With close to 30,000 people attending the four games in Jaipur, we wonder what a few sensible tweaks can do for the women’s game in India

Annesha Ghosh in Jaipur13-May-2019She has only ever played T20 cricket internationally, and has a batting average of 4.75 there from nine innings. But two-two-two-four off the last four balls from Amelia Kerr in the Women’s T20 Challenge final to clinch victory for Supernovas, and Radha Yadav is a star in the making now. Exactly what a platform like a kind-of-IPL is meant to do for women’s cricket in India.All told, it was a success. Four matches. Largely with good turnouts (13,000-odd were at the final). Three of the four games were played under lights, there was some excellent action and close finishes, Velocity choosing to play for qualification to the final instead of going for a win against Supernovas perhaps the only negative.Lots to celebrate then, but there are a couple of things to think about for the organisers and powers that be.Let there be light, as much as possibleIndia haven’t played a day-night or night-only home international fixture since March 2016. The first non-day match they played, at home or away, since that World T20 game in Mohali was at the 2018 World T20, in the semi-final, which they lost to England. Failing to account for the dew factor and the lack of an idea of the intricacies of fielding under lights – apart from other things – abetted their loss.ALSO READ: A high-quality advertisement for women’s cricket in IndiaAt the Women’s T20 Challenge, nearly a dozen catches were shelled – by Indian and overseas players, young and experienced. The swirling ball against the backdrop of the night sky posed all three teams a challenge. At the T20 World Cup next year, in Australia, two of India’s four league-stage games will begin at 7pm local time, the remaining two at 2pm. The 2021 ODI World Cup, too, will have a sprinkling of day-night and night games.With two world tournaments in the next two years, there is a case for the BCCI to consider hosting a few games under lights during the home series against South Africa later this year, and ensure a few night fixtures across all domestic tournaments, including the age-group competitions, in the upcoming season.”Playing under lights is actually challenging because the whole atmosphere changes, the way the wind blows, with the light and the way the ball travels on the field,” said India and Velocity batsman Veda Krishnamurthy, who took most catches (and, more importantly, dropped none) in the tournament. “So, at least if we start playing T20s in the evening [that will help] and also help bring in more crowd.”Around 13,000 people turned up for the final•BCCIThere’s no blockbuster without the publicityA standalone identity, in a non-metro city, held on the sidelines of the men’s IPL were all vital when it came to testing the waters for a possible women’s IPL, or a short three-team event to start with. If the response to the four-match competition – on social media and at the ground – is anything to go by, the Women’s T20 Challenge was more than a sleeper hit.Scheduling the final on the weekend, with a 7.30pm start, allowed appreciable prime-time viewership, the high-quality cricket in the final-ball thriller only bolstering the case for women’s cricket in India to have a bigger, a more expanded T20 league of its own.As crowd turnout goes, the attendance at Sawai Mansingh Stadium grew with each night fixture – from roughly 4,000 in the opening match to 7,000-plus in the second, to over 13,000 for the final. Even the only match with a 3.30pm start, in the sweltering Jaipur heat, had nearly 3,500 people in attendance at the stadium.Be informed, these are numbers for a tournament that didn’t even have much advertisement around the stadium premises. Locals – cab drivers, store owners, hotel owners, children and women – who came to watch the matches said that TV commercials, though sporadic, carried by the host broadcaster during the closing stages of the IPL’s league phase played a part in piquing their interest.Stick to the non-metrosImagine, then, what Women’s T20 Challenge signage at the airport (which had many Rajasthan Royals hoardings well after the team had been eliminated), the railway station, and in the immediate vicinity of the stadium could have done. No reason, then, for the BCCI to doubt the cricket-watching appetite – for women’s games – among Indians, right?”Smaller cities could work, because of the curiosity factor…,” Mithali Raj, who also called for an expanded competition, said. “We could add one or two more teams, but [making] it a double-leg [competition], where we could play each team twice, will make it more interesting because any team can beat any team in the league. That gives every player and team a few more games.”Back in the day, to promote the sport under WCAI [the now-defunct Women’s Cricket Association of India], we tried to play at smaller places where a lot of people came to watch maybe because of the curiosity factor, but we used to attract a lot of people. So that isn’t a bad idea.”Worth thinking about.

