Hi there! This is the transcript of the interview I did for my Podcast, Never on the Backfoot’s 130th episode. Hope you like it 🙂

Neha: Hi, Jarrod! Welcome to Never on the Backfoot Podcast. I’m absolutely delighted to have you here and eagerly looking forward to the conversation ahead. 

Jarrod: Okay. Well, I enjoy playing off the back foot, so I don’t know how it will go. 

Neha: And, uh, to put it on record, I am an absolute fan of yours and this is like a dream come through, you know, actually interview you.

Jarrod: So yeah, just had to put it out there. I think you should dream higher. 

Neha: So what got you first interested in cricket? You can talk about yourself as a cricket fan and also about some of your early memories of the sport.

Jarrod: Yeah, just a bit of a tricky question for me, cuz there is I, I, I was born into a cricketing family. There was no, there was no moment I got into cricket. Uh, cricket was always around, so, um, it was. I was either one and a half or two and a half weeks old. When I went and watched my father play cricket. Um, I was brought up at the cricket club. We were there three, four days a week. Um, so cricket is, was such a big part of my life that it wasn’t as if I chose it.

I’ve said this before, but it didn’t really occur to me that other people weren’t spending all day on Saturdays involved in cricket. I mean, I, I suppose you did at a certain level, but whether it was cricket or football or netball or tennis or whatever sport, um, that you played, I kind of figured that’s what people did. It was only when I got older, it, I realized that a lot of people don’t do that. And so, you know, I just kind of figured that you picked whichever sport you wanted or whichever sport your family liked, um, and sort of followed that and, uh, turned out you do actually have choices in life, but by then it was too.

Neha: Right. And how’s it like, you know, playing cricket in school or even your childhood for that matter? And what are some of your fondest memories? 

Jarrod: Yeah, I played a lot of cricket when I was young. Uh, we would, uh, we would play, uh, quite regularly. I played a little bit of school cricket school. Cricket’s not really a big thing in Australia. Um, certainly not in the way that it is in other, other cricket nations. Um, so I played a little bit at school, you know, captains, my school, primary school team and all that sort of stuff and played, uh, I think mainly played one year of high school cricket. I played a couple of games for them as well. Um, but yeah, played club cricket from, I probably played my first game when I was, I think I must have just turned seven, uh, when I played my first game with a hard ball.

Um, and then from then on in, I played every Saturday and then every Saturday and Sunday, and, uh, when I was older, I played, uh, in the mornings in juniors, then I would play in the afternoons in seniors. So basically I would play WhatsApp about 130 overs a day, um, of cricket. Uh, and I, we would, I would train on Tuesday nights.

I would train on Wednesday nights. I would train on Thursday nights. So I played a lot of cricket, um, at that, uh, at a very, very young age. And then when I went into the workforce, I worked a lot of shift work. So probably from the age of about 20 onwards, I didn’t work as, um, I didn’t play cricket as much. And then I came to the UK and I played a little bit, but once I start working in cricket, it didn’t really, uh, uh, sadly I couldn’t really continue to play as much. Although I played a game, what day are we? The first day played a game on Tuesday this week, which is the first game I played since I broke my arm.

Um, so that was interesting is probably the correct term. Right. And even, you know, growing up who are some of your favourite cricket, this can be male or female. And who is it? Current. We didn’t really have female, uh, cricketers that we knew of in those days. Um, so I’m very, I’m much older than you. Um, so the only one I who know who Belinda Clark was, of course in, um, uh, oh God, I wouldn’t say, um, Catherine Fitzpatrick.

So they were probably the three known cricketers, but you didn’t really see them play, um, that much. So we saw get Zoe Goss playing a charity game, um, where she got Brian Lara out, which was quite a big deal. Um, but I wouldn’t have seen Belinda Clark play very much other than the odd highlight and Catherine Fitzpatrick. I saw a little bit more cause she was, uh, she maybe, uh, cuz she was a fastball. They’d show her a little bit, but again, you just didn’t see them that much. Um, for me, I grew up with Victorian cricketers as my favourite cricketers. So when I was very young, Dean Jones was my favourite cricketer I probably moved on to Matthew Elliot and Ian Harvey.

Um, yeah, within Victoria and then I loved, uh, Muk armed. Obviously then Shane Moore sort of came on the back of that as another leg spinner. Um, and they were really my favourites, I suppose, growing up. Oh, Martin Crow was the other one who used to dress like Martin Crow when I played. Um, so those are probably, that’s probably the main that five or six, um, players that had the biggest impact on me.

And then maybe as I got a little bit older, Stephen Fleming was someone who probably had a big impact on me, which is hilarious. Cause I ended up working for him as an analyst years later. Wow.  and what are some of your favourite matches of all time? Now, these are matches. You can always revisit and you know, something that has always stayed with you.

Yeah. Um, there was an incredible series that had a lot of dull cricket and it was only two test matches. It was, it was the England S Lanka. I wanna say 2014, I think that’s right. Um, where both test matches came down to the last, over. Of the day and that just doesn’t happen in test match cricket. The first one was probably a little bit more entertaining than the second one.

The second one had some, certainly some turd moments in it, but to be at back-to-back test matches where they came down to the last day, uh, was absolutely incredible. I was obviously there for Ben Stokes at Headingly. I was actually in Headingly twice when we list in these be won in Headingly. That was quite a big moment.

Uh, Australia at, uh, Australia 2013, I think it was 2013 ashes, um, at, at, um, Trump bridge was an incredible match being at the game after Phil Hughes, um, uh, was killed, uh, in Adelaide oval was certainly a very big moment. Um, the first time that I really got into women’s cricket was the semi-final in the 2009 world T20. Um, I remember that game really vividly, um, and the way and the way that England plays battered, um, uh, Those are the games I’ve been to. Oh, well the 2017 women’s world cup final was incredible. Um, and so it was the semi-final actually the Hammond pre-cool game. Um, uh, I mean, I’ve been to a lot of cricket. I could literally continue to list games for you if you’d like, um, that’s the occupational hazard. I’ve seen a lot of shit cricket, but I’ve seen a lot of good cricket, right? 

Neha: And on the same line, what are your fondest memories of, you know, having gone to a stadium to watch the match live? And do you have favourite grounds? 

Jarrod: I certainly have favourite grounds. It depends on how good the food is. Um, and how easy it is for me to walk to the ground, which I like to do. Um, uh, I was at Afghanistan’s first 50 over world cup game. I was at Island’s first test match. Um, I went to a one-day in South Africa, Johannesburg at the Wanderers where it was one of the first times I’ve been in a ground where it isn’t the majority of the fans who were 35 years old.

Um, men, uh, there were so many women, there were so many kids there. It was an ethnically diverse from a, from a South African point of view, the crowd and the choir were singing. That was a magical, um, a magical place, uh, to be able to, uh, magical game, to be able to go to also, you know, all the world cup finals I’ve been able to go to. Um, women’s and men’s T20 and 50 overs um, the India, Pakistan world cup games, um, uh, AB you know, again on another level, uh, those sorts of things, but also just really cool things like a couple of years ago, I went and watched Hong Kong, Netherlands play, um, you know, being able to go to that kind of a game and see them and, and working with Scotland and being able to, you know, go to quite a few of the games with Scotland as well.

Um, grounds had the best fish Curry of my life in Eden guns one day, sadly, almost every time I’ve been back since they’ve done a. What I would call bad white people food. Oh. Um, when it’s just like cooking what you’re good at? Um, uh, yeah, I, I, I do, I, I’m very partial to the grounds I can walk to. So Trent bridge, if you’re staying in the right part of the city, for instance, um, Adelaide oval is another really good one that you can walk to mcg for other people.

Not for me. Um, I certainly want Birmingham is maybe pushing it a little bit. Um, so the grounds that are very central, um, in the middle of the city, um, I love the idea of, of, of walking to a, a stadium, um, in the morning, rather than, you know, being stuck in a taxi or a talk talk or a bus or whatever. Um, so those are the ones that probably stick in my mind that it’s not so much the ground.

Um, a lot of it is the facilities, right? It’s a good press box and all that sort of stuff. But my favorite, my favorite thing is really walking the grounds. I love staying, um, uh, at the SCG. I love staying on, um, God I forgot the road. Um, but the, um, uh, the road in Sydney, uh, just next to the ground, uh, you know, getting up in the morning, uh, getting a breakfast and then just walking across, uh, to the ground, any, any ground in the world that has that ability, um, you know, grounds like Pune and, um, uh, grounds like UA, you know, in the UAE or where you have to travel to even Cape town where you have to travel to the outside part of the ground, uh, that the city that’s not for me.

I wanna, I wanna be in the, in the center of town, feel the, I wanna feel the town and be able to walk there. Those are probably my favorite things. Everything else I would bore you about would be press box facilities, which I do very much have some strong opinions on, but no one’s gonna care. Fair enough. And, uh, I think what really fascinated me was the fact that you were born and brought up in Australia, but you later shifted to England. So why did you shift and you know, what prompted it? Could you also talk about your journalism career so far? Yeah. Um, I, I was a filmmaker and I had a film production company, Melbourne that wasn’t particularly going in the direction that we wanted it to go.

Uh, and so we, I would, I was writing a blog at the time and that blog got quite big and I was more than happy to stay in Australia. And I contacted everyone in Australia who covered cricket. I got one reply and that reply was, it was from kin peace, who basically said, um, I do run a cricket magazine, but basically I write every article in it.

So there’s no work for you here. Um, at the same time, people there was. Three magazines in England, all professional, or at least semi one of them was probably maybe a bit more semiprofessional or a couple of them were a bit more semiprofessional, but they, they were paying writers, uh, quick info, had a bunch of staff in, in the UK, which they didn’t in. I think they had two staff in Australia. Um, there was eight newspapers to write for where there’s really only two newspapers in Australia, there’s Murdoch and non-Murdoch. Um, there was an industry around cricket and the deputy editor of, of Western cricket is like, look, I can’t promise you you’ll have a good career, but there’s no one writing like you in cricket, if you come here, you will, at the very least get some kind of work. And so I kind of went on a bit of a whim really. I didn’t know how it would go. And I think I was very lucky in that because I like cricket and most people like their nation’s cricket. It meant that when I wrote this article would be about west Indies. This would be about Bangladesh. This would be about women’s cricket.

This would be about, um, S Lanka. This one will be about Australia. This one will be about India before me. That wasn’t a thing that people did. You did have the odd person who covered more than one jurisdiction. They might cover, you know, England and the west Indies or Australia and England or South Africa or England or, or whatever that may be. But there were no global writers because there was no business for it. Right. But the internet came at the same time that I was coming through. And, you know, very quickly it became clear that I was getting a lot of freelance work that other people weren’t getting because other people didn’t know anything about Chris GA when he came in originally and I’d been watching him for years and other people didn’t know about the problems with Bangladesh cricket, but I’d been following them for years.

And all those sorts of things just helped me, um, build a career and. Then the other side of it was cuz I was a filmmaker, we made videos and you gotta remember that YouTube started in 2005, I think that’s right. Um, someone will correct me in the comments. Um, I think it started in 2005, by 2008, I was putting tons of videos up of cricket.

Um, I don’t even know what the channels are now. They’re probably all dead. Um, uh, I would remix the, um, highlights packages that the ECB would put up, but with my own commentary, um, and we’d get hundreds of thousands of hits um before they took them down. Oh, um, uh, which was to be fair, well done to them for pick back in those days, you could get away with anything so well done for them for even noticing I was using their footage. But so, yeah, so, uh, and then when we went to the ashes in 10, 11, it was me and my friend Sam Collins. And he was like, I think we worked out there was gonna be something around 50 to 70 people writing on the ashes. How do you make a mark? And we’re like, let’s just make videos and see what that does. Um, and by doing that completely separated us from everyone in a good and bad way. Um, and CU him forward offered me a contract within two or three months of that, uh, ashes finishing, I think. Wow. 

Neha: And you did write about so many cricket-playing nations, but my question is, how do you just keep up with everything and how do you know so much? You’re like almost, you know, this person knows so much about the game and knowledge is like all in compassing. How do you just keep up with everything that’s happening? 

Jarrod: I think knowledge is helped by being old. Yeah. Like you’re talking about, I have been following world cricket since 1992. Right. That’s a long time. And when I’m passionate about something, I wanna know everything about it. So whether that be writing, whether that be filmmaking. Whether that be cricket, whether that be basketball, whatever it is, if I’m gonna learn something, I’m gonna learn everything I have. No, I remember Andrew Fidel, Fernando, once saying that he was actually shocked at the lack of skills I have even compared to a normal journalist, you know, I am, I can’t transcribe. Um, I don’t do shorthand. Um, you know, just, I remember the first time I wrote a news story for quick info. They literally said, what is this? Have you never seen a news story before? Um, so, but the things I’m good at, I would like to think that I’m as good at them as most people who have ever come before me, that is a really handy thing.

And so, you know, I think it’s a combination of, I always saw cricket in a different way than other people. I think that’s, I think it would be, you couldn’t argue that. Um, I have a huge intellectual curiosity. I think it gets, I think I get mistaken for being more intelligent than I am, but realistically it’s just, I wanna know everything. So I will try and find out as much as I can. Um, I do have a very deep understanding of cricket and I think I always did. Uh, and may, and maybe that, you know, being able to think about cricket better than being able to play, it probably limited my ability to actually be any good at cricket, but in this career has been a huge boom.

And then I just like to, I think I have, I think I have a very good, um, recall when it’s something I care. So if it’s something I don’t care about, honestly, I dunno if it was on your podcast or the last one I just did with someone, I couldn’t remember what day of the week it was. Um, but I can tell you about Graham and Pan’s a hundred against the west Indies when he was playing for Victoria in a tour game, in the nineties.

Right. And there’s something about that. Recall? I think the best sports writers have an incredible recall. That’s a really hard thing to do. I remember a former player. I was trying to get him into the business once and he said, look, the problem is I’ve played with everyone, right? You know, I’ve played with Coley and SWA and David Warner and Steve Smith and Ricky ping and, you know, own Morgan and whoever else this guy had played with, he listed them. It was incredible. The list and Karen Pollard and Chris Gayle, and he played with all these players. He said, well, I can’t remember anything. He said, so like, you hire me to do a media thing and someone asked me about Chris gal. I don’t have any stories. Cause I can’t remember them. If someone else says, what about this?

He’s like, oh yeah, that happened. And he tells you the whole story. And, and I think, you know, working with Rob SMIS and, um, George Dobel, um, w Thompson and these sorts of people that have this, you know, this incredible, you know, damn BS, another one, this incredible level of recall to be able to pick up this obscure thing.

And I remember, um, David Hops, the former Cricinfo editor once saying that he read the worst cricketer books in the world. So biographies, autobiographies, um, he, he read them when no one else would read them and they’re all almost dreadful, but so that he had two or three great stories to be able to tell every year that everyone else had missed.

And it’s that level of detail that really sets partisan sports writer, that level of fanaticism. Analysis. It’s why my sports writing course is called fans with laptops, which is also to take the piss out of English, uh, cricket or English, sports media, who thought they weren’t real journalists. Um, when it turns out that the fans with laptops are probably the better sports journalists than the actual traditional people who turn up at the game and transcribe what has happened in lead, the fans with laptops are the ones who wanna make sure what they’re writing is correct that have that passion that drives them.

And I think the majority of the best sports writers I’ve come across have that. And I think that that’s a luck thing, right? So, George, George Dobel has a, well, he would say a photographic memory. I’m gonna say a semi photographic memory, but he has an absolutely brilliant memory, um, that you, I don’t, I don’t believe you can teach photographic memory.

Maybe you can, you know, I don’t believe you can teach the levels of fanaticism that me and some other sports writers have to other people. And so there are things that I can help you to make you better at your job. There are things I can help you to make you a good sports writer. There are things I can help you to make you have a career, but to get to that sort of level, that I would hope that I’m on. And that many of the people who I’ve mentioned are on it really does take this inner passion and some weird inner skills that don’t necessarily come across. As you know, D Daniel Norcross used to score hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cricket games that didn’t happen like dice games and all those sorts of things that work and, and that helped him work, work out, run rates required and all that sort of stuff.

That mean as a cricket commentator, he can go. He can literally, he told me a story recently of Alastair Cook’s jaw-dropping when Alistair Cook tried to pass over the score, the, um, the score sheet. Dan Norcross, Dan Norcross went through the entire art scorecard of a team without anything in front of him. He just knew it. Wow. Those sorts of things that some of us have, um, that we had as kids. And the difference is now that we’re channeling them and using them, um, to make mediocre money in sports media. I mean, uh, you know, besides the, uh, mentioned qualities, you also write so consistently in your newsletter and for various other publications.

Neha: Now, could you also delve into your writing processes and in general, what keeps you motivated on a daily basis? 

Jarrod: I’m a writer. So there isn’t a day of my life. I don’t write. And by that, I mean, I might not always write, but I might plan to write, or I might edit whatever, but there isn’t a day. Don’t do that. And I remember, I remember mark Nicholas coming to me once and he’d had this conversation with GD and hag, and he said, you won’t believe this, Jared, but Gideon writes every day. And I was like, yeah. And he looked at me and went, oh my God, you do too. And I went, yes, every day, even when I was doing analysis for cricket teams, I wrote every day, my notes were in writing form rather than note form, if that makes sense.

And, Mark Nicholas is a writer. He’s written a couple of books. I think of the top of my head. He obviously writes quite regularly for quick info and probably, you know, keeps he write for other people. But my right is not mark. Nicholas is not a writer. Right. It’s not in his blood. He doesn’t get kept up all night. The way that people like me and Gideon Hague might. Right. Where if we don’t get up at 2:00 AM to write that thing, we’re not gonna sleep. Right. And that is the level of writer that I’m on. So when you say I write consistently, that’s just the tip of the, that’s just the bits you see. You know, that’s not including the unpublished novels that I, you know, I have 90% finished and haven’t quite finished.

And the mini screenplays I’ve written over the years and the, the sitcom scripts and, you know, the semi bio autobiographical stuff that I’ve written that I’ve never had published. And, um, I’m writing all the time. So that, to me, it’s not, to me, writing is not hard work there. There’s a few different people. I think a lot of people get very, there are a lot of writers who hate writing, right? And that’s a huge percentage of writers that has never been my problem. I love writing. I’d much rather write than talk to humans, um, or leave my house. Um, you know, my wife gets frustrated. We go on holiday and I take my laptop and I’m like, but this it, I wanna, I’m gonna be able to write something.

This is, this is my fun time. Right. Kids are in. I’m not at home. I don’t have to do the laundry or, you know, clean the house I can write. Um, and so I think that’s very much part of that. My writing process massively varies and it varies more now that a lot of my work is in podcasts and videos. Um, I think traditionally, what I used to do is come up with a great idea and write it out in a stream of consciousness.

And while that is a, I think that gives occasionally brilliant results, but it’s not regularly consistent writing. And it would frustrate me that I couldn’t always write it the way I want. And I, what I did with my writing course that I mentioned before with, with fans with laptops is that came out of me, trying to work out how to become a better writer consistently. And what I did was I really deconstructed my writing. And so now it’s much more, what would you say it’s much more, um, Structure is probably the wrong way of putting it, but I know why it’s structured the way it is now, whereas before it would be structured the way it is, because it would come out of me in a GU in, in a big chunk.

Now I know, so I, my writing course really came out of a big fear that I had that in around 20 14, 20 15, I got a lot of attention and a lot of people were saying a lot of good things, but I had this fear that one day I would stop writing good, cuz I didn’t know why I was writing. Good. So I went and learnt why I was writing. Good. So now I can look at a story and I might not pick the exact right best way to write it. And I might not always get the time to write it the way I want to, but I can pick the best two or three best ways to write it and I can put it together. And I can, from a narrative point of view, from a structure point of view, the narrative was always my big strength that I had over other writers structure has become my second big strength.

