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He will lead USA against his friend and school-mate Jofra Archer in a town where they first dreamt of playing international cricket

Sidharth Monga23-Jun-2024Aaron Jones has had a lot to take in over the last three days. On Thursday he came home, but as the captain of USA. On Friday he officially stood to a beautiful rendition of Rally ‘Round The West Indies only for the second time in his life. The first had been in an ODI when West Indies were forced to go into the World Cup Qualifier last year. But this was different: at his home ground, the Kensington Oval, in front of his own people, with David Rudder himself performing the regional cricket anthem.Later, Jones walked out to a huge cheer from his people, hit a huge six onto the roof of the Kensington Oval, then tried to take on fellow Barbadian, two years his senior, offspinner Roston Chase and lost his leg stump. The shot was on, the match-up was on, but it went a little like the whole night did for USA. By the time Jones was getting done with the media, he got a call from another fellow Bajan.Jofra Archer, his friend – school-mate at both primary and secondary school – soon to be his opponent on Sunday, called him and told him he had reached with the England team and checked in at Hilton, the same hotel where USA are staying. Jones couldn’t finish his formalities in time, and spent the Saturday linking up with his family and people.Related

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On Sunday, perhaps at the breakfast, or on the field, Archer and Jones will meet each other. Two kids who had spent their childhood and adolescence dreaming about playing cricket together for West Indies now under two non-West Indies flags playing at their own theatre of dreams in the T20 World Cup 2024. The two spent practically every single day of school playing cricket together. When they were not playing formally, when they were not talking about cricket, they were playing with a tape ball or on hard courts or playing road tennis.Aaron Jones announced himself early at the T20 World Cup 2024 with a magnificent 94* for USA against Canada•ICC/Getty ImagesRoad tennis is a Bajan sport that originated as a response to its time. During the exclusionary racist times of the 1930s in Barbados, when the locals, originally brought to the Caribbean as slaves, were not allowed to play tennis in private clubs, they invented this sport. The kids collected stray tennis balls that flew out of clubs, shaved off the skin, took the inner core and played tennis with it on the streets. The net would be a wooden plank not higher than a foot generally, and the rackets were carved out of wood, giant table tennis rackets if you will. It actually is a bit of a table tennis played with a tennis ball and an underarm serve but on the road.A quick sport, it requires a low centre of gravity and comes with a good working over of the back, glutes and knees. Importantly it has gone from a silent rebellion to being a symbol of inclusiveness. What started as a poor man’s sport is now a low-key national passion. It is now a formalised professional sport that found big resurgence during the Covid-19 pandemic. Prime Minister Mia Mottley has even pitched it as a potential Olympic sport.Around the time road tennis was making a resurgence, Jones was making a tough life decision, following in the footsteps of his friend Archer to move to the USA and play international cricket for them. He had started playing for USA just before the pandemic, but now decided to move to North Carolina – hot summers, winters cold but no snow, beaches far and nearly not as good as Barbados – to avoid travelling so much.The reason for Jones and Archer to move away were more or less similar. Don’t go by West Indies’ declining fortunes in international cricket, both Archer and Jones swear by the abundance of talent and the stiff competition into the Barbados side. It is similar in other traditional cricketing islands, you would imagine. The problem is, there is no level before it keeping a second team ready. Perhaps it has got to do with finances.When Archer moved to England, he did so when he got injured, having started bowling fast only at 17. He knew he would have to spend seven years qualifying to play for England, but he knew he had no future in Barbados once he failed to make the Under-19s because of injury.Jones stuck around for longer, but didn’t see a clear pathway even if he kept fighting it out. “I think that if I had stayed in Barbados and worked hard enough that I probably would’ve played for West Indies eventually,” Jones tells ESPNcricinfo. “But I was in and out of the Barbados first-class team. A lot of West Indies guys come from Barbados. So me being a guy that didn’t represent West Indies, it was hard for me to find a place in the starting XI every game. My career was really and truly stagnant at that time. So I just took the opportunity to go to US and see if I could get another opportunity to play at the world stage there and the rest is history.”

“Oh, if he hits my helmet or anything, he will talk about it for the next three years for sure. If I can hit it for a six, I will definitely hit it for a six. If it’s a good one, I will just let it go.”Aaron Jones has his plans set against good friend and school-mate Jofra Archer

