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With or without Andre Russell, West Indies seem a batsman short – and they’ll have to find a way to beat Bangladesh to keep their World Cup alive

Jarrod Kimber in Taunton16-Jun-20192:55

Ganga: WI need more specialist players in their side

The big three seem to have already pre-ordered their semi-final berths. And so many see the rest of the round robin as a chance for one more team to slip into fourth. Most believe New Zealand is the most obvious team for that. New Zealand have won three games, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, and their biggest challenge should’ve been India, but that game was abandoned because of rain. This means New Zealand are unbeaten after four games with seven points.West Indies have played four games, accruing three points, but they’ve played Australia and England, had a washout against South Africa, and destroyed Pakistan.Within the camp, West Indies are looking at their final five games as the easier part of the draw. While many may have written them off after a poor show against England, they still really believe they are a chance for that final semi-final spot.When asked about this, Jason Holder diplomatically said, “Interesting you said easy teams. I don’t feel any of the teams are easy, but we may – at this present time with five games left, I think the ball’s in our court, we’ve just got to be consistent. We’ve got to play some consistent cricket going into the back half of this tournament.”There is no doubt when you look at the fixtures for the two teams, New Zealand have had a dream run, and West Indies have been unlucky. They ended up playing England on the tournament’s biggest playing surface – helping their opposition. Then they lost the toss and batted first when it was the only time that bowlers would get any help. Against South Africa, they had them 29 for 2 when the rain came, and on South Africa’s recent form, you’d have expected them to struggle from there. And West Indies bounced out Australia’s top order, before allowing Steven Smith to put on a competitive total, and being Mitchell Starc-ed after a good start in their chase.Andre Russell has always had the heart – but does he have the knees?•Getty Images

That West Indies beat England twice at home, and competed with Australia so well in this tournament, it’s clear this is a quality team. But at the moment they find themselves four points behind New Zealand, and equal with their opponents for their next game, Bangladesh.With Bangladesh beating West Indies seven of the last nine meetings, it’s not an ideal must-win match. While it’s not uncommon for teams to have good records against the West Indies of recent times, this will give a confident Bangladesh more belief. They are also use to playing with them in the BPL, so they won’t be star struck by the bigger names, as they’ve been their team mates. Mashrafe Mortaza talked about the recent record of Bangladesh against West Indies, “So we take it positively that, as we said, the matchup, I think our bowling has been fantastic against them last two, three series we played against them. So I think we have to take this positive stuff and the ground and do our best.”West Indies also have question marks over their most important player, Andre Russell.They still seem wedded to Russell, who they appear to believe is the key to them winning this tournament. But he’s not completed 10 overs in a match and has spent as much time limping from the field as bowling on it. Holder said, “We’re keeping him in cotton wool until tomorrow. I saw him yesterday. Saw him this morning as well, and he’s progressing quite nicely yes, you know. We’ll have a final answer with him tomorrow morning.”But Taunton is a small town, you wonder if there is enough cotton wool to protect Russell’s glass knees. He didn’t train on Sunday, and he trained extensively before the England game – which he played in.With or without Russell, West Indies seem one batsman short. And that means batsman, not hitter. Nicholas Pooran’s been excellent in this World Cup, but he has never made a professional hundred, and he’s batting at four. No other team in this tournament is taking such a risk in their top four. On a green-looking Taunton wicket, the lack of batting smarts that affected them at Southampton might come into play again. The first batsmen in the nets today was Darren Bravo. His experience and skill could be important for this game.And if they don’t beat Bangladesh, their hopes of a semi-final spot are virtually gone.

