Test squad for UAE tour

England have announced the squad for the three test series against Pakistan in the UAE in January. In a sign of not only unusual but almost unprecedented stability there is only one chance from the Ashes squad with Ravi Bopara replacing the retired Paul Collingwood. The selection probably closest to a surprise is that Steve Davies retains his place as reserve keeper for the test matches. There was a strong suggestion that he’d fallen behind Bairstow in the pecking order, but it seems that was only for limited overs matches. Hopefully it won’t be relevant, of course. Matt Prior has a strong case for being the best wicket keeper in the world right now and if England have to field any reserve it will be a huge blow. Monty Panesar retains his place as the second spinner, which is not a huge surprise. It was not so long ago that he was the first choice and the other possible selections don’t look like challenging him at the moment. Samit Patel still has a lot of work to do to get into the test side, even if he is moving in the right direction, and Simon Kerrigan is still unproven, even at county level. There wasn’t any place in the squad for Graham Onions, putting a swift end to my suggestion that he play as a fourth seamer.

The squad announcement doesn’t leave much room for speculation about the starting XI in Dubai. Barring any late injuries, nine of the order are set in stone and a tenth, Eoin Morgan, is almost a certainty given the selectors’ preference for six batsmen. (With which I disagree, given the batting abilities of Prior and Broad, but that cause is long lost.) That leaves Bresnan, Tremlett, Finn and Panesar competing for the last bowling spot. I’ve said before that I’d give it to Bresnan and I still would, despite the lure of playing a second spinner. We saw in the Pakistan v Sri Lanka series that pace can be effective in the UAE, and Bresnan is a better bowler overall than Monty.

Pakistan have been playing very good cricket recently, and if they keep it up (a pretty big ‘if’ I know) they will be a huge challenge for England. It’s a strong squad though, there are no injuries (as much as I hate going six months without any cricket there are fitness advantages) so it should be a stronger side than the one that beat India so comprehensively at Edgbaston and the Oval last summer. It is shaping up to be a fantastic series and I’m starting to wish it too had a fourth test.

Hobart preview

The second test of the Australia v New Zealand series starts in a few hours. The Aussies are heavy favourites after a convincing win at the Gabba and I don’t see the Kiwis putting up much more of a fight. Although the wicket in Hobart should be more akin to what the Kiwis are used and I think they probably will bat better, to challenge even a weakened Australia they will have to improve almost beyond recognition. They will also have to field far better than they did in the first test, and I doubt they will have had enough time to improve noticeably.

Theoretically the Australians have a strong home field advantage in Hobart having never lost a test there, but there are some considerable caveats to that statistic. The matches there tend to be against weaker sides; in addition to New Zealand only Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the West Indies (in 2005) have played in Tasmania. Also, the Bellerive Oval only started hosting matches in 1989, so most of the previous nine matches were during Australia’s period of dominance. New Zealand’s bowling coach is very familiar with the ground having played in Tasmania for ten years during his first class career, so I don’t think the Aussies will actually have a marked home field advantage. That said, I don’t think they will need any home field advantage to overcome New Zealand.

The most interesting part of the test will probably be the selection battles ahead of the series against India. Two batsmen are going to be dropped when Watson and Marsh return and all of them bar Clarke are candidates to make way. The obvious direct competitions are Warner v Hughes to see who will survive the return of Watson and Khawaja v Ponting v Hussey to see who will make way for Marsh. But since Watson can, and many argue should, bat down the order it will probably not be so straight forward. Right now Hughes and Hussey are probably under the most pressure and will need centuries to ensure they retain their place on Boxing Day. Hughes has a good record in first class matches in Hobart, but the conditions are expected to favour swing and seam and I think he will find the going very difficult.

As far as the result of the match is concerned I’m predicting another heavy victory for Australia, by 250 runs or eight wickets.

