Pressure from commercial sponsors may finally end the dispute between Cricket Australia and the players over the pay model

Daniel Brettig10-Jul-2017A recurring sight and sound of the Australian winter is that of top cricketers doing their best to act like they’re playing at the height of summer. That’s because July and August are when advertising and promotion for the following season are shot, whether it is Steven Smith and Glenn Maxwell for KFC, Usman Khawaja and Nathan Lyon for Toyota, or all of the above for Nine’s summer of cricket.The Australian cricket pay war, however, means none of those shoots are currently happening at a chilly North Sydney Oval, an overcast Allan Border Field, or between showers at the SCG. Nor are any of the deals that usually result in said advertising being struck, at least not within the bounds preferred by Cricket Australia (CA) and its extensive list of protected sponsors (meaning that no player can sign to other sponsors in the same space – such as Toyota precluding Audi, or KFC ruling out McDonalds).In fact the only person to announce putting pen to paper in any way, since CA announced a downgraded alcohol partnership with Lion Nathan back in March, is Mitchell Starc. As of last week he is now on contract to an Audi dealership in western Sydney, in clear defiance of CA’s concurrent deal with Toyota. Depending on how talks between CA and the Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) progress, it is almost certain that Starc will not be the last player to sign up for a similar kind of deal.Via correspondence to players on the eve of the previous MoU’s expiry on June 30, the team performance manager Pat Howard warned players against such deals. Starc’s actions demonstrated that the players were not fussed by the warnings, and that CA is rapidly losing control of a commercial space it had previously managed comfortably between players, sponsors and its annual grant – in lieu of the players’ intellectual property (IP) – to the ACA.

As recently as last week it is believed that CA was still searching for companies to take up advertising space in the ODI and T20 formats

Among the many reasons CA used to justify its attempt to break up the fixed percentage revenue model was uncertainty about the future commercial landscape. On the face of it, this was true – Commonwealth Bank have downgraded their sponsorship, Carlton and United Breweries ended theirs, and the Nine, Ten and Star (overseas rights) networks all have deals up for renewal next year.But in pushing the dispute beyond the expiry of the previous agreement without any sign of a resolution, and in turn leaving more than 230 players out of contract – including Smith, Warner, Starc and other marketable names – CA has invited a commercial maelstrom that has created far greater uncertainty than that which existed at the start of MoU negotiations last November. The pressure on CA’s leadership – the chairman David Peever, the chief executive James Sutherland and the lead MoU negotiator Kevin Roberts – is now mounting from all sides.Among the most pressing right now is that of major team sponsorships, after CommBank elected to get out of its Test team and series rights to concentrate on the women’s game, and CUB opted out of sponsoring the ODI team and the series it plays in. It has already been reported that the booming financial services firm Magellan is on the cusp of signing on for Test rights, but for many weeks now it has remained on the verge without actually signing.One of the reasons for this seeming hold-up is quite simple, and directly related to the pay dispute. As an ASX-listed company, Magellan must disclose all such activity to its shareholders and the market in general. By announcing the deal in the middle of the dispute, without any certainty about access to Australia’s top players or when they will next be playing, Magellan stands to put itself at risk of stalling a share price that has jumped from A$2.15 at the end of the 2012 financial year to A$27.07 as of Friday last week.At least in the case of Magellan, it appears CA will be able to announce the new partnership whenever a new MoU is struck. However, there is less assurance around deals for the limited-overs team. As recently as last week it is believed that CA was still searching for companies to take up advertising space in the ODI and T20 formats, and finding it decidedly difficult to find takers at a time when the governing body’s usually secure place as a home for advertisers, broadcasters and fans is being eroded.Set up in May this year by the ACA, the Cricketers’ Brand will be responsible for players’ commercial deals with sponsors and also access to them for broadcasters and other media•Getty ImagesAll the while, existing sponsors have been left wondering what is next, and how valid their contracts can be in the current climate. Commercial partners were sent correspondence by CA on June 29 – one day before the MoU expired – in which they were told that they still had IP rights access to players still contracted, and that it would also be possible to use IP for uncontracted players provided it was used to promote the game. The problem? Not one Australian player remains contracted, while only CA could use player IP to promote the game. In other words, commercial partners were left high and dry, without the ability to use any Australian player IP. Which, in short, leaves a long queue for using the likes of Ashton Agar, Travis Head and Moises Henriques: none likely to be taking the field for the first Ashes Test at the Gabba in November. “I’m sure,” one industry figure said, “that’s not what Optus signed up for.”Not helping is the spectre – however remote – of that very match and the four Ashes Tests to follow it being affected by the dispute. No single story has infuriated CA more than last Friday’s revelation that England do not plan to fly down under for their women’s and men’s tours in the event of an extended dispute, on the basis that the players would not be afforded reasonable preparation if there were no professional cricketers to play warm-up matches against.Whether or not the ECB’s message was motivated by the chance to lob a grenade into the opposing camp is a matter for conjecture, but what is not in doubt is CA’s private anger that another cricket board would say anything to destabilise the expectations of fans planning to travel. The fallout from the ECB’s admission was felt on Monday when the Barmy Army’s co-founder Dave Peacock told the that any such prospect could send the longtime fan group bankrupt.”[The Ashes] is on the bucket list of so many sports fans who’ve shelled out between £15,000 [A$25,000] and £20,000 for the 51 days,” Peacock said. “It’s a huge investment and now there’s an element of concern over whether an agreement will be found. There are 30,000-plus fans travelling to Australia this year, and they’ve already booked their flights, hotels, tickets and tours. We could go bust if this isn’t sorted out.”

