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Jose Caballero began Thursday's game between the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees in the former team's dugout and ended up in the latter club's after the Yankees acquired him midway through the contest ahead of Thursday's trade deadline. And with his acquisition by the Yankees, Caballero quite literally snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, as the Yankees bested the Rays 7–4.

After the game, Caballero was asked what it was like switching his rooting interests during a game.

"I was winning today regardless," Caballero said. "We won the game—I guess. That's what I feel right now."

That's one way to get a win!

In all seriousness though, Caballero, who grew up a fan of the Bronx Bombers, should be able to do plenty to help the Yankees win. The 28-year-old has swiped 34 bases, tied for the most in the majors, while rating three Outs Above Average at shortstop, a particularly key metric considering incumbent Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe's defensive struggles.

The Baltimore Orioles and rising star catcher Samuel Basallo have agreed to an eight-year, $67 million contract extension, according to a report from ESPN's Jeff Passan.

Basallo, who is just four games into his major league career, is one of the best prospects in baseball. He is hitting .286 in 14 big league at-bats with five RBI.

The 21-year-old Basallo's contract with Baltimore will begin in the 2026 season, and could max out at $88.5 million. It is the largest pre-arbitration extension for a catcher in major league history.

The Orioles have now locked up their present (and future) catcher for years to come.

Major League Baseball is set to implement an Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System (ABS) beginning in the 2026 season, the league announced on Tuesday. Each team will receive two challenges per game, and the challenges can be kept if they are successful. The challenges can only be initiated by a pitcher, catcher or batter immediately following a pitch.

Hall of Fame Baltimore Orioles infielder Cal Ripken Jr. was asked about the ABS system coming to baseball next season, and voiced strong support of it in an appearance with 106.7 's show on Thursday.

"I'm for the system," Ripken said. "I really believe the whole game can swing on one pitch. You know, it's a 2-1 count, bases loaded and a slider's gonna be down and away and they get the call—it's 2-2 as opposed to 3-1 with the hottest hitter at the plate. It changes the opportunity. Tennis does a good job, football does a good job with the technology, and we have that here. I guess the question is, 'Is two challenges enough?' So it's going to be a little bit of a learning period and a tweaking period and who knows, maybe it goes to all ABS at some point. But I like the idea."

It will certainly be a change that some fans will support and others—baseball purists—may not. But it is baseball's foray into 21st century technology and the challenge system in a sport that is difficult to officiate is long overdue.

Saturday night's epic Game 7 closed out a thrilling World Series and drew baseball's biggest television audience in eight years.

According to early numbers from Nielsen, the Los Angeles Dodgers' 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in 11 innings brought in an average of 25.98 million viewers across Fox, Fox Deportes and Fox Sports. Viewership peaked between 11:30-11:45 p.m. to 31.54 million as both teams tried to find what would prove to be the World Series-clinching run.

More detailed numbers are expected on Tuesday, but Fox Sports is already trumpeting what looks to be an incredible success. The last broadcast to deliver such a number was Game 7 of the 2017 Fall Classic between the Houston Astros and Dodgers, which came in at 28.29 million viewers.

While any headline about historic viewership is welcomed with open arms by baseball, this one is especially impressive considering that these numbers do not include the massive Canadian audience tuned into the event.

It's hard to imagine two teams working together to create more spectacular drama—and more of it—than what the Blue Jays and Dodgers were able to put together. Avoiding any overlap with the NFL and getting a showcase for Game 7 against a weaker college football primetime slate helped push the number even higher.

Sophie Devine has hit her purple patch right in time to lead New Zealand into the Women’s T20 World Cup

Alex Malcolm19-Feb-2020If New Zealand allrounder and now captain Sophie Devine leaves the MCG on March 8 with the World T20 title, a mountain of runs to her name and a bag of wickets, her rivals from Australia and England will have had a significant part to play.Devine, 30, enters the T20 World Cup in career-best form, ranked the world’s No. 1 allrounder, equal with Ellyse Perry, and the world’s No. 2 ranked batter.The newly minted New Zealand captain became the first player, male or female, to reach 50 in five consecutive T20Is less than two weeks ago, completing a stunning sequence with her maiden T20I century against South Africa in Wellington to help the home side to a 3-1 series win after being clean-swept in the preceding ODI series.ALSO READ: Sophie Devine’s form gives New Zealand hope of successThis came off the back of the WBBL, where she was the player of the tournament for her part in the Adelaide Strikers’ run to the final. She was the leading run scorer of the WBBL and was joint fourth among the wicket-takers.Devine partly credits her scintillating summer to a rare pre-season in Perth with Western Australia in Australia’s Women’s National Cricket League. The unusual opportunity came about through then WA coach and now England coach Lisa Keightley, who had previously worked with Devine at Loughborough Lightning in England’s Women’s Super League.”The pre-season I had in WA was fantastic for me,” Devine says. “It was the first pre-season I’d had in a number of years. So to be able to go back to basics and work day-in-day-out and with a great bunch of coaches [was great].

