ESPNcricinfo presents the plays of the day from the World Cup Group A match between Kenya and New Zealand in Chennai

Sriram Veera at the MA Chidambaram Stadium20-Feb-2011The apology of the day
It came from Jacob Oram after he removed Elijah Otieno to bowl out Kenya. He immediately turned, put his hand up and grinned sheepishly at Tim Southee, who smiled. Southee had just taken two wickets in two balls at the end of the previous over. Oram’s wicket had denied him a crack at bagging a hat-trick.The disappointment of the day
This is the last World Cup for the Kenyan veteran Steve Tikolo and he was the most popular and recognisable face from his team. Alas, he didn’t last long. A fast Hamish Bennett yorker ruthlessly re-arranged his furniture. Tikolo was out for just 2. Thankfully, he will have few more games to provide some joy to his fans.The bad decisions of the day
Collins Obuya went for the UDRS but he shouldn’t have, for he was trapped plumb in front. Alex Obanda and Maurice Ouma didn’t go for the UDRS but they should have. The ball that got Obanda would have sailed over the stumps and Ouma was struck outside the line of off stump.The ball of the day
It was the one that did in Tikolo. It was full, fast, and straight. The ball shot under the desperate waft and clattered into the stumps. The middle and the off stump went flying. Bennett slowly came to a halt and smiled gently after his team-mates mobbed him. It was also the beginning of the end for Kenya.The shot of the day
Martin Guptill might not be as famous as a Brendon McCullum or Ross Taylor but there aren’t many batsmen in the world who can loft the ball to the straight boundary cleaner than him. He set himself perfectly in the fifth over to launch an Odoyo delivery behind the sightscreen.

ESPNcricinfo presents the Plays of the Day from the IPL eliminator between Kolkata and Mumbai

Sriram Veera25-May-2011Stop and stare at the umpire – I

Manoj Tiwary was trapped in front by Dhawal Kulkarni, but he couldn’t believe it when the decision went against him. He froze. He stared. He remained frozen. He eventually stirred and left the scene.Stop and stare at the umpire – II
Ambati Rayudu was gobsmacked when he was given out caught behind. It was a bouncer from Jacques Kallis and the ball flew over the flashing blade to take refuge in Shreevats Goswami’s gloves. Kallis kept on running towards the keeper who too had started his celebrations. A puzzled Rayudu had a wry smile, perhaps wondering what all the fuss was about. He had a quick look across at the umpire; so did the rest of the field. Asad Rauf’s index finger went up. A stunned Rayudu yanked off his helmet and looked again at Rauf, with his mouth wide open. At long last, he left the crime scene.Bounce, bounce till you succeed

Everybody knows that the best place to bowl at Yusuf Pathan is at the head. His Indian team-mate Munaf Patel didn’t shy from trying out that strategy in the 13th over. He bounced once and it flew off the top edge over the keeper. The second bouncer was swatted uncomfortably to fine-leg and third was mis-hit over midwicket. Yusuf reclaimed strike for the final delivery and Munaf banged it short again. Yusuf tried to flat-bat it out of the park but couldn’t clear long-on.Times, they are a-changing

Munaf used to be a poor fielder. Used to be. Nowadays he gets irate when his team-mates slip below his standards. The proof of the pudding arrived in the 16th over when Kulkarni chose not to go for a risky catch at third man, preferring the stop the ball on the bounce. Munaf, the bowler, wasn’t impressed. He stood there, hands on the hip before slowly turning and suggesting to another team-mate that he thought Kulkarni should have gone for the catch. Later, in the final over of Kolkata’s innings, when Brett Lee steered a short ball to his left at short third man, Munaf rushed across and threw in a dive to prevent the boundary. Now Kulkarni, that’s how you do it.Protection can get you a boundary
Mumbai needed 15 runs from 12 when Lee hurled a bouncer at Harbhajan Singh. It had pace, the awkward height, and the uncomfortable line to fetch a game-turning wicket but it went away for a game-breaking four. Harbhajan was late on the pull, and not only were his tooth saved by the helmet, he also got some vital runs. The ball flew off the edge, crashed into the helmet grille and flew down to the fine-leg boundary.

