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Batsman turns from scapegoat to saviour in the space of 72 hours, as England bounce back from Old Trafford defeat

ESPNcricinfo staff07-Jul-2018Alex Hales turned from scapegoat to saviour in the space of 72 hours, as England bounced back from an ignominious batting collapse at Old Trafford to square the T20I series with a hard-fought five-wicket victory at Cardiff.And no-one fought harder than Hales himself, as he clubbed England over the line with 58 not out from 41 balls to atone for his momentum-squandering knock of 8 from 18 in the opening match of the series.”It’s right up there,” Hales said after the match. “The game at Manchester was a very, very bad day at the office personally and as a team, we didn’t quite get going. But today was brilliant, to bounce back in a must-win game shows a lot of character as a team.”One of the keys to England’s success was the negation of Kuldeep Yadav, the left-arm wristspinner whose wiles had bamboozled their batsmen to the tune of five wickets at Old Trafford. After intensive work against their spin-bowling machine, Merlyn, England came up with a plan to combat his angles, much of which involved staying deeper in the crease.”I’d never faced him before and I didn’t know much about him,” said Hales. “Maybe I just went out in Manchester without a plan and couldn’t get going. I watched a bit more footage, worked with Merlyn and looked to play a bit more off the back foot and waited for him to float one up hit a bit straighter, rather than cross bat like my dismissal the other night. It’s about having a bit more of a plan and more composure.”We picked him the other night, but I don’t think we played him very well,” he added. “You can see it out of his hand which way it’s spinning, but the other night we were maybe a bit rusty and had never played against him. Now we have had good look, had a good plan and it’s important to take that into Sunday and keep on top of him.”Asked if England’s success against Kuldeep had dealt him a psychological blow, Hales responded: “I think so. I guess it would do, yeah. It’s good for us to have that momentum heading into a must-win game on Sunday. Everyone collectively had a poor day on Sunday, but we bounced back well and it was brilliant today. Particularly Adil [Rashid], I think the Indians were looking to line him up to that short boundary so to go for under 30 was amazing.”Despite his personal success, Hales is under no illusions that his place in England’s starting XI remains vulnerable, especially with Ben Stokes nearing full fitness and potentially pressing for inclusion in the series decider at Bristol.”I’m doing all I can to score runs and keep putting pressure on the guys who know they’re playing,” he said. “We will have to see what happens. If it’s me that’s left out, you look at the guys who are playing ahead of me and what can you do? It’s up to me to keep training hard, being positive and have a decent mindset. It’s funny how quickly things can change.”It’s what Jonny [Bairstow] did for three years. Every time he got a chance he delivered, and has now made four hundreds in six games. I maybe find myself in that position now and have to see what I can do.”One of the strengths of England’s current white-ball set-up is the adaptability of their line-up, with batsmen moving up and down the order according to the match situation. Hales himself came in at No.4 at Cardiff, having been at 3 at Old Trafford, but he admitted that learning new roles was part of the challenge of playing in this team.”The batting line-up is that strong, you look how well Jos [Buttler] is playing, he’s batting on a different planet. Just to be part of this batting line-up, anywhere in the order is a great effort. Wherever I find myself I have to adapt and keep learning, and that was a different role tonight, it was like me and Jos swapped roles. I have to keep learning going forward if that’s the role I’ll play.”Whatever happens to Hales in the course of the next few games, he believes he has the wherewithal to cope with being left out of the side, which is something that he was forced to learn at a young age in county cricket.”When I was young, 22 or 23, I was dropped from the Notts team and was sent on loan,” he said. “Being on a downer is something I have had to deal with in my career so it’s nothing new to me, so when I face those moments, as I did the other night, I had a poor night, I know how to deal with it and bounce back and know that can happen in cricket. It’s a funny game.”

