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'At least it can be a dead ball' – Ajinkya Rahane's plea after Chris Lynn's reprieve

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The delivery from Dhawal Kulkarni hit the stumps, but the bails stayed put, and it ran away for four runs too

ESPNcricinfo staff08-Apr-2019Rajasthan Royals captain Ajinkya Rahane wanted the ball that pinged Chris Lynn’s stumps without dislodging the bails to be treated as a dead ball, he revealed after Royals lost their home match against Kolkata Knight Riders on Sunday.Lynn was on 13 at the time, and off the 12th ball he faced – the ball after Rahul Tripathi had dropped Sunil Narine, the other batsman – Dhawal Kulkarni drew an inside edge that hit leg stump. However, the zing bails didn’t dislodge despite lighting up, and the ball ended up ricocheting to the fine-leg boundary. Lynn – and Knight Riders – awarded four runs, adding insult to the Royals’ injury.Rahane was seen having a discussion with the umpires after the incident. “The rules are the rules, but I told the umpires, ‘at least don’t give it as a boundary’. Already the T20 format is so tough for bowlers, and if you get such a situation, at least that ball can be a dead ball,” he said after Knight Riders had romped to victory by eight wickets, with 6.1 overs to spare.”That was my conversation with the umpires. But see, there is nothing to be gained from brooding about whatever is not in our control.”This was the second time in IPL 2019 that Royals had seen one of their bowlers hit the stumps but not get their man. In their match against Chennai Super Kings at Chepauk, Jofra Archer had gone through MS Dhoni and nicked the stumps before the batsman had scored a run. Dhoni went on to hit a match-winning 75 not out off 46 balls then, and on Sunday, Lynn made use of his reprieve to smash 50 off 32.”I always like to ride my luck,” Lynn told Harry Gurney on iplt20.com. “It is a T20 game and I like to go hard in the first six overs. After I inside-edged it, I heard a second noise and I thought, ‘he’s either going to catch it, or the bail’s going to come off’. But I got lucky. I told the umpire, I saw him put up byes, so I went down and he actually changed it. I’m happy to ride that luck. I might actually go to a casino tonight if there’s one here!”The loss left Royals with just two points from five matches, sitting at seventh on the table with only the winless Royal Challengers Bangalore below them, and the other six teams at least four points clear.2:08

Five reasons why Kolkata won

Rahane though, said that there was no need to panic yet.”It’s not yet late, nine games are left. And things can change quickly in this format. What has happened has happened,” Rahane said. “When you lose, you think more deeply about it. When you win, you don’t think as much. I think there’s no need to panic or brood too much about this loss.”Out of five games, this is the only one that has gone very badly for us. In the last four matches, we played well. Yes, we could have won three matches but we didn’t. But the T20 format is such that you have to take a risk somewhere and back yourself. I don’t think it’s any individual player’s fault. We win as a team and lose as a team. So we need to improve as a team. The quicker we learn, I’m sure the results will change automatically.”The slowness of the pitch at Sawai Mansingh Stadium contributed to Royals mustering only 139 for 3, but Rahane didn’t want to point fingers for the below-par total.”We thought 150-160 would be challenging. But still, if we made 140, and found it difficult to score, we can learn from that as a bowling unit,” he said. “Especially when playing at home, the quicker we adjust to the pitch in terms of what lengths and lines we should bowl, the better. Overall, there are lots of things for us to learn as a team.”We knew the pitch will be slow. We have practiced here also a lot. It’s not right to give an excuse that we can’t play on a slow pitch. Like I said, we should know as a batting unit when to take risks and when not to.”Gurney, who was the man of the match on IPL debut with 2 for 25 in four overs, also used the lack of pace to his advantage. “The pitch looked quite dry, so quite early on in my spell I bowled a cutter and saw a bit of purchase. So I knew that for the rest of my spell, a majority of my balls would be cutters,” Gurney said. “Thankfully the ball gripped and I was quite effective tonight.”

India, New Zealand remain unbeaten as rain forces another washout

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The tournament had its third abandoned match as India-New Zealand fixture was called off without even a toss

The Report by Varun Shetty13-Jun-2019India v New Zealand
As it happenedIndia and New Zealand took a point each and remained the only unbeaten teams in the tournament as rain prevented even a toss from happening at Trent Bridge. As things stood before the match, a result would have either further solidified New Zealand’s position at the top, or helped India nudge ahead of Australia into second place with a game in hand.There were large patches of damp turf in the point and midwicket regions, results of water rolling off the covers, which were on and off intermittently through the day. The sun didn’t come out all day and at the end of it, after several inspections, umpire Paul Reiffel declared at 3pm that the “weather had beaten us”.The abandonment follows an uninspiring trend this week, where two games have failed to start and one was called off less than an hour into play. The three abandoned games in this World Cup are an anomaly as far as this tournament goes, considering there were only two before this edition, since its start in 1975.Both teams would have been happy with the point, but India in particular would have liked to take some momentum from this game, given their upcoming blockbuster fixture against Pakistan on Sunday. But Virat Kohli admitted after the match that the right decision had been made.

