There’s a lot more to hitting a long ball than clearing your front foot out of the way and having a swipe

Aakash Chopra22-Apr-2010All batsmen hit the ball to score runs but some build their games around hitting big and hard. Robin Uthappa belongs to that category, while Jacques Kallis looks to find a balance between aggression and defence. I am not a big hitter, so I watch in awe when someone like Uthappa or Yusuf Pathan goes berserk.But there is more to hitting the ball hard and far than just whacking a white round object thrown your way. There are different ways to hit the ball and this is my attempt at break down the method behind the madness. (Though it would have been better if I had cracked it while I played for India.)Momentum
To play fast bowlers behind the wicket, you can use the pace of the ball to good effect. But if you want to hit them down the ground it’s almost like playing against spinners: you’ll need to generate some pace of your own. In other words, momentum, which can be achieved in different ways.The back-lift: The higher the back-lift, the harder the impact of bat on ball. That’s why we see players like Yuvraj Singh and Virender Sehwag hitting further than the rest without really trying to knock the leather off the ball. To get the bat to come down at the right time, they need to either initiate the downswing early or increase the bat speed; but those are small adjustments to gain the extra yards. Many Australian batsmen, like Ricky Ponting, cock their wrists at the highest point of the back-lift to get the bat higher, and then unwind at the point of impact. That increases the back-lift and the bat speed.Use your feet: Most batsmen prefer this to adjusting their back-lifts. The objective here is to throw the weight of the body behind the shot at the point of impact. It’s common to step out of the crease against the spinners – Sourav Ganguly does it really well, especially against left-arm spinners – but these days many batsmen successfully do it against fast bowlers as well.Timing
Players like Sachin Tendulkar are blessed with this gift. They don’t need high back-lifts to send the ball speeding down the ground or careening through the air. The trick is to meet the ball at the right point of the downswing and then transfer the weight from one foot to another at the point of impact. It’s as complicated as it sounds and that’s why a lot of good batsmen spend their careers searching for this elusive skill. And it’s why less-accomplished batsmen, despite high back-lifts and powerful arms, rarely manage to clear the fence.Maintaining shape
Hitting a long ball on a regular basis is as technical as playing a cover drive. While the back-lift and downswing are important, the shape a batsman maintains during and after the shot is equally important. Uthappa is a good example: he keeps his head still and maintains a stable base and good shape, during and after the shot. No wonder he’s one of the biggest hitters of the ball. The follow-through, a by-product of a good downswing, is just as important. The arms should follow the line of the shot and not fall away.

Hitting a long ball on a regular basis is as technical as playing a cover drive. While the back-lift and downswing are important, the shape a batsman maintains during and after the shot is equally important. Uthappa is a good example: he keeps his head still and maintains a stable base and good shape

Free your arms
You must have room to swing your arms freely. Bowlers will try to eliminate this space by pitching it straight, and batsmen respond by clearing the front leg to create the necessary room – Suresh Raina does it to hit the ball in the midwicket area – or by going deep inside the crease to get under balls that are pitched up. MS Dhoni is really good at getting under the ball and that’s why he manages to hit yorkers with ease.If you want to hit in the air, there are some more things to keep in mind.When you step out, you mustn’t get close and over the ball but stay slightly away to get under it.While playing a grounded shot, the impact with the ball occurs during the downswing, with the face of the bat tilted slightly towards the ground. When you play a lofted shot, you hit the ball when the bat is facing upwards. In theory the lofted shot is an extension of the one played on the ground, but there’s more to it; only a few players, like Matthew Hayden, can hit the quicker bowlers down the ground by simply extending and elevating the straight drive.That’s one difference between Hayden and Uthappa. While Hayden hits them with a straight bat, Uthappa hits with a horizontal bat. The straight bat is a safer option because there’s more room for error if you misread the bounce. By choosing horizontal strokes Uthappa risks missing or edging the ball if it bounces more or less than he anticipated.We have come a long way from the time when hitting sixes was a synonym for slogging. Hitting sixes on a regular basis is an art only a few have mastered. And those few are worth their weight in gold, especially in the Twenty20 format.

Plays of the Day from the second ODI between Sri Lanka and New Zealand in Dambulla

Siddarth Ravindran in Dambulla13-Aug-2010Guptill’s dip continues
With an unbeaten 122 on one-day debut against West Indies early in 2009, Martin Guptill instantly secured a regular spot in the New Zealand top order. He hasn’t missed a game since, but that’s not something he’ll be able to boast of for very long if his lean run continues. His CV was blotted today by his maiden ODI duck, looking to whip his first ball to the leg side but only managing an edge to backward point, making Lasith Malinga the quickest Sri Lankan to 100 ODI wickets, a week after the bowler had captured his 100th Test wicket.The hunt for the first run
Another man who didn’t score a run was Kane Williamson, who unlike Guptill had got his maiden duck in his very first game. On Tuesday he had lasted nine deliveries; today it was just two before nicking Angelo Mathews to first slip for a second consecutive blob. If he’s looking for inspiration, though, he should look no further than Sachin Tendulkar, who started with zeroes in his first two ODIs before going on to own most of the batting records in the format.Battling Watling
BJ Watling had a far better start to his one-day career than Williamson. After surviving a difficult spell against the new ball, he got going with a couple of fours against Angelo Mathews. He persevered in spite of the wickets tumbling at the other end to bring up his half-century with a cracking one-bounce four straight down the ground.Watch your step
When Gareth Hopkins was foxed by a slow, full teaser from Malinga, New Zealand were hobbling at 123 for 6. The new batsman, Daryl Tuffey, had made decent contributions in his previous matches, but he lasted only one delivery this time – a pacy, pinpoint yorker zeroed in on leg stump and Tuffey just about managed to save his toes, but not his wicket.Guptill’s grab
With the silken effortlessness that is his signature, Kumar Sangakkara was taking the game away from New Zealand, dominating an 85-run stand for the second wicket with Upul Tharanga. The target was fewer than 100 runs away with more than 30 overs remaining, but New Zealand’s hopes were lifted by an outstanding catch at short cover by Guptill, who flung himself low to his right to snap the ball inches from the ground and see off Sangakkara for 48.

