Down 1-2 in the series, this was a must-win game for Pakistan, and the pressure of the situation showed in the manner in which they approached their innings

On the Ball with S Rajesh16-Feb-2006Down 1-2 in the series, this was a must-win game for Pakistan, and the pressure of the situation showed in the manner in which they approached their innings. The Indian bowlers showed exemplary discipline early on, but Pakistan contributed with their attitude. The first couple of overs were maidens, and when the runs came, they were in trickles, interspersed with plenty of dot balls. The early defensive mindset of the batsmen allowed the bowlers to settle into a rhythm on a pitch which didn’t offer them too much assistance.The batsmen’s approach eventually resulted in a rash of poor strokes, so that after 15 overs their total read a miserable 38 for 4, from which there was no coming back. The pie-chart below shows just how much of a stranglehold the Indian bowlers had in the first 15: there were 32 defensive shots, while 18 balls were left alone. A comparison with the number of deliveries left alone in the earlier three games tells the story: in the previous match the number was six, while the figure from the first two games was three. Pakistan played 75 dot balls and managed just three fours in the first 15, and ultimately, that’s where the match was decided.

Daniel Vettori’s dogged innings of 60, off 129 balls, ensured that New Zealand sailed well past the follow-on target

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan25-Jun-2005Daniel Vettori’s dogged innings of 60, off 129 balls, ensured
that New Zealand sailed well past the follow-on target, and more
importantly, used up valuable time, which may eventually prove
critical to the outcome of the match. Sourav Ganguly might have
missed a trick when he persisted with Zaheer Khan and L Balaji
against him, instead of relying on his spinners.Vettori scored 19 off 70 balls (strike rate of 27) against Anil
Kumble and Harbhajan Singh. Against the seamers, his strike-rate
was almost three times as much (36 of 46 balls). Zaheer and
Balaji hardly pitched the ball up, and on an agonisingly slow
pitch, Vettori had ample time to work the ball square of the
wicket. Zaheer didn’t test Vettori with a single yorker and
continued bowling short.Length bowled by medium-pacers to Vettori

Vettori was fairly comfortable against the 26 good-length balls
bowled to him, and worked the ball off the square mostly off the
back foot. Against the medium pacers, he scored 18 runs off 9
balls when he was on his back foot, and even when he showed
minimal footwork he succeeded in scoring 7 off 15 balls.Vettori’s footwork against the medium-fast bowlers Balls (Runs)

Vettori was finally dismissed by Anil Kumble and left India with
a lesser lead than they would have liked and lesser time to force
the issue.

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan on why India’s premier cricketer needs to fire both as player and captain

Siddhartha Vaidyanathan26-Jul-2007

You normally don’t associate words like “confused” and “unsure” with Rahul Dravid but there are times during this early stage of the England tour when they have seemed apt. Amid all the excitement over the bowlers and the angst over the batting heavyweights, Dravid’s situation should not be ignored. It is one that prompts more empathy than criticism.He endured two failures with the bat at Lord’s and, excluding Bangladesh, he has now gone four Tests without a contribution (in South Africa last year, he didn’t once go past 50). He’s leading a side that includes a few rookies and has to do without the services of a coach. It comes as no surprise that he has stuttered through press conferences – before the game he said Harbhajan when he meant Kumble; after the game he said, “England’s confidence will surely be 0-0.”Most of India’s important victories in the last five years, at venues as diverse as Adelaide, Rawalpindi and Kingston, have been Dravid-inspired. Under normal circumstances you wouldn’t want your best batsman to be straddled with the captaincy, but Dravid remains the best available option and there’s no point debating the issue. He needs to lead, he needs to score, he needs to win matches. It may be too much to ask but he also needs to win tosses.If the bowlers need to iron out a few creases, they have Venkatesh Prasad to approach. There’s Robin Singh to talk to if anyone has an issue with fielding. But who does Dravid turn to?He is someone who thinks a lot about his batting, visualises his shots the previous day, and ponders hard over the construction of an innings. “I do my best to be in a relaxed state of mind because that’s when I play at my best,” he told in December 2003, when he was still a long way away from the captaincy. “I try to slow things down a couple of days before the game. I have long lunches, do things in an unhurried way. The morning of the match I always get up a couple of hours before we have to get to the ground, so that I have plenty of time to get ready. I take my time to have a bath, wear my clothes, eat breakfast. I never rush things, and that sort of sets up my mood for the rest of day.”

