New Zealand’s captain on learning from Williamson and Vettori, having the courage to bowl it slower, and picking a squad for varied conditions in the Champions Trophy

Danyal Rasool04-Mar-2025″Conditions, I guess, for the majority,” Mitchell Santner says flippantly. As if by instinct, he deflects individual praise, happy to lump it back onto the collective unit. The interview has begun with a response that is stereotypically characteristic of New Zealand cricket.And yet, plainly, there’s more to Santner’s increased value to this New Zealand side than that. His 13 wickets in that famous win over India in Pune were assisted by conditions, but his Test average has ticked downwards over the last couple of years. He followed up that performance with seven wickets in a Player-of-the-Match showing in a crushing win against England in Hamilton, worlds removed from Pune in more ways than one. His Test bowling average over the last two years is under 20 against a career average that hovers in the mid-30s.His improvement extends across formats. Santner’s ODI average and economy rate are better in 2025 than in any other year since 2017 when he’s played more than three games, while his last three years of T20 cricket have produced steadily improving economy and strike rates. Earlier in his career, he used to fit into the New Zealand side because he offered an easy way to balance it, but now he has transformed into the sort of player New Zealand build their side around. That increased value is now official; late last year, he was appointed captain of the white-ball side with a view to lead at least the next three ICC events leading up to the 2027 World Cup, with the ongoing Champions Trophy his first major test.Related

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He clearly relishes the captaincy, but does not think it places him on a higher pedestal; since the appointment of Brendon McCullum over a decade ago, armband transitions have been seamless enough to render every new appointment a continuity candidate.”It’s been a different challenge,” Santner tells ESPNcricinfo. “It’s an honour to play for your country, but also being captain is another level. In terms of the way [Kane Williamson and I] want to approach the game, it’s very similar. Kane’s philosophy started from Baz and went through Kane and everyone in between. It makes it easier that he’s got a wealth of knowledge and he’s done it for a long time. He’s nice to have here and get some ideas off.”Mitchell Santner and Kane Williamson have played under each other’s captaincy•AFP/Getty ImagesWe speak the day before the final of the tri-series in Pakistan, and on the day itself, his entire repertoire is on dazzling display. He comes on to bowl in the 16th over and strangles Pakistan right through the middle, conceding just 15 in his first eight overs. However, in a sign of his versatility, he holds himself back until the 45th over, returning when left-handers Faheem Ashraf, Khushdil Shah and Shaheen Afridi come in to bat. All three prefer the cow-corner slog, theoretically precisely in the arc Santner bowls into.”It takes a little bit [of courage] to toss the ball up,” he says. “Especially when I first started, I was more flat and into the wicket. But playing a lot of games in New Zealand and places that don’t spin a lot, changes of pace and variety have to come into play. I think that’s what I’ve based my bowling off around, that mixing of pace. When it is spinning quickly, you can just roll into the wickets the majority of the balls. But when it is slow and not doing a hell of a lot, that’s when the change of pace comes in. That’s my way of trying to be aggressive as well and take wickets. To potentially have fielders up and bowl slightly slower at times. “In the tri-series final, things work out uncannily similar to the way Santner manifests them. He tosses the ball up higher and wider, drawing them into the slog while staying out of their hitting arc. By the end of the ninth over, he’s snared Kushdil and Faheem; his last two concede just five runs. At 10-1-20-2, it is the most economical bowling spell of his career, and the second-most miserly in Full Member ODIs in 2025.

“I keep in contact with him and he’s helped me a lot with my bowling in the last ten years. The way he was able to change his pace, I tried to do something similar with my action.”Mitchell Santner on Daniel Vettori

