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He may not have played with the Invincibles but Australia’s second-oldest living Test cricketer has plenty to be grateful for

Brydon Coverdale26-Apr-2012Len Maddocks is Australia’s second-oldest living Test cricketer.He nearly wasn’t.”About 12 years ago I died from a heart attack,” Maddocks says. “I was sitting here at home on my own, my wife was away, and I raced out to the kitchen and grabbed the phone and rang 000. In about three minutes the ambulance pulled up in our drive, grabbed me and stuck me on a trolley, stuck me in the ambulance and headed for Box Hill hospital. I carked it on the way. They zapped me back to life.”I’ve been one of the few who have seen the other side. I think I saw a white light but I’m not sure. The first thing I remember of it was waking up at Box Hill hospital with my daughter and her eldest daughter sitting there. I remember opening my eyes and looking up and seeing a window and blue sky and I realised I was still alive.”Every day since then has been a bonus for Maddocks, who is now 85. A small, slight man with a voice that would suit a jockey, Maddocks sits at the kitchen table in his home in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, surrounded by photos of his family. He knows he is lucky; his younger brother Dick, who was a talented batsman for Victoria in the 1950s, suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 40.Maddocks is now afflicted by skin cancers, a result of playing cricket for three decades in an era when “if you put on sunscreen people thought you were a sissy”. He estimates he has had about 30 cancerous growths removed so far.”Still, I can’t complain,” he says. “I’m the second-oldest living Test cricketer [from Australia]. Artie Morris has got me done though.”Morris, 90, became Australia’s oldest living Test cricketer when Sam Loxton died last December. As members of the 1948 Invincibles, they were household names. Maddocks, by comparison, is something of a forgotten man, a wicketkeeper who was second in line to Gil Langley during the mid-1950s and went on numerous tours but played only seven Tests.As a player, he will go down in history as the man Jim Laker trapped lbw in Manchester in 1956 to wrap up his 19-wicket Test. Off the field, he will be remembered as the Australian team manager on the 1977 Ashes tour, when the World Series Cricket split came to light.Despite these legacies, Maddocks is content with his place in Australia’s cricketing landscape. He is philosophical when remembering the WSC rebellion – “somebody had to [be the manager], and all you can do is your best” – and he is happy to have played for Australia in an era when the country was blessed with great wicketkeeping depth.”Don Tallon was the best keeper I’ve ever seen,” he says. “He was much bigger than the rest of us. His footwork was perfect. I can remember going to the MCG for any match he was playing, just to watch him. He was magic as a keeper. Footwork is the most important thing for a wicketkeeper. If your feet are right, everything moves with it.”Remarkably for a man who kept wicket for 30 years at club, state or international level, Maddocks only once broke a digit, the little finger on his right hand. Some glovemen end their careers with fingers gnarled and bent in unnatural directions. Maddocks’ hands look perfectly normal, a testament to his skill and judgement behind the stumps.He considers Ian Healy the best of the modern wicketkeepers and believes Matthew Wade, the first Victoria player to keep wicket for Australia in a Test since Maddocks, is a “good player who will become a very good player”. Unlike some former cricketers of his generation, Maddocks has few gripes about the current state of the game, although the ongoing encroachment of the boundary rope further and further in from the fence does bother him.”I don’t think the players have changed that much,” he says. “I watch the players going on the ground and coming off more closely than most people. You can see they are friendly, which is what we were. Of course, we couldn’t help being friendly with our opponents because Keith Miller was always getting sozzled with them!”Maddocks regards Miller as the most memorable character he ever played with. Even now, he cannot comprehend the effect Miller had on women. Tales of Miller’s conquests are told with a conspiratorial preface – “You can’t print this!” – but it was as a player that the great allrounder most amazed Maddocks.

“We were just unbelievable. We played cricket Saturday morning in one competition, Saturday afternoon in another, Sunday morning in a third competition and Sunday afternoon in a fourth”

