July 1, 2009

RIP Michael Vaughan’s Cricket Career

Posted by Andy Zaltzman 5 days, 5 hours ago

Obituary: Michael Vaughan’s Cricket Career (1993-2009). Passed away peacefully in its sleep, aged 16, after a long decline. Will be extremely fondly remembered by all who knew it.

Farewell, then, Michael Vaughan’s Cricket Career. Never again will the cricket world delight in a cover drive that seemed to have been plucked and polished from a 1900s coaching manual entitled “How To Score Runs In An Honourable Manner”.

It had seemed that the script was written for Vaughan to make an emotional comeback to the England team for the Lord’s Test after Andrew Strauss slipped a disc trying to hit Nathan Hauritz for a sixth consecutive six on the way to defeat in Cardiff, then leading England to their first head-quarters Ashes win for 75 years with a sensational unbeaten double hundred, and concluding the summer by clinching the Ashes on the final afternoon of the series with a spell of 8 for 23 on a turning wicket, before leaving the ground in a special hot air balloon, shouting through a loud hailer, “There, I told you I’d still got it.”

Unfortunately, that script was read, rejected and recycled by the commissioning editors of cricket, who plumped instead for something disappointingly more mundane – a slow fade-out in the relative obscurity of county cricket, followed by a low-key press conference with Hugh Morris.

Injuries have perhaps denied him a late blossoming – by the time Graham Gooch was a year older than Vaughan is now, he had scored only 8 of his eventual 20 Test hundreds. But the press conference gave further proof that Vaughan has made the right decision – the shocking revelation that his small son had joined the list of Unlikely People To Have Dismissed Michael Vaughan, alongside Ricky Ponting, Ramnaresh Sarwan and Daan van Bunge (although whether Vaughan junior can replicate that level of performance in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of international cricket, rather than the gentle surrounding of the back garden, remains to be seen).

	'He was viewed by the great Australian team as one of the finest they had faced.' © Getty Images

For a man who once destroyed the might of Australia in their own back yard, to be clean bowled by Archie Vaughan, 3, in his own back yard, clearly set alarm bells ringing − alarm bells which prompted Vaughan to send out the fire engine of common sense to douse the remaining embers of a sometimes magnificent and always compelling career.

In the pantheon of odd statistical cricket career shapes, Vaughan’s batting provides one of the oddest. In his first 16 Tests over two-and-a-half years, he had an average of 31 and strike rate of 40, with one century.

There had been little to suggest what was to follow. Then, in an 8-month, 12-Test incandescence in the summer of 2002 and the Ashes of 2002-03, he emblazoned seven hundreds into the history books, with an average of 76 and a strike-rate of 61, batting of a quality that few have surpassed. He was viewed by the great Australian team as one of the finest they had faced.

Again, there had been little to suggest what was to follow – a rather middling Test career. Increasingly niggled by injuries, perhaps encumbered by the captaincy, and mostly no longer opening the batting, he averaged just 36 in his last 54 Tests, with a strike rate of 50. Ten centuries punctuated periods of carelessness, lucklessness, and formlessness, but these were occasional peaks, rather the Himalayan achievements suggested by his 2002, and he too often tobogganed straight back down the other side of them back into the Valley Of Inconsistency.

At the start of 2003, Vaughan seemed to have the batting world at his feet. Unfortunately, the batting world, like the real world, turned out to be round, not flat, and the Lancastrioyorkshireman spent the rest of his career trying to balance his feet on it, with only intermittent success.

So did Vaughan underachieve, given the stratospheric heights he once reached, or generally fulfil his potential with one brief blast of overachievement? His career first-class average of 36 suggests that his final Test figure of 41 was one of player who, overall, made the most of his natural gifts, although the ease and beauty of his best batting may have led us to expect more.

