As the cricket world digests the big cricket news of the cricket week − that Alastair Cook still has some work to do to earn inclusion in ESPNcricinfo’s all-time XI; that Australia remain very poor at forcing wins in games that are completely washed out (a shortcoming England, as holders, will be looking to exploit in the Ashes); and that Michael Clarke not only thinks that Ricky Ponting should captain Australia in the Ashes, but said so out loud in an interview, thus proving it − the time seems right for another Confectionery Stall XI.

This is the first Confectionery Stall XI for some time, and as the highly enjoyable season of ESPNcricinfo XIs draws to a close (taking with it the even more enjoyable season of readers’ reactions to ESPNcricinfo XIs), I felt it was time to jump on the XI-selecting bandwagon before it is driven off to the ESPN scrapyard and the pieces sold off to another website.

I particularly enjoyed Suresh Menon’s Elegant XI − a useful team, without question, but heavily biased in favour of all-time greats of the game. I feel this is deeply unfair to the stylish underachievers of cricket history, players who have looked great in action but less great in the scorebook. I therefore submit the Confectionery Stall Elegant But (Relatively) Ineffective XI, a team of the not-so-great-but-nonetheless-pleasing-on-the-eye who have intermittently entranced but more often frustrated the international-cricket-watching universe.

It should be remembered that elegance is not always a reliable hallmark of quality. When I was at school, there was a seam bowler who used to flow into the wickets with the ease of a thoroughbred racehorse, then bowl with perfect rhythm and an easy athleticism, reminiscent of a slow-motion Michael Holding. The last time I saw him play, he was bowling quite well in the West Kent Village League. He had a prettier action than Curtly Ambrose but was, by other conventionally accepted measures of bowling quality, not as good.

In my own village team I used to open with a player who was, in almost every aspect of batsmanship, useless. He struggled to keep good balls out. He struggled to keep bad balls out. He struggled. But every now and again – perhaps twice or three times a summer – he would unfurl an extra-cover drive so majestically perfect that it seemed as if Viv Richards had momentarily invaded his body, as if Wally Hammond’s handkerchief should have been fluttering from his trouser pocket. Next ball he would play down the line of leg stump and see his off peg splattered, or attempt a pull shot and spoon-plonk it to extra cover, or be trapped lbw trying to square-cut a full-toss. But those cover drives were worth a whole summer of single-figure failures.

Perhaps the most elegant English batsman of recent years has been no-Test wonder Vikram Solanki, whose contribution to international cricket comprised 51 ODIs and three Twenty20 matches, in which he averaged in the mid-20s. The first of his two hundreds for England was a magical innings against Pollock, Ntini, Kallis et al at The Oval in 2003. The Wisden verdict: “Solanki finally arrived as an international batsman... few players can demand drooling admiration for an innings. Solanki is one of them.”

His England career, however, generated a disappointingly small pool of drool. He passed 10 once in his next eight innings, was dropped, and departed international cricket three sporadic years later as the latest in an illustrious cavalcade of What-Might-Have-Beens of modern English cricket.

But how good was Solanki? Because he could play shots from the cricketing heavens, there is a tendency to think he underachieved. Paul Collingwood, by contrast, is often regarded as an overachiever who has made the most of his relatively limited talents. His batting has the flourish of an egg sandwich and the elegance of a steamrollered hedgehog. But his fielding reveals phenomenal hand-eye co-ordination and athleticism, and his timing is often extraordinary. But because he nudges the ball for four rather than strokes it, he generates no drool. Plenty of admiration, but none of it drooling. The only drool Collingwood prompts slowly dribbles from the snoozing mouths of opposing fans whilst he is compiling one of his famous match-saving rearguards.

Here, then, is the Confectionery Stall Elegant But Ineffective XI – a personal selection of players in my cricket-watching life (1981 to the present day) who have played the game with style, panache, flamboyance, and above all, limited top-level success. Qualification: must have played Test cricket. Maximum batting average: 38. Minimum bowling average: 30.

1. Gerhardus Liebenberg (five Tests, average 13.00)
I have written before about the soul-crackingly harrowing experience of watching Gary Kirsten stodgegrind his way to what Cambridge scientists have confirmed as the dullest double-hundred in human history, at Old Trafford in 1998. Two days of unremitting misery for which I am still awaiting an apology. Opening the batting with Completely Tedious Of Cape Town was Liebenberg. Statuesque, stylish and rubbish – the polar opposite of his opening partner − Liebenberg stroked a couple of imperious boundaries, one leg-side flick finessed to the boundary with the confident flourish of a born batsman. He was then thoroughly bowled by Darren Gough for 16, and spent the rest of the summer being one of England’s key players, a guaranteed early breakthrough. His and Kirsten’s respective career statistics disprove the existence of God.

2. Sadagoppan Ramesh
India has produced many great stylish batsmen. In his first seven Tests, studded with two centuries and five half-centuries (including 60 and 96 in a match against Wasim, Waqar, Saqlain and Mushtaq Ahmed), Ramesh languidly caressed his way to an average of 55 and seemed well on the road to becoming another one, albeit that he was travelling down that road without moving his feet very much. Sadly, that road diverted straight into a ditch. Twelve more Tests brought no more scores over 61, and an average of 26, and Ramesh was consigned to the selectorial shredder in August 2001. Over the next three years Das, Dravid, Dasgupta, Bangar, Jaffer, Patel and Chopra opened in 43 Tests between them, and generally poked about to no good purpose, collectively averaging 26. The latter part of Ramesh’s career suggests that he might not have done any better. But he would have done just as badly in a considerably more attractive manner. And more quickly. Life is full of contrasts. Seeing Sehwag open with Bangar was like seeing Beethoven team up with Miley Cyrus for a charity single. Wrong and confusing.