It’s not a one-off, either. Despite bowling in the middle when the opposition tries to milk spinners, and towards the start of the third powerplay (that is, the start of death overs), only four players have bowled more dot deliveries this Champions Trophy than his 91. In the early stages of the third powerplay, his parsimony is close to world-leading; only Kuldeep Yadav, Rashid Khan and Maheesh Theekshana can boast a superior economy rate than the New Zealand captain between the 41st and 46th over since the start of the 2023 World Cup.”It can be quite challenging at times for bowlers to think about bowling slow,” he says. “Playing a lot of cricket in New Zealand on smaller grounds and slightly different dimensions, you have to mix it up a little bit. In New Zealand we have a variety of grounds where it might be short, straight, a bigger square. So that kind of slow, wider one comes into play a bit more and if it’s long straight, short square, you tend to bowl a bit slower and full. It’s about adapting and adjusting to what the pitch and the conditions are.”Santner and a side which already looks like it’s moulded in his image are adjusting well. In the first game of the tri-series, in Lahore, where Santner says there was less grass and the wicket was slower, New Zealand batted first, putting up a par total and strangling Pakistan with spin through the middle. Santner was the pick of the bowlers with 3 for 41. On a flatter, faster wicket, they gunned down a large chase against South Africa. Their fourth game in the Champions Trophy – the semi-final against South Africa, will take place in Lahore, meaning New Zealand will have played at four different venues in the tournament; adaptability is a non-negotiable.”It [the changing venues] was part of the thinking when we picked our squad. The conditions could be slightly different. You know what you’re going to get in Pakistan. But I think our squad, we kind of cover that.”Mitchell Santner isn’t afraid to toss the ball up•Getty ImagesThey cover it quite well indeed. Across all three Champions Trophy venues in Pakistan, New Zealand have won their last five ODIs, stretching back to that tri-series. And they have done so in diverse ways, chasing three times and defending twice. It puts them in the relatively serene position of not stressing about the toss; Santner said he did not find the dew in Lahore to be overbearing, and in the one game New Zealand bowled under the lights there, the spinners sent down 26 overs without the moisture hampering them.When Santner made his debut three months after Daniel Vettori retired, he looked something of a Vettori regen: the wavy auburn hair, the spectacles, and left-arm offspin, the lower-order batting ability. Santner cites Vettori as “someone he looked up to”, and his influence on Santner’s game is often unmistakeable.”I keep in contact with him and he’s helped me a lot with my bowling in the last ten years. The way he was able to change his pace, I tried to do something similar with my action. That lack of front arm, like everyone likes to put it. I do watch the batter for a little bit longer. Having that kind of delay and then being able to change is what’s helped me out a lot, especially in white-ball and T20 if guys want to charge. He [Vettori] did it for a very long time in New Zealand on pitches that didn’t offer a lot and did a great job.”Mitchell Santner along with New Zealand’s CT 2025 squad•ICC/Getty ImagesIn the present, though, Santner’s New Zealand find themselves in a familiar position. They are in another semi-final; no side has reached more ICC knockout stages than this one since 2015. Yet, aside from coming within a hair’s breadth of the 2019 World Cup title, New Zealand have not come close to getting their hands on white-ball silverware. Santner was not part of the side that won the final of the 2021 World Test championship.He takes a few moments before answering any question, but this one, as he contemplates the value of consistency against glory, generates the longest contemplative pause. “It’s all about trying to drive this team forward towards a common goal. I think we play our best when we do it for each other. We operate how we want to operate and with everyone giving to a cause in the field. We’ve been close a few times and we have another opportunity here in this major event to see what we can do.”So far, Santner remains true to brand. But then, he fills the pause he’s left. “A trophy would be nice. That might be beyond this tournament. But,” he closes, his voice inflecting as hope fills it, “it might be this tournament.”

The Dodgers are shaking things up ahead of World Series Game 5, making a pair of significant tweaks to the lineup after dropping Game 4 on Tuesday night.

Moving up in the lineup and taking Mookie Betts's spot as the No. 2 hitter for Wednesday's game will be catcher Will Smith. Betts will move down to No. 3, where Freddie Freeman had been batting. Freeman will hit fourth. Betts, despite batting behind Shohei Ohtani, whom Toronto has been remarkably cautious about pitching to, hasn't been too productive in the postseason. He's recorded three hits in the World Series, all singles, and has just a .688 OPS in the playoffs.

Additionally, Andy Pages is moving to the bench in favor of Alex Call, who will start in left field. Pages has struggled at the plate in the postseason, with just four hits in 50 at-bats. He's collected just one hit in the World Series, prompting Dave Roberts to remove him from the starting lineup in favor of Call. With Call in left field and batting ninth, Kike Hernández will be in center field.

Pages had been playing center field, so the Dodgers will be making a change to their approach on defense, too.

With the series knotted at 2–2, it's guaranteed that the teams return to Rogers Centre for the closeout game, whether that be Game 6 or Game 7. Los Angeles was considered a heavy favorite heading into the Fall Classic, and the fact that the Blue Jays have won even two games is a surprise to many. Now, the Dodgers will be hoping these lineup changes can propel them to a crucial win in Game 5 before they return to Toronto.

When Jaiswal scored his century, he had no idea his coach Jwala Singh was at the stadium

