Ben Stokes named Wisden Cricketer of the Year for the second successive year

IPL 2021 | SRH vs RCB - What Experts said as SRH surrender from winning position

The MA Chidambaram Stadium produced yet another low-scoring thriller as the Royal Challengers Bangalore edged past Sunrisers Hyderabad by 6 runs in a cliffhanger to go to atop the points table in Vivo IPL 2021. Similar to the clash between KKR and MI where KKR were cruising to the target, the match looked dead and buried with David Warner and Manish Pandey ticking along the scorers and looking in brilliant touch. It was the wicket of David Warner and a triple wicket 17th over by Shahbaz Nadeem which turned the game on it’s head. Eventually, a composed Harshal Patel delivered the killer punch in the final over defending the 15 runs with some well-disguised slower deliveries and yorkers. For 80 per cent of the game, Sunrisers Hyderabad were the hot favourites to win but pretty ordinary batting in the final stages of the matches allowed RCB to get a sniff and they pounced on that opportunity with both hands. Barring an early wicket of Wriddhiman Saha, the Sunrisers Hyderabad were in cruise control when David Warner and Manish Pandey were at the middle. Manish Pandey didn’t score at a brisk pace but with Warner looking in sublime touch, Manish didn’t need to anything fancy. The wicket of David Warner brought about a collapse. Kyle Jamieson bowled a terrific over which included the wicket of the dangerous southpaw and that allowed RCB to claw their way back into the game. Time and again Virat Kohli has been questioned about his decisions on the field especially while leading RCB but the brave decision to go with Shahbaz Ahmed in the 17th over proved to be a masterstroke. The left-arm spinner bowled perfect lines and some horrendous shots from Jonny Bairstow, Manish Pandey and Abdul Samad brought about their downfall in that over. Shabaz bagged 3 wickets conceding just a solitary run and it proved to be the turning point in the game. Earlier in the day, it was David Warner who won the toss and put RCB in. Devdutt Padikkal who was RCB’s leading run-scorer in the previous season returned to the playing XI and came out to open the innings with skipper Virat Kohli. Padikkal couldn’t get going and was eventually dismissed after scoring 11 of 13 deliveries. Virat Kohli looked in good touch and along with Shahbaz Ahmed tried to resurrect the innings. Shahbaz was dismissed early as well but it was the partnership between Maxwell and Kohli that got RCB back into the game. Yet again, Maxwell looked in ominous touch and carried on from where he left against the Mumbai Indians. He didn’t start off in a bang and played the situation perfectly. Following some quick wickets against the run of play, Maxwell rotated the strike to perfection and opened his arms in the final two overs. It was his knock of 59 of 41 deliveries that allowed them to get near the 150 mark. Eventually, a score below 150 yet again proved to be enough in Chennai as RCB made it two out of two in the 14th season of the extravaganza. Captain’s Viewpoints Sunrisers Hyderabad lamented the fact that SRH allowed Bangalore to get a sniff which they pounced on. He expressed his disappointment at the way they played cross-batted shots against Shahbaz Ahmed which proved to be the game-changer in the end. “A very big bitter pill to swallow. Obviously Maxi batted well, but our bowlers did well to restrict them. Look, it was just about building a partnership...and I was quite disappointed with how we went - cross-batted shots against left-arm orthodox. It just hurts,” Warner said. SRH have now lost both their first two encounters and they will need to turn their fortunes around pretty soon. With three more games remaining for SRH at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai, Warner feels that the pitches will just get better for batting and they are hoping to execute their plans to perfection in the next encounter. “We have another three games here, the wickets are going to get better here. We need to try to take powerplay wickets and need to have one big partnership in the middle. The last four games here the team batting second should've won the game. Last night's game was an example and we played an identical game,” Warner added. Meanwhile, Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Virat Kohli hailed his boys for producing a magical show and make a dramatic turnaround to seal the match from nowhere. He gave the example of the MI-KKR game where under a similar situation KKR faltered and it went the same way even in this encounter. Kohli emphasised the fact that just like RCB struggled to 149 it would be that much difficult for SRH to chase the target down. “Not as exhausted as I'm proud. It was a top game for us and probably it will get more and more tougher here. You saw it in KKR vs MI - you're never really out of the game. Those extra options made the impact performances in the middle overs. I told them if we've struggled to 149, it will be tougher for the opposition,” Kohli said. Even last year RCB started off the campaign in a splendid fashion and faded out during the business end of the tournament and almost scraped through to the playoffs. Perhaps given that in mind, Kohli said that they are not over-excited with the victories and needs to keep on executing their plans to perfection. “I truly believed we could win with 150. The wicket was never a belter and tonight our execution under pressure was spot-on. The wicket kept getting tougher and tougher with the old ball. It's about getting momentum in the first six overs, but for us Maxi gave us that momentum and got us closer to 150. To be very honest, we're not over-excited with victories. We have a clear plan and backing our players. Got Harshal from Delhi for a role. It's a long tournament and you have to be professional with your job,” Kohli added. Experts' take Harsha Bhogle congratulated Bangalore for winning their second match in as many games. Besides he also portrayed the last two matches at Chepauk as a horror movie named Death overs. for the second successive day a relatively low total was defended by the team batting first. It was almost that history repeating itself as it went on the same terms as the KKR-MI encounter. Prominent journalist Sambit Bal resonated the fact and also reminded the viewers that it was just the 7th half-century for Glenn Maxwell in the IPL. He feels that this could be the best year for the swashbuckling all-rounder. Former Indian opener and one of the most prominent voices of cricket currently, Aakash Chopra also voiced his opinion on the game. He accepted the fact that lightning does strike at the same place twice in two days. He also believed that in due course captains winning the toss will chose to bat first given the trend in this season so far.

