Just when their qualification hopes appeared dicey, he came to life with an ODI knock for the ages

Danyal Rasool06-Jul-2023The ball was pitched short, and Bas de Leede looked ready for it. He had got the basics right – his feet were in line and backlift poised to pull it away over midwicket. But this was Perth, where short balls tend to keep on rising. Netherlands don’t get too many opportunities to play in Perth, and, on the international circuit anyway, de Leede doesn’t get many chances to face pace of the kind Haris Rauf had just sent cannoning his way.The ball rose just a little too high, just a little too quick. There was that dreadful moment where it looked to have pierced the uncomfortably large gap between the helmet and the grill with a sickening clunk as it hit de Leede in the face and floored him. The medics rushed to gauge the extent of the damage and de Leede walked off with a cut underneath his right eye. He then met Rauf after the game where the fast bowler told him, “You’ll come back stronger and hit sixes. Go well.” They embraced briefly before heading separate ways. Two men representing two nations that sit far apart at the table in cricket’s pecking order.The sentiment from Rauf was heartfelt, but there was nowhere for de Leede to go. Between that T20 World Cup in October 2022 and the ongoing Men’s World Cup Qualifier, de Leede played no internationals*, missing the ODIs against Zimbabwe and South Africa due to injury. And now between the Qualifier and the upcoming 50-over World Cup, Netherlands have no matches in any format scheduled.Related

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Netherlands were in a must-win against Scotland, who broke local hearts in Bulawayo just two days earlier. They needed to chase 278 in 44 overs to leapfrog Scotland on net run rate and assure themselves of a spot at the World Cup. Both Netherlands and Scotland are two hugely improved sides denuded of the opportunities they merit, so financially hamstrung that they can’t even select first-choice squads for a tournament of this value because the English domestic system provides better financial reward.So, de Leede arrives at the crease after a steady start for Netherlands. The last time a de Leede played an ODI World Cup match was in 2007 when his father, Tim, took on this very opposition in the West Indies. But that was 16 years ago, in the heady days when a World Cup comprised 16 teams. It was Tim’s 29th, and last, ODI. De Leede has already played 30 ODIs and is far from done.For most of the innings, de Leede does what any quality batter in this position would do. He rotates the strike with his captain Scott Edwards, picks off the poor deliveries and sets his side on course for the chase. There’s little sign of the late surge that will sideswipe Scotland in an hour’s time, but despite being 23 and getting few opportunities to play this format, he knows they’re likelier to lose the game taking low-percentage chances than win it at this point.Bas de Leede struck with the new ball and at the death during his maiden ODI five-for•ICC/Getty Images”We had a look at the target where we wanted to be at the halfway point and I think from there comes the point where you stop talking about it, and actually do it,” de Leede said after the game. “Max [O’Dowd] and Vikram [Vikramjit Singh] setting up the platform and then the rest of us to come in and finish it off.”But Edwards falls and the asking rate rises; the Dutch now need 102 in ten overs to qualify. Hoping to make a career playing cricket for the Netherlands is a low-percentage shot in itself. So it’s a bit late to start worrying about taking too many chances now. And when Mark Watt drops one in slightly short, de Leede shoots his shot; he hits his first six of the innings.With Saqib Zulfiqar helping out from the other end, victory looks assured, but qualification is still up in the air with four meaningful overs left and 45 still to get. De Leede then demonstrates his six-hitting ability and goes 6,6,1,6,2,2,6,2 in his next eight balls. Somewhere in there, he gets to his first ODI hundred. It’s a moment most never forget, but de Leede might barely remember it as a happy side note to the euphoria that awaits him around the corner.”It is amazing,” an overwhelmed de Leede said after Netherlands were India-bound. “I can’t describe the feeling. It is going to be one big party tonight I can tell you that.”It was 10 or 11 an over at the death, so for us it was almost like going into T20 mode. We had to try and get as many runs as we could every over and see where we ended up.”They have ended up on the flight to India, where they will dine at the big table with teams that appeared to have locked teams like Netherlands out. As Rauf might put it, de Leede is indeed going well.*Jul 7, 2023, 9:08 GMT: The article mistakenly mentioned that Netherlands had no international fixtures between the 2022 T20 World Cup and the 2023 ODI World Cup Qualifier. This has been corrected.

