Gary Kirsten’s time in charge of South Africa finished the way of a few men before him, and there appears no end in sight to the team’s quest to banish their demons

Firdose Moonda at The Oval19-Jun-2013Let’s be honest. South Africa choke in this semi-final, even though Gary Kirsten insisted they did. Maybe it’s just easier for him to confront the word head on rather than argue the finer points of difference between being noosed and being nowhere. South Africa were the latter.After collapsing to 80 for 8 and clawing their way to a semi-respectable total, they had to endure England’s measured run chase, a lesson in how they should have batted. Jonathan Trott played a delicate, well-paced innings, soft enough to take some of the sting out of the morning’s madness and to leave South Africa resigned to the inevitable.But the real trouble started long before that. They were lucky to get to the semi-finals after winning only one group match. Once there, they were never in the match. They were outplayed and they lost.In the minds of many that is equivalent to choking and South Africa will carry that ever-heavier tag until they win an ICC event. “The dark mist” Kirsten refers to will only burn off when a trophy arrives, and he admitted not even he knows how to secure one.When he took over the South Africa job, that was not his primary concern. The first year of his tenure was focused on acquiring the Test mace and Kirsten could be forgiven for neglecting limited-overs cricket. What he can be questioned on is using them as laboratories for experimentation.Sixteen players made their debut under his watch, which was a solid exercise in depth exploration, but combinations rarely stayed the same for consecutive matches. The floating batting line-up that Kirsten toyed with during his time with India could not translate to a set-up as rigid as South Africa’s.It flopped at the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka last year and Kirsten hinted he would abandon it. But in this tournament he used three different No. 3s in four matches. It was evidence that South Africa have enough players capable of fulfilling a particular position but not anyone who feels it’s theirs to own.That theme applied across the board and it took root at the top with AB de Villiers. He seemed a natural choice as captain when he was appointed but quickly proved otherwise. Indecision, uncertainty and being overburdened led to him relinquishing the wicketkeeping gloves in an attempt to concentrate on leadership and batting, and then taking them back when Kirsten decided that he would give South Africa their best chance.If de Villiers had the likes of Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis or even Johan Botha (who has moved to South Australia) to assist, he may have been able to handle the treble role easier. For now, it seems something always has to give. In this tournament he improved in his decision-making and managing of bowlers but his batting was not up to standard.On the whole, South Africa’s wasn’t. They ran India close in result terms but never looked like they could seriously challenge to win the match, and if Misbah-ul-Haq had some support, Pakistan could have chased down 234. They turned on some style against West Indies but in a rain-affected match a decent total is difficult to judge, and they collapsed against England.Those things have all happened before with Smith and Kallis in the XI, so the batting bloopers are not personnel- or technique-related; they are all about mindset. Kirsten has gone where those before him did not even consider, to try and change the way the South Africa squad thinks.He introduced them to a man who scales the world’s tallest peaks for fun so they could understand pressure better. They climbed mountains with Mike Horn and it helped strengthen their Test performances, but cycling in Amsterdam with him did not help the one-day side learn about the same.Put simply, South Africa’s Test squad is mature and settled. They were at the stage where they could benefit from an out-of-the-box excursion. The one-day side is not. They needed clear guidelines, proper preparation and solid game plans to succeed. Even if they had all those, they may still have come up short.Morne Morkel and Dale Steyn were another pair of absentees who Kirsten was confident would not be missed too much. In bilateral series, South Africa have played without one or both of them in certain matches and won. They are not the only two fast bowlers who are good enough but add their loss to everything else South Africa faced and the accumulation of problems is obvious.Winning one match out of four is not good enough to advance in any tournament, and South Africa’s eventual return is an accurate reflection of where they are as a one-day team at the moment. They are very much a work in progress and they will have to make those developments without Kirsten.His last match in charge was one he will want to forget and it leaves his CV with South Africa incomplete. While he will move on to more leisurely pursuits, they will continue trying to find a way to win when it matters. His advice was that would need “guts and glory”, with the task of finding those qualities now handed to Russell Domingo.He has a few weeks before the next series, in Sri Lanka, and months before the next major event, the World Twenty20 in Bangladesh, but already it is clear South Africa will need to go through a familiar cycle yet again.

As the Indian board goes into its AGM, a look at the year gone by shows its disregard for propriety and public opinion has only served to overshadow its operational efficiency

Sidharth Monga28-Sep-2013In ideal circumstances, the annual general meeting (AGM) of any organisation is an opportunity to take stock, to formulate plans for the future, to apprise its stakeholders of where the body is headed. The BCCI’s AGM, though, is more about political equations and aspirations at the best of times. This year is worse than others, what with legal wrangles and fixing controversies raising new issues of propriety every day. This AGM might not have the required mood to analyse the year gone by and make plans for the one coming up, but what if the BCCI were to look back?There have been IPL controversies both at the start and the end of the year, and the current one is not going to die down any time soon. The president is all set to be re-elected unopposed, but the highest court of the country has said the man has to get his name cleared before assuming office. It was a year when the BCCI was the farthest removed from what the public thinks of it, when its functioning was questioned by the enforcement directorate and the courts, but amid all the controversies it also found enough time to successfully organise two home Test series and a busy domestic season, to host Pakistan without glitches, to provide numerous opportunities for young fringe players through A tours and generate employment for quite a few former cricketers through its broadcast deal that has had more domestic cricket on TV than ever before.The BCCI can hardly hide behind those achievements. They pale in comparison to the questions of propriety asked of it. Soon after its last AGM, the BCCI oversaw a controversial sale of the Hyderabad franchise in the IPL. Turned out it was only a warm-up for the legal tussles and muck that was to follow. Unhappy with the treatment meted out to its franchise, Pune Warriors, Sahara, India’s team sponsors and one of Indian cricket’s biggest benefactors over the previous 10 years, expressed its intention to pull out of Indian cricket. Again.The BCCI’s energies were set to be centred around the IPL, but there were skeletons waiting to tumble out of the closet. Mohinder Amarnath, a former selector who was sacked as opposed to being named the chairman as was anticipated, accused N Srinivasan of interfering with selections. Most importantly, not allowing them to remove MS Dhoni as captain. Now there might have been cricketing merit in what was eventually done – there is even a clause that says every team selection has to be ratified by the board president – but here we are talking of a vice-chairman and managing director of a company saving the captaincy of the company’s vice-president. The company incidentally owns an IPL team captained by the vice-president.Thankfully Dhoni and his India team began to turn around its fortune, for who knows he might have been disowned if not, just like the managing director’s son-in-law who presented himself as the owner of Chennai Super Kings, and attended conferences in that capacity. The moment the news of Gurunath Meiyappan’s alleged involvement in the IPL betting scandal came up, he went from being the owner to an enthusiast in no time at all.

