Kridaya Cricket Blog

New Zealand slumped to another miserable Test defeat against the Sri Lankans. I don’t know if you can call a 2-0 defeat in a 2-Test series a whitewash, but that is exactly what happened. At no point in either match did the Kiwis have any hope of winning the match. It was just a matter of when they would give up the fight.

Winning in Sri Lanka is never easy, but this has been a long slump in the fortunes of the New Zealand team. Ignoring Bangladesh, they are probably tied with West Indies at the bottom of the Test nations ladder. Unlike the West Indies, who have shown some resurgence in their non-striking team, New Zealand seem to be going from bad to worse.

This was bound to happen at some point. The problem with New Zealand is that they are a small nation (in area and population), but for a long time, overperformed because of their status as a developed nation with better infrastructure. This even though the playing season in New Zealand is truncated because of weather conditions during the winter.

Now, as the Indian subcontinent (India mostly, but also Sri Lanka and Pakistan) become more developed, the edge enjoyed by New Zealand has been wiped out by the sheer number of cricket players available in the former countries. Numbers are not enough, but statistically speaking, you will find better talent if there are more players.

That is the reason why the United States and China enjoy dominance at the Olympics, and why India, Australia and South Africa dominate cricket. It is a combination of population and GDP. What we will see is the continued fall of countries like New Zealand and West Indies. England seems to be an anamoly, but that is perhaps because the major English sport today is soccer, not cricket.

Zimbabwe became a Test team after winning a match against England in the 1992 World Cup.

Bangladesh became a Test team after winning a match against Pakistan in the 1999 World Cup.

Ireland beat Pakistan in the 2007 World Cup, beat Bangladesh in the 2009 T20 World Cup and have been generally giving all their opponents major heartaches when they play against them. Latest piece of evidence: their near victory against England a couple of days ago.

So why is Ireland still an Associate Nation?

Has this to do with the fact that Ireland is in Europe and not part of the Sub-Continent Cricket Mafia? Will Nepal and Bhutan get Test status before Ireland?

Needless to say, this is ridiculous. If Bangladesh can go years without winning or even drawing Test matches, why cannot the ICC grant Ireland Test status and prevent its players from leaving to England and other nations?

Spread the word!

99.94 has some praise for Thilan Samaraweera who has notched his second century of the series. Samaraweera’s average stands at 52.25, a figure that would find him a place among the great batsmen of all time. That is, if he had actually done something against a strong team.

Here are his “away” averages against a few teams:

22.66 in Australia
10.50 in India
4.25 in England
Never played in South Africa

His overall averages against Australia are 31.22 and against South Africa (2 home Tests) are 24.66. Compare that with 66.66 against Bangladesh, 84.66 against Zimbabwe, and 83.33 against New Zealand, against whom he has played 31% of all his Test matches. Also a home average of 59.29 versus 44.80 playing away.

This is just an example of the inflated averages of the Sri Lankan players. Take Jayawardene who made his debut in 1997. In 12 years, he has played a total of 4 Tests in Australia and 5 in South Africa. Sangakkara (started in 2000) has played only 6 Tests (both home and away) in almost a decade. Compare that with Tendulkar who has played almost 49 Tests against Australia and South Africa in two decades.

Sri Lanka have shown improved results when compared to the ’90s, but much of it has been at the expense of weak teams like Bangladesh & Zimbabwe, and others who have been declining, like West Indies and New Zealand. They have yet to perform credibly against Australia, South Africa and India.

They may well get there, but so far Sri Lanka has done nothing to justify the high rankings of their team or the high averages of their players.

Win or lose the current Test against Pakistan, Sri Lankans have a lot to think about for future series.

1. What will be their spin attack when Murali comes back? Will it be Herath or Mendis? The Lankans left out the out-of-form Mendis, but Herath has gone missing in this Test with 0/76 and 2/113 so far. Herath’s overall Test record is a miserable 48 wickets in 17 Tests at 37.04 and if you leave out his performances in the first two Tests of this series, it would be much worse. Mendis, of course, has been horrible with his 6 wickets against Pakistan coming at an average of 65.83. From the mystery spinner to the missing spinner, it is quite a drop for him.
   
