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.

Should Royal Challengers have bowled more pace in the Powerplay, and did the umpires fail to call a number of bouncers?

ESPNcricinfo staff08-Apr-20181:43

Coach’s Diary: RCB face death-bowling issues again

Who fared best on ESPNcricinfo’s Smart Stats

Smart Strike Rate (Strike Rate in brackets, min. 5 balls faced)
1. Sunil Narine 395.64 (263.15)
2. Mandeep Singh 277.57 (205.55)
3. AB de Villiers 242.95 (191.30)
4. Brendon McCullum 186.06 (159.25)
5. Nitish Rana 132.15 (136.00)
Smart Economy Rate (Economy Rate in brackets)
1. Andre Russell 1.63 (5.00)
2. Umesh Yadav 4.79 (6.75)
3. Mitchell Johnson 6.32 (7.50)
4. Sunil Narine 6.34 (7.50)
5. Piyush Chawla 6.77 (7.75)

Did Kohli miss a trick by feeding spin to Narine?
Sunil Narine’s reputation as an early-overs smasher is only growing by the day, and a large part of it has been built by his fearsome hitting ability while facing spin early on. While opening the batting in T20s, Narine averages 15.93 against pace and 36 against spin, and ESPNcricinfo’s control percentages show that he is in far more control (69%) against spin than against pace (51%).Control percentages matter little for a pinch-hitter like Narine, but his dismissal figures tell a story: in 36 innings, he has been dismissed 29 times by pace, while also finding it harder to get away, while spin has only got him six times in 18 innings. When he blitzed to what was then the fastest IPL fifty last year, 30 of his runs came off 10 Samuel Badree balls, and it took an Aniket Choudhary bouncer in the seventh over to dismiss him.ESPNcricinfo LtdToday’s innings was almost identical, as RCB fed him liberal doses of spin, with 30 of his runs coming against Washington Sundar and Yuzvendra Chahal. No long-offs for the offspinner, vacant acres in the deep midwicket region for the legspinner – most of it made little sense, especially for an opponent who has borne the brunt of his hitting not too long ago. Chris Woakes, who is not an express quick, got the same treatment bowling a combination of slower and wider ones, right in Narine’s hitting zone.When express pace finally came on in the sixth over in the form of Umesh Yadav, Narine backed away to a low full-toss, and inside-edged onto his stumps. By then, he had made 50 off 19, with an incredible Smart Strike Rate of 395.64.Five overs of spin in the PowerplayOnly once in IPL’s history have more overs of spin been bowled in the Powerplay, and the Knight Riders came in with a plan against the big-hitting quartet of Quinton de Kock, Brendon McCullum, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers. Together, Kuldeep Yadav and Piyush Chawla went for 38 runs off their 5 overs, picking up de Kock’s wicket, a creditable return against a line-up of that ability. If not for Vinay Kumar’s expensive first over, their Powerplay would have been a greater success than ending up on 52 for 1.Bizarre non-no-ball calls
It is now well-known and widely documented that the relaid Eden Gardens wicket suits pace a lot more than spin. Since the beginning of last year’s IPL, pacers have taken a wicket every 20 balls when they have bowled short or back of a length, the third-best strike rate for those lengths after Feroz Shah Kotla and the Wankhede.Today, there were a number of occasions when the number of bouncers exceeded two per over, which went largely unnoticed by the on-field umpires Abhijit Deshmukh and C Shamsuddin, not least the caught-behind decision against Rinku Singh, both of whose feet were in the air when he edged a Chris Woakes bouncer – the third of the over, though none elicited a signal from the umpire – to the keeper.As per ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, 75 deliveries were pitched short or back of a length, for an abnormally high average of 4.68 balls per over of pace. They yielded three wickets in total, but more crucially kept the run-scoring in check, with 37 back-of-a-length balls going for just 5.35 runs an over.

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.”

