ESPNcricinfo looks at the major talking points from the second round of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy 2016-17

Umar Farooq10-Oct-2016Ugly altercation mars Habib Bank-Islamabad clashHabib Bank Limited beat Islamabad by five wickets within three days at Diamond club ground in Islamabad, but the result was marred by an ugly altercation. A minor altercation between Habib Bank’s Azeem Ghumman, who was fielding at gully, and Islamabad’s Umar Kiyani, who was batting then, grew into a heated one after Kiyani was found to be pushing Amad Butt, the bowler, with his right hand. The umpires and the senior players then intervened in an effort to calm things down. Later, a video of Kiyani aiming a punch on Amad’s face went viral on social media. The incident was duly reported to the PCB, and the matter is currently under investigation. According to the preliminary findings, Kiyani was found to have indulged in physical contact twice in addition to using abusive language.Kiyani, the 21-year-old middle-order batsman, was playing only his seventh first-class game, for Islamabad. In the previous season, he had made 273 runs in seven matches at an average of 22.75. Amad, also 21, was recently called-up to Pakistan’s squad for the one-off T20 international against England in Old Trafford last month.‘Misunderstanding’ between Umar Akmal and Wahab DarUmar Akmal led Lahore Whites to a 96-run win over Pakistan International Airlines with a match tally of 175 runs, including a century in their second innings at the Lahore City Cricket Association Ground. This match too involved a heated exchange. Captain Umar had an argument with reserve player Wahab Dar, as the latter failed to carry a kit.Wahab, son of Lahore Cricket Association secretary Shoaib Dar, was added to the Lahore squad as the 16th member. Shoaib then complained to LCCA president Nadeem Ahmed that Umar had insulted Wahab. However, according to the president, it was only a misunderstanding, which was blown out of proportion.Butt and Irfan misfire but WAPDA win againCaptain Salman Butt managed only scores of 5 and 4 against Karachi Blues, but Water and Power Development Authority won their second successive match, at National Stadium in Karachi. WAPDA currently top Pool A with 18 points. Mohammad Irfan, who struggled with fitness issues during the England tour, took only two wickets for 88 runs in 33.4 overs.Ghanchi hits triple-tonTwenty-one-year-old Hamza Ghanchi hit an unbeaten 300 in only his ninth first-class match in a draw between Karachi Whites and National Bank of Pakistan in Karachi. The left-handed opener struck 43 fours during his 420-ball knock, spanning 654 minutes. Ghanchi is the third-youngest player to score a triple-century in first-class cricket in Pakistan after Javed Miandad and Aftab Baloch, and only the sixth batsman in history to convert his maiden first-class century into a triple-century. Behram Khan, batting at No.3, made his presence felt too with 155 off 309 balls, before Karachi declared at 628 for 5 in 159.3 overs.

Matthew Engel’s tribute to boyhood hero Colin Milburn

11-Nov-2016I ought to remember where I was when the news came, as with Kennedy’s assassination or the outbreak of war. But I have no recollection. It was May 23, 1969, and I must have been doing my A-levels. The details of those have been successfully blotted out of my mind since then. The accident in which Colin Milburn lost his left eye and his career must have been thrown out with them.

I do remember that the sinking-in process took longer than usual. Most of us were fooled a little: by inapt comparisons with Pataudi, who played on with his right eye gone; by the wave of hopeful Press coverage from the hospitals; by Colin’s own quite outstanding bravery. I also remember feeling that if so freakish an injury (why couldn’t he just have broken a leg like normal people, for Heaven’s sake?) could end his career, then it was the saddest possible news for English cricket. Milburn might not have been the greatest cricketer of his generation, but he was, beyond question, the cricketer we could least afford to lose. And we lost him.

I was not and am still not an unbiased observer. Insofar as I ever grew up, I grew up, between bouts of boarding school, in Northampton in the 1960s. The Northants side of 1969 was not only good – we had the best and most exciting young batsman in England. What’s more, he was a friend of mine. Well, more like a friend of a friend actually. But he would recognise me and pass the time of day and take an interest. It even fell to Colin to coach me at the Easter nets, which he did without losing his temper. I realised later that he was friends with pretty well everyone in Northampton. That turned out to be one of his problems.

Colin had arrived via County Durham because Ken Turner, Northants’ secretary, had offered him 10 shillings a week more than Warwickshire. This transaction achieved slightly more notice than the acquisition of most young batsmen: Colin had achieved a sort of public notice as a 17-year-old schoolboy when he made 101 for Durham against the 1959 Indians. He even got a special mention in the Editor’s Notes in the 1960 . He was, as put it, `a well-built lad’ or, to put it another way, fat.

He had always been a tubby boy. In the cold winter of 1963, just as he was becoming established as a county player, he fought against it furiously and went down from 18 stone to nearer 16. Thereafter, though his weight was a regular talking point every April, I think it bothered him less. I often wonder how he might have batted had he slimmed down to fit the popular perception of what a cricketer should look like.

So often all his tonnage went into the shot. Yet I don’t think there was anything essentially unconventional about his batting. Memory does odd tricks. I remember the crashing hook, of course; I remember the booming drive, hit most often past a helpless cover point; yet in the mind’s eye I can most easily recall that great bulk leaning forward, ever so correctly, to prod away a ball he did not fancy. The difference between him and everyone else was that he would hit a 50-50 ball that anyone else would leave or block, and hit it with immense force. Not every time. There is another potent memory: his return to the old and grubby Northampton pavilion, red-faced and as near as he ever got to angry, after a daft nick to first slip when a single figures. For us kids, the day moved on to a lower plane. But the good days were electric, and if he got past 20, he rarely stopped before 70.

Years later, after the accident, I umpired a village benefit match in which he thumped harmless bowling all over the place for about an hour and I was able to watch at close quarters the visible signs of how he made up his mind what to hit. It occurred to me then that his secret had not been his bulk, nor his technique, nor even the quickness of his poor, damned eyes but the speed of his reflexes. How else could an 18-stone near-non-runner come to break the Northants catching record, which he did, in 1964, with 43 catches, almost all at pre-helmet short leg?

Those reflexes were never infallible. Nor was his judgment, and sometimes the good days were well spaced out. In 1965, he went into the final match still short of his 1000. Gloucestershire were at the County Ground and Northants needed to win to be champions. It rained on the first and last days, and the fact that Milburn made 152 not out in 3 ½ hours to get his 1000 made no difference whatsoever, except to soothe the pain. And the county still have not been champions.

But the blazing three-year summer of Colin Milburn’s life was just about to start. The following year was the one in which many Championship matches had their first innings restricted to 65 overs. It was one of those early, faltering attempts to enliven the three-day game in response to the success of the Gillette Cup. Colin did not need livening up, but the system suited him very nicely. He began 1966 with two centuries in his first three innings, scored 64 for MCC against the West Indians, then made 171 at Leicester with Alec Bedser watching. On the Sunday he was in the Test team. D’Oliveira was also in the 12 for the first time (though on that occasion he did not play) and I remember being hurt and puzzled by the `Hello Dolly’ headlines. Milburn did play and soon was being overshadowed by no-one.

Nine Test matches – that’s all he had time for. He changed four beyond recognition, though it is true that England did not win any of them: a lively but chancy 94 as England went down to that very strong West Indian team, with Sobers, Hall and all, at Old Trafford on his debut; the 126 not out in the next Test at Lord’s to save the game (only Colin would a game by scoring an even-time century); the amazing, fighting 83 at Lord’s against the 1968 Australians on a bad wicket; and the final 139 at Karachi the following year.

There would have been time for more, but the selectors kept dropping him. Barely a month after the 126 he was gone. He failed at Trent Bridge, then made 71 for once out at Headingley, but he was gone the next week along with Cowdrey, the captain, and half his team to make way for the Brian Close era. In that wonderfully vengeful mood that brings out the best in some cricketers, Milburn went to play for Northants at Clacton and scored 203 not out – a century before lunch, another before tea, and a new county first-wicket record with Prideaux. That year, Ollie was the first to 1000, scored the fastest century, hit the most sixes, and only missed 2000 because of a broken finger. There was no tour for him to be left out of, so he spent his first happy winter playing for Western Australia.