He began in the middle order before finding his place as an opening batsman, but on the second day at Lord’s it was all about his bowling

Brydon Coverdale at Lord's14-Jul-2010Nobody would have blamed Shane Watson if he’d quit bowling years ago. His body was so brittle that every time he ran in a breakdown seemed more likely than a breakthrough. But after each snapped hamstring or stress fracture, every torn calf or wonky hip, he would smile, as if in denial, and insist that he could heal and return stronger. Now he’s on the Lord’s honour board after taking his first Test five-wicket haul.It’s an achievement not to be sneezed at; with Watson’s luck he’d probably dislocate his vertebrae in the process. Shane Warne never took five at the home of cricket. Dennis Lillee didn’t manage it either. Nor, for that matter, did Jeff Thomson, who thinks Watson’s bowling is rubbish and once famously described him as “not an allrounder’s arsehole”.Watson will never be a strike bowler but in swinging conditions he is a valuable option for Ricky Ponting. And the ball swung today. He attacked the stumps and had both Akmal brothers trapped lbw before he’d conceded a run, although Shahid Afridi soon saw to it that Watson’s economy rate ballooned.Within ten deliveries, his figures of 2 for 0 became 2 for 30. But Watson continued to pitch the ball up, allowing it to curve, and he was rewarded when Afridi inevitably skied a catch. Watson’s most impressive wicket came when he curled an inswinger in to bowl the left-hander Salman Butt, who was the only Pakistan batsman to show any real fight.At that stage, Watson was stuck on four victims and he was forced to wait for his chance at a fifth, two rain delays sending him inside to gaze up at the honour boards, tantalisingly close to joining the elite group. Looming large was the presence of Keith Miller, who Watson says continues to inspire him, and when play resumed he was determined to etch his name into history.An edge to slip from Danish Kaneria and the job was done. Watson didn’t bother with the now traditional ball-raise on completing a five-wicket collection, instead running off to pad up for his primary job as the team’s opening batsman. Despite being caught in the cordon for 31, Watson was all smiles after a performance that surprised him as much as anyone.”I had my eye on the batting side of things to try and get a hundred at Lord’s in my first Test here but unfortunately that wasn’t meant to be,” Watson said. “To be able to get it as a bowler is going to take a while for me to get my head around. Over the last few days leading up to this Test I worked really hard on a few things on my bowling … the last three or four months my bowling hasn’t been exactly where I wanted it. For it to come together today has been brilliant.”In the Lord’s nets this week he has especially been working on swing, which he can achieve but without much consistency. Today, the cloudy conditions helped him immensely. He hadn’t bowled at all in Australia’s previous four limited-overs games, due to general soreness. When his Test career began, he was a No. 7 batsman and third seamer, and striking the right mix between his new positions is a challenge.”Opening the batting, my most important role within the team is to be able to score runs,” he said. “My bowling has probably been a little bit on the backburner… my position in the team has changed quite significantly from what it was a couple of years ago. I’m still trying to find the perfect balance of being able to open the batting and bowl.”For the time being, he’ll settle for an unexpected privilege. There’s a new honour board in the visitors’ dressing room at Lord’s, created for neutral Tests, and Warren Bardsley and Charles Kelleway are up there for their batting in 1912 against South Africa. Shane Watson is the first bowler to join them.

Already this match has made headlines, from the venue being changed to controversy over tickets. Now, at last, it’s time for the actual cricket

