India’s bowlers must get the credit for bowling the West Indies with guile and accuracy to bundle them out for 157.

Wisden CricInfo staff05-Jul-2005West Indies were diffident in their first innings, but India’s bowlers must get credit for bowling with guile and accuracy to bundle them out for 157. The graphic alongside may not indicate the control with which they bowled, but is a perfect representation of the variety in India’s bowling. As many as 140 of the 451 balls India bowled – 31% – were pitched on middle stump or further down leg.But this was not profligacy – Zaheer Khan, bowling round the wicket, pitched a lot of balls on leg which reached the batsman on off stump or just outside; and Harbhajan Singh bowled an effective over-the-wicket leg-stump line to the left-handers. Twenty-eight of his 31 balls that pitched outside leg were bowled to lefties Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Mahendra Nagamootoo, as were 17 of the deliveries on leg stump. All of 12 runs accrued from these 48 balls.Erapalli Prasanna once said: “line is optional but length is mandatory”. He would have been pleased today at the length the Indians bowled. As many as 354 deliveries – 78% – were on a good length or just short, and a further 40 – 9% – were yorkers. It was surprising that West Indies never tried something different to hit the spinners off their length – only once in the 451 balls they faced did a batsman step out.Interestingly, 103 of West Indies’ runs were scored on the leg side. Chanderpaul had a lot to do with this. His ungainly but effective shuffle towards off, and the tendency to play across, ensured that he scored 42 of his runs – 78% – on the leg side. It doesn’t matter how they come as long as they do – and when Chanderpaul plays India, they do.Amit Varma is assistant editor of Wisden.com in India.

England will be upbeat after having the better of the exchanges in the drawn game at Nagpur, but they won’t have pleasant memories of Mohali, the venue of the second Test

S Rajesh08-Mar-2006

The first day of the second Test was mostly about one outstanding individual performance: Virender Sehwag destroyed the West Indian attack with his magnificent 180 which put India on course for a huge first-innings total

On the Ball with S Rajesh10-Jun-2006The first day of the second Test was mostly about one outstanding individual performance: Virender Sehwag destroyed the West Indian attack with his magnificent 180 which put India on course for a huge first-innings total. Though Pedro Collins pulled it back somewhat with a wholehearted bowling effort, taking 4 for 75 and getting to 100 Test wickets in the process, India still ended the day well on top.On a pitch which was expected to assist the fast bowlers early, Sehwag completely snatched the initiative at the start with his aggression. It wasn’t just mindless hitting either: when Wasim Jaffer was going strong at the other end en route to their 159-run first-wicket stand – beating India’s previous highest in the West Indies, 136 between Sunil Gavaskar and Anshuman Gaekwad at Kingston in 1975-76 – Sehwag went hard at the bowling, taking advantage of the close-in fielders and the large gaps in the outfield. He scored 99 off 75 balls in the first session, missing by a whisker the opportunity to become the fifth batsman to score a century in the first session of a Test. When India lost Jaffer and VVS Laxman in the second session, he slowed down considerably, before picking up again in the final session when Rahul Dravid assured him of solidity at the other end.

Morning 75 99 15/ 2 Afternoon 72 43 4/ 0 Evening 43 38 1/ 0 The point and cover region were again the most prolific regions, but 40 of those 68 runs came before lunch, when there were more gaps in the field. As Lara packed the off side after lunch, Sehwag was good enough to work the balls on leg side for his runs.And as usual, Sehwag again proved that what’s a good length to most batsmen is a good run-scoring length for him – he scored at 5.45 per over off good-length deliveries, only marginally lower than his scoring rate off the balls which were too full or too short. The bowler who felt the Sehwag effect the most was Dwayne Bravo – he disappeared for 51 from the 37 balls be bowled to Sehwag; 28 of those deliveries were on a good length, and yet they cost him 37.The only West Indian who came out of the day’s play with his reputation enhanced was Collins, who became the 17th bowler from the region to get to 100 Test wickets. The most impressive aspect of his performance was his control: 110 out of 120 balls reached the batsman on or outside off stump; with Lara putting most of his fielders in a cordon around point and cover, that was the perfect channel to bowl.

The regular Monday column in which Steven Lynch answers your questions
about (almost) any aspect of cricket. This week it’s a World Cup
special

Steven Lynch20-Mar-2007The regular Monday column in which Steven Lynch answers your questions about (almost) any aspect of cricket. The World Cup dominates your questions again this week:

