Flat pitches, flatter series

By Cricinfo editor Sambit Bal

Don’t go by the dramatic last hour, when a crumbling pitch almost contrived to produce a result: on the dullness scale, this series stood sheepishly alongside the one these rivals played out in Pakistan in 2006. Like then, the better team took the series, but save for a few individual performances, the cricket remained uninspiring almost throughout; often it was insipid.

A large amount of the blame must be assigned to the pitches, or more appropriately, those responsible for creating them. For nearly two unseemly weeks senior BCCI officials obsessed over the harm being caused to Indian cricket by the chief selector writing a column in defiance of the board’s code of conduct, but not a word was heard about the dead pitch that condemned the second Test to tedium. Of course, the BCCI’s constitution doesn’t lay down guidelines for safeguarding trivial matters like the health of Test cricket and spectator interest.

One of the most heartening aspects about cricket in recent times is that Test cricket has become far more result-oriented, yet the last six encounters between India and Pakistan have yielded four draws, all of them on pitches designed to break the heart and will of bowlers. It would have been a travesty had India sneaked a win at Bangalore, because it would not have been earned by great bowling, but rather due to a pitch that became a minefield towards the end after staying unfair to bowlers for the most part. Anil Kumble looked deadly bowling seam-up, and Yuvraj Singh just by bowling at the stumps.

India didn’t deserve to win because they had shown no intent - in fact, after lunch Kumble seemed more focused on giving Dinesh Karthik an opportunity to bat than on forcing a win - and a result would have somewhat redeemed a pitch that was just not good enough.

This said, the story of the series was also that neither team possessed a bowling attack capable of transcending the pitches. India winning 1-0 was the right result: they were the superior team; but a 2-0 scoreline would have flattered them. Pakistan will rue that one suicidal session on the fourth day in Delhi that cost them the series, but the truth is that like India in the 2006 series, they were playing catch-up all through the series. They managed to bowl India out only twice in the three Tests, and only once for under 600. At no point did they get themselves to a position from where victory could be contemplated.

But most of all, they were flat, lacking in fire, intensity and purpose. The most conspicuous personification of their diffidence was their inexperienced captain. Shoaib Malik had looked calm and controlled while leading Pakistan to the final of the World Twenty20 in South Africa, but in the longer versions of the game, in home series against South Africa and here in the one-dayers and in the first Test, he looked forlorn and bereft of inspiration. Inzamam-ul-Haq, his predecessor, often gave the impression of disengagement, but he had presence and commanded respect of his team-mates for his batting abilities.

Contradiction right at heart of the enigma that is Kieren Fallon

By the Times Chief Sports Writer Simon Barnes

Jockeys are a difficult bunch. It’s a mixture of short man’s chippiness and the demands of the job, a series of brusque, even brutal, wham-bam relationships with an endless series of partners. Thus we have the depression of Fred Archer, the pathological meanness of Lester Piggott, Willie Carson’s outbreaks of spitefulness, and even Frankie Dettori has a dark side.

But Kieren Fallon is different. I have had long chats with him on two or three occasions and each time I walked away thinking: “What a nice guy. If only they were all like that.” Fallon’s CV speaks of someone you would cross the M25 to avoid, but the man himself is quite different.

All the same, there was the time when he pulled a rival jockey off his horse — brilliant, in a way, because a racing saddle and an oated-up thoroughbred do not make a stable platform for judo. Whatever else Fallon may be, he is not so much a magnet for trouble as a black hole. Incomprehensible forces of gravitation tug every possible aspect of strife and destruction towards him. And so, even as his corruption trial collapses, we hear that he has failed a drugs test for cocaine, a matter still in the arena of the unproven as we await the findings for the B sample.

And yet the man I met was a champion jockey filled with humility, lost in admiration for Dettori’s style, expressing a touching eagerness to improve. You can see his hidden nature in the way he rides, in the impulsive, nanosecond seizing of a gap. But for the rest — well, he has some of the most well-mannered demons you could possibly wish to be introduced to. One of the strangest men I’ve ever met.

