Twenty20 cricket's success depends upon whether new spectators carry on watching © Getty Images

Five years ago, the first domestic Twenty20 match at Lord’s attracted 30,000 spectators. The two matches at Lord’s played so far this season have attracted about half that number – not each, but together. All the counties are seeing smaller crowds this year than last, and last year’s were lower than the year before. TV ratings for the IPL this year were down about 15% on last year.

The novelty value of Twenty20 seems to be wearing off. It has undoubtedly brought new people into watching cricket, whether live or on TV, but long-term success depends on whether these new cricket spectators carry on watching.

If their continued loyalty is dependent on the games being exciting, though, the prospect is fairly bleak, because relatively few Twenty20 games are particularly exciting. Only about 30% of games in the IPL have come down to the last over, a figure similar to the English domestic competition. In international Twenty20, fewer than one game in four goes to the wire. At least half the games are pretty much done and dusted by the end of the second innings powerplay, the remaining hour of the match merely giving concrete form to the inevitable.

Not that these figures are bad - in cricket terms. Longer games are even less likely to change their obvious trajectory in the last hour of play. But it compares very unfavourably with other mass-appeal sports.

In huge numbers of soccer games, the result is still uncertain with five minutes to go: a single goal would still be enough to equalise or one side to take a late lead. Hoping to get five runs in the bottom of the ninth in baseball may require huge optimism, but making up a one or two-run difference remains within most teams’ capacity - it only takes one big hit.. With their higher scores, oval ball codes of football tend to be more or less decided rather earlier – once a team needs to score more than once and at least every five minutes, they are very likely to lose – but the tension usually lasts well past the two-thirds point.

Twenty20 moves considerably faster than the longer forms of cricket, but by comparison with other sports it is like watching people racing through treacle.

Longer forms make up for inevitability by offering a stage for individuals to shine. Within the context of a virtually-decided match, there are often subsidiary dramas to sustain interest. Bowlers can get useful hauls and batsmen can play innings long enough to be memorable. Twenty-wicket cricket, whether four-day or five-day, has the further advantage that while it may be obvious that one side cannot win, the possibility that they will not lose remains open right until the end.

Twenty20, though, depends almost entirely on the result for drama. In four overs, a bowler is doing well to take even two wickets, and it takes something spectacular for an individual batsman to stand out. There is much less to talk about with your mates on the way home.

I am not trying to knock Twenty20. I enjoy Twenty20 a great deal. It doesn’t bother me that it does not in practice live up to the ambitious marketing of thrills and spills all the way; I am wholly accustomed to watching matches where not much happens, so one close game in three is quite OK in my book. What is far more dubious is whether the casual fans who have been sufficiently attracted by the new format to give boring old cricket a try will persist with it once they’ve rumbled that underneath the glitz, flashing lights and dancing girls, the central attraction is still cricket.

A few months ago I wrote a piece that questioned the role of the coach, especially in relation to John Dyson and the West Indies when they cocked up the Duckworth Lewis formula in that ODI a few months ago.

Last night, against my better instincts (yet again), I stayed up to watch the West Indies chase a challenging 329 target set by England at Edgbaston. I never really expected them to win but I figured that the chase would be short and entertaining with players like Gayle, Bravo, Sarwan, Chanderpaul etc playing like millionaires in pursuit of a 6+ rpo target on a good pitch. After all, commonsense would dictate that they had no choice but to play shots and keep playing shots until the very end. I figured they might be bowled out for 220 in the 35th over, well worth sacrificing a few hours of sleep to watch some dazzling strokeplay.

Wrong. In hindsight, I should have just switched off and gone to bed as soon as Gayle and Sarwan were dismissed early doors. What was subsequently dished up for the next 46 overs was an absolute waste of time (apart from a brief cameo from the admirable Bravo). It showed total contempt for the viewing public. It was an exercise in cynicism to watch a team just bat 50 overs with no genuine intention of trying to win. At a time when the 50 over game is under threat from the T20 mania that is sweeping the game, the West Indies did everything possible to undermine the integrity of international ODI cricket.

More to the point, it made me realise that Dyson probably has no influence on team tactics or has no idea of what it means. I’m not sure who controls the dynamic in the dressing room but whoever it is, Gayle or Dyson, they are clearly out of their depth when it comes to understanding what it takes to try to win a game of cricket. Or they just don’t care. Perhaps both.

Chanderpaul’s innings, after a brisk start, disintegrated into something that almost defied belief. In the context of an asking rate that never got below 6.5 runs per over, his performance was almost like he was making a silent protest at being left to shoulder the batting responsibilities yet again. It’s not like he was trying to smash the ball and kept missing – no, he just went through a 25 over patch when he made no effort to do anything but push singles. It was astounding to watch the required rate climbing whilst Chanderpaul, capable of playing some stunning shots, seemingly oblivious to the game situation. Even Denesh Ramdin who scored at run-a-ball and has a more limited arsenal of strokes was too slow in the context of a run rate that required much more intent than pushing singles.

The final straw for one sleepy, grumpy spectator on a winter’s night in Australia was to keep waiting for the final powerplay in the hope that it would spark some sort of action. My justification for refusing to go to bed was twisted logic: having stayed up this long, I’d be disappointed if old Chanders exploded in the powerplay (as we know he can) and I missed it. So I waited. And waited. And waited.

I’m still struggling to understand Dyson or Gayle’s rationale for delaying the powerplay until the run rate was almost 12 runs per over. Perhaps they had honestly gone beyond caring. It’s been a tough, cold tour and maybe they’ve just lost interest. What other explanation can there be for rational, intelligent people to be blind to the bleeding obvious. What possible reason could there have been for not taking the powerplay earlier when it was a mere 8 runs per over and there was even the faintest hope of changing the momentum of the game?

As it turned out, my 6 year old son heard the television in the lounge room and sleepily crawled into my lap and watched about ten minutes of the game before asking me: “Dad, why haven’t they taken the powerplay yet? Are they really trying to win?”

