All posts by n8rngtd.top

Is it England? Or India? Or Australia? Or is there a dark horse lurking?

ESPNcricinfo staff23-May-2019Aaron Finch (Australia)
It’s a good question, I think, England have been in great form over the last couple of years and along with India, they’ve probably been the standout performers. So you’d have to say England are definitely the favourites.I think it’s important that some of our guys have got that World Cup experience and having, I think, six players who have been a part of a winning World Cup will hold us in good stead going forward, hopefully. But it’s a different tournament and, once you get out and start playing, the pressure takes over. So it’ll be a great tournament.Eoin Morgan (England)
I’ve no idea. I don’t think there’s anybody that’s head and shoulders above everybody else. In a 10-team World Cup, the ten best teams in the world, it’s going to be an extraordinarily competitive tournament. And I think there will be some quality cricket played. We’re really looking forward to playing.Of course being at home will be a factor. It’s called home advantage for a reason. We get to spend a lot of time in our own beds, we’ll see a lot of our families, and get to prepare like we have done for a number of years now. But England’s a great place to come and play cricket, if you ask any of these guys or any of their players, they love coming here and playing.Virat Kohli (India)
We’ve had both our warm-up games televised already so there’s much pressure on the team wherever we play.The way I look at it, there’s always going to be a huge fan-base for us anywhere we play in the world. But I have to agree with Aaron, I think England is probably – in their conditions – the most strong side in this tournament, but I also agree with Morgs, that all ten teams are so well balanced and so strong, and the fact that this is a tournament where we have to play everyone once, makes it all the more challenging. I think that’s going to be the best thing about this tournament, I see this as probably one of the most competitive World Cups that people are going to see7:10

Runorder: India? Australia? England?

Sarfaraz Ahmed (Pakistan)
As Morgan and Kohli said, all the teams are really balanced, and all are good teams, so I wish them all the very best and I think people will watch great cricket here.Definitely if you’ve seen the past results of Pakistan teams in England – I’m talking about the 1992 Test series, or the 1999 World Cup or 2017 [Champions Trophy] – Pakistan has been very good in England. So we are very confident, in’shallah, we will do very well.Dimuth Karunaratne (Sri Lanka)
We have played good cricket and have good experience [of playing] in England as well, so we will try to do well, and do our best. We came early to get some confidence in the conditions, we are in good shape and will do our best.Kane Williamson (New Zealand)
There are a few guys who were in the last World Cup, which is great, so there is some experience there. But naturally, with four years in between tournaments, there are a lot of new players as well. I guess there’s been a lot of talk around rankings, favourites, underdogs, but I think the thing that stands out is how balanced all the teams are and, when it comes to the day, anything can happen, which makes the way for a really exciting competition.Faf du Plessis (South Africa)
If you look at international cricket right around the circuit, you’ll see very close competitive series home and away. It’s not just more home teams that are dominating. So, like the other captains are saying, I think all of us are really excited to try this new tournament, with everyone playing everyone once. I think it’s a great tournament.Mashrafe Mortaza (Bangladesh)
We have a great team mix, probably as good as we have ever had. We have some young players coming through and we are very excited about them.Jason Holder (West Indies)
To play every side is great for us. We worked hard with the qualifiers to get here, that means it is the top 10 in the world, we want to play them all and give ourselves a shot. The team that wins will definitely deserve it.Gulbadin Naib (Afghanistan)
We have peace in Afghanistan now and cricket is a huge part of that. We are very happy and hopefully that can help us produce good performances. We’re excited to be here in front of the crowds. It’s the top ten teams in the world and we are proud to be representing Afghanistan.

After taking 7 for 22 in the last ODI between the sides, Australian all-rounder says the stage is set for an exciting Test

Valkerie Baynes17-Jul-2019Having had a full week to reflect on her remarkable bowling feats in the third ODI against England, allrounder Ellyse Perry was as humble as she had been while receiving the Player of Match award in front of her team-mates and – very humbled – rivals two Sunday evenings ago in Canterbury.Perhaps it was the fact she was still surrounded by her fellow Australian players on the team bus as they made the journey to Taunton for the Ashes Test starting on Thursday, perhaps there was something in the fact it sounded like she had just been awoken from a nap when she picked up the phone. But a modest, understated, team-first attitude seems simply to be Perry’s style.”I think it did come out of the blue, to be honest,” Perry said of her career-best 7 for 22 which routed England, bowled out for 75, and sealed a 3-0 ODI series victory, worth six Ashes points. It was also the the best ODI bowling performance ever by an Australian woman.Ellyse Perry picked 7 for 22, the best by an Australian woman in ODIs•Getty Images

