The beauty about AB de Villiers is he forces a change in mindset, be it the opposition bowler, captain, his own teammate or even a spectator. He makes one realise that boundaries can be pushed just by making the effort

Nagraj Gollapudi in Pune22-Apr-20161:04

‘Kohli and AB are quality players’ – Rahane

There is an urgency that AB de Villiers brings to the crease. Restless energy, but always full of positivity – in this mood he can murder an opposition and uplift his teammates in case they are stuck in a rut.The South African was in one such mood today when he joined his captain Virat Kohli, with whom he had already shared one half-century and two century partnerships this IPL. It is easy to see intent on de Villiers’ face most times. He wants to score and score fast. He reads the field quickly and picks his areas, but most importantly de Villiers picks his moments.Ishant Sharma was bowling the final over of the powerplay. Having delivered a no ball off the second delivery, Ishant had recovered well by bowling an off stump yorker against Kohli that was guided into the off side for a single. On the next ball, de Villiers jumped out of his crease – even as Ishant bowled a short one into the body – to smash a pull over midwicket.He could have even stayed back and played the same shot, but de Villiers’s intent was to hurt the bowler mentally too. It also helped Kohli to make the bold move of charging Ishant on the final ball of the over with a slap to the third man boundary.Some observers feel de Villiers plays too many premeditated strokes, but the element of surprise is always wrapped up nicely. When Ankit Sharma tossed one on the off stump he might have thought de Villiers would push him to the cover for a single. Instead the South African quickly moved outside the line of the ball to unleash a powerful sweep for his first six.Even before he walked to the crease de Villiers had an advantage with his knowledge and success at the ground. In three previous matches in Pune, de Villiers has two half centuries: 50 not out against Pune Warriors in 2013 and 66 against Rajasthan Royals last year. So de Villiers was aware when he swept Ankit, he was trying to clear the shortest boundary in the ground.Stunning the bowler is something de Villiers gets excited about quietly. When M Ashwin came to bowl immediately after the halfway stage, the South African took on Ashwin’s first ball, picked his legbreak from the off stump and swept it over backward square deep into the stands. The expression on the legspinner’s face showed what a batsman like de Villiers can do leave a bowler blindsided.De Villiers was not yet done with the legspinner. As he was taking guard to face Ashwin in the 14th over, Dhoni moved Kevin Pietersen to square point. Ankit Sharma was at backward point, five yards to Pietersen’s right. Dhoni asked Pietersen to go back a few yards. All of Dhoni’s fine tuning left no impression on the South African. De Villiers reverse swept Ashwin exactly between the two fielders. To remind Dhoni that he had a lot more gaps to plug, de Villiers then swept Ashwin for an easy four between fine leg and deep square leg.The beauty about de Villiers is he forces a change in mindset, be it the opposition bowler, captain, his own teammate or even a spectator. He makes one realise that boundaries can be pushed just by making the effort. Today, Kohli played the supporting act superbly, but de Villiers understood that if Royal Challengers needed a strong finish, Kohli had to not just bat till the end but also score runs.De Villiers had noticed that Kohli was playing to his strengths, playing in the V, but he was not going the distance. De Villiers was frequently in his captain’s ears, uttering the encouraging word and at one point, possibly, asking him to move down the off side and paddle sweep the ball past the fine leg that had been pulled inside.The understanding between both men is very clear and the numbers support that fact. Both men also agree that they cannot stop running. They would rather be breathless than keep quiet. It means the opposition is left out of breath too in the process.”Till you are allowing him a second run and sending AB to the non-striker’s end, you are doing a good job,” Ajinkya Rahane, Rising Pune Supergiants leading scorer on Friday, said with a smile. “The way cricket has moved forward and the way AB de Villiers bats the margin of error for the bowlers is very less. Our bowlers did not bowl that badly, but you need to give him the credit. You need to have a daring to reverse sweep and sweep the fast bowlers.”Among the various stand out characteristics about de Villiers is his sporting spirit. As soon as his South African teammate Faf du Plessis dived forward to interrupt his lofted drive at long-on in the 17th over, which saved a certain boundary, de Villiers tapped his bat to appreciate the fielder’s effort.When Harshal Patel had been hit for a six and four boundaries, de Villiers charged towards Harshal, took the ball, swept the dew off it, put an arm around the helpless bowler and asked him to keep his chin up. All the time keeping that smile on his face. His energy is both restless and boundless.

