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By the end of his 54-ball 135, records and England were left shattered, and there were smiles on the faces of every spectator at the ground

S Sudarshanan03-Feb-20254:07

Abhishek: ‘If I have the ability, I should nourish it’

You couldn’t hear yourself think if you were at the Wankhede Stadium on Sunday evening. The raucous cheers slowly turned into rapturous applause. The and the whistles were drowned out. Everybody was on their feet. Those selling refreshments in the stands had paused. The security personnel had also let their guards down. “Aaa-bheee-shake! Aaa-bheee-shake!” went the chants. In proper rhythm.There were smiles everywhere. Not least on the face of Gautam Gambhir, who is usually reserved. He was up on his feet with a wide grin, not for the first time either. The reason: Abhishek Sharma. He had put on an exhibition – a 54-ball 135 that was as awe-inspiring as it was breathtaking – to shatter records and England. He acknowledged the noise as he walked back. He stopped in his path, turned, and raised the bat and helmet, and continued walking towards his team-mates. The show had finally ended after 93 minutes.The signs of his intent were visible early. Mark Wood, who had replaced Saqib Mahmood in England’s XI, bowled a short ball at 150.1kph that Abhishek pulled over midwicket for a couple. All-out attack has worked for him in the past, and he was not going to back down on this occasion. Even if it meant taking that extra risk. Like he did against Jofra Archer in the third over. He skipped down while making room to a length delivery angled in at 142.3kph and thrashed it over extra cover. He ended that over with back-to-back sixes – a 146.1kph short ball slashed over backward point and a 147.2kph rocket bashed over the covers.Related

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It was carnage. Abhishek played proper cricketing strokes – the drive, the lofted drive, the flick, the cut. All of it seemingly effortless. Most of them gorgeous. All of them effective.Abhishek has done it so often in recent times – like for Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in IPL 2024 or for Punjab in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. He hit a 28-ball century in December last year. Yet it felt new; you could not take your eyes away. “This is like you are at the airport and the planes are flying above you,” Harsha Bhogle said on air as Abhishek hit sixes at will – a record 13 of them.Two of them came when he skipped down to Adil Rashid on successive balls and tonked him straight over the sight screen at the media end. Abhishek himself liked those. “I don’t remember half of them. But I think [I liked] the way I used the pace of the bowlers over covers or even against Adil Rashid; I liked how they felt while hitting,” he said at the press conference.What helped Abhishek was that the England bowlers missed their lines and lengths often. Bowling full at the Wankhede comes with peril. Yet, England bowled ten balls in Abhishek’s slot that cost them 30. Short-of-good lengths are generally a safer option, but he stayed leg side of those and dispatched them in the arc between backward point and long-off. England could not attack him on the body, and he did not need the pull much. Even against seriously fast bowling, with Wood regularly breaching the 150kph mark, despite bowling with a heavily strapped left leg.

“Looking back at the last IPL, him and Travis Head were the same [at] the top of the order for Sunrisers, and he has brought that into India”Jos Buttler

Abhishek was severe on Jamie Overton, greeting him with two successive sixes and taking 15 off his first four balls and 20 off six. His 100th run came with one of his least brutal strokes – a tap in front of cover point. Helmet off, a big leap, arms in the air, he blew a flying kiss towards the President’s Box, where his mother and sister were seated – “When you play such an innings in front of your parents and family, it makes you feel proud and happy; you are able to share such moments with them, so I feel very blessed” – before refocusing. He was on 99 off 36 balls by the tenth over but found the strike hard to get as he scored nine off nine in the next six overs. Then he sped up again to score 27 off eight, including 12 off Brydon Carse, England’s best bowler on the night, in a 17-run over.”Some of the cricketing shots were incredible,” Gambhir later told Star Sports. “Just the bat swing… I haven’t seen a better T20 innings, and against an attack like this where you’ve got Jofra Archer and Mark Wood bowling at 150kph consistently. You might see a lot of T20 hundreds in the IPL, but the quality of attack in front of them [in this series] and a young boy taking them on from ball one is probably the best I have seen.”By the time Abhishek fell, India were well past 200. There was a sense that it was past England’s reach, even if the track had more runs on it and dew was expected to set in. As if on cue, England collapsed in a heap, with Phil Salt scoring 55 off the 97 they made. Abhishek struck twice in the single over he bowled to take down Carse and Overton. A complete game for Abhishek, who scored 38 more than all of England could.3:15