And my third big strength is I write quicker than other people. So I can write, I can write 2000 words in two hours without having anything in front of me beforehand. Um, that’s not a normal human thing. There’s only one other person in cricket writing that I’m aware of. He can do that. The great Chris stocks, um, unfortunately, he typed so heavily. He has to replace his keyboard all the time, but it’s not a normal thing to be able to do that from scratch the way that me and him can. Um, those are three huge advantages, which means that I can structure and work on the narrative far longer than anyone else. Because I know that when I write, I’m gonna write, you know, there are days when I’ve written 13,000 words in a day.

Um, and that’s not a normal thing for even a professional writer to be able to do so knowing where things should go, why they should go there, why I’ve written them, why it’s wrong is, um, is really important to me. But sometimes it’s just like, I’ve got an idea and I sit down and it just comes out. I might reshape it a little bit more than I used to when I was younger, but sometimes that just happens. And other times I’ve got a piece up on my, on my, um, I’ve got, one thing I do is I do a lot of visual representations, so I’ve got apps, um, that allow me to do storyboards, um, uh, by hand on my, on my iPad. And I’ve also got my all behind you or it’s no good to your podcast listeners, but all behind my camera.

So if you’ve ever seen one of my YouTube videos, the other side is a whiteboard wall. Um, and on that at the moment is a piece that I’ve basically planned. I reckon, based on my plan, it would take me an hour and a half to write it. Um, unless the stats get tricky or I go down a rabbit hole, which sometimes happens because it’s basically, I went up to the whiteboard when it was all fresh in my head and write it, but I don’t ever follow one process. I have lots of different processes for different kinds of pieces, but also I’m different at different times. So the piece comes to me differently. Um, uh, you know, uh, and so it comes out of me differently, if that makes sense, that made it sound weirdly sexual, but I didn’t mean it that way, but you know, they come sometimes the piece just come to you in a certain way, and it’s better to write them as they come to you. And other times it’s like, Nope, I wanna step back. And I wanna really think about this, right? 

Neha: But how do you tackle the phases when you have writer’s block or you just have so much in your mind, or you’re like deeply attached to the outcome of the match? How do you just put that into words? How do you tackle that?

Jarrod: I don’t believe in writer’s block. I tell you why this might be a sports writer’s thing, but if writer’s block was a real thing, wouldn’t newspapers be empty sometimes thicker. Yeah. There’s no, it’s, it’s it’s I think from a creativity point, I think there are sometimes where my creativity, well dries. I could still write though, but I do know I don’t get as much now. I think I’m much better at managing my creativity. There was certainly a big period. I wanna say from maybe 2014 to 20 17, 20 18, where sometimes in the middle of a week I would just stop writing. And I would watch a TV. The, from beginning to end took me if it takes me a day was, you know, it takes me two days, whatever I needed to do that.

Um, to be honest, physical fitness has probably replaced a lot of that. I do a lot of working out and that probably helps me a lot now, but being able to do that certainly helps, but it’s a, it’s a job, right? I need to be able to write eight hours a day or I won’t get paid. Like I don’t, I understand what you’re saying, but you have to understand. It’s I think writer’s block comes from people who are either indulged because they get paid too much. Right. Um, or it comes from people who are semiprofessional or even amateur. You can’t have writer’s block if it’s your job, if you are, if I’m, if I’m, if I’m working as a mechanic, I can’t, can’t suddenly go in there and go guys. I just don’t know. I’ve just got this block. Well, you’re fired at the end of your job. There are days when it’s harder to write. There’s absolutely no doubt about that, but you have to learn how to manage that. In fact, I think writers’ block is just writing on days when it’s harder to write rather than actually having a block.

Um, I think David Hops, I mentioned him before, uh, you know, he, he was my editor. I think there was a point in my career where I wanted every piece to be the absolute best piece possible. And Hopsy had to sort of take me aside and go, sometimes you just have to write a shit piece. Right. And he wasn’t saying that in a bad way. Right? It’s a bit like what you’d say to a batter of like, you wanna play your best innings. Right? You wanna play, I wanna be able to play my cover drive and flick off my pads. When the short ball comes, smash it, sometimes you can’t do that. And your 30, your scratchy, 35 is more important than the polished 120 the following day when it doesn’t matter or the following game when it doesn’t matter.

And I think from a, I think from a writing perspective, it’s very similar. There are some days when I just have to get the article up. Yes. Could I spend another four hours and make it 5% better? Yes. Is it worth my time? All right. Is it worth it? Is this piece gonna be remembered? Or have I got the facts right? In this piece. So it doesn’t matter that it’s not as literary, you know, literary as I want it to be, or as visual as I want it to be, or as, um, emotional or doesn’t have an Emma to it. Right? No, but am I gonna spend the next seven hours doing that when I’m really fucking tired? And I, I had to get up at 4:00 AM to get a train from Mohali to Delhi

I then had to get a took, took from one side of Delhi to the other, and it was stinking hot and I couldn’t breathe. Um, and I’ve been working nonstop for the last 12 days, writing between, you know, 1,003 thousand words a day. The best thing I can do right now is just to go, that’s not a great piece. And I know it’s not a great piece and I know why it’s not a great piece and I’m gonna try harder next time to make sure this doesn’t happen. I’m gonna make sure there’s a system in place. So this doesn’t happen. That’s being a professional, right? 

Neha: I mean, you are a very polished writer and you did come into prominence first as the founder of the cricket with, uh, balls blog. Now, how much did you enjoy writing the blog? How’s the experience of the same? And did you ever think, you know, that you’d get that fame and you know, the love that you get for writing? 

Jarrod: I always thought I’d be a writer. So I didn’t think I was very good at anything else for being honest. So I figured that I was gonna be a writer. Um, you daydream about what that means, you know, I always thought, I suppose, as I got older, I thought writing sitcoms would be cool, but sitcom writers aren’t particularly famous, you know, down harm and aside.

Um, I don’t think there are that many celebrity sitcom writers, maybe more so now with Twitter, cuz we can see them running jokes in real-time, but even so, there aren’t many celebrity sitcom writers, so I never really thought of having that kind of following. Um, or movie scripts, and even with movie scripts, you got what Tarantino. So, um, a couple of others, there really aren’t that many famous screenwriters. That’s not what screenwriters and TV writers are, are made for. Right. So I probably didn’t think about it in the same way that perhaps I would have. Then you, you do cricket with balls and it wasn’t my first blog. So I’d written other blogs before.

Um, very quickly. There’s a lot of people following me very quickly. I’m the biggest cricket blog in the world. And perhaps the biggest cricket blog that had been up until that point. Well, still to this point, really, uh, cuz blogs kind of died after that point. But, um, but I’m, my writing was quite developed. My cricket writing wasn’t. My understanding of what I was doing was very low. I was writing in character because I never expected anyone to read any of this. So I was writing a book at the same time when I started the blog. And I just used the character from the book to write the blog, which, you know, leads to a lot of regrettable things.

I’ve probably written, um, that I couldn’t defend, cuz it wasn’t even me saying them. It was this character, but I knew it was a character and hardcore fans that the blog knew it was a character. I think some of them, um, but the rest of the world didn’t know so they were probably coming on going what this guy, what, who writes that? Right. Um, so it was weird. It was weird writing with no rules to an audience who loved it. But what it really did was it kept me at the keyboard and I. I can’t, I think this is right. I think it was 3 million words in two years, even if I wasn’t a very good writer, I would like to think that that would’ve allowed me to, we don’t need the second pair of headphones on.

Um, I think that would’ve, um, allowed me to, um, become a much better writer. What it did was really allow me to experiment and I never wanted to be a writer like other sports writers. I didn’t particularly like sports writing that much. Uh, and so I didn’t wanna be that kind of writer. And so with that, that allowed me to find who I was as a writer, experiment, develop, work out what audiences liked, work out, what audiences didn’t like most importantly, work out what I like to write. Um, and I do the pieces that I probably got famous for the sort of short, angry yell pieces on credible balls. Wasn’t what I liked to. I like to write longer features and delve into things and, you know, writing a blog for 2007. When did I start with cricket info? 2011. So writing a blog for four years with a little bit of magazine writing and freelance writing around that just allowed me to become a writer.

I wanted to be in a way that most writers don’t get that chance. Um, and I created a lot of things that other cricket writers followed, which was great, but I also broadly brought a lot of bad habits that shouldn’t have existed and, you know, probably ruined some careers of people that probably the, the biggest problem for that I always noticed is that people would follow the wrong thing.

All right. So they would, they’d be like, oh, Jarrod’s writing is good because of the jokes. No, it’s not a joke. Jarrod’s good because of the swearing. It’s not the swearing. Jarrod’s good because of the structure. No, it’s not the structure. The things that you need to learn are the narrative, which is really important. The passion. And gaining the knowledge and testing the knowledge. And I think too many people sort of copied the shit, bits of me, not the better bits. Um, but luckily for me, I copied the better bits of me, if that makes sense.  

Neha: You’re such an all-rounder, you’ve done so many commentary students and everything. So could you also reflect on these, uh, commentary stints and how much do you enjoy commentary in recent times? 

Jarrod: You know, do you think the quality is up there or has it like dipped massively? My commentary is probably dipped massively. Um, yeah, the commentary was interesting for me. I never dreamed of doing commentary. In fact, if I never dreamed of being a cricket writer or doing cricket commentary, the only dream I ever had when I was young was weirdly being an analyst and that job didn’t exist, but that was my recurring dream. Um, I had this conversation with Trevor Holmes who was like the chairman of selectors for the Australian team.

Once, you know, there was a shield game on and I, he asked me a question and I started giving him all this information about. Cover drives and everything. And to my, I don’t know, where was it? 15, 16, 17 years, old years. He was really listening to every word, probably. He was like, oh, well, this kid shut up. Um, but that was the job I wanted. So I never really thought about that. And I didn’t think about cricket commentary really until, uh, test match sofa started and I realized you could commentate from home. So the first time that they did it, I was like, I don’t know these people. And I don’t really wanna go hang around with a bunch of people. I don’t know. So I’m just gonna commentate on my own. So I literally did all-day sessions of test matches on my own, on my computer. And people really liked it, but it was exhausting. Mm-hmm and also meant I couldn’t write during the day. And the majority of the people who were on my blog wanted me to write.

Um, and so you commentate for seven hours straight and then write physically is draining. So when the test match sofa asked me to come on board, I came on board and I did. What was that? That was 2009 ashes. So I did 2009, 10 South Africa. I did whatever else they did in 2000 and for the next year. And I probably finished up sometime after the world cup. So I probably did anywhere between 75 at 150 commentary stints, but I kind of figured that’s where it finished. I didn’t see an opening.

I did a trivia night with Jim Maxwell, um, in Australia, sorry, in England where it was me, him and a guy from neighbours. Do you know what neighbours is? So neighbours is like this famous Australian. So opera that is only famous in England  oh, cooking. Literally, no one in Australia cares about it, but it was massive in England. And so like is star off neighbours? Is there just before we start this Tribune, it’s like Australia versus England Ashe’s trivia.  uh, 2013. It must have been. And I hadn’t done much commentary for a long time at this point. And just before we go to air, this guy from neighbours leans into me and goes, mate, I don’t know much about, um, cricket.

I’m like, oh, okay.  and, and then, then two seconds later, Jim Maxwell leans in and goes, just so you know, I’ve got a terrible brain for cricket trivia and I’m like, and I’m looking at the other side. The other side was Simon Hughes. Who’s written histories on cricket, Mark Butcher. Who’s got a really good memory when he, when he cares and miles J who’s a proper cricket nerd and I’m like, oh shit, I’ve gotta go up against the three of them on my own. Now. And we lost because Jim Maxwell, um, answered a question that I knew the answer to over the top of me. And if you go back and listen to that broadcast, it is literally, I must have answered 85% of the questions right for our side. And you could see, I could sense Jim Maxwell, who didn’t know, who never met me before that day, sort of turning around, going, who is this guy?

Right. And it was all broadcasting the BBC. So it was a big deal. And, and Jim sort of came up to me afterwards and said, look, I’m gonna retire. Eventually, would you be interested in coming and commentating for ABC and maybe eventually taking over from me? And I was like, what? Um, yes, Jim Maxwell, that sounds like a dream job. Um, of course, it wasn’t really, until that happened, that I started thinking more about commentary. Um, so they got me to do Australia, uh, Australia’s tour of South Africa in 20 13, 14. Yeah. Yeah, 20 13, 14. I can’t remember if I did stuff for ABC in 2013 as well, or yeah, I must have done some staff, um, as well.

And then I did 2014 and 201515. I did a, a little bit of ABC again, around that time. Uh, talk sport, got the rights to the, the IPL. Yeah. So we would commentate the IPL from London. Um, and you know, the gorilla cricket stuff taught me some things ABC. I had a few different roles on ABC. What really happened though? Was that through gorilla, not gorilla cricket. I never commentated on gorilla cricket. Um, through test match so far through talk sport through ABC, I kind of did three different. I did a little bit of analysis for ABC, although not that much, but I also did co commentary like a former player would, which is quite a big deal cuz usually only former players do that.

Um, and then I did, um, calling in the IPL, which meant that I sort of learnt all the different skills of cricket commentary at once. And it made me listen to cricket commentary a lot different than even someone like Dan Norcross or John Norman or Hasha Boley would cuz most of them do one job suddenly I had to learn all these different skills. And so that was a big thing. And then when I, and then when I went back to talk sport and they got the rights, they got me to be like the on air analyst completely, again, I’m learning different things, but then they’re like, oh, now we need you to be co commentated cuz we’re down a commentator, then it’d be like T20s and now I’m commentating.

And I think, I think I’m fair. I think it’s fair to say. I’m the only person in the world who does those three jobs on air regularly for international cricket anyway, domestic cricket and T 20 cricket might be slightly different. And I think it made me look at. I was always very interested in the radio product of commentary because that I was, I always hated, I, I was probably one of the first people who turned against channel nine and ABC was so good that I focused a lot on that. So I think there was a big part of me that sort of took that and went with it. Then the other thing was that now I’m doing all these different jobs, I’m thinking about commentary quite differently. So I ended up consulting on the, the rebrand and the, the Ji of ABC commentary. Um, so rather than becoming Jim Maxwell, I kind of had a bigger job in some ways, but then ended up with no job with ABC.

And that didn’t really work out brilliantly for me, but they did change their commentary afterwards. So I, it was a small win and then talk sport, knowing I’d done that for ABC got me to come in, you know, and talk sport have now won a bunch of awards for their cricket commentary. Um, and so. I’m really passionate about it because I know one thing I’ve really learned is just how much it’s great to write great pieces. The commentary has an ability to impart so much information to people. Um, cuz so many people don’t read that much. They may, maybe they read their local newspaper, right? They don’t read quick info or quick buzz or bloggers or anything like that when you’re on air, the ability to correct wrongs and share more information and um, shine a light on plays that don’t get, um, shot on normally is incredible. Um, and so I’ve really, really enjoyed that over the years. Um, and I’ve come to enjoy it far more than I probably did when I started. And it was just another thing that I did cuz people thought I was good. Right. And you did talk about how, you know, you wanted to be an analyst when it wasn’t even a thing.

Neha: So how is it like, you know, working as an analyst for the St. Lucia stars and later working with the Scotland men’s team, like how, how are those experiences like? 

Jarrod: Yeah, I did, I, I had three major jobs. I had Melbourne stars as well. Ah, um, and then I’ve done consultancy work and worked with players and captains and coaches and general managers and all sorts of things. So I’ve worked with a lot of teams, over many different kinds of roles. Um, but the biggest three where I’ve been the most public have been the three that, that we mentioned there. Look, it’s terrifying because a lot of being an analyst is going, oh, it’s not 50 50, it’s 60 40. So if you do this, you’re more likely than not to be successful.

It still means the 40% could happen. So I played a club game the other day. I was telling you before. And a couple of the bowlers came up to me for help. And I said to one bowler, I would try this and he gets hit for six and the next over another bowler asked me for help. And I said, I would try this. And he bowls him. Right. I was right both times, but I also could have been wrong both times. And now I get seen as a genius. If I would’ve got two wickets. And I get seen as that an idiot, if I get here for two, six S and yet what I was trying to do in both situations was put the best possible situation for the bowler there.

And that’s a terrifying thing because you can’t predict the future. All you can do is try and do that. Then you have situations where you have players, who you have written in my case, that you’ve written about. They may not agree with what you’ve written about them, and now you’re giving them advice. That’s awkward. I have, you know, various relationships with players, with people throughout cricket, and now you’re in a different job. You’re on the other side, they’re treating you differently. In good and bad ways. So it’s, it’s a kind of terrifying yet exhilarating job. I find you’re completely out of control even when you’ve done all the work that you can do, um, to be in control there aren’t that I don’t feel that way with writing.

I feel like when I write something, I can control the final product. It may not be what I want it to be for many different reasons, but I can control that final product. I think that that is not the case. Um, when you look at, um, uh, being an analyst and there’s some excite, there’s exciting parts of that, also, it matters more, remember talking to another writer, going the exhilaration of being with a game. Can’t be, you know, with a team when they’re playing a game, can’t be compared to writing a piece. And this guy’s like, oh no, no, you know, I’ve got a deadline and I’ve gotta write this piece and it’s for a paper of record. And I was like, yeah, I’ve done all that. That’s not the same as getting a team qualified for a world cup or getting a team from last to the final or getting a team so far ahead of a game. And then watching that all fall apart while you can’t do anything about it, that is just a complete, another level that it’s really hard to explain to someone who hasn’t done it. 

Neha: You’ve done so many roles as well. And you have this venture called 99.94 DM. Could you talk more about that for our listeners?

Jarrod: Yeah. So 99.94 is it came out of me working cricket for a very long time. And me being very frustrated with cricket media and what it could be and what it is. And I think that the longer that I have worked in cricket, the more things I have seen that are being missed that I think can be covered. So I. I think cricket teams are not covered correctly. I think cricket can be covered, correct. Uh, okay. As a general, but not the cricket teams directly. I think there are, I don’t think there is enough commentary, especially radio commentary available for cricket games. I don’t think there is enough podcasts. I don’t think there’s enough analysis of cricketers and cricket teams directly.

The 99.94 is really designed as much as anything to become that. Uh, so that in the best case scenario, 24 hours a day, you can have the 99.94 app open and be listening to a game. And when that game finishes, you’ve got a great podcast between two smart people. And when that podcast finishes, we have another game and then we have three more podcasts and then we have another game and it’s just this constant stream of intelligent people analyzing and discussing cricket. And, you know, we want it to be Cricket’s conversation. There will be elements of video. There’ll be elements of writing as well, but the real heart of it for us is we believe that cricket is a game that people talk about. And I think that’s always been Cricket’s great strength. I don’t think that is being used for cricket as well as it could be.

And so we know there are great conversations to be had in cricket and great commentary to be had in cricket that isn’t currently being had. And so 99.94 is basically going to hopefully fill that marketplace, right. That is a very, uh, noble venture and really excited to see how that, uh, shapes up, uh, talking about, you know, your documentary, uh, journey.

Neha: Now, along with Sam Collins, you’ve, uh, co-directed and quote it in the documentary film death of a gentleman that largely talks about, uh, the influence that the big three has in cricket. Now, according to, you know, how big of an influence does the big three feel on cricket?