Has anyone played in three World Cup-winning teams? asked Michael Docherty from Brisbane
The only team which has won the World Cup three times is Australia (1987-88, 1999 and 2003), and no-one played in all three games. But three members of the current team were on the winning side in both the last two finals – Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Glenn McGrath, who thus stand to become the first three-time winners if Australia can justify their favourites’ tag again this year. Graham Gooch played in three finals for England … and, uniquely, lost the lot.I’m just watching Ireland play and they seem to have a lot on non-Irish-born players. How many of them are there, and what are the qualification rules? asked David Thompson from Huddersfield
The Irish squad includes four players who were born overseas – the captain Trent Johnston, Jeremy Bray and Dave Langford-Smith, who were all in Australia, and Andre Botha (South Africa). The full regulations are rather complicated, but basically a player born outside the country he wishes to represent can do so provided he has lived there for most of the preceding four years (and has not played for any other country in that time). Scotland’s squad also includes four players born outside the country – as does England’s – but the “leaders” in this regard at this World Cup are Canada, who have only three home-born players in their squad (John Davison, Ian Billcliff and Kevin Sandher) and Holland, who have eight players in their squad who were born outside the Netherlands. The full qualification rules can be found on the official ICC siteWho won a World Cup winners’ medal as a player but never played a World Cup match? asked Siddharth Ramesh from Chennai
I think the man you’re looking for has an even more remarkable claim to fame than that: Sunil Valson was in India’s World Cup -winning squad in 1983, but didn’t play in the competition – and in fact never played in a one-day international at all. Valson was a left-arm medium-pacer who took 212 wickets in first-class cricket, most of them for Delhi. In 2002-03 the offspinner Nathan Hauritz replaced Shane Warne in Australia’s squad when Warne was banned after a positive drugs test: Hauritz didn’t play in the tournament, but he has played in eight ODIs outside World Cups.Is Bermuda’s Dwayne Leverock the heaviest man to play international cricket? asked Savar Kashif from Kolkata
Bermuda’s genial left-arm spinner Dwayne Leverock is variously reported as weighing in at between 19 and 20 stone. I’m sure this makes him the heaviest player to appear in a World Cup, and probably in any one-day international, but there’s at least one player who outweighed him in Test cricket: Warwick Armstrong, the Australian captain who inflicted the first Ashes whitewash on England in 1920-21. By the time of the 1921 tour of England, Armstrong – who was known as “The Big Ship” – was thought to weigh around 22 stone. I read in a recent interview that Leverock lives above a curry house – and, he admitted with a twinkle in his eye, “there’s another one next door.” A recent Cricinfo column looked at some other beefy batsmen and bowlers.Ricky Ponting reached 1000 World Cup runs early in his hundred against Scotland. Is he the first Australian to do this? asked Colin Matthews from Perth
Ricky Ponting started this World Cup with 998 runs, and his first scoring shot in this tournament (a four off Dougie Brown) took him into four figures. And his next scoring shot – another boundary off Brown – took him past Mark Waugh (1004 runs) as Australia’s leading scorer in World Cup history. Ponting ended that match with 1111 runs (quadruple Nelson, perhaps?), behind only Sachin Tendulkar (1732) in the World Cup lists at the time. For updated details of the competition’s all-time leading runscorers, click here.Regarding the recent question about the current players who also appeared in the 1992 World Cup, didn’t Sourav Ganguly also do so and score 3 against West Indies … asked Pradyumna Dhore
No, Sourav Ganguly didn’t play in the 1992 World Cup, although I can see why you might have thought he did – he made his one-day international debut in Australia in 1991-92 – against West Indies at Brisbane – and did indeed score 3. But that was in the traditional Australian three-way one-day series, which was played before that season’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Ganguly didn’t make the Indian squad for that tournament – or the 1996 one.

Three years after it was devastated by the tsunami, a small corner of Sri Lanka is looking to the future with hope – and that’s thanks in no small part to the world’s premier cricket club

Andrew Miller16-Dec-2007

On Boxing Day 2004, the day when Sri Lanka was engulfed by tragedy on an apocalyptic scale, the country’s cricketers were 7000 miles away in Auckland, contesting a one-day international against New Zealand that has long since faded to irrelevance. Not all of them were there, however. The most significant name on the team-sheet was halfway down the coast from Colombo to Galle, ruled out of the tour by his ongoing rehabilitation from shoulder surgery. It was an operation that came within 20 minutes of costing him his life.Muttiah Muralitharan’s destination that day had been the coastal village of Seenigama, not more than half an hour north of Galle. He was travelling at the invitation of his manager, Kushil Gunasekera – an elder of the village – to attend a cricket scholarship function at his charity initiative, the Foundation of Goodness. Murali was delayed in leaving Colombo and became snarled up in traffic as it beat a hasty retreat from the southern end of the island. “The sea was behaving strangely,” he was told, and to his great disappointment – but later relief – he turned his car around and somehow kept ahead of the carnage as the coast was consumed in his wake.In Seenigama, Murali’s fellow function attendees were not so fortunate. Thirty children and their parents had already arrived at Gunasekera’s family villa, which for seven years had been the headquarters of his foundation. Within minutes they were fleeing for
their lives as the waves swept in from the coast.”On that fateful day, everything that we had created was shattered in a few minutes,” said Gunasekera. Three of the children present were lost to the waters, a further busload of 50 were swept out to sea en route, and one in ten of the 1500 villagers was never seen again. “I had a good look at my villa for the last time as I ran, through the back roads,” said
Gunasekera. “That day, what I saw in my village, I cannot describe in words.”The waves in Seenigama travelled up to two kilometres inland – aided by the illegal destruction of the local coral reef that could have provided a breakwater, and uninhibited by the low-lying marshland that made up much of the area. By the time they subsided, the region was a ruin and everything that Gunasekera had worked for had been destroyed.The walls of his villa were still standing – albeit with a smear of floodwater near the ceiling, showing that the tide had peaked at around three metres – but everything else he was obliged to rebuild from scratch. He acquired himself a motto which has since been carved in stone on the gateposts of his villa: “The waves of compassion overpowered the waves of destruction.”*****

