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For the first hour on day three, despite the heat and the largely unhelpful pitch, India’s fast bowlers showed a level of intensity and penetration rarely seen from them; in the second hour, things mostly reverted to type

Sidharth Monga at the Gabba19-Dec-20144:53

Agarkar: No point trying to blow tail-enders away these days

Sixty-three minutes of pressure. Not one boundary ball, not one loose ball, not one down leg, not one short and wide, not one half-volley. Good hustle with two bowlers bowling quicker than 140kmph, and one not much slower than 140. Three boundaries are hit in this period – an edge, a good shot and a bit of an improvisation. Two wickets fall. Only 39 runs are scored. There is discipline, intensity, perseverance, and aggression. It is hard to remember India quicks under MS Dhoni bowling better as a unit for an hour. Unfortunately, what followed over 57 minutes after that – 14 boundaries and 91 runs for no wicket – is easy to remember. You can take your pick of reference points for a mini session where India lose control of a match.The first 63 minutes, though, can bear retelling, if only because they are a massive improvement from Adelaide. India fast bowlers have taken more wickets in less time previously, but mostly through magic balls on pitches that are assisting them. On hot days, on good pitches with nice even bounce, when there isn’t much seam movement on offer, you usually have at least one bowler releasing the pressure. Not on this hot day. Not in the first 63 minutes at least.It is 32 degrees by the time India come out of their huddle at 10am. Add five degrees to that because of the cauldron of the Gabba and the humidity. India have made yet another change to their slip cordon. Virat Kohli has moved in, and M Vijay has gone to mid-off. Ishant Sharma and Varun Aaron begin. Both are outside off, neither is too full nor too short. Steven Smith scores four runs through good shots, but Aaron beats Mithcell Marsh with one that holds its line outside off.For the next three overs, pressure builds. Eleven runs have come off the first 4.5 overs. Slips are around, a gully is there. You can hear the Indian fielders on the stumps mic. They sense they are closing in. It’s important they don’t release the pressure. Ishant doesn’t. He pitches just short of a length, around a set of stumps outside off. Marsh leaves it alone on length. It doesn’t bounce as much as expected. The top of off is hit. You bowl this well, you push the batsman back, you give yourself the best chance to make use of misbehaviour in the surface.Brad Haddin – average under 11 since the last Ashes – is the new man in. India are at Australia again. Smith feels the pressure. He looks to drive off the back foot. The ball is not close to him. He gets an edge, which goes safely through gully for four. It is important to not lose the plot here. Dhoni takes the game a notch higher. Aaron goes round the wicket, gets a short leg in, and a short square leg right behind him. Aaron bowls two good short balls. One at the body, one just outside off.This is a crucial time. On the last trip to Australia, India had Australia down at 5 for 205 in Melbourne when Haddin walked out. He saw another wicket fall immediately. He began his innings with a long-on and deep midwicket in place. Dhoni seems to have learnt his lesson. He has looked a better, more proactive captain all match. Also Haddin is going through a lean phase. Most of all, though, his bowlers have been accurate. He continues attacking. Gets two short legs in. Ishant bowls full and nearly has Haddin lbw. Aaron goes round the wicket and aims for the ribs. Haddin gets one boundary through leg gully, but that gap is plugged.Ishant takes a breather after his first spell of 4-1-9-1, and Umesh begins with a maiden to Smith. When he bowls one short and wide, it is not put away. The batsmen just haven’t been in scoring mode. Dhoni has a chat with Aaron, who gets another over. He goes round the wicket with a short leg and a leg gully in place. This is short, this is quick, headed for the ribs from that angle. Haddin tries to get himself inside its line but the ball follows. He doesn’t fancy a hit in the ribs so he just raises his bat meekly. Short leg takes an easy catch. Mark Nicholas on air is reminded of Mitchell Johnson to Jonathan Trott last season.Johnson was Johnson because he had Ryan Harris building the pressure at the other end. India are looking dangerous with their pace because they haven’t bowled a loose ball all morning.Johnson hasn’t been Johnson this Test. He hasn’t taken a wicket. Rohit Sharma reminds him of that as he walks in to bat with Australia 161 behind. The Indian fielders, it seems, have been given free rein. They have been in the ear of the batsmen. Rohit has had a finger-pointing chat with umpire Ian Gould. India are looking to ape Australia in every way.Johnson gets a short leg and a leg gully first up. India are going to bounce him. They have let him know too. This is life in the fast lane. It can unravel fast. It didn’t at Lord’s. It worked at Lord’s. So India go to the bouncer after one double bluff – a full ball, which Johnson times through mid-on for three. Smith, meanwhile, has ramped a bouncer over slip.Ishant comes back to replace Aaron, who has gone off to get his left shoulder some attention. He has dived badly at the end of his spell of 5-0-26-1. He has bowled better than the figures suggest. Ishant comes back, and wants to continue what Aaron has been doing. What he himself did at Lord’s. Bowl bouncers. He bowls one at 133kmph, it is about chest high, and Johnson scorches it along the ground through square leg for four. This is not just four runs. This should be a message. Johnson can pull. He is going to pull. Use it sparingly. Ishant bowls another. No sting in that bouncer again. Four through midwicket. All of a sudden the partnership is reading 24 off 14.The next bouncer from Ishant is higher than the shoulder, but Johnson manages to keep it down. In the next over Umesh tries to bounce him. The ball is pulled down into the ground again. In the next over Ishant looks to bounce him, and is ramped over slips. In the next, when Umesh pitches it up, Johnson is beaten. Surely there is a message in there?Ian Healy on commentary says Johnson has a tendency of missing full and straight balls. India are not bowling that. They are going at his throat, and going for runs. Johnson is 26 off 20, and has played only three scoring shots in the off side. One of them a ramp to the bouncer. Seventeen of these 20 balls have been either short or short of a length. He’s loving it.Can’t be sure if it is ego or bad planning, but India keep persisting with the short ball. They have even started giving Smith the easy single. So now they have begun to try getting only one man out, and are going about it the wrong way. The rest of the unravelling is mere details, but the figures say it all: the last four added 258 in just 48.3 overs, the top six got 247 in 61.1 overs.It should have been 210 for the last four wickets, but Dhoni doesn’t go for a catch an arm’s length to his left. The ball dies in front of first slip, and Josh Hazlewood adds 32 unbeaten runs to his nought at the time. That’s the finishing touch every self-respecting Indian unravelling in the field yearns for.

