The 21-year-old has been appointed Guyana’s vice-captain as they prepare to defend their four-day title in the West Indies Championship

Deivarayan Muthu29-Jan-2025Guyana’s Matthew Nandu had a rousing start to his career, scoring a century on first-class debut and almost repeating the feat on List A debut, in 2023. He then suffered a slump in form but is rising again, having topped the run-charts for Guyana in the 2024 Super 50 competition, with 260 runs in six innings at an average of 43.33. The 21-year-old has now been appointed Guyana’s vice-captain as they prepare to defend their four-day title in the West Indies Championship, which will kick off on January 29.Guyana will open their campaign against Barbados at Providence. Nandu has fond memories of his 126, spanning over eight hours, against the same opposition on debut in North Sound almost two years ago.”Before making my debut I was nervous but after I got a hundred it was a special feeling,” Nandu recalled, speaking to ESPNcricinfo during a camp at the Super Kings Academy in Chennai in December 2024. “Yes, not many people can say that they have a hundred on debut, but I think we can now leave that behind and keep moving forward. “I don’t want to look back at the past, I want to continue looking at tomorrow and what it brings.”Nandu prepared for West Indies’ domestic season by facing a variety of spinners on a variety of surfaces, including black and red, in Chennai. He hopes he can incorporate the Chennai lessons against spinners in the Caribbean.”I’ve been able to figure out ways to score off the spinners in the middle, especially against left-arm spin, and the coaches have given me some good pointers,” Nandu says. “I think what the coaches have passed on over this past week and a half, it’s been very helpful towards my game. I came here with an open mind, looking to learn as much as I possibly can and try and incorporate as much as I can towards my game. So, when I get the time to go back home and put in the work, I’ll definitely focus on the things that I learnt here and try and make it more consistent towards my game.”Related

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While Guyana continues to produce new heroes – Shamar Joseph is the latest poster boy of the region – cricket isn’t as popular in Canada, where Nandu grew up. Nandu played a number of sports, including baseball, basketball and ice hockey, when he was young, but he was always hooked to cricket, which is in his blood. Matthew is the son of Arjune, the former West Indies Under-19s and Guyana legspinner, who played four first-class matches before he moved to Canada. His uncle Richard Jodah has also represented Guyana in youth cricket.During the off-season in Canada, Nandu used to travel to Guyana and went onto emulate his father by playing for both West Indies Under-19s and Guyana. Against Papua New Guinea in the 2022 Under-19 World Cup at Diego Martin in Trinidad, he made 128 off 134 balls to go with two wickets with the ball.”I’ve had my dad work with me since I was a kid, so he’s played a big part in my journey as well; I’ve had the support from my mom and my brother and my uncle as well,” Nandu says. “I’ve been working hard towards my game since I was about nine-ten years old, fell in love with the game and found my way in Guyana, playing trials and stuff like that to get to the next level, so just looking to continue moving forward and taking one game and one opportunity at a time.”Matthew Nandu hones his defence at the CSK Academy in Chennai•Super Kings AcademyWhile these are still early days in his first-class career, Nandu has displayed stickability, which was the calling card of his hero and Guyanese great Shivnarine Chanderpaul. Nandu also idolises current West Indies ODI captain Shai Hope, who had handed out his maiden CPL cap at Guyana Amazon Warriors.”He’s not playing now but I looked up to Shiv Chanderpaul growing up,” Nandu says. “I think right now, it’s Shai Hope – the way he goes about his game and his mannerisms on and off the field. I feel special that Shai was the one who gave me the [CPL] cap and hopefully I’m looking forward to that happening in the future.”Shai was very open. He always wanted to share his knowledge with me, and I tried to work as much as I could with him, to learn as much as I can. And he was always open to share his experiences, and I took that with both arms.”You can be fairly certain Nandu wasn’t talking about getting another cap from Hope for any other team in domestic or franchise cricket.”Well, yeah, it [playing for West Indies] is the ultimate goal, but I think it’s one thing, getting to the level is one thing…but staying there and performing every game is another thing,” he says. “So, it comes more so with the mindset and working on that every day, every game. Just want to continue to have that right mindset.”

The five areas of significant tactical interest ahead of the Champions Trophy final

Karthik Krishnaswamy08-Mar-20254:00

Key match-up: India spinners vs NZ batters

Most ODI teams are incomplete in one way or another. They either prioritise batting depth and end up relying heavily on part-timers, or pick the best possible bowling attack and end up with a long tail. India and New Zealand are easily the two most complete teams of the Champions Trophy 2025. They have top-order batters with a wide range of gears, bowling attacks with variety and incision, and allrounders who ensure both batting and bowling depth. It’s only fitting that they meet in the final, in a rematch of the title bout of 2000. Here are five areas of significant tactical interest ahead of the match.

Win the toss, and?

It’s not been the easiest question to answer in Dubai, with the four matches here so far producing only one clear pattern: India have lost all their tosses and won all their matches.A lot of this, of course, is down to India’s sheer strength. They bat all the way down to No. 8, have six genuine bowling options, and the conditions have allowed them to pack their attack with spinners and not really worry about the one big issue they had coming into the tournament, of dealing with Jasprit Bumrah’s absence.Related

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Because they’re so good, they’ve won three games while chasing and won the one game they batted first in despite slipping to 30 for 3. Through all this, it hasn’t been clear at all whether it’s better to bat or bowl first in Dubai.That’s generally a good thing ahead of a big match, suggesting that conditions haven’t changed all that much between innings. Dew hasn’t been a factor – unlike during the T20 World Cup in 2021, which was played in October-November, when chasing proved distinctly advantageous.Given this, both teams may prefer to bat first, with Dubai’s pitches having shown signs of slowing down over 100 overs – though not to the extent of giving the defending team an obvious advantage. During their semi-final defeat here, Australia perhaps showed the best way for teams to approach playing at this venue, even if they didn’t themselves follow through fully. At 198 for 4 in the 37th over, they were perfectly placed for a big finish, only for the back-to-back wickets of Steven Smith and Glenn Maxwell to derail their innings.With Glenn Phillips, Michael Bracewell and Mitchell Santner in their lower-middle order, New Zealand could well look to follow the template that Australia half-set: bat first, keep wickets in hand, and put pressure on India through the back ten.

