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Left-arm spinner shines at a time when the tour had threatened to come off the rails for his team

Andrew McGlashan01-Mar-20232:11

Chappell: Kuhnemann learnt from the second Test and bowled better

Whatever way Matt Kuhnemann’s Test career goes from here, he’s going to have some good stories to tell.While the first Test of this series was taking place he was playing for Queensland in the Sheffield Shield. Then he jumps on a plane and a few days later is making his debut in Delhi and taking the new ball. Virat Kohli becomes his first Test wicket.On the first day in Indore he held the ball aloft as he walked from the field, barely two-and-a-half hours after India’s innings had started, with the extraordinary figures of 5 for 16 from nine overs – a first-class career-best. His dad had reached the ground just in time to see the fifth wicket after lunch having missed the first session.Related

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At times Australia have tied themselves in knots over their desire to have a left-arm spinner in the side and their handling of Ashton Agar was a curious sequence of his events. When Mitchell Swepson is available for Queensland, Kuhnemann can’t make their Sheffield Shield side, but he was ideal for this devilish surface, which has even left India unimpressed with how much it offered on day one, and he troubled the right-handers in what was an uplifting performance for Australia on a tour that had threatened to come off the rails.”It’s been a whirlwind,” Kuhnemann said of the rapid elevation, whose ODI debut came in similar fashion in Sri Lanka last year. “Like every night I’m sort of just pinching myself. Even today just sitting in the change room, just looking around speaking to [Mitchell] Starcy and Nathan Lyon and thinking this is unreal, just be able to do this. To even go out there and play with Steve Smith and all these other players and contribute to the team, it’s really awesome.”Kuhnemann played a key role in getting Australia into this game after heads could have gone down. They lost the toss on a bone-dry pitch then saw Rohit Sharma nick the cover off the first ball of the game, only they didn’t review. When replays showed, somewhat surprisingly, that India’s captain had also survived an lbw in the same over, Smith could have been forgiven for worrying how events would transpire.Matt Kuhnemann picked up his first five-wicket haul in Tests•BCCIIt was vital for Australia’s peace of mind that they removed Rohit without too much damage after the missed reviews. Smith turned to spin in the sixth over after the brief, rare sight of two quicks in operation as the recalled duo of Starc and Cameron Green took the new ball. There is little chance of either of them being over-bowled on their comebacks.Kuhnemann’s third ball spun sharply past Rohit’s edge and the next turned and bounced to defeat a slog sweep. The straight boundaries at the Holkar Stadium are enticingly short and Rohit could not resist, skipping down and being defeated by more huge spin to present Alex Carey a stumping.In his next over, Kuhnemann produced a perfect left-arm spinner’s dismissal when he drew a skittish Shubman Gill forward and found the outside edge. It felt like every ball could be a wicket-taking opportunity. Two deliveries after dismissing Gill, Kuhnemann produced one that was full at leg stump and spun square past Kohli.On a pitch turning more than anything he had seen before, he kept it simple and let the surface play the tricks. “Nathan Lyon was excellent out there,” Kuhnemann said. “Even after a couple of wickets he said don’t get ahead of yourself, just think about bowling that ball…he was great for me. Not every day you get these wickets like so enjoy them, it’s very different to what we get back home in Australia.”Meanwhile, there was little Cheteshwar Pujara could do about his delivery from Lyon which spun sharply and kept low. Given the conditions, Kohli was constructing a superb innings before he was dismissed by Todd Murphy for the third time in the series, an offbreak straightening perfectly from round the wicket to win the lbw.It was a little surprising when Kuhnemann was taken out of the attack with figures of 5-0-13-3 – Shreyas Iyer having dragged on – although Smith was proactive in switching the spinners around depending on the right and left-hand batters. But after lunch his fourth wicket came when R Ashwin edged a full delivery, and the fifth arrived when one skidded into Umesh Yadav’s pads.Although it’s all relative in an innings that lasted 33.2 overs of which he bowled nine, Kuhnemann said he had implemented some subtle changes as the ball got older having watched how Ravindra Jadeja operated in Delhi.”I’m a massive fan of Jadeja and Ashwin so watched how they have bowled in the last few years,” he said. “The way [Jadeja] uses his crease and probably the biggest thing I picked up in Delhi is that he brings his length back a little bit when the ball gets a little bit older. That’s probably the main thing I brought into this Test. Don’t want to get full especially on a wicket that stays low, being consistent on that five-six metre length.”By stumps, Jadeja himself had four to his name – all Australia’s wickets to fall – to take his series haul to 21, and with India bowling last he could yet be the left-arm spinner to have the decisive say on this game. However, Australia are well placed to prevent that happening. It would be a remarkable turnaround, and Kuhnemann would be a big part of the story.

