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Mohammad Salahuddin and Nazmul Abedeen Fahim are the men the likes of Shakib Al Hasan turn to repeatedly when they need advice

Mohammad Isam30-Oct-2020It wasn’t a huge surprise that Shakib Al Hasan chose Bangladesh Krira Shikka Protishtan (BKSP) as the setting for his return to training last month. At the time Bangladesh were still scheduled to tour Sri Lanka and it looked certain that Shakib, who is coming back from a one-year suspension for failing to report a corrupt approach, would be available for the second Test, so he needed to bring his fitness and skills up to speed.BKSP, Shakib’s alma mater, is where he learned to play the game. There is no better place in Bangladesh than this renowned government-run sports institute for an all-round fitness and training experience for elite athletes. It has facilities for 17 sporting disciplines, including cricket, football, athletics and swimming, and also competent sports science and physiotherapy departments. It wasn’t just the facilities that Shakib needed, though.At a time when he needed to reacquaint himself with cricket, he needed Mohammad Salahuddin and Nazmul Abedeen Fahim, his lifelong mentors and two of the most admired coaches in Bangladesh, by his side.Fahim, who is now BKSP’s cricket advisor, was one of the pioneering coaches at the institution. Salahuddin, who went to school and college at BKSP, was the chief cricket coach there from 2000 to 2005. After a stint as Bangladesh’s assistant coach under Jamie Siddons, he became the first local coach to win two BPL titles. Currently he is the head coach of the Dhaka Premier League side Gazi Group Cricketers.ALSO READ: ‘Our boy is coming home’ – Bangladesh eager to welcome back ‘champion’ Shakib Al HasanThe two men have had a lasting influence on a generation of Bangladeshi cricketers who broke the mould to become top-level performers, among them Mushfiqur Rahim, Mominul Haque, Soumya Sarkar and Liton Das.Salahuddin became something of an overnight sensation after he took a diploma in sports coaching from the Sports Authority of India and then, while being chief coach at BKSP, led the unheralded Victoria Sporting Club to consecutive Dhaka Premier League titles in the 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons. He also took Araf Apparels to the Corporate League title in 2004.”Daulat [former Bangladesh cricketer Daulat Uz Zaman] had passed away midway through the season. They appointed me quickly and then we went on to win the title,” Salahuddin says about his appointment as Victoria coach. “It gave me a bit more say in matters of team building and XI selection in the next season. These three titles were my big breakthrough. My confidence changed and I had acceptability. It opened many doors for me.”Among those doors was the one into the national team set-up. Salahuddin impressed Dav Whatmore, Bangladesh’s head coach at the time, with his fielding drills when the team was training at BKSP, and in 2005 he became the team’s fielding coach.When Siddons took over from Whatmore in 2007, it was a delicate time for Bangladesh, who were under constant pressure to win at home and abroad, and to also prepare their mostly raw players for the highest stage. Siddons saw how the young players communicated with Salahuddin and their respect for him.Champaka Ramanayake, Jamie Siddons and Mohammad Salahuddin (from left) chat during a practice session•Getty Images”Salahuddin was one of the guys I looked up to,” Siddons says. “He had such a great relationship with all the players – they all have great respect for him because of their association with BKSP. He was really close friends with Shakib, Tamim [Iqbal] and Mushfiq. He is also one of the better coaches that I saw in Bangladesh, if not the best one.”Most foreign coaches who have worked in Bangladesh have noted the players’ high regard for Salahuddin and often brought him in to work with them at training camps. When Gary Kirsten made a high-profile audit of Bangladesh cricket couple of years ago, Salahuddin was one of the people he called for a one-on-one meeting.Salahuddin quickly stepped into the role of Siddons’ assistant and helped the likes of Shakib, Iqbal and Rahim grasp the coach’s batting philosophy, which among other things required batsmen to have a high backlift and to produce runs consistently.”He was the go-between for myself and the players,” Siddons says. “He got the best out of them and was a real driving force behind the team’s improvement.”Notably, Salahuddin helped Abdur Razzak overcome a suspension for an illegal bowling action within four months, and also helped him become a better spinner.”When he was first reported [four years previously], Razzak didn’t really fix his action, which is why he was reported a second time,” Salahuddin says. “Everyone had given up on him, and many believed he would never play again. He was told that if he failed the action test a second time, he would have to pay for the next test. But Jamie supported him and gave me time to work with him.”Razzak’s desire and the support from everyone helped him come back. Normally a bowler struggles to find the same level of performance with a new action. Razzak bowled better after he was allowed back into international cricket a second time. I tried to build an action where questions cannot be cast against it again. He had better understanding of spin, and developed in many ways, including his flight.”

