Where There's Life

Still convalescing after my encounter with the surgeon's knife early in the month (what's usually described as a 'minor' operation, although the immediate post-operative pain was anything but minor), I've had a bit of time this week to follow the first game of the India-Sri Lanka Test series, which was called off as a draw this morning once Sachin Tendulkar had reached his 43rd Test hundred.

It was a counter-intuitive affair; the type of Test which, on the face of it, you'd say was certain to drive another nail into the coffin which the likes of Peter Roebuck have been cobbling together for the five-day game recently: 426 plays 760 plays 412. Too many runs, too few wickets, everyone's bored.

Or perhaps not. Until the last day the scoring rate was excellent and there was a series of innings whose merits went well beyond mere accumulation; Rahul Dravid showing he can still mix it with the best in the world (like Mahela Jayawardene) for both strokeplay, and, of course, concentration, Gautam Gambhir emphasizing again how far he's come and how indispensable he now appears at the top of the Indian order, the one and only SRT, twenty years a Test player and counting, doing what he does best these days, building a ton without fuss in benign conditions and slamming the door shut in Sri Lanka's face. There were even a few people there to watch.

Well, I enjoyed it (even if nobody else did), and it'll do to be going on with, but we, and the Test game itself, will need more if it's to sustain itself into an uncertain future. Much is made of the fact that England's the only country left where Test grounds are routinely full, despite the insane cost of tickets, but it needs to be remembered that usually, in England, wickets fall.

But where there's life there's hope, and this game showed that India's ageing order still has plenty of life. The strands of hope, though, need to be supplemented by a strip with a bit more life in the next match at Green Park in Kanpur.

I'll not be holding my breath.

Elsewhere on Planet Cricket

With the Ashes series going on (and the World T20 before that) I've barely written about anything else this summer. Whole Test series have come and gone, the West Indies have lost to Bangladesh twice over, the ODI record individual score has been equalled, but, although I've been aware of it all, I haven't passed a single comment about any of it.

However, I've just caught up with the scores from the first Sri Lanka-New Zealand Test, which started yesterday, and it was fantastic to discover that, not only was Mahela Jayawardene back in the runs (so far so expected), so was Thilan Samaraweera, some five months after he was seriously injured in the Lahore terrorist attacks.

With the eyes of the cricket world trained on The Oval, it's a timely reminder that some things transcend the game.

Alive and Well?

With four run-saturated days gone in Karachi I was ready to post something along the lines of it hardly being the way to attract people back to Test cricket, especially given the fact that Pakistan rarely seem to play much these days anyway.

However, I notice that there was almost an interesting finish to the game today, with Sri Lanka somehow managing to lose five wickets for 144, which just goes to prove that you can't take anything for granted.

Except, perhaps, that players of the quality of Mahela Jayawardene and Younis Khan (not forgetting the largely unsung but hugely consistent Thilan Samaraweera) will, when they find themselves on a pitch like that, invariably make big runs.

I wonder, though, if anyone was watching?

Timeless and Understated

The Galle rains - and some characteristically obdurate batting from the superb Alastair Cook - saved England from a 2-0 defeat, but the truth of the series - that England were more than a little outclassed - wasn't so easily obscured. Michael Vaughan, Peter Moores, and the rest of the 'Team England' hierarchy have a lot of thinking to do before New Zealand.

The player who impressed me the most in the last two Tests was the timeless and understated Chaminda Vaas. A couple of games after his obituaries were being written he was slicing through England with a perceptive combination of low pace, conventional swing and the most finely adjusted line to left and right-handers this side of Glenn McGrath's retirement villa.

Vaas, 33, should now grace Test cricket for a while longer. And, let's face it, if you played in the same side as the great Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, wouldn't you fancy taking the new ball?

Crashing Down

Touring Sri Lanka is tough, and England have been holding themselves together - often by the skin of their teeth - since Kandy. Today, though, it all came crashing down and there appears little hope of salvage over the next two days unless there's a hell of a lot of rain.

The England bowling attack, apart from Harmison, has looked insipid, although Hoggard is probably short of maximum fitness and Sidebottom has continually been let down by fielders in general, and Prior in particular. The batsmen can make fifties but can't go on to big hundreds in the way that is second nature to Jayawardene and Sangakkara. The fielding is shoddy; all the side's best specialist close fielders - Trescothick, Strauss, Flintoff - have gone from the team and we're left with the ageing (and never reliable) Vaughan, the coltish and mystifyingly poor Cook, and, of course, Prior.

When this game is wrapped up it's back home for Christmas and then off to New Zealand, by which time a few more players might find themselves out of the team.

Staying the Same, Changing

With the 2007 English season finally out of the way and the first World Twenty20 also put to bed, the mind turns to everything else that's going on in the perpetually revolving, often crazily over-burdened, cricket world.

Australia in India, South Africa in Pakistan, England in Sri Lanka. There is, as always, a lot happening, but the more things change the more they remain the same. As I write Jacques Kallis is unbeaten on 118 at the end of the first day in Karachi and Mahela Jayawardena has top-scored for Sri Lanka against England in Dambulla.

Elsewhere, though, things have moved on. It was announced at the end of last week that Allan Donald would not be taking up a full-time appointment as England's bowling coach and would instead be joining his old team-mate Ashley Giles back in the brave new world of Edgbaston. This is a pity, as Donald clearly had a beneficial effect on the performances of England's wayward seamers last summer and it remains to be seen whether or not Ottis Gibson, for all his magnificence in Durham colours, can do the same.

