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United Arab Emirates 148 for 3 (Waseem 50, Rizwan 43, Scholtz 1-22) beat Namibia 141 for 8 (Wiese 55, Hameed 2-17, Zahoor 2-20) by seven runs.It has taken UAE six matches in two tournaments, spread over eight years, but finally they have notched up a win at a T20 World Cup. They scored their second-highest tournament total and defended it fiercely, dismissing Namibia for…From 69 for 7, Namibia had no business being in the Super 12s but they have got there, and got there by topping their group and breaking Dutch and Emirati hearts in the process. Namibia’s win means both they and Sri Lanka advance, with Netherlands’ hopes hinging on a UAE win and UAE being denied their first win at a T20 World Cup.Actually, in a match to confound every writer of match reports, it was UAE who triumphed despite David Wiese and Ruben Trumpelmann putting on 80 off 56 balls for the eighth wicket after Namibia were 69 for 7. Namibia needed 14 runs off the final over, bowled by Muhammad Waseem, but Wiese was dismissed off the fourth ball and Namibia did not have enough muscle at the end.The result matters most to Netherlands, who will advance in second place to the Super12s alongside Sri Lanka, with Namibia knocked out despite being the favourites. UAE will also depart the tournament, but with a some points to show for it.Related

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They very nearly dropped their chance of victory when Waseem, who had set up UAE’s total with a half-century and was tasked with bowling the 17th over, dropped Wiese off his own bowling on 33. Wiese slogged and the ball went straight up, giving Waseem time to get there but he could not hold on. He then bowled the final over and had Wiese well-caught by Alishan Sharafu at long-on – the ball was heading for six had Sharafu not timed his jump and held on – to end Namibia’s chances. Incidentally, Waseem had bowled only 22 balls before in 19 T20 games and one of his three victims before Thursday was Wiese.Earlier, on a surface that seemed to get better for batting as the ball got older, UAE’s innings began with a slow burn but finished strongly. They were 58 for 1 in the first 10 overs and only reached 100 in the 16th over. But, they scored 51 runs off the last five overs to push the total close to 150 and notch up their second-highest total in T20 World Cups. Namibia’s effort in the field was mostly disciplined but the left-armers JJ Smit and Jan Frylinck conceded 69 runs in seven overs between them while opening bowler Ben Shikongo only delivered one over, the 15th.In contrast, the UAE’s captain Chundangapoyil Rizwan made some inspired decisions in the field. Basil Hameed became the first bowler to deliver three successive overs in the powerplay in Geelong in this tournament and took two wickets to leave Namibia on 26 for 3 inside five overs. Karthik Meiyappan removed Namibia’s captain Gerhard Erasmus and ran out Smit to open up the middle-order. From 46 for 5, even with David Wiese to come, Namibia could not find a way back and that was underlined when Zahoor Khan was brought back in the 13th over. He took two wickets in his second over to leave Namibia in tatters but Wiese and Trumplemann resurrected their cause only to fall short in the end.Waseem leads the way
UAE’s most accomplished batter anchored their innings with the right mix of energy and aggression to set them up for a competitive score. He found his first boundary when he went down on one knee to sweep Bernard Scholtz over deep backward square and then worked the the ball around through a quiet period before showing off his strong footwork against Jan Frylinck.Waseem advanced down the track to push him over mid-off and then straight back over his head for one of the group’s biggest sixes. His fifty came off 40 balls and despite the slow scoring rate, Waseem maintained a strike rate of over 100 and he did that by running well. He ran 16 singles and six twos and shared partnerships of 39 for the first wicket and 58 for the second to give UAE a base to build on.David Wiese raised hopes of an unlikely Namibian win with his big-hitting•AFP/Getty Images

Finishing strong
The UAE entered the final two overs on 115 for 3 and were still being kept fairly quiet but with 140-plus in their sights, had to hit out. Hameed began the assault when he carefully ran Wiese wide of Zane Green to third for four and then tucked into a short ball and pulled it over deep square for six. Wiese’s final over cost 12 runs but the best for the UAE was still to come. JJ Smits was preferred over Ben Shikongo to deliver the 20th over and immediately missed his yorker.Rizwan sent a waist-high full-toss over fine leg for six. He then ran three to put Hameed back on strike and he finished by whacking a length ball over midwicket and then reverse-scooping another over the wicket-keeper’s head. In between Smit got one in the right place but his final over went for 21. UAE scored 33 in the last two overs.Namibia begin to bottle it
