We tried something new this last week. Photo galleries have always been popular among readers, and audio has been an integral part of the site for nearly three years. We have now combined the two to produce audio-visual stories. Our audio team, Akhila Ranganna and Ranjit Shinde, worked with deputy editor Alex Brown to put together this multimedia photo gallery on Australia's Test series win in South Africa.

Staying with audio, here's one. Nishi Narayanan came up with a lovely idea for a series where captains are asked questions to test how how well they know their team-mates. Haidee Tiffen, the New Zealand women's captain, was game, and so were her team-mates, who supplied the questions.

Continue reading "For your senses only"

Something happens to Virender Sehwag when he sights a spinner. Despite all his adventurism, Sehwag’s batting is usually based on clear and sound principles. He tries to send as many balls as possible to the boundary, but against pace bowlers, his shots are determined by the type of ball. Of late, he has taken to fetching balls from outside the off stump and hitting them between midwicket and mid-on, but by and large, he knows his percentages. It might appear risky to those watching, but in his mind, he has dealt with the ball on merit.

Not so against the spinners, or at least the spinners he doesn’t rate. I once asked John Wright, then the India coach, if he worried about Sehwag’s technique, particularly his lack of feet movement, against the new ball. Wright said he never worried about the new ball, but was terrified when spinners came on to bowl. It was then that he was most likely to get himself out. That’s because “Viru doesn’t think spinners have a right to exist.”

Perhaps Wright has passed on a tip or two to Daniel Vettori.

Continue reading "Why spinners can make Sehwag look silly"

We have always looked for ways to engage you in our coverage of cricket and some of you might have noticed or indeed taken part in the live discussions we have been conducting on the site in the last few weeks. It is still a work-in-progress and we have been experimenting with different forms to find out what works best.

One of the biggest challenges during live online discussions is dealing with the huge amounts of feedback and messages. It is impossible to keep everyone happy. When we tried this first during an India-New Zealand one-day match in a closed environment – we told only a few friends – Jamie Alter, who moderated it, looked dazed after a few minutes. It was a free-for-all format and soon the discussion went completely out of shape.

After a couple of matches, we tried it live just after a match and Sriram Veera tried heroically to take in as many comments as possible, but still ended up with huge number of dissatisfied readers. We read every comment before publishing and the eye and mind can only process so much. Clearly, that was not the way to go.

Next, Avinash Subramaniam moderated a discussion with the readers in which I took part. But soon, it was clear that neither him, and nor me (mostly me) could cope with the volume of questions. A few readers pointed out, quite rightly, that my typing speed was well below par. It is. Shamefully, I have never gone past using two fingers.

Today, we settled for something much more manageable. We restricted the discussion to an in-house group. Akhila Ranganna moderated a closed post-match discussion in which S Rajesh, our stats editor, Jamie Alter, who was writing the match reports, and me took part. We took questions from readers, but through mail, and not through the live chat engine. In the end, we managed to take in only a few questions, but the discussion had the sense of narrative. Lots of users ended up asking similar questions, so apologies who might have felt ignored. Here’s a link to the page. See it for yourself and let us know what you think.

PS: Check this ad out. It's from Aircel, an Indian mobile phone company,
who we partner for cricket content. Watch out for the Cricinfo bubble. The ad is in Hindi though and we can't provide subtitles.

	Andrew Strauss played for Northern Districts on England's tour to New Zealand last year © Getty Images

I am staggered at the way large sections of the English cricket establishment and even the English media have managed to work themselves up over Kent signing Stuart Clark for the first part of the next summer.

Not only is it a needless distraction, but it also reeks of hypocrisy. Have they forgotten the generosity New Zealand extended to them by allowing Jimmy Anderson to play for Auckland to gain match practice during England’s last tour there?

And this quote from Andrew Strauss is a bit rich: "It's very easy for the counties to be short-sighted and worry about their next championship game and season … From an England team's point of view it's important we all need to buy into the fact that an England team performing well helps everyone, including the counties." He was the other beneficiary in New Zealand, playing five games for Northern Districts.

