Looks can be deceptive

A few years ago we played a side which included a player with, apparently, freshly inked arms who spent a large part of his team's fielding session ensuring that his short sleeves were pulled up to his shoulders so that we could see the artwork. He'd also changed his name by deed poll to something quite aggressive. Now I've nothing against tattoos per se and I'm quite happy for people to call themselves what they like but I'm afraid I was amused by his antics with his sleeves and I know that my team mates were equally amused.

Well we played against this chap on saturday and he's now the skipper - he batted for a long time and we later had a spell when we were trying to save a draw and he was bowling. Amusing friendly banter all the way through both sessions and we shared a beer together afterwards and what a nice bloke!

So 1. looks can be deceptive and / or 2. cricket brings out the best in people.

Anagrams

I'm told that someone 'phoned in to TMS on friday to point out that A Mishra and I Sharma, bowling in tandem at the time, have names that are anagrams of each other and to ask whether the occurence was unique. Does anyone know whether they were able to find another example?

Contrast

On the front page of yesterday's Telegraph Sport were two headlines :-
1. 'On top of the world' about England beating India at cricket
2.Wenger accuses Barton of cheating - Arsenal manager furious over Gervinho red card but Newcastle midfielder says referee was right.

Whilst I like it as a sport and have kicked a few big round balls in my time I hate the start of the football season.

Malvern cruise to Cricketer Cup final win

Old Malvernian's won the Cricketer Cup final today at Shenley against Old Etonian's by a big margin - larger than the one that OMTs' lost to Malvern by in the semi. Old Etonian's 141 all out, Old Malvernian's 145 - 4 with 17 overs to spare.

Next year's draw was also made - the final will be replayed in the 1st round next year! And OMTs have been drawn against Old Alleynian's (Dulwich)....

Moaning about the U19 over limits (again!)

It does my head in as a skipper. We've got two 19 year-olds who love bowling and hate the fact that they have to end their spells after 7 overs of slow-medium bowling (the keeper stands up for both of them). They're without doubt not even vaguely tired but they have to come off. One of them opened the bowling and had 4 for 27 so had to give up the chance of a 5 for. The other came on first change and had 3 for 6 from his 7 overs of slow medium. You can view the scorecard here.

Fortunately it looks like we're going to get through this period without losing them to non-cricket related activities on a Saturday as next year they'll be able to bowl normal spells of unlimited length. But one of them in particular moans all the time about not being able to bowl longer spells - it can't be good for cricket that keen youngsters are kept from maximising their role in adult sides.

As a skipper it creates farcical situations - when selecting we have to consider how many "unlimited" bowlers we have as it can become very problematical if all your seamers are subject to the 7 over maximum rule. And when in the field I have to consider giving batsmen in the top 5 of the opposition 1, just so our one strike bowler, who is 15, gets to bowl at the opposition's best batsmen before he has to come off.

It's a crazy situation to be in and I've got a simple solution - keep the maximum overs per day but lose the maximum per spell. A maximum number of overs per spell surely increases the chances of injury as players have to warm up 2 or 3 times and if a bowler is tired the skipper will take them off anyway as they'll be costing the team runs. That would ensure that young bowlers really enjoy playing a full part in adult cricket. It seems particularly unfair on bowlers - no-one hauls our U16 opening batsman, who leads the league runs, off after he's scored 50 - he's allowed to bat all day....

CMJ: "there will be some good players there"

Just heard CMJ discussing the Cricketer Cup final on Sunday between Old Etonians and Old Malvernians. "There will be some good players there," he said "including Alex Loudon who's scored a couple of hundreds". Probably just as well OMTs lost in the semi if CMJ expects "good players" although I suppose the definition of "good" varies! I suspect that CMJ's definition of good is good by professional standards....

Needless to say, when it was mentioned that Alex Loudon's girlfriend may well be watching, Boycott had no idea who Pippa Middleton is. She's not a cricketer so she doesn't exist in Boycott world.

A combined England/Australia XI

Amazing to see how the tables have turned so quickly - as one of the commenter's points out, perhaps only one Englishman would have got in the Australian side in 2006. 5 years later and the consensus is that only Watson (for Morgan) would get into England's side....

Vaseline get involved with Hot Spot debate

Vaseline in India have tried to take advantage of the debate about whether it can be used to cheat Hot Spot in their latest Indian advertising....

Spanish footballers striking

Last summer something Alastair Cook said got exagerated and quoted out of context, and there was talk about England cricketers striking. That wasn't really going to happen though. Apparently, Spanish footballers are striking though - some people don't know how lucky they are. If they aren't paid when a club goes into administration so be it....the vast majority are already millionaires.

