Blog Posts by Anantha Narayanan

Twenty20 is a format eminently suitable for the bits-and-pieces
player, the one who does something in every department of the game, not
always at the top-drawer level. However, T20 also calls for top-quality
all-rounders who perform with the bat and ball very effectively. This
article looks at such players.

The qualification criteria
are 200 runs and 10 wickets. Unfortunately, the bar has to be kept
somewhat low since very few matches have been played in the format.

The
first table looks at the overall quantitative achievements. I have just
added the runs scored and wickets captured multiplied by 25 to derive
an overall achievement table in terms of Equivalent Runs. This may be
longevity based but should not detract from the achievements of the
players.

The innings of the tournament: Warner's 135 in 69 balls for New South Wales against Chennai. Analytically, this has become the best IPL/CL innings ever played. However, visually also there has been no better innings ever. It was important that the NSW bowlers delivered the match for Warner. Unlike the next few days when Warner's own 123 and Harris' 108 were squandered by the Australian club bowlers.

The stunner of the tournament: Warner's 5 switch-hits, producing 3 x 4s and 1 x 6, producing 18 runs. An average of 3.6 runs per ball. One was off Dwayne Bravo, a medium pacer. Despite Harsha's and Ian's continued attempts to discredit this mode of play, it is legal and requires skills not possessed by 99% of international batsmen.

The bowling spell of the tournament: Sunil Narine's 4-over spell of 3 for 8. This was for Trinidad and Tobago against Chennai. This was against top quality players of spin, such as Michael Hussey, Raina and Dhoni. This has also become the best ever

When Mike Hussey scored 81, he would have
assumed is effort would help Chennai Super Kings post a win against Mumbai
Indians in the Champions League Twenty20. But, as Lasith 'Slinga' Malinga
unleashed his batting skills, the win evaporated in the matter of a few swings
of the bat. So I started wondering about such wonderful performances which
finished on the losing side. There were quite a few.

First, the all-round performances which
finished on the losing side.

Poor Yuvraj Singh! Twice he has scored over
50 and captured 3 wickets, and finished on the losing side for the two teams he
has captained in IPL. He must have felt that the whole world (okay, take it as
the rest of the teams) were against him.

A few months back, I looked at teams
scoring 300+ and losing the match. Now let me look at the other side. Teams
scoring below 140 and still finishing on the winning side. This time, I have
given a potted summary and a one-line comment. Nothing more is needed.

ODI
# 593. Pakistan vs India.

Played on 18 December 1989 at Municipal Stadium, Gujranwala.

Pakistan
won by 7 runs. MoM: Saeed Anwar.

Pakistan: 87 for 9 wkt(s)
in 16.0 overs

   Saeed Anwar         42*(32)

India: 80 for 9 wkt(s)
in 16.0 overs

   Imran Khan 
4.0 0 18 3, Waqar Younis 4.0 0 21 3

This was Tendulkar's ODI debut.

ODI
# 772. Australia vs West Indies.

Played on 8 December 1992 at Sydney Cricket Ground.

Australia
won by 14 runs. MoM: Taylor M.A.

Australia: 101 for 9
wkt(s) in 30.0 overs

   Jones D.M           21 (49)

West Indies: 87 all out in 29.3 overs

   Reiffel P.R         6.0 
1  14  3

Taylor got
MoM for his 4 catches and captaincy.

ODI
# 284. India vs England.

Played on 27 January 1985 at Sector 16

After 3 years, Ajanta Mendis at last got
the ball to do the talking, albeit only in a T20 game. In one match, he
re-wrote most of the bowling records. So I thought it is time to look at the
T20 bowling scene. Readers would do well to remember that this refers only to T20
Internationals and not IPL and related matches, which, in my opinion, are not
International matches.

At Trent Bridge, India were pulverised by two
all-rounders, the true variety, Stuart Broad and Tim Bresnan. Broad scored 108
runs and captured 8 wickets for 76 runs. Bresnan scored 101 runs and captured
76 wickets for 96 runs. Rarely has been a match been dominated by two great
all-round performances. And think of it, Bell
would only have been third in the list of MOM candidates.

So I thought this is the time to look at
the truly great all-round performances in Test cricket. I have used a simple
metric of converting the performances to a runs base, assigning 25 runs to a
wicket. Of course this could be complicated a lot by considering various
related options such as bowling quality, pitch type, wicket quality, pitch
type, support received et al. However, let me stick to the simple formulae now.

Given below is the table of all-rounders
who have exceeded 350 "runs" in a Test. That is a lot, as you can see. It is
the equivalent of a batsman scoring a triple-plus century or a bowler

Last time I had looked at the cameos - the
forgotten efforts in ODIs. I had looked at the short but telling batting
efforts. This time, I have shifted my look at the bowling efforts. The key lies
in the definition of a cameo. Just as I had indicated that a 10-ball 25 is defined
as a cameo while a 30-ball 25 is not, we have to set the bowling parameters.
The bar had to be moved quite a few times to get a reasonable number in. I have
defined a bowling cameo as a bowling effort above 2 and below 5 overs in
which the RpO value is less than one per over, irrespective of the wickets
captured. The number of such efforts is now limited to 23. Not a bad filtering
effort considering that there are over 30000 bowling stints.

First let us look at the bowling cameos
from the ‘wickets captured' angle. There is no doubt which is the most famous
bowling cameo, although some people might consider this as not a cameo. However,
it fulfils the conditions laid down. The Courtney Walsh bowling spell of 5

Cricket followers remember hundreds,
fifties, 4/5 wicket hauls in ODI matches. Very few people remember the cameos
which often define the difference between a loss and win. In this article, I
will look at some of the memorable cameos which have been played over the
years.

What is a cameo? I have defined, based on
my own reading of the ODI game, a cameo to be an innings between 25 and 49. A
quick 17 could be considered but it is not often that this would result in a
win. On the other hand, a quick 30 will often mean a win or at least move the
lagging innings forward. A fifty is too long an innings, even though it might
have taken fewer than 20 balls.

For this article, I have set the bar quite
high, just so that I have very few innings to look at. I have only considered
cameos with a scoring rate of 266.7 (RpO of 16). Even lowering this to 250
doubles the number of innings. Thus we have only 14 innings to look at. The table
is ordered in two ways.

The first is in order of the