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On Tuesday, in a match India had to win, he seemingly batted without any burden of pressure to script a fairly comprehensive win

Deivarayan Muthu09-Aug-20231:53

‘When on song, Suryakumar Yadav a nightmare for bowlers’ – Wasim Jaffer

Suryakumar Yadav cycled through two shots when he faced Akeal Hosein in the second over of India’s chase on Tuesday. He had originally got down low to sweep Hosein, but the left-arm fingerspinner spotted it, shortened his length and hid it wide of off stump. Despite one knee on the floor, Suryakumar manufactured enough strength from his upper body to scythe the ball flat and hard over point.It was a portent for the carnage that was to follow.Suryakumar went on to smash 83 off 44 balls on a slow, two-paced Providence pitch that was designed to negate most batters. But Suryakumar is not most batters. West Indies’ bowling wasn’t particularly bad, and the pitch kept getting slower, but he made the attack look pedestrian, and made Providence look like Wankhede.Related

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After Suryakumar had manufactured a boundary on the off side from him, Hosein adjusted his line and attacked the stumps. But Suryakumar was ready with the flat sweep, and picked him away – both in front of and behind square. Just like that, Suryakumar broke Hosein’s rhythm.He then went about dismantling the best-laid plans of the seamers too. Obed McCoy had drawn a mis-hit from Yashasvi Jaiswal when he banged the ball into the pitch, but when he tried to dig one into the pitch against Suryakumar, the batter swivelled back, held his shape for long enough, and hooked the ball over midwicket for four. This forced McCoy to dart an on-pace full one on the stumps, which was launched over his head for six.But the most extraordinary shot came off Romario Shepherd in the tenth over of the innings. When Shepherd floated a slower offcutter wide of off, Suryakumar walked across off and played a half-scoop and half-sweep to hit the ball over short fine-leg, despite falling on the floor in the process. shot brought back memories of Rohan Kanhai for Ian Bishop, who was on commentary at the time. Suryakumar’s ball-striking in front of square – and gum-chewing swagger – was more Viv Richards than Kanhai, though.After India kept the series alive with their first win in the T20I series, Suryakumar refused to pinpoint the aspect of the game that pleased him more, and simply put down his 360-degree range to practice.”I think it was really important to be myself when I went into bat in the powerplay,” he said after collecting the Player-of-the-Match award. “That’s what the team and the team management demanded from me – to bat as much as possible. I’m very happy with the way things went. I’ve practiced these strokes a lot when I used to practice back home. I’ve loved doing that, and I just stick to my game and just express myself whenever I get an opportunity.”ESPNcricinfo LtdWith Tilak Varma being a stable presence at the other end, Suryakumar continued to do his thing in an 87-run third-wicket partnership off 50 balls. He eventually holed out in the 13th over, but Tilak ushered India home in their chase of 160 with an unbeaten 49 off 37 balls. Suryakumar, who has also worked closely with Tilak at Mumbai Indians in the IPL, was enthused about Tilak’s knock.”I think we’ve batted together for a long time now,” Suryakumar said. “We both understand how we bat together. It was his day to bat with maturity, and the way he batted gave me a lot of confidence. I told him straightaway, ‘Just because you’re batting, it’s giving me an opportunity to express myself’. So it was a great innings from him at the other end, and a great learning as well.”Having lost back-to-back T20Is, and with the series on the line, Suryakumar conceded that India did feel some pressure in the lead-up to the third game. Perhaps, there was some pressure on him too, considering he wasn’t particularly fluent on sluggish pitches away from home in IPL 2023, and on similar tracks during the ODI leg of the West Indies tour.”It [the pressure] was running in the back of the mind – it’s human tendency – but at the same time, we spoke [about it] in the team meeting yesterday,” Suryakumar said. “Our captain said it was really important for someone to put their hand up and show some character, and it was the perfect game.”But Suryakumar batted without that burden of pressure on Tuesday. He batted as if the world was at his feet.

South Africa’s dominance in Centurion, Rohit vs Rabada, and more

Sampath Bandarupalli28-Dec-2023163 First-innings lead conceded by India in Centurion. It was the fourth-lowest lead they conceded when they suffered an innings defeat. It was also the first time in 40 years that India lost a Test by an innings despite falling less than 200 runs behind after the first innings.The last such instance was against West Indies at Eden Gardens in 1983, where they were bowled out for 90 after conceding a 136-run lead in the first innings.1 Innings wins for South Africa since their readmission in 1992 with a first-innings lead of less than 163. They had defeated England by an innings and 12 runs at Lord’s in 2022 despite a lead of only 161 runs.7.66 South Africa’s win-loss ratio in Test cricket at SuperSport Park in Centurion. It is the joint-highest for any team at a venue where they played 20 or more Tests. Pakistan also have a 7.66 win-loss ratio at Karachi’s National Stadium.South Africa have won 23 of the 29 matches they have played at SuperSport Park, a win percentage of 79.31, the highest for any team at a venue in Test cricket.ESPNcricinfo Ltd2 Innings wins for South Africa at home against India, both in Centurion. The first one came in 2010, when they won by an innings and 25 runs.1263 Balls bowled in the Centurion Test, making it the shortest completed Test between South Africa and India. The previous shortest was the Ranchi Test in 2019, lasting 1325 balls.34.1 Overs India’s second innings lasted, their joint-shortest all-out innings in South Africa. In 1996 as well, they were bowled in 34.1 overs in Dubran, for 66.Their second-innings total of 131 is their third-lowest in South Africa, after 66 and 100 they posted in that 1996 Durban Test.51 Test wickets for Kagiso Rabada against India. He became the fifth South Africa bowler to take 50 or more Test wickets against India.12.8 Rohit Sharma’s batting average in South Africa. It is the second-lowest for any player with at least ten innings in top six in the country. Mohammad Hafeez averaged 11.83 in 12 innings he batted in South Africa. Rohit’s average against Rabada in South Africa is 6.2, with five dismissals in six innings.

