All the interesting numbers from the IPL retentions on Williamson, Narine, Maxwell, and others

Nagraj Gollapudi01-Dec-20215:50

Why were Russell and Narine retained? KKR CEO explains

14 – The amount (in INR crore) Sunrisers Hyderabad will pay for Kane Williamson is the highest-ever retention price for an overseas player. Williamson will now get nearly five times the money he got in the 2018 auction when Sunrisers bought him for INR 3 crore. He joined Sunrisers in 2015 and was paid INR 60 lakh for the first three seasons before he was bought back at the 2018 auction.29 – The percentage fall in Sunil Narine’s earnings compared to the price he was retained at for before the 2018 mega auction. In 2012, Kolkata Knight Riders picked the then unknown mystery spinner, who had impressed during the 2011 Champions League T20, for a whopping USD 700,000. Narine, who had played just three matches for West Indies at the time, had set himself a base price of USD 50,000. In 2014, Knight Riders retained him for INR 9.5 crore, and ahead of the 2018 mega auction, he negotiated a fee of INR 8.5 crore. However, as per the IPL retention slabs, since Narine was the first player Knight Riders have retained this time, their purse was deducted by INR 12.5 crore. This time Narine’s retention fee is INR 6 crore, a 29% dip in the retention price, the biggest for any player between the 2018 and 2021 mega auctions.ESPNcricinfo Ltd40 – Venkatesh Iyer’s IPL salary has shot up 40 times. In the 2021 auction, Knight Riders bought the allrounder for his base price of INR 20 lakh. On Tuesday, Iyer, who made his India debut in November, was retained by Knight Riders for INR 8 crore. Historically, the record in terms of exponential surge from base price to retention fee belongs to Hardik Pandya, who joined Mumbai Indians in 2015 as an uncapped player for the base price of INR 10 lakh but, in 2018, Mumbai retained him at 110 times his 2015 fee, spending INR 11 crore.ESPNcricinfo Ltd3 – The fewest IPL matches played by someone before he was retained. That honour belongs Umran Malik, who was retained by Sunrisers as an uncapped player for INR 4 crore. Malik was the second uncapped as well as Jammu & Kashmir player, alongside Abdul Samad, to be retained by Sunrisers. Close behind Malik is Iyer, who played just ten matches, in 2021 – his maiden IPL season, the same as Malik. Sanju Samson held that record previously, with Rajasthan Royals retaining him after he had featured in just 11 IPL matches. The same year, another uncapped Indian player, Manan Vohra, was retained by Kings XI Punjab (now Punjab Kings) after playing 12 matches.Glenn Maxwell’s price drop•ESPNcricinfo Ltd1 – In terms of the mega bucks he has earned at IPL auctions in the past, the INR 12 crore that Royal Challengers Bangalore paid Glenn Maxwell is not a head-spinning number. But it is, remarkably, the first time he has been retained by a franchise ahead of a mega auction in his IPL career spanning nine seasons spread across four franchises – starting with Delhi Capitals (then Delhi Daredevils), Mumbai Indians, Kings and now Royal Challengers.8 – According to IPL retention rules, if a franchise retains four players, a total of INR 42 crore will be deducted from the auction purse, even if the teams are paying the players less than that. Four out of the eight existing teams – Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians, Capitals and Knight Riders – retained four players. Two of those – Super Kings and Mumbai – spent the entire 42 crore while Capitals spent 42.50 crore to retain their four players (if a team pays a player more than the retention slab, the higher amount of the two is deducted from the purse). In contrast, Knight Riders procured their four retentions for just INR 34 crore, which means they have saved INR 8 crore from their actual operations costs even if the auction purse is deducted by 42 crore.

