A damp squib

England’s win in the last Test of the summer was little more than a reasonable dessert following a disappointing main course that had looked so appetising when being weighed up on the menu some hours earlier. Prior to the South Africans arriving on these shores much of the media billed the series as an indicator of how competitive England were in the context of world cricket. So what does losing a 4 Test series 2-1 in your own backyard indicate?

The home nation not being in the rudest of health me thinks. With Australia far and away the best Test team and England, South Africa and the Subcontinental nations all supposedly close together in the chasing pack, England at home would expect to win Test series against all of those in the pack. However losing at home last year to India and this year to South Africa hardly gets any opposition boots quaking, let alone the Australians.

South Africa are not a bad team, in fact in my opinion they are underrated, the fact that they don’t have a “proper” spinner is often highlighted by Geoffrey Boycott among others, but is that such a bad thing? Where have a seen that before? A pre-Monty Panesar England perhaps? The one that won the Ashes in 2005 and several home series before that? Yes exactly. Stand up the King of Spain. The England team from that period is not so different from the South African team now. They should be congratulated on coming to England and not just being hard to beat but winning. Well done them. I can only hope this spurs England to take a long hard look at themselves to put things right.

Nothing ever fails for a single reason, so what went wrong?

Batting failures. The top order rarely put together the partnerships required to build the big scores needed in the first innings of a match to push home the advantage in each match overall. England batted first in the first 3 Tests making 593/8 declared, 203 and 231 respectively. In the latter 2 cases, at Leeds and Birmingham they lost comprehensively proving the scenario that a team batting first, if they are put in or chose to bat, need to put up good scores to not be significantly on the back foot with around 4 days of a game to play.

Lack of bowling penetration. In previous times, England have had a “go-to man”, a bowler that the captain could turn to, to break a batting partnership. In their pomp this would have been at different times, Harmison and Flintoff and arguably over the winter Sidebottom was outstanding. When the pitch was conducive to spin, even Monty Panesar chipped in, reference his performance at Old Trafford last year. The go-to man was not present in this series. Sidebottom’s form has dropped away and Harmison and Flintoff are only recently back in the team. Stuart Broad is an admirable cricketer but no strike bowler (8 wickets at 49) and lets not even mention the Pattinson episode.

Let’s look at the Test matches up to next summer. A paltry 2 Tests in India and 4 Tests in the West Indies before next summer where there may or may not be 2 or 3 Tests against Sri Lanka before the Ashes. What a way to prepare for the biggest Test series in world cricket.

England flatter to deceive, Windies look upwards and the Royals are crowned champions

Right, I’ve been quite busy over the past week, which means that the ‘blog has had to suffer. I apologise for this one, I will have more time next week for a super special entry, I promise!

The 3rd Test of England vs New Zealand started today at Trent Bridge in Nottingham and it wasn’t long before England were in deep Trent water at 85 for 5. I guess like any other England fan, I look at the top 6 English batsmen and think, that though it looks a touch defensive, on their day they should be able to post good totals. However, that’s ‘on their day’ and if doesn’t come against as lightweight attack as the Kiwis have, it could be a blue moon in daylight before it does happen. For my money England have really missed the aggressive impetus that Marcus Trescothick used to give at the top of the order since he retired. I dread to think what a South African attack will do to our batsmen later on this summer. At least Pietersen and Ambrose showed what was required and though they got out towards the end of the day, 273 for 7  is a great recovery considering the English post-lunch blues. If the home team can eke out another 40 or 50 runs, they should be confident of holding New Zealand to something short of that total when they come out to bowl.

Across the Atlantic in the Caribbean, Australia are finding a West Indies side that are at least up for the fight which is more than could be said on their tour of England last year, when they apologetically rolled over for a 3-0 defeat. In truth since that low point, West Indies Test match performances have improved in recent months with a win against South Africa in Port Elizabeth, a win against Sri Lanka in Port of Spain and genuinely competing with Australia for the first four days of the 1st Test at Sabina Park before capitulating on the last day. They have a battery of decent quicks, Taylor, Powell and Edwards supported by Bravo and a rock in their batting lineup, Chanderpaul, for others to rally around. Some decent batsmen to support ‘Tiger’, Sarwan and Gayle and a spinner would give them a better balance. So are the Aussies wobbling? I wouldn’t believe it, sure most of the marque names of the past decade have gone, but don’t believe for one second that the Aussies are about to relinquish their throne. Well done West Indies I say.

