Sachin Tendulkar joined an elite group of Test players when he took the field against Bangladesh last month. He became just the fifth person to play Test cricket in four different decades having made his debut as a sixteen-year-old against Pakistan at Karachi in November 1989. Let’s have a look at the players he emulated and how they performed in the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings.

The first man to achieve this most remarkable of feats is also unique in that he participated in Tests in five different decades. That man is Wilfred Rhodes, who started his career as a specialist left-arm spinner in the 1890s who didn’t bat any higher than tenth in any of his first nine Tests. However, by 1912 he had graduated to opening the batting with Jack Hobbs and that pair still holds England’s first wicket record partnership in Ashes Tests with the 323 they added at Melbourne in February 1912. Rhodes also holds England’s record partnership for the tenth wicket too, and by the time he was recalled for his final appearances in 1930 he was back to number 10 playing as a spinner.

Batting-wise, he achieved 646 points and fourth place in December 1913 after he scored 152 against South Africa at Johannesburg in the match that Sydney Barnes took seventeen wickets. However it was with his bowling that he really hit the heights. He spent a total of twelve Tests at the top of the bowling tree between 1904 and 1907 peaking at 823 points. He was unfortunate that despite ending his first-class career just 31 runs short of the 40,000 run / 4,000 wicket double, he never topped the Test all-rounder table thanks to South African Aubrey Faulkner who reached his peak around the same time Rhodes did.

Jack Hobbs made his Test debut in 1908 and ‘The Master’ was only toppled from his lofty perch at the top of the Batting Ratings for one match in the entire period from 1912 to 1928 (by South African Herbie Taylor in 1923). He peaked at 942 at the end of 1912 which is the third-highest points tally ever achieved. His opening partnership with Herbert Sutcliffe was legendary and he spent more than a quarter of his Test career with a Rating of over 900 points. His career records of 61,760 first-class runs with 199 centuries will never be beaten and no-one else has ever scored a Test century at the age of 46. Even when he finally ended his international career Read more…

Administrator Indian Cricket Aubrey Faulkner, Bangladesh, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, England, ICC, Jack Hobbs, Johannesburg, Rhodes, Sachin Tendulkar, Sydney, Sydney Barnes, Test Cricket

In the latest world rankings, released after the Joburg and Hobart Tests, England are without a single batsman in the top 20 for the first time, by my reckoning, since 2002.

Andrew Strauss has slipped seven places over the course of the series with South Africa to No 21 and Kevin Pietersen’s fall has been sharper: down from No 4 at the start of the year to No 26 now.

Pietersen has fallen behind Paul Collingwood (up to No 22 despite not scoring a hundred in his past 11 Tests) and he is only one bad innings away from falling to England’s fourth best batsman with Alastair Cook in 28th place.

Heck, by the end of the Bangladesh tour, Pietersen could even have slipped behind Ian Bell, who is at No 32 and rising.

Four, or even five, batsmen in the top 30 isn’t in itself a bad thing. We’ve had as few as three in recent memory - and no more than six. Sri Lanka and Australia have only four each at the moment. South Africa have five and India have six, but England have two more than New Zealand or Pakistan and one more than the Windies.

That reflects our overall world Test ranking of fifth. The problem is the lack of one or two superstars. Depth is one thing, class is another. There are six different nations represented in the present top ten and England’s finest is 11 places outside that list.

This may be only temporary - Strauss could slip back into the top 20 next week if VVS Laxman (No 17) pays for a poor match against Bangladesh - but it has been a long time since we were without any top 20 representative. Pietersen had been in the top 20 since 2006 and was as high as No 3; before him there was a Trescothick or a Vaughan to fly the flag and, apart from a slump in 2000 and a brief dip in 2002, Graham Thorpe was in the top 20 between 1995 and 2003.

Before him, Mike Atherton and Alec Stewart were regulars in the top ten - and briefly, in 1992, we even had the No 1 and 2 batsmen in the world, in Graham Gooch and Robin Smith. Read more…

Administrator Views Alastair Cook, Alec Stewart, Andrew Strauss, Bangladesh, England, Hobart, Ian Bell, Joburg, Mike Atherton, New Zealand, Pakistan, Paul Collingwood, Pietersen, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Thorpe

South Africa coach Mickey Arthur has yet to be convinced by the controversial Umpire Decision Review System, admitting he has ‘misgivings’ over its application.

The newly-adopted system was at the centre of a handful of flashpoints during England’s tour to South Africa - with TV umpire Daryl Harper criticised for his review decisions and the length of time taken to decide.

And Arthur, an early champion of the review policy, concedes he has yet to be convinced by the UDRS in its current form.

