Having promised the World Unpredictable XI a couple of blogs ago (the ‘blog’ now being the only unit of time I officially recognise), I have since found myself in prolonged and agonising internal selectorial discussions. So many players from the last 30 years have thrust themselves into contention through capricious form, majestic peaks and incompetent troughs, or a simple refusal to embrace the warm, comforting slippers of consistency. What, the selectors (The Confectionery Stall and his three-month-old son) debated long into the night, constitutes genuine unpredictability? My Dull World XI could be backed up with simple statistics, but how can one measure unpredictability?

True unpredictability must include considerable amounts of both success and failure. One-off out-of-the-blue triumphs are not sufficient – Ajit Agarkar, for example, played 26 Tests, scored one century but no other 50s, and took more than three wickets in only one innings – a match winning 6-41 against Australia in Adelaide. Aside from these flashes in an otherwise inept pan, Agarkar was almost entirely predictable.

Andy Caddick was often dubbed an unpredictable talent, but, after a nightmare first series, he was, statistically at least, a steady performer whose failures and success broke down simply into whether it was the first innings (average 37) or second innings (average 20) of a match. (Darren Gough by comparison averaged respectively 29 and 26.) Overall Caddick was Manoj Prabhakar at the start of games, and Malcolm Marshall at the end, a curious combination which possibly explains Nasser Hussain’s hairline.

What about Brian Lara? Probably the most vulnerable and flawed of all batting’s certified greats, Lara caused the selectors more headaches than any other player.
He compiled many of modern cricket’s greatest innings and series, yet failed amazingly often – he played 26 series of three or more Tests, and averaged 33 or lower in 10 of them (including 5 out of 11 series of five or six matches). Lara narrowly misses out on the final XI. Much of his failure can be attributed to one of cricket’s most notable career slumps. For a five-year period between the ages of 27 and 32, when many batsmen are at their peak, Lara averaged 40. Either side of this, his average was 60.

In essence, the truly unpredictable player must generate the feeling that, as he takes guard or stands at the end of his run-up, no-one in the stadium knows what will happen, least of all himself.

In all, I have set myself an almost impossible task selecting an Unpredictable XI from my Test-watching lifetime (1981 onwards), and one which I am unlikely to fulfil without contradicting some of my own unpredictability criteria, but here, nonetheless, it is. (And, just as I resisted the temptation to pick 11 New Zealanders for the Dull XI, so I have rejected the opportunity to choose 11 unfulfilled Pakistani geniuses and be done with it.)

Part 1: Batsmen

Virender Sehwag (India).

A frankly ludicrous, almost surreal, player with an approach to batting that, according to all received cricketing wisdom, ought to give him a Test average of around 30 at best, but whose shameless brilliance has turned him into a modern great. Sehwag only sneaks into the team. He is, essentially, predictably unpredictable. Everyone knows what he will attempt to do, and how he will attempt to do it. The only question is whether or not he will succeed (1 in 10 innings he passes 150), or fail (in half of his innings he fails to pass 25). Either way, he goes down, or up, in a blaze of glory.

Marvan Atapattu (Sri Lanka)

Not the classic epitome of daredevil unpredictability, Atapattu defied his orthodox technique to become one of the most statistically unpredictable players of his generation. Bouncing back from amassing one run in the first six and a half years of his Test career for a less-than-Bradmanic average of 0.16, intermittently-marvellous Marvan scored six double-hundreds (fourth equal on the all-time list) yet still heroically managed to keep his career average below 40.

Atapattu endured more slumps than a champion narcoleptic on a very comfortable sofa. He passed 50 only once in 26 innings between 1998 and 2000, but that once was an unbeaten double-hundred. Shortly afterwards, he followed knocks of 59 and 207 not out against Pakistan, and 54 and 120 against South Africa, with a run of just 270 runs in 14 innings, including six ducks – and 207 of those runs came in one undefeated innings against England. The game of an orthodox grinder, the statistics of a temperamental, bat-hurling, tortured, tantrum-throwing genius.

