All posts by n8rngtd.top

He will now rest the ankle for five days with the aim of returning to running on Tuesday and hopes to face Surrey later in July

George Dobell05-Jul-2018Stuart Broad will return to competitive cricket on July 22 in a bid to prove his fitness ahead of the Test series against India.Broad was forced off the pitch during Nottinghamshire’s Championship match against Worcestershire last week after experiencing pain in his left ankle. He has subsequently had several scans – none of which are understood to have shown a major problem – and a painkilling injection.He will now rest the ankle for five days with the aim of returning to running on Tuesday. If that goes as plans, he will play in the Championship match against Surrey at Trent Bridge that starts on the 22nd. The Test series against India starts in Birmingham on August 1.”I’ve had some injections in my left ankle for an ongoing ligament problem,” Broad confirmed in a post on Instagram.It leaves England with some concerns over the fitness of both their senior bowlers. James Anderson, who has been managing a shoulder problem for some time, will play two games ahead of the Test series – one a 2nd XI match and one a Championship match against Yorkshire – as he looks to prove his fitness.Plans to select either of them for either an England Lions match against India A or in Surrey’s side to play West Indies A have been abandoned.

Spinner Kirstie Gordon impressed by dismissing all three of Storm’s most potent batsmen, including the top scorer in the competition, Smriti Mandhana

ECB Reporters Network15-Aug-2018
ScorecardLoughborough Lightning established themselves as firm favourites for the 2018 Women’s Kia Super League with a crushing victory over defending champions Western Storm at Edgbaston.Chasing 125 to win, Lightning eased home with seven and a half overs to spare, a humbling margin for Storm, who had beaten Lightning at Taunton in a rain-reduced five-over thrash earlier in the campaign but this time were no match for their impressive opponents.Australian opener Rachael Haynes led the way with her third half-century of the tournament, finishing on 66 not out from 40 deliveries including 10 fours and a six.New Zealand allrounder Sophie Devine weighed in with 38 off 30 balls and picked up two wickets as Lightning displaced Storm at the top of the KSL table with one match remaining, the bonus point giving them a three-point lead into their final fixture, away to Yorkshire Diamonds on Saturday evening.Storm take on Surrey Stars at The Oval. The team that finishes top of the table goes straight into the KSL Final at Hove on Monday week, which is preceded by a semi-final between second and third in the chart.Lightning’s tightly disciplined bowling attack had vindicated skipper Georgia Elwiss’s decision to bowl first by restricting Storm to 124 for 6 in their 20 overs, the defending champions’ lowest score in the tournament.Spinner Kirstie Gordon had been the star of the show, dismissing all three of Storm’s most potent batters, including the top scorer in the competition, Smriti Mandhana, who came into this match with an average of 77.40 and a strike rate but this time fell for 29.An eventful Powerplay saw Mandhana riding her luck from the start on a day when she could never quite muster the destructive powers that had brought her the tournament’s only hundred so far.Unable to play with her usual freedom, the KSL’s most prolific scorer escaped a stumping chance before she had got off the mark in Jenny Gunn’s opening over, although the replay showed Lightning’s appeal to be a little optimistic. That was followed by a genuine let-off in the sixth over when, on 17 and beginning to find her timing, she was put down at extra cover, where a stretching Elwiss had a good hand on the ball but could not hold on.It looked like it might be a costly miss when Mandhana repeated the shot a couple of balls later, hitting seamer Devine over the head of the Lightning captain for her third boundary as Storm reached the end of the Powerplay at 43 for 1. They had lost opener Rachel Priest when the New Zealand batter sliced Devine to short third man, but there was plenty of batting to come.England and Storm captain Heather Knight punished Sarah Glenn’s legspin with a couple of boundaries but then a brilliant over from the left-arm spinner Gordon, one of the break-out players of the tournament, changed the complexion of the innings.Called into the attack in the ninth over with Storm 60 for 1, Gordon claimed the major scalps of Mandhana and Knight with consecutive balls, the former failing as she tried to clear Elyse Villani on the long-off boundary. Gordon then came up with a beauty that turned past the outside edge to clip Knight’s off stump.Thereafter, Storm were never able to regain any consistent momentum as Gordon and fellow left-armer Linsey Smith combined with Elwiss’s medium pace to produce a near-perfect bowling performance on a slow surface, seldom giving away any easy runs.Gordon picked up a third success – her 14th of the tournament – and a third of Storm’s batting trump cards when Stefanie Taylor hit her into the safe hands of Georgia Adams on the long-off boundary, giving her figures of 3 for 19 as the leading spin bowler in the competition.Elwiss got in on the act with a deserved wicket when Villani grabbed a second catch in the deep, before doing well to hold on to a low chance at wide extra cover as Naomi Dattani became Devine’s second victim in the final over of the innings.