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Shakib’s association with Salahuddin has run long and their relationship goes deep. He was Salahuddin’s student at BKSP, and shortly after he emerged into the age-group structure, he played under Salahuddin for Victoria. When he broke through into the Bangladesh team in 2006, Salahuddin was on the coaching staff.Shakib has always called upon either Salahuddin or Fahim for advice whenever he has felt low on confidence. He flew back to Dhaka from the 2018 IPL for a couple of batting sessions with Salahuddin when he found himself in a form slump. Last year he summoned Salahuddin to India when he wasn’t getting matches for the Sunsrisers Hyderabad. Later Shakib said it was this particular period of hard work that prepared him for the 2019 World Cup – in which he became the first player in the history of the tournament to score 600-plus runs and take 11 wickets in a single edition.Abdur Razzak was suspended in 2008 for a suspect bowling action, which Salahuddin helped him correct in four months•Associated Press”As a student, Shakib was unrivalled in his understanding of the game,” Salahuddin says. “I never had to mention anything twice to him. He has developed an understanding of his limitations, which many don’t comprehend about themselves. You will never see Shakib backing down from a challenge.”I can spot anything different with Shakib’s bowling action, which allows me to just nudge him in a certain direction. We don’t talk a lot about technique. It’s more about confidence and comfort. It has a lot to do with his mentality. At a personal level, we share a lot. We can say that we are friends, but it is also a little like a father-son relationship. We have leaned on each other when taking big decisions in our lives.”He speaks about a conversation they had shortly after it had been announced Shakib was the No. 1 ODI allrounder in the ICC’s rankings, in 2009. “That day he stood next to me in the stadium and asked if I had anything to say to him. We had this way of conversing which was actually like banter. I said to him, ‘What should I tell you? The day you become the No. 1 Test allrounder, I will have something to say.’ It was banter, but I also wanted to give him a bigger goal. I think a player must dream big.”Salahuddin was unceremoniously removed from his assistant coach’s role in November 2009 by the BCB, no reason given, and reassigned to the National Cricket Academy. He quit the academy role a couple of years later to go work at a university in Malaysia, but whenever he came home for a holiday during that period, the likes of Shakib, Iqbal, Haque and Nasir Hossain would seek him out for sessions.When he returned permanently, Salahuddin found himself in demand among domestic teams, eventually winning the BPL in 2015 with Comilla Victorians – a feat he repeated in 2019. In between those two wins, the BCB very nearly hired him as a batting consultant ahead of the home series against Australia in 2017, before backing out.

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Salahuddin looks up to Fahim as his lifelong mentor, philosopher and guide.”We have known each other for three decades,” Salahuddin says. “I owe him a lot for what I have become today. He brought me into coaching and gave me my first part-time job in BKSP. His one or two sentences have had major influences in my life. Even now, if I feel demotivated I call sir and it fixes everything.”Fahim is the Bobby Robson to Salahuddin’s Pep Guardiola, and takes pride in mentoring Salahuddin.”We may have similarities in our coaching philosophies, in the way we communicate with players,” Fahim says. “[As a BKSP student] he saw [Sarwar] Imran [BKSP head coach in the 1990s] and me from up close, and I sometimes see some traits of our personalities in him. I know that he respects me a lot.Shahriar Nafees (right) credits his second coming as a batsman to Fahim’s guidance•Mohammad Isam”I think Salahuddin has become a coaching brand in Bangladesh. He is one of our best coaches, which is why the best players and organisers come to him. He has proved his quality.”Fahim himself has had a tremendous influence in Bangladesh cricket. He was one of the first coaches to join BKSP in the late 1980s, a time when coaching wasn’t remotely glamorous. Born and raised in Dhaka, he is the son of a respected banker. Fahim played in the Dhaka league in the 1970s and 1980s before taking up a managerial post in a tea garden in Sylhet.”When I left my job as a tea-estate manager in 1988, I was contemplating going abroad,” he says. “One day Imran invited me to see the newly built BKSP campus and asked if I would be interested in working there.”I started to enjoy the work, and after I stood first [in class] during my [Sports Authority of India] diploma in Patiala in 1989-90, I believed I could do a full-time job in BKSP. I had an offer from Patiala, but I believed that since I was going to take up a passion as a job, I better do it in my motherland.”It was an unusual choice at the time for a person from my family and educational background. Coaching as a job didn’t have social acceptance. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I think I took the right decision.”On my first evening there, I was pleasantly surprised seeing how nicely the likes of [Naimur Rahman] Durjoy and others, who were 14- or 15-year-olds, were batting in the nets. The whole atmosphere of the place with the well-organised sessions and kids dressed properly, which was new in Bangladesh, really struck me.”In the wake of Bangladesh’s seminal win in the 1997 ICC Trophy, BKSP found itself enjoying the government’s backing, and in the forefront of the development of a generation of talented young cricketers.Fahim left the BKSP in 2005 after a 17-year association to become Bangladesh’s Under-19 coach for the 2006 and 2008 World Cups. When he was moved into an administrative role in the BCB’s game-development department, he took charge of building a pathway that ensured cricketers from small towns and villages found their way through the age-group system. That pathway was instrumental in helping Bangladesh build their 2020 Under-19 World Cup-winning team.Fahim, like Salahuddin, has continued to keep working with Bangladesh’s top cricketers at an individual level, informally. He too goes back a long way with Shakib, having overseen his development at BKSP and in age-group teams. Although Fahim hasn’t directly coached Shakib since the 2006 Under-19 World Cup, Shakib has turned to him time and again, including during the 2015 Bangladesh-India Test in Fatullah, when he video-called Fahim to fix something in his bowling action.”I give him my suggestions, which could be about cricket or his personal life,” says Fahim. “He doesn’t need technical knowledge all the time. At times he needs a bit of mental support. Maybe there are things that he can’t view from close range. It is not always that he asks, but there are times when I go ahead and tell him.”Shakib Al Hasan at a training session. “We can say that we are friends, but it is also a little like a father-son relationship,” Salahuddin says of their relationship•Getty ImagesShahriar Nafees, who has had a second coming as a batsman in the last five years of domestic cricket, praises Fahim’s guidance highly. “He has been my batting coach since 2015. He is the most knowledgeable among coaches in Bangladesh. He is the best ever batting coach I have come across, and I have worked with many coaches. Fahim sir picks things up very quickly.”His delivery of knowledge is succinct. One or two words. Initially I used to wonder what these one or two words meant, but when I followed what he said, I saw it fixed everything,” he says.Nafees tells the story of how he scored 342 runs across two innings in a first-class match, which remains a record in Bangladesh cricket. Fahim asked Nafees to think differently on the last day of that four-day game against Chittagong, in which he had already made 168 in the first innings.”They were eight wickets down going into the last day, and the match was headed for a draw. He asked me what my plan would be for the second innings. I told him that since the game was going to be drawn, I would just bat normally, get 60 or 70 not out, because there may be 75 overs left in the day after they were bowled out.”Sir told me that my plan should be to take the team to a position from which we wouldn’t lose the game. Once you have ensured that, then bat according to the situation. He said that I shouldn’t think about my individual score.”Nafees went on to make an unbeaten 174 at a strike rate of 83.25, much to his surprise. “I called sir after the game, and he told me that I should never go into an innings with a predetermined mindset of making seventies or eighties. You should never limit yourself, he said. I thought it was an amazing piece of coaching.”He always tells me to get the enjoyment of batting. I think this is why I became hungrier and hungrier, despite not being in the national team,” Nafees says.

