Plays of the day from the IPL match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Rising Pune Supergiants

Deivarayan Muthu14-May-2016The unlikely slog
Ajinkya Rahane is among the most classical of batsmen, relying on brain over brawn. Each of this six fifties this season were built on balance, placement and timing. On Saturday night against Kolkata Knight Riders, Rahane opted to test his muscle, after quietly playing out five balls for two runs. He lost his shape, looking to slog a back-of-a-length ball from Andre Russell, and only managed an inside edge that floored his off and middle stumps.The nick that wasn’t
Usman Khawaja had reprieves on 8, 9 and 22 on his IPL debut against Delhi Daredevils on May 5. He failed to cash in and was stumped off Amit Mishra for 30. Khawaja had a lifeline against Knight Riders as well. Morne Morkel banged in a short ball outside off and induced a lazy dab from the Australia opener. There was a noise as the ball passed the bat, and the bowler and wicketkeeper Robin Uthappa went up in unison. Umpire Bruce Oxenford, though, shot down the appeal. Replays and Ultra Edge later indicated a thin nick. Six balls later, Khawaja holed out to deep square leg for 21 off 17 balls. Another start squandered.Captain under siege, part II
When MS Dhoni walked out to bat against Knight Riders last month, Gautam Gambhir put his helmet on and swooped into silly point to greet the Rising Pune Supergiants captain. Gambhir brought in a slip and a short leg as well.In the reverse fixture, Dhoni arrived with his team at 74 for 4. Gambhir took his position at silly point again, besides adding two slips and a short leg. Knight Riders coach Jacques Kallis who was doing an interview by the sidelines at the time said that it was a plan to knock Dhoni over early and apply more pressure on Supergiants. The plan nearly worked as Dhoni feebly prodded at a loopy Piyush Chawla ball that drifted in first up, resulting in an inside edge that nearly kissed the leg stump via a deflection off the front pad.The crazy mix-up
Sunil Narine, who returned to the Knight Riders XI after missing the team’s last two games because of a finger injury, pushed one away from Dhoni with extra bounce. Dhoni reached out, stabbed to Chawla at backward point, and set off. Irfan Pathan responded to Dhoni, took a couple of steps forward, but suddenly stopped. By then, Dhoni was more than halfway down the pitch. Moreover, he was left jumping and yelling at Irfan’s indecision. The allrounder, who was promoted to No. 5, eventually sacrificed his wicket as Chawla fired a flat throw to Uthappa at the striker’s end. He made his way back for 7 off 8, without daring to look at his seething captain.

Having conceded 248 the last time they played Royal Challengers Bangalore in their backyard, Gujarat Lions will need a new bowling plan to counter their two best batsmen

Alagappan Muthu23-May-2016How does one stop Virat Kohli? That question has pretty much become rhetorical in 2016. Opposition bowlers are calling him a legend. Opposition captains opt to field at the toss to prevent him from going to his happy place. A simple land that offers a bat to play with and a target to chase down. Cricket experts can’t predict the heights he will reach, and Kohli himself has felt unstoppable, judging from the many times he has said, “I could hit every ball for four or six” in this IPL.How does one stop AB de Villiers? That question has pretty much been rhetorical since 2008. He has melded hockey, golf and cricket to become the most feared 360-degree batsman in modern times, though his rate of success skyrocketed only after he acquired the late defensive shot in April that year. Until then, he had seven centuries in 142 innings across formats. Since he played “the late defensive shot for the first time in my life” against India in the Ahmedabad Test, de Villiers has added five times as many centuries (38) in twice the number of innings (294).Kohli and de Villiers are the kind of batsmen that do everything in their power to help their team win. They run like those cartoon villains with their backsides on fire. And above all, they are incredibly assured at the crease. So the best way to topple them is through deception.Gujarat Lions have a couple of options to do that. One, they’d want Praveen Kumar and Dhawal Kulkarni to find movement through the air because there certainly won’t be much off the pitch. They have to camp on a line outside off stump and tempt the drive. But they can’t be too full. Praveen and Dhawal have to find that in-between length where the batsman’s front foot can’t reach the pitch and therefore the hands have to push at the ball and away from the body. Assuming they get some swing from there, nicks could fly.Two, they’d like Dwayne Bravo to get his groove back, because if there ever was a delivery that could sucker punch a batsman in form, it’s his big-dipper slower ball. Kohli and de Villiers may be able to read the offcut out of the hand, but that delivery’s threat is not in its lack of pace, but in the sudden change in trajectory.You may spot the variation early and wait in your stance to clobber it over cow corner. But just as the ball nears you, it dips under the bat swing and you are in no position to counter it. And lately Bravo has been better at disguising his trump card. There have been occasions when he would pack an entire over with slower balls so the batsman could set up for it. Now he is a bit more liberal in using his top pace, especially with the yorkers. That makes the big dipper even harder to spot. David Miller and Glenn Maxwell fell victim to this plan when Bravo collected his best IPL figures of 4 for 22 last month.Kohli and de Villiers get their power from a strong base. If they are thrown off balance, at least they won’t be able to time the ball. Only, Bravo and Lions have struggled to do that on both previous occasions this season. Bravo has leaked 89 runs in seven overs without taking a wicket.This highlights a third, and perhaps the greatest issue, playing against Royal Challengers. Once they get on a roll, they are mighty hard. They made 211 for 3 in a 15-over match the last time they were in Bangalore; only 17 of those runs were on the board after three overs. Chris Gayle went six, six, four in the next over and the carnage was absolute. At one point, there were nine consecutive scoring shots – in sixes. At no point have they been stretched to find the boundaries. Kohli, especially, has rattled bowlers into doing the one thing they hate – run up to the bowling crease hoping for the end to come – simply by trusting his game and playing to a plan.Lions have to do the same, and do it better. They were mauled for 248 for 3 at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium two weeks ago. With a trophy in their debut season on the line, they have to try and shave about 50-60 runs off that total.They may have to set a limit for each over, maybe even each ball they bowl. They have to cramp Gayle for room. The spinners should back themselves to beat Kohli and de Villiers in flight – although chinaman bowler Shivil Kaushik does not yet have the control and might be dropped – and they have to bring Shane Watson in early because he has only had to face an average of nine balls per innings in IPL 2016.That may yet mean their batsmen have to make, or chase 200. But that could well be the easier part of their job.

