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David Warner is ruled out, Will Pucovski has concussion and Joe Burns is badly short of runs

Andrew McGlashan11-Dec-20202:11

Smith on Pucovski’s concussion: ‘Everyone deals with injuries differently’

Hold the line, don’t panicThis would still appear the likely route, where Burns retains his place – he has been backed from the start by selectors, coach, captain and team-mates – with fingers crossed that he gets runs at the SCG or lifts for the occasion in Adelaide. He would be partnered by Marcus Harris, who last played a Test during the 2019 Ashes and has since tweaked his technique working alongside Chris Rogers, with 355 Sheffield Shield runs in three innings under his belt including a 239. Harris has nine Tests to his name, including four against India two years where he made 258 runs at 36.85, and in the following series against Sri Lanka he opened with Burns so it would not be an entirely unknown pairing.Joe Burns is bowled•Getty ImagesThe senior prosThe ship appears to have sailed on this one, but if you glance at social media (which, of course, is where all the proper selection debate happens) then you may notice a few mentions of Shaun Marsh and Usman Khawaja. The former had a prolific start to the Shield season, just as everyone, including Marsh himself, was moving on from his Test career. Speaking to , Justin Langer did not slam the door shut for Marsh: “You never discriminate against age. He’s doing everything possible,” he said. Khawaja, meanwhile, holds an average of 96.80 when opening the batting including 145 in the 2016-17 day-night Test against South Africa in Adelaide.Mission for MarnusThis is perhaps gaining a little momentum, a promotion one spot up for Marnus Labuschagne to plug the gap – most likely alongside Burns, but potentially even Harris if the selectors really get spooked by Burns’ form. As Steven Smith said yesterday, the No. 3 can be in to face the second ball of the match anyway so is there a massive difference if he goes in straight away? And if you can be thrust into an Ashes Test as a concussion sub, and never look back, you can probably handle this. Labuschagne has opened nine times in his first-class career, although not since 2016, and also did it in the recent ODI series after Warner’s injury although was dismissed for 7. The other byproduct of this move would be the middle-order batsman moving up a slot each which creates room for Cameron Green at No. 6. Green has done enough to suggest he could command a spot on batting alone, regardless of the bowling workload he is capable of.Marnus Labuschagne looks on during practice•Getty ImagesFrom left fieldThis one involves another batting-order reshuffle and is a bit more out-of-the-box: shift Matthew Wade up from No. 6. If it was alongside Burns it would retain the left-right combination and, as a punchy left-hander, Wade is not too dissimilar to Warner even though not the same pedigree. It would be a leap of faith given that Wade has never opened in first-class cricket (he does have an average of 57.25 from five innings at No. 3) although he has done it a lot in white-ball cricket, including a handful of ODIs, and on the Australia A tour of England in 2019 before the Ashes made one-day scores of 117 and 155 at the top of the order. This move would actually lead to fewer batsmen moving from their current positions but, like the Labuschagne option, would also open up the spot for Green.

PCB’s over-reliance on testing and mistakes in key moments under scrutiny

Osman Samiuddin06-Mar-2021The PCB is scrambling to find a window to reschedule the curtailed sixth season of the PSL, with June in Karachi as one option. June is not usually part of Pakistan’s home season (though they did host the 2008 Asia Cup then) and windows in May and September have been talked about, but in a busy year for international cricket, space is at a premium.The board is keen to host it in Karachi, and though the UAE has been mentioned as a potential host, the fear is that if they do go that way, it would squander all the groundwork done in convincing international teams to play in Pakistan.Whenever and wherever the season is completed, the planning and implementation of a biosecure bubble will almost definitely be outsourced to a specialist firm. That will be a tacit acknowledgment by the board of the failures of this season – the board’s head doctor and the man in charge of those protocols Dr Sohail Saleem has on Saturday offered to resign – which was called off on Thursday after a spate of Covid-19 positive tests among players and staff.The outsourcing will be a key factor as they try to move ahead, even as the dust is far from settled on the events of the last week, the impact of which one senior Pakistan international has privately compared to the terror attacks on the Sri Lankan team in 2009.Related

