The second Test broke some long-standing records, and came close to breaking a few more iconic ones

Sampath Bandarupalli04-Jan-20243:01

SA vs India – The shortest completed Test ever

642 Total number of balls bowled in Cape Town, making it the shortest completed Test ever. The previous shortest Test lasted 656 balls, played between Australia and South Africa in Melbourne in 1932.ESPNcricinfo Ltd1 India’s seven-wicket win at the Newlands is their first victory at the venue, failing in their previous six attempts. It was also India’s first Test win while batting second in South Africa, as their four previous wins came batting first.2 Test matches won by India where none of their batters got a fifty-plus score. Virat Kohli’s 46 was the highest individual score here, while Murali Vijay’s 40 was the highest during their 124-run win against South Africa in Nagpur in 2015.Related

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4 Men’s Test matches hosted at Newlands that finished in two days – South Africa against England in 1889 and 1896, and South Africa against Zimbabwe in 2005 are the others. Kennington Oval is the other venue with as many as four two-day Test matches.8 Five-plus wickets for Jasprit Bumrah in the 28 Test matches outside Asia, the joint-second most for an Indian. Only Kapil Dev has more five-fors outside Asia in Tests than Bumrah – Nine in 45 games.Three of Bumrah’s nine Test five-fors have come in South Africa, the joint-most for an Indian bowler, alongside Javagal Srinath.ESPNcricinfo Ltd2 Instances of two six-plus wicket hauls by Indian pacers in a Test match, including Mohammed Siraj and Bumrah in Cape Town. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Ishant Sharma did the same against England at Lord’s during the 2014 tour.60.23 Percentage of South Africa’s second-innings total scored by Aiden Markram. It is the highest contribution for an individual in a completed Test innings for South Africa. The previous highest was 59.89% by Herbie Taylor, who scored 109 out of 182 against England in Durban in 1913.8.83 Ratio between Markram’s 106 and the second-highest innings score (Dean Elgar’s 12) in the fourth innings. It is the second-highest ratio between the highest and second-highest individual score in an all-out innings in men’s Tests.Charles Bannerman holds the record as his 165 in the first-ever Test match in 1877 had a ratio of 9.17, as the second-highest score was 18* by Tom Garrett.12 Dean Elgar’s score is the second highest for South Africa in their second-innings, behind Markram’s 106. It is the lowest ‘second-highest’ individual score in an all-out innings featuring a century. The previous lowest was 13 when Daryll Cullinan scored 103 against Sri Lanka in Centurion in 1998.Markram also became the first batter to score a century despite no other teammate scoring 20 runs in any innings (where teams got bowled out twice) in a Test match. Kyle Verreynne’s 15 in the first innings is the second-highest individual score for South Africa in this Test.

Dan Lawrence’s move to Surrey was the shock of the summer… until Jordan Cox replaced him at Essex

Andrew Miller and Matt Roller27-Mar-2024They don’t come much more Essex than Dan Lawrence. He spent the first half of his life living in a house that backed onto Chingford Cricket Club, where his dad Mark is the groundsman, and speaks with an unmistakable accent. He has played more than 200 games for the county across formats, scoring 15 hundreds, and his girlfriend is the chief executive’s daughter.No wonder, then, that commuting into The Oval and pulling on a Surrey tracksuit for his new county’s media day on Wednesday felt a little strange. “It’s very new,” Lawrence said with a sheepish grin. “But I’m just really excited to get going, to be honest. It’s obviously a brilliant club, and I’m excited to crack on.”Lawrence’s move happened quickly last summer, and caught most people in county cricket by surprise. Essex said that he rejected “a very strong three-year contract” to stay put and those involved in the deal have insisted that his desire to make the move meant that money did not play much of a role.The deal was wrapped up and announced within two weeks of June 1, the date on which out-of-contract players are allowed to speak to other counties. “As soon as Surrey came knocking, it was a pretty quick decision for me to come this way,” Lawrence said. “To be honest, I think the only club I would have come to would have been here.”Related

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So why Surrey? “I felt like for the benefit of my career, it was time to explore somewhere else,” he explained. “It’s great coming to a club that’s really successful and has won a lot in the last few years; being around a group of players who are very like-minded and inspiring to try and achieve the same thing.”The appeal of batting at The Oval is quite a big thing for me. The wickets are very good and it allows you more opportunity to score big, bulk runs. It’s been frustrating running the drinks quite a lot for England: it’s been ten Tests in a row I’ve sat there and watched. It’s been great to be there but obviously I want to play and I feel like this place gives me the best opportunity to play for England again.”There is also the prospect of moving into London permanently – even if navigating the housing market alongside the early stages of the county season will be a challenge. “The price difference is a bit much from Essex,” Lawrence joked. “Me and my girlfriend are obviously quite a young couple, so we’re quite keen to get into the mix and see what London has got for us. It should be great.””It’s been ten Tests in a row I’ve sat there and watched”•AFP/Getty ImagesA similar sense that the action was elsewhere was the spur for Lawrence’s replacement at Essex to hop across the Thames Estuary and complete the second-most eye-catching move of the English off-season, one which was finalised around six weeks after Lawrence’s own departure was confirmed.It’s coming up for four years since Jordan Cox announced himself with an extraordinary 238 not out for Kent against Sussex in the Covid-era Bob Willis Trophy; it’s been 18 months since Cox’s first England call-up, as an unused reserve on the T20 tour of Pakistan in September 2022. Since then, however, a badly broken finger has hampered his progress, and midway through last summer he decided he could wait no longer to reignite his ambition.”I needed a change,” Cox said at Chelmsford, on his first day in Essex colours. “When you’re not enjoying your cricket at 22, 23, that’s when you need to branch out and experience something new. I wasn’t performing great last year in the red-ball side of it, but I wasn’t enjoying the off-field side more than the actual play. So, I took the opportunity to get out of my contract, which I think was needed.””Pulling the pin”, as he put it, did not go down especially well with his former club, with Kent stating that they were “disappointed” in a terse press release, and with Sam Billings, the club captain, criticising his decision on social media. Cox, however, insisted he had “never shut the door”, and that he’d be open to a return to the club that he had represented since the age of 10 if Kent’s ambition across formats could match his own.”It might sound a bit rogue, but I’d rather play Test cricket than T20 cricket,” he said. “How Baz [McCullum] and [Ben] Stokes are doing this Bazball type of cricket, why wouldn’t you want to play? It looks like a great environment.”Kent are fighting for the Blast every year. They are consistently very good, but in four-day cricket, I don’t think they are at this moment. I’ve never had many feelings of a four-day win. For a couple of years at Kent, we were pretty consistently doing 140 overs in the dirt, every single game. So it would be nice to be on the other end of it, and reignite my love of four-day cricket.”Cox was an unused squad member of England’s 2022 tour to Pakistan•Getty ImagesThere was another big draw for Cox. Having spent five formative years at Felsted School, nine miles down the road from the County Ground, he admitted that the chance to work on a daily basis with Jason Gallian, his former school coach who is now chair of Essex’s cricket committee, had been a clincher.”It was a very big reason,” Cox said. “He’s still my batting coach today. He’s in Australia at the minute on holiday which is lovely, but I need him back for my grind!”He’s been awesome since I was in year nine, like 14 years of age. Because he’s seen me since I was young, when I had that freedom and didn’t really care about things, he’ll be like ‘why are you not doing this, like you used to do?’. Sometimes, depending on where you bat in franchise cricket, you’re just slogging, so then to get back into the red-ball side of it again, he sorts out my technique.”As for filling Lawrence’s shoes at Essex, Cox insisted that he was focused only on his own game, but said he recognised the restlessness that had caused his predecessor to seek pastures new.”Dan’s been pretty unlucky hasn’t he?” Cox said. “For Brooky [Harry Brook] to have the year that he did was pretty unbelievable. Dan has been pushed aside, in a way, which is just probably unlucky but a bit annoying for him. But I think it’ll come to him. I can’t see why it wouldn’t. Because he’s now classified as an allrounder with his bowling, so he’s always got a chance.”That’s certainly the view of the man himself, with Lawrence also believing that he’ll have a better chance to develop his idiosyncratic offspin at The Oval, having found opportunities limited by the success of Matt Critchley and, in particular, Simon Harmer at Essex. “If you’re taking a few wickets as well as scoring runs, your chances increase of playing for England,” he said.”It’s our job to help him evolve as a player, and try to be better,” Gareth Batty, Surrey’s coach, said. “The sky is the limit for the young man. I think he could be a genuine allrounder; there is enough with his bowling that we can evolve it beautifully.” With Will Jacks absent on IPL duty in the early months of the county season, Lawrence will likely deputise as Surrey’s main spin option.Gareth Batty hopes to convert Lawrence into a “genuine allrounder”•Getty ImagesOf course, Lawrence isn’t alone in gearing up for a shot at glory at The Oval this summer. Despite his new surroundings, Cox is no less eager for a return to Oval Invincibles for the 2024 Hundred, where he hopes to pick up where he left off as the tournament top-scorer last year, prior to his broken finger.”The Oval is the best place to play cricket, 100%,” he said. “It is a full crowd every game, an awesome wicket, and also, you’re playing with some pretty decent players. Plus, Tom Moody is there as the head coach and I like to follow him as much as I can.”I think it’s the best tournament in the world, and I’m happy to say that,” he added. “I haven’t been to the IPL but it’s nine weeks and the Hundred is three-and-a-half, four weeks. All the overseas want to come, I was talking to the boys in Abu Dhabi and Pakistan, they were all saying ‘the draft’s next week. I can’t wait. I really want to come.’ And I’m like, mate, it’s the best comp ever. Like, unbelievable. The crowds are great and the standard of cricket’s quality.”Despite his palpable ambition, Cox knows that his sole focus has to be on the challenge that lies directly in front of him. “Do the best you can for Essex and it can kick on,” he said. “Like Harry Brook two years ago, he did his thing for Yorkshire, he scored those ridiculous amounts of runs. That made him get picked for England.”He wasn’t desperate just to play for England – he just knew it would come when it comes – but he wanted to score runs for Yorkshire. Hopefully this is the year that I do a Harry Brook. That’d be nice. But if you don’t have that self-belief, then you’re going to be struggling.”