Sreshth Shah in Potchefstroom04-Feb-2020″I made him promise me before he left. I made him promise me that he will finish the World Cup with the most runs. If he gets it, I told him I’ll gift him a car.”That’s Jwala Singh, Yashasvi Jaiswal’s coach, talking to ESPNcricinfo inside Chalet 26 of Potchefstroom’s JB Marks Oval, watching his protege take a big step in fulfilling that promise, with a century against Pakistan in the semi-final on Tuesday.Jaiswal, however, has no idea Singh is in South Africa. Jaiswal had categorically told Singh not to come for the tournament. But Singh couldn’t resist, so he flew to Johannesburg and then drove to Potchefstroom as soon as India’s semi-final spot was confirmed. He stays hidden all day, away from Jaiswal’s line of vision, just in case his student gets distracted seeing his coach.But Singh is more than Jaiswal’s coach. Since Yashasvi’s father handed over his son’s responsibility to Singh in 2013, Yashasvi has lived with his coach in Mumbai. Effectively, Singh is the father figure in Jaiswal’s life. The love is on display as Singh gets up from his deck chair to clap as soon as Jaiswal scores the run that takes him past Sri Lanka’s Ravindu Rasantha as the tournament’s highest run-scorer.The Jaiswal at the Under-19 World Cup, though, is very different from the Jaiswal in domestic cricket. Back in India, the left-hand batsman has built a reputation of being an attacking batsman. He has already struck double-hundreds twice in one-day cricket, once for Mumbai Under-19 and another for the senior Mumbai team. But at the World Cup, he has been restrained. Against Sri Lanka, his 59 came at a strike rate of 79.72. Against New Zealand, his 57 was scored at a strike rate of 74.02. Against Australia in the quarter-final, his strike rate was 75.60 while scoring 62.”In Mumbai, he has senior cricketers around him, so he has the freedom to play his natural game. But here, he knows he’s probably the most crucial part of the team’s batting,” Singh explains. “That’s what makes Jaiswal special – his adaptability.”Fifteen minutes later, Jaiswal guides a short ball down to the fine-leg boundary to inch closer to his fourth fifty in five games. Singh chips in again, giving an insight into the teenager’s brain.”You see that shot? That’s what sets him apart,” he says. “Any other batsman and he would’ve gone for the pull. But Jaiswal knows that’s not the right option when there’s no run-rate pressure.”The reason Singh can analyse Jaiswal so well is because they’ve stayed under the same roof for five years now. Once upon a time, Jaiswal would live in the tents of Azad Maidan in Mumbai while beginning his cricketing journey, selling , a street snack, after practice to stay financially afloat in India’s most expensive city. But since Singh opened his home’s doors for Jaiswal, they have practiced cricket in the daytime and chatted about everything else in the evenings.”We have a rule at home. Every evening, he gives me a massage and tells me how his day went,” Singh says. “Even if I forget to ask him for a massage, he will come to me. Because he’s not had much of a childhood, he can get easily lured into things that teenagers do these days. So we discuss every aspect of his life. Everyday. But he is this headstrong because I’ve never given him anything on a platter. Even on the IPL auction day, I sent him to shop for groceries.Yashasvi Jaiswal hits into the leg side•Getty Images”Once in a generation can someone become a legend. Jaiswal has that in him, which is why it’s so important to stay grounded. There are so many players who have played for India and done well. But legends don’t come by every day. That’s what I have tried to drill into him. He has now come to understand what all he can achieve if he keeps his head in the right place.”This one time, he was the Player of the Series in a local tournament. He got a INR 10,000 voucher. He said he wanted to buy a cricket helmet, so I gave him permission to buy one.”When he came back, he said, ‘I’ve spent INR 3000 extra, can you give me that money please?’ That was the first time I got angry at him. I snatched the helmet from him and said, ‘13000 for a helmet? That’s ridiculous. You will wear this when you really deserve it.'”I put the helmet on top of his almirah after that. So that he could see it every day. The day he made his Ranji debut, I personally handed that helmet over to him. That’s the day I realised that whatever goal you give Jaiswal, he will fulfil it.”Singh, who was also Prithvi Shaw’s coach from 2015 to 2018, says that he feels blessed to have shaped two cricketers who are destined for greatness. At one time, Singh – from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh – had dreams of being an India cricketer. But knee injuries dashed his hopes and so he chose to be a coach. He has recently given permission for a movie to be based on his life story. It’s title is apt: .As Jaiswal reaches his nineties, I probe whether the now-successful Jaiswal – with an IPL contract at hand – has ever given him a gift, Singh’s smile widens.”You see his jersey number? It’s 23 because that’s my birth date,” Singh says. “What more can I ask for?”Before my daughter was born, he was my only child. Now he’s an elder brother to my girl. Even my girl has proven lucky for him. The day she was born, December 6, 2017, he struck the double-hundred for Mumbai Under-19.”He is so mature that when I said I’ll give him a car for being the highest run-scorer, he said he doesn’t want a new one. He wants to take my old Brezza so that I buy myself a new one.”A few moments later, Jaiswal reaches his hundred by slog-sweeping the Pakistan spinner Aamir Ali over deep midwicket. He raises his arms, looked upwards and says a silent prayer. Singh then says, “I think I’ll reveal it to him now. That I’m here.”