They haven’t been in action since April, and have rested some players for the Australia T20Is, but Shamsi backs them to hit the ground running

Firdose Moonda28-Aug-2023A colder-than-normal winter in South Africa was accompanied by a quieter-than-normal cricket schedule which saw both the national men’s and women’s side out of action for several months. This week, with spring on the horizon, they’re back.The women, who have not played since reaching the T20 World Cup final in February, are in Pakistan for their first tour to that country while the men, who have been on a break since early April, take on Australia at home.It’s the start of an important period for both sides: a rebuilding phase for the women, who have lost senior players to retirement and a rebirth for the men’s team, after they finished last summer on a high under new support staff and now stack up for the ODI World Cup. In the months they’ve been inactive as national teams, some of their players have plied their trade in leagues around the world while others have balanced between taking a break and attending training camps and now, they say they’re ready to begin again.Even though South Africa’s international stocks are no longer as high as they once were – the men are ranked fifth in T20Is and sixth in ODIs – with ICC events every year, they have their eyes on at least one of the big prizes. And this time, they believe they are building the depth required for major tournament success and will start by testing that against the team who have historically pushed all their buttons: Australia.Related

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South Africa are resting key personnel from the curtain-raising T20Is. None of Kagiso Rabada, Quinton de Kock, David Miller, Anrich Nortje, Heinrich Klaasen or Wayne Parnell will play in the three-match series, with Dewald Brevis, Donovan Ferreira and Matthew Breetzke in line for debuts. Given that those three have already made their names on the T20 franchise circuit, Tabraiz Shamsi was bullish when asked if they were going into the next series as second best.”Why would the South African cricket team be underdogs against anybody?” Shamsi replied. “Look at the quality in our change room, look at the quality of players we have and even though we’ve rested a few senior players, the guys who have come in are not weak links. Absolutely not. No matter who the opposition is, no matter how good they are, we respect them but we are not underdogs against any team in the world.”Assuming South Africa are going in undercooked is not entirely incorrect, especially against the backdrop of what their opposition have been doing. While South Africa were out of action, Australia (albeit not all the members of the T20I squad) were involved in one of the most intense English summers in recent memory. They competed in the World Test Championship final, and beat India, and then retained the Ashes with a 2-2 draw. While Shamsi would never discount the advantage of regular, competitive cricket, he pointed out that it does not always mean better preparation.”There’re pros and cons as we can see with the Australians, who have been playing a lot of cricket,” he said. “They’ve got a number of guys with injury concerns where we don’t necessarily have that sort of problem.”Pat Cummins, Steven Smith, Mitchell Starc and, most recently, Glenn Maxwell will all miss the T20Is with varying degrees of injuries while South Africa boast a fully fit and firing group that has been “put through our paces”, as Shamsi put it.”We’ve been working very hard,” he said. “Honestly, these dark circles under the eyes, they are not natural. We are well prepared.”Though it was hard to tell through a Zoom screen (yes, that’s still a thing), Shamsi did not look particularly tired, but cut a lean figure as a testament to the training he has been doing. He has also had some recent game time in the Lanka Premier League, where he finished as the joint third-highest wicket-taker in conditions which he hopes could mirror those at the World Cup in India.Tabraiz Shamsi made a splash in the Lanka Premier League with his left-arm wristspin•SLC”It was really nice to go to Sri Lanka and play a little bit in the subcontinent,” he said. “In terms of being game-ready, it definitely helps that I have played quite a lot of games in the last month.”What that means for his role in the national side remains to be seen. Though Shamsi had established himself as the premier spinner in the white-ball side throughout 2021 and 2022, he lost ground to Keshav Maharaj more recently, But Maharaj ruptured his Achilles in March and was expected to be out for the rest of the year. He has made a quicker-than-expected recovery and has been included in the squad along with Shamsi and Bjorn Fortuin. It is expected that only two of the three will make it to the World Cup, though Shamsi does not have any certainty on it just yet.”I’m not too sure,” he said. “We are going to see what happens with the make-up of the squad. But I just want to say, it’s a massive effort that Keshav has put in with his recovery. It normally takes about eight or nine months to recover from something like that. So that’s a huge credit to him and the medical staff that has helped him to recover. We are looking forward to having him back on the park and doing the magic that he does.”A call on whether Maharaj plays in the second and third T20I will be taken later this week, with the ODI series a priority. Though the T20Is are clearly experimental at this stage, Shamsi still described playing in them as a “responsibility” and said the results matter. “We don’t want to think too far ahead and look at the World Cup because we have eight international games ahead of that. I’m sure people won’t be happy if we lose eight games in a row,” he joked.Especially not against Australia.”Any opportunity you get to play, if it goes well for you, there’re a lot of positives you can take from it and even if a game or two doesn’t go your way, you learn from it,” he said. “You pick up on points and mistakes that you’ve made so that you can ensure that come the big, crunch games in the World Cup, you don’t repeat the mistakes. Australians like to play hard and so do we. It’s going to be spicy, it’s going to be exciting and that’s the way we like to play our cricket as well.”