It’s tough to imagine the Dravid of today having enough time to go through all these routines in a relaxed manner. He needs to think of team composition, plan net sessions, sort out his team-mates’ struggles, and do his best to keep morale high. Captaincy can be hard work in such circumstances. Ravi Shastri, who led in only one Test but made a name for himself as a shrewd tactician, thought Dravid was over-attacking on the first morning by setting a 7-2 field for the England openers. India’s bowlers were taking time to come to terms with the Lord’s slope, as well as the occasion, but Dravid refused to relent. It was no doubt the bowlers’ fault for being off line, but England raced away with the momentum too easily. Again Dravid was probably guilty of letting the game drift on the fourth afternoon, but stopping Kevin Pietersen when he’s in that mood isn’t easy.India have relied so much on Dravid over the last five years that a minor blip in his form causes a rise in the mercury levels. England experienced the downside of appointing a talisman like Andrew Flintoff as captain; are India entering similar territory?The last time he left England, Dravid had successfully made the step up from a good batsman to a great one. If he can get back his groove and help India win this series, he might transform himself from being an uncertain leader to an assured one.

Ashley Giles wrung every last drop out of the limited talent he had

Andrew Miller10-Aug-2007

In Duncan Fletcher’s estimation, Giles was one of the three most professional cricketers he had ever worked with © Getty Images
In the final analysis, Ashley Giles’ international career looks every bit as ordinary as his detractors always insist it has been. A bowling average of 40.60, a batting mark of 20.89. If you could flip those figures around, you’d be looking at the single greatest allrounder who ever lived. Alas, that’s not the case. You’re looking at Gilo. The Wheelie Bin. The non-spinning left-arm spinner. The butt of every joke that was ever made about England’s cricket team during their golden era of the mid-2000s.But hang on, there’s an anomaly in that sentence. That’s right, the golden era. For there’s one other statistic that deserves a mention when assessing Giles’ career. In the course of his 54 Tests, Giles was involved in no fewer than 27 victories and just 12 defeats. To put that into some sort of context, the England cricket team as a whole managed just 26 wins in the entire decade of the 1990s. For all the derision he attracted, Giles was a winner, and as integral to his side’s success as any of the glamour boys who so regularly eclipsed his limelight.Giles’ value to England cannot be assessed by statistics. His five five-wicket hauls have been exceeded by Monty Panesar in barely a third of the games, while his tally of four Test fifties in 81 innings (and a highest score of 59) hardly seem the sort of numbers to justify the blind faith invested in him by his coach Duncan Fletcher. But it was the commitment of his contributions that made the difference. Giles was a cricketer who had no choice but to excavate every ounce of his ability and, in doing so, coaxed similarly heartfelt performances from men with twice the talent but half the drive.In Fletcher’s estimation, Giles was one of the three most professional cricketers he had ever worked with. It’s hard to imagine who could have topped his charts because Giles was a Fletcher man through and through. Memorably the partnership all ended in tears, with that misguided recall for the 2006-07 Ashes, but let’s face it, that series was a bridge too far even for the likes of Andrew Flintoff and Steve Harmison. Even so, for Giles to wind up as the scapegoat, after dropping Ricky Ponting at Adelaide, was nothing less than apposite.Giles was always the scapegoat when things started to go wrong for England, never more so than in the 2005 Ashes, when England’s defeat in the opening Test at Lord’s caused a barrage of spleen-venting in the media. In the build-up to the series, Terry Alderman had suggested that any Australian batsman who got out to Giles should go hang himself; and after a wicketless outing at Lord’s, the former Zimbabwe captain Dave Houghton suggested that persisting with him in the side was like playing with ten men.And yet, in that famous series Giles and his team-mates negotiated the last laugh. His ten Ashes victims included each and every member of Australia’s top eight, but it was his performances with the bat that would be recalled with the most gratitude. At Trent Bridge he soothed the nation’s brow by clipping the winning runs after an innings-saving stand with Matthew Hoggard, and in the next match, at The Oval, his fluster-free defiance allowed Kevin Pietersen the freedom to thwack the Aussies into submission. Giles finished that day with 59 – the highest score of his career. He would never play a Test in England again, and in hindsight he should perhaps have bowed out of internationals there and then.But as ever, Giles had made his runs when they counted. At this point it’s worth throwing in a few more statistics: 9 for 80, 5 for 31, 7 for 97, 7 for 68. They read like the sort of bowling figures that Giles could only dream of. In fact, they are the batting collapses, at both Lord’s and Trent Bridge, that have undermined England’s ambitions in their current series against India. Giles may never have gone big in any of his innings, but he failed so rarely that collapses such as these were all but eliminated during his time in the side.In fact, from the moment he scored the first of his Test fifties, against Zimbabwe at Lord’s in 2003, Giles was dismissed in single figures in just nine of his 53 innings. That hardly reads like riches, but coming from that pivotal No. 8 position, it meant that the man at the other end – invariably the last recognised batsman – had a foil in whom he could trust, and the freedom to play his natural game.Giles’ successes with the bat were myriad – his back-to-the-ramparts 17 not out at Galle in 2003-04, when England somehow escaped the clutches of Muttiah Muralitharan; his 70-run stand with Graham Thorpe at Trent Bridge in 2004, when England chased a record 284 against New Zealand; his unsung 31 at Johannesburg the following winter, when Marcus Trescothick cracked 180 in the second innings to pave the way for a miraculous win. If, one day, Panesar becomes the multi-dimensional cricketer that he would dearly love to be, maybe his omissions in favour of Giles at Brisbane and Adelaide will be cited as the catalyst.