3. Xavier Marshall
Included on the basis of one off-drive against Australia that I saw him play on the telly a couple of years ago. It was beyond perfect. Unlike his Test, ODI and first-class averages (20, 17, 24), which are beyond belief.

4. Greg Blewett
After Mark Waugh, and possibly Damien Martyn, the most graceful Australian of his era. The panache of his back-to-back career launching hundreds against England in 1994-95 suggested Australia had unearthed a new world-class stylist. The rest of his career suggested they had unearthed a prettier version of Bruce Edgar.

5. Carl Hooper
Hooper made batting look simple and majestic. He seemed to have enough time to write a letter home whilst waiting for the ball. Sadly, he often batted as if he was thinking of what he was going to write in it. He could hit forward-defensive shots for six, and get out to almost any bowler in the world given the chance. Not a total failure, but after 50 Tests he averaged 31, which was a sick joke by the same cricketing gods who allowed Gary Kirsten to average in the mid-40s. A hybrid of Hooper’s style and Chanderpaul’s concentration would have been one of the greatest batsmen of any era. A hybrid of Hooper’s concentration and Chanderpaul’s style could have led to cricket being outlawed.

6. Chris Lewis
The allrounder who had it all – explosive, round-the-wicket strokeplay, and athletic, sometimes rapid, bowling. All that was missing were the performances to back it up. And the sense not to catch sunstroke on the eve of a Test match. And the ability not to be convicted of drug smuggling. Currently in jail, not looking quite as brilliant as when he smashed a century in India in 1992-93, or when he clean-bowled Tendulkar at Lord’s in 1996.

7. Geraint Jones
Intermittently competent behind the stumps, taker of the most important catch in modern English history, and stroker of some of the purest off-side shots you could wish to see. Did not stroke as many of them as you would wish to see, admittedly, but on his very occasional day, he was an old-school stylist mixed with a modern improviser.

8. Alex Tudor
Looked like a natural in all departments when he emerged in the late 1990s – a smooth action that generated pace that frightened the all-conquering Australians, and a flamboyance with the bat that immediately raised the suspicions of the England selectors. Tudor dismissed both Waughs, Ponting and Langer in a potent debut in Perth, then in his first home Test flayed his way to a match-winning 99 not out in the most brilliant night-watchman’s innings ever played by an Englishman, playing shots that many had assumed Geoffrey Boycott had officially outlawed from the English game. Then fizzled out like a once-promising sausage on a rain-hit barbecue. One of the lost talents of world cricket.

9. Brendon Julian
Lithe left-armer with a sweeping action, and all set to be the long-awaited New Alan Davidson. Took a stunning caught-and-bowled to dismiss Robin Smith in his debut series in 1993, prompting no less a judge than Richie Benaud to eulogise (if memory serves): “That is the mark of a very fine young cricketer.” Unfortunately Benaud was wrong. Julian proved to be only a quite fine young cricketer – 15 Test wickets at a shade under 40, and 128 runs at 16, in just seven Tests.

10. Phil Tufnell
His average was little different to Ashley Giles’. His action was from a different universe. Ashley Giles bowled like a broken combine harvester trying to restart itself. Tufnell had a natural fluency and rhythm that touched perfection on his occasional great days for England. Ashley Giles won the Ashes. And could bat. And field. Tufnell loses out in those three categories.

11. Mohammad Akram
Richie Benaud said that Mohammad Akram reminded him of Michael Holding. Enough said. Mohammad Akram agreed. Michael Holding was unavailable for comment.

There is my XI. Apologies for the slight English bias, but many elegant but ineffective players from the rest of the world never have made it to these shores, so I could have missed the chance to appreciate both their elegance and their ineffectiveness. Please nominate your own suggestions for this XI.

Comments (157) | XIs

The major cricketing news in England of late has been the fact that Jimmy Anderson may or may not be struggling to be fit for the first Ashes Test, after he may or may not have cracked a rib whilst being possibly punched or hypothetically not punched by someone who either was or was not a team-mate, in what may or may not have been a boxing match, on what may have been an extremely important team bonding camp in Germany or may alternatively have been grown men mucking around in a wood because they don’t really have proper jobs. The camp may or may not prove to have been either “great fun, and the main reason we won the Ashes”, or “a miserable, pointless, and knackering exercise and the principal cause of our humiliating 5-0 defeat”. Or neither. The details remain sketchy. The England team seems to have been firmly bonded anyway, even without yomping through some fields or toasting Ricky-Ponting-shaped marshmallows round a campfire whilst singing rude songs about Peter Siddle.

Whatever proves to be the case, it is safe to say that Anderson’s injury only happened because of the invention of air travel. If England had had to take a six-week boat trip to Australia, we can assume that the bonding camp would have been rendered redundant, and Anderson would not have been injured trying to recreate the Rumble In The Jungle. He might have been eaten by a whale instead, but the long voyage would have given him ample time to recover.