With his effervescent character and homespun technique, Dinesh Chandimal embodies something of the island spirit – as well as the fight his team had lost

Andrew Fidel Fernando at Chester-le-Street30-May-2016″Sri Lankan players have a lot of fight,” said coach Graham Ford of the team he had been desperate to return to. “Sri Lanka generally fight hard,” an England player said through the course of the series. “We fight till the last ball,” Angelo Mathews occasionally used to announce when his team were struggling. Recently it has become all he says.And in a way, Sri Lanka’s batsmen had been in the fight of their lives in the first three innings this series. They had practically declared war on their own averages. Professional reputations were left bloody and twitching in two different north-of-England cities.But in five batting sessions at Chester-le-Street, when a more traditional Sri Lankan fight took shape, it was no surprise that Dinesh Chandimal was the man most effective at getting his team back on brand. He was lively. He took on risks. He wrung runs out of the lower order. Thanks to Chandimal, Mathews even got to say the words “Sri Lankan fight” at the post-match press conference, and for the first time in the past month, his words were not speculative.Chandimal is a quintessentially Sri Lankan cricketer. In his background are details that island novelists transpose on their protagonists – the hard beginnings, the tsunami, the fortuitous scholarship to a big Buddhist school, his subsequent success as Ananda College’s captain. In his technique are glimpses of the coastal curve he hails from – the beach cricketer’s booming bottom hand, the loose drives and fluttering homespun cuts that somehow pass through cover.

Mathews pleased with fight

“We talked about everything possible to get back on track. We talked about our character and the fight. We’ve been talking a lot about it, but unfortunately we didn’t show it on the field. I thought we started showing it in the second innings while we were batting. We had a brilliant first day. We caught all our catches. But unfortunately started off day two by letting Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes off the hook. Then we had a really bad day and we had to fight really hard. I thought all the batters worked really hard in the nets every single day before the start.”

Coaches attempted to iron out his crinkles in 2013 and 2014 and, like any good Sri Lankan boy, he paid heed. He changed his grip and discovered he could no longer face the short ball. He had exclusive lessons with the batting coach, and found himself having trouble facing team-mates. When he turned down a $100,000 offer from the IPL to focus on his training, Chandimal was becoming something of a company man.It was only when he changed tack that runs began to flow again, yet in his cricket, the lessons lapped up in youth survive. He is easily the most effervescent on the field when he keeps wickets. He scoops up the helmets and sprints from end to end while others are flagging after a long day or a large defeat.At Chester-le-Street, as his team stared at another humiliation, Chandimal produced the kind of innings Sri Lankan players are told Sri Lankan players produce. When Alastair Cook set traps for him on the leg side, Chandimal didn’t avoid those areas of the ground. Instead, he kept shuffling across his stumps and backing himself to beat the fielders. Another England captain had put men on the leg-side fence for Duleep Mendis in Sri Lanka’s first match in the country. Mendis kept hooking bowlers into the stands until he had a triple-figure score. These stories, dressed up and embellished, have passed into lore for fans, but have become the manual for players such as Chandimal.At the other end, another Sri Lankan battler kept England out, and Chandimal company for 116 runs. After Chandimal struck the 162 not out that saw Sri Lanka turn around a 193-run first-innings deficit against India last year, it was Rangana Herath’s spin that closed out that manic Galle victory. Here he provided an example for his batting colleagues.”Absolutely, the other batsmen can take lessons from Rangana,” Mathews said. “He’s become a proper No. 8 for us over the past one-and-a-half years. He’s been scoring and hanging in there. If I recall, a couple of years ago at Headingley, once again he batted with me and got 49. He’s been giving his best with the bat and ball for us over the last couple of years. Every day he’s been trying to get better.”The partnership only delayed the defeat. It merely dressed up what was in fact another Test thumping for a struggling team. But in the reclaiming of a cricketing identity – real or imagined – Chandimal repeatedly leads the way. For a few moments on the fourth day, in the north of England were snatched peeks of a tropical island.

Having come close to an international debut once before only for rain to thwart it, Jon Holland is ready to make the most of his second chance after earning an unexpected call-up