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Fahim and Salahuddin have spent tireless hours not only giving Bangladesh’s best batsmen throwdowns but shaping their minds to make them world-beaters.Siddons believes Salahuddin is the man for the Bangladesh head coach’s job. “He has everything that it takes. He has communication skills, his ability to coach the skills of the game is probably as good as anyone in Bangladesh. He also has a really good record as a coach in the BPL,” he says.Time has far from run out for Salahuddin and Fahim. If Shakib’s call for help last month is evidence, Salahuddin is in the prime of his coaching years. If the BCB is to make the best use of these two minds, they are just a phone call away.

The India batter opens up about the harrowing time when Covid struck her family

As told to Annesha Ghosh02-Jun-2021The reason I’m doing this interview is because a lot of people still don’t know how best to respond to Covid. I just want them to educate themselves, so they don’t go by things written on the internet. People should consult medical professionals and do so before it’s late. In a crisis like mine, they should be able to take the right steps at the right time.It remains a mystery as to how my family got infected or how, despite all of them and even some of my friends in Bangalore having tested positive, I returned negative tests all through. You can say it was pure luck that I didn’t contract the virus. Or it could have been down to the fact that I’m used to washing my hands frequently. I really don’t know.Mental strength is important. My oldest sister, Vatsala, had panic attacks before she passed away from Covid. My mom might also have panicked, because the night before she died of the virus, in my home town, Kadur, about 230km north-west of Bangalore, she learned that everybody else in the family had tested positive, including the kids. I don’t know, but maybe that affected her.My heart goes out to people who are suffering. I’ve heard stories of entire families being wiped out because of the virus. Thinking of that, I just tell my other sister, Sudha, and my dad to be grateful that the rest of the family has recovered.We’re all trying to come to terms with the tragedy, trying to accept the reality right now, and reminding ourselves that whatever has happened is behind us now. I feel that in a way my mom was among the lucky ones because she had her family with her when she passed away. It hasn’t been like that for many people who have died of Covid.My mom and sister were a huge part of my life, and they will always remain so. Everything I am is because of them. My mother used to tell me, “You are the daughter of the nation first and you’re my daughter later.” I really don’t think there’s anything I could ever do for the two of them to express my gratitude towards them. Whether I scored a hundred or got out first ball, it didn’t matter to them – I was their favourite cricketer. I’ve always been a pampered baby in the house regardless of my age.

