Allen’s last six T20 scores have read 137, 74, 34, 78*, 50 and 38

Vishal Dikshit17-Jan-2024The 2022-23 season was not a great summer for Finn Allen. At the start of the season, he had a disappointing 2022 T20 World Cup by managing just 95 runs in five innings. He then lasted more than 20 balls only once in the remaining five T20Is that summer and his ODI form also lost sheen after a glittering start. A year later, he didn’t get a ticket for the ODI World Cup in India.This summer, though, has been remarkable for him in T20s. Let’s go back a few months to another summer, the one in England. Allen smashed 240 runs from nine outings in the Hundred, only behind Jos Buttler’s tally of 391, with a strike rate of nearly 145 that helped Southern Brave reach the playoffs. He stayed back for the T20Is against England and blasted 83 off 53 in the third game before returning for the home summer where his last six T20 scores (both domestic and international) have been 137, 74, 34, 78*, 50 and 38.Related

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The latest of those was 137 off 62 balls in the third T20I against Pakistan, studded with a record-breaking 16 sixes that made his score the highest by a New Zealand player in T20Is. So what’s changed for him this season?”I think I’m just evaluating risk and times that I want to take a high-risk option,” he said after the Pakistan game. “Maybe prior to this summer was a little bit all over the show and not so much control but I’m trying to have more control now and be a bit more decisive.”I’m working on just adapting to the scenario better, situations better, and I guess picking my moments to go. I’m basically trying to have a stable base and build off that and expand my game from there.”The stable base was on show in Dunedin where he let his flourishing swings and hand-eye coordination do all the work to belt all his sixes in the arc from long-off to square leg. He stood tall to either swing down the ground or put away the short balls with pulls whenever Pakistan erred with their lengths, even if they came with a change of pace.That he could score at a very high strike rate was evident even before this season, but now he is also being consistent, something he has been working on since returning to his home team Auckland before this domestic season. His scores in the ongoing T20I series – 137, 74 and 34 – are a testimony to his consistency, which bodes well for both Allen and New Zealand in the build-up to the T20 World Cup in June.Along the way, Allen has also been taking down some big names. After a 26 off 17 in the opening Super Smash game, he struck 50 off 24 against Wellington where he took down Ben Sears for 20 off just six balls. In his unbeaten 78 off 46 balls after that, he punished Ish Sodhi for a sequence of 6, 4 and 6 after the powerplay to hit him for 22 runs off seven balls. On Wednesday, it was Pakistan’s Haris Rauf who came in his way and Allen blasted him for 47 off just 14 with the help of six sixes and two fours.Allen says a lot of it comes down to his preparations before the games because the “fickle” nature of the format can turn the tide quickly.”I come back to my basics and making sure that before a game I know my basics,” he said. “And going into a game I feel like I’ve ticked everything off. It’s such a fickle game, the tide can turn real quick so knowing that I’ve ticked everything off before a game and can put it down to execution and plans.”With two more T20Is to go in the series and another home T20I series against Australia next month, Allen will hope his hot streak continues this summer.

Tanzid Hasan and Rishad Hossain blazed quick runs to help Bangladesh overcome some mid-innings chaos to beat Sri Lanka by four wickets. The hosts clinched the ODI series 2-1 after three players got injured in the last three overs of the first innings in Chattogram. Tanzid, who was approved as Soumya Sarkar’s concussions substitute, struck a career-best 84 before Rishad went berserk, slamming four sixes and five fours in an unbeaten 18-ball 48.Rishad came to the crease with Bangladesh needing 58 runs to win in 13.5 overs. He opened his account with a first-ball six off Wanindu Hasranga, before pasting him for a four and another six in the same over. He slammed two more sixes, off Hasaranga, in the 40th over that cost Sri Lanka 24 runs. In all, Rishad took 40 runs off Hasaranga, from just 11 deliveries.Sri Lanka couldn’t muster up a big total in the deciding game but youngster Janith Liyanage’s maiden ODI century got them past the 200-run mark. Liyanage made an unbeaten 101 off 102 balls with eleven fours and two sixes. But as the Sri Lanka innings was closing, Bangladesh kept losing players to injuries.Related