By announcing the deal in the middle of the dispute, Magellan stands to put itself at risk of stalling a share price that has jumped from A$2.15 at the end of the 2012 financial year to A$27.07 as of Friday last week

Whenever and in whatever way it is sorted, the MoU is likely to have one major change regarding the commercial side of the game – namely the previous state of detente around player IP that had CA get generous rights to the players in exchange for its annual grant to fund the ACA. Much as previous iterations of the CA board have strained to break the perceived shackles of the fixed revenue percentage model, so too have players, managers and the ACA grumbled every now and then about protected sponsors and CA windfalls from the use of IP.There was nothing more commercially contentious in CA’s original MoU submission to the ACA last December than the following words: “Given that CA is an employer of the players and the ACA is the collective bargaining agent for the players, we question the appropriateness of CA directly funding the ACA.” It was a warning followed up later in negotiations by the strong assertion that the board would no longer fund the players’ association, meaning the withdrawal of annual payments amounting to around $4.5 million paid directly by CA to the ACA over the past five years. Another payment to factor into commercial rights is the A$3.6 million paid by CA into a marketing pool for all centrally contracted players, in return for their use as wearers of branded uniforms, the reason spectators and television viewers see signage at grounds, and the faces and names of advertising and promotional material and appearances.But in seeking to remove the ACA’s annual grant, CA has opened up a debate in which the association and also the agents of individual players believe more can be done; they believe that CA’s list of protected sponsors – nine for the men, all sponsors for the women – is too lengthy, and that greater freedom of sponsorship and movement would allow the players to earn more while also funding the operational costs of the ACA.”The ACA have set up the Cricketers’ Brand, which means they could exploit the players’ rights, sell them to CA for a net A$10 million dollars, the ACA could run itself and the players would get more than A$3.6 million,” a player manager said. “Whatever happens going forward, the MoU gets signed and players are again housed under that deal, but CA shouldn’t have the right to have nine protected sponsors, they should have three or four paying enough to get that right. The rest shouldn’t be protected and the ACA should, in conjunction with the agents, exploit the images in other ways, to pay their own way and pay the players more.”The uncertainty in commercial circles created by Australia’s pay dispute has led to growing pressure on the CA leadership, including CEO James Sutherland•ICCIn the meantime, more players will join Starc in signing individual contracts with all manner of sponsors, while the aforementioned Cricketers’ Brand will chase opportunities to seal more collective deals – as evidenced by the fact the ACA’s commercial manager Tim Cruickshank is reportedly set to fly to India this week to test the marketplace. Even when an MoU is signed, the convention in the past has been for existing deals to be honoured for their full term but not renewed, for instance when Adidas and then Asics requested, as part of apparel deals, that all players wore their brand of whites, rather than the assortment, usually aligned with bat sponsors, used previously. A mess of different deals signed in the midst of the pay war would serve only to drive down the value of protected sponsorships with CA.Which ties in with one of the more telling stories about how complex relationships between CA and commercial partners can be – one that suggests it is this money, rather than the cut the players are seeking, that will force an end to the dispute. The story of Warner’s attempt to punch Joe Root in a Birmingham bar in 2013 is well-documented; less so the commercial chaos it caused behind the scenes. The very day an angry Sutherland spoke in Brisbane about Warner’s transgression, and its attendant narratives of alcohol and late nights out, a Victoria Bitter promotion was scheduled to take place on a barge in front of London’s Tower Bridge. At a cost of about A$80,000, it would serve also to help CA sell tickets for the home Ashes series that was to follow.The promotional event did not end up going ahead on its original date and, given the particular nature of the issue, would not have been a surprise had it been cancelled altogether. But it did take place about a week later – with Warner absent – CA’s marketing and commercial arm having gone through hoops to ensure it did go ahead. How much Warner’s hefty punishment – and the decision to then terminate the contract of the coach Mickey Arthur – was about brand protection is a question only Sutherland can answer. This time, of course, the entire Australian team is currently unavailable to the game’s increasingly jumpy sponsors, and may not be again until those adverts actually need to be shot under sunny skies.

Over-experimentation in the middle overs undid the early damage inflicted by the pacers, says Australia captain

Daniel Brettig18-Sep-20172:39

‘Two new balls made chase tougher’ – Smith

Depth is a concept that Australia can expect to wrestle with during the Ashes, in the sense that England’s batting order has it and Steven Smith’s side, for the time being, does not. In Chennai, Smith’s ODI team got an early taste of what that can look like, albeit in circumstances that allowed some room for benefit of the doubt.With the new ball, Nathan Coulter-Nile and Pat Cummins started exceptionally well, bowling fast, on the ideal length and with enough movement to prompt errors from India’s top four. Marcus Stoinis then followed up by “bashing the wicket” and coaxing out a couple victims of his own to cross-bat shots.However those early gains gave way to more indifferent bowling through the middle of the innings, as India showcased the depth – that word again – they have added to their batting order in limited overs matches through the regeneration of MS Dhoni and the allround ability of Hardik Pandya. Dropped catches helped too, but India still had to capitalise, something Dhoni and Pandya did in grand style, the former savaging the recalled James Faulkner, after the latter had swung freely at Adam Zampa’s flat, full wrist spin.”I think we probably we went away from our plans a little bit,” Smith said. “We were hitting such a good length and certainly persisted with that for a while with the good bouncers we were bowling. We were trying too many things, too many slower balls, just not hitting that good hard length we were hit early on.”The message to Zampa as well was to bring his length back a bit. He was bowling very full and Hardik looked like hitting everyone of those for a six. As soon as he got his length back a bit and made him go across the ball, he got him out. He just bowled a fraction full and paid the price.”Depth in batting tests a bowling unit in this manner. Second and third spells are required, wickets must be coaxed from old balls as well as new, concentration and discipline must be maintained for longer periods than an initial burst. Granted plenty of overs in which to right the ship, Dhoni and Pandya proved capable of playing a longer game than Australia’s bowlers. It was an episode that could not help but be noticed by England, particularly its lower middle order trio of Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes and Moeen Ali.”That partnership changed the game,” Smith said. “They put on 120-odd and took them from 87 to 206. In the end that proved to be a match-winning partnership. Unfortunately we weren’t able to capitalise on the start we had. We started very well with the new ball. That’s a positive for us. One thing we have been working on.”Over the last 18 months, we haven’t started well with the new ball, we haven’t been able to draw things back. I thought we bowled to the conditions and bowled to the right areas.”When rain arrived between innings, reducing Australia’s allotment of overs to 21 and their target to 164, the time afforded to Dhoni and Pandya was sheared away from the touring middle order. This was doubly unfortunate, as the same inclement weather that reduced the overs also helped create an ideal environment for India’s seamers Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah and Pandya himself. By the time the early overs had seen a tit-for-tat loss of Australian top order wickets not dissimilar to India’s, there was very little room for the middle order to manoeuvre in.”It was never going to be easy chasing 160 with two new balls. It was sort of a good new ball wicket to bowl with,” Smith said. “We could have perhaps played a little bit differently and try to take a little bit more time upfront. It’s always hard in 20 overs to judge that. We weren’t good enough. Batting for 20 overs is difficult when you are losing wickets. Trying to go hard, it didn’t work out as we would have liked. Hopefully we would turn things around in a couple of days in Kolkata.”I think 160 with one new ball would have made things a lot easier. When you have two new balls from both ends, as you saw the whole game, we took three wickets with the new ball and they found it quite hard. It was the same for us. When you are playing 20 overs, you don’t have a great deal of time to make things up. You need eight an over basically from ball one. It was difficult in that aspect. Perhaps we could have been a little bit more defensive at the start, keep wickets in hand and harder later.”Stacked as it is with allrounders, Australia’s limited overs batting order is deeper than the Test match equivalent. They will hope that next time around the weather will not intervene at an awkward juncture. but at the same time, Smith will know that success for his teams this summer will relate very much to whether they can persist for longer periods than in Chennai – India now, and England in coming months, both have the depth to test Australian endurance.

