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The reasons include a one-dimensional pace attack, Sarfaraz Ahmed’s falling stock, and more

Danyal Rasool17-Jun-2021Quetta Gladiators was the model of a well-run franchise, perhaps not only in Pakistan, but T20 franchise cricket across the world. They were snapped up for the most competitive price of all six PSL franchises, but the relative modesty of the side’s value never dimmed its appetite for consistent success. For the first four seasons, the Gladiators were perhaps the most predictably successful side in the league, winning the title in 2019 and only once failing to reach the final.From those heady heights, Sarfaraz Ahmed’s side – and it has always been Sarfaraz Ahmed’s side – has suffered something of a drastic decline. The 2020 season was the first that ended in elimination at the group stage, with the Gladiators finishing fifth on net run rate. Their overall impeccable record might have suggested it was an aberration, but the trend was turbo-charged this year, with the Gladiators, rock bottom with seven losses in nine, becoming the first side to be dumped out of contention.The game that knocked them out was especially ignominious, with the Multan Sultans inflicting upon them the heaviest defeat in PSL history. The Gladiators were shot out for 73, the second-lowest score in the league. But the spectacular nature of their nadir shouldn’t detract from the fact that the Gladiators have been well short of the mark all season, both in the first leg in Karachi, and now that the tournament has moved to Abu Dhabi. Here’s a look at a few of the things that went wrong for a one-time PSL giant.Related

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Failure to replace elite batters
There are only so many stars a side can lose without the shine coming off them, and the Gladiators have lost star batters by the shedload over the past few seasons. One of the most reliable strategies for success in the PSL is also one of the more straightforward ones: select world-class overseas batters, stick them at the top of the order and watch the runs and boundaries tumble in. For the first three seasons, the Gladiators could boast perhaps the biggest star of all in Kevin Pietersen, joined a year later by PSL royalty Rilee Rossouw, before Shane Watson and Jason Roy linked up with them in 2018. Add to that roster Ahmed Shehzad, who, in the initial years of the PSL, still harboured hopes of joining the ranks of those three in T20 celebrity status, and had the numbers to back it up. Only Watson and Pietersen hit more sixes for the franchise, while no one betters Shehzad’s nine half-centuries.By 2020, though, the Gladiators had lost all of them. The decision to let Rossouw go in 2019, especially as he continues to thrive for the Sultans, has aged especially badly, and the inability to acquire batters of the calibre they possessed in those early years has begun to take its toll. This year, seven different men have opened the batting for them, and Jake Weatherald, Usman Khan and Saim Ayub – their most regular openers – don’t really come close to matching the explosiveness of the players they lost. The Gladiators have been allowed to decay, and now the rust is showing.The Gladiators are now without several T20 batting stars they once had, including Shane Watson•PCB/PSLOne-dimensional fast bowling attack
It never hurts to have an express pace bowler in a side, whatever the format, but could it hurt if you cram in as many as three on subcontinental pitches? The Gladiators had Dale Steyn, Mohammad Hasnain and Naseem Shah on their roster, but all have ended up proving either prohibitively expensive or ineffectual for the best part of the tournament. Steyn isn’t quite the phenomenon he has been for so long around the world, and when Wahab Riaz and Sherfane Rutherford smashed him for 21 in a tight penultimate over in a crucial early game, the writing seemed to be on the wall. It was a game that captured effectively the Gladiators’ inability to keep the runs down against their fast bowling, with Hasnain, Steyn and Shinwari conceding a combined 133 in 11.3 overs.Hasnain, the ace fast bowler, has an economy rate of 8.89 this season. Shah has gone wicketless in the three matches he played, last conceding 19 in an opening over that set the scene for a crushing Islamabad United win. The loss of Ben Cutting, a player who balanced that pace attack with more nuance, guile and experience, hasn’t helped either.Sarfaraz Ahmed’s long-standing captaincy
Ahmed’s influence over Pakistani cricket over the past decade or so is hard to overstate, and in a lot of ways he is Mr Quetta Gladiators, so long term is his service to that franchise. The Gladiators are the only team to retain their captain from the first season, and it was easy to see why when Ahmed led them from one successful campaign to another. His contributions with the bat over the years have anchored the Gladiators through several sticky spots, combining regularly with Rossouw over the years, especially in tight chases.But it’s also hard to miss that Ahmed’s stock has fallen over the past two years. His previous two campaigns with the side have come after he was sacked from the Pakistan captaincy and removed from the side altogether. In that same period, his performances with the Gladiators have remained steady, but with the league seeing high-scoring games with greater frequency since it moved to Pakistan, Ahmed’s anchoring role doesn’t quite hold the value it used to.In addition, several flustered exchanges with his own bowlers this season appear to have painted the picture of a captain not quite in harmony with the rest of the squad. A captain who demands the highest standards with the relentlessness that Ahmed does will invariably exact an emotional debt from his side. At some point, that debt has to be repaid, and the Gladiators’ days of reckoning appear to have come.The toss
It would be harsh to allocate any blame to Ahmed for not calling correctly, but the inflated importance of bowling first in Karachi meant losing all their tosses in the first leg didn’t help the Gladiators’ cause. They were forced to bat first in each of the five games they played there, losing their first four and finding themselves on the verge of elimination before the league was halted anyway. They were the only side to actually defend a total in Karachi this year, keeping the Sultans at bay in their fifth game. But as Wednesday’s game, where they won the toss and chased against the same opposition illustrates, the Gladiators’ problems run deeper than the landing of a coin.

A look at the duo’s superb year, when they added 1380 runs together at an average of 57.50 in the format

Sampath Bandarupalli17-Dec-2021Rizwan and Babar top the run-scoring charts
Two new milestones have been set in the 20-over format in 2021. Both were achieved by Mohammad Rizwan. He finished the year with an aggregate of 2036 runs in T20s to become the first batter with 2000 T20 runs in a calendar year. In the T20Is alone, he scored 1326 runs – the first batter to breach the 1000-run mark in a calendar year in T20Is. His 13 T20I scores of fifty-plus runs this year is also a record.ESPNcricinfo LtdBabar Azam occupied second place in both lists as he ended the year with 939 T20I runs and another 840 runs across the Pakistan Super League and National T20 Cup. Chris Gayle’s 1665 runs in 2015 was the previous most T20 runs for a batter in a calendar year. Babar came close to breaking that record in 2019 when he amassed 1607 runs. Babar, however, has made 20 fifty-plus scores in 2021, the most fifty-plus T20 scores in a calendar year.ESPNcricinfo LtdRizwan finally finds success in T20s
The fascinating fact about Rizwan’s tally of 2036 T20 runs in 2021 is that it is higher than his career runs till 2020 in the format – 2029 runs – while playing more than 100 matches. The move to bat up the order in 2020 turned the tables for Rizwan in T20s, a format that never brought him much success earlier. His success in the New Zealand tour as a T20I opener last year could be credited to Babar’s injury, which had ruled him out of the series, leaving a spot at the top vacant.ESPNcricinfo LtdRizwan was the Player of the Tournament in PSL this year for leading Multan Sultans to their maiden PSL title while scoring 500 runs. He had four fifties in 12 innings in that tournament, where he got out under 20 only twice. This turnaround came after playing just two matches in 2020 and seven games across the previous two editions for Karachi Kings. He had just one fifty – which he hit in 2016 – in the first five PSL editions.Rizwan defines consistency
Despite having fewer fifties than his national team captain, Rizwan ended up with a higher run tally this year due to his consistency in getting starts. He reached the 30-run mark in 30 of the 45 T20 innings and was dismissed for a single-digit score only six times. Only two players have scored 30-plus scores at a higher frequency in a calendar year in the T20 format – Virat Kohli in 2016 and David Warner in 2019.ESPNcricinfo LtdKohli scored at an incredible consistency in 2016, where he averaged 89.66 and was the Player of the Series in three of the five T20 events played. Warner was at his very best in 2019, being the highest run-scorer in IPL that year even while not being available for the entire tournament.Rizwan started the year with nine successive 40-plus scores across T20Is and PSL. He also had seven consecutive innings of 30-plus runs in T20Is, a streak that ended in the T20 World Cup. It remains the longest streak of 30-plus scores for any player in T20Is. In T20Is, he had 20 scores of 30-plus runs in the 26 innings he batted.Rizwan and Babar make it look easy
Only twice did Rizwan and Babar bat together in T20Is before 2021. This year, they added 1380 runs in 25 stands at an average of 57.50 – the first pair with 1000 partnership runs in a calendar year not only in T20Is but also in all T20s. Only five other batting pairs in the history of men’s T20Is have more career partnership runs than what these two have added in 2021 alone.ESPNcricinfo LtdUntil the start of 2021, there was only one pair with more career partnership runs – Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan with 1743 runs, having batted 52 times together. Kevin O’Brien and Paul Stirling, with 756 runs in 2019, previously held the record for most T20I partnership runs in a calendar year. In T20s, Kohli and AB de Villiers hold the record, for adding 939 runs in just 13 innings for Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2016.ESPNcricinfo LtdRizwan and Babar now hold the record for the most century partnerships by any pair in T20Is – six stands – out of which four are 150-plus stands, including the unbeaten 152 in Dubai, which helped seal their maiden World Cup win over India. Rohit and Dhawan are only the other pair in men’s T20Is with multiple 150-plus stands. The Pakistan duo also equalled the T20 record for most 150-plus partnerships, held by Kohli and de Villiers.