He played in two Tests in 1967, but his best score was 40 at Edgbaston. Nonetheless he scored the fastest century of the summer (78 minutes this time, four minutes quicker than the previous year) and was picked to go to West Indies. When he got there, he started slowly, lost out to Edrich for the First Test, and became a spare part.

It was clear that some influential people did not regard Milburn as a business cricketer. After his Lord’s 83 the next year ended in a catch on the midwicket boundary, one of the selectors commented sourly, `What a way to get out.’ He was injured after that and did not return until the Oval-D’Oliveira-Underwood-mopping-up Test, after which he was left out of the South African tour party. Since someone else was also left out, Milburn again found himself overshadowed by D’Oliveira, and there are plenty of people around who still believe Milburn’s omission was the dafter.

But the curious thing was that Milburn had plenty of detractors in Northampton as well. He had loads of friends. In some cases the same people were in both categories. The County Ground crowds, such as they are, on both the football and cricket sides have long had a fairly well-deserved reputation for sourness. I think the town was much happier when 1965 was over and its team stopped all this winning nonsense; we could all go back to being happily miserable again. And much of the moaning was at Milburn. There was something not right about all that boozy joviality. Why couldn’t he settle down and live and play boringly like you are supposed to do? And poor old Ollie did not seem able to shut them all up by going out and playing one of his really great innings. They always seemed to come somewhere else, somewhere exotic like Lord’s or Clacton. Northampton had to be content with some very, very good ones.

Perhaps the greatest of all came that November, even further away. On a fearsomely humid day at Brisbane, Milburn went out to open the batting. At lunch he was 61 not out and, rather out of character, complaining; there was so much sweat seeping through his gloves that he could hardly grip the bat. After lunch, the weather cooled a fraction; Milburn went berserk. In the two-hour afternoon session he scored 181. Even Bradman never approached that. He was out the over after tea for 243 and apologised to his team-mates.

He was on a Perth beach with (so the story goes, and it is almost certainly true) a couple of birds and a good many beers when, three months later, he got the message that England needed him to reinforce the party for the substitute tour of Pakistan. It is generally held among cricketers that Perth is a better place to be than Dacca, and the feeling among the England party at that stage of the tour was, by all accounts, that they should fly out to join Milburn rather than the other way round. But he flew in via one of the most convoluted routes in the history of aviation, and the team summoned up enough energy to give him a guard of honour at the airport and con him into believing that there was no room at the Intercontinental with the other lads and so he would have to stay in a dosshouse next to a swamp.

His very presence brightened the tour. When they moved to Karachi for the final Test, Milburn was picked and played his last, biggest and probably greatest Test innings, 139 on a dead slow mud pitch. As at Northampton, as with the England selectors, he was not wholly appreciated – the crowd were too busy rioting to take much interest. But, as the game was abandoned after the gates were smashed by the crowd, it was generally agreed that whatever else had gone wrong for English cricket that winter – and pretty well everything had – at least Milburn had now emerged as a genuine Test batsman, and not just a slogger.

Sunday League begins

The summer of 1969 marked the start of the Sunday League which, genuine Test batsman or not, might have been designed for Milburn’s personal use. He began the season with 158 against Leicestershire and played his part in a Northants win over the West Indians. His selection for the First Test was now not even a matter for discussion. And then it happened.

I was a schoolboy still and cannot be certain that all the smiling pictures were not just a front for the camera. But the sister-in-charge said his manner never changed in his 11 days in hospital; the hospital management committee singled him out in their annual report (`his infectious good humour and indomitable spirit raised morale throughout the hospital’) and in the years that followed I failed to glimpse whatever sadness lurked behind the mask.

Colin Milburn spent a good deal of the time (too much, said all Northampton) after his accident in his old corner spot at the bar of the Abingdon Park Hotel, always with a happy group, in shadow, but obviously not in sadness. Then, quietly and suddenly, he left Northampton and returned to County Durham. There were still booze and birds but no marriage and, for a man past 40, no obvious purpose. He did this and that. He went to the odd London do. He still smiled. We still chatted. He almost found his on radio. His occasional commentaries were shrewd and funny and generous, because he did not believe no-one else could play. His indomitable spirit did not only raise morale at the hospital; it lit up my youth.

Stats highlights from Day 1 of the Perth Test, where David Warner’s bruising half-century notched his average at WACA to over 100

Gaurav Sundararaman03-Nov-201619 Wickets in the first over of an innings across all formats for Mitchell Starc, the most for any bowler since 2015. Next on the list, with seven wickets each, are Lasith Malinga, Dawlat Zadran and David Willey.18 Number of batsmen Starc has dismissed for a duck in his career. Eight of them are openers.2006 The previous instance of South Africa losing three wickets inside the first 10 overs of a Test match in the first innings, against Sri Lanka at the P Sara Oval in Colombo. Today they were 27 for 3.0 Number of specialist spinners to debut at WACA before Keshav Maharaj. Before Maharaj, only nine overs of spin was bowled by a debutant in Perth. Dean Elgar was the last one to do it. He bowled one over during the previous Test between the teams here.78.40 Quinton de Kock’s batting average in 2016, which is the highest among all South Africa batsmen. He has scored three fifties and one hundred this year.50 Number of wickets taken by Starc at home. He is the fourth left-arm fast bowler to take 50 wickets at home. Since 2015, Starc has taken 22 wickets from five matches at 23.40. Before that, he had taken 28 wickets at 31.28. Mitchell Johnson leads the list with 171 wickets.106 David Warner’s average* at the WACA from eight innings. He has three hundreds with a highest score of 253. The only instance when he did not score a hundred was against South Africa in 2012.12 Number of times out of 38 fifty-plus scores Warner has made a fifty at under run-a-ball. Ten of those, including today’s 39-ball half-century, have come in Australia. Since Warner’s debut no other batsmen has made as many fifties under a run-a-ball. Brendon Mccullum is next with seven such instances. No other batsmen has had more than three such instances.76 Average opening partnership for Australia at home in the last one year. The next best is New Zealand with 43 runs. Warner and Marsh have added 105 so far.*At end of the first day’s play

We now have a rudimentary fielding average in the BBL, but it’s a crying shame there aren’t any other, more meaningful, measures

Jarrod Kimber05-Jan-2017The ball rebounds off the pads towards point. The point fielder comes in as Inzi is confused about whether he should run, or maybe confused about whether he is running. As he decides to turn back, the point fielder picks up the ball. Inzi is about six metres from the crease, the point fielder is about 12 but has the momentum.The men are two different specimens – one a wounded buffalo trying to find a waterhole to hide in, the other a cheetah looking for an easy, quick kill. It seems, at least on first glance, that the cheetah is moving so fast that he starts flying. The still image shows him flying, hands and feet stretched out like a human torpedo sent to destroy the stumps. And Jonty Rhodes does kill them, he does run out Inzi, he does fly.It t is one of the most famous moments of fielding cricket has ever had. Up there with Joe Solomon’s run-out in the tied Test, Colin Bland running out Ken Barrington, and Kapil Dev taking the catch of Viv Richards.And while that fielding was incredible, there is also the other side we remember. The Fred Tate drop, Chris Scott’s 483-run Brian Lara drop, and Rhodes disciple Herschelle Gibbs dropping Steve Waugh (read World Cup). But how many run-outs did Rhodes complete in his career? Was it more than Ricky Ponting? Did Ponting have a better accuracy when he threw? Who fumbled more? Cricket doesn’t know, and neither do we.