I heard Matt Prior interviewed on the radio about the team jaunt, and when asked what happened, he claimed that he is not allowed to give details of exactly what the squad were doing. It is hard to imagine why the ECB felt compelled to commit the players to silence on the issue. Perhaps it is a straightforward administrative issue – perhaps no one in government has ever found the time to downgrade the level of secrecy required for any British operation in Germany since the early-to-mid 1940s.

Perhaps the activities might reveal points of weakness the Australians could exploit in the Ashes – “Right, boys, we know Alistair Cook turned out to be very good at abseiling, so let’s keep a tight off-stump line for the first 10 overs and hope he gets bored and tries to abseil down something.” Perhaps the skills learnt could prove crucial at important stages of the series – “... and, Richie, it looks like Strauss is asking Finn for one final effort to break this partnership, and the young Middlesex paceman looks confident”; “Of course he does, Bill, let’s not forget Finn now knows how to light a fire by rubbing sticks together and how to kill a reindeer with his bare hands. Marcus North can hold no fears for him now.”

Many in the press have criticised the ECB for sending the players on the camp, and for making them punch each other’s lights out whilst on it (could they not have hired a couple of Doug Bollinger impersonators instead?), but, in mitigation, who knows what injury Anderson could have suffered had he been tucked up safely at home. He could have been run over by an escaped steamroller in Lancashire, or fallen into a vat of custard whilst visiting a local food factory, or tumbled out of a window whilst playing all-in caged Scrabble. It is best that England players’ injuries are administered centrally these days. There are rumoured to be plans to take the squad on a DIY course next week, in the hope that someone will hit Kevin Pietersen round the head with a plank of wood and concuss him back into form.

Of course, there are other things happening in the world of cricket than minor injuries to England players several weeks before the Ashes begin. Bangladesh’s impressive ODI series clattering of New Zealand was welcome and auspicious. As Oscar Wilde once famously wrote, “To win one ODI against a major cricket nation may be regarded as fortune, to win two looks like signs of genuine improvement, and to spank a decent New Zealand side 4-0, without your best batsman, whilst three times defending chaseable totals, suggests that, come World Cup time, with home advantage potentially all way to the semi-final, Bangladesh could be a real threat to anyone.”

Good luck to Darren Sammy as the new West Indies captain, a role that seems in recent years to have mostly involved administering contractual squabbles and occasional outbreaks of cricket. Sammy wrote on his Twitter feed that he will face the challenge “with God at his side”, although even the Almighty would struggle to turn the current team into world beaters (whilst, even at his Biblical best, God would have been lucky even to get a place in the starting XI in the 1980s).

Here, as promised, following on from last week’s blog about Tendulkar’s impossible struggle to overtake John Traicos and Dave Nourse in the Fewest Tests Missed In A Career Lasting Longer Than 20 Years Challenge, here is a table of the 20-year-career Test players and the percentage of possible matches that they played in.

Dave Nourse: 45 out of 45 Tests between 1902-1924 (100%)
John Traicos: 7 out of 7 Tests between 1970-1993 (100%)
Garry Sobers: 93 out of 100 Tests between 1954-1974 (93.0%)
Sachin Tendulkar: 171 out of 185 Tests between 1989-2010 (92.4%)
Syd Gregory: 58 out of 75 Tests between 1890-1912 (77.3%)
Mushtaq Mohammad 57 out of 76 Tests between 1959-1979 (75.0%)
Jack Hobbs: 61 out of 91 Tests between 1908-1930 (67.0%)
Imran Khan: 88 out of 139 Tests between 1971-1992 (63.3%)
Colin Cowdrey: 114 out of 195 Tests between 1954-1975 (58.5%)
Frank Woolley: 64 out of 110 Tests between 1909-1934 (58.2%)
George Headley: 22 out of 45 Tests between 1930-1954 (48.9%)
Wilfred Rhodes: 58 out of 120 Tests between 1899-1930 (48.3%)
Bob Simpson: 62 out of 149 Tests between 1957-1978 (41.6%)
Freddie Brown: 22 out of 113 Tests between 1931-1953 (19.5%)
George Gunn: 15 out of 87 Tests between 1907-1930 (17.2%)
Brian Close: 22 out of 245 Tests 1949-1976 (9.0%)

Some notes on this for those of you with a not-particularly-busy day/week/life in the offing: Dave Nourse’s son Dudley played 34 of 35 possible Tests in his 16-year career, from 1935 to 1951; between them, therefore, they recorded a 98.75% attendance rate over a combined 38-year career, making them, statistically and unarguably, the father-son combination least likely not to play in a Test Match if there was one available in which to play. Even allowing for the fact that the Incredible Test-Playing Nourse Family were lucky enough to predate the age of squad rotation, this suggests that there may be an as-yet undiscovered gene that determines propensity to play in all possible Test matches.

Further support for this theory comes from the Zaltzman family. I have never played in an available Test match, nor has my father (yet; making him one of the few remaining South-African-born Englishmen not to have played Test cricket), nor did his father, nor his father before him (Lithuania having not yet, at that late-19th-century stage, been awarded Test status [and even if they had been, the chances of them selecting a Jew would have been remote]).