And last year, the BCCI hosted an England High Performance squad during the England-India Test series, and the squad included Sajid Mehmood and Amjad Khan, both of whom were drafted into the England one-day team. It’s another matter that the squad returned without playing a single match in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.

The New Zealand cricket board extended the same generosity to the touring Indians and Rahul Dravid made the most of it by scoring a hundred for Canterbury. It was pathetic that the Indian board chose to withdraw Sachin Tendulkar and Dinesh Karthik from a practice match contaminated by the presence of couple of ICL players. It made the world’s most powerful cricket body look mean and small.

I am waiting to see if Craig McMillan is part of the commentary team for the second Test. Sky TV are right to tell BCCI, which wants McMillan, another ICL player, withdrawn, to stuff it. I am hoping the New Zealand board stand by Sky. Someone has to tell the BCCI that it might make the most money, but it doesn’t own the world.

Coming back the England, I can’t help feeling the obsession with the Ashes borders on the unhealthy. It’s time to wake up to the reality that there is more to cricket than their traditional rivalry with Australia. The truth is the Ashes has only been in contest once in the last 20 years.

And obsessing with one contest and one opposition can be hugely distracting. It was ridiculous to hear the chatter about the Ashes even before England started their West Indies tour.

Despite all the hype about this being an Ashes year, the first task of the summer for England is to win back the Wisden Trophy.

I feel sorry for John Dyson, who will now become a reference point for gaffes after messing up the D/L calculations. He is not the first man on the earth to make a mistake, and pray, what was the captain doing?

And I felt sorrier for Bryce McGain. It was as if the South Africans were avenging themselves for a lifetime of torment against Shane Warne. McGain isn’t the first Australians legspinner to have been taken to cleaners on his debut. But he is 37 and might have played his last Test.

Like Daryll Cullinan said after the second day, you don't want to see any cricketer being humiliated and having to experience the day that McGain experienced.

And news has just come in that the IPL has been shifted out of India. To where it is not certain yet, but what’s certain is that Lalit Modi seems to have met his match in P Chidambaram, the Indian home minister. No one has made Modi sweat more in recent times.

It is not unusual for sport to adjust its timing to suit the structure and space of television but Test matches starting at noon will still feel strange.

For the moment, the New Zealand cricket board has managed to keep the start of the first Test against India to 11 am. But who knows what will happen before the second Test. Sony Television, which has the rights to broadcast the India-New Zealand series in India, want the Tests to be pushed back by an hour so that the start is at the slightly less unearthly time of 4.30 am.

At one level, it is a reasonable request because ultimately television runs – and pays for - sport. And non-cricket fans might wonder what the fuss is all about. After all, they will still play for six hours or more and 90 overs will still be bowled, and the light in New Zealand holds till 7 pm. And in most parts of the world, sport organises itself to the convenience of television.

The English Premier League long ago sandwiched the traditional 3 pm Saturday kick-off between matches starting at noon and at 5 pm to ensure a better spread on television. It means inconveniencing fans travelling to cities spread over a distance – they either have to start out too early or have to stay back overnight - but the truth is that television pays the salaries. The two football world cups in Mexico – in 1970 and, more famously, in 1986 – had matches starting at noon despite the heat just to suit television timings in Europe. And earlier this year Roger Federer complained about the late starts at the Australian Open that kept players on the court close to, and sometimes past, midnight. But he had to play on.

Perhaps Test cricket fans are nerdy and removed from reality in their devotion to Test cricket but a noon start just wouldn’t feel right. It is contrary to the rhythm of Test cricket, in which the morning session stands for something.

Maybe it is only notional, and mostly in our minds, but the mornings are supposed to belong to the bowlers. Not that they always do but conditions – moisture on the pitch, heaviness in the atmosphere – have the potential to make the ball wobble and seam a bit.

But of course, most traditions are now disappearing. When India toured Australia in 2007-08, the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne was the series opener and not, as customary, the second Test; the upcoming Ashes in England begins on a Wednesday instead of the traditional Thursday; and they may soon print names of player on whites. And as soon as they can find a light-coloured ball to last 90 overs, they will start playing Tests at night.