Manjrekar: Abhishek has grown into a very confident batter

“Credit to Abhishek Sharma, I thought that’s as clean a ball-striking as I’ve seen,” England captain Jos Buttler said. “I thought he played fantastically well. We always sit down and think what more we could have done or how we could have stopped him. It can be difficult sometimes when a player gets on a roll and they play as well as he did. Looking back at the last IPL, him and Travis Head were the same [at] the top of the order for Sunrisers, and he has brought that into India. He played a brilliant innings and yes, sometimes you want to credit the opposition.”Most of the capacity crowd stayed back till the last ball. Some of them even wanted to hear the Player of the Match speak. And some others queued up in the narrow lane outside the Wankhede to get another glimpse of their hero of the night. Some, who had watched Shane Watson’s 117 not out and Sanath Jayasuriya’s 114 not out at the venue, felt Abhishek’s knock was the more destructive.On a cool, windy Mumbai evening, the idea of what a 37-ball hundred is all about had changed for everyone.

Boland is very worthy of every opportunity he gets, and feels ideally suited for the green-tinged pitch at The Oval

Andrew McGlashan06-Jun-2023Scott Boland’s place in Australia’s attack for the World Test Championship final against India is nothing less than he deserves. But it was very close to not happening.The selectors have, understandably, taken a cautious approach with Josh Hazlewood. Had he been just a little more ready, or if a five-match Ashes did not follow this Test, it’s highly likely he would have been in the XI.And, with a Test record that reads 222 wickets at 25.83, he would have been worthy of his spot.Related

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However, Boland is currently very worthy of every opportunity he gets. With a green tinge to The Oval pitch, Boland feels like a bowler ideally suited to the conditions. Along with Pat Cummins, he caused Australia’s batters some uneasy moments in the nets on Monday.”In Australia, you can get passages of play where the Kookaburra doesn’t do much and the wicket is quite flat,” Cummins said. “In the past here in England, because the ball does talk a little more, I’ve seen players get too caught up in trying to take wickets every ball because you’ve suddenly got the ball swinging and seaming. Think someone like Scotty, it’s just a really simple gameplan: you hit your good areas and you stay there all day and hopefully the ball will do the work for you. He’s had a few bowls over here now and has looked good, but he looks good whenever he bowls.”This Test will be Boland’s first game of first-class cricket in England (he has only played two first-class games outside Australia), and the first time he has bowled with the Dukes ball. For a bowler of his skillset that is a somewhat surprising statistic. He did not feature in the Australia A side which toured in 2019 despite 48 wickets at 19.66 the preceding season.His only previous experience in the UK was with the Aboriginal side which toured in 2018. Boland, who is becoming a hugely significant figure in Australian cricket, is one of just two indigenous male Test cricketers alongside Jason Gillespie.

“Scotty is consistent, bowls good lines and lengths, bangs away there all day, and keeps you under pressure, every delivery, and he’s going to do the same with the Dukes. But this time, he’s going to get a little bit more assistance”Peter Siddle on Scott Boland

A number of counties enquired about his services for a pre-Ashes stint this season, but Boland declined, instead wanting to bowl the majority of his deliveries for Victoria and Australia.Peter Siddle, who played in the 2019 Ashes and will once again be a domestic team-mate of Boland’s next season having returned to Victoria, believes he has all the attributes to be handful.”All I said to him was, ‘you don’t have to change too much’,” Siddle told ESPNcricinfo. “I think his bowling and style is very much already suited to bowling with the Dukes. And I think the other big factor, like I’ve said to the boys for years coming over here before Ashes series, is don’t get too carried away with the swing.”Scotty is consistent, bowls good lines and lengths, bangs away there all day, and keeps you under pressure, every delivery, and he’s going to do the same with the Dukes. But this time, he’s going to get a little bit more assistance. I’m excited to see him do his thing. Firstly, the Test final, but I think he’ll have a big part of the play throughout this Ashes series. Because he’s going to be very well suited to these conditions. And I think he’s going to do well.”He expects Boland to make extensive use of the wobble-seam delivery, which Siddle learnt from his time in county cricket and picking the brains of Stuart Broad.Getty Images”We’ve spoken a lot about it,” Siddle said. “Scotty’s been doing that with the Kookaburra for a couple of years now. So now he’ll use that a lot throughout this series. It definitely works wonders over here. Especially when you’re trying to seam the ball. You’ll see that used a lot.”Boland’s last Test outing, in Nagpur, was the first wicketless match of his career and saw his average balloon to 13.42 – for a while during his first two home summers, which began with that magical debut at the MCG against England, it was a bit of a game-within-a-game to see how long he could keep it below 10.Australia are in a fortunate position when Boland is not yet a first pick in the XI when everyone is fit. It makes you wonder when he might be elevated into that position.When Hazlewood returned from injury against South Africa in Sydney earlier this year, he was asked whether the established order of Australia’s fast bowlers would mean he slotted back in. And so it transpired with him playing as one of just two quicks. He justified it, too, with five wickets in the match.5:05

