Five reasons why their wins in India – and the ones in the lead-up – were only to be expected

Firdose Moonda24-Mar-2021In the mess that is South African cricket at the moment, there is at least one thing going right: the national women’s team. In the absence of some of their most prominent mainstays, they wrapped up their tour of India with a 4-1 win in the ODI series and a 2-1 victory in the T20I leg.The administration continues to lurch through crises that could see ministerial intervention in the near future, the domestic men’s game is on the verge of a restructure that will cost 75 jobs, and the national men’s team doesn’t have a confirmed Test fixture in sight. Amid all this, the women have reached their highest ever ODI ranking – No. 2 – while also recording a first T20I series win over India, and have players climbing up the international charts. If you are wondering how that happened, coach Hilton Moreeng has an answer: “It’s exceptional planning from players and management, controlling what we can and making sure we focus on what we can do.”That’s only part of the story. The women’s team has benefitted from consistency, in coaching, playing personnel and funding, which has allowed them to flourish while other parts of the game in the country flounder.Moreeng, who took the team to the semi-finals of the 2017 ODI World Cup and the 2020 T20 World Cup, was reappointed on a three-year deal in July last year, extending a tenure that started in 2012. In this period, the team has gone from amateur to professional, thanks to a sponsorship from financial services company Momentum, which has been in place since 2013 and will last at least a decade.Last September, when Momentum announced it would no longer sponsor men’s ODIs, the domestic one-day cup, and age-group weeks because of its dissatisfaction with CSA’s governance, it committed to backing the women’s team until at least 2023, the year the country is due to host the rescheduled Women’s T20 World Cup. In a media engagement on Wednesday morning, Carel Bosman, head of sponsorships and events at the organisation, indicated that that may continue beyond the present end date.All that has meant that the South African women’s team has a stable base from which to operate and the benefits of that are visible in their results. Despite a Covid-19-enforced layoff from March 2020 to January 2021, they adjusted to bubble life well and have won all four series – two in ODIs and as many in T20Is against Pakistan and India each – they have played since. Their aim of lifting the 2022 ODI World Cup trophy does not seem far-fetched, even though they will have to keep up the form they are in for another 12 months.Here’s a look at what they might want to keep doing right.Laura Wolvaardt and Lizelle Lee – two of the best in the business•BCCI/UPCAMental Strength
South African teams are not known for their ability to deal with pressure, but this team has shown that they can hold their nerve in crunch situations. They kept up with the DLS required run rate in the third ODI in India to claim victory, won both the fourth and fifth with less than two overs remaining, and took the second T20I on the final ball.Both Moreeng and stand-in captain Suné Luus put that down to a change in mindset which came from beating New Zealand 3-0 away from home early last year. “Everything as far as a mental shift is concerned happened in New Zealand,” Moreeng said. “We had to have hard chats with our batters and address the inconsistency that had been happening in the batting unit.”In New Zealand, South Africa chased successfully three times to automatically qualify for the 50-over World Cup and proved to themselves that they could beat top teams, away from home. Although they were out of action for a long stretch after that, the self-assurance didn’t go away and was only enhanced when they beat Pakistan at home before traveling to India. “There was a silent confidence going around the camp,” Luus said. “We hit the ground running in the Pakistan series. And here, nobody ever doubted that we wanted to win. There was never any fear of failure.”Lee’s dominance and du Preez’s return to form
South Africa’s senior players embodied that bold attitude to set the tone for the India series. Lizelle Lee was the top-scorer in the ODIs with 288 runs including one hundred (a career-best 132*) and two fifties at an average of 144, and the third-highest run-scorer in the T20Is, where she scored one fifty. She rose to the top of the ODI rankings before being overtaken by Tammy Beaumont and her opening partnership with Laura Wolvaardt is among the most formidable in world cricket, so much so that South Africa were thought to be over-reliant on the pair.Related

India Women 'have to start from scratch', says coach WV Raman after setback against South Africa

du Preez: 'In India, I made sure to try out different curries'

Lizelle Lee strives for 'more consistency'