Cricket says catches win matches, and they may, but we don’t count them well enough to check. And we certainly don’t count them at all when they aren’t taken

Chances are you have a favourite fielder, and not just a favourite fielder but probably favourite fielders for different positions. Bob Simpson at first slip, Mohammad Azharuddin at second, Geoff Marsh at gully, Rhodes at point, Clive Lloyd at cover, Brendon McCullum at mid-off, David Boon at short leg, Garfield Sobers at leg slip, and George Bonnor at fine leg. But for all the love they get from cricket fans, cricket doesn’t appreciate fielding, because if it did, it would measure it.Cricket says catches win matches, and they may, but we don’t count them well enough to check. And we certainly don’t count them at all when they aren’t taken. It is one reason why batsmen-wicketkeepers have replaced specialist wicketkeepers, because we count runs, we agonise over them, and if you are lucky, you will see the total catches of a keeper at the end of the column.Fielding stats just don’t exist. Not in any real way. Unless you are Rahul Dravid, the chances are no one will remember how many catches you took. Ponting and Rhodes were great fielders, but which one made more run-outs? While old cricket guys gushed about Bland’s phenomenal ability as a cover fielder, we don’t how many run-outs he was involved in. Before Charles Davis and ESPNcricinfo ball-by-ball, we didn’t even know what the catch-drop ratio of modern players was, or more importantly, have any way at all of tracking dropped catches in cricket.Cricket Australia is trying to change the way people think about fielding; they have developed a fielding average. For people looking for real information on what happens on a cricket field, and not lazy generalisations, this is an important development.A large part of the early sabermetrics revolution in baseball showed that fielding was an overrated skill, and getting on base was an underrated skill. Better athletes were chosen over players who could field better, in less spectacular ways. Baseball fielding has been more athletic and of a higher quality than cricket fielding, but weirdly, it might also be less important in the game.Paradoxically, though fielding is probably less important in baseball, it is also analysed far more•Getty ImagesHow many times have you heard it said of good fielders, “He’s worth 20 runs in the field”? It was something that was often said about Andrew Symonds – that his untold value in the field made him worth far more to his team than a normal player. A proper fielding metric could tell us how much.While batting averages are not a great way of looking at what a top-order player is worth in T20, let’s just say that a decent No. 4 batsman in T20 makes 30 runs a game. Then if you have two options, a player who makes 31 runs a game and another who makes 27, with proper fielding data, you might be able to tell that the 27-runs-a-game player might also bring you two run-outs and four catches more a season, and actively save extra runs in the field than the other player. Then you take the conversation from “He’s probably worth 20 runs in the field” to “He’s worth 8.3 runs and .35 more dismissals a game in the field than the other guy we could pick in the top order.”The ball is fielded far more often in cricket than in baseball, the catching percentages are far lower in cricket, the stakes on errors are presumably far higher, and therefore cricket analytics could prove that fielding is an undervalued skill. The only way we can know is by tracking it.That is what Tim Coyle, an assistant coach of Southern Stars, wants to do. On Cricket Australia’s website a few weeks back there was an article about giving all players in the BBL a public fielding average. “We went through quite a few different ideas on how we were going to present this, and at the end of the day we decided to try and keep this number as simple as possible,” Coyle, who is part of the Australian national fielding panel, said.They didn’t want an entirely accurate fielding-data system but one “that shows fielding performance in a simple way alongside batting and bowling”. What is interesting is that they went away from the traditional runs-based methods of working out a player’s worth and invented a new metric – which is less an average and more an error ratio.

If you have a player who averages 31 and another who makes 27, with proper fielding data, you might be able to tell that the second player might also bring you two run-outs and four catches more a season, and actively save extra runs in the field than the other player

According to the CA method, the fielding average is calculated by expressing the proportion of grade-one chances taken as a fraction between 0 (no chances taken) and 1 (all chances taken). A perfect fielder would be 1.0. A fielder who drops one out of ten would be 0.9; if they dropped two from ten, 0.80.The maths is, as Coyle and the team behind it wanted, simple, as is the basic error system behind it. A grade-one error is the most straightforward chance that no professional cricketer would be expected to miss: throwing from a small distance at three stumps, a catch every player would be expected to take. A grade-two error is marginally above expectations. Grade three is a one-handed blinder, hitting one stump from 25 metres, and fielding that ends up on YouTube.According to the CA data, Rob Quiney is a perfect fielder, at 1.0, and Glenn Maxwell is 0.93. Maxwell has had two grade-one errors, Quiney none. The first problem with this system is that it doesn’t tell us if Quiney has had three missed chances at grade two, and Maxwell hasn’t missed any; or maybe Maxwell has taken one grade-three chance and Quiney missed both his opportunities of that kind. That might make Maxwell a far better fielder than Quiney, but it wouldn’t change his fielding average.Then there is the fact you can’t be better than 1.0. If you take 68 chances from 68, and someone else takes 15 from 15, you will both be perfect. Even if your chances are at the toughest positions in fielding – slip and gully have far higher drop rates than mid-off or square leg – you won’t be rated any higher than someone with a perfect record at an easier position. And because you can’t be better than 1.0, it doesn’t matter how many one-hand blinders you take. If we used a system similar to this for batting, Bradman, Pollock and Headley might all have a perfect batting average, rather than one being 30-odd more than the others. There is also the fact that if you have taken 49 out of 50 chances, and another guy has taken his first 20, he will have a better record.But maybe the most jarring idea in this system is that it is an errors calculation. The same has been used in baseball for generations, but it has also been derided in that sport, where people are using proper data to try and map fielding worth. There is an entire chapter in about the failings of the error system. When you only track the errors, you take out a fielder who simply gets to more balls than others do through pace or desperation. Brendon McCullum might make more errors in the field than Inzamam, but he also stops a lot more.For all his spectacular efforts, Maxwell is rated below Quiney in CA’s fielding stat, which takes account only of “grade-one” chances•Getty ImagesWhen it comes down to it, you can’t have a proper fielding analytics system that doesn’t at least try to take all this into account. CA does have another system – that they keep privately – that looks at fielding impact, and in that, Maxwell is rated higher than Quiney. They are also looking at a fielding strike rate, “the number of dismissals a player gets divided by the number of matches they play”. And Maxwell ranks high there as well.The problem with the fielding average is that in trying to make it simple, “so people understand it” as Coyle says, they have made it almost pointless. I want to know who the best fielder is, not which one misses the most basic balls. What I want isn’t “a simple measure of fielding performance”; I want as close to a comprehensive system to work out what a fielder’s worth is, and that isn’t simple.Think about one of the most simple moments in a T20 match. A batsman gets a well-directed yorker from a bowler late in a T20 game, and all he can do is bunt it out to long-on. The non-striker has bolted and decides to take a two, the long-on fielder is just a bit slow to react, and this allows the non-striker to make it back just as the bowler takes the bails off. In traditional cricket that is two runs – both runs go against the bowler and go towards the batsman and total.But the reason there is an extra run wasn’t the bowler’s fault, and it had little to do with the striking batsman. It was the non-striker and the fielder who combined for the second run, and yet it goes against neither of their names. In a perfect world there would be a metric that allows us to work this out.With a SportVU camera, spatio-temporal pattern-recognition software, and cricket-specific algorithms, we could work out important and previously unanswerable cricket questions. How long it took the ball to get to the fielder, how far the ball was from the fielder, whether the fielder went straight at the ball, if the fielder took off slowly, how often a second run was successfully made in that situation, and the accuracy and speed of the throw. From that, once enough data is brought in, we could start to work out who played the biggest part in those two runs, and it could be used for everything from wicketkeeping dives to run-out chances. We could tell which fielders make plays, and which ones only execute grade-one chances that any player could make.But this is quite advanced, and while something of the kind might end up coming to be reality, we are a long way from a system of this sort.

I want to be able to prove a commentator wrong, or right, when he says Kohli is a good fielder. I want to know how often Martin Guptill gets to a ball quicker than most fielders, and how often he then fumbles it