Over, and over the wicket © Getty Images
Of course, first and foremost, Giles was a bowler, but in that role he also spent more time acting as a foil for his team-mates than as a spearhead in his own right. His long, lonely and lampooned spells over the wicket and into the leg-side rough enabled England to rotate their quartet of pacemen from the other end – and by 2005 those pacemen were being heralded as the best in the world. Giles’ predecessor, Phil Tufnell, suffered for being used in such a holding capacity, and Panesar too is better utilised with men round the bat. Giles, however, knew his niche, and stuck to his guns – and those of his captain.Even so, he had his moments with the ball in his hand. He bagged 17 wickets on his maiden England tour to Pakistan in 2000-01, and then starred in controversial circumstances against India the following year when his persistent leg-stump line resulted in the stumping of Sachin Tendulkar for the first and only time in his career. That was the tour on which Hussain reached his captaincy zenith, but by then he had identified the men who could carry out his orders.Without an innate cricketing talent, and bucketloads of character, Giles could not have endured in the manner that he did. The irresistible rise of Panesar means Giles will hardly be missed, but one day – when distance has lent more perspective to the team of which he was a part – his contributions will be recalled as more than just makeshift.

Anand Vasu says Wasim Jaffer hardly played a false shot during his unbeaten 192 on the first day of the Kolkata Test

Anand Vasu in Kolkata30-Nov-2007

On January 28, 2003, Mumbai needed 127 to beat Himachal Pradesh in a Ranji Trophy match when Wasim Jaffer received news that his mother Zulekha had died. Jaffer was shattered and unsure of whether to play on the final day. Chandrakant Pandit, then coach of the Mumbai team who had suffered a similar fate, spoke to Jaffer of his experience to which Jaffer replied, “I’ll do it for my team”. He scored 47 off 51 balls as Mumbai won without losing a wicket. Only then did Jaffer leave to attend his mother’s funeral.Determination is one of Jaffer’s stronger suits and he prefers to make statements on the field rather than off it. Ask around for a tale of some sort from his past, and apart from descriptions of his long innings in domestic cricket, you draw a blank. Soon after scoring 192 on the first day of the Kolkata Test, Jaffer faced the media. When a journalist asked if he was distracted – or forced to concentrate harder – by the presence of his wife Ayesha in the stands, who was frequently on the giant screen, Jaffer only said, “I always know where my wife is,” displaying a sense of humour that isn’t always obvious.What is obvious, though, is Jaffer’s tremendous hunger to score. In Indian cricket, the role of an opening batsman is not to be envied. They don’t get too many chances, and once dumped, there isn’t a way back. Ask Sadagoppan Ramesh, Shiv Sunder Das, or even Aakash Chopra. But Jaffer has done it twice – he made his debut in the home series against South Africa in 2000-01 and was dumped, following which he was picked again for the 2001-02 tour of West Indies before being dropped once again.”I’ve gone through a lot of lean phases in my career,” Jaffer said. “I’ve been brought up like that. I’ve been dropped two or three times and gone back to Ranji Trophy, got big scores and come back. I’m used to scoring big. It’s just that I haven’t done that much in international cricket and I’ll try to do that from here on.”On the day, Jaffer faced 255 balls and was rarely beaten. Even Rahul Dravid was troubled early on, especially by Sohail Tanvir, but Jaffer hardly played a false stroke. He has always scored a high percentage of his runs in boundaries, looking exceptionally elegant when he strikes the ball through the leg side, and he hit 32 fours today.

