Archive: September, 2009

England’s one-day all-rounders

Are they going to win a game with the bat? Are they going to win a game with the ball?

• Luke Wright
• Dimitri Mascarenhas
• Tim Bresnan
• Adil Rashid

There’s room for players who chip in, rather than deciding matches on their own, but there seem to be altogether too many of them in England’s side. Dimitri Mascarenhas, for example, is a great batsman when you’ve got five overs to go, but he’s unlikely to pass 50 too often and he’s not going to run through a side with his bowling.

The other three are slightly different, in that they’re younger and are investments for the future to some degree. But there’s only so much international experience to invest. You can’t field all three of them, because none seem likely to win you a game.

At the minute, they’re 32 runs and 1-52 players.

Graeme Swann interviews

You want Graeme Swann to be man of the match every time he plays, because he’s head and shoulders above everyone else in world cricket when it comes to the post-match interview.

Today’s offering after a consolation win that followed six consecutive defeats:

“Everyone talks about this big word ‘momentum’. We’re on a roll now, aren’t we?”

He’s such a consistent performer these days. There are a lot of young players who could learn a lot by poring over some of Swann’s interviews on the laptop.

How bad is England’s one-day batting?

Four fifties between them in six one-day internationals. That’s bad.

Remember when you were at school and someone had egg sandwiches. ‘Ughh. Who’s got egg?’ someone would ask. Think of the faces everyone made when they realised someone had egg. There were probably even a few children crying, because having egg sandwiches is perhaps the biggest crime at school.

We saw faces just like those in the crowd last night. England’s one-day batting is as bad as having egg sandwiches at school.

How do Durham win their games?

We thought we should probably mention Durham’s victory in the County Championship. How did they win? The same way all teams win in the longer formats – through their bowlers.

Durham can boast of the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 9th highest wicket takers in the County Championship first division. Look at the bowling averages and the picture’s even clearer. If you only include bowlers who’ve taken 10 wickets or more, Jimmy Anderson’s top, but let’s exclude him, because he only played one match.

This is what we’re left with:

1. Graham Onions (Durham) 45 wickets at 15.28
2. Ian Blackwell (Durham) 36 wickets at 20.88
3. Steve Harmison (Durham) 49 wickets at 21
4. Mark Davies (Durham) 17 wickets at 23
5. Liam Plunkett (Durham) 40 wickets at 23.3

Then it’s Naqaash Tahir of Warwickshire.

Durham also have seven batsmen averaging over 40 – including Shiv, who’s topping the averages at 135.5 – so it’s not just the pitch.

Well played Durham and well played Durham’s bowlers.

Why Andrew Flintoff turned down a contract that would have prevented him from making almost painful amounts of cash

It was because of the bungee clause.

Flintoff’s agent, Andrew Chandler, explains why his client has turned down an incremental England contract which might have stopped him playing in the occasional lucrative Twenty20 tournament:

“There were one or two things in it that made it difficult to sign like he wouldn’t be allowed to participate in dangerous sports and he’s possibly doing a television series in which he may do bungee-jumping.”

What more reason could there be?

Chandler goes on to use the phrase ‘has to’ in an unusual way:

“He’s got three young kids and Andrew and his wife Rachel both spend reasonable amounts of cash so he has to make plenty.”

Ricky Ponting is getting old

Ricky Ponting must be nearing retirement age because we’re starting to appreciate him.

We read a statistic the other day that about one in five top seven Test batsmen average over 50. That’s a ludicrous figure, but players like Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting were averaging over 50 long before it became fashionable. Watch them play and you know why.

Ricky Ponting’s 150 at Cardiff in the first Ashes Test was the kind of unattainable batting perfection that commentators always demand and never receive because cricketers are actually humans. It was kind of sterile in its flawlessness though; admirable in the same way as really efficient engineering.

If that innings was all about a solid batsman making the right decisions again and again and again, today’s one-day hundred revealed slightly more of the ability that Ponting ordinarily unleashes so watchfully. Few batsmen could mimic the six he hit off Rashid; across the line into the off side, but right out of the middle of the bat. Still fewer could have advanced towards Ryan Sidebottom, got nowhere near the pitch and yet hit the ball so cleanly we swear it disappeared into the clouds.

However, the surest signs that he’s getting on a bit have been seen in post-match interviews where Ponting has revealed himself to be something other than a colossal tool – a fact he managed to keep concealed from us for the first 14 years of his international career.

If you’re worried about us, don’t worry, watching Ricky Ponting flip out is still one of our greatest joys.

England’s batting card and score

It’s rare that a side scores 299 in a one-day international and yet has such an underwhelming batting card. Who got the runs? Somehow, it was no-one.

To be fair, Eoin Morgan’s 58 off 41 balls was pretty eye-catching, but it still falls slightly short of significance somehow, particularly after England rather inevitably failed to defend that total.

The steady, everyone-gets-double-figures nature of that batting card made more sense for the brief period later in the game when Dimitri Mascarenhas and Ravi Bopara were bowling in tandem. England are clearly working to the New Zealand template: everyone bats (a bit) and everyone bowls (medium pace).

Chris Read is really bad at batting

We’ve watched Chris Read bat several times and we wouldn’t say he wowed us with the pristine aesthetics of his strokes. Nevertheless, he must tire of the way people talk about him like he should come into bat after Devon Malcolm, even if Devon had food poisoning and couldn’t find a bat.

Here are Chris Read’s first-class batting averages in each of the last few seasons:

• 2005 – 44.68 with one hundred
• 2006 – 27.41 with one hundred
• 2007 - 54.17 with two hundreds (second division)
• 2008 - 42.06 with one hundred
• 2009 - 73.71 with four hundreds

We’re not saying he’s Adam Gilchrist. We’re not even saying he should get picked for England. We’re just wondering at what point he’ll lose his reputation for being a ‘pure’ keeper who can’t hold a bat.

Luke Wright is first victim of the machines

We all knew it was going to happen. The machines have become self aware and they’re revolting against humanity.

The odds were on some sort of Skynet style military computer being the first to turn against us, but fortunately it was actually something far less threatening. So instead of facing nuclear missiles, we’ve simply got 90mph yorkers to contend with.

England’s bowling machine has come to think for itself and its first thought was that it didn’t much like Luke Wright. It fired a yorker into his foot and he needed stitches.

We should counter this threat to mankind by donning additional padding.

Brett Lee’s reverse swing yorkers

It doesn’t matter that it’s only a one-day international at the arse end of the season. It doesn’t matter that it’s an Australian against England. The simple fact is, proper fast bowling is a fantastic sight.

Brett Lee bowled reverse swing yorkers at 95mph. It was just like Waqar Younis and there is no higher praise than that on this website.

Sod researching the batsman’s weaknesses. Sod setting him up. Sod building pressure. Sod putting the ball in the right areas. Sod setting the right field.

Just run in, bowl it as fast as you can, reverse swing it and knock the bloody stumps out the ground.