Match Report: Heat continue streak, beat Stars in rain marred, thrilling encounter

Teary-eyed Siraj makes remarkable transition from rookie to a lead bowler at SCG

When the players of Australia and India were standing at the SCG during the national anthems of both the countries, camera frames were frozen on the face of Mohammed Siraj whose tears were not stopping and were flowing on his cheeks. The moment was indeed special for Siraj who was living through the dreams he and his father had seen when his father used to ride an auto rickshaw in Hyderabad. Former cricketers and analysts swapped in to point out how much the game and representing his country meant for the right-arm pacer, although he is not lucky enough to make his father realise his dreams, and that he can only see him looking up in the sky after taking every wicket in the first few days of career. He was India's man to answer the press conference after the end of the first day’s play, and Siraj was asked to touch upon the feelings that made the moment so emotional for him. "Just remembered my father at that time. I was really emotional. He wanted me to see playing Test cricket. Wish he could see me playing for India,” was the reply of the young man who has shown exemplary mental strength by staying back in Australia to live up to his father's expectations while dealing with emotional capitulation. Siraj is having an interesting entry into Test cricket as he has been promoted as one of the lead bowlers just in the second game of career, after being held back with the ball by the captain on his debut. Siraj showed more skills and temperament for a bowler playing his first game at the MCG, and with the injury to Umesh Yadav, the team management had no option but to promote Siraj with the new ball alongside Jasprit Bumrah. Just like his Test debut where he seized the opportunity with both hands, Siraj put all his emotions he felt before the game behind him, to get into the basics on how to bowl with the new ball. He knew the incoming David Warner was itching to get away with few boundaries at the start of his innings, and kept his composure and kept on teasing the left hander outside his off stump. The persistence paid off as Warner edged one to Cheteshwar Pujara while attempting to drive Siraj on the up and the Indian team was delighted to see a young man making the most of chances and rising to the occasion. He was disciplined with the ball and kept on testing the debutant Will Pucovski outside his off stump, and sometimes bringing the ball back in hope of hitting his pad as the right-hander showed a vulnerability in taking a front foot stride across the line of the stumps. Moreover, he was smart enough to remember the struggles of Pucovski in the recent past where he has struggled to get his head out of the line, and hence target him with a sharp and accurate bouncer in a well-laid plan. “Last match (the practice match) we were bowling short to him and in this game also we tried that as he was playing them and not leaving. So, the plan was to surprise him with an odd bouncer without shifting focus on line and length,” Siraj said of the line of attack against Pucovski. Siraj’s accuracy and perseverance almost paid off when the debutant top-edged one in an attempt of pulling one rising bouncer off him, but it was not to be for India and Siraj as Rishabh Pant dropped yet another chance in the horrible hour of play for him and the tourists. Pant attempted to catch the ball in the second grab and although the umpires went upstairs to confirm the legality of the catch, Siraj was elated and hugged Pant twice in a sign of how much that wicket meant to him. Ultimately, it turned out Rishabh Pant had let the ball go between his pair of gloves, but at the end of fay, Siraj looked at the dropped catch as a ‘part of the game,’ and pointed out regaining focus back as the key to move on from such episodes. "It is part of the game and you do get upset as a bowler when it happens. But it is something we can't do much about...It becomes important to move on and focus on the next over,” Siraj said of the dropped chances by Rishabh Pant. Before the second Test at the MCG, there was a direct toss-up between Navdeep Saini and Siraj as the third seamer to replace Mohammed Shami. Ultimately;y, the team management went for Siraj because of him showing excellent rhythm in the two warm-up games, while his competitor Navdeep Saini looked all over the place in the tour games. The chance to debut did not come too late for Saini either as Umesh Yadav got ruled out of the series, and the right arm pacer from Karnal started his Test career on a horrible note, giving away two boundaries off his first two deliveries in his Test career. Saini looked under enormous pressure, but Siraj came running in for him to boost the confidence of someone Siraj believes bonds well with him and made him realise that he has to do nothing extra in the big state of a Test match. He made Saini realise that replicating just what he has been doing over the years in the domestic cricket and for India A where Siraj and he have been playing together for a long time, would bring him rewards, and it came quickly in the form of Pucovski wicket who was caught inside the crease and in front of the stumps to hand Sanii his maiden Test wicket. "Saini and I have played a lot of matches together for India A, so we bond really well. I was just telling him to do what we did in domestic cricket and India A,” Siraj said on the bond between him and Saini. Experts and analysts present at the ground observed that the pitch at the SCG was the best pitch to bat on compared to the last two pitches at the MCG and the Adelaide Oval. The bounce was true on the wicket, which was on the lower side, and it provided the home batsmen extra time to adjust against whatever little movement the India bowlers were able to extract in the air or off the pitch. However, the pacer emphasized the value of patience in Test cricket and said that the Indian bowlers are looking forward to building more pressure by bowling tighter lines and length to the Australian batsmen on the day two of the Test. "It is very a flat wicket. Our plan was to build pressure and not try too much as it is a very easy wicket for the batsman. Even the bouncers are not carrying as well it was in the earlier games," said Siraj, who made his debut in the previous game. But Test cricket it is all about patience and we must keep that in mind,” Siraj said on the pitch at SCG. Siraj echoed the sentiment of a flat pitch and pointed that their bouncers too did not carry high enough to trouble batsmen, and that slowness of the wicket allowed the batsmen to use their feet and hit over the top against spinners. “It is because of the easy nature of the surface that their batsmen stepped out but when they saw the ball turning sharply late in the day, they went back to the crease," Siraj observed. Let's see what happens tomorrow. The plan is to bowl in one tight channel and build pressure,” Siraj added. Australia are in a much better situation in the Test match after poor display of batting in all the four innings preceding the first innings at the SCG with the unbeaten pair of Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne looking in ominous touch for the tourists. Siraj will once again be relied upon by Ajinkya Rahane in the first spell of the second day to find a breakthrough, and if he will be able to take away even one of Smith and Labuschagne before they can harm India, the ascendency of Siraj in the team will be well and truly begin if it had already not started on his debut at the MCG in the Boxing day Test.

