Managing his own workload, a team in transition, and finding a refreshed ODI strategy are on the list

Alex Malcolm13-Apr-2022Maintain the Test rage on the road
Australia waltzed through the Ashes 4-0 under Justin Langer but their patchy Test form prior to that was part of what made Langer vulnerable to the internal and external criticism that ultimately contributed to his exit. Australia have started brightly under McDonald with a 1-0 away win in Pakistan. It was Australia’s first Test series win in Asia since 2011 and their first away series victory anywhere since 2016. McDonald is keen for this current Test team to be known as Pat Cummins’ team and one that he will simply support. But the strategy that he helped implement paid off in Pakistan, and Australia now have the challenge of replicating it in Sri Lanka in July and India next year if they want to play in the World Test Championship final.Related

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Defend the T20 title
The only thing harder than winning a T20 World Cup is defending it and Australia face the unique challenge of needing to do it just 12 months after last year’s triumph in the UAE. The advantage is that it comes in home conditions. The challenge is that Australia will need to improve again. There are questions surrounding the form of captain Aaron Finch, but McDonald is in no doubt he is the man to lead Australia at the World Cup. The emergence of Josh Inglis in the middle order, while the form of Nathan Ellis and Sean Abbott in Pakistan, as well as the possibility of using Tim David as a lower-order hitter, creates both options and headaches in terms of what is the best team structure and strategy for Australia to win the title in Australia. Preparation may also be an issue given their best side might not play much together ahead of the tournament. But that wasn’t an issue last year.Finding a 50-over formula
ODI cricket was the least prioritised format during Langer’s tenure. Australia struggled in the lead-up to the 2019 ODI World Cup but found a way to be very competitive in the tournament only to be blown away by a far superior England side in the semi-final. From then on it was an afterthought. The ODI team has played well during the pandemic but has largely used second-choice players as Australia’s stars rested for key Test and T20I assignments. But Australia now only have 18 months to prepare for an ODI World Cup in India. They did have an extraordinary ODI series win in India in 2019 courtesy of a magical chase in Mohali. But they have lost four of their last five ODI series there and were bounced out of the 2011 World Cup in the quarter-final. The brand of cricket Australia played in 2019 was behind the times. McDonald and Australia need a refreshed strategy ahead of the 2023 tournament.McDonald has to manage a Test team in transition•Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesA team in transition
At the end of the 2023 World Cup, even before that, there could be a big turnover of players in all three forms. Finch and David Warner are unlikely to continue after the 2023 World Cup. Nathan Lyon and Usman Khawaja will be 35 and 36 respectively at the end of the 2023 Ashes. Matthew Wade could also finish his international career at the end of the 2022 T20 World Cup while a host of other players will be heading towards their mid-30s. McDonald and the selectors will need to manage all of the exits carefully while getting younger players up to international level quickly in order to keep producing results heading into the second half of his four-year contract.Managing the coaching workload
Langer did rest for three series during his four-year tenure, although one, the 2021 T20I tour of New Zealand, only came about because the simultaneous Test tour to South Africa was cancelled. Australia have a relentless schedule coming up over the next 18 months and it will be impossible for McDonald to coach every assignment. He has already put in place a strategy with CA to rest for certain white-ball series in that period and wants to elevate assistants and consultants during that time to increase the depth in Australian coaching. The idea is a good one, the execution is the challenge.Relinquishing the reins and empowering an assistant to take full control is never an easy thing for any coach to do. McDonald has stressed it is possible provided the right personalities work together towards a common goal of making the team better across all forms. In the age of working remotely, it is also possible for coaches to still be of value to the team environment while working from home for short periods, provided the communication lines are open and the leadership structures are clear.