Coming off two stellar domestic seasons and having got Sunrisers Eastern Cape into the final of the SA20, the fast bowler is hoping his time is now

Firdose Moonda07-Mar-2024As the star of the second season of the SA20, Ottniel Baartman has made headlines, but he is not exactly happy about it.”There is a hype about it and for me, personally, I don’t like it,” Baartman says during a first-class match at Newlands. “The media can make or break you, just like one bad performance can put you on the back foot. But I do feel I am on the map now.”He is, and in a big way.Baartman was the SA20’s leading bowler until the final, when he was leapfrogged by his team-mate Marco Jansen. Baartman was part of an attack that dominated the competition – all three top wicket-takers came from Sunrisers Eastern Cape (SEC) – and he helped his team become champions the second year running by taking an eye-popping 4 for 10 in the first qualifier, giving them a direct route to the final.He also did all of that in a T20 World Cup year, where bilateral fixtures are so scant that national coach Rob Walter has made it clear the SA20 and CSA domestic T20 challenge will inform his final selection. South Africa last played T20Is against India in December and won’t play any before their World Cup squad travels to West Indies ahead of the World Cup. So it’s no surprise that Baartman finds himself in the conversation. “All the messages I get and all the calls are from people telling me, ‘You are next in line for the World Cup.’ I don’t want to give them an answer because I don’t know selection.”Related

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But Baartman’s SA20 coach, Adi Birrell, who pre-signed him for SEC after seeing him playing for his provincial side, South Western Districts, a few seasons ago, does, and he believes the case has been made. “His alignment was very good. He runs in straight, follows through straight, and not much can go wrong with his technique. So it’s easy for me to say that, of course, he has got to go [to the World Cup], because he has done so well, but I haven’t sat down and looked at the options,” he says.”What I will say is that this is his time. He is at the top of his game. Too often, not only South Africa but teams in general go for the young guys with potential, instead of picking the guy who is at the absolute peak of his powers. You need to win the trophy now, and so right now you need people that are in form. I feel he should be going.”Baartman and Nandre Burger (right) were part of the limited-overs squad for the series against India last December, but Baartman didn’t get a game, while Burger made his debut•Getty ImagesBirrell’s point rings true for as recently as the last T20 World Cup in Australia, where South Africa exited in the group stage after a poor chase and defeat to Netherlands. Leading into the tournament, opening batter Reeza Hendricks scored four successive half-centuries on a tour of England and Ireland but did not get a game at the World Cup because of the presence of Quinton de Kock and captain Temba Bavuma, who had returned from injury and struggled for runs. Birrell didn’t say it but South Africa can ill afford a repeat of that.Could Baartman fit in? A first-choice South Africa line-up will include some combination of Kagiso Rabada, Lungi Ngidi, Jansen, Anrich Nortje and Gerald Coetzee (if both of the last two are fit). Andile Phehlukwayo, Lizaad Williams and Nandre Burger are also in the mix, which suggests it’s a crowded field, but the advantage Baartman has could lie in the conditions.While the drop-in pitch in Nassau County, New York, will be a mystery until the tournament begins – South Africa will play three of their four group-stage matches there – they then move to the Caribbean islands, where surfaces are said to be somewhat similar in character to St George’s Park, scene of much of Baartman’s SA20 success, or Kingsmead, where he plays his domestic cricket.Baartman himself wouldn’t go that far, because he genuinely does not know what to expect. “I’ve never been outside of South Africa” he says. “So I don’t know any of the grounds or what to expect. If I go, it will be a first for me.”And a fairytale story for a sportsman who had the odds against him from the beginning.Unlike many of the athletes who advance to the national team, especially in cricket and rugby, Baartman did not go to an elite private school or come from one of the bigger provinces. He grew up in Oudtshoorn, a town in the Western Cape, inland and about equidistant from Cape Town and Gqeberha, best known for its ostrich farms. He still lives there and describes it as a “small town with a small community”, where “there are a lot of good sportsmen but they are not going anywhere”.That’s partly because they are encouraged to concentrate on other things, like getting a good education. “I had the opportunity to go to a private school but my mother did not recommend that,” Baartman says. “It was one of those things where they just focused on sport and not academics. For us, it was: you have to learn first before you can play sport.”Baartman was adjudged the bowler of the SA20 2024 season for his 18 wickets, pipping team-mate Marco Jansen•SA 20Still, Baartman enjoyed the game, kept playing and started his career in his hometown. He eventually had to move to a bigger centre to turn professional. He was offered a rookie contract in Bloemfontein and spent three years there with Knights, who opted not to renew his deal after the first pandemic summer of 2019-20, so he moved to Dolphins. “My career started to go up from there. They had all the facilities and some world class coaches,” he says.In the 2021-22 season, Baartman was the leading bowler in the CSA Provincial T20 Cup with 11 wickets at 10.09. The following summer, he was second-highest in the CSA T20 Challenge with 15 wickets at 14.40. Throughout, he showed himself to be “very competitive and quite astute with his tactics – clever cricketer,” Birrell says. “He looks for the tough overs. And we trusted him with the big overs: at the back end of the Powerplay and the death.”That’s because Baartman’s speciality is the yorker. He learnt it in his youth “playing street cricket, because we used to just hit the stumps as many times as we could and I feel like it started there,” he says. “It was about how many yorkers you could bowl in a row.”These days he calls it his “go-to delivery”, which explains why he was used so extensively at the death by SEC. In the qualifier, he had Heinrich Klaasen caught behind off a wide, yorker-length delivery in the 17th over, to all but end Durban’s Super Giants’ chase. But it’s also not the only ball he has become known for. “His seam-up ball is pretty good too,” Birrell says. “And then he has got a bumper and a bouncer.”In SEC’s first win of their SA20 2024 campaign, Baartman took 3 for 35 against Mumbai Indians Cape Town, dismissing Dewald Brevis and Liam Livingstone with short balls. Asked how many variations he has, Baartman wasn’t sure but listed the knuckleball among them. “I feel that delivery and the yorker are the two I can get away with when the pressure is on.”He has a few more opportunities to show his worth over the next seven weeks when he will be in action for Dolphins in the CSA T20 Challenge that starts on Friday and concludes at the end of April. All eight Division 1 provincial teams will play the other seven both home and away, for a total of 14 matches, before the knockouts. With no IPL deal calling Baartman, he is expected to be able to fully participate in this tournament and make himself impossible to leave behind when South Africa name their World Cup squad in May.”He is just a really great talent and it’s pretty raw. He didn’t go to fancy schools. He has trod that other path,” Birrell says. “And he is a favourite in our team. Very popular. He will be an asset.”