Daniel Brettig02-Aug-2016An expired passport, replaced in a hurried 24 hours before flying to Sri Lanka, says a lot about how much Jon Holland has thought about playing for Australia in a Test match lately. But canny displays in training for the tourists, ahead of a game they must win, spoke equally loudly for a level of ability the selectors have always rated.The call from chairman of selectors Rod Marsh to tell Holland he needed to travel to Galle to replace Steve O’Keefe and partner Nathan Lyon in the second Test necessitated a journey from Brisbane back to Melbourne for a hurried renewal of documents. It is seven years since Holland last made an Australian tour, an ODI sojourn to India in 2009.”Rod rang me when I was up in Brisbane, getting ready for Australia A, and told me that SOK was not good and I had to get over here,” Holland said. “It was a bit of a surprise, so much of a surprise that I didn’t have a passport ready, so I was a bit nervous.”I went back to Melbourne, I had to renew it, it had expired. Getting over here, just being around the group it hits home a bit more.”I will be a little bit nervous if I do get a chance to play, I have worked hard on my bowling the last couple of years. I am pretty comfortable with where my bowling’s at. Hopefully, if I do get a chance, I can get myself into the game and get a couple of results.”On that previous tour, Holland was so close to a debut that he had “the chat” with then captain Ricky Ponting informing him he would play in the final match of the series in Mumbai. But rain began to fall almost as soon as Ponting spoke those words, and so, Holland returned home without playing.”It was the last game, we’d already won the series,” Holland said. “Ricky told me on the bus after training which was the next day, and as soon as he told me, it started raining and it didn’t stop until we got on the plane to come home, so unfortunately I missed out, but that’s the way it goes.”I guess it was in the back of my mind that time was getting away from me, but I really enjoy playing cricket for Victoria. They’ve stuck with me through three shoulder injuries and supported me and given me the chance to play cricket, I have to thank them. It’s here now, it’s all a bit surreal still and I will just have to wait and see if I do get the chance to play.”Usefully, Holland is dropping into the Australian side in a manner he has become familiar with for Victoria. The selectors’ preference for Fawad Ahmed as the No. 1 spinner has meant Holland only plays on spinning pitches, and has harvested 22 wickets at 16.41 from his past three Shield games, spread over two seasons. Eight wickets in the Shield final piqued the selectors’ interest ahead of this tour.”I would like to play every game for Victoria but that hasn’t been the case,” he said. “Fawad has bowled extremely well for Victoria and it’s been hard to get in there, and especially in Australia – playing two spinners doesn’t happen too often, but my opportunities for Victoria have come and I enjoy playing for Victoria.”The Shield final was a big game for me. I’d missed out on a couple, one through injury and one not being selected the year before. It was a big dream of mine to play in a winning Shield for Victoria, and to get the opportunity and do well was a really great week for me.”In watching the first Test of the series on television, Holland was reminded of the left-arm spinner’s art by the clever variations of Rangana Herath. There has been evidence of similar skill from Holland in training, varying his pace and degree of spin to beat Australian bats on numerous occasions. Cricketers rather than athletes, Herath and Holland share an instinctive understanding of deceit.”He knows the conditions extremely well here,” Holland said of Herath. “He just bowls on the spot and knows how to subtly change his spin and variations and pace and that sort of thing. I think just about every time he bowls the ball it’s hitting the stumps, which is a big positive. I try to take a bit of that on board and try to do the same as that.”If Holland’s passport was unready, he has at least got in his kitbag a handful of good relationships with Australian team-mates from days gone by, whether it be Under-19 tours or his Academy intake.Most critical of all, he shares a good rapport with Steven Smith. Captain and spinner must stay close this week. “I’ve known Smithy since he was pretty young,” Holland said. “I guess we have got a pretty good relationship, so, hopefully, he backs me in and looks after me.”

James Vince did the hard work but gave his innings away in a worryingly familiar manner. He is running out of chances to prove his worth

