Predict & Win Cricket Contest
Cricket Highlights
Impact sub Pandey finally gets his chance, and makes it count
Manish Pandey made 42 in 31 balls after walking out at No. 7 to take KKR to a total they defended well
What is going wrong for MI? Here's what Hardik said
Mumbai Indians skipper Hardik Pandya seemed to be at a loss for words to explain the reasons for his team's disastrous showing in IPL 2024 so far.
Hayley Matthews' 78 helps West Indies finish series 4-1 against Pakistan
Pakistan collapsed around Sidra's 48 to lose seven wickets for 37 and eventually post 134
CHENNAI : The opening partnership between Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana has come a long way since 2019, the year Verma made her international debut at the age of 15. They recently became only the second opening pair to cross 2000 runs in international cricket, behind Australia's Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney. The duo has seen each other's growth as batters and has contributed to many of India's wins over the years. However, there is still scope for India to maximise the potential of this duo. A glance at the career strike rates of these two inside the powerplay and outside of it makes a very interesting read. Verma is known to be aggressive from the get-go and that is reflected in her powerplay strike rate of 135.2. Mandhana, on the other hand, because she is mostly letting Verma make most of the powerplay, has a strike rate of 117.2 (since Verma's debut in 2019). That number might look less compared with Verma's strike rate, but it is still amongst the top four players with a minimum of 50 matches since 2019. The other two players ahead of Mandhana are Healy and Danni Wyatt of England. The roles get reversed after the end of the powerplay overs. The more Mandhana bats, the better her strike rate gets. Her strike rate from 7-11 overs remains the same, but whenever she has batted between 12-16 overs, she has scored with a strike rate of 148.3. The more Mandhana stays at the crease, the more she makes of her opportunities. For Verma, though, the more she bats outside of the powerplay, her strike rate starts to decline. From 135.2 in the first six overs, it goes down to 124.4 if she lasts till the 11th over. It becomes increasingly harder for her to bat after the 12th over as her strike rate dips to 114.4. Again, just like Mandhana in the powerplay, these are not bad numbers at all, but strategic planning could make a difference between scoring 150, which has been the consistent batting first score of the side, to consistently going towards 170+ scores. If India allows Verma to make most of the powerplay fielding restrictions, with her usual flair without thinking too much about what she can do after the powerplay and lets Mandhana hold the fort without eating too many balls at the other end, India can set a foundation on which the middle order can thrive. With that clarity of roles for the openers, the middle-order, and a quality finisher like Richa Ghosh, India can then look to post a total that's outside of the opposition's reach. For this to work, the middle order has to come to the party as early as possible. However, for now, the support staff has the chance to assign that role clarity starting from the openers so the dependency on the pair could gradually go down.
IPL 2024: Bumrah sparks in fading Mumbai as KKR win at Wankhede after 12 years
CHENNAI: On Thursday, both T Natarajan and Sandeep Sharma, the two best Indian pacers not named Jasprit Bumrah in this year's edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), showcased their wares to perfection. On Friday, it was Bumrah's turn to show exactly why he's the undisputed figurehead. Coming into the game against the Kolkata Knight Riders, it was safe to suggest that the Mumbai Indians weren't themselves. Speculation had been rife that a leadership change had led to a divided house. Batters punching below their weight, spinners being ineffective and overseas bowlers not pulling their weight... You get the drift; it has not been a good campaign. But that principle doesn't apply to Bumrah, whose artistry shined once again. Under a floodlit Wankhede, he was divine. It was rather poetic that he started his innings the way he finished yorker targeting the stumps. When you watch a yorker in real-time, it can look deceptively simple. In reality, it's an extremely hard skill to master because of the margins at play. In his column for the International Cricket Council's (ICC) website in 2017, Shane Bond had written: One of the things I keep getting asked is whether bowling the yorker is becoming a dying art. I don't think so it is just that the yorker is being used differently, and bowlers are also experimenting with a range of slower balls. The yorker is not just one of the most difficult balls to bowl, the margin for error is also extremely small. Therefore, it becomes vital to use that weapon judiciously, the