(A side note for graph fans. Broken into sections and plotted on a graph, Vaughan’s batting average forms a career shape known to some scientists as ‘The Lopsided Sombrero’, or, to others, as the ‘Meerkat Popping His Head Up Above A Baseball Mound’. This compares with, for example, Matthew Hayden’s ‘Bactrian Camel Drinking From A Puddle’ (three slumps (periods in which he averaged 24, 30 and 23) sandwiching two humps (69 and 60)); or Brian Lara’s ‘Stuntman Chickening Out Of Jumping The Grand Canyon And Instead Riding Down One Side, Across The Middle, And Up The Other Side, Then Continuing On For A While To Escape The Disappointed Fans’ (average of 60 in his first 31 and last 51 Tests, 40 in the 49 Tests in the middle). Mike Gatting can also claim The Sombrero, although, with averages of 23 and 22 stretching out either side of a peak period of 62, his was pulled down lower over the wearer’s head than Vaughan’s. The Sombrero is probably the most common career shape, but few have had as tall or pointy a crown as Vaughan. More on this in a future blog. If you can bear to wait.)

	Archie Vaughan, son of Michael, demon bowler in the making © AFP

I have followed Vaughan’s fluctuating career with particular interest. We were born in the same month, and have much else in common besides – neither of us had played a Test match by the age of 25, we were both at some point schoolboys, we both list breakfast amongst our top four favourite meals of the day (I assume), we were both best as opening batsmen, neither of us is quite as mobile as we once were, we both like cricket, we can both be backed at 10,000-1 to win a Nobel Prize for Physics, and he got as many laughs as I did during a gig at the Rawhide Comedy Club in Liverpool in 2002 (although he at least had the excuse of not being on the bill due to his prior commitment to smashing Australia to all parts in that winter’s Ashes; I, by contrast, would have been able to hear my own footsteps as I left the stage, were they not being drowned out by the footsteps of the audience leaving the venue).

Having lived these almost parallel lives, it seems appropriate, in solidarity with my exact contemporary, the most significant England cricketer of our generation, and the man who, more than any other, stood in the way of my own dreams of becoming England captain, that I today also announce my retirement from all forms of professional cricket. Not that there were not a few million others also standing in the way – but Vaughan was the biggest obstacle of all, with his innovative, positive and record-breaking leadership.

He deserved a more fitting exit than this. Other recent former England captains have been more fortunate. His predecessor Nasser Hussain stepped off the international stage at Lord’s in 2004 exactly the way he would have wanted to go – scoring a match-winning hundred and running out one of his team mates.

Alec Stewart was applauded around the Oval the previous year after what seemed like an unbroken 5-day Barmy Army farewell serenade. Having spent two days at that game in close proximity to some of the top Barmy regiments, I have it indelibly inscribed upon my soul that there is, incontrovertibly, “only one Alec Stewart”.

Mike Atherton had exited the same arena in 2001 to the resounding applause of a grateful public willing to overlook the scorebook entry of “c Team Nemesis b Individual Nemesis 9” (or “c Warne b McGrath 9” as Wisden insisted on recording it) in recognition of his years of noble resistance.

Vaughan was one of England’s most stylish batsmen of all time, one of its greatest captains, dropper of some of its easiest catches, and bowler of probably the single greatest off-break in English cricket since the days of Laker, when he bowled a fully-firing Tendulkar for 92 at Trent Bridge in 2002, for one of his six career wickets. If he did not prove to be the great batsman he appeared to have become in 2002, he is unquestionably an English cricket great, and will be missed by all cricket supporters.

Apologies for my unscheduled absence for the last couple of weeks. Hear my thoughts on Pakistan’s magnificent victory in the World Twenty20 in the Zaltzman Report audio show. I hope you have enjoyed the audio (whether you have listened to it or not) (although clearly listening to it is (hopefully) more likely to cause you to enjoy it).

I will return with more later in the year. During the Ashes, I will be hosting a comedy show called ‘Yes, It’s The Ashes’, at 11am on Saturday mornings on BBC Radio 5 Live, starting this Saturday. It will also be available via the BBC website. I will also regularly updating The Confectionery Stall as often as work, fate and wife allow.

