*** Indian Premier League 2015***

[Maximus]

[Maximus]

2 Number of times England have lost an ODI by nine wickets at home. The first time was also against India, in 1986. England have suffered seven nine-wicket losses overall and their five ten-wicket defeats were all away from home.

91 Number of ODIs India have won under MS Dhoni, which is the best for an Indian captain in ODIs. Mohammad Azharuddin held the record earlier, with 90 wins in 174 matches. India have won 91 from 162 games under Dhoni.

7 Number times in the last seven English summers that the team winning the Test series lost the ODI series. Before India this summer, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia split the ODI and Test honours with England, twice each, over the last six seasons.

34 Number of Indian players who have scored a century in ODIs. Ajinkya Rahane was the 34th. The only countries with more centurions are Australia (39) and England (37). However, Indians have scored 217 centuries in ODI cricket; the Australians are second with 179.

183 India's opening partnership today was their highest in England and the fourth highest outside the subcontinent. During the Test series, India's opening partnership produced 219 runs from 10 innings, and only 137 from eight innings in the last four Tests.

18 Number of 50-plus opening stands for India in England, their most in any country other than home. India have an equal number in UAE, 17 of those in Sharjah alone. The 183 that the openers put together today was India's first 50-plus partnership on this tour to England, including the Tests. In ODIs India's openers have averaged 65.30 in England over the last six years, posting three century and five fifty stands in 13 innings.

3 Number of times that India have beaten England at Edgbaston. England have beaten India only once at this venue. India's win percentage of 75 at Edgbaston is their best at any English venue where they have played more than one ODI. The other English venues where India have won more ODIs than they have lost are Trent Bridge and Lord's.

5 Number of times that England have lost their first three wickets for 25 runs or fewer against India. They were 23 for 3 today, having lost Alex Hales, Alastair Cook and Gary Balance. The last time this happened was in Jaipur in 2006.

85 Number of catches Raina has taken in ODIs. He took two today to equal Anil Kumble and go seventh on the list of Indian fielders with the most catches in ODIs. Mohammad Azharuddin, with 156 catches, is the leading Indian, while Mahela Jayawardene holds the overall record - 206 catches.

26 Number of wickets Mohammed Shami has taken this year. He took three today and is now the second highest wicket taker in 2014, with Lasith Malinga leading the list with 29. Three of the top four ODI wicket-takers in 2014 are Sri Lankan, with Shami being the only exception.

[lambadimba]

saurav ganguly okappuud successful captain annaru kada MAXI ... is is above or below Azhar

[Maximus]

saurav ganguly okappuud successful captain annaru kada MAXI ... is is above or below Azhar

 

Azzu Bhai raccha captain asalu...Gangu  azzu bhai taruvatha....

kani gangu takkuva matches lo almost azzu bhai ki deggarlo vochadu...

[Maximus]

eliminate Ahmed Shehzad...

[dalapathi]

Comment
We be men
Not quite. Sledging is not masculine, it's shameful
Simon Barnes
September 2014

There are times when people take considerable pride in their shameful doings. Often it's a bit of a man-thing: the adulterous husband may have done something pretty terrible - like destroying his family - but he still boasts about it because it means he's one hell of a man. Generally that's a pretty good clue about the adulterer's inadequacy as a human being.
And so with sledging. It happens, and on the whole it's pretty shameful - and yet cricketers stand up and boast about it. We may do bad things, but that's because we're so incredibly masculine. There's a scene in King Solomon's Mines in which Sir Henry Curtis and the African king-to-be, Ignosi, are lost in mutual admiration, and Ignosi says: "We be men, you and I." At this point the alert reader either laughs out loud or reaches for the sick bag. Because we've kind of grown out of that sort of thing, haven't we?
But perhaps not on the cricket field. Alastair Cook, the England captain, with his designer stubble and the thin veneer of Essex laid over his public-school tones, seems to be a man constantly in wait for Ignosi's compliment. After the summer's sledging row between Jimmy Anderson and Ravindra Jadeja, Cook's summary was that England just can't help being Real Men. "We also want to play competitive cricket," he said. "We don't want to be too nicey-nice, with everyone saying they're playing in the right spirit."
Fact: it is perfectly possible to play outstanding competitive cricket without shouting bad words at people; talk to anyone who batted against West Indies of the 1970s and 1980s if you don't believe me. Hard and competitive cricket is what people want to watch: but it's possible to provide this without going back to the playground of Sunnyhill School.
Ask any former or current Test cricketer to tell you the funniest sledging stories and you find yourself involved in a very short conversation. There aren't any. Apart from half a dozen examples that have been trotted out a thousand times. Of these, one is quite funny and one is brilliant, but alas, it stopped being funny after the death of Glenn McGrath's first wife.
The rest of sledging is all, to quote the great comedian Billy Connolly, f*** this, f*** that and f*** the other. There are disputed origins for the term sledging, but that needn't concern us here. In fact, I'd like to see the term fall out of use, because it implies a we-be-men pride in the practice. The Americans have a better term: trash-talking, and it's one that demeans the person doing the talking. You are less inclined to boast about trash-talking when you're associated with trash. And perhaps less inclined to do it.
It comes down to Oz-envy. All cricket teams suffer from that to a degree - a hangover from Australia's decade and a half of dominance - but none so much as England. Of course, cricket by its nature gives you plenty of opportunity to exchange views, and it's the legitimate task of the fielding side to make the batsman uncomfortable. Eleven against one are comfortable odds for most of us, and ganging up on the batsman is one of life's little pleasures.
Fact: it is perfectly possible to play outstanding competitive cricket without shouting bad words at people
So you shout encouragement at the bowler, shower praise on fellow fielders, make excited noises when the ball passes the bat and make loud asides intended to be overheard: You got him now, Reg, he's really struggling, fast and straight, mate. And on and on for as long as time and cricket continue.
And where do we draw that line in the dust between banter and trash-talk? Sledging became an industry for the side known as the Ugly Australians in the mid-1970s, when they genuinely shocked cricketers used to different terms of engagement. It became a kind of trademark for the great Australia side of the 1990s and early 2000s, dignified for all time by Steve Waugh's fatuous defence of the practice as "mental disintegration". Actually, I suspect McGrath and Shane Warne were more important to Australia's success than rude words.
Since then other teams, notably England, have followed slavishly. This Australian team was one of great cricketers and they sledged viciously: so if we start sledging viciously we must be great cricketers too. Right? Hard to see a flaw in such an argument: certainly, English cricketers never have. In the Kingsley Amis novel Lucky Jim, the hateful artist Bertrand knows that great artists have lots of love affairs, so he has lots of love affairs to show the world that he's a great artist.
You'd have thought that England would have gone off sledging when they were gleefully paid back by Australia last winter. They were brutally sledged, and there was no comeback, not because they lacked the skills in the protean forms of the word f***, but because Mitchell Johnson blew them all to hell. Naughty words are not much help against a top fast bowler at the peak of his game.
But no, England are back sledging like the pseudo-Aussies they are, and though they are bursting with pride in themselves for this achievement, it's time that the people who matter did something about it. That's us. The paymasters. The people who watch. Are we enriched by seeing grown men slagging each other off? Or do we prefer them to play cricket with the right balance of brutal intensity and common decency? What sort of cricket do we prefer: Anderson telling a batsman to get stuffed or Andrew Flintoff commiserating with Brett Lee at the end of one of the most gripping Test matches of all time?
Cricket is not war. It's not even professional wrestling. It's sport. A game. We love sport because it's beautiful, because it's enthralling and because ultimately it doesn't matter - and we prefer cricketers to play cricket on that understanding. So let's close with a story about the death of sledging. Angus Fraser of England was bowling to Brian Lara of West Indies, and fizzed one past the outside edge: "I don't suppose I can call you a lucky bleeder when you've got 347."

[dalapathi]

 

© PA Photos Cover story Monsterball

Last season Mitchell Johnson revived not only his own flagging career but also something cricket had quite forgotten: the terrible thrill and fear of the bouncer

Daniel Brettig | September 2014

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Does anybody remember laughter?

Not the belly laughs of administrators, broadcasters and players hoovering up money from T20 cricket. Not the amusement of fans at fielding misadventures or commentary gaffes. And certainly not the smug chortle of batsmen attacking bowlers with the impunity offered by bulging bats, shrinking boundaries and emasculated pitches. The snorting of which we speak is a deeper, darker kind. It is the predatory, hyena cackle of the Australian slips cordon behind Mitchell Johnson.

"You expect sledging and tough verbal encounters all the time, but one thing you don't want is that situation where another team feels they've got such an advantage that they can take the piss," says one of Johnson's contemporaries. "You see a few times when Mitch has his back up. There's laughter from the slips in the Australian team, as if to say, 'You've got no chance and thank god we're not having to deal with this.' That's the last thing you want, a team that feels such an advantage they're able to muck about a bit."

