Different Strokes
Ponting pulls ahead of the rest
As he nears the end of a brilliant career, Ponting will need to decide if he will go down in flames, hooking and pulling like a man still in his pomp, or whether he can shelve the ego and grow old gracefully (in a cricketing sense)
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
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| Ricky Ponting’s instincts, footwork and eye make him a magnificent sight when taking on the short ball © Getty Images |
Let’s get one thing straight up front. Ricky Ponting will forever be remembered as one of the greatest batsmen to have ever played the game. That much will never be questioned, regardless of what he achieves in the twilight of his career. He has also been one of the best attacking players of short bowling; not just competent at avoiding it like Steve Waugh, Allan Border, Rahul Dravid and others, who generally eschewed the hook and pull strokes, Ponting’s instincts, footwork and eye make him a magnificent sight when taking on the short ball.
What will be interesting to see is what old age will do to Ponting. Or put differently, what will Ponting do with old age?
I write this post just as Ponting was dropped on nought on the hook shot (again) and then promptly played an ambitious pull a few balls later. Clearly, ego, instinct or his own unwavering self-belief will not allow the older Ponting to put those shots away early in his innings, despite recent failures and much commentary on that very issue. A young man he is no longer but perhaps someone forgot to tell him. Or perhaps he just won’t listen.
Full postBetter read than watched
This series for the D'Oliveira Trophy seems to have been written by John le Carre
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
As at Centurion, the Newlands Test was hardly a feast for the eyes until the final hour.
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In the latest twist to the cheating row, South Africa have asked the match referee to conduct an examination of the England team's teeth in order to determine whether the skin of the said gnashers has been artificially enhanced with Velcro, superglue or some similar substance which allows England to unfairly save Test matches. Paul Collingwood will be first into the dentist's chair, since he is serially implicated in these draws by one wicket which England are specialising in. Following him will be Graham Onions, whose nickname of Bunny is allegedly short for “bunions” but actually describes his batting pretty well, so how he survived demands closer investigation.
Collingwood's chief accomplice on this occasion was Ian Bell, playing the kind of innings we have not come to expect from him. I have always loved his hundreds, even if they have always surfed a wave started by someone else, but I had grown impatient with his repeated failures when the side was in trouble. This innings on its own would not have convinced me to stop doubting his temperament, but taken with his ugly 72 at The Oval in the Ashes decider, the evidence is now there: he will never be as good at grafting as Alastair Cook or Jonathan Trott or Collingwood, but he is now, at least adequate.
As in Centurion, the Newlands Test was hardly a feast for the eyes until the final hour. Both matches featured one really forceful innings by a batsman – Graeme Swann at Centurion; Graeme Smith at Newlands – and one woefully unrewarded spell of superb bowling – Onions at Centurion, Dale Steyn at Newlands – and there has been the odd successful spell from Morne Morkel, James Anderson, Swann or Paul Harris, but mostly what we have had to watch have been Jacques Kallis and Collingwood in 'they-shall-not-pass mode'. I greatly appreciate the batting slowcoach – and wrote a piece before Christmas extolling the breed to prove it – but those two are so dull while standing firm that enjoyment of the match for those watching migrates to the abstract plane.
Full postWhy Test cricket isn't dead
What’s best about Test cricket played on this sort of pitch between two relatively evenly-matched teams is that it has provided a platform for every type of cricketer to be villain and hero
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
I write this post hastily; Pakistan delicately poised at 101 for 5, chasing 176 for what is an impossible, inevitable, guaranteed, 50-50, uncertain, comprehensive win. It is a measure of the quality of the Test match and the SCG surface that any of these adjectives can be used to describe this wonderful contest. In fact, by the time I finish writing this brief post, any of the earlier words might be redundant. That’s the sort of game it’s been.
What’s best about Test cricket played on this sort of pitch between two relatively evenly matched teams is that it has provided a platform for every type of cricketer to be villain and hero. When was the last time we had a game that created a stage for cricket’s entire cast to play the lead role at different times during a single game?
