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Jenny Thompson speaks to Adam Hollioake on the eve of his return to big-time cricket

Jenny Thompson21-Jun-2007

Adam Hollioake is hoping for more Twenty20 success – but this time with Essex © Garry Bowden
In cricket’s worst-kept secret since Michael Vaughan resigned as England one-day captain earlier this week, Adam Hollioake has signed up to make his Twenty20 return. It’s four years since he captained Surrey to success in the inaugural tournament, but he won’t be turning out for them this time: he will be playing for Essex.”I wanted to play for Surrey,” he admits. But despite excelling for them in 2003 and ’04, times have moved on. Surrey’s focus is understandably on their younger players – Hollioake is now 35 – and so he had to settle on Essex instead. Then again, it was their coach’s idea that he should return to the game.Graham Gooch spotted that he still had the talent earlier this year while they were playing beach cricket in Australia – where Hollioake was born and is now settled, with a slight Aussie twang to boot – and suggested he make a comeback. Business commitments Down Under prevented Hollioake from considering a full-time role but a month out for Twenty20, and a charity event, was plausible.While Surrey are experts in this short game, Essex have made the finals day only once in four seasons – and they snapped him up. It must be hard to parachute straight into a side, almost as an overseas player must feel. I ask if he feels like an Essex player yet. He pauses. “I met the guys for the first time on Monday. I think once I start playing I will be more part of it.”Netting has gone well. “I started off scratchy last week. But I had good net on Monday. It’s all coming good at the last minute!” Indeed, he signed just three days before his first match in Essex colours, against Sussex, this Friday.He’s super-fit at least, a self-confessed fanatic, fitter even than in his playing days. “Cricket prevents you from getting fit – you spend so much time on the pitch.” This includes training for his recent boxing match in London with the former All Black Eric Rush. Hollioake has boxed since his youth and enjoyed the experience hugely, even though he lost on points.”It was a tough fight,” he says. “It was exactly what I expected. It was hard, a hard game. It didn’t hold any surprises. I love fighting. I’m a bit of a sicko!” [laughs] “Anything… as long as it’s legal.”

Hollioake is keen for more silverware © Getty Images
Would he do it again? “I’d do anything for charity.” Yes, he would. This fight was for a children’s charity, Sparks. Earlier this year he did the marathon for the CHASE Ben Hollioake Fund, set up in memory of his brother who died in 2002. Over the last few years he’s done treks, bike rides and sailing events for good causes. He even played ice cricket.Ben’s death has inevitably made him a more sober character, and charity commitments are an example, but his sparkling, cheeky spirit remains. He giggles naughtily, for example, when I ask if playing for Essex is his biggest act of charity yet.The marathon went well. While most were sweltering on a surprisingly warm April day, it wasn’t so hot for Hollioake, used to the Perth heat. “I was one of the only ones running in the sun and I had a free course. My cricket bat began to get heavy towards the end!”Despite being weighed down by full kit, he completed it in six hours. Then again, he is fiercely competitive. This streak came out in beach cricket. “We’re sportsmen. None like losing – even with a game of cards.” Gooch wants to sign him up for another stint next year, and he has provisionally agreed. “I love it. It’s great fun.”With all these commitments, it’s amazing he does find the time to fit in his property development business, set up in 1998. “Originally it was me, dad and Ben… It’s moved on a lot.” It’s now a full-time occupation and the main reason he won’t consider a full comeback.Time may judge Hollioake as an excellent one-day and Twenty20 player, but it’s worth considering his first-class stats, too. Although he played just four Tests, his first-class average is 38.7, higher than Vaughan, Flintoff or Trescothick. His innovative Brearley-esque thinking helped Surrey to three Championship titles, while there’s a touch of Imran Khan to the way he melded disparate individuals.Surrey haven’t been anything like the first-class side they were since he left. Still, he has no regrets. There’s plenty away from cricket to occupy him, including school runs for his five-year-old daughter Bennaya.It’s the holidays, now, though, which make the Twenty20 campaign convenient. So, how will he feel when he has to face his old teammates when Essex play Surrey at the end of the month? “I’ve not had time to think about it. I’m just worrying about myself to be honest.”He has actually played one Twenty20 since retiring, a one-off charity match for the Tsunami Fund at The Oval, and he took a hat-trick.If he can slip so easily back into the groove this time around, what would he think if England came knocking for the World Twenty20 Championship this September? “I hadn’t considered that.” Then, a pause… And a glimmer. “If that came up I’d have to think about it!”

After three days of swinging fortunes, this gripping, exhilarating Test is now poised for a grand denouement and if you love Test cricket that’s what you would wish for irrespective of who wins