Down the years such laughter has been heard occasionally, brought on by the speed and malice of Jeff Thomson and the West Indian batteries that followed him. After their 17-over Via Dolorosa against Michael Holding and Andy Roberts on a treacherous Old Trafford pitch in 1976, John Edrich erupted into the maniacal giggles of a deserter happening on a mirage when informing Brian Close of his score. One. Thomson was blackly amused by the travails of his victims, enjoying the power he possessed to bore through layers of skill and ego to the fears beneath. In recent times Shoaib Akhtar's celebrations were characterised as much by screeching laughter as the aeroplane run.

By 2013, however, such tales had become just that. Stories told by coaches, former players and pundits like Holding, a voice crying out in a wilderness of pragmatic medium pace and elbow-flexing spin. Dale Steyn for a time carried the flame of pure speed, but his shaving back of a few kilometres in the name of longevity meant that he was more likely to find the outside edge than additional cheekbones to join Craig Cumming's. Morne Morkel had the pace and bounce but not quite the menace. And both men had actions that offered a decent sight of the ball - a morsel of comfort also offered by Australia's latter-day Ferrari, Brett Lee.

As for Johnson, he lurked in the background, occasionally lethal but more often unreliable. The general view was that his highest peaks had already been scaled, however briefly, against South Africa in 2008-09. Australia's selectors chose him at some times and not others, never completely trusting him to hold up under the sternest pressure. During the India tour in early 2013 he played a single wicketless Test, and was suspended from another as one of the "Mohali four" who failed to submit homework to the coach. In the middle of last year's Ashes series in England he might as well have been completely unknown, much as when he first arrived on the Australian scene 14 years ago.

****

"What have we got here?"

Appearing at Adelaide Oval No. 2 on an April morning in 1999, Johnson turned a few heads well before he warmed up to bowl in centre-wicket training. None of the other players, most known to each other via the increasingly regimented pathway of junior competitions and talent identification, had seen him before, not even the Queenslanders. They laughed at his choice of haircut - an undercut with a ponytail. He was 18. Introducing himself as "Mitch from Townsville", Johnson strapped on his one pair of bowling boots and loosened up.

© AFP(More than) a handful

Jonathan Trott Manchester, September 8, 2013

The ball that started it all? Australia's first ODI after the failed bid for the Ashes in England was a washout in Leeds, but a finer day in Manchester allowed Johnson to charge in. Trott thrust his gloves towards a first ball that was angled across the eyes. It was the quickest delivery England's No. 3 had faced all summer. This missile, and a couple more in another rain-curtailed affair at Edgbaston, convinced Australia's selectors to let Johnson loose against Trott and Co at the Gabba.

Yuvraj SinghMohali, October 19, 2013

Not strictly a bouncer, but fast, short and moving away from Yuvraj, who dabbed at it with feet leaning closer to leg stump than off. Brad Haddin clasped the chance above his head, an unusual stance for a wicketkeeper in the subcontinent. On returning to Australia, Haddin said Johnson had hit his gloves harder on slow Indian pitches than at any other time, and on any other surface, in his career.

Jonathan Trott Brisbane, November 22, 2013

Another venomous throat-ball to finish what Old Trafford started. The match and series changed in the fraction of a second between the ball leaving the bowler's hand and its arrival well ahead of the batsman's schedule. Trott's gloves were raised in self-defence as his head jerked away, and though the Kookaburra went to ground, Australian spirits rose and blood thirst spread through the stands. Trott lasted another four Johnson balls before he was taken behind - off another bumper - on the stroke of lunch. Nothing was the same again.

Graeme Smith Centurion, February 13, 2014

Smith and Johnson had plenty of shared history, mainly defined by broken fingers. But each new series brings a fresh start, and this time Johnson immediately stated his intention with a short-pitched attack and a backward short-leg fielder. The first ball thudded into Smith's thigh pad, and the second ballooned off gloves raised in fearful self-preservation. At the end of the series South Africa's captain bade farewell not only to Johnson but the international game altogether.

Hashim Amla Centurion, February 15, 2014

Perhaps the most storied bouncer in cricket is the one Ernie Jones fired through WG Grace's beard. In the second innings of the Centurion Test, Johnson's first ball to Amla would have done the same had the batsman not been wearing a helmet with a visor. There had been plenty of Johnson bouncers through the summer, and plenty of outcomes. But the stupefied expression that passed across the unflappable Amla's face as he composed himself said it all. This was not for the faint of heart, nor perhaps the entirely sound of mind.

Within the space of a ball or two, the curiosity of players and coaches turned into a more alert posture. The kid was every bit as quick as Dennis Lillee had said when he urged the Academy coach Rod Marsh to get him down to Adelaide. Chris Hartley, then Australia's Under-17s gloveman and now Queensland's, said the impression was forceful. "Everything about him was very raw but there was just these natural ingredients. The ball came out of his hand really quick, his action was a little bit loose but fundamentally it was very fluent and very simple."

By the next summer, Johnson had begun to lose some rough edges. The ponytail was the first to go, perhaps fortunately for all those now emulating the moustache. His action grew tighter, and his role was defined in Queensland's youth team: take the new ball and scare the living daylights out of the opposition.

The national U-19s carnival that December was played in Perth, with its storied fast pitches. Horror stories quickly mounted. New South Wales were battered; Ed Cowan and Aaron O'Brien bore the brunt of a spell in which Hartley stood 30 metres back and still took the ball on the rise. Noticing that Johnson regularly overstepped two or three times an over, Cowan pleaded with the umpire to overlook the no-balls so he would only face six deliveries at a time, not eight or nine. Previously cocksure teenagers opted for chest guards. Queensland's glee grew with each match.

The encounter they had waited for was to be against the hosts, a Western Australia XI with Shaun Marsh at the top of the order. Only 16, Marsh was still two years away from the Sheffield Shield hundred that would have Steve Waugh waxing lyrical, but he was already the jewel in his state's junior programme. The pitch at Settler's Hill was tinged green and fast. Queensland chose to field, eliciting a confident response from the hosts - runs on the board would see them through. Johnson sized up Marsh and proceeded to deliver a one-two punch more recently familiar to Alastair Cook, Dean Elgar and Stuart Broad. Hartley recalls:

"The first ball was a quick bouncer that whizzed past Marsh's grille. He turned around, and looked at where I caught the ball with wide eyes, as if to say, 'Wow, what was that!' Mitch followed up with a ball that pitched about middle and off, straightened enough to beat the outside edge, hit the top of off stump and snapped it in half. The joy coming from our team was completely at odds with how silent the sidelines felt with the WA team, who had been banking on Shaun. He'd not just been knocked over but had his stump broken in half…"

A suitably shaken WA were razed for 74. Johnson 4 for 21. Lillee's public pronouncement of Johnson as a "once-in-a-lifetime prospect" was still two years away.

Musing on his early career, Johnson observes that whatever happened with his technique and confidence, he always had the bouncer to fall back on. It was always more reliable than fuller balls that often skewed wide.

"If I look at my whole career it's been an important ball for me," he says. "Just using it at the right times and with the right venom, making sure that if I am going to bowl it I'm going to bowl it hard into the wicket. If I do get hit I know I can bounce back and still go hard with it. When you've got that pace up your sleeve it's always in the back of the batsman's mind a little bit and you can worry him.

"That's part of the reason you play, to have that bit of intimidation."

****

Johnson's passage between 1999 and 2013 featured repeated injuries, swift development and elevation to the Australian team. He was not always confident of his progress, even if he could look utterly terrifying on the pitch. Moments of transcendence - Kuala Lumpur in 2006, Melbourne in 2007, Perth in 2008, Durban in 2009 - were fleeting. The shy, ponytailed Townsville youth often crept through the Cricket Australia veneer, whether in ham-fisted attempts to assert himself verbally or in the combination of nerves and family troubles that engulfed him in successive Ashes in 2009 and 2010-11.

Warning, Bell: England's No. 5 gets a wake-up call in Brisbane, 2013 © Getty Images

Those struggles make more sense after reading one of his earliest interviews, ahead of his first Shield match at the MCG in 2001. "When I first found out I was actually coming to Melbourne I started shaking," Johnson told Channel Seven. "I'll probably do that again when I wake up on [match] day. I know I will have a lot of mixed thoughts but I'll just try and play the game and forget about what's going on around me. I don't really feel there is pressure on me. I just feel a bit nervous and I'm just trying to get on with my own thing at the moment and not think about it all too much."

Those nerves were compounded by a bowling action he struggled to rely on, and a team uncertain of how to use him. Johnson's immense speed was allied to enormous strength, and when he seemed unsure of where the ball would go it seemed safer to use him in longer spells. The 166 overs he slung down in four Tests in India in 2008 were 18 more than any other member of the attack did: and yet he did not bowl when Australia needed wickets on the penultimate afternoon of the series, due to Ricky Ponting's concern about the over rate. Then, as in England a year later, the only laughter emanated from Australia's opponents.

