The South Africa head coach mentioned that the lockdown in the country hasn’t “really disrupted our plans”

Firdose Moonda08-Apr-2020Mark Boucher has called South Africa’s win over Australia in the ODI series in March the “light at the end of the tunnel” after a difficult first season in charge of the men’s national side. Boucher took over in December and oversaw South Africa lose a Test and T20 series to England, draw a rain-affected ODI series, lose a T20 rubber to Australia and finally win the ODI series 3-nil, which gave Boucher hope that South Africa are progressing, albeit mostly in shorter formats.With back-to-back T20 World Cups in the next two years and the 2023 fifty-over tournament marking the end of Boucher’s contract period, that’s no bad thing and is so far allowing for the talent pool to deepen.”The exciting thing was in white-ball cricket, to see the guys grow a bit. We gave quite a lot of opportunities to youngsters and they started to gel as a team and not allow one particular guy to carry them through,” Boucher said. “Our performance against Australia was the light at the end of the tunnel but it’s not that it’s the finished product.”To get there, Boucher wants to continue up-skilling his players and is hopeful he will still be able to make use of the expertise of batting consultant Jacques Kallis and spin-bowling consultant Paul Harris, whose short stints with the national side have come to an end. The duo were brought in on a temporary basis for the 2019-20 summer to supplement the coaching staff made up of Boucher, assistant Enoch Nkwe, bowling coach Charl Langeveldt and fielding coach Justin Ontong.”I’m not too sure what will happen with Jacques Kallis and Paul Harris, but hopefully can sort something out contractually because we would be stupid not to make use of their experience,” Boucher said.ALSO READ: Cricket South Africa to advertise for selection convener, national coachesExpanding the support staff would likely be dependent on Cricket South Africa’s budget, which will be squeezed following the departure of Standard Bank as a sponsor at the end of this month. The organisation has indicated they are in talks with a new corporate backer but remain cautious about their financial position, as is the case with many entities worldwide.CSA have been slightly less affected than most, with the shutdown coinciding with the end of the summer. As a result, they will not suffer losses from postponed tours and may even save some money if their scheduled visit to West Indies for the A side and both the men’s and women’s national teams, scheduled between June and August do not go ahead.Despite those uncertainties, the rest of South African cricket has been largely unaffected by the current situation, having lost only two ODIs in India and the women’s home series against Australia so far. “I don’t think it has really disrupted our plans. We were always going to be having a break at this time,” Boucher said. “The plan was to give the guys some off time, to travel a bit, spend some time with the families, they are certainly spending some time with the families now but not traveling and there’s time to get rid of a few niggles their bodies have picked up.”But it’s not all rest and relaxation. South Africa’s players will all go through fitness tests as when the country’s lockdown ends – at the moment this is due to happen on April 16 – and will be expected to have maintained their conditioning. “We have put in some programs with regards to keeping fit and strong around your household,” Boucher said. “We are putting new fitness clauses in contracts so you need to be fit.”

Outcast England batsman should be allowed to prove he’s changed, says team-mate

Andrew Miller22-May-2020Chris Woakes believes that Alex Hales would be welcomed back into the England set-up this summer, assuming he has learnt his lessons following the drugs ban that caused his axing from last summer’s World Cup squad.Speaking in anticipation of next week’s squad announcements, for which England are likely to choose up to 45 players to accommodate both red- and white-ball needs, Woakes acknowledged that Hales remains a “world-class player” despite not having been selected for England since March 2019, and admitted that a part of him felt sorry for his former team-mate, after missing out on what ought to have been the highlight of his career last summer.”I don’t 100% know what will happen but I’d be happy to see Alex back in England colours,” said Woakes. “I would imagine the majority would have the kind of views I have given. People deserve a second chance, as long as they’ve gone away and worked on a few things. I don’t know why anyone would see that any differently.”The ultimate decision remains in the hands of the England white-ball captain, Eoin Morgan, who took a hard line on Hales in the immediate aftermath of his drugs ban, describing his actions as a “complete disregard” for the team’s values.And though Morgan conceded earlier this month that “the door is still open” for Hales to return to the white-ball set-up, he also put no timeframe on how long he would need to “regain that trust”.Nevertheless, Woakes’ endorsement is significant seeing as he was one of the group of senior players – alongside Morgan, Joe Root, Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali – who initiated the removal of Hales from England’s World Cup plans last May.”I don’t know 100 percent if it’s the right decision, it’s not my call,” Woakes said. “[But] I’m a believer that people serve their time so to speak – he’s gone through a tough time, being left out of the World Cup, and going on to see that team lift the trophy must have been difficult for him.”Though Hales has yet to make a public apology for his actions, which overshadowed England’s final preparations for their most important campaign in a generation, he recently told the Daily Mail that he had matured as a character since his fall from grace, and hoped that the England management would find it in themselves to “forgive and forget”.ALSO READ: Is it now or never for Alex Hales’ England recall?Hales has certainly demonstrated a renewed focus with his on-field performances. In 22 innings for Sydney Thunder and Karachi Kings since December, he has amassed 815 runs at 42.89, including eight fifties, and believes he has been in the “form of his life”. With back-to-back T20 World Cups looming – albeit October’s event in Australia may be facing postponement – the statistical case for his England recall is self-evident.Alex Hales gets low to slog-sweep•Getty Images