Adam Milne proves too hot for Rockets as Will Smeed wins it at the double for Phoenix

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Belligerent opening stand with Finn Allen turns a taxing chase into a saunter at Edgbaston

George Dobell01-Aug-2021Birmingham Phoenix 145 for 4 (Allen 43, Smeed 36) beat Trent Rockets 144 for 6 (Malan 51, Milne 2-13) by six wicketsAn outstanding spell of bowling from Adam Milne and a blistering innings from Will Smeed helped Birmingham Phoenix inflict a first loss of the competition upon Trent Rockets at Edgbaston.Milne equalled the most economical analysis by any bowler delivering their full contribution of 20 deliveries in the competition to help keep Northern Rockets to a modest total of 144 on what appeared to be a fine batting track.While Dawid Malan made 51, the highest score of the match, he struggled for fluency for much of his innings. At once stage, Moeen Ali was able to bowl 10 successive deliveries for a cost of just 10 runs with Benny Howell again impressing with his control and variations.Only Alex Hales and Samit Patel scored at the rate Trent Rockets would have wanted. But Hales skied ball 44 to mid-off, the victim of a neat piece of bowling from Moeen who floated one a little wide, and without his impetus, the innings failed to ignite.In taking 59 from the first 20 balls of the reply – a record for a Powerplay in this competition even before the final five balls of the period (they only added one more in that next set) Smeed and Finn Allen soon broke the back of the run-chase with Phoenix reaching their target with six wickets and 26 deliveries to spare. Only once in the competition to date, when Manchester Originals defeated Phoenix with 27 balls remaining, has that margin been exceeded.While Trent Rockets, who won their first three matches, stay top, it’s a result that revives Birmingham Phoenix’s campaign. They move into the top four.Mean Milne

Despite bowling two sets in the Powerplay, Milne went for just 13 runs from his 20 deliveries. Bowling at a sharp pace and cramping the batters for room, Milne’s spell included 14 dot balls while he also claimed the wickets of D’Arcy Short, dismissed for a duck in the opening moments of the game, and Rashid Khan. Tom Helm’s first five balls, by contrast, cost 18 runs. It was, in many ways, the defining contribution of the match. But it’s a batter’s game and it was Smeed’s impressive innings which won the Hero of the Match award.Going according to Malan?

In an innings that provided something of a microcosm of his career, Malan top-scored for Trent Rockets. But he did so at such a run-rate that it remains debatable how valuable an innings it was. Certainly there were moments in Malan’s innings – not least when he had scored seven off his first 12 deliveries despite batting in the Powerplay – when his run-rate appeared to put pressure on his partners. Hales’ dismissal, caught at mid-on, could be put down to just such pressure.Moeen Ali had a good day as Phoenix captain•Getty Images

As so often, Malan started to make up for lost time as he innings progressed. From having scored 29 from 29, he finished with 51 from 41. But his run-out – he was the victim of a direct hit from Moeen fielding at wide mid-off – from the 91st delivery of the innings prevented him from fully cashing in on the investment he had made at the start. And when the opposition gallop to victory with more than a quarter of the allotted deliveries unused, there are bound to be questions about how well he paced his innings.The counter argument is that, without Malan, Trent Rockets may not have got anywhere near 144. This was their highest score of the competition to date, after all, and the site of Rashid, flailing like a drowning man at No. 6, and Matt Carter at No. 8, suggested their batting lacks a bit of depth.Either way, Malan’s method is sure to encourage more debate.The need for Smeed

