All posts by h716a5.icu

Despite their excellent record in world tournaments, New Zealand lack an edge to their cricket

Sidharth Monga01-Oct-2012Less than a fortnight after receiving their Spirit Of Cricket Award, New Zealand already seem to have done enough to win another. When a debutant bowler was hit in the face, Brendon McCullum and Rob Nicol – never mind his Italian mob guy looks – didn’t for a moment think of running off the ricochet, instead showing concern for Akila Dananjaya. It becomes all the more significant when you look at the result: a tied Super Eights match against Sri Lanka, after which the Super Over – not quite as preposterous as the bowl-out, yet not quite cricket – denied them the points.It is tempting to think how many other batsmen would have reacted in a similar manner in a format where hitting and running like hell is just the thing to do. Forget the spirit of cricket, though. New Zealand have won hearts over the years with their show at world events: their seven semi-finals in 14 World Cups across formats is second only to Australia’s semi-final record.They haven’t gone past any of those semi-finals, though. So they are a general nice team that try hard, reach the last four, but mean no offence. They were not even behind the change of water suppliers at this World Twenty20, although their players suffered the most gastric problems. It is endearing all right for neutral supporters, but their fans and players have to be sick of these frustrating misses.They might be massive overachievers to some, but on days like the last day of matches in their Super Eights group, you wonder if there are bigger underachievers around. They had no business losing, and they had only themselves to blame. Despite stomach bugs, sore Achilles, a key player’s personal issues keeping him out and botched batting orders, on pitches increasingly helping spinners, they still came to within scoring 140 in 20 overs with 10 wickets in hand of giving themselves a fair chance of making it to their eighth World Cup semi-final.Yet, with no obvious pressure of extraordinary bowling – not until Sunil Narine bowled the 17th and 19th overs for just five runs – their batsmen bottled it. They were up against three specialists bowlers, and Darren Sammy and other bits-and-pieces men, but no one other than Ross Taylor and Brendon McCullum could score at more than a run a ball.Taylor, the lone man on the burning deck, who almost single-handedly tied the game, and changed his gameplan on the spot to counter Marlon Samuels’ 125kmph darts from two steps, was too gutted to talk about what happened. “We gave it our best. At times we didn’t execute as we would have liked. We lost key moments in the game against Sri Lanka and again here today,” was all he could say.Ask him of the luck involved in the Super Over, and Taylor goes, “No, I think execution comes into it,” Taylor said. “There’s a bit of luck that goes into everything you do, but there’s a lot of training and thought that goes into all aspects of the game. It just wasn’t our day.”Niceness again. You want some badness from New Zealand at such times. You want them to complain of the seven runs that Steve Finn’s kicking of stumps cost them. You want them to complain about the absurdity of a Super Over in non-knockout games. They just stay nice, racking up spirit-of-cricket points.There is no empirical study that will tell you niceness equals lack of ruthlessness, or if New Zealand have not found themselves out of their depth in some of these semi-finals, but for once you want them to be dragged out of a World Cup. Kicking and screaming.

Richie Richardson, the West Indies manager, doesn’t only take care of team logistics, he also is a mentor to a young side finding its feet in international cricket

Mohammad Isam21-Dec-2012There’s a good chance West Indies will win five Test matches in a row when they take on Zimbabwe in March next year. This streak would better the four in a row they won in 1993, albeit against much stronger opponents.This West Indies team has defeated New Zealand at home and Bangladesh away, but it would nonetheless be an achievement for the players, who have turned a corner this year.As the team manager, Richie Richardson, who captained West Indies during their 1993 streak against Australia and Pakistan, will be watching from the dressing room when Zimbabwe come to Barbados. He is one of the lesser-mentioned cogs of the West Indies machine under Darren Sammy.For all the goodwill they have received for their recent success, West Indies’ progress has been slow, and the four wins are nothing compared to what Richardson’s team achieved, starting with the famous one-run win in Adelaide that turned the 1992-93 series in Australia in West Indies’ favour. They went on to win the final Test, at the WACA, by an innings and 25 runs, and the series 2-1. The next two were comprehensive wins against a Pakistan attack led by Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis.Things have changed so much for West Indies cricket since then. Victories against New Zealand and Bangladesh are now causes for celebration. This new sense of success was missing from the side in the past decade.”Since I have been here, there is certain improvement, in terms of commitment,” Richardson said. “Players are buying into what the coach has to offer. It is paying off. [They are] working harder and with more commitment.”It has been slow going between January 2011 and December 2012, but the last six months might give Richardson a brief reminder of how things were back in the day.These days he spends most of his time dealing with logistical and managerial issues, though he tries to spend time talking to players as well. “I like the idea of working with younger players, paying attention to them. I make sure they do the right thing.”I hope we can really rise again. I believe we can. We have dominated world cricket for a long time and we had a lull. I think it is about time we came back.”Richardson said working with Sammy is easy. “He often asks me questions, and I feel free to discuss bowling, batting and captaincy. It is very important for captain, coach, manager and senior players to have a good relationship. Sammy works well with anybody, always smiling and open, approachable.”Richardson says it’s nice for captains to have a large support staff at their disposal, a luxury he didn’t enjoy during his captaincy years. “Captaincy is always tough but if you want to compare between my time and now, I was a player, captain, father, counsellor, coach, everything. It is easier for players with the support staff these days. Everything is more controlled, [we have] several coaches, we have everything available now, but back then we had nothing. We had to do everything based on memory. Things are better. That’s how it should be, because the game is becoming more and more professional and you have to do these things to [keep up] with the rest of the world.”West Indies coach Ottis Gibson appreciates the “tremendous” support he receives from Richardson. “He has been brilliant for me to bounce ideas off,” Gibson said. “His attention to detail, in terms of touring, the movements of the team, the logistics of the team, is second to none.”But Richardson is not your everyday team manager. In Bangladesh he strutted out of the airport and declared the team had arrived to win everything on the tour. And though West Indies lost the ODI series, their improvement didn’t go unnoticed.Richardson also offers advice to batsmen and slip fielders, though not often. Gibson, in fact, welcomes Richardson’s input. “He’s a Level 3 coach in his own right,” Gibson said. “He spends time talking to the young players, especially about batting in Test cricket. He was one of the best slip fielders West Indies ever had, so to be able to offer advice to the guys, he gets involved in some of the practices.”It is hard to imagine whether a fifth consecutive win will make Richardson feel the way he did after his streak in 1993. But as the manager and senior-most member of this West Indies set-up, he will take pride in seeing his charges experience the success he did on a routine basis during his international career. And five straight wins will certainly mean more to West Indies cricket today than they would have in 1993.