Sharda Ugra in Bangalore26-Feb-2011The team called the Rock Stars of Cricket announced their arrival at the Chinnaswamy Stadium with the most unusual sound. Not guitar, not drums, but the echo of a conch-shell.It came from their bald, body-painted travelling fan and it sounded significantly sonorous, the ceremonial trumpet that it is meant to be. If Sri Lanka and Pakistan set off the weekend with a heated contest at the Premadasa, the least India against England in Bangalore must do is live up to its advertising. Of being firecracker or pressure cooker or, at the very least, a big sink. This is, to use a rather dark pun, the 2011 World Cup’s big-ticket game.Much theatre has circulated around the game even before even a ball was bowled. It has been moved from Indian cricket’s iconic venue, the Eden Gardens, due to organisational blunders. It has been the reason that close to 3000 people lined up at 2am for tickets and, within few hours, a thousand were scattered by the police’s five-foot long bamboo batons. It has also brought the biggest contingent of travelling fans to this World Cup. It had better not rain. In less than the first two minutes of his press conference, MS Dhoni used the word “important” six times.When he was done with his ten minutes of answering questions to a roomful of around 120 people, Dhoni walked out onto the outfield carrying his kit like a backpack, as if he were a tourist sauntering down towards the Anil Kumble Circle, past the 11 TV broadcast vans lined up near the ground. Dhoni was heading out to inspect the wicket which in India’s practice match against Australia did not thrill their batsmen with its ease, but built the case for their bowling balance they were looking for.It still does not mean that Piyush Chawla will be an automatic pick on Sunday. Or that Harbhajan Singh will open the bowling like the six other teams who have opened their bowling with spin in this first week of the World Cup. It will only mean that England will have to prove that they are, as Andrew Strauss believes, an improved batting team against spinners bowling in their very element.MS Dhoni is used to deal with the expectations of billions•Associated PressIndia’s batsmen moved swiftly on from their stutter in the Bangalore match to a general feeling of well-being after Dhaka. Their worries with the bat are far removed from the strugglers in this competition. The most important question must be whether Virender Sehwag will keep the promise he made to himself of batting 50 overs and then maybe even field. Dhoni seemed to think that 30 overs do nicely. Yet for all that India’s batsmen did against Bangladesh, they will be up against a far better and more organised bowling attack, Stuart Broad’s upset stomach not withstanding.The most mouth-watering rivalry in the contest, though, rather than that of batsman versus bowler, might well be between the two lead offspinners, Harbhajan Singh and Graeme Swann. The last time the two teams met at the same venue it rained. The result was decided by Duckworth-Lewis and India took a 4-0 lead in a series that would be truncated three days later by the attacks in Mumbai. Swann was just finding his feet in India and Harbhajan had gone for 42 in four overs.Since then, cricket, Swann and Harbhajan have travelled a vast distance. Today, Swann is regarded as the world’s No. 1 spinner and recently, Harbhajan said that it was Swann’s videos that helped him find the rhythm that led to of his best performances in recent years on the tour to South Africa.Given the drama that has followed this match, if India do feel in a mood to gamble or surprise maybe they should give their new left-arm spinning option an early go at England’s latest ODI opener. Being out to Yuvraj Singh five times (just one less than Harbhajan, not kidding) could just mean that Kevin Pietersen doesn’t like pies. But that’s no reason not to try. Dhoni, celebrated for his occasional wild gambles, once threw Yuvraj an almost new ball in a Test just to put the pies out again.After the India net session, there was a meeting between Dhoni, coach Gary Kirsten, physiotherapist Nitin Patel and BCCI secretary N Srinivasan. Rather than discuss the Ashish Nehra injury situation, maybe they were planning the innings-break menu to ensure that it follows the coach’s ‘eight rules of eating’ found in his vision document.They were in the full glare of the hawk-eyed media, whose ranks swell every game. Their numbers could well rival those of ticket-seekers outside the Chinnaswamy of whose fate, Dhoni said: “It’s unfortunate that some of the fans had to go through it. But again when the Indian team don’t perform you have to go through a lot of criticism so I feel that it is part and parcel … Maybe some of them wouldn’t have felt so bad because at the end of the day, they want to get tickets. So that’s what I want to say.””Part and parcel” of an India game includes the public expectation of a victory. Defeat would affect the confidence on the street far more than that of the team and had Dhoni not just given us all a glimpse of what he thinks of the street? He described, mostly for overseas journalists to whom it might be new, what it was like to be India at the World Cup. “Pressure always comes when you start playing for your country,” he said. “First, you want to seal a permanent place and then be consistent. When you are part of the team the pressure follows you like your own shadow.” His counterpart, Strauss, offered another option. “I don’t think it’s the time to take the pressure off. It’s a World Cup and we all need to stand up and perform.”One man leads a team who is trailed by billions, the other captains a side that has just erased a quarter-century of cricketing misery in Australia.It had better not rain.

Martin Williamson on why the sweeping changes being undertaken by Cricket Kenya have not come a moment too soon

Martin Williamson01-Jun-2011Cricket Kenya has been forced into making some drastic changes in the aftermath of a World Cup campaign which was the culmination of a fairly wretched couple of years. Things would have been altered anyway, but the humiliation of the side was so complete that a decision seems to have been made to blow the old system apart rather than slowly steer it in a new direction.The courage of the board in this regard should be acknowledged, even if there is a valid argument to be made that the changes are long overdue. The latest upheaval concerns something I have long argued has been at the root of many problems – the way players have been centrally contracted and then allowed to get away with substandard performances and an all-too-often unprofessional approach to the game.For too long Kenyan cricket has tolerated players who have often seemed to regard playing as an inconvenience. By local standards, leading players have been very well rewarded, and yet have repeatedly failed to deliver, not only on the big stage but also a more than a few smaller ones as well.When they decided to go on strike – egged on by mischievous former players and encouraged by other senior ones – on the eve of a tour of England in July last year, the die was cast. Kenyan cricket was humiliated and out of pocket, while the outside world looked in bewilderment at a supposedly professional cricketers behaving like greedy adolescents.In any other walk of life, people with such a consistently dismal record in their jobs would be fired. But so complacent were many in the squad they considered themselves irreplaceable, and that feeling was fostered by a board who often seemed to allow them to get away with mediocrity or worse. The real concern was that youngsters coming into the side – and a look at the fringe players in the World Cup squad will show there are increasing numbers – would be tainted, assuming that such behaviour was normal.

[Changes] will mean a difficult year or two, but even that has to be preferable than the death by a thousand cuts everyone has been forced to witness since the 2003 World Cup success

Reports of issues in training have been doing the round for some time, and few close to Kenyan cricket were surprised when stories emerged of disharmony within the squad at the World Cup. Words like arrogant and cocky were privately used to describe the attitude of what should not really be described as big-name players. Only when the team took to the field, they failed to deliver. Repeatedly.Cricket Kenya has now the resolve to sweep away the old and start again. It will mean a difficult year or two, but even that has to be preferable than the death by a thousand cuts everyone has been forced to witness since the 2003 World Cup success.Under the new contractual system, players will be expected to act professionally and will be judged accordingly. Some will find that bewildering and unfair. Given what has happened in the past, they will find support among a compliant local media who are all too ready to use such individuals to support their open agenda of attacking Cricket Kenya at every turn.The board needs to weather that storm and continue to build for the future. It’s been eight years since Kenya’s greatest hours. The world has moved on, and now it’s Kenya’s turn to so.

