Misbah showed the way on day one, and the whole Pakistan team celebrated with push-ups after their Lord’s win. But is it the best of the lot? Vote for your choice

18-Jul-2016

ESPNcricinfo presents the plays of the day from the T20I in Southampton

Andrew Miller at the Ageas Bowl05-Jul-2016Non-run out of the day
Danushka Gunathilaka had faced just three deliveries of Sri Lanka’s innings when a direct hit at the non-striker’s end might well have sent him on his way, had England bothered to appeal more vociferously. Backing up a mistimed drive into the covers from his partner, Kusal Perera, Gunathilaka dabbed his bat into the crease as Eoin Morgan pinged off his bails but the verdict would surely have been out had the decision been sent upstairs. England weren’t too badly short-changed in that Liam Plunkett over, however. Perera was cramped for room on the pull two balls later, and caught at fine leg by Tymal Mills.Debut of the day
Shortly before the toss, Mills was presented with his England T20 cap by Morgan – a proud moment for a cricketer who thought his career was over two years ago, following the diagnosis of a congenital back condition that forced his retirement from first-class cricket. His opening over proved as brisk as his reputation – a 92.5mph loosener to Gunathilaka followed by a second-ball flinch into the covers that could have been a run-out with a direct hit. It was a sharp and threatening arrival.Debut of the day 2
Liam Dawson was a mildly controversial addition to England’s World T20 squad – he was picked as England’s third spinner ahead of Lancashire’s Stephen Parry, despite England’s coach Trevor Bayliss never having seen him bowl in a match situation. However, he needed just five deliveries to demonstrate his wicket-taking potential – in front of an appreciative Hampshire home crowd, he ended Gunathilaka’s stay via a bottom-ended heave to long-off, then cherry-picked a loose return drive from Kusal Mendis one over later.Cameo of the day
Dasun Shanaka started his tour of England with a bang back in May, where his three-wicket burst on the first day of his Test debut up at Headingley briefly offered Sri Lanka a glimmer of the ascendancy. But his sign-off – with the bat at least – was idiotic in the extreme. Facing up to his first ball from Dawson, he lobbed the ball towards Jason Roy in the covers, set off for an easy single then inexplicably turned for the second. Roy’s shy was as fast and flat as you’d expect, and Buttler whipped off the bails with the batsman still a metre from the crease.Double-act of the day
Collisions in the outfield can often be horrific affairs – think Jason Gillespie and Steve Waugh at Kandy in 1999, or Rory Burns and Moises Henriques at Arundel last summer. But somehow, Roy’s and James Vince’s coming-together at deep midwicket turned into be a fine piece of tag-team fielding. Ramith Rambukwella launched a slog high into the leg-side, both men converged, and as they spun off one another – Vince ended up tumbling over a speaker behind the rope – the ball was squeezed to a halt two metres inside the rope, like a handbag caught in the sliding doors of a tube train.Injury of the day
It looked a fairly innocuous dismissal at first glance – a lofted drive from Dinesh Chandimal off Chris Jordan that Morgan, pocketed at extra cover with what appeared to be the minimum of fuss. But then, seconds later, England’s captain was jogging rather urgently off the field. It soon transpired he had dislocated the ring finger on his left hand, but a tweet from the England camp confirmed he would “bat as normal” … which, in light of his recent form, was a bit of an open goal for the many wags on social media. As it transpired, Morgan’s 47 from 39 balls was his highest score in 22 international innings.

The batsman talks about why he can’t see a future for himself in the West Indies side as long as selection depends on playing domestic cricket

Tim Wigmore07-Jun-2016″The past is history.” So proclaims Lendl Simmons’ status on WhatsApp. It is the mantra of a man who wants to look forward in life, not moan.Yet Simmons cannot help but feel aggrieved. He, like Chris Gayle, Darren Sammy, Dwayne Bravo and Andre Russell, was not considered eligible for selection in West Indies’ ongoing ODI tri-series against Australia and South Africa. All those players did not play in this year’s West Indies domestic 50-over tournament, instead playing in the Big Bash.”It’s just foolish,” Simmons says. “We are available to play but we are not being picked. It’s just a stupid rule that they have. Unless that rule changes, no one will play for the West Indies, because I don’t think anyone is going to give up franchise cricket to play regional cricket when the fees are not suitable enough. A lot of other teams’ players don’t play in their domestic [competitions] but still play for their country. This is not the same for us, but such is life.”While wishing West Indies well, Simmons warns that “we could embarrass ourselves because Australia and South Africa are not coming here with their A teams. They are coming here with their full teams.”Simmons was gripped by anger two months ago as well. When he came out to bat in the semi-final of the World T20, with West Indies 19 for 2 after three overs, in pursuit of 193, Simmons was riled by Virat Kohli.

