The Mumbai Indians quick has almost every skill a fast bowler could hope for, and he’s showing them off in the IPL

Karthik Krishnaswamy26-Apr-20242:07

Moody singles out Bumrah for praise

You’re writing about Jasprit Bumrah’s extraordinary IPL season. You type ‘prithvi shaw jasprit bumrah’ in the search bar, looking for this video from this game, but you end up, instead, at this video from two years ago, from this game.Who else but Bumrah could have dismissed the same batter with two entirely different yet equally unplayable deliveries?You remember the yorker from this season, of course, made memorable by Shaw’s lifted back leg. A nifty bit of footwork out of the Mohammad Azharuddin/Kevin Pietersen playbook, but where those two adopted the flamingo pose to whip the ball through midwicket, Shaw did it purely in self-preservation.The 2022 ball was just as devastating, an offcutter-bouncer that lost none of its pace for being delivered like an offcutter, jagging in wildly off the pitch to follow Shaw’s attempt to… to do what, exactly? Here again, the batter’s actions were almost all reaction, almost entirely geared towards self-preservation, except on this occasion he was protecting his head rather than his foot.Related

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Bumrah can make you look helpless from either end of the length spectrum and nearly every point in between.Much of this helplessness stems from how little time Bumrah gives batters to line him up. His release point, as you already probably know, is much further ahead of the crease than it is for most fast bowlers, so he’s effectively bowling on a shortened pitch. But it isn’t just that. When you’re watching his release from front-on, from the batter’s point of view, he gives you far less of a clue than most bowlers as to what length he’s about to bowl.An X (formerly Twitter) analyst, who doesn’t want to be identified here, has dipped into ball-tracking data and created an enlightening graph that plots bowlers’ average release heights for different lengths, and it’s notable how tight Bumrah’s cluster is, especially compared to those of taller bowlers.Unless he’s delivering high-effort bouncers halfway down the pitch, for which his release is notably later and lower, it would take a batter with an incredibly good eye to differentiate just from release height (they have other cues to help them, of course) what length Bumrah is bowling. For pretty much any length from 2m to 8m from the stumps, his release height is virtually the same. That range encompasses everything from yorkers to hard-length balls.Jasprit Bumrah’s action gives you little clue of where he is going to land the ball•BCCIAnd if it isn’t enough that Bumrah’s action gives you precious little clue of where he’s going to land the ball, he can make it confound you in every way imaginable.He can beat you in the air like a spinner, and make you misjudge lengths fatally. You probably already know about the lift Bumrah can generate. He puts so much backspin on his on-pace deliveries that the ball defies gravity for a fraction of a second and comes to earth later, and fuller, than the batter is conditioned to expect.Bumrah’s yorker to Wriddhiman Saha from Mumbai Indians’ first game of the season demonstrated this beautifully. Saha was shaping to drive through the covers, his mind probably registering a half-volley or something near that length when he saw the ball leave Bumrah’s hand, little realising how much of a misjudgment he was making. It was a misjudgment of length, yes, and because of Bumrah’s exaggerated inward angle it was