The Confectionery Stall

The Official Confectionery Stall Cricketing Morality Challenge

2009-10-14T12:11:11Z

In which direction does your cricketing moral compass point? © Getty Images

Welcome to the Official Confectionery Stall Cricketing Morality Challenge, following on from Andrew Strauss actions in the Champions Trophy – first recalling Angelo Mathews like a benevolent shepherd allowing a naughty fox one more chance to prove he can cohabit with your flock, then spurning Graeme Smith’s supplication for a runner like Henry VIII definitively telling Anne Boleyn that it was over for good because he didn’t go for women without heads, if I may use two largely inaccurate similes. I now give you the opportunity to find out the direction in which your cricketing moral compass points. Will it be north, towards the good of cricket and humankind, or south, towards 'win at all costs and damn the consequences'? SCENARIO 1
It is the final over of a unfeasibly crucial limited-overs match. Your team needs four runs to win with just one measly wicket remaining. The opposition’s star fast bowler, who has taken five for 15 from nine overs of helmet-clattering fury, is walking back to his mark. All the other main bowlers have completed their allocation. No one else on the fielding team knows how to bowl. As the bowler turns at the end of his run-up and prepares to run in, you notice that a man-eating bear has escaped from the crowd and is charging up behind him. You realise that your chances of victory would be greatly enhanced by the fast bowler being eaten by the bear. Do you alert him to the impending danger?]]> SCENARIO 2
An opposition batsman is blasting your bowlers to all twelve corners of the ground. Your twelfth man runs on in between overs with a selection of new hair gels for the wicketkeeper, a handful of hungry termites, and an instruction from the coach to sprinkle the termites in the batsman’s crease so that when he next settles to face a delivery, the ravenous insects will gobble his bat. Do you: (A) Grab the termites off the 12th man, start shovelling them into your mouth, while shouting to your coach in the pavilion that you will not stoop so low in an effort to win a cricket match, and send the 12th man back to the pavilion to fetch some salt and tomato ketchup to make the termites tastier. (B) Take the termites but refuse to go through with the coach’s cheeky scheme. Instead, spread the termites on a good length in front of the batsman, and hope that he has an irrational fear of termites. If he seems unconcerned by the termites, simply sit back and wait for one of the following to happen: (1) some local snakes smell the termites, slither to the crease, and eat the termites, then hope that the batsman has a rational fear of snakes; (2) the termites build one of their trademark mounds just outside off stump on a good length, rendering batting much more difficult (it is a fact that even Bradman never scored a hundred on a pitch containing a functioning termite mound); or (3) the umpires abandon the match due to a termite and/or snake infestation. (C) Put the plan into action. The coach is boss – he calls the shots. You take the termites from the twelfth man, then stand by the stumps (which your wicketkeeper is surreptiously smearing with the hair gel, a notorious termite repellent) pretending to move your fielders around whilst furtively dropping the termites all over the crease. Then jog slowly towards the bowler and tell him to take the longest and slowest imaginable run-up, before crouching in the slips and deliberately distracting the batsman just as the bowler finally arrives, causing your adversary to pull away at the last second. This will give the termites maximum bat-eating time. Then, when the batsman notices that his bat has been eaten by termites, refuse him permission to replace it, on the grounds that the ICC Match Regulations do not stipulate that a batsman should be allowed to replace a bat that has become part of the food chain, for fear of destabilising local ecosystems. SCENARIO 3
Your team needs two runs to win at the end of a pulsating match. Nine wickets are down. You are one of the last wicket pair trying to squeeze out a spectacular victory. You get an obvious thick edge to the wicketkeeper, who tosses the ball high in the air in celebration. The umpire however, had been distracted by a passing airship that he thought looked a bit like Inzamam-ul-Haq, did not see the delivery and gives you not out. What do you do? (A) Either walk, or, preferably, persuade the umpire to give you out, or wait for the next ball and smash the stumps to pieces with your bat. Then return to your frosty dressing room and say: “Cricket was the winner,” before taking refuge in a cupboard. (B) Refuse the runs, but stay at the crease. When the opposition players berate you for not walking, remind them that it’s only a game, and that there is no documented proof that famous names in history ever walked when playing cricket, so why should you? In the spirit of fair play, you decide that neither side deserves to win, so you bat out the remaining four hours of play without scoring another run to secure a draw. (C) With the ball still in the air and the wicketkeeper and fielders celebrating like a giraffe who has just eaten a lion, you sprint through for two runs, screaming: “Yes, yes, yes, in your faces, losers, Almighty Zeus himself decreed that we should win this game.” How did you answer? Mostly ‘A’s: You are a hero, a cricketing saint, and, as such, have no future in the professional game. Mostly ‘B’s: You are too philosophically indecisive for top level cricket. Retire. Mostly ‘C’s: Congratulations. You have displayed the hard-edged practicality of all great captains. You have an ability to take tough decisions, even when those tough decisions are wrong. You’ll go far in cricket, life, and, potentially, politics.

Spaghetti Bolognaise with a side of moral quandary

2009-10-10T05:29:03Z

Andrew Strauss played the good cop in recalling Angelo Mathews after a mid-pitch collision led to a run-out © Getty Images

In the all-you-can-stomach fashion of modern cricket, no sooner has one major (or, more appropriately, quite major) tournament been whisked off your plate, than another is slopped onto it. The Champions Trophy left the customer neither wanting more, nor regretting his meal choice. It was an adequate spaghetti Bolognese of a tournament, befitting the current adequacy of international cricket. The fleeting hope of England fluking a major one-day trophy was snuffed out like the cheap imitation candle it was. Australia were excellent – the divots in their scalps from the head scratching they must have endured over how they lost the Ashes must be reaching close to skull level. The absence of so many top players from all or some of the competition left it appearing a little mundane, and the fact that a new-look Australia won their semi-final and final so easily raised questions about the overall standard and depth of the world game. This year’s ICC World XIs are not exactly replete with must-see legends of the sport. A generation of modern greats has been gradually leaving the game in recent years – the new as-yet-unspectacular generation of cricketers understandably feels a little pedestrian by comparison. For Mitchell Johnson to be named cricketer of the year, having flunked his biggest exam, shows that that the cupboard of cricketing greatness is largely bare. Paul Harris is rated the seventh best bowler on the planet in the ICC Test rankings. Yes, he is a steady performer, underrated by much of the cricket media, unfairly lampooned by English commentators in 2008. But the seventh best in the world? If Harris was playing an impromptu game in the street outside your house, would you watch? You might take a peek through the window, but you probably wouldn’t actually go outside. Ten years ago the top eight bowlers in the rankings were, in order, Donald, Pollock, McGrath, Ambrose, Murali, Walsh, Kumble and Akram. All greats of the game, all bar Kumble averaging in the mid-to-low 20s, all bowlers who made batsmen pick nervously at their lucky omelette on the first morning of a Test. This week, the top eight are: Steyn, Murali, Johnson, Ntini, Harbhajan, Clark, Harris and Zaheer. All good bowlers, but today’s batsmen wolf their omelettes down with relative confidence. The batting (perhaps understandably) is in better shape, but to illustrate the lack of invigorating young blood being transfused into cricket, only one of the top 30-ranked Test batsmen is under the age of 25 (number 27, Alistair Cook, another who is not the kind of player to cause turnstiles sleepless nights). Perhaps more revealingly, only nine of the top 30 are under the age of 30, and just five have made their debuts since the start of 2005. At some point, if time, work and wife permit, I will see how this compares with previous points in cricketing history – perhaps this is not unusual, perhaps it is just a slight quirk, but it seems to me that cricket urgently needs some new world stars to emerge in the threatened Test arena. For now, I challenge you to list 10 players currently under the age of 25 who will be welcomed to the wicket in their final Test with a guard of honour in recognition of their immortal services to the game. Anyone who correctly predicts all 10 will win a papier-mache macquette of Lalit Modi counting a colossal pile of Twenty20 cash in his garden shed. Results to be confirmed in the year 2029. The Champions League Twenty20 has instantly replaced the Champions Trophy. To be honest with you, I had forgotten about this tournament. To be fair to the CLT20, however, I have forgotten many things in my life, including: − almost everything I learnt at school and university − almost everything I have ever learnt that is neither a sporting statistic nor the name of one of my children (the latter being an impressive feat, bearing in mind that I have not had them tattooed on me, so have to rely purely on my capacity for mental recall) − where I left my keys this morning − my own birthday − why aeroplanes work, and − who ultimately admitted to being afraid of the Big Bad Wolf. As a neutral with no particular allegiance to any of the teams involved, and insufficient space in my diary and brain to invite another cricketing tournament to roost, my interest in the tournament is largely restricted to any evidence it may offer regarding whether Test cricket is doomed, and if it is, how soon that doom may loom. For me, the highlights of the Champions Trophy were the complex moral and philosophical quandaries Andrew Strauss had to confront. Strauss played good cop in recalling Angelo Mathews after a mid-pitch collision led to a run-out, but bad cop in refusing Graeme Smith a runner after the poor big lambkin pulled up lame after a long day outdoors running around a bit. I think he was right on both counts, although I would have liked to see the England captain demand that Smith find a runner of near-identical build. Or that AB de Villiers be forced to put on extra clothing until he reached the same weight and girth as Smith. This in turn could have led to highly entertaining disputes about exactly how chunky the South African skipper currently is, with umpires having to measure with calipers the exact span of Smith’s tummy. Cricket has always been a moral maze – should you walk when you snick one to the keeper? Should the fielder appeal for a catch when he knows that the ball bounced three times before it reached him? Should the umpire give a leg-before-wicket decision against a batsman who he thinks might be sleeping with his wife, even when he knows: (a) that the ball pitched marginally outside leg stump; (b) that his wife’s infidelity is the direct result of his own obsession with umpiring, leaving her feeling unwanted, unloved and used (how many evenings a week can a husband reasonably expect a wife to stand with pads on putting her legs in front of moving objects?); and (c) that the alleged Lothario batsman was at the non-striker’s end? Over the weekend I will concoct some hypothetical scenarios to test your cricketing morality, including whether or not you should tell an opposition bowler that he is about to be eaten by a bear.

