County Championship 2021 | Surrey vs Durham calsh to be called off

Joe Root proud on captaincy achievement, rejoices 'perfect storm' to come back in Leeds

England were rattled and shaken on the final day of the Lord’s Test against a hostile Indian team led by Virat Kohli and four pacers. From the first session, England lost their way and India were rescued from a precarious situation by Mohammed Shami and Jasprit Bumrah, with whom the hosts attempted to settle ego battles. Later, they could not manage to hold the Indian bowling attack off for a little more than 50 overs and conceded a 1-0 lead from a position of relative strength. Skipper Joe Root was gutted to see his team falling off the clip after reaching a point from where they should have had the game in their pocket. They had to dig deep as Kohli had promised to get bogged down irrespective of the situations and needed to start the third Test on a perfect note. On cue, the bowling attack led by James Anderson ran riots on the Indian batting lineup and routed them for 78 inside the first two sessions. Later on the same day, England also thwarted the same quartet of pacers and ended the day at 120/0 that more or less put India on the brink right on the first day. India were always playing a catchup game and in the end, fell short by an innings and 76 runs. Having won the third Test at his home ground Headingley, Root hailed the performances on the first day of the third Test as a “perfect storm” that allowed them to blow India away. He commended bowlers for exploiting the excellent conditions for bowling but called the hundred run partnership a near “turning point” for their series-levelling win. He said that the openers Haseeb Hameed and Rory Burns fulfilled a long-standing demand of big first innings score and laid down a perfect platform for the middle order to take the game away from India’s grasp. "It was almost the perfect storm, everything seemed to fall our way. Perfect little nicks to the keeper got us off to a great start, it was a brilliant bowling performance. We found our lengths, exploited the wicket really well. And that opening partnership to set things up was almost a turning point in the game for me,” Root said in the post-match press conference. “A substantial first-wicket partnership was exceptional and credit to those two lads. Under the pump off the back of last week, to come out and perform like that and get us 135-0 was brilliant. Really set the game up and gave the rest of us the opportunity to go and make that big first innings score that me and Silvers harp on to you guys about all the time." While James Anderson was his tormentor-in-chief in the first innings as he eliminated the first three big wickets of India such as the man in form KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli, it was Ollie Robinson, who kept the hosts in the game bowling in the channel around off stump throughout the third day. India were brilliant with the bat but could not get away as Robinson was on the money albeit Anderson was offline for the most part of the day. The pacer earned rewards for his accuracy and consistency on the fourth morning as he wiped out the Indian middle order to hand India a humiliating defeat. Root spoke very highly of the tall seamers and said that he does not remember a lot of names who got settled so quickly at the international level the way he has so far now. He has played four Tests so far and already has two five-wicket hauls to name. Root said that the England team management was never unsure of his credentials with the ball and it was just a matter of whether he would be able to extract as much off the pitch with the older ball as he gets with the newer one. "Not off the top of my head. It's been phenomenal to watch him perform as he has. The Test matches he's played, he's had big influences on all of them. He's been around the squad for a little while and we've known how skilful he is. It was almost a question of whether he'd be able to back it up in his third spell with the ball a little older. And he's shown huge skill in being able to do that time and time again with big workloads under his belt. He's shown what he is capable of doing and long may that continue,” Root spoke of Robinson, who was adjudged Man of the Match at Headingley. Root has been in red-hot form in the series with three centuries from as many games and with the win in Leeds, he has gone on to become the most successful England captain in terms of wins. He was ecstatic to beat Michael Vaughan as the captain of England with the most number of wins and said that all these successes are the stuff of his “boyhood dreams”. He also extended gratitude to all the players who have put their hands up with performances and coaching staffs for finding perfect ways of preparation behind the scenes to enable him in the journey to the top. "I'm living my boyhood dream, captaining England. Something I dreamed of doing from being really small. Great group of players, who are very talented and dedicated to becoming better all the time. Couldn't be more proud, proud to have gone past Michael. But you don't do that on your own as a captain, it's down to the group of players and the coaching staff as well. It's all one big thing. You're the one making the decisions but they are the ones going out and time and time again putting in performances. And really proud of the way they have done that this week,” a proud England skipper added. Although it was the bowling that won England the third Test, Root would be more delighted that other batsmen stepped up with valuable contributions to bat India out of the game. The opening pair of Burns and Hameed, and followed by the returning Dawid Malan at number three provided England a bullish start to boss the flows of the game while India kept on chasing the curve with indifferent bowling performances.