Rangpur Riders mixed solid supporting acts with the firepower of their big-hitters to power through the latter half of the tournament

Mohammad Isam13-Dec-2017Tournament reviewRangpur Riders were deserving winners of this year’s BPL, and not only because of their hired guns. They peaked at the right time, razing their playoff opponents in one big performance after another. They took down a youthful Khulna Titans side in the eliminator, before riding out the controversial two-day second qualifier against Comilla Victorians. In the final, they never pressed the panic button as Chris Gayle and Brendon McCullum burned down Dhaka Dynamites, the pre-tournament favourites.As usual, Mashrafe Mortaza led the team superbly while contributing with his all-round abilities. He was the team’s best bowler, regularly giving them early breakthroughs and standing up when the opposition got big on them.Rangpur also got success through local players like Mohammad Mithun, Nazmul Islam and Sohag Gazi who performed better than expected. Ravi Bopara and Rubel Hossain also provided important runs and wickets. It was also a maiden BPL title for Tom Moody, in his first season coaching in the tournament.What workedGayle and McCullum finally came good in the playoffs, as did Johnson Charles. Mithun and Bopara were their consistent performers in the league stage while among the bowlers, Mashrafe and Nazmul were the most effective.What didn’t workRangpur missed Thisara Perera after he had to leave for international duty. Kusal Perera, Adam Lyth and Ziaur Rahman also didn’t fit their plans while Sam Hain remained untested.Tips for 2018The maiden BPL title should motivate Rangpur to contract some more top T20 cricketers in the next season.

They’ve won three of the last four BBL titles, and have begun the new season with three wins on the bounce, despite missing six key players. What makes the Perth Scorchers so good?

Tim Wigmore29-Dec-2017Under the roof at the Etihad Stadium, the Perth Scorchers are walking out to bowl. Their captain Adam Voges only knows one thing: Mitchell Johnson will bowl the first over. Beyond that, who will bowl and when is governed by a mixture of Voges’ assessment of his bowlers’ form, the Scorchers’ pre-match data analysis, and simple gut feel.This fusion of intensive pre-match preparation and creativity during games is the hallmark of how the Scorchers have become the world’s most dominant T20 domestic side. Since the 2013-14 season, they have won three of the four Big Bash Leagues. They have won 28 of their 42 games in this time – more than the Hobart Hurricanes and the Sydney Thunder combined.At the Etihad Stadium, the Scorchers had three players playing for Australia in the Test two miles away – and Jason Behrendorff and Nathan Coulter-Nile, two outstanding T20 bowlers, injured, as well as Sam Whiteman, their best keeper. Yet even with six probable first-choice starters missing, plus another cluster of fringe players, the Scorchers still beat the Renegades, who had also won their first two games this year. Although the chaotic end and harum-scarum running between the wickets was out of kilter with the Scorchers’ normal smooth efficiency, they still won with an over to spare. And so the Scorchers’ domination of the BBL – the sort that the league’s socialistic structure should render impossible – extended a little further.Of course, some snipe that, when it comes to the Scorchers, the BBL is not really a socialistic sports league at all. Before this match Brad Hodge said their method of retaining their squad was “something that maybe should be looked into” – the implication seemingly that the Scorchers could take advantage of their strong links with Western Australia’s teams in the 50-over and first-class competitions to stay within the salary cap.What is true is that the Scorchers have deliberately cultivated continuity with Western Australia. “We’ve got the same coaching staff, the same administration staff, the same strength and conditioning staff,” Justin Langer, who is coach of both the Scorchers and Western Australia, said before this year’s Big Bash. “What that means is we get them 12 months a year, and not just having to bring them in for six or seven weeks like most T20 tournaments around the world.” In an age of transient T20 sides the Scorchers can feel like the world’s only 12-month-a-year T20 team.Yet the most fundamental reason that players stay with the Scorchers is rather mundane. They stay because they win. Since 2013-14, the Scorchers’ win-loss record is 2.15; no one else has a higher ratio than 1.38.The Scorchers seldom triumph by out-hitting the opposition; instead, they outbowl them. Over the past five seasons the Scorchers’ batsmen only have the sixth-highest strike rate in the BBL. But they have comfortably the league’s best bowling average and economy rate. In keeping with the rest of the BBL, the Scorchers prefer to chase, but they are astoundingly successful protecting low scores. Since the start of the 2013-14 season, they have won six out of 10 matches while defending totals of 150 or less.No other team has come remotely close to that success rate. The Melbourne Stars have defended successfully once in five such attempts, the Brisbane Heat once in seven, the Sydney Sixers once in nine, and the other four teams have never won after scoring 150 or less batting first. In the process, the Scorchers have become the best embodiment of the theory, supported by the findings of many analysts, that teams win significantly more games when they restrict the opposition to 10% under a league’s par score than when they score 10% above the par score themselves.Getty ImagesIn the ninth over of the night, Voges is already using his sixth bowler. His attack is so strong that David Willey, England’s regular T20 opening bowler, is third change and, although he bowls frugally, ends the innings with two overs left unbowled.Voges’ attack is not merely brimming with supremely skilled bowlers; it has wonderful variety, too. Alongside Willey there is the left-arm venom of Mitchell Johnson – almost as ferocious as when he ravaged England at the MCG four years ago; the right-arm pace of Jhye Richardson; the knuckleballs and savvy of Andrew Tye, whose upbringing in indoor cricket helped him become a unique T20 bowler; Ashton Agar’s left-arm spin and James Muirhead’s legspin, unused for three years in the BBL yet good enough to play for Australia in the 2014 World T20. That’s an express left-armer opening with a right-armer; a mystery medium-fast bowler who is often as indecipherable as Russian code and has three T20 hat-tricks in 2017 alone; another left-armer, who specialises in prodigious swing; a left-arm spinner; and a legspinner. There is also Ashton Turner – an offspinner, just to complete the set – who has a frugal T20 economy rate of under seven yet has not bowled in this BBL.Add it all together and the upshot is that Voges is empowered to find the optimum match-ups – which bowlers are best placed to stymie particular batsmen – and can tinker endlessly to prevent batsmen settling against a certain type of bowling.That Voges succeeds so often – the Scorchers have taken 50 of a possible 60 wickets in their last six BBL games – is also a testament to the value of the Scorchers’ analyst. Dean Plunkett is so appreciated by Langer that he used him with Australia when he was temporary international T20 coach this year.Before each Big Bash game, Plunkett hands Langer and Voges a dossier with key performance indicators tailor-made for the ground and the opposition. Langer thinks these numbers clarify rather than confuse. “In all that pressure and the hectic nature of the game, the more we can simplify things the better. This might contradict most people’s idea of data and analysis.”To Voges, “as captain it’s just about staying a couple of balls ahead of the game – working out what the batters are trying to do, who they’ve got coming in next, what sort of matchups you want for those guys, as well as the guys who are in, and trying to balance that out. It doesn’t always work out but that information helps you structure the innings.”On the field, his role is “to keep the bowlers’ jobs as simple as possible, so they can concentrate on executing each ball that they want to deliver and I can worry about the rest – getting the match-ups right and the field placements right.”No T20 side in the world has proved as adept at overcoming the loss of bowlers as the Scorchers. Since 2013-14, six of the ten best bowlers in the BBL, according to the statistician Ric Finlay’s metric, have been from Perth. Against Melbourne Renegades, two of them – Behrendorff and Coulter-Nile – are injured; another, Turner, is unused; another, Yasir Arafat – a surprising choice as overseas player signed on the basis of Plunkett’s research into his death bowling prowess – left long ago.Yet the characters change, but the story stays the same: The Scorchers remain relentless and remorseless in stifling opposition batting line-ups. Other T20 teams have tried to manufacture their fifth bowler’s allocation, but the Scorchers unashamedly embrace specialists, even at the expense of a little batting depth.In the field, Voges has a simple mantra for his bowlers: “be ready at all times.” While they remain so, the Scorchers will continue to suggest that, for all that it is different about T20, one cricketing mantra remains the same. The best way to win matches is simply to outbowl the opposition.

