemic, she would not have dreamed that two-and-a-half years later she’d be playing at two World Cups, 10,000 kilometres away.The last month has been surreal for the 18-year-old, who finished as Bangladesh’s leading wicket-taker at the Under-19 World Cup, including taking 2 for 29 in their statement win over Australia, and then started the senior tournament with 3 for 23 to announce herself against Sri Lanka. Marufa had been capped five times in white-ball cricket before Bangladesh’s T20 World Cup opener but this was a second introduction, and a bigger one.Related

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She was called on in the fourth over, with Sri Lanka 17 without loss chasing 127, and asked to bowl to one of the most aggressive batters in the tournament – Chamari Athapaththu. Asked if she was nervous, a confident Marufa needed only one word to answer: “No.”And she needn’t have been. One look at her says she’s a fast bowler worth showing respect to. She’s all arms and legs when she runs in: swinging forearms, high elbows, straight back and heels kicking up high. If you’re looking at her side-on, you may only see a blur because that’s how quickly she runs in. She has a smooth action and though she will need to develop some pace as she matures, she has already sussed out lines and lengths. Tempting as it may have been to bowl short on a South African strip, she didn’t go there and instead stuck to her disciplines bowling a stump-to-stump line and largely good length.Marufa Akter is elated after cleaning up Anushka Sanjeewani first ball•Getty ImagesHer third delivery was full on the stumps. Athapaththu tried to drive her over mid-on but miscued and the ball carried to Lata Mondal for a simple catch. In her next over, a similar length delivery induced a drive from Sri Lanka’s Under-19 captain Vishmi Gunaratne, who gave Marufa a simple return catch at waist height. And then came the magic ball. Marufa’s next delivery seamed in from fourth stump and snuck below Anushka Sanjeewani’s bat and took out offstump.Marufa shrieked in celebration not least because she put Bangladesh in the perfect position to break a six-match losing streak against Sri Lanka. They didn’t, but Marufa made her mark and the match ended with many questions about where Bangladesh had unearthed such talent from.With captain Nigar Sultana translating, Marufa said her father was initially hesitant about her pursuing a career in cricket. “First of all, my family was not very supportive because my father is a farmer so he actually wanted me to get a normal job. But day by day when I started doing well, my family actually started supporting me very much.”Marufa Akter was Bangladesh’s leading wicket-taker at the Under-19 T20 Women’s World Cup•Getty ImagesIn the end, it was her older brother who encouraged her to keep at cricket. Inspired by Hardik Pandya, who she calls her favourite player, Marufa went on to attend the country’s biggest sports institution: Bangladesh Krira Shikkha Protishtan (BKSP) where she learnt some of the skills she showed off on the world’s biggest stage. “I worked very hard during those days. I didn’t think I was a good bowler but my coach, Madam Fatima and Mr Pilu taught me. I want to thank them for giving me, coming from a rural area, the opportunity to play for the national side.”In the depths of lockdown, when she had handed over her first earnings from cricket – from the Cox’s Bazaar training camp – of US$ 412, she would never have imagined that a few years later she would be talked about as someone who should be in the auction for one of the most lucrative leagues – the Women’s Premier League (WPL). Marufa did not put her name up and no Bangladesh player was picked up but, as the team takes on the world’s best, Australia, they’ll have first-hand evidence that they can dare to dream.

“She bowls very nicely. She was certainly someone that we’ve spoken about today, and I’m sure the batters will have a bit of a look at and think about their plans for her.”Australia coach Shelley Nitschke on Marufa Akter

In total, 14 Australian players landed deals, including the joint-biggest one for a foreign player. Ashleigh Gardner sold for approximately INR 3.4 crore (US$390,000 approx), alongside Nat Sciver-Brunt. Those amounts may sound other-worldly for someone from Marufa’s background but she has managed to impress other teams.”I saw her bowling. She bowls very nicely,” Australia’s head coach Shelley Nitschke said on Marufa. “She was certainly someone that we’ve spoken about today, and I’m sure the batters will have a bit of a look at and think about their plans for her. She was fantastic last night, so we certainly need to be on the lookout for her when she gets the ball in hand.”If you’d told Marufa who could not even go to the practice because her family could not afford to send her there as the pandemic raged on that she would soon earn the praise of the coach of the top team in the world, she may not have believed you. Now, she’s getting the experience many cricketers can only dream of, at back-to-back World Cups against the best batters in the world. It’s still early days in the T20 World Cup, but if we had to pick the player with the most promise so far, it would be difficult to look past Marufa.

