What was that gesture from Ben Stokes to Josh Tongue? pic.twitter.com/7HBIs5BlFF
— Sky Sports Cricket (@SkyCricket) June 21, 2025
The IPL Watcher
Josh Tongue, rabbit eater
ESPNcricinfo staff
24-Jun-2025
How closely did you watch the first England vs India Test? If you were paying attention, you'd have seen Ben Stokes doing this inexplicable thing:
Turns out it isn't the England captain calling for an early dinner. Stuart Broad took to twitter to explain the cryptic gesture.
Full postThe IPL's first three-time champion, and Robin's record
Snapshot of a batting line-up of numbers from IPL 2014
Bishen Jeswant
02-Jun-2014
Statistics often help ascertain who should make up a XI, but not often do stats form the XI. Here's a list of 11 quirky numbers from the 2014 IPL season
1 The number of runs Chennai Super Kings seamer Mohit Sharma has scored in his entire T20 career. He scored this run during the second qualifier against Kings XI Punjab. Prior to that game, he had played 38 T20 matches - but batted only three times - without scoring a run.
2 Number of Man-of-the-Match awards Sandeep Sharma won during the five IPL games Kings XI Punjab played in the UAE. His performance in the India leg tapered off to the extent that his bowling average (8.85) and strike-rate (9.40) in the UAE leg were lower than his economy rate (10.01) in the India leg.
Full postRun, batsman, run
Why do batsmen not attempt to run until they are run out off the final ball of an innings, when it might bring an extra run for their team?
Bishen Jeswant
27-May-2014
The venue is the Dubai International Cricket Stadium. Rajasthan Royals are nine down and need 24 in the last over to overhaul Chennai Super Kings' total of 140. Dhawal Kulkarni swats R Ashwin for two sixes and brings the equation down to nine off two balls. He hits the fifth ball to long-on and the only way Royals can stay in the match is if the batsmen run two, so Kulkarni can try and hit the final ball for six to tie the game.
Kulkarni recognises this and pushes for the second run to get on strike. His partner Pravin Tambe, however, has turned down the second, though it would leave him needing to score eight runs off one ball. Kulkarni carries on and the confusion ends with Tambe being run out at the non-striker's end and Royals losing. Why did Tambe not run? Was it his inexperience, a brain freeze or the high probability of being run out that dissuaded him?
Tambe's inaction is not the only instance of batsmen not running when there was almost nothing to lose for the team. In Hyderabad, Royal Challengers were setting Sunrisers a target, with Sachin Rana facing the final ball of the innings. He missed Dale Steyn's delivery but did not run even though his partner Mitchell Starc had tried to steal a bye to the wicketkeeper. Starc was run out.
Full postThe last-minute substitution
Kevin Pietersen gave his consent for Pragyan Ojha's inclusion as a replacement for the injured Praveen Kumar after the toss and the game got underway after a five-minute delay
Alagappan Muthu
23-May-2014
The IPL is a conclave of extraordinary events. But amid logic-shattering innings, gravity-defying catches and barely-believable collapses, there is the odd blooper or two. Mumbai Indians' bout against Delhi Daredevils was barely under way when they contributed another entry.
The toss was done, the XIs were announced and Wankhede Stadium was readying itself for the first ball. Only, there was a small gathering by the sightscreen. Both umpires were in deep discussion with Daredevils' Kevin Pietersen and Gary Kirsten. Anil Kumble and John Wright represented the Mumbai Indians contingent. Soon IPL chief operating officer Sundar Raman and match referee Andy Pycroft were in the mix as on-air commentary informed that Mumbai Indians' Praveen Kumar had injured himself in the brief window between toss and start of play. The subject of the debate was whether Mumbai Indians should be allowed a replacement in Pragyan Ojha. He was not among the reserves named for the match.
The chances of Corey Anderson or Ben Dunk coming into the XI were remote considering that would push the overseas player count to five (a near-impossibility that Mumbai Indians made happen in the 2011 Champions League T20). Apoorv Wankhade and Sushant Marathe completed the reserves list, but they were batsmen. Mumbai Indians wanted a bowler. Pietersen gave his consent for Ojha's inclusion and the game got underway after a five-minute delay.
Full postWatching from the non-striker's end
A look at some one-sided partnerships in the IPL
Shiva Jayaraman
23-May-2014
The match between Kings XI Punjab and Mumbai Indians in Mohali saw Lendl Simmons hit the first century of this IPL season. Simmons made 100 of the 159 runs that Mumbai Indians scored - a contribution of 62.9% to the team score. However, among the 29 centuries that have been scored in the IPL, Simmons' hundred ranks only eighth in terms of its contribution to the team score. Sanath Jayasuriya's innings for Mumbai Indians against Chennai Super Kings in 2008, in which he scored 114 out of a team total of 158, ranks at the top.
An individual hundred in a T20 game is rare enough and a single-handed contribution of more than 60% to the team score makes it even more special. But Simmons' innings saw another uncommon passage of play: Simmons scored 55 in his opening partnership of 68 with Michael Hussey. Hussey contributed just six runs.
This was only the seventh time in the IPL that one batsman had scored 50-plus in a partnership, while the other had managed only single digits. Simmons' contribution of 80.9% (55 out of 68), however, is not the highest by a batsman in such partnerships. Here are the other six instances in the order of the contribution by the dominant batsman.
Full postRevamped Uthappa hits the high note
Uthappa's outstanding IPL season and the possibility of an India recall.
