Pakistan will look to create consistency and work on their batting ahead of the big event

Firdose Moonda15-Sep-2024Pakistan’s problems: Inconsistency from a team in transition
Pakistan are on their third captain in the last 18 months since last year’s T20 World Cup and their latest, Fatima Sana, will take the reins for the first time in this series. The 22-year-old bowler takes over from Nida Dar, who succeeded Bismah Mahroof, and has the job of creating consistency, especially at major tournaments.Pakistan have only won one match each in the last three T20 World Cups and will go into this tournament with tempered expectations of what would represent success. In a group that includes two tournament favourites – Australia and India – and the in-form Sri Lanka, getting to the semi-finals will take some doing, especially given their recent form.Related

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Since last year’s T20 World Cup, Pakistan have played 23 T20Is, won nine and lost 14 but among their victories have been series wins over South Africa (at home) and New Zealand (away). They’ll fancy themselves against New Zealand in the group stage, and other wins will be a bonus.Pakistan would also like to see an improved commitment to professionalisation from their board. In its 2022 women’s report, global player body FICA (now called WCA) said “fundamental changes are required to create a recognised pathway for female cricketers in Pakistan to make a viable living out of playing professional cricket,” and as recently as this week, that was evident. Players did not receive daily allowances at their training camp which has left some players low on morale ahead of an important event.Muneeba Ali is Pakistan’s leading run-scorer this year•Asian Cricket CouncilPakistan’s focus in this series should be on run-scoring, which is an area they have underperformed. Muneeba Ali is their highest run-scorer in T20Is this year with 280 runs from 12 matches. Their bowlers have enjoyed the bulk of the success with left-arm spinner Sadia Iqbal collecting 18 wickets at 14.33 in T20Is this year.South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt said she “expects Pakistan to bowl a lot of spin so we are prepared for that,” both in the series and when they get to the UAE. South Africa’s stunning slide at home South Africa’s long-running search for an ICC trophy came the closest it ever had last February when the women’s team became their first senior side to qualify for a World Cup final, and that too at home. But a perfect opportunity to build on their success was squandered. There were delays in appointing a new coach and they will travel to this World Cup with an interim appointee Dillon du Preez on the back of a string of poor results.Since reaching the 2023 final, South Africa have played 18 matches in the format, won five and lost 10 with three no-results. They have not won one out of the six series they’ve played and lost series to Pakistan, Australia (both away) and Sri Lanka (at home) as well as a match to Bangladesh for the first time in a T20I.None of that will matter to a fan base desperate for a major trophy and ever-expected after both the men’s and women’s sides reached the last T20 World Cup final. South African supporters will need to be reminded that women’s cricket has grown especially strong in India since the last T20 World Cup, and with Australia and England always a step ahead, their team will have to find something or someone special to challenge for the trophy.Marizanne Kapp and Laura Wolvaardt are crucial players in SA’s top order•Getty ImagesHappily for South Africa, their new all-format captain Wolvaardt is among the best players on the global stage and leads with bat and on the field. She is their leading run-scorer in T20Is this year, followed by No. 3 Marizanne Kapp and her opening partner Tazmin Brits. All three of them have more runs than Pakistan’s Muneeba this year. While that speaks to the strength of the top order, it also points to problems lower down, especially as former captain Sune Luus has struggled. In the last 18 months, she averages under 20 with the bat, which makes South Africa extra reliant on allrounders Nadine de Klerk and Chloe Tryon for middle-order firepower.Both those players have the additional concern of their bowling attack, which has been underwhelming since Shabnim Ismail’s retirement. De Klerk is South Africa’s highest wicket-taker with eight wickets in nine matches this year and South Africa will be expecting more from the likes of Ayabonga Khaka, Tumi Sekhukhune and young Ayanda Hlubi at the World Cup.Their spin contingent features a newcomer, 18-year old Seshnie Naidu, who could make her debut against Pakistan in this series, as she prepares for the big time. “It will be awesome for her to get a game and a taste of international cricket. I’ve faced her a bit in the nets and she has good control for such a young legspinner,” Wolvaardt said.Advantage Pakistan? Mostly, Wolvaardt wants to use the series as a barometer for whether South Africa have progressed since being blanked 3-nil by Pakistan a year ago in Karachi. “It will be a great judge to see if the work we have done behind the scenes is working,” Wolvaardt said.In that series, South Africa scored 150 batting first twice and failed to defend it and then could not chase 151 in the third match. “We’ve been talking a lot about finding that extra 10 to 20 runs,” Wolvaardt said.It’s unclear whether those runs will be needed at Multan Stadium, which will host a T20I for the first time. Wolvaardt described the experience of being the first international T20 side to play at the ground as “special.”

