Operating like a swing man should, Ben Hilfenhaus created severe doubt with most deliveries due to varied amounts of curve

Peter English at Edgbaston02-Aug-2009Ben Hilfenhaus is the only Australian fast bowler to enhance his reputation on this tour and he out-shone his team-mates again on a day when England made sure they could not lose. Despite more improvement from Mitchell Johnson, who is tackling an unfamiliar situation in unfamiliar ways, it was Hilfenhaus who kept things under control until he eventually agreed to take a break. Then things went wild.After delivering 14 overs either side of lunch for a return of 2 for 38, Hilfenhaus was rested and England immediately charged through Andrew Flintoff and Matt Prior, gaining an advantage which took the tourists out of the game. Both wickets in the first session went to Hilfenhaus as he pitched the ball up further than on Friday, and he was rewarded with teasing movement at a testing pace.With a heavy growth on his chin and a gloomy look in his eyes, he appears more suited to logging Tasmania’s forests than chopping off batsmen with sharp edges. Operating like a swing man should, he created severe doubt with most deliveries due to varied amounts of curve, mostly heading away from the right-handers. The slips were always in play, particularly when cover was left out to encourage the drive, and he continued to thrive in the English climate.”Out here the conditions, being overcast, the ball is moving around a little bit,” he said. “That helps.”Paul Collingwood was set up in a way that would have impressed any old-time seamer. He allowed Collingwood to muscle three boundaries on the offside in six balls before watching the batsman aim another drive and edge to Ricky Ponting at second slip. The smart tactic in the over before lunch allowed Australia to eat happily – Hilfenhaus’ bounce and angle had already surprised Andrew Strauss into a nick behind – and England were slightly uneasy.After the break Hilfenhaus returned to his long spell and would have bowled longer if Ponting had not devised a change in plan. “The period of the game there, he wanted me to have a rest, which I was perfectly happy with,” Hilfenhaus said. “I wasn’t getting any wickets so he wanted to try something else.”He had been joined in partnership before lunch by Johnson, who started to resemble the bowler last on show months ago in Australia and South Africa. The speed was sharp, short balls to Ian Bell were on target and he was moving some deliveries back into the right-hander. They were strong signs and all he was missing was a wicket.Even the England supporters who have been jeering him throughout the game must have been pleased that he was finally able to remove Bell, whose run of near-lbw-misses ended when Rudi Koertzen eventually raised his finger. Not even Koertzen could find a reason to decline this one: it was full, in front and the ball did not go close to the bat. But this was no quick fix for Johnson or Australia.Hilfenhaus and Johnson, who was later cleared of any issue with a hamstring, were replaced close together and England suddenly attacked Peter Siddle and Shane Watson, who gave up 40 runs in four overs to turn Australia’s goal into securing a draw and starting again in Headingley on Friday. In less than an hour, with the touring bowlers giving away runs like they had at Lord’s, England had a lead and the work of Hilfenhaus was wasted.The team’s most inexperienced bowler had held them together, so it was a shame to see England’s tailenders attack him heavily later in the afternoon. The edge of James Anderson gave Hilfenhaus a fourth victim and he finished with 4 for 109 off 30 overs, making him easily the most economical of the pace attack.Johnson’s gains from his eight-over stint in the first and second sessions, which included some fire against Flintoff, were given up when the new ball was taken after tea. He has been many things on this tour – unreliable, unresponsive, wayward, frustrated, melancholic and picked on – and he grew angry in the afternoon, searching out batsmen who hit him for four or looked awkward against the short ball.The grumpy Glenn McGrath act didn’t work for Johnson, whose pleasant and shy demeanour is not really a match for the fast-bowling trade. Flintoff was challenged early in his innings by Johnson, who was rested too soon, and then blasted his way out of the brief trouble with a brutal 74.Later it was Graeme Swann who was happy to walk after Johnson and argue with him along the pitch. It will take more than a couple of improved spells for Johnson to prove he is frightening again, with or without some lip. Next ball Swann glided Johnson for four and the crowd chanted: “Who are ya? Who are ya?” Johnson must wonder the same thing.After out-smarting Swann with a slower ball that went to cover, Johnson lined up against Stuart Broad in a long exchange that was quickly followed by an ironic crowd cry of “we love you Mitchell, we do”. He took off his cap off and waved it, showing he retains some space for humour.England continued to mock his closing offerings as he went for 33 in four overs after tea. When the hosts were dismissed for 376, achieving a 113-run lead, Johnson had 2 for 91 at 4.38 an over. It felt like two steps forward before a late one back, a sensation Australia know well on this trip.