Twenty years ago, a South African captain made a confession that would change cricket forever

Luke Alfred07-Apr-2020The days of January 22 and 23, 1988, were not auspicious ones for the Cronje brothers, Hansie and Frans. Just out of Grey College in Bloemfontein, Hansie made his debut for Orange Free State (OFS) in a Currie Cup fixture against Transvaal, with his brother playing only his fourth first-class game for the province. At the Wanderers they faced a Transvaal attack led by the Barbadian Rod Estwick with Clive Rice tucking into his slipstream. The match was over in two days.Both Transvaal pacemen had a touch of the thug about them and were none too sentimental about a group of upstart Afrikaners who had strayed onto the wrong side of the curtain. Frans made 1 and 4, while Hansie’s first-innings 2 was improved upon in his second dig, when he scraped 16 in two hours. “The Cronjes didn’t do that badly,” says the fast bowler Gordon Parsons of a side that had recently been promoted to A Section cricket. “Free State managed 160-odd in the first innings and got bowled out for 51 in their second. Hansie top-scored, if I remember correctly. The next best was Corrie van Zyl.”Parsons, an Englishman who wintered regularly in South Africa, met Hansie for the first time the previous season at the Ramblers nets in Bloem. He was impressed by the youngster’s willingness to learn, remembering that Hansie immediately asked him how he’d get him out. Parsons replied that because Hansie was a little rigid at the crease, he’d bowl on fourth stump, moving it away, and his guess was that the youngster would go at it with hard hands. It was the beginning of a long friendship, cemented over many a meal at 246 Paul Kruger Avenue, the Cronjes’ home. Hansie’s mom, San-Marie, was famous for her cooking, and there was extra attraction: Parsons rather fancied Hansie’s sister, Hester.Cronje’s disastrous first trip to the Wanderers was soon forgotten. Although he struggled – sometimes badly – in first-class cricket, he took to the limited-overs game like a ball of pap to a fishing hook. Parsons remembers a Benson and Hedges match against Kepler Wessels’ Eastern Province in which he and the Cronje brothers played later that year. Wessels had said some mildly disparaging things about OFS in the press and it riled the visitors to St George’s, who were sensitive about being dismissed as a soft touch.ALSO WATCH: Graeme Smith and Daryll Cullinan recall the horror of the match-fixing scandalThere was more. Wessels was 12 years Cronje’s senior at Grey College and had then recently returned home after playing 24 Tests for Australia. Wessels had beaten a path to the summit of the game and had done so on his own terms. Cronje idolised him – taking honours against Kepler’s EP would be just the thing.”We were bowled out for 180-odd in our 45 overs,” recalls Parsons with a chuckle. “We then ran out Mark Rushmere and Phillip Amm went early. Kepler stuck around for 70 and moaned because we peppered him with bouncers. We won by 13 runs.”

Towards the end of the team’s first fully-fledged tour to India since readmission, Cronje entertained thoughts of throwing the third Test in Kanpur

