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Australia’s XII
In between Swann’s comments about ODIs yesterday and the thrilling finish to the Mumbai Test I have neglected to look carefully at the Australian squad for the first Test against New Zealand. There are only 12 in the squad this year, instead of the 17 they famously picked before Brisbane last year, so it gives a pretty clear indication of the likely XI.
David Warner will open, as I predicted, though Eddie Cowan made 145 for Australia A. It’s an interesting selection in many respects. Warner has some international experience in the limited overs realm, but he has played just ten first class matches. (He has played over a hundred domestic T20 matches.) He does average almost 60 in those matches however. Cowan, by contrast, averages 37 in over fifty first class matches, but he has passed fifty in twenty of them. He is also in very good form recently, as his score for the ‘A’ side shows. In essence, Cricket Australia have gone for a basher. It’s not surprising given the traditional ethos of the side, but one might think they would know that T20 stars are not always the best Test batsmen. Last winter they got to watch Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott score a combined 1211 runs at an average of 110, but with a strike rate barely above fifty. Philip Hughes looks like he might be the next to get the axe though, so Cowan may yet get his chance.
It’s possible that my predicted XI will be off by one. Ben Cutting was also included in the squad and could come in for Peter Siddle. Siddle might have been axed for Jo’burg if Harris hadn’t been injured, so it would not come as a shock if Cricket Australia wanted to look at someone else before India arrive. It’s also possible that they will choose all four seamers and Lyon will miss out. I’d be a bit surprised if Siddle were dropped. Whilst he looks a long way off from the bowler who took a hat-trick on the first day of the Ashes last year, to drop him would be to select an pace attack with precisely zero Test caps. (And a spinner with only five.)
The most notable omissions to the squad were probably Trent Copeland and Matthew Wade. Copeland played in the series in Sri Lanka and whilst he did not look like a world beater he did not do anything specific to cost him his place in the side. Wade, meanwhile, scored 53 against the New Zealanders for the ‘A’ side. With Haddin under some pressure it might have been worth to give Wade a call up. He at least looks like he knows better than to try to cut a ball on the stumps with the score 18-5. I’m not surprised that Australia left them both out, but with a weak opponent touring it is a good time to gamble.
I don’t think too much should really be read into the squad though; it’s an injury hit side and they are only playing New Zealand. Selecting Warner over Cowen and leaving out Copleland are sure to raise questions however. Australia will almost certainly win regardless of the XI they select so I think the selectors could have been a bit bolder, but this is a decent start.
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Saturday review – 26 Nov
My weekly look at my favourite stories and blogs starts with one that I saw just after finishing last week’s review. Sky Sports’ Dave Tickner argues that Test cricket is not dying, but changing for the worse. The statistics about the rise of two Test ‘series’ like the one we saw in South Africa are troubling, if not outright alarming. It’s an analysis with which I am inclined to agree, for the most part.
Giles Clarke today wrote a piece reaffirming the ECB’s commitment to Test cricket. It’s a response to a piece in the Telegraph yesterday and it’s a pretty good one. Although I still don’t agree with the logic of having extra World Cup preparation instead of a Test match, he does well to explain why the decision is not all about money. Oddly though, he also says that international cricket is not allowed to clash with the Olympics, despite the fact that the second Test against South Africa is scheduled to do just that. I assume some part of that is mistaken, but I don’t know what.
At Cricinfo, Anantha Narayanan has a piece looking at the most significant hundreds under a variety of conditions. It’s a very good read if you like statistics. (And who doesn’t like statistics?)
Andy Bull writes for the Guardian about a WWI naval battle and cricketers who have read their own obituaries. After one of the better introductions to a cricket article, it eventually gets around to a discussion about the possibly premature obituaries for Ricky Ponting’s career.
The Lancashire website has a lovely story about the scorer for the club. I’m not sure exactly when it popped up, but I didn’t see it until this week (Tuesday I think) and it’s a very good read.
Anyone who regularly reads these will have noticed that I tend to follow cricket more closely than the other sports about which I blog. I don’t read cricket blogs exclusively though and this week there was an amusing post by Bath Rugby’s Sam Vesty on Living Rugby. (Living Rugby is an excellent site all round, it should be noted.)
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Scrap ODIs?
Over the past week and more there has been a seeming parade of cricketers and coaches coming forward to express their preference for Test cricket. Graeme Swann has added his voice in support as well today, going so far as the suggest that fifty over cricket be scrapped. It’s a sentiment with which I am inclined to agree, but with some reservations.