George Dobell at Edgbaston06-Aug-2016The reaction said it all. James Vince stood frozen in horror after steering one to slip. He knew he needed a score here. He knew his career could depend upon it.Instead, after three hours of resistance, he had been drawn into a familiar error. Seduced into feeling at one angled across him against the new ball, he had edged to second slip for the second time in the match and the third time in the series. Like a former smoker who can’t resist, the habit he had tried to cut out had done for him once more. The slow trudge off the pitch, head shaking in dismay and disappointment, spoke volumes.But if this was a familiar end, it was not an entirely familiar innings. It felt like a step forward. It wasn’t just the score – 42 equalled his best Test effort so far – but the maturity he demonstrated in steering England away from trouble after the loss of Alastair Cook and Alex Hales. He had left more deliveries, he played a little straighter and he picked his aggressive strokes more selectively. Not too many batsmen are dropped after contributing 81 runs in a game. Not under this regime, anyway.There had been some nervous moments along the way, though. On 22, Vince was beaten as he attempted to drive one from Sohail Khan that left him just a touch and, on 23, he pushed at one from the same bowler and was fortunate to see the ball bounce just in front of Mohammad Hafeez at slip. On a quicker wicket – and that is just about every wicket – it would have been a chance.This wicket is unusually slow. While it is not easy to score quickly – it is, in truth, a pretty disappointing wicket which does nothing to sustain the viability of Test cricket – it is the sort of wicket on which dislodging batsmen is tough.That is when bowlers even attempt to dismiss them. But, while Vince was at the crease, Pakistan instead concentrated on damage limitation and attempted to frustrate the England batsmen into making errors as they sought to accelerate the run-rate. Vince faced just one delivery from seamers in his entire innings that would have hit the stumps. That’s one delivery out of 65. So, it’s hardly surprising he managed to survive for longer; they were hardly blowing to dismiss him. And Vince, for all the runs he has scored, is the only man in England’s top seven not to have made a half-century in the match.All of which leaves England’s selectors with a tricky decision. They have invested heavily in Vince and they may well feel they could see signs of progress here. He clearly has time to play the ball and a wide range of strokes. The raw talent is pretty obvious.But at the same time, Trevor Bayliss has said several times that batsmen will be judged not by how they make their runs but by how many runs they make. Vince has now been given six Tests and nine innings. How would other leading contenders – the likes of James Hildreth, Scott Borthwick or Ben Duckett – fare if given such a run? Is it unrealistic to expect them to have supplied at least a half-century? A generation of former players – the likes of Paul Parker, Alan Jones, Alan Wells and Paul Terry among them – could only dream of such opportunities.Comparisons with more modern players are no more enlightening. While Sam Robson and Adam Lyth were given 11 and 13 Test innings respectively before they were dropped, both men registered centuries in their second Tests. Such early success naturally extended their run.We are getting to the stage, too, where Vince’s issue may become mental as much as technical. The analysts working with the England teams over recent years have conducted research into the importance of players performing well early in their international career. Their conclusions, unsurprisingly, suggested that it becomes disproportionately more difficult to succeed if the early memories and associations of the England environment are not positive.Vince appears admirably calm at the crease and can only benefit for the backing he has received from the management. But it is only human nature that, with every setback, his self-confidence ebbs a little more. He is up against a fine attack in this series, for sure, but he will rarely play on more batsman-friendly wickets. It is probably provocative to point out that Vince’s average over his first six Tests – 23.44 – is more than 10 lower than Kevin Pietersen in his final six – 33.83 – but it might also be illustrative of the suspicion that selection is not always entirely on merit.Vince has the great advantage over the likes of Wells, Terry and, yes, Pietersen, that he is playing in a relatively successful side. For that reason, his struggles can be overlooked and the investment period can be lengthened. He hasn’t, by any means, looked completely out of his depth and the continuity of selection policy remains, even taken to an extreme, far better than the alternative extreme.But by persisting with him at this stage, the selectors are also denying themselves the opportunity to look at other players. They are denying themselves the chance to see how Adil Rashid could perform as a second spinner or to see how a left-arm spinning all-rounder could manage ahead of the seven Tests England play in Asia before Christmas. They are denying themselves the chance to see how a specialist wicketkeeper could be assimilated within the team or giving another batsman a chance to gain some experience ahead of the winter tours.But in order to experiment, the selectors first have to start coming to some conclusions. Their failure to do so with Vince is starting to look, not so much consistent, but soft.

Stats highlights from the first day’s play in Pallekele, where the hosts were bowled out for 117 in just 34.2

Bharath Seervi26-Jul-201634.2 Number of overs that Sri Lanka’s first innings lasted, which is their shortest after electing to bat. Before this, they had lasted 38.4 overs, bowled for 95 against South Africa in Cape Town in 2000-01.1 Number of lower totals for Sri Lanka against Australia at home, than the first-innings 117. They were bowled out for 105 in Galle in 2011. Tuesday’s total is the lowest total by any team in Pallekele. Sri Lanka themselves had previously made 174 against Australia in 2011.22.30 Test average of Sri Lanka’s top three batsmen at home since July 2015, which is the lowest among all teams. In 36 innings, their top-three has managed only two centuries and one half-century.10.50 Sri Lanka’s average opening partnership in home Tests since July 2015 – again, the worst among all teams. In 12 innings, only once have their openers put on more than 50.2003 The last time Sri Lanka fielded two or more debutants in the same Test. Sri Lanka handed out debut caps to Dhananjaya de Silva and Lakshan Sandakan on Tuesday. Against New Zealand in Colombo (PSS) in 2003, Kaushal Lokuarachchi and Prabath Nissanka made their Test debuts. De Silva’s first scoring shot was a six, which makes him the first Sri Lanka player to start off his Test career with a six.

1 This is the first Test in Sri Lanka in which both teams’ openers were dismissed for single-digit scores in the first innings. Overall, there have been 19 such Tests, the last of which was at Wanderers in 2006-07 between India and South Africa.2006 The last time Sri Lanka’s top five were all dismissed for 15 or fewer runs in a Test innings at home, against Pakistan in Colombo (PSS). This is the sixth such instance for Sri Lanka in home Tests.19.16 Angelo Mathews’ average in his last six Test innings against Australia, with a highest of 35. In his first six innings against them, he averaged 87.25 – he remained unbeaten twice – with a century and three half-centuries.2 Consecutive ducks for David Warner in Tests against Sri Lanka. Warner was dismissed for a duck in the first innings of this Test, as well as in the second innings of the SCG Test in 2012-13. Incidentally, in the other four innings against them, he has made half-centuries. Sri Lanka and India are the only teams against whom Warner has two ducks.