With the Ranji Trophy season kicking off, the MP allrounder is eager to show the world how he has improved

Vishal Dikshit04-Jan-2024Venkatesh Iyer thought he was having a pretty good 2022. An ODI debut, a few quickfire knocks at No. 6 in T20Is in the absence of Hardik Pandya, and he says he was at his fittest in the IPL that year, even though he didn’t score that many runs in the tournament. But when he was turning his T20 form around with blazing knocks in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (SMAT) for Madhya Pradesh, he fell down the stairs in the team hotel and broke his ankle.After a disappointing IPL for Kolkata Knight Riders in 2022 in which he managed just 182 runs in 12 innings and averaged under 17, Iyer’s next T20 series to get some runs under his belt was the SMAT. He started by blasting an unbeaten 62 off 31 at No. 3 against Rajasthan and grabbed a career-best 6 for 20, followed it with a 57 off 35 at No. 4 opposite Mumbai, then a 42 off 29 at No. 5 against Uttarakhand and a 28 off 22 facing Railways. With an average of 63 and strike rate of 161.53 after just four innings, Iyer heard that he was going to be picked for the New Zealand T20Is in November, before he dislocated his ankle which required surgery.It took him four months to get back on the field, in February 2023, when he was cleared for one Ranji Trophy game only as a batter, and then for IPL 2023 also purely as a batter, and another five months until he could start bowling again in domestic cricket.”I’ve always wanted to contribute in all three departments,” he tells ESPNcricinfo before the 2023-24 Ranji Trophy season. “When there’s a problem with one, it feels like I’m not completely committed to my team. Obviously, there was an injury but when I can contribute in all three, the magnitude of contribution can differ, I think I’ll sleep peacefully. That’s what I was missing for a long time. Now that I’m bowling, I’m bowling long spells, bowling with the new ball, in SMAT [2023] also I bowled with the new ball. I’m seeing new dimensions of my bowling and batting, so it feels good.”The 2023 IPL was his first full series back from injury, and the pressure was mounting after a poor campaign the previous year, because he couldn’t bowl yet, and because being an India player now, he was being seen as Pandya’s back-up in the middle order. But even before he picked up the bat that IPL, he had benefited from two major factors. One was the introduction of the Impact Player rule, so he could be swapped in and out just for his batting. And the second was KKR had roped in Chandrakant Pandit, the MP coach, as their head coach. Iyer had the rather rare benefit of having the same coach in his domestic side and in his IPL team.

When I can contribute in all three (disciplines), the magnitude of contribution can differ, I think I’ll sleep peacefully. That’s what I was missing for a long time.Venkatesh Iyer on the frustrations that his ankle injury caused in 2022 and 2023

Pandit and KKR assistant coach Abhishek Nayar decided to bat Iyer at No. 3 because their regular No. 3 and captain Shreyas Iyer was out with an injury.”It meant I would play multiple roles,” Iyer says. “If we’re batting first, I can anchor. If we’re chasing around 200, I have to go for it from ball one. The role was communicated properly and this season I did a lot of following rather than thinking myself. I did a lot of what Abhishek Nayar told me to do and that worked for me. Even if it didn’t, I was really happy with that because he was able to justify why I need to do and that gave me a lot of clarity to go out there and make decisions. It was very challenging but good fun.”Iyer repaid that faith and the backing he got with his most prolific IPL season: 404 runs from 14 outings, striking at nearly 146, and a scintillating century against Mumbai Indians. He revealed the seeds for a successful 2023 season were sown in 2022, first with Nayar in the IPL and then with Pandit during the domestic season.Venkatesh Iyer credits Abhishek Nayar seen here working with Rahul Tripathi for helping him understand cricket and life•kkr.in”I’ve never measured the game with respect to the runs I’ve scored or wickets I’ve taken,” he says. “I think 2022 was my best [IPL] in terms of the discipline I showed towards myself. Despite the failures that I had, I never missed a single practice session, I would always spend hours with Abhishek Nayar to work on my batting skills, bowling, fielding, fitness, diet as well. That was a phase that I didn’t cheat with even 1% with my diet. I was trying my best, but it was not happening, the runs weren’t coming. During IPL 2022 he identified that my batting wasn’t going well despite my hard work.”The instance that kicked off the camaraderie between them was when Nayar spotted Iyer batting waywardly in the nets and felt the need to interrupt. “This is not how we’re going to approach…” Iyer recalls being told by Nayar, “that’s how it started. And I was constantly in touch with him when I was injured before the last IPL. To start from there, to give mental strength. I spent a lot of time with him in Mumbai – from my gym to training to basic cricket practice, he covered multiple facets of the game. Obviously with this injury I couldn’t play certain shots because the ankle wasn’t so free. So how to cover for that, how to prepare for different conditions and grounds…he helped a lot with mental strength and the key to his coaching is communication.”In the 2022 IPL there was bio-bubble also, so it was all the more depressing. Abhishek Nayar played a very important role at that time to bring us together. Not just cricket, but his life traits are also sharp. Just the way he looked at life in general was something amazing for me. He has an answer for almost everything. I used to have deep conversations with him at the time in his room because we couldn’t leave the hotel. Good food, good discussions, watching some inspirational movies, it was tough but as long as you’re understanding that you’re not shifting away from the game, you’ll be fine.”