Never underestimate the significance of being able to make a living as a cricketer either. He actually had an opportunity to make the move before he actually did but he kept giving it a shot for as long as he could. Phil Salt, Chris Jordan and Nicholas Kirton are three other Bajans playing this World Cup from other countries. Life can come in the way of dreams.Both Jones and Archer love their adopted countries, but feel so at peace when they come back to the island of their birth, where they dreamt those dreams. Jones saw all the signs that make Archer so good back in school even though at that time he was the better cricketer. And he should know: they both went to Hilda Skeene Primary and Christ Church Foundation together.’We went primary school and secondary school together,” Jones says. “It was always a competition. He’s very competitive regardless the situation. Even outside cricket, when we played soccer, when we played road tennis, anything to be honest. He’s a very competitive person.”It’s actually really an amazing journey, growing up as kids and then obviously branching off the plane. At that time we couldn’t imagine playing for other countries. We always thought that we would play for Barbados and then West Indies. We got opportunities elsewhere and here we are now.”Being such good athletes, they were both popular boys in school but “good boys”, staying out of trouble. Archer hadn’t yet become a fast bowler. He used to do everything else: bat, bowl legspin, keep wicket. They met as recently as when both the teams happened to be in Antigua at the same time. They keep abreast with each other’s lives.Just before the 2019 ODI World Cup, which it is fair to say Archer won for England, Jones had just made his international debut for USA. Before the big final, Archer actually called up Jones, congratulated him, told him he was looking forward to playing against him, and asked him to stay ready for a bouncer first ball. Now the moment has arrived. England will be facing USA for the first time ever.”Oh if he hits my helmet or anything, he will talk about it for the next three years for sure,” Jones says. “If I can hit it for a six, I will definitely hit it for a six. If it’s a good one, I will just let it go.”To somebody on the outside, this comes across as a highly unfortunate scenario. It helps that Jones is not an overtly emotional person. Or perhaps you need to learn to get better of your emotions when you have to leave home for work. However, there are times when he does wonder what might have been.”I thought about it a few times,” Jones says. “I mean that was the plan when we were younger. I don’t know.. we can’t really know how we’ll feel now because we are not playing for West Indies. But definitely it would have been good because we’ve been close since we were young. And then we know we could bring a lot to West Indies cricket as players so it would’ve been good for sure to play for West Indies together.”

They built on learnings from a less clinical performance than expected against Sri Lanka and are looking unstoppable

Valkerie Baynes09-Oct-20243:16

Clinical Australia complicate NRR matters for others

Good teams learn quickly.So when Australia’s top order all found themselves set on a now notoriously difficult pitch in Sharjah, they set the blueprint for what was already shaping as a crucial match on Sunday for them and, even more so, India.Australia’s 60-run thumping of New Zealand was their second match at the ground while India will play their first and only group game in Sharjah against them. But it wasn’t all bad for India, who stand to gain from New Zealand’s net run rate sliding into negative territory as they prepare to play Sri Lanka in Dubai on Wednesday.India’s upset at the hands of New Zealand followed by their cautious approach in the chase against Pakistan, whom they beat by six wickets with seven balls to spare, leaves them fourth in Group A with a net run rate of -1.217.ESPNcricinfo LtdIf India bat first and score 130 on Wednesday, they need to restrict Sri Lanka to 84 to go ahead of New Zealand’s NRR and to 81 to convert their NRR into the positive. If Sri Lanka score 100 batting first, India need to chase it down in 12.4 overs or less to go ahead of New Zealand’s NRR and in 12.1 overs or less to turn their NRR positive.Australia’s latest victory was built on learnings from a less clinical performance than expected from them when they defeated a struggling Sri Lanka by six wickets with 34 balls to spare at the same venue on Saturday. Beth Mooney’s unbeaten 43 from 38 balls was then the standout performance of an innings where no other batter passed 17.On this occasion, against New Zealand, Alyssa Healy, Ellyse Perry and Mooney – again the top-scorer with 40 off 32 balls – all got themselves in and found the boundary with greater authority to take Australia to 148 for 8, comfortably eclipsing the previous best total in Sharjah during this tournament: England’s 125 for 3 the previous evening.This too was a night game and the Australians looked more comfortable than they had in the searing afternoon heat of the Sri Lanka game. With New Zealand’s spinners offering more pace than the Sri Lankans, Australia’s top-order batters capitalised.Healy signalled her intent, repeatedly clearing extra cover to make the vast outfield look manageable for arguably the first time in six games at the ground en route to 26 in 20 balls and helping her side to 43 for 1 in the powerplay.More was to come, with Perry skipping down the pitch to despatch Eden Carson into the fence at long-on and muscling the next ball through square leg for four.Mooney managed just two fours but her knock was crucial in an innings where Phoebe Litchfield’s run-a-ball 18 was the only other score in double figures after the top three.”We spoke this morning and yesterday that it looked a little bit better than the wicket we were on the other day, still very different to conditions to back home and a bit of a hard slog at times with the slow outfield and the big boundaries and the slow wicket itself,” Mooney said.”We know throughout this tournament we’re going to have to dig pretty deep with the bat and try and find a way to score runs and sometimes that’s going to look pretty ugly and sometimes it’s going to be okay. If we just find a way to make it work, that will hold us in good stead, which is what we did tonight.”Being able to get out there in that first game and get an understanding of the conditions was always good and to bank that sort of data is always helpful moving throughout the tournament. But I think the natural dialogue is that it’s going to be pretty tough and you’ve got to really be composed at the crease and make good decisions and be really clear on what options you have and where to hit what holes.”She also said the performance was “not far off” Australia’s best in recent times. In the lead-up to the tournament they hosted New Zealand and won their T20I series 3-0 but twice suffered batting collapses and were bowled out once, for only the second time since early 2020.”If we’re being really critical, we’ve probably missed out on a few with the bat towards the middle and the back-end there with a few wickets in a row, but certainly really pleasing with that we’ve got ourselves into at this tournament,” she said.That was in no small part down to the legspin of Amelia Kerr, who snared 4 for 26. Having removed Mooney and Perry, she took two more wickets, bowling the big-hitting Grace Harris for a first-ball duck and ending Georgia Wareham’s knock, caught by Lea Tahuhu.But Australia had also learned with the ball.Megan Schutt, Player of the Match with 3 for 12 against Sri Lanka, opened the bowling again and, with Healy standing up to the stumps, offered no width for New Zealand to work with and bowled Georgia Plimmer with a beauty dipping in, beating the attempted pull and rattling the woodwork.That made Schutt the leading wicket-taker in Women’s T20 World Cups with 46 but she wasn’t done. Returning in the 12th over, she had Kerr caught by Annabel Sutherland, running in from long-on, and then bowled Carson to complete the rout, and a miserly return of 3 for 3 from 3.2 overs as New Zealand were bowled out for 88 in the final over.For New Zealand, Kerr maintained that their destiny was still in their own hands: “First, you want to win the game, that’s the key. You don’t want to go out there thinking you’ve got to beat them by X amount of runs… if we win both [remaining games], we give ourselves the best chance to qualify.”Australia next play Pakistan on Friday in Dubai and New Zealand play Sri Lanka on Saturday, followed by Pakistan.