Match Report: Spinners and McAndrew take Thunder past the Hurricanes at Perth

Sydney Thunder consolidated their position at the top of teh Big Bash League 2020 points table after they beat Hobart Hurricanes by a handsome margin of 39 runs at the Perth Stadium. With this win, the Thunder bounced back to winning ways, having been beaten by the Heat comprehensively in their last game. On the other hand, Hurricanes tasted their second defeat in a row, this one a bit sour than a fighting loss against the Stars at home. Callum Ferguson led side is now at the top of the table with six wins in eight games and 22 points in their kitty, one more than crosstown neighbors Sixers, who are at 21 points, having been romped by Scorchers in their last game. Hurricanes though got a boost point and pushed the tally of their points to 19 in nine games with five wins and four losses. Dawid Malan's dismissal the turning point Hurricanes were going nicely after the dismissals of the openers D’Arcy Short and Ben McDermott as Dawid Malan and skipper Handscomb threaded a 40 ball 48 runs partnership. However, just as they were looking to accelerate, Chris Green yorker got the better of Malan. The score was 91 and the Hurricanes’ downfall began from thereon. After the fall of that wicket, within a span of 25 runs, the Hobart side lost five crucial wickets and could never recover back to challenge the Thunder. Sangha, Green, and Nair spin a web Though it all started with the Malan wicket, even before he lost his wicket, Malan wasn’t looking like himself in the middle as he had struggled to 20 from 23 balls. This was because of the fact that he was not able to read either Green or Sangha. Soon after Malan’s dismissal, Sangha flighted Handscomb, the Hurricanes’ skipper back to the pavilion as he was stumped by Sam Billings after coming out of the crease on the first delivery of a fresh spell from the 19-year-old. Just a while afterward, a soft dismissal on a wayward delivery from Arjun Nair got out dangerman Tim David and the bandwagon followed as one after the other Colin Ingram, Macalister Wright, and Nick Winter were dismissed. Ingram, became Snagha’s 15th BBL 10 scalp taking him to the top of the 'most wickets' tally for this season. He got past Strikers’ main paceman Wes Agar, who has 14 scalps. McAndrew the breakthrough man Into the chase, the Hurricanes had got off to a solid start by their openers McDermott and Short. They had added 36 for the first wicket in just four overs and were looking to loosen up. It was at that time that Nathan McAndrew threw in a short ball that hurried on to Short, getting him caught at short midwicket. Soon after, McAndrew also got McDermott out and hindered the flow of runs of the Hurricanes, resulting in building pressure over the new batters like Malan and Handscomb. It was these two wickets by McAndrew at the right moment which got him the Man of the Match Award. He finished with figures of 2/25 from his four overs. Ross and Cutting: The pair that got Thunder back into the attack Earlier in the day, Hurricanes after winning the toss, put Thunder to bat first and did well to get wickets at quick intervals, especially after a brisk start by Hales and Khawaja. From 59 for none to 110/5, the Hurricanes brought themselves back into the game courtesy of their spinners Sandeep Lammichhane and Short, who in the period of 7-15 overs went for just 49 runs and got four wickets. But after their spell was done, comeback man Alex Ross along with all-rounder and big hitter Ben Cutting got into the act, scoring 56 of the last five overs and taking the score to a competitive 167, which eventually turned out to be a winning score. Ross made 44 off 33 while Cutting smoked 31 off just 14 balls, which included four boundaries and a six. What's Next? In the next game at Perth itself, the Thunder would be up against a 'rejuvenated and on a winning trail' Perth Scorchers on Saturday, 09th January. Hurricanes on the other hand have a long four-day rest, which is actually needed after back-to-back losses. They would come back to play Scorchers at the Docklands in Melbourne on the 12th of January.

