Leagues in Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh have all helped nurture future IPL stars, but they need to be supported better

Abhinav Mukund23-May-2025What is easier: playing in the Delhi Premier League (DPL) or the IPL? This was one of the questions put to Priyansh Arya after his stunning hundred against five-time champions Chennai Super Kings last month. Arya responded “DPL” with a shy smile. That mention may have brought Indian state T20 leagues a bit of global prime-time attention, but these leagues have been getting plenty of regular acknowledgement from IPL teams themselves as they look for new talent.Many Indian states now have a T20 league run by the state association. These are more often than not broadcast on TV, and conducted with energy and excitement comparable to the IPL’s. I was part of the inaugural Tamil Nadu Premier League in 2016, which was one of the earliest such in the country. For a tournament that only lasted three weeks, it offered significant financial rewards to many cricketers. In the early years of that league, cinema stars were brand ambassadors, and corporates queued up to get their branding on the team uniform. It seemed like a venture destined for success.The TNPL will conduct its tenth season in 2025, but the league is barely profitable now. Its CEO, Prasanna Kannan, says the TNPL looks to unearth players from all corners of the state to ensure a streamlined supply of talent for the higher levels of cricket. “TN has produced at least seven to eight spinners at one point for the IPL,” he says. “Not everyone may get to play in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, but the IPL teams [have] an opportunity to spot [players] at the TNPL.”Related