After all the joy they experienced in Perth, day one in Adelaide served as a wake-up call for the visitors

Alagappan Muthu06-Dec-20240:45

Pujara: India should have got 250 on this pitch

“Get ready for a broken …” This Australia team don’t say things like that. But Nitish Kumar Reddy managed to get a rise out of their captain when he bailed out of facing the first ball of the 35th over on day one of the Adelaide Test.Pat Cummins has spent this news cycle dealing with questions about the unity of his men and the way they play. He’s been met with whispers of his own decline and insinuations that he takes defeat too easily. None of them seemed to wind him up as much as seeing a perfectly good ball go to such waste. He immediately went bouncer, at 143 kph, and Reddy, despite being ready this time, was barely able to duck for cover. The Adelaide Oval loved that.Related

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India were finally in the Australia they would have expected before coming here. Loud. Demanding. Hostile. Frustrating. Stingy about rewarding good work and gleeful in punishing mistakes. Towards the end of the day’s play, when Mohammed Siraj expressed his annoyance at having to expend more energy than he needed to for the same reason – a batter pulling away from his stance at the last moment, because of a fan running into his line of sight with a beer snake no less – he was told off by 50,186 people and then laughed at when he conceded a four off the next ball.A lot of the talk leading into this game was about India’s batters having to adjust to the pink ball, given how little they play this flavour of Test cricket. But it seems the bowlers had just as much to get used to. In a strange way, just like in Perth where they got a chance to bowl when the conditions were still helpful, a blessing in disguise if there is such a thing when you’re all out for 150, Jasprit Bumrah and Siraj got to use the pink ball just as twilight was about to hit.Nathan McSweeney and his top-order colleagues employed the leave to telling effect•Associated PressA lot of Australia’s success in these games has been built on batting first, batting big, and sticking the opposition in during the final session (usually of day two) when the floodlilghts take effect and wield a strange power over the game. In 2022, they had West Indies 102 for 4 at stumps on day two after declaring their own innings close to the final session’s play. Their fourth wicket had fallen at 428. In 2021, they took the fairly straightforward call to give up the runs their last two batters might have been able to add to their 479 in order to unleash Mitchell Starc at the England top order, and he delivered with a wicket in his second over, with Michael Neser backing him up before stumps. Australia had had 176 on the board before going two down. England had 12.India would have been hoping for something similar; to leverage the twilight session to make their way back into the Adelaide Test. But it felt like they were getting too much movement and struggled to calibrate their lines and lengths to make it count. An under-fire Usman Khawaja and Nathan McSweeney were able to leave 18 of the first 30 deliveries they faced, and that trend continued. Australia didn’t play at half the balls they faced in the first 20 overs. They had a better understanding of the bounce available off the pitch, which made India look like they were missing their marks.”The lengths could have been slightly fuller to encourage more play,” India assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said. “I thought Australia left very well as well. It seemed to be a trademark of the way they play, those two [McSweeney and Marnus Labuschagne, who have put on an unbroken 62 for the second wicket]. They left on length very well. We kind of feel the swing and the seam was a little bit inconsistent which makes it difficult for both parties.”India batted to a plan too. They discerned that the good-length ball contained the potential to cause the most problems, and looked to be proactive against anything either side of that. It was in the course of this that KL Rahul and Virat Kohli fell to balls they realised they could leave but not until it was too late. This may have been a mix of what happens in Australia and what happens with the pink ball.”From Tests gone past, and probably no different today, there’s times in a pink game where the ball can get soft and it’s hard to score, hard to take wickets, a dead patch in the game,” Starc said, “Then for whatever reason the ball starts to do a little bit more again.”India have their task cut out after 77.1 gruelling overs in Adelaide•Associated PressIndia left for their hotel at the end of day one with a sense of what could have been. Another feeling well-known among away teams that come here. Shubman Gill missed a straight ball that he could have driven for four. Yashasvi Jaiswal wandered too far across his crease to be able to connect with a ball on leg stump. Rahul and Kohli were indecisive.”Obviously to lose a wicket of the first ball, sort of sends jitters through the change room,” ten Doeschate said, “But we recovered really well and [from] 69 for 1 we probably feel like we missed a chance there. I also feel that’s the nature of the pink ball. Things can happen quickly. Things happen in clumps, we lost wickets in clumps which we wanted to avoid. There’s lessons to be learned in that first innings and we’ll go away and look how to play in the second innings.”Even their most eye-catching spell of play – when Harshit Rana seemed to get inside McSweeney’s head by asking him to use the bat and when Bumrah found his usual control to beat Labuschagne’s bat – didn’t really amount to anything. They felt something might happen. It didn’t.”I don’t think 86 for 1 is a true reflection of how we bowled,” ten Doeschate said. “I thought there were a lot of played-and-misses. Obviously the edge [that we dropped in the seventh over]. I know the score looks like there’s a big gap between the two teams but we still feel we’re in the game and with a few tweaks tomorrow, if we bowl slightly better, we feel like we can get back in the game tomorrow.”India have loved being in Australia. They’ve had things to do at every turn, literally. The e-scooters available for rent on the streets were a huge hit with the team in Perth. There, at the end of every single day, they found themselves in a pinch-me-I’m-dreaming situation. After 77.1 overs in Adelaide, they’ve received a bit of a wake-up call.

