After an absolutely thrilling wild-card round, the MLB postseason is down to eight teams competing for the right to be called World Series champions.

Both the ALDS and NLDS are set to get going on Saturday, with teams pitted against each other in a best-of-5 series with everything on the line.

Below we break down the schedule for each Division Series and the announcers charged with calling the games.

NLDS—Chicago Cubs vs. Milwaukee Brewers

Kyle Schwarber is hitting free agency at the perfect time. The 32-year-old slugger had the best season of his career in 2025 for the Phillies, and now he’ll hit the open market with plenty of suitors.

In a brilliant campaign, Schwarber set career-highs in home runs (56), RBIs (132), hits (145), runs (111), wRC+ (152), and fWAR (4.9). The three-time All-Star DH led the NL in home runs and RBIs and, if anything, looks to be getting better with age. On top of that, he played all 162 games for the first time in his career. He was excellent in 2024 as well, producing a 134 wRC+ and 3.3 fWAR.

Very few players get their biggest contract after the age of 32, but Schwarber will be an exception. He’s got the kind of bat that should play for years moving forward, and given that he’s a DH-only at this point, there are no concerns about his defense falling off.

Here’s a look at four teams that would be a great fit for Schwarber as he looks for his next home.

Philadelphia Phillies

It’s pretty accepted around the league that the most likely scenario is Schwarber staying in Philadelphia. He’s coming off a career year and has become a centerpiece of the organization over the past four years. J.T. Realmuto and Ranger Suarez are both free agents, so the Phillies have some number crunching to do to keep their core together. Then there’s the elephant in the room in the form of Bryce Harper trade rumors. If they did move Harper, bringing back Schwarber’s left-handed power would be even more imperative. During his four years in Philly, the slugger has hit 187 home runs and slugged .507. He’s not a bat they can afford to lose. There’s very little to suggest Philly is letting Schwarber walk away.

New York Mets

Mets owner Steve Cohen is willing to spend stupid money to compete for championships, and it would likely take that to land Schwarber. Mets DHs slashed .247/.314/.428, and that .742 OPS ranked 16th in baseball. On top of that, Starling Marte, the team’s primary DH, is hitting free agency. There’s an opening Schwarber could fit into. If the Mets can’t re-sign Pete Alonso, the need to add a big bat will get even more pressing. But even if Alonso is back, Schwarber’s lefty power would be a huge addition.

Detroit Tigers

The Tigers need to add some offense this winter and there’s not a better fit out there than Schwarber. Like the Mets, Detroit’s DHs left much to be desired in 2025. They ranked 20th in OPS (.726) while slashing a weak .226/.309/.417. It was a position the team shared all season, but getting one guy to step in and provide stability could be a huge benefit. Schwarber is a veteran with a World Series ring, and he did it while teammates with Detroit shortstop Javy Baez. It’s also worth noting, Schwarber grew up in neighboring Ohio, went to Indiana and came up with the Cubs. He has deep midwestern roots.

Cincinnati Reds

Speaking of midwestern roots. Schwarber grew up a Reds fan and he has teased the idea of playing for his hometown team. And, hey, let’s not write this off completely. Cincinnati almost certainly won’t spend money this offseason, so it might feel like a long shot, but the Reds shocked everyone and made the playoffs in 2025. They could have something brewing and bringing Schwarber back would show they’re serious about winning. I don’t think there’s really any chance of this happening, but he would be an incredible fit with that team and in that ballpark.

Perceived need for speed led offspinner to lose his action after touring with Lions