After decades of making a hash of it, England finally has a representative at the high table of career runs

Tom Booth31-May-2016It’s not before time. For an English cricket observer, it’s hard to remember a more agonising wait for an approaching milestone. Anderson’s 400th wicket surely wasn’t this bad. Perhaps Ramprakash’s 100th first-class century, back in 2008.We can argue all day about the significance of the milestone. How much more valuable are 10,000 Test runs than 9,980? But a milestone it is, and an important one, for it finally gives England the undisputed aggregate leviathan needed for its fans to hold their heads up in international company. For nearly 20 years we’ve had to make excuses for our players’ absences while the big beasts of overseas piled on the runs in an era when it was apparently easier to score buckets of runs than ever before.It was not always this way. Until the early ’80s, England had been one of the world’s leading exporters of record-breaking batsmen. Jack Hobbs, Wally Hammond and Colin Cowdrey formed a succession of record career run-scorers that went unbroken even by Bradman for 30 years. England provided Andy Sandham, Test cricket’s first triple-centurion, and, before Sobers’ 365 in 1957, the Test high score had been in the hands of an England player for 52 of the previous 54 years. Nor do England players of that vintage disgrace themselves in the averages column.Despite this rich history, in casual conversations about greatest ever batsmen, England players rarely feature. Part of this is doubtless because most of England’s best batsmen played before matches were regularly televised, and so most contemporary fans haven’t seen them in action. With the notable exception of Bradman, average, too, is often considered secondary to aggregate in such discussions, as it requires more work to assess comparatively. What is the minimum cut-off number of matches or innings? Are results against certain teams or in certain conditions to be excluded? Names like Ken Barrington and Herbert Sutcliffe have long since disappeared into the mists that shroud our collective consciousness, supplanted by fresher and flashier memories of Laras and Pontings.The last of the dynasty was arguably Geoffrey Boycott, who was the final England batsman to hold the aggregate run record. Later England batsmen would exceed Boycott’s run total, but the 10,000 run club established by Gavaskar remained closed to England players thereafter. Meanwhile multiple players from India, Australia, Sri Lanka and the West Indies, and one from South Africa, earned admittance from 1990 onwards. England batsmen came to occupy a sort of second tier in the aggregate stakes, despite England playing more matches, and having more money at its disposal, than almost anyone else.The reasons for this are doubtless tied up in the collapse of English cricket from the late 1980s onwards. Politics, an unhelpful supporting system, a revolving-door selection policy, and simple bad luck, conspired to prevent many promising England players ever having the careers it had once looked like they might. Had Michael Atherton’s back not betrayed him, might he have made 10,000 runs? David Gower, perhaps, had he not been thrown overboard in 1992? The names of Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick are intoned in such a way as to strike fear in the hearts of promising young cricketers. But, while England were hardly the only team to face these issues, they were the only major team to make such a hash of it.Even after Nasser Hussain and Duncan Fletcher famously stopped the rot at the end of the 1990s, the names of batsmen who impressed early in their careers but, for whatever reason, could not establish themselves firmly towards the top of the world table litter the history of England’s progress: Marcus Trescothick; Michael Vaughan; Andrew Strauss. There is still time for Ian Bell to join Cook on 10,000 runs, although it looks like he might have been jettisoned too soon to make a realistic assault on the summit.Some might mutter darkly about the curtailed career of Kevin Pietersen, but he was in some ways lucky to return to the team in 2012 and, with the exception of one massive innings, has not particularly distinguished himself in first-class cricket in recent years. In any case, he is in good company on the tally of might-have-beens. One might equally speculate about the lost years of Boycott in the 1970s. Whatever the reasons, they didn’t get the runs.One often overlooked factor is that England players are often older by the time they start their careers. Among the 10,000-club players, the oldest on debut was Border, at 23, and only he, Dravid and Sangakkara had celebrated their 22nd birthday before making their first appearance. Cook, starting at 21, therefore had an inbuilt advantage.So luck played its part. But so did sheer bloody-minded determination. Cook stands as an anachronism of sorts, one of the last old-school Test batsmen, a grinder in an age of blast and bash. What team could such a player turn out for but England? It’s fitting that, when England cricket finally produces a statistical icon, it’s a player so utterly typical of their batting style in recent years. In some ways, that makes the achievement all the sweeter.Will others reach 10,000 runs? Perhaps, but, as they say, it’s runs on the board that count. Congratulations, Captain Cook. May these be the first ten thousand of many.Want to be featured on Inbox? Send your articles to us here, with “Inbox” in the subject line.