The 2022 winners and 2023 runners-up struggled throughout this season

Shashank Kishore16-May-20242:37

Aaron: Sai Sudharsan among the keys to GT’s rebuild

Gujarat Titans made a stunning run to the title in 2022 and were within a ball of defending their crown in 2023, but this season has been disappointing. After topping the group stages in the first two years, they enter the final game having already been knocked out.Was their slump down to a change of guard with their captain Hardik Pandya leaving? Have they missed Mohammed Shami? Did Shubman Gill’s form last year hide their struggles, which were amplified even more by his patchy form this time?

The ripple effect of Gill’s form

When Gill walloped a 50-ball century against Chennai Super Kings, he celebrated it with a gesture that seemed like a release of the pent-up frustration.He started the season with promise, hitting 255 runs in his first six games at a strike rate of 151.78, but form deserted him midway through. His next five, until he broke the run drought with a century, brought just 67 runs at just about a run a ball.This was in sharp contrast to last year when he made 890 runs and three hundreds. In six of the seven innings he passed fifty, he struck at over 160. His consistency, jaw-dropping strokeplay, and transformed six-hitting game – Gill’s 33 sixes were the third-most – meant him not being in India’s T20 plans was inconceivable.How times change.Gill’s mixed returns this time had a ripple effect on GT’s top order as they were the worst team in the powerplay (run rate 7.23). It didn’t help that Wriddhiman Saha, who gave them a jumpstart more often than not last year when he made 371 runs, also battled wretched form.It has been a mixed season for Shubman Gill•BCCIHis average of 15.11 this season is the lowest among all openers who have played at least nine innings in the powerplay. Saha’s absence for the CSK game led to Sai Sudharsan opening the innings, instead of playing at No. 3.Unlike Gill and Saha, Sudharsan has been consistently among the top run-getters this season, but he has been challenged in the powerplay, especially against pace. His strike rate of 114 in this phase was the lowest among batters with nine innings.Sudharsan, like Gill, upped his game by several notches in their win over CSK by hitting 103 off 51 balls. From being stuck at 28 off 23 in the powerplay, he managed a sensational acceleration through the middle overs – another bugbear for GT (they were also the slowest through that phase until this game) – helped tide over the slow start.While Sudharsan has topped 500 runs, there will be conversations around his powerplay game – something he acknowledged was a work in progress – when GT do their post-mortem.

The middle-order muddle

Hardik hit the high notes in their first two seasons as a batter, often pushing himself to No. 4 to absorb pressure and allow the trio of David Miller, Rahul Tewatia and Rashid Khan to finish. He made 487 runs in 2022 and 346 in 2023. But in his absence, GT struggled to find the right balance.David Miller wasn’t at his best this time•AFP/Getty ImagesLast year, Vijay Shankar batted in ten innings for them in the middle order, hitting 301 runs. This time, he struggled for form before losing his place halfway through the season. Shahrukh Khan, a big auction pick, came into the mix only when they were already on a downward spiral.Azmatullah Omarzai, brought in to lend balance as an allrounder, didn’t have the kind of batting impact they would’ve hoped for; his four innings brought just 42 runs.Miller was given a bigger middle-order role, but he managed just one half-century this season; his struggles, particularly through the middle overs – he struck at just 123, were revealing. Tewatia, too, found it increasingly hard to force the pace, striking at 77 in the middle phase.All that accumulation in the middle didn’t translate into a big finish either and GT found themselves ranked ninth in the death overs. Being significantly behind the rest of the teams across all batting phases left their bowlers with too much to do.Of course, some of the imbalance in their XI (or XII) was down to injuries, too. Robin Minz’s absence – he’s a big-hitting wicketkeeper-batter – forced them to stick with Saha as an opener, while BR Sharath, Minz’s injury replacement, played all of one game. In all, GT used 23 players, the most by a team this season.

The Shami factor

Shami’s hard length and pronounced seam movement was too hot to handle last year. His 17 powerplay wickets – the highest for a bowler in an IPL season – at an average of 19.41 and economy of 7.5 proved menacing. But a longer-than-usual recovery period from an ankle injury ruled him out for this season.This meant GT had to shuffle around their options, including trying Mohit Sharma, their designated death-overs bowler, in the powerplay. Sandeep Warrier, Shami’s replacement, briefly sparkled while Umesh Yadav had a stop-start season. Spencer Johnson, among their costliest auction signing, found no swing either and was taken for plenty.Mohammed Shami’s absence and Rashid Khan’s poor form hurt Gujarat Titans•AFP/Getty ImagesAll told, it is perhaps Mohit’s tailing off in the death overs that hit them hard. The side with the best death-overs economy last year, thanks in no small part to Mohit, was now being taken for plenty in the same phase.Having picked up eight wickets in his first six games at an economy of 9.39, including match-winning spells against Mumbai Indians and Sunrisers Hyderabad, Mohit endured a mid-season slump. This included being carted for 73 in four wicketless overs – the most expensive figures in the IPL – against Delhi Capitals. While he returned to make an impact with 3 for 31 against CSK, their playoff chances were all but over.

