Who would make it to your all-time Chennai Super Kings XI?

ESPNcricinfo staff25-Apr-2020Wouldn’t it be fun to pick an all-time Chennai Super Kings’ XI, based on player stats for the franchise? We’ve picked ours, now it’s your turn to participate in choosing the readers’ XI.BatsmenAllrounders and bowlers

Over the last four and a half years, the England star has racked up truly special all-round stats

S Rajesh and Shiva Jayaraman31-Jul-2020″We’re in the presence of greatness.”
– Ben Stokes has everyone – fans, critics, team-mates – eating out of his hands, and with good reason: over the last four and a half years, he has scored eight Test hundreds and averages 43.3 with the bat. And he has taken 110 wickets at 28. Even these numbers don’t do justice to his range of skills: with bat in hand, he has the astonishing ability to go through multiple gears in the same Test (Old Trafford, 2020) and even the same innings (Headingley, 2019). With ball in hand, he bowls the tough overs and the long spells when England are looking for a breakthrough. Add to that his wholehearted fielding and the ability to be the perfect team man, and it’s little wonder that England can’t have enough of him.ESPNcricinfo LtdFor the purposes of this article, though, we’ll limit the analyses to his two primary skills, batting and bowling. The high notes that Stokes has hit as a Test allrounder over the last few years have, quite justifiably, evoked comparisons with the all-time great allrounders. How does his peak thus far compare with the best of other allrounders? Let the numbers do the talking.From the start of 2016 – when he made his highest Test score, of 258, against South Africa in Cape Town – till the end of the second Test of the recently concluded home series against West Indies, over a span of 45 Tests, there has been a difference of 15.6 between Stokes’ batting and bowling averages. How does that compare with the best 45-Test streaks of other allrounders? (The best 45 Tests in terms of highest difference between batting and bowling averages are considered.)Taking a cut-off of at least 1500 runs scored and 100 wickets taken in these 45 Tests – Stokes scored 3401 runs and took 110 wickets in these matches – only four allrounders out of 22 have a higher difference in average: Garry Sobers, Jacques Kallis, Imran Khan and Shaun Pollock. Sobers and Kallis had slightly poorer bowling averages than Stokes, but were phenomenal with the bat, averaging more than 70. Imran was outstanding with both bat and ball in the period between September 1982 and December 1991, scoring nearly 55 runs per dismissal and conceding only 20.1 runs per wicket. Pollock just made the 1500-run cut-off – he scored 1561 runs in 45 Tests between January 1999 and September 2003, though his contribution to team runs was extremely low, as we’ll see later – but his bowling stats were stunning: 185 wickets at 19.9. For the top three allrounders, the difference in averages was more than 30, while the difference for Pollock was 20.2.ESPNcricinfo LtdFor all the other top allrounders, though, the difference was less than 15.6. Stokes is marginally ahead of Keith Miller (difference 15.4) and Ian Botham (14.6), while Tony Greig and Andrew Flintoff, the two other leading England allrounders on the list, managed a difference of around ten runs between their batting and bowling averages in their best 45 Tests.Twenty-two allrounders make the cut-off of 1500 runs and 100 wickets in their best 45 Tests, and among them Richard Hadlee is in seventh place – a slot above Botham – with an average difference of 14.8, while Kapil Dev, the fourth among the Fab Four allrounders of the 1980s, is 18th with a difference of 4.6.

Mountains of first-class runs and not a chance, then asked to play against the moving ball in England