On the eve of India women’s first Test in Chennai in 48 years, former players Shantha Rangaswamy, Sudha Shah and Shubhangi Kulkarni reminisce about their first Test there in 1976

Sruthi Ravindranath27-Jun-2024The north-east monsoon had just set in when India and West Indies arrived in Madras (now Chennai) in November 1976. It was the second match of the first-ever official women’s Test series in India. For the first Test, in Bangalore, the stadium was almost full. Not that it was something new for the India players: even the matches they played unofficially previously had drawn massive crowds.And the Chepauk crowd? The stadium was three-fourths full, even on days it rained. Ask Shantha Rangaswamy, the captain of that India side, and she falls back on that old chestnut: the “knowledgeable crowd”.Shubhangi Kulkarni, India’s legspinner, who finished as the highest wicket-taker in that series, faintly recollects the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association trying to bring girls from a nearby school in to watch the match.”My first impression was that the crowd knew their cricket,” Kulkarni says. “They were genuinely applauding the performance. They came to watch the cricket, unlike when we played in 1975 in various cities – the crowd [there] came to see whether the girls played in skirts or pants, you know. They [the Chennai crowd] were cheering both teams, cheering good performances.”Related

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Madras, however, would not see another women’s Test for 48 years. Since that Test, India have gone on to play 39 more, 22 of them in India – four in Lucknow, three in Mumbai, three in Delhi, and the rest in various other cities. But none in Chennai.They will be returning to Chennai for the first time since 2007, when they played an ODI Quadrangular Series there, to face South Africa in a one-off Test starting June 28.Current India head coach Amol Muzumdar acknowledges the significance of playing at the venue. “It’s a historic ground and we are aware of the history that this place carries. Even though a lot of cricket has not been played on this ground [by women’s sides], we are still aware of what the demands are, the pitch and the ground. We’ll try to cater to that in the coming days.”There’s barely any information out there about the 1976 Test played at Chepauk, barring a basic scorecard. It is evident that the match wasn’t completed; West Indies and India played an innings each. India declared at 218 for 9, Rangaswamy and Diana Edulji both top-scoring with 57.Sudha Shah, who has played the most Tests for India, was the Madras local in the squad. A regular at the stadium for long, she had her entire family cheering for her from the stands in that match. She made 18 runs, getting out to Patricia Whittaker.A newspaper reports on the first day’s play of the first official women’s Test in India, in Bengaluru”It’s a punishment to make me recollect what happened 48 years back,” she says, breaking into laughter. But it doesn’t take long to jog her memory.”I played the ball, it looped out and it ricocheted off the slip fielder’s head… the gully took the catch. Everyone was saying, ‘What luck!’ None of us top-order batters scored , if I remember.”Shah remembers correctly. India’s top three were dismissed for 15, 7 and 18. Then Rangaswamy came in.”I played to build the innings, Diana played the finisher’s job,” says Rangaswamy. “Diana went hammer and tongs. She got a quickfire 50-odd, while I had to build my innings to get my fifty.”Not only did Rangaswamy anchor the innings, she also got two wickets with the ball in the game. Remarkably, she also remembers how she got the two batters out.”Pat Whittaker was caught at slips by Sudha,” she says. “I dismissed Beverly Browne with an inswinging yorker.”The match was not telecast live but there was press coverage for the entire series. Rangaswamy remembers a description of the reception she got from the Chepauk crowd in a newspaper report, in the .”It went: ‘Her arrival was greeted with cheers as is normally given to the Nawab of Pataudi and Ajit Wadekar, the other captains of India. She got a rousing send-off after her half-century’, and things like that.”West Indies ended up playing just 29 overs in the rain-hit game, making 41 for 4. Kulkarni did not bowl in the game owing to a finger injury, but the five-for she picked up in the drawn Bangalore Test had given India the hope that spinners could be crucial in keeping West Indies quiet.”We sensed that the gap wasn’t that big and because our spinners were so good, and particularly because we were playing on our wickets, which wasn’t really suiting them, we had a positive mindset that we could go for a win,” Kulkarni says.Sudha Shah (leftmost) and Shubhangi Kulkarni (rightmost) would go on to occupy important roles in the coaching and administrative setup of women’s cricket in India•Getty ImagesThe historic first Test win came in Patna, in the fourth Test of the series. The players were floored by the fans’ reaction to the win. “Right from the ground to the hotel there were crowds and even when we went to the hotel, there were people outside,” Shah says. “So we went to the balcony to wave to them. It was a thrill at the time because we’d never come across anything like that.”With the women not getting paid to play, they were treated to food or juice by the manager after a good performance.”We never got paid, in my entire cricket career,” Rangaswamy says. “Our love for the game was more. We did it for passion, not money. But I remember in Chennai, I think both the captains – Louise [Browne] and I – got a gold chain with a pendant shaped like a ball from Vummidi Bangaru Jewellers or someone.”On Friday, Shah, who is a Chepauk regular, will be at the stadium, cheering for India from the stands. “A few of us [former team-mates] are planning on going to watch the game together,” she says.Rangaswamy, who’s currently in the US, says she’ll be watching the match on TV despite the odd timings. She watched all three ODIs India played against South Africa last week, and she’s looking forward to watching her favourite, Smriti Mandhana, and her recent favourite Shubha Satheesh, play in the Test.