Matt Roller06-Feb-2020Is Adam Riley the new Graeme Swann? That was the question posed by in 2014, following another impressive early-season performance by the promising Kent offspinner, fresh out of university and keeping England’s James Tredwell out of the county’s first team.Riley’s promise was evident to anyone who had seen him bowl. A classical offspinner blessed with the height to get good bounce off most surfaces, he started 2014 as a final-year geography student at Loughborough University, and finished it with 57 first-class wickets, more than any spinner in England but Saeed Ajmal and Jeetan Patel. Unsurprisingly, greater recognition quickly followed: he was invited to bowl in the Lord’s nets ahead of a Test against India, and was sent on winter trips to Sri Lanka and South Africa by the ECB before representing the MCC in the Champion County game in the spring. It seemed a matter of when, and not if he would fill the void left by Swann’s premature retirement during the 2013-14 Ashes.ARCHIVE: England mark time on RileyBut somewhere along the way, things went awry. From the start of the 2015 home summer until the end of his career, Riley would manage only 25 more first-class wickets, and quietly announced his retirement last year at the age of 27. He now works at Dulwich College, having been appointed as the school’s head of player development at the end of 2019.”Kent told me they weren’t going to renew my contract,” Riley explains. “I had a bit of a cooling-off period, where I decided I wasn’t going to play any cricket and have a think about what I wanted to do next. I took the view that I’d run my race.”The question, then, is how this happened: how, in the space of five years, did a young, hungry, talented bowler, who had taken bags of first-class wickets head from England’s spinner-in-waiting into early retirement?”You can look at the footage, and it’s all obvious. I was never the same bowler after that winter,” Riley reflects. “At the time, I remember there being a big push for spinners to bowl a bit quicker. That’s what Swann was doing, that’s what Ajmal was doing, Muralitharan did that, Warne did that.”I guess they were trying to find that ‘next Graeme Swann’. Swann was a world-class spinner – the best who’s played for England, certainly that I’ve been able to watch live – and he naturally bowled a very quick pace but still got shape on the ball. That’s what they were encouraging us to do.”I probably took that too literally, and ended up focusing on trying to bowl quicker instead of getting shape on the ball.”The parallels with a current England spinner are immediately apparent. Before the end of his first over on ODI debut on Tuesday, Matt Parkinson’s bowling speed was being criticised by TV commentators: the suggestion was that while his loopy legbreaks worked at county level, he would need to speed up to have international success.But Riley’s career serves as a cautionary tale. “The danger is that if you change one thing, and that becomes ingrained but isn’t the right thing, all of a sudden you’ve got to iron out two things that have become bad habits,” he says. “Then you can try something else technical, and actually that’s not right either.”And it starts building up to a bit of a mess, really.”Riley returned to Kent at the start of 2015 knowing that something had come wrong. After a handful of ineffective performances, he dropped out of the firing line and into the second team. He worked extensively with Min Patel behind the scenes but the pair “couldn’t seem to put our fingers on how to get me back to where I was”.Fleeting first-team appearances brought occasional success, like a seven-wicket return in a victory against Derbyshire in 2018, but by the end of May last year, Kent had decided they had invested enough time and effort into resurrecting a career that seemed to be going nowhere.”At some stages during that three or four-year period it became a mental thing as well, where I was struggling mentally. At one stage, I was being talked about as one of the best young prospects in England, and then I couldn’t do what I was doing. It was quite hard to get my head round.”I see it in so many other players. They’ll have a fantastic year, and then if it starts to go wrong, they’ll think something’s got to change technically when actually sometimes it’s just a mindset thing.”You think: what’s got you to that point? What’s got you that first-team place? What’s got you that professional contract? Sometimes you need to have a bit more faith in that.”If I could rewind back to 2014, that’s what I’d do: I’d be more stubborn, and say, ‘you know what? I just got picked for England Lions on the back of taking 60 first-class wickets. Yes, to play international cricket I might need to bowl faster, but at the moment I’m 22, I’ve played 30 first-class games, and I’d quite like to stick with what I’m doing.’ But that comes with experience, and at the time I didn’t have that. Hindsight is a beautiful thing.”Adam Riley celebrates a wicket in his final first-class appearance•Getty ImagesWhile his release last summer was “not completely mutual – you never want to be told you’re not wanted”, Riley can reflect that compared to plenty of others, he was relatively fortunate in how his career ended. His Kent deal ran until the end of the season, and he was given notice that it would not be renewed four months before; often, players are not formally told until a matter of weeks before that a fresh contract will not be forthcoming.”It gave me four months to work out what I wanted to do next – if they’d done that on August 31, then actually I’d have been in a worse head space than I am now. I’m in a good one – I’m happy that I’m back doing something I love, and I’ve fallen on my feet.”Riley is glowing about the help he has had from the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) during his transition into retirement, in the knowledge that while he has managed to find a job quickly, there are countless stories of players struggling to cope with the precarious nature of professional sport.

I’m at peace with it now – I don’t really look back and think what if?Adam Riley

“I know other people who were still scraping around every month to try and pay the bills 12 months down the line, and that’s scary. I had some rainy day money that would have got me through at least until Christmas, and it’s with stuff like that when what you hear earlier in your career from the PCA comes to the forefront.”When you’re 21 and wet round the ears you just think ‘I’m going to be playing cricket for the next 15 years’ when the reality is that the average retirement age in professional cricket in 26. Granted, now is a good time to be getting into the game as a young player, with the salary cap going up and the extra competition [the Hundred] going on, but the same principle is going to apply.Riley worked with Tom Jones, his local PCA personal development manager, who “walked me through what happens next, and gave me almost a bit of life counselling”. That included working out what sort of job he wanted, updating his CV, and simply being available at the end of the phone as he tried to work out where he stood.”I read a lot of articles about players that feel like they lose their identity [after retirement]. All they’ve known is being a professional cricketer, and all they’ve been known as by their friends is ‘Adam, the guy who players cricket’. Suddenly, you’ve got to redesign yourself as ‘Adam, who sells insurance’ or whatever it is you go into.”Riley started in his new role at Dulwich at the end of 2019, after his former Kent team-mate Geraint Jones passed his details onto Richard Coughtrie, the master in charge of cricket, and will combine his role with work with Kent U-15s. He enjoys the dressing room-style camaraderie of the PE department, and has his career in healthy perspective; he may not have been the next Graeme Swann, but that doesn’t keep him up at night.”I’m at peace with it now – I don’t really look back and think ‘what if?’. It’s not a major event in the grand scheme of all the years of work I’ll have to do between now and when I retire, it’s just a little substory. But I get to say I’m one of the 0.01% of people that get to play professional cricket – and I had a good go at it.”