Rashid’s lack of bite

Wickets haven’t come as frequently as Rashid would’ve liked; he has picked up 12 wickets in ten matches so far this season. It’s also perhaps a sign of teams being more adventurous, with the Impact Player rule giving them more batting depth, that Rashid’s economy of 8.30 in the last two seasons is much higher than his economy of 6.59 when they won in 2022.Four times this season, the most in his IPL career, Rashid has had an economy of ten or more in a match. Also, for the first time since his IPL debut in 2017, Rashid has been wicketless in three consecutive games. Rashid has himself spoken about how a back surgery prior to the season has had its aftereffects on him.”It did initially in the first few games,” he told the . “Like, when I was bowling my wrong’un, it wasn’t going how it should, because for that I have to use my back more than for legspin. I had that nagging doubt at the back of my mind, so even if there was a bit of stiffness in my back, I would get scared.”These persistent injury woes have had a trickle-down effect on his execution, which seemed pronounced when Will Jacks hit him for 29 runs, including four sixes, in an over to help RCB to an easy win in Ahmedabad.

We go behind the scenes to bring you all the answers to your questions about India’s selections for the white-ball tour of Sri Lanka

Nagraj Gollapudi21-Jul-2024After the announcement of India’s squads for the white-ball tour of Sri Lanka, the immediate headlines focussed on Suryakumar Yadav’s appointment as T20I captain and the fact that Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli were playing the three-match ODI series in preparation for the 2025 Champions Trophy.Several other questions, though, remain. ESPNcricinfo has gone behind the scenes to bring you the answers, a day before newly appointed head coach Gautam Gambhir and chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar address India’s pre-departure press conference.Related

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Is Ravindra Jadeja now a Test-only player?
Jadeja, who announced his T20I retirement after the World Cup, was not named in the ODI squad for the Sri Lanka tour, leading to doubts over his 50-overs future. However, it is learned that the selectors have reassured Jadeja that he is only being rested and he remains India’s primary spin-bowling allrounder. There are two main reasons why Jadeja has been given a break. One, both the selectors and Gambhir are keen to give Axar Patel a chance in ODIs and see if he can play the same role he has successfully performed in T20Is. With just three ODIs in the Sri Lanka series, the selectors and Gambhir agreed that having two left-arm-spin-bowling allrounders would be a surplus.The second reason is that Jadeja is a key member of India’s Test line-up both home and away, a crucial cog in balancing their XI. India are scheduled to play 10 Tests – five at home and five in Australia – from September 2024 to January 2025, and they are looking to keep Jadeja, who is 35 and has missed a number of matches with injury over the last three years, as fresh as possible for those matches.Hardik Pandya has won over the fans, but the selectors are worried about his inability to bowl his 10-overs quota in ODIs•Associated PressWhat is the status of Mohammed Shami?
Shami has played no competitive cricket since the 2023 World Cup final in Ahmedabad on November 19. Currently, the fast bowler is at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru where he has begun to bowl after undergoing surgery on his Achilles tendon earlier this year. The selectors haven’t yet marked a definitive return date on their calendar for Shami, but they are keen to see him feature in one if not both Test series India are scheduled to play at home – against Bangladesh (September) and New Zealand (October-November) – before they depart for their 2024-25 tour of Australia. It is understood that in case Shami has no fitness concerns the selectors could consider him for the 2025 Champions Trophy.Has Kuldeep Yadav been rested from T20Is?
Yes, Kuldeep, who is part of the ODI squad, has been given a break from the T20Is and remains India’s frontline spinner in that format. The selectors want Ravi Bishnoi to gain more experience and believe he is the best option to be India’s second wristspinner behind Kuldeep.Is this the end of the road for Yuzvendra Chahal?
While this might appear to be the case from the outside, the selectors will continue to keep the senior legspinner in their list of back-ups. Chahal was the fourth spinner picked in India’s T20 World Cup squad, but did not get to play any of their games. What goes against Chahal is the fact that his utility is restricted to just his bowling. He isn’t the strongest in the field and is a genuine No. 11 as a batter. The selectors continue to believe Chahal is an extremely good bowler, but feel he will have to bide his time for now. If he does get an opportunity, he will need to cash in to keep his currency strong.Rishabh Pant’s return leaves KL Rahul in a fight to keep the ODI keeping gloves•ICC/Getty ImagesWhy is Hardik Pandya not in the ODI squad?
Hardik, it is believed, had asked for a break during the ODI leg of the tour, though the reason could not be confirmed. Hardik has not played 50-overs cricket since hurting his ankle during the World Cup in November. While Hardik provides the ideal balance to India’s XI when he’s available, the selectors are concerned that he has not been able to bowl his full 10-overs quota when he has played. The 2019 World Cup semi-final against New Zealand was the last time he did so. Since then, he has bowled 27 times in 32 ODIs, without once completing his full quota.Keeping Hardik’s injury issues in mind, the selectors have decided to focus on providing more exposure to the back-ups including seam-bowling allrounders Shivam Dube and Nitish Kumar Reddy (who suffered a hamstring injury and had to pull out of the recent Zimbabwe tour), and spin-bowling allrounders Axar, Washington Sundar and Riyan Parag, whose inclusion for the Sri Lanka ODIs came as something of a surprise. However, the selectors view him as an option who can bat in India’s top six and bowl at least a few overs.Is KL Rahul still an all-format player?
Rahul’s omission from the T20 World Cup squad was a clear signal from this selection panel that he was not part of their plans. This remains the case, as can be seen from Rahul’s non-selection for the T20I tour of Zimbabwe and the T20I leg of the Sri Lanka tour. But it is understood that Rahul remains a key player in the other two formats, where the leadership group and the selectors firmly believe in his ability. Rahul was India’s captain when they last played ODIs on the tour of South Africa earlier this year, and was part of their first XI in the Test series against England that followed, but quadriceps and knee injuries kept him out after the first Test. Rahul’s injury issues and the stiff competition for places will keep him on his toes.At the 2023 World Cup, Rahul kept wickets in the absence of Rishabh Pant, who missed the tournament while recovering from injuries suffered in a life-threatening accident. While the selectors have named both Pant and Rahul as wicketkeepers for the ODI leg of the Sri Lanka tour, Dhruv Jurel, who made his India debut during the England Test series earlier this year, is understood to be seen as the main back-up keeper across formats. Rahul’s return is also the reason Sanju Samson could not find a spot in the 50-overs squad for Sri Lanka series, despite having scored a century in his most recent ODI.Injuries have put Tilak Varma’s India career on hold for the moment, but he remains in the selectors’ plans•Associated PressWhat about Mayank Yadav and Mohsin Khan?
Mayank Yadav’s electric speeds during the early part of IPL 2024 created a buzz around him, leading some to ask if he could be part of India’s pace battery for the Australia tour at the end of the year. The BCCI also added Mayank to the list of fast bowlers with developmental contracts earlier this year. However, the Delhi and Lucknow Super Giants fast bowler was soon ruled out of the IPL with a side injury. While he recovered from that injury, he is understood to have picked up a separate injury while bowling at the NCA. Mayank has only played one first-class match to date; he would be expected to prove his match fitness in domestic red-ball cricket before he is considered for Test cricket at least.As for Mohsin, who was Mayank’s team-mate at LSG, he has a lower-back injury. The selectors have been keen to consider the left-arm fast bowler from Uttar Pradesh in T20Is but Mohsin has been riddled with injuries including the career-threatening limb injury he suffered in 2023.Why is Tilak Varma not part of the T20I squad?
Tilak, who plays for Mumbai Indians in the IPL, has been among the most compelling young batting talents to emerge in the last two years. He played 16 T20Is and four ODIs in the lead-up to the T20 World Cup, but missed out on the shortlist for the tournament after suffering a freak hand injury at the end of the IPL season. It is understood that while he has recovered from that injury, he has since injured his other hand at the NCA, though details are yet to be confirmed. This is why he wasn’t part of the Zimbabwe tour or in the T20I squad in Sri Lanka.

