County Cricket’s Final Over of the Week

77 years is a long time in sport

Ball One – Whisper it to fans of the Red Rose, but Lancashire are genuine contenders for the Championship. Their success has been built on the willingness of individuals to take responsibility for the team’s performance and this was in evidence again as Stephen Moore, a one-time England hopeful whose career has stalled since his move to Old Trafford from Worcestershire last year, got Lanky up to 240 to defeat current champions Nottinghamshire. Anchoring one end, but maintaining a positive tempo, his knock allowed five other batsmen chip in with no more than 35 each to seal the win. A six wicket margin looks comfortable, but only with the power of hindsight.
Ball Two – Durham have broken away with Lanky at the top of the table, but will be rueing a missed opportunity at home to Yorkshire. Phil Mustard was one wicket short of unleashing his ultra-experienced bowling line-up on Yorkshire’s all-rounders and had plenty of time left in the game, but he ran into his counterpart, Andrew Gale, playing a captain’s knock that will have pleased the old boys amongst the members, and the quietly impressive Zimbabwean-raised Gary Ballance. Having tried pace, seam and spin for 37 overs without success, Mustard conceded the draw and the cheers were just about audible from the other side of the Pennines.
Ball Three – In the relegation clash, the stretched resources of Worcestershire were sufficient to see off the always ambitious, but not always achieving, Hampshire. Dominic Cork’s four international bowlers mustered one fewer wicket than dear old Alan Richardson, still trundling in at the age of 36. Now at his fourth county, everyone knows what you get from Richo, but that doesn’t mean that everyone can deal with it. He has a lot more work ahead of him if Worcestershire are to avoid the drop, but he won’t shy away from it and he’s paying comfortably fewer than 30 runs for a wicket this season, yet again.
Ball Four – Warwickshire have an extraordinary number of players who will, with all due respect, be footnotes in the annals of international cricket – there’s William Porterfield and Boyd Rankin of Ireland (denied the opportunity to play regularly with the big boys) and England fringe types, Jim Troughton, Tim Ambrose, Darren Maddy, Rikki Clarke and Chris Woakes. Nearly men they may be, but they all had a hand in an easy win over pre-season favourites Somerset, whose championship season will need a kick start very soon.
Ball Five – Strange goings-on at Lord’s, home to one of the flattest Test wickets in the world, but also home to a Middlesex vs Kent match that saw 23 wickets fall on the first day, over half of which were shared by line and length merchants Tim Murtagh and Azhar Mahmood. The wise men of the ECB Panel who are charged with investigating such matters inspected and interrogated, but, having sucked on a thoughful tooth, decided against exercising their option to dock points, settling for a slap on the wrists for a “below average” strip. Which ground was it again?
Ball Six – Oh yes. The Twenty20 chugged on too. There’s a feeling that not every county takes it entirely seriously and, with Notts fined just £600 for fielding an ineligible player (only David Hussey, the leading runscorer in T20 history), who can blame them?

Fast Bowlers for India

How do fast bowlers develop? A very good answer to this question has been - by bowling. Wasim Akram is on record explaining that when he was 19 years old he would bowl for hours, for this is supposed to be the best way to fine tune the body for fast bowling. Even though theories about developing fast bowlers have changed over the years, it remains a fact that the greatest fast bowlers - Trueman, Akram, Marshall and others, bowled an enormous number of overs in first class cricket. This helped them bowl long sustained spells. Zaheer Khan, currently India's best fast bowler saw his career take a turn for the better after a season of County Cricket in England with Worcestershire in 2006. He bowled 618 overs in 16 games over 3 months. A sustained work load which I think had plenty to do with improvement in his bowling. A lot is made of bowling in "English Conditions", but i think the real issue is the amount of cricket one gets to play in the English season. County Cricket has been a finishing school for generations of West Indian, Pakistani and South African and English cricketers, and i think this is because of this concentrated amount of cricket over a season. It is often argued that the Australians play only 10 first class games per side per season, but what people forget, is almost all the top Australian players, from Terry Alderman (Gloucestershire, Kent) to Doug Bollinger (Worcestershire) also played County Cricket, which meant that they did a lot of bowling in first class games.
India's fast bowling bench has stagnated of late. Harsha Bhogle has argued that it would have helped if Ishant Sharma and S Sreesanth had travelled to England on the India A tour. I am not convinced, for this would have have involved playing plenty of limited overs cricket and only the stray first class game. First Class Cricket is the place to develop the basics - to become better at what one does. ODI and T20 cricket is not. This is a normative assertion to be sure, but consider this reason in its support. In a First Class game, the only option that a bowler (and fielding captain) has is to dismiss the batting side. That is the only way to win first class games. In ODI's and in more so in T20, a bowler can bowl to contain. When a bowler stops looking for wickets, he may as well be replaced by a machine. Let's look at the bowling workloads of fast bowlers coming into international cricket in various countries. I first consider all fast bowlers who have taken at least 250 Test wickets. There are 23 such bowlers. It is followed by a table of the top Indian wicket takers in Tests amongst fast bowlers (minimum 25 wickets)