Hampshire’s plague of injuries this summer have given Gareth Andrew the chance of a fresh start in a county career that seemed to be over

Jon Culley14-Jul-2016There is no good age for a professional cricketer to be told he will not be offered a new contract. But if there is a particularly worrying time for it to happen it is when you are just the wrong side of 30: too young to be thinking your career has run its natural course, yet too old to be the most attractive proposition to a new employer, especially once it has been noted that you have played only a handful of matches in your last two seasons.This was the reality that confronted Gareth Andrew last August when Worcestershire, looking to create space in their staff roster to accommodate an influx of talented youngsters, identified their injury-bedevilled all-rounder as an obvious candidate to make way.What was all the more galling for the county’s 31-year-old one-time player of the year was that the back problem that had plagued him for three frustrating years had been finally resolved just days before he was given the news.Eight years of service, 327 wickets, 23 fifties and one hundred – suddenly it was all over.”I saw it coming,” he admits. “My contract was up and as a senior player who was not playing the writing was on the wall. But it was still tough to leave. Worcester has become my home at the end of the day.”It was a shame because after two years hoping my back would resolve I had an operation in the middle of last season and it cleared up the problem straight away.”It was only a few days later that I was released. Yet I felt I had a lot to give back to the club.”By the time Andrew found himself ready to play again, comfortable for the first time in three years, it was not long before he discovered there was hardly a queue forming to take him on.”Counties are looking for younger guys and I’m getting older,” he said. “Plus they are always going to be a bit wary of someone who has had back problems, if they don’t know the ins and outs.”I have a personal friend who works as my agent and I’ve been in cricket long enough to have built up a lot of contacts. But the answers we were getting tended to be the same – counties have had to tighten their budgets and are looking to play younger guys.”Happily for Andrew, one county’s misfortunes have created an opportunity for him. Although there are no assurances beyond the immediate future, he has found work with Hampshire, who remembered his approach during the winter and have turned to him to help them through an injury crisis.”I’d started to concentrate on things away from cricket, renovating a house in Worcester and doing the next part of my marketing module. I’ve been playing for Ombersley in the Birmingham League,” Andrew said.”I’d been in contact with Hampshire through the winter but when they signed Tino Best I thought that door was closed.”But then randomly, while I was organising the teas for Ombersley on a Friday afternoon for a Saturday game, I got a call from Giles White saying they needed me for a four-day game and would I be able to meet them at Old Trafford on the Saturday. I bit their hand off.”A little over two months later he has played 16 matches for Hampshire across all formats, contributing with bat or ball in all of them, and has the potential to continue his career, for which he thanks his partner for unceasing encouragement – “she gave me the drive and the kick up the backside when I needed it” – and friendly counties, such as Hampshire’s latest opponents, Warwickshire.”Warwickshire were fantastic,” he said. “Dougie Brown is a great guy and I know Alan Richardson, too, as a team-mate at Worcestershire. They offered me the opportunity to train with them all winter. I had a couple of weeks at Derby too with Pop Welch and I had the pre-season with Warwickshire. They gave me the opportunity to get myself fit, so I will forever be in their debt.”I’m not looking into the future at the moment. I’m on a monthly contract, playing game by game, just loving having the opportunity to be out there playing again.”Hampshire have been really accommodating and looked after me really well. It has worked well for them too because they have been losing players left right and centre through injury.”And even if I don’t fit into Hampshire’s plans in the long term, it gives me a better chance of finding another club. I’m only 32 and having not played a lot of cricket in the last couple of years I feel fresh. I reckon I have a few more years to give.”The injury, a stress fracture that first came to light during the 2013 season, restricted him to four first-class matches in 2014 and three in 2015, with five white-ball matches as a batsman only in 2014 but none at all in 2015.”I played all the way through 2013 but missed the last couple of games, which is when I realised I had the injury,” he said.”I did the rehab through the winter and started 2014 really well but after four games I was in a serious amount of pain. It was then we realised the nature of the fracture was different.”So I focussed on batting with the second team for the rest of that season and played a couple of T20s as a batter.”When 2015 came along we were hoping it had healed naturally. But after the second game it was found there had been what they call a non-union, where the last half a millimetre had not healed. Under stress and workload, it flared up again.”We tried injections to stimulate the bone to grow and heal but that didn’t work either. The last chance was to have it screwed.”I went to see a very good back specialist and the amazing thing is that I walked in one day, had the screw put in and walked out the next day healed, with no pain.”In hindsight, had I had it done 18 months ago I would have missed no cricket, but that’s just the nature of professional sport I suppose. You don’t always know these things.”

