Brief thoughts

I think Australia will win at the WACA to make the Adelaide Test a dead rubber. This could be important (probably not though) as they have a much better chance on the flat Adelaide wicket for the fourth Test. At the WACA though, even if it is only as quick as it was last year the Indian batsmen will struggle. The only one who survived on the quicker, bouncier wickets (relative to India and the rest of Australia) last summer was Dravid, but now he looks like he’s not quite reacting quickly enough to full and straight balls. If he is undone with the rest of his colleagues by the pace of the WACA (as I think is very likely) it will hardly matter how the Australian batsmen fare.

England will have to work a bit in the UAE. We already knew this, or at least strongly suspected it, of course, but the warmup matches are bearing it out. The middle order are yet to really get going and whilst hopefully the different atmosphere and mentality of a Test match will help, it does appear that the going will be difficult for the batsmen. Because it’s only a warmup it’s hard to know how big of a problem it will be, but I’m still confident we can overcome it and win the series.

The ECB are wankers.

Saeed Ajmal announced that he has a new delivery and Graham Gooch has said that he isn’t bothered. I can’t blame Goochie, the last time a new ‘mystery’ delivery was actually effective was during that Warne/Murali era and even Warne still got most of his wickets by just turning the ball square. Right now when I think of a mystery delivery I think of the massively unimpressive Ajantha Mendis. Graeme Swann’s success comes without any weird deliveries and Ajmal is perfectly capable of doing the same.

Morgan’s folly

It was revealed on Cricinfo today that the ECB are going to accept the Morgan review and reduce the County Championship to 14 matches from 2014. I’ve written before about what a dreadful idea it is and that hasn’t changed. The fixture congestion is not going to be effectively eased and the four day game is still popular in England. All this is doing is reducing the amount of proper cricket for no discernible gain. What is particularly galling though is that the reason for the added fixture congestion is that the end of the season is being brought forward to accommodate the Champions League T20 competition.

The fact that we are decimating (more than, actually) our own premier competition for the benefit of a farcical, meaningless T20 competition in which we are not even stakeholders is absolutely infuriating. The ECB have already kowtowed to the BCCI about the DRS and already allow players to play in the IPL instead of for their counties. Now they are going to let our fixture list be dictated by Indian administrators who not only do not care about it’s health, but who have shown an active antipathy toward it! In many ways the ECB are the best run of all the cricket boards, but in addition to not scheduling enough Test matches every time they have looked like properly standing up to India they have folded. It is an absolute disgrace.

I’m not going to be so melodramatic as to say this will ruin the County Championship, but I do think it will hurt it. Sixteen matches is just about enough to avoid flukey results, but even then a lot is dependent on the rain staying away early in the season. What will we do when there is a wet spring and the first nine of 14 matches are badly rain affected? England is the only country in the world where domestic first class matches have their own following. Why damage that at all? Why not try to improve attendance and following of these matches instead of abandoning them for more T20s, both domestic and foreign? I have never seen anything that actually confirms the notion that people who come to the game via T20 actually go on to watch first class cricket. If Indian ‘supporters’ are anything by which to go it seems that T20 viewers are mostly loud, uninformed and at best apathetic toward Test cricket. Their money counts the same as the money of those who care about the first class game, but if the ECB truly care about the long term future of the game they must cater to those who also care, not those who don’t.

Will England succumb to spin?

There has been a lot of suggestion ahead of England’s series against Pakistan that there will be a lot of spin on offer in the pitches and that England will struggle. Leaving aside the question of how well the batsmen will play said spin (though it’s a very good one) it also begs the question of whether the predictions about the wickets will be accurate. The UAE is not technically on the subcontinent, though it is only separated from Pakistan by a narrow body of water, and it is not a given that the pitches will thus be a spinning paradise.

Since the start of 2010, spinners in the UAE have performed very slightly better than their seam bowling colleagues. Each have taken 68 wickets in those five matches, but the spinners have done so at an average of 41.51 as opposed to the seamers’ average of 42.32. There’s not much of a difference, and certainly neither are very good. When you consider the fact that the spinners bowled a lot more overs, it is clear that the seamers are still the more successful bowlers. The spinners’ strike rate was 99.0, compared to the 79.5 of the seamers. (Again we see that neither are very good.) The gap is certainly a lot smaller than it is in England, were over the same period of time spinners took less than a quarter of the total wickets and at an average more than ten runs greater than the seamers.

