When All's Said...

It's all been said about Tendulkar and his 200. Suffice to say that at nearly 37 he's playing as well as he's ever done. The perceived signs of ageing that a few of us discerned around the time of the 2007 England tour were illusory and coincidental, and he looks fit and ready to go on for a while yet.

The thing I liked most about the innings was that it was made at Gwalior, a small, up-country venue at which the atmosphere was truly vibrant.

People in India love cricket, but they love SRT even more.

Everyone's Favourite Australian

For all his 310 Test wickets, Brett Lee was a bowler who never quite fulfilled his potential. For, as a younger bowler, he had most everything needed to cut a swathe through the world's batting: the athletic, innately rhythmical action, the searing pace, and, in the right conditions, the ability to do unusual things with the ball. He probably should have been the next great Australian fast bowling hero, but the consistent excellence of McGrath and Gillespie, together with the later litany of injuries which has finished his Test career, cost him some of the plaudits which should have been his.

From an English viewpoint memories of Lee will always centre on 2005. Tearing in from the Pavilion End on the first afternoon at Lord's after Australia had been bowled out cheaply, vainly attempting to win the closest of matches at Edgbaston, nailing Flintoff as England's chase faltered at Trent Bridge and terrorising Pietersen on the last day at The Oval in a spell which touched heights of pace and aggression unseen on an English ground since the days when the West Indies pace attack stalked the earth.

And then there was the fact that he always seemed to be smiling, his demeanour embodying a warmth, sincerity and quiet charisma which I think made him as popular in England as any Australian cricketer in the thirty-plus years that I've been watching the game. Many Australian cricketers have achieved grudging respect in this country, but this was something different.

When it comes to genuine pace, two bowlers from the past twenty years or so stand out in the tableau of the mind: Lee and Shoaib Akhtar. With Shoaib never likely to recapture his best form, it'll be good to have Lee around for a while longer in the limited-overs arena, where he has often done his best work.

The incessantly demanding modern game mitigates against fast bowling excellence. As time passes, bowlers like Lee are going to become rarer and rarer. And, where they do break through, they surely won't smile as much.

Enjoy him while you can.

Air of Inevitability

For anyone who has regularly seen Craig Kieswetter play for Somerset over the last few years (and I have), his promotion to the England one-day squad had an air of inevitability about it. With Matt Prior's failure to make the most of his opportunities with the bat in the over-limit game, I suspect it won't be long before Kieswetter is in the starting eleven, and, once he's there, he may take a lot of shifting. The Test side will probably take longer, but that, surely, will come.

Kieswetter, for as much as he's become a crowd favourite at Taunton, is South African. Not someone who happened to be born there but learned his cricket in England (like Prior himself, or Andrew Strauss), just South African. With a Scottish mother, but South African.

Regardless of England's seasoned history of playing players with South African backgrounds, it's hard not to feel a pang of discomfort as a third player with a history of junior cricket in that country makes his way into the current team.

But what can be done? I seem to remember Geoff Miller muttering something about possible future problems last summer, but the only way round it would seem to be a decision on the part of the selectors not to select the best player for a particular position if he'd learned his cricket elsewhere. And that's hard to envisage.

No, we'll just have to rely on county cricket producing more players of the required standard. And that (for a range of reasons that could probably fill an entire blog) is pretty hard to envisage too.

Good luck, Craig.

Ending in Credit

As someone who grew up as a cricket fan in the days when satellite television didn't exist and Rupert Murdoch was just a newspaper proprietor (well, I'm sure he wasn't just that really, but you know what I mean), I try not to take for granted the fact that it's now so easy to see so much cricket from all over the world.

Back in the old days it was just a crackly TMS transmission from Bombay or Melbourne or Christchurch or St.John's and a few grainy pictures on the evening news if you were lucky. And that was if England were playing. If they weren't you'd be searching for the scores in the Daily Telegraph and then waiting at least a month for some grainy snaps in Wisden Cricket Monthly or The Cricketer.

Now, of course, it's all different. On a drizzly Monday morning, as the coldest English winter for years stretches endlessly on, what better way to make the return to the daily grind bearable than by watching a partnership between two of the greatest batsmen of all time?