Lara Goodall gets rid of 'disconnect' to fire in her second coming

SA Women overcome national nemesis to beat India

Enter Mignon du Preez. Before this tour, du Preez had not scored a half-century since February 2019. But making the most of her renewed approach to batting, thanks in no small part to the 2020-21 WBBL, she reeled off two in a row to secure the ODI series and showed the value of her experience in the middle order, particularly in ushering younger players through tricky periods. Having her firing for the next 12 months and at the World Cup is crucial to South Africa’s chances.Approach against spin
After being bamboozled by the turning ball on their last tour to India, in 2019, South Africa embarked on an intense programme to get better at it. And it has worked. They subjected India’s spinners to their worst home ODI series where they have bowled at least 100 overs, and used the sweep and reverse sweep to good, and occasionally daring, effect.”After the tour we had here the last time, we had to sit down and look at how we could improve because a lot of teams were throwing spin at us,” Moreeng said. “Other teams saw our batting against spin as a weakness. So, in almost every batting camp that we had, we brought in consultants that could help, and every day the players, even the bowlers, had to learn to play against spinners and how to get off strike. The biggest thing for us was that we got bogged down and it was becoming difficult to score. It became a norm for us that even when players go home from camps, playing spin was something they had to keep doing. All the hard work they have put in over the last two years – we are starting to see the results.”Shabnim Ismail has been as good as ever, and appears to have embraced the mentoring role well too•Getty ImagesLeadership
South Africa have played this year without their regular captain Dané van Niekerk and senior allrounder Chloe Tryon, who are both recovering from lower-back injuries. That gave Luus the opportunity to step in as leader, though she also missed some matches because of illness, which allowed Wolvaardt to step in. And, just like that, South Africa may have created a succession plan.”The more leaders we have in the team, the stronger the team will be because there’s enough ideas and maturity,” Moreeng said. “In terms of how we think and plan, most of them will understand what needs to happen.”That’s exactly how Luus experienced the role. “The team makes it easy. They know what they want to do. I think I’m just there to say who bowls when.”Evergreen Ismail leads the attack With the batting in the spotlight, South Africa’s attack has flown under the radar but can’t go without mention. Shabnim Ismail was their leading wicket-taker in both formats on the India tour and once again impressed with her aggression and accuracy, and also in the mentoring role she appeared to play on-field, especially in the absence of Marizanne Kapp in the T20Is.South Africa will also be pleased with the efforts of quick bowler Ayabonga Khaka, who was their most economical bowler on the tour and helped keep a star-studded Indian line-up in control. Khaka conceded 3.44 runs an over in the ODIs, the lowest in the series, and 5.62 in the T20Is, where only Rajeshwari Gayakwad, the India left-arm spinner, was more miserly than her. Tumi Sekhukhune provided good support in the ODIs with five wickets at 28.40 and an economy rate of 5.35.

The two are back where it started for them in ODIs, but neither man goes into the series a certain starter

Karthik Krishnaswamy14-Jul-2021The last time India toured Sri Lanka for a bilateral ODI series, they put in place what became a key component of their 50-overs strategy for the best part of the next two years. It was in Colombo, in the fifth ODI of a series that India won 5-0, that Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal first bowled together.They came together because India had struggled for middle-overs wickets during the 2017 Champions Trophy, and the wristspin partnership went a long way towards solving that issue: between that tournament and the 2019 World Cup, only Afghanistan among Full-Member teams had a better collective bowling average in the second powerplay (overs 11-40) than India’s 32.98.In that period between ICC events, Yadav (87 wickets at 21.74) and Chahal (66 at 25.68) were the top two wicket-takers in all ODI cricket. They featured in tandem in each of India’s first six matches at the 2019 World Cup, but that sixth game revealed the cracks in the strategy.The pitch at Edgbaston was flat, and one of the square boundaries was significantly shorter than the other. In those conditions, England’s marauding top order took full toll of Yadav and Chahal, who took just the one wicket between them while going for 160 in their 20 overs. India’s chase of 338 never really got going, with their lack of lower-order batting seemingly forcing the top order to minimise risk and play for net run-rate.Related

Dhawan: 'Competition for the opening slot is a very good thing'

Bhuvneshwar: I'm not prioritising white-ball cricket over red-ball cricket

Chahal: 'You will see a more confident Yuzi in this series'

Why Chahal is so deadly despite not having conventional skills

Kuldeep and Chahal demoted in BCCI contracts list

That was the last time India picked both Yadav and Chahal in an ODI XI. Since then, they have left one on the bench and partnered the other with a spin-bowling allrounder, usually Ravindra Jadeja. In this new world order, both the wristspinners have struggled to match their earlier impact. Since the World Cup, Yadav averages 58.41 in 12 ODIs, and Chahal 37.12 in five. Both have economy rates north of six an over. Both have suffered demotions in India’s contracts hierarchy.It is at this juncture in their careers that Yadav and Chahal return to the R Premadasa Stadium, the venue where their partnership took root. They return as senior members of a side missing a number of regulars, but neither begins this three-match ODI series as a certain starter.When India last played an ODI, against England in Pune, neither was part of their attack. Chahal was benched for the entire series, and Yadav, who had been hit for eight sixes in the second ODI, was dropped for the decider, with India picking just the one spinner – allrounder Krunal Pandya – and four frontline quicks.On this Sri Lanka tour, Yadav and Chahal will compete for spin-bowling spots with legspinner Rahul Chahar, offspinner K Gowtham, left-arm spinner Pandya and mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy, who, it would seem, might only be in contention for the T20Is that follow the ODI series. Of those four, Pandya and Gowtham are allrounders to varying degrees.Whichever combination they pick in Colombo, India would hope they arrest a worrying overall slide in their middle-overs displays. Since the World Cup, the team’s collective bowling average in this phase is an unflattering 43.75…ESPNcricinfo Ltd… and their economy rate a worrying 6.05. While the sample sizes are small, given the lack of cricket that’s been played since the onset of Covid-19, no other team has done as poorly on this front.ESPNcricinfo LtdThere are mitigating factors, of course. India’s schedule has pitted them against some of the world’s best hitting sides since the World Cup, with all their ODIs in this period coming against Australia (six matches), England (three), New Zealand (three) and West Indies (six). India’s first-choice bowlers have often been unavailable or returning from injury.Most significantly, India’s new-ball bowlers have struggled, averaging an eye-watering 150.42 in the first ten overs of ODIs. This has had an obvious knock-on effect on the middle-overs bowlers, who have often had to begin their spells against set batters on extremely flat pitches. In the last ODI Yadav featured in, for instance, Ben Stokes was able to slog-sweep him with abandon even when he was hitting against the turn and dragging the ball from well outside off stump.Given all that, this series against a Sri Lanka side that’s beset by on- and off-field strife, on pitches that should offer some help to the spinners, couldn’t have come at a better time for Yadav and Chahal. But with all the other contenders breathing down their necks, they might need to serve up a reminder of all their old magic.