Osman Samiuddin14-Aug-2020Wait 10 years, 259 days. Play 12,742 balls of first-class cricket. Average 56 in that time. All for this punchline: in the time it took you to read those sentences but not fully digest those numbers, it’s already over. Four balls, one contact between bat and ball, zero runs. Life is cruel and still it has nothing on the cruelty of batting. Who better to know this than Fawad Alam?For it to be on referral too, because there’s nothing quite like the DRS to prolong and accentuate the torture of batting. What else but something as unforgiving as batting could, after all, accommodate a state in between life and death? Exhale out relief on being given not out. Inhale in nerves upon referral. No chance to exhale. It’s over. He wasn’t even there long enough for Sky Sports to do the inevitable Third Man ostensibly on his stance but really as an excuse to watch some classic Shivnarine Chanderpaul footage.That stance itself feels like a cruel twist now. If you put it against the stance from his earliest days, it could be two different batsmen. He used to have a little shuffle across but remained more or less side on before, still unexplained, the guard became this open invitation for a brawl. Even then it was fine hidden away in deepest, darkest domestic cricket, sighted occasionally on Quaid-e-Azam trophy streams. Now it’s out there for eternity and no matter what runs he scores in the second innings, or however many more Test innings he plays, it consigns him forever to pop up in a listicle on weird stances (we’ll do one most probably).ALSO READ: Asad Shafiq and Fawad Alam: A tale of intertwined destiniesThat will accompany the other listicles he’s destined to appear in, on long-suffering domestic toilers (done that already) or on records pages for the longest gaps between appearances (ditto). A career of 17 years and counting, reduced to three lists. And the memes won’t stop for a while yet. Cruel doesn’t begin to describe it.He was on a hiding to nothing coming in at the fall of Asad Shafiq’s wicket and in contributing zero to a partnership of three with Babar Azam. The latter is a generational talent, the former the guy who really could’ve been, both of whom the manner in which they score compensates to some degree for the number of runs they score. Pure, pristine techniques, every shot a picture. And here is Alam. The minute he arrived, cricket orthodoxy blew up: how can he play at this level with a stance like that? The minute he left, it continued blowing up: see, he can’t play at this level taking guard like that.Fawad Alam was out lbw on review•Visionhaus/Getty ImagesAll those years, his best years, that he couldn’t get in because there was nowhere to get in to with Pakistan’s middle order. Azhar Ali, Younis Khan, Misbah-ul-Haq and Shafiq had the absolute run of those surfaces in the UAE. All those years of bounty, eventually the return of Tests to Pakistan and he gets a call-up in England.And after his captain chooses to bat first, the weather conspires against that decision. This Test has been preceded by days of unbearable heat and unflinching sunshine only to welcome Alam back with muggy, overcast skies, heavier with the threat of rain than actual rain. A day on which 126 for 5 is about par for most sides, let alone Pakistan, and every run seems to have been edged to third man. Against an English attack currently so deep they’re literally drawing straws to see who sits out a Test. No Jofra today, no matter, here’s a leftie who looks seven but swings it mean like the expression on his face when he runs in.Sam Curran might’ve actually been relief but Alam started against Stuart Broad whose stock ball these days is simply the one that gets the left-hander – any left-hander – out. There’s cockfights in this world that are not as cruel as this.

After missing 88(!) Test matches, Fawad Alam is a part of Pakistan's Test XI again

— ESPNcricinfo (@ESPNcricinfo) August 13, 2020

Three balls from Broad, the best result of which for Alam is a toss-up between all three: the nervy jab at the first, the leave-alone of the second, or being beaten square by the third. Alam’s fourth ball is from Chris Woakes who, for this fleeting moment in our existence post Old Trafford, is the best allrounder in England and given that the actual best allrounder in England is the best allrounder in the world, means he’s not to be trifled with.It’s the last ball Alam plays and even physics is not his friend. It’s slanting across him as it lands, and even though it straightens marginally to beat his inside edge, it’s close to being umpire’s call on where it pitched and close to being umpire’s call on where it hit the stumps. Nearly 11 years and undone not just by a computer but by millimetres.As parting insult, as he’s struck, he looks like a combination of a batsman winded by a hit on the box and bowled by a grubber. A bad day to be Fawad Alam, a great day to be a meme.

Despite scoring more runs than anyone else in the first-class circuit, the PCB never gave him a real chance

Danyal Rasool30-Dec-2020There’s nothing particularly vain about Fawad Alam, but for the best part of a decade, he might have wondered if the policies of Pakistan cricket were molded for the sole purpose of disadvantaging him. Two Tests after he had compiled a third-innings 168 on debut in Colombo in 2009, he would be dropped after a couple of failures in New Zealand. Not dropped in that he was eased into domestic cricket to bounce back after he had some runs under his belt, more like thrown out of an aircraft without a parachute. He disappeared, as if he didn’t exist in the first place.In the decade that ends along with this Test, Alam might well have disappeared, even as he topped every run chart anyone bothered to look at from the first-class scene in Pakistan. By 2013, Alam had the highest batting average in Pakistan’s first-class history, a record he still lays claim to. He has scored more runs than anyone else on the first-class circuit since the start of the 2015-16 season, and among active players, only Steven Smith and Hanuma Vihari boast better first-class averages than Alam’s 56.60.Related