England's one-day masterplan

2009-09-29T11:50:14Z

We are so exhausted that we will surely win the Champions Trophy © Getty Images

Well, be honest. Did you see that coming from England? If you are claiming that you did, I want to see written proof, verified by an independent third party. The latest upward surge in England’s wildly fluctuating 2009 has seen them give two outstanding and dominant performances in three days, including a new England record for sixes in a one-day international – 12 (twelve, honestly, twelve) (I saw them all with my own eyes) (albeit on television, so the possibility remains that the entire match was in fact a hoax). Let’s put this in perspective. The dozen missiles launched by Shah, Morgan and Collingwood into the Centurion stratosphere on Sunday eclipsed England’s previous ODI record of 10 sixes in Napier two winters ago. Let’s put this in further perspective. England hit just eight sixes in the seven-game series against Australia just completed. And let’s now complete the perspective putting − Shah’s six bombs put him second equal on England’s all-time list for ODI aerial boundary blasts (as they will in due course become known to TV audiences); Morgan’s five place him fifth equal. ]]> 1. Ensure that you begin the tournament with your two most important players out injured.
2. Ensure that the remaining players are completely out of form, freshly demoralised after a massive drubbing.
3. Enter the competition with a batting order that habitually crawls along nervously, ineffectively and unexplosively.
4. Back this up with a bowling attack that has lacked penetration and control.
It will be interesting to see whether other teams have the courage to put this plan into practice with quite the same dedication as England. It has been an interesting enough tournament so far, although lacking a classic match that has gone to the last over, and missing too many of the world’s leading one-day players through injury. With its simple, condensed format, almost every game has mattered, there is no obviously dominant team and even the pretend West Indies team has performed creditably. The entire tournament will take three fewer days than the England-Australia seven-match jeroboam of tedium. And more than a month less than the 2007 World Cup. If brevity is indeed the soul of wit, then (a) my career is in trouble, and (b) it is also the key ingredient in the recipe for interesting 50-over cricket tournaments. A word too for Anderson and Collingwood. Anderson was expensive, largely ineffective and apparently exhausted in the Australia series, he has taken 6 for 62 from his 19.3 overs against Sri Lanka and South Africa. Collingwood, as generally happens when people start to prematurely question his value, has been at his decisive best. Both players appear reinvigorated after being rested during the recent 6-1 clobbering. If any further proof were needed that the world cricket calendar is counter-productively, idiotically overloaded – and the case for the prosecution is already struggling to cram all the existing bits of proof into a giant skip to dump outside the courtroom – this is it. International cricketers should not need to be rested. Doing so devalues the concept of international cricket – how can it claim to be the best that nations can pit against each other, when some of the best are too knackered to crawl out of the pavilion? The authorities responsible are clearly devotees of the foie-gras school of cricket scheduling – the more matches, series, travel and press conferences they can force-ram down the straining gullet of cricket, the tastier the end product will be. Sadly for them, cricketers are not French geese. This is a slippery slope, and there are few signs that the powers that be have any other intention than to shove cricket into a bobsled with no brakes, and kick it down that slope.

Getting the choke out of the way

2009-09-23T04:23:34Z

If England win the Champions Trophy, and it is an ‘if’ so big that it can be seen with the naked eye from space, it will be one of the biggest surprises in world history. © Associated Press

The short-awaited Champions Trophy is underway, and, ominously for the other seven teams involved, South Africa have started as if they mean business. The Proteas have suffered serial disappointments in recent tournaments, often pulling defeat from the jaws of victory like an enthusiastically sadistic medieval dentist (sometimes even having to stretch beyond the jaws, and wrench defeat from victory’s duodenum with special forceps). Graeme Smith and his men have therefore unleashed a new tactic which is almost guaranteed to win them the tournament – getting their traditional choke out of the way early enough that it doesn’t matter. South Africa’s performance in being hammered by the excellent Sri Lankans suggests that they are hell-bent on ultimate glory, and are rightly unwilling to risk starting the tournament looking like potential winners. They even went so far as to enter the event underprepared and rusty, to minimise their chances of peaking fatally early. I am mildly excited about the tournament. It is of a size and length that should preclude the possibility of losing interest in all cricket, as often happens during World Cups, and features the six strongest teams in ODI cricket, plus West Indies and England representing the world’s up-and-coming limited-overs nations, and hoping to spring a surprise or two as Ireland did in the last World Cup.]]> England’s 2009-10 season begins on Friday against Sri Lanka, a pathetic five days after their end of their 2009 season (which in turn had begun just over a month after their 2008-09 ended – it would seem fairer and more honest if the relevant cricketing authorities simply lined up the world’s bowlers on a bench and then walked along it, smacking each one in the kneecaps with a baseball bat). If England win the Champions Trophy, and it is an ‘if’ so big that it can be seen with the naked eye from space, it will be one of the biggest surprises in world history. I have spent the last 48 hours locked inside a darkened scorebox in my garden attempting to envisage scenarios in which England win the Champions Trophy. I have failed. The closest I came was imagining the earth being destroyed by an asteroid strike on Thursday, leading to the tournament winner being decided by a series of coin tosses by the astronauts on the International Space Station. England lost to India in the semi-final. After the recently-completed one-day series with Australia, I think most England fans would willingly accept such an eventuality. It should also be pointed out that, contrary to press reports, England actually won the series − their victory in game seven on Sunday gave them the whatever-it’s-called trophy under the ICC’s new ‘Winner Stays On’ rule. This was harsh on Australia, who had played well enough and put on a heroically good show of looking like they found the process stimulating and challenging. England’s preparation for the Champions Trophy seems to have been based on engendering dangerous levels of complacency in their opponents. I know that professional sportsmen these days are repeatedly indoctrinated with the mantra that you must never underestimate your opposition, but England − entering the tournament with their two most important players absent through injury, and with many of the rest mentally and/or physically knackered after a summer that seemed destined never to end − will surely test the underestimation-avoidance capacity of the other teams in their group like it has never been tested before. Arguably, slowly building up deep-lying complacency through 15 years of almost unbroken limited-over mediocrity might have been taking this modern-day Trojan Horse tactic a little too far, but such plans need to be adhered to with tenacity and persistence. It is clear that, in the aftermath of England’s excellent but ultimately unsuccessful World Cup campaign in 1992, those in charge of English cricket clandestinely decided that never again would the national team suffer the heartache of failing so close to World Cup glory. To date, they have been spectacularly successful in achieving that goal. A few final thoughts on the England v Australia one-day series recently consigned to the dustbin of history like the half-eaten rat pastie that it was: First, and most overwhelmingly: Thank goodness that’s over. Second: The people running cricket are either idiots, or deliberately concocting the schedules of idiots. In England, not content with scarring this summer’s final weeks with a tortuously anticlimactic monotony masquerading as international cricket, they have penned in similarly uninteresting one-day series for next summer around a ludicrously compressed four-Test series with Pakistan. I have no doubt that scheduling an international cricket season is tricky – I have trouble enough timetabling occasional showers into my weekly routine. However, if you were served the unappetising mess that passes for an English cricketing summer in a restaurant, you would send (or more likely throw) it straight back to the kitchen with a message advising the chef to look for another job better suited to his skill set. Third: England should not be judged too harshly on this series, missing as they were key players such as Pietersen, Flintoff, Gough, Tendulkar, Warne and Henry VIII. With the first two fit and firing, they could easily have escaped with a 5-2 mauling instead of a 6-1 annihilation. Fourth: International cricket is seldom seen at its best when it is a contractual obligation rather than the summit of the game. Fifth: Some stats... In one-day internationals between the eight major Test playing nations this decade, England’s batsmen: • have the lowest batting average; • have the fifth best batting strike rate; • have blasted the equal fewest centuries; • have nurdled the second fewest innings of fifty or more; • have smote the second fewest fours; and • have thwacked the second fewest sixes. England’s bowlers cannot lay claim to such a broad smorgasbord of ineptitude, but can boast the third highest bowling average and third worst economy rate over the same period. England’s batsmen have now racked up three centuries in the 41 ODIs they have attempted to play in the last two years. Among the current Test playing nations, the next least prolific century makers in that time span are New Zealand and Bangladesh with seven tons each. England have also nudged their way to only 37 half-centuries in those 41 games, giving them an average of less than one 50-plus score per match. Oh dear! All in all, these numbers suggest that England (a) are not very good at one-day cricket, (b) haven’t been very good at it for a very long time, and (c) are unlikely to get much better at it in the foreseeable future. Never mind. It’s only a game. And we won the Ashes. And Australia lost the Ashes. Those are two beacons of hope to cling to in the dark winter months ahead.

