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On Thursday night, MLB announced the MVPs of the 2025 season. As is usually the case, there were no surprises at the top of the ballot. Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani brought home his second consecutive NL MVP award for the Dodgers and his third straight MVP. Yankees slugger Aaron Judge earned the honor for the AL in a very tight race over Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh.

However, the MVP ballot can historically contain a few oddities contained within. The Baseball Writer’s Association of America is in charge of voting for the league MVPs every year, based on a tally of 30 votes, and the voters are required to rank their top 10 choices for MVP. That creates a large enough pool of votes that each season’s ballot includes some unexpected names earning exactly one MVP vote.

Last year is a good example. Ohtani and Judge were unanimous MVPs, as it should have been. But on the NL side, Padres’ Dylan Cease and Brewers’ Jackson Chourio both received precisely one 10th-place vote. For the AL, those earning one vote included Astros’ Jose Altuve, Tigers’ Tyler Horton, Royals’ Seth Lugo, Rangers’ Corey Seager, and Astros’ Framber Valdez.

None of the names above deserved to win MVP over Judge or Ohtani. But their contributions to their teams’ respective season were substantial enough to be recognized with a vote in some capacity. It mostly makes for a fun bit of trivia down the line and serves as a glimpse into how baseball writers can rank the 5th to 10th-most deserving MVP candidates when the leaders are so obvious.

This year had some interesting names in this department. With the final votes tallied, here’s every player to earn exactly one MVP vote behind the winners. On the final ballot some players will finish with more “points” than others if their one vote came for a placement higher than 10th, but they all received one vote nonetheless.

PLAYER

TEAM

LEAGUE

Elly De La Cruz

Reds

NL

Nico Hoerner

Cubs

NL

Ketel Marte

Diamondbacks

NL

Seiya Suzuki

Cubs

NL

Aroldis Chapman

Red Sox

AL

Yandy Díaz

Rays

AL

Jacob Wilson

Athletics

AL

An interesting group, to be sure. While the winners earned their place atop the rankings these players can say they earned a vote for their performance this season. That’s something!

In the NL, a pair of Cubs earned MVP spots in the form of Nico Hoerner and Seiya Suzuki. Hoerner hit .297 from the plate and racked up 178 hits on the year to pair with Gold Glove defense, while Suzuki recorded 32 home runs and over 100 RBIs. Then there’s Elly De La Cruz, the Reds’ highlight machine who put forth another great season with 22 home runs and 37 stolen bases. Last but not least, Ketel Marte enjoyed another good season for the Diamondbacks, earning an NL Silver Slugger award to go with this MVP vote.

In the AL, Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman earned himself a vote after a ridiculous season in which he went months without giving up an earned run and totaled 32 saves. In Tampa Bay, Yandy Díaz’s efforts were rewarded with a vote; he batted a clean .300 with 175 hits on the year. Finally, Athletics rookie Jacob Wilson impressively appears on the MVP ballot in his first full MLB season. He finished second in Rookie of the Year voting behind his teammate, Nick Kurtz, and was named an All-Star for the first time as well.

It was a quite a season and these players will always be able to claim they wound up on an MVP ballot.

Full AL, NL MVP voting results for 2025 season

Every year for MVP voting, the Baseball Writers of America kindly release the full ballots showing every player who received votes, where those votes ranked those players, and how many total “points” they tallied.

Below you’ll find the full NL MVP award voting ballot for this season. You can look at a comprehensive breakdown of which votes were cast by each of the 30 writers here.

