February 1, 2017 issue
Cricket
Jasprit Bumrah lived up to his billing as a death-overs specialist, defending eight runs in the final over as India completed a thrilling five-run victory on Sunday (January 29) to level the three-match series 1-1. India posted 144 on a sluggish wicket at the VCA Stadium in Nagpur and were heading for defeat after a 52-run fourth wicket stand between Joe Root and Ben Stokes before Ashish Nehra (3 for 28) and Bumrah's (2 for 20) expert death bowling helped India defend 41 off the final five overs.
England had moved firmly into the ascendancy when Jos Buttler hit 12 runs off Nehra's final three deliveries to reduce the equation to a very gettable eight runs off the final over. Joe Root (38) was adjudged LBW off the first ball of the final over despite replays showing that the star England batsman had inside-edged the Bumrah delivery on to his legs. Moeen Ali turned the strike over to allow Buttler to finish off the game, but the big hitting England wicketkeeper missed a slower one and was then castled by a delivery that skidded through. Chris Jordan swung and missed but scampered across for a bye to leave Moeen with an unenviable task of having to hit a last-ball six to win the game. He missed the wide full toss, much to the relief of the 11 Indian players on the field and their 30000-strong supporters.
For a second game in a row, India struggled with the bat, especially with the surface playing true to its recent reputations. KL Rahul found a good game to find form after a series of no shows, slamming a 47-ball 71 to power India to what eventually turned out to be a match-winning total.
If there were still lingering doubts about what Nagpur had on offer, Eoin Morgan's early moves after winning the toss made it clear. England did a Liam swap and handed the left-spinner Dawson the first over of the match. India's reading of the pitch wasn't too far off, although they removed a spinner - Parvez Rasool - to accommodate another, Amit Mishra.
Resisting the temptation to play Rishabh Pant meant Virat Kohli needed to assume the role of aggressor. He had a highly fortuitous start, top-edging a pull off Tymal Mills and then surviving what looked an absolutely plumb LBW appeal off Jordan. But just as he began to find his range, picking Mills off for successive boundaries including an incredulous backfoot punch over long-off for six, Jordan deceived the Indian captain with a slower ball and had him misting a lofted shot to mid-on.
Kohli's little cameo allowed India to reel off 46 runs in the powerplay but the arrival of spin sent them back once more. Moeen Ali, as in the Kanpur game, was at the heart of yet another middle-overs choke. And Adil Rashid, given an over this time, was equally up to the task with both the surface and the boundary lengths proving to be a trustworthy friend.
The duo gave away only 11 from their first three, with Rashid striking off his fourth ball to dismiss Raina with a googly. Yuvraj Singh then endured a troubled stay in the middle, reminiscent of his innings in the World T20 final of 2014. He got his first run off his seventh ball before a failed attempt at a sweep ended his 12-ball stay for four runs.
Dawson wasn't as effective with Rahul taking a particular liking to the left-hander in the 12th over, peppering the on side with a four and a six. But while Rahul contrived to propel the Indian total onward by completing a 32-ball 50, the new batsmen struggled for timing in the face of some excellent death bowling from the returning seamers. Manish Pandey was left increasingly frustrated by the lack of pace on offer with Mills and Stokes using the change-ups to great effect. Dhoni walked in at the fall of Rahul's wicket and played seven of the 16 remaining deliveries for only five runs as India finished their innings with an underwhelming final five overs, where they scored only 36 runs and lost five wickets in the process.
England began watchfully as India followed the visitors' example to open with spin. But both Jason Roy and Sam Billings weren't to be tied down for too long. The duo picked up a six apiece in a 15-run third over from Yuzvendra Chahal. But Nehra brought India into the contest with a double strike, dismissing both the openers off successive deliveries. Billings was hurried into a pull by a surprise bouncer before Roy was done in by a ball that stopped on him.
Joe Root held one end together, keeping the scoreboard ticking along by resisting the urge to attack the Indian spinners. Morgan plodded around for a 23-ball 19 before hitting Amit Mishra straight to deep midwicket. The legspinner celebrated a wicket off the very next ball when he cleaned up Ben Stokes only for the celebrations to be cut short by an overstepping transgression.