And Woakes, who has played with and against Hales throughout their rise through age-group cricket, including two Under-19 Tests against New Zealand in 2008, said that he would be willing to take Hales’ commitment to self-improvement at face value.”I think if people have gone away for a time and worked on their weaknesses, they should be allowed a second chance,” Woakes said. “Alex is a world-class player. I have played a lot of cricket with him from a young age actually. In a way I felt sorry for him but I understand the decision from the management, captain and rest of the team.”We have a culture and an environment in the England squad that we all try and pull in the right direction. If Alex is willing to do that then I imagine everyone would be happy to see him back playing for England.”

The batsman and offspinner played 14 Tests between 1953 and 1956

ESPNcricinfo staff13-Jun-2020Matt Poore, the New Zealand right-hand batsman and offspinner from the 1950s, died in Auckland on Thursday, ten days after completing his 90th birthday.A batsman who bowled a bit, Poore played most of his cricket in Christchurch in a first-class career that ran from 1950-51 to 1961-62. He played 14 Tests in a three-year span from 1953 to 1956 but never ended on a winning side. New Zealand lost nine of those 14 Tests and the remaining five were draws.He made his Test debut against South Africa at Eden Park in Auckland, scoring 45 and 8 not out, while also picking up two wickets in each innings. That was to remain his best performance at the highest level as he never scored more in an innings and picked up just five more wickets overall in the format. His Test career ended with 355 runs at an average of 15.43 and nine wickets at 40.77. Among non-wicketkeepers, Poore’s 14 Tests remain the most for anyone who never scored a half-century or took a three-wicket haul.Writing in ESPNcricinfo, Martin Williamson noted: “His best returns came on the 1953-54 tour of South Africa where he scored 170 runs in the five Tests, and 550 at 22.91 on the tour as a whole. On his only other trip overseas – to India and Pakistan in 1955-56 – he was less successful, amassing only 132 runs in seven Tests. He was a better player than the figures suggest – his first-class best was 142 for Central Districts. He retired after a wretched season in 1956-57 when he scored 90 runs at 12.85, although his form with the ball improved and he enjoyed his best year with 16 wickets at 17.50. He made a brief comeback four seasons later where in three matches his performances were distinctly mediocre.”

Decision to wait on a decision in light of tight restrictions set to be in place until mid-September in Melbourne

Andrew McGlashan08-Aug-2020Cricket Australia (CA) is willing to wait until much later into the year to make a decision on whether the Boxing Day Test against India will be staged at the MCG, and are currently “full steam ahead” with plans for the game to be in its traditional Melbourne home.The city is in a Stage 4 lockdown following a second wave of Covid-19 cases with tight restrictions set to be in place until mid-September at the earliest. Unlike some other major cities around Australia, Melbourne has not been able to host any crowds at sports events since the original pandemic restrictions took hold in March.Currently Perth Stadium, which missed out on getting an India Test in the original schedule, is able to hold 25,000 spectators for AFL matches while smaller crowds of up to 10,000 are permitted in Brisbane, Sydney and Adelaide although there is a close watch being maintained on the Covid-19 situation in New South Wales.Under the current schedule, India are due to play Tests in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney from early December to early January.ALSO READ: Where does the Australia summer stand?Nick Hockley, the interim CA CEO, said there are contingency plans being worked out on for all aspects of the Australian summer but every effort will be made to enable the Melbourne game to go ahead.”In terms of Boxing Day, it’s one of the most iconic events on the Australian sporting calendar. Certainly at this stage we are planning full steam ahead,” he said. “As long as circumstances allow, we will be doing everything we can to play the Test at the MCG.India are due to play Tests in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney from early December to early January•Getty Images

