As it hurtled towards its astonishing finish, Trent Bridge felt less like a Test match than a manifesto

Osman Samiuddin15-Jun-2022Well, that happened.Five hundred and fifty-three played 539 played 284 played 299 for 5. England beat New Zealand. They got some World Test Championship points and are no longer bottom of the table. They won the series. Jonny Bairstow was player of the match. All this happened.But ? That was something else. That was sensory overload. That was a fever dream. That was all the vibes and feels of sport packed into a small ground in a small city in the middle of England best known around the world for an outlaw who may or may not have existed. That was a ride which, whenever it seemed like it might be dying out, instead got a little wilder. Ben Stokes sat, red-faced from the sun, from pouring every bit of himself out all over this Test, half an hour after the game and said he couldn’t get his head round what had happened. England chased down 299 on the final day with 22 overs left, having not begun until 15.4 overs into the morning. They went at 5.98 an over. If Stokes, one of the creators of this, was having trouble comprehending, what hope any of us?Related

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The finish was some end-days bonfire, burning history as we knew it. Targets this big don’t get chased down like this on a final day. Okay, they do – shoutout to West Indies’ 1984 chase of 342 at Lord’s and Pakistan’s famous chase in 2014 – just not quite like this and not that often.But this entire Test was played on the rumblings of something more seismic, not unlike that ODI series circa 2015 between these two teams where they transformed the white-ball game. Maybe we should’ve clocked the impossibility of that Daryl Mitchell six dropping right into a pint glass in the crowd – that feels like a decade ago – and taken it for a portent. Impossible was going to happen. In some way it was appropriate that an e-auction in India ran at the same time, an e-auction that feels as game-changing.We’d heard about Baz-ball, this curious and vague mix of no-fear cricket played with campfire spirit where everyone – team-mate or opposition – is a mate and to be accorded due respect. But that was white-ball cricket, the culmination of which was the 2019 World Cup where – and this is dumbing it down – England brought the berserker and New Zealand the feel-good.But this was Test cricket where Baz-ball had been untested. Unless you consider Brendon McCullum’s Test captaincy and, I’d venture to say, a record of 11 wins, 11 losses and 9 draws makes it difficult to say anything of it. McCullum’s 145 in his last Test, the fastest in Test history, is often invoked as a crystallisation of pure, high-grade Baz: New Zealand are 32-3, then 72-4 and McCullum? Hold my beer.What doesn’t get mentioned as often is that New Zealand lost that Test comfortably. McCullum slogged to the leg side in the second innings, a ball after he’d hit a six, and left New Zealand, effectively, minus 30 for four.6:35

#PoliteEnquiries: CARNAGE!

Stokes had a wonderful game with bat and ball, and also with words. He got to the nub of what Baz-ball may be with a wonderful turn of phrase that ad copywriters for sports brands are kicking themselves for not having coined first. “Run into the fear,” he said, “of what the game was”.England ran hurled themselves into the fear of New Zealand’s 553 – that is what made this game. Stokes’ 33-ball 46 was the subject of a little discontent, specifically the dismissal: slog-sweeping having already hit a six, with England still 148 behind and only the wicketkeeper and bowlers to come. But he reasoned that he played it according to what he felt the game needed and, in his mind, the game didn’t need a normal Test-match innings. And then, of course, with Bairstow, he scared the crap out of the fear of a last-day, 299-run chase.All philosophy, we know, is great until real life has its say. Cricket has a geography that will make this happen. The surface dictates everything that plays out on it. And this was a very unusual English surface: pace, bounce, small boundaries and an outfield made of glass. It was made for this type of ambition. (As an aside, maybe this is the template England never knew they needed to build a fortress at home. Unlike, say Australia and India, touring England has not been a daunting prospect for so many teams, as results attest). But facing R Ashwin and Axar Patel in Chennai, or Pat Cummins and co at the G will require a more nuanced ambition.Eras change gradually and stealthily, not over the course of five days. They’re built as much on mistakes and missteps as the good times. And this is one Test. McCullum and Stokes are two men. Cricket isn’t a game of two XIs. It is a game of systems and infrastructure and money.But for the duration of the Test, nothing was more tangible than the prospect of a light being switched on, and probably not just for England but for the sport.Strange things happened that played into this. On the fourth morning Joe Root quietly dropped a batting manifesto, urging current players to not be afraid of rewriting the coaching manual. Only if he had said this at the centre of Lord’s could it have sounded more like the Queen saying Republicanism is the way forward.Maybe it was the heady delirium of post-captaincy decompression talking. Maybe it was the dressing room mantra filtering out. But these weren’t empty words. Three overs into that morning, Root would reverse-scoop Tim Southee for six. He was burning flags here.