A look at the form in the first half and the challenges ahead for the bottom four teams on the points table

Gaurav Sundararaman16-Sep-2021

Rajasthan Royals

Squad changes from first phase
In: Glenn Phillips, Evin Lewis, Oshane Thomas and Tabraiz Shamsi
Out: Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer and Andrew Tye
Strengths
Rajasthan Royals’ approach has been to generally bank on certain high-impact match-winners. In the first half of this season, Jos Buttler, Chris Morris and captain Sanju Samson all stepped up to keep the team mid-table. Despite the absence of Jofra Archer and Ben Stokes – who quit early in the tournament due to finger injury – the bowling has not suffered primarily because of Morris, who with 14 scalps is the second-highest wicket-taker in the tournament. While Morris, who fetched the highest auction price in IPL history, has been a catalyst, he has received strong support from the Saurashtra pair of Jaydev Unadkat and Chetan Sakariya. The duo showed discipline and smarts to pick 11 wickets each with an economy of 7.06 and 8.22 respectively.Related

• IPL 2021: Rishabh Pant to continue as Delhi Capitals captain

• IPL 2021 returns: What Delhi Capitals, CSK, RCB and Mumbai Indians need to do differently in second phase

• Crowds to be back in 'reduced capacity' at IPL in UAE

• Recap: Samson's refused single, Jadeja's 37-run over

2020 UAE strategy
Archer, who was the Player of the Tournament last year, was the key architect for Royals in IPL 2020, constantly picking up wickets in the powerplay. Rahul Tewatia and Samson also won a couple of games on their own with their bold displays with the bat.Challenges for 2021
Royals have lost three first-choice overseas players, but have found able replacements who are in outstanding form. The big concern will be the form of their spinners – Tewatia and Shreyas Gopal – who were a major letdown in India taking just four wickets at an average of 81. Will the inclusion of Shamsi resolve that issue? Can Liam Livingstone and Lewis continue their hitting form in the UAE? The answers to the questions would decide whether they make the playoffs or not.Potential XI: 1 Evin Lewis, 2 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 3 Sanju Samson (capt, wk), 4 Liam Livingstone, 5 Riyan Parag, 6 Shivam Dube, 7 Chris Morris, 8 Rahul Tewatia, 9 Kartik Tyagi, 10 Mustafizur Rahman, 11 Chetan Sakariya/Jaydev UnadkatWith four ducks in six innings, Nicholas Pooran will be hoping to have a better season in the UAE•BCCI

Punjab Kings

Squad changes from first phase
In: Aiden Markram, Nathan Ellis and Adil Rashid
Out: Dawid Malan, Riley Meredith and Jhye Richardson
Strengths
The Kings’ openers – KL Rahul and Chris Gayle in 2018 and 2019, and Rahul along with Mayank Agarwal in 2020 as well as the first half of this IPL – have traditionally been the team’s backbone for the past four years. That has not changed barring a spectacular performance from allrounder Harpreet Brar, who had a dream evening against Royal Challengers Bangalore.2020 UAE strategy
Agarwal gave fast starts, Nicholas Pooran bookended innings with rapid finishes, Gayle proved why he remains a heavyweight and Mohammed Shami came into his own as a T20 bowler. There were also enthusiastic performances from the young uncapped pair of Ravi Bishnoi and Arshdeep Singh. However, Kings succumbed to pressure in at least three matches they should have won and paid the price. The poor performances from Glenn Maxwell and Sheldon Cottrell, too, hurt. Equally concerning was Rahul’s sedate strike rate which hovered under 130 despite him finishing the season with 670 runs. Kings’ planning and approach remained dishevelled on the back of continuous losses as they finished sixth only because of a better run rate than Super Kings and Royals.Challenges for 2021
Four ducks in six matches for Pooran underlines Kings’ problems in the middle order. The uncapped Indian pair of Deepak Hooda and Shahrukh Khan has promised a lot but not delivered convincingly. With the Australian pair of Jhye Richardson and Riley Meredith out of the second half of the IPL, Kings do not have any express quick barring Shami to take advantage of what are likely to be fresh and fast pitches. With six matches remaining and just three wins, Kings have an uphill task to qualify for the playoffs.Potential XI: 1 KL Rahul (capt, wk), 2 Mayank Agarwal, 3 Chris Gayle, 4 Deepak Hooda, 5 Nicholas Pooran, 6 Shahrukh Khan, 7 Fabian Allen/Adil Rashid, 8 Ravi Bishnoi, 9 Arshdeep Singh, 10 Nathan Ellis, 11 Mohammed ShamiAndre Russell’s good form in the CPL bodes well for Kolkata Knight Riders•BCCI/IPL