The New Zealand spinner achieved an extraordinary feat in his home city three years ago. What can he do this time around?

Ashish Pant30-Oct-2024Mumbai holds a special place in Ajaz Patel’s heart. It was where he was born and grew up for a while before emigrating to New Zealand with his parents as an eight-year-old. His wife is from the city, and he still has plenty of extended family there, whom he often visits. Three years ago, the Wankhede Stadium was the scene of one of the rarest bowling feats in Test cricket, when Ajaz became only the third bowler in the history of the format to bag all ten wickets in an innings.That was his first time playing international cricket in India and he finished the two-Test series as the highest wicket-taker, with 17 wickets – 14 of which came in that Mumbai Test, to date the best figures by any visiting bowler in the country. While it was an effort that catapulted him to global recognition, it was also bittersweet with New Zealand going down in the Test and losing the series 2-0.Now, almost three years later, New Zealand make their way to the final Test of the series having taken a 2-0 lead and broken a slew of records on the way. There is some pressure on them to sweep the series, but as Ajaz makes his way back to his “second home”, he is likely to take a quiet moment to himself in the place where it all began.Related

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“Yeah, it will be pretty cool. It’ll be pretty nostalgic for me, obviously, going back there,” he says. “My roots are deeply connected to Mumbai. For me, it’s just special being there and being available and having the opportunity to play at Wankhede. Yeah, it’s surreal. Even when I went there the first time, it was really special even before everything kicked off. It was just special to be in Mumbai and be able to have the opportunity to play there.”It was on the second day of the Mumbai Test in 2021 that the stars aligned for Ajaz. He had bagged four wickets on the opening day and was eyeing the honours board, but there was a lot more than that in store. He got his fifth and sixth off consecutive deliveries, and while the seventh took another 28 overs to come, he wrapped up the final three wickets quickly to claim a place in history.Of the ten, Virat Kohli’s wicket was the one Ajaz cherished the most. “He’s a great of batting around the world and comes out with an aura and confidence, and to be able to get him out was special,” he says. But more than the wickets, he remembers most fondly a feeling that came over him earlier in the match.”In a funny way, the glaring moment of that game for me was being out there on the morning of day one and kind of absorbing the fact that you’re out there in Mumbai,” he says. “The place that you’re born… you’re not living in India anymore, you’re playing for another country, which is your new home, but you’re back here against India. And all those things in combination were quite crazy to comprehend, and obviously, a lot of things have to line up to get that opportunity.Ajaz joined Jim Laker and Anil Kumble in taking ten in an innings in the Mumbai Test in 2021•BCCI”It’s almost like I was destined to come there and play, but then the way that it unfolded was obviously quite special. At the end of day two I was just kind of sitting back and appreciating what I’d achieved and what had just happened, and also accepting the fact that there’s a lot of destiny about it, and there’s a lot of grace from high up above to be able to achieve something like that, because we all appreciate that cricket requires a little bit of luck as well, and to take ten, you need a lot of things to go your way. So that was pretty special.”

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Ajaz made his first-class debut in 2012 and had to wait for close to six years to break into the New Zealand team. The 2021 Mumbai Test was only the 11th of his career. One would assume that after taking ten in an innings, opportunities might have been fairly regular for Ajaz, for a while at least. As it turns out, he wasn’t even part of the squad for the next Test series that New Zealand played, against Bangladesh at home less than a month later. In fact, of his 20 Tests, only three have been at home, the last of them in February 2020.New Zealand’s bowling requirements are such that they have opted for a seam-heavy combination at home, with the likes of Rachin Ravindra and Glenn Phillips doing the spin-bowling duties if required. Since his record feat, Ajaz has been part of only ten of the 23 Tests New Zealand have played. All but one of those ten were in Asia. Before the Sri Lanka tour just preceding the ongoing one of India, he went through a period where he played only four Tests in close to two years, between late December 2022 and September 2024.While there is a tinge of frustration at the lack of opportunities, Ajaz admits it “breeds hunger” and the will to “continue to improve”.”If you’re honest, as an international cricketer and a professional cricketer, you want to be playing every game and work towards putting yourself in a position to be able to do that and play in all conditions and play everywhere around the world,” he says. “But sometimes in New Zealand, that’s a little bit difficult. You look around the world and you see spinners playing in all conditions. They play in their home conditions, they play in away conditions, where I guess our team balance and what we’ve been looking to achieve for a while now has been so seam-dominated that it’s been difficult to find a space in that team as a spinner.Ajaz’s new, slightly longer, run-up has helped him expand the range of speeds he can bowl at•AFP/Getty Images”But also, in saying that, if we look at the last five to eight years of New Zealand cricket, we’ve probably had the best seam attack we’ve ever had. So it’s kind of going well.”Yeah, it’s difficult and you want to play and you want to be available and push yourself for every opportunity, and realistically, sometimes that’s not a possibility.”But I think you still have to aim for it, you still have to work towards it because that’s the best way to prepare yourself when the opportunity does arise. I know that I don’t get as many opportunities, So when I do, I’m really hungry for them and I’m really excited for them. And I always work towards my game to be available everywhere, whether it be at home or whether it be in the subcontinent.”Obviously then it’s up to selectors whether I get picked or not. And then if I don’t get picked, that’s fine. I continue to grow my game, so that I can still keep pushing for that opportunity.”He can take comfort in the fact that since his debut, he has been part of the New Zealand playing XI in every Test in Asia. On the flip side, there is obvious expectation from him to rock up almost cold and succeed in spin-favouring conditions almost every time. After all, since his debut, only five bowlers have more wickets in Asia than his 70 in 15 Tests at 30.57 Over the last few years, he has made a change in his bowling stride and load-up, lengthening his run-up to help vary his pace so as to better adapt to surfaces in the subcontinent. It has yielded results. Ajaz was the second-highest wicket-taker when New Zealand visited Bangladesh for a two-Test series late last year. He also picked up eight wickets in the first Test against Sri Lanka in September.”If I’m honest there, about two years ago, I felt like my bowling wasn’t quite up to where I wanted it to be. And it’s funny to say that, because it was literally after I took ten wickets in India,” he says. “But my drive has always been to continue to improve and continue to get better. And one of the big things for me was being able to hit a higher range [of speed].”With my old action and my old run-up, I was able to hit 90s [kph], but not quite consistently. I would range between the mid-80s and the early 80s to the early 90s. With the addition of the run-up, now I can go up to mid-90s and still [also] hit the early 80s. So that range becomes a lot bigger, and that gives you more opportunities and also, it allows you to challenge batters on different surfaces.”If it’s slow, you can adapt and get quicker, or if it’s quick, you can adapt and get slower. After that Mumbai Test, there were probably games where I wasn’t quite satisfied with how it was coming out and what I was able to produce. It was then [about] going on a little discovery and figuring out what that looks like and where I wanted to take my bowling next.”During the two Tests in India in this series, Ajaz has seen the fast bowlers run riot in Bengaluru, and then Mitchell Santner take 13 in Pune. With match hauls of 2 for 100 and 2 for 97, his own performances have been lukewarm. Now, though, on (second) home territory, he will hope for another special show as New Zealand eye a rare series sweep. He will have plenty of support in the form of his parents, wife, daughter and extended family in attendance in the crowd. Is another ten-for too much to ask for?

