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ESPNcricinfo’s wrap of the second day of the Sheffield Shield match between Western Australia and New South Wales in Perth

ESPNcricinfo staff17-Mar-2017
ScorecardFile photo – Ed Cowan was in the runs yet again•Getty Images

Ed Cowan and Daniel Hughes made half-centuries as New South Wales chipped away at Western Australia’s hefty first-innings score, but the Warriors remained on top at the close of the second day in Perth. Both teams remain in the hunt for a place in the Sheffield Shield final against Victoria, but for Western Australia to jump into the decider from fifth place would be an especially fine effort.The Warriors began the day on 5 for 360 and the retiring Adam Voges raised a half-century, as did wicketkeeper Josh Inglis, before Western Australia lost three wickets with the score on 406. Voges was caught behind off Harry Conway for 72, Inglis was bowled by William Somerville for 54, and Cameron Green also fell to Conway for a duck with no addition to the total.Having declared at 9 for 436, Western Australia had to watch on as Cowan and Hughes put on 113 for the second wicket, each reaching 69, before Cowan was lbw to allrounder Hilton Cartwright to end the stand. Hughes fell to Simon Mackin and the loss of Peter Nevill for 33 in the last over of the day left Moises Henriques unbeaten on 35, with the Blues on 5 for 242 and trailing by 194.

Focus not on superstars Gayle and de Villiers in team’s quest to replicate success of the previous season

Mohammad Isam03-Jan-2019Tom Moody, the Rangpur Riders head coach, has a battery of superstars – a batting line-up that includes Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers and Alex Hales – at his disposal for BPL 2019, but the Australian is focused on team-building, rather than stressing on individuals.While Hales will be available for the entire tournament, AB de Villiers, whom Moody will be working with for the first time, is available for seven matches in his maiden BPL stint. As a senior cricketer, who has enough subcontinent experience to bank on, Moody hoped to involve him in helping young players develop their game, but insisted the focus won’t be on him alone.”It is going to be a collective effort that will help win the tournament,” Moody said. “We will be relying on all our domestic and international players to step up when their opportunity comes. An individual can influence and win a game from time to time, but it is more of a team effort that wins championships.”I haven’t worked with AB de Villiers one-on-one before. I have worked with Hales and Gayle before. It will be great to work with AB. He is going to add a different presence to this side. He is a world-class player in this format. He can be very dangerous, but the focus won’t be on him as an individual. I think it is important that we all step up in our playing XI to play our roles.”Moody isn’t new to his team starting slowly. In the previous season, Rangpur were in early trouble with three losses in four games, but found their muscle midway through courtesy their domestic players. Once into the knockouts, they saw their trump cards Johnson Charles and Gayle unleash mayhem. The coach doesn’t want to see a similar situation this time, but believes they are prepared for that eventuality.”We had our challenges last year,” he said. “We had a successful win but it wasn’t smooth sailing. Halfway through the tournament we found ourselves in the bottom half of the table. I think you need to remain calm in those situations and it may well happen again. We have to find a rhythm to our game.”Rangpur have secured the services of some of their key players from last year, despite not being retained. Ravi Bopara, Sohag Gazi and Nahidul Islam were all re-acquired at the draft, along with local players Shafiul Islam, Farhad Reza, Mehedi Maruf, Nadif Chowdhury and Abul Hasan, all of whom impressed last season.”We are lucky enough to secure some familiar faces from last year, but I am excited to have a look at our domestic players with whom I haven’t worked before. It is important that they recognise their role in our campaign is as important as anyone else’s in the team.”Rangpur take on Chittagong Vikings in the BPL’s opening fixture on Saturday.

England wicketkeeper says there is “no point stressing” over the possibility of losing his place

Vithushan Ehantharajah21-Feb-2023Five years and 19 caps into his Test career, Ben Foakes knows not to take anything for granted. Just as it seems he is about to be on the cusp of good things, something comes along to knock him off course.A 2018-19 winter which started with a century on debut in Sri Lanka ended in being dropped two Tests into the West Indies series that January. A recall at the start of 2021 against India was followed by missing the entirety of the following summer after slipping on a sock in the Surrey dressing room and tearing his hamstring.Even when he became the side’s full-time gloveman at the beginning of last summer, he contracted Covid-19 in the third Test against New Zealand and was replaced mid-match by Sam Billings, who played the next game against India at Edgbaston after Foakes was unable to recover in time. He then fell ill in Pakistan meaning not only did he miss the first of the three Tests, but he was left out of the second as Ben Stokes decided to keep a more attacking balance and stick with Ollie Pope behind the stumps. Just to highlight the almost comical levels of misfortune, Foakes had to lend his Surrey team-mate his gloves because Pope had not brought his own.And now, after registering his sixth fifty-plus score in the second innings of the first Test against New Zealand to help set up a thumping 267-run win, another hindrance lurks on the horizon. One far more threatening to Foakes’ Test ambitions than a stray sock.As Jonny Bairstow continues his recovery from a broken ankle, the world-beating, borderline historic form of his replacement Harry Brook has created a selection headache. While Bairstow was the beating heart of the batting in Brendon McCullum’s first few months in charge, scoring four centuries – making it six in 2022 – Brook has subbed in and, essentially, nail down a place of his own with three hundreds in four Tests.Jonny Bairstow has missed the winter through injury•Getty Images