A whitewash followed by its reverse can perplex the sharpest among us

Andy Zaltzman25-Feb-2013I’m confused. England crunched India like a birthday biscuit in the Tests during the summer, then beat them conclusively in the one-day series. But now, just weeks later, they have been unceremoniously counter-crunched by the same opposition, honked 5-0 in a fiesta of grumpy ineptitude, by an Indian team that was as focused, calm and efficient as it wasn’t in England. What does it all mean?It is too early to say definitively. I think we can safely say that, on the evidence of this series, England will struggle in the 2011 World Cup. Subcontinental conditions do not suit their game. India, meanwhile, will be desperately trying to remember not to begin the 2019 World Cup in England (a) with much of their first-choice side absent, (b) after a long, exhausting and humiliating tour that followed hot on the heels of another Test series, the IPL and a World Cup, and (c) in a rainy September.It is probably also fair to say that England have not entirely cracked ODI cricket yet, but that MS Dhoni has.Does it matter that England’s batsmen keep getting out after making a start?Strap in, stats fans, I’ve been digging again. Don’t tell the wife. (I’ll give you a couple of paragraphs to brace yourselves for the stat. Gather your family round, I think they should all be told.)On a global scale, humanity probably has more significant issues to address than England’s batsmen playing themselves in and then playing themselves out again with alarming rapidity. And for Britain as a nation, this matter resides below staving off economicageddon, wondering if we can start exporting our old people to ease the pensions problem, and bickering over whether we should leave Europe and catapult ourselves into the mid-Atlantic instead. However, in the realm of one-day cricket it certainly does matter.In Mohali, Ravi Bopara played arguably the archetypal modern England ODI innings – 24 off 32. It was not a dismal failure, but it was as close to unhelpful in the circumstances as he could have managed. Admittedly England could have done with a few more archetypal 24s off 32s in Kolkata yesterday, but of the impressive selection of Achilles heels they have flashed at the cameras during this series (historians are reassessing whether Achilles was in fact a centipede, not a man), the infuriating habit of batting quite well for a bit and then getting out was the most swollen.STAT ALERT. Here it comes. It’s about batsmen getting out in the 20s and 30s. 5-4-3-2-1. Blast Off.In ODIs since the end of the 2007 World Cup, top-seven England batsmen have been out between 20 and 39 on 152 occasions, compared to the 196 times that they have gone on to reach 40. So 43.7% of the times an England batsman has reached 20 (and has not finished not out between 20 and 39), he is out before he reaches 40. Of Test-playing nations in that time, England are only sixth best at top-seven batsmen not getting out in the 20s and 30s, just behind New Zealand (43.4%). The top four is as follows: South Africa in first (32% dismissed between 20 and 39), Australia in second (36.7%), India in third (38.5%), Sri Lanka in fourth (39.5%).In this period, the highest ODI win percentage table is: South Africa in first (68.1%); Australia in secnd (67.7%), India in third (62.7%), and Sri Lanka in fourth (57.3%).Have a glass of water.The only significant mover between the two charts is Pakistan – seventh-best (44.3%) at not getting out in the 20s and 30s, but with the fifth-highest win rate (56.8%) ‒ nudging England (49.0%) down one to seventh, just behind New Zealand (50.0%).I am not a professional statistician, and I don’t have the certificates to prove that, and I am sure other statistics could be found that produce a similar correlation. However, this mega stat does suggest that telling your top-order batsmen not to get out in the 20s and 30s, and those top-order batsmen following that instruction, is, as has long been suspected, a good idea. Judging by the crowds at the matches, this series captured the Indian public’s imagination in the same way that a baby spider catches an Apache helicopter in its web. I love cricket. Should I be concerned?Yes. The cunning formula of overpriced tickets and a less-than-entirely-cordial match-day experience successfully kept crowds down at the neutral matches in India during the World Cup. That scheme has now been rolled out to cover India’s own matches as well. If cricket has not quite killed its golden goose, then it has certainly tied it to a radiator in a dungeon, punched it repeatedly in the beak, pointed a gun at its head, and screamed: “Lay more eggs, you feathery idiot, or I’m going to stuff you with sausage meat and roast you to the other side of Christmas.” The goose, understandably, is finding it hard to relax into its most productive egg-laying form. Should Jonathan Trott be in the England ODI side?Presumably for the England selectors this is not a matter of much debate. Unless they are easily influenced by internet message boards. I imagine that, when picking their ODI batting line-up, they start with a blank sheet of paper, write Trott’s name on it, and then start thinking about the other players to fit alongside him. They might write Eoin Morgan’s name down first, but have sadly spent too much of the last year crossing it out again when they remember that he is injured.Trott is not the ideal modern ODI player, but not many teams in any format have 11 ideal players, and he is still very good. In the two years since his debut, his average (51) has been excellent, close to the top of the international tree, and his strike rate (78) has been unspectacular but adequate – similar over the same period to Yuvraj Singh, Michael Clarke, Ross Taylor, Graeme Smith and Ponting.The problem is that Trott has been surrounded by other batsmen whose strike rates have also been adequate but whose averages have been close to useless. Dropping Trott would be like firing your accountant after you spent your life savings on a giant inflatable Darrell Hair, left it tied up outside the Sri Lankan embassy, and found it repeatedly punctured the following morning. The accountant is not to blame. How should Trott bat in ODIs?In Mohali, Trott scored 98 off 116, a soundly constructed innings that lacked a definitive final flourish, but which facilitated a strong team score. Clearly it would have been preferable if he had scored 198 off 116. In Mumbai, Trott made a brisk start. But again he made the mistake of not converting his 39 off 48 into 198 off 116. It is starting to look like a behavioural pattern. Some critics also seemed to think that it would have been even more preferable if he had hammered his first ball for four, then smashed his stumps down and marched off proudly announcing that he had given the innings some early impetus. And boosted his career strike rate in the process. Moreover, he would have allowed England’s volcanic middle order more time to Vesuvius it about at 12 an over as they always do.Is it fair to criticise England for being a bit stroppy in the field?No. They are all worried sick about the Greek financial crisis. It is a tense time for everyone. However, results suggest that the somewhat inexplicable strops have not aided performance. This could, of course, be coincidence. Maybe a study could be done to analyse the effects of grumpiness on cricketing success. Perhaps Donald Bradman’s Test innings could be cross-referenced with his personal diaries to calculate whether his rare failures coincided with him being particularly unhappy at a new shade of paint in which his wife had just painted their kitchen, or irritated that the wi-fi in the Australian dressing room was not working, or generally feeling that life was ultimately pointless and we are all just dust in the winds of history.