also a misjudgment of line. The ball didn’t just york Saha but beat his inside edge as well.But as exaggerated as that angle is, it doesn’t stop him from beating the other edge when he wants to. Like the Saha yorker, the Rilee Rossouw yorker from Mumbai’s game against Punjab Kings was also delivered with the new ball, and also from over the wicket, but on this occasion Bumrah swung it so much that the ball defied that angle, reversing course late in its path across the left-hand batter to turn the stumps into a gory spatter.And if he generates significant lift while delivering full-tilt, he can do the opposite too, and get the ball to dip alarmingly, thanks to the vicious overspin he puts on his slower offcutter. After yorking Saha in that Gujarat Titans game, Bumrah dismissed David Miller with one such delivery. Like Saha, Miller was shaping to drive a half-volleyish length through the covers; his front-foot stride was short enough to be non-existent. The ball, though, wasn’t just slower but also significantly shorter than the one Miller initially seemed to think he was playing; he ended up checking his shot, hitting underneath the ball, and spooning it to the backtracking mid-off fielder.Rilee Rossouw’s stumps are shattered by Jasprit Bumrah•BCCIThese deliveries represent only a fraction of Bumrah’s full range, but the thing that moves him into genius territory isn’t the range as much as his awareness of when and how to use it. Despite having every toy a bowler could ask for, he’s far from over-eager to show off his collection. If he bowls on a pitch with a bit of seam movement, he’ll bowl good lengths all day and extract all the help he can. If his slower ball is gripping and stopping, he’ll run in and bowl those all day. Why risk the margin for error of the more spectacular option?But then again, the mechanics of Bumrah’s bowling give him wider margins for error than most other bowlers. Since the start of the 2020 season, only T Natarajan (165) and Harshal Patel (133) have bowled more full-tosses than Bumrah (125) in the IPL. If you attempt a lot of yorkers, you’ll inevitably bowl a lot of full-tosses. But where other bowlers pay a heavy price for missing their length by a few inches, Bumrah doesn’t, and perhaps this has something to do with the lift he generates, and how much harder his full-tosses hit the bat as a result. Bumrah’s full-toss economy rate in this period is 7.87, which is nearly two runs an over better than Mohammed Siraj’s 9.62. No other bowler who has sent down at least 40 full tosses in this time has gone at less than 10 an over while bowling this length.Because Bumrah can do so many things with the ball, and because he knows when to do what thing, and against which batter, and because even his errors are hard to punish, he can bowl in any phase of a T20 innings. With a cut-off of 30 balls bowled in that phase, he’s the most economical fast bowler of IPL 2024 in the powerplay (5.16) the death (7.20), and he sits at No. 3 (7.00) in the middle overs, behind Mayank Yadav and Matheesha Pathirana.Those are ridiculous numbers, and he’s achieved them while bowling for a Mumbai Indians team that has made an ordinary start to the season, losing five of their eight games so far. Imagine how much worse off they’d be without Bumrah. Or, and this is a truly scary thought, where they’d be with one more Bumrah.There is and has been, however, only one Bumrah. He does extraordinary things so routinely that they’ve almost lost their ability to blow your mind. Then he runs up and bowls his next highlights-reel ball, making you marvel at him afresh.