On his last tour of the country in 2014, he only made 134 runs in ten Test innings at an average of 13.40

Nagraj Gollapudi at Edgbaston31-Jul-2018134 runs, 10 Test innings, average 13.40.Tell those numbers to a genuine cricket fan and they will let you know they are from Virat Kohli’s only Test series in England, in 2014.To be known as one of the best in Test cricket, it is important that a batsman succeeds in England. That is the general view held by the privileged lot that have succeeded at the highest level. It is fair to say that Kohli is yet to prove himself as a Test batsman in England.But Kohli does not think so. Back in England four years after that 2014 tour, Kohli is now India’s Test captain. He is No. 2 on the ICC Test rankings. And he remains unfussed about what happened four years ago. On the eve of the first Test, he was asked whether he found it amusing or irritating when people felt he still had a point to prove in England as a batsman, and Kohli said he felt neither. “I don’t know. Back in the day when I did not know better these things used to bother me because I used to read a lot.”According to Kohli, he has long since stopped getting swayed by outside emotions, and he does not consume anything written or said in the media. Doing that, Kohli said, allowed him to have a clear mind and helped retain his focus on his batting. “If I waste my energy on all these things I am compromising on my mindset already because when I walk out to bat I have the bat in hand, not people on the outside who write and predict things. I need to be in the most convincing and the most clear mental space I can be. That happens when I am just focused on what I need to do.”Soon, Kohli will finish a decade in international cricket, which wasn’t something he had envisioned when he started out. “I did not think 10 years ago, very soon I am going to complete 10 years, sitting here in my career. So I have no complaints whatsoever. And I am not in a frame of mind to prove myself in any country. I just want to perform for the team. Obviously, I want to score runs for the team. And I am going to take Indian cricket forward.”This will be the third five-Test series Kohli and India have played since 2014. All three have been against England. In 2014, England won 3-1. India then routed England 4-0 in the 2016-17 home series. So are India, the No.1 Test team, the favourites or the underdogs this time? Kohli refused to get distracted by any such billing. “It doesn’t matter. Whether you are a favourite or an underdog you still have to go out there and do well. If you are underdog, it is not a given the pressure will only be on the opposition. Or if you are favourites, it is not certain that the underdog will come out and just be fearless the whole time. I think it is the balance that is required.”Whether you want to act as an underdog or favourite it is in your own head. You need professionalism more than feeling like an underdog or starting as a favourite. That is something we want to do as a team: we want to be consistent and professional.”

A new book has revealed team performance chief Pat Howard’s disparaging comments about the Bangladesh side Australia had lost to in Dhaka last year

Daniel Brettig04-Oct-2018Bangladesh’s inaugural Test victory over Australia in Dhaka last year was belittled by Cricket Australia’s team performance chief Pat Howard as being achieved by players who were not up to Sheffield Shield standard, a new book has revealed.In Australia’s first Test after the fractious 2017 pay dispute, an underprepared team lost narrowly to Bangladesh on a sharply turning pitch and were immediately leapt upon by sections of the media as overpaid prima donnas. In Gideon Haigh’s , an account of the build-up to this year’s ball-tampering scandal, Howard is shown to have harangued senior figures across Australian cricket in an emailed reaction to the defeat.”I am sitting in a cafe in Dhaka hotel at the conclusion of the first Test loss ever to Bangladesh. I am personally embarrassed and take accountability and happy to accept any criticism that comes our way,” Howard wrote. “For some of you sitting here in Dhaka you are fully aware of how poor a result this is and you have a material opportunity to address in the next few days.”Rightly the system is often judged on the outcomes of the national team. As you can imagine there are many questions being asked of us, and I think they are fair. I am reasonably confident that many of the players that have just beaten us would not get a run in any of the state teams.”To the CA Team Performance – When you go home at the end of the day, does what you do actually make a difference? CA spends over $100m on players’ wages and teams, all in the effort of producing great national teams. We have failed, you have failed and I have failed and it is not good enough.”Howard’s unflattering depiction of the Bangladesh side Australia had just lost to was followed by an improved performance and a victory by the tourists in the second Test, but also by the cancellation of Bangladesh’s scheduled visit to Australia for Tests this year. It is part of a wider picture painted by Haigh of arrogance and disconnection in Australian cricket, a sobering tale for the new chief executive, Kevin Roberts.Elsewhere, Haigh depicts the growing problems confronted by Australia’s ODI team, which one player described as being nothing like a team, while another criticised the former coach Darren Lehmann’s lack of detailed information about how to improve performances. “A player summed up the one-day side in a word: ‘Individuals’. There were no basics, no planning. You got together in the morning, went your separate ways at night. It never felt like an Australian ‘team’ in any sense of the word.””Another player felt that Lehmann had fallen into this coaching fashion simply through running short of things to say: ‘I love Boof. He’s got a great heart and he loves the players. But, really, he hardly coached technique at all. ‘You’re struggling? Just whack it.’ ‘You’re going for runs? Just bowl yorkers.’ ‘We’ll smash them.’ He really just had no other answers but to try and build up this arrogance.'”Haigh, one of the world’s foremost cricket writers, authored with David Frith the official history of Cricket Australia in 2007. The picture painted by is of much that has happened since, focusing on the fact that, as an unaccountable monopoly, the governing body has become arrogant, secretive and inconsistent.”Cricket Australia operates as monopoly and monopsony, unregulated, unrestricted and untaxed,” Haigh writes. “If one wishes to work in the sport, there is every incentive to stay the right side of the country’s sole promoter of cricket attractions and employer of cricket talent. Over the last decade, the organisation has also grown increasingly secretive and sensitive – paradoxically, with each year that it has grown richer and more powerful.”Some who’ve raised questions these last few years have been penalised for their trouble. Asked to sum up the culture of Australian cricket, one of my interviewees put it more succinctly than I ever could: ‘Bullies and sycophants.’ Said another, by way of contrast: ‘[Australian rules] Football gives you one in the belly. Cricket gives you one in the back. It is full of good haters.’ Quoting them directly would hardly improve their employment prospects. But these voices do need a hearing.”Crossing The Line