Cricviz is a fielding data system that, considering Nathan Leamon (England Cricket performance analyst at the ECB) is involved, you can assume is similar to what the England team is using. Cricviz counts every incident that affects the score: catches, run-outs, missed chances, misfields and run-saving stops. Then every one of those incidents gets a plus or minus value, depending on how much it changes the team’s total. So at the end of a T20, a player could be given a sheet and told if he was plus or minus in the field.It’s still subjective – although it’s hard to see how any other system wouldn’t be – as there is still an operator who is making the calls of how hard the stop is, and how many runs should be put against the fielder. And Cricviz seems to be overly generous with players who routinely run around balls rather than straight at them, and is quite soft on what actions top-flight players should be able to perform. But their system, flawed as it may be, is still far better than the public CA model. And it is probably a good indication of what the smarter teams are using privately.Teams are already trying to work out if they are picking the right players.
Look at Melbourne Stars, who have kept Ben Hilfenhaus on their roster. Two balls into his season he looked the goods. Two full, swinging balls, two wickets. But despite Hilfenhaus removing the top of their order, Hurricanes recovered when Tim Paine and George Bailey got together.In their partnership, they faced Adam Zampa. It was coming out well for Zampa. His skiddy legbreaks and a long leg-side boundary meant that Paine and Bailey had to try to hit him through the off side. On the short off-side boundary, Hilfenhaus was patrolling at point. He had a lot of work to do. At one stage he let them steal the second run. One ball, he saved a boundary but couldn’t stop the second run again. There was the three he allowed, which, considering the size of the ground, seemed odd. And also a four that was hit very close to him that he couldn’t stop.There are many ways of explaining what happened with Hilfenhaus on the point boundary. Was he often out of place through bad captaincy, or because he wasn’t listening when he was being moved around the field? Should an older fast bowler – even one who is not a terrible fielder – be the man to field on the short off-side boundary when both batsmen are targeting it? Zampa had bowled well, and completely to his plan, but because of the quality of the batting, and the results of the fielding, his dot balls were wasted, given the batsmen could score easily off him later in the over. It meant that Zampa couldn’t keep the pressure on, that he didn’t get a breakthrough, and ultimately that Hobart was able to play him with complete confidence while smashing him in his last over.The decision to field Hilfenhaus at deep point and keep him there wouldn’t appear to be as important as his two wickets. But it could have been important. For most of cricket’s history, where he fielded, or even how he fielded, wouldn’t have been important, but now you know that someone was watching and trying to work out if that is a weakness of Hilfenhaus and his team.Hilfenhaus’ early wickets against Hobart Hurricanes were recorded for posterity, but his costly misfields should also have been quantified•Cricket Australia/Getty ImagesIn making its system public, CA has taken a significant step forward. Even having a national fielding group at all is smart. They also have an interesting mix, with Coyle; Neil Buszard, a fielding coach with a baseball background; Andy Utting, a former baseballer; and Sunny Kaliyar, a performance analyst. But they are only four people.There are probably thousands of minds out there watching cricket who have brains equally or more impressive. Some with sports-analytics backgrounds, some with computer-coding backgrounds, and many more with free time and a cricket obsession. Thinking that a small group of people will be able to answer an equation as complicated as fielding is bizarre.Baseball’s big statistical evolution wasn’t from people in the front office; it was from people in their lounge rooms trawling through the stats and working out that commonly-held beliefs were wrong. Bill James started as a writer of a self-published book that virtually no one read, and then ended up as front-office staff with the Boston Red Sox.Cricket has its own Bill James out there. John Buchanan used Krishna Tunga in the early 2000s, for what Buchanan calls alternative cricket analysis. But while there are some data analysts in cricket, there are far more amateurs out there who would do amazing things if they had access to the modern cricket data. Four people, all of whom are not looking at the data full-time, trying to solve one of cricket’s great equations is nowhere near as good as a thousand or more doing it. And with the data that Fair Play, the data provider that CA has hired, generates, they could also find other ways to improve teams and learn new things about T20 cricket.Even now, without this data, people are poring over websites to prove theories or just find out things. Like the blog Right Arm Chuck, which spent quite a lot of time looking at the numbers of drops and catches by Indian slip fielders. It proves what many of us may have already thought, that Ajinkya Rahane is the best slip fielder in India, by a distance. But not just by eye, in numbers: his catch-drop ratio is 3.27; the closest Indian slipper is Murali Vijay, at 1.57. Most of the other slip fielders, even the oft-abused Ravindra Jadeja, are around the 1.5 mark.

While there are some data analysts in cricket, there are far more amateurs out there who would do amazing things if they had access to the modern cricket data

On the blog Declaration Game, there is a simple piece that looks at the drops in the series between England and India using ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball coverage. According to it, India took 50 of their 76 chances (66%) and England took 47 from 65 (72%). Meaning that, on their recent numbers, both had a poor series. Alastair Cook took four from seven and Virat Kohli five from ten.And then there is Charles Davis, whose blog, and work for other publications, has delved as deep into cricket’s data science as any amateur with a laptop can. He put up a blog post on teams’ missed-chances percentages in Tests between 2013-14 and 2014-15. It was the era when New Zealand, fired up by McCullum, the continued brilliance of Kane Williamson, and the partnership of Trent Boult and Tim Southee had one of their most successful runs ever. It was also when they only missed 20% and 19% of their chances. Go through all the articles on their rise, mine included, and you won’t find those incredibly important numbers. You might hear that they are a good, great, or even the best fielding side, but it’s subjective. Davis isn’t giving us subjectivity; he’s giving us facts and numbers.Not enough people have ever asked why throws in baseball have been better than in cricket for generations, despite the fact that cricketers throw more often. Or wondered why, if 47% of caught-and-bowleds at Test level are dropped according to Charles Davis, teams still almost never train their bowlers in them, though almost as many chances go there as to point. That is two major cricket inefficiencies that could provide teams with improvement straightaway.The fielding in the Big Bash so far has been abysmal. Sydney Thunder could point at dropped chances for two of their losses. When Brisbane Heat travelled to Adelaide, it seemed like both teams had made a pact to field poorly. The two best catches that night were Kieron Pollard’s Superman grab and the security guard’s pouching a six.The SportVU camera, which has featured prominently in the NBA, could also be used to revolutionise cricket fielding data collection•Getty ImagesAnd yet, for all the scorecards I can find online, there is still nothing regular telling me about how important fielding is in each game. It happens, is commented on and then forgotten. I want to know what percentage of the time David Warner hits the stumps. I want to be able to prove a commentator wrong, or right, when he says Kohli is a good fielder. I want to know how often Martin Guptill gets to a ball quicker than most fielders, and how often he then fumbles it. I want to know which players create wickets through their forgotten third skill. I want to know it all.And cricket tells me almost nothing. TV coverage doesn’t have simple catch-drop ratios. Newspapers do little more than mention important drops, and if you are lucky, the numbers of drops a game, day, or maybe a series. Even ESPNcricinfo’s profiles only mention the number of catches or stumpings by a player, with no mentions of run-outs. Even with the fielding average being made public, it has barely made it to any of the coverage of the Big Bash.”We need to walk before we run” is how Coyle described CA’s fielding average. Their system is a toddler in the world of fielding data, but it is the sort of thing that should have happened about a hundred years ago. This article itself is overdue. Cricket has spent many lifetimes ignoring fielding, and even if the fielding average might tell us almost nothing, almost nothing is so much more than we’ve ever had.Ponting completed 12 more international run-outs than Rhodes, Coyle told me. He’s probably right, but it’s not like I can go anywhere to check it. Rhodes could fly through the air, and while that is amazing, what he really should have taught us is not that he was superhuman but that fielding matters. And hopefully one day, we will know how much.

Players like 17-year-old Joshua Little and the audacious Craig Wallace will be eager to impress in the inaugural competition