“I got a couple of on-drives in this innings and as a batsman, you know that you have to be doing a lot of things correct to hit an on-drive,” Agarwal says

Karthik Krishnaswamy in Hamilton16-Feb-2020Sometimes, you can tell a lot about a batsman by how he puts away a half-volley. The bowler was James Neesham, and the batsman was Mayank Agarwal, batting on 34. The ball was full and a little floaty, angling in towards off stump.Agarwal brought his bat down perfectly straight and presented its full face to the ball, which sped away to the straight boundary after bisecting umpire and non-striker. The straight drive to the on, the shot that made Sachin Tendulkar nod in approval whenever he played it, probably involuntarily but possibly not.This was the seventh four of Agarwal’s innings, and he had also hit a six by then. Some of those shots had come off better deliveries than this one, and some – such as an uppercut off Scott Kuggeleijn, played with both feet in the air – had required a greater exercise of his dexterity and hand-eye coordination.This, though, was perhaps the most important shot of his innings. This, and a virtual replica in Neesham’s next over, off a delivery of similar line but better length, not quite as full.”I got a couple of on-drives in this innings and as a batsman, you know that you have to be doing a lot of things correct to hit an on-drive,” Agarwal later said. “When I got a couple of those, it gave me the assurance that was required.”Agarwal was certainly in need of assurance. He had landed in New Zealand in the middle of January and batted 11 times since then, for India A, India, and the Indians. He hadn’t made a single fifty in those 11 innings.More than the scores themselves, the nature of some of his dismissals – particularly in the second and third ODIs – had pointed to a technical issue, wherein his trigger movement was getting him into too much of a closed-off position, with his front shoulder much further to the off side than his back shoulder, forcing him to play around his body and square up to compensate.Agarwal wasn’t too keen on dissecting the technical adjustments he’d had to make but revealed that he had indeed been getting too closed-off, and that he had worked on the issue with Vikram Rathour, India’s batting coach, after his early dismissal on the first day of this warm-up match.The efforts certainly seemed to bear fruit, never more emphatically than when he drove Neesham down the ground. No shot is better at telling batsmen that they are properly balanced, and properly aligned at the crease, than the straight- or on-drive. It tells them that their head isn’t falling over, and their front leg isn’t going too far across and getting in the way of their bat coming down straight. If he was still getting too closed-off, Agarwal might have had to play around his front pad, and work the same balls squarer, through midwicket or even square leg.The effect of being better aligned was apparent through the rest of his innings too – his footwork and weight transfer just looked more precise, whatever shot he played – and he flowed on to 81 before retiring at lunch. This may have been just a warm-up match, and one lacking first-class status, but runs are runs, and, perhaps more importantly in the lead-up to the first Test in Wellington, fluency is fluency.The two candidates to open with Agarwal, meanwhile, were both out to induckers from Daryl Mitchell, Prithvi Shaw bowled and Shubman Gill lbw. Both planted their front foot too firmly and both drove a little too loosely. But while Gill was out for his second low score of the match, Shaw made a shot-a-minute 39 off 31 balls, putting away even marginal errors in line and length, and more or less sealed his spot alongside Agarwal.

Wides, lbw calls, swing – plenty of things were different in white-ball cricket back then