ESPNcricinfo presents the Plays of the Day from the IPL match between Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians in Jaipur

Firdose Moonda29-Apr-2011The end of the chant
The noise coming from the crowd in the first three overs of Mumbai Indian’s innings would easily have confused someone about who the home team were. “Sachin, Sachiiiiiiiiin,” was being sung in unison even though Tendulkar had only played one shot in anger at that stage. Most fans were anticipating the clash between Tendulkar and Shane Warne and just as their voices had warmed up, their vocal chords were snapped. Ashok Menaria, who had yet to claim a wicket in any Twenty20 match, tossed one up to Tendulkar, who charged down the pitch and was stumped. Silence.The short run
Harbhajan Singh didn’t trust Ali Murtaza to advance the Mumbai Indians score at all and wanted the strike in the final over, even though he was swinging and missing himself. One of his swipes ended up at deep square leg and Harbjahan clearly wanted two. When it looked like the double wasn’t on, Harbhajan turned two-thirds of the way through the first run and returned to the striker’s end to face the last two balls. There was nothing subtle about what Harbhajan was doing, the short-run was clear and he kept strike. He swung and missed at the next delivery but ended the innings with a six.The glimmer of hope
With a strong bowing attack, Mumbai Indians may have thought they’d have some chance of defending their lowest ever IPL total. When Munaf Patel removed Rahul Dravid early the hope would have grown, but when their kingpin Lasith Malinga struck, it must have become a sizeable chunk of expectation. After bowling three yorkers, Malinga dropped one short and Shane Watson was trapped. He tried to hook but ended up edging to Davy Jacobs. It could have been the start of a remarkable comeback but it was too little, too late.The man who could not be dismissed
Johan Botha has become an unlikely batting sensation in the tournament, coming in at No. 3 for Rajasthan, and had not been dismissed in four innings. He was the anchor of the Rajasthan innings in this match and had seen them through the onslaught from Lasith Malinga, and Ali Murtaza’s left-arm web. His boundary off Malinga in the 17th over took Rajasthan to within five runs of victory. Then, the rock moved. He tried to play a good length ball from Munaf Patel past point but missed completely and was bowled.

A tragi-comic meeting with Richard “Danny Germs” Austin who returned to Jamaica after the 1983 rebel tour of South Africa and lost himself to drugs

Sriram Veera21-Jun-2011″If West Indies win by Wednesday, you can never die. The spirits you know …” He is clutching a crumpled paper-bag of peanuts, his eyes are bloodshot, saliva drips out from the corner of his mouth, his head is tonsured, he is dishevelled, probably homeless, and he was just chased away by the cops from the boundary line. The kids call him Danny Germs. He used to be Richard Austin. A West Indies Test cricketer. He even represented Jamaica in football and was by all accounts a good table-tennis player. He was one of the cricketers who went on the 1983 rebel tour of South Africa and found himself ostracised on return. These days he is high on cocaine, wasting himself on the streets of Jamaica, and in general drifting his life away.”Bishen Singh Bedi is going to die,” he mutters before he pats me on the back and says, “I am just f****** with you man!” Austin smiles. He leans across to speak to an old lady sitting behind us. He is polite, courteous and gentlemanly to her. He doesn’t ask her money. He does ask me. “I don’t know how he gets by,” Tony Cozier says when I ask him about Austin. “Some time back, Robin Jackman and I met him at a bar. He made intelligent observations about the game, you know.””Platinum can pass through hydrogen. No other metal can go through it. White metals yes. You see this line running through the eye of this man?” Austin is pointing out to the line in the Jamaican currency note that I had given. He had asked for 100 us dollars. I had just 100 Jamaican dollars. He looks happy. Someone tells me later, “Yes it’s sad that a West Indian cricketer is living like this but there are so many other people like that in Jamaica.” And in India and around the world for that matter. But then, this is a Test cricketer.”I am not bright. Buttons are bright. I am a learned guy. L-e-a-r-n-e-d.” Often, during our chat, he spells out the letters. “Rhythm. R-h-y-t-h-m. Composition. C-o-m-p-o-s-i-t-i-o-n.” He talks about music, about table-tennis, about spirits, and about the crime in the city. Out in the middle, Suresh Raina and Harbhajan Singh steal a quick single. Austin gets excited and thinks there will be a run out. He exclaims, stands up, waves his hand excitedly, almost willing the fielder to fire a direct hit and sits back with a sigh.”My kid was murdered because he was a black man, you know,” he says suddenly. “The cops shot him in New York, in the head.” The lady behind us shakes her head and whispers to me that it’s not true. She gets up and goes away. I ask him about the catch he took at Kensington Oval in the Test against Australia. I tell him that Tony Cozier was raving about it. “Tony eh? Good man. It was off Graham Yallop, you know. It was at backward square-leg. It was the worst ball that Colin Croft ever bowled to take a Test wicket and I took the catch. They say it was one of the best catches seen here.””Have you had mango chutney? I like it.” He asks me which city I am from. “Hmmm. I have been all over India,” he says. “I like Mumbai. It’s fun party place. Some of the other places can be a bit dull, you know.” His face droops; he shakes his head and laughs. I am not even sure whether he has ever been to India. “My friend lives in Mumbai. I know another who lives in Lahore.””I do nothing.” Austin stares out in the middle at the cricket as he says that. “I do nothing.” He just lives. Austin isn’t alone. Herbert Chang, who played for West Indies once and was also on that rebel tour, is also living it rough. “Good man, Chang,” Austin says before suddenly jumping up. He holds stance like a left-hander and leans forward to play a flick. “Chang was a stylish player you know. Good man.” Austin himself was an offspinner who could even open the batting. “He could even keep wickets,” Cozier says. “He was a fine all-round cricketer.””Do you want peanuts?,” Austin asks a 15-year old sitting beside us. And he stretches his left hand out, holding the peanut bag, towards the boy. Austin and the kid talk about platinum, hydrogen and white metals. We are sitting in the George Headley stand. Suddenly, he decides to leave. He gets up, makes me sit in front of him, casts a spell – his finger touches his chin, lips and forehead, and he makes a circling motion around me. “You will be protected.” And he slips away. I see him later at the end of the day’s play, on the road, hitch-hiking his way out of the ground. Just before he leaves, he spots me, envelops me with a hug and asks me to be careful while walking in the streets here. “They just knife you. But you don’t worry. You won’t die. You are protected.”Lawrence Rowe is in town you know. I am going to meet him and have a party later on”. A short while earlier, inside the ground, Austin must have seen Rowe walking out, clad in a suit, and having a Player’s pavilion named after him. Rowe was officially restored to Jamaican cricket. Rowe was Austin’s captain on that fateful tour which affected both men’s lives. Rowe went to USA to escape from the public anger in Jamaica and rebuilt his life. Austin came back to Jamaica and destroyed his life. Life has been one long dark night of the soul for him. This might be the land of Bob Marley but not everyone gets to hear the redemption song.