No one scored a fifty, but a succession of high-voltage cameos led Kings past 200 for the third game in a row

Srinidhi Ramanujam30-Apr-20231:48

Moody: Jitesh a rare batter who can go out there from ball one

On Sunday, Punjab Kings breached the 200 mark for the third match in a row. It’s a rare feat: only one IPL team has done it before them, and it’s instructive that that team, Kolkata Knight Riders, also did it this season. Teams this year have scored big totals more frequently than ever before; with almost a month of the tournament remaining, IPL 2023 has already broken the record for most 200-plus totals in a season.The introduction of the Impact Player rule has had a lot to do with this. Every team bats deeper as a result of it, and it’s allowed every team to bat with a greater degree of freedom.But it’s Kings, perhaps, who have embraced this spirit of adventure more than any other team, and their victory on Sunday exemplified it.Related

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Up against Chennai Super Kings at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, they were set a target of 201, and how they got there told a tale. None of Kings’ batters got to fifty; instead their chase comprised several quick cameos that culminated in a last-ball storming of CSK’s fortress. It was the first time an opposition had chased down 200 or more against CSK at Chepauk, and it was the third-biggest chase at the venue overall.Kings’ batters buzzed with intent from start to finish. The chase wasn’t always fluent, but every now and then a big over would come by, keeping them in touch with their asking rate.There were contributions all the way down the order: Shikhar Dhawan, Prabhsimran Singh, Liam Livingstone, Sam Curran and Jitesh Sharma all scored between 21 and 42, with four of them striking at 160 or above and the other, Curran, at 145. When Jitesh fell in the penultimate over, Kings needed 15 off eight balls, and Sikandar Raza steered them home in a pulsating finish.Prabhsimran and Jitesh, in particular, exemplify this Kings side, and their innings here continued the good work they’ve done throughout the season. Prabhsimran has 210 runs this season at a strike rate of 153.28, and Jitesh 190 at 162.39. Both average in the 20s, but it’s a trade-off teams will be prepared to make if they have enough batting depth.Liam Livingstone’s urgency is a natural fit in Punjab Kings’ line-up•Associated PressJitesh was off the blocks straightaway, launching Ravindra Jadeja for a massive, second-ball six, and it’s something he does often, finding the boundary as soon as he arrives at the crease.”He [Jitesh] is such an impact player,” Tom Moody, the former Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach, said on ESPNcricinfo’s . “He is one of those rare players that seems to go from ball one and get after the bowling. Not many players can do that, they need a handful of balls, say two or three at least to feel the rhythm of the game. He is the player that has the rhythm before he goes out there. A great innings from him, a significant contribution around the success of that victory.”Dhawan is the only Kings player with more than 250 runs this season, but they have five batters who currently average in the 20s while striking at 140 or more.It’s a clear indication of how they approach innings, and it reflects in the fact that they have the joint-second-fewest 50-plus scores of any team this season (7), while putting up the joint-most 190-plus totals (5). And they’ve achieved all this without Jonny Bairstow.Sunday’s victory was a distillation of all that. It was only the second time in all T20s that a team had chased down 200 or more with fewer than five wickets in hand without any of their batters scoring a fifty.Intent right through the innings, and a reliance on a succession of small, impactful innings rather than big scores from one or two players. While there might be a element of Kings wanting to play this way, it’s also true that they might be forced to play this way, given that they have one of the weaker bowling attacks in the IPL. They may have scored three successive 200-plus totals, but they also happened to concede 200-plus totals in each of those games, with Lucknow Super Giants scoring an astonishing 257 earlier in the week.Kings’ bowling weaknesses, in short, force them to aim for well above par when they bat first, and to gun down big targets more often when they chase.Through a combination of design and circumstance, therefore, they’ve constructed a batting unit built around collective intent rather than individual brilliance, and it’s working fairly well for now. In tangible terms, it has brought Kings five wins from nine games, and it’s kept them very much in the running in the playoffs race.

Poor use of resources and not utilising Impact Player rule to best effect eventually cost them a playoff spot

Sidharth Monga22-May-20233:13

Moody: Rajasthan Royals were hurt by the batting form of Buttler, Samson and Hetmyer

Right from the time Shane Warne put together his motley crew in the inaugural season, Rajasthan Royals are a T20 hipster’s team. They don’t play to a formula. They experiment. They push the boundaries. They invest in lesser-known players. Like other teams from the north, they don’t have a parochial fan base, but they do appeal to a neutral observer.In this run itself, Royals have used R Ashwin in a way that helped rejuvenate his T20 career, they have used a pinch anchor, then retired him when his job was done, they have played a part in the beautiful development of Yashasvi Jaiswal by gradually expecting more from him, and they have nominated a captain who talks about T20 as a different sport to the rest of cricket.There is so much to like about Royals, but they are no longer a hipster team now. Two years ago they had Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer, among the best that money can buy. Their bowling attack now has three IPL champions. They have a whole analytics wing that helped them develop metrics for players to go after in the auction. They don’t fly under the radar anymore; more is expected from them.Related

