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“He’ll just have to wait for some more time as Kyle Mayers is doing really well”

ESPNcricinfo staff19-Apr-2023KL Rahul has admitted he “feels bad” about Quinton de Kock’s continued absence from Lucknow Super Giants’ starting XI in IPL 2023, describing his omission as “very unfortunate”.De Kock was unavailable for Super Giants’ opening two games of the season while on international duty and Kyle Mayers, who filled in at the top of the order, made the most of his opportunity.Ahead of Wednesday night’s game against Rajasthan Royals, Mayers was Super Giants’ leading run-scorer for the season with 168 in five innings, including two half-centuries. He has also maintained a healthy strike rate of 168.00.Super Giants have used Mayers, Nicholas Pooran, Marcus Stoinis and one fast bowler – either Mark Wood, Romario Shepherd or Naveen-ul-Haq – as their four overseas players this season, and have been unwilling to alter that combination to accommodate de Kock despite his previous success for them.”It’s very unfortunate that someone like Quinton has to sit out,” Rahul, Super Giants’ captain, said at the toss ahead of their game in Jaipur. “But unfortunately, there are only four foreign players [per XI] that can play in this competition.”He’ll just have to wait for some more time. Kyle is doing really well. It’s a bit unfortunate. You feel bad. I’ve enjoyed playing and enjoyed opening with Quinton, but for now, he’s still not playing.”De Kock opened the batting alongside Rahul throughout the 2022 season as Super Giants reached the play-offs, scoring 508 runs at an average of 36.28 and a strike rate of 148.97. He was retained on a contract worth INR 6.75 crore ahead of this year, but has found himself running the drinks.”It’s been quite relaxed,” de Kock told Star Sports before Wednesday’s game. “I’m not quite used to being on the side for so long but it’s all good – the team’s doing really well so I guess that’s the most important thing.”It’s been chilled. I’ve made a couple more friends sitting on the side, learned a lot more with the boys and it’s been fun watching the guys.”He added that he has been working hard to keep himself fit and try to force his way into the side. “Put it this way: I don’t think I’ve gymed, run and practised as much as I have in the last two in my whole career,” de Kock said.

Hurricanes exacted revenge for their defeat three nights ago with a nine-run win as Thunder suffered a middle-order collapse

Tristan Lavalette13-Jan-2022Matthew Wade made an unbeaten 83 on return, then Riley Meredith lit a fuse with the ball as Hobart Hurricanes ended Sydney Thunder’s six-match winning streak with a nine-run victory at Marvel Stadium.After missing two matches due to personal reasons, Wade’s 54-ball knock held Hurricanes’ innings together after they elected to bat before speedster Meredith tore through Thunder’s vaunted batting order with three wickets in a see-saw contest.Fourth-placed Hurricanes (24 points) exacted revenge after losing by nine wickets just three days ago and tightened their grip on a playoffs berth, while Thunder (31 points) remained second behind Perth Scorchers.Wade returns in styleHaving hit two of his three BBL tons at Marvel Stadium, Ben McDermott eyed another big score but Thunder had his number again as he fell for 18. For the second straight match, he fell to a slower delivery after being deceived by Daniel Sams in the fifth over.It brought Wade to the crease, who returned after missing two matches due to personal reasons and he came in at No. 3 instead of his customary position at the top. Having struggled for most of the season, Wade’s timing was impeccable with a powerful boundary second ball and then smashed legspinner Tanveer Sangha for two boundaries in the seventh over.Wade received a life on 18 when Sangha dropped a sitter at short third man and made Thunder pay along with Caleb Jewell, who justified the faith to keep him as an opener with a 32-ball 51. Hurricanes appeared set to push for 200 until Jewell’s wicket in the 13th over sparked a collapse of 5 for 22.Having watched the carnage around him, an unperturbed Wade lifted Hurricanes with a late flurry. Hurricanes still haven’t quite got the balance right in their batting order but a rejuvenated Wade at No. 3 appears a winner.Thunder hit back after ragged startThunder appeared to be wilting amid the Wade and Jewell carnage marked by ragged bowling and sloppy fielding. But they weren’t rattled and impressively fought back to spectacularly flip the script. In-form seamer Gurinder Sandhu claimed two wickets in a momentum-shifting 13th over as Thunder tore through Hurricanes’ susceptible middle order.They claimed five wickets in a devastating 25-ball burst punctuated by a scintillating yorker by Mohammad Hasnain to clean up an ashen-faced Jordan Thompson in the 17th over. Apart from leaking 16 runs in the 12th over, Hasnain was again irrepressible with full, and fast, bowling.But the disciplined Thunder would have been disappointed with their bowling and fielding in the first 10 overs which ultimately proved costly.Meredith sizzles with paceApart from taking the wicket of Matthew Gilkes in the first over, Meredith was struggling with his rhythm and his wayward bowling promptly suffered a hammering from Alex Hales. Fellow seamer Tom Rogers, their leading wicket-taker this season, didn’t fare any better as an under-siege Hurricanes lost their nerve with Thunder’s 1 for 56 the most runs scored by any team in the powerplay this season.They clawed back through Thompson claiming the key wickets of Hales and stand-in skipper Jason Sangha, who fell to a superb slower ball. Then Meredith swung the match spectacularly in the 11th over by clean bowling Ollie Davies and Ben Cutting with sheer pace as Hurricanes gained a stranglehold.Meredith, who played five T20Is for Australia last year, had an interrupted start to the BBL season and only took three wickets in his last five matches. With his lethal pace and full-length prowess on song, the 25-year-old issued a timely reminder to national selectors.Thunder rocked by middle-order collapseChasing 178, Thunder looked supremely confident under the closed roof as they dominated the powerplay. Hales was patient early during his unbeaten 80 against Hurricanes the last time but he was in a hurry here.Hales smashed David’s spin for five boundaries in the second over and raced to 27 off just 10 deliveries after he flicked a fast delivery from Meredith for six. His whirlwind 17-ball 38 ended in the fifth over but Thunder still looked on course until they lost 4 for 10 mid-innings.Nathan McAndrew tried his best at the end to conjure a miraculous victory but it wasn’t enough as Thunder lost for the first time since December 26.