Namibia made a nervy start to their reply as UAE made good use of a short-ball strategy upfront. Stephen Baard faced five of the balls from Junaid Siddique: got one away for a single, mistimed another, swung and missed at a third, sent the fourth to deep third for four and then inside-edged to give Ahmed Raza at short cover catching practice. Michael van Lingen faced three from Hameed, cut the first one for four, defended the second and then tried to hit the third over deep backward square but found Sharafu, who was perfectly positioned for the catch.But the biggest blow came when Rizwan opted to keep Hameed on for a third over in the powerplay and Jan-Nicol Loftie-Eaton missed a sweep. Though it looked like the ball was going down leg, Rizwan was persuaded to review and ball-tracking showed it would go on to hit the stumps. Namibia were 26 for 3 after five overs.Karthik’s over of mania…
Karthik took a hat-trick against Sri Lanka and made the major incisions into the Namibian line-up and will leave this tournament having made a name for himself. He was brought on to bowl the eighth over and foxed Erasmus with a back-of-a-hand delivery outside off that the Namibian captain made room to slice way and was bowled instead. Three balls later, Smit pushed the ball to a vacant mid-wicket region and wanted two runs. But Frylinck turned down the second, so Smit had to head back to the non-striker’s crease. By then, Karthik had chased the ball and fired a throw to the bowler’s end, leaving Smit short of his ground and furious.…and his other over of mania
Namibia entered the final five overs on 85 for 7, needing 64 runs. That may not have seem completely improbable given that UAE scored 51 in their last five, but with only three wickets in hand, it was going to take some doing. Pressure was building on both sides and UAE were first to let it affect them when Siddique misfielded on the sweeper cover boundary to turn what should have been a single to Wiese into four. Wiese kept strike but then gave it up with a single, clearly trusting his partner, Trumpelmann. He got out the slog and scored 12 runs off the next three balls, all with the same shot, including a four and a six. The over cost Meiyappan 18 runs and shifted momentum to Namibia.

Mayank Agarwal isn’t focusing as much on a Test comeback as he is on emulating the kind of Ranji Trophy season he had in 2017-18, when he topped the charts with 1160 runs in 13 innings.Agarwal isn’t part of India’s Test tour of Bangladesh, having endured a slump in form over the past six months. This has coincided with Shubman Gill and Abhimanyu Easwaran doing everything they can to impress the selectors. Added to that is the fact that he’s also been released by his IPL franchise, Punjab Kings, whom he captained earlier this year.Related

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It’s in the midst of all this that Agarwal has been handed Karnataka’s captaincy. The team reached the knockouts of both T20 and 50-overs competition. Now, he’s set to lead them in the Ranji Trophy, replacing his contemporary Manish Pandey, who was removed from the top job following a mediocre 2021-22 first-class season where Karnataka lost out in the quarter-finals.”I’ve been working on emulating what I did in 2017-18, when I had that good season,” Agarwal said in Bengaluru, ahead of Karnataka’s Ranji opener against Services on Tuesday. “I’ve gone back a little bit, looked at those videos, gone through those game plans and worked around that.”For me, that result or the end goal [India selection] will take care of itself. I want to look at my processes, areas I need to improve on and what I need to do to keep performing the way I was doing. And I back myself to deliver those performances.”Agarwal has a strong batting line-up to lean on, with all of R Samarth, Devdutt Padikkal and Pandey in the mix. The only notable absentee is Karun Nair, who has fallen out of favour with the selectors following a bad run of form that stretches back three seasons. However, there were times during the last campaign that he seemed to be rediscovering his touch again.Mayank Agarwal: There are no two ways about it. We want to win trophies for Karnataka•BCCI

The selectors have rewarded 22-year old Nikin Jose for his Vijay Hazare Trophy form – he was Karnataka’s leading run-getter, and Vishal Onat, who has had a stellar run in age-group cricket. One of them could well be handed a debut cap on Tuesday.As he takes over a young team in a transition, Agarwal is mindful of creating an environment similar to the one in 2013-14, when he broke through to make his first-class debut after years of being pigeon-holed as a white-ball player.”We have to keep encouraging them, create a good environment for them to flourish,” Agarwal said. “They’re in the team because of the performances they have put in age-group cricket. Nikin did very well in the Vijay Hazare as well. We want him to continue that form. As a team, we want to have an atmosphere where they can come, learn, execute and flourish, put up match-winning performances for Karnataka and play for the country.”I want to encourage them [youngsters], because they’ve put in performances. They’re skilled, they have the temperament and talent. We want to back them and help them learn. The environment we want to create in the team is one of wanting to win trophies, and we’re hungry for it.”The more we win and the more we enjoy each other’s success, that will come. Each of us has to be part of this environment, it’s not about one or two players coming in and creating that. If 20-25 of us create that, it will all stack up together. And when things stack up, results will take care of itself.”Karnataka last won the Ranji Trophy in 2014-15 and have stumbled in the knockouts for three seasons in a row. In 2018-19 and 2019-20, they lost in the semi-finals, to Saurashtra and Bengal respectively. Last season, they were upset in the quarter-final by Uttar Pradesh. Agarwal doesn’t want the team to be weighed down the baggage of being nearly men.”We’ve spoken of the legacy [of Karnataka cricket] and realised if we keep thinking off winning, winning, winning all the time, it’s not going to happen. That said, we’ve spoken of how hungry we are, but we also have to make a plan and be adaptable. Be disciplined. If we can do that, with the skillsets we have, the results will take care of itself. We are determined to win, there are no two ways about it. We want to win trophies for Karnataka.”

