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If Johannesburg began as the mirror image of Perth until a changed ending, the second Test in Durban is starting to resemble the corresponding match in Melbourne

Brydon Coverdale in Durban07-Mar-2009

If Johannesburg began as the mirror image of Perth until a changed ending, the second Test in Durban is starting to resemble the corresponding match in
Melbourne . At the MCG Australia posted a healthy 394 and were well on top of South Africa’s batsmen before a massive partnership from JP Duminy and Dale Steyn rescued the game and set up a historic South Africa victory.At Kingsmead, Australia closed the second day with a 214-run lead and needing two wickets to knock over South Africa and strengthen their hold. The men at the crease? Duminy and Steyn. Ominously for Australia, Duminy was well set on 73. Worryingly for South Africa, the Durban pitch was proving harder to master than the reverse sweep.”It’s quite up and down,” the South Africa spinner Paul Harris said. “It’s not easy. Both sides today struggled to score. It has changed a lot since yesterday. It has definitely gotten quicker. Whatever it’s doing, it’s doing much quicker than the day before.”Melbourne was a much better batting wicket. It will be tough but this team enjoys a scrap and we’re certainly in one now. We’re going to have to play really well to get out of this one, probably the best we have played in the away series or the home series in order to get out of this one.”Their major problem will be to tame a wild Mitchell Johnson, who swung the ball outrageously and found enough bounce to send Graeme Smith and Jacques Kallis to hospital with nasty blows. Johnson picked up two wickets in the first over and gave the side a massive lift after a
disappointing end to their batting innings when they lost their last five wickets for four runs.”That’s going to pick up anybody on any cricket team, when you can pick up two wickets in the first over,” the allrounder Andrew McDonald said. “The first over is usually just one or two runs coming off it. But when you put two wickets back in the shed, and then obviously with a couple of blokes retired hurt, it really gave us a great deal of momentum.”McDonald was able to cash in on that momentum to collect three wickets late in the day with his naggingly accurate offerings. In the absence of a specialist spinner, McDonald has played the containing role during the past two Tests and he finished the day with the attractive figures of 3 for 25 from 12 overs, including the vital wicket of Kallis.”That’s my job, to pretty much hold up one end,” McDonald said. “That’s all I do. If I get the wickets, that’s great. I thought I bowled well in Johannesburg, just keeping it tight, and that’s the
same method I used today. Some days you’re going to get the wickets and other days you aren’t. Today was just my day to get a couple.”McDonald was not part of the loss at the MCG, his home ground, and he hasn’t played in a losing Australian team. He has done his best to ensure that trend continues.

Canada’s best player has swapped life as a banker for a cricket contract

Faraz Sarwat14-Aug-2009It is the bane of ICC Associate cricket that for various reasons countries often struggle to field their best eleven players. Canada has suffered from this malaise for years. Some of its best players used to be oceans away, in Australia, New Zealand and England, only sporadically coming together to play if the cricket on offer was important or attractive enough to justify taking time off from the concerns of earning a livelihood. That still remains the case for some, but significantly, Canada has managed to entice its captain into signing a contract from now through to the 2011 World Cup. Ashish Bagai is finally home and he couldn’t be happier. “This is a dream come true to finally be able to play cricket for a living. It’s something I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember”.Bagai began playing the game as a child while in school in India. At age 11 he moved to Canada with his family, and by the time he was 15 he was playing representative cricket in Canada. He duly made it to the under-19 team before graduating to the senior side. His debut ODI remains his favourite match – Canada’s upset win over Bangladesh in the 2003 World Cup.While still in university, Bagai continued to play for Canada, but sometimes his studies prevented him from participating in overseas tournaments, a trend that continued when he began work in the banking industry after graduation. While Bagai was happy with his job, he was disappointed at missing important tournaments like the 2005 World Cup Qualifiers and, most recently, the four-nation Twenty20 tournament that Canada hosted last year. It is an uncomfortable choice, which most players on the team have had to make from time to time – balancing the demands of earning a living while trying to play cricket at a high level.For Bagai, being pulled in two different directions was no longer acceptable and a decision had to be made between choosing to devote himself to his banking career in the UK or focusing on cricket in Canada. His parents helped, reviewing the pros and cons of his options, and Bagai appears satisfied that cricket won out. “I enjoyed my career at UBS in London and was doing relatively well. It is difficult to give that up, but I’m taking a chance on something that hasn’t been tried before. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start the era of professionalising cricket in Canada and building a team that can have an impact at the World Cup.”Though Canadian cricket has become accustomed to life with only fleeting glimpses of Bagai, his worth to the team is immense. A versatile wicketkeeper-batsman, and still only 27 years old, he has scored more ODI runs for Canada than anyone else. He makes the team for his glovework alone, freeing up a spot for an additional batsman, which every Associate team desires due to long tails and a shortage of allrounders.At the moment, considering he is available year-round, and with a view to the 2011 World Cup, it is difficult to imagine anyone other than Bagai leading Canada. Intelligent and thoughtful, with a good sense of the frailties of the local cricket scene, he is the country’s most experienced international. A product of the system rather than an overseas import, he can relate to the newer players as well as he can to the more experienced campaigners like the former captain Sunil Dhaniram.Cricket Canada is over the moon to finally have a commitment from their captain. Six players had already signed contracts by the end of June, but a deal with Bagai was not formalised until August 1 due to compensation issues. It is clear that Cricket Canada is relieved to have not lost Bagai to his career outside cricket. While all concerned are loath to discuss the financial aspects of the contracts, there is no doubt that Bagai’s banking career was a more lucrative proposition than playing cricket in Canada. He is philosophical, though: “Years ago I had promised myself that if the opportunity ever came up to play cricket for a living, I would take it. That opportunity has arrived.”

