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The world Shane Warne entered in 1992 lacked respect and understanding for legspin, and many of the batsmen with whom Trent Copeland has just joined battle regard medium pace almost as dimly

Daniel Brettig in Pallekele07-Sep-2011From the day Shane Warne retired, every Australian spin bowler to follow him was destined to endure comparisons with the incomparable. Nathan Lyon is the man presently encumbered, and Michael Clarke is the latest captain to stress “he’s not Shane Warne” when assessing his spinner’s more moderate skills. A far more reasoned Warne parallel does exist in the Australian attack, however. It is with the medium pace of Trent Copeland. This is not because they share anything whatsoever in method, personality, physical gifts or mentality. Rather it is because Copeland stands to benefit, almost as much as Warne did, from a generation of batsmen not concerned with the subtleties of his skill.A great deal of Warne’s early success in Test cricket was achieved as much by the shock of the new as by the genius of the newbie. Save for Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir, and India’s Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, there had not been an international legspin bowler of sustained quality and success anywhere in the world for more than 30 years. If subcontinental batsmen had not seen much in the way of high class legspin for decades, their counterparts in England, New Zealand and South Africa had seen even less. To watch some of the early attempts by these unfortunates to play the young Warne, his spitting leg breaks and skidding flippers, was to take a mild kind of sadistic pleasure in cruel and unusual punishment.Some years later and Copeland has entered international cricket at a similar juncture for his unfashionable style. Medium pace bowlers have a long and storied history in Test cricket, but the lineage of great ones petered out somewhere around the time that the West Indies were pounding the rest of the world into submission with speed, bounce and plenty of swagger. It is not so much that medium pace disappeared as a skill as that the methods by which they were successful became less prevalent. Covered pitches negated an avenue for cheap wickets, while improved bats and closer boundaries elevated the odds of containment.Yet the onset of the Twenty20 age has offered a window for those bowlers prepared to play on the patience of batsmen no longer conditioned for occupation. It has also afforded a chance for bowlers of lesser velocity to play on the egos of those same batsmen. Where once a maiden was seen as an uneasy truce between batsman and bowler, now it is a conclusive points victory for the latter. The volume of training weighted towards T20 and the clearing of pickets has seeped into the techniques and outlooks of batsmen once considered dour, and those who cannot win contracts in the shortest form of the game are empirically if not technically poorer for it. The will to outlast bowlers like Copeland is likely to be superseded by the desire to collar him.Copeland rose to prominence by stealth, helped by the lack of genuine respect there seemed to be for his skills as he began to cut swathes through Australian domestic batting. His lack of velocity was commented on when he was first chosen for New South Wales, and batsmen and selectors continued to pass the occasional snide comment about his likely speed gun readings even as the bowler himself was splintering Sheffield Shield teams on a regular basis. When he was included in Cricket Australia’s Centre of Excellence intake for 2011, the selector Greg Chappell observed: “There were some in the playing ranks who thought he might struggle to back it up this year.”Back it up he did. By the time Copeland was chosen for the Sri Lanka tour, he had winkled out 87 batsmen in 17 first-class appearances at a price of scarcely 21 runs per wicket. Whatever he has lacked in pace he has compensated for with bounce, swing, seam and the most suffocating accuracy seen by an Australian bowler since his faster seam bowling cousins Glenn McGrath and Stuart Clark finished up. In his first Test Copeland was instantly reliable, blocking up one end while Clarke rotated his pace bowlers and the spin of Lyon from the other.A wicket in Copeland’s first Test over, that of Tillakaratne Dilshan, summed up the risque attitude he can take advantage of against batsmen who presume to lord it over any bowler not firing deliveries down at 140kph. The first ball, eminently respectable, was driven through cover for four. The second, subtly shorter and wider, affording Dilshan less control over his shot, was slapped to the hyper-agile Ricky Ponting at short cover. Though Copeland did not take another wicket for himself in the match, his economy allowed plenty to be taken by his comrades.Through it all Copeland demonstrated something else that will test the wits of unaware international batsmen. For a Test match tyro, his temperament is admirably even. There is a hint of the mature Jason Gillespie about the way Copeland conducts himself, amiable and reliable to friends and team-mates, insatiable and calculating to batsmen and opponents. He appears to possess a deep reservoir of thought and patience. That Copeland owns a clean enough pair of hands to immediately command a place in the Australian slips cordon says plenty for his thoroughness. The last Australian seam and swing merchant to stand there on a regular basis was another medium paceman Copeland may wish to emulate – Terry Alderman.The world Warne entered in 1992 lacked respect and understanding for legspin, and many of the batsmen with whom Copeland has just joined battle regard medium pace almost as dimly. All those perceiving Copeland as a mere trundler of club proportions are thinking precisely what he wants a batsman to think. As he and hubris conspire to plot the downfall of another strokemaker, Copeland will hope that notion sticks around for a some time yet.

