They play an anchor’s role for their sides, but they need to constantly adapt so as not to become redundant

Tim Wigmore and Freddie Wilde29-Sep-2020Cricket 2.0: Inside the T20 Revolution

“Batting like in a Test match in Twenty20 cricket is not really going to work.”
Kane Williamson

He was already well on his way to being hailed as his country’s finest ever batsman and, at 27, was international captain and in his prime. Yet there was a growing feeling that, in Twenty20, his multifarious gifts did not translate into being an asset for his country.”If Kane Williamson doesn’t open in T20, he shouldn’t be playing,” declared the former New Zealand player turned commentator Simon Doull in February 2018. “His record opening is very good – at three and four, it’s not that great. But he shouldn’t be in the T20 side.”Doull’s concerns were not misguided. In his previous two T20 innings, Williamson had scored 9 off 14 balls and 8 off 21, injuring his side in two ways: not scoring many runs and, just as importantly, chewing up a lot of balls.ALSO READ: Extract: Cricket 2.0: The greatest T20 XI of all timeEven as Williamson was well-established among the leading three cross-format international batsmen of his generation, along with Virat Kohli and Steve Smith, there was a gnawing sense that the demands of T20 were outgrowing his classical batsmanship. In the previous year’s Caribbean Premier League, Williamson mustered 172 runs at an average of 17.20 – and a strike rate of just 89. Williamson was used both as an opener and a number four, but with equally dire results. As he painfully tried to muscle boundaries, he resembled an opera singer struggling to sing pop.Williamson’s fate spoke to broader changes in the game: the vastly divergent skills required in T20 and Test cricket. For those like Williamson who were brilliant Test and ODI players, the schedule did not allow them as much space to play T20 as short-format specialists. And T20, with its emphasis on muscularity and power, simply seemed to have no need for what orthodox Test batsmen could do, even when they were as fantastic as Williamson.Then, a funny thing happened. In his very next game after Doull’s comments, Williamson – batting at number three, just as Doull said that he should not – crafted 72 from 46 balls, winning man of the match in New Zealand’s victory over England. In the 2018 Indian Premier League, which began two months later, Williamson enjoyed the third most prolific seasons of any batsman in IPL history, scoring 735 runs at an average of 52.50 – but, most importantly, with an excellent strike rate of 142. Williamson captained Sunrisers Hyderabad to the top of the IPL league stages – they would eventually be losing finalists. In the process he suggested that reports of the death of classical batsmen in T20 had been exaggerated.

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The debate around the value of classical batsmen such as Williamson in T20 spoke to wider conflicts between old and new, defence and attack and style and substance.

As understanding of the realignment between attack and defence in T20 grew, batsmen became more adept at power-hitting. And so teams began to realise that having a batting order with more than one or two classicists was inappropriate