England tactics to set batsmen with tailenders

I didn't watch any of yesterday's play but I hear that when Dhoni was out England had 8 players round the boundary and Strauss at slip, where he was caught. Dhoni had a wild swish so was presumably trying to clear the rope and came unstuck. I'm torn - I hate the idea of having everyone round the boundary with the opposition in so much trouble, but perhaps Dhoni didn't have the patience to score the occassional boundary, the odd 2 and a 1 of the 5th ball to farm the strike for a bit.....in which case, good tactics.

Difficult to criticise when it works but having everyone round the boundary feels very wrong somehow! Any thoughts...?

Shastri and Gavaskar BCCI employees

There seems some genuine surprise at the fact that Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar are paid by the BCCI for some of their commentary work. I don't think it's that surprising given, as ex-India spinner Maninder Singh has said "It's symptomatic of what the country is going through. There are scams, corruption in every sphere of life and cricket is no different." If you've ever been to India you'll recognise and understand that sentiment.

Surprising or not, I do think the amount they're paid is obscene. 3.6 crore, which I believe is £4,896,000 [this is actually 10 times too much - see comments!]. It doesn't seem a justifiable amount for an annual salary for any role, but certainly not cricket commentary. So the assumption I find it hard to avoid considering is that they must be being paid that much to ensure that they say exactly what the BCCI would like them to say - it would be interesting to hear what other explanation there is for that much money being paid for an ordinary commentary role?

Interesting to see that Shastri's intransigence around the UDRS, echoing that of the BCCI, is now being called into question. His little spat with Nasser Hussain made me laugh - first Hussain references the fact he has played 96 Tests as a reason why he's allowed to voice an opinion about the BCCI....surely it's the fact that he is a commentator and his role is, as Geoff Boycott isn't shy of reminding us, to comment. Who cares how many Tests he has or hasn't played?

And then Shastri's retort...."India has every right to take it or not". Erm, not really - ever heard of democracy Ravi? The ICC members should be putting it to a blind vote and then implementing the UDRS. One of the reasons the BCCI gave for not implementing the UDRS a while back was that it cost too much. Perhaps a bit of a cut back on paying back-handers to commentators fellas, and then you wouldn't just be able to pay for the technology for India's home series, you'd be able to pay for the low-income nations to use it too. Now that really would be fantastic leadership of the game of cricket.

Disecting India's performance

Where do I begin?

1) Poor preparation - the wrong balance between rest and play for the West Indies series

2) Lack of warm-up fixtures for the rested players

3) Inconsistent selection - where was Murali Vijay, a like-for-like (almost) replacement for Sehwag, who would have taken the attack to England and possibly force them to change their initial bowling plans.

Where was Virat Kohli? He had a good tour of the West Indies but was jettisoned for Yuvraj Singh, a nothing bowler, a flat track bully of a batsman and a shadow of his old fielding self (before injuries).

4) Poor bowling - if the pitch is not doing anything and if the ball is not doing anything then you dry up the runs by bowling a consistent line outside off-stump and force the batsmen to make the mistake. This is something that England and South Africa have done, and something that India should have yesterday.

5) Abject field placings - that said consistent bowling needs the captain to set the right field. Dhoni not having a third-man for a large part of the innings gave England far too many cheap runs. Not having an orthodox fine leg didn't help either as the bowlers sprayed it. Also even for part-time spinners, you need to have an attacking field to create mistakes, yesterday it was like being at a dairy with all the milking that was going on.

That's just a few areas for development. The last two can be remedied for Edgbaston, but I'm not holding my breath that they will.

Bresnan is a proper allrounder

There were a few rumblings that Broad should bat above Bresnan after Broad scored runs in the first innings at Tent Bridge, following his runs in the 2nd innings at Lords. But there's no way that should be the case. Bresnan bats like a batsman, Broad bats like a bowler - he can play some fantastic shots but there's a lot that goes arial and he always gives the bowler a chance. So the likelihood is that he'll struggle to score runs consistently.

Bresnan approaches his batting more seriously and gives himself the best chance of consistent success, so unless Broad changes his approach, Bresnan should always bat above him.

I also disagree with the commentators about the (possible) declaration. I would have done what Strauss did and bat to a lead of 500 - if you argue that it's a world record score and if India win they deserve it, similarly you can make the opposite argument that 5 sessions should be more than enough for England to bowl them out and if India save the game they deserve it. As always though, any discussion about the declaration is irrelevant until we see the fields that Strauss sets - I hope he's more attacking than on the final day at Lords.

Dumb-ass cricket

Dumb-ass cricket from Ian Bell (unless Asad Rauf called over which I find unlikely), which hopefully won't take away from a superb innings because he really did bat fantastically well until that brain freeze.

Betting odds tell you what's happening

If you follow the cricket via Cricinfo or the BBC waiting to see updates to the scoreboard when you're working as I do, you expect to notice when a wicket falls. But I had the strange experience twice today of hearing that a wicket had fallen from my colleague next to me. Having been a pro gambler for 6 months, he's on top of all things betting and it turns out that the odds change after a wicket well before the scorecards get updated.