The BCCI found enough time to successfully organise two home Test series and a busy domestic season, to host Pakistan without glitches, to provide numerous opportunities for young fringe players through A tours and generate employment for quite a few former cricketers through its broadcast deal that has had more domestic cricket on TV than ever before. But the BCCI can hardly hide behind those achievements. They pale in comparison to the questions of propriety asked of it.

The most charitable interpretation of the whole scandal was that the BCCI hadn’t done enough to protect its prize asset, the IPL, from the unsavoury elements that were guaranteed to flock around it. A proper corporation would have sacked everyone responsible for such a lapse of security, but here the BCCI fell to its lowest. Until then there was nothing to suggest Srinivasan was personally at fault. Until now he was just a victim of carelessness. Now the BCCI appointed a panel that would absolve everybody without a thorough investigation. It was as clear a message as any that the BCCI didn’t care what people thought of the way it functioned.The board was now without an open leader, and had a figurehead who clearly knew he was just keeping the seat warm, playing Bharat to the exiled Ram. Still the board had enough energy to interfere in the internal matters of another board. Again this call to ask Cricket South Africa to steer clear of Haroon Lorgat might or might not have had administrative merit, but the BCCI’s reaction to his appointment showed how little regard it held the public and the international cricket community in. Not only did it renege on an agreement it made in principle, it disappointed the people who had been looking forward to a full tour of South Africa with some anticipation. Not to mention its own cricket wing: the selectors who put plans in place, and the coach who went to South Africa to see how the A team was doing there.The cases, inquiries and controversies will not cease. The BCCI’s operational efficiency – it is no mean job to organise 13 simultaneous first-class matches every week of the season, with them also coinciding with internationals – will keep being neglected unless it cleans up its act on other fronts.And there is a lot to clean. And more will pile on. Next year’s IPL will clash with general elections in India, and might need to be taken out of the country. A new team sponsor might be needed. The search for a new title sponsor for cricket in India is on. The BCCI will hope that in the coming year it bounces back like its cricket team did after a horrible last year. How that cricket team will hope it had its board’s tenacity to dig its heels in and somehow, by hook or by crook, maintain status quo when it kept losing.

Hailing from Bangladesh’ premier sports school, the BKSP, Mominul’s maiden century proves why he was earmarked for the future

Mohammad Isam in Chittagong11-Oct-2013On a few occasions every decade, since the inception of BKSP – the country’s largest sports institute – in 1986, Bangladesh cricket gets in the grip of “who’s coming out of BKSP” fever. It started with Al Shahriar and Naimur Rahman in the mid-1990s and continued with Mushfiqur Rahim and Shakib Al Hasan in the early 2000s. Towards the middle and end of the last decade, Nasir Hossain, Anamul Haque and Mominul Haque were the most talked about.In between, there have been several misses too. Players, such as Al Shahriar, pace bowler Sajal Chowdhury, and more recently Sohrawardi Shuvo, were highly-rated, but they either had technical flaws or they bowed out at a young age due to the weight of expectations.With his maiden century against New Zealand, Mominul has begun to fulfill his early billing. It was a two-paced innings; he started off rapidly on the second day, continuing in the same vein as he went past the century-mark, but as the bowling side caught up with him, he allowed Shakib and Mushfiqur – fellow BKSP alumni – to take over the scoring.”They probably didn’t know much about my batting because on the second day, I got a lot of bad balls,” Mominul said. “There was a bit of pressure on me today, particularly to score the hundred. I got a little careful as a result, but then I crossed that landmark, and the one after that.”It was a little tough to bat today, because they bowled in the right areas. I am a disappointed at not getting a double-hundred. I don’t know if I would get a second chance.”Mominul’s innings would please his BKSP coaches and the age-group scouts, who have spent their lifetimes finding such talents, parading them in tournaments and then spreading the word until one of the Dhaka clubs offer them a contract.Mohammad Salahuddin, Bangladesh’s former fielding coach, used to be the coach at BKSP when Mominul was admitted to the school in the seventh grade in 2004. The mentor kept a keen eye on his progress, and made sure that his guidance wasn’t lost when he left BKSP the following year.Though now he is the coach of a Malaysian university, Salahuddin felt elated after a year of near misses. The two had a talk on the second night when Salahuddin asked Mominul to open up his stance slightly so that he can have full-view of the left-arm seamers or anyone coming around the wicket.

Normally he tapers off or tries to bat too quickly. It was quite good today, I thought he understood where he needed to stop or go after the bowlingFormer BKSP coach Mohammad Salahuddin

“I was a little concerned that he wasn’t getting a big score in international cricket,” Salahuddin said. “Today I saw parts of his innings. I was really pleased with how he kept the rhythm of his innings until his hundred. Normally he tapers off or tries to bat too quickly. It was quite good today, I thought he understood where he needed to stop or go after the bowling.”He is a good guy, very disciplined and a hardworking student. You didn’t have to force him to do things. The old guys at the BKSP indoor would tell you that he was there at the nets almost every day. He prepares well, like he did in this off-season when he worked on his leg-side shots.”When Mominul first came into attention with a 150 against West Indies A, then BCB president AHM Mustafa Kamal, a rather excitable administrator, wanted him in the Test squad right away during the home series against Pakistan, two years ago.It didn’t materialise, but Mominul was in selectors’ eyes from then on. In his formative years after he had moved from hometown Cox’s Bazar to BKSP, he quickly became one of those cricketers that the Dhaka leagues awaited after getting very positive reports from coaches and scouts of the age-groups.Mominul followed the same route that got him to every representative side. But he hardly played more than five matches in the first-class arena. He was always going to make it to the senior side at the back of a bulk of runs, and that came last season. In eight matches, Mominul scored 443 with a top score of 120 out of the two centuries.It was enough for the selectors to keep him in the fringes. The opening came when Shakib Al Hasan was injured ahead of the West Indies ODIs at home. A steady 25 in his fifth ODI, also the series decider, gave a glimpse of how he could hold his own.Mominul made further strides with two fifties during the Tests in Sri Lanka, but in Zimbabwe, after not being able to convert his starts in the second Test, and looking uncomfortable at No. 3 in the ODIs, he was left out from the final ODI and told to work on his leg-side shots.However, the off-season work, the pre-season tour of England with Bangladesh A and some runs in the Dhaka Premier League have helped him. New Zealand were taken aback by his strokes early on, but even after they restricted him on the third morning and afternoon, Mominul didn’t look out of place.