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Hours after their hopes of making it to the playoffs had ended with Mumbai Indians’ win in the penultimate match of the league stage, the Royals leadership would have experienced the cruelty of it all. Royal Challengers Bangalore lost their match in 19.1 overs, thus tipping their net run rate just below Royals’. You wonder how much some of the questionable tactics are hurting the Royals personnel now that they have ended the season in the fifth position, just one win short of qualification for playoffs.In the decisions that are made before the start of the match, which probably include the coaching staff and the analytics team, Royals were the only team that didn’t make proper use of the Impact Player.In 13 matches that they used the Impact Player, the substituted player and the substitute put together created a total impact of 99.4 according to ESPNcricinfo Smart Stats, easily the worst among all teams. The next lowest was 128.2. It gets way worse for matches they batted first in. In seven matches, the Impact Player created a total impact of 6.9, the next worst being 61.6.It should come as no surprise. In most matches, Royals’ XI was the same for batting first and fielding first: six batters, five bowlers. It defeated the whole purpose of the Impact Player: extra depth in each innings.This was the year Royals’ long-term investment in Yashasvi Jaiswal blossomed•Associated PressThanks to the quality of their attack – which also was hampered by the non-availability of Trent Boult for a few games – they didn’t feel the pinch that much when they bowled first because they would end up with seven batters in the chase.That is probably why they chose to chase in their sixth and seventh matches – against Lucknow Super Giants and Royal Challengers, respectively – when the ideal choice, especially in a day match in Bengaluru, was to bat first. In both these matches, they failed to use Jason Holder’s batting at all, sending him behind Ashwin, who has improved a lot and has been used superbly as a disruptor by Royals but is still less of a limited-overs allrounder than Holder.In the failed chase in Bengaluru, they sent in debutant Abdul Basith, who had played 73 balls in all T20 cricket, ahead of Holder.Trying to fit into the middle-overs enforcer role that the injured Prasidh Krishna used to play, Holder didn’t quite deliver what he and his team would would have expected. Not using Holder the batter, and not getting the best out of Holder the bowler, Royals just wasted an overseas slot, which could have been used to build the trio of world-beating spinners with Adam Zampa joining Yuzvendra Chahal and Ashwin.Trent Boult picked seven first-over wickets in IPL 2023•Associated PressIt didn’t help that Kuldeep Sen, who made a superb start to his season and could have been the third fast bowler, injured himself during his first match, in Chennai.Scarred twice when chasing, Royals now began to choose batting in every game instead of asking more of the batters in the chase, even in a night match at Wankhede. That promising start to the season – four wins in their first five matches – was now whittling away, and it all came to a head against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Jaipur.This was a perfect storm of pre-game and in-game calls that kept going wrong. On a pitch that they felt they needed three spinners, Royals couldn’t play Zampa because they also wanted to reinforce the batting with Joe Root. Then they picked Obed McCoy, who hadn’t bowled at all since the T20 World Cup in Australia last year, as the Impact Player but proceeded to bowl legspin in the 14th over. M Ashwin, who had already gone for 23 in his two overs, went for 19 more.Chahal dragged the game back for Royals, but they didn’t bowl their best bowler in the 19th, instead giving Kuldip Yadav that over and keeping Sandeep Sharma for the last. In the end, it came down to a no-ball from Sandeep on the last ball, but it needn’t have.This is not to say that Samson or the team management didn’t have the team’s best interests in mind, but they made too many tactical errors to be able to maximise their potential. It will hurt all the more that this was the year in which their long-term investment in Jaiswal blossomed, they found a solution for the Riyan Parag problem in Dhruv Jurel, the two spinners bowled well while their home venue provided them pitches conducive for them, and Boult kept giving them first-over wickets.The quality of the individuals in the side still brought them to the brink of qualification, but they just made one mistake too many.

Fitness, preparation and wickets in abundance as death-overs specialist finds peak form

