Deepti Sharma – Bulletproof Truth

Australia fly into T20 World Cup final on a wing and a runout

“The way I was batting, that was the only way for me to get out.” – Harmanpreet Kaur on her runout.

Telford Vice / Newlands

RARELY in the long and winding annals of bat-throwing has a specimen been hurled with as much vitriol as Harmanpreet Kaur unleashed at Newlands on Thursday. Her respiratory tract infection still stuck in her throat, her helmet ripped off her head, her eyes ablaze, she let fly with visceral anger.

Rather than a scene from a cricket match, it was straight out of a cage fight. Actually, it might have had her disqualified from a cage fight. Whatever else you do around this woman, do not get in her way.

The bat flew many metres into the outfield as if it had been spat out of Harmanpreet’s consciousness never to return, twisting and turning gracelessly through the afternoon air, then landing ugly, bouncing back up, and travelling further still towards the dark alley of shadow cast by the members’ pavilion, whose denizens would deplore such behaviour. Happily, hardly any of them were in attendance.

Don’t feel sorry for the bat. It was not an innocent. The damn fool thing had lodged itself in the pitch instead of gliding seamlessly across the turf and the crease, and causing Harmanpreet to be run out. It had earned its unscheduled journey to nowhere.

Yes, Harmanpreet should have angled her bat better to avoid her fate. Yes, players are taught to do what she failed to do when they are children learning the game. No, she didn’t deserve to be cast as the villain of her team coming closer than most to beating Australia in a T20 World Cup semifinal. She might disagree.

“If my bat didn’t get stuck I would’ve easily finished that run,” Harmanpreet said in the aftermath, stoney-faced and clearly still riled. “If I had stayed till the last moments we could have definitely finished the match one over earlier as we had the momentum. But even after that, Deepti [Sharma] was there, Richa [Ghosh] was there. I had the belief that they could do it, too, because Richa has also batted well in all the matches till now. But after I got out we played seven or eight dot balls in the middle and the match turned. Otherwise, we got a good momentum and the match was going well.”

In fact, India scored three runs off the next six deliveries after the runout. But she wasn’t wrong — that’s where the match was won and lost. Harmanpreet’s dismissal ended a stand of 35 off 26 with Ghosh, which followed her partnership of 69 off 41 with Jemima Rodrigues. When India’s captain took guard, at 28/3 in the fourth, her team needed 8.88 runs an over. When she was removed, they needed 40 off 32. The match was there for the winning. Until it wasn’t.

“My runout was a turning point. Otherwise we were in the game. Everything was going in our favour. It was a disappointment because the way I was batting, that was the only way for me to get out. The way I was meeting the ball, I knew how to take this innings to the end. From the Australian team’s body language, it looked like they had given up the match. But the moment I got out the momentum shifted.”

India finished five runs shy of overhauling Australia’s 172/4, but the truth of it was they had no right to run the perennial and defending champions that close. They had put in a shocking display in the field, leaking runs alarmingly and dropping three catches, and their bowling was scarcely better.

On top of that, the Indians weren’t sure their captain would be involved considering she had sought relief from her infection at a hospital on Wednesday. “Until the team meeting [on Thursday morning], we didn’t even know whether she would play,” Rodrigues said. “When I saw her dragging her bag I had just stepped out of my room, and I knew she was going to play. It’s not easy. Harry Di, from the time she’s come here, she’s been falling sick, she has injuries. And I’ve hardly seen her bat in the nets because something or the other was happening to her. Imagine the kind of thing she was going through, mentally. To come out there and play the way she did said so much about her mental strength and determination. She’s passionate about the sport and this team. And about winning.”

Instead Australia won their 10th consecutive completed women’s T20I, a stream of success that might have been 22 games long and stretched back more than 16 months had it not been for their loss to India in a super over in Mumbai in December last year.

Their bottomless batting produced stands of 52 off 45 between Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney, 36 off 27 between Mooney and Meg Lanning, 53 off 36 between Lanning and Ash Gardner, and 24 off nine between Lanning and Ellyse Perry.