That might not such a bad thing after all. But those of us who love Test cricket just the way it is reserve the right to be horrified.

It's only the second week and I am already running a day late. Apologies, and here's the recommended reading list from the last week or so.

Australia surprised most cricket followers, and perhaps themselves, by swiftly demolishing South Africa to keep the Test mace. After a series of pieces on depressing subjects, Gideon Haigh was delighted to be able to write one on the new boys
who made the feat possible.

And Christian Ryan, recently the author of a biography of Kim Hughes, the golden boy who presided over one of the lowest periods in Australian cricket, found the Australian win all the more rewarding because it involved struggle.

As South Africa lay in disarray, Brydon Coverdale, Cricinfo's man on the tour, reported on the tension and confusion in their camp with such clarity that one of the members of the home side's management team remarked on how accurately it captured the mood and the goings-on in the dressing room.

Of course there was no getting away from cricket's troubles. Peter Roebuck captured the feeling in this evocative piece that posed this question: what now for cricket?

Just to remind ourselves how beautiful it all once was and how beautiful it can be, I leave you with this one, an extract from Rahul Bhattacharya's Pundits from Pakistan.

Here's a little ritual I want to start on the blog. Every Monday I will put together a list of recommended reading from pieces published on Cricinfo. As Cricinfo regulars, you will perhaps have read them all. But why leave it to chance. These are not necessarily the best pieces from the last 10-odd days, but the ones I liked best.

It was quite a time, and obviously the incidents in Lahore kept us busy. We had a number of pieces on the subject on the site, and a few stood out.

While covering disasters, professional journalists find themselves walking a thin line between the needs of news-gathering and respecting the private space of those affected. We had mixed feelings about asking Kumar Sangakkara, one of six Sri Lankan players injured in the attack to share his experience. But Kumar, who has been a columnist for us for nearly two years, chose to be the professional that he is, and dictated this piece to us while waiting to board the aircraft that would bring the Sri Lankan team home.

Continue reading "It runs on the site"

Shane Warne remains the bowler I have enjoyed watching the most, but there isn’t more thrilling sight in cricket than a fast bowler in full pelt. Cricket is the most cerebral of field sports, but a fast bowler letting rip on a responsive surface is its animal moment, and in a sublime sense.

So after all those depressing days, finally some cheer. A double dose in fact. Two sensational sessions of pure fast bowling, ten wickets, two men in the hospital, two more knocks on the head, and the pitch hasn’t been declared dangerous yet. Has it all been a dream? After all, I did fall asleep on the sofa watching Paul Collingwood and Matt Prior squeeze single after single against that magical tweaking duo of Chris Gayle and Ryan Hinds.

So while watching normal business of Yuvraj Singh swatting sixes as if practising his bat swing, I have taken time to reconfirm on Cricinfo that the second day at Kingsmead did happen. Against the recent average of about four wickets a day, 13 wickets did fall in a whole day; and neither South Africa nor Australia employed a sweeper cover for their fast bowlers.

Dale Steyn and Mitchell Johnson are the fastest men in international cricket at the moment. They were also the leading wicket-takers last year. But Johnson had spent considerable time keeping the ball out of arm's reach as the Australians embraced the tactics of denial. It was a pitiable sight to watch a fast bowler bowl three to four feet outside the off stump, without a slip, and two men on the offside boundary. It was both an indictment of poor pitches and defeatist mindset.

But throughout the year Johnson had never lacked pace, stamina and enthusiasm. Invariably, he was the bowler Ricky Ponting turned to towards the end of a sapping day, and invariably Johnson hit 140 km in his first over. Steyn, of course, has been outstanding all year, bowling outswingers at a pace that made him unplayable on surfaces mildly responsive to his skills. To watch a pitch reward them was therapeutic.

It might turn out to be an exception, but still it was a restoration of faith, a reaffirmation that Test cricket was still the game’s supreme form. The mind has grown numb with the number of centuries scored in the last few weeks: a triple for Younis Khan, two double-hundreds to Thilan Samaraweera, three hundreds each to Andrew Strauss and Ramnaresh Sarwan - but the innings that is likely to last in memory amid this senseless surge of runs is not even a hundred yet.