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Tamil Nadu currently has R Ashwin, Sai Kishore, Washington Sundar, Varun Chakravarthy and M Siddharth in various teams in the IPL. M Ashwin from the state too has been part of IPL teams in the recent past. Only two or three spinners can play for Tamil Nadu at any given point, but the TNPL, with eight teams, provides more players exposure – and thus more of an opportunity for IPL teams to take notice of them. The TNPL is played across four venues, and it was the pioneer in introducing DRS for all games.Aniket Verma was picked for Sunrisers Hyderabad on the back of some stellar performances in the Madhya Pradesh Premier League (MPL). An innings of 123 off 41 balls with 13 sixes for Bhopal Leopards was enough to not only convince SRH to pick him at the last auction but also to start him in all 12 of their games so far. He has had decent returns in the IPL and has turned out to be one of the smarter picks in the auction.SRH are one of those teams who don’t have scouts in every league in the country. Teams like this benefit from the broadcast of the state leagues. They were able to assess Aniket’s talent remotely and ensured he was given a run from the first game after he excelled at the trials and the practice games that followed. Interestingly, even after he was picked by SRH, his state gave him just one chance in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, where he got a zero on debut and did not play again.Digvesh Rathi played just two games for Delhi after being picked up by Lucknow Super Giants at the IPL auction. He too has more IPL games than SMAT ones, and is the highest wicket-taker for LSG this season.Scouting is often regarded only as the ability to unearth a gem from some nook of our country. I see so many social media posts where people credit teams for giving caps to players from local leagues. Yes, that is one part of it, but sometimes scouting is also about making sure you get the best version of a player who is already in your ranks.Ayush Badoni (left) and Priyansh Arya, both of whom have impressed in the IPL, starred in a Delhi Premier League game in its first season, last year•Delhi Premier League T20Rajat Patidar has been on the circuit since 2015. Why would you need to scout him? Royal Challengers Bengaluru did – by way of having their scouts interview opposition coaches and captains, and match officials, to get a better sense of his captaincy credentials, which have been on show in the MPL and in games for his state, Madhya Pradesh. Wasim Jaffer pointed this out on ESPNcricinfo’s Time Out show. It felt like it was the result of intense scouting enabling a well-informed decision that led to Patidar being handed the RCB captaincy.Rathi, Ashwani Kumar, Vipraj Nigam and Zeeshan Ansari are all products of state-run leagues. Ansari, having played for India Under-19 in 2016 alongside the likes of Rishabh Pant and Ishan Kishan, found himself in the wilderness after turning out in just one T20 for Uttar Pradesh in 2019. He got his second wind when the UPT20 league came along and topped the wicket charts for the title-winning Meerut Mavericks in the tournament last year. (Nigam was the second-highest wicket-taker.)The seasoned Karun Nair had a stellar Maharaja Trophy (formerly the Karnataka Premier League) campaign for title winners Mysuru Warriors, and finished as the leading run-getter. His resurgence began from there, and since then he has been splendid for his adopted state, Vidarbha, who went on to win the Ranji Trophy, and reach the Vijay Hazare Trophy final and the quarter-final of the SMAT.Let’s go back to the TNPL. A completely unknown player called Hunny Saini was bought for Rs 11.7 lakh (about US$ 14,000) at the auction earlier this year by Dindigul Dragons, the defending champions, who are captained by R Ashwin. Saini was the sixth-highest-paid player, ahead of Swapnil Singh, who has played multiple seasons of the IPL for three franchises.Saini, who plays fourth-division cricket in Tamil Nadu, hails from Haryana and played all his junior cricket for that state before relocating to Chennai to pursue his cricketing career. TNPL scouts began to take notice of his talent and multiple teams in the league called him for trials, which led to a bit of a bidding war.The TNPL teams also have a scouting network, where Ashwin, for one, has a free hand to hold trials based on the information he receives from his scouts at inter-district competitions and club games. He says all of these players have been in a camp for almost three months now, preparing for this year’s TNPL, starting June 5, all at the cost of the franchise. This requires a serious financial allocation by the franchise.Karun Nair was the leading run-scorer in the Maharaja Premier League in 2024 and his good form ran into the Indian domestic season and this year’s IPL•Maharaja T20That brings us to the financial aspect. Many top T20 leagues internationally run on the IPL’s revenue model, where there is a common revenue pool, which is divided between the national board and the franchises. This will not work in a state T20 league. The broadcast rights will never be sold at a high price, and that makes the revenue pool small.The only reason most leagues are broadcast is fantasy cricket, and the attention the fantasy cricket community directs their way. A TNPL or a Maharaja Trophy will secure more attention from broadcasters because they feature multiple international and IPL players, but, say, a Kerala Premier league will not warrant that kind of attention. (And yet, it has produced a Vignesh Puthur.)The TNPL was among the first leagues to realise that, and they have done away with the IPL-based model: no franchise fee is collected every year from the franchises, and there is no revenue sharing from the collective pool. Instead, the money the franchise makes from jersey sponsorship and other sponsors is theirs to keep.The DPL in its inaugural year set a reserve price of Rs 8 crores (close to $100,000) per year for the purchase of a franchise for a five-year term. This means shelling out a minimum of Rs 40 crores (about $4.8m) for a five-year term. Add to that the salaries of players and support staff, training expenses, transport and hotel costs, and other miscellaneous costs.The current business model makes it difficult for a franchise to break even, which is why most leagues around the country are stop-start and changes of franchise ownership are frequent. If I were to take a punt, I’d say we are going to see some such changes in the DPL very soon. It is unsustainable to operate the way the state leagues are operating currently. The Mumbai Cricket Association, which outsourced the running of its T20 Mumbai League to a third-party event management company last time around, is now mulling taking back the running of the league.State-run leagues have proved to be efficient talent pools for multiple IPL teams, but these leagues’ future is not exactly rosy. Most franchise owners aren’t recovering their money, and this can sometimes create potential for malpractice, by way of various forms of betting and fixing – since the games are broadcast. To protect against that, the BCCI has set guidelines for state associations to follow, an anti-corruption official is appointed for each league, and there are supposed to be secure PMOAs (player and match officials areas) at venues.One and done: Zeeshan Ansari went from playing one domestic T20 for UP to taking three wickets in his first IPL game, for Sunrisers Hyderabad•BCCIThe fact remains that there is only so much money a state-run league can make. This needs to change or the ecosystem will likely collapse. Franchise owners need to be compensated for investing in and grooming young talent. For a tournament that runs for three weeks or less, which is the usual duration of a typical state-run league, they scout, recruit and provide opportunities for young players across the state, in the hope those cricketers become superstars. But the leagues have no monetary gain for doing this.The emergence of state-run leagues as feeders for the IPL must be taken seriously. IPL franchises have enough money to buy teams in leagues around the world – in South Africa, the UAE, the CPL, MLC, and now the Hundred. True, these are attractive investment options compared to state leagues in India. But bear in mind that the demand for Indian players in the IPL has risen since the Impact Player rule was introduced in 2023: 1219 caps were handed out to Indian players in IPL 2024, up from 1178 in 2023. The percentage of Indian players used in IPL playing XIs rose from 64.7% in 2023 to 66.6% in 2024, and it was 67.7% in 2025 (at the time the tournament was interrupted in May).The BCCI shares 70% of IPL broadcast revenue with state associations. This ought to give the associations enough money to develop infrastructure, set up academies, and ensure the smooth conduct of various senior and junior men’s and women’s tournaments. The state ecosystem at large is profitable, thanks to the money that comes in from the central board. But not the state T20 leagues – where the franchises have no real incentive to continue providing growth and opportunities for players while making losses. It makes sense for IPL franchises to invest in a few state-run leagues to ensure a steady supply of homegrown cricketers.State-run leagues now form an integral part of the ecosystem that breathes life into the IPL, and we need to protect them. None of these leagues will grow exponentially, like the way IPL has. It’s more about finding ways to run them sustainably in a smooth and efficient manner, providing opportunities for players in the state.Arya was given a platform and so was Rathi. No one had heard of Puthur when he took three wickets against CSK on IPL debut. If it weren’t for these leagues, it’s likely these players would not have made it to the IPL. Add to them cricketers who were lost in the domestic structure, like Karun Nair and Zeeshan Ansari, who got a new lease of life thanks to these tournaments.The well streamlined production line for Indian cricket’s talent pool has a glitch in it that must be sorted out soon. The state T20 leagues need to be nurtured; they are a vital part of the supply chain for India’s T20 structure.