Halfway into the tournament, it’s time to assess how the teams have been doing. Cricinfo has its report card ready

Sriram Veera06-May-2009Chennai Super KingsRetirement seems to have worked wonders for Matthew Hayden, who has 289 runs at 41.28 for the Chennai Super Kings•AFPThings have begun to perk up after a slow start. Their bowlers were struggling and, by the end of the fifth game, captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni decided it was time for experiments. The bowling line-up started to change: Sudeep Tyagi and Albie Morkel opened and Shadab Jakati, the left-arm spinner, was drafted in. L Balaji was given the task to bowl with the old ball while Joginder Sharma and Manpreet Gony were dropped. And in the batting, M Vijay was drafted in for Parthiv Patel. The changes worked and Chennai won their next three games to storm to the top of the table.Defining moment: It came after the loss to Deccan Chargers in Durban. “We are running out of ideas, we don’t know where to bowl and what to bowl,” was Dhoni’s frank assessment. “This is our best bowling line-up in paper. But it’s not working and now it’s time to change and experiment.”Best player: Matthew Hayden, with 289 runs at 41.28.Biggest let-down: Andrew Flintoff. He struggled with the bat and the ball and Chennai’s form actually started to turn around after his exit.Ins and outs: Flintoff left for England within a week of the tournament after suffering a knee injury. He was anyway slated to leave on May 1 for the West Indies series.Kings XI PunjabThe most disciplined team. They were badly hit by injuries but have gelled as a unit to keep turning in regular wins. Only Yuvraj Singh has scored over 200 runs but four others have scored more than 100, the most in any side. The bowling looked weak on paper but Irfan Pathan has starred with the ball, often taking early wickets to unsettle the opposition. The spinners Piyush Chawla and Ramesh Powar have done well and Yusuf Abdulla too has turned in a couple of good cameos. And Yuvraj, Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, along with the coach Tom Moody, have led the side well.Defining moment: When the team sat together after the first two losses and charted the way forward. They then won a close game against Bangalore – with Ravi Bopara and Yuvraj taking them home – which set off their revival.Best player: Irfan Pathan with ten wickets and Yusuf Abdullah with 14. They have worked brilliantly as a pair. Irfan has often struck crucial blows with the new ball and Yusuf has kept his nerve in the end overs.Biggest let-down: No one actually. If anything, they would like Yuvraj to be more consistent. He is their main power player but has accumulated only 208 runs at 29.71.Ins and outs: Bopara, the only Englishman to perform in the IPL, has left but Brett Lee, James Hopes and Sreesanth will be more than handy additions.Delhi DaredevilsThey have lived up to their pre-tournament billing of being favourites and have the best win-loss ratio, winning five of their seven games. And the best news is that their stars are yet to fire. Only Tillakaratne Dilshan has accumulated more than 200 runs and only Ashish Nehra has taken ten wickets but they have kept winning.Defining moment: No single moment but they have won all the tight games they’ve been involved in and each time someone has put his hand up – whether it’s Nehra with the ball or Dilshan with the bat.Best player: Dilshan. One of the more under-rated players on the international circuit has expertly steered the middle-order out of several mini-crises. Last year, Delhi suffered because of middle-order problems and this time they were really tested by the failure of the top order but Dilshan has stood up to the challenge.Biggest let-down: The hyped opening pair of Virender Sehwag (avg of 21.75) and Gautam Gambhir (avg of 28.00)Ins and outs: Paul Collingwood and Owais Shah have left for the home series against West Indies but that won’t make much of a difference because they never got to play a game. The biggest news so far is that Glenn McGrath hasn’t got a game either.Deccan ChargersIs the Deccan Chargers batting too dependent on Adam Gilchrist and Herschelle Gibbs?•AFPThey proved to be the tournament’s dark horses, winning their first four games. But they lost the next three, possibly because their batting is top-heavy, depending too much on Adam Gilchrist and Herschelle Gibbs.Defining moment: Their fifth game. It was a close finish against Delhi with Fidel Edwards, their strike bowler, going up against Dilshan. As the match hurtled towards its climax, Edwards lost his cool, argued with the umpires over wide calls, got into a sledging game with Dilshan and generally lost the plot. Dilshan plundered 17 runs in the 19th over, bowled by Edwards, to win the game. It was Deccan’s first loss and they are yet to win after that.Best player: RP Singh with 13 wickets at 13.23. He has bowled with the new ball but has really surprised with his accurate death bowling.Biggest let-down: VVS Laxman with 19 runs at 3.80. He has been repeatedly getting out to soft dismissals and is going through a horror run.Ins and outs: Edwards has left after a fine tournament. Andrew Symonds is expected to make an impact when he joins the team after their ninth game.Royal Challengers BangaloreIt’s been a fascinating ride for Bangalore. They upset the defending champions in the first game but returned to last year’s form for the next few. Rare occurrences like five first-ball dismissals and two second-ball dismissals left the team wondering what had hit them. However, they kept working hard in practice and the coach was willing to try different combinations. The appointment of Anil Kumble as captain after Kevin Pietersen’s departure seems to have changed the team’s fortunes; they have won three in a row now to move to fifth in the points table.Defining moment: Mark Boucher held his nerve to win a close game against Kolkata Knight Riders to fetch Bangalore their second win. It was a game that should have been won without much sweat but Bangalore threatened to fold under pressure. Lucikly for them, their opponents were simply worse than they were and that win provided the momentum. Kumble became captain in the next game and they have gone from strength to strength.Best player: Kumble, with ten wickets at an economy rate of 5.82. The man refuses to fade away without a fight. And then there’s his captaincy.Big let-down: Pietersen and Jesse Ryder. Pietersen averaged around 15 and Ryder 8. The two biggest picks of the year were expected to be part of the team’s revival but they have failed.Ins and outs: A struggling Pietersen left and the in-form Rahul Dravid, who had returned to India mid-tournament for the birth of his second child, has rejoined the squad. Nathan Bracken will bolster their bowling if he joins them this week.Mumbai IndiansLasith Malinga is using the IPL brilliantly to show his skills after a long injury lay-off•Associated PressThe Tendulkar syndrome has hit the team. They are yet to get out of the shadow of Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya and have lost quite a few close games. Tendulkar has scored over 200 runs but when he has failed, so has the team.Defining moment: It will come the day they win a game without a contribution from the two big stars. They have talent in JP Duminy, Dwayne Bravo, Abhishek Nayar and Shikhar Dhawan, who have the potential to turn things around. But will they?Best player: Lasith Malinga with 11 wickets at a staggering economy rate of 4.83. He is back from a long injury lay-off and is using the IPL brilliantly to show his skills. The slinger has rarely been collared.Biggest let-down: Harbhajan Singh. Just three wickets so far.Ins and outs: No disruptions for them.Rajasthan RoyalsThe top-order batting had been the chief worry but Graeme Smith’s return to form and Naman Ojha’s successful stint as opener would have eased concerns. Yusuf Pathan has lorded around the park and the entry of Lee Carseldine at the top has added further stability to the top order. They won three tight games, a sign that the captain Shane Warne is still weaving his magic with his band of young men.Defining moment: The Super Over game against Kolkata. It highlighted two of their biggest strengths – Warne as captain and Pathan the batsman. Like Delhi, they have rarely lost a close game. But unlike Delhi, they have lost easily in a few games.Best player: Yusuf Pathan with 181 runs at a strike rate of 161.60. He has played a hand in all their wins.Biggest let-down: Graeme Smith who, till his revival against Punjab on Tuesday, had 65 runs at an average of 13.Ins and outs: Kamran Khan has been asked to undergo rehab for his action but he was already doubtful with a knee injury. Shane Watson will bolster their batting when he joins them this week.Losing front: Kolkata Knight Riders captain Brendon McCullum has just 85 runs at 10.62•AFPKolkata Knight RidersA team drowned by controversies – the multiple-captaincy theory, an under-pressure coach, a struggling captain and even a fake blogger – have been hit even worse by poor on-field performances. There hasn’t been a single moment that sticks in the mind, nor a passage of play that has convinced observers that they are turning the tide.Defining moment: With two runs required from two balls against Rajasthan, Sourav Ganguly, who had guided the chase brilliantly, fell going for a big shot. Had they won that, they might have found the momentum they were desperately seeking.Ins and outs: Chris Gayle has left for England and Sourabh Sarkar has come in for the injured Anureet Singh. David Hussey’s all-round skills will be available after Australia’s Twenty20 game against Pakistan in the UAE this week.Best player: Brad Hodge, who with 240 runs at 40 is third on the run-scorers’ list. He hasn’t found much support from the other batsmen, though.Biggest let-down: Brendon McCullum has just 85 runs at 10.62. He said he’d quit if the team didn’t make semi-finals. While he may have intended it positively, he could be seen as a weak, emotional captain reacting to severe pressure.

