Maharaj’s final exam

“I want to know how good I am by testing myself against the world’s best.” – Keshav Maharaj

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

KESHAV Maharaj’s modesty serves him well, especially when people who are used to putting up with the opposite quality in cricketers expect him to sound like the rest.

In Visakhapatnam on Monday those people were the pack of Indian reporters preparing to cover the men’s Test series between India and South Africa that starts there on Wednesday.

What, for instance, did Maharaj make of the assertion that he is the most threatening spinner from South Africa yet to tour India?

He muffled a laugh at the thought, and said, “I don’t think I’m the best. You can judge on the performances after this Test series, but it’s nice that people talk highly of you.

“I’m just trying to do my business. If I go under the radar and contribute to team and series victories, I’m on the right path.”

Maharaj talks like he bowls — carefully, efficiently, without fanfare and flourish.

If he had wanted to splash more colour into the conversation he might have said he has a better average in Asia, thanks to taking 16 wickets in two games in Sri Lanka last year, than at home: 24.37 versus 31.11.

Instead he spoke about taking his cue not from Ravichandran Ashwin, who has put a hitherto unknown sexiness into off-spin, but from the unflashy left-armer Ravindra Jadeja.

“Ashwin has a lot of variation and Jadeja is very simple, but the key is his consistency and making it uncomfortable for the batters.

“If I can emulate that I can do my job from the one end.”

The last time South Africa played a Test series in India, in 2015, Ashwin and Jadeja bowled 63.32% of all of India’s overs and claimed 54 of the 69 wickets that fell to the home side’s bowlers. Or 78.26%.

South Africa’s slow bowlers in that rubber, Imran Tahir and Simon Harmer — and a supporting cast of Stiaan van Zyl, Dean Elgar, Dane Piedt and JP Duminy — claimed 35 in the 290.2 overs they sent down.

That’s a respectable 63.64% of the total scalps, which means decent spinners prosper in India regardless of where they’re from.

“You can only test yourself when you play against the best in the best conditions,” Maharaj said when asked about the prospect of bowling to players as brutal on spin as Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.

“It will be a good tour for me to know where I’m at in terms of my skill work and if I belong in international cricket.

“I want to know how good I am by testing myself against the world’s best.”

Maharaj, who has taken 94 wickets in his 25 Tests, has passed that test.

Now for his final examination.

First published by TMG Digital.

Gill, Bumrah, Ashwin to face SA

Jasprit Bumrah has played all of his 12 Tests on the road, and how he goes in his first home series will draw intense focus.

TELFORD VICE in London

UNCAPPED Shubman Gill has gone to the top of South Africa’s homework pile for their men’s Test series in India next month.

Opening batter Gill was named in the squad on Thursday as a replacement for KL Rahul, who has gone 11 completed innings without reaching 50.

Gill, 20 and with two one-day internationals under his belt, probably cracked the nod by scoring 90 for India A in the first innings of a four-day match against South Africa A in Thiruvananthapuram this week.

He was bowled by Dane Piedt having faced 153 balls, but he was there for only eight deliveries in the second dig before being bowled by Lungi Ngidi.

That should help South Africa’s cause, what with Piedt and Ngidi both in their Test squad.  

The visitors will also have access to a fair amount of first-hand intelligence on Gill thanks to the 27 Indian Premier League games he has played.

Imran Tahir and Dale Steyn have dismissed him at that level, and he has been involved in matches that have also featured Faf du Plessis, Quinton de Kock, Kagiso Rabada, Chris Morris, Heinrich Klaasen, JP Duminy and Ngidi.

The South Africans will also have noted that Jasprit Bumrah has been selected.

That’s no surprise considering he took 13 wickets in two Tests in West Indies last month, a performance that included hauls of 6/27 and 5/7. 

But Bumrah has played all of his 12 Tests on the road, and how he goes in his first home series will be the subject of intense focus.

He has taken 62 wickets in those matches, claiming five five-wicket hauls along the way, and is third in the rankings behind Pat Cummins and Rabada.

Off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, who took 31 wickets at an average of 11.12 in South Africa’s last series in India, in November 2015 — when the home side won 3-0 — is also among the 15.  

The first of the three Tests will be played at Visakhapatnam from October 2.

A T20 series between the teams, also of three games, starts in Dharamshala on Sunday.