ESPNcricinfo staff16-Oct-2016Yasir Shah removed Miguel Cummins to complete a five-wicket haul and 100 Test wickets•Getty ImagesDevendra Bishoo resisted for 41 balls and scored 17 before becoming the last man to be dismissed; West Indies were bowled out for 357•Getty ImagesShannon Gabriel removed Azhar Ali early, before Bishoo trapped Asad Shafiq lbw for his first wicket•AFPBabar Azam was troubled by a few short deliveries before he inside-edged Bishoo on to the stumps•Getty ImagesSami Aslam countered with a brisk 44, before edging a late cut off Bishoo to slip•Getty ImagesAslam’s dismissal triggered a collapse as Pakistan’s batsmen had a tough time against Bishoo•Getty ImagesBishoo cut through Pakistan with career-best figures of 8 for 49; Pakistan lost their last seven wickets for 30 runs to be bowled out for 123•AFPBishoo cut through Pakistan with career-best figures of 8 for 49; Pakistan lost their last seven wickets for 30 runs to be bowled out for 123•AFPMohammad Amir got rid of Kraigg Brathwaite early in West Indies’ chase of 346•Getty ImagesBut the other opener Leon Johnson kept his end going, scoring 47 before eventually falling to Amir as well•AFPDarren Bravo, with Marlon Samuels, saw West Indies to stumps without further damage, setting up an intriguing final day: West Indies needed 251 runs more, while Pakistan needed eight wickets•Getty Images