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Cummins said that Boland was “very close” to pushing himself into Australia’s first three on merit but added that there wasn’t a pecking order among the senior quicks.”I think we’re big on kind of everyone bowls slightly differently,” he said. “Even Scott is a seam bowler on a good length but he just offers something slightly different to, say, Joshy Hazlewood, and obviously Starcy [Mitchell Starc] being a left-hander is bit different. So I don’t think there’s ever a pecking order. You think about kind of the three guys that you want to go out and play.”The fact that Boland, right now, is Australia’s fourth quick could well be a key element in deciding the Ashes. Both sides are going to need their bowling depth and England’s is already being tested. Cummins wants to be able to field a side where all his quicks can bowl as much as needed without thoughts of what comes next.”That’s the luxury of having bench strength,” he said. “Hoff [Hazlewood] was really close to being available for this one so he’ll be available for the first [Ashes] Test. Nes [Michael Neser], you see how well he’s been doing in county cricket. Sean Abbott’s here, so I’m sure we’ll be calling on a lot of resources. And you don’t want to finish off a Test match with something in the tank knowing that you’ve got other guys fresh that you could bring in a few days later.”

And does Flavian Aponso still hold the record for being the oldest batsman to score a fifty in a World Cup?

Steven Lynch16-Feb-2021I played in the 1996 World Cup for the Holland team, and scored a fifty against Pakistan. I was 43 at the time, and was told it was a World Cup record – is that still the case? asked Flavian Aponso from England

It’s always great to receive a question from the horse’s mouth, as it were – so I’m pleased to be able to confirm that Flavian Aponso remains the oldest batsman to make a half-century in the World Cup: he was aged 43 years 121 days when he scored 58 for Netherlands against Pakistan in Lahore in March 1996. The only other 40-year-old to reach 50 in a World Cup innings was Misbah-ul-Haq of Pakistan, but he was still around two months short of his 41st birthday when he made four half-centuries in the 2015 World Cup.Aponso was close to selection for Sri Lanka before he joined a disapproved tour of South Africa. He says: “After completing 25 years in the Netherlands as a professional cricketer and coach, I moved to the UK in 2005 and got involved with three clubs in Harrow for cricket coaching for juniors. I conduct some private coaching sessions as well – it’s a nice way for this 68-plus ‘old man’ to stay involved in cricket. All my siblings are in Sri Lanka, and I usually visit them for Christmas.”Which is rarer: stumped in both innings of a Test, run out in both, or caught and bowled in both? asked Bob Metcalfe from England

There have been 25 instances of a batsman being run out in both innings of a Test, by 23 players – it happened to the Australian pair of Ian Healy and Mark Taylor twice. The most recent double victim was Cheteshwar Pujara, for India against South Africa in Centurion in 2017-18.Some 23 different batsmen have been out stumped in both innings (none of them twice). The most recent cases both happened in 2019-20: by Rohit Sharma for India against South Africa in Visakhapatnam in October 2019 (he did make 176 and 127, which probably made up for it), and Sikandar Raza of Zimbabwe against Sri Lanka in Harare three months later.But only 21 batsmen have been caught and bowled in both innings – the most recent was Ross Taylor, for New Zealand against England in Hamilton in 2007-08, the third of his 105 Tests to date. He gave a return catch to Kevin Pietersen in the first innings and Monty Panesar in the second: only four batsmen – John Trumble (on debut in 1884-85), Everton Weekes (for 162 and 101 in 1948-49), Keith Miller (in 1950-51) and Richie Benaud (in 1960-61) – have been caught and bowled by the same man in both innings.Which England players have the most runs and wickets in Tests at Lord’s without appearing on the honours boards there? asked Thim Ponnappa from the United States