“A lot of people playing cricket currently know what mental health is, but it is also important to accept that if the system is not doing anything to offer you mental-health assistance, you must find support for yourself”

My sister Vatsala was 14 years older than me and was as much my mother as my mom was. She was the one who took care of me from the time I was a baby. At times people used to get confused as to whether she was my mother or my sister.As a kid, I would never let go of her. When she got married and had to go to her husband’s house, I sat in a corner and cried my eyes out. My brother-in-law brought her back home the next morning and said to her, “You please stay at home with your sister and come to your in-laws only when you want to.” That was the kind of relationship I shared with her.She was my No. 1 fan. She watched most of my games. She used to be there at the ground, bringing me and my friends biryani in big boxes. I don’t know how it’s going to be when I get back on the field knowing she’s no longer around.A day or two before my mom died, we were a bit concerned about my sister because she had had a fever for about six days straight. She was in home isolation in Kadur and had initially tested negative, but when we took her to the hospital and did a CT scan, it was learnt that she had developed Covid pneumonia. When she returned a positive test, I moved from my home in Bangalore, where I live with my brother and his family, to a hotel because our entire family, including me, had assembled in Kadur a few days earlier for Vatsala’s birthday and the Ugadi festival.Upon testing in Bangalore, I tested negative but my brother’s wife and their daughters, who had all returned to the city with me from Kadur, tested positive. We were worried about what to do if any of them needed hospitalisation because at the time getting a hospital bed in Bangalore was very difficult. So we thought of getting my brother and his family down to Kadur. They did go to Kadur eventually, the night before my mom passed away.When her oxygen level started dropping, they moved Vatsala from Kadur to a hospital in Chikmagalur so she could have a proper non-invasive ventilator. About 80% of her lungs were damaged. The doctor said she needed to respond to the medicines and only then could they say what was going on. Eventually she did respond and was doing well for about four or five days. She had a bit of a cough but she seemed to be recovering and was fine the night before she passed away. She had been moved out of intensive care to a general ward a few days earlier. I remember speaking to her the previous evening. She was speaking properly, though she hadn’t been feeling like eating much. But over the next 24 hours, her oxygen level started dropping and she had a relapse. There seemed to have been a panic attack, and things started going downhill. It’s difficult to say exactly what happened.After my mom died, my brother just shut down. It affected him mentally. He, too, had to be hospitalised in Chikmagalur because of Covid, while his wife, Shruthi, was put in hospital in Kadur. My father’s CT scan for Covid was bad as well, and he too was in hospital. My brother’s daughters, meanwhile, were in Bangalore with their maternal grandmother. I was the only one who didn’t contract the virus, so I was sitting in Bangalore in the hotel, trying to coordinate everything. I had to arrange for essential supplies to send them while also trying to speak to doctors, look for beds in hospitals, and do whatever else was required.Krishnamurthy with her mother, Cheluvamba Devi•Veda KrishnamurthyAll we knew about Covid before this was, if you get it, you can stay at home, do your isolation and take precautions – that will be fine. But what happened in my family happened because of not having enough knowledge of how to respond quickly. I think we lost two or three days in the beginning when they were isolating in the house. What if we had put my sister in the hospital a day or two before we eventually did? We were just going by what we knew.That was when I started telling people what dealing with Covid needs. You shouldn’t leave it till it’s too late. The number of calls I made during those 20 days – I was constantly on the phone, trying to coordinate things, keep all the family members updated and keep their morale up. That effort used to consume a lot of my energy; to put up a front that I was okay was difficult. And I realised that a lot of people out there had been suffering in similar ways.I felt that accessing medical care was easier for my family than it was for most people, in Bangalore or elsewhere, because it was in Kadur, which is a small town where everyone knows each other. My dad called up the doctor directly and beds were arranged for both my sisters and my mother.Going through my Twitter feed at the time, I felt a lot of people were struggling with something as basic as getting a doctor to instruct them on what they should be doing – whether that was isolating at home or something else. When I started retweeting people’s calls for help, I had little knowledge of the impact it might have. I amplified those tweets simply because I knew what it felt like to be in that situation.Even when my mom was critical, I carried on with the retweets because I felt it was what I should be doing because of my social-media reach. I remember one of my friends telling me, “You should be putting your energy into looking after your own family and stop doing what you’re doing on social media.” And I was like, why should I stop doing something that could help someone else? I’m glad the platform could be used to help so many people in need.It was also around that time that I started educating my friends and their families, who were affected, on ways to get medicine, the rules to follow to obtain beds, and what to do when your oxygen saturation drops to a critical level. Nine members of my family had been infected in different ways, so I started sharing my experiences with people to try to help them make better judgements. My reasoning was that if I spoke to, say, 20 people, and among them if just one person took lessons from my experience, that was a positive.