T20 heralded a shift in the nature of batting, emphasising aggression, power and boundary-hitting. Players like Andrew Symonds, Virender Sehwag, Brendon McCullum, Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and MS Dhoni, and later AB de Villiers, David Warner, Aaron Finch, Jos Buttler, Andre Russell, Glenn Maxwell and Hardik Pandya, embodied this approach.The evolution ran contrary to the most prized batting skills in Tests and ODIs – wicket preservation and strike rotation. And so it led to some of the world’s leading batsmen – who played long innings, but often fell short in terms of scoring rate – being evaluated in a different way. ‘Batting like in a Test match in Twenty20 cricket is not really going to work,’ said Williamson.The very notion of some of the world’s best Test and ODI cricketers being ill-suited to T20 illustrated how radically T20 differed from its older siblings. That it was classical batsmen who were squeezed by the shortest format was particularly pertinent because this resonated with the concerns of traditionalists about the future of the game – that ultimately T20 was a simplified game, morally and intellectually inferior. There was a profound sense that traditional cricket lovers wanted classical batsmen to succeed in T20 – and that acceptance of the sporting merits of the format partly hinged on them doing so.”Mahela Jayawardene shows beauty can thrive in game of beastly hitters,” wrote a headline in The Guardian during the 2010 T20 World Cup, when Sri Lanka’s Jayawardene was top-scorer. “This may well be seen as a tournament for the musclemen, those powerhouses who can clear the front leg out of the way and force the ball vast distances beyond the boundary,” The Guardian’s esteemed chief cricket correspondent, Mike Selvey, wrote in his article. “Jayawardene represents the antithesis to this, a slender presence, but one whose wrists are of tungsten and whose technique is a thing of beauty.” Similarly, ESPNCricinfo gushed that “Jayawardene is showing the world that an orthodox approach can be wildly successful in Twenty20.” The implication was that this notion made T20 an altogether more satisfying game for those reared on the longer formats.ALSO READ: Do you really want Virat Kohli in your T20 XI?After the 2017 IPL – when Hashim Amla, another orthodox Test great had great success – Sunil Gavaskar, one of India’s greatest Test batsmen, launched a staunch defence of their more conservative approach. “T20 is not about sixes… T20 is about making sure that there are no dot balls and both these batsmen have made sure that there are very few dot balls,” Gavaskar said. The comment did not stand up analytically: in T20, the number of boundaries that a team hits is a far better predictor of whether they will win than the number of dot balls they allow. But Gavaskar’s comments distilled the desperation for T20 to find a place for archetypal Test batsmen.The world’s best batsmen in Test and ODI cricket were in many ways considered the sport’s finest artisans – very elegant players, with supreme technical proficiency in attack and defence. In the 1990s and 2000s Sachin Tendulkar became the sport’s first global mega-star and was one of a coterie of modern batting greats alongside Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis and the Sri Lankan pair of Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara. In the 2010s the torches were passed to India’s Virat Kohli, Australia’s Smith, New Zealand’s Williamson and England’s Joe Root. These players appeared to find a sweet-spot between many of batting’s trade-offs: wicket preservation and scoring rate; strike rotation and boundary hitting; strength against pace and strength against spin.In the early years of T20 many teams blithely assumed that the very best Test players would simply be good 20-over players. Royal Challengers Bangalore’s batting order in the inaugural IPL was a perfect example of this misunderstanding. Bangalore signed the great Test batsman Rahul Dravid as an ‘icon’ player and then proceeded to build an entire batting order of similarly orthodox players at the auction: Kallis, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Mark Boucher and Wasim Jaffer, as well as the 18-year-old prodigy Kohli. This batting order was quickly exposed as lacking the requisite power: no team in the 2008 IPL hit fewer boundaries or scored at a slower rate.As understanding of the realignment between attack and defence in T20 grew, batsmen became more adept at power-hitting. And so teams began to realise that having a batting order with more than one or two classicists was inappropriate for the demands of the modern game.Ajinkya Rahane’s 35-ball 40 in the 2016 World T20 semi-final might look like a valuable contribution on the scorecard but it effectively cost India eight runs in the game•IDI/Getty Images”At the start of T20 you’d have one or two hitters,” recalled Luke Wright, who played more than 300 T20 matches in a career that started in 2004. “So in terms of setting a score you had to have one or two players really sit in an anchor role. And you don’t really see that anymore: it is mainly hitters.”This evolution was turbulent. Understanding, particularly among traditionalists, was complicated by batting’s primary statistical measure: the batting average. In longer formats, this was an effective measure of success or failure for batsmen. But in T20 batsmen could make a large number of runs while harming their team’s chances of winning. This was a particularly acute problem for classical batsmen who were very comfortable playing long innings but who struggled to do so at a fast rate.In the 2016 T20 World Cup semi-final, Ajinkya Rahane provided a perfect example of the danger of orthodox batsmen in T20 when he played a classic ‘match-losing innings’. Rahane was a very elegant player – strong off the front and back foot, adept against pace and spin and a natural timer of the ball – and built a fine Test career. But he was also exactly the kind T20 was leaving behind.Batting first at the Wankhede Stadium, a venue known for high scores, Rahane scored 40 off 35 balls – an excellent strike rate even in ODIs, but pedestrian for a T20 on a high-scoring ground – while quick scoring from the rest of India’s top order saw them post 192 for 2 from their 20 overs. Rahane had faced 29% of India’s deliveries and only scored 20% of their runs. He had scored at 6.84 runs per over while the rest of his teammates had scored at 10.08 runs per over. Rahane’s long innings also prevented powerful lower order batsmen Hardik and Suresh Raina from even batting. West Indies chased India’s target down with seven wickets and two balls to spare.ALSO READ: ‘Learn to be aggressive and then I will teach you defence’ – Stephen FlemingAccording to the traditional batting average Rahane’s 40 runs was a significant contribution – the highest batting average in T20 history for anyone with 1000 runs by June 2020 was 43.01 by Babar Azam. But Rahane’s innings was totally out of sync with the match around it.Perhaps it was revealing that Rahane’s innings came in such a high-octane match. When the stakes were highest – in knock-out matches – teams could have a tendency to play more defensively. But such fear of failure meant they embraced suboptimal tactics: any team who prioritised minimising the risks of a collapse was liable to score too slowly.It wasn’t until around 2012 that meaningful data analysis started to become commonplace and not until nearer the end of the decade that such measures became publicly available. One such measure was CricViz’s match impact, which sought to quantify the impact – positive or negative – of players on the scorecard. By this measure, Rahane’s innings in Mumbai cost India eight runs compared to an average player batting in the same situation – comfortably the worst contribution in India’s innings despite it being the second highest individual score.As awareness of the downsides of innings such as Rahane’s grew, so too did the concept of ‘roles’ in a T20 side. No role was more pivotal than that of the orthodox batsman. While an entire batting order of classicists was inappropriate there could, in certain situations, be value to one – or possibly two – such players, depending on the balance of the rest of their batting line-up.