The man with the most Test runs at Lord’s without the aid of a century – which would have meant his name would be enshrined on the honours board in the dressing room – is the former England captain Michael Atherton. He amassed 852 runs in 15 Tests at Lord’s, but his highest score was 99, agonisingly run out against Australia in 1993. Next comes Graham Thorpe, who made 711 runs in 13 Lord’s Tests, with a highest score of 89.The leading overseas player is Sunil Gavaskar, with 340 runs in five Tests at Lord’s, with a highest of 59 – although Gavaskar’s name does appear on the honours board, as he scored 188 for the World XI in the MCC Bicentenary match at Lord’s in 1987, which MCC treat like a Test.For the bowlers, Matthew Hoggard took 37 wickets in 11 Tests at Lord’s without the five-for that would have got him on the honours board (his best return was 4 for 27). The 1950s left-arm spinner Johnny Wardle claimed 23, and Australia’s Shane Warne 19, in four appearances, without a five-for.R Ashwin’s wicket of Rory Burns in England’s second innings was the first time in more than 130 years that a spinner had struck with the first ball of a Test innings•BCCII noticed Jofra Archer has got out in every Test innings he has batted in so far, despite usually coming in at No. 9 or 10. Which tailender has had the most innings without a not-out? asked Chris Harper from England

As I write, England’s Jofra Archer has had 18 innings in Tests and been dismissed in every one of them. As this table shows, he’s well down the overall list, which is headed by Sri Lanka’s Kaushal Silva, who was out in every one of his 74 Test innings, 12 more than Pakistan’s Salman Butt. Quite where Archer stands in relation to other tailenders depends how you classify them: the West Indian fast bowler Alzarri Joseph, who I think fits the bill, has so far been out in all his 24 Test innings. The Sri Lankan wicketkeeper Guy de Alwis was dismissed in all his 19 Test innings, despite never going in above No. 8.Ravichandran Ashwin took a wicket with the first ball of England’s second innings in the first Test. When was the last time a spinner struck with the first ball of a Test innings? asked Jatin Moghal from India

R Ashwin dismissed Rory Burns with the first ball of England’s second innings in the first Test in Chennai. It was the first such instance in a Test for more than 130 years, since slow left-armer Bobby Peel nabbed Alec Bannerman with the first ball of Australia’s follow-on at Old Trafford in 1888.At first sight it would appear as if South Africa’s Bert Vogler did the same against England, trapping Tom Hayward lbw with the first ball of the match at The Oval in 1907. Vogler was usually a legspinner, but the match report in The Times the following day says “Vogler started with a few fast overs”. Some things never change: the newspaper added that “Hayward appeared to be dissatisfied with the decision.”Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

Debutant hailed for seam skills at vital juncture of South Africa’s first innings

Firdose Moonda16-Dec-2024Another day, another impressive performance from an England Test debutant in Bloemfontein. This time it was Ryana MacDonald-Gay, the 20-year old seamer, who struck twice even as lightning could not, either side of a 45-minute weather-related interruption, as South Africa’s batting unravelled.Their collapse of 7 for 44 started when MacDonald-Gay, in her second spell and with the old ball, produced a delivery that held its stump-to-stump line, beat Marizanne Kapp’s drive and hit the top of off. It was a dream dismissal for any bowler, nevermind a complete newcomer taking her first wicket and that too, of one of the opposition’s most valuable players and a franchise team-mate. Kapp, who plays alongside MacDonald-Gay at Oval Invincibles, could only accept being undone.”She actually bowled the best out of all their seam bowlers,” Kapp said in the end-of-day press conference. “If you just look at her seam that they keep on showing on TV, that’s a massive standout. And if you are bowling with a seam like that, you’ll always get movement or a bit of nip or something.”Five balls after Kapp was bowled, the players were taken off the field with lightning visible in the distance. They spent 45 minutes waiting for the storm to pass and when they returned, MacDonald-Gay picked up exactly where she left off. New batter Nadine de Klerk had no answers for a back-of-a-length ball that was zoning in on off stump and nicked off.That opened the door to the South African tail with the second new ball still to come. The remaining five wickets fell when England took it, and Lauren Bell was the biggest beneficiary. She picked up three in seven balls and ended with a career-best 4 for 49 but agreed with Kapp that it would not have been possible without “Ree-Mac,” as she called McDonald-Gay.Related