I’m not overly fond of ODIs, personally. They have neither the subtle ebb and flow of a Test match, nor the immediate spectacle of a T20. They last too long to be the evening out that a T20 is, but don’t last long enough to form the engrossing battle that a Test match is. They are only properly exciting when a close finish develops, but those aren’t any more common than they are in other formats. I would not miss ODIs if they were scrapped.
I’m not unreservedly in favour of actually scrapping them, however. (Not that it isn’t a tempting thought.) They do serve a function. Primarily that function is to make money; people do occasionally pay to watch them and broadcasters do pay to carry them. (And most cricket boards are in almost desperate need of money.) This is happening less and less around the world, though. Even in India the crowds to watch England play were sparse. (Though admittedly there were few good reasons to want to watch that series.) The crowds, and more importantly the TV viewership, aren’t getting so small that they are no longer profitable though. The smaller nations have a much easier time marketing ODIs than Test matches and they are one of the only areas in which the associate nations get fairly regular chances to play against full members. And, of course, there are still some people who legitimately enjoy ODIs much more than I do. I don’t want to simply declare my preferred format to be sacrosanct at the expense of someone else’s.
Still, the problem of fixture congestion is a very real one. There is only so much time in the summer and the differing home summers in various parts of the world make scheduling difficult. Australia won’t have time to catch their breath between returning from South Africa and playing New Zealand and then India immediately after that. Meanwhile South Africa recently ended nine months without a Test match and England have four months between Test series. Something probably has to be done, but it does not have to be scrapping fifty over cricket.
One solution would be to entirely disconnect Test and limited overs tours. We have already seen an increase in the number of tours solely for limited overs matches and next year England will go on a Test only tour of Sri Lanka. There is no reason why this cannot happen more often. Ideally this would allow full Test and ODI tours with more of a balanced schedule throughout the year. It might still be too complex to work in practice, but I think it would at least reduce the long layoffs and sudden bursts of lots of back to back cricket. (I concede, though, that without attempting to create a fixture list from scratch I don’t know for certain how well it would work.) There are probably other (better) solutions that don’t involve scrapping ODIs completely as well.
If they did have to be scrapped though I would expect them to just be replaced by T20s. Personally I would not think that to be a bad thing, but it would not do a lot to reduce fixture congestion. (Though there would be one fewer World Cup around which to plan.) It would also not be a palatable solution to those who prefer the fifty over game. It is what I suspect might happen though. Attendances at ODIs have been declining and if they continue to do so I think they will be gradually phased out. T20s are easier to stage and easier to sell to the public and I suspect crowds are already starting to gravitate towards them more than ODIs. Test matches will always be popular in England and Australia, but the nearest ODIs have to that guaranteed support is India who look to be drifting towards T20 as well. Unlike Test matches, the raison d’être for ODIs is to make money and if they stop doing that they will be scrapped.
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A makeshift XI
Despite only playing two Tests in South Africa, five Australians have managed to pick up injuries to rule them out of the first Test against New Zealand. Shane Watson, Shaun Marsh, Ryan Harris, Mitchell Johnson and Pat Cummins are all unavailable for the Aussies. It’s enough injuries that there don’t appear to be clear cut replacements for a lot of them, so it’s a lovely welcome for new chairman of selectors John Inverarity. It also looks like Mickey Arthur’s first job will be to introduce a conditioning regime that allows them to play more than two Tests without half the side injuring themselves. This also means that Ponting and Hussey will be assured of their places and Khawaja will be very likely given another chance to prove himself.
There’s probably a bit of pressure on the players currently contesting an ‘A’ game against the New Zealanders. That game seems like the most likely place from which replacements will be picked. The match is only half over, so all the players with a reasonable chance to be picked will have another chance to try to prove themselves. Right now David Warner and Eddie Cowan, the two openers competing for Watson’s spot have scored 65 and 60 not out, respectively. Warner has scored almost twice as fast which should not matter, but if it starts to look like a tossup may come into play. From the bowling side, James Pattinson is probably the front runner. (Though his name is almost synonymous with selectoral incompetence.) He took four wickets in the first innings of the tour match and is one of the few bowlers not to have been humiliated in last year’s Ashes. After that it’s will be interesting to see if the selectors go for the tried-and-failed Ben Hilfenhuas or the uncapped Mitchell Starc. It may be a bowl off in the second innings of the tour match.
