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The Lord’s groundsman, Mick Hunt, talks to Jenny Thompson about the ground’s impressive new million-pound-plus drainage system

Jenny Thompson29-Jul-2007

The new drainage system at Lord’s may have received glowing praise for enabling play on the Friday of the first Test, but the groundsman, Mick Hunt, is unhappy with a less obvious disadvantage. It’s the end of beer clouds.Before the £1.25million drainage was installed in winter 2002, Hunt would cast an excited eye at the heavy clouds, but now, thanks to the enhanced drainage capability, which can handle two inches of water per hour, it’s play all the way. “My local publican isn’t too happy!” he says.He is, of course, joking. As a Lord’s groundsman for 38 years, 19 of them as head, Hunt is more than delighted that the match was saved, preventing a £1.2million refund of tickets.”Two inches of rainfall doesn’t happen very often – once every 30 years,” he says. “I honestly can’t recall rain as heavy as that.” He swapped his trusty deck shoes for wellies for the first time on a Test day last week. So bad was the flooding on day two that paintings were moved out of the Long Room in the pavilion to prevent damage. Some spectators had headed off to nearby Regent’s Park zoo; others were in the pub and astonished when they saw the match on television.After the deluge, at 12.30pm the remaining crowds and cameras gaped in awe as two inches of rainfall vanished, allowing play to commence 80 minutes later.

“It’s a bit spooky,” Hunt says. But there’s no underlying mystery. Rather, there’s 18,000 square metres’ worth of sand. This new turf, which boasts 90% sand content, replaced one that consisted of 20,000 tonnes of non-porous clay, which retained much more water. Below the 18-inch sand layer is one of gravel, and then a bottom level of stone. The idea came from the USA, and is based on a spec for golf courses in that country. “It’s probably the biggest golf green in the world,” says Hunt.There are other matches which have been saved, like the first one-dayer against West Indies, but that happened away from the cameras. “Leading up to that, it really was continuous rain; you probably had just as much rain in that period. At one stage I just gave up.”But the drainage did its work and in this freak year, not one day has been washed out at Lord’s – most delays have been down to bad light. The system could strengthen the MCC’s case for keeping their second Test. “I think other groundsmen will be looking at it, thinking ‘Perhaps we should’ – but perhaps not the spec we worked on, because we really did go for top of the range,” Hunt says.It’s not all roses, or to use Hunt’s phrase, “bloomers and streamers”. If anything, now the ground can at times become too dry. He points out the yellow run-up footholes left over from the Test. “It gets very, very thirsty because of the filtration. There’s no retention of nutrients. If you have three days of average summer conditions, it just starts to dry out. So we have to keep watering.”That’s when the irrigation system, which was installed at the same time as the drainage, comes into its own. “That’s worth its weight in gold, too,” Hunt says. The irrigation happens at night, to prevent the moisture being sucked up during the day.

There are other innovations: Lord’s was the first to get hover covers, the inflatable, quick-access pitch-coverage devices. “I got the old jokes about ‘I suppose you’re off to Calais'”, Hunt says, but he and his team had the last laugh. They’ve used hover covers for about eight years now, and everyone’s getting them these days. “The old sheets are backbreaking, and they were so heavy they just used to leave ruts – the outfield was a mess.”Hunt is very happy with the kit he’s got. “It’s very quick. If we could reduce the amount of cricket we’ve got… but I suppose we’re fortunate – we’ve got a big budget. The system is so far advanced of anything else. I was up at Trent Bridge the other day, to show my support, and was encouraging them to go down a similar route to ours.”The investment has made a huge difference. Hunt remembers in 1976 a spectator belly-flopping into what became an outdoor pool as the water banked up at the Tavern Stand and settled at the bottom of the 8’ 6” slope. “It would be like waves coming down.”The only waves recently were those of applause as the players resumed on a magical day; the groundsmen – and Lord’s – soaking up the deserved credit. Now all that remains to be seen is if the investment will open up the floodgates around the country.

Top-level international cricket now has two bowler-captains, Anil Kumble and Daniel Vettori, which is a whole lot more than there have been in recent times. We take a look at a little-understood breed