Their spinners have the worst average and economy rate among all teams this season

Deivarayan Muthu23-May-2024In the lead-up to IPL 2024, Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) had a problem of plenty when it came to their overseas combination. But then Wanindu Hasaranga’s injury left them with plenty of problems in the middle overs.SRH first tried out Mayank Markande before turning to Hasaranga’s (almost) like-for-like replacement Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, but neither of them has produced the kind of output SRH might have hoped for. Shahbaz Ahmed, who is primarily playing as a batter at SRH, has also leaked runs with the ball when it has been thrown to him.Here’s a rundown of options available for SRH should they want to rejig their combination against Rajasthan Royals (RR) in the second qualifier in Chennai.

Can Viyaskanth do the job in the middle overs?

Viyaskanth, the 22-year-old legspinner from Jaffna, is arguably the biggest success story of the Lanka Premier League (LPL). He impressed Mahela Jayawardene at MI Emirates in the 2024 ILT20, and Kumar Sangakkara at RR, when he was a net bowler with them last IPL. But he hasn’t posed much of a wicket-taking threat in this IPL, though three games is a very small sample size.Related

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Viyaskanth has picked up just one wicket in ten overs so far at an economy rate of 8.60, but the concern for SRH is that their Indian spin options – Markande and Shahbaz – have fared worse, going at more than ten runs an over. As for Washington Sundar, the offspinner, he has featured in just two games so far, the last of which was on April 20, when he took some tap from right-hand batters Prithvi Shaw and Jake Fraser-McGurk.The average (54.38) and economy rate (11.20) for SRH spinners are the worst among all teams this season. If they end up bowling in dewy conditions at Chepauk on Friday, those numbers might rise further. Even overall, SRH have the worst economy rate (9.98) in the middle overs (7-16) among all ten teams this season.In the last game SRH had played in Chennai, against CSK, they left out Markande, for an extra batter, but Jaydev Unadkat performed the role of a (quick) spinner, bowling offbreaks and offcutters into the pitch to handcuff CSK’s batters. So, perhaps, there is a case for SRH to pick an experienced Unadkat over a rookie like Viyaskanth and free up the overseas slot for an extra batter.Aiden Markram has played nine innings for 199 runs this IPL•BCCI

Should Markram or Phillips come in?

That extra overseas batter could be Aiden Markram or Glenn Phillips. Both batters can also bowl offspin, but RR have just one left-hand batter in their middle order – Shimron Hetmyer – and they often try to delay his entry point as much as possible.It’s also hard to imagine SRH tossing the new ball to a part-time offspinner against Yashasvi Jaiswal, especially when they have Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Pat Cummins in their ranks.Moreover, Phillips hasn’t played a single game so far this season and if SRH finally pull him out of the bench, they run the risk of him rocking up cold in a knockout clash. Phillips was last in action in a Test match in March. Markram, meanwhile, has played nine matches this season and could possibly return to No. 4 as their anchor. Bringing Markram back could somewhat reduce SRH’s reliance on Nitish Kumar Reddy and Shahbaz, who had moved up the order in Markram’s absence.

Jansen or Farooqi – the left-arm (and left-field) options

Like Phillips, Afghanistan left-arm quick Fazalhaq Farooqi is yet to play a game in IPL 2024 while Marco Jansen, the other left-arm seamer, struggled for form and rhythm in the three matches he played. Plus, Chepauk hasn’t offered much new-ball swing and if SRH really need to pair up T Natarajan with another left-armer, Jaydev Unadkat, who has a number of slower variations in his repertoire, seems like the frontrunner.

Nearly two years after a life-threatening accident, he will be back where he belongs, playing Test cricket for India

Alagappan Muthu16-Sep-20241:35

Pant’s Test comeback, India’s next-in-line spinners excite Manjrekar

There’s this really cool thing that legspinners do at the top of their mark. They give the ball a biiiiiig rip with one hand and – as it goes off on a loop, starting down low and surging up high – they keep in contact with it using the other, palm fully open. The most crucial part of this gimmick is they never look at the ball. Even though its in the wrong hand and is barely being held. Because they don’t need to. It’s bound to them. Eventually it’ll end up where it needs to end up.In the Delhi Premier League last month, Rishabh Pant began the 20th over of the chase with this routine. He put a lot of flight – maybe too much, it became a full toss – and got a lot of drift into the right-hander, presenting the opportunity for a simple tap to long-on for the match-winning single. This was day 596.On December 30, 2022, Pant was in a car crash. It was a miracle that he survived. At the time, there was no telling if he would ever play cricket again. Now he isn’t just back, he’s got room in his life for new experiences.Related