It is clear that Cricket Canada is relieved to have not lost Bagai to his career outside cricket. While all concerned are loath to discuss the financial aspects of the contracts, there is no doubt that Bagai’s banking career was a more lucrative proposition than playing cricket in Canada

In Canada there is little understanding of what it really means for national cricketers to have signed contracts. The game does not make money. There is no television revenue or income from gate receipts. Sponsorship is still nascent and the bulk of the funding continues to come from the ICC. For other streams of revenue to emerge, Canada has to become a better team and a more attractive commodity for sponsors. Having a core group of players and a settled captain to work with will go some way in achieving that, by building a team rather than a ragtag collection of players.Bagai has admitted there have been times in the past when he has gone into tournaments without having met some of his players. Though he downplays the impact of such uncertainty, the results on the field have sometimes been gruesome, with unsure body language and no team chemistry. Thirty-odd players took the field for Canada last year, which, coupled with the constant captaincy changes made the side look decidedly amateurish. National team coach Pubudu Dassanayake in an interview to Cricinfo, expressed his own frustrations that came from not having a set group of players at his disposal. With Bagai and the likes of Rizwan Cheema and Dhaniram sewn up, there is now reason for optimism where consistency is concerned.Lack of consistent cricket because of work commitments meant that Bagai himself was often rusty when he would join the team after months away. He’s now looking forward to better days with the bat. “My purple-patch was during the World Cricket League in Kenya in 2007 (Bagai was the Man of the Tournament, scoring 345 runs at 86.25), and that only came as a result of spending six months in South Africa at the academy, focused on cricket. I feel that I have more to offer than what I’ve been doing for the past couple of years. That’s why I’ve come back to cricket full-time.”Bagai however is clear that being a contracted player does not guarantee selection for anyone, including himself. And while representing his country remains uppermost in all his talk about what the contracts mean to him, the former investment banker is not naïve about the financial incentives. “As a captain, I wanted to see match fees given more weight in the contracts. It places real importance on every player getting fit and ready for every game, otherwise they won’t get picked or paid. It means players taking care of themselves. It ensures that players are working towards playing games for Canada and doing well for Canada.”The road to the game becoming professional in Canada is a long one, but the first steps have been taken. Importantly, the right man is leading the way.

Plenty of fun, good stories and research from the Analyst, but not, as the blurb claims, the real history of cricket

DJ Taylor24-Oct-2009Simon Hughes, according to his blurb writer, has written “the real history of this most English of
sports”. I spent ages looking for the right adjective for Hughes’ style.? “Later CB Fry also developed a fascination with the Nazis and once spent an hour chatting to Hitler, trying, and failing, to persuade him to form a cricket team. He spent so long explaining the lbw law that it drove Germany into invading Poland. The Second World War was all CB Fry’s fault!” Well, perhaps not.A style, then? “All in all the turn of the century was an eventful period. Three weeks into it Queen Victoria died, aged 81 (probably of boredom from reading Ranji’s book), the whole nation was in mourning after her 63 years’ sitting on the throne (she must have had terrible constipation)… “A style, let us say? “In the region of 750,000 British men lost their lives in the those four brutal years, and, naturally, the nation was a pretty sombre place for a time, although as there were now three females for every one male the blokes were on a pretty flat track.” No, I decided, the word was .And the problem with jauntiness, as any stand-up comedian will tell you, is that, like a sequence of fast yorkers, it cannot be indefinitely kept up. At least half-a-dozen times in – in its discussion of the Bodyline tour, say, or its analysis of Bradman’s legacy to the game – you get the feeling that the whole thing is becoming a bit of a strain and that Hughes is only a paragraph or two away from some straightforward cricketing history. The moment soon passes, though, the wisecracking resumes and the reader grows habituated to the sight of anything remotely serious being brought, winded, to the ground with such chance hilarities as: “In early 1900 the Labour Party came into being, to flex the growing muscle of the unions, women were being liberated from housework to meet at Starbucks for a skinny latte… “This is a pity, for when he touches on something that really interests him, Hughes in full flow can be a bracing experience. The bits about the cack-handedness of the cricketing establishment and the gentleman/player divide, and the pen-portraits of Tich Freeman and SF Barnes, who, once he was coaxed out of the Lancashire League, took wickets for England at an average of 16.43, could almost come from a different book. The comedy hoop-jumping is set aside for a moment and the reader sits up.Hughes, who has provided a zealous update to include the recent Ashes series, is not the first with an eye for the selective quotation. No doubt the tyrannical Lord Hawke, one-time boss of both Yorkshire and England, deserves every brickbat thrown at him, and certainly he did remark, “Pray God no professional may ever captain England.” But he added the qualification: “I love professionals, every one of them, but we have always had an amateur skipper.” Curiously, the idea that the best teams were those in which gentlemanly nous was employed to sand down the professional grit was shared by many professionals. As Fred Trueman put it, “the independence of the amateur who was prepared to speak up for his team… was the best combination we ever had”.One day someone may very well write the “real history” of the game, but this, despite many
a good story and a fair amount of lightly worn research, is not it.And God Created Cricket
by Simon Hughes
Doubleday, 2009
312 pp, £20