Meet a Washington-based Afghan journalist who follows the nation’s cricket team as he tries to spread some cheer in a country starved of good news

Karthik Krishnaswamy04-Mar-2014Out in the middle, Mohammad Nabi has just pulled Thisara Perera for four. Afghanistan, chasing 254 to beat Sri Lanka, are 108 for 5. In the press box, I open Matiullah Abid’s Facebook profile. His latest post, like most of his posts, is in Pashto, and I cannot read what he’s written. But I can see it has attracted 60 likes in six minutes.Two chairs to my right sits Abid himself, punching away at his laptop, a frown of concentration tugging down at the ends of his thick black moustache. “I’m telling my countrymen not to worry,” he says, turning away from his screen. “Lots of big teams get bowled out for low scores. I’m telling them it’s part of the game. They are still learning what cricket is all about.”Abid has played a big role in teaching them. Based out of Washington DC, Abid works for , the US government’s official radio station. His broadcasts in Pashto mainly cover youth affairs, and cricket has grown to occupy a prominent role in them.”I have a show, weekly, and all the players, once they have become part of my show, everywhere they go I’m in touch with them, I find their phone numbers,” he says. “If I can travel, I travel. If not I use my connections to bring them on the show and tell the listeners Afghanistan is playing and how they are doing. I ask them to send their pictures and post them on Facebook and on our webpage.”Our Facebook page has almost 130,000 followers. I myself have over 5000 friends, and nearly 10,000 followers. I don’t want to praise myself. If you go to Afghanistan and say my name, ‘You know Abid?’ and they’ll say ‘the cricket man?'”Cricket entered Abid’s life quite early. When war began in Afghanistan in 1978, his family migrated to Pakistan. He was seven at the time.”First time I saw cricket was in Peshawar. My friends in my neighbourhood were playing on the streets, in the gardens,” he says. “That was when Imran Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad were playing. Then Shahid Afridi came, and Saeed Anwar was there. I was a left-hander, so I followed Saeed Anwar when I batted and Wasim Akram when I was bowling.”Following the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan, Abid thought he could move back home, but the start of the civil war put paid to that plan. He moved instead to the USA in 2000. There, he realised that cricket had taken root in Afghanistan, and began following the fortunes of the national team.After Afghanistan won the World T20 qualifier in Jersey, Abid decided he would start travelling to watch the team. He’s been at nearly all of their big moments since, but the first time was a particularly emotional experience.”I went to West Indies in 2010, and I could not believe it,” Abid says. “How can Afghanistan be here, playing against South Africa and India in the T20 World Cup? I was listening to our national anthem, and I cried, in front of my friends, and I said, look, people think Afghanistan is a terrorist state and drug state and Afghanistan is nothing. But now, we have a flag, we have an anthem, we have representation.”So this cricket has made us a country in the world arena and now people know us with a different name. If you go on Google, and write Afghanistan – attack, fighting, killing, death, drugs. If you add cricket with Afghanistan – jubilation, victory, fun. Cricket has changed the face of Afghanistan.”Apart from changing how the country is perceived by the outside world, Abid says cricket is also helping heal Afghanistan from within.”The war is the base of all the problems,” Abid says. “Infrastructure is totally destroyed. No schools for a long time, and two generations almost, from 1978 to 2000, remained out of normal life. They lived a refugee life. They can’t think about moving forward. This is the big problem. In Afghanistan, they still don’t believe that things will remain as they are now. If Americans go, what will happen? If the war started, what will happen?”Second thing, the government has misused the money and funding the world is giving, so people live by their own, everybody taking care of themselves. So youth are struggling, trying to make their own life. Thirdly, peace. The main thing is peace. If you are free of all fears – I will go to my school, I will go to work, I will go to the ground, and come back – this thing Afghanistan is lacking.”So these boys give hope to the Afghan youth, that look, we have qualified for the World Cup, so we are concerned about 2015, so we have already crossed this year. Recently, the Afghan cricket team went to the province of Khost. 35,000-plus people were there, and the big ground was full of people, only to see a glimpse of Mohammad Nabi or Hamid Hassan. The guys travelled from Kabul by helicopter.”The reception they received there gave a message to all of the youth. They are the guys who were refugees. They were nobodies. Now the whole country is following them, there are pictures in people’s houses. If you go to Kabul there are big hoardings with Mohammad Nabi and Hamid Hassan. This thing is very good, to push them, to motivate them, to say, look, if they can do it, everybody can do it.”And everyone in the country, it seems, is starting to play the game. Having first established itself in the regions bordering Pakistan, Abid says cricket is becoming popular in other parts of the country too.”The youth who belong to the border areas, the Nangrahar province – Jalalabad is the main city – and in the south, Paktika and Khost, most of the people migrated to the nearest part of Pakistan [during the war]. Which is why most of the players [in the national team] speak one language – Pashto,” Abid says. “Cricket was not that famous in the beginning in the north of Afghanistan [where Dari is the more commonly spoken language], but due to this explosion in popularity, now youngsters in that region also follow cricket. Mirwas Ashraf is from the north of Afghanistan, and there are some other players in the A team and the Under-19 team.But Jalalabad remains the epicenter.”The people who first spread cricket in Afghanistan – Taj Malik, Dawlat Ahmadzai – they belong to Jalalabad,” Abid says. “They established a club, Nangrahar Cricket Academy, which is still producing youngsters, talented guys like the Under-19 players, Hashmatullah Shaidi, Fareed (Ahmed) and the captain [Nasir Ahmadzai], who is the brother of Raees Ahmadzai, the former senior team captain. So Jalalabad has made a big contribution to cricket.”The spread of cricket in Afghanistan, and the successes of the national side, have made Abid a very busy man. Since Saturday’s historic win over Bangladesh, he’s barely had a moment’s rest.”Day before, we beat Bangladesh, and our whole radio programme was based on this,” he says. “Different programmes covering Pashto audience, they were just calling me, can you be our guest, so for four hours I was continuously on radio, talking and talking. Yesterday, I was watching the India-Pakistan match but still talking about what happened against Bangladesh.”