She credited Australia bowling coach Ben Sawyer, who is also head coach of Perry’s WBBL side Sydney Sixers, with helping her – and, of course, her fellow bowlers – since he joined the national team last September.”I’ve been really fortunate to work with Ben Sawyer for a number of years now and we just always try to keep developing and progressing things as a bowling unit,” Perry said. “For whatever reason the other day it was just my day and it went my way and I guess you have those days every now and then when you play. It was just one of those ones that I can’t really explain but it was nice.”Perry had another one of those days the last time Australia played England in a Test. Her unbeaten 213 in the drawn match at North Sydney Oval in November 2017, is the third-highest in a Test innings by any woman.An elite athlete, Perry takes a keen interest in many sports, having gone to watch Roger Federer play Kei Nishikori and Novak Djokovic against David Goffin in the Wimbledon quarter-finals and kept tabs on the FIFA Women’s World Cup, having made 18 appearances for Australia’s national team, the Matildas, in her previous career as a football player.”It feels like a long, long time ago now but I certainly, like anyone else, absolutely love the Matildas and enjoy following their progress and how they’re going,” Perry said. “But personally I think football feels like a whole other career ago, I guess. With England making it to the semi-finals there was a lot of buzz over here. It was really big news and I kept a bit of an eye on it.”But back to cricket, and the team. Perry, who has played all of her seven career Tests against England, expects the hosts to come out firing, given they must win the match to keep alive any hope of wrenching the Ashes from Australia.”The situation has set up a really exciting Test match because I know as a team we’re really eager to play an exciting, enjoyable brand of cricket to watch and part of that is trying to push for a result and be successful in the Test match,” Perry said. “England are in a position now where they need to win the Test match, so from that point of view, it means there’s going to be some really great cricket played.”England are an incredibly capable side with a number of very, very good players. I know they’ve been disappointed with how they’ve performed in the series so far but I think we’re all incredibly wary of them and what they’re capable of doing and given the pressure that they’re under to be aggressive and play well and win this match coming up it’s going to be a really good fight for us.”

Rahul Johri says the board has to follow the ‘law of the land’, and that NADA has given the BCCI assurances about the concerns it had raised

ESPNcricinfo staff09-Aug-2019The BCCI has agreed to come under the ambit of the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) after years of resisting the move.The decision came after BCCI chief executive Rahul Johri and general manager (cricket operations) Saba Karim met sports secretary Radheshyam Jhulaniya and NADA director general Navin Agarwal in New Delhi on Friday. The meeting took place after the sports ministry of India wrote a strongly worded letter to the BCCI in the wake of Prithvi Shaw’s positive drug test and backdated suspension of eight months.”We have to follow the law of the land and the BCCI is committed to following the law that exists,” Johri was quoted as saying by after the meeting. “The letter which we have signed states that we accept the law of the land.”Asked whether the Committee of Administrators (CoA) was mandated to take such a decision in the absence of an elected general body, Johri said, “Whoever is in existence, the law of the land is there. So you and I can’t choose at what time to follow the law of the land.”The BCCI had been staunchly opposed to coming under NADA’s ambit for several years, consistently arguing that it is an autonomous organisation and not a national sports federation, and is therefore not under NADA’s jurisdiction. In November 2017, Johri had said the BCCI’s anti-doping mechanism was “robust” and rejected the need for NADA to test cricketers.However, on Friday, Johri said that while the BCCI did raise a number of concerns, it had agreed to come under NADA after the sports ministry gave assurances about resolving whatever issues the cricket board had.”We have raised a lot of concerns, we have listed them out and they have agreed to address all these,” he said.The BCCI’s primary concern with coming under NADA was the contentious whereabouts clause that deals with out-of-competition testing. The clause has been regarded as an invasion of privacy and a potential threat to the security of the high-profile cricketers.Johri, however, said “don’t jump the gun” when he was asked about the clause, which requires every athlete to fill a declaration form mentioning three specific dates in a year when they are not competing but are available to NADA’s dope-control officer for sample collection.If any athlete fails to appear on all the specified dates, it invites sanctions for breach of the World Anti-Doping Agency Code. Such a breach had led to the West Indies allrounder Andre Russell being banned for a year.”The BCCI raised three issues before us about the quality of the dope testing kits, competence of pathologists and sample collection. We assured them that whatever facilities they want, we will provide but there will be some charge for it,” Jhulaniya said. “But that higher facility will be equal for all national sporting federations. BCCI is no different from others. They have to follow the law of the land.”The BCCI also agreed to bear the differential cost arising from the high-quality testing methods.”That is okay (bearing the cost), that is not the issue right now,” Johri said. “We have said to them that we want a certain level of service for our players. If there is any differential then the BCCI will agree to pay for it.”There are speculations that the sports ministry pressured the BCCI to come under the ambit of NADA after holding back clearances for the South Africa A and women teams’ upcoming tours to India, but Johri rubbished that claim. “These two are separate issues,” he said. “The tours have already been cleared.”