'Stalled' from doing the Ashes review

2009-09-11T04:48:53Z

Hello again Confectionery Stallers, and welcome back to the blog after a slightly-earlier-and-longer-than-expected holiday. I signed off the last blog in a flurry of post-Ashes statistical frenzy confidently predicting that I would post the Official Confectionery Stall Ashes Review. I can only apologise for not having done so. A number of things cropped up that prevented me doing so. 1. My wife discovered me having a candlelit dinner in a French restaurant with Statsguru. I tried to convince her that it was perfectly innocent, that I just wanted to thank Statsguru for all the help it has selflessly given me through the summer, but only time will tell whether she swallowed it. If she had heard me giggling coyly at all of Statsguru’s jokes, I would have been in big trouble. Anyway, on our family holiday, I was not permitted to take even so much as a copy of Wisden with me. I tried to argue that if she was allowed to take two children with her, I was entitled to take two boxes of Wisdens with me. My wife, being a lawyer, won the argument convincingly. Even my offer to read her the match reports of England’s series in India in 1981-82 to help her get to sleep was rejected. ]]> 2. An unscheduled cricketing comeback. Having not played for three years, I strapped on what was left of my cricket kit for the first time since I became a father and took the field for the mighty Penshurst Park in a colossal local derby against Chiddingstone in the Kent Village League. Cricket simply does not come any more intense than that. And what a return for Zaltzman, 34, striding to the wicket with eight overs remaining and Penshurst in need of quick runs, like Odysseus returning from his 20-year war-then-gap-decade extravaganza, surviving the easiest documented missed stumping opportunity on 3, spanking a six over long on that flabbergasted me, my wife, my bat, the ball and those of my team-mates who had seen me bat before, then creaming a cut straight to backward point, deciding the purity of the shot merited at least a single, and being run out by between 12 and 14 yards as the non-striking batsman stared in stationary amazement from comfortably and immovably within his crease. Thus I was out for 17 mesmeric runs following a dazzling display of strokeplay all round the wicket that brought to mind a young Frank Woolley in his pomp, that proved what Mark Ramprakash might have achieved if given the chance at The Oval, that demonstrated once and for all that, while form is temporary, class (or, in this case, an absence of class) is permanent. Chiddingstone luckily fluked the match by seven wickets with about six overs to spare. 3. I have been unable to sit still for long enough to type more than three words at a time due to the febrile, adrenaline-surging excitement that rampaged through my body whenever I thought about the forthcoming seven-match one-day series. The Ashes were a tasty if uneven appetite-whetting hors d’oeuvre, but now for the real main-course cricket – a Titanic three-week contest to define once and for all which of the two ancient rivals is the greater cricketing nation. There’s probably a trophy for it as well, although no-one is quite sure. And it might affect the ICC rankings too, although no-one knows how they work or what they mean. And there are crucial psychological points to be scored in the build-up to the 2010-11 and 2013 Ashes. And personal cricketing immortality awaits for any player who can send down ten tidy overs or smack a crucial 30 off 20 balls. England against Australia – cricket at its unquenchable greatest. As I write, three matches in, the series has yet to fully explode into the shimmering majesty the world had expected. Some may argue that waiting for this series to erupt is like sitting on top of a small hill in Gloucestershire wearing a heat-proof bodysuit while muttering: “Now for a spot of volcano surfing.” Others may suggest that these seven games represent that crassest example of scheduling in cricketing memory, further proof that those who run the game have no discernible soul. A few might even go so far as to argue that these games, along with the 13 (thirteen) (yes, thirteen) (I’m not joking, thirteen) one-day internationals England will play next summer are a cheeky, underhand scheme to discredit further the already-maligned 50-over format by boring the English cricket watching public into going to watch some crown-green bowling. But for now, let us cast such cynics aside, and luxuriate in the mellifluous rhythms and majestic drama of England struggling to hit the ball off the square and Australia playing adequately enough to win easily. 4. The Ashes defied analysis. On reflection, there was nothing much to it. There was no great masterplan cunningly executed, no merciless exploitation of opposition weakness. Both sides played two good matches, and two bad ones. Australia failed to capitalise on one of their two good ones, but probably would have done but for rain. England showed considerable mental resilience to rebound from their staggering ineptitude at Leeds and play an excellent match at The Oval, but only after showing considerable mental frailty to plumb those depths in the first place and necessitate a subsequent display of mental resilience. Having previously displayed similar frailty at Cardiff and similar resilience at Lord’s. The pattern of the series suggested that if there had been a sixth Test, Australia would have waltzed it. And if there had then been a seventh, England would have trounced their old enemy and regained the Ashes in a blaze of unexpected glory. If both sides had played well simultaneously, we could have seen a great Test. If both sides had played badly simultaneously, we could have seen one of the all-time classics. 5. I lost my pen. 6. I’ve been working out some stats about how regularly teams score centuries and half-centuries in one-day internationals. And how regularly they concede them. Don’t tell the missus. Please. More on this later, when she’s out of the house. Okay, since you insist, here’s a little taster: since the 2007 series with India, England have amassed three hundreds in 37 games, comfortably the fewest of any major Test nations (and one per 105 innings played by their batsmen − excluding Pietersen, the rest have scored one century, by Strauss, in 288 innings). However, England’s bowlers have only conceded five in that time – only South Africa (a measly one) have conceded fewer. So while England might not know how to play entertaining 50-over cricket themselves, but they also know how to stop their opponents doing so. Which possibly explains why that Gloucestershire volcano remains resolutely dormant.

A frisky evening with Statsguru

2009-08-24T16:12:41Z

Now that we’ve all calmed down a bit, I have another statistic for you. And it’s a good one. A series that has seen England plumb some extremely murky depths ended with a second joyous and outstanding triumph. Broad’s meteoric spell on Friday was supported by superb batting on Saturday, leaving Australia with an unrealistically Himalayan mountain to climb. Ponting and his men had been bafflingly, unAustralianly passive and negative in the field as England piled potentially crucial extra rocks on top of what turned out to be a 546-run Everest. They set off confidently enough, but Hussey and Flintoff then combined to steal Ponting’s crampons and send him tumbling off the mountain, and then Clarke was unluckily bullocked off it by a passing African rhino in a hang glider (if I may attempt to convey quite how unfortunate he was when run out). It remains a mystery why North and Haddin then chose to hurl themselves down a ravine when there were still technically enough rations to at least attempt to reach the summit. It was a strange way of proving that Australians never give up. Yesterday was a great day for English cricket, and in particular for Strauss, whose batting and coin-tossing were of the highest calibre, sparking celebrations that, rightly, did not touch the wild exultation of four years ago. For my part, I celebrated with a romantic evening in with Statsguru, and, well, without wishing to go into too much indelicate detail, things got a bit frisky between us, and a statistic emerged. A beautiful, bouncing new-born statistic. And its first words were these: England averaged 6.49 runs per wicket less than Australia in this series, but still won. This is the biggest runs-per-wicket deficit ever overcome to win a Test series. In the entire history of cricket, the human race and the universe put together. Here endeth the stat. Let’s all take a couple of minutes to think about that.

