He was, for most of us, not just a cricketing idol but a member of our family – one we could turn to for hope and comfort

Alagappan Muthu24-Apr-2023There is an essential component to fake news. The consumer has to want to believe it. So it needs to be something seductive. Something evocative. Something that feeds into the popular belief.When Barack Obama was the US president, a quote was once ascribed to him, where he wanted to understand why his country’s GDP went down every time Sachin Tendulkar went out to bat. (Presumably because all the Indian Americans were too busy watching cricket to be productive at work.)There is nothing in the public record to substantiate a single word of this. Yet it caught on like a college nickname. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense, it’s out there now and everybody else likes it.Somewhere in the meme-ification of this story is the truth of what one man meant to more than a billion people. We didn’t stop at any of the red flags. We saw a world leader known for being thoughtful and genuine praising our childhood hero and we wanted it to be true because it made us feel good.Sachin just made us feel good.It’s his birthday today. His 50th. And there is a thing he used to do whenever he reached that milestone on the field. He’d tilt his head to one side, raise his bat but not all the way up, just sort of shoulder-height, with the face tilted down. And if the sun caught him at the right angle, the shadow from the visor of his helmet would hide his eyes, giving off major boss vibes.Related

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It has been ten years since he retired, but the biggest batting records continue to bear his name. Most runs. Most hundreds. Most fifties. Some of those records might stand all the way until the end of time. And some of them are only under threat because, a) his successor is also ridiculously prolific, and b) the white ball don’t reverse-swing no more.Statistics, though, are only tools. They can, at best, guide us when there is a choice to be made. The decision itself comes from a far more primal place.Look and feel.And Sachin offered up a ton of both. Straight drives with so little fuss it felt like the fulfilment of a pact. “Just be a good ball and go for four, okay?” Back-foot punches that combined the grace of a ballet dancer with the power of a heavyweight fighter. And those flicks. If they could talk, they’d be like, “Come on, man. Don’t make it this easy.” He was geometric perfection. But also a bit cheeky. Sometimes, when the required rate was getting to him, he would play a shot that didn’t make sense even as it happened right before our eyes. An inside-out drive for six over cover to a ball pitching outside leg stump. That stuff was freestyle. That stuff was gangsta.Plus, he went and did all this to the best of the best. Wasim Akram. Shane Warne. Courtney Walsh. Glenn McGrath. Muthiah Muralidaran. This five-foot nothing prodigy made world-beating his day job, and that at a time when Indians didn’t fancy themselves capable of such audacity. This is how he made people who had no connection to him want good things for him. By that definition alone, he became like family. He became the stranger we kept calling by first name.Legitimacy helped. Especially when it came from the greatest batter in history. “I’ve only seen Tendulkar on the television,” Sir Don Bradman said, “And I was very, very struck by his technique and I asked my wife to come and have a look at him because I said, ‘I never saw myself play but I feel that this fella is playing much the same as I used to play’.”

Suddenly Sachin’s greatness started to make sense. He got so good because he wanted to make everybody – including himself – happy

Legendary innings helped. Sharjah 1998. Chennai 1999. Centurion 2003. But really, the relationship between a player and a fan – more specifically between Sachin and his fans – was personal. Some 19-year-olds right now probably owe their very existence to that six he hit off Shoaib Akhtar.I went to a house party in college. My crush was there. I was worried I’d spend the whole thing gawking at her and being weird. Fortunately the TV was showing a rerun of the CB Series final of 2008, allowing me to gawk at that and be weird in a less embarrassing way.I have not seen peak Sachin first-hand. The Perth century. The Qadir takedown. The Desert Storm. My memories of him are all of the accumulator that he became later in his career. The artist who became a technician, culling all the risk out of his game in order to increase productivity. But there was still some magic left. Like Chennai 2008, where his only Test-match-winning century in a chase came just a few days after a terror attack on his city.It was one of his more bespoke innings. He left nothing to chance. Not even the fate of his non-striker. For 42 overs, he was the voice inside Yuvraj Singh’s head. And when it was done, he dedicated the win to the people of Mumbai and hoped it might in some small way ease their pain. Stone-cold precision born out of warmth, feeling and empathy. Suddenly Sachin’s greatness started to make sense. He got so good because he wanted to make everybody – including himself – happy.He has tried to do the same after the end of his career as well, but it has probably not had the same effect. Mindful of the way the Indian media functions, grabbing anything he says and turning it into a headline, he exercises an abundance of caution in all of his public appearances. He tries so hard not to say the wrong thing that he ends up barely saying anything.We are pushing it, of course, asking a private citizen to be more vocal just because at one point he used to carry all of our hopes and dreams. And it feels very on brand that even on his birthday, we’re the ones asking for presents. It was deeply unfair for us to burden him that way in the first place and it was remarkable that he was able to shoulder that weight for so long. Sachin doesn’t belong to us anymore. He belongs to Anjali, Arjun and Sara now. And he’s earned the break. Twenty-four years of being at our beck and call is enough. Probably.