George Headley played all 19 of West Indies’ Tests from 1930 to 1939, then captained them in their first post-war game in 1948, played in Delhi later that year, then kicked back for a while, perhaps dreaming of one day playing for the Stanford Superstars like his heroes Sylvester Joseph and Daren Powell, before a late and unsuccessful 1954 recall in his mid-40s against England brought his batting average sliding still further downwards from its pre-war 66 to its final resting place of 60, but more importantly gave him eternal membership of the exclusive 20-Year Test Career Club.

Later in the same series that Headley belatedly bowed out of Test cricket, Garry Sobers bowed into it. He played 85 consecutive Tests, from his second match in 1955 until 1972. He was a good cricketer. Anyone who attempts to persuade you otherwise is probably trying to steal money from you. Ignore them and report them to the relevant authorities.

Bobby Simpson took a 10-year break after his first retirement in 1968, before clambering out of his cosy baggy green bed and claiming to be serving his nation in its hour of Baggy Green need by leading a Remnants Of Australian Manhood XI during the Packer Shebang. In reality, he just wanted to become just the second Australian in the 20-Year Test Career Club.

(There are rumours circulating in cricket circles that mid-80s three-Test spinner Murray Bennett is looking to launch another comeback and join Simpson and Syd Gregory in The Club, 25 years after his last Test appearance. Bennett’s manager, the Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel, who lists Matt Damon, Conan O’Brien, Tim Zoehrer and Martin Scorsese amongst his other clients, claimed: “Murray has unfinished business at Test level, and the current weakness of Australian tweaking means that this should be a no-brainer for the selectors. If they pick Bennett, I can pull a few strings and get them Robert de Niro to open the batting in the Perth Test. I have total faith in Murray Bennett’s ability to single-handedly win the 2010-11 Ashes – that is why he is the only left-arm spinner I represent. I’m going to make Murray Bennett a worldwide megastar.”)

And to finish this week’s ramblings, here is an illustrious chain of cricketing debuts for you: on Tendulkar’s debut, the opposition captain was Imran Khan, who on his debut had bowled to Colin Cowdrey, who had played his first Test alongside Bill Edrich, who debuted against Don Bradman’s 1938 Australians; the Don’s first Test was against an England team containing Jack Hobbs, whose opposing opener in his first Test was Victor Trumper, who made his debut in WG Grace’s last international. On WG’s first-class debut, he dismissed Julius Caesar. He did. Don’t look at me like that. He got Julius Caesar out. Twice. Here’s proof. He would probably have got Genghis Khan and Charlemagne out too, if they’d been playing. Julius Caesar’s first major appointment in public life was as the High Priest of Jupiter in Rome in 84BC. Jupiter was King of The Gods. And a very useful swing bowler and hard-hitting middle-order batsman. And a real success with the ladies. The Imran Khan of his day. And even Jupiter would have struggled to dismiss Tendulkar in Bangalore.

That is all.

Comments (37) |

All cricket fans cherish moments when they first see a player, and think to themselves: “This lad is something extraordinary.” They cherish them even more when they turn out to be correct. Few would boast that when they saw Paras Mhambrey bowl for the first time, they just knew deep down that he would go on to take 400 Test wickets; or that they happened to catch a glimpse of Blair Hartland’s debut Test innings whilst on holiday in New Zealand in 1992, and instantly wrote a series of postcards home telling their parents that Wally Hammond himself had been reborn as a Kiwi opener.

Many will have thought it during Cheteshwar Pujara’s mesmeric, match-sealing fourth-innings 72 on debut in Bangalore, for his timing, his decisiveness and precision of shot, and his ethereal stillness at the crease. Time will tell. Time is often a bit of miserable sod in these matters. When Phil Hughes added to his debut 75 with two stunning centuries in his second Test, against Steyn, Morkel, Ntini and Kallis (and Paul Harris), who would have thought that he would be dropped just three Tests later? Not me, and probably not Phil Hughes. And almost certainly not the then bits-and-pieces allrounder Shane Watson, who replaced him and has since reached 50 in 12 of his 26 innings, the highest ratio of fifties-per-innings of any baggy green opener with 10 or more half-centuries.

Debuts, the deceitful little minxes that they are, have made many false promises. Particularly with legspinners. Narendra Hirwani took 16 for 136, Warne took 1 for 150. Kumble returned an inauspicious 3 for 170. Ian Salisbury twirled his web around Pakistan to take 5 for 122. Where did his 600 other Test wickets go? And maybe England should have stuck with Chris Schofield a little longer. Warne’s debut gave perhaps the falsest and cruellest promise of all to England fans – that Australia had unearthed yet another cannon-fodder legspinner to be marmaladed by England’s batsmen. That little reverie took one ball to shatter. It was sweet while it lasted.

I remember when I first realised that Sachin Tendulkar could turn out to be the truly special player that he had been rumoured to be by the world’s cricketing press. It was when he reached 10,000 Test runs. It was clear at that point – in his 122nd Test, with an average of 57 − that the young man was destined for greatness. (Others had suspected it before then, but I like to reserve judgement on players until I am absolutely 100% sure about them, and the 10,000-Test-run barrier seems as fair a benchmark as any. Bradman, Sobers, Richards and Ken Rutherford I remain to be convinced about. The logic is simple: you can easily score fewer than 10,000 Test runs without being a particularly good batsman. But only good players reach 10,000. I therefore acknowledge that Tendulkar is a useful bat. Very useful, in fact – 95 international centuries constitutes a solid effort.)