It took him just ten minutes to figure it out. I wish I’d asked him earlier!

In March 1986, Graham Gooch’s 129* off 117 balls just got England over the line in what was reduced to a 37-over ODI against West Indies. Earlier in the tour, they had recorded their other victory by winning a four-day game against Jamaica. They lost the five Tests and the other two ODIs by massive margins, as well as four-day games against the Windward Islands and Barbados, and weren’t exactly impressive in the four-day games against the Leewards or Trinidad.

What we have just witnessed was as one-sided as the slaughters to which England were subjected twenty-odd years ago.

Back then, all we had to go on were the reports in the papers and the live radio commentary . The captain was David Gower, regularly pilloried along the lines of his being horizontal were he any more laid-back. The tabloids especially delighted in using words like “spineless” and accused the team of failing to try and of lacking guts or pride, and stopped only marginally short of calling for the ritual disembowelment of the captain as prelude to flaying alive the rest of the squad on their shameful return home. Sound familiar?

I could not then accept that the England players were quite as contemptible as the reports said. The charge which could be laid against them was defeatism: they were beaten before they even got on the plane because they expected to lose, which sure enough they went ahead and did.

After the Test series in the Caribbean, Chris Gayle intimated to several of the press party that the prospect of a swinging ball in a cold English May was not one that he or his players were relishing. The West Indies turned up like teenagers to a cinema showing “Bowlers of the Living Dead”, expecting to be scared out of their wits. It is to England’s credit that they largely managed to make the fantasy all too real. Anderson delivered high-class swing at pace, and if Stuart Broad’s command of the bouncer is not as sure as Joel Garner’s was, Ramnaresh Sarwan is unlikely to feel much like arguing the toss over it. And then there was the horror of Swann, all the worse for being unexpected.

I hope that’s what happened, anyway. I don’t want to live in a world where the failure of Shivnarine Chanderpaul to average 100 in a series can be used as evidence that he is not trying his damnedest for the team the way he has done throughout his infernally dogged career. I don’t want to believe that the younger players in the West Indies team aren’t storing away their hurt with a resolution that one day they will be stronger and better-equipped to make England pay.

Part of England’s problem in 1986 was that their captain was a rational man whose realism led him to the conclusion that his team were not good enough to win and was unable to pretend to them that they could. He was replaced later that year by Mike Gatting, the kind of optimist who believes that both sides start the game at 0 for 0 and either team can win. The following winter, Gatting’s team - which couldn’t bat, bowl or field - won the Ashes.

Chris Gayle’s brand of leadership is not what West Indies now need: they need someone who will lead a charge over the top in even a hopeless cause. The obvious choice is Dwayne Bravo, but an Englishman is bound to point to Ian Botham and Andrew Flintoff as evidence that charismatic, swashbuckling all-rounders do not necessarily make good skippers. So why not Fidel Edwards?

Phil Hughes’s early-season stint as Murali Kartik’s stand-in has finished and England’s limited-over squad has gathered, which results in the dispersal of Middlesex’s remarkable quartet of unorthodox batsmen – Hughes, Owais Shah, Eoin Morgan and Dawid Malan.

Born in four different countries and learning their cricket in a slightly different set of four countries, they have independently arrived at the conclusion that the stance in which they take guard is merely a take-off point. The conventional batsman does no more than go forward or back, and possibly move his front leg outside off stump to prevent the lbw, but when the ball is delivered, these four go a-roaming in search of the best place to play the shot they intend. There are a fair number of such batsmen these days, but it is rare to see virtually a whole top order made up of these crease-gypsies. Not that these four have much more in common – each has a highly individual style.

So far, two of them have made it to the highest level. The left-handed Hughes likes to back away and smash the ball through the off side while the right-handed Shah glides across his stumps to hit leg-side boundaries, so when the two bat together a captain can set an 8-1 field which doesn’t have to change over when the batsmen run a single. Hughes has successfully deployed this technique – or lack of it – in Test cricket; Shah has become a key member of the England ODI team by moving about in his crease but curbs his wanderlust in Tests, a self-imposed restriction which may lie at the heart of his relative failure in five-day cricket.

Malan, while born in Roehampton, grew up in South Africa and is not England-qualified for another few months, while Morgan has so far played ODIs for Ireland with very little to show for them - only the eagle-eyed will have noticed the 91 runs he amassed in nine games at the last World Cup. Both, though, could well become stars of the future.

Malan is the more normal of the two since he plays recognisable cricket shots, even if from positions in which ultra-correct batsmen like Peter May, Geoff Boycott or Greg Chappell would never have been seen dead. He caught the national eye last year in the Twenty20 Cup quarter-final . Most people turned on their TVs to see Fred Flintoff making one of his many comebacks and were rewarded with a rollicking half-century and a three-wicket haul from the megastar, but it was Malan’s astonishing 54-ball 103 which powered Middlesex through to Finals day and persuaded the England selectors to include him in their Performance Squad of up-and-coming players.

Morgan, though, is on the verge of making his England debut. If he does well, A&E units around the country will be overwhelmed by people coming in complaining of jaws dropping so fast that they break.

A couple of weeks ago, the Sky commentators were stunned by one of his boundaries very fine on the leg side: alien to the cricket canon, the shot would have been instantly recognisable to a hockey player as a blind-side backward pass. For Morgan’s first experience of hitting balls with wooden things came in the Irish game of hurling, which bears the same sort of relationship to hockey as Australian Rules does to football in that the ball spends most of its time flying around at chest height rather than zipping along the ground. Hurlers acquire an extraordinary flexibility in spinning round and hitting the moving ball in all sorts of directions: Morgan has translated this to cricket and come up with what may be a unique style.

