No play was possible on day one despite there being plenty of sunshine

Daya Sagar09-Sep-2024There were clear skies overhead but the damp conditions underfoot at Test cricket’s 124th venue created a player safety issue serious enough to force the abandonment of the first day between Afghanistan and New Zealand in Greater Noida.The umpires conducted six inspections of the ground over the course of the day before play was called off around 4pm local time.”When you compare it with 10am till now, there’s an improvement but we’re worried about five to six patches inside the 30-yard circle,” Kumar Dharmasena, one of the two on-field umpires, told the host broadcaster at the end of the day. “One area of the run-up does not look comfortable. It’s a player-safety issue. We even saw one player get injured yesterday as well, we know how hard it is. Both of us are concerned.”The player Dharmasena is referring to is Afghanistan’s opening batter Ibrahim Zadran, who hurt his left heel when he slipped while fielding on Sunday. The injury ruled him out of this Test and Afghanistan’s ODI series against South Africa starting September 18. Playing in sub-standard conditions is a risk international cricketers cannot afford to take.Related

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The futility of Monday was not surprising, considering the state of the venue on the eve of the match. Even though there was not much rain overnight, and none at all during the day, the sub-par drainage system at the venue meant the damage to the outfield couldn’t be swiftly repaired.The ground-staff tried, but they didn’t have much to work with. They used the roller on the bowlers’ run-ups and attempted to dry wet patches on the square with sawdust. These efforts were repeated frequently with little impact.An Afghanistan team official told ESPNcricinfo the players were unhappy with the facilities at the venue and it’s possible that they may not want to play in Greater Noida in the future. He also said Afghanistan had wanted this Test to be played in Lucknow, Dehradun or Kanpur. But that was not possible because Lucknow and Dehradun are hosting T20 leagues, and the stadium in Kanpur is being readied for the second Test between India and Bangladesh later this month.Afghanistan have played 11 ODIs and T20Is in Greater Noida before but the facilities here are not up to international standard. On the eve of the game, their captain Hashmatullah Shahidi wished his team could have “one good home venue” in India instead of going from place to place. Afghanistan do not play their home games in Afghanistan and have played their ten Tests at nine different venues.The facilities for the public weren’t good in Greater Noida either: entry was free but there was no proper seating in the scorching heat. The media covering the Test had no access to water or food initially.The toss has been advanced by 30 minutes to 9am on Tuesday, with a minimum of 98 overs to be bowled on the remaining four days of the Test. The forecast, however, is for thunderstorms on Tuesday morning, which could create more heat for the organisers despite the gloomy weather in Greater Noida.

This is a team heading into transition. While the players who built India’s invincibility at home are still around, let’s celebrate what they have achieved instead of chastising them for how it ended

Sidharth Monga27-Oct-20241:13

How much will this defeat hurt India?

Don’t cry it’s over. Rejoice it happened. One of the great runs in our sport has come to an end. It spanned three captaincies (four if you count Ajinkya Rahane), three coaches (four if you count the two staggered Ravi Shastri stints separately), and survived batting and fast-bowling transitions. It was so long that the current coach was a player when India last lost a series at home. In between he made a Test comeback, won an IPL, served a term as a Member of Parliament, mentored two IPL teams, won another IPL title as a mentor, and is now back as India’s coach.While also being at their best-ever when travelling, India took their home dominance to such extremes that winning a Test series in India became more difficult than winning a World Cup of either format or a World Test Championship. The world just didn’t have the depth to match the sides India played at home. You could outscore their top order – which teams did for varying lengths of time – but the allrounders, also two of the best spin bowlers of all time, always pulled India out of holes of varying sizes. Batters will tell you just how much risk taking even a single involved when the ball was turning and R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja at their prime bowled with 6-3 or 7-2 fields.On the final day of this streak, the two allrounders took one final stand, triggering a 5-for-24 collapse with the ball, batting with each other for 12.3 calm overs, giving us time to go over the wonderful memories created over the period. It is hard to ignore, though, that the final nail was nailed in in a Test in which Ashwin and Jadeja were outbowled by two spinners who entered the match with two first-class five-fors between them.Related