Their young Indian batting core needs support from the bowlers and middle order

Alagappan Muthu20-May-20253:08

Chopra: Suryavanshi has already shown maturity

There is a feeling that Rajasthan Royals (RR) have been terrible chasers in IPL 2025. Until the very last game of their season, they were able to run down a target only once in eight attempts. And that needed a 14-year-old to perform a miracle.On that basis, there is a temptation to say that RR kept betting against themselves this season. They won the toss seven times and chose to bat second each time. There are much more private ways to explore masochism. Sanju Samson admitted to second thoughts at the toss in the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) game.”To be very honest, we were thinking, should we set a score and try and defend because that’s what was not happening,” he said on the broadcast. “And then I felt like there’s no hiding in this game. Let’s go out and face it and prove that we can still chase down a score.”Related

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A franchise that made it to the final in 2022 and fell just one step short of that in 2024 isn’t in the business of making mistakes. Least of all the same one over and over. Over this three-year period, RR had a win-loss ratio of 1.63 as a chasing unit, the second-best of all the teams in the IPL.They could have improved on that this year. Three of those seven defeats were looking a lot like wins. Two of them saw inspired performances from their young Indian batting core that had totals in excess of 200 well within their grasp. One run. Two runs. Ten. Eleven. A Super Over. So slim were the margins. Most royals are defined by excess. These guys were left forever reaching for parity. Reverse-swing played a big part in their undoing. No other team suffered as badly as RR did to the old ball’s whims.Mitchell Starc. Josh Hazlewood. Avesh Khan. Andre Russell. These were the impediments they ran into and couldn’t overcome. When those bowlers were able to execute their plans to as close to perfection as possible, all RR’s batters could do was hold on. Shimron Hetmyer found himself in the thick of this unforgiving cycle. He finished with a strike rate of 158.53, the seventh-lowest among 46 batters who were a frequent presence in the death overs (minimum 30 runs scored). RR set aside INR 11 crore to retain him. He had earned that payday. Between 2022 and 2024, his strike rate in the death overs was 200.2:16

Bangar: Jurel has skills and temperament to be a prime finisher

RR made another big call ahead of the auction. Samson had become a regular member of the India T20I side now. He was opening the batting and was having considerable success. With that in mind, perhaps, they let go of Jos Buttler. He is the quality of player who could have helped problem-solve many of the situations they found themselves in. He hit a hundred against KKR in 2024 that gets better with every viewing. He had Nos. 9 and 10 for company. RR were 46 runs away. There were only 19 balls left. Buttler scored every single run to bring victory.Samson, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Riyan Parag make up a solid batting group but they all play high-risk cricket. Asking them to do anything else will diminish their match-winning ability. RR could get the best out of them if they could bolster their middle order. Bringing in someone who can stay calm and reassess the situation when it starts to turn the wrong way. Their arrival becomes all the more essential because Vaibhav Suryavanshi has added to their top-order riches. The promising Indian batting talent RR have could do even more damage – which is startling to say when Jaiswal and Suryavanshi put on an opening stand of 76 where 74 runs came in boundaries – if they had a safety net.There are options on the market. Sikandar Raza has done it before, although only briefly in the IPL. RR have previously tried and been burned by David Miller, Rovman Powell and Daryl Mitchell. But this time they don’t have to do much heavy lifting. There’s maybe a chance it clicks. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that most of them offer a second skill.

“We need to sit back after the season, I think after a couple of weeks, we need to do a proper review and understand where we went wrong. Definitely we could have done much better”Sanju Samson

Rahul Dravid finally won a senior World Cup going in on all-round talent. India’s championship-winning side had four of them and the one that he fought for – Axar Patel – surprised South Africa with the bat. Only just back in charge of RR, Dravid kept putting out sides that seemed to lack in batting depth; they have had Wanindu Hasaranga bat as high as No. 5 and 6 even in this Impact Player era. They backed Sandeep Sharma over Jofra Archer for the Super Over against DC. Their fast bowlers ended the season with the highest combined average (42.95) and the second-highest economy rate (10.60). RR were knocked out of the playoffs race on May 1. At that point, they had only managed three powerplays where they picked up more than one wicket. They were constantly falling behind in games because of their bowling attack. It highlights the value of someone else that they let go. Trent Boult.Franchises only get to keep six players whenever a mega auction comes along. Invariably, some of these hard calls come back to bite you. It’s the nature of the IPL. It’s how the tournament avoids monopoly. The onus then shifts to how well a team can paper over newly-formed cracks. RR need a dependable opening bowler and possibly a bankable Indian spinner so that they can stop conceding 200-plus totals. They gave up seven of those this season, equalling the IPL record set last year by Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH).0:47