Come on, concentrate.

Good. This was the 35th time in 539 Test series that a team has won with an inferior average (and only the second Ashes contest in which the statistically weaker side has triumphed since 1902). Never has that inferiority been greater than 6.49 runs per wicket. The previous record margin was 6.03, when England hoodwinked South Africa in 1998 after narrowly escaping with a last-wicket-remaining draw at Old Trafford. Coincidentally, that was Flintoff’s first series – his career has been bookended by two of cricket’s greatest statistical heists. So, did England deserve to win the series? Taking the five matches as a whole, perhaps they didn’t. Taking the two sides’ performances in the final, winner-takes-all shootout at The Oval, they probably did. Taking Australia’s first innings failures at Lord’s, Edgbaston and The Oval, they certainly deserved to lose it. This statistic certainly confirms that this has been one of the oddest Ashes series of all time – two teams equally capable of both very good and genuinely atrocious cricket produced a series that was close overall without containing a single close game. Four of the Tests were massively one-sided (first innings leads of 239 at Cardiff, 210 at Lord’s, 343 at Leeds and 172 at The Oval). Only very briefly at Lord’s was there a match in which both sides had a realistic chance of winning, and this was rapidly snuffed out on the final morning. All in all, it was a bit like watching a boxing match in which the fighters were punching their own faces as often as their opponent’s, or a two-horse steeplechase in which the horses alternately sail majestically over one fence before ploughing face-first straight into the next without even attempting to get off the ground. Australia ended snout-down in the last, leaving England to prance past them and trot down the final furlong punching the air in delight that there were no more fences left to crash into. The destination of the urn was ultimately decided by England’s belated competence and resistance in Cardiff, and by Broad’s magnificence at the Oval on a pitch where no other fast bowler made a significant impression.]]> Top Ten Biggest Runs Per Wicket (RPW) Deficits Overcome To Win A Test Series. Commit it to memory, then destroy it. A more accurate measure of the extent of cricketing superiority overcoming may be The Heist Percentage – the difference between the sides’ averages as a percentage of the losing team’s average. By this measure, England’s 2009 Ashes win is the 7th greatest heist in Test history – a 15.9% heist, some way off Australia’s burglary of the 1891-92 Ashes, when they filched the urn despite averaging 21.6% less than England. The injustice still rankles today, and clearly motivated Strauss and his men at the Oval. In fact, as Graeme Swann celebrated the final wicket, lip-readers would have seen him screaming the words, “This one’s for WG Grace and his boys.” There you go. Now I must spend some quality time with the wife. If she sees me looking anything else up on Statsguru in the next month, she’ll start telling me she can’t go on with three of us in the relationship.

England set for oddest Ashes win

2009-08-22T07:45:30Z

This has been a curate’s omelette of a series, and it seems that the decisive egg was thrown into the pan by Stuart Broad yesterday. Broad chose what can conservatively be described as a useful time to graduate from being a perennially promising bowler who had previously chipped away with occasional wickets, to being one capable of devastating an opposition top order – from a sporadically flaring barbecue to a full-blown Krakatoa in one magnificent spell. He had taken more than three wickets only twice in 35 Test innings, so Australia’s backroom cricketing seismologists could be forgiven for not having detected the pre-rumblings of Broad’s extraordinary eruption of intelligently hostile swing and cut. He was ably aided by Graeme Swann, on a stupidly helpful surface, and Swann was unably aided Umpire Rauf, with two stupidly helpful lbw decisions. England will have to pull off something spectacular to lose from here, which, on the patternlessly inconsistent form both sides have shown this series, is not out of the question. They seem set, however, to complete one of their oddest Ashes victories. They began this Test having been poor-to-hapless for large swathes of the first four games. No single player had compiled a properly good series – no batsman was averaging over 50, no bowler under 30, and even Strauss, comfortably England’s best player, had failed in two games out of four. Australia statistically had most of the top batsmen and bowlers, but it now looks as if their irresponsible collapse at Lord’s, and less culpable but still carelessness-assisted one at the Oval yesterday will have decided the series. ]]> The pitch for such an important match has been an embarrassment (although, as a general rule, one like this is preferable to a featureless featherbed), making the toss disproportionately important. Both sides appear to have selected their teams wrongly, Australia more wrongly than England. Jim Laker would have fancied beating his own 19-wicket record on this pitch. Even Nathan Hauritz might have come close to it. However, a feature of the series has been how both sets of batsmen, products of an era of predominantly pancake-flat wickets, have proved totally unable to adjust to even mildly unhelpful conditions and moderate movement of the ball. I suppose it is inevitable that, if you live on a diet of pancakes, suddenly being served an unshelled crab will be a major test of your knife-and-fork technique. In this decisive game, England’s batsmen and bowlers have so far been more disciplined. Ponting and Clarke, Australia’s two best batsmen, were out playing attacking, good-wicket shots early in their innings. Strauss by contrast has simplified his already simple technique, and scored some of his most important runs. And Ian Bell received almost no praise from a media that has become so obsessed with his supposed mental frailties that they failed to notice him chiselling out his toughest and arguably best Test innings after an unpromising start. And, if England fail to pull off something spectacular and do complete the series win, Monty Panesar can clear his throat and prepare to deliver his Man of the Series acceptance speech.

Fancy England scoring 1003 to win

2009-08-20T05:23:22Z

It increasingly seems that when England pick Steve Harmison, they essentially pick a myth © Getty Images

Sit down. I have some stats that may or may not be relevant to the Oval Test. • Australia are averaging 13 runs per wicket more than England – 46 to 33 – meaning that, statistically, they have dominated this series more than they did the series of 1990-91, 1994-95 1997 or 1998-99 which they won comfortably without having to sully their baggy green hands with an important final Test, and more even than in the famous 4-1 Lillee-and-Thomson-ignited drubbing of 1974-75. Nevertheless, thanks to Monty Panesar’s unbreachable bat, they have failed to translate this obvious superiority into champagne-spraying exultation. As an incidental substatistic, at the equivalent stage of the 2005 series, Australia and England both averaged 30.87 runs per wicket – though, when an extra decimal place is thrown into the equation, England had a clear advantage of 3 thousandths of a run per wicket over. Good, close series, that one, with hindsight. • If England do win (and assuming they do not hand Australia a 1938-style innings-and-500 drubbing), they will become only the 2nd team since 1902 to win an Ashes series despite averaging less than their opponents − in 1981, England won 3-1 despite averaging fractionally lower than Australia (26.38 to 26.52). Botham’s aura evidently made a 0.15 runs-per-wicket difference then – can Flintoff’s overcome a 13-runs-per-wicket deficit this time? • If England drop Graham Onions for Flintoff, they will attempt to take 20 wickets with five bowlers who, in the last two Ashes series, have taken 65 wickets at an average of 50.12, with a strike rate of a scalp every 83 balls. If they continue on this form, they will need 277 overs to bowl Australia out twice for a combined total of 1002 runs (excluding leg-byes and byes). England will therefore have to score 1003 in around 170 overs to win. The best tactic on winning the toss would be to insert Australia, bowl them out for 501 by mid-afternoon on day two, then smash a quick run-a-ball 1003 for 9 declared by just after lunch on day four, and bowl Australia out for 501 again to win with the last ball of the match. The only potential flaw in this plan is that the 11 batsmen who would have to do this have, over the same time span, averaged 30, and scored at three per over. Still, stranger things have happened. Albeit, not in cricket. Or reality. ]]> • It increasingly seems that when England pick Steve Harmison, they essentially pick a myth. Either side of his annus mirabilis – from October 2003 to September 2004, when he took 70 wickets in 12 tests at an average of 19.8, against Bangladesh, West Indies and New Zealand – he has harvested just three wickets per Test at a Malcolmian, Prabhakaretic, sub-Pringlesque average of 37.5. If you then remove four further ‘Tests’ against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, that average creeps above 40, into the realms where Madal Lals, Ashley Gileses and Guy Whittals roam. If you then get a bit cheeky and whip out his 11 for 76 on a bouncily helpful wicket at Old Trafford against Pakistan, England are now relying on a bowler who for the vast majority of his career against top-class opposition on non-trampolining pitches averages 43 – slightly worse than the career averages of fast-bowling legends such as Champaka Ramanayake, Nixon McLean, Pramodya Wickramasinghe and Nathan Astle. Most players’ careers can be statistically picked apart in some way, but these are ugly numbers in anyone’s notebook, particularly if that person is using their notebook to plot a series-clinching Test win against Australia. There you go. You can’t argue with facts. Particularly when the facts are arguing with themselves.