*Do not include T20Is for West Indies or representative teams like West Indies A or West Indies XI“When he fielded, he said something to me, and I said to myself, ‘I’m going to show you you’re not the only good batsman,'” Simmons says. He also reckons Kohli kept throwing the ball to his end to try and get under his skin. “That’s the way he is. He’s very arrogant, he’s very aggressive when he fields, and when he bats as well. He’s just a very aggressive person.”Those things motivate our players and it certainly motivated me. That really urged me to bat the way I did – to show him that he’s not the only one who can do it. That played a big role.”So too did simple fortune. Simmons was twice caught off a no-ball, and reprieved a third time when a catch off a legitimate delivery was overturned when Ravindra Jadeja was shown to be touching the boundary rope when he took it. “Every cricketer has his day and you just need to cash in when it is your day,” Simmons says. “I took full opportunity of that to bat until the end. It was mind-blowing doing that with all those people supporting India and being very loud. It was the highlight of my career.”Kohli might have reflected on the impact of his words as Simmons thumped five sixes into the Wankhede, en route to a 51-ball 82 not out. “When India chase, one of their top batsmen bats deep – that was my role, batting in the middle overs, especially because I play spin well. I know they didn’t have any good death bowlers, so with Russell, Bravo and Sammy to come once we passed the middle overs, those guys could always come out and finish.”It was left to Russell to score the winning runs, dispatching a full toss – from Kohli, of all people – into the Mumbai night sky. And when Carlos Braithwaite’s four towering sixes clinched the final, Simmons had gone from watching the World T20 at home, having originally not been selected because he was not fully fit, to being a world champion in the space of a week.

“Franchise cricket is the avenue for players to earn a living. Not everyone gets retained for the West Indies, and anyway our retainer is not sufficient to say you can live off this for three to four years”

It proved an expensive triumph. Simmons played at “85%” in the World T20, aggravating the problems with his lower back that had originally led him to miss the tournament. His back ultimately forced him to fly home after one IPL game. “But I think it was worth it – putting the West Indies back on the map by winning the World Cup again. It was a big achievement for the Caribbean. It meant a whole lot. We knew that everyone in the Caribbean was watching the final. We desperately needed that, because we know there’s a lot of politics in cricket right now – a lot going against the players right now.”Simmons suggests that his uncle**, West Indies’ coach Phil, shares his frustration, “but there’s not much he can do”.Having won two of the last three World T20 crowns – Simmons was not selected in 2012 – West Indies are shaping up as international cricket’s first dominant T20 side. Bravo has even suggested they could be as successful in the format as the Test side was in the 1980s.”It’s calypso cricket,” Simmons says of the West Indies’ success. “It’s because of the way we play our cricket – we are aggressive, very sprightly, and that’s how we are. We’re not good at Test cricket right now, but T20 is right up our alley.”Even a golden duck in the final could not dilute the memory of his innings, a distillation of the T20 qualities that have earned him attention from franchises the world over.”We are aggressive, very sprightly. We’re not good at Test cricket right now, but T20 is right up our alley”•Getty ImagesIndia has seen the best of him: Simmons has 1038 runs at 47.18 for Mumbai Indians. But he is also enthused about the Caribbean Premier League. It “pays well” and, for the first time ever, means leading players from foreign shores play domestic cricket in the West Indies, testing and improving Caribbean players without deals in other T20 leagues.Simmons is unashamed about the path he has chosen. Injuries have rendered him unable to play Tests – he never even scored a half-century during an eight-match career that ended five years ago – and he has not played an ODI, or even a List A match, since the World Cup. That will not change until either he or the West Indies Cricket Board change their minds about playing in the Nagico Super50. Neither seems likely.”Yes, I enjoy playing for Trinidad and I want to play for the West Indies, but people also have families that they need to feed and a life that they need to build,” Simmons says. He will continue to be a flag bearer for the age of the itinerant T20 player – a sign of the things and, he reckons, a shape of the future of West Indies’ best players too.”Franchise cricket is a very good thing. People can travel around the world and play cricket. You get paid well for your services, and people want our services,” he says.”Franchise cricket is the avenue for players to earn a living. Not everyone gets retained for the West Indies, and anyway our retainer is not sufficient to say you can live off this for three to four years.”It was ever thus. West Indies have always relied on foreign leagues – traditionally county and club cricket in England – to fund their players. Garry Sobers once almost missed an international to play an English club match, because it was more lucrative. The T20 globetrotting of Simmons and Co is new. But it is also entirely in keeping with West Indies’ past.** – June 8, 2016, 0830 GMT – the article originally stated that Phil Simmons is Lendl’s cousin. It has been corrected