As reports in different newspapers claim that José Mourinho has (a) signed up as England’s next head coach and (b) performed an about-turn and joined Barcelona, the fact to bear in mind is that neither scenario would come as the least surprise. Mourinho obeys neither laws nor conventions. He pleases himself and if he gets the England job, he will do it for himself alone.

I take my hat (and shirt) off to Giggs

I remember attending a football match in which opposition supporters sang of their hatred for Ryan Giggs. Not for the first or the last time, I was bemused by a football crowd. How can anyone hate Ryan Giggs? He’s another of those athletes who lift the heart.

He has just scored his 100th league goal for Manchester United, so it’s a nice moment to applaud him as he lifts his bat, and to muse on the idiosyncratic gallop – at full pace, he is recognisable from half a mile away – and that expression, seen far too often, alas, of profound and innocent bewilderment because the ball that he has struck has failed to find the goal.

Pak Spin-Let it go, Captain Khan

By Cricinfo blog writer Kamran Abbasi

Younis Khan, suggest reports emanating from Bangalore, is about to turn his back on the Pakistan captaincy for a third time. We all know that Younis loathes nothing more than being somebody’s dummy. We all know that the unreasonable reactions of Pakistan fans turn his mind from the captaincy. But if the reports are true and Younis does not lead Pakistan in Bangalore, he will be the dummy and an unreasonable one at that.

Admittedly, Pakistan’s decision-making has defied logic. Yasir Arafat rushes in too late to play. Shoaib Akhtar leaves his hospital bed to open the bowling. Kamran Akmal remains Pakistan’s wicketkeeper for his batting and not his glovework. Abdur Rauf is summoned but blocked by the board. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s stand-in captain is an agitated bystander.

What power can Younis expect, though, as stand-in captain? He keeps the seat warm for his younger leader, and it is churlish to complain since this is a situation of his own making. The captaincy and the power could have been his.

Statistically, Younis is one of Pakistan’s best ever batsmen. Everybody who scoffed at his heroics at Kolkata needs to remember that Pakistan have an abysmal record of saving a Test match on the final day. Far more illustrious Pakistan batting line-ups than this one have flopped miserably in less trying circumstances.

Yet Younis has never managed to capture the broad acclaim to match that of the people he rubs shoulders with in the records table. Some of this reluctance is down to Younis’s unpredictability, although he is increasingly reliable. Some of it is down to juvenile mockery of his bottom-slapping technique of player motivation.

Much of this ambivalence, however, is entirely explained by his bizarre relationship with the Pakistan captaincy. The first refusal could be explained by principle. The second explained by emotion. Many Pakistan fans have been exasperated by these decisions. How could somebody refuse the national leadership role? This third hesitation will eradicate any sympathy for Younis’s stance. The question is a simple one: What matters more to Younis, his pride or the opportunity to rescue this Test series for his country?

Let it go, Captain Khan. Your pride infuses your play but your pride is also diffusing your senses. The best answer to people in the squad or in the PCB who might undermine you is to show them what you are capable of on the field. That is where you win the argument, not in press conferences, syndicated columns, or air-conditioned boardrooms.

A Pakistan team with its third captain of the series will be a limp challenger to India’s dominance.

For more Pak Spin click here

The Spin-Three steps back, and Talk to gossip

The Guardian’s weekly take on the world of cricket. By Lawrence Booth

THE GLORY DAYS OF SEVEN YEARS AGO FEEL A LONG TIME AGO

Seven years ago, England visited the subcontinent for their first Test series since 1992 and came away with pinch-me-please wins in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The results were the making of Duncan Fletcher’s reputation as an international coach, a reward for the old stagers (Atherton, Stewart, Thorpe, Hick, Gough and Caddick) who had suffered throughout the 1990s, and apparently a seminal moment in the development of English cricket. From now on, south Asia would be the place you scored runs rather than suffered them.

