All posts by n8rngtd.top

Head coach Jon Lewis talks about Sophie Ecclestone, Nat Sciver-Brunt, Charlie Dean, Sophia Dunkley and more

Sruthi Ravindranath16-Dec-2023Some of the best bowlers in the world – specifically spinners – not only stick to their strengths but are also constantly upgrading their skillsets to stay relevant. Left-arm spinner Sophie Ecclestone, the top-ranked bowler in ODIs and T20Is is no different. As someone who bowls a lot quicker than most spinners, she has been working on dropping her pace, England Women’s head coach Jon Lewis has revealed.Since her debut in 2016, Ecclestone has been on top of the wicket-takers list in T20Is and is the second-best spinner in the list in ODIs. She capped off an incredible year in T20Is as the top wicket-taker among players from Full Member teams in 2023.She’s also worked on bowling against left-handers, her much-improved average of 10.80 since 2022 as compared to 31.50 until 2021 in T20Is a testament to it. In the one-off Test against India, she got the opposition’s two left-handers out in back-to-back overs, first having Smriti Mandhana caught at short leg with a short ball turning in from outside off and then getting a length ball to turn in sharply to make Yastika Bhatia chip it to short leg again.Related

• Bell on Ecclestone's rare off day: 'It puts pressure on us, but she will bounce back'