Visitors crash the party through dominant knocks from Joe Root and Dan Lawrence

Cameron Ponsonby16-Mar-2022As you get off the plane in Barbados and walk into arrivals, the first two posters you’re greeted with are of Garry Sobers and Rihanna. Cricket and entertainment. Sounds good.Today, with thousands of England fans in attendance, the two combined as Joe Root and Dan Lawrence’s dominant 164-run stand off 269 balls took over proceedings, much to the joy of those in attendance at the Kensington Oval in the London Borough of Barbados.”He’ll be delighted to be not out overnight following another good hundred last week,” Marcus Trescothick, England’s batting coach, said of Root’s unbeaten 119. “[For him] to do it all again he’ll be delighted. It’s a real pleasure to sit there and watch it unfold and see how he goes about it.Related

Root century drives England as Lawrence falls late for 91

Fortress Bridgetown beckons after Antiguan appetiser

“To see him batting in the fashion he has, the mental discipline and approach he’s putting into his batting to come back and start fresh every time… it’s an honour to stand there and throw at him and then to sit back and watch him all day.”Trescothick was also glowing in his praise of Lawrence’s performance, who scored a career-best 91 before being at caught cover off what was scheduled to be the penultimate ball of the day’s play.”Absolutely,” Trescothick replied when asked whether England would be focusing on the positives from Lawrence’s innings rather than the pain of narrowly missing out on a maiden Test match hundred. “You always take the positives. And then we try to understand what happened there? Did anything change? Those are the sort of questions we’ll sit down and talk about.”But this was a party that West Indies allowed to happen. Root was caught behind off what seemed like an inside edge on 23, only for it not to be reviewed. He was dropped down the leg side by Josh Da Silva on 34. And on 87, he should’ve been run out by John Campbell. To make matters worse, Lawrence was also dropped on 72, as Alzarri Joseph let a head-high slip catch split his hands and run away to the boundary.As a result, having shared an awkward drink or two with England in a turgid first session and shared a pleasant dinner with them in the second, in the third, West Indies allowed Root and Lawrence to invite themselves back to theirs for afters and watched on as the two raided the drinks cabinet and fridge in equal measure.”Kraigg, you got anything I could eat? Starving.”The runs flowed on the pitch as quickly as the Banks lager and rum punch flowed off it. It was loud. Lawrence’s leg-side flicks were loud. Root’s pulls and reverse sweeps were loud. The England fans. Loud.For the most part, this wasn’t the stereotypical Barmy Army showing that consists solely of the continued dirge of just repeating “Barmy Army!” *dooph dooph* “Barmy Army!” *dooph dooph* – rather 8000 people spending their day with one foot in the land of Sobers and the other in the land of Rihanna, just as they were told to on arrival. It was a party.Of course, as the day came to a close, “Sweet Caroline” got one more play than would otherwise be deemed socially acceptable and the dooph dooph chants made their return. The sun going down at the end of a day at the cricket is like the moment on most evenings out where the lights go up and reveal the mass of destruction, sweat and alcohol that the darkness had previously hidden. If anything, this way around is better.The highlight of the day from an English perspective was the noise that greeted Root’s century as the Greenidge and Haynes Stand morphed into the Kop. The open-air nature of cricket grounds means it is not often you get that visceral echo that is so synonymous with football grounds, but here you did.”It was brilliant, wasn’t it?” Trescothick said. “A real English contingent throughout the island at the moment and great support throughout. We’re lucky that we get great support wherever we go and to see it here, it was pretty much a home game for us so it’s really nice to have.”The Brits were abroad. And they were rowdy. Both off the pitch and on.

