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.

Things We Have Learnt from the Ashes So Far

• Cook's place is probably not under threat: an average of 310 in the 2010 Ashes to date will do wonders for a batsman's self-confidence.
• Trott is yet to play an Ashes test without making a hundred: statistics never lie. Ok, so it's a fairly small sample, but it's the sort of thing to get up the collective nose of an Ozzie attack. Speaking of which...
• Doherty and Johnson are no Warne and McGrath: with combined match figures of 90.5-15-318-2 (an amalgam that actually does Xavier Doherty a disservice, as both the wickets were his), these two are unlikely to give England's batsmen any sleepless nights. I'd say Doherty's place is safe for now (Smith's single wicket against WA is unlikely to have XD [isn't that a smiley face of some sort?] quaking in his boots), but Harris and Bollinger are breathing down Johnson's neck -- I'd expect at least one of them to come in (with, possibly, Hilfenhaus making way as well).
• An England series win is still a possibility: ok, so that was hardly going to be overturned by a single test, but I'll take any opportunity to put a positive spin on things -- my prediciton is still on. (I'm going for 2-1.)

EDIT: Cook's average is 302, not 310, not that it matters much...

Why I Want Ricky Ponting to Win the Ashes...Maybe

Don't get me wrong.

Come midnight tonight -- well, that's if I can be bothered to stay up into the night for a contest between the teams world-ranked, as Andy Zaltzman puts it, fourth [and] fifth. Out of, basically, 8 -- I'll be cheering Strauss & Co. on like your next cricket-obsessed English loon. (Incidentally, doesn't 'Strauss & Co.' sound like a gentlemen's outfitters from the late 19th century?)

And if there's one figure in world cricket I truly despise, it is Ricky 'sour grapes' Ponting, with his face like a constipated bulldog chewing a wasp wrapped in a cow-pat. (Actually, maybe that's what he has been chewing, all these years. Would explain a lot.)

The fact is, though, that Ricky Ponting, loath him or dislike him, is one of the greatest cricketers to walk the face of the earth. Yes, he whinges a fair bit, but he's second only to The Don in the batting rankings of a country that has produced a fair few good cricketers; ok, so he has a slight weakness on the legside, now that his flexibility and footwork aren't what they used to be, but he scored so many runs at under-13 level club cricket (507 in 7 innings, with an average of 507) that they had to change the rules governing when a batter should retire.* And he may not appear to be the most dazzling of Ozzie captains -- his propensity to bat when winning the toss is reaching near-pathological levels -- he is still, as David Boots argues, one of the most successful skippers ever.

I don't particularly want to see such greatness -- the word is overused, but not, I believe, in this case -- trashed because Punter happens to be only the third Australian captain in history to lose 3 Ashes series. Firstly, given the current ICC standings, does The Ashes really matter all that much? And secondly, it's not like Australia were trounced in either of the other two: in 2005, England were handed a giant stroke of luck when a cricket ball, for once, didn't do what Glenn McGrath wanted it to; in 2009, Australia were not so much beaten into submission as bored into it by a dogged 10/11 partnership.

So it is with mixed emotions that I predict an England series win this time around.** It will be great if we do inflict another defeat on a faltering long-term adversary; I just wish the losing captain had scored a few fewer than 12,250 Test runs.





*Sorry, you're relying on my memory for this, as I can't find a link to the article -- it was in one of the UK national broadsheets at the weekend, though.

**Given the success of my last prediction, in which I failed to even predict the number of players England would take on tour, let alone their names, I'd take this with a huge lump of salt.

Past Achievement vs. Future Promise

It's been a mixed couple of days for England's cricketers.

Graeme Swann's fortunes appeared to have continued on a downward spiral, post-Catgate, as his name was left off the ICC longlist for cricketer of the year. This snub -- and any resulting effects -- lasted barely 24 hours, though, as he was added to the list, and promptly picked up his 98th, 99th, 100th, and 101st Test wickets.

At the other end of the scale, Alastair Cook continued his rather ignominious battle with Salman Butt (batting totals in last five innings: 1, 8, 7, 0, 17) for the title of 'least in form left-handed opener of the series' by adding a meagre 6 runs to his aggregate of 41 in 4 previous innings.

I'm more than prepared to eat a whole dish of humble pie this evening, following a gritty 120 from Cookie that forms the backbone of an eventually-match-winning 200+ lead. The trouble is, I don't think he's going to deliver. Yes, Cook may be the second-youngest batsman in the world, after a certain ST, to reach 4000 Test runs. But past achievement, even when compared with the current greatness of a batsman such as Tendulkar, is not necessarily an indicator of future success.