Former India batsman Sanjay Manjrekar analyses the reasons behind India’s clinical win in the first Test and why West Indies could barely put up a fight

ESPNcricinfo staff26-Jul-2016’Ashwin looks ready for England, South Africa and Australia’Sanjay Manjrekar believes R Ashwin’s feat of 17 five-wicket hauls in 33 Tests has elevated him to ‘Muralitharan-esque’ form2:15

Manjrekar: Ashwin looks ready for Eng, SA and Australia

‘This India team meant for higher challenges’Though India put in a clinical performance in the first Test against West Indies, Manjrekar says the hosts did not really put up a challenge1:55

Manjrekar: This India team meant for higher challenges

What’s gone wrong with West Indies?West Indies have one of the weakest batting and bowling line-ups in the world and Manjrekar feels this must be fixed at their first-class level3:23

What’s gone wrong with West Indies?

Advice from coach Chandika Hathurusingha at Bangladesh’s pre-season training camp has helped the opening batsman reinvent his one-day game

Mohammad Isam08-Oct-2016As recently as last week, Imrul Kayes was still learning how an approach that involved having a premeditated mindset could radically change his batting. He has since implemented the game plan twice in four days, and on both occasions struck centuries.His 112 in the first ODI against England was his best innings in the format, though his dismissal took a bit of the sheen off the innings that began with a rousing six over square-leg that burst a hole inside an advertising board deep into the Shere Bangla National Stadium’s grandstand. That century was a follow-up to his 121 for the BCB XI in England’s warm-up match on Tuesday.Following that innings, which he also started with a cracking boundary off Chris Woakes, Imrul said that it was Chandika Hathurusingha’s advice that made him change tack.It has taken him more than eight years of playing at the international level to appreciate that there is nothing wrong in getting out of his shell to use his full potential. The hundred in Mirpur was testament of his ability to accept that he needed to change his approach to batting. It is also another feather in the cap of the coach Hathurusingha who has now made a difference to the career of yet another international cricketer.While Imrul’s Test career finally took off in 2014, he never quite hit the same note in the limited-overs game. He has opened in all but seven of his 60 matches, but was always playing second fiddle to Tamim Iqbal. Even when he did well, Imrul always seemed to struggle to pace his innings suitably.Since his debut in 2008, under Mohammad Ashraful and Jamie Siddons, Imrul had developed into an opening batsman who needed to play catch-up at the top level. He had issues dealing with deliveries outside the off stump, especially those angling away. He was comfortable against straight and incoming deliveries, but when bowling attacks figured him out, he looked lost for options.The cut and square-drive were his strengths too, and along with scoring runs in front of square on the leg-side, a big innings depended on finding gaps in these areas. For the first three seasons of his international career, Imrul batted without having too much focus on him; much of the opponent’s attention when playing Bangladesh circled around Ashraful, Tamim and Shakib Al Hasan.When he lost his form towards the end of 2011, he was swiftly dropped and replaced by seven other openers who were tried with Tamim. Only Anamul Haque and Shamsur Rahman came close to filling his gap completely but via runs at No. 3 in the Test team, Imrul returned to the ODI squad after more than two years.Though in his return match against Pakistan in March 2014 saw him add 150 for the opening stand with Anamul, the next time he opened was in the 2015 World Cup in place of the injured Anamul. It was a disastrous time for him as he was a mid-tournament replacement with only some domestic innings under his belt. He feared that he was about to be dropped but in 2015, he emerged as an important Test batsman. The fear didn’t go away completely as he was in danger of becoming typecast as a “Test specialist”, a tag that can be career-threatening for any hopes of returning to white-ball cricket.His first attempt at reinventing his game came midway through last year’s Bangladesh Premier League after he had run into woeful form. He finished off with two rapid fifties, the second of which was in the final where he helped Comilla Victorians to the title.But this latest change in his general outlook is something that has been happening in the background for quite some time. At some point during Bangladesh’s long training camp this summer, Hathurusingha told Imrul to think outside his box.The aim was to give Imrul a greater presence at the crease through positive body language, so the coach told him to think of playing the cut and pull off every ball that offers width or is pitched short. At the same time he was encouraged to deal with good balls differently, go for singles or defend with intent, but bad balls, of which there can be plenty, should be hit for fours and sixes.It sounds like a simple message but Imrul’s career has perhaps changed for good. He has now found success with the new formula so instantaneously that he may not want to go any other way.He can now go after the bowlers in the first Powerplay and, given his experience, knows how to work the ball around when the slower bowlers come on. But with his mindset now reset to a more attacking mode, he will always be ready to put away the bad ball.