New Zealand’s new-ball threat

They could put plenty of pressure through the front ten, too – with the ball. Of all bowling teams at this Champions Trophy, New Zealand have been the most impressive side in the first powerplay, boasting the best economy rate in the phase (4.32) and the second-best average (24.71) behind India (21.55). It’s a particularly impressive feat, given that New Zealand have played three of their four games on the flatter pitches of Pakistan. Their efforts to keep the top orders of Pakistan and South Africa on the tightest of leashes on pitches where their own batters had scored 320 and 362 showed just how good they have been with the new ball.ESPNcricinfo LtdIndia found this out when the teams met in the group stage, when Matt Henry’s seam and Kyle Jamieson’s swing (and Glenn Phillips’ GlennPhillipsness at backward point) reduced them to 30 for 3 inside seven overs. They managed to fight back and win that game, but they won’t want to get into that sort of situation again in the first place.There is some doubt around Henry’s availability for the final, as he recovers from a shoulder injury sustained while taking the catch of Heinrich Klaasen in the semi-final against South Africa, and it will be a major blow to New Zealand’s hopes if he is ruled out. But his colleagues have been pretty good with the new ball. Jamieson has a first-powerplay economy rate of 4.21 in this tournament, and Will O’Rourke has done even better, going at 3.33 while picking up two wickets in six overs in this phase.

The Rohit effect

Whichever pair takes the new ball for New Zealand, they’ll come up against Rohit Sharma, who’s had a most curious Champions Trophy.He’s scored 104 runs at an average of 26.00, with a top score of 44, and that doesn’t look particularly good on the surface, but all his runs have come in the first ten overs, a phase in which no batter from any team has scored more runs.And he’s scored those runs at a strike rate of 107.21, which has allowed his opening partner Shubman Gill to take his time early on. If Gill’s first ten-overs strike rate of 93.42 doesn’t seem particularly slow compared to Rohit’s, consider the first five overs – Rohit has scored 71 runs at 102.89, Gill 28 at 63.63.Rohit hasn’t always looked fluent while batting this way, and it might potentially benefit him, at a personal level, to take a little more time getting his eye in. Given the duration of ODIs and the conditions in Dubai, there’s even an argument to be made that it could benefit India for him to do so. But their batting depth allows him to start innings in this turbocharged manner, and these starts are the biggest stamp Rohit has put on India’s white-ball teams as captain, so it’s unlikely he’ll change it in this big final.

Can Mitchell and Latham put India’s spinners off their lengths?

Whether India stick with four spinners – they seem likely to – or pick just – just! – three, New Zealand’s batters know they’ll face a trial by spin. They’ll know they can’t simply let the spinners settle into their lengths and will have to figure out ways of putting pressure back on the bowlers. Two of the best weapons for doing that are the sweep – and all its variants – and the use of feet to get down the pitch, and New Zealand have a middle-order pair who excel at using them.ESPNcricinfo LtdAmong Full Member batters with at least 300 runs against spin since the start of 2023, Tom Latham has scored a greater percentage of his runs (52.63) than anyone else via these two methods. His prowess at the sweep and reverse-sweep are well known, but he’s also a frequent user of his feet – only Sadeera Samarawickrama (70) has stepped out to spinners more often than Latham (66) in this period. Much like Cheteshwar Pujara in Test cricket, Latham generally keeps the ball along the ground when he uses his feet, and is one of only two frequent steppers-out in this period (Afghanistan’s Rahmat Shah is the other) with a sub-100 strike rate while doing so.Daryl Mitchell also steps out a lot, and he does this in a more stereotypical way, hitting 13 sixes – only Shubman Gill (15) has hit more while stepping out in this period – and striking at over 220 while doing so. He’s a pretty adept sweeper and reverse-sweeper too, and his total percentage of runs via sweeps and forays down the pitch (41.52) puts him in the top five among Full Member batters.This contest between India’s spinners and New Zealand’s Nos. 4 and 5 comes with a fair amount of history. Latham and Mitchell have scored two hundreds each against India, with both of Mitchell’s efforts coming during the 2023 World Cup.They’ll know they’ll have to battle the conditions as well as the bowlers, though, with the pace of India’s spinners – Kuldeep Yadav is the only one of the four who consistently bowls below 85kph – making it a genuine challenge to get down the pitch to them, and their ability to attack the stumps turning sweeps into a risky proposition, particularly given Dubai’s lack of bounce. Latham found this out the hard way when he was lbw missing a reverse-sweep off Ravindra Jadeja in the group stage.

Kohli vs Santner (and Ravindra?)

It feels like a while ago now, but Virat Kohli came into this Champions Trophy with quite a lot of scrutiny – external, certainly, if not from the team management – around his form. His 100* against Pakistan and his 84 against Australia have, however, shown that he retains his genius for the 50-overs game no matter what he’s going through in other formats.Both those innings showcased the method – so simple on its surface, yet so hard for most others to replicate – that’s made Kohli one of the ODI GOATs. Very few batters through the format’s history have matched his ability to accumulate risk-free runs at a rapid clip; he’s an expert manipulator of balls into gaps, and a supreme athlete between wickets. There’s a lot more to his game, too – he couldn’t have pulled off Hobart or Jaipur, among many other innings, otherwise – but those other facets haven’t really been tested at this Champions Trophy.As the graphic above shows, only three batters (minimum 100 balls faced in that phase) have achieved lower dot-ball percentages through the middle overs of this tournament than Kohli (38.65). And though his boundary percentage (25.43) is on the lower side as well, this is mostly down to the fact that he hasn’t needed to attempt that many boundaries, with so much of his batting during this tournament coming in chases of sub-250 targets.Given the conditions in Dubai, Kohli is likely to play a similar sort of role in the final, whether India bat first or second, with the batters around him given greater responsibility for finding boundaries.New Zealand’s challenge, then, will be to try and force Kohli out of his comfort zone and find ways to push up his dot-ball percentage. In Mitchell Santner, they perhaps have just the weapon for this task.Since the start of 2021, Kohli has scored significantly quicker against pace (strike rate 102.70) than spin (84.50) in ODIs, and while he’s struck at over 80 against the other three kinds of spin, he’s had his struggles against left-arm orthodox, going at 73.02 and getting out ten times in 21 innings.ESPNcricinfo LtdIn this period, Santner has a terrific head-to-head record against Kohli, getting him out twice in five innings while conceding less than four an over (3.82). Rachin Ravindra hasn’t done too badly either, not dismissing Kohli but keeping him to 36 runs in 46 balls. New Zealand certainly could get through a few overs of Santner and Ravindra in tandem if Kohli and another right-hand batter are together, particularly given the conditions in Dubai.This is precisely why India have used Axar Patel as their regular No. 5 through this tournament. He breaks up their otherwise entirely right-handed top order, and has the game to put pressure back on the spinners.