Mishra's lapse cost India 38 runs off 27 balls and potentially the match as Stokes set about rebuilding England's chase along with Root. The Durham all-rounder targeted Suresh Raina's (0 for 30) final over, clubbing a six and a four to reduce the equation to 52 off 36. From there on England were in complete control until India's seamers returned. The 37-year-old Nehra bowled a miserly 17th over, claiming the big wicket of Stokes with a slower one and despite conceding 16 off his 28 runs in his final over, his bowling partner ensured India left Nagpur with a smile and the series still in the balance
Brief scores: India 144/8 - 20 ov (KL Rahul 71, Manish Pandey 30; Chris Jordan 3-22) beat England 139/6 - 20 ov (Joe Root 38, Ben Stokes 38; Ashish Nehra 3-28, Jasprit Bumrah 2-20) by 5 runs.
The Manchester-based club have signed both Chanderpaul and South Africa wicket-keeper/batsman Dane Vilas in a bid to bolster their top order during the upcoming 2017 English season.
Only Brian Lara has scored more Test runs for the West Indies than Guyana star Chanderpaul who scored 11,867 runs and 30 centuries in 164 matches.
He has agreed a one-year contract, while 31-year-old Vilas has signed a two-year deal with Lancashire.
Both players have joined Lancashire as non-overseas players on 'Kolpak' contracts, a move which effectively ends Vilas's hopes of playing for South Africa again in the immediate future, with Chanderpaul having already retired from international duty.
Lancashire, seventh in the First Division of England's first-class County Championship last term, will look to their new duo to help fill the gap left by the departure from Old Trafford in recent seasons of South Africa's Ashwell Prince and Alviro Petersen.
Prince retired in 2015 while Petersen was given a two-year ban by Cricket South Africa in December for attempting to cover-up a match-fixing scandal.
Gritty left-hander Chanderpaul previously played for Lancashire in 2010, scoring two hundreds and five fifties in eight first-class matches for the Red Rose county.
"I can’t wait to return back to Lancashire this summer. I thoroughly enjoyed playing for the club in 2010," said Chanderpaul in a club statement. "I'm looking forward to passing on some of my experience to the younger players in the squad."
The 68-year old described the highly poor performance of the Test and one day teams as ‘alarming,’ saying back-to-back defeats raised several questions over the team management and there is a need of proper surgery.
“Poor fielding and running between the wickets are main reasons behind the defeats, while performance of coach, selection committee and players are also highly questionable,” he said.
Pakistan were blanked 3-0 in Tests, while they have to face 4-1 defeat in the ODI series.
“During the one-day series, Australia made several changes, but we [Pakistan] didn’t give chance to fast bowler Rahat Ali even in a single match and kept relying on Mohammad Amir – who has failed to deliver,” the ex-paceman said and added that captain Azhar Ali failed to utilise players properly.
“During first four one-dayers, Azhar depended on three fast bowlers, and in the last one he came up with four fast bowlers only to face a mountain 370-run target,” he said.
Talking about Misbah-ul-Haq’s performance, Sarfraz said: “Misbah badly failed as a player and captain. He made only 76 runs in three Tests. What can I say on these scores? This performance is a matter of concern, he [Misbah] should have announced his resignation before the start of third Test, but still he is sticking.”
He said that a cricketer like Misbah, who contributed a lot in the past, will have to request for a farewell Test. “I don’t know why he didn’t quit before the Sydney Test, the 43-year-old should have resigned honourably,” he said.
To a query, he said that the performance of former South African coach Mickey Arthur is highly questionable.
“What results has [the coach] produced during New Zealand and Australia tours?” he asked and added that for better results, the team management will have to go for a domestic coach who could properly guide players in native language and could easily identify the talent in domestic circuit.
“I fail to understand why the team management opted for foreign coach since we have several greats of Pakistan cricket. Why are their expertise not utilized?” he questioned.
Sarfraz said that it is high time for the government to look into the matter for bringing improvement in cricket since as a nation we could not afford such shameful defeats in future.
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had invited West Indies to Lahore for the two games, on consecutive days, after the Pakistan Super League (PSL) final, which might be held in Lahore on March 9.
However, Shaharyar Khan, the PCB chairman, said on Saturday (January 14) that the plan has been cancelled. "The West Indies board have conveyed to us verbally that the thing is off," AFP reported him as saying. "The West Indies players' union is not willing, so at the moment they have refused."
With the league expected to get underway in the first week of August, Guardian Media reported that talks are in progress with a potential buyer from India but that nothing is concrete just yet. CPL has been pumping money into the product since the inception in 2014 and is yet to turn around a profit.
What they have done though is create a product that is now a viable one and a sale at this point in time could fetch them a handsome amount, to offset the funds they would have pumped into the league.