The Champions Trophy may be too soon but a succession plan is needed for India’s biggest stars

Nagraj Gollapudi11-Jan-20252:51

What next for Rohit and Kohli in Test cricket?

Demoralising Test series defeats at home against New Zealand and in Australia have shaken Indian cricket to the extent that the selectors, the team’s think tank led by head coach Gautam Gambhir, and the BCCI are confronted with questions they would have ideally discussed only after the 2025 Champions Trophy ended in early March.ESPNcricinfo has learned that the selectors and Gambhir will meet on January 11 to review the Australia tour, but inevitably, the question of the future will hang prominently, and that would include the immediate future: when does the reset button for India’s ODI team get activated?
Which would bring them to a conversation about the two biggest players in Indian cricket: Virat Kohli and the Test and ODI captain Rohit Sharma.

The Rohit-Kohli question

Before the Border-Gavaskar Trophy it would have been sacrilegious to even countenance not having Kohli and Rohit in the ODI squad. They were the top run-scorers in the 2023 ODI World Cup and instrumental in India’s unbeaten run to the final. They were also crucial to the title win at the 2024 T20 World Cup in June last year, with Kohli even buying into the attacking batting ideology championed by Rohit and the head coach Rahul Dravid.Since then, though, both batters have struggled. Rohit also admitted to captaincy errors that contributed to India’s 3-0 defeat against New Zealand. However, it is the manner of their prolonged batting failures in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy combined with their age (Rohit is 37, Kohli 36) that has put them under the scanner now.The questions confronting the decision makers in Indian cricket would be these: should they finish the cycle with the template that took them to final of the 2023 ODI World Cup, or should they take into account recent events and make a fresh start at the Champions Trophy itself?The answers are not straightforward.When Gambhir took charge as head coach last August, he was asked before his first assignment (the ODI series in Sri Lanka) about how much quality cricket was left, according to him, in Rohit and in Kohli. He said he expected both players to be “motivated enough” for the Australia tour as well as the Champions Trophy. He even hoped they could play the 2027 ODI World Cup if they remained fit and emphasised that both of them merited a place because they could still contribute to wins. However, after the 3-1 loss in Australia where Kohli averaged 23.75 and Rohit 6.2, Gambhir said it was “up to them” to decide their future.Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli bring vast experience to the team in big tournaments•ICC via Getty ImagesWhile fresh conversations will be had about their future in Test cricket, in the roadmap drawn up last year by the Ajit Agarkar-led selection panel, Rohit and Kohli were part of the plan for the 2025 Champions Trophy. Both are part of India’s top three, which also includes Shubman Gill who formed a successful opening partnership with Rohit in the 2023 ODI World Cup. However, the resounding success of Yashasvi Jaiswal in Test and T20 cricket makes him a viable top-order batter in ODIs too, according to some in the Indian think tank. They believe Jaiswal, who is uncapped in ODIs, provides the left-hand option and can develop into an all-format player like Gill.But while Jaiswal could be included in the ODI squad as a third opener, who could he replace in the team? The Rohit-Gill opening partnership has been extremely successful – their average of 72.16 is the best among opening pairs with a minimum cut off of 25 innings. Rohit has struggled in Test cricket since September but he was India’s highest run-scorer in their previous ODI series in Sri Lanka in August, when he made 58, 64 and 35 on challenging pitches. Kohli’s scores in Sri Lanka were lean – 24, 14 and 20 – but ODI is his best format. Without them, India’s batting line-up looks bereft of experience.Instead of taking a hasty decision, the selectors and Gambhir could follow the route taken ahead of the 2024 T20 World Cup, when there was intrigue over whether Kohli would fit into the XI. The decision makers including Rohit, Dravid and selectors agreed his experience was vital in big tournaments. It is understood they had a chat with Kohli to ensure he bought into the way India wanted to bat in T20 cricket.The BCCI could use a similar process of dialogue to determine the futures of Kohli and Rohit in ODI and Test cricket. Also, it is important that Gambhir and Agarkar have a clear vision and are on the same page before they sit down with the two players. Unless they believe Kohli and Rohit’s motivation levels have been wavering, it would be a brave call to drop either of them before the Champions Trophy.Is Shubman Gill the right ODI captain for India after Rohit Sharma?•Getty Images