Stats highlights from Punjab Kings’ victory against Chennai Super Kings

Sampath Bandarupalli08-Apr-20252:37

Jaffer: Hope to see Arya in India colours soon

39 – The number of balls Punjab Kings (PBKS) batter Priyansh Arya took to score his century against Chennai Super Kings (CSK), the second-fastest by an Indian in the IPL behind Yusuf Pathan’s 37-ball hundred against Mumbai Indians (MI) in IPL 2010.4 – Arya’s hundred is also the joint-fourth-fastest in the IPL and the second-fastest for PBKS behind David Miller’s 38-ball century against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in 2013.310.00 – Arya’s strike rate against CSK’s fast bowlers – he scored 62 runs off 20 balls. Only two batters have had a higher strike rate against quicks in an IPL match (minimum of 20 balls) – 348.00 by Suresh Raina vs Kings XI Punjab (now PBKS) in 2014 and 342.85 by Jake Fraser-McGurk vs MI in 2024.Related

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136 – Runs that PBKS scored after the fall of their fifth wicket against CSK – the most any team has scored after that point in an IPL innings while batting first. It is also the joint-fourth-highest by any team in an IPL innings.2 – Number of batters before Arya with centuries in a men’s T20 in which none of the others in the top six got to double-digits.Michael Bracewell scored 141* for Wellington batting at No. 3 against Central Districts in 2022 when 5 was the next-highest from among the top six.Saber Zakhil scored 100* from No. 8 for Belgium against Austria in 2021, where all the top seven batters got out for four or fewer.12 – Catches dropped by CSK in IPL 2025, including five against PBKS on Tuesday – the most by any team in this tournament. Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) and PBKS are joint-second with six.9 – Catches dropped in Mullanpur on Tuesday – five by CSK and four by PBKS, the most in an IPL match, according to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball logs, surpassing the eight dropped catches by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) at Eden Gardens in 2023.

Bowlers like Tharindu could redefine their craft, while batters like Shanto could carve new Test legacies. But how many opportunities will they get?

Andrew Fidel Fernando17-Jun-2025It was just as the freshest cycle of the World Test Championship (WTC) 2025-27 was approaching its fourth hour that the freshest Test cricketer on the planet pivoted at the top of his mark, and did something a little bit special.In his first 95 deliveries in Test cricket, Tharindu Rathnayake had been a right-arm offspinner. But like a magician who plunges himself into the hat and pulls out a different version of his own self, Tharindu chose this moment to pretty much instantaneously yank out his slow left-arm avatar. The field barely had to move. Tharindu bowled a tidy enough first ball of left-arm spin. It got cut away behind square for a single.In that first fascinating moment of Tharindu’s ambidexterity, this team felt emphatically and inescapably Sri Lankan. It felt like Tharindu was the latest entry into a proud tradition of bowling rebellion. This is a tradition that brought cricket delights such as wrist-spin offbreaks (Muthiah Muralidaran), down-swinging round-arm yorkers (Lasith Malinga), and the carrom ball (Ajantha Mendis and Rangana Herath).Related