IPL 2021 | Dushmantha Chameera, Wanindu Hasaranga get SLC's NOC to play for RCB

In what would come as a welcome development for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, the Sri Lankan duo Dushmantha Chameera and Wanindu Hasaranga have got the no-objection certificate from Sri Lanka Cricket to play in the second part of the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League. SLC issued a statement on August 29 to confirm permission to the players who were signed up by the franchises as replacements for the tournament scheduled to be played in the UAE. The permission has been granted in consultation with the Technical Advisory Committee and they will depart the country to join their IPL franchise after the conclusion of the home series against South Africa. They will rejoin the Sri Lanka squad on October 10 to play two warm-up games before ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifiers tournament, the SLC said. The RCB have signed up Hasaranga and Chameera as like for like replacements for the Australian duo Adam Zampa and Kane Richardson respectively. They had opted out of the event citing the bubble fatigue. The Virat Kohli-led franchises also signed dup Singapore-born Tim David for the remaining portion of the 14th edition of the marquee event. The Royal Challengers have had an excellent start to the IPL 2021 winning five out of the first seven matches, and the franchise would hope for a similar performance in the UAE Leg of the tournament.

CPL 2021 | SNP vs GAW: Vengeance seeking Warriors face table-toppers Patriots in round two

In what was dubbed as a matchup between the experience and youth of the West Indian cricket, the experience made it count comprehensively even as Chris Gayle was not part of the playing XI for St Kitts and Nevis Patriots. Dwayne Bravo’s men made a light work of the Amazon Warriors from Guyana and won the match comfortably by nine wickets. However, it goes without saying that the Warriors made quite a few mistakes, the first of which was changing a winning combination and bringing in Nail Smith in place of Romario Shepherd. Then they promoted Odean Smith to number three which was bunder as neither Smith nor Shimron Hetmyer, whose place Smith took, could make anything out of that move as both of them failed. Skipper Nicholas Poorana and Mohammad Hafeez batting at six and seven respectively make no sense at all. Thus, if the Warriors want to make amends and win this match, they must learn from their mistakes. On the other hand, the Patriots were almost perfect with their bowlers, especially Dominic Drakes bowling beautifully during the powerplay as well as in death. The batting by both openers Devon Smith and Evin Lewis was great and Gaye wasn’t missed much. So they could go in without any change in the XI whatsoever. St Kitts and Nevis Patriots vs Guyana Amazon Warriors Match Number: 08 Date and Time: August 30, 2021, 12:00 am IST, 02:30 pm Local, 06:30 pm GMT Venue: Warner Park, Basseterre Broadcast: Star Sports Live Stream: Fancode Pitch Report The pitch hasn’t really had one face so far as it has been slow at times and at other times the ball has just come on to bat nicely. Thus to say that it would be a belter of a wicket would be a bit too hasty for an assumption. But no doubt, it wouldn’t be dead bat and totals around 160 will be competitive. Weather Forecast The weather at Warner Park will remain hot and humid with humidity being as high as 72%. The temperatures would remain in the lower thirties with the moderate wind blowing from the northeast and thus helping the bowlers early on in the morning. A captain winning the toss would look to bowl first without any doubt. Probable XI St Kitts and Nevis Patriots Evin Lewis, Devon Thomas, Joshua Da Silva (wk), Asif Ali, Sherfane Rutherford, Dwayne Bravo (c), Fabian Allen, Dominic Drakes, Sheldon Cottrell, Paul van Meekeren, Fawad Ahmed Guyana Amazon Warriors Brandon King, Chandrapaul Hemraj, Odean Smith, Shimron Hetmyer, Shoaib Malik, Mohammad Hafeez, Nicholas Pooran (c & wk), Nial Smith, Ashmead Nedd, Naveen-ul-Haq, Imran Tahir Dream XI Team Fantasy Suggestions Batters Evin Lewis, Sherfane Rutherford, Brandon King Bowlers Imran Tahir, Romario Shepherd, Dominic Drakes All-rounders Mohammad Hafeez, Fabian Allen, Odeon Smith Wicketkeepers Devon Thomas, Nicholas Pooran Vice-Captain Mohammad Hafeez Captain Evin Lewis

Over-dependence on heroics, failure as collective unit script frequent India collapses