Time and again when watching him, you see a smooth and effortless stroke and instinctively applaud the boundary but then scratch your head and wonder how on earth he accomplished it. At least in the domestic Twenty20 there is a big replay screen available to assist in deciphering what happened, for without one it is nigh-on impossible for cricket-trained senses to apprehend it.

Except, perhaps, for elderly Middlesex members whose memories stretch back sixty years. Though coming from a very different background, Morgan’s inventiveness is perhaps best likened to that of the grandfather of another current Middlesex player and sometime Cricinfo blogger: I fancy Denis Compton looks down at Morgan from the great pavilion in the sky and raises an approving glass to his spiritual heir.

	Andrew McDonald is among the few surprises in an otherwise predictable squad © AFP

For the first time in as long as I can remember, the announcement of the Ashes touring squad has been completely overshadowed in Brisbane by torrential rain, the likes of which the folk in Old Blighty are probably more accustomed to than us tropical folk. The sight of people marooned up creeks without paddles, confined to an indefinite period of loneliness is probably something that Andrew Symonds can relate to. His exclusion owes nothing to Mother Nature but it is still a sobering thought that his Test career may be over. One can only hope that ‘sober’ is a word that is now part of his lifestyle because his talent, though waning with age, is still worth the entrance money.

My initial gut feeling was that this was a squad without any major surprises. Australia have usually sent away at least one ‘bolter’ on most Ashes tours, a young tyro who has been identified as having potential and is picked on instinct rather than numbers. Wayne Holdsworth, Greg Campbell and Dirk Welham rank amongst the under-achievers. Terry Alderman and Michael Slater spring to mind as success stories. I’m not sure if Andrew McDonald really qualifies in that “young tyro” category but his selection might have been one of the more contentious ones in an otherwise predictable squad.

Phillip Hughes would indeed have been on the tour even if he hadn’t already played Test cricket but his instant stardom has ensured there was never any surprise about his passport being stamped. Perhaps Graham Manou might be considered lucky – he is not the youngest wicketkeeper going around Shield cricket but one cannot quibble with it either. Chris Hartley from Queensland staked a late claim with end-of-season runs and Tim Paine was highly regarded but they’ve gone with Manou and fair enough too.

The bowling attack is fascinating. Mitchell Johnson and Peter Siddle picked themselves, Brett Lee was always going to be given every chance to recover and Stuart Clark has always been perceived as an England specialist if he recovered in time. Ben Hilfenhaus is the player I’m excited about. If the conditions are anything like we’ve seen in the recent Tests against the Windies, he will be a handful, swinging the ball at +140 kph. The question is: will he make the first XI?

Watson’s ability to bowl will be a crucial aspect to the balance of the attack. If he can bat in the top 6 and bowl at full pace, that’s akin to having a Kallis-type player in your team (I’m not suggesting he is close to matching Kallis’ fantastic career stats but there are similarities). That will mean Haddin can bat at 7 and four specialist bowlers can sit behind him, making up a pretty useful seam attack if you can also get some overs out of Marcus North (if he plays). Watson’s bowling will crucially allow Australia to always play a spinner (Hauritz or North) and still have the luxury of 4 seamers. Throw McDonald into the mix and the batting becomes very long indeed with Johnson’s lusty hitting too. McDonald’s Derek Pringle style bowling may be quite a bonus in England you know.

The batting order virtually picks itself doesn’t it? The big assumption of course is that they will all fire at various stages throughout the series. No one in that top order is seriously under threat for the first few Tests you wouldn’t imagine. Australia has the usual plethora of left-handers which may nullify some of Anderson’s outswing but he showed that the inswinger can also be a dangerous weapon against the lefties. Gayle and Chanderpaul are not insignificant scalps.

Overall, a balanced squad without any major omissions or surprise inclusions. Doug Bollinger may feel a tad disappointed but who would you leave out? He’s already had enough of sitting on the sidelines so perhaps he is better off playing some cricket or having a break and waiting for his next opportunity. And one cannot help but wonder what more Brad Hodge has to do? Emigrate perhaps?

Watson is probably the only player for whom this is a make or break tour. Another significant injury and he may well cook his own goose. The Australian public recognise his talent but they are almost expecting him to break down. Michael Clarke’s back injury is probably the other major long-term concern but he may get away with not having to do much bowling.

Well, if Australia are expecting to do much pre-tour work at the Centre of Excellence in Brisbane, they may be better leaving for England immediately. Who would have thought it’d be drier over there? They’ll be practicing on slightly damp pitches over here for a few weeks yet!

	James Anderson bowled as well as any England swing bowler has these last twenty years © Getty Images

West Indian cricketers are not supposed to fear anyone – except their mothers. So what must have happened is that when Chris Gayle got home with the Wisden Trophy, his mother took one look at it and told him that it wasn’t his and he was to give it back to the people it really belonged to as soon as possible or there would be trouble. And if the other boys’ mothers said similar things, then we can understand why their performances at Lord’s and the Riverside were so abject, and perhaps even forgive them.

All right, so it was pretty chilly out there in the middle and the ball moved in the air and off the seam at times, but international-level cricketers ought to be able to make a better fist than that of conditions other than idyllic. Fidel Edwards managed to make some good use of the moving ball but his colleagues did not even get the ball to whisper, let alone talk. The batsmen decided to play as if the ball was not moving at all and trust to luck for survival, a policy with predictably grim results.

It gives me no pleasure at all to have to write that whatever credit they justifiably accumulated with their gritty determination to win in the Caribbean, they squandered in seven days of rolling over and dying in an English spring. Unless they really were doing what their mamas told them to.

There is a feeling, then, that England were merely beating the air, but even that has its benefits. It does the heart and confidence a lot of good to record thumping victories if you haven’t had one for a year.