At a venue where chasing is difficult, England’s best chance lies in batting first and applying pressure on a shaky Sri Lankan middle order

Madhusudhan Ramakrishnan25-Mar-2011The path to the quarter-finals for the two teams could not have been more contrasting. After a shock loss against Pakistan in Colombo, Sri Lanka have been emphatic in their remaining games. England, on the other hand, have stuttered their way into the next round by eventually beating West Indies in a close game in Chennai. England’s unpredictability has been on view throughout the group stages. They were below par in their matches against the non-Test playing teams and Bangladesh; they threw away winning positions in the matches against Ireland and Bangladesh but in the big matches against South Africa and India, they managed to pull off stunning comebacks. Sri Lanka come into the quarter-final on the back of a huge win over New Zealand in their final group game in Mumbai, and knowing fully well that they are playing at one of their favourite home venues.England hold a slight edge in the overall meetings in ODIs, but Sri Lanka have the advantage in matches played at home, despite losing the home series in 2007 by a 3-2 margin. In global tournaments, England have dominated Sri Lanka and lead the head-to-head meetings 8-2. However, the majority of the wins came in early editions of the World Cup when Sri Lanka were not genuinely competitive. Sri Lanka have the edge in recent clashes in World Cups, beating England in both the 1996 and the 2007 tournaments. While England did beat Sri Lanka comfortably in the 1999 World Cup and in the 2004 and 2009 Champions Trophy, those games were played in England and South Africa, where the conditions will be quite different to Colombo. In clashes in Sri Lanka since 2000, the home team leads 6-3 and boast a much higher average of 28.92 as compared to England’s 17.75.

England’s performance in the group stages makes it incredibly hard to judge where they stand. They have been ordinary against the smaller teams and have gone on to lose matches they should have won. On the other hand, they managed to pull of close wins in low-scoring games against South Africa and West Indies and tied their match against India in Bangalore after chasing 338. Their stats against the top teams are comparable to Sri Lanka’s but they are much poorer against the lesser teams. In sharp contrast to England, Sri Lanka have been clinical in their games against the smaller teams. Hopefully for England, the more relevant stat for them will be their numbers against the top teams.

Sri Lanka dominate England across all phases of the innings in matches played in the tournament so far. England score at a slightly higher rate in the first 15 overs but average considerably lower than Sri Lanka in the same period. Sri Lanka have been supreme in the middle overs, averaging 95 while batting and just over 17 with the ball. England have been more expensive in the same period and average over 35 with the ball. In the end overs, Sri Lanka score at 8.25 runs per over and concede just over a run a ball. England have lost 14 wickets in the batting Powerplay in their group matches and score at 6.36 runs per over in the last ten overs of their innings.

While Sri Lanka’s top order is dangerous in home conditions, their lower middle order is not the most reliable and is yet to be tested in the tournament. England’s middle order is also shaky, and apart from Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell, the rest of the batting has not been in great form. Both teams have scored at a very similar rate against pace and spin, but Sri Lanka have the better average by virtue of losing far fewer wickets.Sri Lanka have been the best bowling side in the spin department and are likely to employ three spinners against England, who demonstrated vulnerability while facing quality spin against Bangladesh and South Africa.

The Premadasa Stadium has a history of being heavily loaded in favour of the side batting first, especially in day-night matches – in 49 completed games, 36 have been won by the team batting first. In day-night matches played at the venue since 2000, Sri Lankan spinners have been excellent in the second innings with an average of 23.66 and an economy rate of 4.02. Muttiah Muralitharan, the second highest wicket-taker in World Cups, has been exceptional in the second innings in day-night games at the Premadasa, with 25 wickets at 14.88 in the last decade. With the knowledge of the difficulties associated with chasing at this venue, England will feel that their best chance lies with winning the toss and batting first.

