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He put down the 4-1 series result to the way the Indian side put the hosts ‘under a lot of pressure’ in the five-match series

ESPNcricinfo staff03-Feb-20194:55

Neesham, Santner dismissals ‘on the unfortunate side’ – Williamson

New Zealand captain Kane Williamson put the 4-1 series result down to the way India’s bowlers bowled throughout the series and the way the visitors put the hosts “under a lot of pressure”. Speaking after losing the fifth ODI by 35 runs in Wellington, where New Zealand were unable to chase down 253, Williamson conceded there was “a little bit of a theme throughout the series” in the way India would recover and put the pressure back on the hosts.”I mentioned earlier that the game is about pressure and if you can, as an outfit, you want to put the opposition under as much pressure as you can to challenge decision-making, and when you do that, you tend to pick up wickets and that puts you in a fairly strong position,” Williamson said. “I think throughout this series India were far better at that than us and as a bowling unit they were superb – their accuracy from a seaming and spin perspective did put us under that sort of pressure in which we saw improvements throughout the series but it certainly was something that we didn’t start the series well with. We weren’t able to soak that up and try and turn up and put it back on them.”To be honest, over these five games, we’ve been put under pressure a lot and it obviously challenges decision-making which although we’re on the wrong side of the results 4-1, which India fully deserve.”New Zealand’s bowling unit relied heavily on their swing spearhead Trent Boult, who collected 12 wickets, but no team-mate of his picked up more than four in the series. India, in comparison, had all their frontline bowlers chipping in with Mohammed Shami and Yuzvendra Chahal taking nine each, Kuldeep Yadav eight, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar seven. They also stifled the New Zealand batsmen, with none of the above conceding more than 5.50 runs per over. Overall, the New Zealand bowlers picked up 27 wickets in the series and India had 40 to their name.In the fifth ODI, India were in trouble at the start yet again, at 18 for 4, but recovered on the back of Ambati Rayudu’s 90 and scores of 45 each from Vijay Shankar and Hardik Pandya, which helped them post a challenging total. Williamson said they were “confident” of chasing the score but India managed to pick up wickets at key moments.Colin Munro tosses his bat up after chopping on•Getty Images

“I think it was probably a par-ish total on that surface,” the captain said. “It (the pitch) was a little bit variable and probably a little bit two-paced as well. We knew that the Indian bowling attack would maximise what they might be able to get out of it, as they’ve done in the series. So we knew it’d be a challenge but saying that when it is 250, there isn’t the scoreboard pressure, so if we’re able to get partnerships then we could take the game deep and we were confident and been able to chase it down.”But I guess there’s a little bit of a theme throughout the series although there were some improving signs today, we just wanted to take them a little bit further. And they were able to pick up wickets at key moments which made life a little bit difficult in that chase. I thought the first half from the bowlers was outstanding and in the last two games they’ve really stepped up which is pretty nice.”India’s recovery on Sunday was made easier by their decision to play an extra batting option in Vijay Shankar by resting spinner Kuldeep Yadav. Shankar batted at No. 6 ahead of allrounder Jadhav and consolidated with Rayudu by putting on 98 runs for the fifth wicket with a patient 45 off 64 balls. India’s decision to add depth in the batting also allowed them to play Pandya at No. 8 – he hammered 45 off 22 balls – and Bhuvneshwar Kumar at No. 9.”It would have been nice to pick up another couple of wickets [after 18 for 4], we obviously spent a lot of resources at the top with seven and six [overs] from our front two seamers,” Williamson said. “Knowing that they had an extra batter we had to make a few changes and because they’ve not been coming that hard at us it was difficult to blast them out but we thought if we could squeeze for a period of time we would maybe create a couple of errors.Colin de Grandhomme walks back after being trapped in front•Getty Images

