Former captain’s prolific form all the more gravity-defying because of England’s recent woes

Andrew Miller06-Jun-2022Composure in midst of deep gloom. As with the latter months of his captaincy, so too with his new beginnings back in the ranks.Lesser players might have drawn back the curtains in north London on Sunday morning, and baulked at the sight of Lord’s enveloped in a thick blanket of cloud – never mizzly enough to prevent play from beginning on time, but seemingly perfectly weighted to the needs of New Zealand’s seamers, as they resumed a dicey contest needing five more wickets before England could tick off their 61 remaining runs.Joe Root, however, is nobody’s idea of a lesser player. With a sense of purpose that might have been grafted from one of his very best white-ball tempo-setters, but in an occasion that dripped with Test cricket’s full pomp and circumstance, Root got busy from the get-go, and New Zealand’s challenge died a death by 10,000 cuts.His first delivery of the day was dinked off the pads behind square – the purity of his angles against an arrow-straight sighter from Tim Southee rendering the stroke as riskless as a dead-batted prod back down the pitch. And if New Zealand didn’t know it for certain at that moment, then that sinking feeling cannot have taken long to manifest. Thirty-four of Root’s runs, but a solitary boundary, came from that soul-sapping nurdle, the most productive stroke of his innings – nay, his career – and on his watch something uncannily similar to calm descended over a restless, undulating match.Related

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For in a contest that seemed destined to be defined by haymakers – “if they throw us two punches, we’ll throw them four”, as Matt Potts, England’s debutant, evocatively put it on day one – it proved to be the deft caresses of Root and Ben Foakes that hurt New Zealand the most.Had Kane Williamson been allowed to choose the manner in which England went about their victory push, he would surely have traded a few swings for the stands for the high probability of a crucial miscalibration – such as that which tipped Ben Stokes from the contest on the third afternoon. And in fact that would have been the plan had a wicket fallen on this final day. Stuart Broad was padded up and ready to go loco at No. 8, the logic being that his madcap methods were better unleashed with wickets in hand rather than at the very last ditch.Root, however, specialises in a more passive brand of aggression. From the moment of Stokes’ departure in the 50th over of the chase, he chipped off his last 81 runs from exactly 81 balls, a startling speed from a man who – aside from a handful of under-edged cuts in the final surge – never once looked rushed in the course of a 170-ball stay.It was a point that Stokes acknowledged afterwards, as he harked back to the wisdom of the last England coach to attempt a fusion cuisine between England’s red- and white-ball mindsets.”As Trevor Bayliss used to say, it’s not all about hitting fours and sixes,” Stokes said. “You can be positive about the way that you leave, positive in the way you defend. It just makes things a lot easier, your decision-making, when you’re looking to be proactive and positive.”

“It was very special to get the hundred and reach 10,000 runs, I can’t pretend it wasn’t, but nothing replicates winning games of cricket”Joe Root