Joe Root scooping Tim Southee for six#ENGvNZ pic.twitter.com/ZQLzK31aZk

— ESPNcricinfo (@ESPNcricinfo) June 13, 2022

His methods have brought titles to Mumbai and Vidarbha, and they could now potentially take MP all the way

Shashank Kishore17-Jun-2022″Quick, boys.”A voice, not loud enough to boom around the dressing room but loud enough to be heard, gets everyone’s attention in the Madhya Pradesh camp.It’s their coach Chandrakant Pandit’s first and final reminder that they need to be out of the ground soon. A recovery session, team meeting, and one-on-one chats are lined-up at the hotel. They can’t be fatigued by Bengaluru’s evening traffic after a long day.They want to make sure their hour-long commute back to the hotel will last no more than an hour. Within 20 minutes of stumps being called, they’re all ready to go. The players troop out, one by one, bags neatly packed and loaded onto the bus.What does this have to do with cricket and the Ranji Trophy? Well, this peek into the MP camp highlights the importance they have placed in time management, planning and preparation – the ingredients of a most memorable campaign, constructed methodically under Pandit, a man whose methods have brought success to the numerous teams he has coached over the years. Methods that are uncontested.”I may even slap a player, but there’s a reason behind it and he will understand that too,” he once said, only half in jest.He’s won Ranji titles with Mumbai and Vidarbha, and he’s now coaching MP, who are perfectly placed to reach their first final this century. We aren’t even counting the many players he has shaped at the National Cricket Academy or at several junior camps.File photo – Captain Aditya Shrivastava contributed a crucial second-innings 82 to drive home MP’s advantage over Bengal•PTI For three weeks now, MP’s hotel has been their home. Even with bubble restrictions lifted, they’ve continued taking precautions, and kept to themselves. Instead of a round of golf next door, the players have spent the extra hour at the gym. Rather than trips downtown to visit a mall, watch a movie, or grab a bite, they’ve indulged in and chitchat by the poolside, or competitive games of FIFA, or late-night coffee sessions.These players have had each other’s backs through thick and thin. Team bonding has been the foundation of their Ranji Trophy campaign. It perhaps is with most successful teams, but this feels different. Or maybe it just feels so organic that the vibes resonate across the group without anyone going out of their way to speak about it.You can see why this is big. MP don’t often make Ranji finals. They were last there in 1998-99, when they lost to Karnataka. Pandit, incidentally, was their captain then.Now there’s another opportunity, potentially, should they see off Bengal’s challenge on the last day of their semi-final in Alur. MP need six wickets to win, and even a draw will be enough since they’ve secured the first-innings lead. Bengal need a further 254 runs in a chase of 350.Kumar Kartikeya picked up three of the four Bengal wickets that fell on Friday. He’s itching to get his hands on the Ranji Trophy. When he left home nearly a decade ago, he didn’t know he’d make it to the IPL. The Ranji Trophy was all he’d heard of, and dreamt of playing in. If he were to win it now, it would make the trip back home doubly special.Rajat Patidar has seen different shades of the happiness spectrum over the last six months. In February, he wasn’t picked at the IPL auction. In April, he was sitting down to plan his wedding, but had to put it on the backburner. One call from Sanjay Bangar, the Royal Challengers Bangalore head coach, and he was in Mumbai within six hours.In May, he became the only Indian uncapped player to hit a century in the IPL playoffs. If he adds a Ranji Trophy win to that achievement, he might have a significantly expanded guest list when his much-delayed wedding goes ahead.Chandrakant Pandit coached Vidarbha to back-to-back Ranji Trophy titles in 2017-18 and 2018-19•PTI Akshat Raghuwanshi, the prankster in the group at 18, whom everyone is fond of, may have not even been here had MP had the services of the India allrounder Venkatesh Iyer. Raghuwanshi was making a mark in age-group cricket when a freak innings – a half-century off twenty-something balls in an impossible chase – made heads turn.Umpiring in an Under-19 match, Pandit declined to give a plumb lbw early in Raghuwanshi’s innings just so he could see more of this talent he’d heard so much about. What he saw certainly impressed him, because he gave Raghuwanshi his Ranji chance straightaway, and he’s responded with three half-centuries and a century in his first five innings at this level.Then there’s Aditya Shrivastava, the captain, who was all of five when MP last made it to the final. When he started out in 2015, he was so star-struck around the group that he’d barely mumble a word to the senior players.Here he is now, as captain, giving pep talks to the entire group – every day, every session, every time they step out onto the field. With the bat, his stubborn 82 in the second innings, his only half-century of the season so far, was as important as the 79 Patidar made in the same innings, the wickets Kartikeya took, or the century Himanshu Mantri made in the first innings.These are just some of several stories that make up this team, many of which are still waiting to be told. You are unlikely to hear them unless and until MP win. Because that is one of Pandit’s simple rules. Talk only after you have something to show for it.And no one is complaining. Everyone is happy to stick to this instruction. There’s the Ranji Trophy on the line, and they’re just giving it their all by shutting out external noise, quite literally.On Saturday, along with Pandit, there will be many others willing them on. Among them, will be all the former players who’ve shaped MP cricket into what it it today: the Bundelas, the Khurasiyas, the Saxenas and the Ojhas among others. They will all be wishing their team well.

