The Twins have hired former Pirates skipper Derek Shelton as the franchise's new manager, according to a report from Jon Heyman of the

Shelton will replace Rocco Baldelli, who was fired by the Twins following the end of the regular season after seven years with the club. This represents a reunion for Shelton and the Twins as he previously worked as a bench coach under Baldelli and Paul Molitor in Minnesota from 2018-19.

Shelton, meanwhile, lands on his feet after parting with the Pirates in May, just 38 games into the season. Pittsburgh was off to a 12-26 start at the time of his departure, and was looking for a spark in their rebuilding club.

Shelton will be tasked with a similar rebuild in Minnesota after the Twins traded several key contributors at the deadline. Minnesota finished the year 70-92, which was good for a fourth place finish in the AL Central.

The 55-year-old Shelton has compiled a 306-440 record in his five-plus seasons as a major league manager, all of which came with the Pirates. He has never taken a club to the playoffs.

أثار محمد صلاح النجم المصري الشكوك حول مستقبله بسبب التصريحات الصادمة عقب تعادل ليفربول ضد ليدز يونايتد، حيث انتقد آرني سلوت وناديه بشدة وألمح إلى أن هناك من يرغب برحيله من ملعب آنفيلد.

ولا تزال أندية الدوري السعودي للمحترفين مهتمة بالتعاقد مع محمد صلاح بعد فشل محاولات التعاقد معه في وقت سابق من هذا العام.

وأشار الصحفي “بن جاكوبس” في حديثه مع “TalkSport” حول مستقبل محمد صلاح، إلى أنه من المرجح أن يبقى النجم المصري في يناير.

اقرأ أيضًا.. هل يشارك محمد صلاح في مباراة ليفربول وبرايتون بـ الدوري الإنجليزي؟

وذكر جاكوبس: “ما زلت أعتقد أنه يمكننا القول إن ليفربول هو الأقرب للإبقاء على محمد صلاح، لأنهم يريدون أن يكمل عقده حتى نهايته”.

وأضاف: “لكن في حالة رحيله فإن الهلال يعتبر المرشح الأبرز، وقد حاولوا التعاقد مع صلاح قبل انطلاق بطولة كأس العالم للأندية”.

وواصل: “هناك فريقان آخران حسب علمي أيضاً يراقبان صلاح في السعودية وهما القادسية وهو نادي مثير للاهتمام لأنه مملوك لشركة النفط السعودية العملاقة أرامكو بالتالي فإنه بإمكانه إنفاق أمواله الخاصة”.

واختتم: “لذلك هما لا يعتمدون على أي تمويل من وزارة الرياضة أما النادي الآخر هو نيوم الرياضي، وهي مدينة رياضية جديدة ستفتح في الوقت المناسب لبطولة كأس العالم للأندية ويحظى النادي بدعم واستثمارات ضخمة”.

Friday was a scary 24 hours for Tigers fans, who watched star pitcher Tarik Skubal allow four earned runs to the Marlins before leaving his start with discomfort in his side.

Fortunately, Detroit manager A.J. Hinch indicated to reporters Saturday that Skubal would be fine.

"Tarik Skubal’s imaging came back clean and he plans on making his next scheduled start," ESPN's Jeff Passan wrote on social media Saturday, citing Hinch. That start would potentially take place Thursday against the Guardians.

Skubal, 28, is a strong candidate to win his second straight American League Cy Young Award. He's 13–5 with a 2.26 ERA and 224 strikeouts in 183 1/3 innings this season, and he leads all AL hurlers in bWAR for the second consecutive year.

The Tigers are currently 84–64, and lead Cleveland by 7.5 games in the race for the AL Central Division. Detroit hasn't won a division crown since taking four straight from 2011 to '14.

Oftentimes, after MLB managers are ejected, the absolute last thing you'll hear from them is some sort of mea culpa:

It just doesn't happen.

But something to that effect occurred following the Red Sox' 4-1 loss to the Houston Astros on Wednesday, during which Boston's manager Alex Cora was ejected in the seventh inning.

Cora's protestations began in the top of the sixth inning with Astros righthander Hunter Brown on the mound. After Brown walked Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran, he was called for a balk. Two batters later, Brown switched from the full windup to the stretch mid at-bat, prompting the Red Sox to object to ultimately no avail.

An inning later, Cora emerged from the dugout to further discuss the call—or lack thereof—with the umpires, who then ejected him. Cora explained what led him to emerge from the dugout and even surprisingly admitted that the umpires were correct in their ruling.