Arthur told the The Wisden Cricketer magazine: “I was always in favour of the UDRS but now that we have seen the system in operation for a decent period of time, I have mixed feelings.

“Incorrect umpiring decisions can affect the results of matches and also players’ careers so I felt that anything that could bring more correct decisions had to be good for the game.

“The system is definitely more good than bad but I do have some misgivings. We have to standardise the use of the UDRS across the world by using all the tools available. If ‘Hot Spot’ and ‘Snicko’ are used in one series but not another then the system is half-baked.”

Arthur has also raised questions over the fallibility of Hawk-Eye, suggesting the predictive system has yet to win over all cricket professionals.

“I’m not 100% convinced about the predictive element of Hawk-Eye and I don’t think many players are either.

“The other issue that needs to be clarified is the amount of time taken to decide whether to call for a review. I understand that in Australia it has been 10 seconds.

“In our series against England we were given 25. I think it’s fair to say that both Read more…

Administrator South Africa, Views Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Daryl Harper, David Richardson, England, Hawk-Eye, ICC, Mickey Arthur, South Africa, UDRS

England’s decision to allow “jaded” captain Andrew Strauss to miss next month’s tour to Bangladesh will leave many fans scratching their heads.

At a time when England are looking to lick the team into shape for their Ashes defence against Australia at the end of the year, it seems odd for the skipper not to be leading his troops from the front. Instead, it will be a “very excited” Alastair Cook who takes charge.

Strauss certainly does need to do something about his form. His team were fortunate to tie the four-match series 1-1 in South Africa after scraping two draws in Centurion and Cape Town by the skin of their teeth, and the captain himself was way below his best with the bat, scoring just 170 runs at an average of 24.28.

But rather than an extended rest, he could consider that the best way for a test batsman to regain his form is to play in a test. And given that Bangladesh’s bowlers are hardly the most fearsome in world cricket, shouldn’t an out-of-touch opener be relishing the opportunity?

Now the tour of South Africa is over, England have a four-week break before they leave for three Twenty20 matches in the Middle East ahead of the trip to Bangladesh.

Isn’t four weeks enough for Strauss to recharge his batteries before getting out there again to try to do what a batsman does best — and bat? Read more…

Administrator England Add new tag, Alastair Cook, Bangladesh, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cape Town, Centurion, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, England, South Africa, Twenty20

In the end, England were not able to produce a third great escape to win the Test series here in South Africa. But had they held on for a couple of extra hours at the Wanderers on Sunday they might have just managed to do it.

Johannesburg was hit by a huge thunderstorm in the afternoon which would have washed out any play after tea - and on Monday the city was hit by heavy rain and dark cloud which may have made conditions impossible on what would have been the scheduled final day.

Whether it would have been right for England to win the series is obviously highly debatable although this morning’s newspapers here in South Africa leave you in little doubt about what they think.

Stuart Hess, writing in the Johannesburg Star, states: “There are those who believe that England deserved to get something out of the Test series. They’d be wrong. The outcome was not a true reflection of the standard these two sides displayed, for South Africa were much the better team. England were resilient throughout, showed a lot of character, but even their own captain recognised they were the inferior team.”

Despite England’s rather disappointing capitulation yesterday morning it has overall been a gripping Test series. As England clung on to nail-biting draws at Centurion and Newlands we got a great picture through your e-mails and texts of how you were nervously listening to Test Match Special.

It was almost too much for TMS new boy Michael Vaughan at Newlands who turned to Jonathan Agnew during the final over to say “I’m sorry Aggers, I just can’t watch this”. Jonathan quickly replied: “I’m sorry you’ve got to. Remember how many times you put us through this sort of thing when you were captain.”

One of my favourite stories of people listening to the series came from Steve in Oxford who e-mailed us when England were taking important wickets one afternoon. He told us: “I am currently invigilating an exam and just jumped for joy at that wicket, disturbed everyone, but I Read more…

Administrator RSA vs ENG Adil Rashid, Alastair Cook, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cape Town, Centurion, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Duncan Fletcher, ECB, England, Geoff Boycott, ICC, Johannesburg, Michael Vaughan, South Africa, Stuart Hess, UAE, UDRS, Wanderers, Yorkshire

How the No3 and No4 batsmen respond to their disappointing series could be a key to the team’s immediate future

That was an extremely impressive performance by South Africa. Not many teams would have been able to respond in such convincing fashion after going 1‑0 down after three Tests and enduring two such frustrating draws along the way. They annihilated England, and Graeme Smith and the management deserve credit for holding the side together as they did.