Stats highlights from an utterly dominant day for Australia

S Rajesh04-Jan-2012Only once has a pair added more runs in Test cricket after coming in at three down for less than 50•Getty Images

• Clarke’s unbeaten 251 is the fourth-highest by an Australian captain in Test cricket – only Mark Taylor, Bob Simpson and Don Bradman have scored more. It is the second-highest by a captain against India, next only to Graham Gooch’s 333 at Lord’s in 1990.
• In only ten Tests as captain, Clarke has already scored four centuries, and averages more than 54 in these games.
• Clarke’s knock is also the highest Test score by an Australian at the SCG, and the third-highest by any batsman at this ground – only Tip Foster (287) and Brian Lara (277) have scored more. With plenty of time left in the game, Clarke has an excellent opportunity to become the first batsman to score a triple-century in a Test at the SCG. And if he scores seven more, his will be the highest score by an Australian since Matthew Hayden’s 380 against Zimbabwe in 2003.
• The 288-run partnership between Clarke and Ponting is Australia’s fifth-highest for the fourth wicket, and easily their highest for that wicket against India. Their previous best against India had also been achieved by the same pair – 210 in Adelaide in 2008.
• The partnership is the second-highest for the fourth wicket by any team when they’ve been three down for 50 or less. The only higher partnership was achieved in 1934, when Bradman and Bill Ponsford added 388 for the fourth wicket after Australia had been reduced to 39 for 3. This partnership equals the stand between Nasser Hussain and Graham Thorpe against Australia at Edgbaston in 1997, when they added 288 after being 50 for 3.
• For India, it was an entirely forgettable day. Not only did Clarke and Ponting put together the largest fourth-wicket stand that any team has managed against India, it also came when Australia had lost their top three cheaply. Stats clearly indicate that these recoveries happen against India far more often than against other sides. Only 14 times in Test cricket has the fourth-wicket pair added 200-plus runs after being three down for less than 50, and six of those have come against India, three of which have been since December 2008.
• The last Australian to score a Test double-hundred had been Ponting, when he scored 209 in Hobart against Pakistan in January 2010. On that occasion, Clarke had scored 166, and the pair had put together 352 for the fourth wicket after Australia had been 71 for 3. Since that knock, Ponting had gone 33 innings without a century before this innings.
• Ponting’s hundred improves his already stunning record at the SCG: he has scored 1480 Test runs there at 67.27 with six centuries. At no other venue has he scored more runs or hundreds.
• Since the beginning of 2011, this is the sixth time that three Indian bowlers have conceded 100 or more runs in an innings. When Umesh Yadav reaches that mark, India will have four bowlers who’ve conceded 100-plus runs in an innings. Since 2000, that’s happened to them 11 times.

Mandeep Singh’s success is largely due to his ability to play fast bowling. He has outscored his Australian team-mates in Kings XI Punjab and hopes to play for India soon

