All posts tagged: batsmen

Batsmen playing like golfers and dead tracks are hurting IPL with thousands cuts, and killing Tests

Batsmen playing like golfers and dead tracks are hurting IPL with thousands cuts, and killing Tests

Published by Webster

In case India fails to reach the World Test Championship final, and the usual formality of an inquest is undertaken by the BCCI, this week’s IPL game at Lucknow can be a good start. If there is the customary righteous rage about the death of Test cricket among experts, and the mandatory shedding of crocodile tears by fans, the dismissals of a few Test batsmen playing the LSG vs RR match would provide perspective. There shouldn’t be any shock or surprise; this was coming. During the said game, Mohammed Shami’s two wickets served as a reminder of India’s potential problem in Tests in the coming months. Bowling to India Test regular Dhruv Jurel, the 35-year-old made the ball swing in and move a shade after pitching around the off-stump. Jurel would dutifully edge the ball to the wicket-keeper. The commentators would react as if Shami had bowled the ball of the century. If not for the IPL brief to overact at every minor match moment, it was unlikely that the seen-it-all international players-turned-pundits would have …

IPL: Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna and Ashok Sharma are GT’s Motera Motorheads at Ekana as they rock LSG’s brittle batsmen | Cricket News

IPL: Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna and Ashok Sharma are GT’s Motera Motorheads at Ekana as they rock LSG’s brittle batsmen | Cricket News

Published by Webster

Old-fashioned Shubman Gill and his band of home-raised fast-bowling trio star in GT’s cruise over LSG The switch from a rickety vintage car to a warp-speed race car was both swift and seamless. Shubman Gill looked ragged and rusty in the first 13 balls he faced. He survived a tough catch, tried to manufacture strokes and failed, drove crisply but straight into the fielders’ hands. But when he seemed like a blow away from crumbling to the mat, he dragged himself from the ropes and showered his adversaries with blows for a 56 off 41. It was Mohammed Shami’s third over. The first two had bled only 10. A double and dot later, Shami erred on the leg-side and Gill gleefully flicked it through the vacant fine-leg region. Something stirred, a routine stroke filled him with belief. The next ball, he thrust his front-foot and drove him aerially over long-off. There was not much room to free his arms, it was a length ball on off-stump, but the bat-swing was so fluid that he generated …

Devdutt Padikkal: Batsmen have taken the game to next level, so should bowlers | Cricket News

Devdutt Padikkal: Batsmen have taken the game to next level, so should bowlers | Cricket News

Published by Webster

4 min readApr 6, 2026 09:16 AM IST Devdutt Padikkal is tired of hearing the same old grouse. “T20 is increasingly becoming a batsman’s game.” He retorts: “It is just that the batting in this tournament has gone up another level.I think everyone is working so hard to hit those big sixes and fours,” he says. Similarly, he says, bowlers should elevate their levels. “When you take your batting to another level it’s now the bowler’s job to really follow that and try to you know take their game up,” he says, after RCB’s crushing win over CSK. He then used RCB’s bowlers as an example. “I feel we still have some really quality bowlers who are doing the job. You know we have gotten them all out and restricted them under 210 which is pretty good especially in the Chinnaswamy. So yeah I’m very confident that all the bowlers will show up,” he says, after two cracking half centuries in as many games, As both captain and batsman, Padikkal has been making the step-up. …

‘Pakistan batsmen were trembling’: Shahid Afridi reveals pressure of facing MS Dhoni’s India in 2011 WC semi-final in Mohali | Cricket News

‘Pakistan batsmen were trembling’: Shahid Afridi reveals pressure of facing MS Dhoni’s India in 2011 WC semi-final in Mohali | Cricket News

Published by Webster

5 min readMar 11, 2026 06:47 PM IST India won their third T20 World Cup with a 96-run win over New Zealand in the T20 World Cup final at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad in front of the home crowd. It was a rare World Cup triumph for India in home conditions: India’s last World Cup win at home was in the 2011 ODI World Cup, with the MS Dhoni-led side scoring a six-wicket win over Sri Lanka in the final at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Just like in the recent T20 World Cup, one of the defining games for India back in 2011 was a win over arch-rivals Pakistan, where the Dhoni-led Indian team stormed into the final with a 29-run win over Shahid Afridi-led Pakistan in the semi-final played at Mohali, which was also watched by the Indian PM Dr Manmohan Singh and then Pakistan PM Yusuf Raza Gilani. Afridi has now shared how the Indian team benefited from the home crowd and how some of the Pakistan batsmen were trembling while going …

How Jasprit Bumrah’s slower ball swallowed seven batsmen at the T20 World Cup

How Jasprit Bumrah’s slower ball swallowed seven batsmen at the T20 World Cup

Published by Webster

4 min readChennaiMar 9, 2026 09:00 PM IST There is a moment, just before the ball leaves Jasprit Bumrah’s hand, when the batsman thinks he knows. The arm comes over high and fast — nothing in the action suggests anything is different. The seam position offers no clue. The fingers give nothing away. Then, at the last instant, the wrist snaps sideways — a single, violent, almost invisible rotation, as if turning a doorknob. The arm speed is preserved. The ball is not. By the time the batsman realises, he is already through the shot. * * *Ryan Rickelton saw it first. South Africa were rebuilding, two wickets down, and Rickelton leaned into a length delivery around middle stump the way you do when you have read the length early and trust your hands. The ball arrived after his hands had finished. It lobbed to mid-off. Rickelton turned to the giant screen, not quite believing what he had just watched himself do. That was the first glimpse. There would be six more. * * *Against …

Arshdeep Singh after India’s T20 World Cup win over Zimbabwe: ‘Bowlers ready to do the dirty work as long as our batsmen get wickets they enjoy batting on’ | Cricket News

