Doing the splits England's white-ball side keep showing rest of world how to play a different sport
The Guardian|November 15, 2022
A little before 8pm local time in Melbourne on Sunday, Adil Rashid stepped up to bowl the 12th over of Pakistan's innings. The 11th, bowled by Liam Livingstone, had just been swatted for 16.
Jonathan Liew
Doing the splits England's white-ball side keep showing rest of world how to play a different sport

After a sluggish start, Pakistan were 84 for two and the tide of the game was beginning to turn. It was at this point, in the white heat of a World Cup final, that Rashid bowled a wicket maiden.

We should probably talk a little more about this. Except it's not that easy. "The Wicket Maiden Heard Around The World" doesn't really roll off the tongue. It doesn't have a score or number attached to it. You can't capture the brilliance of that over in a statue or a photograph. It ended not with wild celebrations or even a salute to the crowd, but a pat on the back and a medium-size round of applause.

You can try to break the over down into its constituent parts - the beautifully disguised googly that fooled Babar Azam into a return catch, the wicked variations in flight that prevented Iftikhar Ahmed from getting off strike. You could point out the statistical significance of the over in the context of Pakistan's innings, perhaps even assign some glitzy, data-derived metric like Total Match HyperImpact. But none of this would really grasp the greatness of what Rashid managed.

This story is from the November 15, 2022 edition of The Guardian.

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This story is from the November 15, 2022 edition of The Guardian.

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