In late 2011, when a freakishly injured toe at the Wanderers ruled him out of the home season, Johnson could think of nothing better than getting away from cricket. Even including the 2010 Perth Ashes Test, where he took nine, his past three series had reaped 24 wickets at near enough to 50 runs each. "I just wasn't sure where I was going," he said in 2012.

"If I hadn't got the injury and let's just say I got picked on the next trip - because there was concern that I wasn't going to get picked - I don't think anything would have changed in my performances. I don't think I would have retired but I definitely would have stepped away from it a little bit. Before my injury I wasn't confident and didn't believe in myself. The first two months away from it I didn't miss the game at all. I'd spoken to one of the coaching staff and said, 'I'm just not interested in it.'"

The interest slowly returned. Watching an Australian team that had begun to win again helped. Rousing displays against India in Melbourne and Sydney through Boxing Day and New Year added a sense of purpose to Johnson's recovery work, as he followed on television from Perth. Especially helpful was the sight of Michael Clarke pointing to the badge of his cap when indicating where Peter Siddle and James Pattinson should bowl to India's tail at the MCG. That visceral, physical threat was Johnson's greatest weapon, and he resolved to use it more liberally the next time around.

McLaren sank to his knees and removed his headgear to reveal blood on a swollen wound above his right ear. He did not play any domestic cricket for the remainder of the season

Vitally, Johnson reconnected with Lillee. He trained in Perth as national selector John Inverarity looked on. The break refreshed his body and mind, while Lillee sharpened his technique. A believer that the run-up is the most important part of a bowling action, Lillee lengthened Johnson's approach and encouraged an exaggerated piston motion with his arms for rhythm. At the wicket, the placement of Johnson's feet was refined, improving his height at delivery and thus his arm and wrist positions.

By the time Johnson went to England for an ODI tour in 2012, the technique he would carry though the following year's destruction was in place, even if the results were not immediate. Most importantly, he had belief in the method and in himself. Bolstered by Lillee's four-word "TUFF" mantra (Target, stand Up, Front arm and Follow-through), he was markedly less affected when spectators jeered him at The Oval. Not many knew it at the time but Johnson had found the path that would lead, 16 months later, to an Ashes date at the Gabba.

****

Settling at the top of his mark in Brisbane on the second morning, Johnson was nervous but ready. He knew his plans for the English batsmen, his role in the team, and that he had the confidence of the captain in the slip cordon and the coaches at the boundary's edge. It had not always been possible to say all this. Doubts about the reliability of his bowling action had slipped away over the previous summer, and bursts of speed at the IPL, and then in the ODI series in England and India, had impressed Australia's planners. Most significant was that he made England's No. 3, Jonathan Trott, decidedly uncomfortable. It may be surmised that Johnson was chosen for Brisbane for his effect on Trott alone - the devilish sparkle in Inverarity's eyes when he named Johnson part of the Gabba XII said as much.

"You pick your players," Johnson says. "Trott was struggling with the short ball, and we'd noticed that in the one-day series earlier last year in England, the way he played it. So there was definitely a plan to bowl short to him. There were certain players through that series and in South Africa we wanted to bowl it to. It's probably more satisfying to bowl a good short ball to a top-order batsman. There was a couple through the series, a few to Alastair Cook and a couple to Ian Bell, those really good players."

Rusty early deliveries gave spectators a reason to groan, as Johnson sought to calibrate his sights. Then Ryan Harris drew an outside edge from Cook, sending Trott in to bat minutes before lunch. Afterwards, Australia's players would testify to the power of the next few minutes. Trott, usually inscrutable, had been a pillar of England's 2010-11 Ashes victory in Australia, yet here he was helplessly, hopelessly drawn into a bouncing, hooking battle with Johnson that could only go one way. He waved at a short ball on the stroke of the interval. It was the moment in which the series tilted sharply towards the hosts.

© Getty ImagesCasualties of war

Three batsmen talk about what being hit on the head does to your game

Mike Gatting: Nose broken by Malcolm Marshall First ODI, Kingston, February 18, 1986

I always felt I was lucky because it was just my nose. As the surgeon told me, it could have pushed the bone back into my brain and that could have been serious trouble.

There is always the tingle when you are playing a fast bowler. You tell yourself, "Crikey, there is a battle on here. I've got to be at my best." When I faced Malcolm again there was that tingle. I tried to keep telling myself to watch the ball but I was not sure how the body was going to react. Was it going to freeze? Was it not going to do something I wanted it to do?

I knew Marshall was going to bowl me some bouncers. Marshall knew I would be looking for the bouncer, so he did not start with them straightaway. But then he came round the wicket and bowled the bouncer. I hooked. I was a bit late and it went over his head.

There was never fear. If there is fear you've got to stop playing. You've got to always back yourself to be able to get out of the way. I do not think about the Marshall hit at all. Even if I see it on film, it does nothing to me. I have a scar on the top of my nose between my eyes. When I see that I think: aren't I lucky?

Rick McCosker: Jaw broken by Bob Willis Centenary Test, Melbourne, March 12, 1977

I was asked by Greg Chappell, our captain, whether I wanted to go back to bat or not. I said I did. I wanted to be part of the match.

I guess it was a risk going back. But it was a diminished risk, because by that time, late on the third afternoon, the wicket had become quite flat and the English bowlers had been in the field for at least a day.

What that incident did not change was my attitude towards batting. I did not change my attitude to the hook shot. I realised there was a reason why it happened in the first place: the lack of proper technique in playing the hook.

There was no fear when I went in to bat after the injury. You are anxious that nothing like that happens again, but that does not necessarily mean that you go out there with fear. Otherwise you are giving the game away, because being an opening batsman you are always going to cop it. You just have to learn to improve your technique."

Andy Lloyd: Struck on the right temple by Malcolm Marshall First Test, Edgbaston, June 14, 1984

"Before the ball that hit me, I had already faced a few short deliveries from Garner and Marshall. But this one just flew at me and caught me completely unawares. I thought it was going to go over my left shoulder. Instead it hit me on the temple.

My first impulse, like that of many batsmen who are hit in the face or head, was to get up and bat. At the time I was not in intense pain. I knew there was a problem when I tried reading the advertising signboards fencing the ground. That's when I realised there was something wrong. I lost 35% of central vision in my right eye. The biggest issue was whether I was going to play cricket again.

One of my first county matches on return was against Glamorgan in 1985. I made 160. Greg Thomas was a pretty rapid fast bowler and he bowled a lot of short stuff at me, but what he and the others did not know was: I was picking the ball after it had pitched; it was the full balls that were causing me difficulties in reading the length. The depth perception in my eyesight was the main problem.

I was 50% the batsman I used to be after that injury. But it did not damage my confidence. The only time you lose confidence is when you are not scoring runs. My ego was bruised, but on my return I became a more attacking player. That was because I knew I couldn't play for England again with my reduced eyesight.

I played Marshall later quite a few times. My game plan was the same: play back because he is going to bowl fast at you, but look to come forward because that is how a bowler tries to get you out. That is how you play fast bowling.

Interviews by Nagraj Gollapudi

A repeat in the second innings hurried Trott onto a flight home, battling a sense of mental and emotional burnout that Johnson himself could have related to in 2011. Johnson had also pointedly gone after England's tail in each innings. Australia's fielders grew increasingly aggressive, enlivened by the blood sport taking place before them. Clarke's confrontation with James Anderson was notable for turning on stump microphones, but it was representative of a wider aggression. While the gunslinger Johnson fired life-threatening bullets, the hyenas cackled expectantly from behind.

"Your fast bowler is someone who raises the intensity levels on the field and takes the fielding team with him. When you see a fast bowler like Mitch on song, that lifts the whole team and changes the complexion of the game completely," says Robin Peterson, part of the South African team that was next on Johnson's menu. "It gets the crowd going, the commentators going, and as they're bowling at speed, the slips and everyone around the bat jumps onto the bus and it becomes really intimidating. There's no relaxing. Even while he's walking back to his mark you're hearing chatter about it and the slips let you know that the next ball's going to be coming just as quick."

England's bowlers were lined up for punishment in a systematic, consistent way not seen for years. The Australian bowling coach Craig McDermott wanted his pacemen to intimidate bowlers in the way he had been by Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and company. Led by Johnson, they made Broad, Graeme Swann, Anderson and others choose a quick innings over a long one. Skittish strokes grew increasingly prevalent across the series; five out invariably meant all out. At short leg, George Bailey watched Monty Panesar's difficulties with mounting anxiety.

"I was just trying to get him to get his elbow out of the way, for starters," Bailey said. "That didn't look that much fun. He was muttering away to himself to watch the ball. It was not pretty."

In an attempt to defend the honour of his team-mates, Swann admitted more than he realised about how Johnson's speed was undermining England's lower order. "I honestly don't think any of our batsmen fear for their physical safety," Swann wrote for the Sun. "Bowling of that pace ups your heart rate, and sometimes people play more shots than normal because of the surge of adrenaline. We've had plenty of batsmen caught on the hook, for example, in the first couple of Tests."