“It comes down to if we can get a crowd at the MCG, we’ll play at the MCG. There’s a long way to run, over four and a half months; [I] think it’s very premature to be talking about this. All the restrictions that are ongoing – we are just hopeful that they take very quick effect and we get back on top of the situation and people can get out and about, we can get back to crowds and get back to live events.”We are having to remain agile, certainly we’re looking at contingency planning across the entire summer. As things change we’re doing everything we can and we have all the back-up arrangements to make sure we get cricket played. We are a number of months off having to make any change to the published schedule in respect to Boxing Day.”The India series remains the vital part of the summer for CA, but is just one of many sets of fixtures they are trying to stage. Under normal circumstances, the domestic season would be starting in around six weeks but there are currently no confirmed schedules for the Sheffield Shield, Marsh Cup or the Women’s National Cricket League (WNCL). New Zealand’s women team are due to be the first international visitors of the season from late September for T20Is and ODIs.”There’s a huge amount of work going on in the background at the moment. It is very complicated,” Hockley said. “If you think about the summer of cricket [and] all the different formats, there’s a huge amount of complexity in all of that because each of those competitions are reliant on inter-state travel. The absolute starting point is that we get as much of the schedule away as possible and that’s what we are working towards.”The more immediate schedule that needs final approval is the men’s limited-overs tour to England with T20Is and ODIs set to be played in bio-secure grounds in September. The tour is expected to proceed but there are a few final elements that require government sign-off given Australia currently has closed international borders and heavy restrictions on inter-state movement.”There is a bit more work to be done around travel exemptions, but we’re committed to making that tour happen,” Hockley said. “We’ll be making some announcements on that in the next couple of weeks and confirming that tour as soon as we’re able to.”

A breezy five-over chase helped them pick up their first points of the season

The Report by Karthik Krishnaswamy20-Aug-2020Is the DLS method a fair way to determine targets in rain-shortened T20 games? Graeme Smith, the former South Africa captain, recently said he doesn’t think so, and he could have used Thursday’s CPL game between the Barbados Tridents and the St Lucia Zouks as an example to support his argument.It was shaping up to be a slow-scoring tussle between two spin-heavy attacks on a two-paced pitch. Rain arrived, ate away more than two hours of action, and transformed the nature of the contest. Rather than a 20-over target in the region of 145, the Zouks had to chase a far less challenging 47 in five overs, and they got home with ease, with five balls to spare.The Zouks attack – Mohammad Nabi in particular – bowled well enough to be deserving victors, but rain and the arithmetic of DLS rendered everything about the first innings almost irrelevant. To rephrase the cliche about games of two halves, this was a game of two games, or maybe even two entirely different sports.Luck favours the chasing sideLuck plays a fairly influential role in T20 contests; over five overs, with the batting team still having ten wickets to play with, this role is magnified. The Zouks hit seven fours and two sixes in their chase, and of those nine boundaries, four were miscues – including the first two that Rahkeem Cornwall edged behind the wicket in the first over to set the tone of the chase – and one was a chance that Mitchell Santner couldn’t wrap his hands around at long-on.Over a longer contest, these moments of fortune play a smaller role in deciding the result. The Tridents, moreover, had an attack made for this Tarouba surface, with four frontline spinners, but three of them didn’t get to bowl at all. The fourth, Rashid Khan, picked up two wickets and could have had a third (the chance Santner failed to grab off Nabi) but ended up going for 24 in his two overs.Rain interrupted the Barbados Tridents innings•CPL via Getty Images