Who is the next ODI captain?

It is a question India might have to find an answer for after the Champions Trophy, and not before. Rohit has shaped the brand of cricket India have played since he replaced Kohli as the all-format captain. He’s also actively worked with the selectors to identify and develop players he believed could deliver results.The selectors had shortlisted Gill as a leader in the making and appointed him vice-captain of the ODI and T20I squads that toured Sri Lanka last August. Based on feedback received from the Indian dressing room, Agarkar said Gill had shown “decent leadership qualities” and had the potential to grow.However, Gill also had a poor tour of Australia where he was dropped for the fourth Test in Melbourne amid growing concerns about his runs in overseas Test matches. The time may not be right for a promotion right away.

Multi-skilled players vs specialists

India’s selectors and Gambhir have been keen to pick players who have more than just one skill – but may not qualify as genuine allrounders – in the ODI and T20I squads. In Sri Lanka last august, India played Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Riyan Parag and Shivam Dube. Tilak Varma, who bowls part-time offspin, was also drafted into the ODI squad after the 2023 World Cup.Tilak and Parag, in their early 20s, have the selectors’ backing because of their aggressive attitude, ability to float in the middle order, their agile fielding, and ability to bowl spin. They will compete for a spot with specialist batters like Shreyas Iyer, who played an important role in the middle order during the 2023 ODI World Cup along with KL Rahul. There is bound to be debate on who could play in the middle order while also providing bowling options to balance the XI.Indian cricket is at a fork in the road. One school of thought is to stick to the tried and tested route for the short-term. Another is to chart a new path right away, arguing that the 2023 ODI World Cup was 14 months ago and there is a need to plan ahead and develop players for the next 2027 ODI World Cup. The question is to what extent the process begins – if at all – before the 2025 Champions Trophy.

It has been a series of ups and downs for Jaiswal, but with the bat, he managed to end on a high

Sidharth Monga02-Aug-20253:22

Bangar: ‘Jaiswal’s Sehwag-esque impact makes it easier for batters to follow’

A five-Test tour can feel like a lifetime within a life. It can be a selfish existence, even for those working on it on the outside, but more so for cricketers. There is no other responsibility or commitment other than to look after every aspect of your game. Everything else is taken care of for you, which is a privilege, but it takes a huge emotional toll to deal with this constant examination of your game, the variety of conditions and situations, and the vagaries of sport.For Yashasvi Jaiswal more than others, this tour of England has been a lifetime of ups and downs. He started with a dominating century at Headingley, but dropped catches and saw them play a huge role in losing the unloseable Test, was taken out of the cordon, has had the odd spray from the captain for not being on the field, and has also seen the team’s fortunes go up and down.Jaiswal might have got starts but a second big score eluded him till the end. He has tried to do all the right things, he has tried to keep his emotions on an even keel, but he is also an intense person, whose reaction to anything is to go into the nets and face more balls. He does that any break he gets: before the start of play, lunch, tea, between innings or whenever anyone is available to throw balls at him. It must have taken some effort to keep him away from training two days before this match. Or perhaps his family’s presence in London might have helped.Related