The coach made a significant departure from his “character over cover drives” mantra, homing in on issues of batting technique

Daniel Brettig in Abu Dhabi20-Oct-2018For all the statistical measures of Australia’s batting decline, nothing has spoken as loudly as the philosophical shift in focus suggested by Australia’s coach Justin Langer at the conclusion of his first Test series in charge. Talking technique may not sound like a big deal for the head coach of the national team, but coming from Langer it was a marked departure from much of what he is known for.Over comfortably more than a decade, Langer has been synonymous with the phrase “character over cover drives”. So much so that it could easily be the title of one of his books. His achievements as a batsman and as a coach of Australia’s domestic sides have appeared to go hand in hand with a philosophy grounded in personal discipline and growth, as much if not more so than the MCC coaching manual.But since his appointment as the national coach in May, Langer has seemed to be wrestling with the loss of plenty of former certainties as the sheer complexity of his task has become clearer. In the aftermath of Australia’s 373-run hiding in Abu Dhabi to lose the UAE series to Pakistan, he made a significant departure from that “character over cover drives” mantra, homing in on issues of batting technique as the key to arresting Australia’s wretched recent history of collapses.In assessing how the touring team’s two first innings in Dubai and Abu Dhabi essentially cost them any chance of winning the series, Langer pointed out that in the concurrent Sheffield Shield round, a host of other batting collapses had also taken place, and recalled a conversation with the former professional golfer Lyndsay Stephen about mental skills being subservient to technical limitations.”If you look at this round of Sheffield Shield cricket, I know a number of the states have also had some big batting collapses as well,” Langer said in Abu Dhabi. “I’ve been in the State system for a long time and I’ve watched this and I think what I’m really intrigued about is you’re not allowed to use the word technique anymore.”Lyndsay Stephen, the golfer, I remember having dinner with him and everyone says it’s all mental, it’s all mental. It’s all about the mental side of the game and I thought that’s interesting, yeah that’s what everyone says. But Lyndsay Stephen told me, ‘I’d rather have a guy with a good technique who is a bit softer mentally, than a guy who is really mentally tough with a really bad technique’. This is in golf. I said ‘what do you mean?'”He said, ‘If you’ve got a good technique, you’ll hit most balls down the middle of the fairway and over time you’ll develop some confidence and you can learn concentration and that’s how you get mental toughness. If you’ve got a bad technique and you’re hitting the ball behind the trees or in the rough, it doesn’t matter how mentally tough you are, eventually you’re not going to be able to hitting it into the hole that often’.”Haris Sohail takes a catch at first slip to dismiss Shaun Marsh•Getty ImagesTurning his focus from golf to cricket, Langer indicated that it was now necessary for many Australia batsmen to look more closely at the technical underpinnings of their approach to batting, in a manner that would allow them to retain the skills that would keep them in the middle for long periods against a moving ball. In this, Langer essentially suggested that many players in the current system were playing for their state and country without the basic fundamentals that were once self-evident.”I was brought up in Australian cricket where we did a lot of bowling machine work and we did a lot of talk on technique,” he said. “Technique to me is about footwork patterns and playing forward when it’s full, and [playing] back when it’s back. So they’re just really basics of the game particularly in footwork patterns and you talk about the great Australian players [how] they moved their feet like boxers, every one of them. They had footwork patterns and then from there you have the skill of run-scoring. And it’s a really important thing.”The technique is really important and I think now there’s a lot of talk because of white-ball cricket that you just have wide stances and you just stand and deliver. Well that’s okay, but even in T20 cricket or