"First of all, they got it right," Cora said. "They got the call right. The only thing for me is that we've seen that situation before, that guys who have a regular windup and they ask the guys to declare. You don’t have to declare if you have a hybrid windup; that’s when you have to declare, because that way you’re not deceiving the runner.

"But throughout the last two years, we’ve seen situations that is a regular windup, and they’ve asked the pitcher to declare, that was the only thing. I went out there to educate myself to be honest with you. That’s what I told him. I want to learn. I don’t know if he took it that I was being sarcastic. I wasn’t. I was walking back, and he threw me out.”

Cora's ejection seemed to stem from a miscommunication with the umpire, as he insisted to reporters after the game that he wasn't trying to get tossed from the contest.

"…I hate getting thrown out," Cora continued. "My job is to be in the dugout and help this team to win games from the dugout. This whole thing about rallying the troops and getting thrown out—that's bull—-. My job is to be in the dugout…"

It’s Mr Cool’s 39th birthday. So, time to test whether you’ve been watching closely and taking notes on how to be not just cool but MS cool

ESPNcricinfo staff07-Jul-2020

He has not been sleeping very well leading into the Wellington Test, but come match day, he stood up to make it count

Karthik Krishnaswamy in Wellington22-Feb-2020It was poised to be that kind of day for India. A day when they were bowled out cheaply, just when conditions were getting better to bat in. A day when their bowlers weren’t doing a whole lot wrong, but weren’t at their best either. A day when New Zealand were threatening to pull away.But they kept themselves in the game, just about, thanks mostly to Ishant Sharma.Ishant was coming back from a grade-three ankle injury, having recovered from it at an almost miraculous pace. He had landed in New Zealand less than a week before the Test match, and was still struggling with jetlag.”I could only sleep for 40 minutes last night,” he said, at his end-of-day press conference. “The night before that, I slept for only three hours.”Sleep-deprived and perhaps not yet entirely back at his physical peak, Ishant didn’t bowl the long spells he usually gets through. The 15 overs he sent down on day two were rationed into five separate spells, the longest of which lasted four overs.India looked flat and in need of inspiration almost every time Ishant began a new spell. The others weren’t doing badly, but they weren’t doing well either. This might have been okay on another day, but India had only put 165 on the board here.Jasprit Bumrah was playing his first Test since returning from a stress fracture, and the rhythm wasn’t quite there. He had seemed to find it in the warm-up match, where he hit his lengths almost as soon as he began his first spell, but here he looked edgy, walking back to his mark a little too quickly between deliveries, bowling good balls without necessarily stringing them together into pressure-building sequences, and looking like he was searching a little too eagerly for that one wicket that would make everything okay.Mohammed Shami had begun well, squaring Tom Blundell up twice in his first three overs and finding his leading edge both times. Those balls had fallen safely, though, and the batsmen had become used to the spongy bounce of the Basin Reserve pitch. But as a result of those two balls to Blundell, maybe, Shami was bowling a touch too short, not bringing the batsmen forward enough.R Ashwin was getting the ball to grip and turn more than a fingerspinner might usually do on a second-day Wellington pitch, and had spun one between Blundell’s bat and pad early on, only for bounce to save the batsman from getting bowled. But Kane Williamson was not allowing him to settle at all; against lengths that may have drawn other batsmen forward, he was trusting his back-foot game to keep punching Ashwin into the covers, where a defensive fielder, two-thirds of the way to the boundary, would soon appear.Ishant Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah share a light moment•AFPIshant had gotten a little lucky with his first wicket, Tom Latham strangling a catch down the leg side. That dismissal seemed to have happened a long time ago when Ishant came back for his third spell. New Zealand were 72 for 1, with Blundell and Williamson both batting on 30.Little seemed to be happening in the air or off the pitch at that stage, with the sun out, the wind down to a simmer, and the batsmen well set. Ishant’s first ball, however, seemed to swing a long way into Williamson. The ball may have gotten a lesser batsman in trouble, but Williamson had all the time in the world to work it