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In fact, so steeped is Sri Lanka in bowling weirdness that Tharindu is only the second ambidextrous spinner in this team, Kamindu Mendis also having bowled in Test cricket with both arms. Which means that the XI has as many dual-arm spinners as it does spinners that bowl with only the boring single arm.If Tharindu – for whom bowling is the primary suit – and Kamindu have long careers together, there is the chance that between them, they can open up entirely new sections of bowling analysis. We may suddenly find ourselves asking questions never seriously asked in cricket.Which arm does he get more wickets with? Which arm does he bowl quicker with, and does this correlate to him being more economical? If it’s established that he is a better offspinner, does he get more right-hander wickets with that style, or is the ball turning away always going to be more threatening to right-handers? If he bowls nine offbreak overs consecutively, does he tend to gain a competitive advantage in switching to his less-tired left arm? And on pitches that have footmarks to work with, this guy will probably be unstoppable, right? The lines of attack available… wow!Test cricket’s great strength is that it offers the broadest canvas of maybe any sport in existence. What shapes will come out of Tharindu’s unusually broad brush?And while Sri Lanka are still attempting to regenerate their spin-bowling, Bangladesh were attempting something similar, but on the batting front. There is an ongoing exodus. Tamim Iqbal, Shakib Al Hasan, and Mahmudullah are out already. Only Mushfiqur Rahim remains of the first generation of Bangladesh greats. Where are the consistent big runs going to come from?Mushfiqur Rahim and Najmul Hossain Shanto carved a stand to remember•Getty ImagesOn day one of the first Test in Galle, Bangladesh seemed to have done the better job of replacing their greats, with Najmul Hossain Shanto joining Mushfiqur on a trip to triple-figures, at the same venue Mushfiqur hit Bangladesh’s first ever double-hundred in 2013.But while Sri Lanka and Bangladesh’s Test cricketers are trying to expand the game in their little ways, the environment in which they operate is rapidly shrinking. After this series ends, Sri Lanka have no Test scheduled until May 2026, which is partly why both Angelo Mathews and Dimuth Karunaratne quit this year.Bangladesh also have only 12 Tests (the minimum amount) in their two-year WTC cycle, though they also have non-WTC Tests scheduled against Ireland and Zimbabwe. South Africa, the champion Test side as of Saturday,have only 14 Tests on the ledger, while West Indies have 14 too. It increasingly feels like a coup for these teams to average merely seven Tests per year.The argument is not that Test cricket is dying. In some places, it is in more spectacular health than it has ever been. In both Australia and England in this decade, the Ashes series have smashed viewership records. Just in the last week, the ECB CEO said that ” in terms of commercial importance”, Test series against India were worth as much as The Ashes.After winning the IPL with his beloved Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), Virat Kohli insisted that although that victory was sweet, it ranked “five levels below Test cricket”. But then what qualifies as real Test cricket is also in contention. Kohli, for example, played 47% of his Tests against either Australia or England, but never faced Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, or Ireland.Sri Lanka have no Test scheduled until May 2026, which is partly why Angelo Mathews chose to retire•AFP/Getty ImagesEssentially, Test cricket has chosen to build high, rather than wide. There is sufficient money in cricket that it could choose to divert to Tests in nations outside the Big Three, but there is less will. The WTC could require every team to play 16 Tests in the cycle to qualify. The ICC could finally put that ‘Test cricket fund’ into place, whereby the Big Three pay to support Tests elsewhere in the Full Member world. Instead, cricket has arrived at a situation in which England play 60% more Tests than most other nations.While some suggest that playing more Tests is a WTC disadvantage, players from teams who play fewer Tests point out that their opportunities to develop Test skills are scarcer. Even if teams that played fewer Tests had an advantage – and there is no serious evidence they do – they gain so little from winning. South Africa’s men do not have a home Test scheduled for the next 15 months.Increasingly, it has begun to feel as if places such as Galle are Test cricket’s hinterlands. Does what happens here matter, especially when no Big Three team is on the field? If commercial value is to increasingly become cricket’s supreme good, where does that leave Tests like this one? And is the size of your home cricketing economy the greatest predictor of opportunities available to you?Bowlers such as Tharindu could potentially redefine their craft, while batters such as Shanto could carve new Bangladesh Test legacies. But they may never get the chance to. To what extent does cricket really care? As the sport continues to centralise power, these are the margins at risk of being trimmed.

Head coach Gambhir and batting coach Kotak have done it in the past but they can only share the experience, not make time move faster

Sidharth Monga26-Jul-20252:29

Kotak: ‘Credit to Gill’ for changing his batting approach

There is perhaps nothing more absolute and objective than time. It takes one second for one second. Sixty of them will make a minute. There is no way around it. You can’t do anything to make the earth move faster or slower. It is never more apparent than when you are so far behind in a Test that a draw is the only result possible for you, and you have to bat five sessions to earn it.Against modern Test attacks, it is generally not possible to bat five sessions for a draw unless the conditions are your friend. You need it to be either devoid of lateral movement and uneven bounce, or you want it to run out of life so that things are happening too slowly off the surface. A bowler, the best of the series, down for two sessions helps.Then, and only then, begins the battle with time, which can also be extremely subjective. How you perceive time can make it seem stress-inducingly quick or painfully slow. It perhaps seems so only to those on the outside, but time can move extremely slowly during such situations.Related

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India’s dressing room has two men who have achieved these feats at different levels. Their head coach Gautam Gambhir once batted 643 minutes for just 137 runs while following-on to help India save a Test in Napier in 2008-09. Not long before that, the batting coach Sitanshu Kotak resisted Mumbai at the Wankhede Stadium for 796 minutes for a draw. Kotak’s bringing of Mumbai down to their knees is part of Ranji Trophy folklore.The experience is out there, they can perhaps tell the formula to those going out: four overs equal 15 minutes, eight overs is half-an-hour, double that and you get a drinks break. One more drinks break, and there is a session break. You need these landmarks on the way.It still can’t help time move faster. The biggest challenge when attempting such draws is to not get ahead of yourself. You can’t think, “yeah, this looks easy now” and start thinking of the next challenge: Ben Stokes, or the second new ball, or overcast skies. You can get away with doing that in a chase. You can perhaps take risks when you are confident and make sure that even if you get out, you leave the rest a manageable task.There is no such concept here. It has to be done one ball at a time. There is no get-out-of-jail-free card, except to wait for the sentence to get over. You have to find the sweet spot between concentrating and relaxing. Too focused, and you can exhaust yourself. Too relaxed, and you can make a mistake. And if you get out, your team is no closer to finishing the task than the objective passage of time.KL Rahul plays the short ball comfortably despite a packed leg-side field•Getty ImagesKL Rahul and Shubman Gill have the techniques and the temperament. Gill is naturally an even-tempered person. Rahul has seen enough ups and downs in cricket to know better than to get swayed by outcomes. They have both had one infamous meltdown on a Test field each. Rahul in South Africa, Gill at Lord’s.However, with bat in hand, a natural extension of their bodies, they have the kind of game that can take care of them as they go about batting time. They have seen through a hat-trick ball, the tricky three overs before lunch, the new ball, then a drinks break, then sets of 15 minutes to tea, then repeated it to stumps.They have had other landmarks. Perhaps a Jofra Archer spell. Then making him bowl bouncers. Then switch off and switch on as he went around the wicket. Same with the other end. Liam Dawson switching to over the wicket. Kick them away. One ball at a time. Move around, get one to kick and beat the outside edge, but play the next ball for the angle because not many will turn. As Gill did in the 62nd over, having faced 162 balls by then.2:11