Stats highlights of Sanath Jayasuriya’s 20 years in international cricket

S Rajesh26-Dec-2009Twenty years ago, Sanath Jayasuriya began his international career in pretty nondescript fashion. The stage was huge – the Melbourne Cricket Ground – but Jayasuriya’s contribution was unexceptional: coming in at No.5 after Australia had scored 228, he scored 3 off 11 balls as Sri Lanka fell short by 30 runs. Jayasuriya has come a long way since that uncertain debut.Over 20 years, he has progressed from an occasionally-hit, mostly-miss limited-overs batsman into a high-quality and consistent performer in all forms, capable of the quick blitzes and innings of long and sustained aggression in equal measure.One-day internationals, though, remains his strongest suit. He has played more matches than any other player, and scored the second-highest number of runs. It wasn’t all smooth sailing for him from the start, though. In his early days in one-day cricket he struggled to make an impact – his first half-century came in his 40th ODI, and after 55 his batting average was a miserable 13.87.The change in fortunes thereafter was stunning. He began opening the innings regularly, and the 1996 World Cup heralded the new Jayasuriya – in his next 100 games (after the first 55), his average almost tripled, and the strike rate moved up to almost a run a ball. It’s stayed around that mark ever since, even if his average has dipped in the last few matches.

Jayasuriya’s Test stats have fewer peaks and troughs. The start wasn’t anywhere near as horrific: in his first eight innings he had three half-centuries, and since then the average has stayed on the right side of 35 through most of his career. Each of his 14 Test centuries had their fair share of excitement, but a couple of innings stand out – his 340 against India in 1997 remained the highest score by a Sri Lankan for nine years, while his 213 against England at The Oval a year later was even more stunning for the sheer impact it had on the game – he got his runs so quickly it allowed Muttiah Muralitharan enough time to bowl England out cheaply in the second innings to give Sri Lanka their first Test win in England.Even with a somewhat unorthodox technique, Jayasuriya still handled the rigours of opening the innings in Test cricket with plenty of success. With Marvan Atapattu he added 4469 runs for the first wicket – only two opening pairs have scored more. Jayasuriya has also scored the most runs of all Sri Lankan openers – his 5932 runs came at an average of 41.48, which is slightly higher than his overall Test average of 40.07.