“He was interesting in everything that he did,” Maddocks says. “When he batted he was different, when he bowled he was different, fielding he was different. Ian Johnson, for example, always stood behind me at first slip, so the ball couldn’t go to his left hand. He couldn’t catch left-handed. When Miller was at first slip he used to stand yards away and he’d be diving all over the place.”Like Miller, Maddocks was a talented Australian Rules footballer. He was on North Melbourne’s list in the 1940s, but unlike his brother Dick, did not win a senior game with the club. He did, however, play baseball for Victoria as a teenager, and whatever sport was on the agenda, his parents were behind him and his two brothers all the way.”In hindsight, we were just unbelievable,” he says. “We played cricket Saturday morning in one competition, Saturday afternoon in another, Sunday morning in a third competition and Sunday afternoon in a fourth. After each day’s play, dad would discuss with us the things that had happened, where other kids had made mistakes and where we could have done better.””Mum used to go to all of our cricket, all of our football, all of our baseball. We’d set out from home at Newport with the old man out front on his bike, then my older brother Alan, then me, then Dick on our three bikes. Behind us came Mum, and the old man had built a little platform thing on her bike so that she could carry the soft drinks and the afternoon tea and the scorebooks. She had to score. I remember saying to her later in life, ‘how did you put up with us Mum?’ She said, ‘if I hadn’t put up with you and gone with you, I would never have seen any of you!’ They were great days.”The drive and determination that Maddocks showed in his early cricketing days propelled him into the Victoria team, and ultimately to Test cricket. All the while, he was working as an accountant for Australian Paper Manufacturers, where he had started work as a 16-year-old.A transfer to the company’s Hobart office allowed him to captain Tasmania for seven years, during which time the state played regularly against the other states and touring sides – though they were not part of the Sheffield Shield. When he became an ACB board member after his retirement, Maddocks chaired an ACB sub-committee on Tasmania’s push to enter the Shield.”We put it all together and said, ‘There’s your deal,'” he says. “The other states unanimously agreed, some of them with a bit of doubt at first. Tasmania have done well. They’ve turned out some good cricketers.”Maddocks considers helping Tasmania break into the mainstream of Australian cricket to be one of his finest achievements. But it was playing the game that brought him the greatest joy. His love of the game kept him playing club cricket for North Melbourne until he was 46.His association with the club has been as close to lifelong as is possible. His father signed him up as a junior member with the North Melbourne Football club as in 1932, when he was six. In February of this year, Maddocks was back at North Melbourne for a cricket club reunion, 80 years since he first set foot in the team’s Arden Street headquarters.Now that six-year-old from the depression era sits at his kitchen table with a Macbook plugged in and ready to use. Maddocks and his wife Heather use Skype to keep in touch with their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.He knows that every chance he’s had to see his family in the past 12 years has been a blessing. Everything else is secondary.

After troubling Pakistan in the Twenty20s and the one-dayers, Thisara Perera wrecked their top order in his first chance in the Test series

Kanishkaa Balachandran in Pallekele08-Jul-2012Pakistan must have seen enough of Thisara Perera already. It all began in Hambantota where his lower-order cameo shored up Sri Lanka’s batting on a slow pitch. In Pallekele, he took six wickets in the second ODI to turn the game Sri Lanka’s way. If that wasn’t enough, he had a hat-trick in store two games later in Colombo to trigger off a monumental collapse to match the unpredictable Pakistan of the old. He was back at Pallekele for his first Test of the series and it shouldn’t have surprised too many that he gave Pakistan headaches again.Perera’s selection for this Test was expected, given that Nuwan Pradeep failed to justify his role as the second seamer in the two opportunities he got. Pradeep didn’t bowl as badly as his figures suggested, but as his captain Mahela Jayawardene said, there’s no point in having pace if you can’t combine that with accuracy. Pradeep’s bowling fitness was the bigger worry, and his ability to last an entire series was also questioned. The conditions in Pallekele were expected to be friendlier for the seamers, but the hosts had more or less made up their minds to make a change.The green tinge on the pitch compelled Sri Lanka to drop a spinner and bring in an extra seamer in Dilhara Fernando. It was a deviation from the norm, as Sri Lanka rarely field more than three seamers in a home Test. The last time they played four seamers at home was during Pakistan’s previous tour, in 2009, at the SSC Test, the most batting-friendly venue at the country.It proved an inspired selection. Jayawardene sprung a surprise by tossing him the new ball, ahead of the more experienced Fernando. Perera struggled a bit with his line and length early on, straying wide to Mohammad Hafeez. He created the first opportunity of the morning when Taufeeq Umar edged to slip, only to be dropped by Tharanga Paranavitana. Nevertheless, Perera kept posing questions whenever he made the batsmen play.He had worked out that the best way to trap Hafeez was to bring the ball in to him, and it worked as one snuck through the bat-pad gap on the drive and clipped the off stump. In his following over, he gave Azhar Ali a testing time with his swing, getting one to hit him on the pads, prompting an lbw shout. He followed it with one that swung in sharply and confused Azhar and the following ball, he cleverly got one to move the other way, forcing an uppish drive to gully. In two overs, Perera had dismissed the centurions from the SSC Test.It’s still early days for Perera as a Test bowler. He struggled in England last year and was used as an opening bowler in South Africa, though with little success.”I was playing Test cricket after some time and I got the rhythm and started hitting the right areas after one over or so,” Perera said. “Mahela was feeding me with some information and one of the main things he said was that in Test cricket you have to be patient.”It’s worth noting that Perera had it in him to bowl nine overs on the trot in his first spell. Nuwan Kulasekara had bowled ten himself. Perera says he is now getting more confident with his bowling fitness to bowl longer spells.”I had bowled 17 overs by tea,” Perera said. “Even when I was playing Under-19 cricket I was bowling with the new ball and I think I can do well with the new ball.”The batting conditions had eased out after lunch and the 85-run partnership between Misbah-ul-Haq and Asad Shafiq was starting to worry Sri Lanka a little. In the fifth over of Perera’s second spell, he struck again. He bowled a straighter line to Misbah and kept him quiet for the first three balls. Misbah tried to create a scoring opportunity off the fourth by walking down the pitch but the bowler got it to move away and induced an outside edge. Misbah admonished himself for chasing a ball he should have left.The fact that he bowled as many overs as the left-arm spinner Rangana Herath, and managed to consign Fernando to the third-change bowler speaks for the trust Jayawardene has in him, despite his limited experience at Test level. Gaining experience is his priority.”I think I need patience to play Test cricket,” Perera said. “If you take ODI cricket, bowling line and length is the key, but I hope I will develop and become a regular member in the Test squad as well.”