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Far be it for anyone to suggest that this golden age is over, but these players are not going to get fundamentally better from here. Father time is at work. Come next year, this same set of players will start as favourites at home, and will most likely win again, but you can’t wish away transition. Virat Kohli has averaged 32 over the last five years. He will be 36 before he takes the plane to Australia. He still might find an Indian Summer, but there likely won’t be a fresh summer. The same goes for Rohit Sharma, Ashwin and Jadeja.It’s not like the signs haven’t been there. Pune was India’s fifth Test defeat at home since 2021. In the previous seven years, they had lost just one at home. The need for rescue acts from the allrounders had increased. Jadeja started missing Tests with various injuries. Ashwin’s lengths have not been as exacting as they earlier were. This series defeat was a freight train coming, which just happened to gather speed at an unexpected time.The weather in Bengaluru turned at the right times for the opposition, New Zealand lost a good toss to lose and won a good toss to win, and boom… It didn’t even take two excellent spinners bowling in tandem, which was considered the bare minimum to beat India in India. The previous series defeat at home came to Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar, aided by James Anderson’s reverse swing. Panesar was temperamental but he was good when he was good. A Sreesanth if you will. High ceiling. Here New Zealand rocked up casually after a 2-0 wipeout in Sri Lanka, didn’t play any warm-up game, and we thought we knew the ceiling of Steady Santner. It is a bit like The Undertaker dropping his Wrestlemania streak to a part-timer.Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma have been key cogs in several of India’s successes over the last decade•AFP/Getty ImagesIn a way, this result is good for the new spinners and batters who will carry India in two-three years’ time. A streak won’t be their burden to carry. But the administration and the players will do well to learn the commitment it took to build this empire. Ashwin is not the fittest athlete going around, but he never missed a single home Test. Jadeja only started missing the odd Test after 2020. That Kuldeep Yadav, who should be the spin leader for a few years, did not or wasn’t made to sort out his chronic left groin issue between the T20 World Cup and now smacks of complacency on both the player’s and the administration’s part.Transitions are tricky. Gambhir and chief selector Ajit Agarkar have the unenviable job of getting in new players who will learn from the experience of these stalwarts, and have a formidable team ready by the time Australia come to India for a five-Test series in January 2027. Skill might not be an issue in this massive country, but game awareness, when to attack and when to weather a storm, preparedness, body management, all needs to be learned. While also managing two massive tours of Australia and England in the coming 12 months, tours that can turn ugly in no time if the injured Mohammed Shami is not adequately replaced.It will be a bittersweet morning after for the players. They will be proud of the streak, but will also be asking themselves if it could have been extended. Even those who were not a part of the losing side: Cheteshwar Pujara, Rahane, Umesh Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Shami and others who played smaller roles.Spare a thought for Ashwin, Jadeja and Kohli, constants throughout the streak. Professional rivals in many ways who came together beautifully. Ashwin having a go at Anderson because he took the captain’s name in vain. Kohli building up pressure for Ashwin by not letting one ball pass through him at short straight midwicket. Younger, quicker men didn’t have that intuition to move the right way whenever Kohli missed a match. Ashwin and Jadeja gradually learning to admire each other despite being two completely different persons.Now they will listen to their bodies a little more closely and decide when to completely pass the torch. Agarkar will have to be as ruthless as he was with Pujara and Rahane. Batters will be more dispensable than bowlers, but also likelier to make comebacks at an advanced age. A few emotional years await Indian cricket. Savour every last bit of it.

The main act lasted all of 15 balls, Kohli the batter showing few signs of arresting his steady descent into the perfectly ordinary. Kohli the icon of the masses remains in much loftier territory