IPL 2021 | SRH vs RCB: Hits and Flops as Royal Challengers outshine Sunrisers in battle of endurance

The Royal Challengers Bangalore won the contest against the Sunrisers Hyderabad by six runs and made two in two wins this season. Defending a total of 150 runs— a kind of score that the chasing teams have found it tough to get as balls start gripping in the surface, Royal Challengers stuck to the task and tightened the noose around the Sunrisers batting to bring out a collapse of the middle order. Glenn Maxwell emerged as the crisis man for the Royal Challengers with his first fifty in the tournament since the 2016 edition. While defending, the all-rounder Shahbaz Ahmed, who struck as many as three wickets in one over to break the backbone of the Sunrisers was the new hero for the men in red and gold. For the Sunrisers, there were usual heroes in the form of captain David Warner and Rashid Khan while the contribution from the likes of Manish Pandey, Vijay Shankar were left to be wanting. Here, we shall decipher the best and the worst performances that swung the game in the favour or against their teams. Hits Glenn Maxwell The 14th edition of the IPL is very young now but Glenn Maxwell looks like a man on the mission to silence all his critics with each passing game. From a 10 core cheerleader to questions on his seriousness and or lack of it in the IPL, Maxwell has dealt all of that from some of the big names in Indian cricket. The Royal Challenger management muted all those noises and picked him up in the auction with passionate bidding. Two games into the tournament, Maxwell is building it up on the trust shown by the leadership group that includes Virat Kohli. Maxwell walked out to bat just after the end of the powerplay and had an able partner in Virat Kohli at the other end. He opened his account with a delightful chip shot over cover for four off Rashid Khan and the form he was in the last game was showing its signs. The duo started putting balls into gaps, except for an over of Shahbaz Nadeem where both he and Kohli went berserk and plundered 22 runs, and stitched a 44-run partnership in six overs as the surface started playing tricks. Then, Maxwell saw wickets falling in clusters and the RCB went from 91/2 to 109/6 in a span of 28 balls that saw the departure of Kohli, the star of the last game— AB de Villiers, Washington Sundar and also Daniel Christian. He was supported well by Kyle Jamieson but Maxwell was the main glue that performed the dual role of an anchor and an aggressor with such ease in interoperability. With only 110 runs in 17 overs, he had to make sure that the RCB reached a par total around the 150-run mark. Jamieson started the onslaught against Bhuveshwar Kumar in the next over and Maxwell too chipped in to make it an 18-run over. The next over from T Natarajan were to be only Maxwell’s chance of limelight as he dispatched the left arm for two boundaries to put the RCB in the sight of defendable total and himself on the brink of his maiden fifty in a long long time in IPL. He was dismissed at the last ball of the innings but the last over from Holder yielded enough runs for the RCB to have run on the board to fight hard with the ball. Shahbaz Ahmed Shahbaz Ahmed was picked up by the RCB in the IPL auction last year for his all-around abilities. He was one of the main reasons behind Bengal’s excellent showing in the Ranji Trophy for the 2019-20 season. His participation in the first game of the season was limited to just one over in bowling and few balls in batting. Hence, he could well have been the casualty from the playing XI for the returning Devdutt Padikkal. However, Virat Kohli persisted with him for the left-arm spinning option he brings to the table. Kohli’s move was ratified by the all-rounder when he brought as many as three wickets in the 17th over of the Sunrisers’ chasing efforts of 150 runs. First of his victim was Jonny Bairstow— the only batsman for the men in orange, who had batted with some control in their last game on a similar pitch. Bairstow’s go-to shot against the spinners turning the ball away from him has been the slog sweep, but Shahbaz ripped the ball off the surface and the top edge by a very decisive de Villiers with the gloves in his hands. He ended another sluggish innings from Manish Pandey when the right-hander wandered out of the crease hoping against the hope to get out of a hopeless situation he found himself in. Shahbaz saw Pandey coming down the track and pulled both the length and pace of the ball back to induce a leading edge and the RCB smelled a sniff in the contest. Abdul Samad is one of the highly-talked of player in the Sunrisers Hyderabad line up and the management received a lot of flack for not batting him higher up the order. The management wanted to be correct on that front but Samad was not ready to take the challenge, or it was not to be his day. After tucking him on the first two balls, Shahbaz pushed one sliding into him and Samad tried to take him downtown to break free. Instead, another leading edge was found and Shahbaz was not ready to share the success with anyone and pouched a high-ball to send the Sunrisers camp into disbelief. Shahbaz Ahmed bowled only one more over than in the first game, but the three-wicket over changed the whole course of the game. Kohli should be commended for showing faith in his abilities and when he too should pat his back while looking back at