New Zealand quick has had extraordinary start to his career … because he is extraordinary

Jarrod Kimber20-Jun-20214:15

Match Day Masterclass: Swing vs seam – Dale Steyn explains

Batters wait patiently for tall bowlers to deliver full balls. They talk about the floatiness of these deliveries. When the ball is over-pitched, they go into attack mode.Because of this, tall bowlers rarely pitch the ball up. Instead, they stay on their best length and keep the batter stuck on the crease. The problem is that to get a lot of swing, you need to bowl fuller. So throughout the history of cricket, you don’t see a lot of tall bowlers in Test cricket over 80 miles per hour consistently swinging the ball.Today, Kyle Jamieson bowled very full, swung the ball massively, touched 87mph/140kph, while delivering it from 2.3 metres which is 30cm higher than a standard seam bowler. His Test bowling average is 14.13. This is a scary collection of skills in one person. If you were designing a creature in a lab to be a perfect seamer, this is pretty close to what you’d choose.

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There have been many changes to bowling styles over the years. After the war, the most common form of delivery was the outswinger. It dominated cricket until the West Indies method of seam bowling took over.And while West Indies had quite varied bowlers, their fundamental skill was pretty simple: fast bowlers, who were tall, and who got something off the surface, not through the air. The thought process was that swing is fickle and can disappear. Fast and tall will last you through the day.Kyle Jamieson pinned Virat Kohli lbw with a near-unplayable full-length seamer•Getty ImagesThe need for speed has changed what we look for in bowlers. Speed and seam can go together, as Jasprit Bumrah, Pat Cummins and Kagiso Rabada, among others, have shown us. But few bowlers have swung the ball at speed. And those who do tend to be left-armed, which is an advantage already, as it generally allows them to over-pitch more. Or short and fast guys with a full natural length.It’s not that the tallest bowlers can’t swing the ball. Rather, it’s because their fuller balls are the easiest to handle, and they have so many other advantages naturally, so they rarely develop the skills. Joel Garner, Glenn McGrath, Curtly Ambrose, Steven Finn, and Morne Morkel could occasionally swing the ball, but their strength is hitting the track on a length.

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When you have tall bowlers swinging the ball, it’s either only for short periods or from bowling more slowly. Jason Holder is an example of that in modern cricket. His speeds are significantly less than the traditional six-foot-plus quick, and so he gets consistent swing.But Kyle Jamieson is quicker than Holder, and he’s certainly more than a bowler who can just swing it occasionally. He’s a proper tall fast-medium consistent swing bowler. Test cricket really hasn’t seen many of those ever. And he can move it both ways, and also perform his craft from around the wicket. He’s got a magic toolbox. For someone who came late into bowling, either Jamieson is an excellent mimic, or a natural for seam positions.And facing someone like Jamieson is already an extra challenge. He is a faster bowler than most players his height, but any bowler of his size is tougher to pick up. Australia used to call Morkel a monster because of his release point.After just seven appearances, Jamieson is an automatic pick in New Zealand’s world-beating Test team•ICC via GettyTest match batting is something you get good at by consistently practising the same skills until you can filter information quickly enough to face someone at 80 miles per hour. Jamieson’s so tall that his release point is way higher than average. There is an adjustment that needs to be made for that which isn’t easy to make at his speed.But that’s only the first problem with his height; the second is the bounce. Bowlers have, at that height, a near-permanent tennis-ball bounce. If you’ve ever played cricket with both a tennis ball and a proper ball, you’ll understand the difference in facing both. Those kinds of balls need different shots. So this means that, in a way, shots played to a tall bowler have to be different to others. His height makes the game different.Now, add swing.

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Kyle Jamieson has the third-best Test bowling average of any player with 40 wickets. If you discount the bowlers before 1900 who had no assistance from the days before liquid manure was used in pitch preparation, he’s No.1.Now we know he won’t keep this average up. Quite apart from the very helpful people on social media who keep pointing out that he hasn’t played in Asia yet, Jamieson is not seven runs a wicket better than Malcolm Marshall, the bowler with the lowest average of anyone with 200 wickets. For fun, the next two bowlers on this list are Garner and Ambrose, two other tall men.Jason Holder lacks the extreme speed of many tall bowlers, so relies more on swing than seam•RANDY BROOKS/AFP/Getty ImagesJamieson’s first-class bowling average when not playing Tests is 24.21 from 28 matches. There will be a regression to the mean. People will get more used to him; he’s not bowled that much in his career to date, so with IPL and Test duties, he’s about to get a workload that will chip away at him.But this is an incredible start; and that’s before you even glance at his batting, in which he currently averages 47, towering over his first-class record of 21.This has been a remarkable run of eight Tests. If it happened in the middle of someone’s career, it would be a highlight, the fact it’s occurred at the start is even more amazing.

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So what does all this make when you combine it? Jamieson’s only obvious weakness is that he’s not a 90mph bowler. He’s accurate, swings it both ways, and delivers it from a comical height. If he was regularly over 90mph/145kph, he’d have achieved seam bowling’s singularity.So far in this Test, he’s averaged more swing than everyone except Tim Southee, at height. This is such a weird thing to play against.Look at his wickets in this match. Rohit Sharma’s was a simple outswinger that swung early and then travelled a long away, taking the edge. Rishabh Pant’s was a rare poor ball, and an even more poorly executed shot – but one that was also induced by the extra bounce. Ishant Sharma faced a ball angling into the stumps that swung before landing, and then hit a trampoline when it pitched. To follow that up, Jamieson started a yorker to Bumrah that tailed in from well outside off stump, as if it had a homing beacon on it.And then there was Virat Kohli’s delivery. This pitched outside off stump, went very straight, and then seamed back sharply. It was essentially an offspinner bowled from 230 centimetres at 85mph / 138kph. I am not sure how you play that. And apparently, neither is Kohli.