Plays of the day from the fourth ODI between England and Pakistan

Andrew McGlashan at Headingley01-Sep-2016The steepler
A batsman hits the ball in the air towards Ben Stokes at their peril – just ask Adam Voges. He twice showed his calmness under the pressure of a catch during the early stages of this match. For the first chance he had to turn, run and take the ball over his shoulder, but while the second chance to come his way was technically easier – he was already on the boundary at deep square when Sami Aslam top edged – it went so far in the air that Stokes almost had too much time to ponder it. When he did hold on, he gave a little pat of his chest as if to indicate the heart had been racing.The shackle breaker
With Sharjeel Khan having gone early there was a Test-match feel to how Pakistan built their innings with Aslam and Azhar Ali together. It was like being transported back to the second day at Edgbaston. Aslam couldn’t kick on, but Azhar was at least able to put a little pressure back on the bowlers when he struck the first six of his innings – flicking Liam Plunkett over square leg – and in the next over he added another when he slog-swept Adil Rashid over the ropes.The beamer
A curious aspect of Moeen Ali’s bowling this season has been the almost match-by-match occurrence of a huge, head-high, beamer which flies directly to the keeper. His aim was even more off in this match when, in his fourth over, he sent one over both Azhar’s head and that of Jonny Bairstow behind the stumps. Then the free hit on offer was swung to deep square-leg where Stokes took a catch to out-do his first two. It didn’t count, but saved three runs.The yorkers
It’s unfair to call Chris Jordan a one-trick pony, but he appears far more certain of himself as a bowler at the end of an innings. His four-over spell to close out the innings, albeit with Pakistan already seven down, was outstanding – and especially the final two overs of it. He produced a textbook display of yorkers, getting at least seven almost spot-on, to ensure Pakistan – mainly Imad Wasim – could only score freely at one end.The plead
Mohammad Irfan had removed England’s openers, despite being warned for running on the pitch, and set about making life tough for Eoin Morgan. He beat him with a short ball, which brought a huge appeal for a glove behind only for Marias Erasmus to signal wide, then next delivery there was an even bigger shout for caught behind – Irfan ended up appealing on his knees. Pakistan reviewed, although Sarfraz Ahmed wasn’t actually sure, and the replays showed it had brushed Morgan’s back pocket. A very fine umpiring decision.The drives
It has been a stop-start season for Stokes due to injury and when he has got to the crease his stays have not been long – but he has not looked out of form. With England under some pressure, having just lost Morgan to be 72 for 4, he unfurled a brace of the most sweetly struck drives you could wish to see. He barely moved an inch after each of the shots off Hasan Ali, holding his pose briefly for the cameras. No one in this power-packed England line-up hits the ball more crisply.

ESPNcricinfo staff12-Oct-2016PAKISTAN’S DECADE-WISE RESULTS128 Tests won by Pakistan, out of 399. At the same stage in their Test history, four teams had more wins – Australia (176), England (160), West Indies (146), and South Africa (144). India had 87 and New Zealand 80.57 Away Tests won by Pakistan. In terms of win-loss ratio, Pakistan’s 0.678 (57W, 84L) is fourth, after those of Australia (1.203), England (0.877) and South Africa (0.825). (Away Tests excludes those played in neutral venues.) However, their ratio is by far the best among Asian teams.AWAY RECORDS OF TOP THREE ASIAN TEAMS——PAKISTAN CAPTAINS WITH MOST WINS2.33 The win-loss ratio for Javed Miandad, the best among Pakistan captains who have led in 15 or more Tests. The next best is Mushtaq Mohammad, with an 8-4 record in 19 Tests.13 Pakistan captains, out of 14 who led in at least 10 Tests, with at least as many Test wins as losses. The only exception was Intikhab Alam – one win, five losses in 17 Tests.11 Away Test wins under Misbah-ul-Haq’s captaincy, the most for any Pakistan captain. Saleem Malik and Wasim Akram are next with six wins each, followed by Imran Khan, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Waqar Younis (five each).——PAKISTAN’S RECORD BY OPPOSITIONPakistan have won more Tests than they have lost against all opposition teams except South Africa, Australia and England.——PAKISTAN’S PACE GEMS3 Pakistan fast bowlers who have taken 350-plus Test wickets at averages of less than 24. Overall, only ten fast bowlers have achieved this feat, and no other country has more than two such bowlers.60 Percentage of Pakistan’s wickets that have been taken by pace bowlers; they have averaged 30.47 runs per wicket, compared to 33.20 for the spinners.——BEST AND WORST SEQUENCES24 Most Test wins for Pakistan in any sequence of 50 successive Tests; their best win-loss record in this sequence was 24-12, in the period between 1990 and 1998. Their most defeats in a 50-Test sequence is 23, in the 2004-2010 period.6 Pakistan’s longest sequence of successive Test wins, between May 2001 and February 2002; they won against England (1), Bangladesh (3) and West Indies (2). Their longest sequence of defeats is 5, between November 1999 and March 2000.16 Pakistan’s longest sequence of consecutive Tests without defeat, between November 1986 and April 1988. They won 4 and drew 12 during this period.——MOST MAN-OF-THE-MATCH AWARDSOnly two players have won more Man-of-the-Match awards than Akram – Jacques Kallis (23) and Muttiah Muralitharan (19). Shane Warne has also won 17.In away Tests for Pakistan, Akram has won 12, while the next best is 6, by Imran and Younis Khan.MOST MAN-OF-THE-SERIES AWARDSOnly two players have won more Man-of-the-Series awards than Imran – Muralitharan (11) and Kallis (9). Hadlee and Warne also have 8 each.