Chopra: Madhwal has looked the part since his inclusion

CSK were trending towards that mark on Tuesday too. At the end of the 17th over, ESPNcricinfo’s Forecaster had them getting to 205. Akash Madhwal and Tushar Deshpande dragged it back, showing that success in a chase isn’t all about the runs scored but the runs saved as well. It gave them the cushion to absorb the early loss of their top run-scorer and a mini collapse. There was a karmic kindness in Hetmyer and Dhruv Jurel being the batters securing victory in a blaze of fours and sixes. That was the partnership that kept crumbling earlier in the season.Samson knows some introspection needs to be done. But he was happy for the happy ending. Nearly everybody on the field wanted a picture with Suryavanshi. And this was a game with MS Dhoni in it.”The game is changing, the way people are coming on, the way people are looking at powerplay, the batsmen, the quality of bowling, the quality of teams,” Samson said. “I don’t think there is much difference in the quality of line-up of the teams. The combinations are almost similar.”But I think the margin of error between winning and losing is so less that it’s very hard to find out why did we have a bad season actually. So I think, to be very honest, we need to sit back after the season, I think after a couple of weeks, we need to do a proper review and understand where we went wrong. Definitely we could have done much better. There are some mistakes we have done. We have to accept it and move on with it and come back with a better positive mindset next season.”

How those in charge of the global Test game made a crucial mistake in their planning

Alan Gardner15-Jun-2025After the excitement of the IPL final (you’re welcome for the reverse jinx, Virat), the cricket world was due a change of pace. Cue a jump cut to dear old England – birds tweeting in hedgerows, football louts desecrating village greens – and the return of red balls, white flannels and traditional manly virtues like leaving in the channel outside off.And this week was all about a proper heavyweight battle. Two teams familiarising themselves with alien conditions. Two touring parties trying to get to grips with the London transport system (tricky even when no one is particularly interested – just ask West Indies). The hype, the intrigue, the social media buzz. The weight of history bearing down.We are, of course, referring to India’s intra-squad warm-up match ahead of the first Test against England. What did you think we meant?Related

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Oh sure, the World Test Championship final was going on, too. That looked like fun and all. But it was missing a certain ingredient, dontchathink? A reason for a billion pairs of eyeballs to swivel devotionally on Lord’s. An incentive for the news crews, influencers and celebrity spotters to give cricket their patronage. Heck, only one of the Big Three was involved, and certainly not the one whose milkshake brings all the marketing boys to the yard.Cricket, as we all know, is a numbers game – and the numbers here just didn’t add up. If we’re really invested in saving the Test format, the ICC needs to avoid making such elementary mistakes.

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Don’t worry, though, Test cricket does still have some big hitters in its corner. No sooner had Virat Kohli ended 18 years of hurt by lifting his first IPL title, than he was declaring it ranked “five levels under Test cricket”. And this after Royal Challengers Bengaluru fans turned up to an earlier game at the Chinnaswammy wearing white to mark news of his Test retirement. Ouch. “If you want to earn respect in world cricket all over, take up Test cricket, give your heart and soul to it and earn the respect from legends,” Kohli added. Hopefully those wastrels plying their trade in piddly T20 leagues around the world were paying attention. And the administrators scheduling two-Test series left, right and centre, too. Respect from legends, guys. It’s right there on the table. What do you mean “Will it pay the bills?”

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The second World Cricket Connects conference brought together the game’s powerbrokers for a weekend of behind-closed-doors schmoozing – but singularly failed to get the most-powerful broker of them all in the room (despite said broker, Jay Shah, being appointed to the World Cricket Connects advisory board at the start of the year). Still, everyone had a nice time. Sourav Ganguly was quoted describing it as “a lovely event” in a typically flowery MCC press release. Kumar Sangakkara said it was “wonderful”. Mark Nicholas hailed the “massive growth and innovation” experienced by cricket in recent times, adding that there was “an overwhelming desire for this to continue”. Actual recommendations seem to have been less abundant than pats on the back, but still. The game is clearly in good hands!