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Mustafizur Rahman cramped up in the 48th over before Soumya injured his neck and knee in a boundary line crash on the advertisement boards. In the last over, substitute fielder Jaker Ali collided with Anamul Haque, who completed the catch. Jaker had to be hospitalized with a concussion.It wasn’t just the players whose fitness was tested in this game, with umpire Tanvir Ahmed taking Richard Kettleborough’s place after the latter fell sick due to the heat.Bangladesh openers Anamul and Tanzid calmed things down, adding fifty for the opening stand.Anamul however became the first of Kumara’s four victims from his first spell. Anamul lofted a drive to cover after making 12. Captain Najmul Hossain Shanto fell in Kumara’s next over, edging behind after just making one run.Tanzid batted serenely meanwhile, hitting six of his nine fours through cover and mid-off. He dealt well with the fast short ball too, hitting two boundaries slightly fine of the square-leg fielder, and two more through midwicket. Tanzid took a liking to Kumara, slashing him for a six as he took 30 off 19 balls from the fast bowler.Janith Liyanage smashed his maiden ODI century•AFP/Getty Images

Soon after reaching his second ODI fifty, Tanzid survived a run-out chance in the 17th over when a throw from mid-off struck the stumps but the bails didn’t fall with Tanzid well short of the crease. He added 49 runs for the third wicket with Towhid Hridoy, to steady the Bangladesh chase.Kumara removed Hridoy and Mahmudullah in his third spell, to get his first four-wicket haul in ODIs. Hasaranga got into wickets in the 26th over when Tanzid mistimed one to long-off. It was a reckless dismissal as Bangladesh were 130 for five.Mushfiqur Rahim and Mehidy Hasan Miraz had to shut down shop, adding 48 runs for the sixth wicket. Mehidy made 25 before holing out in the deep midwicket boundary, leaving the stage for Rishad to do his thing.Earlier, Liyanage saved Sri Lanka from getting bowled out for a low score. Coming to bat when they were 77 for four, he batted steadily while the rest of the batters around him crumbled. He struck a couple of lovely cover drives and got two fours through midwicket gracefully. He was also cool with fours through short third, especially when he leant back to a Taskin Ahmed bouncer to guide it past Mushfiqur. He struck eleven fours and two sixes, one over long-on and the other swivelled off Shoriful Islam over fine-leg.Taskin had opened up the Sri Lanka innings with the wickets of openers Pathum Nissanka and Avishka Fernando. While the latter was caught behind clearly, Nissanka strangely didn’t take a review when he was given lbw. Replays showed that the ball would have headed down the leg-stump.Fernando was caught behind the wicket for the third game in a row, before Mustafizur Rahman removed Sadeera Samarawickrama for 14. Sri Lanka captain Kusal Mendis carelessly edged legspinner Rishad Hossain after reaching 29.Liyanage added 43 runs for the fifth wicket with Charith Asalanka, before Sri Lanka lost their way, slipping to 154 for seven in the 35th over. Liyanage however didn’t allow the innings to slide down, instead adding 60 runs for the eighth wicket with Maheesh Theekshana.The pair batted out thirteen overs before Theekshana holed out in the square-leg boundary after Soumya replaced the injured Mustafizur to finish the 48th over.Pramod Madushan’s catch caused a collision between Anamul and substitute Jaker. In between these two injuries, Soumya hurt his neck and knee in a boundary-line collision with the advertisement board. Bangladesh however overcame the panic of all these injuries and the six wickets, with the big win.

Douglas Jardine’s desire to win back the Ashes at all costs brought him the urn, and vilification in England and Australia

Christopher Douglas23-Sep-2005It’s a perverse choice, I know, because DRJ wasn’t exactly a crowd pleaser – dour, defensive batting style, awkward, stiff-legged way of moving around the field, and a firm belief that any noise coming from the stands should be punished by an immediate 30-minute suspension of play. He captained England only 15 times (won nine, lost one, drew five) but as time goes by his stature seems to grow. And that’s because in 1932-33 he took a side to Australia and regained the Ashes. Ray Illingworth and Pelham Warner are the only other England captains to have achieved this.Douglas Jardine is the name more than any other that stands for the legendary British qualities of cool-headed determination, implacable resolve, patrician disdain for crowds and critics alike – if you’re English that is. To Australians the name is synonymous with the legendary British qualities of snobbishness, cynicism and downright Pommie arrogance.I certainly don’t spend time rereading accounts of matches that Douglas Jardine played or watching old film of him, nor do I have his photo on my bedroom wall. But since writing a biography of him over 20 years ago, I have always had an affection for him, not just as a fearless, single-minded, scary, hook-nosed sort of toff, which I suppose part of me would quite like to be, but because he was partly responsible for my education.I left school at 15 and the two years I spent in my early twenties researching DRJ’s life and trying to express it in coherent form was the nearest I got to going to college. There wasn’t much money in it, so I had to subsidise the writing with scraps of TV acting work and doing the horses (I dedicated the book to my five biggest winners). It’s safe to say I would have been the very last person DRJ would have chosen for the job.I was deeply conscious of my unsuitability as I interviewed those who knew him: Percy Fender, Gubby Allen, Jack Fingleton, Bob Wyatt and so on. But having to get to grips with the single most important episode in DRJ’s life – Bodyline – with very little prior knowledge still less opinion was probably an advantage.