Unlike in his previous four years as India captain, MS Dhoni’s now-famous clinical detachment has been unable to produce a turnaround for his team

Sharda Ugra at The Oval22-Aug-2011India’s last word at the end of a Test series in which they made very few statements was MS Dhoni trying to be heard during his media conference in a committee room at The Oval. As the ICC Test mace was presented to England outside, the PA system played loud celebratory music – Jerusalem, Land of Hope & Glory and more such stirring stuff – while Dhoni answered his questions. In his line of vision was a television showing live pictures of England’s players receiving medals and trophies, jumping up and down on stage, their lap of honour. It must have hurt. It better have. Dhoni, not given to many shows of emotion, unsurprisingly, looked neither crushed, nor dejected. He looked as he has always looked as India captain: quite together.A short while before he spoke to the press, Dhoni had passed a man during the presentation who appeared to have taken the defeat personally: Tiger Pataudi, the first India captain to have won a Test series overseas. Four years ago, Pataudi sat on the steps outside the old dressing rooms at The Oval, with the Indian team, including Dhoni, gathered around him. In a photograph from that day, like everyone else, Pataudi is beaming, sharing the frame with a brand new shining trophy named after his family, for which India and England will forever tussle in Tests. The Pataudi trophy now belongs to England after a 4-0 rout of clinical execution. On the stage, with the game lost well before tea, Pataudi could not even force a manful smile as the Indians walked past him to collect their medals.Unlike in Dhoni’s previous four years as India captain which began, coincidentally, after that 2007 win, a now-famous clinical detachment has been unable to produce a turnaround from his men. India could not bat out the 30-odd more overs that would have saved the final Test and left them with a scrap of at least something from the series, rather than another thumping defeat.All that India gained from this series were lessons in what not to do in the future. Dhoni talked about what is going to be a perpetual headache over the next few years: grooming the next generation and among them, building a pool of young bowlers. “It’s important to not lose bowlers, especially when you are not in the subcontinent, because manoeuvring three specialist bowlers becomes very difficult, and using part-timers, who are usually spinners,” he said. “I think it will be very important to groom a few bowlers or [to] have the bench strength. If we keep playing with the same bowlers and don’t give exposure to some of the youngsters, we may be forced at some point of time to straightaway bring them in to play Test cricket, which can be tough on them. So I think you need to plan it a bit and hopefully utilise the time in between in the best possible manner.”The defeat to England aside, India, Dhoni said, were going through a “grooming” period. Their challenge would be handling public expectations of victories, based around performances from their most experienced, along with giving a new generation the opportunity to break into the international game. Dhoni said the younger players coming through were of two kinds – those who immediately started “scoring from the first game they play and they are superstars in their own way” and others who took their time.”It’s not like you are always entitled to get those kind of players, which means you will have to start grooming youngsters so that they are able to play in different conditions and different scenarios once there is pressure on them. We need to groom as many youngsters as possible, try to give them confidence by not shuffling them too much. It will all be about giving confidence to the coming generation so that they are at their best when thrown at the top level.”

The burning IPL questions

A centrepiece of the instant postmortem of India’s 4-0 defeat to England has been the involvement of most of the Indian team in the lucrative six-week IPL tournament that followed the ODI team’s World Cup victory and preceded the tour of England.

MS Dhoni was asked two specific questions about it: one, whether new coach Duncan Fletcher should be empowered to control how much key players took part in the IPL, particularly before major series. “Let’s see and hope for the best, you know, who gets empowered and who gets the power,” Dhoni said. “Hopefully we won’t miss players, you know, if you all feel it’s because of the IPL.” It was then pointed out to Dhoni that, since 2009, there had been three straight dips in India’s performances in major events immediately following the IPL: the two World T20s and now the Test series in England. Asked directly whether the IPL was good for Indian cricket, Dhoni appeared amused. “Well, this was not just after the IPL, you know, so let’s not bring everything out of cricket and put it on IPL.”

England captain Andrew Strauss was asked whether his team had benefitted from the fact that most of its players did not take part in the IPL due to its clash with the English season. “You can never hold it against a player for wanting to play in the IPL for financial reason or for improving their game or whatever,” he said. “But in some ways, we have been less affected by it than other sides. And as an England team, looking at it purely from an England perspective, there have been some benefits in us being less involved, but as I said you can understand players want to be involved in that tournament.”

As long as this result rankles India, this debate too will rage.