If you look at the current India fast bowling bench - Ashish Nehra, Ishant Sharma, S Sreesanth, Munaf Patel and RP Singh (im excluding Irfan Pathan and L Balaji for now), what stands out is how little they have bowled in comparison with say Malcolm Marshall or Imran Khan or even todays premier fast bowler - Dale Steyn. Steyn has bowled 2597 overs in 81 games in First Class Cricket since his debut in 2003-04. This includes spells where he's been out due to injury, and also includes the time since he became the South Africa spearhead, and hence missed out on some first class cricket. Ashish Nehra made his Test debut in 1999 and in 11 years has bowled less than Steyn has in 6. Of course Nehra has played lots of ODI cricket, but that is a hindrance, not an aid to developing into a top class fast bowler.

Take the example of Zaheer Khan. Of his 2247 overs of First Class bowling, 618 came in one season in England in 2006 for Worcestershire. Zaheer is now in his 11th season as a first class cricketer, yet, over 1/4th of all the bowling he did in First Class Cricket came in one season - 3 months in 2006. They made him a better bowler.

If we really want to know why we dont have fast bowlers, it's because our fast bowlers play too much limited overs cricket, and more importantly, too little first class cricket. It's not their fault, for the Ranji Trophy allows only 8 games per player if your side doesn't reach the final. It's even worse now, because the current generation of upcoming fast bowlers spend half the cricket season training with T20 sides, getting trained to bowl 4 over spells against batsmen who don't care about getting out. It is no surprise that the selectors are desperate enough to select Abhimanyu Mithun and R Vinay Kumar after their first season for Karnataka.

We are repeatedly treated to discussion about how T20 is going to help India unearth new talent. Name one new talent unearthed by T20. All the top T20 players who are not India players were already established Ranji Trophy talents. Any discussion about the specifics of T20 (such as the fact that bowlers bowl 4 overs) invites another airy fairy response about how T20 is developing "different" talents. Of course, there is no elaboration on what these different talents might be.

Consider this. With India's best batting and bowling talent fed into T20 franchises for half the season, it follows that for half the season, India's upcoming fast bowlers train without ever bowling a full spell (between 6-10 overs). If you are wondering why Ishant Sharma has become such a poor bowler, consider the fact that he has played more T20 games than first class games. It's not his fault that he has become ordinary - he hasn't been preparing to bowl proper spells - to work out how to dismiss batsmen who are trying to defend their wicket.

The fact is, there is too much money in T20 and the BCCI is unlikely to continue to change this policy of letting the T20 franchises use India's best upcoming talent. What's more, in anticipation of this, T20 and ODIs are becoming more popular even at the age group level.

India don't have a rich and thriving fast bowling bench because India's fast bowlers don't bowl enough in first class cricket. There is no substitute for this. Bowling 2 overs at Mathew Hayden in an IPL game is no substitute for bowling at an ordinary Ranji Trophy batsman on a flat wicket for a solid hour in a Ranji Trophy game.

I expect India to become a mid-table side in a few years time if this type of preparation continues. The only way out is to play more first class cricket.

The Question Tendulkar Should Be Asked

But probably wasn't.

Sharda Ugra reported on Cricinfo that Sachin Tendulkar has nothing against DRS, but thinks that consistency is the key, and that DRS would be more effective if combined with Snickometer and Hawkeye. Today she quotes the CEO of Virtual Eye, Ian Taylor as agreeing with Tendulkar.



Virtual Eye and Hawkeye used different types of cameras in their ball-tracking. Virtual Eye Cameras have a higher framerate but lower resolution, while Hawkeye cameras have a lower framerate (about half of Virtual Eye) and better resolution. This is because the Hawkeye people believe (and claim they are supported by scholarship in this) that being able to locate the ball with high accuracy (which a higher resolution makes possible) is more important than getting a higher number of data points (which a higher framerate makes possible).

So ball-tracking has problems. The two major vendors of ball-tracking technology do not agree about the accuracy of their respective methodologies, and the ICC has not tried to get independent scrutiny of the matter.

But leave that aside. Ms. Ugra's reporting and article reeks of the classic problem in investigations. People often answer only the questions that they are asked. So here is the central question that Sachin Tendulkar needs to be asked. His answer to this question (and BCCI's answer to the same question) will fundamentally change the debate.

What does Sachin Tendulkar think about the Player Review? Does he think it is a good idea for a player to be given the opportunity to ask for a review, with no new information being made available to him before he decides whether or not to ask for one (beyond what the non-striker can tell him)?

This is the crux of the problem. It is the core issue in DRS. The technology is problematic, but is still usable if handled by experts (Umpires) with sufficient discretion.

