England went back to Abu Dhabi between the second and third Tests – and nearly lost Rehan Ahmed at border control. The pod sat down to discuss

ESPNcricinfo staff13-Feb-2024After a break in Abu Dhabi, England have returned to India ahead of the third Test – although not with another visa hitch. Ben Stokes hopes to have Rehan Ahmed available for selection in Rajkot but could the situation have been avoided? Alan Gardner, Andrew Miller and Vithushan Ehantharajah discuss this and more on the latest episode of Switch Hit. Will Mark Wood come into the XI as part of a shift in tactics? Can England cope without senior spinner Jack Leach? And how should we view Stokes’ greatness on the eve of his 100th Test?

Captain Najmul Hossain Shanto admits that Bangladesh “didn’t play well as a team”, despite getting the pitch they wanted

Mohammad Isam25-Mar-2024Alarm bells are ringing for Bangladesh after their fourth successive batting debacle in Tests. On a pitch that the team management reportedly desired, the home side collapsed twice in Sylhet, with Litton Das’ shot to get out in the fourth innings particularly being emblematic of the side’s batting failure.Captain Najmul Hossain Shanto has owned up to the problems, including his own dismissal in the fourth innings. But there are suggestions that the players weren’t prepared for the Test, which is all the more concerning given how most of them have ignored first-class cricket for many seasons now.Bangladesh kept Sri Lanka in the field for three hours on the fourth day. Most of the damage was done the previous day when they crashed to 37 for 5, before Mominul Haque’s 87 took them to 182 – their fourth consecutive sub-200 innings at home. In the first innings, they were bowled out for 180 after crashing to 83 for 5.Bangladesh made 172 and 144 against New Zealand in Dhaka, but at the time, the raging turner and the afterglow of beating New Zealand in Sylhet in the previous game, meant they avoided some of the public criticism. Three months ago, Shere Bangla National Stadium’s pitch was stacked too much in favour of the spinners. In Sylhet this time, both team acknowledged that barring the first 20 overs in each innings, the pitch was good for batting.Related

