India struck a familiar, unavoidable chaos fueled by jangling nerves to lose from a winning position

Shashank Kishore14-Oct-20244:18

Takeaways: Australia block out the noise, India’s fielding in focus again

Long before the pall of gloom set in, it felt like a dream you hoped would last longer. The fans – nearly 15,000 of them in Sharjah – came rushing in through the turnstiles as the sun went down, boisterous and full of joy, chanting, singing, waving and doing just about anything to get the attention of Jemi, Harry or Smriti.The days of packing a stand with school kids handed out free sandwiches, it seemed, were long gone. With all that indifference and systemic apathy (only somewhat) behind us, it felt like the start of a new era. All it needed now was that fuel to propel the rocket into orbit.India needed that push to go from being contenders to champions. And for that, they needed to play like one, against the real ones, who know how to close out games from impossible situations, even if their captain happens to be hobbling on crutches and moonwalkers. India couldn’t have asked for a more grander stage.Related

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The noise, buzz, colour, madness – it was mayhem, but it was glorious. Never before had security guards used to seeing four administrators and five ground staff guffaw over endless cups of Irani chai been put to this kind of last-minute riff-raff, where every pre-match drill, including elaborate security mechanisms, needed rehearsing.This was India vs Australia, billed as the match of the tournament, not without reason. The grandness of it all deserved a thriller. And we got one. Inevitably though, it felt like the rockstars who everyone was here to watch, were leaving their performance midway. Unless Pakistan play the match of their lives on Monday night.Australia clinically disarranged India’s jigsaw, leaving them with several questions and fewer answers, a heartbroken captain, Harmanpreet Kaur, who looked spent, physically and emotionally, gasping for breath in unforgiving October humidity.For all the dropped catches and missed run-out chance and the chaos surrounding Asha Sobhana’s one-leg hobble just prior to the start, which no one seemed to think was serious enough initially, India had Australia on the ropes, like they’ve had them on a few occasions. Think back to last year’s T20 World Cup semi-final in Cape Town or more recently last December’s T20I series in Navi Mumbai.Despite India’s top-order wobble, with Shafali Verma, Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues all gone, Australia briefly wobbled. Harmanpreet and Deepti Sharma – a contrasting pair – brought India within 53 runs of victory. With two set batters at the crease and 30 balls to play and with six wickets in hand, this was India’s chance to nail it. But they struck a familiar, unavoidable chaos – the story of their evening – fueled by jangling nerves.In the space of four balls, they lost two wickets. Deepti holed out to the 59-metre pocket at deep midwicket, and Richa Ghosh, their biggest six-hitter who has seemingly been batting a position lower than ideal, run out stealing a non-existent single to cover. All that might and muscle that had gone into preparation reduced to zilch thanks to a split-second’s indecision. Halfway through the run, Richa was hoping against hope Phoebe Litchfield would miss. She hit bull’s eye to send the hugely partisan Indian crowd into a state of shock.Phoebe Litchfield’s direct hit ran Richa Ghosh out•ICC/Getty ImagesAs the LED bails lit up, Renuka Singh’s jaws dropped, hands on head. Shreyanka Patil was in disbelief, glaring at the replays on the giant screen, Mandhana was staring aimlessly into the distance and Rodrigues glum. The shock told you a story. The unraveling was rather swift, but not too unfamiliar. Especially in crunch moments.You only have to go back to Cape Town last year, or maybe the Commonwealth Games. India have lost from winning junctures. The deep wounds of the past even had them engage a sports psychologist for moments like these. And when it didn’t come off, the sense of shock was palpable.All said, this was peak Australia, doing Australia things. A team that knows how to conjure magic when pushed to a corner. Like Megan Schutt bowling a 17th over that went for just one run with India needing 41 off 24. Or Litchfield hitting a crucial last-ball six in her cameo 15. Or Annabel Sutherland killing the game by picking up two wickets off her first three balls in the final over.All of which is incredible, but perhaps not more than Australia completing their spectacular defence without needing to bowl Ellyse Perry or Grace Harris, even Tahlia McGrath. Or having to play without their chirpy, intimidating captain and gun opener Healy, who knows what it is to deflate India in a world final with 86,000 people watching live. It was simply a testimony of Australia’s depth and resolve.The end was so utterly predictable that fans who couldn’t wait to get in made a quick beeline for the exit, long before the final ball was bowled. From Mexican waves and wild cheering to every Bollywood chartbuster until half an hour earlier, there was momentary silence that reflected the glum in India’s change rooms.Monday may or may not throw up surprises. But long after the dust settles, India must do some soul-searching. With a 50-over World Cup to look forward to within a year, India need to “learn from the disappointment and experience” – head coach Amol Muzumdar’s assessment – to go from being contenders to becoming champions.