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What must have really freed up Jaiswal’s mind, though, was the nature of the pitch. This was not the kind of pitch where you can battle it out and hope for things to get easier. Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley enjoyed success by being attacking. When Jaiswal walked out for his final innings of the series, India were trailing by 23 – only 23, thanks to a big effort from just the three fast bowlers – and needed a big third innings to give themselves hopes of levelling the series in the tour finale.There was an hour and 40 minutes on the second day to go to stumps, so it wasn’t as if India needed to bat time. Jaiswal came out and cut the first ball hard. The sound echoed in the stadium although Duckett denied him any runs. This much was clear, though: Jaiswal was going to look to score off anything remotely loose. He was not going to let the three standing England bowlers settle into any rhythm.Opening in Test cricket is a lot about taking care of many things that can go wrong, and it isn’t always possible to cover them all. Here, Jaiswal was focussing more on what can go right. It was as though he told himself he had done what he could in preparation, and now just needed to trust the universe.Throughout the whole innings, Jaiswal showed an exaggerated return to what has worked for him in the past: both in attitude and with his rituals. His walks to square leg between balls became longer, sometimes ending up in hand-shaking distance of the square-leg umpire. Even at the non-striker’s end, he would walk almost to midwicket between balls, switching off into a world of his own. It was as though his emotions were bubbling up and he wanted to keep them in check. So was his attacking intent, but that he didn’t want to check.Yashasvi Jaiswal brought out his own version of Bazball•Getty ImagesJaiswal’s first six scoring shots were boundaries, the last of those hit so hard that the worst possible result would be a half chance, which burst through the hands of Harry Brook at second slip. The universe was now beginning to look after him. A hook shot later in the evening didn’t stick in Liam Dawson’s hands. If a series is a life, it was coming a full circle. He dropped four at Headingley, and was now the beneficiary of two in a crucial period before stumps on the second day.This innings was not about head position or stance or guard or being in control. This innings was more about trusting his game built on painstaking hard work, about trusting everything will fall in place if he let instinct take over. This was more about his emotions.This innings was also about squaring certain things off, about the circle of life, about collecting receipts. Like Faizal Khan in , Jaiswal was now saying he will avenge dropped catches, low-control innings, and even time-wasting, which he did almost comically by cramping up at the non-striker’s end in what proved to be the last over before lunch. Although it wasn’t necessarily gamesmanship; he has tended to struggle with cramps in a few of his long innings.Jaiswal’s emotions were on an all-time high when he was in his 90s, going off at non-striker Karun Nair for not alerting him to a change in the field and then not running a third that could have got him his hundred. The release of emotion upon reaching the hundred said a lot.Jaiswal has ended his series as he began: a belligerent century to end up with a tally of 411 and an average of 41.10. Top-six batters overall have averaged 48.77 in the series so far; Jaiswal is used to being head and shoulders above his peers in his young career so far. That is probably why he was edgy.A century in challenging conditions should be succour if Jaiswal had been hurting. It is said you don’t become a great cricketer without having at least one bad tour of England. Jaiswal, who clearly aims to end up as a great, hasn’t had a bad tour by any measure, but has had all the extremes in one tour. A whole lifetime’s worth of ups and downs.

RCB went back to the drawing board ahead of IPL 2025, and their new plans have carried them into Qualifier 1 for the first time since 2016

Shashank Kishore28-May-20252:31

Will an 18-year-long wait end this season?

For once, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) aren’t just in the playoffs. They’re playing Qualifier 1 – a result that looked difficult when Virat Kohli was dismissed on on Tuesday night with RCB still a long way from victory. The spectre of past failings loomed, but their stand-in captain Jitesh Sharma emphasised why the RCB of 2025 is different.Jitesh finished unbeaten on 85 off 33 balls, his maiden IPL half-century. RCB won with eight balls to spare, underlining their batting depth. They now have a direct route to the final – and a second chance if they need it – which is significant because three of their previous four appearances in the playoffs since 2020 have ended in the Eliminator.Their deepest scar, however, is from 2016 – the closest RCB have come to winning the IPL title in 17 years. Chasing 209 against Sunrisers Hyderabad, RCB were 114 for 0 in the 11th over, but unravelled after Chris Gayle, Kohli and AB de Villiers fell and finished nine runs short.Related

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This RCB, however, is no longer a team that lives and dies by its big three. They have displayed depth and versatility. They are the only team to have won all seven designated away games in a season in IPL history, and with the playoffs in Mullanpur and Ahmedabad, a familiar chant is growing a little louder.