Australia’s fielders in particular were slow to adapt to a WACA wicket with the pace and bounce of old

Daniel Brettig at Perth14-Dec-2017Amid all the nostalgia for the final Ashes Test at the WACA Ground, Australia’s players seemed to have been those least taken in by hopes for one final Perth flyer. For all its febrile history of venomous pacemen and bold batting, in the minds of Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc, Steven Smith and Darren Lehmann, this has been less the venue of pace and bounce than of endless overs watching Ross Taylor, Dean Elgar or JP Duminy batting, either side of Mitchell Johnson’s retirement.Certainly Hazlewood was less than optimistic when asked about the pitch this week, and on the eve of the match, Steven Smith lamented that the surface was softer under foot than he had wanted to feel. In mitigation, the curator Matthew Page was equally unsure of the strip he had prepared, noting that cold weather had stopped it from “baking” as he had hoped. The same uncertainty led the selectors to pick a fifth bowler in Mitchell Marsh, rather than a sixth batsman in Pete Handscomb.Within a few overs of Thursday’s play, however, it was clear that this valedictory WACA Ground pitch was among the fastest and liveliest prepared here in some years, offering some early seam movement, steep bounce and often frightening pace. At the same time it was commendably even and reliable, meaning batsmen could get plenty of their own back with full-blooded strokes, whether driving off the front or pulling and cutting off the back.In short, it was the sort of surface Australian players have often dreamed about utilising against visiting teams, particularly those from England. Not since 1978, the year the Sex Pistols broke up, has an English team emerged victorious in a WACA Test match, aided largely by the absence of so many Australian players due to Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, which was played across the road at the Gloucester Park trotting track. As signs around the ground proudly state, Australia have emerged victorious in seven of seven Ashes Tests since 1990-91.But having been presented with conditions better for bowling than they had expected, the Australians failed to take full advantage, due to some shoddy catching in particular. Marsh’s drop of Mark Stoneman meant that the opener would absorb a Hazlewood spell deserving of several wickets. Cameron Bancroft’s miss of Dawid Malan, first ball with the second new ball, meant that the left-hander could go on to a commendable and unbeaten century.In the hands of Starc, Hazlewood and Cummins, the ball flew through in ways that sorely tested the reflexes of the wicketkeeper Tim Paine, let alone those of Alastair Cook and Stoneman. Their average speed on the day was 142.85kph, the highest such figure in the CricViz database. In his 150th Test, Cook was duly beaten by pace through the air and off the wicket to perish lbw, before Stoneman endured a fire-and-brimstone spell from Hazlewood that included a stunning blow to the side of the helmet that was followed – after the obligatory concussion test – with another lifter that flew off the bat handle to within millimetres of being caught by Nathan Lyon in the gully.Stoneman would be unfortunate to be given out on DRS referral due to evidence that was mixed at best, adjudged to have gloved a short delivery that took off, this time from Starc relieving Hazlewood, and wonderfully caught by Paine. He fell after Joe Root had again succumbed to Pat Cummins, gloving another rising delivery down the leg side to Paine. The sheer hostility shown by the Australian fast bowlers was a lot to handle, something Malan and Bairstow were able to do as the shadows lengthened and a drying pitch lost some of its earlier lateral movement.Also of assistance to England was the fact that the pitch offered bounce but very little turn to Nathan Lyon, after he had spun the ball around corners in Brisbane and Adelaide. Based on how Stoneman and James Vince played Lyon’s very first over, the former electing to sweep almost immediately and the latter equally eager to use his feet and get down the pitch, the visitors were always going to be braver this time around.

