Different Strokes

Are Symonds' minders interested in his welfare?

Symonds is entitled to ask himself; are these friends, managers, counsellors and employers actually interested in my welfare or do they just want to use my marketability and skill until I become a liability

Andrew Symonds is entitled to make his own lifestyle choices and accept the consequences © Getty Images

25-Feb-2013

Apparently Andrew Symonds may have a slight issue with alcohol. Shock, horror. After months of denials from his management team, an assurance from his counsellors that he was ready to take up life in the public spotlight again and complete confidence expressed in him by the selectors/team-mates, apparently there may still be a lingering problem. Really?

Apparently he now faces the very real possibility of having his Cricket Australia contract ripped. Gosh, we never saw that one coming!

Apparently the team and the administrators feel that he’s had enough chances. Apparently the new team culture cannot make any more allowances for someone with an alcohol problem. This surprising revelation came from Ricky Ponting, looking solemn and sad and ever-so-slightly ridiculous in his VB cap and VB team shirt. No place for alcohol in this environment Roy. Not for public consumption anyway!

Congrats to the Dutch

A little World Cup involving twelve teams does not need an opening ceremony to kick it off – a thrilling cricket match was all that was needed, and that is what we had.

25-Feb-2013

Regular readers will recall that I predicted two months ago that England would pick the wrong team and get beaten by Netherlands, and so it has come to pass. Discussion of England’s incompetence can wait until they have been eliminated; today is for lavishing praise upon the Dutch.

Netherlands won because they entered into the spirit of Twenty20 and their opponents did not. Theirs was a performance of committed enterprise, England’s one of nervous inhibition.

Do birth dates affect performance?

Are the best cricketers of our times born with talent or have they been unwittingly dealt the best hands in life, courtesy of their lucky birth date

Are the best cricketers of our times born with talent or have they been unwittingly dealt the best hands in life, courtesy of their lucky birth date? Millions of people around the world believe in astrology and auspicious dates but could it be much simpler than that? How many potentially great cricketers were never heard of, lost to the game before their talent was allowed to blossom?

25-Feb-2013

In his best-selling book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explores the playing rosters of many American and European team sports (ice hockey, basketball, football) and discovers the amazing coincidence of birth dates. In a system that has a junior selection system based on a calendar year (January 1 to December 31), his statistics show that an extraordinarily high percentage of athletes’ birthdays are from the first few months of the year.

His theory is that in junior sport these boys naturally tend to be bigger, stronger and physically more advanced than boys who are born later in that year. At a young age, this is a significant advantage and leads to the same group of boys dominating their junior teams, being regularly selected for the top teams, getting the best coaching and widening the gap between those born later in that 12-month cycle.

His is a convincing argument which also suggests that the younger kids get discouraged by that disparity in physical maturity (and not getting selected for junior rep teams) and they tend to drop out of that sport, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of the older boys who continue to make all the top teams through to adulthood.

Super Dan and Ugly Brendon

Over the next three weeks we will see brilliance and incompetence, thrilling games and bad ones, beauty, courage, comedy, athleticism, determination, clumsiness, impudence, passion, triumph and despair

The difference between Clark Kent and Daniel Vettori is that Clark Kent took his glasses off before saving the day.

25-Feb-2013

India had slowed down a little but were still ahead of the rate, seemingly cruising to victory when Vettori brought himself back on for the 17th over. Yusuf Pathan could not make much out of the first two balls, but latched on to the third, sending a screamer back over the bowler’s head. A certain four, quite likely six. Except that SuperDan leapt, stuck both hands in the air and despite being knocked sideways by the force of the blow, was still clinging on to the ball when he hit the ground.

Twenty20's novelty wearing off

The novelty value of Twenty20 seems to be wearing off

Five years ago, the first domestic Twenty20 match at Lord’s attracted 30,000 spectators. The two matches at Lord’s played so far this season have attracted about half that number – not each, but together. All the counties are seeing smaller crowds this year than last, and last year’s were lower than the year before. TV ratings for the IPL this year were down about 15% on last year.

25-Feb-2013

The novelty value of Twenty20 seems to be wearing off. It has undoubtedly brought new people into watching cricket, whether live or on TV, but long-term success depends on whether these new cricket spectators carry on watching.

An effortless loss

Chanderpaul’s innings, after a brisk start, disintegrated into something that almost defied belief

25-Feb-2013

A few months ago I wrote a piece that questioned the role of the coach, especially in relation to John Dyson and the West Indies when they cocked up the Duckworth Lewis formula in that ODI a few months ago.

Last night, against my better instincts (yet again), I stayed up to watch the West Indies chase a challenging 329 target set by England at Edgbaston. I never really expected them to win but I figured that the chase would be short and entertaining with players like Gayle, Bravo, Sarwan, Chanderpaul etc playing like millionaires in pursuit of a 6+ rpo target on a good pitch. After all, commonsense would dictate that they had no choice but to play shots and keep playing shots until the very end. I figured they might be bowled out for 220 in the 35th over, well worth sacrificing a few hours of sleep to watch some dazzling strokeplay.