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Think about this New Zealand attack. They have three of their best bowlers ever, 827 wickets between them. Three completely different styles of bowling that complement each other well. They’ve travelled the world, carried New Zealand to No.1 in the rankings, and into the World Test Championship final. And coming into this match, had New Zealand chosen a spinner, most probably one of Trent Boult or Neil Wagner would have missed out.Related

• Not luck, not fluke – New Zealand deserve to be the World Test Champions

• Dig deep, get down and dirty – no one does it better than New Zealand

• Top-order batter to 'something special' fast bowler – the Kyle Jamieson story

• Patience and restraint, the new arrows in Virat Kohli's quiver

• WTC final rages against the dying light as regulations come under scrutiny again

And while the others are more experienced and tested, given the combination of all Jamieson’s skills and his recent record, his spot was clearly safe.This is a great era for seam bowlers. Guys like Suranga Lakmal and Sharma have pulled in ridiculous numbers after years of huge bowling averages. Since the start of 2018, there isn’t a Test seamer with 50 wickets who has taken them at more than 30. Yet there are two, Ishant and Holder, under 20. All these things have to be taken into consideration, as do Jamieson’s eight Tests being split between New Zealand and England.But he’s averaging under 15 and taking a wicket every 36 balls. This isn’t normal, no matter what the conditions are.And, this isn’t just about natural talent and an incredibly handy combination of skills. There are plenty of bowlers who arrive with a natural talent that their opponents work out over time. That process slows them down, after which it’s about how they adapt. Jamieson’s end-of-play chat with the ICC crew showed that he recognised what he done wrong (relatively speaking) on Saturday and corrected it on Sunday by bowling fuller.This is someone in his 36th first-class match, who began bowling only a few years back, adjusting his length to bowl unnaturally full. This adjustment lead to him taking his fifth five-wicket haul in seven and a half Tests.Kyle Jamieson has height, some speed, swing, seam, control and the ability to change his plans. He’s not perfect, but if you’re standing at the other end when the ball is swinging, it may just feel as though he is.

The 22-year old has played just one first-class match at home, but has now scored an unbeaten half-century on Test debut

Umar Farooq27-Nov-2021Abdullah Shafique was called up to Pakistan in 2020 – but not for the Test side where he distinguished himself today. He was called up to the T20I side, on the back of a hundred in the National T20 Cup. He since then has been with the national team, though generally finds himself sitting on bench upon bench. He did play three T20Is, following up an unbeaten 41 with a pair of ducks in New Zealand. But he had his eyes firmly upon the longer format, and, despite spending just 20 months in the first-class system, he was called up for the series against Bangladesh. It might be easy to overlook because he took to it so naturally, but Shafique’s domestic career in Pakistan isn’t even two years old.His Test call-up wasn’t met especially warmly. There was disgruntlement about why a player with only one first-class game in Pakistan’s domestic circuit went on to play Test cricket for the country. But despite his unconventional route, Shafique’s red-ball debut had always been on the cards. But while people debated his inclusion, he was busy totting up a 145-run opening stand with Abid Ali to put Pakistan in command.

The fundamentals of his game are flawlessMisbah-ul-Haq on Abdullah Shafique

He was especially solid on the day, underlined by, according to ESPNcricinfo’s numbers, a control percentage of 94 to go with his unbeaten 52. A staid strike rate of 32.09 might signal attrition, but there were moments of confidence and flair, none more so than when he danced down the ground to deposit Mominul Haque over the sightscreen to bring up his half-century. He was the first Pakistan opener to do that on debut. There were no streaky edges to third man; in fact, he scored no runs in that region. It was the onside where he excels, underlined by more than half his runs coming through midwicket.***Shafique broke into the system as a 20-year-old batter, coming from a cricketing family in Sialkot. His father, Shafiq Ahmed, also played first-class cricket in Pakistan and his uncle, Arshad Ali, played international cricket for UAE. He was drafted into the Central Punjab second XI because their first team at the time had Babar Azam, Azhar Ali, Abid Ali, Salman Butt and Ahmed Shehzad – and therefore no room in the top order. He was overlooked for the first five rounds by the second XI, too but in just the second opportunity he got, scored a double-hundred.Related

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That gave Shafique a look-in into the first team, where a debut century earned his side the points that helped keep their 2019-20 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy season alive. It remains his only first-class home game, but he followed that hundred up with another in T20 cricket, making him just the second cricketer in history to manage three-figures first-class and T20 debut.***There has never been a set pattern to recruitment in Pakistan’s domestic system, and bringing players through to the national side. Players have been discarded for poor performances, only to make a comeback months later without any discernible improvement in form or skill level. They have always preferred instinct to organisation, ever living in the hope of unearthing another Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Javed Miandad or Inzamam-ul-Haq.Abid Ali and Abdullah Shafique have together put on 145 runs in Chattogram•AFP/Getty ImagesMisbah-ul-Haq, the ex-head coach and chief selector, was the man who selected Shafique in the national side, even if he spent most of that time frozen out of the starting line-up. There were several openers tried and discarded – Shan Masood, Imam ul Haq, Imran Butt. But Shafique hung around, patiently awaiting his chance. There was some pressure on Misbah to give Shafique his chance, but at the time, he couldn’t see him making a Test or ODI debut just yet. Now, sitting watching his debut on TV, there’s barely a happier man.”He was always close to making his debut and I am happy he finally has,” Misbah told ESPNcricinfo. “He is one of the few eye-catching players you enjoy watching. He is rare breed who is technically solid and has all the tools to build his game. He is an opener who can attack and has an implacable defence, too. If you have look at his batting, he plays close to his body and his precise foot movement make his balance just very right. The fundamentals of his game are flawless. I know he hasn’t played much domestic cricket but he played a lot of club cricket. His development at that stage, I think was so thorough and meaningful that he hasn’t missed much.”

He gained all the relevant experience playing club cricket. That is rare and you do not find such players every dayMisbah-ul-Haq on Abdullah Shafique

Shafique played club cricket in the locally famous Amir Wasim cricket academy in Sialkot before moving to Jaguar Club, where he worked with Mansoor Amjad. “He is ahead of his time and understands what he is doing,” said Misbah. “He is so composed playing with no sense of pressure about it. He is already mature in his game. I think he played a lot of club cricket, which we often disregard the importance of.”There was logic behind Pakistan keeping him close, even if he had limited game time. He did play two T20Is in New Zealand but Misbah believes they came too early and in conditions that were much too testing. Sure enough, Shafique fell for two ducks, and was consigned to the sidelines for an extended period.”He has got a great temperament, just like Babar Azam,” Misbah said. “His maturity is one of the many factors that vindicate his decision not to throw himself into domestic cricket. He gained all the relevant experience playing club cricket. That is rare and you do not find such players every day. It doesn’t work with everyone. He is determined, he is smart, he can take singles at will and he is a hard worker.”Misbah doesn’t do hyperbole, and if Shafique excites him quite as much as that, there’s perhaps good news for Pakistan’s top order woes. The man who couldn’t get off the bench might soon be getting fans off their sofas if he’s nearly as good as he looked in Chattogram today.

Australia emulate West Indies in lifting trophy despite not winning a single game batting first

Matt Roller14-Nov-20212:47

Moody: Can’t underestimate Australia as they don’t often play T20Is at full-strength

After Australia became the second team in a row to lift the men’s T20 World Cup without winning a game batting first, Aaron Finch admitted that his success at the coin toss throughout the tournament was “a big factor” in their success.Finch had suggested in the build-up to the final against New Zealand that he would not have minded losing the toss in Thursday’s semi-final win over Pakistan in order to “put a big score on the board and really squeeze” the opposition, despite the fact that every night game played at Dubai across the World Cup was won by the chasing team.But after his sixth toss win out of seven in the World Cup – and his 18th out of his last 22 in all T20Is – Finch said that the opportunity to chase had been vital, as Australia repeated West Indies’ record in the 2016 edition by winning the tournament without successfully defending a score.