First century since 267 against Pakistan serves timely reminder of young batter’s potential

Andrew Miller11-Mar-2022The stats don’t lie. At least, not when you accept them as indicators of an underlying truth, rather than an irrefutable end in themselves. When England’s second innings got underway in Antigua, just three balls and 18 minutes into the third day’s play, and with a deficit of 64 to surmount, a graphic flashed up on the TV screens that warned of the potential jeopardy in store.It showed a list of England’s top-order collapses in 2021 – a hammer-horror of batting dysfunction, featuring each of the eight occasions in that year’s 15 Tests in which they had lost their first five wickets for 67 runs or fewer.And when it came to England visits to the Caribbean, that batting malaise had even deeper roots. On their previous trip in 2019, Joe Root’s men were rolled aside for 77 en route to a thumping defeat in the opening Test. Ten years prior to that, England had been routed for 51 by Jerome Taylor and Suliemann Benn on the fourth afternoon of the series opener, eventually losing by an innings in 33.2 overs from an unnervingly similar position – a first-innings deficit of 74.And so when Alex Lees departed for his second single-figure score of his debut Test, it’s fair to suggest that English optimism was in short supply. Zak Crawley had already survived a triggering of his own after all – and for all that his first-over lbw verdict was one of the worst of a substandard match for the umpires, his haul of 11 single-figure scores in 16 innings in 2021 was hardly a reason to believe that his reprieve would be a long-term one.But by the close of an unfamiliarly serene day’s batting from England, Crawley had racked up his second Test hundred, passed 1000 runs in the process, hauled his average back above 30 for good measure, and shown enough class and durability in his 200-ball stay to awaken thoughts that his career-best 267 could yet be at his mercy if he shows sufficient hunger on what looks now to be the deadest day five of a Test match since… well, since last week.For those stats don’t lie. No player who, at the age of 22, can convert his maiden Test hundred into the sort of whopper that Crawley compiled against Pakistan at the Ageas Bowl in 2020 can possibly be written off barely 18 months later. And given the ebbs and flows of both form and luck that all established players must endure in the course of their international careers, there’s no way either that he’ll look back in a decade’s time, on this century or his Southampton epic, and think, “well, that was a complete road, it doesn’t really count”.For this performance deserves to be viewed within the context of England’s rebuild, as well as the realities of a lifeless deck. In the whole of the team’s desperate 2021, there had been a solitary century from a player not called Joe Root – and that man, Rory Burns, no longer merits a place in the squad after his defenestration in the Ashes.By the time Crawley had nudged Jayden Seales through midwicket for his milestone-sealing runs, England had posted a centurion in both the first and second innings of a Test for the first time since their tour of Sri Lanka in 2018. The fact that Root was not the man to three figures on either occasion would hardly be a cause for celebration if it meant that he was also desperately out of form. But given that he finished his own solid day’s work on 84 not out, the chances are that he could yet follow suit on Saturday morning. From a first-day nadir of 48 for 4, the batting aspect of England’s reset couldn’t really have progressed more exponentially.”Oh, that’s right up there, it was really special feeling when I got it,” Crawley told BT Sport at the close. “I had a tough year last year and probably at times didn’t think I’d get this opportunity again, so I’m absolutely delighted and pleased we’re in a good position to win tomorrow.”Zak Crawley is congratulated by Joe Root on reaching his half-century•Gareth Copley/Getty ImagesThat latter assessment might be stretching the bounds of optimism – especially given the mixed status reports about Mark Wood’s dodgy elbow. But with a lead of 153 already banked and nine wickets left to push it further, there will undoubtedly be the chance to have a dart with a new ball at some stage on the final afternoon, and maybe even come up with a more threatening response than Chris Woakes and Craig Overton managed in their off-colour opening gambit.But for now, England can content themselves with something resembling a feelgood factor in the most troubling facet of their current Test game. All things being equal, they will pass 300 in their second innings of the match, having failed to make that mark in ten attempts in the Ashes. Stiffer tests will lie ahead, maybe even as soon as in Barbados next week, but having found his place in the team untenable last summer, after averaging 10.81 in his first eight Tests of the year, the self-belief that Crawley will have gleaned from this chance is immeasurable.”When I got taken out the team they said I had a big future which I was very thankful for,” Crawley said. “It gave me a lot of confidence. I was thankful they picked me for the Ashes, it’s a dream come true. I always believed in myself that I would come again. Maybe not so soon, but I knew I was young and I had a chance to come again.”Given the air of reticence that has dominated England’s top three for the past decade, the optics of Crawley’s batting have long made an irresistible case for his defence. Where his contemporaries have all died in a ditch – especially Dom Sibley last summer, whose only remaining shot against India had been an uncomfortable shovel off the legs, and Haseeb Hameed in Australia, a tour for which his selection was borderline negligence – Crawley’s poor returns have at least been a consequence of his broadened horizons. And on the fleeting occasions when his game has come together in the midst of his dry spell – most tellingly with his first-morning fifty in Ahmedabad last year, and again with a brilliant 77 at Sydney in January – he has looked as fluent as any player in the game.”Make good decisions,” was the advice that Crawley had drummed into him during his 193-run stand with Joe Root, the perfect role-model for a young, expansive right-hander – not least on the ball before his century, when he swung too eagerly into an air-shot against Seales, and immediately had his captain in his ear, reminding him that good things come to those who wait.”He does that extremely well and I tried to emulate him,” Crawley added. “He was very good to bat with, he batted brilliantly and took the pressure off. He’s always a calm head telling me to take it one ball at a time, make good decisions, and thankfully I made a few more than I usually do.”Related