A team from MLB Advanced Media are looking at how they can develop new statistics to analyse performance in cricket

Peter Della Penna in Florida28-Aug-2016The arrival of the India squad in Florida this weekend brought in huge throng of supporters hoping to spur a new age for neutral-venue cricket possibilities in the USA. But their presence also drew attention from an unlikely source, with a series of Major League Baseball data miners camping out in Lauderhill for the weekend to see how to bring their analytics to another sport.Eleven members of MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), who help curate data for the online services known as MLB Statcast and MLB At Bat, set up a trailer at the Central Broward Regional Park to collect as much player and ball-tracking data as possible in an effort to bring their new-age stats approach to cricket from baseball.”We’re doing some research on how can we apply our Statcast data acquisition technologies to other sports, i.e. cricket, because baseball and cricket are very similar to each other,” says Kevin Prince, a broadcast analyst with MLBAM who is originally from Kent, England, but has been working in the USA for more than 30 years. “We’re here to gather all the player-tracking and ball-tracking data, hopefully to provide a system that can provide the Statcast type of analysis that we’ve perfected for baseball, and hopefully provide that for cricket.”As part of their technical set-up at the stadium in Lauderhill, the crew set up six cameras mounted to the floodlight towers on the west side of the ground, as well as a radar above the sightscreen on the north side. The cameras track player movement while the radar tracks ball movement. The crew visited Lauderhill last month for the Caribbean Premier League and their interest was sufficiently piqued for them to make a return for the India-West Indies T20s to see what they could apply from baseball principles.”It’s the fourth-generation stats, more performance-driven on the field,” says Per Von Rosen, a technical manager with Statcast, originally from Stockholm, Sweden, who came to the USA last year but has previously done cricket analysis in England. “So, how hard did you pitch, how hard did you hit, exit velocity of the ball coming off the bat. In fielding, the route efficiency taken to catch the ball.”We know where a fielder was when the play started, we know where he caught the ball, and therefore we can know which path he took. Was it a straight line, did he deviate from that straight path, and how fast did he react to the ball off the bat – all of these things. It’s basically putting together his athletic capabilities. Some guys always happen to be in the right place to make the catch, and now we’re putting numbers on that.”One of the most popular data points in terms of fan traffic for Statcast online is exit velocity. Giancarlo Stanton of the Miami Marlins, the 2016 All-Star Game home-run derby champion, has nine of the 15 highest exit velocity measurements of the season, with a highest of 123.9mph speed of the ball coming off the bat. However, six of the nine connections only went for singles and none for home runs.”The hardest you can hit a ball has to be a trajectory that’s a little more flat,” says Rob Engel, a senior software engineer with MLBAM. “Any time you hit a home run, you have to put a little more launch angle on the ball, and you’re not actually hitting it as square as you would hit a line drive. So the farthest home runs are technically hit a little softer than a hard line drive straight back to the pitcher, because the bat maintains contact with the ball longer, so you hit it harder.”In cricket, the use of these metrics could demonstrate that players who hit sixes aren’t necessarily swinging or connecting harder, especially compared to a drive straight back down the pitch or a cut straight to point. Little nuggets like this are what Engel says draw fans in. “Big numbers are sexy.”How quickly does Virat Kohli get to the ball once it leaves the bat?•AFPWhere the Statcast appears to be having a significant impact in terms of media scrutiny for players is in terms of the fielding aspects, which have long been neglected. Engel, who is originally from San Francisco, was at his first ever cricket match on Saturday, but says he has immediately identified areas where cricket data could be improved for fielders based on what he has done with baseball.”Things are really registering well with fans, as well as smaller things like arm strength, route efficiency and distance covered, they’re easy to comprehend,” says Engel. Arm strength measures the speed of the ball out of the arm from an outfield throw, route efficiency tracks the distance and time it takes to field a ball from the moment it leaves the bat and is cross-analysed against raw distance covered.Another area is base-running speed, including acceleration time it takes to reach top speed as well as top overall speed from home to first, first to third base and so on. But even subtler things are tracked, such as how big a lead a base runner gets off the base before attempting to steal. They are learning the slim margins that allow for a slower runner to gain a bigger advantage and get to the next base quicker than a runner with a higher speed rating.For cricket, it can be taken to measure fastest runners between the wickets and the impact of acceleration and deceleration while converting one run into two or two into three. Not only are the measures of interest to fans, but teams are able to utilise them for scouting purposes to gauge whose arm they can’t or can take on for a second run from the boundary.”There’s an outfielder for the Yankees who threw a ball 105mph with a crow hop earlier this year – Aaron Hicks,” Engel says. “That sparked a Twitter controversy – how can an outfielder throw harder than Aroldis Chapman? But if you look at the physics of the throw, with a running start and a crow hop, it makes sense you can throw the ball harder than from a [pitcher’s] mound without a running start. So those things are really registering well with fans, as well as smaller things like route efficiency and distance covered, they’re easy to comprehend.”Traditional fielding stats only credit you negatively, and it’s basically who screwed up the least rather than who gave us the best performance. So now we have a forward-thinking model on what fielders can give us the most out of their physicality as opposed to who screws up the least.”Prince says they are currently in discussions with the ECB, IPL teams, and Big Bash franchises. who are all keen to gain access to the Statcast capabilities. “Baseball has the leading digital asset creation and development tools out there,” says Prince. “The whole Statcast aspect has been recognised by all the other sports as being a groundbreaking structure, so there’s a lot of people interested in these aspects of the game. A lot of people are interested in seeing how we’re going to go here.”Von Rosen says in his time watching cricket in England, he noticed how fielders were underappreciated, with only catches and run-outs marked in traditional stats. The Statcast technology can track fielders at point, for example, who may be cutting off singles with their speed to the ball off the bat, but have not got the recognition they deserve. In that way, MLBAM’s data could transform how cricket analyses player performance.”You go online and you start reading your cricket news or baseball news, what we want to do is put material on there that you’ll never stop looking for news,” says Von Rosen. “You’ll be watching video after video, play after play with all of this information you can see, so you never really want to stop.”

