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Three promising newcomers in the USA side are hoping to help their team break its Division Three jinx

Peter Della Penna22-May-20173:21

USA cricket welcomes three new faces

Camilus Alexander
Perhaps the coolest cat prowling around the USA squad, 35-year-old legspin allrounder Alexander oozes confidence on and off the field.The Grenada native was a strong prospect for West Indies in his youth, having been part of the squad that went to the 2000 U-19 World Cup. His team-mates then included future Test players Marlon Samuels, Jermaine Lawson, Narsingh Deonarine and Brenton Parchment. However, Alexander struggled to find a regular place in the Windward Islands side once he graduated to senior level. His mentor Rawle Lewis was entrenched as the first choice legspinner, and offspinner Shane Shillingford was a frequent pick.”After a while I decided I wanted to try something new and have a different avenue,” Alexander said. He got a call one day from Clayton Lambert, the former West Indies opener who had migrated to the USA in the late 1990s and wound up playing for the country at the 2004 Champions Trophy, before later going on to coach the US team. Lambert, based in Atlanta, said one of the club teams in the strong local competition was interested in a bowler who could bat. At age 30, Alexander packed up and came to Atlanta, where Lambert, who works as a truck driver, helped him get a job in the same field. As if that wasn’t enough of a helping hand, Alexander also became roommates with Lambert for the first year he lived in Atlanta.”I came over and gave it a shot and it’s just gone on from there,” Alexander said. “I knew him from first-class cricket back in the Caribbean, so it wasn’t too hard to get along, and he helped me a lot. Coaching-wise, he gave me a lot of inspirational advice and how to go about playing different situations. He helped me in a lot of ways.”

“I’m looking to make a name for myself. Try to perform in the best way that I can, try to get at least two or three fifties and get at least 10 to 12 wickets”Camilus Alexander on his goals for the season

Alexander has been piling up runs after shifting to more of an emphasis on his batting than his bowling, which helped put him on the selection radar. He was the top scorer at the most recent selection camps in Houston. Along with Lambert, Alexander says Lewis and Darren Sammy, who captained him at Windwards for a brief period, were also helpful in developing his game.”[Sammy] was always an inspirational guy in the Windwards team so we learned a lot from him,” Alexander said. “He always told me, ‘Nothing comes easy. If you need to achieve something, you need to work hard at it’, and he really worked hard at his game and just moved from one level to the next really quick.”Alexander’s role in the USA squad is to shore up the middle order – a problem area for USA in the recent past – while also offering spin in the middle overs.”I’m looking to make a name for myself,” he said of the Division Three challenge. “Try to perform in the best way that I can, try to get at least two or three fifties and get at least 10 to 12 wickets. Doing that, the team will benefit and it will help the team to go on and win the cup, which is our ultimate goal.”Camilus Alexander credits his erstwhile captain Darren Sammy as a major inspiration•Peter Della PennaIbrahim Khaleel

Though he is new to the USA squad, Khaleel has a distinguished resumé built up over the course of a decade with Hyderabad in Indian first-class cricket. He played for the state, beginning at Under-13 level, working his way up through each junior squad before making his Ranji Trophy debut in 2002, under the captaincy of Venkatapathy Raju.Khaleel was arguably in his prime around 2008, when he took a chance on the rebel Indian Cricket League. He was named Player of the Series playing for ICL’s India XI against a World XI.”ICL changed me as a batsman, as a keeper, the way I approached the game, it just made me better,” he said. “The confidence that Steve Rixon [as coach] gave me was just unbelievable. The work ethic, the way he shows you the drills for wicketkeeping, the way he tells you how to bat, how to approach batting and keeping, it was just unbelievable. He took me to a different level. The confidence level I had was great but he made me a better keeper and a better batsman.”After the ICL folded, Khaleel took the BCCI up on its amnesty offer and came back to the Hyderabad fold, while also trying to find a place in the IPL. He signed a squad contract with Mumbai Indians but never made it into the starting XI, and by 2010 they had cut ties with him.

“ICL changed me as a batsman, as a keeper, the way I approached the game, it just made me better”Ibrahim Khaleel, who played domestic cricket in India, before moving to the US in his 30s

He was still a regular with Hyderabad over the next few years, though, and one of his biggest career highlights came in November 2011, when he set a world record with 14 dismissals (11 catches and three stumpings) in a first-class match against Assam.”I didn’t know it was a world record,” Khaleel said. “We just finished the game and I went back to my room. That’s when my phone starts ringing. ‘What’s going on? I know we won the game but why is everybody calling me?’ You just created a record. ‘What record?’ There was a guy who got 13 [dismissals] and you have 14 now.”In 2013, he married an American doctor, and the couple agreed he would continue to play in Hyderabad, spending the season in India before coming back to Beloit, Wisconsin, where she had established their home near her hospital job. After the 2014-15 season, though, the “commute” was wearing, and Khaleel says he made the decision to stop playing Ranji Trophy cricket for good at age 32.In the USA full-time, he initially played sporadic league cricket casually in Chicago, a two-hour drive from Beloit, a town of 36,000, just over the Wisconsin border from Illinois. But in 2016, ICC Americas organised a regional combine tryout in Chicago, and a fire that had been barely flickering grew strong once again with the prospect of representing USA. Khaleel already had a green card, thanks to his wife, and the Milwaukee, Wisconsin US Customs and Immigrations Services office fast-tracked his citizenship application. He got his passport a week out from the squad submission deadline to be eligible to play for USA at Division Three.Khaleel: “Everybody is a fantastic player in our team. When I look at them as a player, as a team-mate, to me the only thing I look at is how confident they are in their approach”•Peter Della Penna”My wife was like, ‘You know what, we decided that you don’t want to play cricket and you’re gonna chill. Now you’re gonna travel?'” Khaleel laughs. “I told her I’d do that but I always wanted to play for the country.”She’s one of the biggest reasons that I’m here, because she supported me a lot. She knew that I always wanted to play for the country, and when I had this opportunity, she helped me with all my stuff, getting the paperwork done for the citizenship and stuff, and then when I got selected, she was just very happy for me.”Even with worn knees and a sore back from 20 years’ worth of wicketkeeping through the Hyderabad system, Khaleel’s skills with bat and gloves are still undeniable. He was USA’s second-leading scorer – behind USA’s Jamaica Tallawahs allrounder Timroy Allen – on their warm-up tour in Potchefstroom ahead of landing in Uganda, and hopes some of his experience will rub off on his new team-mates.”My experience is all about confidence,” Khaleel said. “Everybody is a fantastic player in our team. When I look at them as a player, as a team-mate, to me the only thing I look at is how confident they are in their approach. The only thing I go and tell them is just back yourself.”

