Test Dilemma’s and will Australia and India please grow up
With the first test against New Zealand approaching it is time to start thinking about the possibilities selection wise. There are challenges for positions in most sections of the team, and the players will be putting forward their case in the warm up games on at the moment. I’ll talk about them and let you know who I’d pick – let me know if you disagree!
Starting at the top there is the batting selection. Cook, KP, Bell, Colly and Vaughan are already on the team sheet, with seemingly Shah and Strauss vying for one spot. If Strauss gets it, it seems he might bat at no 3 with Bell moving to no 6 probably. The second warm up game starting this evening goes with this line up I think. If Shah gets it then Bell will stay at 3 and Shah gets the no 6 spot in a nice and simple move. In the first warm up game Shah did himself no harm nearly getting a century, while Strauss (who has been playing club cricket in NZ) played onto his stumps for a poor 4. I was watching Sky Sports the other day and Dominic Cork was quite adamant that Strauss shouldn’t even be in the squad, although he never quite backed up this claim with why he thought that. I’d go the way of Shah – he seems to have done enough in my mind to be given a bit of a run in the side and has looked at times a class player. However this seems to be against what the selectors will do according to the press, and I’m unsure what more Shah could do to get a test place!
Seddon Cricket Ground, Hamilton
Onto the keeper situation – and time for me to toss a coin. Mustard kept well in the ODI’s, and showed that he had potential with the bat, although I’m not sure how his batting would fare in test match cricket. It was either Craig McMillan or Cork the other day who said however, that we should be looking to bring Tim Ambrose as he was the real deal. I’m not going to say one way or the other as I don’t know enough so heads its Mustard, tails its Ambrose… and its come down tails!
Onto the bowling attack and our way without Flintoff is to go with 3 seamers and a spinner and I see no change to that formula here. The spinner will be Monty, and you couldn’t drop Hoggard or Sidebottom (if he gets over a hamstring niggle) with the new ball. Which leaves one spot open for a seamer. I would give Jimmy Anderson a break, he took some hammering in the ODI’s and would do well to maybe take a step back. Broad is one for the future and I’d be really looking to get him into the side permanently very soon, but I don’t know if now is the time. Much to the despair of a few people I expect, I would go with our friend Harmy. The very same Harmy who has managed to strain his back without even playing a proper game of cricket out there! Hold on, what am I saying – I want to bring in a permanently injured, homesick bowler who isn’t a shadow of his former self over an up and coming youngster who seems to not let setbacks affect him at all (see 36 off the over in the world twenty20 for what I mean here). I must be mad and I remain the right to change my mind at any point! What I really can’t understand is how Tremlett is still staying in the selectors thoughts. Please, anyone tell me why he is there. Broad is many times better and it annoys me to watch the mediocre performer that is Tremlett in the England side.
The final thing I wanted to say (on this rather long blog post!), is how boring it is getting reading about another incident between the players of Australia and India. Recently we had Sharma fined for over ellaborate celebration (ridiculous, I think you should be allowed to do anything!), and what really annoyed me here was a quote from the Indian team which went something like “Australia started it”. I mean come on, are we back in the playground? Australia don’t seem to know how to play humbly though, as shown by the continued comments coming out of their camp regarding some of the Indians. Guys, give it a rest now eh, its getting very boring.
Cricket Spikes
In previous posts I have talked about equipment from a specific brand in each post, but spikes are a bit different and I’ll try to give an overview of all of the decent ones now here.
Adidas are one of the best known brands for spikes, and the brand of spikes that I use. After last years half-hearted effort of changing the colour from red to blue (WOW!), this year they have actually changed the look and feel of the spikes a bit as well. Supremely comfortable and available in many different versions, you won’t go wrong with a pair of these.
Asics are the other top brand at the moment in cricket spikes, and favoured by fast bowlers throughout the world. I havn’t actually tried Asics spikes before, but if they are anything like their trainers (which they almost certainly will be), they will be very comfortable and decent lasting. They look pretty good as well, but they aren’t that cheap - but worth a go if you don’t fancy the Adidas.
There is also Puma who sell a decent range of cricket spikes, which are also pretty hard wearing from my experience. Apart from these top brands, a lot of the cricket companies have their own brand of cricket shoe out as well but they generally cater for the lower end of the market. They don’t look as good and won’t be as comfortable over a decent length of time - its always worth spending a bit of money on your feet as you will have to wear them for quite a while each week!
Nike Air Zoom Yorkers are another shoe which you will seen worn by international players, but these aren’t available in the UK, and the only way you can get them is by over paying to import some and to be honest i can’t see the point. Maybe if they import them properly and we can get them from an authorised retailer I’ll look at them again.
The final thing you could do is to get a pair of trainers “spiked”. This involves buying a comfortable pair of trainers and sending them off to a specialist who will then remove part of the sole and replace it with a new one with spikes in it! Pro’s like this as it means they can find their most comfortable trainer and not have to wear something “off the shelf” from Adidas or similar. The costs for this are quite high though - but if you play a lot of cricket then it is worth thinking about.