Bangalore was one of the great highlights of his statistics-boggling career, a display of complete technical and tactical mastery that first transformed the game and then completed it, played with a vigour that suggests he may have several more good years left in him. Once he has ticked off 50 Test centuries and 15,000 runs, perhaps Wilfred Rhodes’ 31-year Test span will be the next major record in his sights.

Tendulkar’s continuing resurgence has been the highlight of a compelling microseries that again highlighted the desirability of macroseries. India finished looking like the world’s top side, playing three days of majestic cricket to seal the series, and Australia ended as a team with more question marks than a transcript of an unusually urgent police interrogation of a hard-of-hearing and inquisitive suspect.

Ponting’s captaincy on Wednesday attracted widespread criticism. To my layman’s eyes it seemed intended to distract the Indian batsmen through sheer bafflement. As they tried to figure out Ponting’s extremely well-concealed masterplan, they could easily have becoming distracted and perturbed, and smashed their own stumps down in confusion. Not really trying to take wickets when he needed to really try to take wickets was an obtuse approach. I have heard rumours that every night Ponting goes back to his hotel room, makes little papier-maché dolls of Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, says to them: “Right, Glenn, you bowl from the bathroom end, and Shane, you take the bed end. I’m going for a snooze, and when I wake up I expect you to have bowled the opposition out. Night night.” Admittedly those rumours are ones that I have made up and said to myself, but still, no smoke without fire. There has to be some truth in them.

Back to Tendulkar, officially the world’s best batsman again for the first time in eight years. Tendulkar’s Test career is about to celebrate its 21st birthday, and is now the 11th longest of all time, and the fourth-longest not to have been interrupted by a world war. The three players ahead of him on that little list are Syd Gregory (58 Tests from 1890 to 1912; his longevity can be ascribed to an undroppably assertive moustache), Brian Close (England’s youngest and oldest post-War Test player, his 22 Tests splattered over almost 27 years, dropped six times in his first seven matches spanning three different decades, and proud owner of the most sporadic career in Test history), and dual-nation legend John Traicos, more of whom below.

The Mumbai Methuselah has missed just 14 of India’s 185 Tests in the almost 21 years since he first plonked his 16-year-old feet onto the Test arena, giving him a 92.4% attendance-at-work rate. This currently puts him fourth on the list of highest-percentage-of-possible-Tests-played of the 16 players with Test careers lasting longer than 20 years.

If he stays fit, continues to set his alarm clock, remembers to turn up, and is not lured away by the promise of a stint as lead cricket bat player in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s forthcoming season of cricket-themed adaptations of the works of Mozart, then he could pinch the bronze medal from Sir Garfield Sobers (93% of Tests from 1954 to 1974). That is as far as he can hope to go. Two men remain unattainably in front: one-and-a-half South Africans and half a Zimbabwean. Dave Nourse did not miss a single Test of the 45 South Africa played from 1902 to 1924, and Traicos was never dropped in his 23-year Test career, from 1970 to 1993.

Traicos, who stands alone alongside Richard Hadlee in the Official ICC Catalogue Of Bowlers Who Have Dismissed Both Sachin Tendulkar and Keith Stackpole In Test Cricket, also remained undefeated until the final few months of his career. These facts in isolation might hint at one of the all-time great cricketing careers. Sadly for Traicos, his 23 years as an international cricketer were adorned by just seven Tests, sandwiching a 22-year sabbatical as a humble civilian – three games for South Africa before their ban in 1970, and four for Zimbabwe after their admission in 1992.

Recently unearthed relics from an archaeological dig at Kingsmead in Durban, where Traicos made his debut for South Africa, suggest that this Egypt-born son of Greek parents personally built a special altar with his cricket bag and sacrificed 100 head of oxen to almighty Zeus in return for (a) never being dropped, (b) having at least a 23-year-long Test career, and (c) not losing for the first 22 of those 23 years.

Zeus, always a deity with a wry sense of humour, granted Traicos’ wish with a flamboyant crack of his trademark thunderbolt, and the Egyptigrecozimbabweacsouthafrican tweaker skipped away in delight, visualising the forthcoming decades of batsman-shattering devastation that his tidy offbreaks would soon wreak. Zeus, meanwhile, giggled quietly to himself and muttered under his breath: “Sucker – you can have your 23 years undropped. And you can also have your seven Tests, your 18 wickets, and your bowling average of 42. Got you, Traicos, got you. Thanks for the barbecue. Yum, yum, yum.”

The King of Olympus then high-fived himself, and chirped: “I’ve still got it. Over 2000 years out of the media spotlight, and the Big Z has still got it.” It’s all in Wisden, if you read it backwards.

Some more on long careers in another blog later in the week. Unless the CIA suppress it. They fear needless cricket stats.

Lara has been deleted from the list of players the author is not 100% convinced about. Thanks to Anadi Bhatia for bringing the error to notice

Comments (74) | Tendulkar

Lancashire’s VVS Laxman set England on course to win the Ashes with a match-winning and potentially series-turning innings for India against Australia in Mohali, a performance of classically Lancastrio-English cricketing resolve, fit to set alongside this nation’s great Ashes-triumphing performances of recent times, such as Pietersen’s 158 at The Oval in 2005, Botham’s 1981 mega-heroics, Australia’s top-order batting in 1985, and Kerry Packer running World Series Cricket at the same time as the 1978-79 series.

