Agarkar?

Aussie Dave's recent post on Ajit Agarkar got me thinking - why is he selected? He is rather inconsistent, offering jaffas and cafeteria balls in an over and sending down military medium pace in one game then 88 mph thunderbolts in the next. His economy rate is average at just over five and his batting isn't much cop (despite sporadic demonstrations of real talent; take his test century at Lord's in 2002, for example). It seems his real talent lies in taking wickets as he averages 1.56 wickets per ODI, better than Wasim, Murali, Pollock, Warne and several other top bowlers. He's the fastest bowler to 50 ODI wickets, taking just 23 games. Then again he's only bowler in the top 40 ODI wicket takers of all time whose economy rate is over 5.

So Agarkar gets India wickets, but at a price. The Indian selectors clearly feel that the compromise is worth it with Agarkar and justifiably so. But my question is 'What is more important in ODIs: taking wickets or keeping the runs down?' Ideally a captain wants a bowler who can do both, like McGrath or Muralitharan. But suppose you are a selector of a country that lacks such talents (i.e. every country except Sri Lanka) - where does your preference lie? Would you pick a bowler who keeps things tight or one who takes wickets at a price? Would you pick Agarkar?

Overseas players - missing the point

One of the most frequent and long running debates is about oversaes players (Lord Harris chose an England team for a Lord's Test match without Ranjitsinhji in 1896 , apparently out of misplaced jingoism - and he wasn't even what we'd call nowadays an overseas player).
And the debate usually centres on how the overseas players pick up skills and experience, particularly of English conditions, that they can later use against us in Test matches and how their presence bars the way for young English talent.
Occasionally the points are also made that they raise the standard and the level of entertainment which must benefit local talent and that those good enough to reach England sides should be able to overcome the competition anyway.
But I remember when I first started watching county cricket how the Hampshire fans loved their Roy Marshall and soon how Kent supporters felt similarly about Asif Iqbal and John Shepherd, Middlesex had Wayne Daniels and Somerset Joel Garner and Viv Richards. They, and several like them, all became part of their adopted teams set-ups and were treated as such by the supporters. It was because they stayed for long spells and as far as I can remember didn't move to other counties (well Viv did have a brief go at Glamorgan, but you understand my point) - they were as much part of the sides as the locals.
Nowadays the time seems short between applauding enthusiastically for 'your' overseas star's performance and clapping politely as he does the same thing for the oppo..
So how about rules that prohibit overseas contracts of less than say 3 months or prevent overseas players playing for more than one county in say 8 years - or would we hear the old Kolpak arguement about restraint of trade?

More sports Burble

Just in case you hadn't noticed the links on the right-hand side of this page, there is now a Football Burble site and a Rugby Burble site to cover the World Cup. Make sure you go to the sites and take the RSS feeds.

Now that we're covering more sports you have no excuse not to tell your friends about the Burble sites - if they are a winter sports person rather than cricket, you now have other sites to send them to...

Interesting practise tip

It seems that Ian Bell owes his recent success to practising with a narrow bat. Apparently Monty Panesar is now using the same tactic so England supporters to Monty scoring hundreds for England soon....

Zimbabwe cricket looking up a bit

Great to see some positives in Zimbabwe cricket for once - largely inspired by the return of Tatenda Taibu as their one candidate for a world XI. Good luck to their new coach Robin Brown, who has been newly installed in the role, replacing Kevin Curran.

I'm not sure I'd take things as far as Ray Mali though who is suggesting that Zimbabwe can become the world's number 1 ODI team! They competed well against South Africa in their recent series, but never really looked like winning any of the three games, so they should take the positives (eg. scoring over 200 in each match), and not get ahead of themselves.

Dean Jones

I don't doubt Dean Jones' dedication to Victorian cricket, but I'm not sure why he's surprised that he's been overlooked for a spot on the Victorian board following his involvement with the ICL. I think the fact that they are supporting him at all is a show of faith given his role in the ICL.

We shall see how things turn out but I don't necessarily agree that the ICL could be good for cricket as Adam Gilchrist has said. Perhaps he recognises that as an international cricketer coming to the end of his career, the ICL could be a nice little earner.

Attitides to bats

As amateur players myself and another player in my club team have two completely different opinions on bats.

Mine: I'm not very good so I'm not willing to spend hundreds of pounds on a really good bat - the most I've ever spent is £50 on a second-hand one.

His: I realise I'm not very good so I need all the help I can get and am happy to spend money to get a decent bat.

Am I just tight?!?

