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  • Thanks, Windies

    The series in the Caribbean is over and the West Indies have lost 0-2. It does not look like a good result and it isn’t, but the Windies do deserve credit for fighting. They did not play well in the series, but they never gave up. I thought they would lose this Test by around 175 runs, but instead they got 100 runs closer. They tried until the last ball of the first Test to win and they came close then too. In the second Test they went for the runs until the rain intervened. In the past year I have watched India play eight Tests and in those eight combined they did not put up as much fight as the West Indies did in this series.

    The West Indies did not win a Test, nor did they deserve to, but they never stopped trying. The fact that they kept trying meant that we had entertaining, if not always skilful, cricket and it also meant that they came much closer to winning then they probably ought to have. The contrast with India’s feeble capitulations in England and Australia is striking. India are objectively a better side and have the benefit of famous names, but I know which who I would rather watch. I’d like to hope that someone in the team India set-up took note, but with their festival of mindless slogging in full flow I know that would be a fool’s hope.

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  • Congratulations, Shiv

    Shivnarine Chanderpaul is now the tenth batsman all time to score more than 10,000 Test runs. It’s a remarkable achievement for a player who I have always thought has been an underrated one. He has long been a rock for the West Indies and since Lara retired he has often been their lone aspect of resistance. I doubt many of his runs have come in easy situations and his 10,000th was no exception as the West Indies head toward a certain defeat in the match and the series. As with Dravid, I have a great respect for a player who can do that and I hope that he can reprise his 2007 heroics (ideally with the same results in the Tests) this summer.

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  • Warwickshire win by five wickets

    Even today, over two days after the match ended, this one still hurts. After two days I thought we couldn’t lose, but we did. It means that we have lost both of our LV=CC matches and sit at the bottom of the first division. On the whole, however, I think we played well and that there is reason for optimism.

    Our batting collapsed some in the first innings and more dramatically in the second, but it was actually not particularly poor relative to the rest of the matches. We batted first in the match and across the eight matches the average score of the side batting first was 209. Lancashire’s 250 was actually the third highest score overall (Leicestershire’s 324 and Gloucestershire’s 255 being the two higher) and the highest in the first division. No other Division One team even got a bonus point after batting first. Two hundred fifty does not look good overall, but I thought at the time that it was a pretty good score and I still think that is true.

    The collapse in the second innings was more troubling. Batting for time and batting through rough patches is something at which we need to improve and our cause was not helped by some very rash shots. Being caught on the boundary just before stumps is pretty much inexcusable. It is, however, something at which we can improve and especially as the tricky early season conditions fade there is no reason to suspect that we will not. Certainly the fight both in the first match and in this one shown by Ashwell Prince is a good sign.

    It is tempting to say that our bowling lost this match, but I think that would be inaccurate. As bad as it looks to let the opposition go from 81-7 to 327 all out, the fact is that we ran into a pair of very good innings. It has looked in the first two matches like counter-attacking is a good strategy and Rikki Clarke did that to great effect whilst Maddy had survived the toughest parts to make sure he had a partner. Perhaps we would have done more with the ball, but in this case the opposition simply did very well. More indicative, I think, is too look at the rest of the innings: the other nine partnerships in the first innings were worth a combined 103 runs. That is very good, especially when one then adds in the 71-5 in the second innings. We never really looked like winning, but given that we had nothing really to gain it was fantastic to see that kind of fight. Had we another fifty runs…

    We lost. And we’ve now lost two matches at what was our fortress last year, Aigburth. To have done so is a horrible missed opportunity, yes. But we have to remember that we aren’t usually going to concede 224 for the eighth, or any, wicket. It was very much anomalous. There is definite room for improvement, but I strongly believe that if we play as well in the rest of our matches as we did in this one we will win much more often than we lose.

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  • LV=CC week three roundup

    Unfortunately, this was a very rain hit round of matches. Out of eight matches played in both divisions, only two had positive results. Despite this, some of the draws were quite close run things and we were treated to a handful of very tense finishes. The eight matches, with summaries thereof at the end of the post, were:

    Warwickshire beat Lancashire by five wickets
    Middlesex drew with Durham
    Nottinghamshire drew with Somerset
    Surrey drew with Worcestershire
    Derbyshire drew with Leicestershire
    Hampshire beat Glamorgan by two wickets
    Kent drew with Gloucestershire
    Yorkshire drew with Essex

    Warwickshire’s second successive dramatic win puts them top of the Division One table, whilst Derbyshire’s survival keeps them in that spot in the second tier. It’s still probably too early to draw any definitive conclusions, but it is worth noting that none of Durham, Lancashire or Yorkshire have won a match yet. I was far from alone in predicting those three to finish at or near the top of their respective divisions and it will be interesting to see how they go from here. Derbyshire also looked far from impressive in their match and it will be interesting to see if their good start was due to favourable opposition.