The thrill of securing a draw in the dark may provide its own endorphin rush, but Babar Azam was lucid enough to see the bigger picture. The Pakistan captain has acknowledged his side had not met expectations during the home Test season, which came to a close with a 0-0 draw in this second Test.”The Test season hasn’t gone according to expectations,” Babar said at the post-match press conference. “It’s not an excuse but some of our players were unfit which disturbed our combination. Of course there’s talk about the pitches, but conditions are different at every venue. We give our input on pitches, but you get the pitches you get, and after that you have to execute your plans. You can’t just complain about losing a match because of pitches. We prepared them according to our plans, but results didn’t go our way.”After a 3-0 defeat to England last month, Pakistan found themselves on the back foot for large parts of both Test matches against New Zealand. On the final day of each match, the home side was happier to shake on a draw. In the first Test, New Zealand needed 77 runs with nine wickets in hand when light intervened, whereas today, the visitors needed just one wicket when the umpires whipped off the bails. Extend it further back to the series against Australia, and Pakistan have now gone eight Test matches at home without victory in a run that extends back two years.Related

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It might easily have been three successive home series defeats when Sarfaraz Ahmed was squeezed down leg side in the 87th over. It brought out Pakistan’s No. 11 Abrar Ahmed to survive a nerve-shredding final 15 minutes alongside Naseem Shah, with the pair seeing out 21 balls before it became too dark.”It’s difficult to play the new ball when the fielders are up but Naseem and Abrar held their nerve at the death,” Babar said. “The way Saifi [Sarfaraz] came back and got us out of a hole was amazing, because his partnership with [Saud] Shakeel brought us back into the match. He’s come back after four years and had a dream comeback, after waiting all those years. It was his belief that kept him going.”At the start of that session, though, it was tantalisingly poised. Sarfaraz and Saud Shakeel had added 99 for the sixth-wicket stand. New Zealand’s fast bowlers appeared to have run out of ideas, but the scoring rate for the stand stood at just under 2.25, which meant Pakistan still required 140 runs in a final session where all four results seemed possible.Babar said Pakistan were eyeing up the win at that point. “We’d planned to go after it at tea, and you have to take risks for that. At the time, we needed 4.5 [an over], for which you need to take chances, which can lead to dismissals. If we’d got out, you’d be asking very different questions. When New Zealand saw we were going for it, they opened the field up. We still took chances but then it becomes a slightly different situation.Sarfaraz, who had crossed three figures by this point, was now accompanied by Agha Salman; his strike rate was higher than any other Pakistan batter at that point. He had struck four boundaries and New Zealand were beginning to look a touch ragged in the field, a couple of misfields and the odd set of byes whittling down the target even further. However, once Matt Henry got the old ball to swing back in and beat a wild swing from Salman, the outlook changed once more.”Agha got out and then the tail came in; after that we wanted to take the game deep,” Babar said. “Saifi was in there so he was better at assessing where the game could go. When a wicket falls, building a new partnership is difficult. After our set batters got out, we knew the tail was coming, and we’ve lost our last few wickets quickly in the past.”In the end, though, pragmatism won even though Pakistan were desperate not to end the home season winless. Babar admitted the way forward from here could take time, he pointed out this Test side was “very good” until very recently, when injuries derailed them at the start of this season.It prompted him to emphasise the value of fitness in an age of relentless cricket. “We’re trying to learn from our mistakes,” Babar said. “Everyone has their own opinions but we have to focus on our performance. Forming a team takes time. Our Test side was very good, but suddenly there were a few injuries, which disturbed our players and altered the form of our side. We’ve tried to do our best but it just hasn’t worked out. We’ll look at whether to have Test specialist players in future. There’s so much cricket if you want to play all three formats you’ll have to be ultra-fit.”