India Test squad: Virat Kohli (captain), Mayank Agarwal, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwar Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant, Wriddhiman Saha, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Kuldeep Yadav, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma, Shubman Gill.

First published by TMG Digital.

Spin still rules in India, but the gap is closing

India’s focus has moved from preparing diabolical turners towards consciously making pitches that keep their fast bowlers in the game longer.

TELFORD VICE in London

THERE’S no hiding the 1.88-metre tall slab of humanity named Ravichandran Ashwin, who was easily spotted amid the shadows stealing across the gracious Brabourne as Halloween night closed in on Mumbai in 2015.

In the middle the South Africans were winding down their tour match. But the focus of all non-players present, and a fair few players, was on the other side of boundary.

Ashwin was in the throes of a fitness test to discover whether the side strain that had kept him out of most of the one-day series would also remove him from the tests.

Trick or treat? Depends who you ask.

Off-spinner Ashwin took 31 wickets in the series — more than twice as many as Imran Tahir and three times Simon Harmer’s haul — and left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja 23, one fewer than Tahir and Harmer combined — to power India to a 3-0 triumph.

The only pitch that wasn’t blatantly bespoke for India’s spinners, for the second test in Bangalore, went almost untouched: four full days were washed out.

South Africa were dazed and confused, and crushed by the collision of the conditions, the Indians’ confidence and their own insecurities.

Only eight of the 69 wickets India’s bowlers took in the series were claimed by seamers.

With the South Africans due back in India for three tests in October it’s pertinent to wonder if Ashwin remains the force he was then.

On the strength of the three first-class matches he played for Nottinghamshire in June and July, when he took 23 wickets at 19.91 and scored an unbeaten half-century, hell yes.

“I do not want to set goals or targets, to put pressure on myself,” Ashwin said last week ahead of India’s series in West Indies.

“I am bowling to a good rhythm; the ball is coming out nicely from the hand and I just want to continue in this vein.

“I had a rewarding time with Nottinghamshire in the English county, was among wickets and runs. So the confidence is there.

“I want to take it as it comes. I am fit and I am bowling well. And I can always bat.”

If you’re blessed with an ego as big as Ashwin’s why would you need help from the pitches Still, you can’t help but wonder what might be done to them when South Africa visit this time.

The rubber will be India’s first at home in the World Test Championship, in which pitches deemed unfit will cost the hosts in the standings. That is unlikely, not least because of India’s stature in the world game.

So a better answer might be had from examining what has happened there in the past four years.

In the eight tests played in India in 2016 their spinners claimed 109 of the 147 wickets that fell to their bowlers: 74.15%.

The slow poisoners’ share of the scalps shrunk to 59.31% in the eight tests in India in 2017, but it was up to 63.79% last year — although only three matches were played.

India’s bowlers did all that against a range of differently skilled opponents. They hosted New Zealand and England in 2016, Bangladesh, Australia and Sri Lanka the year after that, and Afghanistan and West Indies in 2018.  

Even so, word from India is that the focus has moved on from preparing diabolical turners and towards consciously making pitches that keep fast bowlers in the game for longer.

The rise of quality quicks like Jasprit Bumrah — who has played all of his 10 tests away but seems set for a home debut against South Africa — and Bhuvneshwar Kumar are major reasons why.

Another is that Virat Kohli has long since answered all questions about his captaincy. The 2015 series was his first at home as India’s captain, and followed South African wins in both white-ball rubbers.

There was plenty of pressure on Kohli to deliver — and to give him all means, by fair means or foul, to do so.

Expect, then, a fairer contest this time. All it needs is for South Africa to turn up.

First published by the Sunday Times on August 18, 2019.

Buttler the chump in arrogant Ashwin’s cheating

Buttler’s bat was behind the crease when Ashwin moved towards the stumps – a damning indictment of the bowler’s intentions. 

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in London

JUST seven games in and the 2019 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has delivered a dozen half-centuries, a five-wicket haul and four of four scalps each.

One of the latter came from Imran Tahir, who took 3/9 for Chennai Super Kings against Royal Challengers Bangalore in Chennai on Saturday.

The best score by a South African in those games is AB de Villiers’ 41-ball 70 not out for Royal Challengers against Mumbai Indians in Bangalore on Thursday.