The most effective anchors – who maintained healthy scoring rates while not compromising wicket preservation – gave batsmen around them freedom to bat aggressively, because they were not fearful that their team could collapse

The growth and rise of power-hitters meant teams were increasingly stocked with aggressive batsmen. These players were capable of scoring rates well out of reach of players like Williamson and Rahane but their attacking approach made them less secure at the crease and so prone to playing shorter innings on average. An entire batting order of aggressive hitters could, if several fired together, score huge totals but their one-dimensional nature meant they were also prone to collapse and could flounder in tougher batting conditions. In the 2019/20 Big Bash, Brisbane Heat scored 209 for 4, 109 all out and 212 for 3 in consecutive matches, a run that embodied the boom or bust nature of their approach.The proliferation of big hitters lent justification for the presence of a counter-balance, a batsman or two who scored slightly more slowly but could do so more consistently. It was here that the skills of orthodox batsmen came to the fore.Such players like Williamson lent stability to their teams. Their exemplary techniques and general robustness against both pace and spin meant that they could succeed in a range of situations and a multitude of conditions. In this respect these classical players resembled all-court players in tennis, who could succeed on a variety of different surfaces. Many of T20’s new-age players, like McCullum and Maxwell, were particularly destructive in good batting conditions – which were commonplace on the T20 circuit. But on slower, lower pitches or on pitches that gripped and turned, their aggressive, swing-through-the-line approach was far less effective.So, among most teams a very specific role emerged for the orthodox batsmen – the ‘anchor’. These batsmen were tasked with holding the team’s innings together and enabling the more aggressive players to bat around them. Anchors were generally deployed either as an opener or a number three; either way, they sought to bat for a significant period of the innings to provide stability. For players of such technical quality this part of the job was not a problem. Babar, for example, averaged 35 balls per dismissal – almost one-third of an entire innings.ALSO READ: Sidharth Monga: How to watch a T20 gameThe bigger and more pressing challenge was scoring quickly enough. As T20 run rates rose, they dragged the lower limits of what was acceptable from orthodox players with them. In the first half of the 2010s, strike rates of around 120 were passable and strength against pace was sufficient – Australia’s Michael Klinger, who played for the great Perth Scorchers dynasty, was the archetypal early anchor. But as the game changed that floor was lifted up towards strike rates of 130, which in turn required improvement against spin, and then in higher scoring leagues sometimes strike rates in excess of 140 were demanded from anchors. This shift quickly placed pressure on players of Klinger’s ilk, amplifying the difficulty of the role. Kohli’s evolution encapsulated the changing demands on anchors; he lifted his strike rate from 125 from 2008-2015 to 143 from 2016 to June 2020.It was generally accepted that anchors would score more slowly than the innings run rate – but if they did so by much, they could become a drag on their team. These pressures were further accentuated by the belief among many analysts that wickets were overvalued in T20 and teams should bat with more aggression.Yet, for all the scientific thinking applied to T20, elements to the anchor role were much harder to quantify. The most effective anchors – who maintained healthy scoring rates while not compromising wicket preservation – gave batsmen around them freedom to bat aggressively, because they were not fearful that their team could collapse. The benefits of the anchor’s ability to rotate strike reliably, particularly scoring singles to ensure a more dominant batsman could move on strike, was also difficult to measure; such batsmen could ensure their most destructive players could face the most balls possible and, if need be, protect unreliable hitters from the opponent’s best bowler. Perhaps most significantly, the very best anchor players brought versatility on a variety of pitches and against different types of bowlers and were savvy enough to adjust their games depending on the match situation.These various benefits meant that an anchor could play an innings that could be seen – or even calculated – to have a slight negative impact, yet helped their team by empowering more destructive players. The best anchors were the ultimate role players.Virat Kohli has lifted his T20 strike rate from 125 from 2008-2015 to 143 from 2016 to June 2020•BCCIAt times, the role required forgoing their wicket for the greater good of the team. This acceptance was crucial because failure to do so could result in match losing innings such as Rahane’s in Mumbai.Williamson was one anchor who recognised the role demanded selflessness. ‘I believe T20 cricket is, out of all the formats, the most “team” format of cricket,’ he said. ‘There are innings that I think we’ve all seen in the past where guys have put themselves maybe before the team situation. And then scoring a big score looks really nice but it might have actually been to the detriment of the team.’Anchor batsmen were best seen as facilitating players, akin to playmakers in football: players whose contribution could be unobtrusive and sometimes hard to quantify, but who set up the game for their teammates.Ultimately, the deployment of one or two anchor batsmen in a T20 line-up amounted to what behavioural economists described as ‘defensive decision-making.’ This is the idea that in medicine, the stock market and beyond, humans don’t make decisions that are optimal. Instead, they make decisions to ‘cover their ass’, as Gerd Gigerenzer argues in Daily Telegraph

Pakistan’s most effective batsmen have not been their prettiest – think Javed Miandad, Saleem Malik and Saeed Anwar. But these five combined runs with elegance