As England hooked themselves to oblivion in the second Test in Adelaide, effectively ceding the Ashes right there, Australia's fielders laughed like winners. Johnson was the reason.

So what is it like to stand in the middle, fighting not only for your wicket but your health?

In South Africa, a team steeped in speed was routed by Johnson on a Centurion pitch concocted to maintain the hosts' unblemished record at the ground. AB de Villiers was the only local batsman to survive or thrive for an extended period, and even he needed to make the most of his outrageous talent. More representative were the struggles of Peterson, the left-arm spinner whose batting pretensions were challenged fully. For him and the rest of the tail, the torment began in the viewing area.

"When you see any fast bowler running in," he says, "bouncing out your top order and bowling at that pace, it sends a message to the lower order, because you know he's going to come hard and aggressive at you. You try to be calm and relaxed, but it's difficult to be calm and relaxed facing 150 clicks. It's a very difficult proposition to sit there and watch.

"We were all well aware he was bowling pretty well, we saw that in the Ashes. But the change facing Mitchell last series to this series was definitely his aggression. Besides that, he bowls short spells where he's very quick every single delivery. You can feel he's running in at you, and that's an intimidating thing.

"The guys put in all the work in the nets and hours preparing, facing short-pitched bowling and getting hit a lot in the nets as well. But it doesn't prepare you for when you're out there. The biggest thing from the lower order's perspective is courage more than skill. He doesn't give you any soft balls, he bowls everything at a high intensity, and he was just too good. Period."

Too good is one way of putting it. Too fast, too dangerous another. On a pitch offering variable bounce, Johnson used every angle available to him, causing major problems for left-handers Peterson, Ryan McLaren and Morkel by switching around the wicket. This is the fast bowler's equivalent of using the grenade launcher on an assault rifle. When Malcolm Marshall told a debutant David Boon in the 1984 Gabba Test, "Are you going to get out or do I have to come around the wicket and kill you?" he spoke an inconvenient truth for those who believe cricket should be played by gentlemen.

"Facing him around the wicket is really hard work," Peterson says. "You've got a short leg, a leg slip, a guy out on the hook and a fine leg. It's tough because you can't score on the off side. When you're batting, if it's not only about trying to preserve your wicket and it's about survival and protecting yourself as well, it becomes a different proposition. Hence all the arm guards, chest guards and protections going around.

"You really feel like you're absolutely pushed into a corner with nowhere to go, and I'm not sure how batters are going to be able to adapt to it. Sometimes you do things in the heat of the moment where you feel like 'How the hell did that just happen?' That's pace bowling, that's what it does to people, it takes you out of your comfort zone and makes you do things that you wouldn't necessarily do against a guy bowling at 135kph. It's not about being scared, but sometimes it is so quick your body just reacts before you actually realise what you've done."

Peterson dealt with the ordeal as best he could, resorting in the second innings to an exaggerated hop across to the off side in an effort to mix up Johnson's line and perhaps tempt him to pitch fuller. It was a short-term policy that had the minor consolation of reaping 21 runs and ending with a dismissal - not to Johnson but to a grubber from Peter Siddle.

© Getty Images

But it is not the 22 wickets in three Tests that spring instantly to mind when recalling Johnson's impact on the victory in South Africa. Nor is it the masses of children who sought his autograph in Centurion, St George's Park and Newlands, many wearing fake moustaches. It is the threat of danger underlined by Holding. "We haven't seen too many people bowl with that sort of aggression and that sort of pace," he said after watching Johnson in Centurion. "I think it's finding out some batsmen who have been quite comfortable over the past five or six years with the medium-pacers they've had around."

Ryan McLaren found out most of all. Johnson's bouncer cracked into the side of his head as he tried his best to stave off a vast defeat in the first Test: hot pace, rearing bounce, a momentary loss of bearings, and a sickening rifle-shot sound as ball met helmet and skull with head-on precision. McLaren sank to his knees and removed his headgear to reveal blood on a swollen wound above his right ear. Australia's players crowded around with genuine concern across their faces.

In appreciating the profound effect of Johnson's destructive summer, the fate of this lesser-known victim is worth noting. Though he resumed at the batting crease and edged Johnson soon after, McLaren was ruled out of the following two Tests when he complained of recurring headaches and other side-effects of concussion. Scarcely reported was the fact that he did not play any domestic cricket for the remainder of the season. If anyone was laughing at this, it was with the kind of rueful inflection that accompanied a Dale Steyn quip from 2012.

"Where else in the world do you get the opportunity to basically kill someone with two bouncers an over? Or try, legally."

[dalapathi]

 

© Getty Images Editorial The bowling was superfast

Batsmen excepted, breathes there a fan with soul so dead who doesn't like it fast and furious?

Rahul Bhattacharya
September 2014

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One of the possible names for this magazine was Shot! The exclamation is universal, alive in a variety of twangs and registers, at home on a maidan, a beach, a green, or in a commentary box. A little too batsman-friendly, however; not a good pitch. We heart bowlers. Most of the earliest stories we commissioned involved bowling. You may have read some last month: a panel on the finest pair, a conversation with the pioneer Saqlain Mushtaq.


This month's cover story is Daniel Brettig's terrific account of how Mitchell Johnson reintroduced the world to bloody scary. Brettig's reconstruction arcs from Johnson's first bad-haircut appearance at the Academy back in 1999 to the blow that concussed Ryan McLaren this February. Its details are telling and sometimes chilling. Pace - and length! - like Johnson's invests our languorous game with the frisson of blood sport. Brettig recounts a moment in 2011 when Johnson, burnt out, injured and following the Boxing Day Test on television, watches Michael Clarke simply point to his cap by way of instruction to his fast bowlers. It arouses Johnson. Extreme pace arouses most watchers. Battling it is a different prospect. "Broken marriages, conflicts of loyalty, the problems of everyday life fall away as one faces up to Thomson," Mike Brearley wrote in Return of the Ashes. It was a lovely and qualified line. Those quoting it neglect four key words from the paragraph: "My own experience is..." Others, as Jonathan Trott's example cruelly indicated, may find their minds not wonderfully concentrated but further clouded.

There was a moment in 2011 when Johnson, burnt out, injured and following the Boxing Day Test on television, watches Michael Clarke simply point to his cap by way of instruction to his fast bowlers. It arouses Johnson

The minds of batsmen, especially the clouds, is the topic of a fascinating discussion between Martin Crowe and Daryll Cullinan. Sambit Bal knew the pair well enough to extract genuine candour. Their conversation, 7500 words after boiling down to half as the recipes suggest, gives you a taste of the obsession, isolation and torment involved. Along the way they crack one or two fine jokes - and pay tribute to two or three great bowlers of their time.

Karachi Khatmal, aka Ahmer Naqvi, writes of another kind of isolation. His thoughtful essay on Pakistani fandom in a time of cricket destitution roams films, songs, tweets and message boards - and also demonstrates why fast bowlers are bigger than rock stars. The idea of Pakistani exile has an echo in Osman Samiuddin's delightful meeting with Lalit Modi in London. The encounter introduces a series with cricket's banished, slated to run every other month.

That is the first of two series announcements for the issue. The other, we are very pleased to tell you, is for a monthly column from a great sportswriter of our time, Simon Barnes. His first piece takes on sledgers and masculine posturing, and contains withering words that need no bleep marks.

Elsewhere, Vaneisa Baksh paints a heartwarming portrait of one of cricket's support cast, a Trinidadian peanut vendor. As the English season winds down, the photo feature gives you a last sighter of jolly costumery. However, Russell Jackson will not miss team jerseys where "nipples should have been allocated their own England cap numbers". And Daniel Brigham profiles a big success of the summer, and probably beyond, Joe Root.

But back to bowlers. Daniel Vettori lets the side down only marginally by picking a batting performance as one that changed his life. Towards the start of the issue you will find the dexterous Vernon Philander talk about his method (sorry, no gouging tips). On the final screen, Ian McDonald will almost tell you the private story behind the most famous triumph of a bowler over a batsman.

[Maximus]

@dalafai....Zim gelusthey ee roju...