Hayden backs World Cup cuts

Former Australia batsman supports a 10-team tournament

Hayden: Backs 10-team World Cup

Former Australia batsman Matthew Hayden has backed the International Cricket Council's decision to cut the number of teams in the World Cup.

The associate nations, including Ireland, have been excluded from the 2015 tournament, which is set to consist only of the 10 full member sides.
The decision will be reviewed by the ICC at the end of June, however, after there was widespread criticism due to Ireland's competitive showing at the 2011 tournament.
But Hayden, who won the World Cup twice with Australia, thinks the competition should be reserved for the world's elite teams.
He told The Cricketer: "I sympathise with the arguments but these competitions are about the world's finest and even though Ireland produced some outstanding cricket, which shows the support mechanisms for our developing nations are working, I still think the World Cup should be for the premium sides."
Hayden did however say that the door should be left open for Ireland if they can prove they can consistently compete with the full member nations.
He added: "I would like to see further changes to the World Cup because you do not want to disenfranchise a community.
"They need to be involved in the system that promotes and relegates. If Ireland are sitting in the top eight, there is a system where sides have the chance to miss out.
"It's not a Test-ranking competition, it's a one-day competition. I support a 10-nation tournament."

Hot Royals head South

Afridi stars with both bat and ball as hosts win low-scoring contest

Afridi: smacked 29 with the bat and then took three crucial wickets

Hampshire moved top of the Friends Life t20 South Group with a 35-run win over Sussex in a low-scoring game at the Rose Bowl.

The Hawks managed to make 126-8 from their 20 overs thanks mainly to Shahid Afridi, who made a breezy 29 at the top of the order.
In the end that total proved well beyond the reach of the Sharks, with Afridi completing a fine all-round with 3-10 as the visitors were bowled out for 91.
The former Pakistan skipper claimed two wickets in his first over, starting with Lou Vincent reverse sweeping the leg-spinner straight to short third man.
Luke Wright followed four balls later for 24 as Sussex - who could have gone to the summit themselves with a victory on their travels - collapsed in a hurry, losing their last nine wickets for a mere 39 runs.

Strauss backing for Broad :

      Captain insists bowler has been playing well

Broad: Has the backing of captain Andrew Strauss 

England captain Andrew Strauss insists he is confident Stuart Broad will rediscover his best form going into the final npower Test against Sri Lanka.

Broad is tentatively trying to re-establish himself back in the England side after being dogged by injuries during the winter.
However he heads to the Rose Bowl with his place in the side under threat after he took just 2-154 during the second Test.
And although the figures do not make pretty reading, Strauss believes Broad has been unlucky.
"We always want our bowlers to be taking a lot of wickets, so in that sense it is," Strauss said.
"But he has done a lot of good things - he has passed the bat a lot.
"The fact of the matter is we have a good squad of bowlers and they are all being pushed hard to keep improving.

Perfect

"You have to realise that sometimes one guy will get all the wickets when another guy bowls better, so you have to look a little bit beyond how many wickets a guy has taken and look at how many balls they got in the right area - and that sort of stuff."
England will be intent on making up for any shortcomings which emerged in the Lord's stalemate - principally a consensus that their bowling attack was off beam, in the absence of the now fit-again James Anderson.
"You're not going to play the perfect Test match every time. It's unrealistic to expect that," added the captain.
"In some ways, the fact that our bowling performance was a little bit down at Lord's is more of a reflection on how good it's been over the last 18 months.
"We've just come to expect bowlers to run in and put it on the spot consistently every time they bowl."
England (from): AJ Strauss (captain), AN Cook, IJL Trott, KP Pietersen, IR Bell, EJG Morgan, MJ Prior (wkt), SCJ Broad, GP Swann, CT Tremlett, JM Anderson, ST Finn.
Sri Lanka (from): KC Sangakkara (captain), NT Paranavitana, HDRL Thirimanne, DPMD Jayawardene, TT Samaraweera, HAPW Jayawardene (wkt), NLTC Perera, CRD Fernando, HMRKB Herath, UWMBCA Welegedara, RAS Lakmal, BAW Mendis, HKS Randiv, MF Maharoof.

Sangakkara decided to captain Sri Lanka after ‘considering the needs of the side’

Kumar Sangakkara has revealed how he was persuaded to lead Sri Lanka again, just 10 weeks after quitting.

 

Sangakkara, who stood
down after Sri Lanka’s defeat in the World Cup final against India,
agreed to stand in as captain for the Lord’s Test against England after
Tillakeratne Dilshan was ruled out with a broken thumb.

 

“When I was first
approached to captain the side I wasn’t ready to take it on, because the
fact was I had given it up, with a view of having finished my role as
captain after two successful years,” The Sun quoted Sangakkara, as
saying.

 

“Unfortunately there
was no vice-captain appointed for this Test series, so the side was left
in a bit of a problem with no one to step in to captain, so with a lot
of deep thought and considering the needs of the side and Sri Lanka, I
decided to say yes to captaining Sri Lanka again for a final time in
this Test,” he added.