Rahul Bhattacharya31-Jan-2025It was a day of mourning – the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination – but the Jaitley wore a celebratory air. Entry was free, there were injuries trying to enter (a Ranji group match!) and in speculations about when queueing began, 4am turned into a consensus. On the road adjoining the medieval Kotla ruins, a municipal tempo blared Punjabi hip-hop at a festive volume, and there was a beat of hip-hop in the Delhi squad names – a Money Grewal, even if no longer a Prince Choudhary – and certainly in the jet-black Porsche Panamera Turbo (personalised number plate, obviously) that ferried Virat Kohli from his Gurugram mansion.Kohli no longer lives in Delhi, or entirely in India, basing himself out of Mumbai and London; and as further incongruous reminder of his itineracy, the faithful threw themselves into un-ironical chants of “RCB”. No longer a resident, but Virat Kohli is as Delhi as a fight. To tell a Delhiite that Kohli is not one of them is to say a reflection lies. So, no matter that he was playing a Ranji match after 12 years, and no matter that it was enforced: he was here, he is here!Here, too, was Kartik, posing for photographs. A lookalike from Chandigarh, donned in an India Test baggy, his beard groomed in perfect homage. Eight lakh followers on Insta, he tells me, from eight years of being like Kohli. I want to save his number. What came after Kartik? “You can write Kohli.” Inside the stadium a poster proclaimed: “There is no kingdom without King Kohli.”Real or fake? Fake in this case: Virat Kohli’s lookalike, Kartik•Rahul BhattacharyaThe first day Virat Kohli spent almost entirely in the field, and almost exclusively in the slips. Two Gautam Gambhirs loomed over him – the name staring down from each wing on the stand usually likened to a giant parking lot, yet also resembling a gargantuan concrete spider on its back. The Gambhir stand that held, according to one scribe, “more people in this one Ranji match than in the entire five years when Gambhir was sent back to play Ranji”. There were eleven thousand in, perhaps twelve, maybe fifteen. Nobody could remember a bigger Ranji crowd in recent times.An hour into Kohli’s first Ranji match in 12 years a man ran on to the field and touched his feet. As he fled away Kohli directed the security not to thrash the fellow, which is as Delhi a gesture as a thrashing, the line between belligerence and benevolence perennially fine, the stuff that maintains the charge between its people.A full 24 hours later, the crowd had occasion to cheer the demise of their No. 3, the rising star Yash Dhull, a former Under-19 World Cup winning captain no less, like the man about to replace him. Kohli stood up from the plastic chair at the boundary rope, gripping his bat with his customary bottom hand. As he commenced his walk to the pitch, as if choreographed, the four thousand-odd in the adjoining Bishan Singh Bedi stand each raised an arm, phone cameras trained upon their subject.Related