Plays of the Day from the IPL game between Rajasthan Royals and Royal Challengers Bangalore in Jaipur

Firdose Moonda11-May-2011The vintage playmaker
Rahul Dravid opened his account with a shot so classy he could have been a Rolls Royce. He used his wrists the way only he knows how, swivelling the bat in his hands and driving the ball past point with finesse and elegance. He followed it up with another trademark shot, a flick through midwicket, delicate and stylish. For good measure, both those beauties came off the bowling of his Indian counterpart Zaheer Khan.The wicketkeeper who would be fielder
AB de Villiers was relieved off the duties behind the stumps and allowed to prowl the outfield. He was heard on the microphone, cheekily saying that he “had no idea why the owners and managers think he may be a good fielder,” and that he enjoys his fielding as much, if not more, than he does his wicketkeeping. It wasn’t until the 10th over that he was brought into the fray when Shane Watson smacked a ball long and flat to de Villiers at long-off. He had to move a little to his left to gobble it up and did. The celebration was enough to show how much de Villiers enjoys his work without the gloves.The stranded non-striker
Ajinkya Rahane was looking in good nick and hitting the ball well when he was hung out to dry by Johan Botha. He played a reverse-sweep to point, where de Villiers was lurking. Botha set off for the run immediately even though Rahane didn’t move. Botha wasn’t looking and was already at his partner’s end when the throw came to the wicketkeeper, and there wasn’t a batsmen in sight. Rahane sacrificed himself and Botha failed to his find his rhythm. Seventeen balls later, he was gone.The legend lets it go
Shane Warne had already misfielded once in the circle and was desperate to put on a good show for his adopted home crowd one last time, but nothing was going right. Botha was having a dreadful time, being smacked around by Tillakaratne Dilshan and Chris Gayle and then he tossed one up to Gayle. He got under it, but not enough and chipped it to mid-off where Warne was fielding. It took a bit of a reach to clasp it but Warne couldn’t and the ball slipped through his fingers and trickled to the rope for four.The end
Warne had bowled three impressive overs, his last performance in Jaipur in the IPL and looked certain to finish on a high. He was throwing in the flipper, the odd googly and those perfect legbreaks. But it ended with an assault. Gayle hit Warne’s last two balls for boundaries, the first a six over long-off and then a sweep shot that went to backward square leg for four. Warne walked back into the outfield with a small hint of sadness on his face. Jaipur looked on, too stunned to say goodbye, too moved to do much else.

For the most part of the second Test, India looked like they belonged not to a bygone age of general trendiness and cool that the best of retro represents, but a time of cricketing nightmares