Picked by Quetta Gladiators, the spinner could play high-profile cricket in Pakistan for the first time since having left the country, fearing for his life

ESPNcricinfo staff20-Nov-20181:29

Five PSL newbies to watch out for next season

Legspinner Fawad Ahmed could be in line for a cricketing homecoming of sorts, after he was picked up in the PSL 2019 draft by the Quetta Gladiators.Fawad is an Australian citizen but was born in Pakistan, and lived there until his late 20s. He had also played first-class and competitive cricket in the country, but was forced to leave for Australia in the face of threats from the Taliban. In Australia he sought asylum, which was initially rejected but eventually accepted, and he became an Australian citizen in 2013.He has since played three ODIs and two T20Is for Australia – all in 2013 – and though he drifted out of national contention, his story has never slipped away from the public imagination. And earlier this year he was back in the cricketing spolight, as the leading wicket-taker at the Caribbean Premier League, taking 22 wickets for Trinbago Knight Riders in their title-winning run. In last season’s Big Bash League he was among the top wicket-takers, with 12 for Sydney Thunder at an economy rate of just over 6.Next February, however, will be the first time he lines up in the PSL and as a Gold pick, he joins a strong Quetta squad of spinners which includes Sunil Narine, Mohammad Nawaz and Mohammad Asghar. This season the league is expected to stage eight matches in Pakistan, including the knockouts and final.Given that Quetta is one of the league’s stronger teams, having made the final two seasons out of three, there is a distinct possibility that they will play some games in Pakistan. In turn that means Fawad will have a choice to make on whether he returns to the country for what would be his first high-profile commitment there since he left fearing for his life eight years ago.Over the last two seasons the league has played games in Pakistan that have involved foreign players, but each time it has gone through a drawn-out process in trying to convince them to travel and play.

Fast bowler heads for Lions tour of UAE with a chance to prove he possesses the pace and the skill to trouble the best