Jarrod: Yeah, it suppresses the other nations. Um, well the big three that we’re talking about at the time, they basically wrote a document on how to take over the game. So that was a pretty big deal. Um, their big three is no longer together. It should be said the big three, um, are all upset with each other and, uh, have separated, but they are the three biggest cricket nations and India on its own is a big one. Um, and England and Australia certainly have a big say, uh, in the game as well, but the other, the other boards have allowed this to happen. Uh, they could have fought for better governance. They could have called India’s bluff. A lot of this comes down to the fact that they’re all afraid that India will never be two of them again.

Okay. Um, why, if you all decide to stand up to India at the one time? That means India’s not playing international cricket anymore. And if India’s not playing international cricket anymore, and you are running the BCCI think there’s gonna be a lot of angry Indians coming to you and going, we like the IPL and we’d like to continue the IPL, but we also want India to beat Pakistan to the world cup. Right? I think there are ways that you could have put pressure back on the big three specifically, uh, that wasn’t done. And I think let’s call them the small seven. I think they were, they were weak. I think they were stupid. I think they were selfish and utterly clueless and they allowed this to happen.

Now, there are some things that you can’t get past. The fact that India creates so much wealth for cricket and that they’re gonna have the biggest say anyway, that doesn’t mean that you don’t unionize around them. If the small seven all got together and agreed on what was best for cricket, big three in a weird position, then do they break off? Do they go on their own? Let’s say India, doesn’t play in the next world cup. Right? And they’ve just decided to leave because they’re not happy. The way that cricket is being run the world cup’s still gonna be worth a lot of money. People say that India is worth between seven and 80% of Cricket’s wealth, right?

20% of the world cup is still a lot of money. 30%, 40%, and 50% of the world cup is still worth a lot of money. That’s where the other boards have got themselves to blame. And I’m more than happy to when the big three were trying to take the game over on their own, more than happy to stick the booth in what they did was disgusting. It was terrible. And would’ve been utterly ruined international cricket, far more than the franchises, uh, are going to eventually ruin it.

But the small boards have had ample opportunities to fix this. And they don’t do it because ultimately they choose the easiest option, which is sucking up to India or sucking up to England, or occasionally sucking up to Australia over there doing the right thing. Um, and putting themselves, we could have a proper world test championship with the right, all sold in a great package that would make a bunch of money for test cricket, but west Indies and Sri Lanka didn’t want to be in a position where they get relegated. Wouldn’t be in division one. You don’t get to be in division one because someone said, you’re good enough to play cricket in 1898 or 1930, or, you know, 1955. You’re good enough to play division one in 10th cricket, cuz you’re consistently one of the best teams. And we’ve set up this system where we think once we’re in, we should never lose anything. And that is what is holding cricket. Absolutely. And a lot to pond it on, you know, because the big three do have that influence. 

Neha: And you’ve also written Australian autopsy, the go details of how England dissected Australia, uh, you know, detailing the 2010/11 Ashes series. Now, how closely do you follow Ashes? I mean, it’s an obvious question. And what prompted you to write this book and write this particular book?

Jarrod:  I’ve actually written about five books. So that must have been my third book. Um, I wrote that book because it was my first time as a professional. I was getting sent to every day of a major tour. Um, I’m obviously an Australian who covers cricket in England, so the ashes are an occupational hazard for me. Uh, but I was really interested in covering an entire series for give-to-end. From my perspective. I didn’t think anyone like me had ever written a book like that before sort of an outsider on the inside at a certain point.

Um, I ended up being a really important series. I think the way that England played their, their cricket. Um, I think it was quite clear that this was on its on its way. Um, and yeah, I think, I think I, I, I really wanted to write, I suppose the sort of cricket books I’d read a lot when I was growing up with those sort of travel log cricket books. And I wanted to try my hand at it. I don’t re I, I don’t remember weirdly enough. I wrote what I thought was the worst book before that. And I think reviews wise and, um, everything else, the other book is a lot more popular, but I thought this was a much better book, but people didn’t quite gravitate to this book the way that I thought they should have, uh, well, the way that I would’ve hoped anyway.

Um, but yeah, I just, I think. As a writer, it was like an opportunity to cover an entire ashes from beginning to end. We even went, did I get the warm-up games? No, I know it was next year. Next time I went to the warm-up games, but, you know, being travelling around, uh, what it was like, uh, what it was like coming back home as an Australian, all that sort of stuff. I just thought it was an interesting topic and that I could write a decent book on it. 

Neha: Right. And talking about books, you’ve also written ‘Test Cricket: The Unauthorized Biography’ in 2016, which is another fabulous book. Is the longest format of the game, your favorite format? And are you a purist? 

Jarrod: Yeah, I’m a purist. But when I say I’m a purist, I don’t mean that I only like test cricket. Cause when people say that there was cricket before there was test cricket, first class cricket is incredible. Um, I, yeah, so I’m a purist in that I love cricket. To me, the format is less important than the game itself, because we don’t know that test cricket will last forever because we only know it’s been around for, you know, 120, 130 years.

Right. Wait, what year are we in 2022? I need to update that my master there, but, um, I think it’s very important to know that cricket, any cricket can be beautiful. And I, so I’m not a purist in that perspec from that perspective. I, if you have a read of that book, it’s not just about test cricket. There’s a lot about, especially when I wrote about women’s cricket. And when I wrote about the associate nations, they’re not test nations. I should say the women’s women’s are obviously, but they don’t play a lot of test cricket. So I wanted that to, I thought that there’d been some very good books about their history of cricket, but they’d been written very early in Cricket’s history. I felt like there hadn’t been a book that had told your wife, Zimbabwe was great. Why island was great? You know, why all these different parts of, you know, away Sri Lanka was great. Why Pakistan’s resurgence in the eighties was important. Why new Zealand’s getting good was all these sorts of little things. I think test cricket history sort of stops in around 1960 and the rest you, what you get the rest of it is nostalgia porn about how good the west Indies were or how good Australia were, or the 83 world cup or whatever your, your thing is.

And what I really wanted to do is right about everything right up until Pakistan being taken away from the game, the rise of women’s cricket. And I also wanted to write it in a particular kind of way, which was that in some ways, test cricket or sorry, in some ways cricket itself is this pure, beautiful thing. And humans keep trying to ruin it. And I wanted to show. That cricket had managed to fight its way through the cracks when it probably shouldn’t have, when it shouldn’t really exist in modern society, it’s managed to continue to because the sport itself is so great. That’s the story that I wanted to tell of test cricket, um, and cricket in general, really. And that’s what I did. 

Neha: Talking about how cricket has been tweaked, we have seen how ODIs and T20Is are a big thing now, and there’s, this, this goes about how ODIs are kind of becoming irrelevant and, you know, even Bilateral series don’t make as much sense. Now, according to you are ODIs are becoming irrelevant and in the future, we might not see it exist?

Jarrod: I thought ODIs are irrelevant in 1996 and here we are. Um, they make a lot of money for TV companies. And when TV companies were the major, um, part of cricket we kept having one day is, uh, now. We have streaming platforms and we have T 20 cricket. So they’re less relevant. We shouldn’t have bilateral cricket outside of friendly and maybe a couple of key marque series. Bilaterals is a stupid idea. It’s why cricket doesn’t make as much money as it should. It’s why players from Bangladesh get paid pits. Well, actually Bangla displays get paid. Okay. But plays from New Zealand and Western cities get paid to pits compared to players from, you know, England and India and Australia. Um, there are many ways that we can fix that up by having a league pay structure and all these sorts of things. So I don’t care about bilaterals as far as I’m concerned, T 20 internationals and, uh, T 20 and one day internationals should be Friendlys played before world cups. I, I don’t really care that much about them in any other sense.

There’s too much cricket being played. If they disappeared, I wouldn’t wouldn’t care that much coming into world cups. It’s great to work out who your best team is and, uh, work out how things work. Um, We could have great. We could go back to the old days of having little, you know, quad quadrangular series, where every day, you know, a different team plays a different team, you know, 10 straight one day is being played.

Um, everyone gets different chances to play. Um, that would be great preparation for a world cup. There are things that we can do instead, we play these bilateral series that kind of fade into nothingness, right. And even, you know, with the draft of the FTP, that’s out, uh, it came under the scanner because, you know, there’s just an increase in the number of matches. There’s a jam packed schedule. Do you think a lot of cricket is being played at the moment and viewer burnout is an actual thing. And going ahead, will we see a lot of retirements too? Like people going to Ben Stoks way we’ve already had that people have been reti retiring by formats for decades now. Um, so that’s already, that’s always happened and we might get more of it.

Um, there’s always been too much cricket. In places like England, um, specifically, um, there’s probably been too much cricket internationally since year 2000. There’s not too much. Women’s cricket. There’s not too much disability cricket. There’s not too much associate cricket, certainly too much. Men’s cricket at the major at the major end look, no one’s in charge of the game, so no one’s around to stop it. And so people are just gonna keep playing more and more cricket because it makes them money at the board level and players will play and smart players will try and manage that best they can. Right. I mean, cricket also has this claim of being a global sport, but although we just have like eight proper test, you know, uh, playing nations now, how do you think the ICC can actually make it an inclusive space for the associate nations and, you know, get them also to the mainstream?

I think the last 20 years we’ve had the biggest boom we’ve ever had in associate. Um, we’ve had the Thai women’s team at the, at the world cup. We had the Ja Japanese team in the under 19 world cup. Uh, we have the Brazilian women improving. We have Nepal, we have Afghanistan and Namibia and the men’s, um, Papua new Guinea. Uh, we have island as a test playing nation. We have Afghanistan as it playing nation. We probably have Scotland, Nepal, um, Netherlands, not too far behind, uh, it’s happening, but the ICC is not in charge of anything. Right. They’re not actually in charge of world cricket, so they can’t make anything happen. Ireland have test playing status. They don’t play tests. So what does that do? All right. So that’s, that would be my answer to. Right. And let’s take the discussion forward to women’s cricket. Now you said you do follow women’s cricket closely, according to you, how has women’s cricket evolved? I’m not looking at a particular time span, so feel free to think of anything, but how do you think it has, uh, evolved? So you were talking about the games we were at before, uh, that I remembered. So in the 2009 world cup, I watched England versus, uh, England versus Australia and the semifinal. And then last year I went to a hundred game and that’s domestic game. And the quality of that hundred game was nearly double. What I saw in that world cup semifinal. I’ve never seen any sport in the world move as quickly. Um, as I’ve seen women’s cricket move in the last 15 years. Um, so there’s nothing but good signs there. The professionalism is getting better and better. We obviously still have problems, uh, you know, certain societies within cricket see women differently.

Right. I don’t, I don’t think I need to tell you that. Um, you know, I’ve just done a podcast on, uh, uh, women’s cricket and Pakistan. It’s tough. Um, and so there’s, there’s no doubt that that’s a problem, getting money, getting grounds, getting access, pleasing your parents, pleasing your husbands in some situations, pleasing your wives and other situations.

Um, there’s huge problems when it comes to William’s cricket, but the growth and the way that it’s moved in the last 15 years, as I said, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. And so it would be impossible to sit here and be negative about something that 15 years ago was dreary and dreary. And Dulan white, I suppose, is another way of putting it. It was a white middle class sport 15 years ago. And it’s not that anymore. It is moving at a rapid rate. And, um, uh, I, I think it’s incredibly exciting. 

Neha: Right. And, you know, talking about the other things, like, you know, women’s IPL, I feel, uh, there have been a lot of calls to have this right now. Do you think this is the way to go ahead for women’s cricket and most importantly, even the Indian game, and there’s also been some concerns on the financial feasibility of the same. So how do you look at it? 

Jarrod: The financial feasibility of a women’s IPL yeah, like when it be self-sustaining model like the IPL, you know, when it starts off, well, the IPL wasn’t self-sustaining um, so the, the team team owners lost money for years at the start of the IPL. Right? So almost, I’m not sure there’s any franchises in the world that would start a league that’s that’s that self-sustaining do, do they not advertise women’s products in India?

It’s not as great, I guess. Well, you don’t have, you don’t have. Um, women’s clothing brands that are sold in India? You don’t have makeup? Do I need to keep going? Are there other things that women buy that men don’t buy? I mean, there has been this reluctance from the BCCs end, right? Because they don’t really market women’s cricket. It that well, but what is, but you see what I’m saying? When you are saying it, is it self-sustaining and I’m saying 50% of the population are out there. You, how many million people do you really need to watch a game to make it self-sustaining? Not much right now.

Let’s say we get, let’s say it gets a million people to watch per game on TV telling me I can’t make money off that per game. 20 games, 30 games, 40 games, 50 games. That’s 50 million people. You’re now telling me that all those advertisers that for years have been aiming their products at. Have a women’s game that they can a, a whole new line of products are that you’re a women’s sports brand in India, and you don’t wanna be involved with the women’s IPL. And you’re asking me if it’s sustainable now forget the fact that it needs to be sustainable. Doesn’t need to be sustainable for the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years, right? Because the owners will pay for it to start with, right? Cause people will wanna be involved with it. Now think about it when at the fifth year or the 10th year, and you’re saying that you can’t make money off a women’s IPL, it’s a billion-dollar branch in 20 or 30 years time, perhaps right?

In five years time, you should be able to make proper money off it. It’s it’s it, it complete idiocy to think that you couldn’t make money off this right now. Let’s say you can’t make money off it for 10 years possible. Have I missed something or the BCCI. They could make the top thousand women’s cricketers professionals tomorrow and not notice it in a bank balance. Right. In a, in a heartbeat. They have so much money when people say to me, oh, the players aren’t ready yet. You know, there aren’t, there aren’t enough good quality players pay ’em in five years time, you’d be better than Australia. Right. Where people say things like, ah, there isn’t as much interest in women’s cricket.

Okay. So it’s gonna be smaller than men’s cricket. We kind of knew that coming in there’s gonna be enough interest in it. There are gonna be sponsors when they did the women’s hundred. Do you know what the ECB found? There were all these sponsors who’d never wanted to sponsor cricket before who was suddenly answering their calls right there. It’s stupid that it has not existed yet. It’s misogyny. It’s short-sightedness. It’s actually losing money. It’s losing the BCCI money that they didn’t start this competition five years ago, because it would be flying by now. Absolutely flying. Uh, the only thing I would say is I’ll probably make a lot more money of it now, post Harman pre um, uh, just because I think now the IPL is so big.

It’s like, oh, we can buy an women’s IPL team here. Um, and we can make some money off that if they sell them separately, if they don’t tack them onto the men’s team. Um, so they would probably make a little bit more money when they start now than they would’ve five years ago. But what are we talking about here? Right? Women’s sport is the, the, the growth industry it’s growing way quicker than men’s sport. You would have to be an actively stupid person to not invest money in a, in a women’s I P lead. Like if they’ve got, if I had money, that’s where I’d be putting my money. Right. And so I, I don’t understand it. On any level, it, it’s not good morally.

It’s not good for cricket. It’s not good for finances. It’s not good for advertising. Not having this league is just a big mistake. Absolutely. I mean, I’ve always been for the women’s I feel, but, you know, I just keep wondering why the BCCI isn’t you know, taking the plunge to eventually know, start this, uh, leaders. It’s almost like it’s run by men. Yeah. And know when, when do men go outta their way to help women? That’s what happens when you have a bunch of men running things? Right? If, if, if the BCCI was 50-50, there’d be, you know, there’d be a women’s IPL already. There’s they loss, I mean, BCCI doesn’t need the extra money, but they are leaving money on the table.

They’re also leaving fans on the table. They, right. The more you can grow, the more you can do. You know that some fat uncle on a sofa, right? Who hates women? If there’s no cricket on probably still gonna watch women’s IPL occasionally. Right? My dad never showed any interest in women’s sport ever, but as women’s sports on the TV, he watches it. It’s good. The quality’s good. He likes women’s tennis. He likes women’s golf. He watches women’s cricket. He watches women’s Aussie rules football. Right? Will he watch it when it clashes with the men’s more often than not? No, but if it’s his favorite sport compared to a, another sport, he doesn’t like as much.

He’s probably more likely to watch the women’s and he’s favorite sport than he is to watch a men’s in another sport. He’s not so sure about people like watching sport, people like going to sport. People like paying for things involved with sport, give them more options. Then you can build a whole nother audience. You can build other stars that you can make money. That’s what the BCCI should be doing. That’s what the PCB should be doing. That’s what CSA should be doing. That’s what the CWI should be doing. I can just keep naming the leagues until they all do it.  

Neha: On the same line of thought, do you think of, you know, women women’s Cate is other needs of it’s other needs majorly, uh, debated topic too. So what are your thoughts on this? You know, what is the road ahead that can be adopted for women’s tests? 

Jarrod: Yeah, I, I wonder now if the only way we’ll ever have women’s tests is if it’s split off and it’s separate from everything else. And I don’t think there’s an audience that’s being built for that. So if it happens, I really worry about it. Look, you watch women’s test cricket and it’s a bit like watching T20 on one-day cricket for 15 years ago, they don’t look very good at it. They don’t play it enough. They don’t prepare for it enough. They’re not thinking about it enough. And. It’s really hard to be good at something that you spend less than 5% of your time at, right? So the quality isn’t there and it doesn’t look as good on TV as the women’s T20 and one day is due because they’re practising that. And they’re preparing for that all the time. So I do worry about women’s test cricket going forward. That said if women’s cricket keeps growing, I just find it impossible for someone not to work out how to do a women’s test league.

Neha: Right. And, uh, we almost come to the end of this interview because we’ve spoken so much cricket and I’ve just been curious, you know, what are other things, uh, you know, besides cricket that you’re actually passionate about? Like basically how do you unwind and relax? 

Jarrod: I’m right. I don’t unwind. That’s just what I do. Um, I, I love basketball. Um, so I follow basketball quite a bit. Um, I kind of follow basketball. 80% or 70% of the year when it’s, when the NBA’s on and then follow Aussie’s football a bit for the other part. Um, I mean, since COVID happened, I probably the one part of my life I haven’t worked on as much has been unwinding, cause I’ve been a freelancer during COVID. I just have to keep working. Um, so, you know, and trying to build 99.94 from an idea through to a business is an epic undertaking. Um, but I spend a lot of time with my kids, um, a lot of time with my family in general. Um, and I think one good thing about being a cricket person, whatever it is is I haven’t travelled as much in recent times, but you do travel a lot.

And so, you know, you work hard for 10, 11 hours of that day, but then you go out and you find the, you find the, um, The late night bar in, in Birmingham that has, um, you know, eighties retros games and table tennis and pool table, whatever it is. And you play with your friends and, um, find new restaurants and new foods you haven’t eaten before and all that sort of stuff.

So I think most of my unwinding is probably with my family now, and that’s great. And I’ve got absolutely no problem with that. Um, and then the rest is probably basketball and, and maybe a little bit Aussie rules football, right? 

Neha: And one last question, before we wrap up this episode, you’re a ‘multimedia legend’. It goes without saying…

Jarrod: It doesn’t go without saying, you should say it again xD

Neha: ‘Multimedia legend ninja’.

Jarrod: So I might get that on a business card except for no one really takes business cards anymore, but continue.

Neha: Yeah. So do you have, you know, tips for us who look up to you and want to follow in your footsteps and a final message for our listeners?

Jarrod: If, if someone wants to get into this, I think the first thing is. Follow the things that interest you don’t follow, the things that you think interest other people. There are a few people who’ve made careers in cricket media by trolling Indians or trolling Pakistanis, um, or trolling everyone on Twitter, I suppose. But generally, they don’t build very good professional careers. There are a few people who are good at following the trends of cricket and writing a piece the next day. I don’t think they feel very fulfilled. Write about what interests you talk about, what interests you, what interests you follow that, and work out.