So there we have everything you could want to know about cricket spikes in time for the season, time to go out there and buy some!
AB de Villiers out on a double bouncer!
Right now I’m a bit bored of talking about England’s cricket. Luckily for me interesting stuff is happening around the world! Take a look at this video to see a replay of South Africa’s AB de Villiers getting out against Bangladesh - its pretty comical and I don’t think I’ve seen it happen in international cricket before. The only video I could find doesn’t show the dismissal live, but if you see about 20 seconds in they show you a replay from the stump cam. Enjoy!
IPL Player Auction – Dhoni ‘worth’ US $1.5 million
Evidently, this caused a bit of a stir around the world, but that media excitement didn’t really get as far as England. Sure, there was a bit of coverage about it and some stuff in yesterday’s papers, but not to the extent where you actually knew what was going on without having to read a few different sources. So I went to Live Cricket Updates which gave me a few sites which actually listed what was going on so I could get my head around it.
From what I understand, players were “auctioned” (by someone who didn’t even own them), to the various teams in the Indian Premier League. This is the ICC ratified version (I think!) of the Twenty20 competition going on in India this spring. Teams with lots of money could afford the best players, or those which will get them back the most amount of money in terms of marketing exposure! Now I think I heard that players would get the amount they went for as a salary, but this could be wrong. MS Dhoni was the most ‘expensive’ player, going for something like £750k, which isn’t all that surprising when you consider that he is India’s captain (read ‘highly marketable’), and a hell of a player with the bat and gloves. However, even decent players who won’t be playing this year went for a fair old whack. Justin Langer, who will be playing for Somerset this season whilst the IPL is going on, went for just over £100k!
I think this shows the huge amount of money in the game in India, which appears to be blowing any other country out of the water, England and Australia included. There is such a huge following in India and clearly some very rich individuals / companies are starting to see some potential lucrative revenue streams. I guess we won’t know the impact of this for a year or so, but buckle up, as it looks like this Twenty20 game, started to fill a couple of weeks in an English summer will very probably take over the cricket world in the next few years.
Lastly – I didn’t see the England highlights the other night as I was too busy swearing at my broken laptop. Damn computers when they break are useless – now I have to go searching for another one. That is unless some kind soul out there has a brand new laptop they want to pass my way……. thought not!
It’s a Tie!
Once I’d realised late that last night’s game had already started I stayed up to watch a bit of the fourth ODI and it was pretty good watching. Cook and The Colonel had racked up 150 and I went to sleep feeling positive, expecting to wake up and hear we’d won the game! The track was obviously a bit of a road though, so I knew that it wasn’t in the bag. In the end, I was very pleased to hear that we’d scored 340 - I wouldn’t have thought that has happened for a while - but I didn’t expect to hear it had been a tie!
From the reports, it sounds like we dragged it back well after looking dead and buried – and if I have the chance to watch the highlights this evening it will be good. However, I could be chucking my laptop out of the window when they’re on as I think it died last night..
With the past two performances being decent, I’d like to know what the hell went on in the those first two games. How can a team go from being so inept to putting up a real challenge? Is it something the coach is doing, or is it that the players are actually taking on some responsibility for the failings of the earlier games, or something else? Hopefully it is a matter of a number of known factors, for if it just a case of “I don’t know” how does that actually help us in the future?
P.S February is too early to start nets – I’m still in a bit of pain from Sunday and its now Wednesday! Maybe it was from when I looked down the net to see a cricket ball hurtling quickly towards my head. Cue thinking “I can catch this” to “It’ll hit the net and break my finger” to “Actually, its quite close now, I better do something!!”. So I did what any self respecting cricketer would do having not caught a cricket ball all winter – I dived to the floor like a girl!
Gunn and Moore 2008 Equipment
We move onto Gunn and Moore for the next in the series looking at 2008 equipment! They havn’t changed anything huge in their range for this year, although they have simplified their protection range (thank god – more companies could learn from them).
When the Catalyst came out last year I deliberated about which bat to get before buying one of these, and I was delighted with the decision I made. The star in the range if you ask me - A great bat, although I prefer the look mine has over the new 2008 model. Light enough to play your shots, but with a decent chunk of wood, middle it and the ball will go flying. I really do love my bat and I would recommend any of the catalyst range to anyone.
The others in the range also have an updated look, and they have revived the “cannon” model name, but nothing outstandingly new this year.
Onto the protection, and I mentioned that this has been simplified. Before they had each model (catalyst, duellist, etc), and each price point (606, 808, original le etc), which meant for a very large range, and complication where it wasn’t needed as the products were essentially the same. Now they just have the price points, so going from 303 for the entry level stuff up to original le test quality stuff. Much more simple and it all looks pretty good stuff – I reckon I might be in the market for a pair of their pads this season. I already have the bat and I swear by the gloves (the most comfortable out there in my opinion).
Oops, that turned into a bit of an advert for Gunn and Moore – I guess keeping your customers happy has its benefits!