• Sciver-Brunt shows how England can tackle India's spinners

• The Deepti Sharma show wipes England out in seven sessions

“I know that over the last couple of years she’s worked incredibly hard at bowling at left-handers,” Lewis told ESPNcricinfo. “She can bowl faster than most girls and spin the ball at a higher pace than most girls. So that’s one of the unique things she does better than other people.”We’ve talked a lot to her about how to use her drop-down in pace rather than change up in pace. So those are probably the two things that we’ve worked on with Sophie. She’s worked out some really good stuff about bowling to left-handers. She understands what makes her a good bowler to left-handers and I thought during the summer in the [Women’s] Ashes series she bowled very well to Beth Mooney and also to Jess Jonassen.”While match figures of five wickets for 167 runs in a thumping 347-run defeat at the hands of India might suggest that the work is still in progress, her seven wickets at an average of 10.14 and economy rate of 6.26 made her the leading wicket-taker in the three-match T20I series preceding the Test and included 3 for 15 in her first match back after a three-month injury layoff.Her accuracy, pace, subtle changes of trajectory and seam positions have troubled batters for years, but she keeps working.Sophie Ecclestone picked up wickets of three Indian left-handed batters in the one-off Test•BCCI”Sophie doesn’t really enjoy training much – she loves playing games. She loves going out on the pitch and competing, so we have to try and find ways to stimulate her in training. She’s worked for a long time with Gareth Breese, her spin bowling coach. They have a really strong relationship.”England have also been boosted by the presence of offspinner Charlie Dean, who has risen quickly through the ranks since her debut in 2022 to become one of their go-to wicket-taking options.England captain Heather Knight also trusts her with the new ball. A consistent performer, Dean reaps the benefits of bowling classic offspin and also relies on drift and attacking lines. She was instrumental in bowling India out for 80 in the second T20I and provided a much-needed highlight for England during India’s second innings of the Test in Mumbai, claiming four crucial wickets as the hosts built a mammoth lead, her accuracy on display as she had Deepti Sharma lbw and Sneh Rana bowled off consecutive deliveries.Lewis praised Dean for her consistency, calling her the best “on the planet”, and wants her to continue sticking to her strengths.”We keep challenging her around the consistency of her best ball and bowling her best ball as often as possible,” Lewis said. “Her best ball is the best. There’s no offspinner that matches her on the planet. No one gets the drift she gets, no one gets the turn she gets. Her best ball is absolutely fantastic. She’s a young spinner and there are lots of young spinners that don’t bowl consistently.”One thing I would say is during the T20 series, in terms of her output and her numbers and where she was landing the ball, it’s gone through the roof in comparison to what she was through the summer and previously. We’ve got an excellent spin bowling coach in Gareth Breese, who works closely with those girls and helps them hone their skills. She’s going to be an excellent bowler.”Among one of the most prolific performers for England for a long period has been Nat Sciver-Brunt, who played an important role with the bat in helping England seal the T20I series in India and was their only batter to pass 21 in the Test with a first-innings 59.She’s England’s top run-getter in T20Is and ODIs this year, her best coming in the Ashes ODI series where she scored 271 runs at an average of 135.50 to go to No. 1 on the batting charts in the format.Jon Lewis on Charlie Dean: “No one gets the drift she gets, no one gets the turn she gets”•BCCIIn T20s this year, she has scored 1315 runs in 40 games at an average of 45.34, making the most runs for champions Mumbai Indians in the inaugural WPL. Lewis is “very fortunate” to have her in the England side, revealing how she plays a key role in the leadership group.”When she was playing for Mumbai [Indians, in WPL] I was a bit jealous,” said Lewis, who coaches UP Warriorz in the competition. “She’s a great cricketer. She’s incredibly calm and clear about what she wants to do and how she goes about her game.”She’s still learning and she still wants growth in her game. She wants to improve but the understanding she has of what she does when she plays well is the thing that stands out to me. And the other thing that she brings to our side is the way that she’s able to communicate with all our players on the field. She’s a real asset. She helps Heather [Knight, captain] a tremendous amount. She’s incredibly calm and communicates clearly, especially with our young players. They work as a team.”[Knight] and Nat and Amy Jones and Sophie Ecclestone work as a senior player group that takes responsibility to make sure the team is running well on the field and off the field. But Nat in particular is a good person who cares a lot about English cricket and playing cricket for England. She cares a lot about the team-mates around her and is a great support for all of them.”Team-mate Sophia Dunkley, however, has been going through a lean patch. She’s made just one half-century across formats since the beginning of the year for England, averaging just 17.00 in 11 T20Is. She took a break for the latter part of the home international summer and found some late form in the WBBL in November, but she couldn’t keep the momentum going in India. After scores of 1, 9 and 11 in the three T20Is respectively, she departed for 11 and 15 in the Test.But one of Lewis’s key takeaways from his time working in the England Men’s Test set-up early in the Brendon McCullum-Ben Stokes era was removing fear of failure and backing players.This was clear when England picked Dunkley to open alongside Tammy Beaumont in the Test after Emma Lamb, who opened in the Ashes Test in June, returned home from India with a back injury.Sophia Dunkley has had a tough run with the bat in 2023•BCCI”She is frustrated that she’s not getting the runs that she would like,” Lewis said of Dunkley. “She’s made some little technical changes to how she approaches her batting, which has given her access to different parts of the ground. If you saw her wagon wheel for a couple of games in the Big Bash, she accessed areas of the ground that she hasn’t previously been able to do.”The difficulty for these girls is they’re trying to bring all these changes into their games whilst playing international cricket and being the player that everyone looks to in their franchise to score the runs. It’s very different to men’s cricket where other people are brought in to give [regular] players a break.”I’ve got a real strong belief around Sophia’s talent, she’s got an amazing ability to strike a cricket ball. She’s talismanic in the way she approaches the start of the game. It wasn’t long ago that she had a pretty good World Cup and was really good against West Indies [in 2022].”You mustn’t get lost in the fact that she hasn’t scored runs for a short period of time. If you compared her to some of our older players at the same age, I think she’d be well ahead of the curve. We’re building a team for the future, and we’re building a team that has a style of play we’re confident can help us win games. Right now, Sophia is a big part of that.”England suffered a shock 2-1 loss to Sri Lanka at home which exposed their weaknesses against slower bowlers. With the T20 World Cup set to be played in Bangladesh next year and the ODI World Cup in 2025 in India to follow, Lewis organised a camp with select players in Mumbai following the series to help them improve their game against spin.”[It was] just to expose them to different conditions, what shots they can play and how they need to adapt their game in different conditions,” he said. “We’ve got two subcontinental World Cups coming up in the next two years. It’s important to understand the conditions and how to play them smartly.”What does aggression or high strike-rate look like in India compared to what it would look like in the UK? Or what would that look like in Bangladesh? We are a developing side and all we were try and develop some skills.”The girls took lots of takeaways from it. Do I expect those things to become straight into their game after a five-day camp? Absolutely not. But do I expect them to think about how to improve, one hundred percent I do.”