Raw power meets technique and instinct in a shot the batter has made uniquely her own

Valkerie Baynes01-Mar-2022She’s been called “Harmanpreet Thor” and when she’s raining hammer blows on the opposition, it’s rather apt. And yet to put the word “slog” in front of Harmanpreet’s glorious sweep sounds so unrefined, and not entirely accurate, for her version is more nuanced. Sure, the aggression, power – and result – are there, but the effortlessness of her action makes it a thing of beauty as well as brutality. Dropping to her back knee, head over the front one to form a perfectly balanced base as she brings her bat down and lets her levers do their devastating work – pow!Slog, conventional, paddle, reverse. Watch Harmanpreet and you forget momentarily that her way is not the only way. Her action looks infinitely repeatable, from the set-up through the swing to the sight of the ball sailing over the fence, often several times in an innings. Brisbane Heat witnessed it during her 23-ball fifty for Sydney Thunder. And again as she slugged their attack for six sixes en route to 65 off 32 for Melbourne Renegades last November.India are no strangers to Harmanpreet’s impressive array of strokes, in which that sublime sweep features heavily, like during her unbeaten 171 in the 2017 World Cup semi-final.Biju George was India Women’s fielding coach at the time before going on to join Sunrisers Hyderabad and now the Sports Authority of India, and he reckons Harmanpreet’s sweep is as much about instinct as technique. “Normally, what the batter will hear taught right from the beginning is, if the spinner flights the ball, you come out and play the ball. The sweep is like a secondary shot, not your main shot,” he says. “But for Harmanpreet it’s an expression of her identity, her individuality.”While many players sweep late and fine, Harmanpreet takes the ball early and hits it square of the wicket or ahead of square – and hard. Once set, she’s not afraid to play the shot against medium-pacers either. A combination of coordination and bat speed enable her to generate huge power.”She hits it like a rocket,” says George. “She is there to dominate, make no mistake about that. When she goes out to bat, in my mind I see a big flag waving over her: ‘Here I am.'”She has thought out her game really well. People might think she’s an impulsive player [but] she’s an instinctive player. She reacts to the ball, she reacts to the situation.”Like Harmanpreet, England captain Heather Knight has a wonderful collection of strokes, her reverse sweep particularly effective. And while her vice-captain, Nat Sciver, has the inventive “Natmeg” in her bag – threading a full delivery between her feet and fine to the leg side – she can also produce a powerful conventional sweep.Sophie Devine admits there’s little more satisfying as a batter than punching a straight drive back past the bowler, but she values the rewards the sweep – or slog sweep as she is quick to clarify – has brought her. It is a shot players often learn later, after coaches teach the “safer” strokes, but Devine has advice for those wanting to add it to their game: “I just say, hit the ball hard. That’s the great thing about cricket, you’ve got to commit fully, whatever shot it is.”Who Does it Best?: The cutter | The pull | The googly | The cover drive | The yorker | The cut | The bouncer | The sweep

Former Bangladesh coach on his sacking: “The brave decision wasn’t taken, they took the easy decision”

Mohammad Isam21-Feb-2022How was the experience of winning a BPL trophy?
I haven’t won many trophies during my coaching career, (so) it was absolutely wonderful to be part of a trophy-winning campaign with Comilla. It was hugely important to win a trophy in Bangladesh. We had success in Bangladesh. I had a tiny bit of success in Worcestershire. I was very proud of the way the Comilla boys fought. [Fortune] Barishal were a very strong side during the campaign. It was fitting that we played against each other (in the final).Two tough teams, however, didn’t play very well on the day. There were lots of mistakes. I can only put that down to pressure of the final, and the build-up of the whole four weeks of intense cricket. I think that whilst, as a coach, you see so many mistakes, but to the public, what an entertaining game of cricket it was!Your coaching debut in Bangladesh cricket was far from memorable, though.
I don’t think anybody has had an international coaching debut like that. We lost the toss on a green bouncy wicket against some very good West Indian fast bowlers. We were 45 all out on the first day. But from then on, we nearly won the next Test. Then we won the ODI series in the West Indies. We were 1-0 down in the T20Is, but won the two games in Florida to win the series. Suddenly, we left the tour on a real high, winning two series and losing one.

“If you sit and watch from the BCB’s president box, you wouldn’t understand the workings of what’s going on there (at the ground). You just say, ‘Well, he didn’t do very well, let’s get rid of him’.”Steve Rhodes

Apu (Nazmul Islam), the left-arm spinner, started to call me the “lucky coach”. By which he meant, maybe, things are going our way a little bit. We lost a lot of games in the journey towards the World Cup. But we also won some other series. We beat the West Indies here (in Bangladesh) where we didn’t play a seamer in any of the Tests. Some of our tactics were clever. They were not all my tactics. I am not the egotistical coach who puts my hand down for everything. I had a wonderful captain in Shakib Al Hasan, who had some great thoughts and ideas about beating the West Indies. I think there were great things happening in the dressing room.How would you describe the 2019 World Cup campaign?
If things went our way, we thought we had a squad that could possibly squeak a bit further than we got. So, we were all disappointed by how we finished. We started really well. I thought Bangladesh fought hard against a lot of good opposition. When some of those teams played their good game, we couldn’t win. No matter how hard we tried, we weren’t quite good enough. That came as a surprise to a lot of people in Bangladesh.Related

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Our only bad game was the last one against Pakistan, but we were already out of the tournament. Against the likes of England, India and Australia, we got plenty of runs. Even in the bad games, we competed hard. We could have won against New Zealand. We had some great wins against South Africa and West Indies. The best win was against Afghanistan. We had a tremendous campaign overall.I found it a little bit disappointing to be told that that poor performance in the World Cup is the reason why I was to be released from my contract. I felt it wasn’t true. To me, it looked flimsy. There must be some other reason. Where we were at the end of the World Cup in the points table looked poor. But the truth was, we played so much better than what our end position showed. I wasn’t there for arguing, because you can’t argue with your employers if they want to get rid of you. To this day, I don’t really know the actual reason.What was your coaching philosophy?
I was trying to do something new in Bangladesh, to drive forward in improvement. It revolved around the style of the coaching and the support staff. It was how we could make the players grow by getting them to be more responsible for their own game. Trying to get them to think more on the field, so that when a situation happens, there’s no coach around to ask “what do I do now”.It was quite a change from the normal culture of the way things are in the subcontinent. I accepted it was always going to be a difficult thing to drive through. You are up against a culture. But I have seen in the Indian team how it changed.The coach is there to assist, help and push along. We are not there to totally drive their careers. I call certain coaches as “satnav coaches”. To explain, you think about trying to go from Worcester to Newcastle in your car. I press in “Newcastle” in the satnav, and it tells me how to go, by giving me details about every turn I have to take, how long I have to go before the next junction. All you do is listen to the satnav and look at the map occasionally. When I reached Newcastle, it tells me that I have reached my destination. If someone asks me how I got there, I have not learned anything about that journey. I have been told, “do this, do that”. In coaching terms, a lot of people in the subcontinent thinks that’s how you coach. This is how you play the forward defensive, on this wicket you have to do this, on that wicket you do that, when you are bowling at him you do this. A player tries to do that.

