Home

  • Now I’m cross

    The ICC are a bunch of craven, short-sighted idiots. Which goes without saying, really, but once again they have thrown that fact into sharp relief. Yesterday they decided that the DRS would not be mandatory. This after making a bizarre half-DRS mandatory last summer. This despite that the single biggest problem with the DRS is not it’s accuracy (which is not perfect, but is quite high and higher than that of the on field umpires) but the inconsistency of it’s application. The ICC have responded to this problem by making it worse. It also begs the question of why, when all the major boards except India support the DRS, does the DRS fail a simple vote by the boards? The amount of short term, selfish thinking on display is staggering.

    That happened yesterday. Today they decided to postpone the test championship until 2017. The rationale is that they promised ESPN Star Sports (in India) a Champions Trophy in 2013 and couldn’t back out of that. Which I understand and is certainly true. This isn’t entirely their fault, even. The fact that ESPN insist on a one-day tournament is infuriating, but unsurprising. There’s no guarantee that India would even qualify for the test championship, and it would not be as popular in any case. One cannot expect a corporation to act against it’s own interests. But the ICC should have seen this coming. By signing a deal with ESPN Star Sports they must have known that they would be putting themselves under the control of an organisation that does not have the best interests of cricket at heart. By allowing ESPN to dictate terms the ICC guaranteed they would be preferentially staging ODI tournaments. They must not let this continue. When the rights come up for negotiation again they must give themselves some flexibility. Unfortunately the odds of this happening are lower than the odds of a whelk surviving a supernova.

    This does not fully explain the ICC’s decision, however. The fact that they must stage a Champions Trophy does not mean that they could not stage a test championship. It would give them four major tournaments (test championship, 50 over World Cup, T20 WC, and Champions Trophy). It’s more than are needed but all four could still be staged with one every four years. Except the ICC decided to make the T20 WC once every two years so as to squeeze every penny out of it. The upshot now is that in order to stage the test championship in 2013 it must conflict with the CT. In 2014 it must conflict with the T20 WC, in 2015 the ODI WC and in 2016 the T20 WC again. The ICC could have just bitten the bullet and staged two events in a year. But they didn’t. They chose the solution best for their coffers instead of the solution best for the game.

    , ,

  • Predictions for today

    It’s been a pretty good postseason so far. Mostly because the Wankers lost, but also because three of the four division series went to five games, which is a welcome change from the past few years. Not only were there three deciding games, all three were decided by just one run. After Fuck-Rod struck out to send the Wankers home (the memory of which still gives me a warm feeling) the Brewers walked off in the tenth inning against Arizona and the Chris Carpenter out-duelled Roy Halliday. (The last one was the best; all deciding games should be 1-0 pitcher’s duels.) Neither of the championship series will be sweeps either, which makes for a good start.

    The Rangers are leading the Tigers two games to one, with the home team winning every game so far. This is not surprising; the Rangers have the most hitter friendly park in the AL, and the Tigers have one of the least. The Tigers have actually looked the better side so far; the Rangers only narrowly won their home games whilst the Tigers looked quite assured at home last night. Indeed, with a few breaks in the first two games the Tigers could be 3-0 up right now. Today (imminently, actually) Rick Porcello starts against Matt Harrison. Neither have been dominant this year, which will probably give the Rangers a slight edge, even though the game is in Detroit. I’m tipping the Rangers to win, but only just. (Just barely tipping them, that is. I don’t think the game will necessarily be close and I do think it will be high scoring.)

    The National League, after having a much better pair of division series, has not had an enthralling championship series so far. The Brewers and Cardinals traded blowouts in the first two games and now the series is level going to St Louis. I expect the trend may change tonight though as both aces are starting. Gallardo has actually pitched better during the postseason so far, giving up just one run in each of his two starts. Carpenter, however, gave up four runs in three innings in game two of the NLDS before his famous performance in game five. Carpenter also had a complete game shutout in the last regular season game, but that was against Houston and I’m pretty sure I could shut out Houston. So it should be a good game. Carpenter is pitching at home for the first time this postseason and Gallardo is pitching on the road for the first time, so it will be interesting to see if that affects either of them. I think the Cardinals will win a close game.