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RCB’s loss to Rajasthan Royals (RR) in the IPL 2024 Eliminator laid bare a sobering truth once the euphoria of the six-game winning streak that took them there had dissipated. Their game plan needed an overhaul.Prior to the mega auction last November, their director of cricket Mo Bobat made it non-negotiable that the franchise would assess players not by “how they play” but “how we want them to play.” His vision put role clarity over reputation. It was no longer about assembling the best players; it was about assembling the right ones.In the months that followed, Bobat, head coach Andy Flower, batting mentor Dinesh Karthik, and head scout Malolan Rangarajan used data, visual evidence and their collective experience to arrive at what they felt was would be a successful method.The objective was clear: build a batting line-up that had power and could impose themselves on bowling attacks. Like SRH and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) had done so staggeringly in 2024. They deprioritised averages in favour of more impactful metrics like strike rate and boundary percentage, both in the powerplay and beyond.An ultra-aggressive opener to partner Kohli was on top of their wish list. Faf du Plessis, 40, was no longer a long-term solution. Will Jacks, who scored a 41-ball century against Gujarat Titans in 2024, was a strong contender but RCB’s management wanted Phil Salt.According to Karthik, Salt had the ability to “convert a good over into a big over”, and so they spent INR 11.25 crore to buy him. Salt currently has 331 runs at a strike rate of 171.50. He helped RCB take 30 runs off a Mitchell Starc over, took Pat Cummins and SRH apart with an innings of 62 off 32 balls, and set up RCB’s chase against LSG on Tuesday with a 61-run stand with Kohli in 5.4 overs. They are the third-most prolific opening pair this season, with the highest run rate among the teams who have made the playoffs.Kohli has constructed another 600-plus season for himself – his third in a row – but he too has bought into the aggressive philosophy. His last three innings have come at 170+ strike rates and all eight of his half-centuries have resulted in victories – an IPL record. He’s been less of an anchor and more of a storm at the top.Virat Kohli and Phil Salt have scored at 10.55 an over as an opening partnership•BCCIRCB, however, have always had plenty of runs at the top. Their point of difference this season is what’s happening down the order. Their ability to score, and score impactfully, is deeper than ever.Jitesh’s innings that sealed their place in the top two is only the latest example. Romario Shepherd blitzed the IPL’s second-fastest fifty from No. 7. Tim David is the joint highest for sixes between overs 17-20 with a strike rate of 203 in that phase. The 26 balls he batted against Punjab Kings (PBKS) were the most he has faced in an IPL innings and he scored his maiden fifty in the league.That friendly hug between Mumbai Indians (MI) and RCB at the auction table as they let go of Jacks, seemingly with an eye on David, has yielded desired results. They will hope David recovers from a hamstring strain to play some part in the playoffs.

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Bobat and Flower sounded out Rajat Patidar for the RCB captaincy this season as early as February 2024. Those conversations intensified in June when they met the franchise’s owners for a season review. When asked what he wanted to change if he became captain, Patidar spoke of the need for a gun pace attack. Flower and Bobat knew then that Patidar was the man.They waited for more evidence. Patidar needed to captain his state team, an opportunity he firmed up by speaking to Madhya Pradesh head coach Chandrakant Pandit. Patidar led MP to the final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2024-25 and was also the tournament’s second-highest run-getter.Impressed by his decision-making and leadership, which they observed on a scouting trip to India, Flower and Bobat also met Kohli, who gave their choice his full backing. For the first time, RCB had a captain who wasn’t a superstar Indian or high-profile international.Rajat Patidar’s temperament as captain has passed the test this season•Getty ImagesOn captaincy debut, Patidar helped RCB beat KKR at Eden Gardens for the first time since 2019. His half-century was central to their first victory against Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in Chennai since 2008. He helped RCB beat MI at the Wankhede for the first time since 2015.His decision-making has also had an impact. Against KKR, Patidar brought on Suyash Sharma against Andre Russell, perhaps not the most obvious choice, but it paid off. KKR finished with 172 when 190 had looked likely. With 34 to defend in three overs against CSK, Patidar once again backed Suyash and he conceded only six off the 18th over. He gave Yash Dayal the final over in that match despite him going for runs earlier and it paid off too.”The best thing is that he’s been calm,” RCB fast bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar had said of Patidar’s mindset. “That’s what is needed, especially in this format. “Because when you lose a match, the easy thing is to panic. And that’s what he has not done. We lost two matches [at home] but he’s been the same whether we won or lost. With the bowling changes and everything, he’s been superb.”Stand-in captain Jitesh Sharma has delivered in Patidar’s absence due to injury•AFP/Getty ImagesPatidar, however, has not been able to field – and therefore captain – since the IPL resumed due to a hand injury. He shares a close rapport with Jitesh, who has stepped up to lead in two high-pressure games.Jitesh’s high-impact performance that took RCB into Qualifier 1 may have been the final piece RCB were looking for ahead of the playoffs. The game against LSG began with a mix-up at the toss – Jitesh handed over the batting-first XI when RCB were in fact bowling – which needed Rishabh Pant’s sign off to fix. He had another bit of luck on 49, when he was caught off a no-ball, and went on to close out the game.Jitesh’s rise has been the result of hard work behind the scenes. In January and February, he attended training camps led by Karthik and Flower, where he worked on developing shots that he previously believed were beyond him – like the reverse ramp that he now plays consistently.”It’s been a great journey till now because in the off-season, I really worked hard with DK [Karthik],” Jitesh had said during the season. “I think whichever shot I am playing right now is the replica of what he used to play. He is trying to create a new player in me, because he believes that I can play 360 degrees. I am really enjoying myself in this new role.”Another player RCB invested heavily in was Devdutt Padikkal, whom they earmarked as their No. 3. After struggling for role clarity at RR and LSG, he returned to RCB with his IPL career at a loose end. The message to him was clear: he could no longer be an accumulator of runs. Until his season-ending injury, Padikkal had scored 247 runs at a strike rate of 150.60. His previous best strike-rate in a season was 130.50 in 2023.Josh Hazlewood is likely to return after an injury layoff for the playoffs•Getty Images”If you look at the top order in the last few seasons, we had to do bulk of the scoring,” Kohli said after Padikkal scored a 35-ball 61 against PBKS. “But this time around, it feels like even if someone gets out, like in Chennai, guys can still keep carrying on with that momentum and keep counterattacking, like in Mumbai as well. It feels very balanced.”

