Cricket

It’s that time of year and that time of the decade. So, what’s the best XI of the last ten years? In some ways it is a disappointingly easy selection. But here it is anyway: 1. G Smith 2. V Sehwag 3. R Ponting 4. S Tendulkar 5. B Lara 6. A Gilchrist* (Wkt) 7. S Pollock 8. S Warne (Capt) 9. J Gillespie 10. M Muralitharan 11. G McGrath Criteria: Anyone who retired before 2006 is ineligible. Lara, Tendulkar and Warne etc could also, of course, be in a team of the 1990s. As you can see – and as you know – there’s been a severe shortage of

The thing about cricket, or one of the things about it, is that the game makes few allowances for ability. The strong are persecuted just as surely as the weak are found out. There is, literally, no hiding place. Indeed, the strongest players may suffer more than the weakest. For with ability comes increased expectation and responsibility. The weak or average player can fail; the strong cannot if his team is to prosper. So not the least of the many wonders of Sachin Tendulkar is that he has withstood the all-but-intolerable burdens that come with being a hero to a billion people. Consider this: instead of the silence you might

Kevin Pietersen is an idiot. One day that will become endearing and amusing and we’ll look upon his daftness with fondness and so on. But that moment hasn’t arrived yet. So, for the time being, we look at Pietersen and wonder what on earth is going on. No normal person would tell the Times that:  “I truly believe Jacques Kallis is the greatest cricketer ever.” This is as absurd as Chris Adams’s claim that Mushtaq Ahmed was the finest cricketer who ever played for Sussex. I suppose we ask quite a lot of professional sportsmen, but is it too demanding to wonder if, from time to time, they might actually

1st May 1930: Australian opening batsmen Bill Woodfull (1897 – 1965, left) and Archie Jackson (1909 – 1933) going out to bat against Worcester at Worcester. Photo: E. F. Corcoran/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images. The other day Patrick Kidd wrote a nice post on cricket and the outbreak of the Second World War, but, speaking of cricketing heartbreak, Saturday was the 100th anniversary of Archie Jackson’s birth. Poor Jackson. We’ll never know what might have been and, of course, it’s that sense of if that lends his story its power. It’s not quite right to say that Jackson’s premature death was a tragedy since the rules of tragedy demand that the

Further to this post, an occasional series exploring the relevance and application of Carl von Clausewitz’s On War to the game of cricket. In Chapter Nine of Book Six the great theorist examines some of the problems faced by a side mounting a rearguard effort on a turning wicket: On the battlefield… it must be acknowledged that a turning movement is [often*] the more effective form. This is not due to the form of envelopment as such; rather it holds true only where the envelopment can be pushed to an extreme, when it can severely restrict the enemy’s chances of retreat while the battle is still in progress. This is

Earlier this summer, at the end of a conversation on other matters, the (excellent) American blogger Kevin Drum asked for more cricket-blogging. I’m happy to oblige! He said he finds the game “endlessly fascinating” if also puzzling. “I’m pretty much agog” he wrote “at the idea that you have a sport that frequently ends in a draw even though it takes five days to play.” This is a common observation and an aspect of cricket that mystifies many people, by no means all of them American. But of the three most common results – a win, a loss and a draw – it is not an overstatement to say that

It’s important to remember that the Ashes is still tied at one test apiece. It’s not as though this has been a disastrous summer for English cricket. It just feels as though it could have been better. That being said, I don’t think many people are confident that England will find a way to win at the Oval and England’s pusillanimous selection has both failed to inspire confidence and dampened enthusiasm for the fray. Perhaps this is too pessimistic by far. Perhaps it’s a little too soon to be quite so gloomy. Nonetheless, there’s a sense of foreboding about this test match. So it’s good to be able to read

So, the selectors have spoken. And what a dreary story they have to tell. The selection of Jonathan Trott (and the retention of Ian Bell) for the final test of the summer is depressingly timid. Worse than that, it is recklessly timid, since it presumes that England have been more competitive in this series than is actually the case and that modest tinkering with the side is all that is required to produce a final victory. This is not an analysis that is endorsed by the facts: England were comprehensively outplayed at Cardiff and Leeds, while their victory at Lords rested upon: a) a sloppy Australian batting performance, b) an