Their teams may have missed out on the knockout berth, but their bright individual performances left a mark on the tournament

Arun Venugopal16-Mar-2015William Porterfield, Ireland
275 runs, 45.83
Best performance: 107 v PakistanIreland kept the Associates’ flag flying high throughout the competition, and central to their plucky performances was their captain. Although Porterfield didn’t play a leading part in any of Ireland’s three wins, his leadership on the field and off it – where he passionately argued against the shrinking of the next World Cup to 10 teams – made an impression. Porterfield’s best performances came against two top teams: India and Pakistan. His century against Pakistan in a must-win encounter eventually proved futile.Jos Buttler, England
145 runs, 35.25
Best performance: 65 v BangladeshThere were a few eyebrows raised when Buttler was appointed vice-captain of the England side. His value as a wicketkeeper, apart from his work ethic and calm, were perhaps factored in. The stage, therefore, was set for him to showcase his utility in the lower middle-order in a tricky chase against Bangladesh.
Buttler played himself in and looked good to seal the game, but his dismissal culminated in England’s defeat and eventual exit from the tournament. Buttler had also made an unbeaten 39 off 18 balls earlier against Sri Lanka, again in a losing cause.Ed Joyce, Ireland
246 runs, 41
Best performance: 112 v ZimbabweEd Joyce has in the past spent considerable time switching between England and Ireland. He represented England in the 2007 World Cup before reverting to Ireland in the next edition. There was further vindication of that decision this time around when he was at the heart of two significant wins: after scoring 84 against West Indies in a match where Paul Stirling and Niall O’Brien also contributed substantially, Joyce struck a 103-ball 112 to set the foundation of a match-winning total against Zimbabwe.Brendan Taylor has played his farewell game for Zimbabwe•Getty ImagesBrendan Taylor, Zimbabwe
433 runs, 72.16

Best performance: 138 v IndiaIt’s impossible to gloss over the poignancy of Taylor’s two recent centuries coming in what were, for now, his last two innings for Zimbabwe. At the end of the league phase, Taylor had more runs than AB de Villiers and Tillakaratne Dilshan in the World Cup, and was the second-highest scorer after Kumar Sangakkara. His hundreds against Ireland and India came at a strike-rate of 125-plus. In the India game he came in after the fall of two quick wickets and counterpunched spiritedly. Zimbawe coach Dave Whatmore said Nottingamshire, with whom Taylor, 29, has signed a Kolpak deal, were “very, very lucky” to have him. Zimbabwe evidently not so lucky.Shaiman Anwar, UAE
311 runs, 51.83
Best performance: 106 v Ireland“Anwar’s doing very well in the team and he’s such a confident individual that we call him ‘Sir Viv’ in the dressing room – that’s his nickname,” UAE captain Mohammad Tauqir said after Anwar’s 62 against Pakistan. You can’t fail with a nickname like that. An employee with a shipping firm, Anwar was the highest-scorer at the halfway stage, and became the first UAE batsman to score a World Cup hundred.Sean Williams, Zimbabwe
339 runs, 67.80; 7 wickets, 40.85
Best performance: 96 and 3-72 v IrelandNot long before Taylor announced his decision to pursue a Kolpak deal, Williams, 28, was ready to walk away from Zimbabwe. In this tournament, he and Taylor have provided their team with runs and plenty of them. In Zimbabwe’s agonising defeat against Ireland, Williams chipped in with three wickets before partnering Taylor with the bat. There was an encore, against India, of the Taylor-Williams show, and Williams rounded off his campaign with his fourth half-century.Samiullah Shenwari, Afghanistan
254 runs, 42.33
Best performance: 96 v ScotlandBefore Shapoor Zadran set off on his delirious run, it was Shenwari who had set the base for Afghanistan’s first win in the World Cup, over Scotland. He ground out 147 balls before being the ninth man out. He played useful hands against New Zealand and Bangladesh as well, and finished as Afghanistan’s highest run-getter in the tournament.Josh Davey, Scotland
15 wickets, 20.73
Best performance: 4-68 v EnglandFor Davey, the step up from a little-known seamer of an Associate side to the highest wicket-taker in the World Cup – even if briefly- was as rapid as it was remarkable. It’s certainly good enough to update his Twitter bio that until now describes him as “Entrepreneur and chocoholic.” Davey’s first notable performance was a three-wicket burst as Scotland ran New Zealand scarily close. His performances thereon went north; an economical two-wicket spell in a gutting defeat versus Afghanistan was followed by a five-for against England and the wickets of Sangakkara, Dilshan and Jayawardene against Sri Lanka.UAE captain Mohammad Tauqir has charmed people with his humour•ICCShapoor Zadran, Afghanistan
10 wickets, 26.50
Best performance: 4-38 v ScotlandOne image is certainly likely to catch the fancy of TV production crews when they put together a World Cup montage as the tournament winds down: that of Shapoor, fists clenched, bolting at full tilt before spreading his arms and falling onto the ground in sheer elation after striking the boundary to accomplish Afghanistan’s historic triumph over Scotland. But there was more to the left-armer than his strapping build, shock of hair and Shoaib Akhtar-inspired run-up, as his four-for in the aforementioned game showed. Shapoor, who watches videos of Wasim Akram the night before every game, turned in sturdy performances against Sri Lanka and New Zealand, too. That he can perform the Attan, the Afghan war dance, fits in snugly with his rockstar persona.Hamid Hassan, Afghanistan
8 wickets, 32.62
Best performance: 3-45 v Sri LankaIf Shapoor features in the montage, Hassan’s ungainly cartwheels can’t be far behind. With a headband and Afghanistan’s colours smeared on the cheeks, Hassan’s Rambo avatar is the sort of thing television feeds on. It helps he can bowl fast, and has a big heart. He produced that sort of a performance against Sri Lanka, who were nearly stunned by Afghanistan. “If I’m doing something wrong in a match, I watch myself on the big screen and when I touch my face, I get paint on my fingers,” Hassan told cricket.com.au. “And I say ‘You’re playing for your country, think about what you’re doing here’.”Mohammad Tauqir, UAE
5 wickets, average: 46.20
Best performance: 2-38 v IrelandTauqir, at 43, became the oldest captain in World Cup history. While he wasn’t even the leading wicket-taker in his own team, his loopy off-spin made him the stingiest at 5.26 an over. Tauqir’s off-field success wasn’t insignificant either; the good-natured bluster sprayed with humour endeared him to many. Just look up his comments on having a “lot of cleaning of shoes” to do, or how UAE would avoid conceding 400 against South Africa only if they batted first. An investment banker by day, Tauqir, one of the two Emiratis in the squad, will go back to his “waiting employers” a more popular man.