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• ICC biosafety head: 'We don't want to cancel tournaments, we just want to have them safely'

• PCB accepts Dr Sohail Saleem's resignation, looks to revamp medical department

• PSL 2021 to resume in June

• Non-playing PSL franchise member left bubble despite testing Covid-19 positive

Whether it becomes as seismic as that remains to be seen, but there is clear concern within the board that it could hit both the PSL and potential touring sides later in the year.Franchises and boards, meanwhile, are still sifting through the wreckage, the former beginning to detail their experiences inside the bubble and its loopholes.Though not alone, scrutiny will be on two-time winners Islamabad United, where in Fawad Ahmed, the first positive test after the tournament began was recorded. Three other players from the franchise have tested positive since. The franchise – and the PCB – has already had to defend itself over protocols followed during a social media shoot.In communication that is expected to be sent to the PCB, the franchise reveals that despite complaining of feeling unwell after the evening game on Saturday, February 27, Ahmed wasn’t given a Covid test until the following evening, at 9pm, despite repeated requests. The franchise claims when Ahmed initially consulted the PCB doctor, informing him of a stomach pains, he was told it didn’t fit Covid symptoms. The doctor was unable to see him the next morning because of another unrelated medical incident.Though Ahmed was put into immediate isolation, it isn’t clear whether the rest of the squad, as close contacts, went into isolation – and if they did, for how long. There are conflicting reports on this, but both the PCB and Islamabad tweeted only that Ahmed had been put in isolation when they eventually made his result public and that other members had all since tested negative.The question of isolation becomes especially significant in light of a birthday party held for Azhar Mahmood, fast-bowling coach with the Multan Sultans, on the same evening as Ahmed complained of feeling unwell. Hasan Ali, Ahmed’s team-mate, attended that party (in the same hotel) as well as a number of other players from other franchises.

There is strength in unity and sharing the love. We shared one such moment of one of our very own last night. Happy Birthday @AzharMahmood11 #HappyBirthdaySultan #BestWishes pic.twitter.com/7XdOHSbRPQ

— Multan Sultans (@MultanSultans) February 28, 2021

Promoted to open, Malan nails his match-up with Hasaranga to propel England to 3-0 win

Matt Roller at the Ageas Bowl26-Jun-2021The long-standing debates over England’s best batting line-up in T20 international cricket will roll on and on until October’s World Cup but this 3-0 thrashing of an abject Sri Lanka side has been a reminder of the oddity of the tournament itself.The draw for the World Cup – initially scheduled for Australia last year, but since shifted to India and now the UAE and Oman – took place 18 months ago, and in the intervening period it has become apparent that England have done well out of it: they have avoided West Indies and New Zealand, both of whom will be significantly stronger than their ICC ranking implies, and will see themselves as favourites against both South Africa and Afghanistan.The result is that even if they are beaten heavily by India in the group stage, they need only beat those two teams, plus the two qualifiers from the preliminary phase, and they will reach the semi-finals, and be two wins away from their long-standing ambition of becoming the first men’s team to hold both World Cups simultaneously.This series proved that, while there are decisions to be made about the side’s best combination and structure, the most important thing for England is that they have a deep, versatile batting line-up which is filled with players that can single-handedly win a game on their day. For Saturday’s thrashing at the Ageas Bowl, they were without three of their first-choice top six – Jos Buttler (calf), Jason Roy (hamstring), Ben Stokes (returning from a hand injury) – while their first-choice No. 3 and No. 4 opened the batting and their back-up finisher came in straight after, yet their win was still a procession.England’s collapse from 143 for 1 after 15 overs to an eventual total of 180 for 6 looked for a fleeting moment like it might cost them after Danushka Gunathilaka punched the first ball of the chase through cover; as it turned out, it would have taken a declaration with five overs left to turn this into a competitive game, as Sri Lanka’s batters collapsed in a heap. This was the sort of clinical performance that should help them annihilate the weakest teams in their World Cup group; unless they come unstuck in two of the other three games, they will cruise through to the semis.Only then will their answers to the important questions come under real scrutiny. Where should Jonny Bairstow bat? How can they get more out of Stokes? Should Mark Wood bowl mainly in the Powerplay, at the death, or a bit of both? And the randomness of certain events – in particular the importance of the toss in floodlit games in the UAE, bearing dew in mind – could render such discussions useless anyway.Related

