New Zealand

Twenty20 wicketkeeping

Do you want the better batsman or the better wicketkeeper behind the stumps for your team? That argument’s been represented by any number of individual duels over the years. Recently though, we think you’ll all agree that the better batsman’s been winning out, in general.

Blame Adam Gilchrist. He’s a great wicketkeeper, but his batting’s so spectacular it easily overshadows that fact. International sides want wicketkeepers who average 50 now, let alone 40. They’ll never get it because Gilchrist’s a one-off, but it won’t stop them trying.

But there might be some hope for the thoroughbred stumpers. Might Twenty20, that impure bastard version of the game, bring wicketkeeping skills to the fore once more?

Here’s our rationale – obliterate it in the comments with your usual gusto. How many batsmen do you need in Twenty20 cricket? How many do you really, really need? We reckon five – five specialists at any rate.

Presumably at least one of your five bowlers won’t be Tufnell-esque and presumably any eligible keepers are at least half-competent with the bat. If you’re serious about winning, then you don’t really want to be losing more than five wickets in 20 overs. Things aren’t going your way if that happens.

So you can fairly happily pick your best keeper. And you know what – there’s an added incentive.

In Twenty20 cricket, with scoring being so low and tight, batsmen get cheeky. It’s not totally unknown for them to take a run off a ball which goes straight through to the keeper. They like to jump around as well to disrupt the bowler’s line and length, coming down the pitch or batting out of their crease.

So wouldn’t it help if you had a keeper who was good enough to stand up to the stumps to fast-medium bowlers? No cheeky byes. No batting out of the crease. The wicketkeeper’s having a real impact there.

Twenty20: saviour of the wicketkeeping tradition. There’d be a touch of irony in that.

Ricky Ponting goes through some rather spectacular motions

No, he hasn’t risked eating cream cheese in Karnataka and isn’t enduring THOSE sorts of spectacular motions (just say no, kids). He’s just going through the cricketing motions, only ‘going through the motions’ for Ricky Ponting involves scoring unbeaten hundreds. He operates at a higher level, this batsman.

Australia won two one-day internationals against New Zealand and are therefore better than them. Ricky Ponting scored an unbeaten hundred in each match and is therefore better than most other batsmen.

Was it really worth doing this? Why didn’t they just take a week off?

Everyday cricket every day

Here’s a comparison. The Rugby World Cup finished last Saturday. England played in the final. Their next international fixture will be on the second of February.

England’s final match in the Cricket World Cup was on the 21st of April, against the West Indies. Their next international fixture, a Test match, also against the West Indies, was on the 17th of May. If by some miracle they’d made the final of the World Cup, it was played on the 28th April.

Okay, so maybe every cricket website you read is repeatedly making this point and maybe every newspaper too, but the fact is we’re all right about it. International cricket is no longer special. The word ‘everyday’ can be synonymous with ‘mundane’ – the everyday grind; your everyday clothes. Mundane, commonplace, routine, everyday. Cricket is played every day.

Cricketers ‘retire’ from one-day internationals or Tests in their twenties; players are rested from matches or even tournaments; and international fast bowlers cut their pace to increase their longevity.

The latter’s been happening in county cricket for years. It’s something county cricket’s always been criticised for. ‘Too many matches mean that there are no fast bowlers on the county circuit, so young batsmen aren’t prepared for Test cricket’.

Well now its relentless fixture list is perfect preparation.

Justin Kemp: attacking batsman

No headlining effort from us today.

World Cup player to watch, Justin Kemp, hadn’t done a great deal since South Africa’s first match, but yesterday he rediscovered runs. Or boundaries, at any rate.

89 off 56 balls is always handy, but when you’re chasing 154 it pretty much does the trick on its own. Kemp even had the gall to finish the match with a six. It’s what Twenty20′s all about. New Zealand might disagree.
Little did Kemp know, however, that he was merely warming-up the crowd for Yuvraj Singh’s six sixes in an over.

Still marching…

How refreshing that an England campaign in an international tournament hasn’t ended in meek capitulation for once.

A quick note of commiseration for The Colossus who didn’t deserve to be on the losing side after ballsily whopping three sixes off three balls when New Zealand were about 40-4. Craig McMillan also deserved better for his 57 off 31 balls.

And on another day, Shane Bond’s final over, the penultimate of the innings, which went for just four runs and featured three wickets (one a run-out) would have justified his inclusion as one of our World Cup players to watch.

Alas for Bond, his good work was undone when the next over began with three sixes off the bat of, ooh, let’s say Chris Schofield, as England ran out winners.

Here’s the now-obligatory Kevin Pietersen victory photo:

We’ve done some solid Photoshop work in order to depict an alternate world where Kevin Pietersen misses a straight one. This is clearly fiction because Kevin Pietersen’s reverse sweep is never anything other than staggeringly effective.