Delhi’s win was the result of a combined effort – the batting recovery from 67 for 4, the fiery bowling which crippled Rajasthan’s chase and some outstanding fielding

Jamie Alter at the Feroz Shah Kotla31-Mar-2010.Farveez Maharoof nipped out two wickets in the first over of the chase, from which Rajasthan never recovered•Indian Premier LeagueGambhir and Karthik begin the recovery
Gautam Gambhir hadn’t played a significant innings since Delhi’s first game. Tonight he needed to bail Delhi out and found the perfect ally in Dinesh Karthik. The pair confidently saw out the threat of the spinners on a track taking turn. The ball dipped occasionally but Gambhir, smooth on his feet, and Karthik were alert.Karthik scored ten runs from his first 11 deliveries, nine of which were bowled by spinners, and was beaten early by one from Shane Warne. Karthik isn’t a batsman to commit to the front foot early, an asset on such tracks, and that came in handy. The pair’s rotation of the strike was also exemplary, and they fed off each other very well. Gambhir dropped anchor, Karthik attacked and continued in the same vein after losing his partner.Karthik steps up
The most significant role in Delhi’s biggest win came from Karthik. His ability in this format is not lost on anyone, and his application was again remarkable. A batsman coming in at No. 6 in this format is usually expected to give it thump from the start, but given Delhi’s early travails it was essential he revisit his approach.Karthik did just that. Warne’s threat negated, he backed himself to loot other bowlers. Once he’d passed 25, he cut loose. Three sixes came in four balls, each strokes of class: Siddharth Trivedi strayed onto the pads and Karthik played a gorgeous pick-up shot. Sumit Narwal pitched two length deliveries and they were dumped over long-off and long-on in a costly 17th over. The pace of the pitch had been a bit of a concern earlier, but now that Karthik had gauged it, the runs flowed. Shaun Tait was slammed for three successive fours the 18th over and a fourth six followed in the final over.The knock was a personal triumph for Karthik, who had stepped up to captain when Gambhir was injured and oversaw two straight losses that sapped Delhi’s momentum. Two evenings ago, Karthik had been out first ball to Ishant Sharma. But tonight he produced an inspired performance with the bat and in the field, featuring in four dismissals to bag the Man-of-the-Match award.Maharoof strikes twice
If Rajasthan had stunned Delhi in the field early on, the home side returned the favour in quicker time. Delhi were without their strike bowler Dirk Nannes, ruled out for a week due to a finger injury. His replacement was Farveez Maharoof, who had been Delhi’s most expensive bowler and hadn’t played for over ten days. But an opening over that accounted for two wickets was something even Nannes hadn’t managed this season. Maharoof bowled three overs mixed with clever legcutters, and finished with 2 for 13.Mishra’s guile
There’s a reason Amit Mishra is tied on 11 victims with Muttiah Muralitharan as the tournament’s highest wicket-taker. His bowling, bar one poor match, has been successful because he has preserved the fundamentals of conventional legspin. He’s not been afraid to flight the ball and has used his googlies really well.Mishra began with two short deliveries which Naman Ojha slapped to the boundary, but as soon as tossed the ball up and got it to loop, he was a handful. Ojha was drawn onto the front foot in defense, the ball broke away and Karthik held on to the outer edge. With his eighth delivery Mishra struck the decisive blow, getting Yusuf Pathan to hit one straight to long-on. The delivery? A slow, loopy legbreak. He then dismissed Adam Voges to finish with three for 25.It’s a wonder he didn’t make India’s squad for the ICC World Twenty20, while Piyush Chawla, who has averaged 40 this tournament and conceded eight-an-over, did.Safe as houses
A fielder rarely wins a Man-of-the-Match award for his catching and throwing, but tonight David Warner put the case forward. His four catches and a direct hit run-out count as five wickets.
Having failed with the bat, Warner made his presence felt early in Rajasthan’s chase. Running back from mid-off after Michael Lumb chipped the second ball up in the air, Warner took a brilliant catch. He had to make good ground and then put in a stretch to get there. His reflexes trumped all else, with Warner just managing to clutch the ball with his left hand as he fell forward. On his knees, Warner faced the delirious spectators either side of the sight screen and raised his arms in jubilation.Not too long after, Warner took the decisive catch of Yusuf while falling backward onto his rear in front of long-on. In a flash he kissed the ball and, winking, pointed at the fans behind him. In a short span of time, the New South Welshman has been wholeheartedly accepted by Delhi’s fans and the roar that bellowed was testament.Warner had a field day, literally, going on to flatten the stumps from mid-on to run out Warne first ball and holding his fourth catch later on. The achievement puts him tied with Sachin Tendulkar for most catches in an IPL match. Amazingly, nine of the ten wickets involved either Warner or Karthik.