Thakor’s two-wicket burst and Deepti’s all-round game proved to be the difference between the two sides on the day

Firdose Moonda08-Mar-2024If looks were deliveries, Saima Thakor would have had a wicket with her eighth ball. It was on the back of a length; Shafali Verma came down the track to try and smash it away but was too hasty and ended up pushing it straight back to the bowler. Thakor collected, mock threw at the stumps and gave Shafali a stare-down that said, “I’ve got it in for you.”And she did. Two balls later, Shafali tried to advance on Thakor again, the ball kept low and snuck past the bat to find offstump. Shafali looked up at Thakor in disappointment and was met with the same stare, only more triumphant. As Thakor gave Shafali a small send-off (and Shafali responded with some words of her own), the contest between these two teams, which on form and history is a no-contest in favour of Delhi Capitals, ignited.It was Meg Lanning who tried to put it out. She took three boundaries off Thakor’s next over to make it clear who was in charge of this game, and Capitals did not need to look back until Deepti Sharma forced them to.Related

• Shabnam is young, quick, takes big wickets, and is just a bit different

• Deepti's hat-trick and half-century give Warriorz thrilling win

It wasn’t just that Lanning struck four after four; it was the ease with which she did it. The first was a tickle fine off a shorter ball, the second was a silken cover drive off a fuller delivery and the last was a vicious cut through backward point. The message to Thakor was clear: you can’t bowl too short, too full or too wide, you can’t miss your length or your lines, not even a tiny bit, or you will be punished.Still, Capitals were behind after the powerplay – 35 for 1 compared to UP Warriorz’s 44 for 1 – but Lanning was there. Gouher Sultana, Deepti and Rajeshwari Gayakwad all erred by going too short and Lanning dispatched them all. By the halfway stage, Capitals had caught up to where Warriorz were and had the advantage of wickets in hand. They were 63 for 1, with only Lanning’s opening partner dismissed; Warriorz were 63 for 3 with all of Kiran Navgire, Alyssa Healy and Tahlia McGrath out.Crucially they still had Deepti at the crease and the move to promote her to No.3 could prove a masterstroke. Deepti has only batted at No.3 four times before in her 160-match T20 career and only once in the last six years. With Vrinda Dinesh injured and Chamari Athapaththu out of the XI, she got the opportunity to play in that position today and showed she can pace an innings from that position. She took Warriorz to a competitive total with a second successive fifty and though it remains to be seen how they will manage her if they choose to bring Athapaththu back, they would have seen the value of having a player like her there. In this match, it brought the kind of stability Warriorz have envied a team like Capitals for having, and they even had glimpses of it today.Thanks to Lanning the chase was set up and she seemed set to get them there and rack up some accolades along the way. When she raised her bat to fifty, Lanning became the first batter in WPL’s short history to hit three successive half-centuries and two of them have come in winning causes.Meg Lanning’s 60 was in vain for Delhi Capitals•BCCIIn the last week, Lanning struck 55 off 41 when Capitals scored 163 for 8 and then 53 off 38 when they posted 192 for 4 against Mumbai Indians. Capitals defended both totals. Then, in the first time they’ve been asked to chase in Delhi, she finished with 60 off 46 on Friday. It’s an impressive run which speaks to what she said earlier about the pleasures of being freed from the expectation of the international game. If runs were words, her performances are doing the talking. But they’re not the only ones she has.In the immediate aftermath of the game, Lanning admitted to the host broadcaster that she was “frustrated,” that the innings that took her to the top of the batting charts did not come in a winning cause and took the responsibility of the defeat on her shoulders. “My wicket played a part in it,” she said. “I was the set batter and I put pressure on the other batters coming in.”She may have been unnecessarily harsh on herself because players of the quality and International experience of Jemimah Rodrigues and Annabel Sutherland are also used to handling tense situations. In the end, it came down to who could hold their nerve and it was Thakor who did.She was brought back to bowl the 18th over, took pace off to Rodrigues and denied her the ability to generate any power. Rodrigues hit the ball to Sophie Ecclestone at long-off and a team that has dropped 13 catches through the tournament so far, held their breath. Ecclestone held on.That wicket opened Capitals up and even though it was Deepti’s hat-trick and eventual four-for and Grace Harris’ defence of nine runs off the last over that won the game, Harris herself paid tribute to the work Thakor did, in her opening spell and later on. “It was Saima, really – when she got up and about against Shafali,” Harris said to the broadcasters when asked what she thought the difference between the two sides was. “She bowled exceptionally well today and kept the stumps in play. It was just us jumping on the back of that energy.”