So as Morgan was starting his innings he said to me "Another wicket's fallen" to which I told him that his information was out of date...the fourth wicket had gone down just before that. But as it turned out, he was right - Morgan was out third ball....the Cricinfo scorecard caught up about 30 seconds later. The same happened again when Bresnan was out - my colleague noticed the odds change and told me a wicket must have fallen. Sure enough I found out it had shortly afterwards.

That's a whole new experience for me....following events on the cricket pitch via the betting odds!

Cricketer Cup semi-final scorecard / match report

For those that haven't seen the scorecard / match report from the Old Malvernians v OMT match, they're here:

Scorecard
Match report

Lack of conversation

We all know that one of the principal reasons for playing cricket is to spend time before, during and after with your pals, but it hadn't occurred to me how important the between over conversations are until we had a weird recent match. Because the pavilion had also been booked for a playschool it was decided to play an away fixture with all the bowling from one end with the kiddies safe behind long stop ( in theory and, as it turned out, in fact).
Very disorienting - you usually don't move very far between overs, if at all and you certainly don't go past anyone to exchange a brief bon mot and it must be particularly tedious for normally loquacious keepers, particularly if there's no slip to chat to. The skipper also can't say 'next over that end' but, on the plus side, I was able to confuse a team-mate at a precious wicket-having-fallen- conversation opportunity - 'I don't think they've got the overs right - if we started that end it must be an odd number'.
At least I didn't bowl at the wrong end as I did the previous year - not wrong, you understand for tactical reasons, but for the safety of a house which suffered broken windows in 2010 !

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...

Getting out of the way of the ball

Listening to the TMS commentary and Cook has just got hit fielding at silly point. On the backside as he turned around. Why do players do that? Gambhir got hit on the elbow doing that yesterday.

I've fielded close in quite a lot and I try not to turn at all. It of course takes a bit of nerve not to flinch but whatever you do you're just as likely to get hit and I'd prefer to be watching the batsman in case the ball isn't middled and you can react.

I'm told by people that have been professionally coached on this that the advice is to simply hunch down facing the batsman if you're at short-leg, and jump up if you're at silly point (as the ball is likely to go low on the off-side, but may go at any height on the leg-side), but not sure I totally agree with that. Any move that takes your eye off the ball or just moves your eyes, makes it less likely you'll catch a chance.

All good things....

....must come to an end and the 2011 OMT Cricketer Cup run came to an end yesterday at Old Malvernians. More details in another post (or you can check the OMT Cricketer Cup blog), but interesting things I learnt from playing against a team with 7 ex-first class or minor county cricketers:

David Nash called "one" when it went to the boundary but he and his partner were pushing for two all along and got it easily (the "one" call being purely so that the fielder doesn't charge in as they assume that the batsmen don't want more than one).

Their wicket-keeper, who doesn't have representative honours, kept calling "no run" loudly whenever the batsman hit it for a potential single. It momentarily made me and others hesitate at the non-strikers end thinking it was the striking batsman who'd called no run, so you could call it cricket-smart or unsporting depending on your view point, but it worked.

Gutted to lose obviously, but the small upside personally was getting David Nash and Mark Hardinges out.

You never stop learning

So we're sitting watching our colleagues bat and someone says, of a fielder 'oh, he's made the mistake of chatting to the square leg umpire'.
'What's wrong with that ?' I ask. Well, I'm told, if the umpire moves back and the fielder chooses to continue the conversation he's likely to move back with the umpire and he's no longer saving one. It had never occurred to me but in the next match I decided to test the theory during my own umpiring stint and wow! it works. I had a quick bowler by me who was happy to tell me his life story including cricketing achievements and I'm pretty sure he'd have followed me to the pub if I'd gone there. He certainly moved back 10 yards or so as I did so. Brilliant - try it yourselves.

Interesting lead up to the 1st Test...

We've all been embarrassed by our parents occasionally, but Harbajan's mum's intervention after Dhoni took part in an advert for a competing whisky brand must take some beating!

Annual Brakspears intake over

Another year, another enjoyable Thames Tour. Here's a few selected photos....none of actual cricket of course! Tour record was played 6, won 3, tied 1, lost 2. I am to blame for the tie as I was captaining that game...a one run win was the ideal but I was a bit over-generous in the way I tossed the ball up in the final over! No matches lost to bad weather so all good....

Preparing for the Aldworth game at The Bell. Allan (front left) had clearly just swallowed a wasp.

John Walter holding court. Dave McCabe has clearly heard this anecdote before.

4 of the team relax at Aldworth having racked up the huge total of 92, preparing themselves to bowl Aldworth out.

Once again Mark Davis took the wicket of Tim Vines on Wednesday against Peppard. Tim forces a smile for the annual photo.

The team look on at Goring as Jon Vallerius and Guy Edwards knock off the winning runs.

Mark Davis wrapped in the OMT flag.