I can’t end a review of the week without commenting on the IPL finals. After Punjab threw it away in the semi, to my mind it could only be Warne’s Rajahastan Royals to win the title, albeit I thought they might do it a bit more comfortably than leaving it until the final ball of the match. Credit should go to their opponents Chennai for making the match one that ebbed and flowed right up to the last over, in grave contrast to the one-sided semi finals. My personal favourite moment of the semis was watching batsman after hapless batsman trying to slog Warne away and failing as he turned the ball at right angles off the pitch!

IPL set for grand finale

So 56 games after this ‘hurricane’ through the game began one of 4 teams stands on the edge of becoming the inaugural winners of the Indian Premier League, if they can get to Sunday and win in the final.

So who’s there? Making an absolute mockery of the notion that you get what you pay for, or perhaps proving that having money doesn’t necessarily mean you know what to do with it, the 3 highest spending clubs did not make it to the semi-finals!

• Mumbai Indians – Squad Cost: $111.90million;
• Bangalore Royal Challengers – Squad Cost: $111.60million;
• Deccan Chargers – Squad Cost: $107.01million.

Well done to those franchises who obviously got dazzled by star players instead of those who could do a job for them!

True congratulations should go to Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals, who finished top of the table with the lowest squad cost in the tournament ($67million). Is Warne the finest captain Australia never had? On this evidence yes. He has shown that no matter how much money you squirt around, it is no substitute for the nous that he has. If he were a footballer he would be a top level manager. What little he did spend on foreign imports they played a key part for him. Graeme Smith and Shane Watson, Sohil Tanvir and Watson again with the ball can all hold their heads high. He also brought through young local players such as Asnodkar and Trivedi, showing much promise with bat and ball respectively.

In second, Kings XI Punjab powered by the awesome batting performances of the imported Aussie Shaun Marsh, who tops the runscoring table with 593 runs from 10 innings at an average of just under 75. Just to underline his performances, he is 70 runs ahead of his nearest rival who took an extra 3 innings to get into that 2nd place. It wasn’t all his work mind with international class acts like Sangakkara, Jayawardene and the captain Yuvraj all weighing in with runs. Their bowling line-up is at least as good as their batters with Sreesanth, Chawla and Ifran Patan all currently in the top 10 wicket takers list of the tournament. A solid all-round team.

Chennai Super Kings snared third spot with the captain Dhoni being one of the few high cost players to be near worth his asking price. He has inspired his team into the semi-finals and he should get kudos for this. Matty Hayden got them off to a flyer before he left for the Caribbean, as I predicted he would, but in terms of batting their’s has been a team effort rather than outstanding individuals. Similarly with the bowlers, though I’m sure Murali will be disappointed to only have 8 wickets from his 13 games. Their best player has arguably been the South African Morkel whose hard hitting has got him 225 runs at a strike rate of 150 and 13 wickets.

The last team in the semi-finals are the Delhi Daredevils by a single point from the 5th placed team, the Mumbai Indians. Getting them off to blazing starts in the tournament are the opening pair that took India to the first ever international Twenty20 trophy last year in South Africa. Gambhir and Sehwag have pedigree and the fact they have batted together at international level is obvious, Gambhir playing the ‘anchor role’ (strike rate: 144) to Sehwag’s more swashbuckling stance (strike rate: 187). No team is just made of batsmen however, as I’m sure the Master of Miserly, Glenn McGrath, influencing the attack might have something to do with why they’ve got to the semi-finals.

Looking over all the teams, I feel Kings XI Punjab team have got the best balance and come into the finals off the back of a big win against the Royals, who did admittedly rest players knowing they were already in the finals. Chennai and Delhi have teams that are batsman led with few match winning bowlers. It is because they have effective bowlers as well as batsmen that I back Kings XI Punjab to win on Sunday.

Does the IPL erode classical batting?

The past few weeks have seen cricket purists mourn what they see to be the core skills of the game, being eroded by the need, as they see it, for big slogging with further degradation of classic cricket shots such as the cover drive. Is there any truth in these claims?

In theory, the 20 over game suits those batsmen that can score quickly and is assumed by cricketing purists to be burly batsmen who like to crash their runs through boundaries with strength, rather than timing. So lets look at the leading runs scorers in the high profile Indian Premier League tournament as of the end of play today (1st May 2008).

