Economics and politics dominated an auction that left a pair of veterans counting their blessings

If you’re Mohammad Kaif, a lottery ticket would be a smart move, while Damien Martyn could do worse than contemplate the tables at Bellagio or Caesar’s Palace. Neither man has played international cricket for more than three years, and Kaif’s performances in the inaugural Indian Premier League – he didn’t even make the Rajasthan Royals squad for the second season in South Africa – were as ordinary as Martyn’s brief flirtation with the nearly forgotten Indian Cricket League.

The Royals, captained and coached by Shane Warne, bought out Kaif’s $675,000 (£412,000) contract before the auction to free up the space that they then filled with the classy 38-year-old batsman who was once Warne’s brother in baggy-green arms. If that raised eyebrows, there was bemusement when Kings XI Punjab, who have appointed Kumar Sangakkara as captain in place of Yuvraj Singh, splashed out $250,000 for Kaif, whose batting is usually conspicuously devoid of the power and pizzazz associated with Twenty20 cricket.

Many of the headlines in England on Wednesday will focus on the lack of interest in Graeme Swann, but the Twitter-friendly off-spinner’s IPL tale is far from over. The auction represents only the most high-profile route into the league. There are other ways. Both the Mumbai Indians and the Chennai Super Kings have injured players that they can replace before the action begins on 12 March. In Mumbai’s case, they will have only the $100,000 that they spent on Kyle Mills last season, but Chennai have a whopping $1.55 million to draw on, having seen Andrew Flintoff go under the surgeon’s knife yet again. Don’t be surprised to see Swann or Doug Bollinger, another who attracted no interest, fielding a few calls from agents over the coming days.

With the auction taking place in Mumbai, a city subjected to the worst terror attacks ever seen in India, there was little doubt that the story of the day was the shunning of the 11 Pakistan players on the auction list. When Richard Madley, who usually helps sell antiques and Read more…

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Australia’s best young cricketers ought to think long and hard before rushing down IPL’s yellow brick road. Naturally it is tempting go for the quick buck, or rather a quick million. Cricket is a blue-collar game hereabouts, and lots of the younger fellows are battlers. Sign on the dotted line, and overnight they can buy a house or a fancy car. Most of them, too, have agents whose only source of income is to obtain IPL contracts or lucrative sponsorship deals for their charges. Unsurprisingly, the youngsters are agog at the idea of mixing with the giants of the game. They can leap from grade cricket to batting with Sachin Tendulkar. Of course it is tempting.

That is the problem.

But the players ought to beware.

Already the lights are flashing.

Numerous IPL players have returned with dreadful injuries, rotten form or soft brains. Playing a few 20-over games might not seem much of a commitment, but bad habits can easily set in. It’s only possible to attend so many parties and emerge intact. A lot of damage can be done in that period. Although other factors were involved, Andrew Symonds, Brett Lee, Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff and Muttiah Muralitharan have all struggled to recover from their first IPL campaign. Nor has much been seen of bright sparks such as Ajantha Mendis or Shaun Marsh. For that matter Ishant Sharma and Ravi Bopara have gone backwards. India cannot find any youngsters to challenge its ageing champions. None of them have progressed. Some have become front-foot swipers.

Success ought not to come too soon or too easily.

IPL suits older players on the way out and neglected cricketers anxious to make a mark and a dollar.

Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Matthew Hayden and company are perfect fits - great cricketers unable or unwilling to spend days in the field or bowl long spells but Read more…

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…what posts would they take in the British government?

Prime Minister – Michael Vaughan
Sorry Strauss. Vaughan has a more Blairite public face with Yorkshire steel propping up his policies. Universally respected; peace envoy to the middle east already a certainty.

Deputy Prime Minister – Andrew Strauss
No Blair/Brown ego wars here. Strauss would never turn the job down if offered, but second in command suits his style.

Chancellor of the Exchequer – Matthew Hoggard
We need someone thrifty from Yorkshire to keep a tab on taxes and mortgage rates. Yearly budget speech guaranteed entertainment.

Secretary of State for Defence – Mike Atherton
Rock solid. Nothing’s getting past that. Get out of my sight, outswinging terrorists; this is Lancashire’s finest.

Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, First Secretary and Lord President of the Council – Alastair Cook
Mandyesque smarminess required. Mandyesque smarminess found. God-like aspirations will fall on deaf ears, as will all his policies.

Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs – David Lloyd
Everyone would love him.

Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor – Bob Willis
All derelict houses to be turned into prisons. Anyone not capable of an upright seam sentenced to five years labour making cricket balls. All umpires to spend seven months in solitary confinement on evidence of a “truly shocking” decision being made.

Secretary of State for Health – Andrew Flintoff
Just one of his roles. Expected to offer cheerful assistance to PM on most matters, and Read more…

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James Anderson is “gutted” not to be Andrew Strauss’s vice-captain for England’s tour to Australia this winter. The reason he was not given the responsibility, apparently, is because he is a bowler and from the North.

