Pakistan are the current T20 world champions. Shahid Afridi, Umar Gul, Mohammed Aamer, Saeed Ajmal and company played some enthralling cricket to claim the trophy last year. Since then, Pakistan have seen another exciting batsman emerge on the horizon: Umar Akmal. Therefore, it defies logic that nobody wanted to buy the 11 Pakistani players in the IPL 3 auction on Tuesday.
 
What's the reason? Let us go through what has been proffered by the men and women involved with IPL. Some team owners have said that the Pakistani players had a problem of availability during the period. That's nonsense. Unlike the top Aussie players, they are available for the entire duration. In fact, West Indian Kemar Roach, a Deccan Chargers buy, will miss the first two games. That's because the Zimbabwe tour of West Indies gets over on March 14 while IPL 3 begins on March 12.  The second Deccan Chargers game will be held on March 14.
 
Another gentleman was heard mouthing that the Pakistanis were not chosen because this was a short auction. There were too few players to be bought, he said. This logic doesn't hold either. The truth is that the owners spent sums as high as $720,000 and $610,000 for the likes of Parnell and Roach, while ignoring Aamer and Gul. Are we saying that the former two are better bowlers than Aamer (who is also emerging as a handy bat) and Gul? Or that the Pakistanis are not even worth $100,000? And have we forgotten that Afridi was the man of the series in the T20 World Cup 2009.
 
One logic being offered is that franchisees were not keen to have Pakistani players because there is an element of uncertainty involving them. Simply put, the relationship between the two countries is already edgy and could always get worse. In that case, the Pakistani players might go back. So why take the trouble?
 
Even this argument is specious. Sure, nobody would want to invest a huge amount in a 'risky' player. But then isn't investing over $750,000 in Keiron Pollard any less risky? What's the guarantee he will succeed? What about investing $750,000-plus in Bond, once a great bowler, now extremely injury prone. Let us not forget he's currently injured too. Besides, he Read more...

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Day Three
I woke this morning to a lot of noise outside. It was either raining very heavily, a tidal wave was coming, or there was a gale coming through. It was the later and that meant a tough day at the office for me. I bowl into the wind, that’s one of the jobs I have made my own. It is something I have prided myself on and if you’ve read a lot of my blogs you’ll know this; if you haven’t; when I was starting out for Wellington I picked the worst job in the team and I made myself good at it. There’s always a vacancy for the worst job in the work force. Doing that job has meant tough days at the office, but it does mean that I’m at the office, and I really do like my office!

I was 2 not out overnight and was looking forward to sticking around with the bat as long as possible. I’ve made a goal for myself every time I go out to bat to face 50 balls. If I do that the partnership should be up around the 50-run mark; even if I’ve only scored 10. Batting with Bondy was going to be fun, we were going to take every run on offer, and I knew he was pretty keen on hitting a couple of big balls! I was pretty happy too that Asif and Gul were not at full pace; they looked pretty tired from the day before.

I nicked a four and got a cover drive away off Gul. I was premeditating a little with that ball. I was guessing it was going to be full, and if it was, I was going to hit it as hard as I could. I had the wind behind me so if I didn’t quite get it, if it was in the air, it should still, hopefully, carry over the straight fielders. It was too wide to hit straight, so I just flung the bat at it, and it came off ok; sweet.

My first bowling spell was eight overs before lunch and then three straight after. Eleven overs of the first 14 to be bowled into that wind that day. It was hard work, and I was going well. I felt good, my rhythm good and my speeds were right up there. I felt like I was really doing my job, I was keeping the runs down so we could attack from the other end, and I was also making life tough for the batters that were in. The ‘into-the-wind’ role is often measured by how many wickets are taken at the other end, and in my first spell there was three; I was Read more...

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Captains meeting done and dusted, massage finished, food done, blog and sleep to go before we head into the first Test of the summer against Pakistan, here in Dunedin.

This is a home series for Pakistan; Dunedin is about as far away from home they could find themselves climatically. I can’t believe I’ve just used the word ‘climatically’. It was very cold when we got here on Saturday, it has warmed up a bit, but when the wind comes in the temperature certainly drops a lot!