The pick of the stats from an enthralling second Test between England and West Indies at Trent Bridge

Sampath Bandarupalli21-Jul-20241 England registered their first-ever instance of 400-plus totals in both innings of a Test match with 416 and 425 at Trent Bridge. There had been 11 previous instances of a team posting 400-plus totals in both innings of a Test match, with India’s effort against England in Rajkot in February this year being the recent most.2 Number of Test totals by West Indies, higher than their 457 on the losing side. West Indies made 526 for 7 against England in 1968 at Port of Spain, which they lost by seven wickets following an aggressive second-innings declaration. They were bowled out for 463 against India in Kolkata in 2011 while following on with a first-innings deficit of 478 runs.1441 Runs aggregated by England and West Indies at Trent Bridge are the third-most for a Test match since 1980, where all 40 wickets fell. The 2015 Lord’s Test between England and New Zealand saw 1610 runs, while there were 1553 made between England and Pakistan in the 2006 Leeds Test.10 Number of Test matches with three 400-plus totals, including the Trent Bridge Test. The last of the previous nine was the 2009 Ahmedabad Test between India and Sri Lanka.20y 279d Shoaib Bashir’s age coming into the second Test. He is now the youngest England man to bag a five-wicket haul in a home Test. James Anderson, who retired last week, was the previous youngest, at 20 years and 296 days old, going into his Test debut in 2003 against Zimbabwe, where he took a five-fer in the first innings.3 Number of five-plus wicket hauls for Bashir in the five Test matches he played, all at the age of 20. There have been only three Test five-fers in total by other England players under the age of 21 – one each by Bill Voce, Anderson and Rehan Ahmed.2013 The last instance of West Indies getting bowled in a session before Sunday was against New Zealand in December 2013. West Indies were bowled out for 103 in 31.5 overs in the post-tea session on the third day in Hamilton.In contrast, the 457 all-out in the first innings by the West Indies was their first 450-plus total in Tests since September 2014.241 West Indies’ losing margin at Trent Bridge is the second-highest in terms of runs despite a 400-plus total in the match. India lost to England by 247 runs in 1990 at Lord’s despite a 454-run first-innings total.There have also been 16 instances of a team losing by an innings margin despite a 400-plus total in the match.

England’s greatest batter picks off more landmarks in his march towards the summit