There we go … as I speak, Kamran Akmal has sewn up the role of Chief Villain in this performance. For a brief moment there, I was wondering if the sheer romance of this gripping, see-saw encounter would have seen him claim ultimate redemption by leading Pakistan’s fragile tail to a glorious victory. Such were the depths of despair he plumbed when dropping those four chances that it was almost tailor-made for the Hollywood script with poor old Kamran smiting a six to win the game by one wicket in the lengthening Sydney shadows.
Brad Haddin may already know what that feels like. Having played a dreadful shot in the first innings and a careless flick across the line to Danish Kaneria in the second, his shot at redemption came when Salman Butt glanced one down leg side. Whatever transpires in the next hour or so, his place amongst the “greatest wicketkeeper-catches by an Australian” is assured. Alas, not so for Akmal Snr.
Full postImports swell Australia's cricket economy
Some of the players are hardly household names either and yet, their performances thus far have endeared themselves to the home crowds.
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
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Generally speaking, Australian domestic cricket has rarely embraced the concept of the ‘overseas import’. From club ranks through to state teams, there is a sense that the local lads are good enough to do the business and with a lack of money in club cricket (unlike in Britain where Aussies ply a good trade as Overseas Professionals for league clubs and counties), visitors are not feted in the same way that we get looked after in the UK.
Having played 12 seasons of cricket in England and Wales myself and been a direct recipient of untold hospitality and kindness, the likes of which the Australian club scene is scarcely equipped to reciprocate, I once made a silent pact to myself to go out of my way to look after any overseas cricketer who came to Australia. Quite often, they struggled to get used to the bouncier pitches, the style of cricket that could quite easily see you not batting for a month (club cricket is played over two Saturdays with very little Cup fixtures, evening leagues or social cricket in between). Having to find their own accommodation, part-time jobs and transport is a far cry from the sort of Rolls-Royce treatment we received as soon as we set foot on British soil.
There’s no need to worry anymore about the reception that the latest influx of foreign cricketers will receive on the domestic scene though – not if the first few games of the domestic Twenty20 tournament are anything to go by. Some of the players are hardly household names either and yet, their performances thus far have endeared themselves to the home crowds. Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, Dwayne Smith, Shahid Afridi and Kieron Pollard aren’t necessarily regular fixtures in their own national teams (Afridi the exception being Pakistan’s Twenty20 captain), yet they have already shown off the depth that these countries must possess if their qualities are deemed surplus to requirements.
Full postHow Broad bamboozled the South Africans
My theory is that Broad has somehow acquired the ability to make things temporarily invisible to specific people.
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
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It's only one game and South Africa can still win the series; when they start again at Newlands, the scoreboard will show 0 for 0 and anything can happen over the following five days; England should not start getting ahead of themselves and believing that it will be a cakewalk from here on in. All that is true, but there is no reason why any England fan out in the streets today shouldn't have at least a little dance about the result at Kingsmead. Only a few weeks ago, South Africa were the number-one-rated team while England bobble around in mid-table, and yet they were utterly crushed. Victories that comprehensive and impressive need to be celebrated.
But they also need to be explained, and explaining this one is a toughie. Of course South Africa can be beaten in a Test match, but they don't get beaten by an innings that easily. Australia did it during their period of dominance, now happily ended, and Sri Lanka did it a couple of times when Muttiah Muralitharan ran amok, but ordinary sides – and England are definitely an ordinary side – do not thrash South Africa like that.
Full postAamer sings the tunes of Imran and Wasim
Pakistan fast bowlers have a tradition of first unveiling their menacing intent in Australia
Saad Shafqat
25-Feb-2013
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Pakistan fast bowlers have a tradition of first unveiling their menacing intent in Australia. The last two men who did this were named Imran Khan and Wasim Akram. Now there is a new kid on the block answering to the name of Mohammad Aamer. By an ominous coincidence, Aamer has taken a five-for in a losing cause in Melbourne, something Imran and Wasim also did.
Ominous, because after Imran took 5 for 122 in a 1977 Test that Pakistan lost to Australia by 348 runs, he went on to take those 12 wickets at Sydney that stand out as one of the great milestones in Pakistan's cricket history. Wasim's gratification was more delayed but no less grand. In early 1990 he took 6 for 62 and 5 for 98 in a Melbourne Test that Pakistan still lost. Two years later he was back in Melbourne, this time to be crowned Man of the Match in a World Cup final.