That’s only as far his batting is concerned, though. Jayasuriya brings to the table much more than that: his left-arm spin has given the Sri Lankan side plenty of balance over the last decade and a half, especially in one-day internationals, where his ability to bowl tight spells in the middle overs has allowed the team to play an extra batsman. He is the only player to score more than 10,000 runs and take more than 300 wickets in ODIs; even after easing the cut-off considerably – to 5000 runs and 200 wickets – only two more make the cut.

Jayasuriya the bowler is often underestimated, thanks to his sheer presence as a batsman, but he is among the most successful spinners in ODIs, especially in the subcontinent. He is the second-highest wicket-taker in Asia, with 225 scalps at a respectable average and economy rate, and is next only to the incomparable Muttiah Muralitharan. Jayasuriya’s numbers compare pretty well with India’s two frontline spinners, Anil Kumble and Habhajan Singh – the averages and economy rates for the Indians are only slightly better than Jayasuriya’s stats.The best conditions for him have usually been in his home country – in 128 ODIs in Sri Lanka, he has averaged 28.31 for his 119 wickets, and conceded 4.44 runs per over. His worst venue, on the other hand, is clearly Australia – in 51 matches he has only taken 19 wickets at an average exceeding 62. (His batting stats in the country are further proof of the fact that Australia didn’t bring out the best in Jayasuriya.)

What also stands out about Jayasuriya is his ability to play fearlessly even when the stakes are high. His aggregate in the finals of ODI tournaments is next only to Tendulkar, while the average and strike rates are very impressive too. He is one of only eight batsmen to score 1000 or more runs in finals.The team which has suffered the most at his hands in finals in India. His overall average against India is only 36.30, but in finals it shoots up to 56. Both his centuries have come against them.

Jayasuriya is also second in the all-time list of players who’ve won the most Man-of-the-Match awards in ODIs. He has 48 from 443 games, next only to Tendulkar’s 60. Jayasuriya’s powers are clearly on the wane, but hopefully he has enough left in the tank to turn in two more matchwinning performances, which will take him to the half-century mark that he so richly deserves.

The blog was the sensation of the second season of the IPL. The book seems an unwieldy, long-winded cash-in

Jayaditya Gupta03-Apr-2010The problem with covering the IPL, as any journalist or blogger will tell you, is that events change so fast as to render the morning’s news redundant by lunchtime. And so , the (barely) fictionalised account of the 2009 IPL season, is hamstrung by the fact that, on publication, it has already been overtaken by events. Calcutta Cavalry is so 2009; this year it’s all about the Haryana Hurricanes, though the cast reads eerily similar: a franchise fronted by a Twittering Bollywood A-lister, coached by an Australian and featuring a temperamental left-handed Indian batsman ousted from the captaincy in favour of a foreigner wicketkeeper-batsman.That’s just one of the reasons why the FakeIPLPlayer (FIP) should have stuck to the blog. Another reason is the format – think Twenty-20 stretched into a Test match: short, sharp bursts welded into an unwieldy and long-winded narrative. The 2009 blog was an instant and smash success, with its wickedly sharp, eerily prescient take on life inside a franchise with the wheels blown off. Even as the questions grew – Who “FakeIPLPlayer”? Was any of it true? How did he/she/they come so close to reality? – the answers became irrelevant. The blog at once offered an instant connect with the tournament, being staged thousands of miles away, and the wit punctured a lot of the bombast that had grown around it (that season we didn’t have Navjot Sidhu in the studio). It helped in the suspension of reality, and after a point it didn’t really matter what was fact and what fiction. takes those blog posts and constructs a story around them – the story of FIP, the havoc his blogs cause to the paranoid franchise owner and his aides, the mistrust they sow within the Calcutta Cavalry, and the undercover search to find him. There are several parallel strands, chiefly the exploits of the Bangalore Bangers and their megalomaniac billionaire industrialist owner, who sacks their iconic, upright Indian captain, replaces him with an upstart Englishman, and reinstalls him when the season goes pear-shaped. There are the aforementioned Hurricanes, whose captain is having an affair with the Bollywood A-lister. And at every turn, pulling all the strings, is Lalu Parekh, the head of the Indian Bollywood League, who believes in “inclusive capitalism”.Then there’s the everyday working of a high-profile billion-dollar league: tantrums, contract issues, libellous newspaper articles and subsequent apologies, failed dope tests and how to get around them (I’d never heard of powdered urine before this!) and of course all the off-field nocturnal activity. Add to this the complex name changes – it’s a story within a story, remember, so each of the principals has at least two names, and a third if you connect him to real life – and you’re a little confused by the time you get to the humour.At the end of 401 pages, it’s tough to figure out whom this book is aimed at. The casual cricket fan will miss out on the in-jokes and, unable to connect many of the references to incidents real or imaginary, be left bemused by the minutiae of international cricket politics. The more informed fan will simply be too closely absorbed in IPL 2010 and wonder why FakeIPLPlayer hasn’t resumed his blog.The writer hasn’t yet disclosed his/her/their identity, it is still unclear whether this is fact, pure fiction or something in between. The sad fact, though, is that truth is often stranger than fiction. You get far more reading , the compilation of Cricket Australia’s uncensored, declassified documents, or , David Davies’ account of life at the helm of English football in the turbulent noughties. And far more laughs on Twitter feeds.The blog was a ripping yarn; the book turns it into a gaping yawn.The Gamechangers
by the Fake IPL Player
HarperCollins India, 401pp, Rs 199