Manjrekar: Second new ball will be the next big challenge for India

Rahul, who faced his first ball after Gill had already played one, went into stumps having negotiated 210, which was 33 more than Gill. At one point, he was so engrossed in just defending the ball and switching off that he forgot to run. Gill had to shout at him.Runs were immaterial and were scored only when the ball was really bad or when played instinctively. Or, at times, just to buy time, that wonderful concept. When you keep defending, defending, defending, even though time is moving too slowly, you are concentrating so hard you can feel hurried. So you hit a four, move your legs, knock gloves with the non-striker, switch off, and switch on again.The job is only 40% done. Day five will move at its objective pace again. It will feel too slow and too quick at times. There will be landmarks. Get yourself in, then new ball in 17 overs, then proper switch on, personal milestones perhaps. If you get close to erasing the deficit, you can sense time move faster because every run you score will also take time for England to score it back. For England, it will start rushing out of their hands if India get close to saving the match.Such Test innings are perhaps appreciated more by eccentrics, but there is every bit of the competitiveness that makes sport a spectacle. On a beautiful Saturday evening, as the shadows at Old Trafford lengthen, time is moving smoothly. It will find its own rhythms on Sunday morning: slowly for some, quickly for some others. It will, in actual fact, move only one second at a time.

For a while, India’s performance in the World Cup opener matched the mood in a city in mourning, till Amanjot Kaur and Deepti Sharma decided to do something about it

S Sudarshanan01-Oct-20253:06

Review: Deepti channelled her best version

A lot can happen after a pause.On Tuesday afternoon, the silence at the ACA Stadium was deafening.An overcast afternoon that began with a glowing, heartfelt, musical tribute to singer Zubeen Garg, who died 11 days ago, turned the mood among the record 22,843 that kept the mood at the venue sombre. And after the game started, India’s World Cup dream received a jolt: Smriti Mandhana played out a maiden over and soon fell in the fourth over. Pratika Rawal and Harleen Deol, both playing an ODI World Cup for the first time, didn’t rattle away and India faced 61 dots in the first 15 overs. Flashbacks of another India home World Cup game against Sri Lanka.The first pause came courtesy an hour-long drizzle.Related

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It shortened the game to 48 overs a side (another short halt later reduced it to 47) and gave Rawal and Deol the chance to change gears.India were 120 for 2 after 25, setting a decent platform. Then Inoka Ranaweera struck thrice in five balls to leave India at 121 for 5; Richa Ghosh fell in the next over to leave them at 124 for 6.That brought Deepti Sharma and Amanjot Kaur, the latter on 50-over World Cup debut, together. It was all rather shaky for India.Then came another pause – a short and expected one, the drinks interval.India 129 for 6 in 29 overs, Deepti on 13 off 10, Amanjot 0 off 5. Something had to happen.

****

Amanjot is good at one-liners. There is this other thing that she is equally good, if not better, at – fighting her way out of adverse situations.She was sidelined for a year with a stress injury and only returned to action ahead of WPL 2025. In the injured Pooja Vastrakar’s absence, Amanjot was able to carry the allrounder’s mantle for Mumbai Indians and continued in the same vein on the tour of England.Five T20Is and an ODI later, she was missing again.She had a few niggles and, in consultation with the coaches, rested herself to be fresh for the World Cup. Her first game upon return tested her. And brought out the best in her.Amanjot Kaur celebrates after scoring a counter-attacking half-century•ICC/Getty ImagesDespite the tricky situation India were in, Amanjot chose to attack and took on Sri Lanka’s best bowler of the evening, Ranaweera, hitting her for fours in each of the next two overs. In no time, she had raced to her maiden ODI half-century in just 45 balls.Sri Lanka dropped her thrice and she made them pay.Later, Amanjot was one of only two seamers India played and she trapped Vishmi Gunaratne lbw. It was a great game for her – her rocket throws pinging wicketkeeper Richa Ghosh’s gloves just added to the fun.

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Deepti’s first challenge was to see off Ranaweera’s hat-trick ball. Despite being one of India’s most valuable players across formats, her batting approach in such tricky situations has been in the spotlight. On Tuesday, she did not get bogged down under pressure. A quick single here, a sprint for a couple there, she kept the strike rotating and transferred pressure back on Sri Lanka.For most of her innings, Deepti batted at a strike rate in excess of 100. She used the sweep to telling effect – each of her three fours came with that shot; she scored 20 off 11 with the sweep. In ODIs since 2024, 42% of Deepti’s runs (158 out of 369) have been with the sweep. That is the best among batters with at least 200 runs against spin in this period (where ball-by-ball data is available).Together, Deepti and Amanjot added 103 runs for the seventh wicket, and put India in the position they needed to be in.ESPNcricinfo LtdDeepti’s evening was not done. Sri Lanka captain Chamari Athapaththu, her team-mate at UP Warriorz, hit two sixes and two fours in Deepti’s first two overs, which went for 23. In a stiff chase of 271, Sri Lanka needed Athapaththu to get a significant score. But Deepti won the duel, darting one through Athapaththu to all but douse Sri Lanka’s challenge. Her three wickets took her to second among India’s leading wicket-takers in ODIs in the process.

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“It is said that a wounded lion takes a step back only to take a big leap forward…” Amanjot said, paused and laughed, speaking at the post-match press conference. “You people will make me famous just for my one-liners!”With Amanjot, what you see is what you get. Her confidence often rubs off on others and covers up for her lack of experience, too. Her partnership with Deepti was the perfect fire-and-ice combo to combat and wriggle out of Sri Lanka’s stranglehold. It was just the second century partnership for the seventh wicket or lower in ODI World Cups.”Ultimately, you want a good score to defend,” Amanjot said. “We can’t play dots just because we are six down. I knew that Deepti was with me and we had to stitch a big partnership. I had to stay in the middle. The pitch was sticky, the ball was holding in the surface and there was turn on offer. The longer the two of us batted, we knew we could take India to a decent total and we did that.”With Deepti Sharma, the sweep is always just around the corner•Getty ImagesThis is what Amanjot was preparing for. And she did not want to turn up for the World Cup undercooked. “I did not have an injury but I felt my body needed a little rest,” she said. “We did a few scans and I discussed with the coaches that I did not feel well while bowling. I did not want to play for India at 80-90%. I should be either at 100% or not play; I don’t like such half-measures.”I should be able to stop runs, and push with the bat and ball and contribute as an allrounder. Otherwise anyone can play in my place.”The pause in her career helped Amanjot return not only fit and fresh but also with greater clarity.”It was the first game of the World Cup and looking at the hype and crowd, there were jitters,” she said. “All that is normal, the more you play the more you get used to it. I played six [five] dot balls at the start. The Aman before rehab would have tried to hit the seventh ball in the air. But rehab has taught me patience and gratefulness – whatever you get is enough, you don’t need more. God made me do as much as was necessary today and I did that.”That’s what can happen after a pause.