The bowlers especially will feel a lot better for knowing that they can bowl very well indeed if there is a little help from the pitch and weather: even Tim Bresnan looked a handy back-up bowler once he could get some movement while James Anderson bowled as well as any England swing bowler has these last twenty years. Stuart Broad bounced Ramnaresh Sarwan out and Graeme Swann gave left-handers a lot of trouble. Assuming Fred Flintoff comes back to replace Bresnan, that leaves Graham Onions fighting it out with Ryan Sidebottom and Monty Panesar for the fifth bowler’s spot, the question being which of them best complements the other four in the conditions anticipated.

But what encouraged me most about their performance was that they enjoyed being at work. The mid-week crowds may have stayed away (for all the concerned comment about small gates, the one Saturday of actual play was almost a sell-out) and the media may have spent large parts of every press conference wheedling about the Ashes, but the captain and team director had clearly managed to get them to concentrate on doing the job in hand as well as they could and worry about what comes next when it arrives. There was an enthusiasm and brio about their play which belied the lack of attention being paid by anyone else.

For a team which was in turmoil five months ago, this is an impressive tribute to the management skills of Strauss and Flower, hereafter to be known as the Andrews Brothers.

Their task, which they have no choice but to accept, is to reassemble the group after the interlude of the ODIs against West Indies and the ballyhoo and disappointment as teams more skilled at Twenty20 leave England standing at the World Cup and get them to carry on from where they left off. Since this is Mission Impossible, this post will self-destruct five seconds after you read it.

It’s clear that Cricket Australia viewed him as a risky proposition and have therefore left him off their contract list. He’s not long returned to the game after battling a bout of depression/anxiety/battle fatigue, call it whatever.

His return from that mental injury did not stop him from breaking down with more physical ones. Unable to sustain his pace for more than a few overs, Australia’s selectors obviously felt they cannot afford the luxury of a fast bowler who can’t bat and is ponderous in the field. Perhaps when Warne, McGrath and Gillespie were in their prime, they could have contemplated a high-risk match winner but those halcyon days are long gone. They now need 11 fit players, each of them operating at full throttle. That’s what happens when you’re back with the rest of the pack. Like the global economy, this is a time for consolidation rather than speculation. Fair enough. Even Tait wouldn't argue with that logic I'm sure.

I can’t help but feel for the poor chap though. Denied the chance to play in the IPL because he was supposedly being rested for national duties, he is then informed that his contract will not be renewed. What exactly was he being saved for?

Surely the selectors must have known their own minds a few weeks ago. What has happened in the last few weeks in the physiotherapy room to suddenly make them realise that he was not going to make the cut? It’s hardly like he’s played a few games of cricket, bowled poorly and cooked his own goose. Has he turned up late for his massage sessions or something? If they honestly felt that he was probably going to miss out on the next contract list, why on earth did they deny him a chance to earn his living in the IPL and find his form again? It would be upto his IPL coach to decide whether to pick him or not.

Tait can have no complaints about missing out on a contract. His stuttering performances in the ODI’s last summer were not those of a player who deserved to play for his country. Anyone who has to be nursed through a ten over stint in four spells is clearly not much use in the modern game. But he is entitled to be aggrieved about a basic lack of transparency when it comes to the selector's long-term intentions. At best, it smacks of poor planning. At worst, it’s just plain unkind.

On his day, at the top of his game (which admittedly has not been all that often!), his unusual action and blistering pace is good for the game. A breath of fresh air for a game that has precious few old-fashioned characters. The game owes him nothing except perhaps a dash of honesty. That’s all he’d ask for I’m sure.

Five of the players involved in the Wisden Trophy series went to South Africa with the IPL, which many thought would be very poor preparation for playing Test cricket. So how have they done?

Ravi Bopara and Chris Gayle both both recorded similar figures, averaging about 28 with the bat at a strike rate of about 117. Gayle’s contributions were generally useful without being outstanding, while Bopara played one match-winning innings and some small ones. Both were thus moderately successful.

Bopara is the batting success story of the Tests so far. Gayle was going pretty well in the first innings at Lord’s before dragging one on, and was done by Anderson’s swing for a duck in the second.

Kevin Pietersen had a disappointing IPL, failing to record a hundred runs even in total over six innings. At Lord’s he was out first ball, beaten by a superb delivery from Fidel Edwards, who was the best bowler in the Test. Edwards had also been to the IPL, where his returns were adequate, being neither as impressive as Lasith Malinga’s nor as laughable as Andrew Flintoff’s.

The fifth was Paul Collingwood, who did not get a game in the IPL, and then looked out of touch during his brief Lord’s innings. Although not strictly relevant, Owais Shah also did a stint of training with an IPL team without getting on the field, and then returned to play 50-over cricket for Middlesex, lasting two and six balls in his two innings, the second of which realised one run.

Any competent statistician would point out that this is a very small sample from which to try and draw any conclusions, but the obvious one is that form is continuous from one form of the game to another. Gayle has always been more vulnerable to a swinging ball and Edwards is a better bowler when the ball swings, which accounts for the differences in their performances just as well as any other possible explanations, such as Gayle’s much-publicised wish to be somewhere else. If you play badly at Twenty20, you won’t immediately get better by playing in a Test, and if you don’t play at all, you’ll get out of touch.

What it definitely shows about Bopara, though, is that he is an adaptable and versatile batsman. He is quite content to watch and play quietly for periods as well as capable of mounting exciting assaults. He played good Twenty20 cricket in the IPL and then came back to play good Test cricket. The Australians will no doubt have noticed that he’s a good candidate for being caught at square leg when hooking poorly, but otherwise he seemed to make the transition entirely smoothly.

But is that not what one requires from any top player? Should there really be any surprise that a batsman can spot the differences in field settings when he is at the crease? Most of batting is knowing where the fielders are and attempting to hit the ball to where they aren’t while being cognisant of the sort of shot which is liable to cause the ball to go to them at catchable height and avoiding it. Attempting to whack every ball from a quick bowler over his head when there are four slips and a gully posted behind you is not clever cricket, and anyone worth picking in a Test match ought to be able to work that out without four weeks of rehabilitation from the adrenaline-fuelled stress of playing Twenty20.