One shot changed the course of Chennai’s game against Central Districts

Sriram Veera in Durban11-Sep-2010One shot changed the course of the game. Until then the Central District Stags were hunting down the Chennai Super Kings with bouncers. Until then the white ball was kicking up at the throats of the Chennai batsmen. Until shot from S Badrinath. It came in the 11th over and changed everything. Chennai were pinned down by the short ball and had limped to 48 for 3 after 10 overs. You could sense Central Districts’ confidence had escalated after Hayden had top-edged his pull shot for a first-ball duck. You could sense they were on top when Suresh Raina gloved a lifter. The situation was ripe for the kill when it happened.Mitchell McClenaghan, who had given just seven runs from his first two overs, dug one short and it flew over Badrinath’s left shoulder. There was no edge. There was a muted appeal from behind the wicket, Badrinath shook his head and the bowler lingered on with the appeal before he went back. You wondered whether the next ball would be another bouncer; Badrinath knew it would be a bouncer. It was a bouncer. Badrinath side-stepped and upper cut it all the way over the fielder at backward point boundary for a stunning six. It was a pivotal moment. “I felt he was going to bowl a bouncer,” Badrinath later said. And he was ready for it.It’s a shot that he plays often and plays well. He regularly chips it over the slips but many a time goes for the cut over point. “It’s a shot that comes naturally to me. Not that I usually hit it for sixes but that upper cut is a shot I like to play.” There isn’t much of an arm-extension in Badrinath’s play. Even his drives are jabbed out. Punched out. In him, the fluidity in the arm-movement that you associate in a sub continental batsman is conspicuous by its absence. His upper cut is so different from the whiplash cut of a Sehwag; it’s more in the nature of a Steve Waugh. For what it’s worth, it changed Chennai’s approach today.A couple more short ones came but Badrinath wafted them away to the boundary. The bowling fell away. The bouncers seemingly lost their venom. S Anirudha grew in confidence and started to play the big shots. “It was tough initially as the wicket had a spongy bounce and they had come with a plan,” Badrinath said. “I tried to play safe for a while and once I got comfortable out there I decided to play that shot.”Perhaps Central Districts overdid the bouncers. Their captain Jamie How said the plan was to bowl short deliveries and his bowlers were simply sticking to it. “He [Badrinath] played really well. I am happy with my bowler’s performance. It’s the batting that let us down.” True.
Another New Zealander would have breathed easy. Yesterday, Stephen Fleming was a slightly nervous man. He wasn’t sure whether the five-day preparation was enough. He was concerned that some players like Matthew Hayden were coming out of the cold. He was worried about his team’s tendency to be slow starters. He fretted that this short tournament wouldn’t allow such lapses.”If things don’t go well [against Central Districts] we have to work very hard to get back into the competition,” Fleming had said yesterday. “Tomorrow is a very important day for us.” He would have turned more nervous at the tenth -over mark. Hayden , Raina, and M Vijay were back in the hut. An inexperienced Anirudha was in the middle. MS Dhoni, Badri later revealed, wasn’t feeling 100% and Albie Morkel’s batting is like a lottery. He would have been sweating at that point but Badrinath affected a jailbreak with a shot of confidence.

There is nothing like a fine catch – like Jean Symes’ to remove Ramnaresh Sarwan – to give any match a kick up the backside

Telford Vice in Johannesburg19-Sep-2010″There is,” Rodgers and Hammerstein concluded in ‘South Pacific’, in an age when all men were hairy and every woman was a fairy, “nothin’ like a dame.”Similarly, in cricket, in any era you would care to mention, there is nothing like a fine catch to give any match a kick up the backside. That holds true even in the rock ‘n roll format of the game and its current gig, the Champions League T20.You can keep the smashing pumpkins that arch way over the tightly wrapped groupies on the midwicket boundary, as well as the balls of fire that cut an AC/DC zigzag as they clatter through some thunderstruck unfortunate’s stumps. Nevermind those jumping jack flashes, give us a catch to build a dream on. Baby, I like it.’Twas just such a catch that stirred some ziggy stardust into the game between the Highveld Lions and Guyana at the Wanderers in Johannesburg on Sunday, bloody Sunday.In the fifth over, Craig Alexander, a bowler who seems to have muddled the order of his alleged “fast-medium” status, steamed in to deliver his first ball of the match. Alexander’s effort spewed wide of off-stump. Ramnaresh Sarwan shaped to drive it square, and he duly connected. But not as squarely as he would have liked, and the fat sound of a thick edge guffawed around the ground.Then it happened. One moment Jean Symes was awaiting anything, as is the wont of those who patrol the no-man’s land of backward point. The next he was presented with the impossibility of catching a ball screaming more than a metre to his right and just as far above his head. A moment after that, Symes did something presumptuous. That’s right, the silly bugger tried to take the catch.But a funny thing happened on the way to Symes making a fool of himself: he didn’t. He spearheaded his dive with both hands, one behind the other, straight out of the Jonty Rhodes manual on how to make the impossible possible. He couldn’t catch it, surely … could he?As it turned out, Symes and the ball were on a collision course, a bespoke pair of vicious vectors. Smack went the ball into the hands. Crash went Symes to earth. Mad went the crowd when it became plain that he had held on to his prize. Sarwan slunk off, stage left, like a scolded sloth as the celebrations soared and then gave way to the Sunday afternoon sleepiness seeping back into the scene.Not that Alexander’s adrenalin would allow him to take a nap. The catch and the audacity of its taking transformed him into a bowler eminently more fast than medium. He zipped through the rest of his four overs at speeds significantly higher than his regular range. It might not sound like a long way from the upper-130s to 148 kph, but it is.Some said they had seen Alexander hit 150 kph before. Others doubted that. But there was no disputing that his blood was aboil as he roared and ripped at his quarry with unvarnished aggression. Clearly, the magic of the catch was at work.A less dizzy analysis of this match might argue that it was won and lost by a Guyana outfit that already had one foot and their kit on the plane home, or by Ethan O’Reilly’s bristling bowling – which earned him career-best figures of 4 for 27 – or by the unbroken stand of 133 between Alviro Petersen and Richard Cameron, in which 96 runs flew and flowed in fours and sixes.But this is no time for sober comment. A catch to conjure with isn’t taken every other day. When it is, the moment deserves to be savoured as sublimely as possible. Stuck in a moment with you, it really is the sweetest thing.