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“It did play a big factor, to be honest,” Finch said. “I tried to play it down as much as I could because I thought, ‘at some point in the tournament, I’m going to lose a toss and we’ll have to bat first’. But it did play a big part. You saw out there at the end there the dew factor: the slower balls weren’t holding in the wicket as much. I don’t know how I did it – maybe it was just fate.”I thought the way that we bowled with the new ball in that powerplay was obviously really important. That first ten overs, to restrict New Zealand to 57. We knew they were one down but it was always going to be tough because the dew started to come down quite heavy, which we hadn’t seen at all in the tournament so far.”In T20 cricket, you need a bit of luck, don’t get me wrong. Of course you need a bit of luck. We won six out of seven tosses, which goes a long way. But we’ve played some really good cricket. We played cricket where we put teams on the back foot because we were aggressive.”

“Without a word of a lie, I promise you, I called Justin Langer a few months ago and I said ‘don’t worry about Davey, he’ll be man of the tournament’. I thought Adam Zampa should have been man of the tournament personally, but [Warner]’s a great player, he’s one of the all-time great batters and he’s a fighter”Aaron Finch

Finch also hailed David Warner’s impact after his third important contribution in a row, with his innings of 53 off 38 balls in the final following scores of 49 off 30 in the semi-final against Pakistan and 89 not out off 56 against West Indies to seal Australia’s qualification from the Super 12s.While he suggested that Warner’s Player-of-the-Tournament award should have gone to Adam Zampa, the leading wicket-taker since the start of the Super 12s, Finch said that Warner’s batting had epitomised Australia’s attacking philosophy.”You didn’t expect that?” he asked a reporter rhetorically. “I certainly did. Without a word of a lie, I promise you, I called Justin Langer a few months ago and I said ‘don’t worry about Davey, he’ll be man of the tournament’. I thought Adam Zampa should have been man of the tournament personally, but [Warner]’s a great player, he’s one of the all-time great batters and he’s a fighter. He’s someone who when his back’s against the wall, that’s when you get the very, very best of David Warner. It was a special finish to the tournament for him, the last couple of knocks.”We are really, really committed to staying positive and aggressive against spin, and that showed tonight. I thought the way Mitch [Marsh] and Davey played against New Zealand – Shadab [Khan] got four-for in the semi-final but we kept attacking.”We were so committed to that throughout the tournament. We were comfortable to be able to fail being aggressive because we know that that’s when we play our best. I think if you go home and you don’t make the semis or you don’t make the final, you’re kicking yourself if you’re an Australian team and you play in your shell. So that was a real positive for us.”

Opener puts early struggles behind him to help continue Pakistan’s flawless World Cup

Danyal Rasool02-Nov-2021A blond, strapping giant of a figure gazes across the distance of his run-up and 22 yards of a barren, glassy cricket pitch. He’s staring at a diminutive figure in green at the other end; from that distance and height, Mohammad Rizwan must have looked positively Lilliputian to Ruben Trumpelmann. At any level of cricket, this looks like a mismatch, and for a short while, an international World Cup is no different.Rizwan fends off a couple of hostile deliveries, but Trumpelmann is only just getting started. Namibia’s left-arm fast bowler, born in Durban, watched South Africa quicks Kagiso Rabada and Anrich Nortje torment Bangladesh on the same surface earlier in the day; he was surely encouraged by that. He sends one on a length that Rizwan fidgets clumsily at; it beats the outside edge, nipping away at the last. The movement encourages him, and he goes fuller, coaxing Rizwan into a drive he can never hope to execute. It’s angling across too much, while Rizwan’s feet are rooted in place. The listless Rizwan takes a tentative stab at the fifth delivery, but has no control on what is currently transpiring. He respectfully defends the last ball; the first maiden over Rizwan has ever faced in T20I cricket. The giant left-arm fast bowler has roughed up the little opener.It is nine balls before Rizwan manages a single against the nagging Trumpelmann, much happier to watch the action from the other end. This is as unlike Rizwan as we’ve ever seen him, uncertain, underconfident, streaky and fortunate. A couple of overs later, he survives an lbw shout by the skin of his teeth; some observers facetiously remark his presence at the crease is an advantage for Namibia, others call for him to be retired out.

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Rizwan acknowledged the unusual nature of what occurred at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium. “In the first six overs, to be honest, I didn’t understand what was happening,” he said at the post-match press conference. “I was struggling. Some balls were skidding, others were sliding, some inswinging, others outswinging. But instead of throwing my wicket away, I dug in.”It almost flies in the face of modern T20 wisdom, which would conclude he was having a net negative impact on his side’s chances by being out there, and advise he was better served taking on much higher risk and almost accept an early dismissal as a to allow the next batter in. By the halfway stage, Rizwan’s fortunes hadn’t improved much; he had scored 16 off 25, managing just one boundary all that time. The innings it seemed to bear greatest resemblance to at this World Cup was the one Lendl Simmons played against South Africa, limping to 16 off 35 as West Indies stumbled to a below-par total, and subsequently a convincing defeat. Unlike West Indies on that occasion, Pakistan had all ten wickets in the bank, so Rizwan’s go-slow felt even more criminal.Related