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No Indian batter before Kohli had cut quite a figure like Kohli: so shorn of body fat, borne out of so obsessive a diet, with such impressive delts and traps over so lean a torso. Accordingly, there were no curves, no rounds for his sleeveless sweater to negotiate; it fell on him as it would a mannequin. “Visionary,” was his former trainer Basu Shanker’s word when I spoke to him during the 2023 World Cup. “He started preparing himself like an Olympic athlete”. In that tournament Kohli scored 765 runs, the highest ever at a World Cup.In the long format, however, his numbers have gone from contraction to recession.Over 39 Tests in the last five years, the average has plummeted from a commanding 55, into the 46s now; his strike rate in the period has retarded into the stodgy 40s. He averages 30 in this time, while his big-four rivals, Kane Williamson, Joe Root and Steven Smith do 64, 54 and 45. Of batters with 20 innings or more, Kohli comes in ninth – on the Indian list, that is. In the world he is 64th. Put another way, he has been, middling, mediocre, medium, for a third of his Test career.What explains his steady descent to the perfectly ordinary? What ails this exceptional athlete?The Gautam Gambhir Stand heaved for another famous Delhi son•PTI , proposed Swami Premanand Maharaj, the guru Kohli and his family visited after the Australia tour, since karmic debt (I am translating and condensing here) within a group of people can overwhelm the excellence of one’s practice. My friend and former colleague Sidharth Monga, a proponent of luck as a measurable parameter, conjectured that Kohli enjoyed an excess of such luck in his prime and is enduring a deficit now. Karma, luck, vast forces. Perhaps it’s just his off-side play.His eighth ball Kohli was beaten outside off stump, drawn into a drive by Kunal Yadav, a fine, full ball that seamed away. The next ball, short of a length and in that channel just outside the channel, Kohli fenced at. He was lucky to miss again.Ian Chappell used to tell a story about Garfield Sobers. Mark Mascarenhas, the television mogul, asked the great man about the secret to batting during a late-night session. Nothing to it, said Sobers, in his 60s, on his feet in a trice to demonstrate: if it’s up, hit it so – pouncing forwards to drive; if it’s short, hit it so, dancing back to cut. In Vaneisa Baksh’s remarkable new biography of Frank Worrell, Sobers tells her that as a boy he would watch the great batters from the crowds on the boundary line – not their strokes, “I wasn’t interested in that. I used to watch their movements and watch the pitch of the ball and length to see what they do to that kind of ball, how they move.”Himanshu Sangwan had a day to remember, and that might be understating it•PTI It has been extraordinary to watch a great off-side player’s off-side game fray away; extraordinary to consider that he chose to simply not explore one entire half of off-side play.Three years ago, after a laudable 79 off 201 balls in Cape Town, Sanjay Manjrekar was prescient in insisting that “he’s got to look at this method of scoring runs” – the method being such a pronounced commitment to front-foot play that it turned gradually into a monomania. It is hard to think of a great batter so mute on the cut: a natural scoring shot, making fewer demands on technique or courage than other attacking shots. The Indian legacy in the stroke is rich. Vijay Merchant’s storied late cut, Gundappa Viswanath’s legendary square cut. Sachin Tendulkar cut, of course, and also punched thrillingly off the back-foot with a vertical bat. Virender Sehwag almost based a career on it: if he wasn’t cutting you to pieces it was probably because he was upper-cutting you.Fourteenth ball, Kohli hit his first boundary, a sizzling straight drive off the seamer Himanshu Sangwan, providing a moment of deliverance to the crowd.A touch of Mohammad Azharuddin about the stroke, the wrists coming into play, the right leg raised back from the knee as he completed the shot. Something of the Azhar spirit in it, too – the times he had a point to prove and nothing to lose. The next ball Kohli advanced down the track again; the ball darted in between bat and pad; he lost his shape, his grip on the bat and his off stump, which went cartwheeling, while he looked ruefully down at a spot on the pitch. As he walked back to the Virat Kohli Pavilion, again a choreography went off in the stands, this time a synchronised outward procession – an exodus.Why are the fans headed to the Railways vs Delhi Ranji Trophy match? There is only one answer in this instance•Rahul BhattacharyaIt’s difficult to embrace failure with a smile and keep going, said the guru in his short discourse to Kohli, but God gives you that ability. On the surface of it he had certainly been smiley, laughy, chatty, meeting with old friends, their children, encouraging young team-mates.Coming back to Delhi, for Delhi, had possibly tapped into something deeper. A home left is a more poignant thing than a home inhabited. In a conversation with Jatin Sapru, one of those conversations in which Kohli so articulately attends to the Kohli brand, he recalled: “I know when I used to be on a Scooty going around playing games and, you know, trying to make a mark. I don’t forget those days.” He gestured with his fingers. “I can still feel it.” Delhi doesn’t leave you the option of not feeling. You feel it all: the noxious air in your throat, the bone-chilling nip of a winter morning, the dust-laden loo that blows in the brutal summer, in which the euphemistic “hot-weather tournaments” proceed.Soon he was in training gear, yapping away. He was the lowest scorer for his side, the only one in single digits.Outside the stadium, two youngsters from Greater Noida, glumly held up their poster. “Here for King Kohli. Comeback Loading.” They were taking off now but planned to return at the end of the day to witness a felicitation ceremony for Virat Kohli.

The only gap in their line-up is bowlers with the ability to hit sixes, and that’s something they might have to live with for the moment

Sidharth Monga04-Feb-20252:30

India vs the rest: quicker runs, more wickets in the middle, and more

If it hadn’t actually happened, you would struggle to imagine the kind of dominance India have displayed in T20Is. It is a fickle, high-variance format. The shorter the duration of the game, the smaller the gap in quality between opponents. India have won 43 of their 53 completed T20Is since the start of 2023. This includes an unbeaten T20 World Cup campaign during which they went from the seam-bowling paradise of New York to the flatties in the Caribbean Islands to spin-friendly Guyana and back to high-scoring Barbados, getting the better of eight different teams.Take out the first half of this unimaginable run, and we are talking of stuff beyond fantasies. Since the start of 2024, India have won 28 and lost three. Surely there should be some mean reversion around the corner? Surely India have enjoyed too much luck? Surely this run should be unsustainable?And they are missing at least two of their first XI players. Two players who are the kind of point-of-difference bowlers franchises break the bank for. It is scary to think how good India can get if you add Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav to the line-up that just beat a full-strength England 4-1. We finally have in front of our eyes a team worthy of representing a country that runs the best non-international T20 tournament. A country with hitting talent that was just waiting to be unleashed on the world should their national team dare to shed muscle-memory conservatism.However, in these three – and other strike bowlers India have – lay their only weakness. Bumrah, Kuldeep, Varun, Arshdeep Singh, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Ravi Bishnoi – none of them can be relied upon to hit a six. The way Jofra Archer or Adil Rashid or Mark Wood can. Or Mitchell Starc or Pat Cummins. Or Kagiso Rabada or Marco Jansen or even Anrich Nortje.This weakness forced Tilak Varma to tamper with his game in the Chennai chase, which he did successfully. However, you can’t go in with fewer than three strike bowlers. Especially when they are as good as Bumrah, Kuldeep, Varun and Arshdeep. It is a weakness India will have to live with unless one or two of them can do the unthinkable and build six-hitting prowess the way R Ashwin has at the fag end of his career. However, none of them has the inherent batting ability of Ashwin, so this might be too tall an ask.Yet, all things being equal, add Bumrah, Kuldeep, Shubman Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal to the current squad, and India should start as strong favourites in the 2026 T20 World Cup. There can still be a crucial toss lost or horrible dew or that 130 all out on a big night, but should India become the first team to successfully defend their title in men’s T20 World Cups, they will seal their status as the greatest T20 team ever assembled. To many, they already might be.