Australia coach Justin Langer sits down with ESPNcricinfo to talk about his evolution as a coach, leading the team through a crisis and why this Ashes might be different

Daniel Brettig29-Jul-2019In the middle of the 2009 Ashes series, a few months before he retired from playing and began a decade in coaching for Australia, Western Australia and Perth Scorchers, Justin Langer inadvertently told the world he thought James Anderson could be “a bit of a pussy if he is worn down”.The comment was part of a personal email to Australia’s then coach Tim Nielsen by way of advice on how to tackle England in that year’s five-Test contest. After it was leaked, Langer was the subject of a major story in the , published just as the tourists were trying to recover from a first Test match defeat at Lord’s in 75 years.Looking back on the episode as he reflected on a decade in coaching, Langer says, sitting in the lobby of the Australian team hotel in Birmingham, that it was an early part of his education in public scrutiny – an area in which he has faced unrelenting examination over his first year as Australia’s coach.”One of the boys left the email Tim had printed in the change room at Glamorgan there. It got passed to Steve James, who had been a player at Glamorgan for a long time, who then decided to keep it until it suited him or his newspaper, which was in the [third] Test. And you just learn very quickly that: one, it’s an industry, two, people will twist and turn it however they want, and three, people have got no real concern for who the person is who’s got feelings – they’ll just use it however they want. Good grounding, I guess.”Tim Nielsen said I’d played a lot of cricket in England, I’d played against some of the players, and did I have any thoughts? So it was a pretty innocent question and I just wrote a few words to Tim as a mate and a guy who’d been an assistant coach when I’d been there. It was a personal letter that then got called a dossier. It was a bit like when we took our shoes off at Edgbaston [during the World Cup], all of a sudden they’re calling it ‘earthing’ and all that, all this psychobabble, it was just taking our shoes off because it’s a nice thing to do at a cricket ground.”Much was made of the Anderson comment, but Langer regards it as a measure of both the Englishman and his own evolution as a coach that the same word would not be used again.”Now that was my way of just talking about his body language. When we played against James Anderson as a young man, we felt that if we got on top of him, hit anything loose he bowled, because his body language would drop a little bit. I’d take back the word I used. That wouldn’t be my style now, that’s for sure, but it was two Aussie blokes talking to each other about someone’s body language.”Do I think that now about James Anderson? Absolutely not, and I hope you write this in the article: James Anderson has turned into a brilliant, great English fast bowler. He will be the person we talk about most when we go through our plans for winning this Ashes. When he was a young man he was different, and that happens with most. When I was a young batsman, I was dour, I couldn’t hit the ball off the square, I probably didn’t smile much.Justin Langer looks back at his time with Perth Scorchers and Western Australia as vital to his development as a coach•Getty Images”That was my interpretation of him, having played against him. I didn’t know him at all. That was our experience of his body language as a young player. Would I say that now? No way in the world. He is a great bowler and we respect him enormously, I personally respect him for his longevity, for his skill. The greatest compliment we can give James Anderson now – the same person who wrote that ten years ago, [not] expecting it to get into public hands, certainly wouldn’t say that about him now.”