Arshdeep Singh after India’s T20 World Cup win over Zimbabwe: ‘Bowlers ready to do the dirty work as long as our batsmen get wickets they enjoy batting on’ | Cricket News

Published by Webster

Hours before the game started, Arshdeep Singh’s family was watching the South Africa versus West Indies game in their hotel room in Chennai. “When the West Indies batsmen were hitting, my dad used to chide, saying, ‘what are you doing, what are you doing?” he recounted, chuckling. His reply was practical: “I said, it’s okay, don’t worry, just enjoy the match, and hope that South Africa wins, and we win both our matches well.” It was how he approached the game, too, without any nerves but with the belief that India would beat Zimbabwe. “I think if we win, we play good cricket, the result will take care of itself. We had a lot of fun, they played very well, and we’ll try to not lose in the finals,” he said. ALSO READ | T20 World Cup: India’s batting regains awe and fear factor as hosts crush Zimbabwe by 72 runs The left-arm seamer’s performances had flown under the radar this tournament. In five games, he has nabbed eight wickets and conceded at 7.11 runs …

T20 World Cup: Why India’s batsmen keep falling into the same traps in Ahmedabad | Cricket News

T20 World Cup: Why India’s batsmen keep falling into the same traps in Ahmedabad | Cricket News

Published by Webster

5 min readAhmedabadFeb 23, 2026 06:59 PM IST Like detectives returning to the scene, India’s support staff would have pored over the Ahmedabad defeats searching for answers. They needn’t look too hard. The evidence is in the field placements, the lengths bowled, and the shots that keep finding fielders. Rival teams have read India’s batsmen — and are exploiting what they’ve found. Abhishek Sharma’s leg-side labours An imperiously-disguised knuckle ball from Marco Jansen ended Abhishek’s brief resurgence. He was prematurely committed to the stroke and nowhere near the ball — neither under it nor on top of it — to wield any control. He miscued, predictably. He could console himself that it wasn’t an off-spinner that got him, but the manner of the dismissal would sting. Yet again, it was the leg-side carrot — the off-side packed, spaces left on the leg-side (all fielders apart from the long-leg inside circle) — that did him in. The problem is he relies too heavily on hand-eye coordination for such shots. Unless the ball is short enough to …

Rivals copy Martin Crowe’s 1992 World Cup strategy to rein in Indian batsmen

Rivals copy Martin Crowe’s 1992 World Cup strategy to rein in Indian batsmen

Published by Webster

6 min readAhmedabadFeb 19, 2026 05:12 PM IST A novelty tactic deployed by the visionary Martin Crowe in the 1992 ODI World Cup has found a revival in the 2026 T20 World Cup. Crowe, the New Zealand captain, opened the bowling with Dipak Patel, a journeyman batting all-rounder, recast into an off-spinner. The move shocked the favourites Australia, co-hosts and defending champions. Similarly, captains have used seemingly ordinary off-spinners to handcuff India’s power-packed top-order. It has worked tellingly, to such an extent that it has emerged the unforeseen tragic flaw of this wondrously knit batting unit. None of Aryan Dutt, Salman Ali Agha and Gerhard Erasmus induce sleepless nights. Batsmen don’t hawkishly pore over their footage. None of them turn the ball precociously away from the left-hander, and on the contrary, spin or angle the ball into them; none possess befuddling variations or roll out arcane tricks from their sleeve. Bestowed with humbler virtues, they deal with subtle change of pace, angle and release points, at a spinner’s good length, or just shorter. None are …

Despite batsmen not firing on all cylinders, bowlers deliver as West Indies beat Italy to maintain all-win record | Cricket News

Despite batsmen not firing on all cylinders, bowlers deliver as West Indies beat Italy to maintain all-win record | Cricket News

Published by Parlour News

4 min readFeb 19, 2026 04:27 PM IST West Indies, only the third unbeaten team in this edition of the T20 World Cup alongside India and South Africa, were expected to brush debutants Italy aside, more so after being sent out to bat first on a batting-friendly surface at the Eden Gardens. But their batting lineup, except captain Shai Hope, who scored a brisk 75, failed to fire against a resilient Italian bowling attack. The West Indies bowlers, however, saved them the blushes by masterminding a 42-run victory as Italy’s first World Cup ended with just a lone win and a lot of what ifs. The Hope-led outfit was rocked early as Brandon King was sent back in the second over by Ali Hasan for just 4 runs. Such was the accuracy of the Italian bowling that West Indies took three overs to get their first boundary of the match which came off the willow of Hope who carved Thomas Draca for a four. That was followed by another as he cleared the infield easily …

‘Move away when Usman Tariq pauses’: Ashwin’s advice for Indian batsmen ahead of Pakistan clash | Cricket News

‘Move away when Usman Tariq pauses’: Ashwin’s advice for Indian batsmen ahead of Pakistan clash | Cricket News

Published by Webster

2 min readFeb 13, 2026 04:24 PM IST Former Indian spinner R Ashwin has offered a simple piece of advice to the Indian batters who will be facing the unique side-arm action of Pakistan off-spinner Usman Tariq on Sunday in the T20 World Cup. Talking on his his Youtube channel ‘Ash Ki Baat’, Ashwin said, “If he stops before delivering the ball, the batsman has the right to move away. He can say that ‘I thought he is stopping’. That will be an interesting case and a huge headache for the umpire. If I was there I would have done it. One should do everything to win a game within rules. I would simply say I don’t know when he will release the ball and I would step away. If I move away, it is the umpire’s responsibility.” The 30-year-old Tariq has created quite a stir in the four T20 Internationals he has featured in. He has taken 11 wickets at an economy of less than six runs per over. Apart from all the talk …