Try as he might to sound philosophical about it, Sreesanth couldn’t hide his disappointment after being forced to miss the Test series because of an injury

Sidharth Monga in Colombo12-Jul-2010You are seen as Indian cricket’s trouble child, the prodigal son, the enfant terrible. Your fist pumps to tell yourself that you are the best are talked of more than your wrist, which can send down deliveries with the seam bolt upright, shaping away from the batsmen, a rare ability that ought to make you one of the best anyway. You are out more than in, your dance is talked of more than your bowling, and then suddenly the selectors punt on you.You bowl a beautiful spell on a dead pitch to win your team a Test, you feel you are bowling as well as you have bowled, and then you get swine flu. You make a quick recovery, setting yourself up for a Test again, and on cue a side strain becomes a stress fracture and you are out again. You lose your Test place, struggle in the IPL because Twenty20 is not really your game, and you are not picked for the national limited-overs sides. You disappear off the news radar, train hard, play a lot of local games, regain fitness, and plot another comeback.Just before the series starts, your lead fast man is injured, you are certain to play in the XI, and you think of bowling the first over again. Just before your first net session on the tour, you injure yourself in the warm-up. You bowl six deliveries in the nets before the pain gets too much, you get an MRI done, and are out again for close to four weeks. Sreesanth, this is just not your time.”I was looking forward to this one,” Sreesanth said minutes before returning to India. “The moment I came to know Zaheer is not around, I thought ‘wow it is a great opportunity for me’. After 2006, bowling the first over was a dream come true again.”Also Sri Lanka is like Kerala, conditions and weather wise. I was not worried about the heat or the humidity or anything. I was in Cochin also for one month, training hard, because I knew I might get a call-up. I was completely prepared for the series.”I had corrected my eyesight too, I don’t wear specs anymore. It was Muralitharan’s last match too, would have been a historic match. I ended up missing it. Some things you just cannot control.”Try as he might to sound philosophical about it, Sreesanth couldn’t hide his disappointment. “I played a lot of club games,” he said of his time out of the limelight. “I was at the NCA, training, bowling in the nets, I was getting through a very good workout. For six months I had no injuries, suddenly this happens. Yesterday I must have done something odd in the warm-up.”Last night, when Sreesanth awaited the results of the MRI while the rest of the world was immersed in the football World Cup final, was a difficult one. “I was worried last night,” he said. “But I had a good conversation with Paddy [Upton, mental conditioning coach]. You can’t worry about spilt milk, next time keep it in a proper container.”Sreesanth is now headed to the NCA, back to the gym and a new specialist, trying to figure out another way back. “Thank god it happened in the season, so I can actually play properly,” Sreesanth said. “We have KSCA league coming up, and lots of other games before the next series comes up. I am looking forward to playing as many games as possible and come back.”It was against the same opposition, Sri Lanka, that Sreesanth revived his career in Kanpur last year. He was hoping to do something similar here, but his second day on the tour was good enough to end it. “I had a knee injury for quite a while, but it never bothered me,” Sreesanth said. “Any fast bowler has got a niggle here and there, but when you play for the country, when you do something you love, you don’t worry about the pain. Yesterday was different. After the warm-up, my knee was getting locked. I couldn’t bear the pain.”Doesn’t happen to everybody,” he said. “I was the chosen one, like I was the chosen one in the [Twenty20] World Cup, taking that catch. I didn’t complain then. I can’t complain now, ‘Why me?'”

The batting Powerplay seems to have been more advantageous to the bowlers in the World Cup, and though Pakistan’s numbers in it read well, they are quite inflexible in deciding when to take it

