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No result Incessant rain first reduced the first West Indies-Pakistan T20I to a nine-over shootout before eventually washing away the match. Pakistan had chosen to bowl first under cloudy skies with rain also predicted, but the teams raced off to the dressing room just after completing their national anthems. It took almost three hours for the rain to stop and the ground to dry, with the umpires then deciding to curtail the contest.But of whatever was played, Kieron Pollard and the Pakistan bowlers combined to ensure there was entertaining cricket while it lasted.Debutant Wasim has instant impact
All it took right-arm pacer Mohammad Wasim to land a blow was five balls, although that was not a wicket. In the second over of the West Indies innings, he pitched one short of a length on middle and off, and got it to angle in with the bounce on to Lendl Simmons, who missed his pull. The ball instead hit him on the right side of his neck, immediately inviting the physio on the ground, who decided to take Simmons off with a sling protecting his right arm.Wasim was taken off after that, but returned to bowl the seventh over. After hurting Simmons, he then had Chris Gayle caught at long-on as the bowler now brought out the slower ball. Gayle, who had come in after Simmons, played away from his body to try and heave that, but only found the fielder in search of rapid runs.Just wickets and sixes
Amidst a flurry of dot balls – which were 30 in total – and a bunch of extras, which contributed 14, there were five wickets claimed with as many sixes slammed from the third over until the eighth. Hasan Ali got two, while Mohammad Hafeez, Usman Qadir and Wasim all grabbed a wicket each. Nicholas Pooran cracked twin sixes off Hafeez, before Gayle deposited Shadab Khan over his head and Andre Russell dispatched Qadir over extra cover – all this, before Pollard got into Ali with a whip.Pollard provides late entertainment, but Hasan delivers too
Pollard arrived at the crease with one ball of the sixth over left, but watched from the other end as Gayle fell in the following over with West Indies’ run rate still under nine. With Pollard on strike, Ali was brought back for the eighth after foxing Evin Lewis off his first ball earlier in the innings. This time, Ali was whacked first ball over deep square leg as Pollard swung his bat to a good length ball on middle and leg, and despite not quite finding the middle of the bat, sent the ball sailing over deep square leg.But that was the only boundary Ali conceded off his two overs, digging the slower balls perfectly on a rain-affected pitch to keep the West Indies batters quiet. Ali then got Shimron Hetmyer three balls later – Mohammad Rizwan completed a good diving catch – with the hosts struggling for momentum amidst the numerous cutters from the visiting bowlers.Pollard was on 10 off 5 deliveries when only four balls remained in the innings, and the West Indies captain ensured they were well taken care of. A dot ball later, Shaheen Afridi pitched one short on middle and leg as Pollard pulled fiercely to bisect deep square leg and deep midwicket for four. After nabbing two more runs, he ended with a maximum by sending the ball crashing over deep square leg when he made room to a length ball on middle and off, and pulled with disdain. Although he got 12 runs off the last three balls, rain would have the final say with Pakistan not having to chase the total.

India’s men’s domestic calendar will begin with the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy on November 4, while the Ranji Trophy, the country’s premier first-class competition, starts on January 13, 2022. The Vijay Hazare Trophy will get underway from December 8, with neutral venues being used across all tournaments.In an extensive list of domestic fixtures released by the BCCI on Monday, the board also confirmed that Delhi will host the Syed Mushtaq Ali final, on November 22, while Kolkata will stage the Ranji finale, on March 16.Related

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The Ranji Trophy will begin after the teams complete a five-day quarantine, with the matches being held at Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Trivandrum and Chennai. Kolkata will host all the knockout matches, which will begin on February 20 after the teams serve another five-day quarantine period.The tournament will consist of six groups, including five Elite ones of six teams each and one Plate group featuring eight teams.Domestic heavyweights Mumbai, Karnataka and Delhi have been clubbed together in Elite Group C, while defending champions Saurashtra have been paired with Tamil Nadu, Railways, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand and Goa in Elite group D. Last year’s runners-up Bengal will begin their campaign in Elite Group B alongside Vidarbha, Haryana, Kerala, Tripura and Rajasthan. The Plate group will comprise Chandigarh, Meghalaya, Bihar, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh.The Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, meanwhile, will be held across Lucknow, Guwahati, Baroda, Delhi, Haryana and Vijayawada, with the knockouts starting in Delhi from November 16. The BCCI, however, did not announce the venues for the Vijay Hazare Trophy yet.The Men’s Under-25 State A one-day competition will be held from November 20 to December 10, with Bangalore hosting the knockouts, including the final on December 10. The four-day CK Nayudu Trophy will run from January 28 to March 31. Nagpur, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Mohali, Jaipur and Ranchi will host all the matches, with the knockouts being held exclusively at Vijayawada.Meanwhile, the Women’s Under-19 One Day Fixtures will begin on September 28 and run till October 18, with teams split into five Elite Groups and one Plate Group. Rajkot, Nagpur, Bhubaneshwar, Vizag, Surat and Jaipur will host all the matches, with Surat hosting the knockout phase, from October 11 after the teams complete a mandatory five-day quarantine period. The Senior Women’s One Day tournament gets underway on October 31, with Bengaluru hosting the final, on November 20.

