Mitchell Marsh is firming as Australia’s likely captain for the T20 World Cup after being named to take the reins for a three-match T20I series against West Indies. The selectors are yet to confirm who will be Australia’s permanent T20I captain having not made a formal decision after Aaron Finch retired following the 2022 T20 World Cup. Australia have only played two T20I series since then with Marsh leading an…
Adelaide Oval is the traditional home of day-night Tests in Australia, but this year the pink ball game is at the Gabba in Brisbane. The venue has previously hosted two such Tests. Here’s a reminder of how they played out Australia 429 (Smith 130, Handscomb 105, Renshaw 71, Amir 4-97) and 202 for 5 dec (Khawaja 74, Smith 63) beat Pakistan 142 (Sarfaraz 59*, Hazlewood 3-22, Bird 3-23) and 450…
Maxwell has not played any cricket since Melbourne Stars’ last BBL match on January 15. Before Friday’s incident in Adelaide, he had already been rested from Australia’s three-match ODI series with West Indies as part of his management around his previously broken leg. That meant Maxwell was not due to play again until February 9 when he is set to be part of Australia’s T20I side for the three-match series…
The physique is as lean as it ever has been. The tattoos now stretch across a sleeker canvas. The cheekbones protrude a little more. Only the beard looks burdened with extra heft. Blow the dust off the memes – Ben Stokes looks more like Vincent van Gogh than ever before. A cricketer’s appearance rarely, if ever, warrants analysis. But for one to look like they’ve dropped from heavyweight to middleweight…
England are considering playing Mark Wood as a lone fast bowler alongside three spinners in the first Test against India, which begins on Thursday in Hyderabad. Both teams anticipate the pitch at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium will take spin throughout. And while England came into the tour expecting that any four-man attack, supplemented by Joe Root’s slow bowling, would be split evenly between seam and spin, they could veer…
Ben Stokes says he is “frustrated” by the ongoing delay with Shoaib Bashir‘s visa application for England’s tour of India, which has forced the Somerset offspinner to return to the UK, subsequently ruling him out of the first Test. England arrived in India on Sunday without Bashir, who remained in Abu Dhabi where the squad had been training ahead of the series, along with Stuart Hooper, the ECB’s director of…
The revolving door at the head of the PCB is set to see a new man at the helm, with Mohsin Naqvi primed to take over as chairman when PCB elections are held. It is understood the elections could take place as early as next week. The position at the top became vacant when Zaka Ashraf quit last week, a fortnight before his latest three-month extension as chairman of the…
Defending champions Mumbai Indians and 2023 runners-up Delhi Capitals are set to kick off the 2024 edition of Women’s Premier League (WPL) on February 23 at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. The five-team competition will have a total of 22 matches, with the final set to be played on March 17. After the entire tournament was held only in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai in 2023, the WPL this season…
Shubman Gill and Deepti Sharma have won the BCCI awards for best men’s and women’s international cricketers of 2022-23. Gill won the men’s award, named after the former India captain Polly Umrigar, for the first time in his career, while Deepti won the women’s award for the second time – she also won it for the 2019-20 season. Gill made the step up from exciting prospect to international superstar in…
New Zealand 92 for 9 (Jackson 26, Ghazanfar 3-29, Gul 2-12, Khalil 2-16) beat Afghanistan 91 (Jamshid 22, Rowe 5-21) by one wicket The Under-19 World Cup got its first thriller when New Zealand scraped through by one wicket against Afghanistan while chasing a measly 92 in East London. When New Zealand got closer to the target by crawling from 52 for 6 to 82 for 6 in 11 overs,…