Batsman leads way with 75 not out in chase of 158 to put Lancashire in prime position for home quarter-final

Jon Culley at Wantage Road14-Aug-2019After the rare taste of defeat against Birmingham Bears, normal service resumed as Lancashire Lightning eased home with nine balls to spare on a night on which one sensed they would not have broken into a sweat even had the temperature been 10 degrees warmer.With Alex Davies dominating with a masterful 75 at the top, finding the boundary 10 times but impressing also with some skilful shot placement backed up with superb running between the wickets, the absence of their leading scorer, Glenn Maxwell, through a minor hamstring injury was barely noticed.Supported with vigour by Liam Livingstone at the start, with measured calm by Steven Croft through the middle overs and improvisation by Dane Vilas at the end, Davies underlined the depth of resources in the current Lightning squad that sees them with a five-point cushion at the top of the North Group, albeit from a match more than everyone else.

Talking T20 podcast

Daniel Norcross and Matt Roller wax lyrical about Somerset’s three musketeers as the quarter-final race nears boiling point – listen on ESPN radio

Adam Rossington (40) and Dwaine Pretorius (38) top scored as the Steelbacks posted 157 for 7 but even on a used pitch that gave the slow bowlers something to work with there was a never even a hint of a wobble from their opponents, who surely have one foot in the quarter-finals, not least with Maxwell set to return for Friday’s game against Birmingham.Northamptonshire are not completely out of the picture, even in eighth place, but they will have to go some to qualify from here.What had been shaping up as a pretty decent powerplay for the home side stalled rather dramatically after a bemused Richard Levi, aiming to chip into the legside field, was caught at third man off a leading edge in the fourth over. Adam Rossington worked a four off his hips in the same over to take the total to 37 for 1 after four but Richard Gleeson conceded only three in the fifth over and Saqib Mahmood just a single in the sixth, in which the Steelbacks lost another big wicket when Josh Cobb holed out to deep square leg without scoring.Lancashire, who had won the toss and fancied there would be something in the conditions for their bowlers after a miserably wet day, then took the pace off and put the squeeze on some more before Rossington and Alex Wakely eased the pressure with a boundary each as Northamptonshire reached the halfway stage at 69 for 2.On a slow pitch against disciplined bowling, the Steelbacks struggled to build any momentum, picking up only a couple of boundaries in the next five overs. A full swing of the bat from Wakely sent the ball over the rope at deep midwicket, but in the same over of an impressive spell of legspin by Livingstone came another setback as Rossington failed to clear the fielder at long-on.Livingstone cleverly bowled Wakely in his next over to finish with a tidy two for 24 before Rob Keogh and Pretorius gave the innings some belated substance with a flurry of big blows, the latter walloping Matt Parkinson for consecutive legside sixes on his way to 38 off 22 balls before the legspinner thudded the next delivery into his pads.The two had added 52 in five overs, most of them in a furious assault against Mahmood and Parkinson that accrued 37 in 12 deliveries. But James Faulkner tightened things up again with a superb final over that conceded only four and claimed two more wickets as he finished with 3 for 36.Needing just under eight an over to overhaul the Steelbacks and claim their sixth win after three no-results in their first 10 matches, Lancashire could not have asked for a more emphatic statement of intent from their openers than Davies provided by smashing the first three balls of Ben Sanderson’s opening over to the rope.Livingstone took up the gauntlet, needing little time to loosen up as lofted three of his first nine deliveries for six and though he was out looking for a fourth, well caught at deep mid-wicket, Lancashire were ahead of the game at 55 for 1 after the powerplay, even though the Steelbacks dragged the rate back a little in overs five and six.The torrent of boundaries had dwindled to a trickle as Lightning reach the halfway point at 83 for 1 after some largely tidy work by Graeme White and Keogh but Davies and Croft were content with ones and twos with wickets in hand and the scoring ahead of the required rate.Davies took advantage of a couple of loose deliveries from White to raise his boundary count to eight as he passed 50 in 38 balls before Faheem Ashraf checked Lancashire’s progress a little by yorking Croft in an excellent over that went for just two singles.But Davies continued to play splendidly, rarely passing up the opportunity for an easy boundary that came his way all too often and never keen to settle for singles if a two was available as the target came down to 34 off the last five.By now, the Steelbacks’ heads had dropped as Vilas warmed to the task and chopped Sanderson away twice through the offside before the game ended in a manner that aptly reflected the crumbling nature of the home side’s cricket as Vilas swatted away a Nathan Buck full toss which Wakely’s misfield at deep backward square turned into the winning boundary.