Interestingly, however, when directly compared spinners have actually fared better in England than in the UAE. In England since the start of 2010, spinners have taken wickets at an average of 39.12 and a strike rate of 69.0 (compare to the above figures in the UAE). That time period comprises 15 Tests in which spinners have taken seven five-fers. In the five matches in that time in the UAE spinners took just one five wicket haul. The implication I take from these figures is that the conditions will hurt all bowlers, but it will hurt the seamers much more than the spinners. So whilst the spinners will have a larger role to play (relative to their role in England) they are not going to get so much help from the pitch that they become an unusually large threat to the batsmen.

England win, Bresnan out

England won the first warmup match by three wickets. It wasn’t particularly convincing; the bowlers conceded lower order runs in both innings and there were a pair of middle order collapses when we batted. I’m not too fussed though. Whilst it’s good that we take warmup matches seriously, they are still called warmup matches for a reason. None of the players have played competitively since October at the earliest and the Test specialists have not played since August, so a bit of rust is to be expected. The conditions are also completely unfamiliar, so whilst England did not look dominant I don’t think there is anything about which to be worried. Hopefully they will look a bit more assured in the second warmup.

Unfortunately, Tim Bresnan was ruled out of the series with the elbow injury he suffered before the match. It is a blow for England; Bresnan’s stamina would have been invaluable in the UAE, plus his bowling style is probably better suited to the slower wickets than a tall bowler. Finn looks the most likely candidate to replace him, having played in the first warmup match, but with Onions likely to be added to the squad to replace Bresnan I would like to see him get a look in the second warmup. He’s not as quick (as I recall) as Bresnan, but I think he is more like Bresnan than Finn is. I mentioned a couple of months ago that I would like to see him get a Test, and that hasn’t changed. I think Finn is a good replacement, but Onions may be able to get more out of the pitch with his style. Hopefully he will get to play in one of them.

Cricket Australia have a new policy

Cricket Australia announced details of their new rotation policy today. Instead of a ‘horses for courses’ style squad policy, however, they are planning to rest their major players for ‘minor’ series and use those to blood youngsters. On the face of it that is a pretty good plan, however I don’t know how well it will work in the specific circumstances for Australia. The biggest problem they face is that they won’t play a lot of minor cricket over the next few years. Between the upcoming tour to the West Indies and the 2015 Ashes they will only play eight Tests that would probably be considered ‘minor’, and three of those are against Pakistan who could be a vastly improved side when the play in October of 2014. In that same time they have home and away series against England, India and South Africa.

Australia are probably well advised to find a way to blood young players and limit their workload though. Their young bowlers have done a fantastic job this winter (though that is not limited to Australia), but they have also been hampered by injuries. It may just be bad luck, but They have had a batsman and two bowlers go down after just a few Tests each. (Just one Test in the case of Pat Cummins.) They were forced to play young players against New Zealand because of the number of injuries they had. If rotating players in for just a few Test matches will build up their fitness it is certainly a good idea to do so.

Ultimately I think this is a good idea in principle, but perhaps not in practice. In addition to not having a lot of opportunities to implement it, I’m not sure they really have a squad with which to do so either. Most of the young players have already come into the side, and more must do so soon when Ponting and Hussey retire. The only real candidates would be amongst the bowlers and even then they seem to be lucky if they have enough fit ones to make rotation possible. I think it would have been advisable to use a rotation policy where feasible, but not announce it as the default position.

Saturday review – 7 Jan

After a hiatus for Christmas and New Year’s I am resuming my Saturday Review this week. The week was dominated by the New Year’s Tests, though in each case the hosts won comfortably on the fourth day. England began their tour of the UAE and bowled the ICC Combined Associate and Affiliate XI for 281, though it could have been better after the ICC XI were 90-6 just before lunch. Broad was the main destroyer, taking four wickets including one each in his first three overs. Anderson, Finn and Swann all picked up two. My favourite articles this week were:

Ian Bell: Lord Megachief of Gold 2011 – King Cricket

Bradman versus Warne – Ashley Mallett, Cricinfo

India have an athleticism problem – Harsha Bhogle, Cricinfo

Everyone’s invited to cricket’s giant virtual bar – Jarrod Kimber, Cricinfo

I’ve stopped writing summaries of them because I’m rubbish at it and don’t enjoy it. But I highly encourage you to read all of those, especially Jarrod Kimber’s as it describes everything I love about Twitter. It’s especially useful in America as there isn’t anyone local with whom I can talk about cricket.