Sidharth Monga18-Feb-2008

George Giffen, perhaps Australia’s first great allrounder, was more of a bowler than a batsman, with seven five-fors and one century from 31 Tests. As a captain he was, according to the , cantankerous and a bit too trusting of his own bowling. In , Don Bradman mentions a time when the crowd had to shout at Giffen to “take yourself off”. He acceded … and changed ends.In his four Tests as captain Giffen bowled 236.2 overs (1418 balls, as opposed to 4973 in his other 27 Tests) – and that after not bowling at all in one innings. In his first Test as captain, Giffen also became the first man to put an opposition in. Although he took 26 wickets in those four Tests, at an average of 22.34 and a strike-rate of 54.50, both better than his career figures of 27.09 and 62 respectively, that was the last series in which he captained Australia. Giffen possibly embodied everything what is traditionally thought of to be wrong with bowler-captains. He wasn’t the first bowler-captain in Test history, but none of the breed till then had had a run longer than ten Tests.A bowler leading a team somehow doesn’t sit well with traditional cricket thinking (win the toss and bat first, remember?). Bowlers are only the henchmen, the doers; batsmen are the shrewd planners. A bowler-captain is supposed to over-bowl or under-bowl himself, be imbalanced and over-aggressive, too simplistic and instinctive. It is no surprise that out of the 71 men in the history of cricket who have captained a team for 20 or more Tests, only ten are either bowlers or bowling allrounders or plain allrounders. The last time two bowlers went out for a toss in a Test match was in January 2003, when Shaun Pollock and Waqar Younis did the honours; 226 Tests have been played since then.A captain is at his busiest when his side is in the field. A batsman-captain can focus his energies on strategising and leading the side, which gives him an obvious advantage over a bowler, who has to think about his own bowling, apart from making sure he has the right fields set and that he has used his other bowlers judiciously. It is physically taxing, too, especially if the captain in question is a fast bowler. “You are worried about your own bowling, about the batsman you are bowling to, and then at the end of a tiring or frustrating over, rather than switch off, you have got to captain for the bowler at the other end,” Mark Taylor, one of the more acclaimed modern captains, points out. “As a batsman you field in the slips and can tend not to worry about the bowling, and can spend a lot of time thinking about changes of bowling if necessary.”It is tough for bowler-captains in other ways too. To return to popular perception: a bowler is regarded as a simple creature, when reduced to essentials – give him a set field and he will try to hit a rhythm of bowling to that field, and as far as possible not diverge. A bowler, especially a pace bowler, hates somebody coming up to him every ball and telling him what to do. Captaincy is a bit more complicated than that. A batsman is naturally more flexible and more innovative, and thus more suited to the task of leading a side.These are perceptions, and commonly held ones, and not always true. Is a bowler not best placed to understand the requirements of a side, considering the bulk of captaincy work happens when a team is fielding, and has to do with the taking of wickets? Imran Khan writes in All Round View how, at one point during the Barbados Test in 1976-77, Mushtaq Mohammad overlooked the wishes of Sarfraz Nawaz and Imran, who were reversing the ball at the time, and took the new ball. “We were right, and the new ball got thrashed about all over the park …”

Imran strongly believed that only a bowler-captain could understand what another bowler was trying to do. “… Allan Border tells me he did not fully understand what his pace bowlers were trying to do, and is honest enough to admit he didn’t know what advice to offer them when they were being hit.””The secret is to pick a good bowler as a captain,” Ian Chappell, himself a batsman, and one of the best Australian captains of all, says. “[Richie] Benaud and Imran are good examples … Then they will justify bowling a lot. The good bowling captain will only get better under his own leadership because he’ll have the right fields.”Imran concurs, referring to how he would get irritated by a batsman telling him what to do with the ball. “Being a bowler helped my captaincy a great deal,” he writes. “Having bowled in different conditions, I felt confident of handling my attack, and capable of advising the younger bowlers in the side. It was easy for me to advise and encourage them because I understood what they were trying to do.”I used to study a bowler’s run-up and delivery, and suggest what he might be doing wrong … If a bowler bowled a long-hop, my comment – if any – was not the parrot-cry of ‘pitch it up’. I’d ask if everything was all right.”With captaincy, a lot of it is about adjusting to the added responsibility. Imran did that well, was a good man-manager, and his captaincy brought the best out of his team and himself. Pollock took his own game to a higher level when leading South Africa, but he will also go down in history as a captain who failed to get the best out of his team. Daryll Cullinan, who played under Pollock, says that that period in Pollock’s career will be remembered for his lack of man-management skills and insight into what captaincy was all about.As Chappell says, “A bad captain, whether he is a batsman or a bowler, will make mistakes not because of what he does, but because of his ineptitude. Both a batting or bowling captain have to make adjustments once they have the extra responsibility. The good ones do it and the bad ones can’t.”Although Imran was self-admittedly helped in his captaincy by his being a bowler, and Pollock not necessarily hampered by the same, the truth is there hasn’t been a highly successful bowler-captain since Imran and Kapil Dev. It may be unfair to judge Courtney Walsh, Heath Streak, Waqar, and Andrew Flintoff solely on the basis of results: Walsh and Streak didn’t have the strongest teams to lead, and Waqar and Flintoff were way off their best when their selectors ran out of options or the first-choice captain was injured.A tale of two leggies
In recent times, a certain legspinner promised to make an innovative captain, and thereby prove bowlers could make for leaders the equal of batsmen. But one indiscreet phone call too many and Shane Warne, deputy to Steve Waugh at the time, lost his chance forever, leaving a host of questions unanswered.Would he have brought himself on as soon as he saw Cullinan at the crease? Would he have been instinctive or patient, just like Warne the bowler? Would he have raised his own game even higher? Would he have been aggressive – as he showed in the few ODIs he led Australia in? How ready would he have been to play out draws? How good an off-the-field captain would he have made?Following Warne’s retirement, Anil Kumble has done two things Warne never managed to: score a Test century and lead his national side in Tests.

