Putting Mr Creosote on a Diet

This weekend sees the start of that period in the cricketing year when the ICC seem to think that taking a tired and disillusioned format that has been superseded in the entertainment stakes by the upstart younger brother (Twenty20) and that has never had the prestige of the grandaddy of the game (Test) and producing a staggeringly bloated tournament out of it is the way to have the fans flocking in their droves to cricket grounds and tv screens. Even the England captain has stuck his oar in -- when you're responsible for a feat of anti-organisation so extreme it gets Straussy criticising you, you know you're in trouble.

Once the thing has got underway fully, I'll no doubt weigh in with an opinion or two on the games themselves. (And no, I don't mean I'm just waiting for England to play, because 'only then does the tournament start properly'; I just think that a weekend of minnow-crushing doesn't give many pointers as to the form of the teams involved. Did we really doubt that Kenya and Canada would be humbled? [Although, actually, didn't England only just scrape past Canada? Maybe England should be classed as minnows, too. To be honest, that's probably not a bad idea: then at least we wouldn't go into the match against the Netherlands as firm favourites; we all know how that's turned out in the past...])

For the moment, here are some suggestions for the ICC of ways to ensure future World Cups aren't overshadowed in the excitement stakes by their own adverts.

• drastically limit the number of teams involved: I know, I know, allowing Canada/Netherlands/etc. to take part encourages interest in those countries, increasing revenue, and thereby aiding development -- honestly, though, when Kenya get destroyed by 10 wickets, how much good is that doing...well, anyone?
• shorten the tournament: a by-product of the first point, but the length of time covered by the WC needs to be analysed. Cutting out the second group stage (Super Sixes) is a good start.
• play Twenty20 instead: ok, not an entirely serious point, but do we really need a WC as well as a World T20?

I could go on, but it's time to go and watch the highlights: having cricket on terrestrial tv is a wonderful thing. Also, it's Sri Lanka, for whom I do have a bit of a soft spot -- I'd love another 'home' win for them, 15 years after their first...

Cricket's Coming 'Home'...Briefly

This morning -- well, afternoon; it's all relative, hemispherically speaking -- Team England crawled over the finish line, two days into the fourth month of a tour of Australia that has seen, for all the hype surrounding the Test series, mixed results.

Tour matches

Opponents: Western Australia, South Australia, Australia A, Victoria, Prime Minister's XI

England's Record: 3-0; W (6 wickets), D, W (10 wickets), D, W (7 wickets, D/L)

Verdict: An undeniable English success. Three comfortable wins, and two draws in which England lost only 20 wickets in four innings, and outscored their opponents 1305-857.

Tests

Record: 3-1; D, W (inn + 71r), L (267r), W (inn + 157r), W (inn + 83r)

Verdict: Another England victory. Unlike last time, this was fully deserved: the century count, a bone of contention among Aussie pundits in 2009, was England 9, Australia 3. Wickets taken was another battle won by the English: they took 91, bowling the Aussies out on every occasion except the 2nd innings in Brisbane; Australia managed only 56, bowling England out 5 times.

T20s

Record: 1-1; W (1 wicket, last ball), L (4 runs)

Verdict: Not so much a contest in which the teams won a game each, as one in which the scores were level after each failed to win one. Australia probably edge it, with two 50-plus scores (Watson and Finch) to England's one plus-40 (Morgan).

ODIs

Record: 1-6; LLLWLLL

Verdict: Hmmm.

So there you have it: a tour in which England dominated the longer format with an ease that was at times embarrassing, but that saw a resurgence from Australia in the shorter forms of the game. And with a World Cup imminent, England's shortcomings on the one-day field are likely to obliterate any residual feelings of euphoria over a third Ashes win this century.

New Year, New Design

(As it's the rugby season, and having a light and summery background in January just feels wrong.)

Snatching Victory from the Jaws of........Well, Victory

In a few hours' time, barring a Botham-esque stand from Smith and Siddle, England will have added a series victory to their regaining of the Ashes, and made a mockery of many pre-Brisbane predictions. (Mine included, although a 2-1 win was only slightly too conservative.)

The interventions of Christmas and New Year have meant I haven't documented this series as closely as I wanted to; some might say this was a good thing, as the up-turn in England's fortunes coincided with the start of my blogging silence. . . But I couldn't resist returning at the end of 23 days of often brilliant and sometimes woeful cricket to offer some final thoughts. (Slash gloats.)


Man of the Series

Fairly predictably, Alastair Cook. 700+ runs , batting for 36+ hours -- that's a day and a half. That pie's still tasting pretty good.


