What will England’s 100-ball competition look like in 2025 after ‘Project Gemini’ is complete?

Matt Roller23-Jul-2024Fireworks, live music and a sold-out Oval crowd will herald the Hundred’s return on Tuesday, but there will be just as much interest in what is happening in the hospitality suites as on the pitch. The ECB plan to use the competition’s fourth season as a shop window for potential investors into the eight teams and have invited the “best in world sport” for a look.The governing body rejected a significant offer from a private equity firm, Bridgepoint Capital, to buy a controlling stake in the Hundred in late 2022 and have spent the past 18 months discussing the tournament’s future. Last year, they launched ‘Project Gemini’ to develop their preferred option: a revamped Hundred, with external investors buying stakes in the eight teams in time for the 2025 season.”We’ve seen a huge amount of demand from different kinds of investors,” says Vikram Banerjee, who is running the project as the ECB’s head of business operations. “I would really hope that we have a level of partnerships with some IPL teams… but at the same time, we’ve just sent out a document and a video to some NFL owners that explains what cricket is and what the rules are.”The sales process will not start until late this year but informal talks have been going on for months. Banerjee travelled to India earlier this year and has spoken to the owners of every IPL and WPL franchise “a number of times”. There is also interest further afield: “Interested parties have contacted us from Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, USA and India,” says Andrew Umbers, the co-founder of Oakwell Sports Advisory.Potential investors watching the 2024 edition will see that the Hundred has a solid base. It attracts strong crowds – around 580,000 tickets were sold last year, across 34 matchdays – and has support from both terrestrial (BBC) and subscription (Sky Sports) broadcasters, while the men’s and women’s double-headers have proved to be a hugely successful model.Related

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But it also has major issues: the first week of the men’s competition will play second-fiddle to England’s third Test against West Indies, and squads are further depleted by the final stages of Major League Cricket. “We can see who our competitors are in the English summer and we need to be in a position not just to compete but to win,” says Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief executive.”They’ll want to demonstrate that this is already a competition that’s attracting lots of new fans, and that if you are able to invest more in talent, it could be even bigger,” says Omar Chaudhuri of Twenty First Group, who worked with the ECB on the men’s high-performance review and the revamp of the women’s domestic game. “The pitch has to be: we’ve got this thing that is already good, and we can supercharge it and turn it into something really great with a little bit of money well spent.”Gould said there are “no active discussions” around changing the competition’s format – from 100 balls per side to T20 – but suggested that two new franchises are likely to be added from 2029, when a new broadcast rights cycle starts. “There is an ambition within the game that we would like to see the competition expand at some point,” he said.

How will the process work?

The ECB say that the formal process will begin in the first half of September, “building off that momentum that, hopefully, is created from the tournament,” Banerjee adds. They have appointed financial advisors in Deloitte, one of the ‘big four’ accountancy firms, and the Raine Group, the American bank involved in the recent sales of Chelsea to Todd Boehly and a minority stake in Manchester United to Jim Ratcliffe.The Hundred’s process will be significantly more complicated than recent precedents, such as the BCCI’s auction of two new IPL franchises in 2021. First, the ECB will hand 51% stakes to the eight Hundred ‘hosts’ – seven counties and, in the case of London Spirit, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Then, the hosts will decide whether they wish to sell some, all or none of their stake. Finally, bids will be invited from private investors.”It won’t be ‘everyone put a big number in an envelope, hand the envelope in, and the eight biggest numbers win,'” Banerjee says. “I’m not going to sit here and say that money’s not important, and we don’t want money coming in. Of course it is, and it’s an opportunity to create fantastic seed funding for the financial sustainability of the whole sport.”But alongside that, how are they going to support English cricket? We’ve got a process that will last three months that will ask partners for, yes, numbers and financials, but also all these qualitative things… it’s a bit more complicated, but the reason for the complication is to ensure we have the right outcome for English cricket in the long term.”The ECB want to process finished in time for the 2025 season•ECB/Getty Images

Slow progress

The ECB’s ambition is to have the details finalised ahead of next year’s draft, but there have already been frustrations with the process from prospective investors. The reported last week that interest had cooled due to a lack of clarity; Gould said it was “fascinating” to see potential buyers trying “to negotiate through the media”. One source told ESPNcricinfo: “The ECB have screwed up, haven’t they?”Some hosts have already held meaningful talks with prospective buyers but the key question is around control, whether that relates to branding, commercial opportunities, naming rights, or cricket operations. “One of the biggest things for any investor, in any sport, is governance and the route to actually getting things done,” Chaudhuri explains.”As much as you can grow the value of your own club through performance, there’s a lot you rely on outside that, with what the league or the governing body is doing. That is hard to do due diligence on: you could speak to people at a county and get a sense of whether you can work with them, but it’s very hard to get a sense of what that looks like across every other team.”Some prospective investors are unclear whether they should be speaking more to counties or to the ECB itself. “They need to be clear on the process and explain where the value is in English cricket,” Umbers says. “They have to detail how governance will surround these new ownership structures, and that the process of sale is going to be determined by the ECB and not the first-class counties.”

The missing one percent

The prospect of owning a minority stake in a franchise – with Surrey among the hosts to indicate they intend to retain their 51% – may not prove attractive to owners. An official at one IPL franchise told ESPNcricinfo that they had no real interest in spending tens of millions of pounds simply to become a “passive investor” with no meaningful control over a team.”It’s going to be a massive challenge for any of these investors not to have a majority stake,” says Adam Sommerfeld, the managing partner of Certus Capital who advise private equity firms on sports investments. “The question will be, can private equity get the returns that they need from these assets? They’re not going to get five-times returns on it.”But hosts could also propose a model where a 49% stakeholder still takes a significant level of control, whether that be over cricketing operations or naming rights and branding. There is recent precedent for this in England’s Premier League: Jim Ratcliffe and his company Ineos own 27.7% of Manchester United, but control the club’s football operations.”You are going to see some different structures of first-class counties separating commercial and economic control,” Umbers says. “You are less attracted to invest in any company or franchise if you are not able to influence where the monies are being spent. That’s why there will be different structures: you see this all the time in private equity in sport, for example with CVC in rugby.”Will IPL owners want to become minority stakeholders in Hundred teams?•Getty Images for ECB

What is a franchise worth?

There will be a significant disparity between the prices of the eight franchises depending on where they are based: clearly, there will be more parties interested in owning a team based at an iconic venue in London which seats 30,000 people (London Spirit) than at a stadium half the size in Cardiff (Welsh Fire). Umbers estimates that the franchises – taking a 100% valuation – could be worth anywhere between £30-120 million.Yet in the short term, teams’ revenue will come primarily from central broadcast income and the draft will ensure that costs are fixed. It means that the smaller teams could prove to be the shrewdest investments. “There’s a big difference between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ leagues,” Chaudhuri says. “In a closed league, revenues are generally distributed pretty evenly and there’s no potential downside of relegation.”That means if you acquire a smaller brand, you have the opportunity to turn it into a much bigger one: there’s no real downside to getting things wrong if you experiment a bit more. A really smart investor could buy Welsh Fire or Southern Brave for a lower price and say, ‘we are really going to double down on performance here, because our brand is not going to carry us globally’ – and that could prove to be quite profitable.”The early indications are that around half of the eight Hundred franchises could have investment from IPL owners, with Reliance – who own Mumbai Indians – said to be early favourites to buy a stake in London Spirit. “Ideally, you’d want a group of owners that not only have the ability to invest in and grow their own teams, but also have the desire to work together and collaborate,” Chaudhuri says.The ECB are also conscious of avoiding a single franchise becoming too dominant and powerful, with Banerjee citing the example of Manchester City in the Premier League. “We can learn from that and go, how do we put those protections and controls in place now to make sure that those [things] don’t happen? That’s the work I’m doing at the moment… we can learn from all the different sports around the world.”London Spirit are expected to be the most valuable franchise•Alex Davidson/Getty Images

The women’s Hundred

Even the Hundred’s harshest critics would not contest that it has accelerated the growth of women’s cricket in England and Wales. “The Hundred has helped provide an outstanding platform to boost the visibility of the women’s game, and given more opportunities to showcase exceptional female athletes,” says Tammy Parlour, the CEO of the Women’s Sport Trust.The Trust’s research found that 1.3 million people – around one-fifth of the Hundred’s total TV audience in the UK – only watched games in the women’s competition, and indicated this could be even higher with access to primetime slots. “Games broadcast in the evening have received more viewers than those shown in the afternoon,” Parlour says. “Visibility drives engagement, so it’s important that women’s sport is given access to more of these prominent platforms.”Umbers believes that the double-header model is “incredibly appealing” to prospective buyers. “The investors we have been speaking to are absolutely interested in, and want to back, the growth of women’s cricket within the Hundred,” he says. Chaudhuri, meanwhile, believes that a genuine interest in the women’s competition must be “a red line” for potential owners.

