Is it best to be occasionally brilliant?

Now that Australia have finally dropped Mitchell Johnson I think it raises some interesting questions about why some bowlers are retained for longer than others. Some seem to be retained against all common sense, while others are always talked about as close to being dropped. I'm no psychologist, but it must come down to people (and selectors) feeling more favourable towards players who give brilliant performances and very poor ones, compared to the steady-eddies.

Of course the best bowlers are always steady-eddies and can occasionally put in brilliant match-winning performances too. I'm thinking of bowlers like McGrath, Warne, and dare I say his name in the same breath, Flintoff in his latter career (NB. he had a far better later part of his career). Their worst was a decent Test match performance. And their bowling averages - yes, I know stats don't tell the full story - back that up.

But then you've got the steady-eddies who don't seem to ever be quite as revered as the scattergun occasional match winners. I'm thinking of the likes of Angus Fraser who averaged 27 but always seemed to be on the verge of being dropped in the second half of his career. Or Matthew Hoggard, who's average of 30.5 puts him miles ahead of Devon Malcolm (37), Steve Harmison (31.8), and Flintoff's overall average of 32.8. But no-one remembers Hoggard's regular 3 fors, just the 9 in an innings that Malcolm got against South Africa, Harmison's 7 for 12 against West Indies, or Flintoff's 5 for at Lord's against Australia.

Mitchell Johnson (30.1) had a sensational period in Test cricket and will remember some real highs, such as his 8 for against South Africa. But somehow those highs stopped the selectors from assessing him as they should have done, just as England did with Harmison. Then consider this against Stuart Clark, who averages 23.9 in Tests, only took a 5 for twice and never took 10 in a match, and was swiftly forgotten after injury pegged him back a little (sorry Dave, just had to mention Clark one more time to rile you!!).

Anyone with me on this theory that players get cut far more slack if they can be a matchwinner occassionally rather than a steady performer almost every match?!?

Pick Shah and bat him at 5

Strauss of course tells us that the latest warm-up was a good workout, but I'm not sure the various journalists out there have the same view, particularly when it came to England's lousy fielding. But on the positive side, there are key batsmen in form (particularly the skipper and ex-skipper) and the bowlers have had plenty of time to find their rhythm.

Shah apparently got a dodgy decision to be dismissed for 9 LBW, but Bell played a terrible pre-meditated sweep to be bowled round his legs towards the end of day 2. For me, the time has come for Shah to replace Bell (if it hadn't before) - if he's good enough (which his technique suggests that he is) Bell will make stacks of runs at county level and then come back a better player. I'd also - much as I hate to admit it - listen the Geoff Boycott's view and bat Shah at 5, Boycott of course having said that anyone that thinks Owais Shah is an international number 3 needs their head read. That allows our best player, Pietersen, to come in at 3 and dominate the match, and it also allows Collingwood to bat at 4 and be entrusted with getting the side a big score. One of the decisions that Moores got wrong was to push Collingwood back to bit-part number 6 when most of his success has come from batting high up the order with Pietersen. At 4, Collingwood averages 56 and I think we should settle for that.

The bowling looks a little less predictable, but I'm glad that the prevailing view seems to be that Sidebottom will play. England have looked rudderless without him as there is no-one else apart from Flintoff who the captain can expect to keep the runs down if we're not taking wickets. I trust Flintoff is happy he'll be there and I suspect the spinners will be, given that they may be able to use the rough he creates. But which spinner will it be? Personally I'd go for Panesar, but there's very little in it given Swann's improvement and Panesar's relative decline of late. So you'd be left with the side:

Strauss, Cook, Pietersen, Collingwood, Shah, Flintoff, Prior, Broad, Sidebottom, Harmison, Panesar.

Suprised I picked Harmison? Yes, so am I! But he has to be given the chance to relive his former West Indian glories and Anderson hasn't done enough to take the place ahead of him....

Flintoff and Pietersen

Without being inside the England camp it's very difficult to know for sure how Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff get along. What you can say is that they both have big characters and play a huge role in dressing room morale. So rumours that Flintoff was involved in Pietersen's downfall as England captain comes as a nightmare to any England fan. Although today Harmison has unequivocally stated that Flintoff's support for Pietersen was total in a Cricinfo article titled "Flintoff and I supported Pietersen". (Personally I'm just impressed he didn't say "Me and Flintoff..."!)

But unfortunately it's not the first time that there have been rumours about whether or not they get on. When Flintoff was captaining the last Ashes tour, rumours were rife that Pietersen wasn't playing for the team, despite being one of the England success stories of the tour. As this article from the time suggested, Pietersen himself had said that he didn't follow team instructions during the nightmare 2nd Test at Adelaide where England capitulated on the final day.

While that 2nd Test didn't paint a good picture of Pietersen as fully supportive of his skipper - despite his hundred - it also showed why Flintoff made a lousy captain. He huffed and puffed and his shoulders dropped as England fielded on the 5th day, leaving Hoggard to put a consoling arm around his shoulders and try and remind him of his responsibilities to the team as captain. It's very possible that current animosities between the two started during that Test - both would have been distraught afterwards and looked for reasons why they slipped to an embarrassing defeat.

