Says “it felt like a debut again,” after his 53 off 40 balls leads England to victory

Matt Roller21-Sep-20220:29

Hales on his return: ‘Three years is a long wait’

Alex Hales described his England comeback as “a dream come true” after his anchoring half-century led them to a six-wicket win against Pakistan at Karachi’s National Stadium on Tuesday night.Hales had not played international cricket for three-and-a-half years after revelations about a second failed test for recreational drugs caused him to be axed from the 2019 ODI World Cup squad on the eve of the tournament, a period which led him to doubt whether he would ever represent his country again.Related

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But following a change of captain, coach and management, he won a recall to their T20I squad for the Pakistan tour and the upcoming T20 World Cup in Australia as a replacement for the injured Jonny Bairstow. And, he marked his return to the side with 53 off 40 balls in a convincing win.”It’s a very special feeling to be back out on the park for England,” Hales said. “Three years felt like forever. To go out and score fifty on my return, in a winning team, is the stuff dreams are made of.”Guys have said in the past that it was never down to cricket why I missed the three years. That was never in doubt. But there were always nerves and pressure coming back after three years. It felt like a debut again… it feels like a dream come true to come back and contribute with a half-century in a winning team.”Hales’ years in exile on the T20 franchise circuit were characterised by belligerent starts in the powerplay and dominance through the leg side, but his innings on Tuesday night was very different. He struggled for strike early on and had to grind out his runs, scoring three-quarters of them through the off side as Pakistan looked to hide the ball wide outside his off stump.He slapped the second legal delivery he faced through covers for a four but battled to 38 off 32 after 14 overs – reprieved by Shan Masood at wide long-on when he was on 28 – before cutting loose towards the back end. A flick off his pads brought him a 39-ball half-century, his joint-slowest in T20 internationals before he miscued the next ball to mid-off with the target in sight.Alex Hales struck 53 off 40 balls on return to England colours•AFP/Getty Images”It was all about getting over the line,” Hales added. “I wasn’t quite at my fluent best but to get fifty and steer us in the right direction meant a lot. There are lots of times in T20 where you don’t quite feel on top of your game and you’re a little bit scratchy.”But the deeper you take it, the more fluent the innings becomes. I got a couple of boundaries away towards the end and killed the game with Harry [Brook].”I was trying to hit boundaries, it just didn’t quite happen tonight for some reason. I didn’t have quite as much strike as I would have liked. I didn’t quite manage to get going in the powerplay, but that can happen. I still managed to dig deep and steer us in the right direction for the win.”Moeen Ali, deputising as captain for the injured Jos Buttler during the Karachi leg of this tour, was delighted with Hales’ innings. “For someone to come in after such a long time, I’m sure he would have been really nervous,” he said, “so to play the way he did showed how good he is and why he is one of the best openers in the country.”Hales is hugely experienced in Karachi – he had played at the National Stadium 15 times in the PSL – and was anticipating a skiddy pitch, but said that the pitch had been “slower and lower than what we’re used to” on Tuesday night.”Sometimes it can be 200 par here,” he told the PCB’s YouTube channel. “But it was on the slightly slower and lower side. I’ve been lucky to have played in front of full houses here before and it’s just outstanding. It’s one of the best places to play cricket in the world and the fans really put on a show tonight.”It has been a long time between drinks, but Hales knows that a strong showing in Pakistan should be enough for him to edge out Phil Salt in the race to open the batting with Buttler at the T20 World Cup – a tournament he suggested England are approaching with some optimism, despite a quiet year in this format so far.”There are guys stepping up and putting pressure on guys who are in the team,” Hales said. “We’re quietly confident heading into the World Cup. Guys look like they’re in a good space and playing good cricket and there’s good, healthy competition amongst the group which should help us get better.”