Andrew Tye, the Australia seamer, has signed for Northamptonshire for the 2023 T20 Blast.Tye was the stand-out performer in Durham’s Blast campaign last season, claiming 21 wickets in 10 matches, to take his overall record in the competition to 67 wickets in 48, following a previous spell at Gloucestershire between 2016 and 2019.He joins Northants off the back of his fourth BBL title, having helped Perth Scorchers overcome Brisbane Heat in last week’s final. In the course of that match, he picked up his 300th T20 wicket in just his 211th match, surpassing the previous record set by Rashid Khan (213 games).”I’m very excited to be joining Northamptonshire for the Blast,” Tye said. “They’re a good team that’s had success in the competition in the past so I’ll be hoping that we can recreate that success this year.”Tye, 36, will be reunited with his Australia team-mate Chris Lynn at Wantage Road, and has also played alongside the club’s bowling coach, Chris Liddle, during their Gloucestershire days.”I’m looking forward to joining Lynny, it’s always better to have him on your team than to try playing against him,” Tye added. “I’m excited to work with John Sadler too, I’ve heard really good things about him plus Chris Liddle and I go back to his playing days at Glos so I’m excited to see him and work together again.”Sadler, the head coach, added: “To get AJ on board is really pleasing, he’s an amazing addition and gives our team a great balance.”His experience and skill set is exactly what we needed and he knows what’s required to win games and win competitions too. He’ll be a super asset for us this season.”Northamptonshire, two-times winners of the T20 Blast in 2013 and 2016, have struggled in the competition in recent years, with a solitary quarter-final appearance in the past five editions. However, with England’s David Willey also returning to the club after his spell at Yorkshire, the captain Josh Cobb believes they will have a “world-class” core in 2023.”AJ’s got a fantastic record in T20 cricket and we were looking for someone to come in and bring real experience to the attack, someone that can bowl the tough overs in the latter part of the innings and be a banker for us at the death,” Cobb said.”Willo [David Willey] coming back is a great addition for us as an allrounder, then we’ve got Lynny [Chris Lynn] at the top of the order and AJ now with the ball. It gives us a real solid core of world class experience throughout the side.”We know we fell away last year but we played some excellent cricket in the tournament, so hopefully with these two coming in alongside Willo we can push and go one step further this summer.”

