News Snippets
Severe lack of posting this week - busy-ness finishing off an online cricket shop for a friend and the lack of cricket on tv to get me excited meant not much action here, but seeing as twenty20 time is around the corner expect more to happen now!
Despite my recommendations in my last post about making some changes to my Telegraph Fantasy Cricket Team, I never got round to it and my position is being affected badly because of it. I thought in the end I might as well hold off and make the changes next week once all the twenty20 players have turned up and I can get some specialists into the side!
Speaking of Twenty20, it starts on the 11th June (next weds), and I’m looking forward to seeing some hopefully dry weather and good cricket. Last year’s tournament was decimated by the rain, and the way things have been recently I think we’re going to have to cross our fingers for some good weather. I havn’t had a chance to find a decent preview of the competition yet, no doubt they’ll appear in the weekend papers and I’ll link to one when I find it.
One player who might take Twenty20 by storm this year is Ravi Bopara. He’s in England’s one day squad so he might not play that much for Essex in the competition, but Ravi Bop scored an incredible 201* in the Friends Provident Trophy yesterday in 150 something balls I think it was. Well played Ravi, but you better watch out as that type of form might get you picked for England!
Over the the WIndies, Australia are continuing their good run of Test victories, but not quite as convincingly on the pitch as they used to. Things that have happened over there - ‘Punter’ Ponting recently passed 10,00 runs which is a hell of an achievement, and Stuart MacGill announced his retirement after taking a bit of stick from the WIndies batsmen and realising that he couldn’t continue. He was unlucky in the sense he was born in the Shane Warne era and never had the chance to properly stake his claim, but he was always prone to bowling a long hop an over, but boy he could turn the ball a bloody mile! It’ll be interesting to see the replacement for MacGill, as with the Ashes starting next summer the spinner won’t have that much time to get used to the international scene before taking us on. He’ll be rubbish of course and we’ll claim back the Ashes! Hmm…
Right, I’m off to watch the highlights of us attempt to screw up the first day of the Test Match against NZ. Until next time..
Top 10 (or so..) players so far in Telegraph Fantasy Cricket
We’re a month or two in to this season’s fantasy cricket season, and it’s time to take a look and see how I’m doing, and which players we should have chosen!
I started off the season like a rocket, miles ahead for a good few weeks, but then I stopped paying attention and things quickly went downhill. I think 3 of my 4 bowlers were out injured, and coupled with other team’s players coming into form I’ve hit mid table mediocrity very quickly! So time for a bit of surgery, although not as much as one of my mates who’s used more than half of his transfers in the first month!
Top Batsmen (at time of writing)
U Afzaal - a player I have! woohoo!
HD Ackerman - always seems to do well, no different this year but wasn’t on my list for this season, maybe i need to re-think.
M Di Venuto - ditto.
M Butcher - a bit of a surprise to me, but a double ton helped! Not playing for Surrey today so maybe pacing himself for the season?
J Gallian - a special mention seeing as he was only rated a 2, he’s had a storming season so far.
Keepers
hmmm.. Luke Sutton has done nothing so far for my team, so looks pretty close to the chop, but for who?
P Nixon - the old man continues to score well (but he’s expensive!)
C Read - the young man continues to score well (but he’s expensive!)
N O’Brien - A surprise from Northants where he wasn’t even first choice but seems to be doing well
M Prior - Scoring a lot in the Championship but just called into the one day squad will hurt his points here.
All Rounders
Sickeningly, the top two so far are two players I talked about before the season but didn’t choose, how stupid am I?!
P Trego - taking good wickets so far this season
R McLaren - I really should have picked him
N Boje - Finally, another player in my team (time to make him captain I think)
R Ten Doeschate - another player I talked about pre-season, I hope somebody took my tips as I didn’t!
Bowlers
T Bresnan - has found wickets and runs a plenty so far in the season, will it continue?
J Allenby - Who?! Seriously, I have no idea who this is…
Y Arafat - Woohoo, another player of mine from the start, class!
D Pattinson - making the most of a starting spot at Notts with Broad and Sidebottom out of the equation
C Langeveldt - I brought him in for Mahmood a week or two back as his stats were looking pretty good.
So how am I going to get out of my mid table position having looked at the stats above? I think I need to cut some dead wood in M North (Batsman, Skipper), L Sutton (mentioned above), A Mahmood (seems to take wickets but the points aren’t enough), S Mushtaq (maybe I’ll hold on to him), and look at bringing possibly a name or two from above. Then hopefully see myself return back to the position I deserve at the top of the tree!!
That’s Why We Love Test Cricket
The second test between Eng and NZ shows why Test Cricket still keeps our attention in the ever increasing seas of Twenty20 and the like. Those games provide a quick hit of interest, but none of the intrigue and see-sawing of momentum that we saw over the past few days at Old Trafford.
Innings 1 - NZ hold the power despite some stupid running between the wickets (what were Oram and Vettori thinking?!), with England then forgetting how to bat with any intention of scoring runs in reply. The Kiwi’s almost force the follow on, but we scrape through thanks to Broad and put them back in.