It does not take much to get fans excited about a possible return to form for the Lancashire prodigy

ESPNcricinfo staff06-Apr-2019It may have been against a bunch of students, and in a match lacking first-class status, but it does not take much to get England fans excited about a possible return to form for Haseeb Hameed. Having reaching his double-hundred on Friday, Hameed was finally dismissed on the second morning of Lancashire’s warm-up match against Loughborough MCCU for 218.The Loughborough attack had a grand total of 11 first-class wickets between them, but Hameed showed the commitment to ruthless accumulation that marked him out as a teenager, batting for more than six hours and facing 336 deliveries after coming in at No. 3.Picked by England at 19, Hameed’s form subsequently fell away dramatically. After a dreadful 2018 summer, when he averaged 9.70 from 17 innings for Lancashire – with a top score of 31 – his efforts at the university ground in Loughborough will encourage the hope that he can interest the selectors again.England’s Test team remains unsettled, with little certainty around the likely top three to face Australia during the Ashes later this summer. Keaton Jennings, Hameed’s Lancashire team-mate, was dropped in the Caribbean, before making an unsuccessful return in the third Test against West Indies, while Rory Burns averages 25.00 and Joe Denly has only played two Tests. Any signs that Hameed could push his case would doubtless be welcomed.Hameed was seemingly destined for great things when he broke into the Test team in 2016, becoming the fifth-youngest man to debut for England. He scored two half-centuries in six innings against India before a hand injury ended his tour early, but then suffered a prolonged slump that saw him slip out of contention as Jennings and then Mark Stoneman stepped in to partner the now-retired Alastair Cook.Lancashire are due to open their Championship campaign against Middlesex at Lord’s next week, when Jennings will also be looking to hit the ground running against an attack that could feature a pair of potential Ashes candidates in Steven Finn and Toby Roland-Jones.

Conscious of the need to compete with other T20 leagues, Cricket Australia will explore having separate funds to encourage the biggest names to sign up

Daniel Brettig18-Feb-2019A ring-fenced marquee fund to attract overseas players to the Big Bash League is under strong consideration by Cricket Australia as the governing body begins its debrief of a tournament that expanded enormously in 2018-19 while also raising numerous red flags in terms of crowds, broadcast audiences and scheduling.BBL clubs and broadcasters are both adamant that more needs to be done to bring in major names such as AB de Villiers, Eoin Morgan and Andre Russell in an increasingly competitive global T20 marketplace, with each group raising the issue in recent weeks.ESPNcricinfo understands that CA will explore the option of creating a separate marquee fund for overseas players, outside the general BBL salary cap of AUD1.77 million and similar to that used by the A-League in concert with Fox Sports. This would serve to close the yawning gap that has opened up in terms of potential remuneration for players coming to Australia relative to the Bangladesh Premier League and Pakistan Super League, to name but two of the competitions on the circuit.ALSO READ: Big Bash team of the tournamentWhile any such fund is unlikely to be large enough as to compete dollar for dollar with other leagues that are defined by privately-run franchises and the deep pockets of many of their owners, the ability to offer international marquee names a contractual figure somewhat closer to those available elsewhere will bring in other pull factors such as Australia’s weather and lifestyle that had attracted numerous high profile players in the past.The questions of how the marquee fund would work, and how players would be distributed among the clubs – perhaps via the use of a draft based on finishing positions from the previous tournament – remain to be answered. CA’s previous use of extra marketing funds to sweeten deals for the likes of Shane Warne and Kevin Pietersen has been raised by clubs, with the qualification that any new fund must apply more equitably to all.

The BBL debrief

How to attract more of the best overseas players
Length of the tournament
The best structure for the finals
Ensure high-quality pitches