The Rawalpindi leg of the PSL this season has stood out for the surfeit of fours and sixes that have pervaded it, but even by those gluttonous standards, Usman Khan stood out. The former Quetta Gladiators man tormented his previous employers, smashing the fastest PSL hundred as Sultans piled on 262, the highest PSL score in history.Gladiators, needing a win – and in truth, a comprehensive one to stay alive – battled gamely, half-centuries from Omair Yousuf and Iftikhar Ahmed keeping the scoreline respectable. But despite the placidity of the surface, there were simply too many runs to get. Abbas Afridi showed the bowlers could have their say too with a five-fer that included a hat-trick, and though Gladiators took it much deeper than it appeared they might, they fell short by nine runs.Gladiators required a run-rate boosting victory to retain realistic hopes of pipping Peshawar Zalmi to a playoff spot, but the manner in which Multan started put any such notions to bed. It wasn’t until the third over that Usman struck his first boundary, but the four he plundered off that Aimal Khan over was very much a harbinger of what would follow. By the sixth over, Multan were purring, and the hapless Qais Ahmed was clobbered for 27 as Sultans posted 91, the highest powerplay score of the season.The carnage continued with 21 of the next over, and a further 27 off Qais’ second. During that over, Usman had brought up his 36-ball hundred, the fastest this league has ever seen. The following over saw the 150 come up, with the innings still in its first half. Nawaz brought himself once more and, to Gladiators’ relief, deceived him with the flight as Umar Akmal effected a smart stumping, though, having bludgeoned a 43-ball 120, the damage had very much been done.Mohammad Rizwan wasn’t exactly plodding along, but he’d been happy to turn the strike over, facing just 17 of the first 61 balls. He brought up his own half-century off 26 balls, but the carnage often happened at the other end. Tim David was in imperious form and combined with Kieron Pollard to finish strongly after the Gladiators had staged a mini-revival in the middle overs. The fourth wicket partnership between the duo combined for an unbeaten 58 off 33, and while that almost felt snail-paced after Usman’s fireworks, it still powered Sultans to the highest PSL total by 15 runs.Gladiators needed a huge effort from the top three if they were to stage a repeat of the monster chase they achieved against Peshawar Zalmi earlier in the week. But the architect of that triumph, Jason Roy, was dispatched with a slower ball in the second over. Martin Guptill took charge with a blistering powerplay cameo, smoking 37 off 13 balls before a bit of extra pace from Ihsanullah took the outside edge.But cameos weren’t enough in a chase of this magnitude, and to make up for the lack of one huge innings, Gladiators strung together several small, consequential ones. Seven of the ten who batted registered double figures, none of them at a strike rate lower than 170. Yousuf and Iftikhar appeared to be making a game of it with a 57-ball 104-run stand through the middle overs, with both batters scoring half-centuries. Iftikhar, somewhat bizarrely, gestured to shush the Rawalpindi crowd after getting to the mark in 28 balls, even as his side was well on course to be silenced before the playoffs for the fourth successive season.It was Afridi who dismissed him with a slower ball to ease any Multan nerves, but to Gladiators’ credit, they kept hammering away. Mohammad Nawaz struck a four off his first ball, while Akmal and Umaid smashed sixes of theirs, and though the wickets kept tumbling, the runs were steadily being knocked off. When Akmal smashed two sixes in the 17th to leave Gladiators needing 56 off 22, they might even have been narrow favourites, but Afridi would have the final say.Three wickets off successive balls straddling two overs were the icing on the cake, as Afridi achieved just the fifth PSL hat-trick, and though Gladiators raged against the dying of the light, the light truly was going out for them. The scoreline might say they fell short by just nine runs, but this elimination is the fourth first-round exit in a row for the 2019 champions. The narrow margin of defeat cannot detract from the gulf between them in a league where most of their competitors have pulled far out of sight.

There remain more questions than answers about how the next Australia cricket season will look due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, but Australia batter Beth Mooney believes the Women’s Big Bash could be a success as a domestic players only event if international travel remained restricted.The WBBL would be one of the early marquee competitions if the Australian summer followed the same structure to last year. In the 2019-2020 summer, the WBBL was staged from mid-October to early December as a standalone event for the first time rather than being run concurrently with the BBL. Despite being staged outside of the peak holiday season, it was considered a significant success and attracts international talent from around the world.ALSO READ: Cricket Australia mulls five India Tests behind closed doorsHowever, while Australia is making positive progress in tackling the coronavirus – and there are overtures about some exemptions to travel restrictions – there remains a great deal of uncertainty whether border restrictions will have lifted enough to allow an influx of overseas players by October, which is also leaving significant doubt over the men’s T20 World Cup.”I’m sure those conversations will continue to happen and worst-case scenario, we might have to keep it as a domestic tournament for this year, but I think that would provide good opportunity for young players and really show the depth we have in Australian cricket,” Mooney said”The real positive thing that’s happening at the moment is the fact that the AFL and NRL are trying to get up and running. Sport is a huge part of the Australian public’s lives and we want to give something for people to feel joy about and watch in isolation. So there’s a real positive that they’re moving slowly towards bringing back elite sport and i think that will hold us in good stead for a WBBL to happen.”Among the other multiple moving parts for the women’s game is the potential impact on the 50-over World Cup in New Zealand next February if other events before then – notably the T20 World Cup – have to be moved. There is also the looming problem of the qualifying event which is due to be held in Sri Lanka in July, which looks unlikely at the moment.Mooney acknowledged that there are issues beyond sport being dealt with at this unprecedented time but hoped that with nine months still to go before the World Cup that the situation would be resolved.”You want to be playing as much cricket as you can and a one-day World Cup is one of those things that’s always in your calendar and eye line as a cricketer,” she said. “There’s bigger things in play so if it was to get moved I don’t think anyone would be too disappointed if it was because we were trying to take care of people.”There’s a bigger picture in the cricket landscape as well trying to fit everything in from the male and female programs. At this point we are a long way off, have a lot of time up our sleeve, New Zealand’s summer aligns with ours so hopefully time is on our side and helps us get a World Cup in February.”Mooney was also confident that if the build-up to the World Cup was disrupted Australia would still be able to get themselves in shape for the tournament.”The real positive about the Australian women’s team is that we’ve been professional for a few years now,” she said. We’ve kept the same core group of players across that time. We’ve also played a lot of cricket in the last 18-24 months, so I actually don’t think it will take us a really long time to get back in the groove of it.”