I’d prefer not to be diving around as much as I was, probably shows we were a little bit two sides of the wicket at timesTim Paine

But the fact that there was little deviation relative to the first two Tests tipped the balance back towards the batsmen. Lyon’s 0 for 61 from 19 overs was presentable, but a long way short of his earlier feats. Marsh’s return to the Test bowling crease was similarly inoffensive, but the pair’s lack of wicket-taking threat drove Smith to try his own legbreaks for three overs.Walking off at the close, Marsh and Bancroft had plenty of reason to ponder their missed chances. In the space of three Tests, Australia have dropped two specialist first-slip fielders in Matt Renshaw and Handscomb, leaving Marsh to take up the post alongside Smith. Stoneman’s edge from Hazlewood was straight to him, perhaps only creating difficulty by arriving at the sort of height where a slipper can be unsure whether to have hands pointing up or down. Nevertheless, as a WACA local, Marsh should have not only taken the catch, but done so in comfort.Late in the evening, the second new ball offered the chance for Australia to take the rush of wickets that some of their earlier bowling had merited. Malan, though a talented strokemaker, is given at times to the odd mental lapse, and by his own admission he made one first up by premeditating a flick off the pads at Starc and finding himself trying to work a full outswinger through midwicket. The edge flew fast, Bancroft lunged at third slip and the chance went to ground, also eluding Smith. A wicket there might well have brought several, but as it is Malan and Bairstow can now begin again.”You get more time in Perth, it was just that it happens, you drop catches sometimes,” Paine said afterwards. “I think the second one that Bangers dropped came really quickly and that’s more Starcy than the Perth pitch. He gets that really full ball to fly through and it got there a little bit quicker than he anticipated.”Reflecting on his acrobatics, Paine said the diving he had to do suggested that Australia’s pacemen had not been able to deliver the consistent lines and lengths that might have reaped more wickets. Stoneman had been able to feast on the full ball early on, before Malan and Bairstow showed considerable panache in despatching the short ball – never better than the shot which delivered the left-hander’s first Test century, also England’s first of the series.”I’d prefer not to be diving around as much as I was, probably shows we were a little bit two sides of the wicket at times, but I wicket-keep to be in the game and I certainly was today so it was good fun,” Paine said. “Definitely [more pace and bounce], not a lot of sideways or a lot of swing, but certainly more pace and bounce than we’ve seen for the last few Tests here and Shield cricket, so some good signs. It felt pretty hard under foot the last hour or so tonight, it might be fractionally quicker if anything tomorrow.”By the final over, the Fremantle Doctor had well and truly come in, the 22,148 spectators were both well sunned and well oiled, and the viewers both at the ground and on television had been treated to plenty of vintage WACA sights and sounds. In their post-play debrief the Australians spoke also about another WACA trait – batsmen who get in on this surface have the chance to dominate for long periods. Missed opportunities and English improvement mean Malan and Bairstow can join a long line of other batsmen to have already done so.

For Steven Smith and Darren Lehmann, the challenge has been to find a less risky and more sustainable way of running up totals in Test cricket. And they found what they were looking for this Ashes

Daniel Brettig09-Jan-2018In cricket, as in music, the right tempo can be hard to find. Martin Hannett, the iconoclastic Manchester record producer, is depicted in the film telling the Joy Division drummer, Steven Morris, to play “faster, but slower”. In assessing the way the 2017-18 Ashes series was played, many have noted that it was the slowest in terms of scoring rate since 1994-95.For Australia, that is a seriously promising statistical sign that the team led by Steven Smith and coached by Darren Lehmann is finding the correct tempo for sustained success as a Test team.Shaun Marsh suffers quad strain

Australia’s middle-order batsman Shaun Marsh is out of the Perth Scorchers’ next Big Bash League match against Sydney Thunder on Wednesday due to a quad strain he carried through the fifth Ashes Test.
Marsh, who was second behind Steven Smith in the series’ leading run-makers, is believed to have suffered the injury during the Melbourne Test but was successfully able to manage it while making his second century in five Tests at the SCG.
Australia’s coach Darren Lehmann has lauded Marsh’s role in providing dependable support for Smith in particular.

Twenty-three years ago, Mark Taylor started his Australian captaincy with a goal to score more rapidly and play more proactively, the better to utilise the burgeoning talents of his team to win Test matches after the relative conservatism of the Allan Border/Bob Simpson years. Taylor wanted his teams to accelerate so as to make around 300 runs a day against quality bowling attacks and, in subsequently becoming the best Test side in the world, they largely did so.For Smith and Lehmann, the challenge has been to do the opposite, throttling back from the frenetic speeds at which Australia have become used to scoring runs in Tests, to find a less risky and more sustainable way of running up the totals that an excellent and now versatile bowling attack can defend. In summing up the way Australia had approached this Ashes series, won 4-0 after a final innings victory in Sydney, Lehmann said it had been critical to bat for long periods, even if not at the optimum rate. Similar maxims will apply for future, overseas assignments in South Africa, the UAE and England again in 2019: boom and bust is out, steady accumulation is in.”Long periods of time with their two senior bowlers in [Stuart] Broad and [James] Anderson we wanted them to bowl a lot of overs,” Lehmann said. “That was certainly a plan in the first innings of every game to make sure we’re batting big in the first innings, and achieved that in all bar Melbourne basically. So for us making sure those older guys were coming back day in, day out to bowl, was important, if we did that we gave our bowlers enough rest and away we go from there.”We’re planning that far ahead, it’s not funny. For us, it’s making sure you’re changing the way you play wherever you play. South Africa you would think very similar to Australian conditions so it’s not so bad. Pakistan is totally different, we’ll have to prepare differently as we did for India. I thought that Test series in India was unbelievable and if we got over the line there it would’ve been an amazing achievement, but you’ve got to chop and change between where you play and who you play.”That’s planning, Under-19s already underway, planning where we’re going to play, how we’re going to prepare, so they’re the things you do well ahead of the game.”

“We’re planning that far ahead, it’s not funny. For us, it’s making sure you’re changing the way you play wherever you play.”