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Shanto admitted that Bangladesh had to quickly regroup after this 328-run defeat so that they can give an improved showing in the upcoming Chattogram Test.”We got the pitch we wanted,” Shanto said. “It was in our favour. We have no complaints about the pitch. I don’t think a defeat will bring us motivation. How we prepare and what we are thinking, that’s more important. This was a bad result. We didn’t play well as a team. We couldn’t take our chances. We are focusing on improving in the next game, and ensuring we don’t make the small mistakes.”Our top order didn’t do well in both innings, but it was also the same for them. We have to work on improving our game. I am hoping we will do well in the next game. There are lessons from every game but only when you take a long hard look at where you went wrong and where it went right for you. We have to consider everything. This experience will help us in the future.”There are no mincing words. Bangladesh batted poorly in Sylhet. The top order offered no fight against the new ball. In particular, they chased deliveries moving away from and outside off-stump. Openers Zakir Hasan and Mahmudul Hasan Joy were caught behind once each, as were captain Shanto and Mominul Haque. Shahadat Hossain got caught in the slips in both innings.Shanto called his waft outside off-stump a misjudgment, promising to improve in the next game.”I can only say that I chose the wrong ball. The sort of wicket it was, I should left that delivery as a top-order batter. It was a misjudgment. We will try to make a comeback in the next game.”The spotlight however is on the Litton dismissal on the third evening, when he tried to slog the first ball he faced in the innings. Angelo Mathews caught the skier, as it turned Bangladesh’s dire situation worse.Shanto suggested that Litton’s dismissal was rare in Test cricket, so he has to work harder on his batting with the coaches ahead of the Chattogram Test. He, however, ruled out giving a break to Litton.Shoriful Islam and Khaled Ahmed added 40 off 35 balls for the ninth wicket in the first innings•AFP/Getty Images”I can’t talk about Litton’s dismissal. He can explain it better. You don’t see this sort of dismissal in Test cricket. The batting coach can talk about the particular shot. I don’t want to talk too much about his dismissal. We wouldn’t have spoken if it was a caught-behind dismissal. I think the batting coach and Litton will plan better so that these shots can be avoided next time.”When (Litton) didn’t play the last ODI, we were thinking of giving him a break. He is an important player for us. One of our best batters. He hasn’t had a great time lately but we should be with him during this time, starting from the coaching staff to the players. He is also wary of this. I am hopeful he will do well in the next game.”Selector Abdur Razzak told reporters after the third day’s play that Litton’s shot was “disappointing”, but said that the top order has to take equal responsibility for their low scores.”It is disappointing that a senior batter got out in this way in a Test match. It is not right. But it wasn’t just Litton Das. We lost five wickets in the session. Everyone is at fault. There’s no chance to say that these are raw players,” Razzak said.”We have picked the players because they can handle these situations. When the team does well, we credit the team. The team now has to take the responsibility in this situation.”Bangladesh now have four days to recuperate ahead of the Chattogram Test which starts on March 30. There were suggestions however that they didn’t get enough time to prepare for the Sylhet Test, that was played four days after the last ODI in Chattogram on March 18, leaving Bangladesh with just three training days.Razzak, however, felt that the team had enough training. He said that cricket tours these days don’t allow practice matches.”The way cricket is these days, there’s not enough time for practice matches. There’s a lot of competitive cricket these days. I don’t see it as lack of preparation for the players,” he said.Bangladesh collapsed to their fourth successive sub-200 score at home•AFP/Getty ImagesThis was a particularly busy season for the senior men’s side. After the ODI World Cup last November, Bangladesh played home Tests against New Zealand and also toured New Zealand for white-ball matches. The two domestic first-class competitions had finished by December. There were no other Bangladesh A tours. The BPL was held from January 19 to March 1, while the Dhaka Premier League, the lucrative List-A competition, began in mid-March.Bangladesh’s Test specialists, however, had opportunities to play both the NCL and BCL. But none of the players in the XI had played the full season of first-class cricket. Zakir and Khaled played seven matches each, while Mominul played six games. Joy and Shahadat played three each.Litton, Mehidy and Shoriful Islam didn’t play a single first-class game this season while captain Shanto played one. It is mostly because their schedule didn’t make room for the first-class fixtures, but for long, even the more senior players have avoided the first-class tournaments.Most of the Sri Lanka players have a healthy diet of first-class cricket this season. Nishan Madushka and Fernando played nine and eight games respectively, while Dinesh Chandimal, Kamindu Mendis and Prabhat Jayasuriya have played seven each. Dimuth Karunaratne and captain Dhananjaya de Silva took part in six games too. Even someone as busy as Kusal Mendis played five games.Only playing first-class cricket will not guarantee success in Tests. Bangladesh’s first-class scene has long been criticised for lacking in quality. Tournaments like the NCL and BCL haven’t quite reached the level required to promote first-class cricket.That being said, Bangladesh also pay less attention to Test cricket, especially when an ICC tournament is knocking on the door. In this case, the T20 World Cup in June is the BCB and team management’s main concern, even though the Tests they are currently playing are also part of an ICC tournament.

A heated exchange put the South African “in the zone” as he hammered a belligerent century to win Jaffna their fourth title

Madushka Balasuriya22-Jul-2024Bhanuka Rajapaksa kept Galle Marvels in Sunday’s Lanka Premier League final with an 82 off 34 deliveries, but his most consequential role in the game might have been in riling up Rilee Rossouw.It’s not uncommon for athletes to search for added motivation in high-pressure contests. This was revealed about Michael Jordan, for example, in the Last Dance documentary, which showed him picking fights and sometimes even conjure slights out of thin air to help fuel his game.On Sunday, Rossouw might have just taken a page out of Jordan’s book, as he produced a knock of utmost belligerence – an unbeaten 106 off 53 deliveries – to fire Jaffna Kings to a fourth title in five years. The catalyst for Rossouw’s outstanding play, however, had taken place a little earlier.Related

