Cricket

Spot the flaw in the first line of this press release that I just received from A&C Black about a new book called Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Cricket.

"The Ashes take place annually every November…"

Among its other books, A&C Black also published Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, although the influence does not seem to have reached the press office.

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How to kill interest (or my interest anyway) in a game of cricket:

Sachin Tendulkar is batting beautifully, as usual, hitting the ball crisply to all parts of the ground as he races to 50 in 23 balls for the Mumbai Indians, but it is another Mumbai Indian who catches the eye, a youngster I had never heard of before called Aditya Tare, who two-steps down the wicket and launches the sweetest shot over long-off. It is a lovely stroke, power but timing, and even Saint Sachin taps his bat in appreciation.

And then the commentator says this:

"Wow, another DLF Maximum".

Yuck. Yuck, yuck, yuckety-yuck. In those four words, my enthusiasm is quelled and I switch over to watch Friends on another channel. It's one of those episodes where Ross is even more irritating than usual, but it still beats the brutal bastardisation of cricket.

And it's not just beautuiful sixes becoming DLF Maximums, it is splendid one-handed catches becoming a Citi Moment of Success. Even the time-outs are sponsored. By next season, I expect there will be Nando's nurdles, Pepsi run-outs and ugly hoicks across the line, sponsored by Hero Honda.

Fine, advertisers demand their return, but I wish the commentators would have more self-respect than to keep parroting these messages so slavishly. It demeans them and it demeans the game. Above all, though, it just makes cricket boring.

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I hope the England selectors have been following the first few matches in the IPL. With the final 15-man World Twenty20 squad to be announced a fortnight today, a couple of names that have fallen out of favour have been making a strong case for reselection. And when it comes to T20, I'd argue that form and confidence matters much more than former track records.

One is Owais Shah, who made 58 not out for Kolkata in the tournament's opening fixture and remained not out, albeit facing only five balls, in their second game. Dimi Mascarenhas has done OK, too, with four wickets in two games.

But the player making the biggest case for a recall – and this pleases me – is Ravi Bopara, a player dismissed by some readers of this blog recently as not good enough to play for an Indian village team, who made 56 in Kings XI Punjab's opening match and followed it today by carrying his bat until the third ball of the final over, making 77 off 50 balls. It has earned him temporary custody of the fabled orange cap given to the leading run-scorer in the tournament, but a summons from Lord's may be even more valuable.

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Well it was hard work, but once Bangladesh's sixth-wicket pair had got sick of each other's company after 70 overs, the end came soon enough. England go 1-0 up and perhaps they might relax enough in the second Test to tweak the balance of the side a little.

Graeme Swann will never complain about playing the leading role, but he could have done with a bit of spin support in this Test and with James Tredwell taking eight wickets in the only warm-up match it still seems strange he was not given a go.

His absence gave Swann the chance to take his first ten-wicket haul and, somewhat surprisingly, the first ten-for by an England off spinner since Jim Laker in 1956. Laker, who died in 1986, took three ten-fors in his career. Roy Tattersall, now aged 87, is the only England off spinner alive apart from Swann to take ten in a Test.

Nor is Swann a flash in the pan. His previous best was 9 for 164 against South Africa in Durban and he has also twice taken eight in a Test. Peter Such, who took eight wickets in the Old Trafford Ashes Test in 1993, a match where he was overshadowed by some Australian spinner, is the only other England off spinner to take eight in a Test in the past 35 years.

Swann now has 79 Test wickets in 17 matches, with an average below 30 and a strike-rate of a wicket every 59 balls, which among England spinners to take 20 wickets, with any arm or bowling style, has been bettered in the past century by only Walter Robins, the Middlesex leggie of the 1930s.

Let's just hope that having been asked to bowl 49 overs in the second innings, and 79 in the match, Swann isn't too knackered to continue the good work in the second Test, which starts on Saturday.