• The big picture is a turn-off as England learn World Cup lessons at a cost

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And so to Dawid Malan. Countless column inches have been filled, including on this website, by debates over Malan’s value to England’s side: nobody has ever started their T20I career with such compelling numbers and he has ensconced himself at No. 1 in the ICC’s player rankings, but with such a strong set of batting options available to them, his slow-starting method and his occasional struggles on slower pitches, such as the ones expected in the UAE in October, has come under intense – and perhaps unfair – scrutiny.This series has encapsulated the debate: his two low scores on two-paced Cardiff pitches were wholly unconvincing, but his dominant innings of 76 off 48 balls on a better pitch at the Ageas Bowl was one of high class: the other 72 balls in the innings brought only 92 runs off the bat. Even if his form “only has one way to go”, as Eoin Morgan put it at the toss, his rate of success in T20I cricket has been phenomenal.On Saturday, Malan managed what no other England batter has in this series by getting after Wanindu Hasaranga, Sri Lanka’s blond-haired, bright-booted rockstar of a legspinner. Realising that ball spinning into his arc towards the shorter boundary represented a favourable match-up for him, Malan treated Hasaranga with disdain, thumping him for two fours and three sixes and scoring 34 off the 10 balls he faced from him; Roy was the only other man to hit him for four across the whole series.The slog-swept sixes were brutal, but there was a touch of class, too: on 18 off 15, he reverse-swept him into the gap between short third and backward point, and in the same over nailed him over deep backward square leg and lofted him inside-out through the gap in the covers that his reverse-sweep had created.”When you do your match-ups and look at the dimensions of the ground, with a right-hander in [at the other end], my match-up is to take down the legspinner towards that shorter boundary,” Malan explained afterwards. “Even though it was into the wind, that was my role: to take the positive option against him.”If that was an offspinner on that side, Jonny would probably have been over-aggressive against him because that was his match-up. I faced him the other night at Cardiff and didn’t see him that well, and my movements weren’t very good, so it was nice to face him a couple of days later in different conditions and get on top of him.”During his difficult series in India, it seemed as though the drawbacks of Malan’s method outweighed the benefits, but in this innings, the opposite was true. He may not mind the debate rolling on: “I quite like proving a point so when I do get criticism I do like going out there to show those people that seem to have their opinions,” he said.There are similar questions to weigh up in the bowling attack: are Chris Woakes and David Willey viable options as new-ball specialists? Is Chris Jordan still a banker at the death? The absence of much new information from this series means they will not be answered definitively until the knockout stages of the T20 World Cup – and even then, there is another one to follow only 12 months later.

Why Harshal Patel came in second on the Smart Wickets list, the top match performers and more