Orange Free State’s new-found first-class status was, in a sense, a family affair. While the young Cronje brothers were struggling to tame Estwick on a spicy Wanderers deck, their dad, Ewie, and others had campaigned tirelessly for OFS to take what they believed was her rightful place among the traditional domestic powerhouses of the South African game; he also represented OFS at board meetings and was close to the United Cricket Board’s Ali Bacher. Through Ewie, the Cronjes had a representative in the heart of South African cricket’s decision-making process.Ewie grew up in the small town of Bethulie, south of Bloemfontein, and had learned cricket from David Marks, the owner of the local Royal Hotel. For young middle-class Afrikaners, advantaged through the 1950s as apartheid began its comprehensive lockdown of South African life, cricket provided opportunities for self-improvement. All you had to do was wear white, rub your bat with linseed oil during long winter nights on the and remember to fold your wrists over the ball when cutting.ALSO READ: The Cronje chronicles – a timelineEwie was the only Afrikaans-speaking member of the OFS Nuffield side in 1957. Hansie, by contrast, was part of a dominant Afrikaans-speaking side in his final year at school 30 years later. After the 1987 Nuffield Week, the national schools tournament, he went on to captain SA Schools with Jonty Rhodes as a team-mate, and by the 1989-90 season, he was scoring his first first-class century – for SA Universities against Mike Gatting’s rebel England tourists.Parsons says that Cronje was not only self-evidently ambitious, he was also a good planner. “His view was, ‘If we do get back into international cricket I’m going to be ready.'” It was a view encouraged when, shortly after Cronje had scored his maiden ton, Nelson Mandela was released from Paarl’s Victor Verster prison on February 11, 1990. It wasn’t the first time that the path of Cronje – who had been feted early on as a possible South Africa captain – intersected with the crosswinds of politics.Eighteen months after Mandela’s release, Cronje, along with Faiek Davids and Derek Crookes, was taken to India as part of South Africa’s quickly arranged first post-readmission tour. Pakistan had withdrawn from their trip to India at the last minute and it was felt that the youngsters – who supplemented the main side – would gain from the exposure. Ewie and San-Marie were invited along as part of a slightly swollen official delegation. India had been a vocal critic of apartheid. Now 100,000 people lined the streets from Calcutta airport to wave at the South African cavalcade as they inched towards their hotel.The beginning of the end: Cronje’s much-lauded decision to forfeit the second innings of the Centurion Test in 2000 turned out to be motivated by less than noble reasons•Getty ImagesAt the beginning of the following year Cronje’s fine domestic form was rewarded with a place in South Africa’s first ever World Cup squad. Weeks later he found himself in Barbados, as understudy to skipper Wessels, for three one-day internationals and an Easter Test. South Africa was not yet democratic but the world rushed to welcome her back into the fold. Both within and without, some thought it happened with unseemly haste.”Nobody ever doubted for one second that he was the right choice for captain,” Cronje’s former headmaster, Andre Volsteedt, told a BBC documentary in 2008, and so it came to pass. With Wessels suffering from a hand injury, Cronje took over the captaincy when the team was in Australia in 1993-94, with the South Africans memorably winning the Sydney Test. The full-time captaincy wasn’t his but it was only a matter of time.Wessels remained captain for the tour of England in 1994, the first to that country since readmission. Matters began on a grace note of flag-draping emotion, with a thumping win at Lord’s. Old “Soft Hands”, Peter Kirsten, scored a century in the drawn second Test, at Headingley, but matters headed south at The Oval when Fanie de Villiers struck Devon Malcolm flush on the helmet, an affront to which he didn’t take kindly. “Don’t ask me that – you guys are dead,” was Malcolm’s response to Allan Donald’s question about whether he was all right, as he felled the South African batsmen like skittles. Malcolm took 9 for 57 in the South African second innings, England winning the Test and so squaring the series.ALSO READ: Devon Malcolm: ‘I saw some of the so-called tough guys of world cricket tremble’Cronje had a miserable time in England. His dismissal to Malcolm in the second innings at The Oval was a case in point: he was too late on the shot, being bowled by a delivery that beat him for sheer, breathtaking pace. The selectors were suddenly worried: Out of his comfort zone in England, Cronje looked troubled. Was he the right man to take over from Wessels?They dealt with their unease about Cronje and others – like Andrew Hudson – both adroitly and with a touch of expedience: by sacking Mike Procter, the coach. By the time the team toured again, playing in the Wills Triangular in Pakistan with the hosts and Australia, a new gaffer was driving the team bus. His name was Bob Woolmer and he was a man for whom the word could have been invented. Having grown up in Kent, he had relocated to Cape Town in the 1980s after playing 19 Tests for England. An assiduous thinker about the game, Woolmer interviewed better than his rivals and brought best practice and creativity to the job, qualities Procter conspicuously lacked.Against his better judgement, Wessels remained. He had turned 37 the month before the tour to Pakistan in October 1994, but such were the concerns about Cronje, the captain elect, that he soldiered on. Although the South Africans lost all six matches, Cronje was in sublime form, rounding off South Africa’s penultimate game with a not-out hundred against Australia. Despite South Africa failing to reach the final, he was the competition’s leading scorer, making Wessels’ retirement all the easier. He walked into the sunset with the characteristically grim dignity that had made him such a reliable performer in the early readmission years.

Cronje became the go-to man for young and old Afrikaners alike; he also became a figurehead for all that was perceived as good in the fragile post-apartheid consensus – a new man for a new age.