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Not unlike Jonny Bairstow in his first-innings hundred, a feature of Crawley’s innings was the shelving of his favoured drive. Early in his innings, a graphic on the TV broadcast contrasted Nkrumah Bonner’s magnificent discipline in the channel outside off with Crawley’s tendency to go looking for the ball, a reflex approach that had done him in all too often in his previous innings, including via an inside-edge to Joshua da Silva in his first-innings 8.”I like to put some pressure on the bowlers but I’ve certainly tried to rein my game in a bit more since coming back into the team,” Crawley said. “I’ve tried to put away a few more shots that I was playing last year and getting me into trouble.”I’m just trying to make the game a bit more simple,” he added. “Against the new ball, the drive is not an easy shot to play. I’m much more comfortable playing through the leg side. That’s not ruling out the off-side game – there’s still plenty of runs to be had there. It’s just knowing when to play it.”Such are the lessons that a spell of dead-deck accumulation can gift to a team in need. It may not count for much in a broader context right now, but when the spin settings get cranked up on the next tour of India, or when Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood find a juicier surface in next year’s Ashes, Crawley will be able to tap into this moment, and remember he’s been here before. And he’s young enough and good enough to head back there again.

Who cashes in on fielders’ gifts the most, who doesn’t – this is what the numbers say

Shiva Jayaraman17-Jan-2022Marnus Labuschagne lived an incredibly charmed life in the first innings of the Adelaide Test recently. He was dropped at least thrice (four if you count a very tough chance missed by Ben Stokes in the 51st over of Australia’s innings) on his way to 103.This wasn’t the first time Labuschagne was reprieved thrice in an innings. In his short Test career, Labuschagne has been at the receiving end of such good fortune on one other occasion. In the Ashes Test at Headingley in 2019, Labuschagne was reprieved three times on his way to 80 in Australia’s second innings. In two other innings, he has been let off twice.Which made us wonder if he was indeed the luckiest batter going around in Test cricket.A batter could get lucky in many ways in cricket. However, in this piece – which is more of a chronicle than any sort of analysis – we look at only dropped catches and missed stumpings in Test cricket since Labuschagne’s debut.

