No Smoke Without Fire

Happy New Year.

While passing the time in freezing and gloomy Derbyshire over Christmas I managed to see much of the action from Melbourne, where Australia were ultimately despatched in some style by South Africa. And the third Test, starting tonight at the SCG, will still be very watchable, if only to see if the Proteas can make it 3-0. While the relative decline of Australia was inevitable, I'm sure it won't prove terminal, but it is an experience full of the most relishable Schadenfreude imaginable, especially when you look at Cricinfo to see Punter flanked by the latest couple of debutants dredged up by the selectors. A few eyebrows may be raised around Worcester when local cricket fans realise that Doug Bollinger, who didn't exactly cover himself in glory during a stint at New Road in 2007, is one of them.

Closer to home, everyone's wondering what's going on with Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores. I'm inclined to think that there's no smoke without fire, especially since the two were reported to have had talks to clear the air between them just after Pietersen was appointed captain last summer. If, as has been reported, KP is making an issue out of the fact that Vaughan wasn't selected for the West Indies then I think he's wrong, as there seemed to me to be no way that Vaughan could be selectd without opening up those responsible to charges of the most ludicrous favouritism imaginable, but it would be interesting to see who the last man standing would be if it came down to a choice between the captain and his coach.

On the one hand you have a batsman of genius (and a promising captain) who, unencumbered by traditional English modesty, is clearly prepared to speak his mind and rock the boat if he thinks a cause is worth defending. On the other you have a coach who embodies the modern technocratic approach to player preparation but who hasn't covered himself in glory since he took on the England job. Up to now Moores has avoided too much criticism, mainly, I suspect, because he isn't Duncan Fletcher and has a bit more charm and politeness about him (which isn't hard), but, personable though he is, it's probable that he may not be as good as a coach as Fletcher.

If it comes down to a choice between the two, I know who I'd back.

Shah's Time

After what happened in Mumbai yesterday, which is bound to cast a shadow - and very possibly curtail - England's tour, it seems a bit passe to bang on about the inadequacies of English selection, but it's an easy target, so why not? With England posting a decent total but still losing at a canter yesterday, you were left wondering what on earth Alastair Cook was doing there, but, more specifically, what has Owais Shah done to deserve such consistently inconsistent treatment?

Having made 72 at number three in Bangalore (to add to his 58 in Indore earlier in the series), Shah was again shunted down to six, from which position he made a coruscating 66* in support of Pietersen's century. With everyone rightly adamant that England need more ODI centuries, and Collingwood once more in awful form, it seems illogical that Shah hasn't been trusted with a higher position in the order throughout the series.

Shah has been an international since 2001 but his career at the top level has taken a long time to mature. His fielding was initially a real weakness and is often ponderous still, while his right-hand dominated technique is hardly a thing of beauty and can tend to detract from his very real qualities of class, confidence and aggression.

All the evidence was that Duncan Fletcher didn't trust him, but Moores and his selectors have at least seemed happy to give him a run in the side, and Pietersen, as an attacking batsman of genius, recognizes him as a kindred spirit.

With just two Tests behind him (an impressive Mumbai debut in 2006 and a nerve-ridden one-off against the West Indies at Lord's in 2007), now increasingly appears to be the time to look again at Shah's credentials in the longer game, and I fervently hope he gets the opportunity to show what he can do.

Whether that opportunity comes in India before Christmas remains to be seen.

(Failed) Investigative Journalism

While admitting to the world that I'm an MCC member will probably do my blogging credibility (if I have any) a lot of damage, it does give you opportunities that you wouldn't otherwise get.

Yesterday morning I was having a glass of water outside the England dressing room (it's just where the water machine happens to be, honest) when I turned round to see Peter Moores and Paul Collingwood deep in conversation on the stairs. Unfortunately I was just too far away to hear what they were saying without making it obvious I was listening in, but it may have been the moment that Moores told Collingwood he was heading out of the side. Or maybe not. If either of them is reading this perhaps they could fill me in.

And then, as the dust was settling after the game, I came across Giles Clarke and David Collier in conversation outside the Long Room. They had obviously heard about my amateurish attempts to eavesdrop important conversations and quickly ducked inside the deserted inner sanctum where they could talk in private. Not before, however, I had picked up Clarke saying something about Keith Bradshaw which I'd better not repeat here in case I misheard it. It's very tame, though.

So there you have it. If you're part of the 'mainstream media' you get to conduct proper interviews with important people from which you rarely learn anything interesting, but if you're a blogger who happens to have a little red book from the MCC you can hang around the Lord's pavilion trying to eavesdrop on the conversations of the same important people from which you never learn anything interesting.