“My wife was like, ‘You know what, we decided that you don’t want to play cricket and you’re gonna chill. Now you’re gonna travel?'”Khaleel on his wife’s reaction to his decision to play for USA

Nosthush Kenjige
The two other USA debutants have more than two decades of first-class cricket between them. Kenjige on the other hand is neon green by comparison, in terms of his high-level cricket experience. But the 26-year-old left-arm spinner’s work ethic goes a long way towards helping bridge that gap.Born in Alabama, where his father worked as an agricultural researcher at Tuskegee University, he and his family moved back to India before he had turned one, to Chikmaglur, outside Bengaluru, where his father runs a coffee farm. Kenjige played university cricket in Bengaluru, as well as for Jawans Cricket Club in the city’s Sir Mirza Ismail Shield competition.The only one in his family with American citizenship (since he was born there), he decided to move back to the US in 2015, first to Virginia and then to New York, where he found work as a biomedical technician. He applied and was granted an invite to the New York Combine organised by ICC Americas in June 2016, where he impressed enough with his left-arm spin to be named in USA’s 30-man training squad ahead of Division Four at the end of July.Kenjige: “To just have stars and stripes on the chest, it’s a dream for anybody”•Peter Della PennaThough he holds a USA passport, a quirk in the ICC’s eligibility criteria for Associate teams below the WCL Championship meant that Kenjige had to fulfill 100 days of “community service” to become eligible. This can consist of playing in matches, coaching players, or undertaking other development activities. So desperate was Kenjige to play for USA that he would commute one to two hours – depending on traffic – from Manhattan to New Jersey after work, three days a week, and again on the weekends, to the CricMax complex in Old Bridge, the nearest indoor facility where he could train and coach.Officially, eight hours equals a day of credit for the ICC 100-day stipulation so if he made it by 6pm and stayed until 10pm, he could log a half-day on weeknights, and then put in two full days on the weekend. The owners gave him a set of keys to lock up if he was the last to leave. After starting his mission in August, Kenjige met the threshold in February, in plenty of time to be eligible for Division Three.”It’s just that I enjoyed cricket and I didn’t necessarily count it as commitments or service of any kind,” Kenjige says. “The fact that I was just enjoying the work that I was putting in every day, even though the commute was bad. I could have given a thousand reasons [to stop] but it was just the passion in me. I just loved to go to the place and get myself working at it and just get better every day. I think everybody in my position would have done it if they loved cricket.”

So desperate was Kenjige to play for USA that he would commute one to two hours from Manhattan to New Jersey after work, three days a week, and again on the weekends, to the CricMax complex in Old Bridge, the nearest indoor facility where he could train and coach

Kenjige took a brief period off work in January to train in South Africa with the Knights franchise before returning to New York. At the team’s selection camps in Houston this March and April, he finished as the leading wicket-taker. That achievement, and his phenomenal fielding – he is often stationed at backward point – made him a shoo-in for the tour to Uganda. He said it was “the happiest day of my life” when he got the selection call.Kenjige’s fanatical quest to give himself the best chance of being selected came at a price, though. Just before leaving for Uganda, he was fired from his job. He says he saw it coming, considering the amount of time he had taken off from work and to go to selection camps, but says without hesitation that he would do it all again.”It was always my dream to play for the US. It was a no-brainer. If they hadn’t asked me to leave, I would have left at some point, because this is where I’ve always wanted to be. Looking back at it 20-30 years from now, I don’t think I’m gonna regret it.”Any sportsperson for that matter, when we start playing cricket, you always dream of playing for the country. To just have stars and stripes on the chest, it’s a dream for anybody. You know that you’re playing for your country, you represent your country. It’s been a dream so I can’t ask for anything more.”

Their last two home series have ended 1-1, and the cricket has been competitive throughout

ESPNcricinfo staff07-Sep-2017Series are being left undecided
Bangladesh drew their last two home series 1-1 against Australia and England, but both times the schedule could not accommodate a decider. The justification, in the past, might have been that the series would be too one-sided but with their performance on a steady incline over the past couple of years, Bangladesh have proven they aren’t the minnows they once were, especially in their own conditions.The matches have been fought intensely
Two of the closest Tests of the past 12 months have been played in Bangladesh. In the first Test against England, in Chittagong, Bangladesh fell just 22 runs short of their target in the fourth innings. At no point in the Test did a team get too far ahead, with England getting a 45-run first-innings lead and then setting the hosts 286 to win.In the series against Australia, the first Test was again close, with Australia losing by 20 runs after late partnerships in their first innings and a David Warner century gave them a chance of a come-from-behind win. Even though the second Test was decided by seven wickets, it was close till the fourth morning, after which Nathan Lyon swung the game Australia’s way.Bangladesh fans during the home series against England•Getty ImagesThe crowds will come
Cricket is massively popular in Bangladesh, but Test-match crowds are smaller than ones for limited-over games. The series against Australia had an average attendance of 4,000. There were some days in Chittagong, though, that had the stadium around half-full, and the expectation is that with longer series and Bangladesh doing well in Tests, more people will come through the gates.

How a return to Newlands was a big moment of redemption for two 60-something friends

Sidharth Monga in Cape Town03-Jan-2018Two men in their late 60s walk into Newlands Stadium early on Wednesday morning, and set up a camera and canvas. Envar Larney, a renowned impressionist painter, sets out to paint the stadium, Table Mountain included, over the next six-seven hours. Neil Frye, his friend and a producer, sets up his camera to film and photograph the process. This is a big moment of redemption for these two men.As a kid, Larney, of coloured descent, once came to Newlands and had to sit in the coloured section. He decided he was not going to come back again, and eventually exiled himself from the country. Frye, his white friend who moved to Cape Town from Port Elizabeth at a young age, exiled himself because he didn’t want to join the illegal war on Angola in 1975.Since then, Frye found it tough to settle down in another country because of the restrictions against South Africa, and came back to his home country in the 1980s. Larney has never become a South African again, but in the post-Apartheid era he has come again and again, and painted the stunning scenery of South Africa.His “through-the-magic-window” style is not that big on detail as it is on an abstract impression of what he sees over the course of the day. By the time he reaches the final stages of his work, Larney has added an abstract impression of the South African huddle, with the team having started training at 2.30pm.The two are discussing how nice it would be if it turned cloudy because he won’t add to the painting what doesn’t exist. That is something for a man whom reality hurt badly when he was little.Frye had to fight his own battles. He went to the first army training in 1971, but left nine months later. He came back two years later, fell in love with his best friend’s sister, who lived next door, but had to then split in 1975 because of the Angola war. Those were terrible times for South Africans: Larney, who studied arts at the University of Cape Town, had a choice: either face persecution or stop being a South African, and Frye was forced to come back despite marrying in England because it was just not easy for him to live in a new country.Frye remembers amusing stories, too, of white and coloured folk trying to be friends. Larney once happened to go to a whites-only job, and had the officers trying to remove him. Another friend of theirs, David Brown, another white person, then intervened: “You better watch out; this is the son of the Spanish ambassador. He does not speak a word of English, but if you say one thing to him, forget about your job.”Frye also remembers hiding under blankets in the back of the cars to enter coloured neighbourhoods to hang out with his friends. It wasn’t easy for the conscientious white folk either. “A lot of my friends here were on both sides of the colour lines,” Frye says. “Some of them were persecuted, like sleep deprivation for weeks, you could die of that. Because they refused to go to war.”As a kid Frye remembers he used to sit next to the coloured section at Newlands because their comments were funny compared to the “stiff-upper-lipped” white crowds. Larney, though, had to do without cricket in his home city, but he fell in love with cricket nonetheless. And now he is back to Newlands, his “holy grail”, on an invite from CSA, to paint it and put it up for exhibition on day one of the Test against India.That is a great moment for these friends. As sweet as the one Frye encountered and taped on video when England came here last. “The Barmy Army and the South African equivalent of that went at each other,” Frye says. “The Barmy Army sang ‘Moeeni, Moeeni Moeeni, Moeeni’, and the South Africans went ‘Hashim, Hashim, Hashim, Hashim.'”Here you have an English Barmy Army singing and praising a Muslim who is English, and the South Africans right next to them – and they are predominantly white – chanting for another Muslim who is South African. That to me was quite fantastic. It gives one hope. You realise that as human beings, what we really want to do is enjoy ourselves.”