Kallis might have just about pulled his weight this IPL season, but the demands of T20 and his slow strike-rate has made him look desperate with the bat

Sidharth Monga19-May-2013It was a flat pitch, surrounded by a quick outfield, on a hot day in Chennai, and 263 runs had already been scored in 26 overs by the time Jacques Kallis came out to bat. Kallis didn’t bat badly. There was one loft back over the bowler’s head for a six. You couldn’t say he was struggling. When you looked at the scoreboard, though, he was only 19 off 19.Then you saw Kallis do only what the quickest of the bowlers might have made him do, that too with the sharpest of bouncers: he played a shot while not looking at the ball, a length ball from Dwayne Bravo. Kallis premeditated a shot he has hardly ever felt the need to play, the ramp, and went down on his knee too early. The head fell away and the eyes were almost shut as he dragged this from outside off and into the lap of short fine leg. We don’t need to see Kallis to be brought down to this level, but it’s a format he has chosen to play on in. And obviously he felt under the pressure to do something crazy.The thing with Kallis in T20 is, we still see the lovely shots and the poise at the wicket, we still see he looks good and untroubled, but when we check the stats we see a season strike-rate of 97, which is not appreciated in this format. If you listen to commentators, though, you’d think Kallis has been Kolkata Knight Riders’ most valuable player.Kallis has done his fair bit with the ball. He has been canny, and has used the cutter on the slower pitches superbly, but it is as a top-order batsman that he has hurt Knight Riders. He has faced close to 54 overs for just 311 runs, which can possibly work in the company of big hitters in red-hot form. Not with the way the other Knight Riders batsmen have gone this season.Kallis is not the reason Knight Riders have failed to defend their title. In fact if you look at his bowling contribution – 16 wickets at an economy rate of 7.43 – he has pulled his weight. However, Kallis will hate to be judged against that low a standard. He is used to doing much better. Nor should he be reduced to playing ugly T20 shots. Once again, even as the commentators exclaimed about a great contest between Dale Steyn and Kallis today, it began and ended with an ugly hoick.Kallis had scored 24 off 28 balls when Steyn came back, and under the pressure he just went after the first ball. To call it a contest would be to insult the word. Just like it is an insult to the great batsman to go through uncricketing shots, but it is a choice he has made.

Some days, Upul Tharanga bats so well, his innings seem like a dream. Other times, he falls asleep at the crease. It is a vacillating pattern he must arrest immediately, with the team’s batting future at stake

Andrew Fidel Fernando in Pallekele27-Jul-2013When Upul Tharanga made his debut for Sri Lanka in August 2005, his was one of the more remarkable tales in international cricket. Eight months earlier, his family lost their home in the Boxing Day tsunami, that claimed thousands of lives in his home town of Ambalangoda. Only 19 then, Tharanga had played a match in Colombo the day before, and was setting out for home when he had news of the disaster. When he returned to his neighbourhood, he found “nothing was there”.Tharanga took three months’ leave from the game, as he and his family began piecing their lives together, and found a friend in club teammate Kumar Sangakkara, who gave him money and equipment to help set his cricket on track again. Upon his return to the game, he caught the selectors’ eye and had an international hundred one month after making his debut. Next year, five more ODI tons made him one of Sri Lanka’s surest long-term prospects. Tharanga has rarely lived up to that promise since.Serene and unyielding in full flow, but cagey and hapless all too often, few other batsmen have stretches of good form as fragile as he. Slim rewards from January’s tour to Australia had him left out of the side for four months, but on his return series, Tharanga struck a scintillating 174 that raised hopes he would own Sri Lanka’s troublesome second-opening spot for some time. Since that innings, he has made 7, 6, 11, 43, 3 and 5. The 43 could so easily have been 0, had he not been dropped early at second slip.His latest innings, in the third ODI, was a fumbling, frustrating, familiar mess. Groping endlessly at balls outside off stump as the seam bowlers worked the channel, Tharanga edged a boundary between the keeper and slip, and made one run from his remaining 22 deliveries.How blinding a difference from his innings in Kingston just over three weeks ago. That day, Tharanga caressed the ball so languidly, he seemed to be batting in slow-motion fantasy. He cut so late, yet drove and pulled so powerfully, it seemed no delivery imaginable could ever get him out. Tharanga had begun Sri Lanka’s innings in a graceful trance, and finished with devilish fury, plundering 66 from his last 22 deliveries to punch out unbeaten, with a strike rate of 109.4.Tharanga also has 13 ODI hundreds – only three fewer than Sangakkara, and Mahela Jayawardene who have both played in twice as many ODIs. How to reconcile that record with the batsman who eats up Powerplay overs, then routinely presents his wicket to slip, thanks to an incurable technical malady, which is almost untenable in the age of two new balls. This pained effort against South Africa bore a resemblance to his 20-ball torture for two runs in the 2011 World Cup final, that sucked the wind from Sri Lanka’s sails and set India off apace. Some days Tharanga bats so well, his innings seem like a dream. Other times, he falls asleep at the crease.It is a vacillating pattern he must arrest immediately, because at 28 now, and with eight years of international experience behind him, Tharanga is perfectly placed to ease the coming loss of Sri Lanka’s senior batsmen. No one who sees him on his best days will doubt he is capable of greatness, yet he is now two innings away from having his place in the side roundly questioned, again. Sri Lanka have already tried two other opening combinations this year, and there are talented others in the domestic circuit capable of catching the selectors’ fancy.”We’re not trying to chop and change our openers too much because we’re trying to have the same combination and give the players a good run,” Angelo Mathews said after the match. “Upul has shown in the recent past, when he got a big hundred, that he can bat through the innings. Unfortunately he couldn’t do that in the first three matches, but I’m sure he’ll come to the party in the next two.”As batsmen we have to be consistent, and apart from TM Dilshan, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, we aren’t among the runs for long. If we want to win a lot of matches in the future, we can’t just leave it to the seniors. We all have to contribute.”Tharanga now approaches a fork in his career. If the inconsistency that has ruled his career so far cannot be vanquished, he may forever be banished to the cricketing purgatory so many talented men have known before, when they have flourished yearly in domestic cricket without earning a recall. But if he can discover a route to the sustained batting success he promised in his youth, Sri Lanka will be some way to solving the crisis that rushes towards them.