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As Alam piling on the runs every time the Quaid-e-Azam trophy rolled around became a familiar sight, so did another altogether less pleasant spectacle. When squads for upcoming tours were announced, chief selector after chief selector, captain and coach alike would field questions from the media and never satisfactorily explain why it was the man who had more runs at a superior average than everyone selected ahead of him, who was consistently given the cold shoulder. There were murmurs about squad balance, lip service to horses-for-courses and, though no one said it publicly, private anxiety about his ungainly, crab-like stance. This at a time, mind you, when Shivnarine Chanderpaul topped the ICC Test rankings at the age of 40.There’s absolutely nothing the various stakeholders in Pakistan cricket agree upon, but everyone through the door at the PCB through various reigns of chairmen, coach, manager or captain appeared to have made formed a pact to freeze Alam out of getting near the national side. That might sound conspiratorial, but if there was a genuine cricketing reason to ignore a man whose average flirted with 60 season upon season even as first-class games in Pakistan routinely saw games end before lunch on day three, it was never quite made plain.

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Things would get worse for Alam. If successive coaches and chief selectors were leaving him out, people wondered, often aloud on primetime television shows, there must be a reason no one seemed to want him near the national side. After all, it is difficult to question the collective wisdom of Dave Whatmore, Waqar Younis, Mickey Arthur, Grant Flower, and Misbah-ul-Haq, not to mention the myriad others who enjoyed prominent decision-making roles about the national side during decades in isolation.All Alam had the audacity to do during this time was chip away at the last shavings of the arguments levied in favour of his isolation, and the blunt tool he used was the sheer volume of his runs. He scored so many, so frequently and so predictably he almost began to appear obsessive. And every time he was snubbed, for home series, away series, series in which players were rested, you could be sure he’d pop up with another huge hundred at some nondescript cricket ground around the country.A decade passed. The youthful, boyish looks gave way to a more wizened countenance, a bushy beard and a glorious handlebar moustache. The batting stance grew somewhat more extreme; it didn’t do the run-scoring any harm. The 23-year-old who was dropped in Dunedin saw his 20s trickle by without another sniff at a national side that appeared perpetually in need of batsmen who could play long, patient innings, particularly in seaming conditions like England and New Zealand. When, a decade on, he finally did get a shot, it came against perhaps England’s best ever bowling attack, and he would manage 30 runs all series.Technically feeble, who? Fawad Alam was in complete control against New Zealand’s elite attack•Getty ImagesBabar Azam’s injury gave him another go in New Zealand, but while Alam might be grateful for the opportunity, it was hard not to watch him grind out that innings without feeling righteous indignation bubble up inside every now and then. This man was told his domestic form wouldn’t translate to international success, that flaws in his technique would be exposed if he stepped up to international cricket again, that this cricketer who averaged over three runs more than anyone in Pakistan’s first-class history was such a hopeless cause he didn’t merit so much as one opportunity to put on a Test cap ever again.Anyone who has bothered to actually watch Alam play cricket over this time saw a man dealing with the New Zealand attack in the same way he has approached first-class cricket in Pakistan. He turned the final day battle into a war of attrition, left alone 64 of the 269 balls he faced, and defended a further 89. He left Neil Wagner and Kyle Jamieson when they went too short and pulled them when the ball hung around chest height. He was watchful against the quick bowlers, but attacked Mitchell Santner when he was introduced. He might have been batting for National Bank of Pakistan in the QeA; it was the same playbook, and it very much translated to international cricket.