So what to make of it and how does it effect the England team? Well for all their talismanic qualities, the two are completely different. Reports suggest that Flintoff likes to relax over a beer with his mates and family. Pietersen likes to prepare every last detail and when he's not thinking cricket he relax with celebrity mates. But what makes their relationship tricky is that they have different approaches to get to the same goal - England winning. Their not poles apart - they're close enough to overlap. Neither could be accused of anything but total loyalty to the England cause (I hope I'm not proved wrong by Pietersen taking a lucrative IPL offer and turning his back on England - I'm sure I won't but you can never quite say never). And there is total respect for each other - Pietersen pushing Flintoff up the batting order against all statistical evidence to the contrary proved that.

So it's now down to captain and coach (in that order) to ensure that their shared goal is the main focus, not how the team gets there. Both will need to feel included and both should be told now what happens when Strauss has to leave the pitch (I would give the Test captaincy to neither and use Cook or Collingwood if necessary but the ODI "vice" captaincy could be a thornier issue). It's classic man-management - all be it very tricky man-management - and if Strauss can get it right while maintaining his batting form then his position as England captain will be a very strong one. If he struggles to pull the two of them together then he will go the way of the two previous England captains and be forced into resignation, but that is the subject of another post....

The lure of IPL money

I'm sure that Harmison's decision to make himself available for ODIs again has nothing to do with the potential money involved in the Stanford game and the IPL...

Pick a bowler, any bowler...

After the selectorial debacle at Headingley, with long-term 12th man Tremlett clearly not rated, and with a host of proven international bowlers snubbed through the inclusion of a 30-year-old Aussie with 11 first-class games under his belt, the selectors have work to do to restore order to the derailed England squad before day one at Edgbaston on Wednesday.

So who did they include in the squad in the place of the axed Pattinson and Tremlett? Harmison. Hmm.

A couple of statistics for you:

Test bowling record vs South Africa:
- Harmison 18 wickets @ 59.55, best bowling 4-33
- Hoggard 26 @ 25.50, best 7-61

Test bowling record at Edgbaston:
- Harmison 5 @ 68.20, best 2-62
- Hoggard 20 @ 23.15, best 5-92

On top of that, Edgbaston's groundsman Steve Rouse reckons the pitch will be ill suited to Harmison's short-pitched, steeply bouncing style, predicting instead "a 'kiss the turf and get it to swing' wicket". Er, Matthew Hoggard, anyone?!

I hope Harmison proves me wrong, but this has the makings of another selection clanger. Presumably he'll play at the expense of Broad. Let's hope they, at least, get the balance of the team right, and restore some backbone to the batting lineup with Collingwood. His first-innings 40 overs at Headingley show we're incapable of resisting overbowling Flintoff when things aren't going our way, so we might as well stick to the balance of four front-line bowlers plus Collingwood (and, if only he would bowl, Vaughan, as Ed says!).

Bowlers

I feel a bit sorry for the poor man. He was thrown in at the proverbial deep end and he barely managed a paddle.

There's no doubt, once Sidebottom is declared fit, Pattinson will be back playing for Nottinghamshire and probably get lots of wickets which I'm sure his PR people will say justifies his initial selection.

But the return of Sidebottom won't improve England's bowling that much. Broad still bowls too short and Monty too fast. These two need to improve quickly or England's balance deteriorates even further. A very short term move would be to bring back an in-form (and hungry?) Harmison for Broad and give the bowling more bite, but weaken an already brittle batting line up.

But do the selectors trust Harmison?

Hoggard is his own man!

I hate the way several articles in the press have linked Harmison and Hoggard together as if they are joined the hip. The England selectors (wrongly in my opinion) chose to drop Hoggard after one bad game. Not surprisingly on a seamer friendly wicket, Anderson came in and took wickets, but that doesn't make him a better bowler than Hoggard. Despite Fletcher's comments that Hoggard has been losing his zip for some time, he is still better than Anderson and should be picked.

Harmison is a completely different kettle of fish. He was dropped at the same time as Hoggard but he's been poor since the 2005 Ashes and being consistently that bad, even accounting for injuries, means there is no question he should be dropped and only considered for a comeback after consistently achieving at County level over a season.

Why the likes of Sidebottom and Fletcher keep mentioning them in the same sentence as if they are in the same situation mystifies (and aggrevates!) me. I'm still hoping that we pick our best 4 bowlers for the 1st Test v New Zealand on 15th May and there is no doubt in my mind that includes Hoggard.

Quote unquote

You may or may not be a reader of Cricinfo's "quote unquote" but if you'd like to take a look click here.

My top 3 are:

"In terms of sporting endeavour and prestige, the IPL is to cricket what diarrhoea is to dodgy curry houses - an unfortunate by-product." Paul Lewis, in the New Zealand Herald, clearly doesn't care much about developments in India.