A special infographic looking back at R Ashwin’s special Test career

ESPNcricinfo stats team, Mathew Varghese, Illustration by Girish TS16-Feb-2024ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Since his IPL debut in 2008, Karthik has missed only two games, and scored 1000-plus runs for two teams

Sampath Bandarupalli23-May-2024257 Dinesh Karthik retires from the IPL as the second-most capped player of the league, alongside Rohit Sharma with 257 appearances, and only behind MS Dhoni’s 264.2 Karthik is the second-most prolific wicketkeeper in the history of the IPL with 174 dismissals, behind Dhoni’s 190. Karthik has 137 catches and 37 stumpings in the IPL with the gloves, both behind Dhoni’s 148 catches and 42 stumpings.4097 Runs by Karthik while batting at No. 4 or lower in the IPL are the second-most behind Dhoni’s 5047. Karthik batted at No. 4 or lower in 204 innings, and at No. 3 on 30 occasions but never opened the batting.1565 Runs scored by Karthik during the death overs (17-20) in the IPL. Only Dhoni (2786) and Kieron Pollard (1708) have scored more runs during this phase in the IPL. Karthik scored those runs at a strike rate of 186.97, and hit 91 sixes across the 837 balls faced.

Their batting template remains in the spotlight, after failing even in conditions where it might have been expected to bear fruit

Sidharth Monga16-Jun-20241:31

Mumtaz on Babar’s innings – ‘Bizarre and baffling’

This space is not going to give into the exceptionalism that Pakistan cricket is more prone to this kind of a thing than any other cricket, but they have ended this disappointing campaign on a tragicomic note. It was like the middle order was hell bent on vindicating the RizBar way of playing white-ball cricket, and in these conditions it might well have been. And yet, in the end, even the RizBar way needed some fearless hitting from Shaheen Shah Afridi to relieve the pressure. It leaves you none the wiser about the course Pakistan should take.If we were to be left with Pakistan cricket’s improvisation on the chicken-and-egg situation of whether RizBar are so regressive because of a weak middle order or whether the middle order is so ordinary because RizBar don’t let them play at all in flat conditions, did we really need Pakistan to play the World Cup? To be fair to him, Babar Azam took the demotion, pushed up a more attacking left-hand opener, and still the results haven’t been great.In their final match, where the best they could achieve was a consolation win, Pakistan were staring at embarrassment when Babar showed his class, his ability to bat at a run a ball on a difficult surface, but eventually it wasn’t enough. It took Afridi’s sixes to settle the nerves.Related