Abdul Mazid followed in the footsteps of Nafees Iqbal and Raqibul Hasan in making a hundred in a warm-up game against England’s tourists

Mohammad Isam in Chittagong16-Oct-2016It remains to be seen whether Abdul Mazid, the latest Bangladesh batsman to make a century against an England touring side, will follow the colourful example of the last two men to do so, in 2003 and 2010. But, unlike Nafees Iqbal and Raqibul Hasan, this time he seems content to have let his runs do the talking.On this very day in 2003, at the BKSP ground in Savar, Nafees Iqbal cracked 118 in the first innings of England’s opening tour match, then had the temerity to dismiss England’s spinners as “ordinary”.Nafees, still a year away from making his Test debut back then, was Bangladesh’s up-and-coming star of the day who bore a lot of hope in their early days as a Full Member nation. In the end, however, he played only 11 Tests and 16 ODIs before passing the mantle to his younger brother – Tamim Iqbal.Funnily enough, one of the spinners whom Nafees had taken to task back then was back on parade today. Gareth Batty picked up two wickets today to further his claim for a Test recall after an absence of more than 11 years, but not before Mazid had thumped for two fours and a six in his innings of 106.When England returned for their second full tour to Bangladesh, the centurion in one of the warm-up matches, Raqibul, did the unthinkable by announcing his retirement from international cricket at the age of 23. This came as an angry reaction to being overlooked for the 2010 World T20 preliminary squad. After scoring the hundred, he left Chittagong in a fury, bewildering team-mates, coach and the BCB high-ups.His retirement angered the then-captain Shakib Al Hasan although coach Jamie Siddons sympathised with Raqibul. But the BCB terminated his contract even though he had returned from retirement a week later. He went on to play only two more Tests, and has been out of favour with the senior side for the last five years.Mazid, meanwhile, is neither a teenage sensation like Nafees was in 2003 nor a regular Test player like Raqibul in 2010. He is a 25-year old opener who is a consistent performer in domestic cricket over the last five years.His only taste of representative cricket was for Bangladesh A in the Caribbean in 2014, but that tour was a mini-disaster as he struggled against genuine pace. But in the intervening two years, he has improved measurably although England’s quicks still caused him some discomfort today when they pitched it short.But for the rest of Sunday morning, Mazid dominated an England attack including Stuart Broad, Chris Woakes and Steven Finn with 106 off 95 balls that had 16 boundaries and a six. He had reached 92 in the first session before cramps kept him in the dressing room until late in the day when he returned and reached three figures off 90 balls. Mazid’s end came when he swung across the line in the 66th over.Mazid will consider himself unlucky to be in form at a time when the competition for Bangladesh opener’s slots are stiff in all three formats. Tamim Iqbal and Imrul Kayes will be opening against England in the Test series, with the likes of Soumya Sarkar, Liton Das, Shahriar Nafees and Imtiaz Hossain also in the frame.But Mazid was a delight to watch at the MA Aziz Stadium, much like Nafees and Raqibul but without their frills.

Fighting spirit, hard work, and the unshaking support of his mother helped a young man from Langa leopard-crawl his way into the cricketing limelight

Luke Alfred28-Dec-2016Until very recently, Malusi Siboto was a relative unknown outside of a hundred or so South Africa’s franchise cricketers and the handful of zealous fans who follow the domestic game. Then he appeared in the domestic T20 final for Titans against Warriors before Christmas, giving an emotional performance that endeared him to a television audience running into the hundreds of thousands. He was suddenly – ephemerally – South African cricket’s biggest star.With Warriors poised to make a fist of chasing Titans’ by no means impossible target, he dropped a dolly standing at short fine leg but, shortly afterwards, was offered a chance to make amends by stand-in captain David Wiese, who asked him to bowl the final over, with Warriors needing 12. This he did successfully, but not before bursting into tears mid-pitch after bowling the delivery that ensured Titans could not lose. He followed that delivery with the season’s most memorable wide, before breathing deeply and somehow composing himself sufficiently to close out the game.When at last he bowled the final ball in an interminably long 20th over, he sprinted into the stands to hug and kiss his mum and grandmother. He had flown them up from Cape Town for the final.No one has been a more loyal and loving supporter of her son than Siboto’s mother, Nandi. “It was very emotional at the end of the final because, in a way, it was what I’ve been working so long for. I got into a final with the Knights against the Cobras at Newlands two seasons ago, which we lost, so this game was very important to me.”