“Cricket can be a really fickle game, particularly T20. You can train the house down and feel a million bucks and get an absolute peach of a delivery and you’re out for a golden duck”

“We didn’t have anything New-Zealand-wise, so it was almost pure luck really. I don’t think it happens too often [that] you invite Kiwis over, but I really do appreciate everything the WACA provided for me.”Devine only played four games for WA in the WNCL either side of her WBBL commitments with the Adelaide Strikers and her Wellington and New Zealand duties, but she had a profound impact on the group during the pre-season.She made a match-winning century for WA against a Victoria attack featuring Australia trio Perry, Annabel Sutherland and Sophie Molineux in January. WA went on to win their first ever WNCL title last weekend against New South Wales, despite Devine and Keightley being absent.She also credits her form to her Wellington mentor Christie van Dyk, who pushed her to become a more consistent player. “A lot of my success recently has to go to him. He’s just really pushed me to be better, to want more for myself and to value my wicket,” Devine says. “If you asked players about me a couple of years ago, they would have said, ‘Could be a great player but just throws away her wicket a little bit.'”So I instilled that in my training and in games – really valuing my wicket and wanting to be a batter and spending time at the crease. Looking at my strengths, I know I can have that power side of the game, but if I can be in for more than 10-12 overs, I can hopefully cause some damage.”Devine’s consistency has been stunning. She made nine half-centuries in the WBBL in 16 innings at a strike-rate of 130.33. She then backed that up with a century and two more half-centuries for Wellington to win the Women’s Super Smash, with the hundred for WA in between.Devine’s maiden T20I hundred capped a five-match run of 50-plus scores, the first in T20Is for any player•Getty ImagesShe rolled that form into her first official T20I series as captain of New Zealand. She says there was no magical technical or physical change in her preparation that has seen her game go up a level. The change was simply an attitudinal one.”I think a massive part is the mindset,” says Devine. “The top two inches is the most important thing in cricket, and that’s been something that I’m really striving to want more from myself.”The other really important thing is, cricket can be a really fickle game, particularly T20, in that you can train the house down and feel a million bucks and get an absolute peach of a delivery and you’re out for a golden duck. I guess as long as you’re consistent with your processes, your performance looks after itself.ALSO READ: Sophie Devine named WBBL player of the tournament”That’s certainly important for me as a captain, and even as a team-mate, just passing on that knowledge and experience I’ve gained. Cricket has plenty of ups and downs, and if you ride each and every one of them you’re going to be pretty knackered from it. Staying consistent and level-headed and working as hard as you can helps performances out on the park.”Captaincy can be a burden for some players but Devine seems to be thriving, having taken over from Amy Satterthwaite. “I’m really honoured,” she says. “Any opportunity you get to play for your country, let alone leading the team into battle, is special and something I don’t take for granted.”The key thing for me at the end of the day – I’m a player first. I’m an allrounder that wants to perform with bat and ball, and if I can do that, lead from the front, hopefully I can drag a few of the others alongside me. It’s about me focusing on doing my role, what’s required for the team at the time, and then worrying about the captaincy almost after that.”

“If you asked players about me a couple of years ago, they would have said, ‘Could be a great player but just throws away her wicket a little bit'”

Her biggest challenge as captain will be how and when to bring herself on to bowl. She only bowled 8.5 overs in the four matches against South Africa, preferring to give others an opportunity.”That’s a challenge that any bowling captain has,” Devine says. “I guess I’m really fortunate that I’ve got Suzie Bates in the team, who has obviously led the team for a long, long time, and really successfully, and I’ve relied a lot on her for her honesty and her thoughts. There have been times where she has literally thrown the ball to me and said, ‘You need to bowl’, and you do need to have that support and courage to bowl yourself. So having her on my shoulder helps massively.”Though it’s all about the match-ups. I might be ideal to bowl to someone but not against another team, but that’s something we’ll be looking towards in this World Cup.”Devine admitted New Zealand are entering the World Cup not knowing what their best side looks like, having used 15 players in the South Africa series. “I’m actually really comfortable with it,” she says. “I think it’s a really good thing for us. We’ve got plenty of options and that’s what you want heading into these events. Then it just comes down to who the best match-up is. We’ve got 15 players who can all do a job.”She will lean on the experience of Bates, Lea Tahuhu and Rachel Priest through the tournament. But if her form and mindset are anything to go by, Devine is more than capable of carrying New Zealand on her shoulders, and perhaps even heading home with the trophy for the first time.