Plays of the day from the only T20I between Sri Lanka and India in Pallekele

Abhishek Purohit in Pallekele07-Aug-2012The field changeAshok Dinda was almost about to start in his run up to bowl the second delivery of the 18th over when he asked MS Dhoni to move fine leg into the circle. Consequently, Virat Kohli jogged back from mid-off to long-off. Dinda hurled it in full to Dinesh Chandimal who mistimed a heave for Kohli to move a few paces to his right and take the catch. Dinda punched the air, delighted his move had paid off.The slog(s)Twenty20 reduces even an opener, and a pretty good one, into a slogger. Gautam Gambhir swung at his third delivery, but escaped as he was dropped at deep square leg. He swung at another one, but mistimed it to mid-on. The third time, he did not connect. The fourth time, he missed again and was bowled.The stroke(s)You could make out what kind of form Virat Kohli is in the way he dealt with the first ball Lasith Malinga bowled to him. It was a typical Malinga ball, low trajectory, full and swinging away just outside off stump. Kohli crouched low, bent his knees, stayed in the crease, and guided it with the swing to the deep backward point rope.Mahela Jayawardene is a master at deft touches. The first ball of Umesh Yadav’s second over was similar to the delivery Malinga bowled to Kohli. Jayawardene tackled it just like Kohli had; in fact, he ran it even finer, past the slip to the third-man rope.The celebrationDhoni is not given to being expressive at the fall of a wicket. But when Thisara Perera was given run-out by the third umpire off a Manoj Tiwary direct hit, Dhoni celebrated in peculiar fashion. He smiled broadly, and trotted over extravagantly towards Tiwary, taking small steps and swinging his arms all the time. The act was played a couple of times on the giant screen at the ground, and the crowd loved it.

Australia’s bowlers were guilty of bowling short on a slower Gabba pitch and their new bowling coach’s key task would be to remind them the methods that brought them success last year

Brydon Coverdale at the Gabba09-Nov-2012There was good news and bad news for Ali de Winter after the first day of Test cricket since he took over from Craig McDermott as Australia’s bowling coach. The bad news was that Australia had completed their worst first-day bowling performance ever in a Gabba Test, by letting South Africa reach stumps at 2 for 255. The good news was that de Winter now knows he’s not superfluous. His key task is to make sure the McDermott methods are not forgotten.It is not that Peter Siddle, James Pattinson, Ben Hilfenhaus and Nathan Lyon were terrible, far from it. They were just a little bit off. And against patient men like Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis, a little bit off is all it takes. The attack veered from the consistency that made them so dangerous last summer against India. They still created chances – Siddle was deprived of two wickets by a no-ball and his own butterfingers – but those opportunities were notable because they were so rare.The pitch didn’t help, offering less of the zip and seam movement than first-day Gabba surfaces often provide. There was some cloud cover that provided swing when they pitched full, but too often they dropped short, denying the ball the chance to curve in the air. It wasn’t as bad as Australia’s bowling in the 2010-11 Ashes, but there was a similar lack of patience. Whether it was first-day nerves or rust, it needs to be rectified quickly.Most notable was the regression of Hilfenhaus to old habits. During the Ashes he was so predictable that England’s batsmen could watch the ball swing out of his hand and play it or leave it knowing there would be no surprises. He re-emerged last summer with an action reworked by de Winter and made India’s batsmen play, swinging the ball late and using the crease for variation. There wasn’t much of that today.It is no coincidence that Hilfenhaus has spent most of the past six months bowling with white balls in short formats, where banging the ball in short of a length is common. He didn’t get the habit out of his system in Tasmania’s Sheffield Shield game last week, when he was outbowled by James Faulkner and Luke Butterworth on the kind of pitch fast men dream about.The bowling attack veered from the consistency that made them so dangerous last summer against India•Associated PressAgain he erred on the short side early at the Gabba. By the time he started to correct himself, the ball had lost much of its shine. There was one searing yorker that dipped in late and nearly had Alviro Petersen lbw, but it was the only time Hilfenhaus looked dangerous. There is no question that he was underdone coming in to this series. De Winter’s task now is to steer him back to the good habits they discussed last year.Not that Hilfenhaus was alone. Siddle and Pattinson both dropped short at times, and on a slow pitch with little seam movement, that was a mistake. When Pattinson pitched the ball full and allowed it to swing a little – the mantra instilled by McDermott during his year as bowling coach – he had Graeme Smith lbw. But the fact that Australia’s fast bowlers didn’t create a single genuine chance off the batsman’s edge on a first-day Gabba pitch was as telling as the fact that Michael Hussey and Rob Quiney were bowling in tandem as stumps approached.The only time the slips came in to play was when Lyon was bowling. His economy wasn’t quite as bad that of Greece or Spain, but it was a slight worry for Michael Clarke. At least Lyon found turn and bounce and created some half-chances, including an edge off Amla that fizzed past slip, and one wicket when his flight and dip tricked Alviro Petersen into lobbing a catch to mid-on. The omitted Imran Tahir might have been watching with envy, given South Africa should be bowling last.Of course, it’s difficult to make a complete judgment until both teams have bowled. Morne Morkel’s bounce might be less of a threat on this slow pitch, but it’s hard to imagine Dale Steyn and Vernon Philander failing to find a solution to the surface. Get it up there, attack the stumps and give the ball a chance to swing.It’s the message de Winter should drum into his men overnight, especially with the second new ball available on Saturday morning. After a surfeit of one-day and Twenty20 cricket since he took over from McDermott, de Winter’s real job has now begun.