“We saw some chances, maybe the odd mistake which is nice if it goes your way, but for the large part they were able to soak up that pressure and take the game to a stage where then they could knock some hard runs. [Pandya’s] was a fantastic innings of 40 off 20 which put them at that par, perhaps even a fraction higher, at the halfway stage.”Williamson quickly dismissed suggestions of any kind of complacency after New Zealand had dismissed MS Dhoni for 1 and had India four down inside the first ten overs.”Not, not at all,” Williamson said, when asked if his team grew complacent. “We’ve seen throughout the series how good India are and you do need to be playing good cricket for a long time, not just a few dismissals. MS is a big wicket but as we’ve seen today there are a number of other guys that are outstanding world-class players. We’ve seen throughout the series. So there was none of that.”Williamson also admitted he made a “mistake” when asked about the dismissal of Ross Taylor, who was trapped lbw by Pandya for 1 in the 11th over. The ball had struck Taylor above the knee roll and the batsman decided not to review it after having a chat with Williamson at the other end. Ball-tracking later suggested the ball would have bounced over the stumps.”Yeah, I heard about that. We obviously had a conversation and Ross has been batting absolutely beautifully so it’s actually hard when you realise you make a mistake through our communication but unfortunately it’s one of those things and you do need to move on.”Yeah, he walked past me and asked, ‘what do you reckon, and maybe it’s too high, and maybe it’s umpire’s call,’ and unfortunately it’s one of those things that we move on [from].”After the upcoming T20I series against India starting February 6, New Zealand will host Bangladesh for their last three ODIs before the World Cup in England. Williamson was non-committal about how far they were from finalising a squad of 15 before the world tournament.”We had a number of guys involved from a larger squad perspective which was great,” he said. “There’s still some cricket to come and that will be helpful but time will tell as to finalising that squad but it’s not so much about that as it’s about the cricket that we want to play right here right now.”The idea is that as a squad you want to be able to have guys in the situations and have these experiences so over a bigger picture we’ll all be better for it and that’ll be the best part that came out of this series, it was a very tough series.”

Allrounder eclipses previous best by 69 runs as Surrey run out comfortable winners