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ESPNcricinfo LtdData since Labuschagne’s Test debut, in October 2018, suggests that he has indeed been dropped most often in Test cricket in this period. There are 16 instances of him being dropped (or not stumped). He has been caught or stumped 25 times. So, of the 41 times he has offered chances to the fielding team, only 61% have been taken. He has been lucky the other 39% times. Among batters who have offered at least 20 such chances since his debut, only Mushfiqur Rahim has a higher reprieve rate. Mushfiqur has offered 22 chances of which only 12 have been taken, for a reprieve of 45.45%. Abid Ali, R Ashwin and Usman Khawaja make up the top five.ESPNcricinfo LtdIt’s popularly held in cricket that batters who are not in form don’t get lucky too often. It can’t be truer in Virat Kohli’s case. Kohli finds himself among the bottom five of the unluckiest batters. Kohli has offered 33 chances during this period and has been reprieved only three times. David Warner is at the bottom of this list with just two reprieves out of the 23 catches he has offered. KL Rahul is also in the bottom five. Kraigg Brathwaite and Dinesh Chandimal complete the list.ESPNcricinfo LtdGetting lucky is one thing and making use of whatever luck comes your way quite another. Warner may have got only two chances, but he has made use of them like few others have. He offered a very tough chance to short leg that was spilt when he was on 48 in the first innings of the 2019 Gabba Test against Pakistan. He went on to score 154. Whatever luck that has come Warner’s way seems to have come at the Gabba, for that’s where he got his other chance too. Rory Burns dropped him in the slips in the recent Ashes Test off the bowling of Ollie Robinson. Warner was on 49 then, and went on to score 94.Among 48 batters who have had at least five chances missed off them in this period, Tom Latham has cashed in the most. On an average, Latham has added 68.8 runs after the reprieves. This is calculated by averaging out the runs added by the batter after the reprieve until the end of the innings or the next reprieve. Since a batter could be reprieved quite close to the end of a team’s innings, thus limiting the extent to which they can make use of the opportunity, this average is just instructive of how the batters have done on such occasions. Dhananjaya de Silva, Babar Azam, Khawaja and Mayank Agarwal are the others in the top five.ESPNcricinfo LtdThe bottom of this list has a few bowlers, but at 46th place (out of 48) is Haseeb Hameed, whose additions are 3, 17, 8, 4 and 0 (each in different innings). Marcus Harris is the next batter, ranked 41st, with an average addition of 10.8 runs. Steven Smith has also not made his five reprieves count – scoring only 62 runs for an average addition of 12.4 runs. For Smith, four of these five chances were after the 2019 Ashes. Not surprising, since Smith has not even been half the batter he was in the five-year period until that Ashes series. Imam-ul-Haq, with an average addition of 15.8 runs in six innings, completes the bottom five among proper batters.ESPNcricinfo LtdWe can only speculate about how these batters would have done if they had not been reprieved at all (and, of course, assuming hypothetically that they got no other chances in the innings before these reprieves). Who would have lost out the most? Or conversely, who would have gained the most?Turns out, the biggest gainer in terms of absolute runs added is Labuschagne, who has got 567 of his 2220 Test runs (25.54%) after the chances in nine different innings.So, in an alternate universe, Labuschagne is averaging 42.4 instead of 56.9, and has three fewer centuries and four fewer fifties.At No. 5 in this list is Khawaja, who made 419 of his 916 Test runs in this period after being reprieved in eight of his innings. That’s 45.74% of the runs he has now ended up scoring since October 2018.ESPNcricinfo LtdIn contrast to these batters, is Ajinkya Rahane. Rahane has been reprieved in more innings (as against most times) than anyone else during this period. He got at least a second chance in 15 of his 53 innings but could score only 274 additional runs. Less than half of what Labuschagne managed from less than two-thirds of Rahane’s count of innings. As the cliché goes, you make your own luck.

The India batter on her love affair with butter chicken, discovering lasagna in Australia, and a secret Bhatia family recipe