England's win and Ricky's flight to Argentina

2009-08-19T04:27:59Z

I have finally emerged from my special shed at the end of my garden that I keep for emergency situations, such as nuclear war, Armageddon, a large meteor homing in on South London, and mentally recovering from watching England being humiliatingly obliterated in a crucial Test match. I spent six months in there after Adelaide 2006. I remain unconvinced that I did not re-emerge too soon. The £20 I forked out on a fifth-day ticket for Leeds proved to be one of my less sound financial investments, alongside the purchase of a surfboard made of salt, my bet that a zebra would win the Grand National by 2007, and a contribution to the research and development budget of a company making a sausage howitzer for rapid feeding of crowded school dining rooms. Was Headingley operating a Nigerian-banking-style internet scam, preying on vulnerable and easily-misled cricket fans such as myself by promising an unforgettable day’s cricket, with England potentially winning the Ashes and adding a new entry to its Top 10 List of Greatest Ever Moments, for just £20 – the price of four £5 notes − when they knew full well that England were planning to collapse like a Victorian lady at the unexpected sight of a gentleman’s danglers? I knew it seemed too good to be true, but I was sucked in and the media were so persuasive I felt I couldn’t turn them down. In the event, my Tuesday holiday at Headingley transpired to be a fairly dull experience, sitting alone in an ugly, empty stadium with a copy of Wisden, a pair of binoculars and an imagination. However, even trying to pretend England were knocking off 300 to win on the last afternoon proved impossible, and I ended up envisaging a mid-afternoon collapse and Ricky Ponting sprinting around the outfield with the Ashes screaming, “Yes, yes, yes, we’ve done it – we have vanquished the mightiest of the mighty.” To make matters worse, play in my imaginary final day ended late due to bad light and I missed my train back to London. ]]> Even the most ardent positivist in the England camp would concede that the fourth Test was a bit of a disappointment. The prize was within touching distance, but, instead of reaching out and grasping it, England tripped over their own shoelaces, landed headfirst in a bucket, staggered around blindly with the bucket lodged on their head, walked into a plate-glass mirror, staggered backwards, fell over a dog and tumbled out of a 15th floor window. Nevertheless, as the players of both teams have been chanting with monk-like repetition, it is Only One-All And Still All To Play For, despite Australia’s pronounced statistical superiority (they are averaging 13 runs per wicket more than England, more on which in tomorrow’s statfest of a blog). Furthermore, looking at History, that most seductive but useless of guides, the best Australia can hope for from this match is a draw. They have never won a decisive Ashes Test without the following two criteria being fulfilled: (1) Don Bradman is in the team; (2) it is the 1930s. Neither of those looks likely to happen at The Oval. Ponting and his men will therefore have to hope that England cannot force a victory. So, this is it. After all the build-up, the years of waiting, the endless speculation, and the nationwide frenzy of anticipation, finally, on Thursday, Jonathan Trott will make his Test debut. And the 2009 will reach its denouement. I confess to knowing little about the former South African, but he has a solid overall first-class record and, as a horse for this particular final Test course, has been picked when bang in form, and a loud bang at that. In previous times, the England selectors seemed to shy away from picking new players if they were in form, preferring to wait until they were struggling, and preferably, having to face top-notch opposition, before throwing them in, in an effort to undermine their confidence and self-belief for the long-term. It was a curious tactic, with hindsight. Bell is lucky to be playing – if Rudi Koertzen had used his eyeballs at Edgbaston he would have had three failures out of three and be contemplating a prolonged period on the sidelines learning not to put his leg in the way of inswingers. But the stage is set for one of the great career-transforming double-centuries of all time. England need major contributions from players who have failed to deliver them so far, and if they (and especially Flintoff) make a good or even non-cataclysmic start, the crowd, occasion and prospect of another drunken bus-tour around London and a chat with the Queen could inspire them to close the gap in quality between the sides that seemed apparent before the series and in Cardiff, then went AWOL for a couple of Tests, before re-emerging as a chasm in Leeds. I still think England have a chance of ensuring that their Ashes blimp soars victoriously to the skies on the helium of adrenaline and history, rather than merely Hindenburging into an inferno of defeat at the first opportunity. The good news for England is that, so far in this series, the performances in one match have generally not given many hints as to how the teams would play in the next. And they will know that, if it is a close game (and let’s hope that it is – there hasn’t yet been a match in this series in which both sides have played well), Australia may start thinking about how they really should have had these Ashes wrapped up and under the Christmas tree by now. And Ricky Ponting may start thinking how the last Australian captain to lose two Ashes series in England, Billy Murdoch in the late 19th century, ended up playing for England less than two years later. No-one could cope with that Bazooka Of Damocles pointing right into his face. THE CONFECTIONERY STALL OVAL TEST PREDICTION What the heck. England to win. I don’t really think that, but I’m trying to give optimism a go, just for a change. Flintoff to be knighted at tea on the final day before ripping through the Australian tail to clinch victory. Ponting to burn an effigy of himself on the outfield before going into hiding and being sighted in Argentina some years later. Brace yourselves for some hard-core Confectionery Stall stats tomorrow morning.

A quick Sunday stat

2009-08-09T10:55:02Z

How low can England go? Answer: very low © Getty Images

As I write, Broad and Prior are launching a spectacular Headingley-81-style fightback – a blazing partnership that has so far brought 22 defiant runs in just 20-odd minutes. Whether this develops into the 350-plus stand that might give Graham Onions a chance to do a Bob Willis remains to be seen, so, with the game still poised so delicately in the balance, here is a statistic for you. England’s number 3, 4 and 5 have in this game posted the worst ever Test performance by and England 3-4-5. The worst. In 890 Tests. Even counting matches when nightwatchmen have broken up the 3-4-5. Even in 19th-century games when the wickets sometimes literally had snakes in them. Ouch. (Counting only games in which numbers 3, 4 and 5 have been dismissed twice, which seems fair in the circumstances.) Bopara, Bell and Collingwood mustered 16 runs between them in their six innings. Even by the most positive-taking of modern standards, this was ‘a bit disappointing’ and ‘something that needs building on’. In fact it was the equal third worst performance by numbers 3 to 5 in the batting order in all Test history (excluding South Africa at Melbourne in 1931-2, when they used a completely different 3-5 in the second innings, to spectacular effect – Bell, Mitchell and Cameron managed to double the 5 runs accumulated by Christy, Taylor an Viljoen in the first). South Africa can proudly claim both first and second place in this list of shame. They managed 12 in a Test in 1888-89, at a time when they still pretty much pitched up at the ground and asked passers-by if they fancied a game of cricket for a couple of days. And, least triumphantly of all, Keith, Endean and McLean – not the worst 3-5 in Test history by any measure – amassed 6 runs in the 1955 Oval Test. Scores of 5, 0 and 1 in the first innings paved the way for three second-knock ducks as Laker and Lock filled their spinny boots on a turning wicket. So at least Bopara, Bell and Collingwood can claim to have done 166% better than the 1955 South African 3-to-5. A small consolation as they take their place in English cricket’s slightly embarrassed history books. [A quick update – Prior is out. I daresay the odds are now even longer the 500-1 England defied 28 years ago. But Broad has just been dropped by Siddle. Could that be the crucial turning point? No. No. No. It could not.] For English masochists, those who dislike England for whatever reason, and those who simply love the statistics of failure, here is a list of the worst ever performances by an England 3, 4 and 5. Please ignore if you are of a sensitive disposition, or closely related to the three batsmen involved. Thanks be to Statsguru.