In this series the only “youngsters” to come through were Amit Mishra, ironically with the bat, and Praveen Kumar, for his all-round feistiness. “Definitely we have the talent,” Dhoni said, “if you see the players who have been performing for us who have been part of the Test side. Of course they have not been very consistent. We have somebody like a Suresh Raina, we know how talented Rohit Sharma is, Cheteshwar Pujara did decently well in South Africa, Abhinav (Mukund) did a good job in the last two series. I think we have got the talent that is needed, they need to be given the exposure and confidence. I feel that it is not always the technique… technique is important, but it’s also the confidence level. If the confidence level is high, people stop talking about the technique because you are scoring runs.”On a pitch that England captain Andrew Strauss called a “little more subcontinental” compared to those for the first three Tests, India produced an almost 1990s-style post-Tendulkar collapse. Seven wickets fell for 21 runs. Seven was also the top score from the last five wickets. It came, not from three of India’s top seven batsmen who were part of the crash that followed the Mishra-Tendulkar century partnership, but Ishant Sharma. Ishant’s call for a review after being given out caught bat-pad, was perhaps the strongest gesture of defiance in India’s nausea-inducing last hour of the Test series.Dhoni said later that the loss of quick wickets just before the second new ball had led to the slide, after what had begun as India’s best day of the tour. “It sets like a panic in the dressing room if you lose wickets in quick succession. We should have been able to stop that but we were not able to, which was the main reason why the game ended so quickly.” Dhoni said, “the batting department should have performed a bit better.”Injuries, particularly to key players like Zaheer Khan and Virender Sehwag, have been cited as one of the reasons for India’s failure in England. When asked whether the team should find a way to ensure that its best players are at their fittest for the most important series, Dhoni’s answer appeared to indicate that external expectation often dictated how the Indians went about their business. “The expectation level is too high – (it is) one thing that doesn’t allow the kind of… I wouldn’t say experimentation … but the kind of procedure that needs to involve the youngsters. When we play any side, we are expected to win and the pressure comes on the same players who have been playing for the past few years. It takes a toll on them, everyone wants to play as many games as possible. How can you say this series is important and that is not, but you don’t want to miss players in key series?”Until this result, Dhoni had not lost a series as captain. When he was asked whether his enthusiasm for the job as leader had begun to dip at any time during the series, he said, “I don’t believe in surrendering. This job was given to me when I didn’t really expect it and I’m not a person that believes in surrendering. I’m giving it my best shot and that’s what it’s all about.”For all his success, courage and risk-taking ability, a World Cup-winning captain has, within four months, become part of India’s most monumental series surrender in the last decade. It must hurt. It had better. Even if he didn’t show it.

How the first England team to tour Australia might not have, if it were not for a refusal by the great novelist

Ashley Mallett19-Feb-2012In the Australian summer of 1861-62, Charles Dickens dismissed a handsome offer of £7000 to embark on a reading tour Down Under; HH Stephenson’s England cricket team toured Australia instead. Dickens was then offered £10,000 to visit Australia in the summer of 1862-63, and the offer was increased substantially over a number of weeks but the great novelist rejected them all. He was destined never to set foot in Australia.The £7000 offer was made by Melbourne entrepreneurs Felix Spiers, who kept the Royal Hotel and Café de Paris in Bourke Street, and Christopher Pond, the host of the Piazza Hotel on the corner of Bourke and King Streets. The two men pooled resources to either get Dickens Down Under or bring out the first England cricket team. They enlisted the services of an agent, Richard Mallam, who sounded Dickens out, but though the writer had toyed with the idea of settling in Australia, he did not commit to the move because he could “only not do so until he should have finished “, as John Forster’s biography had it.A key member of the England team that visited was Charles Lawrence, an allrounder, who as a boy in 1840 walked the 22km from Merton in Surrey to Lord’s to watch his heroes, among them Fuller Pilch, the All England champion bat. Round that time, Dickens was in Ballechelish, Scotland, polishing his newest epic, .The cricket connection was never far away with Dickens. In he wrote with charm about a cricketing encounter between the fictional All Muggleton and Dingley Dell. Dickens makes light of the game but shows his eye for detail:

“[Each Fieldsman] fixed himself into proper attitude by placing one hand on each knee, and stooping very much as if he were ‘making a back’ for some beginner at leap-frog. All the regular players do this sort of thing – indeed it’s generally supposed that it is quite impossible to look out properly in any other direction. ‘Play’, suddenly cried the bowler. The ball flew from his hand straight and swift towards the centre stump of the wicket. The wary Dumpkins was on the alert; it fell upon the tip of the bat and bounded far away over the heads of the scouts, who had just stooped low enough to let it fly over them.”

Lawrence stayed in Australia to coach cricket, and he eventually found himself captain-coach of the Australian Aboriginal cricket team that toured England in 1868. On that tour the Aboriginal team played 47 two-day games, of which they won 14, lost 14, and had the better of the home sides in most of the drawn matches. The players were given pseudonyms or nicknames because their tribal names were either too hard to spell or pronounce, or both. Johnny Mullagh (Unaarrimin) was a specialist batsman and good medium-fast bowler, who played 45 matches on that tour, scoring 1698 runs at 23.65 and taking 245 wickets at 10 runs apiece. Lawrence, who in 1849 took all ten wickets against William Clarke’s famous All England Xl in Edinburgh, hit 1156 runs at 20.16 and took 250 wickets at 12. But there was a huge difference in abilities among the players. For instance, one man, Sundown (Ballrinjarrimin), a specialist batsman, scored just one run on tour in three completed innings – though it was a personal best, because no one ever knew Sundown to have scored a single run in any match prior to the England tour, and he never played after 1868.While Lawrence was in London with the Aboriginal team, he met Spiers and Pond, the men who had payrolled the England tour to Australia six years previously. Lawrence learnt that the two entrepreneurs did not collect the publicised £11,000 profit from the tour: as they ordered more wine to share with Lawrence in their Covent Garden restaurant, they confessed that their take was actually a cool £19,000, which left them flush with funds – more than enough to tempt Dickens for a reading tour with, the following year, 1862-63.

