Different Strokes

O'captain my captain

In my last post , I touched briefly on the traditional Australian way of selecting captains

25-Feb-2013

In my last post, I touched briefly on the traditional Australian way of selecting captains. The captaincy issue has now come into even sharper focus with the Shahid Afridi situation. Mike Holmans has written an excellent piece on that.

It might be interesting to buy a Round The World ticket and look at the cricketing world to see if we can explain (or hypothesise) why different countries have their own unique way of choosing captains and whether this reflects something about the culture of that country.

Starting with Australia, it's pretty much accepted that it's always been the Australian way to select the best 11 players and the captain usually emerges from that lot. There haven't been too many cases where a captain was brought into the team purely for leadership purposes. Bob Simpson did that in the late 1970's during the height of the World Series Cricket crisis but his performances did him no shame, despite being an old man. Mark Taylor's loss of form around the 1996-97 period presented a conundrum - had he not scored that career-saving century in the second innings at Edgbaston in 1997, he might have become a victim of that tradition. It's generally a pretty ruthless (and readily-accepted) practice so most Australian captains actually jump before they're pushed anyway. Even the great Allan Border was given a polite nudge when it looked like he wanted to hang on for a little bit longer. That's why Michael Clarke's position as T20 captain must be under severe threat - he's got the weight of history and tradition against him if he continues to fail.

It's back to the drawing board for Pakistan

The limp subsidence to defeat after lunch was a depressing anti-climax after what had been a fascinating and highly enjoyable Test

Shahid Afridi has had enough of Test cricket © Getty Images

25-Feb-2013

I am sorry that Shahid Afridi will not be appearing in the Test series against England which starts next month. He is one of those players who lights up a cricket field and guarantees that a match will not be dull, at least when he is taking an active part. He himself had not really wanted to come back to Test cricket, but he was prepared to give it a go when pleaded with by the folks back home. Having given it a go, he has shown that his original view was right.

I was sceptical of the view that he only knows one way to bat, but he has proved it correct. That it's a way which has its place in Test cricket there is no doubt, as my defence of his second-afternoon assault attempted to show, but there are plenty of times when it is highly inappropriate, such as on the fourth afternoon. The situation when he came to the crease for the second time was again not at all good for Pakistan, but after he had holed out it was considerably worse, which had not been the case on Wednesday.

I did not think Wednesday's innings was stupid, reckless or irresponsible in the circumstances, but Friday's was utterly gormless.

The case for Shahid Afridi's assault

I have already pleaded guilty to holding Shahid Afridi in high esteem – I am, if you like, a Boom Boom Boy biased towards seeing his actions in the best light – but I thought his innings an entirely rational choice in the circumstances obtaining at

The Pakistan v Australia Test has confirmed that I live in a different universe to the one Henry Blofeld inhabits. As I sat atop the Pavilion on Wednesday evening with the radio commentary on my earpiece, I heard him describe Shahid Afridi's cameo earlier on as “a quite disgraceful innings.”

25-Feb-2013

In my world, “disgraceful” implies some breach of decency or morality, and I fail to see how an innings of thirty in ten minutes is a breach of either. Had he cover-driven the bowler rather than the ball or spent ten minutes audibly and obscenely haranguing the umpire, “disgraceful” would certainly be appropriate, but there is no moral turpitude in hitting sixes or holing out at mid-off. Anyone who thinks there is has, at least in my view, a badly malfunctioning moral compass. Where I come from, the worst you can say of Afridi's innings is that it was stupid or reckless or irresponsible.

Not that I would, as a matter of fact. I have already pleaded guilty to holding Shahid Afridi in high esteem – I am, if you like, a Boom Boom Boy biased towards seeing his actions in the best light – but I thought his innings an entirely rational choice in the circumstances obtaining at the time. I am perfectly willing to listen to an argument that it wasn't, but it had better be a convincing one.

Improving players

If he can discipline himself to be a Test player, Afridi has the talent for eventual greatness

“I guess how Strauss reinvents himself for 50-overs ODI will decide how compelling a case England makes for World Cup glory. Right now, it is hard to see the purist shine in a difficult ODI situation … Strauss will need to go the Martin Crowe way (1992 World Cup) to take this side all the way," says Kunal Tageri, commenting on my piece "The joke's no longer on England"

25-Feb-2013

Monday's innings against Bangladesh gives us a strong clue about how Strauss is reinventing himself. In posting the third-highest individual score by an England player in an ODI, he surpassed his own 152 against the same opponents five years ago. He actually scored slightly faster in that 2005 game as England rattled up 391, but the big statistical difference is in the sixes column: none in 2005 and five in 2010. And it's not just against weak Bangladeshi bowling that he's been doing it: he cleared the ropes a few times during the recent series against Australia too.

The wagon wheel of his innings yesterday is revelatory. In his early years, fielding captains could leave the arc from extra-cover round behind the bowler to midwicket completely empty and have nothing to worry about because Strauss so rarely played in the traditional V. Yesterday, the sixes were all in that area, and a good fifth of his other scoring shots were down the ground too. Captains are going to have to think harder about how to contain and dismiss him. Strauss was already a successful Test player, so it shows that the good can get better by assiduous practice and working on things in the nets.

