Give me hard work and guts over a show pony any day

I enjoy it when the apparent alsorans make a big impact on a Test and so it proved in the last Test.   I find it amazing that the commentators can keep giving Darren Sammy a hard time over his position in the West Indies Test side - watching the England series and much of the West Indies v Australia series he's more than justified his place.   Not only can he be relied upon to bowl decent lines and be relatively economical (look at the disciplined lines he bowled to get Strauss out in the 1st inning at Trent Bridge), but he does take wickets too.   He's taken 5 in just over 3 innings - hardly a terrible return.   None of the commentators seem too concerned about Fidel Edward's position in the team (injuries permitting) and yet he's performed worse than Sammy in the last two series and can't bat.

Which brings me on to Sammy's batting.   He's not graceful but he's effective.   And on current form he should be batting in the top 6 for West Indies.   At a minimum he needs to bat above Ramdin.   It says much about his batting that he was feared by the Australians and when West Indies were given a sniff of a chance by an attacking declaration by Michael Clarke (which went to waste due to rain), it was Sammy who was promoted to 3.   Not Bravo or Chanderpaul, Sammy.

And that's without even considering that he has the world on his shoulders captaining a young and inexperienced (in general) team who are ill-equipped to deal with the best Test teams in the world.   Plus of course the continued noises about Gayle, Sarwan and Powell and their wrangles with the West Indies board.  

On the England side of the fence there's Tim Bresnan.   This is a guy who averages 40 with the bat, 25 with the ball and has won 13 games consecutively for England.   He'll probably never score 150 like Stuart Broad did, but he tries to reduce the risk in his batting to increase his chances of success for the sake of the team.   It doesn't look like England will go that way, but Bresnan, Broad and Swann at 7, 8 and 9 allows the team to play 5 bowlers if they so wished.

Just the 8 wickets in the last Test for him too.   Must be in line to be dropped then.

I hope the unfashionable players get a break some time soon, but I'm not sure it will happen.

5 Arrested in IPL fixing sting

Why are we not surprised and how much does it really matter? These matches are now becoming predictable monotonous and inconsequential. In other words an ideal target for this sort of thing.The bigger question is how long will it all last ?

Another, much less interesting, question is 'how sad do you have to be to spot, as I did, two mathematical errors in scorecards in the weekend's Times ?'

Best news for a very long time

The Sunday Times article seems to have evaded my cricketing / drinking cronies but it seems to me to be the best bit of cricket news for a long time. MCC have been working with Imperial College London ( from whom we have many friends) to create a system to monitor bowling actions during matches . Apparently it uses a couple of sensors fitted either side of the elbow joint and cameras. No longer, hopefully, will we have the nonsense of chuckers being tested in a laboratory and deemed satisfactory. Naming no names but you all know who I mean!