Kolkata Knight Riders

Squad changes from first phase
In: Tim Southee
Out: Pat Cummins
Strengths
Knight Riders’ spinners, as well as their aggressive batters like Andre Russell, Pat Cummins and Nitish Rana, showed their prowess in the first half of the season. Russell even took a five-wicket haul and was striking at 166. His 2021 CPL form augurs well for Knight Riders in the UAE. Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine are their biggest weapons with the ball and are not dependent on conditions. While Narine opted out of the T20 World Cup, he has been in good form in the CPL with the ball in hand. Chakravarthy will walk in upbeat, too, having made it to the India squad for the T20 World Cup and it was in the UAE where he announced himself last IPL.2020 UAE strategy
Knight Riders’ all-round team approach seemed to be working for a while. Chakravarthy, who was the team’s leading wicket-taker (17) dominated the match-ups while Shubman Gill and Eoin Morgan made an impact in the batting department. But the inconsistency of Dinesh Karthik, along with the failure of Russell the batter who also had to battle fitness issues meant Knight Riders lost out in the race for the play-offs, finishing fifth eventually.Challenges for 2021
Slow, struggling starts by the top order followed by a stuttering middle order were the biggest concerns for the Knight Riders in the first half. They lost 12 wickets in the powerplay and averaged just 25.75. Gill and Morgan were striking at 117 and 112 respectively, with an average of 15.33 and 18.85. As head coach Brendon McCullum plainly put it, his team were “paralysed by the fear of failure”. Can Knight Riders now overcome that fear?Potential XI: 1 Shubman Gill, 2 Nitish Rana, 3 Rahul Tripathi, 4 Eoin Morgan (capt), 5 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 6 Andre Russell, 7 Sunil Narine, 8 Prasidh Krishna, 9 Shivam Mavi, 10 Lockie Ferguson, 11 Varun ChakravarthySunrisers Hyderabad had little to cheer about during the first chunk of the season in India•BCCI

Sunrisers Hyderabad

Squad changes from first phase
In: Sherfane Rutherford
Out: Jonny Bairstow
Strengths
It is hard to find positives in a team that has notched a solitary win, fielded 21 players – the most in the first half of the IPL – and dropped their captain David Warner. Still, the trio of Rashid Khan, Kane Williamson and Jonny Bairstow gave a semblance of stability to an otherwise struggling outfit which also was without T Natarajan, who had to quit early in the tournament to undergo knee surgery. Manish Pandey, too, batting as No. 3 showed a stable head.2020 UAE strategy
It was Natarajan, Williamson, Warner along with Wriddhiman Saha that helped Sunrisers make the playoffs. All four of them are likely to feature in the XI this time around, too. The middle order that includes Abhishek Sharma, Abdul Samad and Priyam Garg also performed in crucial situations. Sunrisers would be hoping for a repeat of the same.Challenges for 2021
The challenge for Sunrisers over the last few years has been straightforward: who are the four overseas players and how can the middle order contribute more? Credit to Warner and the bowling unit here that despite those twin challenges, the team has managed to make the playoffs consistently. The absence of Jonny Bairstow, who opted out, could prove to be a blessing in disguise as role clarity becomes a lot more stable. But Pandey and Vijay Shankar’s form remains crucial. On the bowling front, too, Sunrisers’ fast men have been short of form including Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who averaged 56.7 in the first half of the season.Potential XI: 1 David Warner, 2 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 3 Kane Williamson (capt), 4 Manish Pandey, 5 Kedhar Jadhav, 6 Vijay Shankar, 7 Sherfane Rutherford/Jason Holder, 8 Rashid Khan, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Sandeep Sharma, 11 T Natarajan

The horror start to the Ashes shows they might have lost sight of what’s most important in the game

Mark Nicholas24-Dec-2021It is that time of year, on repeat it seems, every four years. It is the time of Pommie-bashing down under, when England’s shocking inability to cope becomes the Groundhog Day of its genre. This is agony from afar – oh, the darkness of the early morn! – and gut-wrenching up close. It’s not just the drip of torture – we can steel ourselves for that – it’s the overwhelming humiliation that gets you. Like English cricketers simply can’t play.Is the unilateral criticism fair? Or are the circumstances so extreme as to now provide a clear explanation? Obviously enough, the players have made basic mistakes. Equally, selection has been odd. The management of the team appears never to have been to Australia before, which of course they have been, all of them. The captain is the first to have a second crack at the Great Southern Land since Andrew Stoddart in the latter part of the century before last. Stoddart won the first time but failed to defend. Joe Root is on course for a double disappointment. Is the Ashes really the one event that defines an English or Australian career? No! But the Ashes can make the man – check Lord Botham, Andrew Flintoff and Ben Stokes, allrounders who have stopped the nation.Let’s pause for a moment and consider the circumstances within which the current England players have had to perform – this is Covid we’re talking, and the bubble. Cricket is as much a game of the mind as it is a game of talent, application and of technique. Perhaps more so. It requires patience and concentration, a kind deal of the cards and a fair wind.Related

• England are presentable at home but poor abroad, and their home strength is under threat

• Woakes backs Root to stay on as England captain

• Ashes long-con exposed: England's dereliction of Test cricket threatens format as a whole

• Joe Root: 'We need to put some pride back in the badge'