Smeed is fast making a name for himself. Like Jos Buttler and Tom Banton, he was educated at King’s College, Taunton and like both of them, he has impressed as a young player at Somerset. But, having won a call-up in the Hundred as one of many replacement players, he had never previously opened in T20 cricket (the Hundred is officially seen as T20 for statistical purposes) and owed his opportunity to something of a hunch from Phoenix’s coach, Dan Vettori.It worked beautifully. Smeed thrashed 36 from just 13 deliveries to put his side far ahead of the run-rate at the start of their innings. At one stage, the 19-year-old took 20 from four successive balls (two sixes and two fours) from Timm van der Gugten, a man who has played almost 50 international matches. Such was the power with which he pulled and drove that he will have franchise owners around the world sitting up and taking notice. “The coach just told me to go out and have some fun,” Smeed said later. “I just kept it simple and watched the ball.”Van der Gugten, by contrast, later parried a chance from Liam Livingstone over the mid-wicket boundary for six. Sometimes it’s just not your day.Mole-eye

Moeen hadn’t scored from any of his first five deliveries. And while the pace at which Smeed and Allen had started the chase gave Moeen some sort of cushion, there was just a bit of pressure building when he defended his sixth ball only to see Patel ask for a review of a leg-before decision that had been given not out on the pitch.Multiple replays persuaded the TV umpire that ball had, indeed, hit pad before bat, at which stage Moeen’s heart must have been in his mouth. But ball-tracking technology was unavailable due to a technical error meaning the officials were obliged to stick with the on-field umpire’s decision. Moeen went on to make an increasingly fluent 26 to speed his side towards victory. It could have been a crossroads moment.Voting with their feet

Edgbaston might be seen as a potential swing state in the Hundred’s bid for success. While the ground has a good record for international ticket sales, it has never matched the London grounds (or, of late, Emirates Old Trafford) when it comes to domestic T20 sales. Only local derby matches against Worcestershire have come close to selling out in the Vitality Blast.So, to see Edgbaston close to full here felt significant. The club also reported swift sales of merchandise (a report supported by the number of spectators wearing Phoenix orange) and an eight percent increase in the number of female ticket-buyers in the tournament to date when compared to the Blast.As ever with the Hundred, you have to be a little careful with official reports. Several thousand seats were unavailable here due to the placing of the stage and because of Covid protocols. And, with plenty of beer being consumed and even Sweet Caroline making a brief appearance, it wasn’t entirely clear how ‘new’ these spectators really are. But a crowd of 17,479 for a domestic cricket match outside London is impressive and suggests this competition is starting to gain some traction.

Kent sign Wes Agar for four Championship matches

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Australian quick available from next week as club await June arrival of India’s Arshdeep Singh

ESPNcricinfo staff14-Apr-2023Kent have signed Australian quick Wes Agar for four LV= Insurance County Championship matches while they await the arrival of India’s Arshdeep Singh.Agar, the 26-year-old right-arm fast bowler who has made two ODI appearances for his country, represented Australia A against New Zealand A, dismissing three of the opposition’s top-order batters on his way to innings figures of 4 for 56 earlier this month.In the past two years, Agar has taken 41 wickets in 11 first-class matches. He was named the Bradman Young Cricketer of the Year in 2020, awarded to Australia’s most promising first-class player under the age of 24.Agar will be available to play until May 21, covering home matches against Essex and Hampshire and away fixtures with Middlesex at Lord’s and Surrey at The Kia Oval before Arshdeep arrives in June.”This is an exciting new challenge for me,” Agar said. “Playing county cricket has always been a dream of mine and I’m excited to be a Kent player and thankful for the opportunity. With a win already under our belt this year, I hope to be a part of more victories in my time here.”Related

  • Arshdeep Singh joins Kent for Championship

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Kent defeated Northamptonshire in their opening match of the season last week while their ongoing Division One clash at Warwickshire was one of several Championship games delayed by rain on the second morning on Friday, with the hosts 367 for 3 overnight after being sent in to bat and punishing a depleted attack missing injured seamers Nathan Gilchrist and Grant Stewart. Matt Quinn, the New Zealand quick also broke down early in his new-ball spell before returning to action after the lunch break.Paul Downton, Kent’s director of cricket, said: “Wes is an exciting, wicket-taking bowler known for bowling a ‘heavy ball’. He offers us a point of difference that will complement our core bowling group at the club and will help us in our efforts to take 20 wickets in each of our next four matches in the Championship.”Kent recently announced that they had signed Arshdeep for five Championship matches between June 11 and July 28. He and Agar join Kane Richardson, the Australia pace bowler who will play in the Vitality Blast, and South African spin-bowling allrounder George Linde, who is in the second half of his two-year all-format deal, as overseas players at the club.