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June 19, 2009

No choking but South Africa flunk big test

Posted by Andy Zaltzman 2 weeks, 3 days ago

	If Shahid Afridi always played like this, Garry Sobers might be nervously fretting over his place in the All-Time World XI © Associated Press

Farewell then, South Africa. An excellent campaign ended in failure – and within seconds, the choking accusations had begun. As sure as night follows day (but without even the intervening buffer of evening), as sure as headache follows headbutting a lamppost, as sure as, in my experience as a father, throwing food on the floor leads to the mother of your children saying, “Don’t throw food on the floor – you’re 34 now and supposed to be setting a good example,” as sure as all of these things, South Africa were accused of choking on the big occasion.

In all sports, when a team or player has acquired a reputation for choking, fairly or unfairly, any failure is habitually deemed a choke. South Africa’s track record of flunking big knock-out games goes before them, which is understandable, given the spectacular firework displays they have put on when exiting recent tournaments – all the more magnificent for the fact that the team habitually plays with studied focus and almost scientific precision. Seeing South Africa implode on the cricket field is thus akin to watching a normally sedate accountant turn feral and start barking at a filing cabinet after losing his favourite pencil.

However, yesterday, there was no choke. Twenty20 is barely long enough for a team to peruse the menu and order a tempting sandwich of whole sardines, peanuts and biro lids in floury seeded bread, let alone start eating and choking on it. South Africa did not field or bat especially well, but (a) Pakistan were good, (b) Shahid Afridi was exceptional, and, importantly, (c) Twenty20 is a capricious game and this tournament has proved that most teams can beat or lose to most others on a one-off basis.

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June 10, 2009

Ashes for England, history for Broad

Posted by Andy Zaltzman 3 weeks, 5 days ago

Here are the Official Confectionery Stall Conclusions From Days 1 to 5 Of the World Twenty20.

England will definitely win the Ashes

	The perfect final over except those four missed chances © Associated Press

Australia were humiliatingly dumped out of the tournament from a group containing only Sri Lanka (a nation that failed to win a Test match between 1877 and 1985) and West Indies (who had played no discernible cricket in the previous two months).

England, by the starkest of contrasts, heroically stormed into the last eight despite being lumbered in The Group Of Death with the Netherlands (a team good enough to beat England, the founders of cricket, in their own head-quarters) and Pakistan (undisputed 1992 World Cup winners, and a team good enough to beat the team good enough to beat England).

The only possible conclusion from this is that the Ashes are all but in Andrew Strauss’s back pocket already.

Arguably, I might be reading too much into it. But for those looking for omens of an England victory (in the absence of overwhelming scientific evidence pointing that way), in 2005 the Australians suffered a Twenty20 humiliation, losing to England by 100 runs, and went on to lose the Ashes.

Therefore, an England win is surely written in the stars. Admittedly, there are innumerable stars in the sky, and, if you squint hard enough, you can convince yourself almost anything is written in them. Last week, a friend of mine told me that the words “if you ride your bicycle fast enough into a disused quarry you won’t get hurt” were written in the stars. His heavily bandaged head and knees bear painful testament to his need to invest in a higher-quality telescope.

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June 6, 2009

An England supporter's thoughts on the opening match of the World Twenty20

Posted by Andy Zaltzman on 06/06/2009

The waiting is over. The World Twenty20 has begun. Cricketers from all corners of the globe have descended upon England, to test their skills against each other, and entertain the watching public.

It was a tremendous shame that the opening ceremony had to be cancelled due to the rain – I guess the world will never know now what spectacular displays would have unfolded on the famous Lord’s turf. Congratulations are due, however, to David Morgan and the Duke of Kent for bravely pressing ahead with their welcoming speeches despite the conditions, ensuring that the tournament had the official launch it so richly deserved.

Watching on my television, it was hard to tell whether the PA system conveyed their words audibly to the crowd at the ground – I do sincerely hope so, it would have been a shame for them to miss out. And how fortunate we are to live in an electronic age when microphones make such things possible.

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June 4, 2009

India (and Scotland) a shoo-in for the finals

Posted by Andy Zaltzman on 06/04/2009

Exciting update: Andy's audio preview is here.