Interview by Annesha Ghosh18-Mar-2022What is one meal you can eat day in and day out?
Butter chicken and roti. I eat it at home when my father makes it, and every time I go to a restaurant I straight away call for butter chicken if anyone else accompanying me orders non-veg.Is there anything you really love that you’ve added or removed from your diet to better fit your fitness regimen?
Chicken biryani. I it, but my nutritionist has asked me to cut out rice from my diet totally, explaining how it can affect my fitness and make me slow – with regards to injury too. So chicken biryani has had to go.How difficult was it to give that up?
It did break my heart when I was told I shouldn’t be having rice. But I was, and am, willing to make such sacrifices to get better results out of my cricket. But whenever I am allowed the freedom to have food of my choice, say, on a day off or some such, I make sure to have chicken biryani and butter chicken.What else has been hard to give up?
. I used to eat a lot of it growing up, but in the last seven years I’ve only had the home-made version of the street snack, and that too, rarely. In December last year, though, I had proper roadside after I scored a century for Baroda in the senior one-day domestic competition in Nagpur. It felt so good.What is your favourite pre- or post-workout snack?
I like to keep it light, so I usually go for [millet rotis]. After a workout I like having protein shakes or brown-rice cakes with peanut butter.Which of your team-mates is the best cook?
I am yet to taste anything made by my India team-mates, but I’ve heard Smriti Mandhana is quite good, so I’d like to try out some of what she makes. My Baroda team-mate Charmi Shah is decent at making Maggi and popcorn.What’s one thing you can cook for yourself really well?
I can make pizza. I remember making pizza at an Amul cooking contest once. On a regular basis, though, I think I’d be more comfortable making bread-omelette and [okra] – that’s a dish I love tucking into every now and then.What’s the one dish you would like to ace?
[spinach]. I can’t make it but my mother makes it very well. It would make for a very nice combination with , which I already know how to make, and roti.Who is the one team-mate who can eat whatever they want without it affecting their fitness?
Tanvir Shaikh from Baroda. She indulges in deserts often but she tops pretty much all the sprinting drills. We often ask her, [You eat everything, where does all of it go?] In the Indian team, I am a newbie, so I don’t have much of an idea, but I think Sneh Rana is similar [to Tanvir]. Her fitness is top- shelf. Her metabolism must be quite high, so cheat meals don’t appear to affect her much.Is there a snack you carry in your kit bag when you’re travelling or on tour?
Peanut butter – dark-chocolate flavour. I took a liking to peanut butter ever since I first had it during the home series for South Africa [in March last year], for which I was part of the Indian squad for the first time. I can’t do without peanut butter after a workout.Did you try any new food when you toured Australia?
We were served lasagna at the pink-ball Test [in Carrara]. I loved it. During the tour they would also serve rice, dal and chicken – tandoori or butter – for buffet, and we’d order roti separately along with . The food in Australia was very good.Which cricket venue you’ve played at has had the best food or catering?
We were in Ranchi for a domestic game, and I loved the food and catering in that stadium. I particularly liked the chicken.You’ve grown up, and live, in Baroda. What would you recommend to anyone visiting your home town?
Kathiyawadi cuisine is quite famous in Gujarat, especially the Kathiyawadi , which serve a wide variety of fare. Those are usually a bit more spicy than Gujarati . Baroda’s street food is quite popular as well, and people here are crazy about in particular. , , are some of the other dishes I’d recommend.What do meals look like during a regular week in the Bhatia household?
My mother is vegetarian, but my dad, [older] sister, and I eat non-veg, so the fare on weekdays is usually veg stuff, which either my mom or our cook takes care of. Anything non-vegetarian is typically reserved for Fridays and Sundays and is made by my father.What are the signature dishes in your family?
Home-style chicken and mutton are my papa’s signature dishes, but our household has one of its own, the Bhatia . It’s a gram-flour-and-yoghurt-based thin gravy, which most types of are, and we add a generous assortment of diced drumstick, potatoes, and okra in it. We treat all our guests to it and serve it with steamed rice and sometimes with .What food do you miss most when you’re on tour?
. It’s so simple to make and it reminds me of the simplicity of home. Though you get dal at restaurants or often at match venues in India and abroad, it’s never the same, and as simple, as .

