The last time a Test match was drawn in South Africa was three years ago; since then 17 Tests have produced results. In fact, South Africa have drawn only two of their last 27 matches at home, against England in 2005 and New Zealand in 2006. Australia’s 57 home Tests in this decade produced 48 results.

Australian captain Ricky Ponting says that he fears for the future of Test cricket because of the low percentage of decisive matches in the subcontinent. There are two messages here, the obvious one and the one implied, which is that the subcontinent, or more correctly India, probably hold the future of the longer game in their hands.

Only 29 of 47 matches in India, or 62 percent, have produced results and that is cause for worry. Should public interest and thus television and advertising money move away from Tests as a result of too many inconclusive games, then that format is in danger. A major attraction of the shorter formats is that matches end in victory or defeat. Cricket has seen some exciting draws – but not too many in the subcontinent where the fate of a match is often decided by the third morning and everybody merely goes through the motions thereafter.

But – and this is a point that Ponting has missed – it is not only the tracks that hold the key to a result. There is such a thing as temperament, and psychologically Indian captains play safe, ensuring first that at least a draw is assured before thinking about victory. No Indian captain – Tiger Pataudi, and possibly the early Sourav Ganguly were exceptions – would let go of a bird in hand for a speculative two in the bush. A defeat is such a national disgrace that few captains are willing to take a chance on losing in order to push for victory.

Rahul Dravid’s refusal to enforce the follow on despite a 300-plus lead in the Trent Bridge Test of 2007 or Sourav Ganguly’s similar response after India made 700-plus and restricted Australia to under 500 in the Sydney Test of 2004 are examples of captains who realize that the effigy-burners and editorial-writers are just waiting for a single mis-step to swing into action. It is worse at home where Indian captains are expected to win every time, and the unreal Read more…

Administrator Australia Australia, Bangladesh, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting, Sourav Ganguly, South Africa, Tiger Pataudi, Trent Bridge

Quiz question. What links these England Test wins? Lord’s 2000 (v West Indies), Kandy 2000-01, The Oval and Trent Bridge 2003, Johannesburg 2004-05, Edgbaston 2005, Mumbai 2005-06, Wellington 2007-08, The Oval 2009?

Answer: they all followed demoralising defeats.

So when England’s bowlers were given a lesson in ingenuity and chutzpah by AB de Villiers at Cape Town on Friday, you could almost guess what was coming next: South Africa all out for 119 – their lowest total in home one-day internationals – and England on the brink of winning a series that most observers, this one included, felt was another limited-overs accident waiting to happen.

You couldn’t make it up. And if you did, you’d be sacked for over-embellishment.
Consistency is a strange thing. It’s got so many syllables you imagine sportsmen nodding off when the captain uses it in his team-talk. Neither is it the sexiest concept in the sporting dictionary.

It’s also wonderfully understated. Why not just say: ‘We want to win every game’? But it has become the Holy Grail of this England cricket team – a reasonable, modest, unflashy goal for those embodiments of reason, modesty and non-flash, Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower.

The good news is England are aware of the problem. In the 1990s, their stirring victories were undoubtedly too seldom and almost always too late: at The Oval in 1993 and 1997, at Bridgetown in 1993-94, at Adelaide in 1994-95, and at Melbourne in 1998-99, the series could not be won.

Worse, all those games took place in series England went on to lose. The games mentioned in the first paragraph, by contrast, were all part of series England either drew after being behind or won. Progress comes in all shapes and sizes.

The journey, though, may only be beginning. After England’s win on Sunday, Strauss was keeping his size 11s on the ground. ‘The see-saw nature of this series so far suggests that if we expect to [win at Durban on Friday], we will probably come unstuck,’ he said. ‘So we have to Read more…

Administrator England AB de Villiers, Adelaide, Andrew Strauss, Andy Flower, Blogs.CMDN.com, Bridgetown, Cape Town, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Edgbaston, England, Melbourne, Mumbai, South Africa, The Oval, Trent Bridge, West Indies

Hallelujah to the news that MCC is to reject a plan to name Lord’s after a sponsor. Watching England play India in the ToffeeCrispStadium @Lord’s.org would have just felt wrong.

There is a certain poetry to the naming of cricket grounds. For more than a century, Test cricket has been played at Lord’s, Trent Bridge, Edgbaston and Old Trafford without the need to adorn the ground with a sponsor’s name.

Co-naming rights may have been signed for The Oval and Headingley - and how the addition of Brit and Carnegie grates - but nothing jarred quite as much as when the first Test of last summer’s Ashes series was staged at the SWALEC Stadium.

The problem was not that the match was played in Wales. It was that the ground used to have the far more attractive name of Sophia Gardens, until the South Wales electricity board bought a ten-year sponsorship deal in 2008 for £1.5 million. The only plus was the irony that it ambushed a series sponsored by npower, SWALEC’s competitor.

Yet the original name for the Cardiff ground was itself a form of sponsorship. Sophia Gardens was named after the wife of the second Marquess of Bute, who arranged for land in Cardiff to be put aside for sport in the late 1800s.

