The Surfer
Australia's greatest opener
Robert Craddock in the Courier-Mail writes that Matthew Hayden, who has retired, will go down as Australia's greatest Test opener.
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Robert Craddock in the Courier-Mail writes that Matthew Hayden, who has retired, will go down as Australia's greatest Test opener.
When Australia's team of the century was announced in January, 2000, Hayden wasn't even in the Test side and had played a handful of unproductive matches over six frustrating years.
But his Test record gives him the right to be crowned Australia's greatest opener ahead of team of the century choices Bill Ponsford and Arthur Morris. He was also, by a subtantial margin, Queensland's finest home grown batsmen.
Mike Coward in the Australian will remember Hayden as a powerful figure at the crease.
Full postTest of the best
Graeme Smith's sense of pride and purpose appears to have had a salutary effect on his team as the South Africans, who were once (in)famous for being chokers, are now playing with the panache, aggression, enterprise and ambition that defined the best
Judhajit
25-Feb-2013
Graeme Smith's sense of pride and purpose appears to have had a salutary effect on his team as the South Africans, who were once (in)famous for being chokers, are now playing with the panache, aggression, enterprise and ambition that defined the best teams of the game.
Ayaz Memon in Daily News & Analysis believes the Smith surges ahead because it is the captaincy that is going to determine which team finishes this year at the top as there is very little to choose between the top six in terms of talent.
Suresh Menon in his column on Dreamcricket.com says it is unlikely that whoever takes over from Australia as the No. 1 test team - whether it is South Africa or India - by the end of the new year, will have such a clear run for so long. The more likely scenario is a bunch of two or three teams at the top taking the number one spot for brief periods.
Full postKevin Pietersen: sacked for being Kevin Pietersen
As the dust settles on a week bizarre even by the standards of English cricket, we must ask ourselves what it is that Kevin Pietersen has done wrong, writes Simon Barnes in the Times .
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
As the dust settles on a week bizarre even by the standards of English cricket, we must ask ourselves what it is that Kevin Pietersen has done wrong, writes Simon Barnes in the Times.
So what went wrong? It seems that people simply decided that, after all, Pietersen was the wrong sort of chap. Why? He expressed reservations about the coaching staff, but many a captain does that. Not everyone in the team was crazy about him, but show me a captain loved by all and I'll show you the Tewin Irregulars. Pietersen just went about things the wrong way. He complained about the head coach in a manner that wasn't quite right. He was unfamiliar with the local code and, well, I'm afraid we don't do things like that here, old boy. It seems that Pietersen has gone because he doesn't fit in, because he is very keen on his own way and because he is a bit of a maverick.
Naivety was behind the South African's demise as England captain, writes Angus Fraser, who looks at several issues Pietersen faced, in the Independent.
Issue: Pietersen was informed by email and does not fully understand why he is no longer England captain.
Warner brothers: A tale of two sons
Peter Roebuck in the Age looks at Australia's new Twenty20 hero David Warner and finds that, pleasingly for headline-writers, he has a brother who also plays
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Peter Roebuck in the Age looks at Australia's new Twenty20 hero David Warner and finds that, pleasingly for headline-writers, he has a brother who also plays. He also considers that Warner's situation could not have happened in another era.
As has long been their custom, Howard and Lorraine Warner spent Saturday afternoon running the canteen at Eastern Suburbs cricket ground in Sydney. A no-mucking-around couple, they live in working-class Mattraville and turn up at weekends to support their club and, perchance, to watch their sons play.
Both boys worked their way through the ranks like everyone else. Steve, their eldest, is a hard-hitting and hard-living batsman at present stationed in the second team. David, their youngest, plays first grade and one day hopes to make his Sheffield Shield debut.
Oh, and he's opening the batting for his country and is poised to make his fortune in the Indian Premier League. David Warner is both a product of the system and the times. His sudden rise shows that the system works and the pressures upon it. In any other era he'd still be obscure, another rookie playing for his state's reserve team hoping for promotion.
Full postAustralia's low-key coach knows his place
In the Australian , Peter Lalor chats to the national coach Tim Nielsen about his coaching philosophy
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
In the Australian, Peter Lalor chats to the national coach Tim Nielsen about his coaching philosophy. In the wake of the England leadership crisis, Lalor also considers how fortunate Australia are to have a coach and captain who get along so well.
Watching the Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores English captain-coach fiasco from the safety of another hemisphere should have a few in Australian cricket thinking "there but for the grace of God go we". Because, you can be sure, had Shane Warne ever been captain of Australia, the relationship with coach John Buchanan would have been entertaining at the very least.
Warne, the self-styled Rajasthan Royals' coach who doesn't believe in coaches, never hid his contempt for Buchanan's lateral, meeting-heavy, style. The leg spinner and Chappell were firmly of the view that a coach was the thing you drove the players to and from the ground in. Still, Warne-Buchanan (think Homer Simpson and Ned Flanders) was one drama that passed Australian cricket by and the tabloids are all poorer because of that.
The Herald Sun looks at Bryce McGain, who has made his long-awaited return from injury. As fate would have it, McGain’s comeback match for his club side Prahran came in the competition’s “country round”, which meant he played in the small Victorian town of Warrion, which has a pub, a petrol station, a church and 22 residents.