We’ve trained the last two days and trained well. It’s a good feeling when you look around the nets and field seeing the boys all going well; hitting the planned areas in the nets, taking our catches (slippers and outfielders) and showing the intensity that we’ll need to bring on game day tomorrow.

In our captains meeting our guest that handed out our Test Caps was Richard (Dick) Taylor, 1974 Commonwealth Games gold medalist in the 10,000 meters. This was a very special one for us. A Kiwi legend that put so much into one event, against a great field, and came up trumps! It was an honour to have him in our presence and have him present our caps.

We’re looking to bat first if blue is the major colour in the sky. The pitch looks like it will be pretty good first up to bat on; although that goes against a lot of first-class matches that are played down here. They quite often are over in less than three days. The last two Tests down here, the Bangers and the Windies, have been flat and pretty slow wickets. We’re expecting much of the same this time too.

Our bowling attack is probably one of the oldest put out on a park. We’ve been called ‘wizened’ and ‘geriatric’ by an ex-player in the media. It’s fair to say that between us (Martin, Bond, Tuffy and I) we’ve had a good laugh at it. We all feel great, sure it doesn’t get any easier, but in terms of fitness, energies, love of the game and desire, we’re as young as anyone would Read more...

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One good reason New Zealand didn’t win the Champions Trophy final?

They avoided having to prance about in those white jackets - awarded to the winning team - which made the Australians look like a bunch of cruise ship crooners who had unexpectedly run aground at Centurion but were ready to break into a verse of Copacabana.

Still, the New Zealanders would have tolerated some dodgy dressing up if they’d been able to pocket the title yesterday. They collected US$1 million ($1.34 million) for their efforts, but money comes and goes; in the overall scheme of things that will amount to loose change for some of them once the divvying up is done; silverware would provide a validation for their efforts, plus the satisfaction of a line in the history book as the first two-time winner of the trophy.

And if they had it would have been a remarkable achievement, given that three first-choice players - Jesse Ryder, Jacob Oram (for bowling, if not, at the moment, batting) and the rejuvenated Daryl Tuffey - were lost to injury during the tournament, and inspirational captain Dan Vettori withdrew on the morning of the final with a hamstring injury.

It turned out to be a game too far for New Zealand, who had overcome a poor start to beat Sri Lanka, England and Pakistan in the space of nine days to improbably reach the final.

New Zealand then needed its best players to stand up yesterday. A bad day, then, for acting captain Brendon McCullum to have a nightmare - 14 balls for a duck and dropping a crucial skier - Ross Taylor to miss out again, and Grant Elliott, who carried New Zealand past Pakistan in the semifinal, to get a good ball from Brett Lee.

Above all, an awful day for Vettori to miss altogether. He is the team’s best bowler Read more…

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There are things New Zealand can do to beat South Africa’s Proteas other than pray for invasions by dogs or raindrops - although I note that last time I checked it was thunderstorms and lightning, very, very frightening over there.

Here’s a quick 10 to consider - feel free to chip away with your own…

* See if we can arrange to play somewhere other than Centurion. Too late for this of course but it would be nice as the Africans have beaten us there all three times we’ve played. Let’s at least pray we have packed our economy rates in our coffins as we’ve conceded 314 and 324 in front of the grassy embankments of the ground formerly known as SuperSport Park.

* Eradicate legside addict and compulsive puller Graeme ‘Le Muppet’ Smith early. Might be worth putting 5 bucks on him to be dismissed bowled too: he is 4th on the all-time list of most likely to get out in that fashion (27% of all his ODI dismissals).

* Not succumb to the skiddy pace of the man who looks like Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden, Dale Steyn. We shouldn’t either - his only return against us in ODIs is 2/50 from 9 overs although he did snare both openers that day back in December 2007.

* Whoooooh big ol’ Jesse Ryder to make his debut against South Africa in one-dayers with an innings to remember, punctuated with limited running between the wickets, cheeky grins, crashing drives, Kluseneresque slogs, and a memorable bandanna.

* Put pressure on AB de Villers - he is the South Africans’ banker in terms of runs. He Read more…

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