How to make that into something is probably the biggest tip that I have. Um, separate to that. I mean, I do have sports writing course, which was soon to be a multimedia course that the multimedia bit hasn’t quite been. Put up yet, but will be very soon. Um, and when that goes live, obviously, um, that will help people. But, you know, again, I think one of the big things I would say is how often do you podcast? Oh, I try weekly episodes. Yeah, try no, I actually publish weekly episodes. Yeah. Every week on the same day, uh, the days deferred, but now because I have holidays, so the frequencies are a little more, but weekly is for sure people listen to podcasts in a pattern.

They know that on Tuesday, their science podcast is gonna be out on Wednesday. Their financial podcast is gonna be out Thursday. Their baseball podcast is gonna be out. You need to hit people in a pattern you need to be consistent. Right. So I think one of the big things that most young creators struggle with is sustainability. Come up with an idea that you can do every week. Time up with an idea that you can do three times a week. Don’t come up with an idea that you can do for the next month, every day. And then you won’t do it for three months. Now. I won’t get you anywhere. Sustainability, predictability, consistency. Right. And I think that’s the thing.

I try and train into people more and more as I’ve become freelance, I’ve really understood that of where these people are. These people are going to expect you to be there consistently, and that you need to be there consistently. Otherwise, you’ll fall out of their reading habits, their subscription networks, the algorithms don’t push you. All those things start to happen. Right. And I think that, that seems to be the, the major problem I find. I, I, I remember when blogging was around, I learned this really early on. You’d go. This really good blog. Like they’d write a really good blog and everyone would be talking about it. So you’d race over there to read it.

And the first line would be something along the, I says, ah, sorry, I haven’t been blogging much recently.  don’t tell people that, fix it or just put the, the product up either the product is good enough and you can do it or make sure that you are blogging recently every time find a, an ability to be able to do that. And so if you look at my YouTube and my, uh, podcast network, I have one podcast a week where I ask fans to ask me a question. I do no research. I may be with the Patreon questions, read them beforehand today. I didn’t even get a chance, right? Yeah. With the, the other podcast, literally most people at my level try and do famous people on their podcast.

Do you know how hard it is to get a famous person to mesh with your schedule? Famous people are busy. Being these people have got a lot of stuff going on. Everyone’s asking them, even if you’re really close personal friends with them, it’s hard to get them on. So what did I do? I went, okay. What if I get just everyone? I know anyone who’s smart. Who’s ever said anything. Who’s an expert on something in Cricket. I’ll just get them on. Every Wednesday. That episode goes up. There’s two days of the week. I don’t have to worry about anything. Right? YouTube it’s like, it’s so hard to do the big level content on YouTube all the time.

Right? How do we come up with really good YouTube videos that don’t take as much effort they can be produced quicker? Then I don’t need four animators running around with their ass on fire sustainability, sustainability, sustainability. You’re doing these podcasts. You’re not doing those videos. You could get a, you could double your audience like that. Oh, you’ve done this huge interview with me. Cut it up into four blog posts. Transcribe it one bit of content, for three different audiences. That’s what you need to be thinking. It’s hard to get someone like me on your podcast. Yeah, I’m only here because here because Arya told me about you and I followed you on Instagram and you sent me a message. That’s a lucky coincidence for you, right? Yeah. That all those things happen in a thing. It’s hard to get someone like me on, right?  You’ve now got me on, what are you gonna do with this podcast? What if no one listens to it the first time? 

Neha: I mean, I have like 127 episodes, so I do have a good listeners base.

Jarrod: But this will certainly, I think these 127 episodes could have been videos as well. Yeah. Hundred and 27 transcripts. Mm. Do you see what I’m saying? Yeah. Sustainability. It’s hard to get someone good on your podcast. When you get someone on, on your podcast, make the most out of it. I’ve just had Jarrod on my podcast. Here’s the transcript. Here’s what I thought about having Jared on my podcast. Do you see what I’m saying? Now? You’ve got two articles. Yeah. Now you do a YouTube video or a podcast about what it was like to interview me on your podcast. Exactly. Do you see what I’m saying? This is sustainability.

That’s what young creators have to work out. Instead, they burn up and they do heaps and then they flame away. I’ve seen it again and again, and again, work out how to be there day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out. Here’s my schedule. This is what I’m gonna do on Wednesdays. They know the podcast is gonna go up on Thursdays. They know the YouTube’s gonna go up Friday. They know I’m gonna do a bunch of clips on Instagram from the two on Saturday. I send out my, um, transcript, never send out on Saturday, send it out on Monday.  um, that’s what you should be. That’s what everyone should be doing. And if not, they should do my course, which I tried to make cheap enough so that everyone could do it. If you wait a couple of weeks, all the podcast, the, and video stuff will be there.  

Neha: I will definitely look to, you know, do the course and just, you know, uh, invest in sustainability and repurposing my content. And as much as I’d love to talk to you more and more, I can’t take a lot more of your time. So with this, we draw curtains on the episode. Thank you so much, Janet. You have no idea how much this interview means to me.

And it’s like, as I said, at the start, you will dream come true to interview you. So thank you so much for taking the time off your busy schedule. I know this must have been a really long day for you and for sharing such lovely insights and thoughts. I’m sure the listeners will, uh, love the episode and we’ll have so much to take away. This was a great collaboration. I hope we can do a lot more in the future as well. 

Jarrod: You have to wonder why I gave you so much time. Was this a job interview because I might wanna hire you in the future? Hey, I’m gonna leave you with that. That’s gonna keep you up at night.

Neha: Yeah, really? Yeah. But, uh, thank you so much. And it really means a lot.

Jarrod: Cheers. No worries.

This Women’s World Cup 2022 has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride as we’ve seen some scintillating matches and some real nail-biter encounters. What has been really fascinating to see is how none of the matches has been lopsided and they’ve all been fairly contested encounters.

Without further ado, let’s get started on the matches that have happened so far and a summary.

1. West Indies vs New Zealand

Hayley Matthews’ exploits with the bat and ball trumped New Zealand’s efforts as the hosts lost the ICC Women’s World Cup opener by three runs at the Bay Oval. Sophie Devine’s sensational century kept New Zealand’s chase on track for the most part but West Indies fought back brilliantly towards the end to put the first points on the 2022 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup table. Katey Martin and Jess Kerr’s quickfire 40-run partnership brought it down to run-a-ball for the last over but the wheels came off dramatically for New Zealand. Deandra Dottin, bowling her first over of the game, held her nerve to pick two wickets and effect a run-out as West Indies emerged victorious.

2. South Africa vs Bangladesh 

A brilliant spell from Ayabonga Khaka has helped South Africa escape with a hard-fought 32-run victory over a gallant Bangladesh in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in Dunedin on Saturday. Khaka’s match-winning 4/32 included a spell of three wickets in nine balls as she put the clamps on Bangladesh’s batting line-up and ensured her side were able to defend a modest total of 207.

Openers Shamima Sultana (28) and Sharmin Akhter (34) had given Bangladesh a perfect start as they reached 69 without loss, but Khaka’s timely intervention reduced the score to 72/3 with wickets falling in quick succession as the required run-rate continued to rise. Skipper Nigar Sultana (29) and Ritu Moni (27) tried to use their experience to get Bangladesh back in it, but Shabnim Ismail (1/33) and Masabata Klaas (2/36) returned to the crease with the ball as the Proteas held on. The Proteas were all out in the final over for 207, but that proved enough as Khaka’s inspirational spell and some valuable experience made sure there was no fairytale World Cup debut for Bangladesh.

3. Australia vs England

Nat Sciver’s unbeaten century went in vain as Australia managed to defend a total of 311 against arch-rivals England in their opening match at the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022. After a thriller in the opening day of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, fans were treated to yet another close encounter. Defending 311, Australia managed to hold their nerve with England needing 16 off the last over. Jess Jonassen gave away just three runs as the Aussies put their first points on board in the World Cup standings.

4. India vs Pakistan

India registered a dominant win over arch-rivals Pakistan in their opening game of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022. India’s innings was a story of three parts – the Smriti Mandhana-Deepti Sharma recovery after the early wicket, the stunning middle-order collapse and an incredible rescue act by Pooja Vastrakar and Sneh Rana.

India were cruising with Mandhana and Deepti set for big scores before the wicket of the latter triggered a middle-order collapse. From 96/1, India was staring down the barrel at 114/6. Vastrakar made her intent clear after walking out to bat at No.8, smashing two boundaries in Nida Dar’s final over. That set the tone for the remaining 15 overs of the innings as Rana and Vastrakar matches each other stroke for stroke and took the game away from Pakistan.

Both the batters got to their respective fifties as they put on a splendid 122-run partnership, the highest for the seventh wicket in ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup history. Vastrakar fell in the last over of the innings but not before ensuring that India had a total to defend. Rajeshwari Gayakwad was the star for India with the ball, but it was the brilliant spell of fast bowling in the Powerplay from Jhulan Goswami and Meghana Singh that put Pakistan on the back foot from the very beginning. The scoreboard pressure eventually got to the batters as Javeria Khan fell in the first overs after the fielding restrictions were lifted attempting a big shot. Pakistan never really managed to recover thereafter and were bowled out for 137, falling short by a massive margin of 107 runs.

5. New Zealand vs Bangladesh

An unbeaten half-century from Suzie Bates helped New Zealand register their first victory of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022 with a comfortable nine-wicket triumph over Bangladesh in a rain-affected clash at an overcast Dunedin on Monday. Bates used all her experience and guile in a match that was reduced to 27 overs apiece, scoring 79 from just 68 deliveries to ensure the White Ferns chased down their opponents’ score of 140/8 with seven overs remaining. It was New Zealand’s first win of the tournament and sees them rise to third on the standings behind India and South Africa, while Bangladesh remained winless.

6. Australia v Pakistan

The Pakistan middle-order fought back after an early assault by Australia’s leg-spin twins but their total of 190 ultimately wasn’t enough against a supremely talented top-order. Alana King (2/24) and Alyssa Healy (72) helped Australia register a comfortable seven-wicket win against Pakistan in their clash at the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui on Tuesday. Chasing a modest target of 191, Australia openers Alyssa Healy and Rachael Haynes went at a decent rate, putting the bad deliveries away to lay down the perfect platform for their side. They were helped by some shoddy fielding from Pakistan, as both the openers got a second life with their catches going down.

7. Windies vs England

West Indies remain unbeaten at the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, consigning England to a second consecutive loss with a narrow seven-run triumph in Dunedin on Wednesday. It was a true team performance from the West Indies, with Shemaine Campbelle’s half-century, combined with an even contribution from their bowlers and a spectacular catch from Deandra Dottin that delivered the win as England were bowled out in the 48th over chasing 226 for victory.

8. New Zealand vs India

New Zealand sealed back-to-back victories after a disciplined bowling performance helped them bowl out India for 198, after setting them a target of 261 to chase. New Zealand, defending a target of 261, kept India in check for the majority of the innings to beat India by 62 runs at Seddon Park in Hamilton.

9. South Africa v Pakistan

Shabnim Ismail bowled a brilliant final over and returned figures of 3/41 as South Africa beat Pakistan by six runs in Mount Maunganui. Trusted with bowling the last over, Ismail gave away just four runs while defending 10 runs, keeping South Africa’s perfect record intact in the 2022 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup. The win takes South Africa into the top 4 in the table, where they occupy the third spot with four points in two games.

10. India vs Windies

India pushed on to post an ominous target in Hamilton, while Jhulan Goswami broke a World Cup record. Breaking the record for most Women’s Cricket World Cup matches as captain, Mithali Raj continues to leave no stone unturned with the side’s batting order, moving herself up to No.3 in favour of Deepti Sharma.

While the shuffle may not have delivered the desired result, making just 20 runs between them in the new roles, the opening pair of Smirti Mandhana and Yastika Bhatia showed glimpses of a world-class partnership. The pair went on to compile 184 for the fourth wicket – the highest partnership in Women’s Cricket World Cup history for India. Both making outstanding hundreds individually, their partnership set up a late-over Indian flurry, as the women in blue pushed on to make the most of the strong base.

West Indies fail to press after a wicket-taking stretch. Flat in their fielding effort, the West Indies were also slow in terms of their over rate, forced to rush through to the end of the innings with spin opted for at the death. While India raced out of the blocks by jumping on the short-pitched bowling, the West Indies looked to have pulled things back, taking three wickets in a 7.2-over stretch. Jhulan Goswami added yet another feather to her crowded cap. With the wicket of Anisa Mohammed, she became the leading wicket-taker in ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup history, surpassing the late Lyn Fullston at 39 wickets.

11. Australia vs New Zealand

Tournament favourites Australia flexed their muscle with a commanding 141-run victory over arch-rival New Zealand at the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup in Wellington on Sunday. It was a clinical performance from the six-time Women’s World Cup champions as they successfully defended 269/8 by bowling their opponents out for just 128 in the 31st over at Basin Reserve.

In the 12th and 13th match respectively, Bangladesh registered a historic victory against Pakistan, while Marizanne Kapp’s heroics helped South Africa win a thriller against England. It was a performance full of passion and class as the quickly-developing Bangladesh side successfully defended their score of 234/7 with a brilliant display of tight spin bowling. South Africa clinched a thriller in the final over with three wickets to spare against England to seal their third consecutive win in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022.

In the 14th match, a superb spell from Ellyse Perry and a steady half-century from the ever-reliable Rachael Haynes helped Australia maintain their unbeaten status at the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup with an easy seven-wicket victory over West Indies in Wellington. Perry (3/22) picked up two wickets in her first over and three during a magnificent opening spell to help skittle the West Indies for just 131, before Haynes (83*) guided the tournament favourites past the required total with just under 20 overs remaining at Basin Reserve.

In the 15th game, Charlie Dean (4/23) and Heather Knight (53*) made vital contributions as England beat India by four wickets at the Bay Oval in Mount Maunganui to seal their first win of the tournament. The defending champions built their case through a strong outing in the field, holding catches and capitalising on run-out opportunities, bundling India out for 134. Meghna Singh and Jhulan Goswami looked to have cracked England’s top order, dismissing Danni Wyatt and Tammy Beaumont respectively (both for one), though Sciver’s 65-run partnership with Knight steadied the ship. Sciver’s knock of 45 from 46 balls helped England in the cause to bolster their net run rate.

In the 16th game, Marizanne Kapp produced yet another all-round performance to take her team to victory against New Zealand in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup. She came to South Africa’s rescue with the bat yet again as she remained unbeaten on 34 in a crunch chase against hosts New Zealand. She walked in to bat at 166/4 and despite wickets falling regularly at the other end, held her nerve to consolidate South Africa’s position in the points table.

In the 17th game, West Indies produced a disciplined bowling performance to successfully defend their small total and defeat Bangladesh by four runs in a final over thriller at the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup on Friday. Despite only being able to post 140/9 from their 50 overs at Bay Oval, the Caribbean side was able to use all their experience to bowl Bangladesh out for 136 in reply for their third win of the tournament.

In the end, it came down to the final six balls in Tauranga, with experienced West Indies skipper Stafanie Taylor (3/29) bowling to Nahida Akter (25*) and Bangladesh still requiring eight runs for victory with just one wicket in hand. And it was Taylor who once again produced for her country when required as Fariha Trisna fell for a duck on the third ball of the over to hand West Indies the narrow triumph.

In the 18th game, special fifties from Alyssa Healy (72) and Meg Lanning (97) helped Australia make it five wins out of five in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022 with a six-wicket victory over India in Auckland. Chasing 278 for the win, the game went into the final over but Beth Mooney finished the game off in style as Australia became the first team to book a berth in the semi-finals of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022. With the win, Australia also broke the record for the highest successful run-chase in Women’s World Cup history, surpassing the one they set against Sri Lanka in the 2017 edition of the tournament.

In the 19th game, England registered a thrilling one-wicket victory as they upstaged a late fightback from hosts New Zealand to secure two crucial points in the ongoing Women’s World Cup. Chasing 204 runs to win, England was on track with Natalie Sciver playing a sublime knock of 61 runs. However, New Zealand bowlers fought back late in the game as they threatened to take the game away from England. But Charlotte Dean and Anya Shrubsole batted sensibly for the last wicket and took the team over the line. New Zealand had taken two early wickets of openers Tammy Beaumont and Danielle Wyatt before England recovered well.

In the 20th game, a brilliant performance by their spinners helped Pakistan restrict West Indies to 89/7 in a rain-affected encounter before the batters kept their calm to seal an eight-wicket victory in Hamilton. Pakistan clinched their first victory of the 2022 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, beating West Indies by eight wickets in Hamilton, registering their first points on the board. The result was a big dent in the West Indies’ hope of qualifying for the semis. Chasing a target of 90 in 20 overs, Muneeba Ali and Sidra Amin provided a solid platform for Pakistan. A crucial stand of 33* runs between Maroof and Omaima Sohail though would seal the deal for Pakistan. Maroof remained unbeaten on 20 while Sohail scored 22 as celebrations erupted in the Pakistan camp with an eight-wicket victory and seven balls remaining in the bank.

In the 21st game, Yastika Bhatia’s fifty and the all-around heroics of Sneh Rana helped India secure a convincing 110-run win over Bangladesh in Hamilton in the 2022 ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup. The win put India in the third spot in the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2022 standings with six points and keeps them in the race for a place in the semi-finals. The massive margin of victory has also boosted India’s net run rate to +0.768, the second-best in the tournament as things stand and could well be an important factor to decide the final four places.

In the 22nd match, Another Meg Lanning masterclass helped Australia remain unbeaten at the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup with an emphatic five-wicket victory over South Africa in Wellington on Tuesday. Lanning scored her 15th ODI century as the six-time World Cup champions successfully chased down South Africa’s total of 271/5 with just under five overs remaining at Basin Reserve. The victory sees Australia move further clear at the top of the tournament standings and they look certain to finish in that position when the knockout stages commence next week. While South Africa remains second on the standings, the loss does leave them in danger of missing out on the semi-finals should they not win any of their final two matches against West Indies and India.

In the 23rd match, South Africa qualified for the knockout stages of the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup and West Indies’ hopes are hanging by a thread after rain forced their clash in Wellington on Thursday to be abandoned. Just 10.5 overs of play were possible at Basin Reserve, with South Africa moving along to 61/4 before the heavens opened yet again to spoil any hope of the match being completed.

In the 24th match, Defending champions England put up a clinical all-round performance to beat Pakistan by nine wickets in their must-win ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup match in Christchurch. Chasing 106 for the win, Danni Wyatt stepped up and registered her first fifty in the Women’s World Cup as England romped home with 184 balls and nine wickets to spare in their must-win clash against Pakistan.

In the 25th match, Beth Mooney was the steady head that held her nerve when others failed to ensure Australia eased past Bangladesh’s modest total on a wet and windy day in Wellington. Jess Jonassen and Ashleigh Gardner picked up two wickets apiece during Bangladesh’s batting innings and Mooney’s heroics with the bat was enough to make sure Australia entered the semis undefeated on the back of seven straight wins.

In the 26th match, a magnificent century from opener Suzie Bates and a maiden five-wicket haul from Hannah Rowe has helped New Zealand register a 71-run victory over a gallant Pakistan in their ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup match in Christchurch on Saturday. Suzie Bates hit 126 from just 135 deliveries in the White Ferns’ total of 265/8 and that proved too much for Pakistan as Rowe picked up 5/55 to effectively seal the result for New Zealand at Hagley Oval.

In the 27th match, England had little trouble posting a decent total as the consistent Sophia Dunkley made the most of her opportunity to spend plenty of time in the middle and notched her second-ever ODI half-century. Spin twins Sophie Ecclestone and Charlie Dean were again the picks of the bowlers and the three young guns now look set to be crucial to England’s chances in the knockout stages.