It is coming up for the third anniversary of the tragedy, but Seenigama is a neighbourhood transformed. Murali’s passion, zeal and profile have set in motion the reconstruction of 1000 demolished houses, while Ian Botham and the rock star Bryan Adams are two other improbably connected celebrities who have adopted the cause as their own.Today, though, it is all about the MCC, the oldest and most famous cricket club of all, which came to hear of the plight of the village, and whose patronage has taken Gunasekera’s dream and sent it stratospheric.The MCC bigwigs are out in force today, to celebrate the culmination of a two-year partnership. Mike Brearley, the president; Keith Bradshaw, the chief executive; John Stephenson, the head of cricket; and Roger Knight, the former secretary, are all in attendance as Gunasekera leads the party through the various and varied phases of
his grand project. A craft centre, an English language school, a fully equipped computer centre, and a lively kindergarten for the children too young to recall the horrors that befell their elders. All are fully funded and fully operational, and joyfully received by the
local community.”The MCC has not merely provided a cricket ground and pavilion but a much broader input into the community,” said Brearley. “And what is more, money and goodwill tends to attract more money and goodwill.”The Centre of Excellence, as Gunasekera’s villa will henceforth be known, is just one part of the MCC’s project, however. Ten minutes down the road in nearby Hikkuduwa, there is a more conventional mark of the club’s patronage, as the Sri Sumangela Central College marks the opening of its new cricket ground.Hikkaduwa is one of the most popular coastal resorts in Sri Lanka, a mecca for surfers and sun-seekers alike. It’s also the location for a devastatingly poignant memorial to the tsunami – the remains of a train that was plucked off the railway line from Colombo to Galle by the waves, killing all 1600 people on board. Three battered carriages have been salvaged from the debris and repositioned in a siding next to the level crossing by the station, fully in view of the MCC convoy as it makes its way to the day’s second venue.Much like the Asgiriya Stadium in Kandy and Surrey’s Cricket Village near Colombo, the MCC-sponsored ground has been carved directly out of the jungle, creating a wonderfully atmospheric amphitheatre. Reddish-brown scars on all sides of the pitch bear testament to the newness of the venue, but also provide perfect natural viewing platforms for the locals who’ve come to see the show. Later in the day the ground will be officially opened by a Twenty20 match between the MCC and the Foundation of Goodness, but the first item on the agenda is a Spirit of Cricket skills programme for a group of Under-11 cricketers.

Ian Bell and Graeme Swann have come along for this stage of the day, which is billed as a chance for the children of the local community to get an introduction to the game. Not one of them needs it, however. Bell and his various batting partners are run out by direct hits every other delivery, while Swann has a mow at his first ball and loses all three stumps. The pair are seriously impressed by what they see, particularly when an outstanding one-handed catch is pulled off in the deep.Hardly a chance goes to ground all day, and by the end of it all, both professionals have ditched the kid gloves and are spanking their shots and tweaking their offbreaks as hard as possible. England’s half-hearted Kwik-cricketers, the likes of whom turn out at Lord’s
during Test match lunch-breaks, have been comprehensively put to shame. Later in the day, in his opening address, Brearley speaks of his desire for the next Murali or Mahela Jayawardene to come from the playing fields of Sri Sumangela, but on this evidence, the MCC has just mined an entire generation.By early afternoon the ground is awash with villagers – some 3000 people crowd around the various vantage points, some perched high on the rocks next to the new bacon-and-egg-coloured indoor school, others sat peacefully on the boundary’s edge or in the shade of the pavilion. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the MCC’s 20-over game is watched by more people than turned out for each day of the Kandy Test match, Murali’s world record notwithstanding.Clearly the admission costs were a factor during the Test, but there is something else at play here. A pair of pundits belt out the action over the giant PA, trumpeters and drummers keep up their own musical commentary as they cavort on the boundary’s edge, and free wafers and orange juice are passed among the parched spectators. At the break
between innings, just as the evening rain begins to fall, a troupe of brightly coloured girls takes to the outfield to perform traditional Sri Lankan dances. After the shattering events of the tsunami, the sense of a community being rebuilt is unmistakeable.”It’s difficult to know what the end result will be when you commit to a project such as this,” said Brearley, “but it’s only when you come here that you get to see something that’s alive and real.” Gunasekera is the happiest man alive as he leads his team out to bat, and when a spanking innings is ended by Bradshaw’s sharp catch in the gully, he departs the field with a grin as broad as the spectrum of projects his efforts have helped put in place. In one small corner of tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka, the waves of compassion really have overpowered the waves of destruction.

