Is Prasidh Krishna’s hit-the-deck style the way to go? Talking points ahead of India’s three-match ODI series against England

Shashank Kishore11-Jul-2022It is entirely possible the 2019 ODI World Cup final still feels recent, but the fact is that there is another 50-over World Cup upon us next year. While the build-up to it may still be muted, India, like many others, have some work to do. The three-match series against England beginning on Tuesday at The Oval will provide an opportunity for a few players to set things right, while at the same time being an audition for the others.Can Kohli banish talks of a decline?
The numbers are out in the open. It is likely that even the most disconnected fan of the game knows a century has been loading for close to three years. But it hasn’t entirely been doom and gloom for Virat Kohli the batter.Adelaide 2020, Chennai 2021, The Oval 2021, and Cape Town 2022 are a few shining examples. Ever since he gave up the captaincy last year, every innings has brought with it that much more scrutiny.Related

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Even for someone as zoned out as Kohli from external chatter, he is unlikely to forget that the count of century-less innings in international cricket now stands at 77. His struggles have been analysed threadbare, and mindset scrutinised to the extent that there has been a chorus from former players and coaches for him to take a break, which he has received in plenty; fair call to the BCCI there.But the men who matter – Rohit Sharma and Rahul Dravid – have continued to back Kohli.All said, the upcoming ODIs may be his best chance to shred talks of being on the decline and bring back that air of inevitability to his batting and hundreds, something that was commonplace when Kohli was at his peak between 2015 to 2019. For the record, he has six half-centuries in his last 11 ODI innings.Shreyas Iyer will need a big score to keep someone like Suryakumar Yadav out of the ODI side•AFP/Getty ImagesSuryakumar vs Iyer
Such stifling competition for places isn’t new to Shreyas Iyer. He wasn’t even a first-choice player in India’s Under-19 World Cup squad in 2014. But the reality is that while he hasn’t done much wrong in the opportunities he has got, his methods of handling the short ball have come under scrutiny.Iyer was in the form of his life last year before a shoulder injury sidelined him for six months. But in the time since, he has lost his IPL captaincy, was released by a franchise that he led to their first-ever IPL final a year earlier, and then saw Suryakumar Yadav, Sanju Samson and Deepak Hooda catch up with him as far as the middle-order stakes go.An average of 41 and a strike rate of 97 across 24 ODI innings means he should be an automatic pick, but the competition for places is such that he will need a big score to keep someone of Suryakumar’s calibre out. Suryakumar’s most recent knock was an unreal T20I century on Sunday. Like Iyer, he too has cashed in on every opportunity so far in the 50-over format. This middle-order jostle is a healthy one, though.Hardik Pandya last bowled ten overs in an ODI innings during the 2019 World Cup semi-final•PA Photos/Getty ImagesPandya’s return to 50-overs cricket
He has returned to bowling, and has done quite well so far in T20s, but can his body tune up to the rigours of the longer format? Can he deliver ten overs if required? How will the change in format affect his workload? There are a few questions which Hardik Pandya could potentially answer in this series. He has only featured in nine ODIs since July 2019, the last of which was in Sri Lanka last year when he was part of a second-string squad led by Shikhar Dhawan.In fact, Pandya last bowled ten overs in an ODI innings during the 2019 World Cup semi-final. So clearly, there is plenty to look forward to because the bowler in him lends India a new dimension and squad balance.Prasidh’s hit-the-deck style the way to go?
With Jasprit Bumrah being the pace spearhead and Mohammed Shami clearly still in the ODI plans, the third-seamer spot could be a juicy toss-up with a number of claimants in the ring.There is Prasidh Krishna, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj and now Arshdeep Singh. Among them, Prasidh has so far had an impressive initiation. Even on the most docile surfaces, his height and release allow him to get deliveries to rear up awkwardly on batters. Moreover, Prasidh does this at a fair clip too, at above 140 clicks. These, combined with a perfect seam that gets the ball moving both ways, make him an even more dangerous prospect on surfaces with some assistance.Prasidh had a breakthrough ODI series earlier this year against West Indies, and is being groomed to be the kind of bowler India saw in Ishant Sharma in his early days. Of course, the 50-over format wasn’t one that Ishant always favoured, but Prasidh has shown there is enough to work with if persisted.He is just seven ODIs old but has already picked up 18 wickets at an average of 16.42, and an economy of 4.84. But England’s destructive batting line-up could offer a stern test.