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For Rizwan, though, the only crime seems to be the audacity of the idea that a wicket was ever worth throwing away, defiantly backing Pakistan’s ostensibly conservative, anchor-heavy approach at the top. “What’s important for us is to assess both the conditions and the bowling,” he said. “You’re right to say that we’re not power hitters. But thankfully, we’re cracking the code here whereas the rest of the world is still struggling with these conditions. That’s because Babar and I complement each other well and plan how to approach the innings as a partnership.”Babar Azam and I learn from each other. Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi are conditions where even if you play very well, you end up around 150 or 160. If you look at other teams in the Powerplay, teams are finishing around 35 for three or four. But our Powerplay ends around 40-42 without losing any wicket. Today, the conditions were tough, and their bowlers deserved credit because they used the pitch and bowled the right lengths. They gave us a tough time but everyone knows what a world-class player Babar is. We’d planned to take the game deep and tough out that period.”With Pakistan finding themselves in the unusually happy position of effectively having qualified for the semi-final with games against Namibia and Scotland to spare, there was even room for quirky experimentation. Having fielded first each of their first three games, Pakistan opted to bat after winning the toss, aware they might not have the choice in a crunch semi-final. When, with just over four overs to spare, and eight wickets still in hand, Pakistan sent in Mohammad Hafeez ahead of the more natural, in-form power hitter Asif Ali, it felt like they had again taken a conservative approach. Rizwan, however, insisted it was just a ploy to ensure Pakistan were firing on all cylinders.”We sent Hafeez in ahead of Asif because we want to tick all our boxes. Asif has already performed in this tournament, and so have all the bowlers – Hasan Ali bowled beautifully today, so that box was ticked today too. The one player who hadn’t yet performed much [with the bat] was Hafeez, so we wanted to give him a chance. But he found form today as well. We’re in a rhythm, and we hope to maintain that rhythm when we go to the semi-final and win it.”By the time Trumpelmann returned for his third over about 45 minutes later, Rizwan’s digging in and toughing out was done. He hoicked at his first ball, and while not quite in control, made enough of a connection to send it over the rope for six. He rounded the over out with a four, and when Trumpelmann was brought in for his final over, Rizwan ensured he signed off that personal battle by sweeping the fast bowler for another boundary. Having managed one run off his first nine balls, he plundered 14 off the four balls the 23-year old bowled to him in his return spells.In his last 18 T20Is, Rizwan has batted through the Pakistan innings eight times. When the world’s leading T20I runscorer this year finds himself in a pinch, he doesn’t bail out. He simply goes on batting.

Even if you believed Kohli-cam to be the most egregious example of a team game being turned into a personality cult, you might just find yourself missing it

Karthik Krishnaswamy16-Jan-20222:06

Is Rishabh Pant a dark horse to be India’s next Test captain?

They were thirty-sixed in Adelaide, and there was no Virat Kohli for the rest of the series. How did India cope? Rather well, as it turned out.Back spasms ruled Kohli out in Johannesburg, and a younger, quieter stand-in oversaw an unexpected defeat during which, in some eyes, India’s efforts on the field lacked the full-time captain’s energy and aggression. Kohli returned in Cape Town and poured his energy and aggression onto every blade of grass and into the stump mic. India lost in more or less the same way.Captains get far more credit for victory and far more blame for defeat than they ever deserve. They are as good as their teams happen to be, and Kohli’s results across formats are the best of any full-time India captain because he led India’s best-ever team. It’s as simple as that.Well, almost as simple.Related

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Go back to Kohli’s first-ever Test as captain. Not yet full-time captain, he made – or was involved in making – two decisions that immediately spelled out what his captaincy would be like, and how it would be different from anything that came before.He dropped R Ashwin and played the debutant Karn Sharma, in the belief that wristspin would bring quicker wickets than fingerspin on Australian pitches. Then, on the final afternoon, Kohli kept playing his shots and going after an outlandish fourth-innings target even after India had lost every other recognised batter, this when he had already scored hundreds in both innings and had the chance to pull down shutters and try to bat out a draw.Australia scored at five-and-a-half runs an over against Karn’s legspin over their two innings, and he never played Test cricket again. And Kohli’s willingness to risk defeat in the pursuit of victory ended up in defeat.Seemingly impulsive selections and the preference for the outright aggressive option remained a marked tendency during Kohli’s early years as captain. St Lucia 2016 was a case in point, when India left out Cheteshwar Pujara and M Vijay and brought in Rohit Sharma for his freer-scoring style, which they perhaps desired with the forecast suggesting that significant time would be lost to rain. India won despite an entire day getting washed out, as it transpired, even if Rohit didn’t make a hugely significant contribution to the result.It wasn’t the first or last time Pujara found himself out of the XI following a short stretch of poor form. Ajinkya Rahane would experience this too, during the South Africa tour of 2017-18. It would seem an irony, then, that the last year of Kohli’s captaincy would feature an unwavering belief in Pujara and Rahane despite both experiencing far longer streaks of even leaner form.This reflected, possibly, a tempering of Kohli’s early impulsiveness. Or it perhaps just reflected a greater belief in his two middle-order comrades after they had both proven their ability multiple times in difficult situations, and a recognition that their low averages over a prolonged period may have had as much to do with the bowlers and conditions India were facing, Test match after Test match, as any drop in their ability. Kohli’s returns over the same period were hardly any better.Kohli’s early trigger-happiness, then, may have simply been a consequence of having a younger and less experienced core group of players. As they grew older and more settled in the side, they may simply have become harder to displace. It’s a natural cycle that all teams go through.Shami, Bumrah, Ishant – the pace bowling riches that flourished under Kohli get a doff of his hat•Getty ImagesThe other quality Kohli showed in his Adelaide captaincy debut, however, never changed, and he always remained willing to risk defeat in the pursuit of Test wins. That quality would come to define his captaincy.Nowhere was this more evident than in his consistent use of five-bowler combinations. His predecessor MS Dhoni had also been keen on it, but the fifth bowler was usually someone in the mould of Stuart Binny or Ravindra Jadeja, who in the early stage of his Test career was viewed as a batting allrounder, even if that aspect of his game took longer to live up to its potential than his bowling.In contrast, Kohli played five genuine bowlers in his first two Tests after that 2014-15 Australia tour, when the post-Dhoni era began in full earnest. In Fatullah, he picked three fast bowlers – Ishant Sharma, Varun Aaron and Umesh Yadav – and two spinners – Ashwin and Harbhajan Singh – and if a one-off Test against Bangladesh seems like the easiest assignment for a brave selection, he went in with two fast bowlers – Ishant and Aaron – and three spinners – Ashwin, Harbhajan and Amit Mishra – in India’s next Test in Galle. All five were bowlers first, and for all his ability with the bat, Ashwin had never batted above No. 8 before those two Tests. And with Dhoni no longer in the side, the five bowlers were batting below Wriddhiman Saha, whose batting ability was at that stage largely unproven.It didn’t quite come off in Galle – even though it took a freak innings from Dinesh Chandimal to turn what looked like an inevitable Sri Lanka defeat into an unexpected win – and India tempered their approach as they came back to win the series, with Binny recalled as a hedge-your-bets allrounder. But Kohli had shown his willingness to sacrifice batting depth to heighten India’s chances of picking up 20 wickets, and it would remain a feature of his captaincy.It was fitting then, with Jadeja – now a genuine batting allrounder overseas – out injured, that Kohli’s last Test as captain featured five out-and-out bowlers, with Ashwin and Shardul Thakur making up a hit-or-miss combination of lower-order batters at Nos. 7 and 8.But how much was this down to Kohli, and how much down to Ravi Shastri, in both his stints as head coach? Five bowlers was also a feature of Anil Kumble’s brief and highly successful tenure, during which Ashwin often batted at No. 6. With Kohli out injured for the decider of a tense home series against Australia in Dharamsala, Kumble and the stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane chose to give the wristspinner Kuldeep Yadav a debut rather than pick a like-for-like middle-order batter.And when Rahane stood in after 36 all out, India brought in Jadeja as a second spinner at the MCG rather than replace Kohli with a specialist batter.Kohli, Shastri, Kumble, Rahane and even Rahul Dravid, then, all seemed to share the same vision as far as picking five bowlers was concerned. And you can see why. It was a sound idea, and India had the players to make it work.In a sense, Kohli was lucky to take over the captaincy when the bulk of those players, particularly a promising group of bowlers, were all just beginning to mature at the Test level. Ashwin, Jadeja, Ishant, Umesh and Mohammed Shami had experienced most of their growing pains under Dhoni.You could argue, however, that Kohli and Shastri laid down the fitness standards that drove those bowlers to become the best versions of themselves. Over the course of their tenures, the fast bowlers went from being able to deliver one spell of high intensity during a day’s play and then losing steam, to being able to come back with the same intensity over multiple spells. Bharat Arun must take some of the credit for their upskilling as well.Ishant exemplified the extent of growth that was possible in this regime. He had averaged 37.30 in 61 Tests until the end of 2014. Since the start of 2015 – which is when Kohli became full-time captain – he has averaged 25.01 over 44 Tests, pitching the ball significantly fuller and closer to off stump than he used to, and rediscovering his inswinger.And as the incumbents became more threatening bowlers, newcomers came in looking like they had already played 20 Tests. One of them, Jasprit Bumrah, was both a once-in-a-generation genius and a product of the BCCI’s system, having been recognised as a prospect as far back as his stint at the National Cricket Academy in 2013, when he began building up the fitness he needed to ensure his body could withstand the demands of his unorthodox action. The other, Mohammed Siraj, was an even clearer product of a smoothly-paved talent pathway, having performed brilliantly on multiple India A tours before making his Test debut.As with everything else, Kohli may have only had a limited role to play in the rise of those two bowlers. But it’s not a knock on his captaincy. It’s just a reminder that a team’s success is the culmination of a number of processes overseen by a number of skilled decision-makers, of which the captain is only one. It’s probably healthier anyway when less power is concentrated in one pair of hands, even if – at the peak of his powers as batter and captain – it seemed as if Kohli was Indian cricket’s biggest power centre.Virat Kohli arrives at India’s training session•BCCIThe aura around Kohli’s captaincy, in truth, was much larger than the actual scope of his role, and this was simply a reflection of how aggressively personality-driven cricket’s marketing and packaging has become. Even Sachin Tendulkar didn’t have a dedicated camera following his every movement to ensure that the producer could bring you every pump of his fist and every raise of his eyebrow. And as the camera sought Kohli out, Kohli played up to it, a symbiotic relationship that filled our screens with frenzied send-offs, fingers on lips to quieten the opposition’s fans, and hands cupped around ears to raise the volume of India’s fans.This, of course, is who Kohli is, even if it’s a hyperreal version of him. Even if that on-field personality’s contribution to India’s results was negligible, it’s the part of his captaincy that will be remembered most fondly – or, if you fall on that side of the divide, with the most distaste. It’s possible that he’ll remain just as expressive when he is no longer captain, but it’s likely that Kohli-cam will play a smaller role in our lives, leaving you with curiously mixed emotions. Even if you believed Kohli-cam to be the most egregious example of a team game being turned into a personality cult, you might just find yourself missing it.

