Should probably write about Bangladesh v India or the IPL auction or something. Have decided to do a follow-up to a 2006 post about Dheeraj Jadhav instead.

If you read that post, you’ll see that in 2005 we tipped Gautam Gambhir for great things, but only to ourself. Being as Gambhir’s hit a hundred in each of his last five Tests and you’ve never heard of Dheeraj Jadhav, you might think that we named the wrong man.

Well, yes, you’d probably be right. However, there is a weird symmetry with Gambhir’s recent achievements. Here are Dheeraj Jadhav’s last four first-class innings: 114, 111, 165 not out and 49 not out. Those figures demand context as well.

• The 114 was the highest score in the match. The next highest, in any innings, was 43.
• The 111 was the second highest score in the match. In all, there were two hundreds and two fifties in the match.
• The 165 not out and 49 not out were in the same match. There were no other hundreds and only three fifties in the match.

What’s our point? Our point is that we don’t really have much to say about Gambhir’s five hundreds or Eoin Morgan being signed to play in the IPL.

Tags: Dheeraj Jadhav // 8 Appeals »

We appreciate England’s desire to identify the next England captain in advance, but why has Alastair Cook been chosen?

Warning: this article may contain some petty, bigoted views about certain strands of British society

Leadership attributes

There is no standout candidate to be the next England captain, yet England have clearly plumped for Alastair Cook. Why? Presumably he is ‘made of the right stuff’ and has a sound, tactical understanding of the game. Let’s take those in reverse order.

Tactical ability

We can’t say what goes on behind the scenes. All we can comment on is what we see. Alastair Cook presided over one Twenty20 match. It was the worst captained England side we can ever recall seeing.

Being made of ‘the right stuff’

What constitutes ‘the right stuff’? Being as his tactics are nads and his nervous manner is unlikely to inspire people, we’ll have to look elsewhere. We have concluded that ‘the right stuff’ is his social background.

To most of us, a school is a place. It is somewhere they make you go for a few years with bike sheds made of asbestos. To others, a school isn’t a place, it’s an attribute.

Why is Alastair Cook the best man to captain England?

Of course there must be more to this. In answer to the question ‘Why is Alastair Cook the best man to captain England?’ the answer is surely something more concrete than: ‘Oh, you know… it just seems like it should be him…’

Tags: Alastair Cook // 28 Appeals »

“They can’t beat us in Test matches. They can surprise you in ODIs but not in Tests.”

So said Virender Sehwag about Bangladesh before his side fell to 213-8 on the first day. Presumably Sehwag saw this coming as well as an almost infinitely better second innings in which India will declare. Seems a very specific prediction.

In 2006, Australia turned up in Bangladesh not needing any warm-up matches. After conceding 427, they promptly fell to 93-6 in reply before Adam Gilchrist saved them. They got away with it, but they had to chase 307 to win.

The moral of these stories is when you’re about to tour Bangladesh, don’t be cocky knobheads about it.

England think they can’t be beaten. They’re resting players, assuming they’ll win. We’ve written about it more at The Wisden Cricketer.

Tags: Bangladesh, England // 9 Appeals »

A lesson in momentum: South Africa will take momentum from winning this last Test handsomely. England will take momentum from drawing a series they truthfully expected to lose. Everyone’s a winner. Such is momentum in cricket.

England can take quite a lot of pride after winning the one-day series, saving two Tests against the odds and recording one of their great away wins. Ideally, they would also take Morne Morkel, but he’s far too big to fit through the thing that lets you know whether something can be hand luggage or not.

What they mustn’t take is the positives. Take the negatives for once, you cherry-picking bastards. If all you take is positives, you end up as lazy and self-satisfied. Take it from someone whose whole ethos is about seeing the worst in everything.

Tags: England // 8 Appeals »

Ryan McLaren plays an immaculate cover drive for four. James Anderson bounces him with the next ball and the one after that. McLaren ducks them both.

Will it be three in a row? Yes, it will. This time McLaren attempts a hook, but misses and the ball strikes him on the front of the helmet, right in the middle.

The damage: McLaren’s contact lens has moved and the physio has to poke around in his eye to get it back in place. 0.1 of a point to James Anderson. The South African batsmen quake in their boots at the potential for temporarily impaired vision.

Tags: James Anderson // 8 Appeals »

The ball has swung in this match. There has been seam movement, some bounce and good turn. On top of that, South Africa need to win this game. Mark Boucher and Graeme Smith have been the standout batsmen. This is not surprising.

Most players play worse in these situations. A very small number play better. Boucher and Smith almost always play better when their team need them to and with every Test cap they’ve earned, this has become more and more the case.

How would we fare in the same position? Well, we sometimes freak out watching the highlights of matches we know England have won, put it that way.

Tags: Graeme Smith, Mark Boucher // 2 Appeals »

What do you mean it’s still moving? It’s as good as dead. It can’t feel pain any more.

Did England listen to all the media coverage that said they’d done well in the series even if they lost this Test and ease off as a consequence? We say no. We say that South Africa have better batsmen and bowlers and in this Test it’s been more apparent.

Did England get so caught up in Andrew Strauss’s call to ‘play positively’ that they equated defensive play with playing for a draw? Maybe a bit.

Tags: England // 5 Appeals »

If you told us that we had to use a tired cliché to describe the effort that Dale Steyn puts into bowling or you’d force us to do a dance in front of other humans, we’d hang our head, sigh softly and mutter “sinew-straining”.

Dale’s certainly wholehearted. Perhaps too wholehearted. The staring eyes betray a love of caffeine the like of which we haven’t seen since everyone in the office got caught in a nasty espresso-drinking cycle last year (you needed the pick-me-up in the morning after yet another nervy, sleepless night).

Whatever it is, Steyn skitters in, looking ever-so-slightly-deranged, and whips the ball through with a bit of away swing. It’s not a bad stock ball. Only Ian Bell was really up to it, but Steyn lodged a mirror image of the delivery in amongst his stumps by way of a reprimand.

Tags: Dale Steyn // 12 Appeals »

Atherton 0, Hussain 0, Butcher 1 and Stewart 0. Now that’s a bad start.

Morne Morkel is mint, by the way; a big gallumphing lankatron of genial ferociousness.

Tags: England, South Africa // 12 Appeals »

Panesar’s current coach at Highveld Lions, Dave Nosworthy, says:

“Somewhere along the line he had lost who Monty Panesar is.”

This does seem to be the case. Panesar says:

“What happened last year is that I had so many external voices to listen to … When I was searching for an answer I was going external … All the answers are inside.”

Why listen to other people when there are so many internal voices to listen to? Your own voices are far better informed about you and even if they tell you to set fire to things, they do it for a reason. Even if they tell you to give the financial director of your company a wedgie because he uses too many acronyms, they do it for a reason.

The police say you shouldn’t have punched that child, but they didn’t hear the American accent she was putting on. The voices did.

Tags: Monty Panesar // 4 Appeals »