In the 28th match, South Africa broke India’s hearts with a stunning victory off the final ball of the match that knocked their opponents out of the tournament at the group stage. The India openers got away to a flyer but some clever and composed bowling in the last 10 overs restricted the total to well below the 300-mark that had looked likely throughout much of the innings. South Africa looked in control of the run chase as Laura Wolvaardt continued her stirring form while Lara Goodall found some touch of her own, but it took some final over heroics from Mignon du Preez to steer them home.

1st Semi-Final: Australia 305/3 (Alyssa Healy 129, Rachael Haynes 85) defeated West Indies 148 (Jess Jonassen 2/14, Megan Schutt 1/8) by 157 runs

A delayed start due to overnight rain in Wellington did little to hamper Australia as Alyssa Healy and Rachel Haynes put on 216 for the opening wicket to take control of the contest. There was no way back for West Indies, as six different bowlers picked up wickets during the run chase as Australia booked their place in the decider.

2nd Semi-Final: England 293/8 (Danni Wyatt 129, Sophia Dunkley 60) defeated South Africa 156 (Sophie Ecclestone 6/36, Anya Shrubsole 2/27) by 137 runs

The reigning champions saved their best performance of the tournament to date for the cut-throat semi-final against the Proteas as Danni Wyatt scored a brilliant century to put England in a dominant position. In-form spinner Sophie Ecclestone bowled beautifully in reply to pick up six scalps as South Africa crumbled under the pressure.

The Finals

Australia 356/5 (Alyssa Healy 170, Rachael Haynes 68) defeated England 285 (Jess Jonassen 3/57, Alana King 3/64) by 71 runs

A career-best 170 from Alyssa Healy and strong cameos from Rachael Haynes and Beth Mooney helped Australia post a massive score in the World Cup decider in Christchurch. The bowlers did a splendid job to bowl England out for 285, despite an impressive century from Nat Sciver. There were some nervy moments during England’s run chase, but spin twins Jess Jonassen and Alana King got crucial breakthroughs at pivotal moments to ensure Australia clinched a seventh World Cup title in style. 

With this, we draw curtains on the blog that served as a review of this World Cup so far. Thank you for your unstinted support throughout. Please follow and press the bell icon on Spotify and subscribe to Never on the Backfoot Podcast on Google Podcasts for the latest episode updates and stay tuned. 

Do check out @neveronthebackfoot on Instagram and @neverontheback1 on Twitter for the latest facts, terminology, retweets, fresh tweets and a lot more coming up this cricket season. The podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, Overcast and a lot of other platforms and spread the word. 

This blog is all about the victorious campaign of our U19 boys in the recently concluded ICC U19 Men’s World Cup. 

Recapping India’s journey so far: India had to overcome hurdles to become the first team in U19 Men’s Cricket World Cup history to lay their hands on the trophy five times. We look back at their journey in the West Indies. Having won the coveted under-age trophy in 2000, 2008, 2012 and 2018, India continued their recent domination at the 2022 U19 Cricket World Cup, beating England by four wickets in the final at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua. India came into the tournament with good momentum on their side, winning the U19 Asia Cup in December 2021 and carrying it all the way to the final of the World Cup. It wasn’t an easy ride to glory for the Indian team – at one point in the tournament, they had a tough time picking a playing XI after several players tested positive for COVID-19. The setback, however, seemed to spur them on as they finished the tournament unbeaten.

Let’s look back at India’s journey to the finals:

1st match: Group stage game vs South Africa: Won by 45 runs 

India was tested in their very first match of the tournament against South Africa. The Proteas got some early breakthroughs and India were off to a shaky start. But a good inning of 82 from skipper Yash Dhull and vital contributions from the middle and lower order got them to a competitive total of 232. During the chase, Dewald Brevis threatened to take the match away from India but the young bowlers showed great heart and managed to bowl the Proteas out for 187. Left-arm orthodox spinner Vicky Ostwal registered a five-wicket haul, while seamer Raj Angad Bawa picked up four wickets.

2nd match: Group stage game vs Ireland: Won by 174 runs

Ahead of their clash against Ireland, several players of the Indian contingent, including captain Yash Dhull and vice-captain Shaik Rasheed, tested positive for COVID-19, leaving a barebones squad to choose from. India, however, showed how much depth they had as other players stepped in and delivered impactful performances. India posted a massive score of 307/5, thanks to vital contributions from the top-five after Angkrish Raghuvanshi and Harnoor Singh led the way with a 164-run opening stand. In response, Ireland was bowled out for just 133.

3rd match: Group stage game vs Uganda: Won by 326 runs

India’s domination in the tournament continued with a massive 326-run win over Uganda in their final Group stage game. Raghuvanshi and Raj Bawa scored a century each, with the latter top-scoring with 162* off just 108 balls. India posted 405/5, their second-highest total in U19 Cricket World Cup history. Stand-in captain Nishant Sindhu was lethal with the ball in hand, returning a four-for as Uganda were bundled out for 79. The 326-run win was the second-highest runs margin in the history of the U19 Cricket World Cup.

4th match: Super League quarter-final vs Bangladesh: Won by five wickets 

The Indian colts came up with equally strong performances in the knockout stages, starting with the quarter-final against Bangladesh. Ravi Kumar ran through the top-order with three wickets in the Powerplay before the spinners wrapped up Bangladesh’s inning for 111. India stuttered in the middle of their chase but Yash Dhull, returning to the XI after recovering from COVID-19, batted through to take India to the semi-finals with five wickets in hand.

5th match: Super League semi-final vs Australia: Won by 96 runs wickets 

India was in trouble at 37/2 batting first before Dhull and Rasheed pulled off a rescue act with a 204-run partnership. The captain got to his hundred but the vice-captain was unfortunate to be run out at the non-striker’s end six runs short of a century. Cameos from Rajvardhan Hangargekar, Sindhu and Dinesh Bana took India to 290/5. Ravi Kumar once again struck early but Australia recovered through Campbell Kellaway and Corey Miller. However, the wicket of Miller opened the floodgates as Australia went from 71/1 to 125/7. Jack Sinfield and Tom Whitney delayed the inevitable with a 42-run stand but Australia were eventually skittled out for 194. With the 96-run win, India made it to their fourth successive U19 World Cup Final.

6th match: Final vs England: Won by four wickets

Asked to bowl first in the final, India landed the opening blow through their pacers, reducing England to 91/7. Ravi Kumar and Raj Bawa ran riot with the ball, before James Rew and James Sales led England’s recovery with a 93-run stand. The pacers returned to clean up the rest of the batting line-up for 189. Chasing 190, India faltered early, losing Angkrish Raghuvanshi for a duck in the first over. Harnoor Singh and Shaik Rasheed consolidated with a 49-run stand. Rasheed got to his half-century but soon lost his wicket and Dhull followed shortly after. Nishant Sindhu and Raj Bawa then got together to bail India out of trouble by adding 67 runs for the fifth wicket. Though there were some jitters towards the end, Dinesh Bana finished things off in style with two consecutive sixes to seal the match and take India to their fifth U19 World Cup title.  

Top performers

• Opener Angkrish Raghuvanshi was the highest run-scorer for India in this tournament with 278 runs at an excellent average of 46.33. That includes a best of 144 that came against Uganda in the group stage.
• Left-arm orthodox spinner Vicky Ostwal was the highest wicket-taker for India with 12 wickets to his name at an average of 13.33. Ostwal registered his best figures of 5/28 against South Africa in their very first match of this competition.
• All-rounder Raj Angad Bawa was the standout player for India in this tournament. He amassed 252 runs in the competition, the second-highest for India, which included a record-breaking knock of 162* against Uganda, and also picked up nine wickets at an average of 16.66. He was the Player of the Match in the final for his five-wicket haul and an important knock of 35 from 54 that took India close to victory.

With this, we draw curtains on the blog. Thank you for your unstinted support throughout. Please follow and press the bell icon on Spotify and subscribe to the Podcast on Google Podcasts for the latest episode updates and stay tuned. 

Do check out @neveronthebackfoot on Instagram and @neverontheback1 on Twitter for the latest facts, terminology, retweets, fresh tweets and a lot more coming up this cricket season. The podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, Overcast and a lot of other platforms and spread the word. 

This blog is a review of the 2 semi-final encounters and the finals in the recently concluded World Cup and man, we’ve witnessed some amazing matches. 

SEMI-FINAL 1: ENGLAND VS NEW ZEALAND

Outstanding New Zealand beat England in a thriller

A stunning finish saw New Zealand beat England and reach the final of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup. Daryl Michell was the hero as New Zealand chased down 167 in Abu Dhabi to seal a spot in the World Cup final. New Zealand had needed 109 off the last 10 overs, and with the required rate steadily climbing it was clear that they needed a big finish. And that is exactly what they got, with Neesham launching 27 off just 11 deliveries to turn the game back in New Zealand’s favour. Nineteen of Neesham’s runs came off Jordan’s pivotal 16th over, which went for 23 runs in total, just as a tense finish looked likely. And Mitchell, who had anchored the innings for long periods, joined the party by going big himself to race to his half-century and finish on an unbeaten 72 from 47.

The Black Caps opener carried his bat in a stunning knock, producing a brilliant late display of power-hitting as New Zealand raced through the gears to avoid a nervy finish, winning with an over to spare. Chris Woakes’ two early wickets in the Powerplay had restricted the Kiwi chase. But a steadying knock from Devon Conway and a quickfire 27 from James Neesham put New Zealand on top, with Chris Jordan’s 16th over going for 23 runs to swing the match in New Zealand’s favour. And it was Mitchell who finished the job, hitting 25 off his last seven deliveries to win it with an over to spare. 

Earlier, Ali and Dawid Malan helped England reach 166/4 in an occasionally scratchy first innings. Scoring was slow and steady for much of England’s effort with the bat, with openers Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler steady but unspectacular through the Powerplay, before Malan and Ali’s partnership rebuilt the innings. Some big hits late on from Livingstone and Ali, who finished on 51*, helped England to 166/4. But England needed a big effort from their bowling attack to tie New Zealand down in the reply, and they were unable to do so, missing out on a third-straight place in a World Cup final.

SEMI-FINAL 2: AUSTRALIA VS PAKISTAN

Wade and Stoinis stun Pakistan as Australia reaches final

Australia produced a sensational run chase to stun Pakistan and set up an all-Antipodean final at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021. Matthew Wade and Marcus Stoinis did the damage late on for Australia after David Warner’s fiery 49 had set the chase up, with four wickets from Shadab Khan not enough to stem the tide.

Tasked with chasing down 177 to win the second ICC Men’s T20 World Cup semi-final, Australia was hit with Shaheen Shah Afridi at his very best in the opening over, with Finch falling for a first-ball duck and Mitchell Marsh surviving a tight LBW review off the next delivery. With Stoinis and Wade at the crease, the equation for Australia was strikingly similar to New Zealand’s in the first semi-final, with over 50 runs required off the final four overs. And, while the rate of scoring wasn’t quite as high, the big hits kept flowing for Australia, while – just as there was in Wednesday’s match – a crucial catch wasn’t taken in the deep as Hasan Ali put down Wade. And Wade took full advantage of that drop, hitting Afridi for a superb ramped six, then whipping him into the stands over midwicket, and then sealing the win with another ramp as the 19th over went for 22 runs

Australia rode out the storm and seemed to be taking control of the match as Warner raced to a rapid 49. But spinner Shadab Khan seemed to turn the game in Pakistan’s favour, taking 4/26 including a controversial dismissal of Warner, to leave the game on a knife-edge. Yet the remarkable semi-final had one final twist in the tail, as Wade and Stoinis let fly late on to get Australia across the line and knock out the tournament’s form team. Stoinis finished with 40 from 31 balls. But it was Wade who was the hero, with his 41 coming off just 17 deliveries, including three consecutive sixes off Afridi to seal the win with an over to spare.

Earlier, Mohammad Rizwan had punished Australia for two dropped catches as he reached another half-century to help Pakistan to 176/4 after being put in to bat in the second semi-final. Rizwan’s effort was his third fifty of the tournament and 10 of an extraordinary 2021 that has seen him become the first batter in T20I history to pass 1000 runs in a calendar year. And his knock was even more impressive given coach Matthew Hayden’s reveal that the player had been in hospital as recently as Wednesday with a lung issue. But ultimately that was not enough for Pakistan as Australia chased down 177 with six balls and five wickets remaining to set up a meeting with New Zealand in Sunday’s final.

THE GRAND FINALE: AUSTRALIA VS NEW ZEALAND, AN EXCITING TRANS-TASMAN FINAL

Marsh and Warner take Australia to T20 World Cup glory

Australia won the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 as Mitchell Marsh and David Warner hit half-centuries to chase down 173 with ease. Marsh and Warner’s brilliant knocks came after New Zealand captain Kane Williamson had responded to losing the toss with a classy inning of his own, with his 85 off 45 helping the Black Caps to 172/4. At the time, it was the highest score a team had posted in a Men’s T20 World Cup Final.

But Australia started the chase well and rarely took their foot off the gas as they raced to the World Cup title with eight wickets and seven balls to spare, sparking jubilant celebrations in the UAE. With Warner and Marsh still at the crease, Australia reached 43/1 at the end of the Powerplay. And the pair went through the gears as the spinners came on, adding 39 runs in the following four overs to leave them needing 91 from 60 to win the T20 World Cup at the halfway stage of the reply. 

It was said before the match by New Zealand skipper Williamson that the final would come down to individual contributions, and so it proved, with two of Australia’s top four delivering on the biggest stage in the run-chase Williamson, looking in fine touch, raced to 51 off 33 balls as he smashed Maxwell for back-to-back sixes to reach his milestone. And the New Zealand captain’s takedown of Starc set New Zealand up brilliantly to reach the sort of total that had looked a long way off after ten overs. But Williamson’s efforts were ultimately in vain, with Marsh and Warner making mincemeat of the chase to complete an eight-wicket win for Australia on the biggest stage. Victory for Australia is their first T20 World Cup title, with the Aussies set to defend their T20 World Cup crown as hosts in 2022.

With this, we draw curtains on the blog that served as a review of the of the 2 semi-final encounters and the final. Please do follow and press the bell icon on Spotify and subscribe to Never on the Backfoot Podcast on Google Podcasts for the latest episode updates and stay tuned. Do check out @neveronthebackfoot on Instagram and @neverontheback1 on Twitter for the latest facts, trivia, quizzes, terminology, retweets, fresh tweets and a lot more coming up this cricket season.

This blog will dissect India’s campaign in this T20 World Cup. We will be discussing some key topics and help understand what went wrong with India this time around. Let’s get started.

India exited the Twenty20 World Cup after New Zealand beat Afghanistan to book the second semi-final spot.  For a team that was counted as one of the favourites ahead of the tournament, India has suffered two debilitating losses, and with 3 wins against Afghanistan, Scotland, and Namibia not being enough as India ensured group-stage exit for the first time since the 2012 edition of the T20 World Cup. 

Fluctuating batting order, lack of clarity at the top

India’s famed batting line-up limped to a modest 110-7 against New Zealand on Sunday, a week after they managed 151-7 while facing an equally good Pakistan attack. Top Indian batsmen including KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma have shown little application after being invited to bat first in both their outings and even though Kohli made a fighting 57 against Pakistan, the total proved insufficient. In four games (including the two warm-ups), India twice tried out two different opening combinations – the first-choice seemingly being KL and Rohit, and the other being KL and Ishan. Both pairings looked great in the warm-ups but succumbed early when it mattered the most, making one wonder why there were two different combinations tried in the first place.

The juggle at the top led to an unclear approach in the powerplay: against Pakistan, both KL and Rohit were undone by some quality pace, and against NZ, Kishan and Rahul were guilty of poorly-executed strokes, leaving extended pressure on the batters to follow (Kohli and Pandya have themselves been in indifferent form). In the second game, Rohit came at a less-accustomed position of three and was forced to try and maximise on the remainder of the powerplay when he himself takes time to settle. In the end, it turned out to be a hotch-potch exercise: as Kohli summarised at the end, “the team wasn’t brave enough”.

Lacklustre with the new ball

With Deepak Chahar not part of the squad, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar in scratchy form, India’s new-ball attack already looked like it lacked proper wicket-taking bite. Varun Chakravarthy is a great prospect, but he’s more of a restricting spinner, who is more likely to get wickets early when there’s a bigger total to defend. With India’s two totals of 151 and 110 not being quite enough, Chakravarthy’s lengths and lack of turn didn’t really bother either Pakistan or New Zealand. Bumrah did well to string together two neat spells, but with Bhuvneshwar underwhelming, and Shami not quite a new-ball bowler, India let the batters ease their way to starts, leaving them in positions where they just couldn’t claw their way back. R Ashwin could have been a better option to have, for he’s known to have the knack to prise out wickets at any point, but then, hindsight is a great gift.

The toss disadvantage

Kohli’s luck with tosses has been historically rotten, and it’s not something that’s in anyone’s hands, but with back-t0-back toss losses, India has been at the wrong end of a massive disadvantage that the team’s batting first is facing in this tournament. Teams batting first have lost 15 of 19 matches so far, with Kohli himself admitting, after the Pakistan loss, that it would be “a big factor” at the tournament, especially with dew creeping in in in the second half and complicating things further for the bowling team. With two big games lined up for India one after another right at the start, India’s double coin-toss loss pushed them on the backfoot, and an underwhelming batting performance really didn’t help their cause after that.

The demanding schedule went against India

Most of the members of this Indian team arrived in the UK in May (or Sri Lanka the following month), and have spent the last five months shuttling from bubble to bubble. It’s really how cricket is played these days, and Bumrah, in the post-match presser, clearly indicated that bubble and mental fatigue had crept in, with extended time away from families being challenging. Post the remainder of IPL 2021, India quickly moved into the World Cup bubble, making it a tiresome calendar for the core group, and hardly any respite in sight with more cricket coming right after. And then, rather contrastingly, India got a week-long break after the Pakistan game, leaving them with an awkward pause after a ten-wicket thrashing. And while that’s not exactly an excuse for the defeats, it didn’t exactly help that most of the side experienced burnout before they played their first game of such a big tournament.

Inconsistent Selections and the first-choice XI didn’t really play much together

The team selections lack consistency and punting Ishan Kishan as an opener instead of Rohit Sharma was a negative strategy on Sunday night. Trying to shield Rohit was a signal to the opposition that the team was under pressure.  India’s first-choice XI has hardly played any T20I cricket together in the lead-up to the T20 World Cup, a problem other under-performing teams such as West Indies and Australia are also facing. On paper, the team looks strong, but when your batters have little experience of playing alongside each other, it can get really difficult to find the collective rhythm and an aligned approach.

While half of the current lot featured on the long England tour, the other half was in Sri Lanka, playing in what appeared like a second-string side. However, as many as six players from the latter squad are part of the World Cup group, with quite a few combinations playing together for the first time. For example, against Pakistan, Bumrah and Shami bowled together in a T20I together for the first time in 21 months; Rohit and KL last opened together in a T20I in March, and before that, February 2020. The pandemic has complicated things, as has the lack of T20Is this year. At the end of it all, India looked like an assortment of good players, but hardly a good team combined. With two losses in their first two contests against Pakistan and New Zealand, India fell back considerably in the race for the semi-finals. Many of the big names failed to get going when under the pump, and though India did make a brief comeback, it proved to be too late for them.

Let’s also have an individual player list performance analysis for India, keeping in mind the performances from their first four group matches.

