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

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

What the Champions League needs is a ‘Best of the Rest’ team. Part of the reason for the falling viewership has been the lack of home heroes to support. No Tendulkar, no Harbhajan, no Yuvraj translates into no fanatical interest in a tournament that pits the almost best Twenty20 club teams from around the world against one another.

And since increasingly Twenty20 teams are bound to be scratch combinations bringing together an opening batsman from one country, a couple of middle order players from another and a spinner from a third and so on, a slot can easily be found for a ‘Rest’ team that will contain players whose club sides do not qualify.

This could be an international team, with players from different countries in the Twenty20 tradition (hardly a couple of years old, and we already speak of a tradition!), or a ‘Rest of India’ side as was popular in the old Pentangular days and survives today as a permanent team in the Irani Cup, playing against the Ranji Trophy champions of the previous season.

If international, we could see the likes of (assuming everybody is fit) Pietersen, Flintoff, Jayasuriya and so on in a team with Indians, or if not, we could have had a team this year comprising Tendulkar, Yuvraj, Harbhajan, Dhoni, the two Pathans and others.

The idea of a world tournament – even one involving clubs and not national sides – is to have the best players participating. This is good for the game, good for the gates and good for the television viewership which makes the difference. While the Champions League was being played, the Indian players were involved in the fairly meaningless exercise of the Challenger series which, now that it is named after a former Board President seems likely to remain on the calendar for the benefit of the fringe players.

When the national team to play Australia in a seven-match one-day series starting Read more…

Administrator Champions League T20 Australia, Best of the Rest, Blogs.CMDN.com, Board President, Challenger Series, Champions League, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Flintoff, Harbhajan, Jayasuriya, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, ODI, Pietersen, Tendulkar, Tests, Twenty20, Yuvraj

This is the silly season of cricket, so being to the point (literally) and maybe even inane, is quite in. So here’s my take on why the Champions League T20 isn’t justifying the pre-event hype… as yet.

1. T20s… just too blah
Whatever anyone says about the death of Tests or ODIs, perhaps people are finally waking up to the fact that one T20 game is pretty much like the other. Yawn…

2. Where are our He-Men?
We Indians like our desi big brands. Other than a few good men, Dravid and Kumble in Bangalore, or Gambhir and Sehwag (and to a lesser extent Nehra and Karthik) in the Daredevils, there’s not much for Indians to get starry-eyed about. (Except in that cool boat ad). No Sachin, Dhoni, Yuvraj, Bhajji, Ganguly, Zaheer or even poor Ishant.

3. Phoren teams? So what?
When we don’t care about our own domestic cricket (am sure Neo isn’t even asking for the ratings of this year’s Challenger Series) what chance of our caring about cricket or cricketers from clubs most of India has never even heard of?

4. Howzatt! You mean, ‘Who’s that’?
We Indians also like our designer foreign brands. And they’re not around. No Smith, Ponting, Hayden, Flintoff, Pietersen, Warne, Vettori, AB… and no melodramatic Pakistanis! Okay, so we have Gilchrist holding the Deccan flag aloft and Gibbs disappearing before he can say hello for the Cobras. Then there’s Brendon McCullum (traitor!) on for Otago, that quiet Kallis, and a subdued, shorn Kallis. Not enough, mate.

5. Big-ticket event doesn’t equal big crowds
Basically, despite the tournament being cricket’s richest prize, the BCCI-IPL is treating the event just like they treat domestic cricket in India — with disdain. Outside of the corporate Read more…

Administrator Champions League T20 AB, Bangalore, BCCI, Bhajji, Blogs.CMDN.com, Challenger Series, Champions League T20, Cobras, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Daredevils, Dhoni, Dravid, Flintoff, Gambhir, Ganguly, Gibbs, Hayden, IPL, Ishant, Kallis, Karthik, Kumble, McCullum, Nehra, ODI, Otago, Pietersen, Ponting, Sachin, Smith, T20, Vettori, Warne, Yuvraj, Zaheer

All eyes are on one man as the Ashes head for Edgbaston – but England cannot cling to belief that one man can slay the Australians alone

English cricket and their somewhat undernourished supporters have done plenty of lionising in their time but never before has one man carried the kind of burden Andrew Flintoff takes on to the field here today. Whatever the weight, though, he can hardly complain.