Why Phil Hughes should not be dropped

It has been suggested that Phil Hughes will be ‘rotated’ out of the Australian XI for the second test at Hobart. If there is a change it will almost certainly be either Hughes or the equally out of form Hussey to make way for all-rounder Daniel Christian. Hussey has already expressed unease at the prospect of rotation and has counselled Hughes not to change his game. Hussey appears to be worried he will be the one to miss out in a rotation policy and is trying to make sure it’s Hughes instead.

I hope it isn’t Hughes to go, however, I like having Hughes in the Australian side. A look at his career statistics and history shows why. His first class form is very impressive, but in tests overall he averages 36.13 with three centuries and three fifties. That’s six times he’s gone past fifty in thirty innings. Hughes’ career is based almost entirely on the second test of his career, in which he scored 115 and 160 against South Africa in Durban. It was only a decent series apart from that. He scored nought and 75 in his first test and 33 and 32 in the last test of the series before going to England for the 2009 Ashes. He fared poorly against shorter bowling in England and was dropped for the third test. (And announced it himself, on Twitter.) He was dropped to give him a chance to work on his technique, but he never really improved. He had one-off tests against Pakistan and New Zealand after the 2009 Ashes, but his best score in those two matches was 86* against New Zealand. Regardless of his failure to improve, the injury and subsequent dropping of Katich during the 2010/11 Ashes gave him a more permanent place.

Since his debut tour to South Africa Phil Hughes has scored just 633 runs at an average of 27.52. His lone century in that time was against a Sri Lankan ‘attack’ at Colombo a few months ago and he has passed fifty only three times. The only time he has done so against an international quality attack was his 88 in Jo’burg last month. His technique was lacking against in England in 2009 and he has never fixed those problems. His footwork is non-existent and he can only play the short ball in the sense that he can play it in the air to gully. And this is why I want him to stay in the side. I hope the selectors continue to look at his extremely impressive domestic form and drop Hussey instead because in 2013 I want to see him walk on to the pitch at Lord’s on an overcast July morning and face Jimmy Anderson with the new ball. I really, really want to see that.

Australia win by nine wickets

To say that New Zealand played poorly in the first Test is an understatement. Australia did play reasonably well, but the Kiwis failed to put up any sustained fight. The scoreline is probably not indicative of the gulf in talent between the two sides, but it was certainly a fair result given how they played.

The New Zealand top order was the most culpable. It can be reasonably said that they bat down to seven with Vettori, but those seven batsmen averaged just 28 in the match. Without the first innings heroics of Vettori and Brownlie it falls to just 16. Of the 13 top order dismissals, no fewer than nine of them were needless. (That’s including Vettori’s suicidal run out in the first innings, though he deserves credit for having played well up until then.) They looked like they had not realised they were no longer playing one day cricket and were allowed to leave balls outside off stump. When they were in the field they let the Australians off the hook multiple times. They dropped catches, took wickets off no-balls and possibly most damningly allowed Mitchell Starc to score 32 not out on debut as Australia put the match out of realistic reach. They will have a lot on which to work before the next Test.

Australia do deserve some credit. They bowled well enough to induce the brainless errors by the Kiwis and batted with discipline for the most part. (With the exception of Phil Hughes, who is probably nearing the end of his career.) It’s a bit difficult to determine how effective the new Australian bowlers really were; with New Zealand batting poorly and only Peter Siddle against whom to compare them there is an element of guesswork. I think Pattinson looked like a genuinely good find though. He bowled with proper pace and hostility and did pick up a couple of wickets that were not the direct result of poor batting. Lyon looks like he will be the first choice spinner for the foreseeable future, which would finally bring some stability to the role. I don’t think Mitchell Starc had much of a debut though, his unbeaten 32 notwithstanding. He took only two wickets in the match, both off poor shots by Kiwis in the first innings (McCullum and Ryder). He’s the most likely to go when Cummins returns, unless Clarke wants to play a very inexperienced attack against India.

I can’t really see New Zealand winning the second Test, or any Test against a side better than Bangladesh at the moment. They need to improve all facets of their game in the longest format, as right now they are fielding an XI who don’t seem to know how the game is supposed to be played.