off his stumps and down to fine leg for one.His third ball started on around fifth stump, and seemed once again to swing, this time away from the right-hander. It wasn’t a difficult leave for Blundell, but the fact of the ball leaving the right-hander, that too in the air, suggested Ishant might be finding reverse-swing.Perhaps it was all just an illusion. “No, it was not reversing,” Ishant said. “Actually, nothing was happening. I was trying that something might happen from the wicket. So I was just not holding the ball on the seam but trying different things. Kookaburra, after 40 or 50 overs, the seam really gets soft. So you need to come hard and hit the length very hard if you hold the ball cross-seam. That’s what happened.”So cross-seam then. The next ball jagged off the pitch, inwards, from the perfect length, which had brought Blundell forward but not far enough. A gap appeared between his front pad and defensive bat, and the ball snuck through. New Zealand 73 for 2.They were 91 for 2 when Ishant finished his three-over spell, with Ross Taylor, playing his 100th Test, having just kicked his innings into gear with a slog-swept six off Ashwin. By the time Ishant came back into the attack, 17 overs later, the score was 152 for 2.Williamson and Taylor were batting beautifully, putting together the kind of third-wicket partnership India fans have seen numerous times in their home Tests, between Dravid and Tendulkar, for instance, or Pujara and Kohli. The two best batsmen in the team chugging along effortlessly to consolidate a position of strength, and refusing to let the visiting bowlers settle into any sort of rhythm.Ishant Sharma goes up in appeal against Tom Latham•Getty ImagesTaylor, for instance, wasn’t letting Ashwin bowl his best ball – the flighted offbreak landing outside off stump. He’d played that slog-sweep when he’d only just come in, and when Ashwin tried that line again later in his spell, he got down low to paddle him fine for four. In between, as a result, Ashwin mostly bowled stump-to-stump and a little flatter and fuller than he’d ideally have liked to bowl, just to prevent Taylor from sweeping.Shami and Bumrah, stretching themselves to break the partnership, erred in line or length every now and then. Williamson caressed drives either side of mid-off, or got on his toes to punch through point. Taylor played a couple of leg glances, off balls that may have gone on to hit leg stump or even part of middle, his hands somehow whirring through the shot despite his having to play around his front pad.By the time Ishant returned, eight of the previous ten overs had contained a boundary. New Zealand trailed by a mere 13 runs. The pitch, which had offered so much sideways and vertical assistance on day one, was now appearing a lot more straightforward to bat on.But there was still something in it, and the taller bowlers – Kyle Jamieson and Tim Southee during India’s innings, Ishant now – were seeming to extract that little bit more from it.”I’m not sure,” Southee said, when asked about this at his press conference. “It seems like one of those wickets where the odd one, every now and then, stands up a little bit, and I guess when you’re a little bit taller you can kind of expose that a little bit more.”Ishant had a square-ish leg gully in place when he bowled to Taylor now, in his fourth spell. With the first ball of his third over, he bowled the perfect delivery to produce a lobbed catch to that fielder, and there’s no way he could have bowled it entirely on purpose. Taylor, pressing onto the front foot with his trigger movement, was in no position to deal with one that spat up from just short of a length, all the while jagging back in and cramping him for room.Even if Ishant couln’t have bowled it entirely on purpose, there was still a method to the dismissal, and it was much the same as the method employed by Jamieson on day one. But where Jamieson had used his short ball to push batsmen back, and then used the fuller one as his wicket-taking ball, Ishant had gone the other way.Of all the fast bowlers to have bowled on the first two days – not including the medium-paced Colin de Grandhomme – Ishant bowled the greatest percentage of deliveries (64.44) that brought the batsmen onto the front foot, according to ESPNcricinfo’s data. Southee came closest (63.64) while Shami (48.04) and Jamieson (48.96) brought up the rear.Different bowlers have different methods, and there’s no right or wrong one, but committing batsmen onto the front foot will most certainly heighten the danger of your short ball. Or the shortish ball that rears up unexpectedly.It was just the ball a somnolent India had needed to jolt back to life, even if the man who bowled it would have much rather been in bed himself.

