“More or less for me now it’s just about having fun and enjoying however many days I have playing international cricket”

ESPNcricinfo staff09-Jun-2021″It was kind of a shock” for Jason Holder to be relieved from the West Indies Test captaincy, and while he admits to finding it difficult to transition from being the leader to an ordinary member of the team, he wants to focus more on his game, and be a sounding board for youngsters looking for guidance.”Yeah, it’s been difficult. I probably may not show it, but it has been difficult,” Holder told ESPNcricinfo in an interview a couple of days away from the start of West Indies’ first Test against South Africa in St Lucia. “For the last five-six years, I’ve been captaining West Indies, whether that be Test-match cricket or one-day cricket. So now being relieved of both captaincies, it has been a strange transition for me personally.”Related

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Kraigg Brathwaite led West Indies in Bangladesh when Holder, as well as a number of other regulars, opted out of the tour because of the Covid-19 situation around the world. West Indies swept the two-Test series, and when it was time to select the squad for the home series against Sri Lanka in March, the team kept faith in Brathwaite. Roger Harper, the lead selector, said at the time that Brathwaite’s role in shepherding the team successfully in the absence of many first-choice players in Bangladesh had played a big role in his appointment on a permanent basis.That meant Holder’s stint as captain, which had begun in October 2015, ended after 37 matches, which included 11 wins and 21 losses. It was a period in which he climbed to great heights as a player, piling on big hauls with the ball and even hitting a double-century with the bat. After 47 Tests, Holder has 123 wickets at an average of 27.41, 2253 runs at an average of 33.13, and the No. 1 spot in the ICC rankings for Test allrounders.Holder played the home series against Sri Lanka, in Antigua, and did well. In the first Test, there was a five-wicket haul (his eighth in Tests) and in the second, there were scores of 30 and 71* – both matches were drawn.”It was kind of a shock. Yeah, still lost for words in regards to that, but I am not dwelling on it. I don’t think it’s something I should dwell on, to be fair,” Holder said. “I am just trying to find ways to move on and transition back to just being a regular player. For me now, it’s about showing a bit more of my character, and being a lot more… I would say outspoken. I am relatively outspoken, but just expressing myself a little bit more and having fun.”I feel as though I have been really, really committed to West Indies cricket – I am still committed to West Indies cricket, but more or less for me now it’s just about having fun and enjoying however many days I have playing international cricket.”Holder is still only 29, and has spent most of his career at the highest level in leadership roles. Without that responsibility, Holder felt he would have to redesign his role in the team.”There is a lot less pressure, a lot less responsibility. It’s just about me now personally… I’m a 100% team man. So I’ll play my part to help the team and if there are other players who are seeking out advice or guidance, no doubt I’ll be here to give them that,” he said. “But it’s no longer a time where you’ve got to look to select teams, look at combinations… all these things have just gone through the window. So for me now, it’s just a little bit more detailed as to as to my preparation into myself, particularly, and not having to deal with the team aspect of it.”I guess my contributions now will be more so in small groups and one-on-one basis with the players. And team meetings obviously I’ll share my expertise, and give as much guidance as I possibly can, but I still think the captain has to be given his leeway to lead the team the way he wants to lead the team, and we’ve got to give him confidence and support that we can as the group.”The first West Indies vs South Africa Test starts on June 10, with the second set for a June 18 start at the same venue.

Gladiators allrounder stretchered off to an ambulance as second innings got underway

Sreshth Shah11-Jun-2021Playing his first match of PSL 2021, Quetta Gladiators’ Andre Russell was struck on the helmet while batting and later replaced by fast bowler Naseem Shah under the concussion-sub rule at the innings break. The decision to replace the allrounder with Naseem did not seem to go down well with Islamabad United; their captain Shadab Khan could be seen talking to umpire Aleem Dar before the second innings began.During the first over of the second innings, Russell was stretchered out from the dressing room to an ambulance. He had received the blow to the head in the 14th over of Gladiators’ innings. He hit two sixes off Muhammad Musa in that over before he was slow on a pull shot to a bouncer from the pacer. After being struck, Russell was checked by a physio and allowed to continue batting, although he was out next ball, caught at third man.The rules on concussion substitutes state that any concussed player can be replaced by someone outside the XI, as long as the match referee agrees that the incoming player is a like-for-like replacement. Although Russell is a pace-bowling allrounder and Naseem is a specialist fast bowler, the decision to allow Naseem as a replacement might have been based on Russell’s inability to deliver four overs in Gladiators’ bowling innings.Naseem opened the bowling for Gladiators but, defending 133, conceded four fours in a 19-run first over. Gladiators went on to lose inside 10 overs, the first time in PSL history a side has won by the halfway mark. This was Gladiators’ first match after PSL 2021’s restart in Abu Dhabi.