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But as fun as bowling in a T20 game might have been, there is something even better on the horizon and Pant’s been working really hard for it. In fact, it was hard to pick out another player who spent as much time as he did out in the middle during India’s three-hour training session on Monday in Chennai. He was everywhere, diving this way and that during a fielding session with the slip cordon. Facing Jasprit Bumrah on the main ground. Leaving it to go into the nets and take some throwdowns. Pausing – for barely a moment – to cool off in front of a giant, portable fan (temperatures in Chennai are approaching record levels for September). Going to the main ground again to face the spinners. It’s almost like he’s missed this.Now usually when Pant is added to a mix that includes a bat, a ball and other people, there’s a decent chance of shenanigans. Last week during the Duleep Trophy, he barged in on the opposition team’s pre-game huddle, and after play got underway, demanded promises that they wouldn’t score any runs. It was different here.Three days out from the start of India’s new Test season, he was on his best behaviour, getting tips from the head coach Gautam Gambhir, doing group studies with his wicketkeeping bro Dhruv Jurel. It wasn’t until R Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav were tossing the ball up or dragging them down that he went to his more recognisable shots, one of which travelled from the pitch on the furthest side of the square on the off side all the way to the wide long-on boundary.Rishabh Pant is all smiles after guiding India home to the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2021•Getty ImagesTaking down spin is a big part of Pant’s game. His cat-and-mouse battle with Nathan Lyon is up there among the best passages of play in modern-day Test cricket. An attacking batter who couldn’t care less that the ball turning away from him meant he was at a disadvantage and a masterful spinner who didn’t need anything but his stock ball to pose a threat, headlined the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2020-21. For the first four years of his career, Pant was keeping pace with Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara, who were India’s best players in the format. And while it may be fanciful to expect him to reach those same heights immediately, it seems more likely that he will show his best form in red-ball cricket.India have managed Pant very carefully and although he is yet to produce a big innings, there have been increasingly positive signs. Day 450 since the car crash. He made his first runs. Day 457. He scored his first fifty. Day 523. He returned to the Indian team. Day 538. He was world champion.”It’s a remarkable comeback, honestly,” Ricky Ponting, who has worked very closely with Pant at Delhi Capitals, told . “If you can even see his leg now, and if you listen to the stories he tells about what he confronted when he woke up on the side of the road having been thrown out of his car 40m up the road at 200kph, I mean…”Even just thinking about the mental side of coming back [is hard], but physical side of it, the rehab he went through. I didn’t think he’d play last year’s IPL and that’s why I was on the phone with him because we had the auction coming up and we needed to know what to do. Right from 12 months before that, he said don’t worry about me. I’ll guarantee you I’ll be right for the IPL and we thought okay, he’ll be able to bat, we might have to manage him, use him as a Sub player. [Shakes head]. Kept every game, one of our leading run-scorers, batted No. 3 in the World Cup, part of the World Cup winning team. It’s a remarkable comeback.”You’ve all seen him play. You’ve heard him on the stump mic. He’s an infectious character to have around the group. He loves his cricket. He’s a winner. He doesn’t just play to make a few runs and be out there for the fun of it. He must have four or five Test hundreds already and he’s got about nine [six] 90s as well. You know, [MS] Dhoni played for, what 120 Tests [90] and made three of four [six] hundreds. This is how good this guy is.”And after 629 days, he’s back.