In which the next generation of Zaltzmans gets enthusiastic about the shortest form of the game

Andy Zaltzman25-Feb-2013Thank you for your responses to last week’s blog on English interest in the IPL, which provoked some lively and varied reactions. Some agreed with my viewpoints, others did not. Some in a more strongly worded manner than others. Several Indian readers expressed a similar lack of emotional connection with the tournament, some from elsewhere in the cricketing world have fallen for the new-fangled charms of the talent-packed short-form spectacular.The IPL continues to be the biggest issue in the game at the moment. It clearly arouses strong and divergent opinions, in India and outside. I do not, however, think there is any element of “English jealousy” involved. Test match fans the world over – whether they love, hate, or remain undecided about Twenty20 as a format ‒ are rightly concerned about the impact it is having, and will inevitably continue to have, on the game they love. Its effects have already been seen in international schedules, team line-ups, players’ techniques, and the volume and unchangeability of the excitement in the voices of stadium announcers.Clearly, T20 and the IPL have done and will do much good for the game globally. They could also, in some ways, do irreparable harm. The balls are, literally and metaphorically, up in the air, swirling around in the floodlights after cricket took an almighty swish with its eyes partially closed, and we do not yet know if those balls will land safely pouched in our hands, splash messily into our plastic beer glasses, or plummet hard and fast straight on the bridge of our cricket-loving nose. Or a combination of all three. The anxieties many people have about the future of the game are nothing to do with national affiliation.A final footnote to last week’s piece (which, I would like to stress, I did not intend to be an “anti-IPL” piece, still less an “anti-Indian” one, nor do I think it was one)… During my children’s supper time on Monday evening, we watched the closing stages of the republican-minded IPL fan’s nightmare match-up between Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Rajasthan Royals, won easily by Bangalore after some characteristically brilliant striking by the Virtuoso of the Veldt, AB de Villiers.My children, aged five and three, asked a range of questions of varying pertinence, from “Is he out?”, “Why has that man got big gloves on?”, and “Why do the blue team keep hitting the ball in the air?”, to “Whatever happened to getting your foot to the pitch of the ball, keeping your front elbow high, and stroking the ball along the ground?” (The last of those questions may, on reflection, have been asked not by my offspring but by the ghost of Gubby Allen, who had popped round unexpectedly for a cup of tea and a quick haunt.)With a few overs remaining, my daughter chose to support the Royal Challengers, largely because I told her they were by this stage definitely going to win, but partly also because I had been to Bangalore. We have therefore picked the RCB as our team for the rest of the tournament, thus giving us the not-quite-umbilical emotional connection to an IPL franchise that I wrote about English viewers generally lacking. I am taking her to the tattoo parlour tomorrow morning to have a portrait of Vinay Kumar inked indelibly onto her bicep. Whilst I go into surgery to attempt to have my hair rendered as gloriously luxuriant as Zaheer Khan’s. It may be a long operation.These early encounters with cricket can prove deeply influential – my children may well grow up thinking that RCB’s four-wicket hero KP Appanna is the greatest bowler in the history of the game, just as I grew up convinced that Chris Tavaré was the inviolable blueprint for the art of batsmanship.After supper, we retired to the children’s bedroom, armed with a plastic cricket bat and ball, and for the first time in their young lives, the junior Zaltzmans showed genuine interest when their daddy tried to make them play cricket. My son displayed a penchant for leg-side drives that can only have come from his mother’s side of the family (if he had sliced everything through gully, any paternity issues would have been verifiably laid to rest), whilst my daughter clonked a straight six ‒ all the way to the curtain on the other side of the room, a mighty carry of some 10 or 12 feet ‒ of which Ian Botham himself would have been proud. If their strokeplay was a little on the agricultural side of the MCC Coaching