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Afridi provided glimpses of what might have been: back to taking wickets in his first over, back to setting the game up for what can be a menacing pace attack. Of all the World Cups, this one had conditions where Babar and Mohammad Rizwan might have been justified in playing the way they do, but Rizwan cracked under the asking-rate pressure against India when the game was his to take home.A day before this match, Imad Wasim spoke about the mindset needed to play while-ball cricket at par with other excellent modern teams. He spoke about how Pakistan used to rule T20 cricket before they became a regressive unit. He spoke of the need to get rid of the fear of failure.When asked if it is insecurity from the decision-makers or the highly emotional reaction of the fans that nurtures this fear, Babar pointed at perhaps a question of quality. He said the selections have been consistent, that in fact there has hardly been much churn when he has been captain. In 85 matches that Babar has captained, 27 players have batted from Nos. 3 to 7, including Babar himself and Rizwan. By comparison, in 96 matches since the start of 2020, India have tried 32 players from Nos. 3 to 7.Babar Azam had to anchor the chase with wickets falling at the other end•AFP/Getty Images”I think we are playing the same eight-nine players for the last four years,” Babar said. “They should not fear on that front. They are being backed. They are being given opportunities. But as a player, you have to step up a little. Look, the mindset should be how you want to play. Now you can’t hit every ball, you can’t hit a six on every ball, you can’t even get a wicket on every ball. You need to assess the conditions, what’s required here.”Tell me how many matches have been played here [in the USA] and has there been any outstanding batting? There’s been a struggle, but you need to be proactive about what’s required here. You need partnerships, you need to bowl at good, hard length. It’s not that you come with a set mindset and follow just that.”I am not denying that we have to think out of the box. Every player has to think. It’s not that one person has to do it. Every player has to think because cricket has become very fast. We have to move with the times. With modern cricket, you must have game awareness. You know that you have to take it deep here, you have to take a bit of load. You know no matter how much you do, you can’t score at 150 here. You try to build the innings. I think it’s more game awareness and common sense that is required here.”That sounds like an acceptance that in other, more standard, T20 conditions, Pakistan need to move with the times. If this failure results in course correction, this World Cup could yet be an important event in Pakistan cricket.However, it will rankle them that they failed to make it out of round one in conditions that suited their style of cricket. There can be some allowance made for the USA defeat because they got put in and the scoring trend through the match suggests that only the first five-six overs were difficult, which is a significant portion of the game. Against India, though, they won the toss, they got the best of the conditions, and the one batter who got in neither killed the chase nor took it deep.It might also be time to crack the whip a little because the job security Babar mentioned hasn’t seemed to work for the top order or the middle order.

Things didn’t quite go to plan, however, as Bangladesh’s old-fashioned crease occupation and spin bowling had the last laugh

Danyal Rasool25-Aug-2024With its network of surveillance cameras, airtight security, and heavy police and military presence, it can feel like there is no hiding place in Rawalpindi. This was felt particularly keenly on Thursday, when a combination of the Bangladesh cricket team’s presence and political rallies made any kind of commute an impossibility, with shipping containers, sniffer dogs and armed security men overwhelming the twin cities, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.Equally, there was no hiding place at the Pindi Cricket Stadium, partially because, alarmed by very few spectators on the first two days of the first Test against Bangladesh, the PCB announced free entry to the stadium over the weekend. What a larger crowd that turned up on the last two days saw from their side, however, might have left them feeling shortchanged.

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Pakistan just couldn’t stop talking about the pitch. What they wanted to do with it, who they had hired to take care of it, how it would come of age over the next five days. Close-up, high-definition shots of a surface laced with grass were shared excitedly by the PCB, with experienced curator Tony Hemming’s arrival announced equally prominently. They announced, more than a day out from the game, that an all-pace attack would line up for the first game.Related