   
2. Sri Lanka did not cross 300 in any of their innings in this series. The batsmen were shielded by the bowlers who saved them each time Pakistan threatened to win a Test. As usual, Sangakkara and Jayawardene have been among the top run-makers. Sri Lanka cannot continue to keep relying on just two batsmen to produce the goods against the stronger Test teams.
   
   
3. It was a nice gesture to give Vaas a final match, but it will probably cost them the Test and an opportunity to make a strong statement by a 3-0 series victory. The Sri Lanka selectors have to be tougher than that. What if the series had been at 1-1? I know this is not going to happen, but at some point in the past, they should have had a talk with Vaas and told him he was no longer going to play a part in international Test cricket.
   
   
4. Sri Lanka should not fool themselves with the final outcome of this series. They were outplayed several times during the Tests and they just about managed to escape when Pakistan let go of its advantage. Against a stronger team like Australia or South Africa, that would be fatal. Worse, they were outplayed at home. I know they have always struggled against Pakistan at home, but they have to worry if it is going to be an ongoing trend.
   
   
5. It is not clear whether the better performances by some Sri Lankan players is an indication of their so-far hidden talent or is a flash in the pan. We already talked about Herath. Now consider Kulaskera with 16 wickets in 3 Tests in this series. Before it, he had only taken 5 wickets in 6 Tests. Thushara 12 wickets in this series after spending 4 years in the wilderness. Paranavitana has done nothing in his career except for those two knocks in the Galle Test. If they can replicate some of their good performances in this series in the future, Sri Lanka will do well. But otherwise, Sri Lanka will continue to have passengers that will break them against the tougher Test nations.
   
   

It took the final match to understand how big a MISTAKE John Dyson made by misunderstanding the Duckworth-Lewis calculations in the first match of the ODI series between England and West Indies. If the West Indies had won or tied the first game, they would have easily won the series.

Even though England technically won the series, they did not win any match that was not rain-curtailed. The West Indians acquited themselves commendably in all the matches, even the last one, where they were in the chase for a considerable period of time.

As the tour ends, the West Indies have much to cheer. They won the Test series – a victory against a major Test-playing nation after a long time. They won the one-off T20 match. They would have won the ODI series if it hadn’t been for a self-inflicted wound. They fought as equals against the English team, who were unable to dominate them, except during for a few batting marathons during the Test.

For England, this was a tour to forget. They had been playing catch-up against the West Indians in all forms of the game. Against one of the more innocuous attacks in world cricket, they embarrassed themselves by getting bowled out for 51 (in the first Test) and 117 (in the 3rd ODI). Flintoff’s hattrick was one of the few good moments they had.

Despite England’s troubles, Andy Strauss’s captaincy is not in danger. Above all, There is No Alternative. Pietersen, Collingwood and Flintoff have been tried and failed. And Strauss has been in good form, hitting 3 centuries in the Tests, winning one ODI with his batting and almost winning another with a century.

West Indies have a return tour against England before the Ashes. In typical times, that would have given some comfort to the England team, gaining some confidence before the formidable Aussies arrive. Now, it is another round of pain for them.

[Photo licensed from mugley]

New Zealand were saved from a terribly embarrassing score by being rescued from the depths of 6 for 60 to a respectable, if hardly intimidating, total of 279. Daniel Vettori and Ryder played well, scoring centuries each, though the latter with little help from the clueless O’Brien who almost sold his partner down the river by getting stumped out. Apparently O’Brien was looking for a single, though why he felt the need to leave his crease blows my mind.

The Kiwi’s habit of having Vettori be the superstar batsman in addition to leading the team and bowling the most overs is, to be very kind, crazy as bats. It reminds me of India in the early 1990’s, boasting the supposedly best batting lineup in the world, but having to be rescued each time by Kapil Dev and the tail to worry the scorers. New Zealand seems to be in the same state now, with Vettori and McCullum the best batsmen in the team.