Craig McDermott looks forward to working with Australia’s bowlers after being appointed by CA, and says his close relationships with the bowlers will help them get in gear for the upcoming Ashes series

Daniel Brettig17-Oct-2013Ten days ago, Craig McDermott returned to Australia feeling a little downbeat. After mentoring Australia’s Under-19 bowlers in a quadrangular tournament in India, he had wanted to stay on to work with the senior team for their ODI series against the hosts, an earlier offer knocked back by Cricket Australia. As far as McDermott was aware, he remained at arm’s length from the national team, offering only occasional help via the Centre of Excellence. The flight home seemed a journey away from where he wanted to be.But a few hours after his arrival in Brisbane, McDermott’s phone buzzed with a message from Darren Lehmann, asking him to meet with the national coach and the team performance manager Pat Howard. Soon enough, he was handed the role to coach Australia’s Test match bowlers, with preparations for the Ashes in his immediate sights. Recalling the earlier conversations about India, McDermott chuckled. “Those things are always planned well and truly ahead of schedule, so maybe they were already talking about things behind closed doors,” he told ESPNcricinfo. “I don’t really know…”Whatever their sense of timing, Howard and Lehmann had not forgotten the way McDermott worked tellingly with fast bowlers young and old in 2011 and 2012, a phase in which Australia’s pacemen had been the most incisive in the world. Nor had the bowlers themselves, who within minutes of McDermott’s appointment being announced, flooded their former coach’s phone with messages. The strength of those relationships will be as useful to Australia’s bid for the Ashes as the clear and fruitful advice that had won their trust in the first place.”I’m really looking forward to getting back with the boys. I’ve had Sidds, Patto, John Hastings and a few other guys contact me already, so it’s great that they’re happy I’m back and that I’ve been appointed and they’re contacting me,” he said. “So that’s a positive start from my point of view. I’ve kept track of the Ashes and some of their one-day and T20 cricket, so I’m up to speed with where everybody’s up to.”It’ll just be good to get around the states in a week or so’s time when I start to see some Sheffield Shield matches and some practice sessions prior to Shield matches. I’ll make sure that guys are up to speed and talking through any technical things we might want to look at as well and make sure we’re back on track from where I left it 15 months ago, the mantra and all that sort of stuff I set out for the lads. On their side of it as well they accepted where we wanted to head on certain ideas, and also Michael Clarke embraced that very well as well.”All that good feeling and mutual understanding does not disguise the fact that McDermott’s task is a hefty one. While Australia’s bowlers fared better than their batsmen in England, heavy workloads during the series and repeated defeats across two series overseas, have sapped the pace battery of strength. James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc and Jackson Bird are unavailable, while Peter Siddle and Ryan Harris are creaking rustily back into gear. Ben Hilfenhaus remains sturdy, and Mitchell Johnson has been swerving the white ball at speed. But much remains to be done to return the attack to the heights they scaled against India two summers ago while avoiding the pitfalls of the 2010-11 Ashes series at home.”We certainly want to make sure we get to what we were doing 18 months ago,” McDermott said. “That’s my focus. I’m not too bothered about the previous Ashes series in Australia. We improved on that and we’ve shown we can do it, so we just need to have four, six, eight guys knocking the door down and bowling well to give the selectors some variation and some things to think about when it comes to what wickets we’re dealt with.”In Brisbane do we play four quicks if the wicket’s good enough, or do we play three and a spinner and Shane Watson or whatever it happens to be. They’re things the selectors have to sort out, but my job is to get our blokes bowling well with the red ball … and that doesn’t stop somebody else in Shield cricket knocking the door down by getting a lot of wickets in those early Shield games because you need guys who are in form.”McDermott’s pace bowling tenets have always been simple. When he was first appointed in mid-2011 he advocated accuracy, a fuller length and the rediscovery of swing. When consulting in Brisbane on the pre-Ashes camp, he told the squad members “be prepared to be boring” in sending down ball after ball in the right spot. Now he will be working with the states to ensure the selectors’ nominated eight fit fast men are thinking simply and clearly, while also helping to plan that none are unnecessarily blown out by a domestic schedule featuring six Shield matches in as many weeks.”It’s always good to have plans, but injuries always upset plans don’t they?” McDermott said. “We’ve got to make sure we’ve got those guys fit as well as the next echelon below that, so if we do get two or three injuries like we do have with Pattinson, Cummins and Starc, that we’ve got other guys who can take over from them and bowl well in Test cricket. That’s part of my role as well, to make sure the next lot down are preparing for possibly injuries and coming to the fore in Test cricket. I’ve had a fair bit to do with most of those bowlers, whether it be through Australia A, the CoE and the Australian set-up.”At the same time, McDermott will work in concert with Ali de Winter, the man who replaced him last year. Howard has indicated their split roles may be the first of several across formats, allowing support staff to spend a little less time on the road as the composition of the teams also diverge. Both McDermott and de Winter are contracted until the end of the World T20 in Bangladesh next year, before a break that will allow the former to work on a few of the projects he built up between national team stints.”It’ll be interesting to see where it unfolds,” McDermott said. “I’m through until after the World T20 and so is he, and then we’ll just see where it all leads after that. But they look like they’re heading towards that track and then next year it there’s four months off in the FTP, so that allows me to run my Billy’s Cricket Academies as well and do some work with Australia A and also the CoE. It’s a pretty good mixture I can see for the next 9-12 months.”

With uncapped Indian players entering the IPL auction pool for the first time, franchises have begun inviting talented domestic players for trials to assess their value