Sambit Bal at the WACA18-Jan-2008

Irfan Pathan has been India’s most impressive player of the match, starring with both bat and ball © Getty Images
After three days of swinging fortunes, this gripping, exhilarating Test is now poised for a grand denouement and if you love Test cricket that’s what you would wish for irrespective of who wins. A draw is the only result ruled out; India have history and the runs on their side; Australia must break one record to create another. They are perhaps the only side that can do it.It was a day when the odds kept shifting. It started with India as favourites, by lunch the bookies were backing Australia and the day ended with India 4/11 favourites against 2/1 for Australia. That sort of sums up the day.Australia will feel the match slipped away from them a bit in the final session, when RP Singh added 50 rollicking runs with VVS Laxman for the ninth wicket and Irfan Pathan swung two batsmen out, but it was a mixed day for both teams. India ended up getting 50 more than Australia would have wanted them to, but perhaps 50 fewer than they would have liked when the day began. Which of course makes for the sort of finale this Test deserves.Throughout the day, commentators kept saying how good the pitch was for batting, yet seen in isolation, the bowlers had another good day. Eleven wickets fell on Friday; four in the first session (India had lost four wickets for 46 runs at one point), three in the second, and four in the last. The second session is where India started to take control as Ponting, mindful of the over-rate, was forced to turn to Michael Clarke and Andrew Symonds. Though Mahendra Singh Dhoni took an age to get going, the quiet period allowed India to consolidate.VVS Laxman scored the most runs – it was perhaps his least sparkling innings against an opposition he continues to torment, but it was among his most matured and cultured, and RP Singh provided a nasty twist at the end. But it was an assured performance from Pathan that kept India going in a difficult period.In many ways, Pathan has been India’s most impressive player of the match. He has been called on to bat in the dying moments on consecutive days and then to take on fresh bowlers in the morning, and he did the job with the calmness of an accomplished batsman. With the new ball, he has removed the openers in both innings: not bad for a man who got his break because of an injury to a team-mate. Had Zaheer Khan been here, Pathan would probably not have played; now he looks as though he has always belonged.It’s been a remarkable comeback for a man who has already experienced the best and the worst in international cricket in four years. It was in Australia in 2003 that he first announced his arrival – coincidentally because of an injury to Zaheer – with two crunching, reverse-swinging yorkers that cleaned up Steve Waugh and Adam Gilchrist – but the fall began just as he was being anointed, somewhat misguidedly, as the heir to Wasim Akram. The pace dropped and the swing disappeared and from Indian cricket’s poster-boy he came to be described as competition to Murali Kartik, India’s slow left-arm orthodox spinner.It has been a hard climb from there, and Pathan has done it gradually, by first bowling cutters in Twenty20, then restrictively in the 50-over game, and batting impressively to score his first hundred in his return Test, and now the zing seems to back in his Test bowling.In the first innings, not only did he get rid of the openers, he bowled the longest spell bowled by a quick bowler so far in this match (ten overs) without dropping his pace, now in the healthy 130s, or losing his line. And his wickets today were due as much to swing as they were to the bounce he managed off an awkward length. The ball that got Phil Jaques was his second successive ripper: the first had been a swinging yorker that barely missed the edge and then the stump; a second, barely short of length, reared and moved just enough to catch the edge. It is up to the Australian batsmen, who haven’t been allowed to dominate the way they like to by the Indian bowlers, to chase the improbable. Rule nothing out – this is a Test that has refused to be taken for grantedEarlier, a sprightly bowling effort from Australia kept India to 242 runs for nine wickets on a third-day pitch, which was even more remarkable because only two of their bowlers ever looked capable of taking a wicket. Shaun Tait, who was trusted with only six overs on a day Symonds and Clarke bowled 23 between them, looked lost and listless and, though he got rid of Sourav Ganguly, Mitchell Johnson was criminally profligate, going for nearly six runs an over.It was left to the magnificent Brett Lee and the impressive Stuart Clark to keep Australia in the game. Clark must be sick of being compared to Glenn McGrath and in fact he has added something to his bowling that McGrath never had: a touch of swing. As ever, he bowls pretty straight but occasionally, just when the batsman thinks he has the line covered, the ball snakes away, just a bit, to beat the bat. He bowled one of those to Dhoni today: it beat the outside by a fraction, and the off stump by the same distance. His second-best ball of the day got Australia the early breakthrough: Virender Sehwag, on whom rested India’s hopes of taking the match away quickly, was cleaned up.Lee’s brief sparring with Sachin Tendulkar showcased how Test cricket can provide the stage for individual contests within a team game. Lee’s first ball squared up as Tendulkar shaped to clip it to the leg side and ran past the third slip for four. The next couple of overs, Lee kept probing away, an inch out side the off stump, a foot wide next ball, then a bit closer, and then one tantalisingly wide, to which Tendulkar looked drawn for a fraction of a second. When the full ball arrived, three deliveries later, back it went, gloriously past the bowler. Round one to the batsman.Lee, though, wasn’t to be denied. Tendulkar tucked the first ball of the next over for a couple and Lee went wide and homed in outside the off stump; Tendulkar, almost by instinct, looked for the clip to midwicket but was nailed for pace, and there was no doubt where the ball was headed but for the pad. That’s the way Lee looked to get him out in the Test, and that’s the way he has got him both times.Now, though, it is up to the Australian batsmen, who haven’t been allowed to dominate the way they like to by the Indian bowlers, to chase the improbable. Rule nothing out – this is a Test that has refused to be taken for granted.

Graeme Smith and Neil McKenzie mounted the most monumental of fightbacks on the fourth day at Lord’s. Even if South Africa do lose the Test, they wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. And more than anything else, Test cricket is alive and well, argues