Stuart Broad has committed to Nottinghamshire until 2022 at least, after signing a new two-year contract.Broad, 33, is second behind James Anderson among England’s leading Test wicket-takers with 485 scalps to his name, and is set to play his 13th and 14th seasons at Trent Bridge, the venue where his father Chris played the majority of his career.”Every time I step out at Trent Bridge, it feels just as special as the first time I walked onto the turf at three or four years old,” he said.”I love Nottingham being my home, I love playing for the club, and I certainly can’t envisage myself playing for any other county.”Broad enjoyed a fine year in Test cricket in 2019, claiming 30 Test wickets at 23 across England’s home Tests against Ireland and Australia, where he tormented David Warner with seven dismissals in the course of the Ashes. He then added a further 14 wickets at 19.42 in South Africa, more than any of his countrymen.He will be playing in the second division next summer, following Nottinghamshire’s relegation from the top flight in 2019, but was keen to credit the club’s coaching team for their role in his success.”One of Mooresy’s [Head Coach Peter Moores] great strengths as a coach is that he’s always looking to improve players,” Broad said.”Him and Kunny [Performance Analyst Kunal Manek] showed me how my leave percentage was quite high, even though one of my strengths as a bowler is threatening the stumps.”That was great information to take into the latter half of my season with Notts and into the Ashes.”Broad, who signed for Notts from Leicestershire in 2008, enjoyed a Testimonial Year in 2019 and was instrumental in trophy successes for his county in 2010, 2013 and 2017.His 40 red-ball appearances for the club have yielded 147 wickets at an average of 24, with 17 of them coming from seven appearances in 2019.Responding to the contract extension, Moores highlighted the importance of Broad’s leadership qualities to a Notts squad that has undergone a period of transition in recent years.”Whether it’s by example with the way he prepares for games and goes about his cricket, or with words of advice for his fellow players, Stuart is a brilliant leader for us,” Moores said.”We were all really pleased for him with the way he performed in the Ashes.”He’d spent some time out of the side during the previous winter and responded in the best possible way, by working harder than ever and coming back stronger.”Someone who can continue to do that – and to reinvent himself, in some ways, despite all his success – is a great example to everyone.”His record for Notts when he’s with us is outstanding and – knowing Stuart – he’ll be as motivated as anyone for us to bounce back from last season by playing successful four-day cricket for the next couple of years.”