The Rest of World need to defend 23 runs off two overs against Australia Women. Who bowls the 19th?

ESPNcricinfo staff28-Jun-2020Scenario: You are captaining a Rest of World XI against Australia in a benefit match at the MCG after the 2020 Women’s T20 World Cup. Australia have just lifted their fifth trophy. Your ROW XI sets 190 to win, and Australia bring it down to 23 off two overs with six wickets in hand. Alyssa Healy and Nicola Carey are at the crease. Whom do you give the 19th over to?Andrew McGlashan:
Ecclestone has shown nerves of steel at various points in her young career – not least earlier this year when she was given the Super Over against Australia in a tri-series game – and has risen to be the No.1-ranked T20I bowler in the world. Her height enables her to fire the ball in at the batters’ feet, which will be vital to prevent Healy and Carey getting underneath the ball, but neither is she afraid of holding a delivery back and tempting them. It could be a bit of a risk with her spinning the ball into the left-handed Carey, but you would back her to hold her nerve and give her team-mate enough runs to defend in the final over.Vishal Dikshit:
With Healy and Carey at the crease, the 19th over should be given to a bowler who is familiar with both batters and the conditions in Melbourne. I’d also want someone who is aggressive and performs well under pressure. That would make me go for Marizanne Kapp. A gun bowler, Kapp has won South Africa close matches with both ball and bat. To add to her credentials, she was the Sydney Sixers’ top wicket-taker in the 2019-20 WBBL and had been the most economical bowler in the four editions before that. Also worth remembering is her impressive performance in the Super Over against the Melbourne Renegades in the 2019 WBBL semi-finals. Bowling to big-hitters Dani Wyatt and Sophie Molineux, Kapp had conceded just six runs.Against Australia, I’d back her to run in with intent and target the stumps. She’s got pace, accurate yorkers, variations, the ability to bowl full and wide, and the discipline to bowl to her field. Also, it was in the 19th over that she claimed a WBBL hat-trick against the Melbourne Stars just eight months ago.Getty ImagesAlan Gardner:
Experience, a cool head, and a decent yorker are the required ingredients in order to close down Australia’s chances ahead of the final over. Getting rid of Healy would be handy too, so let’s turn to the bowler who has had most success against her in women’s T20Is – Brunt has taken Healy’s wicket eight times (the next best is three). She may not have the pace of her pomp, but Brunt has been at the forefront with England for over a decade, winning games and trophies with her combative approach. She’s also done the job in an almost identical scenario: with Australia needing 22 off 12 at Bristol in the 2017 World Cup group stage, Brunt conceded five runs and a leg bye. Full and straight or a bumper barrage, Brunt’s got the tools and knows how to use them.Shashank Kishore:
Ideally, you want to bowl someone who can nail yorkers at will. Having opened the innings, Healy may have just tired a little by the 19th over. Also, very rarely do we see her scythe the ball over point or squeeze it between point and short third. Healy’s game is built on brute force and taking apart spin. That’s where Kapp’s experience will come in handy. She uses the crease well and can execute yorkers. So the plan to Healy will be to pack my off side and attempt wide yorkers for a couple of deliveries. For Carey, I’ll have two fielders behind square – a deep square and fine leg – and look to go full, straight, and fast. Those two fielders are just for insurance, in case she attempts to scoop or paddle.Sharda Ugra:
It would be nice to bung Deepti Sharma in here and watch the lovely loop lull the most explosive batter in the game into a trap. But no. Healy’s power overrides the absence of pace on the ball, and her game awareness gets her past the opposition’s well-telegraphed intentions. Healy will have to be stopped before Carey and Australia feel the pressure. The best person to remove Healy then is a hardy, reliable campaigner. In steps Brunt. She is the one bowler who has had Healy’s number, dismissing her eight times in their 18 T20I encounters. It is Brunt’s speed and ability to bowl the heavy ball or the skiddy bouncer along with her changes of pace that could get Healy tied up and then hitting out. Take out Healy in the 19th and you take Australia out of the game.Annesha Ghosh:
Let’s assume the pitch is on the quicker side, similar to the one used in the final. Against a left-hand right-hand combination boasting the power and insouciant gap-piercing ability of Healy and Carey, you need a quick with the ability to move the ball both ways. Given a stable base is the predominant source of Healy’s power, South Africa pacer Marizanne Kapp may be able to trouble her with what Smriti Mandhana calls her “in-between” swingers. Kapp is good at subtly adjusting her length and, though she has never dismissed Healy in international cricket, the duo’s familiarity with each other as Sydney Sixers team-mates could work in the bowler’s favour. Kapp’s angry-fast-bowler zip and bag of tricks might do enough to frustrate Carey, the more inventive of the two batters, with a reputation for plucky cameos built on reverse paddles and relentless plundering off the back foot square of the wicket.

