Difficult to know what to make of KP claims

Obviously I haven't read it and I'm not rushing out to buy Kevin Pietersen's book.   But it's almost impossible to avoid the analysis of the points he raises.   The character assassination of Matt Prior is a bit of a surprise given that it's often been quoted how Prior made the first move in getting him back into the team after the textgate scandal.   And Graeme Swann has made that point in his initial view of the book as "a work of fiction".

 

Jonathan Agnew has also made the point that he wouldn't have come back into the team after textgate but for Flower's support.   So it's difficult to square the Pietersen account with the reality.   That said, my personal view is that it's unlikely to be invented in it's entirety.   We tend to assume that things remain the same within a team environment, but that's not the case.   Prior could have been a great team man during the period when he was on the up and an increasingly brooding presence lashing out at others as his personal performances dropped considerably to the point when even his greatest supporters would agree he had to be dropped.

 

And we also know that the bowlers were petulant every time someone misfielded - we all saw that from the TV pictures.   And the commentators all commented on how it was over the top.   So his comment that fielders were asked to apologise to the bowlers for mistakes doesn't seem particularly unlikely.   (Having said that, I automatically apologise to the bowler when I screw up in the field - doesn't everyone?)

 

One point that I definitely have some sympathy for Pietersen on is the question of wanting his wife and child on tour with him for the whole tour.   Everyone's different and to him it was key, so surely it was in England's interests to facilitate that for any player that wanted that.   There's no debate about how professional he was - he turned up on time and trained hard at all times - surely what he does and who he has with him outside of those times is (a) up to him and (b) in England's best interests to get right.   It's an issue that won't go away, unless of course Andrew Strauss is right and Test cricket is marginalised to such an extent that tours shorten considerably.

 

Equally, I totally disagree with Pietersen that anyone could have coached England during the period they got to number 1.   He suggested that they were that good that the coaching role wasn't important - I've always thought the opposite.   In the historical context of great teams like the West Indians in the times of Clive Lloyd or the Australian's under Steve Waugh, England were distinctly average and yet they made it to number 1, albeit for a very short time.   That was a victory for the sum of their parts rather than individuals, although Pietersen's right to point to his number of man-of-the-match awards.   He could undoubtedly win games of cricket for England that without him they couldn't have entertained thoughts of winning.

 

So the jury's out, for me at least.   Over time a consensus will presumably be reached on how much of Pietersen's book is true, how much is an exaggeration, and how much is pure fabrication.   I only hope that it's objectively assessed and that some attempt is made to see if what he says has elements of truth, or if elements of his book are entirely truthful.   If the concensus comes from what the (anti-Pietersen) majority want to think rather than the reality, that will be an extension of the bullying that he claims was so prevalent.

 

I don't believe that it's entirely fiction, no matter what Graeme Swann would have us think.   What will be interesting now is the reaction in the coming days, weeks and even months and years, as Pietersen's right - players under contract will not criticise the ECB.

 

Prior gone

Prior has apparently quit cricket for the rest of the summer to try to get fit....it's on Sky TV but not even on Cricinfo yet.

Difficult to believe...

If I hadn't watched England get out to 3 pull/hook shots in the last 15 minutes I wouldn't have believed it possible for international batsmen to use so little brain. Cook must be fuming - his captaincy is made to look particularly poor because opposition batsmen don't obligingly hit the ball to our fielders. Yet England's do.

The writing was on the wall before Prior was out. He tennis shotted a 4 from way above his head. It was high risk but came off that time. If he carried on like that it was only a matter of time before he was out, and so it proved.   If that's Prior's last England innings it was a sad way to go.

Someone needs to tell England that it is ok to sway out of the way of the short ball!

England captaincy debate continues....

Interesting to hear the debate on TMS about who could replace Alastair Cook should he go as captain - if it happens wouldn't England have been in a so much better position had they picked James Foster from the start of the summer so that he could have stepped into the captaincy role?   What a pity they didn't go with my selection!   Having said that England would have missed out on their top Test run scorer this summer if they'd not picked Root!

Mike Selvey mentioned Chris Read as a possible keeper/captain but he's a couple of years older than Foster so for me Foster's the man.   Sounds like Jos Buttler will take the keeping slot and Cook will continue as captain but time will tell....

Prior stops man killing himself

It looks like something good has come from England's tour down under at least!   Matt Prior talked a man down who was planning on jumping off a bridge to end his life, and then he and Stuart Broad stayed talking with the guy until police arrived.   No - it wasn't one of their England colleagues or support staff!