Being in a high-profile position in Bangladesh cricket, my neck was on the line. So was Mashrafe [Mortaza] as captain. So were the senior players. If they decided the performance wasn’t good enough, then somebody had to go”Steve Rhodes

You’d say that’s coaching. No, that’s coaching to a degree. That’s satnav coaching. The player won’t improve. On the flipside of that, you go back to the time when we have to go to Newcastle. When I was a 25-year-old player, there was no satnav. The night before the journey, I’d open the map and take notes. There was no Google, so I’d ask winding the window down where Newcastle Cricket Club was. When I was on my way back to Worcester, I learned a lot more about the journey. I was responsible for my focus and concentration. Next time I went to Newcastle, I knew the route. I didn’t need the map.This is an example of how somebody improves without being told. Working things out for yourself. I was doing that style of coaching with the Bangladesh team. I encouraged the same with the other coaches. I even told them, “if you are unsure about saying anything, don’t say it; you don’t have to prove to me that you’re coaching and earning your money”. Sometimes, less is more.A culmination of this was when I had a visit from one of the board members during the World Cup. He was saying that they were unhappy with my coaching style. I needed to be more like a satnav-type coach. I explained fully to this board member how my style was going to improve people quicker. I gave him an example with his son, who is abroad. He admitted that his kid was growing up fast being on his own. But he went back with the news that the coach won’t change. I think that had something to do with it. I wasn’t coaching in the manner they were used to.Was there a feeling that you could lose your job?
As a Bangladesh coach, you are forever on a vibe of how long it will last. I think that’s life. Nobody has the right to be cushy in their job.We had a great tournament in Ireland as a build-up. We won the tri-series. I thought we were going the right way. At that stage, I didn’t expect that I would be gone after the World Cup. When we couldn’t qualify (for the semi-final), I thought there was a chance of change. I was, whilst surprised, not surprised as well. I really didn’t know what to expect, to be honest.Cricket is so big in Bangladesh that when a World Cup campaign is perceived as average, something has to go.
Being in a high-profile position in Bangladesh cricket, my neck was on the line. So was Mashrafe [Mortaza] as captain. So were the senior players. If they decided the performance wasn’t good enough, then somebody had to go. Scapegoat, or sacked. I don’t know what you want to call it, you are there to be knocked down in that sort of role.The senior players “can play a huge part in driving the next generations,” Steve Rhodes feels•AFP/Getty ImagesYou said yourself that something had to go. But did it go? Was it that bad? Could it be said that the way things had been building, winning around 50% of the matches, we were moving in the right direction? Apart from the Pakistan game, we weren’t doing badly in the tournament.Maybe a brave answer to those people calling for scapegoats would have been: we don’t really need one at the moment, we are okay. We would have loved to go forward but we didn’t. We played some good cricket. Shakib did brilliantly. Litton Das played a marvelous innings against the West Indies. [Mohammad] Saifuddin had shown his quality as well. But the brave decision wasn’t taken. They took the easy decision: we haven’t done well, so the coach is going.From a Bangladesh perspective, why does the World Cup always feel like the end of something?
Wrongly, people expect too much. Now people are saying to me, Bangladesh are in the same place they were 15 years ago. It is probably true. Maybe the expectation of being a top-four side is beyond them. They ought to be looking at it a little bit differently. What about, let’s get into the top six or seven first? The focus should be on general progression. Maybe the board and supporters should realise, are we going to improve first, than being in the top four?What did you think of the BCB’s approach, was it professional at all?
To a certain extent, yes. I got no qualms with the administrative staff. They were professional. They did a lot for me. I was very grateful. I think some things needed changing. The style of coaching was one thing. You need support from your board. They need to understand what you are doing. In this area, I wasn’t given the support as they didn’t understand it.The other angle might be, the players play under absolute pressure and not trusting people. It can affect their performance badly. To bring out the best in the player, take pressure off them as much as you can. Only a few players revel in pressure. You have to get through most when they are under pressure. The coaching staff and I got to know the players so well, we knew what made them tick.If you sit and watch from the BCB president’s box, you wouldn’t understand the workings of what’s going on there. You just say, “well, he didn’t do very well, let’s get rid of him”. Sadly, young players and medium-term players (those who have been around for a while but not quite done it) feel that pressure. There’s an immense sense of “what will they do next, will I be the one dropped?” How can you perform your best when you have that in your mind?

“Maybe the board can sometimes also get out of the way when something good is happening”Steve Rhodes

It comes down to whether the selection policy is right. I would question whether it is right. The president [Nazmul Hassan] does sign off the team. I think he is not a bad man. He listens to reason. Sometimes he’d say coach, or captain, “if that’s what you want, let’s do it”. But there are other times, because of his power and veto, that he can listen to other people around him that might persuade him differently. You then question the cricketing knowhow of those people. That system isn’t quite right.Do you think if you had the right kind of time, you could have made the players more self-reliant?
I really do. We were doing something that India have done. It was to give importance to every person in the team. The likes of [Virat] Kohli, [MS] Dhoni and the senior players came to the conclusion that everyone is equally important in their team.The proper analogy is whether the racing car driver is more important than the guy who puts one of the nuts on the tires. The answer is, there’s nobody more important. If the guy doesn’t put the nut on right, the wheel falls off, and the driver is no good. The person who takes that one catch is as important as the others. People might be surprised to know that it doesn’t often happen in the Bangladesh team. I think it is holding things back a little bit.What do you think worked against you?
I think they have had different styles of coaches in the past. [Chandika] Hathurusingha was a feisty character who got the best out of some people. I think it had more to do with the lack of understanding of how I wanted to coach. I think that’s where they didn’t really get it.It could have been easier. It would have been nice if they (BCB) understood the way I wanted to coach. It wasn’t the case, and you have to try to make the best of it. I wasn’t going to coach in the way they wanted me to coach.It was our way of getting the team and the players better. You must empower the players. They are out there batting and bowling for Bangladesh. They need to think clearly under pressure, and what’s best for them and the team. It is not about getting instructions from the captain or coach. You take decisions by being given responsibility.How was your relationship with the board president?
I did enjoy working with him. I had a better conversation with him one-to-one. There were two or three occasions when I had very, very good one-to-one conversations at his house. It was very difficult to get the president one-to-one. He had quite a few people who he works closely with. Then it becomes chaotic. You don’t concentrate on each other’s words. Too many people talk at the same time, and you don’t really achieve anything.We might not have agreed on some selection issues but I knew my place as well. As board president, they were employing me. I knew there were some fights you can’t win, but there were some fights worth fighting for.Courtney Walsh and Steve Rhodes worked together with the Bangladesh team•Getty ImagesHow do Bangladesh go forward, and get better given the present system?
I don’t know if they will get better. They will always compete really well. One thing about Bangladesh is, they have gifted, wonderful cricketers. I have seen some tremendous cricketers playing in the BPL. But they are not given the chance to think for themselves. I think they have to do what I was trying to do.The local coaches have to realise that there’s another way of coaching, one that might be beneficial. I am not pointing the finger at the Bangladeshi coaches. They are just used to the system of doing it.What do you make of Bangladeshi coaches?
Bangladesh have good coaches. I have experience with (Mohammad) Salahuddin, who has a good cricket brain. He keeps things relatively simple. There’s definitely a Bangladeshi guy who could be Bangladesh’s head coach. They would have to make compromises – the board and the coach – to make it a working relationship. Salahuddin could do the job really well. It could be the start of something.It is wrong of me talking of new coaches when you have got one in place. But I am not so sure that international coaches is the way forward all the time. I was one. The poor players get used to a coach, and he is gone. Then they get used to another coach, and he is gone. The players then go back to their own local coaches from years ago. He is here all the time, and someone they trust. They try to trust the international coaches, but they get moved on. It doesn’t give continuity, which doesn’t do good for Bangladesh cricket.Part of how Bangladesh are going to go forward, is how the careers of the five senior players are managed from this point.I think they are all different characters. You approach them in different ways – that’s the skill of man management. All of them were terrific. But the one area that used to wind me up, and it wasn’t their fault, is that the media called them the Magnificent Five. I was quoted somewhere saying that we are the Magnificent Eleven. I think that’s important: the team.How can they help going forward?
They can play a huge part in driving the next generations. Shakib, [Mahmudullah] Riyad, Mushi [Mushfiqur Rahim] and Tamim [Iqbal] have a lot of cricket left in them. They have a wealth of experience. They are all good cricketers. Shakib has one of the most magnificent brains I have come across in cricket. But does Shakib get the right respect for what he has achieved in cricket? Or is he just our employee and we will control him?He has so much to offer, so it will be such a waste if he finishes without giving more knowledge and experience. Mashrafe, too, has contributed a lot. He led from the front. He has been a passionate champion and warrior of Bangladesh cricket. He has lot of tactical nous. He can make people listen.Maybe the board can sometimes also get out of the way when something good is happening.Don’t overcoach by trying to warrant your salary. The board member is watching, so I better coach, coach, coach. You are ruining players doing that. The same [sits] with the board. Don’t over-instruct. If things are going okay, just relax. Don’t get too involved in it all. You don’t have to prove you are a board member. If things are going in the right direction, your worth as a board member might be to say less.