What is essential in terms of preparation for playing well is being in good form and having your body adjusted to the correct time zone. In the end, being able to select your shots based on the merits of the ball, where the fielders are and what the state of the game is so basic that one wonders why anyone makes a fuss about the format it’s done in.

There is one scenario in which Pakistan's legal confrontation with the ICC over World Cup 2011 hosting rights could prove an intelligent move: if it forces both the ICC and Pakistan into a compromise that relocates the Pakistan-based games to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Indeed, this may well have been the ultimate strategic outcome in the mind of the PCB officials as they planned a litigious attack on the ICC.

Deep inside, even the PCB hierarchy understands that no visiting team will feel safe in Pakistan after the calamitous events of March this year in Lahore. Pakistan as a political and social entity has to enjoy a long run of peace and stability before the prevailing mood on that situation can be expected to change. But don't expect the PCB to admit as much; as the official protector of Pakistan cricket, it cannot afford to give the appearance of surrender.

The opportunity for a legal challenge to the ICC popped up unexpectedly for the PCB. It is only understandable that with the chips down and their backs to the wall, they will pounce on it. Unlike on previous occasions, when security concerns have been discussed, it appears that this time around due process was not followed. The PCB claims that relocating World Cup matches was not on the agenda of the recent ICC meeting, and when it was brought up, the PCB chairman Ijaz Butt was caught off guard. If this is true, then the ICC has no defence. Any law firm worth its salt – and DLA Piper, the group engaged by the PCB, is certainly one such – will smell blood and go for the kill.

Granted, Mr Butt should have done his homework on this topic. Granted, he and his aides should have been able to think on their feet and propose Dubai and Abu Dhabi as proxy venues. Had he done that during the meeting, it is possible that the compromise now being hoped for could have been reached without much fuss.

But even despite this missed opportunity, the PCB is in the rare position of having a strong hand. Pakistan's recent series against Australia has shown that the stadiums in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, with fantastic facilities and full-throated crowd support, are highly credible alternate venues. True, they are outside the boundaries of South Asia, but flying times are convenient, with a flight from Karachi to Dubai taking about only as long as a flight from Karachi to Islamabad. There is some concern that the arrangement has proved more expensive for the PCB than expected, but added expense is hardly a driving concern if you are trying to salvage World Cup hosting rights and the prestige that comes with them.

Put yourself in the PCB's shoes. It deserves some empathy. Several commentators have observed that this legal confrontation between the ICC and the PCB helps no one. Nothing could be farther from the truth, because it certainly helps Pakistan. It gives the PCB an opening that, for the first time in this atmosphere of fear and terror, could enable them to force a compromise. For if the ICC failed to follow due process, it has few options. With DLA Piper on the case, we can be sure we will get to the bottom of this.

A couple of weeks ago, I announced my intention to give this year's IPL a go, i.e., to try and see if I could get myself to support a team in cricket that was not a national representative side. I picked two teams: the Delhi Daredevils, because, I'm from Delhi (I still say that even though I left 'home in 1987), and Kings XI Punjab, because, well, my last name says so. I went for hometown and ethnic affiliation. I bought myself a broadband video package that gives me live telecasts,replays and highlights of all the games. I even baited Mumbai fans, just to get myself pumped up.

I'm not sure that all of this has worked for me. The first indication of this came in the Delhi vs. Chennai game on May 2nd. Delhi were chasing Chennai's 163, and to be honest, I was getting into the swing of things. After Dilshan fell with the score at 53, Dinesh Karthik and David Warner came together, and seemed to be taking Delhi toward Chennai's total. Both were batting well, and victory looked within sight. And since both players are not Delhi locals, my support for them could be seen to be a reasonably good indicator of the IPL's ability to overcome my desire to have just homegrown folks playing for my hometowns team. Of course, I've admired Karthik as a player for the Indian team (and even had high hopes he would find a permanent place in the side) so I'm sure that played some part in my perceptions of the situation.

But something interesting happened in the 16th over. Shadab Jakati, a young Goan spinner, who had already impressed me by bowling Dilshan with a beauty, was in action, and after being hit for two fours by Karthik, came on to bowl to Warner. At that moment, rather than wishing that Delhi continue their charge, I found myself cheering for the Indian youngster
against the Australian newbie. Suddenly, my desire to see Delhi, supposedly my team, beat Chennai, was eclipsed my desire to see an Indian spinner put one over the Aussie bludgeoner. When Jakati had Warner stumped, I was delighted. Guile had done in power, always a good result to see in Twenty20, and an Indian lad had done in an Aussie one. National pride had poked its head up.

Delhi lost the game, and I went back to being disappointed when locals Manhas, Sangwan and Bhatia all failed to support Karthik adequately. Somehow, in the midst of a Delhi-Chennai game, Id managed to let an India-Australia matchup distract me.

And then of course, there was the Delhi-Mumbai game; if there was a game I should have been able to get excited about, it was this one. But somehow, at the end, when Delhi had won, it was hard to convince myself that we had put one over the old enemy. Indeed, I couldn't even bring myself to send a gloat or two to my Mumbai friends (the ones who cared about the result, that is). I'm really not sure why this was the case, and to date, I'm no closer to understanding why a Delhi-Mumbai game didn't get me riled up. Was it because I don't think these are 'real' Delhi and Mumbai outfits? I've heard some Mumbai fans disown this unit as just "Ambani's lot", and yet others say "A Mumbai team is a Mumbai team". But I do know that my reactions on beating Mumbai in a Ranji game would not have been as muted as they were in beating them in their IPL matchup.

So the IPL's charms haven't worked on me as yet. Perhaps if I was matching the games with friends in tow, my reactions would have been different. It's hard to get really excited about an IPL game when you are watching it alone at home on a 19-inch monitor. The lack of such company (noted in the comments section in my last post on the IPL by reader Anabayan) is crucial, and it will be the subject of my next post.