Meet the Bajan and the Brummie who are dreaming of playing international cricket together

Matt Roller30-Jul-20241:23

Bethell and Mousley’s plan to push each other to Test cricket

England will reboot their white-ball set-up in September after surrendering both world titles in the space of nine months – and two Birmingham-based allrounders are making a case for inclusion.Jacob Bethell and Dan Mousley have already played Under-19s and Lions cricket for England, and have dreams of playing a full international alongside each other before long. They are team-mates for Warwickshire and Birmingham Phoenix, and could be in direct competition for a spot: they are both left-handed, middle-order batters who bowl fingerspin.Along with Rob Yates, another young Warwickshire player who has represented England Lions, they spend a lot of time in each other’s company. “We all want the same things in the game,” Mousley says, “but by us three almost working together, it makes it a lot easier: dragging each other to the nets, doing stuff together… it’s really helped us and pushed us on.”Bethell is only 20 but has already been earmarked as a future England player for several years, and is in line for a debut against Australia later this year. If the opportunity arises, he would love to play alongside one of his close friends. “Playing for England with Dan, that’d be unreal,” he says. “We always talk about, ‘f***, in 12 months’ time, we’ll be doing that.'”Related

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Mousley, who is three years Bethell’s senior at 23, is as Midlands as they come: he has an unmistakable accent, is a big Aston Villa fan and grew up in Nether Whitacre, outside Birmingham. “He calls it the royal village, God’s country,” Bethell says, laughing. “No matter how well cricket goes, he will live in that village for [the rest of] his life.”He can be a spiky character on the field. “Dan’s the most down-to-earth, loving kind of fella away from cricket,” Bethell explains, laughing. “And then he steps on the park, and he becomes someone that you almost want to punch in the face if you’re playing against him – which is a great attribute to be able to flip in and out.”Bethell’s own background is very different to Mousley’s: he has a British passport but was born and raised in Barbados before moving to the UK and winning a scholarship to Rugby School. “It happened all very quickly,” he recalls. “I was playing for my club in Barbados and happened to play in front of a touring side from England.”And then, that September, I was on a plane and starting school at 13… Michael Powell, the director of cricket [at Rugby] has the link with Warwickshire, being a former captain. He got me over to Warwickshire, and I’ve been playing for the Bears since I was Under-14s, and worked my way back up.”Mousley has had success in the Blast for Birmingham Bears•Getty ImagesIt was not a straightforward decision to make at such a young age. “It was a bit daunting,” Bethell reflects. “But to be honest, at the time, I just got on with it. I look back on it now and I’m like, ‘jeez, did I actually just do that? Move away from the family and everyone?’ And my parents look back on it the same: they’re like, ‘we actually really let you go and do that?’ But it is probably one of the best decisions I’ve made.”Both Bethell and Mousley had breakout seasons in the T20 Blast, as Warwickshire – playing as Birmingham Bears – topped the North Group in spite of an inexperienced batting lineup. Bethell played one of the most eye-catching innings of the tournament, hitting a 15-ball 50 against Northamptonshire, but it was a recovery job that stood out to Mousley.”His knock up against Worcester: we were 10 for 3, chasing 160 [156]. I think he got 70 not out at the end and it was batting on a different planet, to be honest. That really said to me how much he’s matured. That 15-ball 50, the striking was ridiculous; I haven’t see many people strike a ball like that. But his mature knock against Worcester, I was like, ‘wow, he’s got it all.'”Mousley has relished the responsibility of batting up the order this season, after spending the winter ringing Warwickshire captain Alex Davies and asking him to come in at No. 3. “All the way through – age-group cricket, academy cricket – I’ve always been in the top four. You get in the first team, you do well at No. 6, and I didn’t really move because I’d done pretty well.Bethell playing for Warwickshire in the Championship•Getty Images”I’ve really enjoyed it. Obviously the challenge of batting at No. 3 is [the ball] does a little bit more up top. When you’re coming in at No. 6, you’re very rarely coming in during the powerplay. But it’s nice for me, having two fielders out: you can just almost play normal cricket shots, and it gives you a little bit of time to get into an innings.”He has also had success with the ball, taking 13 wickets in the Blast and conceding just 6.81 runs per over. Mousley is a uniquely quick offspinner, with an average speed around 65mph: in Saturday’s win over London Spirit, he bowled a 75mph bouncer to Andre Russell. “I’ve always had pace on my side, and I guess it’s a bit of a niche in T20 cricket,” he says.Both players are on England’s radar ahead of Australia’s white-ball tour in September, which comprises three T20Is and five ODIs. With their team-mate Moeen Ali’s international career most likely over, and Ben Stokes and Ben Duckett’s availability limited by Test commitments, Bethell and Mousley’s left-handedness should play into their favour.Their aspirations are not limited to white-ball cricket: both say, unprompted, that they have Test ambitions and see themselves as all-format players. Bethell recalls watching the Boxing Day Test from Australia on Christmas evenings growing up – “it worked nicely with the timezones” – and Mousley wanted to be like Andrew Flintoff and Ian Bell.”We speak about it all the time: we’re not one of those players who says ‘we just want to play white-ball, we just want to play red-ball’ – we want to play all three [formats],” Mousley says. “We obviously have a good relationship away from the game, but also pushing each other in training and on the pitch has really helped us.”It may not be long before it is helping England, too.

Australia are eight points up after four games, with the trophy already secured on home soil

Valkerie Baynes20-Jan-2025Two sides with plenty to play for is the equation after the first T20I of the Women’s Ashes. For England it’s pride, with the best-case scenario now a drawn series in a fightback from 8-0 down that would better their 2023 effort at home, where they overcame a 6-0 deficit to draw eight-all. For Australia, the chance to record their most emphatic victory in the history of the multi-format contest is very real, as is a 16-0 whitewash. Just whisper that last bit quietly though, as the Australia camp are – publicly at least – not giving it any airtime just yet.But England are going to need a much better performance than their 57-run defeat in Monday’s opening T20I if they are to salvage something from the series, with the result already guaranteeing that Australia will retain the Ashes.For a time at the SCG, Sophia Dunkley’s first outing of the series had England on track to overhaul a lofty target of 199. But despite her 30-ball 59, the tourists were left wanting.by a lack of support with the bat and a sub-par fielding display that brought back memories of their T20 World Cup group stage exit at the hands of West Indies.Meanwhile, Australia’s ability to deal with anything thrown at them – on this occasion the late injury withdrawals of Alyssa Healy and Ash Gardner – only rammed home their dominance.”Home” being a keyword, Dunkley added, although she admitted that playing on Australia’s turf wasn’t the only difference between this and the previous contest in England.Georgia Wareham and Alana King took five wickets between them•Cricket Australia via Getty Images”We are obviously very disappointed with the result today,” Dunkley said. “We came here with a really open mindset of a new format, fresh format, and we just couldn’t put them under pressure for long enough. We’ve come away falling short, but there’s still eight points out there to get, so we’re going to go into that doing everything we can to try and come away those eight points. There’s still a lot for us to play for, going into the next few games.”We’re playing Australia on their home soil, so coming here and doing that was always going to be tough to get over the line and win the Ashes. But over the last few games, they’ve just put us under pressure a bit more than we have done to them, and we’ve not come away winning those big moments. There’s definitely things we’ve reflected on there and now it’s just for us to look forward to the next three games that we’ve got, and just to give it our all, and try and fight for those eight points as much as we can.”The T20 leg moves to Canberra on Thursday, then Adelaide on Saturday before the four-day, pink-ball Test at the MCG starting on January 30.While England’s fielding let them down in the latest match and, to a lesser extent, the first ODI, also in Sydney, their batters contributed to their own downfall on more than one occasion in the 50-over matches, which Australia won by four wickets, 21 runs and 86 runs, the latter after they had posted 308 for 8.Dunkley epitomised the style of play England have aspired to under the coaching of Jon Lewis, with her aggressive batting taking her to fifty in just 24 balls as she peppered the gaps and cleared the boundary four times in all.Related