Rather than just running in to bowl, now I’m thinking about how to pick wickets, dominating through my bowling, so I feel I’m ready back to 100%.Venkatesh Iyer on his continuing evolution as an allrounder

A few months after the 2022 IPL, Iyer joined the MP squad for the SMAT, and Pandit said he wanted to make Iyer a more “versatile” batter by batting him at different positions.”I played just three-four games in Mushtaq Ali last year,” Iyer recalls. “I was batting at No. 4 and 3, and I was supposed to open the next day, but I had that injury. So I was going to bat in all positions in that tournament. This was Chandu sir’s calculative decision, it would be better for the team also. I was very happy when he had said, ‘I’ll provide multiple roles to you, just want to see how you respond in all of them’. That’s what you want as a batsman, how you are maturing in these kinds of situations.”Call it Pandit’s foresight so that Iyer was better prepared for a middle-order role in his next India series, or another one of the astute coach’s strategies for both MP and KKR.Compared to when he made his T20I debut in late 2021 and had to play the finisher’s role while he was originally a top-order batter in domestic cricket, Iyer feels he is much better equipped for the middle order now. He not only has more experience and runs under his belt at different positions now, he has also started bowling full time and is back to being a proper allrounder.KKR coach Chandrakant Pandit (L) has been instrumental in making Venkatesh Iyer more versatile•BCCI”Now I know what it takes to go there (the Indian team), it’s just a matter of time before I make my comeback,” he says confidently. “One good IPL I’ll be there, one good domestic season I’ll be there provided I keep bowling. Once you score a lot of runs in domestic and in IPL, to go back to the Indian team and play any role is…you will get that acceptance. Say, if I score a lot of runs while opening in the IPL, and I go to the Indian team and I know I’m going to play No. 6, that preparation will start there. But for that to happen I need to score runs here and to score big runs I feel batting at the top is extremely important to get maximum balls. Now I know what it is like to prepare to bat at No. 6, 5 or 4. So it doesn’t really matter to me, all I want to do is score big runs so that when I go there, I have the confidence of runs in my arsenal.”Two months after a cracking IPL in 2023, Iyer gradually increased his bowling workload in the nets and was named the Central Zone captain for the Deodhar Trophy. In the sapping heat and humidity of Puducherry, he returned to bowling in competitive cricket after a long wait and took advantage of being the captain to manage his bowling workload. In October he bowled in all five SMAT T20s and in the subsequent 50-over Vijay Hazare Trophy, he started getting close to the full quota of 10 overs. Iyer feels he is now ready to bowl long spells along with some variations in the Ranji Trophy that begins on January 5.”I think I can bowl around 15-20 overs a day,” he says. “NCA had a huge role in my workload management. I worked with Troy Cooley there on my bowling, even Sairaj Bahutule sir was there. They and the trainers paid a lot of attention on my workload. They managed it very well – like heavy bowling on one day, light bowling and training the next day. I think I’m good to bowl long spells in days cricket.”[Full bowling fitness] will come with the volume, as much as I get to bowl in games. But I’m extremely happy with the way I’m approaching my bowling right now. Rather than just running in to bowl, now I’m thinking about how to pick wickets, dominating through my bowling, so I feel I’m ready back to 100%.”I am adding a couple of variations to my bowling. For a player like me it’s very important to be accurate, even if I have two or three variations. I need to ensure that they are landing where I want them to land. I’m really happy that the red-ball season is coming now because red-ball bowling will give you a lot of consistency. With the white ball, you have to bowl a yorker, you might go for a bouncer or a cutter…things like that. Red-ball bowling is about discipline, the muscle memory will work, I’ll be able to land the ball in the right areas. Once I’m confident with the basic ball, then I can play around with it – same line, same length but from a different angle or from a different spot on the crease, just a little slower or faster, things like that. I feel I’m on the right track now.”This red-ball season I want to enjoy and explore my game, I want to bat for long hours. I really want to contribute in terms of batting, bowling, and fielding this season. So, let’s see, this Ranji Trophy wherever I get to bat maybe top of the order, you never know with Chandu sir. He’s very unpredictable, suddenly he’ll call you up in the evening and tell you, ‘Venkatesh, you’re opening tomorrow’. And he’ll give you the proper backing, he’ll give you the confidence to go out there and do it. He knows that if you have the skills, you’ll do it. He always likes to challenge players and I feel when you’re challenged, you’ll always get better.”The last time Iyer played an entire Ranji season was back in 2019-20. It was before his IPL debut, before he burst onto the international scene and before he had turned 25. With seven league games ahead of him, Iyer will hope he climbs the ladder towards another India call-up instead of slipping down the pecking order. Or the stairs.

