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Dhaka pitch in focus as is unseasonal rain which is forecast from the second to the fourth days

Mohammad Isam03-Dec-2021

Big Picture

Bangladesh have narrowed the gap in skills with Pakistan, but they are still some way off acquiring the mental steel needed to turn corners, handle clutch moments and win Tests. The Dhaka Test is the home side’s last chance to pose the visitors a stern challenge and turn things around for themselves.Shakib Al Hasan’s return to full fitness should help Bangladesh on many fronts. Taskin Ahmed, meanwhile, will be expected to inject a bit of pace.Pakistan’s approach to difficult situations helped them dominate most of the Chattogram Test. When Mushfiqur Rahim and Liton Das put together 206 runs for the fifth wicket in the first innings, they responded with a strong showing on the second morning. When Bangladesh bowled Pakistan out for 286 in their first dig, their bowlers again got them back in the game.Related

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Shaheen Shah Afridi and Hasan Ali didn’t just bowl exciting deliveries to get the wickets, they also put together a bowling partnership that left very little wiggle room for the Bangladesh line-up. Such was their dominance over Bangladesh’s top four that the rest of the batting order was left scrambling to compile a big effort.Abid Ali was Pakistan’s batting enforcer in Chattogram. Their gamble to try out newcomer Abdullah Shafique also paid off handsomely, as he struck two fifties in his debut Test. Babar Azam and the rest of the batting order will look to make amends for not contributing much in the first Test.Bangladesh’s batting is their major concern. The top order combusted easily in both innings, which included captain Mominul Haque. Shakib’s inclusion will bolster the batting that was heavily dependent on Mushfiqur and Liton. The bowling, too, will be spin-heavy now that Shakib is back, but how they balance it with pacers is also a big question. The bowling composition will be an early indication of the type of pitch that curator Gamini Silva might dish out.

Form guide

(last five completed matches, most recent first)
Bangladesh LWLDL
Pakistan WWLWW

In the spotlight

Abid Ali more than made up for his duck against Bangladesh last year with his 224-run tally in the first Test, which included a first-innings 133. Batting like a solid opener, he shifted gears with aplomb, getting into his shell to see Pakistan through good spells of bowling and then opening up quickly to punish errors against spinners and quick bowlers alike.Liton Das bounced back admirably in the Chattogram Test after the T20 World Cup debacle. His maiden Test hundred came at a crunch phase for Bangladesh when they looked down and out. For a player with an aesthetically pleasurable style of play, his inconsistency, though, is frustrating for Bangladesh.

Team news

Shakib and Taskin are set to return to the XI while Mahmudul Hasan Joy could make his Test debut in Saif Hassan’s vacated spot.Bangladesh (probable): 1 Shadman Islam, 2 Mahmudul Hasan Joy, 3 Najmul Hossain Shanto, 4 Mominul Haque (capt), 5 Mushfiqur Rahim, 6 Shakib Al Hasan, 7 Liton Das (wk), 8 Mehidy Hasan Miraz, 9 Taijul Islam, 10 Taskin Ahmed, 11 Ebadot HossainPakistan are likely to be unchanged.Pakistan (probable): 1 Abid Ali, 2 Abdullah Shafique, 3 Azhar Ali 4 Babar Azam (capt), 5 Fawad Alam, 6 Mohammad Rizwan (wk), 7 Faheem Ashraf, 8 Nauman Ali, 9 Hasan Ali, 10 Shaheen Shah Afridi, 11 Sajid Khan

Pitch and conditions

Spinners will definitely come into play at the Shere Bangla National Stadium. The question is when. Unseasonal rain is in the forecast from the second to the fourth days.

Stats and trivia

• In the Chattogram fixture, Abid Ali missed out to become the third Pakistani opener, after Hanif Mohammad and Wajahatullah Wasti, to score hundreds in both innings of a Test match.
• Afridi is tied with R Ashwin as the top Test wicket-taker in 2021 with a tally of 44.
• Liton Das has the second most Test runs among wicketkeepers this year.

Quotes

“Everyone from the subcontinent plays spin very well, so it is better not to give them a spin wicket. I think everyone else would do the same. I prefer a flat wicket.”