In less than three weeks’ time, we will know once and for all which country is currently the greatest nation in the world. Admittedly, this conclusion is dependent on whether your sole criterion for adjudicating the greatness of nations is their ability to win Twenty20 tournaments (and, also admittedly, this is not currently on the United Nations’ official list of ratified country-quality measures).

Nevertheless, the excitement is building ahead of what should be an exciting and enjoyable tournament, even for those who, like myself, are not particularly enthusiastic devotees of the short-form game. The tournament has the kind of intense schedule that enhances tension, rather than the elongated monotony of partial action that has scarred recent world cups. The grounds will be full, the teams have identity, most of the world’s best players will be playing, new heroes will carve their names into immortality with valuable 25-run cameos or match-turning spells of 1 for 16, and, in this melodramatic brand of cricket, upsets are almost guaranteed.

A case can be made for any one of the twelve teams to win – and I will make those cases in the first Zaltzman Report, my weekly World Twenty20 audio show (which should be available late on Thursday or early on Friday). Suffice it to write for now that Ireland will buoyed by the incontrovertible truth that the World Twenty20 has always previously been won by a team beginning with the letter I.

So, will the World Twenty20 capture the broader British public’s easily distractable imagination? Possibly. It feels like the cricketing summer is finally about to begin – those who complained that there should be no international cricket in May effectively got their wish, such was the irredeemable pointlessness of the West Indian ‘tour’.

At the very least, it will give the nation something to take its mind off whether members of parliament have submitted an expenses claim for a rogue £1.99 for a novelty Queen Mother pencil sharpener when it is well documented that they only ever write with their lucky Henry VIII commemorative ball-pen.

However, without live free-to-air television coverage, the home team will need to put up an uncharacteristically competent challenge, in defiance of recent history and an overall Twenty20 record that might charitably be described as “easily improvable”.

At most recent international tournaments, they have played with the confidence and know-how of a sausage in a crocodile pit. In all sporting competitions, there can be a danger of peaking too early – at least, since their 1992 World Cup near miss, England’s cricketers have become indisputable grand masters at avoiding this particular pitfall. Arguably, they have taken their devotion to not peaking too early some way beyond what is desirable or effective.

However, England should begin with confidence high after a succession of wins in all forms of the game. They concluded their preparations with another convincing win against West Indies on Wednesday, although, on their opponents’ current form, managing to contrive anything other than a convincing win against them would have taken a superhuman effort of targeted ineptitude.

Whether this confidence sustains them through the tougher tests in this tournament and the Ashes beyond remains to be seen – there must have been plenty of gladiators in ancient Roman times who discovered that having successfully swatted ten flies in a row counted for little when they came up against a peckish lion.

England will again have to cope without Flintoff, and whilst they would be significantly better with him, he has not played enough of late for them actually to miss him. From an Ashes perspective, his absence is unquestionably good news for England fans, as his current injury significantly reduces the amount of cricket in which he can injure himself before the Test series begins.

On a personal note, the last time there was an international tournament on these shores – the mendaciously-named ICC Champions Trophy of 2004 – England accidentally reached the final, and I deliberately got married on the middle Saturday of the tournament.

The former is marginally more likely to recur than the latter. If England’s success is to be repeated, they will need to overcome the joint force of their recent record and relative lack of experience at this form of the game. If my personal success is to be repeated, I will have to (a) work fast and with devastatingly alluring charm; (b) break the law; and (c) thoroughly annoy my current wife of nearly 5 years. Since I have no desire to do either (b) or (c), my historic inability to do (a) is rendered thankfully irrelevant.

The Official Confectionery Stall Tournament Predicted Winner: India. Or Scotland.

Too close to call. Probably Scotland though. The stormy exit of John Blain is exactly the kind of ruction that often pulls squads together and propels them towards their ultimate triumph before being made into a blockbusting Hollywood movie with some contrived love interest – probably Reece Witherspoon as a female umpire, who after triggering the Scottish captain (Keanu Reeves as Gavin Hamilton) with a terrible lbw decision in a group-stage match ends up giving the same player not out bowled off the penultimate ball of the final before Reeves/Hamilton belts a tournament-winning walk-off home-run off the final pitch, and the happy couple lift the trophy together on the Lord’s balcony before flying off in a helicopter to a secret meeting at ICC headquarters in Los Angeles. Also starring Will Smith as ex-ICC chief Malcolm Speed, and Al Pacino as Billy Bowden. Based on a true story.