Megan Schutt completed a unique double as she became the first bowler to claim a hat-trick in women’s T20Is as well as ODIs

ESPNcricinfo staff12-Sep-2019The final ODI of the three-match series between West Indies women and Australia women in Antigua played out in the much same way as the previous two games, with a dominant Australian performance sweeping aside the hosts, this time by eight wickets. Megan Schutt made history, becoming the first Australian to take an ODI hat-trick in women’s cricket, before opener Alyssa Healy’s blitz decisively shut West Indies out of the match. The 3-0 result helped Australia women surge past England women on the ICC Women’s Championship table, and open up a four-point lead, besides confirming their spot in the 2021 Women’s World Cup.West Indies opted to bat, but their innings was defined by the batting slumps that usually followed promising partnerships. Kyshona Knight anchored the top order with a knock of 40, helping the side rebuild after the early loss of opener Reniece Boyce. But once she fell, West Indies lurched from 73 for 2 to 104 for 6 in the middle overs. A 64-run seventh-wicket partnership between Chinelle Henry and Sheneta Grimmond lifted them past 150 but only to lose their last four wickets in 12 runs. That slump included Schutt’s last-over hat-trick, where she claimed the wickets of Henry, Karishma Ramharack and Afy Fletcher. Schutt, incidentally, was also the first Australia bowler to claim a women’s T20I hat-trick.Healy, coming into the match with scores of 122 and 58 in her last two innings, played another match-defining knock, smacking 11 fours and a six in a 32-ball 61. By the time she fell in the eighth over, Australia were scoring at nine an over and the experienced Meg Lanning and Ellyse Perry then took charge of the chase and saw the side through with more than 18 overs to spare. Lanning, who had scored 121 in the first ODI, compiled an unbeaten 58 off 70 balls while Perry contributed 33 in their unbroken stand of 85. Earlier, Perry had dismissed Boyce to become only the third bowler to take 150 wickets in women’s ODIs.This was only the third time in 16 years that West Indies women failed to win a single match in a home ODI series: they had been swept 6-0 by Sri Lanka in 2003 and lost a three-match series 2-0 to England in 2013 when one game was washed out. It also followed a 3-0 loss they suffered on the tour of England in June, and the two whitewashes have kept them at the seventh place on the ODI Championship table.

Their first victory of the T20 World Cup qualifier was a convincing one as they beat Bermuda by 45 runs