On paper, Australia remain favourites, but India wouldn’t be too displeased either with how things stand going into the MCG

Andrew McGlashan18-Dec-2024At 2.33pm on Wednesday the players left the field at the Gabba for the final time. A short while later, the approaching rain hit the ground and the umpires didn’t wait too long to bring down the curtain on a rare five-day Test that felt much longer than that. The evening before, KL Rahul had joked he’d got more tired walking up and down to the dressing room than he did in the middle.And yet, the final day included its fair share of intrigue. There was a curious Australia second innings in which Steven Smith appeared at No. 6; Jasprit Bumrah taking his series tally to 21 wickets at 10.90; a (seemingly brief) injury scare around Travis Head; and finally the most surprising development, the international retirement of R Ashwin.It means Ashwin won’t be at the MCG, where he had such a big impact on India’s victory in the 2020-21 series, when the teams reconvene on Boxing Day tantalisingly poised at 1-1.But how do you assess the tied scoreline? Offer that to India before arriving and there’s a good chance they’d have bitten your hand off for it given the historic success of Australia in Perth and Adelaide especially and the fact they were coming off a whitewash against New Zealand. After the first Test, though? Perhaps they would have hoped for more.Related

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From Australia’s point of view, it feels under where they would have expected to be for the same reasons of their records at the venues but it’s been a strong response to the thrashing at Optus Stadium. Last week’s pink ball gave them a leg up when it was desperately needed. Despite the odd-looking second innings in Brisbane, they were never on the back foot in this match once Head and Smith had lifted them from 75 for 3.India were not shy of celebrating when they saved the follow-on through the fighting efforts of Bumrah and Akash Deep. Rohit Sharma had a wry smile on his face when he was asked if India’s joy at that moment was a reflection of deeper cracks in the side.”I have been here enough to understand what are mind games and what are chit-chatters and all of that,” he said. “From our personal point of view, we were behind the game. Obviously, it is a little victory for us to avoid that follow-on, looking at how the weather was going to play, looking at where the game was heading. Eventually, we ended up in a draw.”With Australia being ahead in the game, they didn’t manage to get the result. For us to celebrate that, it was a little victory for us. There is no harm. We enjoy each and every moment. We saw two guys who were fighting for the team and we were really happy with that. So, we were celebrating how these two guys batted at the end.”Cummins, playing his role in the mid-series fun, later laughed off suggestions that India took more than Australia from how the game panned out.”Can’t say I’ve ever been scared of momentum,” he said. “Don’t really care about that. Think we can take a lot from this week. A couple of great partnerships. To be sent in on a wicket and score 450 and then be a bowler down and manage to bowl India out for 250 when the wicket was probably a bit better, think we can take a lot from that.”Heading to Melbourne, both sides have similar issues to confront around the top order. For India, the form of Rohit and Virat Kohli remains a concern, Yashasvi Jaiswal has not been able to back up his 161 in Perth and Rishabh Pant has been kept quiet, particularly by Cummins.For Australia the spotlight is on openers Usman Khawaja and Nathan McSweeney. Marnus Labuschagne’s half-century in Adelaide has eased some pressure on him, but he was again out loosely to Nitish Kumar Reddy in this Test. Bumrah is proving a mighty handful for the top order although Cummins added little should be read into Australia’s second innings at the Gabba given the attempt to set a target.Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc took on most of Australia’s bowling load•AFP/Getty ImagesMitchell Marsh’s series has also yet to take off: he walked when he didn’t nick one in Adelaide and has bowled six overs in two Tests, despite Australia being a bowler down for most of the game in Brisbane. Two excellent catches aided his team in this match, but he has yet to suggest he can hit the heights of last season when he was named the Allan Border Medalist.However, one area where Australia have better depth than India is the pace bowling. While Josh Hazlewood’s injury is a significant blow, it is quite the luxury to know that Scott Boland is waiting in the wings to return on his home ground where