Tag Archives: Test cricket

How Many Tests Have You Played?

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I can understand when writers praise Test cricket in the highest terms. It, after all, remains the purest form of cricket. A closely fought Test match with two balanced teams with ups and downs with a classic denouement is the aspiration of every cricket spectator. But this does not mean that every other form of cricket is terrible, as some cricket fans are fond of writing.

If you look at how cricket is actually played in most parts of the world, it is totally unlike Test cricket. Nobody plays a match 5 days in a row with 90 overs per day. Many people don’t even play with a hard cricket ball, pads, stumps, a proper cricket pitch or a large enough ground. The essential elements of most cricket played in the world are:

  • A little room to throw a ball from the bowler to the batsman. Which means, you can also play cricket indoors in your bedroom (as long as your parents don’t know)!
  • A “ball”. Size and material does not matter. Heck, you could even play cricket with a table tennis ball.
  • A “bat”. You don’t need a manufactured bat. A broomstick will do just fine. Or even just use your arm and palms!
  • Stumps. Wait – you don’t need that. 3-4 shoe boxes stacked on top of each other is okay. Or sometimes you can do without that too.

What if you don’t even have that? Or it is raining outside? Well, don’t just sit there. Play dice cricket. Or some book cricket!

However there is something to be said about playing cricket according to the rules of the game. But even when you look there, the time dimension of proper cricket is still not always that of Test cricket. There is a stunning lot of limited overs cricket being played even as it lacks some of the “innovations” brought by the IPL.

Fundamentally, playing and viewing cricket is about fun. Different forms of cricket offer different flavors of enjoyment. If you don’t like a particular form of cricket, that is fine. Nobody is forcing you. Just enjoy the cricket you like and let the others enjoy what they like.

Quiz Question for the Day

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It is kind of a trick question:

Which English cricketer has played at every position other than opener in Tests?

Seems that the answer is Jimmy Anderson. Since he is usually the night watchman for the England team, he comes in at odd positions for a player with his level of batting skills. Usually seems to have done a good job holding out for the necessary 5-10 overs with a highest score of 34 at #4. I also remember Anderson maintaining a record of not making a duck for several innings until he finally got out recently (in last couple of years or so).

 

Duncan Fletcher Presiding Over India’s Demise?

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Dileep Premachandran has some good points to make here:

How do you succeed someone who could walk on water? That might be a question that Duncan Fletcher asks himself on dark nights as India lurch from one mishap to another on this tour. Gary Kirsten left the coaching job at the perfect time – with India ranked No.1 in the Test arena and 50-over World Cup winners. The only way was down, especially with the nucleus of the batting the wrong side of 30 and the bowling so reliant on an injury-prone individual who turns 33 in October.

Captains also have the same problem. As I have written several times, Ricky Ponting’s tragedy is that he happened to be the captain at a time of declining Australian fortunes and will forever be remembered as the captain that lost the Ashes thrice.

But is India in such dire straits? After all, these gloomy predictions are being made in the context of India’s failures in the first two Tests against England. But it needs to be remembered that England are not a poor Test side! Under Andrew Strauss, they have had 19 wins to 5 losses (compared to 15/5 for Dhoni) with two of those series against Australia home and away, and an away series against South Africa. This was a tough tour. People forgot that.

I think England’s sustained failures in limited overs cricket is partly to blame for this lack of respect for the Test side. While their matches in the World Cup were entertaining, no one in the right minds thought that England could be winners and rightly so, as they crashed out in the Quarter-finals. Whereas an opposition like Australia or South Africa is strong in all 3 formats, England’s pushover status in limited overs makes a Test series against them seem easier than it actually is.

As for India, yes, Laxman, Dravid and Tendulkar are on their way out. But all three are in good form and they are (for the most part) playing only in Tests. So prediction – I am assuming that they will be there at least until early to mid-2013 when India hosts Australia for four Tests. Tendulkar turns 40 (forty, gulp!) in April – a good time to call it quits and against his best opponent? Laxman too, even though he is two years younger.

What about replacements? A possible batting order would be Sehwag, Gambhir, Virat Kohli, [somebody], Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina and Dhoni. The [somebody] is the person who will replace Tendulkar (please God, not Rohit Sharma!) and I am not sure who that can be in the middle order. But apart from that, it is a competent batting lineup and should deliver good results against most teams. The idea, of course, should be to build a better base in the meantime.

Zimbabwe’s Winning Return to Test Cricket

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OK, I didn’t expect this. Zimbabwe had an almost flawless win against Bangladesh in the first match on their return to Test cricket. They had enough confidence in themselves to offer Bangladesh a sporting declaration and keep their heads when their opposition seemed to made a good start to the chase. Of course, there will be tough opposition in the future for Zimbabwe, but this is a remarkable comeback.

As for Bangladesh, this was a pitiful display of cricketing skills and more shame to them for mouthing off about the “ordinary” bowling of Zimbabwe at the end of the fourth day. It is amazing how even after a decade of Test cricket, Bangladesh cannot perform at all, let alone consistently. 3 wins in all that time.