Hayley Matthews, the teenage sensation of West Indies’ world-beating women’s team, is relishing the chance to make a career of the sport she loves

Adam Collins11-Oct-2016Carlos Brathwaite’s final-over whirl will forever define the the 2016 World T20, aided by Ian Bishop’s compelling, word-perfect call. “Remember the name!” But in less hectic surrounds five hours earlier, Hayley Matthews, another Barbadian, made a name for herself on one of cricket’s biggest stages.In the women’s final, she flummoxed Australia’s bowlers with 66 from 45 balls, opening the innings and hunting down their 148. After she popped Megan Schutt over the fence and deep midwicket, and Ellyse Perry back over her head early in the chase, the three-times women’s champions never recovered.At the start of the tournament, Matthews was 17 going on 18; by its conclusion she was the Player of the Final. “To this day I still am trying to find words for it,” Matthews tells ESPNcricinfo in a discussion of her Kolkata heroics and her story to date.Four decades ago Janis Ian sang of the pitfalls of the awkward ages – of solitude, despair and expectations routinely failing to meet reality. But Matthews’ experience of those testing years strays from that narrative. Self-assured and ambitious, considered and calm, she’s as impressive in conversation as she is in the middle.”A lot of people take so long to get something like that in their lifetime,” Matthews reflects. “That I could be part of that at such a young age really means a lot to me.”She’s right. These are heights that few scale on the very best day. But so young, with so much of the journey yet to be even conceived? “It is surreal,” Matthews continues. “I saw one article (on ESPNcricinfo) saying that I started the tournament as a 17-year-old and I finished at 18 covered in a bottle of champagne I couldn’t have drunk when it began.” That’s another way of looking at it.She has paused her formal schooling for cricket, pledging to return when she has the time. But between national duty, and the new domestic circuit for women – commitments to Hobart Hurricanes in the Women’s Big Bash League in the Australian summer, and Lancashire Thunder in the Kia Super League in England – time is a particularly scarce commodity.The privilege, though, isn’t lost upon her; following the sun, making a living exclusively from the game – Matthews is of the first generation of women who can legitimately do that.She gets home to the beach, “to parties with my friends, what normal teenagers do,” but since that breathtaking performance in March, that has changed too. “They tease me quite a bit, saying that they are walking around with a legend and a celebrity.”Home is the enduring and quintessential hotbed of Caribbean cricket talent: Barbados. Matthews grew up playing with the boys at her father’s club – a familiar story – before dominating a regional girls’ tournament at age 15. The path to a West Indies cap and central contract followed; her ODI and T20 international debuts both came when she was 16.Brathwaite, who shared so much with her on that special night in Kolkata, remains her closest friend in the men’s game as a former team-mate of her father. “When we won the game, all the guys came running on the field and I jumped into his arms and he spun me around.” His company is also her equipment sponsor – she is the only woman in the game to use the Brathwaite bats.Carlos Brathwaite gives Matthews a hug after West Indies’ victory in the Women’s World T20•IDI/Getty ImagesWhen asked to consider why Carlos and Co. have managed to prosper in white-ball cricket after such a distressing decline in Test cricket over the past two decades, Matthews has well-thought-out views and isn’t shy about expressing them.”The competition for Test match cricket in the region isn’t as high as you’d see in a lot of other countries,” she says. “For example, in Australia where you see a lot of first-class cricketers having about ten hundreds before they get a chance, whereas back home we tend to make teams a lot easier. I reckon it is just that the standard needs to be raised a bit, and professionalism needs to be raised a bit in the four-day cricket back home as a whole.”The conversation, conducted in August when she was playing in the inaugural edition of the Kia Super League, returns to the main subject – Matthews. It’s in these tournaments that she is especially hot property and where she is destined to be a permanent fixture for a generation. In Australia, clubs were actively hunting for her signature as a player around whom a club could be built, directly approaching her through the southern winter in unsuccessful attempts to entice her away from Hobart Hurricanes, who defied expectations to contest a semi-final in season one. Matthews’ affection for the Tasmanian capital is clear; and she notes the standard for the WBBL is “very high”.”Spending a couple of months there at the end of the year is not any harm for me at all,” she notes with a broad smile. “It is a great place; I absolutely love it.”As for the chance to participate from day one in both the WBBL and the KSL, Matthews calls it an honour, as it is for her to be already a vital member of the West Indies outfit who yesterday drew level with England in their five-match ODI series in Jamaica.But casting forward, she relishes more: to be the best in the world. “I want to be,” she simply says.For that to be the case, dependability will soon need to follow talent. Matthews is the first to admit she blew hot and cold in the WBBL and then the KSL. For Hurricanes she made fewer than 200 runs in 14 innings, and with Thunder she had a nightmare with the bat, offset by a team-leading eight wickets with her effective and efficient offspin.”I don’t think it’s any technical flaws, it’s a mind thing for me,” she explains of this consistency predicament. “Sometimes I over-pressure myself a bit, but I’ve been really working on that and I hope it works.”For all of her gifts within the game, Matthews’ opportunities don’t stop there. She can launch a javelin a long way; far enough that she has represented her nation – and won medals – at the CARIFTA Games at age-group level. It’s a discipline she admits she seldom has the time to train for, yet can still excel at: handy attributes for a second career. Surely the Olympic Games tempt?”Sometimes I wish I could be at the Olympics, but if I made the choice to go with track then I wouldn’t have won the World Cup,” Matthews says. “You have got to give up something to get something and I hope I made the right choice.”Logistical considerations aside, she isn’t closing the door: “I guess it would be hard to find time, but if I do find the time I definitely would go back to training and see.”With cricket’s entry to the 2024 Olympics looking at least a puncher’s chance – when Matthews will still be very much at her physical peak…”Hopefully the two events don’t clash.”The audacity of youth.