With Phil Salt in the wings, Roy’s vulnerability upfront could threaten his place

Matt Roller29-Jul-2022Five innings, 80 balls, 59 runs. Jason Roy has had a grim summer for England in T20Is and his form is becoming difficult for them to ignore.On Thursday night in Cardiff, he made a torturous 20 off 22 balls while chasing 208 – an innings that damaged England’s chances more than a first-ball duck – before lofting Tabraiz Shamsi to long-off, then beginning a slow trudge back to the dressing room that has become an all-too-familiar sight in the month since his unbeaten hundred in the final Netherlands ODI.Roy has not lacked attacking intent this summer but has struggled badly against the swinging new ball. ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data gives him a ‘control percentage’ of just 58.8, meaning he has played a false shot every 2.4 balls. His job is to play ultra-attacking shots and get England off to a fast start but it is a volatile role: when batters rely heavily on boundaries, their returns diminish alarmingly if the boundaries dry up.Related

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He has endured some difficult moments over the last two-and-a-half years. He did not enjoy the demands of touring life during the pandemic: even more so than most, Roy’s personality does not lend itself to spending days on end confined to a hotel room. Earlier this year, he pulled out of his Gujarat Titans contract ahead of the IPL to spend two months with his family after struggling off the pitch at the PSL.”Things mentally weren’t right with me at the PSL,” he said last month. “I was in a weird place because I was playing good cricket but I wasn’t enjoying myself. I wasn’t happy and it was just a dark time.” Details of a mysterious fine and suspended ban for undisclosed misconduct have still not emerged publicly, though he stressed that it has “not been spoken about” in the dressing room.Jos Buttler, his captain and opening partner, was quick to leap to Roy’s defence in Cardiff. “Every batter in the world goes through periods where you don’t hit the ball as sweetly as you would like to,” he said. “T20 cricket is a bit brutal in that way: it demands that you keep continuing to take risks and keep being brave.”That’s the job for Jason: he’s such an imposing figure and teams are scared to bowl at him. [We’ll] remind him of all the good things he’s done and tell him to trust himself even more.” Chris Jordan, his Surrey captain, went even further. “We back him 250%,” he said. “Don’t be surprised if he comes good on Sunday.”That level of support for Roy is no surprise and England will continue to back him for the foreseeable future. Since 2015, England have been hugely reluctant to drop batters from their first-choice side, reasoning that asking them to play in an ultra-attacking manner lends itself to quiet runs of form and that leaving players out, as a result, risks undermining the overriding message to be positive above anything else.Jason Roy’s strength against the back-of-length pace bowling can thrive in Australian conditions during the T20 World Cup•ICC via GettyRoy will have a number of opportunities to prove his form ahead of the World Cup. He will almost certainly keep his place on Sunday and then play eight games for Oval Invincibles in the Hundred leading into a seven-match T20I series in Pakistan and a further three matches in Australia before the main event starts on October 22.But counterintuitively, his resounding success as an attacking opener has created a position where he is no longer indispensable in the way he once was. A generation of opening batters have emulated his style in county cricket and on the franchise circuit, epitomised by Phil Salt who has run the drinks in this series after having been used out of position in his four T20I caps to date.Salt will spend August opening the batting alongisde Buttler for Manchester Originals, an ideal opportunity for him to show England’s captain that he is ready to make the step up. There are other options, too: Dawid Malan, Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes would all jump at the chance to open the batting; James Vince’s consistency in the BBL suggests he is an ideal fit for Australian conditions; any number of young players could mount a case with a standout season in the Hundred.And yet Roy still has plenty in his favour. While his record in Australia does not show it, he remains one of England’s best players against the sort of back-of-a-length pace bowling that can be expected to thrive in the World Cup. He has always been a selfless player, evidenced by his attempts to swing himself back into form rather than play within himself and prioritise his own runs ahead of the team’s cause.He has been around for a long time but only turned 32 last week: unless he peaked unusually early, there is every chance that he could be part of England’s squad for the 2024 T20 World Cup and beyond. Even if this proves to be the beginning of the end, his legacy is secure after his contribution to their 50-over transformation between 2015 and 2019.Roy has come back from poor form before, most notably after he was left out for the semi-final of the 2017 Champions Trophy, but there is a fine line between trust and blind faith. Now, he needs to show England that they have stayed on the right side of it.

Also, who takes the No.3 and No.4 slots?