In 1992, they were completely underprepared and had to face the ignominy of an early exit at home. A win on Sunday would go a long way towards removing the scars of that failure

Daniel Brettig28-Mar-2015As is typical of wicketkeepers, Ian Healy was always the most fastidious man in Australian teams of which he was a part. Always neatly dressed, he diarised his cricket with great detail, summing up thoughts, actions and words whether they be good or ill. He kept this up even in retirement, retaining all the shirts, caps and other accoutrements of his many series and tours.There was one exception to this, as Healy discovered upon being asked by Australia’s team management to speak to the 2015 World Cup squad. Rummaging around his Brisbane home, Healy could not find his gold shirt from the 1992 tournament – an extended search revealed only his sleeveless sweatshirt from the event.”It shows,” he said, “how little I wanted to remember it.”Like Healy, a generation of Australian cricketers look back on the 1992 World Cup as the major blot on an era of success and rejuvenation. Underprepared, panicked and playing catch-up against teams who had clearly thought more about the tournament than they had, Australia did not get themselves into gear until it was too late, and ended their contribution with a match against the West Indies that they won despite being eliminated earlier that day, by dint of Pakistan’s win over New Zealand.Under the leadership of Martin Crowe, New Zealand had made the 1992 tournament a priority, where Australia seemed to view it as rather a tedious adjunct to the summer’s annual World Series. The coach Bob Simpson was awarded a contract extension before the event, meaning his job was not on the line as it went wrong, and the captain Allan Border had long since been enshrined as a leader of sufficient standing to call his own time on playing.Nevertheless, the 1992 campaign has grated on Australian cricket for 23 years, as the current team has been endlessly reminded by the likes of Healy, Geoff Marsh, Border and the assistant coach Craig McDermott. The 2015 campaign has been plentifully informed by the lessons and ghosts of 1992, but there will be echoes of the elder team’s failure should Australia fall against New Zealand at the MCG.It was against New Zealand of course that Border’s men first tripped up, beaten comfortably in the tournament opener at Eden Park by Crowe’s batting and captaincy wiles. They have been far savvier this time, avoiding mistakes just as surely as the 1992 team made them.Australia’s ODI team has occupied a curious place in Cricket Australia’s planning over the past four years since the 2011 tournament and the Argus review that followed. Initially it was used as a proving ground for potential Test players, while teams were chosen on a match-by-match basis and looked entirely unsettled – the triangular series of 2011-12 being the only time one Ryan Harris was ever dropped for reasons of form, so anxious had he become about his place in the 50-over side.Though they won countless trophies afterwards, including three World Cups, 1992 has always cast a shadow over Australian cricket•Getty ImagesBut time, both its passing and its running out, as provided valuable clarity, the Cup drawing closer and the team growing more consistent in both its selection and its performance. The wresting back of the No.1 ODI ranking was an important moment, signalling that Australia were gathering strength leading into a World Cup, rather than having it ebb away as it did ahead of 2011.The dual captaincy of Michael Clarke and George Bailey has not always been smooth, but ultimately worked because of Clarke’s skills on the field and Bailey’s equanimity and maturity away from it. His running of messages out to the players during Thursday’s successful defence of 328 against India in the semi-final was a reminder of how Bailey has remained important to this team and squad even after his place was taken by Clarke’s return.Both men have been important in helping mould a style that works commandingly well in Australia, and also takes best advantage of the ODI playing conditions used at this tournament and first favoured by the CA chairman Wally Edwards. There is a mood for these – notably the two new balls and the restriction of only four men outside the fielding circle – to change after the tournament. They have been advantageous to an Australian side not placing much emphasis at all on reverse swing or spin bowling.Other players have also been managed nicely, not least the pace-bowling brigade of Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Johnson, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins. The mere fact that Australia have a full squad of 15 to choose from for the final is a point of enormous credit to the physio Alex Kountouris, the doctor Peter Brukner and the strength and conditioning coach Damian Mednis in particular. This has been the longest and most draining of summers.They will be able to look on with some satisfaction on Sunday afternoon, having guided the team through a season of trials both physical and emotional. So too will the coach Darren Lehmann, an important source of advice but most critically the architect of an environment neither too taut nor too lazy. Lehmann won two World Cups in his career, and among the team Clarke, Shane Watson and Johnson all know what it is like to celebrate victory in the final.But there is not an Australian cricketer alive who can boast of winning the Cup at home, merely a group of older heads still shaking their heads and muttering about the opportunity missed in 1992. Australia won countless trophies in the years to follow, but they could never erase that stain. To win this time around would go some way towards doing so.

Plays of the day from the match between Delhi Daredevils and Kings XI Punjab at the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi

Andrew Fidel Fernando01-May-2015The double-outWhen JP Duminy slid one past an advancing Shaun Marsh to hit him in front, the batsman was as preoccupied by the umpire’s reaction to the appeal as the bowler. A sharp Yuvraj Singh at slip though, was awake to opportunity. Seeing Marsh’s lazy return to the crease, Yuvraj collected the deflection off the batsman’s pads and removed the bails. The umpire would rule Marsh out by lbw, after a long pause, but even before he lifted his finger, Yuvraj was already appealing to the square-leg umpire, having run the batsman out as well.The comebackOn his return to competitive cricket after almost a year out of the game, thanks to injury, Zaheer Khan helped justify his high price-tag for this season’s IPL, with two wickets that sent the opposition into a nosedive. His first victim was former India team-mate Virender Sehwag, also 36 and making a comeback of sorts himself, after being benched for the last match. Zaheer had Sehwag caught at short point, before next over, he removed the other opener Manan Vohra as well.The least watchable momentThe fourth ball of Imran Tahir’s 20th over produced cricket none of the three players involved would be proud of. Tahir first floated the ball up well wide of off stump and turned it away. If batsman Anureet Singh had not made contact, it would probably have been deemed a wide. But the batsman did swing at it, and he connected poorly, sending the ball gently in the air towards Yuvraj at point. The fielder only had to take a few steps back and close his hands on the ball, but let it bounce out comically from his grasp. Of the three, Anureet made some amends for his part in the farce, hitting the final ball of the innings over cow corner for six.The poor introductionWith his list of recent Ranji Trophy victims running long, 23-year-old seamer Shardul Thakur arrived at his IPL debut with considerable hype around him. But he would proceed to make as inauspicious an IPL a start as possible, as Mumbai team-mate Shreyas Iyer scrambled his brains. His third ball, short and wide, was effortlessly lifted over wide-third man for six, and his fourth ball was almost identical, with Iyer’s response also being the same. His attempts to correct his line went horribly as well, as he first delivered a leg-side wide, then was clipped to the fence off the pads. His economy barely improved after that. He conceded 38 from three overs, though he did eventually get Iyer out.

The challenge facing administrators is drawing the majority Chinese population to cricket, which remains largely expat-driven

Tim Wigmore26-Jun-2015From the story of Afghanistan, whose first generation of players learned the game in refugee camps in Pakistan, to the development of Irish cricket across sectarian lines, and a tiny fishing village in Papua New Guinea which produced half the national side that earned ODI status, it is not hard to locate romance in Associate cricket. But it seems a little harder to find in Hong Kong, one of the world’s financial centre.”In Hong Kong, a city where everyone seems to be from somewhere else, just who is an expat, anyway?” the asked last year. The diversity manifests itself in Hong Kong’s cricket team.”I think the style of cricket is unique – and quite hard to explain,” observes Tim Cutler, the chief executive of the Hong Kong Cricket Association (HKCA). The team mixes “the wristy flair from the subcontinent with the traditional methods coached throughout western academies, with players who have learnt their trade all over the world – usually while attending overseas universities before returning to Hong Kong.”Cricket in Hong Kong has quite a history. During the first Opium War in 1841, the British Army decreed that cricket grounds would be constructed adjacent to all army barracks in the area that became Hong Kong. The following year Hong Kong became a British colony, and settlers there tried to replicate the aspects of British life they most missed. For many, cricket featured high up on this list: the Hong Kong Cricket Club was established in 1851.