Plays of the day from the second match of the tri-nation series between Sri Lanka and West Indies

Nikhil Kalro16-Nov-2016Brathwaite’s shoddy techniqueOn an overcast morning, Kraigg Brathwaite weathered a testing opening spell from Sri Lanka’s seamers. All his hardwork came undone with sloppy technique, not against the new balls but while running. He patted a length delivery to mid-on, judged a run well and immediately set off. However, instead of sliding the bat in, he plonked it in the turf on the adjacent pitch. The bat jarred and bounced back up. Nuwan Kulasekara ran in, picked the ball with his right hand and threw the stumps down at the bowler’s end. Brathwaite’s feet and bat were in the air, ending an innings that showed promise.Juggle, catch, juggle, dropRovman Powell’s debut ODI innings was laden with boundaries on the leg side, a result of a strong bottom hand. In the 44th over, he failed to get underneath one such bottom-handed flick off Suranga Lakmal. The ball skewed off the inside half of the bat and carried to deep midwicket’s right. The fielder, Shehan Jayasuriya, moved nimbly and looked set to take a comfortable catch at chest height. The ball, however, bounced out off his palm and lobbed back up. Panicking, Jayasuriya grabbed at a simple parry and juggled it up again. Still panicking, he grasped at it, but the ball had had enough of Jayasuriya and dropped by his feet.Kulasekara’s two plus twoNot many fast bowlers are stationed at midwicket. Kulasekara was and he showed why. In the 47th over, Jason Holder nudged a ball to short midwicket and set off for one. He was slow to start, but picked up pace as Kulasekara swooped in on the ball. He picked up cleanly, turned quickly and released the ball all in one swift motion to hit the base of the stumps at the bowler’s end. Even a tall Holder was more than a foot short. Kulasekara took two wickets with the ball and in the field.Harare’s helpWest Indies defended 227 on the back of some accurate bowling, but were also abetted along the way by a Harare surface that got gradually harder to score on. Ashley Nurse, in the 22nd over of the chase, pitched an innocuous-looking offbreak on leg stump. But the ball spun and bounced on Upul Tharanga, who had shaped to flick, and bobbled up off the leading edge, and Nurse claimed a simple return catch.Carlos Brathwaite, too, realised success lay in using the conditions. He repeatedly used offcutters, banging them in the middle of the pitch. Jayasuriya, batting on 31 in the 41st over, was too early into a nudge and a leading edge was snaffled up at midwicket.

