Latest news with #bowling
CTV News
20 hours ago
- Sport
- CTV News
Regina bowler wins second masters in 3 years while teaching youth fundamentals of bowling
Regina bowler, Josie Brooks is returning home with her second masters win in three years. On June 27 she won the five pin Canadian Masters Ladies Singles Tournament in Surrey, B.C. Her first masters win came in 2023 in St. John's, N.L. where it went down the wire. This time around, she won by seventeen in the final game. 'I was more prepared for this one,' she said. 'I put a lot of work into the mental side of it and the mental-physical prep. I kind of knew the exact kind of work that I needed to put into this sort of set, compared to the last time.' June 27 is also an emotional day for Josie, as that was her grandma's birthday. Her grandmother was also a bowler herself before she died six years ago. Her grandma wasn't the only bowler in the family, Brooks comes from a long line of bowlers, including her dad, Bill, who has been there every step of the way. Bill knows it's natural to worry, but he's confident in the competitor that Josie is. 'I am actually with her success and just to know that she's so confident within herself,' he said. 'I don't have to worry about necessarily how she's feeling on the lanes. I know she's fine, so the less I have to worry about her, it makes it a lot easier for me.' Training since she was five years old, Josie has learned how to balance the mental side of the game. It is something that has become more important since she started competing professionally in 2019. 'As soon as you let go of that ball, the crowd erupts and it's such a wonderful feeling to know that there's support behind me, you're not really just doing it by yourself.' It's a feeling she is passing on to the next generation of bowlers, teaching the younger generation to perhaps, be the next great champion from Regina. 'I do love passing down my tips and tricks that have made my mental game super strong, onto other youth and adults as well,' she said. Josie teaches people at her own bowling school, where she teaches some of the best in the country, upwards of 19 years of age.
Arab News
21 hours ago
- Sport
- Arab News
Cricket-England toil as India ease to 78-0 after being put in to bat
Stokes cited the favorable bowling conditions as the reason behind his decision For the latest updates, follow us @ArabNewsSport
New York Times
a day ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Meet cricket's ‘bunnies' and ‘ferrets', who have the worst job in sport
It was one of those passages of play that only cricket can provide: bowlers being asked to win a Test match with their batting. It was the final day at Lord's last week and the third Test between England and India was on the line. At one end was the tourists' Ravindra Jadeja, a 'proper' batter who took the bulk of the England bowling and attempted to score the majority of the runs as they chased a target of 193. Advertisement At the other end were a succession of 'tailenders' — the bowlers trying simply to stay in and help Jadeja inch India towards victory. Nitish Kumar Reddy, the No 9, scored 13 and faced 53 balls; No 10 Jasprit Bumrah faced 54 balls, making five; and finally No 11 Mohammed Siraj managed to keep out 30 balls and score four before he, too, fell with India still 22 runs short. It feels like perhaps the worst job in sport. There aren't too many other examples of professional sportspeople being made to do something they are simply not cut out for in their chosen discipline. Yet there is also a strange thrill in seeing a 'rabbit' — cricket parlance for a batsman so poor that bowlers want to quickly send them back to their 'hutch' — trying to fend off the best bowling an opposition can muster. Or two rabbits in the case of England's Monty Panesar and Jimmy Anderson, who contrived to deny Australia what looked like certain victory in the first 2009 Ashes Test at Cardiff with an unbeaten last-wicket stand of 19 that, more importantly, chewed up 69 balls. 'I never thought we would save the game,' Panesar tells The Athletic. 'I thought at any given moment I would just get out, Australia would win the Test match, and we'd go home. 