David Hopps26-May-2023Sean Abbott’s first thought about a glorious night he could never have envisaged was that he is no Andrew Symonds with the bat. That made his intervention at the Kia Oval all the more remarkable. He now shares with Symonds the joint-fastest T20 hundred ever made in England and the fourth fastest in T20 history after his 34-ball romp for Surrey in front of 17,000 spectators. He is no mean cricketer, but he just kept smiling at the absurdity of it all.Kent had been pleasantly stunned by Symonds’ hundred in their colours that night in Maidstone back in 2004 as the potential of T20 began to dawn. This time they were the fall guys, their control of Surrey’s top-order abruptly surrendered to one of those nights when a recognised lower-order batter simply discovers a power within themselves that has never previously been witnessed.Nigh-on two decades have followed since Symonds’ revelation of T20’s potential. Then the game invited scepticism and suspicion even in the country that had been daring and forward-thinking enough to present it to the world. As Abbott underlined once more, it has since become a game where anything is possible.”I don’t think people should be thinking about me and ‘Roy’ in the same breath,” Abbott said, moments after his unbeaten 110 from 41 balls with four fours and 11 sixes (all but one between long on and deep square) became just the latest tale of the unexpected. “But it was a lot of fun. Batting records could not be further from my radar. I was just grateful to find the middle of the bat.”He found it so often on his debut T20 appearance at Kia Oval that he now stands only four balls adrift of Chris Gayle’s all-time record. He achieved the feat in the penultimate over with a muscular, short-arm shovel down the ground against his fellow Australian, the veteran seamer Michael Hogan. This from a seam bowler whose average in T20 was 10.91, who had never made more than 41 in 76 previous innings in this format, and who made only 51 runs as an afterthought in Sydney Sixers’ 2022-23 Big Bash campaign.Nobody doubts that he can bat – he has made good runs for Surrey in the Championship this season and has a first-class average of 22 – but this was only the second hundred of his professional career. Inspiration fell upon him. If his maiden half-century brought professional satisfaction, the realisation that he might actually make a hundred became a bit of a lark.It was Kent Day, the Feast of St Augustine, which celebrates the patron saint of Kent and first Archbishop of Canterbury. But this time the chomping was left to Abbott, whose saintly qualities are not even known in Windsor, New South Wales. He came in with Surrey 64 for 4 in 8.2 tentative overs. Sam Curran had just departed to a bit of catching practice at mid-off and the pitch cried out for somebody who would just give it a slug.Thanks to Surrey’s uncommon reliance on a bowler-heavy side, Abbott had that opportunity. He said later that he just didn’t want to use up too many balls. With six overs remaining, Surrey were 118 for 5, Abbott on 28 from 17, and there was talk of how 170 would surpass Kia Oval’s par score. But Surrey added 105 in the last five overs. First Kent’s bowling fell apart then their fielding followed. They began like the side that finished top of South Group in 2021 and finished like the side that ended up bottom a year later.Abbott first took a liking to the left-arm spin of George Linde – too short, six; too full, another six. He might have holed out during that over on 47, but Joey Evison, who had watched those two balls sail many miles over his head, could not make ground at long-off to the mishit.Kane Richardson, another Australian in the firing line, then went for 30 (6-4-6-4-4-6) on the 18th over. Richardson opted for wide yorkers, but never nailed them, and Abbott, by now discovering his full repertoire, mixed delicate steers and extra-cover drives with lean-back heaves into a warm South London sky.When one of those heaves malfunctioned against Evison, Linde, who had a bad night, leaned forward to fumble a sitter. With the century achieved against Hogan, there was time for laughter, too, in the crowd as Richardson and Jack Leaning combined to pat-a-cake another blow into the boundary boards. It was all a far cry from the impressive way Kent had started, exemplified by a brilliant run out of Tom Curran by Jordan Cox at mid off.It was good to see Sam Curran back in Surrey’s side, batting at three and captain, too, so soon after an IPL season in which he had been charged with living up to a record £1.85m price tag. “A season of many ups and downs, lots to learn from and come back stronger,” he had tweeted. He can relax into a tournament where IPL price tags are rarely a staple of crowd conversation.Another of Surrey’s IPL contingent, Jason Roy, was again absent with a minor calf injury, quite a coincidence after a fraught and highly-publicised week in which he abandoned his England incremental contract to sign for the MLC’s inaugural tournament in the United States. The suggestion remains that he will see out Surrey’s Blast season, and will miss the start of the MLC tournment if they reach the final stages, but cricket is in flux, Roy is one of the players at the centre of it, and nothing can be assumed to be set in stone.In the meantime, Surrey’s medical team will see rather more of him than Surrey supporters which is a common state of affairs that county cricket is finding increasingly hard to live with.It was hard therefore not to recall the words of Alec Stewart, Surrey’s director of cricket – and seemingly a contender to replace the late Mystic Meg – who remarked a week or so earlier about top English players attached to counties: “They go away and play elsewhere and when they come back they want time in the indoor school with the best coaches just to get ready to go off and play in another franchise competition. ‘Oh and by the way I’ve got a little calf injury so can I get treated by the physio, the doctor, the medical staff and can I get rehab as well?’ “Sunil Narine stood in as opener during Surrey’s victory against Middlesex at Lord’s 24 hours earlier – a match when Abbott was not one of the eight batters who reached the crease. This time Surrey promoted Laurie Evans and opted for make-do-and-mend with Abbott at No. 6. It all went rather well.When Symonds made that format-defining hundred, Kent’s coach, Matt Walker, had watched with wonder from the non-striker’s end. This time he was about 100 metres away and could be forgiven if he did not find things quite as uplifting.Kent made a spirited start with the bat as Daniel Bell-Drummond and Tawande Muyeye repeatedly peppered the boundary to reach 75 in the powerplay. Both reached half-centuries – Muyeye’s first – but after Sunil Narine had Bell-Drummond caught in the deep, Kent crumbled. The last over was left to Abbott, the game won, his face full of smiles, but no wicket to add the final touch to his evening.