Rashid Khan overtook Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan to become the first top-ranked allrounder from Afghanistan

ESPNcricinfo staff30-Sep-2018India opener Rohit Sharma moved up two spots to No. 2 in ODI batting rankings, while left-arm wristspinner Kuldeep Yadav vaulted to his career-best ranking of No.3 in the bowlers’ list, following their performances in the Asia Cup in the UAE.Afghanistan’s Rashid Khan overtook Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan to surge to No. 1 on the allrounders’ charts, and he also held on to his No. 2 spot in the bowling rankings, behind India fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah.Rohit, who led India’s triumphant Asia Cup campaign in the absence of the top-ranked ODI batsman Virat Kohli, scored 317 runs in five innings in the tournament, with one century and two fifties at an average of 105.66.Finishing as the highest wicket-taker with ten wickets, along with Rashid and Bangladesh’s Mustafizur Rahman, Kuldeep climbed three places to achieve his ranking with a career-best tally of 700 points.Rashid, who scored 87 runs at an average of 43.50 and strike rate of 142.62, and bowled at an economy of 3.72 in the Asia Cup, became the first top-ranked allrounder from Afghanistan.Rohit’s opening partner Shikhar Dhawan, the tournament’s highest run-scorer with 342 in five innings – including two centuries – climbed four spots to No. 5 in the ODI rankings for batsmen. The pair had bludgeoned Pakistan’s bowlers with a match-winning 210-run partnership, with Rohit scoring an unbeaten 111 and Dhawan 114 in the Super Four fixture.Bumrah retained his No. 1 spot among ODI bowlers. He was the fourth highest wicket-taker in the Asia Cup with eight wickets in four games. He was brilliant in the slog overs; he did not concede a single boundary in the 59 balls he bowled during that period.

He will miss the three ODIs and the T20I, to fully recover from a finger tendon injury ahead of a busy summer and the World Cup next year

Liam Brickhill15-Oct-2018Hashim Amla will miss South Africa’s limited-overs tour of Australia in November as he is given time to fully recover from a finger tendon injury ahead of a busy home summer and the World Cup next year.While South Africa are yet to announce their squad for three ODIs and a T20I against Australia in early November, coach Ottis Gibson confirmed that Amla would not be making the journey.”As a selection group we’ve discussed that with him already,” Gibson said. “We’re going to give him as much time as possible to get himself ready for the next set of cricket he’s got coming up.”Amla’s continued absence means that there will be further opportunities for other batsmen to stake a claim at the top of the order in Australia, but Gibson warned that for World Cup hopefuls, “the window is closing”.”For the last 12 months we’ve been looking at players, and for the next couple of months the window is closing,” he said. “We’re getting closer and closer to the guys who we want on the journey.”South Africa last played bilateral ODIs in Australia four years ago, at the start of a season that included the 2015 World Cup. Amla and Quinton de Kock were established as an opening pair by then, and have since formed one of South Africa’s best ever opening partnerships, having scored nearly 4000 ODI runs together including the country’s largest stand of all time, their 282-run demolition of Bangladesh last year.With Amla injured and de Kock rested for the ODIs against Zimbabwe, South Africa trialled Dean Elgar, Aiden Markram and Reeza Hendricks as openers. While Elgar flunked the audition with single-digit scores, Markram and Hendricks put together 75 in the third ODI and Gibson suggested that despite the tricky pitches played on, “we know where we are with those two”.”We know that Quinny and Hashim has been a fantastic opening pair for the Proteas for a long time, and we also know that Reeza Hendricks and Aiden Markram have also been very good in franchise cricket,” Gibson said. “The wickets at the start of the series, especially in one-day cricket were a bit tough for batting, so from that point of view we didn’t get to see as much as we would have liked, but we know where we are with those two.”Gibson’s assessment of his top order during the one-dayers against Zimbabwe was made a little more difficult by some erratic early season pitches, particularly in the second ODI in Bloemfontein when a returning Dale Steyn had Zimbabwe’s batsmen ducking and fending during a spell that bordered on outright dangerous. The pitch in Kimberley was also of an entirely different character than expected – the last time South Africa had been there, de Kock and Amla had flattened Bangladesh with that record opening stand.AFP