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Ben Stokes has shown little appetite for obeying convention in his time as England’s Test captain, and so it should perhaps come as no surprise that he takes a similarly maverick approach to other disciplines. Take the field of mathematics, which has been wedded to the same fusty old principles since Pythagoras started noodling around with numbers 2500 years ago. Stokes won’t be hidebound by such traditions – thus, when asked about Jacob Bethell potentially coming straight back from the IPL and into the Test side at No. 3, he said: “If you’re smart enough, the series that Beth had out in New Zealand, obviously he’s going to be back in the UK for that India series. So, I think you put two and two together, you probably know what’s going to happen.” Or not, apparently, as everyone in attendance came up with 2 + 2 = 4, leading Stokes to rail at the media for having an “agenda” against the incumbent, Ollie Pope. They don’t teach Bazball in school textbooks, people.

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Angelo Mathews has called time on his Test career. The clock is now ticking towards his final appearance, against Bangladesh in Galle next week. Much has happened on his watch, and history will always remember his contribution to the game. They say the best cricketers have more time than the rest – but those minutes and seconds catch up with us all in the end. Hopefully someone at the BCB has the foresight to bring over a commemorative timepiece to mark the occasion. Did we mention he had brilliant timing? ()

Ashes spots in sight as spinners prepare for T20I series with South Africa

Vithushan Ehantharajah09-Sep-2025As Shoaib Bashir bowled to Jeetan Patel – while Adil Rashid (leg slip), Rehan Ahmed (first) and Liam Dawson (padded up ahead of his turn to bat in the nets) watched close by – the centre-but-one pitch at Sophia Gardens was a picture of the past, present and future of English spin.The ‘past’ being Patel, with the Anglo twist being that New Zealand’s former offie now oversees England’s tweakers. His focus for a chunk of Tuesday morning’s session was on the return of Bashir, as England’s primary Test spinner reboots from a broken finger sustained during the Lord’s Test against India.Patel’s work with Bashir a day before the start of the T20I leg of South Africa’s tour was as much a nod to the importance of this winter’s Ashes as the Kiwi’s all-encompassing role. He has also worked with Rehan and Dawson across both red- and white-ball codes, the latter coming in for the fourth India Test as a replacement for Bashir, ending an eight-year absence from the format. Both will be keen to make these next five days count in front of Brendon McCullum to secure their own Ashes spots.Related

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The odd one out is Rashid. All his work with Patel has been in limited-overs cricket. Tests are now a thing of the past, the last of his 19 appearances – January 2019, against West Indies in Barbados – a matter of months after Patel had called time on his own first-class career. And not even the carrot of an Ashes entices legspinner in the way it did his good mate and Beard Before Wicket co-host, Moeen Ali.”What would my answer be?” Rashid replied, bemused, when asked if an ‘Ashes?’ text might work on him two years on from reeling Moeen out of retirement.”It would be a no. I’m quite comfortable and confident of what I have been doing the past seven years or when I finished red-ball cricket. I’m confident in that and my own game.”But I’m sure it wouldn’t come to that because the spinners coming through now are very good and when they go there, they’ll put good performances in as well. So, I’m confident they’ve got it sorted.”They do, to a point. Bashir has been backed to the hilt, but England are reluctant to put their spin responsibilities in the hands of 21-year-olds across the board. Rehan’s omission from the opening XI in Cardiff is no slight on him in the midst of a generational purple patch across formats this season.”I’m confident that if he does get a chance for a longer period, he will flourish,” beamed Rashid, who spent training working alongside Rehan, and the trio of Jacob Bethell, Will Jacks and Dawson, who will share the spin loads on Wednesday, offering orthodox turn both ways.”When we’re bowling in the nets, we’re all together bowling to the batters so it’s just a bit of a conversation of how we go about things. Feeding off each other, certain batsmen, where we should look to bowl, where are their strengths and weaknesses, what we should look to do.”I’ve been around a few years, Rehan’s coming through, lots of spinners are coming through – so it’s just having discussions back and forth about certain things, tactically, and mindset wise as well. That’s going both ways – it’s not just myself going to them, but it’s them speaking to me, in that sense.”There will be understandable frustration that Rehan must wait a little longer for a first limited-overs cap in 2025, particularly with the hot hand coming into this series following an impressive Hundred campaign for Trent Rockets (189 runs and 12 wickets).English cricket loves looking too far ahead, and there is understandable desire to have Rehan plugged into the XI ahead of next year’s subcontinental T20 World Cup. He will likely get a go either in Manchester or Nottingham, where the straight boundaries are more forgiving. At the same time – why rush to crown the prince when the king still thrives?The white-ball dynasty might have crumbled, but Rashid remains a stoic presence. Since 2024’s semi-final defeat to India, England have played 14 completed T20Is, winning eight and losing six. The schedule has meant a full-strength squad has not been brought together in this period, but Rashid has played all but two. It is a streak he is likely to keep up for the rest of the year, including next week’s brief tour of Ireland, then October’s tour of New Zealand.Establishing the right balance adds extra credence to persisting with Rashid at every available opportunity, his brilliance notwithstanding, which was reinforced during the recent the ODI series loss to South Africa bears out. A veteran of 301 international caps is trending towards what would be his sixth T20 World Cup appearance just as vital and as hungry as ever.”I’m going alright. I’m 37… for my personal stuff, I like to take it a game at a time, a day at a time. I don’t look too far ahead in terms of World Cups, this and that. It’s making sure that whatever’s ahead – tomorrow’s game, for example – and then day by day, I let things just unfold as it is and let nature take its course. Ultimately if I’m there trying my best, giving my best, performing and hopefully I can carry that on.”Personally, I’d like to play cricket for as long as possible as long as the body can hold it and as long as you’re performing to a certain level. And that’s what it is. So hopefully at 37 I’m not looking at age, as long as I’m moving well, I’ll try my best.”