NZ are better than other sides at reading conditions, and that allows them to strike faster than their opponents

Sidharth Monga04-Nov-20221:41

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Yet another World Cup where you look at them and think maybe this time they don’t have it in them to make it. But yet again, New Zealand are the first team to reach the semi-finals.Despite that bowling attack, if you put them up against Australia and England over 10 matches in these conditions, you’d expect the other two to prevail.Tournament play is different though. Especially when only two teams make it out of a group of six. Room for error is negligible. Every new venue brings new conditions and new ground dimensions. You have to read the conditions quicker and strike faster than the opposition. That’s something New Zealand have been good at, giving them their fifth straight white-ball World Cup semi-final.Related

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What they did to Australia in the first game of this tournament was somewhat similar to what they did to India in 2016. They picked three spinners to India’s two, went after the new ball, hitting two sixes in the first over and then defended 126 with the ball beginning to rag. Here, they again read the pitch in Sydney perfectly, attacked Australia early and have kept finding a way since then.Their captain Kane Williamson is proud of how well they assess and adapt to different conditions. And this is unlike Test cricket, where you get to see a pitch three days in advance and compare how it is coming along. In this World Cup, sides have had their first look of the pitch on the day of the match.”Often it’s very difficult to know exactly how a pitch is going to play until you start playing,” Williamson said. “And then trying to be really clear with your communication, whether it’s as batters or a bowling unit. Make sure you’re getting around each other to report back and either identify what a competitive total is and what options for some of your better ones to take. Then same with the ball really.”The system then is to keep in touch with the dugout. A batter who is coming in next might send a drink out and ask something. You take that moment out and report back. When you are bowling, you help the new bowler out. Not to say other teams don’t do it, but New Zealand perhaps do it better because their incoming batters or bowlers often know just what to do.Kane Williamson and Tim Southee have a chat during New Zealand’s win over Ireland•Associated Press”The two that are out there are the two that are out there, and then you might get a drink that comes out, and they might ask, ‘how’s it going?'” Williamson said. “Someone on the sideline might be curious. So you report back what you feel is happening. Then sometimes it is your team blueprint, where do we need to be? How do we get there? And doing your best to do it.”It’s one of the challenges of tournament cricket, but it certainly makes it enjoyable to do to try to make those adjustments. Therefore, the value of the contribution isn’t always what it might seem. So it’s really trying to commit to what you’re trying to do as a team and be nice and clear on how that looks. Then from there just really trying to make those adjustments as you go.”One example of making adjustments on the go was when Ireland’s batters took Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi on, taking 29 off their first overs. Immediately, Santner made the adjustment, cutting down the pace and going wide of their sweeping arc.

“Often it’s very difficult to know exactly how a pitch is going to play until you start playing. And then trying to be really clear with your communication, whether it’s as batters or a bowling unit. Make sure you’re getting around each other to report back and either identify what a competitive total is and what options for some of your better ones to take. Then same with the ball really.”Kane Williamson

“We had a little chat, absolutely,” Williamson said when asked about the adjustment. “Obviously being out in the middle and feeling that, when the spin is on the slow side and you bowled a particular line, that made it much more difficult to control. They made that adjustment quickly, which was great.”Also being put under pressure, we know how dynamic that batting line-up of Ireland is, and they’ll keep taking it on. They [the spinners] bowled beautifully to make that adjustment quickly and adjust their line and take a few Ks off their deliveries, which definitely made it a little bit more difficult.”New Zealand might feel Williamson himself getting in a big contribution might be one of the last pieces of the puzzle. Williamson scored 61 off 35, but he scored them his way. He scored 15 off the first 15 balls he faced before he started to get going. The rhythm was better than earlier, and he kept going.”You’re looking to make the contributions, and there’s a lot of thought that goes into trying to position ourselves, whether it’s my batting or someone else’s in terms of the partnership,” Williamson said. “And you’re always wanting to try and get that momentum and take those options and feel quite good about it. So it was nice to make a contribution today.”

Dawson, Wheal, Crane and Ellis all ply their usual trade at Hampshire and it’s Brave’s loss