The likelihood of a comfortable 2-0 series win can’t disguise the frailty in the hosts’ line-up

Firdose Moonda04-Jan-2021South Africa knew 621 was a mirage.Their score at SuperSport Park, built on former captain Faf du Plessis’ 199, seemed too good to be true … because it was. A depleted Sri Lanka were down to one frontline bowler for parts of that innings and, although it still took application to get runs on the board, the challenge of scoring them was greatly reduced.But does that mean 84 for 9 is reality?Bearing in mind the context (the collapse came after South Africa had reached 218 for 1, 61 runs ahead with oodles of batting to come) and the circumstances (the Wanderers surface quickened up on day two and the ball was moving around substantially) and you might be tempted to call it an aberration. But look at recent history, and you will have to question whether this showing at the Wanderers simply reflects the true state of South Africa’s batting.Last season, South Africa lost five wickets for less than 100 runs at some point in all 14 Test innings against India and England, and five for less than 50 runs in seven of those. Wickets fell in clumps at every stage of their innings, bookended by the tail folding in Vizag and the top and middle order stumbling at the Wanderers. And there are no mitigating circumstances, such as unplayable surfaces, to justify their performances. The pitches in India were good enough for the hosts to register seven centuries in the series between them, while at home, England scored three hundreds to South Africa’s zero.Lack of confidence appears to be South Africa’s biggest issue at present, with a few players in need of technical tweaks, and it’s something that can only be fixed with form. The domestic competition provides a place for players to re-find their feet, as it did for Aiden Markram and Dean Elgar who both scored first-class centuries (Markam has three) in the lead-up to this series.Related

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It’s not surprising then, that in such a run-desert, Elgar has been the oasis. Since January 2019, Elgar has scored more runs than all the other openers combined and is second only to Quinton de Kock among the rest of the line-up. Take de Kock, Elgar and Faf du Plessis away and no South African batsmen has scored more than 367 Test runs in the last two years, which suggests that the newcomers are not making the step up as well as it was hoped they might.Markram has just made his return from injury (although there had been pressure mounting on him before he broke his hand and then his finger) so we’ll cut him some slack and put the the spotlight on Rassie van der Dussen and Temba Bavuma, who are both being spoken about as candidates for the Test captaincy and have to start converting.Van der Dussen is newer on the international scene and has done better so far, especially in this Test with a knock that started patiently and built promisingly. After waiting 25 balls for his first run yesterday afternoon, he showed his strength on the pull and the drive this morning and though he was dropped on 44, once he got his half-century, it didn’t seem there was too much in the way of him carrying on. Then, he was strangled down the leg-side, attempting one swipe too many. Van der Dussen has now gone 43 international innings across all formats without a century, even though he appears to have the temperament to score many.Bavuma’s drought is much longer – five years almost to the day – since his only Test century and the concern around him now is the ways he has been getting out. After walking at SuperSport Park, he shouldered arms to an in-ducker when he should have offered a shot. By the time Bavuma was dismissed, Sri Lanka were already well into the tail so perhaps there’s little more he could have done, but a handy not-out would have done his average some good and showed a level of responsibility.Vishwa Fernando celebrates his maiden five-wicket haul•AFP via Getty ImagesCredit must go to Sri Lanka’s attack for showing glimpses of what could have been had more of their first-choice players been available to them through this series. Vishwa Fernando, who was the leading wicket-taker when Sri Lanka beat South Africa two years ago built on that with his maiden five-for and has now taken more wickets than any other Sri Lankan seamer in South Africa.Vishwa found seam movement and, for the most part, pitched it up and lured the South African batsmen in the channel outside off. De Kock and Nortje both nicked off that way. Equally impressive was debutant Asitha Fernando, who made good use of the bounce with back-of-a-length deliveries – one so short it sconed Lungi Ngidi – and deserved at least one more wicket. Van der Dussen was dropped off Asitha’s bowling.But Sri Lanka’s find of the tour must be Dasun Shanaka, who last played a Test three years before this series, and was expected to be a bit-part bowler in this series. Instead, he stood up in an injury crisis at Supersport Park, and snagged van der Dussen and du Plessis to open South Africa up here. His set-up of du Plessis, with a lifter on the penultimate ball of his 12th over and a fuller one with the final ball, to have him caught behind for 8, was when the momentum of the innings switched camps. Van der Dussen had fallen four overs before, de Kock went the over after, and Sri Lanka had South Africa by the neck. They went on to force a choke, but it has probably come too late.Dimuth Karunaratne has pushed them into a lead but, with three days left in the match, it will need to swell closer to 300 to raise realistic expectations of an upset. But that doesn’t mean the hosts don’t have things to think about, especially ahead of a visit to Pakistan and three Tests against Australia, in which a collapse will surely have greater consequences than it did here.