On the day he took his 500th Test wicket, he evoked memories of the great Curtly Ambrose

Andrew Miller28-Jul-2020″It does get a little frustrating,” Buzz Aldrin once said of a lifetime of being known as the second man on the moon. When you’ve travelled approximately 240,000 miles further than all but an infinitesimally small proportion of humanity, it is a bit harsh to be judged in perpetuity against the only man to go one step beyond.But then again, Stuart Broad isn’t the first mighty bowler whose achievements are destined to be remembered in the context of a double act. And far from diminishing Curtly Ambrose, or Waqar Younis, or Glenn McGrath – all of whom shared a stage with a partner who outstripped them in the wickets column – the stature of their sidekick in fact offers a secondary route to immortality; an opportunity to be remembered, quite literally, as more than just the sum of some very considerable parts.For when you stop to think of Broad in full flow, do you really have to doublethink and factor in Anderson’s presence at the other end? Or do you simply marvel, as we all have done this week, at the spring-heeled malevolence that he still carries with him to the crease after all these years, with an action of such biomechanical purity that – barring a few notable tweaks to his wrist position – it has barely altered since his earliest stirrings as a teenage prodigy for Leicestershire in the summer of 2005.ALSO READ: Stuart Broad at 500: Topping the finest, triggering collapses and getting better with ageFor there comes a point in the accumulation of such towering statistics that context becomes irrelevant, and the sheer scale of the achievement takes over as the defining attribute. Broad’s critics (and my word, they are legion – more of which later…) would argue he remains a bowler of great spells rather than a great bowler in his own right, but when the list of those spells – 18 five-fors now, and barely a dud among them – becomes longer than the careers of many of the men he’s outlasted, well, you start to run out of caveats.Stuart Broad roars in celebration•Getty ImagesBack in 1964, Fred Trueman declared that anyone who sought to extend his then world-record of 300 would be “bloody tired”, and 30 years later, Kapil Dev epitomised that prediction as he flapped and gasped his way past Richard Hadlee’s extended mark of 431, before retiring exhausted one match later. Even the mighty Courtney Walsh had lost a measure of his indefatigability by the spring of 2001, when he became the first seamer to 500 in his final home series against South Africa.But Broad, right here right now, is performing with the fury of the slighted, and the confidence of the blessed. All angles and attitude, the spring of a lamb and the snap of a crocodile, that evoke nothing less than Ambrose in his pomp. “Sacrilege!” some might argue, but really, who else could compare?After all, both men have thrived on a scent of blood in the water, a whiff of cordite in the nostrils. A threat to their hegemony, or an insult to be avenged. And at the given moment, almost invariably with a series on the line, both men’s knees would start pumping, their torsos bouncing to the crease like an out-of-body experience, preternaturally excited about what this next delivery might bring.”I’m always amazed at how he gets on a spell and just blows people away,” Anderson told Sky Sports before the start of play, an Ambrosian trait if ever there was one. And sure enough, in seven overs spanning the end of the West Indies’ first innings at Old Trafford and the start of their second, Broad returned the remarkable figures of 6 for 22, before capping his rampage with a full-length pad-thwacker to pin Kraigg Brathwaite lbw. The 500th breakthrough was every bit as irresistible as the fare that had gone before it.Fans surround Curtly Ambrose•Graham Chadwick/PA Photos/Getty ImagesIf there’s been a frustration in the course of Broad’s career, it’s been that those spells – the truly extraordinary spells, when he’s pitched the ball right up to the bat and kicked it off a length like a mule – have been so irresistible that you begin to wonder why he’s not done it every day of his career. Both he and even Anderson have often been guilty in years gone by of dragging their lengths back to avoid being driven, but according to Cricviz, Broad’s length since the start of 2018 has been 41cm fuller than any previous stage of his career, as if he’s realised that now’s the time in his life to hang the reticence, and chase every last scalp available.But the mechanics are one thing, it’s the moods that are quite something else. Broad’s reading of a situation and his ability to strike accordingly has been second to none throughout the course of his career, right from the moment, as a 21-year-old, he was pitched into the fray in the winter of 2007-08 and lauded by Michael Vaughan as “the most intelligent bowler I’ve ever worked with”.For Broad’s natural length on that maiden winter in Sri Lanka and New Zealand was short and shorter. Remarkably, given his stick-insect frame and baby-faced looks, his first proper role in the team was as an “enforcer”, the man to shove a series of batsmen back into the crease so that Ryan Sidebottom and Anderson himself could draw them forward again and get them to nick off to the slips.The ploy worked too. England were terrified they might wreck Broad in a solitary outing, when he replaced Anderson on a dead deck in Colombo and made an arduous debut in stifling heat, but the following March, his recall alongside Anderson in Wellington would prove to be one of the most pivotal selections in a generation. It was certainly the boldest of Peter Moores’ ill-starred time as England coach. With the team 1-0 down after a terrible loss in Hamilton, the Ashes heroes, Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison, were put out to pasture, and a nascent alliance was trusted to turn the tide back to England with a pair of back-to-back wins.Stuart Broad and James Anderson discuss bowling plans•Getty ImagesAnd in spite of England’s attempts to clean out the stables once more, and move on from another pair of established heroes in good time for the 2021-22 Ashes, Broad in particular is digging his heels in with admirable truculence, and showcasing the stubborn spirit he will need to have one last stab at his favourite foes in two winter’s time.For Broad surely ranks as England’s most consistently competitive Ashes combatant since Ian Botham – a man best remembered for his 8 for 15 at Trent Bridge, no doubt, but whose first great dent on the records came six years earlier at The Oval, where his spell of 12-1-37-5 was the first time in three consecutive home Ashes that he’d deliver the series-sealing haymaker.But that Aussie-baiting nature has revealed itself in a myriad of guises. Not least the rhino-skin thickness of his hide, for few men have been moulded who can soak up the sort of vitriol that has been sprayed his way down the years, and remain so gloriously, and supercilously, inured to such criticism.The most famous example came on the 2013-14 whitewash tour, where his refusal to walk for one of the most blatant edges imaginable during the previous summer’s victory at Trent Bridge caused one Australian newspaper to drop their bundle and start a personal vendetta against him. Not only did Broad claim a five-wicket haul on the first day of the Test, and walk into the press conference with a copy of said paper under his arm, he later found himself, on a night out with his mum in Melbourne, giving directions to the pub to a man wearing one of the summer’s must-have accessories, a “Stuart Broad is a shit bloke” T-shirt.Composite: Stuart Broad banners in Australia•Getty ImagesPerhaps there’s the fact that he’s the son of an ICC match referee – and not just any old referee at that, but the ultimate poacher-turned-gamekeeper – a stump-kicking, umpire-dissing, curse-uttering competitor, whose entire career was a byword of bad behaviour.Perhaps it’s the fact that he has the body and looks of an Aryan wet dream, or that his idiosyncratic mode of lbw appeal has led to an entirely new addition to cricket’s lexicon, which one irate feedbacker on ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball commentary described thus during the day four rain-delay at Old Trafford:”You call it celebrappeal. I call it the worst acts of cheating cricket has seen. Charging to the off side to celebrate before the ump has even considered his decision. No wonder we in Australia hate Stuart Broad. Celebrating in front of the batsman without even looking at the ump … a*****e … pathetic … bring on 2021-22 … [message truncated].”Had Broad been born in the era of Bodyline, he wouldn’t simply have been an enthusiastic advocate of Douglas Jardine’s leg theory, banging the ball in halfway down the wicket with a cordon of vultures under the ribs. He’d have donned a cravat and harlequin cap between overs, and sauntered down to fine leg to wind up precisely those types who profess to this day to loathe him.Who’d want to take the field without such a competitor in their ranks?