We count down the best female players of the last 25 years

27-Sep-20241:21

Nat Sciver-Brunt builds her ultimate cricketer

Everyone loves a ranking list, right? Following on from our colleagues in ESPN, who have been running lists of the top athletes of the century on their platforms, we thought the 2024 Women’s T20 World Cup was a good time to look back over the 21st century so far and select the top 25 female cricketers.Will the player you expect to finish No. 1 finish here? Will a player be ranked too high? Will your favourite player be ranked too low or not make the list (sorry if that’s the case). Here are the final five.A group of ESPNcricinfo writers came up with a longlist of 50 names, which were then put into a voting system that played off pairs against each other. Once that was completed, a smaller group then assessed the list for anomalies or glaring omissions.Here are Nos. 25-16 and 15-6</a.Note: only achievements posted after January 1, 2000 are taken into consideration, even if the athlete’s career ran either side of the millenniumStats for 2000 and beyond
Test batting | Test bowling | ODI batting | ODI bowling | T20I batting | T20I bowling | All T20 batting | All T20 bowling5: Jhulan Goswami (India)Jhulan Goswami walks out to a guard of honour from her team-mates at Lord’s•ECB/Getty ImagesGoswami’s rise and the way she made a place for herself at the very top of the women’s game is a celebration of the potential that lies in India’s small towns and villages. Her two-decade long career was studded with several milestones, none bigger than her record for most ODI wickets. In 2017, she was part of a team that nearly brought home India’s first world title.Until her retirement, which fittingly came at Lord’s, also the scene of her (and India’s) biggest heartbreak, her career was marked by deep commitment, an abiding quest for perfection, and a willingness to fight the odds. She prevailed over injuries to her back, heel, shoulder, ankle and knees.Goswami was among the quickest bowlers on the women’s circuit. Her height allowed her to extract steep bounce, and her ability to nip the ball off the seam, alongside her unerring accuracy made for a potent combination. Ask Meg Lanning, to whom she bowled arguably the women’s cricket version of Shane Warne’s “ball of the century” to Mike Gatting’, at the World Cup semi-final.In her post-retirement career, Goswami is actively involved in coaching, at the grassroots in Bengal, and as bowling coach for inaugural Women’s Premier League champions Mumbai Indians. 4: Alyssa Healy (Australia)Alyssa Healy has often been at her best in World Cups•Getty ImagesBig players, they say, own big moments, and that makes Healy – ironically nicknamed Midge – a giant of the game. Her 170 in the final of the 2022 Women’s ODI World Cup set Australia up for their seventh title in the 50-over format, and underlined their status as pace-setters of the sport. Healy was the leading run-scorer at the event and her 509 runs were also the most by a batter in any single edition of the tournament.Healy has been part of two ODI World Cup-winning teams and six T20 World Cup champion sides, and has been a major contributor in those wins. She was the leading run-scorer at the 2018 T20 World Cup, the second-highest at the 2020 tournament and the fourth-highest in 2023.Her unbeaten 148 against Sri Lanka in 2019 was the second-fastest century in women’s T20Is, and at the time, the highest score in the format. Healy’s ability to take the game away at clutch moments was best demonstrated against India in the 2020 T20 World Cup, in front of more than 86,000 people, where she struck 75 off 39 balls to all but decide the title. The move to permanently opening in ODIs in 2017 was a gamechanger for her: from that point on Healy has averaged 44.92 with a strike-rate of 99.25.Healy won the ICC Women’s T20I Cricketer of the Year title in 2018 and 2019. She is one of six Australians to have scored more than 3000 ODI runs and is the second-highest run-scorer for them in T20Is. She also is their most-capped T20I player and has the most catches in women’s T20Is: 61. She was named Australia’s all-format captain in December 2023, replacing the retired Meg Lanning, having led them to Ashes retention earlier that year.Perhaps the only thing missing from her CV is a Test hundred, but she has come as close as it gets, with 99 in her last outing, against South Africa. 