Learning from rejection

Trial and error, setbacks and achievements have all been a part of Langer’s coaching story, for he has been denied as many coaching roles as he has won. “A lot of people don’t know this: when Mickey Arthur got the job as head coach of Western Australia [in 2010], I applied for that job as well and that was literally straight out of the game,” he says. “I thought, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got good leadership, I know the game, no worries.’ But then Mickey got the job and I’m glad he did because I had to find some grounding somewhere else, and that was three years working with the Australian team, and I learned a lot of lessons then.”When Mickey got the Australian job, I also applied for that, and I wasn’t ready for that, but I still applied because people kept saying, ‘You’ve got leadership and you know the game, so you should apply for it.’ It was a a really tough experience going through that process. I’m glad I went through it, and I’m also glad I didn’t get the job then, because then I had six years at Western Australia. There’s no way I could’ve done the job I’ve done for 14 months without having that six years’ experience.”It couldn’t have been better grounding. It was all the same issues, all the same problems, just with less scrutiny. I’ve learned how to deal with it and I feel confident to deal with people, game situations, game plans, cricket. But what I had to learn was the scrutiny of the job, and that’s just another part of my evolution as a coach.ALSO READ: Newlands scandal ended reverse swing arms race – Paine“You’re always evolving and learning, and that’s one of the great things about the job. If you don’t, you might as well give up. I’m certainly doing it. The first six months of my job was so hard – I didn’t enjoy the job much.”From detailed deliberations about how to reintegrate Steven Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft to the team after their bans for ball-tampering in Cape Town last year, indifferent results for the ODI and Test teams in their absence, to the many and varied requirements of a new broadcast rights deal that reaped Cricket Australia A$1.18 billion but left the team with many more obligations than previously, Langer was in up to his neck. He was working, too, with a largely inherited support staff, under contract until the end of this year’s Ashes series. But the team’s smiling visage, he insists, was genuine.”I’ve said forever, my whole playing career and my whole coaching career: if they’re relaxed and smiling and enjoying it, they’re going to play better anyway,” he says. “I think they go hand in hand actually.”We’d got smashed and it took great courage, but it was a new group of guys who came in, and they were loving the fact they were playing for their country. You don’t fake it. We had to improve our behaviours a bit, on and off the field, and that was okay, but we were just doing what we thought was the right thing to do.”

Emotional strain

In the wake of a sapping Test series against India, where the Australians did well to be 1-1 going into Boxing Day but then saw things unravel quickly over the final two Tests, Langer was not always pleasant to be around. This was no surprise to those who had seen him grumpy with WA and Scorchers, but the depths to which he was falling with increasing frequency were somewhat oblivious to Langer until he was confronted by the sight of his wife, Sue, in tears over breakfast.”We got to day three or day four of the last Test in Sydney and my family had been over for Boxing Day and for the SCG Test match,” Langer says. “I’ve known my wife since I was 14 years old, so she knows everything about me, and they were leaving. I had to get in the team car to go to the ground at 8.15am. They were leaving that day, and we were at breakfast at 8 o’clock, and my wife started crying at the breakfast table in front of my daughters.Australia coach: a job that requires someone to wear many hats•Getty Images”I said, ‘What’s going on?’ I never see my wife cry – we know everything about each other. She said, ‘I just don’t like what’s happening here. I don’t like what it’s doing to you, I don’t like what it’s doing to us. People are so mean – what people are saying about you and the team and Australian cricket’. That was a real eye-opener for me, that it was affecting my family.”Others saw signs too. Among them was Malcolm Conn, formerly an award-winning cricket journalist and now the communications manager for Cricket New South Wales, who saw Langer’s testy back and forth with the ‘s Tom Decent over the issue of Glenn Maxwell and how he had been given undertakings regarding CA’s plans for him in the winter of 2018, which turned out to be unfounded.”I got, I’d say, two-out-of-ten grumpy with the journalist in Sydney, and I was also amazed at the backlash of that as well,” Langer says. “I apologised straight after the event, but I realised [from] the way people said, ‘He’s getting angry, he’s losing it.’ I didn’t feel that but my wife was getting upset – that was a real moment.”I’ve said privately and publicly a few times if I look back to my career: 1993 when I got dropped for the first time – really tough time, but pivotal in my life. I got dropped in 2001 – really, really tough time, but pivotal in my life. I look to January 2019 in Sydney – really tough time, but I’ve got no doubt it’ll be a massive part of my evolution as a coach. I got a really nice email from Malcolm Conn, just after that press conference. He gave me some really good advice. He knows what it was, but when I’m getting that sort of feedback from my wife, that sort of feedback from the team, I knew I had to find ways to get better, and hopefully I’ve done that.”