Batsman 48 not out heading into final day at Cheltenham with visitors three down in fourth innings

Paul Edwards07-Jul-2021
For two days, so we have been told, Cheltenham has dodged the showers. This attributes a degree of agility to the College Ground that even so magical a location might struggle to achieve but it is still a fair reflection of our good luck. While other matches in this round were hosed upon ‘big style’ on Monday and Tuesday Gloucestershire and Middlesex’s cricketers went about their business more or less unimpeded. Such splendid good fortune is no more than Cheltenham and its staff deserve but it came to a wet end this morning when a couple of determined downpours prevented any play before luncheon.The gruffer critics, recalling Middlesex’s disintegration on Tuesday afternoon, observed that a few showers at least offered the prospect of this game lasting into its fourth morning. Sadly there was brutal justice in that view. One of the tougher joys of the county programme is its insistence that a side’s capacity for resistance should be tested over six months and there were suggestions in the visitors’ first innings that one or two batsmen were resigned to a grim fate. Six defeats in eight games do that to cricketers.The job of the coach and captain at such times is to convince their mentally battered players that a seventh defeat is not pre-ordained, even at points in the season when they have mislaid their powers of resistance. Put simply, therefore, when Middlesex began their pursuit of 420 to win this game in the middle of this third afternoon their players had to believe a rot could be stopped.Related

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Two players’ innings suggested the message had been received. After both openers had been removed inside the first six overs, Stevie Eskinazi and Peter Handscomb, each of them with just one first-class half-century to their credit this season, defied Gloucestershire’s confident attack for 30 overs adding only 48 runs in the process but at least showing the kind of fight their side has frequently lacked this summer. The cricket was absorbing as James Bracey rotated his six-man attack intelligently, never over-bowling Dan Worrall and Matt Taylor, his main threats, but keeping all his bowlers fresh, secure in the knowledge that this game has another day to go.Handscomb, while he is no Hashim Amla, was unconcerned by his failure to score freely and went 45 minutes without adding to his 13 runs. However, having pushed a single to midwicket, he fell leg before to Worrall and it was left to Eskinazi and Daryl Mitchell to resist Gloucestershire’s bowlers for another hour. They did this in relative comfort and that rich period of play also featured the two huge sixes that Mitchell whacked over long-on when he came down the pitch to the off-spinner Ollie Price. All the same this was classic County Championship fare, old-school cricket, if you will. The fact that it took place at Cheltenham made the vintage even richer. And there will be cricket here tomorrow when Eskinazi will resume his innings on 48 not out.The cultured and discriminating defence offered by Middlesex’s middle-order was all the more vital given the early dismissal of their openers. First to go was Josh de Caires, who punched his third and fourth balls through midwicket for pleasant twos but was then dropped by Glenn Phillips at first slip off his sixth ball but caught by the same fielder off his tenth when attempting a drive. Given that de Caires nearly ran himself out at the non-striker’s end in the over between his first escape and final snaring, it would be fair to describe his second innings in big school as nervy yet even this was understandable given that he was facing Worrall, whose sponsorship by a firm of funeral directors is very fitting.But it was Matt Taylor, a slightly more civilised fellow and consequently receiving financial support from auctioneers, who took the next wicket when he brought one back in to have Sam Robson leg before for nought. There was the slightest suspicion the ball pitched outside leg but this did not really justify Robson leaning on his bat and delaying his departure with the air of a man visited by undeserved malignity. That, though, is what happens when the bottom has dropped out of your grocery bag too many times in one summer.We then settled into a wonderful few hours during which no home supporters barracked the batsmen and few spectators left the College Ground. All the same, the dot-stuffed tension of Middlesex’s innings had been preceded by a far more carefree 85 minutes’ cricket in which Gloucestershire lost their last four wickets in scoring a further 84 runs. The highlight of this session of play was a fine seventh-wicket partnership of 65 in 17 overs between Ollie and Tom Price, a stand in which both brothers played a series of attractive strokes. Ollie was eventually caught behind off Tim Murtagh for 33 but Tom ended the innings unbeaten on 35 and the pair’s value to Gloucestershire is plainly enhanced by their useful bowling. There was no value in the Prices simply occupying the crease – the lead was already 345 when their partnership began – but their self-possession was impressive and somehow emblematic of a county that is enjoying a prolonged and deserved revival in their fortunes. One does not need to hail from Prestbury or Painswick to be pleased by that.