After being hailed as English spin’s saviour, Panesar has had a less-than-miraculous sophomore term. Sure the talent is still there, but he needs to get his self-belief back, and get out of his shell some

Andrew Miller25-Jan-2008

Like a FTSE-listed victim of the global credit crunch, Monty Panesar’s stock has fallen dramatically of late. He’s slipped from his June high of No. 6 in the world rankings to a lacklustre No. 20, he’s lost the one-day spinner’s role that was his during the World Cup in March, and he’s even had to make do with a third-placed finish in the annual
Beard of the Year awards – the title he scooped during his Ashes zenith last winter.This week his England team-mates jet off to New Zealand for the start
of their spring campaign, but Panesar has been asked to take the
scenic route Down Under. Yesterday he arrived in Mumbai with the
England Lions, where over the next couple of weeks he’ll hone his
skills in the Duleep Trophy, India’s premier domestic competition.
Nobody expects it to be a holiday camp – one on famous occasion on the
last such tour in 2003-04, Rod Marsh’s squad somehow allowed South
Zone to chase 501
for victory in the fourth innings – but for Panesar the trip
represents an urgently needed break from the limelight.His game has been stuck in a rut for the past six months, and in Sri
Lanka before Christmas, the frustration was evident. Monty’s mantra
throughout his brief career has been that most enervating of
cricketing clichés, “Put the ball in the right areas”, but for long
periods in all three Tests, he was palpably unable to do just that.
His impact may have been dulled by the broad blades of Kumar
Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, but instead of backing himself to
bowl maidens and bore his opponents into error, he sacrificed his
established strengths of line and length, and set about searching for
the elusive magic delivery.It was not a recipe for success, personal or collective. Panesar still
finished as England’s leading wicket-taker in the series, but that was
entirely down to the shortcomings of his fellow bowlers. His eight
scalps at 50.62 were his worst return since his debut tour of India in
March 2006, but they mirrored almost exactly the eight at 50.37 he
picked up in his previous outing, the home series against India. If a
mental block is forming in his game, then the selectors should be
praised for spotting the right moment to pull him from the front line.”He didn’t have the best of times in Sri Lanka,” said David Parsons,
the ECB’s performance director, who will oversee the Lions tour. Prior
to his appointment in December, Parsons had worked alongside Panesar
as the England team’s spin coach, and few know the mechanics of his
game better. “Monty’s the sort of guy who wants to play all the time,
so I’m sure he’s looking forward to the trip,” Parsons added. “We all see
this as an opportunity for him to work on his game so he’s ready for
the Test matches in New Zealand.”England’s former coach Duncan Fletcher would doubtless seize upon
this form slump as vindication of his own, controversial, assessment
of Panesar’s talents, but not everyone sees it quite like that. Writing in the Observer, Vic Marks, himself a former England spinner, suggested that Panesar was in need of nothing more than a “10,000-ball check-up”. “Monty is a mechanical bowler rather than an intuitive one, which need not be a major disadvantage,” said Marks.
“But [he] looks as if he’s starting to panic when his tried-and-trusted mechanism is no longer producing the results.”

If a touch of vertigo is setting in after Panesar’s stellar rise in
international cricket, it’s hardly surprising – he has not even
completed two years in the Test team, but he has ridden such a
tidal wave of hype and celebrity, he’s sure to feel weighed down by
inflated expectations. Mind you, his lofty profile is largely
self-inflicted – in 2007, thanks to some pretty avaricious cash-ins
by his team of advisors, he was the face of everything from DVDs to
potato snacks, and even found time for an unfortunately premature
autobiography.”A few people have suggested I might be getting too commercially
motivated, but nothing could be further from the truth,” said Panesar.
“When you become a recognised face, people want to get to know you and
with that can come opportunities, but I am working as hard as ever on
my cricket.”Few who saw him in the nets in Sri Lanka would doubt that
final assertion, but somehow he lacks a spark of belief at present.
His predecessor, Ashley Giles, also struggled to cope with the burden
that is placed on England’s anointed spinner, but in hindsight Giles had
it easy. In an era dominated by three of the greatest (and weightiest)
wicket-taking spinners in history, no one realistically expected him
to match the matchless. Panesar, for one reason or another, does not
have that luxury.In truth, he’s been pretty unfortunate in his timing. Five of his
first seven series (and 15 of his 23 Tests) have featured one of the
big three – Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne and Anil Kumble – who
currently outweigh his wickets tally by the small matter of 25 to 1.
Coming from a culture where deference to one’s elders is ingrained
from birth, that’s quite some mental hurdle to have to overcome.Panesar’s reaction ahead of each of these series has been the same.
“How can the student be a rival to the teacher?” he said of his
impending meetings with both Kumble and Muralitharan last year. The
answer, to judge by his stats, is that he can’t. Monty’s record in
matches involving the big three is 41 wickets at 41.68, compared to 40
at 23.62 against the spin-light opposition of Pakistan and West Indies.
Moreover, he’s contributed to two victories in 15 attempts in the
first bracket, compared to six in eight in the second.