Without ever saying a word in his defence, he had taken them all on. They were all wrong, and Fawad Alam was right

Eleven years, five months and 16 days on from that other lifetime when he scored his first Test hundred, Alam pulled Wagner behind square – that shot had served him well both in defence and attack – past a diving deep fielder to bring up a second Test hundred. It had come in the same country as his last Test match, and this was no one of the most meaningful centuries a Pakistan player could ever hope to score. Only Javed Miandad has ever faced more deliveries in a fourth innings for Pakistan outside Asia, against a nation that is stronger at present than it has ever been. This was the 18th successive Test New Zealand have remained unbeaten against Asian opposition at home; they have won 15 of those. Their pace attack boasts over 800 Test wickets between them. Alam wasn’t being eased into this side; if anything, he was set up to fail.But none of that fazed him. As he raised his bat and helmet to his dressing room, the sense of vindication must have almost been transcendent. He knew that, despite a career that will never see its potential fulfilled, he had proven his point. They were all wrong to say he didn’t belong at this level, wrong to say he was technically feeble, wrong to tell him his first-class statistics deserved to be overlooked.Without ever saying a word in his defence, he had taken them all on. They were all wrong, and Fawad Alam was right.

A look at the top batsmen in IPL 2020 through the prism of Smart Stats

ESPNcricinfo stats team04-Nov-2020KL Rahul is the Orange Cap holder with 670 runs, but according to ESPNcricinfo’s Smart Stats, the leader in terms of Smart Runs is Shikhar Dhawan: his 525 runs is worth 558 Smart Runs, while Rahul’s runs are worth only 553.That is because Smart Runs takes into account not just the total number of runs scored, but also the context. Context includes the scoring rates of the other batsmen in the match, the phase in which the batsman batted and the pressure on the batsman at each ball when he scored the runs. Based on these values, each run a batsman scores gets a Smart Runs value, which adds up to his Smart Runs for the innings.ESPNcricinfo LtdRahul’s outstanding unbeaten 132 off 69 balls against the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Kings XI Punjab’s second match fetched him 147 Smart Runs, but thereafter he slipped into the anchor role in most of his remaining innings. That was perhaps necessitated to some extent by the Kings XI’s brittle lower middle order, but several of those conservative innings came in defeats when other batsmen in the match scored faster. That includes a 54-ball 69 in Sharjah and a 41-ball 46 in Abu Dhabi against the Rajasthan Royals, a 52-ball 63 against the Chennai Super Kings, and a 58-ball 74 against the Kolkata Knight Riders. Those innings fetched fewer Smart Runs than the runs he actually scored.On the other hand, his opening partner Mayank Agarwal has been the enforcer at the top of the innings, which is why his 424 runs are worth 446 Smart Runs. The strike rates are indicative of the way each has played: Agarwal has scored his runs at a rate of 156.5, compared to Rahul’s 129.3.ESPNcricinfo LtdWhile Rahul’s overall numbers have dropped, his unbeaten 132 – the highest score of the tournament by some distance – remains the top batting performance of the tournament, fetching 203.7 impact points.In second place is Nicholas Pooran’s 77 out of a team total of 132 against the Sunrisers Hyderabad; the next-highest score in the innings was 11. Virat Kohli’s 52-ball 90 in a relatively low-scoring game against the Super Kings – no other batsman from either team lasted 15 balls at a strike rate of over 120 – is third, followed by Dhawan’s unbeaten 61-ball 106 against the Kings XI.ESPNcricinfo LtdIn terms of overall average batting impact, Agarwal tops the list because not only has he scored plenty of runs – 424 in 11 innings – but has also done it at a consistently fast clip with at a strike rate of 156.5. Among the 12 batsmen who have scored 400-plus runs, his strike rate is the best, though AB de Villiers, who has 398 runs at 163.8, should top him soon.de Villiers is in third place, after Dhawan, while Pooran’s excellent strike rates in high-pressure situations puts him fourth. Suryakumar Yadav’s twin unbeaten 79s – batting first against the Royals, and chasing against the Royal Challengers – have been highlights of his good season, in which he has combined consistent run-scoring with a brisk strike rate.The tournament’s top run-scorer, Rahul, is eighth in these rankings. His numbers suffer in relative terms because of his strike rate, which is the lowest among the top eight impact players.

Their new additions in the bowling department make them look a well-rounded unit

Varun Shetty05-Apr-20212:23

Do top-heavy Punjab have finishing firepower?