Bishen Jeswant
22-May-2014
Ninety-seven runs from five innings, at an average of 19.40 and a strike rate of 108.98 - these are not confidence inspiring numbers from the point of view of a captain, team management or the fans. These stats, from around three weeks ago, belong to the man who is currently IPL 2014's second-highest run-getter. The numbers inarguably point to the fact that Robin Uthappa's performance in the UAE leg of this year's IPL was below-par. Apart from one good innings of 55, his scores read - 1, 22, 19, 0. When the IPL returned to India, Uthappa, however, came roaring back to form, showing everyone that the lows of the UAE were nothing but a blip.
Uthappa's rise began with a strong showing in the domestic one day season. He scored a run-a-ball 104 against Kerala in the Subbaiah Pillai Trophy, the south zone qualifiers to the national one day tournament - the Vijay Hazare Trophy. He top-scored in the Vijay Hazare Trophy with 536 runs at an average of 76.57 including a 132 not out against Gujarat and 133 against Jharkhand, thereby taking Karnataka to the title, and a historic treble (winning the Ranji, Irani and Vijay Hazare trophies).
Uthappa has so far scored 392 runs in the India leg of the 2014 IPL, when no other batsmen has managed to score even 300 runs. Below is a table of the top five batsmen in the India leg of IPL 2014.
Full postSpecialists in failure
The longest losing streaks in the IPL
Anuj Vignesh
19-May-2014
The longest losing streaks in the IPL
7 - Delhi Daredevils, 2014
Delhi Daredevils (like Pune Warriors) are no strangers to piling up big losing streaks and their current run of seven games without a win is the fifth longest in the IPL. After the Daredevils bowlers set up an easy victory against Mumbai Indians, a combination of top-order failures, ineffective bowling, lack of composure at the death and the poor form of their star batsman Kevin Pietersen, culminated in the team succumbing to defeat after defeat after defeat. It all began when the tournament returned to India, with Daredevils losing four successive games at the Feroz Shah Kotla- including a failure to defend 179 against Chennai Super Kings - before being thumped by Royal Challengers Bangalore and Rajasthan Royals to end any faint hopes the team had of making the playoffs.
Full postTarget more than 200? No problem
A look at the biggest chases in the IPL
Nikhil Kalro
18-May-2014
A look back at the biggest chases in the IPL
The very first successful 200-plus chase came as early as the ninth game of the first season. Deccan Chargers were the 2008 version of the current Royal Challengers Bangalore - filled with boundary-clearing stars. Adam Gilchrist, Herschelle Gibbs, Andrew Symonds, Shahid Afridi and an up-and-coming Rohit Sharma were supposed to make their batting line-up the gold standard in the IPL. They made a poor start to the campaign, losing their first two games, but the batting machinery seemed to be getting in gear when Andrew Symonds bludgeoned a century in the third and helped Chargers rack up 214. Symonds' day was soured, however, when Shane Warne conjured a victory for the unfancied Rajasthan Royals by slamming 16 of the 19 runs in the final over, bowled by Symonds.
Full postSix & not out: the IPL's best finishers
How MS Dhoni and AB de Villiers' IPL numbers stack up to show they are the best in finishing business
Bishen Jeswant
17-May-2014
MS Dhoni the finisher is now considered among the game's best, be it in T20s or ODIs. His teams' supporters have come to not just hope, but almost expect Dhoni to take the side to victory when he is batting in a chase. Here we look at Dhoni's finishing prowess in the IPL. Does he deserve all the accolades he gets or are there other batsmen, like AB de Villiers, who are being slighted in the process?
Below is a list of batsmen who have been there at the end of successful chases the most number of times for their respective IPL teams. (The statistics don't account for the vagaries of whether the concerned batsman came in with only a handful of easy runs to be knocked off, and so the chaff will have to be separated via a manual, qualitative assessment.)
| Batsman | Innings | Runs | High score | Strike rate | 50+ scores | 4s | 6s |
| LRPL Taylor | 11 | 243 | 81* | 149.07 | 1 | 16 | 14 |
| MS Dhoni | 10 | 289 | 67* | 156.21 | 2 | 23 | 12 |
| AB de Villiers | 10 | 419 | 89* | 146.50 | 3 | 34 | 22 |
| G Gambhir | 10 | 539 | 75* | 125.34 | 7 | 60 | 3 |
| RA Jadeja | 10 | 193 | 38* | 178.70 | 0 | 14 | 11 |
| DPMD Jayawardene | 10 | 368 | 110* | 139.92 | 3 | 42 | 7 |
| JH Kallis | 10 | 500 | 89* | 123.15 | 5 | 47 | 13 |
Holding back Duminy, Jadhav hurting Daredevils
Certain teams have been very conservative with their batting order, giving their biggest hitters little crease time. The approach has backfired on Delhi Daredevils the most
Karthik Krishnaswamy
15-May-2014
Imagine you are given a set of eleven names that includes both Steven Smith and Stuart Binny. Now imagine you are asked to arrange them in the batting order. If 100 cricket fans are given this exercise, you would think at least 75 of them - unless they are all rabid Karnataka fans - would bat Smith ahead of Binny, no matter which format this hypothetical XI is playing. It is simple cricketing logic.
Try telling Rajasthan Royals that. This season, Binny has batted nine times for them. He has gone in eight times at No.5, and once at No.6. Smith, meanwhile, has batted seven times, each time at No. 6. This despite the fact that Binny has had a poor season - he averages 16.28, has a strike rate of 115.15 - while Smith has had a good one - average 36.75, strike rate 133.63.
In their last match, against Chennai Super Kings, Royals were 84 for 1 at the 10-over mark before losing two wickets in three overs. At this stage, they could have sent in Smith, who had just struck an unbeaten 21-ball 48 in a fairytale chase against Royal Challengers Bangalore. Instead, they sent in Binny, who had made scores of 12, 8, 0*, 0, 11, 12 and 1 in his last seven innings.
Full post