As so often with English sport, generalisations based on one-offs (or even two-offs) did not stand up to scrutiny. Narrow or not, this morning’s defeat in the first Test at Kandy was their sixth in 13 in the subcontinent since they left Colombo with a four-wicket win in March 2001. Only three of those games have been won, and two were in a series against Bangladesh, who at one stage looked as if they might spring a horrible surprise at Dhaka. The brutal truth is that the Ring of Fire triumph at Mumbai more than 20 months ago remains the glorious exception.

If England took two steps forward in the winter of 2000-01 through a combination of Fletcher’s forward-press scheme, Nasser Hussain’s bloody-minded leadership and some imaginative bowling from Darren Gough, they have since taken three back. And unless they can turn things round in Colombo and Galle over the next couple of weeks, the excessive fear struck into the hearts of pasty-faced Poms by the subcontinent will begin to assume pre-Fletcher proportions once more.

This seems counter-intuitive when you think back to some of the moments along the way. Andrew Flintoff and Matthew Hoggard bravely shouldering the burden at Bangalore; Craig White scoring his only Test hundred at Ahmedabad; stirring rearguards at Galle and Kandy; hundreds for Ian Bell and Kevin Pietersen at Faisalabad; Alastair Cook’s debut and Hoggard’s tirelessness at Nagpur; even Bell’s double here.

But if that gives the impression that England’s batsmen have generally prospered, it is misleading. More than any factor - the inexperienced squad in India in 2001-02, Murali’s doosra in 2003-04, the post-Ashes hangover in Pakistan in 2005-06 - the inability of the batsmen to book in for B&B has cost them dear. In 15 Tests on the subcontinent, England can boast one score of more than 134 (Marcus Trescothick’s 193 at Multan in a game Pakistan somehow won), and eight other hundreds. When you consider that there have also been 43 half-centuries, you can see the problem: jobs are being left half undone.

It is harsh to single out Bell, comfortably England’s best player in the Test that has just finished. But his knocks of 83 and 74 were all too symptomatic: attractive, and not quite enough. The bottom line is that England have lost a Test in which they reduced the opposition to 42 for five on the first morning. Back in 1999, England themselves slumped to 45 for seven in the first innings against New Zealand and still won. And yet New Zealand came back to take the series. England are going to have to reverse their recent form on the subcontinent if they are to follow the Kiwis’ lead.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The shooter was defending himself from an attack with a cricket bat which is similar to a baseball bat, but it’s flat. For this man to bring a firearm to a sporting event is odd but then again, he has the right to do so. He has a concealed weapons permit and if, in fact, he was protecting himself, he was authorized by law to do so” - Florida police defend the actions of Devan Bascom, whose decision to shoot Francis Singh in the abdomen called a swift halt to a cricket match in the sunshine state. Mr Singh is said to be in a stable condition following an operation.

Australians will never throw in the towel over Shane Warne’s status

By the Times Chief Sports Writer Simon Barnes

By the time you read this, Muttiah Muralitharan may well have broken the record for Test-match wickets, having joined Shane Warne on the almost ludicrous mark of 708 yesterday. Time, then, to brace yourself for a wave of resentment, most of it from Australia.

It makes a fascinating parallel with The Times’s series on the 75th anniversary of the Bodyline tour. Back then there was (and still is, in a fossilised kind of way) outrage that an Australian sporting hero should be revealed as nothing more than a man. The tactic of bodyline bowling exposed Don Bradman’s shortcomings and this was not acceptable. Therefore, the tactic must be wrong.

The record Murali has equalled is held by a player who, like Bradman, is one of the greatest cricketers that ever drew breath. But Murali is set to pass his record; therefore the record-equaller must be wrong.

Murali is Wisden’s 2007 Leading Cricketer in the World and I wrote a piece in the almanack to mark the fact. I said that Murali’s action had been passed and accepted and authorised, which means that you cannot quarrel with Murali, only with the laws of cricket. I also said that those who pick this quarrel must be prepared to argue about the angle between the longitudinal axis of the upper arm and forearm in the sagittal plane.