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After three days of cricket where Pindi played as Pindi usually plays, Pakistan’s assistant coach Azhar Mahmood, who grew up and learned his trade in this city, said the behaviour of the surface had totally taken his side by surprise. He epitomised the confusion with this memorable line: “We didn’t read the pitch wrong, it just didn’t do what we expected it to.”Things seemed to go well at first. With the pitch at its conventional day-two flattest, Pakistan cruising at 448 for six, and Mohammad Rizwan unbeaten on 171, Shan Masood called his side back, presumably to make hay of all that pace-friendly goodness Bangladesh had spent 113 overs mostly failing to extract. It was the optically aggressive move – all the overs lost to the weather on day one may have also played a part – and Masood is an optically aggressive captain.Masood admitted Pakistan would have “liked another 50 to 100 runs”. But it wasn’t long before shades of the Shan-ball brand appeared. “We were the ones that were very proactive. We were trying to take decisions. We declared quite early. We scored at a quicker rate.”Shakib Al Hasan and Mehidy Hasan Miraz starred while Pakistan chose not to field a frontline spinner•Associated PressBangladesh were making no such concessions to entertainment. On the day Mahmood wondered why the pitch didn’t behave as he thought it would, Bangladesh’s run rate scarcely tiptoed above three an over. The following day, when a frustrated Naseem Shah called for an overhaul in the way Pakistan should look to exploit home advantage, his frustration partly stemmed from the fact Bangladesh had kept him and his team-mates out for the best part of 170 overs.The seventh-wicket pair put on 196 runs, but there was never any hint of a declaration, Bangladesh ensuring Pakistan squeezed every last drop of effort from their four-man pace attack in searing August heat in Pindi. Mahmood expressed mild frustration at Bangladesh’s indolence in a TV interview later, upset that it deprived Pakistan of the chance to prevent a draw. If only the opposition would play the way Pakistan wanted them to.

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Bangladesh never uttered a peep in complaint about the surface – a member of the camp even privately expressed a desire for the opportunity to play on similar strips back home. Having watched Pakistan go spinner-less, they played the conditions like a fiddle, perfectly clear on how to go about pushing for a result in these conditions. They had a big lead, an early overnight scalp, and a day to make Pakistan pay.By this stage, Pakistan were as convinced about the flatness of the pitch as they had been a few days earlier of its spice. Still not flat enough, as it turned out, for embattled captain Masood, or his equally beleaguered predecessor Babar Azam, to put any runs of consequence on the board. Masood threw his bat at one, ironically ending up undone by extra pace and bounce. Babar, meanwhile, squandered the fortune of avoiding a king pair by throwing his bat at a wide half-volley with no foot movement, unable to execute his trademark cover drive as resplendent bails danced behind him.Having made mistakes throughout the game – as Masood would acknowledge post-match – Pakistan were in no mood to stop just now. Saud Shakeel, whose predisposition towards conservatism would have been welcome now, skipped down the pitch to counter spin that there had been little sign of up till now, allowing Shakib Al Hasan to slide one past his edge as Litton Das whipped off the bails. Abdullah Shafique, whose 37 off 85 was doing its bit to neuter Bangladeshi interest, suddenly found himself down the pitch, too, only for backward point to nestle underneath the top edge. Salman Ali Agha nicked a straight one first up off Mehidy Hasan Miraz, and – who knew? – spin was finding a way of making its mark on the final day of a Pindi Test. Pakistan had made clear all Test they didn’t want a draw, but it wasn’t always obvious they were this keen to avoid one.A dejected Abdullah Shafique walks back after skewing a top edge towards backward point•Associated PressSince the start of this Test, Pakistan had been vocal about the wisdom of going in all-pace. We were told if the seamers weren’t getting any assistance, neither were the spinners. That Pakistan were so confident of getting 20 wickets this way that they might do it against England in October, too. That Salman Ali Agha was bowling so well he was effectively a specialist spinner. Around the same time, Abrar Ahmed, Pakistan’s only real attacking frontline spinner, took four wickets for Pakistan A against their Bangaldeshi counterparts in the same city.All while Bangladesh kept Pakistan out on the field for so long they would be forced to bowl 50 overs of Agha and makeshift spin themselves, getting a single wicket for those efforts. Bangladesh’s own spinners were responsible for seven of the nine wickets that fell on the final day. Quality spin bowling, as it turns out, has a way of scrambling minds even without a great deal of assistance from the surface, with high-quality slower bowlers as lethal with the straight one as the ones that turn.They can toy with batters’ crease positions, test their patience, and awaken all the psychological demons that players work hours putting to bed. Shakib and Mehidy have spent a career establishing reputations that give opposition batters’ such pause; merely rocking up and attempting to lump Agha in the same category is unlikely to have a similar effect.That the game ended with Zakir Hasan sweeping Agha, whom Masood had turned to just four overs into Bangladesh’s nominal chase, was perhaps a fitting way to seal a result both sides deserved. Pakistan had made clear all Test how much they’d hate a pitch that gave them a draw. On that note, at least, Rawalpindi’s surface found a way to avoid disappointing them.