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“I completely agree (that she was the best),” Bell said. “I think (Lauren) Filer and Ree-Mac both bowled unbelievably today. Filer’s pace and Ree-Mac, she presented the seam amazingly and just nipped it around, so she held length. On debut, yeah, she was outstanding today.”Filer’s 2 for 53 included the big wickets of Annerie Dercksen, whom she peppered with short balls, and Sune Luus and proved the value of England including a fourth seamer. With more resources available to her, Heather Knight could use Filer, especially, in short spells. She had only one five-over spell, split by lunch, but was mostly used in three-over bursts, when she could crank the pace up. “That’s the best way to get the best out of our seamers is short spells, go really attacking, and just keep it ticking,” Bell said.She marvelled at Filer’s barrage to Dercksen which ended when the South African No.3 top-edged an attempted cut and sent a chance to Knight at second slip who parried it to Sophie Ecclestone at first. “Filer’s pace is obviously really attacking and she (Dercksen) didn’t look comfortable,” Bell said. “She holds that pace really well throughout her spell and she got her in the end with that team catch.”After lavishing praise on her team-mates, Bell also had the chance to reflect on her own performance and she was happy to call herself a work in progress, both in this innings and overall.Maia Bouchier and MacDonald-Gay pose with their debut Test caps•ECB/Getty Images”The job I had today was to bowl into the wind and I think I wanted to just hold length and hold line as much as possible,” she said. “With the second new ball, I was happier. It took me a while to work out what my best option was in that pitch but by the end I felt really good. At this current moment in time, it’s a process that I am very much going through.”It’s not that I won’t bowl inswing, or that that inswing that I used to bowl is gone. I just have been practising away-swing so much and it’s what I’m most comfortable bowling at this current moment in time. But my game will hopefully get to a point where I’m really comfortable bowling inswing, I’m really comfortable bowling away-swing, I’ve got my wobble ball will obviously make me, I hope, a pretty challenging bowler to face.”Someone Bell may look to emulate is Kapp, who has been South Africa’s best seamer and bowled four especially tough overs to start England’s second innings. The outswinger is Kapp’s poison and she beat Beaumont’s bat several times on the second evening.That may not concern her as much as what happened in the first innings, when Kapp thought she had Beaumont out lbw second ball after pinning her on the pad but umpire Kerrin Klaaste was not interested.In the absence of DRS (due to CSA prioritising it for white-ball women’s matches because of the cost), Kapp could not review. When asked about it, she did not complain.”It’s a new thing that we have DRS available,” she said. “I don’t believe we’ve had it available for T20s and ODI cricket before so it’s really helped in those series. And if I have to be completely honest, I’d probably prefer having it in those two formats.”Laura Wolvaardt also appeared to want to review when she was given out lbw to Sophie Ecclestone when she was on 65 and indicated she had hit it but had to go. South Africa will hope that, if there is another decision they want to go their way, it’s third time lucky.

Seamer looks back on the controversy of 2013, and the sequence of events it kicked off