    As I type this the Tigers-Rangers game ought to have started, but it has been raining in Detroit and the new start time is set for 16.45 CDT.

    ,

  • Please don’t wake me

    India v England round two: ‘This time there’s curry’ starts later this week. Specifically it starts at 04.00 CDT on Friday. Which is quite early, especially for a completely pointless series. It isn’t even a proper ’round two’, it’s only an ODI/T20 series. The real round two will be in a year’s time, when England go back for a four test series. England aren’t playing the tests now because… well… I’m sure there’s some reason. Anyway it’s an ODI series in India, which means that England won’t win. Douglas Adams explained why in Life, the Universe and Everything: ‘They care, we don’t. They win.’ And history supports this; England haven’t won an ODI against India in India since the sixth ODI of the 2006 tour, which was a dead rubber. England lost that series 5-1 (with one match rained off) and lost the next ODI tour 5-0 (with two matches cancelled after the Mumbai terror attack). To be fair to England, they have improved considerably since those tours, albeit more in test matches than in limited overs ones.

    I was tempted to suggest that the most recent match in India (in the World Cup) was the best barometer. This may be the case, but that match featured a 120 off 115 balls from Sachin Tendulkar, 5-48 from Tim Bresnan, 158 off 145 balls from Andrew Strauss and a brilliant spell from Zaheer Khan in which he took three wickets for one run in six balls. Of those four players, however, Khan and Tendulkar are injured and Strauss has retired. India have sustained numerous injuries since the World Cup, whilst retirements and a youth movement have rendered England almost unrecognisable from the team that performed so mercurially during the World Cup.

    England will have the momentum coming off their home ODI wins, but I don’t think this is worth much, if anything. (In the last Ashes England had the momentum going into the Perth test, which they lost heavily. Subsequently Australia had the momentum going into the Melbourne test and were bowled out for 98 on the first day.) What may have more an effect is India’s desire for revenge. TMS’s Adam Mountford says India are billing this series as ‘The Payback Series’. (They don’t seem to be short of confidence.) England should do better in this series than in ODI series past (they could hardly do worse, mind), but I don’t know that they’ll win it. England have a lot of inexperienced players, and I doubt they’ll do much better in the unfamiliar Indian conditions than the Indians did in the unfamiliar English conditions over the summer. (Though Bairstow and Borthwick didn’t seem troubled in the last warm up match.)

    It is an odd series in that it’s interesting on paper (England’s first trip to India since their revival under Strauss and Flower) without actually being interesting. It isn’t a test series, but there is one coming up in a year. We just played India anyway, so it doesn’t stir up any interest in that regard. Obviously the series is good for the ECB coffers (a good thing), but I think England (and probably India) would be better served by having a bit of a break. A win would allow England to rub India’s nose in the dirt a bit, but a loss would allow India to say that the series in England meant nothing, so England really have nothing to gain.

    I’m not sure how much of the series I’ll listen to. As motivations to get out of bed before dawn a meaningless ODI does not rank in the top ten. And even upon successfully getting up it is hard to stay awake through the middle overs of an ODI on just three hours of sleep. (I know from experience.) I’ll see how I feel when the alarm goes off at 03.30 on Friday morning.

    , ,

  • Painting testimonial pictures, oh-oh-oh-oh

    One of the things on which I’ve had my eye in the past week (in the couple of hours I’ve had to spare between the MLB playoffs, RWC, and both premiership and international football) is the ongoing spot-fixing trial. I thought about writing about it at the weekend, but I’m (obviously) not a lawyer and thus the events are thus a little bit removed from what I can really analyse. And whilst the first few days had some very interesting evidence presented, it was mostly stuff that was already known, or was more speculative. Today, however, more of the video of the exchanges between Mahmood (the journalist) and Majeed was shown, in which Majeed claimed that the fixing was much deeper than no-balls and even included throwing an ODI. The video looks quite damming (as did the phone records last week), but a lot of the quotes sound like Majeed was talking out of his arse, trying to impress Mahmood. (Apparently Majeed knows just about every famous and important person in the world.) Majeed himself is not in the dock, so we’ll be denied a chance to see him use the ‘I was lying to try to get more money out of this guy’ defence, but I expect Butt and Asif will use roughly that tactic.