Virat Kohli is set to play his first Ranji Trophy game since 2012, and was at the Delhi stadium on Tuesday to prepare for this

Daya Sagar28-Jan-20251:02

Watch: Kohli’s nets session with Delhi ahead of his Ranji comeback

A larger-than-usual crowd had gathered outside the gate of the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi. Word had spread that Virat Kohli was going to join the Delhi team to train ahead of their next Ranji Trophy game, which he will be playing from Thursday. Even some TV and YouTube journalists were in attendance, which usually doesn’t happen ahead of a Ranji match.But then this is Kohli and he is returning to domestic cricket after more than 12 years; he last played in the Ranji Trophy in November 2012. Seeing the crowd that had already gathered in anticipation, two days before the game, the sub-inspector stationed at the gate remarked to his colleague that they would have to beef up the security in the coming days.Around 9.30am, Kohli emerged from a black Porsche, the last among the Delhi players to enter the ground, with around 10 others buzzing around him, including Delhi’s head coach Sarandeep Singh. He joined his Delhi team-mates for football drills, bouts of laughter, and 100-metre sprints, before it was time to hit the batting nets.Kohli padded up, donned his helmet and took out an unusual-looking bat to face a throwdown session. The blade of this bat was much thinner than his usual bats, probably a change forced by the outside edges that led to all eight of his dismissals in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. For about 15 minutes he took throwdowns, delivered from the middle of the pitch; five minutes were spent on front-foot strokes and the rest went on facing back-of-length balls off the back foot. This session was a mix of defensive and aggressive strokes; he was beaten a couple of times outside off but otherwise middled some along-the-ground pulls and short-arm jabs.Virat Kohli tried out a few different bats in the Delhi nets•PTI Now it was time to move to the other nets to face some spin. Here he switched to his normal bat and for nearly 20 minutes faced left-arm spinners Harsh Tyagi and Sumit Mathur and offspinner Sumit Sharma. He cut short balls from all of them. Tyagi beat Kohli’s outside edge a couple of times and some deliveries bounced extra, meeting Kohli’s bat on the sticker. Once when Kohli went after a full delivery from Tyagi, attempting a lofted stroke, he managed only a leading-edge. Sarandeep praised the bowler but it was a session in which Kohli was largely steady and in control.Next, he went to face the fast bowlers for another 20 minutes; the line-up included Navdeep Saini among a bunch of right-arm quicks and a lone left-armer in Siddhant Sharma. When Siddhant beat Kohli’s bat twice, with the angle taking the ball away from him, it was time for Sarandeep to step in. He advised Kohli in Punjabi to switch to a middle and off-stump guard, and Kohli did so. He beautifully middled some of the deliveries that followed, drawing applause from the coach.Saini, the highest-profile of the bowlers, also beat Kohli once but otherwise he looked steady and calm, leaving plenty of deliveries outside off. He transferred his weight on the back foot for the shorter balls, punched some of them through off and nudged and jabbed others towards midwicket.Virat Kohli was happy to take questions from a young one•PTI While Kohli went through the drills, an eight-year-old fan, Kabir, closely watched all his movements, his father telling him to observe how Kohli’s head remained still while he played his shots. It turned out that the father was former Delhi player Shawej Khan who had played with Kohli in age-group cricket. Once the nets session ended, Kohli gave Shawej a bear-hug, autographed his son’s bat and imparted some advice.Kohli finished his day with some slip fielding and outfield catching, which he did for about half an hour before posing for some pictures – first alone, and then with some Delhi & District Cricket Association officials – in front of the pavilion named after him.

