Tag: WIvAus

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.

IPL thoughts

I’ve heard a lot of talk lately about the IPL. This is pretty remarkable, really, because I’ve put in every reasonable filter on Twitter and other places that I could in an effort to avoid it. It’s probably fair to assume that there has been much more talk than I have actually heard, which means there has been a lot of talk about the IPL. I wasn’t going to talk about it. I was going to quietly ignore it and let those who liked it get on with it. Except I forgot that the raison d’être of the IPL is for people to spread the holy gospel and it’s accompanying advertisements to all corners of the earth. I can’t ignore it without blocking most of Twitter and Facebook and never, ever going to Cricinfo and I need those sites for other things. So instead I am going to add my rather small voice to the cacophony of those talking about the IPL and I am going to say why I hate it.

The first reason is what I alluded to above: it’s omnipresence. I’m pretty sure the goings on of the English FPT20 are not written in detail in Australian papers. I could be wrong, but I also don’t think everyone in India is watching with keen anticipation on Finals Day. And yet the IPL is assumed to have worldwide appeal. Why? It cannot be simply because there are international players, every domestic T20 league in the world has those. Lancashire have Junaid Khan again, will this ensure that Pakistan unites behind us as we go through the usual month of only T20? I am inclined to doubt it. The only thing different about the IPL is that its international players are paid obscene amounts of money. This is not the sort of thing that ought to be embraced or encouraged, but the IPL was designed for hype and it has done well enough that it is considered reasonable to broadcast it outside India. More than once have people assumed that since I watched cricket I must watch the IPL. This has never happened with the Sheffield Shield, SuperSport Series, Plunket Shield or even Ranji Trophy. (For the record, I don’t watch a lot of first-class cricket outside England, but I try to at least keep an eye on the leagues. I thus don’t have any strong affiliations to teams, but I tend to support South Australia, Cape Cobras, Otago Volts and Assam.) The fact that it is assumed that I care about an Indian T20 tournament simply because it has an effective publicity machine is grating.

The second reason is the marketing. It’s entire marketing style assumes that I have the attention span of a slightly slow gnat and will get bored if more than five minutes elapse without and explosion or a shot of a dancing girl. It assumes that I cannot know when something is exciting if Ravi Shastri is not there to shout a bit. This is either spectacularly insulting or an admission that the actual sport is lacking. I suspect both are true to an extent and neither are pleasant explanations. I could, on this blog, change font style and colour every sentence. I could put animated fireworks between every paragraph in an effort to make it more appealing. But that would be putting style in front of substance and anyone reading would be able to see through such superficialities. The IPL does not seem to agree with that approach though. They cover up their many shortcomings with glitz and insultingly assume their viewers will not notice.

A subset of this is that I hate the fact that the entire IPL is nothing but a vehicle for advertisements. I accept the modern need for sponsorship of cricket, but the IPL takes it to another level. It is one thing to add an extra word or two in front of a name like LV= or Investec, it is quite another to put one in front of everything. As with all other aspects of the IPL, it has the subtlety of a man trying to crack a safe by jackhammering through the top.

The theoretical backup to all of the hype is the international players that have been paid/bribed large sums of money to try to lend credibility to the Mickey Mouse tournament. This is the third reason I hate the IPL and where it goes from mere annoyance to actual problem. The IPL’s poaching of some of the best and most prominent players marginalises every other event that happens at the same time. (And that is quite a bit of time, the IPL seems to drag on for ages.) This tends to hit the West Indies the hardest. The IPL always overlaps with their relatively short home season and because of their financial problems we have already seen many of them choose the IPL over their country. It is impossible to know how the first Test between the West Indies and Australia would have gone if the West Indies had been able to field a full strength side. There are other, large, reasons why the West Indies lost that Test, but they only lost in the end by three wickets. Having a full strength side may have been the difference. The IPL also hurts the County Championship for similar reasons and the ECB would be well advised to refuse to allow English players to compete or to demand much greater compensation.

But does the IPL try to avoid conflict with internationals? No, in fact the BCCI suggest that internationals are scheduled around the IPL! Never mind the fact that for the West Indies and, to a lesser extent, England this is not feasible, it is a staggering arrogance. For all their pretensions, the IPL is still a domestic competition. It must schedule itself around Tests or take a backseat to them. This is a league originally run by Lalit Modi, however, so its approach is not surprising. I don’t even particularly mind the T20 format, but the IPL is loud, boorish and arrogant. Why anyone likes it is a mystery to me and hopefully the reports I hear of declining viewership are indicative of the long-term trend. It will probably never happen, but I hold out hope that one day the entire league will fold.

Armchair Selector: Australia win by three wickets

This should not have been a close match. It was, in fact, almost a match that refused to be close. After three days and two hours, the West Indies seemed to be in an unassailable position. After three days and four hours, a draw seemed like the most likely bet. About thirty minutes after that, Australia seemed like strong favourites. But these transitions happened very quickly and at almost no point before the fifth day did it seem like the result was in the balance. It was not until the West Indies dug in on the fifth morning and rain delayed the restart after an already delayed lunch that the match seemed close. In the end, Australia won for two main reasons: Continue reading on The Armchair Selector…

The importance of being realistic

This winter has been a good one for the Australians. Not only did they overcome a weak Indian side, they did so comfortably enough that they could mostly brush a loss to New Zealand under the rug. Better still for them, England lost four out of five of our winter Tests. It has prompted a resurgence of confidence from the antipodes and over the past few months there have been quite a few willing to express it. During and immediately after England’s matches I got quite a few messages on Twitter about how England were going to be destroyed in 2013 by the ‘mighty aussies’ [sic]. In particular, there were several assurances that our batting would collapse in a heap against their pace attack.

Today in Bridgetown, the West Indies declared their first innings closed on 449-9.

West Indies v Australia preview

Almost lost in the glare of the start of the County Championship (it was a very exciting first day) is the three Test series in the Caribbean between the West Indies and Australia. It should be interesting; the tour was finally scheduled properly ,ODIs first, and the West Indies emerged with a very creditable 2-2 draw. It sets things up well for the Test series, the West Indies looked much better than I think most were expecting and Australia are still in a state of flux.

The rest of this post is now on The Armchair Selector! I’ve explained why here, but if you already know or don’t care then continue reading…

Club v Country

It has been confirmed that Australia’s tour of the West Indies next year will clash with the IPL. Having seen the full schedule, I don’t really mind this. The tour starts before the IPL does, so we won’t have the ridiculous scenario where players fly in two days before a Test match. And it should come as no suprise to anyone that I do not care one jot about the success of the IPL. It will probably raise the question again of whether there ought to be a window for the IPL, though. I don’t think there ought to be, of course. We don’t have a window for County Championship matches, which still form the premier domestic league. We don’t have windows for any other T20 competition either and if we did there would not be any time for international cricket. So there shouldn’t be a window for the IPL.

It would, however, still be best for both Test cricket and the IPL if they didn’t clash. The last thing the Windies need is for their crowds to be watching IPL matches on TV instead of watching the Tests at the ground. And the IPL is more of a draw when there are international stars around. The IPL fancies itself a football league, however, and that provides a possible solution. European football leagues have a hiatus when there are international matches to ensure that the players are available. I don’t see why the IPL could not do the same. There aren’t any six week holes in the calendar, but there are gaps throughout the summer especially if the number of useless ODIs are decreased. (And actually I don’t think anyone would care too much if the IPL clashed with an ODI.) The IPL would probably benefit from spreading out it’s matches anyway; crowds were down last year and this would make it more of an event. Next to abolishing the IPL completely, I think this is the best solution.