The former Pakistan fast bowler, now Quetta Gladiators coach in the PSL, talks about coaching in T20 and the importance of long-format cricket for all players

Interview by Umar Farooq15-Feb-2022After his retirement from playing cricket late in 2020, former Pakistan fast bowler Umar Gul changed hats seamlessly, taking up the bowling coach’s role with Quetta Gladiators in the PSL almost immediately after. Here, he talks about his coaching philosophy, particularly when it comes to fast bowlers and their nurture.How difficult was the transition from a cricketer to a coach?
It’s never easy when you have given your everything playing cricket since your childhood. There was passion involved and when you have done it for 20 straight years, it’s not easy to walk away just like that. There were brief [career] gaps due to my injuries and those were frustrating times but I always made a comeback and never let it go. Because it was about passion, it took time for me to absorb that I won’t be bowling anymore and it will not be the same when I retire. I wanted to continue playing in a few leagues but there were no takers and it came down to making a quick decision about my future before it was too late.I wanted to stay close to the game, be in the field, so I told myself: why not coaching? I gave myself a long, hard look, thought about my temperament and I realised I have always been generous about helping my colleagues when working in the nets – giving them tips, listening to others, chipping in with my knowledge. I wasn’t just bowling but learning a lot around the art of bowling.Related

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I was lucky enough to get a call from Quetta Gladiators to work as a coach only two months after I retired from cricket. Then I had a stint in the Kashmir Premier League and in the Lanka Premier League for Galle Gladiators. This season in PSL, Moin Khan [head coach] had his son’s wedding and I have been leading [Quetta] as head coach. That has been a productive experience, working broadly with everyone rather than just bowlers.You are a rarity as a Pakistani former player who has decided to go global with his coaching career, rather than just doing it as a one-off.
I think it is a role that requires a different kind of expertise [to playing]. It’s a different ball game and we ex-cricketers overestimate ourselves on the basis of the cricket we played and think that we can easily take up coaching as a career straightaway.

“Coaching is basically working with the psyche of a player. You have to go into his mind to figure out the problem”

It requires grooming, experience, and ideally if you come through working with a younger lot [of players] it’s easy for you to grow. It’s a difficult process but [worth it] if you want to go global and are not just looking for small gigs.My career panned out in an era where the gears shifted from the mid-2000s [type of cricket] to modern-day cricket in the last five-six years. So I didn’t have to take a break or learn to catch up with the times. I played my cricket with HBL at domestic level and played under so many big names. With such an extensive playing career you definitely learn a lot, especially when you come up under big coaches throughout. There were different philosophies from coaches and captains. I led HBL, so there was also leadership involved and there was a consistent learning curve from playing the highest level of international cricket.There is debate about whether or not it is necessary for a good coach to also have been a good cricketer. What’s your take?
You can learn the game theoretically and still become a good coach. Basically there is no right or wrong answer to this. It’s a combination of many things and not always about cricket but management of players.Cricket is evolving rapidly and it depends on how quickly you learn new things, and how you work with players. I am gaining tons of experience with Gladiators and I love to work with players in the field, so it isn’t really a problem for me to adapt.Gul on Naseem Shah: “In Test cricket in Pakistan you need a bowler who can consistently bowl 140-145kph because of the slow pitches”•Getty ImagesI’m not limiting myself to Quetta Gladiators only but looking for other opportunities to grow myself. I have made my mind up that this is my bread and butter. I have done my Level 2 coaching course and am waiting for PCB to open up the Level 3 course. If you want to do it right, you need to learn it right. With all the practical knowledge, you’ve got to have theoretical knowledge as well.How would you describe your coaching philosophy?
Your actual job starts when a player is down and going through a rough patch. Form, good or bad, is inevitable. You can easily lose your way with one patch of bad form and fade away like you never existed. That is cricket.Obviously a player playing at the highest level must have the skill sets and the hard work behind him, otherwise he wouldn’t have made it that far. A good coach is the one who basically picks up a player in bad form and encourages him and works with him to overcome the lean patch. It’s basically working with the psyche of the player. You have to go into his mind to figure out the problem. I have been through so many phases in my career and I know what a player expects from a coach and what a coach should be doing to lift up a player.With batters scoring more runs than ever in the shorter formats, there is always pressure on bowlers to keep evolving. How tough is that on bowlers?
In the past, longer formats were more focused and the conditions were more bowler-friendly, but with the passage of time, T20 cricket has taken over a lot of attention. There is public demand [for this kind of cricket] and over time, the changes are largely batting-friendly, and that’s understandable because ICC is basically looking to attract fans.

