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

If England are to be special again, FA must take a walk on wild side

By the Times Simon Barnes

Say the Football Association and Brian Barwick, its chief executive, could somehow be embarrassed into it. Say that the FA could be chivvied out of its safe-pair-of-hands, risk-averse world-view. And say that the man in question was not, after all, playing games while tarting about for Real Madrid. Just say that all those things happened – then ask yourself, what would it be like?

What would happen if José Mourinho was England manager? Would he actually be any good? What sort of trouble would he find (for all England managers find trouble)? And what weaknesses would he ultimately reveal? (It is one of sport’s eternal laws that every England manager must eventually stand before us exactly as he is.)

It all comes down to Mourinho’s colossal, almost ludicrous sense of self-esteem. That is his strength. It is also his weakness, of course, but let that go for a moment. Let us start at the beginning: the opening press conference, the first meeting with the team.

The job has been discredited by the appointment and subsequent failure of the hapless Steve McClaren, “the reductio ad absurdum of England managers” in Brian Glanville’s telling phrase. Mourinho would restore, in an instant, prestige to the position and, by extension, to the team. Both would be special again.

If I am doing the job, it must be one of the most important jobs in the world: Mourinho would bring that attitude with him and, at a stroke, everything to do with the England team would be important, serious, requiring total commitment. After all, everything that relates to Mourinho’s vanity is important.

The England team would become, in an instant of time, a wonderfully sexy thing. The effect of this, at least at first, would be inspirational. It would be a complete and radical relaunch for the England football team: exactly what is needed.

Now on to the actual football. Sven-Göran Eriksson, when England head coach, empowered his players by treating them as grown-ups, by allowing them to make their own decisions, by trust. Eriksson succeeded admirably, up to a certain point, that point being the quarter-finals of big tournaments.

Mourinho’s methods are radically different. Players are required to worship him, to do all they can to win his confidence. Could these methods secure England’s qualification for the World Cup of 2010? It would be surprising if Mourinho failed to pull it off. He has a capacity to win the loyalty of players at a profound level: very much a two-way street, as he established with his core players at Chelsea, his Untouchables. He can do hard slog; he can make a team who reliably beat the teams they bloody well ought to beat.

This same talent would work in tournament play, that unique form of football that club managers never have to worry about. Success at a World Cup is about getting on a roll. England did that, to an extent, at the World Cups of 2002 and 1990, reaching a level at which success began to seem logical and inevitable. Mourinho is capable of doing that with England, of doing as well as Eriksson.

S**t that will get you suspended from School. Part 1

This essay was one of two that got a student suspended and earned him a 0 in his exams. They also made him the President of the Writers Forum.

“Do you agree that most of the charitable work that Multinational Corporations undertake is driven by a motive to promote and publicize their own products?”

I agree. I agree as agreeably as by some rare victory of chance, two usually unagreeable mollusks might agree that to be in agreement, is to agree. I agree. You might not agree with me; but then we are not two unagreeable mollusks now, are we? Yes, I think even you would agree.

Multinational corporations exist for one sole reason that is the soul of their sole reason to exist: profits. Profitability profits them and though they might not be prophets, they are most certainly, blessed in that department.

Come to think of it, it is rather misfortunate that they are not prophets, for the profit for a prophet would have been truly profitable for all of humanity. And since they are not prophets, the profits of multinational corporations benefit none but their own inane selves.

There. My logic is undeniable. My reasoning as sure as two shores never meet.

I am a horse that eats rocks.

But that is beside the point. The point being the much-publicized benevolence of multinational corporations. If only I had some rocks right now, I would throw them at these multinational corporations. But no. That would be wrong. It would be very wrong, because I am blinded by my own maddening desire to hurl rocks. It is not that I dislike them. It’s just that I want to throw some rocks.

Vis-à-vis my blindness, it surely does not preclude the undeniable fact that these companies are doing good. Never mind their selfish motives, I say. If some rich corporation’s selfish-motive-driven-action ends up benefiting the sorry homophobes of Croatia, then I certainly do not have a problem with it.