Sambit Bal at Lord's13-Jul-2008
A rare stroke of attacking intent from Neil McKenzie, whose hundred came from 307 balls © Getty Images
Seen in isolation, this was a pitifully dull day, the kind that can be used to illustrate why the longer form is an anachronism in these pacy times. Runs were scarce, wickets scarcer. Fifty-four runs came in the first session, 61 in the second; fours were occasional and there was no hint of a six. But Test cricket is all about context, and in the context of this match, and the series, it was a compelling day: slow, but always simmering; lacking in action, but not plot and intrigue. It was just the kind that makes watching Test cricket a varied, rich and rewarding experience. If South Africa manage to draw this Test, it will be counted among the greatest of escapes in the history of the game, and this seemingly dull day will be regarded as the one that made it possible.Graeme Smith and Neil McKenzie mounted the most monumental of fightbacks. The wicket remained benign but the pressure was so enormous that it tested the character of these batsmen to the limit. Batting is only half about skills; it was the mental aspect that made the contribution of the opening pair remarkable. All through their vigil, they played with the knowledge that their team was only a mistake away from disaster, and they fashioned their response accordingly.Smith’s application was particularly remarkable. And in some ways, he owed it to his team even more than what would be expected in normal course. He would have consulted the team management for sure, but ultimately, the decision to insert England was his; and his captaincy on the second day, when he didn’t choose the right bowlers or place the best fields, had been diffident and tentative. South Africa didn’t merely need runs from Smith: they needed him to bat and bat.Smith is no stranger to long innings. He batted for more than five hours while scoring each of first four Test hundreds, three of which were doubles. In fact, two of those were back-to-back doubles scored on his first tour to England and on both occasions he batted for more than nine hours. But he had then batted imperiously, repeatedly muscling balls from on or outside off-stump to the midwicket boundary and scoring virtually four runs an over throughout. The situation today demanded him to bat against his natural instincts and he tempered his game admirably. The product was an industrious hundred, and perhaps the most valuable of his career.Smith had spoken of his maturity before the start of the Test, and this innings stands as an eloquent confirmation. Last evening, he even exchanged a smile with Kevin Pietersen after Pietersen, in his new role as England’s opening bowler in the dying light, had cheekily appealed for a catch off Smith’s pad. And he was still smiling when he walked off the ground in the dying light, his side with a mountain left to climb. The image was of a man who had come to terms with his job and to the realisation that life doesn’t begin and end on the cricket field.So out of character was his innings today that it shone with character. Against the quicker bowlers he resisted playing across the line, focussing on scoring his runs square of the wicket on the offside, watching the ball late. But against Panesar, who was turning the ball sharply into him from the rough outside the offstump, he was quick to jump outside the line, almost exposing all three stumps to negate the possibility of a leg-before. Most of his runs against Panesar came on the leg-side. But more than scoring runs, his innings was about denying England a breach, and Smith stuck to task with the solemnity it demanded. The stroke – a cross-batted swat against the new ball — that brought about his dismissal didn’t do justice the rigorous application that preceded it.Smith was only half of the story though and mercifully for South Africa, the other half is unfinished yet, and in a sense, it is even more stirring. Turning 33 later this year, few would have blamed McKenzie had he taken the easy route to join the multitude of South Africans in taking the Kolpak route to England after four years of wilderness. But, as demonstrated by his latest hundred – the third since his comeback seven Tests ago – patience is a quality he has in abundance.And on the evidence of his run so far, it would seem he was an opener trapped in a middle-order batsman’s role. Sometimes, awareness of one’s own strengths eludes you until an unfamiliar challenge presents itself. McKenzie now resembles the classical Test opener, an endangered tribe in a world enamoured by breathtaking starts. In fact, despite all the evidence pointing against it, there was a degree of consternation in the South African media about the absence of Herschelle Gibbs in the squad.The image was of a man who had come to terms with his job and to the realisation that life doesn’t begin and end on the cricket fieldIn spite of three difficult days, Graeme Smith has showed his maturityIt was self-evident that South Africa needed McKenzie’s watchfulness today. He possesses more strokes than he allowed himself, relying instead on the compactness of his technique to see the day through. For a Test opener, his manner of leaving the ball – drawing the bat inside the line of the ball – might project a lack of assuredness, but it is clear that McKenzie has keen awareness of his offstump. Though he did edge the ball once while playing a defensive stroke, his judgement was impeccable throughout the day.When the ball reverse swung for a short period after lunch, James Anderson induced a degree on uncertainty, and even a wild swipe, by moving the ball both ways, but composure never deserted McKenzie. Michael Vaughan pried on his nerves by setting fields that denied him the drive, his most preferable scoring option, but McKenzie wouldn’t be driven to distraction. Nor did he allow the slow clapping from an impatient crowd to disrupt his resolve. It was a slow and low pitch, and the situation demanded watchfulness, which McKenzie supplied unwaveringly.South Africa aren’t out of it yet, but they can now be called the favourites to draw the Test. Of course, it’s a comedown from the pre-match hype, but it is a huge turnaround from the hole they had dug themselves in three successive days of under-performance. Even if they do lose the Test, they wouldn’t have gone down without a fight.And more than anything else, Test cricket is alive and well.

Stats highlights from the second day of the first Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka in Karachi

Cricinfo staff23-Feb-2009
Mahela Jayawardene scored his fifth double-hundred, and is only one short of equalling the Sri Lankan record © AFP
Mahela Jayawardene and Thilan Samaraweera’s partnership of 437 is the highest for the fourth wicket in Tests. It’s also only the second 400-plus stand for that wicket in Tests, after Colin Cowdrey and Peter May’s 411 against West Indies in Birmingham in 1957. This is the fourth instance of two Sri Lankan batsmen – and the 15th overall in Tests – scoring double-hundreds in a single innings, which is the most by any team. Australia and Pakistan have achieved this on three occasions each. The last time this had happened in Pakistan, Sri Lanka had been at the receiving end, as Qasim Umar and Javed Miandad hammered doubles in Faisalabad in 1985. In 27 innings, Jayawardene and Samaraweera have averaged 68.80 together, which is marginally higher than the 68.59 that Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara average. Click here for Jayawardene’s average stands with each batsman. Jayawardene scored his fifth double-century, and his first outside Sri Lanka. Only two Sri Lankans – Marvan Atpattu and Sangakkara – have scored more double-hundreds. Click here for the full list of Sri Lankan double-centurions. There were no sixes in the Sri Lankan innings. It’s the eleventh time a team has scored 600 or above in an innings without hitting a six. Sohail Khan conceded 131 runs in 21 overs. His figures are the fourth-worst in terms of runs conceded for debutants who’ve gone wicketless in an innings. In their epic stand, Jayawardene and Samaraweera scored 110 runs behind the point region – 60 of them in boundaries. Most of these runs came on the first day, as Pakistan did not keep a third man.

Australia’s raw attack struggled to cope with pressure of play at Lord’s, but apart from Andrew Strauss England failed to make them pay