Respect for Trevor Bayliss

Langer takes inspiration from, among others, England’s coach Trevor Bayliss. Famed for his ability to keep calm at even the moments of greatest strain for the teams he has coached, Bayliss left a vivid memory in Langer’s mind when they crossed paths in Dubai in 2009. Langer was on his way to England; Bayliss, coach of Sri Lanka at the time, was on his way back home from Lahore, where the Sri Lanka and ICC officials team buses were machine-gunned in a terrorist attack.”I just remember his calmness. I’ve got a lot of respect for him. He’s just won the World Cup, he’s done some really good things in cricket.”It’s great to see someone like him, who’s gone right through the ranks to now be a World Cup-winning coach, I think that’s brilliant. He’s a great, shining light for coaching. We always get along very well, and I really like the journey he’s taken. [The World Cup win is] a feather in his cap and a reward for the hard work he’s done over many years, and it helps to elevate coaching. I think coaching in cricket is really immature, if you think about the other codes.”Just how far Langer’s own coaching has been elevated with time will be demonstrated by how Australia tackle the task of winning an Ashes series in England for the first time since 2001. Ask him to ruminate on how the team led by Mark Taylor was able to overcome a 0-1 deficit and the captain’s own form slump to win 3-2 in 1997, but the 2005 team could not, despite its bevy of great players, and it is patently clear the result still grates.”Our team then was a great team and no one can ever deny that. But some things happened, didn’t they?” he says. “Glenn stepped on the ball. I’ll say it until I die – you take the best players out of your team in any sport, it’s going to have an impact, and it did. McGrath’s on top of his game – he got his 500th wicket the game before – he’s bowling beautifully to Marcus Trescothick. You take him out, a few of the players for the first time are struggling a little bit with form.”It was a great series, a real arm-wrestle. The same team fought back two years later and won 5-0. It was an unusual tour that, 2005, and we’ll take stuff from it this year. But we’re certainly not the team we were in 2005. That was literally a great cricket team, probably seven or eight all-time greats, a couple of very good players. I was a good player and we had some all-time great players.Steven Smith, Justin Langer and David Warner during the Australia World Cup squad’s trip to Gallipoli•Cricket Australia”This is different. We’ve got a couple of great players this time, we’ve got a couple of aspiring great players, some very good players, and we’ve got some kids learning the ropes. Very different to compare this team to 2005, 1997, 1993 or 1989.”

Secret to Ashes success?

