Lancs sign Shazad

This move surprised me. It surprised me when Shazad left Yorkshire, to be fair, but even then I expected him to go to Somerset. They badly need a bowler and he is a good fit. Really, it never occurred to me that he would cross the Pennines. Now that he has, it forces the questions of where he will fit in to the side and how much of a boost it actually will be.

I suspect that he will come in roughly in place of Saj Mahmood. Saj has been our third seamer for a while and whilst he can be brilliant he is also erratic and using Shazad in his place would probably be an improvement. That said, whilst Shazad is certainly talented he seems to wax and wane as well. It was not so long ago that he was almost a full time England bowler, but since then he has fallen off rather a lot. If the change of scenery and change of coach can bring about a revival than he will be an excellent weapon, but otherwise he might just end up giving the Championship players a rest in the pyjama matches. I worry about that second possibility, as if that happens he might be an overall detriment to the side. His behaviour problems are fairly well established and I think Lancashire more than a lot of sides need to stay tightly knit and disciplined. It was a truly team effort that won us the title last year anything that jeopardises that team mentality is a huge risk.

On the whole, however, I think it is more likely than not that he will come good. He has a lot to prove right now and a very coach in Peter Moores. Whilst most of Lancashire’s problems this year have been with the bat, we have conceded big scores and especially big partnerships at inopportune times and I think that more than anything else has cost us. If we can have a solid second or third seamer to help stop that, it will be a major boost.

LV=CC week five roundup

There was more rain in the LV=CC this week, but not as bad as it was last week and we did have more results than draws this time. (Though this was partly due to a contrived match at Lord’s.

Nottinghamshire beat Lancashire by 185 runs
Warwickshire beat Durham by nine wickets
Middlesex beat Worcestershire by 132 runs
Derbyshire drew with Gloucestershire
Glamorgan drew with Essex
Northamptonshire beat Hampshire by 117 runs
Yorkshire beat Leicestershire by an innings and 22 runs

Of note is that now all of Durham, Lancashire, Worcestershire and Glamorgan have still not won a match this season. Yorkshire’s win at Scarborough was their first of the Championship. Meantime, Warwicks and Notts are each yet to lose a match despite some close finishes for the former and the latter having just a single batting point this season. It keeps Warwickshire on top of the D1 table by four points over Notts, having played one fewer match. Derbys have also done enough in their draw to stay at the summit of D2.

As mentioned above, one of the most notable match of the round was probably at Lord’s where Worcestershire declared before the last day on 45-2 and Middlesex forfeited their second innings. It set up a chase of 283 on the last day, but Worcs did not get near it. It was still an example of good attacking thinking, however. The points allocation system is (rightly, I think) set up to reward victories highly and almost discount draws. Worcs correctly assessed that it was worth going for a win and we got an exciting finish out of a match that looked dead.

This was also the week in which all of the England players were cleared to appear for their counties. Ian Bell rather dramatically returned to form for Warwickshire, scoring 120 after coming in with the Bears 15-3. He this time outshone his England colleague Trott, who could only make two. As Warwickshire do not play next week, Bell will appear for the Lions to get some more time in the middle. Jimmy Anderson bruised his hand and come down with a stomach ailment, but still managed to take 5-82 in Notts’ second innings. In the other dressing room for that match, Swann and Broad took 3-26 & 2-30 and 0-60 & 3-67 respectively. Swann and Anderson each bowled the other in the match as well. Andrew Strauss scored a pretty good 49 in tricky conditions at Lord’s. It was not chanceless, but it was fairly quick and pretty fluent for the conditions. It should ease the silly media speculation about him, however. Steven Finn did not play a large role on the final day, but did take 2-30. For Essex, Alastair Cook’s return to the middle did not last long, as he made only nine and five. Jonny Bairstow made his case to bat at six against the Windies with 182 in Yorkshire’s innings victory, whilst Tim Bresnan took 1-37 and 1-57.

Many of the best performances were not from the England players, or even those on the fringes of the side, however. Andre Adams completely turned the match at Old Trafford with his first innings 7-32 (a career best) and Warwickshire’s Keith Barker took 5-33 in the first innings and 5-37 in the second to ensure that Durham were only briefly in the match. Strauss got the most publicity in Middlesex’s first innings, but it was Joe Denly who put them in a winning position with his unbeaten 134 whilst Alan Richardson tried in vain to restrict the hosts with his 5-89. Derbyshire captain Wayne Madsen hit a century and Tony Palladino took 5-47 as Gloucestershire were forced to follow-on at Derby, but Kane Williamson stepped up for the visitors with 128 (of 409-4) as they secured the draw. Cook failed for Essex, but Alviro Petersen, his South African counterpart, did not and scored 145 at Cardiff. Huw Waters responded for the hosts with 5-47 to restrict Essex in the second innings as the match was drawn. David Willey put in a possibly match-winning effort with the ball for Northants, taking 5-39 in the final innings as Hants could not get close to their target. Finally, Leicestershire had a pair of excellent performances in vain at Scarborough. Wayne White took 5-90 in the first innings and Matthew Boyce scored 122 as Leicestershire tried to make Yorkshire bat again.