Andrew Miller at Lord's16-Jul-2009For approximately half of the first day at Lord’s, Australia bowled as badly as they have done in any Ashes Test for a generation. All the while that Mitchell Johnson was spoon-feeding England’s openers in a ghastly new-ball spell, a packed Lord’s crowd that has witnessed five Australian wins in their last six visits was left blinking incredulously through their pint-glasses. Who were these impostors, and what had become of the men who pushed England to the brink in Cardiff last week?By the close of the first day, we knew. While Andrew Strauss settled serenely into the innings of the day – his fourth century in 12 Tests at Lord’s, the ground on which he learnt his trade as a young buck at Middlesex – Australia’s rookie cricketers were quite simply crushed by the expectant weight of history. Nobody in the ground can have been unaware that the Baggy Green has reigned supreme at this venue since 1934, and nobody seemed more acutely aware of that fact than the Australians themselves.No fewer than eight of the men who followed their captain out of the visiting dressing-room, down the central staircase and through a packed and buzzing Long Room were playing in their first Test at the grand venue, and not one of the six bowlers used on the first day had ever had to contend with the vagaries of the slope, let alone follow in the matchless footsteps of the great GD McGrath, who etched his name on the dressing-room honours board three times in three occasions.Last week, Australia were deprived of the victory that could have settled their nerves for the summer, and at the close of play, Brad Haddin mentioned the tension of the occasion on five separate occasions in a ten-minute press conference. Contrast that anxiety with England’s ease with their surroundings. Of the 14 men who vied for selection in this game, only two – Graeme Swann and Stuart Broad – have yet to make their mark on the walls of their dressing-room, and it’s fair to suggest that time is on their side.”We’ve all batted pretty well at Lord’s in the last few years,” said Strauss, and with 17 Test centurions since Australia last had a hit, that’s something of an understatement. “It has been very batting friendly to be fair, but there’s a lot of confidence in our batting unit here, and hopefully we can continue to display that over the coming days.”But confidence in English batsmen is a very dangerous thing, especially when coupled with Australia’s ability to rise above adversity. By the close, the two traits had collided to create a perfect cliché – a day of two halves. In their first 47.4 overs, England managed 196 for 0, and then 168 for 6 in their last 42.2. By the time they retreated to their dressing-room, no doubt for the sort of talking-to that their opponents received over lunch, they had squandered their second priceless toss of the series.England squad members with hundreds at Lord’s 2009 AJ Strauss, Australia 161*

2009 R. Bopara, West Indies 143

2008 I.R. Bell, South Africa 199; K.P. Pietersen, South Africa 152

2007 K.P. Pietersen, India 134; K.P. Pietersen, West Indies 109; I.R. Bell, West Indies 109*; M.J.Prior, West Indies 126*; P.D. Collingwood West Indies 111; A.N. Cook, West Indies 105

2006 A.J. Strauss, Pakistan, 128; I.R. Bell, Pakistan 100*; P.D. Collingwood, Pakistan, 186; A.N. Cook, Pakistan, 105; K.P. Pietersen, Sri Lanka 158

2004 A.J. Strauss, West Indies, 137; A.J. Strauss, New Zealand, 112

2003 A. Flintoff, South Africa 142At Cardiff last week, England attempted to seize the momentum, but ended up taking the piss. Their desire to dominate translated into arrogance, as ten starts and a top-score of 69 amply testified, and their first-day scoreline of 336 of 7 was soon revealed to be entirely inadequate. What, then, will be made of this effort? As Strauss proved by piling on through to the close, the opportunity was there to atone for those first-Test errors, and convert a confident start into a formidable finish.But the recriminations will abound if, as Australia suggested with their end-of-day rally, their stage-fright has dissipated by the time their turn comes to bat. “The whole occasion of Lord’s got too big for a few of us,” admitted Haddin, “but late in the day we got into our rhythm and started to build a bit more pressure, and relax more into our work. We were looking down the barrel of a very bad day at 0 for 200, and I thought we fought back well.”They certainly did, but England assisted them in their downfall. Superbly though he played for the first 146 balls of his innings, Alastair Cook missed pretty much the first straight one he received (just as he had done at Cardiff), and once he had gone nobody else could muster the necessary application – not even Paul Collingwood, whose out-of-character shovel to mid-on with the new ball looming was the most culpable failure of the day.Coming so soon after Ponting’s agenda-setting 150 at Cardiff, Strauss’s hefty performance was timely in one ways than one. But as he admitted at the close, it had been a better day for him personally than for his team, and nothing telegraphed his frustration more pointedly than the look of daggers he gave Collingwood, his Cardiff hero, as he made his way back to the pavilion.”It is a slightly disappointing [position] from 190 for 0, but I suppose Collingwood was the only one you could say had a hand in his own downfall,” said Strauss, “He was trying to push things along before the new ball came along, which can sometimes happen. But otherwise it was a bit of swing and a bit of nip that did for most of our batsmen, which was pretty encouraging.””There are more wicket-taking opportunities here than at Cardiff, definitely,” he said. “The ball swung around more, and when it swung at times batting was quite tricky. At the same time, in between that there were opportunities to score. It’s always a fast-scoring ground, so if you’re slightly off it’s going to go. If we can get up to 450 tomorrow, we’ll be in a pretty good position in the game, but we’ll have to bat better than in Cardiff.”They’ll have to bowl better as well, and in that respect, the percentages selection of Graeme Onions over Steve Harmison may in hindsight prove to be prudent. On his last appearance at Lord’s, Onions claimed four wicket in seven balls, on his way to becoming the latest notch on England’s honours board – and while the quality of his West Indian opponents were barely worth mentioning in the same context, he can at least claim that Lord’s rarefied atmosphere did not affect his performance in the slightest.Today, that was not remotely true of the Australians. If they can recover their poise from this position – and this evening they made a fantastic fist of a comeback – then they truly are worthy to follow in Bradman’s footsteps.

The Netherlands have played three World Cups, but their biggest moment in cricket only came 10 days ago. One veteran has been there all along