Tendulkar was often subdued, content to play second fiddle to Sehwag's usual hypnotic and unstoppable blend of power and subtlety, but he emerged from his shell whenever he felt like it, notably when he despatched Wayne Parnell with a dismissiveness that suggested he might have been pointing out that he'd been seeing off better bowlers than Parnell since Parnell himself was in nappies.

Not that Tendulkar is ever that arrogant. He just likes to bat, and a placid Eden Gardens track, with a lively crowd in, was the type of situation in which he likes to bat most.

By the close they were both gone, but India ended the day in credit.

Identity Crisis

It's been quiet here, hasn't it? It's not that there haven't been things going on in the world of cricket but there have just been too many things going on in my little world to enable me to find the time to comment about them.

But then things changed. Earlier this week I received an e-mail from the Bangalore Royal Challengers informing me that 'if you aren't already a Royal Challengers fan, we think it's high time you started cheering them on'.

Er, right. Thanks for the advice, but there's one problem: I've never seen the Bangalore Royal Challengers play. In fact, as I don't have the right TV channels, I've never seen a match played by any of the IPL sides.

But wait, it gets better: 'As a cricket blogger yourself, we thought you'd be interested in this challenge. Fanatic Fans Challenge 2 is a war to become the Royal Challenger’s [sic] official Chief Blogger, Chief Photographer, Chief Videographer and Chief Podcaster. The 4 Chief fans will join the team everywhere they go during IPL. They’ll be at 5am practices with the team, they’ll be pumping iron with them during practice. They’ll be part of the team strategy meets, and they’ll be at the TEAM PARTIES. Club Royal Challengers organized this last year at CLT20 – and they’re doing it this year, BIGGER AND BETTER'.

I still try and play the odd bit of cricket myself when my creaking body's up to it, but a '5 am practice' with a team of professional cricketers? Even if I'm not required to take part, the idea of watching cricket practice at 5 o'clock in the morning isn't all that appealing, and as for 'pumping iron with them', well, there are easier ways of ending up in hospital.

What's more, the e-mail was headed 'Dear Brian Carpenters'. What? Is there more than one of me? Such a suggestion could be enough to give a sensitive middle-aged man an identity crisis.

No, despite its attractions I don't think it's for me. While I like a bit of Twenty20 as much as anyone else, I'm a traditionalist. I like good old English Twenty20, as seen every summer at Leicester, Chelmsford or Bristol. Not the bastardised Indian variant that's threatening to take over the world.

Or is it? Personally I think there's a lot to be said for Michael Vaughan's view, expressed in the Daily Telegraph last week, although I don't think the situation is quite as simple as he portrays.

We live and learn.

PS Sorry 'RCB' for any offence caused. I've got nothing against you and I was only trying to be mildly ironic. Don't send the boys (KP? Kallis? God forbid, Ray Jennings?) round.

They Call it Madness

There can be little doubt that South Africa, and the South African cricket community, expected to beat England. In fact, I think a lot of people probably didn't expect England to be at the races.

The fact that the series was drawn - whether England deserved it or not - has led to one of South African cricket's periodic bouts of blood-letting, even if the reasons for it are much more long-standing and complex.

Rumours abound. One of them suggests that Arthur resigned because the wind seemed to be blowing in the direction of Jacques Kallis's omission from the forthcoming Indian tour. And today I read that Graeme Smith isn't the most popular player in the country. In the words of one Kevin McCallum:

Smith is resented because he seems so sure of himself, because he scores his runs in such an ugly manner, and at such a rapid rate. This fear of confidence in South Africa is utterly bizarre. The perception of Smith is based more on emotion than the make-up of the man.

Just in case anyone hadn't noticed, Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith can both bat a bit.

Are these people mad?

Nothing Special

Ignoring the main point of discussion about the England team for Bangladesh, which seems to centre on the fact that Andrew Strauss is giving the tour a miss (I'm firmly in the anti camp), I found myself looking up Ajmal Shahzad's details on Cricinfo the other day as Michael Vaughan kept going on about him on TMS.

I keep a fairly close eye on county cricket and couldn't remember him doing very much, but thought I must have overlooked something as Vaughan kept talking about him as though he was the best thing since sliced bread.