Nothing epitomised the Australian tempo more than the fact Smith scored his runs at 48.51 runs per hundred balls, Shaun Marsh at 45.97, Usman Khawaja at 43.35 and even the hyper-aggressive David Warner at 52.37. Mitchell Marsh, while scoring at a more slippery 57.04, was notably more patient, and only the technical travails of Cameron Bancroft gave cause for concern. The principle underpinning all this crease-occupation was patience, and Lehmann spoke happily of watching Warner happily knock singles into the gaps offered to him by Joe Root as a way of restricting the usual flow of boundaries.”Certainly a bit different for the way they planned, they had deep cover, deep point and two back the whole time,” Lehmann said. “Normally those balls from Davey would go for four, so that was a plan from them to restrict his scoring, but I thought he handled it really well, showed a bit of maturity from Davey, which was great. For him to bat a long period of time is good for him, he knows he can go both ways.”It will be imperative to show defensive and attacking skills at the right times in South Africa, particularly given the way South Africa’s pacemen dismantled India in the opening Test of their current series in Cape Town. Lehmann admitted that the schedule of limited-overs matches between now and March would make the process of adaptation challenging, albeit in conditions not totally dissimilar to those on which Australian batsmen are raised.”We don’t have as much time, that’s the problem with the changeover. We have a [Sheffield] Shield round and a [practice] game in Benoni,” Lehmann said. “They’ll leave early, the Test squad, depending on the T20 squad which is playing at the same time, so we’ll have to work that as best we possibly can. Scheduling we can’t do anything about, but we’ll try and give them the best preparation we can in that regard. They’ve got some quality bowlers South Africa, no doubt about that, they’ll swing it around. It’s been quite dry there so it’ll be interesting to see what sort of wickets we get there, only time will tell.”Preparation is the key for whatever series. You’ve got to get there as early as we can. Broad and Anderson have got 900 Test wickets. And South Africa have got a really good attack. Shaun Marsh made a great hundred last time we were there at Centurion. I expect those guys to be a challenge, as it always is. South Africa are a tough opponent. We’ll have to play well, there’s no doubt about that. We’ll have to bat really well.”Much as Taylor knew that the right tempo for run-making would complement the fact that he had Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and initially Craig McDermott in harness to bowl opponents out, Lehmann and Smith have realised that, provided they stay fit, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon will be able to confound most opponents so long as there are no batting catastrophes to rob them of adequate runs to defend. Lehmann will not yet put the current quartet above Mitchell Johnson, Ryan Harris, Peter Siddle and Lyon from 2013-14, but they are getting close.”They certainly have the potential to be. Harris, Siddle, Johnson and Lyon were pretty good four years ago, but these guys are younger, they’ve got the appetite to be great,” Lehmann said. “Twenty-five days of cricket as well, every day they fronted up for us at crunch times. From a bowling point of view, very pleased we were able to get 80 wickets to win 4-0 and the way they’ve done it.”The last two wickets were a little bit slow and low as such, but Sydney took turn. The first three had some pace and bounce in them, but they adapted to those conditions really well, so, pleased you’ve got those guys playing together all at once.”Lehmann, of course, has flagged for some time that the 2019 Ashes tour will be the end of his time as Australian coach. The 2017-18 Ashes may yet be seen as the pivot point from Australian cavalier to Test-match roundhead, with Cromwellian consequences for the rest of world cricket.

He has played in every Test on the tours of South Africa and England, but his performances so far suggest he’s better utilised as a horse for helpful courses

Nagraj Gollapudi04-Sep-2018Virat Kohli feels safe playing a five-man bowling attack overseas. In each of the seven Tests India have played in South Africa and England this year, Hardik Pandya has been one of the five bowlers. Pandya does not classify himself as either a bowling or a batting allrounder. He wants to be known as just an allrounder.Let us look at his numbers. In four Tests in England, Pandya has been India’s fourth-highest runmaker with 164 at 23.42, including one half-century. He’s also taken 10 wickets at 24.70, including a five-wicket haul. Both the fifty and the five-for came in the same Test, in India’s victory at Trent Bridge.Take away the six riotous overs in which he ran through England’s middle and lower order in that Test, however, and his bowling figures look a little less impressive – five wickets in five innings at an average of 43.8 and a strike rate of nearly 70. It reflects his reliance on conditions to be penetrative as a bowler.In Southampton, where there wasn’t as much help for the quicker bowlers, he was only trusted with 17 overs over the two England innings, picked up just the one wicket, and went at over a run a ball in the first innings. At Edgbaston, Kohli didn’t use Pandya at all in the second innings, not even as a potential partnership-breaker when Sam Curran was rescuing England from 87 for 7.BCCIKohli, then, hasn’t shown faith in Pandya to bowl in all conditions, despite picking him in every Test of India’s overseas cycle so far. In 12 innings in South Africa and England, he has delivered 115.1 overs – that’s less than ten overs per innings – and taken 14 wickets.Those figures suggest Pandya is a batting allrounder capable of making an impact with the ball in helpful conditions rather than the pure allrounder he wants to be known as. Those figures would be more than acceptable if he was pulling his weight with the bat, but that hasn’t always been the case.In Southampton, for instance, he came in at No. 7 in the first innings and fell to a loose shot, just when Moeen Ali was looking dangerous and needed to be tackled with a little more care. In the second innings he was pushed up to No. 6, coming in after a century stand between Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane, which had given India a 50-50 chance in a chase of 245. His early dismissal – squared up by Ben Stokes – showed his technical limitations, and put England right back on top.With those technical limitations, Pandya isn’t yet capable of consistently batting at No. 6. He has been working on his batting, aiming at becoming sounder technically. But his best work so far has come when he has played instinctively, played his shots, and transferred the pressure back onto the opposition. The end goal should be for Pandya to tighten his defence while continuing to be a positive-minded player, but he isn’t there yet.And while he keeps making efforts to get there, it’s important for India to be flexible about when to play Pandya. Kohli will need to better weigh the pros and cons of Pandya versus a specialist bowler or batsman in the given conditions.On the eve of the Southampton Test, Kohli himself said he expected the pitch to take turn from the footmarks as the match went on, hinting at the possibility of playing an extra spinner. Come match day, however, India went in with the same combination as at Trent Bridge. As it happened, Kohli’s prediction of spin playing a crucial role came true; Moeen Ali, just as he was at the same venue against the same opposition in 2014, was England’s match-winner, picking up nine wickets in the match.Getty ImagesFor India, R Ashwin, who looked less than 100% fit having picked up a hip niggle at Trent Bridge, bowled 51.5 overs across the two innings and only picked up three wickets. On the fourth morning, before the start of play, Ravindra Jadeja made a close inspection of the wear and tear at the Pavilion End. Would it not have been better for India to have played Jadeja rather than Pandya? With all the wear and tear on the surface, all India could do then was imagine – imagine the effect Jadeja could have had against England’s seven left-handers, ripping the ball into them from the rough outside the off stump.At Edgbaston, India benched Cheteshwar Pujara. Given it was the first Test, and that the fast bowlers would come into it with fresh legs, and given the conditions that transpired – where the four main bowlers made enough of an impact for Pandya’s bowling to not be that much of a factor – wouldn’t India have been better served with an extra batsman?Leaving Pandya out in Southampton would have been harder than at Edgbaston, given he was coming off a brilliant all-round display at Trent Bridge. But didn’t England send Sam Curran, Player of the Match in the first Test, back to Surrey when they had both Ben Stokes and Chris Woakes fit and available for the third Test in Nottingham? It did not do any damage to Curran, who came back hungrier in the fourth Test and made a match-turning impact once again.Pandya is an integral member of India’s Test squad and deserves to be part of the dressing room. He remains India’s best allrounder. He will probably be more effective on the harder, flatter pitches India will likely play on in Australia later this year. His batting technique may not be tested as severely, and he might be more required as a workhorse with the ball. He could even get more purchase out of the old, reverse-swinging Kookaburra.But as he continues evolving as a Test allrounder, it’s important India use him wisely, and less rigidly. It will only help his and the team’s growth.