Sidharth Monga30-Mar-2020 #RetroLive Last week, we at ESPNcricinfo did something we have been thinking of doing for eight years now: pretend-live ball-by-ball commentary for a classic cricket match. We knew the result, yes, but we tried our best to go in as ignorant about the actual match as possible, so as to react “naturally” to what was happening. The odd joke aside, we stayed in character and didn’t let our knowledge of cricket’s evolution since then inform our commentary.However, we can break kayfabe now and talk about what we learnt from how cricket was back then, which in this case is the World Cup final of the year 1992.Are we not calling wides?
Wide calls back then seemed to be based more on the umpires’ judgement of the bowlers’ intent than on how wide the ball was of the batsman’s stumps. There were no tramlines for starters (yes, it is easy to forget such a time existed in limited-overs cricket). Quite regularly balls outside leg were not wided: be they wrong’uns starting from within the stumps, inswingers gone wrong, or full tosses outside leg from a left-arm spinner. Just as regularly, the umpires were too harsh on wides outside off.The only explanation for this – other than it being a residue from amateur limited-overs cricket where umpires were lenient in order to complete matches before it got dark – is that they saw it as being the same as in Tests: nobody would intentionally bowl down the leg side, which would be bad bowling, but they might intentionally bowl wide outside off to restrict scoring. As a result, the bowlers had a much bigger margin for error if they bowled straight, but on the flip side, they couldn’t use the space outside off tactically.Wide calls are much less subjective today, except when the batsman has moved around in the crease or changed his stance before the ball has been delivered. The tramlines, introduced just as a guide, have now become an objective parameter in most cases. Going down leg is a strict no-no, but those tramline yorkers are fascinating to watch.Who do I have to kill to get an lbw?
Yes, pitches have got flat, bats heavier, and rules are loaded in their favour, but to really appreciate modern batsmen, you have to watch a rerun – not highlights – of a 1992 World Cup game. Let alone getting a positive reaction from the umpires, the bowlers were so conditioned to receiving apathy that they didn’t even appeal for lbws that were so plumb that even Virat Kohli might not have reviewed them. Batsmen back then hardly ever got out if they so much as got onto the front foot, and often they just pretended to play a shot if they were in trouble. Mad respect for modern batsmen.ALSO READ: Twenty-five things from 1993 that are no longer aroundWhite doesn’t swing? Says who?
It is hard to believe but that was a time when the white ball swung more than the red one. This is not a view based on watching just one rerun; it is based on the first-hand experience of commentators and cricketers.To make it worse for batsmen – and bowlers who struggled to control their swing – one new ball was used at each end in the 1992 World Cup. This is why teams, especially the winners, Pakistan, developed a strategy of batting the first 30 overs almost as if in a Test match. Imran Khan promoted himself to perform just that role. Bowlers struggled too: over the course of the tournament Wasim Akram, for example, went from being a quick bowler to trying to bowl within himself, to once more going all out when cutting the pace didn’t have any impact on the wides.It is amazing how we have a reached a stage where the same manufacturers are struggling to manufacture a ball that will swing.The wrist is history: Mushtaq Ahmed’s success in the 1992 World Cup heralded the age of the wristspinners•Getty ImagesNon-strikers stole ground then too
In the 24th over of the chase, Aamer Sohail pulled out of his delivery to warn Allan Lamb – who had just taken a quick couple the previous ball – against stealing ground before the ball was delivered. Boos punctuated the confused hush that fell over the MCG. Umpire Steve Bucknor called it a dead ball. Sohail ran in again, saw Lamb moving again and pulled out again. This time Bucknor had to intervene and break off a conversation between the two.After the over, the transmission cut to the studio in Hong Kong. Sunil Gavaskar was the expert in the studio, weighing in with analysis and comments between overs and during drinks breaks. The anchor said, “Running a batsman out who has left the bowler’s end is not considered cricket. You’d normally expect a warning first.” Not in limited-overs cricket, where every run is vital, said Gavaskar, whose tone suggested annoyance at Sohail being questioned.The lines were being drawn already: Asian sides were much more serious about limited-overs cricket, and wanted the law enforced over the spirit. Later in the year, Kapil Dev would go on to run Peter Kirsten out after warnings, only for ugly scenes to play out thanks to South Africa’s righteous indignation.ALSO READ: Retroreport: The 1992 World Cup finalImagine Gavaskar’s and Dev’s annoyance then, when 27 years later, exactly on the same day as that 1992 final, R Ashwin ran Jos Buttler out without a warning, only to be lambasted and ridiculed the world over. However, it is not a losing battle anymore, and people are beginning to realise the batsman is gaining an unfair advantage and needs to live with the consequences. Without a warning.Wrist and reward
Pakistan were a horribly balanced side. They had a specialist batsman, Ijaz Ahmed, playing at No. 9, with his utility being only part-time seam-up overs. Sohail was called upon to bowl his full quota. Imran Khan was injured, so he played mainly as a batsman whose job was to fast-forward the game to the 30th over without losing wickets. If other sides had slightly more urgency, they would have punished the bowling lightweights in the Pakistan side, but in one respect, Khan’s team was also ahead of its time.There was only one specialist wristspinner, and he wore the iconic light-green jersey. There was only one spinner in the top 19 wicket-takers in the tournament, and it was the same man, Mushtaq Ahmed. Khan insisted he wanted a legspinner in his side as Abdul Qadir reached the end of his career. Ahmed’s impact was clear not just from his numbers but visibly too, with batsmen finding him as illegible as modern batsmen do left-arm wristspinners. Ahmed, the second highest wicket-taker of the tournament, was, as is known these days, the point of difference between others and the champion side.The time was ripe for Shane Warne and Anil Kumble to rule the world.Other lessons Imran Khan could come to the toss wearing what looked like an undershirt and not be fined. The world still didn’t know much about reverse swing. The stage was set for a testy summer in England. A bouncer above the head was a no-ball even if you touched it. Nowadays it is called a wide, and if you happen to play it, it becomes a legal delivery. RetroLive

And have any cricketers taken part in the Winter Olympics?