The Perth Scorchers quick missed graduation because she was making her WBBL debut

Tristan Lavalette27-Nov-2023Returning home from a pre-season trip, Chloe Ainsworth in an impromptu move decided to show off her self-taught skills on the piano at Brisbane Airport.She held court and played a couple of pieces much to the initial amusement of her team-mates and those listening in, who were left impressed by her hidden talent and confidence in expressing it.”I was involved in music growing up and was pretty good at it,” Ainsworth, who turned 18 in September, told ESPNcricinfo. “My team-mates thought it was all pretty funny. It was good to make them laugh.”Related

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The softly-spoken Ainsworth has injected youthful exuberance in Perth Scorchers, who are built around a veteran core and have enjoyed a bounce back season. After failing to make finals last season in a disappointing title defence, Scorchers finished with an 8-6 regular season record to qualify for the finals. They will face either Brisbane Heat or Sydney Thunder in Wednesday’s Eliminator final in a bid to play Adelaide Strikers for the title.Ainsworth has played a big role in her debut WBBL season to spearhead the attack with 15 wickets at an average of 18.00, enough to get her named in the official team of the tournament announced on Monday. She might be mild-mannered off the field, but Ainsworth follows a lineage of quick bowlers.”I have white-line fever,” she laughed, citing former Australia quick Mitchell Johnson as a childhood hero. “I can be very competitive and it just helps me out there being fired up.”She has been able to back up her snarls at batters. Ainsworth has been clocked around 115kph and is poised to eventually hit the 120s. “I think I can get quicker. That’s the aim…to bowl quicker,” she said.

This Chloe Ainsworth is a seriously talented young cricketer#WBBL09 pic.twitter.com/YjoDhtyEg6

— Weber Women's Big Bash League (@WBBL) November 22, 2023

Ainsworth started off as a wicketkeeper in junior cricket before realising she could bowl faster than anyone else. She rose quickly through the ranks and played one match in Australia’s Under-19 World Cup campaign earlier in the year before breaking her thumb.Even though she’s been well down the order for Scorchers and faced only 20 deliveries, Ainsworth can bat and particularly enjoys hitting the ball hard and long. She has the capabilities of being a genuine allrounder, but right now it’s all about her pace bowling.Bustling into the crease, powered by a burly frame, Ainsworth unleashes rockets and she’s already armed with a deadly yorker. She concentrates on pitching the ball up, but has utilised hostile short-pitched bowling to good effect at the traditionally pace friendly WACA ground.Ainsworth can move the ball around making her a tough proposition and an acceptable economy of 7.29 suggests an ability to maintain control. There is work needed to become a more rounded pace bowler, but the foundations have been built.