Where sides have stumbled, it has been on selection

Ian Chappell06-Nov-2022Australian World Cups when played this early in the season are generally exciting because the pitches give bowlers a chance. Conditions have to be taken into account, and on seam-friendly pitches it’s more difficult to score quickly early. A higher net run rate is often achieved by having skilful players at the crease later in the innings.Upsets and the weather always play an important role in the excitement of T20, but cricket is a better game when the bowlers are a feature of the entertainment. The good sides that bowled well have prevailed.Another important point in the round-robin section is to win by a decent margin, but if you lose, make it a small defeat.Related

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It was the huge first-up loss to New Zealand that caused Australia’s run-rate to plummet and eventually bring them heartache. However, a look at the overall results shows that Australia’s bowling was their Achilles’ heel.While a big defeat is more unexpected than an upset, it is too simple to blame Australia’s predicament on one huge loss. Their selection during the series was puzzling and reflected an uncertainty about their best combination.Selectors need to be careful about a player’s success in domestic tournaments. Australia suffered on this count and found out it pays to test players before a World Cup to ensure they can succeed against the best opposition.New Zealand and South Africa prospered on the back of very good bowling. In particular, South Africa’s fast bowling, spearheaded by Anrich Nortje, has been their strength. However, their sometimes fragile batting and a reputation for imploding in vital World Cup matches make them a dicey proposition in the semi-finals.New Zealand continued to prosper in a World Cup by backing a familiar formula – they fielded brilliantly and competed at every turn. They added to the formula with the exhilarating batting power of Finn Allen and Glenn Phillips. If this World Cup follows a similar pattern to previous encounters, New Zealand’s steadiness under pressure and South Africa’s well-documented ability to crumble will play a part.While India, after a hectic win over rivals Pakistan, have progressed to the knockout phase, their bowling and selection are a concern. The exclusion of Rishabh Pant is inexcusable. If you ask opponents about dangerous players, his name will always be high on the list. Another factor in Pant’s favour is his ability to take an attack apart at any time during the innings, not just at the death. If there’s any further doubt about his selection, Pant’s keeping is easily the best in the Indian squad.It has been shown that an accumulator is important under Australian conditions, as proved by Virat Kohli of India and Kane Williamson of New Zealand. Although Kohli is the more accomplished six-hitter, Williamson did a job for New Zealand by ensuring they had stability in the innings while their enforcers hammered away.Kohli’s ability to score heavily from traditional cricket shots confirms his value as a batter in any format. His mantra to not to let fancy shots infiltrate his Test game should be heeded by all cricketers. The odd player like England captain Jos Buttler are endowed with the ability to play fancy shots regularly, but his capabilities aren’t shared by many. Buttler manipulates the field beautifully and also has the power to post big scores, but it’s telling that in Australia his innings built to a peak.England’s spin bowling hasn’t been convincing and they need to improve in the semi-finals. Nevertheless, in a tight finish, the steady nerves of Sam Curran’s accurate medium pace will be important; he has been one of England’s unsung heroes.The Australian World Cup has provided the usual T20 upsets and has shown the value of bowlers on friendly surfaces. The in-form teams have fared well but the knockout stage is hard to predict, confirming that T20 cricket loves upsets.

India’s total, meanwhile, is the lowest in an ODI innings to include a double-hundred

Sampath Bandarupalli18-Jan-2023208 Shubman Gill’s score in Hyderabad is now the highest against New Zealand in ODIs. The previous highest was Sachin Tendulkar’s unbeaten 186 in 1999, also in Hyderabad.23y 132d Gill’s age coming into the first ODI. He is now the youngest player to score a double-hundred in men’s ODIs. The previous youngest was Ishan Kishan, who set the record with his 210 against Bangladesh last month at the age of 24 years and 145 days.19 Innings needed for Gill to complete 1000 runs in ODIs. He is now the joint-second fastest to the milestone alongside Imam-ul-Haq. Fakhar Zaman is the quickest to the mark, having got there in 18 innings. Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan (24 innings) were previously the quickest Indians to 1000 ODI runs.349 for 8 India’s total in Hyderabad, the lowest total in ODIs to feature a double-century. The previous lowest was 372 for 2 by West Indies against Zimbabwe during the 2015 World Cup, when Chris Gayle scored 215.2 Batters to score a double-century in ODIs when no other batter reached fifty in the innings, including Gill in Hyderabad. The first was Martin Guptill, who scored 237* against West Indies in 2015 – the second-highest score was Ross Taylor’s 42.174 Runs difference between India’s top two scores in the Hyderabad ODI – Gill’s 208 and Rohit Sharma’s 34. It is the third-highest difference between the top two scores in an ODI innings. The highest is 198, when Rohit scored 264 against Sri Lanka in 2014. Virat Kohli’s 66 was the second-highest score in that innings.