Inevitably, a couple of Australian columnists of the unreconstructed kind responded. Their argument was, roughly, I don’t care about all that, I just know that he chucks every ball and that makes “Warnie” the best. So much for logic.

The only rational view is that both are great cricketers and remarkable sportsmen. After that we can argue for as long as you like as to which is better. The argument that Murali is less good because he is compromised (mainly by Australian insularity) is simply not admissible.

It has been a joy watching him: a thrilling but chivalrous opponent, a symbol of unity in a sometimes troubled country, a professional who plays sport with the relish of more innocent times. Some people see international sport as a way in which local heroes seek to touch the infinite, while others see international sport as a measure of the length in feet of the national d**k.

Me, I’ve seen England lose to Murali and I’ve seen England lose to Warnie, and I’ve been blessed. (I’ve seen England win against both as well, so make that doubly blessed.)

To Jonny the glory; to Jason the tag of genius

Few athletes have given me greater pleasure than Jason Robinson. Loyal to my father’s roots, I often watched him when he played rugby league for Wigan and marvelled at the way that some men can run and be caught, while others run and no one can hold them. Therein lies the mystery of rugby.

It’s not just speed, not just little jinks and stutters, it’s not even the ability to see lines of running. Rather, it’s about a personal understanding of space. Robinson, who retired on Saturday after taking part in the Barbarians’ win over South Africa, had this gift to a greater extent than any rugby player I have seen, with the sole exception of David Campese.

An Undiluted Champion

From Rob Steen’s blog on Cricinfo

You wouldn’t think there could possibly be anything more he could do to embellish the legend, but even as the warm breath of the Kandy Man’s most momentous feat enveloped the Asgiriya Stadium, came another reminder of his uniqueness.When Fred Trueman became the first man to take 300 Test wickets at The Oval in 1964, he observed with typical drollness that, if anyone outdid him, he’d be “bloody tired”. Having sent down 38,000-odd balls to Trueman’s 15,000-odd, most of them in steamy, strength-sapping conditions, Muttiah Muralitharan had even more reason to prattle on about work ethics and sweat-drenched toil. Heaven knows he’d have been justified, in the heat of the moment, in hailing his historic delivery to Paul Collingwood this morning as the greatest ball of his career, an impeccable fusion of sorcery and sauce. What followed was as unexpected as anything he has ever served up for our delectation.

Collingwood was bewitched, bothered, bewildered and bowled by a ball that straightened: the “toppie” or doosra, or so we assumed. The author, astonishingly, disclaimed all responsibility: he’d tried to bowl the orthodox offie (as if anything he does can ever be regarded as such) but “the ball went the other way”, or so he confessed in typically disarming fashion to Sky Sports’ Nick Knight. Up in the commentary box, Sir Ian of Bothamshire was pinching himself black and blue.

In each of the seven categories to the right of the wickets column – best bowling, best match bowling, average, economy rate, strike rate, five-fors and 10-fors – Murali bests Shane Warne. Among that magnificent septet, those 61 five-fors are the most revealing (Robert Croft, the former England offspinner, justly equates such hauls to centuries). Yet even that staggering stat only hints at the colossal burden the tigerish Tamil has had to bear. Only one colleague, Chaminda Vaas (322 as I write), has scalped more than 100 Test victims; only Vaas (11) among Sri Lankans has taken five wickets in an innings more than five times. No bowler since Charlie Griffith, moreover, has had his action, and hence integrity, assailed by so many outrageous slings and arrows.

Through it all, almost without exception, he has resisted any urge to bitch back, to fire vengeful salvos about Brett Lee or Shoaib Malik or any other owners of dubious actions. Through it all, he has been mindful of the wider world, of tsunami victims and those less fortunate, as kind to dressing-room newcomers as he is respectful to the senior team-mates he has carried on that impossibly broad back. We Hebrews have a word for such occasions: mazeltov, meaning “congratulations”. “Mazel”, though, means luck, and luck has played no discernible part in this cockle-grilling story whatsoever.