Inside out | How long can India invest in Rishabh Pant, the wicketkeeper?

One criticism the team management under the leadership of Virat Kohli always faces is that they don’t give enough chances to players to establish themselves on the international stage and feel they belong to the big stage. Another level of criticism he faces is that people get unequal opportunities in the team setup. For Rishabh Pant, the first one does not quite hold true, but the latter one works well in his favour. He has been backed timelessly by the team management, and while he is yet to seize the opportunity in the short forms of the game he was deemed brilliant, his Test numbers have been pretty impressive. But, his role in the team is not limited to flamboyant batting, whereas he has a more important job of catching the edges of the bat after bowlers excel in their skills. The fact that the team management preferred Wriddhiman Saha over him in the first Test when Virat Kohli was present to steer the team’s batting but brought the left hander back into the team after Kohli’s departure says a lot about how the team management rates Pant’s credentials behind the stumps and also his batting abilities where batting has not been easier. The team management has been on the horses for courses policy since ages, and it is showing up when they swap Saha and Pant as per the conditions and the desired team combination. But, Pant can’t have an excuse of not finding his feet as he has been around for more than two years, and apart from the Adelaide Test against Australia, Pant has been the preferred gloveman on overseas tours emphasizing the team management’s greed of runs from Pant’s bat. But, has that greed of extra runs started to bite the team management in the face? If the pieces of evidence in the last two Tests are good enough sample size to assess Pant’s wicket-keeping qualities, it would not be unfair to say that the team has been let down by Pant on numerous occasions. On the first day of the third Test at the SCG, Pant dropped as many as two chances off Will Pucovski—one against Ashwin, and another against Siraj. Both those catches should have been taken without any fuss, but Pant made a meal of it. Luckily for India, Pucovski did not last very long and went back to the pavilion after hitting a half-century, but those dropped catches altered the flow of the game. Had Pant taken those catches, Steve Smith would have come to bat way earlier than the time he actually came out to bat, and the situation could have been different. But, Smith came out to bat only in the 35th over of the game and by that time whatever chance the bowlers had of extracting any sort of assistance out of a fairly flat deck at the SCG went begging. In the last game at the MCG as well, Pant had dropped Pat Cummins’s outside edge off Ashwin but thankfully for India, the bowlers had already got the better of the top order by then, and Cummins could not make the most of it although he denied India the chance of wrapping up a win by a margin of innings. Pant’s looseness behind the stumps could well have exposed the Indian bowlers, but they have been incisive to create more frequent chances and Indian have not had to live with the consequences of the greed of too many runs. Pant’s wicket keeping, especially standing up to the stumps against spinners have left a lot to be desired, and it’s highly likely the team management would go for Saha once England come to India for a four-match Test series in February highlighting the binary their choices have created in terms of the number one wicketkeeper in the team over the years rather than backing either Saha to do the job of wicketkeeping while adding some runs with the bat, or heating up the stake for Pant to improve his wicket-keeping game. On the other hand, Pant has been going berserk with the bat, and in the second Test at the MCG, changed the momentum of the game in India’s favour. His presence was not too long, but the sheer audacity of taking on against a rampaging Cummins put Australia on the back foot and allowed breathing space for the likes of Rahane who was going well in his defiant innings. He has been going great with the bat and hence the temptation to play is also greater for the team management. In defence of Pant, it can be said that he should get a longer and consistent rope o either establish his wicket-keeping skills over time and that he can be entrusted upon to improve his game with every match he plays and hence needing more investment from the team management, like the way they put their weight behind any batsman or bowler that they can improve to a better version of themselves. But, will Virat Kohli show patience on him, and what is the ultimate price the team management is willing to pay for trying out Pant on a full-fledged level without shutting the door for him in the name of horses for courses? We’ll see when England will visit India next month.