As a player, Jacques Kallis was a man of few words and most of them were dry. “Well, I guess the bowlers have done their job,” he had said after South Africa conceded 434 in what became one of the most memorable ODIs of all time.Jacques Kallis the coach has a little more to say but the tone hasn’t changed.”I’m not a big one for changing too many things. Dean Elgar won’t come out batting right-handed or anything like that,” he said at South Africa’s training camp in Pretoria, where he has joined the national men’s coaching staff for the summer, a job he claims to enjoy more than he did his 166 Tests, 328 ODIs and 25 T20Is.”I am probably more passionate about talking about batting than I was about batting,” Kallis said. “Towards the end of my career, you become almost like a coach, as a senior player trying to pass on knowledge. And I really enjoy it.”Kallis went into coaching at the first opportunity he got after his retirement in December 2013. In early 2014, he was appointed as Kolkata Knight Riders’ batting consultant and mentor, a job he did for two seasons before becoming their head coach from the 2016 season. He has since parted ways with the franchise and is keen to sink his teeth into something that he can spend more time on, which may bode well for South Africa in the long-term.”I enjoyed the IPL side of it but that’s only T20 cricket where you can’t do too much technical work because you’ve only got two months. Test cricket is nice. You can get stuck into the nitty-gritty,” Kallis said. “I will have more time to work with the guys over a longer period and lay out some goals with the players. I think we have got some really talented players that we can turn into world-class players for South Africa.”Before South Africa can even think about dominating on the world stage, they have to start by rebuilding their confidence, which was blown away in India, by pace, not spin. Although the technical flaws in the line-up were exposed, especially among some of the younger players, for Kallis, a more important starting point is their headspace. Specifically, he aims to empower players with the knowledge they need to bat in any situation.”I’m trying to get a relationship with the players and see how they are thinking and trying to give them game plans,” Kallis said. “I’m trying to give the guys options and ideas and make them realise you can’t bat the same way every time you walk out to bat, You have to adapt your game. I want to get them to know their game plan a lot better so they can try and adapt while they are batting. It’s not the spoon-feeding of coaching, it’s trying to educate themselves so they can educate themselves while they are out in the middle. It’s a lot of off-the-field stuff, the mind stuff, along with the technical stuff.”It’s also about conditions. South Africa have spent the last few summers preparing seamer-friendly surfaces aimed at scaring subcontinent sides. The revenge pitches of the summer of 2017-18 against India were payback for the 2015 series that South Africa lost 3-0 and though those tracks delivered a series win, they also earned the Wanderers an official warning.Incidentally, the uneven bounce of the Johannesburg pitch was also best utilised by India, who won the final Test. In 2018-19, South Africa had visits from Pakistan and Sri Lanka and wanted to bounce them out too. It worked against the former but the slower surfaces in Durban and Port Elizabeth and the lack of form of South Africa’s batsmen (who had not needed to or been able to construct proper innings at home for two years) meant Sri Lanka schooled the hosts and won a first-ever series in the country.All those series were played under Ottis Gibson, who preferred an all-pace attack. Now, things are expected to normalise, with head coach Mark Boucher asking only for “good cricket wickets”, and Kallis is sure that the batsmen will remember how to score runs on them.ALSO READ: ‘My way is not always the right way’ – Boucher’s bid for team unity“Our batsmen have got confidence in South Africa,” he said. “We will have more knowledge of the wickets, more than what England have. Unlike Indian conditions that change a bit from day one and two, to day three, four and five, here the wicket stays the same pretty much throughout so if it’s tough on day one, it’s going to be tough all the way through.”So we know that if it’s tough on day one, it is going to be tough for the opposition. Hopefully we get some good wickets, we all want to see that because we’ve got some very talented batters here and we need to give them the chance to bat on good wickets.”The weather may have the final say in pitch preparation where recent heavy rains on the Highveld could add some extra spice to the surfaces. But that’s where Kallis’ expertise will come in as he seeks to cover all the bases. He has likened the process to preparing for an exam: “If you have prepared properly, you have studied all the chapters, then you go into the exam a little bit calmer. We are trying to make sure we have all the points covered.”And the players have no problem studying as hard as they’ve been instructed to, as the captain, Faf du Plessis, pointed out. “Guys are working with greats, so they are feeding off that positive energy” he said. “You are trying to impress your batting coach because it’s Jacques Kallis so you can’t look like a guy that doesn’t play good cricket, you are trying to impress him all the time because he is the best batsman that ever lived. That’s already a step in the right direction.”Then, you start preparing better because there is some guidance for the young guys in how to prepare in the right way and then through that, you get confidence because all of a sudden you feel that your game is in a better place, you are more confident. We are doing things very well in terms of making sure we give ourselves the best opportunity to get our confidence back.”