Maybe I'm just not doing it right. I'll try again next season.

Harmison and Hoggard: The Future

Well, in the end, the football injury didn't amount to much and Anderson managed to get through the last day and a bit without any trouble, although he was apparently rattling around the pitch as a result of the number of painkillers he was taking. It didn't matter too much, as Sidebottom and Broad did most of what was necessary and England were worthy winners, moving on to Napier as favourites to win the series.

The news of the day in some quarters seems to be the fact that Moores has pointed out that it'll be hard for Harmison and Hoggard to reclaim their lost places. Stating the obvious, I would have thought, as long as Broad and Sidebottom keep bowling well, although history shows that there's at least as much chance of a vacancy occurring because of injury as loss of form.

Obviously both Harmison and Hoggard will need to be bowling well to put themselves in the frame for a recall, but, if they do, will the selectors want them?

Hoggard: A probable yes, on account of his ability to bring similar qualities 'to the party' (as Duncan Fletcher would have said) as Sidebottom; swing, control, competitiveness, heart.

Harmison: Very possibly a no, based on what's becoming too long a history of technical inconsistency and temperamental vulnerability.

With Hoggard you just know he'll be busting a gut to get back in. With Harmy you can't help but have your doubts. And, if he's not sure how much he wants it, you can be sure that the selectors won't be sure how much they want him.

Treading Water

After a couple of days of tracking down the Colombo close scores in the internet cafes of New York City I returned home to see the second Test played to its ultimately rather dreary conclusion. Peter Moores sounded optimistic this morning - it's one of his strong points - but, although England were good value for their draw in the end, they look to me like a team that's treading water. Enough batsmen are in form but the hundreds (with Bell, as usual, especially culpable) won't come, and the bowling attack is solid but lacks penetration. If they can get Hoggard back for Galle it will help, and, with the wicket expected to take spin, Graeme Swann's name may be discussed. You also have to wonder about the selection of Bopara when he's doing hardly any bowling.

So, for Galle it has to be a won toss, hundreds from any two of Cook, Vaughan and Bell, and some penetrative spells from Harmison, Hoggard and Panesar.

Should be easy...

Upward Curve

Another thing I seem to have done quite a bit of since I started the blog is writing about England one-day victories. The CB Series, the home ODIs with India, and now an away win in Sri Lanka; if you ignore the World Cup and the Twenty20 you could convince yourself that England are quite a good one-day side.

They're not that yet, but, under Moores and Collingwood, they are improving and you get the feeling that, this time, the upward curve might just be maintained.

After Fletcher

It was both pleasing and interesting to see Ryan Sidebottom and Graeme Swann playing their parts in England's latest victory over Sri Lanka. Both are players who played a single game for England - Sidebottom a Test, Swann a one-day international - in the early years of Duncan Fletcher's stewardship of the England side. Neither impressed, both were forgotten. Swann said recently that he never spoke to Fletcher again after his tour to South Africa, but, in 2007, both have come back to the side to show how much they've developed in the intervening years and, perhaps, how much England were missing for all that time.

Leaving the intervening South African adventure to one side, there have been enough signs in the home series with India and this one that England, under Peter Moores, are at least putting themselves in a position from which they can improve the most dismal ODI record of the major nations. It seems highly likely that Sidebottom and Swann will be part of that, and Stuart Broad, of the neophyte's freshness and the veteran's mentality, is certain to do so.

Indeed, with Broad, whose straight bat and cool temperament should ensure he'll make plenty of runs at international level to go with the wickets which are a given, it's simply a matter of when he gets into the Test side. Once he's there he'll be there for ever (or it'll sure seem like it).

The Long Road Back

The omissions and inclusions in the latest list of centrally-contracted England players were predictable, but I was heartened and pleased by the return to the ODI side of Graeme Swann, who hasn't had so much as a sniff of a place in the squad since he went to South Africa around the turn of the millennium and was thought to have upset Duncan Fletcher with his insouciant attitude.

At age-group level in England Swann was one of the more talented players of his generation and a member, alongside Owais Shah and Robert Key (and a few other county journeymen like Stephen Peters) of the side which won the under-19 World Cup in early 1998. Later that year he made a sparkling start to his career with Northants -I particularly remember innings of 92 and 111 from number eight in a losing cause at Leicester - and, when he was called up to the England side at the end of the decade, his future looked assured. Somehow, though, it never really happened. The years since have seen him falter at Northampton, move to Nottingham, struggle to make a consistent impression in the first-class game but develop into a dangerous operator in limited-overs cricket with both bat and ball, and retain the enthusiasm and humour which made him stand out back then.