Vithushan Ehantharajah29-Aug-2024Joe Root had never spent more than five balls stuck on 99. But as he inside-edged over his stumps, wore one on the front pad and found fielders instead of gaps, a palpable anxiety swelled around Lord’s.The crowd “ooohed” and “aaahed” through 12 balls of stasis. Some were for the sake of it, others genuinely fearful this could be an insurmountable bump in what had been an otherwise smooth road. It had the feel of a pantomime, all told. But with typical impish nonchalance, Root showed the only thing behind him was the deep-third boundary, which he found with a neat dab through a thinly stretched cordon for his 33rd Test century.If your tally of hundreds equals your age, you’re not just doing something right, you’re doing something great. Considering Root had just 17 when he turned 30 on December 30, 2020, it has been quite the run of form. Not since Michael Caine became a staple of Christopher Nolan’s work has someone looked so at ease embarking on a blockbuster run in the latter part of their career.As with all of Root’s centuries, the ensuing celebration offered context. There’s always a clenched fist involved, but his other antics tend to reflect the circumstances in which he’s just delivered. When that fist is extra tight – pumped at first, then swung overhand and back to himself once more – you can tell he’s just produced a slump-busting knock. When he’s turned the tide of a contest with one of his worldies, there’s often a skip involved. And then there’s the more subdued pump before raising his helmet and bat to the balcony with barely a smile across his face. That’s when you know there’s more business to tend to.This time, it was different. A single hand in the air as he ran towards the Pavilion as those two overs’ worth of tension were broken with some serene timing and a hint of “what you worried about?” It looked like he was playing to the gantry. But Root was worried, too.ESPNcricinfo Ltd”I was a little bit twitchy,” he admitted at stumps. “You can’t not hear the crowd. It was there, definitely… but there is an element of relief once you cross the line and you can concentrate on what’s important.”What was important was giving England their strongest position, which was going to take a bit of work given how things had begun. The top three’s donation of their wickets to Sri Lanka was unnecessary. Dhananjaya de Silva neither looked up at the blue skies nor down at the freshly shaved pitch when he decided to bowl first. It looked a peculiar choice, before Dan Lawrence, Ollie Pope and Ben Duckett gifted him varying degrees of vindication, all of which Root steadily had to reclaim.He did not think much of being out there in the 10th over at 42 for 2. Or rather, he saw it as no extra burden or a situation requiring a hero. He never does. Throughout his career, his work has come with a sense of civilian duty.But, of course, it’s different with him. Just as Clark Kent can do all the things Superman does without having to ditch his spectacles, Root can hit world-class levels without shedding his everyman disposition. It felt prescient that even as Duckett, Harry Brook and Jamie Smith showed their qualities alongside Root in stands of 40, 48 and 62, respectively, the newer kids on the block were left to admire the master in their midst scale peaks they will probably never reach. Peaks Root did not even consider possible when he started out back in 2012.”I just remember walking out in my first Test thinking ‘if this is my one and only opportunity to play for England, I’d be extremely proud’,” Root said. “It’s nice to be sat here having achieved what I’ve achieved, but I feel like there’s still quite a lot more to do. At some point I’m sure I’ll look back on it all and try to take it all in, but there’s more to come hopefully.”That Root equalled Alastair Cook’s tally of 33 centuries and jumped ahead of his former captain’s volume of runs in England felt particularly valuable on this occasion. Thursday’s near-full house did not seem to know what to expect and buzzed accordingly, almost indifferent to what was unfolding in front of them until Root offered them this latest slice of history.Root kept his innings simple as England shipped wickets in the first half of the day•Getty ImagesSri Lanka’s valiant performance in the first Test, while welcome, felt like their ceiling. This place usually hums with idle conversation, but those seemed a little louder and more distracted once the early tuts had subsided. It was the breaking for the odd “Roooooooooot” to mark his 18 boundaries that kept them involved.Root did not just provide comfort for the dressing-room and those at the other end – Gus Atkinson being the latest example with a maiden Test fifty that could morph into something greater on day two – but he served the masses his usual brand of entertainment, which is bankable at this ground. His name will now feature on the honours board for a sixth time.Root’s longevity is reflected in the fact that since that first cap at Nagpur in December 2012, he has played 145 Tests – more than anyone else, and 30 more than Stuart Broad in second. Of course, England do play the format more than anyone else – to a fault, really – but it is as much a measure of his mental and physical robustness as his talent.The three runs from Atkinson’s tuck down to fine leg that took England to 301 was down to Root’s willingness to sprint in the 75th over. And his dismissal was, ultimately, down to his desire to shift up a gear before the close. The only shame was that Root’s demise came through the infamous ramp shot.Milan Rathnayake was there to been taken advantage of, particularly with the shorter hit over the shoulder, down towards the Allen Stand. The stickers met the ball rather than the middle, with Pathum Nissanka taking a straightforward catch at point.The new ball was 2.3 overs away. Sri Lanka were weary. What were you thinking, Joe?”Look, I’ve got out to it a few times and I know you look a bit silly but it brings a lot of runs. We were in a period of the game where they’ve got three seamers. If you can put one of them under a huge amount of pressure going into that second new ball, it makes life very difficult for the last hour.Related