A great athlete, Dick-a-Dick would arm himself with a parrying shield and a leangle (killer boomerang), and for the price of one shilling would challenge all and sundry to throw a cricket ball at him from a distance of ten paces

When the big offer came, in the English summer of 1862, Dickens was said to have uttered: “A Man from Australia is in London, ready to pay £10,000 for eight months there. If…” It was an “if” that troubled him for some time, and led to agitating discussion. The civil war having closed the Americas, the increase made upon the last offer was tempting. He tried to familiarise himself with the fancy that he should thus get new material for observation, and he went so far as to plan .In the end, though, he decided against it. “[T]hese renewed and larger offers tempt me. I can force myself to go aboard a ship, and I can force myself to do at that reading desk what I have a hundred times, but whether, with all this unsettled fluctuating distress in my mind, I could force an original book out of it is another question.”On the 1868 Aboriginal tour there was a man who had hand-eye co-ordination like no other, possibly to rank with the young Don Bradman, who famously taught himself to hit a golf ball with a stump as it rebounded off the family backyard tank-stand. Dickens would have loved Dick-a-Dick (Jumgumjenanuke), for he was the veritable Artful Dodger of the team. Dickens loved the game and had a cricket pitch in his expansive backyard at Gadshill. He may well also have seen the Aboriginal team pass his house in a coach as they travelled from Gravesend, taking the main road to Strood on their way to West Malling.A great athlete, Dick-a-Dick would arm himself with a parrying shield and a leangle (killer boomerang), and for the price of one shilling would challenge all and sundry to throw a cricket ball at him from a distance of ten paces. If a challenger got a ball past Dick-a-Dick and struck him anywhere on his body, the ball thrower would be paid ten shillings. At The Oval in May 1868, seven men threw in unison at one point, but not one ball found its mark. The balls aimed at his head and chest he easily parried with his shield, and those thrown below the waist were deflected by skilful use of the leangle.Before and after play and during intervals in every game, Dick-a-Dick was on the challenge. At Lord’s in June 1868, he persuaded ten gentlemen to shed their top hats to throw at him at once, and evaded them all. Just once on the entire tour was this remarkable athlete caught off guard – in Derby, by a man named Samuel Richardson, in September of 1868.Lawrence’s tour was a great success, although one man, King Cole (Brippokei), died tragically after a short and sudden illness. King Cole had a cold but it wasn’t considered sufficiently bad for him to miss the much-awaited game at Lord’s, which ended on June 13. King Cole died of pneumonia ten days later, at Guy’s Hospital in London. The Australian team management was fearful of more deaths on tour, so in September, one month ahead of the expected departure of the team for Australia, two players – Sundown and Jim Crow (Jallachmurrimin) – who had developed bad colds were sent home. In those days a heavy chest cold was something to fear, for if pneumonia developed, as indeed it had with King Cole, the condition invariably proved fatal.Charles Dickens was indirectly responsible for the first England team touring Australia•Getty ImagesIn the wake of the Aboriginal team, the first “official” Australian team toured England in 1878, under the leadership of Dave Gregory. In the very first Test match, played in March 1877 at the MCG, Australia had beaten England by 45 runs, but the home side did not grant Gregory’s men a Test in England in 1878. The first Test on English soil was in 1880, at The Oval, where England, led by Lord Harris and dominated by WG Grace’s 152, beat Australia by five wickets. Then came the extraordinary Test of 1882, at The Oval. Australia won by seven runs, thanks to the brilliant bowling of Fred Spofforth, who took 7 for 46 and 7 for 44 to demolish the home side, following which the carried a mock obituary, stating that the body of English cricket would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.There is a link, if tenuous, between the 1868 Aboriginal team and the Ashes legend. Nine years after he destroyed the cream of English batting, Spofforth played as an import for Derby. Samuel Richardson, the man who got one past Dick-a-Dick’s guard in 1868, was the secretary of the club then. Spofforth happened to catch Richardson with his hand in the till – to no great avail, as Richardson pocketed £1000 and fled to Spain, where he became the court tailor to King Alfonso and lived to the ripe old age of 93. I am not sure what the moral of this story is, but Dick-a-Dick’s killer boomerang now stands behind glass in the Lord’s Museum, less than three paces from the Ashes urn. There is a good deal of other 1868 team memorabilia as well, including two scorecards. The players wore coloured sashes to help identify them on the scorecard. Today players have numbers on their backs, but the Aboriginals’ coloured clothing beat Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in that area by 109 years.The 1868 Australians were the trailblazers, the men who followed on from Stephenson’s 1861-62 team, which toured Down Under because Charles Dickens dismissed the lure of a reading tour. The first Test was played less than nine years after the Aboriginal team toured England. If Dickens had not let a juicy offering fly past harmlessly, Test cricket would probably have taken longer to come to pass. In 2002, thanks to continued lobbying by Ian Chappell, the 1868 Aboriginal cricket team was inducted into Australian cricket’s Hall of Fame.In 2001 I took an Under-21 Aboriginal cricket team on a short tour of England. It was a part re-enactment of the 1868 tour, and we got to play at Lord’s and see Dickens’ fictional cricket match between Muggleton and Dingley Dell illustrated on the back of the £10 note then. We even had a ceremony at King Cole’s graveside at Meath Gardens in London. During the ceremony, ochre was sprinkled on the grave – the mother (ochre representing the mother, the land) brought to the son. As coach of the team I was asked to read the words uttered by Lawrence when King Cole was buried all those years ago.The racist White Australia policy weighed heavily against indigenous people Down Under, and it almost certainly prevented Aboriginal cricketers playing Test cricket. After the 1868 tour, Aboriginal cricket fell away. A few, such as Jack Marsh of New South Wales, who the England player and later administrator Pelham Warner said in 1903 was the best bowler in the world, was hounded out of cricket with the allegation that he chucked. So too Eddie Gilbert, the only bowler to have knocked the bat from Don Bradman’s grasp, was said to have thrown. Jason Gillespie is the first acknowledged male Aboriginal Test cricketer, but how many others wore the baggy green before him – men who knew that if they revealed their true background they would never have played top cricket?Bibliography
Charles Lawrence’s journal (written in 1911)

by John Forster