Why now?

Within three seasons, the Hundred has gone from competing for talent with one other men’s short-form league between July and September to three, with MLC and Canada’s relaunched Global T20 joining the pre-existing CPL. “We need to be able to ensure that we retain our best players,” Gould says. “If we were to delay too much, others may end up stealing a march on us that would be to our disadvantage.”Banerjee believes cricket is experiencing “a moment” that makes it particularly attractive to investors. “If you take a step back, globally, cricket’s in a really great place… we need to move – and move relatively quickly – to make sure that we have that truly world-class, global tournament. That comes with investment into tribalism and investment into those players.”England’s home international season also underlines why the ECB invested in the Hundred in the first place: in both the women’s and men’s games, the relatively weak line-up of touring teams has seen English cricket struggle to attract much interest outside of its core fanbase, particularly while competing against European Championship football and, next month, the Olympics.Pat Cummins chose Major League Cricket over the Hundred•MLC”If there aren’t meaningful narratives in the international game then it is hard for fans to stay engaged,” Chaudhuri says. “In the domestic game, you have more ability to engineer things by attracting top talent through salaries, ensuring competitive balance… you can make sure that your product stays healthy. It’s much harder to do that in the international game if it’s not a summer where India or Australia are here for a Test series.”The ECB have also watched other boards miss opportunities to attract private investment. “The Hundred is going to be ahead of every other tournament outside the IPL,” Shane Watson, the former Australia allrounder, tells ESPNcricinfo. “Good on them for having the foresight to try and get some of the smartest people in world sport involved who really know how to grow it.”Watson has been hugely frustrated by Cricket Australia’s reluctance to follow the same course of action with the Big Bash League. “They should have done it six years ago, minimum,” he says. “Things were going incredibly well, and then the powers that be butchered it by putting too many games on and extending the season. They’re trying to reel that back, but the horse has already bolted.”English cricket has already had that experience with short-form cricket once before: the ECB brought T20 to the professional game in 2003, but lacked the vision for it that India showed in launching the IPL five years later. The Hundred’s sale process is not only an attempt to raise funds, but to avoid repeating the same old mistakes.

They have a clear philosophy, and they’ve managed to assemble a squad that is as close to bomb-proof as any can get in the fickle world of T20

Karthik Krishnaswamy25-May-20242:32

Are KKR favourites going into the IPL final?

Kolkata Knight Riders vs Sunrisers Hyderabad. You couldn’t wish for a more fitting end to IPL 2024. It’s been a season of redrawn boundaries, and these two teams have done the bulk of the redrawing. Eight of the ten highest totals in IPL history have come in 2024, and these two teams have been responsible for five of those eight totals.Over the course of the season, though, a difference between the two teams has become more and more apparent. SRH have batted with whirlwind intent despite having reasons to temper their approach: they possess arguably the most dangerous top order in the competition, but on days when they lose early wickets, issues with personnel and depth can hurt them.KKR haven’t had those issues. Their squad is designed to allow their batters to throw away every last vestige of caution. As they firmed up their place at the top of the league table, distancing themselves further and further from the chasing pack, it became clearer and clearer that they had built a squad that was as close to bomb-proof as any can get in the fickle world of T20.Related

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No matter what happens on Sunday at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, it’s unarguable that KKR have assembled one of the strongest squads in IPL history, not just from the point of view of personnel but also from that of laying out a template for franchises to learn from.None of it happened overnight, because this has been the culmination of a long-term project.More of the same, but better
KKR finished seventh on the league table in IPL 2022 and 2023. In both seasons, they gave off the sense of a team trying to play in an idealistic sort of way without quite having the resources to pull it off consistently. They were, to put it simply, an inferior version of what SRH have been in 2024.Right through this auction cycle – and even the previous one, when Eoin Morgan and Dinesh Karthik captained them – KKR have batted in a markedly high-intent way. They have the highest attacking shot percentage (45.08)* of any team this season, and they’ve only carried on from where they left off in 2022 and 2023. Their attacking shot percentage over those two seasons (41.50) was also the best in the league. Delhi Capitals and SRH have batted like KKR this season, but it’s a relatively new way of playing for both teams. This isn’t the case for KKR.This is in huge part down to the two world-class West Indian allrounders in their squad, Narine and Andre Russell. Which other team can call upon a four-over banker who also happens to be one of the most destructive openers in the tournament, as well as one of the league’s most dangerous and experienced finishers who can deliver high-impact overs in the middle and death phases when required?Because KKR have Narine and Russell, and because of the luxury of the Impact Player, they can enter match after match with eight batters and six bowlers. And if they happen to slip to 57 for 5, as they did against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede, they can call a ninth batter off the bench without hampering their bowling.When you’re batting in a line-up with that sort of depth, you have no reason to hold back.Plug the gaps
For all the intent KKR showed in 2022 and 2023, there were clear weaknesses running through their line-up. One that a number of bowling teams exploited was a vulnerability against the short ball that ran through their line-up. Take this chase of 177 against Lucknow Super Giants on a bouncy Pune deck in 2022: Mohsin Khan, Dushmantha Chameera, Avesh Khan and Jason Holder ripped through their top order in a spell of concerted short bowling and reduced them to 25 for 4 in 6.5 overs.That was only the extreme example of KKR’s frailties. Against short and short-of-good-length balls from fast bowlers, they had the worst scoring rate (7.67) and average (17.47) of any team across the 2022 and 2023 seasons.Flexibility
KKR have only used three No. 3s this season, usually either Venkatesh (six innings) or Angkrish Raghuvanshi (seven). Shreyas has been their No. 4 more often than not (10 out of 14 innings), but they’ve been a lot less rigid with who bats at No. 5 (Venkatesh, Shreyas and Rinku Singh have all occupied that position at least three times, No. 6 (usually either Rinku or Russell) and No. 7 (Ramandeep seven times, and Rinku and Venkatesh a combined five times).You may have spotted the pattern: KKR have tried to have left-right pairs at the crease whenever possible. Among all the right- and left-hand batters they have, they’ve also assembled a good mix of pace-hitters and spin-hitters. Ramandeep, Russell, Salt, Narine, Venkatesh, Raghuvanshi and Rinku have all scored 95-plus runs against pace this season at 150-plus strike rates, while Narine and Shreyas have done the same against spin, with Russell, Salt and Ramandeep also going at 140-plus without achieving the runs cut-off.At most times, then, KKR have been able to send out the right batter for the situation and match-up in play.Get the bowling right
This section is worth a standalone analysis, because KKR, for everything they’ve done with the bat, have arguably been the best bowling team of this IPL too. They have the best collective average (22.94) of all the teams, and the third-best economy rate (9.39), which is particularly remarkable because unlike the two teams that have done better than them, Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings, KKR have played most of their home games at one of this season’s most batting-friendly venues.Mitchell Starc with a whole season’s worth of tuning up behind him – always a scary proposition•AFP/Getty ImagesSix of their bowlers, remarkably, have picked up at least 10 wickets this season, and this has been a triumph of identifying players with attributes suited to specific roles, and sticking with them. The same six bowlers have played the bulk of KKR’s games, and they all have well-defined roles. Mitchell Starc and Vaibhav Arora swing the new ball; Harshit Rana and Russell hit the deck and bowl pace variations through the middle and end phases, with Starc joining them at the death; and Narine and Varun Chakravarthy control the middle overs.Most of them have experienced fluctuations in form, with Starc and Varun in particular starting the season slowly. But KKR haven’t chopped and changed even when bowlers have had bad days, unless they’ve brought in Anukul Roy or Suyash Sharma when they’ve felt the need for an extra spin option.This has created a situation where bowlers have grown into their roles, and gained rhythm. When Starc bowled a match-changing spell in Qualifier 1 against SRH, a chorus of voices spoke of his big-match ability, comparing this performance to his displays in the knockout stages of last year’s ODI World Cup. Then too, he had made a slow start to the tournament before bowling influential spells for Australia in the semi-finals and final. Big-match ability is one of those woolly, hard-to-define, quasi-spiritual concepts that may or may not exist in a meaningful way. It’s easier, however, to say that given a run of games, elite athletes tend to gain both rhythm and a better understanding of conditions, and begin to deliver telling blows.This is true not just of Starc but the rest of KKR’s line-up too. Over this three-year cycle, KKR have established a clear philosophy, and they’ve tried to work out a combination of players that could make it work. It’s taken a while to come together, but it has now, to thrilling effect.*