Steven Lynch28-Jul-2020Which South African Test cricketer never played a first-class match in his home country? asked Michael Roberts from England
The owner of this peculiar distinction is seamer George Parker, who won two Test caps in England in 1924. South Africa’s bowlers, used to matting pitches at home, struggled on turf in England, and the management cast round for alternatives. Parker, who was born in Cape Town in 1899, had been in England for four years, and was playing for Eccleshill in the Bradford League. He made his first-class debut in a rain-affected match against Oxford University, and took four wickets – and was hustled into the Test side for the opening match of the series at Edgbaston.Parker did his side proud, taking six wickets, although they cost him 152 runs: his victims included Herbert Sutcliffe, Frank Woolley, Patsy Hendren and Percy Chapman. Parker sent down 37 overs, an effort that took its toll, as Wisden reported: “He bowled himself to a standstill and became so exhausted that he had to leave the field shortly before the drawing of stumps, the South Africans finishing the day with ten men.”Parker’s league commitments meant he did not play again before the second Test, at Lord’s, where he dismissed both England’s openers, Sutcliffe and Jack Hobbs – but not before they had shared an opening stand of 268. And that was it: Parker wasn’t called on again during the tour, and never played another first-class game. He eventually moved to Australia, where he died in 1969.Joe Root was run out for the second innings running at Manchester. Has this happened to an England captain before? asked Albert Ross from England
Joe Root’s run-out on the opening day of the third Test against West Indies at Old Trafford made him only the third England captain to fall this way in successive Test innings. The first was Archie MacLaren, who was run out in the final innings of the 1901-02 Ashes, in Melbourne, and fell the same way on the first day of the return series in England, at Edgbaston a couple of months later. Another Lancastrian, Mike Atherton, was run out in successive innings in 1995, against West Indies at Old Trafford and then at Trent Bridge, where he did at least score 113.Root has now been run out four times as captain, the most for England, ahead of three by MacLaren (Ricky Ponting was run out nine times, easily the most for any Test captain). In all Tests, Root has now been run out six times: only Geoff Boycott and Matt Prior (seven) fell this way more often for England. Overall, Ponting was run out 15 times in Tests, two ahead of Rahul Dravid, while Allan Border and Matthew Hayden fell this way 12 times each.Have any cricketers also taken part in the Winter Olympics? asked Kartik Venkataraman from India
I’m not aware of any cricketers – internationals, anyway – who have participated in the Winter Olympics. The nearest I can think of is the left-arm seamer Dirk Nannes, who played white-ball internationals for Australia and Netherlands: he was also an accomplished moguls skier, who took part in World Cup events – but he missed out on the Winter Olympics, although he has commentated on them for Australia television. “My dream as a young bloke was to ski for Australia at the Winter Olympics,” he told the Sydney Daily Telegraph in 2018. “It’s my first love. I didn’t find cricket until I was 26.”There may be some others, especially from the early days when winter sports were a favourite of the English gentry. David Gower, who would surely have been a dashing jazz-hatted amateur if he’d been born a few years earlier, was for a while a regular on the fearsome Cresta Run at St Moritz (a skeleton racing track), once braving the ice shortly before embarking on a tough trip to the Caribbean, as he told The Guardian: “A week before a Windies tour was probably very good timing to get used to handling fear, expectation and speed.”Australia’s Dirk Nannes narrowly missed out on making the Australian ski team for the 1998 Winter Olympics•Getty ImagesSir Garry Sobers lost a Test to England in 1967-68 after declaring in both innings. Is he the only captain to suffer this fate? asked Gary Dockerty from Hong Kong
That match in Port-of-Spain in 1967-68 effectively allowed England to win the series, as they won the game after Sobers’ two declarations, and took the rubber 1-0. The only other captain to declare twice in a Test and lose is South Africa’s Graeme Smith, who closed at 451 for 9 and 194 for 6 against Australia in Sydney in 2005-06. Smith was trying to level the series, which Australia won 2-0 as a result of their victory in this match.There’s a case for saying it also happened in Centurion in 1999-2000, when South Africa declared their first innings at 248 for 8, and forfeited their second, which allowed England to pull off a surprise victory in what became an infamous match, after it emerged that Hansie Cronje, the South African captain, had accepted gifts for ensuring a positive result.Who played the most Tests, all of which were won – and played the most, all of them being lost? asked Steve Rafferty from Ireland
The 1980s West Indian allrounder Eldine Baptiste is the answer to the first part – he played ten Test matches, all of which were won. And the unfortunate holder of the opposite record is Alok Kapali of Bangladesh, who appeared in 17 Tests and lost the lot. Kapali, who’s still playing domestic cricket, holds another peculiar Test record: he took only six wickets with his legbreaks, but they included a hat-trick – Bangladesh’s first in Tests – against Pakistan in Peshawar in August 2003.Use our feedback form or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