Twelve Lions

The Lions squad was announced last week and whilst I didn’t remark upon it at the time, there are some interesting names both included and not.

Apart from the inclusion of Simon Kerrigan (about which I am actually a bit disappointed as we really need him in the LV=CC right now), Nick Compton has also been rewarded for his great start to the season with a call-up. The side is still led by James Taylor. Ravi Bopara has not been included, fuelling suggestion that he is already written into number six in the Test side. This may be true, but I am not certain that it is. The argument goes that England are so sure he will be in the side that they do not want the Windies to get a look at him ahead of time and thus they have omitted him in favour of a purely experimental side of youngsters. Again, this could be. There’s nothing ridiculous about it. But I am not convinced. (Note that this has nothing to do with the fact that Bopara shouldn’t be selected, it’s the separate question of whether he will be anyway.)

First off, I am uneasy with using a lack of selection to a reserve match as proof of first team selection. Note that Graham Onions will also not be playing for the Lions either, however he is very, very unlikely to be in the Test side. The bigger objection is the inclusion of Compton, however. Compton will be 29 this summer, he is not a young prospect. He is not a developing player. I don’t see him being in the Lions as a measure for the next few years, the way it is with Taylor. Surely, the only reason for him to be playing is as an audition for the Test side. Were it a guarantee that Bopara were playing, there would be no need to select Compton for the Lions.

I think the most likely explanation is that Bopara is the default. Despite not playing recently, he will be selected if nothing changes. However, the selection of Compton is an opportunity for something to change. I think the attitude of the selectors will be that Compton can force his way into the side with a good Lions performance in much the same way that Morgan did last year. I rather hope I am right, Bopara remains almost the last person I want to see batting at six for England.

A nail in Morgan’s coffin?

The professional Cricketers Association today released a survey showing overwhelming support amongst English cricketers for a 16 game County Championship and criticising the Morgan Report for not consulting them. (Cricinfo also has a piece on this with a very misleading headline.) It is very good to see yet more condemnation of Morgan’s ill-concieved notion.

The ECB is now one of very few organisations to actually support the Morgan Review. In fact, I’m struggling to think of any others. I believe there are two or three counties and a handful in the media. Most of the counties, however, most I have seen in the media, nearly all of the county supporters and now the PCA are against it. The ECB are stubborn enough that I expect that they will still do everything in their power to force it through and rather pessimistically I expect them to succeed in the end. I am very pleased to see such strong resistance, however.

LV=CC week four roundup

It rained. I could list the results of every match and give summaries, but there was not a single positive result in the country this week. Two matches, Surrey v Durham and Gloucestershire v Glamorgan, were abandoned without a ball bowled over four days. It’s very difficult to have 32 scheduled days of cricket with nothing of note happening, however.

In this round, Lancashire looked much improved. They had the benefit of facing a below-par Somerset attack, but it was still very nice to see a solid performance from the Red Rose. Had the rains stayed away a bit longer there was a good chance that they would have got full bonus points. As it was we only had time to get one bowling point, but a lovely 113 from Steven Croft saw us get full batting points. We’ve still not won a match, but we have shown that we can compete well and that will be important ahead of an important match against Notts next week.

Speaking of Notts, they once again had a difficult time with the bat, but a better one with the ball. Twenty-six batsmen took guard in their match against Worcs (the highest of any match this round) and none of them passed fifty.

Yorkshire are still looking off the boil, they had already conceded a large first innings lead to Kent before the rain came in that match. They have now drawn all of their matches and only really played well in one of them. The fact that Kent got ten points from the match (the most of any side this round) means that they stay on top of the second division.

Armchair selector: An Australian winter’s tale

Australia’s 75 run win in Dominica secured a 2-0 series victory, their second consecutive series win. They have now not lost a Test since their seven run defeat against New Zealand at Hobart. Unfortunately for them, they do not now play another Test until next winter. Obviously they do not entirely control the relevant parts of the Future Tours Programme, but I do think that Cricket Australia may have missed a trick by not trying to schedule something more than five ODIs for the summer. Despite their victories, we have seen some clear gaps in the side recently and there is really nothing to be done to repair them until what must be, for both Cricket Australia and the Australian public, alarmingly close to the 2013 Ashes. With that series in mind, this is how I see the current Australian side:continue reading part I and part II on the Armchair Selector…

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.

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.

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.

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.