Tariq Engineer14-May-2012When Paul Valthaty, last season’s surprise IPL success, struggled to replicate his form this year, Kings XI Punjab turned to 20-year-old Mandeep Singh to shore up their top order. It was just the opportunity Mandeep had been waiting for. Despite his youth, Mandeep was a prolific scorer in domestic cricket – he has made 1,074 runs at an average of 63.17 over two seasons and knew his profile would rise if he could make an impact in the IPL. It would potentially catapult him into the conversation for places in the India squad.”[My] Ranji performance has been good the last two years but if you do well in the IPL, hopefully you will get noticed,” Mandeep told ESPNcricinfo. “I want to play for India as soon as I can and for as long as I can.”Mandeep started steadily with a number of 20s and 30s in the IPL but has found another gear recently, making 56, 43 and 75 in three of his last five innings, with Kings XI winning each of those games. He has also quietly worked his way up the IPL’s list of top scorers and is currently in 10th place, ahead of his more illustrious Australian team-mates, David Hussey and Shaun Marsh.His performances have already made an impression. Following his 48-ball 75 against Deccan Chargers last Tuesday, Hussey, who has been standing in as captain in the absence of the injured Adam Gilchrist, called Mandeep “a very special player” and someone who could do well for India in all three forms of the game. Mandeep’s great strength, Hussey said, is his ability to hit good balls to the boundary with ease.Mandeep puts his success down to his ability to play fast bowling well. “However fast someone bowls, it doesn’t make much difference to me,” he said. “I got the chance to open because the team knows I play fast bowling well. Still, the main thing is that I play freely and don’t worry about any tension that I need to play fast or do certain things. However well I can use the first six overs, I should use them.”This ability to play fast bowling is not something Mandeep takes for granted. It has been honed through many hours of practice. He sets the bowling machine to speeds of 85 to 90 mph and practices with a tennis ball to learn how to combat swing. He has also been taking throwdowns from Gilchrist using a rubber ball. “Gilly throws them hard from 15 to 16 yards and that is very effective,” Mandeep said.One of the benefits of the IPL for young domestic players from India is the exposure to international players and Mandeep is no exception. Hussey and Gilchrist have been teaching him how to approach his batting while Azhar Mahmood has been another valuable resource. “This is a big deal for young players that you can sit with these guys and learn from them,” Mandeep said.Having to take guard against some of the best opening bowlers in the world, like Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, has been another cherished learning experience. “You get an idea about what is needed at the highest level,” Mandeep said. “You are not blank. The Ranji Trophy is a high level but if you play IPL, you get to play the best bowlers from around the world and you get an idea of what it takes to play international cricket.”This season, Mandeep is enjoying his chance to shine, but there was a time when his cricketing future hung in the balance. A diehard fan of Sachin Tendulkar since he was a young boy, Mandeep used to watch Tendulkar and try and imitate the way he played. At the age of 11, he joined the Jalandhar Cricket Academy to chase his dream of playing cricket professionally, but his father, an athletics coach, did not greet his son’s decision with much enthusiasm. He felt his son had made a risky choice and would rather he become a doctor instead, like his elder brother. But Mandeep had the talent and the dedication and was quickly amongst the runs, setting his father’s mind at rest. “Once I started to do well, he supported me a lot.”Mandeep eventually found himself touring Australia as part of the Under-19 team in 2009 and marked himself as one for the future when he cracked a match-winning 151 in the second one-dayer at the Bellerive Oval . He was then named the vice-captain for the U-19 World Cup held in New Zealand in 2010 and made his first-class debut for Punjab in November later that year, making an unbeaten 53 batting at No. 7, the top score of the innings. Along with Abhimanyu Mithun and fellow U-19 team-mate Harpreet Singh, Mandeep was awarded the Border-Gavaskar scholarship for 2010 and spent two-weeks training at Cricket Australia’s Centre of Excellence in Brisbane.While his performances for Kings XI this year have not come with the same pyrotechnics as a Chris Gayle or Virender Sehwag, Mandeep has been crucial in keeping his team in the playoff picture. If he continues to perform in the same vein, his dream of playing India may not be all that far off.

Somehow, the pulsating, tenacious Pakistan side which had won three successive World Twenty20 games failed to turn up

Abhishek Purohit in Colombo01-Oct-2012Even during the previous act, the stage had been set for the main show. Pakistan and India flags, the former more numerous, had begun to be waved in the Premadasa stands by the innings break of the Australia-South Africa game. The anticipation of the fans rose further with every Shane Watson boundary.Minutes before the start, gave way to wild cheering. gave way to wilder cheering. It was clear which team had more support at the ground. Yet, somehow, the pulsating, tenacious Pakistan side which had won three successive World Twenty20 games failed to turn up. In its place, the Premadasa witnessed a stop-start, dull group that retreated further after every forward step it took.Nothing captured Pakistan’s state of mind better than Mohammad Hafeez’s 28-ball 15, a hesitant, even clueless, stay that sucked all life out of what had been a stirring start. Pakistan were 26 for 1 after two overs. It was nearly impossible to think at that stage that they would add barely a 100 more runs. But Hafeez kept defending and defending without intent for no conceivable reason.The nature of T20 demands that the scoreboard keeps running, but more than that, and probably more than most other sides, Pakistan are the kind of team who feed off run-making momentum. They also tend to panic that much more when the runs are squeezed out. Even as Hafeez kept blocking, Shahid Afridi, Nasir Jamshed and Kamran Akmal fell in trying to force the innings along.The move to send Afridi at No. 3 might itself be debated, but it was a gamble the team management took, knowing well that it could have lasted just one ball. His fall might even be attributed to himself, but even during Afridi’s short stay, Hafeez played five dots and managed two singles.Hafeez comes across as a well-meaning man and is probably the best one to lead Pakistan across all formats once Misbah-ul-Haq eventually goes. He has the air of someone who wants to be in control of his team and also wants to give the impression that he is in control. Probably because he never quite got the backing of the selectors and the team management for much of his career, he supports his players, and also wants to give the impression that he is doing so. Throughout the tournament, he has staunchly defended everyone whose place has remotely been questioned, be it Afridi, Umar Gul or Shoaib Malik.With a Twenty20 international strike-rate of 109.75, though, it is Hafeez’s position as opener that should come under question. Pakistan have four openers in their squad for the tournament, and purely on the ability to make an impact, Nasir Jamshed or Kamran Akmal deserves to partner Imran Nazir, with Hafeez dropping down the order.It is not that Hafeez has not made runs in the tournament. He has a couple of forties against New Zealand and Bangladesh. But those knocks were support acts, while Nazir and Jamshed went berserk at the other end. Today, with Nazir falling early and the experiment with Afridi failing, Hafeez needed to ensure the initial momentum was not wasted. He left that to Jamshed and Kamran, both of whom fell trying to attack the part-timer Yuvraj Singh.It was now even more crucial that Hafeez carried on, having spent so much time on the wicket, but he fell instead to a nothing shot against another part-timer, Virat Kohli, trying to dab a delivery to off from outside leg stump.It has been said about Hafeez that when he withdraws into a shell, he remains in it for a while. His diffidence carried itself into the field. He is usually such an active captain, ordering fielders around, snapping instructions, waving his arms, selflessly giving himself the ball in the Powerplay. He was the sixth and final bowler to come on today, as late as the 13th over, by which time Pakistan’s chances had almost evaporated.There was no way you could directly blame Hafeez for Pakistan’s below-par fielding and dropped chances, but his diffidence seemed to spread through the team. They hardly looked like a typical Pakistan side, which would have waited like a big cat ready to pounce on the slightest opening. Hafeez, though, did not think there was anything wrong with Pakistan’s demeanour on the field.”Today, India played better cricket than Pakistan, there is no doubt,” Hafeez said. “Kohli was excellent tonight, but I don’t think there was anything missing as far as our body language was concerned. We really wanted to win the game, but unfortunately we kept losing wickets at regular intervals, so we couldn’t come back after the first ten overs. We were looking for a few early strikes when India batted, but once we couldn’t get those wickets early on, India got on top of us.”Even towards the end, that man Afridi, demonstrative and energetic as ever, clapped vigorously, trying to drum up passion among his team-mates. But Pakistan simply hadn’t turned up at the Premadasa.