Nagraj Gollapudi and Amol Karhadkar11-Feb-20140:00

Rishi Dhawan, Manish Pandey could attract big bids

It became evident how much franchises value uncapped players when Rajasthan Royals retained Sanju Samson•BCCITwo days after Karnataka won the Ranji Trophy, KL Rahul, the second highest run-scorer in the tournament, flew to Mumbai. He was scheduled to squeeze in a trip to Kolkata as well, but that didn’t happen.The reason behind Rahul’s whistle-stop tour was to audition for two IPL franchises (Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders), who had booked his flight tickets. Unlike in the past, the franchises were not fighting hard to lure Rahul into their fold. This time, Rahul was part of a bunch of players they had called for trials in which they could assess their talent by putting them through various match-like situations.At 21, Rahul is one of the 300-odd uncapped Indian players who for the first time will be part of the player auction, which will be held in Bangalore on Wednesday and Thursday. Uncapped players form an integral part of an IPL squad. The size of a squad, from this season, has been restricted to 27, and with a maximum of nine overseas players permitted, franchises point out the advantages of having an uncapped player whom they feel can be procured at a reasonable price and give them more value-for-money returns.It became evident how much franchises value uncapped players when Rajasthan Royals retained Stuart Binny and Sanju Samson and Kings XI Punjab retained Manan Vohra. Uncapped players who prospered during the last IPL season include Rajat Bhatia, Manvinder Bisla, Hanuma Vihari, Ashok Menaria and Pravin Tambe.”It [having uncapped players in the auction pool] makes it very clean and transparent and gives every franchise an equal opportunity,” says Venky Mysore, the Kolkata Knight Riders chief executive. According to Mysore, the big difference between the previous seasons, when franchises would call uncapped players for trials, and now is there is no longer any need to negotiate.”You had a situation where different type of influences came into the picture and that would determine who the player would sign with eventually,” Mysore says. “Our intention was to call some of the boys whom we did not know much about.”According to Mysore, the overall approach and the composition of the squad with regards uncapped players will not change. “On an average, each franchise will have 8-12 uncapped players in the squad,” he says. “The difference this time will be you will have equal opportunity to buy the player provided you are willing to pay the price.”Barring Delhi Daredevils and Chennai Super Kings, the rest of the franchises conducted trials, which generally ranged from one to two days. Even if they cannot offer shortlisted players a contract without buying them in the auction, most franchises say they wanted to see which players suited their needs. One franchise coach says he was looking at “players on the fringe of playing Ranji Trophy” for his franchise.”You are trying to put a face to the name,” the coach says. “Although we cannot assess too much in two days, coaches can get a glimpse of the players’ mindset. These players are very important keeping the future in the mind. Most of the players, both Indian capped players and overseas, are not getting younger. So if somebody has the potential, and even if he does not play this year, you can always hang on to that guy and build on him for the future.”The trials themselves involved net sessions, simulating match scenarios and, in some cases, practice matches. “We are not looking to teach the player anything,” the coach says. “You just want to see whether he fits into your strategy and for the player it is to get an idea about the franchise.”From a player’s perspective, he gets a peek into the how a franchise operates. First impressions work in life and they can work even in the IPL. “It is speed dating in the IPL,” is how a franchise head sums up the concept.Most of those who are being invited have bloomed in the domestic circuit over the last couple of seasons. One promising batsman, who had a consistent Ranji Trophy season, was invited for a trial by a former IPL champion team. “I was given three sets of 20 balls each to show my prowess,” he says. “First I was told to bat assuming they were Powerplay overs, then they told me to treat the ball and field placements like those in the middle overs and the last set was to bat the way I would in the death overs. It may not sound so innovative but the field placements were constantly revolving and it was challenging to score under such pressure. It was a perfect dress rehearsal to bat in the IPL.”Even the bowlers were told to show their skills by bowling either one over or two at a stretch at different intervals in an innings. “I was given the confidence first that I am being considered only because of my accuracy and variations and was told to use as many variations as I had,” a medium-pacer says. “It was a wonderful experience.”

Whatever was Dale Steyn referring to when he spoke of those beasts? All will be revealed here

Andy Zaltzman28-Feb-2014The CSECESU (Confectionery Stall Elite Creative, Editorial And Statsnalysis Unit) (i.e., me) was away on holiday during the Port Elizabeth Test, on a pizza-wolfing and volcano-monitoring expedition in Naples with Mrs Confectionery Stall and the kids.We therefore missed South Africa’s object lesson in how to play against Clarke’s Australians, a lesson from which England would do well to learn. And then go back in time to the beginning of November and have another go. Ideally with Dale Steyn and AB de Villiers in the team.The second Test proved the age-old cricketing adage: when trying to defeat a rampant side, it is strategically wise to have amongst your personnel the greatest bowler of the era and the world’s current best batsman.Since 2010, de Villiers has averaged 66 in Tests and 64 in ODIs. He is strategically flexible and versatile in his strokeplay. He can defend for hours and destroy in minutes. He can hit the ball to anywhere, but chooses when to do so almost flawlessly. His timing could melt granite. He is now the complete batsman.He was not always so – in 23 Tests, from December 2005 (after an excellent debut year), he did not score a century, and averaged 27. Perhaps these failures shaped the batsman he is today. Perhaps, like the young Roger Federer, he needed to learn how to harness the infinite shot-making options at his disposal. Perhaps he was just playing rubbishly for a bit. Whatever the reason, the patience of the selectors has been rewarded, as it was by JP Duminy, de Villiers’ century-making partner in South Africa’s first-innings blunting of the previously stiletto-sharp Australian attack.Duminy, after a briefly stellar start to his Test match life, had averaged just 26 in his previous 20 Tests, spread over five years. If only he could overcome his innate endecaboreiogenicantagonistophobia – a newly discovered psychological condition in which the sufferer fears playing against 11 people originating from the northern hemisphere (thanks be to internet translation sites) – he will be a world-beater. As it is, he is only half a world-beater. In nine Tests against Australia and one versus New Zealand, he averages 58. In 13 Tests against opposition from north of the equator, he averages 20.De Villiers is one of the principal contributors to one of the landmark features of the 2010s. This decade will be remembered by historians for many reasons, ranging from the discovery that all human communication can be reduced to 140 characters, to the collapse of the old order in Northern Africa, via Justin Bieber’s surprise win in the 2016 US Presidential election. But most of all, if current trends continue, it will be remembered as the first decade ever, in the entire 450-million-plus-decades-long history of the planet, in which Test wicketkeepers have averaged more than all non-wicketkeepers combined.The gap has been closing for a while. Up to 1929, keepers collectively averaged 17.2; non-keepers 25.9 (a 50% advantage). From 1930 to 1969, the figures were 22.9 to 30.6 (33%). From 1970 to 1999: 26.1 to 30.4 (16%). Nevertheless, had 16th-century soothsaying celeb Nostradamus prophesied in his unmistakably French way that wicketkeepers would out-bat other Test cricketers in the first decade of the 21st century, people would have thought him even more deluded than normal. “No way,” they would have spluttered into their morning baguettes, “zis is not possible. Le keepeur du wickets – zis is a specialist position, incompatible avec being a top-class homme-du-bats. Zis Micky Nostradamus, he is a few oeufs short of ze full omelette, n’est-ce pas? Next he will fait un prophésage cricketique que l’Angleterre will lose 5-0 in an Ashes series to an Australian team which had lost sept of its previous neuf matches de Test, and who have only one top-class homme-du-bats.”As it transpired, however, the self-styled Provençal Prognosticator would have been almost right – in the first decade of the 21st century, the stumpers lost by just 31.8 to 32.0. Thus far since 2010, glovemen have continued to improve, averaging 34.0; non-keepers have remained steady at 32.0. If the trend continues, in the 2250s, wicketkeepers will be averaging close to 100 with the bat. You read it here first. Lay down some literal gauntlets for your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren; it will be a worthwhile investment. Pimply ones, preferably. The gauntlets, that is. And the great-great-great-great- great-great-grandchildren.