When he captained Karnataka in Ranji Trophy games before he took over the Test captaincy, Kumble would walk up to the stumps to direct the point fielder to the exact angle he wanted him at. The mind immediately saw something special, something it was not used to seeing. In the Tests that have followed, the tough character of Kumble the bowler has accompanied that of Kumble the captain. He hasn’t glaringly under-bowled or over-bowled himself, has handled his young bowling attack well, and has emerged unscathed from the toughest tour a modern captain can make, Australia. In tricky times he has shown the qualities of a statesman – skills not many usually credit bowlers with.Yet he was not the first choice for the job, only getting it because Rahul Dravid resigned, Sachin Tendulkar refused the job, and Mahendra Dhoni was too inexperienced. Was it not the same prejudice against bowlers that Kumble was not thought of as a contender for captaincy till there were no alternatives at hand? Even after he started as captain, it seemed he was just keeping the seat warm. That should be far from the case now.Warne’s Australia against Kumble’s India would have been a dream contest. Two of the greatest legspinners of all time, two of the smartest bowlers of all time, trying to lead their teams in the prime rivalry in Test cricket, adding that final missing feather to their hats. That won’t happen now. One last gripe with Warne will always remain.

The slowdown in totals seems to be a combination of factors – the changing nature of the pitches, bowlers becoming smarter, the departure of some big-hitting batsmen and increasing pressure on the batsmen as the tournament moves to the semi-final stage

Sriram Veera15-May-2008

The opening night of the IPL seemed ominous: Brendon McCullum hit 10 fours and 13 sixes, one of them an outrageous paddle, on his way to 158, a record Twenty20 score. The innings raised visions of the IPL being an unprecedented run feast but the 35 games since have only seen four hundreds – and Sanath Jayasuriya’s against Chennai Super Kings on Wednesday night was the first in May. More batting stats: There were seven 200-plus totals in April but only one in May.The slowdown seems to be a combination of factors – the changing nature of the pitches, bowlers becoming smarter, the departure of some big-hitting batsmen and the increasing pressure on the batsmen as the tournament moves closer to the semi-final stage and the high stakes involved become clearer.The last point appears to be the clincher for Daljit Singh, the IPL’s ground and pitches committee head. “I don’t see any team touching 240 again,” he says. “As we get closer to the semi-finals, the competition has got fiercer and that has affected the teams’ consciousness. The carefree approach at the start is not there. Everybody is looking at points and I do not see 240 again in this tournament unless the team has already qualified for the semi-finals and just have a bang out there. As long as the qualification pressure is still there, they won’t be playing that freely.”Chennai’s 240 in Mohali, the highest total of the tournament so far, was largely thanks to Michael Hussey’s 54-ball 116. Matthew Hayden and Andrew Symonds exploded too but the departure of the Australians and New Zealanders (especially McCullum) has drained the tournament of some beefy hitters. Those big-hitters were also fortunate to make the most of belters, rather than the current ones that have wilted in the May heat and got slower and lower.TA Sekhar, cricket operations chief of Delhi Daredevils and a former fast bowler, cites the changing nature of the pitches as one of the prime reasons. “It’s not as if they have deteriorated or broken up but due to the heat, the pitches have become drier and as a result the wickets have become a touch slower. The ball is also not coming on to the bat as well. The bowlers are exploiting the slow tracks.”Delhi’s batsmen, led by Virender Sehwag, were restricted to 156 by the Rajasthan Royals on May 11. Shane Warne rested fast bowler Sohail Tanvir and opened the bowling with the more gentle pace of Dimitri Mascarenhas. “We had plans for Sehwag,” Warne said. “We bowled slow to him. The bowlers intentionally kept the ball slow.” Sekhar feels the pitch also suited their style of the bowling. “They had a spinning wicket in the earlier game but for this one, they had a slow track.”Are the pitches being specially prepared to be conducive to the home teams? Daljit doesn’t agree. “By and large, it has not been the case. The curators have been told to keep the Twenty20 format in mind. I know the franchises are important but the ground control is with the local associations. And there are awards for the best curators. There are seven points for pitch, two for the outfield and one for the main square – how they are looking after the other pitches. The match referee and umpires are marking the forms after every game. Apart from one game in Kolkata, the quality of the pitches has been great.”If you get a score of 160 it’s eight runs per over, 180 is nine per over and so, anything over 160-170 is still bloody good. Importantly, the bowlers have learnt to adapt. Let’s give credit to them.”A fair point; the bowlers certainly have adapted well, though, contrary to the popular perception, they haven’t been firing in too many yorkers. In 36 games the yorkers have constituted approximately a little over 2% out of the total balls bowled while a majority – around 61% – have been on a good length and nearly 18% of the deliveries have hit the short of length. So it’s the slight changes in pace which have been crucial. Several cutters have been bowled, fingers have been rolled over the seam, the ball has been held across the seam and quite a few regular bouncers have been bowled.

