Jim Moriarty

Cricket Fanatic| Wildlife Lover

[Supriya Sahu IAS @supriyasahuias]

Who says Tigers don't love flowers !

Photo @DudhwaSalman #Tiger

[DK @DineshKarthik]

9 hrs for an ODI match

🤷🏻🤷🏻🤷🏻

#crazyyyy

[Nikhil 🏏 @CricCrazyNIKS]

My word. Sony just showed an ad while showing a highlight of the game, live.

Incredible dedication to the ads, I mean the game. 🙏

[Jim Moriarty @moriartyjim100]

@vikrantgupta73 @aajtak Why rest single format players. Gill will already take rest in latter half of NZ odi series. Give NKR consistent opportunities specially batting if you r grooming him to be back up of Hardik.

[Harsha Bhogle @bhogleharsha]

Defence of the very highest order from India. Made for tense watching but these defenders deserve the very best. A gold to savour and our women are on their way to the LA Olympics.

[Raghu @IndiaTales7]

She climbed this tree like gravity didn’t exist. 🐆

[Jim Moriarty @moriartyjim100]

@CricCrazyJohns GG nailing it here, but you are a coach you should ask for sporting pitches.

[Jim Moriarty @moriartyjim100]

Gill is redefining ODI batting. Flat pitch, poor bowling notions just fade in front of the high quality knock he has played. Simply Outstanding! Once in a career knock. 400 chased as if it is a cakewalk!!!
#INDvsWI

[Incognito Cricket @Incognitocric]

We are Coming For the World Cup 2027 🥶💀

[Jim Moriarty @moriartyjim100]

@Archies_22_33 @lowkeyuney Dharamshala he has a 100, New Chandigarh he hasnt played any international.

[Sudipta Chakraborty Photography @sudiptaimages]

Climbing with incredible agility! 🐾🌳
📍 Manas National Park, Assam, India
#YellowThroatedMarten

[Jim Moriarty @moriartyjim100]

@HitmanCricket Gill is not even half the player kohli is!! He has to buckle up, too early. Kohli at his age had already played iconic knocks. Gill has to first be fit...

[Jim Moriarty @moriartyjim100]

@wildlife_clicks Awesome pic. Seems Ranthambhore. Is it Padam Talao?

[Creature of Wildlife @wildlife_clicks]

Some shots are more than just photographs they become iconic, capturing the soul of a place and defining it forever.

Guess the famous Tiger Reserve of India!

[Jim Moriarty @moriartyjim100]

@Sahil_Malhotra1 Ye ipl me ayega direct aur fir wc tak taang pakad ke baith jayega

[Arun Kamath🕊 @incognito9]

The chestnut headed bee eater. Saw many during my teip to corbett last weekened. Some 500 of them doing murmaration and perching on a huge tree.

#indiaves #thephotohour #TwitterNatureCommunity #wildlifephotography #birds #birdsoftwitter

[Nikhil 🏏 @CricCrazyNIKS]

Two great ODIs today!

Both such good examples of how we may feel game is done at one stage but then the other side not just makes the game but ends up ensuring they end up winning.

Good wins SA and now SL.
Decider for SL on Sunday! 👏

Long live ODIs. 🙏

[Abhishek AB @ABsay_ek]

Every 24th September, the story gets told the same way. Dhoni's helicopter of a captaincy,Sreesanth catching that skier, Joginder Sharma bowling that last over. India won the first T20 World Cup on this day in 2007 & every year anniversary belongs to men in the frame. The man who built the frame barely gets a mention. Nobody rings up Lalchand Rajput. Nobody ever does.

Lalchand Rajput was never even called the coach. BCCI gave him the title "Cricket Manager", a semantic back door they would later use to walk him out of the job.

He inherited ruins. Chappell had gone, 2007 ODI World Cup had been a disaster, effigies were still warm & Sachin,Ganguly and Dravid had opted out of a format nobody trusted. The squad had played one T20I between them. captain had never captained anything.

Rajput took that mess & along with Dhoni gave it one line to live by. "Pressure lene ka nahi, pressure dene ka". Typical Mumbai words, the kind you hear on a Wankhede maidan on a Sunday morning.
What began as a dressing room joke, Robin Uthappa later admitted, Rajput kept repeating until it became the team's spine. He gave young men permission to fail, which is the only way young men ever play freely. He broke the senior-junior hierarchy over Nando's chicken orders in Dhoni's room. He made PowerPoints on opposition weaknesses and then got out of the captain's way.

Nobody talks about the bowl out against Pakistan properly either. That wasn't luck. Rajput, Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh had worked out beforehand that spinners hit the stumps more often than fast bowlers do without a batsman standing there. Sehwag, Harbhajan and Uthappa were picked for exactly that reason. People remember Uthappa's celebration. Almost nobody remembers why he was even bowling.

Then came the erasure. He managed India through Monkeygate & CB Series win in Australia, 2 overseas triumphs in 6 months. Sachin Tendulkar spoke highly of him and even wrote a positive recommebdation for him to Sharad Pawar. A senior player called his sacking "a stupid decision". But BCCI kept Prasad and Robin Singh, dropped Rajput.

He didn't sit around sulking about it. Took that same Khadoos stubbornness to Afghanistan, got them Test status. Took it to Zimbabwe when players were boycotting over unpaid salsries and left them with Sikandar Raza's second career. Now he sits in the UAE camp & help the youngsters with same mindset he helped Dhoni's yoing turks.

So today, when 2007 trophy pictures do the rounds again, spare one thought for the man who was never in the frame. Beacuse some architects don't get their names on the building. They just make sure it stands.

[Abhishek AB @ABsay_ek]

Matthew Breetzke was supposed to be just another one. Another South African kid with a good school record, a nice cover drive and a future of maybe possibly, if things go right. Grey High gives you that. Greame Pollock's old school. 52 school capped players since unity. The pressure there is not to make runs. It is to not waste the talent everyone can already see.

He did not waste it. He just took his time.

Start with his numbers, because you have to. 822 runs in just 14 ODI innings, average of 63.23, strike rate of 97.74. Those figures alone would get anyone excited. But stay with numbers for 1 more minute & sometging more interesting shows up, something the average and strike rate cannot really tell you on their own.

Look at the map of his start:
150 against New Zealand in his debut ODI while opening the batting.
83 against Pakistan in next game at no.3.
Then 3 straight fifties, batting at No.4, against 2 different oppositions, Australia and England, in their conditions.
Then 2 more half centuries in his first 2 ODIs in India.

And the yesterday at Durban. His first ODI on home soil, top order collapsing around him early against Australia and he brings up a century in that very game. 29 for 2 when he walked in, Starc and Hazlewood running in, and he just.... stayed. Built. Finished it.

South Africa needed this. Not another dasher. They have enough of those. De Kock, Miller, Brevis,Stubbs. Beautiful hitters. Terrifying when it works but embarrassing when it does not.
What they needed was someone who could walk in at 29 for 2, take the punch and not throw it back immediately. Someone who could let the fast men bowl their best spells and survive them without needing to prove anytging. Breetzke does that. He lets the ball come. He hits it late. He holds the pose because he has time to hold it.dashers around him do not have that time. They need him to have it for them.

There is a neatness to his batting which no analyst can plan, cricket just occasionally likes symmetry.
Everyone keeps telling you this is the era of hitting first and thinking later. Breetzke keeps proving there is still room in the format for a man who watches the ball a little longer than everyone else.