That’s not to say he hasn’t had some measure of success in these
games, but at no stage – except arguably in Perth during the Ashes, when
he was pumped to the gunwales with indignation after his earlier
omissions – has he gone in with the same belief that so overwhelmed
West Indies and Pakistan. With that in mind, his next destination,
after the Indian interlude, is an intriguing one. New Zealand’s
captain is Daniel Vettori, the most durable left-arm spinner in the
world today. He’s respected and renowned, but hardly the type to be
revered. In fact, his average of 34.22 is two clicks higher than
Panesar’s, and his strike-rate some ten balls slower.Perhaps that goes to show that Monty’s off-colour moments simply come
with the territory. Despite the hype, he is not the messiah that
England dearly wish him to be. He is merely the best slow bowler that
the country has to offer. A touch more self-belief would not go amiss,
however, and to that end he could doubtless be helped by his captain.
In one of the most candid passages of his autobiography, Panesar tells
of the excitement he felt when selected for his debut against India at
Nagpur. Up he bounded to the room of the then-skipper, Andrew
Flintoff, armed with a bundle of plans and potential field placings.

When I knocked on Flintoff’s door and handed over the results
he seemed a bit bemused.

“This is what I’m thinking of doing,” I said.

“Ah, okay,” he replied, sounding as puzzled as he looked. “No worries
at all, mate. I’ll take it all on board and you have a good night’s
sleep.”

I decided I ought to leave quickly because I wasn’t sure whether he
wanted me in his room

Michael Vaughan, take note. Monty is his own man, and has plenty of
ideas to make his own game work better. But to judge by the passivity
of his recent performances, he could probably do with being coaxed
back out of his shell a touch.

His numbers in T20s and in first-class cricket are fantastic, but Nabi knows not to get his hopes up too much

Shashank Kishore12-Dec-2025For a few seasons now, Jammu & Kashmir’s Auqib Nabi, 29, has taught himself to expect nothing from the IPL auction. And yet, as December 16 approaches, even he admits things feel a little different ahead of the auction for 2026.”It feels different, but I’m not able to point a finger to any one specific reason,” Nabi tells ESPNcricinfo. “Finally that moment is here… but you can’t tell anything. If it doesn’t happen, it’s fine. I’m used to it. I’ll work even harder.”These are familiar words if you’ve spoken to anyone on the fringes of the IPL. But Nabi is earnest and unmistakably pragmatic. While he is firmly anchored to the belief that nothing in cricket is guaranteed, he allows himself one concession: “This year… there’s some excitement.” And there’s a good reason.Related

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Nabi has picked up 15 wickets in seven matches so far at the T20 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (SMAT) at an economy rate of 7.41. In his most recent outing earlier this week, against Madhya Pradesh, he contributed a cameo 32 off 21 balls with the bat that helped set up a defendable total, before returning with a crucial three-wicket haul to seal the game for J&K.The SMAT performances came on the back of an exceptional start to the 2025-26 Ranji Trophy, where he was the only seamer among the top-five wicket-takers in the first half of the season. His 29 wickets in nine innings included three five-fors and a stunning 7 for 24 against Rajasthan, helping J&K guarantee themselves a knockouts berth.Those numbers merely extended the dominance he showed in the 2024-25 Ranji Trophy, when he finished with 44 wickets at a remarkable average of 13.93. No seamer in the country came close – the next best managed 35 wickets – and only Vidarbha’s left-arm spin-bowling allrounder Harsh Dubey bettered Nabi’s tally with a record-breaking 69 wickets.

“It’s very tough when you keep performing well and still get no recognition. It’s deflating. But it has taught me to be mentally strong. It’s on the individual how to handle this. No one can teach you”Auqib Nabi

On the back of this rich haul, Nabi was picked in the North Zone squad for the season-opening Duleep Trophy, where he announced himself with four wickets in four balls. Yet, even as Nabi’s domestic record has grown more compelling with each passing season, his continued absence from India A squads has been a talking point within the cricketing ecosystem.”It’s very tough when you keep performing well and still get no recognition,” Nabi says. “It’s deflating. But it has taught me to be mentally strong. It’s on the individual how to handle this. No one can teach you.”Nabi underlines how social media posts – from family, friends and well-wishers who look at his numbers and assume a breakthrough is imminent – has amplified expectations. “I try to keep my focus on matches. I don’t think about selection or results. I live in the present, not the future or past. But how can I tell this to my family or friends who think [it will happen this time]?”To them, it’s the numbers [which matter]. To me, it’s performances that I’ve put in. But also luck is a big thing. Trials are a tough place. You’re competing with so many. When you bowl, who is watching, how many balls you get – all this makes a difference. Sometimes, you have to achieve certain targets, even if it may seem unrealistic. There are so many things that go into being picked in the shortlist from some one-thousand names and then for your name to be called out.”Auqib Nabi was the most successful fast bowler at the 2024-25 Ranji Trophy•PTI “[During] Ranji last season, nobody even spoke of me. I had six five-fors, and was among the best pacers. But it was only after this Duleep [Trophy] match where I took four [wickets] in four [balls] that I got the recognition. Even though it was in a red-ball match, a record is a record.”Suddenly, teams were calling. Trials followed with Delhi Capitals and Mumbai Indians. A few others were in the pipeline, but clashed with SMAT games.”All the trials went well. Let’s see [what happens] on the 16th,” Nabi says with a shrug. He doesn’t even know if he will watch the auction. “I prefer not to think a lot about it. I may not even watch it. I don’t know; it’s so hard to say how it’ll be on that day.”What has sustained him through these years is his skill. Nabi isn’t obsessed with the speed gun, even though he plays in a region that has produced Umran Malik. He knows his value lies elsewhere.Nabi’s natural delivery is the outswinger to the right-hand batter, but he has worked hard to master the inswinger too, spending two seasons honing the ability to move the ball both ways with control. The work has extended to T20 skills – yorkers, wide yorkers, slower bouncers, as well as the discipline of bowling with the new ball and at the death.