Sharda Ugra at Trent Bridge01-Aug-2011On a grim afternoon, everything around Trent Bridge belonged to modern times: flood lights, four umpires, a match referee, the DRS, international rankings, advertising hoardings and blimps. Amid the modernity, India were playing retro cricket.For the most part of this second Test, India looked like they belonged not to a bygone age of general trendiness and cool that the best of retro represents, but a time of cricketing nightmares: when the travelling was mostly timid, the opposition bowlers always too much of a handful and India were always fighting against the tide.Retro can almost always work in fashion and music, but in cricket it only translates into the worst numbers on a score-sheet. At the end of the Trent Bridge Test, India’s numbers were dire: 0-2 down in a four-Test series, defeats by 196 and 319 runs, and totals of 285, 261, 288 and 158 so far. This was not the India of the perpetual scrap, the high bouncebackability quotient, the No. 1 Test ranking (in that precise order in terms of significance). On what turned out to be the final afternoon of the Test, as the wickets column on the giant scoreboard to the left of the pavilion ticked over ominously, Sachin Tendulkar, out for 56, could have been playing in the grim 1990s. At one end of the pitch was skill and intent of high quality. At the other, a revolving door.Nottingham may well hurt more than Lord’s. India, after all, began the game on their own terms: they won the toss and bowled in conditions that make seam bowlers drool and batsmen wince. They eventually dismissed England for 221 and took a first-innings lead of 67. Anyone who walked into the Indian dressing room at tea on the first day and told them they were going to be defeated inside four days by 319 runs would have been beaned with a bat.India’s miseries in this Test have been manifold, and they while they may begin with a tired list of injuries, fatigue and bad luck, they do not end there. Beyond the gloomy events of Monday, the tale of Trent Bridge resides in a sub-plot: India’s inability to lift their game when challenged by England.On the first and second days, India went into the final session in control of the Test. On the opening day, England were 124 for 8 at tea. On the second India were 215 for 4, trailing by 6. In the short passages of play that followed, England pulled off two grand, brazen heists. Before India knew it, the ground beneath their feet had moved and the territory of control in the Test had been stolen. Man-of-the-Match Stuart Broad was responsible for much of that but India’s lack of energy, intensity and focus in all departments was a significant contributor.When England attacked, India retreated. In the last two years, particularly since they went to the top of the ICC Test rankings, Dhoni’s men have absorbed punches and found second winds. In Nottingham, they just ran out of oxygen; in both ideas with the ball and determination with the bat. After two days of swinging fortunes and enthralling individual contests, the third day unveiled the direction the game was taking.India’s lack of resilience was manifested in their response to two partnerships: between Broad and Graeme Swann in the first innings, and even more clearly when Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen saw off the new ball in the second innings. India lacked bowling options to help the seamers in the dry period from the 50th over or so up to the second new ball; in the second half of their second innings – from the 60th over to the 121st – England were able to score 308 runs. India bowled what one Test Match Special commentator described as “flighted nothingness” and “long-hop lollipops”. India’s seamers may have accounted well for themselves in the absence of Zaheer Khan, but to not to have slow-bowling options was reminiscent of Indian cricket’s dark ages.After a reasonable performance in the first innings, India’s seamers found themselves overburdened in the second; they had far too little back-up and were given strange fields. There were deep points when new batsmen arrived, not enough close-in catchers, third man was conspicuous by his absence on a ground where plenty of runs were guided behind the wicket – Rahul Dravid’s first-innings wagon wheel is an illustration of the zones the batsmen were aiming at in Nottingham. It was not just the placement of the fielders that hampered the bowlers. If the Indian fielding was to be shown in black and white, viewers would have thought it was the 1970s.On the fourth day, the batting went into meltdown; not necessarily because the players lacked the character required for a long fight, but because some of them simply lacked the skill needed to endure sustained periods of pressure from England’s bowling. Tim Bresnan, England’s replacement for Chris Tremlett, showed off the weight and menace of his short ball and went through the Indian line-up like a boxer working his way past weaker sparring partners. Abhinav Mukund fell to pure poison, Suresh Raina to a rush of panic and Yuvraj Singh to a trap set up by some merciless treatment. MS Dhoni’s wicket was emblematic of India’s performance in the Test: just like his team had not offered resistance in the face of England’s aggression, their captain did not offer a shot. Three of the top seven batsmen fell to unplayable deliveries; the rest made or were forced to make errors of judgement. In the last 11 years, India have lost their top six for a lower score only twice, and both times at home.In the last decade, India have made definite progress but they must now prove they have not stagnated. At the moment, England are the team surging forward and their bowling in this Test was fierce and impressive; their fast bowlers have not only pace but also discipline and accuracy. It is only with accuracy that speed becomes a bonus.India’s defeat at Trent Bridge is significant and must be marked in memory because, for more than three decades, England has been one of India’s least intimidating overseas tours. Since the 0-3 series defeat in 1974, India ; have not lost more than one Test match on a tour of England; after 1996, they have not been beaten by England in a series. Every tour, regardless of the result, has provided the stage for either a startling batting arrival for India, or a memorable performance.Victory in 1986 remained the last overseas series win outside the subcontinent for two decades, 1990 brought Tendulkar, 1996 Ganguly and Dravid, 2002 a win at Headingley and the arrival of Virender Sehwag as a Test opener, 2007 swing, Zaheer Khan’s zenith and a series win. Until Monday, India had not lost back-to-back Tests since their defeat to Australia at the SCG in January 2008; between then and the start of this tour they had played 38 Tests, won 18 and lost just six.Remember this day in Indian cricket: it could mark either beginning or end. We will know in three weeks.

They arrived as the world No. 1 team but will end the series embarrassed and, in all likelihood, whitewashed