The head coach said previous series results had convinced him Pakistan were on the right track

Umar Farooq14-Jul-2021After losing 3-0 to England’s second-string side, Pakistan head coach Misbah-ul-Haq has admitted he was left shell-shocked, citing the “poor performance” as a collective failure of the players and support staff. He said he was left looking for answers on what went wrong.”You can never defend such performances, it was poor and disappointing,” Misbah said in a virtual press conference. “In the first game, we couldn’t handle the conditions with the bat. In the last match, the batting did well and got a good total which we should have defended but then the bowling and fielding was disappointing, and that has been a problem throughout the series. So overall I think nobody can defend it and we need to pick it up.”Pakistan haven’t won an ODI series in England in the last 47 years, their last win coming in 1974. But despite England’s historical dominance over Pakistan, the 3-0 reverse represented a chastening defeat for Pakistan because of the inexperience of their opposition. England were forced to name a complete new ODI two days ahead of the tournament following a Covid-19 outbreak among the original selections. There were eight uncapped players in the England squad, and a further nine with fewer than five ODI caps to their name, with stand-in captain Ben Stokes the only player with 100 or more games.Related

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Pakistan, on the contrary, came into the series with a full-strength squad but lost all three matches, slipping down the World Cup Super League table in the process. The visitors were thumped heavily in the first two games after effective no-shows with the bat, while England chased down 331 in the final ODI, with Pakistan captain Babar Azam critical of the bowling and fielding efforts.After the 2019 World Cup, Pakistan won three consecutive ODI series, one against a depleted Sri Lanka team, and the other against Zimbabwe, in which Pakistan lost the final game. They were followed by a 2-1 series win in South Africa, which Misbah believed had helped Pakistan gain momentum, but struggles in the middle order have persisted.”If you look back to our recent series, we were satisfied that we are on a right track,” Misbah said. “We had covered almost every department, whether batting, bowling, or fielding, and performed outstandingly. But this series panned out differently and seems like we are still standing where we started and it’s very disappointing. We couldn’t pick up the same thread where we left. There are different reasons and we have to figure that out how and what really effected and how we can move ahead from this point. Why suddenly we had such a poor series [is a mystery], otherwise this team has been doing great for the last four-five series.”I don’t know what changed in the last month. There was nothing much other than just the PSL and now the boys are totally off-colour. So it’s a worrying sign for me as a head coach. I am not looking for an excuse but somewhere we lost the momentum and are struggling to regain it. We have very important T20 series ahead against England, then West Indies and we are looking to sort this out before it.”Misbah, however, urged people to refrain from the blame game.”You can’t just blame coaches or players alone because it’s a team game and you work as a team,” he said. “If they didn’t execute well, then we are equally responsible as well as the players. We do make plans and practice, too. Those bowlers who have to bowl in a certain area and had to hit certain lengths, it was all planned, just not executed on the day. Even when it was executed well, then the fielders didn’t support it. If you drop straight catches in crucial stages then I don’t think you can win. No one individual is to be blamed but we failed collectively as a team, even players or supporting staff.”

Lizelle Lee, Emma Lamb ease Manchester side home after Ecclestone keeps Rockets grounded