They spilled one catch, in the 13th when Healy lunged to where a slip might have been and dropped Harmanpreet off Darcie Brown, but otherwise handed down a fielding masterclass. The prime example was Perry, and the best of her sterling work came in the 19th over when Sneh Rana swept Jess Jonassen for what looked for all money like four. Only for Perry to swoop, dive, and flick the ball several metres back from whence it came, all in one magnificent motion, to limit the damage to two.

“We showed our class today in the field,” Gardner said. “We always speak about being the best fielding team in the world, and I think we really showed that. We took those pivotal moments when we needed to. Ellyse Perry was elite on the boundary, the blueprint for our side. Fielding could have been something that was the difference between us and them.”

But Australia weren’t at all assured of success when India reached a runrate of 9.30 midway through their innings — 1.30 better than was required, and with Rodrigues and Harmanpreet in full flow. It wasn’t so much that the Australians bowled badly, but that the Indians were batting with enterprise and intent.

“At the 10-over mark in India’s innings everyone had probably written us off,” Gardner said. “That shows our character and that’s why the best teams win from those positions. When our backs are against the wall we always try and find a way. Today we probably had no right to win at one point. They were cruising. And then we found a way to get some wickets.”

Champions do that. Great champions do it again and again and again. Australia, who have won this trophy five times in its seven previous editions and have reached the final seven times, are already in that category. They have earned a stab at being heralded as even greater champions.

Cricbuzz

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Magical Muneeba follows insipid India, weary Windies

“It was difficult to be on the other end, but as a spectacle it was outstanding.” – Arlene Kelly on Muneeba Ali’s 102.

Telford Vice / Newlands

FOR most of their T20 women’s World Cup match at Newlands on Wednesday, West Indies and India seemed intent on proving a point in the game’s ongoing trudge towards gender equality: that women are as capable as men of playing dull cricket.

A sluggish pitch didn’t help, but that couldn’t explain the West Indians’ ooze to 118/6 in the face of disciplined although not overtly threatening bowling. Nor the Indians taking all of 18.1 overs to somnambulate to victory by six wickets.

The strike rates of half the 14 batters who took guard did not escape double figures. Only Shafali Verma, Smitri Mandhana and Richa Ghosh struck at higher than 120. No-one reached 145. Harmanpreet Kaur and Ghosh put on 72 off 65.

Deepti Sharma dismissed Shemaine Campbelle and Stafanie Taylor in four deliveries on her way to a haul of 3/15, which made her the first woman to take 100 T20I wickets for India. Karishma Ramharack’s 2/14 featured the wickets of Mandhana and Verma. Ghosh took India home with a 32-ball 44 not out. Taylor and Campbelle shared 73 off 74.

And that was about that. Had anything like a crowd been around they might have asked to be woken when it was over. Instead the ground was sparsely sprinkled, perhaps because the Cape Doctor — a strong south-easterly wind, so named because it is thought to rid the city of pollution and pestilence — blew hard enough to make Table Mountain vanish under a thick blanket of cloud.

Maybe this is churlish. India are one of only four unbeaten sides in the tournament after matches and firmly in position for a place in the semi-finals. So they earned a good, solid, boring win on Wednesday. So what?

“Our main focus was just to go and play according to what the ball was doing,” Harmanpreet said. “I know as a T20 cricketer, we always want to play aggressive cricket. But sometimes playing sensible cricket is more important than showing what you can do. That’s what we did today. Staying there is more important than showing aggression every time. The way [No. 5] Richa batted shows us how much strength we have in our batting. We need to spend some time and execute.”

Harmanpreet practised what she preached, taking 42 balls to make 33: “I didn’t show any hurry because it was a chaseable total for our batting line-up. And I had that self-belief that I could spend some time, and I knew we had a batter [Ghosh] who could execute. I knew Richa was in good touch. My job was to score a single and give her the strike.