    There were many very good performances this week, but my player of the week this week is Warwickshire’s Rikki Clarke. His innings pained me greatly, but coming in at 81-7 and scoring 140 is very impressive. Given how close the match turned out, if he had scored even twenty or thirty fewer it might have made a difference to the result.

    Warwickshire‘s win over Lancashire was a fairly exciting match and not a little bit gutting. It and the ramifications thereof are worth a separate bog post which I will write tomorrow. Meantime, credit must go to Rikki Clarke and Darren Maddy for excellent innings each and a match-winning partnership together.

    Middlesex‘s match at Lord’s was most notable for the return of Andrew Strauss to his county as he looked to bat himself into some form. He faced the first ball of the match after Durham won the toss and bowled. It was not until the next day, however, as rain prevented any play on day one. Strauss might have wished it would keep raining: Onions nipped one back in and knocked back the England captain’s off stump. Onions did his Test hopes no harm with an additional nine wickets in the match and whilst Strauss will no doubt be disappointed with his return, he can take solace in the fact that the rest of his batsmen only managed 336 runs between them in both innings. There was, fortunately, an exciting ending to this match. Rain had interrupted the early part of Durham’s chase of 130 to win, but left them 16 overs to get another 122. Happily, they went for it. They lost six wickets en route too, but there too few overs for a proper climax and the match was drawn.

    At first glance, it is not too surprising that Nottinghamshire and Somerset combined to score four centuries, one of them a double and three of them unbeaten, in a drawn match at Trent Bridge. They probably have on paper the two strongest batting lineups in the country. The devil is in the deatils, however, and only one side was even in this match. The ten batsmen who were out in Notts’ first innings scored 41 runs between them. The top-score amongst those was ten. Which makes the unbeaten 104 by Chris Read all the more remarkable in comparison. It was still not close to enough, however, as Arul Suppiah scored 124, Nick Compton made an unbeaten 204, and James Hildreth chipped in with 102*. Somerset declared on 445-2, a first innings lead of 283. Notts showed some more fight in the second innings, however, and the intervention of rain meant that Somerset did not get the win that they deserved.

    Bowling dominated Worcestershire‘s trip to the Oval. Surrey were bowled out for 140 in the first innings as Alan Richardson took 6-47, but Stuart Meaker returned the favour with 6-39 at Worcs only made 119 in reply. Despite being reduced to 59-5, a solid 79 from Rory Hamilton-Brown helped Surrey set Worcs a tricky 246 to win. The Oval pitch reverted to it’s stereotype, however, and when the rain came at 94-1 it probably denied Worcs a victory instead of Surrey.

    Leicestershire dominated the derby in Derby, putting on 324 in the first innings against the hosts including 105 each from Ramnaresh Sarwan and Joshua Cobb. Unfortunately for the prospects of a result, it took them over two days to do so. When Derbyshire just managed to avoid the follow-on it seemed to seal the fate of the match and even a third innings declaration did not threaten to bring about a result.

    Hampshire went to Glamorgan for what turned out to be the best match of the round. It was notable in the first innings for the return of the tactical declaration: Glamorgan skipper Mark Wallace declared with his side on 103-9 late on the first day to try to get a Hants wicket before the close. It worked as Wallace’s opposite number departed for just three. From there Hampshire slipped to 156 all out the next day and a century for Ben Wright gave Glamorgan a real chance at their first win of the season. Hampshire needed 204 to win and by stumps on day three they were 112 for four. Cue the rain. For a very long time it looked as though the teams would not even get on the pitch on the fourth day. When they did, however, it was just barely in time and Hampshire won by just two wickets off of the penultimate ball.

    Will Gidman had another good match for Gloucestershire at Canterbury, scoring 56 in the first innings and then taking 5-43 in Kent‘s reply. Gloucestershire had a first innings lead of 105, but like in the rest of the country rain had taken time out of the match and Will’s brother Alex took too long in declaring on the last day. Kent were asked to chase a nominal 363, but only 38 overs were ultimately possible and they were comfortably able to draw the match.