Andrew Miller at The Oval20-Aug-2011Shortly after the close of play at The Oval, a drunken punter in a furry penguin outfit attempted to run out to the middle of the pitch. He fell flat on his face after five steps, was pounced on by six security guards, and was hauled off to face the consequences of his actions. With the possible exception of Suresh Raina’s 29-ball duck, it was the most pitiful sight on another extraordinary day of cricket, but at least we can be sure that he won’t be allowed back in for more.Alas for India’s cricketers, they won’t have the same get-out. On Sunday England will set about administering the last rites of a sorry series, and to judge by the manner in which they shed five prime wickets in 31 overs in the fading evening light, India seem more than capable of shrugging off their remaining 15 in 98. Mentally they have already turned their backs on a contest in which only the absent Praveen Kumar and the unfailingly admirable Rahul Dravid have come close to maintaining their reputations, let alone enhancing them.Dravid remained steadfast to the bitter end, magnificent in his defiance of all circumstance – including the concussion suffered by Gautam Gambhir that obliged him to step up as an emergency opener for the fourth time out of seven innings in this series (or sixth out of seven if you take into account Virender Sehwag’s king pair at Edgbaston). His presence, experience and example shine out as a beacon of everything that India have squandered on this trip – technical proficiency, guts and reputation chief among them.Something dramatic has come to pass in the course of the past four fixtures, and though the BCCI can ignore if it chooses, it would be foolish to do so. Indian cricket has become the laughing stock of the world game, and while that might not seem to matter to a board that generates 70% of the sport’s global income and has in its locker-room the World Cup trophy, no less, ridicule tends to be a corrosive disease.For all its undeniable flaws, international cricket remains, for now, the benchmark by which the sport is judged, and India’s success in international cricket has been the very reason why their spin-off products are so marketable. It’s easy to forget how sniffy the BCCI was about their new favourite form of the game, Twenty20, until India’s global triumph in 2007 opened their eyes to its potential. Ever since then, the hype of the IPL – while thrilling, lucrative, and epoch-defining – has been underpinned by the solid knowledge that Indian cricket really is the best in show.Thanks to India’s sheer demographics, it could yet be that the tipping point has been reached already – that it will no longer matter if their blue-riband product degenerates into a World Wrestling Federation-style circus, so long as enough of the game’s key players subscribe, for want of a better phrase, to the Hayden Way. But India is committed to the Future Tours Programme until 2020, so there’s no ducking the sanctity of Test cricket just yet. Besides, given how far they have travelled in the decade just gone, there’s plenty of scope for regression if they don’t mend their ways.In the past few years, instead of using their wealth to form the structures required for self-perpetuation, the farce of this current tour has demonstrated how the BCCI has relied on the brilliance of its top players for too long. A golden generation of batsmen is hurtling towards the end of the line, the team’s key bowlers are unfit, and as the struggles of Raina, Abhinav Mukund and even Yuvraj Singh have demonstrated, the next generation lack the all-round proficiency to fill such massive voids.That latter point is precisely the reason why Duncan Fletcher was hired as India’s coach. Almost to a man, the England batsmen who are shattering new records every day, will swear by his wisdom and expertise, particularly in analysing and ironing out technical flaws. During his seven years with England, he set the team up for as-then unparalleled success, and though he’s now in danger of being remembered for two of the most humbling whitewashes of all time, this latter failure is in no way his fault.That much was clear in a fractious end-of-day press conference, when India’s bowling coach Eric Simons was served up to protest his team’s commitment to the cause. “There’s no doubt this Test can be saved, but there’s no doubt who are favourites,” he said, with the sort of wearied clichés that Andrew Flintoff fell back on during that Ashes whitewash of 2006-07. “We know Rahul Dravid can bat long periods of time, MS [Dhoni] is coming into his own and Gautam [Gambhir] will be back tomorrow. We need someone to bed in for a long period of time.”It’s not fair to mock Simons for his hopeless optimism. He is a diligent professional with a decade of experience in an international coaching set-up, but the futility of his role within India’s lumbering unit, and by extension Fletcher’s, is just one of many facets that has been ripped asunder in this series. For the bulk of his 15 minutes in front of the media, Simons fielded a range of frenzied questions including one monologue from an Indian journalist, the gist of which was: “When will the BCCI realise Zaheer Khan is not Superman?”The answer, however, is not in Simons’ remit, as Anirudh Chaudhary, India’s team manager, made abundantly clear with his regular interjections. “Eric would not know about that,” he stated on one occasion, after an enquiry about India’s request for an extra practice match on this winter’s tour of Australia.Why would a senior member of India’s coaching staff not be in the loop about such an issue, especially given that the seeds of their downfall on this trip were sown during their undercooked display down at Taunton in July? The question is rhetorical, because the answer is plain to see. But that’s not to say that it should be allowed to remain that way.India are not the first team to be humiliated in a Test series and they will not be the last, but rarely has such a shocking result been inflicted on a side with such pre-series expectations. Australia’s 4-0 battering in South Africa in 1969-70, or England’s Ashes disaster in 1958-59 are among the most notable parallels.But every now again, such jolts to the system can only be A Good Thing. While it was ghastly to endure at the time, England’s own whitewash five years ago was in many ways the best thing that could have happened to the team at the time. The result obliged a malfunctioning outfit to conduct a root-and-branch reassessment of their game, and while the resultant Schofield Report was criticised in places for its vapidity, it made some key recommendations which set out to protect the sanctity of the national team.First among those was the introduction of a managing director of the England team. Hugh Morris’s new position was soon tested to the limits by the Pietersen-Moores debacle of early 2009, but having survived that acid test, it came into its own in the exhaustive planning for the Ashes campaign of 2010-11. The presence of a conduit capable of reaching into the heart of the ECB, and delivering on virtually every one of Andy Flower’s requests, guaranteed that that campaign would triumph where every other trip of the previous 24 years had failed.It’s no coincidence that Cricket Australia has aped many of England’s methods in their newly unveiled Argus Report. Australia have a burning desire to return from whence they fell, and resume their long-held status as the best international team in the world. Do the BCCI have the same desire? For the sake of the sport, we have to hope so. But for the time being, they need to be mocked. It’s the best incentive going.