England to play four Tests, three ODIs and three T20Is before Australia arrive for limited-overs tour

ESPNcricinfo staff24-May-2019Centurion will remain the host venue for South Africa’s Boxing Day Test against England later this year, with CSA confirming its fixture list for the 2019-20 season. As well as a full England tour featuring four Tests, three ODIs and three T20Is, South Africa will also host Australia for six limited-overs matches in February and March.England will travel to Cape Town, the traditional venue for South Africa’s New Year Test, followed by matches in Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. Durban misses out on a Test but is the venue for an ODI and T20I; England will also travel to East London for the start of the T20I series.The tour will begin in mid-December with one two-day and one three-day tour match in Benoni. After the Tests, England have two one-day warm-up games scheduled in Paarl.Australia’s arrival in late February will see them go straight into T20Is at Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, with the three ODIs scheduled for Paarl, Bloemfontein and Potchefstroom – Australia’s first visit to Senwes Park since the 2003 World Cup.”This will be a huge summer both for our Standard Bank Proteas, who are currently ranked in the top three in all three formats, and for our fans who can look forward to action-packed and top-quality entertainment against two of the powerhouses of world cricket,” CSA chief executive Thabang Moroe said.”The Test matches will take on particular significance as this will be our first home series in the ICC World Test Championship following our away series in India in October. I am delighted also to announce that we will be working closely with SA Tourism around the Test host venues of Pretoria, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg to ensure that this series creates a win-win situation both for cricket and the South African economy.”The two KFC T20 international series take on extra relevance as we start our preparation for the ICC Men’s World T20 to be played in Australia in October and November next year.”South Africa 2019-20 fixturesDec 26-30 – 1st Test v England, SuperSport Park, Centurion
Jan 3-8 – 2nd Test v England, PPC Newlands, Cape Town
Jan 16-20 – 3rd Test v England, St George’s Park, Port Elizabeth
Jan 24-28 – 4th Test v England, Bidvest Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg
Feb 4 – 1st ODI v England, PPC Newlands, Cape Town
Feb 7 – 2nd ODI v England, Kingsmead, Durban
Feb 9 – 3rd ODI v England, Bidvest Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg
Feb 12 – 1st T20I v England, Buffalo Park, East London
Feb 14 – 2nd T20I v England, Kingsmead, Durban
Feb 16 – 3rd T20I v England, SuperSport Park, Centurion
Feb 21 – 1st T20I v Australia, Bidvest Wanderers, Johannesburg
Feb 23 – 2nd T20I v Australia, St George’s Park, Port Elizabeth
Feb 26 – 3rd T20I v Australia, PPC Newlands, Cape Town
Feb 29 – 1st ODI v Australia, Eurolux Park, Paarl
Mar 4 – 2nd ODI v Australia, Mangaung Oval, Bloemfontein
Mar 7 – 3rd ODI v Australia, Senwes Park, Potchefstroom