    Yorkshire were also unable to play on the first day of their match against Essex at Headingley. When they did get on the park, 126 from Phil Jaques saw them at one point reach 184-2. The subsequent collapse quite spectacularly saw them finish 246 all out. It was still a decent total and only Ravi Bopara, as already mentioned, resisted for Essex. It did not leave the White Rose with much of a first innings lead, however, and with time already lost in the match the only way to get a result was for Yorkshire to dramatically collapse again and when that failed to happen it was always going to be a draw.

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  • Bopara is still not the answer

    There has been a suggestion that Ravi Bopara has secured the number six spot in the Tests with his 117* against Yorkshire today. It was a good innings, Essex only made a total of 199, but it is still not a reason to pick him to play at six.

    First off, it does not change Bopara’s terrible Test stats. As I have noted previously, Bopara’s batting average against teams other than the West Indies is a dismal 15. Going by the same criteria (ie, throwing out Tests against the West Indies) that average fits neatly between Jimmy Anderson’s 13 and Graeme Swann’s 18. That’s good enough for a specialist bowler, it is not good enough for someone who has one Test wicket for 212 runs. There is no reason to suspect that if we give him another chance now it will be any different from all the previous chances we have given him. He can get runs against the Windies, but we need to pick someone who will succeed against South Africa too. There is no reason to suspect that Bopara will do that.

    It is important to remember that Bopara’s innings, whilst good, was in the second division. In their only other match, Yorkshire conceded over 500 in the first innings against Kent. One hundred seventeen is a good fightback when part of 199, but the fact is that it is an innings against a bowling attack that is not special. He played a good innings in difficult circumstances against a mediocre attack in the second division. That does not at all indicate a reversal of his absolutely terrible Test form.

    That innings was not even the best in this round of matches. Chris Read played a much better innings for Nottinghamshire, his hundred was ten times the score of the next best batsman. It was out of a tally of 162 and it was in the first division. Also in the first division, Rikki Clarke scored 140 after coming in with Warwickshire 81-7. Darren Maddy also scored what was for me an incredibly frustrating century in that match and they have probably ensured their side cannot lose from a position where they looked very likely to lose. As I type this, Nick Compton has scored his second century of the season to go with his 99 in the first match of the year. He leads the first division in runs, average and balls faced by a huge amount and that is with the incredibly bowling friendly conditions around the country so far.

    I am very much in favour of the selectors looking at runs in the County Championship, but Bopara has failed so often he must not be given any special preference over other batsmen and he has demonstrably not been the best of those batsmen. There remains no rational argument to pick Bopara.

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  • Losing streak

    The Royals face the Blue Jays tonight having not yet won a home game. Luckily we’ve only played six, but a six game home losing streak (and seven games overall) is something that certainly appears to be worrying. I think, however, that this is a very different losing streak to the ones that have derailed us in seasons past.

    My reason for that thought is that we have been in these matches, especially those against the Tigers. The Tigers have been almost universally tipped to win the division and we could have won at least two, if not all three, games. Most importantly, though, we fought hard in all three. They are certainly the better team and if we had simply been swept (ie, without it being part of an extended losing streak) I don’t think there would have been any complaints with the performance. We made a very good team work hard for nine innings in three games, it is hard to ask for more than that.

    The three losses to Cleveland were rather worse affairs, but three games will not ruin a season. We did not play well in those, the pitching especially disintegrated for no clear reason. Whilst neither are reasons for undue concern (and I am not unduly concerned) it does mean that we need to win the series against Toronto, preferably starting tonight. If we play as well as we did against Detroit I think that will happen. The important thing will be for the players not to panic and start pushing too hard. There was some discussion in the last few games that they may already be doing that, so I think the biggest job for Yost and the coaching staff will be to keep the players calm. Do that, and I think it will be a comfortable game tonight.

