Unstoppable Jamieson gives New Zealand clean sweep over Pakistan and no. 1 rank

BBL10 Match Preview: Heat look to continue momentum against rhythm-searching Stars

Two teams that have found momentum late in the 10th edition of the BBL are Brisbane Heat and Perth Scorchers. While one of it continued by beating the table-toppers Sydney Sixers in their last game, the Chris Lynn led side too would be looking to take it forward when they faced Glenn Maxwell led Melbourne Stars at the Carrara Oval. Stars though on the other hand have found a little bit of a rhythm winning against Hurricanes, having lost three games in a row. Few things went right for them in that game which included the form of their star campaigners Marcus Stoinis and Adam Zampa along with Hilton Cartwright and the two blinders from the Specimen Andre Fletcher. The Joe Factor In their last game, it was Joe Burns, who joined the Heat team after getting released from the Australian Test squad due to poor form. The opener struggled in the game against the Sixers, however, he kind of found his ‘hands’ against the Thunder and the Heat unit would hope that the form continues. Along with him is the overseas signing Joe Denly who has been terrific in the two games that he has played so far, scoring a fifty in the last game. The two Joes would give enough confidence to skipper Lynn along with late order hitters in Lewis Gregory and Jimmy Pierson. With Mark Steketee and Mujeeb in the kind of form that they are, it shouldn’t really be a matter for the Heat to give the toughest of the fights to the Stars. Stoinis could be the shining 'Star' Stars are looking to find momentum and one win in the kitty would have done a tremendous amount of good for the team, especially in the way that victory came about. The usual suspects Glenn Maxwell and Nicholas Pooran did not fire and it was Stoinis and Cartwright that came to the rescue. Similarly in the bowling, even after being without Nathan Coulter-Nile, an unknown gun in Sam Rainbird delivered. It is these performances that would lift the spirits of the team. Among them, Stoinis finding form and hitting a brilliant 97 not out has been the biggest plays and the Stars team would like him to continue with this form and also contribute with a few overs in bowling to take the team balance a notch above. Heat vs Stars: Match Details Match Number- 32 Date and Time: 07th January 2021, 08.20 pm local, 03.50 pm IST, 10.20 am GMT Venue: Carrara Oval, Brisbane Broadcast: Sony Sports Network, Sony LIV Pitch Report The pitch at Carrara Oval has been generally good in this BBL season offering good pace and bounce. Good pace and bounce in Australia are actually batting friendly. However, that doesn't mean flat deck either as bowlers, if they try, can get purchase off the surface if they hit the right lengths. It is expected to behave the same in this game as well. Weather and Bat Flip The weather has been really put off in matches at the Carrara oval with rain intervals halting games. For this match, the forecast is that rain would disturb the proceedings this time as well. With 55% chances of rain in the night and 78% cloud cover, captains could do nothing but win the toss and field first. Heat Strongest XI Chris Lynn, Max Bryant, Joe Burns, Joe Denly, Jack Wildermuth, Jimmy Peirson (c & wk), Lewis Gregory, James Bazley, Mark Steketee, Xavier Bartlett, Mujeeb Ur Rahman Stars Strongest XI Marcus Stoinis, Nick Larkin, Hilton Cartwright, Nicholas Pooran, Nic Maddinson, Glenn Maxwell (c), Seb Gotch (wk), Adam Zampa, Liam Hatcher, Sam Rainbird, Billy Stanlake

Daily Round Up | Jan 6: Navdeep Saini set to make Test debut for India

India have announced the playing XI for the third Test against Australia in Sydney while New Zealand have attained the top spot in the ICC Test rankings. Here are the latest updates from the day. India announce playing XI for third Test The Indian team has made a couple of changes for the third Test against Australia slated to begin from Thursday in Sydney. Rohit Sharma who earlier named as the vice-captain of the side will be opening the innings with Shubman Gill. Apart from this, fast bowler Navdeep Saini is set to make his Test debut for India replacing injured Umesh Yadav. The four-match series is levelled at 1-1 with the third and fourth match scheduled to take place in Sydney and Brisbane respectively. Sourav Ganguly to be discharged on Thursday BCCI president Sourav Ganguly will be discharged from the hospital on Thursday. The former skipper was scheduled to be discharged on Wednesday but he had decided to stay back for one more day. "Ganguly will be discharged tomorrow as he wants to stay back one more day,” the hospital said on Wednesday. New Zealand move to number one spot New Zealand have attained the helm spot in the ICC Test rankings after completing a clean sweep in the two-match Test series against Pakistan at home. New Zealand defeated Pakistan an innings and 176 runs in the second encounter to seal the series. Kyle Jamieson followed his fifer in the first innings with a six-wicket haul in the second. Spectator at Boxing Day Test tests positive for COVID-19 A spectator at the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne has tested positive for COVID-19. “The Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC), as ground managers of the MCG, is aware that a person who attended Day 2 (Sunday, December 27, 2020) of the Boxing Day Test has since tested positive to COVID-19,” a statement said. “The MCG is being investigated as a potential source for the infection,” Victoria’s Department of Health said. “We’re encouraging anyone who was in The Great Southern Stand, zone 5 of the MCG between 12.30 pm and 3.30 pm on 27 December, to get tested and isolate until they receive a negative result.” Pravin Amre appointed Delhi Capitals assistant coach Pravin Are has been appointed as the assistant coach of the Delhi Capitals. “I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Pravin Amre back to the Delhi Capitals side,” said CEO Dhiraj Malhotra, on the latest development. Are thanked the franchise. “I am grateful to the Delhi Capitals management for having me on board. With the team having reached its very first IPL final in 2020, this is certainly an exciting time to be back there. I look forward to working with Ricky again, and all the players,” said Amre.