The postponement of the IPL has been a “blessing in disguise” as it has given the injury-prone young quick time to get back in shape

Shashank Kishore15-Aug-2020Shivam Mavi remembers February 6, 2017 vividly. He had just recovered from a side strain, and wanted to prove a point as he pitched for a berth in India’s Under-19 World Cup squad. England Under-19s batted first at Brabourne Stadium that day, and Mavi “got into the zone” straightaway, castling Tom Banton with a nipbacker.”Full delivery, swung in late, hit the seam, nipped back, and beat the inside edge to crash into the stumps,” Mavi reminisced in a chat with ESPNcricinfo. “, Banton batsman out (It was fun, getting a batsman like Banton out).”That’s when things were going well for him. For a better part of the last three months, Mavi has binge-watched videos such as that one to kill time in Noida, where he lives. He hasn’t played any competitive cricket since December 2019 because of a stress fracture in his back, and is only just feeling his way back into competitive cricket, just like on that day in 2017. After four months of rehabilitation, he feels fit and ready for the upcoming IPL season in the UAE, where he will have a chance to remind Banton about delivery; the two are team-mates at Kolkata Knight Riders.”The IPL being postponed has been a blessing in disguise for me,” he said. “Had the IPL happened in April-May, I would have missed my second straight season. I was scheduled to recover only mid-April. Then to cope that kind of bowling workload straightaway may have been tough, so the last four months have given me time to recover, rehabilitate and become stronger.”

If I can bowl to a player like him, who can hit any ball anywhere, I can bowl to anyone. Sometimes, when I bowl to him, and he can’t hit it the way he wants, he’ll nod. That’s a sign it was a good ball. Once you get confidence bowling to someone like him, you aren’t afraid anymoreShivam Mavi on bowling to Andre Russell in the Knight Riders nets

Mavi felt something was off as he bowled a probing spell in a Ranji Trophy game against Railways in Meerut last December. He felt strain in his back even as he went flat out to finish with figures of 6 for 83 in the match. After the game, he went for a scan that revealed an L1 disc injury. It was another setback. After all, the 21-year-old had felt he had made a complete recovery from another back problem just three months earlier.”Two injuries back-to-back isn’t easy, and I was down mentally,” he said. “I kept thinking how things could go wrong. Fortunately, I had great motivators at NCA. Anand Date, our trainer, I’ve known him since my Under-19 days, so there was familiarity. He understands my body better than anyone. He, Amit Tyagi [NCA physio] and Ashish Kaushik [NCA head physio] charted my recovery, step by step. It took me four months to come back to full rhythm.”Mavi was bowling at “70 to 80%” in March when the initial lockdown was imposed. “I couldn’t bowl for three months, so I was back down to zero again,” he said. “Normally during rehab or training, when you spend all your energy, you tend to sleep well. During lockdown, because I wasn’t spending that energy, I wasn’t able to sleep. I used to be up until 3-4am sometimes, so not being able to bowl or train was a big challenge.”ALSO READ: Shivam Mavi: young, focused and very fastMavi returned to bowling in June and has since clocked in regular training, apart from gym work prescribed by the NCA. He has also kept in touch with the backroom staff at Knight Riders, and “can’t wait to join the camp and bowl”. For the last three weeks, he has spent considerable time with Suresh Raina and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, training and practicing with them at a private facility in Noida after lockdown restrictions were lifted.”Bhuvi teaches you a lot, just the skills he has is amazing,” Mavi said. “He only keeps telling me, ‘swing is your natural strength’. I feel I have good pace anyway, so I don’t worry about that aspect. If I can retain that swing, I can be lethal even at 135 kph. I’ve honestly never thought about pace. For me, rhythm is most important.”Mavi clocked 149kph at the Under-19 World Cup in 2018. This combination of pace and swing made him and Kamlesh Nagarkoti a deadly pair during India’s victorious run at the tournament. Knight Riders staved off aggressive bidding from Delhi Capitals prior to the 2018 edition, and when the hammer went down, he was sold for 15 times his base price for INR 3 crore ($470,000 approx. at the time).Shivam Mavi poses with the 2018 Under-19 World Cup trophy•ICC via GettyHe impressed immediately.”I remember my first wicket like yesterday, I want that feeling back – Gautam Gambhir, at a packed Eden Gardens,” Mavi said. “That itself was like pressure, because he has led the team [Knight Riders] to two titles. But fans were roaring for me this time because he was playing for Delhi Daredevils [Capitals’ earlier avatar]. I bowled a length ball, got it to skid, he looked to punch and was played on. That roar after the wicket, I still get goosebumps. That feeling we may not have this time because we will play behind closed doors, but that was a different feeling altogether.”Mavi suggested that the biggest change in his approach to T20 bowling has come because of bowling to Andre Russell in the Knight Riders’ nets. “If I can bowl to a player like him, who can hit any ball anywhere, I can bowl to anyone,” he said. “Sometimes, when I bowl to him, and he can’t hit it the way he wants, he’ll nod. That’s a sign it was a good ball. Once you get confidence bowling to someone like him, (you aren’t afraid anymore).”On their part, Knight Riders have gone out of their way at times to ensure young talent such as Mavi and Nagarkoti, who has also had his fair brush with injuries, haven’t been lost to the game. Both players, and others part of the set-up, have been part of the franchise’s academy programme where they are monitored twice a year under specialised coaches in Abhishek Nayar and Omkar Salvi. It has helped in a big way.”That support has been immense,” he said. “They look after us amazingly well. They care for us. At these camps, you learn so much more about your game. They have worked on me not just on the bowling aspect, but also on my batting. As a franchise, they are very chilled out. Initially when me, Nagarkoti and Shubman Gill went into the dressing room for the first time, we were very nervous and overawed. But immediately we were made to feel welcome.”Someone like Shah Rukh Khan comes and talks to you like he knows you from many years, laughs and dances with you, such things makes us feel very special. I’m feeling fresh physically and mentally. I can’t wait to start training and bowling for KKR again.”