K Gowtham, the offspinner who has returned to first-class cricket after three seasons to become Karnataka’s highest wicket-taker in 2016-17, talks about the ups and downs of his career

Akshay Gopalakrishnan04-Nov-2016In October 2008, Karnataka offspinner K Gowtham received an invitation to bowl at the touring Australian team. Those were the days when his action had a striking resemblance to that of his idol Harbhajan Singh, who was still in his prime and bowling alongside Anil Kumble in India’s Test side. A lot has changed since, both in Indian cricket and in Gowtham’s life.Before the start of this Ranji Trophy season, it had been three years since Gowtham last played a first-class match. And in the second innings of that match he conceded 206 out of the 718 runs Saurashtra racked up. Cheteshwar Pujara made 352 and knocked Karnataka out in the quarter-finals.Now, in 2016-17, Gowtham is Karnataka’s most successful bowler with 18 wickets in three matches.”I was inspired by Harbhajan’s action and that’s how I started it,” Gowtham tells ESPNcricinfo. “The moment he saw me with the action, he was pretty surprised. But he told me I wasn’t getting side-on completely. I had a semi side-on kind of action, so he told me to rectify that and work a little more on my bowling.”Now Gowtham runs up to the crease slower than before and the Harbhajan imitations have given way to the desire to be his own man.”I have changed my action completely now,” Gowtham says. “Every bowler is unique, and I didn’t want to be known as the guy who bowls like Harbhajan. I wanted to be on my own, so I tried out a few actions in the nets and I could bowl even better than previously.”It wasn’t like Gowtham blindly followed the man he looked up to, and then woke up one morning and decided not to.”The way Harbhajan was bowling was completely different from the way I wanted to do things. He could bowl the doosra, but I couldn’t. While you’re imitating someone, you still have to keep learning new things. Changing the action has helped me, but I have not changed the way I bowl.”Gowtham had the good fortune of running into one of India’s best offspinners, Erapalli Prasanna, after he was picked for a camp conducted by the Karnataka State Cricket Association.”It was a 15-20 day camp and I worked with him,” Gowtham says. “And whatever he taught me during that period, I keenly observed, wrote it down, and kept it in the papers in my diary. He told me to work on my run-up and be more consistent. It was more like a friend who’s giving you his thoughts on bowling.”He’s a legend by himself and I was a little reluctant to go and ask him, but the moment he saw I was doing something and not getting it right, he came up to me and showed me how it’s done. In fact, he demonstrated to me by bowling himself. He asked me, ‘how do you plan to get a batsman out?’ So I told him, ‘either bowled or lbw’. He said I must have more options of getting him at slip, and my main aim should be to get him bowled, because the moment I focus on trying to do that, I have all the options of getting him out, like the lbw, get a caught behind, or get him caught at short leg. He’s helped me quite a bit. Whatever the changes you see, they have come through him.”Gowtham’s serious career began when he was picked for an Under-15 zonal tournament in Bangalore. He finished as the tournament’s second-highest wicket-taker. It wasn’t until he progressed to the Under-22 level that he first represented Karnataka. He played against Bengal, picking up four wickets in the match and scoring a half-century to help his side win.”But, again, there was a period of six-seven years’ gap. But I never gave up,” he says. “It made me stronger and more mature as a cricketer. It’s the same with this period. My fitness, training and routine never changed. I’m regular to practice. If I don’t practice, it’s like I’m missing something on that day.”A regular fixture in the local leagues, Gowtham worked on being more patient and consistently hitting tight lines. He had a productive 2016-17 Karnataka Premier League, where eight matches yielded 11 wickets and an economy rate of 5.58, just before the start of the Ranji season.Gowtham bagged 3 for 97 on his return, against Jharkhand in Noida, and recounts a valuable tip he received from Mansur Ali Khan, Karnataka’s bowling coach.”There was one small change that he asked me to make in between the first game [and second],” Gowtham says. “I was running slightly diagonally towards the wicket, but he told me to run in a little straighter and see the difference. It’s helping me in a big way. My deliveries were slightly drifting down leg, but now, I have more control over the ball. [Mansur] works very silently and has a very low profile. But he’s the one who actually holds the team together; when he says something, it holds a lot of weightage.”Gowtham followed it up with eight wickets – including a maiden five-for – against Delhi, and a career-best 7 for 108 in the second innings against Assam to deliver Karnataka a bonus-point win.Returning to the team after a lengthy spell in the sidelines, Gowtham feels he was welcomed back warmly. “Almost everyone has played for India or India A, so being a part of it and playing in the XI is an achievement in itself. It really holds a special place and helps me stay motivated. Everyone makes fun of me and I make fun of everyone as well; it’s like a barter system. Everyone was happy I was doing well and getting into the team.”