When England take the field in Christchurch, five months after first arriving in Australia for the Ashes, they will be looking to avoid a record 13th away Test without a win

Andrew McGlashan in Christchurch28-Mar-20182:12

Can England arrest their poor Test form?

When England take the field in Christchurch on Friday it will be 152 days since they arrived in Australia at the beginning of an overseas campaign which has stretched through a whole Southern Hemisphere summer and into autumn.The leaves on the trees along the River Avon and around Hagley Oval are turning a distinct red and though the recent days have been warm there is a seasonal change in the air. It says something about how late this Test is being played that on Sunday the clocks in New Zealand go back an hour, with the start time for the match being – sensibly – brought forward by half an hour to try and avoid issues with the light. However, if the evenings are cloudy playing hours could yet be cut. That won’t really be an issue for New Zealand, who only need a draw to take the series, but England may need to force the pace.Let’s not get carried away though. First they need to get into the contest, something they failed miserably at in Auckland – almost historically so when they were 23 for 8 and threatening the lowest Test total of all-time. It’s not that underserving teams haven’t been aided in their escapes before, but it really is a good thing that the two days of rain did not allow England to secure a draw. No get-out-jail-free card.”It was disappointing, and a bit embarrassing from our point of view as batsmen,” Dawid Malan admitted of the collapse. “We’d struggled a lot in the Ashes, and had come out here with high hopes to be able to score a lot of runs.”We are coming up against some really good bowlers from New Zealand, guys who have played a hell of a lot of cricket for their country and are really skilful. We just weren’t up to the task on the first day. Whether the ball did a little bit more than we thought, whether we didn’t play as well, didn’t move our feet… it was really poor.”I think in the second innings we went out there and showed a lot of fight – and that’s the fight we need to be showing in every single innings we play here.”Sure, they batted better on the final day but it could hardly get much worse. And even their attempts to save the game were pockmarked by major moments of carelessness: Mark Stoneman hooking to long leg the ball after reaching fifty, Jonny Bairstow pulling a long hop to midwicket and Ben Stokes slicing to point after four-and-a-half hours of diligence.Only head coach Trevor Bayliss has done the whole shebang since arriving in Australia – grabbing a couple of nights at home in Sydney along the way – and while the players involved in the one-day side have enjoy the significant highs of beating Australia and New Zealand, for the Test-only crew there has been nothing but disappointment. Do they have it in them to overturn their winless run overseas before it hits a record of 13 matches?”When you’re away this long, it might not be that you’re playing a hell of a lot, but from a mental point of view it does get quite tough being away,” Malan said. “It’s a lot of travelling, a lot of time in hotels, a lot of training days … that does drain you quite a bit. But we’re international cricketers – it’s our dream, what we all want to do, so it’s about finding a way to get through those periods.”England players have been keen to dress up the 4-0 Ashes loss by saying how they were ‘in’ all five matches for periods of time. But whether with bat or ball they couldn’t sustain it. Just three centuries and one five-wicket haul in that series speaks of the lack of match-defining performances. Whether you give any credence to attempts to soften the margin in Australia, it is certainly true to say they did not crash the way they did in Auckland.Moeen Ali’s place could come under pressure for the second Test•Getty ImagesWhen a side is struggling there is often, in hindsight, a moment where things bottom out. In one sense England’s last such marker was the 2013-14 Ashes whitewash, but a more direct comparison to what is happening now is Jamaica in 2009 when they were bowled out for 51 by Jerome Taylor and Sulieman Benn. That performance came on the back of the ugly end to Kevin Pietersen’s brief captaincy tenure and though there aren’t the same internal rifts this time (that can be left to Australia for now) it could be that 58 becomes viewed as a similar low point even if right now – on the back of five innings defeats in nine overseas Tests – a turnaround looks long odds against.Still, there was a similar feeling in 2009. England should have won the next game – denied by a final-wicket stand between Daren Powell and Fidel Edwards in the rearranged Antigua Test – and with a slightly more adventurous declaration in Trinidad could have squared the series. After the defeat at Sabina Park, Ian Bell was the fall guy and spent much of the rest of the tour shadow-boxing with security man Reg Dickason.There is every chance that a senior player will pay the price for last week’s debacle with Moeen Ali looking likely to be dropped for the first time in his career. He, more than anyone, has seen his Test form hit a low over the last six matches. A response is needed to something like 58 all out. It would not need to be terminal for Moeen, far from it. He need only needs to look at Bell to know that: he played more than half his Test career after that watershed moment in West Indies. England have been away so long the seasons are changing; it’s about time the team did as well.

News from around the circuit, including the burning issue of county headwear, a promise to give fans their say and the scorer who prefers to run away

Paul Bolton01-May-2018Beanies have become part of a county cricketer’s standard issue training kit but Surrey’s new captain Rory Burns decided to run a Twitter poll on whether they should be worn in first-class cricket after Essex’s shivering Australian Peter Siddle bowled in one during the championship match against Hampshire at the Ageas Bowl.”People’s thoughts on wearing beanies in a first-class fixture,” asked Burns who then gave his followers the option of voting for Yer All For It or Average Bant.The Average Bants have it, polling two-thirds of the vote.Responses to Burns’ tweet included suggestions that only an Australian overseas player would imagine he could get away with it. If the Aussies think the ball-tampering was bad enough, wait until the outcry about beanie hats reaches full volume.

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Wasim Khan, the latest man to be given the unenviable task of trying to produce a coherent County Championship structure, has promised to consult with county supporters before making any changes to the competition.Khan, the Leicestershire chief executive and former Warwickshire, Sussex and Derbyshire batsman, has been appointed chairman of an 11-strong working party which includes representatives from the ECB, PCA and three county directors of cricket.Scrutiny of the two-division championship and replacing it with a conference system, and the current banishing of the Championship to the start and end of the season, are among the issues the group will consider before reporting to the ECB cricket committee in the autumn.”We are not going to have all the answers in that room. We are going to canvass a lot of different opinions in between our meetings,” Khan said.”County members, supporters and the media need to have a say. A lot of them are very knowledgeable, they watch a lot of county cricket and we need to listen to their views.”We have to find a way of doing it in a co-ordinated fashion, how we disseminate the information we get, and draw out the critical themes.”There will be people who will be unhappy with wherever we get to, there are others who think it will be a step forward, but that’s the nature of doing this type of piece of work.”As chair of this group I understand that. But we will try to go wider than this group. It’s not just going to be representative of the 11 views in that room.”

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Steve Rhodes may have been sacked as Worcestershire’s director of cricket during the winter but the former England wicketkeeper continues to support his adopted county.Rhodes attended both of Worcestershire’s County Championship matches at Southampton and Taunton to watch his son George play for the county and he was at New Road on Friday for what should have been the opening day against Nottinghamshire.Rhodes was dismissed in December after a 33-year involvement with Worcestershire as player and coach for not informing the board that all-rounder Alex Hepburn was being investigated by police for an alleged rape offence.Hepburn, who was charged in November, remains suspended on full pay but is not expected to play any cricket this summer. His trial has been listed for January.

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England cricketer sleeps with bishop and politician sounds like a lurid tabloid headline but it happened last week and it was all for a good cause.The cricketer is Ashley Giles, now Warwickshire sports director, the bishop the Right Reverend David Urquhart, who heads the Birmingham diocese, and the politician Shabana Mahmood, Labour MP for Ladywood, who were among 70 volunteers who spent a night sleeping rough at Edgbaston.It was the second time Giles had taken part in the sleep-out which has so far raised more than £20,000 for two Birmingham homeless charities, St Basils and Winter Night Shelter.”It was colder than last year and I didn’t get much sleep. But it was only for one night and we were in a stadium with security staff,” Giles said.”There are lots of people out there who are sleeping rough night after night under bridges and in other places where they are vulnerable.”We doubled the number of volunteers this year and we have raised awareness of the issue of homelessness and a decent amount of money.”