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In hindsight, the restraint RCB showed during the auction, refusing to get caught up in bidding wars for Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer or KL Rahul, was important. Except for an audacious bid for Venkatesh Iyer that didn’t go their way, they stuck to carefully considered spending brackets, choosing structure over stardom. This clarity helped assemble an effective pace attack in Josh Hazlewood, Bhuvneshwar and Dayal, whom they had retained.Until his previous game at the end of April, Hazlewood had the second-best economy for a fast bowler in the powerplay among those who bowled at least five overs in that phase. He was also in the running for the Purple Cap until a shoulder niggle kept him out of their last three league games. His 18 wickets have come with an economy of 8.44 and are spread out across phases: seven in the powerplay, five in the middle overs, and six at the death.”I think we’ve got highly skilled quicks in particular,” Hazlewood had said during the season. “To bowl with someone like Bhuvi, who has been around for so long, he’s so skillful at the start and end, it’s great to learn from him. Just the variety we’ve got, we [him, Bhuvneshwar and Yash Dayal] are all a bit different.”RCB’s biggest weakness from the outside was their spin attack, but Suyash has delivered impactful spells and Krunal Pandya has taken 15 wickets, his best returns in an IPL season. Pandya is among their eight different Player-of-the-Match award winners this season.Two wins stand between them and their goal, but in a format as fickle as T20 cricket, as long as they stay true to their new ethos in upcoming challenges, it should be recognised that RCB’s class of 2025 has been different to all that has come before.

Thanks to Shaheen Shah Afridi’s reverse-swing heroics, they might just have found the blueprint to win even outside spin-friendly conditions

Danyal Rasool15-Oct-2025Twenty wickets. Pakistan captain Shan Masood has concerned himself with no other number ever since England inflicted a chastening innings defeat on his side a year ago, running up the fourth highest total in Test history in the process. It was, according to Masood, the only way to win Test matches, and thereafter, Pakistan began preparing spin tracks which would just about guarantee the fall of 20 wickets.It has turned around the fortunes of Noman Ali and Sajid Khan, who took almost every one of those wickets in the past four home Tests, but Masood will take those wickets however they come. The denouement to the first Test, which Pakistan won by 93 runs, was dominated by Shaheen Afridi, who exploited the old, reversing ball, taking four in the innings – more than Pakistani pace bowlers have taken in the last four home Tests combined. It included the final three, Afridi trapping Kyle Verreynne before making a mess of the stumps for the final two.Related