Where they finished in 2020 Sixth, best of three teams tied on 12 pointsPotential XI 1 Mayank Agarwal, 2 KL Rahul (capt. and wk), 3 Chris Gayle, 4 Nicholas Pooran, 5 Mandeep Singh, 6 Shahrukh Khan, 7 Chris Jordan/Fabian Allen, 8 Jhye Richardson, 9 M Ashwin, 10 Mohammed Shami, 11 Ravi Bishnoi/Arshdeep SinghBatting Not a lot has changed about Punjab Kings’ batting line-up. They continue to be a top-heavy side, with a blistering top four of Mayank Agarwal, KL Rahul, Chris Gayle and Nicholas Pooran. This is largely the line-up that helped them be one of the most consistent teams in the powerplays last year – they averaged 48.35 during that phase and lost only one wicket on average.Related

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The area they had issues with is their batting beyond these four, and while things came together during the end of IPL 2020, there hasn’t been a huge change in their roster. Glenn Maxwell and James Neesham are no longer with them, and potential replacements for them are Moises Henriques, Dawid Malan, and Fabian Allen. A change in strategy will either revolve around the stability that Henriques and Malan could provide – hence freeing up someone like Rahul early on – or the more ballistic option of banking on big-hitters like Allen and Shahrukh Khan. The reliance on uncapped top-order Indian batsmen in middle-order roles is likely to persist given the riches at the top and the fact that they have two breakneck overseas fast bowlers.All in all, it’s unlikely the flavour changes with their batting; it could be more of the same system, with the hope that their new personnel will fit better.Bowling They’ve spent huge amounts to acquire fast bowlers Jhye Richardson and Riley Meredith, in what was a clear and purposeful move to strengthen their bowling. Last year, the Kings were joint-second with Delhi Capitals for fast bowling economy, going at 9.15, and their games often turned around when their new-ball efforts were neutralised at the death. Richardson should bring far more consistency to them and that means they have at least five bowlers settled in for regular roles – Shami, M Ashwin, Arshdeep Singh, and Ravi Bishnoi being the others.ESPNcricinfo LtdWe could see a lot of Henriques this season, as a sixth bowling option, and Allen as a spin-bowling allrounder could be battling directly with Chris Jordan for a place in the side; for cases when they want both Richardson and Meredith in the line-up, that bowling-centric strategy can be aided by the likes of Jalaj Saxena or Utkarsh Singh as No. 7 batsmen.Young player to watch out forLeft-arm spinner Saurabh Kumar flies so far under the radar that even at domestic level, he isn’t often in headlines despite being one of Uttar Pradesh’s most important players. The 27-year-old is among the most consistent cricketers in the domestic circuit, with bowling plans often built around his tight control of line and lengths. He matches the guile that’s given him 192 first-class wickets at 23.44 with a strong game sense that’s given him economy rates of 4.38 and 7.04 respectively in List A and T20 cricket. In another season of balancing their top and bottom, Kumar could prove a handy option for PBKS.Coaching staff Anil Kumble (director of cricket operations), Andy Flower (assistant coach), Wasim Jaffer (batting coach), Jonty Rhodes (fielding coach), Damien Wright (bowling coach)Poll

“I am just thinking how I am going to recover and sleep through the night,” Ashwin said

Sidharth Monga15-Feb-20212:54

Manjrekar: Ashwin a player who loves responsibility

R Ashwin spent the limited-overs leg of the Australia tour, which he was not part of, working hard on and frustrated with his batting. He was being left out of the side because of Ravindra Jadeja’s added batting advantage. It was not an unreasonable selection call: there was room only for one spinner in away Tests, and of late Ashwin had made a fast descent from could-be-an-allrounder to is-he-a-tailender zone.Consequently India’s last four wickets were offering nothing while players such as Sam Curran and Kyle Jamieson were proving to be the extra depth that beat India in Tests they were competitive in. In 19 Tests leading up to the Australia tour, Ashwin had averaged 15.4 with a top score of 38. The batsman who not long ago could cover up for selection errors – like he did here – had gone missing.Like the earnest competitor that Ashwin is, he felt he needed to prove he was worthy of a place in the side. He would ask batting coaches what he needed to do and would tell them he would do it. Every chance he got, Ashwin worked on his batting, much like he did on his legspin to try and add value to himself as a limited-overs cricketer. His team-mates and coaches have sometimes in the past secretly ridiculed him for being too ambitious, but this was an understandable desperation and ambition.Related