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  • WI v Aus: Match Drawn

    This was pretty much the definition of a rain ruined Test match. It was never particularly one-sided, although one feels that Australia were on top for most of it, and it was fairly low-scoring. It simply rained and rained. There was time for few things of note, however… continue reading on the Armchair Selector

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  • Australian fitness

    Theoretically, Australia have bowling ‘in depth’. Which is good for them, because they are having a terrible time keeping any of their first choice quicks fit. In a best case scenario, they will have to choose three (usually) of James Pattinson, Pat Cummins, Peter Siddle, Ryan Harris and Ben Hilfenhaus. The problem for them is that it does not look like it will ever be a best case scenario. Cummins played one Test before injuring himself and has now missed the next eight. Pattinson played four Tests before being injured and missing the next three. Harris is so fragile that he has been omitted from the current Test purely as a precaution. With respect to Peter Siddle, there has been a lot of suggestion that Cummins, Pattinson and Harris are Australia’s three best bowlers. (Though I would dispute Cummins, and to a lesser extent Pattinson, on the ground that they have not played in enough Tests to properly establish their credentials.) They have to improve their fitness if they are to compete against the best sides again.

    Compare the Australian situation to that of England: Jimmy Anderson has missed one Test (for any reason) since being rested for the tour of Bangladesh two years ago. There is no current consensus about the identity of the third seamer, but Steven Finn is yet to be ruled out through injury and Tim Bresnan has only been unavailable for three Tests out of the 17 since the start of the last Ashes. Only Stuart Broad has had notable injury problems, but even he has only missed four of the aforementioned 17 Tests.

    The question of why Australia have such injury concerns is certainly an interesting one. I partly suspect that, slightly counter-intuitively, they play too little cricket, or at least too little first class and Test cricket. They played only three Tests in the ten months between the Ashes and the series in South Africa and their domestic teams play only ten matches in a season. It may be that when they do play they are simply not prepared for the more densely packed Tests seen in modern schedules. Cricket Australia need to find out the reason though. Australia already only have an average, or ever so slightly above, bowling attack. They can get by with playing their reserve bowlers against teams as prone to self destruction as India and the West Indies, they will not be able to do so against the better sides.

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  • LV=CC week two roundup

    It was another very entertaining week of matches in the County Championship this week. Early season conditions favoured the bowlers, especially on the first day as over 70 wickets fell around the country. This went a long way to ensuring that all seven matches had positive results. The full results were:
    Nottinghamshire beat Durham by 114 runs
    Sussex beat Lancashire by ten wickets
    Middlesex beat Surrey by three runs
    Warwickshire beat Somerset by two wickets
    Derbyshire beat Glamorgan by 130 runs
    Gloucestershire beat Hampshire by 33 runs
    Kent beat Northamptonshire by an innings and 120 runs

    It was a poor start to Lancashire‘s title defence as they were bowled out for 124 on the first day. Whilst this was hardly unusual given the conditions around the country, it still looked like a very bad toss to lose. There was some hope: Lancs had some of the best bowlers in the country last year and they reduced Sussex to 15-3 in reply. Michael Yardy and Ed Joyce but on a stand of 164, however, which probably decided the match. It was an especially good innings by Yardy who not only steadied the ship for Sussex but counterattacked brilliantly. Lancashire have to rue the four catches they put down on the second morning however. Sussex had one other fairly big partnership: 43 for the ninth wicket to end Lancashire’s brief hopes of keeping the deficit relatively in check. Lancashire did not play terribly poorly; credit must go to Yardy and Steve Magoffin whose batting and bowling performances respectively were excellent. Lancs could do with a bit more batting practise, but their biggest area of concern will probably be the fielding. It probably did not decide the match, but they dropped far too many catches. In the end, they only barely avoided an innings defeat. Ashwell Prince’s 58 was the biggest score of the match for Lancs as they only set Sussex a target of one to win.

    Notts continued a good start to the season by beating Durham despite being bowled out for 161 in their first innings. Both sets of bowlers made good use of the friendly conditions, however, and that 161 turned out to be good enough for a first innings lead of 32. I think it was not unreasonable to expect more of the same, but instead Notts built an unchaseable total around Michael Lumb’s 131. Given that only three other batsmen in the entire match passed fifty, it was a fantastic innings. Durham started the chase of 368 by collapsing to 30-5 and it was only some good lower order batting that saw them avoid humiliation.