Also, as the pitches have got slower, there have been a few slow bouncers as well that have gripped the surface, turned, and bounced awkwardly. The batsmen have tried to find room by moving about in the crease but the bowlers have tried to cramp them by shifting length and line or tried to mess up their timing by changing pace.L Balaji, who bagged a hat-trick in Chennai’s game against Kings XI Punjab, believes it’s about constantly changing things. “I have played just couple of games and so I am not qualified enough to make a comment but what I am trying to do is not be predictable and make the batsmen think.”Balaji has bowled quite a few slower ones and punctuated them with sharp bouncers. Parthiv Patel, the Chennai opener, thinks the bowlers have sorted out the length to bowl. “Also, the pitches have become slower and slower, so shot making is not that easy.”Venkatesh Prasad, the former India opening bowler who works with the national team as a bowling coach, believes the bowlers have become smarter. “No doubt the wickets are now on the slower side but more importantly the scores have come down as the bowlers know now which is the variation that can give them the dot ball. So most matches you see bowlers delivering at least two slower balls along with the shorter ones, which has not allowed the batsman complete leeway.”At the beginning of the tournament no team knew what would be the par score and, perhaps, that prompted batsmen to go after the bowling. Now they realise 180 is the par score rather than the 220s we saw earlier. Also the bowlers have realised 170 can be defended so it is getting more competitive. So the bowlers are getting cleverer and teams have better game plans.”When Twenty20 started, it was considered that the bowlers were under more pressure but it’s the batsmen who are feeling the pinch now as they are expected to hit sixes and fours. Leaking eight to ten runs per over is no longer considered a crime and the bowlers have started to breathe easier now. The delicious irony is that while the modern game is tilted towards batsmen, cricket’s latest version seems to be witnessing a far closer contest.

There are No.11s who have been known for their incompetence with the bat, but Chris Martin’s lack of skill is legendary

S Rajesh01-Dec-2008

There are No.11s who have been known for their incompetence with the bat, but Chris Martin’s lack of skill is legendary. In the second Test rout against Australia in Adelaide, Martin lasted eight balls in two innings, and was bowled without getting off the mark on both occasions. It was his sixth instance of bagging a pair in only 45 Tests, which is already a record, two clear of the second-highest.There are more dubious batting records that Martin can claim ownership to: in 45 Tests, he has only scored 76 runs – that’s 1.69 runs per match, almost half the number of wickets he takes per match (3.24). His average of 2.17 is the lowest among batsmen who have played at least 20 Tests.Martin also easily takes the title of worst No.11 batsman: in the 61innings he has batted at that position, his average is 2.30 (which is marginally higher than his overall average since he hasn’t scored a single run in the four innings he has batted higher), more than a run lower than the second-placed Maninder Singh of India.

Of the 65 innings Martin has played, he has remained unbeaten 30 times, which means he has been dismissed on 35 occasions, 25 of which were before he got off the mark. As a factor of dismissed innings, Martin’s percentage of getting out without scoring is a whopping 71.43, which again gives him the top spot, more than ten percentage points clear of Pakistan’s Danish Kaneria.

Martin is still 18 ducks short of equalling Courtney Walsh’s world record, but the rate at which he’s going, you’d expect him to get there pretty quickly. At an average of 1.8 Tests per duck, which is his current rate, Martin will equal Walsh’s record in his 80th Test, 52 fewer than the number Walsh needed to amass his 43 zeroes. Clearly, if the baton passes to Martin, he will – given his current batting prowess – be the rightful owner of that record.

Gayle b Sidebottom, and impromptu entertainment courtesy a pitch invader

Jon Guard16-Jun-2009Why I picked this match
I chose this fixture because I thought England had a good chance of making it to the Super Eights. I also expected, as the organisers probably did, that Australia would be the opposition. That they were not did not matter. West Indies are a formidable Twenty20 team. The result was difficult to predict – England’s resilience under pressure against Chris Gayle’s attacking batsmen. My money was on England to squeeze through.Key performer
Ramnaresh Sarwan – rarely will a batsman score such a crucial 19 not out. He came in at 45 for 5 with 35 needed off 22 balls and with England on a roll. He responded with three fours and calmly led his team to victory.One thing I’d have changed about the match
The weather. Games subjected to Duckworth-Lewis always lose some lustre. Sustaining eight runs per over across 20 overs rather than nine across nine might have been too much for West Indies.Face-off you relished
Gayle against any England bowler. The nonchalant West Indies captain has an aura of power. If Gayle gets going, no total is safe.Wow moment
Gayle had calmly dispatched three boundaries, but the final ball of the second over, bowled by Ryan Sidebottom, was full, fast and splayed his stumps. England must have sensed possible victory.Player watch
Andre Fletcher fielded at square leg when West Indies bowled from the Pavilion End. He took a fine mid-air catch above his head to get rid of Owais Shah. Luke Wright fielded there for England and made a fumble late on to give away a second, vital run – not appreciated by the crowd.Shot of the day
Kevin Pietersen’s first ball, bowled by Kieron Pollard, was pulled to the midwicket boundary. No messing around, straight into his stride.Crowd meter
The game was watched by a full house, cheering every England run, wicket and dot ball. There were a good number of West Indies supporters, as well as Pakistanis who had watched the earlier game, with flags for the various countries being waved all round the ground. As the game reached its climax, the noise lessened as the bowlers ran in, the atmosphere very tense, before rising in cheers or groans depending upon the outcome.Entertainment
As the crowd awaited the start of West Indies’ reply, the mood was lightened by a man in just his pants running onto the pitch and sliding on his belly across the covers. Not the right thing to do, of course, but he made an impressive slide and got a huge cheer before being escorted away.Overall
England’s innings got off to an aggressive start, although they lost momentum towards the end, before the rain prevented a genuine, full-length contest. Nevertheless, West Indies’ nine-over reply had the crowd on the edge of their seats. The game came down to the wire, as Twenty20 matches should.Marks out of 10
7. Tense finish, but England slightly unlucky to go out in shortened match.