Numbers from Capitals’ record comeback for a narrow five-run win over Titans in Ahmedabad

Sampath Bandarupalli02-May-20232:53

How Ishant used his experience to trump Tewatia

2 – Instances of a team winning an IPL match despite losing five or more wickets inside the powerplay, including Delhi Capitals’ 23 for 5 on Tuesday. They were five down by the end of the fifth over. Royal Challengers Bangalore chased down 159 against Gujarat Lions in 2016, despite losing five wickets in 5.3 overs.23 – Capitals’ total when they lost their fifth wicket, the lowest from which a team has won an IPL match. The previous lowest was 29 runs by RCB against Lions in the Qualifier in 2016.2 out of 14 chases by Gujarat Titans in the IPL have ended up on the losing side. Their previous unsuccessful chase was against Mumbai Indians last year, when they lost by five runs in pursuit of 178.Related

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21 – Runs scored by Capitals’ top five batters. It is the second-lowest aggregate by the top five for a winning team in the IPL, behind the 16 runs by by Mumbai against RCB in 2017.130 for 8 – Capitals’ total in Ahmedabad is the lowest they have defended in the IPL. Their previous lowest was 144 for 9 against Sunrisers Hyderabad last week. Capitals had never won while defending a total of less than 150 prior to this season.ESPNcricinfo Ltd4 for 7 – Mohammed Shami’s bowling figures in the powerplay, the second-best for any bowler in the IPL. Ishant Sharma had five wickets for 12 runs in his first three overs against Kochi Tuskers Kerala in 2011. Shami is now one of the seven bowlers with a haul of four or more wickets in the powerplay in the IPL, while Ishant is still the only bowler with a five-for.200 – David Miller’s batting average for Titans while chasing prior to his duck against Capitals. Before this match, Miller had scored 400 runs across 12 chases for Titans at a 152.67 strike rate while being dismissed only twice. In fact, Miller scored 253 runs in his previous eight chases without being dismissed.3.71 – Win probability for Titans as per ESPNcricinfo’s forecaster when they needed 30 from nine balls. Rahul Tewatia’s hat-trick of sixes shot up the probability to 7.96, 21.40 and 82.26 respectively.

And who has the highest individual score on IPL debut?

Steven Lynch04-Apr-2023Mark Wood took five wickets in his first IPL match the other day. Was this a record? asked Brian McMaster from England

The England fast bowler Mark Wood took 5 for 14 – his best figures in all T20 cricket – for Lucknow Super Giants against Delhi Capitals in Lucknow last weekend. However, it wasn’t Wood’s IPL debut – he played one match for Chennai Super Kings against Mumbai Indians in 2018 (he failed to take a wicket, and his four overs cost 49).In any case, the best figures on debut in the IPL are 6 for 12, by the West Indian Alzarri Joseph for Mumbai Indians against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Hyderabad in 2019. Those are actually the best figures overall in IPL history: Wood currently sits joint eighth on that list.There was one notable record though: Wood’s figures were the best by an English bowler in the IPL, beating 5 for 25 by Dimitri Mascarenhas for Kings XI Punjab against Pune Warriors in Mohali in 2012.Has anyone made a higher score in the IPL season curtain-raiser than Ruturaj Gaikwad’s 92? asked Nilu Banerjee from India

