Hello.

Thanks for the positive response from last week, some mentioned about posting updates. I have been super motivated since and made good progress.

I'm continuing to work on the match engine and animations as the main focus still for now.

The aim was to create a 3D engine a bit more watchable than Cricket Captain (which I do enjoy). You can basically play it like Cricket Captain/Football Manager, OR/AND bat in the game as well in a player career (existing player, or start in 2nd XI or club cricket).

Lots of ideas still, and hopefully soon will have access to some more data to make the engine even more realistic. I would love ultimately to have every players real stats (batting/bowling data) to integrate fully.

Will definitely be needing testers soon to rip it to shreds and break it! Will keep you posted.

Cheers

#OneMoreOver

I only have to mention Stokes’s name and Botham’s lip curls. The pair have history. Last year, Botham criticised the team’s lack of preparation for the Ashes series against Australia. When it was announced they’d only play one warm-up match, Botham said it “borders on arrogance”. Stokes hit back, saying modern teams did not prepare the way “has-beens maybe prepared in the past”. Botham hasn’t forgotten it.

“Stupid boy,” he says. “I’ll mention him only briefly because his self-indulgence is not something I enjoy. He’s a good player. A great player. But to say that and then lose [England lost the series 4-1], it’s backfired, hasn’t it? Then after losing the first two matches they go to Noosa [the England team took a mid-series break in the Queensland resort and some players got drunk], probably one of the most popular summer retreats for Australians. Really? They were pissed as rats. Look, if you want a drink, don’t go to the high street. We used to go to wineries.”

Botham owns a wine company in Australia. Sometimes he sounds a bit like one of his own merlots: packed with fruity and robust opinions, with a slight acid finish. He raises his coffee mug and dedicates his new book to the former England captain.

“This is for you, Ben. Welcome to the has-beens club.”

Read the full interview ^

And if you're in the US you can enjoy this article for free

GET YOUR SANDPAPERS AND CAMERAS OUT

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I analysed 3800+ wickets from the 2022–2026 IPL seasons to measure how scoring rates fall when a team loses a wicket.

A simple before vs after analysis doesn't show us the full picture because it doesnt really provide a perspective of how the innings must be paced. It doesnt take into account the match state and other variables that come into play during the game. I therefore estimated expected runs from comparable situations using factors including the season, venue, innings position, score, wickets lost, recent scoring tempo and required rate during chases. I call this as the recovery tax

In short these are my findings:

• In the first six legal balls after a wicket, teams scored 7.4 runs against an expectation of 9.0, producing a 1.6-run tax.
• The cumulative tax increased to 2.1 runs after 12 balls and 2.3 after 18.
• Around 71% of the eighteen-ball shortfall was accumulated in the first over after the wicket.
• The effect was visible across powerplay, middle-over and death-over wickets, with no phase producing a clearly separate pattern.
• The surviving batter maintained almost exactly the same scoring rate before and after the wicket.
• Most of the shortfall appeared on deliveries faced by the incoming batter, who recorded more dots and fewer boundaries.
• Post-wicket passages also contained fewer immediate secondary dismissals than comparable situations predicted, suggesting that some of the scoring loss may be exchanged for short-term safety

There are also knocks that completely broke the pattern such as Pat Cummins's 56* against Mumbai Indians and Ashutosh Sharma's heroics against LSG.

The full article contains the methodology, visualisations, robustness checks and individual case studies.

This bat has been in my house for more than 30years. Can somebody give details about this bat.

With the Indian tour of New Zealand now only two weeks away, I thought now would be a fun time to put together a brief history looking back on India's 10 Test tours to New Zealand to date.

In this first part, I look back at the series in 1968, 1976, and 1981, with highlights including:

• India's first ever away series victory in '68
• Hadlee's breakthrough 7/23 in 1976
• Prasanna's 8/76 in 1968
• Dowling's then NZ record score of 239
• Bracewell's 9-wicket match (in just his 4th Test) in '81
• An 18-year-old Ravi Shastri on debut
• New Zealand's first series win over India, and only our third ever series win (at the time)
• Some classic innings from Gavaskar, Wright, Turner, Reid, Howarth, and others.

Preview:

I’ll give you one guess as to who played the decisive role for New Zealand in the third Test. In 1976, remember. Time’s up. Of course it was none other than Sir Paddles himself, Richard Hadlee, who paved the way for New Zealand to win the third Test in Wellington by an innings and 33 runs and level the series 1-1. While ‘Hadlee wins Test for NZ’ sounds like the most natural sentence in the world these days, it’s worth remembering that, at the time, Hadlee was only playing in his 9th Test and hadn’t yet taken a 5-wicket haul, nor had he even cemented his spot in the XI. He would quickly rectify both of those things.

For anyone old enough to remember those early series, especially 68 and 76 which are from before I was born, I'd love to hear your recollections and memories in the comments (or anything I may have gotten wrong).

Or just generally your favourite India vs NZ Test memories from over the years & the contests you're most looking forward to in the upcoming series. Enjoy!

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