Jos Buttler 'not fussed at all' by ODI series thrashing in Australia

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England’s white-ball captain calls on boards to keep all cricket “relevant”

ESPNcricinfo staff22-Nov-2022Jos Buttler, England’s limited-overs captain, admitted he was “not fussed at all” about losing 3-0 to Australia in an ODI series he described as a good example of bilateral international cricket losing its relevance.The series, which was not part of the ODI Super League, was originally due to help England’s preparations for their defence of the 50-over World Cup in India, following on from three T20Is which would serve as the curtain-raiser to the Australian summer.But after the T20 World Cup in Australia was postponed from 2020 to 2022 due to Covid, the tour was split in two, and the T20I series was a warm-up for that tournament. With the 2023 ODI World Cup in India postponed from February-March to October-November, the ODI series became an afterthought and was effectively fulfilled due to contractual obligations with broadcasters.Related

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The series started only four days after England lifted the T20 World Cup and with their Test squad in Abu Dhabi preparing for a three-match series against Pakistan, England fielded a team that was barely half-strength. They lost all three ODIs and were thrashed by a record margin, 221 runs, in Tuesday’s dead-rubber at the MCG.”It was always going to be a tough series for us, coming off the back of the World Cup,” Buttler said, speaking to the BBC. “It’s just been a few games too far and fair play to Australia, they have outplayed us. It’s not part of the ranking system [Super League] so there’s not as much on the games as there would be.”Any time England play Australia you want to put up good performances, but it’s just been hard. I’m not fussed at all about the results, to be honest. We’ve got exactly what we wanted from [the tour to] Australia.”Steve Harmison, the former England fast bowler, described the series as “meaningless cricket, played in a meaningless way” while working as a pundit for BT Sport, and Buttler implored administrators to “take care” of the global game.”Just to take care of it, find a way to keep it all relevant,” Buttler said when asked for his message to cricket boards. “Maybe the ICC tournaments should be a little bit more spread out: it gives you a little bit more time to prepare and it makes them probably a bit more special when they do come around as well.”The landscape of cricket has changed dramatically over the last few years, and we’re in a different time. Lots of people are talking about how you keep bilateral cricket relevant and I think this series is a good example of how probably not to do it.”I think one of the biggest things is having overlapping series. We’ve got a group of players preparing for a Test series that shortly starts in Pakistan and we’ve got a team playing here at the same time. In the new year, a Test match [in New Zealand] finishes one day, and an ODI series starts the very next day in Bangladesh.”I feel a bit for the players, to be honest – the ones who are young and coming into the game at the moment. You want to play all formats and I don’t think the schedule really gives you that chance at the minute.”

Siddle's decade of toil amid batting decline

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Australia have already underestimated Siddle’s value in helpful conditions once, and to do so again would be to pay scant regard to the bowler who has had to cope with far many more average teams around him