Other areas in which the BBL will be the subject of plenty of review discussion will include its 60-day running time, a stretch that many players and coaches thought too long relative to the number of matches, not least the coach of the champion Melbourne Renegades team, Andrew McDonald.”I think I have formed some strong views around it,” McDonald told Radio. “I think it went too long in terms of time frame. We saw it sort of peter out coming to the business end. I think it lifted again for the Grand Final but the semi-finals I think were sort of somehow lost. If you weren’t probably working in the industry you didn’t realise that they were on.”I think the 14 games was magnificent. I think the opportunity that creates for the younger players, we see it in the IPL as well, where younger Indian players get an opportunity throughout a 14-game season, I think we saw that with the younger Australian players coming in, the Sam Harpers, the Mackenzie Harveys for us, and I think that’s great that those guys are getting opportunities and that will accelerate their development and fast track them where they need to get to.ALSO READ: Renegade Boyce atones for unceremonious Hurricanes exit“I think there’s a lot of positives that go with 14 games. We had a couple of seven, eight-day breaks that didn’t make a lot of sense at the back end and made it difficult really to be fair. We sent players home, guys were going back to their home states for three or four days and coming back in. So we would have liked that accelerated a little bit at the back end.”Kim McConnie, the head of the BBL, said ahead of a final watched by 40,816 spectators and a combined average broadcast audience of 1.14 million that the Sydney and Melbourne markets both needed more attention. “The reason we shifted to a full home and away season was to make sure we are a sport for all Australians, and in order to be a sport for all Australians, you need to play in all parts of Australia,” McConnie told .”We also knew that it wasn’t going to be about average attendances. We also knew that it was going to take fans a while to catch up…that we’d end up with smaller crowds at some games. And we’re OK with that. It’s going to take us a couple of seasons to push that back up. Because this is only our eighth year, we’ve got the luxury of time.”The challenges we see are in our two-team markets. As we look at it, there are a couple of isolated areas where in big major cities, we’re just competing against so much more, it’s a little bit harder for us to pick up that momentum. There’s a little bit more work to do in Sydney and Melbourne to build the fan base back up again.”There is also a strong lobby by numerous clubs to change the finals series format from two semis and a final to a system whereby the top two teams get a double chance. “The finals is one of the things that we’re going to review first,” McConnie said. “We’re going to see if this finals structure is the best structure. There’s definitely momentum for the top team getting a second chance.”

A majority of county chairmen want the Blast to be expanded as part of the changes to English professional cricket from 2020

Matt Roller21-Aug-2018The Vitality Blast group stage could be extended from 14 to 16 games because county chairmen are lobbying to rid the competition of its existing uneven format and maximise revenue in the process.Since 2014, each side has played seven home games in the group stages, meaning that they miss out on hosting one team, and counties are pushing for change both for competitive and commercial reasons.The change would likely come into effect for the 2020 season, when the Blast will become the secondary short-form competition in English domestic cricket after the introduction of The Hundred.ESPNCricinfo understands that the vast majority of counties would support a change to eight home games per season, with a majority of 12 required.For commercial reasons, the game counties miss is not identified as one of their most lucrative with derby matches gaining particular protection.For example, Middlesex play their London derby against Surrey home and away every year, but have missed a home fixture against Glamorgan and Kent every other year since the current format’s introduction.Other traditional rivalries – Lancashire v Yorkshire, Gloucestershire v Somerset, and Sussex v Hampshire – are also played twice every season.The group stage of the domestic twenty-over competition did last 16 games in its previous guise as the Friends Life T20 in 2010 and 2011, when the schedule was widely criticised for being too long. Some games were played in front of extremely sparse midweek crowds in those seasons.However, attendances have continued to rise in recent seasons – over 900,000 people went to a domestic T20 game in 2017 – and counties are keen to host an additional game each.There had been suggestions that the Blast’s group stage would be cut to 10 games, with three groups of six instead of two groups of nine, from 2020 onwards, but it is unlikely that such a change would find support among counties for whom T20 cricket is a vital source of income.The Blast would start in mid-May – around six weeks earlier than it did this year – and run through to mid-July, with the One Day Cup expected to follow, running alongside the Hundred.One competition must suffer a fall in standard when The Hundred raids the country’s best players for the eight-team format and the working party set up to make proposals as to the structure of the game, under the chairmanship of Leicestershire chief executive Wasim Khan, seems poised to conclude that the 50-over competition should take the hit.Meanwhile, the prospect of a conference format being introduced for the County Championship is understood to have diminished sharply.It had previously been reported that counties backed the idea of removing the current system of promotion and relegation in favour of three groups of six followed by play-offs between teams in different groups, but support for the idea has waned.