one-day cricket and most certainly first-class cricket and Test cricket when the ball starts moving around, if you don’t move your feet, then you’re going to come unstuck. And that’s something we all have to do in Australian cricket. There wouldn’t be a state coach out there who would be saying it’s all rainbows and butterflies out there after this weekend’s cricket, because of the collapses.”In charting a path forward, Langer argued that all players needed to learn to become better problem-solvers, aware of the intricacies of their own methods and able to tinker with them whenever problems arose. “After day two, I was up until about midnight watching batting videos, looking at ways we can get better,” he said. “What I know about Test cricket, I’ve been through all this before in a sense as an individual player. You come in, it’s really hard, and the only way you work it out is by problem-solving, and working hard.”That was my formula as a player, and all the great players, the great players I’ve been lucky to play with, they’re just really good problem-solvers, they work it out, they work really hard, and they’re brilliant at concentration, so if I can take the lessons I learnt as a player into problem-solving of making the team better, then hopefully we’ll go okay.Aaron Finch gets forward to defend•Associated Press”There’s certainly some focus we have to have. As we see just this week. We’ve got to work out, we’ve got a Test match here, first-class cricket, some T20s coming up. Then there’re some one-dayers. So the schedule is what it is. But the great players are able to adapt and most of them have got a good batting technique and the skill of scoring runs, so we can’t sugarcoat it any longer. If I’m a young batsman in Australia, it’s a pretty exciting time. If you work really hard on your basic game and you learn how to make runs, then there will be a huge opportunities in the Australian cricket team.”Assessing the performances of Australia’s batsmen, Langer was warm in his praise of Aaron Finch, Marnus Labuschagne and Usman Khawaja in particular. We’re in a much different stage of Australian cricket history, aren’t we,” Langer said. “You guys have heard me say it before, it’s usually harder to get out of the side than it is to get into the side. It used to be a beautiful thing, if you were the hunter, it used to be a shocking thing when you were playing. If you were the hunted, well that’s sort of good, but you knew there were hunters coming at you all the time. There was always pressure.”And in this instance, I thought Finchy played pretty well, he did really well, and he’ll learn a lot from this series. I was really impressed with Finchy. I thought Marnus played particularly well in this innings. He had a brainfade in the first innings. You’ve never seen anything like it. Two in two days. I’ve seen some stuff on the cricket field, but I’ve never seen that ever.”And Marnus knows, so I’m not burning him, it was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in my life until what happened yesterday. I thought Marnus played well, and his leg-spin was a real revelation for us. As a young leg-spinner, there’s huge upside to that. Obviously Uzzy played really well, and he’ll have his knee operated on, hopefully sooner rather than later, so hopefully he’ll be right for the first Test match [against India in December].”When he reached Travis Head, one of three Australian debutants in Dubai, Langer returned to his technical theme, by noting how much he could see the young South Australian evolving in his first Test series. “What I liked about Travis Head is his development – he’s working hard on his game,” Langer said. “The way everyone used to say he can’t play spin, well he has worked hard on that. He played a cut shot today. I’m getting a bit technical here, but we’re talking batting here, which I love.”I love batting, that’s why it’s killing me at the moment. But he usually plays his cut shot from leg stump, today he played a beautiful cut shot, [like] Sir Donald Bradman, he got right across, he played that late cut for four. And obviously Shaun [Marsh] and Mitch [Marsh] haven’t had their best series, but we also know they’re good cricketers who have had a tough time. So there are opportunities for guys in the team, and there are opportunities for guys who are good blokes and make a lot of runs.”