“Our biggest challenge is having to explain what cricket is. Almost all local Chinese have no knowledge about cricket, or that cricket is played in Hong Kong”James Chan, HKCA cricket officer

One hundred and sixty-four years later, Hong Kong cricket is at its most exciting juncture yet. Last year was a seminal one. The side almost qualified for the 2015 World Cup, earned ODI status until 2018, and then defeated Bangladeshin their first appearance in the World T20.Yet while cricket is now the highest-ranked team sport in Hong Kong, many do not see the side as representing Hong Kong so much as Pakistani expats. Nine members of their 15-man squad for the World T20 Qualifiers, including Irfan and Nadeem Ahmed, two heroes from the toppling of Bangladesh in Chittagong, were born in Pakistan; but those who learned the game in Hong Kong increasingly dominate the squad. Six members were either born in Hong Kong or have Hong Kong passports; four others, including the teenagers Waqas Khan and Kinchit Shah, predominantly learned the game in Hong Kong.

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The most fundamental question cricketers in Hong Kong face is where to play. It is one of the most densely populated places in the world, and flat land is scarce. Hong Kong has only three grass pitches. Most grounds use artificial wickets.”Access to grounds and quality of facilities are a perpetual battle for all sports in Hong Kong, and cricket’s ground requirements make it an even steeper task,” Cutler says, though cricket should benefit from the government building a new US$3.2 billion multipurpose sports complex. Still, cricket cannot be snooty about where to develop new grounds: HKCA is exploring if the sport can be played at former landfill sites and reservoir areas.It embodies the sense that cricket’s development in Hong Kong is still nascent. The playing base remains far too shallow: there are about 600 adult cricketers today, one-tenth of the number playing rugby union. Given this, Hong Kong’s recent achievements have been remarkable, but the sport needs to attract the Chinese population, who make up over 90% of Hong Kong, for the national team’s success to be sustainable. And historically the Chinese population has simply not cared for cricket.The Hong Kong Sixes was the city’s showpiece event for two decades. It is set for a revival this year, with Chinese commentary•AFPChanging this is a challenge Cutler embraced when he was unveiled as the first chief executive in HKCA’s history in April. The opening up of Higher Performance Programme funding, after Hong Kong gained ODI status last year, has created an opportunity to engage the Chinese population. It will not be easy, especially with the BCCI and ECB having vetoed the inclusion of cricket in the Olympics, despite its transformative potential.”We find ourselves having to split our limited resources between not only training our elite squads but also to edify a population that in its majority knows very little about the sport,” Cutler explains. Even after the success of 2014, Hong Kong must do it all with one-tenth of the ICC funding enjoyed by Zimbabwe: that explains why only nine players are contracted to HKCA.An amiable Australian, Cutler moved to Hong Kong two years ago, where he worked in marine insurance before turning his attentions to cricket administration full-time, and befuddles batsmen with his left-arm spin. Until he became chief executive, Cutler had an app on his phone counting down the days until March 16, 2017 – the day he becomes eligible for selection for Hong Kong.That dream has been put on hold, at least, while Cutler confronts a bigger job. Despite his youth – he is just 33, which seems rather young to hobnob with the Big Three in the boardrooms of Dubai – Cutler edged out over 100 other applicants, so impressed was HKCA by his local knowledge and vision for the sport.”Cricket has the perfect opportunity to embed itself in Hong Kong, not as something once thrust on its people by colonial rule, but [in a manner where] all Hong Kongers can have the opportunity to learn the game,” he wrote in his application. “Hong Kong is screaming out for something that can unite the region in defining its collective identity, beyond political proclivities. I believe that together we can make cricket that ‘something’.” Cutler’s ambition, he says, is “to make the sport fit the region, rather than the other way around.”And there are some encouraging signs. HKCA’s website is on the verge of becoming fully bilingual, and the board is rewriting the Chinese character cricket glossary to better reflect the game. The Hong Kong Sixes, which ran from 1992 to 2012, will return later this year; for the first time, commentary will also be offered in Chinese, geared towards educating viewers about the game.To engage the Chinese media and take the game to schools, HKCA employs three full-time Chinese development coaches; a further two are to be appointed later in 2015. Around 1000 local children in government schools received introductory cricket programmes this year, and 250 of those now take part in regular programmes; an all-Chinese Under-17s league will be launched when the new season begins in August. Two Chinese clubs already compete in Division Two of the Saturday league, and a Dragons team of fully Chinese players will make their debut in the more prestigious Sunday League next season. The women’s game hints at what is possible: over half the squad that played in the Asian Games last year was indigenous Chinese. And one member of the men’s squad, the left-hand batsman Mark Chapman, is half-Chinese.Cricket at the Kowloon Cricket Club. Flat land is scarce in the city, and grounds to play cricket on are not easy to come by•Getty ImagesOne Chinese cricket officer is James Chan, who learned the game in London before taking up his post in Hong Kong in February. “Our biggest challenge is having to explain what cricket is,” he says. “Almost all local Chinese have no knowledge about cricket, or that cricket is played in Hong Kong.”The fiercely competitive academic culture exacerbates the challenge. “With most forms of cricket taking up most of the day, parents pursue less time-consuming activities such as basketball and football,” Chan says. He is trying to combat that by presenting cricket as “like a chess game, a logic tool creating unique methods of problem solving which can be used and adapted in other aspects of life.”But he believes the most attractive aspect of cricket to Hong Kong parents might be its role within English culture: “cricket’s unique selling point”. The hope is that parents might see cricketing prowess as a tool to earning a sporting scholarship at an elite school in England.”Our responsibility is to spread the word that the Hong Kong Cricket Association is willing to help if there are candidates wanting to take this path,” Chan says. While he is not Chinese, Anshuman Rath shows what is possible: born in Hong Kong, he has earned scholarships with Eton and then Harrow, who gave him permission to play in Hong Kong’s ODIs against Papua New Guinea last year on the condition that he brought his textbooks with him. Four days after turning 17, he scored 55 at No. 3.Increased recognition of the value of sport in Hong Kong gives cricket a further opportunity to grow. Should cricket make progress in engaging Chinese children, it could engender a virtuous cycle, where the government (which paid for Hong Kong’s preparation tour for the World T20 Qualifiers) becomes more inclined to offer greater support. “The government is willing to support sports more who are better at supporting themselves in not only engaging local communities but also in establishing stronger controls and better governance,” Cutler says. The timing could not be better for HKCA.