Manual, their youth and inexperience can probably be held responsible more than the IPL hoicking they had just been watching.Would the same youthful enthusiasm have been created if I had switched over to the West Indies v Australia Test match? Probably not. The children’s questions would certainly have been different – “Why aren’t they hitting the ball in the air?”; “Whatever happened to the concept of risk-taking initiative in Australian batsmanship?”; “Why are both teams wearing white?”; “Why are you so interested in this, daddy?”; and “Why isn’t Chris Gayle playing?” To all of which, the answers would have been: “It’s complicated, darling. It’s complicated. Eat your broccoli.”● Australia’s left-arm tweaker Michael Beer is few people’s idea of the spiritual descendant of McGrath, Lillee, Davidson, Lindwall and Spofforth. But last week, in just his second Test, he became the latest addition to the illustrious line of baggy green new-ball tearaways. History will probably judge Beer to not have been the most terrifying opening bowler in the history of Test cricket, particularly on the ground where Curtly Ambrose’s soul-curdling new-ball spell in 1994 obliterated the cream of English batsmanship like a divorced steamroller squishing the bowl of satsumas that had run off with its wife.Nonetheless, Beer became the first Aussie spinner to bowl the first ball of a Test match since Bill O’Reilly in 1938, and ‒ possibly ‒ the first spinner to bowl the first over in both innings of a Test match since 1909.Possibly, but not definitely. My dear, dear friend Statsguru, a trusted and loyal companion on many journeys through the strangely chirping jungles of cricket statistics, a source of refuge and comfort in an increasingly troublesome world, enables the curious-minded (by which I mean, those with nothing better to do) to tick a box to find only statistics relating to those defined as “spin bowlers”. The Guru and I therefore searched for tweakmen who had bowled the first over in two innings of a Test. This is the result of that search. The almost-all-knowing Statsguru lists 1960s Indian batting stylist and part-time bowler ML Jaisimha as the only other spinner to have bowled the first over in both innings of a Test since mystery wrist spinner Douglas Carr did so for England in his only Test, at The Oval in 1909. I conveyed this information to an understandably ambivalent universe via Twitter, the 21st-century’s version of shouting at traffic.Moments later, thanks to the magic of technology, the renowned Indian cricket writer Ayaz Memon had tweeted back to inform me that Jaisimha, in defiance of his official Statsguru accreditation, had also bowled seamers on a fairly regular basis, proving that, sometimes at least, human beings, with their rather more nuanced memory chips, still have the edge over computers.Ayaz described Jaisimha as a childhood hero (as he also was, apparently, to Sunil Gavaskar), who was “stylish, charismatic, an astute captain, and loads of fun” (qualities which Michael Beer may or may not prove to share, although the early two-Test evidence of his career is that he probably does not share all of them).I admit that Jaisimha had been little more to me than a name on vaguely remembered scorecards, before Ayaz furnished me with this microbiography hinting at an engrossing cricketer. The internet is a remarkable tool that enables the human race to share everything instantly and globally ‒ its life-changing scientific discoveries, its revolutionary innovations, its artistic creations, its political movements, its boobs, and most importantly, its articles about cricketers from times gone by, from an age before Jaisimha’s Test average of 30 would have been dissected, harangued and yelped about on message boards and chat forums. So here is some more on Jai, a player who clearly enchanted his contemporaries as well as confused the mighty Statsguru.Duly corrected, I returned to a chastened and apologetic Statsguru and broadened the search remit to include that most enigmatic of bowling categories – “mixture/unknown”. And I can (almost) confirm that it is (perhaps) a fact that Beer is (in all probability) the first spinner to bowl the first ball in both innings of a Test Match for over 100 years. He might not be, but he probably is, and at the very least he is now entitled to treat himself by slapping on a Dennis Lillee headband, twizzling out a Fred Spofforth moustache, and going to bed in commemorative Ray Lindwall pyjamas. Even if he has been left out of the third Test.