He's another example of the type of player - like Ryan Sidebottom - who would never have found a way back into 'Team England' under Fletcher's dogmatic stewardship, and the resurrection of players like this is as good a retrospective argument for Fletcher's replacement with Peter Moores as I've found. And it was instructive to hear Swann himself say last night that Sidebottom's recall and the success that followed it was one of the main things which gave him hope that he too could find a way back.

And now, with the England ODI side finally looking like it could be moving in the right direction, is a pretty good time to return. With Panesar's continuing inability to reproduce his Test form and Swann's batting and fielding potential, a longer-term place in the side could be well within reach of a player who seems to have been around for a very long time but is only 28.

I hope he makes it.

Respect

After the Trent Bridge Test ended in a deserved victory for India and a welter of media and blog comment about the antics of both sides I decided to take a few days to let the dust settle before commenting about what went on. On Friday, however, The Times published a piece by Simon Barnes (link below) which summed up just about everything I wanted to say.

The incident with the jellybeans received more attention than it deserved (such as the perenially barking Charles Colvile saying on Sky that 'in years to come this will be known as the jellybean Test match') but it was symptomatic of the attitude that leads England players and coaching staff to embrace a culture that values and encourages the abuse of opponents as a valid means of playing the game, apparently for no very good reason other than that Australian sides have often done it. So what. I didn't like it when Shane Warne and, less subtly, Glenn McGrath were doing it, but they did have the advantage of being able to play the game a bit better than any of England's current players. It's a culture that fails to respect opponents and, more fundamentally, fails to respect the game. They don't realise that the game is bigger, much bigger, than any of them, and its fundamentals require respect; when someone else is batting the pitch is their territory. Don't encroach on it, don't try and tamper with it, don't scatter sweets on it.

The same is true of posturing idiots like Matt Prior, who despite still being wet behind the ears in Test cricket persists in telling people how tough it is. Matt, you've done pretty well so far in your six Tests, but you'd be better off trying to get your keeping up to scratch rather than trying to show people how hard you are. A middle stump knocked several yards back by an RP Singh inswinger looks much the same no matter how tough you are.

Peter Moores has made a good start as England coach, but I was very disappointed with his response to what happened at Nottingham, paying little heed to the jellybeans and then suggesting that the stump microphones need to be turned down so that his players can say whatever they want without anybody off the field being able to tell how stupid and inane they are.

Of course, India, and especially Sreesanth, were also guilty of lowering the tone. After his decision to make shoulder-to-shoulder contact with Michael Vaughan and the bouncer which he bowled at Paul Collingwood from several yards down the pitch, he was fortunate to escape with a match fee deduction. I think a one-match suspension would have been more appropriate. The comments of Collingwood himself after the Jimmy Anderson-Runako Morton incident showed that he was unaware that if there's one thing that cricket definitely isn't, it's a physical contact game. If Sreesanth is under a similar misconception he needs to be shown that he's very, very wrong.

The history of Test cricket is littered with players who started their careers well but took their eye off the ball and disappeared from view as soon as they arrived.

That's something that Prior and Sreesanth would do well to remember.

The Simon Barnes article is here.

Talking Heads

It's been a while since I've posted, largely because I've been away at the Lord's Test for most of the last week. I'll try to make up for it over the next few days.

As most of the talking heads in the media have been saying, the West Indies will have taken more from the outcome of the first Test than England. The tourists went into the game with hardly any practice behind them and ultimately made a fair fist of competing at Lord's, although they were helped by England's bowling, which, with the exception of Panesar, was wayward and insipid. They can take a lot, though, from the defensive certainty, in both innings, of Daren Ganga, and the more exciting lower-order contributions of Dwayne Bravo and Denesh Ramdin which enabled them to avoid the follow-on. The bowlers still need work, and they'll surely get it at Headingley.

England's batting was consistently excellent, with the only discordant notes struck by the twin failures of Strauss (whose place must be in doubt if both Flintoff and Vaughan return) and Owais Shah (who's already gone, but is hopefully not forgotten). However, I was extremely dubious about the tactic of batting Shah at three. Bell did relatively well there in Australia, and, even though the place seems to have been ear-marked for Vaughan it would surely have been better to keep Bell there and give Shah the chance to bat under less pressure at six. As it was Shah looked nervous and hesitant and so may not have done much better at six, but we'll never know.

