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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

The wait for the 52nd hundred

There’s been a bit more talk recently about the possibility of Tendulkar reaching his 52nd Test hundred. The current India v West Indies Test is in Mumbai, and if he could get the the magic five two in his home city it would be extra special. What is so special about fifty-two you ask? Well it is the first even number after fifty for one thing. That’s pretty special. Of course the real reason why there is such a fuss about it is that if he goes to 52 Test hundreds his 48 ODI hundreds would make his total number of international hundreds is a nice round number, and people like nice round numbers. I am actually rather dreading the moment when he gets to it. Not because I have anything against Tendulkar, I should point out, but the fuss surrounding it is rather tiresome.

For one thing, it’s not a proper milestone. His fiftieth Test hundred was an amazing accomplishment, but Test and ODI hundreds are different beasts. An ODI hundred does not require the same endurance as a Test hundred, the bowling cannot tie down a batsman in the same way in ODIs as they can in Tests. Furthermore there are a lot more ODIs played than Tests. (Tendulkar has more than twice the number of ODI caps as he has Test caps.) It doesn’t really mean anything to add them together; one wouldn’t merge Test and ODI batting averages, one wouldn’t merge Test and ODI strike rates why merge number of hundreds? It’s only nice in that it will add up to a hundred international hundreds. It’s still a nice accomplishment but only insofar as the number of Test and ODI tons are individually impressive. It is not like going to a hundred first class hundreds, which involves no addition of separate stats. (Remember that Test matches are a subset of first class matches.) In the end it just isn’t meaningful. Would any rational person claim that Sanath Jayasuriya’s combined 42 international hundreds are more impressive than Wally Hammond’s 22?

And that hints at the main reason why I am dreading Tendulkar’s 52nd Test hundred (or 49th ODI hundred). There are a lot of people (I don’t think a majority, but an annoyingly vocal minority) who already claim that Tendulkar is the greatest batsman of all time and they will all come out of the woodwork again. There may even be serious articles in otherwise reputable news sources about this. It’s ridiculous though. There should not be any discussion about the greatest batsman of all time that does not begin and end with Don Bradman. Everyone knows his average and it is a sight higher than Tendulkar’s 56.08. Furthermore, Bradman played on more treacherous pitches. (I’m not trying to sound like Geoffrey Boycott, but feel free to imagine him saying ‘uncovered pitches’ there.) The Don also has a far higher centuries/matches ratio; he scored 29 hundreds in 52 matches compared to Tendulkar’s 51 in 183. At the rate at which he scored, if Bradman had had the opportunity to play as many Tests as Tendulkar (remember that there were fewer Tests in Bradman’s time and that he lost six years to the war) he would have scored 102 Test hundreds. Bradman blows Tendulkar out of the water in every category that corrects for a different number of Tests played.

To be fair to Tendulkar, playing 183 Tests over the course of 22 years is an incredible feat itself. Bradman, however, did not lack in longevity. He played Test cricket for 20 years and there is no reason why he could not have played close to as many Tests as Tendulkar. Tendulkar’s record is very impressive certainly, but not only is he is a long, long way behind Bradman, he is probably behind Wally Hammond as well. Hammond averaged 58.45 in his 20 year career and like Bradman did so on difficult pitches and had his career interrupted by the war. Tendulkar also has had the advantage of playing Tests against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. (Though at the time New Zealand and India weren’t much better than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are today.) There is a decent discussion to be had about the exact order of the all time greatest Test batsmen after Bradman (Hammond, Hutton, Hobbs and Grace all have good arguments for the top five and that’s just amongst Englishmen). Tendulkar would certainly be in the top ten, but no rational person could claim him to be better than Bradman.

Perhaps I’m overreacting, but the number of Indian fans who (in some cases literally) treat Tendulkar like he is a god is already a source of irritation. I know that there are lots of rational Indian fans (and lots of irrational English fans, and indeed of all nationalities) but for whatever reason the Indian ones are louder. Perhaps it is because there are more of them as an absolute number (not as a percentage of all Indian fans). The fact that there is even talk about this ‘milestone’ is a bit daft and part of it is due to the deified status of Tendulkar. When he finally does go to three figures it will be enough take precedence over a lot of more important goings on. (I was thrilled that he didn’t do it in England and that India could not hide their humiliating whitewash behind that.) One could say that I like Tendulkar but so not like his fans. In the end I’m left teetering schizophrenically between wanting a good player to do well and dreading the reaction it will provoke.

Why I disagree with the ECB

There has been a very interesting discussion on Twitter about the logic of England’s schedule next summer. After the clearly too short South Africa v Australia series there has been a lot of discussion about why South Africa are only playing three Tests on these shores in 2012 and the soundness of that decision. I think I have probably made it known here and on Twitter that I think it is a bad idea, but it is not a straightforward issue and I want to spell out my thoughts.

The ECB are axeing one Test to fit in a five ODI series against Australia. From the standpoint of a spectator this looks like lunacy, but there is a reason. By agreeing to host the five ODIs against Australia England will play a reciprocal series in Oz just before the World Cup, so as to get their eye in. Also, it has been pointed out that the ODIs are money spinners and the ECB need money to fund nice things, like central contracts.