'We just took it ball by ball. We didn't really think about the draw. We just thought, 'Let's see how long we can keep them out here' and eventually we'll get out. But it just didn't happen and we ended up staying out there much longer than we thought.' Panesar and Anderson stayed so long that Australia were driven to distraction, with captain Ricky Ponting raging at England's repeated use of a physiotherapist as the clock ticked down to the close of play. That only added to the glee of the home crowd, with the momentum generated in Wales fuelling England's 2-1 series win. 'It gave people so much joy,' says Panesar. 'It is still talked about as one of the iconic moments in English cricket. At the time, I didn't appreciate how big it was, but I've come to realise how much of an impact it made. Particularly as I wasn't known for my batting. People said, 'Oh my God, Monty has pulled off the impossible when he can't even bat'. Advertisement 'It's not even so much about the result. It's about things like temperament, patience, self-belief, character and resilience. That's what we had to show in Cardiff and we just took it step by step.' Some of the best bowlers can take inspiration from a moment of batting defiance or even inadequacy. England's Devon Malcolm produced one of the great spells of fast bowling against South Africa at the Oval in 1994, taking nine for 57 after he was riled into action by an incident when the tailender was batting. 'In the first innings, I'd bowled a bouncer at Jonty Rhodes and hit him on the head, so when I came in, the South Africans were encouraging their bowler Fanie de Villiers to give it back to me,' Malcolm tells The Athletic. 'I thought it was a bluff and he would bowl me a yorker, but it was no bluff and he hit me on the head with the fiercest bouncer I'd ever faced. It hit my helmet right on the three Lions. 'It caught me by massive surprise. In those days, there was a bit of an unwritten rule that bowlers didn't bowl bouncers at fellow fast bowlers and in return, you didn't smack them to the fence. But this was different.' It led to one of the great lines in cricket history, with South Africa's Gary Kirsten subsequently claiming that Malcolm told the South African fielders, 'You guys are history,' before going out and destroying them. Or did he? 'I just said, 'You shouldn't have done that. If you want to see what fast bowling is all about, wait until you come in again',' Malcolm says. 'Then what happened was a perfect storm. I just felt in the zone from the start. Every nick was taken, every lbw was given, and I just got on a roll. All started by being hit when I batted.' If Panesar and Malcolm were rabbits, then some tail-end batters can be classified as 'ferrets' — because they go in after the rabbits. The ultimate ferret was New Zealand's Chris Martin, who belongs to a select group of cricketers who have taken more Test wickets (233) than he has scored runs (123). Advertisement Martin is rightly remembered as one of New Zealand's best seam bowlers, but he is celebrated just as much for tail-end batting that saw him fail to score a run in Test cricket for more than four years between December 2000 and March 2004 and hold the record for the most 'pairs' (two scores of nought in the same match) in Test history, with seven. He is also the only batter in Test cricket to be twice dismissed for a diamond duck (run out without facing a ball). 'I never had any real ability with the bat,' Martin tells The Athletic with no exaggeration. 'That hand-eye co-ordination thing for me was mainly around being able to run in and bowl a cricket ball pretty fast. Not so much hit one that's moving fast. 'I tried to work on it without really succeeding and it does become a bit of a mental block after a while. You realise you are there to support your partner and they generally play a few shots when you get there, so that was the entertaining bit for me, seeing someone else have a crack while watching from the other end. Not that Martin, who even had the nickname 'The Walking Wicket', enjoyed his fate. 'I wish I could have thrown the willow, I really do,' he says. 'I think it would have been a lot more fun. I definitely practised like that at times to see what I could do, but making a decision quickly, trusting it and getting everything biomechanically right in that split second was something I could only watch and admire in others rather than do myself. 