Proposed solutions to get them both in the XI have included some creative licenses to have one of them operating as an opener. Unfortunately for Foakes, the most straightforward option would be to take the gloves off him and give them back to Bairstow for the first time since September 2021.Of course, none of this is guaranteed. And who knows – there’s every chance down the line this conversation does not happen. Foakes is aware it is a talking point. But the experiences over the last year alone have shown him enthusiasm towards his own game is far better than anxiety.”I think my England journey has been a bit of a rollercoaster from day one,” Foakes said in Mount Maunganui, prior to England leaving for Wellington where the second Test begins on Friday. “I’ve had a lot of times out of the team where I’ve thought about ‘how do I get back in?’ and things like that, and I guess thinking about those things doesn’t help my game at all.On the prospect of losing his place to Bairstow, he said: “Naturally, you’re going to think about things. But at the stage I’m at, there’s no point stressing over it. I’m having some good form in my career and I’m just trying to enjoy that rather than stressing about what happen.”In international cricket you will always go through certain phases. There have been so many times have in my career when I’ve thought ‘oh that’s going to happen, that’s going to happen’ and it never has. So there’s no point in worrying about it.”Foakes wasn’t always like this, even under the new regime essential built on eliminating doubt. His game, with all due respect, is something of a throwback – even if you don’t really have to go back that far. He’s got most of the shots, but not many of them in the air; he is more of a traditional accumulator than one of the new radicals alongside him.Related

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That he is now comfortable being the outlier is important because, gradually, he has found his own way of providing for the team – thanks in part to no pressure from those in charge, and occasional positive reinforcement to just be himself.”I’m not, as you’d say, Bazball,” he ceded. “So I was kind of thinking, ‘how am I meant to go about this?’ But I think ever since I’ve come in, I think it hasn’t been that, it hasn’t been, ‘you have to try and hit every ball for six’. It’s been, ‘play your way but if you think the option is on, don’t umm and aah about it and be negative. Go for it.'”Some of these guys have got more ability to hit it all over the place. I think if I try and do that it’s just quite far away from my strengths, so I don’t think it’s the smartest idea. I think playing with freedom, but doing it in a way you feel comfortable.”You do have a look up at the scoreboard at your strike rate: you want to keep it above 50. But I think it is a strength of mine to play slightly more normal cricket. And in bridging the gap between our explosive starts and then obviously batting with the tail, and batting with the tail I’ve got to bat a different way but in that period there when we’re so far down, I can bat normally with a batter that’s in, it’s generally worked quite well.”And I do think, quite a few of the games I’ve contributed have been in more in the role of batting normally and I guess more pressurised situations where you can’t lose a wicket. So I think for me trying to perform in those times is quite crucial for the team and that’s where I can probably show my impact the most.”Foakes is right, too. To look at his four highest scores since last May is to see the value of “batting normally”, as he puts it, in this line-up. He made century against South Africa at Old Trafford, after coming in with England 147 for 5, four behind South Africa’s innings total. He put on 173 with Stokes, then 95 with the tail to help the team to 415 for 9 ahead of a series-squaring innings victory.Earlier that summer was a 56 against New Zealand at Trent Bridge in which he combined with Joe Root for 111 to turn a first innings deficit of 148 to just 14. In December in Karachi, he arrived with England five down and trailing Pakistan by 149 before combining with Brook (117) and the tail (62) to give the tourists a 50-run lead.Foakes has averaged 43.66 since Stokes’ appointment as captain•Camerasport/Getty Images

The fourth came on Saturday, and though the situation was not precarious when he arrived – 225 for 5, with a second-innings lead of 244 – Foakes was vital to the tactics of the day, to manage time into the evening when they put in New Zealand under lights for the second time in three days. Stuart Broad gutted the top order and the next morning, England went 1-0 up in the two-match series.Foakes’ composure from the off was all the more impressive considering he was not due in after Harry Brook was caught at slip. Stokes was originally the next man in – but was otherwise occupied. “He was on the toilet, yeah,” Foakes confirmed. “Literally, as the ball came down, he sat down and I had one pad on, nothing else, so I was scrambling around. I was shouting at him, ‘you go! I’m not ready.’ There’s never too much masterclass behind but yeah, he was preoccupied.””It kind of feels like club cricket,” he added. Not so much in terms of the captain being on the can, but how the mindset of the dressing room has changed, despite this still being such a taxing, relentless format. “When I first came in the pressures involved in Test cricket were so extreme and you were so worried about playing a false shot and things like that. And sometimes now you can get out in a weird way and it’s a kind of a joke.”As the one doing things differently, the pressure on Foakes will always be a little bit greater, particularly with Bairstow rehabbing in the wings. However the cards fall, it is apparent at this juncture that Foakes being true to himself and being true to the team go hand in hand. If and when that changes, he can be comfortable in the knowledge he has done everything asked of him. And done it well.