The opening day of the first Test was transformed from one of promise to one of disappointment, if not despair, by a flurry of missed catches after tea

Tony Cozier07-May-2009It is a recurring and irritating storyline, and one which the West Indies have done nothing to change. The opening day of the first Test was transformed from one of promise to one of disappointment, if not despair, by a flurry of missed catches after tea. There were six in all, none especially difficult, two downright dollies. They made the difference between an all-out England total of around 220 and their close of play 289.The source of the problem, as it has been through the decade of decline, is the lack of attention paid to fielding and catching practice and the continuing absence of a specialised coach in that critical area.To watch a West Indies fielding session, with its lack of intensity and its slackness, is to understand why their effort is so often undermined by yesterday’s errors. Australia have had Mick Young, an American with a baseball background, as their fielding guru for years. South African have brought in the legendary Jonty Rhodes to sharpen up an already brilliant fielding outfit. Most other Test teams employ professionals in the post.In contrast, the West Indies have spasmodically contracted the highly regarded Englishman Julien Fountain. They have no one here. Fountain was watching from the stands yesterday and it was not difficult to imagine his sentiments.It is obvious that such a coach can only have an impact with the full backing of the captain and the head coach and the cooperation of the players. It also is an ethos that needs to be infused in regional teams from age-group level.Yesterday’s shambles once more had Fidel Edwards at the centre. As he does with increasingly regularity, the fiery fast bowler with the slingshot action bowled with pace, control, swing and spirit to rip out the heart of England’s batting in one irresistible spell.Sent in, they were coasting at 92 for 2 a quarter-hour after lunch when Edwards removed the left-handed Alastair Cook and the dangerous Kevin Pietersen with successive balls and Paul Collingwood a couple of overs later.Cook chopped into his stumps off the inside edge, Pietersen and Collingwood were undone by perfect pitched, late outswingers. Ironically, in view of what was to follow late in the day, both fell to quality catches. Wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin’s take at full stretch with the right glove to remove Pietersen was exceptional.With Edwards rested, Jerome Taylor well below his best and, seemingly, below full fitness and Lionel Baker and Sulieman Benn still feeling their way at the highest level, a partnership of 74 developed on a flat pitch between Ravi Bopara and Matt Prior, both with hundreds in their preceding Tests in the series in Caribbean.Recalled right after tea, Edwards immediately struck again, removing Prior and threatening a final demolition only for his fielders, true to form, to betray him as they have so often done. In the Kensington Oval Test in February, six missed catches were so costly they allowed England to amass over 600. Four were off him.Here, the tally was three in the space of four overs. The most critical was Brendan Nash’s midrift muddle at square leg when Bopara was on 76, a relief for a batsman on trial in the pivotal No.3 position. He proceeded to an unbeaten 118 at close.It was Bopara’s second let-off. He was on 40 when the umpire Steve Davis somehow ruled not out on a clear lbw dismissal for Benn. But West Indies could only blame themselves for the day’s remaining mistakes. The left-handed Broad was put down by Benn at gully and captain Chris Gayle at first slip, both off Edwards. By now, the rash had reached pandemic proportions.
Broad had a couple more let-offs before one catch finally stuck as he cut Benn to gully. There was also another for Bopara, right after he raised his hundred, Devon Smith at second slip denying the persevering Baker his first wicket.Catches win matches is one of the oldest maxims in the game. The trouble is West Indies don’t seem to appreciate it.