Laxman, alongside Ishant Sharma (who must now surely have inked himself into England’s line-up for Brisbane on November 25), saw Indiland home in a breathtaking late rearguard after Australia’s useless, impotent and morally inept seam bowlers had fortuitously scythed through the Englian top order.

The Baggy Greens, despite being only 0-1 down in the seven-match series, have now surely proved that they will never win a relevant cricket match again – any half-decent team would have appealed more convincingly for leg-before against Pragyan Ojha when just six more runs were needed to lose, and only a fracturing side staring into an abyss of imminent nothingness would have allowed their substitute fielder to narrowly miss the subsequent run-out attempt. Ricky Ponting’s best hope now is to avoid a 7-0 whitewash, and attempt to resign with his dignity and batting average still at least partially intact.

From an environmental point of view, it is a deeply regrettable shame that the obvious formality of England retaining the Ashes for the third series in a row after their triumphs in 2005 and 2009 will have to proceed to satisfy advertisers and spectators, at a cost to the planet of innumerable pointless aeroplane flights, when a ceremonial handing over of the Ashes to England captain Mahandrew Singh Strauss on the steps of Buckingham Palace would surely be more appropriate.

I’m confused.

I apologise if I have taken a slightly Anglo-centric view of the Mohali Test, a modern classic that fluctuated mesmerically amidst outstanding individual performances, crucial injuries and curious umpiring, and which featured one of the most dramatic single deliveries in cricket history. It is hard to think of a more incident-packed ball than Johnson’s to Ojha in the final over – if it was possible to score four for two off one ball, India almost did it. Australia should have taken the last wicket, then could have taken the last wicket, but instead gave away four of the required six runs, and lost a couple of balls later.

For those who missed it, Billy Bowden’s magic umpirical sonar apparently detected an edge that eluded the rest of the cricketing universe before Ojha’s pads diverted the ball from catapulting middle stump into the Punjab skies, whilst the batsman, perhaps momentarily deranged by the pressure and excitement of (a) the occasion, (b) there actually being an adequately sized crowd at a Test match in India, and (c) not being 100% lbw, set off for the most non-existent quick single in cricket history, as the Australian 12th man, Smith, hoved in on the ball and hurled it within centimetres of stump-splattering victory, only to see the leg-side fielders, similarly distracted by the heart-befuddling tension of the moment, admiringly watch his hurl scoot to the boundary for four decisive overhurls.

Perhaps the only individual balls that come close to matching it are the last ball of the 1999 World Cup semi-final, when South Africa finally choked harder than Australia in one of the great simultaneous choke-offs in sporting history, and the penultimate ball of the tied Test in 1960-61, when Grout was narrowly run out by Hunte’s sizzling throw from the boundary as he scampered for what would have been the winning third run. But to have two near-wickets and a boundary must be a first.

The finale of the Brisbane tie remains the most dramatic over in Test history – it began with five minutes remaining of the match, and Australia requiring six runs with three wickets remaining. There then followed, in just seven balls: five runs of varying degrees of luck, one catch, one dropped catch, one missed run-out, and two run-outs (both preventing the winning run, the second sealing the tie with a direct hit from midwicket). Plus one dot ball when not much happened. Something for everyone. One can only imagine how the average modern-day commentator would have relayed the action – presumably with a cocktail of window-shattering decibels and spontaneous combustion.

Mohali, a superb Test match throughout, gave the world the latest of Laxman’s sporadic masterpieces, innings of sublime perfection that have punctuated his oddly inconsistent career. English fans have never seen the Hyderabad Hyperstylist at his best. He has a worse Test average against England (34) than, amongst others, Russel Arnold, Boeta Dippenaar and Paul Reiffel (the 1990s version of Garfield Sobers). Against Australia, since 2000, Laxman averages 62, comfortably outperforming, amongst others, Russel Arnold, Boeta Dippenaar, Sachin Tendulkar, and every other batsman in world cricket.

Laxman’s career alone therefore proves, if proof were needed, that England are 82% better at cricket than Australia, and will certainly win the Ashes by approximately 3.22 Tests to 1.78. Unless Hauritz steps up a couple of gears, or Swann gets injured, or Australia’s superior flat-wicket seam-bowling proves decisive, or the innate class and home experience of their ageing batsmen outdoes England’s seldom consistently high-scoring line-up, or it is not uncharacteristically and unbrokenly cloudy for seven weeks, or Peter Siddle develops an unplayable googly, or England’s selectors panic and recall the late Wally Hammond in the vain hope he can repeat his 905 runs of 1928-29, or this happens, or that happens. Tough series to predict.

Meanwhile, as we English and our cricketing media obsess about the forthcoming confrontation in Baggy Greenland, the world’s current and former No. 1 nations bring their irritatingly short two-match series to a conclusion in Bangalore. In the frequently indigestible smorgasbord of an international cricket schedule that is force-rammed down the throats of the world’s fans, this is a rare case of underkill, like Federer playing Nadal over one set, or Usain Bolt taking on Tyson Gay in a 40-metre sprint, or Kiefer Sutherland starring as Jack Bauer in a new series of 9.