“One of the guys in the sports complex where he was living heard suspicious noises coming from his room one night – we thought he had a girl in there. We found out later that he was doing sit-ups and push-ups!”Coach Monty Jacobs on Siboto

It was not cricket but hockey that was Siboto’s passport out of Langa in the Western Cape, the township in which he grew up. While he was always a decent cricketer, it was his hockey that earned him a bursary to study sports science at the University of the North-West in Potchefstroom in his first year out of school. For a few years, his prowess as a centre-link dominated as he flittered on the edge of South Africa’s Under-21 World Cup hockey squad without making the final cut for the tournament in Egypt. After a year or three, cricket finally gained the upper hand. Some good performances for the university allowed him to be sucked into North-West’s structures, alongside players like Chris Morris and Nicky van den Bergh.”He was always very hard-working,” remembers Monty Jacobs, one of his early coaches at North-West. “One of the guys in the sports complex where he was living heard suspicious noises coming from his room one night – we thought he had a girl in there. We found out later that he was doing sit-ups and push-ups!”Malusi is one of those guys who is really ripped, with a six pack and the works. He also happens to be one of the fittest guys around. He needs to be if he’s going to bowl you 15 or 16 overs a day in the Potch heat.”Siboto was never quite explosive or eye-catching enough a bowler to elbow his way into the Lions structures (North-West are their franchise partners, so the Wanderers was the local destination of choice). Sarel Cilliers, down at Knights, saw enough, however, to offer him a contract in Bloemfontein, and so Siboto headed to the middle of the country, swapping one batsman-friendly pitch in Potch for the arguably even more benign strip at Springbok Park.After the T20 final, Siboto spent a few days training with new Titans coach Mark Boucher, before heading back to Langa for Christmas•Getty Images”The thing with my studies when I arrived was that lectures were in Afrikaans and my Afrikaans is really terrible,” he says. “I had to take notes in Afrikaans and talk in Afrikaans, so it was difficult. It taught me to be patient. I couldn’t tell my mum about it – I didn’t want her to find out anything and so worry – so I just hung in there for as long as I could. I could easily have given up. The first years at university weren’t easy.”Despite his trial by Afrikaans, Siboto slowly became rounded as a cricketer. He found an ally in Vusumuzi Mazibuko, a fellow fast bowler at North-West, and the two set about strategising. “The two of us talked and with his help I changed my mindset,” he says. “We decided that there’s no wicket that’s flat from a bowling point of view. I learned to be positive and think on my feet. I had always used the bouncer. I had always wanted to protect my length to keep the batsman honest. Now we were thinking about other things and being creative. It didn’t matter where we were bowling. We had to keep clever and keep our body language good.”Under Cilliers and the players around him at Knights, Siboto began to fashion a full bag of tricks. For those who haven’t seen it, he has a distinctive action, falling away from the stumps at the non-striker’s end just before the point of release. While this collapse tends to signal that the ball is swinging towards middle and leg with the arm, Siboto cannily counteracts this with the full menu of slower balls, cutters and slower bouncers. Indeed, it was such capacity for reinvention that inspired Rob Walter, before he left Titans for Otago, to bring him up to SuperSport Park in Pretoria. At 29, Siboto is probably as complete a customer as he will ever be.

“It was very emotional at the end of the final because, in a way, it was what I’ve been working so long for”

During his first couple of years out of Wynberg High School in the Cape, it was touch-and-go as to whether Siboto would manage to leopard-crawl his way through a punishing system. He did so, in part because of his fighting spirit but in part because he did not want to disappoint either his hardworking mother or grandmother, Nonkululenko. He has never known his father, and his mum, a personal assistant at the Cape Town Market, seldom managed to watch him play either cricket or hockey when he was growing up. Despite this, she has been a pillar of support, a fountain of pride. It is fair to say that Siboto’s road would have been a significantly more tortuous one without her.After the final, he spent a couple of days training with new coach, Mark Boucher, at Titans, before heading back to Langa for his Christmas holidays. When asked if he was likely to be asked for his autograph as he chilled with his township (mates) over the New Year, he was adamant: “No, no, I don’t think there will be any of that.”He might be right; then again, he might just find himself pleasantly surprised, a bright light from a pocket of the cricket universe from which stars don’t very often come.

A problem of this magnitude stretches beyond the players immediately concerned. Right now, Australia’s batting is driving down the value of the game in this country.