Root’s haste was such that, in sealing the contest inside the day’s first 15 overs, he even secured a full refund for a gleefully receptive crowd – quite the populist’s coup after all the pre-match discussion about ticket prices. Either way, he clearly wasn’t the only national grandee laying on a free party this weekend – and as the players’ kids took advantage of the early finish to turn cartwheels on the outfield while the Platinum Jubilee parade played out on the big screens above them, his glory put the seal on a nationally uplifting four-day weekend.And in the midst of it all, lest we forget, he happened to tick off that 10,000-run mark. How often is it that the quest for landmarks becomes the story, over and above the reason why such landmarks are so sought-after in the first place?For Root, who by a quirk of fate had begun this innings needing exactly 100 runs for five figures, the achievement came packed as if in the bowels of a Russian doll; a milestone within a century, within a run-chase, within the context of a team that had not tasted victory for ten month, within the broader – and soul-baringly-expressed – emotions of his first Test back in the ranks, having freed himself from an “unhealthy relationship” with the captaincy.And once you’d unpacked all those layers, it wasn’t hard to accept Root’s assertion that, all other things considered, he really hadn’t given the achievement a second thought.”I’d been made aware of it, but after the shot I played in the first innings, it felt a long way off,” Root said, recalling the critical stab to gully off Colin de Grandhomme that had set England’s first-day collapse into full motion. “Winning was all I could think about. You pride yourself on winning, and it’s been a long while for this team. It meant a huge amount to get over the line.”It was very special to get the hundred and reach 10,000 runs, I can’t pretend it wasn’t, but nothing replicates winning games of cricket. It’s such a good feeling and one I hope we can replicate through the rest of the summer.”Modesty aside, however, it is a startlingly vast landmark – a pinnacle that seemed so otherworldly back in the late 1980s when Sunil Gavaskar stood there alone, and still remains snow-capped with just 13 fellow greats having since traipsed their way to the top.Root in full flow•PA Images via Getty ImagesAnd while it’s a common theme for England’s record-setting batters in particular to reach such peaks with career records a notch below the highest standards – a reflection both of the number of Tests they get to play compared to their contemporaries, and the difficulties that English conditions can sometimes serve up – there are few criteria by which Root truly pales against his peers.Yes, he is currently one of the few 10kers to average below 50, but he has the time and, clearly, the form to remedy that, while his failure to record that maiden century in Australia clearly hurts – mostly, of course, because Root himself knew that his own runs were the team’s only realistic hope on either of his tours as captain.But the true measure of Root’s achievement will only be known in retrospect, because the history of the era that he is playing through – the pandemic on the one hand, and the real-time disintegration of the Test team that he has so proudly shorn up on the other – has not yet been written. Everything he is doing – for England in the first instance and for his legacy thereafter – is just too up-close-and-personal for a fair appraisal, but the manner in which Root has turned on the afterburners, almost from the moment of his 30th birthday in December 2020, has been legacy-defining.In the space of 17 months, 2192 runs including nine hundreds have tripped off his bat – nine more, in fact, than his most fabled contemporaries, Virat Kohli, Steve Smith and Kane Williamson combined. Which goes to show, not that he’s suddenly roared into a different league, but that a fluidity exists even in the mightiest careers, and that the very best recognise their moments and seize them with an alacrity that leaves merer mortals astounded.Most extraordinarily, Root has achieved all this in a side that has just won its second Test in 18, and in which his 30 fellow players have scored five hundreds between them, with no other top-order batter averaging more than 31. Even Allan Border in his darkest days in the mid-1980s had a better support cast than that; even Andy Flower, in his gravity-defying era for Zimbabwe in 2000-01, had his brother Grant to hold up an end.In time, the granular details of Root’s batting achievements will begin to hold a greater sway in the imagination, even if for now, all we can do is laud the landmarks as they come. But take it as read that, when his team-mates spilled out of the dressing-room to envelop him in the Long Room during his victory march back through the pavilion, it wasn’t just Root’s runs they were celebrating, but the man himself.

His numbers against top sides are not those you’d expect from such a skilful bowler, and holding him back till the 15th over of a middling chase – as was the case against India – hardly helps

Matt Roller13-Oct-20232:49

Why Rashid isn’t at his best against the big teams in ODIs?

It was an incongruous sight. As Rohit Sharma raced to 76 off 43, making light of Afghanistan’s 272 for 8, Rashid Khan prowled around the outfield under the Bishan Singh Bedi Stand at Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium. India were cruising to an eight-wicket win, yet the opposition’s best bowler was at deep midwicket.By the time Rashid finally came into the attack to bowl the 15th over, India were 125 for 0. He dismissed both openers, having Ishan Kishan caught at cover and bowling Rohit after being taken for three consecutive boundaries, but those wickets served only to underline the peculiarity: why did Afghanistan use five other bowlers before Rashid?Jonathan Trott, their coach, could only suggest it owed to Hashmatullah Shahidi’s “gut feel”, saying: “That’s a captain’s prerogative. There is a case, when the ball gets a little bit older, for Rash to bowl with it, and it gets a little bit more turn; it doesn’t skid on as much.”And yet, Trott could not help but make his own view clear: “Certainly, you want a guy like Rash in the attack as soon as possible,” he said, conceding that the game was effectively over as a contest by the time Rashid had bowled his first over. “It’s always something we’ll look at.”Related

