Batting for your life

England need to bat for 3 sessions (subject to weather) today with 8 wickets in hand so real dedication is needed. We have Pietersen first up so all we can hope with him is that he scores enough that when he's out we're past Australia's total - I don't think telling him to defend would be helpful. England's top 2 I'd want batting for my life would be Strauss and Collingwood, if runs were not important.

Interesting then to see some New Zealander's talk about who they'd want batting for their life. Tendulkar, Dravid, Chanderpaul, Yousuf and Sangakkara all seem to make it.

Beware the wounded West Indian tiger....

Interesting to see how West Indies cricket always gets a slating in the run up to Test series against England and there is no doubt they've slid a long way since their glory days. This Stephen Brenkley article in The Independent, sums things up nicely by returning to the merits of Chanderpaul and Gayle, in cricketing terms, at the end of the article.

Who's the top-rated Test batsman in the world? Chanderpaul.

Who's the 2nd highest rated ODI batsman in the world? Gayle.

Perhaps we should be a little less hasty in assuming that we'll march to an easy victory and a little more supportive of the plight of this disparate group of islands...I wonder if my wife would see it as an altruistic thing to do if I was to suggest that a group of us go to watch the next England tour of the West Indies?!

An incredible game!

I suspect Shivnarine Chanderpaul will dine out on this one for a little while....with 10 needed to win off the last two balls of the match aginst Sri Lanka he hit a 4 and 6 to win the game with 9 wickets down. The sort of stuff dreams are made of - it's times like this I wish I had Sky to see the highlights!!

Chanderpaul had earlier been involved in a mix up with Dwayne Bravo which looked to have cost West Indies the match, but he seems to have kept a cool head to bring his team victory. Chaminda Vaas was the unlucky bowler - fortunately he should be experienced enough to put this behind him pretty quickly.

You can see the scorecard here.

2007 Wisden Cricketers of the Year

Interestingly Shivnarine Chanderpaul is one of the 5 Wisden Cricketers for 2007, the others being Ian Bell, Ryan Sidebottom, Ottis Gibson, Zaheer Khan.

Readers of Cricket Burble won't be suprised that I want to pick up on Chanderpaul's inclusion, although that's not to say that I wholeheartedly agree with the others! Chanderpaul was in England last summer and batted brilliantly, but was aided by some poor England fielding - in effect he was very lucky, as determined by real averages, but he did take advantage of that luck very well. Ian Bishop's glowing write up about Chanderpaul goes to emphasise the old adage that it's only results that are remembered.

While Chanderpaul was lauded for some excellent batting in the series, he actually came 5th in the list of real averages with 44.2. A very creditable perfomance but not one, if it were not for his very healthy portion of luck, that would have seen him named as one of the Cricketers of the Year.

Cricket Burble lists updated

I've updated the Cricket Burble lists which are always available if you click on the links to the right of the page. Interestingly, Chanderpaul's "real" average is less than 50, despite an official average of 120 after the first 3 Tests of the summer. The difference between his real and official averages is likely to increase even further after his not out century in the first innings at Chester-le-Street having been dropped on 9. So while he is batting well, he is also capitalising on large slices of luck. You can view the list of "real" averages here.

The 3rd Test featured just one decision that technology proved was wrong. There were several LBW appeals turned down where the ball was just clipping the stumps but, as explained on the "wrong" decisions page, decisions are only considered "wrong" where there is a large degree of certainty. You can view the list of "wrong" decisions since the 2007 World Cup here. The main question to be answered is "would England still have won at Old Trafford if Cook had been given out on 12 as he should have been in the 2nd innings, when he went on to make 106?" As they say, "you decide".