In India, meanwhile, the national 'A' team and their South African counterparts finally managed to get on the pitch for their first (or third) ODI in Rajkot. India gained a narrow victory, largely thanks to Subramaniam Badrinath, the Tamil Nadu player who's been hovering around the side for the last couple of years or so and who's built up a nice portfolio of decent performances. I noticed last week that he's been given a 'Grade D' contract by the BCCI; it'll be interesting to see if he can kick on, as India, whatever their recent achievements in the longest and shortest forms of the international game, will soon be needing some high-quality reinforcements.

The same might be said of England's batting once this afternoon is out...

End of the Road

So, after about seven weeks (I really can't be bothered to count) and goodness knows how many matches (ditto) it's all come down to Australia and Sri Lanka.

One of the few aspects of the tournament about which one can be unreservedly generous is that its best two sides have ended up in the final. And, if anyone stands a genuine chance of turning Australia over, Sri Lanka do.

That said, Australia are playing so well, are so motivated to win their third consecutive World Cup and to send Glenn McGrath, the competition's outstanding bowler, into retirement on the highest of highs, and are so collectively immune to pressure, that I'll be surprised if they fail to do so.

I hope they don't though, and I'll be backing Sanath, Mahela, Kumar, Murali and the rest all the way.

As The World Turns

It seems these days as though on any given day there's usually at least a couple of Test matches going on somewhere around the world. We've just seen Sri Lanka defeat South Africa by one wicket in what was obviously a thrilling finish, and England draw away to a much more comfortable win over Pakistan.

I didn't see much of either game (well, I didn't see any of the Sri Lankan one) so it's difficult to comment in depth, but it's enough to say that I've always regarded Mahela Jayawardene as a truly special batsman and it's been good to have his greatness confirmed these past few months.

It's also true to say that I couldn't stand Dean Jones as a commentator - something to do with his excessive mateyness and his inability to say anything remotely original - and I won't lose any sleep if he's never heard from again after his, er, 'clumsy' remark during the Colombo game.

Back in Leeds (I can't quite bring myself to refer to the ground as 'Headingley Carnegie'), England were excellent, while Pakistan were very disappointing, capitulating lamely to an England side that played increasingly tight and powerful cricket on either side of the Pennines.

Prior to the series much was made of the influence of Woolmer's coaching, his relationship with Inzamam and the players' discovery and re-discovery of Islamic devotion in turning the Pakistan side from a perennially inconsistent blend of disparate talents and personalities into a lean and mean unit that was good enough to challenge the world's best. While there appeared to be something in this during the last English winter, especially in the home series victory over England, they have fallen away badly on this tour, something which they, and their many followers, must feel very uncomfortable about.

True, they have been denied the services of Shoaib Akhtar, the vaunted Mohammad Asif and the Hove favourite Rana Naved-ul-Hasan by injury, but, unlike England, who, since Lord's, seem to have drawn strength from the absence of Flintoff (and Vaughan and Giles), Pakistan have withered. They have frequently appeared little more than a three man team, relying almost completely on Mohammad Yousuf, Inzamam and Younis Khan (who didn't even play at Lord's), with no opening pair, a pronounced tendency to drop catches and run each other out, and a range of mediocre bowlers (although we all know what Kaneria is capable of and I maintain that much more will be seen and heard of Umar Gul). All in all, in the last two Tests, much of their cricket has bordered on the shambolic.

England's progress must be set against Pakistan's decline, but there can be no doubt that England have rediscovered an intensity and bite to their game which largely went missing in the first six months after The Ashes were regained.

While life is certainly easier when you're playing at home and have a new player who's better than the hitherto established one whom he's replaced (and no prizes for guessing who I'm talking about), England have shown a desire and mental toughness which has been absent from Pakistan's displays.

Strauss must take much of the credit for this - Fletcher has rightly praised his mental strength, as evidenced by his centuries at Lord's and Leeds and his increasingly assured captaincy - but we've also started to glimpse a little of what Saj Mahmood could be capable of, both with the ball and in the field, where his first innings run out of Younis set the tone for some bristling English out-cricket.

I've already said enough about Harmison and Panesar, Bell, Cook and Collingwood, so the final word on Headingley has to go with Chris Read. As I said after his recall here, I was pleased that he'd been picked again but was concerned about how he would cope with such an intensely pressurized situation. I needn't have worried. He appeared to keep flawlessly, and, after some early luck, batted just about as well as could be expected in both innings. I'm still not convinced that Jones won't be back for Brisbane but Chris has at least given himself a fighting chance.

It's all he ever wanted, and with Fletcher even starting to praise Panesar, you never know where it could lead...

Records are Made to be Broken

For anyone who grew up, as I did, obsessed with cricket statistics (as well as every other aspect of the game), the breaking of records such as the highest partnership in Test and first-class cricket history carries particular significance, and I was strangely tense as I counted the runs down on Cricinfo's ball-by-ball commentary on the Sri Lanka-South Africa Test at the SSC in Colombo this morning.

After the stand between Kumar Sangakkara and his close friend Mahela Jayawardene had ended on 624 I reflected on the fact that it's gratifying that the runs were made against a relatively strong attack, although it was clearly rendered impotent by a combination of unforgiving conditions and fine batting.

Sangakkara, with a number of assured starts which failed to develop, and Jayawardene, with his superb batting at Lord's in particular, gave hints of what they were capable of on their team's tour of England earlier this summer.

Even after a quarter-century of Test cricket, Sri Lankan players still tend to be underestimated, but Sangakkara and Jayawardene are unquestionably among the finest batsmen operating in the world today.

Just look in the book.