We didn't perform collectively as a team: MI captain Rohit Sharma

Afghanistan recruit Andy Flower as consultant for World T20 2021

Former Zimbabwe player Andy Flower has been appointed as Afghanistan’s national team consultant for the upcoming World T20 in UAE and Oman scheduled to take place in October-November. "We are delighted that Andy has joined ACB. Andy has worked with a number of our players in various franchise completions and his vast experience will be very beneficial and useful to help the team in the World Cup,'' ACB chairman Azizullah Fazli said in a statement. Flower has coached the England team from 2009 to 2014 and helped the side lift the 2010 World T20 which was held in West Indies. Apart from working with the English team, he has had coaching stints in different T20 leagues including IPL, CPL, PSL, and The Hundred. In 63 Tests that he played, Flower scored over 4700 runs at an average of 51.5 while he was capped 213 times in the ODIs and struck 6786 runs, averaging 35.3 during the course. Afghanistan will begin their campaign against the qualifying team from Group B on October 25 in Sharjah and will then play Pakistan on October 29 in Dubai which will be followed by their clash against the qualifying team from Group A on October 31 in Abu Dhabi. The side will then take on India on November 3 in Abu Dhabi and will end the group stage fixtures against New Zealand on November 7 at the same venue.

MI vs SRH: What Experts Said as both teams bow out of after scintillating batting display

Mumbai Indians bowed out of the Indian Premier League 2021 with a 42-run victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad on Friday, 8 October, in Abu Dhabi. This is the first time since 2018 that Mumbai have failed to qualify for the playoffs stages. Coming into the game with impossible odds, Mumbai Indians led by the belligerence of Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav put on an incredible show. MI knew that they at least had things in their hand after winning the toss, and Kishan made absolutely all of it by starting piling up runs inside the powerplay. He scored a 16-ball 50, the fastest ever by a MI cricketer, but found his partners disperse one by one during the course of his innings. If it were not for Suryakumar Yadav’s incredible innovation, Mumbai would have lost their way in the 15th over of the game. When he walked into bat, Mumbai had lost two wickets in back to back over. SKY took his time to get in, saw through the tough phase of play and went on the attack in the 14th over. When he was dismissed in the fourth ball off the final over, he had picked the scoring rate up and had done enough damage to post 230 runs on board. Even at that point, things seemed well. To win the match, Mumbai had to wrap SRH under 65 runs, but that kind of went sideways when the young Abhishek Sharma started attacking the seasoned MI bowlers. Not only did SRH score 60 runs without losing a single wicket inside 5 overs, at one point, it looked like they were going to make a competition out of it. However, it was not to be, as after Sharma’s wicket, SRH failed to build partnerships and a defiant Manish Pandey knock went in vain due to the same. Captaining SRH for the first time, Manish Pandey produced a fantastic 69 off 41 balls, his best performance this season. Speaking after the game, Pandey admitted that this was a difficult season for Sunrisers as the team failed to turn up together in the games. "Best surface we've played on in this tournament. We knew Mumbai would come hard at us, and they did. I thought we could have bowled a little better, our fast bowlers gave away a few extra runs and that cost us in the end. We won only three games, we had a lot of changes in the side, and they didn't work for us. We were struggling a little bit, even in the early games in Chennai. We tried to do better in the second half, but unfortunately we could not. We only had a few individual performances, but no complete team performance." It was ironic that SRH put up their best batting performance without the services of their famed top order. The Hyderabad outfit scored 193 runs chasing 236 beating their previous best by 16 runs. Mumbai captain Rohit Sharma talked about how they had an on and off season and how fans always expect the best from Mumbai Indians. "When you play for a franchise like Mumbai, you are always expected to perform. I wouldn't call it pressure. More than anything, it is the expectation. What we have created as a group stands out in the last 5-6 years. It was very tough to drop some players. But we had an on-and-off season. We had a fabulous run as a franchise. We can be very proud of what we have created. We were just getting into the momentum of winning games in Delhi, and then there was a break in between. Once we came here, there was collective failure as a group." He stated that he was happy to sign off with a win but was a little disappointed that they could not go through to the playoff stages. “But very happy with the win today; we gave everything, and I am sure it was entertaining for the fans too. [To the Mumbai fans] They have been the 12th man. They have always stood by us. Little disappointed we couldn't go through. Ishan Kishan is a very talented player, just the right position to bat is crucial. He just batted the way we want Ishan to." The viewers got a solid game to sign off the group stage of the Indian Premier League and the experts were offered several plot points to discuss. The most obvious one was in respect to Ishan Kishan’s turnaround in the tournament and what he did in the last two games. After his promotion to the top order, he has looked like a man possessed and has scored a couple of incredible knocks in the IPL. This only raises the expectations that India will slot him in the first XI, possibly dropping Kohli in the pecking order. Ishan in the post match presentation talked about the same himself and revealed the details of his chat with Virat Kohli. “I would love to open. Virat bhai said you are selected as an opener. So you have to be prepared for that.” It caught the eye of several people that Hardik Pandya was sent at number three to up the ante. However, not only did Pandya not miserably fail to execute it, he also did not bowl a single over in the second innings. This meant that Hardik has gone without bowling a single over in the IPL 2021 season and that raises a lot of concerns about his spot in India’s playing XI One of the silver linings for India and Mumbai Indians has been SKY’s resurgence of form. After worrying both the fan sections for an extended period of time, the Mumbai lad put on quite some show today scoring a mammoth 82 runs in just 40 balls, his best in the IPL. Experts also noted how SRH’s USP failed on such a good batting track as their main bowlers notched up the economy rates that is not usually associated with them. It was just not about the bowling though. Ayaz Memon was among the fair few that talked about SRH’s dismal fielding effort on the night. They not only dropped a few silly chances, but their work rate on the rope was not at the expected quality at all. It was an interesting bowing out for two fantastic teams of the Indian Premier League, in the final group stage game of the season. Both teams struggled this season, but looked to have overcome their biggest issue on the night - the batting prowess. Mumbai put on an astonishing performance in the first half, but Sunrisers surprised many in the second innings by showing a competitive mentality - a mojo that seemed lost this season. Going into the mega-auction, both teams have a lot of time in their hands to play with the combinations and it will be interesting to see how they keep and who they choose to leave out.