“It’s early season and you don’t want to be too harsh on groundsmen, but from the players’ point of view it’s obviously disappointing,” Gibson said. “Because whilst we’re creating opportunities, we still need to have decent facilities to play on. I guess a place like Kimberley, where you probably only have one game a year, you’ve only got one opportunity to get it right and they probably didn’t do it as well as they could. But saying that, it’s always been a good facility. Last year we got 280 for 0 in Kimberley. They’ve obviously had some challenges over the winter, and that can happen.”The wicket in Bloem actually looked a good wicket. It always looks good until you play on it. And when we played on it Dale had his tail up that night. Some kept low, some bounced, which is not what you want when you’re trying to stake a place in the team.”Unless you’re a bowler, that is. While the capricious pitch certainly added to the slightly macabre theatre of Steyn’s bone-rattling spell at the terrified Zimbabweans, Gibson admitted that a fit, firing, frightening Steyn was an “exciting” sight.”The real exciting thing for me was watching Dale Steyn bowl in Bloem,” he said. “It was fantastic to see him bowling at that level again and bowling that quickly with that skill and accuracy. That’s a real exciting one.”There have also been some compelling performances in the T20s, with Rassie van der Dussen cracking a debut fifty and Robbie Frylinck showing how effective he might be as a limited-overs change bowler. Gibson didn’t rule out the possibility that outstanding performances in the upcoming Mzansi Super League or franchise cricket could lead to a “wild card” selection for the 50-over World Cup.”The convener will have up his sleeve, if you’re thinking about the Ryder Cup (where coaches will pick wild card players), he might have a wild card pick and there’s always an opportunity for somebody to put themselves in the picture. If Rassie or whoever else goes and really tears up the Super League with performances, then it might make that person hard to ignore. There’s still an opportunity if you’ve not played this season to do that in franchise cricket.”Indeed, the boldness demanded by the T20 format is similar to the formula and style of play South Africa are attempting to shoehorn into their one-day cricket, and what might make a player attractive to South Africa’s ODI thinktank is a willingness to play “un-South African” cricket. Whether that means dropping conservatism for adventure at the top of the order, or stacking a bowling attack with two wristspinners to accompany the quicks, it’s the sort of cricket Gibson wants his team to play.”When we were in Sri Lanka, one of my friends who’s South African said it’s a little bit un-South African to be trying to play so many shots so early and you need to build an innings. But you can still build an innings being positive, which we did in the first couple of games. The key then becomes having the will to stick with it when things get tough.”That’s the only way we’re going to move forward as a batting group, and obviously within that there will be mistakes and you just have to take those on the chin as long as you believe you’re doing is the right thing. And make sure you do it better next time.”

West Indies’ target on Saturday is to keep Bangladesh’s lead below 200 runs, and they plan on doing that by “going hard at them” in the morning session

Mohammad Isam in Chattogram23-Nov-2018West Indies’ target on Saturday will be to keep Bangladesh’s lead below 200 runs, and they plan on doing that by “going hard at them” in the morning session.Wicketkeeper Shane Dowrich, who battled hard with an unbeaten 63, stated that West Indies will need to pick up early wickets on day three if they are to avoid a tough chase in the fourth innings.Bangladesh are currently leading by 133 runs, with five wickets in hand. Mushfiqur Rahim, unbeaten on 11, and Mehidy Hasan will be West Indies’ initial stumbling blocks before Mahmudullah, the last recognised batsman, comes in at No 8.”On this pitch, it is hard to say,” Dowrich said. “I would say anything under [a lead of] 200 is possible. Anything over 200 might be difficult. I think the game is pretty even right now. Bangladesh already have a lead, and a lead on the board is always a challenge. But I think once we go hard in the morning and get those wickets as early as possible and bat well in the second innings, we could also come out winning.”Dowrich added 92 for the sixth wicket with Shimron Hetmyer, who chipped in with a counterattacking 63 off 47 balls. It was an innings that brought West Indies back into the game, after they had slipped to 88 for 5.”I think we complement each other. Obviously, he is a very aggressive player, I told him to be selective and play his shots and that allowed me to just rotate the strike and get him on,” Dowrich said of the partnership. “And once I got in it was easier for me to score. I think everyone has their style of playing on different wickets but it worked for us today.”While Dowrich was solid with the bat, he conceded that he had a more difficult job behind the stumps, since the ball was spinning both ways, and often spitting from the rough patches.”It’s a tough pitch to keep on. There is inconsistent bounce and lots of spin, but I just gotta stay low and try to catch it well,” he said.”I think it’s more than trying to defend. To be able to survive we have to be positive.”