Six months ago, N Srinivasan was a force in the BCCI. That has changed now as a result of legal trouble and the power struggles within the board

Arun Venugopal04-Oct-2015Shashank Manohar’s nomination as BCCI president – to be formalised at a special general meeting on Sunday – has left N Srinivasan, the current ICC chairman and former board president, an isolated figure. Manohar has of late been a vocal critic of Srinivasan and is likely to curb Srinivasan’s influence within the BCCI.The most striking evidence of Srinivasan’s waning influence came on Saturday, when Manohar was nominated for the post by all six East Zone members, most of whom owed allegiance to Srinivasan in the past. One East Zone official sought to downplay the issue, saying he was on “nobody’s side.” He also said he was not averse to either proposing or seconding Manohar’s name, because he was “one of the finest presidents of the board, a man of the highest integrity and most accessible.”An office bearer of a southern state association that had been a staunch supporter of Srinivasan in the past admitted members were wary of antagonising the new powers in the BCCI. “Everybody wants to be safe. I look at my association. Why should I look [out] for others? We want to go with the system.”BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur, who won a close-fought election for his post against the Srinivasan camp last year, promised there would be no “vendetta” against anybody. “If you look at the last six months, there was no vindictive attitude towards any association,” Thakur told ESPNcricinfo. “And I can promise that, on behalf of Shashank Manohar as well, that we don’t have a vendetta against anyone. For us, the institution is more important than the individuals.”Srinivasan’s strength in the BCCI has been on the decline since the IPL corruption scandal in May 2013. Despite being rapped by the Supreme Court and ultimately forced to step aside as BCCI president, he had remained defiant and sought to protect his turf. However, the return of Jagmohan Dalmiya as BCCI president – a consensus candidate of the two factions led by Srinivasan and former board president Sharad Pawar – and, especially, the election of Thakur considerably eroded his base.Srinivasan’s plans for an alliance with Pawar and a proposed meeting with Amit Shah, president of the Gujarat Cricket Association and India’s ruling political party the BJP, which has significant influence in the BCCI, also fell through.While it is understood Srinivasan wanted to lie low during the current BCCI dispensation, his concern was his role as ICC chairman. The BCCI, which had nominated him for the post in June 2014, can change its nominee if it wishes to. Srinivasan’s term is scheduled to end in June 2016.It is understood that Srinivasan is not as upbeat about his ICC prospects as he was a few days ago. “It won’t be impacted by whoever takes over,” a source from the Srinivasan camp had said then. As the SGM neared, though, it became increasingly clear that Srinivasan had exhausted his cards.”Since he [Srinivasan] is not in the BCCI picture for two years, how does it bother him [who comes to power]?” the source asked. “He doesn’t have any such anxiety, and has learnt to remain detached from all this. His world doesn’t revolve around the BCCI alone. He has his cement business to look after as well. If one party wins, the other party has to get on with its work until the next election.”None of his supporters could identify what caused Srinivasan’s fall, despite his group holding the most important positions at the BCCI election in March. “That’s the biggest question mark,” an office-bearer said. “That’s what happens in board. Two members are enough … everything can change.”A BCCI official said Srinivasan’s legal battles took a toll on his reputation. “Nothing new has gone wrong. If he had come out clean from the court matters things would have been different. Unfortunately, nothing much is coming out of that. Secondly, things keep on changing as time passes. They normally change, with new combinations and new requirements.”However, a former board official considered close to Srinivasan, said he couldn’t be written off. “Jaggu [Jagmohan Dalmiya] was banned. Jaggu made a comeback as BCCI president. In cricket and politics, you can never write off a person. He might be lying low now. He is a strongman of cricket, and he knows how to play his cards.”

Mitchell Johnson was prematurely washed up, written off, a has-been. Then he turned it all around and rocked the world

Jarrod Kimber18-Nov-2015From the outside it would have looked like any other plumbing van.It was being driven by a bloke who had lost his state cricket contract. He was once a kid who could bowl seriously fast, but his body was not a weapon – rather, a wasteland of stress fractures. His boss, also his coach, Brett Mortimer, had given him the job as driver.Mortimer knew there was something special there. Had the bloke disappeared right then, he might not have even been a what-if. When he crashed his van into a team-mate’s, there was no reason for it to make the papers. He was no one; probably one bad week, one niggly injury, from packing up his life and travelling back up the coast and living out his life in obscurity. But Mortimer saw him every day in the nets. And he didn’t need Dennis Lillee to tell him this was a serious bowler. Mortimer had played cricket for years and he’d never seen anything quite like this.Mortimer had one last crack. With Brendan Nash away on state duty, Northern Suburbs had a space open at the top of the order. So the bloke was thrown up the order to have some fun, instead of being depressed that he couldn’t bowl. He scored well, and while it was never a science, it wasn’t the first time in his life that runs led to wickets. But really, it was about belief with him. It always would be.No one would have seen that plumbing van and believed there were 310 Test wickets in there. Not even the bloke driving it.

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A few years earlier others didn’t believe the speed gun. They looked at it again. There must be something wrong. The speed gun was part of a plan by Queensland to find a real quick. But this quick? Surely not. This 17-year-old kid, wearing his father’s golf spikes, was bowling quicker than the entire Queensland squad. That can’t be right.Wicketkeeper Chris Hartley was standing 25 metres back in a Queensland Under-19 game. Ed Cowan was facing. Hartley was taking the ball above his head. Hartley and Cowan were sharing glances. This can’t be right.Dennis Lillee saw this kid in the nets. The kid was already thinking about joining the army to “shoot guns and get fit”. But then Lillee saw this kid bowl and said he was a “once-in-nine-lives player”. This can’t be right.After Mortimer pulled the plug on Mitchell Johnson’s bad mood, Johnson only took a couple of years to play for Australia. The white ball seemed to love him. It exploded off the pitch and into the gloves of keeper or batsman. You couldn’t watch Johnson bowl at that point and not feel the excitement.For whatever reason, the red ball didn’t get the hype. Even in Shield cricket, Johnson and the red ball hadn’t got along. Two five-wicket hauls, never more than 29 wickets in a season. But the white-ball work, and hell, just the look of him, it was electric. You didn’t need data analysis, biomechanists and speed guns, you just needed eyes.

The pressure and failure was all around him. Johnson couldn’t be what Australia wanted, and worse, he looked like he didn’t even know how to ever do it