Batting after a side has put up a 600-plus total calls for mental and physical fortitude

Aakash Chopra17-Dec-2009In the recently concluded Test series between India and Sri Lanka, the team batting first invariably put a big score on the board. The tracks were flat and the team winning the toss chose to bat first. While batting first on a flat track is an opportunity to cash in, it’s not so easy to score on the same surface after the opposition has put up a score in excess of 600.Big runs in the first innings give the batting team the advantage for a couple of reasons. One: to achieve that mammoth score you must bat for at least five sessions, which means the batsmen on the fielding side will be tired when it’s their turn to bat. Second: the track, however flat it was at the start of the match, will deteriorate somewhat over those two days.Let’s try to get into the batsmen’s minds while they wait for their turn to bat.Once the opposition has won the toss and elected to bat, the batsmen in the fielding side switch off mentally. On flat tracks you don’t think in terms of sessions but days; you’ll seldom be required to bat after just a session or two.Every now and then you tend to think about how you would have played on such a track and how unfortunate you are not to bat first. After that momentary indulgence in self-pity you get back to the game and try to keep yourself entertained. You egg your team-mates on and put some extra effort into making the day interesting and helping the team.Then comes a time when the opposition are about seven or eight wickets down, having put up a huge score. One of my seniors, the late Raman (Lamba) once told me that batsmen, especially openers, must stop chatting and cheering after the fall of the eighth wicket; they need to start thinking about their own batting, which might be a few balls away. Openers keep an eye on the opposition’s dressing room, looking for a declaration. They also sometimes ask the tailenders about their side’s plans of declaring, if any. The problem is when the tail starts to wag and the opposition captain decides to prolong your agony. You can plan only so much and keep yourself warm and loose for so long.When the last wicket falls, or the declaration finally comes, the openers duly take the permission of the batsmen (it’s against protocol to leave the ground before they do) and rush to the dressing room. After all, they get only 10 minutes to get fresh, change into new clothes (at least a dry shirt) and put on their gear. It leaves very little time to gather your thoughts, and that’s why most openers spend a couple of quiet minutes in their seats with their eyes closed just before walking on to the field.Now the scenes that greet the opening batsmen on the field are quite different from the ones they grew used to after nearly two days of play. There is a crowded slip cordon and most fielders are in attacking positions.Once bowlers have a cushion of 600 runs, they become more effective, or at least more adventurous. They don’t shy away from experimenting in order to dislodge the batsman, and they don’t worry about the runs conceded in the bargain.Batsmen on the other hand are advised not to think in terms of runs – those scored by the opposition or how many they need to score themselves to get to safety. If you think about chasing a total of 650, it certainly sounds like a herculean task. Even if you think about 450 to avoid the follow-on, which is slightly less daunting, you’re still starting off on the wrong foot. You can’t be pessimistic right from the outset. A good idea would be to think about stitching together partnerships and batting sessions.A huge first innings gives the opposition the leverage to try various things. They will invariably start with a conventional attack: two or three slips and perhaps a short leg. The bowling lines will be around off stump, the length on the fuller side. If that doesn’t get the breakthrough, they’ll probably play with the patience of the batsmen by maintaining an outside-off-stump line with a heavily packed off-side field. I remember England trying the tactic against Michael Clarke in the 2005 Ashes. Eventually Clarke ended up dragging one back into his stumps, in his 90s.

If you think about chasing a total of 650, it certainly sounds like a herculean task. Even if you think about 450 to avoid the follow-on, which is slightly less daunting, you’re still starting off on the wrong foot. You can’t be pessimistic right from the outset

If that doesn’t work, sides opt for bowling into the batsman’s ribs from around the wicket.The spinners, too, maintain attacking lines and fields throughout. Even when the batsman is scoring freely, they will have a man at short leg or silly point. That’s exactly what India did during the last Test match, in Sydney, in 2004. Both Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden were well set, but I was kept at short leg all through.The fielding team might also employ an inside-out field, which means having some fielders in catching positions and a few patrolling the fence.The last resort would be to bowl into the rough. On other occasions this particular option is used to restrict the batsmen from scoring runs, but when your team has a huge total on board you use it to attack.A huge total ensures that the team batting second is never safe and the team that put the total on the board is never out of the game: a couple of quick wickets can change the game. Also, nine out of 10 times, if the opposition has scored over 600 runs in the first innings of the Test match only two results are possible – a win for them or a draw.In such situations, batting time is as important as scoring runs. Rahul Dravid once told me that saving a Test match is also an art. If your team manages to score enough to avoid the follow-on, you are generally safe. Otherwise, once again you start keeping an eye on the opposition’s body language to assess if they will enforce the follow-on or not.Regardless of whether they ask you to bat again or not, batting is not going to be easy whenever it comes next. The pressure increases manifold because there won’t be another chance to make up for your mistake. Also, batting will rarely be easy on a fourth- or fifth-day pitch with a match to save.While spinners are supposed to be the greatest threats on the last day, batting against the quick bowlers on a worn-out track with unpredictable bounce is equally difficult, especially in places like Australia where the cracks open up massively. Every now and then the ball hits a crack and behaves abnormally. That plays on the batsman’s mind and can lead to errors of judgment.When winning is not an option it’s difficult to keep your spirits up for the remainder of a match. Batting in the fourth innings on the fifth day requires not only grit and determination but also a watertight technique. Not to mention that for batsmen the margin of error is remarkably small on the last day.