    Middlesex‘s derby against Surrey looked like it might be the best match of the round even on the second day and it did not disappoint. It started off as a bit of a slow-burner; batsmen had to play themselves in properly before trying to go on. The top order for both sides did so passably well, though both suffered collapses in the first innings (Surrey’s the more dramatic). Neither, however, resembled the implosions seen in many other matches. It was slow, low-scoring work and very pleasing to see unfold even as I listened to Lancashire’s match. The work of Dawid Malan for Middlesex and Steve Davies for Surrey in getting the only two fifties of the first innings was very impressive in light of the fairly low team totals. The second innings saw the return of the proper collapses, however. Middlesex had a first innings lead of 34, but only set Surrey a target of 141. They needed something special from their bowlers and Tim Murtagh and Toby Roland-Jones just about delivered. It was close though. Rory Hamilton-Brown almost got Surrey across the line after they had been reduced to 22-3 and 68-4. He could not find a partner though and even though he made the second highest score of the match with 63, his departure left Surrey 126-8 and the tail could not quite do enough.

    Somerset won the toss against Warwickshire at Edgbaston and chose to bat. Seventeen point four overs later they were 44-5 with Trescothick, Nick Compton and James Hildreth making just 14 between them. Compton at least managed to make his five last 64 balls, which is fairly impressive. I did not think they were going to get to 100, before Philander decided to become an all-rounder and top-scored in the innings with 38. In the end, Warwickshire had to rely on their own tail to get the lead close to 100. Somerset had a chance to set a good total and although they lost their openers cheaply again, they got an excellent hundred (133) from Compton and 93 from Jos Buttler. The pair of them put on 167, but it was a mark of how little help they got from the rest of the batsmen that their joint contribution was over half of the total of 354 all out. With Somerset’s batting, it is probably fair to say that it should have been more. Jeetan Patel’s unbeaten 43 left them rueing that failure. Although Warwickshire had briefly been 190-3, they collapsed in just eight overs to 207-8 and Somerset had a real chance. I think, however, that the more deserving team won.

    Derbyshire‘s match against Glamorgan was a case of one semi-competent batting innings winning a match. At the end of day one, Derbyshire had been bowled out for 130 and had reduced Glamorgan to 37-4. They would go on to bowl Glamorgan out for 95 before themselves collapsing (again) to 37-5. Eventually they found some semblance of batting in the lower-middle order, most notably an unbeaten 51 from David Wainwright, and could set Glamorgan over 200 to win. It was not objectively a lot, but in the context of the match all the safe money was on Derbyshire. The extent of Glamorgan’s collapse was still pretty surprising, however. They got off to a decent start and were at one point 92-3. Six overs later, they were all out for 102. Jonathan Clare did most of the damage for Derbyshire, but it was still a spectacular implosion.

    Gloucestershire managed comfortably the best performance in the first innings of this round of matches in their trip to Hampshire. They put up 314 all out, thanks mostly to 114 from opener Chris Dent. Despite a solid 74 from Simon Katich, Hampshire’s reply never seemed to really get going and Will Gidman’s 5-48 ensured that they were bowled out 115 in arrears. Gloucs made enough of it, but I’m sure they would have liked to have done more. No one went past fifty in their second innings, and Hampshire were set a not unreasonable 290 to win. Hants’ top order didn’t bother to show up for that chase, however, and found themselves 72-6 at one point. Wicket-keeper Michael Bates and Chris Wood engineered a recovery, but when Will Gidman struck to remove Bates 13 short of the latter’s hundred, the match was all but up.

    Kent had the biggest victory of the week over Northamptonshire. Northants won the toss, batted and were bowled out for 132. It was an interesting innings as there were no scores of note and the wickets were shared around the Kent bowlers. Northants possibly scented a comeback when Kent were 35-2, but solid contributions from Ben Harmison, Brendan Nash and Geraint Jones combined with an unbeaten 128 from Mike Powell meant that they trailed by a massive 236 after the first innings. Northants did not make much of an effort to make Kent bat again. Captain David Sales 42 was the highest of only three double-digit contributions to their 116 all out as Matt Coles took 6-51 to achieve the earliest finish (lunch on day three) of the week.

    Victory for Notts coupled with defeats for Somerset and Surrey mean that Nottinghamshire now top the first division table with 38 points from two matches. In Division Two, Derbyshire are enjoying one of their best starts to a season in recent times; they sit atop the table with 39 points and two wins from two.

    Nick Compton would be a dark horse at best for England’s vacant number six spot, but after two matches he leads the first division in both total runs and average. Jos Buttler’s good, but ultimately just insufficient, innings should also keep him in the selectors’ minds.