Daniel Brettig in Abu Dhabi18-Oct-2018On days like the third in Abu Dhabi it was very plausible to wonder aloud that old question – who’d be a fast bowler? Over the past decade, Australian pacemen have become quite used to the “grin and bear it” posture after the batsmen have fallen in heaps too regular for their compatriots’ liking.It just so happens that Peter Siddle’s entire Test career has lasted that same decade, starting 10 years ago this week with the hard slog of the 2008 Mohali Test. Resplendent in a coral necklace, Siddle struck Gautam Gambhir on the helmet with his first ball and snared Sachin Tendulkar as his first wicket near the end of that same day, on the way to experiencing a hefty defeat as Ricky Ponting’s team effectively gave up global supremacy for the first time since Mark Taylor’s team won it in the West Indies in 1995.Siddle has played in a total of 63 Tests for 31 wins. Only eight of those have taken place overseas, and none of them in Asia. So it was not without plenty of knowledge that Siddle summed up the task faced by Australia’s bowlers in the wake of a first innings that cobbled a mere 145, turning Pakistan’s mediocre 282 into a vaunted score.”We tried a few different theories at different stages, we tried a little bit last night, different field placements and bowling different areas. It does make it hard when they are so far in front and they’re controlling the game. It does make it hard,” Siddle said. “Today we went back to just trying to dry up the runs, just trying to build up a bit of pressure and go from there.”It was a long day but it worked for us in the end, we weren’t getting a lot of benefit from the wicket, there wasn’t a lot happening there. But credit to Pakistan as well, they batted superbly to the situation of the game, they had time and they had a lot of momentum coming from their bowling innings. It was hard work but credit to all the boys, everyone that got the ball in their hand, dug in, tried their best.”We fiddled with the field here and there but we tried nearly everything we could. It’s just one of those days but like I said to get them in the position at the end of the day, whether they were going to declare or not, we don’t know but to be able to get those last few wickets quickly, at least put them under some pressure with the decision they were going to make.”Such small, incremental wins are about all a fielding side can hope for in these situations, where often even first innings parity still grants the team batting third the chance to drive the game and set it up for a final day pursuit of wickets while the pitch deteriorates. This is particularly true in the second of back-to-back matches, and the toll was as clear as the laboured walk of Mitchell Starc, now nursing a tight left hamstring, and the absence of Usman Khawaja, needing scans on his left knee after spending all of day three off the field after a mishap during warm-up.Others have felt the pinch of short turnarounds, whether it was James Pattinson tearing a side muscle at Lord’s in 2013 after another first innings tumble by the batsmen, or Siddle himself – missing the Perth Test against South Africa in 2012 because he was so sore from the Adelaide draw preceding it, or suffering a back injury in Perth in 2016 after being rushed back from another stress fracture sustained in New Zealand earlier the same year. In that light, he spoke empathetically of Starc, noting how the left-armer stayed on the field throughout, albeit as a slip fielding ring-in for much of it.”He’s not 100% but the good thing was he stayed out in the field, he’s bowled throughout this match when needed, so he’s a work in progress with how he’s travelling, but he still ran around in the field,” Siddle said. “We’ll just be assessing him in coming days, see how he pulls up tomorrow from spending all that time out there. At this stage a similar story is we don’t know until the next couple days how he’s assessed, but it was just good to see him out in the field and he still put in when he needed.”He’s pretty quiet and a pretty strong character so when things have popped up, he tries and keeps it pretty low-key. All he was thinking about was staying out in the field, backing up the boys, being out there with the lads and being able to contribute as much as he could. I don’t actually know. He’s kept it pretty close to his chest. It’s just good to see him out there. Obviously you know he’s struggling a little bit, but to see him still fight and bowl when needed, I think it shows good character that he still wants to put in for the team and be out there for the boys.”Unsurprisingly and not unfairly, Siddle pointed to the match situations he had bowled in when alerted to the unflattering comparison between his three wickets for the series at 56 runs apiece, and the 12 at 11.08 scooped by Mohammad Abbas. “He’s been able to bowl when his team has been out in front and we’ve been under pressure,” Siddle said. “It does make it a lot easier to bowl when the opposition is under pressure. His team has put him in those positions though.”That’s been the tough thing for us, that we’ve had to be very defensive, we’ve been under a lot of pressure when we’ve gone out there and faced him. Credit to him, he’s bowled superbly, he’s put the ball in the right areas, he’s been patient, he’s been consistent. He’s had a lot of success throughout. Credit to him. He’s done a lot better than a lot of fast bowlers have done in these two venues. Credit has to go to him that he’s worked hard and he’s done the job for his team.”At 33, Siddle was unabashedly chosen by the national selectors for his experience and hardiness, with his recent emergence as a T20 operator rewarded by a call-up as cover for Starc in the subsequent white-ball series to follow this Test. But it should not be forgotten that his re-emergence as a contender for international duty arrived via his expert use of the Dukes ball for Essex in England, in conditions so far removed from those of the UAE as to have him bowling in a beanie at times.Eight months out from next year’s Ashes tour, it would be easy to use this series as a reason to discard Siddle, particularly with a bevy of younger fast men trying to elbow each other out of the way for a Test berth in the early rounds of the Sheffield Shield. Aside from Starc, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, current tourists Brendan Doggett and Michael Neser will compete with Chris Tremain, Jason Behrendorff, Nathan Coulter-Nile and Joe Mennie, among others.But Australia have already underestimated Siddle’s value in helpful conditions once – failing to call him up in place of the retired Ryan Harris until the story of the 2015 Ashes series had already been written, in an error acknowledged by the former captain Michael Clarke. To do so again would be to pay scant regard to the loyal service of a bowler who has had to cope with far many more average teams around him than strong ones.

Birmingham left hoping for Northants favour

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Birmingham’s defeat of Lancashire leaves them needing Northants to beat Yorkshire on Thursday night to keep their quarter-final hopes alive