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Be it cheering the opposition even when their own team loses, or turning out in massive numbers just to watch their favourite cricketer practice, you can’t talk about Chepauk without mentioning the crowd.For Radha and Parth, members of the Bucket Hat Cult, a fan group dedicated to women’s sport, it doesn’t get better than watching their favourite team play at the iconic venue for the first ever time. The group – identified by their “uniform”, the bucket hat – has been a notable presence whenever the women’s team has played in Mumbai since India’s Test against England there in 2023.Their catchy chants and songs – one of them goes, “Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to watch Deepti play all day” – even got players to notice them. “Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues wanted to meet us after the game and appreciated our support,” Parth says.Members of the Bucket Hat Cult, a group of women’s sport enthusiasts, will be at the first Women’s Test in Chennai in 48 years•Bucket Hat Cult Considering how strong the Chennai Super Kings fan base is, Radha thinks it won’t take too long for women’s cricket to pick up in the city. The TNCA has made tickets free for the match, and there are hopes a sizeable crowd will turn up, especially on the weekend.”Just look at what RCB [in the WPL] has done for the Bengaluru crowd,” she says. “From a fan’s perspective, it is pretty evident that women’s matches are just scheduled in Mumbai or neighbouring stadiums without much thought for growing the fan base across the country.”Away from the stadium, 84-year old Vijaya Subramanian, a cricket aficionado who lives in Chennai, will be cheering the women on from her home. Her father introduced her to the sport when she was around six years old and even taught her how to create a cricket scorecard. From the age of 11, she started keeping a cricket diary, in which she meticulously jotted down scores off TV or radio commentary.”She lived for a while in Kolkata, where she never missed a game – be it men’s or women’s – before moving back to Chennai,” her son, Karthik, says. “She watches all the games irrespective of the time. Her memory isn’t great right now. We remember names like Shantha Rangaswamy, Sudha Shah and Diana Edulji now because she used to talk about them so much.”Vijaya’s face lights up when she hears the players’ names. “I’m sure I heard the radio commentary for this match in Kolkata,” she says. “I remember they played well in that series. Rangaswamy used to play so consistently.”Will she be watching the one-off Test starting Friday?”,” [I’ll definitely watch] she says.

Virat Kohli did too, a little bit, as the India vs South Africa T20 World Cup final gave us many memories to cherish

Alagappan Muthu29-Jun-20241:23

Flower: ‘Fascinating game of cat and mouse from Rohit’

A catch for the ages

It went up and there was sky. It came down, and there was SKY again. Suryakumar Yadav on the long-off boundary in the 20th over, with 15 runs to defend, pulled off a catch that will be talked about like Kapil Dev’s from 1983.Related

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It was a full toss from Hardik Pandya. A wide full toss. Perhaps a mangling of a wide yorker. David Miller connected more off the bottom of the bat, but still it flew. Suryakumar was haring to his left. At full tilt. He was stretching. He shouldn’t have had any balance out there going as fast as he was, but he did. Somehow. The ball came down just in front of him and he caught it. But he wasn’t done. Because he was so close to the rope. Barely inches from it. So he tossed the ball up, high enough that he could step over the boundary, collect himself, step back in, and keep control of the ball all the way through. Catches win matches. This one won a World Cup.

Genius at play

It was an old ball. It looked scruffy. It shouldn’t be doing these things for a fast bowler. But Jasprit Bumrah is not just a fast bowler. He is miracle made flesh. With South Africa needing 21 from 15 balls, he went wide of the crease. He landed it outside off. It screamed in between bat and pad and brought down Marco Jansen’s castle with him looking utterly bewildered. This was movement off the pitch. The seam pointing in. One side of the ball ragged. The other slightly less so. Reverse? The things Bumrah does escapes the realm of sense and meaning. No one can be that good when this much is on the line.

Klaasen goes boom

One of these days, Heinrich Klaasen is going to hit a cricket ball so hard it breaks in two. He hit five sixes during a hair-raising knock. One of them, with the wind, just flew flat and hard over extra cover. Another went into the wind, and still had enough on it to clatter on to the roof. The power he has is unbelievable. Klaasen hit 70% (seven of ten) of South Africa’s boundaries while he was at the crease and four of them in a single over against a previously unhittable Axar Patel. It was remarkable and he was doing it with such ease. In a World Cup final. In a South Africa shirt. For a little while, it really did feel like the curse was going to be broken.Suryakumar Yadav pulled off a catch that will be talked about like Kapil Dev’s from 1983•ICC/Getty Images

The trap that wasn’t, but was

Quinton de Kock hitting over square leg is inevitable. And that swing of his bat. Starts up high. Comes down smooth. Fully uninhibited. In the old days, Sanath Jayasuriya used to be the master of this shot. And he used to play it the same way. On instinct. So when de Kock had the opportunity to unleash it, in the 13th over of the game, he took it and found six. India immediately stationed a man there. It wasn’t meant to be a trap, because it was right there in plain view, but it worked like one. Arshdeep Singh bowled the same ball. De Kock played the same shot. Only Kuldeep Yadav was there to catch it.

Kohli pulls up the anchor

Virat Kohli was playing a strange innings. He was 14 off five. Then he was 36 off 43. He’d hit only four boundaries in 48 deliveries. He and India were working on the theory that a par score would be enough. This was a final. That does things to people. So a man who had embraced a more attacking game went back to find that old trusty anchor and dropped it all the way down. Then the 18th over came along. A six and a four off Kagiso Rabada. The same dose to Jansen. India got 33 runs in two overs. Kohli finished with 26 off his last 11 balls. Later that night, he was crowned champion.

CD Gopinath talks about facing Ray Lindwall and Sonny Ramadhin, and being part of India’s first Test win

Alagappan Muthu16-Oct-20243:25

CD Gopinath: “There was no strategy on how we were going to beat England”

As CD Gopinath starts talking about cricket, it becomes clear that India’s oldest living Test cricketer has a mischievous soul.”See, when a legspinner bowls, and the ball is spinning, you cut him, the ball will go like this,” he says, extending his right arm and performing a clockwise turn. “I love watching it. I’ve seen fielders thinking the ball will come straight to them, but it bounces and goes somewhere else and they couldn’t stop it. I loved playing that shot and I loved seeing that happen.”Just as he enjoyed watching flummoxed fielders during his career, which included eight Tests for India, Gopinath, now 94, enjoys making light of that time in history.”Some people from the UK came and interviewed me on the Test match that India won for the first time in 1952. I think they were going to write a book or make a video, and I said to them: How can you write a book on one Test match? One season or five Test matches, okay. Why only this Test match? What is there to write so much about? They said, ‘No, we regard that win as a turning point of the cricket history of India.’ In one way it is true. And I am very lucky. I had that for India and I had that for Madras. I asked them: Who else are you interviewing? They said, ‘Nobody else, because there’s nobody else alive. You are the only one from that team that is there.’ I said, ‘So I can say anything I want!”Unfortunately, the lore that surrounds that victory, by an innings and eight runs over England in Madras, is disappointingly strait-laced. And Gopinath did not go through with his scandalous idea of saying whatever he wanted. He did, however, escort that crew to Chepauk to show them exactly where he took the catch to dismiss Brian Statham, England’s eighth wicket in the second innings, which brought India to the brink of history.Related