JP Duminy’s calm and skilful batting on the second day of the Durban Test put Steyn’s and Johnson’s performances in perspective. Yes, the ball hurried off the pitch, and at times it kept low, but by no means was batting hazardous or run-scoring impossible. Days like yesterday are worth celebrating, they don’t come often.

And a postscript just to keep us rooted in reality. This is from Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, currently in Chicago on study break from Cricinfo:

It was great to see Sachin Tendulkar today but it felt like watching a giant fighting in a boxing ring. These New Zealand grounds are so tiny that I wonder how a batting achievement at this AMI stadium can be compared with one at the MCG (Tendulkar, of course, can score runs on a crater in Mars so that's not the point here).

Shouldn't there be a call for a minimum ground size? As far as I see it, it's worse than a dead pitch. Here you see good balls taking the inside edge and flying for four (sometimes even six). And again, pitch preparation is not an exact science - the weather and soil composition are important. How difficult is it to set a minimum ground size?

I know 'It's the same for both teams'. I also know the theory that 'Everyone wants to see fours and sixes'. I even know 'It's important to have variety in cricket'. But something here doesn't seem right. Not only are we marginalising bowlers but these sort of grounds (and I'm including stadiums in India where the rope is brought in) we're doing the same to fielders.

Cricket is supposed to be a grand theatre. But isn't this more like a street play?

As the world's premier cricket website we take pride in being quick and credible. But what a sad moment it is when we have to call Mahela Jayawardene to ask how many of his players have been wounded, or ask Kumar Sangakkara to give us a first-person account of the time he spent dodging bullets, or to get Younis Khan to open his heart about what this means to his team and his nation. As stories, each of these were remarkable, but we'd rather be writing on cricket.

You may have missed a familiar name in our coverage of the Lahore attack. Osman Samiuddin, our Pakistan editor and a veteran at covering cricket disasters, has taken a break to get married - the only event that has brought us some cheer in recent weeks. He wrote us a long email carrying emergency instructions before he left. It began like this:

"Just to let you know, barring nuclear strikes and the resurfacing of Osama bin Laden in
the country (though if Stanford turns up in Pakistan everything is off), I will be off from tomorrow for my wedding."

And it ended this way:

"Cheers all and here's hoping the sh***$$$###t stops hitting the fan in Pakistan. Until I return at least."

But just when you thought nothing could possibly get worse in Pakistan cricket, it invariably does. "Looking at it cynically," Osman says about his job, which he performed with enormous sangfroid and resourcefulness, "it's been a hack's dream, getting to cover such big stories, mostly hugely controversial. But after a while it becomes incredibly sad, to watch what's happening and be torn between being just a journalist – an observer who just documents stuff - and being a fan of cricket and Pakistan cricket, who wants to make it better. Over the last two years, since the Oval Test, it's just become draining and it's strange how much cricket's fortunes here have coincided with those of the country."

I ended my previous piece with the promise that I would write about something more cheerful next. The world has got far more depressing since then. It's hard to escape the gloom.

	Daren Powell hung on for more than an hour to guide West Indies to a thrilling draw in Antigua © Getty Images

Is it just a coincidence or are we entering the dark ages for bowlers? High scores are spreading like a rash. For the first time in the history of Test cricket two scores of 700 have come in consecutive weeks. There had never been a Test featuring scores above 600 and 700, we have now have two in successive weeks.

And who knows where the Lahore Test is headed? I am filled with such dread that I’m not even switching on the TV. Thanks heavens the epidemic hasn’t reached Johannesburg yet. Now that’s what you call a Test.

Thanks for your thoughts on my earlier posts. We haven’t posted only those comments that were offensive: everyone has the right to disagree but not to abuse. And, with hindsight, I can now see why my sentiments about the Karachi pitch might have seemed a bit extreme. My feelings were a bit raw then because after a point every run scored felt like an assault on the senses and a betrayal of Pakistani fans who had waited for Test cricket for so long. But now numbness is taking over.

Continue reading "The good draw and the bad draw"