Despite the loss to Pakistan, Bangladesh’s batting showed marked improvements and would need to continue if they are to finally win a match in 2014

Mohammad Isam in Mirpur05-Mar-2014Mushfiqur explains changes to line-up

Bangladesh captain Mushfiqur Rahim has said that picking extra batsmen like Ziaur Rahman and Mahmudullah was due to his reading of Pakistan’s bowling attack and his side’s iffy form. Bangladesh made five changes for the game against Pakistan, from the one that lost to Afghanistan.
The injured Sohag Gazi and Rubel Hossain had to be replaced while Shakib Al Hasan entered the team after serving a suspension. Shamsur Rahman and Arafat Sunny were dropped, though they have been performing recently.
“Pakistan has one of the best bowling attacks so we felt it was a big risk to go with just six batsmen,” Mushfiqur said. “Zia isn’t the sort of batsman who can tackle a situation when we, by chance, lose 4-5 wickets in 25 overs. He can charge the bowlers in the last 10-15 overs. I think the selection was okay.”
He added that Abdur Razzak was preferred to Arafat Sunny for his experience. “It could have gone either way with Sunny’s selection but we backed our most experienced spinner [Abdur Razzak].”

At the halfway stage, Bangladesh had erected their highest ODI total, and were on a high after lashing 121 runs in the final 10 overs. Their bowling, however, brought them back to earth as everything came undone in the face of a Shahid Afridi onslaught.The required run-rate was a shade under 11 when the final 10 overs began. Mushfiqur Rahim had banked on his spinners to coax it upward but Mahmudullah leaked 16 in the 42nd over and Shakib Al Hasan, their best bowler, was flayed for three sixes in the 43rd. The switch to pace proved just as disastrous as Shafiul Islam was carved for 16 in the 45th. Abdur Razzak’s experience proved for little as he was slogged for 18 in the 48th. And by now Pakistan’s equation was a very manageable 13 off 12 balls.The loss hid vital improvements in Bangladesh’s batting performance, none more pleasing than Anamul Haque’s second ODI century which formed the bulk of a 150-run opening stand with Imrul Kayes. That platform allowed Mominul Haque, Mushfiqur Rahim and Shakib to rake in 121 runs in the last ten overs.Imrul was one of five changes in the Bangladesh XI and the experiment almost backfired in the very first over, but Ahmed Shehzad spilled one at slip. With that slice of good fortune, Imrul constructed a busy half-century when he was constantly on the lookout for runs, whether through boundaries square on the off side or through ones and twos. He has looked an improved batsman since the Chittagong Test against Sri Lanka and was a key component of Bangladesh establishing their second highest opening partnership, and their first since the Kayes-Shahriar Nafees stand against New Zealand in 2010.Anamul caught up as he began finding the boundaries with greater frequency and was once again severe on the opposition’s fastest bowler. Mohammad Talha, like Varun Aaron, was handled with disdain as Anamul collected 31 runs off 19 balls, including three fours and two sixes. But one area where he needs serious work is his consistency. He made a fifty against India, missed out against Afghanistan but again played well against Pakistan, a syndrome that has followed him from the Sri Lanka ODIs earlier last month.Mominul has also developed a recent habit of succumbing after being well-set, although on Tuesday he lost his wicket in the search for quick runs. His timing has been brilliant since the New Zealand series and came in handy as Bangladesh made healthy progress in the middle overs. By the time he was dismissed at 204 for 2, the team was in their best position after the fall of two wickets since 1999.Mushfiqur and Anamul kept the trend going, taking Bangladesh to their best position for the loss of three wickets. Then Shakib joined his captain, and the pair added 77 runs for the unbroken fourth wicket partnership, at a dizzy 13.58 per over to record the fastest 50-plus Bangladesh partnership ever.Bangladesh’s defence began well in the early overs, but they could not prevent a 97-run stand for the opening wicket between Shehzad and Mohammad Hafeez, a best for Pakistan in the last 12 months.Shehzad added another 105 runs with Fawad Alam for the fourth wicket, even more crucial given that it came after the loss of Hafeez, Misbah-ul-Haq and Sohaib Maqsood for just eight runs. That set things up for Afridi as he and Alam carved 69 runs for the sixth wicket – their fastest partnership in the last three years. On the all-time list, this was the eighth fastest 50-plus stand for the team.When Afridi struck five sixes in quick succession, the Bangladesh bowlers slumped to new lows. The batsmen, however, have showed desire, particularly Anamul whose progress has been significant since a lacklustre series against New Zealand. If Bangladesh are to break their 2014 duck in the next match against Sri Lanka, the team would expect exactly this approach from the batsmen, and hope the bowlers offer better assistance.

Saeed Ajmal made a relatively late entry into international cricket but didn’t play his first Test till he was almost 32. He is 36 now and is doing his best to make up for lost time having been a key player for Pakistan for many years

Umar Farooq in Dubai10-Jan-2014Pity Saeed Ajmal. Since May 2011, he’s bowled the most overs in international cricket (1914.1 overs, far ahead of Graeme Swann’s 1619.3 and James Anderson’s 1640.1 overs). And he’s missed only six international matches out of the 122 Pakistan have played since becoming a permanent member of the team across all formats. A relatively late entrant to international cricket, at the age of 30, he played his first Test when almost 32; now 36, it seems he’s doing his best to make up for lost time.He’s been a key player for Pakistan for all this time. And now the strain is showing.The Abu Dhabi Test took its toll on Ajmal. He has never waited so long for a wicket in a Test innings: his previous longest wait was 41.1 overs, in the first innings against England at Lord’s in 2010 and he ended with figures of 2 for 126 from 44 overs. He remained wicketless in the second innings of the first Test with 49 overs, conceding 115 runs, and had to wait another 28.2 overs in Dubai to take his first wicket, making the stretch 77.2 overs.There was a debate of sorts in the dressing room of the Sheikh Zayed Stadium before the first Test over resting Ajmal but captain Misbah-ul-Haq voted out the other spinner Abdur Rehman and insisted on sticking with the veteran. By no means has Ajmal been the wrong pick but he didn’t fire in time. Probably, he wasn’t given much support from the other end, or as Ramiz Raja suggests, he was “neutralised” well by the Sri Lanka batsmen.Ajmal doesn’t want to rest, he has barely asked for it. He wants to play every match and Pakistan don’t want to drop him because he has been doing well. He was supposed to be rested with his suspected hernia last year but doctors cleared him with a week’s rest before the ODI series in Scotland in May.Saqlain Mushtaq, on the other hand, made his Test debut at 19 and became the quickest to 100 one-day-international wickets. His career was damaged by knee injury and in nine years – in which he played 49 Tests and 169 ODIs – his career was over. He made a final unsuccessful attempt in 2004 to force his way back into the Test side, against India in Multan, only to concede 204 runs in 43 overs. Disappointed with Ajmal’s workload, Saqlain advised him to take a break to avoid getting fatigued.”He [Ajmal] is a quality spinner and has proven himself in every format but he looked tired against Sri Lanka and perhaps he needs to be given a break from the sport so that he can refresh himself and come back fresh,” Saqlain said. “He can still play for some more years and is our match winner.”Ajmal is an automatic selection in every format for Pakistan and dropping him could be the hardest thing for the selectors who normally adopt a safety-first policy. Rotation doesn’t work in Pakistan, players are insecure, selections are inconsistent and players have no guarantee if they will be recalled after been rested.Cricket is money in Pakistan and for Ajmal it’s no exception. He wants to earn as much as he can before he walks away. He has been one of the best spinners in the world in the last three years but he is missing out on the IPL money. After a late entry and with age not on his side, it’s uncertain how long he will manage to play. He would want to play the 2015 World Cup but Pakistan would prefer an in-form and fit Ajmal who can contribute with his performances.