[dalapathi]

© Getty Images
Essay
Strange love
A lifetime of supporting cricket's most infuriating team, and now five years of no home international cricket, places the Pakistani fan in a unique predicament
Ahmer Naqvi | September 2014
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The sun has just set over Hattian, a small peri-urban area about an hour's drive from Islamabad, and I am sitting on a sofa on the open roof of a small building. The building is right on the edge of a road first built about 2000 years ago, and tonight heavy trucks with neon-lit geometrical designs go roaring down on it, their luminescent decorations like blurred trails in the twilight. I look at the rampaging trucks while I wait for a match to begin on a TV hooked up to a wire that emerges from a mangrove-like mass of other wires.
Pakistan versus India at the World T20, and as the Pakistani openers walk out, the call to Maghrib prayers rings out. At least half of the assembled crowd silently files into a small room near the television, where they form a congregation and begin praying. As the rest of us watch the batsmen limber up, a rakish man with his shalwar tied at a distinctive height above his ankles, hair neatly oiled and light kohl in his eyes, takes his place in the crowd. He soon starts pointing at the congregation and hisses that they are committing a sin. He asks, rhetorically, why they haven't bothered going to the nearby mosque. No one responds, and when he leaves muttering under his breath, a few grin. When I ask about him later, everyone dismisses him.
It is a cliché to describe cricket in the subcontinent as a religion, even if the situation is as symbolically loaded as above. I was only there to visit a friend, and to get a feel for this piece. My brief was to try to understand and explain what made the Pakistani fan unique. When I began pondering this, I came across many such examples that showcased Pakistanis' love for the game. But at the same time, the more examples I came across, the less sure I was: after all, sports fans the world over share many characteristics and failings. So what made Pakistanis unique?
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Pakistan fans are more likely to put up a picture of a cricketer doing something non cricket related than any other fans. Discuss.
- @ajarrodkimber
Jarrod Kimber's tweet raises some fascinating questions. Pakistan lacks alternatives for celebrity worship, and after decades of oppression of the arts, cricket genuinely cuts across a massive and diverse population in a way little else does. Everywhere you look you find cricket, every facet of society seems to bear the game's reflection, whether it's religion, politics, music, gender, advertisements, films, memes, or even symbols of national identity; cricket is an integral part of Pakistan. It is a country that struggles to acknowledge its myriad languages and cultures, a country that struggles to find space for its bewildering diversity of beliefs and traditions, and yet it is a country that has increasingly found itself in cricket.
A country that, remember, for the last five years has hosted no international cricket.
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Blessed with sharp wit, trenchant opinions and a proclivity for the graveyard shift, Suhayb Alavi is a bit of a cult figure at the news channels he has worked for as a producer. Generally he is remarkably laidback, but he possesses an unnerving poker face that, combined with his heft, makes him appear quite dangerous at times. It is odd to imagine him being scared of anything, like when he describes his first experience of going to a stadium. Episodes of police lathi charges in the general stands in the 1970s and 1980s meant he had to wait until he was well into his teens to see his heroes in the flesh. He describes the trepidation during his first visit, finally relieved by the "tight security… awesome festivity, and no hungama".
Everywhere you look you find cricket, every facet of society seems to bear the game's reflection, whether it's religion, politics, music, gender, advertisements, films, memes, or even symbols of national identity
When I ask him how he feels about cricket no longer being played in the country, he says: "We don't need this generation to treat cricket the way we had to treat Indian movies - if you wanted to watch Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge in the cinema, you had to go to Dubai. Now you have to do the same for cricket."
Not that making such a journey would be out of the question. When Pakistan beat West Indies in the quarter-final of the 2011 World Cup, Sana Kazmi had five days to arrange transport, match tickets and, above all, a visa to her country's traditionally hostile neighbour. All she had was a hashtag - #GetTheGirlsToMohali - and blind faith. It goes without saying that she got there.
Epic journeys are undertaken within the country as well. Ahmed Hassan's first match involved leaving his village at 5am with little money, on the off chance of getting tickets for an ODI against England in Rawalpindi in 2005 (he did). He makes sure to visit as many village tournaments as he can in the spring, when the fields have been harvested and are free for cricket. He tells legends of a batsman called Richie (after Richie Richardson) who is an unrepentant fixer and who once hit Sohail Tanvir for multiple sixes.
Mariam Mehdi's cricket-mad parents raised their children the same way, which meant forsaking the usual Pakistani dinner-time discussions on politics (national, provincial or extended family) to delve into cricket. When Mohammad Amir dismissed Tillakaratne Dilshan in one of cricket's great opening overs, in the 2009 World T20 final, the family made so much noise that the superintendent of their Abu Dhabi apartment building showed up thinking there was an emergency.
Mehdi has at least one important future trip mapped out. "To be honest, I don't expect international cricket to return anytime soon but the day it happens I'm booking my flight and flying to the National Stadium or Gaddafi or wherever they plan to play it."
We all know why and how international cricket left Pakistan. But what it confirmed was that cricket lies right in the middle of a political, civil and security imbroglio that threatens not just the game's existence but the country's future potential. Other teams' fans can complain of merely corrupt owners or venal administrators; the Pakistani cricket fan, on the other hand, is dragged into a bigger picture - far bigger than the game itself.
The void left by the instability and incompetence of those running the game has created unprecedented space for fans, and nothing captures this dynamic better than what the ubiquitous fan-driven website Pakpassion experienced in the summer of 2010.

Women in Pakistan are increasingly breaking male stereotypes on how cricket fans ought to behave © AFP
In many ways the story of Pakpassion represents the classic promise and potential of the internet in Pakistani society. Initially a sub-forum in a larger website, it was taken over by the British-born Sajid Sadiq in the early 2000s, who tried to focus on "quality discussions and water-tight moderating". It quickly developed into a sprawling social space, with its forums contributing to the development of a canon of conversations on cricket as well as a lot more. Soon the site's enterprising volunteers - fans - were interviewing former and current cricketers, and players themselves were turning to the website.
Several years later, one of the interviewees, a coach called Nadeem Iqbal, requested that Pakpassion try to introduce a seven-foot bowler he knew to Aaqib Javed, then the head of the National Cricket Academy (NCA). The Pakpassion fans managed to get Aaqib to take a look, but the seven-footer, Mohammad Irfan, who worked in a pipe factory, had no equipment, lodging, or suitable diet. The fans stepped in, raising the funds required and contacting their vast networks to try to fulfil what they thought was their best shot - getting Irfan a first-class team and steady employment from the game.
The whole tale is exhilarating: a fan-driven cult website pushing the inert levers of postcolonial institutions to achieve something wonderful and life-changing. Yet there was a typically Pakistani twist to the fantastical tale, and by the time Irfan made his debut in an ODI against England in 2010, the website was engulfed in a serious crisis.
That ODI took place right after the earth-shattering spot-fixing allegations, which implicated three Pakistani players and Mazhar Majeed, a player agent. Mazhar was a regular commenter on the website, where his brother Azhar Majeed had a blog. The chummy access that allowed Mazhar to introduce players to the fix was also what made Azhar an interesting blogger. The day the news broke Sajid's phone was melting with calls and messages as he scrambled to put out a press release explaining the website's complete lack of knowledge regarding Mazhar's criminal activities.
"What I learnt is similar to what Amir said after his trial," Sajid tells me over a Skype call. "Be careful of who you trust. No one's got 'fixer' written on their foreheads." Pakpassion's personal trauma was also a national one for Pakistan. Coming a year after the Lahore terrorist attack, it coincided with the country's worst-ever natural disaster, after what had been its bloodiest year in terms of terrorism. It was bad enough to be known to the world as terrorists, but now terrorists and also fixers?
****
"Yeh shaam phir nahee ayegi / Iss shaam ko, iss saath ko / Aao / Amar karlain"
("This evening will not return / This evening, this moment / Come, let us make it eternal")
"Yeh Shaam", Vital Signs"Tapti dhoop talay / Chaon ki hai talaash / Tasub ki dhool thamay / To milay shanakht"
("I'm searching for shade in a heat that beats down / And I find out who I am when I'm covered in prejudice's dirt.")
"Talaash", Junoon
March 1989 saw the release of Vital Signs 1 and in October, Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram played together for the first time. In January 1993, the two Ws ripped out the Kiwis in Hamilton to mark a heady peak. In September, Junoon released their seminal album Talaash. The two pacers and the two rock bands - Vital Signs and Junoon - are still revered as the original gods of their generation, and their roughly parallel rise saw the advent of a new era in Pakistan. After a decade of the most socially, culturally and politically stifling rule in the country's history - that of Zia-ul-Haq - the rise of rock stars on and away from the pitch redefined the way a young Pakistan saw itself. Their swagger and confidence gave the youth new heroes, who they could use to replace the artists, writers and poets who were tortured, exiled or repressed by the military dictatorship of the 1980s.