Concern for endangered species of large mammal can distract a fast bowler from his task; it is thought that Maurice Tate’s later career with England was badly affected by his obsession with Yangtze River dolphins

* Some statistical coincidences of no particular importance:Shaun Marsh’s selection for the first Test, backed by indiscernible statistical support from years of first-class cricket, was one of the great selectorial hunches of recent times. His second-Test pair, however, takes his career tally to a spectacular six Test ducks in 15 innings, or one every 2.5 innings. The average duck rate for top-six batsmen this decade is one every 13.3 innings. The batsman with the best ducks-per-innings ratio, of the 278 batsmen to have batted 75 or more times in Tests, is the man who caught Marsh in the first innings in Port Elizabeth – de Villiers (whose highest Test score is, coincidentally, 278). The man with the second-most Test innings played with three or fewer ducks, after de Villiers: Geoff Marsh, father of quack-specialist Shaun, who blimped out just three times in 93 innings.* Marsh was, by my reckoning, just the ninth player to follow a century with a pair in the next Test of a series. He was, by anyone’s reckoning, the second to do so against South Africa this season, after Khurram Manzoor’s first-Test-hero-to-second-Test-zero-zero effort for Pakistan in the UAE last October. The previous player to plummet from bat-waggling three-figure glory straight into a twin-duck twofold-debacle was Adam Gilchrist, who came in at 99 for 5 in Mumbai in 2001, and promptly flayed India with one of his greatest innings, a 112-ball 122. The seemingly unbeatable Australians and their record-splattering wicketkeeper-batsman then moved confidently to Kolkata. Laxman and Dravid turned cricket on its head, and Gilchrist lasted a grand total of two balls in two innings.(The other champ-to-chump metamorphosers: Graeme Wood, for Australia v New Zealand in 1980-81; Pakistan’s Majid Khan, in Australia in 1978-79; Dilip Vengsarkar, for India v West Indies in the same season; Ross Edwards, for Australia in the 1972 Ashes; Russell Endean, for South Africa in England in 1955; Collie Smith, for West Indies v Australia, also in 1955. Vengsarkar scored 157 not out in the second innings of the third Test; 0 and 0 in the fourth Test; and 109 in the fifth Test, a truly unique duck sandwich, fit to serve at any Michelin-starred cricket-stat-themed restaurant. Of which there are depressingly few.)* Dale Steyn is arguably more unchallenged as the pre-eminent bowler of his age than any of his world-leading predecessors, and, as a habitual shaper and decider of Test series in all conditions, is the most influential Test player of his time. He will always be best remembered, however, as the author and speaker of this sentence, uttered this week: “If I was running in thinking of cuddly bears, I would be dishing out half-volleys and hamburgers for guys to smash.”Please select your favoured interpretation of these frankly glorious words:(a) A cryptic crossword clue.(b) A subconscious and deeply chilling recollection of a previous career working in a low-grade fast-food emporium (where cuddly bears were given out free with children’s meals, fitted with a microchip that made them squeak, “I’m hungry, feed me some nuggets and fries” every 20 minutes; “half-volleys” was rhyming slang for “ice lollies”; and “smashing” a hamburger was a speed-eating technique adopted by regular clients to enable the burger to be glowped down in a single three-bite megamouthful, without the taste buds ever being engaged).(c) An insight into how concern for endangered species of large mammal, such as the Venezuelan Cuddly Bear, can distract a fast bowler from his task; it is thought that Maurice Tate’s later career with England was badly affected by his obsession with Yangtze River dolphins.(d) A song lyric by the cult 1960s New York rock geniuses the Velvet Underground, from the as-yet-unreleased album track, .(e) An explanation of the mental processes that adversely affected Mohammad Sami whilst running in to bowl for Pakistan during his almost remorselessly ineffective Test career. Sami reportedly owns a collection of more than 417,500 vintage Steiff teddy bears.(f) Code. Steyn’s words activated a dormant worldwide cell of secret agents. Stay alert. Something big is afoot. I think they might be about to unleash an army of cloned Darrell Hairs.* David Warner’s post-match ball-tampering bleats smacked, in the words of South Africa’s team manager Mohammad Moosajee, of “sour grapes”. By inferring that South Africa’s surgical splattering of Australia’s batting line-up was not achieved by entirely legitimate means, Warner squidged those sour grapes down and fermented them into a rather bitter Australian whine.Of late, Warner has, as they say, been doing his talking with his bat. Unfortunately, this seems to have given him confidence to also do some of his talking with his mouth. Warner is a compellingly brilliant and flawed cricketer, who has played some of the finest innings of the decade, but, most would acknowledge he is not the most refined verbal communicator that Australian cricket has ever produced.”Hardly anyone takes anything David Warner says seriously anyway,” continued Moosajee, generously inferring that there might indeed be at least someone who does take Warner’s utterings seriously. I doubt that even David Warner takes anything David Warner says seriously. He is, at least, refreshingly loose-tongued in a sporting age of trained conversational restraint.

Every time the new England coach Peter Moores renewed his contract with Lancashire the sighs of relief could be heard from Blackpool to Bacup. Now the sighs are tinged with gratitude and disappointment

