Paul Seaborne on Cricket

Hello everyone and welcome to this weeks edition of Paul Seaborne on cricket. It's been a fairly sombre fortnight owing to the news of the Sri Lankan cricket team coming under attack from terrorists in Pakistan. A devastating attack, and one which has sent shockwaves through the world of cricket.

I am not going to go into too many details of the attack, as you probably all know that the Sri Lankan bus was ambushed en route to the ground in Pakistan and shot at. The lives of six policemen were lost, and players and officials were left injured and fearing for their lives. Understandably the Sri Lankan cricket team immediately left Pakistan to return home, and Pakistan were left nursing the aftermath of this event.

The most immediate thing that comes to mind is that it is hard to envisage ANY sort of cricket taking place in Pakistan for a long long time. Which is a shame for Pakistan, as they have been void of any home international cricket for quite some time already.

However players safety is always a primary concern, and it is totally understandable that no teams will wish to tour there in the near future. So we have to look at what Pakistan do now.

Well, one suggestion is that Pakistan plays their “home” games in England. And the more I think about this, the less problems and I can see, and the more positives become apparent. First of all, you are pretty much guaranteed a very big crowd for the test matches, and the English public love a test match. So this will create revenue for the ECB and the PCB, revenue that will be very welcome after the hole left from the Stanford debacle.

Secondly, England is the only test playing nation to have their summer in the months of May/June/July/Aug and as the international players are always complaining of a hectic schedule, this would provide a certain amount of breathing space, as touring teams could spread their schedules around slightly more.

Another positive to take from playing the Test Matches in England, is that you will almost certainly get sportier wickets than you do in Pakistan. You certainly wouldn’t get 600/6 plays 520/2 at Headingley!

Of course, the downside is that Pakistan will lose any home advantage they ever had, and Danish Kaneria has certainly been more effective at home than he ever has been away, but given the choice of no test cricket, or test cricket in England, I’m sure the Pakistan players would opt for the latter.

Talking of playing on sportier wickets, watching test cricket these last few weeks has tested even the most loyal of spectators. The test matches in the Caribbean and Pakistan have not been what the sport is all about. We as viewers want wickets which will keep the game alive all through the match, where good shots will get rewarded, but they have to be good shots. We want batsmen hopping around and having to work hard for their runs, and most of all, we want a wicket that will give the bowlers some encouragement as the game goes on.

We don’t want games where the two teams can cruise to a draw and batsmen rack up 100’s for fun and the game cruises to a draw.

Compare the pitches we have just seen in the West Indies to the pitches we are witnessing in South Africa. The games at the Wanderers and at Joburg were excellent for cricket. Both tests there have produced a result and the batsmen have had to work for their runs.

With 20/20 cricket threatening the existence of Test Cricket over the last year, fans of the purist form of the game will be worried by the recent trend of drawn matches.

This brings us nicely onto the series victory by the West Indies over England that culminated in a rather thrilling finish on Tuesday evening.

West Indies held all the aces going into this game, leading the series 1-0 thanks to England’s dramatic collapse in the first test. Since that game however we have had two boring draws and criticism has been directed at the West Indies, although most of it, it has to be said, has either come from England supporters or disgruntled layers of the draw! However, it still remains that flat, lifeless pitches do not make for entertaining cricket. Despite England’s best efforts with the bat, their bowlers could not back up the good work and the despite having the West Indies clinching on at eight down in the last test, and nine down at the ARG, the West Indies have won their first test series for five years, and England, just three short months away from the Ashes, are left nursing a defeat that was highly unexpected in the cricketing world.

West Indies v England Test Match Results

West Indies	England	West Indies	Innings & 23 runs	Kingston	Feb 4-7, 2009
West Indies	England	Drawn		North Sound	Feb 13-17, 2009
West Indies	England	Drawn		St John's	Feb 15-19, 2009
West Indies	England	Drawn		Bridgetown	Feb 26-Mar 2, 2009
West Indies	England	Drawn		Port of Spain	Mar 6-10, 2009

So where do England go from here? Well, there are some positives and some negatives to take from the series.

We’ll start with the negatives, they’re easier.