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“I just wanted to come in and contribute as much as I could to the team,” she said. “I just prided myself on being aggressive and trying to take the bowlers on, and putting the other team under pressure. I tried to go out there and do that today, and get us in the game and unfortunately it wasn’t quite good enough, but I’ll continue to do that going forward.”In terms of how England can turn things around, Dunkley added: “Just sticking to what we want to do and how we want to go about it. We’ve not been successful but we come back again and we don’t change that. It’s really important that we keep our eyes very much focused on how we want to play as a team, and how you want to come across. Look, we could go out there and try our best, and still lose. So either way we just want to give it our best shot and try and be brave.”England’s focus on playing how they want to play – effectively the “fearless” mantra introduced by Lewis when he took charge of the team two years ago – has remained a common theme during this Ashes series. But the state of play suggests a change in approach is warranted – as Australia proved in adapting in the absence of two players who have both been involved in every T20I their side has played since January 2013.Whether that extends to an outright change of leadership, however, remains up for debate, with captain Heather Knight’s nine-year tenure sure to come under scrutiny.”We just back Heather 100 percent to lead us out there,” Dunkley said. “She’s done the job amazingly for a long time. She’s a massive, massive part of our change room, a massive leader and yeah, I back her 100 percent to help turn this team around. All we can do is stick together now and fight as hard as we can for the last three games. I’m sure she can bring the best out of us in the last couple of games.”Beth Mooney’s 75 off 51 balls set up Australia’s victory and she also took two catches standing in as wicketkeeper for Healy, while legspinning duo Alana King and Georgia Wareham claimed five wickets between them to help bowl England out for just 141 in 16 overs. Acting captain Tahlia McGrath was their next-best batter with 26 off nine, and she took the crucial wicket of Dunkley as the home side once again showed off their enviable depth and resilience.Could that stretch to keeping them unbeaten in the series? For Mooney, the task of winning the Ashes outright comes first.”I don’t know if we’ll look that far ahead, but I think certainly we take stock tonight and enjoy that win,” Mooney said. “That was a pretty special win after some great performances in the ODIs and then trying to play our way a little bit more in T20 cricket and put a marker out there. We’ll try and celebrate that win and then worry about Canberra tomorrow.”You look at each game in isolation and get the points that are on offer and hopefully the conversation in the dressing-room is we’ve got to play on Thursday like we’re on no points and it’s the start of the series. This group’s hungry to keep getting better and I think the really important thing is that we’ve got the personnel that can keep pushing the boundaries.”

Conrad’s life and career have reflected South Africa’s divided history as well as its culture of sporting excellence

Firdose Moonda08-Jan-2025″This is going to look different.”That was one of the first things Shukri Conrad knew when he took over as South Africa’s Test coach in February 2023.His way was not going to be what some would call the traditional South African way: a style of playing cricket that emerged from the posh, historically white, boys’ schools. Conrad did not intend to follow that mould.”I’ve always felt that we never quite embraced our diversity or saw it as a strength. For far too long, we had this image of what a Protea looked like, and if you didn’t fit that, people would start questioning whether you were really obsessed with the badge,” he said after South Africa qualified for the World Test Championship final to be held at Lord’s in June.”And why? Because some guys come across as too laidback or they have dreadlocks or sideburns and maybe they don’t fit the poster-boy image associated with what an international cricketer looks like. We know there are values and ethics and norms that we always will hold very dear and that doesn’t change, but the boy that comes out of Afrikaans Hoerskool in Pretoria and the boy from Groenvlei on the Cape Flats, or the Indian boy out of Lenasia, the obsession looks different for all of them. I mean, you come down the coast and the guys are so laidback they’re almost horizontal, but they are desperate to play for South Africa, to win for South Africa. It just looks different from everybody else’s.”Conrad knows this because in his life, things have always looked a little different.Related

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He grew up in the 1970s in a cricketing home in the Cape Flats, a low-lying area east of the Cape Town CBD, demarcated for coloured South Africans during the apartheid era, but his father, Sedick, decided to play for a white club. Even in the deepest, darkest days of segregation, this was possible because there were sporadic, albeit token, attempts at integration. Those players of colour who chose to play on the white side made both a sporting and political decision: by playing cricket in a system that was better resourced, they were able to advance their own games but at the cost of being ostracised from their own communities. Sedick was banned by the non-racial Western Province Cricket Board, the body formed as an alternative to the white cricket establishment, and in which people of all races played their cricket.When Conrad was eight, his father was selected in a white South African Invitation XI that included Barry Richards, Eddie Barlow and Graeme Pollock against the Derrick Robins 1975 touring side at Newlands. It was Conrad’s first time at the ground, but he does not remember it as a happy occasion. “That didn’t go down well, because of the state of the country and where my dad chose to play his cricket.”A few years later, Conrad ended up working on the manual scorecard at the ground because one of his neighbours operated it. Keeping the scoreboard ticking was a complex hierarchy that involved making one’s way up from counting the overs to field-spotting and being paid five rand (about two American cents) plus a slice of fruitcake a day. When Conrad talks about it, it is clear those memories are fond.”Down the bottom [of the scoreboard] was the overs, and that’s where you start off. If you did that well enough, you got promoted to doing the bowling analysis, so your maths needed to be okay. You’d be able to count to six and then, obviously, the number of runs scored in that over.”Then you got to do the batters and the runs, but the big job was operating the lights [on the scoreboard]. Whoever was bowling, his light had to be on. The batter that was facing, his light had to be on, but the really tricky one was, whoever fielded the ball, you had to flip that light as well. I spent a lot of my time during school studying who the players were, not doing my schoolwork. I landed that probably at age 12.”1:59