Look out for the regular Confectionery Stall postings during the tournament (hopefully daily, although some days may last 48 hours), and the weekly Zaltzman report audio bulletin. Here's the first one

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May 21, 2009

History and stats point to Ashes glory for England

Posted by Andy Zaltzman on 05/21/2009

	Nightwatchman extraordinaire James Anderson has four ducks fewer than Don Bradman at the equivalent stage of his career © Getty Images

The announcement of the Australian touring party has cranked up the anticipation levels for the most hyped England series of recent times still further. This is a fortunate development, because the cricketing build-up, in the form of England’s alleged Test series against the supposed West Indies, has been numbingly undramatic, as is seemingly the modern way.

This was a short and not particularly sweet series, with most of the country, almost all of the cricket-watching world, and half of the participants seeming to take little interest in proceedings. England played increasingly well, confidently and decisively, but the overwhelming sensation as the visitors completed their contractual obligation of a second innings was: “What was the point of that?”

England failed to win even a single Test against West Indies for 16 years from 1974. They have just won two in a week and even the players themselves were struggling to look excited about it. There is much talk about the sanctity of Test cricket, but this series felt as special and meaningful as a Las Vegas wedding presided over by an unqualified Elvis impersonator who had lost his costume, wig and glasses in a poker game and was wearing a borrowed hospital smock instead.

The cricket-watching public stayed away in their millions. This was due to a number of mitigating factors, including, principally, that they are not imbeciles. Thanks to the internet, they now have easy access to meteorological records for the Durham area in May dating back thousands of years, as well as the ability to check scorecards from recent series in England and guess what kind of contest the West Indies were likely to provide. Perhaps they were also swayed by Chris Gayle’s pre-match posturing, which, following extensive computer analysis, has now been officially confirmed as the least inspiring team talk in the history of organised sport.

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May 14, 2009

Test cricket needs Gayle

Posted by Andy Zaltzman on 05/14/2009

	'Gayle might not need Test cricket, but Test cricket needs him' © Getty Images

At last, the waiting is over. Again. A tortuous, seemingly endless five entire days with no Test cricket have finally wended their pointless way into the history books, and the long-awaited England versus West Indies rematch now marches towards its thrillingly decisive climax at the Riverside today. The Wisden Trophy is still literally anyone’s. The two captains have been at each other’s throats like two top surgeons in a one-on-one emergency tracheotomy competition. And the Ashes (not to mention West Indies’ forthcoming home clash with Bangladesh) loom with massively gargantuan enormity as the players strain every conceivable physical and mental sinew to touch the elusive heavens of cricketing immortality. Truly, the eyes of the universe are trained through excited binoculars on the green Durham sward, and it is hard to envisage that this will not prove to be the greatest match cricket has ever seen.

Perhaps I am guilty of talking things up a little. The advance ticket sales suggest I may even be guilty of talking things up more than a little. Following three days of medium-to-low calibre action at Lord’s, and with the West Indian captain essentially proclaiming that he would rather be doing something else somewhere else than spending a long weekend standing outside in the north of England in the middle of May, the cricketing public is showing little appetite for this game. In fact, it is pushing this game around its plate. It may nibble the odd morsel, but it is clearly watching its weight and saving itself for a far more satisfying main course – Ashes pie.

The first Test was an unsatisfying match, despite its nail-biting denouement. Admittedly, it was only nail-biting for the friend with whom I watched the evening session of day 3 – he had tickets for day 4, and would have missed out on his refund if the West Indies had resisted until stumps. The tension in his wallet was unbearable.

England played well enough, but the startling ineptitude of their opponents in the field and with the bat renders judgement largely irrelevant. If the Australians are not quite quaking in their boots, it is at least partially because the Ashes remain sufficiently far away that they have not yet put their boots on.