The left-arm seamer first made his name in Pune club cricket before graduating to the big leagues

Shashank Kishore04-May-2022On May 1, Gopal Choudhary and Prembai Choudhary travelled over 500km from their home in Yavatmal, Maharashtra, to Pune to watch their son Mukesh play cricket live at a ground. It was a first for them, and being driven to the ground, offered premium seating, and generally being treated like royalty only added to it. They left the stadium smiling as Choudhary picked up four wickets to keep Chennai Super Kings’ IPL hopes alive this season.”It was an amazing feeling to watch him play live and do so well,” Gopal says. “I had only watched him live on the internet earlier. Before the Mushtaq Ali T20s in Lucknow [last November], Mukesh called and asked us to subscribe to Hotstar to be able to watch him play [on TV]. But this experience was something else.”As Gopal watched the IPL game, he recalled the time his younger son packed his bags as a 13-year-old and left Jaipur with his older brother to move to study at the Sinhagad Institute in Pune. “He always liked cricket, but he moved mainly to study,” Gopal says.The family had no background in sport. Gopal, a stone crusher, moved near Yavatmal in Maharashtra in the mid-1980s for work, but left his sons back in Bhilwara, Rajasthan, where they grew up in a hostel close to their maternal grandparents’ home. Bhilwara back then had just one multi-purpose ground, which used to host carnivals more often than it did cricket matches.Choudhary’s cricket skills were spotted during his days in Pune. One of his friends, a club cricketer, saw him bowl at Pune’s Law College grounds in a league game and suggested he train at the 22 Yards Cricket Academy, co-founded by former Maharashtra captain and national selector Surendra Bhave. There, he could hone his game on turf wickets instead of bowling on cement pitches.At the academy Choudhary caught the eye of several senior Maharashtra players who came to train there during the off season, including Kedar Jadhav, Rahul Tripathi, Swapnil Gugale and Ankeet Bawne, Maharashtra’s current captain.Choudhary’s Maharashtra captain Ankeet Bawne: He is a bowler who a captain can throw the ball to at any stage without thinking about whether he’s ready or not”•BCCI”This was around 2015 that he first came to our academy,” 22 Yards head coach Rajesh Mahurkar remembers. “He didn’t have much pace, but there was something we could work with. Along with him there were two other left-arm pacers. We spoke to all three of them and told them that there is talent, and we could work with it if they’re serious. That is how he started.””We worked on his action, pace, and got him up to speed with his fitness. What stood out was, rain or shine, he was very punctual. He wouldn’t miss training.”As we got him in shape to become a competent bowler, we had our next challenge. How do we get him to play more matches?”The academy wasn’t eligible to field a team at the Maharashtra Cricket Association’s invitational tournament, which featured the state’s top club sides and was a key event for the state selectors picking teams across age groups and for first-class cricket.”One of his friends, who happened to know Pravin Tambe, helped find a corporate team he could play for,” Mahurkar says. “In one of the matches he picked up a five-wicket haul and suddenly came into the limelight.”In 2017, Choudhary impressed with his pace and accuracy at the RedBull Campus Cricket tournament, where he played for MMCC College. Among his team-mates was an upcoming batter, Ruturaj Gaikwad, who would go on to recommend Choudhary as a net bowler to Chennai Super Kings in 2021.By then Choudhary had already bowled in the nets in the IPL, for Sunrisers Hyderabad and Mumbai Indians, after fine-tuning his action during a two-year stint at the MRF Pace Academy in Chennai, which he joined in 2016. There he trained under head coach M Senthil Nathan, who has been associated with the academy for over two decades and has worked alongside Dennis Lillee and Glenn McGrath.During his time at MRF, Choudhary would return to Pune to work with his early mentors whenever possible, but he needed to find a club that could compete in tournaments like the MCA Invitational.Harshal Pathak, the former Maharashtra cricketer who now coaches the Thailand women’s national team, signed Choudhary for Cadence Academy, one of the top clubs in Pune, soon after he returned from his first stint at the MRF Academy. A year later, on Tripathi’s recommendation, Choudhary moved to Deccan Gymkhana, the city’s oldest and most prestigious club, to train under former Maharashtra cricketer Satyajit Satbhai.Rajesh Mahurkar, Chouhdary’s mentor in Pune: “Over the past year or so, he’s been working hard to improve his pace. He has identified what he needs to do to get there. He has tremendously improved his fitness and diet”•BCCIImpressive performances for Deccan got Choudhary into the Maharashtra Under-23 team and the senior Ranji side in the same year. He made his first-class debut in November 2017, and now, at 25, is Maharashtra’s front-line seam bowler, now that Samad Fallah and Anupam Sanklecha have moved on.”He’s at that stage where he isn’t insecure anymore,” Bawne says. “He knows he is a regular. He is a bowler who a captain can throw the ball to at any stage without thinking about whether he’s ready or not. I remember a game against Odisha, which we needed to win outright. There was just one session left and we needed to pick up six wickets or so and then chase down a small total.”He bowled ten to 12 overs on the trot, took four wickets, and we won the game.”That attitude comes from within – the willingness to wheel away even on the most placid pitches. It’s no surprise CSK have backed him despite some tough games, where he has been hit for runs. He’s a quick learner, persistent, and a honest trier.”Everyone in the Pune circles describes Choudhary as shy, polite and simple. Mahurkar, who perhaps knows him better than most, speaks highly of his discipline and work ethic.”You will never see him gossiping about anyone. Hardly uses a mobile phone, max one to two hours a day. No WhatsApp, no Facebook. If he must communicate, he’ll just prefer to call.”He comes, quietly trains, does all his drills, he’ll come up and talk to us about something he wants to work on the coming week, and that’s that. You won’t see him idling. If he’s happy with one aspect of his bowling, he will work on the next. Lately, over the past year or so, he’s been working hard to improve his pace. He has identified what he needs to do to get there. He has tremendously improved his fitness and diet. That way he’s very systematic.”Before this year’s IPL auction – his first – Choudhary appeared confident about being picked up by a franchise. “He said MS Dhoni liked his bowling and has been encouraging him a lot, and possibly CSK could give him a call-up,” Mahurkar says. “It’s no surprise they actually bid for him and picked him up at the auction.”Having watched Choudhary’s evolution from close quarters, Mahurkar believes the next step in his journey is for him to become consistent across formats. “His strength is to bowl the ball across the right-hander, but lately he has developed the ball that moves into the right-hander, away from the left-hander.”He mentions the dismissal of Mumbai Indians opener Ishan Kishan from earlier this season as an example. In a game-changing new-ball spell, Choudhary knocked out an off-balance Kishan’s off stump with an outswinger and finished as Player of the Match with 3 for 19.Mahurkar brings up the two other left-arm seamers who first came to train at 22 Yards along with Choudhary. Following his IPL success, they returned to the academy to ask if they could start training again.”The same guys who at the time appeared to have more pace than Mukesh,” Mahurkar says. “They came back wanting to train again after seeing how far this boy has gone.”Can there be a bigger validation than that?”