These first-time auction buys could become key movers for their franchises if they are played this season

Sreshth Shah19-Sep-2020Josh Philippe, Royal Challengers Bangalore
Philippe, a wicketkeeper-batsman from Australia, was one of the stars of the Big Bash League’s 2019-20 season. He started the tournament with a bang, hitting 81 not out against Perth Scorchers and ending the game with a massive six that landed on the roof of the SCG pavilion. He went on to score four more fifties for Sydney Sixers in the tournament, including one in the final. Philippe, 23, has shown both impeccable timing and a 360 game in his short career. RCB were lucky to pick him up for just Rs 20 lakh (about US$27,000) in the last auction, which was before the BBL season. Philippe was recently included in the Australia squad for the ODI and T20I series in England, though he did not make his international debut. He has earned high praise from big names – Adam Gilchrist has said he could be a “catalyst for change” in Australia’s white-ball squad, while RCB team-mate AB de Villiers has said he sees some of his younger self in Philippe.Ishan Porel, Kings XI Punjab
Porel, 22, is a seamer who can consistently hit the 140kph mark. He first drew attention during India’s successful campaign at the 2018 Under-19 World Cup, in which he took 4 for 17 in the semi-final, against Pakistan, and then bowled a tight opening spell in the final, against Australia. Since then, he has become the de facto leader of the Bengal bowling line-up and helped Bengal reach the 2019-20 Ranji Trophy final. He was part of the India A team that toured New Zealand in January 2020 and took eight wickets in three games. Porel began as a back-of-a-length bowler, but over the past few years he has learned to swing the ball and begun bowling fuller to succeed in Indian conditions.Tom Banton, Kolkata Knight Riders
At 21, Banton is already one of the most talked about batsmen on the T20 circuit. In 40 T20 matches, he has an average of nearly 30 and a strike-rate of 154.16. Banton rose to prominence during the 2019 English summer, when he scored 454 runs for Somerset in the Royal One-Day Cup, including 112, 59 and 69 in the three knockout games. He also scored 549 runs in the Vitality Blast, including a hundred and four fifties. He was then picked up by franchises for both the BBL and the Pakistan Super League and had impressive innings in both competitions. He has also become a regular member of England’s white-ball squads. Banton grew up playing field hockey and that helps him play outrageous reverse-sweeps and scoops, which makes him an entertaining batsman to watch.Ravi Bishnoi, Kings XI Punjab
A modern-day legspinner who prefers his googly to the traditional legbreak, Bishnoi was the leading wicket-taker at the 2020 U-19 World Cup, collecting 17 scalps in six games at an average of 10.64. He admires Rashid Khan and Yuzvendra Chahal, and his fast run-up allows him to get extra zip and bounce. It will help Bishnoi, still just 20, that Kings XI Punjab’s head coach is Anil Kumble, the former India legspinner. Bishnoi recently said he had been learning to bowl the flipper from Kumble.Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rajasthan Royals
Jaiswal, an 18-year-old left-hand batsman from Mumbai, was the Player of the Tournament at the 2020 U-19 World Cup, in which he scored 400 runs at an average of 133, including four fifties and a century. By then, Jaiswal had already impressed for the Mumbai senior team – he scored three centuries, one a double, for Mumbai in the 2019-20 Vijay Hazare Trophy. Jaiswal’s consistency and aggression made him a hot commodity at the auction, and he was sold for Rs 2.4 crore (about US$338,000). With Ajinkya Rahane no longer at Rajasthan Royals, there’s a good chance Jaiswal will be one of their first-choice openers.