Right now I think the Australian XI for the first Test will probably be: David Warner, Phil Hughes, Michael Clarke, Ricky Ponting, Usman Khawaja, Michael Hussey, Brad Haddin, Peter Siddle, James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon.
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Who are England’s best bowlers?
It’s been a common question over the last several years, but for once it’s because of a surplus of talent rather than a dearth. Assuming everyone is fit (and there are question marks about Chris Tremlett and Stuart Broad) the contenders for probably three (maybe four) fast bowling places are James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Tim Bresnan, Chris Tremlett, Steve Finn and Graham Onions. Anderson is guaranteed his place and Broad, if fit, probably is too. Bresnan and Tremlett have matched each other with excellent performances in Australia and at home against India. Finn is one of the fastest bowlers to take fifty Test wickets and Onions had a very good start to his career before being injured.
Onions is probably the least likely to get a game considering for how long he’s been out of the side. Finn is a wicket taker, but an expensive one which doesn’t fit in with the ethos of the side. One of the major improvements that Strauss and Flower have implemented is to cut off runs and bore batsmen out, and Finn tends to haemorrhage runs whilst taking wickets. (He still has a fairly low average, but a very high economy rate.) It’s probably a shootout then between Tremlett and Bresnan. Bresnan has an edge in that he is almost an all rounder. We saw against India his ability to score lower order runs. There’s a possibility that they could both play; England have been obstinate in only picking four bowlers, but on the slow pitches of the UAE England might finally change the balance of the side. One imagines that a fifth bowler would probably be a spinner (probably Monty Panesar), but it’s not guaranteed.
I would actually go down a different route to what I think Flower and co will. If I were picking the attack I’d go with five bowlers, but only one spinner. I like Monty, of course (everyone does), but he’s been out of form for a while and I’m not sure he is going to be effective. I’d rather see four quicks who can operate opposite Swann. I quite like the bowling of Finn, but for the UAE and Sri Lanka I’d leave him and Tremlett out. They are both tall hit-the-deck bowlers and I don’t think that will be very effective on the slower pitches. I’d definitely give Bresnan the third quick bowling place. His bowling may be better suited to English pitches, but I think he can prosper in the UAE. His style is not too dissimilar to Junaid Khan. They both bowl quickly and accurately and can swing the ball late. Khan is probably the better bowler, but it was not thought that he would succeed in the UAE. For a similar reason I’d give Onions a chance, at least for the first Test. He won’t get as much swing as he would in England, but he is accurate and will pitch the ball up which I think will work better than banging it in. My bowling unit (assuming fitness) would thus be Anderson, Broad, Bresnan, Onions and Swann.
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575-9
With all the fuss about the Morgan Report I had forgot a bit about India going for a whitewash against the Windies. It doesn’t look like they will. At stumps on the second day the West Indies are 575-9. Since the war, no side has lost after scoring more 575 or more in the first innings of a Test match. In fact, on only two occasions has a team has lost after scoring 550 or more in the first innings of a Test match. Both were at Adelaide and both were in this century. Australia lost to India in 2003 and I see no need, even after winning by an innings at Adelaide last year, to mention the other one. The second tied Test in Madras in 1986 also featured Australia scoring 574-4 declared in their first innings. Pakistan also once lost a match against Australia after scoring 574-8 declared in the second innings of the match. Since the war almost exactly half of matches in which the side batting first have gone past 549 have been drawn, 61 out of 123.
It’s only the second time the West Indies have gone past 550 since declaring on 749-9 against England in February of 2009 and the first time in over a year. (Compare this to England who since the same match in Bridgetown have gone past 550 seven times and four times in the past year.) It’s not wholly surprising; it looks a flat deck and we’ve seen that India’s bowling can be suspect when there’s not a lot of help from the pitch. Still, it’s very good for the West Indies that they managed to build on their second innings fight from the last Test and have put themselves in a position where they should certainly draw the Test match. (Though I don’t see them winning it.)
Whilst it is only the second time that the Windies batsman have passed 550 in almost three years, it is the eighth time that Indian bowlers have conceded that many in that time span. That is far and away the most of any team in that time span; the next most is Sri Lanka with five. The fact that India were the number one team in the world for much of that time highlights the absence of a clearly dominant side. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing.)
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In which I am cross with the ECB
It’s been an irritating last few days with respect to the ECB. After the thrilling and premature conclusion of the South Africa v Australia series we were reminded at how ridiculous it is that England are only playing three Tests next summer against South Africa. Today David Morgan announced his proposals for changes to the domestic game and they are not good. The nature of the proposals were more or less known yesterday, so I don’t need to add to what I wrote then, but what’s amazing is the lack of a coherent rationale behind the proposals and a good indication of how they would work.