This IPL has been one of two distinct halves for Anrich Nortje in IPL 2021.In April, it was all frustration, first at having received a false positive for Covid-19 that sidelined him from the start of the season. Then, once he was available, he was overlooked, because fitting him into the Delhi Capitals XI would’ve hampered team balance, especially with the management preferring Amit Mishra’s leg spin and Steven Smith as batting insurance. This meant seven frustrating games on the sidelines.

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Cut to September and he’s already the toast of the season, sending down one thunderbolt after another, roughing up batters, getting them hopping and ducking, and then using that two-card trick to eventually snuff them out.In two games, his figures read a combined 8-0-30-4. The experience of bowling in familiar conditions – he was the fourth-highest wicket-taker when the IPL was played in the UAE last season – he says has helped him plan better.”One of the things I do is I chat with the batters, and we try and share as much info as quickly as possible, and then let the individuals decide a plan they want to stick to,” he said after helping the Capitals to the top spot all but secure them a place in the playoffs.Anrich Nortje impressed on IPL return•BCCI

So far this season, Nortje has proved hitting the hard Test-match lengths are as valuable as the variations bowlers work on. He says the old-cliche of “trying to hit the top of off” irrespective of the format or conditions is wired into his muscle memory. And everything else he does is simply a by-product of this simple routine.”Today the wicket was quite slow. Speaking to Shreyas Iyer at the break [the innings’ top scorer with 42], he said it was difficult to hit straight, so we made them [Rajasthan Royals] to do that. We hit the good lengths, not too short or full. End of the day, all our bowlers, Avesh [Khan], KG [Kagiso Rabada], all of them did a great job.”The surfaces in Abu Dhabi are definitely slower than Dubai. Sometimes simply bowling variations on a good length is a very good option. Even if you simply change the grip on the ball while hitting the hard length, they’re as good as any variations. Essentially, you try and hit the stumps. You don’t always need to bowl a slower ball or anything [on such wickets].”Such insights, of course, has come about through a lot of planning, awareness and, according to Nortje, chats with his bowling partner and friend Rabada. They share the new ball in Test cricket, ODIs and here at the IPL, too. One of the things he learnt was “not search for high speeds on the field” and “to try and take pitches out of the equation.””It’s nice having him around, we play a lot together, talk a lot of cricket,” he said. “We talk about bowling, variations, our spells. We communicate as best as possible. What balls do you bowl in these conditions, what do you want to try and what do you want to avoid, essentially, we share as many ideas as possible.”And from there, we learn off each other. At the end, having him there, seeing what he’s doing right, what I’m doing right, and learn. Sometimes certain things work, certain things don’t work, but just being able to communicate as freely as possible [has been beneficial].”

West Indies’ white-ball captain Kieron Pollard has insisted that he has no intentions of retiring from international cricket after his side were knocked out of contention for the semi-finals of the T20 World Cup. Pollard was among the West Indies seniors who had struggled to adapt to the UAE conditions; he managed only 46 runs in four innings at a strike rate of under 87. West Indies, who entered the competition as the defending champions, suffered a premature exit when they lost to an already knocked-out Sri Lanka team by 20 runs.”Well, personally… I don’t set personal goals for personal glory. I play cricket to win cricket matches each and every time,” Pollard said at the post-match press conference. “We came to the World Cup to win and we haven’t done that. Unless you’re part of decisions that are going to get rid of me or fire me or retire me, as I stand right now, I have no intentions of not playing international cricket. One tournament or a couple of bad games don’t make a summer. And for me personally, there’s a lot of mileage in my legs as an individual.”There are people in different scenarios who make decisions and when it comes to that [captaincy] question, I can’t make that decision… but again we have a tendency as things go badly, the easiest thing is to blame or chop and change and do different things. But we accept that. I accept that and I take it on the chin and sometimes you have to absorb the pressure before you apply [it]. But personally as an individual I’ve played a lot of good cricket in the last 18 months or two years or so. So, three-four games [are] not going to deter Kieron Pollard.”