Peter Della Penna in Abu Dhabi13-Jan-2017Fareed Ahmad – AfghanistanSince breaking down the doors of world cricket beginning in 2008, Afghanistan have been able to showcase a vast array of talent, and most prominent in this regard has been their uncanny ability to unearth talented fast bowlers. Hamid Hassan was a trailblazer among them for his reverse swing at high speed and when he tapered off due to injuries, Dawlat Zadran and Shapoor Zadran took up the mantle. Left-arm quick Fareed Ahmed is now poised to pick up the baton.Fareed first came to the limelight three years ago when he claimed figures of 7 for 21 to bowl out Pakistan Under-19s for 52 in a 214-run romp for Afghanistan Under-19s. Six months, later he took 5 for 54 bowling with the new ball on his first-class debut against Zimbabwe A. However, it took him until December to get a chance in limited-overs internationals for Afghanistan, where he turned in an impressive showing in the three-match T20I series against UAE, taking five wickets at an average of 17. He now has a chance to show what he can do against some of the other top-flight Associates.Nizakat Khan – Hong Kong
The 24-year-old right-hander had been simmering for the last few years before an explosive season in 2016. Facing a fourth-innings target of 310 against Ireland at Stormont, Nizakat backed up his first-innings 69 with a maiden first-class hundred, ending up last-man out for 123 as Hong Kong fell by 70 runs. In the T20 that followed three days later, he set the platform for a 40-run win by opening with 62 off 43 balls.On Hong Kong’s December tour to Australia, Nizakat blasted an unbeaten 104 against reigning Big Bash League champions Sydney Thunder. He had been barred from bowling since the 2015 World T20 Qualifier, when his legspin action came under scrutiny, but was recently cleared, and this has made him an all-round threat in the tournament.A season in South Africa’s provincial first-class competition helped Gerhard Erasmus’ development•ICC/Helge SchutzJoshua Little – Ireland
The 17-year-old is the youngest player at the tournament, but Ireland appear keen to give him as much experience as possible because a rejuvenated pace-bowling unit is their ticket to reestablishing the fear factor that has dissolved in recent times. As a 16-year-old at the 2016 U-19 World Cup in Bangladesh, he was clocked at over 135 kph during his 3 for 52 against India.Little made his T20I debut against Hong Kong in September and, on a day when more senior pacers took some tap from the visiting line-up, the young bowler had a respectable economy rate of 6.25 despite going wicketless in his four overs to finish with 0 for 25. He’s still developing and might continue to add more pace, making him a tantalising prospect.Gerhard Erasmus – Namibia
The 21-year-old athletic talent is returning to the country where he captained Namibia at the 2014 Under-19 World Cup. He has been groomed for a future leadership role since his men’s national team debut at age 16 against Ireland in 2011 but it has taken him some time to adjust to senior-level cricket.He took a major step forward, though, against KwaZulu-Natal Inland in November, striking a career-best 192 in South Africa’s first-class provincial competition. When he is flowing, Erasmus can play some silky strokes. He has yet to truly fire in T20 cricket, but it is only a matter of time before he translates the promise he showed at junior level into some big scores.Vivian Kingma may finally get the chance to step out of Mudassar Bukhari’s shadow in the Netherlands side•Christopher Lee-IDI/IDIVivian Kingma – Netherlands
Most people mean it figuratively when they say they grew up with cricket all around them. Kingma says it literally. His family loves cricket so much they bought a house adjacent to the Voorburg Cricket Club on the outskirts of The Hague. That passion comes through the 22-year-old, who bowls in the 130 kph range and can be a feisty competitor with the ball in his hand.Kingma had been waiting patiently behind Mudassar Bukhari in the Dutch medium-pace queue for the last few years, getting limited opportunities to showcase his skillset in the Intercontinental Cup and the WCL Championship; up to this point he has played only two T20s. Bukhari’s partial retirement and non-selection for this tour may provide the opening Kingma needs to show he can be a performer in all formats for Netherlands.Arun Poulose – Oman
An opening batsman, Poulose migrated from Kerala to Oman and qualified on residency to play for his new home in late 2016. He made his debut against UAE and top-scored with 47 in his third match to give Oman a 72-run win, prior to the WCL Division Four in Los Angeles.Although he didn’t make many scores during Oman’s stay in Los Angeles, his best was 42 off 27 balls against Italy, a sign that he may be more suited to T20 cricket. While other poor performers at Division Four were axed at selection time, coach Duleep Mendis has kept faith with Poulose for this event, where he has the capacity to form a dangerous opening combination with Zeeshan Maqsood.A switch hit off the first ball? Always possible in a Craig Wallace innings•Peter Della Penna/ESPNcricinfo LtdCraig Wallace – Scotland
The 26-year-old was included in Scotland’s squad for the 2015 World T20 Qualifier but never played and wound up being left out of the side that went to India last March. However, he reemerged during the home summer in ODIs against Afghanistan, UAE and Hong Kong as a potential x-factor in the batting order.Wallace’s audaciousness may be best summed up by the fact that he’s the only player at this tournament who might walk out to open the batting and attempt to reverse sweep a fast bowler off the first ball of the match. His innings are brisk and bold. Anyone attending would be unwise to step away while Wallace is batting because something crazy is always on the cards with him at the crease.Muhammad Usman – UAE
It has been a rough 18 months for the host side since the retirement of their do-everything captain Khurram Khan. However, one of the bright spots during this lean stretch has been the emergence of the left-handed batsman Usman. He has performed well in different conditions since making his UAE debut at the end of 2015.Most importantly, Usman’s contributions have helped take pressure off Shaiman Anwar in the middle order, in turn helping Shaiman back into form. If Usman can remain a consistent threat, UAE may find themselves having a resurgence that could be good enough to help them retain ODI and T20I status beyond the 2018 World Cup Qualifier.

New Zealand dominated Australia with bat and ball, but they finished a washed-out game knowing that their hopes of qualification have been dented

Jarrod Kimber at Edgbaston02-Jun-2017The clouds are in; it’s dark, the batsman is playing the ball late and nervously. It’s supposed to be an Australian bowler, one of the much-vaunted, never-actually-seen-together, four fast bowlers of the apocalypse, and the quivering mess is supposed to be one of New Zealand’s late-innings hitters. But this is Australia’s No.4, Moises Henriques, and he’s facing New Zealand’s first-change bowler, Adam Milne.As Henriques is leaving the ground, New Zealand are celebrating in the rain that will ultimately end their celebrations.Australia came into this game as favourites, but New Zealand played like they were in charge from the start of the match. They took a chance on Luke Ronchi (despite his average of 13 since the last World Cup and that he hadn’t scored more than 37 in an ODI in over two years) instead of the ever-reliable Tom Latham (Av 38 in that time). In part because Latham had scored four ducks in his last six innings as a keeper, and averaged 6.5 while keeping. But also because Ronchi was going to go at Australia as Brendon McCullum did, and that’s pretty much exactly what happened. He hit nine fours and three sixes, and his 65 came at a strike-rate of 151 including 41 runs off 17 Pat Cummins deliveries. The real pace was coming off Ronchi’s bat, not from the hyped Aussie attack.When Ronchi’s attack finished, the batting robotic 2017 Model K that we call Kane Williamson played an ODI innings as if it was pre-planned to be a hundred from the moment he came out. He played late, took chances when the odds were in his favour, manipulated the field and, when he tried to go big, he always had a well-constructed back-up safety shot. His partnership with Ross Taylor was allowed time to breathe because of Ronchi, and they batted throughout the middle of the match and were starting to accelerate in their last few overs together before Taylor skied a ball into the covers. Williamson kept going, and the only thing more predictable than him making a hundred was the questions it kickstarted about his place in the Big Four pecking order.As skipper, Williamson manipulated the field as if he was playing batting mindgames with the Australian top order. Mid-on was up and back, fine leg and deep square kept changing and, at one stage, he set a triple-threat legside trap of two short midwickets and a catching short square leg for Steve Smith.The only time New Zealand were not in control was when Williamson was run out and the middle- and lower-order followed him with a collapse. The platform was so good that the Kiwi middle order chose to go hard against what is possibly the best bowling line-up in this tournament and squandered what could have been an even bigger total had they played with more circumspection.Kane Williamson’s century felt pre-ordained•Getty ImagesThe death bowling was the only real highlight for Australia. Cummins’ first five overs went for 52 runs, his next four claimed 1 for 15. Earlier in their innings, Australia’s only decent bowling came from the combined fifth bowler of Head and Henriques, who conceded 47 in their 10, their most frugal in the game. Hazlewood and Starc both ended with 52 runs off their nine overs, but Hazlewood added five death wickets in his last three overs to give him a six-wicket haul that he probably won’t be telling his grandkids about.But the Australians were pretty honest with how they bowled, “I think especially the first 10 to 15 overs, we bowled probably too full and both sides of the wicket,” said Hazlewood. “I think in England you’ve got to bowl fairly straight and we were too wide outside off a lot of the time whether it was short or full.”I think we obviously missed that practice match the other day to give a few boys the run, so at the end that probably came back to get us, but we’ve got to be better in these shorter tournaments from ball one.”His captain Steve Smith was even more honest, he called the bowling performance, “rusty” and “pretty ordinary” and that, with the rain, “we’ve perhaps got away with one there”.New Zealand didn’t come into this tournament as a favourite: the team who reached the last World Cup final have been lacking for inspiration in ODIs since McCullum took his talents to franchise cricket. But they bossed the Australian bowling and confused the Australian batting before Birmingham’s weather stopped them short.But for all the good news out of New Zealand’s game, with the rain and the draw, they now have the harder run than Australia to qualify. Australia’s next game is Bangladesh, who battled hard against England, but ultimately without Mustafizur Rahman’s wicket-taking will find it hard to take wickets in this tournament. If Australia win that game on Monday, New Zealand have to beat England, the home team and favourites, the following day or they’ll be relying on net run-rate from their final match against Bangladesh.Williamson said: “it is what it is”. Hazlewood said: “I think we’ll be better for the run.” That was it at the end, a what-if for New Zealand, and a practice match for Australia. Adam Milne did bowl very well, for all of his 12 balls, but for New Zealand that wasn’t enough to celebrate.