Osman Samiuddin in Pallekele13-Mar-2011Pakistan have not quite yet mastered the batting Powerplay, though their numbers in this World Cup make for impressive reading. They have only lost three wickets in batting Powerplay overs across four games, the least for any side who has taken it more than twice, and their average run-rate of 9.81 through those overs is second only to South Africa. Yet something about their usage of it hasn’t looked that impressive, though in fairness, they are not the only side of whom that can be said.That is proof enough that the ICC has got the innovation right. On evidence so far, in fact, it is difficult to know whether it is the batsmen or bowlers who have benefitted more from the batting Powerplay in this tournament.England’s stutter against India and India’s own implosion against South Africa counter the Irish boost in their chase against England and AB de Villiers’ canny use to spark South Africa’s chase against India on Saturday.For Pakistan it poses a unique conundrum. The very idea of it muddles the long-held and preferred batting ideology of steady, safe accumulation until the last ten overs whereupon arrives a great burst of scoring. Their current batting order, with Umar Akmal, Shahid Afridi and Abdul Razzaq at Nos. 6, 7 and 8 is configured precisely for that purpose: Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan to build and those below them, power-hitters all, to blast. In their defence, over the years, it has worked more often than not.There is no one ideal time to take the Powerplay, of course. It is a situational strategic tool and there is no definitive moment when it is best employed; in this World Cup only twice have sides taken it before 30 overs; twelve times it has been taken between overs 31 and 40, and the vast majority of occasions – 29 times – it has come after the 40th.Often, two set batsmen at the crease choose not to take it early because the runs are coming anyway. Sometimes, the batsmen at the crease are not best equipped to exploit it. Often, as seen in the New Zealand-Pakistan game, the runs are not as important as is the need to see a good death bowler bowled out, as happened with Umar Gul. With Gul gone, New Zealand pillaged the last five overs.Pakistan have chosen to, as best they can, render it insignificant, trying simply to slipstream it into their own strategy. In four World Cup games so far, on three occasions they’ve waited till after 42 overs to take it.Against Kenya they took it from the 43rd over onwards; at the Premadasa against Sri Lanka from the 44th over; against Canada at the same venue from the 43rd over. The one occasion it has come before was in the loss to New Zealand, when it was taken in the 34th over.Only against Kenya can the strategy be said to have really worked; Misbah and Umar were at the crease and well-set when they took it and they proceeded to take 71 from those five overs, losing only one wicket. Against Sri Lanka, Pakistan probably waited too long; Misbah and Younis were well-set in a match-defining partnership but chose not to take it. Only when Younis fell in the 41st over and after Umar had faced a few balls did they take it, but momentum was lost. Umar holed out and only 36 runs came from it.The game against Canada was most revealing of Pakistan’s attitude towards the Powerplay. After a top-order collapse, Misbah and Umar had rebuilt the innings with a 73-run stand. They came together in the 16th over and batted through to the 35th, yet still didn’t feel comfortable in taking it. Once Umar was gone, the bottom fell out of the batting; when Afridi and Razzaq were briefly at the crease, they chose not to take it even then.Eventually, it was left to Gul and Saeed Ajmal to take it in the 43rd and the innings ended in the same over. Against New Zealand, Razzaq and Gul were at the crease and the game was as good as gone by the time they took 48 runs from it.Before the 40-over mark it seems Pakistan do not consider the Powerplay in any condition, even if Afridi talks publicly of it depending on the mood of the game at that moment. “I think the situation really counts for a lot,” he said. “If you have wickets in hand in the 40th or 41st over then you can take a Powerplay. If the scoreboard is going well you don’t need to take it early.” In other words, do as you have done since the time of Imran Khan.But more than Pakistan’s power trio, Misbah is probably the key man for it, given the position he comes in at and his ability to gather momentum and then unleash it. At his best, in form, he is an intelligent limited-overs player, confident enough to play the big shots for the slog overs and smart enough to fully exploit the field with his running through the middle overs.”We haven’t used it appropriately,” he said before the game against New Zealand. “But it plays a vital role, if you look at the results of some of the matches. The team who uses the Powerplay well generally wins, whether the batsmen or even the bowlers. We need to have a plan for that.”

Australia have beaten Canada and Kenya comfortably, but both teams exposed weaknesses that better sides may be able to take advantage of if the World Champions don’t improve

Brydon Coverdale at the Chinnaswamy Stadium16-Mar-2011A seven-wicket win, an Australian World Cup-record opening partnership, a 34th consecutive World Cup match without a loss. That all sounds pretty good if you’re an Australian fan. But if Australia play like they did against Canada when the knockout stage begins next week, they won’t be lifting the World Cup.And Ricky Ponting knows it. When he collided with Steven Smith as they both positioned themselves under a skied ball in the 42nd over of Canada’s innings, he held the catch but dropped his bundle. Ponting hurled the ball into the turf and walked away from the group, crouching at mid-off while his team-mates were standing beside the pitch, celebrating the wicket.The captain had called for the catch and felt that Smith hadn’t listened, and his team-mates hadn’t called at Smith to stop. It wasn’t a good look for Ponting to turn his back on his young colleague, but he had cause to be frustrated. His men were making errors and for the second time in four days an Associate nation was making them look average. On Sunday against Kenya, they could blame rust, after a fortnight off. On Wednesday, they were just sloppy.And against Pakistan on Saturday, and potentially the likes of India or South Africa next week, that won’t cut it. Impressive as Hiral Patel was, he is no Virender Sehwag, and Henry Osinde is no Dale Steyn. Yet these men, just like Collins Obuya and Nehemiah Odhiambo at the weekend, found weaknesses in Ponting’s outfit, including the fact that later in the evening the captain was out hooking yet again, this time to Osinde.Fortunately for Shane Watson and Brad Haddin, luck was on their side. Watson should have been caught in Harvir Baidwan’s first over when he skied a chance to mid-on, and Haddin nearly played on to Osinde and then survived a perfect lbw shout that Canada should have reviewed. The openers were loose and lazy early, but they were wonderful later, and that is the one great positive Australia can take.In the field, they lacked polish. In the lead-up to the tournament, the former swing bowler Damien Fleming said Australia could be bowling teams out for 50 or chasing 500. And when the Canadian top order slapped and sliced their way to the fastest team half-century of the World Cup, getting there in 4.4 overs, it seemed that Fleming’s throwaway line wasn’t so far from the truth.That’s the risk of playing Shaun Tait, Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson. As Canada showed, their speed can be used against them. Lee ended up with four wickets, but in his new-ball spell varied between being too full with no swing, and too short and inaccurate. Against Patel and John Davison it was costly enough, but a class opener like Sehwag or Chris Gayle could have massacred that bowling.The Australians chose not to give John Hastings a game against Canada, but Watson demonstrated why variety in the seam attack is valuable. As soon as Watson came on the runs dried up. He was accurate, consistent and took the pace off the ball – which cost Patel his wicket when he went for an upper cut that landed in third man’s hands.But Watson himself had moments he’d rather forget, like when he spilled a catch at slip off Karl Whatham’s edge. There were other mistakes with the ball and in the field: Michael Hussey grassed a hard chance above his head in the first over and then gave away overthrows with an unnecessary throw at the stumps, while Johnson, as he often does, bowled a couple of balls that barely made it on to Hawk-Eye’s pitch map.It all added up to a mixed-bag of a performance, though the way the Canadian lower order struggled and Australia’s openers gradually found their touch, it turned Australia’s way. Ponting knows that against Pakistan, on Saturday, they need to prove they can beat a quality side.”Against better teams and deeper batting orders, we have to make sure we don’t let teams get off to that sort of start,” Ponting said. “If you look at someone like Sehwag, he plays a pretty similar way to what [Patel] played today, and if we happen to let him get off to a start like that in a big game, it’s going to be a whole lot harder to peg them back. We’ve got some work to do, but I don’t think we’re that far away. We’ll get a better indication when we take on a good team in a couple of days’ time.”At least when Australia’s players walked off after they bowled Canada out, Ponting gave Smith a pat on the back. All’s well that ends well, but if they don’t lift, their World Cup will be ending well before they want it to finish.