Cameron Ponsonby12-Aug-2022Home, famously, is where your heart is. A quirk of the modern cricketer, adorned in various shades of neon as they trot across the globe, is that they live out of a suitcase whilst pledging their heart and soul to a different franchise six weeks at a time.And tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be a Chattogram Challenger.A lifelong adventure of international flings that rarely, if ever, collide with your one true love at home. But sweat away, sailor you don’t mind.However, in today’s fixture between Southern Brave and London Spirit, four of the visiting Spirit side and 80% of the bowling attack in Liam Dawson, Brad Wheal, Mason Crane and Nathan Ellis ply their trade at Hampshire, with a fifth, Glenn Maxwell, also previously of this parish.The result was a cricketing episode of Whose Home Is It Anyway? A comedy improv show where the away team’s five ‘home’ players outnumber the home team’s three (James Vince, James Fuller and Ross Whiteley) and they trade gags as Jake Lintott and Crane bowl googlies to their heart’s content in the background.”We had the Blast here”, said Hampshire’s T20 final match-winner Ellis to Sky Sports ahead of the game, “so I was expecting some noise when my name came up on the screen. There was nothing.”When I played for Hampshire I got a room with a balcony [in the adjoining Hilton]. Now I’m here as a visitor, I’m facing the other way with no balcony.”Nathan Ellis. A stranger in his own kingdom.Mason Crane celebrates taking the wicket of Alex Davies•ECB/Getty ImagesIn the first innings, London Spirit reached an ultimately match-winning total of 147 thanks to Daniel Bell-Drummond who, in his first appearance of the competition, top scored with 46 off 33 balls.But the plot thickened when Spirit’s ‘away’ bowling attack took on Brave’s home batting line-up. Between Dawson, Ellis, Wheal and Crane, London Spirit’s attack had taken 69 Blast wickets this year for Hampshire. And of Brave’s top seven, Vince, Whiteley and Fuller had combined for over 1000 runs.”It’s pretty much the Hampshire winning attack with Chris Wood on the bench”, Bell-Drummond said after the game. “So they obviously know the ground really well and know Vince and Fuller extremely well. So that was very helpful for us.”Ahead of the opening game of the season, Southern Brave had asked to reduce the boundaries to 70m all around only to be denied due to competition regulations. It is unclear whether the change was requested for reasons of business or pleasure, but crucially, it would have made it different.The result of the move not being allowed, however, is that the dimensions of the ground remained the same as those in the Blast. A fact all the more important due to Hampshire’s longstanding success at the Ageas existing on a diet of pace-off bowling being combined with boundaries that are large enough to be considered intercontinental borders.As the chase began, so too did the all Hampshire affair as Vince faced up to the offspin of Maxwell. However, in a moment very much not in the script, Vince was bowled. A big wicket has never been met with such silence, as a stunned stadium looked on in disbelief. Most of all Vince, who stood his ground and waited for the replay in disbelief that a ball would have the audacity to go anywhere near his stumps on his own ground of all places.It wasn’t until Jordan Thompson came on as second change that Spirit abandoned their Hampshire connection. Dawson bowled his 20 deliveries in two sets of 10, conceding just 21 runs in the process, before Crane too bowled a set of 10. In total, all of Crane and Dawson’s deliveries were sent down from the Pavilion end as London Spirit’s Hampshire played Southern Brave at their own game.”Hampshire play on used wickets here”, said Spirit captain Eoin Morgan to Sky at the close, “they’ve pushed the boundaries out with Mason, Dawson, [Danny] Briggs over the years and taken pace off the ball and used variations.”Whether they’ve set targets or chased them down, they’ve been really busy, they’ve not gone gung-ho with the bat, looking for boundaries, they’ve built momentum with ones and twos and applied pressure in a different way.”It was fitting then, that it was only to Ross Whiteley that Spirit’s plan almost came crumbling down. Whiteley, newly signed to Hampshire this year after playing for Brave last season, struck 52 off 33 balls to get Brave within striking distance before ultimately falling nine runs short.”It’s always fun playing against your mates,” Whiteley said after the game, “and knowing how successful they’ve been it’s always going to be tricky.”They’re great bowlers and they know how to bowl on that surface. They’ve shown it, winning a trophy this year, and they’ve done it again tonight.”In the end, home advantage won out. Just not in the way we’re used to.

The big question is whether Australia will want to pick a second specialist offpinner against India’s right-hand heavy batting order

Alex Malcolm05-Feb-2023Todd Murphy has only been bowling offspin for six years. Eleven months ago, he had played just one first-class game. Since then, he has only added six more.Yet there is a chance, come Thursday, that the 22-year-old could be making his Test debut for Australia against India in Nagpur alongside his mentor Nathan Lyon.Related

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It would be a similar rise from obscurity to that of Lyon’s in 2011. But Murphy’s rise, albeit just as rapid, has come along a more traditional pathway. He has been in the Victoria age-group programmes, thanks to the talent-spotting of his long-time coach, former Victoria legspinner and current Victoria and New Zealand women’s spin coach Craig Howard.Murphy played in the 2020 Under-19 World Cup for Australia, toured with Australia A to Sri Lanka last year and went to Chennai to train at the MRF academy with a select group of handpicked young Australian players. Two of his seven first-class matches have been for Australia A, if you include his excellent performance for Prime Minister’s XI against West Indies in November, which was for all intents and purposes an Australia A team.Howard believes Murphy has all the tools to succeed if called upon in Nagpur.”He’s got very good at being able to adapt on the fly for what the conditions suit,” Howard told ESPNcricinfo. “Right from the start we’ve made sure that he is quite flexible with his seam position. And we’re often talking about which conditions require high overspin and which ones require high sidespin and somewhere in between as well.”If they do produce absolute raggers then he’ll know what to do. He’ll need to bowl with high sidespin and a little bit of undercut and a fraction of overspin, and sort of work that axis with the occasional high overspun ball and a bit of cross-seam stuff too, where you get natural variation off the shiny side, where it skids and it sometimes hits the seam and holds.”There’s a lot more subtle variations over there, whereas a lot of those subtle variations in Australia just don’t work.”There has been talk swirling around Australian cricket for the last six months that Murphy has fast become the country’s second-best red-ball spinner. But the selectors balked at the idea of picking him for the recent Sydney Test against South Africa when they did select two spinners. Coach Andrew McDonald cited the need for picking not necessarily the next-best spinner but the best one to complement Lyon, which meant the left-arm orthodox bowler Ashton Agar got the nod.The emergence of Travis Head as a part-time offspinner has only added to the conundrum. Can Australia pick two specialist offspinners in India with part-time support from a third offspinner, and only have part-time legspin options to spin it the other way in Marnus Labuschagne and Steven Smith? It is something captain Pat Cummins is considering.”It’s a chance. That’s something we’ll have to balance up if we want to go with two spinners,” Cummins said on Saturday. “Do we want variation or just two offspinners? So there’s no reason why we can’t go that way. Travis Head is in the side as well and bowls really good offspin. We’ve got plenty of variety to choose from.”