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India were well worth the 1-1 scoreline. They parked memories of Wally Hammond bashing them around and Alec Bedser tying them up in knots in previous years to begin the five-match series with back-to-back 400-plus first-innings totals. Then, in Kanpur, they came undone on a spin-friendly pitch and were left with only one chance to level the series. The batting had class – having already contributed five hundreds to England’s two – and that number would rise further in Madras, where Polly Umrigar scored a crucial 130 not out from No. 7, which turned 216 for 5 to an eventually match-winning 457 for 9 declared. Gopinath was at the other end when Umrigar got his hundred. Shortly after Statham hit Vinoo Mankad up in the air, after 20 years of trying, India had pulled off something they never thought possible.”[The crew] asked me how I felt,” Gopinath said, “and I said, look, my job was, as a fielder, I had to take the catch. It’s not an achievement. If you can’t take a catch, why would you be in the team? Yes, we were very pleased that we won, because we didn’t expect to win. That too against England, we never thought we’d ever win. We were very happy, but beyond that, there was no… [at] that time nobody demonstrated. They didn’t make fists and things like that.”Today when a fellow takes a catch, the whole team runs there – carries him, kisses him, hugs him – not only in cricket, in every game. In football, when someone scores a goal, they almost smother him. Those days you were not meant to express yourself openly out to the world. The catch I held was a straightforward, simple catch, nothing to it. If you held a brilliant catch somewhere in the slips, someone may say: ‘Well held.’ That’s it. You didn’t go running around the whole ground or carrying people. It was considered vulgar to show your feelings to the outside world. So our celebration at the end of that game was: we went to the dressing room, we said to each other, ‘Well done’, we packed up and went home. That was the end of the matter.Gopinath on the tour of England in 1952•Edward G Malindine/Getty Images”Maybe it didn’t quite dawn on us, because we were the weak team. When we went into that Test match, we didn’t expect to win. We were not even trying to. If we draw, we were very happy. was like winning a match. So long as we didn’t lose. That was the first time that we realised, oh, it’s also possible to win. You realise, oh, it’s also possible to score hundreds or 200s.”Gopinath’s lack of excitement – apart from being typical of his era – might also stem from the fact that he never had any intention of becoming a cricketer. That was destiny’s doing, placing him in the same college house as the captain at Madras Christian College, creating a situation where they needed, first, a wicketkeeper – “They saw me playing tennis, so they called me and said your job is to not let the ball pass you” – and then an opener (“You mean face the new ball? No way I can do that”). Except he did, and began scoring a lot of runs.”I got a duck in both innings of my Ranji Trophy debut, so [team-mate] Balu Alagannan came to me and said, ‘Hey, watch out. Bad things come in threes.’ Next match, I was so scared. It was all I could think about. I don’t even know how I got to the crease but somehow I got there and I got off the mark.”Gopinath was an uncut gem. “When I was young, I didn’t know anything. I suppose what happened was, my reflexes were good, my footwork was good, my eye was good. I could hit the ball.”So the cricket association sent him to train with Bert Wensley, the former Sussex allrounder who played 400 first-class games, and Madras cricket legend AG Ram Singh.Their mentorship helped him move up the levels of the game. It was batting that interested Gopinath the most, to the extent that he named his home in Coonoor “The Cover Drive”.Gopinath (front row, third from right) at a felicitation for Tamil Nadu’s Ranji Trophy winners from the 1954-55 and 1987-88 seasons•TNPL”There was a West Indian bowler called [Sonny] Ramadhin,” Gopinath said. “Those days, his early days, he was called the wonder bowler, and the previous season, West Indies toured England and they beat England because Ramadhin took so many wickets and the English batsmen could not spot what he was doing. He was a peculiar bowler. I don’t know how he did it. He would bowl the same way, one would go offbreak, one would go legbreak and you could never spot which way it was going.”I played against him in an unofficial Test for the Combined Universities against the Commonwealth Second Team in 1950. Again, because of destiny or luck or whatever, I happened to be at the non-striker’s end and I was watching him. I wanted to see if I could figure him out. Then some intuition told me that he normally bowled an offbreak, which was fairly quick, and when he tossed it a little bit, it was a legbreak. It was a blind kind of assessment. Just happened I was right and I hammered him all over. Every time he bowled a legbreak, he’d toss it up a little bit and I’d be ready for the square cut and I’d get four runs. I was top scorer that game. I made 93.”Gopinath had an instinct for batting and he was not shy about following it.”I was very thrilled when I faced Ray Lindwall for the first time. He was damn fast. By the time he played against me [in 1960], he must have been slower. But he was still really fast. One fast one on the leg side and I hooked him and I missed the six by five or ten feet. Immediately my captain said, ‘What are you doing? Don’t take chances!’ I said: what can you do with a short ball on the leg side!”Cricket allowed Gopinath to meet to new people.”I became friends with Lindwall that game, sitting and chatting. We became such good friends that we exchanged caps. I still have it somewhere.”Gopinath at home in Chennai•Alagappan Muthu/ESPNcricinfo LtdIt brought him recognition.Gopinath scored a hundred in the 1954-55 Ranji Trophy final when Madras won the tournament for the first time.It helped him win over his family, who once regarded him as an example of who not to be.”When my mother passed away and we were looking through her things, we found so many newspaper cuttings of me. She never told me, but all of it was there: I saved this match, I scored this century. And when my daughter saw that, she made a book of it.”The simple pleasure of picking up a bat and swinging it around changed Gopinath’s life and he never let the joy fade.”My coach Mr Wensley once advised me not to play the cut because I was getting out to it. ‘You play your drives and everything, you’re okay, but stop the square cut,’ he said. ‘That’s very difficult and you’re getting out.’ I tried to stop it and after a couple of matches, I went back to him and I told him, ‘I love that shot. I can’t do it.’ So he said, ‘Okay, if you’re that keen, don’t go opening. Move two-down, three-down.’ So I did and I never stopped the square cut.”Seeing me square-cut in that Combined Universities game, against Ramadhin, a foreign scribe, the Commonwealth team manager actually, wrote that I was the best exponent of the square cut in India. It was so funny!”I have never had any ambitions. I never wanted to get anywhere. Whatever happened to me happened because of my [destiny]. If I wanted to play for India and so on, I’d have been disappointed. But I never even thought about it. I never dreamt that I would play for India. It just came by. Same thing has happened to me in my life, in my work, and some of the things which at that time was, ‘Oh terrible, a terrible thing has happened’, now I realise I’m so glad that happened.”At some point, people grow up. They realise the perils of living for the moment, of chasing fleeting highs, like the feeling after playing a great shot, and weigh it against the downsides: its potential to get you out. It’s human nature. You want to do the best you can, so you strip the fun out of things.But take it from a 94-year-old who used to play tennis until four years ago, who was friends with Raman Subba Row, Frank Worrell and Denis Compton, who has seen the snowy peaks of Alaska and the breathtaking splendour of the Nile, who was chairman of the Madras Chamber of Commerce and who still serves on the board of several trusts: sometimes doing something just because it feels good is good.