Saturday review – 3 Dec

Far and away the best article I read this week, or any of the last several weeks, was Jarrod Kimber’s ‘Occupy Lord’s‘. I can’t really do it justice with a description; it’s absolutely brilliant and you should go read it immediately. (Hopefully then coming back and reading the rest of this!)

Mukul Kesavan has a great article in Cricinfo today about the fallacy of ‘international hundreds’. It’s very cleverly written, and of course it is nice to see a reasonably high profile writer agree with me.

Also in Cricinfo, Sriram Dayanand has an essay on John Arlott, how he affected Harold Larwood and the role he played in getting Basil D’Oliveira to England. Whilst the events described are fairly well known, the extent of Arlott’s involvement is seldom mentioned.

At the Cricketer, Mark Baldwin writes about the County Championship fixtures and the half-baked Morgan Review. It’s an excellent dissection of the confusion the ECB exhibit with respect to the domestic game.

Lastly, on the Guardian Sport Blog Max Benson wrote about the rise of British sport and the new found edge that we see in cricket and elsewhere.

Imprecision

It’s only the third day of the first Test between Australia and New Zealand, but I have been struck by how imprecise New Zealand have been. They have talented players. Vettori is the obvious example, but Jesse Ryder, Chris Martin and Brendan McCullum are all legitimately of international quality as well. They don’t look like they are playing as well as they ought to however. I use the word ‘imprecise’ because they seem to be sharp enough, just missing slightly.

On the first day they won the toss and batted first in conditions that were not ideal for batting, but neither were they unduly tricky. They are conditions with which opening batsmen ought to be familiar, it is their job to see them off after all, but they played foolishly. Both of their openers threw their wickets away playing rash shots away from the body. Whilst there are times in which such shots are acceptable, the first morning of a Test match is certainly not amongst them. All of New Zealand’s top order except Williamson got themselves out in the same way, all of them needlessly. There were some demons in the pitch, yes, but the fact that Brownlie made 77 not out shows that it was not a minefield. The Australian attack is inexperienced and sensible batting would have brought rewards, but they collectively lost their heads.

Their shortcomings are also visible in the field, albeit not as spectacularly. They have had a couple of excellent chances to put a fragile Australian batting order under pressure, but they have let the opportunities slip away. Their bowling has been just a bit too erratic. Ponting in particular looked very shaky early on in his innings, but New Zealand could not get the ball and the fieldsmen in the right places to take advantage. At other times they have dropped catches, including a fairly straightforward one off Clarke when a wicket would have put them almost on level terms. It went begging and now the match is starting to slip away.

The dropped catches aside, New Zealand’s errors appear to be more mental than physical, the rushes of blood leading to collapses especially. It might be tempting for them to say that even good sides sometimes suffer collapses and even good sides sometimes fail to convert pressure with the ball into wickets and even good sides sometimes drop catches and all that would be true. But the best sides are the sides that do so rarely. New Zealand are doing so for the second Test in a row after almost losing to Zimbabwe. It is something at which their coach must work. They aren’t going to become world beaters with the talent they have, but the talent they have ought to do better than what we are seeing.

Australian ‘cricket’ grounds

One of the first things I noticed last night whilst watching the Gabba Test was the odd colouring of the seats. It’s something I remember from previous Ashes; they’re designed so as to give the impression of a full house even when there isn’t one. (One can infer then that there wasn’t a full house and that the seats don’t do a particularly good job of disguising that fact.) I think it’s pretty stupid, but it’s part of a much broader dislike of most Australian grounds.

Many Australian grounds are not owned by their clubs, but by the state government, and are used for multiple sports, most notably Australian rules football (AFL). As anyone who has tried to watch baseball in a multi-purpose stadium knows, this all but ruins the ground. The Gabba and the MCG are the worst. They’re just great monotone concrete bowls. There is no variation, no individuality, no character. Neither of them have individual stands anymore, they are just unbroken rings of seating. The pavilions in both grounds are little more than greenhouses set into the massive stands and the players emerge from tunnels.