The big takeaways from the ICC’s new men’s Future Tour Programme from 2023 to 2027

ESPNcricinfo staff18-Aug-2022
More international cricket on the menu
Even as new franchise T20 leagues sprout up like mushrooms during the monsoon – the South African and UAE variety will debut in January – the ICC’s new FTP contains an increased number of international matches during the 2023-27 cycle. From 694 matches in the current FTP (2019-23), the 12 Full Members will play 777 international matches – 173 Tests, 281 ODIs and 323 T20Is – in the next four-year period. And that’s not counting ICC tournaments, of which there is one every year (for the first time since the 2011-2015 FTP). Expect the country-versus-franchise debate to get much louder.More Tests, but not everyone
There are more Tests scheduled in this new FTP- 21 more in fact – than between 2019-23. But if you dig a little deeper that’s not necessarily cause for optimism for those worried about Test cricket’s health. Four of the nine countries that play the World Test Championship (WTC) are playing fewer Tests (England play six fewer Tests); if South Africa’s Test series with Australia had not been cancelled, they too would be playing less of the longest format in the new cycle. The big jump in the number of Tests in the FTP has come in large part from a big increase in the number of Tests that Afghanistan are scheduled to play (see below).Related

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Bangladesh get busy
Who’s playing the most games in the new FTP? Not India or England, but Bangladesh. They have a whopping 150 bilateral international matches in the next four-year cycle. While there’s a growing murmur about the point of ODIs, Bangladesh are giving the 50-over format the most love by playing 59 matches. They’re also just behind the Big Three in the number of Tests (34).South Africa taking it easy?
On the other end of the busyness scale, you’ve got South Africa, who are playing only 113 bilateral internationals in the new FTP. That’s more than only Ireland and Zimbabwe. South Africa’s schedule contains the second-fewest T20Is (46), the fewest ODIs (39), and fewer Tests (28) than Bangladesh and New Zealand. In fact, in the 2023-25 World Test Championship cycle, South Africa are not playing any series longer than two Tests (and they are currently top of that table and potential finalists). One reason for this could be that Cricket South Africa want to keep its international players completely free to play its new T20 League in January, and then there’s the two-and-a-half month IPL window, during which a lot of the top South African players will be in India.ESPNcricinfo LtdT20 windows for everyone
Another feature of this FTP is the number of windows that have been created for the T20 leagues of different countries. The biggest one is for the IPL. There is very little international cricket scheduled from the middle of March to the end of May between 2023 and 2027, so that the top players from all countries – minus Pakistan – can take part in the IPL. Other countries have different types of windows for their leagues. Australia have tried to minimise white-ball games in their traditional January slot so their own elite players can play the BBL; Bangladesh have kept each January free for the BPL; the ECB has a small window for the Hundred in August; CSA are doing likewise for their league; the PSL shifts its windows but has one every year; the CPL has August-September.Bad news for ODIs?
The T20 revolution only really took off once India embraced the shortest format with open arms after their victory in the 2007 T20 World Cup. So what does it mean for ODIs if 50-over cricket seems to be India’s least favoured format in the new FTP? India are playing only 42 ODIs in the 2023-27 FTP cycle, the second-fewest among the 12 Full Members, and they aren’t playing any series longer than three ODIs.More games between the Big Three
India, England and Australia will also see more of each other in the new FTP than they did in the current one. They had a total of 65 internationals – 27 Tests, 21 ODIs and 17 T20Is – scheduled between 2019 and 2023. In the next four-year cycle, they are down to play a total of 78 games: 30 Tests, 20 ODIs and 28 T20 internationals.Afghanistan’s Test revolution
Since their Test debut in India in 2018, Afghanistan have only played a total of six matches so far. They have got 21 scheduled in this next cycle, one more than Zimbabwe and only four less than Sri Lanka. It remains to be seen, though, how many of these 21 actually get played.