There are very good reasons for Indian quicks doing better in India than visiting quicks; it’s got to do with angles and trajectories and much else

Karthik Krishnaswamy25-Feb-2023David Warner came to India with a point to prove. His previous two tours of the country had brought him 388 runs in eight Tests, at an average of 24.25. There were question marks over his game against spin, particularly against his old nemesis R Ashwin.Warner’s tour has ended, prematurely, and his average in India has dropped further, to 21.78, but while he has struggled against spin, he has only been out to it once in three innings. The larger share of the wounds he is carrying back to Australia – a concussion, a fractured elbow and two dismissals – have been inflicted by India’s fast bowlers.Mohammed Shami has dismissed Warner twice, both times in a clinical manner that has homed in on an old weakness – a lack of footwork, and consequently a tendency for his bat to come down at an angle while defending good-length balls angling into him from right-arm around.Related

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Both times, Shami homed in on a top-of-off-stump sort of line and length. Both times, he pinned Warner to the crease. In Nagpur, the ball kept going with the angle into Warner, more or less, and bowled him off the thigh pad, beating the inside edge of his bat as it sliced down from gully to mid-on. In Delhi, the ball straightened off the deck, and kissed the outside edge as Warner’s bat sliced across the line in similar manner.Two classic Shami dismissals, in a classic Shami series. Over the first two Tests, he’s taken seven wickets at an average of 14.42, bowling only 30 overs but taking a wicket every 26 balls.Mohammed Siraj hasn’t taken a wicket since getting Usman Khawaja lbw with his first ball of the series, but he’s only bowled 18 overs, and has looked extremely awkward to face at times, particularly when he tormented Warner with the short ball in Delhi.As a combination, India’s quicks have averaged 20.12 over this Border-Gavaskar series. Pat Cummins and Scott Boland, meanwhile, have combined to average 51.00.Two Tests is a small sample size, of course, and batters have achieved fairly similar control percentages against Shami (79.0), Siraj (80.6), Cummins (80.6) and Boland (81.4), suggesting that there may be a degree of randomness to the skewed averages.But the skewed averages have been par for course in nearly every home series India have played over the last decade. It’s one thing to induce uncertainty, and another to translate uncertainty into wicket-taking opportunities.In five of India’s last seven home series, their fast bowlers have collectively averaged below 21. In each of those five series, the opposition quicks have averaged over 35.How they have done it is partly down to home advantage, and of bowling in a style that heightens their threat on lower-bounce pitches. Shami (20.63), Siraj (22.85), Jasprit Bumrah (15.64) and Umesh Yadav (24.71) all average below 25 at home since the start of 2013. Skiddiness, in one way or another, defines all of them.What exactly do we mean when we call a fast bowler skiddy? There’s more to it, but at the simplest level it’s all about geometry. Shami, by definition, releases the ball at a significantly shallower angle than the 6’5″ Cummins does to hit the same spot on the pitch. The ball comes off the pitch at a shallower angle too, which means Shami can threaten the stumps from a wider range of lengths than Cummins. It’s why batters are so often rooted to the crease by Shami deliveries that uproot their stumps.Skiddiness from shorter lengths is also awkward to face, as David Warner found out in Delhi•Getty ImagesIn South Africa last year, the uniformly skiddy nature of India’s pace attack became a disadvantage on pitches where the ball that climbed from a length was the biggest threat to batters. Catches at gully and short leg were likelier occurrences than bowled and lbw, and South Africa’s quicks put their considerable height advantage to telling use to engineer Test wins in Johannesburg and Cape Town.Tall, hit-the-deck quicks tend to prosper in bouncier conditions, and Australia and South Africa have always had an abundant supply of that sort of bowler. India haven’t always had an assembly line churning out world-class skiddy fast bowlers, but they have had one over the last decade.India’s skiddiness advantage is most apparent in how well their fast bowlers attack the stumps: 139 of their 253 wickets in home Tests since the start of 2013 have been bowled or lbw. That’s nearly 55%. Visiting teams’ fast bowlers have taken 237 wickets, out of which only 93 – or 39% – have been bowled or lbw.But skiddiness is also awkward to face from shorter lengths. The short ball comes off the pitch quicker and at a lower height than expected, and tends to cramp the batter for room. When Siraj hit Warner on the elbow and the head in Delhi, it was evident that he had tried to play the pull both times with his elbows tucked in rather than with a full extension of the arms.Putting batters in these sorts of positions can create genuine wicket-taking chances. Since the start of 2013, according to ESPNcricinfo’s data, India’s fast bowlers have taken 75 wickets from short and short-of-good-length balls in home Tests, at an average of 22.49. In the same time, visiting quicks have taken 71 wickets from these lengths while averaging 40.73.In Indian conditions, fast bowlers usually only operate in short bursts, whether the ball is new or old. This can be a mixed blessing. You can bowl flat-out, knowing that the spinners will be back soon to take over the workload, but you also know you have a limited window to make an impact in. It takes an incredible amount of skill and intelligence to create chances over these short bursts. Zaheer Khan did it frequently in his pomp, and over the last decade, his successors have taken it to a new level as a collective.For the visiting batter, then, there’s no respite. If Ashwin, Jadeja and Axar don’t get you, Shami and Siraj probably will.

