At a time when their faces fill your TV screens and newspapers, their names are glaringly absent from the scoreboards

Daniel Brettig at the MCG28-Dec-2018Aaron Finch and Marcus Harris walk out to resume Australia’s first innings on the second morning to the fanfare of music and between the flags of the host country and India. They have the clear goal to bat time and build a platform for the middle order to capitalise on. They start smoothly enough, collecting a trio of singles after Ishant Sharma’s first-up no-ball. Cue the commercial break.Harris and Finch open their shoulders with a couple of boundaries through gully and cover, though Ishant’s lines and lengths are growing more precise by the ball. Finch is beaten by a beauty on a fifth-stump line the ball after his cover drive. India’s captain Virat Kohli senses a chance to corral Finch, who has fallen on slow pitches to straight fields before. When Ishant straightens his line, Finch cannot resist trying to flick past Mayank Agarwal, but thanks to the debutant’s agility and safe hands at short midwicket, he cannot. One down. Commercial break.On the second evening Harris had been struck on the helmet for the second time in the series, receiving medical attention from the team doctor, Richard Saw, having also worn a hefty blow in Perth. Facing another skiddy bouncer from Jasprit Bumrah, this time Harris decides instinctively to resort to fight over flight, swivelling to hook a short ball that is fast and steep enough to mean the batsman cannot guarantee control. With around 359 degrees in which to safely send the ball skywards beyond the slips and in-fielders, Harris finds the one degree that is lethal to his innings – Ishant has only a few steps to make to complete the catch. Two down. Commercial break.Getty ImagesComing in at No. 3, Usman Khawaja has made Australia’s only century in their past eight Tests, a monumental effort to save the Dubai Test against Pakistan. But against India, coming off a knee surgery that restricted his preparation, Khawaja has been struggling to assert himself, soaking up a lot of deliveries and only once, in the second innings in Perth, being able to find enough gaps and boundaries to get an innings going. For all the Dubai heroics, Khawaja remains something of a vulnerable operator against spin, and the low-slung left-arm orthodox of Ravindra Jadeja is perpetually seeking pads, gloves, edges or stumps.Facing a footmark on a good length that has been unsettled by the pounding feet of Ishant, Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, Khawaja props and spars at a ball that hits it, disturbing the turf and popping with bounce and some turn. The resultant inside edge flies obligingly to short leg, and Jadeja celebrates. A run of nine Tests with only a solitary hundred would be Australia’s driest run in more than 100 years, since the first decade of the 20th century. Commercial break.4:29