Cronje’s first Test in charge was against Ken Rutherford’s New Zealanders, at the Wanderers, which South Africa lost in an atmosphere of finger-pointing and recrimination. A win at Kingsmead in Test two levelled the series, but such was the quality of Barry Lambson’s umpiring in the third Test, at Newlands, that Rutherford became apoplectic. He was incandescent that Lambson hadn’t given Cronje out when he feathered an edge to the keeper on his way to a match-and-series-winning 112.At the end of Cronje and Woolmer’s first full season together, Cronje married his childhood sweetheart, Bertha Pretorius. Shortly afterward, he started as Leicestershire’s overseas professional, a position finessed by Parsons. During a busy county season, there were opportunities for fun. The young couple went to Wimbledon, where Hansie was mistaken for Pete Sampras. There was a trip to Paris, where, according to Hester, “they lived on bread and water – he was such a cheapskate, he was always giving away his freebies as Christmas and birthday presents”.As the seasons rolled on, fun seemed in increasingly short supply. Towards the end of the team’s first fully fledged tour to India since readmission, Cronje entertained thoughts of throwing the third Test in Kanpur; the team also considered a match-fixing proposition after having had their arms twisted into playing in Mohinder Amarnath’s benefit match, which wasn’t on the original itinerary.ALSO READ: The Grinch who stole cricketThe following season, a shepherd boy from the Eastern Cape called Makhaya Ntini was forced on Cronje in a home series against Sri Lanka. Ntini had warmed his shoeless feet in cow pats as a child, and he so impressed cricket scouts that he was given a bursary to Dale College in King Williamstown, where he blossomed.He survived a rape trial to become the UCB’s poster boy, and Bacher thought it politically appropriate to shoehorn him into the national side. Cronje was having none of it; Ntini hadn’t served a domestic apprenticeship, he argued. But his protestations were in vain. Ntini made his debut against the Sri Lankans in the Newlands Test of March 1998, taking the first of what turned out to be 390 Test wickets.The young skipper took on an increasingly beleaguered air. He turned out briefly alongside the abattoir workers and painters of amateur Ireland as an overseas professional, a decision that unambiguously said to Bacher and his cohorts: “Be careful, you might lose me.” The following season, when South Africa were visited by West Indies for the first time, South Africa fielded an all-white side against the visitors’ all-black one in the first Test. The controversy was immediate. Herschelle Gibbs, a Cape coloured, was drafted into the side in the place of Adam Bacher, Ali’s nephew, for the second, but such tinkering did little to placate the politicians. A rancorous season, amped up by an insensitive speech by then UCB president Ray White at Newlands, ended in Cronje resigning, a decision later rescinded.Cronje’s betrayal was keenly felt across the world•Yoav Lemmer/AFPThe problem was clear: Cronje was never quite as liberal as the times demanded. He, whose political attitudes had been formed in the old South Africa, was expected to usher in the new with the blithe sweep of the politician’s practised hand. He couldn’t always do it.As the decade funnelled to an end, Cronje and politicians like Bacher circled each other increasingly warily. What had started so warmly with Woolmer also began to sour. Consecutive World Cup eliminations in 1996 and 1999 didn’t help, the second in excruciating circumstances in the tie at Edgbaston, a muddle memorably captured by the ‘s Scyld Berry as “… the day when time and Allan Donald stood still and Lance Klusener kept on running”.Having toured India in 1991 as the happening youngster, Cronje was in the public eye throughout the decade, South African sport’s first celebrity skipper. Lucas Radebe graced the throne all too briefly, hobbled by injuries. Francois Pienaar might have occupied the position too, but his reign as Springbok player and captain was dazzlingly brief, over in 29 Tests and three years, 1993-1996. Cronje was in the public gaze for triple that time, 1991-2000, longer if one takes his post-cricketing life into account.It was a time during which Afrikaner politicians retired almost completely from the public realm. Into the vacuum flowed sportsmen and public intellectuals like Max du Preez and Antjie Krog. Cronje became the go-to man for young and old Afrikaners alike; he also became a figurehead for all that was perceived as good in the fragile post-apartheid consensus – a new man for a new age. Here was uncharted territory, but his was also a career conducted almost exclusively in the glare of public opinion. It was a difficult burden to bear.ALSO READ: I love Hansie Cronje and I don’t know whyCronje’s dislike of political compromise was one thing, the tragic flaw in his personality quite another. He loved money so much that he was motivated to do wrong for it, a fact known by White – and one therefore almost inevitably known by Bacher. Not enough was made of the flirtation with easy money during the Kanpur Test in 1996, ahead of the Amarnath benefit match, hastily tacked on to the end of a punishing tour without the players’ consent. Woolmer didn’t see fit to include anything in his post-tour report, and by the time a new coach, Graham Ford, took South Africa to India next, in 2000, institutional memory had been lost. Cronje accepted the gift of a cell phone while on that second tour, and unbeknownst to him, his conversations with illegal Indian bookies were taped. Cronje’s web of deceit, his undelivered-upon promises and his manipulation, had begun to unravel.Cronje’s initial denials that he had been involved in match-fixing were met with chest-thumping agreement by the vox populi. Then, a handwritten confession and a teary press conference in Durban in April 2000, ahead of an ODI series against Australia. The bookie, Marlon Aronstam, who had waltzed into Cronje’s hotel room during the last Test of the home summer against England before the India tour, thought Cronje had been pressured into blinking first. The Indian police had no transcripts. “It was his word against theirs – he needed to ride it out,” said Aronstam.

Cricket, a sport of boundaries both actual and moral, had, under Cronje’s perverting touch, revealed itself to be effectively boundary-less