It would have been nice to celebrate with friends, but I’m committed to cricket. It will be amazing to play in the finals. I’ll be doing everything I can because I’m competitive. I want to win.The WBBL has come before end of school fun for Chloe Ainsworth

“I will need more variations, especially in T20 cricket,” she said. “You need different deliveries to pull out in different situations. I also want to keep learning how to control swing.”But I try to keep things simple. Cricket is cricket. I’m there to take wickets and I’m backed in to do that.”The team’s confidence in Ainsworth was underlined when Scorchers captain Sophie Devine entrusted her to bowl the final over of a nerve-jangling match against defending champions Adelaide Strikers at the WACA.”When there were a few overs left, I looked at the scoreboard and realised that I was going to bowl [the final over]. I was excited,” she said.With Strikers needing 12 runs to chase down a total of 166, Ainsworth was denied a heroic finish by England allrounder Dani Gibson who hit a last ball boundary to win the match. Ainsworth relied on bowling on a length, but it proved predictable for Gibson who clubbed 15 runs in the final over.”It was disappointing to not get the job done. Everyone got around me after the match to make sure I wasn’t upset,” she said. “It’s a learning experience. It’s about being really clear over the plans and how to execute.”Ainsworth burst onto the scene with an impressive WBBL debut against Hobart Hurricanes in Launceston on the same day as her Year 12 graduation.”I had to miss the graduation, but I checked in with my mates on FaceTime after the game so that was at least something,” she said.The WBBL has been a steep learning curve for Chloe Ainsworth•Getty ImagesHer subsequent debut at the WACA netted a three-wicket haul against Hurricanes, including clean bowling star batter Heather Graham with a pearler that knocked out middle stump.Ainsworth’s starring role saw her thrusted in front of the cameras for a post game media engagement along the boundary of the Lillee-Marsh stand, while giddy family and friends over the fence chanted her name with gusto.”My mates were taking the mickey out of me,” she laughed. “It feels weird having attention. I’m not the most out there person, but it’s all part of being a cricketer at this level.”The spotlight still feels rather surreal for Ainsworth, who last week was supposed to be celebrating the end of schooling with friends in a rite of passage for high school graduates in Australia.Instead, as temperatures soared in Perth amid a pre-summer heatwave, she’s been putting in the hard yards in a determined bid to help Scorchers push for a second title in three seasons.”It would have been nice to celebrate with friends, but I’m committed to cricket,” Ainsworth said. “It will be amazing to play in the finals. I’ll be doing everything I can because I’m competitive. I want to win.”That should be music to the ears of Scorchers fans.

He survived a few close calls before showing the mettle that had been missing in his Test-match game

Alagappan Muthu04-Feb-20241:15

Manjrekar: ‘India needed someone to score big and Gill did it’

One way to play spin is to smother it. To reach out to where the ball pitches and squeeze all the life out of it. A lot of batters try it this way. Shubman Gill is one of them.Except something strange happened to start the 21st over. The ball is full, which is usually the invitation that Gill cannot resist. He was supposed to lunge forward. It’s a very black-and-white way of dealing with spin.Shreyas Iyer does it a little differently. He keeps his options open. He doesn’t fall for the length. He accounts for trajectory. Simply by not overcommitting on either foot. There were multiple instances of this on Sunday in Visakhapatnam. It is why he had a strike rate of 56 even though he hit only three boundaries.Related