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When the Indian Premier League started in 2008, the likes of Hayden, Gilchrist, Kumble, Ganguly, Tendulkar, Dravid, Murali, etc. were eagerly sought after for being famous [then] current international cricketers. Warne had only recently retired.

In 2011, there will be a new fresh player auction and it is quite likely that the likes of Hayden, Gilchrist, Kumble, Warne, Murali and Ganguly would not be purchased at the auction, especially if they don’t perform too well in this year’s tournament.

While a Kolkata Knight Riders side sans Sourav Ganguly (or indeed a Rajasthan Royals minus Shane Warne) seems unthinkable, the whole point of organizing a tournament on this scale, with title sponsorship sold for 5 years, mobile rights sold for 8 years and TV broadcast rights sold for 10 years, is to ensure that the tournament outlasts individuals.

Hopefully from next year, the IPL will trim down the number of games by splitting the 10 teams into 2 groups. A 45 day tournament to decide the best T20 side from among 8 is around 15-20 days too long! Having 2 groups, and sticking to the current play-each-other-home-and-away formula would mean a total of 44 games (20 league games per group, 2 semis, 1 wooden spoon game and 1 final) and we could be done with the tournament a month!

The quality of cricket so far has been excellent. While seamers have actually made a mark (Vaas, Angelo Mathews, Malinga and Sreesanth), they’ll find it tougher as the pitches ease out over the next 40 days. The fielding has largely been really good and all evidence points to R Sathish as being one of the fielding stars of the tournament. For further evidence of his skills, see one of his catches in the 2008 Indian Cricket League tournament.

While we’re at it, why don’t you take a shot at who will lose the most matches at the 2010 IPL?

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Not really much to say about the Test in Chittagong since day 1. England's lack of a fifth bowler meant that Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott were asked to chip in with a few overs today – although I'm surprised that Paul Collingwood wasn't given a go as well – and Bangladesh were able to take the match into a final day because of a splendid 37-over stand between Junaid Siddique and Mushfiqur Rahim, but presumably at some point tomorrow England will go 1-0 up in the series.

Not tempted to get up at 3am to watch the start, I followed the match in from tea as Siddique and Rahim went through the session undefeated. It was a fine effort from them, but England's defensive fields were disappointing with more than 300 runs to play with and they just seemed to be going through their paces.

Bangladesh need one pair to bat through at least another session undefeated if they are to have a sniff of victory tomorrow and it could be an awkward lunch in the England dressing-room if Siddique and Rahim are still there, but I fear we won't see a Cardiff-style defiance tomorrow. Bangladesh once batted 142 overs to save a Test against Zimbabwe, but even if they did that, it would only take them to just past tea tomorrow.

One point of academic interest, having made hay against Bangladesh in his first Test series back in 2005, Ian Bell made 39 not out today to go with his first-innings 84, meaning that his average from three Tests against the Banglas is a whopping 350.

Probably the biggest spanker of Bangladeshi bowling is Sachin Tendulkar, who has made five hundreds against them in seven Tests. Marcus Trescothick didn't do too badly, either, with three hundreds in four Tests.

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I can't get today's IPL opener to play on YouTube – great start there – but while browsing through the site I did come across this clip of some truly woeful cricket in last year's tournament in which the Chennai fielders manage to make four fumbles and misfields in one run-out attempt. The IPL: Keystone Cricket.

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Alastair Cook is the fifth England batsman to make a hundred on his captaincy debut, the third in the past four years and the third to do so overseas.

Hundred in first match as England captain
109 + 50* Archie MacLaren v Aus, Sydney, 1897
119 + 10 Allan Lamb v WI, Bridgetown, 1990
30 + 128 Andrew Strauss v Pak, Lord's, 2006
100 + 13 Kevin Pietersen v SA, Oval, 2008
158* + ? Alastair Cook v Bang, Chittagong, 2010

Twenty of Cook's 78 predecessors as England captain made at least a fifty in their first Test in charge. Not all of them were batsmen, of course, and apart from MacLaren and FS Jackson, who made 82* against Australia in 1905, no others did it before the First World War.