Only last year, all six teams were picked up by owners and prior to this CPL had to bankroll the teams that had no owners. This cost a handsome amount and with regional governments not coming on board as before because of the current economic climate in the Caribbean, the business model has been struggling.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Damian O’donohue said that last year would have been a profitable one for the CPL but it was not. He mentioned prior to last year’s tournament that CPL had already invested US$20 million.
He added that even in the long term a realistic profit will be two to three million a year.
With the help of Indian investment the CPL has moved on from humble beginnings, when the marquee sponsors besides Digicel were an electronics store called Courts and a skin tonic called Limacol. The tournament has now attracted much juicier endorsement from Hero Motocorp, the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles.
That the 2015 trophy was lifted by the Trinidad & Tobago Red Steel was convenient for organisers as that franchise was recently acquired by the owners (Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan among them) of Kolkata Knight Riders, one of the IPL sides that is as yet unaffected by the current corruption saga hampering that league.
final-over thriller
three crucial strikes.
Every once in a while you get days like these in professional sport. Days of never-ending momentum swings and logic-defying occurrences. It was a Sunday when the overwhelming favourite and reigning top seed crashed out of the Australian open in the fourth round. A day when a 35-year-old former champion, his best days supposedly behind him, found juice in his post-op knee to outlast a player eight years his junior in a five-setter.
So, a couple of hours later, when Virat Kohli left midway in a tall chase, you couldn't help but silently marvel at the fickle nature of sport. Then Yuvraj Singh and MS Dhoni followed their captain to the pavilion, leaving a chase of 321 to the relatively inexperienced heads of Jadhav and Hadrik Pandya. But Pandya was in the middle of an irrational day himself – a day when a rank loosener down the leg side fetched him a wicket and the outside edge of his bat was prepared to do all his bidding to reverse India's middle-overs stagnation. But, even his 3 for 45 and a 56 of 43 in a 104-run stand with the gutsy Jadhav couldn't prevent India from going down. For even Pandya's fortune finished second only to Ben Stokes's persistence.
The Durham all-rounder was at the heart of everything that went well for England on the day – starting with the visitors scoring 58 off the final five to the all-important 99th over of the match. And obviously that Kohli dismissal for 55.
One of the recurring themes of the series for England, to borrow from their skipper Eoin Morgan, had been 'those 20 extra first innings runs'. In Pune and Cuttack, they finished on the wrong side of that imaginary mark. They had Stokes to thank for reversing that trend in Kolkata. Even on a spicy Eden surface with a generous smattering of grass, the visitors were heading towards a sub-par total when Pandya's middle-overs strikes reduced them to 246 for 6 at the end of the 43rd over. Then Stokes blitzed four fours and two sixes to score a 34-ball half-century, finishing unbeaten on a 39-ball 57 to power the visitors well-beyond the 300-run mark.
His next act on the day came when Kohli, a strangely tetchy one this time, had survived a drop chance to purr along to his 39th ODI fifty. Just when the Indian captain had booked himself for the long haul, Stokes had him caught behind playing an uncharacteristic on-the-up drive. Kohli's dismissal, as early as the 20th over of the chase, after another opening failure – one that saw Ajinkya Rahane coming in for Shikhar Dhawan – was the body blow to India's chances.
Nobody gave Jadhav this script. He added 104 for the seventh wicket, pulling with authority even when England's seamer's ploy to bowl on a length and outside the off stump reduced him to half his potential. But when dew began to have a greater say at the end of the innings, two of India's newly designated finishers rode their luck in an earnest bid to extend England's misery on the tour. Even as Jake Ball (2 for 56) bowled intelligently, the equation had reduced to 45 off 27. And then Stokes made yet another telling impact. Pandya ran out of luck and was castled before an over-eager R Ashwin skied a length delivery to short mid-wicket. With 23 to win off the final two, Stokes gave away only seven, paving the way for a memorable finale.
Earlier in the day, India had fought back well through the middle phase of England's innings after Jason Roy scored his third consecutive half-century off the series in a 98-run opening stand with the recalled Sam Billings. Joe Root's absence, out with a groin strain, had little effect on the batting-heavy side with Jonny Bairstow filling in with a chanceless 56. But like in the run defence, it was Stokes who dealt the blows that mattered most. The result had little bearing on the series outcome following the reverses at Cuttack and Pune but it was a cathartic end to the match at a venue that wasn't kind to Stokes on his previous visit.
Brief Scores: England 321/8 in 50 overs (Jason Roy 65, Ben Stokes 57*, Jonny Bairstow 56; Hardik Pandya 3-49) beat India 316/9 in 50 overs (Kedar Jadhav 90, Hardik Pandya 56; Ben Stokes 3-63) by five runs.