Here, then, are the official Confectionery Stall Conclusions To Be Drawn From The First Test:

• England’s main concern will be about Ravi Bopara. He is clearly a good player, and, on the evidence of his last two Test innings, a lucky one. However, questions must be asked about his temperament under pressure. He had a chance to carve himself a unique place in the history books – he could have been the 700th player to be out in the 90s in Test matches. No-one could ever have taken that away from him. Instead, he played himself calmly to a century, the 3281st century in Tests, yet another name on an overfilled honours board. He had the chance to make his mark by throwing his innings away to any one of the 20 balls he faced after passing 90 before reaching three figures. And he blew it.
• Graham Onions, after perhaps the most inept two-ball start to a Test career (100% bowled out by a full toss, then a long-hop demolished to the boundary), showed himself to be a decent bowler, and his giddy enthusiasm was magnificent to see. He prompted some slightly overexcited comparisons to Glenn McGrath. Other than a good action and a propensity for skittling teams out in Lord’s Tests, this may be a little premature. Onions’ first-class economy rate is 3.7, compared to McGrath’s 2.5. Onions has also thus far shown no capability for unleashing needless barrages of verbal abuse into batsmen’s faces. If he wants to match the Australian’s 563 Test wickets at 21, he will have to work on both of these aspects of his game. The McGrath-style batting is clearly almost there.

  However, the British media clearly do not consider Onions to be a long-term prospect. They blew every conceivable onion-related headline and wordplay at the first available opportunity, rather than pacing themselves over a 70-Test career. Already, journalists and sub-editors will be rifling through their recipe books trying to find more onion-based dishes in case the Gateshead Goliath transpires to be one of England’s greats.

• Tim Bresnan will never be a Test cricketer. Unless he stops (a) being given out lbw when the ball was not even contemplating hitting the stumps, and (b) not having to bowl very much.
• Those wickets in the West Indies really did flatter the batsmen and insult the bowlers. A boring five-day Test is much, much more boring than a boring three-day Test.
• History will never know whether Chris Gayle would have played better or worse had he arrived more than two days before the game began. He would certainly have played in the same way. Arguably, he would have been stroppier for having had to leave the IPL even sooner. In fact, it is possible that Gayle had too much acclimatisation time. If he had arrived just in time for the toss, he might not have had time to remember that he doesn’t like Test cricket much any more.

On then, to the Riverside, the mostly empty Riverside. During his entertaining to-and-fro with Gayle, Andrew Strauss said: “The important thing is that Test cricket gets the attention it deserves. And that means that people prepare themselves properly for any Test match you play. You don’t want Test cricket to be devalued in any way, shape or form.”

These are noble thoughts, which all Test fans would support. But these words ring a little hollow before a Test at a ludicrous time of year against a team that had not been planning to be involved. Test cricket is the pinnacle of the game, but it is not always treated as such by its authorities. Teams (both home and away) are habitually underprepared, some are depopulated by the tedious political squabbling over the ICL, series are raced through at breakneck speed, and pitches are often designed to provide time-span rather than contest. Test cricket is increasingly often devalued in many ways, shapes and forms.

Gayle’s recent mutterings to the media also proved what a phenomenal entertainer the man is, both on and off the pitch. After encouraging Strauss not to “sleep with Chris on his mind” (sage advice at any time, unless the Chris to whom he was referring was Chris Tavare, who was often prescribed as an insomnia cure by the NHS in the 1980s), Gayle bemoaned how the demands of captaincy force him to go through innumerable onerous tasks. “There’s always something you have to go and do, you know, extra,” said the Kingston Cavalier. “Lunch or dinner, some other thing.” These, of course, are meals of which Gayle would normally steer well clear. He is very much a breakfast, elevenses, teatime nibbles and bedtime snack man. The fact that he is prepared to alter his dietary timetable for the needs of the team is a mark of the man.

England should win this game – they have beaten West Indies in 11 of the past 13 Tests in this country, and it seems unlikely that Gayle’s comments about wanting to give up the captaincy and not being particularly fussed about the future of Test cricket will serve to inspire his troops to follow their captain in a Test match. Let us hope it is a better game than Lord’s, however, and that Captain Chris enjoys it. He might not need Test cricket, but Test cricket needs him.