I suspect that Anderson was speaking with a wry smile, rather than a chip on his shoulder, but he has a point, although it is the bowler bit, rather than coming from the North, that really counts against him.

England have had only three captains in the past 60 years who were fast bowlers. Andrew Flintoff and Ian Botham found the extra responsibility too much. Only Bob Willis (seven wins and six draws in 18 Tests) had much joy. You then have to go back to Gubby Allen to find a fast bowler who captained England - and he lost the 1936 Ashes after leading 2-0. Fast bowlers simply do not make good England captains.

The world was, of course, a happier place when England’s captains were all batsmen and gentlemen amateurs from the Home Counties who could rock up on the morning of a Test after a quick hour’s work shuffling their share portfolios in the City, introduce themselves to the collection of miners who had been dragged away from the pitface to form the England bowling attack and order them into battle.

We may not have won that often, but that was hardly as important as having the right sort of chap to introduce the players to the King during the luncheon interval. You could hardly trust a bowler - especially a northern one - with that sort of responsibility.

The “anti-Northern” argument is less credible now. Sixty-two of England’s past 92 Tests were led by men from the North (Vaughan and Flintoff). Mike Atherton had 54 Tests in charge from 1993-2001. Chuck in Paul Collingwood and his 25 ODIs as captain and the North has Read more…

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A spell in South Africa should make Monty Panesar a more assertive – and therefore better – cricketer

All is very much not well in the cricket world of Monty Panesar. His top-dog England place has gone for now, and with the advent of Adil Rashid so has the touring that has been his for the last four winters. He has endured a miserable season in which his confidence has bled dry, and there are stories, overheard and recounted by Afrikaans-speaking members of the opposition, of a lack of respect from overseas players at his county which he must have sensed. Monty would have been aware of an atmosphere but oblivious to the detail. Northants will be considering whether they can afford his wages now his central contract has gone but in any case he needs to get away from such a pernicious, disrespectful atmosphere as soon as he can. He is at a low ebb.

On Sunday, though, Panesar is flying to Johannesburg where he will spend the winter playing for the Highveld Lions as their overseas player (and perhaps learning Afrikaans) and those who know him well believe it will be the making of him in his attempt to climb once more cricket’s greasy pole of fortune. The change of scenery will do him good. There will, it is reasoned, be a responsibility on him, beyond that which is normally associated with an international spinner, on which he may thrive. He will, in a sense, be required to be a leader.

No one should regard the bitter pill of rejection now as the end of Panesar as an international cricketer. When first selected for England four years ago, in Nagpur, he was already an extremely good bowler, and he remains no less than that. In fact it is easy to lose sight of that fact until his statistics are perused. He has 126 wickets from 39 Tests, which places him in the top 10 of England spinners, those above having all played more matches. In a side that generally has been based around pace, he has an average of 3.23 wickets per match, a rate exceeded from that top 10 by only Derek Underwood, Jim Laker, Tony Lock and Hedley Verity, all of whom bowled in eras when uncovered pitches offered helpful conditions more frequently than now. Read more…

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Andrew Flintoff admits he got found out at last year’s IPL but is looking forward to putting that right next spring

Andrew Flintoff, with an expert dip and hoist of his crutches, slips into a discreet corner of a restaurant on the outskirts of Manchester. He grins ruefully as he shimmies along to the far edge of the plush cubicle where he can stretch out his damaged leg and slide his crutches under the table.

“Sorry about all that,” Flintoff says, shrugging at the sheer palaver his simplest movement entails these days. “The frustrating thing is that I don’t even feel injured. I’m not in pain but the surgeon warned me it’s going to be a test of patience – and patience is not something I’ve got in abundance.”

In late August, just days after he helped England to regain the Ashes with a series of performances lurching from fiery glory to determined limping, Flintoff underwent major surgery on his chronically injured right knee. The surgeon induced two micro-fractures to a bone, in an attempt to stimulate tissue growth and replace worn cartilage, so that he can return to limited‑overs cricket next summer.

“The rehab is very slow,” Flintoff explains. “I’m on the crutches until November and once the knee is scanned, we’ll see if it’s beginning to work. It helps that the surgeon says the chances of me coming back are high. Obviously there is always the odd case where it doesn’t work but I did my own research.

“You Google the operation and get all these examples. A lot of basketball players have had it and they’re much bigger and heavier and they jump higher than me. And they’ve made full Read more…

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THE new buzz word in cricket is ”freelance”. It first appeared when Andrew Flintoff, having retired from Test cricket at the end of the Ashes series, was offered a reduced contract by the England and Wales Cricket Board to play shorter forms. He rejected it, preferring to work as a hired gun in proliferating and lucrative Twenty20 leagues around the world. He became, it was said, the game’s first freelancer.