His all-round contributions go under the radar but he is highly prized if you go by the impact he has in every match

ESPNcricinfo stats team10-Sep-2020The average IPL fan may not pick Shane Watson among their top three players of all time in the IPL, but he does lay a strong claim to that status. He has been the Most Valued Player in the IPL twice; he has more hundreds than most other batsmen in the tournament, barring Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli; and, as the 2018 IPL final showed, Watson has a habit of turning up for the big games. Yet he may not spring to mind as an obvious candidate for the top three because his contributions are often split across batting and bowling and do not always come with the spectacle of a traditional milestone of a hundred or a five-for.While it is not unusual to give the Man-of-the-Match award to a hundred or a five-for in a winning cause in the longer formats, it is often a fall-back option in T20 cricket when there’s no immediately obvious match-turning effort to reward. The rarity of hundreds and fifers increases their perceived value in T20s. They are often not the most influential contributions in a match. ESPNcricinfo’s Smart Stats looks beyond these conventional notions to credit performances that are truly impactful in the context of the match.According to Smart Stats, Watson has had the highest impact by any player on the outcome of a match on 23 different occasions in the IPL – eight more than the 15 Man-of-the-Match awards he has won. With one such stellar effort in roughly every six games, Watson is the third-most impactful player of the IPL.ESPNcricinfo LtdThe graphic lists Watson’s top five highest impact performances in the IPL, according to Smart Stats. While the top four are instances where Watson was also the official Player of the Match, the fifth was overshadowed by a century from Kohli, who was also the official Player of the Match. Smart Stats identifies this instance among the eight matches in which Watson has played a bigger role than any other player.In this Royal Challengers Bangalore match against Rising Pune Supergiants in 2016, Kohli’s Batting Impact was comfortably greater than anyone else’s, but Watson’s all-round impact was greater than Kohli’s. In an innings in which nearly every other bowler went for ten runs an over, Watson bowled four overs for 24, taking the wickets of Ajinkya Rahane, MS Dhoni and George Bailey during the challenging 16th and 19th overs. Watson’s impact with the ball in the match was valued at 121, almost 20% more than the bowler with the next highest impact. With the bat, Watson hit a quick 13-ball 36 and his impact with the bat was valued at 87 – second-highest after Kohli’s. However, Watson’s Total Impact in the match of 208 (Batting Impact + Bowling Impact) comfortably beat Kohli’s.ESPNcricinfo LtdPlaying for Rajasthan Royals in 2014, against Kolkata Knight Riders in Ahmedabad, Watson’s triple strikes derailed the chase in the 15th over, but it was spinner Pravin Tambe who got the Player-of-the-Match award for his hat-trick in the 16th. Chasing 171, KKR were cruising at 121 without loss when Watson dismissed the openers, Gautam Gambhir and Robin Uthappa, on 65 and 54, respectively, and then Andre Russell (admittedly not yet the power-hitting giant he was to become). These important wickets turned the tide of the game. Add Watson’s 31 off 20 balls to it to get a Total Impact in the match of 145, which was comfortably ahead of Tambe’s 114.Such all-round efforts tend to be overlooked when we size up Watson’s claim as one of the all-time IPL greats. That is not to say that Watson hasn’t had his own share of match-winning efforts that have grabbed our attention, but Smart Stats takes into account these not very obvious, yet telling, contributions to rate Watson at No. 3 in the all-time list of the most impactful players in the IPL.