ESPNcricinfo stats team16-Oct-2021Glenn Maxwell was the MVP of IPL 2021, according to ESPNcricinfo’s Smart Stats. Maxwell, who was bought for INR 14.25 crore in the 2021 auction by Royal Challengers Bangalore, put together a stellar performance with the bat and exceeded most expectations. It was not just the 513 runs that he scored at a strike rate of 144.10 in the season, but the manner and the difficult conditions in which he scored them. While most batters found it hard on the dry pitches in Chennai and Sharjah, Maxwell struck at 149.15 and 138.33 respectively on these grounds. He was also the second best player of spin in the tournament, scoring 264 runs from 171 balls at a strike rate of 154.38 and average of 52.8 against spin. Ruturaj Gaikwad was marginally ahead of him. But Maxwell’s impact was not limited to strike rates and averages. He scored when others struggled, and ensured that conditions were taken out of the equation.However, these numbers don’t do full justice to his performances this season. For that, we need to look at Smart Stats, which looks at every batting and bowling performance through the prism of match context, and the pressure on the batsman and bowler at each delivery when they batted or bowled. Maxwell’s 513 runs were worth 624 runs. Coming in at 9 for 2 against Kolkata Knight Riders in Chepauk, Maxwell smashed 78 off 49 to help his team reach 204. This was against a bowling attack that was spin heavy. Similarly, on another tough pitch at Sharjah against Punjab Kings, Maxwell hit 57 off 33 to help Royal Challengers post a competitive total. On several occasions, Maxwell had to soak up the pressure of slow run rates to help his team score above par.ESPNcricinfo LtdMaxwell’s match impact of 46.53 is marginally ahead of the second-placed KL Rahul, who had a match impact score of 46.23 (for a minimum of 11 matches played, to account for those who had done well in India and the UAE). Rahul once again was Mr. Dependable for the Kings. He scored 626 runs in 13 matches. The reason Rahul’s impact was so high is because barring his opening partner Mayank Agarwal, there were not many other contributors with the bat for his team. Rahul often played the anchor’s role for Punjab; in several innings, he scored at a conservative pace due to the middle order’s failures.There is little to separate the rest in the list. Rashid Khan, Avesh Khan and Prithvi Shaw complete the top five. The Chennai Super Kings opening batters – Gaikwad and Faf du Plessis were eighth and ninth respectively in match impact. The reason for their lower impact compared to Rahul was mainly because both Gaikwad and du Plessis had ample support through the batting order.ESPNcricinfo LtdESPNcricinfo’s Purple Cap

The list of bowlers with the highest Smart Wickets is different from the list of top wicket-takers, because Smart Wickets takes into account the quality of batter dismissed, their score at the time of dismissal, and the match context at that point. Taking all those factors into account, Avesh, who is second on the wicket-takers’ list with 24 wickets, tops the Smart Wickets tally with an aggregate of 31.5. Harshal Patel, who was the tournament’s Purple Cap winner with 32 wickets, is marginally behind with 30.7 Smart Wickets. The main reason Avesh’s wickets were valued higher than Harshal’s is because Avesh took wickets of better batters, when the match was still in the balance. While 25% of Harshal’s wickets were of lower-order batters (Nos. 8 to 11), the figure for Avesh was just 16%. Of the 24 wickets Avesh took, 12 were of the top-four batters, including eight dismissals of openers. Avesh also took eight and six wickets respectively in the middle overs and the powerplay, while conceding runs at just 6.5 and 6.8 in those two phases. Harshal’s late wickets were crucial on some occasions, but others came when the match result was a formality. These added to the tally for conventional wickets, but don’t add much to the Smart Wickets count.One of the bowlers who struck crucial blows was Shardul Thakur. He took 21 wickets, but they were worth 26 Smart Wickets. His scalps included Shikhar Dhawan, Venkatesh Iyer (twice), Andre Russell, AB de Villiers, Agarwal and Sanju Samson, to name a few. Most of his dismissals involved either breaking a partnership, or getting a set batter out. Because Smart Wickets takes into account the quality of the batter and the score at which they were dismissed – getting a good batter out early before they can inflict any damage fetches higher points.ESPNcricinfo LtdBest Match Performance
While Maxwell and Avesh took pole positions in terms of MVP and best bowler, the match-wise top impact position was dominated by all-rounders. Kieron Pollard’s outstanding performance with bat and ball against Super Kings took the top spot. Pollard took 2 for 12 in two overs, and scored an unbeaten 87 runs from 34 deliveries. He came in to bat in the 10th over when the score was 81 for 3, and helped win the match off the last ball, chasing a mammoth 218 smashing eight sixes and six fours. Ravindra Jadeja’s brilliantall-round show against Royal Challengers was in second spot, and Jason Holder’s 3 for 24 and 29-ball 47 against the Kings was the third-best match performance.

Past coaches have had revolutionary plans, but they’ve not been easily accepted. Will Dravid be able to stamp his signature with this crop?