Not too sure about this MVP calculations

 

Obviously as a Middlesex member I'm happy to see Steve Finn at the top of the winter's MVP calculations, since I'm already resigned to see little of him on the county circuit this year, but Prior only two from bottom suggests that there is a flaw quite apart from the fact that he should be in all three squads.

 

Calculations and tables are here :-

http://www.middlesexccc.com/articles/2013-04-03/finn-scoops-the-fti-most-valuable-player-award-for-the-winter

Sun out, England concerns

Can't say I'm feeling confident about England's prospects today with the sun out and AB de Villers to come in who still has to get a score in this series.   England's catching seems to have deteriorated this summer, but Prior is normally pretty reliable so it was gutting from an England point of view to see him drop Amla down the legside yesterday.
So fingers crossed for a top bowling and catching performance, but I can't say I'm feeling confident!

Fair play to the selectors by the way for picking Bairstow.   From the squad picked, I would have gone with Prior at 6 and Bresnan 7 - you can never work out how things might have been with a different team, but fair to say Bairstow came off nicely.

Matt Prior kept wicket without pads because of the heat...

....yesterday in Sri Lanka.

But it occured to me that at that level and a few levels below keepers never get hit on the pads anyway. So why do they bother with them when they could just use those lightweight ones that short leg fielders wear under their whites.

Habit, or tradition ?

Prior is not the best keeper/batsman in the world!

He's batted fantastically in the last Test, no doubt about it and he was a key ingredient in England's win. But even some knowledgable journalists have been suggesting he's the best keeper/batsman in the world which is clearly insane. Kumar Sangakkara averages 56 batting against the newish ball predominantly, versus Prior's 45 coming in at 7. And don't tell me Prior is the better keeper and still has a claim - even if you think he might just be superior, a difference in average of 11 is huge. No-one (I don't think?) would even suggest that Prior is the best keeper in England, good glove man though he has become.

As Simon Hughes says here, Prior's great skill is the tempo he gets his runs at and he's a huge asset. But let's keep a sense of reality...

Anderson and England make life difficult for themselves

Looking at the scorecard from England's match against Bangladesh I assumed that Strauss had done his usual and set defensive fields when England needed to take the final 2 wickets, and made a mistake in not letting Collingwood bowl out. It wasn't quite as bad as I feared, but it would be great if bowlers like Bresnan don't have to plead with their skipper to have a slip, as happened in the 48th over. Although there were no attacking fielders in the closing overs, Strauss was quite attacking by his standards as there was a slip in when Raqibal Hasan was bowled by Shahzad and again when Swann bowled Shakib. And taking Collingwood off, even when he was bowling economically, was the right move too. So still some way to go but a slight improvement I reckon.

But what is the skipper meant to do when players let him down with poor performances? Prior cost England several runs with missed attempts to take the ball behind the stumps and, with Prior's help, the bowlers racked up 23 wides. James Anderson's 7th over was one of the worst of all time, and swung the game in Bangladesh's favour....with Broad out England desperately need Anderson to find his range, but it's not looking hopeful. And to make matters worse, Shahzad dropped his caught and bowled and Trott missed a stop at 3rd man as things got tight....Strauss must have been tearing the hair he has left out.

Elsewhere in England's group Ireland felt the cost of dropping Kieron Pollard in the 20s and Asoka de Silva's inability to remember that the batsman can't be out LBW when they're playing a shot and are hit outside the line. England should still qualify if they beat West Indies, but the way they are playing, and with Pollard in form, I can't say I feel confident!

I'd love to see Bopara opening rather than Prior, and Strauss to attack (much) more but, more than anything, Anderson needs to bowl properly and byes, dropped catches and misfields need to be a thing of the past. Strauss had some good company today in going defensive - Dhoni suddenly lost his bottle at the end of India's game against South Africa and suffered the consequences. Harbajan had to bowl one of the last 2 overs with 17 needed and South Africa having 3 wickets in hand. But instead he turned to the expensive Nehra with 13 needed from the final over, and he went for 4,6,2,4 to allow South Africa to win the game with 2 balls to spare.

Will England make it through?

Prior ousts Davies and Wright gets lucky

The England selectors have decided that Matt Prior offers a better option than Steve Davies at the World Cup which is a call that it's difficult to find fault with. But the selection of Luke Wright, ahead of the likes of Tremlett, might raise a few eyebrows. It's difficult to see in what circumstances Wright might play so perhaps his fielding is a critical factor in his selection....it's tricky to see what else it might be given his ODI average of 21 with the bat and 51 with the ball.

