From a distance, it has looked like a dreary month in South Africa. Being confined to barracks by the rain in grim places such as East London, as the England players have lately, once reduced a cricket correspondent of my acquaintance to ripping his telephone out of the wall socket and hurling it into the swimming pool below.

When asked by the concerned local tourist board whether it could be of any help, he was heard to shout, “Yes, you can get me a one-way ticket out of here!”

Not much fun, then, for those following the jamboree, but, for England, at least the opening salvoes of this tour have given them a much-needed boost in one-day cricket.

The gloss of becoming only the second team to win a bilateral series in South Africa was diminished slightly by the unsatisfactory nature of it: the washed-out games in Johannesburg and Durban, which reduced the five-match series to the best of three, and the endless hours to kill between the rain and spaced-out games that, to have been productively spent, would have stretched the imagination of even the most enterprising management team.

With England and one-day cricket, though, any success is worth celebrating.

It is with the management team that we must start, because Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower, captain and team manager respectively, have wrought, arguably, an even bigger improvement in England’s one-day fortunes since the drubbing by Australia than they did with the Test side after the debacle in Jamaica — a performance that led to a great deal of soul-searching and, thereafter, to greater honesty. An Ashes victory was the end game of that change in attitude; a World Cup showing better than any since 1992 now their aim in the limited-overs game.

After the meek post-Ashes surrender against Australia and the subsequent exit from the Champions Trophy, they made two key resolutions: that athleticism is non-negotiable Read more…

Administrator England Alastair Cook, Ashes, Blogs.CMDN.com, Champions Trophy, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, England, James Anderson, Kevin Pietersen, London, Paul Collingwood, Shah, South Africa, World Cup

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…

Administrator Australia Adam Gilchrist, Ajantha Mendis, Andrew Flintoff, Andrew Symonds, Australia, Blogs.CMDN.com, Brett Lee, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, David Warner, Glenn McGrath, IPL, Kevin Pietersen, Matthew Hayden, Moises Henriques, Muttiah Muralitharan, Shane Warne, Shaun Marsh, Steve Smith, Test Cricket

Kevin Pietersen may be many things, but he is not into false flattery. When he says he rates someone, he means it.

And although he likes to make big statements, without the conditionals and weasel words of others, he usually has sound reason for what he says. There is always basis for the bluster.

But some may feel he has taken leave of his senses with the comment in his interview with Richard Hobson this morning:

“I truly believe Jacques Kallis is the greatest cricketer ever.”

Eyebrows duly raised? Let’s leave out all the ancient cricketers who Pietersen may not even have considered - the Bradmans and Barneses and Trumpers and Hobbses. Let’s even leave out players of more recent vintage who have dominated but perhaps slipped the infant Pietersen’s attention when he was running about on the farm in Pietermaritzburg rather than watching TV - the Gavaskars, Richardses, Bothams and Soberses.

But is Kallis even the greatest of those to have played in the past decade? Is he better than Warne or Ponting or Tendulkar or Murali? Where does he sit in relation to Gilchrist or Lara or Kumble? Could Sehwag or Sangakkara or McGrath be rated higher?

Perhaps by posing these questions, it just reveals how blessed we have been to be watching cricket in the past decade. So many greats to choose from. And I’m not saying that Kallis doesn’t deserve his place. He averages 55 in Test cricket, 45+ in ODIs and has 500 international wickets. He is a very very fine player. If only he had an English parent we’d have been in there and poached him…

But for Pietersen to say so definitively that he is the greatest? Well, have your say. And Read more…

Administrator CMDN.com Blogs.CMDN.com, Bothams, Bradmans, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Gavaskars, Gilchrist, Kevin Pietersen, Kumble, Lara, McGrath, Murali, Ponting, Richardses, Sangakkara, Sehwag, Soberses, Tendulkar, Warne

As England’s biggest talent (and ego) arrives in South Africa, Stephen Brenkley gauges the mood of the dressing room, from a side that won the Ashes without him

The Brylcreem Boy flies in today. It will not quite be the return of the conquering hero. Kevin Pietersen will arrive largely unheralded at OR Tambo International airport in Johannesburg – though should his latest sponsors insist upon slicked-down hair it may may well turn a few heads – to be met by a liaison officer and whisked to the England team’s hotel.