Sidharth Monga04-Nov-20214:23

Moody: Dravid’s challenge will be to manage the schedule

Early in his captaincy career – well, he was just a stand-in at that point of time – Rahul Dravid experienced the dark side of superstar power in Indian cricket. He declared an innings closed with Sachin Tendulkar on 194. The furore that followed shocked him. His full-time captaincy, lauded for his tactical nous and forward thinking, was littered with troubles with superstars, one who refused to move on, another who resented a change in his batting position. It eventually ended in the captain’s resignation and a sense of unfulfillment even though he had led India to their first Test win in South Africa and a rare series win in England.This was perhaps why Dravid has long been reluctant to take up the head coach role. Now that he has agreed to it, he is arguably India’s most high-profile coach ever. And he walks into a similarly challenging prospect of transitioning the team from the current superstars to the next ones. Make no mistake about it, Dravid inherits an extremely successful team. They have won two successive Test series in Australia, are a single draw away from winning one in England. India are nigh unbeatable at home, and have made at least the semi-finals of the last seven ICC events.Yet it a delicate turn for Indian cricket because the core of this team is in the last quarter of their careers. Their leader on the field, Virat Kohli, is showing signs of wear and tear, and wants to cut down on responsibilities. Every other automatic captaincy choice is older if not the same age. Not that Kohli is in a tearing hurry to give it all up either.Along with the selectors, Dravid will have to manage this transition as smoothly as he can with all the personality clashes that crop up during such times. The role of selectors can be easily overlooked, but they play a potentially bigger role than the coach.The previous team management led India on some really tough tours, two each to Australia and England and one to South Africa, but they had one advantage. Their stint was the most straightforward one in Indian cricket. In the team, there was no other power head. Unlike MS Dhoni and Dravid before him, Kohli didn’t have to manage any senior or difficult character. He got rid of the only possible dissenting voice, coach Anil Kumble, fairly early in his captaincy.They didn’t need any of the diplomacy a team management needs to deal with the BCCI. In the name of a board was a Committee of Administrators, which never denied anything they wanted. One of the things that has probably worn Kohli down, of late, is the board making sure that player power is kept in check. This is the reality of leading an Indian cricket team, a reality Kohli and Ravi Shastri were immune to, but Dravid – and whoever the next captain – is won’t be. While transitioning, they will still have to get the best out of these senior superstars.Dravid’s success as coach at the junior level has been unparalleled, but the biggest job in world cricket is a different ball game•Getty ImagesOn the field, challenges for Dravid are more direct. He has to make India’s white-ball sides more modern while maintaining the Test intensity. To run down India’s limited-overs sides based on ICC tournament knockout matches will be unfair, but there is a sense that despite running the biggest league in T20 cricket, India are always playing catch-up. Their default position in these formats is conservative. Only when they are pushed up against a wall do they unshackle themselves. The results are often spectacular, which frustrates the observers even more. Dravid will need to get rid of that handbrake.With the largest talent pool available to them, Dravid and the new captain will have to realise the vast potential India have in limited-overs cricket. Those who observe India’s limited-overs talent pool at grassroot levels, especially in the batting, are underwhelmed at what India achieve on the international scene. The test will be immediate: there are two World Cups coming up in the next two years, the T20 one in Australia in 2022 and the ODI World Cup at home in 2023.Related

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More than Shastri’s, like it or not, popular perception will judge Dravid’s tenure on these two events. Dravid is well equipped, though. He brings great experience in both team formation and strategising both as captain and coach in the toughest league of them all, the IPL. That is his big advantage over a man-manager kind of a coach. He also brings experience of overseeing players through their formative years at NCA and in Under-19 cricket.Dravid will find out not much has changed in India’s limited-overs setup since he was captain. The immediate problem is that everybody wants to bat inside the top three when the ball is hard and new. Back in 2006 and 2007, Dravid and coach Greg Chappell were ahead of their time in recognising the issue, but their solution, to ask the most versatile batter they knew to take up the responsibility in the middle order, backfired spectacularly because of lack of buy-in. What solutions will he bring about now? How will he manage a buy-in if he has similar revolutionary ideas?

“Along with the selectors, Dravid will have to manage this transition as smoothly as he can with all the personality clashes that crop up during such times. The role of selectors can be easily overlooked, but they play a potentially bigger role than the coach.”