ESPNcricinfo staff23-Oct-2016Blackwood fell to Rahat Ali’s reverse swing in the seventh over of the day•Getty ImagesDevendra Bishoo took 20 balls to get off the mark, and made 20 off 66 balls before falling to Sohail Khan•Getty ImagesRoston Chase and Shai Hope avoided further damage, and West Indies scored just 45 runs in 27 overs in the first session•Getty ImagesChase fell to Yasir Shah after the break, chasing a wide one and edging it to second slip•AFPYasir cleaned up Hope in his next over with one that kept low; West Indies were reduced to 178 for 8•AFPJason Holder farmed the strike and scored 31 quick runs•AFPBut Yasir struck again to dismiss last man Shannon Gabriel. He finished with 4 for 86 as West Indies were bowled out for 224, conceding a lead of 228•Getty ImagesSami Aslam scored a half-century and put on 93 for the opening wicket with Azhar Ali as Pakistan tightened their grip•Getty ImagesShannon Gabriel ended the association, but Azhar raised a fifty too and took Pakistan to 114 for 1 at stumps for a lead of 342•Getty Images

The tiring Vizag pitch threw up wild variations in bounce and confounded other batsmen, but not the Indian captain

Alagappan Muthu in Visakhapatnam20-Nov-20162:32

Compton: Kohli’s confidence stands out

The ball had solemnly sworn it was up to no good. Then it was given to a redhead.It is the 16th over of India’s second innings. Ben Stokes came charging in and hit the deck with considerable force. The batsman picks the length up early. He prepares to get on top of the bounce by shifting his weight back and standing up taller at the crease. He has no idea he is in the worst possible position for what was about to happen. The back- of-a-length delivery turned into a grubber. Mischief most definitely managed.Virat Kohli should have been in trouble. He could even have been bowled off the inside edge. His best case scenario was if he was beaten – the line was quite wide – or if he could somehow keep the ball out. Those watching the third day’s play in the Visakhapatnam Test were introduced instead to the bizarre case scenario. Kohli smeared a four behind point.There were a few things that helped him pull that off. The original shot he was trying to play was with a vertical bat. So adjusting to the lack of bounce was easier than if he had attempted to play a cut, where the backlift gets bigger and therefore has a longer distance to travel. He provided himself with the same advantage in the 34th over, when the legspinner Adil Rashid produced a grubber. Kohli eased onto his backfoot and it came to rest slightly across onto off stump so that his head would be right in line with the ball. The inherent risk here is the possibility of lbw. But by playing the flick with a straight bat, and waiting to roll his wrists until he made the connection, not only did the Indian captain negate the chance of his being dismissed, he found another boundary.Free-flowing batsmen find difficulty keeping up on slow and low pitches. The lack of pace means hitting through the line is difficult and even maneuvering the ball into gaps requires a great deal of effort. Kohli seems to be setting the template to prove that obsolete although if you want to follow it, you’d best hope you have hands as quick and a work ethic as strong as his. The thousands of balls he hits in the nets, the visualisation he does, the tweaks to his technique, all of it is in an effort to make sure he is equipped to make tough runs; to make sure he has a game he can trust when the pressure is high; to make sure he can not only tackle high-class bowling but dominate.Kohli faced more than 100 deliveries on a third and fourth day surface with wild variations in bounce and finished with a strike-rate of 74. No one that had lasted as long in this match has even come close to scoring that quickly. You have to want to be there, he often says, and watching him be there is a lot of fun. There are the bat twirls. The fiddling with the grille. The re-strapping of the gloves. The tapping of the pitch. He just doesn’t want to be idle. He doesn’t want his concentration levels to drop because that’s when he knows he may not read the play as quickly. He barely spends any time away from the stumps. No trips to square leg to slow the game down. He’s ready in his stance, looking at the bowler with the impatience of a child waiting for their parent to take them to the park.It must be draining to be so switched on. But that’s why both his physical and mental strength are high. At stumps yesterday, he had made more than half of India’s total – 56 out of 98. He finished with 81, only because of a spectacular catch at slip, stabilising India from an early wobble and giving them the chance to set a target never before achieved in the fourth innings of a Test in India. Kohli is a fantastic beast and everyone knows where to find him. At the heart of of a fight.