Confectionary Stall Mid-Series Award Nominations

2009-08-07T05:35:52Z

The Ashes scoots rapidly towards its denouement, with the fourth Test beginning today just under a month after the first. Both sides may be wondering whether they will ever again bowl the other out twice without serious meteorological assistance. And both may think that it is in their interests to club together and purchase a cloud machine. England may be pondering whether or not they will still be allowed a bus parade and some New Year’s honours if the crowd keeps booing Ricky Ponting. Or if they grind out a 1-0 series win. Ponting himself may be contemplating the inevitable consequences of becoming the second Australian captain after Billy Murdoch to lose two Ashes series in England – i.e. playing for England, which is what Murdoch found himself doing 18 months after his 1890 Ashes failure. An intriguing prospect, particularly with the next Ashes in Australia 18 months away, should Ponting prove able to displace Ravi Bopara from the England line-up. The prospects for Headingley have been extensively discussed by far worthier keyboards than mine, so instead of wrongly guessing what might happen over the next five days, I present the first batch of nominations for the Confectionery Stall 2009 Ashes Mid-Series Awards.]]> CONFECTIONERY STALL MAN-OF-THE-FIRST-60%-OF-THE-SERIES Jimmy Anderson The new Botham. Anderson has the priceless ability to take wickets with good balls and, more importantly, bad ones. He plucks stunning catches out of the air like an unusually athletic seal snaffling a particularly rapid herring. And he is a flamboyant batsman willing and able to clatter good-length balls to the cover boundary. All he needs is the occasional cigar, a slightly less honed tummy, and some ducks, and the similarity will be complete. Please, England, just don’t spoil him by making him captain. Monty Panesar Panesar is, or at least should be, a live candidate for the Man-of-the-Series gong. His 7 not out was the most influential single performance of the rubber to date, just sneaking ahead of Mitchell Johnson’s opening spell at Lord’s. Paul Collingwood, Anderson and Graeme Swann all contributed to the rearguard, but they could have been expected to perform as they did on a friendly wicket. For Panesar to play out 40 minutes in any circumstances, with barely a droplet of alarm, could not have been predicted. If cricket is now more about momentum than cricket, Panesar has been the key player thus far. Rudi Koertzen Harshly criticised for his some of his less certifiably correct decisions, Koertzen has valid excuses for most if not all of his so-called mistakes. When he apparently gave Michael Clarke out in the first innings at Edgbaston, he was in reality merely joining in with a Mexican wave. When allegedly giving Ian Bell not out LBW to Johnson when it appeared that the batsman’s L was about as B his W as is physically possible, it was because Koertzen had spotted that the scalding Birmingham sun had melted the varnish on the bails, welding them together in an unbreakable union. Had Johnson’s surprise perfect inswinger managed to avoid Ian Bell’s shuffling limb, it would have knocked middle stump out, but left the bails in place. As Hawkeye failed to show. (It should also be noted that, when England desperately needed Koertzen to keep giving people out on the grounds that they were nearly out, he started getting some close decisions right. He received minimal credit for this – such is the lot of the Umpire.) (And what a set-up by Johnson – an entire two Tests of near unbroken garbage just to maximise the surprise of that one ball to Bell.) DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE SERIES Simon Katich Fans of the New South Wales nurdler would have been hoping and expecting to see a series of Gary Kirsten-like crabby accumulation, and would have been delighted with his century in Cardiff. Since then, however, he has concocted an array of recklessly macho and carelessly loose shots for which he would have been roundly slammed if he had been a player with a reputation for recklessness or carelessness. Phil Hughes One of the most intriguing questions to emerge from the series so far is: how many Test runs will Phillip Hughes score in his career? He currently has 472. The answer could be anywhere between 15,000 at the higher end, and 471 at the lower. Many factors will decide this, including whether or not Test cricket dies on the vine, whether Hughes volunteers for a manned mission to Mars, whether he stops hitting short balls into the hands of fielders, and which performance was more indicative of his future achievements – this Ashes, or the series in South Africa, when Hughes scored more runs against a better attack in tougher conditions. Mitchell Johnson But he’s brewing something. I can feel it. (But then I could also feel Geraint Jones developing into a top-6 specialist Test batsman. We are both still waiting.) The Pitches This has been an interesting and often exciting series despite the surfaces, which, to the untrained eye (e.g., either of my two eyes), have been almost indistinguishable from each other, and provided a stupidly tough examination for the bowlers, but a relatively facile quiz for the batsmen. There have been two circumstances in which the bowlers have dominated – (1) when the ball has swung; and (2) when the batsmen have taken collective leave of their senses. The tension and rarity of a close Ashes series has camouflaged the drab nature of the pitches. If this is the future of Test cricket, however, it will need more than pink balls to keep people interested. More nominations to follow tomorrow. Please make your own nominations too. Each of the winners will receive a commemorative Confectionery Stall bag of dried apricots, personally signed (on receipt of a stamped, addressed envelope). HEADINGLEY PREDICTION Australia are still vulnerable to swing. They have dealt with it with the practiced expertise of a crocodile delivering a baby. England have been little better. Whoever gets the better of the clouds could win. The weather forecast is quite good. It could be a draw. England may miss Flintoff – medical science has kept him going in the series. Forty years ago, he would have been humanely put down by now. I think Australia’s bowlers might click in this match, especially if they pick four front-line quickies. The Confectionery Stall insulates itself from disappointment with pessimistic predictions – Australia to win in four days. (I have a ticket for the fifth day.) England, however, would be happy with a draw to leave Australia having to win at the Oval − Australia have never won a decisive final Ashes Test without Don Bradman in the team. FACT OF THE DAY If England can pull off a shock first-day win (which no team has managed to do in first-class cricket since 1960), they will become the first England team to win the Ashes inside a month since 1890. Australia have pulled of this remarkable feat of Speed Urn Acquisition three times this decade. To achieve this, England’s best tactic would be to insert Australia, bowl them out for 70-odd, cut loose for 25 overs, declare on 180-3, then skittle the Aussies again for 80 to win by an innings. This is, admittedly, a high-risk gambit. But history beckons with a brightly glowing finger.