More teams will be faced with first-choice players pulling out, and it could result in further lopsided contests

Mohammad Isam22-Jan-2021If any part of Jason Mohammed really hoped that his West Indies side would follow what India did to Australia on their own tour of Bangladesh, it’s all gone now. They are 0-2 in a three-match ODI series, never once posing a threat to the opposition.Their batting in both games was almost identically poor, with the middle-order were forced to rebuild after the top-order fell cheaply. They couldn’t quite balance between caution and aggression. And while their bowlers impressed in patches, they were never equipped to defend totals of 122 and 148.Meanwhile, Bangladesh hardly put a foot wrong, in either game. The spinners dominated proceedings after the pace attack gave them early breakthroughs. The batsmen were understandably watchful even though they were chasing small targets. There was professionalism and consistency on display, the least you could expect from a team that has targeted direct entry to the 2023 World Cup.West Indies have now lost their last seven ODIs to Bangladesh. Things may have been different had their first-choice picks made themselves available for this series. But that doesn’t change the fact that they have just given up 30 points in the race to World Cup qualification.Still, coach Phil Simmons had urged the newcomers to put up performances that make it hard for the regular players to replace them in the next series. Covid-19 basically gave them opportunities that were becoming hard to come by. But now it is more than likely that many of those missing seniors will ever so smoothly regain their place in the ODI team.Akeal Hosein has been one of West Indies’ few bright spots on this tour•AFP via Getty ImagesWhether teams and boards like it or not, this is going to be a feature of international cricket until the pandemic ends. West Indies are just the first among the international teams to suffer the consequences of traveling regularly during these times. It is natural to for players to feel so mentally drained that they choose to skip tours. Other teams will be faced with this dilemma soon enough.West Indies had a couple of pull-outs for their visits to England and New Zealand last year, but for this Bangladesh trip, several of their top players decided to stay away. Add to that, Romario Shepherd testing Covid-19 positive before departure, and Hayden Walsh Jr testing positive after landing in Bangladesh. They haven’t replaced him in the ODI squad officially, which leaves them with only 14 men to choose from, and no lead spinner.To go back to January 19 for a minute, the touring West Indies side couldn’t be faulted for feeling inspired by India, who broke Australia’s incredible stronghold in Brisbane, and won the Test series 2-1. They are an inexperienced bunch too, trying to beat an opponent with a formidable home record. But that’s where the comparisons end.India’s domestic circuit includes a tournament like the IPL and they have an A-team system that gives its cricketers an almost international level-like platform. Mohammed Siraj, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Navdeep Saini and T Natarajan may have only dreamt of forming a bowling attack together in a crucial Test in Australia, but when the chance came, they played like they belonged.India’s selectors and team management now know that even if Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma, Mohammad Shami and Umesh Yadav are injured, they have four more to take their place. There will be the initial nerves and perhaps bit of struggle, but they wouldn’t have many teething problems, even at the highest level.West Indies’ second string has given very little evidence of such promise. Their lack of overall experience and first-hand knowledge of Bangladeshi pitches, and a short lead-up into the ODI series, have worked against them. But performing out of their comfort zone, especially in overseas conditions, is how top-class cricketers are made.So far however, Mohammed’s West Indies are a stop-gap team, one that is fulfilling their board’s commitment to the BCB to tour Bangladesh. There hasn’t been much to write home about their performance. However, there is a very important message for every international team: keep up your standards. A small group of top cricketers won’t do in this pandemic. Widen your talent pool. Otherwise, you’ll have to face the consequences.

His success in the middle order has opened up possibilities for KKR in how to deploy Narine, the batsman