Nagraj Gollapudi15-Jun-2009It was bittersweet for Bas Zuiderent when on June 5 the Netherlands recorded the biggest triumph in their cricket history, shocking hosts England in a World Twenty20 thriller. As the team made merry that evening, at the back of Zuiderent’s mind was the thought of the money he was losing.Zuiderent runs a physiotherapy practice back home in Holland. “I don’t get any wages if I’m not working in my day job. We get a daily allowance and no match fee,” he reveals, on the eve of their next game, against Pakistan. (They lost by 82 runs to exit the tournament).It is a harsh reality for the cricketers from the Associate nations, who have to keep motivating themselves to script such improbable wins in the hope of being able to raise a platform from which they can start dreaming big. Cricket is a minority sport in their countries and the boards don’t have the finances to run professional set-ups. The players are in the game for love not money. Zuiderent is a fine example of that sort of devotion.He started when he was 10. “My cousin played cricket at the time and I remember that my mother asked whether I was interested in playing as well. I didn’t think much of cricket initially. Those funny white outfits…”Then my mother took me to a local club in Rotterdam. I can recall bursting out in tears because I didn’t want to join in! After she calmed me down, I joined in the training session and I got hooked on to the game straight away. I never looked back.He was still in school when he made his debut for Holland as a 16-year-old in the World Cup qualifiers played in Kenya in 1994. His first international came in the World Cup two years later. “I was 18. It has been a long journey,” Zuiderent says as his eyes look up staring in the distance. “I’m actually playing the best cricket of my life now. The older I get, the better cricket I’ve started to play.”Zuiderent thinks it has to do with the team ethic, where there has been a radical turnaround from the laidback fashion popular in his early days in international cricket. “Luckily I’ve been part of the transformation,” he says. “It has changed in the way the team operates, trains, eats, sleeps and looks after themselves. It has become a professional set-up.”The Dutch still have only three pros, Dirk Nannes, Ryan Ten Doeschate and Alexei Kervezee, but they are inching towards the level of a professional sports team. The results have been there to see, in the World Cup qualifiers and in the World Twenty20.Zuiderent provides an example of the changing face of Dutch cricket. “In my first years, a past player, in his 40s, would arrive at the ground, inspect the field, do his own thing, like hit a few balls, go back to the hotel and wait for the evening when he could drink five or six whiskies. These were the old-school cricketers, who did not take things seriously and were super unprofessional.”

“I didn’t think much of cricket initially. Those funny white outfits… “

It took at least 10 years before things really changed. “We are a very, very tightly wound team unit, very proud team,” he says. What he doesn’t come out and say is that he would have loved to have today’s team environment when he started. That might have given him more of a chance at realising his potential.In his second international game, against England in the 1996 World Cup, Zuiderent became the second youngest player in World Cup history to score a half-century; Sachin Tendulkar, the youngest, was about 200 days younger when he did. Zuiderent points out the fact with a shy smile. “That was massive for me [the fifty], but it is a shame, really, that I never kicked on and went for bigger things than that.”He still remembers it clearly. “What was most impressive was to walk out and rub shoulders with the likes of Jack Russell, Mike Atherton, Alec Stewart, Dominic Cork… I was just loving it. It was almost unreal,” Zuiderent says. Later that evening, still on cloud nine, he ran into Geoffrey Boycott in the team hotel, who tapped him on the shoulder to say “Well played, son.” Zuiderent won’t forget that. “It was so nice of him to say that.”Zuiderent says that it was only when he started to think more about cricket that he ended up complicating things, and went through a period where he put pressure on himself with expectations. “In the last few years I’ve allowed myself to settle. It allows me to just relax,” he says.A couple of months after his first World Cup, playing for Holland against Worcestershire he hit 99, and was offered a contract. He decided to finish his studies in economics instead, but soon gave that up. “One morning I woke up in Amsterdam and suddenly realised what I was doing was not what I wanted to do. I sort of had an epiphany, where someone was literally talking to me and told me to use the talents I was given.” Within a week he flew to England and signed a contract with Sussex.The 2003 World Cup was Zuiderent’s third•ReutersThe first Dutchman to represent Holland in English county cricket was PJ Bakker, who opened the bowling for Hampshire with Malcolm Marshall. Roland Lefebvre played for Somerset and Glamorgan, and Andre van Troost, who played at Somerset, was rated by Desmond Haynes as the “quickest white guy” he ever faced. Zuiderent was the first specialist batsman. What are the moments that stand out from his county cricket days, I ask him.He talks of his maiden one-day and first-class centuries, which came in the space of two days. The one-day hundred made him the first centurion at the Rose Bowl. “No one can take that away from me,” Zuiderent says with a big smile. The four-day hundred came against Nottinghamshire, against a bowling attack that featured, among others, a certain Kevin Pietersen. Zuiderent smiles when he speaks of lofting Pietersen over mid-off for a six. “He was as cocky as he is today, and that is his massive strength.”That statement illustrates the divide between the top professionals and amateur cricketers. Zuiderent is not embarrassed to admit it. I ask him what the difference is between him hitting a straight drive and Tendulkar doing the same. Zuiderent rolls his eye at Tendulkar’s name, before saying the difference lies in the execution. “Sachin can hit a Brett Lee 98mph delivery at will. We can do it as well, but we don’t control it as well, because Sachin is used to doing it continuously.”Unlike the players from the top cricket nations, who spend most of their waking hours training, much of Zuiderent and his team-mates’ time is spent at their dayjobs. “Because I work 40 hours a week, I cannot afford to practise every day. Our skills are there, but we can’t execute those skills enough to be like Yuvraj Singh or Irfan Pathan, because they can hone their skills much more every single day against the best.”So when victories like the one against England come, they are hard to forget. Zuiderent has been there for Dutch cricket’s peaks: qualifying for the World Cups in 1996, 2003 and 2007, and this World Twenty20. But the England win takes prime spot on the list. “It was our first victory against a full-member country in an official game,” he says with pride.The fact that England took the contest as a bout against a featherweight is not lost on Zuiderent. “England would always believe that they are far superior to the Dutch, and in a way rightly so, because they would win 95 out of 100 times. But never, never take a team lightly that is hungry to win. That is a big mistake you can commit. And England did exactly that. [They thought] we are a Mickey Mouse team. We are way better, and we’ve shown that.