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Sometimes it is better to let the ball spin. Because at that point, the bowler has no control over it. It’s all you.That’s why the single that took Gill from 27 to 28 seemed like a sign of growth.He was taking throwdowns after stumps on Saturday evening, a time when half the world was still hungover on Jasprit Bumrah. He hadn’t even changed out of his whites. Gill had trained himself to the ground in the lead-up to this game too. During the mandatory practice session on Wednesday, he kept going and going and going, and when he ran out of team-mates to run in and bowl to him, he turned to a couple of net bowlers who couldn’t have been more than half as tall as he is. Dude was doing everything short of offering ritual sacrifice to get back into form. Although, considering the luck he had out there…Shubman Gill and Shreyas Iyer have contrasting methods to play spin•BCCILooking stone dead when a ball from Tom Hartley became best friends with his front pad seven balls into his innings, and needing DRS to realise that he’d actually hit it. That’s how out of form Gill has been, and if it wasn’t for a last-minute, might-as-well kind of review, with the clock running out, a score of 4 would’ve been added to a sequence of 12 innings in which he’d only once gone past 35.He was later saved by umpire’s call when James Anderson seemed to have trapped him in front. That was 4 for 2. And it could have been 21 for 3 had a dream delivery for a left-arm spinner from Hartley got the ticks across the board that it deserved. It came from wide of the crease, angling in, drawing the batter forward, but never letting him reach the pitch. Then it straightened just enough to take the edge but England had placed their first slip wide.It was around this time that Iyer was getting set at the other end and he was doing this thing where he was backing himself against the spin. He was letting balls pitch and do whatever they liked and then he was responding to them in whatever way he liked. This was possible because Visakhapatnam wasn’t turning square. It also wasn’t turning quick. So when he pressed forward, he did so lightly, giving his hands a range of motion that allowed him to milk singles both in front of and behind square. Even when he would commit and run at the bowler, he was still loose enough to not be caught off guard. Shoaib Bashir tried to sneak one down the leg side and get him stumped, but Iyer simply slowed himself down and spread himself out so he would be a bigger target, blocking the ball that threatened him with ignominy.Being loose and being mobile is crucial to being at ease against spin. Gill, though, just kept getting locked up. Until, of course, the first ball of the 21st over when he too took a smaller stride forward to a ball that was noticeably full and by virtue of that he had the room he needed to bring his hands down on top of the ball and use his wrists to decide its fate. Earlier, he was just lunging to straight-bat them, or stepping out to whack them, blocking out all other scoring opportunities.Shubman Gill celebrated his third Test century without much fanfare•Getty ImagesThe stats bear it out beautifully. His 104 off 147 balls included 29 singles and five twos against spin. The only other times he had been that successful at rotating strike were when he had the benefit of two of the flattest pitches in the universe.Of course, this little trick won’t work everywhere. On surfaces with a little more bounce and sharper turn, Gill and for that matter, all other batters will need a better solution because then the gap you leave between yourself and the ball is the difference between being caught at leg slip and staying unbeaten for another ball. Considering the amount of work he’s been putting in behind the scenes, and the way he found himself in a rough patch in the middle of an innings with considerable jeopardy only to will himself out of it, Gill has shown the mettle that was missing in his Test-match game. The challenges that await him in the future may not consume him to the extent they did throughout this series.By the end, he was even having fun, playing the kind of shots seasoned pros do. In the 41st over, he only came down the track at Rehan Ahmed after the legspinner had let the ball go, opening up his hips because that’s what you do against bowlers coming around the wicket to smack them straight down the ground for six. The next ball was a slog sweep because once again, it pitched outside leg and he went low to high because there were no fielders in the deep. Finally, he nailed an against-the-turn flick through midwicket by making sure his feet were nowhere near the swing of his bat. He was in tune with the game now. He wasn’t getting locked up. He was seeing the greys.A Shubman Gill century usually comes with a showman’s bow but all through this innings, he was very stoic. It was as if someone had hit the mute button on him. He barely acknowledged his fifty and seemed to raise his bat upon getting to a hundred only because the crowd – his father was in there watching – wouldn’t let him skate by like that once again. Gill’s smile came back yesterday when he took those four catches. The runs have come today. What does tomorrow hold?

All the records the New Zealand batter smashed during his 137 off 62 balls against Pakistan

Sampath Bandarupalli17-Jan-202416 Sixes in Finn Allen’s 137 off 62 balls in the third T20I against Pakistan in Dunedin, equalling the record for most sixes by a batter in a T20I innings.137 Allen’s score is the highest in T20Is for New Zealand , and the joint-fifth highest overall.6 Sixes Allen hit in 14 balls from Haris Rauf. Only three other batters have hit six sixes off a bowler in a T20I: Yuvraj Singh off Stuart Broad in 2007, Kieron Pollard off Akila Dananjaya in 2021, and Josh Inglis off Ravi Bishnoi in 2023 (where ball-by-ball data is available).611 Number of balls Allen took to complete 1000 runs in T20Is – the third fastest to the milestone behind Suryakumar Yadav (573) and Glenn Maxwell (604).135.39 The cumulative strike rate of all the other batters in the match, apart from Allen, who scored at 220.96. The other New Zealand batters scored at a strike rate of only 127.58 (74 off 58 balls).