• Sri Lanka's tail shouts into the void as top-order failings invite humiliation

• Gus Atkinson stays grounded as maiden century shows head for batting heights

• Kamindu fights for Sri Lanka but England seize control after Atkinson hundred

• Dhananjaya wants county exposure for SL batters

• Root 143 repels Sri Lanka before Atkinson 74* turns screw

“I tried to look at things as an opportunity, not as a threat, and if it goes for four or six then it’s on for the last hour to cash in.”Thankfully, Atkinson and Matthew Potts did just that. Their unbroken stand of 50 has England coming back on Friday on 358 for 7, still on course for a bumper first-innings total.No doubt there will be plenty bemoaning the shot, a week after he sconed himself in the helmet with a similar effort in Manchester. But he does seem at peace with the failures. “Sometimes you get a good one and you have to take it on the chin!” he joked at first when addressing the dismissal.More pertinently, Root is on the cusp of becoming the standout batter in English history, and he has his sights set on more. “It’s nice to be sat here having achieved what I’ve achieved but I feel like there’s still quite a lot more to do.”Discourse never dies, but brilliance endures. And Root wants to endure.

Brendon McCullum hoped to lift his spirits but it seems Jos Buttler could not stir himself for another voyage of discovery

Andrew Miller28-Feb-20251:35

Buttler: ‘Right time for me and the team to have a change’

Ten long years ago, almost to the day, England’s cricketers suffered a humiliation greater even than their Champions Trophy exit at the hands of Afghanistan. It was meted out by none other than New Zealand’s then-captain, now England coach, Brendon McCullum, and it would soon prove to be the most consequential defeat in their white-ball history.The venue was Wellington, during the 2015 World Cup, where McCullum’s eviscerating 18-ball fifty rushed through the breach that Tim Southee, armed with Test-match slip cordons and a Kiwi crowd baying for blood, had blown with his career-best 7 for 33. England’s eight-wicket loss was completed with a stunning 326 balls of the entire match left unused – more than a single 50-over innings.Though we did not know it at the time, that was the beginning of England’s Bazball journey. Legend has it how, by degrees, the fates of England and McCullum would entwine and interlock: first, through his close personal friendship with his counterpart Eoin Morgan, who would adopt and adapt his mentor’s aggressive methods to glorious effect for the 2019 World Cup, and then, in 2022, with the relaunch of the Test team under McCullum and Ben Stokes – essentially a transfusion of that new unfettered attitude from white ball to red.Jos Buttler was not only an integral factor in the Morgan reboot, he had been a cause célèbre in the original 2015 meltdown. He made 3 from 7 balls from No. 7 in the Cake Tin crushing, having once again come to the crease below the likes of Ian Bell, Gary Ballance and James Taylor, tasked with an outdated “finisher” role in an innings that, at 104 for 5 in the 27th over, was already as good as over.Related

• Why Brook captaincy call could define Key and McCullum legacies

• Zadran goes from staid to spectacular to finish England off

• Buttler on captaincy future: 'You've got to consider all possibilities'