Twelve years ago, Abdul Qadir, still good enough to turn out for Pakistan, spent a summer playing club cricket in Melbourne. The few who saw him remember it like it was yesterday

Christian Ryan08-Feb-2010On a sticky Peshawar afternoon in 1998, Mark Taylor clipped a Test triple-hundred while Pakistan’s spinners tossed and chased and collected one wicket for 327 runs. Next morning Abdul Qadir, who was not any more a Pakistani Test spinner, and hadn’t been for eight years, found himself in a car bound for Princes Park in one of Melbourne’s lovelier suburbs.Carlton was playing Footscray that day.Carlton was Abdul Qadir’s new club.Driving the car was Carlton’s vice-president, Craig Cook, who was relating the contents of an email his legspinning son Calum had sent – something about a Footscray batting wiz named “Larko”.”Tell Abba,” the email went, “that Larko only picks wrong’uns from off the track, not out of the hand.”Qadir stared out the windscreen. The car pulled up at the oval.”Hey Abdul,” roared Ian Wrigglesworth, Carlton’s captain. “Listen. Larko can’t pick a wrong’un. You set it up, do whatever you want.”Qadir nodded and said nothing. Not until many minutes later, as they were walking out to field, did he ask politely: “When does this Larko come in?”Larko was Rohan Larkin, an ex-state batsman, and he stepped out that day at No. 4.Qadir watched him approach, stuck a fielder at close gully. And bowled. Wrong’un. Larkin, failing to pick it, went to square cut. The ball smacked the bat’s edge and whistled through first slip’s hands for two.”Great,” Larkin thought, “I’m off the mark and I’ve seen his wrong’un. I’ll be right from here.”Qadir’s second ball was faster; wicketkeeper Micky Butera rocked back instinctively on his heels. It was also wider. “Very close to the edge of the pitch,” says Larkin. It was too wide to make mayhem, so wide that the umpire cleared his throat and gave a preliminary twitch of his arms. Larkin flung his own arms high, his bat even higher – “to allow the ball to travel through harmlessly”.Instead the ball dipped – swooped, more like – as if by remote control. It landed, veered headlong in the wrong direction, then hit middle stump, like Shane Warne dumbfounding Mike Gatting all over again. In reverse.”Abdul spun this wrong’un one and a half feet,” gasps Butera. “Sounds ridiculous when you say it.””I would play that ball the same way a hundred times out of a hundred,” believes Larkin.”There was an element of luck in the Warne ball,” Cook points out. “Whereas Abdul’s was absolutely contrived.”The only person not surprised was the contriver himself. Deep down, Qadir knew that by rights he should have been in Peshawar that Saturday, playing for his country not a suburb. His Carlton team-mates knew that he knew it. He did not need to say so; though sometimes he said it anyway. There was and remained only one wonder of Pakistani spin.But Qadir was 43. His face was unwrinkled. Brown eyes still danced with mischief. But selectors of Test teams have no love for 43-year-olds.That was why he wasn’t in Peshawar. It does not explain how he came to be playing park cricket in Melbourne.

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IT HAPPENED, like many of the best ideas, after a long and jolly lunch. The Carlton Cricket and Football Social Club was the setting. Big Jack Elliott, football club president and one-time prime ministerial aspirant, glared at the cricket club vice-president and barked: “Why can’t you bastards win like us?””Well,” said Craig Cook, “we’ve lost a little bit of flair. We really need a big-name player.”Big Jack barked again. “You get the player and we’ll pay for it.”

On his last weekend in Melbourne he was handed the new ball, not for the first time that summer. And for the umpteenth time, from mid-day till sundown, he bowled and bowled and bowled

Cook, a legspin fanatic, thought of Qadir. He phoned an old pal, Javed Zaman Khan, cousin of Imran. An evening net tryout was arranged and Cook’s ticket to Lahore booked. “We took Abdul down to the Lahore Gymkhana Club nets, where he bowled for an hour. And he looked beautiful. We signed him up on the spot.”Forty thousand dollars Carlton paid him. They put him up in a flat in Brunswick, not far from the practice nets. Larkin was one of eight men from Footscray he fooled that Saturday. At spectator-less playing fields all over Melbourne, the ranks of the befuddled grew: at Windy Hill, at Arden Street, at Ringwood’s Jubilee Park.Arms bucked and swayed and his tongue kept licking his fingers when Qadir skipped in and bowled. The passing of decades had taken a few spikes out of his flipper, which now slid more than it spat. But the miracles of his legbreak remained two-fold: the sheer stupendous size of the spin, and the way he could vary it at will. Wrong’uns, meanwhile, arrived in threes.”Three types,” Butera confirms. There was a lightning wrong’un, a mid-paced wrong’un lobbed up from wide of the stumps, and a slow wrong’un. “It looked like a lollipop,” Butera says of this last invention, “and the batsman would think, here’s an opportunity to come down and score. But it would drop incredibly late, and as soon as the batsman got there he’d realise he didn’t have as much time as he thought he had.” The lollipop wrong’un left more batsmen licked than any of Qadir’s other variations, helping Butera rewrite the Victorian Cricket Association record books for most catches and stumpings in a season.”Best time of my life. Abdul put me on the map,” he says. That is not just rosy-glassed affection talking. Nine days after the Larkin ball Butera, previously unheralded, made his state 2nd XI debut.Mid-January came; an encounter with the competition’s in-form batsman beckoned. Geelong’s Jason Bakker, tall and lumbering and toe-tied against even the gentlest spin bowling, had heard all about Qadir’s variations. His coach Ken Davis tried to replicate them, hurling balls down, floating them up, while Bakker watched Ken’s hand in the hope of reading what might happen. After a week of this it was time to face the real thing in a match. And it felt, to Bakker, as if he were still in the practice nets.With eyes wide open he’d stare at Qadir’s wrist. He left balls he was supposed to leave. He defended others comfortably. If he could get to the pitch of the ball, he’d drive. When it was wider, he’d cut, but softly, never forcing anything. Bakker had heard batsmen more debonair than him talk about being in “the zone”, and for the first time he really understood it. “This sounds incredibly vain but I felt like I didn’t play a false stroke.”They paused for drinks. Captain Wrigglesworth despaired. He trotted up to his star bowler. “Listen. This bloke’s picking your wrong’un.”And just like that Qadir stopped bowling it. No flipper or flotilla of multi-speeded googlies. The magic act was over. Every ball was a legbreak, landing on or slightly outside off stump. Every ball twisted harmlessly away. This went on for an hour. It was a scorching afternoon, a flat deck. Bakker cruised past 50. “I’d broken him.” And something else had happened too – “I was getting more confident, more relaxed, less vigilant.”So when another one wafted down, as ho-hum as all the others, Bakker took one stride forward and shouldered arms, intent on letting the thing whirr past, and then just as it was about to bounce, inches from his nose, he noticed that this particular delivery was actually a touch wider, and the seam looked different, and by then it was too late to do anything other than think, “Shit I hope it misses”, which it didn’t. It knocked back middle stump.Against England in Karachi in 1984•Getty ImagesEleven years on, Bakker’s head is still shaking. “An hour – he was prepared to wait an hour. There was I falsely thinking I had broken him, when all that time he was working up a trap for me. I mean, my God, the mentality of the man, the mindset.”Later Qadir would boast, “I saw it in his eyes” – saw that microscopic let-up in the batsman’s vigilance, which was what he had been waiting for all along.