There, apart from a visit or two to the gym to enhance his recently reacquired fitness (don’t spoil the hair Kev), he will spend the next day kicking his heels waiting for his colleagues to arrive from their business in Bloemfontein. When team and star player are eventually reunited he may find that things have changed, that in his absence they have moved on.

England still need Pietersen’s runs and his outrageous methods of making them but in the last four months the team have demonstrated that they can do without him. It may be to the ultimate benefit of both parties. The rest of the side now recognise they can truly perform and have a terracotta urn containing the Ashes and a Champions Trophy semi-final place to prove it.

Pietersen himself may feel somewhat unburdened and although he has always paid generous lip service to the team ethos in the past, there has always been the suspicion – because it was based on reality – that if he did not do it they might not. Equally some players are transformed by Pietersen at the other end and Paul Collingwood, for instance, looks a better batsman with Pietersen around.

As the off-spinning all-rounder Graeme Swann put it yesterday: “It’s exciting for us that he’s coming back, and, you never know, he might have to fight for his place.” Swann was being typically jocular but it was a joke imbued with a certain seriousness. The top-of-the-bill act has not been indispensable.

Swann, who has visibly grown into an international cricketer of stature while Pietersen has been away, said: “Kev’s Kev, he’s a massive personality and a massive player. He’s got to Read more…

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Andrew Strauss tells us that the South African origins of himself, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior and Jonathan Trott are “a non-issue” for England’s cricketers. Which is fair enough, but you can bet your last rand that they won’t be treated as a non-issue by the during the forthcoming series of five one-day internationals and four Test matches. If the South Africa captain, Graeme Smith, doesn’t encourage his men to target these perceived turncoats in the England team, then he’s not the chest-thumping patriot I took him to be. And even if he doesn’t – for he does seem to be mellowing somewhat – the home supporters in Durban and Johannesburg will most certainly let the abuse fly at those biltong-flavoured Englishmen, reserving particular vehemence for Pietersen, who is scheduled to join the party next week.

That prospect won’t trouble Pietersen in the slightest, of course. He got fearful stick when he first played one-day cricket with England in South Africa, to which he responded, after scoring his first international century (108 not out from 96 balls at Bloemfontein), by not so much kissing the three lions on his helmet, as snogging them. He finished as Player of the Series, some achievement given that the South Africans had won 4-1. And now he is five years older and wiser, witness the disappearance of that preposterous white stripe from his hair. It has been replaced, moreover, by an eminently sensible Brylcreem bounce, which augurs well, because the last Brylcreem Boy to play cricket in South Africa, in 1948-49, scored what remains the fastest triple century in first-class cricket. Playing for MCC against North-Eastern Transvaal, Denis Compton took one minute over three hours to reach his 300, hitting five sixes and 42 fours. He completed the last third of it in just 37 minutes.

Strictly speaking, Compton didn’t become the first official Brylcreem Boy until 1950, but we won’t let trifling details interfere with the parallels between the man they called Compo and the man they call KP. I was gratified, when I interviewed Pietersen a few weeks ago, to find that he had done his homework on Compton. “I know he was a pretty flamboyant batter, a chinaman bowler, a pretty cool guy,” he said. Cooler, in fact, than Pietersen knew. He’d done some of his homework but not all of it, and had no idea that his Brylcreemed predecessor also played for Read more…

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Until Jonathan Trott plays some more emphatic innings for England, Michael Vaughan’s caustic observations will continue to ring in his ears.