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For Masood, this offered evidence that there was more than one way of breaking through on this surface. “It’s simple for me,” he said after the game. “Shaheen took four wickets [in the fourth innings]. He’s put in the effort and bowled extraordinarily well. He’s shown why he’s in the world’s best fast bowlers. On these pitches, fast bowlers don’t vanish, their role changes.”The World Test Championship will not be played in uniform conditions; they will be played in different conditions against different teams. We can’t look at one Test and extrapolate to the next two years. We have to play in England and the West Indies with the Duke ball. Bangladesh beat us in seam-friendly conditions so maybe they’ll give us seaming conditions there too. Fast bowlers’ role is not being phased out; we’re expanding the ways we can win Test matches. That’s why we played two fast bowlers, and Shaheen showed us exactly how.”On more than one occasion in the fourth innings, Masood admitted to some degree of “anxiety” after Pakistan had repeatedly failed to put the visitors away once and for all. Overnight, Ryan Rickelton and Tony de Zorzi had gutsed their way to an unbeaten overnight stand after the pair offered the most potent resistance in the first dig. Masood started the day with Afridi, who found reverse to bring the fourth ball in, hitting de Zorzi dead in front.Three hours later, South Africa had begun to sneak back into contention with another little stand for the eighth wicket, compiling 29 runs as the target neared double digits. Once more, Afridi’s introduction brought immediate relief; he would need 11 balls to take three wickets.”When we were discussing the game on the field, Shaheen said “I will turn this match around for you”. We waited for the ball to get older. Obviously not bowling him with the new ball is a big decision. We trusted him, and he demanded the ball, and then he delivered for us. The way he bowled, we’re all excited; it was a superb fast bowling display.”Masood also pointed to his team’s composition as evidence that Pakistan were not looking only to spin their way to victory. He said they had unwittingly ended up going overboard in the series against the West Indies, where prodigious turn on surfaces in Multan that broke up right from the outset ended up with the side that won the toss winning the game. Spin operated almost exclusively from start to finish that series, which ended square 1-1.In Lahore, Pakistan believed there was enough in it for the quicks to field two of them, with Hasan Ali also taking part. It is a combination Masood hinted they might stick with for the second Test in Rawalpindi, calling them “the best exponents of reverse swing in Pakistan.””We’ll collectively admit that the conditions against the West Indies were too extreme. The bowling attacks were evened out because of the conditions. Batting was difficult, and the toss and the first innings lead mattered a lot. This pitch was very similar to the Test we played in Pindi. When a batter set himself he had an opportunity to go on and get good runs here. South Africa also showed when batters are set, it looks like batting is straightforward.Shaheen Shah Afridi struck early on day four•Getty Images”When Brevis and Rickelton were batting and the target dropped below 150, that felt like a stressful situation. But the bowler’s always in the game. Our pacers also contributed. Shaheen bowled extraordinarily well. If you want to do well in the WTC and the Test team, we will need performances from all departments, and we got that this Test.”Masood knows the challenge his side has just overcome, and while much of it does come down to the toss, South Africa are coming off the best winning run in their team’s history. They had won 10 Tests on the trot, including two against Pakistan at home as well as the World Test Championship final against Australia, and gave Pakistan the biggest fright of a side losing the toss since Pakistan started preparing wickets of this nature.For the Pakistan captain, it was proof both of the strides he is convinced his side is making, as well as the notion that the toss does not decide the game. “Our focus has always been on how we’re improving as a side. Getting a result is a huge deal. We’ve taken a strong start in the WTC final, and we need to build on it.”In the last year, when we played against England in Multan, we won the toss on a used pitch. When we won the match, England said it’d be interesting what happens when Pakistan lose the toss, and then we still beat them. The toss isn’t in our hands or South Africa’s hands. It evens out in cricket long-term. In Pindi, I challenged the side to reveal their character even if we lost the toss. And we did showcase that with one of our best Test performances last cycle with Saud Shakeel playing an excellent knock and the lower order complementing him. I’ll always tell the side to show how we can play our first innings well even when we lose the toss. If we lose the toss, we’ll have a plan for how to win the next game.”Whatever that plan is, 20 opposition wickets is set to be at the heart of it.

Across every major event in Carse’s professional career, there has been one recurring presence – Stokes

Vithushan Ehantharajah01-Dec-2024There was a point on Saturday afternoon, as Brydon Carse was walking back to the top of his mark, that he turned to his captain. The fields were fine and the plans clear, but Carse had noticed something he wanted to relay.The grass banks were throbbing with anticipation, the air filled with that loud hum you get when a bowler is in the midst of a Test-tilting spell. This one in particular aimed at New Zealand’s middle order. “This is pretty cool,” said Carse – the man responsible – without breaking stride.”Just lap it all up and take it in,” replied Ben Stokes, “because this pretty special.”Related

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About 24 hours later, both Carse – player of the match gong in his possession – and Stokes were sat on the outfield of a now empty Hagley Oval, quiet but for idle conversation and the noise of team-mates kicking around a football. Beers in hand, smiles on the go. This, too, was something to lap up.England had beaten New Zealand – for just the second time in 11 matches on their patch – and Carse had driven it with a match-wide 10 for 106 of historical and cultural significance. All under the guidance of a close friend.An England bowler has not taken a ten-for overseas in the last 12 years before Carse took four in the first innings and added six in the second, with the final three arriving on the final day. You have to go even further back – to Ryan Sidebottom in Hamilton in 2008 – for the last time a seamer did so.Neither James Anderson nor Stuart Broad could manage it, and they played 151 away Tests between them. Carse has done it in just three attempts.

“He’s turned out to be the cricketer I always thought he could be.”Ben Stokes on Brydon Carse

His first three, by the way, which is part coincidence and circumstance. It has not been a straightforward journey.”Timing is obviously everything,” Carse said, reflecting on this first crack of Test cricket in which he currently boasts 19 wickets at an average of 17.10. “I’ve had my fair share of bad luck with certain things. I don’t want to say I knew this day would come, but I was always ambitious to think I can play cricket and I can play at that level. I’m just very proud of today’s performance.”The principle of time is an important one as far as Carse’s story goes. Because across every major event in his professional career, there has been one recurring presence – Stokes. Guardian angel might be lacing that with too much narrative. But Carse’s Test captain was also his first international captain, when a debut sprung out of the blue in 2021. Covid forced a complete squad change for a home ODI series against Pakistan. Stokes, who was recovering from a broken finger, was drafted in to run the ringers.A two-year central contract in 2023 came on merit, but it helped that Stokes had been tipping Carse as one to watch, particularly for Test cricket despite a modest first-class record for Durham, with an average of 33.25 from 44 domestic matches. Ironically, it was Stokes’ delay in returning from a hamstring tear that handed Carse his debut in the first Test of the Pakistan tour. Stokes had the honour of bestowing Carse with cap No. 717. Nine impressive wickets on tough decks underlined the qualities that had not been made clear on the county circuit.

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