	Now who didn't see that one coming? © Getty Images

The BBC commentators made Graham Swann’s dismissals of Devon Smith and Shivnarine Chanderpaul in consecutive balls their champagne moment, but I would have awarded it to Fidel Edwards for that beautiful ball which did for Kevin Pietersen.

Admittedly, bowlers start with a big advantage when delivering Pietersen’s first ball. They know in advance that he will come forward and attempt to dink the ball to mid-on before setting off for a suicidal single, but even armed with that knowledge it takes a high degree of skill to bowl the right ball. Fidel landed it absolutely to perfection.

Edwards was the best bowler on show: it was just a shame that none of his team-mates bothered to turn up until Brendan Nash and Denesh Ramdin’s stand of 143 delayed the end of the match by a couple of hours. Because of Edwards, England were struggling at tea on the first day, but because of everyone else in the West Indies team, England picked themselves up and eventually romped to victory.

England’s out-cricket was impressive. James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Graham Onions and Swann made up a varied and hostile attack, the fielding was sharp and nearly all the catches were taken – the only really bad miss being when Swann failed to get hand near a fairly routine third slip catch before Nash had scored. Even Matt Prior’s wicketkeeping failed to cause the usual drawings-in of breath and tut-tut-tutting from the always-pick-the-best-keeper brigade. It is not hard to imagine this fielding team holding good batting sides in check, especially once Andrew Flintoff gets fit enough to replace the hapless Tim Bresnan.

As a county allrounder, Bresnan is in the top echelons, but his bowling lacks the bite necessary for Tests. I suspect him of bribing the guys who calibrate the speed guns, because it was when he was alleged to have bowled at 90mph that I knew for certain that they were badly wrong. He is the Ronnie Irani de nos jours; he may well have a lot to contribute to the limited-over sides, but the Test team needs someone who wouldn’t flabbergast if he got a five-fer.

Such as Swann, for instance, who already has two to his name, and whose 63 not out was classier than is expected from someone batting at nine – but, counting Bresnan and Flintoff, England have five players competing for the number seven spot to which they are ideally suited so someone has to drop down.

On the other hand, the top order’s batting was pretty dismal.

Had umpire Davis properly sent Ravi Bopara on his way when he was palpably lbw on 40, England would indeed have been in the mire. But on such things careers can turn. Being able to make a big hundred when the rest fail is exactly what England have wanted to see in their No. 3, so in one innings he ticked all the boxes that Ian Bell and Owais Shah left blank on their application forms and booked his spot for the rest of the summer. If he succeeds over the next three months, he will have the job for years.

The rest have little to be satisfied about. Apart from KP, for whose dismissal Edwards and Ramdin were responsible, the top order gave their wickets away, although Prior contributed 40 well-made runs before offering extra cover some easy catching practice.

England deserved their win, and it is a significant step forward for them to be one-nil up rather than one-nil down after the First Test of a series, but they will have to improve their batting considerably if they are to challenge Australia later in the summer.

	"Sorry, Catfish, but you're more use to us!" © Getty Images

So Cricket Australia has pulled Nathan Bracken, James Hopes and Shane Watson out of the IPL in order to manage their niggling injuries. It may well be the right thing for the country and all three players have the maturity and commonsense to not bleat too loudly (yet). As fringe players, they understand that their brand value is enhanced by playing international cricket.

It begs the inevitable question though: at what point will we begin to see the first cracks opening up between players and their home countries' boards? It’s unlikely that India will ever have to face this problem because the IPL is their very own cash cow. Other countries though, despite overtly supporting the BCCI’s money-spinner (if indeed it does make money which I suppose it does), might soon find themselves in a situation where they are at odds with their players if they exercise their right to withdraw them from IPL commitments.

One could argue that the first cracks have already opened but have been hastily papered over. Sri Lanka have been forced to bow to player pressure and accede to the superior pulling power of the IPL. The West Indian administrators have an uneasy truce with the whole concept, conscious that their main stars can afford to call their bluff because their depth does not allow for players like Gayle, Chanderpaul, Sarwan and Bravo to be left out of the national team if they are forced to choose cash over country.

On an individual basis, Shaun Tait has already expressed his displeasure over not being cleared to play in the IPL. Tait doesn’t quite have enough aces in his hand to call the shots so he is forced to accept that decision for the time being. Now with the latest situation involving Bracken, Hopes and Watson, the murmurs of discontent will eventually rise to a deafening crescendo sometime in the future. It’s a bold prediction but I can see it happening soon enough.

It’s clear that when it comes to making quick money, the players obviously have a different set of priorities to the national selectors. These three players are not silly enough to cruel their international cricket prospects just yet so they will reluctantly accept the verdict from Cricket Australia. There will come a day though when a player will strongly disagree with the need for rehabilitation or rest and will challenge that sort of edict. Depending on seniority and his own sense of whether he can afford to roar his displeasure, that situation may become quite heated.

It might even prematurely push some players into retirement so they can then be freed from all trade restrictions on their IPL contracts. The performances of Warne, Gilchrist and Hayden prove that being retired from international cricket does not mean you can’t cut it in IPL. If anything, they are fresher and stronger. The franchise owners themselves may be tempted to offer incentives to hasten early retirement. Why wouldn’t they? They have little to gain from big names like Gilchrist or Hayden being lost to national duty. Golden handshakes may become more common.

It will create a situation where injuries or workload concerns are pushed underground, where players don’t always confide in their national team’s medical staff about niggling injuries or exhaustion. From their perspective, it might be easier to mask the symptoms and try to hobble through the IPL. In cases like the Flintoff example, there may one day be post-mortems and blame games which put the physiotherapist and team doctor under pressure for not spotting the signs of injury. Perhaps that close, confidential bond that currently exists between players and medical staff will suffer. If in doubt, the medicos might be instructed to err on the side of caution and that will infuriate players who honestly don’t think they’re injured.