Having revealed that Trott celebrated with the South Africans when they won the Test series in England in 2008, and that “it hit home what English cricket has become like”, Vaughan was having a pop at England’s open-door policy towards overseas opportunists.

He was not the first to cast aspersions on Trott’s patriotism. During Trott’s Test debut at the Oval in August, Ricky Ponting strolled past him and said loudly enough to wicketkeeper Brad Haddin to ensure Trott overheard: “Does he speak like a Pom or a Yarpy?”

Undeterred, Trott contributed a confident 41 in his first Test innings, and that unflappable, Ashes-clinching hundred in his second. What he achieved on such an occasion is a testament to him and the men who chose him and should eclipse any doubts about an expatriate South African’s commitment to the England cause.

We have been here many times before. There was a vivid irony in the 1890s when KS Ranjitsinjhi, born and raised in India but making mountains of runs for Cambridge University and Sussex, was blocked from England selection by the president of the MCC, Lord Harris, because he said only “native-born” players could be chosen.

Harris, a former England captain, was born in Trinidad. Harris was overruled for the next Test, and Ranji exceeded even Trott’s debut, making 62 and 154 not out.

Ranji never got to play a Test against the country of his birth, and neither did Basil D’Oliveira, Tony Greig or Allan Lamb. But you would never have questioned their resolve against Read more…

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South Africa are top of tree but England can knock them down a branch or two

After England won the Ashes in 2005, they had a party to end all parties. Sometime during this, it could be said, any potential legacy of the great triumph was flushed down the toilet.

The following winter the team went to Pakistan, and partly because they considered their work was done, partly because of untimely injuries, they were well beaten. Things were never to be the same, no combination of the 12 players who had prevailed against Australia ever took the field again. This time it will be different. This time, England are aware, Ashes or no Ashes, that they ain’t done nothing yet.

In the immediate aftermath of their victory against Australia in the summer just gone, they might have wished for a less exacting assignment than a tour of South Africa. Not only are South Africa the world’s best side in both one-day and Test cricket but their vastly accomplished captain, Graeme Smith, has propelled the downfall of two recent England captains. Both Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan felt compelled to resign during Test series against Smith’s South Africa.

“Let’s hope,” said the present incumbent, Andrew Strauss, yesterday, the humorous aside doubtless tinged with a hint of worry, “that I’m not resigning in three months’ time. He [Smith] is a very worthy adversary and combines being an excellent captain with being a formidable presence at the top of the order.”

Smith has been captain of South Africa for six years, has led them in 68 Test matches and 121 one-day internationals and personifies their unyieldingly tough yet intermittently vulnerable nature. He has probably been waiting for this moment for four long years since England won the Test series in South Africa, and he will not have been exactly delighted by his side’s Read more…

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It is a tough life being an Associate cricketer. Twenty-five representative teams have played official One Day Internationals, and it is often in just the major tournaments that the smaller nations have the opportunity to pitch themselves against the big boys. In that respect, it is especially hard for those players to make an impact on the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings as the matches they play are so few and far between. However, by virtue of their performances on the highest stage of all, some have managed to make their presence felt in the higher reaches of the tables.

Perhaps the greatest sustained performance by any Associate Member was Kenya’s staggering effort in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003. Buoyed by victories over Canada, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, it reached the semi-finals before it was out-gunned by a Sourav Ganguly-inspired India at Durban. It was in that tournament that opening bowler Martin Suji achieved the highest-ever Rating by an Associate Member player. He ripped out the Zimbabwean top order at Bloemfontein on his way to figures of 3-19 in eight overs to set up a convincing seven-wicket triumph. By doing so, he lifted his bowling rating to 646 – good enough for twelfth place overall in a list headed by Shaun Pollock.