Wrong. In hindsight, I should have just switched off and gone to bed as soon as Gayle and Sarwan were dismissed early doors. What was subsequently dished up for the next 46 overs was an absolute waste of time (apart from a brief cameo from the admirable Bravo). It showed total contempt for the viewing public. It was an exercise in cynicism to watch a team just bat 50 overs with no genuine intention of trying to win. At a time when the 50 over game is under threat from the T20 mania that is sweeping the game, the West Indies did everything possible to undermine the integrity of international ODI cricket.

Gayle must go

The West Indies turned up like teenagers to a cinema showing “Bowlers of the Living Dead”, expecting to be scared out of their wits

25-Feb-2013

In March 1986, Graham Gooch’s 129* off 117 balls just got England over the line in what was reduced to a 37-over ODI against West Indies. Earlier in the tour, they had recorded their other victory by winning a four-day game against Jamaica. They lost the five Tests and the other two ODIs by massive margins, as well as four-day games against the Windward Islands and Barbados, and weren’t exactly impressive in the four-day games against the Leewards or Trinidad.

What we have just witnessed was as one-sided as the slaughters to which England were subjected twenty-odd years ago.

Back then, all we had to go on were the reports in the papers and the live radio commentary . The captain was David Gower, regularly pilloried along the lines of his being horizontal were he any more laid-back. The tabloids especially delighted in using words like “spineless” and accused the team of failing to try and of lacking guts or pride, and stopped only marginally short of calling for the ritual disembowelment of the captain as prelude to flaying alive the rest of the squad on their shameful return home. Sound familiar?

I could not then accept that the England players were quite as contemptible as the reports said. The charge which could be laid against them was defeatism: they were beaten before they even got on the plane because they expected to lose, which sure enough they went ahead and did.

The Middlesex quartet

The conventional batsman does no more than go forward or back, and possibly move his front leg outside off stump to prevent the lbw, but when the ball is delivered, these four go a-roaming in search of the best place to play the shot they intend.

Phil Hughes’s early-season stint as Murali Kartik’s stand-in has finished and England’s limited-over squad has gathered, which results in the dispersal of Middlesex’s remarkable quartet of unorthodox batsmen – Hughes, Owais Shah, Eoin Morgan and Dawid Malan.

25-Feb-2013

Born in four different countries and learning their cricket in a slightly different set of four countries, they have independently arrived at the conclusion that the stance in which they take guard is merely a take-off point. The conventional batsman does no more than go forward or back, and possibly move his front leg outside off stump to prevent the lbw, but when the ball is delivered, these four go a-roaming in search of the best place to play the shot they intend. There are a fair number of such batsmen these days, but it is rare to see virtually a whole top order made up of these crease-gypsies. Not that these four have much more in common – each has a highly individual style.

So far, two of them have made it to the highest level. The left-handed Hughes likes to back away and smash the ball through the off side while the right-handed Shah glides across his stumps to hit leg-side boundaries, so when the two bat together a captain can set an 8-1 field which doesn’t have to change over when the batsmen run a single. Hughes has successfully deployed this technique – or lack of it – in Test cricket; Shah has become a key member of the England ODI team by moving about in his crease but curbs his wanderlust in Tests, a self-imposed restriction which may lie at the heart of his relative failure in five-day cricket.

Malan, while born in Roehampton, grew up in South Africa and is not England-qualified for another few months, while Morgan has so far played ODIs for Ireland with very little to show for them - only the eagle-eyed will have noticed the 91 runs he amassed in nine games at the last World Cup. Both, though, could well become stars of the future.

Thunder from Down Under

The sight of people marooned up creeks without paddles, confined to an indefinite period of loneliness is probably something that Andrew Symonds can relate to

25-Feb-2013

For the first time in as long as I can remember, the announcement of the Ashes touring squad has been completely overshadowed in Brisbane by torrential rain, the likes of which the folk in Old Blighty are probably more accustomed to than us tropical folk. The sight of people marooned up creeks without paddles, confined to an indefinite period of loneliness is probably something that Andrew Symonds can relate to. His exclusion owes nothing to Mother Nature but it is still a sobering thought that his Test career may be over. One can only hope that ‘sober’ is a word that is now part of his lifestyle because his talent, though waning with age, is still worth the entrance money.

My initial gut feeling was that this was a squad without any major surprises. Australia have usually sent away at least one ‘bolter’ on most Ashes tours, a young tyro who has been identified as having potential and is picked on instinct rather than numbers. Wayne Holdsworth, Greg Campbell and Dirk Welham rank amongst the under-achievers. Terry Alderman and Michael Slater spring to mind as success stories. I’m not sure if Andrew McDonald really qualifies in that “young tyro” category but his selection might have been one of the more contentious ones in an otherwise predictable squad.