The pair added 104 off just 10.2 overs to blindside Australia in the series decider

Shashank Kishore26-Sep-20221:54

Hodge: ‘It looks like Kohli has his mojo back’

Virat Kohli and Suryakumar Yadav. One a decade-old veteran continuing to push boundaries, both physically and skill-wise, in trying to rediscover himself. The other, a late bloomer at 31, and in the absolute peak of his prowess, with magical wrists and instincts that give him a split-second more than others to hit balls to corners of the ground as he pleases.On Sunday in Hyderabad, it was this combination that put Australia under the mat, before Hardik Pandya sealed India’s series win from being 1-0 down just four days ago. Kohli and Suryakumar added 104 off just 10.2 overs in a fine display of power, skill, wristwork, fitness and the inventive to raze down India’s 187-run target.Related

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This partnership was a tad different, though.Teams tend to bring spin on to Kohli early in his innings. In all T20 cricket since 2021, Kohli strikes at just 108.85 in 40 innings against spin. In comparison, he goes at 137.81 against pace. So, when Aaron Finch brought Adam Zampa on within two balls of his arrival to the crease, it seemed a perfectly legitimate move. Zampa also had the wood over Kohli, having dismissed him eight times, the most he’s been out to a single bowler in white-ball cricket.Three nights ago, Kohli was out giving the charge to Zampa as he played all around a slider that snuck through bat and pad to crash into the stumps. Sunday was going to add another chapter to this match-up, and Kohli wasn’t in the mood to allow Zampa to dictate terms. His first delivery, Kohli’s third of the innings, was a perfectly tossed up delivery on off-stump. Kohli was forward and right to the pitch in a jiffy as he drilled the ball through extra cover to begin with a boundary. It set Kohli up for the rest of his innings.”When Surya started hitting it like that, I kind of looked at the dug-out as well,” Kohli said after the match to Star Sports. “Rohit and Rahul both told me, ‘you can just keep batting on’ because Surya was striking it that well. It was just about building a partnership, so I used my experience a little bit, stayed back.”Australia, though, didn’t just have to be mindful of Kohli. At the other end, Suryakumar was plotting carnage in his own style. One second, he was stepping out to leg, giving the impression he’d be going inside out, only to whip deliveries to bisect deep midwicket and long-on. The next, he was going deep into the crease, so deep you feared for his back leg nudging the stumps, to manufacture length to play his back-cut behind point. These two shots, in essence, are a peek into Suryakumar’s approach – no leeway, no luxuries to settle into a length.”It’s absolute clarity in what he wants to do,” Kohli said of Suryakumar’s brilliance. “Obviously he has the game to bat under any sort of situation, in any condition and he’s shown that already. He got a hundred in England; he batted beautifully in the Asia Cup as well. Here he’s striking the ball as well as I’ve seen him strike. I mean, for the last six months he’s been outstanding so it’s just the array of shots, and to play those shots at the right time is such tremendous for a guy who knows his game inside out and has no fear in executing those shots.”Kohli came out all guns blazing against spin, eventually hitting a match-winning fifty•BCCIAt the end of seven overs, Kohli had raced to 25, with Suryakumar on 6. Within four overs, Suryakumar had comfortably overtaken Kohli. Soon enough, he brought up his half-century with back-to-back sixes off Zampa in the 13th, with Kohli having slowed down to watch the show from the best seat in the house. This wasn’t to say Kohli went completely defensive. He took Zampa on from the get-go, walloping a massive six down the ground. More than the six, his manner of unsettling the bowler told you of how he’d meticulously planned to counter him.”I kind of made up my mind to go after him today,” Kohli said. “He’s a quality bowler. He kind of tries to control my scoring rate whenever we play, and I knew he is going to attack the stumps, so I was outside leg stump already. In the last game, I was kind of disappointed that after hitting a four, I went for a double rather than hitting him for a six, so I’m making a conscious effort to strike big in the middle overs, so that it can help the team’s situation.”Since he has returned from the break at the Asia Cup last month, Kohli has been visibly aggressive against spin. Shades of this dominance were visible in his takedown of Rashid Khan when he broke his century-drought earlier this month in Dubai. Such clarity can often be down to one’s confidence levels. On Sunday, Kohli arrived at the ground an hour and a half prior to the rest of the team and had a 30-minute net. This was a reinvigorated Kohli working his way back up to top form and wanting to cash in on good form that seemed to have deserted him for a while.”I’ve enjoyed my batting ever since I came back during the Asia Cup,” Kohli said. “I’m really enjoying my process, really working hard on my fitness all over again. I’m excited to go to the gym, excited go to practice and just contribute to the team’s cause. I know the last game wasn’t a big score, but I felt like I hit two impact boundaries, so am happy with my contributions. And am not putting myself down if I’m not getting big runs every time for the team. I’m just trying to stay in this space.”

He is slotted ahead of Latham and isn’t fussed about the low returns so far

Deivarayan Muthu23-Jan-2023Daryl Mitchell prides himself on being an adaptable player. Ahead of the 2021 T20 World Cup in the UAE, head coach Gary Stead had so much faith in his adaptability that he bumped him up to the opening slot along with Martin Guptill after Mitchell had originally been picked in the side as a finisher. In the World Cup semi-final against England in Abu Dhabi, Mitchell was particularly slow off the blocks in the powerplay, but he ramped up the pace to seal a famous victory for New Zealand.Now, ahead of this year’s ODI World Cup, Mitchell has been given a new role – a promotion to No. 4 ahead of Tom Latham. Mitchell has batted at the spot six times – five of which have come in Pakistan and India – managing only 93 runs at an average of 15.50 and strike rate of 72.09. But he isn’t fussed about the low returns and backs himself to slot into the new role.”I’m just proud to be representing New Zealand in whatever position I bat in,” Mitchell said on the eve of the third ODI in Indore. “If you’ve followed my career, you can see that I’ve batted in many positions across all three formats. So, I’m just doing my job; [there are] some good days and bad days. That’s the nature of the game we play and yeah really looking forward to tomorrow, as a group, to come out and put in a good performance and walk away with a win in the ODI series.”Watch LIVE in the UK and USA

You can watch the third ODI between India and New Zealand LIVE on ESPN Player in the UK and on ESPN+ in English and in Hindi in the USA.