India have struggled to win away Tests recently; New Zealand have beaten only West Indies and Zimbabwe at home over the same period

Shiva Jayaraman04-Feb-2014India have not won an away Test since June 2011 when they beat West Indies at Sabina Park, Jamaica. Their current sequence of 12 consecutive away Tests without a win is their worst since 1993-2001, when they went 22 away Tests without a win. The bigger concern for India, however, is that they have lost nine of these 12 Tests, putting them at the bottom of the win-loss ratio table in overseas Tests, along with Zimbabwe.Their last tour to New Zealand was the first time in 40 years they won a Test series there, and their only Test win in that series, in Hamilton, was their first Test win in New Zealand in 30 years. Before that, India won a Test in New Zealand in 1975-76, in Auckland. Overall in the last 30 years, India’s win-loss record in New Zealand is their second-worst, after their record in Australia.India’s records at the two venues for the Test series present contrasting pictures. India play their first Test at Eden Park, where they are yet to lose a Test from four matches and have had two of their five wins in New Zealand. At the Basin Reserve, their record is poor: they have lost four of the six Tests that they have played at this venue, and have won only one. India won way back in 1967-68 in the third Test of their first away series against New Zealand. The hosts’ win-loss ratio of 4 against India at the Basin Reserve is their best among teams that have played more than two Tests at this venue.New Zealand have hosted the highest percentage of draws in Tests in recent times. In 12 Tests that have been played here since 2011, seven have ended in draws. This is the most draws played out in any country during this period. New Zealand have won only three of these 12 Tests, two in the recent series against West Indies and one against Zimbabwe in January 2011. Over the same period, Bangladesh are the only team to have done worse in terms of winning Tests at home. However, five of the seven draws have come against the top Test teams: three against South Africa – the strongest touring side in the recent years – and three against England.

New Zealand against India at Basin Reserve and Eden Park

VenueMatWonLostDrawW/LBasin Reserve, Wellington64114.0Eden Park, Auckland40220.0New Zealand’s batsmen have played a significant part in their holding better ranked teams to draws in Tests at home in the last couple of years. Their top-order batsmen (Nos 1 to No. 7) average 43.44 in Tests at home since January 2012, with 10 hundreds in as many Tests. Only South Africa’s top order has done better in New Zealand, averaging 48.73 from three Tests. Ross Taylor has been one of the leading batsmen in Tests in the last year or so. He has scored 866 runs at 72.16 including three hundreds and four half-centuries in 17 innings since January 2013. In home Tests against India, Taylor has hit 327 runs at 64.40 with two centuries. One of those hundreds was in the second innings of India’s last Test in Wellington, which denied India their second Test win of the tour. Jesse Ryder, who has been selected as back-up for Taylor for the series, has done well too, scoring 327 runs at 65.40 against India in Tests at home, including a career-best 201 in Napier in 2008-09.

New Zealand batsman against India at home

BatsmanInnsRunsHSAve100/50Jesse Ryder532720165.402/0Ross Taylor532215164.402/0Brednon McCullum523211546.401/1Taylor has played only one Test in Auckland, scoring 22 against England last year, but his record at the Basin Reserve is good. He has scored 748 runs at 62.33 including two hundreds and five half-centuries. Brendon McCullum and Peter Fulton are the other top run-scorers at the venues of this Test series, with Fulton scoring 291 at 72.75 in two Tests at Eden Park, including two hundreds in a Test against England the last time he played at the venue.

New Zealand batsmen at Eden Park and Basin Reserve

BatsmanInnsRunsHSAve100/50Brendon McCullum2991510432.671/6Ross Taylor1677012955.002/5Peter Fulton1145313641.182/1Kane Williamson9411102*58.711/2BJ Watling61976532.830/2Hamish Rutherford5863717.200/0Among India’s current top-order batsmen, only MS Dhoni has played in Tests in New Zealand before this tour. He has hit 155 runs at 77.50 with two fifties in two Tests. The next-highest run-scorer for India from the current team is Zaheer Khan with 138 runs from five matches. Zaheer has made more significant contributions with the ball in New Zealand, taking 24 wickets from five Tests at 22.95 – his second-best bowling average in a country, after Zimbabwe. He has taken three of his seven overseas five-wicket hauls in Test in New Zealand, with two of them coming at the Basin Reserve. Ishant Sharma is the only other bowler in the India squad to have bowled in Tests in New Zealand, taking eight wickets at 41.75 from three Tests.Given how India’s batsmen largely struggled against New Zealand’s fast bowlers in the recent ODI series, the bowlers are expected to come hard at the India batsman in conditions that have been helpful to fast bowlers. As expected, fast bowlers have tasted greater success at both the venues, but more so at the Basin Reserve where they average nearly 10 runs fewer than the spinners. The hosts will be banking on their fast bowlers – who bowled exceedingly well in the recent series against West Indies, taking 54 of the 60 wickets to fall – to improve their win-loss record at home, even as India look to end their winless streak in away Tests.