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Tom Abell at Somerset’s media day•Getty ImagesTom Abell must feel he has come through the greatest test of his life as he skippers a Somerset side that has made a winning start to the Championship season.There were times last year that his elevation to the role of Somerset’s Championship skipper looked a cruel imposition as his form dwindled so badly he was dropped and Somerset’s relegation looked an odds-on bet. But Abell returned and Somerset clung to their Division One status with victory in their final game. After a winter’s reflection, he has begun 2018 with runs and wickets and two successive victories have left Somerset second in the table.He does not have to look too far these days to read that he is “an impressive young man” and his experience of some though times should leave him better prepared to handle the praise.

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Tony ‘Corporal’ Kingston, Northamptonshire’s scorer is celebrating 40 years with the county.Kingston, an inveterate tea drinker who boasts the largest tea cup in first-class cricket, is the longest-serving county scorer and a popular figure on the circuit because of his impish sense of humour.He acquired his nickname at a meeting of county scorers with Simon Pack, then the ECB’s international teams’ director, who introduced himself to the gathering as Major-General Simon Pack, Royal Marines.”Corporal Kingston, RASC,” said Kingston when he addressed Pack. “What does that stand for Kingo?” asked another scorer. “Run Away Somebody’s Coming,” replied Kingston.Kingston, who first watched cricket at Wantage Road in 1948, began his long association with Northamptonshire as umpire for the county colts side and has been their first team scorer since 1990.

Matt Parkinson’s legspin will be a key factor in Lancashire’s attack when they face Kent in the first Vitality Blast quarter-final on Thursday

Paul Edwards22-Aug-2018If Lancashire reach their first T20 Finals Day since they won the trophy in 2015, the scene in Old Trafford’s home dressing room after the defeat to Durham less than a fortnight ago may enter the county’s mythology along with Jack Simmons’ gargantuan appetite and Ciss Parkin singing “Lily of Laguna” as he walked back to his mark. Having failed to score six off the last over with four wickets in hand, the inquest into the loss was brutal and Matt Parkinson admits harsh words were spoken.Yet Parkinson himself was one of the least culpable players that night. His figures of 1 for 29 off three overs were not dreadful and he was out first ball only when Lancashire needed five runs off two deliveries. And when he had to bowl at his best two evenings later, Parkinson responded by taking 2 for 31 to help engineer Yorkshire’s decline from 130 for 1 after 11.5 overs to 181 for 9 after 20. That fightback set up Lancashire’s six-wicket win, the first of three victories in four days which saw them clinch their quarter-final tie against Kent at Canterbury on Thursday.As figures from the cricket analytics company, CricViz, reveal, Lancashire have bowled nearly half their overs with spin – their figure of 49% is the highest in the tournament – and Parkinson has been to the fore.”I think Matt bowled fantastically well at Headingley,” said Mark Chilton, Lancashire’s assistant coach. “Because he’d done so well last year there was a lot of expectation around him but he hadn’t had the returns we were expecting. Then he bowled brilliantly at Headingley and backed that up with an exceptional performance against Birmingham the next night when he took three wickets. It was a helpful pitch but he had real energy about his bowling. We sometimes forget that he’s only 21 and a little bit of confidence can go a long way.”Both figures and film back up Chilton’s assessment. In Lancashire’s last five group games Parkinson’s legspin took 11 wickets for 118 runs in 18 overs and he has taken a total of 20 in this year’s Vitality Blast. And those wishing to assess the quality of Parkinson’s dismissals should go on social media and check out the Warnesque leg-spinner which bowled Birmingham’s New Zealand allrounder, Colin de Grandhomme. It helps to show why Lancashire’s stand-in skipper, Dane Vilas, almost always calls on Parkinson to bowl his four overs in T20 games.”Dane trusts me, backs me and sees me as the guy who can take wickets,” said Parkinson. “I do get a lot of responsibility and I try to thrive on that. Things have gone quite well for me in the T20 Competition this year.”Parkinson is also a regular pick in Lancashire’s red-ball side and he traces his improvement from what had already been a promising first couple of seasons to the winter he spent being coached by the former Australian leg-spinner, Stuart MacGill.Lancashire’s Blast challenge has been based upon slow bowling•Getty Images”I did some tweaks with Stuart to give me more energy and momentum towards the target and I’m now probably using my front arm a bit more,” he said “The six months with him were fantastic because they gave me confidence I could take with me into this season. They really helped me to understand my game more and to deal with the off days. I’m not saying it was shit or bust for me last year but this year I’m a lot more consistent and I’ve grown as a bowler. I understand my own bowling better.”They are impressive words from a cricketer who is only 21-years-old and for whom the quarter-final against a powerful Kent batting line-up at the St Lawrence Ground will be his maiden knockout match for Lancashire. And should Lancashire prevail, Parkinson will attend his first-ever T20 Finals Day, an experience he would share with three or four other debutants in the squad.”We’ve had some changes and we have some people who’ve played a similar number of games to me, but we also have Jimmy Faulkner, who’s played in a World Cup Final, and we have “Bunny” Onions, who’s an Ashes winner and is around for most of the T20 games,” said Parkinson. “Those guys can give you information and they really help you. They have so much experience from which young cricketers in general can learn.”But before the T20 quarter-final, Lancashire have a day-night game against Surrey at the The Oval to play. Indeed, they may be playing pick-ball Division One cricket against the title favourites deep into Tuesday evening, something like 21 hours before the match against Kent begins.”It’s not ideal but we’ll be fine,” said Parkinson. “We’ll get a good night’s sleep after the day-night game and we’ll be ready to go on Thursday evening.”

He’s been MS Dhoni’s go-to man at the start, but the injures at Super Kings have meant there’s a role for him at the end too – and he’s practiced for it

Deivarayan Muthu in Chennai10-Apr-20193:26

What makes Deepak Chahar so effective?