Vithushan Ehantharajah25-Aug-2023Half an hour after ticking off a must-win game with Southern Brave against Manchester Originals to reach Saturday’s men’s Hundred Eliminator at The Oval against the same opponents, Tymal Mills reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. “I’ve got a little cheat sheet,” he says with a smile.On the sheet are three columns. The first contains a list of all Originals’ batters in order. The second, headed “SCOOP” is followed by ticks and crosses. The third – “PACE”- has “ON” and “OFF” alternating all the way down.You don’t need to know of this “cheat sheet” to appreciate how diligently Mills prepares for every match (his handwriting, by the way, is immaculate). Doing your homework is part of the job for fast bowlers like Mills who operate primarily at the death. But carrying notes onto the field is a recent development for a cricketer eight shy of 200 T20 appearances.”I started doing it in the Blast this year [playing for Sussex Sharks] because there were more guys playing that I don’t know,” he explains. “There were a few times batters would come out towards the back end and I didn’t really know them. So I’d be shouting to our analyst or those on the bench: ‘Does he ramp or not?’ That’s all I really want to know – if a guy ramps, do I need fine-leg back, or should I keep him up?”Since then, I’ve adopted it. I know Mark Watt did it during the T20 World Cup last year [for Scotland]. I don’t know what he had written on his, but that’s just for me; whether they scoop and whether pace on or pace off is a better option for that person, just so I am not going into things blind.””Cheating” works, kids. Mills bowled balls 76 to 80 and 91 to 95 against Originals, removing Jamie Overton and Tom Hartley in the latter set to finish with 3 for 27. Their opponents were restricted to 130, which Brave knocked off with five balls to spare. According to CricViz, Mills’ 10 dismissals at the death (categorised as the final 25 deliveries) are the most in the competition, four clear of second-placed Daniel Sams. He takes a wicket every 7.5 balls in that phase, with a dot-ball percentage of 30.6. His 15 wickets overall are the most in the competition.Mills has been in form and at full fitness all competition•ECB via Getty ImagesThose impressive numbers are nothing out of the ordinary for Mills. You only need to look at the last three seasons of the Blast – 30 wickets at an average of 13.50 between overs 16 and 20 – to see this is merely a continuation of his excellence at the business end. Similarly, his deliveries at this stage of an innings – 62.9 percent are slower balls – are nothing new. The surprise is that, although batters now set themselves for change-ups, his are still effective.”I haven’t changed an awful lot,” he says. “I bowl a legcutter more now than I did back then, just to have a third variation as such. The legcutter is a bit quicker than the back-of-the-hand-er, so I’m using that as a bit of a middle ball.”We’ve played on some wickets which have been decent to bowl on. And by that I mean pretty slow. I prefer slower wickets to faster wickets. My pace often travels for runs on quick decks so I don’t mind bowling on tough wickets in terms of used wickets.”Towards the back end, it’s just trying to predict what the batter is going to do as much as I can, and mixing it up between back-of-the-hand slower balls, legcutters and pace-on deliveries. Just trying to outfox the batter and so far it’s been pretty successful.”All being well, Mills should double the eight dismissals he managed when Brave won the inaugural men’s Hundred back in 2021, which followed a winter in which he spent three months in a back brace following a stress fracture. It was a stint that earned him a call-up to England’s 2021 T20 World Cup squad. He played four matches, taking seven wickets, which was the team’s joint-highest, before suffering a thigh strain against Sri Lanka.Mills was disappointed to miss out on the T20Is against New Zealand, but says he ‘gets it’•Francois Nel/Getty ImagesHe missed 2022’s edition of the Hundred but found himself on the other side of the ledger as an injury alternate for 2022’s T20 World Cup. Reece Topley, Mills’ replacement in 2021, suffered an unfortunate ankle injury when he tripped over an advertising cushion during a fielding drill. Mills replaced him in the squad but did not play a game as England triumphed.A stint in the Big Bash League with Perth Scorchers last winter was cancelled in harrowing circumstances when Mills’ two-year-old daughter Delphi suffered a stroke at the airport before the flight to Australia. Thankfully, after 11 days in hospital following the incident, she has made a rapid recovery. Mills has entered this season’s BBL draft and is expected to be listed at the Platinum band (AUD$420,000).He should be in demand given form and fitness. Wednesday’s final Hundred group game was Mills’ 26th short-form match in the space of 90 days. The first 12 came in the Blast (22 wickets at 21.11) then a six-game stint for Bulawayo Braves in the Zimbabwe Afro T10 (six at 20.50) ahead of the Hundred.”I hate saying it out loud, but I’ve been fit all summer,” says Mills. “I played a full Blast campaign, went to Zimbabwe and played the T10 and now here. It’s just nice not worrying about my body, going about my business and having a nice routine.”I don’t believe in the gods and stuff, but I’m reticent to say yes,” he answers, when asked if he is operating at 100 percent. “But I haven’t missed a game through injury all year, which has been great. I struggled with a bit of a freak injury with my big toe, the skin and a bad laceration that kept reopening. I got that sorted and played 12 out of 14 Blast games for Sussex, and the two I didn’t play was just rest and rotation.”Related

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All this makes the timing of England’s T20I series against New Zealand, which begins next Wednesday, and Mills’ omission from the squad frustrating. Ahead of the 50-over World Cup in October, limited-overs coach Matthew Mott and captain Jos Buttler are opting to use those four matches, and four ODIs that follow, as a tuning-up period ahead of India. As such, T20 staples like Mills and Brave team-mate Chris Jordan were not selected.Mills gets it. Conversations with Mott and men’s selector Luke Wright, a former Sussex team-mate, have been upfront and honest. Nevertheless, Mills rues being unable to add to 13 international caps before the summer is out.”It was disappointing because, as I say, I’m bowling well, feeling great and there are England games coming up and I haven’t been selected. You feel like they’ve come at a perfect time and you want to play.”Luke Wright and Motty were clear with CJ (Jordan) and myself. We both had separate conversations and they’re using these T20 games as part of the whole month to prepare for the 50-over World Cup. With CJ and myself not featuring in the 50-over World Cup, they weren’t going to consider us for the T20 games.”It’s still disappointing and frustrating. I want to play for England as much as I can. But they said I’ll come back into consideration for the games in the Caribbean in December.”Mills emphasised that final point – loyalty to the national team – to Mott and Wright. The global franchise circuit may offer greater remunerations, but Mills has eyes for the T20 World Cup next June in the Caribbean and United States.”That was one of the reasons I was a bit disappointed. I understand, if everyone’s fit, I’m not guaranteed to be in that 15. So I want to try and get opportunities to get on there. I want to do what I can to try and be in the mix for World Cup selection next summer.”