Jon Culley07-Nov-2018Jamie Overton believes he’s ready to become one of the best fast bowlers in the world, after learning to bowl within himself until the time is right to go full throttle.Overton, 24, has been on England’s radar ever since word began to filter out from Taunton that here was a bowler who could bowl in excess of 90mph. He made his first senior squad as a 19-year-old in 2013 but five years later that first England cap is proving elusive.He was touted for the 2017-18 Ashes squad, only for his twin brother Craig to get the call-up instead. There was a lobby of support for him to be part of the current England tour of Sri Lanka, but the selectors instead chose Warwickshire’s own 90mph bowler, Olly Stone.Instead, along with brother Craig and their Somerset teammate Dom Bess, he is heading for the United Arab Emirates for the England Lions series against Pakistan A, which opens with a four-day match in Abu Dhabi on November 18 and also involves five 50-over matches and two T20s.It comes after a domestic summer in which not only did he avoid the serious back injuries that blighted his 2016 and 2017 seasons, but in which he also made what he feels is a significant breakthrough.”I know that with my pace I have an an opportunity that some other bowlers don’t have,” he said. “Being able to bowl at 90mph-plus gives you an edge, definitely, although pace is not the be-all and end-all and if you can’t bowl with control and hit the right areas you aren’t going to scare anyone.”But I feel I have made a bit of a breakthrough these last six months. I’ve altered my action a bit to reduce the stress on my body without losing too much pace.”And I have learned that while I can produce those 90mph-plus deliveries, you don’t need to bowl max out all the time.”I was looking at Mitchell Starc last winter. He would have spells where he was only bowling 83-84-85mph but with skills. Then he would crank up to 89-90mph when he wanted to.”You can settle in, do your skilful work and still go for no runs but take wickets, but when you need to, or when you’ve taken a couple of wickets and you feel there is a chance of getting some more quickly, then you can fire and potentially go through a side.”Overton cited a match against Yorkshire at Headingley in August as a moment he felt his skills were all coming together. Somerset won by 224 runs after dismissing the home side for 194 on the last day.”We were really toiling before lunch and picked up only one wicket,” he said. “But when I came on after lunch it just clicked and I was able to bowl fast but I had control and a good rhythm.” He finished with 4 for 24 from 14.3 overs.”It is just trying to find those moments consistently,” he said. “I feel like when I am at my best I’m probably one of the best bowlers in the world.”I need to work more on my control. Until now I have felt so much more comfortable bowling around the wicket than over, so I’m trying to alter my action so it feels the same bowling over and around, so that I feel I can be equally effective against left-handers and right-handers.”I’m also learning to read the game better, so that I can recognise when to just sit in and when to try something.”I grew up watching Freddie [Flintoff] and he would always look like he was controlling the game and when they needed something to happen he would always make something happen.”That was what got me into the game, watching him playing and making things happen for England. That has to be what I’m aiming for, to be a bowler who is able to do that.”

The allrounder is averaging 28 with the bat and 59 with the ball this season but could feature in Sydney as Australia attempt to level the series

ESPNcricinfo staff30-Dec-20184:04

‘There are holes in India’s batting as well’ – Paine

Australia have added allrounder Marnus Labuschagne to their squad for the final Test against India in Sydney which they need to win to level the series, with captain Tim Paine admitting “a lot of things are on table” following the batting slump at the MCG.Labuschagne made his debut in the UAE earlier this year and played both Tests against Pakistan where he showed some promise with bat and ball, making a top score of 43 alongside claiming seven wickets with his legspin.However, a poor start to the Sheffield Shield cost him the chance of being part of the India series from the beginning and his first-class numbers for the season are an underwhelming average of 28.22 with the bat and 59.60 with the ball.It is Labuschagne’s bowling as much as his batting which has brought him back into contention as Australia battle to balance their side amid the struggles of Mitchell Marsh, question marks over Aaron Finch as an opener and workload of the quick bowlers.”I think there’ll be a lot of things on the table in the next day or two and I’ve got some thoughts on what I think but I think I’ll share that with JL [Justin Langer] and a few other guys before I share it here,” Paine said. “We’ve got the best group of players available to us at the moment and we’ll pick the best combination out of that group that we think will win this last Test.Marnus Labuschagne steers the ball past silly mid-off•Getty Images