They hadn’t conquered Asia since 2014, and following their series win in Bangladesh, South Africa are setting sights on higher honours

Firdose Moonda31-Oct-2024It still matters. Winning away from home matters. Winning in the subcontinent matters. Doing both those things as a country that is now seen as one of the Test nations matters most of all, as South Africa have just experienced.Don’t buy into the talk that it’s only Bangladesh, a place where South Africa have never lost a Test and look at the bigger picture. For the last ten years, the subcontinent has been all but insurmountable. Between September 2014 and September 2024, Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa and West Indies collectively played 35 series in the subcontinent and won just six. Of those, England were responsible for three series (Sri Lanka 2018 and 2021 and Pakistan in 2022) while South Africa lost all four series they played.To be able to finally change that is something South Africa’s stand-in captain Aiden Markram described in an understated way as “very special,” while also recognising the significance it has in serving as a marker of progress.”For us as a group of players, we’ve never won a game or a series in the subcontinent so that makes it very special. It’s been a tough journey at times and to slowly be progressing is a really good thing for us,” he said.Related

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The last time South Africa conquered Asia was in 2014, at the latter end of a dream run that saw them go nine years unbeaten on the road. At the time, Markram was fresh off captaining the under-19 side to the age-group title in the UAE and the future looked bright. They didn’t know it then, but things were already changing.Big-name retirements started with Jacques Kallis in 2013 and every year since then someone else who was considered essential to success stepped away. As recently as last December, former captain and stalwart opener Dean Elgar called it a day which means South Africa have been in transition for almost ten years. The subcontinent became an impossible place to win as South Africa experienced in India in 2015 and 2019, in Sri Lanka in 2018 and in Pakistan in 2021. Of course, it’s not as though SENA countries hadn’t been making use of their own home advantage for decades so they had nothing to complain about, but it didn’t make the losses hurt any less.South Africa’s batting has paid the highest price for that. Since May 2018, they do have a single Test batter with an average over 40 which includes all of the current squad. Tony de Zorzi, thanks to his 177, and David Bedingham, with a hundred and three fifties, are close but both have only played eight Tests.What that means is that South Africa didn’t often have hundreds, which is something they had to play down and Markram is still singing from that hymn book.”As for numbers, it’s all quite relative. You look at different surfaces that you play on, wickets around the world are so different from each other and have so many different types of challenges that you face as a batter so it can be tough to pump that average up but we don’t speak about numbers,” Markram said. “We just speak about making an impact on the game and there can be a time where scoring 60 or 70 is match-winning and then there will be times where big hundreds runs are match-winning.”In this series, the latter was the case. From Kyle Verreynne in Mirpur to de Zorzi, Tristan Stubbs and Wiaan Mulder in Chittagong, South Africa’s wins were built on big runs which gave their attack a lot to work with. And while there is some sense in what Markram said in that an individual stacking up hundreds may not necessarily equate to a successful team, he also recognised the need for a collective progression in performance.”I’m certainly not too fazed about numbers and I don’t think the rest of the guys are either. It’s one of those things that will take care of itself if you put in good performances consistently. Naturally the numbers will lift. We’re all definitely striving towards that but trying to be more consistent and trying to have a good impact on the game.”With South Africa’s batters focused on the efficacy and not the amount of their runs, it was hardly surprising to hear the leader of their attack, Kagiso Rabada, also play down his own importance. Asked about being back at No.1 on the ICC rankings or taking 300 wickets in his post-match interview, Rabada glossed over that the game “moves on”.Aiden Markram believes South Africa have the players required to reach the WTC final•AFP/Getty Images”You have to keep working hard. don’t look at where I am on the rankings,” he said, acknowledging it is a “good motivator to keep going.” His highest praise was for his team-mates, who he said are all “willing to put their hands up,” to drive success.And they can see the rewards in front of them. Despite playing fewer Tests than almost anyone else in this cycle, they’re in with a chance of making the final. They see the potential to make that happen as brimming with possibility. “We don’t really know what the ceiling is because we haven’t managed to lift the trophy,” Markram said.That’s also one way of South Africa looking at their empty accolades cupboard and wondering whether it will ever fill up. They’ve taken the approach that the things they are capable of are still coming and this year has shown them that.They reached the final of the T20 World Cup in June and now their chance to reach the WTC final lies in their hands. It’s proof that something is working, that the talent pool is starting to play to their potential and that maybe, the impossible could become possible.”We believe that we have the players in the country to be able to do so but by no means will it be easy,” Markram said. “The journey itself has been incredibly difficult but worth the fight, worth the hours, worth the sacrifice. That’s pretty much how we see it.”

It’s been a week or so of amazing sporting success for the country, but what the Black Caps did in Bengaluru and then Pune might have no equal

Alagappan Muthu27-Oct-20241:52

Manjrekar: Beating India in two different conditions is a remarkable feat

Tom Latham, this is your fault.In polite society, which this somehow still is (so long as you don’t turn on the news), we have the good sense not to talk about feet. That’s what the internet and a locked door is for. Not live TV. But no. You had to go and say – actually wait, first you had to go and do what you did in Bengaluru, then you topped it by going and doing what you did in Pune, and then you say stuff like wanting to “stay where our feet are” as if that’s meant to convey modesty and level-headedness? Do you know where New Zealand feet have been over the past week or so?Suzie Bates’ were supposed to be taking her into the team bus in Dubai but they just wouldn’t stop dancing the monkey. Back and forth and back and forth she went, over a red carpet, with a T20 World Cup winner’s medal around her neck and a lifetime’s supply of joy on her face.Related