“My mother used to tell me, ‘You are the daughter of the nation first and you’re my daughter later.’ Whether I scored a hundred or got out the first ball, it didn’t matter to them – I was their favourite cricketer”

I also learnt that one’s privileges are useful when it’s just you going through the trouble and the rest of the world is fine, but in a crisis like this, because supplies are low and demand is high, everybody will do anything to get what they need. I did tweet asking for an injection for my sister. She didn’t need it eventually; the doctor only wanted to use it as a last resort. Even though I got to a point where I would have been able to procure the injection, I did not do so because obtaining one for my sister at that point would have meant denying somebody else that immediate life-saving option. I’m thankful to all the people who retweeted that request I put out on Twitter – Harman [Harmanpreet Kaur], Smriti [Mandhana], Mithali [Raj], Mona [Meshram], Reema [Malhotra], and a lot of other cricketers.Though we now have to live our lives without my mom and sister, they will always be part of us. I think it’s a responsibility for all of us in the family to make each other happy, because if one of us starts feeling depressed, the others will too. It is something I did even in the time between my mom passing and my sister struggling for her life. I was the only one who was talking to my sister as she started recovering because the rest of my family were too tired to communicate.I’m a big believer in what destiny holds for you, but I really hoped that my sister would come back home. When she didn’t, I was completely destroyed. All of us were broken to pieces. And I still had to put up a brave face for the rest of the family. What I had to do in those testing couple of weeks was learn to tune myself out of my grief. But it keeps coming back to haunt you.I’m just trying to keep myself occupied doing whatever I can. Ever since I’ve come to Kadur, I’ve tried to make sure that Dad is not by himself, that he’s occupied with card games or watching movies, and things like that. My sister’s son has recovered from Covid. He is 21, studying engineering. He lost his father when he was seven months old; now his mother is gone. It’s difficult to know what he’s thinking, because, like me, he keeps things to himself.As a nation, let alone in cricket or sport, we are still a long way from normalising talking about mental health. Going by my own experience, if I had to, say, approach my mom or my older sister, and suggest that we should consult a professional about how we were feeling mentally after going through our struggles with Covid, if they had lived, I’m not sure they would have been up for it. I wouldn’t call it a mistake on their part – it’s just how we are conditioned as a society.A lot of people who are playing cricket currently know what mental health is, but it is also important to accept that if the system is not doing anything to offer you mental-health assistance, you can and must find the support for yourself if you can afford it. I’ve had mental-health issues and I’ve sought support to resolve them myself.I have been mostly off my phone in regards to speaking with people about how I have been holding up. I’ve tried to limit my responses to just emojis because it’s easier that way rather than talking about it. When something like this happens in your life, it’s nice to know that a lot of people care for you, but on the other hand, the reality hits you even harder as you are trying to come to terms with the tragedy. It’s difficult.I’m not upset with people who didn’t call me or message me. I thank everyone who checked on me. I did get a call from the BCCI secretary, which I didn’t expect, to be honest. He asked about me, my family. He said when he is in Bangalore, he will visit me. It was nice of him to call me.

He spent 381 minutes at the crease for his unbeaten 37

Sampath Bandarupalli08-Jul-20211 – First-class innings of 200-plus balls since 2008 coming at a strike rate lower than Hashim Amla’s 13.30 during his unbeaten 37 off 278 balls against Hampshire on Wednesday. Amla himself was responsible for a better effort in this period when he scored 25 off 244 balls, striking at a mere 10.24 against India in 2015.ESPNcricinfo Ltd19.24 – Amla’s strike rate against Hampshire, the second-lowest by any player in a first-class match after facing 300-plus balls, in the last 15 years. Naeem Islam jnr struck at 19.20 against Rajshahi Division in the National Cricket League 2015 match, where he aggregated 63 runs from 328 balls. Amla was Surrey’s top contributor in the first innings as well, scoring 29 off 65 balls.1.16 – Run rate of Surrey’s second innings against Hampshire, scoring 122 for 8 in 104.5 overs. This is now the second-lowest run rate in a first-class team innings of 100-plus overs since 2000. South Africa’s 0.99 against India in 2015 stands on top as they scored 143 in 143.1 overs during an unsuccessful attempt to save a Test match in Delhi.0.72 – Run rate of the fourth-wicket partnership between Amla and Ryan Patel, the fourth-slowest partnership of 25-plus overs in first-class cricket since 2010. Amla and Patel added 21 runs in 28.5 overs, during which Amla scored only two runs. Amla’s partnership with AB de Villiers against India in 2015 stands third in this list as they scored at 0.64 during their stand of 27 from 42.1 overs.ESPNcricinfo Ltd63 – Balls Amla took to score his first run on the fourth day. He got off the mark on the fourth ball (and the last) he faced on the third day, and his second run had not come until the 67th ball of his innings. Amla had three streaks of 35 and more consecutive dot balls on Wednesday.0.40 – Economy rate of Keith Barker during his figures of 22-17-9-3 in Surrey’s second innings, the most economical bowling effort in a first-class innings since 2000 (minimum 20 overs). Amla alone scored seven runs off 84 balls he faced from Barker who had conceded only two runs in 48 balls he bowled to the rest of the Surrey batters.