Rajasthan captain Pankaj Singh, the ongoing season’s highest wicket-taker after round seven, reflects on his journey to 400 first-class wickets

Nagraj Gollapudi24-Nov-2016The most memorable domestic wicketMy 200th wicket, when I got Piyush Chawla against Uttar Pradesh in the 2011-12 Ranji Trophy. I value this wicket because I had to work really hard to get to that milestone. I had to bowl nearly 60-plus overs to get there. In the previous match, against Railways, I went wicketless having bowled 38 overs. Against UP I was frustrated as catches were dropped off my bowling. Eventually when Piyush was nearing the 90s, I got him caught and bowled. But I had to bowl almost 30 overs to break the barren spell.The toughest domestic batsmanRohit Sharma. I have played at least four to five matches in domestic cricket against Rohit and have got him a couple of times. He plays all the shots. You don’t have the room to just bowl at a certain pace and restrict him. You just have to keep bowling outswing, outswing and then hope to surprise him by pitching an in-cutter. But once he settles he is very difficult to get out and he scores very quickly.The best spellIn the quarter-finals, against Mumbai, in Jaipur in the 2010-11 Ranji season when we won the title for the first time. Mumbai elected to bat. I got three top-order batsmen in my first spell: Sahil Kukreja, Omkar Gurav and Rohit. We had never even taken first-innings lead against Mumbai, at least in my career till then. Mumbai were firm favourites and had fielded their best eleven which also included Ajit Agarkar, Wasim Jaffer, Jinks (Ajinkya Rahane) and Ramesh Powar. So I took the challenge upon me that we had to win somehow.The favourite mode of dismissal?Pitching on middle and hitting the top of the off stump. It does not happen too many times, but I love to do that.The toughest spell in domestic cricket Against Maharashtra last year in Pune. I rate this toughest because I did not succeed. We made 250-odd (270) after being asked to bat. I bowled 27 overs on the second day. That was the maximum I had bowled in any Ranji match in a day. We had Maharashtra in trouble at 124 for 6, but [Shrikant] Mundhe and [Chirag] Khurana rescued them. Usually I back myself in such situations to take a wicket. It was the first time I was unable to do anything. Khurana even hit me for a six in the last over of the day. I was exhausted in the end. Maharashtra won with a bonus point.The best domestic fast bowler in your timeVinay Kumar. I like the way he bowls aggressively, how he uses all his skills and works out his wickets. I bowl quite similar to him. You can feel his presence at all time. I also like his attitude and he is the best in the present era in domestic cricket.The most favourite pitch in IndiaSMS [Sawai Madhopur Stadium, Jaipur] and MohaliThe best compliment you’ve received in domestic cricketRecently after I got him out in Duleep Trophy, Yuvraj Singh told me I was the best bowler in domestic cricket.The one skill needed for a fast bowler to survive in domestic cricketAccuracy.The goal you are after nowTo play once again for India.

Tony Opatha led a rebel side to South Africa in 1982 – a tour on which a certain ill-suppressed madness lurked around the edges