3: Meg Lanning (Australia)Meg Lanning’s trademark•Getty ImagesNothing about Lanning, a non-muscular, 5’6″ tall slim-built woman resembles a butcher. Except when she plays the cut shot to pierce the smallest gaps at backward point.Lanning had an incredible international career, spanning over a decade, in which she scored a plethora of runs and rewrote captaincy records. Thrust into the top job at 21, she led Australia to one ODI World Cup and four T20 World Cup titles during her ten-year tenure. Australia won a record 24 consecutive ODIs under Lanning’s captaincy, the longest winning streak for a captain across genders in the format. She grew in her role as captain and formed a potent combination with head coach Matthew Mott, making Australia the world-beaters they became after the disappointment of the 2017 ODI World Cup.Apart from the raw numbers, Lanning’s ability to step up in key moments and deliver notable performances made her stand out. Her stunning 152 not out in the 2017 ODI World Cup against Sri Lanka in a tall chase was an example. Or her unbeaten 133 in a T20I during the Women’s Ashes of 2019. Her ability to drag the team through to winning positions from tight corners calmly was remarkable; her consistency while doing it made her achievements all the more incredible.Lanning’s retirement last November was something of a shock; at only 31, there was a feeling she had a lot more to give at the top level. But perhaps it speaks of the demands placed on her in a decade where the women’s game grew exponentially. Opportunities on the T20 league circuit mean the world will get to see moer of Lanning, even if it is not in the familiar Australian yellow. 2: Nat Sciver-Brunt (England)Nat Sciver-Brunt has developed into one of the game’s leading players•ICC via Getty ImagesSciver-Brunt’s value to any team she plays in is there for all to see. England’s win percentage in T20Is when she is playing is 75.21% compared to 58.82% when she isn’t in the side. In ODIs it’s 74.47% when she’s playing versus 46.25% when she’s not.But it is useful to look beyond numbers to gauge her influence on England. Team-mates have repeatedly spoken of the calm, quiet, lead-by-example impact she has as a player, vice-captain, and at times stand-in captain.It’s also worth taking a qualitative approach over a purely quantitative one when considering her on-field performances. Twin unbeaten centuries in what turned out to be futile chases against the Australians at the last 50-over World Cup, including in the final, and two more hundreds on the ODI leg of the 2023 Ashes for one defeat and one series-levelling win show what she can do when the stakes are highest.England faced a stretch of time without her, when she took a mental-health break in 2022, which helped pave the way for other players to feel comfortable saying they need to take time out – relevant amid the rapid growth of women’s franchise cricket.Sciver-Brunt was Player of the Match when her Mumbai Indians side won the inaugural WPL last year, and she was the tournament’s second-highest run-scorer and eighth-highest wicket-taker, having drawn the joint-highest bid for an overseas player in the auction. She also topped the run charts in the 2024 Women’s Hundred.Sciver-Brunt missed the start of England’s home summer in 2024 after undergoing an egg-freezing procedure but ended Pakistan’s visit by scoring another unbeaten ODI century and taking 2 for 11 from five overs; she was making her bowling comeback after a long-term knee injury. Sciver-Brunt’s candour about her brief absence and her return to prominence afterwards can surely open another door for women and highlight her trailblazer status in the game. 1: Ellyse Perry (Australia)There isn’t much that Ellyse Perry hasn’t achieved in the game•Getty ImagesPerry is the complete cricketer. She was Australia’s youngest international at 16, and having begun with bowling as her primary weapon, developed into one of the game’s greatest allrounders. Her landmarks include a Test double-century and Australia’s best ODI bowling figures, 7 for 22. It was after that haul during the 2019 multi-format Ashes that former England captain Charlotte Edwards hailed her as “the greatest female player we’re ever going to see”. Early the following year she was named the ICC’s Women’s Cricketer of the Decade.Perry’s career is rife with numerous highlights and match-winning displays. They include a nerveless 3 for 18 in the 2010 T20 World Cup final, where she intercepted the final delivery with a right boot, serving as a reminder of her dual-international status: she scored at the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. Then there was an injury-defying performance in the 2013 ODI World Cup final, with 3 for 19 against West Indies.One of her most iconic moments was the double-hundred against England in 2017, her first hundred in international cricket. Two years earlier she had taken nine wickets in the Ashes Test, including 6 for 32 in the second innings. Perry’s Ashes Test batting average is 67.25 and bowling average 19.11.There was agony in 2020 when a severe hamstring injury ended her T20 World Cup on home soil, but she fought her way back, and having lost her place in Australia’s T20I, side she quashed talk about whether the format was moving ahead of her by bringing a new level to her batting. If someone does eventually challenge Edwards’ claim about Perry, she will be a remarkable player. ESPNcricinfo’s top 25 women cricketer’s of the 21st century: Nos. 1-5 | 6-15 | 16-25