Dravid will have to use all his diplomacy to manage the mental and physical health of his players. Kohli has cried himself hoarse in press conferences about the unsustainable schedules of the Indian team. This might just be the time to take the England route and invest in a completely different limited-overs outfit to better manage players’ bodies and minds. With some help from the BCCI, he will have to harbour a sense of security within the team, if he aims at such a shift.Test cricket has relatively easier assignments and challenges apart from the tour of South Africa and the last Test of the unfinished series in England. Leading that England series already, India will be favourites to make the final once again. However, during Dravid’s tenure, the futures of a few Test stalwarts will come up for review. Delicate decisions will have to be made.While the wild dream of being Test, ODI and T20I champions at the same time can’t be ruled out in the next two years, we will do well to not judge the team on those three or four knockout matches alone.That is one thing that will change from his current job where he himself makes a conscious effort to not focus on the results on the ground. To him, winning an Under-19 World Cup is less important than seeing his players holding their own against older, battle-hardened men in first-class cricket within one year of playing Under-19. His A-team tours are more about judging who can go on to serve India and then providing him enough chances to develop his game. Now Dravid will have to rely on someone else to do that for him.A recent TV commercial plays on the popular image of Dravid. They show him in road rage a moment after the narrator says their offer is as ridiculous as Dravid having anger issues. Because, well, if Dravid can have road rage, their offer is not so ridiculous after all. It works because it is an extremely clever advertisement, based of real-life perception of Dravid: a good boy with a neat side-parting who represents those qualities of people that they want projected.Yet the advertisers needn’t have created a fictional scene of road rage. They could have just shown him fling his cap into dirt as Rajasthan Royals coach when his players didn’t execute well. Welcome back to that life, Rahul. It’s quite a rush. Hope you don’t have to bring out that side too often.

Who are the top run scorer and top wicket-taker in the 2022 IPL?

ESPNcricinfo staff04-Apr-2022 • Updated on 30-May-2022Who is the orange cap holder in the 2022 IPL?
Rajasthan Royals finished runners-up in the 2022 IPL, but their opener Jos Buttler remained the leading run scorer, with 863 runs at a strike rate of 149.05, scoring four hundreds along the way. He was also named the Player of the Tournament. Lucknow Super Giants captain KL Rahul came second with 616 runs. Rahul’s team-mate Quinton de Kock is in third place with 508 runs. The title-winning Gujarat Titans captain Hardik Pandya, who made 34 in the final, is fourth with 487 runs and his team-mate Shubman Gill rounds out the top five with 483 runs.Sixteen batters scored 400 runs or more – among them David Miller of Titans, Kolkata Knight Riders captain Shreyas Iyer and Liam Livingstone of Punjab. Eight centuries were scored this season – four by Buttler, two by Rahul and one each by de Kock and Rajat Patidar of Royal Challengers Bangalore.Here’s the full list of the top scorers in the 2022 IPL.Who is the purple cap holder in the 2022 IPL?
Rajasthan Royals legspinner Yuzvendra Chahal finished as the top wicket-taker of the 2022 IPL, with 27 wickets at an economy of 7.75. He has also taken the only hat-trick of the season. In second place is another legspinner, RCB’s Wanindu Hasaranga, who took 26 at an economy of 7.54. Punjab fast bowler Kagiso Rabada is third, with 23, followed by SRH pace sensation Umran Malik, who has 22. Delhi Capitals left-arm wristspinner Kuldeep Yadav rounds out the top five with 21 wickets.Four five-fors were taken in the tournament: one each by Chahal, Hasaranga, Malik, and Jasprit Bumrah of Mumbai Indians.Here’s the full list of the top wicket-takers in the 2022 IPL.

