17 March 2008

Can Strauss still come good?

Fellow Cricket Burbler Mark Davis has already burbled about Ed Smith's new book - What sport tells us about life, but I hadn't realised until I read this article over the weekend, that Smith's last innings for England was ended by a wrong decision. He never played for England again.

Anyone that reads The Wisden Cricketer will know from my letter at the start of the year that my view is Strauss has been as unlucky as anyone given that he managed to get 3 wrong decisions in a row during the 2nd and 3rd Ashes Tests in Australia. I've questioned whether Strauss would be able to take legal action against the ICC and it's members given that their lack of use of the available technology could be argued as playing a role in his loss of form and eventual loss of his place for the World Cup. I'm told by those trained in those sort of things that this is extremely unlikely, but I'd be considering my loss of my England place, not to mention my earnings, due to circumstances not all within my control if I was Strauss.

Ed Smith got a wrong decision in his 3rd Test and never played another one. Ravi Bopara got a wrong one during his 5 Test innings to date during the Sri Lanka series and was dropped. Andrew Strauss has come back into the side got a wrong one in his 2nd Test back - it would take in inhumanly level head not to rue that piece of luck, leaving him in a worse mental state to make a big score in the 3rd Test v New Zealand, assuming the England selectors give him the chance. I can only hope that Strauss comes through this run of bad luck to show his true potential - no-one will ever know how his career would have gone without the various wrong decisions.

2 comments:

Viswanathan said...

We have a saying in Hindi,which translated means 'a bad workman blames his tools'.

Blaming bad decisions is similar to blaming your fate. :)

Ed said...

Strauss and Bopara haven't blamed bad decisions, but it's amazing the importance that this type of luck can play in a career. Nasser Hussain has publicly said that his career could have been very different but for a wrong caught behind decision (not given) that allowed him to go onto a hundred early in his career.

It was acceptable to shrug our shoulders when the technology wasn't around but now it is, it's unacceptable not to use it and get a greater proportion of decisions correct.