Tim Murtagh has been given special dispensation to arrive late for Ireland’s tour of South Africa later this month, in order to play Middlesex’s County Championship decider against Yorkshire at Lord’s

ESPNcricinfo staff16-Sep-2016
Tim Murtagh has been given special dispensation to arrive late for Ireland’s tour of South Africa later this month, in order to play Middlesex’s County Championship decider against Yorkshire at Lord’s.Ireland take on South Africa and Australia in two ODIs at Benoni on September 25 and 27, two days after the conclusion of the final round of Championship fixtures, in which a Middlesex victory would end their 23-year wait for the title.”This match means a huge amount to both Tim and Middlesex,” said Cricket Ireland Performance Director, Richard Holdsworth. “Having played with the club for ten years, it would be the culmination of one of his most fiercely-held ambitions.”While the remainder of the squad will travel out tomorrow [Saturday], we felt this was an exceptional situation and a game which we should allow Tim to play in.”There has been a long and mutually beneficial relationship between Middlesex and Ireland, and we felt it would further strengthen our close ties by showing some flexibility on this occasion.”Middlesex have agreed to fly Murtagh out to South Africa as soon as the game finishes, in time for him to join the squad ahead of the first ODI against South Africa on September 25.
Ed Joyce, meanwhile, has withdrawn from the tour after being diagnosed with a progressive knee injury which requires minor surgery.Joyce, who turns 38 next week, will be replaced in the squad by Leinster Lightning batsman Sean Terry, who made his Ireland debut earlier this summer during the series against Afghanistan.”It’s obviously a blow to lose someone of Ed’s calibre, but Sean Terry is a batsman of undoubted promise,” said John Bracewell, the head coach. “Given the likely pitch in Benoni, and the likelihood we will facing two majority pace attacks, the selectors felt that Sean was the logical replacement.”

Roston Chase (injury) and Fabian Allen (personal reasons) were unavailable, while Rovman Powell and Romario Shepherd were left out

ESPNcricinfo staff12-Aug-2022Following his return to West Indies’ T20I squad last month, Shimron Hetmyer is back in their ODI set-up too. The middle-order batter has been named in a 14-man squad for the three-match ODI leg of the ongoing home series against New Zealand.Hetmyer returned to West Indies colours for the first time since November 2021 – he had been excluded mostly on fitness grounds in the interim – for the T20I series against India and New Zealand. He is now in line to play his first ODI since July 2021.The squad includes one new face in the Guyanese offspin-bowling allrounder Kevin Sinclair, who has played six T20Is but is yet to make his ODI debut.”As we stated before, we are looking to broaden the pool of players, and we have decided to give Sinclair an opportunity in the CG United ODI Series against New Zealand,” lead selector Desmond Haynes said. “He has been in the system for a while and was also in the ‘A Team’ to play against Bangladesh ‘A’ in the upcoming series. We believe with his calm approach and skills he will do well in the matches against New Zealand.”Left-arm spinner Gudakesh Motie, whose participation in the ODI series against India last month was cut short by a finger injury, has been included in the squad subject to clearing a fitness test.Legspinner Hayden Walsh, who replaced Motie during the series against India, has been left out. Also out of the squad are the hard-hitting middle-order batter Rovman Powell, and the seam-bowling allrounder Romario Shepherd.Shepherd, who was left out of the third T20I against India following expensive outings in the first two – and his bowling in the death overs – has been a concern for West Indies of late. Of all bowlers to have sent down at least 60 balls in the last ten overs of ODI innings this year, Shepherd has the worst economy rate with 10.28, with New Zealand’s Blair Tickner (9.09) quite a way behind in second place.Spin-bowling allrounders Roston Chase (injury) and Fabian Allen (personal reasons) were unavailable for selection.The first ODI against New Zealand takes place on August 17, followed by matches on August 19 and 21. All three games will be played in Bridgetown.West Indies squad: Nicholas Pooran (capt), Shai Hope (vice-capt), Shamarh Brooks, Keacy Carty, Shimron Hetmyer, Jason Holder, Akeal Hosein, Alzarri Joseph, Brandon King, Kyle Mayers, Gudakesh Motie (subject to fitness), Keemo Paul, Jayden Seales, Kevin Sinclair