In sport, as in business, leaders have less power now, and the decisions they take don’t directly affect outcomes

Tim Wigmore20-Feb-2017It has been a seminal fortnight for the England cricket team. The country has a new Test match captain, and Joe Root’s appointment could herald obvious changes to the team’s approach, on and off the field. Yet whether the change of captaincy will have any positive or negative effect on results is an altogether different matter.How much does individual leadership really matter? It’s a question valid in cricket, sport and beyond.”Being in charge isn’t what it used to be,” writes Moisés Naím in . He shows how, for all the focus on the figureheads of teams, the powers of leaders are being eroded, in everything from business to politics and the military. “In the 21st century, power is easier to get, harder to use – and easier to lose,” Naím says, arguing that, because of the digital revolution, the collapse of deference, and increased accountability within organisations, the powerful now face more limitations on their power than ever before. In the second half of the 20th century, weaker sides (in terms of soldiers and weapons) achieved their strategic goals in the majority of wars. The tenures of chief executives are becoming shorter, and those in charge also face more internal constraints on their power than ever before.The most successful leaders have never been more venerated: the leadership-coaching industry is worth an estimated US$50 billion every year, brimming with corporate bigwigs attempting to learn the “lessons” of other leaders’ success. Yet there is no real evidence of the enduring superstar qualities of those who cash in. Award-winning chief executives subsequently underperform, both against their own performance and against non-prize-winning CEOs, as research by Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate shows. A lot of the lauded CEOs’ previous success, in other words, might have been simply luck, and their subsequent underperformance regression to the mean.The obsession with leadership extends to sport, yet leaders’ power is being reduced here also. “In early-modern sports – the late 19th century – there was little or no coaching and hence the captain on the field had a significant leadership role to play,” explains the sports economist and historian Stefan Szymanski. “As sport became more organised and coaching strategy developed, the role of the captain on the field diminished.”

Professionalism and the explosion of money in sport mean that decisions once the sole preserve of a captain or head coach are now influenced by dozens of others behind the scenes