Lets take an example here. Lets say if some giant rope manufacturer starts an advertisement campaign worldwide, proclaiming: SAVE RUSSIAN JEWS. WIN FABULOUS PRIZES! Lets say these Russian Jews in question can only be saved using the rope produced by this certain Rope Manufacturing Corporation that had advertised the plight of the Russian Jews.

Now what happens is that this Rope Manufacturing Corporation starts doling out free rope to one, all and sundry willing to go save the Russian Jews. The Rope Manufacturing Corporation hands out plenty of Russian-Jew-Saving-Rope for free, the end result being that the Russian Jews are indeed, saved.

The world sits up and takes notice. There is a rope-manufacturing firm out there that people perceive as a ‘good’ company. Suddenly, everyone starts buying rope from this Good Rope Manufacturer that had so generously aided in saving the Russian Jews who would have surely perished if not for the wonderful Russian-Jew-Saving-Rope donated by this Good Rope Manufacturing Corporation.

The Rope Manufacturing Corporation’s sales skyrocket, taking their profit ratios for a free ride in the northern stratosphere. The Russian Jews were saved, there’s a lot more rope being produced in the world and the Good Rope Manufacturing Corporation builds itself an HQ made of gold.

Everyone’s happy. We all agree. Why throw rocks at them? Feed them to me.

Geordies should stick with the Dyce man

By the BBC’s Derek ‘Robbo’ Robson

The managerial merry-go-round seems worse than ever.

Geordie friends have been joking darkly about the ‘last roll of the Allardyce’ and calling a Sambulance to take him away.

The only medical attention the big man will need is the surgical removal of a job lot of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum. What a masticator he is. They say he’s not a good manager but then how does he manage to chew all that, eh?

Me and Big Sam have a lot in common. We’re big and ugly and we like our players to keep it simple.

Many’s the time the Blue Bell first XI have begged me to let them play football on the grass. The fact is our playing surface makes Wembley look like Centre Court. It’s got more bobbles on it than one of me Nan’s cardies.

I tell ‘em: “Just get it forward and we’ll start playing up their end.”

The Toon Army are not happy with this rustic approach, asking for something a bit more sophisticated, like.

Of course Tynesiders are very sophisticated fellas. Your average fans at St James’s spend the half-time interval discussing Wittgenstein over a bottle of Merlot and some artisan foccacia.

Joey Barton has called the Magpie crowd ‘vicious’, which is laughable. I’d like to know what Joey’s definition of vicious is. Perhaps Ousmane Dabo has a definition too.

If the team churns out abject performances like the ones chucked up against Liverpool and Pompey, you’d have to be an imbecile not to expect some angry supporters.

Mr Ashley aside, the Toon Army go and watch people on vastly superior wages to themselves and for too long too many of them have not been earning it.

It all starts with results of course - and 1-1 against the Arse is not a bad start. It was great that the Evening Chronicle encouraged the fans to get behind the team on Wednesday night. They were rewarded with a bit of oomph for a change.

But when Barton or some other overpaid dimwit starts slagging the fans for getting hacked off then you have to wonder what these players are on. It’s not up to the Gallowgate to make the players do better.

To his credit, Allardyce has not tried spreading the blame around the terraces. The team have been crap against Pompey and Liverpool especially. But the man’s been there for how long? Four months? It’s not like they’re rock-bottom.

There are a few football clubs whose fans seem to exist in a bubble of total self-delusion: Newcastle, Spurs, Villa - your supporters still dwell in some romantic never-never-land where Jackie Milburn, Danny Blanchflower and Dennis Mortimer never got any older and are still just waiting for a first-team call-up even today.

Then there’s the clubs whose fans are realists/miserabilists: Man City, Everton, Boro. We’re just happy to be competing.