the game against the Sunrisers. Mohammed Siraj The last time these two sides had met was in the Eliminator of the last edition and like in this contest, the Sunrisers were chasing with Mohammed Siraj as the new ball bowler from the RCB. Then, after taking an early wicket, and a barrage of sledging from Virat Kohli to Manish Pandey, Siraj lost all the momentum with a short ball that released all the mounting pressure. That version of Siraj is no more as the pacer has transformed himself big time if the shreds of evidence from the two games this season are enough to form a narrative about him. It appears that he has understood that the flow of a T20 games does not allow bowlers to settle into a rhythm and hence it is imperative to be at it every ball instead of trying to set up batsmen like in the longer formats. He was on a roll from the very first ball and started with an effort to swing the ball before coming to hard length. He was all over Wriddhiman Saha and almost got him on the last ball of the over with a big booming seaming delivery that would have made Glenn McGrath proud. He was not be disappointed for long though and came back to send back Saha in his next over. The batsman who had pulled him from the front foot in the last game between the sides was the man at the number three. Siraj was at top of his game and was clocking the speed gun to 144 kmph with help from the pitch. There were no let-up deliveries and Siraj choked the Sunrises top order in the first half of his spell. Kohli pulled him away from bowling and brought him back again in the last over of the powerplay. David Warner was up to it and dispatched him for a couple of fours, but the bowling figure reading 3-1-14-1 wicket was quite impressive on a pitch where the pace wasn’t to be the best weapon for his skipper. By the time he returned for his last over of the night, the game was almost set and matched. The Sunrisers needed 27 from the last 12 balls that included six balls of him and after conceding a six to Jason Holder, he put the final nail in the Sunrisers’ coffin with the wicket of the Caribbean all-rounder. Flops Manish Pandey In the two games of this edition of the IPL, Manish Pandey has batted like a batsman who does not understand his won game, and neither does he know the role he has to perform for the best of his team. The pitches at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai have been demanding for the sides batting second and unlucky for both Sunrisers and him, he has batted in precarious situations. In the last game, he batted without any intent and allowed the Kolkata Knight Riders to dictate terms. In the end, it was too much to do in the end overs and he had lost all rhythm and energy to bail his side of the trouble. In the game against the RCB, he was going in a similar tempo as in the last innings which definitely did not help his patterns such as David Warner and Jonny Bairstow. However, having seen Bairstow getting dismissed trying to force the issue against the left-arm spin of Shahbaz Ahmed, Pandey did the criminal act of walking out of the crease and attempting to hit over the top without getting anywhere near the ball. He was batting on a run a ball 38 and should have got the measure of the surface which was holding off the balls. Also, Shahbaz was giving his deliveries a serious rip to extract the best out of the pitch and the shot was not on at all, let alone on the very next ball after Bairstow’s dismissal. He needed to attack some bowlers at some point in time, but Shahbaz was not that bowler on the night, and that too at the phase of the game. The Sunrisers management will not give up on him with just two failures, but the time is running away for Pandey as almost every game this season is likely to serve as an audition for players looking to get a place or consolidate their place in the Indian team for the World T20 scheduled for later this year. Wriddhiman Saha Wriddhiman Saha has been defying all his critics in his IPL career albeit his chances have come scattered across various seasons. However, the season is not going well for the wicketkeeper batsman from Bengal and the Sunrisers might as well be compelled to go for other enterprising players sitting on the benches. After a horrendous outing with the bat against the Knight Riders, Saha was trusted to bat at the top of the order once again. However, the move did not pay off as he was all at sea against an aggressive spell from Siraj with the new ball. He was dismissed in the third over by Siraj but all the eight balls he faced before actually getting dismissed, he was out mentally many times by the seam movement and accuracy of Siraj. Warner could well opt for Bairstow behind the wicket and bring a highly-talented Abhishek Sharma to bolster both the batting and bowling department and create an option such as the Shahbaz Ahmad has become for the RCB. Virat Kohli would be elated at the RCB showing character to win games from tough situations. He would not have asked for any better outing from the bowlers, but his own performances with the bat ha snot matched up to the expectations his standard carries with itself. On the other hand, David Warner would be frustrated at letting another game they should have won slip out of their hands. The Sunrisers need to fix roles to players and ask them to play as per the team demands of them if they want to fix their journey and move towards the playoffs.