Aloof yet witty, plain but direct, regal yet casual. MAK Pataudi was so many contradictory things that eventually you stopped trying to classify him

Mudar Patherya22-Sep-2011Spending an hour with Tiger Pataudi was often a matter of trying to get a reaction from granite; he could put you off not by what he said but by what he didn’t. And spending an hour with Tiger Pataudi could also be a pain in the gut because he could make you laugh until it hurt.And that is what Pataudi was: aloof yet witty, plain but direct, regal yet casual. He was so many opposites that eventually you stopped trying to classify him.He was the man you could weave legends around: being hit on the jaw by Andy Roberts, then hitting Vanburn Holder for a straight six, then hitting four fours in succession in front of 90,000, hitting 85 at the MCG, which Ray Robinson described as one of the gutsiest innings ever at that ground, becoming a legend in the covers – and to think that he did all this with only one eye. Sunil Gavaskar described it well: if you want to appreciate the genius of Pataudi, spend a day with an eye closed and then try to light a candle.He was the absentee editor of the magazine for which I worked, . He lived in Delhi; we slaved in Calcutta. He had discovered the magic of decentralisation and empowerment before liberalisation. The magazine, structured by twenty-something-year-olds, was one in the editing of which Pataudi scarcely took an active interest. His name would decorate the tombstone. And then suddenly one day the peon would come in carrying a scroll from the telex room headlined with the words “editorial by mak pataudi”. Typewriter keys would freeze mid-air as people pounced to read the mind of a man who usually dared to differ.Even though he never edited the magazine, he probably read every word that went into it. In 1987, Pataudi, Gavaskar, Mohinder Amarnath and I went on a trip to Tihar jail at the behest of Kenneth Larkins (jailed on charges of espionage), who was arranging cricket matches to enhance a sense of reform. Pictures were clicked. Three days later Pataudi nixed the scoop on the grounds that this was akin to glorifying someone who had sold the country. Two years later, convinced that Pataudi was not looking, a picture of the visit was used. The following week a telex message arrived, addressed to me: “I thought we had an agreement.”He was a man who trusted his instincts; like on the last morning of the Eden Gardens Test against West Indies in 1974-75, when he continued to persist in having an erratic Bhagwat Chandrasekhar bowl to a plundering Clive Lloyd. A couple of overs later Chandra bowled Lloyd, the West Indians panicked, and India won an unforgettable Test. I tried reading his mind. Why had he persisted with Chandra? Pataudi would not tell, not because it was a profound secret but because deep down he probably knew that it was only a gambler’s gut, which could not be intellectualised.Pataudi seldom proffered advice on his own volition, but the rare occasion when he did was when Kapil Dev was dropped from the Indian team after a reckless shot that supposedly lost India the Test, and in the reams that were written immediately thereafter, the one that cut through the clutter was a private message that Pataudi, then editing , sent to Kapil: “Whatever you do, don’t speak to the media.” The one-liner saved Kapil from making things worse, and he was promptly recalled a Test later.If you got to know him well, he would tell you difficult-to-believe stories of maharajas and cricketers. He was in England when the privy purse was abolished and someone at the ground asked how his name should go up on the scoreboard, now that “Nawab of Pataudi” had become an anachronism. He replied: “As far as I care, you can call me John Smith.”Pataudi was the last bridge between the medieval and the modern. Never again will we have a 21-year-old leading India, never again will there be a cricketing blue-blood keeping his place on merit, never again will there be someone who could probably claim, “My father played for England… and India”.An age has ended. In more senses than one.

USACA’s current administration continues to make the same mistakes and doesn’t equip its squads with the right tools to succeed