Rohit Sharma: 118 runs @ 29.5,  HS 74, S/R 151.28   

While the Mumbai batter got going against Afghanistan and Scotland in style, his failures against Pakistan and New Zealand left the Indian middle-order with too much to do against quality attacks. Still, his 74 against Afghanistan was a quality knock.

KL Rahul: 140 runs @ 35, HS 69, S/R 153.84

India’s other opener too flopped in the first two games, while coming into his own against Afghanistan and Scotland. His 19-ball 50 gives him a point over Rohit, in what was otherwise a very disappointing World Cup for his team.

Virat Kohli 68 runs @ 34, HS 57, S/R 100

The Indian skipper’s last competition as T20 captain ended in a forgettable fashion. He held the innings together against Pakistan with a 49-ball 57 but got out at a crucial stage. His captaincy was poor, with baffling selections and uninspired field placements continuing to plague India in this event.

Suryakumar Yadav: 17 runs @ 17, HS 11, S/R 170

Suryakumar missed out on the crucial New Zealand encounter due to an injury and got out too early against Pakistan. He had shown some promise in his 8-ball 11, with a six off the threatening Shaheen Shah Afridi, but ended up chasing a wide one from Hasan Ali, and gifted his wicket to the opposition.

Rishabh Pant: 78 runs @ 39, HS 39, S/R 125.8

The only time India looked like in the contest against Pakistan was when Rishabh Pant was batting with Virat Kohli. He hit Hasan Ali for back-to-back sixes to lift the Indian scoring rate. But he got out soon, and Indian innings fizzled out in absence of initiative from other batters. He did better when sent up the order against Afghanistan, a place where he should look to bat in the future.

Ishan Kishan: 4 runs, HS 4, S/R 50

The talented keeper-batter was at the receiving end of management’s approach, one which saw him open the innings after Suryakumar Yadav missed the New Zealand game, and tried to do what he was told against a quality bowling attack. It didn’t work well.

Hardik Pandya: 69 runs @ 34.5, HS 35*, S/R 153.33, 0 wickets, Econ 10

While Pandya’s batting can still serve the Indian side well, his returns as a fast bowler are diminishing quickly. He gave the Indian innings some sort of respectability against New Zealand, and got going against Afghanistan, but conceded 40 runs in the four overs that he was able to bowl in the tournament.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar: 0 wickets, Econ 8.33

Bhuvneshwar Kumar was featured in just the Pakistan game and was benched for the rest of the tournament. And while Kohli was in praise of the seamer ahead of the tournament, the faith wore off after an insipid performance.

Ravindra Jadeja: 39 runs @ 39, S/R 121.87, 4 wickets @ 21.25, Econ 6.53

Ravindra Jadeja tried to keep the Indian innings afloat after more recognized batters failed in the first two games. He was especially impressive in his 19-ball 26 against New Zealand, which got India to 110. He showed his magic with the ball in the Scotland encounter with his 3-15.

Ravichandran Ashwin: 3 wickets @ 14.33, Econ 5.37

Not part of the XI that lost the first two games, India’s premium off-spinner couldn’t really choose his opponents but did well after being selected against Afghanistan and Scotland. He overcame the conditions to prove that he can still be of use in this format. His 2-14 against Afghanistan ensured a massive win for India

Varun Chakravarthy: 0 wickets, Econ 6.45

India’s mystery spinner failed to get a wicket in any of the three games he featured in. While he provided control he failed to fulfil his primary task of providing breakthroughs for India.

Shardul Thakur: 0 runs, 0 wickets, Econ 10.66

India’s magic man failed to get going with the bat against New Zealand and was unimpressive with the few overs that he got to bowl in the tournament. Brought into the squad at the expense of Axar Patel right before the World Cup, it seemed like the shock of the Pakistan loss forced India to pin their hopes on the Mumbai bowler.

Mohammad Shami: 6 wickets @ 16.83, Econ 8.53

Much like the Indian openers, Shami was underwhelming in the first two games. While he is one of the finest Indian fast bowlers in recent years, his overall T20I record remains modest, to say the least. He returned with fine back-to-back performances in the Afghanistan, and Scotland contests, but all in all this World Cup didn’t work out well for him.

Jasprit Bumrah: 5 wickets @ 15.2, Econ 5.18

Perhaps the only Indian player to ‘turn up’ for the tournament, he looked like India’s best wicket-taking prospect in the first two games of the tournament. India’s poor form didn’t hinder Bumrah, as the class bowler continued to outfox the opposition batters with his speed and guile.

The Qualification Scenario

New Zealand’s win over Afghanistan meant that India was knocked out of T20 World Cup 2021. New Zealand vs Afghanistan match was crucial for India and their fate was in hands of Afghanistan. They wanted Afghanistan to win against New Zealand to stay alive. It would then have been decided by the Net Run Rate. India was going to play last and had a better run rate than Afghanistan and New Zealand before today’s match. They would have known the exact equation in the game against Namibia for them to qualify. But with New Zealand winning against Afghanistan, they ended with eight points winning four out of their five matches after the loss against Pakistan while maximum India could have reached was six points if they beat Namibia. Pakistan had already qualified for the semis with four wins from their first four matches.

So how did they get into this situation?

India didn’t start off well and that hurt them. They lost to Pakistan by 10 wickets in their opener. New Zealand too lost their opening match of the tournament against Pakistan. And then Pakistan went on to win three matches in three, beating Afghanistan as well to consolidate their position at the top and become the favourites to qualify first from Group 2. India vs New Zealand match then became crucial. The team that won the match would have gained the upper hand given they were considered to be favourites to win against the other teams. India didn’t turn up against New Zealand either. The batting failed again as the Kiwis bowled to their plans and restricted India to 110/7. New Zealand chased that down with 5.3 overs and eight wickets to spare. That was a crucial win for the Kiwis.

Pakistan then thumped Namibia to qualify for the semis. Afghanistan’s big wins over Scotland and Namibia had meant that they had a very good run rate. New Zealand needed to win by a good margin against Scotland to better their run rate but they couldn’t as they won by just 16 runs. But they had two crucial points in the bag. India then needed to win big in the rest of the matches to keep their hopes alive and stay in contention. They turned things around with a 66-run win over Afghanistan but New Zealand kept going with a 52-run win over Namibia, bagging another two points.

India then absolutely thumped Scotland by 8 wickets and that propelled them over Afghanistan and their NRR jumped over both Afghanistan and New Zealand’s. Their fate however rested on the Afghanistan vs New Zealand match. Because New Zealand was already on six points and a win over Afghanistan in their last match would have sealed a place in the semis for the Black Caps. New Zealand beat Afghanistan comfortably to cruise into the semis. If Afghanistan had won against the Kiwis, it would have kept them alive as well but only just about. They would have needed to win big against New Zealand and then hoped that Namibia beat India. While India would have been in a stronger position having the equation in front of them against Namibia who was already knocked out.

The Kiwis though proved to be too good for Afghanistan as they bowled, caught and fielded brilliantly. India was left to rue the start they got. If only they had beat one of Pakistan or New Zealand, it would have got really interesting in the group. Alas, that was not to be and we were knocked out. This World Cup surely has been one of the learnings and in the 2022 T20 WC, we can expect a much better showing from India.

With this, we draw curtains on the blog that served as a review of India’s performance in this T20 World Cup. Please do follow and press the bell icon on Spotify and subscribe to Never on the Backfoot Podcast on Google Podcasts for the latest episode updates and stay tuned. Do check out @neveronthebackfoot on Instagram and @neverontheback1 on Twitter for the latest facts, trivia, quizzes, terminology, retweets, fresh tweets and a lot more coming up this cricket season. 

This blog is a review and analysis episode of Week 5 and 6 of this IPL with a special focus on the Playoffs and brief summaries of those matches. We will be focussing on the matches spanning from 27th September to 8th October of this very exciting IPL.

This blog serves as a recap or a review of the two weeks plus the playoffs weeks (that I’m covering all together now, thanks to the exams) that has passed by and focus on some crucial pointers. The format will be pretty simple. I’ll be focussing on the matches that have happened, a look through of the table and where teams stood at the end of the league phase, the purple cap and orange cap holders and the other awards encapsulated in this episode. 

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) returned to winning ways after beating Rajasthan Royals (RR) by seven wickets in Match 40 on Sept 27th. Jason Roy, making his SRH debut, and Kane Williamson starred with the bat as SRH chased down the target in 18.3 overs. Sanju Samson’s amazing 82 was also the highlight of the match.

Brief Scores: Sunrisers Hyderabad 167/3 (Jason Roy 60, Kane Williamson 51*; Mahipal Lomror 1/22) beat Rajasthan Royals 164/6 (Sanju Samson 82, Yashasvi Jaiswal 36; Siddarth Kaul 2/36) by 7 wickets.

Double Header on a Tuesday was witnessed where we saw KKR take on DC and MI take on PBKS on Sept 28th

Sunil Narine starred with the bat and ball Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) win over Delhi Capitals (DC) in Match 41. 

Brief Scores: Kolkata Knight Riders 130/7 (Nitish Rana 36*, Shubman Gill 30; Avesh Khan 3/13) beat Delhi Capitals 127/9 (Rishabh Pant 39, Steve Smith 39; Sunil Narine 2/18) by 3 wickets. 

Mumbai Indians (MI) returned to winning ways after they beat Punjab Kings (PBKS) by six wickets in Match 42. After limiting PBKS to 135/6, MI chased down the target in 19 overs to pocket two points. 

Brief Scores: Mumbai Indians 137/4 (Saurabh Tiwary 45, Hardik Pandya 40; Ravi Bishnoi 2/25) beat Punjab Kings 135/6 (Aiden Markram 42, Deepak Hooda 28; Kieron Pollard 2/8) by 6 wickets.

An all-rounded bowling performance and Glenn Maxwell’s fifty were the highlights as Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) beat Rajasthan Royals (RR) by seven wickets in Match 43 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Dubai on Sept 29th. The Virat Kohli-led unit, who needed 150 runs to win, chased down the target in 17.1 overs and bagged two points.

Brief Scores: Royal Challengers Bangalore 153/3 (Glenn Maxwell 50*; KS Bharat 44; Mustafizur Rahman 2/20) beat Rajasthan Royals 149/9 (Evin Lewis 58, Yashasvi Jaiswal 31; Harshal Patel 3.34) by 7 wickets.

Chennai Super Kings’ (CSK) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in Match 44 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Sharjah on Thursday and with it, became the first team to seal a place in the playoffs on 30th Sept. After keeping things tight with the ball to limit SRH to 134/9, CSK chased down the target in 19.4 overs & with 6 wickets in hand to register their ninth win of the season.

Brief Scores: Chennai Super Kings 139/4 (Ruturaj Gaikwad 45, Faf du Plessis 41; Jason Holder 3/27) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 134/7 (Wriddhiman Saha 44, Abhishek Sharma 18; Josh Hazlewood 3/24) by 6 wickets.

The game went into the final over but Punjab Kings (PBKS) held their nerve and edged out Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by five wickets in Match 45 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Dubai on 1st Oct.

Brief Scores: Punjab Kings 168/5 (KL Rahul 67, Mayank Agarwal 40; Varun Chakaravarthy 2/24) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 165/7 (Venkatesh Iyer 67, Rahul Tripathi 34; Arshdeep Singh 3/32) by 5 wickets. 

Double-header Saturday on 2nd Oct. 

The things went right down to the wire, but Delhi Capitals (DC) held their nerve and beat Mumbai Indians (MI) by four wickets in Match 46 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) in Sharjah. Shreyas Iyer scored a vital 33* while R Ashwin chipped in with an unbeaten 20 and helped DC secure their ninth win of the season.

Brief Scores: Delhi Capitals 132/6 (Shreyas Iyer 33*, Rishabh Pant 26; Trent Boult 1/24, Jasprit Bumrah 1/29) beat Mumbai Indians 129/8 (Suryakumar Yadav 33, Quinton de Kock 19; Avesh Khan 3/15, Axar Patel 3/21) by 4 wickets.

Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shivam Dube’s stroke-filled fifties overpowered Ruturaj Gaikwad’s maiden hundred as Rajasthan Royals (RR) beat Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in Match 47. After CSK, who were put in to bat first, scored 189/4 on the back of Gaikwad’s sensational 101*, RR chased down the target in 17.3 overs, courtesy Jaiswal’s fiery 50 while opening the batting and Dube’s brisk 64*. The RR opening pair of Jaiswal and Evin Lewis announced their aggressive intent straightway. While Jaiswal, who got a reprieve in the second over as Ambati Rayudu could not hold on to a tough chance, creamed five fours in the first four overs, Lewis hit two sixes and two sixes as RR zoomed past fifty in four overs. It was undoubtedly RR’s best performance and one of the best league matches witnessed this season. 

Brief Scores: Rajasthan Royals 190/3 (Shivam Dube 64*, Yashasvi Jaiswal 50; Shardul Thakur 2/30) beat Chennai Super Kings 189/4 (Ruturaj Gaikwad 101*, Ravindra Jadeja 32*; Rahul Tewatia 3/39) by 7 wickets.

Double-header Sunday on Oct 3rd

The Virat Kohli-led Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) beat Punjab Kings (PBKS) in Match 48 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Sharjah and became the third team after Chennai Super Kings and Delhi Capitals to seal a place in the Playoffs While Glenn Maxwell starred with the bat, Yuzvendra Chahal was the pick of the bowlers as RCB secured a six-run win. Needing 165 runs to win, PBKS skipper KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal once again put up a fantastic show with the bat. The pair scored at a good click and brought up the fifty-run stand in the seventh over but then RCB pulled back things and PBKS saw a collective failure handing them another embarrassing defeat.

Brief Scores: Royal Challengers Bangalore 164/7 (Glenn Maxwell 57, Devdutt Padikkal 40; Moises Henriques 3/12) beat Punjab Kings 158/6 (Mayank Agarwal 57, KL Rahul 39; Yuzvendra Chahal 3/29) by 6 runs.

In the KKR v SRH game, bowlers shared the spoils while Shubman Gill scored 57 as Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in Match 49. After they restricted SRH to 115/8, KKR chased down the target in 19.4 overs to seal their sixth win of the season.

Brief Scores: Kolkata Knight Riders 119/4 (Shubman Gill 57, Nitish Rana 25; Jason Holder 2/32) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 115/8 (Kane Williamson 26, Priyam Garg 21; Varun Chakaravarthy 2/26) by 6 wickets.

Things went right down to the wire, but Delhi Capitals (DC) managed to hold their nerve and beat Chennai Super Kings (CSK) by three wickets in Match 50 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Dubai on October 4th. Shimron Hetmyer played a fine knock of 28* under pressure as DC, with their 10th win of the season, moved to the top of the points table. 

Brief Scores: Delhi Capitals 139/7 (Shikhar Dhawan 39, Shimron Hetmyer 28*; Shardul Thakur 2/13) beat Chennai Super Kings 136/5 (Ambati Rayudu 55*, Robin Uthappa 19; Axar Patel 2/18) by 3 wickets.

Nathan Coulter-Nile and Jimmy Neesham ran riot with the ball while Ishan Kishan set the stage on fire with a quickfire 50* as Mumbai Indians’ (MI) secured a dominant eight-wicket win over Rajasthan Royals (RR) in Match 51 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Sharjah on October 5th. While Coulter-Nile picked four wickets, Neesham scalped three wickets as MI restricted RR to 90/9 and then chased down the target in overs to seal their sixth win of the season.

Brief Scores: Mumbai Indians 94/2 (Ishan Kishan 50*, Rohit Sharma 22; Chetan Sakariya 1/36) beat Rajasthan Royals 90/9 (Evin Lewis 25; Nathan Coulter-Nile 4/14, Jimmy Neesham 3/12) by 8 wickets.

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) kept things tight with the ball and held their nerve as they beat Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) by four runs in Match 52 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Abu Dhabi on October 6th. Needing 142 runs to win, RCB captain Virat Kohli set the ball rolling with a crisp four through the off-side. But Bhuvneshwar Kumar struck in the first over and helped SRH take the big wicket for Kohli and then the wickets tumbled for RCB as SRH asserted their dominance. 

Brief Scores: Sunrisers Hyderabad 141/7 (Jason Roy 44, Kane Williamson 31; Harshal Patel 3/33) beat Royal Challengers Bangalore 137/6 (Devdutt Padikkal 41, Glenn Maxwell 40; Umran Malik 1/21) by 4 runs.

Double-header Thursday on October 7th witnessed. Captain KL Rahul set the stage on fire with the bat as Punjab Kings (PBKS) beat Chennai Super Kings (CSK) by six wickets in Match 53. The right-hander hammered an unbeaten 98 off 42 balls, hitting 7 fours and 8 sixes, as PBKS, who needed 135 runs to win, chased down the target in 13 overs.

Brief Scores: Punjab Kings 139/4 (KL Rahul 98*, Aiden Markram 13; Shardul Thakur 3/28) beat Chennai Super Kings 134/6 (Faf du Plessis 76, Ravindra Jadeja 15; Chris Jordan 2/20, Arshdeep Singh 2/35) by 6 wickets. 

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) ran riot with the ball and beat Rajasthan Royals (RR) in Match 54 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Sharjah on Thursday. Put into bat, KKR posted 171/4 and then bowled out RR for 85 to register their seventh win of the season. While young Shivam Mavi scalped four wickets, Lockie Ferguson picked three wickets as KKR marched towards the victory.

Brief Scores: Kolkata Knight Riders 171/4 (Shubman Gill 56, Venkatesh Iyer 38; Chetan Sakariya 1/23) beat Rajasthan Royals 85 (Rahul Tewatia 44, Shivam Dube 18; Shivam Mavi 4/21) by 86 runs.

Double-headers simultaneously occurring matches saw some high octane encounters on the last day of the league phase of IPL on Oct 8th. Mumbai Indians (MI) ended their VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 campaign on a high as they beat Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) by 42 runs. Ishan Kishan and Suryakumar Yadav hammered 84 and 82 respectively and set up MI’s win.

Chasing 236, SRH were quick off the blocks as the opening pair of Jason Roy and Abhishek Sharma put up a 64-run stand. However, MI managed to strike in the powerplay as Trent Boult dismissed Roy for 34. SRH lost three more wickets for 36 runs as Jimmy Neesham and Piyush Chawala shared the spoils, dismissing Abhishek, Mohammad Nabi and Abdul Samad. Priyam Garg and Manish Pandey, who was captaining the side in absence of Kane Williamson, then added 56 runs together before Garg got out. While Manish, who had to bat through the cramps, scored a fine half-century on captaincy debut, MI restricted SRH to 193/8.

Brief Scores: Mumbai Indians 235/9 (Ishan Kishan 84, Suryakumar Yadav 82; Jason Holder 4/52) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 193/8 (Manish Pandey 69, Jason Roy 34; Jasprit Bumrah 2/39) by 42 runs.

KS Bharat held his nerve and cranked a last-ball six as Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) edged out Delhi Capitals (DC) in Match 56 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Dubai on Friday. Needing 165 runs to win, RCB rode on KS Bharat’s 78* off 52 and Glenn Maxwell’s 33-ball 51* and sealed a seven-wicket win in the final league-stage encounter.

Brief Scores: Royal Challengers Bangalore 166/3 (KS Bharat 78*, Glenn Maxwell 51*; Anrich Nortje 2/24) beat Delhi Capitals 164/5 (Prithvi Shaw 48, Shikhar Dhawan 43; Mohammed Siraj 2/25) by 7 wickets.