Plays of the day from the IPL match between Pune Warriors and Mumbai Indians in Pune

Andrew Fidel Fernando11-May-2013The do-overLasith Malinga has not been as effective with the tailing yorkers this season, but in his third ball today he bowled a superb inswinging delivery that struck Robin Uthappa in front of middle and off. As he turned around to bellow an appeal though, he saw the umpire’s outstretched arm and learnt a foot fault had robbed him of a wicket. He couldn’t get Uthappa next ball, which was a free hit, but delivered an almost identical yorker the ball after, this time from behind the crease, and he got his man.The dropGlenn Maxwell, Mumbai Indians’ million-dollar signing, has done little more than twiddle his thumbs at matches this IPL, as he sat on the sideline for his franchise’s first 12 games. He finally debuted against Warriors, but when he came on to bowl in the 16th over, he struggled to prove why he was such a vaunted commodity at the auction. He bowled a cheap over – conceding just six runs, but was unable to hold on to a straightforward return chance from Kane Richardson, which had come to him at chest height.The recoveryWith Kieron Pollard having been rested for this match due to illness, it fell to another West Indian to provide an impressive take on the boundary, and Dwayne Smith did so – only he made it tough for himself by misjudging the strength of the stroke initially. Bhuvneshwar Kumar aimed a six over long-off from the last ball of the innings, and Smith, who had been stationed on the ropes, began running in as soon as he saw the ball leave the bat. He quickly realised he had underestimated the shot, and started to back-pedal as the ball descended from the top of its arc. Still not having made enough ground, he stuck out his left hand and managed to reel the ball in, essentially preventing a last-ball six.The deliveryWarriors needed early wickets to have any chance of defending their paltry total, and having been recalled to the XI, Ashok Dinda delivered a peach to give his side the best possible start. Angling it in and shaping it away slightly in the air, Dinda’s first ball pitched on a length and moved a little more – enough to beat Smith’s blade and collect the off stump, which went cartwheeling towards the keeper.

Adam Hollioake captains ESPNcricinfo’s team of the decade, selected to mark ten years of professional Twenty20 cricket in England

Tim Wigmore26-Jun-2013Today marks a decade since the ECB launched Twenty20 cricket. Advance ticket sales are said to be bouyant, but It is a decade reached uncertainly as the counties embark on the last season of the condensed midsummer format before switching to a season-long tournament.But as England seeks to gain full benefit from its ground-breaking format, a format that has spawned several imitators – and one hugely powerful imitator above all – it is time to mark the occasion.Below is a selection of the best county XI of the past ten years, based on players’ impacts in the tournament over time. Overseas players who have just popped in briefly have been determinedly excluded. It is important to have stuck around for a while.Inevitably, it will create debate. Plenty of players will feel unjustly left out. Tim states that “particular apologies go to Darren Maddy, Graeme Hick, Azhar Mahmood, Danny Briggs and Chris Liddle.” Chris Liddle? Let us know what you think.Marcus Trescothick
No sight in English T20 has been as consistently destructive as that of Trescothick at Taunton. Bludgeoning drives and disdainful pulls have driven bowlers to despair – as well as England fans lamenting that he only played three T20 internationals. His domestic T20 strike-rate, 161, is 16 better than anyone else among the top ten county run scorers.Jonathan Trott
Yes, really. Until his England career, Trott had perfected the role of T20 anchor for Warwickshire – unobtrusively averaging 40 while scoring at seven-an-over. As he mixed deft touches, underrated power and a shrewd ability to judge a run chase, Warwickshire never had reason to complain.Brad Hodge
Not even Chris Gayle has as many T20 runs as Hodge. Hodge, mostly using orthodox shots but hitting them with rare power and timing, hit a brilliant 77* to secure Leicestershire’s T20 victory in 2004, and averaged 45 in English T20. His off-spin was also deceptively effective.Owais Shah
No English batsman comes within 1000 runs of the total of 4500 runs Shah has scored. The format is made for Shah’s clean striking, ability to hit the ball to unusual areas and skill savaging balls out the ground – like the three consecutive legside sixes off James Tredwell in the 2008 final.Darren Stevens
England went through a spell of picking T20 specialists, but somehow Stevens was never one of them. His power and cool temperament make Stevens a superb chaser, as when he sealed the 2007 final. Add in his canny T20 bowling and Stevens has topped the PCA’s list of most valuable T20 players in the past six seasons.Adam Hollioake (capt)
The original T20 master. Hollioake’s bowling varieties and relish for joining the attack at high-octane moments were perfectly suited to the format: flummoxed batsmen lost their wickets to him less than every ten balls. Add in his destructive batting and unrelentingly aggressive captaincy, and only age precluded him from being an IPL star.James Foster
Able to stand up to the stumps even to a regular 80mph bowler, Graham Napier, Foster’s measure is not just in his catches and stumpings – he has more T20 dismissals in English cricket than anyone else – but in how his presence disturbs the batsmen. In front of the wicket, his idiosyncratic foot movement – taking his stance as if the bowler is coming from square leg – helps make him a formidable finisher.Dimi Mascarenhas
While he is more famous for his hitting ability, Mascarenhas is good enough to get into this side on bowling alone: his wickets come at 17 apiece, with an economy rate of only 6.7, for Hampshire. Bowling wicket-to-wicket and giving the batsmen nothing to hit in the Powerplay overs, Mascarenhas often bowls his overs straight through. On T20 finals day last year, his figures were 8-0-31-4.Jeremy Snape
Snape was drifting out of cricket when Twenty20 started; and there seemed no place in this new game for an offspinner. Snape, though, had other ideas, like his ‘moon ball’, landing at an inviting 40mph and deceiving greedy batsmen. He also scored runs at crucial times, such as with his 18-ball 34 in the 2004 final. Also, in a tight situation, who better to have in your side than a sports psychologist?Alfonso Thomas
Somerset’s recent near misses are no reflection on Alfonso the Great’s efforts. His skilful yorkers and well-honed slower balls have earned Thomas 94 wickets in English T20 cricket and a deserved reputation as one of the world’s best death bowlers.Ryan Sidebottom
The share price of left-arm seamers in T20 cricket is high, and Sidebottom has been the best around the domestic circuit. His ability to locate his yorker under pressure and seamless adjustment between bowling over and around the wicket has made Sidebottom a supreme operator at the start and end of innings.