Johnson was now also dedicated to cricket. There was no need to drag or convince him. He wanted it. Bad enough that he even travelled to the MRF pace academy in Chennai to work with Lillee. But his numbers didn’t improve.His early Tests involved wickets from right-handers who chased wide balls. They had to chase them, because otherwise they’d spend hours waiting for one at them. His arm seemed to get lower almost every innings, until he was bowling fast, almost accidental, offcutters. When the batsmen didn’t chase the wide ones, he just let off pressure for whoever was at the other end. After 13 Tests he was averaging 34 with the ball.Just when the excitement was fading he found a green pitch, against New Zealand, and their tail still shudders about it.Two Tests later he was up against South Africa on a sluggish wicket (by WACA standards). AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis had the score at 234 for 3; both had half-centuries. Johnson had a ball that was 70 overs old, with no reserve swing, but just his fast, and slightly more accurate, cutters. In 21 balls he took out five batsmen. He ended with 8 for 61. It was a goddamn Curtly Ambrose spell.In South Africa for the following series he did something he hadn’t done for 20 Tests. He swung a ball perfectly. Hashim Amla could only stutter and lose balance as Johnson struck his pad. Immediately it became the thing his team, and the cricket world at large, fixated on. You could hear people whisper around the world, “No, it can’t be, but maybe it is, a Wasim Akram incarnate”.In the next Test he made a hundred. Australia were always going to lose. But the way Johnson did it, with such long, fluid hitting, the ball just seemed to want to be smashed over mid-on. Parts of Paul Harris are still left in Cape Town after one over. Johnson’s hundred took 86 balls. In the series he was the leading wicket-taker and Australia’s third-highest scorer. Australia were fighting for the Test crown, and Mitchell Johnson Bothamed South Africa out of the series.Johnson had almost crushed Graeme Smith’s hand. He’d discovered swing. Terrorised New Zealand. Defeated South Africa. He was the biggest, baddest damn thing in Australian cricket. No one needed Dennis Lillee to tell them how special he was.And he hadn’t even played a Test against England.At Lord’s in 2009, Johnson was out of answers•Getty ImagesYou can smash all the other nations you want. Antagonise India. Destroy West Indies. End Bangladesh. But Australian and English players get their legend status from being great in the Ashes.That was what Johnson was supposed to do in the 2009 Ashes. He was to lead the attack, continue England’s misery, and confirm he was the legend Australian cricket demanded he be.By the end of the series, none of those things happened.Johnson couldn’t bowl England out in Cardiff. Johnson couldn’t stop stories started by his mother. Johnson completely lost the plot at Lord’s. Johnson lost control of the attack. Johnson all but lost his spot in the team. And Johnson couldn’t win the Ashes.By the time the 2010-11 Ashes came around he was an okay performer in an okay team. The beast that would become a legend was a distant memory. There were good matches, there were bad matches, this was just a cricketer doing his job.The Gabba Test was a chance to do something special. Johnson took no wickets, made no runs, and dropped a catch. For the next Test he was either dropped, in his words, or rested, in those of Cricket Australia.There was a moment during the next Test when Johnson was in the Adelaide nets as England smashed his team on the field. During his session, a ball got wedged into the top corner of the nets. Johnson spent the best part of ten minutes trying to get this ball dislodged. He threw balls at it, he shook the net, he tried to climb up, he used a bat, but nothing would do it. He was supposed to be looking to rekindle his magic, and instead he was doing the job of the support staff. And he couldn’t even do that right.There must have been a part of him that thought he was an impostor. Even at his best, destroying South Africa with bat and ball, it was as if Johnson never believed in himself as much as everyone else did.Impostor syndrome can hit anyone. Every single person in the world can tell you how good you are, they can praise you, they can idolise you, but some people can’t process it. Can’t accept it. Keep waiting to be found out. Think their success was all luck.

These weren’t spells of bowling, these were physical experiences. There ain’t no TV that could do it justice. You had to be in it, feel it, live it, survive it, smell it

They say it comes from childhood, that sensitive children who are overlooked and then become successful never truly accept it. That even when they win, it all feels like it is a mistake and no one must find out. That the pressure to not be found out almost becomes the problem. They start to believe that because they had no control over their success, they have no way of finding it again.Not that Johnson wasn’t trying to find it. Whether in the nets, or much more noticeably, out on the ground, Johnson was in a near-constant state of trying to fix his bowling. This didn’t look like a Test bowler who had led his nation. It looked like a teenager hoping that something would fix him. It was far more common to see him trying to fix his action on the walk back to the mark than it was seeing him terrorise batsmen.The Amla inswinger pressure had never gone away. Being the guy who led an unsuccessful Ashes attack was part of what defined him. Now he had been dropped, one Test into his next Ashes. The pressure and failure was all around him. Johnson couldn’t be what Australia wanted, and worse, he looked like he didn’t even know how to ever do it.The call was made to Dennis Lillee. Johnson had already spent the week working with his bowling coach, Troy Cooley. He had already watched his spell from 2008 against South Africa to psyche himself up. Now the big gun was needed. Lillee would come and see Johnson in the nets the day before the WACA Test. Lillee wasn’t even sure what he could do for Johnson, so he told Johnson how great he could be.At the WACA, Johnson was great. His pace was great, his swing was great, and even his batting was great. Sixty-three runs, nine wickets and one Man-of-the-Match award.But in the press conference he seemed to shrug and suggest the ball swung a bit luckily. The next Test was Boxing Day, and the luck wasn’t there.The MCG gets into full voice like other stadiums dream of. That sort of guttural, communal, sweaty chorus of echoes. It’s the middle-aged man whose life has never been what he wanted it to be, bellowing at the moon while half cut. They had done it for Lillee. They had chanted his name, turning him from a cricketer into a beam of pure light.Johnson stirred strong emotions in fans, whether it was despair and mockery or joy and love•Getty ImagesFor Johnson the accent of the chants changed. He wasn’t the alpha and omega but the punchline. In his own country, he was a musical joke, a wreck. Even in cricket’s biggest ground there was nowhere to hide. It was overcast during that Test, but the clouds over Johnson seemed the darkest.After Perth, Johnson only got two massive English innings to bowl in – 2 for 134 and 4 for 168. He had played more than half the Tests he would ever play, and he was still no closer to finding out how to get the best out of himself. He was still bowling to the left. He was still bowling to the right. And now their chanting kept him up at night.The mental problems weren’t all of it. People can claim it is the all-round skill, the sling action, or even the left arm that makes Johnson exciting, but it’s the pace. That raw, uncontrolled pace that makes the best in their game look slow. That makes tailenders cry. That makes commentators scream. Fans jump. That pace.That pace was going. There was the odd spell, but mostly he was a fast-medium bowler with questionable control who didn’t seam or swing it. It was at its worst when he played against South Africa in Johannesburg. Johnson seemed to fall into medium pace. Slower than he had been as a teenager using his dad’s golf spikes. At the other end Australia had found their newest pace bowler, Pat Cummins. Josh Hazlewood and James Pattinson were around as well.Johnson was battling injury, form and belief.In almost three years since the last Ashes in Australia he’d managed nine Tests. His body and mind weren’t right.This time he couldn’t go to the army and shoot guns. He couldn’t move back to Townsville. He couldn’t drive a plumbing van. He was Mitchell Johnson, and for all the baggage that came with, it also came with something pretty damn special. And Johnson fought for that.