Having also batted at different positions for his domestic teams – Northern Districts and Canterbury – Mitchell is ready do any job for New Zealand in ODI World Cup in India later this year. He is also pushing his case as a seam-bowling allrounder in the absence of Jimmy Neesham and Colin de Grandhomme who have become free agents. In the first ODI in Hyderabad, Mitchell was New Zealand’s most successful bowler with figures of 2 for 30 in his five overs when India amassed 349.”For me, it’s something that I guess as a skillset is to adapt to different numbers in the line-up as well as different situations and I’m a competitor at heart,” he said. “That’s why I play the game and I love competing to try and win those moments. That’s what drives me whether I open the batting or batting at No. 3, 4, 5 or 6. For me, that doesn’t worry me and it’s about getting stuck in and being really proud to represent the country, which is something I dreamt of doing since I was a little kid. And I’m very fortunate to be in this position. I do it with a smile on my face, and puff my chest out, and try and take them on.”Mitchell’s current role at No. 4 has often left him starting against spin. Though he has been dismissed by spinners four times in his last five ODI innings in the subcontinent, Mitchell is still one of the better players of spin in the New Zealand line-up. He uses his long reach to meet the pitch of the ball and is particularly strong at hitting down the ground.”I’m 31 years of age now and [I] know how my game works and how I want to go about the middle phases of one-day cricket [against spin],” Mitchell said. “Always in Test cricket, you do face a lot of spin, so yeah I’m comfortable with how I go about my game and again, it’s about trying to win little moments for the team and hopefully that means we can win games of cricket.”The absence of the seniors – Kane Williamson, Trent Boult and Tim Southee – for the ongoing series in India as well as the five ODIs in April-May in Pakistan, which will clash with IPL 2023 – will give New Zealand an opportunity to test out different combinations ahead of the ODI World Cup. Williamson (Gujarat Titans), Boult (Rajasthan Royals) and Southee (Kolkata Knight Riders) are set to be handed NOCs to feature in the entire IPL 2023.”I think everyone in this room knows that games of cricket like the other day [in Raipur] happen,” Mitchell said. “It’s the nature of the game. Yeah, you lose the toss and get put in on a slightly challenging surface and you’re five down for not many. Us as a group, we’re pretty level and it’s something we pride ourselves on. The group is really excited about tomorrow and about not having Tim and Kane here, I think it’s a great opportunity for our group to test out some new formations and different balances, and give different guys experience over here in India that a lot of us haven’t had.”

He went from being their top wicket-taker to being benched in the space of two IPL seasons, but the mystery spinner believes this is his year to bounce back

Deivarayan Muthu31-Mar-2023Varun Chakravarthy burst onto the cricketing scene in 2018 as a mystery spinner with a bagful of variations, but his life – and career – has had more twists and turns than there are variations in his repertoire.He started his career as a wicketkeeper-batter who wanted to become the “next Dinesh Karthik”, then had a cameo as an actor in a Tamil movie, , when he was trying to break through as an assistant director. Somewhere along the way he ditched cricket and movies for architecture. He then returned to cricket again as a mystery spinner who could turn the ball both ways at a quick pace.Related

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It was those abilities, a prized and uncommon skill set, that gave Kolkata Knight Riders’ attack a potent point of difference in the 2020 and 2021 IPLs. Soon after, Varun played for India in the 2021 T20 World Cup in the UAE. However, in IPL 2022, his form and rhythm plummeted so much that he was benched for three games. The ball wasn’t quite turning both ways or he wasn’t giving it much of a chance to do so by uncharacteristically tossing it up too full, which allowed batters to get underneath the length and pump him over the top. The mystery in his bowling seemed to have disappeared.

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There is one constant theme in Varun’s life: he has bounced back from setbacks – both on and off the field. In 2017, for example, he started his own architecture business, but the floods in Chennai that year damaged his sites, resulting in heavy losses. He managed to find a way to overcome that disappointment. If anything, setbacks have been catalysts for him to bounce back. Just like when he decided to switch his career path to cricket from architecture.Having experienced such lows in life, Varun didn’t allow a few bad games in the IPL last season to send him into a shell. “Yes, obviously, I take the lessons [from life],” he says. “Cricket is part of my life and whatever happens in life also affects cricket. So I try to implement life lessons into my cricket as well and what I have understood is that even during your ups and downs, you should be level, and the only people who will always be with you are your family.Varun went wicketless in the three T20 World Cup matches he played in the UAE in 2021•Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images”I know that I’m not foolproof or damage-proof and I was expecting this kind of an [IPL] season at some point. Everyone will go through a low time, but it’s about coming back.”Sriram Krishnamurthy, Varun’s coach at Madurai Panthers in the Tamil Nadu Premier League and a former coach with Northern Brave Men in New Zealand, credits Varun with maintaining an equilibrium in both his cricket and life. “Even though he had that IPL season he had, one good thing about Varun we’ve seen from day one is, he never gets too high and never gets too low,” Sriram says. “While his confidence was dented after the last IPL, he wasn’t broken, and that comes down to the person that he is. He’s very practical and realistic about understanding the game and life per se. That’s a big strength of his because I feel like for someone who has had the life he has – being a late entrant into cricket – and how far he has gone, for anyone else, it could have taken them away from reality. We’ve seen other players get lost after this sort of quick success, whereas I feel with Varun, he is always focused on what he has to do and I feel the mental element of bouncing back from failures is there with him.”

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What went wrong with Varun last season?Having worked his way up from a tennis-ball background, he previously hadn’t played or practised as much as he did in the last five years. As a result, he veered away from his strengths and some undesirable technical changes also crept into his bowling. His run-up became slower, his lengths fuller, and overall his bowling lost some of its fizz.In the UAE, Varun got some of his fuller ones to skid or hold off the pitch, but on fairly easy-paced hit-through-the line Indian tracks last season, batters lined him up easily. According to ESPNcricinfo’s logs, he conceded 107 runs off 48 full balls last IPL.Around the time he was relegated to the sidelines by the Knight Riders, he sat down and watched his old videos to remedy his bowling. “After those games, I had a break,” Varun says. I was basically trying to flight the ball, which was not my expertise. I [now] bowl quicker and that has worked for me. It was better sticking to that. Personally, I worked on my run-up as well. I realised it quite late, but I came to know that was a mistake.Sriram Krishnamurthy, Madurai Panthers coach: “If, with his pace, Varun ensures the batsman doesn’t have much time to think, I feel that will set him up well”•BCCI”I [had] just started running slower because… if a cricketer practises for a long time again and again, there are a few basics you might forget, which you usually get right. It was a case of that and then when I watched previous videos of my bowling, I realised I was running slow. Then my run-up was quicker, like what it was before, and I feel that was the difference. The last three matches for KKR went well for me after the break.”Once he returned to action for Knight Riders in the last stretch of IPL 2022, Varun hit the pitch much harder, increased his pace, dragged his length back, and denied batters easy access to the boundary. He stuck to his guns in the TNPL 2022 that followed and he and Sriram tried to recreate what had worked for Varun when he first broke into the IPL.”I remember having a conversation with him about what he was doing well when he was going well, in terms of the pace and length he bowled,” Sriram recalls. “By being slower through the air and bowling fuller, he was also giving batsmen an opportunity to sort of get to the pitch of the ball, and when you’re doing that you take away the element of [doubt about] which way the ball is going to go. From that perspective, we discussed how he was successful by bowling that length or slightly back of a length, which made the batsmen play him pretty much only off the pitch. The quicker pace with which he bowls means batsmen will have slightly less time to react.”He did go towards doing something different in the last IPL. For a player to evolve, he has to constantly keep working, and that was probably the journey Varun was going on as well. On the basis of performance, it didn’t necessarily reflect too well on how he did for KKR in that IPL, which again dented his confidence a little bit. But again, the clarity he had about his own bowling and whatever the conversation we had was not about me telling him what to do, but it was a process of rediscovering what he did well before, and to his credit, he was fully aware of his strengths. So he recreated that confidence. [Also] there is a difference in the quality of batting in TNPL and IPL. So it gives him a bit more space and time to get his confidence back, so to say.”With the IPL returning to the home-and-away format, Varun is set to play for KKR at Eden Gardens for the first time. He is usually not a big turner of the ball and particularly relishes bowling on bouncier or even flatter pitches. With Eden Gardens no longer the turner that it once used to be, Sriram thinks Varun has the tools to be penetrative at the venue.After his three-game break in the IPL last year, Varun returned to take two wickets in two games•BCCI”Varun is slightly taller than most average spinners and the other thing is his high release point,” Sriram says. “That release point helps him get bounce off the wicket. He has to bowl that length to extract that bounce. If he uses his height and release point… like he said, maybe he’s not a massive turner of the ball, but he turns the ball enough. If he ensures that the batsman doesn’t have too much time to sit back and think, which comes down to the pace at which Varun bowls, then I feel that will set him up well.”Varun has tuned up for the new IPL season after getting ample game time with Tamil Nadu in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, Madurai Panthers in the TNPL, and Vijay CC in the Chennai league during the city’s oppressive summer.”At Tamil Nadu and in the TNPL, they’ve been using me as a death bowler, so it’s something that challenges me and hopefully I’ll be able to do the job in the IPL as well,” Varun says. “KKR have shown a lot of faith in me, which is important for any player. The KKR management has always been in constant touch with me on how I’m doing and all those things. I’ll always be grateful to KKR for what they’ve bestowed upon me and the responsibility that they’ve given me.”Right after the end of the IPL, we had another camp at the KKR academy. Normally people have a camp before the IPL, but the same players were part of another camp. You don’t know if you will be retained or not, but still we trained with the same bunch of guys. That’s something I liked about what they did last year, and it basically helped our preparation for Syed Mushtaq Ali [Trophy]. Regardless of whether they’re going to retain that player or not, they called all the Indians for the camp again. Hopefully, I can live up to the expectations this IPL.”As a retained player, the expectations on Varun to deliver are even greater this IPL and whichever way this season goes, it could well add another twist to his career.