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It was the 18th over of Galle’s innings, and Jaffna were reeling from Rajapaksa’s epic counter-attack which had peaked just minutes prior when he ransacked Charith Asalanka for 28 in a single over. With emotions fraying and Galle in the ascendancy, the third ball of the 18th saw Rajapaksa complete a single after Kusal Mendis’ throw had ricocheted off the stumps. So far, so innocuous.But when the second throw also deflected, this time off Rajapaksa just as he was creasing at the non-striker’s end, the point of contention arose as Rajapaksa turned and hurried through for a second run.The Jaffna players immediately protested, citing that the ball had deflected off the batter’s body. Rajapaksa, to his credit, had initially put his hand up to stop his partner Dwaine Pretorius from coming back for the second before eventually running once he realised his partner wasn’t stopping. He had even sought to seemingly apologise to his national mates, Mendis and Asalanka, but when the second bye was eventually awarded to Galle, matters boiled over.Rossouw, stationed at mid-off, took a particularly dim view of the incident during a heated exchange with Rajapaksa. Following this, the umpire ushered Rossouw and Jaffna skipper Asalanka over to address the matter, but Rossouw wasn’t backing down. Some amateur lip-reading suggested that the South African was pointing out that that he did indeed know the rules. He was then seen facing up to umpire Kumar Dharmasena as well, before proceedings eventually simmered down.But Rossouw was seething.

“Rilee had told Bhanuka that he had brought the game into disrepute, to which Bhanuka had responded – and then exchanged some words”Charith Asalanka

“Hundred per cent,” Rossouw said after the game when asked by Roshan Abeysinghe if his altercation with Rajapaksa had spurred him on. “People that know me don’t abuse me… it just puts me more in the zone.”As these words were uttered, the camera panned to a stone-faced Rajapaksa. Penny for his thoughts indeed. But boy was Rossouw in the zone. Nine fours and seven sixes meant 78 of his 106 came in boundaries, and some of those strokes exuded disdain – a couple of cross-batted swipes in particular had more than a tinge of anger about them.And so impactful was his knock, it shifted the pendulum considerably in terms of the Player of the Tournament stakes, moving away from tournament top-scorer Tim Seifert and Jaffna’s middle order enforcer Avishka Fernando – the overwhelming favourites pre-game – to Rossouw. His hundred, his second of the season, was by far his best and shot him up to second in the run-scoring charts, while his strike rate moved up enough notches to be the best of those in the top ten.Asalanka was questioned on the incident after the game as well, and he sought to play it down as would be expected.”Usually batters don’t run after something like that, but I think to give Rajapaksa the benefit of the doubt, he was called through for the second and he just responded,” he explained. “Rilee had told Bhanuka that he had brought the game into disrepute, to which Bhanuka had responded – and then exchanged some words.”But you suspect there was not much Rajapaksa could have said in any case to change the outcome. Rossouw, after all, had found his fuel.

Nearly 18 sixes per match. One six every 13 balls. The ball has cleared the boundary at an unprecedented rate this season, and the records are tumbling

Sampath Bandarupalli09-May-2024

Race to 1000 sixes

The 1000-sixes mark has been breached in the IPL for the third consecutive season. The addition of two new teams in 2022 meant that the count of matches increased to 74 and resulted in 1062 sixes in IPL 2022, bettering the previous highest of 872 in 2018. IPL 2023 then set a new high with 1124 sixes, a mark that is not far from getting surpassed.

This exciting, unpredictable opening stage of the T20 World Cup, with its feel-good stories and heartwarming heroics, has made the tournament seem like a global event

Andrew Fidel Fernando11-Jun-2024On a sticky Providence evening on June 5, Riazat Ali Shah hit a vital 33 against Papua New Guinea. Earlier in the evening, his team-mate Frank Nsubuga had taken two wickets for just four, helping reduce PNG to 77.Nsubuga and Riazat both contributed heavily to Uganda’s first World Cup win. But they had travelled wildly different paths to get here.Nsubuga came to cricket through his family. His father was a bartender at the Lugogo Cricket Club in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. When he and his brothers began messing around at the club, they developed a love for the sport. The brothers showed enough early talent that club members encouraged them to keep at it, helping out with coaching and equipment when required. Nsubuga made his debut for East Africa aged 16, and now at, 43 years old, he runs at least ten kilometres before team training starts, in order to keep himself sufficiently fit to compete with cricketers two decades younger than him.Related