From Eastbourne to the MCG to the polling booth, Pakistan’s prime minister has always relished a challenge

Paul Edwards14-Jul-2020That CB Fry should once have been offered the throne of Albania is seen as another eccentric feature of an already eccentric life. It has become a quiz question. That Imran Khan should have wanted to become prime minister of Pakistan is viewed as almost a natural ambition from a man whose thirst for achievement appears unslakeable. It has become a reality.Other world-class cricketers have also sought to make a difference to life outside the game when they retire. All too often their plans founder as they struggle to cope with environments in which 6000 Test runs or 200 wickets do not seal contracts or persuade investors. After a few years they are content to return to the worlds they know and in which they lead fulfilling lives. They are reassured to see pictures from their pomp on the front of the cricket papers and in time they might have a pavilion named after them. Imran has had his face on the cover of magazine and has built a cancer hospital in memory of his mother.The Pakistani establishment told him he couldn’t build such a hospital and then they said he couldn’t run an institution in which about 75% of cancer sufferers receive free treatment. He did both things. They took him nearly ten years. “I have never not believed I am going to win,” he told Mike Atherton in 2016.ALSO READ: Odd Men In – Bill Farrimond and ‘Hopper’ LevettSome cricketers attend their county’s annual reunions and are pleased to be recognised by members who reminisce about the best days of distant summers. Imran has done so much since he retired in 1992 – virtually none of it connected to cricket – that a few junior players, even in Pakistan, might take a moment or two to recall that their prime minister once captained the national team on the greatest day in its history. Then they will recall photographs of a floodlit Melbourne Cricket Ground on a late March evening in 1992 and their captain in his lime-green shirt holding aloft a Waterford crystal trophy and saying how this victory over England should help him achieve his other ambitions. Nobody but Imran knew it at the time but he had played his last match. He was 39 and the best cricketer his country had ever produced now turned his formidable attention to other things.Imran’s continuing desire to fulfil his ambitions outside the game was perhaps sharpened by his being born into his country’s sporting aristocracy. Why achieve only the obviously achievable? Two of his cousins, Javed Burki and Majid Khan, were Oxbridge Blues and both captained Pakistan. (When Imran followed them as skipper of the national team, he dropped Majid from the side on the morning of his first Test in charge in 1982. There is as much steel as suavity in his character.) The family’s affluence ensured that he attended Aitchison College, which is Pakistan’s most famous school and was situated a short distance from the family home in the quiet Lahore suburb of Zaman Park. The high-quality coaching and excellent facilities at Aitchison helped to develop Imran’s burgeoning talent and on the strength of 11 first-class games he was included in the party to tour England in 1971. He was 18 years old.If his first trip to England proved to Imran that he was not yet ready for international cricket, it at least introduced him to the country where he would play the majority of his 382 first-class matches. He completed his secondary education at Worcester’s Royal Grammar School and spent three years at Oxford, captaining the university in his second year and playing for Worcestershire when term had ended. Having once been an inswing bowler who could score a few runs, he was gradually becoming a proper all-rounder whose top-order batting could change games and whose fast bowling included a wicked bouncer. The leap in his delivery stride made you catch breath, especially, perhaps, if you were female.Imran Khan is hoisted up by his team-mates after winning the World Cup•Tony Feder/Getty ImagesSome Oxford contemporaries said Imran was aloof but all of them appreciated his strength of will once he was resolved on a course of action. That determination would be revealed in other ways. Having represented Worcestershire for one full season and been capped when his century and 13 wickets set up an innings victory against Lancashire, he moved to Sussex the following year in 1977 so that he could be nearer London, where his increasingly active social life was based. (For many years the gossip columnists would be as interested in his doings as cricket correspondents. Mercifully the two groups have rarely overlapped.)He was banned for the 1978 Pakistan tour of England because he had joined Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket but he would later declare that his two Australian summers had been time well spent: Mike Procter had advised him on his run-up while John Snow had shown him how turning his left shoulder more towards fine leg would help his outswing.Before long Snow’s own county would be the beneficiary of those coaching clinics. Imran helped Sussex win two knockout trophies and had a leg-before appeal not been turned down in 1981 he might have been in the first Sussex side to win the County Championship. He did not want for self-confidence that summer, a trait noted by his skipper Johnny Barclay during the game against Derbyshire at Eastbourne where the visitors had five wickets in hand and a lead of over 230 on the final afternoon. A draw seemed in prospect. Imran decided he should bowl…”Imran immediately trapped Steele lbw and, a man inspired, wiped out the rest of the batting. Four wickets in five balls, all bowled or lbw. Rarely have I seen such a devastating spell of bowling with an old ball.