Anyone could have seen this Champions Trophy imbroglio coming, but cricket’s governing body did not

Nagraj Gollapudi18-Nov-2024We are here again. Not for the first time and probably not the last.With under 100 days to go for the 2025 Champions Trophy, scheduled in Pakistan, the ICC has still not formally announced the dates for the tournament. The schedule, too, has not been finalised. Why? India, one of the eight participating countries, will not travel to Pakistan – a decision taken by the Indian government, according to the BCCI in its communication to the ICC.We have been here, not once but twice, as recently as 2023. Take your memory back to last year’s Asia Cup and ODI World Cup and you will see a similar pattern. In the first instance, the PCB was forced to loosen its stance that the event would be held solely in Pakistan after the BCCI said India did not have permission from their government to travel across the border. Eventually it was Pakistan, the hosts, who ended up boarding flights to and from Sri Lanka, where India played all their matches, including the final. At the World Cup, the PCB pushed to get the ICC to adopt the hybrid model, but Pakistan eventually travelled to India. They travelled, it has since emerged, despite deep reservations within the Pakistan government.Twelve months later we are once again in familiar territory: the BCCI has made its move, comfortably standing in one corner, arms folded. At the opposite end, the PCB stands steadfast, refusing to blink or budge. The ICC, in theory the adjudicator, remains tight-lipped. It is a shambolic situation.Related

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Who actually gains from this brinkmanship? That is only part of the question. The more important question, though, one that never gets asked properly is: who is responsible for this standoff? Unequivocally the answer is the ICC, the game’s governing body, which has once again escaped scrutiny. To be precise, the ICC leadership: the ICC board.In November 2021 the ICC board allocated hosting rights for various global events in the 2024-31 rights cycle to several boards. The PCB, which had bid for two events, was allocated the 2025 Champions Trophy. The ICC board approved the hosts based on recommendations drawn up by a smaller working group that included Sourav Ganguly, then the BCCI president, and Ehsan Mani, the former PCB chair and ICC head. That ICC board was headed by Greg Barclay. Ganguly, one would assume, had the backing of the Indian board, whose secretary was Jay Shah (who takes charge as ICC chairman from December 1).Sourav Ganguly, the BCCI president at the time, was part of the working group that drew up recommendations to the ICC board when it awarded Pakistan the Champions Trophy hosting rights•BCCIAs a reminder, the ICC board comprises directors who represent the 12 Full Members, along with an independent director, three directors representing the Associates, and the ICC chairman and CEO. So this was a collective call. If there was even a single voice of caution three years ago when it came to allotting the Champions Trophy to Pakistan, details of it have never emerged. Did nobody see this coming? Maybe they did but opted to look down or the other way instead?In the fraught political climate that has existed between the two neighbours since the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008, you didn’t need to be a fortune-teller to raise a red flag about whether India would actually travel to Pakistan in 2025. More than one person involved in the bids allocation process said that one reason the ICC board believed conditions might be favourable for India to visit for the Champions Trophy was if Pakistan went to India for the 2023 World Cup – which they did. And once they did, the PCB must have assumed India would reciprocate.However, in a professional environment, you need accountability instead of relying on good faith. Why did the ICC, in 2021, not attach a few conditions when it allotted the Champions Trophy to Pakistan, starting with an official timeline including deadlines, with one specifically for the BCCI: communicate well in advance to the ICC whether India would travel to Pakistan? Such a hard stop could have been put in, say, a year before the actual event. In the absence of any such cutoff, the BCCI’s first communication to the ICC that India would not travel was relayed around November 6. That is just over three months before the scheduled start of the tournament on February 19.