The problem with these kind of rescue innings is that it diverts attention from the ineffectiveness of the players who are supposed to perform. If New Zealand wins this match, which is a real possibility, the batting collapse will be brushed under the carpet and the team never improves. And one day, the lower order does not rescue the team, there is an ignominious collapse (England’s 51), all hell breaks loose and there are no ready replacements.

In the Kiwi’s favor, maybe we should say that perhaps the wicket was sticky and India did put them in. Still it is an old story that keeps repeating, and New Zealand has to recognize that to improve as a team. Now, if they could only get Shane Bond back…

Via CorSullivan, we have the incredible tale of the Afghan cricket team which may qualify for the 2011 World Cup:

When the British marched into Afghanistan in 1838, they brought polo mallets, fox hounds and cigars. They brought imperial hubris, bone china and cases of port. But the players of the Great Game also brought a great game: cricket.

One hundred and seventy-one years later, cricket has returned here, an outpost of the world’s most civilised sport in one of the world’s most brutal places. Today, the Afghan national cricket team opens its 2009 campaign to secure a place at the Cricket World Cup in 2011, having already won two qualifying tournaments last year. That this stricken, blood-soaked country should be able to field a cricket team at all, let alone one as successful as this, is an astonishing achievement: it is a story of endurance and passion, and of the strange power of sport to transcend politics and war. [...]

If Afghanistan is a nation full of despair, its cricket team is a rare beacon of hope. The players will tell you that they feel their country has been let down on so many levels by the international community. On that green stretch of grass in Argentina today, at least, it’s Afghanistan’s chance to nudge the balance sheet. Pride is the word that the countless fans and well-wishers have used, again and again, in postings on the team’s Facebook page. Says one supporter, Ahmad: “Loins of Afghanistan, proud of you all… I have a wish, that is to show the world that we can beat you.” Or, in the words of the captain, Nowroz Mangal, “Cricket is not just a sport. It is much, much more.”

[Read the entire post]

Adnan Khan, writing on Macleans, says:

A decade ago, if anyone even mentioned Afghan cricket, they would have been the laughingstock of the cricketing community. “Afghans play buzkashi,” cricket snobs around the world might have said derisively, referring to Afghanistan’s national sport in which men on horseback battle to carry a goat carcass over an opposing team’s goal line. “Cricket is too refined a game for them.” What most people didn’t realize at the time was that Afghan refugees living in the impoverished camps of Peshawar on the Pakistani frontier were developing a love for Pakistan’s own national pastime.

Across the border in Afghanistan, the Taliban regime had banned cricket along with any other sport, including buzkashi. Only in Pakistan could Afghan cricketers express their desire to learn the game, as well as showcase their talent for it. Now, since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, Afghan cricketers have risen to the rank of golden boys in the cricketing world, turning heads from Malaysia to Tanzania. Their most recent triumph at the 2009 Division 3 World Cup qualifying tournament in Buenos Aires has propelled them up the world rankings to a level nearly on par with Canada’s own national team.

In the last few years, the Iraq War has grabbed all our attention. But once in a while, articles like these bring back us to what is happening in this landlocked country that has been plagued by violence in the past three decades.  The Afghans are a proud nation, but they remain divided. The influence of a national sport like cricket can help unite them in the way that the 3Cs – Cinema (Bollywood), Cricket and Congress (the Indian National Congress) helped unite the fledgling India after independence.

Qualifying for the World Cup and having their team have an extended run by beating a few giants can improve the country more than the entire NATO force. The armed forces should flood the country with TV’s that can access free satellite coverage of the cricket World Cup. Our best wishes are with these brave players from a land that is struggling to find its identity.

It has been an age since the West Indies won a series against any major Test-playing nation. The decline that they encountered in the 1990s seemed to be irreversible. Even the presence of a giant like Brian Lara did nothing to reverse that trend. But today there is a spark of light that seems to be the end of a very long tunnel.

People will point out that there are many objections to treating this victory in any special way. After all, the West Indians won a solitary Test and that too on the basis on an extraordinary performance from two bowlers who have not replicated that effort. The pitches that the remaining matches were played on were dead and, to use the oft-repeated cliché, bowler’s graveyards. And in two of the matches, the West Indians were 1-2 wickets away from a defeat.