The much maligned shift from 16 to 14 matches, for instance, can only be attained by having not all of the counties play each other twice. This means that some counties will have an easier schedule than others and it means that there will never be a satisfactory basis for the fixture list. Also the matches will start on different days throughout the year so as to accommodate the T20 matches throughout the year. I can’t see how that will make any more money (there will still be fewer T20 matches) and it is yet another case of first class cricket taking a back seat to T20. Hopefully the rest of the ECB realise that the public still like the County Championship and don’t want to see it further marginalised.
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New kit design
The Royals unveiled some minor changes to their kits for the 2012 season today. It’s nothing particularly radical. If one didn’t know that they had taken place one might not even notice. They’re good changes though, subtle but clearly an improvement.
The biggest change probably that the powder blue cap has been abandoned. I am quite glad of this, as I never liked them. The only other change that is readily noticeable with the naked eye is that the colour of the lettering on the powder blue jerseys has been changed to white. Otherwise there are very subtle changes of colour, font and some piping. I quite like them, they’ll look good on national TV next October.
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Lancs News
We’re still waiting for the release of next season’s County Championship fixtures. The most current news is that it will be a week from today. In the meantime all we know is that there won’t be any Roses matches next year and that Lancs will play the MCC in Dubai from the 27th of March. (Shrewd observers will note that this already clashes with a Test match. Presumably the ECB were cross that they couldn’t make a Roses match clash with a Test this year and had to think of something different.)
Whilst we wait there has been some news from the Shires. Yorkshire had a massive shake up of course and now Lancs have announced that they probably will not be profitable until 2013. This is not surprising, as the long legal battles have delayed the redevelopment of Old Trafford and meant that there have not been any Test matches in the north west since the Kiwis toured in 2008. There will be four matches at OT next year, and the unveiling of the Championship pennant, but it is not until the Ashes come back in 2013 that the crowds will really come in. (And hopefully there will be another Championship pennant to unveil that year.) It’s not good news, of course, but nor is it disastrous. A lot of clubs are posting losses and at least there are very large profits forecast from 2013-2016. It could be much worse. We could be Yorkshire.
Jimmy Anderson has also revealed that he would like to have a better chance to play in the IPL. Good luck with that, mate. I don’t see the ECB budging and making a window for the IPL (nor should they). And I don’t see the IPL budging and accepting that they are less important than international cricket and should schedule themselves around it, rather than insisting that it be the other way around. So I don’t see there being English players with a significant part in the IPL anytime soon. I can understand why Jimmy (and others) would want to play in the IPL, but I’m fine with them staying in England.
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Don’t change the County Championship!
I’m hearing that former chairman of the ECB David Morgan is set to propose a some radical changes to the County Championship. According to the Guardian, all of his proposals involve reducing the number of County Championship matches next year. The rationale is the same as it has been the last several times something like this has been proposed, specifically that the smaller counties are in danger of going bankrupt and fewer matches will help them… somehow. (Less travel, I think, though it’s never really made clear.) Why making it harder for the smaller counties to make it into the top flight and making their schedule less comprehensible is not addressed.
The proposals are foolish and hopefully whatever the final one is will get shot down. The last two County Championship seasons have been the best advert for the domestic game possible. There may be a financial reason for changing it, but reducing the appeal of the competition is counterproductive. Attendance may be sparse at CC matches, but it is still the best attended domestic league in the world. The attendance for the County Championship is comparable to the attendance at Test matches elsewhere in the world. I don’t know that the new proposals would jeopardise that, but they would certainly not help. If the plan is to reduce matches then why not the CB40? I cannot get hard attendance figures, but from the TV it looked like Lancashire’s CB40 matches had smaller attendances than their County Championship matches. Certainly the CB40 has less prestige than the other two competitions, why are there still so many matches?
The new proposals would result in a contrived format and almost certainly with reduced appeal. It places the one-day game ahead of the first class matches despite the great success of the County Championship in recent years and despite the positive effect it has had on the national team. (Let us not forget that we are number one in the world, thanks in part to the skill of players in the CC.) There must be any number of proposals that will better suit the domestic game. Hopefully there will be enough board members to see sense. I’m optimistic; none of the proposals in the last few years have managed to go through.
Defensive Indifference 