All the stats highlights from Australia’s innings in Perth where they were bowled out for 104

Sampath Bandarupalli23-Nov-20240:47

What made Bumrah stand out?

104 Australia’s first-innings total in Perth is their second lowest in home Tests against India, after the 83 all-out in Melbourne in 1981.It is also Australia’s third-lowest total in home Tests since 1985 and their fourth-lowest total in the format against India.46 Lead in the first innings for India in Perth, the fifth highest by any team making 150 or less while batting first. The highest is a lead of 71 runs for England, who were bowled out for 113 while batting first against Australia in 1888 in Sydney.Related

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2 Previous instances of India claiming a first-innings lead in men’s Tests, despite scoring 150 or less while batting first. They took a five-run lead in the 2002 Hamilton Test against New Zealand, despite getting bowled out for only 99 while batting first and claimed a first-innings lead of 13 runs against England in the 1936 Lord’s Test, despite making only 147.37 Total runs by Australia’s top six batters in the first innings, the lowest for them in a men’s Test innings at home since the 22 runs they scored against West Indies in the 1978 Brisbane Test.97 Runs aggregated by India (59) and Australia (38) before the fall of the fifth wicket in their first innings in Perth. This is the lowest in a men’s Test match since the 67 runs by India and West Indies in the 1987 Delhi Test.Australia’s top-order batters made a total of 37 runs•AFP/Getty Images2 Number of partnerships across the first two innings in the Perth Test to survive ten or more overs. Rishabh Pant and Nitish Kumar Reddy added 48 runs in 14.1 overs for the seventh wicket for India, while Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood put on 26 in 18 overs for the tenth wicket for Australia.Each of the other 18 partnerships added less than 20 runs, the joint most in the first two innings of a men’s Test match.254 Total runs scored by India (150) and Australia (104) in their first innings at Perth. It is the lowest first-innings aggregate in a Test match in Australia since the 242 runs in the 1981 Test between the hosts and Pakistan at the WACA Stadium.9 Five-wicket hauls for Jasprit Bumrah in Tests outside Asia, the joint most by an Indian, alongside Kapil Dev. It was Bumrah’s second five-for in Australia. He has two each in England and West Indies, and three five-wicket hauls in South Africa.5 for 30 Bumrah’s bowling figures in Perth are the best by an Indian captain in men’s Tests since Kapil Dev’s 8 for 106 against Australia in the 1985 Adelaide Test. Bumrah is also the first Indian captain with a five-wicket haul in Test cricket since Anil Kumble in the 2007 Melbourne Test.

The fast bowler opens up about his evolution over the last two years, his struggles, and the attitude that has shaped his success so far

Nagraj Gollapudi10-Sep-2025In the last year, Delhi fast bowler Harshit Rana has debuted for India in all three formats. Rana, who is 23, and plays for Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, was picked for the Asia Cup, where he could audition for the crucial No. 8 role. In this interview he talks about his growth over the last two years, and how he hopes to fulfill his dream of becoming a regular all-format bowling allrounder.In Kolkata Knight Riders’ first match of the 2024 IPL, Sunrisers Hyderabad brought the target of 209 down to 13 runs from the final over. Heinrich Klaasen had made 50 off 25 balls. You had only played 12 T20s till then, and you were bowling the last over for only the second time in your career. Can you reconstruct that over for us?
It was a very important over for me [in my career]. Shreyas [Shreyas Iyer, the KKR captain], while giving me the ball to bowl the final over, told me: ” time hero defend problem . [This is your time to be a hero, but even if you are not able to defend those runs, it’s not a problem.] The first ball, Klaasen hit me for a six. It was now seven runs from five balls. Shreyas told me to “chill” and bowl what I wanted to bowl.The idea to bowl the slower ball was playing in my mind already. I would like to credit Nayar ‘s [Abhishek Nayar, KKR assistant coach], role here. He passed the same message from the dugout, saying bowling slower would benefit me, because the slower ball sometimes grips at Eden [Gardens]. And I had practised and developed the slower ball while recovering from the injury that year at the NCA [National Cricket Academy in Bangalore]. I had not bowled the slower ball before that IPL, so it was a moment where I needed to deliver perfectly because otherwise it would be a six and the game would have ended.Related