There was nothing illegal about Bodyline. DRJ had such a profound respect for the laws that he would never have countenanced it otherwise. It wasn’t by any means guaranteed to work but he was prepared to risk everything on its success – death or glory

The defenders of Bodyline bowling have all died off and we are all now agreed that it had to end, but the more interesting thing about it to me is that it had to start. It’s true that Jardine was the first to implement the strategy of fast short-pitched bowling with a packed leg-side field, but it was a stage in the game’s evolution rather than a dastardly one-off plan and it was always going to happen sooner or later. The lbw law, the pitches, the height of the stumps, even the size of the ball, were all in the batsman’s favour at the time and something had to give. Even Don Bradman, Bodyline’s chief target, admitted as much in a letter to MCC shortly before the tour.There was nothing illegal about Bodyline. DRJ had such a profound respect for the laws that he would never have countenanced it otherwise. It wasn’t by any means guaranteed to work but he was prepared to risk everything on its success – death or glory. He called his account of the tour (it’s just been splendidly reissued by Methuen with a brilliant foreword on Bodyline by Mike Brearley) and he saw the campaign as something noble and knightly. “Fear and be slain” he would quote to his children in later life, and on the Bodyline tour his bowlers would be reminded as they enjoyed a final fag before taking the field that “an hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name”.He wasn’t a villain but decades of Australian resentment have lent him a kind of villainous glamour that I find irresistible. Likewise his sense of humour: when Herbert Sutcliffe had a benefit match coming up, DRJ sent him an umbrella for luck.Until recently his portrait hung in the Long Room at Lord’s, appropriately enough underneath Bradman’s, DRJ’s cool gaze staring directly into the faces of visiting teams as they clattered through the hushed interior on their way out on to the field. He has been moved to the bar now, as has Bradman, which I think is a pity because it always seemed gloriously ironic that the two great adversaries – the master strategist and the game’s pre-eminent genius – should occupy the same patch of wall space. But Douglas Jardine has survived many attempts to airbrush him out of history and now his status as a sporting icon seems more secure than ever.

Ramnaresh Sarwan has had the fortune, or misfortune, of having been singled out by the world at large