Before the game against Kings XI Punjab on Saturday, Deepak Chahar had not bowled a single ball in the death overs since his IPL debut in May 2016. He had established himself as Chennai Super Kings’ Powerplay specialist – since IPL 2018 no bowler has taken more wickets than Chahar’s 17 – but an injury to the side’s designated death bowler Dwayne Bravo forced Dhoni hold an over of Chahar back for the death.Kings XI Punjab needed 39 off 12 balls in a chase of 161. Dhoni tossed the ball to Chahar, but the seamer made a mess of the back-of-the-hand slower ball in dewy conditions and instead sent down two beamers, the first of which was ramped over backward point. The second was slashed over the same fielder, and just like that the equation was reduced to 31 off 12 balls.Dhoni was livid with Chahar’s back-to-back lapses and walked up to him, asking him to change up his pace and lengths. Chahar then redeemed himself with a brace of near-perfect yorkers and three tighter slower balls. He capped the over with a full, straight ball that knocked over David Miller’s leg stump.Chahar gave Scott Kuggeleijn the cushion of defending 25 in the final over, and the New Zealand seam-bowling allrounder secured victory for Super Kings on IPL debut.”I’ve got thousands of messages asking the same question [What did Dhoni tell you after bowling two beamers?]. I think he was angry,” Chahar said. “If I was the captain, I would have been angry also at that situation, bowling two beamers. They needed 39 runs and suddenly needed only 30 [31] off 12 balls. He was angry at the selection of the ball. It was a wet ball and that ball was not good. So, I went and bowled other balls.”Last season, Chahar found movement in the air and also off the helpful Pune track to subdue the opposition. The Chennai track hasn’t been as helpful to the seamers, but Chahar has adjusted by venturing a variety of slower balls.ESPNcricinfo LtdChahar said that he had trained for the tired Chepauk surface by bowling a lot of slower balls in the lead-up to the IPL. Earlier, he had developed the knuckle ball during his injury-hit stint with Rising Pune Supergiant(s) in 2016, and then introduced it to the world at Chennai Super Kings last season.”Last year we played a lot of matches in Pune,” Chahar said. “The conditions were very helpful for seam bowlers. There was lot of swing and seam [movement], but this year I knew we will be playing a lot of matches in Chennai. So, we practiced that way, and length is very important. When the ball is swinging, you can get away with bad lengths, But, when the ball isn’t swinging, the length and line need to be very accurate.”So, I’ve practiced that way. I have worked on the slower ones and slower bouncers. I was prepared for it. Obviously, I’m a better bowler now than I was last year because at this level, you need a lot of confidence. Last year I performed well, so I had a lot confidence. Playing for India has also helped me.”Chahar’s knuckle ball hasn’t made an appearance yet in IPL 2019, but he pinned Robin Uthappa with a 120kph offcutter in Super Kings’ victory over Kolkata Knight Riders on Tuesday. Uthappa briefly found his groove with back-to-back boundaries off seam-up balls from Chahar. Dhoni then brought fine leg inside the circle and whisked midwicket to the boundary.Chahar got a short offcutter to stick into the pitch and had Uthappa splicing a catch to Kedar Jadhav, who had just moved to deep midwicket. Dhoni and Chahar executed the plan to perfection and left Knight Riders at 24 for 4 in the fifth over. There would be no way back for them.”Obviously, it [Uthappa’s wicket] was a plan,” Chahar said. “The ball only swings one or two overs and after that the batsmen are looking to line up the ball. And there you have to bowl a lot of variations. I’ve practiced a lot of variations like the knuckle ball, but it’s very difficult to bowl with the wet ball. So the option is yorker, or slower bouncer on this wicket. So, we set the field according to that because we are going to bowl this ball.”In the two overs he has bowled in the death in the past two matches, Chahar has done fairly well, giving away 19 runs while claiming a wicket.David Willey (personal reasons) and Lungi Ngidi (injury) have both been sidelined from the entire IPL 2019. Bravo has now joined Ngidi on the injury list and might not be available until the end of April. Chahar said he was ready to dig deeper into his reserves and embrace the responsibility of bowling at the death.”I don’t think I have any pressure,” Chahar said. “I like when responsibility is given to me. I was happy, and I always wanted to bowl at the death. Obviously, we miss Bravo because he’s an asset to the team and you can’t replace a bowler. Because you need a batsman and a bowler in place of him. As far as I’m concerned, I was happy to get the opportunity to bowl at the death. Proving myself as a death bowler will help me in my career because it makes me a complete bowler.”

Inzamam-ul-Haq & Co will have to answer some tricky questions when they sit down to finalise the 15 for the showpiece tournament

Danyal Rasool17-Apr-2019When it comes to World Cup squads, the fans’ perspectives are often more interesting in Pakistan than they are elsewhere. Even today, you will invariably find lists with Imran Nazir or Shahid Afridi’s names in them. For the selectors – now led by Inzamam-ul-Haq – the job of finalising the squad is often a thankless one, impossible as it is to fulfil the wishes of 200 million people. And it’s not just the fans – sure as night follows day, a former player will be on air the day the squad is announced ranting about nepotism or negligence, often both.There are, however, legitimate questions for Inzamam and Co. to consider before they decide on the 15 and get to that press conference. So no list of our own, but here are some of those factors.The pace line-upUnquestionably, the best problem Pakistan have. There are so many candidates to choose from that the only concern is who to leave out. Faheem Ashraf, Shaheen Afridi and Hasan Ali are presumably guaranteed their spots, but Pakistan must still choose two from among Usman Shinwari, Junaid Khan, Wahab Riaz, Mohammad Abbas, Mohammad Hasnain and Mohammad Amir. That’s quite an embarrassment of riches.The last name there – Amir – wouldn’t even be in contention if any other bowler had his figures for the past two years. Since the Champions Trophy final in June 2017, Amir has taken five ODI wickets in 101 overs of bowling at an average of 92.60 per wicket. Unsurprisingly, this is the worst for all bowlers to have sent down over 600 balls in this period. For an idea of just how bad that is, the second poorest specialist fast bowler in that list is Mark Wood, with 20 wickets at 47.75, nearly twice as good as Amir.Mohammad Hasnain claims the wicket of Aaron Finch•AFPWhat Amir does have going for him is an economy rate of 4.58 for the same period; his career economy rate stands at 4.78. It is worth noting that among fast bowlers from World Cup-playing teams, only Jasprit Bumrah (4.30) has been more economical these past two years.Admittedly, Amir’s switch from the tearaway quick who could shoot out oppositions to a bowler who keeps the runflow in check has been a sharp one. But, irrespective, can Pakistan afford to overlook the 27-year-old left-arm paceman, given what he did when he last played an ODI in England?The opening slotsFakhar Zaman and Imam-ul-Haq will be the first-choice openers. Now, and this is by no means an Achilles heel for the team, but Fakhar’s recent loss of form has been most untimely, and inopportune. Since the Zimbabwe series in August last year, runs haven’t flowed as freely off the left-hander’s blade, 377 at an average of 29. That is against a career average of 53.4. Fair enough, you might say; he bats aggressively, so a lean run is always around the corner. That’s true, but in this period, he has struck at a strike rate of 83 in ODIs; before this spell, it was 102.Which brings us to the reserve opener. Abid Ali has come from nowhere to emerge as a serious contender, especially with Shan Masood not helping himself in the series against Australia. But while Abid’s domestic record leaves little room for debate, Inzamam & Co. will have to consider whether taking him along on the basis of one international innings is a punt too left field.Asif Ali tries to go big•AFPThe Asif Ali dilemmaTake him. There is little doubt Pakistan will. He’s the only legitimate power-hitting option Pakistan have lower down the order, so it’s really as simple as that. But it’s more a question of how Asif Ali will be used.He batted at No. 6 in the Asia Cup; even Mickey Arthur admitted Pakistan fluffed that one up by sending him in too high. The coaches believe Asif is too one-dimensional to bat higher, which suggests No. 7. But that makes fitting Shadab Khan, Faheem Ashraf and Imad Wasim in to the side that bit harder. If one of them bats above Asif, the problem of a reliable No. 6 still isn’t resolved (Shadab could do it in the long-term, but the World Cup is too immediate for that sort of trial). That means Asif’s game time might come at the cost of one of the allrounders.In any case, Asif still hasn’t truly established himself in the format. A stellar series against Zimbabwe was followed by low scores in the Asia Cup and after that, but the sample size just isn’t big enough to call it either way.Shoaib Malik – not a shoo-in any morePerhaps the prickliest question facing Pakistan is whether to take their most experienced player to the World Cup for a swansong or not.Shoaib Malik is bowled•Getty ImagesJust months ago, when Sarfraz Ahmed was struggling, there was talk that Shoaib Malik might lead the team at the tournament. A T20I series loss against South Africa, a clean sweep by Australia, and a poor campaign with Multan Sultans at the PSL has put that thought firmly to bed.Should he even go to the tournament, particularly with Mohammad Hafeez looking like he will recover in time? Malik isn’t a realistic bowling option anymore and has an abysmal ODI record in England, averaging 13.6 with the bat in 23 innings. For the past two years, he has struggled to serve as the launchpad Pakistan want at No. 5, Malik’s most frequent batting position in that period. His strike rate of 82.11 in that timeframe is almost identical to his career number. Also, he has also fallen into the habit of getting starts and then getting out: ten of his last 11 ODI innings have seen the 37-year-old dismissed between 10 and 31.Even so, excluding him would be a brave call. No other player from any side at the tournament will boast a career that commenced in the previous century, and his laid-back demeanour is unlikely to be a heavy, unwanted presence in the Pakistan dressing room. And, in any case, Pakistan have a habit of ending players’ careers just after the World Cup, rather than just before, so Malik has history on his side.