Imran Khan is one of those very few people who has a sense of personal greatness and personal destiny… He is the nearest thing cricket has produced to a world historical figurePeter Oborne

‘That was clever bowling,’ he said, as we left the field. ‘Now I want to bat… I want to bat high in the order, I feel it is my day, we must beat this lot. I think I shall bat at four. The others won’t mind.'”Imran made 107 not out, reaching his century with 11 fours and three sixes in 88 minutes. By the end of the match, nobody gave a monkey’s where he had batted, not least the large crowd on the last day of Eastbourne Week. Yet this determination to wrench a game of cricket into a shape of his own devising would be seen again on the game’s far larger stages. Most notably, perhaps, it would be seen in Test series against the mighty West Indian and Australian sides of the 1980s, against whom Imran led Pakistan in six series, winning one, drawing three and losing only in Australia (where he had helped New South Wales win the Sheffield Shield in 1983-84.) Imran instilled a sense of common purpose into a Pakistani team whose capacity to tear itself apart had often seemed unbounded.If anybody had doubted the new skipper’s resolve they were quickly disabused of their misgivings when he declared with Javed Miandad on 280 in the fourth Test against India at Hyderabad in January 1983. The match was won by an innings deep in the fifth day, a result which sealed a series victory. Imran’s approach to the various tasks of leadership was established. Then again it hardly harmed the cause that he had players of the quality of Miandad, Abdul Qadir and Wasim Akram in his side.And if defeats in three successive World Cup semi-finals were lowlights in his international career, first series wins in both India and England in 1987 were quite the opposite. Imran took ten wickets at Headingley to secure Pakistan’s only victory in the second of those five-match series and then made 118 at The Oval to ensure the overall victory was secure.Imran Khan addresses a political rally•Getty ImagesThere were many other days of glory and each of his millions of fans in Pakistan had their favourite. Despite a stress fracture in his left leg which prevented him bowling for three years Imran finished his career with 362 Test wickets and 1287 in all first-class games. There were also 17,771 first-class runs and 117 catches. But sitting in the garden of his home in 2016 he had to be persuaded to talk about his cricket by Atherton. After all it was a long time ago and there are other things in life. More important things, though he did not say this.”I always wanted to leave cricket once I had finished playing,” he said, “I think the potential of a human being only grows when we challenge ourselves. Once life becomes easy it is all downhill. Once I was no longer challenged I always felt I would decay. I never wanted to take the easy road and stay in cricket… In life to succeed you have to have total passion and total commitment. Everything else takes second place… The day I left cricket it was over for me.”He has not been inured to the controversies of his country’s cricketing past. He deeply regrets the match-fixing committed by other players and admits that he once changed the condition of a ball with a bottle-top. But those things, too, are in the past. Now there are hospitals to oversee and a country to run. When Pakistan’s wealthy élite refused to help him construct a memorial to his mother, he went to the people and asked if they could help. His place in sporting history is for others to judge. No one is better placed to do so than Peter Oborne, who, with Richard Heller, has written one of the two fine histories of Pakistan’s cricket.”Imran Khan is one of those very few people who has a sense of personal greatness and personal destiny,” Oborne said. “That destiny first of all manifested itself in an amazing cricket career when he forged a national team and made it the best in the world. And then it forged itself in this enormous monument to his mother: the great hospital which is still there. And then in a political career. [He] is the nearest thing cricket has produced to a world historical figure.”The gossip columnists have long been replaced by political journalists. Armed guards stand at the entrance to Imran’s house and accompany him wherever he goes. His Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Movement for Justice) party is in power and is the subject of constant scrutiny. Its aim is to build a modern, egalitarian, democratic country, still Islamic, and with a welfare state. Most former cricketers are content to cast their vote every five years or so. Odd Men In