"I've seen him spray it worse than that, so I'd suggest it was quite a good start for him." Michael Vaughan on Steve Harmison after his fast bowler opened his New Zealand tour with four wides and two sets of four byes.

"I think Hawk-Eye must have had a late night." Ian Botham explains why a ball he thought was going "way down" was shown hitting leg stump by Hawk-Eye.

Please don't pick Harmison

I have a lot of sypathy for Barney Ronay's article in the Guardian today. Titled "why can't we dump Harmison?" he likens Harmison to an unreliable boyfriend - "the one we can't stop seeing even though we know he's just no good for us - he'll eat all the food in our fridge, blow his nose on our towels and inexplicably hurl a moon-ball second-slip wide through our kitchen window while attempting to peel an orange."

I hope Harmison doesn't get the nod. Of the others, 3 can be picked from 4, as it seems everyone is agreed that there should be 3 specialist seamers. Hoggard and Sidebottom are in for me without much question. Anderson or Broad? I don't like the idea of Sidebottom batting at 8, and 3 similar bowlers doesn't give enough variety, so Broad it is. Very different to my thoughts only a month ago!

But the selectors could still spring a surprise and go for Bopara or Swann instead of Broad - we'll see. Either way, I hope Vaughan gives himself a decent chance to bowl - he and Collingwood could both play big roles with the ball on the slow Sri-Lankan pitches.

Harmison as captain

Harmison doesn't strike me as an obvious candidate for captaincy so I thought I'd check how he was going as captain of Durham v Sri Lanka A. Durham are bowling and it seems that he decided that he shouldn't open the bowling. He then decided he shouldn't be first change either. Then rather than introducing himself as second change, he brought back Luke Evans, the opening bowler who had gone for 41 from 5 overs - you can see the scorecard here. I wouldn't bet on him coming on second change the way things are going! Wouldn't a Harmison/Onions opening partnership be the best available to Durham?

Harmison as a captain....what are your thoughts? A bit too self-effacing for my liking...

Harmison unlikely, Strauss gets another chance

England have announced a 13 man squad for the Lords Test versus India on Thursday. Despite a string of low scores Strauss has made it once again, and it looks like Steve Harmison is unlikely to play given his hernia, although he is in the 13 man squad. James Anderson and Stuart Broad will fight it out for the last bowling position and Broad is surely the favourite given that Moores' is an admirer and the fact that he can bat at 8 (although he should really bat one position lower). If Anderson were to be selected, England would be selecting four number 11 batsmen.

Strauss will be hoping for runs today playing for England Lions or otherwise the pressure will be even greater when he walks out at Lords....

Subsequent update: Stuart Broad looks even more certain to play after his 5 wicket haul today against the Indians.

Plunkett out

Following the series win against the West Indies the selectors have announced the squad for the 4th Test which includes Matthew Hoggard as expected, at the expense of Liam Plunkett. Steve Harmison has managed to save himself with some hostile bowling over the last couple of days at Old Trafford. Peter Moores must be wondering about the balance in his side - he is now going to play in the next Test with 4 players who shouldn't really bat higher than 10 in a Test match....one of them is going to be coming in 8! While this is unlikely to be exposed against the West Indies, it's not a situation he's likely to be happy with in the long-term.

On the batting side of things, Strauss is again under pressure to play a big innings but Peter Moores is showing the same loyal streak that Duncan Fletcher showed in his time as England coach. I don't think there is anyone in England that isn't hoping Strauss gets runs....

The worst Test day ever?

I didn't have the chance to watch any of yesterday's play so it was interesting to hear Jonathan Agnew had described the day's play as "just about the worst day of Test cricket I can remember."

I can only hope that Allan Donald manages to work some magic with Harmison and Plunkett, but it's not a job I would wish on anyone, not even Troy Cooley. England can't afford two mis-firing bowlers out of 4 so I presume that one of them will be dropped when Hoggard is fit again. I wonder if the time has come for Harmison to work on his bowling outside of the Test arena and come back when he is ready, and has proven he is ready.

With poor old Strauss getting a duck (I still maintain he's a class player who has mysteriously lost confidence after 3 terrible umpiring decisions in a row last winter), the England team for the next test could look a little different.

How's about this? Vaughan, Cook, Bopara, Pietersen, Collingwood, Bell, Prior, Plunkett, Panesar, Sidebottom, Hoggard.

When Stuart Broad is ready he could then come in for Plunkett - Moores reportedly being a Broad fan.

I'd love to see Vaughan get another hundred today...fingers crossed.

Misdirected bowling

Steve Harmison and Liam Plunkett seemed to have all sorts of problems at Lords in finding a decent line, but in the India game yesterday Ramesh Powar went one better and managed to get the ball to go to mid-off despite completing a full rotation of his arm - that was pretty special I thought.

What is it about the bowling these days? Comparatively the standard of batting in Test Cricket seems so much higher than the bowling and with McGrath and Warne gone things will only get worse in the bowling department. I wonder how these things come about....will we find the bowlers on top of the batsmen in a decade and sides bowled out for 120 all the time?