In this extract from his new book, the former Australia allrounder looks at sides that allowed players to thrive and those that hung a fear of failure over their heads

Shane Watson05-Nov-2022Winning The Inner BattleThere are environments where the leaders talk about how big this game is, how important this game is, and say, “If we lose this game we are out.” I have been in plenty of these team environments. There are also environments where leaders talk about how performance in this game will dictate selection, and that underperformance might lead to players getting dropped. I have heard from leaders of a number of teams that I have played in say things like, “Spots are up for grabs in the game” or “If you don’t perform, you will get dropped.”So guess what people are thinking in those environments? “Don’t lose. I really need to perform today. I need to score runs. We need to win. Don’t get out. Don’t bowl badly. Don’t stuff up, otherwise I might be gone.” All of these focus on results and fear of failure.These environments can work for a shorter period of time, where fear of failure can drive individuals to be ready to lock in for one very important game. But these environments are not sustainable at all as stress and anxiety builds up to a point where the whole team implodes and I have been a part of these environments on a few occasions too. The telltale signs are that everyone starts to only play for themselves, for their individual spots, and as long as they do enough to get picked for the next game, they are happy. This always leads to an incredibly toxic team environment where the enjoyment factor of playing the game that you love evaporates and it turns into every person for themselves. We should be doing all that we can to do the opposite of this, as the best and most successful team environments always have a fun and enjoyment aspect to them as a very important undercurrent to all that they do.Other environments I have been a part of are ones where there is a clear focus on the process and leaders ask the players to just bring the best version of themselves every time and to do it over and over again. They reiterate that if we all do this, we give ourselves the best chance of coming out on top. This is exactly what a championship mindset looks like!This is what made Ricky Ponting such a good captain. He always said to the team in the lead-up to big games that the team whose individuals do the basics better and for longer will be the team that will come out on top. It focused our minds on the process, on doing the basics, controlling the A factors.

After the retirement of Ponting and Hussey, the Australian team drifted significantly. Players, myself included, began to look over our shoulders. I wasn’t able to direct my thoughts to consistently bring the best version of myself into every performance