© AFP
Like the Ws, Vital Signs and Junoon weren't as chalk-and-cheese as our memories sometimes make them out to be, and what made all four so special was that while they could do what others had done before, they stretched out the ideas of what we thought possible. Like the bowlers, the bands matured and evolved over time without ever losing the ability to be exhilarating. But even as music and cricket defined society for people of a certain generation, the two forces went on divergent paths.
Vital Signs and Junoon became victims of their success, struggling to deal with personal demons as well as unprecedented social pressures. The role of Pepsi in hastening the demise of Vital Signs is well documented: they kept pushing more tour dates, more events and more pop-friendly love songs, sternly resisting the band's moves towards the Pink Floyd-inspired melancholy that would eventually become their identity. Junoon meanwhile had to deal with pressures from the state. After releasing a song about corruption, the band found themselves the target of a TV ban on long hair and "jeans and jacket culture".
In contrast, when a combination of youthful bravado and commercialism's destructive impulses played out in cricket, this is how the establishment reacted:
 

"[…] this commission is left with no option but to hold Wasim Akram not guilty of the charge of match-fixing… This is done on the ground of insufficient evidence. Wasim is barely saved through Ata-ur-Rehman's discrediting himself and Aamir Sohail's actions."
- Justice Malik Qayyum, 2000

"Two things - one, I didn't want that the cricket should be deprived of [Wasim Akram's] participation, and the other was that I didn't want that towards the end of his career... he should be banned or something like that. My idea was not to find people guilty and then punish them."
- Justice Malik Qayyum, 2006
While the rock stars of music were fading out, the rock stars of cricket were exonerated. Most of those caught in the shadow of match-fixing were precisely the sort of players the public lionised - match-winners. They were a brand of match-winners responsible for perfecting the intoxicating, mercurial cricket Osman Samiuddin described as "the haal of Pakistan". The likes of Shahid Afridi and Shoaib Akhtar emerged, perpetuating the idea of cricket as the field of dreams. Even Misbah-ul-Haq, who rose to prominence in the aftermath of the 2010 fixing scandal as a straight-batted anti-hero, has become a cult figure. For Pakistani fans, the anti-hero became just another genre of hero.
Other teams' fans can complain of merely corrupt owners or venal administrators. The Pakistani cricket fan, on the other hand, is dragged into a bigger picture - far bigger than the game itself
Did religion, that other major concern of Pakistanis, have anything to do with it? After the Qayyum report, a number of tainted players became far more publicly religious. This era also coincided with the rise of the "religious celebrity". Several televangelists and popular clerics had taken to "reawakening" popular personalities, mostly former actors and singers. The most famous is one ex-rock star, Junaid Jamshed, the former Vital Signs frontman. But this genre of celebrity really took off once cricket stars came on board. Soon fans were posting pictures of cricketers visiting important shrines and religious gatherings, and performing pilgrimages. These days even the once notoriously colourful Afridi, and the perennially colourful Shoaib, turn up at religious events. It makes for wildly popular images on social media and raises new, still-forming questions about fandom and religion, and the idea of worship that welds them together.
In the early '90s, when my generation got hooked on cricket, Pakistan was still a country with world champions in several sports, where pop music was exploding, where TV dramas would leave cities transfixed, where films could still occasionally boast house-full signs. But as the new millennium approached, hockey, snooker and squash had spectacularly collapsed, cinema was in its death throes, and TV and music were drowning in a broken economy. Through it all cricket not only continued to survive and prosper, it became an omnipresent super-culture, its details and dramas known to even those who didn't care for it. For a nation that was constantly losing its heroes, those of cricket were the only ones left standing.​

 

Eventually cricket became everything.
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"It is not about women being given the same chances, the same opportunities, the same positions as men. Why? Because we are different, because we don't need to aim this low, because we need to be ourselves and figure our own selves out. We need to love ourselves, rather than hate men."
- From "What's Yours Is Mine", posted on the blog Zunn, by Bhai****

Junoon's Ali Azmat: like the two W's and Vital Signs, the band matured without losing the ability to be exhilarating © AFP
Cricket, like most if not all sports in Pakistan, is almost exclusively a male preserve. When the discussion turns towards women in sports, it inevitably involves looking at women in what are understood to be male roles. In that regard, Pakistan has had sporadic but important success, ranging from the dedicated rise to professionalism of the women's cricket team, to the efforts of journalists like Afia Salam, the editor of the Cricketer (Pakistan), and Fareshteh Gati-Aslam, who reported fearlessly on match-fixing.
In recent times cricket in Pakistan has also seen the rise of female fans loving the game on their own terms. "I've never actually played cricket except twice a year on the beach, so I'm sure I can't understand its technicalities as well as people who do," says Sana Kazmi, she of the Mohali jaunt. "But I never claimed to be a technical expert, so it's cute to see men telling me I don't know how to hold a bat when they don't rate a player I like, or when they find a stat I quote as unrepresentative."
Both Kazmi and Mariam Mehdi complain of how tiresome it is to be constantly tested by male fans, or be expected to prove that they understand the game's rules, history and nuances. Mehdi says: "Guys are less likely to engage in a sports conversation with a female than they are with males. When I say my favourite player is KP, guys usually reply with a comment about his looks, implying that is probably why I like him."
Crucially, they and countless others have refused to be in the thrall of male-determined standards of fandom, nor have they let themselves be defined by the prejudices directed at them. "I refuse to not talk about, say, how pretty a fast bowler's hair is just because I want to be taken more seriously by men, because 1) why should I care? 2) it's a big part of the experience of watching and enjoying cricket for me, and 3) it gets more wickets," Kazmi declares.
This is not to say that cricket fandom changes lives. Pakistani women don't have it easy. But as it does for all else, cricket creates a temporary oasis, or a carnival where the rules are temporarily reversed, the reservations briefly relaxed.
No moment captures this better for me than the celebrations that took place after Pakistan won the World T20 in 2009. In areas and streets where women were, and still are, harassed and ogled, for one night the rules changed, and they were free to dance and sing with abandon. I remember ducking beneath an underpass that night, horns blaring and passengers hanging out of the door, when we came up to another car beside us. Inside, an aged lady in a burqa rolled down her window, pushed aside her veil and flashed a giant toothless grin and a proud victory sign.
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"… cricket here is not just about court cases, and dysfunctional players and management. It lives and it breathes… Instead of worrying about when teams will tour Pakistan again, perhaps we should turn our attentions to the domestic scene once more and rejoice in it."
- Osman Samiuddin, ESPNcricinfo

Fans pour into the streets of Islamabad to celebrate Pakistan's World T20 win in 2009 © AFP
The first surprise was that the only available tickets were in black. Sure, it was a weekend, but there were still a few hours for the match to begin and only the smaller of the host city's two teams was going to be playing. Yet the makeshift PCB stalls had apocalyptic crowds swarming around unmanned posts, while touts were selling extremely cheap tickets for twice their value. This was semi-finals day outside Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium for the 2014 edition of the Faysal Bank T20, and it was going to be a full house.
Domestic T20s have always been popular in Pakistan. In many ways the format brings to life most fans' experiences of playing in the streets and in crowded, cramped spaces, as well as celebrating the improvisation of the amateur. I remember attending one match in 2006 at Karachi's National Stadium, where the atmosphere lacked the police-state terror of normal matches, and fans smuggled in cigarettes and contraband. Eventually some of those letting loose even climbed on the stadium's creaking roofs. The experience was electric.
The proliferation of T20s has allowed for a gradual reshaping not only of the domestic scape but of the fan's interaction with it. One result of the 2009 Lahore terror attacks was that domestic T20s are now the only way to see national stars and exciting cricket live and in the flesh. When I went to the tournament in 2006, it was still a bit of a lark. In 2014 it was the highest-quality live cricket on offer in the country for months.
But it's still too early to know what this may mean. Pakistani domestic cricket has always been unloved by fans because, unlike in other countries, domestic teams are corporate sides: it was difficult to become an ultra-fan of Allied Bank, for example. T20 has started giving regional identities space again. This has helped rouse interest in domestic cricket among fans, but there is little doubt it is also a consequence of the format. Pakistani fans love it because it evokes the sort of chaos and entertainment they identify with.
What we saw in Rawalpindi that night was something from a more innocent era - an extremely diverse and democratic crowd of all ages taking in cricket as escape and entertainment, rid of lathi-wielding cops and overbearing social norms. Instead of the constant paranoia about misbehaving single men and harassed families, all we saw was a sea of genuine excitement. The crowd had some sense of home support, but mostly they bellowed with lusty cheers any time a famous national star made it to the crease. The migrant labourers yelled for Younis Khan, while those from the plains roared every time Saeed Ajmal came in. Perhaps surprisingly, given that being persecuted is part of his identity, the biggest cheers were saved for Captain Misbah.
It was a space where cricket was living and breathing for the Pakistani fan, despite all else.
****

"Aaj iss ground mei koi Muslim, Hindu ya Eesaii nahi - iss mulk ka ghareeb utray ga! Qassam khao ke tum nahi darro ge, tum aaj nahi darro ge."
("Today a Muslim, Hindu or Christian won't step on to this ground - this country's poor will! Promise that you will not be scared - you will not be scared today.")
- From Main Hoon Shahid Afridi (2013)
The year 2013 was celebrated for Pakistani cinema's long-awaited revival, as the country's brand-new multiplexes had the chance to play Pakistani films distinguished by both their modern content and filming approaches. The two biggest hits of the year, though, stuck closely to the particular demands of South Asian films: easily identifiable heroes and villains, and a tale of morality. What made these films different, however, was that they were set in urban locales and in contemporary contexts.