• Roll out the cold turkey, England's Christmas is cancelled

Cricket is the most artistic of all games. Batting is frequently difficult and frustrating but even the most prosaic of batters can give pleasure with a mighty stroke or an unlikely rearguard. It is a mainly instinctive skill and yet relies on method for its excellence. Nothing, not even ballet, could be more graceful than Babar Azam’s off-side play or an on-drive by VVS Laxman. Batting pleases the eye because it is a thing of angles and dimensions.Above all, batting is fragile. One minute you have it, the next it is gone. A single ball will undo hours, days, weeks of preparation. For sure, batting – cricket indeed – is not to be trusted. It is played out on the edge of nerves. It examines character, explores personality and exposes vulnerabilities. A man scores a hundred one day and nought the next. This is both wicked and unkind but also, it is tempting and exhilarating. Raise your bat once and you will ache to do so again.For the moment, at least, England have mislaid the art of batting as a unit. This puts undue expectation on Root – and, presently, the feisty Dawid Malan – as well as on the bowlers, the leading practitioners of whom are aged by the standards of high performance. Though James Anderson played a stellar part in England’s stunning 2010-11 triumph under Andrew Strauss and bowled with a huge heart four years ago, neither he nor Stuart Broad have always fired as effectively in Australia as they have done elsewhere. The answer, if you must, is to alternate between them.Rory Burns couldn’t buy a run in his first three innings of the series•Getty ImagesThe rest of the attack is in new territory: a territory that is harsh and unforgiving. Ask Jack Leach: thumped in Brisbane and binned. In contrast, Mark Wood appeared to revel in it but he was rested for Adelaide. Rested? For what? He came to play! Ollie Robinson has manfully rolled in, Angus Fraser-ish, but the ball doesn’t move sideways much, and when it does, he needs it to do so a tad quicker. A yard on Robinson would feel like five to his opponent. Chris Woakes has so far failed to master Australian conditions with the ball, and he’s had a few cracks at it.Back to the batting, where the rot started. Both Root and Malan sniffed hundreds but lost the scent. No raising of the bat for them, while no one else has been close. Haseeb Hameed is rooted to the spot. A cutter of the ball denied his strongest suit by good bowlers, he looks like a fellow who went to the nets in desperate search of a front-foot drive, promptly eased a couple of long half-volleys through the covers and then watched in horror as he chipped the next one into the hands of mid-on. You couldn’t make it up. Out there with him is Rory Burns, the gamest of cricketers but with a method too often exposed by the best users of the new ball. And so on. Ollie Pope is wretchedly low on confidence, while Stokes tries so hard to occupy the crease and defy the bastard enemy that he forgets how damn good he is. Free up Ben, unleash hell!What of Jos Buttler, whose highs and lows are bewildering: a clanger one minute, a hanger the next; a boundary a ball, a block for 207 of them. There is no more thrilling talent out there but the inconsistency is a menace. Where has Jos gone, you think, and then he plays that Cook of an innings at Adelaide Oval: a knock, if you can call it that, in which he scored nine runs between lunch and tea. In Dubai, against the same opponent at the T20 World Cup, he scored close to nine every ball. Remarkable.Which brings us back to the question of circumstance. How demanding is it to live for much of an 18-month period in a bubble that includes numerous periods of quarantine, and still give this trickster of a game your best shot? Martin Crowe called it traffic – can’t play with, can play without.There’s a lot of traffic in quarantine and not much less in the bubble. The wife’s on the phone morning and night, saying it’s all very well for you out there in the sunshine but the kids are coughing and spluttering their way around Grandpa’s Christmas tree and Grandma’s a bit jumpy about you know what, all masked up and that, in her own gaff. And all the while, you’re tripping the light anything-but-fantastic from hotel room to coach to ground and back again, wondering whether the next game will even go ahead. Not easy and probably not much fun either. Think Miller and Compton, Lillee and Botham, Gough and Warne living in the bubble, never mind the quarantine. Hardly, where’s the fun in that? Sure, the guys today earn big bucks but money can’t clear the mind.Jos Buttler has alternated between despair and ecstasy of late•PA Images/GettySo it doesn’t really matter whether cricket is artistic, it just matters that you get the job done and make it home safe and sound. Right now, for the England players, there is nothing especially beautiful about it either: there never is when you’re losing by a distance. Beauty, pah!England were woefully underprepared. Bubble or no bubble, Root and the lads not in Dubai could have been in Australia a fortnight earlier, thus making time for full-on first-class matches against the states or an Australia A team. Ashley Giles, the director of England cricket, should have insisted upon it, ensuring such matches were a pre-condition for the tour. Of the team for the Adelaide Test, only Malan, Buttler and Woakes were in the T20 group, along with Wood and Jonny Bairstow, both of whom should play on Boxing Day in Melbourne. That left a team of cricketers looking for a game. There were England Lions out there too, also eager.Granted, this was more complicated than it appears because Queensland was in lockdown and therefore required of its visitors a period of quarantine. No matter, England could have played one game in Adelaide against South Australia (with a pink ball) and then nipped up to the Sunshine State for a bit of quarantine and a game against Queensland.Year upon year, touring teams come to Australia and get kicked about at the Gabba, as much because they are not ready for its stern test as because the Australians are so good on a ground that most plays to their strengths. Yes, India beat them there at the start of this year but it was the fourth Test, and by then the Indians were flying up the eastern seaboard on something of a magic carpet.The ball, the pitch, the light, the heat and humidity, the intensity – oh, man: the newspapers, the talkback radio, the TV reporters, the commentators, the spectators who know if you’re any good, the bloke in the street who thinks he does; the beer, the wine, the surf – live it, love it, play great because of it. This is Australia, mate.It is one thing to be less good than the Aussies but quite another to turn up late and fail to give yourself the best