IPL 2021 | MI vs SRH: Hits & Flops as Mumbai’s consolation win insufficient for its playoffs qualification

It was always going to be an impossible task for Mumbai to win a game by a margin of 171 in the Indian Premier League which prides itself on competitiveness. It turned out to be exactly that as even after scoring 235 with the bat, the Paltan could only by 42 runs against the wooden spoon holders Sunrisers Hyderabad to bow out of the race for Playoffs and a hattrick of titles. This 42 run win also made sure that Kolkata Knight Riders went through to the Playoffs and will now play Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Eliminator on Tuesday, October 12. Although the game didn’t turn out as the Mumbai team would have wanted it to, still Indian fans would be happy to see two of its important players from the perspective of the T20 World Cup in Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav getting among runs just at the right time. Apart from Surya and Ishan another player, who used to be in contention for a place in the side early on showed glimpses of the reason for it. All of them along with the failures from this game would be discussed in the section called Hits and Flops. Hits Ishan Kishan After the magnificent fifty against Rajasthan which made sure that Mumbai remained in contention even till its last game, Ishan started from where he had left. He was all over the Sunrisers bowlers right from the word go and didn’t waste even a single minute in his pursuit of getting Mumbai to such a target from where they could try for the 170 runs win. The pocket-sized dynamite reached his fifty in just 15 balls, the fastest for a Mumbai Indians player. He was also in the hunt of becoming the fastest Mumbai player to hundred runs, but one rising back of length ball from Umran Malik got a nick off his bat and Wriddhiman Saha didn’t have to do much to pouch that safely in his wicketkeeping gloves. But before getting out, the Patna born had hit 84 off just 32 balls which included 11 fours and four sixes coming from his willow. For this effort, the 23-year-old was rightly chosen Man of the Match. Suryakumar Yadav If Ishan had carried the form, Surya was coming off what has been a very frustrating and equally less productive season of play in this year’s IPL for him. Naturally so, in an attempt when Mumbai wanted to get quick and as many runs as possible, the right-hander was sent in after Hardik Pandya and Kieron Pollard, which is not his usual position. But in mind, the 31-year-old had something to prove, not to others, but to himself because he had gotten the national call up after much struggle and he wouldn’t have wanted to get into the T20 World Cup 2021 on the back of people discussing his name among undeserving candidates. So what did Surya do? Well, he played the best ever knock in his IPL career, making 82 off just 40 balls, before getting caught at deep square leg off a slower delivery from Holder. In his innings, the Indian Mr 360 degrees, as he is referred to by many, hit 13 fours and three sixes. Surya, along with Kishan was one of the reasons for Mumbai getting to such a big total even as big guns like skipper Rohit Sharma, Pandya brothers and Pollard failed to make an impact with the bat. Manish Pandey From not being part of the playing XI for the last four games to captaining the side and then scoring an unbeaten 69 off just 41 balls, Manish Pandey’s season took a U-turn with injuries to regular skippers and vice-captain, Kane Williamson and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. The right-hander looked confident in his crease and was playing with a finesse reminiscing his form from two seasons ago. Hotting on the up, pulling the ball and playing those beautiful drives, Pandey was showcasing all he knows in this game. Courtesy of great strike play, he played the anchor role brilliantly, with only lacking that there was nobody else with him to hit home at the end. In his knock, the 32-year-old hit seven fours and two sixes. Flops Jason Holder While all the bowlers got the treatment at the hands of the Mumbai batters, Holder in particular was taken to the cleaners a lot more than others in this game. Although he did pick up four wickets, all of them apart from Hardik Pandya’s coming in the death when batters were throwing the willow at anything in their arc. The West Indian went for 52 runs in his four overs, which was his most expensive spell in this season. Though Siddarth Kaul too went for 54 runs in his four overs and didn’t even pick a wicket, Holder also failed as an all-rounder as he was out for a solitary run when his team needed him to fire all cylinders with those big levers if they were to have a shot at chasing the target after the loss of the openers. Mohammad Nabi Given a chance due to Williamson’s injury, Afghan Mohammad Nabi or the president as he is known among his teammates wasn’t really able to stamp his authority. Bowling to the left-hander and being an off-spinner, he went for too many runs than expected. He was given the first over itself to try and put on some tight overs and build pressure on the batting side, but in return, he conceded 33 runs from his three overs and wasn’t even able to pick any wicket. With the bat, he was a big disappointment as well. After the kind of start that Abhishek Sharma and Jason Roy gave, putting together 64 in just 5.2 overs, it was the responsibility of senior players like Nabi to make sure that the SRH’s chase remained alive. Instead, what the 36 years old did was to get out cheaply. He could score only three of four balls before Piyush Chawla got him caught in the deep. Though his performance was meaningless with bat and ball, he did achieve the rare feat of becoming the first fielder to complete five catches in an IPL game.