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HE LIVED for Saturdays, his new team-mates sensed. In his inner-city flat he was on his own. The club vice-president drove him to matches, to training. Most nights he ate at the vice-president’s house. “Abdul had never cooked a meal in his life,” Cook explains. “Never made a cup of tea in his life. So if he wasn’t eating at our place I’d organise the Pakistani community to bring food in. And he got a bit lonely, so I’d have to go around and see him.”He would clap opposition batsmen’s fine strokes. He would tell people what a pleasure it was to meet them. “No, no,” he politely informed his captain one gusty Saturday, “I will bowl downwind.” Another Saturday, batting against a fast bowler and a spinner, he insisted that his team-mates jump the fence to alternately ferry out and fetch his helmet at the end of every over.He did not swear. When Qadir was around, Butera used to soften his own language. “But I don’t think the rest of the boys did.”He did not lairise, throw high-fives or drink beer. “I wouldn’t have thought he made a friend while he was here,” says Wrigglesworth. “I don’t know what he did from Monday to Friday and I wouldn’t have thought many people do. As soon as the game finished on a Saturday he was pretty much off. I don’t think he sang the team song once.”The song, in fairness, was seldom aired, for Carlton kept losing despite Qadir’s wickets. By the eve of the season’s final match at Northcote Park he had 66 – only seven shy of the post-war record set by Richmond quick Graeme Paterson in 1965-66. Qadir thought about that record often. “He never,” Cook reflects, “reckoned he should have been left out of the Test side. So when he came over here it wasn’t a holiday. He was wanting to show what he could do.”On his last weekend in Melbourne he was handed the new ball, not for the first time that summer. And for the umpteenth time, from mid-day till sundown, he bowled and bowled and bowled. His preoccupation with the record and those seven elusive wickets had become something close to an obsession. Nobody except Wrigglesworth and the Carlton committee men realised this – until, that is, the fall of Northcote’s ninth wicket, Qadir’s sixth, at which point he bounced into the team huddle and shrieked: “One more!””If he had just shut his gob,” says Wrigglesworth, “no one else would have known. Instead the boys were all going: ‘Hey, hang on a minute!'”One more, alas, did not come easily. Northcote’s last-wicket pair looked untroubled. Runs flowed. Wrigglesworth thought about taking Qadir off. Wrigglesworth couldn’t take him off. “By this stage,” he says, “I was a puppet of the president and the committee. And they wanted to see Abdul get this record.”

A few short years later Douggie was picked for Australia’s team of intellectually disabled cricketers. He has since represented his country in South Africa and England, this stranger who had never bowled a wrong’un until the day he met Abdul Qadir and asked how it was done

Qadir kept going. He ran through all his variations. The partnership kept swelling – to 95 by the tea break. Forty-six overs Qadir had bowled unchanged.”Should I take him off now?”Permission was granted. Five balls later the wicket fell.The Ryder Medal he won as the competition’s best player still hangs on his wall in Lahore. His 492 overs in a season might never be surpassed. Seventy-two wickets at 15.87 in the era of covered pitches at the age of 43 is a feat carved in club cricket legend. It could have been 73, the record should have been his, he told the ‘s gossip columnist the day before he flew home; if only the captain had listened, if only the captain had bowled him a bit more.”Oh, Abdul,” sighed Wrigglesworth when he saw the paper next morning. “Where’s this come from?”

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WHEN Jason Bakker remembers the day that he did not play a false stroke and was deceived by the most mysterious ball he ever faced, he thinks of the heat. At tea-time he galloped upstairs to the Kardinia Park dining room and began gulping down water. “I was tucking into rockmelon and watermelon and whatever else I could find.” That’s when he glanced out the window and saw that Qadir, who had bowled through the entire afternoon session without a rest, was still on the oval.Qadir was out there with Craig Whitehand, known to all at Geelong Cricket Club as “Douggie”, the guy who fronted up every Saturday in his whites and his spikes to drag off the pitch covers and carry out drinks and take care of the equipment. As Qadir was walking off, Douggie had stopped him at the players’ gate and asked, how do you bowl a wrong’un. Now the two of them were standing on the grass, metres apart. A couple of balls lay between them. Qadir would wave his arms and talk a bit. Then he’d bowl a few. Then Douggie would bowl a few. After a while Qadir would wander across and say something. Then Douggie would bowl a few more.Bakker went back to his watermelon and forgot what he’d seen. Twenty minutes went by before he thought about strapping the pads back on. “As I was coming down the stairs,” Bakker recalls, “I looked out on the ground. And the two of them were still there. Abdul had given his whole break on a hot day to this guy from Geelong who he knew nothing about.”At Geelong training the next week Douggie was gleefully flighting wrong’uns. A few short years later he was picked for Australia’s team of intellectually disabled cricketers. He has since represented his country in South Africa and England, this stranger who had never bowled a wrong’un until the day he met Abdul Qadir and asked how it was done.

