The Surfer
Steve James, writing in the Sunday Telegaph , thinks Beau Casson, Australia's latest spinner is not in the league of his fellow country who bowled left-arm chinamen before his arrival.
Much about Casson is ordinary. Take his character. He might appear to possess potential for the mad professor look when older, but he is certainly no eccentric like so many others to have plied his trade. Think of the dark, reclusive Michael Bevan, whom England coach Peter Moores struggled to deal with in his early years at Sussex, or the hyperactive Brad Hogg. Or even, from a bygone era, 'Chuck' Fleetwood-Smith, who ended up living under a bridge. By contrast Casson is what the Australians call 'a good kid'.
Kevin Pietersen's audacious switch-hitting during the first ODI against New Zealand had set off a debate on whether it is legal, after which the MCC stated that he can continue to play the shot
I agree with their decision, though not their logic. While seeking to rid us of the notion that all lawmakers are batsmen they point out that bowlers 'do not provide a warning of the type of delivery that they will bowl (an off-cutter or a slower ball, for example)'. So, they argue, a batsman should have the opportunity of executing a switch hit.
"Had you been travelling near the village of Cranleigh, about 80km south of London, one Sunday earlier this year, you could have followed the signs to the cricket match and made the most extraordinary discovery," writes David Walsh in the
The tall guy with the gentlest batting stroke: wasn't that Mike Rutherford, the guitarist from the old rock band Genesis? And the one over there, standing in the outfield, who looked like he didn't want to age, that was surely Pink Floyd's Roger Waters. The same Waters who once filled us with fight - "We don't need no thought control/ No dark sarcasm in the classroom" - was now playing cricket on a Sunday afternoon with Guy Waller, the headmaster of smart Cranleigh School. In the middle of them all, directing the flow of banter around the wicket, stood Eric Clapton. An earnest cricketer, let us say. But it is the little guy in the gully who rivets you. Bill Wyman, the old Rolling Stone, in his 72nd year and still up for it.
One may glorify Twenty20 as the best version of reality television, but it'll never hit the heights of the climax of an Ashes series, writes David Mitchell in the Guardian
Missing the Antigua game due to injury or making themselves unavailable for the IPL because of the start of the English season have huge long-term financial consequences for these men and, if they follow the money, I for one wouldn't blame them. Test cricket organisers need to be big enough to defend themselves, rather than relying on men in their 20s, with few prospects of employment beyond 35, to do the job for them.
It’s not just to domestic and international calendars but to the individuals, the players, who are tumbling down the rabbit hole with little idea as to where it will all end. Dwayne Bravo and Shaun Marsh would appear to have little in common.
Paul Holden, the Sideline Slogger , comes up with 10 topical questions on cricket, including ICC's new lunch rule following the abandoned match between England and New Zealand at Edgbaston
Under the new rules, even if Collingwood had played hardball and disagreed with Vettori over the need for another helping of Edgbaston macaroni cheese for his boys, the match referee would have been wheeled in to make a call.
One of the most boring batsmen alive in fact: no, not Geoff Allott, Shoaib Mohammed, Alastair Cook, Rahul Dravid, Trevor Franklin, Chris Tavare or Mike Brearley - none other than Jacques Kallis, who hit two unorthodox sixes in a match for Middlesex at Uxbridge during his stint as their overseas player in the nineties.
"Winning the first three Tests of a five-match series in India [as England did in 1976-77] remains a unique achievement, incidentally, and here's the thing: it came with the aid of what these days might be called a skeleton support staff, which
Forward this now to the height of the last Ashes series, when a rough headcount suggested that the ECB staff were just as numerous as the players. Is it too cheap a shot to mention that they lost the series 5-0? OK, it is ... I'm not so much knocking the rising numbers of support staff as pointing out that increasing coaching numbers is not necessarily a panacea. Indeed the sheer weight of numbers who surround the team could cause some conflict and ill-feeling over the next couple of months. I'm talking here of course about Sir Allen Stanford's Antiguan shoot-out (of which you may have heard).
"Pietersen's six over long-on, or long-off as it was before he 'switched', was phenomenal
There has been a big debate about whether the shot should be outlawed, but that's daft. Pietersen's innings was a fantastic spectacle, and it's not as if everyone is going to start switch-hitting; it's too difficult. I can't hit the ball that far from my usual stance, let alone right-handed. Reverse-sweeps have been around for donkey's years. Suddenly everyone has started talking about them, just because one person has become so good at the shot that he has redefined the coaching manual. But I can't see a case for changing the rules. Why would you want to penalise excellence?
More on KP's switch-hitting
Switch-hitting is not unusual in baseball. It is a commonly held belief that right-handed hitters do better against left-handed pitchers and vice versa. The ambidextrous hitter, therefore, becomes a gem of a player and can take advantage of any idiosyncrasies in the size of the boundaries, while giving flexibility to the coach. All a switch-hitter has to do is take his place on one side of the plate or the other before the pitcher has stepped on to his mark. Once the pitcher has wound up, however, the hitter cannot switch.
Time neither dulled its appeal or dimmed its impact. A whopping 940 ODI hundreds have been scored yet, many of them forgettable, only a few memorable, with this knock (at least in my reckoning) at the apex. It’s not that better batsmen than Kapil have not been seen, or some other innings were not better crafted, but I believe no other innings had had quite the same effect. Kapil was to redefine not only the destiny of the 1983 World Cup, but also Indian cricket. This was not just another batting exploit, it was a catharsis. The game would just not be the same again.