That six-packed 92 from Ruturaj Gaikwad for Chennai Super Kings against Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad the other day was actually the third-highest individual score in the opening match of an IPL season. Back in April 2008, in the very first IPL game of all, Brendon McCullum lit up the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru with an undefeated 158 (still the second-highest in IPL history) for Kolkata Knight Riders against RCB. And in 2015, Rohit Sharma made 98 not out in the opening match for Mumbai Indians against KKR in Kolkata.Kyle Mayers hit 73 in his first IPL match the other day. What’s the highest score on IPL debut? asked Joseph Findlay from Barbados

Kyle Mayers hit 73 in his first match for Super Giants against Delhi Capitals in Lucknow at the weekend. That’s the highest score on IPL debut by anyone since the Brendon McCullum innings mentioned above – 158 not out for KKR against RCB in Bangalore in 2008, in the very first IPL match of all.Two others have made higher scores on IPL debut than Mayers’ 73 – both Australians, and both also in that inaugural season of 2008. The day after McCullum’s blitz, Michael Hussey hit 116 not out for CSK against Kings XI in Mohali, and a few days later Shaun Marsh made 84 not out for Kings XI vs Deccan Chargers in Hyderabad. So Mayers’ 73 was the fourth-highest individual score on IPL debut, and the highest since the first season.Travis Head is one of three batters to make five hundreds at home and none away•Getty ImagesI noticed that Mayank Agarwal has scored four Test centuries, all of them in India. What’s the most that one batter has made without any away from home? asked Devang Patel from India

At the moment there are three men who have scored five Test centuries, all of them on home soil: the old England captain Stanley Jackson, whose five hundreds all came against Australia, India’s Chandu Borde, and the current Australian batter Travis Head, who will no doubt be hoping to escape this particular list during the Ashes series in England later this year.Mayank Agarwal is one of five batters whose four Test centuries all came at home, along with Joe Hardstaff junior of England, Zimbabwe’s Guy Whittall, and the Sri Lankan pair of Roshan Mahanamaand Arjuna Ranatunga.What’s the lowest highest score in a completed Test innings? asked Jamie Lewcock from Ireland

If I’ve understood the question correctly, the answer is 7 – when South Africa were bowled out by England for 30 at Edgbaston in 1924, the highest individual contribution was 7, by their captain Herbie Taylor.The only other completed Test innings to include 11 single-figure scores was India’s 36 against Australia in Adelaide in 2020-21, when the biggest contribution was Mayank Agarwal’s 9.There have been several instances of ten batters failing to reach double figures in a Test innings. It includes Australia’s 35 for 8 at Old Trafford during the 1953 Ashes series.Use our feedback form, or the Ask Steven Facebook page to ask your stats and trivia questions

The most striking statistics to come out of an incredible run-chase

Sampath Bandarupalli26-Mar-2023259 The target that South Africa successfully chased down against West Indies in Centurion, setting a new T20 world record. The previous highest also came in an international match when Australia chased down 244 against New Zealand in 2018.ESPNcricinfo Ltd517 Runs scored by South Africa and West Indies, the first-ever T20I to aggregate 500-plus runs. These are also the most runs scored in all T20 cricket – including domestic games – surpassing the 515 runs scored by Multan Sultans and Quetta Gladiators in Rawalpindi during the recently concluded PSL.0 250-plus totals by South Africa and West Indies in men’s T20Is before Sunday. South Africa’s previous highest total was 241 for 6 against England in 2009, while West Indies’ was 245 for 6 against India in 2016. There have only been five totals higher than what South Africa and West Indies each put up in all T20Is.81 Boundaries by South Africa and West Indies in this game, another T20 record, going past the 78 recorded during the PSL game between Sultans and Gladiators earlier this month.35 Sixes hit by South Africa and West Indies, the highest for a T20I, beating the 33 sixes between Bulgaria and Serbia in 2022. West Indies hit 22 sixes, the joint-highest by a team in a T20I, equaling Afghanistan’s 22 effort against Ireland in 2019.ESPNcricinfo Ltd102 South Africa’s total by the sixth over, the highest Powerplay total by a Full Member in men’s T20Is, eclipsing West Indies’ 98 for 4 against Sri Lanka in 2021.South Africa needed just 5.3 overs to reach the 100-run mark, the second-fastest team 100 in men’s T20Is (where ball-by-ball data is available). The fastest is by Romania in 5.2 overs against Serbia in 2021.15 Balls taken by Quinton de Kock to bring up his fifty, the fastest for South Africa in T20Is. De Kock already held the Proteas record with his 17-ball fifty against England in Durban in 2020.ESPNcricinfo Ltd39 Balls taken by Johnson Charles to complete his century, the joint fourth-fastest in men’s T20Is. It is also the fastest hundred for the West Indies in men’s T20Is, bettering Chris Gayle’s 47-ball effort against England in the 2016 T20 World Cup.4 The record for most 200-plus targets chased down by a T20I team, now jointly held by South Africa and India