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Peter Burling and Greg Dalton’s were up on a podium in Barcelona lifting the America’s Cup, a high-speed yachting competition that is 173 years old and has been dominated by New Zealand. They completed a three-peat, the 2024 win backing up those from 2017 and 2021, on a boat named and blessed by the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei tribe.Hayden Wilde’s were pounding the gravel in Torremolinos, Spain, where he finished the World Triathlon Championship Series finale a minute ahead of his nearest rival. (Great Britain’s Alex Yee won the title though, across the three legs.)New Zealand feet were doing amazing things all over the world. But in India, they were breaking brand-new ground. It has been 4331 days since a visiting side has been able to come here and win a Test series. Steven Smith has tried. Ben Stokes has tried. AB de Villiers has tried. Kane Williamson has tried. And though some of them have had sporadic success, sustaining it proved to be too difficult.The New Zealand players rejoice after their first Test series win in India•BCCIPune 2017, Hyderabad 2024, Delhi 2015 – all of these matches witnessed an extraordinary level of planning, effort, execution and a necessary amount of luck. Australia plucked a spinner from out of nowhere and were pleasantly surprised when he took as many wickets as R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja combined. England brought in two novices on a hunch that their high release points could cause problems. South Africa batted with otherworldly determination and even then the best they could ever hope for was a draw. This is the extent to which India – both its conditions and its team – push their oppositions.In Bengaluru, they threatened to overturn 46 all out. In Pune, they polished off almost a third of their target at better than a run a ball. “We knew they’d come out hot, didn’t realise they were going to come that hot,” Latham said.Coping with a game slipping through the fingers is hard, but if it happens at home, you just might have a chance. At least there aren’t quite as many unknowns to deal with and there are potentially previous instances to draw from, going right back down to domestic and age-group cricket. Mitchell Santner couldn’t have had too many reference points for what he had to do over these past few days because he’s rarely had occasion to be a lead bowler at first-class level. His other teams have needed him so scarcely that he’s bowled 30 overs or less in 23 of 34 matches – 12 of those 23 were stints of 15 overs or less – and he’s actually gone three games without bowling at all.And yet, there he somehow was, responsible for 13 of the 20 Indian wickets that fell. At one point on Saturday he had his name on every dismissal, doing a more than passable impression of Richard Hadlee in Brisbane 1985-86, when he picked up 15 for 123 and scarred Australia so deeply that the next time New Zealand travelled to the Gabba they were allotted the home dressing room. Danny Morrison even remembers John Bracewell having a laugh about it. “Oh, look at that. Superstition.”In 66 years of trying, New Zealand had won only two Tests in India. Now they have two in less than two weeks. There is almost nothing the equal of this achievement in their history. Even that win (2-1) over big brother, which they prize above all else, came against an Australian line-up that was rebuilding after the retirements of Dennis Lillee, Greg Chappell and Rod Marsh. This feels bigger. The only one of Hadlee’s stature in this team was out injured and they beat a full-strength India.1:51

How did Santner succeed when Jadeja struggled?

The first ever triple-century by a New Zealander brought the entire country together. Brendon McCullum had been batting for two days when the toll of going against his nature started to weigh him down. He began to play and miss against the third new ball. Then he left one. And a packed-to-the-rafters Basin Reserve roared with all its might. McCullum felt them. He was grateful for them. This feels bigger because they weren’t here.There is similar emotion attached to the Test Championship in 2021 – the Black Caps’ first world title (unless you count the Champions Trophy in its ICC KnockOut avatar back in 2000). They got there after losing four of their first five matches but winning the next six back-to-back – one of them a cult classic, where again Santner, the fourth bowler that they turned to, picked up the final Pakistan wicket with less than five overs to stumps. From there, they went to the final and Southampton was no different to Wellington. Their key players – Williamson, Latham, Devon Conway, Ross Taylor, Tim Southee, Trent Boult, Kyle Jamieson, Neil Wagner – knew what to do and when they returned home they were whisked away on a week-long, nation-wide celebration. This feels bigger because the conditions were so different to what they’re used to.Plus, they had an iffy build-up, a captain having to accept that maybe he wasn’t helping the team and their best source of runs stuck thousands of miles away from where he could be useful. Even just one of those hurdles tends to be too much when on tour. But perhaps that’s where Latham and his foot stuff came in handy.The New Zealand players have every reason to be pleased•AFP/Getty ImagesNew Zealand stayed level, looked inward and they found a prodigy who hasn’t got nearly as many chances as he could have because he’s been in the shadow of greats. Will Young was outstanding in the second innings of the first Test when he stood up to Jasprit Bumrah. They were grateful to a wicketkeeper batter who made a call and a commitment to turn himself into an offspinner. Glenn Phillips bowled 68 overs in Sri Lanka and 37 overs in India. They have a contender for the next Fab Four. Rachin Ravindra could not have looked more at home despite playing against the best in the world. Their most famous benchwarmer has become a hard-hitting frontliner. Matt Henry is the one that needs to get injured now for someone else to get in the XI. And they’re all led by a man who makes a fabulous flat white but he also does this one other thing.”Tom Latham showed a lot of batters who don’t trust their defence as much and are looking to play unorthodox shots, something to surprise the bowler and thereby try and survive,” Sanjay Manjrekar said on ESPNcricinfo’s Match Day after he made the seventh-highest score (86) by a visiting batter in the second innings in India over the last 12 years.”He showed subtle skills. A couple of times, when he misread the length, he was still down the pitch, but didn’t commit himself too much and waited and then with the turn played the ball on the off side. Now those are the subtle skills that were a given in the olden days. Now its hard hands and committing to a shot very early. Tom Latham showed that game along with how he went after Ashwin very early, lofted him down the pitch, played the sweep shot, excellent sort of calculated risk, but most importantly it was amazing that a Kiwi batter showed a lot of Indian batters the subtle skills [needed] to survive and get runs.”New Zealand benefited from the toss both times – when it did fall in their favour and when it didn’t. That’s luck bordering on destiny. Forty-six all out played a big part in India feeling like they had no choice but to take extreme measures, especially with WTC points at stake. The pitch in Pune was meant to play to their strength but what it did was reduce the gap between the two teams. And this week that was just tempting fate.

The 17-year-old made his maiden first-class century playing his third game, against Maharashtra in the Ranji Trophy