Full postNugget: Man of the Century
Ashley Mallett's newest book tells the story of Barry "Nugget" Rees, the talisman in the Adelaide Oval dressing-room
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Ashley Mallett's newest book tells the story of Barry "Nugget" Rees, the talisman in the Adelaide Oval dressing-room. As Andrew Faulkner explains in the Australian, Rees is a man with few enemies, fewer peers, and many hundreds of loyal friends, from hack club cricketers to most of the living Australia cricket captains.
Mallett's book traces Nugget's friendship with former Australia captain Barry Jarman in the early 1960s Adelaide; a path that led to Australian dressing-rooms, Nugget's own line of sporting goods, and a meeting with the Queen.
"And how are the corgis?" Nugget asked at their Windsor Castle meeting. "As you can see Nugget, they are very well indeed," Her Majesty replied with dogs dancing at her feet.
Now Nugget has a little black book most sporting reporters would gladly exchange for their first-born. The Ws alone number Shane Warne and the Waugh twins. At Adelaide Oval last week Rod Marsh looked up, startled, from a training drill to shout a "G'day" to Nugget, and the world's premier curator, Les Burdett, paused from his pitch-preparing duties to wave a hello to his mate. Narrowing down Nugget's closest cricketing friends is a dangerous practice, but Ian Chappell, Adam Gilchrist, Jason Gillespie and Darren Lehmann would make a short list of 50.
Full postMahela's unsung achievement
In celebrating Mahela Jayawardene's 100th Test, Rex Clementine pays tribute to Sri Lanka's captain in the Sunday Island , listing his achievements and pitfalls in a fulfilling 11-year Test career
Judhajit
25-Feb-2013
In celebrating Mahela Jayawardene's 100th Test, Rex Clementine pays tribute to Sri Lanka's captain in the Sunday Island, listing his achievements and pitfalls in a fulfilling 11-year Test career.
He has also had complete control of things and has stipulated what is needed of a Sri Lankan cricketer as you time and again witness exemplary behavior by local cricketers on the field. You hardly remember when a Sri Lankan was called up to the Match Referee’s room for excessive appealing, showing dissent or for any other misdemeanor and the end result has been the country winning back to back Spirit of Cricket Awards.
There may be slight hiccups but, what is most encouraging is that Sri Lanka has graduated into a very respectable Test playing force. Without being much noticed they have achieved a position that the others are still trying to make a reality. S.R. Pathiravitana in the Lankan daily, the Sunday Times, looks back at the ascendancy in the longer duration of the game.
Sri Lanka came to fame in the World arena by winning the Cricket World Cup in 1996 and thus became the new kids in the blocks in the world arena, but, still they did not look at them as a serious Test playing nation. Nevertheless they gradually upgraded their game so that they reached the top four in Test recognition and have managed to stay there for more than two years now.
Like most of the Indian sub-continent teams Sri Lanka is also another side that nurtures its players for a long time and expectedly it has paid its own dividends for its faithfulness.
'Umpiring chose me' - Taufel
Simon Taufel, in an interview with Gautam Sheth in Daily News and Analysis , speaks of his career as an international umpire, the challenges, and the increasing use of technology in making decisions.
Siddhartha Talya
25-Feb-2013
Simon Taufel, in an interview with Gautam Sheth in Daily News and Analysis, speaks of his career as an international umpire, the challenges, and the increasing use of technology in making decisions.
Which of the technology used is the most reliable? How much is HawkEye reliable?
From what I have seen of HawkEye, it is pretty close to being accurate in tracking the ball and telling us where it pitches but is not 100 per cent accurate. I favour WYSIWYG technology (what you see is what you get) and the only technology that fits this description and shows fact is HotSpot.
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The biggest change from the start of my umpiring experience till now is that there is now an umpiring career pathway and an opportunity to become a full time umpire and to become a professional umpire -- that opportunity did not exist at any level until before 2002.
Full post..............
The biggest change from the start of my umpiring experience till now is that there is now an umpiring career pathway and an opportunity to become a full time umpire and to become a professional umpire -- that opportunity did not exist at any level until before 2002.
'Pietersen lacked the qualities of a Test captain'
Siddhartha Talya
25-Feb-2013
Simon Wilde, writing in the The Sunday Times, feels the captain-coach saga was a consequence of Kevin Pietersen's own misjudgment of the feelings of his team-mates - a reflection of his failure to live up to the skills required of a captain.
His talks with an Indian Premier League franchise aroused suspicions about his motives for returning to India after the terror attacks. And his decision to continue with a holiday in Africa while the captaincy crisis escalated — even after his wife, Jessica Taylor, had returned to Britain to appear in Dancing on Ice — suggested a careless regard for his position.
Flat tracks in Ranji matches a concern
High scoring encounters on flat tracks where bowlers stand no chance, and high profile matches played a neutral venues that have failed to draw crowds, have adversely affected the Ranji Trophy competition, writes Bobilli Vijay Kumar in the Times of
Siddhartha Talya
25-Feb-2013
High scoring encounters on flat tracks where bowlers stand no chance, and high profile matches played a neutral venues that have failed to draw crowds, have adversely affected the Ranji Trophy competition, writes Bobilli Vijay Kumar in the Times of India.
The matches puffed and heaved till the final evening but the verdict was out on the first morning itself: in India, batsmen are kings; everybody else immaterial. Runs were there for the taking and it was just a question of not losing one's patience or interest. Inevitably, the ball cried as the bat danced.
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It isn't just about the absence of any semblance of competition though: why were the stands littered with ghosts, rather than real people? Why wasn't there any excitement despite the presence of at least a handful of stars?