Only seven American-born players were picked at the draft, suggesting the league may be located in the USA but it’s not happening for the USA

Peter Della Penna24-Mar-2023On Sunday night at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, all sorts of questions could be explored walking around this wondrous complex dedicated to the history and future of space exploration. On entering, to the left, visitors couldn’t have missed a prominent exhibit dedicated to the new Artemis shuttle program which launched last November. Who might be the first woman to walk on the moon, one might ask? How many years until an astronaut lands on Mars?By the end of that evening’s Major League Cricket (MLC) player draft, conducted at the sprawling facility, a different question took center stage. One that might even stump NASA’s astrophysicists and rocket scientists: What is a local cricketer in the MLC?Judging by the list of 54 players chosen in the draft (for domestic players) it’s entirely possible that if you asked any of the hundreds of people present, you might not be able to get two people to give the same answer.Most coaches, players and fans within the USA have been sold the premise that the MLC is going to provide new opportunities for American players to aid their development by allowing them to play with and against some of the world’s elite stars. That was highlighted by the announcement of the first six international signings unveiled on draft night, headlined by Aaron Finch, Mitchell Marsh and Quinton de Kock.Related

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But when it came to the drafting, a steady stream of messages and social media posts highlighted both the excitement and at times dismay as to who plays as a “local” player alongside those stars. In the first round, three USA national team players were drafted: Steven Taylor, Ali Khan and Rusty Theron. All three have had very different journeys to play for USA.Taylor was born and raised in Florida. He is USA’s all-time leading scorer in T20Is and once flirted with playing for the West Indies by using his parents’ Jamaican heritage. He was briefly even contracted with Jamaica’s first-class team in 2017. He turned a standout knock of 88 off 71 balls in the 2017 CWI Super50 semi-final into a $30,000 contract with Guyana Amazon Warriors in the CPL, making him the highest paid American player in a T20 franchise league at the time. The $75,000 slot he’ll get for being the third overall pick by MI New York is not only two-and-a-half times what he got in the CPL, but nearly as much as he got in 2019 as one of USA’s first centrally contracted players. Except, that was for 12 months’ work compared to sweating out as few as five match days during MLC.Khan was born in Pakistan, moved with his family to Ohio at the age of 18 and became a naturalized citizen in 2015. That was well before he debuted for USA in 2016 and turned into a regular on the global T20 franchise circuit in the summer of 2018. But his pathway to fifth overall pick by Los Angeles Knight Riders was destined once he had been part of the Knight Riders set-ups in the CPL, IPL, and ILT20.Theron grew up in and represented South Africa before retiring and seeking out a university degree in education in Florida. His stay was meant to be temporary until he met his wife, got married and got back into cricket on the US club scene. After qualifying under the ICC’s three-year residency criteria, he was eventually picked for a USA debut in 2019.Elsewhere in the first round, Corey Anderson was drafted by San Francisco Unicorns. He retired from international cricket several years ago and migrated to Texas just ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic to be nearer to his then fiancée and now wife’s family. He has also met the three-year residency threshold to be eligible to play for USA. Liam Plunkett and Shehan Jayasuriya, both drafted in the second round, have also decided to settle in the USA over the last two years, through marriage.In different ways, these journeys paint a picture of a cricket league’s spin on the American dream, especially for a kid growing up in Texas wanting to be the next Taylor or Khan: “Hey kid, you can make an honest living as a professional cricketer right here in America.” As when 20-year-old Dallas native Ali Sheikh, who has played for USA Under-19, but is yet to get a senior team cap, was taken in the sixth round for $25,000. That’s not such a bad part-time summer job for a college student at the University of Texas at Dallas. If he does well enough, it’ll come off more like a summer internship leading to a full-time cricket job post-grad.Franchises gathered inside NASA Space Center Houston for the MLC Draft•Peter Della PennaHowever, snaking through the rest of the draft, that dream started to get fuzzier. The lack of USA national team qualified players selected became increasingly hard to ignore, or the lack of outright American citizens. This was, after all, a draft for local players. Following the selection of Taylor third overall, it took until the fourth round for a second American-born player to be picked: Nosthush Kenjige 22nd overall pick, joining Taylor at MI New York.But a pick which drew much more scrutiny came one selection earlier when Chaitanya Bishnoi was taken by San Francisco Unicorns. In a media release issued by MLC on March 6 to highlight the shortlist of 102 players in the draft pool – including 56 who were divided into four teams for a T20 quadrangular played in front of coaches and scouts from the six MLC franchises – there was no mention of Bishnoi, a 28-year-old journeyman from Delhi who at one time was in the Chennai Super Kings squad but never made it to a starting XI. As recently as January, Bishnoi was suiting up for Haryana in the Ranji Trophy. Instead, there was a ‘Chetan Bish’, presumably Bishnoi’s Clark Kent alter ego who had left India at the start of March, rocked up to Houston and was deemed a “local” player.When Bishnoi walked up on stage to collect his new Unicorns cap in the tradition of American drafts and pose for a photo with tournament director Justin Geale, there were smiles on the dais mixed with the pained grins of several USA squad players in the crowd. Many of those without a central contract who live paycheck to paycheck, along with their peers currently on an ODI tour in Namibia, wound up undrafted while Bishnoi was fetching a $40,000 purse designated for fourth-round picks.When asked for their definition of “local”, an MLC official said: “A player needs to demonstrate that they will hold a ‘qualified visa’, have established their ‘primary and permanent residence’ in the US, and will continue to satisfy the ICC’s guideline regarding ten out of 12 months for three consecutive years.” That may be a reasonable definition but satisfying all three statutes after spending a handful of days in the country strains credulity, especially since Bishnoi was specifically described in MLC documents as a “player currently transitioning to eligible visa to be classified as domestic player”. There is also a subtle but important difference in the language used by MLC, giving the green light to players who “will” pledge to stay in the USA for three years, versus the ICC guideline requiring non-citizen players to have already lived in the USA for three years.To be fair, Bishnoi was not the only one that MLC appears to have flexed their domestic player statute for, though he is the only one to bizarrely alter his name upon arrival. Mukhtar Ahmed and Saif Badar, 30 and 24 respectively, also arrived at the 11th hour into Texas for the quadrangular T20s held the week before the draft, having been part of the Pakistan domestic set-up during the 2022-23 season. Mukhtar went in the second round for $65,000 and Badar in round seven for $15,000.USA players on the fringe of being drafted might have been able to reconcile this if they saw the “local player” criteria being massaged to accommodate, say, Virat Kohli. But many people in US cricket circles are struggling to understand why MLC officials were so desperate to shoehorn a trio of fairly obscure names into the draft who will not move the needle one bit when it comes to marketing exposure, ticket sales or TV ratings.In the end, players with deep ties to the national team were few and far between among draft selections. Only seven American-born players (13% of the picks) were chosen, including four in the Under-23 development category. Though there is a requirement to have an Under-23 player in each squad, there’s no mandate to play them in the XI. It means that realistically, only three franchises may have a solitary American-born player in their starting XI of the 66 players who will make their MLC debut from July 13.Players with deep ties to the USA national team were few and far between among the MLC draft selections•Peter Della PennaSeparate from that, there is miniscule representation of USA national team players on the whole. Only 15 out of the 54 picks were players who have been capped for the senior or Under-19 teams. When all the overseas signings are finalised, it means that at best an average of two USA players will be in any squad.This is in stark contrast to, as a relevant example, the UAE’s ILT20. Though nine overseas players were allowed in any starting XI, organisers mandated that each squad pick four UAE-qualified players and two in every starting XI. MLC will allow six overseas players in their starting XI, yet their malleable definition of “local” – along with no mandate to specifically pick a minimum number of USA-qualified players – means that there may be numerous matches where not a single USA national team player takes the field.The glowing exception is MI New York. Despite their stubbornly goofy branding in tagging Mumbai into the name of every domestic city-based franchise they have a stake in, MI New York has the most American flavour by far. They used six of their nine draft picks – double the next best – on USA squad players. That’s thanks in large part to former USA head coach J Arunkumar in their backroom. If he thought the quality of a USA player was no good, he could easily have ignored his former charges. Instead, he has vouched for their quality. If that many are good enough for MI New York, why not other teams?At the other end, Washington Freedom and San Francisco Unicorns only took one USA squad member each. Meanwhile, a total of 22 current or former USA squad members at junior or senior level went undrafted out of the final pool of 102 players. The snubs include the three batting heroes of USA’s first ever T20I win over a Full Member nation in December 2021 against Ireland: Sushant Modani, Gajanand Singh and Marty Kain. That kind of unbalanced equation gives off the impression that while the league may be located in the USA, it may not necessarily be happening for the USA.Amid reminders of Neil Armstrong’s historic walk on the moon, the ability for current or former overseas stars to cash in some American greenbacks on the T20 circuit took a giant leap for cricketkind on Sunday night. Yet, a much smaller step was taken to advance vital cricket playing ambitions and opportunities for the ‘local’ man.