His methods have brought titles to Mumbai and Vidarbha, and they could now potentially take MP all the way

Shashank Kishore17-Jun-2022″Quick, boys.”A voice, not loud enough to boom around the dressing room but loud enough to be heard, gets everyone’s attention in the Madhya Pradesh camp.It’s their coach Chandrakant Pandit’s first and final reminder that they need to be out of the ground soon. A recovery session, team meeting, and one-on-one chats are lined-up at the hotel. They can’t be fatigued by Bengaluru’s evening traffic after a long day.They want to make sure their hour-long commute back to the hotel will last no more than an hour. Within 20 minutes of stumps being called, they’re all ready to go. The players troop out, one by one, bags neatly packed and loaded onto the bus.What does this have to do with cricket and the Ranji Trophy? Well, this peek into the MP camp highlights the importance they have placed in time management, planning and preparation – the ingredients of a most memorable campaign, constructed methodically under Pandit, a man whose methods have brought success to the numerous teams he has coached over the years. Methods that are uncontested.”I may even slap a player, but there’s a reason behind it and he will understand that too,” he once said, only half in jest.He’s won Ranji titles with Mumbai and Vidarbha, and he’s now coaching MP, who are perfectly placed to reach their first final this century. We aren’t even counting the many players he has shaped at the National Cricket Academy or at several junior camps.File photo – Captain Aditya Shrivastava contributed a crucial second-innings 82 to drive home MP’s advantage over Bengal•PTI For three weeks now, MP’s hotel has been their home. Even with bubble restrictions lifted, they’ve continued taking precautions, and kept to themselves. Instead of a round of golf next door, the players have spent the extra hour at the gym. Rather than trips downtown to visit a mall, watch a movie, or grab a bite, they’ve indulged in and chitchat by the poolside, or competitive games of FIFA, or late-night coffee sessions.These players have had each other’s backs through thick and thin. Team bonding has been the foundation of their Ranji Trophy campaign. It perhaps is with most successful teams, but this feels different. Or maybe it just feels so organic that the vibes resonate across the group without anyone going out of their way to speak about it.You can see why this is big. MP don’t often make Ranji finals. They were last there in 1998-99, when they lost to Karnataka. Pandit, incidentally, was their captain then.Now there’s another opportunity, potentially, should they see off Bengal’s challenge on the last day of their semi-final in Alur. MP need six wickets to win, and even a draw will be enough since they’ve secured the first-innings lead. Bengal need a further 254 runs in a chase of 350.Kumar Kartikeya picked up three of the four Bengal wickets that fell on Friday. He’s itching to get his hands on the Ranji Trophy. When he left home nearly a decade ago, he didn’t know he’d make it to the IPL. The Ranji Trophy was all he’d heard of, and dreamt of playing in. If he were to win it now, it would make the trip back home doubly special.Rajat Patidar has seen different shades of the happiness spectrum over the last six months. In February, he wasn’t picked at the IPL auction. In April, he was sitting down to plan his wedding, but had to put it on the backburner. One call from Sanjay Bangar, the Royal Challengers Bangalore head coach, and he was in Mumbai within six hours.In May, he became the only Indian uncapped player to hit a century in the IPL playoffs. If he adds a Ranji Trophy win to that achievement, he might have a significantly expanded guest list when his much-delayed wedding goes ahead.Chandrakant Pandit coached Vidarbha to back-to-back Ranji Trophy titles in 2017-18 and 2018-19•PTI Akshat Raghuwanshi, the prankster in the group at 18, whom everyone is fond of, may have not even been here had MP had the services of the India allrounder Venkatesh Iyer. Raghuwanshi was making a mark in age-group cricket when a freak innings – a half-century off twenty-something balls in an impossible chase – made heads turn.Umpiring in an Under-19 match, Pandit declined to give a plumb lbw early in Raghuwanshi’s innings just so he could see more of this talent he’d heard so much about. What he saw certainly impressed him, because he gave Raghuwanshi his Ranji chance straightaway, and he’s responded with three half-centuries and a century in his first five innings at this level.Then there’s Aditya Shrivastava, the captain, who was all of five when MP last made it to the final. When he started out in 2015, he was so star-struck around the group that he’d barely mumble a word to the senior players.Here he is now, as captain, giving pep talks to the entire group – every day, every session, every time they step out onto the field. With the bat, his stubborn 82 in the second innings, his only half-century of the season so far, was as important as the 79 Patidar made in the same innings, the wickets Kartikeya took, or the century Himanshu Mantri made in the first innings.These are just some of several stories that make up this team, many of which are still waiting to be told. You are unlikely to hear them unless and until MP win. Because that is one of Pandit’s simple rules. Talk only after you have something to show for it.And no one is complaining. Everyone is happy to stick to this instruction. There’s the Ranji Trophy on the line, and they’re just giving it their all by shutting out external noise, quite literally.On Saturday, along with Pandit, there will be many others willing them on. Among them, will be all the former players who’ve shaped MP cricket into what it it today: the Bundelas, the Khurasiyas, the Saxenas and the Ojhas among others. They will all be wishing their team well.