What about medical staff in IPL teams? Will they be under subtle pressure to underplay an injury (especially stress fractures or 'wear & tear' injuries) to nurse someone through a few T20 games? Their loyalty is to their IPL team, not the national team so what's wrong with patching somebody up to get through a short tournament. Medical opinions can differ - I can see some interesting conversations between doctors and physio's from opposite sides of the fence. "When did you know he was injured, how bad was it, why didn't you rest him earlier?"

Agents too will play their part in muddying the waters. Presumably, their commissions depend on the IPL contracts being honoured so they will be exerting their influence on the player to ensure he plays IPL. Do they have a duty to their client (the player), the national team or to themselves? In most cases, I can’t see the country’s interest coming first!

What happens in situations where the home states (eg: NSW) can see some benefit in denying the IPL team the use of their player, hoping that if that team does not make the Champions League stage, he is then available for their home state/provincial team? With that much money at stake, they have every good reason to want their star player wrapped in cotton wool and save him from injury. If that means his IPL team doesn’t qualify, gosh, wouldn’t that be convenient?

The thing about conspiracy theories is that they don’t always have to be true to create bad blood or mistrust. Trust is often the first casualty when relationships sour. Players, doctors, administrators, franchise owners, television moguls and fans are all stakeholders in this relationship one way or another. The best Powerplays may yet happen off the field and on the physio’s table!

I've just finished reading Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the Bad Old Days of Australian Cricket , Christian Ryan's biography of Kim Hughes and have a few thoughts to offer (to add to Michael Jeh's piece). First off, this is a good read. Ryan writes fluently, and conveys the sheer physicality of cricketing action remarkably well. There are many colorful turns of phrase, and they are all needed when describing a) a cricketer as interesting as Hughes and b) a cricketing culture as hard-boiled as the Aussie one. Ryan's English is unmistakably Australian, with its directness and verve, and he has done well to construct the book as a kind of oral history, based on extensive interviews with many of the participants--players, coaches, journalists--in the Hughes saga.

I've always wondered whether my unbridled admiration of Hughes's dazzling, fleet-footed strokeplay was an aberration and I'm glad to find out that other kids (including some that went on to become Test cricketers) thought just as highly of his dancing down the pitch, his cover driving on bended knee, and his luscious pulling and hooking of the world's best fast bowlers. It's a pleasure to read about the three Test innings played by Hughes that have entered cricketing lore as all-time classics: the 213 at Adelaide vs India in the 1980-81 series, the 100* at Melbourne against the West Indies during the 1981-82 series, and the 84 against England during the 1980 Centenary Test at Lords. If you like extravagant strokeplay, you should buy the book just for the photographs of Hughes batting in the Centenary Test. There is one photograph in particular, that will leave you breathless, and wondering "How the hell does someone play that?" (If you are curious, go to Patrick Eagar's website, search for Kim Hughes, and browse; you'll know when you hit it).

When it comes to describing the bad old days of Australian cricket, the Chappell-Lillee-Marsh saga of relentless conspiracy and non-cooperation is depressing but in the end, it is just one component of a larger dysfunctionality in Aussie cricket at the time. Ryans most salutary contribution to Australian cricket writing is debunk some persistent Aussie myths about the cricketing scene (besides mateship). No one who reads this book will ever again believe that when it comes to sledging, what happens on the ground stays on the ground, and that folks just shake hands after a game and make up (at the least, such feelings about on-ground conflicts don't seem to be universally held amongst Australians). At times, in Ryan's telling, Australian cricket seemed to have as much factionalism as Indian cricket, and that's saying something. But it is no surprise to find out just how badly cricketers were treated by administrators. At times, one marvels at the sheer feudalism of crickets managers.

As I wrote to Christian earlier today, there is an interesting book waiting to be written about the relentless image construction of Australian cricketing lore and history, as conducted by CA/ACB/PBL/NineMSN et al over the last 20-25 years. The souvenirs hawked on Channel 9 are just one part of it. Christian has already contributed to this process with his revelatory article on the singing of Under the Southern Cross and it's place in dressing-room post-match rituals. Next in line should be a piece on the mythology of the baggy green, which Ryan alludes to in the book, which Ian Chappell has already sought to dispel, and which might, in many ways, be by far the hardest to do.

Kim Hughes was not a simple man; he had many personal and cricketing faults. But in full flight, he was a sight to behold, and brought pleasure to many cricket spectators, including a young Indian schoolboy in India in 1979, who intends to write a blog post describing that obsession in the next couple of days. Ryan has written a book as only a fan of Hughes the batsman could, as one who struggles to understand why the glory of a an epic innings is not consonant with the considerably less glamorous facts of the politics of cricket. I'm glad he has written this book; I hope he has others in store.

If I were Geoff Miller, I think I’d be a little miffed at the coverage given to the various England squads announced last week. There is scarcely a mention of the national selector who chairs the selection committee and acres devoted to the influence allegedly wielded by the newest addition to the committee, team director Andy Flower, whose imprint we are supposed to be able to discern.

Excuse me? The head coaching honcho, whether you call him coach, team director or Grand Panjandrum, spends his time working with whomever is in the current squad, giving him extremely detailed knowledge of today’s personnel while preventing him gathering much of interest about potential recruits.

Flower won’t have seen Eoin Morgan, Graham Onions or Tim Bresnan play much, if any, cricket over the last two years, so how can his imprint be seen in their selections?

There might be something in the picks of Graham Napier and James Foster since Flower came to the England job from Essex, but they have earned their elevation by performances in last year’s Twenty20 Cup, mostly played when England were busy losing ODIs to New Zealand and Flower was presumably fully occupied trying to inculcate the basics of shot-selection into Ian Bell.