‘No real experienced heads in the batting line-up’ – Cummins

At 35, Shaun Marsh remains a “player of promise” in the eyes of many within the Australian system, and his ability to play shots while combining them with sturdy defence and good judgment around off stump are world class when at his best. But his best has always seemed to come and go like the winds swirling around the MCG’s vast concrete bowl, and at a time when Australia’s batting stocks have seldom been weaker, he has been unable to provide the consistency so desperately required.So it is that on the stroke of lunch Marsh, having kept out Bumrah for much of the morning while scratching his way to 19, is completely flummoxed by a perfectly pitched slower-ball yorker that dips under his groping bat and hits pad and toe for a clear lbw verdict from the umpire Ian Gould. India’s glee is matched by Australian grief – the last partnership of two specialist batsmen has been broken and the innings is a mere 33 overs old. Lunch. Long commercial break.Shaun Marsh is deceived by a slower ball•Cricket AustraliaNo player has been a greater exemplar of Australia’s recent tendency to identify and graduate talent early than Travis Head, an experienced Sheffield Shield player before his 20th birthday, captain of South Australia soon after, and now an established part of the national squad if not yet the Test team itself. The coach, Justin Langer, has remarked upon how quickly he has seen Head learning and growing, whether in the UAE or early Tests at home.But, in Perth, he squandered a pair of fine opportunities to go on to a century by thrashing heedlessly outside the off stump and being caught at third man. In Melbourne, he throws his hands again at numerous deliveries flung wider by India’s bowlers, before playing only vaguely and loosely in the vicinity of another accurate, stumps-seeking projectile from Bumrah. To be dismissed in that fashion, so soon after the resumption, leaves Australia floundering not only in the match, but the series. Commercial break.Mitchell Marsh’s return to the team had provoked boos from the parochial Victorian crowd, even though the length of India’s first innings vindicated the decision to include a fifth bowler. But it is with the bat that Marsh now needs to summon the resourcefulness to rebuild in the company of the captain Tim Paine, and his effort is obvious in the overs after Head’s departure. India, though, have an opponent with a distinct statistical advantage over Marsh – Jadeja.When Marsh, his feet uncertain to the point that he turns a probable half-volley or full-toss into a viper spitting out of the rough, edges to slip, he has fallen to Jadeja for the third time in 66 balls, while scoring five runs.With that dismissal, Australia’s humiliation is more or less complete. Paine and the tail are unable to perform the sort of rearguard they had already been called upon for too often in this series. As Cummins observes after play, this has been a thoroughly deflating day for the bowlers in particular, affording them very little respite, and leaving India with a mighty lead to build on with plenty of time left.”Not ideal. This morning we turned up hoping we’d all have our feet up, have a big dent into that first-innings score and be on our way to being right in the game or taking the result away from them,” Cummins says. “It’s one of those things, still a young batting group, seen them training for hours and hours trying to get better and, Alfie, the coach just talks about batting non-stop to them. They’re all trying their best; it’s just one of those things today that didn’t come off, but obviously not ideal.”Less ideal, of course, is the absence of Steven Smith and David Warner, the banned duo at the centre of Australia’s leadership but also the Newlands ball-tampering scandal. They have remained a presence via the news pages and the scheduling of interviews, press conferences and a commercial campaign by Smith around this Test match, the most visible of the Australian calendar. So it seems entirely fitting, if galling for Australia, that on one of the most critical days of the series, their absence as batsmen is felt more keenly than any PR campaign or commercial could achieve.”You look at even the Indian side and how prolific [Cheteshwar] Pujara and Virat [Kohli] have been, their top two batsmen, they’ve had such a big impact on the series so far. So it is always going to be hard missing two of your best players,” Cummins says. “But we’ve known for nine or 10 months it’s going to be the case and others have to stand up and I think it probably highlights the class they’ve had in previous years, but we’ve got to find a way, I think. Everyone is here is good enough, they’ve done it a level below, all of them are the best Shield players, most of them have done it for Australia before, so we’ve definitely got the batsmen, hopefully it just clicks soon and we’ll be away.”All through the day, television coverage of Australia’s batting demise is punctuated with those phrases from Smith, repeated and repeated, causing irritation if not outright anger among viewers. They do not need any such reminders that Smith will be back soon, having performed the roles of club cricketer and community ambassador before holidaying in New York at present. All anyone needs to recall memories of Smith and Warner putting in studied hours of batting on slow pitches like this MCG strip is to look at the scoreboard, for the names that aren’t there. Commercial break.

Patience around the West Indies young stars, like the team’s chances at the World Cup, is starting to run out