Tom Moody, the Sunrisers Hyderabad coach, looks ahead to the new season, and the challenge of working with players coming off long international tours

Interview by Nagraj Gollapudi04-Apr-2017It must start again all over again – the campaign.
Absolutely. Last year was a wonderful experience. It will be a treasured moment for everyone at Sunrisers. But certainly the page is turned. We need to reinvigorate and challenge ourselves. We again have another opportunity.Do you look to repeat the things that worked last season?
You need to constantly evolve as a coach, as a player and as a team. The same things don’t tend to work day in day out, particularly in a fast-moving game like T20. The style of cricket, the brand you play, the game plan you have in place will naturally change with the personnel changes in the squad every year.You said you were busy with player meetings earlier today. How important are these meetings?
That is one thing that hasn’t changed. Over the years in the IPL, it is important to catch up with players one on one. I do that with my assistant coach. It is important to understand exactly where the players are with their game, what are the things they are concentrating on, the areas they are looking to develop and improve, how we can help them in those areas. The other thing is role clarity – to give them a clear understanding of why we were keen to get them at the auction, why we selected them, and where I see them fitting into our plans for the season.So it is a relationship you need to nurture at all times?
The coach-player relationship is not one that starts at the beginning of the IPL and finishes the day the tournament ends. It is a relationship that is carried out throughout the year. I keep in touch with the players whether they are playing domestic or international cricket. It can even be a congratulatory message or just a simple “Hi, how are you getting on?” That is a very important part of building a positive and open team environment.

“Afghanistan have always bowled Rashid at the heat of the moment. That, to me, showed he is a player who not only has skill but also the character”

What is it like when you have senior players, some of whom are the core group of the franchise, just coming out of a long and hard-fought series, like your captain David Warner, who didn’t make a lot of runs during the India tour?
It is interesting you mention his name. I have only just been in communication with him ten minutes ago on WhatsApp. Since he was going to Australia very briefly, I was just joining the dots with him to make sure both of us were on the same page. It boils down to the communication. I am in regular contact with Davey, whether that is for supporting his quest to perform for Australia or regarding our plans for the IPL this year.I understand there are certain players that are going to be coming into the tournament a little bit more mentally and physically fatigued than others, more so your international stars. But in saying that they also accept the responsibility they have taken in being part of the IPL and being senior figures in franchises. They would be expected to step up come the first game on April 5.It is a reasonably easy exercise. Whether it be Kane Williamson or Warner or Bhuvneshwar Kumar, if you have the regular communication then it is an easy position to come in and have a conversation with them. To make sure you have a clear understanding of where they are physically and mentally, to tell them that we have empathy and understanding of where they are, and we will try to be as flexible as possible. These players have huge commitment all year around, and they also have their own personal commitment with family. So understanding of these things is important. If that is seen by the players, you tend to generally get a positive response, because they appreciate you understanding them as a person and not just as a cricketer.Let us revisit the last season. Could you go back to how you felt when you achieved the title one fine Sunday evening?
It was one of those moments all the hard work, all that energy and all that commitment you make – you get this feeling of huge satisfaction and reward. It was just an overwhelming, euphoric feeling.”For us, Yuvraj is that No. 4 batsman who goes out and plays with freedom and continues to be a dynamic and destructive player he is known to be”•BCCIIf you look at numbers purely, Sunrisers’ campaign was guided by just two batsmen, your openers. That was incredible, right?
There was no question that there were some remarkable individual performances that led the campaign to be a successful one last year. The real cornerstone to our success was firstly our captain, David Warner, and his extraordinary season, and secondly, his partnership with Shikhar Dhawan. Both shared the best opening combination of the tournament. You can look at any numbers, but if you have got your top order firing, you go a long way towards building a strong total that one can defend or chase down.We also had situations where, because of that dominance of the top two, there were limited opportunities for others to shine. That was purely because the number of balls consumed by our top order really took the shine away from our middle order. Having said that, we had a number of cameos from our middle order that were significant in us winning games. Probably one of the most significant was Ben Cutting in the final.So you are saying the middle order did not get much time to flourish?
I am just saying that was a possible reason. This year may be very different – though I hope not – where our Nos. 3, 4 and 5 are going to have to make far more considerable contributions.Dhawan has been out of the Test squad. Do you reckon the good season he had last IPL might motivate him to fight for his place?
Shikhar has struck some tidy form. He had a good hundred and a half-century just recently [in the Deodhar Trophy]. The IPL is a truly big stage to perform, whether you are an international or domestic player, because people recognise it is an extremely competitive and tough tournament. If you are scoring runs or taking wickets, it is worth noting. I am sure Shikhar has that burning hunger and desire to find himself back in the Indian squad. Another big season in the IPL would put his name in front of the selectors.Another big-name Indian player is Yuvraj Singh. You spoke about role clarity. What is his role in the team?
The fortunate thing to have Yuvraj is, he has got a huge amount of experience. Yuvraj totally understands what his role is and how he fits into the team and how important he is to the team. For us he is that No. 4 batsman who goes out and plays with freedom and continues to be the dynamic and destructive player he is known to be.

“We set out to target both international and local spinners while also trying to cover our bases in the fast bowling department, with Mustafizur only available for four or five games”

Ashish Nehra, Mustafizur Rahman and Barinder Sran are part of your fast bowling bench. Was it more intuition, or did you do some number-crunching to pick left-arm bowlers last year?
A bit of both. We were very aware of the numbers behind left-arm fast bowlers and the benefit of having them. We recognised that having the experience of Nehra was very important to our attack. He did not play as much as he or we would have liked to due to injury last year, but just his presence was a key, considering we had a young bowling group. He will again play an important role this year.You managed to pull it off with a dominant pace attack. Do you think that proved to be the right strategy?
That was more coincidence than design. In the early part of the tournament we felt that we were not getting the impact with our slower bowlers. We felt the likes of Moises Henriques and others needed to fill that void in the middle overs, and they do it cleverly with changes of pace. Like most teams, we did not rely on spinners [who bowled a total of 50.2 overs for six wickets].What fine-tuning has been necessary after last year’s victory?
We felt we needed to have a rethink around our strategy with spin bowling. We also realised Mustafizur was not going to be available for the whole tournament [because of international commitments]. We set out to target both international and local spinners while also trying to cover our bases in the fast bowling department, with Mustafizur only available for four or five games.One big surprise was Sunrisers picking two Afghanistan spinners – Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi. It surely was not a spur-of-the-moment decision to pick the pair.
Very far from spur of the moment. It was a very, very thought-out strategy. Both were very worthy of playing in the IPL. Rashid has shown over a long period of time that he has something that is quite unique. He has the ability to deceive batsmen at whatever level – both right- and left-handed – and whatever format of the game with his legspin. We have huge confidence of him fitting into our squad easily. I am not going to call him an X-factor. To me he is just a clever spinner. He spins the ball both ways and quite often batsmen are unsure which way it is going.”The real cornerstone to our success was firstly our captain David Warner and his extraordinary season, and secondly, his partnership with Shikhar Dhawan”•BCCIThe other thing that appealed to me about Rashid is that Afghanistan have always bowled him at the heat of the moment. He is not bowling the easy overs in the middle of the innings. He is given the responsibility to bowl under pressure every single time. It is part of their strategy. Because he is skilful and he has obviously got the temperament, he bowls under pressure and he does it well. That, to me, showed he is a player who not only has skill but also character.I have been an admirer of Mohammad Nabi for a couple of years. He has been a bit of an unsung hero in the rise of Afghanistan cricket. He has been successful when he has played in other T20 leagues. He was an important option to have in our squad because we really did not have an international allrounder that could bowl spin. He is also a player who has been around for a long period of time, understands the game, has got maturity. I generally feel that players of that caliber, who have got experience and maturity, are assets to any team.What will be the challenge for Sunrisers this season?
To me, it is not so much asking us as reigning champions defending our title. That is not what it is about. It is about us looking to improve on what we did last year. There are certain areas we feel that we can improve, and if we focus on just those small aspects of our game as a team, we hope that the results will reflect that and we will be playing finals cricket again. Ultimately every team wants to climb into the top four. That is the first milestone every franchise wants to achieve. For us to do that, we need to be focusing on how we need to continue to improve.