In an Ashes squad of 17, Langer and the selection chairman Trevor Hohns have assembled a group with more than a few players who offer gritty, fighting qualities, but also plenty of experience playing the game in this part of the world.”The vision early on to have us playing some Australia A cricket and those three red-ball games, hopefully that will give us a kick-start into the Ashes,” Langer says. “The fact we kept players like Marnus Labuschagne, Cameron Bancroft and Peter Siddle playing county cricket – so, as many Australian players playing red-ball cricket as possible – that was all part of the planning for it.”Equally England will have some players who have played some red-ball cricket as well. We’ve got eight guys, I think, who’ve just been solely focused on red-ball cricket for the last few months, and plus the one game the other day.”One of the most intriguing choices was Bancroft, who comes back into the fold at the same time as Smith and Warner. Langer and Bancroft have enjoyed a close relationship as batsman and mentor for years in WA, but Langer is adamant that sentiment had nothing at all to do with the 26-year-old’s presence in the squad. Indeed, he points out that Bancroft’s county stint with Durham was perhaps even more valuable than most.”Selection is about performance isn’t it? He, like David and Steve Smith, they’ve paid a very heavy penalty,” Langer says. “He came to Durham and he’s got to bat first on a really tough Durham wicket, because there’s no tosses over here. I remember talking to Marcus North weeks ago about it, and he said, it’s a very tough wicket up there, and he’s averaged 40-odd, got a couple of hundreds.ALSO READ: ‘I wasn’t as true to myself as I could have been’ – Bancroft battles back“Then he batted in a two-and-a-half-day game, and you’d have to say he was the standout batsman, just with true grit. I think to win over here we’re going to need batters who are really mentally strong, who’ve got a sound technique, who make runs. What he does is if he gets in, he usually gets hundreds. He likes to bat, to wear them down. He’s also a brilliant fieldsman – if he plays he’ll be a very good bat-pad to Nathan Lyon. He is a great slips fielder, which is important in English conditions, just a really good package.”He’s earned it on performance – a bloke who averages 56 in Shield cricket and averages 40-odd opening the batting in tough conditions in Durham and then plays like that [in Southampton]. He’s been selected on performance. When he came out of it he was the leading run scorer [for Australia] in South Africa in that [2018] Test series, so he can obviously play as well. There’s no sentiment there. We thought there were some tough selections, no doubt about that, but we felt he is in good form and he warrants selection through his performances.”How will Langer’s Australia respond to the question he once posed of James Anderson? For they are not only going to be facing a concerted challenge from England on the pitch but a strident campaign of criticism, abuse and booing from beyond the boundary. They know, more or less, what to expect, but they still need to cope with the challenge of fronting up to it day upon day for 25 days across five Tests. Resilience will be required – by the bucketload.”We’ve had a pretty good snapshot of what to expect from the crowds here in England,” Langer says. “We respect if that’s how they want to react, that’s fine – there’s nothing we can do about it. Our boys were brilliant throughout the World Cup, and I expect them to be brilliant dealing with it throughout the Ashes as well. I know it’s going to be tough on them. We’ll just get on with the job and play the best cricket we can.”That’s why it’s called Test cricket. It’s tough. That’s why we love the game so much. Physically, mentally, technically, you’ve got to be really strong. We talk about mental toughness, having a great technique. Bowlers have to have the physical endurance, batsmen have to have concentration. It’s a game of resilience, it’s like a marathon, and our blokes will be up for it. It’s the toughest part of the game.”

Comfortable among the stars and in his own skin, the Maharashtra batsman has gained prominence in a short span of time, and is a regular in the India A set-up now

Shashank Kishore25-Sep-2019″Mahi , Andre Russell scoop paddle . Short fine leg deep square [Mahi , Andre Russell doesn’t play the scoop or the paddle. We could have removed the short fine-leg and put a deep square-leg instead].”That’s not Virat Kohli having one of his routine consultations with MS Dhoni. This was Ruturaj Gaikwad, a 21-year-old rookie top-order batsman, who did not feature in a single IPL 2019 game for Chennai Super Kings, asking his captain if he had erred by letting the Kolkata Knight Riders danger man off the hook. Each of Russell’s five fours and three sixes had come in the arc between long-off and deep square-leg, not one behind the wicket. Russell had rescued a floundering innings and remained unbeaten on 50.”Sharp cricket mind,” Dhoni told Gaikwad, who smiles as he narrates his conversation with his hero. ” plan , short fine top edge . involved [The plan was to bowl a little shorter, and the short fine-leg was for the top edge. Stay involved with the game like this].”That’s ‘Rutu’ for those who know him well, like Surendra Bhave, the former India batsman and Maharashtra coach. “A confident young man, who is comfortable carrying himself around the superstars,” Bhave tells ESPNcricinfo.But why are we talking about Gaikwad now, you might wonder. It’s because he has moved up the ranks to become an India A regular on the back of some impressive performances for Maharashtra in 2018-19. He was their leading run-getter in last year’s Vijay Hazare Trophy too, with 365 runs in eight innings at 45.62 and a strike rate of 90. While his Ranji Trophy numbers were slightly less impressive, the selectors clearly saw something in his game and decided he was primed for the step up.