BBL 10 Match Preview: Distraught Renegades seek relief against impressive Strikers

After losing to the Adelaide Strikers for by a big margin of 60 runs on Tuesday, the severely out-of-form Melbourne Renegades will taken on them again to avoid their eighth consecutive defeat in the ongoing season of the Big Bash League (BBL). Such poor form is very rare and Renegades would need all the luck to get out of it. Their opponents, unfortunately for them, happen to be a very competitive side as well. Currently, at the fourth position in the standings, the Adelaide side has enough motivation to get a win. Playing at home makes the Strikers even more dangerous, especially with pitches a little more conducive to spin. Renegades in Distress Two teams were really struggling about a week ago in the BBL’s present season – Renegades and Perth Scorchers. The latter have now notched up three wins on a trot but the difficulties for the former team continues unabated. A first-ball duck for captain Aaron Finch was a good symbol of the problems being faced by the team. Finch is the best batsman in the team but he hasn’t been able to lift his team. His usual opening partner Shaun Marsh missed the last match and his availability for the next game is not certain. The promotion of Sam Harper hasn’t worked yet but there is hardly any better option. Mackenzie Harvey batted as an opener on Tuesday and did show some promise. This is a promising sign and every such positive is important for a beleaguered team. Mohammad Nabi and Imad Wasim, the two foreigners in the middle order, haven’t brought any change of fortunes. Their bowling has been more reliable than their batting. But there isn’t great depth of talent, at least proven one, in the ranks. So, the Renegades have to hope for a turnaround in form from the existing players. The bowling looks more promising. Imad bowled well with the new ball in the last match. His bowling style – tight line and length – is suited to this format. Mohammad Nabi is also a very useful option but it’s his younger compatriot Noor Ahmed who has got everyone excited. Highly talented but slightly uncooked, he could be the man to make a difference. A lot would also depend on Kane Richardson who has been average so far. Spin was the preferred option for Adelaide, based on the composition of the side, still, without the support of pacers, the slower bowlers will be easy to handle. Strikers in Good Stead The bowling department of Strikers, on the other hand, is looking impressive. Rashid Khan was always going to be a star but the emergence of Danny Briggs as an equally reliable bowler has compounded the problems for opposition batsmen. The leadership of Peter Siddle has been working beautifully in this season for the Strikers. First, as the captain and now as the seniormost bowler in the side, he has led his troops brilliantly, adding deadly Yorkers to his arsenal alongside his other tricks. The support given to him by Wes Agar is invaluable. The space for a third seamer is still contested. Harry Conway did well in the last game and is likely to retain his spot. On the batting front, the promotion of Matt Renshaw to the opening slot worked a bit. His 35 off 28 showed signs of him getting into the rhythm. The nature of BBL this season has been such that big scores are rare. So, even a 30-odd at the start is a valuable contribution. That’s what Renshaw managed on Tuesday. His partner Phil Salt is a dangerous player and has been in good form. However, his opening partner for most of the season, Jake Weatherald, benefitted greatly from a change in his position. From opening the innings, Jake went down to the no. 6 position and scored a half-century. The middle order of the team has also assumed a very impressive look. With Alex Carey, Jonathan Wells, and Ryan Gibson, all in good form, and Rashid at no. 7 showing mettle with the bat also, this batting order is among the best in the league presently. Renegades vs Strikers: Match Details Venue: Adelaide Oval, Adelaide Date and Time: December 8, 12:40 PM IST, 5:40 PM Local, 7:10 AM GMT Broadcasters: Sony Sports Network, Sony LIV Pitch Report The Adelaide Oval has produced good pitches in the two matches it has hosted so far. The sign of a good pitch is that everyone has something to play with. That’s been the case here. Spinners, pacers, and batsmen have all got an opportunity. However, the spinners may play a bigger role with the passage of time since the pitch will have wear and tear. Weather and Bat Flip A nice warm day awaits the two teams on Friday. The temperature in the evening would be around 21 degrees, not uncomfortable for the players. With no cloud cover or rain expected, batting first would be the default option, though chasing wouldn’t be any tougher. Probable XIs Renegades: Aaron Finch (C), Shaun Marsh, Mackenzie Harvey, Sam Harper (Wk), Mohammad Nabi, Beau Webster, Imad Wasim, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Jack Prestwidge, Kane Richardson, Josh Lalor, Noor Ahmad Strikers: Matt Renshaw, Phil Salt, Alex Carey (C &Wk), Jonathan Wells, Ryan Gibson, Jake Weatherald, Rashid Khan, Danny Briggs, Wes Agar, Peter Siddle, Harry Conway

Match Report: Heat continue streak, beat Stars in rain marred, thrilling encounter

The brilliant last over

The Larkinsanity

Fielding level - Heat

Lynnsanity at display

What's Next?

Teary-eyed Siraj makes remarkable transition from rookie to a lead bowler at SCG

Match Report: Spinners and McAndrew take Thunder past the Hurricanes at Perth

Inside out | How long can India invest in Rishabh Pant, the wicketkeeper?

BBL 10 Match Preview: Distraught Renegades seek relief against impressive Strikers