She is the most genuine allrounder imaginable

ESPNcricinfo staff29-Oct-2020The 50 Greatest Australian Cricketers (Affirm Press), in which Dan Liebke charts the careers, characteristics and enduring legacies of the finest Australian players of the last half-century.

‘She’s totally amazing’ – Amy,
‘Watch the ball. Make good decisions’ – Ellyse Perry

If I told you that Australia had a batter who averaged 78.10 in Tests, 52.10 in ODIs and 29.07 in T20Is, you’d probably consider them the kind of player you’d want batting in your top order.If I told you that Australia had a bowler who averaged 18.19 in Tests, 24.29 in ODIs and 18.97 in T20Is, you’d surely want them to lead your bowling attack.If I told you that those figures belonged to the same cricketer, you’d probably smack me upside the head and tell me to stop lying. After all, the Australian men’s team, as a rule, haven’t had a true allrounder – one who could comfortably hold their spot with their prowess in either discipline – for decades.ALSO READ: Profile: Ellyse the incredible (2017) In the last 50 years, which man comes close? Shane Watson was handy with the ball, but if you had to choose him as a bowler only, you’d be in a perilous state of affairs. Steve Waugh in his youth was a handy ODI allrounder, as was Simon O’Donnell. But neither reached that standard in Tests. Mitchell Johnson has a Test century, but no sane person would ever have picked him as a specialist batter.However, over in the women’s side, we have Ellyse Perry, the most genuine allrounder imaginable.Perry made her debut for the Australian ODI side in 2007. She was 16 years old, the youngest ever cricketer to represent Australia. Her T20 debut came six months later, where she was awarded player of the match for her 29 not out with the bat and her 4 for 20 with the ball. Her Test debut came two weeks after that. Not yet old enough to vote or legally drink, Ellyse Perry was an allrounder in all three formats of the game.At this stage, however, she was primarily a bowling allrounder, who batted in the bottom half of the line-up and was only expected to contribute occasional runs. This would be her position for the first half of her career.Despite an ankle injury bothering her when she started bowling in the 2013 World Cup final, Ellyse Perry took 3 for 19 to help dismiss West Indies for 145•Pal Pillai/Getty ImagesThis slightly reduced role didn’t stop her from having an impact. In the 2010 World T20, the still-teenaged Perry was given the last over of the final, with New Zealand needing 14 to win and the big-hitting Sophie Devine at the crease. Perry saw the game out, using her football skills to intercept with her foot a straight drive from the final ball that would have sent the match into a Super Over. She was player of the match.Three years later, in the 2013 World Cup, Perry was struggling with an ankle injury. She’d missed a good chunk of the tournament because of it, but was determined to play in the final against the West Indies. She batted with no apparent discomfort, contributing 25 not out (22) to help Australia to 259 for 7 from their 50 overs.When it came time to bowl, however, with the West Indies moving comfortably along at 32 for 0, Perry’s ankle wouldn’t support her. Attempting to bowl her first ball, she was forced to abort her run-up, and limp back to the top of her mark. Her second attempt was no more successful, the pain evident with every step.Yet somehow, Perry fought through the pain and forced herself to bowl the over. It was a maiden. A wicket maiden to be precise, as she removed Kycia Knight lbw from the final ball of the over. From the first ball of her next over, she caught the edge of Stafanie Taylor’s bat. However, the third umpire adjudicated that the ball didn’t carry to Meg Lanning at slip. So three balls later, Perry had Taylor caught and bowled instead. Still no runs had been taken from her. In her following over, Perry had Natasha McLean lbw. After three overs, she had the figures of 3 for 2 with two maidens. West Indies were done. Ellyse Perry had won the World Cup on one leg.ALSO WATCH: 25 Questions with Ellyse Perry: ‘Fast bowlers are cooler than spinners. Just look at them!’Even if you only considered her bowling feats at this stage of her career, that would have been enough to see her acknowledged as one of Australia’s finest ever cricketers.From the middle of 2013 on, however, Perry suddenly decided to become not just a handy lower-order batter, but instead one of the best batters in the world. Perhaps, given that her international soccer career was winding down, she was bored and looking for a new challenge.The improvement in Perry’s batting from 2013 on was most noticeable in the longer forms of the game. Her batting average in ODIs, which was 21.86 from 54 matches up to the 2013 World Cup final, transformed into an average of 70.58 from 58 games afterwards. In Tests, her batting average of 22.66 from three Tests prior to 2013 jumped to 111.20 from five Tests afterwards.Granted, those Test figures are a very small sample size. On the other hand, they’re the only Tests that the women get to play, and jumping from 22.66 to 111.20 is certainly better than moving in the other direction. Furthermore, given the jump in her ODI batting records, which is over a far more statistically significant sample, it’s not crazy to think Perry’s Test batting might genuinely have improved dramatically as well.Certainly, when she was compiling a patient 213 not out in the 2017 Ashes Test and then following it up with 116 and 76 not out in the 2019 version, one got the distinct impression that her batting at Test level had advanced a notch or two.Perry’s 213 not out in the 2017 Ashes is the highest Test score by an Australian female batter•Getty ImagesRegardless of how precisely Perry’s astonishing Test batting figures reflect her true ability at that level, there’s little doubt that she’s one of the elite batters in women’s cricket these days.Oh, and her bowling has also maintained its previous spectacular standard throughout this period of her batting improvement.All of which makes Ellyse Alexandra Perry an impossibly good package of a cricketer.A decent trick question a seasoned cricket fan can ask a more casual fan is to name the greatest cricketer of all time. Most such casual fans will unhesitatingly blurt out “Bradman” as the answer.But Bradman was merely the greatest batter of all time. The more nuanced answer is to consider both batting and bowling and pin your vote on Sir Garfield Sobers, who had a batting average of 57.78 and a bowling average of 34.03.Despite the difficulties of comparing different eras and the different formats played, it’s not crazy to consider Ellyse Perry the Sobers of women’s cricket. She’s got a similarly mind-boggling record with both bat and ball over a similarly long career.And so if I told you that Ellyse Perry was Australia’s greatest cricketer of the last 50 years, you’d have to at least consider the possibility that I was telling the truth.Which is convenient, because that’s exactly what I am telling you: Ellyse Perry is Australia’s greatest cricketer of the last 50 years.This excerpt has been edited lightly to ESPNcricinfo house style

