http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/ en Copyright 2009 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:54:31 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss

Australian cricket is underpinned by two strong brands that sell beer and whisky © Getty Images

  Anyone with an interest in Australian sport, not just cricket, will be digesting the detail of the government-commissioned Crawford Report which was handed down yesterday. Basically, in a very simplistic summary, the report attempts to prioritise where the limited pool of government funding should go. Some Olympic sports - the niche ones that don’t attract many participants or win medals - will probably see a cut in funding while other popular sports (like cricket), which enjoys huge participation, should continue to receive generous funding. As a cricket fan, with young children on the verge of entering the system, the Crawford Report’s probable bias towards cricket is likely to benefit my own selfish ends. My oldest child, aged six, has just begun his cricket career for the Ferny Fireballs under-eight team and will no doubt benefit from continued grassroots investment. His passion for the game is unbelievable – broken light bulbs, damaged walls and a room full of cricket posters attest to the reach of the clever marketers who are charged with the task of seeding the next generation of young Australian cricket fans. “Good on ‘em” I say. I can think of nothing better than a cricket-crazy household, just to ensure that my wife can't change the TV channel without a howl of protest! ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/11/anyone_with_an_interest_in.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/11/anyone_with_an_interest_in.php Michael Jeh Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:54:31 +0000

Despite a surfeit of cricket, I sense a slight ‘flatness’ on the world circuit right now. In fact, that's probably the exact reason why there seems to be a lack of spark. On many levels, cricket seems to be full of contradictions and confusion right now. The once-mighty West Indies arrived in my home city, Brisbane, today. Their arrival barely rated a mention, such has been their fall from grace in recent times, not helped by the uncertainty about whether the star players would tour or not. Any team that boasts the batting explosiveness of Gayle, Chanderpaul, Sarwan and Bravo is worth paying the entrance fee to watch but if early ticket sales are any indication, the Gabba staff can expect a quiet shift at the turnstiles. Ironically, the main attraction may end up being the least flamboyant batsman in the squad – hometown boy Brendan Nash who is the least unlikely Calypso King in every respect. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/11/_despite_a_surfeit_of.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/11/_despite_a_surfeit_of.php Michael Jeh Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:04:12 +0000

Can Joe Denly do the job Marcus Trescothick used to? © Getty Images

  One of the great puzzles about South Africa since re-admission is why they have performed so poorly against England. The last time England toured, in 2004-05, England brought the side which won the Ashes a few months later and may just have had a slight edge which they duly converted to a series win, but on every other occasion South Africa's team has been obviously miles better - until you look at the scoreline and find that if they managed to win at all, it was only by the odd Test, and that they even contrived to lose in 1998. In one-day cricket, at which South Africa are known to be good and England known to be hopeless, the score between the sides in the 2000s is 10-all with one tie and two no-results. I have no wish to know why South Africa underperform against England -- and would rather no-one found out, because the consequence has been fascinating cricket with ding-dong battles and it would be a shame to dispel the magic. And although it would be amazing if the ODI series which is about to begin will consistently emulate the last match these sides played, at Centurion a few weeks ago in the Champions Trophy, we can hope.]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/11/england_south_africa_kryptonite.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/11/england_south_africa_kryptonite.php Mike Holmans Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:21:21 +0000

Getting run out is a habit Mohammad Yousuf cannot seem to shake © Getty Images

  If you watched the first ODI between New Zealand and Pakistan sitting somewhere in Pakistan, you would have heard a collective national groan when Pakistan’s total was 57 for 2. At that point, Mohammad Yousuf tapped a ball straight into the hands of short cover and took off for a single. That’s “short” cover, mind you – meaning that the fielder was well within the circle and ideally positioned to block the single. Nor was the fielder some uncoordinated slack. Yousuf has picked out the spry Martin Guptill, who nailed the stumps at the bowling end with a direct smash. The groan preceded the run-out, because we all understood in a flash what was about to happen. The one person who appeared not to have grasped the moment, from the looks of it, was Yousuf himself. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/11/if_you_watched_the_first.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/11/if_you_watched_the_first.php Saad Shafqat Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:31:49 +0000