Aravinda de Silva (Sri Lanka)

At Lord’s in 1991, the Colombo Curiosity marched out to bat with half an hour remaining of the day’s play. He marched off 30 balls later having flayed 42 unstoppably perfect runs to his name, before marching back out the next morning, getting out, and marching back off. In the second innings, he stodged 18 off 91 balls.

In 1997, he emerged from a three-year slump to hit seven centuries in 12 innings. Capable of coming in at 1 for 2 in a World Cup semi-final against India in Calcutta and blasting 66 off 47, but also of scoring 27 in nearly four hours in a Test against Zimbabwe. In Tests, he averaged 25 between 1984 and 1988, 53 between 1989 and 1993, 20 between 1994 and March 1997 (in which time he won Sri Lanka the World Cup with one of the greatest innings in cricket history), 74 between April 1997 and February 2000, and 36 between March 2000 and the end of his career in 2002. A properly odd career.

Kevin Pietersen (England)

Swerving between the slalom gates of success and failure like a drunken Olympic skier, Pietersen has had one bad series in the 14 he has played, but, arguably, not a single great one. Between the last Ashes and the start of the recent West Indies series, Pietersen scored nine centuries in 22 Tests, but still averaged only just over 50, alternating between the golden underpants of triumph and the dank jockstrap of failure with no apparent link to current form.

Increasingly capable of painstakingly over-careful accumulation, or tub-thumpingly reckless aggression, Pietersen has at times demolished Warne and Muralitharan, but is vulnerable to club-standard finger spin. As captain, he even managed to coax an outburst of baffling unpredictability from the stolid old ECB. Anything seems possible with Pietersen. Would it really be a surprise if he came out to bat dressed as Elvis or scored a 60-ball hundred whilst batting with a dead ferret instead of a bat?

Carl Hooper (West Indies)

Depending on mood, or form, or prevailing winds, or horoscopes, or the will of the fickle cricketing gods, Hooper could look like an undisputable all-time great or a total novice, sometimes in consecutive balls. At his best, he could stroke a ball over a far distant clump of trees whilst appearing hardly even to move his bat. At his worst he could hit any bowler in the world straight to cover point for no apparent reason. Enchanting and frustrating, the ultimate in unpredictability. Let himself down with antiflamboyantly steady off-spin.

Those, then, are the batsmen. So many players have been unlucky to miss out, from Srikkanth to Ashraful, from Astle to Cullinan. Maybe Ross Taylor and Phil Hughes will demand selection in a few years’ time. Your reactions and rival selections are, as ever, welcome and appreciated.

Next time: Shahid Afridi, and the other five members of the team.

The official Confectionery Stall review of the West Indies v England series. Accept no substitute. This is the real thing.

More than a week has passed since the West Indies series ended in an ill-befitting flurry of excitement, like a retired accountant suddenly regretting the drab conformity of his working life and deciding to jump his mobility scooter over the Grand Canyon whilst dressed in a leopard-print leotard and wielding a tomahawk. Already, aside from Taylor’s flambéing of the England top order in Jamaica, the abiding memory of the series is of Collingwood dabbing Hinds to deep square leg for a comfortable single.

The final day frenzy was somewhat out of keeping with the majority of a series that was, for the most part, rubbish, punctuated only rarely by brief outbreaks of real cricket. In the end, Strauss took a bit of a gamble on the final day, but not enough of one, and England came to regret their first-innings fielding errors (and wasted referrals) in Trinidad, and their needless, thoughtless caution in Antigua. If the captain had taken as many risks as he routinely takes ‘positives’ in his post-match interviews, England would probably not have lost.

West Indies deserved their series win, for producing the one decisive passage of play in the four matches, and for having the requisite doggedness (and a sufficiently high boredom threshold) to play for a draw for 15 consecutive days. Not long ago, holding on for 15 overs would have been considered something of a triumph. Time will tell whether this victory constitutes the waters breaking in the long-awaited rebirth of West Indian cricket, or just a minor early contraction, or even merely an incidental bout of stomach cramp brought about by excessive consumption of gherkin-flavoured ice cream. At least there are strong signs that the decade-long gestation may soon be over, and the cricket world will hopefully soon be able to celebrate the arrival of a beautiful, bouncing new-reborn West Indian cricket.