Clarke's T20 captaincy hangs in the balance

Whichever way you look at it, Michael Clarke's reign as captain of Australia's T20 outfit must be under serious consideration

Michael Clarke needs to rediscover his form in the shortest version of the game © Getty Images

25-Feb-2013

Whichever way you look at it, Michael Clarke's reign as captain of Australia's T20 outfit must be under serious consideration. Let's look at it from a numbers perspective. Since his early days as a flamboyant strokeplayer, he has now modified his technique somewhat which has perhaps made him more reliable in the longer formats but has come at the expense of his strike-rate. His rate of scoring has dropped markedly in the last few years, despite predominantly starting his innings whilst some of the Powerplay overs are available to him. His highest score in a winning cause is just 37, and even that was chasing a mere 75 posted by India at the MCG in 2008.

What's also interesting is that he actually scores faster in games that Australia have lost. His overall strike-rate in losing causes is greater than in winning ones. I wonder how many other top-order players from the stronger teams score faster in games that their team lost. I can understand why lower-order sloggers may end up with that sort of anomaly, often not batting in comfortable victories but swinging blindly when the team is under the kosh.

It's dangerous to surmise too much from that sort of statistic because Clarke could argue that when there is less of a need for him to score quickly (i.e. winning), he eases off the accelerator, but when his team is up against it, he scores faster. His detractors however could counter that by pointing out that his average is almost 5 runs per innings lower in games Australia loses, which is quite a significant difference in a shortened innings.

Bangladesh win shows how far they still have to go

The moaners who insist on disputing the Tigers' credentials will no doubt suggest that one couldn't expect anything better, but I doubt that it has anything to do with Ashraful being Bangladeshi and everything to do with him being a cricketer

Bangladesh beat England for the first time in any format on July 10 © Getty Images

25-Feb-2013

Congratulations to Bangladesh on their first win against England! Now they have completed the set by beating all the top eight teams; presumably they can take their stamped bingo card to the prize counter in Dubai and get a lifetime supply of falafel or a giant fluffy rabbit.

As with their previous wins against the senior teams, the Tigers caught their opponents having a bad day (I was going to say “caught them on the hop”, but that would have been in poor taste given Ian Bell's unlucky injury). England's catching was poor, their bowling lacklustre and their batting as ghastly as it's been in quite a while, and Bangladesh were competent and cool-headed enough to capitalise. But it's a measure of how far they haven't come that their celebrations were so ecstatic: they will have truly advanced only when they are merely quite pleased rather than flabbergasted when they win.

Bangladeshi ODI wins are still rare enough that each prompts the odd reflection on their previous ones. I immediately recalled their last victory on a tour of England and Wales, when they beat Australia at Cardiff in 2005. That was based around a magnificent hundred by Mohammed Ashraful, who then seemed on the road to stardom.

The joke's no more on England

It is quite conceivable that the England XI which just played could turn out in the World Cup final, and it is entirely possible that their opponents would not be Australia.

England have improved enough to be taken seriously as ODI competitors © Getty Images

25-Feb-2013

Despite the strenuous efforts of those who have to find something to say or write every day to convince me that the ODIs between England and Australia had some relevance to the Ashes this winter, I remain firmly of the belief that the series was largely superfluous and meant very little beyond avenging the 6-1 result last summer.

Half of the England side will have very little to do with the Test series in a few months time, after all. Neither Luke Wright nor Mike Yardy have any business near a Test squad and Craig Kieswetter's wicketkeeping is not good enough to recommend him as the backup to Matt Prior. Eoin Morgan will almost certainly be in the squad but will only get to play if there are injuries to the specialist batsmen, and Tim Bresnan has no obvious qualifications to be in the first-choice XI. If there was one thing we learned from the series against Bangladesh, it was that Bresnan is not a Test-class new-ball bowler, and that Ajmal Shazad is a better old-ball bowler to boot. Bresnan may be a marginally better bowler than Jacques Kallis, but Kallis doesn't get into the South African side on the strength of his bowling, and Bresnan offers rather less than Kallis with the bat.

Admittedly, most of the Australian ODI XI would be in serious contention for places in the Test team but the one who would be of most significance is Shaun Tait, who doesn't play first-class cricket.

The irony of Howard's nomination

Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world ..

Watching the John Howard ICC fiasco from a neutral distance, one cannot help but marvel at the beautiful irony of it all. From the moment his nomination was canvassed a few months ago, it was almost inevitable that this was unlikely to be an election without controversy; nothing about Howard, overtly political and divisive figure that he is, love him, hate him, or in my case, utterly indifferent to him, was likely to result in a smooth succession to the ICC throne.

25-Feb-2013

Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world ... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception.- Kenneth Koch

The ensuing debate in Australia has been even more ironic. Those in the pro-Howard camp have cried foul about the way in which his nomination has been derailed, bemoaning the fact that no valid reasons have been proffered, claiming some sort of national insult, even going so far as to claim hurt on behalf of our NZ cousins. As if the sensitivities of our neighbours across the Tasman have always been something we have keenly sympathised with! More irony.

The anti-Howard brigade have brought up his past, replete with references to past policies and personal views that he espoused when he was still a mere politician. They counter-accusations of a subcontinental power bloc against Howard by reminding the ‘old powers’ that they ran the game for nigh on a century and it is only fitting that the new economic powerhouses now control the sport. It is a valid enough argument but can we please then dispense with any notions of good governance, best candidate, cricket's greater good etc and just accept that this is about who holds the balance of power. No shame in that - it's just a fact of life in the corporate jungle.

Excited about the World Cup - the cricket one

Anyone brave enough to make any predictions