Presumably Bell will open with Strauss and Prior will bat 6 or 7 rather than Prior opening...

A career as a comedian or a cricket journalist?

I would argue that many a cricket journalist is a comedian (remember those that claimed Prior's Ashes Test position was under theat from Kieswetter after the World Twenty20, or those that questioned Strauss' position in the ODI side because they claimed the Lumb/Kieswetter opening partnership should not be parted???), but it seems that Miles Jupp couldn't make a success of a career switch.

His latest stand-up show discusses his failed attempts to make a career of cricket journalism, but you'll have to go all the way to Edinburgh to see it!

Cramming in the matches brings in more money but doesn't necessarily help the best team win

The concensus at Steyning seems to be that the planned schedule for the Twenty20 tournament is crazy. Sussex sit pretty at the top of the Southern league and look in a good position to get through to the next stage of the competition after a Matt Prior inspired win tonight. The cause of contention is that the next stage is a quarter-final. A league - as everyone appreciates - is a far better way of finding out which team is best when compared against a one-off knock out competition. And yet the quarter-finals mean that Sussex could be a comfortable top in the league stage and then - Twenty20 being what it is (open to a fair bit of chance) - they could lose a one-off match in the quarter-finals on not even make the finals day.

Scheduling for money once again, rather than considering that it might be nice if the best team wins. The top 2 from the North and South league should go through straight to the finals day.

But, totally unsurprisingly, it isn't just the ECB that are trying to cram in more fixtures for more money. The IPL franchises don't even try to hide their lust for money:

"The number one reason for adding teams and having more matches was having more revenue. If the number of matches is reduced, it doesn't work for me," a franchise official said. "We can address the problems [player fatigue] arising out of that; there is a solution. But reducing matches and the reduction of revenue is not on."

So to summarise, sod the players - we want our cash. I don't imagine people that think like this - as in England - could care less who wins unless it financially benefits them in some way.

One match v Bangladesh means little

While it's great that England won emphatically in the 1st Test at Lords, it would be wrong to make sweeping insights off the back of it. Yes, Bresnan didn't bowl superbly (and he shouldn't be opening the bowling in Tests) but equally he was England's best bowler in the winter so one poor match means little. And Finn looked good for his excellent returns but superior batsman will be able to play the bouncing ball better than Bangladesh, and he wasn't exactly express pace - he bowled one ball in the match over 90mph and was often in the lower 80s.

Classic over-reaction from both the professional and amateur media though, and sadly poor old Bresnan doesn't get another game to convert those that have slated him as it seems that he was bowling for at least part of the Lords Test with a stress fracture in his foot. Sidebottom has been brought in and, if he's fit enough, seems like an excellent choice to open the bowling with Jimmy Anderson. (I am tempted to have a go at arguing that Hoggard should be playing, but feel I'd be wasting my breath!!).

As they're lacking a Test-class all-rounder, England need to establish what their plan is and this summer will help them do that. By the time they reach Australia, they need to know if they have 4 bowlers that can carry nearly all the bowling in a 7 batsman team (Swann needs to be in superb form for that to be viable), or if they will play with 5 bowlers (Prior needs to be batting well). At the moment I'm in favour of the latter, knowing that England have a number of batting bowlers. This means that although Matt Prior may need to bat 6, they should be capable of decent partnerships right down the order. An order of Bresnan, Swann, Broad, Anderson, Sidebottom, for example, should be capable of chipping in some half centuries down to number 9 as they did in the 2007 Ashes.

But they have plenty of time to experiment yet and they need to learn from each game without ever making decisions based on one game - I'm sure Flower and Strauss know that whatever observers keep trying to tell them.

7 batsmen

I'm not entirely against picking 7 batsmen but I generally subscribe to the "if your top 6 batsmen can't make runs, why should the 7th?" school of thinking. Hopefully Ian Bell will prove that thinking entirely wrong and make runs if England are in trouble at 50-4.

What I perhaps think is missing in the current thinking is consideration of the quality of the bowlers when it comes to batting. Yes - if your batsmen 8 downwards are McGrath, Muralitharan, Ntini, Martin - you may want to consider a 7th batsmen. If your batsmen from 8 downwards are Swann, Sidebottom, Anderson, Onions then you might consider a 7th batsman a luxury as they can all hold a bat with the exception of Onions.