England deserved their series loss, for producing the one truly dire passage of play in the series, and for failing to take major opportunities twice – their flawed decision-making, crucial dropped catches and damaging caution combined to help them avoid what could have been two excellent wins in unfavourable conditions.

I cannot remember a series in which there has been so much dull and pointless cricket. In the last three Tests, England faced 246 overs from part-time bowlers – that amounts to almost three full days of spine-chillingly vapid cricket, from which England collated 880 runs for 11 wickets at 3.6 per over. Cricket is not supposed to be an endurance sport. Nor is cricket-watching. Both came close in this series.

It says much about Test cricket that, even so, three of the four games had spectacular climaxes. However, if pitches like this are allowed to proliferate, Test cricket will die a slow, painful and deserved death. A few die-hard fans will remain gathered sadly round its bedside urging each other to remember it how it had been in its heyday, and not in its final decline into oblivion when it was but a hollow, spluttering shell of the great game it had once been. Meanwhile, administrators will bicker over who should take custody of its less magnificent but more commercially-minded children, 20-over and 50-over cricket, and who should hold the pillow over Test cricket’s face until the twitching stops.

Nevertheless, looking ahead to the Ashes, England are not, I think, in as bad a state as a series loss to one of world cricket’s weaker teams would suggest. The batsmen, having been in something of a collective slump for a couple of years, have mostly buffed their averages and confidence.

	'Technically, Panesar's appealing arguably has more flaws than his batting and fielding combined. Everything is wrong about it – the vocal tone (too much of a caterwaul), the facial expression (too imploring), the desperate hand-clapping (too much like an out-of-his-depth primary school teacher trying to control a classroom full of naughty children)' © Getty Images

Of the bowlers, Swann was excellent throughout, taking more wickets in three matches than Warne took in the Caribbean in his entire career. (Swann took 19 scalps in 3 matches compared to the great Australian’s 17 in 7 – that is 2.6 times as many wickets per match. If Swann can repeat his wickets-per-match superiority over Warne during the Ashes this summer, he will take 76 wickets in the five tests. That is a stone-cold fact.)

Broad and Anderson emerged with creditable returns, and must be ticking off the days until they are released to bowl on a fair surface. If England can find a new fast bowler and a new number 3 batsman, or at least overhaul, respray and relaunch old ones, and a pair of magic wicket-keeping gloves, they should be competitive. It would help if Australia do the decent, gentlemanly thing, and sustain two or three key niggling injuries before the series. And don’t discover a spinner.

England will have a greater chance of success if they fill the glaring vacancy in their multitudinous non-playing workforce. The team’s support staff has for some time been one of the British government’s principal strategies for keeping unemployment levels in check, and current figures suggest it is the only one still working. However, one crucially important position remains unfilled, arguably the key role in preparing the players and enabling them to extract the maximum benefit from their performances − an appealing coach.

Appealing is one of the most important facets of the modern game, and England are hopeless at it. Panesar, of course, is the worst. Technically, his appealing arguably has more flaws than his batting and fielding combined. Everything is wrong about it – the vocal tone (too much of a caterwaul), the facial expression (too imploring), the desperate hand-clapping (too much like an out-of-his-depth primary school teacher trying to control a classroom full of naughty children), the backwards hopping (it seldom pays to look like you have just trodden on a snake unless you have actually just trodden on a snake).

England must invest some of the ECB’s billions teaching their bowlers how to convince an umpire – personally, I think the two-fingered point from the crouched position is usually effective, possibly accompanied by a gradual arching of the back; and it might be worth trying an old-fashioned barked ‘howzat’ rather than the modern extended eleven-man yowl.

And now for the one-day series. I admit that I struggle motivating myself to watch 50-over cricket, and England continue to look as well-equipped for the purpose as they do for a polar expedition, but it would be nice to see England finish at least one match this winter with a smile on their faces.