Yes, we can all agree that the West Indians did not win this series by putting up a commanding performance. But when a team is getting whitewashed regularly and losing at home without even being able to put up decent scores, this is a major milestone from the West Indians. This is one step forward, but nevertheless a huge step in gaining respect and self-confidence.

And remember, this is not a one-off performance. The West Indians have been improving their performance in recent times, drawing a Test against Australia (which SA may not be able to do at home, we will see) and holding the Kiwis to a 0-0 draw in the 2-Test series.

What the West Indians have to do now is to take courage from this performance and build up their team to perform against other teams. They may not be able to reach the heights of their illustrious predecessors immediately, but if they understand their limitations and slowly work towards fixing them, they can be one of the strongest teams once again.

Well, it didn’t take too long on the fifth day for the South Africans to bundle the No. 1 ranking and give it back to Australia. The defeat was particularly ironic in that South Africa made the largest innings score in the match, ranking among some of the highest 4th innings scores in history. If they had only made a similar score the first time around, maybe they would have had a chance of saving the match.

Kudos to Australia from coming back from demoralizing Test and one-day series losses to SA at home, and then beating them in their own den with a bunch of debutants who performed brilliantly. This puts the previous South African win in a different light now. Maybe they were just lucky in the first two Tests in Australia. But the defeats helped Australia regroup and reclaim what is definitely theirs. They deserve it.

We, on this blog, have been guilty, like many others, of gloating at Australia’s recent troubles. But I would justify it as hoping for a more level playing ground for teams and greater competitiveness on the world stage. Think of how boring the 2003 and 2007 World Cups were. This is not just about Australia. There is nothing more nauseating than watching two mismatched teams play, which pretty much defines any match played by Australia in the last few years. This post by Philip Oliver misses that point.

For SA, maybe they can try to regain some pride by winning the last match. They still have a lot of work to do in the coming years to prepare for the next encounter with the Aussies. I would say that this series defeat would rankle more than the previous 3-0 whitewashes. Rarely have we seen the crown snatched so cruelly and so quickly from a new monarch.

Australia have batted South Africa out of the match and series after the 3rd day and it would take an innings of Hanif Mohammed proportions from a South African batsman to save the day. Not only does the current form of the Australian bowlers rule that out, the South Africans have to do it with their captain out of the running and their foremost batsman probably still under the mental strain of being hit on the jaw.

What a damb squib this series has turned out to be. I am reminded of the Ashes 5-0 whitewash that followed the 1995 classic series in England. Or how the Australians steamrolled past every team in the last World Cup after losing to England in the tri-series and drubbed 3-0 by New Zealand. When you mess with the Australians, heaven help you. They come back and they come back strong.

The story behind this series has been the injuries that has made the Australian comeback possible, though not in ways that they anticipated. Brett Lee and Stuart Clark, both fearsome bowlers, were out of the running for this series. But their replacements have been more than competent, punishing the SA team. It is embarrassing how deep the Australian talent pool is, and how ashamed the Australian Cricket Board should be to have thrown away the last series by keeping non-performers like Hayden around, when they could have had Hughes. 

For the SA team, injuries have been disasters. Smith’s injuries prevent him from leading the effort against pumped up Australian debutants out to prove themselves. Without Smith’s leadership (and undoubtedly, he has more of that than Ricky Ponting), the South Africans seem lost. Kallis has not been great against Australia, but something is always better than nothing, and although he came back from retired hurt, he didn’t last too long.

The West Indies almost had a disaster today losing Gayle to an injury, but the new-look West Indian team is intense and knows how to last out there. Once again, they crossed 100 overs and look good for another century of overs. If and when they overhaul the England score, they will have completed the biggest upset in recent times, and set up England to look forward to another miserable Ashes against a rejuvenated Australia.

Finally, we cannot ignore Sachin’s injury when he was very close to making the first double-century in ODIs. Given how 300 is an average score nowadays and how regularly teams cross 350, the day is not far away for someone. It would have been sweet justice to have Sachin Tendulkar cross that magic figure, just as he should get his first triple century before he retires. Maybe some other day.