Career-best showings with bat and ball help see off Sir Alastair and co

David Hopps16-Aug-2021Glamorgan 293 for 5 (Rutherford 67, Cooke 66*) beat Essex 289 (Cook 68, Walter 50, Cooke 5-61) by five wicketsJoe Cooke started the season as a careworn Championship opener trying to make the grade, but life became a far grander affair for him at Sophia Gardens in the semi-final of the Royal London Cup as he summoned the best performance of his life with bat and ball to lead Glamorgan into Thursday’s 50-over final.Cooke’s 5 for 61 helped to keep Essex in range at 289 after they had threatened to run away with the match. And after Hamish Rutherford’s explosive retort put Glamorgan in the ascendancy, Cooke, now acquainting himself with No. 7, was a model of sound judgment with an unbeaten 66 from 56 balls as he shared an unbroken stand of 111 in 17 overs for the sixth-wicket with Tom Cullen.Considering the hold that Simon Harmer’s offspin has had upon county cricket in the past few seasons, there could be no sweeter finish for Cooke than to launch him straight for four and six in successive balls to win the match, the winning blow sailing through the trees at the Taff End to threaten the riverside walkers: probably the nearest thing to marketing that the competition has had all year.Glamorgan’s opponents in their first one-day final since 2013 will be determined by Tuesday’s semi-final between Durham and Surrey – and Durham must try to negotiate a safe passage without their leading wicket-taker in the competition, Paul van Meekeren, who has a long-standing deal in the Caribbean Premier League with St Kitts and Nevis Patriots and must leave early to quarantine ahead of their opening game on August 26.The Sophia Gardens pitch appeared to possess two distinct moods, offering excellent batting conditions in the first half of both innings, but then markedly losing pace and bounce as the ball softened to make strokeplay difficult. Essex certainly suggested as much as they lost their last seven wickets for 64 in the last 62 balls.Cooke scotched that theory. In an unfamiliar role, he met Essex’s spinners with composure and when the captain, Tom Westley, finally had to return to seam with 26 needed from four overs, he grasped the moment. Essex were not about to entrust the job to Ben Allison, whose four new-ball overs had bled 46 in the face of Rutherford’s 44-ball 67. Instead, they turned to Jack Plom, but he conceded 16 – 15 of them to Cooke, who began the over by driving a half-volley back over his head and ended it by chopping him over short third for another boundary.Cooke made a habit of releasing the pressure on himself by taking a boundary at the start of the over, never more evident than when he welcomed the return of Ryan ten Doeschate, 41 now, with a flat bat over his head when 42 were needed off six. Essex did not bowl Paul Walter – only six overs for 59 this season, quite a comedown for an allrounder who once had the Essex sage, Keith Fetcher, purring at his potential.Perhaps the umpire, Ian Gould, who these days bestrides the county circuit like a latter-day Dickie Bird, but without the engaging histrionics, would have been privately relieved at Glamorgan’s victory. It was Gould who inadvertently stopped Cullen’s pull shot with his shin at square leg at a critical juncture. At least Gould had the decency to refuse treatment; Dickie would have required a fleet of ambulances and a chapter in his next book.”It’s a pretty cool and special feeling,” Cooke said. “Because Hamish scored so quickly, we knew we could keep it ticking over. It was a good pitch and hard to bowl. Some of the good balls were going for four. My first spell with the ball wasn’t great and Alastair Cook got a hold of me so to come back with wickets in my second spell was pleasing. I’m enjoying a different role in this team and I’m always in the game both batting and bowling.”Rutherford, a seasoned campaigner who knew that Glamorgan needed a flyer, and he had to provide it, broke Allison with five successive leg-side boundaries – the last of them clearing the ropes at square leg. There were 23 in all in the over. When Rutherford fell against Harmer at long-on, Kiran Carlson’s sparky run-a ball 36 maintained the momentum while Nick Selman batted in the shadows. When Selman was fifth out with 108 still needed, Essex might have imagined themselves slight favourites.Essex’s batters did not do much wrong. In a debilitated competition, it was good to see Alastair Cook’s trademark cut shot to the fore as he made 68 from 66 balls before he fell in exasperating fashion, overbalancing to a nondescript leg-side wanderer to be stumped. Essex’s two young batters, Josh Rymell and Feroze Khoshi, played their part in setting up the innings, as did Walter’s half-century, but the finale was feverish and Cooke’s medium pace was the beneficiary as back-of-a-length deliveries brought excessive reward.The real hero was the old fox, Michael Hogan, whose 10 overs cost 21. There is an imbalance in English cricket between young one-day batters (a veritable plague) and young one-day bowlers. Hogan, true to the verities of the game at 40, is a constant reminder of what can be achieved.