The ideal county limited-over allrounder © Getty Images

  In a January 2000 ODI at Kimberley, Mark Ealham took five wickets for eight runs in 24 balls. Five of Zimbabwe's top seven were struck on the pads, and each time umpire David Orchard responded by raising his finger. It was the first time anyone had got five lbws in an ODI innings. It is the perfect example of his bowling strength. The spell was during the dreaded middle overs of an ODI when nothing much usually happens, and his line was deadly accurate. The Cricinfo profile labels him medium-fast, but that “-fast” suffix risks contravening the Trade Descriptions Act: he might have tried to justify it in his early years, but he soon settled down as a straight medium-pacer. Ealham's control of line was impeccable, he could often wobble it in the air, and he could vary his pace enough to unsettle batsmen committed to trying to score. In the MCC v Champion County match which opened the 2006 season, Ealham smashed eleven fours and seven sixes on his way to a 45-ball hundred, which went on to win the Walter Lawrence Trophy for the season's fastest. Forty in thirty minutes rather than a hundred in three hundred was what his county sides usually wanted from him, which explains why he passed fifty 80 times in first-class cricket but only converted 13 into hundreds.]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/valete_ii.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/valete_ii.php Mike Holmans Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:54:06 +0000

It's not too fantastic to imagine a scoresheet, that along with the batsmen and bowlers' names, also records the fielders' names as well © AFP

  A few weeks ago, I wrote a little piece suggesting cricket take a leaf out of baseball's book and maintain statistics for fielders. The practical difficulty with this suggestion is that cricket scoresheets do not contain this kind of information: fielders do not figure on scoresheets except for when they take catches. The runouts and boundary saves they make, the catches they drop, the misfields the inflict on their team are all missed. But for a few years now, a scoresheet has been present which could potentially address this difficulty. I am referring to the Cricinfo ball-by-ball commentary, which currently records brilliant fielding, catches, drops, some misfields (if they are particularly egregious), and sometimes information on the fielder.]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/online_commentary_and_fielders.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/online_commentary_and_fielders.php Samir Chopra Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:11:56 +0000

Jason Gallian was more of a bruiser; he was a slender version of Mike Gatting, sharing his appetite for runs though not for food © Getty Images

  Eight former England players announced their retirements during the 2009 season. I have already written about Andy Caddick, Mark Butcher and Michael Vaughan, who all had substantially successful Test careers, but the others have received little in the way of public appreciation for their efforts over many years. In the first Test of the 1989-90 Under-19 Ashes, Jason Gallian made an impressive 158 not out and 14, while John Crawley made 52 and 44 not out. They both made their first-class debuts for Lancashire a few months later but in the youth game Gallian, having been born and brought up in Sydney, was captaining the young Australians. He also qualified for England through his parents and was enticed back by Lancashire's offer of a contract. Crawley was the earlier to become successful in first-class cricket. He impressed in 1993 and it was no surprise when he was picked for England the next year. He was an exceptionally good player on the leg side and a more than competent player of spin, but he never quite clicked as a Test player. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/valete_i.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/valete_i.php Mike Holmans Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:22:51 +0000

Sri Lanka, and not Australia, were the one-day world champions in 1996 © Getty Images

  What the Champions Trophy has just showed us is that cricket needs these occasional global tournaments to provide a wider perspective on a game that is still only genuinely competitive amongst a handful of nations. Unlike football or tennis or athletics, which are truly multi-country sports and unlike baseball, basketball or gridiron which seem to be able to survive on American domestic consumption, cricket needs all of it’s senior members to be competitive if it is to compete with these other sports. It was almost not thus; I was not aware that in the late 1990s, world cricket was apparently on the brink of a major split that would probably have destroyed the game. I always knew there was some talk of it but it never really seemed to be much more than a bit of posturing and chest-puffing. I recently stumbled upon a book called Run Out, written by the former CEO of the Australian Cricket Board, Graham Halbish. It’s hardly a new offering and it’s certainly not worth recommending but nonetheless, it still provided a fascinating insight into the politics of cricket in the 1990s. He described an ambitious idea called Project Snow which was apparently Australian cricket’s defiant response to the power bloc of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and South Africa. Without going into the detailed politics of it, Australia, New Zealand, England and West Indies would form a league which played each other on a regular basis (presumably the other countries would do something similar with their members) and world cricket would be split in two. Amazingly, he went so far as to make the statement that the intent of Project Snow was to show South Africa that it had made the wrong choice in siding with the Asian bloc, to call India’s bluff and to show the subcontinent that “we could do without them, but that they could not do without us”. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/why_they_cant_do_without_us.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/why_they_cant_do_without_us.php Michael Jeh Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:55:51 +0000