Sharda Ugra in Manchester26-Jun-2019On Sunday, after being rudely ejected from the World Cup by defeat to Pakistan at Lord’s, South Africa captain Faf du Plessis spoke painfully and eloquently of what defeat did to teams and individuals. “It chips away,” he said. “At your confidence. It chips away at your ego. It chips away at you as a player.”In their last two matches, West Indies have faced two confidence-denting and campaign-disrupting defeats. Bangladesh chased down 321 in under 42 overs and then New Zealand successfully defended eight runs with 12 balls to go. West Indies captain Jason Holder said the two defeats had been “crushing” and, “we felt them drastically over the past couple of days.”ALSO READ: Gayle says ‘definitely’ playing ODIs and ‘maybe’ Test post World CupYet the buzz from the West Indies camp on Wednesday was not about what Holder was promising – to keep going. “There’s no point to drop our heads,” Holder said. “We’ve got three games left in this campaign and we’ve got to just win all three games.” Just before Holder, Chris Gayle had made an unexpected arrival into the media box and announced his “unretirement” and that he is up for being involved in the series against India after the World Cup. In a trice, attention wandered from the West Indies’ rickety campaign to Gayle and that OTT nickname ‘Universe boss’.At the moment, Gayle is a titanic figure in West Indies cricket, one who is marketed as a brand beyond the team itself, even as he modestly but unequivocally counted himself among the Caribbean greats. No West Indian batsman has come close to Gayle in this World Cup in run-getting. Gayle is the highest run-scorer for his team, his 194 off five innings a sign of how the younger West Indians expected to shine – Shai Hope, Shimron Hetmyer, Nicholas Pooran, Evin Lewis, Darren Bravo – have been considerably and consistently underwhelming.Jason Holder leads his team out•IDI via Getty ImagesAt this World Cup, outside of the match against Bangladesh, the only century partnership by West Indies batsmen was Gayle and Hetmyer’s 122 against New Zealand. In their four other completed matches, they have only had two top-order stands above fifty in which Gayle was not involved. Brathwaite has scored the team’s only century; Hope and Hetmyer have two fifties and Pooran only one from five innings. But that is about it. Against India, on Thursday, it will not do.Braithwaite’s century of daring and torment and the hubbub around the Andre Russell injury has taken the heat off any of their young batting stars failing to announce their arrival at the tournament. When Holder was asked about them, he did begin his reply talking about “being proud” of the newbies, but stated that they would need to increase their adaptability quotient to the level of the competition they were facing.”It’s just a matter for them to grasp batting on the international circuit,” Holder said. “And I think Shai has done a reasonable job so far. Hety has shown glimpses of brilliance, as well as Nicholas.”Rarely are West Indies referred to as “qualifiers” in this World Cup, maybe due to their status as two-time world champions and of being everyone’s romantic favourites. But West Indies haven’t won a 50-over series, never mind a multi-nation 50-over tournament since they beat Bangladesh August 2014. Five years is enough time for turnarounds, but since the last World Cup and the start of this one, West Indies have lost 42 of their 67 ODIs. Reports of the West Indies’ 50-overs renaissance, it must sadly be accepted, are greatly exaggerated.The young batsmen, Holder said, needed to become the “rock and soul” of his team and not its minor players. “They’ve got to set up games and learn to close them out,” Holder said. “And great young players are great players, full stop. They get themselves in, set themselves up and they go very, very big.”4:42

Ganga wants Bravo, Allen in WI’s XI

Holder singled out Kane Williamson’s performances in the World Cup as an exemplar to his tykes. “Just see the way how he goes about his business, he sets it up and goes big and bats down to the very, very end.”When asked about the younger bats, Gayle said he had been talking to them on building on starts, citing the lessons given to batsmen through longevity and experience. “You have to build on it because it doesn’t come easy, and you’re going to find a difficult time in your cricketing career where you’re going to be struggling for runs. So when you get those starts, you have to convert these fifties into hundreds and be consistent as much as possible as well.”An unsettled West Indies top order has also not helped, born of the early lack of form of Bravo and followed by an injury to opener Evin Lewis. The West Indies highest opening partnership in the World Cup has been 36, all else in single figures and not more than seven partnerships have added 50 or more. This before we move onto other inadequacies.Who would want to be Holder having to explain, as he had, “on numerous occasions” why his team had not stepped up after their dramatic opening match against Pakistan, blowing out the batting that had scored 300-plus in three of their four previous ODIs inside 20 overs? From a World Cup start that heralded the beginning of a new era in world cricket to a squad of showboaters drunk on T20s, West Indies would have liked to steer clear of either descriptor.Yet, here they are: on the verge of becoming the third team to be emphatically sent out of contention for a place in the final four, lined up against one of the two unbeaten teams in the tournament. As the cup of clichés is running over, patience around the West Indies young stars, like the team’s chances at the World Cup, is running out.