Newcastle aren’t very good. Allardyce has as good a chance as any - and certainly a better chance than the scowling Sourness or the droning Roeder - of getting the team winning summat.

If not him, then who? Shearer continues to be an obvious candidate but how can they afford him? Not the wages so much as the celebration.

They’ll fly him in dangling from a black and white helicopter, pump dry ice into the Gallowgate end and every step on the terrace will light up beneath his feet as he puts his foot down, like Michael Jackson doing Billie Jean.

Small children with gather in heavenly choruses on the pitch and coo “There’s no one quite like Shearer!” with Ant ‘n’ Dec and Bryan Ferry accompanying.

Tony Blair’ll embrace him like a brother. And finally a giant hand will pass through the grey murk of the Tyneside sky and gently place his index finger on Sir Alan’s forehead, officially anointing him “The Geordie Saviour, like”.

My advice would be to stick with Sam. There are too many glowering chairmen sitting on managers’ chests like some monstrous millionaire demons. They need to get out of the bleeding way for a while and let the managers manage.

One Thin Dime

Taken from 365tomorrows.com your daily source of Sci-Fi.E=mc2. The most famous formula ever. Not that there’s been a lot of competition. Einstein’s formula reveals that matter is just one of many forms of energy. Energy is what gets you out of bed in the morning, and energy is what leaves a bruise if you fall on your face in the late afternoon.

Matter is just a form of energy: a new battery will have just the teensiest tiniest more mass now, than when it has run down. If you pull back on a bow, you are adding energy to it, and so the bow has infinitesimally more mass when it’s taunt, than when it’s relaxed. Even for something really energetic, like a thermonuclear explosion the amount of mass involved isn’t very big. If you collected all the detritus from a 25 megaton bomb after the explosion, you would only be missing one kilogram of mass, and an average sized city. One kilogram is probably close to the mass of that first stone used to help kill that first antelope, so very long ago.

But if you go the other way around, and instead of considering the amount of mass in energy, but the amount of energy you can get from a certain mass, then you’re talking.

Think about all the energy your body uses in a day: getting up, walking, climbing stairs, pumping blood, breathing, thinking, remembering. All of that energy is stored as chemical potential energy for a while before you use it. Most of it dissipates as heat, some of it becomes motion, some becomes thought. If you could get all of that energy from converting mass into energy, how much mass would you need? If, instead of eating and breathing, you could directly convert mass to energy for your whole life, how much extra mass would you need to carry around with you?

If you lived to be eighty, you would only need a couple thousandths of a gram. That’s the mass contained in one thousandth of one thin dime. Remember every challenge you’ve surpassed, or run away from; remember every thought, every passion, every need – all of it combined took less energy then is contained in the material missing from a scuff on a dime.

If you were a perfect machine, and you wanted to live among us, you would need to pass as human. You would need to appear to breathe, your blood would pump, your glands would sweat, so you would use about the same amount of energy as we do. But you wouldn’t need to power yourself from air and food. With the right technology, you could convert mass directly to energy. You could live for eighty thousand years on a dime.

You could live among us, observe us and compile your observations for almost as long as there have been humans. Almost ten times as long as we have lived in settled communities and nearly twenty times as long as we have lived in cities. For a quarter, you could live for almost two hundred thousand years. That’s as long as we’ve existed as a species. If you waited to join us until we started building cities, today you’d still have one hundred ninety five thousand years left. That’s plenty of time to live as we do, to love as we do, and to study. Then, when our species’ time has come to an end, there will still be plenty of time to reach your conclusions, and to take them home.

Arsenal Song

Not as good as the Mcclaren tribute but very funny nonetheless. This guy is brilliant.

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.

