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Allan Donald has praised Zimbabwe’s attack, saying that their performance in the one-off Test against Bangladesh is a testament to the “hard work and time the guys behind the scenes are putting in.”

Firdose Moonda11-Aug-2011Allan Donald, the South Africa bowling coach, has praised Zimbabwe’s attack, saying that their performance in the one-off Test against Bangladesh is a testament to the “hard work and time the guys behind the scenes are putting in.”It’s a really good attack and definitely gives them something to work with,” Donald told ESPNcricinfo. Donald coached Zimbabwean franchise, the Mountaineers, last season and was recently in the country with the South Africa A side when they participated in a triangular series also featuring Australia A.Donald made special mention of the new-ball pair of Brian Vitori and Kyle Jarvis, both of whom impressed in taking five wickets each in the Test. Donald had seen both of them when he was in Zimbabwe and said he spotted their talent early on.”I saw Brian when we played the Southern Rocks, he was playing for their second team and I saw him warming up one morning by himself and wondered why he wasn’t in the first side. He had such good discipline.” Vitori appears to be the most competent left-arm bowler to play for Zimbabwe since Bryan Strang, who last played a decade ago, and his unique angle brought immediate results.Together with Jarvis, Vitori formed a promising partnership, with his swing and Jarvis’ pace the key elements of their pairing. “I am so happy for Kyle, especially because he had such trouble with his back last year,” Donald said, referring to Jarvis’ stress fracture, which kept him out of the game for several months and is said to have cost him a yard or two in pace. “All he did was hang around the grounds and try and learn.”With two such determined characters taking the new ball for Zimbabwe, Donald thinks they may have found the ideal combination, after having been through a fair number of seamers recently. That list includes Shingirai Masakadza, younger brother of Hamilton, who Donald thinks will come back strongly after being dropped for this series, although he was part of Zimbabwe’s World Cup squad. “He gets some serious gas, he’s up there at about 138 or 140 [kph] and is a very good athlete,” Donald said.With the number of young quicks coming through the franchise system, the likes of Chris Mpofu and Elton Chigumbura will have to “improve” significantly to keep pushing for their places, even in the 50-over format. “You need two good guys who will have pace and can knock people over,” Donald said, indicating that he felt Vitori and Jarvis should keep their spots for the five-match ODI series against Bangladesh.”As they saw in the Test match, with Bangladesh, you pick up one or two and that can become three, four and five. They play loose shots although some days they can play serious cricket and beat you all ends up.”

Kumar Sangakkara was critical of his side’s batting effort, and called on the top-order to bat longer

Siddarth Ravindran in Dambulla17-Aug-2010Sri Lanka find themselves at the bottom of a tight table at the halfway stage of the tournament largely due to an insipid top-order batting performance against India. After winning the toss and choosing to bat, often a huge advantage in Dambulla, four of their top five made single digit scores to leave Sri Lanka floundering at 44 for 4. From then on, they rarely managed to loosen India’s grip on the game.Kumar Sangakkara was critical of the batting unit, calling the performance ‘not professional’ and urging his batsmen to bat longer. “I think none of us who got starts got on with it and we didn’t spend enough time to assess the conditions,” he said. “Unfortunately the way we batted was not at all professional and not up to standard at this level of cricket. We need to make sure we don’t do that again.”Praveen Kumar, who started the match with a ripper of a delivery to get rid of Upul Tharanga, and Ashish Nehra got the new ball to seam about early, making it hard for the batsmen. “I think Praveen Kumar bowled very well, he managed to get movement off the track, unfortunately right throughout we couldn’t really apply ourselves long enough to get over that, we had to get over 12-14 overs with wickets intact and that would have set us on our way.”There was a semblance of a recovery when an aggressive Tillakaratne Dilshan and Angelo Mathews added 38 for the fifth wicket. Dilshan, though, top-edged a slog-sweep to hole out just before a passing shower stopped play. “Just before the rain, we needed the partnership to continue, unfortunately there were a couple of soft dismissals. On a track like this you need to get 230-240 and you can defend that; we have seen it before.”After most of the specialist batsmen failed, Suraj Randiv and Nuwan Kulasekara helped haul Sri Lanka to 170. The bowlers then managed to reduce India to 32 for 3, though they couldn’t build on those early breakthroughs. “I think we had a bit of a chance (after getting three wickets),” Sangakkara said. “Unfortunately we didn’t put enough balls in the right place, but Dilhara Fernando and Angelo Mathews bowled exceptionally well.”

England captain targets 3-0 win in New Zealand to cap year of evolution for Test squad