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Riazat wasn’t even born when Nsubuga appeared in his first international, in 1997. And no one from Riazat’s village, tucked deep in the gloriously scenic Hunza Valley of the Karakoram range in north Pakistan, could ever have imagined the shape his life would take.Riazat came to Uganda circuitously, meeting some Ugandan-based players at an Ismai’li Games event in the UAE, who then convinced him to move his whole life there to pursue his dream of playing international cricket. He now has a player-of-the-match award in a World Cup.All through the opening stages of this tournament, we’ve encountered fascinating stories such as these. Perhaps you have been among many to have developed a crush on Saurabh Netravalkar, the Mumbai-born left-arm bowler whose Super Over delivered USA the biggest upset of the tournament , and the best result in their history – their win against Pakistan. That Netravalkar is an engineer for tech giant Oracle, and has marked himself out-of-office on Slack till June 17th, is now part of World Cup lore.In Texas, Nepal fans from all around the United States turned the Grand Prairie stadium dark blue, and were so raucous after each Nepal boundary and each Netherlands wicket that even through the TV it felt like a major final.Nepal’s fans turned Dallas blue at their first match of the 2024 T20 World Cup, against Netherlands•ICC/Getty ImagesYou imagine Nsubuga’s father wiping glasses behind the counter as he watches his kids (three of whom would play for Uganda, by the way) hit balls in the field. You imagine Netravalkar setting that out-of-office message, his bowling spikes already packed in a bag at home. You wonder what kinds of conversations are being had in school playgrounds in Kathmandu and Pokhara, about when exactly Nepal lost that match against Netherlands. And, vitally, cricket ceases to feel like a mere obsession slavered over in a handful of former British colonies, and more like a sport with a genuinely global footprint. One that is finding new stories, because for once it has made peace with the possibility that mismatches may occur, and upsets that put profitable teams (from the broadcasters’ perspective) out of the competition may also take place.There have, of course, been problems that are well-documented. The match times are nuts: if you’re watching in South Asia it feels like two tournaments are running at once, one at dawn, and one late in the evening. Some teams, Sri Lanka in particular, have complained about less-than-ideal travel arrangements. And the pitches in New York have not favoured the kinds of batting spectacles audiences have come to expect of the format.And yet it’s hard to get away from the feeling that in the early going, this World Cup has had the vibe that some of the best sporting events in the world, like the FIFA World Cups and the Olympics, capture: it has felt like a festival, a global celebration of cricket that has brought life to a greater spread of fans than many cricket World Cups past have.Even the unintended consequences are fun. In the last week, as cricket has made its most naked attempt yet to breach the US market, fierce arguments, with supporting videos, gifs, armchair biomechanics breakdowns, and good old-fashioned internet shouting have broken out on various social media platforms (X in particular) between cricket and baseball fans. The fights are essentially about which sport produces the more impressive physical feats.On the fielding front there may even be some intellectual legitimacy in making the comparison. Baseball is all over cricket when it comes to throwing, but compared to catches that cricketers routinely take, those mitts-on catches are weak. Going into the United States specifically to woo a new audience but ending up enraging them instead is also one of the most typically cricket things to happen to cricket.Helped by some upsets – USA over Pakistan, of course, but also Canada beating Full Member Ireland, and Afghanistan stomping their way through their group so far, there is a joyous anarchy here.Techie-turned-hero Saurabh Netravalkar has gone from obscurity to being one of the talking points of the World Cup•AFP via Getty ImagesEspecially joyous, and especially anarchic, because we are, unquestionably, living in the era of Big Cricket. If you haven’t clocked it, this is a business first, and an equitable sport second. Pakistan and India always play in the group stages, tournaments are designed to maximise the number of lucrative India matches, India know which semi-final they will play if they qualify, and oh, if we’re adding up ICC men’s limited-overs finals in the last ten years, seven were scheduled to be played in India, Australia, and England – the game’s three most profitable markets – and two for everywhere else (including the ongoing tournament). It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the game’s richest sides have what constitutes a competitive advantage in ICC tournaments.Perhaps there is no stopping the inevitable march of capitalism, and India’s domination of the cricket economy. In this World Cup, no fewer than five other teams (Sri Lanka, South Africa, Scotland, Ireland, and the USA) are sponsored by Indian companies that barely sell products in foreign markets. Which means that for even established sides such as South Africa and Sri Lanka, no businesses from their own countries could match the power that companies that primarily make money in India bring to the table. It is already likely that for Sri Lanka, for example, a country of 22 million (and shrinking), the bigger market is casual Indian fans interested in Sri Lankan cricket rather than Sri Lanka fans themselves.Faced with this brutalist reality, a 20-team World Cup is life-giving. There will be time for higher-quality teams to be playing higher-quality teams. There will be, with a little luck, an intense Super Eights stage, and high-pressure semi-finals between the most elite sides that cricket has to offer. But for now, for a group stage, this is as good as it has been for a while.And if the ICC have overextended themselves in attempting to break new ground so desperately, this has to be among the more forgivable of their sins. For a change, it feels a lot more fun to be following an overambitious sport than one that has plonked itself down in familiar comforts and settled into profitable insularity.