He came in to bat earlier than he’s ever done in ODIs, and he turned this challenge and opportunity into a heartwarming maiden hundred

Danyal Rasool31-Aug-20231:44

How Iftikhar Ahmed changed the tempo for Pakistan

Iftikhar Ahmed shouldn’t have been in any position to score an ODI hundred. The jury was – still is, probably – out on his place in Pakistan’s starting XI, and the Asia Cup opener against Nepal was just his 15th ODI. Even if he’s the least cynical person in the world, Iftikhar, who turns 33 this Sunday, may well believe that a search to replace him furtively is always going on in the background.He especially shouldn’t have been in the position he bats in, given the players who come in before him. Fakhar Zaman, Imam-ul-Haq and Babar Azam have been the most reliable top three in the world in this World Cup cycle; roughly two-thirds of Pakistan’s ODI runs have come from their bats. No other top three has contributed more than 55% of their team’s runs since the last ODI World Cup ended.Only once before in his ODI career has Iftikhar faced more than 41 balls, and coming in as he does during the death overs, frustrations about his inability to translate his fearsome T20 power hitting into ODI cricket have lingered.Related

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Pakistan’s top order was expected to grind Nepal’s bowlers into the boiling Multan afternoon dust, but a pair of run-outs and some soft dismissals saw Iftikhar come in during the 28th over – the earliest he has come in to bat since his debut in 2015. And therein he saw a chance he knew he’d rarely have.”The way our top order bats, they usually take matches very deep. It’s been a long time since I came in to bat so early,” Iftikhar said after the game. “Usually, I come in around the 40th or 45th over. But as a professional, you have to be ready for any situation and work on your skills. I know now that I won’t get a chance to construct too many innings. I focus on hard hitting since that’s what I’ll be required to do most.”But training to go deep in his crease, get the front leg out of the way and blast away to long-on is not always the skillset required in the middle overs of an innings that needs reconstructing. With Babar at the other end and worries about fragility lower down, Pakistan needed to navigate their way from 124 to 4 to a stage where Iftikhar’s big-hitting skills would come in handy later on. That meant he needed to do one of the things that has challenged him in this format: hang around.Babar Azam and Iftikhar Ahmed added a mammoth 214 off just 131 balls•AFP/Getty ImagesIt’s something that doesn’t pose any problems for Babar, and Iftikhar found that helped him. With Nepal taking the pace off the ball and the surface not quite as conducive to stroke-making, he needed all the help he could get.”Babar is a world class player, and when he rotates the strike as effectively as he does, he takes all the pressure off you. We were just chatting normally to each other during our partnership and enjoying ourselves,” Iftikhar said.”Early on, the ball was gripping into the surface. In Pakistan, whatever the weather, the ball grips in the first innings, and the bowlers were bowling slow, which gave them even more grip. When I came in, I found the wicket very difficult to adjust to at first. But as I played on, the ball began to find the middle of the bat.”Iftikhar said that in his signature self-effacing manner, not quite doing justice to the onslaught he unleashed upon Nepal. Until the 39th over, he’d managed to get to 36 at just a bit better than a run a ball. But with the innings approaching the phase he actually trains for and finding himself set, Iftikhar found the platform he always craved. He plundered 73 runs from the final 37 balls he faced, manipulating the field one moment with clever placement, and taking it out of the equation altogether with monstrous hitting the next.Iftikhar Ahmed bashed his maiden ODI hundred from only 67 deliveries•AFP/Getty ImagesHe brought his hundred up in the penultimate over, in which he ran Karan KC ragged. Iftikhar’s brute force was on display for the first four and six that took him to 97, before a delicate carve to short third brought up the hundred that age, batting position and sheer circumstance had until then conspired to deprive him of.”As a professional, every player dreams of a hundred. Scoring hundreds at number six is difficult, and that made me really happy. In international cricket, it’s never easy to score a hundred against any team. Nepal weren’t given this spot, they qualified for it. They’ve beaten a lot of teams to get here. They’re a very good team, but we’re in very good form at the moment.”Once more, the stress was on the collective rather than the individual, but Multan wouldn’t be stopped from directing singular love towards this superstar. Chants of “Ifti ” (uncle), an unusual sobriquet for a 32-year-old, began to sound throughout the stadium towards the end of the innings. This, remember, was at a time when Babar, a man whose veneration crosses partisan city divides in Pakistan, was at the other end, batting on 150. A local journalist would later tell Iftikhar he had been happier to see him score a hundred than Babar score one.Iftikhar bashfully smiled, and the chatter eventually moved on to the game against India on Saturday. Cricket might move on soon enough from this contest, but on a day where the heat and humidity were enough to drive anyone slightly mad, it was Ifti-mania Multan went crazy for.