“We’ll get up to Sydney and have a look at the conditions, I think we’re hearing it will spin quite a bit, so once we see that for ourselves we can try to think about the best combination to win that Test. From what I’m hearing it will be dry, spin quite a bit, a bit like the old SCG used to be.”Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins had almost two days in the field as India piled up 7 for 443 and were then back out again by the final session of the third day after Australia folded for 151 in their first innings.”Physically they’re all fine,” Paine said. “We’ll have a look at the conditions before we name our XI. There’s no problem with any of them at the moment.”Mitchell Marsh performed a handy role with the ball in Melbourne, sending down 26 tight overs over the opening two days, but had an awful time with the bat as he twice fell trying to attack Ravinda Jadeja. It takes his Test run tally in his last five matches to 74 runs at 7.40.”As we’ve said all along, we know Mitch at his best can offer a lot to Australian cricket,” Paine said. “We just need to make sure he’s at his best more often than not and like the rest of us the gap between his best and his worst gets smaller all the time.”No one has been dropped from the squad named before the Melbourne Test which means Peter Handscomb, who was omitted in favour of Marsh, retains his place. Peter Siddle, who will play Big Bash for Adelaide Strikers on New Year’s Eve, remains the spare pace bowler.Finch’s role as opener is also being hotly debated following a double failure at the MCG, and though he has been retained in the squad, his role in Sydney could range from the status quo, to dropping into the middle or being left out altogether.

Diamonds and former Essex head coach to mentor Yorkshire batsmen 

ESPNcricinfo staff22-Jan-2019Paul Grayson has been appointed as Yorkshire’s batting coach.The Yorkshire Diamonds head coach will relinquish his duties with the women’s side to take over as fulltime batting mentor to the club’s first team, second XI and academy from March 1.Grayson, who was head coach at Essex from 2007-15, said his latest role was not a step towards returning to a lead coaching position.”This is the perfect role for me,” Grayson said. “I have no intention of going back into a club to become head coach, I made that pretty clear in my interview.”I feel that I specialise in batting along with a bit of spin bowling as well. I just want to support the other coaches, pass on my experience and my knowledge, and also work with the players.”Grayson, 47, played at Headingley between 1990 and 1995. He retired from first-class cricket at the end of 2005, having scored 8,655 runs at 31.70, and taken 136 wickets at 44.39.He was one of seven candidates interviewed for the position and will head to South Africa for warm-weather pre-season training a week after starting his new role, supporting head coach Andrew Gale and bowling coach Richard Pyrah.”I hope to play that father figure around the dressing room,” Grayson said. “I will give the players options and then it is down to them to perform.”I think that white-ball cricket has been a success at Yorkshire over the last couple of years, but it is pretty evident that some of the lads need to improve their numbers in red ball and enjoy playing four-day cricket again.”Gale said he had felt for a while that the club needed a batting coach.”The bowling group has been quite close and Richard Pyrah treats them as his own, I felt the batters needed that also,” Gale said.

Draft letter to ICC prepared, government ministries to be consulted after internal discussions

Nagraj Gollapudi and Sidharth Monga21-Feb-2019In a dramatic and unprecedented move, the BCCI has prepared a draft letter asking the ICC to ban Pakistan from participating in the upcoming World Cup. ESPNcricinfo understands the letter, which was prepared on Wednesday, will be discussed at a top-level BCCI meeting on Friday and then taken up with the concerned ministries of the Indian government.In the draft, the BCCI argues that Pakistan should be banned from the World Cup given the Indian government’s stand that the country is supporting terrorism in India – the latest incident being the Pulwama militant attack where 42 Indian soldiers died after a suicide bomber rammed into their convoy in Kashmir. Imran Khan, Pakistan’s prime minister and Patron of the Pakistan Cricket Board, has denied that allegation and asked India to share actionable evidence.The draft is believed to have been overseen by Vinod Rai, the chairman of the Committee of Administrators (COA), who asked BCCI chief executive officer Rahul Johri to address it to ICC CEO David Richardson and Steve Elworthy, the World Cup’s tournament director.That the letter has not reached Richardson and Elworthy already is because Diana Edulji, the former India women captain and the other member of the CoA, wanted the matter to be discussed at Friday’s meeting before taking a final decision. Neither the letter nor the World Cup issue was on the meeting’s agenda, which was originally going to discuss the IPL and other routine issues. Along with Rai and Edulji, Friday’s meeting will be attended by Johri along with the senior IPL and BCCI officials as well as the BCCI’s legal team.Neither Rai nor Johri have made any public comments yet and neither has responded to ESPNcricinfo’s queries.Edulji, who was in Delhi on Thursday to attend a hearing in the Supreme Court concerning the implementation of Lodha Committee recommendations, said all stakeholders including the Indian government would be consulted on the matter. “We will discuss the procedures to be followed and the way forward,” Edulji said. “We will consult the ministry of external affairs, ministry of home affairs and the sports ministry. We will also look at how things have been done in the past.”The Pulwama militant attack has triggered a strong reaction from the Indian public and many, including prominent cricketers, have called for the BCCI to boycott playing Pakistan in the World Cup. India and Pakistan are scheduled to meet on June 16 in a World Cup group match in Manchester. This week, Elworthy revealed that close to half-a-million applications for tickets were received once the ballot was opened, easily the most sought-after game with twice the demand for the final on July 14.Fans enjoy the Champions Trophy final between India and Pakistan•PA Photos