Cricinfo revealed that he's taken 53 wickets at 35 from 22 matches, with a best of 4 for 22. Nothing special, and for a moment I found myself wondering what was up and how we could even consider picking someone for a Test squad when they'd never taken five wickets in a first-class innings. It wouldn't have happened in the old days (as Fred Trueman might have pointed out).

But then I remembered that Wayne Parnell and Nathan Hauritz were in the same boat when picked by South Africa and Australia respectively. Indeed Hauritz's average was well over 40 and he's done okay, so perhaps it doesn't matter all that much.

We'll see. The chances of Shahzad actually playing in Bangladesh look slim, not that that's enough to prevent him being dropped. Just ask Adil Rashid.

Hard As Nails

England's evisceration at the hands of Steyn and Morkel was quick, it was bloodless and it had been coming. With Steyn closer to his outstanding best than ever before against England and Morkel looking once again like a bowler who could terrorise the world, something had to give, and with England's two best batsmen continuing to struggle and the lower order failing to compensate (just what was Prior thinking?) it was always likely to be the precarious lead which they brought north from Cape Town.

On England's side it was a series for low-key heroes; less so South Africa, with the immense Kallis and Smith doing what they do best, although yesterday it was refreshing and appropriate for the frequently overlooked Mark Boucher to take his share of the limelight.

Despite their strange flirtation with Thami Tsolekile and AB de Villiers (not sure what happened to him) under Ray Jennings it's now very hard to imagine or remember a South African side without Boucher behind the stumps. Low-slung, perennially scowling, shuffling up and down the cut strip for hours on end and catching chance after chance off the seamers. His trademark celebration - a leap in the air and the ball thrown skywards - is an island of relative flamboyance in a sea of businesslike reserve.

Boucher now stands as one of the greatest post-isolation South African cricketers; a wicket-keeper of class and consistency, a batsman of timing and fortitude who's at his very best under pressure, a hard-as-nails senior pro who's seen it all and more, and who, with Ntini gone, represents, along with Kallis, the final link with the Cronje era.

He's never exactly been a cricketer to warm to, but this time of all times he didn't deserve to end up on the losing side.

Hard Rain

One of the great things about the British institution that is Test Match Special is that it can often be at its most entertaining when there's nothing happening on the field.

So it was today. England were being taken to the cleaners by South Africa when it rained. Really, really rained. And listeners in the UK were treated to the sound of Jonathan Agnew failing to suppress what sounded suspiciously like a scream of terror as a very loud clap of thunder reverberated around the ground. In the meantime Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Vic Marks compared recollections of great ground-flooding storms of the past, like The Oval '68 or The Gabba '98, while Michael Vaughan complained about the draught as the wind began to whistle through the commentary box.

The Twitter feeds of Agnew and David Lloyd reveal the life of the professional cricket commentator in all its glory - a staple diet of expenses paid cricket-watching, sunshine, travel and fine dining, interspersed with regular 'holidays' and fat-fee (if not fat-free) after-dinner speaking - so it may not have been a bad thing for them to suffer a rare bit of hardship.

High Veldt storms can be fierce and unsettling. As someone said, the thunder was so loud that 'even Daryl Harper would have heard it'.

Everything's Fine (unless you're KP)

As usual, after England have done something few people expected them to, everyone's views on the topics of the moment appear to have changed. Ian Bell is a master batsman, and his place in the side can never be doubted again, while KP may be finished, owing to a combination of off-field distractions ('lack of hunger' some people call it) and dodgy technique.

This is rubbish. I've always liked Ian Bell, but, by Centurion, I'd started to doubt. Since then he's batted very well, and, most importantly, he did so in Cape Town under intense pressure, but more is needed for a lasting judgement to be made

KP will come good again. Don't worry, and, if you are, just dig out recordings of some of his finest innings for England (The Oval 2005 should do it). He might have been out cheaply a few times recently but he really can bat.

The only things everyone can agree on are that Paul Collingwood's one hell of a tough bugger, and for someone who can't really bat, Graham Onions has batted quite well in some difficult situations recently.

I hope he isn't required at the Wanderers, though.