Karthik Krishnaswamy24-Jun-20221:17

Lara – ‘Rahul Tripathi can be a tremendous asset for SRH and India’

India have just gone through an entire five-match T20I series without making a single change to their XI. Now they begin a series in Ireland with a squad that looks similar in many respects, but is different in a couple of major ways. Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer are absent, having joined India’s Test squad in England, and Hardik Pandya will captain the side. Rahul Dravid is also away in England, so VVS Laxman will take over coaching duties. How will India’s XI shape up under Hardik and Laxman?Who bats at Nos. 3 and 4?
India’s most difficult selection could be who fills the No. 3 and 4 slots vacated by Shreyas and Pant, with their squad containing five candidates for those two roles. Of the five, Deepak Hooda and Venkatesh Iyer are incumbents who spent the entire South Africa series on the bench, while Suryakumar Yadav and Sanju Samson are making comebacks.Related

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Suryakumar will probably slot straight back into the side at No. 3, having only missed the South Africa series because he was nursing a forearm injury. Given what he’s done in his brief international career so far – he averages 39.00 and has a strike rate of 165.56 after 12 T20I innings – he’s probably ahead of Shreyas in the queue for middle-order spots in a full-strength India side.It’s harder to choose between the remaining four for the other slot. Samson and the uncapped Tripathi bring similar attributes. Both are known for their ability, and willingness, to go hard at the bowling early in their innings, and both are equally good at home against pace and spin, with Samson boasting particularly impressive strike-rate numbers.Hooda, meanwhile, earned his call-up thanks to a consistent run of form at No. 3 for Lucknow Super Giants, and apart from clean striking over extra-cover also brings the ability to bowl offspin. India might find this useful, with their other spinners turning their stock ball in the other direction (though that only holds true if you consider the legbreak to be Ravi Bishnoi’s stock ball and not the wrong’un).3:43

Can Umran Malik be a part of India’s T20 World Cup plans?

Venkatesh seems the unlikeliest of the five to bat at Nos. 3 or 4, given that he’s usually been used either as opener or finisher, but his left-handedness – an ingredient India otherwise lack in the middle order in Pant’s absence – gives him a valuable point of difference.The team management, however, probably views Venkatesh as a back-up to Hardik rather than a top-four option. With Hardik captaining the side, Venkatesh may only get his chance if India decide to go with two seam-bowling allrounders in Irish conditions and leave out Axar Patel, the spin-bowling allrounder.Who’s the wicketkeeper?
India’s squad contains three keepers in Dinesh Karthik, Ishan Kishan and Samson. With regular keeper Pant absent, the choice of who takes the big gloves will probably hinge less on pure keeping skills than on who of the three contenders is likeliest to have a settled place in the XI. This probably rules out Samson, who wasn’t part of the squad for the series against South Africa, and who is one of numerous contenders vying for limited space in the upper middle order.When all the regulars return to the T20I set-up, Karthik is probably the only one of the three who will remain in the first-choice XI, given how he’s pushed himself to the front of the queue to play the finisher’s role. Kishan will probably remain the back-up opener behind Rohit Sharma and KL Rahul, even though he scored more runs than anyone else on either side during the South Africa series.The clearest clue to the identity of India’s wicketkeeper in Ireland came in the BCCI release that announced the squad for the tour. There may have been three keepers in the squad, but only Karthik had “(wicket-keeper)” next to his name.1:28

Jaffer: Arshdeep should be considered for selection against Ireland

Will Arshdeep and Malik finally get their chance?
The call-ups of the left-arm death-bowling specialist Arshdeep Singh and the scarily fast middle-overs enforcer Umran Malik were the most headline-worthy selections when India announced their squad to face South Africa, but neither got a game in that series. It made sense for the team management to stick to their first-choice bowling attack given the way the series went, with India having to come back from 2-0 down, but now, perhaps, could be the time for a few experiments.Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Harshal Patel are probably already sure-shot selections for the T20 World Cup later this year, fitness permitting, as is Yuzvendra Chahal on the spin front. India could perhaps rest the three of them at different points during the series, and test out Arshdeep, Malik and Bishnoi. This series might represent India’s best opportunity to test out their skills in unfamiliar conditions, with both quicks uncapped and Bishnoi yet to play international cricket away from home.