Shamya Dasgupta10-Aug-2020Majid Khan
Majid’s last Test had a fun batting order: Mohsin Khan (pretty), Mudassar Nazar (not pretty), Majid Khan (pretty), Javed Miandad (not pretty), Zaheer Abbas (pretty) and Saleem Malik (not pretty). Unfortunately, Majid fell for a 13-ball duck in that game. But he had made a name as a batsman most pleasing to the eye over the course of a near-20-year-long Test career. Right-handed Majid was elegant in the way left-hand batsmen usually are, with flowing drives and pulls, his bat coming down in a graceful arc. What gave him an air of sophistication was the somewhat laidback appearance at the crease, which led to more than one critic suggesting that it didn’t matter to him enough. It certainly did. A long and quite successful career at first-class and Test level proves that.Zaheer Abbas
One of Pakistan’s absolute greats, Abbas was, at his best, almost the perfect batsman, beautiful to watch and someone his team could count on to lead the charge – not always a given with batsmen so pleasing to the eye. Abbas finished with a Test average of 44.79. In Australia, it was 40.62, and in England, where he also found a happy, long-term home with Gloucestershire, it was 56.06. He wasn’t quite so successful in India, strangely, or New Zealand and the West Indies. But wherever he played, Abbas wowed onlookers like few could at the time, certainly among right-handers. In many ways, he was the anti-Viv Richards. Both Richards and he scored a lot of runs and dominated attacks, and were equally stylish in their different ways, but Richards was more hammer ’em while Abbas was knife through butter. He was especially alluring because he hit so many boundaries and looked, at times, like he was worried about hurting the ball when banishing it.Is there a prettier off-drive in the game than Babar Azam’s?•Getty ImagesMohsin Khan
Mohsin Khan walked away from the game at the age of 31 to become an actor in India. He left with some pretty impressive performances and numbers to his name, but they don’t tell of how, in late 1983, he seemed like he could make himself taller than he was at the crease and get on top of the bounce from Dennis Lillee, Geoff Lawson, Rodney Hogg and Carl Rackemann to score 390 runs at 43.33 in a five-Test series in Australia. At the time, pace and bounce were the weaknesses of many an opening bat from the subcontinent, but Mohsin – tall and loose-limbed, with in-vogue long hair – was cut from a different cloth (and even in the regulation whites of the time, he looked more stylish than his team-mates). He could have played on, surely, and had he done so it would have only made Pakistan that much more appealing a side.Mohammad Yousuf
From the mid-1980s, we jump straight to the late-1990s and 2000s, and to the man who started out as Yousuf Youhana but really came into his own after changing his name to Mohammad Yousuf. Like Abbas before him, the best part about Yousuf was how well he balanced a hunger for runs with grace and grandeur. With 7530 runs in 90 Tests, at an average of 52.29, and 9720 in 288 ODIs at 41.71, he is among Pakistan’s top five run-getters in both formats. Like the other three, Yousuf was supple, graceful, and – what’s the best word? – calm. Calm himself, of course, and so unhurried, so in control, so peaceful that he created a sense of serenity while he was out in the middle. Was it the exaggerated backlift? Was it the time he seemed to create between bowler releasing ball and batsman doing something about it? Or was it, maybe, Younis Khan and Inzamam-ul-Haq on either side of him in the batting order? Yousuf stood out. An unusual run-machine who rarely ever looked clumsy.Babar Azam
Some say he should be included in the current Fab Four – lose one of Steve Smith, Kane Williamson, Virat Kohli and Joe Root. That, or just make it the Fab Five because there can’t be a list of great current-day batsmen without this young man. It’s tough to say exactly why he sets the pulse racing because Azam is not quite as obviously magnificent as the other four stylists on this list. He isn’t even built like them; not as languid nor as nimble. The thing about him is that he never looks ugly, or gauche, not for a moment. His statements on style aren’t as conspicuous as, say, Williamson’s, but you’ll find them – enough to be bowled over – if you are attentive. Think soft-shouldered suits and a dollop of the blasé. That’s Azam.

Stats highlights from the first day of the Test between India and England in Chennai