Instead, Cronje unravelled. It became apparent that the idea for each side to forfeit an innings in Centurion against England was not his but Aronstam’s, an act of audacity for which Cronje received R50,000 and a leather jacket for Bertha. While in India weeks later he was receiving upwards of 50 to 60 cell phone calls and text messages a day, as he jokingly floated the idea of underperforming in a Test with Lance Klusener, Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis.Later in India, with the five-match ODI series already lost, he conspired to involve Gibbs and Henry Williams in underperforming in the fifth ODI in Nagpur. Ever the charming , Gibbs forgot the instructions; Williams injured himself and couldn’t complete the second of his ten overs. Ironically, South Africa won the match, losing the ODI series 3-2.ALSO READ: How the match-fixing drama unfoldedCronje’s confession prompted the King Commission, a soap opera replete with pantomime villains (Aronstam), feisty public prosecutors (Shamila Batohi) and comically unreliable witnesses (Pat Symcox and Daryll Cullinan). Judge Edwin King had begun proceedings by striking the appropriate high note, telling Cronje “the truth shall set you free”, but with hindsight we see that the commission’s intention was palliative. Woolmer wasn’t called as a witness, and neither was Wessels. White, who had a sometimes tetchy relationship with Bacher and was less likely to coat his answers, would have proven invaluable in answering questions. It would have been illuminating, for instance, to hear his answers about the “lost” 1996 tour report to India.All this was conducted in the deforming glare of the television cameras, a place Cronje had occupied, on and off, since his first tour to India in 1991. Essentially an outlier (apartheid-educated, Afrikaans-speaking, from South Africa’s most maligned province), Cronje was not only ill equipped with the diplomacy demanded by the times, he was country’s most scrutinised celebrity sportsman. The pressures he faced were unique, the erosion slow and cumulative. By the end he was lost in a moral wilderness, having breakfast with Aronstam and his son on the morning of a Test, entertaining thoughts of corrupting the match. Cricket, a sport of boundaries both actual and moral, had, under Cronje’s perverting touch, revealed itself to be effectively boundary-less. It had reached a moral degree zero, with Cronje holding the compass. “When I told my friends about having breakfast with Hansie, they couldn’t believe it,” said Aronstam.Neither could we.Excerpted with permission from by Luke Alfred and Ian Hawkey (Pan Macmillan SA, 2019)

This week, we look back at the red-ball careers of West Indies’ T20 freelancers

Karthik Krishnaswamy08-Jun-2020The 103-Test enigma
Chris Gayle famously said he “wouldn’t be so sad” if Test cricket died out, but he’s shown more fondness for the format since then, wearing the number 333 (his highest Test score) on his jersey, stating in his autobiography that “without Bob Marley there would be no Beenie Man”, and expressing hurt that his Test achievements tend to get forgotten.And he has a point. Gayle played 103 Tests, and left behind an impressive body of work: more than 7000 runs at an average better than that of Stephen Fleming, Michael Vaughan and Mark Waugh among others, with two triple-tons among his 15 hundreds.So here’s some footage to watch and better appreciate the red-ball Gayle: the 333 in Galle; the 87-ball 105 at The Oval in 2004, which included six fours in one Matthew Hoggard over, and a ludicrous straight six, with one foot off the ground, off James Anderson; two hundreds on the 2003-04 tour of South Africa, in Centurion and Cape Town; and a pair of hundreds on the 2009-10 tour of Australia – the unbeaten third-innings 165 in Adelaide, where he carried his bat and gave West Indies a distinct chance of victory, and the 72-ball 102 in an agonizingly close defeat at the WACA.That’s right, Gayle made two hundreds in a series in Australia South Africa. Since the start of the 1990s, Sachin Tendulkar is the only other visiting batsman to have achieved that feat.A remarkable debut
In the same Cape Town Test where Gayle scored 116, a debutant walked in to bat in the fourth innings with West Indies four down and struggling to save the game. Dwayne Smith proceeded to play the unlikeliest of match-saving innings, clattering 15 fours and two sixes in an unbeaten, run-a-ball 105.For those who can only recall Smith in his later avatar as a T20 basher, this video is a glimpse of a very different batsman: nimble-footed, with a lovely, wristy flourish. There’s a carefree spirit at work too; Paul Adams bowls to him from left-arm over, with a packed leg-side boundary, and Smith keeps lofting and whipping him in the air and into the gaps. And you’ll scarcely see a more breathtaking shot than his bent-knee cover drive off Makhaya Ntini that carries all the way for a flat six.Dwayne Bravo pulls off a stunning caught and bowled•Hamish Blair/Getty ImagesThe other Dwayne
Six months after Smith, West Indies handed a Test debut to another Dwayne, and he also happened to be a lavishly gifted strokeplayer who bowled medium-pace. And while Dwayne Smith never really translated his potential into consistent performances in international cricket, Dwayne Bravo left enough evidence to suggest he could have become an all-format superstar.Watch here as he picks up six England wickets on a tricky, two-paced Old Trafford pitch in 2004 – he could be as skillful bowling seam-up with the red ball as he is while bowling those dipping slower balls with the white.And while he’s now primarily a bowler who plays the occasional lower-order cameo, he was primarily a batsman during his Test-match days, and scored three hundreds, two of which came in Australia. In Hobart in 2005, he walked in with West Indies effectively minus 124 for 5 (which soon became minus 117 for 6), and scored an attractive 113 against McGrath, Lee, Warne and MacGill. Four years later in Adelaide, Bravo led a strong first-innings display with a 156-ball 104 that featured some terrific drives through the covers. Sadly for red-ball aficionados, Bravo would only play seven more Tests.Seven at Lord’s
Just as it did with Bravo, T20 made a profound impact on Darren Sammy’s bowling. Sammy hardly bowls now, and when he does, it’s usually an assortment of slower balls and cutters. Early in his career, however, Sammy bowled stiflingly accurate medium-pace, using his height to hit the pitch and get the ball to nibble off the seam. Those limited weapons allowed him to average under 30 through his first 20 Tests, during which time he picked up four five-wicket hauls. One of them, famously, was a seven-for on debut at Lord’s, a performance that was all about line, length, a bit of bounce, and the merest hint of movement off the deck.The new Ramadhin?
In the 1950s, West Indies’ most potent spin-bowling weapon was a Trinidadian who could, as his Wisden Almanack profile puts it, “make the ball break either way by a simple flick of his small fingers and an imperceptible turn of the wrist.” Sonny Ramadhin picked up 158 Test wickets in 43 Tests, and his average of 28.98 remains the best among those of the five West Indies spinners with 100 or more wickets.From June 2011 to December 2012, another Trinidadian with a remarkably similar method to Ramadhin played six Tests for West Indies, picking up 21 wickets at 40.52. Not particularly remarkable, but six matches is no sort of sample size to determine a players’s quantity, and Sunil Narine may have gone on to bigger things as a Test cricketer. In what turned out to be his last Test, in Hamilton, Narine picked up first-innings figures of 6 for 91 and may well have won the match for West Indies had they not collapsed in the second innings. As you can watch here, it isn’t just deception that gets Narine his wickets but his perfect length too.What We’re Watching