The 2024 tournament has produced some exciting matches albeit on dodgy pitches

Ian Chappell15-Jun-2024Two of cricket’s greatest rivalries – India vs Pakistan and Australia vs England – were played in a 24-hour period during the 2024 T20 World Cup.While these fierce rivalries still generate great excitement, the Australia vs England bout fell short of expectations, with Australia winning the T20 match comfortably. India versus Pakistan always creates hysteria and once again this was the case even in New York as there are plenty of expats from both countries living in the USA.Going into the heavyweight bout India had only lost one World Cup contest to Pakistan and that was in the T20 format in 2021.Related

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India versus Pakistan, but different

This imbalance was partly explained years ago by a decorated Indian cricketer: “Pakistan tries to impress India,” he explained, “while we are only interested in having an impact on the West.”Pakistan cricket’s previous history may also help explain India’s stranglehold in their World Cup encounters. In early 1973 the Pakistan team were described as “Panikstan” because of the suicidal nature of their 92-run loss to Australia at the MCG. They then confirmed their newly acquired nickname by losing the third Test at the SCG by 52 runs despite only chasing a moderate target of 159.The “Panikstan” moniker was to the fore again in the 2024 World Cup as Pakistan lost a crucial contest to India in New York. After manoeuvring into a strong position where they were predicted to win, Pakistan capitulated and lost a low-scoring encounter by six runs.This was yet another typical big-brother-over-little-brother victory and that syndrome has weighed heavily on Pakistan in World Cup encounters.

There’s a highly competitive cricket rivalry still to be played in the Super Eight – India vs Australia. This has become a blockbuster contest in recent years.

Yet in Toronto in 1996 the two teams mixed amicably in a series at the suitably named Toronto Cricket, Skating and Curling Club. The five-match series was tied at two-all when one Indian player hilariously noted: “The soldiers are lined up at the border armed with rocks but they don’t know which way to throw them.”So well did India and Pakistan get on that I asked a mixed group of players, “Why do the two countries fight wars when the players socialise comfortably?”The answer was revealing and yet concerning. “We understand each other and eat similar food,” said an Indian player, “and the people generally get on well but the politicians of each country like to keep the aggro simmering.”The pitches in the USA again generated controversy, particularly the New York venue, which attracted a lot of negative publicity and proved to be difficult for batters. In many cases a score just exceeding 100 proved to be a match-winner.The USA reputation for providing dodgy pitches isn’t a recent one. In September 1999, I covered an India A vs Australia A five-match series in Los Angeles, where the respective skippers were VVS Laxman and Adam Gilchrist, both of whom went on to enjoy illustrious international careers.The pitches on that occasion could only be described as “ropey”, especially when genuine pacemen like Brett Lee operated. Dodgy pitches were accepted with a shrug of the shoulders in 1999 but, with the USA team qualifying for the Super Eight and being promoted as a viable cricket nation, this is not good enough. Mind you, USA cricket has long been wracked by organisational turmoil and this could be yet another example of the chaos that exists among their administration.While T20 pitches should never totally favour batters, there’s no excuse for surfaces that are considered dangerous.There’s a highly competitive cricket rivalry still to be played in the Super Eight – India vs Australia. This has become a blockbuster contest in recent years.Even if these two teams provide yet another exciting contest, it shouldn’t camouflage the USA problem. If cricket wants to make headway in the USA it has to vastly improve the administration and their pitches, while also convincing locally born players it’s a game worth playing.