Stats highlights from the 2nd ODI between South Africa and India at Kingsmead, Durban

Shiva Jayaraman08-Dec-2013

If it’s Ashes cricket, there will be ego clashes

Jack Vittles28-Dec-2013Key performer
Unfortunately for us England fans it was that man again – Mitchell Johnson. His transformation from the butt of the Barmy Army’s jokes to the spearhead of Australia’s all-conquering bowling attack was complete on this sunny afternoon in Melbourne. Although it was Nathan Lyon who picked up five wickets today and broke the England middle order, it was Johnson’s dismissal of Jonny Bairstow that really gave Australia the upper hand. Earlier in the day when Root took a suicidal single to mid-off and was run out via a direct hit from guess who…. Johnson again!One thing I’d change about the day
A perfect day at the MCG, the sun was shining, the atmosphere was electric and wickets were tumbling. Unfortunately they were English wickets. If only we could have put on the performance the occasion deserved.The interplay I enjoyed
There was only one match-up that I could possibly pick. KP v Mitch One ego versus another. It was a windy afternoon and Pietersen was often pulling away while Johnson was in his run-up because of debris on the pitch. After the fourth or fifth instance Johnson lost patience and hurled the ball at the slips. The crowd roared and Pietersen rose to the challenge as Johnson lost his rag. Words were clearly exchanged and the umpire had to step in. It didn’t appear to affect Pietersen’s batting but poor Bairstow bore the brunt of Johnson’s anger and was dismissed as a consequence.Player watch
Lyon bowled superbly today and was sent down just in front of us to fine leg after his spell to receive the adoration of the crowd. After acknowledging the crowd, Lyon saw a security guard holding a beach ball – one of many confiscated throughout the day. He had a brief conversation with the steward and then walked over and grabbed the beach ball and threw it back into the stands – as if he couldn’t be any more loved by the Aussie fans today.Shot of the day
On a day where runs were too hard to come by once again for England, Pietersen looked good for his 49. His best shot was a beautiful straight drive off the bowling of Johnson. He had just taken a wild swipe at the previous delivery but this shot was a thing of beauty and it really did feel like Pietersen was finding something approaching his best form.Crowd meter
After the bumper crowds of days one and two, it was expected that day-three attendance would be down. But this was not the case. Over 65,000 poured into the ‘G to watch Australia take charge of this game. The crowd was pretty quiet today, absorbed in the battle on the field, but it did come to life later in the day as the wind picked up. Due to the high winds there was a period in the evening session when five overs were bowled in about 30 minutes. We would have grown restless but the wind was keeping us occupied, to be honest. In the space of five minutes I had to dodge plastic cups, tissues, newspapers and hats. Most of these made their way on to the field much to the amusement of the fans.Entertainment
Cricket Australia obviously decided that it was putting all its effort into the first two days’ entertainment. The lunch interval consisted of local kids playing kwik cricket and then the tea interval had a game that involved a member of the crowd running around with a bat and then attempting to catch a ball while he was trying to steady himself. Hardly box-office.Overall
Another great day of Ashes cricket, and it proved once again that you can never take this game for granted. England would have thought they were in control in mid-afternoon but as Johnson, the wind and the crowd ramped up the pressure, they crumbled and collapsed once again. Still a great day in Melbourne and the crowd was much better behaved today after too many were thrown out yesterday.Marks out of ten
7. Loses one mark for England failing to turn up with the bat, one mark for the chilly winds (38 degrees, they said!) and one mark off for the annoyingly cocky Aussie I had to sit near!