“We are not worried very much about the result. We only want to go and execute, and we are going into every match thinking about that.”

There was excitement of the wrong kind after eight overs of India’s reply, when Taylor fell prone after routinely fielding and throwing a ball at short fine leg. She was stretchered off, apparently suffering from a back spasm. Taylor didn’t play in any of the Windies’ 17 T20Is between July 2021 and Saturday because of a back injury, and her departure in dramatic fashion on Wednesday was alarming. Late on Wednesday night, no update on her condition was available from the West Indian camp.

There was finally something to cheer in the second match of the evening. Muneeba Ali’s 68-ball 102 set up Pakistan’s 165/5, the second-biggest total in the 10 matches played in the tournament. Muneeba, bespectacled, slight and precise, scored crisply all around the wicket — 55 on the on side, 47 on the off — and unleashed especially mean drives over extra cover. She hit neither of Pakistan’s sixes but 14 of their 16 fours, and had the energy to run 46 of her runs. Charitably, the Irish bowled both sides of the wicket too often. But those runs still had to be hit.

It was an impressively accomplished performance by a player who, in her previous 42 T20I innings, had a top score of 43 — her only foray into the 40s. Now she is Pakistan’s only female century-maker in the format, and an example to the Indians and West Indians who came before her for how to survive and prosper in conditions like these.

Her batting done, Muneeba settled down behind the stumps, taking a catch and a stumping and keeping immaculately, and helping her team bowl out Ireland for 95. She was on the field for all but six of the 219 balls that constituted the match.

Considering only 11 of her first 42 innings had been on the faster pitches of Australia, England, Ireland and South Africa, how had Muneeba managed to more than double her best effort? Although she didn’t quite answer the question, her reply was priceless: “I don’t know, but these days don’t come very often. We don’t get these chances in international cricket regularly. I cherish this moment.”

She reached her hundred in the 19th over with a slapped drive into the covers that went through Cara Murray and kept going for four. Muneeba had help in a stand of 101 off 67 with Nida Dar, and from the sidelines: “Between the 12th and 15th overs I thought I could get a century because there were enough overs and I had enough runs. My teammates were telling me to go for it because you don’t get opportunities like this very often.”

Even the Irish, who are among four teams who have lost both their matches, could appreciate what Muneeba had achieved. “It was difficult to be on the other end, but as a spectacle it was outstanding,” Arlene Kelly said.

Batting like Muneeba’s is riveting to watch, regardless of the gender of the batter. But another, troubling, sign that the gap between women’s and men’s cricket is narrowing is the implication of Shohely Akhter and Lata Mondal in a scandal over fixing. Shohely claims, in an interview with Cricbuzz, that the affair is a result of miscommunication and Mondal says she has reported the matter to the authorities. But the mere fact that women’s cricket and corruption are being mentioned in the same conversation tells us this side of the game is being taken seriously by people who have, and who want, money.

Money or Muneeba? Which would you prefer? If teams strive to give of their best, to play with aggression and creativity and to do more than just enough to win sensibly, that’s no contest.

Cricbuzz

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.

Is it a hood ornament? Is it a flamingo? It’s a non-striker …

“Maybe some people will use it, maybe they won’t.” – Glenn Phillips on his unorthodox non-striker’s stance.

Telford Vice / Sydney

THE non-striker’s end could do with some positive publicity, and it got it towards the conclusion of New Zealand’s innings in their men’s T20 World Cup match against Sri Lanka at the SCG on Saturday. While the focus was on the other end of the pitch, Glenn Phillips had the bright idea to set himself up as a sprinter rather than a batter.

He faced forward with his left foot behind the crease. His right foot was a metre or so up the pitch. Both his knees were cocked and ready to go. His upper body leaned into the stance, his chest parallel to the pitch. His bat was on the ground lengthwise and nowhere near the crease. He held it in his right hand, in a hammer grip, where the handle met the splice. His left hand and arm were extended at an upward angle in the air behind him. He looked not unlike a hood ornament on a vintage car.