It took over 15 years for it to come into being – here’s the story of the plans, the hurdles, and, in the end, the solutions

Daniel Brettig31-Jul-2019Steve Waugh was still captain of Australia when James Sutherland and Paul Marsh had among the first serious conversations about a formal league structure for international cricket. Marsh was not yet the chief executive of the Australian Cricketers Association, and Sutherland was only two years into a long stint as the chief of Cricket Australia.It was Marsh, partly inspired by the debates and context he had seen around Australian football, who put together a basic ODI league structure and passed it on to Sutherland. The proposal called for 11 teams playing 30 games each – ten home, ten away, ten neutral – with a promotion and relegation system, and 15 games in each country. As an indicator of how long ago all this was, Kenya and Zimbabwe were both included, and there was no thought of T20s.”Paul had a model, which I loved, and it’s been a long time trying to sell the virtues of it in one form or another, and obviously it extended through to Test cricket,” Sutherland said. “I’m not ashamed in any way to give him credit for that model and that idea that has finally been approved, albeit in slightly different form. A good thing for the game.”Around 2004, Sutherland conveyed the concept to more global discussions at the ICC, graduating quite soon from ODIs to Tests. It all struck an immediate chord with Dave Richardson, then the ICC’s operations manager, because as a South African he had never been able to compete for Test cricket’s headline trophy – the Ashes.”I know even back then Australia were worried about one-day cricket in particular, but at the ICC we were worried about the Test format,” Richardson recalled. “There was a period where the Ashes was kind of good enough for England and Australia as far as Test cricket is concerned, so they weren’t as desperate to have something that gave Test cricket added context.”England and Australia players always talked about ‘we’re going to win the Ashes’ or ‘that’ll be a highlight in our careers’, whereas a South African player or a Test player from any other country, they didn’t have that context. Right back in those early days, we were trying to think of a way we could add context over and above just the rankings.”Nothing underlines the litany of divergent agendas and interests at the heart of international cricket quite like the fact that it took another 15 years for the World Test Championship (WTC) to finally come into being, beginning with the Ashes battle between England and Australia.Why did it take so long to be approved, what were the hurdles, and what, in the end, shifted them?The World Test Championship begins with the Ashes battle between England and Australia on August 1•Getty ImagesFor Richardson, the attraction of the idea was linked not only to South Africa’s lack of major series, but also memories of his childhood, watching the memorable pair of Centenary Tests between England and Australia, in 1977 at the MCG and 1980 at Lord’s.”In my era, everything was so new, so to win a Test series against England, or India, or any of the teams was in itself something special. Australia, in particular, I played four series against in my time. So it probably didn’t hit me too much as a player then, but certainly in my time at ICC I saw the need when Sri Lanka were playing West Indies or Bangladesh, if Test cricket is to survive in those countries we needed much greater context.”If we’re going to keep saying we want to keep three formats of the game going, and make it attractive to players, then we’ve got to give an opportunity to Test players to also call themselves world Test champions.”The other thing that went through my mind was as a youngster, I can remember those Centenary Test matches that took place in Australia and one in England. I remember seeing those guys, Rod Marsh and all of them involved in that Centenary Test, and thinking ‘geez, that was a special occasion’. So to have a World Test Championship league and then a World Test Championship one-off final, I was thinking of those types of matches, and also the Champions League football final, where you have one match, if you go to it, it’s a celebration of football for basically a whole week.”The hurdles to the concept were quickly apparent. First and foremost, they were matters of control. The idea of being told by the ICC what the schedule would be, fixed for any length of time without flexibility, was anathema to most members – even those who supported the idea in theory. Similarly, the prospect of having to play all nations more or less the same amount would have upset the applecart of the likes of Australia, England and India, in terms of hoarding their most lucrative tours frequency-wise.As one example, between New Zealand’s last Boxing Day Test in Melbourne in 1987 and the one they are due to play at the end of 2019, England and India have played MCG Tests no fewer than seven times each. Such imbalances, and the desire of boards to maintain them, were central to why the championship spent so long as just an administrators’ thought bubble.That’s not to say that 16 years elapsed without numerous attempts. The first was made in 2008, when Sutherland and Rohan Sajdeh, from Boston Consulting Group, went on a global tour to promote the idea. In July of that year, Sutherland addressed an ICC forum with the words: “Let’s face it, generally speaking, the FTP is currently a hotch-potch of bilateral tour arrangements that, given the current volume of international cricket, produces matches that no longer linger in the memory or have lasting meaning.”In the midst of a crowded year, where CA was trying to patch up damaged relationships with the BCCI and its own players in the aftermath of Monkeygate, this was a battle Sutherland and Sajdeh fought without the desired success. At the time, it all just seemed too hard, with some ideas – such as the pooling of global bilateral rights for the championship – reaching too far beyond the realities all boards had become used to.”It lost a bit of steam there at one stage, and I think India were critical to that, for whatever reason weren’t necessarily ready for it, but it’s come again and I’ve always maintained contact with Rohan,” Sutherland said.Another attempt arrived in 2010, during Haroon Lorgat’s eventful tenure as ICC chief executive, a time in which the game’s Dubai headquarters were a hive of ideas, but without the relationships at executive board and member levels to win the politics as well as the policy.

“The argument that eventually won the day was if you’ve got context, the value of certain series that were previously frowned upon or looked down upon will increase simply because they are part of a championship.”Dave Richardson