Returning to the land of his forefathers for the World Cup, the Netherlands opener is hoping to turn his excellent start into something bigger

Himanshu Agrawal07-Oct-2023Vikramjit Singh, one of the biggest positives for Netherlands in their opening match against Pakistan, is briefly lost for words as he thinks back to one of his favourite shots from that half-century. He mimics the flick shot that he picked from a near fourth-stump line off Shaheen Shah Afridi. “That was sweet, I really enjoyed that,” he says with a smile.Vikramjit hit Shaheen for three boundaries, all inside the powerplay, to give Netherlands an excellent start in their chase of 287. His third-wicket stand with Bas de Leede briefly kept Pakistan on tenterhooks, before his toe-ended pull shot that found deep midwicket led to a collapse. A couple of overs earlier, he had cleared the same long boundary by playing a similar shot off legspinner Shadab Khan. He said he didn’t rue attempting the shot, but wished to have timed it better.On Monday, Vikramjit will have another opportunity. Perhaps he will have the chance to put to action the learnings from having watched his “idol” Quinton de Kock make bruising century in South Africa’s World Cup opener in New Delhi. It was an off day for Netherlands, so Vikramjit watched the match closely. He first met de Kock at the T20 World Cup last year, where he couldn’t stop asking him questions.”The backlift, him playing away from his body, the way he cuts the ball – I want to bat like him every time I go out there,” Vikramjit had told ESPNcricinfo prior to the World Cup. “The chat I had with him [at the 2022 T20 World Cup] was about the way he goes about it, what he thinks when the bowler is running in, etc. Then we had a series against South Africa, when again I had a chat with him.”Related

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Vikramjit, like a couple of others from his team, is returning to the country of his forefathers for the World Cup. While there are no games in Punjab, where his family hails from, there is still an air of familiarity about it for him.Prior to coming to Hyderabad, he spent ten days in Bengaluru training on different surfaces. As such, Vikramjit often makes trips back to India to play, and has spent considerable time training with former India Under-19 World Cup winner Taruwar Kohli in Jalandhar. Kohli’s familiarity with Vikramjit grew during his club cricket stint in the Netherlands between 2017 and 2019, when he would often frequent Vikramjit’s house. That eventually grew into a mentor-mentee relation.Vikramjit Singh’s batting is more fearless than his mentor, Taruwar Kohli’s•KNCB/Gerhard van der LaarseSince 2021, the two have trained together at Kohli’s academy, with the help of robo-arms, bowling machines and dedicated coaches. Vikramjit has fed off the knowledge of his mentor-cum-friend, but there is one difference. While Kohli’s batting was mostly orthodox, Vikramjit’s is a little more enterprising.”For me, it’s about getting used to the speed of the game,” Vikramjit says. “In international cricket, everything happens so much quicker. Not only is the ball being bowled faster, but also the game is moving so quickly. Just getting used to that takes a little bit. When you get into the professional set-up, you learn not only cricket-wise but also off the field – like how disciplined you need to be.”Much of Vikramjit’s early learnings were shaped by his father, Harpreet, who was also his first coach. The solid grounding helped Vikramjit make a name in the Under-12s and Under-15s. At 14, he even got a bat sponsorship from Jalandhar-based manufacturers BAS, which was incidentally facilitated by Ramesh Kohli, Taruwar’s uncle and one of the partners in the company.The early age-group promise helped him earn a national cap at 16 when he made his T20I debut against Scotland in 2019 following a strong endorsement from former Netherlands captain Peter Borren. An ODI debut followed in 2022, one that set in motion his trip to the World Cup. This is a fresh chapter in a journey that began in a tiny village near Jalandhar called Cheema Khurd.Vikramjit, who was born there, moved to the Netherlands when he was “three or four” after Harpreet took over a transport business established by his father. Vikramjit remembers watching the 2011 World Cup on TV and dreaming of playing in one.”My grandparents are the ones who migrated to the Netherlands,” he says. “My dad, and all my uncles and aunts, was born there. Dad was an amateur cricketer. I joined him at times, and really walked in his footsteps.”

“In international cricket, everything happens so much quicker. Not only is the ball being bowled faster, but also the game is moving so quickly. Just getting used to that takes a little bit”

Vikramjit went to a Dutch school and made Dutch friends, which meant playing a lot of football, the country’s most popular sport. However, cricket didn’t leave him.The defining moment of his young career came during the ODI World Cup Qualifier this June, when Netherlands were fighting for one of the two qualifying spots. Against hosts Zimbabwe, Vikramjit was struggling on 8 off 23 but picked up pace to finish with a then-career-best 88 off 111 to lay the foundation for Netherlands’ total of 315, at the time their joint-highest in the format.When facing West Indies in the same tournament, he went from 0 off 6 to 37 off 32 in a chase of 375. Netherlands eventually won the game via a Super Over, having tied the game with their highest ODI total. His “best innings” came when he cracked 110 from 109 deliveries against Oman in the Super Sixes and took home the Player-of-the-Match award.”I don’t like remembering my innings, but you still always remember the first hundred,” he says. “That was quite special.” Ultimately, Netherlands – along with Sri Lanka – made it through to the World Cup. Netherlands had finished last in the 13-team ODI Super League but had managed to take down the big boys en route to India for the ten-team World Cup.”The Super League was a great opportunity for us to showcase what we’re made of,” Vikramjit says. “It was great playing big names and bigger teams. But hopefully we can do well in the World Cup, and the ICC looks at us and says, ‘These guys are here to play as well. They are not just an Associate team.'”Perhaps a win or two against the big boys in the coming weeks will further drive home that point. For now, Vikramjit is happy to revel in an excellent start that he hopes to transform into something bigger.