Johnson had almost crushed Graeme Smith’s hand. He’d discovered swing. Terrorised New Zealand. Defeated South Africa. He was the biggest, baddest damn thing in Australian cricket. No one needed Dennis Lillee to tell them how special he was

With a stable home life as a new father, a chance encounter with an SAS vet and a career-affirming net session with Lillee and John Inverarity, Johnson started to get himself right. All those people played a part, but it would have meant nothing if he didn’t put in the effort. For the first time, he believed.The first people to see this were the IPL folk. Then a few teams got glimpses in ODIs. People, Sachin Tendulkar included, started to talk Johnson up again. And, for perhaps the first time ever, so did Johnson. His words didn’t sound hopeful, like they had done earlier in his career. They sounded like a threat, like premonition. As if he saw the summer of Mitchell Johnson before us.At the Gabba, Johnson started with the new ball. A full toss down the leg side. More full tosses followed. More balls down the leg as well. After three overs of the 2013-14 Ashes, Johnson had been dragged from the attack. There were times when that would have been enough. It wasn’t.Second spell: Jonathan Trott faced Johnson. First ball, he hit him. He glared. Johnson had never had a good glare. No matter how old he was, he always looked young, fresh-faced, like a boy playing tough. The tattoos didn’t make him tough, nothing did. But this was different. Even without the charity moustache, just looking at his eyes, there was something going on in them. This wasn’t an empty glare. Trott and England felt it. So did every single person at the ground. Every single person at every single ground that summer.Mitchell Johnson believed. Oh, didn’t we get to see what that meant. All that frustration, all those flirtations, all those false starts, all those injuries, all those chants, all those headlines, all those punchlines, all those days that he felt like a fraud, a lucky bastard, an impostor, they came out of his hand like the devil himself.There is no way to properly explain what it felt like to see Johnson in full flight in his summer. You can talk about the noises, the fact that for every ball in that Test and the seven that followed, it felt like he was on a hat-trick. About the blood- and stump-lust that took control of you. That at times he looked like he was actually in flight, like some fighter jet roaring through the crease. That in Melbourne the entire ground, the entire city, shook for him like it had for his mentor. That in Adelaide he was one ball away from destroying the entire Adelaide renovations. In Sydney the fear, the excitement, that desperation to see his every ball was still there, still so strong. People were rushing to have grandchildren just to tell them about it. You could feel the pain of England like every wicket was being tattooed on your body. No one dared blink when he had the ball. Smartphones were in airplane mode. Fun times were on pause.None of that gets it across, the fear, the danger, the pace, the excitement, the carnage. The everything. It was a roller coaster through hell. Like his hands were made of dynamite, like the world had found a new demon soundtracked by an endless death- metal musical.No, this still isn’t doing it. These weren’t spells of bowling, these were physical experiences. There ain’t no TV that could do it justice, you had to be in it, feel it, live it, survive it, smell it. You weren’t watching it, you were part of it, some great big throbbing muscle thrusting him through the sound barrier. No, still not right.Anarchy in Adelaide: you had to be there to believe Johnson’s pace and fury•Getty ImagesSorry, it can’t be fully explained. You weren’t there, man.It was a once-in-nine-lives summer. Dennis Lillee was right.And unlike the best of Australian summers, it didn’t end in Australia, it kept going. When Johnson destroyed England, a meme started online. It was a picture of Dale Steyn, pointing down the lens, and the writing said, “You beat the Poms 5-0. How cute.” Steyn had held the title of world’s best bowler for so long it had barely been a decent conversation starter for half a decade.The old Johnson might have overthought it. Worried about it. This Johnson just bowled. At South Africa, through South Africa.Hashim Amla almost lost his head. Ryan McLaren his consciousness, Graeme Smith lost his career. Steyn threw everything he had back at Johnson, but even Steyn, the greatest bowler of his generation, had to sit back and watch as another man shook up the world.When the summer of Mitchell Johnson was over, so were England as a team, South Africa as the undisputed champions. This broken-down non-believer hadn’t just reached out and touched the sun, he had grabbed it and bounced someone with it.

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Stuart Broad saw something. Perhaps he just didn’t want to look at Johnson. Not square in the eyes, at least. He pointed to a shiny bolt and turned a ravenous crowd into a screaming beast.Johnson was already in his dream over with two earlier wickets. He had already bowled his dream ball to Cook the night before. He had already played his dream Test the match before.Broad wasn’t delaying a ball, he was delaying inevitability. Certainty.Johnson delivered a fast ball on leg stump. There were days, whole seasons, perhaps even whole years, when the same ball would have been flicked to the boundary. Broad would have fidgeted with his gear while Johnson put his hands to his head.Now England believed every ball would be a wicket, and so did Johnson, so did everyone.Broad hopped away from the ball, Broad’s leg stump hopped too.Mitchell Johnson ran frantically down the pitch. Like he was in the world’s greatest dream.No one watching this spell could actually believe he was doing this. Let alone the bloke bowling it. He couldn’t believe how easy it had become.

Wicketkeeper Sam Billings talks about hair care, his golf handicap, and his biggest six

Interview by Jack Wilson07-Jan-2016If a catch went up for England to win the World Cup, who would you want to see under it?
A skier? That’s tough. I’m going to say anyone. We’re a seriously good fielding side and I’d back any of the lads to take it.Who has the best hair in cricket?
() Me!And how long do you spend on it?
Let’s just say it gets some good preparation time.The England squad are on the start line of a 100-metre race. Who wins?
Chris Jordan.Which of your team-mates has the worst habits?
Fabian Cowdrey at Kent. His personal hygiene and general eating habits are horrendous.Who in the England team is the best golfer?
All the lads will say me because I’ve got the lowest handicap. I’m off eight. But [Alex] Hales, [Jos] Buttler and Jason Roy are absolute bandits off 12. I don’t think I’ve won yet!Who is the worst?
Reece Topley. He’s not that great – and not that interested!Who has the strongest arm in cricket?
Ben Stokes.What is the biggest six you have hit?
I hit Danny Briggs into the top tier of the Frank Woolley Stand in a T20 at Canterbury. It’s the biggest hit of my life.Billings (second from left) and his team-mates celebrate England’s ODI series win over New Zealand in June•Getty ImagesHow old were you when you first made a century?
I was 12.Who is the worst sledger in cricket?
Matthew Coles. Some of the things he says aren’t too well thought through.Who is the most naturally talented player you have ever shared a dressing room with?
Jos Buttler is unreal.Describe yourself in four words.
Posh has to be one. Then I’ll go with driven and good fun.What is your favourite shot?
That’s a tough one. I’ll go with either the paddle sweep or the reverse sweep.If you could be a professional at another sport, what would it be?
Football, golf or rugby. If I had to choose one, I’ll go with rugby.What did you do with your first England shirt?
It’s in the process of getting framed and I’m giving it to my parents.As a wicketkeeper, who hits the gloves the hardest?
Liam Plunkett.