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As it is, Ashwin was playing only one format for India, and there too he was now at the risk of being limited to Tests in India only. If not for the injury and concussion to Jadeja in the T20Is, there’s a fair chance Ashwin wouldn’t have played the Adelaide Test. That dismissal of Steven Smith in the first over and then the continued grip on him in Melbourne might not have happened had Jadeja, the better batsman of the two, had not been injured. And it might not have been that unreasonable a selection either.Vikram Rathour, the India batting coach, worked hard with Ashwin, gave him the freedom to try new things, but then concluded that his batting looked fine. He just needed to worry less about the results even though he could understand Ashwin’s concern because it was playing him out of the side.ESPNcricinfo Ltd”He has been very very helpful in terms of trying to explore new options,” Ashwin told Star Sports after his hundred in Chennai, confirming Rathour’s role in his batting turnaround. “As it is I am someone who tries a lot, and he is facilitating me to go out and express myself and explore various options. I’d love to credit him for my batting in the last four-five Tests. He has kept me in the loop, he has said I have been batting very well, and not to overthink it.”In that Adelaide Test, there were signs of the return of Ashwin the batsman when he added 27 with Wriddhiman Saha in the first innings, but again he was part of that horrible collapse in the second innings. Ashwin did feel, though, that he was batting better and that something good was around the corner. The last day of the Sydney Test, all the pain in his back, and the team situation, just took his mind off all the nuts and bolts he was worrying about.In the lead-up to the second Test, all Ashwin worried about with the bat in hand was how to counter Jack Leach, who had got him on the forward-defensive and also on the book foot. It is actually instructive that Ashwin spoke of the whole batting unit looking to find ways to counter Leach, not Dom Bess, who also got five wickets in the Test. Again, Ashwin credited Rathour for working with him on the sweep, a shot he hasn’t played much since he was 19.”After the last Test we were talking about how we are going to counter Leach and probably start bringing the sweep into our game,” Ashwin said. “The last time I swept was when I was 19 years old. And I missed a couple of sweep shots, got dropped from the side and didn’t play the sweep for the last 13-14 years. [I’ve] been practising only that shot over the last week to 10 days. Very very thankful that the plan has paid off. The wicket is such that you can get your runs square. A very very good day.”You might argue that this hundred was not exactly the typical lower-order runs India were after on their trips in England and New Zealand, but it did keep at bay any critics of the pitch his home ground rolled out. Surely they can’t doctor the pitch for both his bowling and his batting? And for a dreamy ambitious boy who grew up playing cricket in the streets of Chennai, to score a Test hundred at his theatre of dreams was extra special.”I am just thinking how I am going to recover and sleep through the night,” Ashwin said. “I am glad it has happened at my home ground. I don’t know if I am going to play another Test here. I don’t know when the next Test will be here.”As Ashwin said, the side has been living a dream over the last two-three months. Why not make it better and knock a home hundred and five-for off the list then?

The likes of Pooran, Morgan and Chahal have also failed to set the stage on fire

Vishal Dikshit03-May-2021Nicholas Pooran, Punjab Kings (Innings: six, runs: 28, average: 4.66, SR: 85)
One of the top T20 names in the world, Pooran has been going through a rut he wouldn’t have thought even existed. Four ducks in six innings, one of them without facing a ball, and a strike rate of under 85.Nicholas Pooran has four ducks in six matches so far in IPL 2021•ESPNcricinfo LtdApart from the run-out against the Sunrisers Hyderabad, Pooran has been out to the short ball a couple of times and thrown away his wicket the other times, to be dismissed by fast bowlers four out of five times.Pooran has been given a new role this season to bat at No. 5 behind Deepak Hooda, who has made useful contributions as the Punjab Kings’ new No. 4. The move was probably to stretch some muscle down the order after the departure of Glenn Maxwell, but it hasn’t worked at all, and Pooran was finally dropped to make way for Dawid Malan against the Delhi Capitals on Sunday.Related