Daniel Brettig15-Nov-20164:30

Chappell: Australia have dug themselves into a hole since Argus review

On Saturday, a mate took his girlfriend out for birthday brunch at the same time David Warner and Joe Burns walked to the middle in Hobart. By the time they returned home, Australia had been bowled out for 85.On Tuesday, two former Australian Test players checked the scores to see the team were still two wickets down on the fourth morning before heading into work meetings. By the time the pair broke for lunch, the Test match was over.These are but two examples of how far the batting cancer in Australia’s Test team has spread. A collapse of 10 for 83 in the third Test of the series in Sri Lanka was noticed by some, being the third defeat in a row. But those of 10 for 86, 10 for 85 and 8 for 32 so far against South Africa are disturbing the rhythm of Australian life at a time when vast swathes of the community expect to be sitting down to watch the cricket. It is, quite literally, beyond a joke.A problem of this magnitude stretches beyond the players immediately concerned to affect the rest of the team, the support staff, coaches, selectors, management, the Cricket Australia board and the sporting public at large. Right now, Australia’s batting is driving down the value of the game in this country – a rude shock to those administrators who have at times made the team’s performance subservient to the “bigger picture” of growing the game.There was nothing particularly unusual about the way Australia’s batsmen folded at Bellerive Oval. A poor choice of shot by Usman Khawaja ended a partnership with Steven Smith, the new man Adam Voges was placed under immediate pressure, and once he was out the rest fell apart like a slow-cooked lamb leg off the bone.The only salient differences from other days were the fact that the short ball did as much damage as deliveries probing a length around off stump, as South Africa’s pacemen recognised the best way to utilise the indentations left in the Hobart pitch by their spells on day one when the surface was still fresh. Voges and Callum Ferguson both fell when trying to leave shortish deliveries, while Peter Nevill was out fending at a Kagiso Rabada throat ball, in a dismissal that could have been from any number of West Indian victories in the 1980s.It is beyond doubt that the South Africa seam and swing attack has been of the highest quality, as demonstrated by the present career averages of Vernon Philander (21.67), Kyle Abbott (21.83) and Rabada (22.75). But it is equally true that when other highly skilled pace ensembles have charged in at Australian batsmen in the past, whether it be the West Indians, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, or Allan Donald and Shaun Pollock, they have found the baggy greens harder to shift.That’s what Smith referred to in an impassioned address after the match. “I need players who are willing to get into the contest and get into the battle and pride in playing for Australia and pride in the baggy green – that’s what I need,” he said. “At the moment it’s not good enough. I’m quite tired of saying it, to be honest with you. It’s happened five Tests in a row now, for an Australian cricket team that’s humiliating.”Something that has clouded Australia’s batsmen over the past five matches is a state of conflict between the philosophy that informs their approach and the match scenario in which they find themselves. Notions of driving the game forward, being proactive and entertaining are second nature to the team and the coach Darren Lehmann, but as one former player has put it, “you have to earn the right to play that way”.Intriguingly, there was little identification among some members of the team for the way JP Duminy and Dean Elgar dug in on day three of the Perth Test. They did not score at a rate deemed attractive to the public, but did as much as anyone, in their understated way, to decide the outcome of the series.Yet the overwhelming body of evidence now before everyone connected to Australian cricket is that this team is not good enough to attack at all costs, as much as they would like to do so. Basics, and stubborn application, must be rediscovered. “We’re only driving a game if we’re in a position, to be perfectly honest and we haven’t been for a while now,” Lehmann said. “We’ve got to stay in long enough to create those chances and put pressure on the opposition and we haven’t been able to do that.”South Africa have been driving the game barring day one of the Perth game and we had an opportunity there and we didn’t take it. That’s probably happened in the past few Test matches – even in Sri Lanka we had a couple of opportunities to grab the game and didn’t. It’s about these young guys getting better about grabbing the game and taking it from there.”Unquestionably, Australian cricket must refocus on the defensive basics of batting, and also on ensuring players are as focused, prepared and energised as possible when the time comes to pull on the national team kit. South Africa’s cricketers did something similar earlier this year, following an 18-month lull that followed the 2015 World Cup won by Australia at home. What they have now achieved is a strength in depth that Smith, Lehmann and the selectors can only dream about, without anything like the same budgets.After play, the Australians met with the chief executive James Sutherland, the team performance chief Pat Howard, and a quintet of former playing luminaries in Mark Taylor, Shane Warne, Ian Healy, Michael Slater and Tom Moody. That too, provided a reminder of how far this batting cancer has spread, for continued problems will affect the jobs of the administrators and also the salaries of the commentators – a new round of broadcast deals is to be decided over the next year. Chronic batting troubles could reduce the money available to the game.A third example of how Hobart’s events are spiralling ever outwards could be found on the boundary’s edge at Bellerive an hour or so after the final wicket fell. A man had picked up his primary school-aged grandson from school to take him to see the cricket, but there was none to see. Instead they were left to wander around an empty stadium, as South Africa’s winning players caroused in the middle of the ground.