Batter was handed over gloves midway into the T20 World Cup, and credits Luke Ronchi for his progress

Deivarayan Muthu08-Nov-2021Before the T20 World Cup in the UAE, Devon Conway’s only experience of visiting the subcontinent was way back in 2005, when he was on a school tour to Sri Lanka. He came into his first World Cup without much game-time, having suffered a finger fracture in the inaugural Hundred.Conway expected to slot into the XI as a specialist batter; he did feature in New Zealand’s opener against Pakistan as a pure batter in the middle order. In that fixture in Dubai, Conway leapt to his left from wide long-off and plucked a catch out of thin air to get rid of Mohammad Hafeez. It was Tim Seifert who had instead kept wicket in that match.Seifert was New Zealand’s first-choice T20I wicketkeeper during their 2020-21 home summer, but in order to bring fast bowler Adam Milne into the XI, the team management benched Seifert and handed over the keeping duties to Conway. After pulling off an absolute stunner in the outfield, Conway showed off his reflexes behind the stumps as well. Standing up to legspinner Ish Sodhi in Sharjah, he snagged a smart catch to dismiss Namibia captain Gerhard Erasmus. Then, standing behind to Milne in Abu Dhabi in a must-win for New Zealand, he leapt to his right, stuck out his right glove and snaffled a nick from Afghanistan’s Mohammad Shahzad on the rebound.Related

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One of New Zealand’s biggest strengths this tournament has been their players adapting to new roles on the fly. Cases in point: first Daryl Mitchell and now Conway.”So far, touchwood! It has been really good. I really enjoyed it. I do enjoy keeping – it keeps me engaged in the game and you’re always in the game,” Conway said. “So it’s exciting behind the stumps and then sort of today [Sunday, against Afghanistan], it’s a bonus standing behind the stumps for 20 overs and getting the opportunity to bat. We really do get a good feel for how the wicket is playing and come up with a plan before you go into bat, which is quite nice.”But I didn’t think I was going to get as much opportunity with the gloves, but the opportunity presented itself and I’m really enjoying it.”So, has Milne’s extra pace or the spinners’ variety challenged his keeping more?”Normally, it’s quite harder keeping to the spinners,” Conway said. “We’ve got Ish Sodhi who turns it both ways and bowls sliders, we’ve got Mitch Santner who has got really good control and can turn and slide it on as well. But, I think, I found it quite tricky keeping back to the seamers and felt like the ball was wobbling a fair bit behind the stumps, and yeah, it was a bit of a challenge keeping to the seamers today [Sunday].”

“It was pretty cool to see them and hopefully I can catch up with them at some point in the future.”Conway on seeing his parents in the stands during the match against Afghanistan

Former wicketkeeper and New Zealand’s current batting coach Luke Ronchi has had a hand in Conway’s progress. Conway had also worked with Ronchi at the Wellington Firebirds nets when he was on the road to recovery from the injury.”Working with Ronchs has been awesome,” Conway said. “He’s got a lot of experience on these surfaces and knows these wickets better than anyone here. So, good to get some of that knowledge from him and talk different game-plans. I’ve worked quite a lot with Ronchs over the last couple of years.”So, he knows my batting and what needs for me to get to my best as a player. I just continue to have those conversations with Ronchs and we just try to work out a plan, and hopefully that pays off at the end of the day.”After making 27 off 24 balls against Pakistan, Conway didn’t contribute much with the bat in the next three games. However, on Sunday, his smarts on a fairly true pitch were central to New Zealand acing a chase of 125 against Afghanistan at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium. He threw both Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi, in particular, off their lines and lengths with a variety of sweeps, including the reverse-hit. All told, he took 31 off 19 balls from the spinners.”The key to facing those sorts of bowlers is they are going to turn it both ways, so to combat that I just sort of thought we’d play with horizontal bats, using the sweep and reverse-sweep was my go-to [shot],” Conway said of his game plan against spin. “They were bowling quite quick into the wicket, so I thought I could sort of use that pace to my advantage. But that’s the things we talk about as a bowling collective – how we are going to attack certain bowlers and formulate a game-plan for that and try and execute it as we as we can in the game.”His captain, Kane Williamson, backed him up with an unbeaten 40. Conway has also had regular support from the stands, with Denton and Sandy, his South Africa-based parents, taking a month off to watch their son in action across the three venues in the UAE.New Zealand’s support crew is set to double up for the semi-finals as Mitchell’s father John, the former All Black player and coach, is preparing to fly in from the UK.”It’s been special to see my family – my parents – over the last few games coming to watch, and I haven’t seen them in a long time,” Conway said. “So just to sort of see them from a distance has been pretty cool, and yeah it was just nice to contribute to the team’s success today and have them there in the stands watching and supporting us all the way. So, it was pretty cool to see them and hopefully I can catch up with them at some point in the future.”If Conway can pull off the dual role once again against England on Wednesday in a rematch of the 2019 ODI World Cup final, then he will be a step closer to creating his legacy.