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Eoin Morgan, Kolkata Knight Riders (Innings: seven, runs: 92, average: 15, SR: 112)
Being an overseas captain is always tricky in the IPL as it adds a layer of scrutiny on the player for blocking one of the four foreign spots. Eoin Morgan was the Kolkata Knight Riders’ second-highest scorer last season but this time he has managed under 100 runs after seven innings. Barring an unbeaten 47 that took his team home against the Kings, Morgan has also bagged two ducks, and only one other double-digit score.Morgan has shuffled between Nos. 4 and 5 so far and failed to provide the impetus the Knight Riders seek in the middle overs, whether batting first or second.As a result, the Knight Riders have failed to chase totals in the range of 150-170 and managed to score only 133 and 154 while batting first in Mumbai and Ahmedabad, where other teams have put up much higher totals.Shubman Gill, Kolkata Knight Riders (Innings: seven, runs: 132, average: 19, SR: 118)
As an opener in T20s, you would be expected to either go hard at the top or play anchor if wickets fall around you. And Shubman Gill has failed to do either of those jobs this season. It’s possible he has been asked to drop anchor while his partner Nitish Rana goes for the boundaries, but Gill has crossed 25 only twice.Shubman Gill has had a disappointing run so far in IPL 2021•ESPNcricinfo LtdAmong batters who have opened at least five times this IPL, Gill’s average is the lowest (18.85) and his strike rate among the bottom three, only higher than David Warner and Quinton de Kock.The Knight Riders, as a result, hardly get a strong start if Rana falls early. Gill’s crawling strike rate has often been compared with KL Rahul’s for the last two seasons. In Rahul’s case the argument is his middle order hasn’t been firing as much, but in the Knight Riders’ case Gill has Morgan, Dinesh Karthik and Andre Russell for the fireworks which shouldn’t be holding the opener back.Hardik Pandya, Mumbai Indians (Innings: six, runs: 52, average: 9, SR: 118)
The way Hardik Pandya was dispatching bowlers last season as a specialist batter with a strike rate of 179, his lean patch this time around has come as a surprise.Pandya has looked scratchy with his six-hitting exploits, facing a total of 44 balls across six innings. He went 40 balls without a six this season, and when he struck two in the tall chase against the Chennai Super Kings on Saturday, it looked like Pandya had regained his prowess, but he holed out to long-off while going for a third six. Barring the opening game in which he was trapped lbw, Pandya has been dismissed while going for the big shots, mostly in the ‘V’ down the ground.Pandya has been doing what he usually does in the death overs – go deep and across in the crease and swing down the ground – but it’s either the slower Chennai pitches or the slower deliveries from quick bowlers that have not allowed him to middle the ball.Suresh Raina, Chennai Super Kings (Innings: six, runs: 123, average: 25, SR: 127)
When the Chennai Super Kings finished second last in the 2020 IPL without Suresh Raina, it was thought that his return would be a big reason behind their turnaround this season. Their fortunes have turned, but it’s not because of Raina.After a cracking 54 at a strike rate of 150 in the Super Kings’ opening game, Raina’s form has dipped even though they have played all their matches in Mumbai and Delhi so far. A prolific batter against spin, Raina has fallen to pace all four times since that half-century, once to Mohammed Shami’s short ball and later to the lack of pace offered by clever bowlers like Harshal Patel and Chetan Sakariya.The Super Kings haven’t been hit hard by the lack of runs from Raina, who has batted mostly at No. 4 this time, because of the contributions from their openers, Moeen Ali at No. 3, and Ravindra Jadeja and Ambati Rayudu down the order. Placed second at the halfway stage, the Super Kings can rise even further if Raina regains his touch.Yuzvendra Chahal, Royal Challengers Bangalore (Innings: seven, wickets: four, average: 47.50, economy rate: 8.26)
Yuzvendra Chahal has been the Royal Challengers’ prime spinner for years, but neither has his attacking bowling earned him wickets so far nor has he been able to contain the runs. He would have licked his lips at the prospect of playing the first three games in Chennai but he went wicketless in two of those and leaked 41 runs against the Mumbai Indians.One of the reasons Chahal hasn’t clicked is that his legbreak – his stock delivery – has not fetched him wickets this time. His legbreaks got him 12 of his 18 wickets (67%) in 2019 and 16 of his 21 scalps (76%) last season. But so far in this season, Chahal has picked only four wickets in 23 overs, and only two of those off his legbreaks.Chahal also wasn’t able to hit the perfect lengths against the Kings in Ahmedabad, where Harpreet Brar and Bishnoi snared five wickets for a combined 36 runs from their eight overs. Chahal, on the other hand, bowled fuller and leaked 34 on his own, which included three sixes.