Alan Gardner is joined by Matt Roller and Vish Ehantharajah to discuss Will Jacks’ inclusion and Harry Brook’s promotion, as well white-ball squads for New Zealand

ESPNcricinfo staff25-Sep-2025After completing their season with a 2-0 T20I series win over Ireland, England named their squads for tours of New Zealand and Australia. On this week’s Switch Hit, Alan Gardner hears from Matt Roller and Vish Ehantharajah about the inclusion of Will Jacks and Harry Brook’s promotion to vice-captain. Also up for discussion: Zak Crawley’s T20I call-up and Championship glory for Notts.

The McCullum effect has been visible in patches for the white-ball squad, but 50-over game still needs attention

Cameron Ponsonby24-Oct-2025Clarity is all the rage in English cricket.Upon Brendon McCullum’s Test appointment in 2022, then ECB strategic director Andrew Strauss said the Kiwi “blew us away with his clarity of thinking”. Stuart Broad was soon to praise McCullum for his relentless positive energy. “Running towards the danger” quickly became England’s catchphrase as players publicly and privately spoke of the most enjoyable environment they’d played in.The missing link for those outside the group is what McCullum’s magic words actually are. Zak Crawley shared a Chinese proverb once, which was nice, but players line up to praise McCullum for the small messages, delivered at the right time.”Go out there and whack the spinners,” was Tom Banton’s example of McCullum’s divine intervention. It’s going to DVD soon, apparently.But when you’re a player with the CV of McCullum, it really is the messenger, as much as the message, that makes it count.And he’s succeeding. The T20 team is doing well, even if the ODI side remains a work in progress, winning just eight of their 23 ODIs since the 2023 World Cup. A conscious effort has been made to make this squad a team, with the pre-series trip to Queenstown a nod to that. So too are McCullum and Brook trying to create a settled group of players who know the shirt is theirs.”That’s the exact reason,” Brook confirmed, when asked why England had chosen the same XI for all three matches, rained off or otherwise. “We’re trying to settle the team as much as possible.”Related

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And again, McCullum, and Brook, are succeeding. From the start of the English summer, when the two began their work together, nine players have played in all six ODIs that England have played. So too have six players played all eight T20Is where McCullum and Brook have been present.”I think the balance of the side is pretty good at the minute,” was Brook’s summation after Auckland.Counterintuitively, the T20 group is the more settled. At least in terms of balance. England have decided on the spin combo of Liam Dawson and Adil Rashid – the “wily old foxes” as Brook describes them – meaning the return of Sam Curran leaves the team with three seamers and two spinners. When it comes to the World Cup and more spin-friendly surfaces, bringing Will Jacks in for Curran will be an option.There is only one area that remains up for grabs. The ODI seam attack.So far, Rashid has held down the sole specialist spinner role as England have picked three seamers. Jofra Archer and Brydon Carse are locks when fit, but the third and final spot is unspoken for.Sonny Baker endured a tough ODI baptism as England continue to search for a settled seam attack•Getty ImagesAcross the summer, Saqib Mahmood, Jamie Overton, Matthew Potts and Sonny Baker all appeared. Extend that to the start of the year and Mark Wood and Gus Atkinson featured. Go back six months further and you have Reece Topley and John Turner. Luke Wood, who has played only two ODIs, is in the current squad and could feature this series. But …”Where I sit in the pecking order, I couldn’t tell you,” Wood said following the washed out T20I at Auckland.For the six ODIs in which Brook and McCullum have been in charge, they’ve plumped for four specialist bowlers with the fifth to be made up from whoever else is on hand to help out, to allow them to pick seven specialist batters. “Imagine having us five-down and Will Jacks comes out to bat?” Brook said of the strategy earlier this year.It is an aggressive option, but its shortcomings were exposed against South Africa at Lord’s when the spin of Jacob Bethell and Jacks conceded 112 runs between them.Jacks, who has played all six ODIs in a new role at seven so far, is injured for this series, opening the door for a return for Curran and a slight shift in team balance. And with Archer absent from the first match with one eye on the Ashes, his spot, plus that of the third seamer, is open.Which brings us back to clarity. Two seamers will lace up for the first ODI in Mount Maunganui, with only one able to survive to Hamilton for the second. Baker played one match in the summer before he was discarded. Potts played two but didn’t make the plane for New Zealand. Overton played two while England continue to try and mould him into the player they want and believe he can be. Mahmood played four but is now injured.It is a fact of sport that plans can never be perfect, even more so with fast bowlers where injuries are that more regular. Nevertheless, under McCullum and Brook they have tried their best to make it so.The ODI World Cup is still almost exactly two years away, giving England time to pick this group. Back it, and see how it develops. They have made their bed with the majority of the side, the New Zealand series is the first step to seeing how the final part of the jigsaw lands.