At the event to mark the 100-day countdown for the World Cup, Richardson had told ESPNcricinfo that the ICC had not received any communication from either the BCCI or the PCB on the World Cup. He said the ICC would continue to monitor the developments.The matter is not on the agenda of the ICC’s quarterly meetings, scheduled from Monday in Dubai. Johri will represent the BCCI at the chief executive committee’s meeting while the BCCI’s acting secretary Amitabh Choudhury will be on the ICC Board meeting, where the issue is likely to be taken up.Quite how the process for banning a team at the request of another works is not clear. There is not known to be any clause in the ICC’s constitution that allows such a step; on the contrary, article 2.3 (H) states that “each Member [is] entitled (subject to meeting any relevant qualification criteria) to participate in certain Cricket events organised or sanctioned by the ICC”.Neither would there appear any straightforward contractual method to do so. Under the Members’ Partnership Agreement (MPA) that governs the participation of Full Members in global events, and signed by all boards in 2015, it is contractually binding that all countries participate in these tournaments. Excluding one country would carry significant legal and commercial consequences. The commercial consequences of an India-Pakistan game not happening would also be significant.Richardson had pointed out that if India wanted to forfeit points, the ICC would review the tournament guidelines and the MPA to ascertain whether it was for a justifiable or non-justifiable reason. It is understood that to make its case stronger, the BCCI would need a clear government directive even in the scenario of forfeiture.Many of these issues are likely to come up during the CoA meeting on Friday, including whether the BCCI has the legal cover if it takes any drastic step. Another significant point is likely to be whether the BCCI’s three office bearers and by extension the several board members (state associations) were consulted, or should be consulted, before the BCCI takes a final decision. The members are the biggest stakeholders as they will eventually be back at the helm once the BCCI conducts fresh elections. Some heads of state associations have confirmed to ESPNcricinfo that they had not yet been consulted.

India captain earns game’s oldest individual award as well as being named Leading Cricketer in the World

ESPNcricinfo staff10-Apr-2019Virat Kohli’s reputation as the outstanding cricketer of his generation has been further enhanced by a brace of accolades in the 2019 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, which is published today.Kohli, who will lead India’s World Cup campaign in England later this year, has been named as the Leading Cricketer in the World for an unprecedented third year in a row.He has also achieved one of the few accolades to have eluded him in his career so far, by being named as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year, the oldest individual award in the sport.
Jos Buttler and Sam Curran were also named among the five cricketers, following their key roles in England’s summer campaigns, alongside Rory Burns, Surrey’s championship-winning captain, and Tammy Beaumont, the outstanding player in another successful year for England’s women.Kohli’s fellow Indian, Smriti Mandhana, is the Leading Cricketer in the women’s game, after racking up 1291 runs across limited-overs formats, including 13 half-centuries, while Rashid Khan, the Afghanistan legspinner, is the Leading Twenty20 Cricketer for the second year in a row.Kohli, however, was the sport’s dominant figure in 2018, making 2735 international runs at 68.37 across all formats, more than 700 more than his nearest challenger, England’s Joe Root.In that time, he scored a remarkable 11 centuries in 37 innings, seven of which came on India’s tours of South Africa, England and Australia, traditionally three of toughest venues for overseas batsmen.Wisden