Shukri Conrad on Kwena Maphaka

By then Conrad had also started playing cricket for a coloured club. When Hasan Howa, the founding member of the South African Cricket Board – the umbrella body of non-racial cricket – found out that Conrad was playing what was called “board cricket”, he put a stop to it.”I’ll never forget,” Conrad said, “he was this big, burly character with a deep voice, and he basically said to people, ‘Well, his dad is playing on the other side, he’s not allowed to play here.’ And rightly so.”Conrad was then recruited by an administrator who formed a team of coloured school boys that played against the white schools in the area – thereby becoming a part of the white cricket circuit. Their opposition included SACS, the alma mater of Peter Kirsten, Bishops and Rondebosch, where Gary Kirsten studied. “Their lunches were great,” Conrad said. “We’re talking real privilege.”Conrad played in that system until he finished school, by which time South Africa was a political pressure cooker, with riots taking place regularly. He was encouraged to get a respectable job, in his case as a teacher. “That’s what your parents said to you: ‘You’ve got to work for the government because it gives you security. You get a housing subsidy.'” But the sporting bug in him fought those urgings. “Cricket was what I wanted to do. I wanted to play professionally.”Conrad could have gone to the other side of the country, because he was offered a scholarship at Natal University, but he had a desire to play for Western Province, so his only choice was to “go back to the non-racial side”, which meant approaching Howa again.Sedick, banned by Howa in the past, went with his son to see if they could come to an agreement. To Conrad’s surprise, they did. “After all the animosity, they embraced each other like long-lost father and son,” he said. “I was standing there and thought they hated each other, but that was the greatness of Mr Howa. He was very principled. He wasn’t going to back down on his beliefs. He coined the phrase ‘No normal sport in an abnormal society.'”A young Shukri (front left) with his family•Courtesy Conrad familyIt was a mantra the Conrads had come around to. “We probably didn’t see the wood for the trees. Everything was about cricket at the time. Looking back, would I do things differently? Would my dad do things differently? I think the answer is an unequivocal yes. Knowing what we know, maybe we were ignorant or maybe we just chose not to see some of the goings-on back in the day.”Conrad’s career as a top-order batter never really took off. “I always wanted to play in quite an aggressive way, sometimes too aggressive. I wait all week to play cricket. I don’t want that to be boring too, you know.”After unity in 1992, he played a little bit in the Western Province B side but “probably realised this ship had sailed”. While in his job as an English teacher, he also started coaching, and travelled between South Africa, England and the Netherlands for gigs until the headmaster of his school gave him an ultimatum.”He said to me, ‘You’ve got to decide now, you can’t be upping and coming back and parachuting in whenever you feel like’, so I gave up teaching after ten years. Then I got a call from Ziggy Wadvalla.”Wadvalla, the CEO of Gauteng Cricket, was looking for a coach for the provincial B side. Conrad got the job and spent three years there, turning the team around and winning the provincial one-day cup in 2003-04.He was also heavily involved in development at the Soweto Cricket Club. “A lot of the young players in Soweto were starting to come through the system. Enoch [Nkwe, South Africa’s current director of national teams and high performance] came maybe a year or two into my time. Soweto Cricket was a vibrant place. Things were happening there.”In this World Test Championship cycle, South Africa have won eight out of 13 Tests so far•AFP/Getty ImagesWith a growing reputation as a coach who could make things happen, Conrad was lured back to his home team, Western Province, and coached them for five seasons, winning trophies in all three formats: the 2006-07 one-day cup, the 2008-09 T20 competition, and the 2009-10 first-class title. From there he moved on to Cricket South Africa’s high-performance centre and national academy, where many of the current national players passed through. But although Conrad enjoyed working in player development, and was doing a bit of commentary on the side, he also “missed competition”.In 2022, he took over the national Under-19 side ahead of their World Cup. South Africa did not do especially well in the tournament but Dewald Brevis finished as the tournament’s leading run-scorer, and 15-year old Kwena Maphaka was hand-picked by Conrad as a future star. Later that year, when the national men’s job was advertised, Conrad, who had applied for it unsuccessfully before, decided not only to give it a “last shot” but also to double his chances.”Enoch had decided they would split the roles into red and white ball, and I thought to myself, I am going to throw the hat in both rings,” Conrad said. “I would really have liked the white ball. It’s an exciting format. But in chatting to Enoch, I realise there was probably a lot more graft to be done in this [Test] space. The team needed to be reshaped, remoulded and shifted in a different direction. We’ve always had good players. We’ve always had talented players and we will always have.”Initially Conrad actually got both red- and white-ball gigs, albeit temporarily, because he was asked to also oversee South Africa’s ODI series against England, which was crucial to their 2023 World Cup qualification hopes. Not only did they win 2-1 but captain Temba Bavuma, who had endured a torrid 2022 T20 World Cup campaign, played himself back into form and scored the hundred that sealed the series. That knock came after a well-documented conversation with Conrad in Bloemfontein, and it helped the coach with his decision to make Bavuma his Test captain.Sedick Conrad, Shukri’s father, played for South Africa’s Invitational XI against a touring international team in 1975•Courtesy Conrad family”I was pretty clear in terms of who was going to be the captain,” Conrad said. “It was always going to be Temba, and [the conversation in Bloemfontein] played a part. That just solidified everything but we needed to go in a new direction with new ideas.”Conrad brought plenty of those. As sole selector, his first series, at home against West Indies in February 2023, included sweeping changes, such as dropping Kyle Verreynne, Lungi Ngidi, Sarel Erwee and Rassie van der Dussen.”I looked at the type of cricket I always wanted to play and at the time [Heinrich] Klaasen had been with me at the national academy and he was playing really well in white-ball cricket. That was the type of cricket we wanted to play as well. It was tough on guys like Kyle, Khaya [Zondo], Sarel and Rassie,” he said. “But I was always going to select the character. I think we’ve all got ability. There’s some technical things here and there, but for me, the character was important and the test of the character was how a lot of those guys were going to come back if any of them were going to come back.”Verreynne has made a comeback and has credited Conrad for his transparency and backing. Ngidi could well do the same, although he is recovering from a groin injury. The rest may not, but Conrad has continued to make bold choices, picking 35-year-old Dane Paterson, who bowls in the 120s has the ability to get the ball to nip around, and Corbin Bosch, an allrounder who thought his opportunity had passed him by. He has also given chances to Maphaka, still raw and learning, and extended runs to David Bedingham and Tony de Zorzi.Conrad has a broad and deep knowledge of South Africa’s divided history and the politics entwined in its sport, and understands his responsibility to all South Africans – to put together a team that is both representative and that wins.Kagiso Rabada is South Africa’s leading wicket-taker of the WTC cycle, averaging 18.75 for his 41 wickets in nine Tests•Phill Magakoe/AFP/Getty ImagesSo far, he has largely got that right.”When you’re involved in South African sport, it is not an achievement to get a fully representative side there. That’s part of what you’re supposed to do. You understand the past. You understand what this country’s gone through. You understand the issues. When, in our country, the minority are walking for pleasure but the majority are still walking to get to work, you know you’ve still got a long way to go and we embrace that. We’re always looking to get our national side fully representative. And when you sign up for South Africa, you also want to make every single person in the country proud, and they must have a line of sight where they can say, ‘Well, I can dream about getting there.’ And hopefully we’re doing that.”From one victory in their first four Tests of this WTC cycle to a place in the final, Conrad has taken the team to heights that did not seem possible when he took over. It’s not the South African way to dream of more, because of how much disappointment has stalked them in knockouts and, more recently, in finals. But Conrad has a new South African way.”Just dream a bit,” he said. “Allow yourself to dream. There’s no harm, right? Some of the best things happen in dreams. And once you’ve got that little picture, let’s start working on a little map as to how we’re going to get there. We know it’s going to be tough, but we’re starting to do tough. We’ve got to do tough better, but we’re starting to do tough now.”