Inside out | Australia series is Rohit Sharma's moment of reckoning in unfulfilled Test career

Rohit Sharma has made yet another comeback in the Test team, and once again, the right hander’s return to the team and playing XI has created a bit of buzz about the handling of players by the Indian team management. That Rohit is a gifted cricketer is an argument that has been used repetitively to defend the backing he has got from the Indian team management under different captains but he could not nail down his spot in the squad until the promotion to the top order in a similar fashion to his white-ball career, where h started looking coming to his won with his eye-catching strokes and big hundreds. Rohit played his last Test against Bangladesh in 2019 in India, and in that home season, he was sizzling with bat and scored daddy hundreds at the top of the order to deflate the opposition teams, and all looked settled for both him and the team at the top of the order. But, another hiccup occurred on the tour of New Zealand and he could not play the Test series against New Zealand. When Rohit was smashing the likes of Kagiso Rabada, Anrich Nortje on the Indian pitches, there was a sense of awe about him that the Rohit Sharma the world had expected was finally arriving on the big state in the longest format, but deep down there must be thinking among all pundits and fans that bigger tests were waiting overseas to examine him on the basis of skills and technique to combat and dominate pacers on foreign soils. In this regard, the absence in New Zealand could not quite give him the chance to stamp his authority on the team and establish his position among the other contenders for the opening slot. What made matters worse were the events that followed the New Zealand tour as India were starved off any cricket for months and when the Indian Premier League started, Rohit defied all odds of rustiness and looked set to grab the opportunity that was to follow in Australia. However, an episode of serious miscommunication happened in which Rohit looked like preferring playing for his franchise Mumbai Indians in IPL, instead of looking beyond the spectacle of the cash-rich league and subsequently jeopardizing his chances to play in Australia. Rohit Sharma’s career has been marred by injuries at perfectly wrong times. He was all set to replace an injured VVS Laxman in Nagpur way back in 2010, but he ended up injuring his ankle playing football in the warm-up session before the toss and the rise of other batsmen such as Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, and Cheteshwar Pujara around him meant that he got the chance to break into the playing XI only at the number six position below the likes of other younger batsmen in 2013. He announced his arrival on the big stage in a grand fashion, hitting two back to back centuries against West Indies, but failed miserably in the stern examination taken by Dale Steyn and Company in South Africa. On the next overseas tour to New Zealand, Rohit could score one fifty in four innings but was again guilty of throwing away his starts but his partners in Kohli and Rahane notched up centuries to never stay out of the contention. His rising stocks in the early part of career started tanking by the tour of England in 2014, but when India gave up the idea of playing Stuart Binny as the fifth bowler, Rohit was inducted back as the sixth frontline batsman in the line up in Southampton, but the match turned out to be an infuriating one for both Rohit and the team management. He was persisted with the team on the tour of Australia that followed the same year, but runs did not come and whenever he got off to a good start, he was guilty of throwing it away in signs of not being a batsman who was willing to wait for his time. Meanwhile, he kept on performing in Tests played in India, but his away numbers never improved. On the back of strong numbers in home Tests, and due to Ajinkya Rahane’s horrible run of form in that phase, Rohit was promoted as one of the five batsmen in the team on the tour of South Africa where his great unravelling as a Test batsman began five years ago. He failed with the bat in both the Tests, and it forced the team management to come back to seven-four combination and the emergence of an all-rounder in Hardik Pandya meant there was no place left for Rohit in the team and he was subsequently dropped from the team for the tour of England. However fragile his body and inconsistency with the bat have been over the years, he never dropped out of the radar of the team management and it underlines the trust and confidence he enjoys among the leadership group. When the BCCI announced the replacement for Umesh Yadav and Mohammed Shami before the third Test at the SCG, Rohit’s name was suffixed with the vice-captain tag, which in many ways was a massive revelation about the place of Rohit in this team set up. Before Rohit’s arrival, it was Pujara who was the deputy to Ajinkya Rahane who was leading the team in absence of Virat Kohli. This long thread of vice-captains shows nothing but the standings of players among the Indian team management, and it now shows that Rohit is rated very highly, in fact maybe more than Cheteshwar Pujara who has been one of the mainstays of the Indian batting line up, and it was more than certain that he would walk back into the Test team for the SCG Test. The remaining two Tests will be followed by nine Test matches against England at home and away and he would be itching to make his mark in the upcoming two Tests to silence the critics and stake a full and final claim on one of the opener’s positions in the batting order. Rohit would know that these two Tests will serve as a litmus test of his batting in overseas conditions and that the four Tests against England back home is a kind of territory he has already dominated against South Africa. If he wants to seal a spot for himself on the tour of England in the summer later this year, the time to put his head down and pile on the runs is now, when the pace trio of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, and Josh Hazlewood is all in readiness to test all aspects of his batting with the new ball.