For the budding fast bowler, a tour of Australia offers an unparalleled growth curve. The pitches are hard, the atmosphere intense, the competition unforgiving. There is no more utterly sink-or-swim scenario in world cricket. Imran first came here in late 1976 with a reputation
as a bits-and-pieces allrounder capable at best of wayward medium-pace.
Full postThe return of the fingerspinner
When a spinner is on and there are four or five fielders crouched round the batsman, you can feel the steam building up in the pressure-cooker - and these last few weeks, we have had gratifyingly extended views of batsmen being boiled like sponge
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
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In the recent Australia-West Indies series, Suleiman Benn was the joint leading wicket-taker for the visitors. Nathan Hauritz took the same number of wickets as Benn, though he was outdone by teammates Johnson and Bollinger. As I write, the leading wicket-takers in the South Africa- England series are Graeme Swann and Paul Harris.
There was a theory floating round in the early part of this decade that the conventional finger-spinner was an endangered species, and that fairly soon he would be confined to Asian habitats. Wrist-spinners, and weird finger-spinners like Muttiah Muralitharan, would survive and even thrive elsewhere, but the common or garden tweaker was destined to die out. Yet here we are with series in Australia and South Africa with the spinners in rude health and doing very well.
Full postHonour as an excuse for sledging
Every country has their own culprits but the theme is universal; refer to national pride, passion, honour, competitiveness etc and that buys you immunity from good manners
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
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Pride. Passion (passionate). Competitive (ness). Fierce competitor. Honour (of representing state or country).
Some of the most over-used or inappropriately-used words in modern sport these days. Manufactured by media machines that churn out chillingly cynical, homogenous statements in order to protect their ‘product’ (note: no longer a game but a product/investment/franchise). Voiced by professional athletes (ad nauseaum), who do not realise words like pride, passion and honour actually contradict many of the actions they seek to excuse by invoking such cheap emotional blackmail.
Full postThe true spirit of cricket
The spirit of Christmas and the Spirit of Cricket: two abstract concepts that are more about misty-eyed, mushy sentimentalism than about anything you can actually see and touch and feel
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
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The spirit of Christmas and the Spirit of Cricket: two abstract concepts that are more about misty-eyed, mushy sentimentalism than about anything you can actually see and touch and feel. Humbug!
The ‘spirit’ of Christmas seems to be a very literal interpretation in Australia, with a record number of drunk drivers getting arrested on the way home from Christmas parties, presumably celebrating the season’s goodwill and peace to all men. Clearly, that goodwill doesn’t extend to anyone sharing the road with them!
Likewise, the cricket scene too is full of little incidents that show up the Spirit of Cricket for the joke that it is. Administered by an ICC that bumbles about in its own inconsistency, handing out vastly differing punishments for similar offences and new playing conditions that have been poorly thought out (or not enforced), the sport cannot make up its mind about where it sits – is it a business, is it a gentleman’s game, is it a war between countries or is it about setting good examples for young children? It certainly can’t be all things to all people.
Full postThe slowcoaches
The legacy of idolising Boycs is an enduring appreciation for the stonewaller in his various guises, though it has to be said that he does not always make for riveting viewing
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
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While Tim McIntosh was painstakingly putting his 74 together on Saturday, a few of the people mailing the Cricinfo commentators were moaning about his slow scoring. Then one of McIntosh's mates piped up that it was a five-day Test and this is how Test cricket should be played.
That “should” needs considerable qualification, but first-class and Test cricket are indeed the only forms of the game where long periods of defensive batting make good tactical sense – and McIntosh certainly did a useful job for New Zealand: building a platform and wearing down the bowlers on the way to an imposing team total.
I was brought up, so to speak, on batting like that. When I started watching, the England openers were very likely to be John Edrich and Geoff Boycott, who were both masters of the craft. Indeed, I'm not sure I've yet seen anyone better than Boycott at the pure business of batting for as long as possible – but as I grew up in Yorkshire, he was a childhood hero and that may introduce a certain bias.
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