Rahul Bhattacharya07-Jul-2005Ramnaresh Sarwan has had the fortune, or misfortune, of having been singled out by the world at large. In Guyana, the raw, simmering South American country of his origin, he has been called the New Rohan Kanhai ever since he stepped into teenhood.All through the Caribbean he has been branded the finest West Indian batsman since BC Lara, before even having made a Test hundred. When Ted Dexter watched him bat in England two years ago, he concluded that this boy of 20 would end with a Test average of 60, a mark that Garfield Sobers and Vivian Richards could not touch.These perceptions of Sarwan are understandable because nothing he does appears forced, a trait rarer than imagined. In the field, his slight, taut frame makes easy, brisk movements. His batting has the quality of natural solidity and unexaggerated busyness, full of strokes but without biff or flamboyance. He can even send down loose-limbed legbreaks as if Test cricket were a net; their casualness sometimes breaks partnerships. He has, what’s the word – class.On the field Sarwan is a 22-year-old; outside it even more so. His demeanour is boyish, neither coached nor sportstar-ish, and if there is an intense side – there must be – it is stored away for appropriate times. During this chat, he seems genuinely excited by what he says is his first interview to a non-West Indian publication.Sarwan is Hindu, part of the Indian community that migrated to the Caribbean in the middle-1800s. Like most East Indians, he likes watching Hindi movies and listening to their music, though he doesn’t have the faintest what the words mean. Sheepishly he will tell you that he cried at the end of Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge (listening to the title in his Guyanese accent can be entertaining too). As he returns to India (he has been here before on an A tour), his curiosity about the land of his ancestors is well alive, and he will doubtless find India’s is in him.Sarwan is now at the point in his career where the Young Prodigy has faded from popular awareness, and real expectations have replaced the excitement of watching the bloom. You could have made 0 and 0 in your first-class and one-day debuts, but that is forgivable if you are 16. When you are part of a team that has lost more than it was thought possible, and in a batting line-up that has collapsed in more ways than believed possible, critics will sharpen pencils. Particularly if you have shown a penchant for getting out successively in similar fashion (this summer, against India it was Ashish Nehra dragging him wide and having him nick to slip; against New Zealand it was mistiming pulls from outside the off stump); and you still have not scored a hundred despite getting past fifty 13 times. Never mind that 13 scores of above fifty is more than either Sachin Tendulkar or Mark Waugh, two of Sarwan’s batting heroes, had managed after 24 Tests.”Now is the time.” Sarwan is in the middle of explaining that these are days meant to be seized. He means, of course, the hundred. “I’ve got to say, it’s in the back of my head all the time now. It wasn’t there earlier, but now it is. Hopefully, it will come to the front of my head!”It’s something I have to work on. I blame it on bad shot-selection. It’s more or less a mental thing, I have to work on my concentration. The 100 means something to me. I don’t want to be remembered as a good player who just got 50s and 60s. I don’t want to get myself into a situation where at the end of my career, I’m pushing myself really hard. I think now is the best time for me to score hundreds because I’m fit and and I’m young. Now is the time.”It must be frustrating for Sarwan and his followers, but they must both know that it is only a matter of time. Because of his precocity, Sarwan has been pushed to the next level before he has known it; learning, thus, has always had to be on the job. In schools under-12, he scored a century and was instantly fast-tracked into playing for the Georgetown Cricket Club senior team, facing fast bowlers twice his size and age. He remembers having to make adjustments to get used to the pace.Yet, that was nothing to playing against Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq and Mushtaq Ahmed on Test debut, in the summer of 2000. The bowling was of a quality he had never seen before; and so was the competitive edge of international cricket. “I wasn’t nervous, but against Wasim I was a bit tentative,” he recalls. “When I was on 29, I tried hooking him, and he swore at me. At that point I realized that this was not going to be easy, and they would try and get in my hair.”Sarwan did find a method of responding to such situations. Later that year in England, his first tour with the senior team, when Andy Caddick reminded him that it was time to change the diapers, it was met with a laugh. Yet, cricket and its mind-games were not the most difficult part of that trip. In between Tests, Sarwan had to return home for the funeral of his girlfriend, who died of pneumonia at only 18 years of age.Life moved on and Sarwan proceeded later that year to Australia, where boys really become men. His team was trounced 0-5; Sarwan himself played three of those matches – and averaged nine. Brett Lee’s pace particularly, proved a harder proposition than he imagined.”I didn’t really get down on myself,” he remembers about that period. “I was still staying positive although I wasn’t scoring runs. I was getting encouragement from the players, and my coach, Roger Harper. There were times when things aren’t going your way. Most of all, that tour taught me how to adjust to situations quickly and become mentally tough.”Looking at Australia sort of encouraged me as well. They are always positive. When they find themselves in tough situations you can see that they dig deep. For example, when [Adam] Gilchrist and [Justin] Langer won against Pakistan [chasing 369 to win from 126 for 5, at Hobart in November 1999]. I would say Steve Waugh is number one in that sense. I admire the way he handles the situation when his team is in trouble.”Yet it was in Sri Lanka last season that Sarwan ran into the finest bowler he has come up against – Muttiah Muralitharan. If playing Murali and averaging 53 in West Indies’ 0-3 humiliation was an education, watching Lara waltz his way to two hundreds, one double and a fifty in six innings was even more of one.”Without a doubt, Murali is the most difficult bowler I’ve faced. He’s always testing you. He doesn’t give you anything and makes you work for every run. I think Brian was amazing. In the first Test I think he wasn’t picking him but he swept his way to a 100. But from then on, he started to pick him and he started to hit him wherever he wanted. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone play such difficult spin bowling with such ease.”In India, West Indies will be without Lara, and Sarwan must put the spin lessons to use. There is nothing to indicate that he will not. He is a sunny chap with a special talent and the ability to take life in his little stride. If he is able to drive himself he will, as he says he wants to, come to be remembered as one of the great batsmen that West Indies has produced. Now, of course, is the time.Rahul Bhattacharya is assistant editor of Wisden Asia Cricket magazine and Wisden.com in India.