South Africa’s captain hasn’t been in good form this tournament and is recovering from injury – but there’s more to it than just that

Firdose Moonda14-Nov-20233:47

Bavuma: Probably impossible to block out noise at World Cups

Eish.It’s a word used in South Africa to express a variety of emotions from surprise to irritation and sometimes when we don’t know how to respond at all.For example: Hailstones the size of cricket balls fell from the sky yesterday in Johannesburg. Eish, are you serious? Maybe it’s a sign that the men’s team will finally win a World Cup semi-final. Eish, I hope so. But what about Temba Bavuma? Eish. I don’t know.We don’t, and we never will understand the intersectional complications of being the first black African to captain South Africa, the first black African batter to play for South Africa, and now to be experiencing what should be the most special week of his career as one of his most difficult. But we can try.Let’s start with what we know. Bavuma has a hamstring strain, which hampered him in South Africa’s last league match against Afghanistan, but is improving. After taking part in optional training on Monday, Bavuma did more fitness drills during Tuesday night practice, which include high-speed running, one-on-one fielding sessions with one-handed pick up and throws, and a net session. His footwork was a notable feature of his training and he appeared to be making good progress. By Wednesday, he is expected to be declared fit with South Africa’s coach Rob Walter saying that “in an ideal world,” they would not want to have to wait until the morning of the match to confirm Bavuma’s participationRelated

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In any other team (and there are examples at this World Cup, including Kane Williamson’s), if the injury has satisfactorily healed, Bavuma should take his place and lead South Africa in the semi-final against Australia. But this is not any other team. This is South Africa in a semi-final. And this is South Africa with all its history. So it isn’t as straightforward as that.We also know that Bavuma has come under scrutiny for his failure to score big runs at this tournament – 145 at an average of 20 – and with a top score of 35 in a team where every other member of the top five has a century, that’s fair. But there is also an undertone that he is not good enough and that needs to be examined more closely.Before the World Cup, Bavuma was South Africa’s highest run-scorer in ODIs this year and averaged close to 80. He scored a series-winning hundred against England which played a significant part in securing South Africa’s automatic qualification to this tournament and two other centuries in his next five innings. Currently, he has an ODI average of 47.25, which is more than respectable and what he is going through now might be nothing more than a lean run.Temba Bavuma hasn’t scored enough runs this World Cup to silence questions about his place•Associated PressThat’s certainly how the team management are looking at it; they continue to express their confidence that Bavuma’s best will soon be on display. “He hasn’t scored the runs he would have wanted to at the World Cup but every training he looks like he is close and every game he looks like he is close,” Walter said on Tuesday. “A good score is just around the corner for him.”What complicates matters is the presence of Reeza Hendricks in the squad, and the conflation of an old issue, from last year’s T20 World Cup. Bavuma, who was then captain of the T20 side, went into that tournament having just recovered from an elbow injury which kept him out of an England and Ireland tour, where Hendricks reeled off four T20 fifties in a row. Bavuma then made two ducks and a score of 3 in a series in India in the lead-up to the T20 World Cup.Despite all that, because Bavuma was captain, Hendricks was left on the bench at the T20 World Cup and Bavuma opened the batting without much success. He made one double-digit score in the first three games of the tournament and ESPNcricinfo understands he was going to be dropped for South Africa’s remaining games but a last-minute selection vote saw him keep his place in the side. In the end, Hendricks did not get a game.This time there is absolutely no inside talk of benching Bavuma. “Temba hasn’t come into the conversation about being dropped because he is one of our best batters for the entire year,” Walter said.But on the outside, though we are now in a different competition with a different format, the ghosts of Australia 2022 have begun a haunting in India. Bavuma made scores of 8, 35 and 16 before he was struck down with a stomach bug and had to miss South Africa’s matches against England and Bangladesh. Hendricks replaced him in the XI and scored 85. On that evidence, it’s easy to think history is repeating itself but that’s too convenient a conclusion. The reality is more complex. Hendricks followed up that half-century with 12 against Bangladesh and his ODI record is not as good as his T20 one. He averages a shade under 30 in ODIs and had only played three matches this year before the World Cup.So, while we could wonder whether Hendricks should have been given the opportunity to play more (and he will after Quinton de Kock’s retirement), we cannot make a numbers-based argument that Bavuma will play ahead of him for anything other than cricketing reasons. That includes the fact that Bavuma is captain and it should.Bavuma is a skilled leader and his decision-making has earned him praise from many outside observers. He sets attacking fields, makes timely bowling changes, and does not appear to panic when things are tense, either on or off the field. Crucially, he has led South Africa through some difficult and potentially divisive situations, including de Kock’s refusal to take the knee at the 2021 T20 World Cup, and he has always conducted himself with dignity and integrity while backing his team-mates. Bavuma understands the job he does is bigger than sport and that he is a representative and a role-model for South Africans who have not had someone like him to look up to before. And in that, at least, he is not alone.Siya Kolisi captained the Springboks to victory in the Rugby World Cup final last month•AFP/Getty ImagesWhile Bavuma is South Africa’s first black African cricket captain, he is not the first black African to lead a national team in a sport historically dominated by white people. That is the domain of Springbok captain Siya Kolisi, who was appointed in 2018, called a quota-captain and then spat in the face of that term by leading the national rugby side to two World Cups trophies. Kolisi is thus their most successful captain and a standard bearer of black excellence.This year, with the rugby and cricket World Cups being played at the same time, the stories of Kolisi and Bavuma have dovetailed and the parallels between them are too obvious to ignore. Now, they even mirror each other in a particular detail.Kolisi partially ruptured his ACL four months before the Rugby World Cup and for a period of time, his participation in the tournament was in doubt. He made what has been described as a miracle recovery, similar to Keshav Maharaj’s from a ruptured Achilles. Bavuma’s injury is nowhere near as serious, but the burden he carries is arguably much heavier than Kolisi’s.Unlike Kolisi, Bavuma did not begin this campaign with a World Cup title to his name. Unlike Kolisi, Bavuma’s is not a game of substitutes. That’s important because when Kolisi and Bavuma are judged side by side, it’s easy to forget that Kolisi plays a sport where, if things are not going according to plan or he has given all there is to give on a particular day, he can be taken off. And that’s exactly what happened 51 minutes into the semi-final against England. Bavuma does not have the same luxury. But he does have the same, if not greater, expectations of both himself and his team.Succeed, and Temba Bavuma will have the nation at his feet. But fail and it will be his fault before anyone else. Whether he is injured or not. Whether he plays or not. Whether he scores runs or not. Eish.