Andrew Symonds did not have a contract to accept or reject; Cricket Australia tore it up. It freed him to play for as many as five teams at a time around the world, without the irritating inconvenience of team meetings and a code of behaviour. It also gave him control, for marketing purposes, of his own image, which seemingly consists of getting drunk and belligerent a lot, but always remembering to clean his teeth. In a car wash. He became a freelancer.

Now Dwayne Bravo, variously of the West Indies, Kent, Mumbai Indians, Trinidad & Tobago and fleetingly this summer of Victoria, wants to see the money. He prefaced his plea with the usual caveat, as empty as the buffoon Brendan Fevola’s serial pledges to reform, about his undying love for Test cricket, At least Chris Gayle was not so two-faced.

Bravo said he hoped his record would speak for itself. Presently, it tells of an average of 32 with the bat, 40 with the ball and latterly a part in a boycott, so decimating the once mighty Windies that they were thrashed by Bangladesh. Bravo, having not played much for the West Indies latterly, wants to be free not to play much for the West Indies. He wants to be a freelancer.

Player agents say many more cricketers will take the money and run, or hobble (Flintoff), stumble (Symonds) or swagger (Bravo). They say authorities have only themselves to blame Read more…

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Jonty Rhodes has an interesting suggestion for livening up the middle overs in ODI cricket.

“All the Power Play overs, including the one by the batting side, should be taken by the 31st over. They could bring in this rule. This way you could have plenty of action between overs 20 and 30. And the last 20 overs are bound to be interesting in any case,” the former South African cricketer told The Hindu.

The 40-year Rhodes was an inspirational cricketer who revolutionised fielding during his time. He often ruled at point, making blinding saves and coming up with sensational catches.

Rhodes will always be remembered for his fielding but has a useful batting record in both Tests – he has 2532 runs in 52 matches at 35.66 – and the ODIs – the right-hander has notched up 5935 runs in 245 matches at 35.11.

He took 34 catches in Tests and 105, in the ODIs. Rhodes also saved countless runs with his anticipation, reflexes and astonishing flexibility.

Rhodes welcomes Twenty20 cricket and says cricket’s latest version has brought new fans to the game. “A lot of families are coming to watch the game which is good. The stands are getting filled up in South Africa,” he says.

He adds, “Twenty has made the game faster. The batsmen are playing a lot more strokes and the standard of fielding has gone up.”

However, Test cricket remains the foremost form of the game for Rhodes. “You should not tamper with the rules for Tests. They should stay as they are. You ask any of the cricketers Read more…

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Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower have plenty to think about ahead of the Champions Trophy in South Africa

There are perils in becoming a freelance. It is always possible that no one will want to offer any work, but this weekend cricket’s most prominent freelancer and first tax exile must be sitting pretty somewhere in Dubai.

Andrew Flintoff knows that once he can walk again, he will stroll right back into the England one-day side, always assuming that there is not a better offer on the table to play elsewhere. England have been so insipid in the past fortnight that Flintoff would be welcomed back with open arms if only because his presence in the dressing room appears to promote confidence.

Just remember how dire England were throughout the Headingley Test in Flintoff’s absence. Their performances in six one-day internationals have been no better, the sole consolation for the two Andrews, Strauss and Flower, being that the team’s ineptitude does not seem to matter so much. This summer will still be remembered for England’s Ashes victory rather than their NatWest humiliation.

Even so it has been a degenerating mess. Australia have been invigorated by this tournament, seizing it as a chance to regain some pride after the Ashes defeat and to prepare for the Champions Trophy, which begins in South Africa on Tuesday. The England players are either exhausted (Paul Collingwood, James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Matt Prior) or incompetent (the rest with the honourable exception of Strauss).

There has been a major turnover in personnel since that joyous afternoon at The Oval Read more…

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Musicians will know that the initials FF mean fortissimo. That’s play as loud as you can. Give it some welly. In cricket, the initials FF also signify something at full blast that makes too much of a din at times, but can stir the blood and lift the heart like no other.

And here he comes, propelling himself at speed on crutches into the foyer of Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach Hotel. Freddie Flintoff, the fastest invalid in the West.

There is an audible fluttering among the veiled ladies. All eyes are fixed upon the strawberry-blond giant. Imagine a marauding Viking’s frame topped with a sweet, schoolboy face, the kind that used to be jammed under a grey flannel cap, and you get the picture.

I am worried about shaking Flintoff’s hand in case he falls off the crutches. Noting my hesitation, he sticks out a palm the size of a frying pan: ‘Go on, you’re all right. I’m good on these. I’ve had enough practice.’

He certainly has. This is his eighth operation. England’s best all-rounder has a dicky ankle and a crocked knee. Flintoff went in for surgery at the end of August, just 24 hours after England regained the Ashes at the Oval.

At that match, Fred was in a seriously bad way. The painkillers had admitted defeat. The injections in his backside had little effect. He had no business standing, let Read more…

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