Steve Tikolo brought class to Kenya’s batting line-up, and he often saved his best for the biggest stage in world cricket

S Rajesh20-Mar-2011An ODI tally of 3421 in 134 matches may not sound like much, but it’s a huge deal considering the fact that these stats belong to a batsman from one of the Associate teams. When at the peak of his powers, Steve Tikolo was a classy batsman with talent that isn’t reflected in a career average of 28.99. Over a 15-year career Tikolo played five World Cups, and scored an ODI half-century against all Test-playing teams except New Zealand and Pakistan.Tikolo’s first one-day international was in the 1996 World Cup, against India. Kenya were beaten comprehensively, but Tikolo was the one Kenyan batsman to make an impression, scoring a smooth and polished 65 when no other team-mate touched 30.Five games later Tikolo showed his debut display was no fluke, creaming 96 off 95 balls against a Sri Lankan attack that included Chaminda Vaas and Muttiah Muralitharan. As was the case so often in his career, this was a lone hand as well, with no one else from Kenya scoring even half as many runs. Tikolo finished that World Cup with an average of 39.20 and a strike rate of 80.99, and it was clear that Kenya had discovered a top-class batsman.Playing for an Associate team reduced his chances of testing himself against the top teams, but he continued to impress on the big occasions whenever the opportunity came along: in the 1999 World Cup he again showed he belonged to a different class compared to the other Kenyan batsmen. Against England, Tikolo scored 71 out of a team total of 203, and he followed that with his second successive World Cup half-century against India.The 2003 World Cup was slightly disappointing from a personal point of view even though Kenya reached the semi-final – Tikolo did get a half-century there, against India again – but in 2007 Tikolo made full use of limited opportunities, scoring 155 in three innings. The highlight was an outstanding 76 against England, in which Tikolo again played the lone hand – the second-highest score in the innings of 177 was 17.Tikolo finished with a career average of 28.99, but that’s only because the runs dried up almost completely in his last 17 matches, in which he averaged less than 14. Through most of his career he averaged more than 30, and he performed reasonably well against the top ten teams too.

Among Associate batsmen, Tikolo is easily the highest run-getter, with almost 1000 separating him from the next-highest.

Tikolo had managed to bring his best to the table for the World Cups, but his farewell series didn’t quite work out the way he would have wanted it to. In four previous World Cups, he had scored a couple of fifties in each, and averaged nearly 35 in those matches. This time, he didn’t even manage an aggregate of 50 in the entire World Cup, scoring 44 runs in five innings, with a highest of 13. That’s brought his overall World Cup numbers down quite considerably.

Tikolo’s contribution to the Kenyan team wasn’t only through his batting, though. He also bowled very handy offspin, and finished with 93 ODI wickets at a very acceptable average of 32.95 and an economy rate of 4.73. Among bowlers from Associate teams, only Thomas Odoyo, with 137, has more ODI wickets.Apart from his batting and bowling exploits, Tikolo also led Kenya to one of their finest moments in international cricket, when they reached the semi-final of the 2003 World Cup. With more quality players to support him, Tikolo’s numbers, and his impact on Kenyan cricket, would have been even greater.