Paul Edwards21-Apr-2014Every time the new England coach Peter Moores renewed his contract with Lancashire the sighs of relief could be heard from Blackpool to Bacup. But many Lancashire supporters always suspected that the man who helped bring them the Championship nearly three years ago would soon be tempted away to pursue his other goals in cricket. It was just a question of when.Now it has finally happened, perhaps those supporters can reflect how lucky they were that one of the game’s best coaches worked with their players for five eventful summers. “We realised we were not going to have someone like Peter for 20 years,” acknowledged Mike Watkinson, Lancashire’s director of cricket. “We knew he had an ambition to do something else at some stage.”But until the national team unravelled big style, as they say in Bolton, few Lancashire members thought that a return to the England job was particularly likely. Now they can be a trifle comforted that it took one of the biggest jobs in world cricket to persuade Moores to leave a post he plainly enjoyed.And perhaps they, like many of us, will now look back to February 2009 and conclude that Moores’ readiness to take on the Old Trafford job, five weeks after his bruising first experience with England, revealed something of the measure of the man.He later disclosed that the rigour of the interview process had stimulated him at a time when he was not sure whether he wanted to return to the county game. Two 15-minute presentations and two hour-long interviews were tough. He liked that – and suddenly he very much wanted to coach the club he had always loved since his days as a boy at King’s School, Macclesfield. Fortunately for Lancashire, they gave him the gig.He impressed us at his first press-conference. England was then in his past, he said; he had had a job with the national team but he didn’t have it any more. Now he wanted to talk about Lancashire’s players, their strengths, their hopes, their dream of winning the County Championship. It was his task to help them become better cricketers and he was looking forward to it. Already he had a detailed knowledge of their recent records. His eyes shone with excitement at the prospect of the work ahead. The press pack would get used to that look.And so began five years during which very few requests to “have a word with Mooresy” were turned down. Regardless of Lancashire’s fortunes on the field, he was almost always available. One remembers the pavilion at Trent Bridge after a hard-earned win; the outfield at Guildford after Kevin Pietersen had given Simon Kerrigan a fearful mauling; innumerable occasions in the press tent at Aigburth as Glen Chapple’s men made their uncertain way to that improbable title.The coach was always ready to offer his opinions and take our questions, albeit that one or two required skilful deflection to the long grass. Experienced communications professionals have said that Moores is the most understanding and obliging sportsman with whom they have ever worked. It is easy to see why.Inevitably, perhaps, there was coachspeak. Lancashire’s players had to “take the positives” from a dismal draw, and a tricky run of fixtures, for example, “is what it is”. But journalists are sometimes all too ready to criticise their interviewees and just as frequently reluctant to praise them for original and enlightening comments. When Moores was asked if he had banned talk of the title in the closing months of 2011 he replied that of course he hadn’t. “We talk about it all the time,” he continued, “It’s great. Why wouldn’t you want to talk about it?”After Lancashire had subsided to a particularly supine defeat at home to Worcestershire in 2012, the Old Trafford coach, albeit honourably reluctant to single out particular individuals for blame, still said that he hoped the players were hurting because they certainly should be. Stories filtered out that he was prepared to hand out old-style rollickings when they were required. He may have mellowed a little since the last time he coached England but he remains ready to challenge players who are performing averagely.But then some of the fans who laid out hard-earned cash to watch the last Ashes series might agree that the players needed a bit of confrontation as to what the hell they thought they were doing.There were quieter times, too. One could turn up at Lancashire’s Indoor School on a cold morning deep in December and find Moores happy to talk about the skills some of the second team newcomers were developing under his guidance. We are going to miss him in the press box.The most important and lasting legacy of Moores’ time at Lancashire will be the way he took decent cricketers and turned them into winners. Good teachers show their pupils how they can achieve their known potential; great ones convince their charges they are capable of performances beyond their own beliefs. Peter Moores is a great teacher.As evidence of this, consider the way in which he developed the talents of players like Kyle Hogg, Karl Brown and particularly Simon Kerrigan in the Championship season. Yet he remains a student of the game and of the wider issues involved in coaching. Perhaps it was his reading of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball that enabled him to see the potential of the Sri Lankan Farveez Maharoof in the Spring of 2011. Or perhaps it was just that he got the best out of more or less the only overseas professional Lancashire could afford at that time.Like many other fine coaches, Moores takes a group of players and turns them into a team. When Chapple’s men arrived at Taunton for the last day of the 2011 season, they found photographs of each of their most notable performances pinned up on the dressing room wall. Each of them, even Maharoof, who was not playing but had stayed on in the hope of seeing the Championship won, was reminded of his contribution to the collective success.And when the next season brought only the disappointment of relegation, Moores was quickly out on the Lord’s balcony. “Last year these players won the Championship,” he said. “This year they’ll have to cope with relegation. These things are all part of being a professional cricketer. It’s all part of it.” One felt he was speaking from experience.Until Moores was appointed on Saturday it was tempting to adapt and echo F Scott Fitzgerald’s obiter dictum that there are no second acts when it comes to coaching the England cricket team. As it is, this inspirational leader has been given the chance to deal with what he probably regards as unfinished business, although it might be decades before he acknowledges it as such.For the moment, he is in charge of the Lancashire side for their current game against Warwickshire. It will be his last official job at Old Trafford. Apparently the players are to go out for a pint with him later this week but one hopes he gets a decent farewell from the Old Trafford members too. He certainly deserves some plaudits and I reckon he would appreciate them. After all, as Basil Fawlty said: “Now comes the tricky bit.”

Former Bangladesh batsman and current national selector Minhajul Abedin talks about the hurt of not getting to play Test cricket, and the high-pressure Dhaka league games of his day

Interview by Mohammad Isam18-Oct-2014The biggest drama of your cricket career occurred in 1999. What was going through your mind when you found out you were not in the World Cup squad?
I think it was historic not pick a player who made 135 in the trial match prior to the World Cup. They simply dropped me. It was the biggest joke in Bangladesh cricket. I am sure it didn’t happen anywhere else in the world. We know what happened next, so we don’t need to discuss it now. I think it happened due to personal hatred, which should never be the case in professional sport. It victimises the person and his family.You made it back after there was a after a national outcry for your return. In the World Cup game against Scotland, Bangladesh were 26 for 5 at one stage when you were at the crease.
My immediate target was to bat till the 40th over come what may. Luckily I had a good stand with Naimur Rahman, and then I told Enamul Haque to just defend. Let’s take it to the 40th over and see how much we can add afterwards. The wicket and weather were against us. I had an initial chance but I batted well afterwards. We moved to 185 for 9 from that point, which was only possible because of help from above.There can be no compromise with experience in the game. My lifetime of work in the Dhaka Premier League really came in handy that day. Experience comes to play when you are facing a negative situation.You also made a fifty against Australia. Was that a better innings?
It was a great effort against Australia, a dream team at the time. I batted against Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, and you could call it an improvement day-by-day. One of our biggest reasons for batting well was [our coach] Gordon Greenidge. He made sure we batted a lot against bowling machines, which helped us immensely.A year after the World Cup, Bangladesh played their inaugural Test match. But you never got to play a Test.
I had retired after the 1999 World Cup in a huff, but the board told me later to give them a letter. By that time I had started playing first-class cricket and scored heavily in the first three seasons. I had the opportunity and the experience to play Test cricket, but I think that same personal vendetta worked against me as it had happened in 1999.At 35, did you think you were fit to play Test cricket?
If the board had said I was unfit, I couldn’t have scored a thousand first-class runs in one season. During a Test series against Pakistan, between the first and second Test, I made 200 and 100 in the same first-class game. I couldn’t have scored more than 300 runs in a four-day game. So that was also a big question. I couldn’t compromise a country’s cricket for someone’s personality. So I thought that since this country has given so much to me, so much love, I can sacrifice Test cricket. It helped me get over the hurt of not playing Test cricket.