They are now in a place where they need to decide whether one-day cricket matters

Cameron Ponsonby07-Nov-2024There is a fundamental truth in life. You can’t be good at something you don’t do.Only rowers, who spend their lives facing the wrong way, are the exception to this rule. But they are six-foot-five-inch, VO2 max robots who couldn’t catch a rugby ball at 15 and were instead shoved into a boat to live a life of misery. Cricket is actually a sport.And it’s one that England currently aren’t very good at. After a 13th ODI loss in 20 and third consecutive one-day series defeat, the ECB need to make a choice: invest in List A cricket or not.When the Hundred arrived in 2021, the repercussions on the international one-day side were not immediate. Those in the team already had vast 50-over experience to draw on and were World Champions. There was not much room in the team – and if there was – you were of an age where you’d had some List A experience in the preceding years.Related

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But now it’s three years later and the next generation of English one-day cricketers are arriving in the team with next to no experience. Of the 15 players to make their ODI debut for England since the first edition of the Hundred, ODI cricket makes up 23% of all List A matches they’ve played. And that’s only due to David Payne, Sam Hain and Jamie Overton doing a lot of heavy lifting. Remove the ‘old-boys’, aka those aged 29 and above, and that percentage jumps to 41%.Dan Mousley scored his maiden international half-century in the decider•Getty ImagesWhen Dan Mousley, who made his maiden international half-century in the deciding ODI, walked out on debut to bat in Antigua at No.7, with 15 overs to go, he commented to Sam Curran that he didn’t really know what he was doing.”He almost admitted himself he hadn’t actually played loads of 50-over cricket,” Curran said earlier in the week. “Guys are learning.”More experienced players are adding their voice to that sentiment.”I don’t think there’s many players in this team that you could go through and go ‘oh they’re doing a great job right now’,” said Phil Salt ahead of the third ODI, where he made 74. “That’s the reality of it because we’ve not played a lot of 50-over cricket. I’d love something like a domestic 50-over competition. I’d love the opportunity to play in that so you can get the rhythm and it’s not always stop-start.”There is, of course, a domestic tournament in England, but the current calendar infamously means that none of the top white-ball players are available to play in it.This is not a call to scrap the Hundred, far from it. But a recognition of the reality that English cricket finds itself. If ODI cricket is something they want to excel at, a change from the status quo is required to give players the opportunity to play. They’re literally asking for it.What that looks like is unclear, and it is easy to point to some of the best ODI cricketers in the world who have not developed from a healthy back catalogue of domestic cricket. Virat Kohli has played 34 domestic one-dayers compared to 295 ODIs. Joe Root 38 compared to 171.But the thing about the best is that they are by definition anomalies. Harry Brook does not need to play a handful of games for Yorkshire to get the rhythm of the format, but Mousley might.Phil Salt had a consistent series in the West Indies•Getty ImagesIt is unusual and not desirable for an England team to lose to a team that hasn’t even qualified for the Champions Trophy and consider the entire XI almost devoid of any responsibility. It is not Jordan Cox’s fault that he underperformed at No.3. He had literally never done it before. In his four List A matches before this series, he had batted at four once, five once and six twice.”I’m not paid enough for that,” Salt laughed when asked what the answer might be.There are all number of fag-packet solutions. More England Lions matches, the return of the North-South series or letting any player in the Hundred hop home quickly to have a hit in the One-Day Cup. None of those ideas are particularly good.Ultimately, the untangling of the calendar would be the only solution. One option would be to move the One-Day Cup to April when wickets are fresh and bowlers could benefit from building their workloads rather than entering a two-month block of County Championship cricket straight off the bat.

“I know that I’ve not had the most successful time in 50-over cricket and not really been doing myself justice, but the more opportunities I get to play it, the better I will be at it. That’s the bottom line.”Phil Salt on ODI cricket

Yes, it would clash with the IPL, but if you’re playing in the IPL, you’re probably already playing for England so you’re of less concern. It’s the players who aren’t currently playing for England, but might in the future, that you need to target.”I don’t think there’s many people that can just walk in and do it after not playing for a while,” Salt said. “I know that I’ve not had the most successful time in 50-over cricket and not really been doing myself justice, but the more opportunities I get to play it, the better I will be at it. That’s the bottom line.”There is, of course, option C. Which is that it’s not worth the hassle. Test is best and play T20 the rest. In the modern world with format fatigue and an overcrowded schedule, maybe something has to go. That would be sad. But if something is of value to you, you put in time towards it. And if you’re not going to play it and you’re not going to practice it, then really, you’ve got to ask what’s the point of it.Players deserve the opportunity to be good at what they do. It’s up to England to decide whether one-day cricket matters enough to give them that chance.