Look no further than Bengaluru and Chinnaswamy, home to Dravid, Kumble, Viswanath and Chandrasekhar

06-Nov-2010Bengaluru can be a contradiction. The people can come across as laid-back and quiet and yet ambitious. Its cricketers have all have been quiet, cultured men who played the game with great success. The city and the state have produced some of the best Indian players. At one point, in the late ’90s, nearly three quarters of the Indian team came from Karnataka.Bengaluru didn’t enjoy the British patronage of cricket that benefited the port cities of Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai. It was only in the late ’50s and ’60s that Bengaluru began to emerge as a serious contender in the cricket stakes. Over the next couple of decades cricket won institutional support from banks and public sector units, and private corporate sponsorship came in the ’90s.Cricket history has reflected the realities of society. Karnataka has had a long-standing dispute over river water with neighbouring Tamil Nadu, and the frisson reflects in their cricketing rivalry as well. There have been numerous cases of crowd trouble during encounters between the two teams in the past.The venue
Originally named the Karnataka State Cricket Association Stadium, the ground was renamed after M Chinnaswamy, who was the president of the Indian board in the late ’70s. It also houses the National Cricket Academy. The stadium was given Test status in 1974-75; it hosted West Indies in the opening match of their series that season. The first ODI played on the ground was in 1982.Ground page | Tour fixtures | MapGreat matches
India v Pakistan, fifth Test, 1987
An all-time classic, thanks to a pitch that was a minefield – to put it kindly. The match is remembered for Sunil Gavaskar producing a masterful 96 over five hours and 23 minutes in the final innings, battling the wiles of Pakistan’s spinners, Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed, and the spite of the pitch. No one else in the India side made over 26, and they were all out for 204 chasing 221 for a win that would have given them the series.India v Australia, second Test, 2010
An outstanding 72 by Cheteshwar Pujara on debut set up a seven-wicket win for India. Not the result Australia might have expected after they got to 478 on the back of 128 from Marcus North in the first innings. Honours were more or less even after India batted (Sachin Tendulkar made 214 and M Vijay 139), but Australia fell for 223 in their second dig, and India blazed to the target of 207 on day five – Tendulkar unbeaten with a fifty alongside Pujara.Top performers in Tests
Most runs Sachin Tendulkar, 869 at 62.07 | Top score Younis Khan, 267 v India
Most wickets Anil Kumble, 41 wickets at 34.53 | Best bowling Maninder Singh, 7 for 27 v PakistanMajor players
Rahul Dravid | Anil Kumble | Bhagwath Chandrasekhar | Gundappa Vishwanath | Javagal Srinath | Venkatesh Prasad | Roger Binny | Erapalli Prasanna Home team
Karnataka have won the Ranji Trophy eight times and have been runners up four times. The Karnataka-Tamil Nadu rivalry matched the Mumbai-Delhi contests in intensity and in the following for it. Karnataka’s most recent wins were back to back, in 2013-14 and 2014-15 – that last win coming against Tamil Nadu, whom they also beat for the title in 1995-96. In 2009-10, they lost to Mumbai in a thriller.

ESPNcricinfo08-Feb-2011Join Jonathan Harris-Bass and the team for all the latest English cricket news and opinion. From the County Championship to the Test arena, the Switch Hit Podcast team chew the fat on all the action. .This week’s show: As England look set to become the number one side in the world, we discuss if the current side are better than the Ashes winners of 2005?Plus, a look at whether India can come back despite growing injury concerns.Jonathan Harris-Bass, Andrew Miller, Andrew McGlashan and Sambit Bal are this week’s Switch Hitters.To download the podcast to your computer, click here.To listen via iTunes click here.If you don’t have iTunes and would like to listen to the show on an RSS feed, click here.

ESPNcricinfo presents the Plays of the Day from the IPL game between Chennai Super Kings and Deccan Chargers in Chennai

Abhishek Purohit01-May-2011White’s contagious form
Cameron White has been struggling to get bat on ball for quite some time now. Even a forward defensive appears like an achievement at the moment. In such a frame of mind, there can be days when the contagion with the bat spreads to other areas of a player’s game. Two deliveries after M Vijay’s dismissal, Michael Hussey pulled a long hop from Pragyan Ojha straight to White at square leg. It came at a catchable height, White got both hands to it, and dropped it. Hussey went on to add 36 more in a 60-run stand with Suresh Raina that laid the foundation for Chennai’s innings.Morkel goes massive
Despite a late flourish from Chennai, Deccan had managed to keep them to 139 with nine balls to go. Ishant Sharma had conceded 23 off 21 deliveries and would have looked to end on a tight note against new man Albie Morkel who had faced just three deliveries. But Deccan were taken aback by what came next. Morkel smashed the next three deliveries, all on a length, into orbit over long-on. Each six was bigger than the previous one, and the last two were the biggest in the IPL, at 109 and 114 metres. Chennai surged to 165, and tellingly, their winning margin was 19.The comedy of errors
What happened off the last ball of Doug Bollinger’s first over is something that would have had few parallels even on a school ground. Shikhar Dhawan cut towards point and trotted out of his crease. Sunny Sohal, meanwhile, had assumed that there was a single, and rushed towards the other end. Dhawan was ball-watching, and Sohal had almost crossed him before he realised what was happening. He turned back, and both batsmen were now aiming to make the same crease.The point fielder, in his haste, went for the striker’s end. Had he hit, both batsmen would have been caught short, but he missed. The man backing up at midwicket, fumbled while trying to collect the ball as well. He recovered, and seeing one batsman try to make his way to the non-striker’s end, lobbed the ball to Bollinger, who was some way from the stumps. Bollinger gathered cleanly but his first attempt to disturb the bails did not find them. Panicking, he threw the ball at the stumps, but astonishingly, missed again from close range. At that moment, Chennai wouldn’t have found a needle in a haystack full of them. Sohal was on 13 then and went on to add 43 more.The one-trick show
Right from the start, Sohal had made his intentions clear. He was going to back away outside leg stump, and hope to clear cover. Sometimes he missed, sometimes he connected, and mostly the results were hilarious. On either side of a six and a four in a Morkel over, Sohal played two shots that made the big screen flash: “You can’t teach that.” He made lots of room only to find the ball eating it up and hurrying on to him. One the first occasion, he fell away and managed to edge the ball wide of Dhoni. On the second, he got it in the same direction, this time off a delicate dab. Both times, he collected boundaries. Morkel went for 20 in that over, and Chennai weren’t finding Sohal’s effort funny at all.