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May 6, 2009

KP will bounce back. He has to...

Posted by Andy Zaltzman on 05/06/2009

	Ravi Bopara aside, England's performance today has mirrored their efforts in the Caribbean © Getty Images

Let Battle Commence. Briefly. For a couple of weeks. And then let it commence again two months later. After literally weeks of waiting, England’s Ashes Test summer has begun − nine weeks, two Tests, a one-day series and a Twenty20 World Cup before the actual Ashes. The tension has proved too much for the Lord’s crowd, who have mostly not turned up. Either the cricket-watching public is pacing itself to avoid the risk of burnout in a long and demanding summer schedule, or it looked at the ticket prices, remembered what the weather in England in May is usually like, checked how the credit crunch is going, weighed up the pros and cons of watching Nash bowl to Cook, and decided to feed their families instead.

It seems that England (or at least large parts of the English media) have been building up to this summer’s showdown with their oldest enemy since approximately 13th September 2005. Perhaps they have been focusing so hard on it that they have at times appeared to ignore most other matches, series and tournaments in between, including the 2006-07 rematch in Australia (which, according to the internet, did happen, although for the life of me I cannot recall it, and remain convinced it was a hoax – the alleged 5-0 scoreline seems wildly implausible).

Despite this, England began the penultimate Test before the Ashes with a new-look team, including four players making their home debut, and only two remaining from the XI that played the first four Tests in 2005. England are thus likely to take on Australia with a team largely unencumbered by the scars of that victory. No-one will accuse England of being overprepared come July. (Australia could easily begin the series with only three of the players rumoured to have participated in the 2006-07 whitewash, so the message seems to be that winning the Ashes spells the end of your international career. Be warned, ambitious players. Success will be the seeds of your destruction.)

England badly need to win this microseries against West Indies, and to achieve this, their bowlers must rediscover the elusive feeling of bowling teams out twice. Recent history suggests Lord’s is not the best ground for them to attempt to do this. Pitches have tended towards increasing tedium over the course of a game, frustrating bowlers and spectators, and slightly devaluing the once-rare currency of the heroic rearguard.

As I began writing this blog (at the lunch interval of Day 1), they had made a decent start, and the match seemed to be repeating the pattern of the last three Tests in the Caribbean – a steady but undominant, unexplosive start by England’s batsmen in the face of some fairly low-intensity cricket by West Indies, on a pitch that offers the tantalising prospect of a high-scoring draw.

Chris Gayle chose to put them into bat, for two main reasons. One: why change his successful drawing formula from the Caribbean series? And two: to double his acclimatisation time before having to bat. It’s always nice to stretch your legs after a long flight, and what better way to do so than spending a couple of days standing at slip on the hallowed Lord’s turf? All good travel agents recommend it.

Gayle’s plan now looks in danger of being scuppered by one of his own players. Fidel Edwards, heroically but mostly unrewardedly thunderous for most of the series in West Indies, has just blasted out Cook and Pietersen in two balls, and suddenly the match looks far more interesting. Edwards, one of cricket’s most exciting bowlers, deserves more luck and fairer wickets.

Before those wickets fell, I had been in the process of confidently predicting that Pietersen would smash a brilliant century, based on the premise that his stint in the IPL had, contrary to popular opinion, provided him the perfect preparation for this Test. England’s key batsman appears to have played himself completely out of form, and did little to justify his bulging wage packet. My theory is that Pietersen is seldom more dangerous than when he has a point to prove – and is therefore almost certain to smash a brilliant century. If I may qualify my thesis slightly in the light of recent events, Pietersen is seldom more dangerous than when he has a point to prove, except when he still has a point to prove but has just been out first ball. And I’m sure if he had not been out first ball, or subsequently, he would have scored a brilliant hundred. My point therefore stands.