Mushfiqur Rahim and Mahmudullah have led by example in the absence of Bangladesh’s most vital player, Shakib Al Hasan

Mohammad Isam09-Dec-2012Bangladesh captain Mushfiqur Rahim and his deputy Mahmudullah have taken the long overdue steps from being occasional match-winners to players who can regularly do so. Their performance in the 3-2 victory in the ODI series against West Indies has been the biggest gain for Bangladesh in the last four weeks of international cricket.In the deciding match in Mirpur, Bangladesh had stumbled to 30 for 3 in pursuit of 217, when Mushfiqur and Mahmudullah counterattacked and put on 91 runs. They only made 40s, but their contributions prevented a susceptible line-up from collapsing.What made their contributions in this series stand out was the absence of Shakib Al Hasan, who was injured for the ODIs. Normally, Shakib does it all, and that has been the case in Bangladesh’s few series wins in the last few years. When they beat a second-string West Indies in 2009, Shakib played the lead with Tamim Iqbal and Mahmudullah in supporting roles. Against New Zealand in 2010, Shakib did it by himself, scoring hundreds, taking wickets and leading the side as Bangladesh won 4-0.Shakib was also a significant contributor to Bangladesh’s Asia Cup victory in March, but over the last two years Mushfiqur and Mahmudullah have also been match-winners, mostly finishing tense chases. They had the leadership roles on paper but hadn’t been performing them on the field. Now Mushfiqur, the more talkative of the two, has asserted himself as a captain by leading from the front in difficult times. Mahmudullah’s reticent nature, however, was taken as reclusive, even soft at times.In the last four weeks he has been anything but soft. After making 62 in the first innings of the Dhaka Test, Mahmudullah had gathered enough confidence to take on Tino Best. He was bruised but remained at the crease for 83 minutes in the second innings, taking hits on the body, fighting bouncers by hooking for six, a rarity for Bangladesh batsmen. He was dismissed by Best in both innings but his career had advanced. Just before West Indies arrived, there had been calls for Mahmudullah to be dropped after he had been in poor form in the World Twenty20s as well as in first-class cricket.”I know that if you’re not performing, you are not worth your place in the team,” Mahmudullah said. “It was an extra responsibility to perform consistently. I was under pressure but all I thought of was to contribute to the team, and perform consistently.”I didn’t have a good time in the last few matches but since I batted at No. 7 my role is of the contributor, not the one who makes the big runs. It doesn’t always catch people’s attention as a result.”Mahmudullah credited Mushfiqur for giving him enough space, a factor that was vital in him regaining confidence. But more importantly it was taking up responsibility that pushed him to do more for the team.
“Without Shakib, who is our best player, I felt I had to stand up in the team,” he said. “My role as the vice-captain is to help the team’s leader. Mushfiqur is an intelligent guy and we talk a lot among ourselves about what needs to be done for the team to do better.”Mahmudullah’s promotion to No. 5 was not likely because of the lack of experience in the line-up, but Mushfiqur thought it would be best to give his form player more opportunity to bat. It was a positive move, one that the captain needed time to make, but he did change things around to give the team a positive outlook.Mushfiqur’s captaincy was also heavily tested in this series, and he will be pleased with his progress after taking over from Shakib in controversial circumstances last year. After the early exit from the World Twenty20s and the Test series loss to West Indies, Mushfiqur put himself under immense pressure. He came good with a Man-of-the-Series performance in the ODIs against West Indies, and will have a clearer idea of how fortunes fluctuate in cricket.Bangladesh need more players in their team to take the step up that Mushfiqur and Mahmudullah have, if they are to build on their success in 2013.

