All the key stats from a low-scoring thriller in New York

Sampath Bandarupalli09-Jun-20241:56

Rapid Fire Review: Is it curtains for Pakistan’s WC campaign?

119 – The score India defended successfully against Pakistan on Sunday. It is the joint-lowest total any team has successfully defended at the Men’s T20 World Cup in a 20-over game. Sri Lanka also successfully defended 119 against New Zealand in the 2014 edition.1 – The target of 120 is also the lowest India have successfully defended in a full 20-over game in men’s T20Is. The previous lowest was 139 against Zimbabwe in 2016 in Harare.The 120 total is also the second-lowest target Pakistan lost chasing in the format, behind the 119 against Zimbabwe in 2021.

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.

Ten T20I defeats in a row couldn’t sway resilient team from sticking to their guns in emphatic win

Shashank Kishore04-Oct-2024Sophie Devine had to scream her lungs out to get Maddy Green’s attention at long-off. She was unhappy with Green’s positioning and implored her to move a few yards to her right. The move was partly instinctive as much it was down to an understanding of Smriti Mandhana’s strengths, having played with her in the Women’s Premier League.Four balls into Eden Carson’s second over, the ploy was rewarded when Mandhana tempted fate and holed out to long-off. And just like that, Mandhana’s plans of playing a shot she scores a lot of runs off, especially early on against spin, were nipped in the bud.Devine revealed the plan for Mandhana was one among many that New Zealand put together for this World Cup opener, and while the results had been slow to come to fruition over the course of the previous year, what had remained was their steadfast belief in their methods.”Look, to be honest, we’ve been planning for this game for about, I don’t know, probably close to a year,” Devine said. “We’ve been really focused on this one game for a long time now, and the level of detail that we’ve gone into, in terms of match-ups, field settings, obviously it helps having played a little bit in the WPL.”It’s all well and good to have plans. If the bowlers can’t execute it, it doesn’t mean anything. But I thought the bowlers were outstanding. We were really clear around what plans we wanted to use and how we wanted to use them, and for them to execute and to pick up wickets regularly is something that I was really proud of. It’s a pretty cool feeling to have plans executed, and to be rewarded for it.”One of those plans that Devine touched upon, it seemed, was bowling a heavy ball. On a Dubai surface where the dew didn’t come on as anticipated, the ball was gripping more than a hint. And Lea Tahuhu showed the value of hitting hard lengths. The wickets of Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh and Deepti Sharma were reward for that unwavering discipline.Tahuhu’s natural swing, courtesy of her slingy action, tends to take the ball away. While she isn’t the tallest bowler in the game, she has worked previously with Jacob Oram, the former New Zealand allrounder turned bowling coach, on a slower bouncer to complement her hard lengths.Friday’s plan was confirmation of the extent to which the players have bought into the team’s methods, without being swayed by the uncertainty that a series of insipid results, including 10 successive T20I losses, can bring.”I think a word that got used today when we were presenting our jerseys was ‘resilient’ and, when I think of resilient people, I think of Leah,” Devine said. “She’s obviously been in and out of the side, she’s battled through injuries, she’s obviously got a young family now, and [she showed] her ability to just keep bouncing back and then to perform in pressure situations like she did today.Related

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“As a captain it’s a real privilege to be able to throw her the ball and know that she’s going to fight tooth and nail to do whatever she can for this team. And people like that are so important in a team environment, because that mongrel spirit is infectious and I thought she’s been great today. Long may it continue.”The brightest example of New Zealand’s spirit is Georgia Plimmer who was backed to open despite a horror run of form all through the summer. She made 26 runs in four innings during a winless England tour and had just one not-so-fluent half-century in the final T20I of an otherwise forgettable Australia tour.A T20I strike-rate that had been just a nudge above 84 revealed more than an inkling of struggle in the Powerplay. It may have been prudent for Devine to move up herself, but the New Zealand captain laid out what she termed a succession plan, for when she and Suzie Bates eventually decide to move on.One of those plans was to back Plimmer to find her feet in the pressure of international cricket. And on Friday, she launched a powerplay salvo that rattled India. In the context of her career and the match, Plimmer’s 23-ball 34 up top was worth so much more, even though there were other batters, such as Devine herself, whose unbeaten 36-ball 57 looks the more significant on the scorecard.”The cricket gods decided to be with us today and sometimes that’s all it is, isn’t it?,” Devine asked. “Sometimes you get a lucky bounce, sometimes you get, you know … a catch goes in the gap. I don’t think it’s through lack of effort, it’s not through lack of trying, it’s not through lack of preparation, I think it’s just sometimes the way cricket is.”So, I’m just really proud of this group to keep sticking at it, to keep believing in themselves. Trust me, we’ve been copping stuff from all over the place about the batting order, and I hope today shows exactly why we’ve been sticking with it for the last 12-18 months, because we believe in this batting order.”We believe in the openers, we believe in Melie [Amelia Kerr], and we believe in myself and the rest of the group. So hopefully that’s brought us a little bit of breathing space, but we know that it’s on us now to make sure that we back it up.”In a way, New Zealand played like a team that wasn’t burdened by the same expectations as India. Neither are they bound by history. Devine admits theirs is a transition that has loomed for longer than expected, which they’re trying to address in the best possible way.All told, New Zealand played like a team that would’ve embraced delight and dejection in equal measure, provided they didn’t deviate from plans that had been in the making for a while. And when the spotlight was on them on a grand stage against a more fancied opponent, they conjured magic to sting their opponents like few defeats in recent memory.