For all that Lancashire sit contentedly atop the Division Two table, their batting order in 2013 has displayed all the stability of a post-war Italian government.

Paul Edwards at Old Trafford17-Jul-2013
ScorecardLancashire have badly needed the stability provided by Simon Katich and Ashwell Prince•PA Photos

For all that Lancashire sit contentedly atop the Division Two table, their batting order in 2013 has displayed all the stability of a post-war Italian government. None of the six predominantly home-developed players who occupied the first half-dozen places when Glen Chapple’s team won the title at Taunton in 2011 have played every four-day game this summer.Paul Horton has been injured for much of the season and Luke Procter for a small part of it. Stephen Moore has played only two County Championship games and, along with Tom Smith and Steven Croft, is currently out of the side. Karl Brown is opening for the first-team but he has been dropped recently too. Into the gaps created by the omission of established batsmen have come Luis Reece and Andrea Agathangelou, both of whom seem to be making the most of their opportunities.In the midst of this fluxion, Ashwell Prince and Simon Katich have provided the solidity upon which most of Lancashire’s best batting efforts have been based. So when Reece trooped off a sun-soaked Old Trafford outfield this morning, having been pinned lbw on the back foot by Dean Cosker for 53, there was a certain inevitability about the way in which Prince and Katich took control of their side’s reply to Glamorgan’s first innings total of 474.Coming together at 123 for 2, the two left handers spent the rest of the first session and much of the afternoon building a partnership with a rapidity comparable to that displayed by the lime-jacketed contractors who are erecting scarlet and green stands around Old Trafford in readiness for the Ashes Test which begins in 15 days.Prince was much the quicker, reaching his 50 off 57 balls with a clip though midwicket off John Glover and his first Championship century of the season with a six into the pavilion off Dean Cosker. But Prince was also the first to depart when he gloved an attempted sweep off Nathan McCullum to Mark Wallace behind the stumps. But by then, Prince had made 113 and shared a stand of 157 with Katich, who had made comparatively sedate progress: when both batsmen had faced 99 balls, Katich was on 35 compared to Prince’s 84, although this perhaps reflected his desire to bat long once again.Katich added a further 36 with Agathangelou before the latter was caught at slip when his indeterminate forward prod off McCullum only edged the ball to Jim Allenby at slip, in which position the same fielder had dropped Katich on 18 off McCullum.When Lancashire had garnered three bonus points there was some talk of the home side declaring behind and helping to set up a run chase. This proved to be little more than gossip. Katich and Luke Procter ground on into the evening session, the Australian reaching his century with a cover drive off Wagg who later reverted to left-arm spin and had Katich caught down the leg side by Wallace for 115 five overs before the close.By then Katich had put on 90 with Procter, who goes into the final day on 53. For their part the Glamorgan attack stuck to its task on a pitch which had altered little since Wagg induced Karl Brown to play on for 48 in the eighth over of the day.That wicket ended Brown’s 99-run first-wicket stand with the impressive Reece. The partnership constituted Lancashire’s best opening partnership of the season and had the pair added another run it would have been only the seventh time in 129 innings since Peter Moores took over at Old Trafford in 2009 that the openers had put on a century. The last occasion it happened was at Taunton in 2011, the fateful day when Lancashire won the title.There have been significant changes in personnel since then but it is the addition of Katich -with 874 runs in the Championship this season – that could be so important in assisting Lancashire’s attempt to return to English cricket’s top table.