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Having sought the assistance of Big Mama Stats to prove why England will definitely, decisively and unarguably win the Ashes, I will now ask her to prove that Andrew Strauss and his men are heading for a definite, decisive and unarguable pulping.

(Please do not read this piece in isolation – I realise that, without the context of Part One, this might look like gratuitous numerical hatchet job on a highly successful team. But still, numbers are numbers, and they deserve their say as much as the other great tools of sports punditry, such as experience, perception, gut feeling, rampant jingoism, selective memory, blind optimism and/or pessimism, and, above all, guesswork.)

THE ASHES-LOSING ENGLAND XI, 2010-11

Strauss
Deceptively inconsistent throughout his Test career, for one who is outwardly as unflappable as a granite pterodactyl’s wing. Strauss seems to have a bizarre and inexplicable fixation with averaging between 24 and 26 in series of longer than three Tests – he has done so in five of England’s last seven such rubbers.

These include the last two major series, in South Africa and at home against Pakistan (in which his highest score in eight matches was 54), and his previous tour of Australia, on the supposed 2006-07 Ashes, when he allegedly averaged 24 if Australia claims are to be believed. He has not scored a century for 13 Tests, and only one in his last 17.

As a captain, he masterminded England’s 2009 Ashes triumph by sitting in the pavilion in Cardiff quietly wetting himself whilst Anderson and Panesar held on for a draw, then skilfully led his team to a drawn series in South Africa by doing the same thing twice more.

Cook
Too often bats as if he is trying to befriend the slip cordon, his legs, arms and bat moving like frantic passengers at a busy station all heading for different trains. Averages just 26 in 10 Ashes Tests, and, since the start of the last Ashes tour, in 36 Tests against the top-seven ranked Test nations (i.e. excluding Bangladesh and West Indies), he averages just 33.

Trott
The Cape Town Compulsive Twitcher averaged just 29 in his only previous winter of overseas Test cricket, as his game melted down like a dead zebra’s ice cream on his return to the country of his birth.

Pietersen
Here’s a question for you: What do Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen have in common? Is it: (a) they were both born in South Africa; (b) when they eat a fishfinger, they both nibble the top corners off first to make it look like a fish cricket bat; (c) neither of them has read War And Peace, start to finish, in the original Russian; (d) they were both shortlisted for the role of Tim Curtis in the forthcoming Hollywood blockbuster The Savage Blade, the $150-million biopic of the former Worcestershire and England opening batsman (in the end, the part of three-Test wonder Curtis was given to Vin Diesel, with Kiefer Sutherland as county team-mate Stuart Lampitt, and Scarlett Johannson as England chairman of selectors Petra May); or (e) they have both averaged under 26 in England’s last two major series?

It was a trick question. The answer is of course: all of the above. In his last six series, over 16 Tests, Pietersen has averaged 35, with no centuries, and has plinked only five sixes from his once explosive bat. He is far from the dominator he once was. He hit 32 sixes in his first 18 Tests, but has crossed the ropes just 21 times in 48 matches since then, whilst his scoring rate has dropped by 20%. Pietersen needs to regrow his successful, almost unstoppable 2005 badger hair. It was a source of strength and inspiration for him, and fear and confusion for the Australians.

Collingwood
The glue holding England’s batting together has been decidedly unsticky of late – he has posted six single-figure scores in his last eight Test innings. In his last 17 Tests, he has scored just one century and averaged a sedate 37. In the eight Ashes Tests since his Adelaide masterwork (“The Sistine Chapel ceiling of Durhamite batsmanship” – The Durham Weekly Sprout), Collingwood averages a Brearley-esque 23.

Bell
The Flamethrower Of Eternal Justice averages a piddling 25 against Australia in 13 Tests, dreamy cover drive or no dreamy cover drive. The latter, in most of his Ashes innings – Eternal Justice has trousered a scarcely believable 14 single-figure scores in just 25 Ashes innings.

Could be vulnerable to verbal attack. On his last tour of Baggygreenland, the Australians, masters of psychological intimidation that they are, sledged him using techniques they had clearly learnt from CIA terrorist interrogators – they teased him about looking a bit like someone from a film. “What works in Guantanamo, works at the MCG,” explained captain Ricky Ponting, as he scuttled off to try and put an orange jumpsuit on Alastair Cook.

Prior
As a wicketkeeper, his handling skills were once compared to those of a baby-hating midwife. This is not true, but the point stands. As a batsman, in his 14 Tests against the three highest-ranked teams of recent years (Australia, India, and South Africa), Prior averages 26, with no centuries.

More pressingly, Prior, about to make his first trip to Australia, will be fretting bucketloads about his future career prospects. England have changed their wicketkeeper in four of their last five Ashes tours. The last five keepers to don the gloves for England in Australia for the first time have never played Test cricket again after the end of that series – Rhodes in 1994-95, Hegg in 1998-99, Foster in 2002-03, and Jones and Read in 2006-07.

Alec Stewart in 1990-91 is the last England gloveman whose career was not ended by his first Ashes tour, and that series was also the last England jaunt to Australia that did not signal the total annihilation of a wicketkeeper’s Test existence. Even then, established first-choice Jack Russell was jettisoned after three Tests, and was in and out of the team for the rest of his battered-hat-festooned career. Furthermore, in 1986-87, Jack Richards kept wicket in all five Tests as England triumphed. He was promptly dropped for the first Test of the following summer, played only three more times, and never passed double figures again.