“I was conflicted in my own mind. I knew they were expecting the slower ball, but I didn’t know when to bowl it”

Matt Roller17-Jul-2022It is hard to comprehend the contrasting emotions that Hampshire’s players experienced at 9.48pm on Saturday night in Birmingham. Nathan Ellis yorked Richard Gleeson and charged towards the Hollies stand, roaring “COME ON!” as he peeled away in celebration. His team-mates sprinted over and engulfed him, and the Edgbaston events staff set off the fireworks to mark Hampshire’s record-levelling third T20 title.And then, umpire Graham Lloyd held his arm out and called them back from the deep-point boundary: Paul Baldwin, the TV umpire, had spotted that Ellis had over-stepped. James Fuller sank to his knees. Chris Wood flung the stump he had pulled out as a commemorative souvenir back towards the pitch. “My heart sank,” Ellis said. “All I could think about was the fact that we’d just carried on like that, and I’d carried on celebrating for the last 30 seconds. And now we were in trouble of losing the game.”Related

• James Vince's calm amid the chaos secures Hampshire their night of glory

• Ellis keeps his cool – twice – to seal one-run thriller for Hampshire

The equation had shifted into Lancashire’s favour. With two runs awarded for a no-ball in English domestic cricket, they needed only two runs off the last ball to lift the trophy by virtue of a higher powerplay score. After James Vince, Hampshire’s captain, delivered a team talk, Ellis stood at the top of his mark and tried desperately to clear his mind enough to make a decision as to what he should bowl.”I hadn’t bowled a slower ball to him [Gleeson],” he explained. “My thought process was: ‘what’s the best way to try and get a play-and-miss?’ That was it. Once I’d made that decision, it was just try and execute.” His back-of-a-length, back-of-the-hand slower ball flew past Gleeson’s outside edge, bounced over the top of the stumps and through to wicketkeeper Ben McDermott on the half-volley.Despite Lancashire’s protestations, Hampshire celebrated for a second time. Ellis finished wicketless but his spell, conceding 23 runs from his four overs, must rank among the best none-fors in T20 history. Even before closing out the win (at the second attempt) he had conceded only nine runs across the 15th and 17th overs as Lancashire froze in their chase; all told, he bowled 10 dot balls and conceded a single boundary, which came during the powerplay.Ellis’ strategy at the death was a microcosm of the planning behind modern T20 cricket, and illustrated the unique challenges of the Blast’s Finals Day. After winning their own semi-final at the start of the day, Lancashire had watched Hampshire beat Somerset immediately before the final; Ellis realised that they would have seen how many slower balls he had bowled during his spell of 3 for 30.Ellis – “My role in T20 cricket has never been as a wicket-taker”•Getty Images”It was a little bit of cat-and-mouse,” he said. “I was conflicted in my own mind. I’d bowled three on-pace attempted yorkers and I knew they were expecting the slower ball, but I didn’t know when to bowl it. I was fully aware that I’d bowled a lot of slower balls in the semi-final earlier in the day, and aware that they [Lancashire] were probably watching.”Ellis is shorter than most fast bowlers and has a whippy action, bowling at good pace from tight to the stumps. His back-of-the-hand slower ball, honed playing Sydney club cricket for St George, is difficult to pick since the seam stays upright throughout and he has been a revelation for Hampshire, conceding just 6.87 runs per over across the season.He was only their fifth-highest wicket-taker, with 15, but his death-over economy rate (6.61) was the best in the competition by a distance. “My role I’ve played in T20 cricket has never been as a wicket-taker,” he said. “It’s not something I even think about or look at: it’s probably more damage control or defend. Those moments to me are way bigger than wicket tallies or anything like that. If we get the win, I couldn’t care less.””The way he regrouped and then his confidence to go to that slower ball in that situation… he’s executed so well at the death so a lot of credit has to go to Nelly,” James Vince, Hampshire’s captain, said. “All the other guys were there spectating on the off-chance it came to them but for him to re-group and have the ball in hand and be as calm as that was outstanding. He’s played a bit for Australia, but I’m sure he’ll play a lot more.”ESPNcricinfo LtdAlong with McDermott, his Hobart Hurricanes team-mate, Ellis was signed on the back of his BBL form which Vince has experienced as an opponent, playing for Sydney Sixers. “We’ve got a good relationship with George Bailey, the Australian selector, from when he played at Hampshire,” Vince said. “Although there was [Australia] A cricket and other squads going on, we had good confidence that we’d have him for the whole competition. That makes a big difference.”Ellis was a travelling reserve when Australia won the T20 World Cup in the UAE last year and will now come into consideration as a squad option for their title defence in October – particularly if he can secure a replacement deal in the Hundred and continues to impress in that competition.But those thoughts can wait. Finals are not about the future, but the unfiltered emotion of the present. And as Ellis, still in his full kit and wearing a Hampshire bucket hat, sat in the dressing room with his team-mates deep into the small hours on Sunday morning, he was left to reflect on the surreality of a final that he won twice