Special mention must be made of the start of Peter May and Mike Atherton's captaincy careers. May began with 83 against South Africa in 1955 and followed it with three hundreds, a 97, 89* and three other fifties in his first eight Tests as captain. His first "failure" was 43 against Australia at Old Trafford in 1956, but Jim Laker's 19 wickets ensured that no one complained too much.

Atherton began with 72 and 28 for an even 100 in the Test against Australia at Edgbaston in 1993 and followed it, like May, with three hundreds, four fifties and a 48 in his first eight Tests.

David Gower almost started with a bang. He deputised for Bob Willis against Pakistan at Lord's in 1982 and made only 29, but when he was next given the job two years later, he made 152 and 173* in his first two matches as permanent captain, against the same opponents but away from home.

Finally, Marcus Trescothick deserves a bit of applause. He captained England only twice, but made 86 in his first game in charge, against New Zealand at Lord's in 2004, and followed it with 193 in his second, away to Pakistan. Perhaps we missed out on something there.

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Following on from my previous post, what were Bangladesh thinking asking England to bat this morning?

Wonders of hindsight and all that, but with England picking only one spinner and Bangladesh having several more than useful ones, surely it would have made sense for Shakib Al Hasan to want to bowl last on this pitch. Not least because of Stuart Broad's dodgy back, which has now had an extra day to recover.

Oh well, he's the captain…

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If the rest of the country were as naturally conservative as the England selectors, Gordon Brown may as well start wrapping his breakables in newspaper now and book the removals van for leaving Downing Street on May 6.

This morning's first Test in Bangladesh was crying out for England to take a risk and pick five bowlers, but instead they retreated for the comfort of six batsmen. The result is that with only three wickets down they have almost got to 400, but sometime tomorrow will come the hard part: taking 20 wickets.

This they must do with an attack that features a debutant, someone playing in his third Test and a fast bowler who could barely walk on Wednesday. I wish them all the best and really hope that Steven Finn and Tim Bresnan do well, but I suspect the smart money will be on Graeme Swann taking his first ten-wicket haul in Tests. Certainly, Swann will be doing a lot of bowling.

And I know it is only Bangladesh they are bowling to, but it was also only Bangladesh's bowlers they had to face this morning. At some point England need to start experimenting with a different balance of the side. Remember they have never beaten Australia away with only four bowlers.

Actually, the speed at which England scored today, if continued tomorrow, means that they may only need to bat once this Test and could have a whole three days in which to take those 20 wickets, but you should not approach Tests with that mentality.

Even if our best five batsmen cannot be trusted to make the 400 runs or so that should be a minimum against Bangladesh, they should have faith in Matt Prior at No 6, who has a Test average of more than 40 after 27 Tests, which surely suggests he is good enough to bat there, followed by Stuart Broad, Graeme Swann and Tim Bresnan, all of whom average in the mid-20s in first-class cricket. Swann averages 32 in Tests.

We lament the retirement of Andrew Flintoff, but there are four pretty decent all-rounders right there. We have come a long way from that day ten years ago when England played with a bottom four of Caddick, Mullally, Tufnell and Giddins.

This caution is just depressing. I know they were worried about the form of Pietersen and Trott, but throwing in a debutant batsman, who did OK-ish, does not strengthen the batting that much. Or, put another way, selecting Plunkett or Tredwell instead of Carberry would have strengthened the bowling without overly weakening the batting.

Still, this is the team we have. Bravo to Cook, who is only two shy of his highest Test score and must be considering making a double hundred before lunch tomorrow, and bad luck to Pietersen for joining the 99 Club (former members include Mike Atherton, twice, and Marcus Trescothick) and Trott for being caught off his helmet. The batsmen have done their job today, the bowlers will have their chance soon.

Just better hope that Broad's back doesn't go ping overnight.

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