ESPNcricinfo stats team05-Feb-20217 Centuries for Joe Root in the last 15 innings when he has scored a fifty. Excluding the one against West Indies at Old Trafford in 2018, when he remained unbeaten on 68, his conversion rate to hundreds is 50%. Out of the 54 times he had made a fifty before that, Root had hit 13 centuries, a conversion rate of 25% (excluding two unbeaten fifties). Among batsmen who have hit at least 10 fifty-plus scores since September 2018, no batsman has had a better conversion rate than Root. Kane Williamson (six hundreds out of 12) and Henry Nicholls (five hundreds out of 10) are the other batsmen to convert 50% their fifties to centuries in that period.7 Successive Tests in India in which Root has got at least one fifty-plus score. Javed Miandad is the only batsman who had a better run (8). Alvin Kallicharan and VVS Laxman are the other batsmen with seven fifties in seven Tests in India.ESPNcricinfo Ltd8 Batsmen including Root who have hit a century in three consecutive Test matches in Asia. Hashim Amla was the last batsman to do so; he had scores of 253* in the Nagpur Test in 2010, then 114 and 123* in Kolkata in the next Test, and 80 and 118* against Pakistan in Dubai in the first Test of his next tour to Asia. Ken Barrington is the only other England batsman among the eight.9 Batsmen who have hit a century in their 100th Test. Root is the third England batsman to do so after Colin Cowdrey and Alec Stewart. Ricky Ponting is the only one to hit two hundreds in his 100th Test.ESPNcricinfo Ltd2012 The last time a visiting team in India put on a 200-run partnership. Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott had added 208 runs for the fourth wicket in the third innings of the Nagpur Test. The last 200-plus stand in the first innings of a Test in India by an away team was in 2010, when Amla and Alviro Petersen added 209 runs for the third wicket in Kolkata. Dom Sibley and Root recorded only the 14th instance of a visiting team putting on a 200-run partnership in the first innings of a Test in India.17 Tests played by Jasprit Bumrah before his first one at home. Excluding Pakistan players who debuted in the mid-2000s and had to play their ‘home’ Tests at neutral venues in the UAE, this is the longest any player has gone before playing his first Test at home. West Indies’ Daren Ganga also played 17 Test matches before playing his first home Test match.ESPNcricinfo Ltd3.87 The combined economy rate of Shahbaz Nadeem and Washington Sundar – India’s fourth and fifth bowling options – in this innings so far. Between them the two bowlers bowled 32 overs and conceded 20 out of the 30 boundaries hit in the day. The other bowlers – Bumrah, Ishant Sharma and R Ashwin – returned a combined economy rate of 2.34 from 57.3 overs.

Faced with a steep chase and an unfavourable match-up, Dawid Malan proved he is in England’s best XI

Matt Roller01-Dec-2020It seemed like a situation tailor made to expose Dawid Malan’s perceived faults. Chasing 192, England were 25 for 1 in the fourth over, on a Newlands pitch that was supposed to be slow and worn. Surely, this would be the occasion that his penchant for scoring slowly at the start of his innings would catch up with him, and his T20 international form would begin to revert to the mean.Instead, Malan pulled his first ball through square leg, flashed his second through third man and pulled his third over fine leg for six. England’s notorious slow starter was on 14 off 3.Perhaps, then, the real test would arrive when he came up against Tabraiz Shamsi, South Africa’s animated left-arm wristspinner. Shamsi had bowled 14 balls to Malan in his T20 career, conceding only 12 runs and dismissing him once. The fact that Shamsi’s stock ball turns away from a left-hander’s bat made him an obvious bowler for Quinton de Kock to use, creating a match-up that should have suited South Africa.ALSO READ: Marvelous Malan 99* leads England to series sweepIn fact, Malan reverse-swept Shamsi’s first ball for four. In the second over he faced from him, he swept another four; in the third, he lofted him inside-out over extra cover before slog-sweeping him over midwicket.Shamsi’s fourth over was the best of the lot for Malan: another reverse-sweep for four, another booming drive over the cover ring, and a violent crack dead straight back over the bowler’s head. Malan faced 14 balls from the bowler that was meant to trouble him the most, and hit him for 38 runs.There is no clearer sign that a batsman is in a rich vein of form than the cover drive being his most productive shot. No prizes for guessing that 30 of Malan’s 99 runs came in the area between cover and extra cover, 20 of them via sumptuous boundaries.This was an innings to dispel any lingering doubts about his spot. Throughout Malan’s T20I career, there has been a sense that for all his success, his time in the side would be fleeting. With England rarely fielding a full-strength XI in T20I cricket, instead prioritising the 50-over team, it has been difficult to work out exactly where he stands within the set-up.In early 2019, he flew to the Caribbean hoping to “prove a point” in a T20I series against West Indies, at which point he had made four fifties in five innings; he didn’t play a game. Later that year, after hitting only England’s second hundred in the format, he was implicitly criticised by his captain for failing to run a bye off the last ball to protect his average.Earlier this year, he wrote in a column for Sky Sports, “I don’t know how you can be under pressure with numbers like [mine]” immediately before three T20Is in South Africa; he was given one game, out of position at No. 4. This summer, as he became the ICC’s No. 1-ranked T20I batsman, he found himself criticised for his slow starts – including on this website. Before this series, many wondered if he would eventually drop out of the side to accommodate Joe Root ahead of next year’s T20 World Cup in India.But after his Cape Town effort, there can be little doubt about it: Malan has proven unequivocally that he is in England’s best T20I side. His average remains over 50, with his strike rate a tick under 150; he has passed 50 in more of his 19 innings than he has not. Having initially seemed like something of an outsider, attracting little praise from his team-mates, he now has their full support.ESPNcricinfo LtdThere may still be challenges to come, of course. Malan is highly likely to be sought after at the next IPL auction, and his game against spin and high pace will come under scrutiny in that tournament. There is still the best part of a year until the T20 World Cup, and as Jason Roy’s struggles in this series have demonstrated, the vagaries of form can catch up with anyone.And yet there remains a sense that even if his form slumped dramatically in the T20 circuit, he would manage to turn things around in an England shirt. Malan has cited the quality of pitches and the amount of extra preparation that he feels he is afforded at international level as the reason behind his England record outstripping his numbers in domestic T20 cricket, and on this evidence it is hard to question his judgement.The clearest evidence yet of his improved standing in the dressing room came immediately after he had nudged the winning run into the off side to leave himself on 99 not out. “I didn’t know how it would go down if I turned down the single,” he smiled at the post-match presentation, with Morgan lurking over his shoulder. They were not the words of a man fearing for his place.England’s players have repeatedly stated over the last few months that there is no harder task for a professional sportsman than to force your way into their white-ball teams. It is testament to Malan’s performances that he has managed to do just that.