Selkirk vs Langholm at Philiphaugh, 8/9/08 Actually, it wasn’t a completely disastrous cricketing weekend. Selkirk did successfully chase 206 to defeat Langholm in the Border League. Not called upon to bowl or bat, your correspondent’s contribution was limited to taking a simple (but vital!) catch. Elsewhere, of course, doom and gloom and despair reign supreme. England’s batting this morning as Broad and Swann gave it some humpty actually irritated me. Too late, far too late. But a reminder that there was nothing to excuse the abject feebleness of this English performance. This has been a strange series contested by two pretty average sides. The quality of the cricket scarcely compares

Ricky Ponting batting at Edgbaston last week. Photo: Tom Shaw/Getty Images. Three – yes, a whole three –  cheers for Dominic Lawson’s article in the Independent today. He is right: booing Ricky Ponting is disgraceful. There may be a cartoonish element to it all and perhaps the Barmy Army will signal this by cheering the Australian skipper to the echo at the Oval when, we assume, he plays his final test innnings in England, but that’s still not quite good enough. For the time being, too many England cricket fans – not to be confused with supporters of English cricket – seem to have decided that Ponting is some kind

Note the jaunty attempt to emulate Gordon Greenidge; note too the lack of control which has caused the bottom hand to leave the bat, suggesting that this attempt has, alas, more or less failed. Photo: Grant Kinghorn. No blogging until next week, I’m afraid. Holiday time. Albeit an unusually energetic trip overseas as I’ll be playing cricket every day this week. I’m making my debut for the White City All Stars – a team skippered by Peter Oborne, late of this parish – on the club’s annual tour of Ireland. Should be fun. Runs and wickets permitting, of course. Anyway, see you on the 28th or so.

In 132 years of test cricket a side has followed on and won on just three occasions. Despite this, enforcing the follow-on has become almost as unfashionable in the modern game as stationing a fielder at third man. It is as though modern skippers have concluded that the accumulated weight of cricketing evidence, built up over more than a century, has lost its persuasive power in the contemporary game. So it wasn’t terribly surprising that Andrew Strauss declined to put Australia in again at Lord’s this morning. One man, above all, is responsible for the follow-on falling out of favour. Ever since VVS Laxman scored 281 against Australia at Eden

Tuesday’s stage in the Tour de France was interesting and, in its way, revealing. Ultimately, it was about power and interest. Should the race be run be its organisers or, effectively, in partnership with the peloton and the teams? And, just as importantly, should the interests of the teams be placed ahead of the interests of the fans? The Tour organisers decreed that yesterday the riders would ride without the radios they’ve come to rely upon. The teams, unsurprisingly, objected and, equally unsurprisingly, the riders agreed not to race properly until the closing kilometres of the stage. Levi Leipheimer summed up the mood in the peloton when he said that

So, yes, little blogging. Blame a combination of Ashes cricket and an infestation of family… Hiatus will continue as I shall be at the cricket in Cardiff on Friday. Talk amongst yourselves and deliver your verdict on whether Kevin Pieterson is just a tube or merely something else… See you on Sunday* or Monday…. *We’re playing vile Gala on Sunday in a must-win reserve league fixture. So, no blogging Sunday either. It’s all cricket all the bloody time here, you know…

Not all change is necessarily or automatically regrettable. Even in cricket. Nonetheless, anytime anyone from the ICC talks about future plans you know that something terrible is on th ecards. No surprise then that David Taylor, president of the world’s worst governing body, suggests that what we what to see is four day tests and that there’s a “need” for day-night test cricket. Never mind that there’s absolutely no evidence of any demand for day-night tests, nor that day-night first class cricket was a complete and utter failure when trialled in the Sheffield Shield a few years ago. Nor is there any obvious demand or need for four days tests.