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Dustin Silgardo17-Nov-2023

Karachi Kings are in a spot of bother and Azam Khan is making his presence felt

Danyal Rasool05-Mar-2024

Sultans supremacy

The Sultans rank third on the overall wins table at the PSL, and if that doesn’t seem remarkable, it should. They started out two full seasons late, and yet just two other teams boast more wins than their 43, with their win-loss ratio of 1.535 comparing very favourably with teams in the other big franchise leagues (IPL, BBL, CPL, SA20, T20 Blast, the Hundred, BPL and LPL). In fact, it’s pushing up to top-10 levels. And it’s because every year, they seem to put together the sort of season they’re having now.Mohammad Rizwan’s captaincy, from his charisma to his tactics, is unmatched across the league. A set-up that blends local with foreign coaches, and more groundbreakingly boasts the only female coaches in the league, would have likely received significantly more scrutiny if results had gone awry. Instead, their on-field performances have been near-flawless, with the league’s two top wicket-takers, a spinner and a fast bowler, hailing from the franchise. Just about every single win has been comfortable, and as the table takes shape, it’s hard to argue they aren’t the best team in the competition.The last four seasons have seen the Sultans finish top or second after the league stages, and they have made three of the last four finals. While history suggests anything can happen in the knockouts, Sultans’ league supremacy remains unrivalled.

Karachi (the Kings, the crowd)

If the Kings lose a game but no one shows up to watch it, did it actually happen? The team is under new management and captaincy, but all they’ve accomplished so far is demonstrate that they are slightly better than a Qalandars side at its worst. Seems like a lot of effort for little reward.The first leg was played in Lahore and Multan, and the Kings might have hoped moving to Karachi would help reinvigorate them but it hasn’t worked out like that. Then again, is it really home advantage if the home crowd doesn’t show up? The relatively sparsely populated stands in ostensibly Pakistan’s most cricket-mad city stood in stark contrast to what Lahore, Rawalpindi and Multan offered.Karachi’s absent crowd is a regular whipping boy for the other franchises, especially the only one below them on the points table. But if you’ve ever been to the National stadium without a media or VIP pass, you’d be surprised that anyone shows up at all.No one quite knows how to get there on matchday, with security protocols maddeningly random, and ticket printing booths far away. And while at Gaddafi stadium, it can almost seem like there’s no bad seat, in Karachi, there’s barely a good one. Chain-link fences obstruct the view for anyone sitting closer to the front, and if you move further back, you can barely make out the players let alone the ball.It’s not the spectators who’ve let that stadium down, but the other way around. And, for now, the Kings haven’t exactly given them a reason to turn up, either.Azam Khan has come back from a quiet start with two blistering knocks•PCB

The Azam Khan culture war

The Azam Khan culture wars take on a fresh dimension every week, and after a feeble start to the PSL, two blistering innings have demonstrated the batter’s value to his side. He isn’t Pakistan’s best keeper, fielder, or runner, and so it can seem as if he has more going against him than for him. But there is perhaps no one in Pakistan cricket who can overpower a bowling attack towards the backend of a T20 innings like the Islamabad United wicketkeeper, making up for lack of agility with fearsome strength and the sweetest timing.Tim David once told ESPNcricinfo he’d consciously worked on becoming a lower-order hitter because everyone wanted to bat in the powerplay in T20 cricket. As Pakistan wrestle with how to fit an expanding pool of top-order players into the top three, Azam continues to press his case at a time of the innings few put their hands up.

The PSL’s unusual spinners

While the national side has suddenly run dry of T20 spinners, the PSL can’t get enough of them. Leggie Usama Mir is now the tournament’s leading wicket-taker, while mystery spinner Abrar Ahmed and Shadab Khan place third and fourth.But Abrar isn’t the only unorthodox spinner in the PSL this season. Peshawar Zalmi’s Arif Yaqoob, who has barely played any first-class cricket, took four wickets in an over to deny United at the death, and has an action so uncanny you can barely keep an eye on his wrist, let alone the ball. Quetta Gladiators’ Usman Tariq, meanwhile, breaks off all his momentum by coming to a near standstill at the moment of release, and then holding the pose like a penalty taker waiting for the goalkeeper to commit.Salman Fayyaz of Qalandars appears to fall away as he sends down his legbreaks, though he did remain upright enough to take a sharp return catch and get rid of Alex Hales. Sultans have tried out Faisal Akram, perhaps best described as a left arm wristspinner with a googly for a stock delivery.Abrar remains a cut above the rest, but the emergence of the others suggests an experimentally permissive culture at the PSL. For spinners, history suggests that can only be a good thing.