Teams in the Hundred are looking very different with players off to the CPL and international duty

Jake Lintott29-Aug-2022It’s been a bittersweet week. We had two really good wins, against Welsh Fire and in a difficult game against Trent Rockets, and it’s still special to win, even if you’re not really in the running for the knockout stages. You want to play for personal pride through to the end, and to trip other teams up if you can.It’d be great to finish with a win against Northern Superchargers on Wednesday, but we’re still disappointed with the position that we got ourselves into at the start of the season. It’d be great for us to finish on a real high by winning at Headingley. It’s crazy how tight the table is and if we win, we wouldn’t end up missing out on the knockout stages by many points at all.The atmosphere at our home games has been great and the fans have really got behind Southern Brave. That’s not been the case at every venue we’ve been to so we’re pretty lucky in that regard. It still feels like there’s a real hype around the Hundred and it feels like the standard has gone to the next level this year.Related

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When you look through the squads, they’re much stronger than last season because of the number of top overseas players that have been involved. It’s been awesome to go up against some of the world’s best but some of the teams are looking very different in terms of personnel heading into the final stages with players leaving for international duty or other leagues like the CPL.There’s so much cricket being played at the moment, all around the world, and the schedules are carnage. I’d love competitions to try and work together a little bit more: when they go up against each other, you end up with worse availability in both, which obviously affects the standard.There’s been lots of chat about the schedule all summer and it has been interesting to hear about the high-performance review. I haven’t played much first-class cricket but I look at the guys who are playing four-day cricket week in, week out and it makes me tired just looking at them. There’s going to have to be some kind of compromise somewhere.Personally, I think you could have three groups of six in the Blast and play 10 group games each, rather than 14, and you could have a three-division County Championship too. That would make Division One really strong and we’d still have 10 first-class games in the season – the same number they play in Australia, for example.I don’t envy Andrew Strauss having to make decisions on it because it is so hard to please everyone involved in the game, but ultimately, I think they will have to cut things back a little bit. There’s just so much going on at the moment: if you play in the Hundred final this weekend, you might start a Championship game 36 hours later.You have to try and find a way of looking after players. People don’t always take travel into account and most of our training is geared towards preparation for the next game: finding time to do much technical work when you’re playing so often is really hard. Volume is a big concern from the players’ perspective.I made my List A debut while playing for England Lions earlier this year and I’m desperate to play more 50-over cricket. It should be a big part of the schedule, for me: if you have 50-over World Cups to prepare for, you have to be playing one-day cricket consistently. At the moment, because I don’t play much red-ball cricket for Warwickshire, I find myself training with them for most of the year, but I only play for them for about five weeks, in the Blast.There are some very good players who have missed out on Hundred contracts this year and in future, you could have more than one wildcard pick per team. I got wildcarded last year because Southern Brave needed a wristspinner and I had done well in the Blast. It would be great for other players to have the same opportunity after breakthrough seasons for their counties.We travel to Leeds on Monday and we have a team meal with our women’s team there. We’ve got a great relationship with them and do lots of stuff together. They’re a great team to watch and we always try to get there before we play to watch their games: it’s really impressive how Charlotte Edwards has got them playing.They’ve got all bases covered. Smriti Mandhana and Danni Wyatt are a pretty formidable opening partnership and Amanda-Jade Wellington’s legspin has been huge for them. For me, they’re far and away the best team in that competition, so hopefully they’ll go all the way.

Hashim Amla retired from all forms of cricket on January 18; here’s how the cricket world paid tribute to the South African batter

ESPNcricinfo staff19-Jan-2023

Hashim Amla.. where do I start?! Not easy. Might take me a few days, weeks, months, years.

I can literally write a book about you.

Humaam, thank you for always being there for me. You’ve always been a brother who made me feel safe in so many ways.

— AB de Villiers (@ABdeVilliers17) January 18, 2023