The toss has proved too crucial in some one-dayers © Getty Images

  The Champions Trophy, played on early season pitches on the South African Highveld, has thrown up enough variety worthy of a global competition. It’s had enough intrigue and diversity to suit just about every style of cricketer. No team can claim they were significantly disadvantaged by the conditions, although the toss was crucial in some of the earlier matches. That’s cricket though – how can you ever compensate for the vagaries of the toss? In long series between two countries (or even tri-series), it is probably fair enough to leave things as they are. Going by the law of averages, the coin toss tends to even out in the long run and the better team usually wins the series. Most sensible people will agree that the longer the competition, the better the chances are that the most deserving team will triumph. Shorter tournaments like World Cups and Champions Trophies necessarily allow for much less margin in terms of this balancing-out effect. Especially in cut-throat situations where one loss can finish your tournament, the toss is often crucial. Too crucial. In some of the early games at Centurion and Johannesburg, where extravagant spin and seam were in equal abundance, the toss effectively determined the outcome. Perhaps it’s worth giving serious thought to the 4 x 25 over format that Sachin Tendulkar (and others) are expounding, to renew and regenerate the 50-over game. In fact, I’d go one step further by suggesting 2 x 20 overs to begin with, followed by 2 x 30 overs. This allows the team winning the toss to still reap some advantage by minimising the time they have to bat in the first stanza (if the ball is nipping around a bit) or maximising the time they have to bowl in the second session (if the pitch is starting to turn or keeping a bit low). ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/time_for_fourinning_onedayers.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/10/time_for_fourinning_onedayers.php Michael Jeh Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:18:41 +0000

As yet, at least, fans haven't decided that the Champions Trophy is a prestige tournament. © AFP

  A lot of people took me to task after my last post, in which I suggested that it was a bit odd that most cricket fans don't rate the Champions Trophy very highly, many accusing me of English sour grapes. I was clearly underestimating Asian interest in the tournament, but Chris from Australia commented that there was zero interest in Australia, and when I checked the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age websites immediately afterwards, they still had the Ashes logo on their cricket pages - which still devoted far more attention to deconstructing Australia's Ashes loss than to prospects for the CT. And Australia are the holders. Some people suggested that ICC needs to give the CT more prestige. I get the idea, but I'm not sure that prestige can be magically bestowed by the powers that be. ICC tried that with their idea of a Super Series of ODIs and a “Test” between the top-ranked country and the Rest of the World, at which the world's cricket public blew a resounding raspberry. Throwing oodles of cash into the prize pot doesn't do it either, as Allen Stanford found before he was arrested. The point is that prestige is not in the gift of the authorities: it is we, the fans and supporters, who confer prestige on tournaments and series. And as yet, at least, we haven't decided that the CT is a prestige tournament.]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/the_slomo_replay_tournament.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/the_slomo_replay_tournament.php Mike Holmans Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:17:27 +0000

Ian Botham and Viv Richards - one of the greatest cricketing friendships © PA Photos

  I read the late and great David Halberstam's little gem, The Teammates, this past weekend and like many of its other readers, was struck by the simple story of the multi-decade friendship of four sportsmen (in this case, Boston Red Sox luminaries Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Dominic Di Maggio and John Pesky). Halberstam's tale concerns friendships amongst members of the same team, and of those, I've heard, a few when it comes to cricket. But one cricketing friendship featured two giants of the game who played for opposing teams in international cricket (albeit the same team in a domestic cricket competition): Ian Botham and Viv Richards. The reasons the Botham-Richards friendship struck me as so distinctive (in clearly idealized ways) were numerous: they were both cricketers I admired for the way they played their cricket; there was something undeniably romantic in the notion that men used to fierce competition against each other in one context, could then put shoulder-to-shoulder in another; a camaraderie amongst sportsmen in a sport centered largely on international bilateral contests was uncommon; the political overtones of a proud black cricketer finding comradeship with a Somerset lad; and so on. While tales of friendship amongst team-mates were common in cricket (in the Indian context, the friendship between Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath was well-known), this kind of trans-border mateship was rare (though admittedly, in English county cricket, these had become increasingly common), and thus, there were more contrasts to be seized on, many more differences to point to as having been bridged, and many more commonalities to note amongst the two.]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/cricketing_friendships_and_nat.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/cricketing_friendships_and_nat.php Samir Chopra Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:25:02 +0000