You could forget the game before the weekend but tonight, at least, you might take away two expressions from it – a scowl and a distraught face

Sriram Veera in Durban19-Sep-2010Sometimes you compress a game into a solitary expression of human emotion. Shaun Pollock’s tears in a World Cup, Rameez Raja’s in another World cup, Andrew Flintoff’s handshake with Brett Lee or Lance Klusener’s icy-cool look back at the devastation behind him after famous run-out.You might probably forget this game before the weekend but tonight, at least, you might take away two expressions from it – a scowl and a distraught face. They came at different turning points and captured the moment and the pulse of the game.Kumble’s scowl is one of the most recognisable vignettes of Indian cricket. Today it was seen at various moments when his team-mates fumbled but the severest of them was reserved for himself. When directed against the others, the scowl is filled with anger. When it’s his mistake, you can see his face muscles tighten, his pupils dilate, and he grits his teeth and yanks his head away. It doesn’t feel like solely a disappointment. It feels more personal than that. That shake of the head is almost as if he wants to throw that feeling out of his body and get on with the game. The intensity is almost scary. Mumbai were tottering at 86 for 5 in the 15th over when it happened. Kumble got one to dip quickly on Dwayne Bravo who hit it back to his right but he couldn’t hold on. Kumble lunged with both hands but spilled it.He said later it was one of those things. That he was expecting the catch but missed it completely. That he didn’t put up his hand today and his team lost because of his bowling and that dropped catch. He then said something which captures him perfectly: “It can be cruel even after 25 years.”Now to that distraught face of Virat Kohli. He began his career fairly recently and has perhaps seen more joy than sorrow. Tonight offered a moment of a kind of gloom that only comes after a high. If he had not played a blinder to take his team within a shot of victory and experienced a bit of a high, he wouldn’t have been so sad later.We associate a batsman with a signature shot. Kohli’s is that swat-flick that he used so profitably today. Herschelle Gibbs plays a similar shot but much squarer behind the wicket. Moin Khan’s version of the shot was more audacious. Back to Kohli. When 40 were needed off 18, Kohli swat-flicked Abu Nechim over midwicket. Flick. Blink. The ball soared over midwicket boundary. When 26 were needed off 10, he played that shot twice to make Malinga wince in pain. When 11 were needed off 4, he swat-flicked Zaheer Khan and repeated that shot again two balls later. Both came off full tosses, the kind of tripe that Zaheer had delivered in an earlier game against South Australia Redbacks.It came down to the final delivery. It was another full toss, and that too on the legs. Kohli went for his signature shot. Blink. Flick. Four? Nope. Blink. Flick. Out. The ball ballooned up and another youngster Ambati Rayudu settled under it. Kohli was distraught and he sank to his knees. Rahul Dravid consoled him but Kohli didn’t move for a while. Kumble later said Kohli was still feeling the pain of that moment. “The previous ball he played the same shot and got a four. On a different day it might have gone over the keeper and we could have got two runs and got a Super Over.. but it was a brilliant knock.” Indeed. “Batting at No. 6 in Twenty20 cricket is not easy,” Kumble said. “Virat is a young cricketer looking to make a mark in international cricket. I am sure he is a little disappointed that he is playing at No. 6 in our team but the team dynamics are such that we need him to play there. Today was his opportunity; having come close he is very disappointed.”These are the moments you might take away from tonight’s game. A scowl of a 40-year old man who feels the pain of a dropped catch, a misfield or a game lost despite playing for 20 years at the highest level and a distraught face of a youngster who perhaps wants to play a match-winning knock that he can remember after 20 years. It was not to be. Tonight wasn’t their day.

It was expected that the visitors would struggled with an inexperienced bowling attack in England and that proved the case against two in-form batsmen