NSW will have a new A$50 million training base, the first time it has shifted its headquarters away from Sydney’s eastern suburbs in more than 150 years of existence

Daniel Brettig12-Nov-2018New South Wales will still play the majority of their home Sheffield Shield matches at the SCG, despite the inclusion of an ICC-compliant oval in plans for a new A$50 million training base for the state association. It is the first time NSW has shifted its headquarters away from Sydney’s eastern suburbs in more than 150 years of existence.Discussions about the headquarters and training facilities of Cricket NSW have been going on for more than five years, and focus upon a new “hub” site in the Sydney Olympic Park region began to take shape in late 2016. It was hastened by concurrent plans to redevelop the Sydney Football Stadium adjacent to the SCG, thereby squeezing the state association out of offices it had occupied for some years.At the same time, ongoing squabbles between NSW and the SCG Trust, plus the expansion of the state’s number of elite teams with the advent of the NSW women’s team and men’s and women’s Big Bash League sides, created further pressure for expansion. To that end, the NSW state government has pledged A$30 million to the project, with NSW and Cricket Australia to contribute A$10 million. The remaining A$10 million expected to be required to fund the project will be sought in coming months from sponsors and also the Federal government.”This is a landmark day for NSW cricket. NSW produces the best cricketers, male and female, in Australia and they will now have the best facility in Australia to train,” NSW chief executive Andrew Jones said. “This facility will also accommodate indoor training and outdoor playing for men, women, boys and girls from all over Sydney.”The growth of cricket and the Allianz Stadium redevelopment make this facility urgently needed. During the past decade the number of elite teams under the Cricket NSW umbrella has grown from two to six with the advent of the men’s and women’s Big Bash. With Cricket NSW also leading the professionalisation of women’s cricket two seasons ago, we have simply outgrown what we currently have at Moore Park.”The new facility will allow us to have a modern high-performance centre with a cricket field and plenty of turf nets to cater for the increased number of elite and developing players now coming through our pathway system. With our extra training facilities at Blacktown and a continuing presence at the Sydney Cricket Ground we will now be able to better cater for all our athletes right across Sydney.”Key to the new facility will be the ability to train on turf wickets during the winter months, an advantage previously available only by venturing north of the NSW border to the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane. But despite the inclusion of a new cricket ground in plans, the association’s strategy will still be to play four of every five home Shield fixtures at the SCG, leaving the new Olympic Park precinct, to be completed by 2022, as a training and administrative base.”The government’s investment of $30m towards a Western Hub will be a game changer for our sport in NSW,” CA chief executive Kevin Roberts said. “I know first-hand the importance of facilities like these to support young aspiring cricketers, particularly in one of the fastest growing areas of Australia. CA is pleased to join Cricket NSW and the NSW Government in investing in this project and we can’t wait for it to get started.”Since the opening of the NCC in Brisbane in 2013, Cricket Victoria has unveiled its own A$40 million headquarters at Junction Oval in Melbourne, Tasmania has worked to allow its players the chance to train on turf during the winter by installing a large marquee in Hobart, and now NSW has followed suit with its own set of year-round facilities. CNSW will move to temporary offices in Sydney Olympic Park at the end of this season, ahead of the new centre’s opening.”In our 159-year history we have never had a home that we manage and control,” Jones said. “We produce the best male and female cricketers in Australia and they deserve the best facilities, and now we will have them. It will be the best high-performance cricket facility in Australia. There have obviously been some issues for cricket lately, but they are one or two-year issues, this is a 100-year success story. So this will set Cricket NSW up until 2118, so what happened in 2018 won’t matter.”NSW already shared a playing and training facility at Blacktown Oval to Sydney’s west, while the Sydney Thunder play their BBL home games at Sydney Olympic Park.