Since Alan Knott, England’s wicketkeepers in Australia have averaged 20.66 in 45 Tests, with one century and five fifties, all whilst crawling along at a fraction over two runs per over. In summary, Australia is a bad place for English wicketkeepers.

Swann
Is Graeme Swann: (a) the world’s most valuable all-round cricketer who holds the key to England’s Ashes hopes; or (b) a fortuitous chancer who has buffed up his bowling average against some of Test history’s most inept batting line-ups? It’s another trick question. The answer is (a), with a bit of (b) thrown in. Swann averaged 40 with the ball in his previous Ashes series, and, against the higher-ranked Test nations, averages close to 36. He averages just 15 with the bat in his last 11 Tests, with a highest score of 32.

Broad
The man who puts the “petulant” into “often needlessly petulant” has seldom produced for England overseas – he averages 37 with the ball and just 14 with the bat in away Tests (compared to 32 and 39 at home). He has not taken five wickets in an innings since that Ashes-winning apparent breakthrough at The Oval in 2009, and has never averaged more than four wickets per game in a series.

Anderson
Could win the Ashes single-handedly. If they were being played in cloudy conditions in England, with Pakistan’s batsmen playing for Australia. Sadly, that is a big “if”. Perhaps the biggest “if” since Rudyard Kipling started projecting the titles of his poems onto the skies above Gotham City. The Ashes will not be held in England with Pakistani batsman. Not this year. Anderson has taken just 17 wickets in eight Tests against Australia, at an average of 56. Over his whole career, in overseas Tests, he has taken 52 wickets at an average of almost 44.

Finn
Struggled to take wickets in his two previous overseas Tests, against Bangladesh, and tends to leak runs – his economy rate is 3.77 in Tests, 3.61 in first-class cricket. Finn is tall. Martin McCague was tall. He once bowled one of the worst opening spells in Ashes history. Logically, therefore, Finn will definitely do the same.

Finn has taken fewer Ashes wickets than, amongst others, Len Hutton, Uzman Afzaal, Ranjitsinhji, and Alan Igglesden (and I guarantee that is the first time in human history that those four names have appeared in the same sentence). Finn can play the “lack-of-opportunity” card as hard as he likes, but the fact remains that he has taken the same number of Australian Test wickets as actress Julie Christie, controversial former professional pope Pope Pius XII, my wife, Diego Maradona and 1997 England one-cap left-armer Mike Smith.

BACK-UP

Morgan
His brilliant array of strokes will not be of much use if his technical flaws against seam bowling continue to rear their indecisively-fiddling-outside-off-stump heads. He has scored just 103 of his 257 Test runs against pace, and been dismissed six times by quicks (compared to 154 runs for once out against spin and dobblers).

Davies
He could become the first English-born wicketkeeper to make his debut for England since James Foster in 2001 – the previous five England-born glovemen to debut for England since Alec Stewart (Foster, Read, Hegg, Rhodes and Blakey) have, between them, averaged 19 with the bat in careers lasting an average of seven Tests.

Also, see Prior’s entry above for the fortunes of England’s wicketkeepers in Australia. In addition to that list of woe, of England’s reserve wicketkeepers on Ashes tours, Gould (1982-83) never played in a Test match at all, Tolchard (78-79) never added to his four caps, Taylor (70-71 and 74-75) played one Test in New Zealand at the end of the 70-71 tour then waited seven years and a Packer revolution for his next. Going further back, surprise first-choice AC Smith never played another Test after the 1962-63 tour, back-up keepers Keith Andrew and Arthur McIntyre played only one Test each after their tours 1954-55 in 1950-51 respectively, Paul Gibb never played again after the 1946-47 tour. Nor George Duckworth after 1936-37. Dodger Whysall played just once after 1924-25. Arthur Dolphin never played after 1920-21. I’m boring myself now. The point is: Davies should fake a serious illness if he wants to have a future as an international cricketer.

Bresnan
He struggled to hit the ball off the square or take wickets in his Tests against Bangladesh; expensive and unpenetrative in ODIs this summer; has had a poor first-class season for Yorkshire. No current reports of anyone in the Australian squad waking up in the middle of the night sweating and screaming, before clambering into their parents’ bed, and asking, “Mummy and Daddy, is it OK if I sleep in your bed again? I’ve had another nightmare about Tim Bresnan.”

Panesar
He has spent much of his recent international career on a learning curve. Unfortunately, that curve has been heading downwards. He averages over 40 in his most recent 22 Tests − the reincarnation of Ashley Giles himself, but with the useful batting and fielding having gone AWOL during the changeover. Monty averages 44 in 17 overseas Tests. His batting has never kicked on from the promise shown in that one straight drive he hit in Perth four years ago that had critics excitedly hailing the new Garry Sobers. And he fields as if he has read the wrong instruction manual, but refuses to back down.

Tremlett
He has taken little over three wickets per match in county cricket over the course of his career. The last time England took a temperamentally suspect giant fast bowler to Australia, the first ball of the series almost killed second slip.

It all looks very, very bleak for England. If you ignore the last blog. And it all looks fantastic if you ignore this one. Statistics are a fickle mistress. I think it will be a close series. Two-all. Or 5-0 either way.

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