He has made himself impossible to drop, pushing India towards the rare move of picking him as a non-keeping middle-order batter

Karthik Krishnaswamy11-Nov-2025It was clear even in January 2020 that Dhruv Jurel had big ambitions.Watch this video, produced during that year’s Under-19 World Cup in South Africa. “I just want to be a successful cricketer,” he says. “I want to play 200 Test match[es] for my India.”He seems to say these words with no thought of how outlandish they must sound coming from anyone, let alone someone who had played no senior cricket at that point. Or with no thought given to the hurdles in front of him, including Rishabh Pant, older than Jurel by only three-and-a-half years and by then already looking set for a long and extraordinary career.A year-and-a-half into his international career now, Jurel has played seven Tests, and all but one of them has come in the forced absence of Pant. This, typically, is life for the wicketkeeping understudy. Keeping is a specialist job, and for much of cricket’s history it was unusual for regular keepers to be good enough with the bat to play Test matches consistently as pure batters.Related

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• Dhruv Jurel makes case for India Test spot with twin hundreds against South Africa A

It’s become a lot more common in recent times, of course, and Test teams now routinely line up with one keeper who keeps and one or even two who don’t. On Friday, South Africa are likely to line up at Eden Gardens with a keeping keeper in Kyle Verreynne and a non-keeping keeper in Ryan Rickelton.India, however, haven’t had much of a history of non-keeping Test keepers. Of the 13 India players who have kept wicket in 10 or more Tests (this weeds out specialist batters who have occasionally done the job, like Vijay Manjrekar and KL Rahul), only two have played as specialist batters in non-emergency situations (such as the crises of unavailability that led to Wriddhiman Saha’s debut and Jurel’s appearance in Perth last year): Budhi Kunderan (in three Tests, with Farokh Engineer keeping) and Dinesh Karthik (in seven, with MS Dhoni keeping).And both Kunderan and Karthik opened the batting when they played alongside another keeper. Stopgap or otherwise, and with or without the big gloves, keeper as opener is certainly an authentic Indian-cricket tradition.All this to say, then, that Jurel, against South Africa on Friday, could go where no India Test keeper with a career of any real length (sorry, Madhav Mantri and Chandrakant Pandit) has gone before: starting a Test series as a non-keeping middle-order batter, ahead of specialist contenders within the squad. And if it happens, it will happen because Jurel has made himself near-impossible to leave out.On September 15, before India A’s first unofficial Test against Australia A, Jurel had one century in 25 first-class games, and an average of 47.34. It was a record befitting his status as a keeper-batter of immense potential, but even if he had shown signs of an uncommonly good eye, technique and temperament, there was, as yet, not a lot of evidence to force India to pick him ahead of B Sai Sudharsan or Devdutt Padikkal or Sarfaraz Khan or a host of other candidates in a specialist middle-order role.Since then, Jurel has rattled off 140, 1, 56, 125, 44, 6*, 132* and 127* in five first-class games — two Tests against West Indies (in the first of which he scored that 125) sandwiched between India A matches against Australia A and South Africa A. His first-class average has jumped to 58.00.Gloves or no gloves, Dhruv Jurel has proved himself to be handy in the field•PTI How do you leave out someone with that record, in this form, who has already shown multiple times that he looks entirely at home in Test cricket? This is someone with a match-turning, Player-of-the-Match performance on a tricky, low-bounce pitch in just his second Test. Someone who, in his most recent match, scored a day-one century on a greentop against South Africa A when no other India A player — their XI included Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Padikkal and Pant — went past 24. Someone who had done the same sort of thing for India A — twin half-centuries when none of his team-mates scored one in either innings — at the MCG last year.India must have come very, very close to the conclusion that you don’t leave out such a player, in fact, and that you find any possible way to pick him. And they probably don’t have to think too long or hard about how they can do this, because there is a fairly obvious way, and a fairly obvious player to leave out.During the Tests against West Indies, Nitish Kumar Reddy looked like a luxury player India picked because they could afford to pick him — not so much for his utility for the immediate task at hand but for helping him grow into the game-changing player they believe he can become. India could afford, in that series, to pick an allrounder who is, at his present stage of development, a sixth bowler and, for all his batting promise, a No. 8 behind Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar who are far more accomplished with the bat at present.Jurel, except in one innings when India promoted Reddy to give him batting time, batted above all three allrounders during the West Indies series, and looked a natural fit in that position. Now, even with Pant back in their XI, there is every chance India will want the batting edge Jurel gives them over this current, work-in-progress version of Reddy, because South Africa’s attack is nothing like the severely depleted West Indies bowling they just faced.Kagiso Rabada is an elite fast bowler with the experience of two previous India Test tours. Keshav Maharaj is one of the world’s best fingerspinners and Simon Harmer a hugely experienced one, and both arrive with more subcontinent know-how than they did in 2019-20 and 2015-16 respectively. Senuran Muthusamy was a debutant and far more of a batter than a bowler when he last toured India, but now he’s fresh off a Player-of-the-Series performance in Pakistan.Jurel could be starting the Test series as a non-keeping middle-order batter, ahead of specialist contenders•Getty ImagesWho would you pick between Jurel and Reddy, against that attack, when you already have five bowlers?The question, however, isn’t quite as simple as that, because there’s a specialist batter in India’s squad, and that batter, Devdutt Padikkal, has been in pretty good form too, notwithstanding two lean games against South Africa A.Since his return from a hamstring injury suffered during the IPL, Padikkal has scored a 150 against Australia A and a 96 for Karnataka against Saurashtra in the Ranji Trophy, and if an average of 38.40 across six first-class games in this period doesn’t look flash, there’s one mitigating factor in that he batted at No. 3 or No. 4 in all his innings, and typically faced a newer ball than Jurel had to.And if you put aside the question of current form, there’s the fact that the selectors and team management have long viewed Padikkal as the next batter in line for a middle-order role. Does a run of inspired form from another candidate change that view? And does that question become more awkward if that candidate is the reserve wicketkeeper?