For that matter, what was the naming of Lord’s in 1787 but an early sponsorship deal? Thomas Lord was a Yorkshire wine merchant who had been approached by Lord Winchilsea, the patron of the Hambledon cricket club in Hampshire, to build a ground in London. Winchilsea said that Lord would be free to stick his own name on the ground as a reward.

Surely that was sponsorship. The only difference is that 200 years of tradition has given the name authenticity. Likewise, modern baseball fans could not imagine the Chicago Cubs playing at a ground named anything but Wrigley Field, although the stadium changed its name Read more…

Administrator England Blogs.CMDN.com, Cardiff, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Edgbaston, Hampshire, Headingley, Lord's, MCC, Old Trafford, Sophia Gardens, South Wales, SWALEC, The Oval, Trent Bridge

There are some deluded people out there - even some cricket-lovers - who say that baseball is a better game than cricket. Not sure why. It is possibly due to the balance between bat and ball being more in the pitcher’s favour than it is in cricket - although I find the idea of a ball game in which a side might only hit the ball a dozen times in three hours and still win baffling.

Maybe they like the constant flipping between batting sides, so that momentum swings to and fro every 10 minutes or so. Or it could have something to do with baseball being even more of a game for stats-geeks than cricket. I’d love to be enlightened.

Anyway. I quite like baseball and there are some things that it does well. Having people wandering around the stands selling food and drink is a good idea. So is building in a designated “stretching time” for the spectators. And so is ending a best-of-seven series when one team gets to four.

Wouldn’t it be better if Ricky Ponting and Andrew Strauss had just shaken hands at the end of yesterday’s game and said “well played, see you in South Africa”? Instead, they have to trudge on and play two more ODIs at Trent Bridge before heading north (Durham, in late September of all places) to play a seventh match on September 20. England fly to South Africa for the Champions Trophy the very next day and then start that tournament on September 25. No wonder they look so jaded.

Not that playing too many games is an excuse. Paul Collingwood needed a break because he has played 30 Tests, ODIs and T20 internationals this year. James Anderson, who has also Read more…

Administrator ENG vs AUS Andrew Strauss, Australia, Blogs.CMDN.com, Champions Trophy, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Durham, ECB, James Anderson, Michael Clarke, Mitchell Johnson, Nottingham, ODI, Paul Collingwood, Ricky Ponting, South Africa, Trent Bridge, Tri-Series

In the course of my travels over the last couple of days, I’ve watched Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook get out for one and four respectively at Lord’s, seen Kent skipper Rob Key score an assured 90 only to miss out on a ton when he was lbw to a straight one at Northampton, and called in at The Oval to sit in on an interview with Mark Ramprakash, to hear him say he’d definitely play for England again, if asked.

What a week this is turning into for speculation, counter-speculation and player watching.

Once Bopara and Cook were dismissed at Lord’s, England selector James Whitaker sat in the media centre, glued to the television, awaiting news of Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott from Trent Bridge.

The skies were leaden and it wasn’t a good day for batting. Who’d be an England selector?

Wholesale changes aren’t needed for the Oval. Yes, England had a horrendous time at Headingley, batted and bowled abysmally, but you don’t become a terrible side overnight (or even in two-and-a-half days as the case may be). Read more…

Administrator Ashes Alastair Cook, Ashes, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Edgbaston, England, Headingley, Ian Bell, Jonathan Trott, Kent, Kevin Pietersen, Leeds, Lord's, Mark Ramprakash, Ravi Bopara, Rob Key, The Oval, Trent Bridge

To judge by the responses to a blog over on the Guardian website, opinion is divided as to the heinousness of the boos aimed at Ricky Ponting during the Lord’s Test. I’m guessing here, but I’d say the divide went something like this: the English weren’t too fussed about it, the Australians were. Twas ever thus, of course, but the question remains: why Ricky?

You may think this is no time for an English scribe to be sympathising with the captain of Australia. England have just won at Lord’s for the first time in 75 years; Australia’s strike bowler has lived up to his tag by apparently going on strike; Andrew Flintoff is a national hero once more. Sharpen the pencil, man! But the truth is Ponting deserves a fairer press than he gets – especially after his Test-match horribilis at Lord’s.

The measure of the man was evident after that defeat, when he spoke with candour, humour and – when it came to the reaction of the crowd – a degree of self-deprecation which national stereotypes assure us is not part of the average Australian’s DNA. And Ponting does talk well: he mulls questions over, he answers them directly, he looks people in the eye and he occasionally smiles.

His one blind spot concerns the aggression he displays towards umpires. He was at Read more…

Administrator Ashes 75 years, Aleem Dar, Andrew Flintoff, Andrew Strauss, Australia, Blogs.CMDN.com, Brett Lee, Cardiff, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Edgbaston, England, Jason Gillespie, Justin Langer, Lord’s, Paul Collingwood, Phillip Hughes, Ricky Ponting, Trent Bridge

The Ashes captains have shown little regard for the etiquette of the game with their appeals and claimed catches