Match-ups are a big part of T20 tactics, but sometimes you can read too much into the data

Aakash Chopra22-Oct-20203:00

Why did AB de Villiers come in so late?

One-on-one duels have existed among humans for ever, in various forms. The more powerful or the smarter of the two contestants ends up victorious, and the closer the fight, the greater the amount of folklore around the duel. Such contests are central to sports narratives. Who wouldn’t stop to watch Shane Warne bowling to Sachin Tendulkar? Or Brian Lara facing up to Glenn McGrath?As cricket evolved to accommodate the 50-over format, the importance of the duel began to dissipate. The primary focus in limited-overs cricket is always on not conceding runs, so the bowling lengths and the field positions did not allow duels to prosper. T20 has taken it a step further – now sometimes all attempts are made to avoid certain one-on-one contests.Some of these one-on-one contests still exist in the longest format of cricket, because there’s no place to hide in Tests. A bowler may have your number, but in Test cricket, that is not seen as a reason for you to be demoted in the batting order, or for you to refuse a single to stay at the non-striker’s end.ALSO READ: Virat Kohli on AB de Villiers at No. 6: ‘Sometimes decisions you take don’t come off’T20 is, by far, the most tactically evolved format, for the shorter duration doesn’t give a team that falls behind time to come back into the game. One bad decision could be the difference between a win and a loss. While bowling teams still try to throw their best bet against the opposition’s best batsman, batting teams’ attempts to avoid such match-ups have reached crazy proportions. And very often, they are driven by data and analytics.If a certain batsman has poor numbers against legspin, irrespective of the quality of the batsman, attempts are made to keep him in the dugout till the threat is negated partially or completely.We saw that happen in the Royal Challengers Bangalore vs Kings XI Punjab match in Sharjah. On a spin-friendly pitch where batting wasn’t easy, the Kings XI had two legspinners, M Ashwin and Ravi Bishnoi, both uncapped and with limited IPL experience. Even so, the batsman who had demolished the Kolkata Knight Riders’ bowling in the previous game at the same venue was kept in the dugout while RCB sent out two left-handers to counter the legspin threat.We are talking about RCB looking to avoid a duel between a batting genius, AB de Villiers, and two uncapped Indian spinners. Obviously, the RCB management realised their mistake after the event and it’s unlikely to happen again.But the fact that it happened in the first place begs the question: how much should we read into match-ups? Are they really as important as some of the data analysts suggest? Or are they as overrated as some cricket pundits want us to believe? Was there any merit in shielding de Villiers against legspin? Numbers tell us that R Ashwin gets the better of Chris Gayle. Should he come on to bowl the moment Gayle walks in?ALSO READ: Aakash Chopra: How bowlers are dealing with the high-scoring conditions in SharjahWell, there’s no perfect answer to this question. Since RCB had lost a couple of wickets before the tenth over, there was indeed merit in sending Washington Sundar, the left-hander, in to bat alongside Virat Kohli. Sometimes you want a certain player to play a certain role, and if, in the bargain, a perceived threat can also be neutralised, why not?Sundar’s plan that night should have been to hang around for a bit, go after the legspinners, or any spinner, for that matter, after the halfway mark, and then go hell for leather every ball. In the process if he made an exit, well and good.Role definition and its fulfilment are a critical component of T20 cricket. Where it went overboard that night was when Shivam Dube came in to bat after Sundar because the legspinners’ overs weren’t done yet. de Villiers is not a walking wicket against legspin. It was surely a case of paralysis by analysis.One must also focus on the merits of these match-ups and how they play out in the middle. The moment Glenn Maxwell comes in to bat, you ought to have a pace bowler bowling bouncers and a legspinner bowling wide to him. If that legspinner happens to be Yuzvendra Chahal, even better. It would be futile for the batting team to avoid that contest, but it’s essential that the bowling team exploit it.These match-ups, when presented by the bowling team as an attacking option, are worth their weight in gold. But when you start hiding a batsman or a bowler based on reputations and data, there’s a serious chance of going overboard. We’ve seen so many instances of a left-arm spinner or a legspinner not being allowed to bowl to a left-hand batsman early in his innings, but that strategy can come back to bite you if the bowlers preferred over these spinners don’t dismiss that batsman.There’s a valid match-up that must take place in every encounter: the best against the best. You must let Jasprit Bumrah, Jofra Archer and Kagiso Rabada bowl at KL Rahul, David Warner and Kohli. Even if that contest lasts only a few balls, it’s worth giving it a shot. Such a contest happens in isolation and often has nothing to do with the remainder of the game, for the bowler must bowl the right length and line to dismiss the batsman, and it’s up to the batsman to either cope or perish. Once that’s done, the rest of the match can resume. The key in all these match-ups is to look at the quality of the players in question and not merely the data.