RCB vs DC: What Experts Said after KS Bharat's 'marvellous' knock hands RCB a last-ball win

The Indian Premier League unveils some nail-biting encounters and the clash between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Delhi Capitals in Dubai on Friday was one of the instances of the same. RCB needed six off the last delivery when Avesh Khan first bowled a wide going down the leg and then a full toss which was deposited into the stands by KS Bharat for a maximum to anchor his team over the line. The Bangalore team was handed a target of 165 runs in 20 overs and the Virat Kohli-led side had a disappointing start to the chase as they lost Devdutt Padikkal and Kohli early in the innings. Bharat who had come in at number three was then joined by AB de Villiers and the two batters put 49 runs for the third wicket before de Villiers was sent back in the hut for a run-a-ball 26 by Axar Patel. Later, Glenn Maxwell came in the middle and the Australian along with Bharat stitched a match-winning and unbeaten stand of 111 runs for the fourth wicket. While Bharat struck an unbeaten 76 off 52, Maxwell remained not out for a 33-ball 51 during the course as RCB ended with nine wins and 18 points under their belt. Earlier, DC were off to a flying start as openers Prithvi Shaw and Shikhar Dhawan scored 88 for the first wicket. But Dhawan’s departure saw a couple of wickets falling at regular intervals and Delhi were reduced to 108/3. It was Shimron Hetmyer who chipped in with a cameo and scored 29 off 22 to help his side put 164/5 in 20 overs on the board. Siraj picked up two wickets for 25 runs in 4 overs for RCB. RCB skipper Virat Kohli acknowledged that winning the game after losing some early wickets feels good. “Unbelievable game. We had nothing to lose, but it was a competitive game which is always the case in the IPL. To lose wickets and to still beat the team at the top of the table feels good.We have beaten them twice now. The way AB batted in the beginning and then with KS (Bharat) and Maxwell in the end was unbelievable,” he said in the post-match presentation. DC captain Rishabh Pant put the onus of the defeat on poor fielding. “The way we fielded today, we deserved to lose. We all know how important catching is in the shortest format of the game. We lost too many wickets while batting and that is where we lost the plot. Not feeling really happy as we have to win these kind of matches,” he said. Experts’ Opinion Journalist Ayaz Memon lauded RCB’s ‘great effort’ to beat table-toppers. “Great effort by RCB to beat table toppers DC in their last league match. Doesn’t alter position in points table, but gives good momentum heading into play-offs,” he tweeted. Former India bowler RP Singh lavished praise on Bharat for the way he stitched his innings and won the game for RCB. “Never seen Kohli so happy after a win in IPL ! Well played Bharat. This innings is going to be remembered for a long time,” RP wrote on Twitter. Former India player Irfan Pathan praised Bharat for his marvellous match-winning knock. “Enjoyed watching this marvellous match winning inning from Bharat,” Irfan tweeted. Delhi Capitals will now play CSK in first qualifier in Dubai on Sunday while RCB will lock horns with KKR on Monday in Sharjah.