The visitors have been hampered by a new problem in this series – a lack of consistency in the middle order – and although Faf du Plessis’ outstanding start to Test cricket has offered some solace there remain plenty of issues

Firdose Moonda at the WACA30-Nov-2012Limp middle-orders used to infect South Africa’s limited-overs teams. It was the reason they failed at the 2011 World Cup and many a tournament before that, but it was not a disease that spread to the longer format. There a mixture of dynamism and dependability existed. Both those are qualities that are absent in it on this tour of Australia.Of the five innings South Africa have batted in so far, the middle order has let them down every time. In Brisbane they lost 4 for 52 in the first innings and 3 for 63 in the second. In Adelaide, the collapse was more dramatic when five wickets tumbled for 17 runs on the third day.The six overs after lunch in Perth saw three wickets fall as Hashim Amla, AB de Villiers and Dean Elgar were all dismissed for the addition of only 12 runs. It is this folding that will seem the most glaring because it resulted in a below-par score despite the later recovery.The inability to minimise risk is the root cause for the wobbles illustrated by two of the three dismissals in Perth. Amla was run-out after answering a de Villiers call that should have been more circumspect. De Villiers himself was on the receiving end of a good ball that swung away late to find his edge but then Elgar’s inexperience showed in his short selection. He played an unnecessary pull after being primed by a series of pitched up deliveries from Mitchell Johnson.Jacques Rudolph, who was dropped for this match, was guilty of exactly the same thing in the previous two Tests. His could not blame it on inexperience, though, but a technical flaw. Rudolph played Nathan Lyon in the air in both Brisbane and Adelaide to further underline his vulnerability against offspin and he was left out of the XI to play the deciding Test.Rudolph’s average in his last eight innings was 26.87 and he was an obvious weak link. Because of that South Africa have needed seven batsmen, not to lengthen the line-up as they would have us believe but to recover. In Faf du Plessis they have found an able Mr Fix It. He has the temperament and confidence of someone whose Test career is much older but even his patch-up job on the opening day here could not harden the soft middle order.Just a year ago, South Africa had players who could act as solidifying agents. With de Villiers at No.5 with Ashwell Prince at No.6 there was a combination which could be both sensational and stable. Neither are around anymore: Prince literally so and de Villiers not as we knew him.Prince was dropped after the Boxing Day Test last year, even though he scored a half-century the match before that. He was retained on national contract but has been given no indication that he will play for his country again.De Villiers has become a shadow of the batsman he once was. Although his resilience remains as both his innings in Adelaide showed, his flamboyance has gone. Despite his insistence to the contrary, becoming the full time wicketkeeper has affected his batting and he has not scored a half-century in nine innings since taking over the role.On most occasions he has managed a start but been unable to convert and it appeared to be a problem with patience. Adelaide debunked that myth. He batted for over four hours and faced 220 balls for his 33. His forward defensive made more appearances in that innings that it has done in the ten before them and it was as unbreakable as the wall he had erected around his state of mind.Du Plessis said de Villiers was so defensive in his approach it took even him by surprise. When he joined his school-friend and team-mate at the crease, he hoped they could stay positive at first but de Villiers turned down singles they would normally have run for fun. They both knew they could not present even a sliver of an opening to Australia and de Villiers took that instruction very seriously. As a result, the pair “blocked balls we could have hit for a few,” as du Plessis later said.De Villiers emerged out of that innings with proof that he had the stamina to bat for a long period and that he was able to do that without presenting the chances he had before. Not even a week has passed since that day and de Villiers has reverted back to the player who chased a short and wide Peter Siddle delivery in Brisbane.His running out of Amla and subsequent succumbing to a ball he could have got behind, albeit it a good one, left South Africa facing a paltry first innings total. While Elgar also contributed to that, he cannot be judged yet. To walk in on debut with the team in trouble is difficult. Although he had du Plessis to draw inspiration from, his duck, notable for being the first by a South Africa Test debutant since 1998, will not close his door. A player of the experience and calibre of de Villiers though, should have taken more responsibility.That could be what the South Africa middle order currently lacks most: someone to front up. With a top four that carries the heavyweight credentials of Graeme Smith, the form of Alviro Petersen who has scored three hundreds and two fifties this year and the aura of Amla and Jacques Kallis, it is easy for the rest to think they won’t have much to do.But they will and they need to be properly equipped for that. For as long as de Villiers continues to don the gloves the decision between six and seven batsmen remains unresolved, as does the identity of those players, which is far from the ideal position for solidity.