chance. In 1986-87 Mike Gatting’s team made a right mess of two of the three state games that preceded the first Test. “Can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t field” was the famous headline on a piece filed by the ‘s unflinching cricket correspondent Martin Johnson. Then Allan Border sent England in to bat, and Bill Athey fought for his wicket like a man instructed solely to protect the trenches, before Botham charged out of them to slaughter a withered attack. If ever one innings changed the preconception of a cricket series, that was it: 138 he made, helmetless and gung-ho. (Hadn’t that happened somewhere before?)Remember when Brisbane didn’t spell bogey: Botham seals the deal for England at the Gabba in 1986•Ben Radford/Getty ImagesIn 2010-11, Strauss’ team made relatively light work of the state teams but found themselves drowning in a sea of Australian optimism after such moments as Strauss himself – having chosen to take first use of the pitch – slapping the third ball of the match into the hands of gully and Peter Siddle roaring in to take a hat-trick.But, like Gatt’s buccaneering band, Strauss’ disciplined players were by then embedded in the local culture, both on the field and off it, and duly battled the odds for two long days to save the game. No way that was possible if they had only just arrived. This isn’t only England. Every team that comes to the Gabba undercooked gets eaten alive. Raw meat is all about the blood. The Australians haven’t lost a first Test there since Gatting and Botham. It is a fortress, and so, just quietly, is Adelaide and the pink ball day-nighter: yes, they are unbeaten at that little party as well.In short, you can practise among yourselves all day long, but it’s not the real thing. Giles and Chris Silverwood, between them director, coach and national selector of England cricket, surely take responsibility for the threadbare schedule. Add in Root when it comes to selection, plus the nod of a couple of senior players – though Broad doesn’t seem to be one, given his inexplicable omission from the first Test – and you’ve got the gamut of those running the show day to day.It is fair to be critical, though I’d go easy on the decision to bat first in Brisbane. That was a dog of a toss to win because every piece of data on the ground points to the advantage of batting first, and the data has it. What’s more, Pat Cummins would have batted first too.As the rain fell in the days leading up to the game, Root will have scratched his head during numerous mid-pitch conversation about that 22 yards of Queensland turf and resolved to not do as Nasser Hussain, Len Hutton and others from other lands had done before him. He knew the pain of bowling first at the Gabba – probably has images of Phil DeFreitas and Steve Harmison writ large in the memory bank. And yet, the grass on the thing, usually so straw brown, kept springing up from beneath the covers with a damp feel and green tinge. As the coin hung in air, Root doubtless thought, “Oh god, it’s a bowl-first pitch for a bat-first match. We have to look this bull in the eye and show him we mean business, but what exactly does that business look like this morning…” Pause. “We’ll bat.” Nice, thinks Cummins. Root got it wrong. Even Mark Taylor, that old hawk of the bat-first message, said he would have bowled. Blimey – if only Root knew that.Any joy, boys? If England don’t rediscover their sense of adventure and fun, they’ll be all adrift soon•William West/AFP/Getty ImagesThen, no Broad or Anderson but instead, Woakes and Leach. Was Anderson really injured or was he being saved for Adelaide, where, the assumption was, the pink ball would swing as it did four years ago? Assumptions, huh. Was Broad so badly out of nick? He had David Warner in his pocket, for goodness’ sake, and more generally, loves a left-hander, of which Australian have a few. First match of the Ashes, the Gabba: you go with your best team, don’t you, and let the devil…Then Burns missed a half-volley, first ball of the match, falling across his stumps like an off-balance Gold Coast surfer. Then England were three down, then six. Oh, the inglorious nature of a collapse. You can’t win a Test match on the first morning (though it’s a daft cliché, because Australia did) but you can sure lose one. On the subject of the toss, it is in that mantra that reasonable criticism of Root’s decision can be found, simply for the fact that his ill-prepared team needed some time to bed in. Imagine the Australian dressing room, delighted that England were choosing the options that most played into their hands.We could tear strips off the Adelaide Test performance too – no Leach or Dom Bess, really? – but does it help? And that was a grim toss to lose. The fact is that, again, England weren’t ready. Had Adelaide been a four-day first-class match against South Australia, the players could have shrugged it off in the name of the learning curve.Let’s go back to India in February. Rather brilliantly England won the first Test, in Chennai, whereupon the in-form Buttler went home for a predetermined rest. Bairstow wasn’t even there – he was home too, having a kip perhaps. Ben Foakes played in the second Test, along with Dom Sibley, Dan Lawrence, Moeen Ali (who went home soon after) and Olly Stone. (Burns, Root, Stokes, Pope, Broad, Leach made up the team.) England were beaten, and then beaten again and again, by heavy margins.Rest through rotation to compensate for bubble life has done little good for performance. Winning away had never been straightforward but in the current environment has turned hellishly difficult. The thinking behind rotation is flawed. The tough question is the one that asks whether the England players are enjoying themselves. On any level, can they find a sense of adventure and fun in a land that has long offered the most exciting tour of all? Or has the year of living limited and lonely turned the greatest game into an obligation? Are the players comfortable with their thoughts or weary with regulation and instruction? Initially, some were undecided about going: what space do they occupy now?The art of cricket is a beautiful journey and should become a beautiful result. This beauty holds its place in our heart even at a time when all roads point to change. It is why there is an immense responsibility as we frantically modernise a game that has its roots in the past. After all, it is the roots that define it. Right now, one imagines such thoughts are far from the minds of the beleaguered English cricketers. Perhaps, Boxing Day at the Melbourne Cricket Ground will remind them of the glory of the game and, thus, bring excitement and inspiration. England are quite good enough to beat Australia but first the traffic must clear and the collective mind become committed.