The former South Africa batsman and ace fielder looks ahead to his T10 coaching stint, and talks about the best fielders he’s seen so far

Interview by Shashank Kishore07-Jan-2021The full-length dive into the stumps to run out Inzamam-ul-Haq at the 1992 World Cup is one of cricket’s most iconic images. The man in that picture, Jonty Rhodes, is pushing 52 but looks no older than 25. Fitness is a big part of his life, adventure even bigger. It’s this streak that has now taken him to Sweden, where he’s coaching a team of committed amateurs looking to pose a serious challenge at the Associate level. Rhodes is also a part of the IPL with the Kings XI Punjab, and will be seen in the upcoming T10 League as the head coach of the Pune Devils.In this chat, Rhodes talks about modern fielding, coaching below the elite level, and whether he has any World Cup regrets.You’ve had a busy post-retirement life. Fielding coach, head coach, motivational speaker, bank officer, commentator. Is there a box you are yet to tick?
I retired in 2003 and immediately started working with Standard Bank as a sponsorship manager. I didn’t really get back into cricket for six years. I retired thrice, which is crazy (laughs), but I could never leave it because this is a game I’m so passionate about.Related

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Initially, I thought I’d walk away from cricket completely, until the IPL came along. I started with Mumbai Indians in 2009 as fielding coach – did it for nine seasons. After that, a two-year break helped me, from a journey point of view. I spent a lot of time developing the game at the grassroot structures as opposed to working with high-performance players or teams. That was an eye-opener. I spent time in Nepal, Malawi, Zimbabwe, in different parts of South Africa – places with passion for the game but with limited facilities, yet it doesn’t diminish people’s love for what they do.Hopefully 20 years later, I’m still throwing balls around, scoring, umpiring or doing something in cricket.What are the challenges of coaching a small Associate member country like Sweden?
At Sweden, I’m not just the national coach, I’ve got to also look after the pathways from junior cricket to Under-19s to women’s cricket because there are only four paid professionals at the Swedish Cricket Federation. I’ve got players from Sweden who originate from Pakistan, Afghanistan, India. There aren’t too many locals, so that’s something I’m looking to push for. If you can harness that diversity, it’s a huge asset to have.There’s also a T10 gig coming up with the Pune Devils. How did that come about?
Interestingly, Sweden has a lot of T10 cricket. They don’t have many facilities, but there are a lot of clubs who want to play on weekends. It’s too drawn out to facilitate 50-over cricket. All the players registered with us are working professionals, so they only have the weekend off. Both T20 and T10 are a big part of the Swedish cricket make-up. I’ve got to get as much experience from this shortened version, even if it isn’t from an ICC point of view, because Sweden isn’t participating in a tournament currently.I’ve worked as a sponsorship manager when we introduced the Pro-20 in South Africa in 2004. I’ve been a stakeholder in T20s for a long time, so I’m looking to try and see that adjustment is very quick in T10 as well. It’s a different format. There are players who have more experience than I have [Pune’s marquee signings include Thisara Perera and Mohammad Amir], so I’m also looking to learn from them.On boundary catching: “If your feet are shuffling sideways, you can have the power to spring up and land at the same place”•BCCIWhat is the biggest attribute needed in a team environment today?
The ability to listen. As coaches, your first instinct is to feel the need to say something, but when you have so many experienced players in your line-up, you need something unique and powerful, because they have seen it all. On the field, you have no say when things unfold. Also, from the business point of view, there’s lot of strategy and analysis that could work, but it’s about the actual execution that’s important. And that’s done better by listening rather than telling them what to do. If you’re listening, you’re giving them a chance to work out what the best plan could be. It allows people to grow. It’s an important attribute to any environment – T20, T10, even life.Batsmen often have to change mindsets when they switch formats. Does it apply to fielding as well?