Big-match temperament and growing tactical acumen makes for a compelling package

Matt Roller23-Aug-2023For seven years, the identity of England’s next white-ball captain was clear. Jos Buttler served as Eoin Morgan’s No. 2 between 2015 and 2022, deputising in nine ODIs and five T20Is, and was the obvious successor when Morgan called it a day last year.Now, there is a level of uncertainty. Moeen Ali is Buttler’s vice-captain and has thrived in that role, captaining England to a 4-3 T20I series win in Pakistan last year and making several unheralded contributions to their success in Australia. But Moeen is 36, and unlikely to play ODIs beyond November; next year’s T20 World Cup looks like a natural end-point.Buttler is only 32 and is the strong favourite to captain England into the 50-over World Cup in 2027, but there may well be a vacancy for the white-ball vice-captaincy as soon as next summer. In the short term, there is a three-match ODI series against Ireland in September in which the World Cup squad are unlikely to feature, which will require a stand-in leader; in the long term, there is no standout candidate to succeed Buttler.Enter… Sam Curran? It might seem a left-field suggestion, but at 25, Curran is England’s youngest white-ball regular. His diffident public persona does not suggest an obvious captain in the making, but those who have worked with him speak highly of his cricketing intelligence and leadership credentials. Quietly, he has become a viable contender to eventually succeed Buttler.Curran has only captained six games at senior level, and admits it came as “a big surprise” when Trevor Bayliss asked him if he would deputise as Punjab Kings captain at the IPL earlier this year. “Shikhar [Dhawan] was injured, and Trev just asked, ‘do you fancy doing it?'” he recalls. “I was more than happy to. The games went pretty well and I really enjoyed it. Who knows what will happen?”Under Curran’s leadership, Kings won two out of three – and the wins came away from home against sides that ended up qualifying for the play-offs: Lucknow Super Giants and Mumbai Indians. With Curran returning to the UK before Chris Jordan, Surrey’s regular T20 captain, he filled in for another three games at the start of the Vitality Blast.Sam Curran captained opposite Rohit Sharma in the IPL•BCCIAhead of the Hundred, Tom Moody, Oval Invincibles’ head coach, was keen for Curran to take a more active role in leadership, perhaps in part to lessen the burden on Sam Billings – one of two players in the Hundred, along with Buttler, who captains while keeping wicket.Along with Jason Roy, another senior player, Curran has been part of pre-match strategy meetings this season and is part of Invincibles’ leadership group. “It’s just about having chats with analysts and guys who want to chat about different scenarios,” he explains. “Obviously I know Bilbo very well, and we’ve had a lot of conversations.”In-game, Curran often fields at mid-on or mid-off during the Powerplay and returns the ball to the bowler, offering a word of encouragement or advice as he does so. He consults with Billings on reviews, and hurries his team-mates up during end-changes when they fall behind the over-rate.Does he enjoy the tactical side of the game? “Yeah, I do,” Curran says. “It was something new to me, but when I did it, I really enjoyed it. It helps when you’ve got senior players and experience around you.”By his own admission, Curran is “not a massive planner”. Instead, he says he is “a big reaction person”. He explains: “I’m not massive with watching videos. You obviously plan for the game in your mind, but I like turning up on the day and reacting to conditions and dimensions.”Regardless, analysts say that Curran’s reading of the game tends to marry up with their insights – and he has shown that adaptability in his own bowling, most obviously at last year’s T20 World Cup, where he took home the Player of the Tournament award as well as the trophy.Related