Given the challenges 2020 has thrown at everyone, it is refreshing just to talk about cricket again

Daniel Brettig16-Dec-2020At the end of a year blighted by Covid-19, Australia and India find themselves facing off at the same venue where they began their previous bout in 2018 – in the august surrounds of Adelaide Oval.The reassuring sight of the old scoreboard and the Moreton Bay figs at the northern end of the ground provide a sense of continuity intrinsic to Test match cricket, and will be a striking background for the teams of Tim Paine and Virat Kohli in the first ever day/night Test for the Indian side away from home.Yet there will be so much more to cherish about the meeting of two of cricket’s most powerful nations than just about any other time they have crossed paths since beginning a pattern of almost constant contact 20 years ago. Not least the fact that the series is happening at all.Without disregarding the enormously influential financial forces that have driven India and Australia to play no fewer than 12 Test series against each other since 1999 – the same number of encounters as Australia have had Ashes series against England over the same period – all participants and spectators will have had moments this year when they were not entirely sure the series would happen.In the hard months of March, April and May, where the world was almost entirely without sport, there was plenty of time to ponder that grim possibility, and more recently the issues at hand were largely to do with obstacles to staging the series even as so much goodwill existed between Cricket Australia and the BCCI to make it happen. In a year when its leaders have faced pitched battles with state associations, state governments and rights-holding broadcasters, CA has been grateful that India’s administrators and players never raised significant hassles about the tour.Instead, the hurdles for CA’s interim chief executive Nick Hockley and chairman Earl Eddings were largely to do with finding a port of entry for the charter plane carrying the touring team. From initial plans to land in Perth, the blueprint was shifted to Adelaide and then Brisbane before finally being scooped by Sydney, Canberra, the New South Wales government and the SCG Trust. Anxiety levels were never higher than during a lengthy and ultimately fruitless negotiation with the Queensland government.Even after the Indians arrived, there was a chance the series would be turned on its head by a Covid outbreak in Adelaide. For a long time, Adelaide Oval had been slated to host at least one and possible two Tests, given the extended lockdown faced by Melbourne for most of the year that kept a cloud over Boxing Day until as late as October.Related