Yes, you talk about fielding in T20 cricket, but fielding is huge in Test cricket too. I still remember Ravindra Jadeja’s one-handed catch at deep square leg in a Test in New Zealand [in Christchurch in March 2020]. Those sorts of efforts can change a Test, but yes, T20 has certainly highlighted the importance of fielding and its intensity. In the IPL, you saw some brilliant saves at the boundary, not just great catches. Everywhere you’re looking to save a run. In a lot of games, it all comes down to the last over, last ball, so it’s not about if the guys are doing it differently, I don’t think so.Over the years, have you seen a fundamental shift in how young Indian players approach fielding?
One hundred per cent, but it’s more about the fitness levels. MS Dhoni started it in his quiet way. As captain, he was a quiet, behind-the-scenes guy with a lot of authority. Compare that to Virat Kohli. Heart on his sleeve, he’s very determined in what he wants to change and what he thinks is important. You think of his fitness level and how it changed his game and his athletic ability. You’ve seen that with guys like Ambati Rayudu, Suresh Raina – players I’m a great fan of – because of the ability to move in the field and the contributions they make with the bat.If you’re setting standards in your fitness levels consistently, that’s amazing. Because as a fielding coach, I can always coach somebody to catch the ball, but the difficulty is in getting somebody to the ball to catch it. If they don’t have that ability and mobility, it’s difficult. From what you’ve seen, the athletic ability has changed of all youngsters coming through.Cricket is a game of habit. Too often, you’ll have ten years of “this is how we field” and it’s difficult to change that. You can bat for two hours, but in India in April-May during the IPL, there’s no chance you can field for more than 20 minutes, so we work together in small groups: ten to 20 minutes of high-intensity fielding, 100%, get it right and move on. Players who spend lot of time bowling and batting, if you can improve their ability to move, that’s a massive change in the right direction.”If you’re listening [as a coach], you’re giving the players a chance to work out what the best plan could be. It allows people to grow”•Samuel Rajkumar/BCCITalking of athletic ability, we’ve seen some incredible boundary catches in the IPL. What is the key to being a good boundary rider?
It’s important to not take your eye off the ball. Whether you’re batting or fielding, you still have to watch the ball. Awareness is the key. What I try and promote as fielding coach is the need for players to play different sport. Whether it’s badminton, football – not seriously, just to get that lateral movement. As a field hockey player, there was a huge benefit to my fielding. It was a massive benefit to me [to be] a football player, because it gives you that peripheral vision and the awareness of space.From a catching point of view, it’s about getting back to the rope as quickly as possible and not looking at it. I was trying to get the guys to shuffle back to the boundary like they are stepping out when they are batting. You don’t run forward or run backwards when you’re stepping out to bat, you still come with a good shape. It will give you a good base to work from because if your momentum is taking you back towards the rope, as soon as you jump, you’re going to jump outside the rope. Whereas if your feet are shuffling sideways, you can have the power to spring up and land at the same place.Those sorts of things do have a technique to it. It’s about doing it enough times so that it becomes a habit and the players become aware. You can work on the technical skills, but it’s the awareness, the anticipation, that’s important.From memory, can you pick out some of the boundary catches that have stood out?