Paddy Upton for Rajasthan Royals built a process-driven environment that took all of the anxiety and stress out of a very pressurised tournament where performance and results were so important. The other team environment where this was done incredibly well was at Chennai Super Kings in the IPL under captain MS Dhoni and coach Stephen Fleming. I never heard either of them say, “We need to win this game today”, or “If you don’t score runs today or take wickets, you will be getting dropped.”My second year with CSK really stuck with me. There was no chopping and changing in selection. In other teams I had been with, players were turned over constantly. If a player didn’t perform for a couple of games, selectors would think he wasn’t good enough and would replace him immediately. This meant that everyone started looking over their shoulders and thinking, “Gosh, if I don’t perform in a couple of games, then I could be gone too.”No matter who we are, we are always going to have times in our lives where we are in a “results-focused” environment. By understanding the mental-skills framework in this book, we know that this is the opposite of where we want to be mentally for us to be at our best both individually and collectively. We need to listen to what is being said by the leaders in this environment and we need to redirect their words ourselves to say, “I am not going to let their results focus influence the correct mindset I need for me to be at my best.” This can be much easier said than done when players are being chopped and changed from one game to the next without any rhyme or reason, apart from someone not performing in one game. But understanding this will be a powerful tool for you to use throughout your life to ensure a negative environment doesn’t infiltrate your thinking and pull you out of your high-performance mindset.I’ve been a victim of a negative team environment. After the retirement of Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey, the Australian team drifted significantly. Pressure to perform began to affect confidence and consistency. Players, myself included, began to look over our shoulders. I didn’t have knowledge of the mental skills I needed to redirect my thoughts to the right things at the right times to consistently bring the best version of myself into every performance, instead of being overcome with fear and overwhelmed by a need for results, which saw my performances go downhill throughout that time. And this was all at a time where I was in my prime, performing really well in the IPL in an incredibly enjoyable, process-driven team environment. But as soon as I went back into this other environment, my kryptonite, my performances started to tank again and the enjoyment factor of playing the game that I loved evaporated very quickly.When Watson was able to let go of the negative mindset that gripped the team, he was able to play with freedom and the results automatically followed•Craig Golding/AFP/Getty ImagesMy last three months with the Australia T20 team from early January 2016 through to the T20 World Cup in India was another example of one of those environments. We played India in a three-match T20 International series, where the selectors picked a really big squad and chopped and changed the team significantly from game to game, and then this flowed on to a T20 series in South Africa before we headed to India for the T20 World Cup. The conversations and actions around the group from the leaders – that being the coach, captain, selectors – were consistent messaging like, “All spots are up for grabs if you want to play in the T20 World Cup” and “You need to perform in this game as you might only have one opportunity to press your claim.”As soon as I heard and saw this, I immediately acknowledged in my own mind what this ridiculous situation was creating. This time I opted out. I knew the importance of preparation and focus. The result was that I bowled as well as I had in T20 cricket for Australia, played one of the games of my life at the SCG as captain, and retired at the end of the T20 World Cup as the No. 1 T20I allrounder in the world.Surprise surprise, we lost to India in the quarter final knockout game. We left a few runs on the table and didn’t execute that well with the ball against an Indian team that had barely changed their XI from the first game that we played against them during the series in Australia, three months before.But the attitudes I saw in that T20 World Cup are everywhere. I saw it recently in a game of junior cricket. The result of the match was important as a place in the grand final was riding on it. A number of the parents had really built this game up as being a knockout game and had stressed to the kids how important it was to win to make the final. Then one of the calmest kids in the team went out to bat with two overs to go and one of the parents said, “Don’t get out, otherwise we will lose” as he walked out to bat. And guess what happened. This poor young kid ended up getting out, and because of all of the build-up of importance for this game by the parents and kids around him, the calmest child on the field lost the plot, throwing their gear everywhere in disappointment of letting the team down. It was so sad to see and something that should never happen if the parents around the team simply understood the fundamentals of how to create the optimal environment. Reinforcement of the correct mindset would then filter down to all of the young kids.It is so easy to allow the “live or die by results” environment to infiltrate your mindset and start to corrupt it. It is easy to start to move your thinking to fear of failure and how important it is to perform and get the results. But by understanding all of the mental skills in this book, you will be armed with all that you need to be mentally tough enough to create a super-strong cocoon around yourself, to just direct your thoughts to continually creating your optimal mental environment to bring the best version of you, no matter what team environment that you are in.We need to do all that we can in our power to help with creating the best team environment possible, so that individuals don’t have to feel like they are rebelling against the team leadership just to stay process-driven, to bring their best A game possible, game in game out. I’m convinced that more and more teams should be open to allowing players to manage their own mental and physical preparation. Everyone is different; everyone comes to know what best suits them; just as a lot of cricket is individual, so should a lot of the preparation be too. Understanding this will create so many more high-performing team environments, higher-performing individuals and most importantly, much more enjoyable team environments too, so that we never lose the fun and joy that we get playing the game that we love.Alex Malcolm, an associate editor at ESPNcricinfo, was involved in the editing of the book.

As the pandemic wreaks havoc in India, the IPL marches on. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but can the BCCI make it count for more?

Jayaditya Gupta25-Apr-2021On Sunday afternoon, as the captains of Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bangalore waited for the toss, the commentator Ian Bishop put out this public service announcement: mask up, keep a safe distance, self-sanitise. The simple message, repeated several times during play, was the first high-visibility sign of the IPL as an institution addressing the resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic that has wreaked havoc in India.There have been occasional statements by commentators and some franchises on similar lines – mask up, stay safe – and some individual players have gone further. But this was the first time the IPL used the high-profile toss segment of its broadcast to spread this message, the recognition that outside the bio-bubble was a country fighting a desperate battle against the pandemic.India is currently in the grip of an especially vicious wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Countrywide, there are 300,000 new cases every day – the most by any nation since the pandemic first broke out last year – and the effect has crippled healthcare and allied services, even in Delhi, the national capital. Just for context, there have been 26,000 deaths since the IPL began on April 9.Related