His form on the Test tour of England was particularly outstanding – although India slipped to a 4-1 series defeat, Kohli himself made 593 runs in the five Tests at 59.30, including hundreds at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge.And, as a consequence of making such a big impact on the English season, he was finally named as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year, an honour that dates back to 1889.Wisden states that “excellence in, or influence on, the previous English summer are the major criteria for inclusion as a Cricketer of the Year”, and seeing as Kohli had managed just 134 runs at 13.40 on his previous Test tour in 2014, this was his first real opportunity to claim an exclusive honour that – unlike the Leading Cricketer award – can only be achieved once in any player’s career.”Despite finishing on the losing side, India captain Virat Kohli shone with the bat, laying to rest his struggles in England in 2014,” said Wisden’s editor, Lawrence Booth.”His Test batting, especially in England, was magnificent, while his 50-over form moved to a new level – if that was possible.”Elsewhere in the 2019 Wisden, the Almanack’s 156th edition, Booth reflects on another eventful year for the sport, which included the fall-out from Australia’s ball-tampering scandal in Cape Town , and the retirement of England’s leading Test run-scorer, Alastair Cook, who features on the front cover alongside England’s leading wicket-taker, James Anderson.”There was more to him than met the eye,” Booth wrote in his Notes By the Editor. “Sluggish between the wickets, he was fitter than anyone. Possessing only three strokes against the seamers – the cut and the pull grew scarce as bowlers cottoned on, leaving the nudge off the hip – he made more Test runs than any other left-hander or opener.”And he took his only Test wicket while impersonating Bob Willis. When Radio 4’s “World At One” cut to a clip of Cook “doing what he did best”, that wicket is what they came up with, as if his 12,472 runs had passed them by.”But in one respect Cook was no paradox: for mental strength, England has never seen anyone like him. Even his parting shot – 71 and 147 against the world’s No.1 side [India] – required him to rediscover the edge he said had deserted him. We shouldn’t have been surprised.”In Cook’s absence, Booth is pessimistic about the prospects of England’s Test team uncovering another top-order batsman to replace his grit and resolve – not least given the advent in 2020 of the ECB’s new competition, The Hundred, a format about which he is scathing.”Quite what a 100-ball tournament will do to England’s search for a Test top order does not bear thinking about,” he wrote. “If only someone at the ECB had been on hand last year to explain why they thought it a good idea to stake cricket’s wellbeing on a form of the game played nowhere else in the world.””England’s openers were once the envy of the world; gutsy, stoical, pragmatic, they may even have embodied a certain Britishness. Now, it’s a pleasant surprise when one survives until lunch.””It is not easy to see what can be done while the domestic schedule treats four-day cricket as an inconvenience … unless the Championship can reclaim the turf of high summer, the flow of hopeful young openers will slow to a trickle.”

Mitchell Marsh found a way past Tim Paine on an enthralling final day of the match at Bellerive Oval

Daniel Brettig15-Mar-2019Western Australia’s captain Mitchell Marsh found a way past the Australian Test captain Tim Paine to vault the Warriors into third place on the Sheffield Shield table after an enthralling final day of the match at Bellerive Oval in Hobart.Needing exactly 400 on the final day with all 10 wickets in hand, the Tigers’ pursuit was marshalled by a masterly innings from Matthew Wade as he maintained his push for a place on the Ashes tour with a century.The Warriors had struck early on the final day and at 4 for 136 the game seemed to be headed inevitably for a WA win. However, Wade, who had earlier seemed intent primarily on survival, spread his wings in the company of Ben McDermott in a stand worth 183 for the fifth wicket.At 4 for 319 with plenty of overs and time remaining, the Tasmanian chase appeared well and truly on course. But Wade and McDermott were both accounted for by the second new ball within 16 runs of each other, leaving the hosts scrapping for a draw.This pitted Paine against Marsh, who had been dropped from the Australian side in all formats this summer. It appeared that Paine might be on the way to repeating his rearguard heroics in Dubai late last year, but Marsh coaxed a catch with the first ball of the penultimate over to hand outright points to the Warriors.