Kamindu Mendis can bowl orthodox left-arm spin. He can bowl right-arm offspin as well. He is also a handy batsman. And his unique skills were on show against Pakistan in Mirpur

Vishal Dikshit in Mirpur03-Feb-2016On the first ball of the 18th over in Sri Lanka Under-19s’ chase against Pakistan Under-19s, in Mirpur, left-handed batsman Kamindu Mendis attempted a reverse sweep off left-arm spinner Ahmad Shafiq and it fetched him three runs. That was not the first time Mendis had switched hands or his stance or his style of playing – whether during the day or his career.When Pakistan were batting, Mendis was brought on to bowl in the 27th over with two right-handed batsmen in the middle and he started with some orthodox left-arm spin. After a run-out in that over, left-handed batsman Salman Fayyaz took strike. Mendis then switched to right-arm offspin.”I practice with both arms but I bowled with both arms [in a match] for the first time in Under-17 against St Joseph’s College two years ago,” Mendis said after the match. “I took four wickets in that match.”The junior Sri Lankan selectors first spotted him and his unique skill about a year ago in school cricket and held several trials before picking him for the home Youth ODIs against Pakistan last October. “He does it very well and he’s just 16 years,” junior selector Ranjan Paranavitana told ESPNcricinfo. “And he can bat at any position…it’s an added factor for Kamindu.”Mendis first started practicing with both arms in the nets at the age of around 13 when his coach Dhanushka Dhinagama came up with the idea. The plan was simple – turn the ball away from the batsman. And that’s what he did today too – left-arm orthodox against right-handed batsmen and right-arm offspin against left-handed batsmen.”When two left-handed batsmen are batting, we have to use two offspinners,” Paranavitana explained. “When Kamindu is bowling he can bowl to both kind of batsmen.”Mendis is also aware that he is not the first Sri Lankan to try it out. Hashan Tillakaratne, a part-time offspinner, had done so in the 1996 World Cup in a league match against Kenya. Defending 398, Sri Lanka had the match in the bag when Tillakaratne came on to bowl the last over of the innings and bowled left-arm orthodox spin and right-arm offspin. Even though Mendis was not even born then, he has played with Tillakaratne’s son who happens to be a chinaman bowler.Naturally a left-hander, Mendis is more of a classical spinner compared to the spinners of this age and era. Right arm or left arm, he flights the ball and often pitches it up to tempt batsmen to drive with a slip in place. In Sri Lanka’s 23-run loss to Pakistan, Mendis bowled only four overs without any success and conceded 21 runs.Mendis took to cricket because of his cricket-following father and represents Richmond College in Galle, like his captain Charith Asalanka. And the two recently made their List A debuts together for Galle Cricket Club. Mendis and Asalanka, in fact, have been playing together since the Under-13 level.Mendis is one of the youngest members of the squad and likes to call himself a batting allrounder. It was his batting that proved more handy on Wednesday when he hit 68 runs at No. 3, even as the rest of the batsmen did not provide substantial support. In a chase of 213, Mendis took his team closer to 150 with a patient knock, which lasted nearly two hours, before holing out to long-on. Sri Lanka then lost their last five wickets for 32 runs.”My idea was to play 50 overs but I played a poor shot and got out,” Mendis said. “So I think I should do less mistakes and do well in remaining matches.”The other young and promising allrounder in the team is Jehan Daniel, the only player younger than Mendis in the squad, and assistant coach Avishka Gunawardene said the idea to pick them early was to hone them for the next Under-19 World Cup.”That is the plan in our mind,” Gunawardene said. “In every Under-19 tour we are planning to have 16 or 17-year-old guys go on the tour so they can play for a couple of more years in Under-19 and take over when the senior guys go. That has been the plan in the system.”I think Sri Lanka’s school cricket structure is really good, it is one of the best in the world. That is the backbone of Sri Lankan cricket. So until they come out of school, they hardly play first-class cricket.”Mendis bats left-handed, can he bat right-handed too?”Can’t bat with both hands (laughs) but I can reverse sweep,” and he used quite a few of them after the 18th over too.

A new memoir speaks to a generation of fans who were also losers

Andrew Miller30-Apr-2016The 1990s. God, they were a tough decade. It may be fashionable now to fear for cricket’s relevance in an age when satellite TV has whisked the sport out of the reach of the majority of Britain’s spotty, impressionable teenagers, but at least on the flip side, there’s a team out there somewhere that knows, intermittently, how to win.My generation, on the other hand. Well, we were saddled with losers – “literally, losers”, as Emma John’s wincingly honest memoir reminds us. And what did that make us by proxy?In fact, give or take a few undertones of unrequited love (and let’s face it, most of us probably exhibited more give than take…), could have been the tale of any thirtysomething England cricket fan of any gender or persuasion.Every detail of John’s own cricketing awakening feels as familiar as the “tick-tick-tick” of the BBC’s Test match theme tune, “Soul Limbo”. There’s that first accidental introduction, in her case during one of her mother’s deliberately hoarded ironing sessions, during which the question: “Mum, what is a wicket?” acts as an open-sesame moment into a world of figures in white who had previously appeared to do a whole lot of not a lot, while blotting out the TV schedules for days on end.There are the invaluable newspaper cuttings of that pre-internet age, lovingly collated in John’s case into bedroom posters (proof, in her mother’s eyes, of her “industrious” teenage nature, proof to her sister that “she was such a nerd” – take your pick). And then there’s page 341 and all that, those sibling Ceefax squabbles that inevitably resulted in being brained by the TV remote (but Emma, did you never discover that double-tapping the button allowed you to overlay the text on the actual picture?)BloomsburyThere was no easy way to be an England cricket fan in that desperate, defeat-ridden decade – least of all a trainee one, learning the complexities while at the same time processing the failures. For all the gratification on offer, we might as well have taken up computer coding as a hobby. (And yep, a fair few of us did that too…)And yet, our generation always knew there was more than just victory and defeat at stake. “If cricket hadn’t been so difficult to understand, I might never have bothered with it at all,” writes John in the first of several passages that ring utterly true to my own experience of learning cricket’s ropes. “You had to work hard for the privilege of understanding what you were watching.”But none of that quite encompasses the depths of masochism that were required to cope with England’s serial failures throughout such a formative decade. And so, to aid her own quest for self-discovery (or closure, as it turns out), John enlists the help of the men in the middle themselves.If there is a weakness in the premise of John’s book, it isn’t exactly one of her own making. It just so happens that most of the players she idolised are now among the most recognisable voices in the sport. So, while there is situational comedy in several of her encounters with the class of the 1990s, some of the insights on offer are fairly run-of-the-mill – the likes of Alec Stewart, Nasser Hussain and the absolute apple of her teenage eye, Michael Atherton, are simply too experienced in the art of broadcasting to offer much more than sound bites.That said, John’s expertise in player profiling – honed during her years as the Wisden Cricketer‘s deputy editor – does unearth some gems, not least her fascinating portrait of a hungover Phil Tufnell. As Tuffers consumes one of the best-timed sausage sandwiches ever committed to literature, and swings his way through his full gamut of emotions, it dawns on John why she had always had a soft spot for him.”He was sulky and moody… he was needy for affection, and desperate to please… he just wanted to have fun; he just wanted to sleep. I didn’t need Mike Brearley to diagnose Tufnell, I could do it myself. He was a teenager.”Following On. A Memoir of Teenage Obsession & Terrible Cricket
By Emma John
Bloomsbury
260 pages (hardback)