While Bates says basketball has had a role to play in improving her mental and physical fitness, the clincher has been her decision to focus solely on cricket for some time now

Abhishek Purohit15-Feb-2013There are several dual internationals in women’s cricket – Ellyse Perry is probably the most talked-about – who go about juggling two completely different sports, training routines, playing mindsets and the like because they love both and can’t bring themselves to abandon one for the other. Suzie Bates, New Zealand captain and allrounder, basketball player and Beijing 2008 Olympian, is one of them.Bates is currently in the form of her life with the bat. She’s made the most runs in the Women’s World Cup – 386 at an average of 77.20 with a century and three fifties from six innings. While Bates says basketball has had a role to play in improving her mental and physical fitness, the clincher has been her decision to focus solely on cricket for some time now. Having earlier done the same for basketball to be able to play the 2008 Olympics, Bates admits the decision was “tough”.Basketball fulfilled Bates’ dream of going to the Olympics and gave her a chance to see athletes that one would otherwise “only see on television.” She met Dirk Nowitzki, the German NBA basketball player, who was a “really nice guy.” Bates didn’t get to speak to Rafael Nadal but followed his progress through the tennis draw and found him “pretty cool.” She still regrets missing the opening ceremony – “you get to do it only once” – as her team had a game to play early next morning.It sounds as good as it can get – representing your country at the highest level in two sports in parallel, but it puts enormous strain on body and mind. While still only in her mid-twenties, Bates was starting to find adapting to the changeovers increasingly draining. “I reached a stage where I didn’t feel I was doing either (game) justice,” Bates says. “I was inconsistent with my cricket and not as good at basketball as I could have been.”In mid-2011, Bates was offered the New Zealand captaincy. She took it up, knowing the responsibility would mean far greater devotion to cricket in terms of time. That she is thriving in her enhanced role is evident in the manner she’s batted in the World Cup.”When the captaincy came up I was like, yes, I am going to give it a good crack, with the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka and the World Cup here. I just put the basketball on the side. It has made me enjoy my cricket better as I came fully prepared, practising consistently rather than playing basketball one day and then doing nets practising my skills. This has been the longest time I have focussed on cricket.”Once I accepted it, it has changed my mind. Being a leader and getting the team to commit, I can’t be seen doing my own thing and have to commit fully to the programme. I am loving the challenge. Now that I have experienced captaincy, I don’t know how you play without doing it.”While she adores basketball, cricket is clearly Bates’ greater passion. A strapping, aggressive batsman, her basketball experiences have endowed her with considerable stamina. She can bat on and on and hates getting out.”I had two brothers who played basketball and cricket. That is where I got introduced. I think being a New Zealander I was exposed more to cricket, watched more cricket and had more cricket idols. That is why I have had more of a passion. I still love basketball. It is just not there that much in New Zealand.”Dual internationals face constant, conflicting demands on their time. Perry was asked last year by the coach of her Canberra-based football club to choose between soccer and cricket, leading to her quitting the club. Like Perry, Bates has been used to balancing both sports from an early age.”When I went to Beijing I had to give up cricket for 18 months and choose basketball. At high school, there was a national cricket tournament and I had a New Zealand basketball trial. There were always those decisions. I sort of planned well in advance. Someone like Ellyse Perry has had pressures over time. I look back and I don’t know how well I have handled the quick changeovers. Now I am getting older and taking more time to recover.”Whatever be the pressures, Bates knows she is among a chosen few individuals who have had the best of two worlds, and is glad to have been able to do it the way she has. “At times it has been tiring, but I have achieved most things I considered to in the long term. The World Cup (in cricket) has always been the goal. We’ll get there eventually I hope. There is nothing I’ll change, especially where I am now with my cricket. I am loving it, playing more regularly has been really good with my form.”

It appears that Pietersen appears poised to lose his battle against authority, and English cricket will have driven away another talent while the men in authority continue in their unrepentant ways