“I speak with bowlers not just about their bowling but how to analyse the batsman. You must look at his weakness, where he is making mistakes”

The pitches these days are much flatter, making it tough for fast bowlers. But at the same time it just takes one good ball to get rid of a batter. The balance is important and ICC should be finding a balance between the bat and the ball, and that basically comes with pitches. More runs are a public demand but as a professional, either as a batsman or bowler, you have to keep evolving, regardless of the conditions. If you want to be a great player you have to adapt to tough conditions.As a coach, how do you prepare a bowler to deal with power-hitting batters?
There is nothing better than a yorker. It is still the best ball a bowler can bowl in all three formats. It’s really tough for a batsman to hit from that length. Although batsmen have innovated so many shots, like paddle sweep, reverse sweep, scoop, for bowlers the yorker is still the best ball. If you have a strength, you must work hard on it so you have even better command of it.Other than that, you have to keep working on other varieties, like slower ones, knuckleballs, releasing from the back of the hand, slow bouncers – so there are varieties that can counter the batsmen but you have to have control to do that.Length balls in T20, bowled on the stumps, are very useful, but then you have to trust yourself and back yourself. The best bowlers in the world, like Rashid Khan, Imran Tahir, [Tabraiz] Shamsi these days, or in my time [Lasith] Malinga or me, what we used to bowl was stump to stump. Line and length needs to be accurate and you need to have self-confidence.Yorkers aren’t bowled consistently, though. Why is that?
I see bowlers hitting the yorker length in training quite often but then it depends how well a bowler manages to execute on the field. The Pakistani fast bowlers definitely have the skill but they are lacking the self-confidence to bowl three to four back-to-back yorkers. They have the fear in their mind that a batsman could go for a paddle sweep or a number of other shots. If you are going in thinking about how to survive, it won’t help. This sense of fear needs to be eradicated first if you want to be able to hit the right length.Gul with fellow Pakistan fast bowler Sohail Tanvir at a training session. “I have always been generous about helping my colleagues when working in the nets – giving them tips, listening to others, chipping in with my knowledge,” Gul says•Prakash Singh/AFP/Getty ImagesWhat’s your take on Quetta Gladiators bowler Mohammad Hasnain’s bowling action, which was recently declared illegal? Was it always flawed or do you think he just tried too hard to generate extra pace on Australian pitches in the BBL?
In franchise cricket we don’t have enough time to look at the technical side of a bowler’s action or to mend their action. It’s mostly about sharing cricket knowledge and preparing from game to game, working on the strategic side. I don’t think Hasnain exceeded his elbow flex trying to hit the hard length on Australian pitches but I am not really sure what went wrong. I haven’t seen his biomechanics report and videos yet and I don’t know which of his deliveries was the problem but I have spoken with him and backed him to remodel his action. I have encouraged him and asked him to accept it rather than be sceptical about it. He needs to be clear that he needs to remodel his action. I hope he will come out of this soon, as he is an asset.Another young Quetta fast bowler is Naseem Shah. What are your thoughts on his progress in his career so far?
I am surprised that he wasn’t picked in the 15-man Test squad [for the Australia series] and was selected among the reserves instead. In Test cricket in Pakistan you need a bowler who can consistently bowl 140-145kph because of the slow pitches. When the ball gets old, you need pace to reverse the ball to deceive the batsman. It was shocking that he isn’t there in the squad.He has improved dramatically in the last one year. He has pace, he is young, and his fitness is better as well. And he is maturing in his bowling.When I joined Quetta last year I spoke with him in detail. He used to bowl short a lot and I persuaded him to switch to good length instead. It will only come when he plays the longer format. He has everything in him but he needs to get more cricket under his belt.

“There is nothing better than a yorker. It is still the best ball a bowler can bowl in all three formats”

As a coach, I speak with bowlers not just about their bowling but how to analyse the batsman you are bowling at. You must look at the batsman’s weakness, where he is making mistakes, and that’s an ability every bowler should have, because that breaks down the mechanics of bowling easily.With Naseem I speak with him from time to time about how to read a batsman’s mind and his bat flow, and how to adjust line and length accordingly. He is responding well. He hasn’t played much white-ball cricket lately, but this PSL season he is playing consistently. One thing is for sure: the more you play, the more you get polished.How do you compare the scope of work for a coach in the shorter and longer formats? Does T20 give a coach enough time to make a difference?
If you want to develop a player, you need plenty of time with him to change his mindset and his game. You need time pre-series, when you are not playing games and there is enough time for development.It varies from player to player. Some are quick learners and some take time to absorb intel. It is a lengthy and gradual process where both coach and player need to understand each other, but in franchise cricket you hardly get two to three days of practice, and there are back-to-back matches. You cannot afford to tweak someone’s bowling techniques [during a tournament] because it can affect his performance mid-season, and there are chances of picking up injury. You can’t make a bowler learn the technical side of bowling mechanics.It will be a mistake by a coach if he tries to work on bowlers’ techniques [during T20 tournaments]. Franchise cricket is more about sharing intelligence with the help of data about players’ weaknesses and strengths. You get tangible analytics, so as a coach you have to sit with the bowler and talk it out and make a bowling plan.Gul gets a guard of honour in his last game, in the National T20 Cup in October 2020•AFP via Getty ImagesWhat if a player is out of form and you as a coach have to try to pull him out of it?
If someone is out of form, as a coach you help him regain his rhythm. You make him bat a little longer in nets to get his touch, or for a bowler you make him bowl longer spells to find confidence. Sometimes a player is overworked and all you have to do is to reduce his load and relax him for some time to regain his form and rhythm. Sometimes very small things make a difference and you just need to understand the problem. Players obviously need an answer and as the coach you have the eye and it needs to be good enough to provide the answer they are looking for.What is your assessment of Pakistan’s current fast-bowling crop?
We have a great line of fast bowlers in the country but the lack of first-class cricket is a problem. It is really important to have enough matches under your belt. It’s very rare that a bowler without real experience of first-class cricket comes and immediately starts excelling at the international level.To play the longer format helps you grow as a cricketer. It makes you learn the art of bowling. It helps your body endure and acquire greater command of your line and length. Your temperament comes with playing the longer format and it improves your skill set and also gives you a reality check about yourself as a bowler. If you can sustain playing in the longer format as a bowler, you can easily adapt to white-ball cricket with success.Unfortunately in the last five or six years, the selection of national players has arguably been driven by their performance in T20 – either in the PSL or the National T20 Cup. There is skill in white-ball cricket but your body needs to sharpen up. In first-class cricket you have to bowl 15-20 overs a day and stay in the field for six to seven hours, so that way your body gets used to coping with the pressure and load. Also when you bowl spells in different phases of the day, that enhances your bowling skills. Shaheen [Afridi] is exceptional, but it depends how quickly you learn.