Pressure in the field and a sign of being with proper cricketers

So you stop and watch a cricket match and you soon work out roughly the standard by all sorts of things - the setting of the field, whether the fielders are in grown up or schoolboy/girl places, whether they walk in properly and the returns to the keeper quite apart from the standard of the bowling and strokes played.
But I recently found out whilst playing a game that was frighteningly above my standard (why had I agreed to play?) of another much more reliable indicator. How the ball gets back to the bowler after it's gone dead.
Quite early in our fielding session in this game I noticed that it was never dropped and it wasn't just gentle loops keeper-slip-gully-square cover-extra-mid off-bowler. It was often slip or even keeper to mid off and these guys just never dropped it (40 overs!).
So ever other over I'm at cover and the pressure's building (it only went rarely down the leg side) would I be the first to drop it?
Bowling was a nice release from pressure and then long off was a blessed relief.
Did I drop it? What do you think?
And the team I was playing for? The Barmy Army - some seriously good players there ( but not seriously in the literal sense)

Positives for Ian Bell

Never let it be said that I don't give both sides of the argument when it comes to Ian Bell. Fellow Cricket Burbler Dave McCabe will be happy to see this Cricinfo article showing that Bell's record over the last few years is not as bad as critics like me would have you believe. His average of 37.95 puts him 6th in the all time list of England ODI averages behind the illustrious list of Pietersen, Knight, Fairbrother, Lamb and Smith. I wonder what their real averages would be?

Powerplay changes from 1st October

Given my rants about England leaving out Panesar from the last ODI against India, it's good news that the rules about fielders in the 2nd and 3rd powerplays will change from 1st October. Given that a 3rd fielder will be allowed outside the ring in the 2nd and 3rd powerplays, England may be persuaded to play Panesar come what may, as opposed to the current defensive thinking that sees him dropped whenever the boundaries are relatively short.

Hopefully England will now use Panesar as the attacking wicket taking bowler that he should be in all ODIs, rather than thinking defensively. Unfortunately for Monty, the rules don't change until after the current England v India series, so poor England selections are still very much a possibility for the rest of the summer....and of course there is no guarantee that the rule change will see England change from defensive thinking and leaving Panesar out, even with 3 fielders allowed outside the ring from the 11th over.

"Our spinners worked beautifully for us"

There's nothing more for me to add to the captain's quotes following the game.

Dravid said of his spinners: "They did me proud. We knew it was a gamble playing them, but they way they contained their batsmen in the middle overs won us the game.

"We played some good cricket, but our spinners worked beautifully for us."

And Collingwood: "We thought we'd go with the four big lads, but maybe 320-odd was too many for us."

For the England selectors...

Repeat after me, "always pick Panesar". Got it? What's frustrating is that the lessons don't seem to have been learnt - we left him out against West Indies and now we're doing it again.

And another little rant - Bopara can bowl!!! Let's use him when the other bowlers are getting smashed around the park - he can't do much worse...maybe I'll live to regret those words!

You can see the latest score here.

Rant over. For now!

Getting your best fielders in the right place

I'm a bit bemused by Dravid's comment in this article talking about the relative fielding standards of India and England. OK, so India aren't the best fielding side in the world, but it now seems that they aren't fit enough to move into the positions they need to be in when there is a left-hand/right-hand partnership according to Dravid. "Ideally you want the right fielder in the right places. But if you have a left-hander and a right-hander, and someone's standing for the sweep, he's got to come to point after that. I can't move a player from boundary to boundary after every ball."

Now I'm not suggesting that players should run boundary to boundary every ball, but he doesn't have to come to point - just anywhere other than the opposite boundary. When it matters players should be capable of moving long distances between balls - after all they are professional athletes. I remember watching the Australians at Edgbaston in the World Cup over here and being amazed at how far some of the players ran between balls when there was a left/right partnership. I remember Ponting and Riefel seemed to be running miles particularly; Ponting because he was a crucial in-fielder, and Riefel because Waugh was trying to hide him. But they did so for what seemed like ages (sorry I can't remember how long) uncomplainingly - or so it seemed - because they knew it was in the best interests of the team.

Mind you, in a recent club game I pointed out to our best fielder that he was rather wasted on the boundary to the left-hander after he'd refused our skipper's request to come into the ring. "I'm not here for a fitness session" was his short answer (I have spared you the accompanying swear word). And that was only a 20 metre amble required between balls. I wonder if Ganguly uses the exact same expression when Dravid asks him to move each ball?!

Botham never made a hundred

There was so much made of the fact that the England top 3 at the start of the World Cup hadn't made a one day hundred, you would have thought that all the previous greats must have made hundreds with ease. Remember Ian Botham, now Sir Ian Botham, who isn't short of an opinion or two on Sky Sports? It turns out that despite opening for England throughout the 1996 World Cup his top score in over 100 ODI innings was 79 and his strike rate was the same, so certainly nothing to write home about. And his average? An unbelievably low 23.21. No wonder Flintoff keeps saying he's a batting all-rounder - with an ODI average of 32 he is compared to Botham.

Agarkar

I've never really understood why India continue to select Ajit Agarkar. His record isn't bad, and he has had his moments in international cricket, but to me, he just doesn't seem up to it. Ok, he does a bit with the ball, but he always seems to send down at least one four ball an over, not a good attribute for a guy now seen as a one-day specialist. As I said, he has had his moments - a test century at Lord's and a major contribution to a test win in Australia with 6/41 in the fourth innings (his only test five wicket haul). These moments, though spectacular, are too few and far between. I didn't see Tuesday's match, but the figures certainly suggest he was the least effective of India's three front line seamers. I guess Indian selectors feel they have few other options with Irfan Pathan out of form/favour, Munaf Patel unfit and Sreesanth so erratic.