'As far as standing there and facing a Mitchell Johnson, Shoaib Akhtar, Brett Lee or Dale Steyn, of course there was a bit of fear. I don't think in my everyday life I will ever get that feeling again. It's relatively addictive because you don't often get that situation where you have to make certain decisions to make sure you're not going to get your arm or ribs broken or you're going to get hit on the head. I was OK in getting out of the way of it, it was just defending my stumps that was the problem.' Martin smiles at the realisation he is remembered just as much 12 years after his last Test for what he could not do with the bat as what he could do with the ball. Advertisement 'The crowd always cheered whenever I got a run and at times that was the loudest cheer of the day,' he says. 'But you had to enjoy people rooting for you in that way because perhaps they were seeing a bit of themselves in you. 'You're struggling and they're trying to imagine what it would be like to be out there with pads on and a bat in their hands. New Zealanders like a bit of irony and we tend to celebrate someone who's out there struggling. It was always me, unfortunately.' Mark Robinson was an English equivalent of Martin, once setting a world record of 12 first-class noughts in a row and ending the 1990 season with Northants with three runs in 16 innings. But he was a good enough seam bowler to take 584 wickets for Northants, Yorkshire and Sussex before embarking on a stellar career in coaching. 'I was proud and I was brave,' Robinson tells The Athletic. 'I'd fight my corner, but it was frustrating when I got ridiculed for my batting. What was interesting was when I went to Sussex towards the end of my career, I got a lot more help with my batting and I ended up being nightwatchman (the tailender tasked with going in at the end of a day's play to protect the established batter). 'I did OK and it just shows that if you invest in people, give them a game plan and some confidence, they can achieve more. But there were plenty of times when I thought I was in an unequal battle.' That greater help tailenders receive with their batting in a far more professional era means that the rabbit — and certainly the ferret — is in danger of extinction. The England team under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum even did away with the nightwatchman when they launched their Bazball era. Instead, they dispatched 'Nighthawks', where hard-hitting but limited batters such as Stuart Broad and Rehan Ahmed would try to score quickly at the end of a day to disrupt the opposition. Advertisement Now the team reflect the modern game where there are few genuine No 11s and will go into the fourth Test against India on Wednesday with a tail so strong that Brydon Carse, who made a half-century in the last match at Lord's, will be at No 10, and Jofra Archer, another bowler with decent ability with the bat, will be at 11. 'It is nice looking at the team sheet and knowing you bat all the way to the end,' said Stokes at Old Trafford. 'You don't pick your team thinking about having a strong No 11, but we are blessed with some very good all-round cricketers.' Malcolm would have welcomed that level of support. 'I genuinely loved my batting, but it was made clear to me I was there to bowl,' he says of his time in the England team. And Robinson admits he would not have put up with a batter like himself in a coaching career that saw him lead Sussex and Warwickshire to the County Championship title and England women to the 2017 World Cup. 'There are far fewer rabbits in the game now because you're not allowed to be one,' says Robinson. 'As a head coach, I refused to have anyone like that. The game now demands that you can't just be a walking wicket, you have to fight your corner and put time into it.' As Bumrah and Siraj showed at Lord's, there is still room for tail-end resistance against a far superior bowling opponent. And Test cricket is a richer game for it. Click here to read more cricket stories on The Athletic, and follow Global Sports on The Athletic app via the Discover tab.