“If you are going in thinking about how to survive, it won’t help. This sense of fear needs to be eradicated first if you want to be able to hit the right length”

Is it really important for a white-ball specialist to play first-class cricket?
It is. Even if you only want to play white-ball cricket, you still have to engage with the longer format, especially if you are young. I spoke to Mohammad Amir when he retired from red-ball cricket. I asked him to pick and choose, even if he wanted to focus on with white-ball cricket. It’s not necessary to play the entire season but a few games to keep your fitness and rhythm intact.T20 bowling also needs rhythm, and if it’s not there, you can’t have a good T20 game either. It looks like just a matter of four overs but for it, you still have to practise for 12 overs a day to keep your game alive. Otherwise it’s tough surviving bowling just four overs in the nets. The format appears to be easy but it sucks up a lot of your energy. I am saying it because I have played it and I know it.These days an elite player from Pakistan plays about 150 days of cricket overall in a year, including franchise cricket, internationals and domestic games. Do you have any thoughts on how to make sure players have long careers despite this workload?
That wholly depends on the player and how he looks at his workload. If I say somebody is tired and should rest, that is unfair because it’s the player himself that knows exactly about his workload. It’s a coach and trainer mutually planning for a player that helps the player manage his career effectively, but the player obviously has to be honest and careful.These days there are lots of scientific tools available – like, Australia and England players are constantly being monitored in terms of their workload and pressure. You have specialised gym training to maintain fitness, and no matter what age you are, you can still manage your game.

In the absence of Rohit, Hardik and Jadeja, India’s long-standing problems were amplified in South Africa

Hemant Brar24-Jan-20224:15

What went wrong for India against South Africa?

India went into the ODI series against South Africa with the mindset of starting to build the team for the 2023 World Cup. But not only did they lose the series 3-0, they are also probably no closer to finding solutions for what ails them in the format.Over the last couple of years, India haven’t had a wicket-taking threat in their bowling, their middle order hasn’t come to the fore when needed, and they haven’t had a regular sixth bowling option. All these issues haunted them in South Africa as well.The wicket-taking threat issue is worth looking into a little deeper since it’s an aspect that helped their ODI game between 2017-2019. Since the 2019 World Cup, though, they have the worst average and the worst economy in the powerplay.One possible reason for that is Bhuvneshwar Kumar blowing hot and blowing cold in his appearances between injuries. The teams, meanwhile, have also found ways to negotiate Jasprit Bumrah without giving him wickets upfront.Related

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The knock-on effect of not striking in the powerplay is that when the spinners come into the attack, there are usually two set batters in the middle. With Kuldeep Yadav losing his form and place, and Yuzvendra Chahal losing his novelty, India have struggled to pick up wickets in the middle overs as well.R Ashwin made an ODI comeback in South Africa, after more than four years, but he didn’t present the point of difference India might have been after.India, however, did seem to show some awareness of the need to hit the wicket harder – something England and Australia tend to do for wickets in the middle overs – and went for the tallest bowler in Prasidh Krishna when it came to experimenting. They fared slightly better in the third ODI with change of personnel and strategy.Deepak Chahar came in for Bhuvneshwar and struck early with the new ball. In the middle overs, the Indian seamers bowled much shorter lengths as compared to the first two ODIs. With the ball holding into the pitch, they picked two wickets with the short ball. It will be interesting to see in the coming ODIs if India are going to implement this strategy more consistently.In the batting department, KL Rahul opened the innings in the absence of Rohit Sharma despite having achieved great success at No. 4 and 5 in the last two years. The move, though, opened up a middle-order slot and India tried Shreyas Iyer there.Shreyas Iyer made scores of 17, 11 and 26 in the three ODIs•AFP/Getty ImagesShreyas batted at No. 5 in all three ODIs and on each occasion had the time to build his innings. India would have hoped for better than the scores of 17, 11 and 26, especially in the first and the third match when they needed him to steer the chase. Dravid said after the series that if the players were being given an extended run, he expected “really big performances” from them. Shreyas failed in that aspect.As far as Rishabh Pant is concerned, his 85 off 71 balls in the second ODI was arguably the best knock by an Indian in the series. With India having lost Shikhar Dhawan and Virat Kohli in quick succession, Pant presented a rare case of rebuilding an innings at a strike rate of almost 120.Once Rohit returns, Rahul can move down the order, lending the middle order a bit more experience and stability. Once he and Pant get together there, they promise a solution.Another long-standing issue is that India’s batters don’t bowl, and their bowlers cannot be relied on for runs. During this series, Shardul Thakur and Chahar showed promise with the bat, but is Thakur a first-choice bowler or does he get in because he bats? Also, the first problem remains unsolved, and Hardik Pandya’s lack of bowling fitness has a part to play in that.In Pandya’s absence, India tried Venkatesh Iyer as their sixth bowing option but didn’t give him a single over in the first ODI. He bowled five in the second before being left out for the third.India tried Shreyas as their sixth bowling option in the final ODI. He bowled legspin to right-handers and offspin to left-handers but lacked control. Still, it’s an option that hasn’t been explored so far and if Shreyas can work on his bowling, it could provide India some relief. But India will also be hoping for Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja to regain their fitness and form by the time the World Cup arrives.So while you wouldn’t want to read too much into one series where the team went in with the intention of trying out a few things and also had a couple of key players missing, Rohit and Dravid will know there is still quite a bit of work to do.