Latest thrashing by South Africa underlines scale of challenge for Harry Brook and Brendon McCullum

Matt Roller02-Sep-2025If the margin was an aberration, then the result itself was not. England were utterly thrashed at Headingley as South Africa cruised home with 175 balls to spare, their seventh defeat in 10 ODIs this year and their 20th loss in 30 matches since the start of the last World Cup. Harry Brook said it was “just a bad day” but England have had far too many of them in this format.This was an abject performance, characterised by a collapse of 7 for 29 to slide from 102 for 3 to 131 all out. Sonny Baker conceded 76 runs in seven wicketless overs, the most expensive figures for an England debutant, and the chase barely lasted long enough for the floodlights to come on. The crowd had long since thinned out by the time Dewald Brevis hit the winning six.For Brook, this was a reality check after starting his tenure as white-ball captain with a clean sweep against West Indies in June. South Africa were far stronger opponents, and have now hammered England in three consecutive ODIs: this was worse than the car-crash in Karachi at the Champions Trophy, though still someway short of the Mumbai mauling at the 2023 World Cup.Related

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The fans who stuck it out to the bitter end cheered sarcastically as Adil Rashid took two cheap wickets with the scores level, but left feeling short-changed. “It’s not good enough,” Brook said. “Nobody wants to come and watch that. I can’t say much more than we’ve just had a bad day. We’ve got to put it behind us as quick as possible and move onto the next game.”Brook refused to blame England’s lack of relevant preparation, but their build-up to this series was almost non-existent. Eight players trained at Headingley on Sunday, with seven – including Brook – missing due to their involvement in the Hundred’s knockout stages, and the same number on Monday. Jamie Smith aside, their batters looked bereft of rhythm or confidence.The contrast with South Africa’s preparation was obvious, arriving in Leeds directly from Australia last week. They were faultless in the field – Aiden Markram and Ryan Rickelton took excellent catches, and Tristan Stubbs’ sharp throw ran Brook out from deep cover – and looked every inch a side that had been playing international cricket for the last month.But the last week alone cannot explain the wider pattern of England’s sharp decline in ODI results. Once the team to beat in this format, they are now ranked eighth in the world – sandwiched between Afghanistan and West Indies – and this was a defeat that had all the hallmarks of the bad old days.For Brendon McCullum, Markram’s ultra-attacking innings in the run chase must have felt eerily familiar. Markram’s 86 off 55 balls bore almost uncanny similarities to McCullum’s 77 off 25 against England in Wellington a decade ago – right down to his merciless treatment of Baker, which evoked McCullum’s disdainful takedown of Steven Finn.England’s problems did not stem from over-aggression but a more fundamental failing to adjust to the tempo of the format. Brook was run out looking for an unlikely second run in the 14th over while Jos Buttler, Jacob Bethell and Will Jacks’ dismissals were about as soft as they come, all caught playing half-hearted, rotating shots rather than trying to hit boundaries.”In my opinion, we probably could have gone a little bit harder with the bat and tried to put them under a little bit more pressure,” Brook said. “The more positive you are and aggressive you are as a batter, sometimes you get away with more stuff.” Markram’s high-risk, high-reward approach served to underline his point.But England consistently bat like a team unfamiliar with the demands of 50-over cricket, with batters grinding the clutch to jump between first gear and fifth but nothing in between; they have been bowled out in 15 of their last 30 ODIs. For all that they can blame their lack of exposure to the format, their top seven on Tuesday had more than 15,000 ODI runs between them.Concerned by the divergence between formats, they have made an overcorrection. They picked seven players on Thursday who had featured in a gruelling Test series against India, six of whom had then gone straight into the Hundred and looked worn down by their heavy workloads. Somehow, they managed to look short of rhythm and overcooked simultaneously.England were too slow to evolve after their 2019 triumph, changing captains three years into a four-year cycle between World Cups. They were understandably reluctant to move on from a golden generation of white-ball players, and paid a high price with a humbling group-stage exit in 2023 which marked the final chapter for several players’ ODI careers.The trouble is that they do not appear to have learned from those errors. They are halfway through another four-year cycle but have no clear identity as a team beyond a deep batting line-up. Brook’s repeated clichés about putting bowlers under pressure and trying to take wickets do not equate to a philosophy, nor an actual gameplanEngland have two chances this week – at Lord’s on Thursday, then in Southampton on Sunday – to prove that criticism wrong, and perhaps it is unfair to judge them too harshly after one off-day. But for a team that only two years ago were defending champions in both white-ball formats, days like this have become uncomfortably familiar.