I asked Mahi bhai this when I joined the CSK camp. ‘?’ He said: ‘ sign , shot [to get out] .’ You’re talented, keep scoring runs in domestic cricket

On his India A debut, however, Gaikwad was out for a golden duck, against England Lions in January 2019. It was to be, however, just a small blip in the course of a glorious summer. His scores for India A in List A cricket during the home series against Sri Lanka A and in the Caribbean against West Indies A read: 187*, 125*, 94, 84, 74, 3, 85, 20, 99. That’s 677 runs at an average of 112.83 and strike rate of 116.72. He did have three forgettable outings against South Africa A in Thiruvananthapuram after that, but Gaikwad isn’t ready to tinker with his reputation as an aggressive run-getter who likes to dominate bowling attacks. And that’s the confidence he wants to carry into this season’s Vijay Hazare Trophy, which started this week.Gaikwad is somewhat in the KL Rahul mode: a tall, lanky, right-hand opener. He might not be as stylish as the Karnataka opener, but Bhave says Gaikwad has a very simple game that is compact and suitable against all bowling. “I saw him first about four years ago, and I could immediately see there was an X-factor about him. I’d heard of him scoring a double-century in an Under-19 game where Maharashtra were 250 all out. And people were talking about him, so I took a look at him and have been impressed. He’s fit. He’s an outstanding fielder, bats at a very good clip. His mindset is that of a run-scorer. At times he has to curb his aggression, but some of his shots – just wow.”***Gaikwad is from a Pune-based family that has always valued academics highly. His father is a Defence Research Development Officer and his mother a teacher at a municipal school. None of his cousins, with whom he grew up in a large joint family, played sport. But, in 2003, watching Brendon McCullum scoop Australia’s fast bowlers at Nehru Stadium in Pune got him hooked to the sport. He was just six then. Soon enough, he was playing too. At 11, he joined the Vengsarkar Academy in Kondwa, a Pune suburb, and has been training there since.Initially a middle-order batsman, Gaikwad’s breakthrough season was 2014-15, when he was the second-highest run-scorer in the Under-19 Cooch Behar Trophy. In the following season, he made 875 runs at 97.22, leading to a Ranji Trophy debut against – guess who? Yes, Dhoni’s Jharkhand, in New Delhi, a game he remembers fondly, even though he made just 15.”Mahi was Jharkhand’s mentor. I wanted to impress him, but suddenly got hit by a bouncer from Varun Aaron and fractured my finger,” Gaikwad remembers. “I wanted to come off, but Kedar Jadhav told me to carry on. After a point, I just couldn’t tolerate the pain, so tried to hit out and was caught. At the lunch break, Mahi came over to talk to me and signed my bat and wrote ‘get well soon’ on my plaster.”

Frankly speaking, I didn’t expect to get picked for India A so soon, but now that it has happened, I’m only learning to take the good with the bad and be balanced about things. I try to learn as much as I can from every session