Cook was Cook, Collingwood was Collingwood, Bell was Bell and Pietersen was Pietersen. Matt Prior, however, was outstanding, and his powerful hundred against a tired attack and tidy keeping may indicate that England have finally found a worthy successor to Alec Stewart. I hadn't seen him play live before and I was hugely impressed. My old favourite Steven Davies might have to wait a bit longer but that's no bad thing.

England's bowling was poor. Monty did all that could have been expected in largely unhelpful conditions with the assistance of Asad Rauf, but Plunkett was a random mixture of the very good and the very bad, while Harmison was just bad, looking once again like a bowler devoid of form, desire or confidence. It was instructive that he had taken some good wickets at a low average for Durham, though, so perhaps he's just developed a mental block about Test cricket, which would explain a lot.

At the moment Harmison's form represents Peter Moores' biggest challenge. It's one he needs to meet - perhaps by appointing a new bowling coach - as soon as possible.

Predictability

The England squad for the first Test against the West Indies, announced earlier this morning by David Graveney, was quite predictable, even though it contained a couple of players who I'm sure wouldn't have been there if Duncan Fletcher had still been in charge.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, I always had a feeling that Matthew Prior would secure the wicket-keeper's spot ahead of Paul Nixon, chiefly because of his past links with Peter Moores. In a sense it's hard on Nixon, who did everything that could have been asked of him (and more) during his short time in the side, but, at 36, he was never going to be there for very long. Of course, there are no guarantees that Prior will do any better than any of the other glovemen who've been tried over the last four years but he probably deserves a go, if only on account of his first-class career batting average which nudges a heady forty. I've seen very little of him - and nothing live - so I'll be interested to see how he goes at Lord's.

As a break with the past it's also good to see Owais Shah in the squad, although he'll only play if Pietersen isn't fit. While his stilted ODI career has been a largely hesitant affair, both with the bat and especially in the field, he's always been a potential Test player of quality, something which he fully demonstrated in Mumbai last year. It's nice to know that Moores recognises his quality in a way that I don't believe Fletcher did.

Liam Plunkett takes the fourth seamer's position ahead of Anderson and Mahmood, which will do for the time being. Mahmood in particular looks like someone who could do with playing a bit more county cricket (perhaps a whole career's worth) and there are still doubts over Anderson. However, Plunkett himslef needs to start producing his best with a bit more regularity if he's to prevent the selectors looking towards Broad and Onions.

I'll be at Lord's for the game and if the weather allows enough play I expect an England win well inside five days. The West Indies will be lacking practice against the red ball (they're not goung to get any play at Taunton today as it's pouring down) and they usually seem to lack motivation these days. Harmison and Hoggard are both bowling well and England also have plenty of batsmen in form.

Reintroduction

With his 284 for Somerset against Northants there seems to be an implication in many parts of the media that Marcus Trescothick should be reintroduced to the England side as soon as possible.

I can't agree, and feel strongly that he shouldn't be considered for England again until he's absolutely certain he's ready, and from all his recent public statements it doesn't look as though that time has come yet.

Perhaps it will have done by the time India are here in July, although Peter Moores and his fellow selectors will have to think long and hard about whether he's able to stand up to the physical and mental rigours of an overseas tour, and, if they feel that he isn't, whether he can be selected for home Tests alone.

It'll all play out in due course, but, in the meantime, we in the south-west can enjoy his runs, not to mention those of James Hildreth, who made a century, and Ian Blackwell, who made 81.

A better season than last year may be in sight for Somerset, although you have to wonder how they're ever going to bowl anyone out twice on that Taunton pitch.

Prior Engagement

With Australia and Sri Lanka safely in the World Cup final (of which more later) the domestic news was made today by the so-called 'England Performance Squad'.

Of course it's good to see Tres back in there (and Owais Shah), but the identity of the wicket-keepers was its most interesting aspect. Sure enough, Nixon is there, and, after his performances for England over the last two months he deserves nothing less, but he's joined by Sussex's Matt Prior. It's a finely balanced thing but I think Prior will (and probably should) start at Lord's.

With his former county coach Peter Moores in charge and a pretty good England A tour behind him it's hardly a surprise, but it emphasizes again, nearly four years after Alec Stewart retired, how England are still searching for a regular wicket-keeper.

Regular readers will know that I strongly favour Worcestershire's Steven Davies to be the long-term occupant of the role, but I'm happy to see Prior get a chance.

As much as anything else it'll mark the change from Fletcher to Moores, as I'm sure Fletcher would have gone for Nixon.

Maybe Moores will, but I'll be slightly surprised if he does.