SA vs PAK: Babar Azam scores fastest T20I century by any Pakistan batsman

Pakistan skipper Babar Azam scored the fastest century in T20I format from a Pakistani batsman in the third T20i of the series against South Africa in Centurion. Opening the batting with Mohammad Rizwan chasing a mammoth target of 204, Babar put Proteas bowling attack to the sword and brought his hundred from just 50 balls. Babar was dismissed after a 59-ball-122 that led Pakistan’s chase. He broke the previous record held by Ahmad Shehzad who had notched up a 58-ball century against Bangladesh. On his way to the match-winning innings, Azam also registered two more records against his name. His 122 against South Africa is the highest score by a Pakistan batsman in the international T20 games. Also, it is the second-highest score by any batsman while chasing in the history of T20I cricket. Azam’s century and splendid innings from Rizwan from the other end helped Pakistan in chasing a big score with 12 balls to spare. Interestingly, Azam had scored the slowest fifty by a Pakistan batsman in only the last game off 50 balls. The day has been full of wonderful developments for Azam, who dethroned Indian captain Virat Kohli as the number one batsman in the ODIs.

SRH vs RCB: Glenn Maxwell scores his first IPL fifty since 2016 to rescue Royal Challengers

New Royal Challengers Bangalore recruit Glenn Maxwell finally scored a half-century in the Indian Premier League (IPL) since 2016 when he smashed a game-defining half-century against the Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 6th match of the 14th edition of the competition. Winning the toss, it was Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper David Warner who won the toss and put RCB in and it was not the start what the doctor would have ordered for RCB. They lost Devdutt Padikkal and Shahbaz Ahmed early and it was the partnership between skipper Virat Kohli and Maxwell which got them back into the game. Following Kohli’s dismissal, the onus was on Maxwell and AB de Villiers to do the job for Bangalore. However, the wicket of ABD put RCB on the back foot and they could never really press on the accelerator until Maxwell smashed some lusty blows in the death overs which got them close to the 150 mark. They eventually ended on 149 in their allotted 20 overs. Maxwell was quite magnificent during his knock of 59 of 41 deliveries which was studded with 5 fours and 3 sixes. He took on the attack from the outset and carried on from where he left against the Mumbai Indians. He looked in dominant touch and played an instrumental role in RCB reaching a competitive total. Maxwell was snapped up by RCB in the February auctions for a whopping sum of Rs 14.25 crores and he needed to do justice to his price tag. After a lacklustre previous season with the Punjab Kings (formerly Kings XI Punjab), he was released by the franchise but he is now proving to be a great value-addition for the Royal Challengers Bangalore.