Over the next couple of weeks, I expect I shall watch at least some of the Champions Trophy coverage on TV. After all, I'm a cricket junkie and the English season finishes this week, so I've nothing else to watch until April. And, since you are enough of a cricket junkie to be reading a blog on a cricket website, it's pretty likely that you will also be tuning in at some point. TV companies know that there are many people round the world like us who will watch any international cricket, almost whatever it is, and are therefore willing to part with money for the broadcast rights, and the ICC then spends that money on what it considers to be worthy causes. Slaking our appetite for the game provides money to help develop the game around the world (though why they pour money into salvaging Zimbabwe when West Indies are in danger of collapse passes my understanding), so it seems beneficial all round. But nobody seems to care very much about who wins it. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/why_dont_we_like_the_champions.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/why_dont_we_like_the_champions.php Mike Holmans Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:50:02 +0000

When it comes to the vexed issue of the batting Powerplay, I’m convinced that the strategists will soon have enough historical data to crunch some meaningful numbers. As more ODI games are played under the new rules, there will be more data available and clear patterns will start to emerge. Thus far, the batting Powerplay has been anything but! It has often been the Achilles heel for the batting team - poorly executed, poorly timed and the catalyst for a collapse. One of the problems with it has been this dual sense of fear (what if we lose wickets?) combined with the burden of self-expectation (the Powerplay is a powerful weapon that we MUST save for that match-winning moment). Instead of viewing it as another tactic in the batting arsenal, it’s almost viewed as Devil and Saviour in the one incarnation, thereby giving it that real Jekyll & Hyde quality that confuses clear thinking. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/dont_leave_the_powerplay_so_la.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/dont_leave_the_powerplay_so_la.php Michael Jeh Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:43:08 +0000

My weekend got off to a rough start, but the news I read this morning, that India and Pakistan might play Test matches at a neutral venue (sometime after 2012) has put a huge smile on my face. Hopefully, the sensible thing will be done by staging these in England. India and Pakistan need to stage their Test cricket somewhere else; in stadiums that might actually fill up with loud, enthusiastic fans, of which there will be plenty in England for both teams. Pakistan can regard North England as "home" and India can do the same with the South. Many expats will fly in to watch the games (I would seriously consider flying over for one Test at least), and hopefully, English pitches will co-operate with the weather to produce some result-oriented cricket. The India-Pakistan cricket relationship needs a shot in the arm, and this might do it. The fact of the matter is that even without the politics that has been getting in the way, India-Pakistan Test cricket in recent years has been a bit of a crashing bore (and not just because both boards have staged too much cricket between the two). The series in 2004 was played in empty stadiums, an especial irony given all the pre-tour hoopla about how desperate the Pakistan cricket fan was to see the Indian team in action. The two series played in India since then have been impressive showcases for India's inability to close the deal in Tests. In both series, India held the upper edge, and managed to royally stuff things up. In the 2004-05 series, they won one Test when Pakistan obligingly rolled over, but failed to drive home the advantage in another, and then completely lost the plot by putting together a nice last-day collapse in the third Test. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/an_early_vote_for_indiapakista.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/an_early_vote_for_indiapakista.php Samir Chopra Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:53:11 +0000

Cricketers have mentors. Those that inspire them to reach heights they might not have dreamed of. I think cricket fans have mentors too. Those that inspire our fandom, pointing us to corners of the game we might not have thought of exploring, whose influence makes us the fans we are today. My mentor in cricketing-fandom was (and is) my uncle (my mother's younger brother). He taught me how to read cricket scorecards, to calculate batting and bowling averages, to find cricket commentary from England and Australia (and to tune shortwave radios), and introduced me to many of the game's greats. Indeed, he made me aware of so many different facets of the game, that it would take a column considerably longer than this one to do justice to him. Before I came to the US, it was no exaggeration to say that if I had experienced a pleasurable moment in watching cricket, the odds were high it was in his company. ]]> http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/my_uncle_my_mentor.php http://blogs.cricinfo.com/diffstrokes/archives/2009/09/my_uncle_my_mentor.php Samir Chopra Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:38:50 +0000