“I keep alternating between deleting social media apps and installing them just to post and get out”Auqib Nabi

“You need to keep evolving,” he says. Through it all, fitness has never abandoned him. “I’m blessed that way, because I’ve never looked at fitness as something extra; it’s part of my conditioning. That’s why long spells have never been an issue.”Nabi credits J&K bowling coach P Krishna Kumar for guiding him through the nuances of red-ball and white-ball bowling, and helping him understand his game better. But perhaps the biggest shift has come from the improvements within the J&K cricket ecosystem.”Earlier, before Ranji, there wasn’t much build-up. I used to play club cricket in Bangalore, which can be tough for an outsider. Now we have camps, matches, wickets, practice games. There’s a system in place.”Coming from a background where even a proper pitch to bowl on and wearing spikes, didn’t exist, the difference is immense. “Where I come from, in Baramulla, there’s no set-up. I had to bowl from a short run-up. Even now, if I have to train, I go to Srinagar or Jammu. These are the two places.”The competitive mindset has changed too. A decade ago, merely competing with big teams was treated like an achievement. Today, the belief is different. “Last four-five years, we’ve developed that mindset. Competing is not good enough. We can beat anyone. It starts from there.”The achievements of players like Umran Malik have allowed J&K players to dream big•Getty ImagesFormer J&K captain and allrounder Parvez Rasool sowed those seeds of belief when, in 2015, he became the first player from J&K to represent India. Malik has shown what raw pace can do. Abdul Samad and Rasikh Salam have seen intermittent IPL success. Young players in J&K now allow themselves to dream big.Nabi himself remains deeply committed to that dream, but he also holds another one close: winning a domestic title for J&K.”I’ll be happiest if I can help my team win a title,” he says. Conversations with senior players like Arshdeep Singh during the Duleep Trophy have reinforced what he already believed: follow the process, trust the work, stay true to your routines, and results will follow.Nabi has been hardened by the domestic grind over the years, but when expectations from outside get too much, he cuts himself off. “I keep alternating between deleting social media apps and installing them just to post and get out,” he says with a hint of a laugh.Nabi’s performances over the last 18 months are now slowly being talked about. His name is circulating in the right places. Yet, he is guarded: “If it happens, great. If not, I’ll go back to work. But yes… this year, there’s excitement.”

Some may point to the nature of the pitch but it was nowhere near as inert as some of Bangalore’s big-name players were

Cricinfo staff19-May-2008

It was a dismissal that summed up Bangalore’s shambolic displays in this
competition. Misbah-ul-Haq, who finally revealed why so many consider him
a maestro of the Twenty20 format, smacked one hard to long-off and set off. For
an instant, it looked as though it might be four, but Shoaib Malik, on as
a substitute for Gautam Gambhir, made good ground to stop the ball with
his forearm.It was the last ball of the 16th over and given that the scoreboard was
hardly moving, Cameron White had hared across for the first and turned
quickly for the second. Misbah, perhaps used to more leisurely rhythms, didn’t respond, and Malik’s throw to the bowler was passed on to Dinesh Karthik behind the stumps. White, who now has a paltry 57 runs in the IPL, was yards out.Unlike in Test cricket, where you can have a poor session, or a one-day
game, where you can be whacked in the Powerplays before staging a
comeback, Twenty20 is an unforgiving format. A couple of bad overs and the game
slides out of reach. Given the rain in the air and the cool conditions,
Rahul Dravid would have been justified in expecting something special from
his quick bowlers when they emerged to defend 154. Instead, Dale Steyn
apart, they dished up the sort of rubbish that Geoffrey Boycott would have
fancied his mum to hit.For Delhi, Glenn McGrath and Farveez Maharoof had been almost immaculate,
conceding 28 from eight overs and taking four wickets along the way. The
contrast with Zaheer Khan and Praveen Kumar couldn’t have been more stark.
Bangalore’s duo, both internationals, went for a whopping 70 from
five overs, with Bharat Chipli’s brilliant catch at point gifting Praveen
a wicket.Bowling half-volleys and long hops to Sehwag isn’t clever at the best of
times. To do so when your team had half a chance thanks to Misbah’s late
flails was beyond the pale. Sehwag tried to defend his mates, saying: “The
wicket was flat, good to bat on, and Gautam and I played really really
well”, but in reality, the pitch was nowhere near as inert as some of
Bangalore’s big-name players were.Dravid was diplomatic as always, though he admitted that conceding 91 from
the first seven overs wasn’t the best way to defend a modest target.
“Given the conditions, I thought it was a good, fighting total,” he said.
“Their top two are the guys in form and if we could have cracked one, or
even both of them, open, we might have had a chance. But yes, we could
have bowled a little better.”The consolation prize, and that’s all that Bangalore will win this season,
came in the shape of a tidy spell from Anil Kumble and a superb allround
display from Sreevats Goswami. With just one wicket in his previous six
outings, the $500,000 investment on Kumble was looking rather generous,
but on Monday night the old tricks and temperament scripted a nice
turnaround.Tillakaratne Dilshan was smartly stumped by Goswami off a big legbreak and
Dinesh Karthik then miscued one to cover for White to take a fine catch.
Had a contentious caught-and-bowled appeal against Shikhar Dhawan been
upheld, Kumble’s figures would have been 4-0-18-3. As it was, the spells
from him and Steyn weren’t quite enough to camouflage the inadequacies of
others.Goswami, who has spent the last few weeks training alongside Mark Boucher,
was as relaxed behind the stumps as he was in front of it. Bangalore’s
batting displays in this competition have been dire to put it mildly, and
it was no surprise that his 39-ball half-century elicited huge cheers from
a sizeable crowd. He ran the singles and twos with purpose and also pulled
the ball with immense power for a little man.”He got an opportunity after quite a long wait,” said Dravid. “He’s got
something about him. He showed some pluck and some fight out there.”
Cautious against the accurate Maharoof, he chose his moments well, picking
off Pradeep Sangwan, his Under-19 team-mate and Rajat Bhatia with aplomb.Ultimately though, even Goswami had to cede centrestage to the real
heroes, Delhi’s dynamic bowling duo. “Both of them [McGrath and Maharoof]
hardly gave anything,” said a smug Sehwag later. “They know where to bowl
and how to bowl.”For the moment, few batsmen have any answers. Bring on Ganguly, Tendulkar
and Jayasuriya.