Things got as far as an official launch for a championship, even a logo late in 2013, and plans to scrap the ODI Champions Trophy to make room for it. But the pushback from members to this idea in particular, and Lorgat in general, was to eventually ferment into the Big Three takeover in 2014 .”I think all three of the Big Three, India included, were in favour of Test cricket,” Richardson said. “And they introduced a Test fund available to countries to enable them to play Test cricket where it wasn’t feasible from a financial point of view, so it wasn’t that they were against Test cricket, I just don’t think they were sold on the idea of a league with a one-off Test final.”The bottom line was members depend a lot on revenues generated from ICC events, India generate a lot from their bilateral Test series anyway, they don’t necessarily need an ICC event or didn’t back then feel the need for any greater context than they currently had. So, at that point in time, obviously you’re going to make a lot more money from a Champions Trophy than you would a one-off World Test Championship final. I think it was purely that, a worry that we wouldn’t generate enough money for the members.”When Shashank Manohar replaced N Srinivasan as the chairman of the ICC in 2015, the World Test Championship returned to the agenda. Richardson was by this time the ICC’s chief executive, and Sutherland was in the 15th year of his CA tenure. The game’s landscape had changed considerably, as T20 created new pressures on the schedule and the value of ICC tournament rights continued to grow. As with many things in global diplomacy, self-interest came into the bargain.”I think it was finally triggered by the fact that the value of the rights to bilateral series, in particular Test series, had gone down or was in danger of going down,” Richardson said. “There was an added need to create that context and of course when that need was there, we jumped on the opportunity.”Then introducing T20 World Cups every second year, the increase in value of the 50-over World Cup, I think members said ‘well, ok, we can still accommodate a World Test Championship and we can do away with the Champions Trophy’, and that’s really how it materialised.”It wasn’t that they [The Big Three] were against Test cricket, I just don’t think they were sold on the idea of a league with a one-off Test final.”•Getty Images”The argument that eventually won the day was if you’ve got context, the value of certain series that were previously frowned upon or looked down upon will increase simply because they are part of a championship. Once that point was realised or accepted as a decent argument, then the resistance to a Test league went away.”Sutherland, too, was happy. “It’s not often in cricket that you get an idea up the first time you put it there. Cricket people tend to be a conservative bunch and they don’t like change, even if it’s staring them in the face as being bleeding obvious.”But it was inevitable, perhaps, that one more roadblock remained – the format. In trying to maintain the “hotch-potch” of bilateral tours, a league table a decision on the best team in the world all within a short enough period for followers to keep track, the first idea was to divide Test cricket into two divisions. In theory, it worked well. .”The reason for seven and five was everyone agreed that if we had a league table running from a longer period than two years it would become too cumbersome and people wouldn’t be able to keep the context together,” Richardson said. “Then, from a practical point of view, fitting in more than six series in two years would have been very difficult. So that was why initially, probably more so than anything, and also trying to make sure Test cricket is as competitive as possible, those would have been the reasons for two divisions.”But we should also acknowledge if you were a country that dropped from first division to second division, you could see the value of that competition from a rights point of view diminishing greatly, and countries might be in trouble. I can understand why countries in danger of being in that second division would vote against it.”Emotions never ran higher than during this debate, for it went to the crux of what Test cricket meant to most members – an elevated status. “Sri Lanka Cricket has decided not to support two-tier Test cricket as we have decided it’s detrimental to SLC and for its future,” Sri Lanka Cricket’s president Thilanga Sumathipala said at the time. “We feel that to make it a top seven – you are virtually relegating the bottom three to a different level. We believe that if you are a Full Member, there can’t be two tiers. One of the reasons is to maintain sustainability of the economy of cricket. If India goes to eighth position, what happens?”ALSO READ: FAQs: All you need to know about the 2019-21 World Test ChampionshipWhat happened was Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe joined forces with the BCCI to block the proposal, forcing Richardson, the ICC operations manager Geoff Allardice, and members back to the planning table. Their result was imperfect, but at least prevented the formalisation of a two-speed economy. Allardice and full-member CEOs were then consigned to lengthy and regular scheduling workshops to iron out a schedule acceptable to all, a process invariably filled with compromise.Among those was a points system whereby each Test series is worth the same number of points, whether two, three, four or five matches long (this, to make sure each Test has value). In addition, the only way Pakistan and India can play one another is for the two nations to qualify for the final, which is the only match of the championship billed strictly as an ICC event. Commercial rights to all matches are retained by members as under normal bilateral terms.”The difficulty with nine teams is that there’s not enough time for everybody to play everybody else in a two-year period, so we’ve settled on this as maybe not the ideal league structure, but certainly as best as we can achieve at this point,” Richardson said. “I think we’ll still have the two best Test teams in the final.”I’m hoping that it’s a start and people will see it and they’ll enjoy the World Test Championship final as a one-off match and then if changes need to be made it can grow from there. It’s like drafting a paper, you’ve got to get the first draft on paper first. That’s the hardest part, once it’s there, you can then look at it, review it and improve it in the future.”The start of the World Test Championship, with all the context it will provide, also marked the end of Richardson’s ICC tenure – Sutherland having left his post at CA in 2018. Theirs was a long struggle, sometimes put on hold, but always kept in the back of the mind for the right moment. Allardice, having been at CA when the pursuit began, is now in Richardson’s former operations post, and Sajdeh is on the board of USA Cricket.”Enough that I can’t remember how many,” Richardson laughed when asked how many drafts of the championship had been binned. “I understand how things move slowly. It’s not that easy, especially when you’ve got a board representing a number of different countries, with sometimes varying interests. So things do take time, DRS took a long time to get accepted by everybody.”I’m just excited to see how it pans out and can’t really wait for that first final in 2021. Ideally we would have liked to give it much more of a splash on the promotion side but we had the World Cup and maybe it’s a good thing we just let things grow, the interest and enthusiasm grow bit by bit, alongside the competition. Once the fixtures start to be played and you see the log building, hopefully by the time 2021 comes around everyone will be really excited and desperate to become a part of that final.”The last word on the World Test Championship to Waugh, captaining Australia when this saga started and now mentoring Tim Paine’s team for the first series of the inaugural edition. For Australia’s great teams of the past, the concept of winning the world title in a final is something that was never able to be enjoyed, and Waugh is known to think that the achievements of the teams he was a part of are not quite as celebrated as they should be for that reason.Undoubtedly, the 1999 World Cup win was more definitive in terms of public memory than any number of Australia’s Test series victories under Waugh’s captaincy between 1999 and 2004.”We would have loved that,” Waugh said of a Test final. “As a team, our players really liked the big moments, the series where they were playing one versus two, where you knew the side was second-best team and trying to take your title. That brought the best out of the team, so definitely would have loved to be a part of that. I played for 18 years and many people said we were the No. 1 Test side in the world, but I think unless you hold up a trophy or you can get to that final game then you’re not really sure.”

From the hurt at not being picked in the IPL to the time when he wasn’t picked for 14 matches after an ODI century – Tiwary doesn’t hold back

Interview by Varun Shetty15-Dec-2019At 34, what are the things you prioritise?Age is obviously just a number. If we listen to the interviews or read interviews of great athletes, they always say that this is just a number and we also feel the same way because it’s all about fitness, your awareness, your understanding of the game.Priorities, as far as professional life is concerned – I want my performances to be better than they were previous season. And also keep performing to the best of my ability and make sure that my consistency rate is there all the time. And I believe deep down that one season of Ranji Trophy can again bring that luck back to me, as far as being picked for India is concerned.And also to get an opportunity in the IPL as well. Last year I could not make a team, so obviously IPL is a very big platform. I’m hoping that somebody gives me an opportunity in their side.After 16 years of being at this level, how do you now prepare for a season as opposed to 10 years ago?Very similar kind of preparation to be honest. It’s just that I need to improve on my skillsets because the more compact you become in Ranji Trophy, the more tight you become, there are more chances of you getting consistent scores. The older you grow the more effort you have to put because earlier, your body was pretty natural, but the load of so many years now takes a toll on the body. I bowl as well, and I give more than 100 percent – obviously everyone gives – but I’m also someone who dives a lot on the field. So that’s why I’ve always kept my physical fitness the first priority and then obviously work on my skillsets and improve on the other part.You must have seen as well, legspin was not working for me in the middle because I had a niggle in my spinning finger. Then I came with the slinging offspin, which was very useful for me in T20s which happened in Ranchi [Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, 2017-18]. I was the leading wicket taker for Bengal. 14 [13 in eight matches] odd wickets at a very good strike rate.Is that something you’ve had to keep doing in the last few years, innovate?Yes. That is because I want to make sure I’m ready with all three departments. Since my spinning finger was injured, I could not bowl legspin. That’s why I started bowling slinging offspin because I wanted to contribute to the team and also show the concerned people in franchises that I can contribute in bowling as well. It’s not about the four-over slot, it’s about the one over which makes an impact in an IPL game, where I can contribute a tight over. And they look at me as an option. That’s why I started that, to get more regularly picked in the IPL and give more options to the captains and teams who are there at the auction table.So preparing for the IPL is now officially part of your routine?No. It depends on the format which I’m playing to be honest. Obviously IPL is a very big platform, but I’ve always prepared according to the format which I’m going to play. Because I play the situation. Somewhere down the line, I feel that that is one thing that has maybe became a downfall of my career. Maybe. That question pops up in my mind most of the time because I’ve always given emphasis on playing the situation rather than playing for something which is coming in the future, like the IPL.