He has had three terms in office, but a strong challenger has appeared, in the form of Ricky Skerritt

Andre Errol Baptiste07-Mar-2019A smile has returned to West Indies cricket. It has continued to grow through the Test series win over England and the draw in the one-day series, but it has nothing to do with one or the other.Instead it is the announcement that, come the end of March 2019, there is a strong opportunity and occasion for West Indies cricket to breathe again. Former West Indies team manager Ricky Skerritt has announced that he will be challenging the incumbent president of Cricket West Indies, Dave Cameron, for the presidency.Cameron has been unpopular all around the West Indies since his appointment on March 27, 2013, replacing Julien Hunte, before which he was a vice president of the board. He has been especially unpopular with several of the top regional players and former players, who have had their say on his three terms (of two years each).While there is not much, or enough, known about Skerritt as an administrator, there is a strong belief that anything is better than Cameron again. The latter has not helped himself with his utterances in the past, whether on television, radio, in print, or via social media, which many have either rightfully or otherwise described as arrogant or divisive.ALSO READ: Dave Cameron presidency has ‘damaged’ CWI – Ricky SkerrittIt is apparent that, unlike in the case of the previous challenger to Cameron, Joel Garner of Barbados, Skerritt’s run at the presidency is gaining traction, and with it, causing a serious ripple effect all around the Caribbean.Yet again, it appears that the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board (TTCBC) is supporting Skerritt, as too, it is reported, is the Leeward Islands board. For the TTCBC, despite the fallout from their support of Garner previously, it appears to be a case of having had enough. Indeed, the question is: why has it taken so long for the TTCBC to realise the need to challenge Cameron?Also, we all know of recent statements by Enoch Lewis, the CWI director of the Leeward Islands board, who openly challenged Cameron’s decision to appoint Richard Pybus as the new West Indies coach without the total approval of all CWI board members.Over the next few weeks we can expect the battle to intensify, with Cameron under pressure to hold off an angry West Indian public, who have seen the return of certain top players to the West Indies fold result in a change in attitude and performance. We can expect bitterness from Cameron’s team as they attempt to curtail the growing momentum of Skerritt. There is the strong possibility that more players will become available should Cameron no longer be president. In fact, there is talk that some players might come out of self-imposed retirement if that occurs. All of this adds up to a strong showing for Skerritt and his team, but sadly, it is not the people of the region who will vote. Were that the case, Cameron would probably lose by a record margin.However, we also need to know more about Skerritt – and Kishore Shallow, who is running as vice-president alongside him. More than just press releases and ten-point plans, we need to have a better understanding of both men and what they can deliver and how much we can trust them. For the people of the region, trust is critical in terms of support.ALSO READ: Ricky Skerritt announces challenge to Cameron CWI presidencyThe representatives of the six territorial boards – Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trindad and Tobago, Windward Islands, and Leeward Islands – will vote to decide on the CWI presidency. Each board has two votes.We have been told in a media release that Leeward Islands and Trinidad and Tobago will vote for Skerritt and Shallow. But Shallow is president of the St Vincent and Grenadines Cricket Association, which falls under the Windward Islands association, whose president is supposedly still Emmanuel Nanthan of Dominica, who is currently also the vice-president of CWI under Cameron. So there is a strong possibility that the Windward Islands’ votes could be divided between Shallow and Nanthan, thereby placing a lot of emphasis on Barbados (a noted Cameron stronghold) and Guyana (a certainty to vote for Cameron; they have also been struggling to hold elections for over six years and are being supported by the current executive of Cricket West Indies).Two votes each for Cameron from Barbados and Guyana, plus at least one vote from the Windward