Next time: Part 1 of the World Unpredictable XI.

How much of a gambler is Andrew Strauss? The cricket world is about to find out. Will he have the nerve to set West Indies, say, 200 off 70 overs? Will he settle for, say, 240 off 60? Does he truly believe that losing 2-0 is as good (or bad) as losing 1-0? England’s final chips of the series are in the captain’s paw, the roulette wheel is spinning, Strauss is nervously twitching his bow tie, the croupier is looking at him expectantly, and Chris Gayle is puffing on a massive cigar. It has been a grindingly tedious night at the casino, but it could still end in a frenzy of excitement.

Given the state of the pitch, England’s almost Sisyphean struggle to take wickets, the increasing tendency of their best fielders to drop relatively simple catches, and the impressively decreasing tendency of the West Indies to subside at the first available opportunity, Strauss’ decision will probably make little difference – it will require a spell of Taylor-in-Jamaica inspiration from one or more of the English bowlers (most likely Anderson with the new ball, then Panesar with the old), and/or a collective choke of England-in-Jamaica proportions by the West Indian batsmen, as the fishbone of victory lodges in the oesophagus of tangibility. Neither seems likely, but either is possible.

Nevertheless, the skipper’s call will reveal much about his captaincy. Since the Sabina Park capitulation, he has batted admirably and positively, but England have consistently failed to gamble − in their batting order and declaration in Antigua, their selection in Barbados, their field placings (at times), and, arguably, in choosing to bat first in both of the last two tests – perhaps, given the state of the pitch, it could have been worth Strauss’s while to rip the Oval 1998 page from the Arjuna Ranatunga book of captaincy (one of cricket’s jauntier tomes), insert the opposition on a flat pitch, and give his bowlers maximum wicket-taking, limb-resting and conditions-and-umpire-aggravated-frustration-cooling time. Admittedly, England have no Muralitharan, but then again, they also have no Wickremasinghe, so it might have been worth a punt.

Gayle’s claim that West Indies have been trying to win throughout this match must rank as one of international cricket’s most bared-faced fibs, and congratulations to him for managing to make this outlandish statement without breaking down into a giggling fit. It might have been equalled had Douglas Jardine averred at the end of the Bodyline series that he just asked his seamers to hit a tidy line and length, or Ravi Shastri declared in his autobiography that he just wanted to entertain, and damn the consequences. However, it is now more than possible that Gayle and his team, despite doing almost everything in their power to avoid such an eventuality, may find themselves accidentally winning the match (with apologies to the unquenchable fire of Fidel Edwards).

The Confectionery Stall prediction: West Indies to close on 173-6 chasing 224 to win. Roughly. Whatever happens, it will at least give England something to focus on for the rest of the day before noticing that Australia are good again. Really good. And getting better. (And if the two series with South Africa had been counted as one six-match series, it would have been one of the great series of all time.)

	The referral system’s effect has largely been to overturn correct decisions and uphold wrong ones © Getty Images

A potentially nerve-jangling end to this largely drab series will certainly make a refreshing change, if only through having a day’s cricket in which the main talking point will be cricket, not the accursed referral system.

To those uninitiated in the arcane, murky and incomprehensible processes of top-level sporting administration, the referral system appears either to have been myopically conceived, or to have been based on some cast-off pages found in the recycling bin of a special ICC room containing in Dubai an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters attempting to write a three-volume anthology of poems about David Boon.

The system is as confused and incomplete as a dog without a head, its obvious and easily remediable flaws exacerbated by umpiring that might as well have been carried out by the same bonceless pooch.

Daryl Harper has appeared to be umpiring a different game to the one taking place in Trinidad. (In fact, the closest match I have found based on the pattern of his decision-making suggests he has been hallucinating a Test between Australia and India from December 1967 in his hometown of Adelaide, and officiating, quite well, on that instead. When he gave Strauss not out after an edge to Ramdin that was both audible and visible, he thought he was turning down a caught behind appeal from Graham McKenzie against Farokh Engineer (correctly, as it happens – Engineer’s bat brushed the ground and wicketkeeper Barry Jarman only half appealed). Whether or not Harper attended this match, watched it on television, or listened to it on the radio, remains a matter for conjecture, but it clearly lodged in his subconscious and is now seeping out at an awkward time. And the only explanation for Aleem Dar failing to overturn the indecision was that he was understandably distracted by an escaped rhinoceros rampaging around the umpires’ room.)