Pace v Spin at Eden Park and Basin Reserve, since 2004

Bowler TypeMatWktAveSRBBIBBM5w/10wEden Park, AucklandPace410433.3064.96/6811/1806/1Spin42838.0382.84/447/1400/0Basin Reserve, WellingtonPace1434229.5854.76/2310/8017/1Spin148739.2986.07/13010/1182/2

Having tossed away opportunities in the field with reckless abandon and slumping into negative territory at the start of their chase, England found the courage to make amends

Alan Gardner in Chittagong27-Mar-20144:33

Crowe: Hales innings best of the tournament

It wasn’t quite the shot heard around the world but Alex Hales’ bludgeoned six high over midwicket to seal victory for England against Sri Lanka should reverberate round the World T20. How a team that had seemed stricken by bad form and low confidence at the halfway point managed to perform such a volte face, pulling off their highest run chase with six wickets and four balls in hand, is a question only the T20 gods can answer.Just when it appeared England had lost their way irretrievably after stumbling in circles for months, they discovered a map to guide them safely, resplendently through unchartered waters. T20 is about the outsized, the extraordinary, the odds-defying and the synapse-shredding. Hales provided plenty of that in his soaring crescendo of an innings but, like his partner Eoin Morgan during a record third-wicket stand, the calmness inside was just as important.Sri Lanka had accepted England’s generous largesse and gambolled their way to another new high score on the ground. England had dropped four simple chances in the field and missed a run-out too. Shoulders had slumped, eyes appeared hollow. Few had high expectations of the team’s World T20 chances but this had the look of a tired farce. Indignation at an early decision not to award a catch that looked to have been clearly taken was gradually eroded by dismay at each successive, basic error.What to do? Perhaps, during the ten minutes the teams were off the pitch at the interval, Ashley Giles and Stuart Broad merely passed around a photocopy of the serenity prayer:Alex Hales made a blistering hundred that could turn England’s tournament around•Getty ImagesMichael Lumb’s supreme effort to remove Mahela Jayawardene first ball had gone unrewarded. England’s poor catching had gifted an advantage graciously received by a formidable opponent. So inauspicious was the start of their reply that they effectively moved into negative territory after the first over, a double-wicket maiden. None of these things could be changed but Hales and Morgan showed the courage required to make amends.The required rate rose above 12 an over even before the halfway stage. In the tenth, Morgan hit the first six of the innings. The crowd’s response to a steady, if initially unthreatening, flow of boundaries was a mixture of curiosity and wonder; as the tempo increased and outrageous possibility coalesced around the two batsmen in the middle, the cheering became more fevered. By the end, as Hales finished off Sri Lanka with a barrage of sixes, the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury was rapturously receiving the 2014 tournament’s first centurion.Hales, who had previously been dismissed on 99 and 94 in T20 internationals, punched the air and removed his helmet upon reaching three figures, the first England player to do so. He finished the job in the next over, raising his hands aloft as the ball sailed towards the stands again. He may never crack first-class cricket but he is first-class at T20.Victory not only changed the complexion of the group and revived England’s chances of reaching the semi-finals but it allowed them to make some significant gains after the slow regression of recent times. At the last World T20, Sri Lanka ended their participation at the Super 8 stage, with Lasith Malinga filleting them for a five-wicket haul. On this occasion, he was blunted and Ravi Bopara, who had talked of his plans to deflect Malinga’s yorker, demonstrated the extent of England’s learning by twice doing just that to pick up consecutive fours at the start of the 18th over.Morgan played his first significant knock in more than a year, passing fifty for the first time since England’s failed World T20 defence in Sri Lanka two years ago. These two teams have met at each of the last two tournaments and the winner has gone on to the final. England will exceed expectations if they make the knockouts but, having beaten the No. 1-ranked side, may now feel that circumstances favour them for a Dhaka rally.For almost the entirety of Sri Lanka’s innings, it seemed as if England’s malaise would continue. They have talked stoically about pulling through but looked most likely to be rolling out of Chittagong on a gurney after a wretched performance in the field. “Whatever it is, it’s not catching,” as Richie Benaud used to say. England feel like they have been trying to catch a break for weeks but they did not show any proficiency at the skill during Sri Lanka’s innings, tossing away opportunities with reckless abandon.Ironically, the most difficult take of the night was the spark for what followed, as England disintegrated in the wake of Jayawardene’s non-dismissal quicker than you could said “foreshortening”. There was irony, too, in Jayawardene’s drop of Hales. Jayawardene was the chief beneficiary of England’s litany of mistakes but by the end his isolated gaffe had proved to be more costly. Wisdom in T20 can be as simple as knowing what you can and can’t affect. Taking catches is a good place to start.

The England board’s recently announced plans to revive old cricket grounds in urban areas was greeted with suspicion. Is the cynicism justified?

Jon Culley03-Apr-2014It is a cloudy Friday afternoon in Nottingham and out of curiosity I decide to drive to King Edward Park in Sneinton, an inner-city area a couple of miles from Trent Bridge, wondering what had become of something called the npower Urban Cricket arena.It is a facility that was opened in May 2009, when Stuart Broad turned up to wield a plastic bat and pose enthusiastically with a bunch of smiling kids bedecked in sponsor’s t-shirts, holding up red sponsor’s cards with the number six on them.Journalists were invited to note the sponsor’s commitment to grass-roots cricket development while they awaited a chance to tease a few lines out of the England bowler with an upcoming Ashes series moving closer to the top of the news agenda.Media calls of this type are routine, invariably taking place in a socially deprived neighbourhood into which players – along with an entourage of officials from the England and Wales Cricket Board, sponsors’ representatives, and press officers – are parachuted for an hour or two to hit some balls, shake some hands and share some wisdom with the assembled cricket writers before disappearing again. Rarely does anyone return to see what happened next.Journalists tend to regard such events with a slightly jaundiced perspective, suspecting that what they are witnessing is largely window dressing, as a sport’s governing body tries to demonstrate that the substantial sums of money being handed over by their sponsors have a purpose beyond merely providing bigger pay packets for their players.Little wonder therefore that a certain amount of suspicion greeted the announcement last month from Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman, that as a result of “the new financial arrangements at the ICC”, under which England wrested a larger share of international revenue, there would be new money available to revive old cricket grounds, or perhaps even provide new ones, in urban areas.Is such cynicism really justified? It is a question I ponder as I find the entrance to King Edward Park and pull up nearby, expecting the npower Urban Cricket arena by now to be a graffiti-daubed, vandalised, and generally neglected shadow of its shiny former self.More of what I found later. But a few days on, I put the question to Wasim Khan, once an inner-city no-hoper himself – in the view of his peers and elders, at any rate – and now the chief executive of the Cricket Foundation charity and the driving force behind the Chance to Shine and StreetChance schemes that have done much to reverse the decline in cricket in state schools and to foster enthusiasm for the game in the most disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods.