The McCullum effect has been visible in patches for the white-ball squad, but 50-over game still needs attention

Cameron Ponsonby24-Oct-2025Clarity is all the rage in English cricket.Upon Brendon McCullum’s Test appointment in 2022, then ECB strategic director Andrew Strauss said the Kiwi “blew us away with his clarity of thinking”. Stuart Broad was soon to praise McCullum for his relentless positive energy. “Running towards the danger” quickly became England’s catchphrase as players publicly and privately spoke of the most enjoyable environment they’d played in.The missing link for those outside the group is what McCullum’s magic words actually are. Zak Crawley shared a Chinese proverb once, which was nice, but players line up to praise McCullum for the small messages, delivered at the right time.”Go out there and whack the spinners,” was Tom Banton’s example of McCullum’s divine intervention. It’s going to DVD soon, apparently.But when you’re a player with the CV of McCullum, it really is the messenger, as much as the message, that makes it count.And he’s succeeding. The T20 team is doing well, even if the ODI side remains a work in progress, winning just eight of their 23 ODIs since the 2023 World Cup. A conscious effort has been made to make this squad a team, with the pre-series trip to Queenstown a nod to that. So too are McCullum and Brook trying to create a settled group of players who know the shirt is theirs.”That’s the exact reason,” Brook confirmed, when asked why England had chosen the same XI for all three matches, rained off or otherwise. “We’re trying to settle the team as much as possible.”Related

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Salt, Brook fireworks set up crushing England win

England claim series after rain ruins Auckland decider

And again, McCullum, and Brook, are succeeding. From the start of the English summer, when the two began their work together, nine players have played in all six ODIs that England have played. So too have six players played all eight T20Is where McCullum and Brook have been present.”I think the balance of the side is pretty good at the minute,” was Brook’s summation after Auckland.Counterintuitively, the T20 group is the more settled. At least in terms of balance. England have decided on the spin combo of Liam Dawson and Adil Rashid – the “wily old foxes” as Brook describes them – meaning the return of Sam Curran leaves the team with three seamers and two spinners. When it comes to the World Cup and more spin-friendly surfaces, bringing Will Jacks in for Curran will be an option.There is only one area that remains up for grabs. The ODI seam attack.So far, Rashid has held down the sole specialist spinner role as England have picked three seamers. Jofra Archer and Brydon Carse are locks when fit, but the third and final spot is unspoken for.Sonny Baker endured a tough ODI baptism as England continue to search for a settled seam attack•Getty ImagesAcross the summer, Saqib Mahmood, Jamie Overton, Matthew Potts and Sonny Baker all appeared. Extend that to the start of the year and Mark Wood and Gus Atkinson featured. Go back six months further and you have Reece Topley and John Turner. Luke Wood, who has played only two ODIs, is in the current squad and could feature this series. But …”Where I sit in the pecking order, I couldn’t tell you,” Wood said following the washed out T20I at Auckland.For the six ODIs in which Brook and McCullum have been in charge, they’ve plumped for four specialist bowlers with the fifth to be made up from whoever else is on hand to help out, to allow them to pick seven specialist batters. “Imagine having us five-down and Will Jacks comes out to bat?” Brook said of the strategy earlier this year.It is an aggressive option, but its shortcomings were exposed against South Africa at Lord’s when the spin of Jacob Bethell and Jacks conceded 112 runs between them.Jacks, who has played all six ODIs in a new role at seven so far, is injured for this series, opening the door for a return for Curran and a slight shift in team balance. And with Archer absent from the first match with one eye on the Ashes, his spot, plus that of the third seamer, is open.Which brings us back to clarity. Two seamers will lace up for the first ODI in Mount Maunganui, with only one able to survive to Hamilton for the second. Baker played one match in the summer before he was discarded. Potts played two but didn’t make the plane for New Zealand. Overton played two while England continue to try and mould him into the player they want and believe he can be. Mahmood played four but is now injured.It is a fact of sport that plans can never be perfect, even more so with fast bowlers where injuries are that more regular. Nevertheless, under McCullum and Brook they have tried their best to make it so.The ODI World Cup is still almost exactly two years away, giving England time to pick this group. Back it, and see how it develops. They have made their bed with the majority of the side, the New Zealand series is the first step to seeing how the final part of the jigsaw lands.