ESPNcricinfo brings you the plays of the fifth day of the third Test between South Africa and India at Newlands

Firdose Moonda at Newlands06-Jan-2011The luckless bowler
When Lonwabo Tsotsobe bowls, the fielder’s fingers evidently start sweating butter. Today, he had another catch put down off his bowling in his very first over. Tsotsobe invited Sehwag to cut with a short, wide, ball and the Indian opener obliged. JP Duminy, standing at point, had to lunge to his left to grab what was admittedly a tough chance. Even though Duminy went with both hands, Tsotsobe was still out of luck, and the chance was spurned. It took Tsotsobe’s match tally of dropped catches to four, and his series tally to many more.The pain
The parade of the walking wounded continued when Gautam Gambhir came out to open the batting despite an injury to his elbow. He must have expected to experience some discomfort but probably didn’t think the hurt would come with the first ball he faced from the world’s springiest bowler. Morne Morkel was always going to be a threat because of the variable bounce on offer, and he showed that when the first ball he bowled bounced so sharply that as Gambhir tried to take his bat out of the way, it hit his elbow. The sore elbow. The ball flew over the slip cordon and gave Gambhir his first boundary, together with some treatment from the physiotherapist.The offspinner
South Africa needed a right-arm offspinner to make use of the patch of rough that Harbhajan Singh exploited to such good effect on day four, and Graeme Smith decided he was the man for the job. His first three overs were fairly tight, going for just 14 runs but when he returned for a second spell, it all went a little pear shaped. Three lollipop deliveries were dispatched to the boundary, the first two by Rahul Dravid and the third by Gautam Gambhir, and Smith suddenly had figures of 4-0-27-0. He then went back to fielding.The effort
Getting Gautam Gambhir out seemed to fire up Dale Steyn considerably and he even though he his next delivery wasn’t particularly quick, there was a lot of spark in it. A vicious bouncer that was aimed at VVS Laxman head sailed over the batsman and Mark Boucher to race away for four.The last hope
With the match clearly petering out to a draw, the captains could have shook hands on a draw with 15 overs left in the day. Instead, South Africa continued in the field and waited for the opportunity to take the second new ball. With ten overs to go, it was optimistic to think that seven wickets would succumb to the new ball. After just one over from Dale Steyn and one from Morne Morkel, enough was finally enough and the series was drawn.

Plays of the Day from the Group A match between Canada and Zimbabwe in Nagpur

Nagraj Gollapudi in Nagpur28-Feb-2011Colour of the day
Red. And no, it wasn’t the film in the Krzysztof Kieślowski trilogy. It was the colour that jarred the eye in Nagpur, with both Zimbabwe and Canada wearing similar hues of blood red. Such was the stark similarity in the colours that it felt as though only one team was playing. With Pakistan and Kenya also sporting a similar green, would it not be better for cricket to adopt the same approach as soccer, where a team has the option of first-choice and alternative colour to avoid any clashes?The glaring miss
Tatenda Taibu tried a pre-meditated sweep against a full toss from Balaji Rao. The bottom edge bounced off his pads into no-man’s land on the leg side, but the Canadians appealed for lbw and Asad Rauf readily raised his finger. Taibu instantly asked for the review and immediately, and correctly, got the decision reversed. The angle was straight, the ground was empty, it was close to noon and bright, but Rauf did not see or hear the edge. Thankfully, technology came to Taibu’s rescue and did not create a debate like the one that angered India captain MS Dhoni on Saturday evening.The winning hand
Ray Price pitched the ball on a length around off stump and Nitish Kumar, the youngest player in the tournament making his World Cup debut, hit an airy drive that seemed going towards mid-off. Price, who usually bowls from wide of the crease, was on his follow-through and just skipped a couple of yards further to his left to take a beauty with his outstretched left hand.The Raspberry
John Davison, Canada’s most experienced player. Canada expected a lot from him today but he was all smoke and no fire. Leave aside his bowling figures (7-0-56-0), more disillusioning was his choice of shot against Price. Price was bowling his first over, the second over of the innings. To the third ball he faced, Davison stepped out and attempted a wristy flick over midwicket. Unfortunately for him, Price, having read the batsman’s mind early, had given loop and Davison was beaten and bowled.