BBL10 Match Preview: Hurricanes, Thunder fight to get back to winning ways after slip-ups

The Hobart Hurricanes and Sydney Thunder, both were handed defeats in their previous games, somewhat derailing their prospects of making it to the Playoffs as early as possible. While the Hurricanes couldn’t get past Stars even after an inspiring performance by Ben McDermott with the bat, Thunder’s express train was halted by the two Joes of Heat in Burns and Denly. While Hurricanes would wish that someone like Spiecman Andre Fletcher don’t catch the way he did in Hobart in their last game, Thunder would like to have Tanveer Sangha to be a little less expensive, although he is a wicket-taker now doubt. But the youngster was taken to the cleaners by the Heat. For Hurricanes, Big Ben and Dawid must fire Hurricanes’ batting line up looks much more impressive after the induction of number one T20I batter in the world Dawid Malan and with McDermott getting into the groove, it has become even more dangerous. McDermott, 26, is now the leading the run-scorers chart in BBL10 with 277 runs in six innings at an average of over 55 and a strike rate of more than 136. Malan, 33 on the other hand has also amassed 155 runs in just four innings with one fifty as well. It is these batsmen that the Hurricanes would wish are in the best of their form. Apart from these two, there is the ever-reliable Colin Ingram and the big hitter Tim David, who too have performed well, scoring 228 and 191 runs respectively in the BBL10 so far. If these four get going, no total would be small for the ‘Canes. Thunder need some spark in bowling While the batting of the Thunder has always been on the mark, it is their bowlers that need a bit of a spark. In the seven games, the bowlers have been able to get the opposition really dismantled only twice, but on both those occasions, it was the batting that had already mounted teh pressure by scoring more than 200 runs. Apart from those two occasions the only occasion where they did bowl well was against Perth Scorchers where they were able to restrict the team at 152. With Daniel Sams not available even for the next game, the likes of Chris Green and Adam Milne need to take the responsibility. Against a very attacking ‘Canes the Thunder bowling would have its real test. Hurricanes vs Thunder: Match Details Match Number- 31 Date & Time- Jan 7, 2021, 10:00 AM local, 12.30 PM IST, 07.00 AM GMT Venue- Perth Stadium, Perth Broadcast- Sony LIV and SonyTen Network Pitch Report Up until now, only one game has been played at the Perth Stadium in this BBL season and that saw a two-way result in which the side batting first posted an imposing 185 while that batting second bundled out for just 89. The wicket, however, is a true wicket with the ball coming on to the bat nice, and of course, there is early movement. The wicket is ready for a thriller if both teams apply themselves. Weather and Bat Flip With 58% cloud cover in the daytime, the players would hope for some respite from a 37-degree celsius temperature. In the hot weather, the pitch would get better with time, and hence chasing would be a preferred option for the team winning the Flip. Thunder Strongest XI Usman Khawaja, Alex Hales, Callum Ferguson (c), Sam Billings (wk), Oliver Davies, Ben Cutting, Chris Green, Nathan McAndrew, Adam Milne, Tanveer Sangha, Chris Tremain Hurricanes Strongest XI Ben McDermott (wk), D'Arcy Short, Dawid Malan, Peter Handscomb (c), Colin Ingram, Tim David, Johan Botha, Nathan Ellis, Scott Boland, Riley Meredith, Sandeep Lamichhane