ECB Reporters Network15-Aug-2018
ScorecardBirmingham Bears preserved their hopes of qualifying for the Vitality Blast quarter-finals with a comfortable seven-wicket win over Lancashire Lightning at Edgbaston.Lancashire, already assured a place in the last eight, chose to bat but were bowled out for 102 with only Danny Lamb passing 20.Olly Hannon-Dalby inflicted most damage with 4-0-20-4 although critical pressure was imposed by spinners Jeetan Patel (4-1-15-1) and Josh Poysden (4-0-18-1). With Birmingham lacking Henry Brookes and Olly Stone, both injured, and Chris Woakes, back in the England side, Hannon-Dalby did his utmost to disguise their lack of pace up front with subtle variations of pace.Birmingham then eased to 105 for 3 with 35 balls to spare after openers Ed Pollock (36, 24) and Ian Bell (34, 36 balls) added 68 from 54 balls.The Bears now need a favour from Northants Steelbacks on Thursday. If the Steelbacks beat Yorkshire at Wantage Road, the Bears could still qualify with victory over Worcestershire Rapids in the big derby at Edgbaston on Friday.On that match does the Lightning’s quest for a home quarter-final now also hinge. A Rapids victory would mean they claim a home quarter, consigning Lancashire to travel in the processThe Lightning innings started smoothly enough, 22 runs arriving from the first 17 balls, but then slumped to 59 for six. Hannon-Dalby started the collapse with two wickets in four balls, Alex Davies and Karl Brown caught at extra cover and mid on respectively.Dane Vilas lifted Aaron Thomason to deep point, Arron Lilley became Grant Elliott’s 18th victim of this year’s Blast when he sliced to short third man and Josh Bohannon the 19th when he was trapped in front.Patel and Poysden increased the pressure, the latter bowling Steven Croft with a textbook leg-break. Catches from wicketkeeper Tim Ambrose, fresh from signing a contract extension at Edgbaston, did for James Faulkner, Lamb and Mark Watt as the Lightning lower-order flailed in vain before Hannon-Dalby removed Matt Parkinson to seal a personal T20 best.Bell and Pollock made rapid inroads into the small target. Bell, in the T20 form of his life, has become the Bears’ highest ever scorer in the format during this year’s tournament and again batted with class and composure. Pollock, under no pressure to go too hard in pursuit of such a meagre total, played with controlled aggression and sent the score past 50 in the eighth over with 16 from three successive balls from Lilley.Pollock perished to a catch at long on, just as the Bears’ first ever T20 ten-wicket win loomed, and Bell chipped Parkinson to mid-off but victory soon followed to put the Bears’ fans firmly in the Steelbacks’ camp tomorrow.

Kent bewitch Somerset yet again to qualify

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Kent beat Somerset for the 11th successive time in a high-scoring affair at Canterbury – a remarkable sequence which put them alongside Somerset in the knockout stages

ECB Reporters Network16-Aug-2018
ScorecardKent Spitfires downed South Group leaders Somerset by five runs in a high-scoring thriller at Canterbury to book their place in the last eight of this year’s Vitality Blast T20.Kent’s seventh south group win inflicted Somerset’s fourth defeat in their final game of the campaign and extended the West Country county’s woeful, winless T20 run against Kent to 11 matches dating back to 2011.Batting first, Kent posted their highest short-form score against Somerset and equalled their best ever T20 total, matching their 231 for 7 scored against Surrey at The Oval in 2015.Somerset chased manfully throughout, and needed a six off the last ball to tie only for Mitch Claydon to send down a near perfect yorker to seal the triumph.

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Kent captain Sam Billings led the run spree with an unbeaten 57 from 35 balls, but Sean Dickson’s cameo 20 from nine balls and a belligerent 42 from 22 deliveries by Alex Blake after a sloppy display in the field by the south group leaders.With their place in the last eight already assured, Somerset elected to bowl after winning the toss, but Jerome Taylor’s second over conceded a brace of boundaries to Daniel Bell-Drummond and 14 in total.Joe Denly, Kent’s leading T20 run-getter, plundered a straight six in Jamie Overton’s first over that ended with a deft late cut for four, as the hosts, aided by six Somerset wides within five overs, raced to 50 after only 4.3 overs.Taylor had Denly caught at short third man for 26 from the penultimate delivery of the powerplay to make it 67 for one then, with 37 off 21 balls to his name, Bell-Drummond pushed inside the line of a Max Waller legspinner that clipped off stump.Waller and Roelof van der Merwe, the slow left-armer, stemmed the flow of Spitfires’ boundaries until Heino Kuhn broke the stranglehold with a reverse sweep for six against Johann Myburgh as Kent reached the mid-point on 99 for 2.Kuhn perished attempting to repeat the shot against a Waller full toss, picking out Corey Anderson at point, but Blake opened his boundary account with a straight six off Waller and greeted Overton’s return with another maximum into the retirement complex adjacent to the ground.Waller finished his stint with 2 for 29 as Kent reached 150 in their 16th over with Blake and Billings posting a 50 stand in 4.4 overs.Billings unfurled his ramps, paddles and pulls to collect three successive boundaries in a Taylor over that cost 25 in total, but the partnership ended for 82 when Blake was superbly caught overhead by Overton at long-off for 42.Kent’s skipper reached his third 50 of the campaign from 31 balls, Taylor was taken out of the attack for his second beamer and the visitors conceded six penalty runs for failing to bowl their overs in the alloted time.Chasing 232 at 11.55 an over, Somerset lost Myburgh after 15 balls to a stunning over-the-shoulder catch by Imran Qayyum that gave T20 debutant Grant Stewart his maiden wicket.Steve Davies and Peter Trego, the former Kent allrounder, clattered a quickfire 59 in five overs before Trego holed out to deep square leg then Davies blotted his copybook by chipping Qayyum’s second ball of the night straight to extra cover.Qayyum conceded a huge leg-side six to James Hildreth as Somerset reached 102 for 3after 10 overs but, with the required rate rising to almost 13, Corey Anderson heaved against Calum Haggett to see Billings cling onto a skier running back towards third man.With 82 needed from 30 balls, James Hildreth hooked a Mitch Claydon bouncer to long leg and despite late clubbing from Gregory and Tom Abell Somerset just fell short.