The ball is the fundamental unit of cricket, and with Warne, each one was a universe of possibilities

Osman Samiuddin10-Mar-2022If Shane Warne never took another wicket after Mike Gatting’s, he would still live on. Not in as many minds, and certainly not as rich a figure, but a ball like that has its own life. It does not go forgotten. The reason it endures and that it was so instantaneously acclaimed is for what it did in the milliseconds of its existence, the mad physics around it, but also because it was legspin as a platonic ideal.This is, of course, a truism. How else do all the great deliveries become great if not by doing something great? But that ball speaks to a fundamental often overlooked in cricket, which is that, broken down, the game is only the sum of the self-contained vignettes each of its individual deliveries represents. Only when stitched together do we then have a match, unto a series, unto a career. Each ball is a world by itself, of limitations and possibilities, and when you walked into the world of a Shane Warne delivery, you walked into a world with no limitations, where possibilities abounded. In this world the ball could, and did, behave in ways unlike any before Warne existed.Think of the circumstances leading to that ball. It was Warne’s first in a Test in England. Hardly anyone at Old Trafford that day would have seen him before. They might have heard of a new blond leggie who had helped win a Test in Colombo and run through West Indies, but few would’ve seen him. Then, without warning, he did .Related

• There's a Warne-shaped hole in this Ashes

• Legspinners look back at Shane Warne's ball of the century: 'That delivery will always be the pinnacle'