More than one person involved in the bids allocation process said that one reason the ICC board believed conditions might be favourable for India to visit for the Champions Trophy was if Pakistan went to India for the 2023 World Cup – which they did

But more crucially, what plan was in place to deal with the outcome that was always likely? In a perfect and equitable world, global tournaments could go ahead without teams that are unable to participate in the prescribed way, but no ICC tournament is commercially tenable without India’s participation, a fact that was emphatically underlined during the last broadcast deal. Why wasn’t a hybrid option part of the contingency plan if India failed to travel to Pakistan? Or was it assumed that the PCB would once again fall in line and acquiesce to a hybrid model?As it turns out and as was pointed out to them recently by a senior official from an overseas board, the PCB might have a little leverage by dint of their team being part of the most watched and most lucrative match in an ICC event. It might have been unacceptable to the PCB to accept the hosting rights with a hybrid option attached as a contingency. But it would have been the most pragmatic and clear-minded approach, since it is beyond the ICC to persuade the Indian government to allow the Indian team to travel to Pakistan. Instead, the ICC leadership has opted to kick the problem down the road, hoping it will somehow resolve itself.In our increasingly divided and divisive world, strong leadership is required to maintain equilibrium. The ICC board in the past has shown it is capable of doing that. Now it needs bold solutions for the future.

Out for a duck in his first innings, he showed he can make quick adjustments to turn things around

Alagappan Muthu24-Nov-2024What is the most fun a batter can have on a cricket field?Scoring hundreds? Yashasvi Jaiswal is 15 Tests and 16 months into his Test career and he has four of those now.Hitting sixes? He has 35 of them this year which is a world record. Brendon McCullum has been bumped off.Related

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Doing well away from home? He made his debut in the West Indies and scored 171. He now has the highest score by an Indian batter in Perth. And this place is special. It might still be home to Sachin Tendulkar’s best Test innings.For the players themselves, a job well done is about putting the team in a winning position. Jaiswal left the field having contributed over 50% of the 313 runs that India had scored. A lot of them were hard-earned. He absorbed Australia’s new ball pressure. He withstood their temptation, which took many forms. Sixty two leaves in total, with Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood probing away in the off-stump corridor. Another new high point in his career, beating the restraint he showed on debut in Roseau. Nathan Lyon was brought in early to try and sucker him into going hard at the ball. Four balls in, he did charge the Australia offspinner but seeing the ball was a bit flatter and a bit wider with the potential to turn past his outside edge if he weren’t careful, he switched from an attacking shot to a defensive shot.With time, those immense reserves of talent, and the concentration levels that he was demanding of himself, Jaiswal was discovering pleasures that do not make it onto the scorecards. He had the Australian bowlers sticking their heads in their hands. He goaded them and all they could do in response was offer a wry smile. This is not like the old Australian teams of the past, the ones who saw being aggro as a tactic. But still, a 22-year old on his first tour here telling their all-time great left-arm spearhead that he was “coming on too slow” and him having nothing to say in return was all kinds of cool. Especially when it took precious little effort to get rid of him in the first innings.Jaiswal threw his wicket away trying to hit himself out of trouble in the third over of an away tour. At the next available opportunity, he fixed it. That doesn’t happen too often. There have been – in the entire history of Test cricket – only 81 instances where a batter who scored a duck in the first innings turned it around to score a century in the second. And Jaiswal finds a pretty special place even among these guys. His 161 is the eighth-highest score on this list.2:50

Jaiswal: ‘I back myself to take brave decisions’