A fucking tunnel — What is this, football? (Image from Channel Nine)

Worst, they have to use drop in pitches because the AFL players don’t like being tackled on the hard wicket. (Apparently AFL players, like NFL players in the USA, are soft.) [Edited to add: I have been informed in the comments that this is also to protect the wicket from AFL players.] They aren’t cricket grounds anymore; they are AFL stadia in which cricket is sometimes played. The MCG at least has a history of being a dual use ground and at least it can mostly fill the seats during the cricket. (If Australia are playing well.) The Gabba has shown that it can’t and shouldn’t be used for cricket. The SCG isn’t immune either unfortunately; the gorgeous old pavilion is overshadowed by stands on either side.

The rot is spreading too. The Adelaide Oval is being renovated to increase capacity for the AFL and there are plans for the SCG to become more like the MCG. (Though that is at least for partly cricketing reasons, specifically the World Cup.) The WACA is the only ground that is not often used for AFL and it’s also the only ground with a sensible renovation plan.

I should point out that English grounds are not perfect. The Point at Old Trafford is a monstrosity which at the very least ought to have been placed opposite the pavilion instead of literally overshadowing it. And the Edgbaston renovations aren’t brilliant either. They are both an attempt to improve the grounds suitability for cricket though, which is their actual function. They aren’t built for football at the cost of cricket.

Samit Patel and the IPL

I’m very glad that Samit Patel declined to play in the IPL this year. He says that he needs to focus on Championship cricket to improve his chances of selection to the Test side. It would be easy for him to try to get some of the money on offer in the IPL with the knowledge that he is very unlikely to get a Test place anyway, but I am glad that he has chosen to fight for that slim chance all the same.

Right now his best chance of getting into the Test squad is probably as a second spinner for subcontinental tours. He’s probably still behind Monty Panesar for that spot and may soon be behind Simon Kerrigan, but he can bat better than either of them. It’s probably too late for him to get into this winter’s tours, but a full season next summer could boost his chances for selection against India, where he performed well in the recent ODIs. I’m not sure how much going to the IPL may have jeapordised those chances (it didn’t really hurt Eoin Morgan), but it would have caused him to miss almost half of the Championship. It probably can’t hurt for him to make his priorities clear to the England management though and a good season will ensure that his name is at least mentioned.

Aus v NZ preview

On paper this ought to be a one sided series. New Zealand have played varying degrees of poor cricket for years now and barely beat Zimbabwe. Meantime Australia are historically a pretty strong side. The recent contests haven’t been worth watching; New Zealand haven’t won a Test in Oz in 26 years. The fact that it may be any sort of a contest this year is a mark both of how far the Aussies have fallen and the extent to which injuries have taken their toll.

A lot of the build up to this series has focused on the Australian injury crisis, with five players pulling out before the first Test. The speculation about the replacements was curtailed, however, when the selectors named a squad of only 12. Peter Siddle was named leader of the attack, though since he is the only one of the pacemen to have ever played in a Test match he was rather the obvious choice. Nathan Lyon will probably also play (though Clarke said that if the wicket looked juicy he would be willing to play four quicks) meaning that one of James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc or Ben Cutting will probably be carrying the drinks at the Gabba. It will also mean that Chris Martin will have twice as many career wickets as the entire Australian attack combined.

There are still question marks about Australia’s batting as well. In the absence of Shane Watson, David Warner will open with Phil Hughes. Warner is in form, but unproven in first class cricket and Hughes is a bit rubbish. The middle order of Clarke, Ponting, Khawaja and Hussey is also a bit suspect. Ponting managed to get some runs against SA and now he’ll have a pretty weak Kiwi attack against which he can boost his credentials for the series against a pretty weak Indian attack. Clarke scored an incredible 151 in his first innings against South Africa and then managed just 15 for the rest of the series. He struggled in the Ashes last year as well, so it’s hard to be sure how he will do. Khawaja is still yet to really get going internationally, but he did score important runs against South Africa. Hussey looks like the weakest link of the chain. He was under considerable pressure before the last Ashes and responded by scoring buckets of runs in the first three Tests (and very few in the next two). With the dearth of Test cricket played by Australia since then he hasn’t had many more questions asked about his place in the side, but he scored just 60 runs against South Africa with a top score of 39. Combined with the last two Ashes Tests, his last eight innings against high quality bowling have yielded just 113 runs. Admittedly he won’t be up against strong bowling during the Australian summer (NZ and India) but it must still be a worry for the Australian selectors. If he doesn’t excel against the Kiwis I think they ought to look very hard at him being the one to miss out when Watson returns from injury.