• Facing Warne: the magic, the theatre, and the whole shebang

• Shane Warne: the showman who could do hard graft

• Shane Warne's greatest hits

And if he could do that, then what couldn’t he do every time he walked up to bowl?In the days since his passing, scouring YouTube for his best moments has been a comfort. Quite likely this has been a universal response. A connoisseur will argue that 90-second videos of only wickets falling is to miss the point of Warne. That experiencing Warne without what Gideon Haigh calls the pageant of Warne is to know of Warne but not to feel Warne.That theatre essential. That walk back to his mark, the occasional pause to fix the field or to let doubts fester in the batter, to make them think something is amiss when nothing is. Then the amble in, so utterly lacking in foreboding it was as if Jaws was coming to shore to the title music of . Then there were the traps, with ball but also with manner. The appeals, the gradual massaging of an umpire into his decision; the bluff of the oohs and aahs and smirks and sneers when he beat a bat, but especially when he found the middle of one. As much as Warne’s wickets, everything before and around them is the eulogy.But these videos make two points, the first a complementary one, that these grand and elaborate ploys and plots needed denouements to match and Warne delivered them with truly freakish quality and consistency. But second, that even as one-off deliveries that may never be bowled again, with no build-up or backstory or history, that only ever exist in bite-sized social media clips, these deliveries work. And how.Look back and weep: MSK Prasad is bemused at what has befallen him in Adelaide in 1999•Hamish Blair/Getty ImagesNot long after Gatting at Old Trafford, Warne would bowl Graham Gooch behind his legs at Edgbaston, coming in round the wicket. It is less iconic but notable because it became a leitmotif in the Warne canon: which other bowler, before or since, has bowled as many batters around their legs as Warne?In a way this dismissal is a legspinner’s ultimate flex. Sneaking in behind a batter is peak deception. And to do it, the ball must do what all leggies are supposed to make it do: spin leg to off and preferably big. The conceit is in treating the batter as if he is not there as an opponent: he’s there as a marker, an obstacle around which to find the best route to the stumps. The calibration needs to be so precise, it’s unfathomable: the angle, the spot where it must land, the degree of turn, all so that it misses pads, bat, and backside. In this instance the angles are even more outrageous because Warne, unusually, runs in from between the umpire and stumps.There’s an over to Craig McMillan that is priceless for how Warne sets his trap (Adam Gilchrist’s cackling provides an assist). But the wicket ball is an absolute WTF for the lengths to which McMillan has gone to prevent being bowled behind his legs. Ultimately, as he bat-pads to short leg, he appears to be playing a forward-defensive to a delivery bowled by the square-leg umpire.In no other sport is there an obvious equivalent to what is happening here. A fleeting kinship with football’s nutmeg? There’s greater consequence and a more acute geometry here, as when Warne famously nutmegged Basit Ali. Typical Warne that the tease – chatting with Ian Healy about whether to have pasta or Mexican for dinner (as if he wanted anything other than pizza) to stretch out the tension of the day’s last ball – is as sweet.Something of this mode, of the wrong-way-round-rightness, is elicited by the epic Roberto Carlos free kick against France in 1997. Carlos eschewed the obvious angle for his left foot by swerving the ball like an outswinger round the outside of the defensive wall, rather than curling it like an inswinger round the other side. That free kick was a one-off: Warne did it repeatedly.The best of the genre isn’t strictly of the genre. Poor MSK Prasad receives a Warne delivery from the wicket that doesn’t drift as much as get caught in a late and sudden patch of violent turbulence, pushing the ball down and to the leg side.A quandary. Prasad has taken leg-stump guard and instinct is telling him to pad this away. Training and tradition are telling him to get real, because balls delivered from there are not padded away. That’s not how cricket works. From flight, fight or freeze, Prasad chooses the last.Even as the ball then hits the stumps behind him and Healy is starting to celebrate, Prasad is unmoved, staring at the spot the ball landed on – around a sixth-leg-stump line. How did it land there, his mind is failing to process, and where has it gone, it is asking. And how did it get spun the ball. Somebody who had never seen cricket could watch a big legbreak from Warne and understand immediately it was an elite athletic feat, sexy and dangerous, compelling and superior, unique and evolutionary. A single Warne legbreak was the game’s gateway drug.As time passed that spectacle became rarer, though not extinct. The most vivid occasions were against left-handers, where, because Warne was at them from round the wicket, and that TV cameras mess up depth perception, some of those balls looked like they were breaking at right angles.Like with Andrew Strauss at Edgbaston, which nearly made it as the ‘s ball of the (21st) century. It would have done, probably, had Strauss not appeared as discombobulated as Prasad had been. Granted, Strauss did not freeze, but in displaying the worst footwork since Elaine Benes hit the dance floor, he tarred the delivery a smidge with his own cluelessness.Not that better positioning helped, as Shivnarine Chanderpaul once discovered at the SCG. He understood the ball’s intentions from the line, so preposterously far outside off that Chanderpaul would need a visa to play it. He knew this was going to spit back into him. Having figured out the length and leaned forward, he changed plans and nimbly shifted his weight on to his back foot. Until this moment – 71 off 67 balls – Chanderpaul’s plans against Warne had worked. Until ball 68, when Mike Tyson’s famous musing about plans came to mind: “Everybody has a plan until they get hit.” Or bowled by Shane Warne.This was a central truth about Warne. Not only did he always have a ball that punched through the opponent’s plans, he had one that punched through his own. As when he pulled off a near-exact replica of the Chanderpaul delivery in bowling Saeed Anwar in Hobart three years later.Like Chanderpaul, Anwar was set. Like Chanderpaul, Anwar knew as soon as the ball left Warne’s hand what it was going to do. Like Chanderpaul, he half stepped out but smartly leaned back, with aspirations to cut. Like Chanderpaul, those aspirations were swiftly turned to crud. Like Chanderpaul, he was bowled. Unlike Chanderpaul, this was the one time Anwar looked inelegant with bat in hand.Hobart heist: in 1999, Saeed Anwar was bowled by one that torpedoed in at a right angle almost, after pitching way outside off•Getty ImagesThere’s an even more cartoonish quality to this ball, an unreal defying of natural laws. For starters, it breaks the width of the Thames to hit leg stump. And ordinarily, when a ball lands on a pitch, it loses speed. This is science and we all signed up to science to understand how the world works. All except this ball. This ball springs off the pitch faster than it landed, so fast that it doesn’t hit leg stump, it knocks it clean out of the ground. A ball produced by a spinner, with the consequence of one produced by a fast bowler.What elevates this ball, though, is Richie Benaud. Prior to it, there’s a commentary preamble from Mark Taylor about the plans Warne might be working on against Anwar. Those plans are binned as Warne switches to round the wicket and bowls this ball. Only Benaud can process and articulate: “Whatever Warne was planning, he has suddenly produced a ball entirely different from the others he has bowled and it has ripped back.”Which is to say, whatever else you had been watching, or not, whatever Warne plan you might have intuited, however much you knew about the game, if you watched this one ball, then you saw everything you needed to and you didn’t need to know anything else.Except this last thing: the flipper. In later years when Warne stopped bowling it, he started relying on the bastardised slider. Not the legbreak that didn’t turn – let’s call that the bluffer – which did for poor Ian Bell at Lord’s and fooled even Benaud. The real slider got Andrew Flintoff later that same innings.Neither was a patch on the flipper, which seemed a hellish delivery to bowl, let alone bowl well. The flipper, Warne would explain, required the ball to be released from an actual snap of the fingers, which was difficult but totally apt because it was presaging magic. Unlike Warne’s big, showy legbreak, this was proper illusion. Batters saw that Warne had dragged it down, except he hadn’t. Batters saw a long hop, or one short enough to cut or pull, except it wasn’t. Batters saw it go straight and it did, except straight never felt so pretzelian.It would be cruel to pick any of Daryll Cullinan’s malfunctions; candy from kids Benaud said of one. It would also be impossible to pick just one. The one that got Richie Richardson, the world’s introduction to it? Cullinan one, two or three? Ian Bishop, ’96 World Cup, a place in the final on the line? Let’s go Alec Stewart, usually such an expert judge and executor of the cut, getting it so wrong at the Gabba. Not as short as he saw, not the legbreak he saw, not as slow as he saw.The flipper also didn’t care for science, such was its acceleration on landing. This question sounds wrong, but it isn’t: has a ball ever beaten batters for pace so comprehensively and so consistently as Warne’s flipper?Nothing does justice to the world of Shane Warne – to the world of a single Warne delivery – as watching these deliveries again the last week has made clear. Maybe they bring some succour. Maybe from them we see that even if Warne had lived long beyond last Friday, these deliveries could not be bowled again by anyone other than him. That even if he is now no longer of this world, we live on gratefully, eternally in his world. Rest in Peace, King.

All the major social media reactions after the thrilling draw in Canberra

ESPNcricinfo staff30-Jan-2022England came within touching distance of chasing down the highest total in Women’s Tests. But a fightback from Australia in the final hour of the match brought it to a thrilling draw. Here’s how Twitter reacted to one of the closest games in women’s Tests.

Shame there's only one test #Ashes https://t.co/wW6VZ0tGXc

— Sarah Taylor (@Sarah_Taylor30) January 30, 2022