“Absolutely there’s no reason why [they can’t play together]. If your two best spinners are standouts and they both spin it the same way this certainly shouldn’t be a problem, and because they are a little bit different in what they do there should be no reason why they can’t play together.”Craig Howard

The worry is that two offspinners won’t match up well to India’s top order with the top four likely to be exclusively right-handers while it’s possible there could be only one left-hander in the top six.Left-arm quick Mitchell Starc won’t play the first Test either, meaning there won’t be a lot of rough created outside the off-stump of the right-handers.But Howard believes Murphy and Lyon can play together in the same side given they are slightly different offspinners. Murphy also has a good record against right-handers in his short first-class career, averaging 26.7 and striking at 62.2, which is streets ahead of Agar and even legspinner Mitchell Swepson in recent years.!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var t=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var a in e.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r=0;r<t.length;r++){if(t[r].contentWindow===e.source)t[r].style.height=e.data["datawrapper-height"][a]+"px"}}}))}();

The defending champions need some crucial replacements after trading out a couple of players

Abhimanyu Bose21-Dec-20225:12

Who should replace Lockie Ferguson at Gujarat Titans?

Who they’ve got
Gujarat Titans, the defending IPL champions, released only six players ahead of this mini-auction and, rather unsurprisingly, have kept the majority of their title-winning squad intact.Follow the 2023 IPL auction LIVE

You can watch the auction live in India on Star Sports, and follow live analysis with Tom Moody, Ian Bishop, Wasim Jaffer and Stuart Binny right here on ESPNcricinfo.

Current squad: Hardik Pandya (capt), Abhinav Manohar, David Miller, Shubman Gill, Matthew Wade, Wriddhiman Saha, B Sai Sudharshan, Darshan Nalkande, Jayant Yadav, Pradeep Sangwan, Rahul Tewatia, Vijay Shankar, Rashid Khan, Alzarri Joseph, Mohammed Shami, Noor Ahmad, R Sai Kishore, Yash DayalWhat they have to play with
The Titans have a total purse of INR 19.25 crore (USD 2.3 million approx.), and seven slots to fill, including three overseas slots.What they need
A fast bowler. They traded Lockie Ferguson to Kolkata Knight Riders and will need a replacement, as head coach Ashish Nehra said earlier this month. Another Indian quick will also help, because they would want a back-up for Yash Dayal. Not to forget Hardik Pandya’s workload management. Having released Jason Roy and traded Rahmanullah Gurbaz to Knight Riders, Gujarat would also want to bring in a top-order batter, who can either open or come in at No. 3. And a fast-bowling allrounder, but with only Rajasthan Royals (INR 13.2 crore), Royal Challengers Bangalore (INR 8.75 crore) and Knight Riders (INR 7.05 crore) left with smaller purses than them, they may end up being out-bidded for the big names (think Sam Curran, Cameron Green, Ben Stokes) in that category.The likely targets
Sam Curran would be a perfect fit, adding batting depth while also replacing Ferguson as a frontline quick. However, he will be in high demand and teams like Sunrisers Hyderabad and Punjab Kings have plenty left in their purse and could break the bank for him.Reece Topley, a tall left-arm quick with a deadly yorker, will add to the team’s arsenal and might be easier to get than some others. Titans could target him as a like-for-like replacement for Ferguson.Jaydev Unadkat has a history of being expensive, but he brings with him a wealth of experience as well as form and confidence. He led his domestic side Saurashtra to the domestic 50-overs Vijay Hazare Trophy title this month, and also got a Test recall for India’s ongoing tour of Bangladesh.Mayank Agarwal is likely to be the most sought-after Indian batter in the auction. He would fit into the Titans top order, but they will face stiff competition from several teams.And why not Kane Williamson? He was released by Sunrisers and could become Titans’ glue at the top of the order. He can open the innings or play at No. 3.

From bottom half of the CWC League 2 to stringing together an improbable series of wins under a new coach, it has been a surreal year for the side

Shashank Kishore28-Apr-2023″Each of those 12 matches could be an episode of a Netflix series.”Monty Desai, Nepal’s head coach, is reflecting on his team’s journey from rock bottom to being a step closer to their World Cup dream.When Desai joined Nepal in February, they were second from bottom of the World Cup Super League 2 points table. They needed 11 wins from a possible 12 matches to secure a berth at the 50-over World Cup Qualifier in Zimbabwe this June.They got them, making for a stirring story of how an underdog team with a history of infighting and administrative challenges rose to conquer new frontiers.Related

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“It’s emotional to even talk about it, there are so many stories,” Desai says. “I don’t know where to begin.”Associate cricket is cut-throat. But it also offers many lessons in character-building and camaraderie, and stories of people who play for the love of the game without knowing if they will be loved back.On a cold spring evening in Kirtipur on March 16, Nepal were, as they soaked in the glory of having achieved the unthinkable, having pipped UAE in a thriller under fading light.The Tribhuvan University ground was teeming with far more people than it could accommodate. Thousands dotted the streets to give the team a victory parade. Nepal’s prime minister hosted a reception for the team.”It was as if we’d won a World Cup,” Desai says. “But I told the boys the journey has just begun.”