The Umpire's Decision is Final (unless the umpire is Daryl Harper)

It's been a tricky and tedious week, with too much time spent trekking to and from work amid the snow and ice to allow me to see any of the live action from Cape Town.

I have, however, managed to catch each evening's retrospective on Sky, and found last night's especially entertaining, although that had nothing to do with anything the players did.

A theme which has occasionally surfaced here over the years - and something which I find genuinely mystifying and shocking - is the question of how on earth an umpire with such a record of utter incompetence as Daryl Harper has remained a member of the ICC Elite Umpires' Panel for as long as he has.

One of the few pundits who's consistently given Harper his due over the years is the inimitable Bob Willis, and, after the howlers of yesterday and the day before (both thankfully rendered insignificant by the UDRS), he was the usual model of splenetic restraint.

Delving into the depths of his vocabulary for a word rarely if ever heard before on a major sports programme, Willis appropriately described Harper as a 'nincompoop'.

Ramifications of Failure

With the dust having settled a bit I wonder if it's now possible to make any sense out of what happened at Kingsmead a few days ago.

Because of the ease with which England had built their lead I wasn't expecting South Africa to have too much trouble batting out time. The potential movement, for both Swann and the seamers, looked slow, the South African batting line-up looked experienced and capable, if just a little short with Morne Morkel at eight. Sitting on a sofa a few thousand miles away all looked fine and dandy.

It soon became clear, though, that things were far from fine. We had Amla offering an exemplary display of how not to drive at a big turning off-spinner, followed by Kallis, de Villiers and Duminy all temporarily forgetting that in seaming conditions it can often be just as dangerous to try too hard not to use your bat as it is to use it.

Kallis's decision not to play a stroke at a ball from Broad which, even if it hadn't moved, would have come very close to his off-stump, looked like an especially bizarre misjudgement. But why?

Well, the trite explanation (but also the correct one) is to say that the pressure got to them. When their team's unxepectedly up against it and their minds start to be infected by the negative ramifications of failure, players, even great ones, do very strange things.

But it seems to me that the current South African side are perhaps more susceptible to this type of collapse than many other teams of the past with whom they'd like to rank themselves. I do not feel that they yet have the depth of confidence that goes with a record of sustained achievement, nor the type of settled attack which instils confidence in their batsmen. It's surely unquestioned now that the sentimental, possibly politically-influenced, decision to play Ntini at Durban was wrong, and it heaped further pressure on a team that was more vulnerable to the type of bristling counter-attack which England came up with than they'd have liked us to have believed.

This is a good team, if you let it play. If you get in its face and do what it doesn't fancy, like trying to get people out with orthodox off-spin from the first ball you bowl, you've got a chance.

And Kallis - immensely experienced, technically-sound, but inclined to be a little too predictable, one-paced and cocksure - exemplifies their vulnerability to opponents who do what they least expect.

Whether, given their terrible post-isolation record there, England can do the same in Cape Town in the face of what's bound to be an intense South African backlash, remains to be seen.

As someone who spent the early days of 1996 in the shadow of Table Mountain and who still comes out in a muck sweat at the mere mention of the names of Dave Richardson and Paul Adams, I know what can happen out there on the Newlands acres.

We await Sunday morning with interest.

Recovering Composure

Watching England build with composure and patience against a one-man attack yesterday was a reasonable way to spend the time. Especially if you're just starting to emerge from a hideous bout of flu which has rendered your Christmas a complete non-event.

But then, with Cook and Bell having made good runs you're left to ponder (those elsewhere who know me as a defender of Bell may be amused by this) whether you've been giving them too hard a time.

Cook yes, Bell no. Cook merely reminded one of his main quality, and that which sets him apart from almost every other young English batsman you can think of. Patience. With that, a shedload of runs under his belt in Test cricket already (and he's only just 25) and some necessary technical work under way he'll be around for a while yet. No wonder Boycott likes him.

Ian Bell was poised, stylish and engaging late in the day, all the things he tends not to be when the fur is really flying. But, while his unbeaten fifty will have reminded a few people that technique isn't really the problem, his temperament, which is, is highly unlikely to be tested again in this game.

