India finally win one

And win quite comfortably, in fact. It’s the first time they have beaten England since the first test of the 2008 series, way back in the KP/Moores era. It’s the first time they’ve beaten anyone since beating the West Indies before the England tour.

I think, however, that England played poorly more than India played well. England’s bowling and fielding were sloppy throughout the innings. They bowled eighteen wides and had a fair number of overthrows and misfields. Despite this, when Kohli was caught in the 29th over it made the score only 123-4. For almost thirty overs England kept India under five runs an over, but when Raina came to the crease and India took the batting powerplay England’s defiance slipped away like a shady character in a film. England haemorrhaged 174 runs in the last twenty overs of the match and went from being in a strong position to needing 301 to win. Dhoni got Man of the Match for his 87 not out off 70 balls, but I thought Raina’s innings may have been more important. Raina came in with India under a lot of pressure and responded by scoring 61 off 55. By the time he holed out the floodgates were open and Dhoni could play with the sort of abandon we saw him employ so well after top order collapses during the test series.

As bad as England’s collapse with the ball was, the collapse with the bat was almost worse. England lost Kieswetter and Pietersen in the powerplay, (for 7 and 19 respectively) but still came out a reasonable 48-2. With Cook and Trott at the crease they had the men they needed to set a platform and set about doing so. Cook brought up a run a ball fifty, whilst Trott played more circumspectly (as he is wont to do). England had recovered to 111-2 when Cook suffered a rush of blood and holed out against the spinner Jadeja for 60 off 63. Two overs later Trott tried an ugly sweep off the same bowler and was bowled. This left England in almost the same position in which India had been at 120-4 in the 25th over. Unlike India, the subsequent attempt to counterattack and loosen the shackles just resulted in Bopara and Bairstow departing in successive overs (a total of four wickets in five overs). Both went to fairly careless shots, attempting to drive a spinner, mistiming it and presenting a simple return chance. The tail never really stood a chance of rescuing England, though only Swann lost his wicket in a manner that could not be described as ‘brainless’. England were bowled out for 174 with eight of their batsmen giving their wickets away.

The only consolation for England is that we know they can play better, and it reasonable to think that in the next match they will. If they had played better today they would have had a good chance of winning and it certainly would have been close. Unfortunately for England, now India have their confidence properly restored and will likely play better themselves. I think it will be a better series from here, but I also think that England may have blown any chance they had of winning it.

Ravi Shastri to run for US President

All cricket boards are inherently political organisations, but the BCCI are more and more resembling the American ‘tea party’. They have decided on their ideology and if any pesky facts happen to try to contradict the ideology then the problem is with the facts, not the ideology. The most recent instance of this is, yet again, their opposition to technology. Hot Spot will not be used in the India v England ODI series after the owner got sick of dealing with the BCCI and shipped some of the cameras to America for use in the World Series. My favourite quote from Warren Brennan, the owner of Hot Spot: ‘Almost all of the time I speak to the Indian cricket board, it’s really all about power for them, and them owning the game, because they believe they have a virtual birthright to control the game, because they bring in such a high percentage of the revenue into the sport’. Which is pretty much what I’ve suspected for a while now.

Especially as today I woke up (at a quarter to four in the morning) to hear that the BCCI had barred their host broadcaster from even showing HawkEye. Because, of course, if a decision goes against the Indians it wouldn’t suit the official line for anyone to know that it was correct. Just imagine the chaos if an Indian batsman were to be correctly given out! I am reminded of watching The Chuck Fleetwood Smiths after the Tendulkar was lbw on the last day of the last test and Indian fans simply refusing to accept that it was actually out. Their commentators have free reign to declare that a given appeal was clearly out or not out and there is no conflicting evidence. They say the Indian fans view cricket as a religion. It certainly seems to share the worst aspects thereof.

And my heart goes out to those in the UK who are forced to watch the BCCI’s propaganda station on Sky right now. I feel your pain, as the same thing happened on my feed during the first two tests of the summer series.

Now I’m cross

The ICC are a bunch of craven, short-sighted idiots. Which goes without saying, really, but once again they have thrown that fact into sharp relief. Yesterday they decided that the DRS would not be mandatory. This after making a bizarre half-DRS mandatory last summer. This despite that the single biggest problem with the DRS is not it’s accuracy (which is not perfect, but is quite high and higher than that of the on field umpires) but the inconsistency of it’s application. The ICC have responded to this problem by making it worse. It also begs the question of why, when all the major boards except India support the DRS, does the DRS fail a simple vote by the boards? The amount of short term, selfish thinking on display is staggering.