“Where’s the planning? We talk about planning but I can’t see where that planning has got to”

ESPNcricinfo staff20-Dec-2021Alastair Cook has questioned England’s planning and criticised the “simple, avoidable mistakes” they have made in the first two Ashes Tests after their 275-run defeat in Adelaide saw Australia take a 2-0 lead.Cook, England’s captain during their 5-0 defeat in Australia eight years ago and their leading run-scorer on their victorious 2010-11 tour, said that England’s decision-making “hasn’t been good enough”, and said that there was little evidence of the planning that Chris Silverwood – England’s head coach and Cook’s former Essex coach – had regularly referred to throughout his two years in charge.”Ultimately, England are ruing the fact they’ve made too many mistakes in these two games,” Cook said in BT Sport’s coverage. “Their fielding isn’t as good as Australia’s, the decision-making off the field to get to this point hasn’t been good enough, and you can’t afford – on a tour like this – to make mistakes. It’s such a tough tour anyway.”Hindsight is the easiest place to come from but we’ve gone into this tour with all the stuff from Chris Silverwood, saying ‘we’re going to be the best-prepared England team’, ‘we’ve prepared for this’, ‘we want to arrive with this, this and this.’ Yes, there have been some circumstances they can’t have avoided like the Covid situation, the weather they’ve had, the T20 World Cup rescheduled.Related

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“But they turned up to play the biggest Ashes game which is the first one, where you set the tone, where you start to get in the series, and played a bowling attack that had never played before together. Where’s the planning? We talk about planning but I can’t see where that planning has got to.”Cook was also critical of the decision to omit Stuart Broad from the first Test at the Gabba, suggesting picking him should have been “a no-brainer”.”I don’t think James [Anderson] was fit to play that game, so that’s fine,” he said. “So then you go for a guy who’s got a good record at the Gabba, Stuart Broad, who you know can handle big situations, has delivered for England in the past… and you don’t play him. I’m sitting there going ‘really? Like, really? How’s that decision been made’. To me, that’s a no-brainer.”Matt Prior, England’s wicketkeeper on the 2010-11 tour and Cook’s vice-captain during the 2013-14 whitewash, highlighted England’s “unforced errors” as well as their decision-making, describing their profligacy in the field as “a huge negative”.”Before you even look at batting vs batting and bowling vs bowling on the two sides, it’s England’s unforced errors,” he said on BT Sport. “Dropping seven catches in two Test matches, that’s a huge negative and it’s one that can be trained and practised and shouldn’t happen at this level, quite frankly.”Taking wickets with no-balls and the amount of no-balls being bowled by this England team – it’s those elements that will be as frustrating as not leaving as well as the Australians, or bowling a bit fuller, or everything else.”People talk about one-percenters, but taking catches? That’s a 20-percenter. England aren’t at a place where they’ve focusing on one percent here, one percent there – get your 20 percent right first and then you can go from there.”But I agree with Alastair that some of the decisions that have been made so far in these two Test matches… I mean, talk about putting yourself behind the eight-ball before you’ve even got on the pitch. It’s been a real tough one.”

India will tour South Africa for three Tests, seven ODIs and two Twenty20s beginning in December this year and extending to early 2014

Firdose Moonda12-Apr-2013India will tour South Africa for three Tests, seven ODIs and two Twenty20s beginning in December this year and extending to early 2014. This will be the teams’ first meeting since two seasons ago when they battled for the No.1 ranking which India held onto under Gary Kirsten. Now, South Africa are mace holders with Kirsten in their camp.There was talk of a fourth Test being built into the schedule but that has not materialised. Mike Gajjar, CSA’s manager cricket operations, said it was only ever a “possibility” to have an additional Test and the two boards stuck to what was “entrenched in the FTP.”But there is some good news for fans of the longest format. ESPNcricinfo understands the traditional Boxing Day Test will return to Durban after it was cancelled previous season because CSA opted to play three festive T20s instead. Although the other venues have not been confirmed, it is a given that Cape Town will host the New Year’s Test and either Johannesburg or Centurion should get the third fixture.Both teams will be short on Test cricket before the meeting. South Africa last played the format in February and will only meet Pakistan for two matches in the UAE before hosting India while their opposition will not play a single Test between now and then. India whitewashed Australia at home in March but have only fifty-over engagements until they fly to South Africa.That includes seven ODIs against Australia after the Champions Trophy which adds to the glut of matches in the format. South Africa do not usually host ODI series of longer than five matches so India’s scheduled seven is unusual. It should present an opportunity for some of the less visited grounds in the country, such as the Maritzburg Oval, the chance to host international cricket.India’s tour forms part of a bumper summer for South Africa. They also host Australia for three Tests in February-March 2014. Both series are among the more lucrative incoming tours with only England being the other team to bring in sizeable profits from television rights.