The opening batter from New Zealand lit up the opening day of the tournament in the USA

Sampath Bandarupalli13-Jun-202519 – Sixes Finn Allen smashed during his 151-run knock for San Francisco Unicorns against Washington Freedom in the opening game of MLC 2025. He broke the record for most sixes hit in a T20 match, bettering the joint-record previously held by Chris Gayle (vs Dhaka Dynamites in 2017) and Sahil Chauhan (vs Cyprus in 2024), who hit 18 sixes each.49 – Balls Allen took to complete his 150 in Oakland. It is now the fastest 150 in T20s, bettering the record held by Dewald Brevis, who got to his 150 off 52 balls when he scored 162 against Knights in 2022 in South Africa’s domestic T20s.134 – Runs Allen scored off boundaries, including the 114 coming through the 19 sixes he hit. Only three men have scored more runs through boundaries in a T20 innings than Allen.28 – Total sixes by Unicorns in their innings, the second-most by any team in a T20 match, behind the 37 by Baroda against Sikkim last December in India’s domestic T20s. The Unicorns batters hit at least one six in 16 of the 20 overs in their innings.ESPNcricinfo Ltd151 – Allen’s score against Freedom is now the highest individual score in MLC. The previous highest was 137* by Nicholas Pooran against Seattle Orcas in the 2023 final before the league acquired T20 status.34 – Balls Allen needed to bring up his hundred, the second-fastest in a T20 franchise league, behind Gayle’s 30-ball effort against Pune Warriors in IPL 2013. The previous fastest hundred in MLC came off 40 balls by Pooran in the 2023 final (before the T20 status).269 for 5 – Unicorns’ total against Freedom is by far the highest in MLC. They also became the first team to breach the 250-run mark in a T20 match in the USA, as the previous highest was 245 for 6 by West Indies against India in 2016 in Lauderhill.

The hosts had victory within reach but their tournament now stands on the edge with two huge games ahead

S Sudarshanan20-Oct-20253:15

Review: How did India lose this game?

A bizarre thing happens at the Holkar Stadium in Indore every time it hosts an international match. A small part of the wall between the adjoining basketball court and the stadium is demolished to facilitate entrance to the north stand that houses the press box. Once the game (or series) is over, the wall is rebuilt. It is not a makeshift entrance as there is a permanent grill gate, which becomes operational once the wall is broken down.This can be loosely used as an analogy to explain India’s situation at the Women’s World Cup 2025 – the more the things have changed, the more they have remained the same.Against South Africa, India’s top and middle order failed and the lower order got them to a decent score but the bowlers couldn’t defend it. Against Australia, the top- and middle-order gave them the platform but the lower order didn’t contribute and their bowlers crumbled under the pressure.Related

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England in semi-finals after India unravel in tense finish