And how many times has a bowler gone wicketless in the first innings and taken a five-for in the second innings of his debut Test?

Steven Lynch06-Jun-2023In Ireland’s second innings at Lord’s, both the No. 8 and No. 9 reached 80. How often has this happened in the same Test innings? asked Michael McKenzie from Ireland

Ireland’s fightback at Lord’s last week, which at least staved off the innings defeat, owed much to Andy McBrine, who made 86 not out from No. 8, and No. 9 Mark Adair, who hit 88. This turns out to be only the sixth time both Nos. 8 and 9 have reached 80 in the same Test innings.Neither of Ireland’s batters escaped the eighties, which hadn’t happened before; in all the other cases, at least one of the players made it to three figures. In the first, in the Ashes Test in Adelaide in 1907-08, debutant Roger Hartigan scored 116 from No. 8, and Clem Hill 160 from No. 9 for Australia. Hill usually went in much higher up but had been ill during the match.The only other instance of both Nos. 8 and 9 scoring centuries in a Test innings came in Bulawayo in 2017-18, when Shane Dowrich made 103 and Jason Holder 110 for West Indies against Zimbabwe.Against Ireland, Josh Tongue took a five-for in the second innings of his Test debut, having not taken a wicket in the first. How unusual is this? asked Kevin Matthews from England

The Worcestershire fast bowler Josh Tongue had figures of 0 for 40 and 5 for 66 on his Test debut, against Ireland at Lord’s last week.Tongue is only the tenth man to follow a wicketless first innings on debut with a five-for or better in the second. It seems to be something of an English specialty, as six of the previous nine times this happened also involved England bowlers: Christopher Heseltine (1895-96), Wally Hammond (1927-28), James Langridge (1933), Jim Smith (1934-35), Ken Shuttleworth (1970-71), and Adil Rashid (2015-16).The three from other countries were Australia’s Albert Trott (1894-95), and the South African pair of Cuan McCarthy (1948-49) and Lance Klusener (1996-97). Both Trott and Klusener took eight wickets apiece in the second innings, after failing to strike in the first. We should also give an honourable mention to Australia’s
Simon Katich, who took 0 for 75 and 6 for 65 in his second Test (against Zimbabwe in 2003-04), having not bowled in his first.Between them, Kumar Sangakkara and Tillakaratne Dilshan scored three of the eight centuries made in the 2012-13 Galle Test between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh•AFPChris Gayle once carried his bat in a T20 international. How many others have done this? asked Mitchell McCarron from Jamaica

Chris Gayle is the only opener to carry his bat in a T20I innings (by which I mean open and remain unbeaten in an all-out innings, not just bat through the 20 overs). Gayle scored 63 not out of West Indies’ 101 against Sri Lanka in the semi-final of the T20 World Cup at The Oval in 2009.Arthur Kyobe carried his bat for 51 of Uganda’s 109 in a tie against Scotland in Nairobi in January 2010, before such matches were automatically given official international status. And there have been three further instances in other senior T20 games: by Sanjaya Rodrigo (16 not out in a total of 85) for Ragama against Bloomfield in a Sri Lanka T20 Cup match in Colombo in October 2005, Ankit Yadav (54 not out/107) for Odisha against Vidarbha in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy game in Indore in March 2013, and the Pakistan international Mansoor Amjad (52 not out/131, after earlier taking 4 for 18) for Galle against Badureliya in the Sri Lankan T20 tournament in Colombo in January 2020.I spotted that a Championship match at Taunton in 2007 included eight centuries. Was this a record for a first-class match? asked Andy Morrison from England