Standing on the Table at the end of the league phase had DC at 1 with 20 points, CSK at 2 with 18 points, RCB at 3 with 18 again and narrowly missing out the 2nd place with a skewed NRR, KKR and MI at 4 and 5 with 14 points, PBKS and RR at 6 and 7 with 12 and 10 points and SRH placed last with 6 points and just 3 wins

This ensured that Qualifer 1 had CSK take on DC, the Eliminator had RCB take on KKR and the result of the Qualifier 1 and Eliminator paved the way for Qualifier 2 ft. DC take on KKR and the final seeing CSK take on the winner of Q2, KKR. Let’s have a quick recap of these encounters.

Qualifier 1 summary: A vintage MS Dhoni finish made its presence felt as Chennai Super Kings (CSK) beat Delhi Capitals (DC) by four wickets in Qualifier 1 in Dubai and became the first team to reach the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 final.

Meanwhile, DC, will now take on the winners of the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in Eliminator for a place in the summit clash. Needing 173 runs to win, CSK lost Faf du Plessis as Anrich Nortje disturbed the timber in the first over.

From there on though, it was all Ruturaj Gaikwad and Robin Uthappa show. While Gaikwad welcomed Kagiso Rabada into the attack with a six in the fourth over, Uthappa turned the clock back and went 6, 4, 6, 4 against Avesh Khan as CSK zoomed to 59/1 after 6 overs. The pair continued its good work and Uthappa brought up a superb fifty in the 10th over. The pair completed a hundred-run stand in the 13th over as CSK moved to 111/1.

However, just when it looked that CSK were dominating the proceedings, DC pulled things back. First, a double-wicket 13th over from Tom Curran helped DC see the back of Robin Uthappa and Shardul Thakur. Shreyas Iyer took both the catches and then, along with Rabada, pulled off a sensational run-out to dismiss Ambati Rayudu in the 15th over. Ruturaj, who completed yet another fifty in the season, and Moeen Ali scored 28 runs in the next three overs as CSK moved to 149/4 after 18 overs. However, Ruturaj, after scoring 70, got out on the first ball of the penultimate over. But Moeen, who hit a four, and captain Dhoni, who tonked a maximum on the second ball he faced kept CSK in the hunt. While Tom Curran’s slower one did Moeen in, Dhoni hit three fours and scored an unbeaten 18 off 6 balls to power CSK to their ninth IPL final. 

DC were looking for a solid partnership and captain Rishabh Pant and Shimron Hetmyer rose to the occasion. The duo, who joined forces in the 11th over, added 83 runs together. The two kept the scorecard ticking and took DC past 100 in the 14th over as Hetmyer creamed a six off Moeen. The DC captain hit his first maximum – a one-handed six – of the night in the 16th over before the pair completed the 50-run stand in the next over. Rishabh and Hetmyer hit a four each in the 18th over as DC moved past 150. While Hetmyer got out in the penultimate over, Rishabh went on to complete a fine last-ball half-century to guide DC to 172/5.

Brief Scores: Chennai Super Kings 173/6 (Ruturaj Gaikwad 70, Robin Uthappa 63; Tom Curran 3/29) beat Delhi Capitals 172/5 (Prithvi Shaw 60, Rishabh Pant 51*; Josh Hazlewood 2/29) by 4 wickets. 

Eliminator summary: Sunil Narine starred with the ball and bat as Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) beat Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in Eliminator of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Sharjah on Monday.

The Eoin Morgan-led unit will now square off against Rishabh Pant’s Delhi Capitals in Qualifier 2 and the winner of that match will take on Chennai Super Kings in the summit clash. After limiting RCB to 138/7, KKR made a brisk start as Shubman Gill and Venkatesh Iyer cashed in on the scoring opportunities and took KKR past the 40-run mark. However, Harshal Patel’s introduction in the final over of the powerplay gave RCB their first breakthrough as he got Gill out for 29. Two overs later, Yuzvendra Chahal trapped Rahul Tripathi before the wickets. Harshal then picked up his 32nd wicket of the season as he had Iyer caught behind the wickets. KKR then promoted Narine up the order and he hammered 3 sixes on the first legal deliveries he faced and helped KKR zoom past hundred.

RCB though continued to fight hard as Chahal had Rana in the 15th over before Mohammed Siraj’s double-wicket 18th over – where he dismissed Narine and Dinesh Karthik – took the things right down to the wire. Captain Eoin Morgan and Shakib Al Hasan though held their nerve and took KKR home with two balls to spare. Earlier, RCB, who elected to bat, and KKR both retained the same playing XIs which took the field in their respective last games. RCB were quick off the blocks, courtesy captain Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal. While Kohli creamed three fours in the first two overs, Padikkal hit two fours in the fourth before RCB moved to 49/0 at the end of five overs.

KKR struck on the first ball of the sixth over as Lockie Ferguson dismissed Padikkal after the left-hander dragged one back onto the stumps. While Kohli survived a close run-out, thanks to his brilliant dive and KS Bharat got a reprieve in the eighth over, KKR struck in the 10th over as Sunil Narine picked a wicket in his first over, dismissing KS Bharat. Then, Narine landed two massive blows in his next two overs. First, he disturbed the timber to get Kohli out for 39 and then bamboozled AB de Villiers to pick his third wicket, pushing RCB on the backfoot. Narine continued to make merry and KKR continued to dominate the proceedings as Glenn Maxwell was dismissed in the 17th over. KKR continued to keep RCB in check and limited them to 138/7.  

Brief Scores: Kolkata Knight Riders 139/6 (Shubman Gill 29, Sunil Narine 26; Yuzvendra Chahal 2/16) beat Royal Challengers Bangalore 138/7 (Virat Kohli 39, Devdutt Padikkal 21; Sunil Narine 4/21) by 4 wickets.

Qualifier 2 summary: The pendulum swung dramatically as things neared the end, but Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) held their nerve and beat the spirited Delhi Capitals (DC) in Qualifier 2 of the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 in Sharjah on Wednesday and set up the blockbuster final showdown against the MS Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings, which will take place in Dubai on Friday.

Needing 136 runs to win, KKR were off to a brisk start, courtesy Shubman Gill and Venkatesh Iyer. The pair cashed in on all the scoring opportunities and took KKR to 51/0 at the end of the powerplay. The two continued to build on to the solid start and added 25 runs more in the next four overs as KKR moved to 76/0 at the halfway stage. Two overs later, Iyer brought up his fifty-third of the season. DC though managed to get Iyer out in the next over just when he and Gill were inching closer to a hundred-run stand. While Nitish Rana and Gill added 27 runs together, DC continued to put in a fight and scalped three wickets, conceding just three runs as KKR moved from 123/1 to 126/4 at the end of the 18th over – an over where Kagiso Rabada conceded just a run and picked up a wicket.

Anrich Nortje then had the better of Eoin Morgan in the penultimate over as DC pushed KKR to score 7 runs in the final over. Ashwin then scalped two wickets, dismissing Shakib Al Hasan and Sunil Narine – in the first four balls of the last over. However, with 6 runs to get from the last 2 balls, Rahul Tripathi creamed a maximum to help KKR seal a place in the final. Earlier, KKR, who elected to bowl, remained unchanged while DC brought in Marcus Stoinis in place of Tom Curran. KKR made a tight start as Shakib Al Hasan bowled one-run over before Lockie Ferguson conceded just fours in the second over. Prithvi Shaw though took on Shakib in the third over, creaming a six and a four as DC scored 12 runs in the over.

Shikhar Dhawan then tonked two maximums in Sunil Narine’s first over as DC moved to 32/0 after four overs. However, Varun Chakaravarthy’s introduction into the attack gave KKR their first breakthrough as the spinner dismissed Shaw. Stoinis replaced Shaw in the middle and he and Dhawan took DC past fifty in the eighth over. KKR though kept things tight and were rewarded with the second DC wickets when Shivam Mavi disturbed the timber to get Stoinis out in the 12th over. Three overs later, Chakaravarthy picked his second wicket as Shakib took a fine catch to dismiss Dhawan for 36. Ferguson then had the better of DC skipper Rishabh Pant in the 16th over as Rahul Tripathi completed the catch.

Shimron Hetmyer got a life even in the next over as Gill put in a sensational effort in the deep as Chakaravarthy overstepped by the slightest of margins. The left-hander made the most of it, hammering two sixes in the next over. While he was run-out in the penultimate over, Iyer, who scored an unbeaten 30 – a knock which included a last-ball six, took DC to 135/5.

Brief Scores: Kolkata Knight Riders 136/7 (Venkatesh Iyer 55, Shubman Gill 46; Kagiso Rabada 2/23) beat Delhi Capitals 135/5 (Shikhar Dhawan 36, Shreyas Iyer 30*; Varun Chakaravarthy 2/26) by 3 wickets. 

Finals Summary: The MS Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings (CSK) beat Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the VIVO Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 final in Dubai and lifted their fourth IPL title.

CSK, who posted 192/3 on the board on the back of Faf du Plessis’ brilliant 86, restricted KKR to 165/9 and sealed a 27-run win. In the chase, Shubman Gill creamed a four on the first legitimate delivery. Venkatesh Iyer then enjoyed a stroke of luck as MS Dhoni could not complete the catch in the second over. The left-hander then took the attack to CSK bowlers, hitting three fours and a six by the end of the fourth over. The KKR opening pair continued their impressive run of form and powered the team to 55/0 after 6 overs. While CSK looked to keep things tight, Iyer and Gill scored 16 runs in the 10th over – an over which saw Iyer completing his fourth fifty of the season and a spider-cam string coming to Gill’s rescue – to KKR to 88/0.

CSK then struck thrice in quick succession to change the course of the match. First, Shardul Thakur dismissed Venkatesh Iyer, courtesy a brilliant catch in the deep by Ravindra Jadeja, and Nitish Rana, thanks to a good low catch by du Plessis in the 11th over. In the next over, Josh Hazlewood got Sunil Narine out as Jadeja took a fine catch near the ropes, helping CSK scalp three wickets for nine runs. While Gill brought up a solid half-century, CSK continued to chip away as Deepak Chahar trapped the KKR right-hander before the wickets in the 14th over. Jadeja then bowled a double-wicket over, dismissing Dinesh Karthik and Shakib Al Hasan to push KKR on the backfoot. Shardul picked his third wicket, dismissing Rahul Tripathi, while Hazlewood scalped his second wicket of the match as Chahar took a superb catch near the ropes to get Eoin Morgan out in the 17th over.

Although Shivam Mavi and Lockie Ferguson added 39 runs, it was too little too late as CSK went on to seal a fine win to clinch their fourth IPL title. Earlier, KKR, who elected to bowl, and CSK remained unchanged. Shakib Al Hasan and Shivam Mavi kept things tight in the first two overs and were almost rewarded with the wicket of du Plessis in the third over. But Dinesh Karthik could not collect the ball cleanly and du Plessis got a life. Meanwhile, Ruturaj Gaikwad creamed a four and a six in the same over to get CSK on the move.

du Plessis and Ruturaj hit a four each in the next over before going on to complete another fifty-run partnership on the final ball of the powerplay. But 11 runs later, KKR managed to break the opening stand as Sunil Narine dismissed Gaikwad as Shivam Mavi took the catch in the deep. But CSK went after Shakib in the 10th over as du Plessis and Robin Uthappa hit a six each as CSK moved to 80/1 at the halfway stage of their innings. The two went after the KKR bowling and completed a fifty-run merely in 25 deliveries. Meanwhile, du Plessis, who was playing his 100th IPL game, brought up his 22nd IPL half-century. Narine once again came to KKR’s rescue as he trapped Uthappa before the wickets to give Eoin Morgan and Co. their second wicket.

However, CSK continued to chip away as du Plessis continued to make merry, with Moeen Ali for the company. The pair cashed in on all the scoring opportunities and targeted the KKR bowling to bring the third successive fifty-plus stand for CSK in the final. While du Plessis got out on the final ball of the innings after scoring a fantastic 86, he and Moeen, who scored a quickfire 37* off 20 balls, scored 61 runs in the last five overs to push CSK to 192/3.

Brief Scores: Chennai Super Kings 192/3 (Faf du Plessis 86, Moeen Ali 37*; Sunil Narine 2/26) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 165/9 (Shubman Gill 51, Venkatesh Iyer 50; Shardul Thakur 3/38) by 27 runs.

The purple cap and orange cap holders and the other awards

Emerging player of the season & Orange cap winner– Ruturaj Gaikwad -635 runs in 16 games – 1 hundred, 4 fifties.

CSK’s opening batsman Gaikwad is the main reason they have won many battles in the IPL 2021 and the IPL crown tonight. Gaikwad has not only given CSK good starts in the powerplay and but also ensured that he plays long and capitalize the starts in the middle-overs. Tonight was no exception as he started the innings onsong but was, unfortunately, dismissed after scoring 32. That was, however, enough for him to cross KL Rahul and become this season’s top scorer

Purple cap & Most Valuable Player – Harshal Patel

The highest wicket-taker of the tournament gets awarded with the Purple cap. Harshal Patel aka Purple Patel took the cap in his first game, and he never got away from it. Patel scalped 32 wickets in IPL 2021 and none of the bowlers came close to him. Avesh Khan finished at the 2nd position with 24 wickets, whereas Bumrah finished in the top-3 with 21 wickets under his name.

The two openers of Chennai Super Kings had their dream season, and they finished as the top-2 run-scorers of the season. However, both of them failed to become the most valuable player of the season. Ruturaj finished with 255.5 points, whereas Faf finished at 258 points. Both of them finished at the top-3 position. However, with 264.5 points under his belt, Harshal Patel, the winner of Purple Cap, won the Most Valuable Player of the season.

IPL 2021 Power Player of the Season

Venkatesh Iyer for winning three Power Player (best performance in powerplays) awards in IPL 2021.

With this, we draw curtains on the blogthat served as a review of the just-concluded IPL 2021. Hoping you liked it. Please do follow and press the bell icon on Spotify and subscribe to Never on the Backfoot Podcast on Google Podcasts for the latest episode updates and stay tuned. Do check out @neveronthebackfoot on Instagram and @neverontheback1 on Twitter for the latest facts, trivia, quizzes, terminology, retweets, fresh tweets and a lot more coming up this cricket season.

This blog encompasses the 4th week spanning the 4th week that was resumed on 19th September after cancellation in early May owing to the COVID-19 virus spread in the bio bubble of this league.

We will be focussing on the matches spanning from 19th September to 26th September of this very exciting IPL. This episode serves as a recap or a review of the one week that has passed by and focus on some crucial pointers. 

The format will be pretty simple. I’ll be focussing on the matches that have happened, best batting performances, best bowling performances, a look through of the table and where teams stand, the purple cap and orange cap holder.

First up, the matches that have happened and the teams who’ve faced each other. 19th September we had CSK take on MI, where CSK yet again defeated MI comprehensively by 20 runs. On 20th September, we saw RCB take on KKR that KKR won by 9 wickets in a very one-sided contest favouring KKR. On 21st September, we had RR take on PBKS which was a nailbiter finish as RR emerged victorious by 2 runs. On 22nd September, we had SRH take on DC that saw DC win by 8 wickets in what was a convincing win for DC. On 23rd September we had MI vs KKR, which KKR won comfortably in a very dominant fashion. 

Friday, 24th September saw arch-rivals RCB and CSK facing off against each other that saw CSK extend their winning run by defeating RCB. Saturday’s doubleheader has DC vs RR, in which DC won by 33 runs and PBKS take in SRH which again was an edge of the seat thriller where we witnessed PBKS register a win by a miserly 5 runs. Sunday’s doubleheaders had KKR vs CSK take on each other that saw CSK win another game emphatically and in the RCB vs MI match, we finally saw RCB end their UAE consecutive losing streak and register a much-needed win by 54 runs. 

The next section will focus on excellent batting performances

In the CSK vs MI match, Ruturaj Gaikwad was phenomenal with the bat notching up 88 off 58 balls, Saurabh Tiwary with his 50 off 40 and not to forget DJ Bravo’s 23 off 8 too, was good. 

Shubman Gill’s calm and composed 48 off 34 and Venkatesh Iyer’s 41 off 27 vs RCB were some good knocks. Mahipal Lomror’s 43 off 17, Mayank Agarwal’s 67 off 43 and KL Rahul’s 49 off 33 in the PBKS vs RR match were standout performances. Rahul Tripathi’s 74 off 42 in the MI vs KKR was a delightful knock.

Devdutt Padikkal’s 70 off 50, Virat Kohli’s 53 off 41 in the CSK vs RCB match were top-notch knocks, Sanju Samson’s 70 off 53 in the DC vs RR game, Jason Holder’s 47 off 29 in the SRH vs PBKS game were yet again knocks that stood apart owing to the sheer tenacity of them, Ruturaj Gaikwad’s 40 off 28, Jadeja’s 22 off 8 and Tripathi’s 45 off 33 in the CSK vs KKR were fabulous. Maxwell’s 56 off 37, Kohli’s 51 off 42, Rohit Sharma’s 43 off 28 in the RCB vs MI game concludes my list of top batting performances.

The next section will focus on exceptional bowling performances

Adam Milne’s good spell of 2/21, Deepak Chahar’s 2/19 and DJ Bravo’s 3/25 in the CSK vs MI match were good bowling spells. Andre Russell’s 3/9, Varun Chakravarthy’s 3/13 in the RCB vs KKR match was noteworthy. 

Arshdeep Singh’s 5/32, Shami’s 3/21, Tyagi’s amazing spell of 2/29 in the PBKS vs RR match, Kagiso Rabada’s 3/37, Nortje 2/12 and Axar Patel’s 2/21 in the SRH vs DC match and DJ Bravo’s 3/24, S Thakur’s 2/29 and Harshal Patel’s 2/25 in the CSK vs RCB game were spells of the highest quality coming when the team needed them most.

Mustafizur Rahman’s 2/22, Nortje’s 2/18 in the DC v RR game were good. Jason Holder’s continued good performance with the ball continued as he registered figures of 3/19, additionally Bishnoi’s 3/24, Shami’s 2/14 in the PBKS vs SRH game were good. Thakur’s 2/20, Narine’s 3 scalps in the CSK vs KKR game were noteworthy. Bumrah’s 3/26, Harshal Patel’s fantastic 4/17 where we also witnessed a hattrick and Chahal’s 3/11 in the RCB vs MI game concludes the list of top bowling efforts.

A look through of the table and where teams stand has CSK at numero uno with 16 points, followed closely by DC with the same points a slightly lesser NRR at 2, RCB at 3 with 12 points, KKR, PBKS, RR and MI at 4, 5, 6 and 7 respectively with the likewise 8 points and SRH at 8 with 2 points and completely out of contention for the playoffs. 

The orange cap contention has Shikhar Dhawan, the man on a mission lead the pack with 430 runs, KL Rahul placed 2nd with 401 runs, Faf du Plessis at 3 with 394 runs, Ruturaj Gaikwad at 4 with 362 runs and Sanju Samson at 5 with 351 runs. The purple cap contenders has Harshal Patel extend his golden run with 23 prized scalps at 1, Avesh Khan at 2 with 15 wickets, Chris Morris tied with Bumrah at 14 placed 3 and the Punjab duo of Arshdeep Singh and Shami with 13 wickets each at 5 on the table.

This blog encompasses the 3rd week spanning from 26th April to 2nd May of this very exciting IPL. I thought let this blog serve as a recap or a review of the one week that has passed by and focus on some crucial pointers. 

The format will be pretty simple. I’ll be focussing on the matches that have happened, best batting performances, best bowling performances, underrated performers, a look through of the table and where teams stand, the purple cap and orange cap holder.

First up, the matches that have happened and the teams who’ve faced each other.

Monday’s encounter had PBKS take in KKR that saw PBKS continue their disappointing vein of form losing by 5 wickets in what was a comfortable chase for KKR. Tuesday’s match had RCB and DC take on each other which was a nailbiter that RCB managed to salvage by 1 run. Wednesday’s match had CSK take on SRH that saw CSK extend their winning run as they comfortably chased the total set by SRH. 