CNA
3 days ago
- Sport
- CNA
Knee injury ends Reddy's England tour, Arshdeep out of Manchester test
MANCHESTER :India's bowling attack suffered a double blow on Monday when Nitish Kumar Reddy was ruled out of the remainder of their tour of England due to a knee injury while fellow seamer Arshdeep Singh will also miss the fourth test in Manchester. India's board (BCCI) did not share details of Reddy's injury but cricket news website ESPNcricinfo reported the 22-year-old had damaged a ligament while training in the gym on Sunday. The bowling all-rounder, who played in two of the three tests so far in England, would be returning to India, the BCCI added. Arshdeep's wait for a test debut goes on after the 26-year-old suffered a hand injury, and right-arm pacer Anshul Kamboj has been drafted into the squad as cover. "He sustained an impact injury to his left thumb while bowling in the nets at a training session in Beckenham," the BCCI said in a statement. "The BCCI medical team is monitoring his progress." With seamer Akash Deep nursing a groin issue, India could be left with no choice but to play pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah in the Manchester test beginning on Wednesday. India had planned to limit Bumrah's workload after the pacer had back surgery early this year, and he was due to be available for only one of the remaining two tests. England lead the five-match series 2-1.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
What made playing with Bumrah unique
I first faced Jasprit Bumrah in a club match when he was still a teenager, long before he became my India team-mate. There were other bowlers playing in the game who had played first-class cricket but he was just different. These days, as we have seen through the current Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy, he is a complete bowler, but back then the main thing about him was his pace. He was rapid. Throughout the following years he began to make his name in the Indian Premier League but before he played his first Test in Cape Town in South Africa in 2018, there were still a lot of question marks around him in India. His action was unique, people questioned whether he would be able to swing the red ball or if he had the consistency and control for the longer format. He may have only taken four wickets in that first Test but he answered all of those questions. I remember standing at first slip with Virat Kohli next to me at second and Shikhar Dhawan at third. We were all saying how it just felt unlike any of the other bowlers. We had Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Hardik Pandya playing in that game but again he felt different. Shami was quick but Bumrah was quicker. I stood at first slip a lot to Bumrah in my career. It was totally unique. Much is made about the angle created by his action and his position wide on the crease being difficult for batters but it is tricky for slip fielders too. The angles he creates means the wicketkeeper has to stand almost behind the stumps against right-handers, rather than on a fourth stump line. That meant I had to move further over to close the gap. It always felt like you are seeing him jog in from straight on. When you add in his skiddy trajectory everything just felt quicker. Bumrah would never shout at a slip fielder for dropping a catch – he is too nice a guy for that – but we did joke with him. Off the field Jasprit is an introvert. He spends a lot of time in his room. It is not in a bad way. He just enjoys his own company. There was a group of us – myself, Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant and former wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha – who would always be playing Fifa on the PlayStation while on tour and whenever we invited Jasprit it was hard work getting him there. In the end we had to joke that we wouldn't take any catches off his bowling if he didn't come. Bumrah needed the help of a good partner when playing Fifa - as a gamer he's not up to much - but it was on his first tour of England in 2018 when he went up another level as a bowler. By the time we went to Australia the following winter we realised he was our wildcard that would play for India a very long time. He was instrumental as we won in Australia for the first time. You may remember on that tour of England a hooping inswinger he bowled to Keaton Jennings who was out lbw without playing a shot. England's batters just could not read his swing and, using the Dukes ball for the first time, when he got it to move, it moved a long way. If I had bowled a ball like that one to Jennings I would have been running around celebrating and talking about it for ages. Jasprit stayed cool and didn't ever brag. He just gets on with the next delivery. In the dressing room he is always watching the game. Most fast bowlers come off the field and relax with their feet up. He does relax but he always has an eye on the field. When I used to sit next to him he would always be giving an input on what our batters or the opposition could be doing differently, which is why he was viewed as a candidate to be captain before India appointed Shubman Gill. Most people talk about Bumrah's skills with the ball, his angle or his action but his biggest strength is often overlooked. He has a brilliant cricket brain which comes from his time in the IPL. There he worked with people like former Sri Lanka bowler Lasith Malinga and has gained the skills to outsmart a batter. His first instinct is always to bowl his best ball but if a batter gets in he knows all of their strengths and weaknesses. He has taken the skills from white-ball cricket to become the complete Test bowler. One of my favourite moments on that England tour in 2018 came in Southampton when Jasprit helped me get through to a hundred in the first innings. I was on 96 when he came out at number 11 and I have to admit I did not think I would get there but he walked in and said "I will defend. I don't know if I will survive but I will do my best". I ended up finishing on 132 not out as we put on 46 for the last wicket. That day sums him up because whether batting or bowling he is a very competitive cricketer. When it comes to his bowling, no matter the situation of the game, he always wants and believes he can get a wicket. Ultimately, he is the perfect team man. Cheteshwar Pujara was speaking to BBC Sport's Matthew Henry Get cricket news sent straight to your phone