We used to associate the adjectives ‘mercurial’ and ‘unpredictable’ with another Asian team, but it’s Sri Lanka who could do better justice to those tags

Sidharth Monga in London15-Jun-2019The wife of Sri Lanka’s once-captain has accused – on Facebook – one of their players of being a political appointment made by the sports minister of the country. That captain – one of the seven ODI captains tried by Sri Lanka since the last World Cup – is not the captain anymore. He has been accused of picking and choosing games, and has been forced to switch between IPL and domestic cricket in Sri Lanka, and is eventually here at the World Cup. Barely.Seven, of course, is more captains than any side has tried between the two World Cups. And they have gone to the event proper with an eighth, a man who last played ODI cricket in the last World Cup. Between the two World Cups they have tried 57 players, more than any other team. Since the Champions Trophy in 2017 – which is when most sides began to firm up their World Cup plans – they have tried 47 players. The next-highest is 37. And yet they have picked five players from outside this pool for this World Cup.Their chairman of selectors for a considerable period in this spell, Sanath Jayasuriya, stands banned from all cricket activities by the ICC for two breaches of its anti-corruption code. The current chairman of selectors, Ashantha de Mel, with whom the coach hasn’t necessarily shared a vision, has been now installed as the team manager for the World Cup. In some parts of the world, this process is known as “clipping wings”. The manager has duly shot off a letter to ICC complaining about all sorts of things, suggesting secret vendetta against them and not against, say Bangladesh or Pakistan.Players from his previous teams swear by this coach even though there have been significant amounts of tough love wherever he has gone. Under Chandika Hathurusingha, Bangladesh made the knockouts in a World Cup for the first time, beat India and South Africa in ODI series at home, defeated Sri Lanka in an away Test, and made the semi-final of the 2017 Champions Trophy. He showed them how good they were. In Sri Lanka, his wish to run the team with similar authority – as someone who has a definitive say in selections – has resulted in the sacking of players he propped up, players the team invested in. Two of the biggest legends of Sri Lankan cricket, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, are so disenchanted and wary of being used as political tools that they are gainfully employed elsewhere.Yet Sri Lanka go to South Africa and become the first Asian side to win a Test series there. Not a T20I series, not the odd ODI, but a whole Test series. That immediately after losing the series in Australia in seven days where they had a failed middle-order batsman returning as a Test opener. Immediately after the Test success, they go on to lose the ODIs 5-0 in South Africa.While we debate whether it is lazy and a convenient stereotype to call Pakistan mercurial and unpredictable, Sri Lanka might just be the Pakistan we are talking of. On the tragicomic front, Sri Lanka have arguably left Pakistan behind. Well, they haven’t leaked information about genital warts on a player yet, but you get the point. Their surges are more subtle than Pakistan’s, not as irrepressible, not as loud, but they turn up when they have no business turning up, just like in South Africa.There comes a time – just like with Pakistan – that this comedy turns depressing for their followers. Saturday morning seems to be that time at The Oval. They have complained about pitches, hotels, training facilities and team coaches. Coaches as in buses, and not men who teach them cricket. Although you can argue they never stopped complaining about them either. They are chasing ghosts, and have convinced themselves of a conspiracy against them in a green pitch at The Oval even though previous similar green pitches here have produced six scores of 300 in eight attempts.WATCH on Hotstar (INDIA ONLY) – Sri Lanka’s collapseOf course, they win the toss and bowl first on a pitch that chasing has been difficult all tournament. Lahiru Thirimanne is diving over the ball. Relay throws are going wild. The pitch is flat. Lasith Malinga is going round the wicket to right-hand batsmen with the new ball. You can’t tell who the captain is. Nobody looks in charge.Not long ago, Angelo Mathews performed push-ups on the field to make a point to the coach who had had him dropped on fitness grounds. He is there on the team list provided by Sri Lanka here, but he is almost invisible. Nobody has a presence. Reading body language can be hazardous at most times, but here they all look positively listless. Over in India, Niroshan Dickwella, the spirit of this side who had no business being anywhere other than England, scores a century against India A.It is instructive that Dhananjaya de Silva has bought them reprieve with the ball. He is a Test No. 3, who has been made to play in all positions from 1 to 9 in his 33-match ODI career. Later in the day, he will get to bat only when the match, which they have a good chance of winning, is all but over as a contest.Suddenly, though, a switch comes on. Isuru Udana starts it with a slower ball to get Aaron Finch out when it is looking like Australia will score 350. Malinga nails a yorker to bowl Steven Smith out. Smith, who rarely gets out bowled. The last time it happened was 20 innings ago. Udana is leaping all around and nailing direct hits off his own bowling to run two batsmen out in the same over.There is one man in the crowd who has refused to stop encouraging Sri Lanka all day, but now they have all found voice. Now you are reminded that while there might not be a band playing, Sri Lanka has a huge support in the stands. There are 30 fewer to chase than what looked likely.Dimuth Karunaratne, the captain and opening batsman without an ODI century to his name, begins to throw his bat around, and everything comes off. Kusal Perera, who only recently played one of the greatest Test innings ever, is being Kusal Perera. Australia’s reaction is to go short, probably going back to the barrage that laid Sri Lanka low in the Tests earlier in the year. Difference in pitches notwithstanding, Perera and Karunaratne show they have put in work on the short ball. There are edges – which happens with starts of such intent – but when they are connecting, they are connecting sweetly. In the Powerplay, they take 40 off 26 balls pitched shorter than a length.WATCH on Hotstar (INDIA ONLY) – Karunaratne’s 97Things are happening that shouldn’t be happening with this team. Australia are burning reviews so they can’t review when they finally have one. Run-out chances are bringing four overthrows. And you have Kusal Mendis and de Silva and Mathews to follow. If “this happened in 1992 too” is Pakistan fans’ meta joke on their so-called mercurial nature, there is talk of Sri Lanka’s chase of 322 against India at the same venue two years ago. More importantly there is reminder of talent in the side, and also outside it. Talent that is getting lost in this dysfunction.It all ends in more dysfunction, though. Senior players take zero responsibility of a run-a-ball chase. Even in failing to being more like Pakistan, Sri Lanka have been like them. They crash all hope spectacularly. Imagine the match when the two come up against each other.