he is such a force. Meanwhile, Rohit did not sound confident about Mohammed Shami being available at all during the series although Akash, who is often compared to Shami, was much better than his 1 for 95 would suggest.On balance, Australia remain favourites for the series although that is largely based on the stunning form of Head, a revived Smith and the durability of Cummins and Mitchell Starc.And so the roadshow heads to the MCG, a surface that has been a fast bowler’s dream in recent seasons, with the prospect of a record opening-day crowd. The weather forecast, whisper it, looks good for Boxing Day (it’s also good for Brisbane the moment the Test leaves town) and there is a series where everything remains up for grabs. Merry cricket Christmas.

No picks in Hundred draft continue global trend. But poor results and board intransigence are also to blame

Osman Samiuddin14-Mar-2025Forty-five Pakistani players registered for the Hundred draft for the 2025 season. On Wednesday, exactly none of them were picked for any of the eight teams. That means that this season, the fifth, will be the first to not have any Pakistani players. Given the last two seasons had seen six and four Pakistani players respectively in the league, it is a notable disappearance.This season, you may have heard, is also going to be the first after the equity sale of Hundred franchises, four of whom are now either part-owned or majority-owned by owners of IPL franchises. Ah, you might think. This is starting to make some sense now. The IPL has long excluded Pakistani players from appearing. Its satellite franchises in leagues in South Africa, the UAE and the USA have also (mostly) excluded Pakistani players.Relations between the PCB and BCCI (more representative of their governments than ever before) have rarely been worse, or more given to pettiness, as the shenanigans at the recent Champions Trophy prove. It naturally follows that another league with incoming IPL ownership will begin to freeze out Pakistani players. This was exactly the scenario, after all, that the PCB spelt out two-and-a-half years ago. To believe in this sequence of logic is not at all to be a conspiracy theorist.But – and especially in the context of this Hundred draft – it doesn’t help to pretend there aren’t other factors, equally compelling if not more so, at play here. For one, the schedule (it’s almost always the schedule). Pakistan have two bilateral white-ball commitments in August that clash directly with the Hundred’s dates – the first two weeks of August, when they are in the Caribbean for three ODIs and three T20Is, and then a home series with Afghanistan that starts in the third week of that month (and a T20 Asia Cup that starts in September). Given Pakistan are undergoing yet another transition, and there is a T20 World Cup next year, their top players will almost certainly be involved in those series and, so, unavailable for the Hundred.Another terrible ICC tournament has left Pakistan’s reputation in the dust•AFP/Getty ImagesAlso, about those top players: it’s not as if Pakistan’s white-ball players are exactly hot property at this moment. Three abysmal ICC tournaments in a row have taken all the sheen off a generation of players once expected to abound in, and enrich, these leagues (of course, it could be argued they wouldn’t have performed so poorly had they been playing more regularly in those best leagues in the first place). Instead, Pakistan are outdated and stagnant, jarringly out of sync with the game as it is played today.More than all of this, though, is the wider truth, that the PCB itself is to blame. Successive administrations have flailed between being restrictive and gormless in dealing with player NOCs. The modern landscape demands a flexibility and deftness from boards in player management and the PCB has been as flexible as an iron rod. In fact, in an alternate reading, Pakistan’s white-ball regression over the years can be traced directly to how poorly the board has handled NOCs.A relevant case was revoking Naseem Shah’s NOC for the Hundred last year at the last minute, despite there being no clash with any international commitment (and likewise denying three others permission to play in Canada’s GT20).It was done in the name of workload management ahead of a busy season of international cricket, including nine Tests. How did that management turn out? Naseem played in three of those Tests, despite not suffering injury, and none of them consecutively. He wasn’t even in Pakistan’s last Test squad of the season (Shaheen Afridi, one of those whose NOC was revoked for the GT20, only played two of the nine Tests and wasn’t in Pakistan’s last two Test squads).Related