Karthik Krishnaswamy24-Oct-2020Leave, leave, leave.The middle one was a wide, sure, but how many T20 innings begin with three back-to-back leaves?Sunil Narine would have left every other ball of that Kagiso Rabada over too, if he could have. All he wanted was to survive it, mark his guard at the other end, and hopefully face some spin.Narine played his first match of IPL 2020 on September 23. It was now October 24. Over an entire month, before this game, he had faced just five balls of spin. He had only faced 40 balls in all, yes, but it was still an unusually low percentage of spin.There were three reasons for this. One, this IPL was in the UAE, and the pitches, especially in the early part of the tournament, had encouraged teams to bowl mostly pace though the powerplay.Two, teams were able to bowl pace and pretty much nothing else to Narine because Chris Lynn was no longer partnering him at the top of the order. Though everyone’s known for a while that Narine’s ability to demolish spin bowling is counterbalanced by a vulnerability against quality fast bowling, especially when it’s short and at the body, oppositions until last season also had to factor in the pace-loving, spin-detesting Lynn at the other end.Three, and most obviously, Narine hadn’t been surviving long enough to get any taste of spin.This was probably why the Kolkata Knight Riders had moved Narine into the middle order, after four games. It’s harder for teams to use their first-choice match-ups against middle-order batsmen, because you can’t predict when they’ll arrive at the crease, and in what sort of situation.On Saturday, Narine walked into a situation – 42 for 3 in 7.2 overs – that would traditionally ask the new pair to bat with caution initially, especially in the case of a team like the Knight Riders, who, with Pat Cummins at No. 7, do not bat particularly deep. Narine, whose career as a T20 pinch-hitter is largely built on his willingness to be dismissed in search of quick runs, seemed the unlikeliest of candidates for such a role.Perhaps this was why Narine got to face spin as soon as he made it through that Rabada over. The Capitals had used their seamers for seven of the first eight overs, and only had two overs each left from their two main quicks, Rabada and Anrich Nortje. They hadn’t yet bowled R Ashwin, possibly because they wanted to keep him away from Nitish Rana, who had scored 55 off 22 balls in all T20 meetings against him before this game, without being dismissed.Rana was still at the crease, however, and the Capitals couldn’t have gone on delaying Ashwin’s introduction. They may well have felt this was the ideal time for it, even if the new man, Narine, also boasted an excellent head-to-head against Ashwin: 28 off 10 balls, without being dismissed.Given the situation, there was a chance Rana and Narine would choose to play Ashwin a little more watchfully than usual, which would have suited the Capitals nicely. They may have even felt it was worth Rana or Narine taking Ashwin on and risking their wickets, particularly with Abu Dhabi’s long boundaries in mind.

Ashwin’s second ball to Narine, he cleared his front leg, freed his arms, and cleared long-off with a hit measuring 85m. There would be no hesitation, no second-guessing. Narine would simply bat the Narine way.

With Narine in particular, the challenge was to do with both the outfield size and the lack of powerplay field restrictions. In 62 IPL innings before this one, he had only batted four times in the middle order – twice at No. 4, once at No. 5, and once at No. 7 – and it wasn’t clear whether he would be able to overcome both challenges consistently. In his previous middle-order innings this season, against the Chennai Super Kings, he had been caught on the long-on boundary, on this same ground, while trying to hit Karn Sharma for six.Ashwin’s second ball to Narine was just the sort of ball to test someone’s six-hitting ability. Not just the physical ability, but also the mental clarity to disregard the cocktail of match situation, ground size and lack of field restrictions, and swing as cleanly and decisively as possible. It had just a hint of flight to it, and it landed full but well short of half-volley length.Narine cleared his front leg, freed his arms, and cleared long-off with a hit measuring 85m. There would be no hesitation, no second-guessing. Narine would simply bat the Narine way.The contest against Ashwin would take centre-stage, which you’d expect, given he scored 32 – exactly half of his 64 runs – off 11 balls against him, and given that the relentlessness of his hitting forced the offspinner into going over the wicket – an exceedingly rare occurrence for him against left-hand batsmen – and bowling legspin to him. But Narine did enough against the other bowlers to remind viewers that when he’s on song, he’s far from a one-trick pony.There were times during his innings when Narine seemed to have stepped back in time to 2017 or 2018, when teams hadn’t yet fully figured out how to bowl to him. Just look at the numbers to remind yourself of that time. Across the 2017 and 2018 seasons, he averaged 22.35 against pace and struck at 169.64. Between the start of 2019 and this match, his numbers against pace had dipped significantly: his average to 13.12, his strike rate to 122.09.Now it felt like Narine had turned the clock back. Tushar Deshpande gave him width, an ingredient that’s very rarely been part of his recent diet in the IPL, and he stood almost still, save for that open front leg, and carved him over backward point. Marcus Stoinis went short to him, as fast bowlers must, but he’s not particularly quick, and Narine pulled him onto the grass banks beyond the square-leg boundary.By the end of his innings, Narine had scored 29 off 15 balls against Deshpande and Stoinis, and 3 off 6 balls – a small sample size, but consistent with the larger trend of his career – against Rabada and Anrich Nortje. A well-directed short ball from Rabada dismissed him, which you might have predicted before the game, but you probably wouldn’t have correctly predicted how much he’d score.So what did we learn from Narine’s innings? We already knew he can take spinners apart, even those as good as Ashwin, and that he can put the quicker bowlers away when they aren’t hammering away at his weaknesses. We already knew he’s less certain against the very best fast bowlers.But the Knight Riders have now learned his skills aren’t unsuited to the middle order, and that new knowledge opens up new possibilities for how and when to deploy him. Everyone watching him, meanwhile, has learned, not for the first time, to never, ever write him off.