Veteran allrounder digs deep in low-scoring thriller to seal one-wicket win

ECB Reporters Network10-Jul-2021Northern Diamonds 110 for 9 (Gunn 27*) beat Western Storm 106 for 9 (Macdonald 4-17) by one wicketAlex Macdonald registered career-best figures to put the skids under Western Storm and help Northern Diamonds achieve a dramatic one-wicket win at Taunton to take control of Group B in the Charlotte Edwards Cup.Diamonds skipper Holly Armitage won the toss and opted to field, a decision which reaped dividends when Macdonald took 4 for 17, eclipsing the 4 for 28 she claimed for Yorkshire women against Surrey in 2015. Undermined by poor shot selection and unable to build meaningful partnerships, Storm posted a below-par 106 for 9, Katie George top-scoring with 21 and Nat Wraith contributing 20.But the hosts came roaring back into contention, Danielle Gibson, Alex Griffiths and Nicole Harvey claiming two wickets apiece as Diamonds lurched to 96 for 9. It required all of Jenny Gunn’s vast experience to see the visitors over the line, the former England international hitting the winning four off the final ball to finish unbeaten on 27 from 21 balls.Put into bat, Storm were up against it from the outset, Linsey Smith pinning Georgia Hennessy lbw without scoring in the first over, and then holding a catch at point as Gibson succumbed to Gunn in the act of cutting. When Phoebe Graham located Sophie Luff’s outside edge and Sarah Taylor took a brilliant diving catch at the second attempt behind the stumps, Storm had lost their captain for a duck and were under duress at 28 for 3 in the fourth over.Having played second fiddle in a stand of 23 for the fourth wicket with George, opener Fi Morris fell to MacDonald, top-edging a catch behind and departing for 16.Dropped on 11 by Katie Levick at mid-on off the bowling of Graham in the sixth over, George made good her escape to accrue 21 valuable runs from 23 balls, striking a brace of fours in the process. Chancing her arm once too often though, she then hoisted a delivery from MacDonald high to Campbell at deep mid-on and exited at a crucial juncture in the innings with the score on 64-5 at the halfway stage.Former Gloucestershire bowler MacDonald struck again in her next over, inducing Griffiths to sky a catch to point and then removing Lauren Parfitt, held by Graham at mid-off, as Storm subsided further to 76 for 7 in the 13th over. Emily Edgecombe was comprehensively stumped by Taylor off the bowling of Levick, but Wraith mustered tail-end defiance, contributing a forthright 20 from 21 balls, before Smith returned to remove her off stump and complete a handy return of 2 for 15 from four overs.Edgecombe struck an early blow for Storm, having Armitage caught at the wicket for five in the first over, but Leah Dobson and Ami Campbell staged a progressive alliance of 27 in three overs to lay solid foundations.Yet Storm stuck to their task in the field and, when Griffiths removed Dobson and Campbell in the space of five balls in the fifth over and Gibson then bowled MacDonald for six, there was the merest hint of an unexpected outcome.The fight-back was well and truly underway when Griffiths performed a brilliant stop and throw from the deep square leg boundary to run out Taylor for 11, the former England star falling inches short in pursuit of a second run. Rachel Hopkins was trapped in her crease by Morris for two and Dutch international Sterre Kalis played down the wrong line and was clean bowled by the impressive Gibson, at which point Diamonds were teetering on 78 for 7 and heavily reliant upon veteran campaigner Gunn.Offspinner Harvey accounted for Smith and Graham in the penultimate over to set-up a tense finale. With 10 needed from the final over, Gunn held her nerve, lofting a length ball from Griffiths over mid-on to register her third boundary and clinch a memorable victory at the death.