I still don’t like the decision though. For one thing, I question the soundness of the reasoning. It’s true that England have not done well at recent World Cups, but the problem goes deeper than preparation. That’s not to say that England will necessarily continue to fare poorly at World Cups (they used to fare poorly in Test matches too), but extra preparation time is still unlikely to dramatically improve the performance. Australian conditions are not as alien as Indian conditions and acclimatisation was not England’s problem in the last World Cup. (Whilst the conditions were problematic, England played better near the start of the tournament. If the issue had been acclimatisation they would have improved over the course of the tournament. The same would have happened in the most recent five match series, but clearly didn’t.) Certainly more preparation will not would not hurt, but it will only be a benefit if a lot else goes England’s way as well. Given that there will be warmup matches against other sides before the World Cup it looks like overkill. It’s not by itself enough to justify losing a Test match.

I’m not convinced that this series will offer a significant boost to the ECB coffers either. We saw this summer that there is still a strong appetite for Test cricket in England. (Wales not so much.) The four match series against India was about as one sided as they come, yet there were very large crowds every day. The images of the queues for the final day at Lord’s are still incredible. The crowds will clearly come when England play a strong side like South Africa. A Test match against the second best side in the world is not less likely to draw crowds than a meaningless five match ODI series, even against Australia. It can’t even be said that it is due to the Olympics, as the 2012 games fall during the Test series anyway. The decision would make a lot more sense if it had been a Test match against the West Indies to go, as the Windies are less of a contest, but we only played a two match series last time. I don’t know if that has a direct bearing on the current decision, but it would be understandable. There are still other, better ways that the ECB could have fit in five ODIs against Australia though. They could have reduced the number of ODIs against the Windies and/or South Africa, for instance, and played Australia at the tail end of the season. It is not a reasonable decision and I have yet to see a good explanation for it.

More broadly though, I oppose the notion of playing extra ODIs at the expense of a Test match. I understand that ODIs are important, that smaller nations need them to develop and that more matches mean more money for the ECB. (And I don’t think the ECB are being greedy, there is a lot of good they can do with more money.) This sends a message that the ODIs are a priority though, which is not a good message to send. Unless England actually win the World Cup, a good ODI performance is unlikely to raise the profile of cricket as much as a good Test series is. If I ask about the summer of 2005, how many people will wax lyrical about the tied NatWest Trophy final? It was a very good ODI series, but it was not in the same postcode as the Test series. I think the same will hold with the World Cup. It would be very nice if England win it, but it will not be a disaster if we don’t and anything short of making the final is very unlikely to be as exciting as a full Test series. Even if England do go to the final I don’t think anyone will be saying that it was down to the extra preparation (see above). It’s possible, of course, and it’s possible that South Africa will be two up after three matches, but neither are likely. More likely we will be denied a conclusion to the series, just as South Africa and Australia were today, in exchange for a World Cup performance that still fails to capture the imagination

One all going into a nonexistent third Test

I’m still a bit amazed at the finish to the second South Africa v Australia Test. Australia won by 2 wickets after the advantage had changed hands several times. Pat Cummins, the eighteen year old on debut, hit the winning runs after coming within about a centimetre of being LBW on review. (He was struck in line, but not so much as to overturn the umpire’s decision.)

Australia were probably deserved winners. They put their previous collapses behind them and managed to put together timely partnerships. The individuals who were under the most pressure to perform did so; Ponting made 62 and Haddin 55. Hussey also chipped in with some useful runs in a partnership with Haddin that put Australia in the ascendancy after the early wickets of Clarke and Ponting. Mitchell Johnson continues to look better with the bat than with the ball; he scored an unbeaten 40 that went a long way to winning Australia the match. His contribution might be a bit overlooked with the headlines about Cummins, but it was probably more important and at least as important as Haddin’s 55. The manner of the result probably eases some of the pressure on the selectors. They could probably justify naming an unchanged XI for the first Test against New Zealand. (Though they did so after the win at Perth last year and we know how well that turned out.) I would still drop Johnson. Australia may hove lost this Test without his batting, but the rest of the bowling attack has had to carry him this series. I don’t think they can go on like that.

It could be, and probably will be, said that South Africa choked. I certainly made that joke on Twitter when Australia looked like they were going to cruise to victory. It probably isn’t fair, but they did not play as well as they ought to have. Smith’s bowling decisions and field placings as Haddin and Hussey betted were not particularly sensible. At the time he had runs with which to play, but neither really attacked nor really defended. The batsmen could and did find the gaps and were not under a lot of pressure. His best decision was to take the new ball straightaway, but it transpired that it was not quite enough. The deciding point was probably when Steyn dropped a sharp return chance off Cummins with nine still to win. The TV was showing Nathan Lyon looking so nervous that it is hard to imagine that he would have survived long. We’ll never know, unfortunately. More unfortunately we won’t get a deciding Test match after the two thrillers to which we have been treated. Hopefully the absurdity of this will sound a wake up call to the administrators.