Vishal Dikshit18-Oct-2024The Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) isn’t like the rest of Mumbai. In a city where poverty and opulence co-exist without any tangible borders, the BKC is an upmarket commercial hub embellished with offices of multinational companies, high rises adorned by modern-day reflective glass, five-star hotels, upscale restaurants and lavish offices of some of the top banks of the country. Against the backdrop of a metro, its chaos and congestion, this place feels as if it was planted there like a drop-in pitch.And in the middle of this swanky complex stood a 17-year-old boy on Friday who was a bit different to everybody that was around him too. He had been toiling in the scorching sun for close to four hours, sweating to earn each and every run for his team, getting his whites dirty, and physically proving his worth surrounded by people much older – some twice his age.Ayush Mhatre’s face still has a boyish roundness to it. It was hard to miss when he took his helmet off after scoring his maiden century in only his third first-class game and held his arms aloft facing the Mumbai dressing room.Mhatre is the latest from Mumbai’s production line that rolls out promising youngsters ever ready to step up when the first-choice players are unavailable. Two years ago, when the likes of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Sarfaraz Khan were away for national duty for the last couple of seasons, a 17-year-old Musheer Khan made his Ranji Trophy debut. And now when Musheer is out injured after a car accident last month, another 17-year-old has stepped in in his place, almost like he was packed and ready in a warehouse in BKC.Mhatre embodies the struggle of the average Mumbaikar. To chase his cricket dreams, he has had to travel nearly 80 kilometers one way by train from Virar (outside Mumbai) to Churchgate (next to Wankhede Stadium) to access the famed and cricket coaches. He was always supported by his parents to pursue this dream, and it was his (maternal grandfather) and then his (father’s younger brother) who chaperoned him on his journey into the city so he could have it all.Mhatre took the game up when he was five, but it was at 15 that he really began to think that the runs he was piling up in school and club cricket could be done professionally. His personal highest score stands at 254 not out, in a private tournament, and he “gained a lot of confidence” in playing the Kalpesh Koli Under-16 tournament in Mumbai. By December 2023, he had made it to Mumbai’s Under-23 squad for the CK Nayudu Trophy and was also named in MCA’s Under-19 team of the year for 2023-24.Ayush Mhatre is unbeaten on 127 against Maharashtra•PTI At the start of this season, still in Class XII, Mhatre had an inkling that a Mumbai call-up was coming. He was asked to take part in the red-ball KSCA Thimmappiah Tournament, which several players use to tune up for the start of a new Ranji season. There, he smashed 173 against Gujarat and 52 in the next game opposite Andhra. He also started prepping for the challenges fast bowling could throw at him in first-class cricket by batting against plastic balls on tiles with Prashant Shetty, who has coached many Mumbai players including Prithvi Shaw and Jemimah Rodrigues. Eventually, when the call came for the Irani Cup clash against Rest of India, after Musheer had met with an accident, Mhatre was mentally ready.”I was surprised, but there was no pressure, I was excited,” he said on Friday.Mhatre scored 19 and 14 against the likes of Mukesh Kumar and Yash Dayal, and as soon as the Ranji Trophy season started, he took no time to register his maiden first-class half-century against Baroda, top-scoring with 52 on a spicy surface in Mumbai’s first innings when only one other team-mate crossed 30.On Friday, batting on his home turf, after Maharashtra had been bowled out for just 126, Mhatre saw off the new ball while Shaw and Hardik Tamore fell cheaply, and he stitched useful partnerships with his captain Ajinkya Rahane and Shreyas Iyer to power the score past 200.He reveres his Mumbai senior Rohit Sharma – also from the suburbs – for his trademark pulls and timing, and almost as a tribute to him, Mhatre pulled a short ball so handsomely towards the Bank of America building towering over the ground that the Mumbai dressing room erupted in applause. He seems comfortable off both the front and the back foot – the straight bat drives and the confident cuts showed as much. There was rarely a lull when he was at the crease, his strike rate hovering around 75 as he brought up a half-century off 63 balls and his century off 133 balls. Eighty of his 127 runs came on the off side.”The first hundred is always special,” he said after the day’s play. “I was confident which kept building in this innings.”Mhatre said Rahane coached him through a 99-run stand for the third wicket by setting “small targets of five runs at a time,” before he batted “calmly” with Iyer in an unbroken partnership of 97 as the field spread out and the baking sun made the pitch more batting friendly. Even at this nascent stage of his career, he understands he can’t get carried away even if he loves to attack.”I have to play with control, play according to what the situation demands, that’s what the team expects from me.”Mhatre has started with a bang, he has lived up to the promise he had shown in age-group cricket, and now he will want to stay true to the character of a promising Mumbai batter and really make it big.

The unrest has affected the training of the various national teams and there is uncertainty over the women’s T20 World Cup in October

Mohammad Isam07-Aug-2024First, what’s going on in Bangladesh?It started as a students’ protest against a contentious job-quota rule, and built up, largely in response to the government’s attempts at suppression, into a huge political uprising, resulting in perhaps the worst incidents of violence in the history of the country since its liberation in 1971. Prime minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and flew to India on Monday. It ended the 15-year rule of the Awami League. The country’s army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman met with president Mohammad Shahabuddin to form an interim government even as the world saw images of people looting and vandalising properties belonging to Hasina and her family, as well as those belonging to the government. Statues of the “father of the nation”, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, also Hasina’s father, were desecrated and demolished.Cricket might not be the most important thing at the moment then, but still, how has it been impacted?The Bangladesh senior men’s team is expected to leave for Pakistan on August 16 but several of their training sessions couldn’t be held. The BCB and PCB operations departments are in touch, and the departure date hasn’t changed.The Bangladesh A team players and management offer prayers for the deceased in the anti-government protests•BCBThe Bangladesh men’s A team was scheduled to leave for Islamabad on Tuesday but couldn’t since the Dhaka airport was shut on Monday. The team will travel to Islamabad on 10 August, instead, which was scheduled to be the first day of the series, and the matches will begin from August 13.*The Bangladesh women’s team’s training was also disrupted. They have recently returned from Sri Lanka, where they reached the semi-final of the Asia Cup, and were preparing for the T20 World Cup, which will be held in the country in October. Dhaka and Sylhet are the venues for the T20 World Cup, but hosting the ten-team event remains a concern.India, Sri Lanka and the UAE are in the shortlist for back-up venues in case the ICC is forced to shift the World Cup out of Bangladesh.Does the change in government mean a change in…The BCB? Yes, quite likely. BCB’s next elections are only in October 2025. But given the highly politicised nature of the board’s makeup, it is tough to see any of the directors, especially president Nazmul Hassan, returning to the Mirpur office.There are other issues too. Nazmul has also been Bangladesh’s sports minister since early 2024. Shafiul Alam Chowdhury, the BCB director, became an Awami League MP in the 2024 general elections. Several other board directors have political connections as well – including former MPs Naimur Rahman and AJM Nasir Uddin and directors Sheikh Sohel and Nazib Ahmed, Hasina’s cousins.None of them were available, at least on their phones, since the fall of the government on August 5.BCB boss Nazmul Hassan’s whereabouts are unknown at the moment•BCBWhat’s the update on Nazmul?There are conflicting reports. We heard from one source that he had left the country, but there are also reports – all unconfirmed – that he is in Bangladesh. His ancestral home in Kishoreganj was vandalised, but he wasn’t there. As such, he lives in Dhaka in a house known for holding important press conferences related to Bangladesh cricket.Will the BCB have an interim set-up too? Or we don’t know yet?The National Sports Council had formed interim or ad-hoc committees to run the BCB in 2007 and in 2013. On the first occasion, it was during the rule of a caretaker government at the centre. In 2013, it was formed between the presidencies of AHM Mustafa Kamal and Nazmul Hassan, who became the first elected president of BCB later that year.Anything we say on the future of the BCB right now will be speculative at best. There is some worry about how the ICC interprets the situation. Last year, the ICC had suspended Sri Lanka Cricket for two months for violation of responsibilities as an ICC member, in particular, “the requirement to manage its affairs autonomously and ensure that there is no government interference in the governance, regulation and/or administration of cricket in Sri Lanka”.They lost the right to host the Under-19 World Cup as a result, but they were allowed to play international cricket. How the ICC interprets Bangladesh’s situation is going to be interesting to see as the PCB, too, has had a few changes to their president in recent years, and none through an electoral process.Shakib Al Hasan is currently playing in the Global T20 Canada•MLCWhat about Shakib Al Hasan – his position is impacted too, right?One couldn’t tell from Shakib Al Hasan’s on-field performance in the Global T20 Canada that, in his first term as a member of parliament, his party has been toppled in such dramatic fashion. He led Bangla Tigers Mississauga to a two-wicket win over Surrey Jaguars on Monday, winning the Player-of-the-Match award, hours after the government fell in Dhaka.There were videos going around on social media showing several Bangladeshis abusing Shakib after the match. He was also seen in an argument with a Bangladeshi fan during his previous match in Brampton after he had been asked about his silence on the crisis back home.Shakib, who was in Bangladesh for a few days after the T20 World Cup ended in June, has been playing in the MLC and the Global T20 Canada since early July. He has made himself available for the two Tests against Pakistan. He remains one of the country’s top cricketers but whether the political situation impacts his future as an international cricketer or not is unknown.How about Mashrafe Mortaza – he is an Awami League MP and a youth icon?Mashrafe Mortaza’s silence on the students’ movement also did not sit well with many. He was known for his salt-of-the-earth persona in his years as a player and later as Bangladesh’s captain from 2014 to 2020. His decision to venture into politics in 2018 was met with mixed reactions. At that time, Mashrafe became the first active international cricketer to be a member of parliament. On Monday, his parents’ home back in Narail was set on fire.Will Mashrafe return to public life as a politician? We don’t know. Both Mashrafe and Shakib, two of Bangladesh cricket’s biggest icons, being silent through the past few weeks at a time of crisis for Bangladesh might have hurt their reputation.