From watching videos of Kohli, the Tamil Nadu and Gujarat Titans batter has come a long way and is on the verge of stepping into his idol’s boots

Deivarayan Muthu07-Jun-2025″ [Very proud]. To play for the country in Test cricket…”B Sai Sudharsan’s mother, Usha Bharadwaj, says she is very proud, and then trails away, lost for words, when asked about the prospect of her son making his Test debut in England.”We Face-timed him as a family after he got picked in India’s Test squad,” she says. “Me and my husband are here in Chennai, [our] elder son is working in Australia, and Sai Sudharsan was in Ahmedabad.” Sai Sudharsan piled up a chart-topping 759 runs in 15 innings at a strike rate of 156.17 for Gujarat Titans this IPL season.Related

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• Sai Sudharsan: 'I have expanded my batting; mentally I'm a bit more free and expressive'

• Sai Sudharsan: Feels 'surreal' to be part of India's Test squad

“We are in different parts of the world now, but that call took us back to 2020, when we trained together as a family,” she says.In December 2019, Sai Sudharsan was in tears after he was dropped from Tamil Nadu’s Under-19 team. He was not in great physical shape, and acknowledging it, channelled his hurt into working towards becoming a fitter, stronger player. Early the following year, he began training with his mother, a strength and conditioning coach, who used to be a volleyball player for Tamil Nadu. His father, R Bharadwaj, a former track athlete who represented India at the South Asian Games in Dhaka in 1993, also played a key role.”During the [pandemic] period, we started training together,” Usha says. “I took care of his strength and conditioning, while my husband took care of Sai Sudharsan’s running and ground training. We wanted to make sure he had strength and endurance – the foundation for fitness. If you have both, you can push to play any sport. Flexibility is also important.”Because of Covid, all of us had to be indoors, and fitness became a family activity for us. Sai Sudharsan got addicted to it, and I also showed him videos of Virat Kohli, which motivated him and encouraged to become fitter and stronger. His brother also chucked a lot of balls to him at the nets. He used to do push-ups and then challenge Sai Sudharsan to do it.”It takes a village: Sai Sudharsan with his brother, B Sairam (second from right) and his parents, who have all had played a part in his cricket success•B SairamFrom there on, Sai Sudharsan became obsessed with improving himself and evolving. Having grown up playing on extreme turners in Chennai, he was always good against spin, but his batting against pace needed some fine-tuning. He exposed himself to side-arm throwdowns at speeds upwards of 140kph, and picked up the ramp shot from Gujarat Titans team-mate Matthew Wade.Most batters would have been satisfied with the kind of returns he got in this year’s IPL, but Sai Sudharsan is not most batters. He signed off from the tournament saying he has “a lot of things to improve” as a T20 batter.His coaches and seniors have marvelled at his hunger to train harder and bat longer than anyone else. He has had to be dragged out of the nets by his coaches on occasion. Even when he travelled to Ahmedabad to collect a number of awards after the IPL, he managed to squeeze in some net sessions.”Sai Su is someone who is religious about his nets and practice,” R Sai Kishore, Sai Sudharsan’s captain at Tamil Nadu and long-time IPL team-mate at GT, says. “How do I put it? He’s mad about practice and there is no room for complacency at all – something that we spoke about even after the IPL ended.Sai Sudharsan receives his Surrey cap from Alec Stewart in 2023. He averages 35 in his five innings in the County Championship, including a hundred against Nottinghamshire last year•Ben Hoskins/Getty Images for Surrey CCC”From 2021 to 2022, there was a massive difference in Sai Su’s game, 2022-23, there was again a massive difference, and so on every year.”That drive to keep getting better is the most amusing thing about him. To do this at 23, the sky is the limit for him.” Sai Kishore considers Sai Sudharsan an inspiration. “I might be a senior to him in terms of age and all, but I’ve learnt a lot from him.”Sai Sudharsan’s first-class average of 39.93 after 49 innings isn’t flash, but India’s selectors see potential and a high ceiling. He also has experience of playing in England, having turned out for a handful of games for Surrey across the 2023 and 2024 seasons.When the club first picked Sai Sudharsan, he had played fewer than ten first-class games and had not made his ODI debut. He made up for the lack of experience with his meticulous preparation. Alec Stewart, the former England wicketkeeper-batter, who was Surrey’s director of cricket at the time, was impressed.Before playing his first game for Surrey, against Northamptonshire in September 2023, Sai Sudharsan turned up for the county 2nd XI in Guildford, trying to acclimatise to the English conditions and the Dukes ball.With Gujarat Titans team-mate Sai Kishore, who says Sai Sudharsan has been an inspiration to him•BCCI”Sai came as an unknown and his experience of the English game was very limited,” Stewart says. “Vikram Solanki [the former England batter and current GT director of cricket] was massive in recommending him to me, and I have so much respect for Vikram. From his first training session, you could see that he was a special talent, and he hasn’t looked back. He loves to bat – whether in the nets or in the middle – and just fitted into our set-up perfectly.”Stewart reckons Sai Sudharsan’s soft hands and his range of shots will serve him well in English conditions.”He plays the ball late, and that’s the most important thing here. If you go too hard and get too far out in front of yourself, when the ball seams, you’re not in control, then your bat can get outside of your eyeline, whereas he plays it under his eyeline, plays it under his eyes, and plays it late. And even if he does nick it a little bit, like Kane Williamson, for example – you can nick it, but it still falls short of slip and that again is a real attribute of Sai’s.”The pitches are quicker here, certainly at The Oval, and to succeed, you have to be able to play off the back foot. You’ve got to be selective to pull, hook, cut or let go. He gets out of the [line of the] short ball well but can also play the uppercut over the slips. He’s got a full array of shots, and he gets them in right order.”The Dukes ball has a tendency to swing more than the Kookaburra and the SG ones, but Sai Sudharsan has had enough practice with it.You shall know him by the colour of his cap: Sai Sudharsan with his harvest of trophies for topping the run table and other feats in this year’s IPL•BCCI”When he’s gone back home, he’s taken some of our Dukes cricket balls back with him,” Stewart says. “I didn’t charge him for them and just let him have them,” he laughs. “But, no… he had that forward-thinking [mindset] and trained with those balls, so that when he comes back to us, or hopefully [is] picked for India on tour, he’ll have had nice practice against the Dukes cricket ball as well.”Some of those will probably be worn out by now because I gave them to him last year, but he’s a quick learner and he practises with a purpose. Yes, he likes volume, but he also likes to improve.”From watching videos of Kohli shown him by his mother, Sai Sudharsan is now a frontrunner to slot into India’s top four in the post-Kohli Test era. Stewart, a veteran of over 130 Tests, has some advice for the young batter.”Obviously big shoes to fill, with Mr Kohli standing down,” Stewart says. “But no one can do what Virat has done. If he can go in and almost not think of ‘I’m Virat’ because he’s not replacing him… Virat has retired. And therefore, can he not be the next Virat but can he be the best version of Sai Sudharsan? Then India have got yet another high-quality cricketer.”Sai Kishore believes Sai Sudharsan won’t be weighed down by the pressure of expectations and backs him to make the step up to Test cricket successfully. “Sai Su has no stage fright,” he says. “He made his IPL debut before he made his first-class debut. Be it TNPL [Tamil Nadu Premier League], TN, county, IPL or India, he was never taken aback by the situation or by the atmosphere. You come across a lot of skilful players, but they may not have the right mindset. Sai Su is supremely skilled and mentally strong, which is quite a rare combination.”India will enter a new era in England without the old firm of Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Sai Sudharsan could be one of the new faces who defines that new era.