He is a master of his craft, among the sharpest bowlers around, and has the superpower of being able to swing the new ball both ways at will

Jarrod Kimber16-May-2022There is a whisper about fast bowlers of a certain age, and for medium-fast guys it comes sooner and is louder. It’s the muffled choir of thousands of people wondering if they have lost their nip, lost the yard, lost that little bit of extra pace that allows them to be dangerous.Ishant Sharma had it recently. After years of dominating batters worldwide, the collective wisdom about his recent drop in form is that he’s just not getting the same energy off the wicket. Bowlers, seamers especially, are almost seen as this disposable asset at times. Used until they are no longer physically able to do their jobs, and then discarded for the next six-foot-five bloke who hits the deck hard.Bhuvneshwar Kumar had these comments and thoughts aimed at him last year, when he had his worst IPL season, taking only six wickets in 11 matches. He has never been all that fast; that this slump came when he was over 30, and was coming off the back of a season-ending injury the year before led people to think his time at the top was over.Related

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But in that very same year he did some of his best work ever in tormenting an England team on some incredibly flat pitches. On the 20th of March 2021, he bowled against England in a game that had 412 runs in it. Bhuvneshwar’s four overs went for 15, and he dismissed Jason Roy and Jos Buttler. No other Indian bowler went for less than 8.50 runs per over.Three weeks later he was in the IPL, and he went at an economy of over 11 in two of his first three matches, and nine in the last one before the Covid break. In the second part of the season he got back on top of his economy, but took only three wickets in six matches.In or out? You never know what you’re getting with Bhuvi, new white ball or not•Faheem Hussain/BCCISo you could make the leap to say he was over if you looked at Bhuvneshwar last season and only at his IPL form. Perhaps he was losing that little bit extra off the pitch and that was making him less potent.But it’s worth talking about why he was so good for years despite never being tall, quick or unconventional, which is generally what helps in T20. His primary skill is skill. That perfect wrist gave him a really good Test average. But it was an asset that translated better to white-ball cricket than it did for other similar bowlers like Vernon Philander and Mohammad Abbas. And one of the reasons is that Bhuvneshwar moves the ball so much more than most bowlers, and he does it in two directions.Early on he’s almost like a legspinner because most of his balls are on and around an off-stump line. But he can also miss off stump by two feet with an outswinger, and then swing it back to leg with an inswinger. That is not a usual cricket skill.Most seam bowlers can only bowl an outswinger or an inswinger. Because their actions are made for that kind of delivery. Some can bowl both, but they only can master one. And there are bowlers who can deliver both but struggle to do it with the new white ball, as it gets away from them. Bhuvneshwar can swing in and out at will, with accuracy, with the shiniest of new balls.This skill is important in T20 because when you’re trying to smash him over the ring for a boundary, depending on his mood, a ball angled in at your off stump can hit leg or be around 50cm wider than off. That is a disturbing amount of lateral movement and very hard to line up.