    But what does seem to be true (since it was the thing for which Mahmood was pretending to pay the money, as opposed to an aside boast) is that the no-balls were to prove that the players would be involved in more serious fixing. The video today was of Majeed explaining about the ‘brackets’ that were allegedly fixed. If true, these would not be a few inconsequential no-balls, but would mean that the fixing was affecting the outcome of the match. (Haemorrhaging runs for a few overs, as the Majeed said they would, would let a batsman get set and possibly set him up for a big score.) If this is true (and again, that’s a bigger ‘if’ than if a skywriter started doing Kipling) then it certainly casts doubt on all the matches in which Pakistan have played in the past few years.

    I’m very much looking forward to see the arguments of the defence. The evidence so far looks quite damming, but the original ICC case, after presumably hearing the same evidence and arguments, handed down surprisingly small bans. It makes me wonder if the defence won’t reveal some hole in the more serious allegations, without being able to explain away the original no-balls. (According to Cricinfo, Sky Sports statistician Benedict Bermange calculated to odds of innocently predicting those three no-balls at one in 1.5 million.) I’ll be keeping a slightly closer eye on the upcoming proceedings.

    ,

  • Andy you’re a star

    Andy Murray overcame Rafael Nadal to win the Japan Open last night. (Well it wasn’t night there, but you know what I mean.) I didn’t see it, because the rugby was on, so all I know comes from the Guardian coverage of the match.

    I’d liked to have seen it, though (and I did try). Apparently Murray’s victory came with a final set whitewash (against Nadal)! It is Murray’s 12th straight victory and his 20th career title. Hopefully he can keep his purple patch going through the Australian Open in four months.

    ,

  • I’ll be thinking of an unrelated thing

    If you look very carefully in the sports section you will see that some events other than a pair of miserable England performances took place yesterday. Buried down below the rugby post-mortems, below the analyses of the football performance in Montenegro, down just above the foreign football results and the CLT20 news you will see that Andy Murray made it to the final of the Japan Open.

    Murray has been playing very well recently. Last week he easily won the Thailand Open and has won eleven consecutive matches and 22 of his last 23. The problem he will face in the final is Rafael Nadal. Nadal the #2 in the world. Nadal who has inflicted two of Murray’s last three defeats and knocked him out of the last three Grand Slams. Murray has defeated Nadal before, of course. Most memorable was in the quarter finals of the 2010 Australian Open, but also in the final of the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament. (Yeah, I had to look that up.) The latter tournament is on the same level as the Japan Open, so there is a smidgen of hope for Murray. Fingers crossed.

    The match, near as I can tell, will be on Sunday (9 October) at 06.00 BST, 00.00 CDT. It might also be two hours earlier. I saw two different statements on the tournament’s website, and I’m not certain I correctly translated from Japanese time to BST. (All of the news stories on that site, by the way, are punctuated with double exclamation marks. Somehow it seems appropriate.) Unfortunately if I’m right this is the same time at which the third RWC quarter final starts, so I’ll probably be watching that.

    ,

  • If it wasn’t for disappointment I wouldn’t have any appointments

    It has not been a good 24 hours for England sport. Yesterday in Podgorica the England football team blew a 2-0 lead and drew 2-2 to Montenegro. Today the England rugby team played France in a world cup quarter final. Well I say ‘played’, but ‘stood like statues whilst the French ran riot’ might be a better description. On Twitter TMS scorer Malcolm Ashton suggested that France were playing a Madame Tussaud’s XV. Jonathan Agnew asked why ITV were showing an X-rated horror movie. England went into halftime trailing 0-16. They gave glimpses of a fightback in the second half, but just as in the group stages they were sloppy. They conceded fewer (far fewer) penalties, but these were offset by handling errors. I lost count of how many times England knocked the ball on in the French 22. (Though part of that was probably due to the fact that I switched from tea to brandy at halftime.) England did score a brace of tries to maintain interest, but it wasn’t enough. The full time result was England 12-19 France and not even the most partial of England supporters would say that it was unfair. In a way, this gives France the double over England, as the most recent football encounter was also a French victory, at Wembley last year. We need to try playing them at cricket.