Lahore's Iqbal Park plays host to a swarm of matches at any given time © Getty Images
The biggest hit was Waar, in which a good guy (Pakistani) cop battles terrorism orchestrated by a local group controlled by an Indian agent - a predictably popular action film context.
The second was Main Hoon Shahid Afridi, where a team of working-class boys are led by a good-guy ex-Pakistan captain who is framed for match-fixing by his evil father-in-law, who also owns the rich-boy team that the good guys beat in a big national final. What made this film fascinating was that it showcased cricket as a popularly accepted route at making it big as a winner and a hero in the country's imagination. A review by the critic Rafay Mahmood described the film as "[an] attempt to manufacture a 'Great Pakistani Dream', where individuals unite and fight for something irrespective of religion and ethnicity". This is a crucial insight, since it explicitly links cricket not only to mass appeal but more importantly to mass appeal that is not pandering to jingoism or exclusionary ideals.
This is where Pakistani cricket fans find themselves today - in a society and a country where cricket is everything and everywhere; where cricket serves as one of the fullest expressions of identity, where it manages to subsume the myriad diversities of the idea of being Pakistani and presents it as a whole.
And all this where there is no live international cricket to be experienced. This is the unique situation of the Pakistani fan today, whose life and recent history has led to a moment where cricket has come to mean more than most things, at a time when, ironically, cricket has gone into exile.
****
I know that cricket will return one day, and when it does, I have little doubt that it will do so in a country very different from what it is now. Perhaps it won't even be a country where cricket is as central to society anymore. Perhaps the forces that bring about the peace will also unleash new voices, new contexts and platforms to project a sense of self. Until then, we still have cricket.

 

[dalapathi]

@dalafai....Zim gelusthey ee roju...

Normal gaa gelichina waste kada, finals ki vellalante ooh range lo gelavaali. kashtam

[dalapathi]

© Getty Images

High Fives Leading from the tail

Even before tailenders became lower-order batsmen they were easy to love. Here are five memorable unions of (mostly) bunnies

Sharda Ugra | September 2014

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Tenth wicket
Larry Gomes and Malcolm Marshall v England, Leeds, 1984
Memorable tail-end partnerships normally occupy a reasonable amount of time. Like Michael Holding and Larry Gomes - 82 for the eighth wicket in this very game - pulling West Indies out from 206 for 7 in reply to England's 270. But that one's not the vintage tail-end stand from this game. Our pick produced only 12 runs, took 16 minutes, and had Malcolm Marshall in it, skipping out to the ground, tossing back his inner glove, bat in his right hand, left in plaster. He had broken the hand, but Gomes was on 96 and it is what team men did. Marshall faced eight balls, taking his fractured top hand off the blade on impact. There was one swish, one balletic back-foot open-face glide for four. He sprinted a double, Gomes got his century, and at 302, Marshall was out. That should have served warning. He returned to clean up England with 7 for 53, bowling at top pace, action unblemished. Broken hand or not, Maco made it his match.

Eighth wicket
Omari Banks and Vasbert Drakes v Australia, St John's, 2003
In the last West Indies-Australia Test played at the Old Rec, the new firm of Banks and Drakes made sure their team had the final word. Australia had cleaned out the previous three Tests, and after a dead-heat first innings in a game gone crazy, set West Indies 418 to win. On day four, fearsome sledging and bitter skirmishes turned the air blue. At close West Indies needed 47 with four in hand. There was the sanity of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, nailed to the crease, finger broken, batting on 103. But when he left early on the final day, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie's rockets could have blown the house down. Banks and Drakes, though, were having none of it. They rode out the storm and preferred counter-attack over hunkering down. Flowing cover drives, slashes, edges, and a six off the spinner. In about 90 minutes, Banks and Drakes combined perfectly to pull off the highest successful chase in Test history.

Breaking bad: Malcolm Marshall gets his dud hand out of the way while facing Paul Allott at Headingley. He returned to bowl England out for 159 © PA Photos

Ninth wicket
Chaminda Vaas and Nuwan Kulasekara v England, Lord's, 2006
In only their second three-Test series in England, Sri Lanka's tail was made to bat for their team's life. Following on after England's 551, their top six were gone by the end of day four, Sri Lanka leading by only 22. By lunch on day five, two more had fallen. England had time to bowl the opposition out, push for a win and beat the rain. At 421 for 8, Vaas, a very capable No. 9, and Kulasekara, a hitter of timing and courage, came together and stayed together for more than 45 overs. Their partnership was stop-start because of the rain - Vaas getting behind the line and Kulasekara wading in at the first sign of spin. It took Vaas more than four hours for his 50 (187 balls, seven fours) and Kulasekara's 64 (189 minutes, 133 balls, seven fours, two sixes) is his only Test fifty to date. The partnership, 105, occupied time, stretched the lead to safety and signalled Sri Lanka's fighting intentions for the summer.

Tenth wicket
Harbhajan Singh and Ashish Nehra v Zimbabwe, Bulawayo, 2001
From a match long forgotten, a partnership of only 38. But like its protagonists, unpredictable and eccentric. India, looking for their first Test win outside the subcontinent in 15 years, needed to stretch the first innings as far away as possible from Zimbabwe's 173. Harbhajan, high-risk and creative in his strokeplay, had put up 72 with Sameer Dighe for the eighth. But when Nehra, the most uncoordinated of batsmen, arrived, an early end beckoned. Instead, the pair produced a pantomime of synchronicity - sword-waving Harbhajan, Nehra of Sparta, defending, fending and swaying. As tea approached, Harbhajan could be heard over the stump mike egging on his partner. "Bahut achcha, shabaash, thodi der mein andar jaake chai peeyenge." ("Well played, keep going, in a little while we'll go in and have some tea.") The lead was stretched to 145 - 110 coming from the eighth and tenth wickets. Victory in Bulawayo didn't exactly mark the onset of world domination, but it was for India the start of a decade in which the ghosts of travels past could be driven away.

Just my cup of tea: Ashish Nehra hung around for 39 minutes for his 9 in Bulawayo © AFP

Ninth wicket
John Bracewell and Derek Stirling v England, Nottingham, 1986
It was the summer of the little guys - or at least the little guys of that era. India's second series win in England in over 50 years of trying was followed by a Kiwi knockout, thanks to the bowler who scored a century. Not Richard Hadlee, who repeatedly eviscerated the English, nor their allrounder captain Jeremy Coney, but offspinner and committed clouter John Bracewell. He came in to bat when New Zealand trailed by 17 and by the time Stirling came in, Bracewell was warmed up. Greater woe was heaped on England as the two men put on 65 for the ninth. Bracewell needed the No. 11, Willie Watson, to see him past his century and New Zealand led by 157 on the first innings. When England batted, Bracewell got Graham Gooch, David Gower and Bill Athey, and Stirling picked up Derek Pringle and Greg Thomas. New Zealand won the Test and their first series in England.

[dalapathi]

 

© Getty Images Hate to Love Once a rat in blue, now the Kohinoor

It's easy to dislike a brash upstart like Virat Kohli; it's hard to not admire his brilliance

Kamran Abbasi | September 2014

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The day after Sri Lanka's win in this year's World T20, a picture went big on Twitter. It was a photograph of Lasith Malinga and Australia's Meg Lanning posing in a rickshaw, carrying their respective trophies. The joke seemed to be that Malinga had scored. A day later, the picture did the rounds on Twitter again - with a subtle change. There was a rickshaw driver, straining every sinew to pedal the champions. He had a perfectly photoshopped image of Virat Kohli's head.

For every supporter who harboured an iota of resentment towards India's new darling, the amusing image became a moment for ROFL. Kohli, the king in waiting, was transformed into a pauper pedalling lesser mortals on a soirée. Sachin's heir bossed the tournament and propped India up in the final, but it wasn't enough to win the trophy. For everybody itching to mock Kohli, a beggar's garb fit him sweeter than a king's robes.

There was much to dislike early in his career. A rare talent spoilt by incidents of dissent, unsporting behaviour, and a middle finger aimed at an Australian crowd. It's easy to love a humble hero like Sachin Tendulkar. A brash star with no record to speak of quickly raises antibodies. That was Virat Kohli.

One solace was that his record against Pakistan was poor. But a match in Mirpur in the 2012 Asia Cup put such hopes to rest. Pakistan scored over 300, with Umar Gul, Saeed Ajmal and Shahid Afridi in hand to defend the total. Kohli destroyed them with a fluent, imperious 183. India won. Kohli moved a step closer to his coronation. There was nothing to laugh about anymore. He was laughing at us.

Kohli is perfect for bringing out the worst in opposition fans. He carries himself with a natural arrogance. Cheeku's cheeky smile and trimmed beard are barely enough to cover his inner self-love. When he strides out to bat, it's with the air of a man who owns an arena. It doesn't matter who is bowling; it's no secret that Kohli wants to dominate. No total is too big, no run rate too daunting when he is at the crease; he will turn disaster into triumph. On the field he is equally cocky, strutting about expecting a television camera to adore him every second. He is The Man - the supreme hero.