South Africa win by ten wickets

South Africa’s victory gives them a 2-1 victory in the series and their first win in a series at home since they played the West Indies a few years ago. It’s an important victory for the fortunes of the team, and they thoroughly deserve it having dominated most of this series. The fact that they did win will probably come as some relief after they dominated most of a four match series against England two years ago and could only draw it 1-1. To Sri Lanka’s credit, they made them work for it on the last day. I said yesterday that Sri Lanka would need Samaraweera and Mathews to have a good partnership and for one of them or Chandimal to shepherd the tail and that is exactly what they did. Samaraweera and Mathews batted through the entire morning session and put on the highest ever fifth wicket partnership for Sri Lanka against South Africa. During this time I counted four edges falling short of the slips or ‘keeper, however, so South Africa were a bit culpable. The breakthrough finally came when a ball kept horribly low to Mathews and had him trapped LBW. After Chandimal departed not long after Samaraweera did shepherd the tail and put on over fifty with Perera. Sri Lanka grabbed a lead of one when Welegedara hit Kallis back over his head for six, the ball before Kallis uprooted leg stump, meaning South Africa would have to chase two runs to win. This prompted the sort of farce that can only be seen in cricket, as the timing of the dismissal meant that tea had to be taken before South Africa could start their chase. The first ball after the twenty minute break was a no-ball and Petersen hit what is listed on Cricinfo as a single to long on, though live I thought it had gone to the rope. (Though I had been awake for 25 straight hours by that point, so I wouldn’t consider that reliable.) The no-ball also meant that it was the first time a team had chased a total off zero deliveries.

It was a fairly frustrating day for the South Africans. I think they would have thought like I and most people did that they would have the match wrapped up by the second drinks interval. To their credit, when the wickets weren’t coming they never really dropped their heads; they kept plugging away and eventually did make the breakthrough. I couldn’t see them losing the match, or even failing to win since there was an entire day to spare, but given their past failings it would have been easy to start thinking ‘here we go again’. They didn’t though, and they deserve credit for that. Their victory will be a huge boost to their morale, and with their next series being in New Zealand they should go into England on a high. (Though there is a lot of time between the New Zealand tour and the England tour.) Despite their now a bit predictable slip up in Durban, they had a very good series. Sri Lanka were never in the first or third Tests and never looked like even saving them.

For Sri Lanka, they probably won’t be too disappointed with the result of the series. The gave away an opportunity for a very good result when they chose to bowl, but the fact that they won even one match is more than they have done before. When one considers the fact that they were without a proper bowling attack the result looks even better. The pragmatists will immediately recognise, however, that ‘better than expected’ does not equal good and they still have a log way to go. Their next series is at home against England and whilst we are yet to see how England do in the UAE, one expects that Sri Lanka will be very much second favourites.

Australia win by an innings and 68 runs

It was actually a lot closer than I thought it would be. India batted very well in the morning session, only losing Gambhir, and scoring at a frenetic rate. There always seems to be the looming spectre of a collapse about India’s batting, however, regardless of how assured any two of them may look during a partnership. Today the collapse was started in possibly the most ridiculous manner possible, when Michael Clarke brought himself onto bowl in an effort to get through the last few overs before the new ball quickly and ended up getting Sachin Tendulkar caught at slip via a dreadful drop by Haddin. It was just about as farcical as one could imagine, but it meant that a new batsman, Kohli, would come in to face the new ball. Just before Tendulkar was out the score was 271-3. Seven overs later the score was 286-7. The surprising bit for me was that India’s tail did not carry on in the same manner, to which I have become accustomed. The tail wagged quite a lot, with Ashwin scoring 62 and Zaheer Khan a rapid-fire 35. There was a point at which another sub-300 score looked quite likely, but the lower order did manage to save some face for India.

The result leaves the question of where the two sides, especially India, go from here. The series is effectively over, so India could take this opportunity to experiment with some younger batsmen. Sehwag and Laxman in particular look like they could use some time to reassess their technique, so leaving them out on one of the quicker tracks in the world, Perth, may not be a bad strategy. It is very important that they start to blood some youngsters in unfamiliar conditions. Raina in England and Kohli in Oz have been badly exposed in conditions more suited to bowlers than the ones to which they are used and they and Rohit Sharma will need to find ways to overcome that. Better for India to give them a go when there is little to lose than at the beginning of an important tour as they did in England and Australia. I don’t think it will happen, given the selectors previous tactic of burying their heads in the sand, but it would be worth a go. It could hardly be any worse, certainly.