In a game where 458 runs were scored off 40 overs, for just six wickets, the South Africa spinner’s figures read 4-0-23-2

Karthik Krishnaswamy03-Oct-2022On a night when the rest of South Africa’s attack combined to concede 210 off 96 wicketless balls, and on a pitch where 458 runs came in 40 overs, Keshav Maharaj bowled 24 balls, gave away 23 runs, and took two wickets. On a night full of incredible hitting from both teams, and on a night when South Africa lost, Maharaj’s efforts were never really in the running for the Player-of-the-Match award. It’s the way these things work.Related

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But there was some reward at the end of it: he was ESPNcricinfo’s MVP, with his impact rating of 88 putting his performance ahead of blindingly brilliant knocks from David Miller, Suryakumar Yadav and KL Rahul.This was an important performance in Maharaj’s career. He played his first T20I only in September 2021, nearly five years after making his Test debut, but in just over a year, he’s arguably leapfrogged Tabraiz Shamsi – the No. 2 bowler on the ICC’s T20I rankings – to become South Africa’s first-choice spinner in the shortest format.South Africa have played 12 T20Is this year, and Maharaj has featured in all of them. Shamsi has missed two games, both against India in India – the washout in Bengaluru back in June, and Sunday night’s run-fest in Guwahati.These could have been opposition-specific selections, of course, the left-arm orthodox spinner winning out against the left-arm wristspinner against a top seven featuring six right-hand batters. And on Sunday, India arguably lent Maharaj a bit of a helping hand by sending in Virat Kohli at the fall of the first wicket, when Maharaj still had 1.1 overs remaining. It could have been a chance to promote the left-handed Rishabh Pant, or to push Suryakumar Yadav, their best player of spin, up one place from No. 4 to No. 3.

Suryakumar apart, India’s batters aren’t natural sweepers – Rahul plays the lap-sweep brilliantly, but not so much the square sweep – and Maharaj was giving them a thorough working-over

Suryakumar eventually came in when Maharaj had two balls left to bowl, and immediately showed the difference between him and the rest of India’s top four, picking up six runs off those two balls with a pair of perfectly controlled sweeps. Suryakumar is India’s most frequent user of the sweep, because he can play the shot off a far greater range of lengths than most.KL Rahul had tried sweeping Maharaj earlier in the over, only to be defeated by the perfect T20 length – a touch too short for most batters to sweep safely, but not short enough to cut or pull – and the ball’s low, skiddy trajectory off the pitch.Soon after that wicket, the broadcast cut to a montage of Maharaj’s deliveries to Rahul. All of them were pitched on this awkward length, and Rahul had played all but the last of them – the fatal sweep – off the back foot. Nearly everything was bowled at upwards of 90kph, so there was little scope for the batter to step out of his crease. And there was no real joy to be had off the back foot, with the ball drifting in sharply, and then either skidding on or straightening marginally – in either case finishing within the line of the stumps. There was no room to free the arms, and the natural variation in turn – there wasn’t a great deal of it, but just enough – meant there was too little margin for error to attack with a straight bat. When the batters tried to make room, he followed them, reading their intentions brilliantly.2:13

Ntini: Lengths from South Africa very poor

Maharaj had erred twice with his length in his first over – the sixth of India’s innings – and Rohit Sharma had swept and pulled him for a pair of fours. But he settled quickly into that in-between length thereafter, helped by the field spreading out, and conceded only seven runs off his next ten balls before a frustrated Rohit slog-swept him straight into deep midwicket’s hands.It was Rahul’s turn, after that, to try and break the shackles with a sweep, and lose his wicket in the process. Suryakumar apart, India’s batters aren’t natural sweepers – Rahul plays the lap-sweep brilliantly, but not so much the square sweep – and Maharaj was giving them a thorough working-over.This was the one blemish in India’s otherwise sensational batting display, and a bit of a flashback to last year’s T20 World Cup, where Imad Wasim and Mitchell Santner had tied them down in a similar manner.Like Imad and Santner, Maharaj had preyed on the limitations of India’s top order. But on a pitch that gave him little margin for error, he had to bowl with extraordinary control and guile to pull it off.

Sri Lankan legends were among those to shower Dasun Shanaka’s team with praise

ESPNcricinfo staff12-Sep-2022

Congratulations for a fantastic win and most importantly bring back the Sri Lankan brand of cricket that we were renowned for. You brought the cup back home as planned! Enjoy this moment. Next target the World Cup !

— Sanath Jayasuriya (@Sanath07) September 11, 2022