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But the outbreak that forced a hard if brief lockdown in South Australia had contingencies flipping to start the Test series with a day/night Test at the MCG and then go on to play a more traditional game from December 26 onwards. All these permutations were at the forefront of the mind of Adelaide Oval’s curator Damian Hough, who has reckoned with rock concerts and football fixture turnarounds in the past, but this year has prepared a Test match strip with a Christmas pageant rather than Sheffield Shield games as a lead-in.”One thing we have learned with Covid is to be more in the present,” Hough said. “We like to plan months in advance. We still had plans but had to live in the moment a little bit more,” he said. “[A U2 concert last year] was a much bigger challenge than what we’re going through this year. I never thought I’d see a Christmas pageant at the Adelaide Oval, so it’s just a unique year.”We’re fortunate to be able to give Australia centre-wicket [training] on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so that was our only preparation, and it seemed to go really well, the feedback was positive. We have got the recipe that seems to work … we’re just sticking to the game plan.”More than anything else, those centre-wicket sessions loom as a priceless competitive advantage for the members of the Australian squad who arrived earlier than those who played for Australia A against the Indians on a different surface at the SCG, something Paine had little hesitation in asserting.There is something refreshing about tactical discussions on the eve of a Test series, rather than those of Covid protocols•Mark Evans/Stringer”We’ve been really lucky to come to Adelaide early,” he said. “We trained three nights in a row on the centre wicket at Adelaide Oval, which I think is going to be a huge advantage for our team. It’s the hardest thing about the pink-ball Test; you normally get it once a year. Sometimes with a Shield game, this time without one. So you’re learning pretty much on the job, in real time, when you walk out to the middle.”To try to adjust to conditions that are just so foreign to us – with the lights on and a pink ball. So it is foreign. But we’ve managed to get three nights on the centre wicket at the Adelaide Oval, which has been terrific for our group – batters and bowlers – to get a sense of what it is like again. Re-jog your memory from last year – it’s going to be a huge advantage for us come tomorrow.”Kohli’s adjustment, having not even played in the SCG warm-up game, will be as critical as any other factor to the outcome in Adelaide. It will be heightened, too, by the fact that this is Kohli’s only Test match for the series, making it still more of a one-off event before Ajinkya Rahane takes over as captain for the remaining three games.With artillery such as Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon, the Australians have enjoyed considerable success in dismissing Kohli early in each of the past two series. Get through that phase, though, and Kohli has proven he can hurt even this most vaunted of attacks.”Everyone’s got great plans of getting all the best players out don’t they, but that’s why they are the best, they can adapt, they can change with what you’re doing, and Virat is certainly one of the best players if not the best player in the world,” Paine said. “There’s going to be a time in this, well actually there’s only one Test so hopefully it doesn’t, but when you play against players as good as Virat, at times they do get away from you, that’s just the game.”But certainly we’ve got plans in place that have worked ok against him in the past; hopefully they work early enough this week, but if not, yeah, we’ve got a couple of different plans. the great thing with our attack is they’re all different, we’ve also got Nathan Lyon and now you throw in Greeny, we’ve got some different angles, some different speeds and obviously Nathan’s spin as well as Marnus, so we’ve got lots of different options to throw at him if he was to get in and set.”There is something refreshing about tactical discussions and plans on the eve of a Test series, rather than those of Covid protocols, border restrictions and the financial shocks of the year to date. Paine, who appreciates his Test career more than most after coming within a phone call or two of retiring from cricket altogether in 2017, had no notion of “bubble fatigue” at this point in time, when asked whether such considerations might shorten what is left of his time at the summit of the game.”Absolutely not. I’m loving it to be honest,” Paine said. “I don’t think this hub has been as strict as maybe the IPL or the one in England. I’m getting a great night’s sleep; my kids are both at home – which is good in one way but I certainly miss them. But I’m sleeping better here and feel fresher here than I did at home, so hub life might actually make me play longer if anything.”You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. If there has at times in recent years been a touch of fatigue about the frequency of meetings between India and Australia, the events of 2020 have ensured this latest chapter will be as vivid as any sporting contest can be when so many around the world remain cooped up by a pandemic.