ROUNDUP: The Evolution of Finn Allen

📊 Dom Murray traces Finn Allen’s career as he has become a consistently devastating (and frustrating) presence at the top of the order for NZ.

“In many ways, Finn Allen is the next natural evolution in New Zealand’s recent opening batting lineage of Jesse Ryder, Brendon McCullum, and Colin Munro. In fact, Allen’s career strike rate of 171 in the powerplay in T20 cricket makes McCullum’s mark of 131 look positively quaint these days.

Yet, with this style of play inevitably comes criticism. While McCullum was widely loved in New Zealand cricket by the end of his tenure, for a large part of his career, his ‘that’s just the way I play’ attitude left many fans tearing their hair out, as England are now learning. Munro, likewise, was widely misunderstood by the New Zealand public before being jettisoned by NZC as one of the original crop of T20 mercenaries. Well, Munro may have walked so that Allen could run.”

✍️ Shashank Kishore goes behind the scenes to reveal how RCB rebuilt their losing team from 2025 to win this year’s WPL (without Ellyse Perry!).

“I call her [Radha Yadav] a coach-killer. She says she needs to bat for half an hour, and ends up batting for two hours. The whole group is like that. Smriti, Radha, Arundhati [Reddy], Shreyanka [Patil], all of them. They’re now bonafide and certified coach-killers. But very happy for Radha.”

✍️ Tarutr Malhotra on the fan conundrum of watching associate games; we all wish them well, but we also don’t watch their games. Can that be changed?

“As Sam Curran and Harry Brook have endless discussions between each ball, Andrew Leonard sees his chance to feed our growing, collective fandom. He has years of knowledge about Nepali cricket and he shares it. He took the game from a schadenfreude-esque glee at England’s potential loss, to a look at the perfection it had taken Nepal to even reach this point. Suddenly, I only cared about what this game could mean for The Cardiac Kids.”

• “Players over performance”
  ✍️ Lavanya Lakshminarayanan on Lizelle Lee, Bharati Fulmali, the increased abuse female players get online with their increased profile, and the responsibility of administrators to protect them.

• “Why do teams score slower”
  📊 Sruthi Ravindranath predicted and explained why teams score slower at the World Cup compared to franchise games.

• “How bats are aiding the T20 revolution”
  🔒 Sanjjeev K Samyal on how bats have changed to give more reliable edges.

• “India’s quietest revolution”
  ✍️ Suhail Bhat has a fantastic deep dive into the consumer tech that is revolutionising everyday cricket in apartments, streets and maidans in India.

• “Ibrahim Zadran is AFG’s patient zero”
  📊 Arnav Jain analyses how the AFG opener is holding them back, from both a pure numbers and a intent standpoint.

• “How Tim Seifert learnt to play spin”
  📊 Dom Murray on how Tim Seifert took an unorthodox route to become better; skip international & domestic cricket, and play Asian franchise leagues.

• “PAK’s sole solution for their batting issues”
  📊 Tarutr Malhotra on PAK maximising their limited batting order.

• “BtH: A Super Over Special”
  ✍️ Tarutr Malhotra analyses the highs and lows of the SA-AFG game via the highs and lows of the four post-game overs that determined its outcome.

• “Project Milaap”
  🎤 PCCI Pod talk to India’s Sharda Ugra, Pakistan’s Ahmer Naqvi, & Bangladesh’s Mohammad Isam about the fallout from the Mustafissure saga. [Apple/Spotify]

• “Australia can’t win (receipts)”
  📽️ Ian Higgins/Sam Perry talk to Sophie Molineux about becoming the new AUS-W captain, as well as their usual hilarious WC review. [YouTube]

• “What the WPL is really like”

  🎤 Katya Witney & Lauren Winfield-Hill with 19-year old Lucy Hamilton on playing in the WPL this year, playing in the WNCL for 4 years, & her maiden AUS call up. My teenage years were not that productive. [Apple/Spotify]