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  • IPL thoughts

    I’ve heard a lot of talk lately about the IPL. This is pretty remarkable, really, because I’ve put in every reasonable filter on Twitter and other places that I could in an effort to avoid it. It’s probably fair to assume that there has been much more talk than I have actually heard, which means there has been a lot of talk about the IPL. I wasn’t going to talk about it. I was going to quietly ignore it and let those who liked it get on with it. Except I forgot that the raison d’être of the IPL is for people to spread the holy gospel and it’s accompanying advertisements to all corners of the earth. I can’t ignore it without blocking most of Twitter and Facebook and never, ever going to Cricinfo and I need those sites for other things. So instead I am going to add my rather small voice to the cacophony of those talking about the IPL and I am going to say why I hate it.

    The first reason is what I alluded to above: it’s omnipresence. I’m pretty sure the goings on of the English FPT20 are not written in detail in Australian papers. I could be wrong, but I also don’t think everyone in India is watching with keen anticipation on Finals Day. And yet the IPL is assumed to have worldwide appeal. Why? It cannot be simply because there are international players, every domestic T20 league in the world has those. Lancashire have Junaid Khan again, will this ensure that Pakistan unites behind us as we go through the usual month of only T20? I am inclined to doubt it. The only thing different about the IPL is that its international players are paid obscene amounts of money. This is not the sort of thing that ought to be embraced or encouraged, but the IPL was designed for hype and it has done well enough that it is considered reasonable to broadcast it outside India. More than once have people assumed that since I watched cricket I must watch the IPL. This has never happened with the Sheffield Shield, SuperSport Series, Plunket Shield or even Ranji Trophy. (For the record, I don’t watch a lot of first-class cricket outside England, but I try to at least keep an eye on the leagues. I thus don’t have any strong affiliations to teams, but I tend to support South Australia, Cape Cobras, Otago Volts and Assam.) The fact that it is assumed that I care about an Indian T20 tournament simply because it has an effective publicity machine is grating.

    The second reason is the marketing. It’s entire marketing style assumes that I have the attention span of a slightly slow gnat and will get bored if more than five minutes elapse without and explosion or a shot of a dancing girl. It assumes that I cannot know when something is exciting if Ravi Shastri is not there to shout a bit. This is either spectacularly insulting or an admission that the actual sport is lacking. I suspect both are true to an extent and neither are pleasant explanations. I could, on this blog, change font style and colour every sentence. I could put animated fireworks between every paragraph in an effort to make it more appealing. But that would be putting style in front of substance and anyone reading would be able to see through such superficialities. The IPL does not seem to agree with that approach though. They cover up their many shortcomings with glitz and insultingly assume their viewers will not notice.

    A subset of this is that I hate the fact that the entire IPL is nothing but a vehicle for advertisements. I accept the modern need for sponsorship of cricket, but the IPL takes it to another level. It is one thing to add an extra word or two in front of a name like LV= or Investec, it is quite another to put one in front of everything. As with all other aspects of the IPL, it has the subtlety of a man trying to crack a safe by jackhammering through the top.

    The theoretical backup to all of the hype is the international players that have been paid/bribed large sums of money to try to lend credibility to the Mickey Mouse tournament. This is the third reason I hate the IPL and where it goes from mere annoyance to actual problem. The IPL’s poaching of some of the best and most prominent players marginalises every other event that happens at the same time. (And that is quite a bit of time, the IPL seems to drag on for ages.) This tends to hit the West Indies the hardest. The IPL always overlaps with their relatively short home season and because of their financial problems we have already seen many of them choose the IPL over their country. It is impossible to know how the first Test between the West Indies and Australia would have gone if the West Indies had been able to field a full strength side. There are other, large, reasons why the West Indies lost that Test, but they only lost in the end by three wickets. Having a full strength side may have been the difference. The IPL also hurts the County Championship for similar reasons and the ECB would be well advised to refuse to allow English players to compete or to demand much greater compensation.

    But does the IPL try to avoid conflict with internationals? No, in fact the BCCI suggest that internationals are scheduled around the IPL! Never mind the fact that for the West Indies and, to a lesser extent, England this is not feasible, it is a staggering arrogance. For all their pretensions, the IPL is still a domestic competition. It must schedule itself around Tests or take a backseat to them. This is a league originally run by Lalit Modi, however, so its approach is not surprising. I don’t even particularly mind the T20 format, but the IPL is loud, boorish and arrogant. Why anyone likes it is a mystery to me and hopefully the reports I hear of declining viewership are indicative of the long-term trend. It will probably never happen, but I hold out hope that one day the entire league will fold.

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