His bowling is impeccable but his batting doesn’t really seem to have a place in the XI

Alex Malcolm19-Feb-2022Ashton Agar is a good problem for Australia to have. Most sides would love an experienced left-arm spinner, who in his last 10 T20Is, has maintained an economy rate of 5.60.In his last two matches against Sri Lanka, he has staggering figures of 2 for 28 from eight overs. He has bowled 21 dot balls and conceded 27 singles and one wide only. Team-mate Glenn Maxwell believes Agar, right now, is better than ever.”The way he’s bowled in this series is no shock to anyone,” Maxwell said following Australia’s six-wicket win at the MCG. “His control is brilliant. He’s working on different deliveries all the time, always looking for a way to get better and it’s just a sign of a really good maturing player who’s got full hold of his skill at the moment.”The problem is not his bowling. It’s that Australia’s hierarchy don’t know how to fit the Agar puzzle piece into their best line-up. As well as he’s bowled in his last 10 T20Is since July 2021, Australia have lost seven of them, including the only game he played in the World Cup. In the 10 games he hasn’t played in that same period Australia have won eight, including six in the World Cup to lift the trophy for the very first time.As good as Agar is with the ball and in the field, his batting doesn’t quite fit in Australia’s overall T20 jigsaw. It is alluring though. The raw skills are incredibly appealing. His long, languid arms produce an eye-catching bat swing, and his best strikes are glorious. But those strikes are few and far between. In nearly 10 years of professional T20 cricket, across 92 innings, Agar averages 16.89, strikes at 116.63, and scores a boundary once every 7.97 deliveries. That he consistently bats in front of Pat Cummins who averages 17.11, strikes at 133.79 and scores a boundary once every 6.59 deliveries is mystifying. Even Daniel Sams, Australia’s No. 8 in the last two T20Is, averages 14.82, strikes 151.21 and scores a boundary once every 5.37 deliveries.Agar’s batting in T20I cricket is more closely aligned with Mitchell Starc, who has faced 82 balls in 17 innings, only batted higher than No. 9 six times and never higher than No. 8. Agar averages 11.76, strikes at just 103.34 and scores a boundary once every 9.96 balls. Starc averages 9.33 and strikes at 102.43 and scores a boundary once every 13.67 balls.Australia’s hierarchy knows that Agar can’t bat at No. 7 anymore. Their success in the World Cup showed the need to have a specialist batter there after Matthew Wade produced two cameos against South Africa and Pakistan that were pivotal in their triumph.It means that if Agar plays, he will have to be part of a four-man attack, either in place of Adam Zampa or alongside him, which squeezes out one of their big three quicks and leaves them short on powerplay and death overs.So, with David Warner and Mitchell Marsh rested for the series against Sri Lanka and Steven Smith ruled out of the last three games due to concussion, Australia have taken the opportunity to try something completely different and open with Agar.Australia have lost seven of the last 10 T20Is that Ashton Agar has played•Cricket Australia via Getty ImagesThe theory is similar to how Sunil Narine has become a T20 opener. It’s no surprise that Australia’s interim coach Andrew McDonald and captain Aaron Finch were willing to try it, given they were the first to try Narine at the top of the order for Melbourne Renegades in the BBL in 2017, before Kolkata Knight Riders used him there with great success in the IPL. The idea is that if a bowler can open, in arguably the easiest spot to bat, then it stretches Australia’s line-up and holds Wade at No. 7 to give them depth. But it does push Finch out of position and creates a squeeze on middle-order places, which puts pressure on Smith.Narine’s T20 batting numbers, like Agar’s, were far from spectacular ahead of his first stint opening. He averaged 11.16, was striking 124.02, and scored a boundary once every 6.79 deliveries. But in 104 innings as an opener, Narine averages 18.17, strikes at 155.81, scores a boundary once every 3.76 deliveries, and has made 10 half-centuries.The key though is that only three of those innings have been played outside the slow wickets of Asia and the Americas. They were on bouncy Australian tracks, where he made diminishing returns of 21 off 13, 12 off 10 and 4 off 4. Narine has also only opened twice in international cricket, scoring 4 off 12 and 2 off 6 against India in 2019.While opening is in some respects the easiest spot to bat in T20 cricket, due to a hard new ball and just two fielders out for six overs, it takes a little getting used to when you’re a bowling allrounder, as Agar discovered against Sri Lanka last night, facing 140kph plus deliveries from Dushmantha Chameera and Lahiru Kumara.”They came at him hard with some really good hard fast bowling tonight and that’s probably something they hadn’t done too much of so far this series,” Maxwell said.Agar made 26 off 31 and faced 14 dots after scoring 13 off 13 in Canberra. But Stoinis said there was no expectation of Agar.”[We said] just go out there and experience the game out there, understand how it feels to be out in the middle at the start of the innings. You don’t need to do anything spectacular. Obviously, he’ll want to perform as well as he can but no judgment from the team because this is a time when we’ve got to try things and change things up to a certain extent and look to improve on last year’s World Cup and create some options in our squad. And we also understand for him although he’s been one of the best bowlers in T20 cricket for such a long time, he might, with the balance of the side that we’ve had, find himself out of the team for a while. So I think it’s definitely important for him to have time in the middle when he’s playing.”While it is admirable for Australia to trial the concept, something they have rarely done before, and it is fair to suggest Agar needs more time and development in the opening role in both training and possibly at the lower level, the reality is hard to escape. Australia’s opening World Cup match on October 22 is against New Zealand, with a fast-bowling brigade likely to feature three of Trent Boult, Tim Southee, Adam Milne and Lockie Ferguson. Six days later, Australia face England at the MCG, who could well have Jofra Archer, Chris Jordan, and/or Tymal Mills among a host of other options.Australia will need their best two openers and their best top seven for those assignments, as they did to win the World Cup last year.Where that will leave Agar in the starting XI, is once again a mystery.