Belated request to stay leaves allrounder in no-win situation, and may hasten end of Test career

George Dobell16-Feb-2021It felt like a farewell. As Moeen Ali thrashed five sixes and three fours in 12 balls of carnage, it felt as if he had decided to go out playing the way he had always wanted to play. To go out swinging, if you like.First, the reality check. Moeen will probably play for England again within a month. Yes, he’s returning to England now, but he will re-join the tour party in time for the T20I leg of the tour which starts on March 12.He could return to Test cricket, too. He’s only 33 and, despite that moderate form with the bat and some inconsistency with the ball, he showed glimpses of the ability that has earned him nearly 200 Test wickets and nearly 3,000 Test runs.But just because he can, doesn’t mean he will. And the fact is, with England likely to play one spinner in home Tests and during the away Ashes, he is giving other candidates – and younger candidates, at that – a chance to establish themselves in his absence. This feels like the end of the road.It’s probably worth reflecting on how we arrived at this point. How a man whose life has been, for the most part, driven by an ambition to play for England, has “chosen” (more on this word later) to go home rather than play Test cricket. It would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago. It is no exaggeration to say his father sometimes went without food to ensure Moeen – and his siblings – had the best chance to fulfil their potential in life. In Moeen’s case that meant playing cricket.And that’s what he did. He used to rush to the park to play cricket the second he was released from school. When the park was locked each night, he and his friends would climb back in and play in the dark. When his mum dragged him home, he’d play in the hall of their house. He was a professional cricketer before he could grow a beard. How could a man so obsessed with the game end up in a situation where he has declined several touring opportunities with England?Maybe we are over-complicating things here.We have to remember this key point: England are trying to fulfil an absurdly heavy schedule during a pandemic. To that end, they have asked their players to spend a long time on the road without the option – usually a part of touring life, these days – of seeing their friends or families. For those all-format players on the tours of Sri Lanka and India, that means the prospect of three months away.Virat Kohli had his stumps disturbed by Moeen Ali on the first day of the second Test•BCCIThe added complication comes when we factor in the IPL. If we do, it leaves those all-format players facing the prospect of up to five months away. And, while that may have been deemed acceptable in an age when cricketers travelled by boat and were not expected to play an active role as parents, it isn’t any more.The ECB, consequently, committed to giving those all-format players a break at some stage of the tour. Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer, you may recall, were rested from the Sri Lanka leg. Mark Wood and Jonny Bairstow missed the first two Test of this series – both are back in India now – while Jos Buttler played the first Test and was rested for the next three. Moeen was told he would be going home after the first two Tests in India. He spoke about it before the series started.Now, let’s go back to that ‘chosen’ word. It was the word used by Joe Root when he confirmed Moeen was heading home after the second Test. “Moeen has chosen to go home,” he said.It wasn’t the word used to explain Buttler’s or Archer’s absence. It wasn’t the word used to explain the absence of Bairstow or Wood or Stokes, either. Or the word used when Root himself missed the first Test of the 2020 summer to be at the birth of his child. Only Moeen’s.So, why use it with him?Well, it is possible that Root simply expressed himself clumsily. In the aftermath of a chastening defeat, having dealt eloquently with questions about the pitch and England’s problems against spin, he might simply have erred in suggesting that Moeen had simply decided to go home. Who hasn’t done that at some stage? Root has had a magnificent tour; he can be forgiven a misstep.But we should be very clear that it is a misleading word. The fact is – and they do not dispute it – the England management had agreed Moeen’s rotation period ahead of the series. It was their decision.England celebrate after Moeen Ali bowls Virat Kohli•BCCIBut then confidence in Dom Bess wilted. And Moeen enjoyed a return to Test cricket which, while not perfect, provided a reminder of the high ceiling his game has. He would, but for dropped chances, have taken a 10-for, remember. And he has now taken 56 wickets at 25.69 apiece in his last 11 Tests. So, sometime on Monday afternoon, Ed Smith, the national selector asked Moeen stay on the tour.It was an unfair request, really. And a request not made to any of the other rotated players. It forced Moeen into an impossible situation whereby he was made to feel he was either letting down his family or his team. But by then he had made a commitment to that family – a family who have watched on helplessly as he was diagnosed with Covid-19, remember – and they were expecting him home. Was he meant to call and say ‘Sorry, kids: hopefully see you in three months’? In such a light, it wasn’t really a choice at all. He is, by the way, expected to spend little more than a week at home. His flight back to India departs on February 26.You wonder what Bess makes of all this. As if he hasn’t had enough to deal with, he will now go into the second half of the series knowing that he was not just dropped, but that the national selector asked another spinner to stay on tour because confidence in him was so low. It’s not terrific man-management, is it?There will be those, no doubt, who suggest Test cricket should be England’s (and Moeen’s) priority. And there will be those appalled that the IPL is factored into this equation. The fact is, though, these players cannot be expected to ignore the riches on offer in India and besides, with a T20 World Cup to be played in the country later in the year, there are strong cricketing reasons for being involved in the tournament.