The referral system’s effect has largely been to overturn correct decisions and uphold wrong ones. Why the predictive element of Hawkeye is not used is, frankly, a baffling piece of cricketing Ludditery. If the technology is trusted to track the ball accurately to the point of impact − the difficult bit, requiring complex and highly advanced equipment – why not allow it to complete the task by then predicting the remainder of a parabola – the scientifically simple part, requiring some a computer or a bendy ruler?

Science, the coquettish little vamp that she is, can predict for us where comets are going to be in 200 years’ time. I think the ICC could unleash science’s smart-arsed power to compute where a cricket ball would almost certainly be six feet from where it last demonstrably was. As it is, the TV umpire is being shown the ball’s path to impact, but then being forced to guess what happens next. In my experience, in matters of science, science will generally take more accurate and better informed guesses than guesswork. Which partially explains why I have never won a Nobel Prize for physics, whereas several physicists have.

There seems no reason why, within a couple of years, a properly managed combination of Hawkeye, Snicko, Hi-Motion and Hot Spot (coincidentally the names Tiffin, Harper, Dar and referee Alan Hurst use when they’re pretending to be a hip-hop group whilst warming up before the start of play) could not be able to produce a close-to-definitive verdict on most appeals within 30 to 40 seconds. Furthermore, with the Strauss non-dismissal yesterday, an elementary psychologist, or parent, could have taken look at the England captain’s face and told the on-field umpire that the batsman was at least 135% out.

At the moment, the half-use of only some of the available technology is tantamount to using the latest electronic medical equipment to diagnose an illness, then asking a child with a pair of scissors and a plastic stethoscope to perform the operation. If I may exaggerate wildly to make a point.

COMING SOON:
The Confectionery Stall Review Of The Series, and, following on from The World’s Dullest XI, the Confectionery Stall World’s Most Unpredictable XI.

The appalling events in Lahore have thrown a cloak of gloom over world cricket, and Pakistan cricket in particular. They have been covered comprehensively on this site and elsewhere by those far better qualified to comment, and far more acutely affected by the acts and their repercussions, than I am. I can add little but the same sorrow for the victims, the same relief that worse was avoided, and the same hope that Pakistan can live on as an international force, that all cricket lovers must be feeling.

Cricket will now have to attempt the impossible balancing act between player and public security and a refusal to bow to a violent microminority. Terrorists disgust and bore me at the best of times, and their self-indulgent, posturing destruction becomes no less repellent and tedious when they assault the world of sport, which is supposed to provide humanity with a temporary escape from the harsh realities of reality.

And cricket needs Pakistan. The Test game had been significantly less vibrant over the last 14 months without them. My first exposure to Pakistan cricket was in the brilliant 1982 series in England, when my nascent cricketing interest was far more intrigued by Mohsin Khan, Imran Khan and Abdul Qadir than it was by Chris Tavare, Ian Greig and Eddie Hemmings.

I was lucky enough to be at The Oval in 1992 to see Waqar Younis blast out Stewart, Atherton, Gooch and Gower in eight thunderously perfect overs of new-ball devastation. Concerted collective action will be necessary to ensure that the Waqars of the future will be able to make the Athertons of the future involuntarily head a barely-seen, almost-supersonic ball over the wicketkeeper for four leg-byes, as happened that day. This is set to be perhaps cricket’s greatest ever challenge.

The top-level international game involves few teams, which is both a strength, as it engenders the ongoing rivalries that have shaped and enlivened the game, and a weakness, as it is seriously compromised by the absence or decline of any of its members.

World cricket has a chequered recent record in acting for the collective good of its nations. It must now do everything in its power to help Pakistan maintain a prominent standing in the international game while its domestic situation remains so depressingly, apparently intractably, vulnerable.