Peter Della Penna13-Aug-2011Six months ago USA’s Under-19 squad was riding high after beating Canada Under-19, completing an undefeated run to claim the ICC Americas U-19 championship. The team had confidence and, with five players returning with experience from the 2010 U-19 World Cup in New Zealand, qualifying for the 2012 World Cup event seemed realistic. However, thanks to kamikaze planning by the USA Cricket Association (USACA), the team failed to qualify for next year’s tournament in Australia.Several strange decisions were made prior to the team heading for the 2011 U-19 World Cup Qualifier in Ireland. Unlike in 2009, when USACA held its U-19 national tournament in May prior to the Americas U-19 Qualifier in July and the U-19 World Cup Qualifier in Canada that September, the administration tentatively planned to hold the 2011 U-19 national tournament in October. Staging the competition earlier this summer would have been the best way to evaluate who deserved to go to Ireland.Instead, a half-baked camp was held in June in New York, after which some questionable selections were made. Five New York region players were chosen, though several of them had no noteworthy performances to speak of. Meanwhile, only two players made it from the North West, a region that stood head and shoulders above the rest of the country over the last several years for its ability to produce good young talent.A four-match series against West Indies U-19, scheduled a few weeks after the selection camp, did nothing for the USA players other than humiliate them and destroy their confidence heading into Ireland. Now that the team failed to qualify for Australia, the only reason the U-19 national tournament will remain on the calendar this autumn is to fulfill an ICC mandate in order to make sure funding from the game’s governing body continues to flow in.More bizarre choices in the last month did not help the team’s preparation either. USACA flew two players in to Florida, Stephon Singh and Christopher van Tull, to participate in some of the matches against West Indies U-19 despite neither player having ever been part of any USA squad or even a selection trial. They were brought in allegedly because they would be eligible to play for USA if the current group qualified for the World Cup in Australia. It deprived those in the squad for Ireland of playing opportunities and damaged team chemistry.There was also no continuity in the leadership. Abhijit Joshi was named captain for the Americas U-19 Qualifier in February, but was removed in favour of Greg Sewdial for the tournament in Ireland. Sewdial had hardly played any competitive cricket since spending more than a year recovering from two surgeries to his left ankle.Head coach Robin Singh arrived late for the series against West Indies U-19, leaving Sew Shivnarine in charge of team training. Robin then left the country for unknown reasons after the fourth match, while Shivnarine flew to Connecticut to scout talent at the U-15 national tournament. It meant that for the next five days, team manager Wesley King was running training along with USA women’s head coach Linden Fraser, who was flown to Florida to help out until the team left for Ireland.The squad then spent a week in Strabane, Northern Ireland, ahead of their first match against the hosts, but only played one warm-up game against a local club side. Robin didn’t rejoin the squad until they arrived in Dublin for the start of the qualifiers. There was a gap of 12 days where he wasn’t around. When players were asked in Florida what they were working on while Robin was away, the general response was a shrug of the shoulders.It was apparent that the players were confused by the coming and going of coaches. That lack of mental clarity seemed to have an effect on them in their first two matches. USA’s batsmen were called short of a run twice and dropped several simple chances in a one-wicket loss to Ireland.The next day against Papua New Guinea, first slip jumped out of the way of a wide delivery rather than catch it, which resulted in five runs, and four overthrows were conceded later on when no one backed up a shy at the stumps. Still, USA appeared to be on their way to victory before getting involved in two sloppy run-outs in the span of 15 balls and they eventually fell short by six runs. By the end of the tournament, those missed opportunities cost USA a spot in the top six and a chance to compete in Queensland next year.The general behaviour of the management also left a lot to be desired. King refused to make Robin or Sewdial available to the media following the loss to PNG. When he was questioned about it a few days later, after the team’s win over Afghanistan, he reacted with an outburst just moments after Mital Patel, who had taken six wickets and completed a hat-trick, had been presented with a Man-of-the-Match award.At the tournament’s closing ceremony and dinner, USA’s players were the first to leave while Robin never showed up. So they did not witness the gesture made by PNG U-19 head coach Andy Bichel at the end of the night as he led his players across the room to shake hands with each and every member of the Scotland team, the tournament’s champions. That’s the kind of leadership USA players at all levels need on and off the field, but which has been absent for a long time.Perhaps the saddest example of USACA’s failure to guide and nurture young talent to prepare them for the international level is the case of Joshi. Three years ago in the Caribbean, Joshi set the CLICO International U-15 Tournament alight with 265 runs in six innings, including four half-centuries, to finish fifth overall on the runs-chart, behind two players from Pakistan and two from West Indies, John Campbell and Kraigg Brathwaite.Braithwaite has gone on to play Test cricket and Campbell torched USA U-19, scoring three centuries in four matches during the West Indies U-19 tour of Florida. In that same series, Joshi could only manage 31 runs in three innings, and in 21 innings for USA at the U-19 level, he’s never reached 50. Ireland’s George Dockrell took just three wickets in five games at the 2008 CLICO tournament, but has since left Joshi in his wake. The difference in each player’s development was poignantly summed up two weeks ago when Dockrell bowled Joshi off the only ball he faced from the left-arm spinner. Dockrell went on to lead Ireland to a third place finish at the qualifier while USA ended up seventh.Whether it’s with the senior or the junior teams, USACA’s current administration continues to make the same mistakes and doesn’t equip its squads with the right tools to succeed. Unless new blood comes into power during the next USACA elections, and sweeping changes are made to the way cricket is structured in America, the ICC would be well advised to turn their efforts away from New York and focus on development in Beijing and Shanghai as a way to spread the game.