Andrew Miller13-Jun-2023Admittedly, the Ashes rivalry hasn’t offered a lot to write home about from recent tours Down Under, but Australia in England on the other hand… now we are talking. From Edgbaston 2005, to the great escape at Cardiff four years later, all the way through to Ben Stokes’ miracle of Headingley in 2019, there’s scarcely been a summer of recent vintage that has not served up an all-time Anglo-Aussie classic. And ten years have now passed since one of the tastiest tussles of the lot.England’s 14-run win at Trent Bridge in the opening Test of the 2013 series had something for everyone… from Ian Bell’s masterful second-innings century to the bittersweet romance of Ashton Agar’s debut 98, all the way through to James Anderson’s tireless ten-for on a dry and unresponsive deck.But in spite of such rich pickings, the incident that truly endures is – from an Australian perspective – the one that got away. Or, as England’s fans might prefer to see it, the one that Stuart Broad got away with.England had conceded a first-innings deficit of 65, and were struggling second time around too before Broad and Bell came together in a match-turning seventh-wicket stand of 138. Without his doughty 65 from 148 balls that spanned the third afternoon and the fourth morning, there would have been no grandstand fifth-day finish.And yet, as Australians recall all too well, that effort should have ended on 37, when Agar tossed up a wide one, into the rough outside the left-hander’s off stump. Broad shaped to cut, the ball ended up in the hands of Michael Clarke at slip, and that should have been that.Aleem Dar, however, thought otherwise, and as Clarke glowered and gesticulated from behind his sunglasses, Broad donned his finest poker-face and stared down his accusers.”I was thinking, ‘we need more runs here, we’re 230 ahead,'” Broad recalled on the eve of the 2023 campaign. “If I get out, we lose the game. So I’m never just going to walk off and accept a loss. I looked up at Aleem and he said not out.”Moments later, in the Sky Sports commentary box, David Lloyd’s instinctive reaction to the first slo-mo replay rather encapsulated the furore that was about to break out. “Oh my goodness me,” he intoned, as the ball clearly kissed off the edge of the bat, onto the tips of Brad Haddin’s gloves, and away into Clarke’s hands… “speechless!””It was all absolute nonsense, wasn’t it?” Broad said. “It still follows me around. Everyone’s been convinced that I nicked it straight to first slip, which is remarkable really. Because even Brad Haddin said afterwards, ‘did you nick that?’, because it cannoned into his gloves and went to first slip.”Related

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Broad has had a decade to contemplate the incident, and so it’s perhaps unsurprising that he’s done his research in the interim. By his reckoning, across that year’s home and away Ashes, there were 21 other instances of batters not walking for catches – including, it might be pointed out, Haddin himself, who would eventually be given out on review at the gripping climax to that Trent Bridge Test, when Anderson was shown to have found a thin inside-edge with Australia in touching distance of victory.However, the optics of an edge flying into the hands of first slip – albeit via a double deflection – were always likely to inflame sensibilities. And this was especially so because, as Broad has also posited, the presence of one of two of the so-called press-box “Dukes”, senior sportswriters with an angle to grind, meant the incident was ripe for sensationalism.”If it was just cricket writers in the press box. I don’t think it would have become a story because we’ve all watched a lot of cricket. But it was the weekend before the Premier League started, so it was the sportswriters in – your Ollie Holts, Martin Samuels. They were like, ‘let’s make a big story’. I don’t know if that’s absolute nonsense, but that’s how I’ve dealt with it. That was the reason why it became a talking point.”Broad’s certainly not wrong that the Dukes did go to town on it. “Did Broad injure cricket yesterday?” Samuel asked, rhetorically, in The Daily Mail “Sadly, he did. He didn’t mean to. He was just playing hard, playing to win.”Writing in , meanwhile, under the headline: “What he did wasn’t just disappointing. It was deeply, deeply embarrassing,” Holt said that the incident was reminiscent of “Rivaldo rolling around clutching his face when a ball kicked at him by a Turkey player had hit him on the arm”.”Let’s be honest,” he added. “It was hard to witness what happened without feeling a sense of sadness and contempt.”Broad, however, remains utterly unswayed by such sentiment. “I think I’ve only ever played with one true walker,” he said. “That was Graeme Swann, because he just hit the ball to cover anyway. It’s just not a thing in the modern game. I don’t know anyone that does it. And ultimately, if I had have just wandered off having been given not out, I think I’d have been criticised the other way, because we’ve lost the game.”Stuart Broad stands firmly by his decision not to walk•PRAll of which helped set the parameters for part two of an extraordinary grudge match, in Brisbane four months and three England Test wins later, when Australia’s media took up the cudgels ahead of a series in which Mitchell Johnson and Co. would deliver the ultimate act of vengeance with a 5-0 trouncing.Upon arrival in Australia, Kevin Pietersen had been the initial target of the Aussie media, with the Courier-Mail proclaiming on its front page: “He’s so arrogant not even his own team likes him”. However, when KP responded in a tweet that such attention was good for his ego, the seed of an alternative strategy was germinated, as the newspaper’s editor, Christopher Dore, later told The Guardian.”Stuart Broad earned the role of Ashes villain … by acting with complete contempt for the spirit of the game on that dark day in July,” Dore wrote. “We settled on calling him the ’27-year-old English medium-pace bowler’ in all our reports. We felt this was an even a graver insult than turning him into an asterisk and refusing to publish his image. What fast bowler wouldn’t be furious about being relegated to mediocrity?”It wasn’t just the papers who got stuck in though, as Broad recalled: “Darren Lehmann [Australia’s coach] didn’t help the cause, having eight beers and going on a podcast …”Lehmann, who had taken over from Mickey Arthur just two weeks before that infamous Trent Bridge Test, was cut from a very different cloth to his more schoolmasterly predecessor, and was clearly itching to lay down a marker for his first home campaign, as he addressed the radio station Triple M with a startlingly frank call to arms.”From my point of view, I hope the Australian public give it to him right from the word go, for the whole summer,” he said, to gales of on-air laughter. “I hope he cries and goes home.”Broad said: “A few of the Aussie players came and apologised for their coach, for what he said. But I didn’t cry …” Instead, his response merely added to his legend – and, dare one say it, the grudging respect that he’s long since earned over the course of eight previous Ashes campaigns.After shrugging off the catcalls and banners in the crowd to pick off a first-day five-for at the Gabba, Broad strolled into the press conference with a copy of the Courier-Mail under his arm. Whereupon he was re-christened “The Phantom Menace” for the rest of the Test … at least until Johnson’s fireworks came along to scorch the narrative.”I really enjoyed that Australia tour because it was feisty,” Broad recalled. “It was a bit niggly, I got booed, and all sorts of songs were sung. But that’s quite unique. You don’t boo a player you’re not bothered about, so that’s the way I took it, and that’s the positive I dragged from it.”Overall, however, were he given the chance to relive the events of that first Test of the English summer all over again, how would he play it?”I wouldn’t change it for anything,” Broad said. “Because we won the game by 14 runs, and if I’d have walked off, we’d have lost the game.”Stuart Broad was speaking at the launch of wine merchant Laithwaites’ partnership with England cricket. For exclusive offers on great wines this summer, visit laithwaites.co.uk