Documentary on Australia’s T20 World Cup 2020 success showcases the rise of women’s sport

Daniel Brettig11-Feb-2021If we needed any further reminder of the tenuous nature of gains made by women’s cricket, it arrives with the fact that a revealing and emotive documentary account of Australia’s T20 World Cup victory last year is being released at precisely the time Meg Lanning’s team should be playing in the ODI equivalent., produced by Angela Pippos and Nicole Minchin in collaboration with Cricket Australia, captures the moment in time when the women’s game was showcased like never before, culminating in an unforgettable finale against India in front of 86,174 spectators at the MCG. The figure was fractionally short of the world record for a women’s sporting contest alluded to in the title, but close enough that it really did not matter. This was a landmark occasion for countless reasons set out boldly over the two episodes.Most poignant among these is how the world was pitched into global pandemic mode within days of Australia’s model display in the final – there was one Covid-19 case present on the night. That has left a sense that many of the words spoken about investment in the game for the long-term have become increasingly empty amid the scramble for survival beyond coronavirus. Instead of seeking to reclaim the ODI crown won by England in 2017, Lanning and company are currently taking part in the Australian domestic league and wondering whether they will ever again see sights to match those of March, 2020.Related

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Their understandable scepticism about the initial plan to host the final at Australia’s largest ground is laid out nicely in the early passages of the film, best articulated by the self-deprecating but disarmingly frank Beth Mooney. CA’s strategic vision for the women’s game, rammed home strongly to the local organising committee and its then chief executive Nick Hockley as far back as 2016, was always about the need to “think big” and aim for the MCG.This documentary’s conception was weaved into the conversations that followed, with Pippos eager to build upon other projects to chronicle the rise of women in sport – whether it be a series on the Australian Football League Women’s (AFLW) competition entitled , or her widely lauded book on the topic, . It should be made clear from the start, however, that despite airing through the same Amazon platform, is unlike , which was based on the Australia men’s journey on retaining the 2019 Ashes post the ball-tampering scandal in 2018. With the latest documentary, the filmmakers are seen having greater editorial control although fewer chances to peek behind the dressing or the meeting room door.Pippos and Minchin might have had more as they followed the Australians around the country in February and March 2020, but for the drama of the campaign that unfolded far less smoothly than Lanning and the national team coach Matthew Mott would have preferred. A startling defeat to India – spearheaded by the spin and guile of Poonam Yadav – had got the hosts off to the worst possible start, and when they sank to 10 for 3 against an unfancied Sri Lanka side in Perth, elimination was a distinct possibility. The film crew, which the team had been introduced to a week before the tournament began, was unsurprisingly not quite so welcome at this stage; but the trade-off is for an outlandish narrative no novelist could have scripted.Ellyse Perry’s tournament had been affected due to a hamstring injury while playing•Getty ImagesAs a result, only one team meeting is captured, a somewhat clipped discussion ahead of the final pool game against New Zealand at the Junction Oval. There were also dressing room restrictions imposed by an ICC event. But the honesty and clarity with which players such as Lanning, Mooney, Alyssa Healy, Rachael Haynes and the proudly unpolished Megan Schutt express themselves helps to bridge the gap. Dane van Niekerk, Heather Knight and Harmanpreet Kaur offer their own considered insights among opposition captains, and the former Australian skipper Belinda Clark also brings valuable context. Hockley is there too, speaking a little less guardedly than he has as CA’s interim CEO, and only the presence of the MCC chief executive Stuart Fox feels anything like superfluous.The notable absence of Ellyse Perry from the list of interviewees though might be grounds for conspiracy theories given her initially curious and ultimately painful tournament, but the truth is a little more mundane. When interviews were conducted in the days after the tournament, she had been undergoing major surgery on her torn hamstring, while scheduled on-camera time for later in the year was to be cruelled by Covid-19 lockdowns in Melbourne. Nevertheless, she still cuts an intriguing figure, especially when Lanning speaks to the contrast between Perry’s fastidious note-taking and her own far more seat-of-the-pants captaincy style.Thematically, the only major omission is the gulf between the fully professionalised Australian system and virtually all the rest; certainly, there is nothing really to stand comparison with the WBBL as a domestic T20 event. Part of Australia’s wrestle in the early games was in the gap between their “on paper” strength and the actual, anxious performance.Episode two of focuses on Australia’s three consecutive elimination games against New Zealand, South Africa and India once more in the final, with many of the documentary’s best moments emerging through the glum sight of a rain-sodden Sydney on the day of the semi-final. Healy admits she was sure that Australia would be eliminated due to rain after having finished second in their pool, as the rules stated that the team with the most points after the pool stage would qualify for the final should the semi-final be washed out. In fact, she even sent texts to van Niekerk mid-afternoon with pre-emptive congratulations on their progression to the final.As the afternoon wore on and England were eliminated when their first-up game against India was washed out, Pippos was moved to excuse herself from the hubbub of the press box under the pretext of the need for a cup of tea to curse the imminent cancellation of the project. That pressure on Australia to reach the final and so turn it into the spectacle the organisers dearly wanted makes for some sober reflections from Hockley and others about balancing such desires with the “glorious uncertainty” of sport. Healy is happy to say in the aftermath that the team “blatantly lied” during their repeated public denials of extra pressure, or of “embracing the moment” in which so much rested on their progress.History shows that Sydney’s skies did clear for just long enough, the SCG was dry enough and the Australians squeaked home by just enough – five runs – over South Africa. That set up the perfect final for the administrators; and on a pristine autumn day, curtain-raised by Katy Perry, Lanning’s team put together a performance to match even the wildest of their dreams. These moments have been captured expertly, with shot choices that emphasise the takeover of previously male-dominated halls.Cameras linger over countless images or statues of male cricketers, reminders that in terms of progress, that wondrous day in March 2020 should only really be the beginning. Overall, plays out like a better than average official film. But it is so much more powerful for being a women’s tale, pulled together resourcefully in the shadow of coronavirus.