The fab four’s legend contains so many stories about combating difficult conditions and making off-the-cuff changes to their technique. Steven Smith’s shuffle across off stump. Virat Kohli ditching a practice of tapping his bat down at the point the bowler is about to deliver and instead waiting in like a coiled-spring position, with the bat up high, poised over middle and off stump. Jaiswal isn’t that stature of batter yet and the adjustments he made here weren’t really as drastic. He just willed himself to play closer to the body and get his runs squarer of the wicket when the ball was new. But showing a capacity to do so, along with the cricket sense to then capitalise on his good work as the bowlers tired does suggest the high ceiling he had already come on this tour with has gone even higher.These kinds of batters are able to exist outside the constraints of a Test match. This one, for example, was being played on a terribly slow outfield. A vast majority of the 27 threes so far in this game should’ve been fours. But there was this one time when the ball just flew off the turf. It happened when Jaiswal combined two shots – an off-drive powered by a flick of his wrists – and it looked so vicious the highlights should slap a warning on it. Seconds after this bit of genius, though, he was gone. He couldn’t believe, after all the ability he’d shown and the shots he’d played, he ended up cutting a short and wide delivery from Mitchell Marsh’s medium pace straight into the hands of backward point.Perth Stadium needed a little time to reconcile with that too but eventually silence was given the boot. The ovation they gave him was beautiful. There was something about it that said the crowd wanted more of him; that even after 161 runs, 397 balls, and 18 boundaries, they hadn’t had their fill; that they’d found someone worth the cost of a ticket; someone that would dominate pub conversations; someone that they could copy looking in the mirror; someone they could set as their phone wallpaper; someone to be a part of their lives for a long time to come.What is the most fun a batter can have on a cricket field? Ask Yashasvi Jaiswal about his time in Perth.

Allrounder speaks ahead of Ireland’s World Cup qualifying campaign

ESPNcricinfo staff09-Apr-2025Orla Prendergast talks to the Powerplay Podcast ahead of Ireland’s World Cup qualifying campaign in Pakistan, reflecting on the pain of missing out to Scotland in T20 qualifying, how she manages her nerves when it’s all on the line, and why – after a promising start in football – she chose cricket.

The RCB left-arm spinner keeps the percentages in his favour even on some of the high-scoring venues, a glimpse of which was seen on the opening night of IPL 2025

Karthik Krishnaswamy22-Mar-20251:48

Why were RCB spinners successful?

You always know what you’re going to get with Krunal Pandya. He’s played nine full seasons of the IPL, and his economy rate each time has been there or thereabouts, ranging from a best of 6.82 in 2017 to a worst of 7.98 in 2021.Ravindra Jadeja has finished three full IPL seasons with eight-plus economy rates (not counting his debut season when he only bowled 2.1 overs). Axar Patel has done this three times too. Krunal, never.This isn’t to say that Krunal is better or more consistent than those two. But it says something about him that he has comparable overall numbers in the IPL to two of international cricket’s most respected left-arm spinners, and that he’s done a difficult and sometimes underappreciated job year after year.Related