This series might actually be the best way to get the Indian Test team breathing back to normal and ensure that they digest the rest of what awaits them

Sharda Ugra05-Nov-2011When the India v West Indies series, which begins at Feroz Shah Kotla on Sunday, first turned up on the calendar, there was much mumbling and grumbling from the hosts. Sandwiched between the tours of England and Australia, it was given the status of a meaningless shred of lettuce in a double cheeseburger. West Indies are amongst the game’s contemporary strugglers (a fact that is easy to understand but hard to keep writing about), they have not been on a full Test series in India for nine years, during which India toured the Caribbean thrice.To mark the moaning and mourning, the Kotla Test will be the first of three week-day specials, from Sunday to Thursday. Eden Gardens runs Monday to Friday game and Mumbai begins on a Tuesday and ends on a Saturday.Yet, suddenly the lettuce is not quite so meaningless for India – because the first of that burger led to a bout of coughing and choking (no pun intended, honestly) that lasted three months. This series, then, might actually be the best way to get the Test team’s breathing back to normal and ensure that they digest the rest of what awaits them.If England became a case study of the “everything that could go wrong did go wrong” tour for the Indians, the three Tests against West Indies will be a check of whether all their best parts can get back to working order. Had this series not been around, the R&R available for the Indians after the bruises in England would have consisted largely of a few first-class cricket games for every player. West Indies, despite all their recent struggles, are an opposition that will ask far tougher questions.India’s comfort at home is expected to give its injured players a chance to test their recovery, their out of form batsmen a much-needed inner kick of confidence and also a return to even keel, the team’s faith in its ability to create and seize opportunities to win five-day games. For the moment, it has certainly given India’s selectors, a chance to offer proof of their bravado before they actually pick the 15 for Australia.That, however, is weeks ahead. Which is where West Indies want India to be looking, far ahead of them, ahead even of themselves. Captain MS Dhoni was not about to be distracted. When asked about the dramas of England, he said, “There’s no good reason why we should be thinking about England. It is all about looking ahead, that is what we have done.” A few minutes later, a query popped up about the Australia tour, to which he said, “the Australia series is too far away, no point thinking about it.” The immediacy of India’s present involves being up against a team to whom this series is quite completely, the real deal. In the time that West Indies have been kept away from a tour of India, the game’s goalposts itself have shifted. Darren Sammy’s men now know where it’s at.

Sandwiched between the tours of England and Australia, it was given the status of a meaningless shred of lettuce in a double cheeseburger

The Tests against India are not about trial-error-tinkering of any kind. When the captain Sammy called the series, “the biggest” for most of his team, it was not as if he was merely talking the series up. The three Tests will be a demanding examination of West Indies’ capabilities as travellers. Victory in Bangladesh, they know, was enjoyable, welcome, rousing even but not exactly the Normandy landing. Bangladesh is one of only three countries where West Indies have won an overseas Test in the last 10 years, South Africa and Zimbabwe being the other two.
The big benefit from the West Indies win in Dhaka is that they travel to India with match-winning performances from some of their inexperienced players, particularly legspinner Devendra Bishoo, and top order batsmen Kirk Edwards and Darren Bravo. They bring with them a frontline bowling attack – Fidel Edwards, Kemar Roach, Ravi Rampaul – with more Tests between them than India’s main bowlers have played. (Ishant Sharma and Pragyan Ojha are still one short of a combined experience of 50 Tests and Dhoni has promised two debuts at the Kotla).Outside the more familiar parameters of an Indian home series – slow, flat wickets, heaps of runs – the series will test the resolve in the younger West Indian batsmen and the strength of India’s bowling bench. Even without the presence of Chris Gayle, a series once glumly considered of as a mundane afterthought, is now full to the brim with individual stories. The question about the Tendulkar Hundred is the least of them, at the moment, even to the man himself. What is of greater interest is whether he will be back to the match fitness that makes him both confident and relaxed. Virender Sehwag’s shoulder has to be worked to full stretch, his collective with Gautam Gambhir needs to get going again. Darren Bravo must prove that he is a worthy successor to Sir Brian Charles. Marlon Samuels must make himself truly valuable to the West Indies again. Ishant must be ready to lead the bowling regardless of Zaheer Khan’s medical condition (for the moment, reported to be improving) and ankle-muncher wickets.This week, Delhi’s winter suddenly set in with foggy skies, weak dawns and early sunsets. It is exactly what the India v West Indies series had promised to be when first announced: bleakly grey, largely uneventful, predictable even. On the eve of India’s first Test at home versus West Indies in almost a decade, a series of revelations await. Who knows, we may even be witness to a burst of winter sunshine.

Nathan McCullum has a common-sense approach to cricket, which he picked over football, and he wants to make the best of the limited time available to an international sportsman