In the IPL, he excels at the difficult task of batting in the middle order, but he has his work cut out trying to push his way back into the India set-up

Sidharth Monga19-Sep-2020Rishabh Pant runs down at Mujeeb Ur Rahman, a bowler with variations ranging from the carrom ball to the offbreak to the legbreak to the wrong’un. He thinks he has picked the legbreak and tries to go over the leg side, but it turns out to be the wrong’un, which he ends up slicing to cover. This is after he has hit the Kings XI Punjab’s then gun bowler Andrew Tye for four, six and four in the previous over, and hit the first ball of this Mujeeb over for four more.The three overs for which Pant has been in the middle have brought 33 runs, to inject some life into a Delhi Daredevils innings that was limping at 77 for 2 after ten overs. His intent and eagerness to hit out are later proved right, when the Kings XI chase down the target easily. Pant knows the Daredevils are headed to a below-par total, but gets out trying to correct that course. For 28 off 13. How has he fared? Has he failed?A big part of cricket is failure and how you deal with it. In an interview to the three years ago, Stephen Fleming, coach of a pretty successful franchise, said helping players deal with insecurity about failure was a significant part of his job: “It is very hard to convince a player that if he is going at [a strike rate of] 190 but averaging 10 and he comes in with four balls to go, [that] he is an asset. It is [about] convincing guys that they are doing their roles to maximum. If someone is batting at a run a ball for 20 balls and averaging 50 at the end of the IPL, it is not great.”ALSO READ: ‘This much I know: how to play in what situation’That is a conflict inherent in cricket: the pursuit of individual goals in a team sport. You want the team to win, but you also want to make runs to keep your place in the side. It is quite telling that as recently as 2017, a coach who had worked with some of the biggest names in T20 felt that players still rated themselves by the traditional metric of the batting average. It naturally follows that in trying to keep that average high, in trying to retain their place, batsmen run the risk of being at odds with the team’s goals.This gets all the more vexing if you don’t bat in the top three. There is no time to make up for slow starts. Your striking efficiency has to be high: there are no field restrictions in place to take your shanks and mishits over the 30-yard line and rolling into the fence. The pitch has probably slowed. It is easier for limited batsmen to be shut down, with fewer boundary options because of the spread-out fields and the fact that the opposition’s best spinners are bowling.It is no wonder everybody wants to bat in the top order, where more is expected of you but you have the time and the freedom to go about your innings. Some ordinary T20 batsmen have found their way into top-ten lists for aggregate runs or high averages simply because they have the luxury of batting in the top order. Teams have to strike a balance between the old notion of letting their best batsmen play the most deliveries and having their best batsmen bat in the most challenging phases of an innings.ALSO READ: Rishabh Pant’s wild ups and downs since 2018Batting outside the top three requires a mix of high skill and a new attitude. That’s why the likes of Andre Russell and Kieron Pollard are so highly valued as T20 players. That’s why West Indies have been such a successful international T20 side.India have struggled to manage this attitudinal shift and it has hurt them at world events.In the IPL, for example, all of their high performers bat in the top order. They are selected for India based on traditional metrics, find the top order is jam-packed, and are then forced to become middle-order batsmen at the international level. The Dinesh Karthiks of the world hardly get a run. Can you blame them, then, for worrying about their average?

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Around the time that Fleming spoke about the need for rethinking what batting success and failure in T20 meant, Pant was finding his feet in the IPL. At the time he was in his second IPL year. Since the start of that season, no one in the IPL has scored more runs than him. The next eight batsmen on the list predominantly bat in the top three. None of them is close to his strike rate of 168 in that period. And yet, he has averaged 38. He is one of only three players to have maintained the holy-grail double of an average of 30 or more and a strike rate of 150 or above through a career of 50 innings or more. AB de Villiers just misses out making that list.ESPNcricinfo LtdPant has no apparent weakness against any kind of bowling. His average and strike rate in this three-year period against pace and spin are 39 and 177, and 42 and 157. Wristspin is the biggest weapon deployed by teams in the middle over, but he averages 56 and strikes at 160 against it. Offspin, which goes away from him, goes at 38 and 151. Left-arm pace, another point of difference that every team seeks, draws an average of 36 and a strike rate of 201. Hyderabad is the only IPL venue and the Kings XI Punjab the only team to have kept him under a strike rate of 150.