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…

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ALLAN Border’s contribution to Australian cricket is almost impossible to measure.

Such is his nature that Allan Border does not notice let alone complain that the true worth of his service to Australian cricket is often unrecognised, unwritten and undiscussed.

So to this end it is hardly surprising that the 25th anniversary of his first appearance as his country’s 38th captain went unnoticed this week.

This is not acceptable. Attention should always be drawn to December 7, 1984 when Border succeeded his mate Kim Hughes as skipper against the West Indies in Adelaide.

It is a date of the utmost significance for it marks the beginning of what is best termed “the age of stability” in Australian cricket.

It is much too easy following the heady successes of the past 20 years under Border, Mark Taylor, Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist to ignore, even forget, the confusion, controversy and tensions which so characterised Australian cricket in 1984.

Despite some initial misgivings and an anxious and sometimes grumpy first two years in office Border prospered to become a very fine captain and led Australia on a record 93 occasions over the next nine years and three months.

Aside from his enormous contributions as one of the greatest and most courageous batsmen of any era (11,174 runs at 50.56 with 27 hundreds and 63 fifties) his legacy was the provision of certainty, unity and a collective confidence at a time of great uncertainty — a bequest from which Australian cricket in general and Ponting and his men in particular continue to benefit.

Indeed, it is remarkable that Australia has had just four captains in 25 years and there is no doubt that the many successes of this period have been a direct consequence of the impressive stability achieved and maintained at just about every level of Australian cricket. There is no Read more…

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When called for Sreesanth to be banned for his beamer at Kevin Pietersen during the Trent Bridge Test of 2007 - an incident that KP dramatically described as one that might “take my head off” - it was just another incident in the life of a bowler whose professional conduct played second fiddle to his rancid emotions.

Since no one has ever been proven to deliberately bowl a head high full toss, the benefit of the doubt was given. Sreesanth ended up losing half his match fee for the lesser offence of a shoulder barge on Michael Vaughan. This seemed to irk Athers no end.

However, Sreesanth merely took the role of aggressor to a more vocal, and some might say, stupid level. Before the subsequent tour of Australia, he announced: “I love the spotlight. The Aussies should be worried I am coming. Sreesanth’s way is to be aggressive. Sreesanth will always remain Sreesanth.” Quite. The Aussies weren’t that worried. He didn’t play a Test match and the worst flak they received from him was as 12th man during the fourth ODI when he managed to insult virtually every outgoing Australian batsman with a few choice words.

Mickey Arthur certainly concurred with the man himself during the South Africa tour in 2008. “Sreesanth was just Sreesanth. Perhaps our players lost a lot of respect for him on the tour. He constantly abused AB de Villiers and it was very personal. But considering the general spirit in which the series was played, we didn’t feel strongly enough to complain.” This suggested a man out of step with his own team let alone the opposition.

The Kerala-born bowler tried meditation without too much joy, although he promised to find a balance between what was “really good and really bad”. The final straw came when his own team mate Harbhajan slapped him during the IPL match between Mumbai and Punjab in April 2008. Even Umpire Saheba waded in with a national putdown: “Sreesanth wasn’t a favourite in the India dressing room. He is one of India’s main bowlers, and yet, he is not doing anything to Read more…

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Memo to Mickey Arthur and Graeme Smith: save your breath. If England were being captained on their tour of South Africa by, I dunno, Graeme Hick in one of his less assertive moods, the constant mind games – and I only narrowly avoided inverted commas – might be worth it. But Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower have come through a lot together in a short space of time. As Michael Vaughan once said, it’s all duck off a water’s back.

Journalists are sometimes accused of spinning a story: emphasising those aspects which present it in, well, the most presentable light. The players and coaches usually roll their eyes; sometimes they object; but very occasionally, when it suits them, they join in. And that is precisely what Arthur and Smith have been doing ever since England landed in South Africa – and even before they got there.

First there was the contrived brouhaha over Strauss’s so-called refusal to allow Smith a runner for cramp during the Champions Trophy. Smith blamed Strauss; Strauss passed the buck to the umpires; the truth was left dangling somewhere in the middle.

Then Arthur questioned the absence of Steve Harmison from the Test squad. OK, so he was answering a direct question, and I appreciated the honest answer he gave me. But the intended message was clear: you’ve made a big mistake.

Since then Arthur – an affable guy, as it happens – has joked about the lack of Englishmen in the England team, and expressed his mock-incredulity at the decision to give Adil Rashid but a single over in the second Twenty20 international at Centurion on Sunday. If you recall Smith’s baiting of Vaughan during the 2004-05 series, and Arthur’s reference to “Mother Cricket” at Headingley in 2008, when Vaughan claimed a catch at mid-off after berating AB de Villiers for claiming a catch at slip, then you will recognise this South African tactic for what it is: an old one.

But is it worth it? Andy Flower, who could hardly be more dignified if you slapped a barrister’s wig on him and asked him to speak Latin, pointedly used the word “modest” when he 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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The debate goes on, after Mike Atherton’s article (Grey Clouds Lie Over Moral High Ground) calling for the preamble to the laws of the game, entitled The Spirit of Cricket, to be given out. Simon Barnes has joined in by writing that cricketers lost in the finest and most complex of moral mazes are desperate for clarification, something made more difficult by the laws and the spirit of cricket being two quite different things. Cricket is not an easy game at which to cheat, but it is easily tarnished.

The interpretation of the spirit of the game generally considered to mean what is thought of as being honourable and less than honourable is essentially a matter of personal discernment, and highly susceptible to changing times. That cricket is a game to be played according to written laws, and at the same time within a code that is not written, lays it open to dispute.