Kiwi speedster wrote. The margin is about 30 centimetres from approximately 22 yards out during your delivery stride after running in. Misalign it by a few centimetres on either side of that 30-cm mark and you will travel. Not if you are Bumrah, though. The control he has on the yorker is unusual for it's almost always on the money. The few times he fails to hit the mark, it's usually a low full toss, another difficult ball to get away. Over the last few matches Sunil Narine has played, bowlers have tried to home in full onto his pads. Some have overpitched it, others have conceded wides. Not the 30-year-old. His first ball to Narine is full and straight and the opener just about got an inside edge. He followed it up with another yorker that the West Indian squeezed away for a single. His next two balls to the southpaw were different; one was going away with the angle and the other was a bouncer, which pinged his helmet. There's a set pattern to how Bumrah has been used this year. One over in the powerplay, one in the middle phase and two at the death. If ever Pandya had to break that pattern, it was now. Kolkata, on a fresh but two-faced strip, had lost half their side for 57 just after the powerplay. The visitors used 'break glass in case of emergency' option Manish Pandey as an Impact Sub to steady a boat in danger of being shipwrecked. He last played in this format last year. Alas, Pandya stuck to the template and allowed Pandey and Venkatesh Iyer to stitch an 83-run stand. When he brought back Bumrah in the 14th over, they had already grown in confidence as Pandey ramped him for a six over third man. His third spell, though, splattered the stumps a few times, as both Mitchell Starc and Venkatesh had lost their stumps to deliveries out of a video game (magical, basically). He also snaffled Ramandeep Singh to return with figures of 3/18 in 3.5 overs. The problem, though, came from other sources. He has taken 17/274 across 11 games while averaging 16.11 at an economy of 6.25. The others have not been fit for purpose: Pandya (8/297 at 37; 11), Gerald Coetzee (13/341 at 26.2; 10.17), Nuwan Thushara (4/156 at 39; 10.40), and Piyush Chawla (5/222 at 44.4; 9.25). The other bowlers have frequently neutralised Bumrah's brilliance. It happened against Kolkata too. The others combined to concede 150 in 15 overs. Brief scores: Kolkata 169 all out in 19.5 overs (Venkatesh 70, Manish 42; Bumrah 3/18, Thushara 3/42, Hardik 2/44) beat Mumbai Indians 145 all out in 18.5 overs (Suryakumar Yadav 56; Mitchell Starc 4/33).
IPL 2024: A Special Win, Says Spinner Varun Chakravarthy As KKR Beat MI At Wankhede After 12 Years
Kolkata Knight Riders: Conceding that his team looked down and out despite a fighting 70 by Venkatesh Iyer, Kolkata Knight Riders spinner Varun Chakravarthy said the 24-run victory over Mumbai Indians was special as it was their first win at Wankhede in 12 years. Jasprit Bumrah (3-18) and Nuwan Thushara (3-42) claimed three wickets apiece at each end of the KKR innings as Mumbai Indians restricted them to a paltry 169 despite brilliant fighting 70 off 52 balls by Venkatesh Iyer, who raised 83 runs for the sixth wicket in the company of Manish Pandey, rescuing their team from a precarious 57/5 at one stage. Chakravarthy praised Venkatesh Iyer and Manish Pandey for pulling them to 169 which they eventually defended. This is a very special win because we were down and out in the first innings. The way Venkatesh and Manish pulled it back was great, said Chakravarthy at the presentation ceremony. Mitchell Starc claimed 4-33, bagging three wickets in four balls in the 19th over to end Mumbai's innings for 145 after spin twins Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy had reduced them to 61/4 with identical 2-22 hauls. Suryakumar Yadav waged a lone battle raising Mumbai Indians' hopes with a 35-ball 56, raising 49 runs for the seventh wicket with Tim David (24) before Andre Russell (2-30) and Mitchell Starc ended Mumbai's innings, sharing the last five wickets between them. Extremely good feeling, because we haven't won at Wankhede for 12 years. It was just a matter of one wicket (when David was batting and had brought down the equation to 26 off 11 balls], said Varun Chakravarthy. He said bowling in the second innings was very tough the dew made gripping the ball difficult. He said the wicket had also improved and the ball was not stopping and turning as it did when KKR batted. There was dew, but somehow we controlled our emotions. Second innings there was not much help (for the spinners) because of the dew. The batters did tell that the ball was stopping and turning. But when I came on to bowl, I realised it wasn't stopping, he said. Chakravarthy called fellow spinner Sunil Narine a legend as both of them finished with identical figures of 2-22 off four overs, bowling in tandem to start Mumbai Indians' downfall.
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