Firdose Moonda12-Mar-2012Café No. 7 Balmac in Maori Hill is not the kind of place Nathan McCullum would have been able to eat breakfast at when he was growing up. It is located in one of Dunedin’s most expensive suburbs, two streets away from where McCullum now lives and a lifetime away from where he grew up down the hill in the southern part of the city, in a “small, wee house”.But though McCullum and his brother Brendon did not have a privileged childhood, it was carefree. “It had a nice yard for us to play backyard cricket with our mates and all sorts of sports,” McCullum remembers while munching on a scone and drinking a latte in his new, posher surrounds.”It was part of our lives growing up, all sports, just to play all day, every day, cricket, rugby, soccer, basketball. We got some mates together and played. That’s the joy of being a young fellow with no responsibilities.”Still, he had to make some mature decisions at a young age, the first one before he was a teenager. “I used to open the bowling and bowl first-change but then I went to a tournament where I was captain and we didn’t have a spinner,” he says. “The spinner broke his arm the week before the tournament. The coach came to me and said, ‘Since we don’t have a spinner, do you want to bowl some?’ As the captain, I gave it a crack and never looked back.”McCullum soon realised that the style of bowling that had been imposed on him was probably the best, because it gave him hope of playing international cricket. “I needed to be realistic about my options. Being just under 5ft 10, I am not a giant, so I needed to be aware that I am probably not going to bowl express pace. Spin bowling was a foot in the door. There weren’t a lot of people bowling spin, so it was an option.”His other career choice was fairly impractical, but one driven by passion. “I love football. I was probably a better football player than I was a cricket player,” he says. A one-time holder of the golden boot for South Premier League club Caversham AFC, with 19 goals in a season, McCullum was a prolific striker.He considered turning it into a full-time gig but knew that would require a life-changing move. “If I was going to try football, I had to take the plunge and move to the UK when I was 17 or 18. At that time I wasn’t quite ready to do that. I wasn’t mature enough and I wasn’t really sure that that’s what I wanted to do. Then I started to earn a little bit of money from cricket with Otago and that forged the way for what I was going to do.”McCullum ultimately chose cricket over football, but not without a tinge of regret. “The more I watch football, the more it makes me want to play. I’ve got mates who play for Otago, and when I go watch them I just want to play, so I don’t really even watch now.” He has also all but abandoned his support of Arsenal, the club he was most closely aligned to.Forgetting about football helped him concentrate on cricket, which needed his full attention because he found the going tough. “I was working part-time at a sports shop and training and trying to fend for myself. It was a tough gig. The time you put into training, you should be working and earning money, but you’re trying to live your dream. You don’t want to give up your dream, but at the same time you have to make sure you’re earning money. There are a lot of people in that situation.”So he persisted. Having an example to follow helped as well. While he was in and out of the Otago side, his brother was establishing himself in the national side. Brendon moved from Dunedin to Christchurch when he was 22 and Nathan didn’t see much of him in those years, but says he was “always right behind what he was doing”.Unlike Brendon, who was talked about as an immensely talented player, Nathan had to make do with old-fashioned hard work and grit. He was part of the generation of cricketers who had real jobs, one of which took him to Holland in 2007, as a player-coach for the Hermes Cricket Club, outside Rotterdam. He was in charge of the age-group and of the first team, for whom he also had to play every Saturday. “It really took my game to another level. It was about being responsible and leading from the front, and I guess it was big part of my career. I managed to mature and grow up a lot the last four or five years.”

“We work hard, we fight hard, we do things well and we scrap, but we’ve got to do that 10% better. If we start doing that we can win tournaments, we can be No. 1 in the world”

It also allowed him to earn a living through cricket because he could play domestically in New Zealand in the summer and spend the winters in the northern hemisphere. Later that year he played his first international – a match against South Africa at the World Twenty20 in Durban.He had to wait two years before he played again but in that time he worked with Mike Hesson, now coach of Kenya, who had a major impact on his career. “He always had faith in me and knew how to push the right buttons on me,” McCullum says. “He gave me some great opportunities and pushed me a little harder and I pushed myself harder, and eventually I was able to get into a position where I was close to the New Zealand team.”McCullum is now a regular in both the T20 and ODI sides and said he is comfortable with that role, even though he’d like to also play Test cricket. “I love Twenty20 and one-day cricket: the hustle and bustle, the energy, the enthusiasm and the fast-paced nature of it. I guess at some stage I’d love to play Test cricket, and it’s at the back of my mind. But I want to play Twenty20 and one-day cricket as long as I can for New Zealand and try and win a World Cup and be part of history.”In some ways his preference reflects his pragmatic approach to the sport. McCullum accepts that the career of an international sportsman is short and hopes to maximise the time he has, even if that means being branded a 20-over mercenary. “There is only a limited lifespan for an international sportsman, let alone an international cricketer, so you’ve got to take every chance you can. I’ve had a taste of a few [20-over leagues] and it’s fantastic. The hype and excitement is incredible.”T20 has also given the McCullums the chance to do something few brothers can – play together for a national team. “It makes the special moments even better sometimes. We haven’t really spent that much time together in recent years, but we probably spend more time together now, being on tour with New Zealand.”McCullum hopes more members of his family go on to play cricket. “That form of the game [20-over cricket] is growing and it’s only good for the youngsters coming through these days. Hopefully my 18-month-old son might play cricket at some stage.”
Young Luke was in attendance during the first Test between New Zealand and South Africa, and is already a regular at cricket matches around the country. He will grow up in a bigger house in a better neighbourhood, and will likely have more opportunities than either his father or uncle had. McCullum hopes by the time Luke makes a decision on whether to become an international sportsman, the perception of New Zealand cricket will have changed from that of a team that scraps to get where it is. He believes they are better than that.”The amount of quality players we’ve got is second to not many,” he says. “We’ve just got be smarter. We work hard, we fight hard, we do things well and we scrap, but we’ve got to do that 10% better. If we start doing that we can win tournaments, we can be No. 1 in the world, and we can compete every day of the week with every team in the world. We’ve got the confidence and the ability to do it and we’re just learning along the way.”