Doubtless the worthy performances will mount as the tournament wears on, but for now the IPL’s biggest story is what didn’t happen when Ravichandran Ashwin shambled in to bowl the fifth delivery of the 13th over of Rajasthan Royals’ innings in their game against Kings XI Punjab in Jaipur on Monday.

Ashwin didn’t bowl that ball and Buttler didn’t see what was happening behind him — Ashwin landed in his delivery stride, then changed course and broke the wicket.

An angry exchange between the two players ensued while the television umpire, Bruce Oxenford, made up his mind.

Oxenford’s decision was correct: Buttler had been run out.

That Buttler was out of his ground when Ashwin flicked off the bails was undeniable. But it was just as true that Buttler’s bat was still behind the crease when Ashwin started moving back towards the stumps — the most important fact of this matter and a damning indictment of the bowler’s intentions. 

Ashwin didn’t punish Buttler for cheating by stealing ground, which would have been his right. Instead, he engineered a dismissal that was patently unfair in every sense except where he knew it mattered: in the terms of what cricket calls its laws.

Ashwin cheated Buttler into believing he would bowl the ball. Then he cheated Oxenford into handing down the only possible decision. 

He even cheated the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which said in a statement: “To clarify, it has never been in the laws that a warning should be given to the non-striker and nor is it against the spirit of cricket to run out a non-striker who is seeking to gain an advantage by leaving his/her ground early.

“Furthermore, with batsmen now being deemed in or out by millimetres by TV replays on quick singles, it is right that they should remain in their ground at the non-striker’s end until it is fair for them to leave.”

A day later, it appeared the MCC had changed its mind. “After reviewing footage of the incident and trying to work out when the moment is that the bowler is expected to deliver the ball — the key here — we think Buttler was still in his ground,” the club’s “laws manager”, Fraser Stewart, was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail’s website. “There’s then a delay, before Buttler drifts out of his crease — and it’s this delay that makes the dismissal against the spirit of cricket.”

What the nice man from the MCC didn’t say was whether it was right that bowlers should seek to entrap batters, as Ashwin unarguably did. 

If you’ve had to put up with him, you would not be surprised. Ashwin’s arrogance at press conferences makes Virat Kohli come across like a monk, which is in its own way impressive for someone who has failed to get his head above the parapet of mediocrity on anything other than home pitches.

He averages 48.07 in Tests in Australia and 46.14 in South Africa, and 28.25 in Asia. He is a one-trick pony who seems to think he is a quality bowler, despite resounding evidence to the contrary presented on pitches that aren’t made bespoke for him.

Still, Buttler should have known better. He suffered the same fate playing for England against Sri Lanka in a one-day international at Edgbaston in June 2014 — that time at the hands of Sachithra Senanayake, and after the bowler had warned him.

The danger of losing your wicket cannot be worth the gamble of a being a few millimetres closer to the other end of the pitch.

This has nothing to do with cricket’s rules, spirit or traditions. It has everything to do with failures of intelligence and integrity.

Buttler is a chump. Ashwin is a cheat.

Not before time, Centurion’s in a spin

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in Centurion

CENTURION lives up to its reputation as a ground where fast bowlers expect to be greeted by St Peter at the gate. The christians among them, anyway.

In the 22 tests played here before the current game between South Africa and India, a bowler has claimed 10 wickets five times.

Down the road at the Wanderers, which has seen 37 tests and is also a friend of pace, seven 10-wicket hauls have been recorded.

At Newlands, home to South Africa’s most balanced pitch and its most frequent test venue with 55 games, bowlers have claimed 10 a round 10 times.

That means spectators have seen a 10-wicket haul in more than a fifth of tests played in Centurion.

One of the Wanderers’ magnificent seven was a slow poisoner — Hugh Tayfield — and all of six of Newlands’ perfect 10.

But not once has a bowler who etched their name onto Centurion’s 10-wicket honours board been a spinner.

The converse of all that is also true.

Centurion’s average first-wicket stand of 28.47 makes it the most difficult place in the world to open the batting among current test venues. No other South African ground is in the top 10.

Things get easier for batsmen as the innings wears on at Centurion: all four of South Africa’s other regular test grounds average fewer runs for any wicket. But it is firmly in the bottom half of this draw worldwide, coming in at No. 70 among all 114 test grounds.

Not much of that is likely to change in the next few days, except perhaps in one aspect.