Best Innings of the Series

Finally, Kevin Pietersen had silenced the doubters. Not got the temperament to push on into the 200s? Pah. Weak against left-arm spinners? It doesn't really matter if you get to 227 before falling to one. The first innings at Adelaide was a masterwork. Gone was the scratchy, jittery Kaypee of yesteryear, foxed by such cricketing goliaths as Mehrab Hossain; this was a new, mature model of the complete batter. KP 2.0, then. Until...


...Worst Shot of the Series

Oh dear. After an ugly swipe at Mitchell Johnson yesterday, the composure of the Adelaide double-century appears to have been a false dawn.


Most Undermined Stat of the Series

Jimmy Anderson's 5 previous wickets in Australia went for 80 apiece; England were basing their attack on someone who just didn't have a clue when handed the Kookaburra ball. So this analysis makes for pretty good reading:

208.1 ~ 49 ~ 614 ~ 23

That's 23 wickets at 26.7, with an economy rate of less than 3 an over. Oh, and 23.5% of his overs were maidens.


The Heart and Soul of England Cricket Award

Duncan Fletcher, Nasser Hussain, and the Three Wise Andrews (Flintoff, Strauss, Flower) have all been credited with a hand in the renaissance of English cricket over the past decade or so; the man I believe to have done more for the game in this country than any other, since his ODI debut in 2001, is Paul Collingwood, who retired from Test cricket this week. So long, Paul, and thanks for all...of...these.

Things We Have Learnt from the Ashes So Far (Part Three)

Schadenfreude -- especially where the England cricket team is concerned -- is never a good idea.

Broad's Loss Is XXX's Gain

Members of the Fast Bowlers' Union have been the focus this week, as an injury to Stuart Broad has ended his first overseas Ashes.

Or rather, they were the focus, until they failed to take a wicket in the final 124.4 overs of the match billed as a shoot-out for the vacated Test place.

Matt Prior, instead, took the headlines, in a game that provided little in the way of cricketing interest; little, that is, apart from a surge, at 55-4 in the second innings, in the old feeling -- familiar to any fan of England cricket between 1987 and 2003 -- that England were about to come unstuck. High/lowlights included 3 wickets for Paul 'God' Collingwood, and combined figures of 7 overs for 88 from Strauss and Morgan, with the captain doing his best attempt to polish faecal matter by taking his 3rd first-class wicket (and thus leading to the pub quiz question 'what ignominious cricketing fate links Kevin Pietersen, Stephen Fleming, and Michael Hill?').

So, in the interests of--well, interest, here are 3 alternative -- not entirely serious -- options for the Andies to consider as they ponder filling the Ashes hole.

1. Give Morgan a Go: Colly has proved beyond reasonable doubt that he's a world-class bowler, capable of tearing thro--or, at the very least, conjuring devastat--listen, at least his recent first-class record is better than Mitchell Johnson's, ok? England don't need another bowler. 5-man attack? Pah. 4-man? So last year. Morgan in at 5, Colly the superstar all-rounder at 6, Bell, Prior, and 3 bowlers.

2. Why not Monty? Rub it in the Aussies' faces: trouble finding one spinner, eh? We've got so many, we don't know what to do with them. Granted, playing two spinners on the bouncing, swinging deck at the WACA may not be a great idea, but it could just be a stroke of genius. Besides, Finn and Anderson will have them 7 down before lunch on the first day, anyway.

3. Go Local: there must be an England-qualified medium-fast journeyman languishing somewhere in Australian grade cricket. (Does the name Darren Pattinson ring any bells?) No, we don't need to go looking, but it might make the Aussies feel a bit better about their selectorial machinations. (Isn't Schadenfreude great?)

Not that it really matters. After Stuart Broad's golden duck and MJ's 32-ball 0 at Brisbane, Ryan Harris's Adelaide pair, and 4 wickets in 7 innings between the three of them, England's new no. 8 doesn't have a lot to live up to.

Things We Have Learnt from the Ashes So Far (Part Two)

• Cook must be loving this Ashes lark: after two Tests, though his average has plummeted from 302 to a measly 225, the young opener appears to be doing his best to grind my gloomy comments into the dust; the horrific 2009 series, in which a first innings 95 was the only score above 32, and he failed 5 times on a score of smaller than 11, is a distant memory.
• KP is back to his confident, nay, obnoxiously arrogant best: the wicket of Michael Clarke on the fourth evening was the unnecessary cherry on the cake of an English double-centurion who has finally banished the demons that have plagued him in recent years -- not only did he spend much of his 227 taking apart one Australian left-arm spinner, but the dismissal of Clarke, fittingly, saw him dismiss another.
• Swann is bowling like a match-winner: not that this is particularly unexpected, but I thought it was worthy of note, if only because I was very close to including something along the lines of 'Swanny needs to buck his ideas up' in my last post. Good job I decided not to, then.