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In the final, he bowled shrewdly to the MCG’s vast square boundaries. Two of his three wickets came from batters pulling good-length balls to deep midwicket, as he finished his four overs with 3 for 12 to be named Player of the Match.”We are very lucky as players in this day and age,” Curran says. “We’ve got great analysts who work with us who can show you anything you want: videos, trends, match-ups and all those types of things. But for me personally, that might just confuse the game a little bit. I try to react to what’s in front of me.”Perhaps the biggest challenge for Curran would be his workload. England have had bowlers and allrounders as ODI captains before – think Bob Willis, Adam Hollioake, Andrew Flintoff and Paul Collingwood – but not in the modern era of a relentless, three-format international schedule.And Curran is in high demand in franchise leagues: Bayliss made him the most expensive buy in IPL auction history last year, and he has been retained for a second season at MI Cape Town in the SA20. By the time Buttler steps away from the captaincy, the global landscape could look fundamentally different.Curran has not been at his best in the Hundred, scoring 120 runs and taking five wickets across eight group games. But Sunday’s final will provide him with another chance for him to perform on the big stage, and to underline the big-game temperament that has been such a feature of his career.If Invincibles win the men’s trophy for the first time, it will rightly be Billings who takes the plaudits for his savvy leadership over the last four weeks. Yet in Curran, England might well have stumbled upon a long-term option for the limited-overs captaincy.

Fifteen freakish numbers from Virat Kohli’s 15-year international career

Sampath Bandarupalli18-Aug-2023More than 500 kilometres between wickets
In his 15-year-long international career, Virat Kohli has run roughly 277km between wickets for his non-boundary scoring shots. He’s also covered some 233km for his partners’ runs when he’s been at the crease, taking the tally to approximately 510km. Only once has Kohli run an all-run four to date, during an ODI in 2013 against Zimbabwe.ESPNcricinfo LtdAn average of 518
Kohli’s success with the bat in T20 World Cups is well documented. He was Player of the Tournament in both 2014 and 2016, and his record in chases is particularly outstanding. India have won nine of the ten matches during which he has batted in chases, and he’s remained unbeaten on eight occasions.Kohli averages 270.5 in those ten chases, which is nearly twice the average of the next best, Marcus Stoinis (146), among batters to have played a minimum of five innings. Kohli’s average shoots up to 518 in successful chases, close to five times that of the second-best, Cameron White (104).Helmet off at 46 venues
Kohli has played at 83 venues in his international career so far, and has scored hundreds in 46 of them. Adelaide Oval is the standout venue for Kohli; it has witnessed five of his 76 tons. Only one player has had a hundred on more grounds than Kohli – Sachin Tendulkar, unsurprisingly, at 53 venues.ESPNcricinfo LtdA perfect start to World Cups
Kohli made a dream start to his World Cup career with an unbeaten century against Bangladesh in Dhaka in the opening match of the 2011 edition. A year later, he scored a fifty on his T20 World Cup debut against Afghanistan, to become the first player to complete the double of a hundred on Men’s ODI World Cup debut and a fifty on Men’s T20 World Cup debut. Aaron Finch matched this double, with a fifty in the 2014 T20 World Cup and a century on the opening day of the 2015 ODI World Cup.Excelling in oppositions’ backyards
Kohli has scored a century in all nine countries where he has played ODI cricket, and in seven of the eight countries in Test cricket, with Bangladesh the only exception. He has scored both Test and ODI hundreds in six countries against the home team – Australia, England, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, South Africa and West Indies. Only two players have had both Test and ODI tons against the host nation in as many or more countries as Kohli – seven by Sachin Tendulkar and Kumar Sangakkara.Nearly 1000 runs in ten innings
In 2018, between February and October, Kohli scored nearly 1000 runs in a span of ten ODI innings. Kohli amassed 995 runs between his 197th and 206th ODI innings at an average of 142.14, with five hundreds and three fifties. It is the best 10-innings ODI streak for any batter. He surpassed by 138 runs the previous record held by David Warner for scoring 857 runs between October 2016 and June 2017.