We will now see if Collingwood’s preparation for the Test – a paid holiday watching the IPL and making some new friends – can set a new template for success. If he scores a hundred, perhaps the ECB will consider forcing all England players to become non-playing members of Indian franchises. In which case, we can confidently look forward to newly stratospheric standards in county cricket as players strive even more desperately for international recognition. (Last-minute update: Collingwood out for 8. Bad news for would-be England cricketers. Hundreds of schoolboys abandon their dreams of playing international cricket. I owe Chris Gayle and his toss-winning decision-making an apology.)

The (revised) Confectionery Stall prediction for the Lord’s Test: Pietersen to bounce back from his first-innings blob with a brilliant, point-proving century.

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May 1, 2009

ECB's strong words to the excluded

Posted by Andy Zaltzman on 05/01/2009

	Show some consistency Mr Bell. And then some more © Getty Images

This has been a momentous week for English history. The selection of a Test squad that was both surprising and interesting seemed to have been consigned to the bulging dustbin of history when central contracts took hold. England team announcements had mostly become as predictable as the returning officer delivering the results of the latest North Korean elections (at which, incidentally, Darren Pattinson last summer won a seat as MP for Pyongyang West).

On Wednesday, however, coach Andy Flower and his selectorial compadres caught the media – and some of the centrally contracted players – unawares with a novel XII for the Lord’s Test against West Indies. There are two brand new bowlers fresh off the splutteringly inefficient production line of county cricket (Bresnan and Onions), a new No. 3 (Bopara, the first current Kings XI Punjab player to be picked for England in 132 years of Test cricket), and a marked failure to base selection on fading reputation.

This is a no-lose selection for England. Either they will unearth a couple of new gems to hurl at the unsuspecting Australians, or they will be able to recall and unleash a seething, jilted Harmison, Vaughan or Bell, or even a justifiably peeved Hoggard, bent on proving their worth one final time. In fact, the trickiest scenario may be that the new players do adequately in the Tests, and the old players do adequately for their counties, and England enter the Ashes still unsure of their best team.

Well done to the selectors for a choice that is both bold and sensible, and that has added further to the necessary competition for places. In the absence of many world-class performers, it makes sense to select the team with greater flexibility than of late. At times in England’s past, the selectors have given the impression that they would quite like to give WG Grace another crack, for old time’s sake, because there is no substitute for experience, and because they did not want to upset him.

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April 24, 2009

A case of cricketing apathy

Posted by Andy Zaltzman on 04/24/2009

	The clash between Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff wasn't quite the 21st century version of Hector v Achilles © Getty Images

Global cricket continues to pound its own never-ending treadmill with the urgent ferocity of a marathon runner who has remembered mid-race that he was supposed to be at his own wedding, but is on course for a personal best which he is unwilling to sacrifice. The IPL has added further congestion, while proving that, contrary to scientific expectation, the best way to solve the problem of players complaining about an overloaded calendar was not to reduce the amount of cricket, but add to more and cover it with solid gold.

With so much of the world’s cricketing focus on the IPL, it has been easy to forget that the first Test of the English summer is just two weeks away – which is an entirely ridiculous sentence to be able to commit to cyberpaper on the 23rd of April. As the great cricket scribe EW Swanton once wrote: “An Englishman should never start a Test match when he can still catch frostbite by sneaking into Lord’s at the dead of night and playing nude cricket on the square. This Gubby and I learned by bitter experience on a moonlit evening early last May.”

The English domestic season is already in full swing – if ‘swing’ is the correct terminology for something that lurches spasmodically from one form of cricket to the next, like a drunk polygamist trying to cuddle the right wife.

I realise that the expanded programme of international cricket is necessary to fund the expanded programme of international cricket, but the current structure of the England team’s summer is designed to minimise spectator anticipation – Tests begin before the season, its characters and its form lines have properly started to take shape, without the curtain-raising, rivalry-establishing pre-fight sparring of a one-day series. The matches are then squeezed together into frantic back-to-back bowler-punishing wodges, with an ODI series tagged on as an elongated afterthought, dragging along through September to end the summer on a probably damp and quickly-forgotten squib. (By comparison, when Jimi Hendrix played the Woodstock festival, he was on after Herbert The Singing Labrador, not before. Otherwise, Herbert would have struggled, however good his barked rendition of Blue Moon.)

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