At this point it looks like it can only go one way - an NZ win. However, the balance shifts throughout the second innings as Monty puts huge pressure on the Kiwi’s and we knock them out with a chase able target to get with the bat. At this point the game could go either way - the pitch could play a part and we could bat like we did in the first innings, or we can be positive and go and win the game. We all know now that the latter is what happened, but it was such an intriguing day that you wanted to watch it all.
How many games of Twenty20 change during the game like that? There won’t be many that’s for sure, and that is why we still love test cricket.
We now have just over a week until the final test match - and during that time the England side will still be up for debate, with Collingwood looking on the dodgiest ground at the moment. The problem is I can’t see anyone in better form with international quality to bring in in his place. We shall see…
Second Test vs NZ
The end of the first test was a bit of a damp (or dark!) squib which didn’t really prompt me to post any thoughts about it, and the start of the second test hasn’t really got me excited either, and it start tomorrow morning! Maybe it is the Champions League Final taking over the sports media, maybe its the fact that the first test was a bit dull but the series hasn’t got going which is a shame.
Possibly the biggest headline surrounding this test is the return of Darryl Hair to the international umpires position. Ever since the ball tampering allegation shenanigans he has been vilified and left out of any international umpiring, with him trying to sue the ICC and with Pakistan saying they’ll refuse to play in a game he umpires. I care very little for the politics in cricket surrounding this type of thing - he thought the ball had been tampered with - Pakistan threw a wobbly and everything that happened afterwards was regrettable. I’m not going to drag it all up again, lifes too short, but it will be a shame if the focus of this game is on the umpire rather than the match itself and the players involved.
I don’t see any changes to the England side being made (please don’t play Tremlett), - with NZ maybe just looking at the fitness and effectiveness of youngster Tim Southee. However, despite three dry days between the test matches, the weather for this bank holiday weekend doesn’t look good and it could be another frustrating time for the players and spectators alike! I’m not sure we’re firing on all cylinders yet, and I worry when I look forward to the series against South Africa later in the summer as I think we’ll struggle. I hope I’m wrong though, (or do I, having been born in SA!).
It’s Dark Outside
The first test between England and NZ has struggled to really get going thanks to the lovely English summer. So much time has already been lost to wet weather and dark skies, and with the forecast for Saturday also not looking much cop you have to wonder if we’ll get a result out of this game.
There isn’t much anyone can do about the rain delays aside of building an indoor cricket stadium, but Alec Stewart on the TMS blog raises a good point about test grounds having permanent lights to supplement the light when we have generally crappy days like yesterday and today. They wouldn’t be there so we can play when its night-time, but just to help out and stop annoying the paying customers who have seen a stop-start day of cricket which never really got going at all. It makes good sense, although individual grounds may have issues with planning permission, I think its something that the ECB should be pushing for at each test ground in the UK.
Onto the match itself - which show England looking pretty good in their new Adidas gear! I know some people aren’t too fond at the lack of woolly jumpers, but this is 2008 and those people need to get with the times a bit more! McCullum was the star of the NZ side with the bat, with an entertaining if not overly orthodox innings who really gave the Kiwi’s any standing in the game. Sideshow Ryan wasn’t quite on the spot on Thursday, but managed to take something like 4 wickets for 5 runs to wrap up the NZ innings. Broad bowled well, and Anderson and Monty did ok as well, but I can’t help but think we let the Kiwi’s get away with scoring more than they should have. I guess we’ll see once we’ve put some runs on the board and that’s when we’ll be able to tell.
Roll on some more summer weather…
Cricket is back to being “dodgy”?
I’m going to be careful what I say in this post as I don’t want to get into any trouble, but it is with regards to West Indian all rounder Marlon Samuels being given a two year ban for “receiving money, benefit or other reward which could bring him or the game into disrepute”.
The “dodgyness” of cricket was well exposed a few years ago when Hansje Cronje, the South African captain was found to have spoken on a number of occasions with bookmakers and fixed matches, and then the allegations came out for lots of players who were said to have given “information” to the bookies in return for some cash. A lot of the allegations weren’t for downright cheating (although I think a couple were), they were more for giving team and pitch information, and for giving their opinion on the upcoming games.
Whether or not the latter is actually wrong is probably another point, but the ICC quite rightly stamped down on the lot of it. If there are grey lines then people are always going to push the boundaries - much better to have it black and white as to what players can and cannot do, and in recent history it hasn’t been mentioned in the media or around the game of cricket (from a fan’s perspective).
For a while, cricket’s name was tarnished, as more and more info was uncovered - and people began doubting some of the great games of the past. It wasn’t a great time to be a cricket fan (although I was a bit too young to really understand the ins and out of it all).
Now it has reared it’s ugly head again with this allegation, and I really hope it doesn’t start off another round of bashing cricket, as it doesn’t take much for the common man in the street to hear a few stories and all of a sudden cricket is “dodgy” and its all we end up talking about.
I don’t know why the players do it after everything that happened a few years ago - maybe they don’t mean to and do it unwillingly and unwittingly, maybe the money is better than I can imagine - but it just doesn’t seem worse the risk. Samuels (appeal permitting), will miss out on two years of cricket now not just for his country but with new twenty20 tournaments popping up who’s to say he wouldn’t have been picked for an IPL side and make more money than by giving some information to bookmakers.
We wait and see whether the allegations hold true (although having given the ban the ICC must be pretty sure), and what effect this will have on the rest of the cricket world.