Like most Australian's, my lasting memory of Agarkar will be the seven ducks in a row he scored against Australia over four tests and two series. Incredibly, the first four of these ducks were first ballers, the fifth was a second baller, and the sixth and seventh lasted a marathon 15 and 12 balls respectively. You can imagine the barracking he cops each time he walks out to bat in Australia!

Ian Bell

At the risk of playing devil's advocate to the opinions of certain other Cricket Burblers, this post is in full praise of Ian Bell and his role in the current England team! (An opinion easily expressed in hindsight after today's match, I'll freely admit.)

I'm just watching the highlights of the England ODI this evening, and was delighted to see a good win set up by a pair of fine debut hundreds by Alistair Cook and Ian Bell. Whilst I appreciate how one day cricket has evolved to a breakneck pace in recent years after its conception, necessitating powerful hitting as well as orthodoxy, isn't it great to see a solid platform being laid by proper batting before being developed by free strokeplay rather than mindless slogging? Though every international team would love a Gilchrist, Jayasuriya, or Pietersen, all too often we have seen the search for players in the same mould ending in county biffers that have no place in international cricket (Ian Blackwell, anyone?).

I'm convinced that good test players can adapt far more readily to one-day cricket but not vice-versa, and both Cook and Bell made that point emphatically today whilst playing proper cricket shots (and fielding marvellously too). Sure, the Aussies might have turned that start into 320+, but some of the bits-and-pieces England one day sides of the last ten years would have turned it into 220 all out.

I'm also in disagreement with critics of Ian Bell's role in the test team (reminiscent of the constant debate hanging over Paul Collingwood even when he was scoring consistently). The guy already has a test average comfortably in excess of forty, with six hundreds. He has already suffered failure (Ashes 2005) and has shown the maturity to learn from his failings and tour Australia in 2006 as a much improved player. All this at the age of 25 and with many potential test match years ahead of him.

In the nineties, England's search for batting resulted in many failed experiments, whimsical selection and several high-profile failures. Two of the rightly acknowledged stars of that less successful era - Mike Atherton and Alec Stewart - both averaged under forty. In this context, Bell is most certainly a proven test match player. Furthermore, I don't buy the argument that Bell scores 'cheap' runs - i.e. against poor opposition or when the scoreline is already heavily in England's favour - surely our dominance of certain nations and the higher frequency of our wins is a measure of the improvement our test team has made since the nineties rather than a devaluation of the efforts of the players who secured that success?

Selections

When I saw the team lists for the first ODI between England and India I was amazed that England could find no place for Owais Shah. I felt he deserved a chance to cement his place more than one or two others named. I asked myself who I would drop in order to make way for Shah and the two names I came up with were ..........Cook and Bell.

What do I know!!

Only those that played understand Test cricket

It was with some interest that I read the following at the end of a Cricinfo article about the forthcoming BCCI meeting: "All senior selectors will now have to have played at least five Test matches or 50 first-class matches. Currently a selector merely has to have played one first-class match. To be a member of the junior selection committee, the eligibility will be a minimum of 25 first-class matches."

I'm not sure I fully understand the thinking here. While he didn't select the team, John Buchanan "coached" Australia to success (although many might argue that it would have been harder to fail given the players at his disposal), despite playing just 7 first class games himself. And Clive Woodward, while having played for England at rugby, brought success to England in the 2003 rugby world cup because he saw England rugby as a business, rather than a sports team. I agree that the ideal sporting administrator has a blend of business and sports backgrounds, but the ratio of skills might be say 80:20 - i.e. it's more important to be skilled in business than it is to be skilled in sport. The BCCI are ensuring a few "jobs for the boys" but I can't help thinking their policy will reduce the chances of India achieving long-term success.

ICL controversy in Pakistan

It seems that the ICL is going to make it's mark on Pakistani cricket, having managed to secure the signature of Imran Farhat, Adbul Razzaq and Mohammed Yousuf along with Inzamam-ul-Haq. That's four of their squad gone immediately, given that the PCB have already made their stance clear - no player who goes to the ICL can play for Pakistan. Yousuf is a huge loss for them - all the others, it can be argued have limited value having failed to live up to their hype in the past or in Inzamam's case, due to his advanced age, but Yousuf has been Pakistan's best player over recent times, and at 32 he still has several years in him.

I have deliberately not commented on the ICL until now because it sits outside of the international cricket calendar and Dean Jones had previously commented that the ICL would not target current Test players. In this case though, the ICL clearly have lured current test players with money, so Pakistan will be annoyed to lose the services of all four, especially considering the youth of 25 year-old Farhat and 27 year-old Razzaq, although Razzaq got in before the ICL announcement by retiring from international cricket. The PCB need to stand strong if they have the long-term interests of the game in Pakistan and the rest of the world at heart and not give them contracts or pick them again.

Out of order

Not sure if this alleged sledge by England in the recent series is common knowledge, but it seems that someone may have said "I drive a Porsche, do you have a car?" to one of the Indian batsmen! If it was actually said, then the offending England player is, quite apart from being out of order, clearly a little bit in the dark about the huge amounts (comparatively) that India players earn through all their sponsorship deals.