Australia are still in control of the game, but the clouds of doubt have reappeared on the horizon for them

Alex Malcolm28-Dec-20241:31

Boland: ‘We’re still in a pretty strong position but could’ve been better’

In the glorious sunshine on a Saturday morning in Melbourne, Australia were in control of the game. Nathan Lyon had just pinned Ravindra Jadeja lbw to leave India 221 for 7, 253 behind with two days and two sessions remaining.Five hours later, Nitish Kumar Reddy walked off the MCG to a standing ovation from 83,073 people, unbeaten on 105 and India’s innings still 116 runs behind but alive and kicking, as the dark clouds of a rainstorm rolled in to end play early.From the brightness of the horizon to the impending gloom was an apt metaphor for Australia against India in recent years.Related

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They are still in control of the game, with two full days of set fair weather to come. But the clouds of doubt have appeared. They shouldn’t be there, but they are because they have seen this movie before. In Brisbane in 2021 and in Delhi in 2023 they were in control of the game, until lower-order century stands dragged India back into the contest and to eventual victory.It was noted yesterday after Steven Smith and Pat Cummins’ exemplary stand, that Australia had only produced four century stands for the seventh or lower wicket in the last ten years. India have produced four in the last four years against Australia alone. Only one other team, England, have managed one in that time against this Australian attack.The same man has been involved in two of them. Washington Sundar named his dog after the Gabba, having made 62 on debut in a 123-run seventh-wicket stand with Shardul Thakur that turned that game India’s way.Can you call a second dog MCG? He could do whatever he likes if India win from here following his 50 in a 127-run eighth-wicket stand with Reddy.The other lower-order century stands were produced by Axar Patel and R Ashwin in Delhi in 2023 and Thakur and Ajinkya Rahane in the World Test Championship final at The Oval only months later against this exact Australian bowling quartet of Cummins, Lyon, Mitchell Starc and Scott Boland. The only difference is that Mitchell Marsh is the allrounder at the MCG in place of the injured Cameron Green. That was the only one of the four that hasn’t cost them the game so far.2:10

Washington: Nitish’s hundred ‘will be remembered forever’

This one shouldn’t either. But how and why it keeps happening should be concerning to this Australian side.To be fair to Australia, they did exactly the same with the bat on day one. Two lower-order century stands, both against the second new ball, might point to an excessively flat pitch. But a man who knows MCG pitches would disagree.”I think it started off with a fair bit of nip in it, still a little bit of nip there at the moment,” Boland said. “Not as consistent as I’d like as a bowler, but I think it’s going to be a pretty good Test match wicket.”Boland knows a truly flat MCG pitch when he sees one, having played Sheffield Shield cricket in the pre-Matt Page era. The ongoing issues he manages in his left knee could well have resulted from slamming it repeatedly into the slab of concrete that used to sit underneath the drop-in trays here prior to 2018.Australia’s bowlers have been doing the heavy lifting for the team in recent times, but the repetitive nature of these stands against this opponent speaks to a couple of issues.India’s ability to nullify Lyon is a major reason why the tail continues to frustrate Australia. Against every other opponent, Lyon can lock down an end when the hardness of the new ball wears off. His frugality, and his ability to threaten batters with spin and bounce in Australian conditions allows Cummins to set and forget and rotate his three quicks in short bursts at the other end to ensure they sustain their pace and quality.Ravindra Jadeja was trapped by a quicker one from Nathan Lyon•AFP/Getty ImagesBut Lyon has been almost completely shut out of this series so far. He has five wickets at 53.60, striking at 114. Two of those bookended the stand between Reddy and Washington. In between times, Reddy scored 44 off 60 against Lyon including three fours and a six.It meant Cummins had to manage his bowlers differently and he made some odd decisions. Boland, who had easily been Australia’s best having removed Virat Kohli and Rishabh Pant, was hardly used in the early part of Reddy’s innings. He went from 1 off 2 to 56 off 90 before Boland returned to the attack.Straight after an hour-long rain delay, the likes of which had enabled Cummins and Starc to continue to bowl in Brisbane, Marsh bowled a three-over spell in tandem with Starc, instead of Cummins or Boland, when the pitch had become more difficult to bat on according to Washington.”Coming off that break we tried to take them a bit wider with the ball,” Boland said. “We obviously set a seven-two field and try to see if they want to flash their hands outside the off stump.”Marsh conceded just four runs. But it only served to massage his figures from 0 for 24 from four overs to 0 for 28 from seven. Since taking 2 for 12 in the first innings of the series in Perth, Marsh has figures of 25-1-1-125.There were some slightly odd bowling changes on Pat Cummins’ part•Associated PressIt was no surprise then to see Starc grimacing with some back soreness as he shouldered the load at the other end. He never left the field and continued to bowl at high pace despite getting the physio to check his back at fine leg between overs.Starc was part of a three-man attack that took 20 wickets in Adelaide, and a three-man attack that did all of the bowling in Brisbane after Josh Hazlewood broke down.”He’s okay,” Boland said. “I think he just had a bit of a niggle somewhere in his back or rib, I don’t know. But he came out after the break and was bowling 140kph so I think he’s going to be fine. I think he’s underrated for how tough he is.”Four years ago, Australia’s quicks got to the line in the fourth Test having shouldered a heavy load in Melbourne and Sydney, only to run out of gas in Brisbane.”We’re leading by 115 runs, so in a pretty strong position,” Boland said. “Obviously, it could have been better, but I think that’s Test match cricket. It ebbs and flows. Yeah, hopefully tomorrow morning, we get that first wicket, and then put on a really nice lead and see how the game plays after that.”There shouldn’t be cause for alarm in Australia’s dressing room. But no one could blame them if there wasn’t a looming sense of déjà vu.

In his first full Ranji Trophy season, the 22-year-old from Vidarbha has strut his stuff with ball and bat. Now he’s ready to take on Tamil Nadu in the quarter-finals, with friends in the opposition camp

Shashank Kishore07-Feb-2025When Vidarbha’s Harsh Dubey takes the field in the Ranji Trophy quarter-final against Tamil Nadu on Saturday, he’ll be up against a number of friends in the opposition camp. Dubey, this season’s highest wicket-taker so far with 55 scalps at an incredible average of 14.50, has been playing league cricket in Chennai for the past four years and can’t wait to “banter” with his mates.”Pradosh Ranjan Paul is a very close friend, I’ve played a lot of cricket with Sai Sudharsan. They’re wonderful blokes, but whenever we play for our respective teams, there’s a healthy banter and rivalry, which makes it that much more fun,” Dubey tells ESPNcricinfo.This is Dubey’s first full Ranji season. As a left-arm-spin allrounder, an opportunity opened up only because two-time Ranji winner Aditya Sarwate shifted to Kerala as a professional. It would be an understatement to say Dubey has grabbed his opportunities. Dubey’s tally ahead of the knockouts includes six five-wicket hauls – three of them in his last four bowling innings.Related

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He has also contributed 308 runs, including three half-centuries. “As a spinner alone, I’ve looked up to Ravindra Jadeja and Rangana Herath, I love watching them bowl, but as an allrounder, it’s hard to look past Jaddu ,” he says.Dubey, 22, attributes his improvements as a cricketer to his batting lessons in Nagpur and his bowling lessons in Chennai. Dubey first began playing for the Mylapore Recreational Club (MRC), captained by R Ashwin. Incidentally, that stint was facilitated by Ashwin when he was supposed to have been enjoying a day off from the IPL.”I was playing the semi-final of the CK Nayudu Trophy [Under-23 tournament] against Madhya Pradesh in Vadodara because I’d been dropped from the Ranji squad,” Dubey remembers. “I’d just taken seven wickets and scored 60 not out with the bat. I’d just returned to my room when my friend Rajneesh Gurbani [the former Vidarbha fast bowler, who now plays for Maharashtra] called.”The IPL was going on and he was a net bowler for Rajasthan Royals. He was playing chess when Ash happened to ask Gurbani if he knew of a left-arm spinner form our state. And Gurbani told him about me and one other player. Ashwin then googled my name and found a couple of YouTube videos of me bowling and asked Gurbani if I’m interested to play in the Chennai league.