The legendary former West Indies fast bowler looks back at times he was on the receiving end of racism in a book co-written with Usain Bolt among others

Michael Holding25-Jul-2021Usain is thirty-four years old. And that could have been me talking at the same age. I travelled. I saw it. I heard it. And then I came home again. And did I talk about it with my parents? Not really. We didn’t dwell on the things that happened when I was away. I wanted to concentrate on my sport and career. Get on with building a life. And for Usain [Bolt], the same is true. When you are the fastest man the world has ever seen, life tends to get pretty busy and your mind is occupied. When I got back to Jamaica after a cricket tour or a stint playing county cricket in England, the last thing I wanted to do was rake over all the racist incidents during a chat with my parents. And, boy, was there a lot of that stuff.On my first tour to Australia as a West Indies player in 1975 I was abused from the crowd in Perth, Western Australia. “Go back to the trees!” That sort of thing would be headline news now, although as I type this, I have to say that I’ve just read a story about India players getting abuse from the crowd in a Test match in Sydney. Back then, I just shrugged and thought, Glad I don’t live in this country. But 2020 and it’s still going on? Pathetic.Related

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When we were travelling around Australia I distinctly remember being in an elevator with my team-mates and, on the way down from our floor to the lobby, the lift stopped on a floor below ours. The doors opened to reveal a middle-aged white guy who was awaiting the lift to go down as well, but when he saw four or five big Black guys, he stepped back. Fine. Maybe he was intimidated, we were a tall bunch. But as the doors shut, he shouted a racist slur. And do you know what we all did? We laughed. We thought it was funny that there were people as stupid as that in a country like Australia. In the Caribbean, where we all came from, we didn’t encounter such behaviour.My next overseas tour was in 1976 to England. I was there again in 1980. There the abuse came mainly in the form of letters delivered to the dressing room. Most were seeking autographs, but there were quite a few letters that were uncomplimentary to put it mildly. They went in the bin. I can’t remember the precise words but I’m sure all the old favourites were in them. “You Black this, you Black that, go back to your own country.”Joel Garner signs autographs for kids in Sydney, 1984•Kevin Solness/Fairfax Media/Getty ImagesOn the field of play I never had an opposition player say anything untoward. But I do remember a moment in a game when I was “guesting” in a reserve match for a professional team before I started playing county cricket, when I was made aware of the colour of my skin. We had just taken a wicket and were talking in a huddle about what the next move would be and one of my team-mates said something along the lines of “Get the Black so-and-so on to bowl.” Anyone who watched the West Indies team in my era will know that whenever a wicket fell, the entire team gathered together, whether to celebrate or just chat among ourselves until the next batsman appeared. Even those fielding right on the boundary edge made the trek in, but that was peculiar to us, not many other teams did it and especially not county teams. This player obviously didn’t realise that I had made my way in from my fielding position. It stung.And I’ve come across racism in pretty much every corner of the globe that I’ve travelled to down the years. That includes when I was playing as well as when I wasn’t. It’s taken on almost a different form, too, because I am often accompanied by my wife, Laurie-Ann, who is white. She is from Antigua but has Portuguese heritage. We’ve walked into a hotel in South Africa, and while I’m being attended to, someone else behind the desk will approach her and ask if she needs help to check in. She’s standing right beside me, but of course, in their mind, there is no way she could be with me.Simon and SchusterWhen on holiday in Nassau we’ve turned up at a restaurant with a booking and the maitre d’ will look at her, not me, and enquire about our reservation. At the end of the meal the waiter hands her the bill. Obviously, she came to Nassau and picked up this Black guy on the beach. The guys attending on us are Black. The brainwashing and unconscious bias work both ways. We laugh about that one. But if we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying. And there are loads more stories like those. The situations I have recounted are the ones that stick in the memory for one reason or another. And they each have the same impact. They strip away your humanity, they take away your feelings of self-worth. You feel as though you don’t belong, and I suppose, on a very basic level, that you are not wanted or liked. I think all human beings can relate to that. Like me, loathe me or be indifferent – that’s cool. Just don’t form a negative opinion about me because of the colour of my skin. It’s irrelevant.”I just want to keep preaching love,” Usain says. “And hope that we can see something change.”Maybe he’s right.Extracted with permission from Why We Kneel, How We Rise