New Zealand look like they will play a very similar side to the one that scraped to victory in Zimbabwe. Jesse Ryder and Tim Southee will almost certainly come into the side and both are probably good additions. Ryder certainly is, he is a very powerful batsman. Southee is in for Jeetan Patel and is good in that he is a seamer replacing an unneeded second spinner, though he isn’t necessarily a better bowler. The Kiwis still don’t have a lot in the way of batting however; Ryder and the captain Ross Taylor are the only two who average over 40. Their only world class bowler is Vettori, though a case could also be made for Chris Martin. Bracewell looks a decent talent, but has only played against Zimbabwe. Southee is essentially a county bowler.

Australia are weak and have serious questions about most of their squad, but those questions are unlikely to be asked by New Zealand. For the Kiwis to make the series close they will need virtually all of their players to step up. Their batsman in particular need to put pressure on the inexperienced Australian attack. The Australian batsmen have the motivation of knowing that one of them will be dropped when Watson returns and should not have undue difficulty facing the Kiwi attack, though it will be interesting to see how Bracewell fares. If the Gabba track is as flat as it was last year I think the first Test will be drawn, though I doubt either side will score 517-1. I think some life in the pitch will help Australia more than New Zealand though. The last thing the Aussies want is for their debutant bowlers to toil for hours on a flat surface and return 0-100. With a bit of encouragement from the wicket they could put some real pressure on a fairly brittle Kiwi batting order. Ultimately I think there will be enough in the pitch and the Kiwis will be sufficiently ill-disciplined that Australia will win both Tests.

2012 county fixtures

The 2012 county fixtures have finally been announced! And it was roughly five minutes before I was vaguely cross about them. England play six Tests next summer and Lancashire are playing a Championship match during every one of them. It’s not too bad during the series against the West Indies; Lancashire are actually playing every week during that time so there is no real way to avoid conflict. But, as usual, during the midsummer gap between Test matches Lancs are only playing limited overs cricket. It’s quite frustrating. To make matters worse, during the South Africa series Lancashire aren’t playing in the gaps between the Test matches, only during the Tests themselves! And, as we already knew, our curtain raiser falls during the first Test in Sri Lanka. There is some improvement though; this year none of the matches completely overlap with a Test. There is always at least one day that does not.

For most of the counties the season starts the week after the curtain raiser. That gives a start date of 5 April, the earliest ever for the County Championship. Lancashire don’t start until the next week, playing a rematch of last season’s opener against Sussex at Aigburth. Lancs then play a match a week for the next nine weeks, meaning that once again the season will be half over by the beginning of June. Warwickshire will try to exact a measure of revenge for last season early, as they come to Aigburth on 19 April. (21 April will be a long day for me. It’s the third day of the match against Warwickshire, but also on the calendar are Bath v London Irish, Liverpool v West Brom and Royals v Blue Jays.) The first two home matches are at Aigburth and the first match at Old Trafford is against Notts on 2 May. Newly promoted Middlesex come to Liverpool on 23 May, but unfortunately our trip to Lord’s isn’t until the penultimate round of matches on 4 September. The last match of the season is at Old Trafford against Surrey, starting 11 September. We won’t be visiting the Oval this year; our match in Surrey will be at Guildford.

Overall it’s roughly what I expected. (By now I just assume that the ECB will schedule Tests at the same time as Championship matches.) The interest lies in the details, of course, and every year I enjoy going over the fixtures. The Christmas decorations are up and it is below freezing outside, but spring feels just a bit closer now.