I favor expanding Test cricket to countries like Ireland, not restricting it by taking it away from non-performing countries. But the example of Bangladesh continues to be a big problem for Tests, including statistical performances of teams and players. The solution is probably to have a group structure for Tests, where say, under-performing teams are relegated to playing until they can qualify for Tests against top tier teams. Or maybe have multiple groups where teams transition in and out. Teams should play more against their nearer competition than against someone much better or much worse than them.

The Future Tours Programme doesn’t quite work well with the problem of vast differences in skills. Right now, the ICC has things mapped out till 2020!!! Does anyone think that the current pecking order in world rankings will stay the same over the next nine years? I don’t think even old East European communist countries had 10 year plans! Even convenience doesn’t serve as an excuse for planning 10 years in advance. Of course, these plans will surely change, but still…

Make Ireland a Test Team

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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!

Pakistan in Sri Lanka Schedule

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While the Ashes are going on, we will have a fight between two subcontinent teams. Pakistan will be taking on Sri Lanka in their den, a difficult proposition always. Kumar Sangakkara will be leading the team at home for the first time. Mohammad Yousuf is back, though will he mark a return to his world-record-breaking form? This will also be the first series after the Sri Lankan government defeat of the LTTE. Hopefully, some LTTE remnants do not cause any violence during this period.

Test Schedule

1st Test: July 4 to July 8
2nd Test: July 12 to July 16
3rd Test: July 20 to July 24

One-Day Series

1st ODI: July 30
2nd ODI: August 1
3rd ODI: August 3
4th ODI: August 7
5th ODI: August 9

One-Off Twenty20 Match

August 12

Promises to be an engrossing affair.

England Start Ashes Preparations in Style

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England beat the West Indies at Lord’s by 10 wickets today. With the Ashes barely two months away, this is a huge boost to the morale of the team. In many ways, this win has helped England preparations in a big way:

  1. Ravi Bopara’s century stops England, at least for now, from tinkering with the notion of bringing the inconsistent Bell and out-of-form Vaughan back at No. 3.
  2. The victory makes them less nostalgic for Vaughan’s captaincy. If Strauss and Flower can form a good duo together, England can “exorcise” the happy memories of Ashes 2005.
  3. A great find in Graham Onions. Swann’s great form and the rest of the bowling were not too bad either.

A few asterisks:

  1. West Indies dropped quite a few. England’s total would perhaps not been so imposing.
  2. There were quite a few failures in the batting lineup such as Pietersen and Collingwood. They will have to shape up.
  3. Tim Bresnan? A quiet debut. England need to see more of him in action.
  4. The partnership between Nash and Ramdin. Remember that South Africa lost the home series against Australia purely because they could not get the lower order (especially Johnson) out. Good teams learn to break partnerships and clean up the tail.

As for the West Indies, a shoddy performance, but they deserved what they got with their captain missing until a few days before the first Test. The only silver lining is that they have two more days to mull over things before they start the next Test. Their bowling was not too bad. But the fielding let them down and a fragile batting ended their hopes.

Test-Playing Cricket Countries on a Map

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Here are the Test nations plotted on a world map. I have skipped a few of the smaller nations which make up the West Indies, but that doesn’t make a difference.

Cricket Test-Playing Nations

It doesn’t look like a lot, but in terms of population, it is pretty huge. 1.6 billion people live in Test-playing nations – a quarter of the world population. After football (soccer), cricket is the most popular sport in the world. It remains to be seen if the growing popularity of Twenty20 will increase the attraction to other populations. If China and the United States accept cricket as their main sport, it will indeed be the most popular in the world.

So Much for a New World Order

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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.

Will SA Choke Again?

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As the history of SA’s World Cup difficulties show, they come ever so near the prize and then self-destruct. After managing to defeat Australia at home, all they had to do was hold their nerve against an inexperienced new Australian team at home and lay claim to the No. 1 title without anybody objecting. At the end of the 2nd day in the second Test against the Australians, they are already looking at a demoralizing defeat (Test and series), their captain out for several weeks and perhaps even a whitewash.

What a change from just a few weeks back when South Africa had beat Australia in the second Test to clinch the away series and then beat them again in the one-day series. Even without their captain, Graeme Smith, they won the ODI series with a match to spare. Australia, on the other hand, seemed beaten down and failed to even beat the New Zealand team in the following one-day series.

The key to Australia’s comeback has been the excellent performance of their debutants and Mitchell Johnson. Even without his bat talking in this match, he has made an impact, striking fear into the hearts of the South African batsman, like we have not seen in some time. Today has been a ferocious advertisement for hostile fast bowling.

South Africa’s hopes lie in some amazing heroics by Jean-Paul Duminy and Dale Steyn. They have done it before, but history rarely repeats itself and not so soon either. With only 10 batsman in the team after Smith’s injury, they would first have to get very close to Australia, then bowl them out for nothing and then not do the same as the Australian batsmen. Tall order. Possible, but improbable. If it happens, that would be one of the greatest comebacks in Test cricket.