Outstanding Test Cricket in the Gulf States: Pakistan-England Series

Christopher Martin-Jenkins, courtesy of the author and the Times where this essay appeared in the regular column Thunderer,** under a different title

Have you tuned in these last two weeks to the strangest sporting spectacle of the winter? Were we watching proper Test cricket in the entrepot and melting pot of Dubai, that fantastical oil-fired architects’ playground in the desert? Do three matches, decided in eleven days, more often than not before sparse crowds on neutral territory and producing a record 42 leg before wicket decisions constitute a genuine Test series?

Pakistan Test squad in triumph – Pic by Lakruwan Wanniaratchchi for AFP

Yes, emphatically yes; and fascinating, riveting, Test cricket at that, odd as it was and inconvenient though it may be that England batted badly and were trounced. It was a far more interesting series than is normally the case when England play away in Pakistan, where most games have been bore-draws played out at a slow pace on dry, dull surfaces. Only six of Pakistan’s 25 home Tests against England at home have been won by either side.

Lampooning Indian Cricketers as Asylum-Seekers

India: shredded in England, now pulped in Australia

Gideon Haigh, in The Weekend Australian, 28-29 January 2012, with different title:“Tourists have gone in circles rather than thinking in cycles”

RAHUL Dravid was widely and justly praised for his Bradman Oration last month. He has also proven prophetic. “Creaking terminators”: his droll, self-mocking description of India’s top order has turned out to be almost unimproveable. Yesterday at Adelaide Oval, they ground finally to a halt, and a remorseless Australian attack rolled right over the top of them.

 Pic from AFP

The visitors’ four mighty batsmen, weighty with honours and worth 45,000 Test runs, slouched towards the exits of their careers, the victims of good bowling, if not perhaps in each case of particularly good balls. They moved off pensively – in Virender Sehwag’s case at a meditative limp, holding the bat at its toe, analogous to a flag at half-mast.

Often times we talk of a player who has gone on a game too far. There is a case to be made that this Indian team has since its World Cup victory gone on a year too far, or at least gone in circles when it should have been thinking in cycles. Its reputation, shredded in England, has here been pulped.

Asantha De Mel considers Sri Lanka’s Cricket Selections

BBC Sandeshaya Service

The Sri Lankan cricket team do have enough talent and it is for the players to enhance their performances, says the newly appointed chief selector. Asantha de Mel, who replaced Duleep Mendis as the head of selection committee, said the new selectors will discuss the issues related to the recent poor performance of the team when the squad is back in Sri Lanka after their current tour of South Africa. Sri Lanka has only secured a single Test win, a historic win against South Africa in South Africa, since spinner, Muttiah Muralitharan retired from Test cricket, last year.

The team has also failed to secure a single series since Tillekaratne Dilshan’s took over the reigns from Kumar Sangakkara, at the end of cricket World Cup co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Unpaid Underrated Sri Lankan Cricketers stuff up the Wessels prediction

AP News Item, courtesy of The Australian, 31 December 2011, where it bore a different title

FOR the first time since Muttiah Muralidaran retired, Sri Lanka has finally won a Test. It did it convincingly, by more than 200 runs, and in a country where it had never won in the long format before. There’s life for Sri Lanka after the great man Murali. Thursday’s 208-run win was not just a breakthrough in South Africa, it was a turning point for Sri Lankan cricket after 18 months of misery. For 15 matches Sri Lanka foundered in Tests, going winless since record-breaking bowler Muralidaran said farewell to the five-day game with a 67th five-for haul in a 10-wicket victory over India in July last year.

Knee-jerk selections and failures in Tests without Murali

Rex Clementine,in the Island 1 November 2011

 Pic from Island

 The barren period for Sri Lanka without a Test win continues as the national cricket team has now spent 15 months without tasting success in Test cricket. In that period Sri Lanka has played 13 Test Matches, losing four games and drawing nine matches. Naturally, Sri Lanka’s bowling deficiencies due to the retirement of Muttiah Muralitharan and the absence of Lasith Malinga is seen as the main reason for the disappointing run. True the bowlers have not been penetrative enough, but the four matches that Sri Lanka lost in that period were due to   batting collapses that cost the team dearly as on all those instances barring the current one the fate of the series was decided on that batting collapse.

Pic by M Kiran for AFP

ICC reveals spineless greed on issue of Test play-offs

Gideon Haigh, in  the Weekend Australian, 29-30 October 2011 with different title… Gideon Haigh is one of Australia’s best sports writers and has expertise in financial analysis as well. He has now joined the Weekend Australian’s columns and must be listened to avidly. Web Editor.

HYPOCRISY, the saying goes, is the homage that vice pays to virtue. In cricket, it is the homage administrators pay to Test matches. Time and again, administrators assure us of their continued regard for Test cricket as the game’s ultimate form. Then they pull sneaky little manoeuvres like winnowing Australia’s planned three-Test series against South Africa away to two, and England’s promised five-Test series against South Africa next year to three.

Their recent decision to welch on playoffs for the World Test Championship is perhaps their most destructive move yet. Destructive and also instructive: because it demonstrates how far the game’s welfare now falls behind self-interest and short-term financial expediency as a governance priority.

At their July annual meeting inHong Kong, the executive board of the International Cricket Council, on which Cricket Australia’s representative was its chairman Jack Clarke, agreed to advance plans for playoffs to the World Test Championship: semi-finals and a final among the top four ranked countries. It was welcomed as a much-needed innovation: a chance to contextualise the game’s most skilful and historic format, and enrich it with a finale worth the name.