Gaikwad is replaying the moment in his mind as he speaks. “In fact, I asked Mahi this when I joined the CSK camp. ‘ [Do you remember]?’ He said: ‘ sign , shot [to get out] [Of course. Not just the sign, but the shot too]. You’re talented, keep scoring runs in domestic cricket.'”Gaikwad was among the Super Kings’ last picks at the December auction at his base price of INR 20 lakh, something he wasn’t expecting. “After the first round for uncapped players, I switched off the TV and turned on my Playstation,” he says. “My number was 80-odd, and suddenly from 75 it jumped to 110. So I thought my chance was gone.”After some time, I started getting messages. That’s how I found out about my selection. My parents were out of town and returned later that night. It was only when a friend came home with a cake that they actually believed I had been picked.”***Gaikwad hasn’t modelled his game on anyone, but likes to pick out aspects from those he has watched and followed. He talks a lot to contemporaries Shreyas Iyer and Shubman Gill, with whom he’s spent some time at the India A set-up. He shares a good rapport with Ankit Bawne too. “We’re all close friends, we learn off each other,” he says. “The India A system is very competitive, but it’s a special place to be in because we learn from each other, even if we may directly or indirectly competing with each other.”Frankly speaking, I didn’t expect to get picked for India A so soon, but now that it has happened, I’m only learning to take the good with the bad and be balanced about things. I try to learn as much as I can from every session. Like, earlier this year, Stephen Fleming (Super Kings’ coach) told me: ‘don’t premeditate at the nets, just allow your instincts to take over, because match pressure is a different ball game.’ So from then on, I’ve tried to consciously cut out risks early and try and play out 10-15 balls.”What if there’s a bad ball? “Sehwag mantra, see-ball, hit-ball,” he laughs. “In fact, during the recent tour of West Indies, I tried to follow his of hitting a six to get to a century, but I was out caught for 99.”Gaikwad is witty and candid, and up for a laugh, even if the joke is on him. That, he says, is how he is. Not intense, but not too casual either. It is a philosophy he has followed from observing players and getting to spend time with them in the IPL and the India A set-ups. “Once I know I’m set, I know I can score quickly, I just want to dominate,” he continues. “There’s no fear. By dominating, I don’t mean playing rash shots. Rahul Dravid sir said, sometimes a good leave or a good forward defense can also show signs of a batsman’s domination. I haven’t spoken much to him one-on-one, but these words have stayed with me.”Gaikwad is aware that to be considered at the highest level, he needs to show consistency across formats. In List A cricket, he averages an impressive 53 across 41 innings. In first-class cricket, though, he’s managed just 38 in 15 matches.”In 20 first-class innings, only once or twice I’ve been out early. Mostly been getting 30 or 40, 70-80. The conversion isn’t there and I need to get better,” he agrees. “In one-dayers too, I have 15 fifties [he has 14], and have been out from 75-99 some 11 times. In first-class, if I’ve scored 70-odd in one innings, I’ve been out cheaply in the second innings. It’s not like I’m getting out on zero. I know if I iron out this and figure things out, I can get big 100s.”So, clearly, he’s one of the geeky sorts who remembers numbers. “Because it irritates me,” he says loudly. “I do all the hard work and then I get out when I know I’m capable of much more. Hopefully the coming season, I can correct this.”Bhave reckons Gaikwad could fulfil his potential if he sticks to the straight and narrow. “The best part about his batting is that it is simple. There’s no complication, no awkward back lifts, shoulder dipping and all that,” Bhave says. “If you look at all quality players, simplicity is their forte. He keeps it like that. Like to drive the ball, but has an equally good back-foot game, is a very good puller of the ball. At the international or A level you won’t get too many half-volleys to drive, so your back-foot game has to be good and he has that. I think he has a lot of upsides. The way he’s shown form at the India A level, we expect him to carry that for Maharashtra and hope he can pile on the runs. If he has a good season from here on, he’ll be right up there in contention.”

The West Indies allrounder is happy to take the opportunities that come his way and not rush things, although, a maiden ODI hundred, against India, would be a sweet way to end the year

Saurabh Somani13-Dec-2019Roston Chase is something of an enigma in the West Indies team. He made a match-saving hundred in only his second Test, but averages only 31.38 in the format. For a bowler who comes in as second or third change most times, he has better innings figures in Test cricket than Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh, Andy Roberts and Joel Garner. And while he’s got the all-round skills to be a valuable member of the one-day team, Chase has been in only 22 of the 59 ODIs that West Indies have played since he made his debut in the format.None of that is evident when you watch him go about his job. He has a languid calm with the bat and a business-like approach with the ball. It’s much the same when he speaks. He was left out of West Indies’ squad for the World Cup, a decision that puzzled a fair few people, but he has marked his comeback to the ODI set-up with spectacular returns. In West Indies’ 3-0 sweep of Afghanistan last month, Chase was the Man of the Series, as much for his bowling as his batting.”In the team, I see myself as an allrounder now,” Chase said. “When I first started, I wasn’t too confident in my bowling. But over the last couple of years I’ve worked with Mushy [former Pakistan legspinner Mushtaq Ahmed currently consulting with West Indies] and I’ve been working very hard on my bowling.”I really see myself as someone who could be the No. 1 allrounder in the world some day, so I try to work hard on both aspects of my game. I’m learning a bit more about my bowling as my career goes on. I’m very happy with where it’s at right now, but I want to keep improving so that I can give my team the best chance of winning more games and series.”