Knight and Smith stay cool in the heat of the battle

Now chasing 289 against England, India had seven wickets in hand, a set batter in, 57 runs needed off 57 balls – comfortable, right? Nine times out of ten, the chasing team would be backed to win in such a scenario. Sunday was the tenth occasion. India slipped from there to a third straight defeat at this World Cup.It was Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur’s calculated assault that helped set the chase up after India were 42 for 2 in ten overs. Mandhana started off scratchily, faced only 18 deliveries in the first 12 overs and scored her first four off the 23rd ball, courtesy of an outside edge. Harmanpreet played her most fluent innings this tournament as India’s senior duo chose their battles carefully. All this after India’s bowlers led by Deepti Sharma helped drag England back after they seemed on course for a 320-plus total.England had two left-arm spinners, a bowling style that has been India’s undoing in recent times. But they were kept wicketless until the 42nd over. Whenever England bowled anything wide outside off, both Mandhana and Harmanpreet used the loft over extra cover to release the pressure. Their 125-run stand came off only 122 balls. Before Sunday, England were the most economical bowling unit (3.31 runs per over) in overs 11 to 30; India went at 6.05 runs per over in this phase in Indore.Amanjot Kaur and Sneh Rana walk off after India’s defeat•Getty ImagesIndia had dropped a batter (Jemimah Rodrigues) and brought in an extra bowler (Renuka Singh). So it was imperative for one of Mandhana and Harmanpreet to see the chase through. Mandhana took the onus upon herself by being patient and, as she later said, avoiding aerial shots. Till the rush of blood in the 42nd over.Linsey Smith chose the around-the-wicket angle with square leg, midwicket, long-on and long-off in the deep. Extra cover was clear and Mandhana was tempted to explore that region to get India’s ask under six an over. But Smith got the ball to drift away a little, which meant Mandhana lost control of her stroke and holed out to long-off.”Smriti’s wicket was a turning point for us, but we still had many batters,” Harmanpreet said after the game. Those other batters were Deepti, Richa Ghosh, Amanjot Kaur and Sneh Rana – all of whom have contributed with the bat in this tournament.England were unrelenting thereon. They pressed both Smith and Sophie Ecclestone into service, and India could score only 31 for 2 in the six left-arm spin overs in the third powerplay. The squeeze was truly on. Case in point being Deepti’s progress: she faced only 14 dots off her first 39 balls and scored 36 before Mandhana’s fall, and 10 dots in the 18 balls since then.Deepti Sharma started briskly but couldn’t keep up the temp•ICC/Getty Images”I don’t know how things went the other way,” Harmanpreet said. “It is a bad feeling, when you put so much hard work and take the game to the end. But the last five-six overs didn’t go to plan. I am at a loss of words but [it is] definitely a heartbreaking game.”Smith and Ecclestone used the Jess Jonassen model of stifling batters by denying them the bat-swing. They bowled from over the wicket to right-handers with three fielders deep on the leg side and cramped the batters for room. India did not collapse; they just could not break loose out of England’s stranglehold.It is not all doom and gloom for India. Their campaign is far from being over. They have two more games – against New Zealand and Bangladesh – at DY Patil, a venue they have recently played a lot at. They needn’t look beyond their latest victors for inspiration: England had lost each of their first three games at the 2022 World Cup and still qualified for the semi-final and finished runners-up.They might have a relook at their team combination again. Do they need that sixth proper bowler? Or can they do with the extra batter and squeeze some overs from the part-timers? Can they hold their nerves in a tense finish after three such outings?There are cracks in the wall. India need to ensure they fix it before it all crashes down on yet another home World Cup.

With tours of India and Sri Lanka to come in this WTC cycle, South Africa have shown in Pakistan that they have the resources to be dangerous

Firdose Moonda23-Oct-2025Never before have spinners played such a major role for South Africa in a Test victory.Simon Harmer and Keshav Maharaj’s 17 wickets in Rawalpindi are the most by South African spinners in a win. Add Senuran Muthusamy’s 11, Harmer’s five and Prenelan Subrayen’s two in Lahore and South Africa’s spinners took 35 of the 40 wickets on offer this series – the most in a two-Test series.The performance of the spin quartet speaks as much to South Africa’s evolving relationship with spin to the improvement of the personnel involved. Put simply: “We didn’t come here with mediocre spinners,” as Kagiso Rabada said after the game, and he’s right.Related