****

Five nights before their game against Namibia, the first of their 12 remaining fixtures, Desai received a message from their opener Kushal Bhurtel. His mother had suffered severe burns all over her body in a freak accident and had to be brought from their hometown to a hospital in Kathmandu.”The spontaneous call from the entire team to be alongside their colleague in this moment spoke of the camaraderie,” Desai says. I could see they cared for each other.

“For Bhurtel to play the role of a son by giving his mother moral support, and then to come back and be clear on his role in the game was a tremendous achievement. He set the tone for the whole team.”Coach Monty Desai on Kushal Bhurtel’s match-winning knock when his mother was ill

“In fact, it was Bhurtel’s younger sister who insisted he stay focused on chasing his dream and the country’s dream. She is his inspiration.”When Bhurtel returned, he found himself in the cauldron of a high-pressure chase of 286 against Namibia. He remembered Desai’s words: “Walk into the unknown with excitement.” Bhurtel made 115 off 113 balls to set the tone for a stunning chase.”For him to play the role of a son by giving his mother moral support and then to come back, focus and be clear of his role [in the game] was a tremendous achievement. He set the tone for the whole team,” Desai says.After the first match of the UAE tour, where Nepal were scheduled to play three more fixtures in the CWC tri-series against UAE and Papua New Guinea, legspinner Mousom Dhakal injured his shoulder. Nepal needed to seek a replacement, but they needed a detailed report from the physio, Vikram Nyaupane, with accompanying scans that needed to be verified by an ICC committee.Nepal had a small window in which to complete their paperwork, but Nyaupane’s pregnant wife had just gone into labour in America, and he was dealing with the stress of it while being far away.”I wasn’t aware of his personal situation [and that it was happening] the same morning while we had to submit a report with all evidence in place to the ICC committee,” Desai says.”All this happened between 8 and 9am in Dubai. It was only around 11am, when we got together for a team meeting, that it was brought to my notice what he had been going through the whole night, while I was chasing him to write a proper professional email to get the job done.”I thanked him profusely for what he had done. Going back home immediately wasn’t an option for him. Being a proud Nepali, he wanted to be part of this journey; winning or losing was immaterial to him.”Sandeep Lamichhane’s inclusion in the squad for the tri-series sparked protests across Nepal•AFP/Getty ImagesAkash Gupta, Nepal’s side-arm specialist, comes from Gorakhpur, an Indian town in Uttar Pradesh along the Nepal border. Gupta would travel to and from his hometown to Kathmandu three times a week for camps and matches, without complaining of fatigue.Each step of that 12-match journey was dotted with stories like these, of adversity and the strength to overcome it.

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Dhakal’s unfortunate injury paved the way for Sandeep Lamichhane’s inclusion. But it wasn’t straightforward. He had been accused of rape by a minor and had been under trial. His selection at the time sparked anger in the country.”It is extremely disappointing but also worrisome,” noted Nepali activist Hima Bista said at the time. “The institutional protection for him shows an attitude of normalising gender-based violence,” “The narrative is, if you are a celebrity, you can get away with anything… what about the victim?”While Lamichhane was granted bail on furnishing a bond of two million Nepali rupees (US$15,400 approx), he wasn’t permitted to travel outside Nepal. But that changed when the country’s Supreme Court granted him relief.Lamichhane had been instrumental in Nepal going through the CWC tri-series in Nepal, the first four games of their 12-match streak, unbeaten. He took 13 wickets in what was his first set of games since his arrest last October.

“The institutional protection for Lamichhane shows an attitude of normalising gender-based violence. The narrative is if you are a celebrity, you can get away with anything… what about the victim?”Nepali activist Hima Bista

His participation in that series came with its fair share of objections. Scotland and Namibia, Nepal’s opponents, refused to shake hands with him after the initial games, and their respective boards issued statements condemning gender-based violence.Despite the misgivings over his inclusion within Nepal, the Cricket Association of Nepal’s decision to field him underlined the win-at-all-cost mindset that can sometimes engulf Associate teams, given that opportunities for them are few and far between. After all, their ODI status, which Lamichhane had helped them gain in 2018, was in jeopardy again.But long before his inclusion as a replacement, a decision over Lamichhane had been taken internally. Soon after taking over as coach, Desai had sought clarity from all parties concerned upfront, to prevent distractions later on.”Once the court cleared him to play, the selection committee asked what you feel about it,” Desai explains. “I said, allow him to come to the camp for a day or two. I invited him one day with a small group of senior players around. There was Rohit Paudel, our captain, Gyanendra Malla, and a couple of other players.”In our very first meeting, Sandeep said, ‘Coach, if anyone feels uncomfortable, you don’t need to bring me into the squad.’ I asked him, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he said he wants to contribute towards the team. This is where he got his identity from. I asked the captain and senior players what they felt. All of them said, if he’s cleared to play, he should be welcomed. So it was a collective call.”