India slipped into yet another embarrassing defeat in Leeds by enduring monumental collapses in both innings which has now become a worrying pattern for the Virat Kohli-led side. Kohli, to his credit, has not offered any excuse such as the absurd “45 minutes of bad cricket” he had offered after the top-order collapse against New Zealand in the 2019 ODI World Cup and instead has come forward to own up the mistakes of his own and teammates. At Headingley as well, he conceded that the team did not play good shots and failed to apply themselves in the face of an exceedingly good spell of bowling by James Anderson and Ollie Robinson. He owned up the failure at the Adelaide oval as well after the historic low of 36 all out against the Australian bowling attack comprising of Mitchell Starc, Patt Cummins and Josh Hazlewood. One can change the protagonist, villain and plot of their story, but the script has remained the same, at least over the last couple of years. They have been vocal about that those periods of the game don’t define the quality of the side, but they would not be honest to themselves if they don’t find this problem worth addressing. But, are they even taking cognisance of the frequent batting collapses that have marred them from becoming an impossible side to be defeated? Let’s see how they responded to the question of batting collapses after the game ends? Kohli had left the squad to come back to India after the capitulation in Adelaide, and the stand-in skipper Ajinkya Rahane said that the team did not discuss the innings of 36 while starting their preparing for the MCG Test, where they bounced back admirably. On the face of it, the approach of not making a huge issue of a bad phase of play does not appear faulty as too many “conversations” will make players, especially young ones doubt their ability to handle pressure situations while batting. Kohli too reiterated the same stance after the twin collapses in Leeds and said that India will “analyse” only after the next two Tests on what went wrong in the batting department. If the problem was actually an “aberration” as Kohli conveniently suggested, not having a conversation over it and trying to find answers to uncomfortable questions would have been reasonable. But, the issue has developed into a crisis of their own making and hence the point of not terming it as it is becoming untenable. Kohli owned up to failures both in Adelaide and Headingley, but what good is owning up if it does not lead up to a process of crisis management? This space is not suggesting that the team is incapable of handling good bowling in a tough phase of play or it is necessarily a technical issue on the part of batsmen. It’s impossible to ascertain that batsmen who otherwise put on a brilliant display of batting in the very next innings or match right after collapses can fail to arrest a collapse due to technical deficiency. But, why they have suffered so many batting collapses in the recent past? The answer to this question lies in the scoreboard of matches they have played in this period. They seem to have relied heavily on pieces of individual brilliance to get over tough batting conditions instead of putting on a collective batting effort to get through to a big score. Let’s see the games after the collapse in Adelaide and understand the fragility of the batting group and more often than not have been bailed out by one or two batsmen out of seven in the side. At the MCG, after a decent partnership between Cheteshwar Pujara and Shubman Gill, India had slipped to 175/5 although a major chunk of those runs was made by the skipper Rahane who went on to score a magnificent ton and also stitched a 121-run partnership with Ravindra Jadeja to bail them out of trouble. Australia batted horribly in the game in the face of hostile and accurate Indian bowling but if it had not been for the partnership between Jadeja and Rahane, India would not have taken the lead and the hosts would have come hard at them with a target of more than 200 runs to defend in the final innings. In the first innings of the MCG Test, more than 50 per cent of the runs were scored by two batsmen while the rest nine batsmen added 157 runs. If Gill’s 45 will be taken away, the rest eight of them could manage only 112 runs with no other batsmen crossing the 30-run mark. In the next Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, there were valuable contributions from the top order but none of them could make it big on a flat surface to make Australian bowlers toil hard. Not one batsman scored more than 50 runs and India paid for it by conceding a big lead of 94 runs. It took herculean efforts from them to secure a draw on the final day of the game. In the series decider at the Gabba, which turned out to be a generational win for India, the game was folding completely as per the same script. They were down and out in a position to once again concede a big lead before the brilliance of Shardul Thakur and Washington Sundar rescued them with outrageous stroke playing. They were up for the fight in the second round and won the game after a remarkable innings from Rishabh Pant on the final day. The lessons from the tour of Australia would have been that there are chinks in their armour in terms of batting and the Test series against England at home should have been the perfect place to launch the remedial process. However, they slipped into another collapse against the innocuous off-spin of Dominic Bess in the first innings of the first Test and in-form Joe Root made them pay. In that home series against India as well, after the collapses in Chennai, it was the partnership between Rohit Sharma and Rahane that rescued them after Moeen Ali had threatened to bring another collapse. The pitches in the last two Tests was shoot out between bowlers and England were too poor to compete with them while it required Pant and Washington’s batting once again that bailed them out of trouble. There have been patterns of the team not being able to produce a collective brilliance where all batsmen produce some sort of scores and take the team towards a score of respectability. The team has produced many heroes in the recent past but the fact that they needed heroics to win games and that it did not come in the form of what should have been a normal affair for top sides as they boast of being is telling a lot of story of their fragility. The story has not been changed on this tour as well. First, they collapsed against New Zealand to hand them over the World Test Championship, while the brilliance of KL Rahul and Rohit saved the day in Nottingham and the first innings of the Lord’s Test. When chips were down in the second innings the pair of Pujara and Rahane put on an attritional partnership before another heroic partnership lower down the order between Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Shami took them in front of the game. If they would be clinical with the bat overall as a team, they won’t have to rely on one individual to do the heavy lifting. Over-reliance on openers had to go awry at some point in time considering England are blessed with the riches of James Anderson and the consistency of Ollie Robinson, who will not have too many off days in their home conditions, and it did happen on the first day of the Leeds Test. Hoping on individual brilliance can not be a strategy and most certainly India would not be too happy at those methods of a win as well. But, as the failings have become too frequent, there are questions marks over the team management’s inability to find a solution to it. If India have to come back from the drubbings in Leeds, Virat Kohli and Ravi Shastri must fix responsibility in the dressing room albeit by not “demoralising” them. The batting group should seek some inspiration from their bowling attack which is not built around the brilliance of individual players instead all of them present formidable challenges to the opposition by bowling well as a collective unit.