“To select him now as a specialist batter in a Test XI that also includes Pant is another leap of faith, but it can’t be a particularly difficult one to make”

The answer, in normal circumstances, would be yes, it would be terribly awkward. But present circumstances are far from normal. Jurel isn’t on a random burst of inspired form; he’s showing India the run-scoring ceiling that everyone who has tracked him since his junior days has believed him capable of.Right through his career, people with a deep understanding of the game have looked at Jurel and seen a talent worth fast-tracking. Rajasthan Royals picked him in their XIs, or as an Impact Player, when they already had two keeper-batters as good as Sanju Samson and Jos Buttler, and did this when he had only played three previous T20 games.When he was first picked for India A, Jurel had only played 12 first-class games, and scored just one century. Three first-class matches later, he was in India’s Test squad. Then he spent two Tests on the bench before India gave him his cap and left out KS Bharat, who had been in and around the squad as reserve keeper for close to five years.So many leaps of faith, and so far, Jurel hasn’t once given the wise heads who have made them any reason to doubt their judgment. To select him now as a specialist batter in a Test XI that also includes Pant is another leap of faith, but it can’t be a particularly difficult one to make.

Playing for 10 teams in seven franchise tournaments over the last three years has taught the allrounder all about embracing uncertainty

Ekanth10-Dec-20251:25

Neesham: ‘You just go tournament by tournament and hope to perform’

“Win this tournament, and then go to India and win the T20 World Cup, and then probably go home for a bit.”These are James Neesham’s objectives over the next 12 months. Notice that there are no personal goals. As a globetrotting freelancer, he’s happy to divorce results from his performances.”I don’t really do goals like that [specifically] for a season,” Neesham tells ESPNcricinfo in a media interaction organised by Dubai Capitals. “I could play seven games, I could play one game; we could win the whole thing, we could come last, all the possibilities are on the table. But it’s about tackling each day as it comes, try and put on performances. If that ends up [with you] scoring 300 runs in a season, then that’s fantastic. If it’s less than that, then it’s just something you’ve had to deal with.Related

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“You just go tournament by tournament and hope to perform. Not having the security of a format means you have to be beholden to your performance a little bit more. Look, as professional athletes, everyone’s used to having to rely on themselves, be self-sufficient, and perform. So, it’s nothing too worrying.”Since declining a national contract with New Zealand Cricket [NZC] in September 2022, Neesham has been a constant presence in the global T20 circuit. He has played for 10 teams in seven competitions as well as 45 T20Is for New Zealand.Going freelance has helped Neesham open up his schedule during New Zealand’s home summer•Sanka Vidanagama/AFP via Getty ImagesLooking back, Neesham feels he is doing what he wanted to when he gave up his contract, and opening up his schedule during the New Zealand summer to play around the world.”The main thought process behind that decision was being able to play in the SA20 during our home summer,” Neesham says, “which you obviously can’t do if you’re contracted. I got three years with Pretoria Capitals, which was a very enjoyable stint for me, and now here at the ILT20, being able to play against the best players in the world in our home summer. That was the goal.”Twenty-seven of Neesham’s 115 games in this period have come for Pretoria Capitals and Dubai Capitals, franchises owned by the GMR group. He enjoys the familiarity and continuity that this provides.”I go way back with GMR to play[ing] in the IPL in 2014 for Delhi Daredevils [now Delhi Capitals]. It’s always nice to have the continuity of the same management and coaching staff to keep things familiar. With the schedule being different, not being able to play all of the SA20 this year, ILT20 became the preferable option. I’m very happy to come here and continue my relationship with the Capitals in a different [tournament].”Given the nature of the freelancer’s schedule, it can be a challenge to remain match-ready as and when the call to play comes. It makes keeping fit a priority, but Neesham is realistic about what’s in his control.”Injuries are part of the game,” he says. “No one is fully fit all the time. For myself, at 35, I have enough experience to know how to prepare myself physically for tournaments, and the thing with cricket these days is that there’s no real off-season. You’re pretty much playing year-round, so you can stay conditioned for cricket. Then it normally holds you in pretty good stead going from tournament to tournament.”

And what’s the highest score repeated back-to-back by a batter in ODIs?