The match you’re talking about was the County Championship game between Somerset and Middlesex in Taunton in April 2007. Middlesex declared at 600 for 4, with centuries for Owais Shah, Billy Godleman and David Nash, but Somerset replied with a county-record 850 for 7, which included 315 from Justin Langer and single centuries for James Hildreth, Cameron White and Peter Trego. In the time remaining before the draw was agreed, Ed Smith reached three figures and Middlesex got to 209 for 2.Eight centuries is a record for any English first-class match; there have been six other matches worldwide with eight each, including two Tests – West Indies vs South Africa in Antigua in 2005, and Sri Lanka vs Bangladesh in Galle in 2012-13.But there have been two first-class matches that contained nine individual centuries, both of them in India: a Ranji Trophy semi-final between Bombay and Maharashtra in Poona in 1948-49, and the Duleep Trophy final between West Zone and South Zone in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1986-87.This week’s World Test Championship final is being played in England, yet England are not in it. How many Tests have been played here without England in? asked George Campbell from England

The World Test Championship final between Australia and India, which is scheduled to start at The Oval on Wednesday, will be the 548th Test match played in England and Wales (three have been staged in Cardiff). This will be only the seventh not to feature England. The others were the three matches between Australia and South Africa in the 1912 Triangular Tournament, two matches between Pakistan and Australia in 2010, and the inaugural WTC final, in which New Zealand beat India, in Southampton in June 2021.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

Stats highlights from RCB’s thumping 112-run victory against Rajasthan Royals in Jaipur

Sampath Bandarupalli14-May-202359 Rajasthan Royals’ total against Royal Challengers Bangalore is the third lowest in the history of IPL.ESPNcricinfo Ltd10.3 The length of Royals’ innings against RCB, the second shortest all-out innings in the IPL. RCB had lasted only 9.4 overs when they were dismissed for 49 in 2017.112 Royals’ margin of defeat, their first by more than 100 runs. Their previous biggest defeat was against KKR in 2021, when they lost by 86 runs.ESPNcricinfo Ltd4 RCB’s wins by a margin of 100-plus runs in the IPL, the most for any team. Only one other IPL team has won by 100-plus margins more than once – Mumbai Indians (2). All of RCB’s previous wins by 100-plus runs were in Bengaluru.30 Number of wickets RCB have taken in the powerplay so far this season. It is already their best performance in this phase, surpassing 25 powerplay wickets in 2013 and 2018. Gujarat Titans are a distant second with 20 powerplay wickets so far in IPL 2023.4 RCB’s wins in afternoon games this season, a 100% record while batting first. They successfully defended totals of 189 and 171 against Royals, and 174 against Delhi Capitals and Punjab Kings.ESPNcricinfo Ltd121 Number of innings Faf du Plessis has taken to score 4000 runs in the IPL. He is the fourth quickest to reach the milestone in terms of innings, behind KL Rahul (105), Chris Gayle (112) and David Warner (114). Du Plessis is also the fourth overseas player to complete 4000 runs after Warner (6255), AB de Villiers (5162) and Gayle (4965).

And did Yashasvi Jaiswal have the highest score for an opener on Test debut?

Steven Lynch18-Jul-2023In Dominica, R Ashwin bowled Tagenarine Chanderpaul, having already dismissed his father in a Test. How many people have achieved this double? asked Ahson Atif from India, among others

India’s R Ashwin completed this rare feat by bowling Tagenarine Chanderpaul in the first Test against West Indies in Roseau last week; he’d dismissed Tagenarine’s father, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, four times in Tests in 2011 and 2013.Ashwin was the fifth bowler to dismiss a father and a son in a Test. The previous two also involved the Chanderpauls: Mitchell Starc of Australia, and the South African offspinner Simon Harmer have also accounted for both. The first two cases involved the New Zealanders Lance and Chris Cairns, who were both dismissed by Ian Botham and Wasim Akram.Did Yashasvi Jaiswal break the record for the highest score by an opener on Test debut? asked Priyanth Kumar from India