The West Indies dasher who made a mark at the World Cup might be the first player to come to the big time under the mentorship of the first generation of Caribbean T20 guns for hire

Jarrod Kimber06-Sep-2019Trinidad, late in 2017. Nicholas Pooran is in Sunil Narine’s house to hang out. With him is his mentor Kieron Pollard, and Dwayne Bravo. It’s Trinidad T20 royalty. At this stage Pooran is barely known other than to close watchers of the CPL or to people who follow random T20 drafts. But his fellow Trini mates know all about him.Pollard tells him to learn how to bat by playing first-class cricket. It is Pollard who found Pooran an agent and got him to play franchise cricket while still little more than an ESPNcricinfo profile. But it is Bravo who gives him advice that changes everything.”Dwayne was telling me, ‘Pooran, you can still learn from franchise cricket, man. You just have to learn quickly, stop making the same mistakes over and over. And you have to know what you want as a cricketer.'”From that day, I sat down, talking to my girlfriend and parents, and when I realised what I really wanted, that helped me a lot. I was fortunate to get the opportunity to play, and gradually I started improving.”The last two years, that was a process of my development. Not every young player gets these opportunities, but I could understand different cultures, different conditions, and learn from different people. Two years ago I didn’t know my strengths as a batsman, or my role in teams or situations. Now I am starting to put it together. Now I understand when I need to play a certain way, and what shots to play when, and it’s working out for me. But I didn’t happen overnight. From 20 to 23.”ALSO READ: How Nicholas Pooran came back from the brinkAt 23, with three first-class games to his name, Pooran became a marquee player for Guyana Amazon Warriors, was sold for Rs 4.2 crore (about US$590,000) to Kings XI Punjab, batted No. 4 in a World Cup, and made his first ever professional hundred.It didn’t happen overnight, but like many of his innings, it happened fast. Nicholas Pooran is a child of franchise cricket.***”When I woke up from the accident, the cast was on my leg. I couldn’t move my toes. I knew it was bad. I asked the doctor if I could play cricket again. They weren’t sure if I’d be able to run again, and my blood pressure went straight up, as all these things went running through my mind. But I kept believing.”That was how Pooran described the few minutes when he woke up after a car crash in 2015. He has been keen to move on from being the player known as a survivor of a car accident in which he suffered a torn patella tendon, fractured tibia and fractured ankle.