The new regime and not being captain anymore has brought him liberation and, perhaps, self-discovery

Osman Samiuddin06-Jul-2022Joe Root got England underway on the fifth morning at Edgbaston with a little nudge off his thighs to square leg for a single. It was almost exactly the shot with which he began England’s final day in the chase at Lord’s against New Zealand earlier this summer. It is a trademark Joe Root shot.He has an entire family of back-cuts, from the angled-bat dab down fine to the more vertical open-faced glides square and everything in between: these are all trademark Joe Root shots.The Joe Root off-drives are a trademarked range, housing the bog-standard drive through extra cover, leaning lithely into the shot, the square-driving on one knee or going straighter, body and bat moving into the ball with the practised ease of a dancer.Related

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The clips he works through midwicket – also a Joe Root trademark. The pull shot: trademarked; the back-foot punch, on his toes, as elegant as a yoga pose; the little drop to the off for a quick single; these are all shots that are identifiably Joe Root’s but if so many shots are identifiably Joe Root’s, then can any one shot be truly his? And if not, where does that leave us?With the best batter in the world at this moment.One sense that is common with great batters in their very best periods, as with Root now, is that every great innings acquires this inevitability. Of course, they scored a hundred and of course, they did it the way they did it, the way they always do it. It’s them, that’s what they do. After a time, pitches, bowlers, situations, and even results can become irrelevant.Or rather than an inevitability, is this what it must be like to see (rather than hear) an echo? Every subsequent great innings is the echo of an original great innings the batter has played, except unlike with sound, there’s no loss of vividness.With Root, most innings drive home the universal observation about his batting, that the first time you look up at the scoreboard after he has come in, he is already on 20-something and nobody is quite sure how he got there (hint: those trademarked shots).But the reality for most batters has always been that the first part of any innings is the most difficult time. They are lining up actions, making sense of the surface, getting their body aligned, making sure the feet are light, the arms loose and a central equilibrium holding it together. They are trying to tune themselves out from the outside noise but also tuning themselves to the task at hand.There’s no standout metric that illustrates the point of Root’s starts – the best one is that his dismissal rate in the first 20 balls (among batters who’ve played at least 100 innings since Root’s debut) is the sixth lowest. Even the caveat that he has played a lot in England, where top-order batting is basically about negotiating the early dismissal, doesn’t save this from being underwhelming. But that only speaks to a broader point about Root, because by the time you’ve read the last two paragraphs, he’s already on 23.

With Root, most innings drive home the universal observation about his batting, that the first time you look up at the scoreboard after he has come in, he is already on 20-something

For all that England’s batting has been this summer – and aside from being astonishingly successful, it’s still not clear precisely what it is – it has been underpinned by the presence of Root. He is the one who was there when none of this was there, and he’ll be the one still there when all this isn’t. That he has bookended the wild last few weeks with fourth-innings hundreds in a big chase is perfect.And the Edgbaston hundred was every bit as significant as Lord’s hundred. England had lost three wickets in two runs in a matter of minutes, Virat Kohli was all over them and India were threatening to recreate The Oval. Lose Lord’s and who knows whether this happens. Lose this and face the questions, or at least the smirking reminders that against the best attacks, this isn’t going to work.Root’s response was to lead England as he was always meant to: with bat. In the first 15 overs of the stand with Jonny Bairstow, a period in which the game was at its tightest, Root took 60% of the strike. That might not appear a very lopsided proportion but imagine the strong temptation to let Bairstow take over and really barrel his way into that target?Instead, Root gamed it out. Enough singles to not let the score stagnate (but not so many that anyone noticed he was already on 20-something), keep out what you can, put away what you can. Jasprit Bumrah got too straight, away to the midwicket fence; Mohammad Shami gave him a fraction on length, dabbed through backward point. Root survived a tight lbw shout, next ball he shuffled out – another trademark – and clipped Shami through midwicket.From the other end, Ravindra Jadeja was gaining control. Post tea, he had figures of 6-2-9-0 into his spell, drying up England’s runs from over the wicket. Root had reverse-swept twice to try to break the stranglehold, without success. In the seventh over of Jadeja’s spell, he finally paddle-swept him twice, each for four; in his next, he swept him conventionally for another. Boom, Bumrah and Shami seen off, now Jadeja; by the next over, Mohammed Siraj and Shardul Thakur were bowling.He can be a rock star too•PA Photos/Getty ImagesThis wasn’t what England had done previously; this was Root doing what he does. He referred to conversations in the dressing room about recognising moments when the pressure had to be absorbed, before ruthlessly turning it around – a bit of nuance not often talked about over these Tests.Once that period broke open, the inevitability crept back in: of a Root ton and more improbably of another big England chase. On the final morning, Root got through the 90s with, in order, a glide off the face through third man, a clip off his pads and a late, late dab so fine it bounced in front of and then over second slip – all for four. If Root were to sleepwalk his way through the 90s, this is the route he would take as he knows it so well.Eventually, England chased down the total in a much more calculated and less bludgeoning way than at Trent Bridge and Headingley. They were more inevitable about it and at the centre was Root.All that said, it has been a fascinating summer in the career of Joe Root. He feels like a kid again and because he has never knowingly not looked like a kid, the youthfulness is assumed to be in his batting. The new regime yes, no captaincy also yes. Together it has brought liberation. His strike rate has always been healthy but this summer, he has been striking at 19 runs more per 100 balls.Also, perhaps, self-discovery. At Trent Bridge, he played shots that are unusual for him in Tests and urged a rewriting of the coaching manual. After Edgbaston, he half-joked he was caught between the grounding of the old Yorkshire way of orthodox batting and the entreaties of his captain to be a rock star. But he has clearly been re-thinking, or rather re-assessing, more seriously the contours of Test batting.”It’s scripted out how you need to play in Test cricket,” he said when asked about dealing with the stifling orthodoxy around the format. “Sometimes being unpredictable is very difficult to bowl at. Sometimes the gaps are bigger, and you know where the ball is going to be because of generally how sides bowl for long periods of time. There have been occasions this summer I might have played some unusual shots. But they’ve felt like pretty low-risk options in the moment.”It’s not as if no one has ever come upon this truth before. Virender Sehwag, as just one, understood this from the moment he started playing. In Root’s case, it could even be argued he has returned to it, given his once burgeoning white-ball game. Remember that, unlike his great contemporaries, he rarely gets to exhibit his (still considerable) white-ball skills anymore.He has played seven ODI innings since becoming a world champion three years ago; he hasn’t played a T20 outside the Blast in over three years. The absence has steadily dimmed the cachet and robbed him of a global, all-format sheen (while, by contrast, Steven Smith and Kane Williamson faced off in the last T20 World Cup final). If nothing else, this summer has been a righting of that.