Cheeku's cheeky smile and trimmed beard are barely enough to cover his inner self-love. When he strides out to bat, it's with the air of a man who owns an arena

This attitude isn't confined to playing the game; he also wants to run it. At any time of crisis you can be sure Kohli, inside that cricket-wired brain of his, has thought of a better scheme than his captain. Unless Kohli is the captain, in which case any situation is in hand. With the passing of Tendulkar, Dravid and Sehwag, a time of opportunity for opponents, it seems unfair that India found Kohli. Tendulkar, Dravid and Sehwag rolled into one: that's how good Kohli can be.

But, you see, as fans we only despise those we fear and secretly admire. You couldn't get so worked up about Suresh Raina, for example. Rohit Sharma possibly, but he has turned out to be quite rubbish so far. And that's the essence of Kohli. As much as you might wish to loathe him, you can't.

It's hard to see a flaw in his game or his attitude. He has seized the spotlight in international cricket, and he is in no rush to let go. It's what he expected inside that self-loving, cricket-wired brain of his.

The mark of a world-class player is that he can dominate every format. A great batsman should be able to adapt to every situation, from the first over of a Test match to the final over of a T20. Kohli has that quality. When he bats, you expect him to succeed and your team to be defeated, but somewhere deep inside you still want him to thrill. A short Kohli innings is a disappointment. It's this innate attraction, defying your instincts, that brands him as a special talent. And it's all done with such panache, such relish and sparkle. That's Kohli, killing you stylishly.

Of course, style isn't something new to Indian batsmen. Just as Indian fans have admired Pakistan's fast bowlers, Pakistani fans have admired the skill of India's batsmen. That innate attraction again, defying your basest instincts.

For me, it began with the silky magicians of the 1970s and 1980s. Indians could keep the dogged defiance of Sunil Gavaskar to themselves. Dilip Vengsarkar, on the other hand, now he was a player, all touch and timing, a model of upright style. India's batting was sometimes brittle, especially overseas, but a middle order of Vengsarkar and Mohinder Amarnath was a joy. VVS Laxman followed soon after, an artist of such elegance and powerful wristwork that David Gower seemed workmanlike in comparison.

How could any cricket lover, even an opponent, fail to adore these glorious artists? He is one such player, that Virat Kohli. My irritation with his arrogance has long passed. My dislike of his partying, disrespectful persona has subsided. I no longer see him as a rat in blue. I see him as Virat in bloom, a master of technique and temperament. A batsman to enjoy, a showman to savour.

Kohli's nature is that he inspires loathing. Opponents celebrate his failures and dance at his dismissals. Fans abuse him and lampoon him on Twitter and Facebook. These are all accolades to his ability. Kohli can pedal as many rickshaws as he wishes, the world of cricket is spinning to his tune. The last laugh, you imagine, will be his.

So I say, despite myself, in defiance of my tribal instincts, hats off to you, Mr Kohli. In you, India have discovered a diamond as bright as the Kohinoor. Tendulkar, Dravid, and Sehwag rolled into one - that would be something special. Now show us it can be done, Mr Kohli. It's your turn to sparkle.

[Maximus]

Normal gaa gelichina waste kada, finals ki vellalante ooh range lo gelavaali. kashtam

 

upset chesthey baguntadhi....!!!elagao Aus n SA finals ani telsindey kada

[dalapathi]

© AFP / Getty Images
Before the Gangnam Style World T20 win in 2012, West Indies' most recent major title was this Champions Trophy victory against England at The Oval. It was edge-of-the-seat stuff, as Nos. 9 and 10, Courtney Browne and Ian Bradshaw, saw off Steve Harmison and Andrew Flintoff and dragged their team out of a position where they were headed for sure defeat (147 for 8 chasing 218) and took them to a two-wicket win in growing darkness. When Bradshaw struck the winning boundary in the 49th over, his team-mates rushed onto the field screaming with joy. The captain, Brian Lara, dedicated the victory to those back home, where hurricanes Ivan and Jeanne had wreaked devastation earlier in the month.



© PA Photos
By the early 1960s, the dull and defensive cricket of the previous decade had badly affected crowd attendances at Test and county matches in England. The MCC decided one way to bring back the interest was to have a knockout 65-overs-a-side competition. Thus, the Gillette Cup was born. It didn't start well, with the media largely ignoring it, and the players playing it like a traditional first-class game with attacking fields. But by the second round, the enthusiasm rose all round. There were still those who didn't appreciate the nuances of limited-overs cricket. In the Daily Express, Keith Miller accused Sussex captain Ted Dexter of "spoiling" the day as his side beat Kent by 72 runs. "Dexter used nothing but short-of-a-length pacemen with the idea of keeping Kent's score down." In a defensive move, Dexter put nine men on the boundary during the closing stages of the final, ensuring Sussex took the inaugural title, beating Worcestershire by 14 runs in a sellout at Lord's. The Express moaned again: "Ted Dexter's tactics, successful as they were, could eventually kill a great idea." Not quite: the Gillette Cup proved to be a massive commercial success and it wasn't long before other countries set up similar tournaments.




© Getty Images
No one could have imagined that India would come within nine runs of a record win when they were set 438 to get in little over a day at The Oval. But Sunil Gavaskar's flawless 221 winched them within hailing distance. Gavaskar first had a double-century opening stand with Chetan Chauhan, then a 153-run partnership with Dilip Vengsarkar. With 20 overs remaining, India needed 110 with nine wickets in hand. Even after Vengsarkar and Kapil Dev fell in quick succession, the chase was on, but a tactical move by Mike Brearley put a spanner in it: he handed the ball to Ian Botham, who had become the fastest to get to the double of 1000 runs and 100 wickets (in 21 Tests) earlier in the match, but hadn't looked threatening all day. Botham had Gavaskar caught at mid-on, dismissed Yajurvindra Singh and Yashpal Sharma lbw in successive overs, and ran out out S Venkataraghavan in between. At the start of the final over, India needed 15 runs and all four results were possible. Karsan Ghavri and Bharath Reddy, Nos. 9 and 10, played out the six balls encircled by fielders.

 

© AFP / Getty Images
Though his career will forever be tainted by the match-fixing scandal, Mohammad Ashraful will also be remembered as the youngest player to score a Test century. At 17 years and 61 days (there are doubts about what his actual age was at the time, but he was the youngest to the record), he made 114 against Sri Lanka at the SSC on debut, breaking the mark set by Pakistan's Mushtaq Mohammad (17 years 78 days) in 1960-61. Ashraful, who was not out on 4 at the end of day two said afterwards that he had trouble sleeping that night. "I dreamt about Lara's 375 and me scoring a century." The next day he pulled Chaminda Vaas for fours and danced down the track to hit Muttiah Muralitharan over the top. Murali, who took ten wickets in Sri Lanka's innings victory, broke another record, becoming the fastest bowler to 350 Test wickets. He and Ashraful were jointly awarded the Man-of-the-Match cheque, but Murali gave his share to the teenager. The only other batsmen under the age of 18 to score Test hundreds are Hamilton Masakadza and Sachin Tendulkar.


© PA Photos
Twenty-six years after Bob Simpson was in the thick of things in the first tied Test, he sat and watched, as coach, his Australian charges finish with a similar result, this time in Madras. The last day began with Allan Border declaring, to set India 348 to get in a minimum of 87 overs. It looked on at tea, when India were 190 for 2. But with just 18 needed from five overs, Ray Bright struck twice. Off the final over, bowled by Greg Matthews, India needed four runs, with one wicket in hand. Ravi Shastri took two from the second ball and, strangely, stroked a single off the third to give strike to the No. 11, Maninder Singh, a Chris Martin-esque tailender. "I had to make the winning run and Ravi came up to me and showed me the gaps. He said if you could get a run, get it, otherwise give it a smack. That is what I was trying to do," Maninder, who was trapped lbw off the penultimate ball, said later. He wasn't very happy with umpire V Vikramraju's decision. "I was surprised because before I even played the ball, I could see his finger going up." The hero of the Test was Dean Jones, who battled nausea and dehydration to score a double-hundred.


© Getty Images
The shot that launched a thousand premier leagues. Misbah-ul-Haq's ill-fated scoop caught beyond the circle gave India the inaugural World T20 title and paved the way for auctions, million-dollar contracts, and the Chris Gayle phenomenon. The tournament, hosted by South Africa, was a great success despite India's initial reluctance to participate. Most matches were sold out; Zimbabwe beat Australia; Gayle scored a trailblazing hundred; India and Pakistan had a penalty shootout-style bowl-out; and Yuvraj Singh hit each ball of a Stuart Broad over for six. The final was the perfect end, a refreshing change from the miserable 50-over World Cup a few months before. Set 158 to win, Pakistan were in trouble at 77 for 6 when Misbah turned the game around with three sixes in an over off Harbhajan Singh. The target from the final over was 13, with one wicket in hand. MS Dhoni tossed the ball to medium-pacer Joginder Sharma. A wide and a six later, Pakistan needed six off four balls. Misbah attempted a risky ramp shot over short fine leg and was caught by Sreesanth, to give India their first global title since 1983.