ESPNcricinfo presents the Plays of the Day from the second ODI between New Zealand and South Africa, in Napier

Andrew Fernando29-Feb-2012The unintentional ramp shot
A four is the last thing on a batsman’s mind when he opts to leave a ball, but that is exactly what Brendon McCullum collected when he tried to get out of the way of a Morne Morkel short ball in the 12th over. McCullum could not drop his hands in time, and the ball hit the edge and was unintentionally ramped over the slips for four. Who needs the ‘McScoop’?The moment of justice
Tarun Nethula had threatened to take Hashim Amla’s wicket from early on in his spell, but two fortuitous top edges – one that fell in between two converging fielders and another that was shelled at long off – denied Nethula the scalp of one of the best players of spin in the world. But towards the end of a terrific spell in which he had bested Amla regularly, a fizzing legbreak finally caught the edge of Amla’s bat and McCullum held on to dismiss the batsman for 92.Catch of the day
Martin Guptill held a strong, late contender for catch of the day, when he caught Faf du Plessis, tossed the ball up as momentum took him over the square-leg boundary, and completed the catch upon re-entry. However, it was a much less likely athlete that takes the honours. Jacques Kallis took a terrific backpedalling catch to dismiss Kane Williamson earlier in the day, when the batsman launched Lonwabo Tsotsobe high over mid-on. Running backwards, Kallis never took his eyes off the ball and seemed to have not made enough ground, but arched his back and stretched to pluck it from behind him. The catch kickstarted the collapse that turned the game in South Africa’s favour.The ominous burst
A one-day series rarely goes by for South Africa without a heavy contribution from Hashim Amla, and his barrage in the opening overs signalled that tonight would be his night. After two quiet overs to begin, Amla larruped Kyle Mills over point, and plundered 25 from 10 balls to launch South Africa’s reply – all but one of those runs coming from six off-side boundaries that included a serene glide down the ground. New Zealand were barely allowed to catch their breath from then on, as South Africa rollicked on at over six runs an over until the match was won.The set-up
Guptill’s catch on the square-leg boundary had been set up the previous delivery by Andrew Ellis, whose surprise short ball took the shoulder of du Plessis’ bat and thudded into the grill of his helmet. Perhaps after some sort of signal from Ellis that he’d bowl the same ball again, Guptill moved squarer on the fence, and though this time the short ball didn’t surprise du Plessis, he was duped by the bowler and caught in the deep.

This was India’s fifth-worst series as a bowling unit, and their ninth-poorest with the bat. More stats highlights from the match and the series

S Rajesh28-Jan-2012

Gautam Gambhir and Sunil Narine were the headliners of a successful campaign, but Kolkata Knight Riders weren’t merely a two-man team