A hard-hitting batter, could he be the latest gem to be unearthed by Mumbai Indians’ scouting network?

Deivarayan Muthu26-Nov-20241:35

Moody: Fitness the only question mark for Deepak Chahar

Bevon Jacobs was asleep in New Zealand the moment his cricket career took an unexpected turn thousands of miles away at the IPL 2025 auction.He woke up on Tuesday morning to his phone blowing up. “You’ve just been picked up by Mumbai Indians,” was one of the messages from Jacobs’ cousin, who had been tracking the auction from South Africa.Towards the end of the two-day event in Jeddah, after the likes of Kane Williamson, Daryl Mitchell, Finn Allen and Michael Bracewell from New Zealand had gone unsold, MI raised the paddle for 22-year old Jacobs for INR 30 lakh. Most people watching didn’t know who he was.Related

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“Oh! They [his family] couldn’t believe it,” Jacobs said. “I think they were more shocked than I was. We were all in a bit of a mental state this morning [where] we just didn’t know what was going on. I woke my dad up and he was panicking thinking that someone was breaking in (laughs). I was like ‘no no I’ve just been picked up in the IPL’. So that was a pretty good laugh this morning. No, it was awesome.”After playing fewer than 10 T20s, Jacobs will now join with the vastly experienced Trent Boult and Mitchell Santner at MI for IPL 2025.

Who is Bevon-John Jacobs?

Jacobs, 22, is an explosive middle-order batter who was one of the breakout stars of the 2023-24 Super Smash. He slotted in as a finisher for Canterbury Kings, hitting 134 runs in six innings at a strike rate of 188.73 – the second best after Doug Bracewell (202.02) among batters who had faced at least 50 balls in the tournament.Jacobs had immediately caught the eye in the Super Smash, when he went after Sean Solia, the New Zealand A seamer, and Jimmy Neesham, the New Zealand international, on debut against Auckland at the Eden Park Outer Oval. He struck 42 off 20 balls and continued to produce sparkling cameos.Jacobs was born in Pretoria in South Africa before his family emigrated to New Zealand when he was about three years old.Bevon-John Jacobs was picked up by Mumbai Indians for IPL 2025•NZCHe emerged through the Auckland pathway system before he shifted to Canterbury, where he made his senior T20 and List A debuts. Ahead of the 2024-25 domestic season, Jacobs, however, returned to Auckland, with Jonathan Bassett-Graham, Auckland cricket’s acting head of performance and talent, calling his hard-hitting as a “real bonus.”Jacobs showed his red-ball chops when he scored 75 and 79 on Plunket Shield debut, for Auckland, against Wellington last month against an attack that included Logan van Beek and Liam Dudding, who is among the top wicket-takers in this Plunket Shield.

Has Jacobs played T20 cricket outside of NZ?

Jacobs had a stint in the Queensland T20 Max, in Australia during the recent New Zealand winter, where he smashed 100 off 40 balls on the final day of the competition for South Brisbane against Toombull. Using his long reach, Jacobs kept finding – or clearing – the boundary. Mumbai are big on power-hitters with that long reach and that’s perhaps why their scouting team, which includes former New Zealand captain John Wright, identified Jacobs as a potential IPL finisher.”I guess there was a little bit of media around that tournament [Queensland T20 Max] and I happened to get some runs at the end which was nice,” Jacobs said. “I played with an awesome club and a good bunch of lads there got around me and I guess it was my kind of my first experience overseas playing as an overseas player. So, I guess that might help in a sense a bit of familiarity going over there but yeah obviously it [the IPL] is a bit of a step above but I’ll do what I can.”

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