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Pollard rued West Indies’ “sloppy” performance in the field, exploited by an inexperienced yet talented Sri Lanka side to put up an above-par total of 189 for 3. In response, West Indies lost Chris Gayle, Evin Lewis and Roston Chase in the powerplay. Despite counterattacking innings from vice-captain Nicholas Pooran and Shimron Hetmyer, the rapidly rising asking rate was too much to overcome for West Indies.’It was a good batting track,” Pollard said. “If we had sort of restricted them to 170-175, I thought that was about par on this track; [we] gave them a couple of extra runs, and then we weren’t able to sort of finish off the innings. The batting has struggled throughout the entire tournament, and it has been disappointing. Obviously, we’ve been singing the same song over and over and it’s something that hasn’t helped us – the way that we’ve batted throughout the tournament. We just have to accept that we weren’t good enough.”Pooran, who was bumped up to No. 3 after batting at No. 7 against Bangladesh, made the early running in the powerplay, claiming 32 of the 52 runs West Indies scored in the first six overs. While Dushmantha Chameera tricked him with a cutter for 46, Hetmyer pressed on to hit an unbeaten 81 off 54 balls. Pollard identified the two batters as a key part of West Indies’ T20 future but challenged them to produce such performances more often.”I think that [the progress of Pooran and Hetmyer] is very, very important,” Pollard said. “Nicholas getting the opportunity to bat up the order. Last game, he was full of confidence, and we just decided to sort of ride on that confidence and just try something different. I think he gave us a good start in the powerplay and after the powerplay. Obviously, he wasn’t able to carry on, but that is a positive sign for us in the right direction.”And then Hetmyer – this is what we know Shimron can do. He comes in and manoeuvres the ball at the start. He’s a powerful individual and if we can get these sort of performances from these guys consistently, I think it will augur well for us in the future. But it’s not just the glimpse, the task is to do that on a consistent basis. The glimpse is good enough and it’s something we definitely look at going forward.”In order to unearth new talents, Pollard reckoned that West Indies should bring back the regional T20 tournament, in addition to the franchise-based CPL, to expand the pool of players.”I think it’s something that we have to look at. I think it’s something that has plagued us over a period of time for the last ten years or so, we’ve had sort of the same guys playing T20 and dominating as we go along,” he said. “One of the things we need to do is, especially in the Caribbean, we need to have another tournament other than CPL where we can unearth new talents. When we had the Caribbean T20, that was an opportunity to bring you talent from different parts of the Caribbean to be able to have the nucleus for this last generation or so… Since CPL has come in, yes it’s a franchise-based system, but we’ve only had the opportunity to recycle the same players over and over again.”So, it’s something that we need to look at but there are some cricketers and a lot of young cricketers looking forward to playing and contributing to West Indies cricket. And it’s something that I’m personally excited about. It’s the end of a generation, but there needs to be a lot of conversation that needs to take place on how you’re going to make the transformation from club cricket or even CPL to international cricket because there’s a big step-up. So in between, we need to have another tournament if you look around the world, there are different tournaments that different teams play so that they can unearth new talents.”

The motivation of making amends for missing this year’s World Test Championship final is an added driving force behind Australia’s push for an Ashes whitewash after they took a 2-0 series lead.Convincing victories in Brisbane and Adelaide mean that they can retain the Ashes with victory in Melbourne during the Boxing Day Test which would be a third consecutive success in a home series with England having not won a game since Sydney in 2010-11.The 2017-18 fixture at the MCG is the only one of the last 12 Ashes Tests in Australia that England have not lost courtesy of Alastair Cook’s double century on an awful pitch. Since then the surface has been rejuvenated and a recent Sheffield Shield pitch was rated by those who took part as one of the best the MCG had produced with pace, bounce and movement.Related

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In their previous dominant scorelines, Australia’s victories achieved after the Ashes had been secured widened the gap and helped their ranking, but now with the World Test Championship points on offer any further wins could be crucial as was evidenced by Australia narrowly missing the final in the previous cycle.”That’s what the Test Championship has brought in, it’s not just about winning the series you are currently playing but you are playing for something bigger than that as well,” Marnus Labuschagne said.Ultimately it was an over-rate fine in last season’s MCG Test against India which cost Australia a spot in the WTC final, but had they secured another win along the way they would also have qualified. That could have been achieved against India at the SCG, where the tourists battled to a draw, or the series-decider at Brisbane. Going further back there was the loss at The Oval in the 2019 Ashes where England leveled the series and, of course, the famous Headingley result.Australia have some tough overseas assignments in this WTC cycle•CA/Cricket Australia/Getty Images

“We had heaps of other opportunities that we could have made that game,” Labuschagne said. “Watching that final, I was in England, it was a great spectacle and awesome to watch. I think it’s important for us to take the Test Championship really seriously and it’s something we want to win. It certainly hurt me last time sitting and watching.”Australia are currently second in the WTC table having played just two Tests of the latest cycle. Their overseas portion of the competition will be demanding with tours of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India while next summer’s home schedule involves West Indies and South Africa. Regardless of the opposition, they are determined not to be caught out by the same mistake.”Over-rates really shouldn’t be that big of a thing but we are always just trying to make sure we are getting through the overs and we learn our lesson from the [last] instance,” Labuschagne said. “Would be silly of us not to have learnt from that experience then all of a sudden find ourselves in a similar situation in 12-24 months time.”England, who are languishing at seventh, have already been docked eight points for their over-rate at the Gabba.Labuschagne also has personal motivation heading into Boxing Day as he looks for a maiden Test century at the MCG with a high score in his two outings of 63. In a warning to England, despite his first-innings century in Adelaide and match tally of 154 runs he was still not satisfied with his contribution.”Even though I scored runs this game I’m still disappointed I didn’t go and make a really big score and really shut the game out, especially after being dropped and getting a chance off a no-ball,” he said. “There’s a lot for me to learn from [Adelaide] and take into Boxing Day and make sure if I get to a hundred make it a really big score.”