Steven Lynch21-Oct-2025 In the recent Test in Lahore, Hasan Ali did not score a run despite batting twice, did not take a wicket despite bowling in both innings, and did not take a catch. Have there been any similar (non) performances like this in Tests? asked Hassan Abbas from Canada
Pakistan’s Hasan Ali did not make any runs in the first Test against South Africa in Lahore last week despite batting twice (for two 0 not-outs) and bowling in both innings (two lots of 0 for 14); he also did not take a catch.This was the 31st such barren performance in a Test match, the first since Australia’s Scott Boland against England at Headingley in 2023. Cuan McCarthy of South Africa and Shannon Gabriel of West Indies – noted rabbits with the bat – did it twice. In only 13 of these instances was the player dismissed for 0 in both innings.Ibrahim Zadran made consecutive 95s against Bangladesh recently. Was this the highest repeat score in ODIs? asked Ahmedul Kabir from Bangladesh
The Afghanistan opener Ibrahim Zadran followed his 95 against Bangladesh in Abu Dhabi last week with another 95 against them three days later. The highest repeated score in successive one-day internationals is 116, by South Africa’s Herschelle Gibbs against Kenya and India during the 2002 Champions Trophy in Sri Lanka. Gibbs retired hurt in the second of those. The highest score for consecutive ODI dismissals is 113 by Virat Kohli, against Bangladesh in Chattogram in 2022, and Sri Lanka in Guwahati a month later.In women’s ODIs, Tazmin Brits of South Africa made 101 and 101 not out in successive innings against West Indies and Pakistan in 2025.In Tests, Pakistan’s Aamer Sohail had successive innings of 160 against West Indies in Rawalpindi and Karachi late in 1997, while the highest repeated score in T20Is is 78, by Kendel Kadowaki-Fleming of Japan against Singapore and Hong Kong in 2024.In India’s first innings in Delhi against West Indies, the openers were out stumped and run-out. Has this ever happened before in a Test? asked Michael Porter from England
Rather surprisingly perhaps, the dismissals of Yashasvi Jaiswal and KL Rahul in Delhi last week provided the 20th instance of both openers being out stumped or run out in the same Test innings. That includes eight cases of two run outs and six of two stumpings, leaving six occasions where one opener was run-out and the other stumped.Sydney Barnes, seen here with his wife and son, took two seven-fors in his final Test•PA PhotosImam-ul-Haq and Salman Agha were both out for 93 against South Africa in Lahore. What’s the highest identical score by two batsmen in the same Test innings? asked Simon from South Korea
You’re right that the Pakistan pair of Imam-ul-Haq and Salman Agha were both out for 93 against South Africa in the first Test in Lahore last week. But it was quite a way short of the highest repeated score in a Test innings – 234 by the Australians Sid Barnes and Don Bradman for Australia against England in Sydney in 1946.Barnes claimed he got out deliberately so as to tie Bradman’s score, which was an Australian record for the SCG at the time. “I preferred to have my name associated with Don’s in holding the joint record,” he wrote. “I worshipped him. He could do no wrong as far as I was concerned… I hit one high above my head and walked out.” Back in the dressing room, Bradman congratulated him on his innings: “You have done a great job for Australia.” Barnes responded: “You didn’t do so bad yourself.”The highest score repeated three times in a Test innings is exactly 50, which has happened twice: by West Indies against India in Port-of-Spain in 1962 (by Easton McMorris, Willie Rodriguez and Wes Hall, who was not out), and New Zealand against Pakistan in Sharjah in 2014 (Ross Taylor, Corey Anderson and Tim Southee).What are the best bowling figures by someone playing in their final Test match? asked Simon Johnstone from Scotland
The only man to take eight wickets in an innings in his final Test was the old Surrey and England fast bowler Tom Richardson, with 8 for 64 against Australia in Sydney early in 1898. There have been 11 other instances of a bowler taking seven wickets in an innings in their final Test (including two by Sydney Barnes; see below). Rashid Khan took 7 for 66 in his most recent Test for in Bulawayo in January, but will presumably play again.The best match figures in a player’s last Test are 14 for 144 (7 for 56 and 7 for 88) by Barnes f or England against South Africa in Durban in February 1914. By the time Test cricket resumed after the First World War, Barnes was 47, although he was still playing to a high level and might well have been called up. Jack Ferris (1891-92) and Clarrie Grimmett (1935-36) both took 13 wickets in what turned out to be their final Test match, and six other men took ten or more (excludes current players).Shiva Jayaraman of ESPNcricinfo’s stats team helped with some of the above answers.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

The Australia A tour of India will mark the start of Konstas’ season before a defining month of Sheffield Shield cricket for New South Wales

AAP09-Sep-20250:27

Konstas gone for duck as tough Caribbean tour ends

Sam Konstas doesn’t care for regrets or critics. And by putting himself on a self-imposed social media ban, the teenager hunting an opening spot in a home Ashes series has ensured he will hear as little of the latter as possible.The 19-year-old is set to play two four-day matches in India for Australia A before targeting four Sheffield Shield games for New South Wales with a goal of finding the red-ball form that eluded him on a tough tour of the West Indies.Whatever happens in the next two months, you can be sure the charismatic young gun won’t be giving two hoots over what outsiders say about his approach.Related

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Konstas dazzled the cricket world on Boxing Day last year against India on Test debut with a flamboyant and audacious 60 off 65 balls. Critics said he would not be able to play that way on a regular basis and succeed.Runs have since proven elusive and Konstas did not pass 25 in his next nine Test innings.  He is competing with a plethora of candidates to partner Usman Khawaja for the opening Ashes Test in Perth but has no regrets about his approach on debut against Jasprit Bumrah and company.”I wouldn’t change it,” Konstas told AAP. “I don’t have any regrets in my life to be honest. I thought that was the right method at the time and it paid off. I don’t get too fixated about what others say. Whatever I feel is right I totally commit to.”My method is someone who is an aggressive batsman that likes to take on the game, while understanding the game situation when I do play well. It is about trying to score runs and win games.”The more experiences I have in different conditions the more I will adapt. I have to find my method and what works best in each situation.”What also works best for Konstas is not having social media. He went from a relative unknown to a global attraction overnight with 281,000 followers on Instagram. Watching the ball and not his phone screen is now the focus.”I never had social media until I was 18. I had it for a year and now I have taken a break from it to be more present and try and get back in the Ashes squad,” Konstas said. “It is just about focusing on myself and trying to give it a good crack.”Everyone uses social media differently but I feel now is the right time to get off it. I don’t read my comments on Instagram. I don’t care what other people say to be honest but everyone has their opinion.”Konstas heads to India with confidence and valuable lessons already under his belt.”I’ve had a few experiences in the subcontinent,” Konstas said prior to taking centre stage at Tuesday’s ASICS kit launch at the SCG. “I was lucky enough to be in the MRF Academy last year and to tour Sri Lanka as well with the Aussie boys. Hopefully I can score plenty of runs and adapt to those conditions.”It is about trying to be in the present moment with any game I play whether it be my club team, NSW or Australia A ahead of the Ashes.”I got so much out of my first time in the Caribbean and facing a quality fast attack. The wickets were tough to bat on.For me it was about trying to find methods for scoring runs in those conditions and understanding the bounce is variable and trying to find another method, if I do go again.”