Sophie Ecclestone was almost unplayable on Saturday night at the Khettarama, suffocating the Sri Lanka batters and squeezing the life out of them

Andrew Fidel Fernando12-Oct-2025

Sophie Ecclestone fizzed through Sri Lanka’s resistance•ICC/Getty Images

Three overs into Sophie Ecclestone’s spell at the Khettarama, there is a three-way dead heat.- of her three overs had been maidens.
– Both those maidens also brought a wicket each, bringing the wickets column up to .
– She had also conceded runs in the non-maiden over, even if one of those was down to a misfield.So 23 overs into Sri Lanka’s innings, they are on 98 for 3, and Ecclestone has figures of 3-2-2-2. Subtract those Ecclestone figures from the overall score, and Sri Lanka are 96 for 1 after 20 – one big over away from being ahead of the required rate, with plenty of batting in hand. Instead, having gone confidently enough through the first 18 overs, they have hit heavy scrub. Ecclestone, the world’s top-ranked bowler, awaits, a rock python on a low branch. Having struck twice, she’s in the process of constricting this innings.Related

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There is no batter in this Sri Lanka top order that appears to have the capacity to breathe when they are facing Ecclestone. This track is taking turn, but there is something Ecclestone is doing that no one else had for 68 previous overs in this match. She tosses them up from an already-high release point, puts big revs on the ball, replete with overspin. The lines are impeccable. The bounce is steep.The right-hand batters are finding her especially impossible to play, the ball hanging in the air one moment, then diving and jiving away the next. The best spinners make batters doubt their judgment of length, of line, and of time. Sri Lanka’s batters quickly find themselves entirely unsure of how to handle this spell, stuck between needing to score off Ecclestone because her early overs have put them so far behind the rate, and daring not take on a bowler who is manipulating the ball so skilfully through the air.”Her skill-execution was brilliant, and she got the rewards for what she put in,” Nat Sciver-Brunt said of Ecclestone•Getty ImagesAfter two further overs, Ecclestone’s figures have – incredibly – improved. She has three maidens in five overs. Only two further runs scored off her. Oh, and there was another wicket – Kavisha Dilhari attempting a favoured sweep, only for the ball to sneak under the bat like a skink under the garden gate.The innings continues to be asphyxiated. Ecclestone bowls unchanged for ten overs. Sri Lanka’s innings never takes a real breath again.”She’s No. 1 in the world for good reason,” captain Nat Sciver-Brunt said later. “It’s pretty special to have a player like her. It took her a little longer to come on to bowl today. They had the left-handers in and I thought I’d try and get [offspinner] Alice Capsey into the game a little bit earlier.”Ecclestone’s first over was the 19th of the innings, and she was the sixth England bowler used.”But Sophie bided her time, and made it look very easy,” Sciver-Brunt said. “Her skill-execution was brilliant, and she got the rewards for what she put in. She’s an experienced player in our side, and a leader in our spin attack.”3:19

Sri Lanka undone by Sciver-Brunt’s masterclass

Ecclestone is not the first spinner to prosper at the Khettarama, of course. This track has been one of spin-bowling’s great limited-overs strongholds for more than 30 years now, many epic defences of meagre scores having been staged here. But she is the first England spinner to collude so successfully with this particular stretch of clay.This was England women’s first match at this venue, which has rarely been used for international women’s cricket. But England men, who have played 12 matches here (and won as many as two!), have never had a spinner take more than two wickets in a match. Usually it is the England batters groping unfruitfully outside off stump and blinking in bewilderment at clattered wickets, while Sri Lanka whoop themselves to another victory.To underscore just how sensationally she was bowling, Ecclestone takes out the prize left-hand batter with perhaps her best ball of an excellent evening. Chamari Athapaththu had retired hurt with cramps in the sixth over, and only returned to bat after the third wicket fell. But that meant she was walking into the maws of this Ecclestone spell, and soon found her own innings suffocated, playing out five dot balls out of six against Ecclestone before being bowled by the seventh. This one fizzes its way through outside off, dips, grips, and wriggles its way between Athapaththu’s bat and pad to find middle stump.Ecclestone had just taken out the opposition’s star batter, but as with everything else in this spell, she did this with nonchalance, like she was only mowing a lawn, or painting a wall. By the end, her figures read 10-3-17-4. An England spinner bowling on some sacred spin-bowling turf as if she was born to it.