Some men smile sheepishly and shrug their shoulders when heroism is heaped upon them. “Freddie” tends to look as though he is auditioning for a remake of Gladiator.

The question is a big one, however. Can he really carry the freight? Can he do what he did so memorably four years ago, when his body was much less assailed, and wage the fight right up to the moment the Ashes are regained? Or will he lapse into the mode of 2006-07, when the highest expectations foundered amid some of the worst neglect of competitive responsibilities ever seen in a major sportsman?

That might sound like a mean appraisal of Flintoff’s situation after his spectacular performance at Lord’s but we can be sure it is one the Australians, however highly they rate the recent evidence of their most celebrated opponent’s match-winning potential, will be entertaining today. Read more…

Administrator Ashes, England Andrew Flintoff, Andrew Strauss, Ashes, Cardiff, Caribbean, Edgbaston, England, fitness, Freddie, Glenn McGrath, Ian Botham, IPL, Lord's, Michael Vaughan, Paul Collingwood, Phillip Hughes, Pietersen, Ricky Ponting, Sophia Gardens

One of the most irritating complaints heard from some Australians this summer has been about Andrew Strauss’s ethnicity. “Aw, mate, he’s just a Saffer like Pietersen,” they say, ignoring the fact that you could not find a more stereotypical plummy-voiced product of the British public school system than Radley-educated Strauss.

Sure, he was born in Jo’burg, but his mother is English and he has lived here since he was 6. Strauss is so English that he sips Earl Grey with pinky extended while watching his team bat from the Lord’s pavilion. He is so typically Pom that his upper lip starts to quiver whenever he hears Elgar. He enjoys queuing (heck, he told my colleague John Westerby today that he was thinking up strategies for Edgbaston in the queue at Legoland). He has English teeth.

Strauss is as English as Andrew Symonds, that Birmingham-born, heavy-drinking, wild pig-wrestling, zinc warpaint-wearer, is Australian.

He was, however, born outside England. I will concede that. In fact, we have had England captains hail from nine countries other than England, including Peru (Freddie Brown), Italy (Ted Dexter) and Trinidad (Pelham Warner). We’re just a multicultural nation with tentacles Read more…

Administrator Australia, England Andrew Symonds, Australians, Barnett, Batty, Blogs.CMDN.com, Botham, Butcher, Caddicks, Collingwood, Cricket Blogs, Curtis, Dilley, Emburey, English, Flintoff, Fraser, Giles, Gooch, Gower, Hoggard, Jarvis, Johnson, Lambs, Malcolms, Oval, Pietersen, Pietersens, Read, Russell, Strauss, Strausses, Tavare, Thorpe, Trescothick, Vaughan

Cursed him. Within moments of writing my “will they, won’t they” piece on Pietersen and his injury, the ECB announces that the Hampshire batsman has had surgery this morning on the troublesome Achilles tendon and will be out for the rest of the series.

The squad for the third Test will be announced on Sunday and one would assume that Ian Bell, having been in the squad for the first two games, will slot straight in as Pietersen’s replacement. Yes, Aussies, the “Shermanator” is back. And he was out for 7 today against Hampshire.

It would be tempting to play Bell at No 3 and drop Ravi Bopara down the order a place or two to enable him to regain his confidence against the older ball. Bell is averaging 54 this season and must be in prime position although Owais Shah, who did not shine against the Windies over the winter, is averaging 55. Trouble is, Shah has played only four games to Bell’s 11. His bench-warming stint in the IPL could still count against him.

Who else? Well, Rob Key has picked the right moment to find some form. He made 270 for Kent last week against Glamorgan, which almost doubled his tally for the season. Yes, but, it was only Glamorgan. I’m not sure he has done enough, even though he now has a first-class wicket to his name as this photo shows. Jonathan Trott, Bell’s Warwickshire team-mate, is on 70-odd as I type today, which is on par with his season’s average. Read more…

Administrator Ashes Adil Rashid, Ashes, Aussies, Bell, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, ECB, England, Flintoff, Hampshire, KP, McGrath, Owais Shah, Pietersen, Prior, Ravi Bopara, Shermanator

Ah, the joys of youth. I spent most of the Cardiff Test feeling like a teenager again – in that it was harrowingly reminiscent of the 1989 and 1993 Ashes cloutings that England received. History, it seemed, was repeating itself like senile old biddy historians have always assumed it was. As the Australians tortured England’s bowlers and the English top order disintegrated more crumblily than a packet of dry biscuits in an earthquake, there cannot have been an England supporter who did not think at some point: “That’s that for the next fifteen years then.”