Some of the biggest names in women’s cricket recount their standout experiences in past editions of the game’s premier event

Interviews by Shashank Kishore06-Jul-2017Lisa Sthalekar, former Australia allrounder
I fondly remember the 2013 campaign, not just for the win but for the emotional decision I took soon after our crowning glory. I had decided to quit the game before the World Cup. It was hard to keep all of it within, but I didn’t want to distract the team from our ultimate goal. We had just won the World T20 in Sri Lanka six months earlier, so to be part of a successful group gave me much pride. To achieve what we did and walk away in the country of my birth was special.What I also remember clearly of the campaign was the lack of buzz. When we landed in South Africa for the World Cup in 2005 – my first – all teams were housed at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria. There were flags, logos, banners and plenty of advertisement to suggest a big tournament was to start. In 2009 too, the ICC did a great job: there were plenty of posters and billboards around the main Sydney streets, all the teams were lined up for a function at the Sydney Harbour bridge. It was momentous. But the moment we landed in India for the 2013 edition, it seemed as if the message was simple: “Right, we’ll now split you teams into groups. One set pack up and head to Cuttack. Others stay back in Mumbai. Good luck.” The disconnect was glaring. Fortunately a lot of people had come in for the final and we had some kind of atmosphere. I think India’s early exit didn’t help matters.Goswami, the world’s leading wicket-taker, was inspired by Cathryn Fitzpatrick during the 1997 World Cup final: “Something about her action fascinated me”•Andy Campbell/UTPMEDIAJhulan Goswami, India fast bowler and former captain
Cricket had caught my fancy in 1992. Cable television had just entered India, and everyone in our neighbourhood used to get together to watch the World Cup matches on TV. Watching it with my brothers, who were fans of Imran Khan and Kapil Dev, got me hooked to the game. I would try to copy their actions during our street cricket matches. But it’s unbelievable, even today, how I didn’t watch a game in a stadium for the next five years. I had received complimentary passes from Hero Honda for the 1997 final. It was my first time at an international game. There were 45,000 people at Eden Gardens! The noise was unbelievable. I remember my academy friends saying someone called “Fitzy” was the fastest bowler. I had no clue who she was. I had never seen her before, but watching her bowl that day inspired me. Later I found out her name was Cathryn Fitzpatrick. Something about her action fascinated me. I tried to meet her but couldn’t. Years later when we played together and shared time together in the dressing room, she was surprised to know about how that was a turning point for me.New Zealand celebrate their World Cup win in 2000: “The joy of winning a World Cup and celebrating it with your mates is an unbelievable feeling,” says the captain then, Hockley•ESPNcricinfo LtdDebbie Hockley, former New Zealand captain
I played in five World Cups and have plenty of memories. We lost two successive finals – the 1997 one was particularly heartbreaking – but I can still imagine the buzz around Eden Gardens. But my favourite memory has to be our win in 2000 at home. To do it against Australia was extra special, especially given we lost our previous final to them. It was a nerve-racking experience. Defending five off the last over with one wicket in hand, a million thoughts went through my mind. I thought, “Oh dear, I can’t take a third successive loss in a World Cup final.” It was also to be my last game, so those final moments were emotional too. I knew I wouldn’t return to the field. But here I was the captain, and couldn’t let fear dictate me.I had positioned myself at long-off with fans screaming into my ear. Fortunately we got a wicket off the first ball, I don’t think I would have been able to hold my nerve for one more delivery beyond that. There was manic celebration around me, but all I remember was sitting right where I was fielding for a good two or three minutes with my head down, eyes closed and just soaking it all in. Someone had to push me to move from there and join the team celebration. Those last few moments in the dressing room were really special. We were hosted for a nice dinner reception that evening. The joy of winning a World Cup and celebrating it with your mates, many of whom have been an integral part of your journey, is an unbelievable feeling.Australia bask in the glory at Eden Gardens in 1997: “Our victory lap is still etched in my memory, because we were being cheered like a home team,” says Clark•Craig Prentis/Getty ImagesBelinda Clark, former Australia captain
Personally, it’s hard to look beyond our 1997 campaign. To this day, I don’t know how many people were there at Eden Gardens that day. I’ve heard different variations. One thing I can tell you, though, is my eardrums were buzzing; I hadn’t played in front of such a crowd ever before. Our victory lap is still etched in my memory, because we were being cheered like a home team. For us to win there was extremely special. It was also in 1997 where I hit that record 229, against Denmark. To bat right through to get to a world record was great but it didn’t quite sink in for a long time.Raj leads her troops out for the 2005 final. “We were overawed [in the final], but it was nevertheless a campaign to cherish in more ways than one,” she recalls•Getty ImagesMithali Raj, India captain
The 2005 campaign brings back so many memories. I was close to giving up the game. During the tournament I struggled to run because my knees had given up. They used to swell up like potatoes. I was spending plenty of time with the physio to get ready, but somehow it was very difficult. I phoned my mother to tell her I would quit, even before the tournament began. I also told her not to inform my father of this decision, but she dissuaded me. As it turned out, we finished runners-up. Just before the final, I remember receiving so many phone calls at the team hotel from back home. I had never given so many interviews up until then, but seeing the interest made me so happy that I thought to walk away would be stupid. The regret of not winning the final will always be there. We were overawed, but it was nevertheless a campaign to cherish in more ways than one.Maroof (right): “The seeds of what we are today were sown [during the 2009 World Cup]”•Getty ImagesBismah Maroof, Pakistan batter
The tournament in 2009 was our first World Cup since our appearance in 1997. As a team we were excited, but we knew we weren’t anywhere close to the top sides in terms of standards. We played just two tournaments after our qualification was confirmed in 2008. Our home series against West Indies would have given us a chance to see where we stood, but that was cancelled because of security reasons. Cricket-wise, it was always going to be too much for us to match up to the standards then. Our realistic goal was to compete.In terms of our build-up, there wasn’t much. Apart from our immediate families and friends, not many even knew what we were training for. The lack of coverage wasn’t entirely surprising. People would wonder why we would train in the hot sun for months together, and were equally baffled to hear there was a World Cup for women. But the moment we landed in Australia, all of us were so amazed at the sporting culture there. The seeds of what we are today were sown then. The following year, we went on to win Asian Games Gold. That is when people back home knew there was a women’s team too!

Faf du Plessis’ deja vu dismissal padding up was the lowlight of a mistake-riddled performance from South Africa