Smriti Mandhana: 'I'll be thinking about pulling out of WBBL'

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

India vice-captain, who has been on the road since the start of 2022, is looking for a break so she can be fit and ready for her national team

Vishal Dikshit12-Sep-2022India vice-captain Smriti Mandhana is considering pulling out of the Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) to manage her workload and to keep herself fit for international commitments.For Mandhana, 2022 started with an ODI tour of New Zealand in February in the lead up to the ODI World Cup in the same country in March. That was followed by domestic white-ball tournaments in India in April and May before the Indian team played ODIs and T20Is in Sri Lanka in Jun-July. Later in July and August, India played five T20Is in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham where they finished with a silver medal, and Mandhana has been in the UK ever since, first for the Women’s Hundred to represent Southern Brave who finished runners-up, and then for the international white-ball games against England, which started with a T20I series on September 10.”I think more than the mental part, it’s about managing a little bit of physical part,” Mandhana said in a press conference from Derby. “Definitely I’ll be thinking about pulling out of WBBL because I don’t want to miss out on playing for India or having any niggles when I play for India because I want to give my 100% when I play international cricket. So definitely I’ll be thinking about playing or pulling out of Big Bash.”Mandhana took pains to add that she wasn’t really complaining about the volume of cricket she’s had to play because this is the kind of schedule women cricketers have wanted for years.”I have been on the road for a while now,” she said. “Post the one-day World Cup, I have been on the road with the domestic and the tournaments you mentioned [the Sri Lanka tour, the Commonwealth Games, the Women’s Hundred]. I just try to tell myself that because of Covid we haven’t really played a lot of cricket and we really hoped that we came back and start playing cricket.”And now I can’t be complaining that we have a lot of cricket on the platter. As a woman player we always wanted this sort of schedule for us. I’m really happy to be playing so much cricket and I’ve had my family over, like my mom is over here and she was here for the Hundred as well. So that also helps to be in a good mindset and the team-mates have been just amazing. It feels like we’re a family together.”India have a pretty packed schedule coming up. As per the new Future Tours Programme – a first of its kind for women’s cricket – India wrap up their series against England on September 24 and immediately fly out to Bangladesh for the Asia Cup which runs from October 1 to 16.The WBBL would have started by then – Mackay hosts the opening game on October 13 – and will go on till the end of November. India will host Australia for five T20Is in December following which they fly out to South Africa in January 2023 for a T20I tri-series involving the hosts and West Indies. February marks the start of the women’s T20 World Cup.There is no respite even after that. The women’s domestic season in India has been brought forward in 2023 to ensure the month of March remains completely free. That’s when the BCCI plans to hold the inaugural women’s IPL. It will be a standalone tournament, leading into the men’s edition.India women may get a break in April-May before they go on the road again, touring Bangladesh in June-July for three ODIs and as many T20Is. Then, they’ll welcome South Africa in September for three ODIs and three T20Is, New Zealand in October for the same number of games, England in December for a Test and three T20Is, and Australia in December-January for a Test, three ODIs, and three T20Is. It’s all part of a bumper home season for India in 2023-24.It is in light of such a busy calendar that Mandhana feels as her captain Harmanpreet Kaur’s does: India need a sports psychologist travelling with them.”Harman rightly pointed out…we had a psychologist Mugdha ma’am with us during the World Cup and she helped a lot of girls,” Mandhana said. “The way the cricket schedule is right now, many girls will benefit from such a mentor or psychologist in the team. I agree with Harman that such a move will help a lot of girls in the team.”Mandhana pulling out of the WBBL won’t be the first instance of a high-profile player taking a break in the women’s game. Katherine Brunt was rested for the ongoing series against India “with a view to maximising her mental and physical recovery off the back of what has been an intense year so far” and her wife Nat Sciver also withdrew saying, “I am very emotionally fatigued.”