India can’t get a word in as tourists’ attack answers legitimate pre-series questions

Matt Roller12-Mar-2021A good team can adapt if things don’t go to plan. For a dominant team, things invariably do. It was a measure of England’s control of the first of five T20Is in Ahmedabad that their bowlers could stick to the blueprint that had been set throughout their 20 overs.Coming into this series, there were legitimate questions about England’s bowlers. Despite the side’s winning streak, they have leaked runs with the new ball and at the death across the past three years, while the absence of a third spinner in their squad seemed to demonstrate an obvious lack of depth in that area.In that light, restricting India to 124 for 7 provided an emphatic answer. Three wickets inside the first five overs through legspin and high pace set the tone, while hard lengths through the middle and more of the same at the death ensured India’s was slow and painful.Jofra Archer led the way with three wickets•Getty Images”The wicket was a bit slow so it was going to be hard to hit the length balls, but obviously if you bowl a bit fuller, then it becomes a bit easier,” Jofra Archer explained. “So the plan to everyone was just try to bowl length as long as possible and luckily for us we didn’t really have to change that – we just stuck to it.”In particular, it was the ‘hard’ length – balls pitching around eight or nine metres from the stumps, reaching the batsman just above waist-height – which proved particularly difficult to get away. England’s seamers bowled 46 balls that pitched in that back-of-a-length region, according to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, conceding only 38 runs from them and taking two wickets.ESPNcricinfo LtdFurther proof of its effectiveness came through India’s boundary count in front of square against the seamers: one four through mid-on, another off the pads, and a single six over long-off. “Even some of the boundaries that they did get, there were a few through third man,” Archer said. “As a bowler, you’re happy to go for runs there as long as you don’t get hit where you don’t want to get hit. We’re at peace getting hit behind the wicket – that’s fine.”For Eoin Morgan, it was a night where everything he tried seemed to work as captain. He had offered enough of a smirk in his pre-series press conference to hint that he had something up his sleeve in a bid to address England’s impotence in the powerplay – they had taken 18 powerplay wickets at 48.05 in the last 18 months before this series – but few had predicted the first part of his plan.Like a poker player going all-in on the first hand dealt, Morgan threw the brand new ball to Adil Rashid, who had bowled a single powerplay over in his T20I career and hadn’t bowled the first over of a match since the 2011 Champions League. Rashid’s method was uncomplicated, and similar to his usual T20 plan: he used his googly and his slider to the left-handed Shikhar Dhawan, cramping him for room from a good length, and conceded only two runs from the first over.Morgan opted for aggression, combining legspin with high pace in a revamped new-ball partnership by throwing the ball to Archer. He struck early: KL Rahul, who has had the better of his head-to-head with Archer in the IPL, inside-edged a wide one onto his stumps, and England had the breakthrough that had eluded them so often.Sensing an opportunity, Morgan stuck with Rashid. As Virat Kohli backed away to the leg side, Rashid tried to cramp him from a length and push him even further towards square leg; Kohli’s bat turned in his hands as he looked to force one through the ring, and he could only pick out mid-off.Related

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Rishabh Pant briefly threatened to throw England off, reverse-scooping Archer for six and whipping him off the pads for four more, but Archer’s nonchalant shrug in response added to the impression of calm. Morgan’s first change was seamless: Mark Wood, recalled to the side after spending the series in South Africa before Christmas on the bench, bowled every ball in his first over at above 90mph/145kph, and his sixth brought the wicket of Dhawan, clean bowled attempting to heave to leg. India were 20 for 3 after five overs, and the game was already England’s.Morgan shuffled his deck through the middle overs, with Rashid bowling a solitary over outside the powerplay, but again the plans were clear. Wood was introduced as a ‘shock’ bowler, hitting the splice and the gloves in his final two overs, and while Shreyas Iyer coped well enough by giving himself room, Hardik Pandya’s scoring was choked by England bowling into his midriff: his only two boundaries, off Ben Stokes, were off the shortest and fullest balls he faced. Wood did not bowl a single slower ball in his four overs, while Jordan and Archer bowled one and two respectively.

England nailed their plan to Hardik – only two balls in his half all night (pitchmap from BCCI) pic.twitter.com/v8gLS3gSi1

— Matt Roller (@mroller98) March 12, 2021