From Darren Harold, New Zealand

Nothing tops watching a match live at the ground © Getty Images

What a fantastic time to be a cricket fan. As I pen this piece I am part way through a long cricketing day – in hours only, the time is positively racing by! In the space of one day, I’ll hear, read and see the exploits of six international teams playing in all three of the games’ formats via a seemingly endless list of media sources.

Over the course of a tiresome Friday in the office, I listened to my native New Zealand turn in a mediocre ODI performance against a Zimbabwean side in Dunedin still struggling to reacclimatise themselves to the rigours of international cricket. Though not the decisive victory they were hoping for, the feats of McCullum, Guptill, Nicol et al. were described via an audio commentary on my laptop, while I checked the details on ESPNcricinfo’s live scoring.

Upon arriving home, Aggers, Boycs and Blowers were setting the scene before the opening session of the third Pakistan versus England test from Dubai. Competing with the excited shouts of my young son, their dulcet tones filtered out of my iPad thanks to a digital feed via BBC Radio 5 Live’s Test Match Special (TMS).

Very soon, I’ll flick on the television to see if the hapless Indians can finally get a victory on their Australian tour in the second T20 from the MCG. The mute button will be on though so I can keep listening to the game in the desert – that, and I can only take so much of the Channel 9 cheerleading (sorry, commentary) team.

Continue reading "Cricket in a global village"

From Paul Leary, United Kingdom

The battle for supremacy of a sport such as Test cricket can never and must never be compressed to a single game © Getty Images

If recent weeks have told us anything, it’s that to be considered the No. 1 side, you must do more than just top the rankings. This winter, the two most recent incumbents of this prized position have been defeated by Australia and Pakistan respectively.

India, a team which spent around 18 months at the top of the pile, have gone down 4-0 to an inexperienced but hungry Australian side, displaying the same technical flaws against the moving ball as were seen during the English summer. England, recently crowned No.1 and lauded copiously as such, have subsided in the heat of the UAE. Despite relatively friendly pitches and a notable lack of ‘rank’ turn, the mere sight of a spinner 22 yards away seemed to be enough to have England’s batsmen nervously shuffling and prodding anywhere but near the ball.

There’s a lesson to be learnt. That to be considered the best team in the world more widely than just in the ICC Rankings, a team must win throughout the world, displaying aptitude against pace, seam, swing , and spin, in any and every set of conditions. Based on this conclusion, it’s fair to say that realistically, we are yet to establish another ‘No.1’ side since the retirement of Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist et al in 2007, and the subsequent decline in fortunes of the Australian team after more than a decade of domination.

Continue reading "Why a Test Championship is flawed"

Inducting young players into the Indian XI would not in any way diminish the worth of the batting legends © Getty Images

From Balachandhran S, India

Dissection is being campaigned against. It is much maligned, I understand. In schools, children and young adults are encouraged to refrain from practical classes in dissection (biology). In reality that is because animals are sadly extinguished in the name of learning. In sport too, there is dissection. And sometimes sportsmen become the victims of the process. Not at all times is dissection illuminating. But then there is only one thing to do after every game for many people – dissect it threadbare and discuss what could have been. Therefore it is very tempting for us, as fans, to dissect the individual games of the Indian players who have featured in six consecutive away Test defeats. But better still is the process of shining the torch ahead to light up the way, rather than looking behind to see who is catching up and on which stone(s) we stumbled. This, primarily, is one such effort.

Personal landmarks, a waste of media time

The peerless Sachin Tendulkar's much touted hundredth hundred probably weighs more on the minds of millions of fans and media people than on the man himself. Popular cricket columnists now claim that Tendulkar's quest for this statistical gem is bothering the entire team – weighing it down and not letting it perform to potential. Not only are such claims laughable, they are also outstandingly ridiculous for the sheer fact that these are people who have played the game at a very high level. When Virender Sehwag or MS Dhoni is facing down a 140kph delivery from James Pattinson or Peter Siddle, their illustrious team-mate's elusive landmark is the last thing on their mind.

Continue reading "Test cricket in India - The way forward"

By Stuart John, Australia

Can Ed Cowan make more out of his international career than his English namesake? © Getty Images

This sounds familiar to anyone? Regular first-class cricketer plays for over seven years, not excelling but not sinking into the abyss as many have before. Mid-table mediocrity, so to speak. Said cricketer then wakes up one morning and discovers the cricketing fairies (I'd like to imagine Merv Hughes in a Tinkerbell outfit tip-toeing around the house so not to wake anyone up) have turned him into a batting champion. Centuries flow from his bat like beer from the tap, eventually leading to a long-awaited Test call-up. Once there, our hero doesn't disgrace himself either, battling a difficult pitch and a strong bowling attack to make a useful 60-odd before being caught behind; his second innings is less successful, with an lbw decision against him early on.

I should probably mention at this point that our hero is already a published author. If you're an Australian cricket fan, you probably know the answer. And if you said his first name is Ed, we'd be in agreement. But our hero for this particular story isn't new Australian opener Ed Cowan - instead, it's former England player Ed Smith. Mind you though, most of the above could be true for Messrs. Cowan or Smith – and there's more to it than that. Both made their first-class debuts at a young age, for world-famous British universities (Cowan at 20 for Oxford, Smith at 18 for Cambridge); both struggled for about four years into their first-class careers; and both have a reputation for being intellectual in a career that doesn't always look that kindly on those outside the norm.

Continue reading "The parallel tales of two writer-cricketers"

New Zealand's best bowler since Richard Hadlee, Shane Bond, had a career tarnished by injury that probably fell into the category of unfulfilled, rather than great © Getty Images

By Keith King, South Korea

New Zealand is such a small country (many cities have more people than New Zealand’s four million-odd inhabitants) that, in many ways, is insignificant on the world stage. Sport is one avenue through which New Zealand and New Zealanders have asserted themselves on the world stage. For a country its size, New Zealand has done remarkably well in many sporting codes, including rugby and rugby league, netball and softball.

For those that would argue (with some justification) that these are mere fringe sports in a global sense, New Zealanders have won both tennis and golf majors, made the semi-finals of the basketball World Championships and made the soccer World Cup finals twice (admittedly, they haven’t won a game yet once they have reached them). At the Summer Olympics, New Zealand has won 86 medals (which surprisingly enough is four times the number India, a country with a much greater population, has managed to win).

Arguably, though, the one sport at which New Zealanders are not as competitive as they should be, despite taking it seriously, is cricket. Since New Zealand’s introduction to Test cricket in 1930, the New Zealand team (they weren’t known as the Black Caps until much later) has usually been at the bottom or near the bottom of the heap, the worst team going round. It took 26 years and 45 tests for New Zealand to register their first Test win. Australia wouldn’t even play their neighbours for a 27-year gap between 1946 and 1973, which must be rated as the ultimate cricketing cold shoulder.

New Zealand has a win/loss ratio of 0.47, the lowest of all test teams barring Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (India has the next lowest win/loss ratio of 0.77, showing that it has not always been the powerhouse it is now). A brief respite was found with the introduction of Sri Lanka to Test cricket (the whipping boys of the 80s and early 90s) and then a more permanent one with the introduction of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, who now seem to be the only teams New Zealand can reliably beat in test matches.

Continue reading "Who is New Zealand's best after Hadlee?"