“When I came into coaching, I saw that a lot of things that I had done in my playing career are being introduced in Level 3 and 4 coaching. But we did a lot of work without much knowledge of actual factors”

Still, did you feel, as Bangladesh’s best batsman at the time you ended your career, that it was unfair not to play Test cricket?
It was unfair. I believe now that as a selector if you are not letting the best performer play, it makes no sense. If I am looking after my personality instead, I am not doing service to my country.Did you agree with the youth-focused selection policy at the time?
There have been many Test players in Bangladesh who quit cricket soon after playing a few Test matches. There are many Test players who are still under the age of 30 but are long gone. Of course there was blind faith [on youth]. One player was taken ahead of me and he didn’t play more than one Test.Every sport team provides chances to young players slowly so that it builds the team’s base. You have to give them time. After we won the ICC Trophy in 1997, we made seven changes within six months. A team’s performance is hampered when you make frequent changes.Minhajul Abedin was the epitome of the Dhaka Premier League. How did you reach those heights?
When we started in the early 1980s, there was hardly any international cricket. So the main goal was to play for the biggest club in the league and be the top scorer.In my first match in Dhaka, I made 47 against Gulshan Youth while playing for Dhaka Rangers in the second division. The owner, Mr Sentu, told me, “You will one day become the country’s best player.” It stuck to me, and I never forgot that sentence. I was the highest scorer in every game that season, and in the following year I joined Lalmatia in the First Division. I made 89 against Abahani in a tournament final.I made a couple more seventies, and I was called up in the senior team for a tour to West Bengal. I was one of the youngest players in the team. There were lots of senior players. I played well in a trial match and I was taken. I didn’t get many chances there. While coming back, I told myself that I must play at No. 4 for Bangladesh.In my second season in the First Division, the 1984 season, I joined Abahani and made 739 runs and since then, I hardly missed out on a place among the top five run-getters each Dhaka Premier League season until I retired.You were the lynchpin of most Abahani-Mohammedan matches, considered the Dhaka derby and a battle that has been so important to Bangladesh cricket.
Again, due to the lack of international cricket in the 1980s, the Abahani-Mohammedan game was the biggest cricket match in the country. There were two other teams – Bangladesh Biman and Brothers Union, so I used to target big scores against these teams mainly. There was pressure from the supporters, of course.We didn’t have a lot of training facilities, so we used to do fitness work with the football teams. We hardly had net bowlers or other facilities, but we had to make sure of full fitness in these big games. By the time the season was over, every player wanted to be in demand for the next season.I spent nearly 16 years with Mohammedan and six years in Abahani, in which we were league champions each time, and then we made a “dream team” in Surjo Tarun for a couple of years.Paint us a picture of an Abahani-Mohammedan clash from the 1980s and 1990s.
I will tell you my first experience. In 1984 when I was playing for Abahani against Mohammedan, it was my first derby. I took a rickshaw from Rajarbagh to Bangabandhu National Stadium [about 4km)] at around seven in the morning. I saw a line near the Purbani hotel [around 3km from the stadium], and it kept going towards the stadium. I thought it was a political rally, but in truth it was the fans waiting to get in to the stadium. I was the Man-of-the-Match in that game, which was a tournament final. I made 59 out of 139, but we bowled them out for 87.Before the match, the pressure reached dangerous levels from the supporters. They would stone us at training if the club didn’t hire a foreign player ahead of the big game. They would ask us: where is the foreign player? If we were on the losing side, we wouldn’t get out of the dressing room before 8pm [three hours after the scheduled end]. So we always played with this pressure, discussed it in the team meetings. We knew that to get the abuse off our back, we had to perform and win. And it wasn’t just at the ground or at training. We used to be hounded in the bazaars, abused regularly until we won the derby, whichever side I played for.Minhajul during his match-winning 68 not out against Scotland in the 1999 World Cup•Getty ImagesMohammedan club officials were nice enough not to be mean to us after we lost these big games. The senior players used to be in the forefront of all discussions during those days. I learned a lot from them. I learned how to handle supporters. There was some misbehaviour from supporters. Still, we feel that we spent a great time during those days, a large part of my career.It was always a full stadium, especially in the BNS, which was regularly 40 to 50,000 people. Nowadays we don’t even see 100 people in Mirpur. We see big crowds in international matches, but no more in domestic games.How did you get interested in cricket? Tell us about your early days in Chittagong.
We had two clubs in Chittagong – Abedin Colony Club and Town Club. They took part in all the major sports in the top division. These clubs were created by my father. He was martyred in the 1971 Liberation War. His last innings was a century for East Pakistan in a three-day match. We have a paper clipping of the next day’s report. He organised these clubs and most of my family members played. This is where I started my career.Did you consider it a risk to come to Dhaka from Chittagong in the early 1980s, when cricket wasn’t really big?
I came to Dhaka to play cricket and also football for Muktijoddha. I never thought of it as a risk to my life or career, mainly because my family wasn’t dependent on my earnings. I could do my own job and not really worry about making money.In 1986 you were picked in the country’s first ODI team.
We played the game in Morutuwa. We had a lot of senior players there. We didn’t have any international exposure but we had a tour to Pakistan just prior to this ODI tournament, which really helped us get our eye in, so to say. It was something to remember. We were a team without facilities, but we went to play an ODI. I consider it a great experience.You were also Bangladesh’s mainstay in the ICC Trophy.
I think our best team was in the 1990 tournament in the Netherlands. We were beaten in the semi-final by Zimbabwe. We had a chance to avoid them but we missed that opportunity; it was a calculation error on our part in the group stage. We made 15 runs fewer in a game against the home side.We reduced Zimbabwe, a strong side in those days, to 130-odd for 6 but they went on to make 200-plus. Dave Houghton made 91. But these things happen in cricket, and we couldn’t go past them. The team had a great combination of batting and bowling. Players had technique, temperament and experience, unmatched by most of our teams in the pre-Test era.How did you become such a consistent domestic batsman?
I think we were mentally very strong, leaving aside practice facilities. I feel my thinking and understanding of the game was quite progressive. When I came into coaching, I saw that a lot of things that I had done in my playing career are being introduced in Level 3 and 4 coaching. But we did a lot of work without much knowledge of actual factors. I think this was god-gifted, and we could use it in the right time.Wherever we went to play, we discussed matters with senior players. I met Javed Miandad in 1986 at a party. We asked him about technique, what is the best technique? He said: “There is no good technique in the world. The best you can do is to play straight. Don’t let the ball go past you.” I always kept that in mind.Do you share your batting experience with the current generation?
Batting came naturally to me as did the understanding the situation. I have always tried to share when I am a coach and selector. One has to know the right time and place to utilise one’s talent.Now that you are a selector, do you feel Bangladeshis demand too many changes too quickly?
You cannot judge a player after one or two games, even at the top level. There’s no compromise on experience and fitness. Everyone has to look at the best performer first. See the difference between domestic and international performance. I have to look whether there is a major change in a player who goes from domestic to international, and also vice versa. I wouldn’t want any player to go through what I had gone through. I never took sides when I played, and now that I am a selector, I always look for someone who is good for the long-run, a stable performer.