“I don’t think I’ve batted so fluently so far in my Test career,” Jaffer conceded at the end of the day, but refused to compare this knock with his double-century against West Indies in Antigua. “All hundreds have been special. I’ve got only few so I’ll count all of them as special. Scoring 192 runs in a day is something I haven’t done before. It feels good that we’re in a strong position and I’ve got runs.”Jaffer has five centuries in 23 Tests but you can break his career up into two phases. In the seven Tests he played before his latest comeback, and the 16 he has played since. In Phase I, Jaffer made 261 runs at just over 20, scoring three fifties and no hundreds. Since returning to the team against England at Nagpur, Jaffer has been a different batsman. He’s not so hampered by that half stride forward, is being trapped half-cocked much less, and has been far more assured outside the off stump. And it’s shown in his numbers; an average of 41.89 with five hundreds, one of them a double.”I was conscious that I have got a few starts in the England series [earlier this year] and did not convert them into hundreds,” Jaffer said. “The same happened in the Ranji Trophy so I was a bit conscious and tried to be focused once I was past 60-70.”And focus he did, past 100 and then 150 and to the doorstep of 200 while VVS Laxman, the man who owns an epochal 281 at this ground, sat padded-up and watched. In a team of stroke-makers Jaffer barely gets mentioned, and more talk is centred round players who aren’t even in the Test side. Almost without anyone noticing, Jaffer has become the third highest run-getter in the world this year behind Jacques Kallis (1125) and Kevin Pietersen (881), with 718 to his name so far. Contrary to popular belief Jaffer isn’t bland or colourless, just quiet, and at the moment very valuable to this Indian team.

Stats highlights from the sixth match of the CB Series, between Australia and Sri Lanka in Perth

S Rajesh and HR Gopalakrishna15-Feb-2008
Adam Gilchrist: Another ODI century, another ODI victory © Getty Images
Adam Gilchrist ended his international career at his home ground on a tremendous high, scoring his second ODI hundred at the WACA to ease Australia to a 63-run win. Perth has been a kind venue for him, especially over the last four years: he has scored 489 runs from ten ODIs at 48.90, but 369 of those runs have come in the last five innings, including two centuries, both against Sri Lanka. This was Gilchrist’s 27th Man-of-the-Match award, of which six have come against Sri Lanka, and three at Perth. Australia’s superb performance in the field also ensured Gilchrist maintained his 100% record of always finishing on the winning side whenever he has scored an ODI hundred. This was his 16th century, and Australia have ended up winning all those games. In fact, Gilchrist has been Man-of-the-Match on 15 of those occasions; the only time he scored a hundred and didn’t get the match award was nearly ten years ago, against Pakistan in Lahore, when his 104-ball 103 was overshadowed by Ricky Ponting’s unbeaten 124 in a run-chase of 316. All of Gilchrist’s 16 ODI hundreds have come at the top of the order, which makes him the highest centurion among openers for Australia, one more than Mark Waugh’s 15. Gilchrist also became only the fourth batsman – after Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Sanath Jayasuriya – to score more than 9000 ODI runs as an opener. In 253 innings as opener, Gilchrist has scored 9071 runs at an average of 36.87. Ricky Ponting became the first batsman to score 10,000 runs at the No. 3 position in ODIs. After his innings of 25 at the WACA, Ponting has 10,021 runs from 253 innings at No. 3, which is well clear of the second-placed Jacques Kallis, who has 5917 runs from 154 innings. The 105-run stand between Gilchrist and Michael Clarke was Australia’s 50th century partnership for the third wicket in ODIs. Australia are the only side to have 50-plus hundred stands for each of the first four wickets. Clarke’s stumping gave Muttiah Muraliltharan his 51st such dismissal, which is a record. Shane Warne is next with 50 stumpings in ODIs. Kumar Sangakkara has effected 54 stumpings, which puts him in third place, after Romesh Kaluwitharana and Moin Khan.