Crawley’s innings during the third Test against Pakistan in numbers

Bharath Seervi22-Aug-2020267 – Zak Crawley’s score, the second-highest maiden century by an England batsman and the seventh-highest overall. Only Tip Foster’s 287 is a higher maiden hundred by an England player than Crawley’s 267. Karun Nair’s 303 not out is the only higher maiden century in the last 25 years.ESPNcricinfo Ltd4 – Number of batsmen to make a 250-plus score in Tests at a younger age than Crawley, who was 22 years, 200 days at the start of this match. The four batsmen are Garry Sobers, Don Bradman, Len Hutton and Graeme Smith. Bradman and Smith had made two 250-plus scores before turning 23.3 – Crawley is the third-youngest England batsman to score a Test double century. Hutton and David Gower are the two England batsmen to score a double-hundred at an younger age than Crawley.ESPNcricinfo Ltd1 – Number of higher individual scores by England No. 3 batsmen in Tests than Crawley’s 267. Wally Hammond’s 336 not out is the only bigger innings at No. 3.359 – The partnership between Crawley and Jos Buttler, is the joint fourth-highest fifth-wicket partnership in Test history. For England, there have been only five bigger partnerships for any wicket in Tests than the 359 between Crawley-Buttler. Crawley scored at a strike rate of 70.17 (200 runs off 285 balls) in the partnership whereas Buttler scored at just 49.64 (138 off 278).ESPNcricinfo Ltd1 – Crawley’s 267 is the highest innings in Tests to end by stumping. The previous highest score for someone who was stumped out was Seymour Nurse’s 258 in 1969.28.54 – Crawley’s Test career average in seven Tests, coming into this match. He had made 314 runs in 11 innings with three fifties. After his massive 267-run innings, his average has shot up to 48.41. His first-class career average was just 30.82 before this Test with three hundreds and a highest score of 168.

Captain has led the way with the bat to keep Sussex in quarter-final hunt

Matt Roller15-Sep-2020If T20 can be a fickle game, no competition exemplifies it better than the Vitality Blast. While most leagues now incorporate an IPL-style play-off system – with the team finishing top of the group stage given a double chance – the Blast is a straight knockout from the quarter-finals. Even if you win every game in your group, one slip-up is enough for you to be dumped out unceremoniously.Sussex know that better than most. Across the last two-and-a-half seasons, they have the joint-best win/loss ratio (alongside Lancashire) in the competition, but no silverware to show for it. After losing a tight 2018 final to Worcestershire, they confirmed their knockout spot with two group games to spare last season, but Moeen Ali made a remarkable 121 not out after being dropped on 5 in the quarters to send them out.”No matter how good a team you are, we all know how random T20 can be on any given day,” reflects their captain Luke Wright. “We’ve been very, very close. All you can do is keep getting yourself into the quarter-finals and hope you get it right on the day.”It’s not always the best team that wins; it’s the one that gets some momentum at the right time. That’s what Essex did last year. They were nearly dead and buried at the halfway stage, but they timed their run brilliantly. Sometimes you almost want to scrape into the quarters: if you hit form once you’re into those, then you’ve got a massive chance.”ALSO READ: Essex ride their luck to make off with T20 spoilsSussex look well-placed to qualify with three games to go in the South Group this season. Defeat at home to Essex on Monday, thanks to a Dan Lawrence special – “he played out of his skin” says Wright – was a surprise, but two wins should be enough to secure a quarter-final berth.They have managed that despite the absences of Jofra Archer, Chris Jordan (both England then IPL), Phil Salt (England reserve), Laurie Evans, Reece Topley (both left for Surrey), Rashid Khan and Travis Head (both had their contracts cancelled) for much of the tournament to date, and plenty of that has been thanks to Wright’s own form.