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Much of Desai’s philosophy on team-building has revolved around having a “happy dressing room”. Having previously worked with Nepal in 2015, he had a ringside view of the hurdles players faced. Infrastructure was among the major considerations; clashes between players and the board weren’t uncommon either.Nepal are one of only three teams, alongside Scotland and Oman, to make it directly to the World Cup Qualifier in Zimbabwe•Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty Images”The first goal was to create a happy dressing room,” he says. “I didn’t know how it had been earlier, but I was clear that everyone needed to play for one another as a group. You need to have open discussion about issues, not have a senior-junior divide.”Experience-wise, they may be different, but when it comes to their views, they needed to have an open forum. I had to impress upon them these things. Among the first things we spoke about was to create awareness, not just cricket-wise but awareness around how we manage emotions, our choice of words, our body language. We had 12 games to shape the team.”Once I connected with all of them, defined their roles and put plans in place, we were confident of being able to get something out of it. We weren’t quite sure what the end outcome would be. Qualifying for the Qualifier wasn’t even on the horizon then, because you don’t think that far.”But my Under-19 experience with Nepal told me there was potential. So when we started off, we were clear about rewriting our story. What unfolded in those 12 games was magical – one story after another.”Much of the change in culture, Desai says, is down to his rapport and understanding with Paudel, Nepal’s 20-year-old captain. It’s a responsibility Paudel has been able to warm up to without allowing it to get in the way of his batting form. Desai is all praise for Paudel’s clarity and calm handling of potentially tough situations.”In one of the games, I wanted to hold back Rohit, just to have some experience in the middle order, but he was clear he’d bat at his usual number. He had that much conviction.” Desai says. “He walked the talk with a crucial half-century.”I know with him, there’s a captain who will challenge the status quo if needed. That’s the highlight of our partnership.”

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In the final game of this long stretch of matches, Nepal were faced with the challenge of chasing their highest-ever ODI target to win. At stake was a place in the World Cup Qualifiers.

“Among the first things we spoke about was to create awareness, not just cricket-wise but awareness around how we manage emotions, our choice of words, our body language. We had 12 games to shape the team”Monty Desai

UAE’S Asif Khan had bludgeoned a 41-ball century to help set up a target of 311. When Nepal slumped to 37 for 3, some in the crowd started to get unruly. But Bhim Sharki and Bhurtel hit counterattacking half-centuries to lead the rescue.After they were dismissed, Aarif Sheikh and Gulsan Jha played unreal cameos to keep Nepal alive. Amid all the drama, the light was fading, and 44 overs into the chase, the umpires got together and decided play couldn’t continue.”We were just behind DLS when Aarif got out. We were suddenly 15-16 behind. The crowd got emotional. Things were thrown, a few UAE players along the boundary were heckled. Paudel, Malla and a few other players appealed for calm. All this cost time.”We had to stretch to cross the finish line with DLS requirements of 20 runs in the next over or two,” Desai says. “Gulsan played an unreal knock – his first-ever fifty will forever be remembered.”When play was finally suspended, Nepal were nine runs ahead, with Jha having received support from veteran Deependra Singh Airee. Nepal had done the unthinkable.”It was the perfect culmination of us winning those one-ball battles,” Desai explains. We realised UAE will come with aggressive fast bowlers. We had mentally prepared for that. We had sessions where we prepared physically by practising ramps – scoops specifically.”And under pressure, Bhim played two crucial scoops on the leg side, Aarif played a ramp under pressure to a short ball over the keeper’s head. Those are examples of courage shown in one-ball battles that kept us on course.”

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After those heroics, Desai enjoyed a short break at home in Mumbai before joining the squad again for the ACC Premier Cup, a tournament whose winner will qualify to play this year’s 50-over Asia Cup in Pakistan this September. The top three teams from the tournament will also play the ACC Emerging Nations Cup, involving the A sides of the big five – India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.Desai on his relationship with Nepal captain Rohit Paudel (standing): “I know with him, there’s a captain who will challenge the status quo if needed”•Prakash Mathema/AFP/Getty ImagesDesai’s next challenge is to work with CAN to develop a robust domestic structure.”They play the Prime Minister’s Cup, which is their biggest competition. Apart from that, some private T20 leagues, but they’ve agreed to revamp the domestic structure,” Desai says. “There’s also a focus on improving ground infrastructure.”At our management meeting, there have been some discussions around ensuring windows for A tours, apart from playing some invitational tournaments in India. We will try and reach out to associations like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Vidarbha, who host such tournaments prior to the Indian domestic season. If they can accommodate us, it would be great.”They are developing two more grounds, and now with ODI status being retained, it will unlock some more funding that will open the doors not just for the men’s but also the Under-19 and women’s team.”For now, Desai and Nepal have their sights firmly on the present. They aren’t looking too far ahead and are happy to stick to their philosophy of embracing the unknown with excitement.Five years ago, Desai was part of Afghanistan’s squad as they made a remarkable comeback from nowhere to win the ICC World Cup Qualifiers in Zimbabwe. He, and the rest of Nepal, will be hoping history will repeat itself.