Zak Crawley rises a remarkable 53 spots to reach a career-best No. 28 after scoring 267 in third Test

ESPNcricinfo staff26-Aug-2020Three England players made big strides in the rankings in the rain-hit third and final Test against Pakistan: James Anderson’s seven wickets in the match – which took him to 600 Test wickets, the first seam bowler to get to the mark – put him at No. 8 among bowlers, while Zak Crawley and Jos Buttler rose in the batsmen’s chart after hitting 267 and 152 respectively in England’s only innings.Anderson reaching the 600-wicket milestone was the story of the Test match, but Crawley was named Player of the Match for his mammoth double-century, his first three-figure score in his eighth Test. It was the second-highest maiden Test century by an English batsman and the seventh-highest overall, and gave him a lift of 53 positions in the list for batsmen to No. 28 with 605 rating points, both career highs.Only Ben Stokes (No. 8), Joe Root (No. 9) and Buttler, who got to the 21st position after hitting his career-best score, are ahead of Crawley for England in the rankings.Anderson had dropped out of the top ten, but the former world No. 1 got right back in to slot in at No. 8. In Southampton, not only did Anderson reach the 600-wicket mark in Tests, he also recorded his 29th five-wicket haul in Tests, in Pakistan’s first innings, before striking twice more in the second innings.There wasn’t much joy for Pakistan, apart from Azhar Ali and Mohammad Rizwan moving up the batsmen’s rankings. Ali’s 141 in their first innings took him up 11 spots to No. 23, while Rizwan, who hit 53 in the first innings to build on the 72 in the previous Test, got to the 72nd spot, a jump of three positions.At the end of the series, which England won 1-0 after winning the first Test by three wickets, the home side’s prospects of reaching the final of the World Test Championship had taken a hit. The WTC schedule is not halfway through yet, with 14 out of 27 series remaining, but England, after four series, are in third place behind India and Australia with just two series left – in Sri Lanka and in India – while Pakistan are further behind, at No. 5, with the second Test of their home series against Bangladesh, a tour of New Zealand and another home series against South Africa still to be played.

Harry Conway continued to star with a useful partnership and more wickets at Drummoyne Oval

Daniel Brettig13-Mar-2019Harry Conway continued to enjoy the game of his life but Victoria were inching their way to a defendable fourth-innings lead against New South Wales after two dramatic days of the top of the table Sheffield Shield match at Drummoyne Oval in Sydney.NSW had begun the day by eking out another 38 priceless runs for the final three wickets, as the captain Peter Nevill found more than useful help from Conway to forge a first-innings advantage. The Victorian response was quickly unsettled by Conway, who got an outswinger to lift off a length at Travis Dean and reap a catch in the slips, maintaining the visiting captain’s difficult season.Marcus Harris and Will Pucovski steadied things for a time, but in the minutes before lunch both were deceived and dismissed: Pucovski pinned lbw on the front foot by Steve O’Keefe, then Harris tucked up by a Greg West bouncer and gloving into the cordon from the very last ball of the morning.In the afternoon, Conway bent a near yorker around the groping bat of Cameron White to pin the former Victorian captain lbw for a golden duck, and Nic Maddinson hinted at a major score before glancing West into Nevill’s gloves for 33.Conway’s third strike arrived when Matthew Short was turned around by another away swinger and well held by Nick Larkin in the slips, and Seb Gotch’s unsuccessful attempt to hammer Jason Sangha’s legbreak beyond the boundary left Victoria with only three wickets remaining. Nevertheless, their lead by the close was worth 130, with James Pattinson and Peter Siddle intent on adding more.