“Gurbani immediately called me. I still remember, I was on the way back to the hotel and was exhausted. He’s like ‘, will you play in the Chennai league?’ I told him, I’m too tired now, I am not thinking about playing immediately. And then it suddenly struck me what I’d just said. I quickly rang up Sarwate [Dubey’s Vidarbha team-mate at the time] who was playing in Chennai and asked him about it, and he was like if you’re getting a chance there, hands down go for it. Then I called Gurbani and informed him. That’s how it all started.”Dubey began as an opening batter – he would even go on to score a half-century on first-class debut – but it was his bowling heroics at the age-group level that caught people’s attention. Now 15 games into his first-class career, Dubey’s batting promise is clear once again – he has hit five half-centuries in 25 innings, with a high score of 76.”I learn mostly from watching my videos and with a close friend who helps me,” he says. “Like after the Rajasthan game, I changed a bit in my stance and grip on my base when batting. That helped me our previous game against Hyderabad [he made 65 and 55, in addition to a match haul of eight].””This season I felt the way I batted in the Vijay Hazare final [he made 63 off 30 as Vidarbha tried to chase 349], it felt nice,” he continues. “I had anticipated Prasidh [Krishna] bowling a yorker, so shuffled across to scoop, but when he went for a wide yorker, I was quickly able to innovate and ramp him towards third man. These I can execute only because of the work I’ve put in with the bat and with the side-arm specialists. The focus is on keeping the head still while playing those shots.”Harsh Dubey – effective with both ball and bat•PTI If he continues this way, Dubey’s performances will put him in the queue for the India spin-bowling allrounder’s spot. Jadeja, his hero, is 36 and Ashwin has already retired. Among the fingerspinners, there’s Washington Sundar and Axar Patel high up in the pecking order. At the India A level, there’s Manav Suthar who has also done incredibly well. This is where Dubey’s batting ability could give him an edge in the longer run, but he’s not thinking too far ahead.”My goal currently is to help win the Ranji Trophy,” he says. “Because that thing motivates me rather than my personal goals.”Dubey comes across as relaxed and not completely overwhelmed by the prospect of competition. He says it has never occurred to him that cricket is a “profession” and that he doesn’t have a back-up plan. But there’s gratitude for the sacrifices made by his parents.His father was in the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), a job that included periodic transfers. As a kid, Dubey lived in Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata and Guwahati, before the family settled in Nagpur. When he was due for another transfer just prior to the pandemic, he turned it down – which meant giving up his job – to support Dubey’s cricketing journey.”I’d been picked in the Under-23s when my dad decided to leave his job,” he says. “But I didn’t look at it as pressure, even though it was a big decision for him. Nowadays, people don’t quit government jobs so easily, he had a few years of service left. But today, he feels very happy for [making] the call. He doesn’t express it as much but I know he’s happy that I’m doing well.”

“I had anticipated Prasidh [Krishna] bowling a yorker, so shuffled across to scoop, but when he went for a wide yorker, I was quickly able to innovate and ramp him towards third man. These I can execute only because of the work I’ve put in with the bat and with the side-arm specialists. The focus is on keeping the head still while playing those shots.”

Dubey’s yet to have a taste of the IPL even though he’s been part of trials at Rajasthan Royals, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Mumbai Indians and Sunrisers Hyderabad. 
”If they didn’t pick me, I have to perform more,” he says. “If I keep getting disappointed at 22, I can’t focus. There’s lots more to do.”One of the things he’s particularly proud of is the work he has put into his fitness, which, “for a foodie, it’s a big thing”. Dubey says chats with Ashwin have taught him invaluable lessons.”I was chatting with Ashwin once and he said he was lactose intolerant. He got to know about it after he’d turned 30. He said if he knew about it a lot earlier, he may have picked up 100 more wickets than he did. I thought if this guy thinks like this, as a [then] 19-year-old, I should be focused even more. From then on I’ve worked with a dietician, started looking after myself.”I guess my metabolism is very slow. I tend to gain weight quickly, that’s why I train a lot.”Dubey’s waiting to have another long chat with Ashwin now that he has retired. The two last met when Ashwin was in Nagpur for the 2023 Nagpur Test against Australia. “I’d requested if he’d be able to meet my parents who were big fans, and he obliged, so I went over to the hotel to meet,” Dubey says with a smile.”Initially he’d said there was a meeting he needed to be at but that got cancelled and we spoke for nearly three hours that day. It was a proud moment for my parents that they were able to meet a player of his stature because of me.”Hopefully in the future, my dad’s dream of being a [national] cricketer is something I’ll realise, and then his sacrifice would’ve been worth even more.”

If SRH had a bit of a hole at No. 3 last season, they may have found the perfect candidate to fill it this time around

Karthik Krishnaswamy23-Mar-20252:46

Rapid fire: Are Kishan and SRH a perfect match?

Did you see that?Did you see Abhishek Sharma step out, realise that Fazalhaq Farooqi had followed him with a bouncer into his body, and still have the time to lean back, manufacture room, and carve the ball over backward point?Did you see Sanju Samson hook Mohammed Shami for six, and slap and chop him either side of point for a pair of surgical first-over fours?Did you see Dhruv Jurel welcome Pat Cummins to IPL 2025 with a 90m six over long-on, with a bat-swing like the smoothest golf drive?Related

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• SRH fall one run short of their own record IPL total

• Ishan Kishan revelling in 'a lot of freedom' at SRH

• Kishan's 106* ensures SRH ease to win in 286 plays 242

This was quite a match if you were a top-order batter, keeper-batter, or keeper-batter who bats in the top three and has been part of India’s recent T20I squads. Abhishek and Samson are India’s current opening pair in the format, and Jurel their reserve keeper in their most recent series.Between them, they scored 160 off 83 balls.It wasn’t quite the match for Yashasvi Jaiswal, but it could so easily have been that. If he had uppercut Simarjeet Singh a few inches higher, or if Abhinav Manohar had mistimed his jump at point by a few milliseconds, you might be reading an open-mouthed appreciation of his gifts.2:06

‘Kishan hammered everyone to every corner’