    So England’s RWC has ended in much the same manner as the cricket and football versions: Bitter knockout disappointment. The next knockout tournament is Euro 2012, followed by the World T20. I’d suggest maybe England have a chance at the latter, but as I type this England’s cricket side are 35-3 in a warmup match against Hyderabad. I’m going to bed.

    , ,

  • Swing low sweet chariot

    England v France kicks off in about fifteen minutes in Auckland. It’s the second Six Nations quarter final of the day (or night, depending on your location). The first match was a proper upset with Wales, who failed to beat South Africa in their group and always looked a little sketchy, beating an Irish side who had shocked the Wallabies to top their group. I didn’t see anyone who expected Wales to win, I certainly didn’t. But their defence was superb, twice early on Ireland got down to within a metre of a try, only for Wales to force them back and eventually force an error. The second time Ireland went a full fifteen metres backward before conceding a penalty. It was a very, very solid performance, capped by a brace of second half tries after Ireland had equalised. The full time result was a fair one: Ireland 10-22 Wales.

    So the two old protagonists meet again. England and France, adversaries for the past thousand years give or take. England should win. England have a very good record in knockout matches against France and won at Twickenham during the Six Nation. France’s world cup has been abysmal. Poor play and a player rebellion was capped by a defeat to Tonga in their last group match. They had done enough to qualify anyway (and were never going to top a group containing New Zealand), but could hardly have gone into the quarter finals in a worse way.

    Still, England have not been overwhelming. They won all their group matches, but needed a late try against Argentina and a very late try against Scotland. They played sloppily throughout the group stages. Not only did they concede a staggering number of penalties, they had a fair share of handling errors as well. Only against a depleted Romanian side did they look comfortable. They also had off pitch troubles most notably with regard to the balls provided to Wilko.

    In the end, I do think England will win. They haven’t played well, but they have always managed to do just enough to win. (And no more.) France have not. Also, England are starting both Flood and Wilko which I think is a good idea. I think this will put the French defence off, as there will be more kicking opportunities, and will improve the distribution to the backs with more width.

    We’ve already seen one upset today though. COME ON ENGLAND!

    , ,

  • It’s a blogroll

    I have a blogroll now, blogrolls are cool. It’s over on the right underneath my twitter feed. I encourage everyone to go to all those sites.

  • How sweet to be an idiot

    FT Montenegro 2-2 England. England played brilliantly for half an hour to take a 2-0 lead, and then proceeded to play appallingly poorly for the next hour. The big headline, though, is that Wayne Rooney is still an idiot. Rooney got a straight red for getting frustrated and maliciously kicking a Montenegrin in the back of the leg. A spectacularly stupid bit of petulance, almost as bad as his crotch stomp against Portugal five years ago. It is only tempered by the fact that this time a draw was all England needed, instead of sending them out on penalties.

    The result means that England are definitely in Euro 2012, but that Rooney will definitely miss at least the first match. I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing. Since the end of his purple patch in the 2010 WC qualifiers Rooney has picked up as many cards (2Y, 1R) as he has scored goals. Will he rediscover his form before next summer? Impossible to say, of course, but I am sceptical. He’s never really impressed in the summer, and his success in the WC qualifiers looked more like a Harmison-esque form of his life, as opposed to what we should expect on a consistent basis.His absence will give England at least one match (and I suspect two or three) to try out a new attacking strategy, hopefully one that’s more fluid that what we’ve seen with Rooney’s statuesque demeanour in the penalty area.

    None of Rooney’s antics should take away from the fact that England played as poorly in the second half as I have ever seen them. They gave the ball away time and time again. As such, they could not create any sustained pressure and with Montenegro steadily increasing in confidence and desire (with Wales beating Switzerland) England may have been fortunate to have only conceded an equaliser. Coming on the back of the shaky 1-0 victory over Wales it means that England will be far from favourites when facing up to competent opposition in Poland next summer.

    , ,