Australia are also faced with some selection headaches. In the short term Harris is back fit and whilst he does not necessarily demand inclusion, he has been one of their best bowlers recently. Last winter Australia played an all pace attack at Perth to very good effect and I don’t think it would be a bad idea to do so again. I think Lyon is a good bowler with a lot of potential, but he hasn’t done a lot in the first two matches and the WACA will probably not suit him. In the long term they have the problem that only the old guard scored runs in this match. Warner, Cowan and Marsh all failed as they did in the second innings at the MCG. Australia cannot rely on Ponting and Hussey for very much longer, but now they are in a position where they cannot easily drop them either. If the selectors are lucky Ponting will choose the end of the Australian summer as an opportunity to retire on a high, but this does not look likely as two months ago he suggested that he might still play in the 2013 Ashes. Meanwhile Hussey seems to be making scores at the exact right time to keep his place in the side. I think that as well as Ponting and Hussey have done in this Test the selectors must still show them the door quite soon. England dropped Steve Harmison after the 2009 Ashes despite the fact that he had a good Test because Strauss and Flower recognised that he did not fit into the long term plans for the side. Australia must do the same. Fortunately for them they will at least have some time in which to consider the matter.

I might have to go out this weekend

I can’t see either of the New Year’s Tests going into a fifth day. Michael Clarke finally declared on 659-4 at the SCG after Michael Hussey raised his 150 (and Clarke was on 329) and at Newlands Sri Lanka collapsed to 239 all out and were unsurprisingly asked to follow on. They reached stumps on 138-4, still trailing by over 200. Rather surprisingly, this does mean that India are likely to last longer than Sri Lanka, though it’s close.

India actually played better on day three than day two, though they still didn’t get any wickets (for an entire session and a half) they did spend the morning trying to contain Australia and kept the run rate down below three an over. They still bowled Sehwag quite a bit, however, despite the fact that he was really only there to make up the numbers. He was at least tight enough to avoid bringing up his ton, although his figures of 23-1-0-75 mean that he conceded more runs today than he scored at the MCG (and more than he scored in both Tests against England combined). He did arguably bowl better than Yadav though, who took 0-123 in 24 overs. After lunch, India went back to looking as poor as they had the day before, however, and just waited for the declaration. India made it to stumps on 114-2, which is a decent platform given that they were bowled out for 191 the first time. Whilst Sehwag went cheaply, of course, Gambhir managed to stay not out overnight and has scored 68 so far. It’s a pretty good return for him at an important time. Dravid, unfortunately for India, was bowled through the gate again, this time for 29. Without Dravid it will take a very good batting display from the rest of the order to see them through to stumps, especially as Australia will likely be able to take the extra half hour.

Sri Lanka’s horror show of a Test match is much less likely to make it to a fifth day. After getting themselves into a pretty good position overnight, 149-2, they capitulated this morning and lost Sangakkara to the third ball of the day before the rest fell in a heap. Only the ‘keeper Chandimal offered any resistance and he was last out for 31 in a total of 239 all out. Following on, Sri Lanka’s hopes of getting off to a good start were dealt a blow by Dilshan going for just five, but they recovered well from that and were only one down at tea. Jacques Kallis, who had had a quiet test up to that point, struck in the final session, getting Thirimanne to edge behind and taking good catches off Tahir and Morkel. Sri Lanka now need Mathews and Samaraweeera, who scored 12 runs between them in the first innings, to hold out for at least a session tomorrow and for one of them of Chandimal to shepherd the tail if they are to stand any chance of even making South Africa bat again. I’d start making plans for Friday night and Saturday afternoon now.

599-2

Yesterday was not kind to subcontinental teams. India and Sri Lanka bowled almost five sessions between them and in that time took only two wickets whilst conceding 599 runs. I can’t say much about Sri Lanka’s bowling; I didn’t see a lot of it as I have to sleep at some point and by the time I got up South Africa had declared. India’s bowling, however, was abject. They were still very much in the game at the start of the day and a couple of early wickets could have touched off another Australian collapse. They never really tried, however. At no point in the morning did they look like taking a wicket, or even like they wanted to. Dhoni was neither attacking nor trying to dry up the scoring and by the time Australia overhauled India’s first innings total it looked for all the world like declaration bowling.

I was harsh on India after the MCG Test, but they were so much worse yesterday. In Melbourne their batting let them down, but their bowling was at least average. Today it was far, far from average. They were completely flat and uninspired from the moment they got on the pitch yesterday morning. It was probably the worst bowling display I’ve seen since Australia conceded 517-1 last winter, and they at least have the excuse that England’s batsmen are very good. India picked up one wicket, that of Ponting, with the second new ball and did at least make Clarke look uncomfortable for a few overs. It wasn’t nearly enough, however, and Sehwag came on to bowl (in tandem with Ashwin) with the new ball just 18 overs old. It was an utterly pathetic effort all around and they are effectively out of the series now.