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But with them [Iyer and Nayar] giving me the confidence and telling me to bowl the slower ball [bravely], I bowled the next ball and it was a good slower one. Just one run came off it. So I decided I would only deliver slower balls for the rest of the over, because the batters would be waiting and guessing if it was the quicker delivery or the slower one. Even the [fifth] ball, when they needed [five runs off two balls], I thought whether I should go for the yorker, but Shreyas told me to stick to the slower ball and not be bothered even if it got hit. In fact, I was telling him that he – Klaasen – would swing the bat against the slower ball and even if he mistimed it, it could go for a six if I faltered. But it went my way.Since you bowled the slower ball the previous four deliveries, Klaasen might have predicted you were going to bowl the same again and might have planned for it, right?
Our plan for Klassen was to bowl wide outside off stump because he didn’t use his feet that much and used his hands more to hit those sixes. So the plan was to keep the ball far from his arc and that is exactly what happened, and he was caught at third.The execution sounds simple in hindsight. But what kind of preparation goes into delivering such balls?
You have to repeatedly do the things in the practice that you want to deliver in the match. So I bowled – and continue to bowl a lot – against a single stump, on the same spot. I specifically trained a lot for getting the slower ball close to the wide tramline or the wide yorker.Rana nervelessly defended 12 runs in the final over of KKR’s first game of the 2024 IPL season, with the full backing of his captain Shreyas Iyer•BCCICutters, like the one you used to dismiss Klaasen in that match, are not easy. Do you worry about the ball slipping out of your hand?
Yes, it happens at times. Because when the ball is wet, it becomes difficult to bowl the offcutter. Because a cutter is such a delivery that if it is [full/short] then it usually goes for a six. If it is full then it comes in the arc, and if it is short then the batsman gets extra time to hit it. So the five- to six-metre length becomes essential for a cutter for a fast bowler. In death overs the ball becomes wet usually due to dew, so we train using a wet ball for such a scenario. During training I place the cones at the five- to six-metre-length area with the aim of hitting that length at least ten of the 12 balls.Shah Rukh Khan [KKR co-owner] was watching that match. But there were two more special people watching. Can you talk about them?
It was the first game for Mumma and Papa when they had come to watch me live at a stadium. I had called them [insisted they come]. Papa would always tell me that he doesn’t want to see me live at a ground because he gets nervous easily. Even on that day after Klassen hit me for a six, Papa told me after our victory that he had quickly gone inside towards the washroom, as he couldn’t bear to watch it. Later when he started hearing the and ecstatic noises from KKR fans, he walked out. I was very happy in that moment for all of us.Tell us a bit about your childhood and how you came to cricket.
My dad is a property dealer and Mummy is a housewife. I was born and brought up in Ghevra, which is the last village on the border of Delhi and Haryana. My parents still live there. When I was young, there was no ground in Ghevra and we had to travel some distance towards the neighbouring village to play. But when I was there recently, I noticed every second corner had a big ground full of turf pitches and good enough facilities.Cricket would allow me to get [time] off from tuition. I have studied [for the] BA [degree], the simplest for cricketers. My sister, who is six years older, insisted I do my graduation and she ensured I completed it.In IPL 2024, there was another key match at Eden Gardens. Mumbai Indians needed 22 runs from the final over in a rain-shortened match. A win would make KKR become the first team to qualify for the playoffs. You had been hit for runs in the powerplay by Ishan Kishan, but you gave away just three runs in that last over, and picked up two wickets. What was the planning there?
My first three [wicketless] overs were nothing special prior to that. It was between me and [Mitchell] Starc for the final over. Shreyas handed the ball to me. The planning for that over was a little bit different because on that day there was no hold [grip] on the surface.The day before the match we were chatting to Gautam [Gautam Gambhir, KKR mentor in 2024 IPL], on what we could do differently in the death overs, because you can get predictable for batters who know you might only bowl the slower ball or you might only bowl yorkers. He told me that batters usually will predict I could bowl a slower bouncer or a yorker or a slower ball, but they don’t normally expect a fast ball on a hard length. In my previous over I had delivered a few slower balls, but against one of them Tilak [Varma] swept a four and a top edge had flown over the third man. So I realised I had to change something and not get predictable.”I love to bat. In domestic cricket for Delhi, I have felt that we have won due to my batting, and that gave me that inner confidence that, yes, I can bat”•BCCIThe first ball of that final over I bowled quick, pitched on hard length, and Naman Dhir was caught skying towards deep midwicket. Next ball, against Anshul [Kamboj], I decided to go slower because I did not want him to mistime a faster delivery that he could edge and sneak a four. They took a single and that brought Tilak on strike. I decided to go for the hard-length plan but set a field for the slower ball. He was caught behind.Gambhir who rarely smiles, was happily smiling after that KKR win. How has he helped you?
He has changed my mindset. I had never met Gautam before he joined KKR. In our first conversation, which was before the start of IPL 2024, he said: “You will play the 14 matches in the season regardless of how many runs you give. I just want you to continue playing cricket with the same aggressive nature as you have always – with your head up. Whether you get hit for 70 or 80 runs in four overs, your head should not be down. And if you are able to do that, I am telling you, 100% you will do something.”To be told as a player, just go out and play openly, don’t think too much, that, I feel, was the turning point. My confidence shot up and I could express myself fully, including in my celebrations, which you might have seen, where I was aggressive at times.Gambhir is a straight talker. Has there been an incident where he scolded you?
Whenever I am around GG , I am always on my toes (). I hope I don’t do anything [that leads to] scolding me. Because he always tells me that things have just started in my career and if I can devote as much time and energy towards cricket, I will grow in the game that much.How do you deal with bowling in pressure situations? What are your strengths?
More than skills it is my mindset. When I stand at the start of my run-up I think, , I will do it. I will save [the situation]. I’ve had this mindset from the beginning. And it’s because of my father. In the first decade when I started playing cricket, I never achieved any success. I never played anywhere. I played nothing. I only got rejection from every place I went. I only heard no, no, no. I used to cry, wondering what I would do in life. Papa used to always say: , do the hard work and do the things that are in your hand [control], you will get something in life.He never allowed me to doubt myself. I used to cry in front of him, saying, my name is not coming anywhere, nobody is playing me, I won’t be able to do anything in life, what will happen if I don’t succeed in cricket? He would always motivate me and say, “[As long as] I am around why are you taking the tension? You just play with a free mind.” Whenever I went to play a match, he would always say, “As a bowler, think how you can be one step ahead of the batsman.” I feel it is a mind game. If your mind is working quicker than the batsman and you are more proactive, then you are better.Rana had Harry Brook caught out for a duck on the third-ball Brook faced in the Nagpur ODI, discombobulating him with a head-high bouncer•AFP/Getty ImagesWhen was this rejection phase?