In this form and on that pitch South Africa’s bowling attack was formidable. That makes it difficult to assess just how poor England’s batting was. Certainly the two low totals should not deflect attention from the team’s other flaws. The decision to leave out Graham Onions was puzzling. His close-to-the-wicket bowling style and ability to move the ball off the seam would have made him perfectly suited to the conditions at the Wanderers. And the bowlers who did play did not perform as well as they should have.

Clearly, though, England have one big concern. That is the form of Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen at No3 and No4. Pietersen has had a tour he will want to forget. Before the series had started, he asked me if I would be able to work with him to help correct some technical issues in his batting. As I am contracted as a consultant to South Africa I had to refuse, but it is clear to me that there are two glitches he should work on.

Firstly, he has been getting too low in his stance at the crease. He is bending his knees too much. In any game played with a moving ball, it is crucial to keep the head and the eyes still. In cricket a batsman needs to keep his gaze as parallel to the ground as possible. Because Pietersen is dropping so low, he has to rise up again as the ball is coming at him. His eyes are travelling in the opposite direction to the trajectory of the delivery, moving up as the ball is coming down. This is affecting his ability to properly judge line and length.

The second problem is that he is moving his feet too early, before the bowler has even bowled. That means he is getting into position and then having to wait for the ball to reach him. There should a rhythm to hitting the ball. That is why I always advocated the use of a Read more…

Administrator England Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, England, Jonathan Trott, Pietersen

INAIA IS NOW the world’s top team in Test cricket. The move to ensure that india plays more Tests is a step in the right direction and can help this format regain its popularity

For cricket’s hardcore devotees, the purists who insist that Test cricket is the real form of the game, September 24, 2007, was no day for celebration.

It was the day Mahendra Singh Dhoni led a team short of full strength — a squad for which top batsmen such as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly had made themselves unavailable — to victory in the ICC World Twenty20 in Johannesburg. The game that we knew, relatively gentle, moderately fashionable and acceptably paced, took on another dimension.

It was not as though fans suddenly woke up to the joys of big hitting to the detriment of all else —after all, the subcontinent has been serving up flat decks in one-day internationals (ODIs) for some time now. It was just that India’s administrators, who till then considered Twenty20 cricket a creation of marketing men in England, wholeheartedly adopted the shortest version.

If sociologist Ashish Nandy’s assertion that cricket was “an Indian game accidentally discovered by the British” was a bit of an exaggeration, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) strove to make this a reality with T20s. The hurried establishment of the Indian Premier League ushered in the era where T20 is king.

One-day cricket became popular in India after the country won the World Cup in 1983. T20 got wide acceptance in 2007. Now it is to be seen whether India rising to top position in Test cricket leads to revival in interest in this variety of the game.

When India beat Sri Lanka 2-0 to become the No. 1 Test team in the world, the men counting the coins in the BCCI’s vault discovered there were things that didn’t figure in a balance sheet but they mattered a lot to the game’s stakeholders.

Suddenly, being the best in the world, rather than briefly occupying top spot thanks to a quirk in the rankings system, became the goal. Reaching the top has forced the board to request the visiting South Africans to convert February’s five-ODI series into one comprising two Read more…

Administrator Indian Cricket Australia, BCCI, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Eden Gardens, England, ICC, Kolkata, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Nagpur, New Zealand, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Test Cricket, Twenty20, VCA, VVS Laxman, Yuvraj Singh

A MAGNIFICENT sporting contest which produced a pulsating climax and edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting drama should be reason to celebrate and to be grateful for the joy that Test cricket provides.

There will be a hundred “what if?” questions asked, and understandably so given S A ’s proximity to a glorious victory, but blame should be avoided at all costs and those inclined towards post-match wisdom must remember that hindsight is the prerogative of the smug.

Those now tempted to question the wisdom and timing of Graeme Smith’s declaration on the fourth evening are profoundly missing the point. The extra runs which took the game away from England and made it “safe” allowed SA to remain on the attack for the entire day.

On two occasions the “extra” close catcher, which would not have been in place in a conventional field, resulted in a wicket, Smith’s own catch at the luxury position of leg gulley to remove Alistair Cook might not have been a possibility had the captain been concerned about saving runs and AB de Villiers might not have been able to make his spectacular grab at third slip to remove Jonathan Trott if England had been in the game.

But the captain did not only get the declaration right, he also managed to maintain an intensity and belief among the team which most teams would have abandoned when Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott batted for more than 43 overs to take England to within 35 overs of safety with seven wickets in hand.

The bowlers were rotated smartly and kept as fresh as possible and the move to bring Paul Harris back at the death for a single over, in which he took a wicket, and then to remove him from the attack was both inspired and brave. Even more inspiration came from Friedel de Wet who proved an old adage that the best people make the best cricketers because they appreciate everything the game has to offer them and take nothing for granted.