Once again England’s lack of positive batting has cost them. The main point I would like to raise is the issue of the speed of batting in the final test. West Indies had one front line bowler on a flat pitch in a game they were intent on drawing. So England crawl along, finishing with a run rate of 3.5 per over despite adding a run a ball hundred in the final session. This is simply not good enough when you have to win a series. I appreciate it’s always easier from the sidelines, however with one bowler and a flat pitch, England could have rocked along at nearer to four per over, declared earlier with more runs on the board.

Owais Shah. Shah was the big disappointment for me on this tour and now surely the clamour for his inclusion in the team must stop. It’s not as though it was a tough series for batting. Fairly comfortable bowling on very flat pitches. And yet he failed to make a score of any note, used up a lot of deliveries and ran himself and others out and is a liability in the field.

England still have a question mark over the No 3 spot. Ian Bell is one option. There aren’t many others I’m afraid, and until someone comes along with an outstanding talent with the bat, then England have to go back to Bell.

Alistair Cook – if he’s not careful people will start to get on his back. Scored a hundred in one test but did little else of note on pitches that batsmen should have lapped up the runs on.

Monty Panasar. Previously everyone’s favourite, Monty is fast running out of friends in the viewing world of cricket. The cheeky appealing, the childish fielding and the hopeless batting that were once funny will quickly becoming an irritation if he doesn’t start winning games for England. And the appealing, dear God the appealing.....

Now for the positives. Well we could sit here and say how many runs England’s prolific batting line up got, but we’ve already established that Boycott’s mother would have made runs here, so onto other issues.

I thought James Anderson bowled exceptionally well all tour and is getting better and better, and no one tried there heart out more than Anderson in the final tests of the series, and for me, he is the big positive to come out of the tour. Surely a starter in England, and give him an overcast day and a pitch with a bit of life in it and he will take a bagful of wickets this summer.

Graham Swann surely proved that he is England’s main weapon in the spin dept now ahead of Panasar. Bags of wickets and useful lower order batsmen, he will prove useful in the coming months.

I was also impressed with Andrew Strauss and his captaincy and overall play. I know there are critics out there who will be lining up to shoot down his negative play, but there wasn’t a lot he could do on his first tour as skipper. He did make one mistake by batting on too long in the fourth test, but apart from that, he grew on me, leading from the front and showing leadership qualities.

All eyes were on Kevin Pieterson before the first test. How would he handle being sacked as captain? How would his teammates react to his presence? How would Strauss handle the ego? Well the answer is Pieterson couldn’t have done any more than he did on and off the pitch. Runs galore, committed fielding and backed his captain up when asked to. 100% to KP.

So overall not the end of the world for England, however there are still questions to be asked. What is happening with Steve Harmison? Unfairly criticised for not giving 100% by Coach Andy Flower and seemingly out of favour, will we see the best of him again? Andrew Flintoff – is he ever going to be the strike bowler we saw in 2005? And finally, where is David Lloyd?

So while England have been struggling to win on lifeless pitches in the West Indies, it has been completely the opposite for this summers opponents, Australia, who have been destroying South Africa in a three test series. They have gained an unassailable 2-0 lead and have proved to everyone without a shadow of a doubt that they are still the team to beat. Not only have they won, they have done it convincingly, whilst at the same time unearthing great talent. Philip Hughes has been brought in at the top of the order to replace the recently retired Matthew Hayden, and his brutal innings at Durban shows he has all the hallmarks of emulating the former opener. Similarly, they have found two new bowlers in Hillfenhaus and Siddle, the later who eerily reminds me of a young Glen Mcgrath. Both these bowlers have been successful on this tour.

Neither, however, have been as successful as Mitchell Johnson. Johnson is just starting to mature into a very fine bowler after slowly improving since his days as a stock bowler in Australia’s one-day side.

Johnson has risen to number two bowler in the world behind Dale Steyn, and now he has developed a lethal in-swinger as well and his standard out-swinger, and indeed doing this at a great pace (90+kph) tells me he won’t be far away from claiming the number one spot sooner rather than later.

Well that’s all for this edition folks, be sure to check back soon for the next edition, where I will be waxing lyrical about the unstoppable force that is India in One Day cricket. I shall also be reviewing the South Africa v Australia series in more detail, and discussing anything else that appears over the next week or so in this wonderful game.

Be lucky

Paul.