A round-up of the Ranji Trophy Group B matches on October 30, 2015

ESPNcricinfo staff30-Oct-2015
ScorecardFile photo – Jiwanjot Singh was the only batsman to pass 50 on either side•ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Seventeen wickets fell on the opening day in Patiala even as Punjab secured the first-innings lead.Electing to bat, Andhra were shot out for 80 in 45 overs, with only opener DB Prasanth (33) passing 20. The visitors slumped to 22 for 3 and never recovered from the poor start, as Punjab’s spin trio of captain Gurkeerat Singh (11-5-14-4), legspinner Sarabjit Ladda, who took five wickets in the last game, and left-armer Rajwinder Singh picked up eight wickets between them. Seamer Siddarth Kaul claimed the other wickets to fall.Punjab started well in their reply with opener Jiwanjot Singh and Uday Kaul putting on 58 runs for the second wicket. But after Uday was trapped lbw by Prasanth, who took three wickets with his leg breaks, Punjab slid from 73 for 1 to 119 for 7. Jiwanjot resisted for more than two and a half hours before being bowled by Prasanth with less than four overs to go for stumps.Andhra vice-captain Prasanth said the surface was “underprepared”, but wasn’t particularly difficult to bat on. “It’s rank turner obviously, but if you have confidence on your defence you can easily negotiate,” Prasanth told ESPNcricinfo. What the pitch did today it will do the same thing tomorrow. There is not much cracks… it is not opening at all. We will fight hard tomorrow to get into the game.”
ScorecardB Indrajith’s second first-class hundred held Tamil Nadu’s innings together after they were inserted in Delhi.Tamil Nadu didn’t have the best of starts, as opener B Aparajith was bowled by seamer Anureet Singh in the seventh over with the team’s score on 6. But, captain Abhinav Mukund and Dinesh Karthik put on 61 runs before seamer Ranjit Mali dismised him
Abhinav fell one short of his 50 and then Vijay Shankar was dismissed by Anureet to reduce the visitors to 101 for 4.Indrajith, coming in at No.5, first put on 79 runs for the fifth wicket with R Prasanna before raising 78 runs in the company of J Kousik. Indrajith remained unbeaten at stumps while Anureet picked up three wickets.Tamil Nadu vice-captain Indrajith said the pitch was even-paced and good to bat on despite some movement off the surface throughout the day. “It tends to ease out once you settle down and is good for the batsmen. [A total of] 350 is ideal, but we would like to get more than 400,” he said. “Whenever they bowled short, the run-scoring opportunities opened up and it made things easy for me.”Indrajith said there were a couple of “soft dismissals”, but credited Anureet with bowling consistently well through the day.
ScorecardUttar Pradesh recovered from a wobbly beginning to post a decent total after electing to bat in Valsad.After the visitors were reduced to 87 with 4, with Umang Sharma and Mohammad Saif being dismissed in the space of two overs, Himanshu Asnora and captain Eklavya Dwivedi added 61 runs. After Dwivedi and Ali Murtaza were removed by Jasprit Bumrah, Asnora put on 58 runs. Asnora then went on to raise 43 runs for the ninth wicket in the company of Saurabh Kumar, and remained unbeaten.Rush Kalaria picked up three wickets for Gujarat.
ScorecardBaroda’s bowlers stifled Madhya Pradesh after the visitors opted to bat in Vadodara. Madhya Pradesh were reduced to 4 for 2 in the fourth over after both the openers, Aditya Shrivastava and Jalaj Saxena, were dismissed for ducks.Captain Devendra Bundela and Rajat Patidar, however, added 73 before Bhargav Bhatt had Bundela lbw. Patidar and Harpreet Singh added 50 runs for the fourth wicket. Swapnil Singh then struck twice to reduce Madhya Pradesh to 127 for 5 before the middle-order showed some resistance.