That happened yesterday. Today they decided to postpone the test championship until 2017. The rationale is that they promised ESPN Star Sports (in India) a Champions Trophy in 2013 and couldn’t back out of that. Which I understand and is certainly true. This isn’t entirely their fault, even. The fact that ESPN insist on a one-day tournament is infuriating, but unsurprising. There’s no guarantee that India would even qualify for the test championship, and it would not be as popular in any case. One cannot expect a corporation to act against it’s own interests. But the ICC should have seen this coming. By signing a deal with ESPN Star Sports they must have known that they would be putting themselves under the control of an organisation that does not have the best interests of cricket at heart. By allowing ESPN to dictate terms the ICC guaranteed they would be preferentially staging ODI tournaments. They must not let this continue. When the rights come up for negotiation again they must give themselves some flexibility. Unfortunately the odds of this happening are lower than the odds of a whelk surviving a supernova.

This does not fully explain the ICC’s decision, however. The fact that they must stage a Champions Trophy does not mean that they could not stage a test championship. It would give them four major tournaments (test championship, 50 over World Cup, T20 WC, and Champions Trophy). It’s more than are needed but all four could still be staged with one every four years. Except the ICC decided to make the T20 WC once every two years so as to squeeze every penny out of it. The upshot now is that in order to stage the test championship in 2013 it must conflict with the CT. In 2014 it must conflict with the T20 WC, in 2015 the ODI WC and in 2016 the T20 WC again. The ICC could have just bitten the bullet and staged two events in a year. But they didn’t. They chose the solution best for their coffers instead of the solution best for the game.

Please don’t wake me

India v England round two: ‘This time there’s curry’ starts later this week. Specifically it starts at 04.00 CDT on Friday. Which is quite early, especially for a completely pointless series. It isn’t even a proper ’round two’, it’s only an ODI/T20 series. The real round two will be in a year’s time, when England go back for a four test series. England aren’t playing the tests now because… well… I’m sure there’s some reason. Anyway it’s an ODI series in India, which means that England won’t win. Douglas Adams explained why in Life, the Universe and Everything: ‘They care, we don’t. They win.’ And history supports this; England haven’t won an ODI against India in India since the sixth ODI of the 2006 tour, which was a dead rubber. England lost that series 5-1 (with one match rained off) and lost the next ODI tour 5-0 (with two matches cancelled after the Mumbai terror attack). To be fair to England, they have improved considerably since those tours, albeit more in test matches than in limited overs ones.

I was tempted to suggest that the most recent match in India (in the World Cup) was the best barometer. This may be the case, but that match featured a 120 off 115 balls from Sachin Tendulkar, 5-48 from Tim Bresnan, 158 off 145 balls from Andrew Strauss and a brilliant spell from Zaheer Khan in which he took three wickets for one run in six balls. Of those four players, however, Khan and Tendulkar are injured and Strauss has retired. India have sustained numerous injuries since the World Cup, whilst retirements and a youth movement have rendered England almost unrecognisable from the team that performed so mercurially during the World Cup.

England will have the momentum coming off their home ODI wins, but I don’t think this is worth much, if anything. (In the last Ashes England had the momentum going into the Perth test, which they lost heavily. Subsequently Australia had the momentum going into the Melbourne test and were bowled out for 98 on the first day.) What may have more an effect is India’s desire for revenge. TMS’s Adam Mountford says India are billing this series as ‘The Payback Series’. (They don’t seem to be short of confidence.) England should do better in this series than in ODI series past (they could hardly do worse, mind), but I don’t know that they’ll win it. England have a lot of inexperienced players, and I doubt they’ll do much better in the unfamiliar Indian conditions than the Indians did in the unfamiliar English conditions over the summer. (Though Bairstow and Borthwick didn’t seem troubled in the last warm up match.)

It is an odd series in that it’s interesting on paper (England’s first trip to India since their revival under Strauss and Flower) without actually being interesting. It isn’t a test series, but there is one coming up in a year. We just played India anyway, so it doesn’t stir up any interest in that regard. Obviously the series is good for the ECB coffers (a good thing), but I think England (and probably India) would be better served by having a bit of a break. A win would allow England to rub India’s nose in the dirt a bit, but a loss would allow India to say that the series in England meant nothing, so England really have nothing to gain.

I’m not sure how much of the series I’ll listen to. As motivations to get out of bed before dawn a meaningless ODI does not rank in the top ten. And even upon successfully getting up it is hard to stay awake through the middle overs of an ODI on just three hours of sleep. (I know from experience.) I’ll see how I feel when the alarm goes off at 03.30 on Friday morning.