The official (Confectionery Stall) Ashes quiz Part 2

2009-07-30T04:35:11Z

Welcome to Part 2 of the Official Confectionery Stall Multiple Choice 2009 Ashes Quiz. Following last week’s four questions about the Lord’s Test, this week’s exam focuses more on the Edgbaston Test, which, if predictions about the weather and pitch prove true, is already shaping up to be one of the most exciting matches ever played in the Birmingham area which straddles July and August 2009. Pencils at the ready... 5. Who is going to win at Edgbaston?
(a) England They’ve already broken one hoodoo – not having beaten Australia at Lord’s since Greta Garbo was still a proactive conversationalist. In the oldest of all cricketing proverbs: One Brings Two. They will surely now break another hoodoo – not having beaten Australia in the next Test match after beating Australia at Lord’s since 1890. It will help if the team can follow the example of the majority of the English media, and forget how they only managed to escape from the jaws of defeat in Cardiff by first coating themselves in mayonnaise and climbing into those jaws. (b) Australia Mitchell Johnson has set himself up perfectly for a startling return to form, catapulting England out on a docile pitch before slugging a match-winning century. Australia’s batsmen are averaging almost 10 runs an innings more than England’s in the series so far, and, as Michael Clarke himself said, his team is never more dangerous than when the chips are down. Recent history suggests this is almost as big a lie as his claim that this Australian team is as good as any he has played in, but you have to admire the lad for saying it anyway. (c) No-one – it will be a draw Rain is forecast, the pitch is reportedly flat as a demotivated pancake, and, more pertinently, both sides should have learned from their mistakes of the first two Tests, each of which were played on friendly batting surfaces, and each of which required batting of catastrophic ineptitude to lead make a positive result possible. Even so, the runs-per-wicket for both sides put together (43) is so far the highest ever in an Ashes series. It will take something special for either side to force a defeat out of themselves. Furthermore, in the West Indies, England proved masters at accidentally playing for the draw when they need to play for the win. They should therefore have no trouble playing for the draw when they actually need to play for the draw. Three stalemates would be enough to match the glorious 1926 and 1953 one-nil-out-of-five triumphs. (d) No-one – it will be a tie There has never been an Ashes tie. The last Edgbaston Test was the closest the two teams have ever come. There have been 321 Tests between these nations. Statistically, with only four results possible, around 80 of those should have been ties. It is long overdue. ]]> 6. All cricket fans will be hoping that Edgbaston is not scarred by further umpiring controversies of the sort seen and giggled/whinged about (delete according to hemisphere of origin) at Lord’s. What is the long-term solution to disputes such as the Hughes-Strauss-Koertzen-Ponting-Ball-Grass-Referral Incident? (a) End all arguments by removing caught from the list of dismissals. This will also encourage more exciting, aggressive bowling. Fast bowlers would be forced to bowl yorkers in an attempt to dismiss batsmen bowled or lbw, and bouncers in an effort to make batsmen retire hurt. In this age of breakneck modernisation, it could also herald a return to underarm daisy-cutters − cricket re-embracing its roots. (b) Take the fielder’s word for it – we’re all adults, and it’s only a game. The batting team must, however, be entitled to demand an instant on-field polygraph test to ensure the catcher is telling the truth. If it transpires that he has fibbed, he should be paraded around the boundary, booed and pelted with biscuits shaped like Colin Cowdrey. (c) Alternating decisions – one out, the next one not out. This new system was trialled at Lord’s – refer one, don’t refer the next. Statistics say that such a system will even out over the course of a series, or, at least, over the course of the rest of cricket history. (d) Dye the entire outfield with a bright purple pigment. This is a simple, error-proof solution to demonstrate conclusively whether or not a ball has bounced before thudding into a fielder’s hands. Only the 22-yards between the stumps would be left unpurpled. The ball would be thoroughly cleaned by the umpire before each delivery. After a disputed catch, the umpire would inspect the ball. If the purple pigment is visible on the ball, the ball would have been shown to have bounced, the catch would be duly disallowed, and the umpire would tut at the fielder concerned and start muttering about how the entire planet has lost the plot. The pigment would have to be re-applied to the outfield between each over, to ensure a fair and even covering at all times. Batsmen would not be allowed to coat their bats in the purple pigment. Traditionalists will of course bleat about how cricket has always been played on a green surface, players will complain about getting purple all over their clothes and faces, and groundsmen will whinge about the added workload and potential toxicity of a substance that may have to be radioactive in order both to be sufficiently purple and not to cause interference on TV pictures. Surely, however, reaching a fair decision is more important than any of these minor quibbles, in this day and age? 7. Last week, I promised to ask the question: How much will England miss Kevin Pietersen? On reflection, this can now be more productively phrased: Which of the following true statistics about Ian Bell is the most misleading? (a) Ian Bell averages 25 against Australia The widely-accepted idea that Ian Bell has ‘never really done it against Australia’ is true in the sense that he has never really done it against Australia, but false in the sense that the statistics point unerringly to him doing it in no uncertain terms this time. Whilst only a mathematical Luddite could dispute that Bell averages 25 in his 10 Ashes Tests, and has been out in single figures 11 times in his 20 innings, it should also be remembered that he averaged 17.1 in 2005, but a much more respectable if scarcely abacus-shattering 33.1 in 2006-7. This represents a 93% series-to-series improvement. If the Warwickshire Whirlwind continues to ski the right way up this graph, he will average 64 this year, 124 in 2010-11, and 240 in 2013, by when he will be universally recognised as the greatest player of all time. It should also be remembered that Bradman scored six ducks against England, so he wasn’t all good either. And, in the 2006-07 series, Bell scored more runs than Strauss, Cook, Flintoff, Panesar, Prior, Bopara, Botham, Barrington, Compton, Hutton, Hammond or Hobbs. Or Gilchrist or Langer. (b) Ian Bell averages over 40 in Test cricket This puts him above, among others, England stalwarts such as Stewart, Atherton, Hussain, Lamb, Gatting, Greig (both Tony and Ian), Fletcher, Woolley and even Hutton (Richard, admittedly, not Len). He averages 48 in the first innings when games are shaped, averages 47 batting at No. 4, 74 with Strauss as captain, 45 in England, and 43 in third Tests (although he’d better perform at Edgbaston – he averages 18.5 in the fourth and fifth Tests of series). And he averages 297 when Kevin Pietersen is not in the team. Against this, he has mostly played on nice and friendly pitches, it’s a batsman’s game these days, averages mean less and less in modern Test cricket, he filled his boots against Bangladesh at the start of his career (see Pietersen-absent stat above), filled them again against a fairly weak Pakistan attack in 2006, since when he has scored three centuries in three years. And you can dress a statistic us as smartly as you like, but it doesn’t guarantee that it will be dancing cheek-to-cheek with truth at the end of the evening. In summary, Ian Bell could have done better, Ian Bell could have done worse. Bearing in mind the class of his best innings and finest strokes, however, the overall feeling is that Ian Bell’s career has so far been like a fillet of prime sirloin made into an adequate stroganoff. Neither inedible, nor incredible. (c) Ian Bell averages 1.3 catches per match in Ashes Tests This compares domineeringly against Kevin Pietersen’s figure of 0.3. So he is effectively worth one extra innings per Test. Which means that Bell’s batting average of 33 is in effect almost identical to Pietersen’s 50. 8. Which part of their game will Australia have to improve most to avoid repeating their disappointing performance at Lord’s? a) Bowling. b) Batting. c) Rudi Koertzen. And, finally, as a tie-breaker in case the scores are level: 9. Will there ever be another Test pitch with genuine pace and bounce in it? a) No. b) Probably not. The deadline for completion of the quiz in order to win the chance to captain your country in a Test match is 1st January 2019. Answers to follow at some point before then.

The official (Confectionery Stall) Ashes quiz

2009-07-25T12:00:00Z

As promised, here is Paper 1 of the Official Confectionery Stall Multiple Choice 2009 Ashes Quiz/Exam. Answer the following four questions to the very best of your ability. No cheating. Read your answers aloud to your computer or a trusted household pet, then wait and see what happens. All those scoring above the Test batting average of their favourite player are entitled to draw themselves a certificate, and scribble their names onto a Test scorecard from an appropriate edition of Wisden. QUESTION 1: Where does the Lord’s victory rank amongst the great achievements in British history? (a) Not very high. It’s only a game. And Australia were, for the most part, garbage. When a solid but habitually unspectacular opening partnership such as Cook and Strauss put on 196 in 40-odd overs without having to think about taking even half a risk, you know you’ve bowled like a skip full of rotting potatoes. (b) Quite high. Below Shakespeare’s plays, but above Buck’s Fizz winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 1981. One of the great monkeys has been removed from the national sporting back, but that will be forgotten if England allow the monkey to then climb up a tree and urinate on their picnic by failing to win the Ashes. (c) Top of the list. Bar none. The Cardiff-Lord’s double was the finest escape-followed-by-victory combination since the Dunkerque-Battle-of-Britain one-two in 1940. However, bearing in mind that Britain had prevailed in a world war just over 20 years previously, the Lord’s win has even greater rarity value. QUESTION 2: Why did Australia play so astonishingly badly for large and decisive parts of the game? (a) Because they are a largely inexperienced team, and therefore prone to inconsistency, with some key players out of form. We don’t yet know how good they are. Their impressive series win in South Africa looked like a resurgence after back-to-back defeat in India and against the Proteas. But was the away victory over Graeme Smith’s team what economists would call a ‘dead cat bounce’ – the short-lived but misleading rise of a plummeting stock before it plonks back down onto the ground, lifeless and worthless, like a cat lobbed out of an office window? If so, can Ponting and Nielsen resuscitate the cat? Are the Australians willing and able to kneel down and give mouth-to-mouth to a cat? Or is the cat actually fine? Did the cat deliberately throw itself out of the window to pass the time on a dull afternoon, play dead for a while to attract some attention, whilst planning to leap back to its feet and miaow, “I’m fine, never felt better, what are you all fussing about? I suppose a bowl of milk’s out of the question?” (b) Because the entire Australian nation has completely lost its manhood. Where Merv Hughes sported a moustache that simply bellowed, “I mean business, and I’ve got half my lunch stuck on my upper lip to prove it,” now Peter Siddle has a small and unforgivable tuft of hair languishing apologetically below his mouth. And what about Haddin’s comments about Hauritz’s finger dislocation? “I don't know if I can talk about it,” wept the wicketkeeper, wiping a tear from his eye with a trembling glove. “I don’t like seeing those things,” he continued, whilst calling for a little teddy bear to cuddle to help him through the ordeal. “My stomach can’t handle it,” he concluded, before running away and hiding under a desk until he was sure it was safe to emerge. Allan Border must be spinning in his still-empty grave. (c) They didn’t. No less an authority on the matter than Ricky Ponting said so, and he should know. (d) Because of Rudi Koertzen.