“I could not get the reason why I was not getting picked. It was not communicated. So if that communication is not there, you feel what’s wrong with my game. At that point I had no one who guided me as such to be more calm and not to overthink.”MANOJ TIWARY

I see a lot of players, no matter what the situation demands, they try and go play very attacking shots. When a player plays attacking shots, or takes too many undue risks, there is always an opportunity for the opposition to get his wicket. I don’t try and do that. But still when I sit back and I don’t get picked for the IPL, when I see those players getting an opportunity, then I feel whether my preparation was correct in playing the situation, or should I have played more attackingly to make sure my strike rate goes higher up, irrespective of how much I’ve contributed to the team. So that is a question which pops in my mind when I miss out on an IPL contract.You missed out last year (in the IPL auction) and were outspoken about how upset you were. Why did you choose to come out and talk about it?It was quite simple. In [IPL] 2017 I had a fabulous season (with Rising Pune Supergiant). I got four FBB Stylish Player awards and our team reached the final as well. Unfortunately, we lost against Mumbai [Indians] in the final, where we could have won. Those awards come because you did really well, you made an impact on the game. After that the Pune team left the IPL [when their 2-year contract ended] and then I went to the auction again and Kings XI [Punjab] picked me.Unfortunately, when I sit back and think about why I didn’t get a fair run it was because I realised that Kings XI at that point of time picked so many openers in their side, where they had to make all the openers bat in the middle order to make the combination correct. KL [Rahul] was there, Mayank [Agarwal] was opening, Karun [Nair] was also opening, [Aaron] Finch was an opener, and Gayle obviously. So that, somewhere I feel, has hampered my position in the team.But, nevertheless, I got three opportunities to bat. First two I couldn’t make an impact. But I felt that third innings against Chennai [Super Kings] was an important innings. It was the second-highest score [35 off 30] for the Kings XI side after Karun Nair’s half-century. That was something which I thought was a good innings under pressure. And after that, I did not get an opportunity because the team did not qualify and last year nobody picked me.My name came first in the auction, and I was a little surprised to see no one has picked me. My base price was INR 50 lakhs [approx. US$ 7050], so I did not come as expensive if someone had taken me. That’s why I was a little disappointed, because people pretty quickly forget your contributions. And I’ve always been a very upfront guy, I’ve always believed in saying the truth. And that has been a downfall, when I sit back and think about the statements I’ve made earlier during my career.That’s how the emotions came out. I try to be calm most of the time – and I’ve been now, over a period of time. Earlier I was very aggressive by nature, on the field as well, when I started playing. Sometimes I obviously feel bad. I’m not against any of the young players getting picked for the IPL, it’s just that when I see in difficult situations all the youngsters who have been given a longer rope, in those crucial situations, they’re not able to hit those boundaries. Not able to keep their calm in such a way that they’re giving themselves a better chance to succeed. Whereas when I’m sitting at home watching those games, I feel that I could have scored those runs, I could have made that impact. So these are the things that bother me at times, but when time passes, it’s all well and good.Manoj Tiwary holds the pose after hitting a straight six•BCCILot of people believe you’re unfortunate not to have played more for India. You got injured at crucial points and so forth. Ever felt, “why does this only happen to me?”There are a couple of instances where things have not gone the way I would’ve loved them to. Like getting injured on my first tour in Bangladesh, in 2006-07. Before a game I got injured, my shoulder got dislocated. Then I had to wait one year to make a debut in Australia (2008 CB Series). I was waiting for the other opportunity in that tournament, where Rohit [Sharma] became Rohit if you remember. Then I had to wait three years to make a comeback. I was made to open in the West Indies when I had a fabulous IPL with Kolkata Knight Riders (in 2011). Went to West Indies, got opportunities, but at the opening slot, which is not my position. I’ve always batted at No. 4. In the fifth game of the series, I got opportunity at No. 4. I scored 24 [22] and got out. Got set and got out.Again, I was dropped for a lot of matches. Again I got picked in the West Indies home series where [Virender] Sehwag opted out. I made sure I batted No. 4. In the last game of the series, I got a hundred, and after that I was not part of the playing XI for the next 14 games for India. And that 14 games happened over a period of six months.I could not get the reason why I was not getting picked. It was not communicated. So if that communication is not there, you feel ‘What’s wrong with my game?’ At that point, I had no one who guided me as such to be more calm and not to overthink about these things, so that whenever you get an opportunity you will obviously have to make an impact on those games.But having said that, I look at life in a very positive way. From where I started and where I am right now, it’s all because of god’s grace. I’d never thought that I will reach this place where I’ll be financially secure, people will know my name and give me love and appreciation. I see a lot of people in our community who are differently-abled. I’ve got my body intact. I compare with them whenever I come across difficult situations and I obviously think I’ve been blessed to have this kind of life. So those phases just pass by.In the coming season, you’ll have a slightly different role, with a new captain coming in at Bengal?I’ve always wanted to be a team man, my only aim is to make sure the team wins the trophy. During my captaincy term, I have won a few trophies. Now I want to help [Abhimanyu] Easwaran. He’s our captain now. I want to assist him whenever it’s required, but I also want to give him that space so that he becomes a good captain by himself. Because captaincy I believe is all about your gut feeling. And what you are thinking in that point of time. That is what I’ve done in Vijay Hazare and Syed Mushtaq Ali. So my role as a senior is to just help the youngsters. I want to go up to them and tell them what needs to be done and how you can do it, rather than I keep sitting and watching them, keep replaying their mistakes. What I had gone through – I don’t want them to [go through and] lose out on time. You learn because of your experiences and when I see these players are getting misdirected or not working in a correct way, I want to make sure that these guys don’t lose out on time.

“I started bowling slinging offspin because I wanted to contribute to the team and also show the concerned people in franchises that I can contribute in bowling as well.”MANOJ TIWARY

Now that half the home season is done, what would your ideal season look like from here?I want to score more than 1000 runs this season. That’s my aim. I’m working towards it. Whatever is required to be done, whether it’s physical or planning my innings in a better way. I’ve chalked out a few areas where I need to work as far as my technique is concerned. Getting my technique a bit tighter for the Ranji games. Which is always the challenging part when you play shorter formats before the Ranji season, you want to play Ranji in the same flow. That’s not going to give you dividends. Because in days matches, the ball keeps swinging most of the time. You have to have a very good technique and temperament to score big runs and hundreds. And I’ve done it in the past. It’s just that this year will be more important because I want to give myself the best chance of scoring 1000 runs.Is that the goal now, that you have to go out on a high?I’m not going anywhere. I’m 34 and I plan to play another ten years. I know it’s not going to be easy. If Wasim [Jaffer] can play for so many years, if Zaheer Khan can roll his arm at 42 and still get wickets at T10, why can’t I? Michael Jordan, LeBron James, so many other athletes. Nobody will question LeBron James – he’s 34 I guess. He’s going to continue for another 3-4 years. So that’s how I want to break it down. Three years [at a time], or two. I’m not going to go (out) so easily.