At lunch on the final day, I sat down with my wife and children and desperately attempted to write a list of positives for England take from the match. My family contributed little of use. My baby son seemed unwilling even to talk about it, so traumatising was the action unfolding before his seven-month-old eyes. I racked my brains, but did not make much progress beyond: (1) No-one died, (2) Worse things happen at sea, and (3) Shane Warne had taken fewer wickets than he had in any Ashes Test in England (or Wales) since the Oval Test of 1989. England have finally worked out how to play the Master Leggie – make sure that he (a) has retired, and (b) is in Las Vegas playing Poker. With hindsight, it now seems obvious.

However, the last-day heroics of Collingwood and the tail saved England’s extremely streaky bacon, and papered over some alarmingly seismic cracks in their performance. Looking on the positive side, ultimately time deprived England of the chance to push for victory. If only this had been a timeless Test – no side in the world would have fancied chasing an awkward 30 or 40 to win on a wearing sixth-day pitch. Read more…

Administrator Ashes Ashes, Australia, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cardiff, Collingwood, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Durham Defier, England, Las Vegas, Lord’s, Master Leggie, MCC, Pietersen, Shane Warne, West Kent

For a coach who wanted 4, or was it 11, captains for his team, it is no surprise that he couldn't settle on a single title for his book. John Buchanan's literary offering on cricket appears to have two titles on the cover. The Future of Cricket comes on top, The Rise of Twenty20, follows. That apart, the cover also has a strap line: When money talks, cricket listens. How big money, administrators are powering a new cricket world: an inside account. Phew! Can't this guy keep anything simple?

The book's juicy parts have already made national headlines. When you write adversely about Gavaskar, Harbhajan and Yuvraj, you are sure to grab eyeballs. And when you write lines such as in T20 "you have to be inventive, fearless. And I don't see those qualities as part of Sachin's make-up at this stage of his career. Sachin Tendulkar is still a great player, but not in this arena of T20," everybody is eager to find out what you say next.  Buchanan may have led KKR to the bottom but the book demonstrates his genius for marketing himself.

Reading the book one gets the impression that Buchanan is a mastermind at predicting the distant future. But he is not so adept at dealing with the present or the immediate future. He certainly didn't know that KKR will finish last in IPL2.  And that he will get the boot Read more...

Avijit Ghosh Australia Ajantha Mendis, Australian, Blogs.CMDN.com, Buchanan, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, damien martyn, Dravid, Duckworth-Lewis, Ganguly, IPL2, KKR, Kolkata Knight Riders, McGrath, Pietersen, Royal Challengers, Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan, Stuart McGill, T20 World Cup, Warne

» Monty Panesar looks a better option than Adil Rashid
» Ryan Sidebottom rusty so Graham Onions becomes Plan B

Geoff Miller, the national selector, is sufficiently old to remember at first hand Johnny Nash’s 1972 hit There Are More Questions Than Answers so as he sat watching the Lions at New Road , inscrutable behind his shades, he might have been humming it to himself as he pondered the squad for the first Test, which he must announce on Sunday.

What might have been a relatively straightforward operation as fitness and form have started to come together has been confused by the Lions’s efforts against the Australians in the final warm-up.

Twice in the game the bounce and languid pace of Steve Harmison, omitted from the 16-man training camp, has accounted for the tyro Phillip Hughes in a manner that rendered the batsman undignified. Graham Onions has bowled beautifully, his figures not reflecting this, and Adil Rashid found bowling on a slow pitch left him little room for error but batted with real panache for 66, the latter part against Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson with the new ball. Read more…

Administrator Ashes Adil Rashid, Anderson, Bell, Bopara, Broad, Cardiff, Collingwood, Cook, Flintoff, Geoff Miller, Graham Onions, Lord's, Monty Panesar, Onions, Panesar, Pietersen, Prior, Ryan Sidebottom, Steve Harmison, Strauss, Swann