At just 23, the Pakistan women’s captain has turned personal tragedy into resolve, leading her side while elevating her own game

Firdose Moonda30-Sep-2025Fatima Sana’s last conversation with her father was during the 2024 T20 World Cup and it was about cricket.”We had a video call. He watched our match against Sri Lanka and also our game against India and we discussed everything. But then suddenly…” Her voice trails off.Three days after that conversation, her father had a heart attack and passed away in a Karachi hospital. Sana left the T20 World Cup to be at his funeral and grieve with her family, with no intention of returning to the tournament. “But my mother told me that when my father was in hospital, he told the doctors, ‘My daughter is playing for Pakistan’ and that it was his wish for me to go back and play the next match,” Sana says. “I said to her, ‘No mom, I can’t do that’, but she told me, ‘It was your father’s wish, so you have to go.’ My mother supported me at that time, so I think she is braver than me.”With Pakistan already knocked out of the competition, Sana returned to Dubai and led the team in their final match, against New Zealand. She was stoic as she lined up alongside her team-mates for the national anthems but as soon as the first notes of “” started, tears streamed down her face. Her father was a pilot in the country’s air force and a patriot. The pain of losing him was too much to bear.Related

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But already she had proven her age was no barrier to her willingness to take on responsibility, and her returning to the field underlined the commitment she made when she had agreed to lead Pakistan, just weeks before.Sana was named Pakistan’s captain in August 2024 (she had captained in two ODIs before), a little over a month before the T20 World Cup. She replaced the vastly experienced Nida Dar, who was removed following Pakistan’s loss to Sri Lanka in the semi-final of the Asia Cup and has since taken an indefinite break from cricket. “I was very shocked when our coach told me,” Sana says. “I just went back home, and discussed it with my family and they all told me they thought I could do it. I didn’t have time to talk about it to anyone else. But I was a little bit nervous at that time, because it was so sudden.”Having accepted the role, she wanted to step up and do it as well as she could, and might have bitten off more than she could chew. “The coaches told me that I have to manage my workload,” she says.In her seven matches since being appointed captain, Sana has taken a four-for and consecutive three-wicket hauls•Getty ImagesHer numbers reflect how seriously she took the role. Before the recent series against South Africa, where she went wicketless, Sana captained Pakistan in seven ODIs, took 14 wickets at an average of 17.71 significantly better than her 63 wickets overall at 29.74. She has also led in nine T20Is, where she has ten wickets at 20.20 (also an improvement on her overall average of 25.40, though her economy rate is fractionally worse as captain). She’s currently the second most prolific fast bowler for Pakistan, just seven short of Asmavia Iqbal at the top, a gap she could close during the upcoming World Cup.But it’s the batting stats that really stand out. Two of her three ODI fifties have come after she was appointed captain, and almost half her T20I career runs, at a strike rate of 146.37, compared to an overall strike rate of 118.46.Her improved performances have brought calls for her to put herself permanently at No. 5 to stabilise the middle order, and she’s hoping she can soon make the role her own. “I am still working on my batting a lot,” she says. “When I started playing in the Pakistan team, I was at No. 8, then I moved up to seventh, then sixth and then fifth, so hopefully I will be able to bat higher.”If she’s looking for a role model, she need go no further than a woman she looks up to already: Sana Mir, who, though she was moved up and down the order, started and ended her career at No. 5. Mir has been a sounding board for Sana since the earliest days of her career.

The Cubs franchise and fanbase was shaken on Monday when legendary player Ryne Sandberg died at the age of 65 from cancer.

The Cubs and MLB world alike have honored Sandberg in various ways this week. The Cubs are even introducing a No. 23 patch to their jerseys for the remainder of the 2025 season to memorialize "Ryno."

This isn't the only way the Cubs are honoring the late legend. On Saturday in their home game vs. the Orioles at Wrigley Field, all Cubs players will wear a Sandberg No. 23 jersey without their names on the back. The team will wear the iconic pullover blue jerseys that Sandberg used to wear during his time with the team in the 1980s.

Cubs executive Crane Kenney shared the news on 670 The Score on Thursday, also noting that the jerseys will be auctioned after the game and all the proceeds will be donated to cancer research. The organization plans to celebrate Sandberg's legacy and life all day on Saturday at Wrigley Field.

It will be an emotional day in Chicago on Saturday.