In one of several examples given by Atherton, when a batsman might or might not have been done a favour by the fielding captain, his view and mine of the outcome are diametrically opposed. Like me, he can have seen the incident, which took place in a recent Champions Trophy match between England and New Zealand, only on television; but that provided more than enough evidence on which to form an opinion.

The batsman was Paul Collingwood, who, having played and missed at the last ball of an over, started, after a brief pause, to walk down the pitch for the now customary between-overs chat with his partner, to be concluded no doubt by the modern fad of touching each other’s gloves in that peculiarly demure way. Nothing could have been clearer than that Collingwood had no intention of stealing a run.

The square-leg umpire was already moving in to take up his position for the next over when Brendon McCullum, the New Zealand wicketkeeper, threw down the batsman’s Read more…

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A QUIET night, 10 years ago. Some forgettable restaurant in the Caribbean. When you’re an Australian cricketer being herded like a sheep from one faceless hotel to the next, with three-course meals piled on top of umpteen others, even Caribbean restaurants can occasionally become forgettable. Shane Warne was 29 back then, a few days away from the dirty 30s.

He parked himself at the far end of the dining table. Brian Lara was in tow, hanging off Warne like he’d become best mates with the coolest kid at school. Warne spent the next few hours regaling all present with one anecdote after another, a charm offensive to do Bill Clinton proud. He was funny, revealing, open, honest, self-deprecating. Jokes were delivered at his own expense. What a jolly good fellow, and so said all of us.

Warne will be front and centre again tonight in Melbourne. He’s 39 now, a few days away from the naughty 40s. An appropriate round of celebrations will be held at a suitably flash cocktail lounge on Chapel Street where an army of his mates, an ample supply of his preferred poison, vodka, enough Cuban cigars to clog the cleanest lungs and $1500 bottles of French champagne will be on offer.

The venue has been described as ”fit to play host to a Russian billionaire”. Or on an even grander scale, Warne.

Former teammate Matthew Hayden once summed up Warne’s superstar status thus: ”I was rooming with him in Durban in 1994. He had that Aussie surfer kind of image. Everyone thought he surfed. Remember he had that board he help up in England in 1993, with XXXX all over Read more…

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Andrew Flintoff rides off into the sunset — at least so far as Test cricket is concerned — with a cacophony of non-plaudits ringing in his ears. Good but not great, they’re all saying. A national hero, but a cricketer who fell short of the highest standards. A talisman, not a great man.

This assessment has been so universal that Flintoff went along with it himself. Never a great cricketer, he said, just one of the lads who did his best. Fair enough, it’s for others to say, after all. But let’s make a sober judgment on this. Let us assess the question of Flintoff’s greatness, not by means of a sentimental journey by pedalo or by a forensic examination of statistics. Let us make a serious exploration of greatness in sport.

Mike Atherton, chief cricket correspondent of this newspaper, has led the charge for the non-greatness cavalry. The principal reasons for Flintoff’s shortfall, he says, come down to statistics and longevity. This is a very cricket view of sport. If we could widen our vision, we would set Flintoff in the context not of cricket but of sport. And that changes everything.

Cricket is notoriously obsessed by statistics and, certainly, Flintoff’s don’t stack up like, to name the most obvious example, Ian Botham’s. No argument here. But how much do statistics reveal about a career? The very existence of statistics distorts our view. I say that they can Read more…

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Security has been tightened for the fourth npower Test at Headingley Carnegie this week as English cricket seeks to halt growing criticism of unruly crowd behaviour during the Ashes series.

Concerns about crowd conduct during the third Test at Edgbaston are likely to intensify at Headingley, where drunken elements in the West Stand have been a significant problem in recent years.

When England played South Africa at Headingley last year, 81 people were ejected from the ground during the first three days of the Test match.

Much of the criticism of crowd conduct at Edgbaston has focused on the Barmy Army, the supporters’ group that prides itself on its vociferous support of the England team. The organisation was granted a block of 500 seats at Edgbaston. At Headingley, its area will be restricted to 200 seats, while Vic Flowers, its so-called leader and Jimmy Savile lookalike, and Bill Cooper, the trumpeter, have been discouraged from attending. Read more…

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Freddie Flintoff stands up, and the whole room seems to shrink: the chairs and tables retreat, and the ceiling suddenly bows low. At 6ft 4in, the England and Lancashire all-rounder is as tall and broad-shouldered as a farm boy with hair the colour of hay. Hand outstretched, he smiles awkwardly.

This week, Flintoff (born Andrew, nicknamed Freddie after the similarity of his surname to that of the cartoon character Fred Flintstone) will join his England team-mates in Cardiff to play the first Test of the Ashes. It was the Ashes that made Flintoff a household name four years ago, when, following one of the most exciting series in memory, the English team beat the Australians for the first time in 18 years. The nation duly erupted into cricket mania, with MBEs and photoshoots for the team, an open-top bus tour through the streets of London and a reception at 10 Downing Street, during which the team was said to have been so drunk they could barely remember meeting the prime minister (”An urban myth,” Flintoff assures me. “It was an unbelievable day and, contrary to popular belief, one I remember fairly well”).

Much of the attention then focused on Flintoff, who had in the course of the series broken Ian Botham’s record of six sixes in an Ashes test match and taken seven wickets in the same game. In the win at Trent Bridge he scored a century, and on the fourth day of the final Test took five wickets. The Australian coach named Flintoff man of the series, and he also won the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year. Read more…

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