Islands, puts him on five votes. Similarly, two each for Skerritt from Leeward Islands and Trinidad and Tobago, plus one vote possible from Windward Islands, places him on five votes too. This means that Jamaica’s two votes are critical. The facts that Cameron is a Jamaican by birth, and that the elections were apparently suddenly shifted to Jamaica in March, assume relevance. Politically there are those that have suggested that the current opposition party in Jamaica strongly supports Cameron. Only time will tell whether the influence of the Caricom leaders on Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, will have any impact on which way the Jamaican association votes.So, just as the fate of West Indies in the upcoming World Cup may very well hinge on Chris Gayle, it appears that the fate of West Indies cricket administration too is in the hands of two Jamaicans.

Their head-to-head is incredibly tight, and there’s always needle between the players. Shouldn’t the two teams meet more often?

Mohammad Isam in Southampton23-Jun-2019Like world leaders at a diplomatic summit, Bangladesh coach Steve Rhodes and Afghanistan captain Gulbadin Naib uttered grand words in their press conferences at the Hampshire Bowl. Rhodes said he was proud of Afghanistan’s rise in cricket and that he respects them a lot, while Naib praised Bangladesh profusely: for their start at this World Cup, for the form Shakib Al Hasan has shown, and even their domestic cricket.But amidst all these niceties, Rhodes let slip a “we are ready to take them on”. Naib, in the middle of a long answer in Pashto, slipped in a couple of cheeky lines in Urdu.” (We are drowning, but we will take you with us.)”Having lost all six of their matches so far, Afghanistan aren’t going to make it to the semi-finals. And so, Naib reasoned, they might as well take Bangladesh down with them.The statement, right at the end of the press conference, confirmed that there will be needle in the contest. And why not, for this is a proper rivalry. Bangladesh are 4-3 ahead in the head-to-head between the two sides in ODIs, but if you throw in T20Is, Afghanistan are 6-5 ahead. Last year, Afghanistan crushed Bangladesh in a T20I series in Dehradun, before handing them a 136-run hammering in the Asia Cup. But later in the same tournament, Bangladesh edged them out by three runs in a classic contest, which put them on course for the final.Sparks often fly when Afghanistan meet Bangladesh•NurPhoto/Getty ImagesThese meetings have produced their fair share of altercations. The moment Bangladesh won that last game in the Asia Cup, Mushfiqur Rahim mimicked Mohammad Shahzad’s dance routine from the Dehradun T20Is, where he had led the dance. During the 2014 World T20 game, Shahzad got into a tangle with Tamim Iqbal, and Dawlat Zadran with Tamim and Shakib. Even during a BPL game three years ago, Shahzad and Sabbir Rahman had to be separated during an on-field altercation.In terms of the on-field contest, it seems to be a “new kid on the block” thing between these two teams, but it seems to be largely confined to the field of play. Away from it, there’s a lot of bonhomie. Before Mohammad Nabi and Rashid Khan became T20 globetrotters, they cut their teeth in Bangladesh’s domestic competitions like the BPL and the Dhaka Premier League. The likes of Rahmat Shah, Shahzad, Najibullah Zadran, Naib and Mujeeb Ur Rahman have either played in the DPL or the BPL, or both. There’s not just great demand for Afghan cricketers in Bangladesh, but respect too.Recently, Bangladesh inadvertently helped Afghanistan’s cricket in one way. When they passed up on Phil Simmons as head coach last year, Afghanistan took him on, and by all accounts it has helped them in their progress into the World Cup through the qualifiers. Simmons has generally made his name by lifting struggling sides.But there has been a sense of unease among decision-makers in the BCB about Afghanistan. Bangladesh should do their bit to help the two newest Test teams, but in the next three years they are scheduled to play Afghanistan in just one Test, three ODIs and four T20Is split over two bilateral series – in October 2019 and February 2022.These two closely-matched teams don’t play each other as often as they should. Given that their few meetings have often been tensely fought, more frequent matches won’t just help the teams grow individually, but also give their fans a rivalry to get hooked to. On Monday, sparks will most certainly fly in Southampton – sink, swim or drown.