Luke Alfred01-Feb-2017Late one weeknight in September 1982, a South African lawyer called Colin Rushmere flew into Colombo. He had flown from his home town of Port Elizabeth up to Johannesburg, then on to Hong Kong and Sri Lanka. The timing of his arrival in Colombo was no accident: the hour was sleepy, and as expected, customs officials were bleary-eyed.His most important item of luggage was a briefcase, a constant companion. In the bottom of it, disguised by other things, were stacked 14 contracts. He was in Sri Lanka to have them signed. Rushmere was not only armed with his trusty briefcase – he had a story primed, just in case. If asked, he was to mumble his way through a passable Dutch accent and busk for all he was worth. “Tony [Opatha], who picked me up and arranged the [‘rebel’ Sri Lankan] tour from their side, told me that he was so well known that he’d have to drop me a couple of streets away from my hotel,” remembers Rushmere. “He didn’t want to be seen because at that stage the tour was very hush-hush. If anyone asked or we got into any difficulties, I was a ‘Dutch businessman’.”Flying home a couple of days later I had my bags thoroughly searched, including my briefcase. As the official was digging deeper and deeper and I was getting more and more concerned, I had a brainwave. I noticed an exchange bureau close by and asked if I could change my remaining money. As I did, she seemed to lose interest. She never got to the signed contracts.”All the clandestine manoeuvring started a couple of months before Rushmere’s Colombo nip and tuck. In July, Ali Bacher and Geoff Dakin, the chief executive and president respectively of the South African Cricket Union (SACU) made the hop from London, where they were schmoozing around the edges of the ICC’s annual meeting at Lord’s, to Rotterdam. They spent the night and were back in Birmingham the following morning to watch Allan Lamb score his debut ODI century for England against Pakistan, in their eyes a timely reminder of what South Africans could do if allowed to strut on the international stage.”I remember Bacher spotting Opatha in the airport waiting area,” says Dakin. ‘There he is,’ says Ali, to which I replied, ‘Very good Ali, well spotted, he’s the only black man in this sea of white faces.’ We got negotiating and Opatha asks for $30,000 per player. Ali says, ‘You think we have that sort of cash, you must be in cuckoo land.’ So Opatha comes back, quick as anything: ‘So tell me, Ali, how many cuckoos are there to the dollar?'”Bacher and Dakin’s detour to Rotterdam was to gauge the seriousness of Opatha’s scheme to bring an unofficial Sri Lankan team to South Africa later that year. They left satisfied, and returning home, sold the idea to their board. Sponsored by South African Breweries (SAB), an English rebel side had toured South Africa the previous season, and while there was political fallout both at home and abroad, the tour was successful enough for something similar to be attempted again.Although Sri Lanka had only played their first official Test (losing by seven wickets to England in Colombo) that February, that debut didn’t appear to be overly significant to either Opatha or the South Africans. Carrying more heft, by far, was the fact that the Sri Lankans were a non-white team. This would help convince a largely unimpressed world of SACU’s reform credentials, a sort of cricketing equivalent of both having your game and playing in it. A token handful of black and “coloured” players, like Edward Habane, Omar Henry and Joe Rubidge played in the provincial games, but essentially Opatha’s men were playing against apartheid-era white opposition. “By their standards they were going to be handsomely paid,” recalled Dakin, “and we needed regular foreign opposition to keep the game healthy. National Panasonic [the electronics manufacturer] were an enthusiastic sponsor. We went ahead and kept it as quiet as we could.”

“The lepers who are surreptitiously worming their way to South Africa must understand that they are not playing fair by the coloured world”Sri Lankan minister Gamini Dissanayake on the rebels

Opatha hadn’t played cricket in or for Sri Lanka since the 1979 World Cup, and at the time of the negotiations was playing club cricket in the Netherlands. With his customary larger-than-life flair, he set about assembling a side, the financial temptations of the tour proving too generous to ignore.Rushmere flew back from Colombo with 14 signed contracts in his briefcase, but literally on the eve of the Sri Lankans’ arrival in South Africa he needed to dash up to Harare, where they were in the closing stages of a tour against Zimbabwe. “It was very important for us that we get confirmation from [Roy] Dias and [Duleep] Mendis that they were prepared to make it, because we’d heard that they were vacillating,” said Rushmere. “Joe [Pamensky, then the treasurer of SACU] promised that if we could get the signatures of those two, they could come back for another tour the following year.”In the event, the parties got bogged down in financial negotiations. Despite not being available for the entire South African tour, Dias and Mendis demanded the full fee. Rushmere was unable to reach agreement with them, and after a heady few weeks in which there were press rumours of the Sri Lankans’ passports being withdrawn, a group of sundry tourists from Colombo arrived at Jan Smuts airport in late October.Unlike the fanfare that preceded the arrival of the SAB England side the previous summer, there was no media fandango. “They were expressly told to pack a small suitcase with a change of clothes and a toothbrush,” says Dakin. “They were ‘tourists’, dressed in civvies. Kitting out took place here in South Africa. We wanted to draw as little attention as possible to their arrival.”If there were any quibbles from the hosts about the quality of the tourists without Dias and Mendis, who had batted at three and four respectively in Sri Lanka’s official debut Test in February, Opatha did his best to keep them in check. With characteristic swagger he dubbed the team the AROSA Sri Lankan XI – the “ARO” in AROSA standing for the Antony Ralph in Antony Ralph Marinon Opatha – the “SA” being a self-explanatory doffing of the cap at his hosts.The tourists were in all likelihood kitted out by Adidas (the photos are indistinct) and they were shadowed at all times by Piet Kellermann, a South African government representative, who saw to it that there were no official incidents. The tourists were described as “charming ambassadors” but were required to toe the petty apartheid line. There was to be little venturing outside of their hotels, or “see-for-themselves” furloughs into the townships for a little . The unusual use of the verb “worming” tells us all we need to know.As worms in cuckoo land, history has judged neither SACU nor the Sri Lankan rebels well. The verdict is unlikely to change anytime soon.