They now have a batting group that promises both depth and versatility, which will worry other teams

Karthik Krishnaswamy26-Apr-20233:01

Moody: Tewatia’s role has changed because of Impact Player rule

Gujarat Titans had a problem last season. It didn’t hurt them, because they went and won the IPL, but that didn’t mean the problem didn’t exist. In most of their games, they picked five genuine bowlers plus Hardik Pandya, but that forced them to compromise on their batting depth. It didn’t hurt them, because David Miller, Rahul Tewatia and Rashid Khan batted out of their skins, but it’s rare for Nos. 5, 6 and 7 to fire so consistently and in unison over the course of a season.When IPL 2023 dawned, Titans found themselves free of the need for this compromise, thanks to the introduction of the Impact Player. They could now stack their bowling their batting in every game.But just as teams can struggle to get to grips with a problem, they can sometimes struggle to get to grips with its solution.Over their first six games of this season, Titans’ batting suffered from a bit of a 2022 hangover. Out of necessity, their top order had batted with a degree of conservatism last season. The necessity was gone now, but the conservatism remained.Before Tuesday’s game against Mumbai Indians, Titans had the third-worst scoring rate (7.61) of all teams in the middle overs (7th to 16th) this season, while maintaining the best average (35.15) through that phase.If those numbers didn’t make it clear enough that their batters needed to take more chances through the middle overs, consider this: before Tuesday, Tewatia had faced only 19 balls in six games without being dismissed. Titans were wasting a key resource.ESPNcricinfo analyst Tom Moody brought up the Tewatia issue during Tuesday’s game, on the show .”To be honest with you, I think [Tewatia’s] role has changed slightly because of this Impact Player,” Moody said. “He’s gone one further down the rung on the batting order because everyone has that extra player now, so he’s probably thinking also, ‘I wish I had a few more overs to get out there and do my thing, because I’m feeling good about my game’, but he’s not getting the opportunity.”For all that, Titans had won four of their six games, and their two defeats had come about because of improbable late hitting from Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals. They could easily have looked at their middle-overs issue through an ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ lens.But they didn’t. They responded to the defeat against Royals by leaving out Sai Sudharsan, a top-order anchor who had made two impressive half-centuries at the start of the season, and making room in their middle order for both Vijay Shankar and Abhinav Manohar – both more natural six-hitters than Sudharsan – rather than just one of them.The change didn’t bring immediate results in a low-scoring game against Lucknow Super Giants, but it paid off on Tuesday, when Titans made their biggest total of the season (207 for 6) on their way to a thumping 55-run win.Rahul Tewatia swept his first ball for a six•BCCIIt wasn’t the perfect batting display, but the imperfections were, in a way, a true reflection of Titans’ changed approach.Their batters made a clear effort to go after Mumbai’s spinners through the middle overs, for instance, but this intent only seemed to backfire initially, as Hardik, Shubman Gill and Vijay picked out deep fielders while trying to hit sixes. By the time they had bowled six of their eight overs in the game, Piyush Chawla and Kumar Kartikeya had combined figures of 6-0-46-3.But Titans didn’t stop looking for the big hits against the spinners. Miller hit Kartikeya for a straight six in the 14th over, and Abhinav stepped out to launch Chawla for another in the 15th. The Abhinav six was particularly noteworthy, because it came in an over where he’d already drilled Chawla for a pair of fours through the covers off wide half-volleys – those boundaries didn’t temper Abhinav’s desire to keep going after the legspinner.Interviewed by the broadcaster between innings, Abhinav said Titans’ batters had gone out with a clear message.”There was an effort to actually get more runs in the middle overs,” he said. “In our batsmen’s meeting, Hardik made it very clear that if we go after their main bowler, which was Piyush Chawla, then we can get more runs on the board and the rest of the bowlers will be under pressure. So that’s what we tried to do and it worked.”It worked – almost too well, because Tewatia came out, once again, with barely any time left in the innings. But he proceeded to do what he does so well in these situations, facing just five balls and hitting three of them for six, including an audacious shuffle-sweep off Riley Meredith off the first ball he faced.Tewatia would probably prefer to come in with a little more time left in the innings, but for now he’s making an impact no matter how late he enters.”He’s good enough to do it, and there’s not many people that are good enough to go from ball one,” Moody said. “He’s good enough to do it, which is a unique skill.”With Hardik, Abhinav, Vijay, Miller, Tewatia and Rashid lined up from Nos. 3 to 8, Titans should theoretically be able to bat with none of them needing to hold themselves back unless absolutely necessary. Sudharsan could still play a role too, particularly as an Impact Player in chases of small-to-middling targets.It’s a batting group that promises both depth and versatility, which will worry other teams. For their first season-and-a-half in the IPL, Titans were mostly a gun bowling team that did just enough with the bat. At the halfway point of this season, they seem to be taking the next step towards becoming that elusive entity: an all-round T20-winning machine.