The Afghanistan legspinner had announced his father’s death on Sunday evening through a Twitter post where he said he had lost ‘the most important person in my life’

ESPNcricinfo staff31-Dec-2018Adelaide Strikers have announced that Rashid Khan will play in their New Year’s Eve clash against Sydney Thunder in honour of his late father. The Afghanistan legspinner had announced his father’s death on Sunday evening through a Twitter post where he said he had lost “the most important person in my life”.”The Adelaide Strikers advise that Rashid Khan wants to play in tonight’s match against the Sydney Thunder at Adelaide Oval in honour of his late father. Rashid’s father passed away last night and Rashid has decided that he will stay in Adelaide and play tonight. The Strikers give their condolences and full support to Rashid and his family during this difficult time. The family have asked that their privacy is respected,” a media release from the franchise said.
Rashid is in his second season with the Strikers, the reigning BBL champions, and has taken five wickets from three matches so far, with an economy rate of 3.41. Adelaide Strikers are currently placed sixth after three games.

The visiting batsmen ended without a half-century between them in either innings, after Kurtis Patterson smacked his second unbeaten hundred of the match

ESPNcricinfo staff19-Jan-2019The Sri Lankan batsmen ended the three-day practice match in Hobart without a half-century between them in either innings, as they stumbled against the left-arm spin of Jon Holland on day three.The visitors had in fact been modest the entire day, taking only one wicket in their 32.5 overs with the ball before stuttering to 131 for 6 in their second innings. Their only solace is that the their tormentors on day three – Kurtis Patterson, who cracked a second unbeaten century in the game, and Holland, who took 4 for 28 – are not in Australia’s Test squad.Only Lahiru Thirimanne, who is essentially auditioning to open alongside Dimuth Karunaratne, made a score of significance for the Sri Lankans, making 46 off 121 balls. Nos. 4 to 7 fell in fairly quick succession to Holland, with Dhananjaya de Silva and Sadeera Samarawickrama picking up their second disappointing scores in the match, making 2 and 6 respectively. What was worse for the Sri Lankans was that Roshen Silva, who was batting on 23, was forced to retire hurt.Earlier in the day, Marnus Labuschagne, who may be in Australia’s XI in the first Test at the Gabba, completed a half-century, having begun the day on 33. Lahiru Kumara dismissed him for 50 off 101 balls, but that would be the last wicket the Sri Lankans would take in the day, as Patterson struck 102 not out off 136 balls, to go with his 157 not out off 212 deliveries in the first innings. Patterson was involved in an unbroken 90-run stand for the fourth wicket, to which partner Will Pucovski’s contribution was 33 off 70.Perhaps not wanting to risk their frontline seamers, however, the Sri Lankans bowled only Kumara in extended spells on day three, with Dushmantha Chameera, Suranga Lakmal and Kasun Rajitha bowled only for a handful of overs.The first Test starts on Thursday.

Australia quick fit and firing for spell with Nottinghamshire as he seeks route back into Test side

Jon Culley14-Apr-2019Australia fast bowler James Pattinson is back in England at the start of an Ashes summer and, without making brash predictions, is clearly optimistic he can play a part, even though it is now more than three years since his last Test appearance.Pattinson played an impressive role in helping Victoria regain the Sheffield Shield at the end of the Australian season and believes his planned three-month stint with Nottinghamshire gives him the perfect opportunity to prove his form and fitness following major back surgery in November 2017.Pattinson, who turns 28 next month, was out of competitive cricket for 15 months before and after the operation, which was aimed at stopping the recurring stress fractures that threatened to end an injury-plagued career.He returned to Shield cricket last November and after a carefully managed comeback came into his own as the tournament reached its climax, culminating with seven wickets in the final as Victoria beat New South Wales. He was subsequently backed by his coach, Andrew McDonald, as an Ashes match-winner.”There is a long way to go before then and obviously there is a World Cup too,” Pattinson said after checking in at Trent Bridge on Saturday and facing immediate questions about his Ashes prospects.”It is about playing cricket and building up my strength and stamina. I didn’t bowl a heap of overs in the Shield games – I think the most was 26 overs in a game. So the next step is to see how I cope with more overs and see how my body responds.”But at the moment my back feels as good as it ever has. It is too early to be looking too far ahead but I feel it’s promising times.”A big bonus, Pattinson said, was how he felt after stepping off the plane. “I’ve just had a long flight and in the past after sitting around for so long it would be hard to get moving again,” he said. “I would need two or three days just to loosen up. But this time I’ve pulled up really well.”I haven’t had to do much different in the way I bowl. I have been managed carefully in terms of how many overs I have been able to bowl in Shield cricket and it has helped not having to bowl so many overs.”But I haven’t probably tested my back out fully yet to see what I can do and how many overs I can cope with.”He believes that the plans Nottinghamshire have for him could provide the ideal build-up to reaching that point.The county have up to 10 matches in the Royal London Cup before they return to Championship action on May 14. Pattinson was part of the Nottinghamshire team that won the 50-over competition by beating Surrey in the final at Lord’s in July 2017, which turned out to be his last cricket before surgery.”We’ve got a pretty heavy one-day schedule with eight games and potentially some finals in a short space of time but with not having to bowl more than 10 overs in any game you can plan and prepare quite well,” he said.”With four-day cricket you don’t know if you’re going to be playing 30 overs or 50 overs and it is hard to plan for sometimes. But a run of one-day games will hopefully put me in good stead for the longer spells.”Nottinghamshire rather hope that will prove to be the case. In just five Championship appearances in 2017, he took 32 wickets at 12.06.Pattinson paid tribute to the coaching staff at Victoria for the faith they have shown in him as he made his comeback.”Andrew McDonald, the coach, and the physio over there, Nick Adcock, have been awesome,” he said. “They have been a tremendous help to me in getting back to where I want to be and the Shield final was all the more special for being able to share it with the physios and coaches who have put a lot of faith in me.”Pattinson admitted there were moments before and after surgery when he wondered whether he would play again.”There are always those doubts, but there are a few guys who have had the same thing before me and they have come out the other side okay and that helped me stay optimistic,” he said. “But coming here in the taxi from the airport it came into my mind that at one time I sometimes thought I might never get back here.”I had a fantastic few months here the last time and had some success with a fantastic bunch of guys, so it is a great feeling to be here again.”