• All-but-through SA hope to pile more misery on out-of-contention England

• Decline and fall: England face up to scale of ODI rebuilding job

As if to demonstrate the madness of this misallocation, Buttler’s solitary hundred up to that point had come from a near-identical starting point: 111 for 5 in the 29th over against Sri Lanka at Lord’s the previous summer, whereupon he blazed an astonishing 121 from 74 balls but still ended up on the losing side. The path to redemption was plain to see. More power up top, more faith throughout, and a more central role for the best white-ball batter of his generation. In June 2015, in the opening game of the team’s new era, Buttler himself made 129 from 77 balls (against New Zealand, inevitably) to lift England to their first 400-plus total, and it was as if a prophecy had been fulfilled.And yet, throughout this decade of close alignment – and despite McCullum himself speaking warmly of their friendship on the day he came full circle as England’s white-ball coach – Buttler had never before felt the direct effects of that legendary dressing-room influence. Until, that is, this brief and gruesome alliance that has spanned barely six weeks. Nine defeats in ten matches would have been thin gruel in any context. Add to the mix another global-trophy disaster, and the captain’s position was untenable. It’s little wonder that McCullum’s overriding emotion, as he sat with his captain at his resignation press conference, was “sadness” that their partnership had never stood a chance.In part, Buttler has been a victim of circumstance, as McCullum also implied. All things being equal, he would have been a glorious addition to the core of generational greats – Stokes, Joe Root, James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Jonny Bairstow – without whom the original Bazball project could never have got off the ground. Instead, he remained at arm’s length from their capers, charged instead with the solemn duty of upholding the white-ball team’s standards, following Morgan’s sudden retirement in June 2022.Jos Buttler and Brendon McCullum were only briefly in harness with the white-ball teams•Matthew Lewis-ICC/ICC via Getty ImagesLest it be forgotten amid the navel-gazing, Buttler did achieve that aim magnificently at the first time of asking. And yet, even as he piloted England to the T20 World Cup in 2022, there were doubts as to whether he had placed his own stamp on the team that Morgan rebuilt, or simply pressed the right buttons and got the requisite response from men that he had already gone the journey with: Stokes and Adil Rashid chief among them.These doubts were redoubled in 2023, when England’s bid to get the 2019 band back together came such a spectacular cropper at the 50-over World Cup in India. And since then, even though McCullum’s arrival as all-formats head coach implies a renewed focus on white-ball cricket, this winter’s Ashes is surely the more pressing reason for the realignment. Irrespective of the setbacks in the short term, the consistency of messaging to the likes of Harry Brook, Jamie Smith and Ben Duckett, not to mention England’s cohort of hard-worked fast bowlers, could yet be crucial in a legacy-defining campaign.Where then, did Buttler sit within all that? All under-pressure captains must surely ask themselves the question that he articulated on Wednesday night: “Am I part of the problem, or part of the solution?”. But whereas Morgan in 2015 would have looked first in the mirror, and then at an underutilised generation of hungry young thrusters – Buttler, Stokes, Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow among them – and realised that all they needed was a chance, England’s situation right now merits a significantly more pessimistic outlook.

“There have been few players of Buttler’s generation whose performances have seemed so dependent on his mood. His famous bat-handle message has long been a prop to remind him to snap out of it, but his innate pessimism was even in evidence in the Afghanistan defeat”