The Indian opener Yashasvi Jaiswal scored 171 on his Test debut against West Indies in Roseau last week. He was the 17th Indian to score a century on Test debut, and the third opener.The highest score by any opener on debut is 201 not out, by Sri Lanka’s Brendon Kuruppu, against New Zealand in Colombo in 1986-87. The only other double-century – and the highest by a left-hander – was Devon Conway’s 200 for New Zealand against England at Lord’s in 2021.Next, and the highest for India, comes the 187 of Shikhar Dhawan, against Australia in Mohali in 2012-13.Earlier this summer Pat Cummins won three successive Tests after losing the toss. Was this a record? asked Rahul Sompura on Facebook

Although Pat Cummins lost the toss in the World Test Championship final against India and the first two Ashes Tests, Australia won all three matches. This turns out to be the 15th occasion a captain has lost the toss but won three Tests in a row. There are five cases of four – by Australia’s Warwick Armstrong (starting in 1921), Viv Richards (1988-89), Stephen Fleming (2005-06), Graeme Smith (2008-09) and Steven Smith (2017-18). But leading the way, with five successive Tests won after losing the toss, is MS Dhoni, in a sequence that started in 2013. Shivnarine Chanderpaul lost seven successive Tests after losing the toss, starting in 2005-06.This strikes me as a rather contrived record, as it relies on the captain being repeatedly unlucky at the toss, which is unusual – even though England’s Nasser Hussain once lost ten tosses in a row (Dhoni and Sunil Gavaskar come next, with nine). Perhaps a better marker is successive Tests won after losing the toss (ignoring matches where the toss was won); Australia won 12 in a row in which Ricky Ponting lost the toss from 2007-08, and South Africa 11 under Graeme Smith (starting 2008-09). Shakib Al Hasan of Bangladesh lost eight successive Tests in which he won the toss, starting in 2018.MS Dhoni went on to win five successive Tests at home after losing the toss, starting in 2013•BCCIWhat is the lowest number of wickets a team has lost while winning a Test match? asked Sanket Amdalli from the United Arab Emirates

There have now been five Test matches in which the winning side lost only two wickets, all of them innings victories. The most recent was by South Africa (637 for 2 declared) over England (385 and 240) at The Oval in 2012, in the match in which Hashim Amla scored 311 not out. South Africa also beat Bangladesh in Chattogram in April 2003 while losing only two wickets.The first three instances were all by England: against South Africa at Lord’s in 1924, New Zealand at Headingley in 1958, and India at Edgbaston in 1974.There are 11 further Tests in which the winning side lost only three wickets, the most recent by Sri Lanka against Ireland in Galle earlier this year.George Headley played Test cricket against Wilfred Rhodes, who made his debut in 1899, and also against Tom Graveney, whose last Test was in 1969 – a total span of 70 years. Has any other Test player covered a longer period with opponents and/or team-mates? asked Stephen Parker from Australia

The 70-year span you mention for the great West Indian George Headley actually comes in second on this particular list: in his first Test, England’s Wilfred Rhodes played alongside WG Grace (debut 1880) and in 1929-30, against Headley, who played on till 1953-54, a total span of more than 73 years.Freddie Brown of England played alongside Frank Woolley (debut August 1909) and Brian Close, whose last match was in July 1976 – a span of almost 67 years. George Gunn played against Australia’s Syd Gregory (debut 1890) and Headley, whose last Test was in 1953-54 (total span more than 63 years), while Woolley played against Gregory and with Brown, whose last Test was in 1953 (span almost 63 years. Here’s the list of the longest Test careers .Shiva Jayaraman of ESPNcricinfo’s stats team helped with some of the above answers.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

With Sri Lanka inching towards victory, he bowled a searing spell where every ball seemed to have the batter’s name