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Even so, you wondered what exactly Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), his newest employers, were thinking when they gave Krunal the ball at the start of the fifth over on Saturday night, with Sunil Narine on strike. Narine was enduring one of his rare slow starts in the powerplay, and if you’d asked him which opposition bowler he’d want to face at that moment, he’d quite likely have pointed to Krunal and said, “I’ll have some left-arm spin, please.”The first ball of this match-up, slogged with the turn over the wide long-on boundary, may have made you question RCB’s wisdom again. And then, when Ajinkya Rahane swept and chipped Krunal for back-to-back fours to end that over, you may have asked the same question again, with a wider ambit this time, taking in not just this moment in this match, but RCB’s season in its about-to-enfold entirety.On the eve of this IPL 2025 season-opener against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), RCB head coach Andy Flower had been asked whether he felt his squad was lacking in the spin department. It was somewhat telling that Flower began his answer with these words: “It’s a really good and apt question to ask.”Flower then backed Krunal – they had worked together at Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) – emphatically to lead RCB’s spin attack through the season.Krunal Pandya struck in each of his second, third and fourth overs•Associated Press”Krunal was a significant part of our targeted players in the auction. He’s a smart and courageous cricketer and he’s got leadership experience as well. So having his nous, he’s a streetwise operator and he’s obviously got class as a left-arm spinner, let alone as an allrounder. That is comforting to have in our group and leading the way in the spin department.”By the time Krunal returned to the attack, RCB needed him to show all the qualities Flower had spoken of. Narine had just departed, but another left-hand batter, Venkatesh Iyer, had replaced him, and KKR were 107 for 2 in ten overs.Now, bear in mind that there’s always a certain messiness to the mechanisms of cause and effect in T20s. There are many, many factors behind why a bowler concedes 15 in a wicketless first over and comes back to pick up 3 for 14 in his next three, and one of those factors is, well, randomness. Things just happen sometimes, you know?You could certainly say that about the ball that began the transformation in Krunal’s fortunes: Rahane c Rasikh Salam b Krunal 56. A ball that wasn’t quite there to be pulled, but one the batter had to try and pull anyway, because this is T20 and you can’t keep waiting for bad balls, and it’s always a bigger risk outside the powerplay with all those fielders on the boundary.But if it was a random dismissal, it was also a very Krunal kind of random dismissal. The ball was fired in from left-arm around to finish at an awkward spot for the batter, at around bail height or just above on leg stump, tucking him up for room. At 98.4kph, it was very much at the quicker end of the IPL spinners’ pace spectrum, so the batter didn’t just have a paucity of room to deal with but a paucity of time as well. Add all that up, and you get a ball that’s hard to get more than a single off – almost always a win for the bowler in this format – and hard to hit for four or six without taking a significant risk.The on-song Ajinkya Rahane was one of the three wickets Krunal Pandya picked up•Associated PressThis is the crux of Krunal’s art. It often involves doing predictable things, which could be – depending on the type of batter he’s bowling to, the conditions, and the field setting – keeping the stumps in play, or bowling outside a batter’s hitting arc, or finding a way to get the batter off strike. But because he knows that the batter knows what’s coming, Krunal has also developed a genius for throwing in the unexpected. He routinely delivers the ball from well behind the crease, for example, and in this match, he delivered a nasty surprise bouncer to the bareheaded Iyer. It was called wide – it qualified both on line and height – but Krunal had made his point, and Iyer immediately called for a helmet.Next ball, Krunal was back to bowling what you might call his stock ball. It was quick – this one clocked 101.9kph – delivered from around the wicket, and angled towards the top of the right-hand batter’s leg stump or the left-hand batter’s off stump, with the chance of a little bit of turn to make things unpredictable. Given that pace, line and length, it’s a hard ball to step out to, a risky ball to sweep, and an unnatural ball to play attacking shots against with either a vertical or horizontal bat.Iyer went right back in his crease, and tried to manufacture a whip through the leg side, with his bat somewhere between vertical and horizontal. All he managed was an inside edge into the stumps.”You have to go with the flow, how cricket is evolving, right?” Player-of-the-Match Krunal said at the post-match presentation, when asked about the pace he was bowling at. “The skillset [that] batters have these days, the ability to hit sixes or hit good shots consistently – so you also have to make sure [of] how can you up your game, you know? So that was one of the reasons, where I wanted to bowl quick, I wanted to give [batters] less time.Krunal Pandya finished with figures of 3 for 29 on his RCB debut•MB Media/Getty Images”And once again, my change of pace […] bowling slow also comes in handy when I use that quick ball.”Krunal’s last ball of the day was another of these quick balls – 103kph – and Rinku Singh, going for a pull that couldn’t really be a pull, because of the diagonal angle of his bat, missed entirely, the ball straightening ever so slightly past the inside edge to hit the top of off stump. The transformation from 1-0-15-0 to 4-0-29-3 was complete.”Sometimes when you play in [front of] so much of crowd, you have to narrow down your focus, right?” Krunal said, when asked about the comeback. “So again, when I came in [for my] second over, I made a very conscious effort to just narrow down my focus where I wanted to bowl, and if I [had] to get hit, I’ll get hit on a good ball. So that was the thought process, and glad that I was able to deliver.”Apart from everything else that goes into his bowling, what sets Krunal apart is his ability to keep the percentages in his favour. It’s essential if you have to bowl spin in the IPL and come away without suffering serious punishment. And he’s managed to do this time and again on the toughest proving grounds. He has an economy rate of 6.98 at the Wankhede Stadium – his primary home ground from 2016 to 2021 – and if that ground is notoriously unforgiving for spinners, the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, his new home ground, can be even more unforgiving, and he’s gone at 6.58 there, over seven games.Krunal has always been a survivor, and it was this skill, more than any other, that RCB hoped to tap into when they signed him up. No matter what comes next, they have got the start they wanted from this relationship.