Graeme Swann's achievements provide an interesting point of comparison. The third of Swann's four wickets yesterday placed him on an intriguing list of players to take 100 wickets in 23 Tests. The names Mankad, Underwood, Warne, McGrath, Mushtaq, and Kaneria will no doubt catch the eye, but it is another English name that is of note, here: nestled between the two great Pakistani spinners is one Stephen James Harmison.

In his prime, Harmison was undeniably a good -- even, on a certain March morning at Sabina Park in 2004, a great -- bowler. But he will never be lauded along with the Indian, English, Australian, and Pakistani names that he and Swann both join at 23 on the 100 list.

Swann's performances over the next years -- not his achievements over the past 23 matches -- will determine whether he goes the way, in English bowling terms, of Underwood or Harmison. Cook's fortunes, similarly, hang in the balance; though a decision on his future may come sooner rather than later.

[POSTSCRIPT, 3pm: Cook falls, 10 runs short of the fairly arbitrary total I set him. Mmmm, tasty.]

On the Kelvin Scale

Graeme Swann's drink-driving charges this week might have been seen as a distraction from the task in hand, as the no. 3 in the World Test bowling rankings was forced to miss training a mere 48 hours before the third Test against Pakistan. What caught the eye in the Cricinfo report on Swann's absence on Monday, however, was the input from the no. 3 in the England T20 batting lineup, one 'Kelvin' Pietersen.

The form of Kaypee, former captain and once the first name on [insert England coach here]'s team-sheet, has been a worry of late. Stephen Brenkley has written about the dipping Test average that will soon plumb depths from which even a Man of the Series Twenty20 performance won't be able to drag him. What this story about Swann shows, however, to the English media and -- equally importantly -- the Australian dressing-room alike, is that here is a cricketer who remains at the heart of (*yuk*) 'Team England': it is KP's twitted comments on Swannee's predicament that make the headlines, ahead of the more professional summary of the team captain.

And it reveals something about Swann, too: even within the England team there are grumblings about the South-African-born contingent. I wonder how Andrew Strauss feels about that?

Why Cricket Doesn't Matter

Umar Gul and Yasir Hameed are two players who have not been at the centre of the Pakistani cricket uproar in recent weeks, but they are significant for two reasons. Firstly, they have provided the Pakistani team with some rare high points in a lacklustre all-round performance in the little-more-than-five days of Test cricket in the series so far: Gul's 65* from no. 9 was not only the team's highest score of the first innings of the first Test, it came at a S/R comfortably higher than those around him, a stat that he reproduced in the second innings; his stats as a bowler have been pretty good, too, with 4 wickets at a respectable 31.5. Hameed's single contribution had less of an impact, but his ability to do what very few of his team-mates had done -- actually hold onto a catch -- makes his role in the side a noteworthy one.

Secondly, however, there is the question of the provenance of these two men. Whilst most of the squad are Punjabi by birth -- nearly half were born in Lahore, in the east of the country -- these two hail from Peshawar, in North-Western Frontier Province. For those of you who've been living under a rock, Gul and Hameed could be forgiven for having things other than the thwack of leather on willow on their mind at present: with current statistics for the flooding in Pakistan touching 12 million affected out of a population of 166 million, it doesn't take a vast imaginative leap to consider that these two -- if not a greater number of the tourists -- might have been directly affected in some way.

It seems to be the done thing at the moment, after successive batting collapses of monumentally inept proportions, to lambast the Pakistani cricket team. Well, after five years that have seen a major earthquake in the vicinity, a terrorist attack on a fellow international cricket team in Lahore, and now this month's floods -- not to mention, within the sport, match-fixing allegations, international bans and the rest -- is it any wonder that they're a bit . . . ermm . . . out of sorts?

A couple of days after my recent post about Murali's status as an all-time great, I read a newspaper piece that suggested Warne's career achievements were the greater as he got a lower percentage of his wickets against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. I think if the recent travails of the Pakistanis show us anything, they serve as a reminder that the fortunes of all international cricket teams rise and fall -- West Indies after 2003 would be a good example, but England teams of the 90s and early 00s were fairly shocking, too -- and for reasons that don't always have everything to do with the sport. This is the beauty of international cricket: that it is at one and the same time a serious business for millions of people, and something that -- when faced with the natural and political disasters of certain regions of the world -- matters not a jot.