Umar Akmal’s three-year ban has been reduced by one-and-a-half years by an independent adjudicator, retired Supreme Court judge, Faqir Mohammad Khokhar. The batsman attended the hearing in person in Lahore, and with the reduced ban, he will remain suspended effectively from February 2020 till August 2021. Akmal said he might appeal again to try and get it “reduced further.”Akmal had been banned from all representative cricket in April this year after he failed to report details of corrupt approaches made to him ahead of this year’s PSL. He did accept then that the incidents which formed the basis of the two charges pressed against him by the PCB had taken place, but pointed out that the circumstances were such that they did not merit reporting to the board. Each charge carried a three-year ban which were running concurrently.In May, Akmal filed an official appeal against the ban, challenging the length of the sanction and hoping to get it reduced. His appeal was based on the narrative that players who had fallen foul in a similar manner to Akmal previously were handed far lighter sanctions, with Mohammad Irfan banned in 2017 for six months, and Mohammad Nawaz given a two-month ban. But it had emerged that he had been handed the stiffer-than-expected penalty for failing to show sufficient remorse.”I am thankful to the judge for listening to my lawyers properly,” Akmal said after the hearing. “I will decide about the remaining sentence and try to get it reduced further. For now I am not satisfied and will consult my lawyers and family how to take this ahead. There are many players before me who made mistakes and just look at what they got and what I got. So all I say right now is thank you very much.”Akmal initially did not contest the PCB charges, foregoing the right to plea his innocence. The case was directed to the chairman of the PCB’s independent disciplinary panel who, after hearing both the PCB and Akmal handed down the three year ban. The judge Justice (retd) Fazal-e-Miran Chauhan had observed that Akmal had failed to give any plausible explanation for not reporting the matter to the PCB’s vigilance and anti-corruption departments and was in breach of article 2.4.4, and was deemed to have engaged in corrupt conduct under the anti-corruption code of the PCB. Akmal had attended that hearing without a lawyer, presenting his case himself. Should he wish to appeal against the reduced ban, Akmal’s recourse would have to be the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland.After Akmal had been banned for three years in April, the PCB counsel had said he was satisfied with the verdict, indicating the penalties for breaching the anti-corruption code needed to be made stiffer. “This three-year ban on the basis of non-reporting is considered appropriate,” he had said. “The PCB was asking for a stiffer sentence. It’s high time that duration of the ban should be increased because it’s very clear that players are not learning the lessons as much as they should have. So as far as the legal side is concerned, I am very satisfied as the duration of the ban is reasonable, justified and proportionate.” There has been no comment yet from the PCB on today’s ruling.

Sri Lanka have lost each of their five most-recent T20Is, but the team’s improved fitness standards, and its batting confidence – both of which were on display in the ODI whitewash of West Indies – should have a knock-on effect. This is what captain Lasith Malinga hopes anyway, as he attempts to correct a woeful captaincy record since taking over in late 2018.”When you start winning matches, the bad things in our game seem to get erased, and the good things are noticeable,” Malinga said on the eve of the first T20I in Kandy. “That’s the situation now, which I’m happy about. Fitness wise, a bowler should be able to bowl four or five overs. And when a bowler goes to the middle, he should be able to complete that game without getting injured. We’ve seen that from our players now. They bowl, and they run hard, and they dive. Angie [Mathews] bowled 10 overs for the first time in years. Those things have improved. I’m sure it will continue. These are the results of many months of hard work. The new coaches have come in and helped with that.Almost all the batsmen in Sri Lanka’s top seven made contributions during the ODI series, with Avishka Fernando and Kusal Mendis especially impressive, hitting one century and a fifty apiece. Thisara Perera and Wanindu Hasaranga also made good finishing contributions from lower down the order.”If a team is to win, you need at least seven players playing somewhere near their best,” Malinga said. “We saw that in the ODI series – lots of great individual performances influenced the result. For a while we didn’t have batsmen who could get among the runs frequently enough, and they weren’t finishing games. But now their mentality has come good. I’m hoping they’ll keep playing well in the T20s.”Malinga was also pleased with the trust shown in each of Sri Lanka’s players during the ODI series. Sri Lanka played all three matches with the same XI. This is rare.”There’s a new coaching style here now,” Malinga said. “This is a time when players get to consistently play. Because of that consistency in selection, players have got self-confidence about their place in the team. I think over the next three to four matches we will get a team that is unafraid to take risks. That’s my hope.””The selectors and team management feel this is the best 15 T20 players in the country, so I don’t think it should be a big problem to give them matches consistently.”