But Phillips had a plan. He was under starter’s orders, awaiting not the crack of a pistol but the blur of the bowler rushing past. “If I had had my bat behind the crease, I thought it would be slower to turn and accelerate,” he told a press conference after the match, in which he scored a 64-ball 104 to engineer New Zealand’s 65-run win. “So I had my foot inside the crease, and I was going from there. The [conventional] extension of the bat inside the crease gives you another foot or two, but I’ve got little arms so my speed is probably going to get me further than my reach.”

Phillips has speed to burn, as he showed in running the 40 runs he scored that didn’t come in fours and sixes. And in a stand of 84 off 64 with Daryl Mitchell that started after New Zealand had been reduced to 15/3 in the fourth over. Phillips said the pair had used aggressive running between the wickets as a way to counter the dominance Sri Lanka enjoyed when the partnership started.

On the possibility of his unorthodox approach at the non-striker’s end gaining traction, Phillips said: “Maybe some people will use it, maybe they won’t.” Cricket’s army of analysts are probably already measuring whether what might be called the Phillips flamingo makes for faster running than the regular method of keeping the toe of the bat behind the crease while holding it near the end of the handle.

Mitchell, it seems, won’t follow Phillips’ lead. “I’m not as fast as Glenn,” he said. “I couldn’t get out of the blocks as fast as he does, so I probably wouldn’t do it that way. GP, he’s his own man. We love all the weird and wonderful things that he does. We’re all happy for him to keep doing them as long as he does things like [score centuries].”

Trent Boult concurred, and offered critique: “If anyone was going to do it it was him. It wouldn’t have been pre-planned; that just happened. He actually had the bat in the wrong hand, according to our trainer.”

Right on both counts, as Phillips explained: “It was a spur of the moment thing, but I actually had my three-point stance wrong — it’s supposed to be the other arm and the other leg. The position was to be able to see the bowler and take off as quickly as possible.”

And to avoid being run out in the fashion that has grabbed headlines in recent weeks. When Deepti Sharma had had enough of Charlie Dean backing up too far at the non-striker’s end in an ODI at Lord’s last month, she rightfully interrupted her delivery stride to remove the bails and dismiss Dean. When Mitchell Starc spotted Jos Buttler doing the same as Dean while Starc was bowling during a T20I in Canberra earlier this month, he issued Buttler with a warning that was picked up by the stump microphones: “I’m not Deepti but I can do it. Doesn’t mean you can leave your crease early.”

England’s players aren’t alone in stealing ground. The regrettable practice is widespread. At best it is reckless of the non-striker not to know where they are in relation to the crease. At worst it is cheating. Either way, the advantage gained is unfair and should be punished — and the bowler is best placed to do so.

The argument that the non-striker should first be warned is ridiculous. Bowlers don’t tell batters what kind of delivery they’re about to receive, just as batters don’t inform bowlers about what stroke they’re about to play. Why should bowlers alert non-strikers to the legitimate mode of dismissal they’re entitled to effect?

“You trying not to be out of the crease,” Phillips said. “There’s been a lot going around about Mankads and leaving the crease. At the end of the day it’s my responsibility to make sure that I’m in the crease and leave at the right time. If the bowler is doing his job then he has the right to take the bails off.”

Phillips isn’t the only player with sharp ideas in this area of the game. Earlier this month, in an interview with the Melbourne Age, Starc floated the notion of a technological solution to the scourge: “While it is hard to do at all levels, why not take it out of the hands of interpretation and make it black and white? There are cameras for front foot no-balls, a camera there all the time [at higher levels of cricket] and someone watching the line.

“Every time the batter leaves the crease before the [bowler’s] front foot lands, dock them a run. Then there’s no stigma. It takes away the decision to have to run someone out or think about it.”

Simple and effective. Just like imagining yourself as a hood ornament or a flamingo to gain an advantage fairly.

First published by Cricbuzz.

Processing…

Success! You're on the list.

Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. Please reload the page and try again.