Spin bowling aficionados will not have missed the fact that Ravichandran Ashwin will start the second day’s play with three wickets already in his back pocket.

So two more in South Africa’s first innings will get him halfway to becoming the first slow bowler to own 10 here. Indeed, only four spinners feature among the 31 five-wicket-hauls taken at Centurion.

Off-spinner Ashwin isn’t that much more successful in Asia — where he averages 22.75 — than elsewhere, where that number is 24.97. But in three tests in South Africa he had taken only five wickets at 44.40.

That was, of course, before Saturday, when an unusually non-green, more like khaki Centurion surface offered turn almost immediately Ashwin bowled his first over — the 20th of the match, or the eighth before lunch.

Last August at Centurion, Kane Williamson tossed Mitchell Santner the ball for the first time in the 18th over.

The New Zealand left-arm spinner lasted two overs before disappearing until the 54th.

But Santner’s no Ashwin, who bowled until lunch after being introduced on Saturday, continued immediately afterwards, completed a first spell of 8-5-8-1, delayed the taking of the new ball for 6.2 overs, and then shared it.

And to think he might have been deemed surplus to requirements …

“Two days before the game it looked like we were going to play an all-seam attack,” Ashwin said after the close.

“And then, when we walked onto the ground [on Friday], [the pitch] was white in colour — the grass was coming off.

“All of a sudden I really had to pull myself back and think, ‘I am in the game now’.

“[On Saturday] when we came to the ground, it looked like a wicket that was really flat and [we] had to have a spinner in the game.”

By stumps, one of the batsmen Ashwin was bowling to was Keshav Maharaj, South Africa’s left-arm spinner.

Maharaj is hindu, not christian. A prayer to the gods in thanks for this Centurion pitch wouldn’t go amiss.

Centurion: field of SA’s dreams

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in Centurion

WHO says runs are hard to come by in Centurion? Not the record books, which list 39 centuries — among them two double tons — made in the 22 tests played there.

Unhappily for visiting teams, only nine of those centuries have been scored by non-South Africans. Unhappily for India, only once has one of their players made a hundred here.

And he could play a bit: Sachin Tendulkar scored an undefeated 111 at the ground in December 2010.

Even less happily for the team who will play the second test here on Saturday, they lost that match by an innings despite racking up a second innings of 459.

That tells you how difficult South Africa are to beat in Centurion. There’s no mountain, there’s no steeply banked cauldron of support, and there’s only 23 years of test history.

But there is something more valuable and important than all of those peripheral aspects put together: a bulletproof record of success.

Almost bulletproof, that is. South Africa have won 17 tests in Centurion and lost only two; to England and Australia.

And England’s two-wicket win in January 2000 would have been a draw had Hansie Cronje not made a deal with the devil to wrangle a result after three days had been lost to rain.

Centurion hosted its inaugural first-class match as recently as December 1986 and its first test nine years later, but it’s as if South Africans were made to play here.

It bounces. It swings. It seams. It does everything except turn. And, once batsmen have overcome those challenges and middled it, the ball races across the outfield as if something nasty is chasing it.

Little wonder that all four test teams from the diametric opposite of all that, the Asian subcontinent, have not only never won or drawn a match here but also all been beaten by an innings at least once.

Zimbabwe, New Zealand and West Indies are also members of this sorry club and Sri Lanka have suffered the indignity twice.

There’s context for you. Centurion has helped reduce proud, strong teams like India and Pakistan to the risible standards of Zimbabwe and West Indies.

How do you beat South Africa here? Save for finding a gambler or bookmaker with dressingroom connections, by unleashing a moustachioed, left-arm gunslinger at the height of his powers to take 7/68 and 5/59.

Those were Mitchell Johnson’s figures in February 2014, when Australia won by 281 runs.

India’s attack, like every other team’s, does not harbour anyone like Johnson. So they might be interested to know that another, altogether different moustachioed, left-arm gunslinger took 6/67 in the second innings in Centurion’s original first-class match.

Ravichandran Ashwin is neither moustachioed nor left-armed, but he might want to know that other bowler’s name: Alan Kourie.

If the quintessential crafty slow bowler can take wickets on his first visit to non-turning Centurion, what price an off-spinner blessed with similar intelligence and attacking intent?

Mr Ashwin, meet Mr Kourie …