Debutant Jason Sangha, Daniel Sams floor Melbourne Stars

by n8rngtd.top Uncategorized

After Sangha smashed an unbeaten 36-ball 63, Sams took 3 for 5 in the rain-affected game

The Report by Sam Perry21-Dec-2018A first innings half-century from 19-year old Jason Sangha and an all-round performance from Daniel Sams propelled Sydney Thunder to victory over Melbourne Stars in Canberra. In a rain-affected fixture that eventually saw the Stars requiring 90 from eight overs for a win, none of the power hitters from the Melbourne franchise managed to get going, after skillful bowling from Gurinder Sandhu, Chris Green and Sams restricted Stars to just 74.Watson and Buttler set the platform, Zampa turns the screwsAfter being sent in by the visitors, Thunder openers were off to a fast start, with Shane Watson unleashing a characteristic barrage of brutal, balanced cuts and drives, while his partner, Jos Buttler, cut and pulled with equal ferocity. Neither Michael Beer nor Jackson Coleman were any match for them, as they propelled the to 38 from the opening four overs, before Buttler eventually fell to Adam Zampa at the close of Powerplay.Zampa’s first over halted Thunder’s momentum immediately. He ended his first over with 1 for 1 after picking up the dangerous Buttler, floating a slow wrong’un that beat Buttler all ends up. Buttler first advanced, then stopped, and eventually found himself too far away from the ball, reaching for it as spun past his bat, cannoning into the stumps.Stars consolidate before Sangha and Sams pull awayAfter Zampa applied the brake, captain Glenn Maxwell introduced Nepal international Sandeep Lamichhane into the attack. The 19-year old legpsinner started brilliantly, accounting for Watson in his second delivery. Lamichhane tossed one up fractionally outside off, and Watson could only launch it over long on, where it was taken by a leaping Nick Larkin.In the final ball of the over, he zipped another one in, enticing Callum Ferguson to work across the spin to the legside. It gripped, grabbed the leading edge, and popped back to Lamichhane, who took the simplest of catches to finish his opening BBL over with two wickets, conceding only three runs.It brought England Test captain Joe Root to the crease. While his team-mates had struggled to read Lamichhane, Root swept confidently, regularly countering his variations, before capitalising on anything short. He was eventually undone by Zampa after attempting a pre-meditated slog sweep, skying it straight up and into the safe hands of wicketkeeper, Ben Dunk, for 18.He shared a steady partnership of 40 from 29 balls with Sangha, who stood out with the bat. The BBL debutant impressed with his range of scoring, frequently extracting maximum value when the spinners dropped short, heaving the ball over the ropes with striking bat speed.He accelerated when joined by Sams, who also made an immediate impact, muscling two sixes over midwicket early on to set up his innings before finishing with 34 from 21 balls. Sangha hit four sixes and four boundaries himself, eventually making 65 from 36 balls, and in turn becoming the youngest player in BBL history to make a half-century. Thunder ended their innings with an imposing 181 for 5.Weather wreaks havoc, Stars fall shortA significant rain delay had a major effect on the target, and the inexperienced bowling duo of Sam Rainbird and Nathan McAndrew won the opening exchange. Conceding only 14 from the opening two overs, it left Stars with 76 to get from 36 balls, with Travis Dean and Maxwell at the crease. Dean fell to Sams straight away, bringing Marcus Stoinis to the crease. Maxwell couldn’t make his mark on Sams, eventually chipping him to deep midwicket at the end of Sams’ excellent first over. Dwayne Bravo was next, with 70 required off 30 balls.In the next over, Stoinis holed out at long off, Sangha taking a fine catch skirting the rope. Green’s tight bowling in that over pushed the asking rate further.While Bravo was able to pull Sandhu for six early, a succession of slower bouncers did the trick, with Bravo caught on the square leg fence late in the over.From there, neither Evan Gulbis nor Nick Larkin could make an impression on the target, with the asking rate ballooning out to 33 from the final over. Despite a late flurry from Larkin, Thunder prevailed comfortably and deservedly, ultimately managing the wet conditions better than their opponents.