For a change, West Indies are ahead in the series and the issues of unfitness, absenteeism and leadership that have stalked them in recent times are now attending their opponents

Tony Cozier26-Feb-2009

West Indies find themselves in an unfamiliar position entering today’s Test at Kensington Oval. For a change, they are ahead in the series and the issues of unfitness, absenteeism and leadership that have stalked them in recent times are now attending their opponents.A shift in self-confidence, another irritant they seemed unable to overcome during their decade of decline, is also evident. What doubts there are now lie with England.Andrew Flintoff’s strained hip muscle, the latest setback in a medical history that would fill several episodes of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, has eliminated their talisman from a match that is likely to determine the outcome of the series.His influence is such that Shane Warne commented on Wednesday that if he doesn’t play in the Ashes series in the summer, “Australia will win, no doubt”. It was a typical case of Aussie hyperbole but, whether in the Ashes or at Kensington over the next five days, England are undeniably weaker without him.No sooner than his absence was confirmed than Matt Prior, the highly accomplished No. 7 who also keeps wicket on the side, hopped on a flight back to London to be with his wife who had given birth to the couple’s first child, a son, a day earlier.It is the modern way – the present captain Andrew Strauss and the South African Shaun Pollock are among others who have interrupted tours for paternity leave – but it hardly does anything for team unity when his replacement, Tim Ambrose, is told it is a stop-gap measure until Prior can tear himself away from the little one and return for the final Test in Port of Spain.As it is, the two have engaged in the cricketing version of musical chairs over the past two years – Prior out, Ambrose in, Ambrose out, Prior in. Competition is good but, in such circumstances, it can be divisive.England’s reservations extend to a piece of floating bone in the right elbow of Graeme Swann whose eight wickets at the ARG were reward for quality off-spin bowling. He has postponed the required surgery but, even though he has declared himself fit enough to play, it is hardly the ideal situation.West Indies can relate to all such upheavals. Over the past two years they have been repeatedly diminished by injuries and illnesses to key men, although not yet by any new-born babies. That day will, no doubt, soon arrive.Over the period, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Chris Gayle and Dwayne Bravo have all missed matches, or parts of them, at critical times. On this occasion, Bravo, an allrounder as important to the balance and energy of the West Indies as Flintoff is to England, remains unavailable while his right ankle mends after surgery. All the others are fit, in form and now believing they can win.Such contrasts extend to the captaincy. The controversy over Gayle’s elevation to the helm for West Indies in 2007 has been simulated by Strauss’s hurried replacement of Kevin Pietersen a fortnight before England touched down in the Caribbean, and the predictable aftermath. Gayle is now well established in the position. He has scored hundreds in two of his last four Test innings and three in his last eight ODIs and is undefeated as captain for five Tests.In his first match back at the helm, Strauss presided over the 51 all out loss at Sabina Park. It was an experience that might have prompted his unnecessarily delayed declaration in the following Test in Antigua. Even after his own commanding 169 in the first innings there, it suggested a captain still unsure of himself and his team.The core question over the coming five days is whether West Indies can capitalise on such a favourable state of affairs. The answer will divulge just how far they are on the road back to respectability.