There is a toss-up for new-ball bowlers and a debutant vying for a spot in the middle order

Nagraj Gollapudi10-Mar-2021Who should be Rohit’s opening partner: Dhawan or Rahul?
With Rishabh Pant set to perform the role of the wicketkeeper-batsman, Rahul may have to play as a specialist batsman. And opening the batting is the most favourable position for Rahul, who has done the job assertively for Kings XI Punjab over the last three years.Compared in terms of numbers, Rahul has an edge over Dhawan. Since 2019, if you combine both T20s and IPL, Dhawan has scored 854 runs at a strike rate of 133.43 and an average of 40.66. Rahul has hit 960 runs at a strike rate of 136.36 and a far superior average of 87.27 as he tends to bat deep into an innings. In the middle overs Dhawan has 641 runs at a strike rate of 131.08 and an average of 29.13. Rahul slows down, too, in the middle overs, his strike rate dipping to 129.05. However, he averages 41.84 having scored 795 runs in this phase.As a left-right combination, Sharma and Dhawan provide variety at the top and they have vast experience to handle pressure. But both men use the same modus operandi: start slow, get settled before taking off, which at times, especially while batting first, has been a factor in their teams failing to raise a par total.In contrast robust starts from the Sharma-Rahul combine has helped India raise massive targets. In 2017, against Sri Lanka in Indore, India were able to raise 260 for 5 on the back of the opening stand of 165 in 12.4 overs. Two years later, against West Indies in Mumbai, India scored 240 for 3 after Sharma and Rahul blasted an opening stand of 135 in 11.4 overs.Overall, of the 18 opening pairs globally with a cut-off of minimum of 500 T20I runs, the Sharma and Rahul pairing is the third-best on average (50.72) and second on run-rate (9.96). Of the five opening pairs to have piled at least 1000 runs in T20Is Sharma-Dhawan’s numbers are among the weakest. Their average of 33.51 is the seventh-worst and run rate of 8.28 is the fourth-worst.Clearly it is then a choice of safety against being bold.