De Wet always had raw pace and talent but two back operations and a stuttering career persuaded him to seek an alternative life away from the game. He moved back home to Krugersdorp and started his own nursery business which he has continued to run Read more…

Administrator South Africa AB de Villiers, Alistair Cook, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, England, Graeme Smith, Jonathan Trott, Makhaya Ntini, SA

Not even a surprising decision by a third umpire prepared to ignore the evidence provided by Hot Spot, and so the review system, could take the gloss off a superb chase by the West Indies or a deserved victory by Australia. The West Indians can be proud of their performance. In times past they were granted five-match series but their stocks have fallen and they stand near the bottom of the rankings.

On the face of it, a 2-0 defeat has not significantly improved their reputation but the result conceals a substantial improvement reflected in sharper fielding, improved running between wickets and more committed lower-order batting. Lazy habits had taken hold and the basics had been neglected. Now a healthier culture has developed. The players looked like cricketers and performed with their hearts and heads. As much could be told from Kemar Roach and Gavin Tonge’s audacious and ill-starred last-wicket thrust.

Twice in the series the touring team came back from cricketing death. Further humiliations were feared after their heavy defeat at the Gabba. Instead, the visitors stirred sufficiently to shake up the hosts in Adelaide.

Heavy defeat was likewise expected after the tourists fell 208 behind in the first innings in Perth. Instead, the West Indies skittled Australia for a paltry total and chased with such grit that at one stage their chances of taking the spoils were put at 3-1. In the end they fell short but they went down fighting.

Numerous members of a hitherto mostly anonymous outfit made their marks. Hardly any of them had previously toured Australia. Roach’s sizzling pace, Sulieman Benn’s stilted legs and climbing tweakers, Adrian Barath’s daring strokeplay and bright fielding, Dwayne Bravo’s skills and gusto, Narsingh Deonarine’s pluck, Travis Dowlin’s grit and Denesh Ramdin’s promise all attracted high praise. The West Indies can build around these players. Australia have lost some lustre but remain hard to conquer. These blokes had a good crack at it.

Chris Gayle deserves credit for the awakening of his side. Plain and simple, he saved the series. Beforehand his leadership had been questioned, not least hereabouts. The criticisms Read more…

Administrator Australia, West Indies Adelaide, Adrian Barath, Australia, Blogs.CMDN.com, Brisbane, Cardiff, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Denesh Ramdin, Dwayne Bravo, England, Fidel Edwards, Gabba, Gavin Tonge, India, Jerome Taylor, Marcus North, Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Narsingh Deonarine, New Zealand, Pakistan, Perth, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Ricky Ponting, Simon Katich, South Africa, Sri Lanka, WACA

England have suffered in their trials by video at Centurion but only tweaks are needed to ensure everyone is happy

THE CENTURION Test has been our first experience of the revised Umpire Decision Review System. My initial impression is that the changes made to something that was largely derided earlier in the year on the tour of the West Indies have improved it.

In the Caribbean, the third umpires had a shocker. This was because of the limitations of the system — partly due to poor technology, such as the wrong camera angle being supplied for use in some crucial decisions — and because of misunderstandings as to the exact role that the man in the box plays in guiding the umpires in the middle.

Those problems have now been removed. The most important change has been to allow the third umpire to use the predictive element of Hawk-Eye, whereas previously he was apparently forced to use a ruler as a primitive way of assessing the likely path of the ball in the event of a query over an lbw appeal.

This change emphatically does not mean that there is no debate. At tea yesterday, Sir Ian Botham and I got stuck into a decidedly warm discussion following the upholding of the not-out lbw verdict in favour of AB de Villiers. Hawk-Eye had shown that the delivery from Graham Onions would have clipped the leg stump pretty hard. The crucial point was that it was not within the tolerance levels prescribed by the International Cricket Council (ICC) for such incidents.

So if a review shows that the decision of the man in the middle fell within the margin of error, the orange graphic comes up “Umpire’s Call”, and the original decision stands.

This does present an anomaly. We had a situation in which the umpire had given De Villiers not out, and Hawk-Eye suggested strongly that he should have been given out. However, because of the margin of error, the third umpire could not definitively say the original verdict was wrong, so the on-field umpire’s decision stood, and England had lost their final review. That was the point Sir Ian was most indignant about: that even if one accepted the decision as laid down by the rules of the system, it seemed harsh that England had lost the review when everyone knew Read more…

Administrator England, South Africa Aleem Dar, Amla, Anderson, Caribbean, Centurion, De Villiers, England, Harris, Hawk-Eye, ICC, JP Duminy, Kallis, Prior, South Africa, Steve Davis, Swann, Trott, UDRS