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It was the latest installment in Rashid’s unusual and underwhelming World Cup career, which is now 11 matches old. At 25, he already holds elite status as a white-ball bowler: at some stage next year, he will overtake Dwayne Bravo as the leading wicket-taker in T20 history. And yet, that success has generally eluded him in 50-over cricket.In aggregate, his ODI record is superb: he has 174 wickets at 19.91 in 96 matches. But over 100 of those wickets have come against Ireland and Zimbabwe; in his dozen appearances against nations in the top six of ICC’s rankings, he has taken only 13 at 44.30 each.In T20, nobody has played Rashid better than Shane Watson. Watson faced 73 balls from Rashid across 11 matches, scored 108 runs and was never dismissed by him, most memorably scoring a match-winning century for Chennai Super Kings against Rashid’s Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 2018 IPL final.Watson believes that Rashid’s struggle to convert his T20 form into 50-over cricket owes to the specifics of the format: with only four fielders permitted outside the 30-yard circle in the middle overs of an ODI, he has less protection in the deep. “When batters feel like they need to take Rashid Khan on, that really does bring him into the game,” Watson told ESPNcricinfo.Rashid Khan dismissed Ishan Kishan and Rohit Sharma after coming on in the 16th over of the chase•ICC/Getty Images”With four people out, batters do not have to take a risk: they find it easy to be able to find the boundary or rotate the strike. Everyone knows that Rashid Khan is the major weapon for Afghanistan, so the game plan will always be around making sure they negate him. And if he gets it slightly wrong, there are low-risk boundary opportunities available with four men out.”When facing Rashid, Watson shifted his stance across so that he covered his off stump. “It was a bit like facing Shahid Afridi,” he recalled, “because they’re a lot faster through the air [than most wristspinners] and more direct… they’re not really trying to get you out through flight, more from the ball skipping off the wicket.”The ball where he gets most of his wickets is his wrong ‘un… so I would set up to be able to hit the ball dead straight or into the leg side, with the ball mainly coming in. He’s not a big turner of his legspinner. I thought, if I was on off stump, I was comfortable knowing that he wasn’t really going to spin the ball past me on the outside of the bat.”Throughout their T20 encounters, Watson noticed that when Rashid went wicketless early in his spell, he would “start chasing wickets” by bowling fuller than his natural length. “He’s going to try and bowl more miracle balls… try to bowl a bit slower, or a bit fuller, which means there are more scoring opportunities for the set batters.”That pattern played out on Wednesday night. After Rashid was cut for four by Rohit, his next ball was a fraction fuller and straighter, and was dispatched over the leg side for four more. His follow-up was a googly, targeting the stumps; Rohit swung it away over the leg side for six.

“The ball where he gets most of his wickets is his wrong ‘un. So I would set up to be able to hit the ball dead straight or into the leg side, with the ball mainly coming in.”Shane Watson spills out his secret of tackling Rashid Khan

On Sunday, Rashid will come up against an England side who will look to put him under pressure. All of their batters have played with or against Rashid in international or franchise cricket; four years ago, they plundered 110 runs off his nine overs in Manchester, including 11 sixes.It seems implausible that Shahidi will hold him back as long as he did against India – even if that decision fitted the general pattern of Rashid’s ODI career, which has seen him bowl only two powerplay overs this year. “Once the ball has stopped swinging, I’d be getting him on,” Watson said.”Afghanistan has to take early wickets to try and get into the middle order, and he’s absolutely their best wicket-taking opportunity. Even if it’s just one or two overs in the powerplay, get him into the game early. You’d prefer to ask a few questions, compared to getting him into the game when it’s nearly too far gone.”Rashid’s schedule has been relentless this year – he has featured in six different franchise leagues – and he has been carrying a back niggle for several months. His status as Afghanistan’s most prominent cricketer means that he cannot simply switch off when he is not playing.This week, he announced that he would donate his match fees for this tournament to the relief effort following the devastating earthquake in Afghanistan, and his foundation has launched a fundraising campaign for its victims. Cricket can never be his sole focus – even during a World Cup.And yet there are few sights in the sport that can bring more joy than Rashid at his best, grinning after beating a batter or wheeling away with his arms outstretched in celebration. Afghanistan will hope they prove to be the defining images of his 2023 World Cup.

The pair registered a number of records during their 122-run partnership

Sampath Bandarupalli06-Mar-202211 – India have defeated Pakistan in all 11 Women’s ODIs they played. Only three teams have played more ODIs against an opponent with a 100% win record – 15 by Australia against Ireland, 12 by Australia versus Pakistan and 12 by India against Ireland.122 – Partnership runs between Sneh Rana and Pooja Vastrakar, the highest stand for the seventh wicket or lower in Women’s ODIs. The previous highest was 104* by Nicola Brown and Sarah Tsukigawa against England in 2007, while Danielle Hazell and Nat Sciver also put on 104 against Sri Lanka in 2016.ESPNcricinfo Ltd1 – The Rana-Vastrakar partnership is also the first-century stand for the seventh wicket or lower at Women’s World Cups. The 85-run stand between Katherine Brunt and Jenny Gunn against Australia in 2017 was the previous highest.1 – Rana and Vastrakar also became the first pair to score fifties in the same innings in women’s ODIs while batting at No. 7 or lower. There is only one previous instance of two fifty-plus scores by a No. 7 and lower in the same ODI – Sophie Devine (74*) for New Zealand and Jess Duffin (68) for Australia in 2010 in Queenstown.0 – Number of players before Rana and Vastrakar to score fifty-plus runs while batting at No. 6 and below on Women’s World Cup debut. The previous highest for a World Cup debutant while batting outside the top five was 48 by Shandre Fritz against Ireland in 2005. In all, only three Indians had scored a fifty in their maiden Women’s World Cup match before Rana and Vastrakar.