Matt Roller15-Aug-2021Beware the wounded animal. Manchester Originals were the first team knocked out of the women’s Hundred but have played party poopers in their final two games, winning away at Northern Superchargers to dent their qualification prospects and now thrashing Trent Rockets to eliminate them at the group stage.Rockets were pegged back by regular wickets after being asked to bat first: Sammy-Jo Johnson hit four sixes in her 33 and Sarah Glenn played an important cameo at the death, but their highest partnership was 29 for the first wicket as Originals’ attack dented their prospects of posting a defendable score.In the chase, their attack was impotent and their fielding sloppy as Emma Lamb and Lizelle Lee spearheaded a cruise to victory with nine wickets in the bank and 13 balls to spare. Lee was happy to go along at a run a ball with Lamb flying at the other end, but took on the responsibility after Lamb’s dismissal and flat-batted Katherine Brunt for four to seal the win.The result not only eliminates Rockets, but also guarantees Oval Invincibles a berth in Friday’s eliminator at their home ground. They will play the winner of Tuesday’s fixture between Northern Superchargers and Birmingham Phoenix, barring an improbable net run-rate swing towards London Spirit on Wednesday night.Rockets fail to launch
Rockets knew they needed to break their losing run at home and win by a decent margin to give themselves a decent chance of qualifying, but seemed to play within themselves under the pressure of the situation. Nat Sciver, their captain and key batter, threw her head back in frustration after her dismissal, caught at mid-on off Kate Cross, and in the field they were distinctly average.To stand a chance of defending a score that looked 15-20 runs light on a good batting pitch, Rockets needed to be tight and alert in the field but conceded 21 extras – 16 of them in wides – and gave Lamb an early life when Glenn put down a straightforward chance in the covers. The scoring rate was never a problem; Georgia Davis removed Lamb for 46, but the back of the chase had been broken long before.Economical Ecclestone
Sophie Ecclestone is the best T20I bowler in the world according to the ICC’s rankings, but she has not been as effective as she might have expected in the Hundred. Ecclestone bowls at the same pace, if not faster than, most male spinners, and teams have generally played her like a medium-pacer rather than a slow left-armer in this tournament, with plenty of success.She came into Originals’ final game with only three wickets for the season and none in her last four appearances, but proved almost impossible to get away at Trent Bridge. She conceded a solitary boundary, when Brunt paddle-scooped her over the keeper, and struck with consecutive deliveries in her final set of five to finish with 2 for 11 from her 20 balls – the most miserly spell by an Originals bowler in the season.Universe Cross
Cross has carried a heavy burden for Originals: she is their captain, their main strike bowler, and their only senior seamer, but has coped well with the pressure on her to perform. She is joint-second in the wickets charts, with 12 scalps at 14.08, and has led her side into mid-table after a slow start to the season.Unusually, she did not strike with the new ball at Trent Bridge, but returned to take two key wickets in her third and fourth sets of five. She returned after 50 balls with Sciver getting set, and induced a false shot as she pulled a length ball straight to mid-on, and in her final set, she had Brunt caught well by Lee at backward point.After their qualification hopes evaporated early in the season, Originals have grown into the competition and may only miss out on the knockout stages by a single point. With one of the younger squads in the competition, there is reason to believe they will bounce back well next summer.

On a pitch that offered substantial assistance, Sri Lanka’s spin-bowling coach felt his bowlers were somewhat overeager

Andrew Fidel Fernando23-Nov-2021Sri Lanka’s young trio of frontline spinners has taken seven wickets between them and seemingly put the team in a strong position in the opening Test against West Indies. But spin-bowling coach Piyal Wijetunge thinks they could have done much better.Offspinner Ramesh Mendis (26 years old), and left-arm spinner Praveen Jayawickrama (23), took three wickets apiece, and Lasith Embuldeniya (25) took one, to help reduce West Indies to 224 for 9 before rain washed out much of day three’s play.But on a pitch that offered substantial assistance, Wijetunge thought his bowlers were somewhat overeager.”I’m not 100% happy – we could have done much better. We have been missing lines and lengths very frequently,” Wijetunge said of the performance. “We’ve got three young spinners, and on this pitch, which turns a lot, I think we were trying too hard to get wickets. We need to have patience, because the pitch does help us.”Instead of bowling the ball in one spot and waiting for the pitch to do the work, we went hunting for wickets. We tried too many things. But of these three spinners, Lasith Embuldeniya has played 12 [11] Tests, Praveen Jayawickrama has played two [one], and Ramesh Mendis three [two]. They need to keep building on their consistency.”However, Wijetunge did believe that Sri Lanka’s spin bowling was generally in a good place, with these three spinners around for the Test format, and others coming through the system. Sri Lanka are fielding two frontline left-arm spinners for the first time since the retirement of Rangana Herath (he had occasionally played alongside Malinda Pushpakumara late in his career). Wijetunge outlined Embuldeniya and Jayawickrama’s contrasting strengths.”Lasith Embuldeniya is a conventional type left-arm spinner, and of the three who are playing this game, he’s the most consistent in terms of his skill.”Praveen took 11 wickets on debut, and on this Galle pitch we would anyway consider him. He’s got natural variation, with the seam angles he uses. The ball straightens and when it hits the seam, it spins more than [it does] for the others. When they have exposure and experience, they are definitely going to be matchwinners.”Where Jayawickrama, in particular, has a decent straighter ball, but Embuldeniya has not yet developed a good version of that variation – something that was obvious during England’s tour of Sri Lanka in January. Where Emuldeniya and Wijetunge might have ordinarily worked on developing a straighter delivery through the course of the year, this has not been possible in 2021.”The one that comes in [to the right-hander] is definitely one that we have to work on with Embuldeniya. But with Covid-19 and the protocols around it, it has been difficult to work in new skills. We get bubbled a maximum of two weeks before the series, and the only thing we can do as coaches then is to get the players game-ready.”Before this, we had off-season training at the high performance centre, where we could have developed variations, or worked on consistency. But we haven’t had that chance, and there are only five or six skill-training sessions per series.”