QUESTION 3: So did Michael Clarke really, honestly, mean it when he claimed before the first Test that “we’re as good as any team I have been part of for Australia”? a) Yes. Absolutely. He believes it to the very bottom of his baggy green soul. But he is also suffering from major amnaesia after headbutting a large, moving truck. He cannot remember anything from before June 2009. b) No. He’s not a total idiot. But, in the circumstances, he was unlikely to say: “Hauritz is a decent tweaker, but let’s be honest, he’s barely fit to play the same sport as Warney. Siddle gives it a go but if he’s Glenn McGrath then I’m Cyndi Lauper. And Mike Hussey is nowhere near as good as that guy Michael Hussey who played for us a couple of years ago.” c) Yes. But he didn’t finish the sentence. He was distracted by a low-flying buzzard before he could continue: “... that has contained five players whose name begins with H. No doubt about it.” Or, possibly: “... at motorcycle pyramids. Yeah, we’re great at the old team stunt riding. Managed to get all eleven of us balanced on a Kawasaki last week whilst Punter pulled a wheelie. Bradman’s so-called ‘Invincibles’ could barely even ride a bicycle by comparison.” QUESTION 4: Did Strauss really catch Hughes? a) Yes, sure did, went in clean as a nun’s whistle. Look in the scorebook if you’re still not sure. Or, more practically, look at a scorecard in a newspaper or on the internet, they’ll probably be easier to access than the actual Lord’s scorebook. But the point stands. He’s the England Cricket Captain. Not any old Cricket Captain. The England Cricket Captain. By definition, he is the most honourable man in the known world. b) Possibly. He probably caught it on the end of his fingers, but it might have brushed the grass on its way in, which he would not necessarily have felt. This explains why he celebrated spontaneously, and without the evil glint in his eye or demonic cackle that surely would have been present had he been pulling a fast one. c) No. Clearly not. The ball almost bounced over his head before he caught it. The fact that he even thought about claiming the catch proves that the entire English nation has not only gone to the dogs, but it has dressed up in a cat outfit and is waiting for those dogs to eat it. This ‘catch’, if such a word is applicable to such an act of nefarious naughtiness, proves that the public school system is nothing more than a factory of cheats, liars and hoodwinkers.

The remaining questions will be unleashed on Monday, including (in case any of you wish to do some revision before sitting Part 2): How much will England miss Kevin Pietersen? What is the solution to disputed catches? Who will win at Edgbaston? And, in retrospect, could the 12th-man glove-trundling incident in Cardiff have been the most important single moment in English cricket history? The correct answers will be given after the Edgbaston Test, or possibly after Headingley, or even after the Oval, depending on when the truth makes itself known to the relevant authorities

Wanted: knees and ankles for Freddie

2009-07-24T03:16:49Z

Hello again Confectionery Stallers. I wrote last week about how the Cardiff Test made me feel like a teenager again, with its Australian dominance and voracious run-scoring painfully echoing 1989 and 1993. At Lord’s my regression continued – I felt like the 10-year-old that I was in 1985, watching England casually demolish substandard Australian bowling, then blast through a tentative top order. Is Freddie Flintoff really the new Richard Ellison? To complete that distinctly mid-80s Ashes feeling, five Australians were good enough to get themselves out pulling or hooking in the first innings – as if an entire team of cloned Andrew Hilditches had taken the field. At the age of 34, having never seen England even come close to defeating Australia at Lord’s (the last time England even took a first-innings lead over the Aussies at Lord’s was 1975), I had long since assumed this would simply be something that I would never see in my lifetime, alongside such distant but hopeless scenarios as England fielding a four-prong wrist-spin attack, the monarch leading Britain into battle again, Neil Armstrong landing on the moon for a second time, a dog being elected prime minister of a G8 nation, the Vatican becoming a Test-playing nation (although St Peter’s Square remains one of the flattest batting tracks in the Catholic world), the development of the self-cooking chicken, the extinction of the wasp, and lasting peace in the Middle East. I am still finding it hard, therefore, to adjust psychologically to the fact that Hedley Verity is no longer the last man to have bowled England to victory in an Ashes Test at Cricket HQ. ]]> in Mohali in 1997-98. Kuruvilla scored 35 not out, compared to Flintoff’s 34 for once out, and took 6 for 117, as opposed to the English titan’s comparatively profligate 6 for 119. Few in the cricket world, however, talk excitedly of ‘Kuruvilla’s Match’. None, in fact. Not even members of the Kerala quite-quickman’s immediate family. Yet, for drama, hostility, and the impact of one player grasping a match by the neck and throttling it until it stopped squeaking, Flintoff’s efforts on an unresponsive wicket on rebellious knees were staggering. If England take the series, Flintoff will retire from Tests as the first bowler in history to be able to claim that 50% of his career first-class five-wicket hauls had played decisive roles in securing Ashes. He is a cricketer who transcends statistics. He will not be remembered for his apparently unremarkable numbers. Which is fortunate, because his statistics themselves are hugely misleading, to the extent that any half-decent judge would throw them out of court as evidence in the case of R. versus Flintoff’s Claims To Cricketing Greatness. Ignore his career bowling average of 32.17 – identical to Ewen Chatfield’s to two decimal points, almost a run-per-wicket worse than Alan Mullally’s. Flintoff was barely even a bowler at all when he began in Test cricket. He took seven wickets in his first 10 Tests, and just 43 in his first 26 games, spread over five years to the end of the 2003 series with South Africa. His first Test wicket was just his eighth in first-class cricket, hardly the sign of a natural wicket-taker destined to take the world by storm. More the sign of a poor man’s Derek Pringle. Essentially, Flintoff had to learn to bowl in the international arena (even today, over the course of his career, he has taken only 124 wickets in 104 first-class matches outside Test cricket, which is a fair few more than I have taken, admittedly, but fewer than the average county trundler). Since 2003, however, his long and usual bowling apprenticeship complete, he has taken 182 Test wickets in 51 games, at an average fractionally under 28 and with a strike-rate of 56 – figures in the same bracket as the likes of Jon Snow, Angus Fraser, Jeff Thomson, Merv Hughes, Darren Gough, Graham McKenzie and Wes Hall. If modern batsman can be mentally debited around five runs from their career averages due to a combination of dead pitches, knackered bowlers, space-age bats and advertising-age boundaries, then bowlers should also be credited a little. If Flintoff had been bowling in the 1980s, and had entered the Test game somewhere near fully formed, I would suggest that his career average would almost certainly have been in the mid-to-low 20s. Flintoff’s self-improvement, particularly as a bowler, aided by patience on the part of selectors and captains, is one of the most remarkable stories of modern English cricket. Seeing the shuffling 20-year-old who made an uncertain, ineffectual debut in 1998 against South Africa – two matches which brought him 17, 0 and 0 with the bat, and one wicket for 112 – who would have predicted that he would score even 370 Test runs or take 25 wickets, let alone 3700 and 225? By all of which, what I really mean is: I’m going to miss him, and Test cricket is going to miss him. I don’t care if he sometimes bowls a bit too short, habitually gets out poking at something nondescript outside off stump, has occasionally drunk from a flagon containing something other than an isotonic sports drink, and hasn’t been involved in many England wins in recent years. (The last of these is hardly Flintoff’s fault. England haven’t been involved in many England wins of relevance in recent years.) And if anyone is willing to donate a healthy pair of knees and ankles, I personally will contribute to a surgery fund to keep him going as a Test cricketer for the next five years. Whether he likes it or not. To celebrate the once-in-anyone-under-the-age-of-75’s-lifetime occasion of an England Ashes win at Lord’s, The Confectionery Stall is delighted to announce the launch of the first ever Official Confectionery Stall Multiple Choice 2009 Ashes Mid-Series Quiz. The questions will be issued in the form of two exam papers, the first on Saturday, and the second on Monday. If you score over 99.94% (the mark achieve by a computer simulation of the late Sir Donald Bradman when it sat this test), you will win the chance to captain your country in a Test match (subject to permission from the selectors and players of the relevant team).

Interesting positives from Cardiff

2009-07-16T02:56:19Z

Ah, the joys of youth. I spent most of the Cardiff Test feeling like a teenager again – in that it was harrowingly reminiscent of the 1989 and 1993 Ashes cloutings that England received. History, it seemed, was repeating itself like senile old biddy historians have always assumed it was. As the Australians tortured England’s bowlers and the English top order disintegrated more crumblily than a packet of dry biscuits in an earthquake, there cannot have been an England supporter who did not think at some point: “That’s that for the next fifteen years then.” At lunch on the final day, I sat down with my wife and children and desperately attempted to write a list of positives for England take from the match. My family contributed little of use. My baby son seemed unwilling even to talk about it, so traumatising was the action unfolding before his seven-month-old eyes. I racked my brains, but did not make much progress beyond: (1) No-one died, (2) Worse things happen at sea, and (3) Shane Warne had taken fewer wickets than he had in any Ashes Test in England (or Wales) since the Oval Test of 1989. England have finally worked out how to play the Master Leggie – make sure that he (a) has retired, and (b) is in Las Vegas playing Poker. With hindsight, it now seems obvious. However, the last-day heroics of Collingwood and the tail saved England’s extremely streaky bacon, and papered over some alarmingly seismic cracks in their performance. Looking on the positive side, ultimately time deprived England of the chance to push for victory. If only this had been a timeless Test – no side in the world would have fancied chasing an awkward 30 or 40 to win on a wearing sixth-day pitch. ]]> here.