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The IPL’s tepid response till very recently has prompted the perception that it is a bubble within the bubble – that the entire system is cut off from the world outside to the extent almost of tone-deafness. This cannot be the reality, of course, because the players are in virtual contact with life outside and have had family and acquaintances affected by the virus. But it is the perception, helped by the silence emanating from the tournament itself.Indeed, it has led to a line of thinking that the IPL should be called off. That in a time of national tragedy as this is – and a tragedy that, by all estimates, will get worse before it gets better – sport is irrelevant, perhaps even disrespectful. This is not a time for light entertainment.That is debatable, because there are clearly takers for the IPL as entertainment or distraction from the surrounding grimness. Anecdotal evidence, perhaps, but I can hear the TV commentary from apartments around mine every evening, and I know of people – including one 80-year-old aunt – who wait for that match every day to offer some relief.Equally important, though, is to see the IPL as not merely a sporting activity, 22 men playing cricket under floodlights. It is an economic activity that brings in millions of dollars, which are then spread around the wider cricketing ecosystem and to the country at large. Think of hotel rooms occupied, chartered flights booked and the IPL gig economy – social-media teams, cameramen, commentators, security and catering and housekeeping staff, and all the people they support in turn – that keeps the wheels turning. A distressed economy needs whatever cylinders that can keep firing.Crucially, it is a well-managed bubble, as it was in the UAE last year; two weeks in, there have been positive cases, but largely before the tournament started. The lack of crowds and the caravan concept – two venues at a time, instead of teams criss-crossing through the tournament – make it easier to manage logistics.It is precisely this immense soft power, though, that the IPL needs to wield at this moment.

If you have beaten COVID-19, you have the power to save a life. #ProjectPlasma – A joint initiative by #DelhiCapitals and @FeverFMOfficial encourages you to donate your plasma.

And as @SDhawan25 says, let's defeat this pandemic with positivity #YehHaiNayiDilli pic.twitter.com/gCzH2FIsBh

— Delhi Capitals (@DelhiCapitals) April 24, 2021

There have been individual, perhaps oblique, statements. Royal Challengers Bangalore have a short public-service video about basic bio-safety protocols; on Saturday, Delhi Capitals released a message about plasma donation in the Covid-19 context. R Ashwin, who plays for them, has also been tweeting about plasma availability. Harbhajan Singh hasn’t merely expressed his anguish – he has helped set up a mobile testing lab in Pune and has retweeted some of the thousands of cries for help on social media, hoping his influence can open doors.

Everything coming to an END.. we are clueless..No one is to guide don’t see any light.. it’s getting dark.. people are dying.. someone care ? NO #COVIDEmergency #COVID19India #Covid

— Harbhajan Turbanator (@harbhajan_singh) April 16, 2021

Even Shoaib Akhtar – the Pakistani bowler Indian fans loved to hate – issued a simple, heartfelt appeal for help.

India is really struggling with Covid-19. Global support needed. Health care system is crashing. Its a Pandemic, we are all in it together. Must become each other's support.
Full video: https://t.co/XmNp5oTBQ2#IndiaNeedsOxygen #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/vX1FCSlQjs

— Shoaib Akhtar (@shoaib100mph) April 23, 2021

There is plenty more that the IPL can do even now – sponsor the distribution of N95 masks or sanitisers; setting up vaccine camps or announcing that some percentage of their income will go to a specified fund. And, easiest of all, using the big names – especially those on its payroll – to reinforce the same simple message.Abhinav Bindra, the only Indian to win an individual Olympic gold and now part of various high-level athletes’ commissions, spoke about this issue on Sunday. Writing in , he said the players should acknowledge the enormous privilege they enjoy to be able to play sport in these times. If he was BCCI president, he said, and “had the capability”, he would “give a large amount to do, say, the vaccination right or help out in any other way. This is one way to acknowledge that to conduct the IPL right now is a huge privilege and everyone should act responsibly.”The BCCI is famous for its ability to think on its feet, to change or create or tweak plans to suit the situation. It has responded with alacrity to many crises in the past, usually when cricket is under threat. This threat is far greater and more serious – it’s a country in crisis.