Warne may have done more to revive the art and heart of spin, but Murali has redefined our notions of sporting heroism. Verily, a champion for our times.

Pak Spin-Cornered Tigers Face Extinction

From Cricinfo writer Kamran Abbasi’s Blog-Pak Spin ‘The Mysterious World of Pakistan Cricket’

Pakistan fans have been wondering for over a year about what happened to the legendary cornered tiger spirit? The Twenty20 world Cup offered a brief reminder of what it was meant to be like but ever since Shoaib Malik’s team has been cornered and cowering. The captain has faced criticism for his unwillingness to bare his teeth and his fellow writers have barely raised a growl.

Encouraging performances have been sporadic and insufficient to revitalise Pakistan’s Tigers, young of age but weary of soul. As if a loss of spirit wasn’t enough, the physical health of Malik’s shrinking violets means that they are barely able to field a team in Kolkata. A psychiatrist would be examining the likelihood of psychosomatic illness.

Unfortunately for Pakistan it is the bowlers who are afflicted. By some margin they have been the better half of Malik’s team, and it is the batsmen, who failed so miserably in the second innings of the first test, who must now carry the battle to India.

I hate to say this but Pakistan’s best bet in Kolkata must be a draw. With the bowling attack that they are rumoured to be able to muster, India’s batsmen must sense a kill. The cornered tigers face extinction. This is a battle for survival. Pakistan fans will want to know their team has the stomach for it.

Click here to get to Kamran Abbasi’s blog

Only a genius can live up to England’s great expectations

By the Times’s Simon Barnes

No coaching job is impossible. The England job, so abjectly vacated by Steve McClaren last week, is not impossible; what, after all, is a coach required to do? A very good coach consistently enables players to achieve the best results they are capable of. That can be done with any team or individual. Sven-Göran Eriksson came close to doing it for England, with three successive quarter-final finishes and 2½ near-immaculate qualifying campaigns. McClaren fell short. England were capable of qualifying for Euro 2008 and messed it up.

The problem with being a football coach is not coaching but the expectations of your employer. Which, unless your team are owned by Roman Abramovich, means the expectations of supporters. Thus a Manchester United manager is required to win the league title at least every other year, the Arsenal manager to do so one year in three, the Liverpool manager at least once, soon. About 15 Barclays Premier League managers are expected to provide a top-ten finish; all 20 are expected to avoid relegation.

Clearly, then, not all expectations are capable of realisation. That’s why football coaching is a somewhat silly business. An England manager is expected to win the World Cup, a trophy the country has won once in 18 tournaments, having entered 15. A brief glance at England’s record demonstrates that with a good coach the country generally provides a quarter-final sort of team. So the job has a silly expectation.You come in, do your damnedest and, if you are a very good coach, you will leave with a quarter or a semi to your name and your reputation undamaged - everywhere except England.

But there are coaches of genius who enable players to achieve results beyond their capabilities. If England expects a World Cup victory, they need someone capable of making the players play better than they do normally. In other words – are you listening in Soho Square? – the safe candidate can only fail.

Harmison sets inevitable tone

Last Friday was an anniversary. A year ago, England began their defence of the Ashes. It was so bizarre that, initially, my brain was unable to process what my eyes had seen. The first ball of the series caught by second slip; alas, not off the edge of the bat.

“It was the way he took it,” David Lloyd said at dinner that evening, more than once, each time miming Andrew Flintoff’s nonchalant big-handed take, as if catching wide balls was a tiresome part of second slip’s routine. “Did you write about it at all?” Just the 800 words, Bumble.

Stephen Harmison set the tone of fight and defiance for the Ashes summer of 2005 with his terrifying first over at Lord’s and he set the tone of horror and dismay for the return series with that extraordinary first ball. It led, with dreadful inevitability, to England’s still unbelievable capitulation in Adelaide. Adelaide remains one of the great sporting experiences of my life – that is, if you count horror, misery and despair as a sporting experience.