ESPNcricinfo looks at the most and least profitable auction punts of the season

Shiva Jayaraman29-May-2018

The methodology

Both batsmen’s runs and bowlers’ wickets are adjusted by taking into account their relative strike rate or economy (to the season average), respectively. With the season average strike rate of 137.92, if a batsman scored 100 runs at 150.0, his runs are adjusted to give him a credit of 8.7 (100*150/137.92). Similarly, if a bowler has taken 5 wickets at an economy of 7, he is given a credit of 1.37 additional wickets to reward for his superior economy (season average: 8.92).
Batsman collectively scored 19098 runs and bowlers took 662 wickets in this IPL. Teams spent over 551 Crores INR on the players, which meant that each run scored this IPL cost the teams roughly INR 1,44,734 and each wicket INR 41,75,432. Each player generates value based on the adjusted runs he scores or the adjusted wickets he takes.
For example, Sunil Narine scored 357 runs at a strike rate of 189.89 (season average SR – 137.92), so he is credited with more runs than he actually scored, which works out to 478. This multiplied by the value of each run (INR 1,44,734) gives a batting value of INR 6.91 crores. Similarly, Narine took 17 wickets at an economy of 7.65 (season ER – 8.92). So his 17 wickets are weighted up for his better economy and get him returns equivalent to 18.4 wickets. The bowling value he generates is INR 7.67 crores (18.4 multiplied by the value of each wicket, i.e. INR 41,75,432 . The total notional money he generates for his team is the sum of his batting and bowling values – INR 14.69 crores. This minus the price at which Narine was retained by Kolkata Knight Riders give the gains made by the team by investing on him. This figure works out to INR 6.05 crores.

The Indian Premier League this season may well have been the most closely contested in its 11-year history, but it was hardly a photo finish when it came to how the teams fared with the returns they got off their auction punts. While each of the teams had their fair share of hits and misses, some teams ended up doing significantly better than others in terms returns on their buys at the January auction. ESPNcricinfo looks at the best and worst buys of the season based on how the players fared on the field and the money they cost.The price that teams pay for the services of a player may not always depend purely on his potential to perform on the field. His marketability off it and his popularity among local fans to drive gate revenues – among other factors – may also play a role. However, for the purpose of this exercise we look at the season numbers – runs, strike-rate, wickets and economy – to arrive at guesstimates of the that the players generated for their teams and how the teams themselves fared.A number of actions on the field in cricket aren’t easily measurable and would need a much-evolved effort to quantify: how would one quantify MS Dhoni’s instincts as a captain or AB de Villiers’ I-can-fly-too catching effort? To keep it simple, for the reader, and for ourselves, we look at only the easily quantifiable aspects of the game – batting and bowling – in this analysis. To this end, only the runs scored, strike rates, wickets taken, and the economy rates are taken into account to come up with a return on investment value for each player and thereby, for each team.The Marquee-player tag worthiesThese players generated values of over INR 10 Crores and should trigger off a prolonged bidding war in the next auction if this season is anything to go by. Nine of them make the cut with Narine topping the list. He chipped in with returns of 14.59 Crores for KKR through his performances. Rishabh Pant, Rashid Khan, Shane Watson, Andre Russell, Kane Williamson, KL Rahul, Andrew Tye and Hardik Pandya complete the list.Graphic: Sunil Narine’s all-round excellence put him right at the top of the MVP charts in IPL 2018•ESPNcricinfo LtdThe windfall gainsThese were the relatively cheap buys who ended up contributing in a big way for the teams. Among players to play in at least seven matches this season, Mayank Markande was bought at his base price of just INR 20 Lakhs, but generated notional returns of INR 6.37 Crores through his performances. The rest of top-five, incidentally, are all bowlers who were bought cheap but turned in creditable performances: Shreyas Gopal, Prasidh Krishna, Lungi Ngidi and Deepak Chahar.Graphic: Rookie wristspinner Mayank Markande was among the biggest surprise packages in IPL 2018•ESPNcricinfo LtdNot-worth-the-money buysRohit Sharma came at a price tag of INR 15 Crores but could generate returns of only INR 3.88 Crores. His negative return of 74.12% makes his the most over-priced buy of the season when we look at only his batting performances. However, he is excluded from this list as he contributed by leading the Mumbai Indians. Among players who didn’t add value to the team as captains or as wickekeepers, Deepak Hooda was the worst buy of the season. He was bought at a price of INR3.6 Crores by Sunrisers, but could generate returns equivalent to only INR 95.34 Lakhs: a negative return on investment of 73.52%. Yuvraj Singh, Aaron Finch, Manish Pandey and Axar Patel round up the bottom five. Like Rohit, Wriddhiman Saha – whose performances with the bat a created returns of a negative 70.22% – too avoids this club on account of him being a wicketkeeper.

Stuart Binny spends some time in reflection•BCCIThe spectators in the XIThese players, well, were just there. No significant performances of note with bat or ball and ended up creating notional value of less than INR 1 Crore. Stuart Binny was bought for INR 50 Lakhs in the auction and he managed to generate just enough to cover his cost for Rajasthan Royals. Among players to play at least seven matches in the season Binny contributed the least in terms of his performances. Yuvraj, Sarfaraz Khan and Deepak Hooda complete this club.

More-bang-for-the-buck buysThese were value-for-money buys: not necessarily bought for cheap money but turned in performances that justified their price tags and more. Williamson returned his team more bang for the buck than anyone else in the season: he was bought at INR 3 Crores and generated INR 10.65 Crores. The difference of INR 7.65 Crores between his auction price and his notional performance value is the highest for any player this season. Shane Watson, Shakib Al Hasan, Ambati Rayudu and Narine round up the top-five.