The ICC has found no evidence of corruption following an investigation stemming from a newspaper story in The Sun on the eve of the Perth Ashes Test

ESPNcricinfo staff08-Feb-2018The ICC has found no evidence of corruption following an investigation stemming from a newspaper story in on the eve of the Perth Ashes Test, which claimed the series had been targeted for spot-fixing along with various T20 tournaments around the world.In the lead-up to the third Ashes Test at the WACA in December, reported that two of their undercover reporters had been asked for GBP140,000 (USD187,000) to “spot fix” markets in the match, such as the exact amount of runs scored in an over.The ICC’s Anti Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) immediately launched an investigation, saying that they would cross-reference this new information with their existing reports, although they added, very early on, that there was no evidence that the Perth Test had been corrupted in any way.Now, two months later, the ACSU has confirmed that their investigations did not turn up anything to suggest any matches, players or officials have been involved.”We have carried out an extensive global investigation with anti-corruption colleagues from Member countries based on the allegations in and the material they shared with us,” Alex Marshall, the general manager anti-corruption, said”I am satisfied that there is no evidence to suggest any match has been corrupted by the individuals in the investigation nor is there any indication that any international players, administrators or coaches have been in contact with the alleged fixers.”The game’s most high-profile spot-fixing scandal was broken by the now-defunct – sister paper to – in 2010, which led to Pakistan’s Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif being given prison sentences for bowling deliberate no-balls in a Test at Lord’s.

Half-centuries from opener Himanshu Rana and No. 3 Shubman Gill provided India Under-19s with a total of 273, which they were able to defend successfully thanks a middle-overs squeeze by their spinners Abhishek Sharma and Rahul Chahar

ESPNcricinfo staff23-Dec-2016
Scorecard and ball-by-ball detailsFile photo: Himanshu Rana’s 71 off 79 balls was the highest score of the Asia Cup final•PTI

Half-centuries from opener Himanshu Rana and No. 3 Shubman Gill provided India Under-19s with a total of 273, which they were able to defend successfully thanks a middle-overs squeeze by their spinners Abhishek Sharma and Rahul Chahar. In the end, hosts Sri Lanka were beaten by 34 runs.At one point though, that result had seemed unlikely. With the momentum of picking up six wickets in the last 11 overs fuelling them, Sri Lanka went after the target with great vigour. Captain Kamindu Mendis and R Kelly struck fifties each to take the score to 158 for 2 in the 31st over. That brought the equation down to 116 off 118 balls with eight wickets in hand.India needed to re-establish control and their 16-year old captain Abhishek helped with that, dismissing Kelly for 63. He finished with figures of 4 for 37 in 10 overs of left-arm spin and claimed the Man-of-the-Match award. Sri Lanka had to deal with Chahar’s miserly legspin from the other end. With him bowling his full quota, giving away only 22 runs, and picking up three wickets as well, the chase unravelled. Sri Lanka lost three wickets in five overs between the 38th and 43rd, then another three wickets with the score on 225 and were finally bowled out for 239.It signalled the importance of first-innings runs in Colombo, and India were able to put up enough thanks to Rana’s 71 off 79 balls and Gill’s 70 off 92 balls. While their partnership of 88 for the second wicket was on, it seemed like India would get to a total of 300 or more, but seamer Nipun Ransika, who took two wickets in the 47th over, and left-arm spinner Praveen Jayawickrama, who dismissed both the half-centurions, ensured that did not happen. Sri Lanka would later realise that the damage had already been done.

Samit Patel had planned to go to Dubai for a holiday. Now he’s going with England, hoping to add to his five Test caps