And now, for what they are worth in the current context of international cricket, which is slightly less than nothing, here are some thoughts on the now-mercifully-finished Barbados Test.

This was one of the worst cricket matches imaginable, played out on a truly dreadful pitch, of almost nil sporting interest. An alien or American billionaire, or indeed any other fictional character, had chanced upon this travesty of a game, he, she or it would have assumed: either that cricket is an arcane and impenetrable religious ritual designed to reflect the interminable tedium of life and thus assuage the stroppiness of an unusually cantankerous dullness-loving deity; or that this match was a meaningless and complete waste of everyone’s time (except for a few stressed parents who used it to pacify over-sugared children). In either case, cricket would have been safely preserved for us humble earthlings.

This Test was an embarrassment to cricket. There was no punishment for batting error, no reward for good bowling. They could have played until Matt Prior’s second child is born and it would still probably have been a draw.

The dismal pitch was not merely batsman-friendly, it was knocking on the batsman’s hotel room door at midnight brandishing a bottle of champagne and wearing a negligee. Only Shah, Gayle and Hinds were gentlemen enough to politely spurn its advances. Good on them. If the wicket had been loaded any more decisively against the bowlers, the groundstaff would have found themselves in The Hague facing human rights abuse charges, with a tearful Ryan Sidebottom and Daren Powell consoling each other in the witness box. The Americans did not need to resort to waterboarding – if they have made their Guantanamo ‘guests’ bowl on this pitch, they would have confessed to absolutely anything by the time the third new ball was due.

With hindsight, it was fortunate that the inane and inept referral system distracted so much attention from the anti-cricket on display. Perhaps Daryl Harper and his on-field confreres were merely trying to inject some talking-points into the morass of futility before them.

It was the latest in a thoroughly uninspiring glut of run-gluts. During the Barbados game, I started to have vivid recurring dreams about watching a Test match in which both teams are bowled out for under 200 in the first innings on a green-tinged wicket, with momentum swinging wildly one way then the other, in which fast bowlers are restored to a greater role than the ceremonial propulsion of an unresponsive conker onto the middle of a lavishly advertised bat, and in which a half-century requires a display of skill, nerve and courage by a batsman – before waking up to be confronted with the grim reality of Kevin Pietersen blocking half-volleys from Ryan Hinds.

So what did this game prove? That West Indies are tougher than they were, or at least that Sarwan is; that Ramdin can score runs on a dead pitch against exhausted bowlers; that Bopara isn’t useless; that no parent in their right mind should allow their child to take up fast bowling; and that Cook is less vulnerable to the moving ball outside off stump when the ball doesn’t move outside off stump.

Cook is a curious player. He appears both unusually talented and extremely limited, and both mentally strong and psychologically suspect. He is without question bizarrely awkward for a man who has reached 3000 Test runs at a prodigious age – when batting, he generally looks as if he has borrowed someone else’s limbs. He could smash a run-a-ball hundred and still appear to be out of form. In this series, he has succeeded on the deader pitches, but failed on the more difficult one – so what more have England learnt about him? He is clearly a useful Test batsman, but will he prove to be much more than that against stronger opposition (eg. Australia) on trickier surfaces (eg. in England)?

England unquestionably picked the wrong XI for this game – trying to bowl any side out twice on this pitch with three decent fast-medium bowlers and a decent finger spinner revealed optimism levels bordering on the delusional. That said, they could have brought Larwood, Statham, Trueman, Laker and SF Barnes back to life and they would still have struggled to bowl West Indies out. They might have restricted them to around 550, but it is more likely that the late, great quintet would have taken one look at the surface, feigned some thigh strains, and taken the first rocket back to the comfort of the ethereal pavilion in the sky.

Please let the Trinidad Test be a proper one. Like the one in Johannesburg. I am starting to wish that the 2009 Ashes had been played in November and December of 2008. The conditions in England wouldn’t have been ideal for cricket, but Australia are starting to look alarmingly potent.