Girish Menon25-Feb-2013Kevin Pietersen’s latest comments, immediately after producing a super human performance in the Headingley Test against South Africa, is a cry for help against the faceless managers of the ECB, who appear hell bent on driving this flamboyant superstar away from English cricket. It appears that Pietersen, like so many illustrious sportsmen before him, appears poised to lose his battle against authority, and English cricket will have driven away another talent while the men in authority continue in their unrepentant ways.This is a problem not peculiar to team sport and can be found in other areas of endeavour where functional specialists are considered mere commodities and are divorced from managerial decision making. This trend is definitely dominant in the National Health Service and in the education sector, where managers schooled on efficiency ideas interfere in the daily work of trained doctors and teachers.So why does this problem arise? In this writer’s view, the Pietersen problem has arisen because of the ECB’s irrational and obsessive pursuit of standardisation of player contracts. Why can’t the ECB offer a tailor-made contract to an England player who demands one? Pietersen today is a global brand that definitely deserves a separate contract and should be treated differently from say a Strauss or a Cook. It is high time the ECB recognised Pietersen as another Tendulkar and dealt with him the way the BCCI has done with the Indian maestro.There is also a bit of the Little Englander culture affecting the treatment of Pietersen. Unlike the melting-pot culture in the US, the English media and selectors have reluctantly admitted but never truly accepted the ‘outsider’. In an article on this site, Rob Steen talked about the unique pressures Mark Ramprakash, a player who did not live up to his potential, faced in the England dressing room. The same pressures may have also adversely hounded the performance of Hick, Panesar and Bopara.Those who refute my Little Englander argument will readily point to the achievements of Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis. Fortunately for these athletes they excelled in sporting areas where individual endeavour was all important and so they were cocooned from the team pressures faced by ‘outsider’ cricketers like Ramps.Pietersen’s experience as team captain is an excellent example of a man who was not given a fair chance at the helm of the team. Pietersen’s personality may be brash, cocky and arrogant, but he is an exciting batsman who draws in the crowds. Also, as a batsman, he realises that he is only three quick dismissals away from being ousted from the team. So he needs to make the maximum amount of money to help him lead the rest of his long life.So I do not grudge him his mercenary attitude, instead I demand that the mandarins in the ECB should offer him an individual, tailor-made contract. He is a pleasure in full flow in a team that has to otherwise rely on Matt Prior to score quick runs. So power to you Pietersen!

Television can also compress and shrink distance. But to fully digest Gayle’s brute force in its enormity, come to the ground and become a speck in the stand

Sharda Ugra at the Chinnaswamy Stadium23-Apr-2013Chris Gayle is a big fellow. When he walks down a corridor, he makes bystanders back onto the sidelines and turn into wall-paper. When he enters a room, he fills a door and in about five seconds, the entire room itself, no matter how large.On Tuesday evening, he filled a stadium. To the point at which he emptied the opposition and the contest out of Bangalore’s Chinnaswamy Stadium. At some stage of Gayle’s record-buster, reality-bender and bowler-muncher of an innings of 175 not out, it was like the field had cleared of all other players. There was only Christopher Henry of Jamaica, a series of cricket balls heading towards his bat and departing from it in perfect trajectorial arcs heading towards the International Space Station with tens of thousands of fans around him shrieking, cheering, laughing and waving red flags.Gayle’s batting had deflated and destroyed Pune Warriors’ intentions well within the first hour of the match. Around the time their harassed captain Aaron Finch came onto bowl his dolly-left-arm-whatz-its. By the time he was done, or rather Gayle was done with him, four sixes and a boundary in an over, Royal Challengers Bangalore had reached 124-0 in 9 overs and Gayle had leaped from 67 to 95. He was given a free-hit full toss from Ashok Dinda to get to his century off a ridiculous 30 balls. A record had been broken – is there a man in cricket today, apart from the owner, who could break this one?For all that it must have been on television, the real power and glory of Gayle the batsman can be witnessed and understood only from the stands. The spectator sees him emerge from the recesses of the dressing room, clad in his golden helmet, black bandana flapping over his shoulders. By the time he has reached the stumps, he towers over the keeper, his batting partner, the fielders, the umpires. It is only when he brings his bat down on the ball with a clean swing that must groove on a golf course, that the force of his batting is truly understood, experienced and celebrated.

Between Gayle making room for his bat to come down against Ali Murtaza and the ball landing hard, flat and past the long-off boundary, slow motion is notional. Between those two instants, eyes cannot blink

Television, for all its technological advantages cannot show how fast the ball travels off the bat. TV’s two-dimensional perfection and detail hides an element that is very central to cricket and to its best practitioners – speed. Between Gayle and his bat swing making room against Ali Murtaza and the ball landing hard, flat and past the long-off boundary, slow motion is notional. Between those two instants, eyes cannot blink.Similarly television can also compress and shrink distance, as much as it measures it. Gayle’s six to reach his century off Dinda hit the roof. When in his 120s, he launched Murtaza again, out of the ground. The trackers have measurements for those things – 119m. Explain 119m to a kid. Or imagine in the mind’s eye how far even 100m must be. How far the ball has gone.But come to Chinnaswamy, become a speck in the stand, watch the man so far away in the middle have the curve of his bat meet the ascent or descent of the ball. Watch it travel, propelled through his torso, shoulders, arms in clean, sharp, crescents away from our sight and onto a place where there must be moving vehicles or scattering pedestrians or shaken shrubbery.The television viewer marvels at the 119m, the spectator witnesses a batsman cover distance in its palpable, visible scale. Gayle’s sixes were definitions of gigantism and enormity turned into physical form. The child in every spectator will never forget how everything soared with that six – the ball, the heart, the day itself. We don’t need to hear the commentators shout, “And that’s a huuuuuuge one” “oo, it’s a biggie” “this is outta here.” We can see it, we’re shouting ourselves, thankyavermuch.Gayle’s innings was physics lesson, with music and noise. Momentum is mass times velocity.It was biology class. This is what forces of nature can do.Between the Bangalore crowd and Gayle, the chemistry was crackling.Just before the rain interruption, lightning streaked over Chinnaswamy. That was a news flash: the thunder was coming.