Name	Total runs	Fours	Sixes	Runs in boundaries	% of runs in boundaries	% of runs in the ‘v’
M Hayden	189	24	6	132	70%	43%
B McCullum	188	13	15	142	76%	n/a
R Sharma	178	19	7	118	66%	40%
K Sangakkara	175	22	4	112	64%	39%
G Gambhir	174	23	2	104	60%	18%

(Stats from Cricinfo.com)

The renown big hitters Hayden and McCullum, are numbers 1 and 2 in the leading runs list gives some weight to the purist argument of batsmen muscling their runs by smashing the ball to or over the boundary rope. However, the stroke makers Sangakkara and Gambhir at numbers 4 and 5 give credibility to the counter argument of non-power players being able to prosper in this form of the game. The relative high amount of 4s among the boundary count of these two players would seem to indicate a preference for shots along the ground, whereas McCullum has more than half his boundaries clearing the ropes giving an indication of his powerful hitting, even though the boundaries of the IPL grounds have apparently been made smaller for the tournament.

Often the mark of an assertive classical batsman is one that plays with a straight bat and hence often accumulates his runs in front of square in the ‘v’ roughly from around mid-on to mid-off, hence the final column of the above table is a very crude indicator of a batsman gaining runs in a ‘classical’ fashion. McCullum’s figures have not been included as the vast majority of his runs were gathered in his explosive innings on debut, in the inaugural IPL match, but a visual indication of his run scoring areas is given here. Perhaps it is too early to spot any patterns with all the batsmen barring Gambhir scoring a good proportion of their runs in the ‘v’ going against the purist notion that the IPL encourages cross bat slogging. A closer look at Gambhir’s scoring areas reveals that he is more of touch player preferring to use the pace of the cricket ball to nudge runs square on both sides of the wicket.

So is the IPL diluting classical cricket skills on the part of the batsman? At the moment it’s hard to say, the early signs are that there are unsurprisingly more boundaries being hit in a batsman’s time at the crease, but there also seems to be little sign of the degradation of proper cricket shots in preference of cross bat slogging. As is the case with most arguments, the answer would appear to lie somewhere between the extreme points of view.

3 value for money IPL players

One result of the Indian Premier League’s unashamedly capitalist stance on world cricket is the opportunity to trade players in an auction much like you can buy second-hand goods. Predictably, Indian national team players went for a premium in the auctions on 20th February and 11th March. On that subject, is there a young, pinch hitting, all-rounder in India also known as Anil Kumble? To my mind, the Indian captain is not worth $500,000 to any team in any 20 over cricket tournament, however, overrated players are for another day.

Below are my underrated 3, keeping with players seen previously at international level as I have yet to see any domestic Indian cricket, though I am looking forward to seeing Napoleon Einstein, just to see the name on a shirt. Hopefully than they can do that better than the West Indies did for Jerome Taylor.

Misbah-ul-Haq $125,000: So how to fill Inzamam’s sizeable boots? When stuffing the toes with paper didn’t really work, Pakistan drafted in Misbah after 3 years out to pasture and he really repaid the faith. In the world Twenty20 Championship in South Africa last year, he almost single-handedly got Pakistan to the final. A cool head under pressure and being able to play unorthodox shots (flick over the shoulder anyone?) should make him a shoe-in for any IPL team. That’s qualitative, so how about the numbers? An average of 50 at a strike rate of 130 in 20 over competitions is top notch, so why’s he only worth $125,000?

Dimitri Mascarenhas $100,000: The only England player in the IPL this season is worth a punt, you only have to ask Yuvraj Singh about his batting credentials, having spanked him for 5 maximums in a single over. It is only recently that he has really inflated the batting dimension to his all-round game, of medium pace bowling and smart fielding. Shane Warne, who he played with at Hampshire and who bought Mascarenhas for his Rajasthan Royals team, is a fan and knows he’s picked up a great bargain. Good all round players will be worth their weight in gold in the IPL so, a batting average of 24 at a rate of 125, tied to a bowling strike rate of 19 makes Macarenhas one of those.

Matthew Hayden $375,000: Compared to the other players I’ve looked at here Matty Hayden is expensive, but he is undoubtedly worth every cent and more. Have they not shown Australia games in India over the past decade? This guy is one of the hardest hitters, nay sloggers in world cricket and has the stats to prove it. In the shortest form of the game, an average of 51 gained at a rate of 144 is phenomenal. Although his stats prove his worth I’ve never liked to watch him as a player with his brutal style being less than pretty on the eye, but even I would have realised that results will be everything in IPL and would have expected a fight to get him. $375,000? He’s worth at least double that and his team Chennai Super Kings must be pinching themselves to have got him at a knock down price.