The Royal Challengers captain stressed on the importance of team balance moving forward, following his team’s fourth-straight loss in IPL 2019

Sidharth Monga02-Apr-20193:49

We expect Umesh Yadav to do better – Ashish Nehra

Royal Challengers Bangalore’s constant chopping and changing – of not only the personnel but also the roles of the players within the XI – has come in sharp focus after the side’s four losses in their first four matches in this IPL. Shimron Hetmyer, for example, has had these roles in his first four matches in the IPL: middle order, dropped, opener, middle order. That has an effect on everybody’s role in the XI.However, it can also be argued that good results bring about consistency in the XI and the player roles, and not the other way around. Virat Kohli, their captain, was asked after the game against Rajasthan Royals what was more important: a consistent XI or changes until the right combination is found. Kohli didn’t commit either way, but hinted he needed to keep making changes to start winning matches.”This tournament is not that long,” Kohli said at the post-match presentation. “It’s not going to go on for months. This is a month-and-a-half or a couple of months maximum. You have to be on the eight ball. You have to think on your feet. You have to think of the best possible combination going forward. We will definitely sit down and consider talking about what we can do. What can we do to get the balance right.”Hopefully get some fresh guys in and they can make some cracking match-winning performances for us and get the team going. That’s an important factor: to think on our feet. Not necessarily worry about the other stuff. Just focus on the best XI we can take on the park and be competitive every game.”Virat Kohli watches the ball dribble away after dropping a catch•BCCI

Kohli spoke of the importance of keeping their spirits up and taking some confidence from being more competitive in their defeat to Royals than in the total capitulation against Sunrisers Hyderabad. He said they might have missed a few catches because the fielders might be down on confidence.”In a tournament like the IPL, when the team doesn’t have any momentum, things can get difficult,” Kohli said. “The guys can get a little tight in the field. Bodies can get stiff. A bit of nervousness as well. Look we have to consider everything. The team hasn’t got off to a great start. These things [dropped catches] look really bad when they happen in this sort of phase for a team.”We have 10 games to go. If we start turning things around pretty soon, then we can get on a roll as well. We have to keep believing as a side. Just four games in, we would have liked one result our way if not two. The Mumbai game and this one, I thought we played well. We just didn’t grab onto our chances, we will like to improve our performance and take a bit of confidence that we were a bit more competitive than the last game.”Kohli said the batsmen left the bowlers too much to do by putting up just 158. “Obviously with the bat we were 15-20 short in the end,” Kohli said. “Marcus [Stoinis] and Moeen [Ali] sort of got us to 160, which was competitive, but with the dew factor, I think 15 runs more would have been very challenging. As you saw in the later half, the wicket got slower to bat on and it wasn’t easy to get boundaries away. A few chances came our way as well, which we failed to grab on to. If we make that many mistakes in a game that should have been tight enough, we were going to end up on the losing side, which is exactly what happened.”