Brad Haddin is finally filling Adam Gilchrist’s vast shoes as Australia’s keeper, but he’s not about to let his predecessor’s reputation overwhelm him. “It’s important that you leave your own mark on the team,” he says

Brydon Coverdale03-Sep-2008
Them’s the breaks: Haddin nearly let his chance at the Australia job fall when he sustained a finger injury in his first Test © Getty Images
It took Brad Haddin seven years to win a spot in Australia’s Test team andless than a fortnight to almost lose it. The chance nearly slipped throughhis slightly gnarled fingers when one of those digits broke during his debutin the West Indies in May. But vacant Test wicketkeeping spots have beenrarer than terry-towelling hats in Australian cricket in recent years andHaddin was not about to let a snapped finger shatter his dream.He had spent so long in Adam Gilchrist’s shadow that when Gilchrist retiredand Haddin had three months to prepare for his Test call-up, he plannedmeticulously to ensure it would be a success. That included ignoring thechance to play for big money in the Indian Premier League, instead gettinghimself physically and mentally ready for Test cricket. That made it all themore maddening when his right ring finger fractured.”I’d be lying to say it wasn’t frustrating,” Haddin said. “But it’s one ofthose things that you can’t really let it get you down for too long becauseyou can’t really control what happens out there.”He ploughed on through the second Test before an infection added to theannoyance. There was a very real chance Haddin’s career would stall at twoTests, and the selectors rushed the Western Australia gloveman Luke Ronchi toBarbados as a back-up. Haddin was only saved by a lengthy gap between games.”After the second Test I sort of felt a little bit uncomfortable,” he said.”I might have been touch and go for the third but we were lucky enough tohave eight days off, which helped just get the infection out of the hand.”He knew how Ronchi felt. In 2001, Haddin was flown to India during a Testseries but Gilchrist proved immovable despite having an injured hip. One-daycaps have been more readily distributed, and when the finger began affectingHaddin’s performance in the Caribbean he handed over the gloves to Ronchifor the limited-overs games.Ronchi’s athletic keeping and breathtaking strikes – he thumped a 22-ballhalf-century in the fifth ODI – may have closed the gap between theincumbent and the No. 2. Haddin insists his replacement’s success did notfaze him and he was fully prepared to give up his spot again for the nowpostponed Champions Trophy. His wife Karina is due to give birth onSeptember 10 and regardless of where his team-mates are at the time, Haddinis planning to be right by her side.”There was no way I was going to miss the birth,” Haddin said. “I was alwaysgoing to be there for Karina and it’s something you don’t want to miss, thebirth of your first child. It hadn’t crossed my mind. I was always going to be at the birth, as simple as that.”The thought brought a gentle smile to Haddin’s otherwise weary face as hesat in the stands at Darwin’s Marrara Cricket Ground after a drainingstrength and conditioning workout between ODIs against Bangladesh. His kneesheavily strapped with ice, Haddin surveyed a ground that looked more like asmall-town oval than an international venue, with plenty of grassyembankments for the locals to bring their own deck-chairs and sit and watchwith beer in hand.It would be a familiar sight for Haddin, who grew up in country New SouthWales. His father is a carpenter who also ran a pub in the small town ofGundagai – population: 2000 – before the family moved to the marginallylarger community of Queanbeyan, just outside the Australian CapitalTerritory. It was a thoroughly sporting family; Haddin’s two youngerbrothers are now personal trainers and the three siblings have their ownfitness company. Haddin insists his replacement Ronchi’s success did not faze him and he was fully prepared to give up his spot again for the now postponed Champions Trophy Haddin was fortunate to be virtually an ACT local when the Canberra Cometsappeared in the domestic one-day competition in 1997-98. The team lastedonly three years but Haddin was so impressive – he was the only man to makea century for them – that he was pinched by New South Wales after twoseasons.”That was one of the most important times in my cricket career,” Haddinsaid. “A lot of guys at my age – I was 18, 19 – didn’t have the luxury ofbeing exposed to first-class cricket that young, and with the Canberra Cometscoming in I was lucky. Just seeing the standard of first-class cricket atsuch a young age and I think it’s contributed a lot to where my cricket hasgot to now.”Back in those days the incumbent Australian wicketkeeper, Ian Healy, wasHaddin’s cricketing idol. This week in Darwin, Haddin’s glovework wasclosely watched in the nets by Healy, in town for his commentating duties,while the Australia coach, Tim Nielsen, gave Haddin some throwdowns.Nielsen is the latest in a line of former wicketkeepers who have mentoredHaddin, including Steve Rixon, and Trevor Bayliss, the occasional keeper atNew South Wales. But Haddin is careful to remain his own man, a lesson thathe learnt early in his career. It was reinforced when he came in for theincomparable Gilchrist in the Test outfit.”You come in and you’re replacing one of the legends of the game but it’simportant that you leave your own mark on the team,” Haddin said. “You’vegot to make sure and be honest with yourself. Everyone brings differentthings to a side and you can’t be something you’re not. It’s important justto be yourself.”And not to break too many fingers.

Here are some quick numbers on 300s

Cricinfo staff03-Jul-2008