Suji’s team-mate Peter Ongondo is the only other Associate player to have reached the lofty heights of 600 points with either bat or ball. In October 2007, he sneaked up to 610 after taking 3-16 and 1-10 in consecutive victories against Bermuda in Nairobi. He is still hovering around the 500-point mark with young left-arm spinner Hiren Varaiya close behind him who could possibly be the man to challenge Suji’s long-standing record. Another one to watch is Kyle McCallan of Ireland who is also currently in the top fifty with the ball.

Moving to the batsmen, one player currently stands head and shoulders above the rest and that is the Netherland’s Ryan ten Doeschate. He reached 1,000 runs in One Day Read more…

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» Inaugural match thrills 50,000 crowd in Bangalore
» Duminy’s unbeaten 99 stuns Royal Challengers

There were 30,000 inside the Estádio Nacional in Lisbon on September 4, 1955, when Sporting drew 3-3 with Partizan Belgrade. There was no glitzy opening ceremony or a global TV audience of more than half a billion when the European Cup got under way, but more than half a century on, Lalit Modi hopes that the Champions League Twenty20 will revolutionise cricket in the same way that Gabriel Hanot’s brainchild did club football.

Close to 50,000 watched the opening game at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore, and after kung-fu-fighting Shaolin monks, a laser show and Shaggy of In The Summertime fame had primed the crowd, the hometown Royal Challengers, without Kevin Pietersen, were ambushed by a dazzling unbeaten 99 from JP Duminy, the hero of last year’s MCG Test. Henry Davids, Justin Ontong and Ryan Canning kept the strike ticking over for the Cape Cobras, and Duminy did the rest as the Royal Challengers’ slow-bowling duo of Anil Kumble and Roelof van der Merwe were taken for 69 in eight overs. Kumble dropped a tough caught-and-bowled chance when he had 74, but otherwise, it was an accomplished innings.

The Royal Challengers’ innings was built around half-centuries from Robin Uthappa and New Zealand’s Ross Taylor. Charl Langeveldt had given the visitors the perfect start, having Jacques Kallis caught behind, but with catches going down in the murky atmosphere and lofted hits falling into gaps, Uthappa and Rahul Dravid wrested the initiative.

Langeveldt went off with a jarred shoulder after dropping a catch and in the final stages, his team-mates had no answer to Taylor’s aggression. Monde Zondeki and Rory Kleinveldt bowled far too many full tosses and Taylor (53 off 24 balls) blazed away for 33 in the last two Read more…

Administrator Champions League T20 Anil Kumble, Bangalore, Blogs.CMDN.com, Champions League, Charl Langeveldt, Chinnaswamy Stadium, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Deccan Chargers, Duminy, Henry Davids, Herschelle Gibbs, IPL, Justin Ontong, Kevin Pietersen, MCG, New Zealand, Praveen Kumar, Ross Taylor, Royal Challengers, Ryan Canning, van der Merwe

Fashions in cricket come and go. Today’s cool switch-hitting is tomorrow’s reckless gamble. This week’s doosra is next week’s run-in with the beak for chucking. But one thing has remained constant: the Champions Trophy is a waste of time and effort, a meaningless tournament without context or tradition.

In all its manifestations it has been a failure from its inception in Dacca in 1998 via Nairobi, Sri Lanka, England and India. Perhaps its lowest point was in Sri Lanka when two finals were played on successive days, in both of which only one completed innings was possible. Put them together and there might have been a match. But that was not in the ICC regulations and Sri Lanka had batted on both days, so it was not possible. The upshot was joint champions, which gave the lie to the very idea of a Champions Trophy.

Somehow – well, actually because of lucrative television deals and, crucially, audiences who keep coming back for more – it has survived. In South Africa in the next fortnight it has a real opportunity to answer the naysayers.

The format has changed so that only the world’s leading eight teams are competing and they are playing for prize-money of $4m (£2.5m), with $2m going to the winners. It is short and sharp and it could be a shock.

The world’s best cricketers, barring a few absentees such as the injured Virender Sehwag and Kevin Pietersen, are present in all their glory. Some, mainly from England and Read more…

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