Vithushan Ehantharajah12-Dec-2024England men’s last overseas Test before the 2025-26 Ashes takes place in Hamilton this week – but Ben Stokes has urged his team not to get distracted by next winter’s assignment in Australia.The warning comes as England prepare for their final Test against New Zealand at Seddon Park this week – their 17th of the year – as they look to cap off 2024 with a 3-0 clean sweep. Their next assignment will come in May, a one-off Test against Zimbabwe, before a huge five-match series with India. Though the Ashes glow brightly on the horizon, the captain has reiterated head coach Brendon McCullum’s mantra, to “be where your feet are”.Stokes has overseen a transitional year with the red-ball set-up. There have been seven debuts, with Gus Atkinson, Jamie Smith and Shoaib Bashir becoming mainstays. Winter debutants Brydon Carse and Jacob Bethell have made strong cases to remain part of the XI, particularly against the Black Caps – Carse as the series’ leading wicket taker (16) and Bethell as the team’s second-highest runscorer (172 at 57.33). While Carse is 29, the rest are mid-twenties and younger: Atkinson 26, Smith 24, while Bashir and Bethell are both 21.The collateral has been an experienced core of players moved on, including Test cricket’s leading wicket-taker James Anderson at the start of the home summer. Indeed, it was while addressing Anderson’s enforced retirement after his 188th and final Test cap, against West Indies at Lord’s, that Stokes explained the move to refresh the team was done with a view to competing in the next Ashes. “We had to make some decisions around what we think is best for the team going into that Ashes series,” Stokes said at the time. “We want to go out there and we want to get that urn back.”While there was plenty of blowback from pensioning off Anderson, the motivation was sound. Hard though they pushed Australia in 2023’s home series – in which Anderson took five wickets at 85.40 – the 2-2 draw saw England fall short of a first Ashes win since 2015. That disappointment, wrapped up with the 4-1 series defeat to India at the start of 2024 put the onus on finding players who could perform in all conditions – particularly those they will face next winter.Stokes says he now regrets those comments made at Lord’s. While he insists those words have not impacted the team, there is a suggestion the management are wary of players looking too far ahead and possibly overlooking the challenges in front of them.Related

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“I know whenever we spoke about Australia there is a lot looking towards that, but there are still massive series before that,” Stokes said. “We have India. And I think through my own fault, I maybe spoke a little too much about the Ashes and putting too much emphasis on that series, considering how much cricket we had to play before that.”I quite like staying in the present, in the moment. But it is quite tough when you’ve got an Ashes coming around the corner.”I’ve been involved in quite a few of those now and you do always look at the calendar and think ‘oh it’s nearly here’. It’s just hard to avoid. But I think just making sure I keep my focus on being in the here-and-now and what we’ve got coming up. And then, when the Ashes is our next series, then we will focus on it.”On the field, it has broadly been a positive year for England. They will finish with a winning record regardless of the result in Saturday’s Test in Hamilton, having won 9 out of 16 thus far, with three series victories. But the 4-1 and 2-1 losses away to India and Pakistan, respectively, still smart, particularly having been 1-0 up on both occasions.”Seventeen (Tests) in a year is a lot when you add the other cricket,” Stokes added. “A long tough slog but a really good year. Played some good cricket, found some extraordinarily talented players who have shown they’re capable of delivering big performances on the biggest stage, which is playing for your country. So overall, really happy.”The year has also been one of discovery for Stokes, both of the limits of his body, and of areas to improve as a captain – two facets which have been intrinsically linked.A return to bowling as an allrounder following knee surgery at the end of 2023 was interrupted by a hamstring injury, which resulted in him missing four Tests. That had knock-on effects in Pakistan when Stokes’ mood had his team-mates “walking on eggshells”.He had reason to be on edge, after working flat out to regain full fitness, then having his house burgled during the second Test. But in the time between tours, both he and McCullum felt he had veered from being the leader he set out to be when taking charge in 2022.Stokes began this New Zealand tour apologising for his conduct in Pakistan. He now ends it in similar fashion, sensitive to the fact that talk of the Ashes might have a distracting effect on the team.”At the start of the tour where there was a learning curve for me as a captain, from my experience of Pakistan. And then looking back to then (his comments at Lord’s), even speaking and saying stuff like that – we’re so far away from what my leadership had been about. Staying present, staying where we are, and then worrying about stuff when we have to worry about.”In leadership roles, you can maybe differ from where you first started, and think that’s the right thing to be saying or be thinking about. Which then takes you away from a successful mindset, a successful way of speaking within the group. So, yeah, learning curves as a leader I guess.”

“He is still a leader within the team and his experience and knowledge of the game is invaluable,” Maharaj says of de Kock

ESPNcricinfo staff14-Jul-2023Quinton de Kock has been removed as captain at SA20 side Durban’s Super Giants and replaced by Keshav Maharaj for the 2024 edition of the tournament.”I am super happy, humbled and privileged to accept the opportunity as the captain of the DSG franchise in the next SA20 league,” Maharaj said in a video released by the franchise on Friday. “I am super excited, being a Durban boy – been here 18 years of my life, and it’s a place that I call home for me. So I am hoping I can bring some performances from domestic cricket into the SA20, from a leadership perspective and from a player’s perspective.”Former South Africa captain de Kock, a part of the squad at both the Super Giants franchises – Lucknow in the IPL and Durban in the SA20 – led the team in the inaugural season of the six-team South African league, where they finished one off the bottom after winning four of their ten games (the same as third- and fourth-placed Sunrisers Eastern Cape and Paarl Royals, respectively, but behind them on net run-rate). De Kock was one of the better performers with the bat for the team, scoring 271 runs at a strike rate of 151.39 in nine innings.”I’d like to thank Quinny for all the hard work that he has done on and off the field,” Maharaj said. “However, his job is not over. He is still a leader within the team and his experience and knowledge of the game is invaluable to this unit. And it’s going to be a large and integral part to play for us in terms of bringing the trophy to Durban this year.”