The 23-year-old batter and 33-year-old allrounder on how the Bangladesh T20 tournament has helped them grow their game

Mohammad Isam13-Feb-2022Stay still, watch the ball and play your shots fearlessly. This has been the simple mantra followed by Will Jacks and Benny Howell, the English duo which has played a significant role in taking Chattogram Challengers to the BPL playoffs.Jacks’ unbeaten 92 in their last league game against Sylhet Sunsrisers was a single-handed effort that got them up to ten points. Chattogram, who started off very well in the competition before losing their way in the middle, face Khulna Tigers in the eliminator match on Monday evening.Those following the BPL this season believe that Jacks holds the key to Chattogram’s progress in the knockout stage. The 23-year-old is currently the second-highest scorer in the competition with 398 runs at 44.22. That includes four fifties. He is only 10 shy of Tamim Iqbal at the top but more significantly, he is leading the pack in powerplays performance, having scored 249 runs at 171.52 with 15 sixes.Jacks said that he has had fun scoring these runs but admitted that he needed time to figure out Bangladeshi conditions. In particular, he spoke about resisting the temptation to play a lot of shots.”The key is to play without fear,” he told ESPNcricinfo. “It is tough sometimes to be really aggressive, to score fast, without getting out. It is something that has taken me quite a while to figure out, what my good options are to get me to the boundary with the least amount of risk. Obviously watching the ball and staying still, taking as less risk as possible with the maximum reward.”The ball doesn’t quite bounce as much [in Bangladesh] as it does back in England. You have to limit the areas of the ground you’re usually scoring. I found out that it can be quite hard to play cross-batted shots off seamers. It often takes people a couple of games to get used to it. You just have to almost fight with yourself to do the right things for this wicket compared to stuff that you do back home.”Benny Howell prides himself on doing his opposition research•Alex Davidson/Getty ImagesJacks’ team-mate Howell is ten years older, but the veteran allrounder has proven just as effective for Chattogram, particularly in the latter part of most of their innings during this campaign. He has been the leading scorer in the other end of a T20 innings, the last five overs.”If you come in a little bit earlier and you have some high-quality spinners in, it is not always easy,” Howell said. “I think facing the seam bowlers is a little easier on these wickets. I am lucky enough to come in towards the middle or end of the innings where I get to face majority of seam bowlers.”I do a lot of my research and study on what they plan to do, what their different change-ups are, so I know what to expect when I get in the game. It gives me a little bit of a head start, I think.”Howell is having a second wind as a batter, which he believes had a lot to do with his work with Julian Wood, the power-hitting coach who coincidentally has worked with the Sylhet franchise too. Howell said that they tried a lot of different things to improve his stance.”I actually focused a lot on my batting in the last two months leading into the BPL,” he said. “I worked a lot in the indoor school back in England. I always knew myself as a batter originally but my bowling took over as my main strength. I want to get back to my batting, so that I can add a lot more value to teams with my all-round game. It is probably why it has come off well in this tournament.”He [Wood] has worked out the best possible positions to be able to hit a lot of balls for fours and sixes, that normally with the traditional batting stance might not be able to have the power to do that. I have worked with him with all the heavy bats and light bats, heavy balls and light balls, to improve my bat swing and bat power.”Chattogram Challengers face Khulna Tigers in the BPL Eliminator on February 14•Chattogram ChallengersJacks also believes the BPL has helped him become a better player of spin.”I think there are two different ways of playing spin. I think when I play spin in England, there’s less spin and more bounce. You can play it in a completely different way, and still score quickly. To score quickly here, I have been sweeping a lot. I have also probably used my feet more than I have done in England. I feel my game against spin has grown considerably,” he said.As good as he is, Jacks remains on the fringes of the England T20 side and missed out on the tour of the West Indies earlier this year. But he’s learning to take all that in his stride.”There’s a little bit of disappointment there but it is not something that I will be held up on,” he said. “I know that if I score runs, hopefully my opportunities will come around soon. The England squad is ridiculously talented and one of the best in the world in white-ball cricket. It is incredibly hard to break into that team.”Howell too harbours dreams of playing for England. He has done well for Birmingham Phoenix in the Hundred, and believes that when the call comes, it will be due to his growing catalogue of skills that now includes bowling legitimate offspin and legspin. He has switched to being a spinner during certain overs in the BPL.”I think you have to keep it simple with your own game,” Howell said. “You roughly know your role by your batting position, and you have to adapt to situations wherever you bowl. I have been quite relaxed. Luckily it has come off well with the bat.”My bowling hasn’t been as good as it has been in the last few years. But I am happy with I have also managed to get my legspin and offspin out in the game. It adds values to the team, and especially pushing to play for England. That ambition will never stop.”