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Naseem’s is far from the only case. There was Usama Mir. And Azam Khan. And Haris Rauf . And a whole bunch of others.The PCB will point to the 20 players that did receive NOCs last November, but the stickier conclusion from the last few years is that they have made Pakistani players unattractive options in the marketplace. Why would a franchise take on a Pakistan cricketer when the PCB might abruptly revoke an NOC, or when a training camp call-up cuts a contracted stint unexpectedly short, or when a deal falls through because an unscheduled bilateral series has been shoved into the calendar, or when a player will summarily be called back from a league for a fitness test?None of this is to deny a looming, creeping reality. With the existing political climate as it is between India and Pakistan, and the continuing spread of IPL franchises around the world, it isn’t difficult to see a future in which Pakistani cricketers are marginalised and restricted to a second tier of T20 and T10 leagues (and in that light, who knows what impact going up against the IPL will have on the PSL).Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief executive, insists it won’t be the case in the Hundred at least, and it bears repeating that a packed calendar is the likeliest reason for the kiboshing of a high-profile Pakistani presence this year. Nevertheless, it was also Gould who introduced a new NOC policy last November which ends up hitting the PSL hardest in terms of English player availability, while protecting the IPL. Those words might feel cheap to Pakistani ears.In any case, it’s not as if there has ever been a formal bar on Pakistani players from the IPL. Nobody says that bit out loud. It’s just been that way forever now. And evidence from the other leagues with IPL ownership is, at the least, suggestive that it is contagious. No Pakistanis in the SA20 in three seasons. Only two Pakistanis in a franchise owned by an IPL owner in the ILT20 in three seasons. Only two Pakistanis in a franchise owned by an IPL owner in MLC in two seasons. Four Pakistanis in franchises owned by an IPL owner in the CPL over many more seasons. Nobody says anything about a bar… and yet.There are still four Hundred teams not owned by IPL franchises, so there is every chance Pakistani players might be picked up in next season’s draft (by which stage the new ownership structures will have kicked in properly). But it would feel like a bucking of a wider trend. And before anything else can happen, it would require the PCB to start helping itself and its players.

There was no looking back after Ashwani struck with his first ball in the IPL

Dustin Silgardo31-Mar-2025

Alzarri Joseph | 3.4-1-12-6

MI vs SRH, Hyderabad, 2019Joseph, then just 22, was not slated to play IPL 2019 and only joined the Mumbai Indians (MI) squad as a replacement for Adam Milne. With Lasith Malinga unavailable because of his national commitments, Joseph got a game and had a dream start, dismissing David Warner in his first over. Vijay Shankar fell in his next, before Joseph dismissed Deepak Hooda, Rashid Khan and Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the space of four balls. He finished things off with the wicket of Siddarth Kaul as Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) were bundled for 96. Three of Joseph’s wickets were bowled as the SRH batters struggled to handle his pace.