England’s performance bore no resemblance to the fatigued 10-wicket loss in the World Cup quarter-final three months ago

Andrew McGlashan at The Oval28-Jun-2011The thunderstorm which held up play for three hours at The Oval wouldn’t have looked out of place in Colombo, but England’s performance bore no resemblance to the fatigued 10-wicket loss in the World Cup quarter-final three months ago. It was vibrant, energetic, confident and aggressive. Yet this isn’t actually a new era of one-day cricket for England because there are a few too many familiar faces on show for that to be true.Even though only five of this side played in Colombo in March, there haven’t been wholesale changes by the selectors. James Anderson, reigniting his one-day career with 4 for 18 which were his best figures since November 2009 against South Africa, and Jade Dernbach were both in the squad, while Stuart Broad and Kevin Pietersen would have played except for injury. Really, the only significant changes have been at the top of the order with Craig Kieswetter back and Alastair Cook as the new captain along with Samit Patel’s recall. He was tellingly pushed aside by Tim Bresnan who had been back in squad for a single day.Adding further weight to the theory that, rather than this being a new-look team, it’s more the older version with a bit of touching-up was the performance of Anderson. It’s a well-known story that, moments after England secured the Ashes in Sydney back in January, he curled up in the dressing room and fell into a deep sleep. Despite a three-week break at home he was never the same during the rest of the winter and cut a forlorn figure in the closing days of the World Cup. Although his Test place was never in danger there was talk that it may have brought down the curtain on his one-day career.He couldn’t have asked for a better haul of wickets as he removed Sri Lanka’s senior trio, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara. They were ideal conditions for Anderson with a heavy atmosphere conducive to swing but he made them count. “For two days it was lovely sunshine, then today it rained again,” Dilshan said wryly. “It was helpful for the bowlers.””It was a frustrating winter in the one-day form for the team and me personally,” Anderson admitted. “I felt like I didn’t perform to the standards I set myself. I was very disappointed and just glad to keep my place in the squad and get a place in the XI. Happily the wickets came for me but I thought we bowled brilliantly as a unit. Whatever it was during the winter I put it behind me at start of the season with Lancashire and then in the Test series. I’ve worked really hard, there are a lot of improvements I have to make on my one-day game and I’ve started on those things.”Anderson, though, didn’t quite get everything he wished for. “He fully deserves his four wickets and was begging me for one more over to get his fifth,” Cook said. “It was an outstanding performance up front but especially from Jimmy. To get their dangermen out early got us well ahead of the game.”Cook’s satisfaction will come from the victory rather than his personal achievement. All that can be said about his 5 off three balls was that strike-rate wasn’t an issue. Being caught down the leg side – even though bowlers will disagree – was unlucky. “That’s the game, I shouldn’t have edged it so fine,” he said.However, Cook will be very keen for this series not to be dominated by whether he makes runs or not, and for that to be the case he needs England to win. “It doesn’t get much better than that, to win by such a big margin in a shorter game like that was a fantastic effort from the lads,” he said. “But let’s not get too carried with how the team did or how I did. It’s just a good start. We’ve got to keep our feet on the floor.”There was a hint of irony that at 32-overs per side the contest was actually closer to the Twenty20 version that England made such a hash of on Saturday (there were even six Powerplay overs left) than the full one-day international they were due to play. When play resumed at 5pm after the thunderstorms England were left with 25 overs to build a total and the way they did it was far more encouraging than what was on display in Bristol.A pitch with more pace enabled Kieswetter to hit through the line, Pietersen was sparky before pulling a long hop to midwicket and Eoin Morgan added the gloss as he so often does. Then, just as it appeared another England one-day innings would fizzle out, the fit-again Bresnan hit 23 off 14 balls as 210 turned into 230.In his second coming as an international cricketer Kieswetter has promised a tighter technique and more selectiveness, but without losing any of the natural flair that attracted the selectors. An innings of 61 off 56 balls suggests he has found a good balance.”He can hit the ball really hard and showed it here, that’s why he’s in the side and it’s great for him to get back to scoring runs straight away,” Cook said. “He’s worked really hard, let’s not get carried away with one innings but good things come when you put the hours in. That’s why you do it.”That praise of Kieswetter was the second time Cook mentioned not getting carried away. He isn’t the first England one-day captain to start, or resume, the job with victory. Paul Collingwood did it in 2007, Kevin Pietersen in 2008 and Andrew Strauss in 2009. None of those reigns ended happily. Cook knows he will have his fair share of tough days in the job and far tougher questions to answer.

By turning to other sports for inspiration and ideas, the board may be diluting cricket rather than enriching it. Why not get help from other cricketing nations?