Stats highlights from the 2013-14 season of the Ranji Trophy, which Karnataka won to notch their seventh win in the tournament

S Rajesh03-Feb-2014

• Only Mumbai (or Bombay) have won the Ranji Trophy more times than Karnataka. They have 40 titles, and four runner-up finishes. Karnataka are in joint second place with Delhi, who’ve also won seven times. Before their victory this season, they’d last won in 1998-99 and in 1997-98. Their other title triumphs came in 1973-74, 1977-78, 1982-83 and 1995-96. (Click here for the full list of Ranji winners and runners-up.)
• Karnataka were the only team to win seven matches this season – they won seven and drew four. Coming into the final, Maharashtra hadn’t lost a match either, but defeat in the final meant they ended with a 6-1 record. Apart from Karnataka, the only team which didn’t lose a single match this season was Hyderabad – they played eight games, won one, and drew the other seven.
• Among the eight teams which reached the quarter-finals, Maharashtra had the best batting average by far, but their bowling average was the poorest. They were the only team to average more than 40 with the bat – their average of 47.29 was well clear of Karnataka’s 39.09, though Karnataka completely outbatted them in the final. In the 11 matches Maharashtra played, seven times they scored more than 400, compared to five in 11 games by Karnataka. With the ball, though, Maharashtra conceded 30.63 per wicket, compared to 27.82 for Karnataka. Among the top eight teams, only Railways had a better bowling average.
• Karnataka, though, were the team with the most centuries this season: they managed 15, two more than Maharashtra, while Saurashtra and Hyderabad had ten each. Three Karnataka batsmen – KL Rahul, Karun Nair and Manish Pandey – scored three hundreds each. Among their bowlers, Abhimanyu Mithun led the way with 41 wickets at 24, while Vinay Kumar took 29 at 24.68. For Maharashtra Kedar Jadhav scored six hundreds and was the overall leading run-scorer in the tournament with 1223 runs at 87.35, while Harshad Khadiwale was the third-highest run-getter with 1004, next only to Jadhav and Rahul. None of the others touched 1000 for the season.
  

  How the top 8 teams fared in Ranji Trophy 2013-14

  Team	Matches	W/ L	Bat ave	Bowl ave	100s/ 50s	5WI/ 10WM
  Karnataka	11	7/ 0	39.09	27.82	15/ 20	7/ 1
  Maharashtra	11	6/ 1	47.29	30.63	13/ 26	4/ 3
  Punjab	10	5/ 2	30.05	28.03	8/ 19	7/ 0
  Bengal	9	3/ 1	27.76	28.74	6/ 16	3/ 2
  J&K	9	4/ 3	29.44	29.97	4/ 22	8/ 0
  Mumbai	9	4/ 2	29.80	27.87	8/ 14	5/ 2
  Railways	9	3/ 1	30.64	26.91	7/ 19	7/ 1
  Uttar Pradesh	9	2/ 2	32.77	30.03	7/ 16	5/ 0

• Among the bowlers, Himachal Pradesh’s seamer Rishi Dhawan was the leading wicket-taker with 49 in eight matches at an average of 20.30. He was one of four bowlers who took 40 more wickets this season; the others were Anureet Singh (44 at 17.56), Abhimanyu Mithun (41 at 24) and Ashok Dinda (40 at 25.97). (Click here for the leading wicket-takers this season.) Dhawan took six five-fors this season, more than any other bowler.
• Dhawan also scored 435 runs in the season to go with his 49 wickets, averaging 39.54 with the bat and 20.30 with the ball. He was one of four allrounders to score 400-plus runs and take 25 or more wickets in the season. The others were Parvez Rasool of Jammu & Kashmir (663 runs and 27 wickets), Jalaj Saxena of Madhya Pradesh (545 runs and 35 wickets) and Syed Mohammad (420 runs and 26 wickets).
• The top four wicket-takers in the tournament were all seamers. The highest wicket-taker among spinners was Vishal Dabholkar, the left-arm spinner from Mumbai, who took 39 wickets at 26.76. Overall in the tournament, the quicker bowlers took the honours, averaging 29.33, compared to 33.02 by the spinners. Of the 21 bowlers who took 30 or more wickets, 15 were seam bowlers. Apart from Dabholkar, the other spinners who took 30 or more wickets were Amit Yadav (37 at 20.51), Jalaj Saxena (35 at 19.68), Akshay Darekar (33 at 32.21), Rakesh Dhurv (33 at 25.36) and Shadab Jakati (30 at 33.83). The seamers for Karnataka took more wickets than those of any other team – 126 at 23.76. Maharashtra were next in terms of wickets – 121 at 27.49.