Sometimes the problem is the ECB’s own rules – rules devised for good reasons, to set acceptable minimum standards, but which can further reduce the options available

“At one time, perhaps,” he says. “I think cricket suffered in the past from what you could call ‘initiative-itis’, where things have come and gone quickly and therefore lost a lot of credibility.”They would ask, ‘Is this just here for show? Will it be here today, gone tomorrow?’ It seemed the most important thing was to be seen to be doing things, and communities would get a bit fed up with being used for commercial purposes.”But there has been a change of mindset, a genuine feeling that cricket wants to do something more meaningful with urban communities. The ECB has recognised that not enough was done in the past and has become much more proactive, and Giles Clarke’s announcement that a lot more is going to be done around inner cities can only be a great thing.”But as ever the local authorities face the same challenge: is there enough green space to provide people with hard ball opportunities?”It is the dilemma facing every development officer in every county with a substantial urban population. Take Newham, for example, one of the London boroughs for which Essex is the parent county. Formed from the old boroughs of West and East Ham, Newham had a population of 310,500 at the last census, squeezed into an area of 14 square miles. Enormously diverse, it is also among the most deprived urban areas in Britain, although land prices hardly reflect that.A search for any plot for sale in the borough found only one, roughly one eighth of an acre in size, for £950,000. A cricket field requires around 3.5 acres. That is not far short of £3.5m before you even start transforming the area.The area is not without green space. Newham Council’s website boasts that Newham has 22 parks. Yet not one of them contains a cricket pitch.”There are only two cricket squares in the whole of Newham,” Graham Jelley of the Essex Cricket Board explains. “There is one in a public park, West Ham Park, although that is owned by the Corporation of London and nothing to do with Newham Council. The other one is in a ground leased from the local authority by the Bonny Down Community Association.” Newham Cricket Club, the only club in the borough, plays there.”If you go back 20 or 30 years most of the parks had one or two cricket squares,” Jelley says. “If you go on Google Earth you can see where some of them were. In South Beckton Park, for instance, there clearly used to be two. But gradually over time those have basically disappeared.”It is a story with echoes around the country. In Sheffield, which is Yorkshire cricket development manager Gareth Davies’ patch, the struggling east side of the city, once the thriving hub of the steel industry, recently lost nine cricket pitches within a one-mile radius, while the works grounds that were once the pride of Firth Vickers and Forgemasters and the other steel giants have long gone.And in Nottingham, while there is a vibrant amateur cricket culture with 24 clubs in the city, only a third of them have their own ground.”There has been a continual loss of grounds,” Tracey Francis, Nottinghamshire’s head of community sport, laments. “Nottingham has a huge industrial heritage. All the big employers – Players, Plessey, Pretty Polly – had their own sports ground, but they’ve largely gone. Nottinghamshire bought the old Boots ground at Lady Bay, but most of the others were sold off for housing or development.”We have been developing secondary school sites and looking at where we have the potential to bring fallow cricket wickets back into play, and where we can marry up schools with clubs.”Most agree that what’s needed in urban grounds is good-quality wickets that don’t prompt fear of getting hurt•Chance to ShineIn Sheffield, Davies has a headache anytime the issue of somewhere to play is raised. He does not disguise his pessimism. “If a new club came to me now, I don’t think there is a facility for them in the whole of Sheffield,” he says, before listing the kind of obstacles he has to overcome in trying to meet the demand for outdoor cricket.”You can put them in somewhere like Graves Park, but what is there is basically a field, with no changing room and an uncovered, unmaintained pitch. The council has no money to employ skilled groundsmen, so maintenance consists more or less of cutting the grass and painting the lines and that’s it.”The testing they do is minimal, not to the standards recognised by the ECB. They don’t do anything about the bounce, the carry, the pace of the ball – it is virtually just what the ground looks like, what the access to the pitch is like, not actually what the performance of the square is like.”Buying redundant land for cricket might not be quite so prohibitive in cost terms in Sheffield than in London, with prices roughly a quarter of those in the capital, but as with any urban, post-industrial area, there would be issues such as potential land contamination to be addressed, at extra cost, before a site could be redeveloped for sporting use.”We have a distinct lack of facilities, and where there are some the pitches are so poor people don’t want to play on them,” Davies said. “I have a team from Tinsley, in the east part of Sheffield, that travels 45 minutes to Hatfield, on the far side of Doncaster, for a home game. And even then the pitch they are playing on is substandard.”The modern stumbling block of health and safety is another issue. Davies says: “One thing that councils do possess that clubs cry out for is access to machinery — loamers, cutters, mowers, scarifiers, aerators — but because of the red tape around training and safety, they are scared that if someone gets injured then the council gets sued.”I’ve asked the leagues if they always have to play on grass wickets. Could we not put a non-turf pitch down in the middle of a park space? The bounce will be consistent, it will be safer. But the leagues don’t want to entertain it.”I can understand it might result in teams winning leagues because they have a better pitch, and when it rains you are more likely to play if you have an artificial pitch. But really, if you are talking about Division Seven of the South Yorkshire League, is it not more about a group of people playing a game of cricket and enjoying it?”You want to provide them with something that will make them want to come back next week, not being bowled out for 37 and the other team knocking them off seven down. That’s not a game of cricket.”Sometimes the problem is the ECB’s own rules – devised for good reasons, to set acceptable minimum standards – which can further reduce the options available.”When Sheffield Works got kicked off their ground two or three years ago, a group of us including myself and Dan Musson, the regional funding manager from the ECB, together walked round all the green spaces in Sheffield and we could not find one that was adequate,” Davies says.

You can set up as many street initiatives as you like to entice inner-city children to play, but what if the only grass cricket squares are miles away, in more well-to-do areas?