George Binoy28-May-2012Where they finishedGautam Gambhir was at the centre of Knight Riders’ resurgence after four poor seasons•AFPChampions. After coming second to Delhi Daredevils in the league stage by one point, Kolkata Knight Riders beat Daredevils in the first playoff to qualify for their maiden final, in Chennai, where they beat Super Kings by five wickets and two balls to spare. Knight Riders won 10 of their last 13 games (one was washed out). They were deserved champions and their campaign a glorious revival.Key playerGautam Gambhir’s pay cheque of $2.4 million, the highest for anyone bought at an open IPL auction, came with a heavy mandate: to turnaround the fortunes of the poorest performing franchise. Knight Riders had been the only constant in the bottom four in each of the first three seasons. Those campaigns were weighed down by a leader past his prime fitness and form, divisive coaching experiments such as split captaincy, and a vicious blogger purporting to be a team insider. So, in the lead-up to the 2011 auction, the Knight Riders management retained none of their players. During the auction, they did not bid for most either, including former icon player Sourav Ganguly. The first name on their new roster was that of Gambhir, after intense bidding involving four other franchises. Under his leadership in 2011, Knight Riders finished fourth.In 2012, Gambhir was exemplary. As captain, he was patient with under performing players, especially those part of the core group, and with a team that shape shifted several times before arriving at its ideal combination. His leadership conformed to his aggressive character and though he was emotive on the field his team was not adversely affected by it. They were galvanised instead.As a batsman, Gambhir was Knight Riders’ lynchpin and finished with the second highest aggregate of the season. He was their most reliable run-scorer and also their quickest (among those with at least 150 runs), averaging 36.87 at a strike rate of 143.55. Gambhir made six half-centuries and was dismissed in single digits only three times. Before the final he had 588 runs in 16 innings; Kallis was Knight Riders’ second best with 340. Gambhir’s performance is particularly impressive because the pitches at Eden Gardens were among the most difficult to bat on. They were often slow, with the ball stopping on the batsmen and spinning appreciably. Through his nimble footwork, Gambhir adapted and carried his team’s batting for majority of the season.Bargain buyConsidering the million-dollar salaries some franchises paid for under-performing players, buying the future Player of the Tournament for a mere $700,000 was a steal. At the 2012 auction Knight Riders secured Sunil Narine’s services after an eyebrow-raising bidding war with Mumbai Indians, who then settled for the South African Robin Peterson a few minutes later. Narine was a little-known Trinidad & Tobago spinner, who had impressed during his brief international career, and it was a testament to Knight Riders’ foresight that his mystery sustained through the season. The auction had taken place before Australia’s tour of the West Indies, and because Narine was not WICB contracted and the board had given no indication of Test selection, he was free and willing to head to India.Narine finished the season with 24 wickets in 15 matches at an average of 13.50 and economy rate of 5.47 – the second highest aggregate, the best average for anyone who bowled more than 10 overs, and the second best economy. He conceded more than 30 in a four-over spell only once and went for six an over or fewer ten times. Narine became Gambhir’s go-to bowler in a variety of situations – to pull back a bad one or to consolidate a good one. He bowled 16 overs during the fielding restrictions at an economy of 4.50, and in 26.1 overs during the last five of an innings, his economy was only 7. Narine’s variations – the sharp offbreak with side spin, the ball that breaks the other way, and the straighter delivery – bowled at tricky pace with a high-arm action that generated bounce were unreadable to even Sachin Tendulkar.Flop buyWith a purse of $2 million, Knight Riders bought three players during the 2012 auction: Narine, Brendon McCullum for $900,000 and Marchant de Lange for $50,000. The management would have expected more from McCullum, who scored only 289 runs with one half-century in 12 innings at a strike rate of 102. The Eden Gardens pitches were not conducive to McCullum’s style of batting. He prefers hard, bouncy surfaces where the ball comes on to the bat, but had to cope with sluggish ones that made timing the ball a challenge. He was still Knight Riders’ third highest run-scorer, though, and maintained the balance of the team by keeping wicket. However, with the other wicketkeeper Manvinder Bisla playing a match-winning innings in the final, McCullum will be challenged to keep his spot next season.HighlightConsider these circumstances. Knight Riders had progressed to the final through consistent performances but were suddenly underdogs against a resurgent Chennai Super Kings, who had the home advantage and the momentum. Then L Balaji, who had an economy of 5.40 this season, failed to recover from his hamstring strain, disrupting Knight Riders’ settled combination. Without a quality Indian seamer on the bench, they had to bring in Brett Lee and leave out McCullum, which meant Bisla, who had played only one game in the previous month, would keep wicket and open as well.And then Gambhir lost the toss, Lee got plundered, Narine went for 0 for 37 in his worst performance of the season, Super Kings amassed 190, and Gambhir was dismissed for 2 in the first over of the chase. It could not have got much worse, before Bisla blindsided Super Kings and Jacques Kallis played the perfect foil during a substantial partnership at breakneck pace that won the title for Knight Riders. They were faced with long odds that mounted during the game but had the resilience to beat them.LowlightPerhaps the highlight of Knight Riders’ campaign is that they won the tournament with only one match-winning cameo from Yusuf Pathan, who built his reputation on destroyed IPL attacks in seasons past. This year, he scored 40 off 21 balls in the playoff against Daredevils, without which Knight Riders might not have played the final. Apart from that Yusuf failed, with only three 20-plus scores and a strike rate of 115. He did not bowl much either and was expensive when he did – three wickets in 22 overs across 12 innings with an economy of 8.27. For a $2.1 million investment, the returns were meagre, but Knight Riders backed Yusuf until the end.Verdict”It was important to prove to the country that cricket is a team game, and hopefully we’ve gone some way in doing that,” Gambhir said after the final. Through the tournament, when questioned about his or Narine’s starring performances, Gambhir took pains to stress the importance of smaller, vital contributions from the others.Be it Kallis’ steady batting combined with vital breakthroughs with the ball; Balaji’s prodigious seam movement which earned him the best economy rate of the tournament; the triumvirate of spinners, which included Shakib Al Hasan and Iqbal Abdulla, and Rajat Bhatia who operated with control; or the nuggety middle-order contributions that raised the total by 10-15 runs, Gambhir acknowledged them all. Without them, his and Narine’s efforts would have been in vain, like Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers’ were for Royal Challengers Bangalore. Knight Riders had most of their squad pulling in the right direction for most of the tournament and that made all the difference.