Peter Della Penna in Dubai21-Oct-2019Dhiren Gondaria’s unbeaten 85 led Kenya to their first win of the T20 World Cup Qualifier as they beat Bermuda by 45 runs in Dubai.After choosing to bat on a wearing pitch, Gondaria lifted his side out of an early hole created by disciplined bowling from Bermuda. Alex Obanda fell on the fourth ball of the match for a golden duck miscuing a straight drive to midwicket off George O’Brien where Delray Rawlins took a splendid leaping catch.Kamau Leverock struck twice in his first two overs, getting Irfan Karim caught at midwicket for 15 before a slower ball foxed Collins Obuya to trap him in front for 4. Rodney Trott then had Rakep Patel nicking off to leave Kenya at 66 for 4 after 12 overs.Gondaria could do little but watch as the top order stumbled all around him but eventually he found a willing ally in the No. 6 batsman Rushab Patel. The pair added an unbeaten 72 across the final eight overs with a mixture of sensible strokeplay and a touch of luck.Gondaria had brought up his 50 off 48 balls in the 16th over, then struck back-to-back fours off Rawlins to begin a late surge. In the following over, he inside edged a heave off Leverock that spun back into the stumps but the bails wouldn’t break. Then, on 71, he was then put down at long-off by O’Brien, once again off Leverock’s bowling, as he made the most of his chances and batted through the innings.Bermuda’s chase got off to a dreadful start when Okera Bascome was caught at short fine leg off the first ball from Elijah Otieno. Captain Dion Stovell’s attempt at a glide to third man resulted in his own stumps being rearranged, and then Terryn Fray ran himself out to make it 7 for 3 after just 13 balls.Rawlins did his best to lead a fightback, reverse sweeping Ngoche for his first boundary in the fifth over before charging Obuya for a trio of straight driven fours. He pulled Rakep Patel for a couple of big hits over the leg side in the 12th over but a third attempt resulted in a top-edge being taken at short fine leg by the wicketkeeper Karim, ending a 58-run stand with Janeiro Tucker.Bermuda crumbled thereafter and were all out for 93 as Rawlins’ wicket sparked a collapse (6 for 12). Obuya did most of the damage, dismissing Tucker at long-on before Leverock top-edged a slog to short third man. A googly trapped Onias Bascome for his third wicket before he ended the match bowling O’Brien after a failed charge. After playing three days in a row, Bermuda now has a day off before taking on Namibia, needing a win to keep their playoff hopes alive.

Stoinis’ death bowling was instrumental in deciding the rain-hit contest in the favour of the hosts

ESPNcricinfo staff23-Oct-2019
Western Australia consolidated their position at the top of the table in the Marsh Cup with a 9-run win (DLS method) in a rain-truncated contest in Perth. The match was initially reduced to 42 overs and later the minimum required 20, with Victoria falling short despite captain Peter Handscomb’s unbeaten 73 off 54 balls. Marcus Stoinis starred with both bat and ball to secure the result in Western Australia’s favour.Having opted to bat, Western Australia were in early trouble after the loss of openers Josh Philippe and D’Arcy Short with just 27 on the board, Will Sutherland accounting for both. But the middle order fired for the home team, the likes of Shaun Marsh (30 off 39), Stoinis (45 off 44) and captain Ashton Turner (39 off 27) playing an able support cast to top scorer Cameron Bancroft (76 off 70).A flurry of wickets towards the end, in particular the one of the aggressive Turner, meant that Western Australia couldn’t take full toll of the final few overs, but the revised target of 175 in 20 overs was still a stiff one after the hosts finished their 42 overs at 9 for 281.Seamer Mathew Kelly made it even harder as he ripped through Victoria’s top order, picking up 3 for 7 in his two-over opening burst to reduce the visitors to 3 for 29, and when Jhye Richardson cleaned up Glenn Maxwell for 2 two overs later, a Western Australia win seemed like a foregone conclusion.But first in the company of Nic Maddinson, who struck a 9-ball 28 and later with support from Matthew Short (15 off 12), Handscomb kept his team in the hunt. At one point, the equation had come down to 67 off 48, before Stoinis trapped Short lbw, and struck twice more in quick succession to leave Victoria eight down. While 50 needed from the last five still wasn’t impossible, Stoinis bowled excellent 17th and 19th overs to leave Andrew Tye 17 to defend in the final over, which went for just eight despite a no-ball.

Keeper keeps it modest after eighth Test hundred carries New Zealand’s hopes of victory