Geoff Miller, James Whitaker and Ashley Giles are the men who watch county cricket and work out who looks ready for the big time, so why aren’t they given any credit for shaping the new-look England sides? I don’t see Flower’s squads here – I see Miller’s.

We became used to the coach wielding immense power in the Duncan Fletcher era, but it was a power that he did not really want. Reading Nasser Hussain’s account of selection meetings, it is apparent that the official selectors were weak and dithery, the inevitable consequence of which was that the one selector with a clearly thought-out view ended up getting his own way most of the time. Fletcher himself realised after a time that he had become so close to the regular members of the squad that he could not be dispassionate and stepped down as a selector.

The most important influence a coach can have on selection is essentially negative. After working with players identified by the selectors, the detailed knowledge gained enables him to identify the ones to keep, the ones to discard and the ones to send back to domestic cricket to rediscover their technique, desire or ideal waist measurement. What he can’t do is give more than a specification for the type of player the team will need to replace the ones who are not currently measuring up: it is the selectors’ job to identify them, not the coach’s.

The Schofield Report produced following the debacles in the winter of 2006-7 identified the selection process as needing a more professional structure. That has now been implemented, and it is already evident that the new players getting picked have been carefully watched. They have good records in domestic cricket, but not necessarily the best. They are presumably being chosen because they appear to offer that extra something which lifts a player to success at international level – and that can only be spotted by people who see them play, which the national team coach gets precious little opportunity to do.

While I disagree with much of my fellow columnist Michael 'Fox' Jeh’s thesis about international coaches being useful only as modes of transport, I agree very much that the cult of the head coach is becoming dangerously fetishistic, especially in England where people seem obsessed with finding the new Fletcher in the same way as we used to hanker after the new Botham.

Interpreting anything that happens through the prism of the coach being Lord High Everything does us all a disservice. Cricket is too complex for supremos. Credit Flower with the axing of Bell and Harmison if you like, but let’s praise (or blame) Miller, Giles and Whitaker for the players called up instead. Hold Flower to account for what the selected players do, but pay proper attention to how the selectors go about their business too.

The first time I began to understand the true significance of the term ‘momentum shift’ in cricket was the 1992 World Cup when Imran Khan used it to devastating effect. He picked the moment when he felt his ‘cornered tigers’ were ready to attack and set them loose. The sudden shift in gears when Inzamam and Imran were batting and his decision to unleash Wasim Akram at crucial times underscored his total mastery of the art of sensing momentum swings and then exploiting it with sudden, brutal aggression. It was great theatre.

What’s happened to Pakistan recently then? They seem to have lost that legacy that Imran handed down to them in the early 1990s.

To be fair, it is more an art than a science, difficult to measure or describe. It is probably a gut instinct but it’s certainly something that cricket has now tried to turn into a science. The most successful captains in recent times are the ones who sense these game-changing periods in the wind and can then execute a daring attack that is difficult to counter. Once momentum starts to shift, a game can change forever in a few short overs of mayhem.

The mighty West Indian teams rarely had to worry about momentum shifts – it was usually just one-way traffic with chin music playing in the background. The only way some countries occasionally beat them was to pick a rare moment to try and swing the game violently away. India famously did this in the 1983 World Cup Final, Australia did it to Richie Richardson’s team in the 1996 World Cup semi-final and England did it in front of a packed house at Lords in 2000 when Caddick and Gough bowled like West Indians themselves!

Pakistanis seem to have an instinct for this art form to suddenly transform a game that appears to be meandering along. Their tour of England in 1992 was famous for searing yorkers and late-afternoon collapses engineered by Akram, Waqar Younis and Aaqib Javed. It was masterful captaincy and high quality bowling but the secret was in the timing of the assault.

In this latest series against Australia, it seems to be an instinct that has deserted Pakistan. Watching the 4th ODI from Abu Dhabi, I suspect that had Imran been captain, the game plan would have evolved differently. Last night’s tactics were reactive, defensive and utterly lacking in that sixth sense or intuition that tells great captains when to pounce. The innings was crawling along at about 3.5 rpo in the 33rd over when Afridi came to the crease. He was immediately off to a good start with the Shoaib Malik well set at the other end. It was the perfect moment to take the batting powerplay and change the momentum of the game. Against the new ball on a slow deck, Afridi’s hitting power was probably the only thing that would have changed the direction of the game at that point. Pakistan needed a moment of inspiration but it never came.

Instead, Pakistan chose to keep delaying the PP until first Malik and then Akmal were dismissed, followed by a long period of stagnation when Arafat got stuck at the start of his innings. By the time they eventually took the PP in the 43rd over, that moment had come and gone. Half an hour earlier, the game was ready for that momentum shift but in the end, Afridi holed out in the second PP over and they finished with roughly twenty five runs and two wickets to show for it. We’ll never know what could have been but it’s safe to assume that two for twenty was not part of the perfect blueprint. Not even close!

Watching the innings unfold, I kept shouting at the television, willing Pakistan to break the game wide open while there was still some life in the batting order. It may not have worked but it was worth a try. Afridi is always likely to do something extravagant anyway, even with fielders in the deep so it just made no sense to deny him every chance of inspiring that momentum shift. The longer they waited, the more likely it was that he might be out before he could use the full five overs. In the end that’s exactly what happened.

Even the earlier games had similar moments of indecision. Hopes and Hilfenhaus were allowed to recover in Game 1 when the spinners were taken off with one wicket to get. In Game 3, they delayed the PP so long that they ended up being bowled out halfway through it. Perhaps, even this skill suffers from a lack of practice. One should not forget that Pakistan have played precious little cricket recently.

With someone like Afridi in your team, it’s almost criminal to waste his explosiveness. Some situations demand a momentum shift strategy and this was Pakistan's window of opportunity. What would Imran's cornered tigers have done in the same situation I wonder? They won a World Cup, no less, feeding on smaller scraps of inspiration.