Jarrod Kimber at The Oval31-Jul-20171:52

‘The first rule of batting is to use your bat’ – du Plessis

Faf du Plessis takes the catch two metres inside the boundary. At that moment Ben Stokes is out. But du Plessis loses his balance; it’s like the lusty power of Stokes is too much for him, and pushes him back. He falls over and his head slams into the padded boundary triangle. Stokes is now not out, and the ball is a six.In this age of cricket, where players regularly take catches dancing around the boundary like science-fiction ballerinas, this is especially unfortunate. And because it is Stokes, that also means that the next two balls are bad. Stokes hits both for six, brings up his hundred, and the game that was in the balance for so long suddenly looks like it’s for England. Du Plessis head-butted the rope; Stokes head-butted South Africa.But to focus on this alone would be wrong. South Africa did many things wrong and this was not even the worst thing du Plessis did in the match. That would come later in the afternoon when he left a ball and was out lbw.At the post-match TV chat, after South Africa were beaten on the final afternoon, du Plessis said: “It’s very obvious to me the mistakes that we made.” There were a lot.The conditions were in South Africa’s favour on the first morning. Four seam bowlers, all fairly different, the ball swinging, seaming and Vernon Philander being practically unplayable. But the rest of the attack were not great. It wasn’t that they were terrible, they were just a bit short, a bit wide. England had an opener one bad game from being dropped and a debutant in their top three, but the pressure wasn’t consistently there. It took them 30 overs to finally get it right, and by then they had Alastair Cook and Joe Root set.Once they got it right, they even made Root struggle, but the ball wasn’t new anymore and England made it through to the end of the day at least on equal terms, maybe ahead. Philander’s illness got worse, meaning they would never really have him again in the match. The fifth bowler, Chris Morris, had to step up.Morris came on to bowl the 69th over, and the tenth of the morning on day two. The first nine overs had gone for 27 runs and Morne Morkel had taken the wicket of Cook. This was a critical time in the match.Padded out: Faf du Plessis shoulders arms for the second time in the match•Getty ImagesMorris is not a line-and-length bowler, he’s explosive, and he goes for runs. And perhaps the most obvious thing about him is that he bowls very full. His first ball was full, and Stokes tried to nail it, but couldn’t get it away. The next ball was a full toss, and Stokes hit it through covers. Morris followed it up with two half-volleys that Stokes smacked. There are going to be days when Morris doesn’t work, players like him are risks. In the last Test, he paid off; in this Test, he went off.That over went for 12. His final over went for 17.The over of 17 included a six from Toby Roland-Jones, who is not an allrounder but is pretty far from a tailender. His known batting talent made South Africa’s plan to suddenly put out nine men on the boundary for Stokes all the more bizarre. Stokes had hit no fours in almost 17 overs when Roland-Jones came in, and since that Morris over of 12 he had scored 22 from 52 balls. So you had a batsman that had slowed down, a lower-order guy who could handle the bat, a bowling attack that was chipping away, a pitch still offering help, and nine guys on the boundary. It was bizarre.Stokes was on 68 when Roland Jones joined him. Thirteen overs later he had made 112, England had put on another 74, and the total had gone from par to decent.That meant that South Africa had to start well. Part of that was going to be down to Heino Kuhn.There is little doubt that Kuhn looks like he has the skill to play international cricket. He started his first-class career well, but had a dip for a few seasons that slowed him down. So when he finally got back into the form he had as a young man, he was over 30. This has been a tough series for batsmen; good bowlers and helpful pitches have made it a hard place to make your debut. Add to that du Plessis’ suggestion that “day two, evening session was probably the hardest conditions you will face in Test cricket” and Kuhn couldn’t have had a much tougher time to bat in.

“The mistakes that we made in this Test are very obvious things, so we don’t have to go away scratch our heads about what to do”Faf du Plessis

Dean Elgar had already poked at one he didn’t need to, England hadn’t bowled amazingly, but they were moving the ball and hunting. Kuhn looked composed, there were some cracking off-side shots, he was good in defence, and looked set. That is why it was so disappointing when he tried to flick a straight one across the line.Kuhn is 33; he had replaced Stephen Cook, who is 34. Replacing an older flawed player who has some Test experience with another who is almost the same age and less experienced is the sort of decision that looks like a mistake. Kuhn may be a better player than Cook, he certainly looks more naturally gifted, but Cook’s style (or lack of it) is more about getting in and holding on. Kuhn had to bat through the new ball; he had to negate the movement, he had to fight. Instead he gave it away. It wasn’t just Kuhn who did.”It’s important you fight through it and limit the damage in those sessions, and we didn’t do that,” du Plessis said. South Africa were eight wickets down at stumps.At the start of England’s second innings, Elgar received an edge from Keaton Jennings in the slip cordon. It went fast to him, but burst straight through his hands and down to the boundary. The chances that South Africa, with a crook Philander, were going to rip through England for 150 and give themselves some hope were pretty slim. But this was that moment. Instead, Jennings played the sort of innings no South African from the top order managed first time around. He fought, clawed, and all but had to cut himself out of the shark’s belly with a chainsaw.Had South Africa continued to bowl amazing, keep the pressure on, and wait for England’s fragile batting order to feel the pressure they might have been able to do some damage. But without Philander to pull them back, they bowled well for short times, and at others, they allowed England to get away. Much as they had in the first innings. Eventually they were bowling for a declaration. When that came, they had their last chance to save this game.In the first Test, JP Duminy – Test average of 32 – batted at No. 4. Of course, in a perfect, just and beautiful world, AB de Villiers would be there. But he isn’t.Chris Morris endured a tough Test with the ball•Getty ImagesEven the stars that are left are not shining brightly. Du Plessis averages 35 over the last two years. Even Hashim Amla, who blitzed the most recent IPL, averages only 36 in that time. The only other star in the line-up is Quinton de Kock, who in this series has had to move from No. 7 to No. 4 to fill shortcomings. In his 22 Tests, he has batted in seven of the 11 batting slots. The heart of this team is an incredible bowling attacking that will win them Tests even when their batsmen fail. They also have the battlers Elgar and Temba Bavuma, who are great when it’s tough. But to win consistently, they need class around them.On the fourth afternoon that class was terrible. Amla left a ball off the middle of his bat to slip. De Kock was beaten by his own footwork as much as he was a fast full one from Stokes. And du Plessis, the man who is known around the world as someone who draws Tests that no one thought could be saved, shouldered arms. He didn’t play a shot in the second innings, with his team having lost two wickets in the last two overs, he raised his arms and watched England win the Test.Du Plessis faced eight balls this match, he left four of them, and two of those got him out. That’s not just a mistake, that’s the same mistake twice. And that is what South Africa did; they didn’t just make mistakes, they consistently made the same mistakes.”The mistakes that we made in this Test are very obvious things, so we don’t have to go away scratch our heads about what to do.” That’s how du Plessis put it. Before Old Trafford there will be no head-scratching, and at Old Trafford, hopefully, there will be no head-butting.

In making their highest total in tournament finals and winning the Champions Trophy, Pakistan dished out new lows to R Ashwin and India

S Rajesh18-Jun-2017180 The margin of victory for Pakistan, the biggest in the final of any ICC ODI event. India were at the receiving end at The Oval, just as they were in Johannesburg in 2003 in the World Cup final against Australia, when they lost by 125 runs, which was the previous highest margin (in terms of runs). This is the fifth-highest margin in any final; the largest is 245, and India were at the receiving end there too, against Sri Lanka in the Coca Cola Champions Trophy in 2000.In the last two games, Pakistan were utterly dominant and thrashed two strong teams by huge margins•ESPNcricinfo Ltd73.71 The difference between Pakistan’s batting and bowling averages in the semi-finals and final of this tournament: they scored 92.16 runs per wicket, and conceded only 18.45 runs per dismissal. They scored 6.34 runs per over, and conceded only 4.59 per over. These numbers indicate their utter dominance in the two biggest games of the tournament, against two of the toughest opponents: they beat England by eight wickets with 77 balls to spare in the semi-finals, and thrashed India by 180 runs in the final.Pakistan have never made a higher total in a final•ESPNcricinfo Ltd338 Pakistan’s total, their highest in any tournament final, and their second-highest in an ODI against India. Their highest against India is 344, but that was in a chase of 350.6 Instances of both Pakistan openers passing 50 in a World Cup or Champions Trophy game. Two of those have been in successive games in this tournament: against England in Cardiff, Azhar got 76 and Fakhar made 57.Pakistan openers made the perfect start•ESPNcricinfo Ltd128 The opening stand between Azhar Ali and Fakhar Zaman, Pakistan’s first century stand for the first wicket against India in an ICC ODI event. The previous best was 84, between Aamer Sohail and Saaed Anwar, in the 1996 World Cup game in Bengaluru. It is only the second century stand for Pakistan against India in any ICC ODI tournament.114 Zaman’s score, the fourth-highest by a Pakistan batsman in a World Cup or Champions Trophy game, and the first hundred for Pakistan in the final of these tournaments.There was no doubt about who won the Fakhar v Ashwin battle•ESPNcricinfo Ltd13 Wickets for Hasan Ali, which makes him the joint leading wicket-taker in any Champions Trophy tournament. Jerome Taylor had also taken 13 in the 2006 tournament, which was held in India.6.33 Mohammad Amir’s average against Rohit Sharma in international matches. Rohit has scored 19 runs in 49 balls, and been dismissed three times. In ODIs, he has scored 18 runs in 42 balls for one dismissal, and in T20Is he has scored only one runs in seven balls, and been dismissed twice.45 Runs scored by Zaman off R Ashwin, the most runs scored by any batsman off Ashwin in an ODI. He went past Brendan Taylor’s 42 off 27 balls against Ashwin in the 2015 World Cup game in Auckland.