Shashank Kishore12-Sep-20231:57

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It was one of those games where the scorecard may not entirely reveal the impact Hardik Pandya had with the ball on the overall result. His figures read 5-0-14-1, which while being very impressive were not quite the blockbuster of the kind you saw from 20-year-old left-arm spinner Dunith Wellalage (5-40) or Kuldeep Yadav (4-43).Yet, they left an indelible mark on India’s spirited defence of 214 on a surface where the ball was gripping, turning square, keeping a tad low at times, and, in general, playing up and down enough to have batters between the devil and the deep blue sea. One moment they were thinking patience was the order of the day, and that you needed to tread with caution like KL Rahul and Ishan Kishan did in a superb exhibition of batting against spin during their 63-run stand that led India’s revival after three quick strikes.Next, when they were seeing spinners come on and challenge both edges of the bat, as Wellalage did by simply sticking to a wicket-to-wicket line and varying his flight and angles, you couldn’t help but think it’s best to try to play your shots before a ball has your name on it. How batters from both sides tackled this dilemma made for compelling viewing. And it’s amid this that Hardik truly stood out with his fire and intensity, a compliment that has largely been reserved for his batting, and captaincy to a large extent, in the past.Related

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The joyous appeal of Dunith Wellalage

Hardik still 'turtle, not the rabbit' as he builds up bowling workload for World Cup

It’s no secret India have longed for Hardik to bowl in this manner for a while and have done everything possible, even having him wrapped in cotton wool, precisely for this kind of impact. For starters, this certainly allows India dynamism in the selection, as you saw on Tuesday with them fielding a third specialist spinner in Axar Patel to support Kuldeep and Ravindra Jadeja. Sure, the conditions did help spin but even if they don’t to the extent they did here, India are in a position to think flexibility and batting depth and have Hardik play the role of a third seamer, and not a bits-and-parts bowler who can merely hold an end up.Hardik’s intensity really helped India, especially when for a while it looked as if they were just running out of gas when Dhananjaya de Silva and Wellalage threatened a jailbreak. It’s no rocket science, but on raging turners of the kind, invariably the ones that don’t turn are more dangerous more often than not. But such pitches can over-excite spinners to some extent, and it seemed to be the case for a while with Jadeja and Axar.Hardik Pandya bowled quite impressively on the day•AFP/Getty ImagesIt was at this point that Hardik stepped in and bowled a searing spell where every ball seemed to have the batter’s name. Hard lengths, nip off the pitch, bounce, landing it with an upright seam to have the batter nicking – he did it all, and with a disarming smile that told you he knew he was in top gear. All of these variations were married with deadly accuracy. He was consistently touching 140kph, hitting high on the bat and having the lower order dancing to his tunes.At mid-on, Rohit Sharma, who was just beginning to lose his patience, was finally able to afford a smile that turned into full-blown laughter when Hardik finally picked up his first wicket, the eighth of the innings, with Maheesh Theekshana splicing one to a diving Suryakumar Yadav at mid-on. Suddenly Sri Lanka needed 43 off 55 with two wickets in hand.Only a while earlier, Hardik had begun that spell with Sri Lanka needing 62 from 16 overs with two set batters in Dhananjaya and Wellalage at the crease. So it wasn’t like he was gifted it on a platter. But in sussing out conditions quickly and delivering a telling spell in which he slowly gnawed at the batters, not necessarily bombing them with thunderbolts, he gave them a good work over that eventually got them thinking a reasonable risk against the spinners was worth punting on. This proved to be Dhananjaya’s undoing when he tried to hit Jadeja against the turn but was caught at mid-on. Four overs later, the game was nearly sealed.Hardik’s was one of those efforts where the supporting actor earned as many plaudits as the hero who everyone expects to deliver a blockbuster. For India, those heroes were Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav, who were at the forefront of yet another stunning show to go with their impact against Pakistan 24 hours earlier. Hardik, though, wasn’t to be denied. He had swiftly moved from being a tortoise to the hare, which he quite wasn’t even until as late as July.With the World Cup less than a month away, it couldn’t have been shaping up any better for him, and India.

Valkerie Baynes and Firdose Moonda on the quirks which mean England won more but saw the trophy retained by a now-beatable Australia

ESPNcricinfo staff19-Jul-2023England won four matches to Australia’s three but still couldn’t wrest back the trophy. Valkerie Baynes and Firdose Moonda review a close-fought Ashes contest and discuss what the uncertainty surrounding the staging of the 2026 Commonwealth Games could mean for women’s cricket.