Smith asking Moeen for a favour now is like receiving a late-night text from the ex that broke your heart; if they liked it they should have put a ring on it.

Moeen doesn’t have a full central contract, remember. An IPL gig (he was released by RCB last year but is in the auction at the end of this week) could more than double his annual income. For a man in the home stretch of his career, it is a factor that has to be considered.It’s probably unfortunate that it was Smith who asked Moeen to stay. That relationship hasn’t been especially warm since May 2018 when Smith dropped Moeen from the first Test squad he announced – he didn’t just drop him, he questioned his value overseas and his ability as a first-choice spinner in an unnecessarily punchy series of interviews – and then dropped him again after the first Test of the 2019 Ashes. Moeen had been the top wicket-taker in the world over the previous 12 months, yet was not offered a full central contract a couple of months later. That is the key moment when the relationship started to sour. At the time he most needed support, Moeen was cast adrift.And so we end up here. With a man who has done him no favours asking for a favour. It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that there’s some more less-than-glorious man-management coming home to roost. Smith asking Moeen for a favour now is like receiving a late-night text from the ex that broke your heart; if they liked it they should have put a ring on it.Related

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The problem with the ‘chosen’ word is that it has acted like a dog whistle for the ignorant or those with agendas. It has suggested – perhaps quite innocently – that Moeen has somehow turned his back on the team. It has left Moeen facing accusations – some from people who really should know better – of apathy or weakness or selfishness which few of his team-mates in similar positions have had to endure. It threw him to the wolves, really. It needs to be corrected.There is, perhaps, a deeper irony here. Moeen has been used as the poster boy for inclusivity by the ECB since he made his international debut. But, as we reflect on the wreckage of this situation, we might well question how equitable and inclusive his treatment has been. It’s worth repeating: nobody else was described as choosing to miss part of the tour.And so it feels like an ending.Did Moeen fulfil his talent? A batting average of 28.88 seems criminally low for one so blessed. But 189 Test wickets? At a better strike-rate than Graeme Swann or Jim Laker? That’s an over-achievement, really.There was something about the fragility of his cricket – the sense that you were never more than a waft from disaster – that somehow made every moment more vital and precious. All in all, his career has been like so many of his innings. It left you wanting more. But it was kind of beautiful while it lasted.

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.

Australia’s batters are way ahead but England have outbowled them, and have the advantage of match-time at Hagley Oval

S Rajesh01-Apr-2022Australia have had a spotless World Cup campaign so far, winning eight out of eight. They have beaten England – their opponent in the final – in their last seven ODIs; their last defeat to England in this format was way back in October 2017. They have also won 37 of their last 38 ODIs, dating back to the start of 2018.Despite all of those numbers which point towards Australia being overwhelming favourites for the final on Sunday, England, the defending champions, will feel they have a fair shot at retaining the title. In their opening game of the tournament, against Australia, England almost pulled off a chase of 311, finishing only 13 short. But more importantly, they have been on a roll in the last couple of weeks, winning five in a row.Two of those wins were against the relatively weaker Bangladesh and Pakistan, but England also beat India with 112 balls to spare, and South Africa by 137 runs in the semi-final on Thursday. All of that points to a team which is peaking nicely for the big day.ESPNcricinfo LtdAustralia, though, will carry the confidence of a perfect campaign. Their batting average of 55.79 runs per wicket is almost twice that of England’s 30.26, while the run rate of 5.62 is also well clear of England’s 4.99. Of the 14 totals of 260 or more in the tournament, Australia have contributed five, while three of the top four run-getters in the tournament are Australians. England’s highest run-scorer, Nat Sciver, is at No. 8 among the top run-scorers.Where England have shone, however, is in their bowling: they restricted India to 134 and South Africa to 156 in the semi-final; both those teams scored over 270 against Australia. In their last five matches, England have averaged an astonishing 14.64 runs per wicket, and conceded only 3.44 runs per over. In terms of the ratio between run rate and economy rate, Australia’s overall number is slightly ahead of England’s, but in the last five matches England have achieved an excellent ratio of 1.43.Australia’s powerplay dominanceAustralia have taken 13 wickets in the powerplays and lost just seven, and are averaging more than 48 runs per wicket with the bat while conceding fewer than 24 per wicket with the ball. Those are terrific numbers, and have allowed them to take the initiative early in most matches. They have twice scored more than 50 in the first 10 overs – against Pakistan and India – but the only time they conceded 50-plus was against England, who scored 53 for 1 when chasing 311.