David Hopps at Trent Bridge24-Sep-2015Samit Patel had planned to go to Dubai anyway. Not to be conveniently placed in case an England spinner tripped over a fielding cone. Just because he fancied a holiday in the sun after a long season. Now he goes to Dubai with England, wondering if the Test series against Pakistan will present an opportunity to add to his five Test caps. The sunbed and ice creams will have to give way to fielding drills and ice baths.He looks trim, that needs to be stated from the outset. Either that or the Nottinghamshire kit is expertly tailored for the fuller figure. “He obviously hasn’t been fitness-tested by England because he is off their radar but he is fitness-tested by Notts on a regular basis and his tests are good,” said Mick Newell, his director of cricket.Pick him, then talk him down. Both Patel and Newell, one of those who selected him, are playing down the chance of him actually getting a game. As a replacement for Zafar Ansari, he is very much the third spinner in line, behind Moeen Ali and Adil Rashid, and unlike Ansari he is not a selection with the future in mind. It is not impossible to draw up an XI where all three play – in fact, Patel’s most recent Test appearance, at Kolkata in December 2012, came alongside two other spinners in Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar. But it does seem unlikely.”We weren’t sitting there with hundreds of names in front of us,” Newell conceded. “There are a number of experienced offspinners and there are a number of promising legspinners, although they are a long way from being regarded as Test match bowlers.”Had the selectors spoken much of Patel in recent years? “A little bit in a very broad discussion of spin bowlers – Samit’s name comes up at most selection meetings.” Newell chuckled as he said it. One imagines it has often come up ruefully, an interlude between the serious stuff. But the bond between the player and his director of cricket is a strong one.”I am delighted for Samit because he has never given up hope,” Newell said. “It has been a while since he last played but he has always talked about his desire to play for England and he has this unexpected opportunity so let’s hope he makes the most of it. I have felt for two or three years that he still had a chance of selection in sub-continent conditions.”If England were going to Australia or South Africa, I don’t think Samit would be an obvious pick but this is a tour where unusually three spinners have been selected, the left-arm spinner who got selected was injured and Samit was the most obvious spinner in that role.”All that is just detail for Patel. He is just happy to be back. Last season, in the form of his life, he was determinedly ignored. This season, although short of runs in the Championship, fortune has favoured him. There were times when he seemed to be the only person in the country who believed he would go on another England tour, and he has been proved right.Frustration has been replaced by a bountiful smile, although that frustration was tempered by a recognition of the qualities of the player who got the vote last season. Moeen Ali was championed by Peter Moores, then England coach, now assisting at Nottinghamshire. “I thought I had a chance last season, but they went with Moeen. That pick is not a disappointment for me. He proved he deserved to have it.”This is a good news story, although some will see it largely as an example of England’s calamitous spin-bowling shortage. There is much affection for Patel at Trent Bridge, especially among the crowd. He is a character cricketer, a player who draws a smile, celebrating his skill as one of the best players of spin in the country (as there are hardly any spinners, he does not get much chance to prove it), sympathising with his occasional disasters, and relishing his expressive responses as life turns from good to bad and back to good again.He is a man of many guises. There is the cunning Samit, as one of his left-arm slows beats the outside edge, and persuades him that he has his quarry in sight; there’s the celebratory Samit, bounding around when something goes well, briefly feeling himself the best player in the world; the startled, wide-eyed Samit as events begin to conspire against him; and the disconsolate Samit when a run chase goes awry, he hangs his head and the world briefly becomes insufferable.And there will always be a distinctive mix of self-belief and comedy. Only Patel could follow an ECB tweet announcing his call-up for the Pakistan tour with a wicket at the same moment. “The very moment the press release went out he caused Sean Ervine to loft to mid-off where Stuart Broad, an England colleague again, held the catch … that’s Samit for you,” Newell smiled.Only Patel could follow-up a tour de force of stamina by Surrey’s Kumar Sangakkara in the Royal London Cup semi-final at the Kia Oval by needing treatment for cramp… when he was barely in double figures. Such rich irony. He will be forever worth watching, the sort of player you want to carry on until he is 40.Patel is 30 now and, while he chatted, he referred several times about how he is a mature person these days – habitually adding the word “hopefully” as if he feared something might go awry if he claimed too much. It will soon be Nottinghamshire’s end-of-season drinks party. “I will try to curb it as much as I can,” was his scampish response.He has never met Trevor Bayliss, England’s coach, and is looking forward to working with him, and is thrilled by the prospect of learning from Mahela Jayawardene, who will join the tour as a batting coach. When it comes to the art of playing spin, he will be one of Jayawardene’s brightest students.”I will bat anywhere just to play – that’s non-negotiable,” he said. “Opportunities have not come as I would have liked but that’s just the way sometimes. I will be behind Moeen and Rash to play but I will be happy just to go on the trip. To work with a new coach and with Mahela Jayawardene – I can’t wait. To learn off him will be outstanding.”Patel has been unfortunate in that batting is his strong suit, but spin bowling has often won him selection, creating an imbalance in how he is used. Recognising that England will not change, this season he has tried to change himself, placing more emphasis on his bowling in red-ball cricket.”I set my goal as 40 wickets for the year and I started really well but I have not had as much bowling as I would have liked,” he said. “I’ve been happy with how I’ve been bowling but it hasn’t been a spinner’s summer to be honest.”It’s about thinking like a spin bowler really, rather than a top-order batsman who bowls a bit of spin. How to create more wicket-taking deliveries. I presume I am just a replacement but I am just happy to get out there and impress some coaches.”The sun shone down on Trent Bridge. Samit Patel belonged. He felt special again.