India’s T20I present was there, as was India’s all-format future, in a clash between Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) that produced an aggregate of 528 runs, the second-highest in IPL history.The defining innings of this match, however, came from someone else – another top-order batter who keeps wickets, who could easily be a defining face of India’s present and is young enough to be their future too, but whose innings on this day, for complicated reasons, felt like a blast from the past.A blast, perhaps, from November 2023, when Ishan Kishan was India’s Test keeper in the long-term absence of Rishabh Pant; their back-up opener in ODIs, with a double-hundred in that format; and possibly their first-choice T20I keeper, with his last three innings in that format including two blistering fifties against Australia.November 2023 wasn’t all that long ago, but try measuring that in Indian cricket time. The Kishan of March 2025 is a cricketer who hasn’t played for India in nearly 16 months and is out of the BCCI’s central contracts list. Others have taken his place in India’s squads, and taken full ownership of their roles. Time has stood still for Kishan, seemingly, and Indian cricket has simply kept moving.An unfettered version of Ishan Kishan was on show on his SRH debut•BCCIBut then, he’s only 26. And did you see that?Did you see Kishan step out to Maheesh Theekshana on Sunday afternoon and send him whistling over the ducking umpire’s head with that trademark, unfettered follow-through? Did you wonder why the sight of this familiar figure kitted out in unfamiliar colours made so much sense?The shot brought up SRH’s fifty, and it was just the fourth over of their innings. It was just the third ball Kishan had faced. Travis Head and Abhishek had put on 45 in 3.1 overs, and it made so much sense that another no-holds-barred intent machine would follow them to the crease. This has been the SRH way since their revolutionary 2024 season, and this has always been the Kishan way.Interviewed between innings, Kishan gave a glowing endorsement of the SRH management, particularly their captain Pat Cummins, and if you were so inclined, you could have listened to his words and heard less-than-glowing assessments of previous captains and managements.”The captain especially, the skipper in our team is just giving a lot of freedom to everyone, doesn’t matter if you get a lot of runs or if you get out early. [As long as] you’re doing everything for the team, it’s all fair, and that is the confidence every player needs, so hats off to him, and hats off to the management.”Now everyone says pretty much the same things about the captains and managements they happen to play for, but SRH can only play the way they do if they fully empower their batters to keep taking the high-risk option. There’s a clarity to how Abhishek and Head bat, a seeming absence of the thought of failure or its consequences, and Kishan, at his best, plays the same way.Ishan Kishan slammed his first IPL hundred•BCCIOn 25, for example, he went after a short ball from Sandeep Sharma that was angled away from him, aiming for the gap to the left of deep point. The ball bounced a little more than ideal for this horizontal-bat slap, and there was perhaps less width than ideal, but Kishan threw himself into the shot. He didn’t quite middle it, and was perhaps lucky that the ball didn’t quite carry to the fielder. But from the way he played that shot, it was clear it would have been okay for him to get out that way.On 39, he leaned across to the off side to try and scoop Jofra Archer over short fine leg, and this shot was almost entirely premeditation, hugely dependent on guesswork as to the bowler’s intended line and length. He guessed the line right, but not quite the length, and only managed a top-edge, but it went for six anyway.It’s precisely this sort of educated abandonment of control that unlocks the ability for teams to score at 14 or 15 an over as SRH did right through their innings. It was the first ball of the over, and Kishan had shown Archer he was coming for him, no matter what. Under these circumstances, the bowler running in can’t just think of the field he’s set and the line and length he wants to bowl, but also the means by which the batter can manipulate those things. Kishan hit two more sixes in that Archer over, the 13th of the SRH innings, and they too were all about manipulation – both times he stepped away to the leg side and freed his arms to launch full balls aimed at the base of the stumps over the cover point boundary.Kishan hit 11 fours and six sixes in all, and while some of these flew unstoppably off the middle of his bat, there were others that could count as miscues or chancy hits that could have led to his dismissal on other days. Those, though, were in one sense his best shots of the day, because they fully captured the spirit of his innings: that top-edged scoop that put Archer under pressure; that low full-toss that was close to being a well-executed wide yorker, stabbed off the toe-end to just elude mid-off; the collapsed back-knee slog-sweep that barely cleared deep square leg.This is the SRH way, and this is the Kishan way. If they had a bit of a hole at No. 3 last season, they may have found the perfect candidate to fill it this time around. And along the way, he could yet find a way to force himself back into conversations about India’s present and future.

A revamped squad heavy on Australians and allrounders will look to make the playoffs for the first time since 2014

Sruthi Ravindranath18-Mar-20253:17

Chopra: Maxwell, Stoinis could thrive under Ponting

Where they finished last yearWith five wins in 14 games, Punjab Kings (PBKS) finished second last in the league.What’s new in 2025PBKS have a new captain in Shreyas Iyer, who won the IPL title with Kolkata Knight Riders last year, and a new head coach in Ricky Ponting, who worked with Delhi Capitals until last season. From the previous edition, they retained only Prabhsimran Singh and Shashank Singh and bought back fast bowler Arshdeep Singh via the right-to-match card for INR 18 crore at the mega auction.Related

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Iyer: 'I hate losing. That's what has elevated me to where I am right now as a captain'

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Introducing Suryansh Shedge, clear thinker and ace T20 finisher

Another familiar face in the side is Glenn Maxwell, who had previously played for them between 2014 and 2017 and again in 2020. Apart from Maxwell, they signed four more Australians at the auction: Marcus Stoinis, Josh Inglis, Aaron Hardie and Xavier Bartlett.An allrounder-heavy side, they also have overseas options in Azmatullah Omarzai and Marco Jansen alongside Maxwell, Stoinis and Hardie in that department. New Zealand fast bowler Lockie Ferguson is one of their new recruits and they also have experienced India spinner Yuzvendra Chahal, as well as Kuldeep Sen and Yash Thakur, who have decent IPL experience.PBKS have perennially underperformed, with their last top-four finish coming in 2014. But with a new-look squad, which has several big names and looks well-rounded in all departments, they will hope to change things.Can Shreyas Iyer take his IPL-winning aura from KKR to PBKS?•BCCILikely best XII1 Prabhsimran Singh/Priyansh Arya, 2 Josh Inglis*, 3 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 4 Glenn Maxwell*, 5 Azmatullah Omarzai/Marcus Stoinis*, 6 Shashank Singh, 7 Nehal Wadhera/Suryansh Shedge, 8 Marco Jansen*, 9 Harpreet Brar, 10 Yash Thakur, 11 Arshdeep Singh, 12 Yuzvendra Chahal
Full PBKS squadBig questionWatch out forPriyansh Arya first grabbed eyeballs when he hit six sixes in an over to smash 120 off 50 balls in the Delhi Premier League. That feat led to a bidding war at the auction where PBKS eventually landed him for INR 3.8 crore. The opening batter, who is particularly strong down the ground, showed off his big hits in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy late last year, where he also struck 102 off just 43 balls, hitting 10 sixes and five fours, against Uttar Pradesh. He also topped the run-scoring charts for Delhi.Another talent who’s made a name in the domestic circuit, Suryansh Shedge displayed his finishing skills in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. Arriving to bat mostly in tricky situations, the 22-year old allrounder helped Mumbai wrap up games, and he did the job for them in the final as well, clattering three sixes and three fours in his 15-ball stay to help them to the title. He could be an Impact Player option and bolster their lower order, a role Ashutosh Sharma performed for PBKS last season.Ricky Ponting will hope Yuzvendra Chahal can solve PBKS’ long-running spin-bowling issues•Punjab KingsKey statsPBKS have won just two out of 14 home games – played across Mohali, Mullanpur and Dharamsala – in the last two seasons – the worst for any side in the IPL in this period. This year, they will be playing only in Mullanpur and Dharamsala. Finding a way to make their home conditions work for them could be crucial to their bid to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2014. Iyer has been part of five title wins since March 2024: The IPL win with KKR aside, he won the 2023-24 Ranji Trophy, the 2024-25 Irani Cup and the 2024-25 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy titles with Mumbai. He was also a key member of India’s title-winning Champions Trophy team, and comes into the IPL on the back of a superb run of form.Though he finished with 19 wickets, Arshdeep Singh wasn’t at his best in the IPL last year as he struggled with his accuracy. He eventually turned his year around and finished as 2024’s top T20I wicket-taker with 36 wickets at an average of 15.31. He also recently leapfrogged Chahal to become India’s highest wicket-taker in the format.Who’s out or in doubt?Lockie Ferguson missed the Champions Trophy for New Zealand after picking up a hamstring injury while playing in the ILT20. His availability for the upcoming IPL season is unclear.IPL 2025 will also be Musheer Khan’s first tournament since he sustained a neck injury after a car crash in September 2024. Musheer, who was picked for INR 30 lakh at the auction, had recently started training with the squad.