Compared with other sports, cricket is unusual in giving as much power to the captain as it does. Yet the cricket captain has not been immune to the wider erosion in the importance of leadership across sport. “The role is declining as the potential of coaches to add analytical support based on data analysis has increased,” Szymanski says.It is instructive to compare the responsibility of Mike Brearley to that of Root today. While Root will be supported by a coterie of coaches, physiologists and analysts, Brearley operated before the modern coach, and had to oversee warming up and stretching before each day. In the days of amateurism, captains even had to motivate amateurs to play at all. Today the captain is far more important in club cricket, where they have no coaches to aid them and often face an arduous task to even get a full team together, than in the professional game.The power of individual coaches has also been diminished, because the responsibilities that were once the preserve of one man are now divided up among a multitude of personnel. In international cricket teams today, what were, 25 years ago, the sole functions of the coach are now divided up among what often amounts to a 2nd XI of support staff.While the narrative of football’s Premier League now revolves around managers, each result explored through the prism of their success or failure, perhaps they have never mattered less. In the 1930s, Arsenal manager Herbert Chapman not merely coached innovatively but led Arsenal to introduce numbered shirts, and build floodlights and a new stand. Unless they are named Arsene Wenger, the average Premier League manager now lasts a year in the job. Given the complexities of modern sport, there is a limit to what they can do. Indeed, studies of poorly performing clubs find that performances improve by an almost identical amount whether or not a new manager is appointed. The new boss, then, is rarely much better or worse than the old boss.The book , Richard Gillis explores how victories or defeats are retrospectively explained through a captain’s mistakes or shrewd decisions. Every match must consist of a Good Captain and Bad Captain, and the Good Captain is always the victor. The trouble with this simplistic narrative is that, as Paul Azinger, who led the US to victory in the 2008 Ryder Cup, reflects, “There have been some captains who have micro-managed everything and lost. There have been captains who were drunk every night and won. There is no blueprint on winning.”There is a paradox to leadership in modern sport. Leaders have never faced more scrutiny – but most have never had less power. Professionalism and the explosion of money in sport means that decisions once the sole preserve of a captain or head coach are now influenced by dozens of others behind the scenes: specialist coaches, performance analysts who mine data, dieticians, psychologists and those responsible for nurturing academy players. Perhaps the cricket team that has performed most above themselves in recent years is Northamptonshire in the T20 Blast. Reaching three finals in four years has not just been a triumph for Alex Wakely’s astute captaincy, but also for the coaching staff, the data analyst, the physio and all those involved in player recruitment.The reluctance to recognise the limits of leadership has deep roots. We are a storytelling species. People make for much better stories than underlying, impersonal factors; shows that success in international football can broadly be explained by three factors – population size, GDP, and experience playing the sport – that have nothing to do with leadership. In The Captain Myth, Gillis writes that, because of psychological biases “meshed with our obsession with celebrity, it’s easy to understand how the captain has become such a prominent figure in the sports world”. In cricket, he tells me that “the decisions of the captain can be significant, but the relationship between the decisions and the outcome is not linear, it’s far messier than that, and makes a far less enjoyable tale”.

The reluctance to recognise the limits of leadership has deep roots. We are a storytelling species. People make for much better stories than underlying, impersonal factors

As much as coaches and fans crave inspirational leadership, in modern sport, with huge and complex professional structures to manage, perhaps it is easier for a single leader to make a negative difference than a positive one. “Good captaincy and coaching have far less of an impact on outcomes than bad captaincy and coaching does,” believes Trent Woodhill, a leading T20 coach. Bad leadership can marginalise and disempower the backroom team, effectively preventing support staff from doing their jobs properly. Beyond sport, Naím believes that we are in an age of “heightened vulnerability to bad ideas and bad leaders”. The analysis extends beyond sport. Disruptive technology has not only changed the nature of power, Naím believes, but also led to an age of “heightened vulnerability to bad ideas and bad leaders”.Root has captained in just four first-class games, yet this is in keeping with modern norms. That Virat Kohli, Steven Smith and Kane Williamson have all been successful after their appointments as captain, despite a derisory amount of prior leadership experience in professional sport, suggests that captaincy experience – and, by implication, captaincy skill – is simply not that important. The absence of specialist captains, at both domestic and international level, also reflects a recognition of the limits of what a skipper can achieve.”Playing in the middle and understanding the demands is more important than captaincy,” Andrew Strauss said when Root was unveiled. The greatest potential boon of a Root captaincy lies not in a new culture he might create, or more enterprising leadership, but the possibility of greater run-scoring: if Alastair Cook is reinvigorated without the leadership, while, in keeping with recent England captains, Root’s own batting initially enjoys an upswing.Leadership is not irrelevant. Occasionally cricketers are particularly suited to a leadership role – Brearley, Graeme Smith, or Misbah-ul-Haq, say; some, like Kevin Pietersen, might be the opposite. But the overwhelming majority of captains are bunched in the middle – and, in any case, a captain’s ability to do good is marginal, now more than ever. For all the tendency to focus on a team’s figurehead, great leadership is a collective endeavour, and operates against wider limitations. Perhaps this is why Strauss is so unperturbed by Root’s lack of captaincy experience. Only rarely does the identity of a captain really matter.

Of their 15 century partnerships, which has been Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan’s most important? Vote for your favourite

ESPNcricinfo staff11-May-2017