Daniel Brettig04-Apr-2011As Michael Clarke marked his first day after his appointment as Australian Test captain with an appeal to reapply cricket’s fundamentals, his board’s national talent manager, Greg Chappell, and a quartet of minions were returning home from a trip to Boston and Texas to watch baseball and American football.This unfortunately timed mission was not billed as a holiday or an exercise in wish fulfillment. Instead it was trumpeted by Cricket Australia as a “reconnaissance exercise” designed to “explore best practice being used by two world-leading organisations, covering areas such as recruitment strategies, list management, player preparation, opposition analysis and team culture”. The exhaustive-sounding brief seemed to address areas that must be fine-tuned by administrators if they wish to hurry on the next generation, and at a time when cricket is bleeding talent to football, Australian Rules and general apathy at an alarming rate.Yet the fact that five senior officials would find the time to disappear to the United States before the season had actually ended said rather too much about the thinking of an organisation that still believes it does cricket coaching and management better than anywhere else in the world. It is a notion that has persisted despite a pronounced slide down the rankings at international level, and a noticeable drop in the standards of domestic cricket.Internal appointments are common – national coach Tim Nielsen, talent manager Chappell and new Centre of Excellence coach Troy Cooley have played their own version of musical chairs with management positions in recent years – and it would not surprise to see another promotion from within the ranks to replace Cooley as Australia’s pace bowling coach.Whoever is chosen, they are likely to be taken in by fashionable thinking about the value of other sports as a source of knowledge and ideas for the greater development of cricket. The American trip is of a kind commonly made by many sporting coaches in the early 21st century, as AFL mentors venture to London for primers on the ways of the English Premier League and rugby league bosses check in with the NFL for tips on kicking and injury treatment. A culture of cross pollination extends to the poaching of staff from one sport to another – fitness manager Darren Burgess jumped from Port Adelaide to Liverpool FC via the Socceroos.While this all sounds quite enlightened, it is arguable cricket in Australia is being diluted, rather than enriched, by ideas from outside the game. Clarke certainly would appear to think so, having this to say when asked on a national current affairs program what needed fixing in the Australian team: “To start, it’s about me being able to do things my way. The advantage is, after these three one-dayers in Bangladesh we have a couple of months at home where we can, as a group, Cricket Australia, selectors, board members, Shane Watson and myself, sit down and make a plan to build to the future. But the things that come to mind straight away are, I love the Australian cricket team playing that entertaining brand of cricket. I think it’s really important that we go back to some of the old-fashioned style basics of cricket, where we get better at our basic batting, bowling and fielding, which is going to mean doing more of it at training. These days in cricket there’s a lot of technology, there’s a lot of sports science, which I think is a big part of our game, but I think with a young group we need to get better at the basics.”

“I love the Australian cricket team playing that entertaining brand of cricket. I think it’s really important that we go back to some of the old-fashioned style basics of cricket, where we get better at our basic batting, bowling and fielding”Michael’s Clarke’s view of the way forward for Australia

Twenty20’s emergence is the highest-profile departure from said basics, but there are others ranging from the variance of opinions on how to manage the bodies of young fast bowlers to the fact that three of Cricket Australia’s highest office bearers – chief executive James Sutherland, head of cricket operations Michael Brown and head of marketing Mike McKenna – each cut their administrative teeth, with decidedly mixed results, in the AFL. Sutherland, Brown and McKenna are all commonly heard to spout the buzzwords about “world’s best practice”, “the pathway” and “development”, while advocating a wide search across all sports for the best of everything. Their apparently high-minded intentions, however, are clearly being lost when it comes to the results of the Australian team, and this is where pride in the country’s coaching system has become dangerous.Help is more readily sought from other sports than it is from other nations playing the same game. The only foreign-born mentor with the Australian team is the fielding coach, Mike Young, who has parlayed his long and decorated baseball career into a lengthy cricket tenure. But there is nary an Englishman, Pakistani, Indian, Sri Lankan or Kiwi in sight. Often an Australian coach will try his luck overseas if opportunity is scarce at home, a path trodden by Cooley and more recently David Saker with England. But there are precious few to have been welcomed in Australia from overseas backgrounds in coaching or development – brief stints with New South Wales for Waqar Younis and Graham Thorpe aside. The appointment of former South African coach Mickey Arthur to manage Western Australia was a welcome deviation from the trend.Much can be learned from the ways of other nations, particularly those who bore the brunt of Australia’s dominance between 1995 and 2008. Given their inability to tie down the hyperactive genius of Shane Warne for any protracted period, Cricket Australia’s eyes had to be cast across the seas for a quality spin bowling coach. Bishan Bedi and Saqlain Mushtaq worked wonders for Jason Krejza and Nathan Hauritz at various times, but their roles were confined to those of one-off consultants. On his last visit to India, Hauritz bemoaned his inability to see Erapalli Prasanna. At the same time Mushtaq Ahmed was helping Graeme Swann maintain the form of his breakout summer, something Hauritz was unable to do while taking advice from Ricky Ponting and the Centre of Excellence spin coach John Davison. An attempt to attract Muttiah Muralitharan to Brisbane for this year’s intake was unsuccessful, but would it have been different with the offer of longer-term employment?Spin bowling is just one of many disciplines unique to cricket, and all the research trips in the world to the Boston Red Sox will not improve Australia’s increasingly tenuous understanding of its subtleties.