[Confused? Prior is picked as a batsmen - he's not England's best keeper (although he's improving) - he's picked on the basis he can average 40+ in Test cricket.]

Foster unlucky...

James Foster is reportedly "phlegmatic" about not getting any sort of a chance with England in the training squad and Lions, but he has every right not to be. I'm amazed that Stephen Davies got picked for the Lions ahead of him - perhaps the selectors were worried that a couple of smart stumpings and a big score would put them in a difficult situation and prefer to keep things simple.

I hope they keep the door open to Foster and don't really see him as 4th in line for a Test place behind Prior, Ambrose and Davies....

Bye Bye Bye Bye

I haven't watched any of the latest Test and haven't had the chance to listen to much, but what has happened to justify the number of byes Prior has conceeded?

Check the scorecard out....30 so far out of 384 at the time of writing....

As long as he doesn't drop any I guess Prior is still in credit after his hundred but it doesn't look good!

Same England team next week, no doubt

Given that England only scored 51, there are obvious comparisons to be made with 1994, when they scored 46 against West Indies. That put them 3-0 down, but Atherton's men came back and won the 4th Test of the series. How many changes were there to the starting XI? Just one - Phil Tufnell came in as the spinner for the 4th Test, instead of Ian Salisbury who had played the 3rd. The idea at the time was very much that Atherton wanted to show that the days of constant chopping and changing were over.

This time, England haven't chopped and changed in the run up to the Test - certainly not with their batting. To outside observers it seems inconceivable that Owais Shah won't play in the 2nd Test, but inside the camp they are no doubt considering if they should retain the same side - possibly making the same change as in 1994 - the spinner. But the time has come for Ian Bell to go - he will come back if he's good enough. You may or may not have seen a short article on Bell in one of the free London papers last week, written after day 1, lamenting the fact that 28 was probably enough for Bell to cement his place for the series. Bell is starting to become a joke, and Collingwood and Cook need to turn the corner soon to avoid the same ridicule. It's none of the player's fault that they keep getting selected for faultering perfomances, but they've got to return that faith eventually. A side that relies so heavily on Pietersen is never going to be consistent.

With the Ashes months away, now is not the time to drop the lot of them, and as they are away touring the option does not exist, but the management need to show that consistent failure is not acceptable by dropping Bell. They should also start to consider how they can alter the balance of the side to leave Flintoff and Prior batting at 7 and 8 without it being seen as a negative move. If Flintoff is going to open the bowling and bowl more overs than anyone else bar the spinner, the argument that his injury worries mean we must play 5 bowlers so that he's not over-worked doesn't stack up, especially given that we're finding it hard to find 5 consistent world class bowlers right now. Runs on the board and getting wickets through pressure might be a necessary evil for England until news players emerge.

So the same team next week then, no doubt.

Why doesn't that happen more often ?

If you walk along a busy street you don't bump into people constantly. Instead you subconsciously catch the eyes of people approaching you and somehow transmit a message enabling evasive action to take place. Occasionally you get a situation where you almost collide and then both people move in the same direction once or twice more before you eventually pass. It's always because one of the two was looking away or, more usually, down and no eye contact was made.

Now it seems that Bell and Prior had a moment like that yesterday and Prior was run out as a consequence. So it occurred to me that with batsman watching the ball and fielders as they run between wicketes it is surprising that it doesn't happen more often.

Obviously we know that the non-striker's position when the ball is bowled is determined by what side of the wicket the bowler is operating from and the striker presumably takes that into account in his calculations but I wonder if there is more to it than that.

Bopara to open?

Well it seems that atleast one person agrees with me that Prior shouldn't be opening. And there is a vague suggestion in this Cricinfo preview of the 3rd ODI that Pietersen might consider moving himself up to 3. While I agree that would be ideal, what does that say about England's pre-tour preparation if two matches into a series they rethink such a fundamental as where their best batsman bats?

If Pietersen moves up a slot it potentially allows England to bat Collingwood at 4 (assuming Bopara is considered an opener or specialist 8!) with Shah moving down to 6 (where he's been at his best for England) - something that Geoff Boycott was keen to see happen. Remember, Collingwood and Pietersen bat well together as I've burbled about before. So if Bopara opens and Pietersen moves to three, while I think it's scary that there has been a change of tactics so soon into the series, it could just rebalance the top 6 to ensure it includes England's 6 best ODI batsmen (on tour) - and no England supporter can argue with that no matter how much they may wish to debate the order.

Wouldn't it be nice if Vaughan found form so that we had a natural shot playing opener to select next summer?