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.”

For years now, he has sent mixed messages about his availability for South Africa while turning out for T20 leagues all around the world

Firdose Moonda07-Jun-2019This did not start on the eve of South Africa’s World Cup squad announcement. It did not start at the IPL, when AB de Villiers is supposed to have approached Faf du Plessis with the suggestion of returning to the national side. It did not start with the fallout after the Champions Trophy two years ago, when de Villiers reluctantly let go of the ODI captaincy after du Plessis emerged as a better captaincy option, or even when he took a year-long sabbatical from Test cricket that year. This started seven years ago, in the UK.In Taunton, hours after Mark Boucher suffered the eye injury that ended his career and without consultation with the selectors or anyone else in an administrative capacity back home, the South Africa team camp announced that de Villiers would keep wicket. This seemed a reasonable response to an emergency situation; also South Africa were fortunate that they had someone with de Villiers’ varied skill set to call on. But it was a rushed call and its repercussions are still being felt.ALSO READ: AB de Villiers sought World Cup recall, SA team management said noThe two main learnings that emerged from that decision were about the presence and power of a clique of senior players – which Herschelle Gibbs identified in a biography no one took seriously – and a disregard for the importance of transformation. Thami Tsolekile had been contracted as Boucher’s successor in the lead-up to the tour and arrived eventually, but only to carry drinks. We can analyse the statistical merit of de Villiers over Tsolekile (and it will be a no-contest in de Villiers’ favour) but we also have to look at the bigger picture. In the years after that, South African cricket was forced by its administrators to adhere to targets, most notably in a World Cup semi-final (which affected de Villiers’ deeply) as well as by the country’s government, which could have been avoided had the need to change been embraced earlier.Ultimately, both those events contributed to how de Villiers’ situation with the national team turned out in the years that followed.Some days he wanted to be the next Adam Gilchrist – and he had the ability to be that and more. On others, a chronic back problem prevented him from crouching behind the stumps. Between 2012 and late 2015, when Quinton de Kock took a firm grip on the gloves, de Villiers swayed between wanting to play the dual role of wicketkeeper and key batsman to complaining that he was overburdened and would contemplate early retirement (a story that broke during the Boxing Day Test against England in December 2015). When de Villiers did both jobs, he thrived. He averaged 57.41 when keeping wicket, compared to 50.66 overall. That he could do it was never in doubt; whether he wanted to, whether he felt he needed to, or was forced to, is.Then, there were some days he wanted to captain the side, while on others he was happy being led. De Villiers first threw his unequivocal support behind Hashim Amla when Amla was made Test captain following Graeme Smith’s retirement, and later said in an interview that he had wanted the job. When Amla stepped down a year and a half later and de Villiers was made captain, injury prevented him from leading at first but then he willingly took that sabbatical from Test cricket, which meant he never served as the official, permanently appointed captain. But to his credit, when he saw how du Plessis led the team in Australia in late 2016, he stepped aside, though his desire to be part of a senior group never dimmed.Eventually, there were some days when de Villiers wanted to play and others when he didn’t. Like many players, when he started a family, de Villiers wanted more time off, which was understandable. He also wanted more money, so the IPL was an obvious choice. But then he used some of his rest period to dabble in the CPL while still playing for South Africa in 2016, which sent confusing messages about where his priorities lay.ALSO READ: ‘Decision based on principle; had to be fair to the team’ – CSA selector on turning down de VilliersPlaying international sport at the highest level for more than ten years is tough and de Villiers said so many times. What he never explained was why he found it so much easier to travel to T20 leagues, leaving his young family at home. For that answer, we need to turn to the 2015 World Cup semi-final, where de Villiers was forced to pick a half-fit Vernon Philander in his XI. Of all the players who were let down that day, de Villiers seemed to take it the hardest. That was the World Cup he thought South Africa would win, and he was the one to lead them there.After that incident, de Villiers picked and chose more regularly. After headline-grabbing his way through the England Tests at home in the 2015-16 summer, he opted out of the 2017 Test series against New Zealand and England, which South Africa lost. He came back for a home series against India in 2017-18, and then was the major contributor to a victory in a Test series over Australia, South Africa’s first at home. They may never have achieved that if not for de Villiers.Some days de Villers wanted to lead, other days he was happy to be led•AFPThe combination of frustration with de Villiers for choosing when he wanted to play, and fascination at his ability to justify his choices by performing when he did play became confusing. Should South Africa be angry with him for being selective? Grateful to him for turning up when he did? Accommodating to his needs?It’s difficult to know the right answer because in the middle of all this CSA have also been putting out other fires. The combination of the country’s frail economy and the pressures of their transformation targets took its toll on other players, and a Kolpak exodus saw them lose men who could also be in the World Cup squad today.One of them, Kyle Abbott, walked away, having just established a regular place in the squad. He was at the Hampshire Bowl to greet them before their match against India this week, on the same day Dale Steyn was ruled out of the tournament. Abbott laughed when jokes were made about whether he could be called up (he can’t) but these things are not so funny anymore. South African cricket can’t afford more crises, especially in the face of a T20 competition that has not quite set the world alight, and financial losses that are erasing vast amounts of their cash reserves. On the whole, confidence in the way CSA runs the game is at all-time low, and de Villiers was one of the people who felt that earliest.ALSO WATCH: AB de Villiers: country v club (2016)Considering that the South African Cricketers’ Association is taking CSA to court over its decision to restructure the domestic system, de Villiers is not the only player with concerns, but he is one of the few who can do something about it.In May 2018, he took the most drastic route he could and retired, saying so via an Instagram video. He also revealed that the World Cup was no longer a burning ambition, but the whispers that he still wanted the trophy never went away.In October last year, when the first rumours that de Villiers was considering a comeback surfaced, he quashed them. “That is not true,” de Villiers replied to a message I sent asking him if the World Cup was in his sights. He reiterated that shortly after, when preparing for South Africa’s Mzansi Super League. “There is no comeback. I’m very, very happy with where I’m at in my life. I don’t want to confuse anybody, especially not the [Proteas] team. It will be very selfish and arrogant of me to throw statements around that I’m keen to play a World Cup.”So de Villiers knew, more than six months before the World Cup, that changing his mind would be disruptive. But still, he could not resist.Now there is disruption when the team is at its lowest, one defeat away from an almost certain early exit from the tournament, one senior bowler on the plane home, one junior bowler still nursing injury, and now with one major sideshow on their hands that could lead to a complete unravelling.In some ways, you can’t blame de Villiers for wanting to be involved, especially given the state of the current side. But you can only wonder how he managed to misread the team dynamic so spectacularly that he thought the door was still open for him. In the end, his numbers will ensure he remains a cricketing great. But his legacy will be defined not only by his excellence but also his indecisiveness. It’s worth remembering that both of those were a long time in the making.

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.”