KP v the ECB

In case you have for some reason been cut off from the world all day and have missed the story about KP (and if so, I’m very flattered that you would come here first), he has retired from ODIs and effectively been dropped from T20s.

I actually think KP ought to be applauded for clearly putting his Test career over ODIs. There is some suggestion (and perhaps not entirely unfounded) that his retirement is from some other conflict with the ECB, but I don’t think there is a need to suggest that. It is clear that there is too much ODI cricket; England have 13 ODIs this summer, seven in India and five in New Zealand over the winter, then ten bilateral ODIs plus the farcical Champions Trophy next summer. KP is one of very few England players who actually play in all three formats and I think it is perfectly reasonable for him to decide that it is not worth the cost to his Test career to play so many ODIs. Hopefully the ICC and national boards take note of this attitude and revise the number of ODIs being played. If even the star players are starting to think it too much of an effort, the format itself may not last much longer.

I think the ECB handled it very badly. They declared that ODIs and T20s were so closely intertwined that KP had to retire from both or none at all. This is one of the causes of the suggestion that there was some other reason for KPs retirement and it is not unreasonable, even if I don’t think it is necessary. I do not pretend to be privy to the ECB’s planning system, of course, but the notion that a player cannot decide to retire from just ODIs seems ridiculous. The tours and planning may be intertwined, but different squads are named and there are even different captains! I do not see how it could be too difficult for KP to play T20s but not ODIs and yet not too much trouble to have different captains in the two formats.

I am not ever going to be the president of the KP fan club, but this time (and actually with the Twitter furore as well) I think he is blameless. The ECB don’t seem to particularly like him and whilst they can be forgiven for that, they are being irrational about the situation and I do not think that is forgivable. They are making themselves and English cricket look bad and I think they need to, if not do a U-turn, at least reassess how they handle situations like this for the future.

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.

Another stupid proposal

There is a story in the Yorkshire Post today (to which I followed a link, I don’t read it habitually) claiming that Yorkshire want a three division County Championship structure with fourteen games a season. (Presumably they think it will be easier to avoid relegation that way.) The proposal that their chairman will advocate at the ECB meeting on 12 January is one to have three divisions of eight teams with the addition of minor counties and university sides.

It’s a poor idea for a multitude of reasons. The original proposal in the Morgan review to reduce the number of Championship matches was met with widespread scepticism, both from fans and from those in the media, and this idea is actually worse. And like the Morgan review, this would not effectively ease fixture congestion, but simply make more of the congestion due to limited overs matches. Furthermore, increasing the number of sides playing in the Championship would spread the ECB’s money even tighter and it would decrease the amount of revenue sides can raise from matches. It is an absolutely terrible idea with no redeeming features that are readily apparent. That isn’t too surprising though; it’s from the same club who earlier advocated dropping two sides from the Championship. The irksome thing is that the ECB may well take the proposal seriously as they will the Morgan review.

Saturday review – 26 Nov

My weekly look at my favourite stories and blogs starts with one that I saw just after finishing last week’s review. Sky Sports’ Dave Tickner argues that Test cricket is not dying, but changing for the worse. The statistics about the rise of two Test ‘series’ like the one we saw in South Africa are troubling, if not outright alarming. It’s an analysis with which I am inclined to agree, for the most part.

Giles Clarke today wrote a piece reaffirming the ECB’s commitment to Test cricket. It’s a response to a piece in the Telegraph yesterday and it’s a pretty good one. Although I still don’t agree with the logic of having extra World Cup preparation instead of a Test match, he does well to explain why the decision is not all about money. Oddly though, he also says that international cricket is not allowed to clash with the Olympics, despite the fact that the second Test against South Africa is scheduled to do just that. I assume some part of that is mistaken, but I don’t know what.

At Cricinfo, Anantha Narayanan has a piece looking at the most significant hundreds under a variety of conditions. It’s a very good read if you like statistics. (And who doesn’t like statistics?)

Andy Bull writes for the Guardian about a WWI naval battle and cricketers who have read their own obituaries. After one of the better introductions to a cricket article, it eventually gets around to a discussion about the possibly premature obituaries for Ricky Ponting’s career.

The Lancashire website has a lovely story about the scorer for the club. I’m not sure exactly when it popped up, but I didn’t see it until this week (Tuesday I think) and it’s a very good read.

Anyone who regularly reads these will have noticed that I tend to follow cricket more closely than the other sports about which I blog. I don’t read cricket blogs exclusively though and this week there was an amusing post by Bath Rugby’s Sam Vesty on Living Rugby. (Living Rugby is an excellent site all round, it should be noted.)

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.

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.