George Dobell in Mount Maunganui23-Nov-2019A desire not to spend another day in the field helped drive BJ Watling to the Bay Oval’s first Test century.In warm weather and on a surface tough for both bowlers and run-scoring, Watling batted throughout the day to take New Zealand into the lead an hour or so before stumps. With the surface showing increasing signs of uneven bounce and two days left to play, it may prove a match-defining innings.It was Watling’s second successive Test century – he made an unbeaten 105 against Sri Lanka in Colombo – and his eighth in all. Only three men (Adam Gilchrist, Les Ames and Andy Flower) have scored more than his seven Test centuries as keeper (he made one as a specialist batsman) and only four men (the previous three mentioned plus AB de Villiers) have higher batting averages among those with a minimum of 1,000 Test runs.But despite putting together a record that places him among the very best to have performed the arduous role of keeper-batsman, Watling spoke mainly of his limitations as a batsman and his desire not to find himself keeping after the best part of five sessions in the gloves over the first two days.”I know I didn’t want to field today so that was driving me,” he said. “It was a warm day and you could tell they were tough conditions [for the fielding side].”I just think I’m a very limited player. I try to play how I know works best for me. There are shots that the big boys can play and I definitely can’t, so I take those away from my game. I try to stick to a game-plan and hopefully it pays off. I waited for balls to hit and I wouldn’t be drawn into anything the bowlers wanted.”Watling does himself a bit of a disservice here. While he does not have the repertoire of de Villiers, for example, he does have a decent array of weapons at his disposal. He cuts, he sweeps and he drives. And he does all three elegantly. Most of all, though, he trusts his defence. And because of that, he was able to withstand some admirably disciplined bowling from Stuart Broad, in particular, and a couple of hostile spells from Jofra Archer.ALSO READ:Watling whittles away at England’s resolve“It was hard work,” he said. “England kept coming at us. They bowled extremely well. There were moments where they put us under a lot of pressure and the pleasing thing is we managed to soak it up. England executed their bouncer plan really well and the surface was slow and the bounce variable. It was tough to score freely.”As well as the personal satisfaction of scoring the century, Watling knows he has given his side a chance to secure victory. But with the lead currently a slender 41, he knows there is some work ahead to ensure New Zealand can drive home their advantage. Batting fourth could be tough on such a surface.”We’re expecting the surface to keep playing a few more tricks over the next couple of days,” he said. “So it is important for us to try and build this lead a bit and put them under some pressure when they bat. The least amount of runs we can chase is better.”I definitely think we can win. If we can get some partnerships going tomorrow there’s every chance of a result going our way.”

Despite playing in Lucknow for the first time, the Afghanistan coach is fancying his team’s chances

Saurabh Somani in Lucknow 26-Nov-2019″Six months back I could have told you about Afghanistan. Now I am with West Indies.” – Phil Simmons.Whatever insights West Indies’ coach had about the team he had coached from December 2017 till the end of the 2019 World Cup was clearly not meant for publication. If you had asked him about the insights he had into the opposition in December 2017, he could have given the same answer with the team names inter-changed.Simmons’ record as coach has been excellent, but in spite of that, his first stint with West Indies had not ended well. Not due to the lack of results – they won the T20 World Cup under him – but due to what the WICB termed ‘differences in culture and strategic approach’, and what the rest of the world called a colossal management blunder.With a new management in place at the board, Simmons’ expertise was sought again, and he gladly accepted the role. While he stopped short of saying he had ‘unfinished business’ with West Indies, he does want to stop the wheel turning the way it has. The occasional peaks notwithstanding, the story that was written most often in the last two decades on Caribbean cricket was of West Indies’ decline.On Wednesday, there is the opportunity to take another step towards that when West Indies face Afghanistan in a one-off Test at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow.Technically, this is an ‘away’ game for West Indies and ‘home’ for Afghanistan. But it’s not as simple as that. Afghanistan have moved to this ground just a month ago from Dehradun, their erstwhile home ground, and are as (un)familiar with it as West Indies are. The only time Lucknow has hosted a Test before this one was 25 years back, when the Ekana Stadium wasn’t even a concept, and Afghanistan had as much chance of playing Test cricket as Belgium.”I was very happy when they moved from Dehradun to here for this series,” Simmons said. “Because they would have known everything about Dehradun. And now, it’s (like a) neutral venue, so it makes it even for us.”Afghanistan have in their corner the knowledge that they turned around the last series played at this venue, albeit in a vastly different format. Down 1-0 in the T20Is after having lost 3-0 in the ODIs, they stormed back to win 2-1. Simmons acknowledged that Afghanistan were a “difficult” opponent, but felt that at three-Tests old only, inexperience would be a factor.”Their format is T20, they’ve done well over the last two-three years in T20 cricket, so they were always going to fight back in that one,” Simmons said. “They’ve had three Tests, and did well to win in Bangladesh, but it’s still a learning phase for them and hopefully we can capitalise on that.”The Afghanistan players walk off the field•BCB