The diet of a power-hitter

“Last night, I was up all night, couldn’t sleep, ordered room service, ordered breakfast, 6.30am in the morning before I got a chance to sleep, plain omelette and two pancakes and hot chocolate, so I went to bed at 7.30am, this is how things go for me, I don’t really get a chance to sleep at night, so I went to bed around 7.30, that’s all I had to eat for the particular day, and nothing else, hopefully I get something to eat now.”

What Gayle produced was not so much strokes, (other than his delicate dabs for singles) but shots. The ball spat off the middle of his bat to all corners, turning into parabolas that the crowd was hollering for. Gayle faced more than half the balls bowled by the Warriors and produced a compressed 20-over highlights package. At the other end, Tillakaratne Dilshan was struggling with his timing, Virat Kohli tried to cash in on the momentum and AB de Villiers’ 31 off 8 balls was a sweet tribute to Gayle. But those were minor flickers when held against Gayle’s approach through his innings. Detached, in a state of repose even as he carved up a line-up of bowlers who must bowl to him again in just over ten days.It was an innings that led to spontaneous posters being produced: “When Gayle bats, fielders become spectators and spectators become fielders.” The man writing up clever slogans over the PA booth produced around the 15th over: “Declare?”In 2008, I had turned up at the Chinnaswamy for the first-ever IPL match and watched Brendon McCullum produce an innings of 158 that had blown away the boundaries of what T20 batting was capable of. Chris Gayle’s 175 not out has once again extended the frontiers not merely of the IPL but of T20, making every other high-speed big-hitter look small.Crowds at the IPL are part of the television experience. They can be controlled to a degree as to how they respond to the sound of the tournament bugle, when they chant. But on Tuesday night, Gayle controlled the crowd with the pace of his innings. Spectators were left breathless, applauding his post-100 slow-down. When the ground announcer asked them to launch into Mexican waves during the game, as many as three times, no one listened, no one moved.Their waving and moving and hollering was restricted to the man at the centre who had fallen to his knees after hitting the fastest century in T20 and acknowledged every stand each time he crossed any landmark.His own last words to the crowd were as expansive and magnanimous as his innings had been to the audience. “God’s blessings,” said Gayle, at the presentation, “to everyone.” Hallelujah.

Plays of the day from the second Champions Trophy semi-final between India and Sri Lanka in Cardiff

Andrew Fidel Fernando in Cardiff20-Jun-2013The body blowsTillakaratne Dilshan was the first, and heaviest, casualty of a plague of leg injuries that hit the first hour of play. He sustained his injury in the fourth over and left the field in the fifth. Umesh Yadav had Lahiru Thirimanne hobbling after hitting him just above the knee before Suresh Raina conspired to put players’ legs in more danger. First his throw from second slip hit Yadav in the back of the knee leaving the bowler with a limp for the rest of the over and then from cover, he struck Thirimanne again, with a return throw at the non-striker’s end, prompting more pained hops.The surpriseWith the ball swinging and seaming around, Virat Kohli might have fancied his chances of delivering a few overs of seam-up, but ever the unconventional thinker, MS Dhoni had other ideas. Before the 23rd over began, Dhoni peeled off his pads and handed them to Dinesh Karthik, as he began warming up at short fine leg. The largely-Indian crowd came alive when he marked out his run-up and roared when the umpire gave Mahela Jayawardene out lbw in his first over, but the celebrations were short-lived, as Jayawardene’s inside edge became apparent on review.The other oneR Ashwin was the least disciplined of India’s bowlers, and when he pitched the penultimate ball of the 48th over wide of leg stump, Nuwan Kulasekara justifiably assumed he would add to India’s extras tally. Only Ashwin had not bowled his stock offspinner. Coming from around the wicket, he slipped in the carrom ball which turned appreciably to clip the leg stump as Kulasekara shouldered arms. Not sure if he was bowled or stumped, the umpires asked the third umpire for help, perhaps more in confusion and disbelief, and the replays confirmed that the ball had dislodged the bail on the way through to the keeper.The stealThe sight of Dilshan limping back onto the field with a wounded leg with just thirteen balls remaining raised more than an eyebrow, considering he was seen having trouble placing any weight on his right leg. With five deliveries left, Lasith Malinga lofted Ashwin towards wide long-on where Rohit Sharma was lining up to take the catch. Suddenly, a spectator carrying a banner, jumped the fence and charged into the ground. The intruder had caught everyone unaware and even mildly shocked Rohit, who got distracted. The spectator had rushed towards the middle, having left a couple of security stewards in his trail. Amidst this chaos, and as the crowd went berserk, Dilshan had smartly stolen three runs. Even if it did not count much in the context of the result, it was a steal by all means.