I did not play Under-14, did not play Under-16, played just three matches, and that too for a year, for Under-19 for Delhi. Then, again, I got rejected in Under-25, which was before I started to play IPL. I would go for all the trials but never got my name shortlisted. I could never get a reason why I was not being selected.Let’s talk about your white-ball debuts during the England series earlier this year. On ODI debut, in Nagpur, you picked up three wickets. You must have fond memories?
The debut was amusing, to say the least. [Phil] Salt had hit me for 26 runs in an over. I had leaked a good amount of runs [0 for 37] after my first three overs. Soon after, Shreyas brilliantly ran-out Salt. As everyone gathered to celebrate in the huddle, I stood there quietly. Rohit [Rohit Sharma, India captain] then told me, “” [Bowl from the other end].[Ben] Duckett got out immediately, caught by [Yashasvi] Jaiswal. Gautam always says, your strength is high pace, you should focus on doing that. So when [Harry] Brook walked in, I thought a new bat has walked in, why not bowl a head-high bouncer. I asked Rohit “?” [Shall I bowl a head-high bouncer?] He said, “” [Bowl it.] So I bowled the short-pitched delivery. Brook tried to fend it away and KL [KL Rahul] took a very good catch behind the wicket.You also got rid of Liam Livingstone, taking advantage of his aggressive intent.
Livingstone was trying to swing his bat at each and every ball of mine. He swung at it jumping out of the crease, he swung at it standing in the crease. I was thinking to myself, , you are swinging at the ball despite being new to the crease. Why don’t you wait for a bit, since there are so many overs still left in the innings? So when he attempted to go big while jumping out of his crease again, I bowled the short delivery, which he edged.You made your T20I debut in Pune under interesting circumstances. Morne Morkel, India’s bowling coach, said you were eating your dinner, mid-innings, when you were told.
() After the first innings, we reserve bowlers did some bowling against a single stump, and we went upstairs to have our dinner. As I came down after dinner, Gautam told me, “Be ready, you can [might] go in.” Initially, I couldn’t understand how that was possible. Then I was told [Shivam] Dube had been hit in the head and he was feeling dizzy and I would be the concussion substitute. So I walked in without doing any warm-up. I was standing at third and immediately I had a catch off [Ravi] Bishnoi’s bowling come towards me. I took it cleanly, thankfully. But what I remember is that it was that day I logged my fastest ball in T20 – 151 kph. I had walked in without any warm-up, but I loosened up as it started sinking in that I was making my T20I debut.Rana’s substitution for Dube in the Pune T20I was not without controversy, with England saying it was not a like-for-like replacement•Associated PressYou turned in a match-winning performance of 3 for 33. Did you joke with Dube on the like-for-like substitution?
pace like-for-like batting [Since I am a like-for-like sub for you, I will need to improve my batting.]You have been picked for the Asia Cup where you could end up playing at No. 8. What gives you the confidence that you can deliver if you get the opportunity?
I love to bat. I don’t feel like I can’t bat. In domestic cricket for Delhi, I have felt that we have won due to my batting and that gave me that inner confidence that, yes, I can bat.Did Rohit give you any suggestions on how you can improve as a batter?
During one of the training sessions for the 2025 Champions Trophy, I had just walked out after hitting in the nets. While I was removing my gear, he walked to me and said: “” [We all know you can hit sixes, but you first play safely to begin with.] He impressed upon me the important role the lower-order batters play and that the runs I make will eventually be helpful for the team.In terms of your fitness, do you feel anything needs to change?
There are many things I need to continue to work on. To play cricket for long, very long, for years, I need to work more on my strength.There is this interesting incident with Starc during the 2024 IPL when you were KKR team-mates. Tell us about that.
We were in Mumbai. We both started running around the ground. But he is very tall and he would stride ahead. After one of the runs, I said, “Starcy, I’ll beat you in the next one.” I knew I would not be able to and he would win easily. He said, “Don’t beat me, you just run with me.” He was telling me to run at his pace and run the distance he ran. At the end of it, I was lying flat on the turf. Then I heard Starcy say, “Eh, come on, one more.”What did you learn from him in terms of bowling?
Mindset and calmness. He is at the next level. If you remember, Starcy did not have a good start to the 2024 IPL, but I never saw that guy worried about anything. He was always smiling, though he might have gone for 80 runs in four overs. He did not get many wickets for the first four or five matches and people were talking, but he was still smiling. I liked that thing so very much, because if he is the world’s No. 1 bowler and if he is going through a rough time and he is still like this, then I thought, we younger lot, who have just started, what do we have to be tense about? The things we want, we are getting, so let’s enjoy our time playing the game.Starc and Rana’s KKR camaraderie spilled into a bit of sledging during the 2024 Border-Gavaskar trophy•AFP/Getty ImagesYou have been lucky to work with another bowling legend, Dwayne Bravo, who joined KKR as mentor last IPL. Has he helped you make any tweaks to your game?
Bravo told me, “Do whatever you feel like, I’m not going to teach you the mechanics, I’m going to focus on the mindset.” He always says that even if you are bowling your first over and if you feel like everybody is getting hit or if the wicket is really good, then straightaway you can go for a death-overs field. Since I bowl in the powerplay, I applied that plan a few times, like straightaway bowling a slower ball wide outside off stump, or a wide yorker or a yorker.Your body language is always positive whenever you play. After KKR’s victory in the 2024 IPL opening match, your senior team-mate Andre Russell said how your body language “was on point” in the last over. He said, “With the first ball gone for six, still there was some doubt there, but he came back strong and he got the job done.” Do you agree it is a strength?
When you are on the cricket field, the way you portray yourself can define you. Say, my day is not going well and I am getting hit, then if I am thinking about that with my head down in the field, I will not enjoy that. I play cricket for my feel and my enjoyment. I like being on the cricket ground and if even there I am not happy and have a weak body language and allow doubts to creep in, then I will not enjoy playing cricket. So if my bowling is not going well, I tell myself I will do well in fielding, or dive, or whatever to make an impact.Does your feisty attitude help you with the mindset?
Yes, it does. Others might doubt you, but if you doubt yourself then I don’t think you can do much. So I tell myself not to doubt myself.Having played for India across the three formats, what is the immediate next step in your plans as you evolve?
I need to work more on my batting to become a three-format player. Because if I can make more runs it will be beneficial for both me and my team.What is the best thing someone told you recently?
Last year after I got picked for the Zimbabwe series immediately after the IPL, I told my father about the selection. He said, “You have fulfilled my 35-year-old dream. Thank you so much.” Those words were bigger than anything else for me. We both cried.