Thoughts from the weekend

Another weekend has gone by and another round of Premier League games have takenplace which have left much to talk about. Firstly the Chelsea game was downright boring and didn’t really showcase the festival of attacking football which Avram Grant has been talking about and since his arrival they haven’t really been playing much differently to when Mourinho was there. The manager’s been trying to sell this supposed free flowing style but its hard to implement when the players are exactly the same. This Chelsea side is still the exact same physical, defensively sound and annoying side everyone used to hate under Mourinho. I’m also still wondering when Didier Drogba will cease to display the incredible form he has shown over the last 18 months as I still think he is just an average player having a great run. Yes here it comes, a cliche, ‘Form is temporary, Class is Permanent.’ Turning 30 next year i see age catching up to him very soon. I also have to say he is the worst handler of the media I have ever seen. ‘I am a diver,’ ‘I’m not a diver,’ ‘I’m the best player in the world,’ ‘I never wanted to come to Chelsea,’ ‘I love Chelsea,’ ‘I want to leave Chelsea!’

Arsenal showed that they can still play a delicious passing game without Cesc Fabregas as shown by their magnificent first half display against Aston Villa. However Villa provedin the second half that with commitment and tenacity you can get the better of the Gunners. Ashley Young in particular was excellent.

Fernando Torres is not only world class but also one of the most complete strikers in the world. He also makes Kuyt and Voronin look like complete wallies. However he just can’t seem to score away from Anfield which at this stage of the season is sort of justifiable considering he’s still in his ’settling in period.’ Though his away performances in general have been excellent  he just hasn’t found the back of the net. In fact his phenomenal adaptation to his new surroundings just shows that really great players do not need 24 months settling in time as Drogba needed. Shevchenko on the other hand has just been unlucky in the sense that he was passed his peak when he joined Chelsea and that he is never going to adapt considering his age which is now 31.

Sunderland beat Derby, good for them. And Reading drew with Middlesbrough and no one really cares though it was immensely funny when I heard that Boro made a £10 million bid for Ronaldinho which was just as ludicrous as Birmingham making an approach for Marcelo Lippi.

Catch a falling star at your peril, Chelsea

By Matt Dickinson, The Times Chief Sports Correspondent

As Kaká was confirmed as European Footballer of the Year at the weekend, Ronaldinho’s claim to fame was that he started a La Liga match on the bench for the first time since he joined Barcelona. If that were not insulting enough, the twice Fifa World Player of the Year was said by one Spanish newspaper to have been the subject of a bid by Middlesbrough. Enough to wipe off anybody’s goofy grin.

That football’s greatest showman is in a trough is not in doubt and even if he does not have to pack his bags for Teesside, the trajectory of his career should trouble anybody who loves the game. The fear is that even if we have not seen all that Ronaldinho has to offer, we have witnessed the best of him.

He still has the talent and, at 27, he should have the time to reclaim his perch, but does he have the desire to put himself back on top? It is a question that is just as pertinent at Stamford Bridge as the Nou Camp, given Chelsea’s desire to lure the Brazilian.

In August, Roman Abramovich not only met the player’s brother, who doubles as his agent, but also spoke to Barcelona about making an offer. The Chelsea owner was willing to shatter every transfer and salary record but was told to come back next year.

The assumption was that he would and perhaps Chelsea and other buying clubs, which may include AC Milan, will convince themselves that all Ronaldinho needs is a new challenge after a fifth season in Catalonia; that he is simply distracted.

The temptations for Chelsea are obvious at a time when the beautiful game continues to prove elusive, a point maddeningly reinforced by Arsenal’s brilliance across the capital.

Could Abramovich resist the biggest star in football, a match-winner who invented a move – the espaldinha – in which he can pass the ball with a spasm of the shoulder blades? For all of Avram Grant’s talk of entertainment, there has not been much of that at Stamford Bridge.

One glance at Andriy Shevchenko should provide a cautionary tale about the perils of buying big-name players in their late twenties and further research may also persuade Abramovich to go with his head rather than his heart.

Worries over Ronaldinho stretch back to last season, when he rested on the laurels of being Spanish and European champion. Denials that he had missed training sessions were undermined when he stripped off his shirt to reveal what is known by middle-aged men as a rubber ring.

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.