By the time of his ODI debut in February 2012, Buttler was already a star of the county one-day scene, having amassed 854 runs at 71.17 in his first two seasons with Somerset, including two Lord’s finals. In an early example of the ECB’s fretting about attention spans, the format back then was 40-overs not 50, and yet, as Matt Roller and Tim Wigmore noted in White Hot, their book about England’s white-ball renaissance, this had the unexpected benefit of drawing out the players’ aggressive tendencies, but not at the expense of technique and endurance.By contrast, the advent of the Hundred has taken all such long-haul considerations out of the picture, and with it the very best players. Brook, Buttler’s heir apparent, had not played a single List A game since May 2019 until his ODI debut against South Africa in 2023, and while Smith averaged 63.00 in Surrey’s run to the One-Day Cup semi-final in 2021, his elevation to Hundred marquee status means he may never again feature in a competition that ticks over as a county development project in those overshadowed summer weeks.It’s hard, then, to blame Buttler if he has struggled to greet the advent of “white-ball Bazball” with anything like the same enthusiasm and optimism that Stokes dredged up for the red-ball project. There’s next to no reason for a player who has achieved as much as he has, and with such a stellar cast alongside him, to believe that the best really is yet to come. Of his 2019 team-mates, only Rashid is performing at anything like the requisite level, and he is already 37. Buttler himself has made three fifties in 15 innings across formats since November, having missed five months with a calf injury.What’s more, if the Bazball philosophy is, at its heart, a confidence trick – a mindset with which to park the consequences of your actions and just go out and have a go – then Buttler was always an awkward frontman for such a project. For all of his mighty deeds, there have been few players of his generation whose performances have seemed so dependent on his mood. His famous bat-handle message has long been a prop to remind him to snap out of it, but his innate pessimism was even in evidence in the Afghanistan defeat, when he scratched along to 12 from 24 balls before finally nailing a six that briefly snapped him back into the zone.But it also, perhaps, casts a new light on McCullum’s determination, at his unveiling at The Oval last September, to cheer up his “miserable” captain. It seemed a flippant comment at the time, but it was perhaps a more desperate plea than anyone realised. As indeed, was McCullum’s suggestion on Friday that this might prove as serendipitous as Root’s Test captaincy resignation.Neat though the parallels may be, if Buttler, of all people, could not be persuaded to suspend his disbelief at the outset of this alliance, then who realistically could fill such a void? Ten years on from that tide-turning loss, this time England’s standards may simply have sunk along with their skipper.

The Bangladesh allrounder is just the fifth man in the world to claim this landmark

Namooh Shah24-Aug-2025Shakib Al Hasan added yet another feather to his illustrious career as he picked up his 500th T20 wicket. And he didn’t stop there.Shakib came into the game between his Antigua and Barbuda Falcons and St Kitts and Nevis Patriots in CPL 2025 one shy of the landmark.Introduced for the first time in the 15th over of the innings, he nearly reached the milestone on the third delivery when Jayden Seales took a lovely catch on the boundary only for it to be ruled as a six when replays revealed the fielder had stepped on the boundary cushion.Shakib created another chance in the same over and this time he made no mistake, completing a return catch to dismiss Mohammad Rizwan and become just the fifth bowler in T20 history to reach the 500-wicket mark. He struck a further two times in his next over to finish the match with 502 wickets.ESPNcricinfo LtdWith this achievement, Shakib joins an elite club of bowlers to have taken 500 wickets or more in T20 cricket – Rashid Khan (660), Dwayne Bravo (631), Sunil Narine (590) and Imran Tahir (554).But what sets Shakib apart from the rest is his exceptional all-round ability. He is now the only player in T20 history to have completed the double of 7000 runs and 500 wickets. The closest anyone has come to this incredible feat is Dwayne Bravo, who ended his career with 6970 runs and 631 wickets. Andre Russell who has scored 9361 runs is nearing the 500-wicket mark, currently at 487.Shakib’s legacy is further elevated by his nine Player of the Series awards in T20s, the most by any cricketer. He stands ahead of players like Virat Kohli (8) and Wanindu Hasaranga (7).Among spinners, no player has taken more five-wicket hauls in T20s than Shakib, who has achieved the feat five times. This puts him in joint-second place overall with Lasith Malinga, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Tahir and Shaheen Shah Afridi, who are all trailing David Wiese (7).One of Shakib’s most unforgettable spells came in the inaugural CPL season in 2013 when he ripped through Trinidad & Tobago Red Steel with astonishing figures of 6 for 6. He took another six-wicket haul playing for Prime Bank Cricket Club later in the year in the Victory Day T20 Cup that made him just the second bowler after Ajantha Mendis to claim multiple six-wicket hauls in T20 cricket. A similar feat was later on achieved by Arzan Nagwaswalla in 2023.!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,function(a){if(void 0!==a.data[“datawrapper-height”]){var e=document.querySelectorAll(“iframe”);for(var t in a.data[“datawrapper-height”])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data[“datawrapper-height”][t]+”px”;r.style.height=d}}})}();