Hmm, not really. You think of the 2019 World Cup. Ben Stokes caught Andile Phehlukwayo at the boundary, but he got it wrong. He came in, one hand, leapt up and caught it. Adam Bacher caught Sachin Tendulkar one-handed in a Test in Cape Town when Tendulkar was just defying us. He got 100-odd, I think [169], and the only way we could get him out was through that incredible one-handed catch at the boundary over his head.With regards to T20, there’s been so much brilliance. What I’m loving is that for the first six years of the IPL, if you had a top-ten compilation [of the best boundary catches], it was only the international players in it. Two would be Indians. Now, you’d have at least seven Indians. That, for me, is way more exciting than one particular catch that stands out. It’s just the awareness that these young kids coming through have and the work that they are putting in as fielders.Who are the some of the best fielders you’ve seen?
Ricky Ponting was an incredible fielder. He shattered his ankle sliding into the advertising boards once. In Perth, there used to be a concrete wall as the boundary, as you saw in a lot of Australian grounds. Guys like myself and Ricky, who were committed in the field, had it tough diving around to save every run because we didn’t have a cushion to slide over while trying to pull the ball back in. We either had a wall or picket fence. So Ricky was incredible. Also, the accuracy with which he hit the stumps was amazing.Herschelle Gibbs – I spent a lot of my career playing with him, having him at cover and me at point was a lot of fun. The two of us terrorising the opposition batters was a lot of fun.I’ve enjoyed watching Suresh Raina throughout his career. He was Mr IPL. Everyone spoke about his batting, never missing a game for so long. My impression of him was: here’s a guy who is diving around, having grown up in India, which is an indication that he wasn’t afraid. Him and AB de Villiers, in the modern day, I’ve enjoyed. It’s not about the catches, it’s about the anticipation – them putting pressure on the opposition and never taking the foot off the gas for the full 20 overs.”I played in four World Cups. In four attempts, we didn’t win. If you tell me that I had a disappointing career, no. I don’t have any regrets”•Chris Turvey/PA Photos/Getty ImagesI have to ask you about your international career as we wrap up. Was there a hint of regret at not having won a World Cup despite having the teams to do so?
I played 11 years for South Africa. I played in four World Cups. My career spanned from the start of one edition to the end of another, and I never got to a final. Part of T10 is my focus on the process, less the outcome. As coach, it’s important to allow players the freedom. In four attempts [with South Africa], we didn’t win. If you tell me that I had a disappointing career, no. I don’t have any regrets. Talking of South Africa being chokers at ICC events, having been a part of it, never once have we walked onto the field thinking, “We’re going to win” or “Oh, we’re going to choke.” So from that point of view, I have no single regret.I had an incredible opportunity to represent my country at a stage where three years before 1992, even three months before the World Cup, no one even thought we’d be going there. Having that larger picture of life has shaped me in my cricket. I don’t have a regret. I’m just grateful. I didn’t even have a country to play for six months before the World Cup. And when I came in, people went, “Who is this guy Jonty Rhodes?” Because my average in state cricket was really poor. I was a feisty young guy on the field, but it wasn’t a big part of the game. Kepler Wessels was my captain. He’d played in Australia and knew how important it was. You couldn’t hit the ball out of the ground. The boundaries were big. You needed speed on the outfield, and he chose Hansie Cronje and myself in the squad.Not a single regret with regards to my cricket. No player envy either. How many cups you won doesn’t define me as a player. Australia won three World Cups during my time, but it doesn’t make my career any less of an incredible opportunity to do what I did to make a name for myself by playing a sport in the backyard with my brothers.

A stunning Rohit Sharma hundred made him the toast of the Twitter world

ESPNcricinfo staff13-Feb-2021On the opening day of the second Test in Chennai, Rohit Sharma’s sublime 161 in tricky conditions earned praised from current and former players on Twitter.

What an amazing innings from the graceful and elegant @ImRo45 ! Such class, love watching him bat

— Shane Warne (@ShaneWarne) February 13, 2021