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South Africa went to Pakistan with a clutch of the best spinners they have ever had. In Maharaj, who missed the first Test while he recovered from a groin injury, they have their country’s most successful Test spinner and the only one to 200 wickets. In Harmer, who made his return to international cricket after two-and-half-years, they have the only South African spinner with 1000 first-class wickets. Between them, Harmer and Maharaj have 402 first-class caps. Add Muthusamy and Subrayen, with limited international exposure but plenty at domestic level, and South Africa’s spinners had 595 matches worth of experience between them.”There’s a wealth of knowledge in our change room,” Maharaj told the broadcasters as he received the player of the match award.And it paid off. Maharaj, who took all five wickets as Pakistan’s lower order suffered a collapse of 5 for 17 in their first innings, has made his name on discipline and accuracy and this performance was no different. According to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, he delivered 301 of his 325 balls in the match on the stumps or just outside off which cramped the Pakistan batters for room and did not allow them to score freely. He conceded at under 2.5 runs per over through the match as Pakistan faced 705 dot balls (117.5 overs) in 163.1 overs, which was part of South Africa’s plan to frustrate and eventually be able to dismiss them.Simon Harmer completed his maiden five-wicket haul in the Rawalpindi Test•Associated Press”Against the Pakistan batters, you needed to take away their boundary options,” Harmer said. “They’re very good at using their feet and something that we spoke about. Even when the ball’s turning away from the bat, they’re not scared to step out and get to the pitch of the ball. Non-subcontinent players look to sweep first versus using their feet, especially against a ball turning away. So I think with the amount of spinners we had in the squad, we bounced ideas around, came up with plans and then I think bowling in partnerships, as you touched on, is extremely important. In the first test, we probably weren’t as good at that. We were leaking runs from one side. But then in this Test, we were able to sort of stop the game.”In Lahore, Pakistan faced 637 dot balls (106.1 overs) in 156.5 overs which is still a significant number but they scored at a run-rate of 3.47 compared to 2.88 in Rawalpindi. Some of that can be attributed to the slower nature of the Pindi surface, which turned less. That also meant South Africa’s spinners, not known as huge turners of the ball anyway, had to rely on something other than just spin to take wickets.Maharaj said he did it with consistency and flight. Harmer, whose second innings six-for set South Africa up to chase a small target to level the series, did it with changes of pace, something he refined on the county circuit. He has been in in the top 10 wicket-takers on the county championship in the last six seasons and was the leading wicket-taker in two of them (2019 and 2022).”Recently, I feel like the wickets in England have died a bit. They’ve lost their zip and pace. There’s a lot of times playing in Chelmsford where you get into a situation like that,” he said. “Through the series, the most dangerous ball has been a pace off, between 78 and 82 (kph) On this wicket, the quicker pace was the pace that got batters to commit on the front foot, and then you could use your slower ball to get them into trouble. My time in England has helped me with that, bowling on flat wickets where there’s not a lot happening. It’s about how you construct your overs, what you’re looking to do and what shots you want the batters to play.”An example was the ball that dismissed Saud Shakeel on the third day, before Pakistan had taken the lead. It was flighted generously by Harmer, and delivered at 79.7kph. Shakeel played a little early, tried to force it though the offside and got an edge for Aiden Markram to pouch at first slip. Maharaj’s wicket-taking balls too, were in that same pace range, including the final one at 82kph which drew Sajid Khan out of his crease, only to miss a swipe and be stumped.Senuran Muthusamy barely bowled in Rawalpindi after career-best figures in Lahore, but contributed with the bat•AFP/Getty ImagesMuthusamy barely featured with the ball in Pindi and bowled only four overs in each innings. The most likely explanation is because South Africa already had left-arm spin covered with Maharaj but Harmer confirmed they still “felt we needed the option,” even if they didn’t use it. Muthusamy made the case for being included as a batter alone with his 89 not out and wasn’t too concerned about his lack of contribution with the ball after taking a career-best 11-for in Lahore and ending as the Player of the Series.”This Test match meant a lot more because we won the game,” Muthusamy said on receiving his award. “The first Test was good. It was lovely to get a good few spells of bowling and to get a few wickets and contribute. In this Test, Kesh and Harmer bowled really well and they’re world-class operators. I just try to do my best when I get a go.”In the end, that’s what matters to South Africa. They got to this year’s WTC final thanks to contributions from different players in different matches and if they are to challenge for the next one, they want to know they have a pool of players who can do the same. They’ve always known they have the fast bowlers, they discovered batters aplenty in the last cycle, and this series has shown that they also have the spinners which will be important as early as next month.South Africa’s next stop is India, where they last won a Test in 2011, and have since been outspun on two disastrous tours in 2015 and 2019. They’re expecting similarly challenging surfaces but believe they have the resources to combat them.”The unit that is out here in these conditions is up there with the best in the world,” Aiden Markram said. “Generally, you think of South Africa as just a country of seamers with the odd spinner here and there. But in conditions like this, the guys that put their hands up and put in performances, it’s bloody exciting for us as a team to see.”