Who goes out if Jadeja is fit to return, and will Rahul’s unavailability have any bearing on the selection?

Karthik Krishnaswamy12-Feb-20241:33

Can the Vizag pitch be replicated in other Indian venues?

Kuldeep Yadav or Axar Patel? And is there a case for Kuldeep Yadav Axar Patel? India’s selectors and team management could spend a considerable length of time mulling over these questions in the lead-up to the third Test against England, which begins in Rajkot on Thursday. The issue is complicated by the fact that the selection isn’t a straight shootout between like-for-like players, and will potentially be swayed by the news that KL Rahul has been ruled out. The selection of India’s third spinner, in the end, is likely to hinge on three questions.Will Jadeja be fit to start?Injuries led Ravindra Jadeja and Rahul to miss the second Test in Visakhapatnam. While Rahul has been ruled out of the Rajkot Test, Jadeja’s availability remains subject to clearing a fitness test.If Jadeja is fit to play, he is expected to come back in for either Kuldeep or Axar, with Kuldeep perhaps likelier to keep his place given the wicket-taking threat he brings to India’s attack, particularly when conditions are batting-friendly. He picked up three first-innings wickets in Visakhapatnam, and over the course of the match was also the most economical of India’s spin trio, with his stump-to-stump line and wristspinner’s threat of extra bounce limiting England’s use of the sweep and reverse-sweep. He’s also looked in better rhythm of late than Axar, whose wide release and skiddiness off the surface didn’t quite make the impact India may have desired when they used him in an unbroken 14-over spell in the second innings, when the ball had begun to keep low frequently.Related

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Since the start of 2023, Axar has taken just eight wickets in 11 Test innings at an average of 49.00 and a strike rate marginally below 100. He has averaged 56.71 with the bat in the same period, but India are likely to value Kuldeep’s wicket-taking ability over Axar’s all-round utility if Jadeja returns in Rajkot.If Jadeja doesn’t play, India’s selection is simpler: both Kuldeep and Axar play alongside R Ashwin as they did in Visakhapatam.R Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav in deep conversation•BCCIHow will Rajkot’s pitch play?Rajkot is reputed to be among the most batter-friendly venues in India, with one caveat. By nature, the SCA Stadium is full of runs – Cheteshwar Pujara and Jadeja have each made a triple-century here, and two double-hundreds apiece – but there have been times when the pressure of results has led Saurashtra, the home team, to prepare square turners. As a result, while there have been 20 first-class totals of 500 or more here, there have also been 20 all-out totals of 150 or less.The last two first-class games at the SCA Stadium summed up its yin-and-yang nature: a drawn Ranji Trophy match in January featuring a Pujara double, and a Rest of India win over Saurashtra in the Irani Cup in October, when the third and fourth innings produced totals of 160 and 79.The venue has hosted two Tests so far: a high-scoring India-England draw in 2016 and an innings win for India over West Indies in 2019, when the hosts declared on 649 for 9. Wristspinnners made a significant impact in both Tests, with Adil Rashid picking up seven wickets in the 2016 game and Kuldeep bagging a second-innings five-for against West Indies.The flatter the pitch is, the more India will value Kuldeep’s bowling. A square turner, however, could make them think of picking Axar – either alongside or instead of Kuldeep.If India wish to go all-out aggressive, Axar Patel could slot in as a batting allrounder•BCCIWill Rahul’s absence influence this selection?If Rahul was fit, he would have replaced Shreyas Iyer, whom India have left out of their squad. Now that Rahul isn’t available, though, India could end up with Rajat Patidar, who made his debut in Visakhapatnam, and one of Sarfaraz Khan or Devdutt Padikkal – both of whom are uncapped – at Nos. 4 and 5. While Jadeja, Ashwin and KS Bharat give India a good amount of depth on paper, the lack of experience above them and the concerns surrounding Bharat’s form could lead India to look for ways to slot Axar into their XI.The most defensive way to do this would be to leave Kuldeep out. The all-out aggressive option would be to pick Axar – or Washington Sundar – as a batting allrounder and play him ahead of Sarfaraz or Padikkal, but that wouldn’t exactly address any concerns over depth.A third way would be to play just one fast bowler in Jasprit Bumrah and surround him with four spin options. If reverse-swing comes into the picture as it did in Visakhapatnam, however, and the pitch doesn’t break up a great deal over the first three days, India may want a second quick to share Bumrah’s workload. The composition of their squad suggests India are looking to persist with the two-seamer combination, with Mohammed Siraj back after being rested for the second Test, Mukesh Kumar retained, and Akash Deep called up as an extra option.