Thursday’s doubleheaders had RR and MI take on each other that MI won by 7 wickets. The other match was KKR vs DC that DC won by 7 wickets. Friday’s encounter had PBKS take on RCB that RCB lost disastrously chasing 179. Saturday’s match was the El Classico of Cricket with CSK locking horns with MI that was an exceptional match as we had MI chase an unbelievable total with such precision and ease thanks to Pollard and his manic knock. Sunday’s doubleheaders had RR take in SRH that saw RR trump SRH by 55 runs and the 2nd encounter was PBKS v DC that saw DC register yet another crucial win. 

The next section will focus on excellent batting performances

Let’s kickstart this section with the unbelievable 75 off 42 that AB de Villiers got vs DC that was such a match-winning knock and played at a time when we lost quick wickets and needed that firepower. Rishabh Pant’s 58 off 48 and Hetmyer’s 53 off 25 in the same match were some other set of good performances. 

Manish Pandey’s fluent 61 off 46 besides the 75 off 44 and the 56 off 38 that Gaikwad and du Plessis got in the SRH v CSK match were noteworthy. Sanju Samson’s 42 off 27 and de Kock’s 70 off 50 were some top-notch innings in the RR vs MI match. Andre Russell’s 45 off 27 was a good knock that came under pressure but Prithvi Shaw’s 82 off 41 was another exceptional knock that really set the tone for a brilliant DC win vs KKR. 

KL Rahul’s 91 off 57 vs RCB was a stellar knock as he set the tempo for a glorious PBKS win. Moeen Ali’s 58 off 36, Faf’s 50 off 28 started well for CSK but Ambati Rayadu’s 72 off 27 was a brilliant knock and the highlight was when he broke the fridge of the MI camp but Pollard’s 87* off 34 was a blinder of a knock and was simply too good showing off the vintage Pollard heroics. Jos Buttler’s 124 off 64 vs a deflated SRH had to be the standout performer of the week.

The next section will focus on exceptional bowling performances

Prasidh Krishna’s 3/30, Narine’s 2/22 and Cummins’ 2/31 were some good bowling displays in the PBKS v KKR match. Rashid Khan’s 3/36 vs CSK was another exceptional spell from the young man who simply manages to amaze us every time he steps on to the field. Rahul Chahar’s 2/33 and Morris’ likewise figures were standout spells. 

Lalit Yadav’s 2/13, Axar’s 2 wickets and Cummins’ 3 wickets were clinical in the DC v KKR match. Harpreet Brar’s magical 3/19 where he got the golden wickets of Kohli, Maxwell and de Villiers was another good performance besides the 2 wickets scalped by Ravi Bishnoi. Pollard’s 2/12, Sam Curran’s 3/34 were good bowling performances in the runs feast witnessed in the CSK v MI match. Mustafizur and Chris Morris’ 3 wickets in the RR vs SRH game were instrumental. 

In the underrated performers’ category, we have quite a few contenders who stunned us with their unsung performances

Chris Jordan’s 30 off 18 and Dinesh Karthik’s 12 off 6 were good and timely knocks in the KKR vs PBKS game. Kane Williamson’s 26 off 10 was a very good cameo that helped SRH post that competitive total vs CSK but not enough to guarantee a win. Krunal Pandya’s 39 off 26 was a good knock vs RR that really set the tone for the 16 off 8 that Pollard got ensuring a comfortable win for MI. Chris Gayle’s 46 off 24 and although it was in a losing cause Harshal Patel’s 31 off 13 were some good knocks. 

Currently, we have DC lead the table with 12 points and are going really strong. 

CSK and RCB are at 2 and 3 respectively with 10 points, MI is at 4 with 8 points and RR, PBKS are at 5 and 6 with 6 points and KKR is languishing at 7 with 4 points and SRH is at the last position with 2 points. 

The orange cap contention has Shikhar Dhawan lead the pack with 380 runs, KL Rahul at 2 with 331 runs, Faf du Plessis at 3 with 320 runs Prithvi Shaw and Sanju Samson at 4 and 5 with 308 runs and 277 runs respectively.

The purple cap contenders has Harshal Patel with 17 wickets, Avesh Khan and Chris Morris at 2 with 14 wickets, Rahul Chahar at 4 with 11 wickets and Rashid Khan at 5 with 10 wickers and an exceptional economy rate.

As per the news of the COVID-19 virus having affecting Varun Chakravarthy and Sandeep Warrier, the match between RCB and KKR scheduled for today 3rd May has gotten postponed and a lot of reports have been coming up of other cases getting reported from other teams. When we look back and see in the last 14 days, KKR played against Delhi Capitals, Rajasthan Royals, Punjab Kings and Chennai Super Kings. It has come to knowledge that players from those sides have been asked to self-isolate by their respective franchises and even the match officials involved in those matches, too, might have to serve a quarantine period. The positive test of KKR players and BCCI’s Covid protocol is expected to put the IPL itinerary in jeopardy. With the final of the tournament scheduled on May 30 and international players expected to return to national duty from early June, there’s little leeway for an extension.

The ICC World Test Championship (WTC) final between India and New Zealand is scheduled to be played in Southampton from June 18-22 and the Indian team ideally needs a clear 15-day gap between the IPL and the WTC final. The COVID-19 virus has breached the IPL bubble at a time when India is reeling under the second wave of the pandemic. Recently, the BCCI ramped up bio-security measures, including additional tests, at the IPL venues. The latest development, however, could rock the boat and even result in the calling off of matches, cancellation of the league, rescheduling. Just hoping at this point that all the safety measures are taken, the players and the country’s interests are put at the paramount and swift action is taken. Hoping this phase passes and strength to all the players and everyone battling this tricky virus and to see cricket back in a country that is going through so much and this too shall pass. 

With this, we come to an end with this blog that serves as a recap of Week 3 of this exciting IPL. Unlike last time where I wrote every day match reviews, this time I’m writing match reports in a nutshell that’s available on Instagram or if you want to receive it in person or DM, do let me know and yes, please do check that out and keep the support going. I’d like to thank you all for ardently supporting my blog and this podcast. It really gives me the strength and zeal to keep working and deliver quality content to you all. A heartfelt thank you. Do check out @neveronthebackfoot on Instagram for the latest facts, trivia, quizzes, terminology and a lot more coming up this IPL season just for you. Hoping the IPL resumes soon and this is my 100th blog, wohoo :’)

This blog encompasses the 2nd week spanning from 19th April to 25th April of this very exciting IPL. I thought let this blog serve as a recap of the one week that has passed by and focus on some crucial pointers. 

The format will be pretty simple. I’ll be focussing on the matches that have happened, best batting performances, best bowling performances, underrated performers, a look through of the table and where teams stand, the purple cap and orange cap holder.

First up, the matches that have happened and the teams who’ve faced each other.

The Monday encounter had CSK take on RR where CSK was finally to their winning ways. Setting an imposing 188, they did a very good job and it was all-round performance for that win. The Tuesday match was 2020 IPL finalists MI taking on DC which was a low scoring affair as MI scored a lukewarm 137 and DC chased it down with ease. 

Wednesday’s encounters were a double headers delight as first up we had SRH take on PBKS which was again a low scoring match as PBKS’ batting concerns continued to plague their progress and with 121 set for SRH to chase down, they did so with 9 wickets to spare. 

The second match in this mid-week delight was CSK taking on KKR and CSK continued their dominance as batting first they posted a competitive 220 on the board but in what turned out to be an unbelievable fightback from KKR where they missed out by 18 runs in sealing that victory but credits to the CSK bowlers for that fightback in spite of the KKR onslaught. 

Thursday’s encounter was RCB and RR that saw RCB register their 4th win of the tournament consecutively outplaying RR chasing the 177 on board in what was a dream chase. Friday’s match was MI taking on PBKS where we finally got to PBKS register a much-needed victory.

Saturday’s match was KKR taking on RR which saw RR register a crucial win chasing 133 and it was an entertaining match undoubtedly. Sunday’s doubleheaders had RCB take on CSK where CSK triumphed over the table-toppers with a comprehensive performance. The other game had the first super over finish witnessed this IPL as SRH took on DC and in what was a very close and well-contested match, DC emerged victorious. 

The next section will focus on excellent batting performances

Jonny Bairstow’s 63* vs PBKS opens my quota of excellent batting performances as he was so fluent and effortless that day. Faf du Plessis’ 95* off 60 and Gaikwad’s 64 off 42 lit up the CSK 1st innings but KKR had Pat Cummins who scored 66* off 34, Russell’s 54 off 22 and Karthik’s 40 off 24 that were other glorious knocks from the CSK v KKR match. 

Tewatia’s 40 off 23 was a good knock in the RR v RCB match but the 101* that Devdutt Padikkal got with skipper Kohli also scoring 72* off 47 made it a perfect RCB chase. Rohit Sharma’s 63 off 52 and Rahul’s calm and collected 60 off 52 were good knocks that came when their teams needed it the most. Jadeja’s 62* off 28 balls was an unbelievable knock as he plundered Harshal Patel for 37 runs in the final over which was the difference between the teams and really rocked RCB’s chase and confidence. Prithvi Shaw’s 53 off 39 and Willaimson’s 66 off 51 were good batting performances in the SRH v DC match. 

The next section will focus on exceptional bowling performances

Chetan Sakariya’s 3/36 was a very good bowling performance and was complemented well by the 2 wickets scalped by Morris and Tewatia. In the same encounter Moeen Ali’s 3/7, Sam Curran and Jadeja’s 2 wickets were other standout performances. Mishra’s 4/24, Avesh Khan’s 2/15 in the MI v DC were spells of brilliance and helped DC register that win. 

Khaleel Ahmed’s 3/21 vs PBKS was a good and economical spell so was Abhishek Sharma’s 2/24 in the same match. Deepak Chahar’s 4/29, Lungi Ngidid’s 3/28 were some good spells in that run feast of a match between KKR and CSK. Siraj’s 3/27, Harshal Patel’s costly 3/47 were good spells in the RR v RCB match. 

Shami’s 2/21, Bishnoi’s 2/21 were standout spells in the PBKS v MI match. Chris Morris’ 4/21 and Chakravarthy’s 2/32 in the KKR v RR match were good performances. Harshal Patel’s 3/51 barring that last over was a good spell but Jadeja’s 3/13 and Tahir’s 2/16 was simply next level in the CSK v RCB match. 

In the underrated performers’ category, we have quite a few contenders who stunned us with their unsung performances

Dhawan’s 45 off 42 in the MI v DC match was a quiet knock but very instrumental as he held the fort in that tricky chase. Riyan Parag’s 25 off 16 and fielding in the RR v RCB match was really noteworthy. Sanju Samson’s 42 off 41 and Yashasvi Jaiswal’s 22 off 17 also make the list for comprehensive and good knocks that didn’t quite get the appreciation it deserved in the RR v KKR match. Suchith’s 14 off 6 was an instrumental knock in the SRH v DC match as it brought it to the super over and a very commendable batting performance.

Currently, we have CSK lead the table with 4 wins of 5 games with 8 points, DC and RCB at 2 and 3 with 8 points respectively. MI PBKS and RR at 4, 5 and 6 with 4 points and SRH and KKR with their solitary wins sit at 2 points at 7 and 8.

The orange cap contention has Shikhar Dhawan lead the pack with 259 runs, KL Rahul with 221 runs at 2, Faf du Plessis at 3 with 214 runs and Jonny Bairstow with 211 at 4 and Rohit Sharma with 201 runs at 5. 

The purple cap contenders has Harshal Patel with 15 wickets right at the top followed by Avesh Khan with 11, Morris and Chahar with 9 occupying the 3rd position and Deepak Chahar at 5 with 8 wickets. 

With this, we come to an end with this blog that served as a recap of Week 2 of this exciting IPL. Unlike last time where I wrote every day match reviews, this time I’m writing match reports in a nutshell that’s available on Instagram or if you want to receive it in person or DM, do let me know and yes, please do check that out and keep the support going. I’d like to thank you all for ardently supporting my blog and this podcast. 

It really gives me the strength and zeal to keep working and deliver quality content to you all. A heartfelt thank you. Do check out @neveronthebackfoot on Instagram for the latest facts, trivia, quizzes, terminology and a lot more coming up this IPL season just for you.

This blog encompasses the 1st week spanning from 9th April to 18th April of this very exciting IPL and a review of sorts. I thought let this serve as a recap of the one week that has passed by and focus on some crucial pointers. 

The format will be pretty simple. I’ll be focussing on the matches that have happened, best batting performances, best bowling performances, underrated performers, a look through of the table and where teams stand, the purple cap and orange cap holder.

First up, the matches that have happened and the teams who’ve faced each other.

The first encounter of this IPL saw heavyweights RCB and MI lock horns in what was a solid encounter. Batting first, MI could muster up and post just 159 which seemed chaseable, but a brilliant bowling performance by them ensured it was getting difficult for RCB to chase but RCB won it with 2 wickets to spare and registered the 1st win for the campaign in style. The 2nd match witnessed CSK take on DC where CSK batting first posted a very competitive 188 on board, but DC chased it down with ease and the openers Shaw and Dhawan were magnificent that day. 

The 3rd game saw KKR take on SRH where batting first putting 187 on the board but a batting collapse by SRH ensured KKR got a well deserved 10 runs victory. The 4th game was perhaps the most exciting of the week where RR and PBKS squared off against each other and batting first they got 221 and the chase of RR was enthralling but they missed out narrowly and it still did make for a very exciting match. 

The 5th match saw MI take on KKR where batting first MI was all out for 152 but they literally bowled out of their skins to salvage the much-needed victory and KKR missed out by 10 runs. The 6th match saw RCB take on SRH where RCB exhibited their brilliance in defending the total as they edged out SRH by 6 runs. The 7th match was DC vs RR that saw RR register their 1st win in what was a comprehensive victory in terms of all the departments clicking. The 8th match was a dull affair that saw PBKS get skittled for a paltry 106 and CSK chasing it with ease. MI and SRH squaring off was the 9th match and MI yet again outplayed an opposition with their supreme bowling and sealed the match by 13 runs. The doubleheader Sunday had RCB taking on KKR where RCB put on 204 on the board and really defended it well. The 2nd match was PBKS taking on DC where DC triumphed over them chasing it well. So, this was an exciting start to the IPL with so much to reflect on. 

The next section will focus on excellent batting performances

This week we got to see some good batting performances and let’s start off with AB’s glorious 48 off 27 that was certainly the difference between the two sides in the RCB vs MI match. Raina’s 54 off 36 reminded me of the vintage Raina who always performed for CSK in trouble but his performance was out shadowed by the brilliant 85 off 54 that Shikhar Dhawan made and his DC opening partner, Prithvi Shaw scoring a fluent 72 off just 38 balls also being the standout performers. Nitish Rana’s 80 off 56 with Tripathi getting that mindblowing 53 off 29 really helped KKR post that competitive total on the board vs SRH. 

KL Rahul’s 91 off 50 and Deepak Hooda’s unbelievable 64 off 28 were again some outstanding knocks as they effortlessly decimated the RR bowling, but Sanju Samson’s 119 simply stole the show for the sheer tenacity and brilliance displayed by the young man although they missed out on winning the match, this effort will always be remembered. Jonny Bairstow’s 43 off 22 was a crucial goof knock vs MI. Glenn Maxwell’s 78 off 49 and Ab’s 76 off 34 have to be standout performers in the RCB v KKR match. Mayank Agarwal’s 69 off 36 and Dhawan’s 92 off 49 were other standalone performers. 

The next section will focus on exceptional bowling performances

Harshal Patel for his brilliant fifer makes the list as vs a competent MI team getting those 5 wickets and restricting them had to be the highlight. Marco Jansen in his debut picking that 2/28 was another performance that really stood out vs RCB. Chris Woakes’ spell of 2/18 and Avesh Khan’s 2/23 was some good stuff that we got to see in what was a tough day for DC bowlers vs CSK. Rashid Khan’s 2/24 was yet another awesome spell that was economical but not enough for SRH. 

Although, the PBKS v RR match was a high scoring one did not mean that we did not get to see good bowling as debutant Sakariya with his 3 wickets was impressive and so was Arshdeep Singh with his 3 wickets. Andre Russel with his 5/15 and Pat Cummins with his 2/24 were outstanding and so was Rahul Chahar with his 4/27 complemented well by Trent Boult who scalped 2 wickets. Holder’s 3/30, Rashid Khan’s 2/18 were supreme bowling spells but Siraj’s 2/25 and Patel’s 2/25 were brilliant. Unadkat’s 3/15, Mustafizur Rahman’s 2/29, Avesh Khan’s 3 wickets with Woakes and Rabada’s 2 wickets were spells that stood out during the DC v RR match. 

Deepak Chahar’s 4/13, Shami’s 2/21 were good spells in the PBKS vs CSK match. Rahul Chahar once again shone with his 3/19 and Trent Boult with his 3/28 ensured MI could win the match comfortably by 13 runs. Varun Chakravarthy’s 2/39, Kyle Jamieson’s 3/41, Harshal Patel’s 2/17 and Chahal’s 2/34 were other standout performers. 

In the underrated performers’ category, we have quite a few contenders who stunned us with their unsung performances

Sam Curran with his wily 34 off 15 in the CSK v DC match was exceptional. DK’s 22 off 9 was a good cameo, Manish Pandey has been under the spotlight for his slow strike rate but that 61 off 44 was according to me a good knock and Bairstow too with his 55 off 40 was good. Riyan Parag’s 25 off 11 vs PBKS was another standout performance. Suryakumar Yadav’s 56 off 36 vs KKR definitely makes the list as he was so fluent and magnificent that day. 

Maxwell’s 59 off 41 was another crucial knock for RCB as he looked like the only one who was actually going to get runs that day as the rest of the batting looked listless vs SRH. Shahbaz Ahmed’s unbelievable 3/7 vs SRH was a real game-changer and brought RCB back to the game with that knock. Rashid Khan’s hitting is well known but vs RCB that 17 off 9 was what could’ve almost taken the game away from us but credits to him for that performance. Rishabh Pant’s 51 off 32 was a good knock vs RR and so was the 36* off 18 that Chris Morris got in the same encounter that helped RR salvage the game. Shahrukh Khan’s 47 off 36 in his debut match was brilliant. Vijay Shankar’s 2/19 according to me was a very good spell and really set things for SRH.

Currently, we have RCB lead the table with 6 points, DC and MI at 2 and 3 with 4 points, CSK, RR, KKR, PBKS at 4,5,6 and 7 with 2 points and SRH at the bottom having lost all the 3 games. 

The orange cap contention has Shikhar Dhawan lead the pack with 186 runs to his names RCB’s Maxwell, who had the Orange Cap after scoring 78 against KKR, is now settled at the second spot on the list with 176 runs and two half-centuries. PBKS skipper KL Rahul (157), KKR opener Nitish Rana (155) and De Villiers (125) are at third, fourth and fifth spot respectively.

The purple cap contenders haven’t changed much but Harshal Patel has extended his lead to 9 wickets now. He scalped two against KKR and increased his wicket count. MI spinner Rahul Chahar, who bagged a 3-wicket haul against SRH on Saturday, is placed second with 7. DC’s Avesh Khan (6) moved a place up to the third spot while Trent Boult (6) and Andre Russell (6) are at 4th and 5th place respectively.

With this, we come to an end with this blog of the recap of Week 1 of this exciting IPL. Unlike last time where I wrote every day match reviews, this time I’m writing match reports in a  nutshell that’s available on Instagram or if you want to receive it in person or DM, do let me know and yes, please do check that out and keep the support going.