Latham (41) and de Grandhomme (33) took their side through to 111 for one at Hagley Oval after umpires extended play by an extra 30 minutes because a result was within sight.
New Zealand knocked off the runs in 18.4 overs to complete a rout of Bangladesh, winning all eight matches — three Twenty20 Internationals, three One-day Internationals and two Tests — during the tour.
Jeet Raval was bowled for 33 by Kamrul Islam Rabbi about 10 minutes before the scheduled end of play, but de Grandhomme came out and hit two of the first five balls he faced for six to signal’s New Zealand’s intentions to try and complete victory inside four days. He hit two more in succession to end the game.
Bangladesh, who were dismissed for 160 in their second innings in the first Test in Wellington after scoring 595-8, were bundled out for 173 in their second innings on Monday, setting the hosts a victory target of 109.
“Today was probably our best day of cricket throughout the series which probably gave us the upper hand,” New Zealand captain Kane Williamson said. “A lot of credit to the bowlers and the way they bowled on a good surface was a fantastic effort and to then tick off the runs tonight was very nice.”
Neil Wagner had sparked Bangladesh’s collapse from 92-3 to 106-7, with the left-armer capturing three of the four wickets to fall, including two in one over.
Taskin Ahmed (33) and Kamrul (25 not out), however, produced a 51-run ninth-wicket partnership to ensure New Zealand would need to chase in excess of 100 after Mahmudullah top-scored with 38.
Tim Southee had earlier achieved a personal milestone when he had Shakib Al Hasan caught by de Grandhomme at backward point for eight to bring up 200 Test match wickets.
The 28-year-old is now behind Sir Richard Hadlee (431), Daniel Vettori (361), Chris Martin (233) and Chris Cairns (218) on the country’s all-time list.
“I guess those things are nice to tick off on the way but it’s nice to also sit back and enjoy another Test win,” said Southee, who was named man-of-the-match after figures of 8-142.
New Zealand had a first innings lead of 65 runs after Henry Nicholls had combined with the tail to take their side to 354 though the left-hander missed out on his maiden Test century when he was bowled for 98.
“We had our moments but I think we lost our way a bit,” said Bangladesh stand-in captain Tamim Iqbal. “Bowling them out for 350 was a fantastic job ... but I think our batters ...needed to take more responsibility and score more runs and put them under pressure.”
India will play a four-Test series against Steve Smith’s men starting February 23 in Pune. Australia have been enduring mixed fortunes in Test cricket of late, losing to South Africa before beating Pakistan.
“The last thing one would like to do is underestimate your opposition and Australia is a strong side. Yes, to play in Indian conditions it would be difficult and Australian players have also acknowledged that, which is a compliment to the Indian team, the way they are playing but you cannot take things for granted,” Tendulkar said in Mumbai, on the sidelines of launching ‘Sachin by Spartan’ range of sporting equipment and sportswear.
“I have no doubt that our team will prepare to their best of the ability and deliver when it matters. Australia are going to be tough to handle and that’s how it has always been. But I think I am confident of Indian team” he added.
He also emphasised on the fact that people should spend more time in the gyms and less time on dining tables.
3 ODIs and 2 T20s
Both sides also met in a full tour in the United Arab Emirates late last year, with the Caribbean side losing all three formats.
West Indies Cricket Board operations manager Roland Holder said he expected the tour to be a challenging one.
“Any series against Pakistan always poses an interesting contest for the West Indies,” said Holder.
Kensington missed out on a Test last year when India toured the Caribbean but hosted Tests for every year between 2008 and 2015.
The venue’s most recent Test was in 2015 when West Indies beat England by five wickets inside three days, to snatch a 1-1 draw in the three-Test series.
Sabina Park in Jamaica will play host to the opening Test starting April 2, the fourth Test to be staged at the venue in as many years.
The second Test bowls off at Kensington on April 30 while the third Test starts at Windsor Park on May 10.
Windsor Park has already hosted four Tests since staging its first back in 2011.
Full Itinerary
1st T20: Queen’s Park Oval – March 31
2nd T20: Queen’s Park Oval – April 2
1st ODI: Guyana National Stadium – April 7
2nd ODI: Guyana National Stadium – April 9
3rd ODI: Guyana National Stadium – April 11
Three-day tour match: Trelawny Stadium – April 15-17
1st Test: Sabina Park – April 22-26
2nd Test: Kensington Oval – April 30-May 4
3rd Test: Windsor Park – May 10-14