For Afghanistan coach Lance Klusener, the Test was all about focussing on his team’s strengths and not worrying too much about what West Indies would throw at them.”There’s no hiding the fact that our strength is spin. We’ve got three of the best spin bowlers in the world,” Klusener said, adding that the pitches were “receptive to spin”.”We’ll just have small goals and plans as to how we want to go about things. It’s a learning process as well. But in saying that, we want to be as positive as we can,” Klusener said. “Batting is about scoring runs – whether it’s Test cricket, one-day cricket or T20 cricket. It’s just how you go about. That’s the challenge for us, finding the balance between attacking an defending.”We can take a lot of confidence out of the way we played in the practice game. And they’re coming off a Test win in Bangladesh. So there’s a lot of good things to look forward to. I guess our challenge is runs. If we can put enough runs on the board over the course of the Test match, we’re going to be difficult to beat.”There appears to a widening gap between those at the top of the Test tree and those below it, according to Klusener, but as he pointed out, both teams in this contest fell on the same side of that divide.”We just saw that there’s quite a big rift between the lower teams that are not getting enough Test cricket to your Indias, Australias and Englands,” Klusener said. “There’s quite a big gap but it’s a learning curve for us. We’re going to have to toughen up a little bit, get stuck in and front up. We’re certainly looking forward to this Test match, there’s a lot of history playing against the West Indies as well.”There was a hint of a challenge in the way Klusener spoke of ‘history’ between the two teams. They’ve played seven T20Is, with West Indies winning four to Afghanistan’s three. West Indies are ahead 5-3 in ODIs, but before the one-dayers on this tour, they were 2-3.Test cricket though, is a a sporting animal unlike any other and Afghanistan’s inexperience will be a factor. It could have been offset to some extent with home advantage. But the surface aside – which could still play a decisive role – there’s not much ‘home’ advantage in playing at a new venue, facing a team whose coach knows you inside out.

Ravi Shastri, Mahela Jayawardene and Chris Gayle also don’t want to “mess with” Test cricket

Deivarayan Muthu in Pune09-Jan-2020Sri Lanka coach Mickey Arthur, who is part of the ICC cricket committee that will consider making four-day Tests mandatory as part of the World Test Championship from 2023, has shot down the proposal.Arthur has joined the likes of Virat Kohli, Ben Stokes and Vernon Philander in opposing four-day Test cricket, which is being considered by the ICC in order to free up a calendar that is cramped with too many fixtures and T20 leagues.”Look, I say five-day Test cricket is the way to go,” Arthur said on the eve of Sri Lanka’s third T20I against India in Pune. “Test cricket challenges you – it challenges you mentally, it challenges you physically and it challenges you technically. And a lot of the time on the fifth day, we’ve witnessed a really good Test match that wouldn’t have lasted [otherwise].”A move to cut the fifth day would ease the financial pressure on boards, but Arthur stressed that Test cricket shouldn’t be tampered with because of financial or commercial reasons.”Look, we can talk about financial pressures and that type of stuff,” he said. “[But], I think the fabric of Test cricket shouldn’t be messed with. You want wickets deteriorating on day five, you want thrillers that go all the way, there are a lot of really good exciting draws where one team plays it out. So, I definitely think five-day Test cricket is the way to go without a doubt.”Former Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene, who is also part of the ICC cricket committee, isn’t in favour of four-day Test cricket as well.”We will discuss it in the meeting and I don’t know what will happen after that but my personal opinion is that it should remain five days. I would not want any change,” Jaywardene had told PTI.India coach Ravi Shastri is also not a fan of the proposal. “Four-day Test is nonsense,” he told Indian news channel CNN-News18. “If this goes on we may have limited-overs Tests. There is no need to tamper with five-day Tests. If at all they want to tamper then let the top six sides play five-day Tests and the next six be allowed to play four-day Tests. If you want preserve Tests then let the top six play more against each other. You have the shorter format to popularise the game.”West Indies opener Chris Gayle also joined the other strong voices in rejecting the idea of four-day Test cricket. “I am not a fan of that [four-day Tests]. I’ve played a 100 Test matches,” Gayle said. “A few finish in three days, a few finish in four days, but five days Test cricket is ultimate. It sets the trend. It has been there for ages, so why go and mess with it. If they give other players opportunity to actually experience it as well because it can be a life-changing experience to play five days of Test cricket. It tests your mental state so you can cope in life as well.”The ICC is set to meet in March 2020 to discuss the four-day Test proposal.