A look at what prompted Virender Sehwag’s allegations against the DDCA

Sidharth Monga24-Aug-2009It needed a player of Virender Sehwag’s stature to take on the Delhi & Districts Cricket Association (DDCA), even though all he did by threatening to leave Delhi last week was to reveal the tip of the iceberg. It needed Sehwag because everybody else is too small a fry to even raise allegations of maladministration of cricket – especially in matters of selection at various levels – in a city that runs on connections and clout.This isn’t the first time such allegations have been levelled but it is the first time they’ve had any resonance; most often no official comes out to deny those stories, no newspaper is sued. It almost seems the DDCA is not bothered about its image. This time, junior players found a voice and threatened to follow him out of Delhi. Meanwhile, Sehwag faced a barrage of counter-charges: he’d been bought over by Haryana for a plot of land, he wanted his cousin in the Delhi team. And so on.Yet Sehwag held firm and his stand, right or wrong, is important because it involves Delhi, a nursery for leading Indian cricketers over the last 10-odd years. That’s a fact the DDCA uses in its defence, but which its detractors feel has happened not because of the system but despite it. The detractors point to Delhi’s sole Ranji Trophy win in the past 18 seasons and fear the player supply, like the silverware, will dry up. “There will still be a few talented players who will be at the right place and at the right time,” says one. “Even a few of the players supported by the sports committee could be good, but that’s not how you want them to come up.”Eventually, the matter boils down to the sports committee and its alleged transgressions. Unlike other state associations, Delhi cricket is run by its sports committee, which was created in 1994 to handle the conduct of the local DDCA league and the welfare of its 112 clubs. But the sports committee has become stronger and stronger because of the indifference of the more powerful body, the executive committee, made up largely of mid-level industrialists and small-time businessmen.The executive committee’s peculiarity is that it can’t be voted out. “There is no check on them,” says a current Delhi player. “There is no opposition. You can’t stop them from doing what they want. They get voted in again and again by proxy system.” That’s another peculiarity of the DDCA – it allows members to pass on their voting rights to others, and it’s anyone’s guess what is received in exchange.The sports committee’s power lies in the fact that it proposes selectors for every single age-group team. It’s possible that the names may not be accepted, but it doesn’t usually happen. These teams are the most sought-after, given the avenues they open up, and consequently the selection process is susceptible to fraud. Sehwag was less ambiguous when he first levelled the charge of corruption. “There is too much interference and manipulation from the sports committee in selection committees,” he said. “The sports committee has got too much power. There is more interference at the under-16 and under-19 levels than the Ranji Trophy. In a squad of 15, for instance, the sports committee tries to influence the selectors and slip in one or two of ‘their own’ boys.”His message is clear: if a new Virender Sehwag is to emerge, he’d better come with connections – or be prepared to move out.As did Rahul Dewan, or Murali Kartik, Amit Mishra, Yashpal Singh and a long list of others. It’s anyone’s guess what the future holds for Dron Chhabra, a 15-year-old left-arm bowler whom Wasim Akram loved during a fast-bowlers’ camp last year and whom John Buchanan wanted in the Kolkata Knight Riders set-up – but who hasn’t made Delhi’s Under-16 side.

[Only] if people come and vote can you convince them of the need to change things. Everybody adds to the corruption. I hate to say this, but there are people sitting there, who get these proxies by pleasing clubs, by giving somebody a local manager’s job, a coach’s job, by playing somebody’s son or nephewManinder Singh, former India left-arm spinner

Two years ago, when the 2006-07 season ended, Delhi faced a rebellion similar to the one at hand. Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Mithun Manhas, Aakash Chopra and Ashish Nehra were all gravitating away from the state, fed up with the political interference and selectorial conspiracies. They stayed on, though, and the team played with unity and flair and were a treat to watch. They went on to win the Ranji Trophy. Vijay Dahiya, the coach, said the crucial – and the most challenging – part of his job then was to take all that stuff off the players’ minds and make sure that when they walked out on the field, they were in a mental state conducive to them giving their best.That championship didn’t change things off the field, however. Officials still took the players for granted – [all you’ll play is Ranji Trophy], they were told – and till date Delhi still doesn’t have a single indoor training facility nor have other financial issues been sorted out. The limit on outstation players in Ranji cricket inhibited players’ movement and left them feeling shackled.Former players feel badly about the situation but say it is too big a cultural shock to try and make a change. “I feel so sad that I have played for Delhi and can’t do anything about it,” says Maninder Singh, the former India left-arm spinner. “You just can’t go there and mix with people who are playing politics all the time. Bishan [Bishan Bedi] has been trying for a number of years, but you can’t beat them because it is a proxy system. [Only] if people come and vote can you convince them of the need to change things. Everybody adds to the corruption. I hate to say this, but there are people sitting there, who get these proxies by pleasing clubs, by giving somebody a local manager’s job, a coach’s job, by playing somebody’s son or nephew. As far as I am concerned, I can’t join them.”It’s not as if no other player has protested before but they have made little difference. There is reason to feel that Sehwag might succeed. He meets Arun Jaitley, the DDCA president, on Tuesday to try and end the impasse. There are reports that a compromise has already been worked out. But if Delhi cricket is to turn for the better, Sehwag will have to go the whole hog. Else his protest will just be a reference point for the next time another top player raises his voice.