Graphic: The top three sides also got the best returns of investment in IPL 2018•ESPNcricinfo LtdTeam ROIs At the end of the league stage, Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kings XI Punjab were tied on 12 points with NRR deciding their eventual spot in the table. However, the return on the investment that they generated through their players’ performances were significantly different. Royal Challengers Bangalore spared no expense this season, doling out over INR 2 Crores to as many as 12 players, in addition to spending INR 28 Crores on two of their retentions in Virat Kohli and de Villiers. In comparison, MI and RR had only nine such players (excluding retentions). A forgettable season for the team meant that they were the least profitable team with a return-on-investment of -19.98%. Royals managed to just get across the line to the playoffs this season, but the negative ROI is reflected in their most expensive buys of the season in Ben Stokes and Jaydev Unadkat underperforming. They were the only team with a negative ROI to make it to the playoffs. On the other hand, Delhi Daredevils returned a positive ROI for the season in spite of getting the wooden spoon. It only helped that Chris Morris who was retained at a price of INR 7.1 Crores left midway due to injury driving down their costs.

Some longstanding bests were overhauled as the Bangladesh wicketkeeper racked up a marathon 219 not out

Gaurav Sundararaman12-Nov-2018219 The highest individual score for a Bangladesh batsman in Tests. Mushfiqur Rahim went past Shakib Al Hasan’s 217 against New Zealand in January 2017. Mushfiqur is the sixth cricketer, after Sir Don Bradman, George Headley, Vinoo Mankad, Brian Lara and Virender Sehwag, to break his country’s individual Test score record twice with a score of 200 or more. Mushfiqur has 3962 runs in Tests and is just 87 runs away from overtaking Tamim Iqbal to become Bangladesh’s leading run-getter.ESPNcricinfo Ltd2 Double-centuries for Mushfiqur Rahim as a wicketkeeper in Tests. He became first keeper to score more than one. Before Mushfiqur, seven other keepers had scored double hundreds. His unbeaten 219 is also fourth-highest among those. Andy Flower’s 232 not out against India in 2000 remains the highest. The previous highest score by a keeper against Zimbabwe was 128 by Kumar Sangakkara at Colombo in 2001. Mushfiqur’s own previous double had come against Sri Lanka at Galle in 2013.421 Balls faced by Mushfiqur Rahim during his marathon innings – another Bangladesh record. Mohammad Ashraful previously held the record, when he faced 417 balls against Sri Lanka at Galle in 2013.589 Minutes batted by Mushfiqur – the longest by a Bangladesh batsman in a Test innings. The previous record was set 18 years ago, in Bangladesh’s first-ever Test, when Aminul Islam batted for 535 minutes against India, scoring 145 runs.1 Double-centuries in Tests in 2018. Mushfiqur’s 219 not out is the highest score this year, 23 better than Kusal Mendis’ 196 against Bangladesh at Chittagong. Five of the top six individual scores this year have come in Bangladesh.160 Overs batted by Bangladesh – their second-highest in Tests. Their longest innings came against Sri Lanka at Galle in 2013, spanning 196 overs. Three of the four longest innings for Bangladesh have been against Zimbabwe. This is the longest they have batted at home, and their 522 is their third-highest score in Tests.

The team is a work in progress, but a rare series win in Asia is very much there for the taking

George Dobell at Pallekele13-Nov-2018It has, at various moments of this tour, seemed as if this is the Test series that time forgot.It doesn’t have the history of the Ashes; it doesn’t have the audience of contests against India and, for the first few weeks, there was more talk about rain than runs. The number of travelling England supporters has also halved since the last tour here and world cricket’s headlines have been dominated instead by the Women’s World T20 and Cricket Australia’s apparently endless desire to rip itself apart.Entertaining while those both those things are, it would be a shame if events in Sri Lanka were overlooked.For England could be on the verge of something quietly significant here. They have not won a series in Asia since 2012, after all. And, excluding victories over a Bangladesh side that was still finding its feet in Test cricket, they haven’t won any series in Asia – other than that 2012 miracle against India – since 2001. Quite often, they’ve barely come second.But, over the next few days, they have a chance to change that.They will have to confront one of their longest-standing demons if they are to do so. They were somewhat fortunate to avoid a trial by spin in Galle, but Sri Lanka won’t make the same mistake again. While 84 of the 93 overs England faced in the second innings were still bowled by spinners, the pitch never offered them the extreme assistance that had been anticipated. Rain had hampered pitch preparation and meant that it started slightly damp. While it provided slow turn, the bounce was true. Trevor Bayliss admitted he was a little “relieved” when he first saw it.That is not an issue this time. The pitch, unashamedly prepared to exploit England’s eternal weakness, is drier than a Theresa May anecdote. While Root turned up in Kandy with a mind to play an extra seamer – the ground has a reputation for providing a bit more assistance for seamers – that plan was soon abandoned. Root argued that the ground’s reputation was built, in part, on what has happened in ODI cricket. Without floodlights and dew, he felt there wouldn’t be so much assistance for seamers. And besides, with James Anderson, Sam Curran and Ben Stokes – who is bowling as quickly as he ever has at present – he may feel he has most bases covered.So, England will maintain the trio of spinners who, in Galle at least, added up to more than the sum of their parts. Adil Rashid can be used as an attacking option while Moeen Ali and Jack Leach can either be rotated or bowl in tandem. And, if they bowl with the discipline they displayed in Galle, they are likely to test the patience of the Sri Lanka batsmen. It’s an attack blessed with some depth and variation and probably the best spin combination England have had since the days of Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann.Joe Root cuts a relaxed figure at training•Getty ImagesBut England will also have to bat against spin. And the fact that they have another new No. 3, an opening pair in their second Test together and that they were bailed out in the first innings in Galle by a debutant at No. 7 and 20-year-old Sam Curran at No. 8 suggests there is room for improvement there.Root has claimed the team are fortunate they have so many people who could bat at No. 3. Evidence suggests, however, that is wishful thinking. For if they had anyone who had excelled in the position, they would still be in it. He also claims the team’s flexibility is one of its strengths. But while he has urged his players to embrace that flexibility, it is noticeable that he is pretty committed to that No. 4 role.There’s no reason Stokes shouldn’t excel at No. 3. While he is probably not the sort of impact player who should be rated too rigorously by averages – he claimed only one wicket in the second innings in Galle yet played a huge role in softening up the Sri Lanka middle-order – the fact that his Test batting average is just 33.90 is a travesty. By taking on the responsibility to bat for time as much as effect, he can improve that markedly. He has the talent, the temperament and the technique to shine.Either way, England will have few better opportunities to win in Asia than this. This Sri Lanka team, while talented, is nowhere near what it was a few years ago. All the spin camps, all the Lions tours and placements, all the consultants and coaches: it all comes down to this. England, a work in progress though they may be, have an opportunity to achieve something quite special in the next few days.