“There is a minimum boundary distance required and that seriously stuffs a lot of clubs because a lot of the grounds we play on are not big enough. A lot of the green spaces we looked at fell short of being able to receive funding by about five yards.”In other cities, though, the picture is more encouraging. In Birmingham, the ECB’s Grounds to Play strategy, the development plan put in place in 2010, has delivered tangible benefits, as Ed McCabe, one of Warwickshire’s cricket development managers, explains.”There is still considerable room for improvement in the facilities available but to be fair to ECB they have put their money where their mouth is,” he says. “John Huband, who is their facilities manager for the Midlands, has really shown some faith in Birmingham, building relationships with the council and local politicians.”And we are starting to see a difference. At Perry Hall Park, which has 13 pitches used by teams in the Birmingham Parks League, they are putting in three shelters and toilet areas, and subterranean water tanks, so that if we have a dry summer the pitches can be watered more. They are also putting in two new pitches.”They have also put about £120,000 into a facility at Holford Drive in Aston, that lay fallow for six years, and have put money too into Mitchells and Butlers Cricket Ground, of which Warwickshire are taking over the lease this summer.”Finally there is a ground at Belchers Lane in Bordesley Green, which is a disused former school playing field that lay fallow for 20 years, which the ECB have put money into, bringing it back into use if not this season then in 2015.”Bordesley Green neighbours Small Heath, the area of Birmingham in which Wasim Khan grew up, living in a two-bedroomed house with “five or six uncles” as well as his own family. He played schools cricket at Belchers Lane, having first put bat to ball in the street, and his talent earned him a trial with Warwickshire, although with little encouragement from his own community.”They kept telling me I was wasting my time, they said I’d got no chance,” he says. “‘It doesn’t happen to people like us’ was a classic quote I heard from a lot of people.”Of course, it did happen to him. He was the first British-born Pakistani to play professional cricket, an achievement of which he is rightfully proud, as he is of the 18 professional cricketers to have emerged in the last 15 years from within a three-mile radius of where he grew up. It is fortunate for the current generation that he has spent his post-playing career working to create opportunities for those whose potential faces even more barriers than his did.Chance to Shine has taken the game to two million young people since it was launched in 2005 on a mission to rekindle cricket in schools, largely by strengthening school links with clubs, but if nearby clubs do not exist, the challenge becomes more complex.The Chance to Shine campaign has been on a mission to rekindle cricket in schools•Chance to ShineThere are now 50 StreetChance schemes across seven UK cities, with more than 70 teams playing the tape-ball version of cricket, imported from Pakistan, in which a tennis ball wrapped in electrical insulating tape takes the place of a conventional hard ball.It can take place in leisure centres, youth clubs or in open spaces in housing estates. City police forces across England support the scheme, which seeks to engage young people in areas often affected by youth crime and anti-social behaviour.
Giving inner-city youngsters the chance to continue playing cricket beyond 16 – the age at which the game suffers its largest drop-out numbers – is seen by Khan as critical.”Derelict grounds could be restored relatively easily which is why it is exciting to hear this news of significant money coming into cricket over the next ten years with inner-city cricket,” he said. “The county boards have already identified facilities that could be reused with the right investment.”His enthusiasm, however, comes with a concern that money is spent only after careful research, and not based on assumed needs.”There is a school of thought that everybody from an Asian background wants to play club cricket in any conditions, where the reality is that all the majority want is to play on good wickets where the ball pitches in a certain place and is not going to knock your head off, to play with their friends on good-quality wickets without fear of getting hurt.”For example, if you look at the inner-city parks leagues, in Birmingham but also in London and Yorkshire and elsewhere, the facilities are there. What I’d like to see is an enhancement of those facilities to provide quality cricketing opportunities for people, but also to spend money on sustainability, creating and developing groundsmen from the communities, for example, which would provide employment too. It has to be a holistic strategy.”But what of the npower Urban cricket arena in King Edward Park in Nottingham? Is the pessimism about being little more than a photo opportunity justified? Five years on, when I take a look, there is no sign of activity, but it is far from vandalised, and if cricket might not always be prominent, it is still serving a vital purpose within the community.”It is a great asset,” Tracey Francis says. “In an area of high deprivation, there are nine primary schools, some of which do not have playgrounds big enough or any grass spaces, and a number of those schools walk their children to the urban cricket centre for PE.”Sheffield has an npower Urban Cricket arena, too, in Abbeyfield Park in Burngreave. Ryan Sidebottom was sent along to launch that one.”It is still well used, even though the local community has changed from being a quite high Pakistani concentration to Eastern European,” Gareth Davies says.”The problem is that the areas we put these facilities down in tend to be highly deprived and there are no clubs nearby and that is a barrier, to get the children from there to a club, which is why you need good parks pitches nearby.”Whatever direction this initiative goes in, for me, working with the local authority pitches to enhance and develop the green spaces that they have access to: that will be key.”Wherever you look, the ECB faces a huge challenge, with barriers to be overcome and questions to be answered. You can follow Nottinghamshire’s example and link schools with clubs, but what do you do if there are no clubs? You can offer your expertise to the local council, as Yorkshire would willingly do in Sheffield, but what if health and safety issues make this impossible? And you can set up as many street initiatives as you like to entice inner-city children to play, but what if the only grass cricket squares are miles away, in more well-to-do areas?One thing is certain: with England’s limitations so painfully exposed in Australia, the Caribbean and in Bangladesh over the last few months, the need to build for a better future has rarely been so acute.

A stats analysis of the first ODI between India and West Indies

Bishen Jeswant08-Oct-201427 Number of times India have been bowled out for less than 200 against West Indies, the most against any country. Pakistan have also done this 27 times, while Australia’s tally is 25.3 Number of times Dwayne Bravo has opened the innings for West Indies in ODIs. His innings against India was the first since 2008, when he scored 2 against Sri Lanka in Port-of-Spain.60 West Indies’ win percentage in ODIs over the last year, in which they have won nine out of 15 ODIs. The only teams with a better win percentage during this period are Sri Lanka (64%) and South Africa (73%). India, on the other hand, have only won 12 of the 29 ODIs in the last year, with a win percentage of 41.246 Number of overs bowled by Ravindra Jadeja over the last year, the most by a bowler in ODIs. The next three on this list are Indians too – R Ashwin, Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. This is partly down to India having played 29 ODIs in this period, more than any other team. Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa are the other teams that have played more than 20 games.9 Number of 50-plus scores by Marlon Samuels against India in ODIs. His next best is five against Bangladesh. He has two hundreds against India and Pakistan, and eight 50-plus scores in India, the most outside the West Indies. Samuels has nine 50-plus scores in the West Indies.10 Number of West Indian batsmen who have scored 4000-plus runs in one-day cricket. Samuels joined the list during his innings of 126 not out. Overall, 91 batsmen have reached this landmark.63.3 Denesh Ramdin’s batting average over the last 12 months, while also keeping wicket for West Indies. Among wicket-keepers who have played at least 10 ODIs in this period, only MS Dhoni has a better batting average (70.6).165 Number of runs that Ramdin and Samuels posted for the fourth wicket. This is the third highest fourth wicket partnership for West Indies in ODIs, and their highest against India.32 Number of ODI wickets taken by Shami in 2014 – the most by any bowler. He started the game on 28 wickets, one behind Lasith Malinga, but his haul of 4 for 66 took him to the top.14 Number of 50-plus partnerships by the Indian openers over the last two years; no other team has more. The openers posted 49 runs against West Indies and, over the last two years, have averaged 45.2, the best for a top-ten side.9 Number of single figure scores for Virat Kohli in his last 16 international innings, starting with the Test series in England earlier this year. He has only two 40-plus scores in this period.