Tridents hurry off the blocksPerhaps the one thing the Tridents got wrong was Jason Holder’s decision at the toss – why bat first if rain is imminent? – but the opening exchanges suggested they were on the right track. The two-paced nature of the pitch was already in evidence – and the Tridents had an attack to make full use of it later on – but in the meanwhile, Johnson Charles was taking full toll of some ordinary new-ball bowling from the Zouks. He slapped the first ball of the match – a short one from the left-arm spinner Saad Bin Zafar – to the cover point boundary, and then hammered a wildly inconsistent Obed McCoy for two fours and a six in the second over. By the time he was out for 35 off 19 in the fourth over, his opening partner Shai Hope had only faced two balls and was yet to open his account.Nabi applies the strangleCharles and Corey Anderson – who slapped a full-toss straight to cover – fell in successive Scott Kuggeleijn overs, and the Tridents ended the powerplay 53 for 2. At the other end, Nabi bowled a typically shrewd spell of strangulating offspin, varying his pace, reading the batsmen’s intentions, giving neither right- nor left-hander any room, and getting his arm ball to deviate like a legcutter. He got the wicket of Hope, for an unconvincing 19 off 16, with one of these arm balls, and ended with figures of 4-0-19-1.Zouks wrest control despite Holder cameoFew batsmen in world cricket time the ball as well as Holder does when he’s on song, and on a pitch where most of his team-mates struggled to middle the ball, the Tridents captain strode in at No. 5 and dispatched the ball to all parts – a pulled six off Kesrick Williams was particularly jaw-dropping in its effortlessness – while scoring 27 off 12 balls. But once he fell to a Williams slower ball, the Tridents innings lost all momentum. Roston Chase and Mark Deyal – two of four offspinners used by the Zouks – picked up three wickets in the space of nine balls, before Santner and Ashley Nurse added an unbroken, run-a-ball 22 for the eighth wicket. That left the Tridents poised for a bit of a slog, with 11 balls remaining and the dangerous Khan still to come, but the rain came down and rendered everything that came before meaningless.

Batsmen have hit a whopping 62 sixes in the first two matches at the venue

ESPNcricinfo staff01-Oct-2020The team that hits more sixes usually wins. It’s a common refrain in T20 cricket, but Jos Buttler feels it’s particularly applicable to the ongoing IPL season, particularly in Sharjah, the smallest of the three grounds hosting the tournament.The first 12 matches of the season have produced 178 sixes – that’s 14.83 per match, the highest rate of sixes in any IPL season, ahead of 2018, which featured 14.53 sixes per match. The first two matches in Sharjah, meanwhile, have produced a whopping 62 sixes. There have been more sixes at the venue, in fact, than fours (52).

The ability to hit a large number of sixes in a short span of time has allowed a couple of teams, this season, to get back into games when the odds were seemingly stacked against them. Buttler referenced two such performances: Rahul Tewatia’s rollercoaster 31-ball 53 for the Royals against Kings XI Punjab in Sharjah, and Kieron Pollard’s unbeaten, match-tying 24-ball 60 against Royal Challengers Bangalore in Dubai.”What the six-hitting shows is that if you have that capability, you can make your run quite late to try and win the game,” Buttler said. “Rahul Tewatia hit five sixes in an over that took us from being out of the game to right back in the game. RCB v MI, Mumbai looked a long way away and excellent six-hitting from Pollard gets you back in it.”In past tournaments, you think of Andre Russell, and KKR (Kolkata Knight Riders) needing 70 or four overs and managing to get there. So I think if you have that six hitting capability, you never feel quite safe as the team defending. You realise you can get more at the end than you probably thought you could.”‘Every IPL team has fantastic players missing out’The Royals have started the season with Steven Smith opening the batting alongside Buttler, and haven’t had room yet for the India Under-19 star Yashasvi Jaiswal. Buttler said it was always a “tricky act” to pick a balanced XI, and that good players inevitably miss out in the process.”Jaiswal is a really exciting young cricketer, it’s fantastic to have him in the squad and I know everyone in the team is really excited to watch his development,” Buttler said. “But in every IPL team, there’s fantastic players and there’s fantastic players missing out, so you’re always under pressure to perform.”It’s always a tricky act to try and narrow down to the final eleven and the balance of the team you want. Obviously the coach and captain and the management are really happy with what we’ve got at the minute, and the way it’s set out, so you have to be consistent with that and give it enough time to try and work. So that’s the balance at the moment. But of course if things need to change in the future they probably can.”

ESPNcricinfo’s updates from the 53rd match of IPL 2020

Karthik Krishnaswamy01-Nov-2020