ESPNcricinfo staff28-May-2011This is Sri Lanka’s first overseas Test series without Muttiah Muralitharan since a visit to New Zealand in early 2005, and the big question for them was how to take 20 wickets in a match in the absence of the game’s greatest wicket-taker. On Saturday’s evidence it doesn’t look good for Sri Lankan fans, with no silver linings on a cloudy Cardiff day.It wasn’t just that the only wicket Sri Lanka prised out on the day was that of the injured nightwatchman, James Anderson, but worryingly there weren’t even too many half chances. There were no debates over the pros and cons over the use of DRS as they were no referrals, giving third umpire Rod Tucker one of the easier days of his career.When Sri Lanka were making their way to a satisfactory 400, England bowlers had still posed all sorts of questions. Anderson was getting the ball to nip around, Chris Tremlett troubling the batsmen with his bounce and the crowd got to see some signs of Stuart Broad’s petulance on his Test return as a string of appeals were turned down.There was little of that drama when Sri Lanka’s bowlers got the ball. At the toss Tillakaratne Dilshan had said he was expecting the ball to turn late on the second day, or at least from the third day onwards, justifying his decision to bat first, and also the last-minute move to pick two spinners. There was hardly any sign of that on the third day as the trio of Ajantha Mendis, Rangana Herath and Dilshan himself toiled away although the lack of sun and wear on the surface will have played a part.There was a half chance when Cook swept Herath into Tharanga Paranavitana at short leg and Dilshan spun one past Cook’s outside edge late in the day, but there few other alarms against the spinners. Mendis had complained during his month-long stint with Somerset before this series that he was struggling to grip the ball in weather that was significantly chillier than he was used to He had the long sleeves on to keep out the cold, but that had little effect as his variations were calmly handled.The three medium-pacers had precious little to be happy about either. With all three quicks being right-armers operating in the early-to-mid 80mph (130kph) range, and reluctant to go round the wicket, there was a sameness to the attack. The pitch had lost some more pace and there wasn’t any menacing movement making it all too easy for the in-form England batsmen. Perhaps the inclusion of the left-arm fast bowler Chanaka Welegedara could have posed some questions with the different angle.By the middle of the final session, with little in terms of a contest between bat and ball on offer, the fancy-dress day crowd began to lose interest. They entertained themselves by flinging a pocket-size rugby ball from one stand to the next, amid much cheering.There were mitigating factors for Sri Lanka’s dismal performance though. Despite the morning rain, and the cloud cover through the day, there was no spice in the Cardiff pitch, easing out into a slow-and-low track where it was difficult to dislodge a set batsman. In Cook and Trott they came up against two who are full of confidence after a run-filled winter, who were suited to the patience game this pitch demanded and weren’t given to the extravagant Hollywood shot that could give away their wicket. The injury to Dilhara Fernando robbed the attack of experience, and the injury to Nuwan Pradeep robbed them of their most promising young quick bowler.It was a tough enough day for Sri Lanka to decide against sending anyone from the squad to face the press at stumps. Dilshan will need to steel himself for more days like this until his new-look attack matures enough to cope with the retirement of the country’s three leading wicket-takers. With Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell and Eoin Morgan itching to get their batting summer underway, and England looking to post a massive score, Sunday could well be another difficult day for Sri Lanka’s bowlers.

ESPNcricinfo looks at the key contests in the semi-final between Sri Lanka and New Zealand in Colombo

Firdose Moonda in colombo28-Mar-2011Tim Southee v Sri Lanka’s openers
With over 757 runs in seven matches and four centuries between them, Sri Lanka’s opening pair of Tillakaratne Dilshan and Upul Tharanga is the most solid one of the tournament. Besides the obvious advantage of being a right and left-hand combination, the pair have dominated seam and spin with equal disdain. Of all the opening combinations that Tim Southee has had to bowl to, this will be the most challenging. He did get the better of both in the group match between the two teams, dismissing Dilshan with a short ball and running out Tharanga. He is also New Zealand’s top wicket-taker in the tournament so far, and his ability to swing the ball sets up an interesting clash with the openers.Fielding v fielding
Sri Lanka have been acknowledged as the best subcontinent fielding side in the competition, with their dedication resulting in spectacular catches. They’ve put in a special effort to stop singles in the ring and cut off any easy run flow. Now, they’re up against a team whose fielding was the basis of their win in the quarter-final. Jacob Oram’s catch that dismissed Jacques Kallis and the run-out which saw AB de Villiers depart were the two moments that turned the game in Mirpur in New Zealand’s favour. New Zealand’s fielders flung their bodies around, saving singles everywhere, to frustrate the South Africa batsmen. Sri Lanka should be prepared for the ball to hit a concrete wall and not a gap a lot of the time.Lasith Malinga v Brendon McCullum
This could easily be called the battle of flashiness. One has a blonde mop and an unconventional action, while the other has a tattooed upper body and a wide selection of shots. One likes to bowl flashy, the other likes to bat flashy. The most intriguing part of their battle will be Malinga’s yorker against McCullum’s paddle. When McCullum got an international Twenty20 century against Australia in February 2010, he repeatedly paddled Shaun Tait’s yorkers up and over fine leg, often for six.Sri Lanka’s middle order v Daniel Vettori and Nathan McCullum
The New Zealand spinners may not have as many variations as Sri Lanka’s but they do have the same ability to take the game away from the opposition. Squeeze is the word they abide by, and in squeezing they get wickets; McCullum more so than Vettori, who has only two to his name this tournament but at an economy rate that a Test bowler would be proud of. Sri Lanka’s middle order, from No. 5 onwards, hasn’t had the best of tournaments so far, mostly because the openers haven’t given them a chance to, but they’re still the most fragile thing about the team. Angelo Mathews, Thilan Samaraweera and Chamara Silva will have to work hard for their runs against the two spinners, which could prove tricky considering how little time they have spent at the crease.Muttiah Muralitharan v Ross Taylor
This is the resumption of a battle that the wily offspinner won when the teams first met in the group stages. Taylor was on a high, having scored a century against Pakistan and a 74 against Canada. He was off to another start in the match against Sri Lanka when Muralitharan came on. Taylor wasn’t able to score a run in the first six balls he faced off Muralitharan and the seventh ball trapped him lbw. Taylor hasn’t fired after that and may be looking to do it here, but he’ll have Muralitharan standing in his way.