Elsewhere the obvious was reaffirmed. Ntini is finished, but Morne Morkel has the capacity to do some serious damage worldwide over the next few years if he can continue to bowl with the persistence, pace and aggression which he showed yesterday.

Can he back it up, though? It's a problem Bell and Cook know all about.

Closing Over

For me the most resonant news of the week has been the retirement from Test cricket of Shane Bond. A late developer with an injury-prone body to be sure, but one of those players with the priceless ability to lift his team beyond the ordinary by his mere presence.

New Zealand teams (and especially New Zealand bowling attacks) often appear samey and colourless. Not when Bond was around.

A Merry Christmas to all. See you for more of the same in 2010.

The Cult of Personality

From an England viewpoint the main thing which stood out from the game was again Graeme Swann. Finely crafted orthodox off-spin of the type thought to be on the way to extinction a year or two back and some typically effervescent batting, the product of his seemingly boundless confidence. As someone said, he's perhaps the best number nine currently operating in Test cricket and a player it's hard to believe has been playing at the highest level for barely a year.

By contrast Ian Bell and to a lesser extent Alastair Cook cut painful figures, with Bell in particular fast heading into Mark Ramprakash territory: an English batsman of substantial gifts but without the mental wherewithal to make anything of them.

Both may be put out of their misery soon, although it's hard to see how Cook can be adequately replaced from the existing squad, but a point worth pondering is the extent to which Swann's success is as much a product of his mentality as his ability.

Even when he's been doing well there's seemed to be a diffidence about Bell which will never stand anyone in good stead at Test level, and to watch an Alastair Cook interview is to be both confused and irritated by his bouncy inarticulacy and predictability.

Coming from someone who's never met either, these are value judgements, but consistent success in Test cricket owes a huge amount to personality. And if there's one thing Swann has in spades...

Generosity of Spirit

I didn't see much of the first Test live. Work, pre-Christmas socializing and a trip to Plymouth for a local rugby argument took care of that. But then sheltering from the snow on Plymouth Hoe as de Villiers and Amla built South Africa's lead in slightly warmer conditions thousands of miles away had a certain attraction to it, and it'll certainly stick in the memory.

I was around for the denouement yesterday, though, and the main thing which stuck in my memory from that was Graeme Smith's decision to give Ntini the last over. While admiring Smith's generosity towards a fine man whose status as a cricketing icon for modern South Africa has been rightly pronounced all over the world's media these past few weeks, surely keeping the impressive Friedel de Wet on would have given South Africa a better chance of taking the one wicket they needed to complete an improbable win.

As it is, Ntini couldn't get past the middle of Graham Onions's bat, and, unless the South African selectors are as generous as Smith, that over may well be the last he ever bowls in Test cricket.

Steyn at one end and de Wet at the other in Durban? You wouldn't exactly be queing up to bat, even if you were in better form than Ian Bell and Alastair Cook.

Footwork is for Mortals

One of the best things (and there are many to choose from) about Virender Sehwag is that watching him can make you re-consider all that you ever knew about batting. For example, every coaching manual you'll ever read will emphasize the importance of footwork in batting, but is it really that important? Not for Viru.

Sehwag has often shown (and yesterday was surely his apogee) that all he needs is a bowler and a bat. Some of the greatest hand-eye co-ordination and bat speed ever known will do the rest, coupled with under-rated shot selection and defence, insatiable run-hunger and a sprinkling of luck.

In a marginally less astonishing way it's worked for others too. Some very similar qualities have always stood Marcus Trescothick in good stead, and there are others. Sadly I never saw him in the flesh but all the footage of Graeme Pollock I've ever seen gives the impression of someone who'd just stand there and hit the cover off the ball until the bowlers couldn't take any more.

As with all kinds of aspects of all kinds of games, the Greats make their own rules.

Capturing the Tension

With access to satellite TV and unlimited time it's been possible to watch a lot of cricket in the UK over the past week or two - India v Sri Lanka, Australia v West Indies, South Africa v England.

The New Zealand-Pakistan series is the odd one out. While there's probably a way of seeing it here I don't know how, and, well, I haven't lost any sleep about that as I have a life which I occasionally wish to lead. But the first Test in Dunedin was one of those games where it was possible to see from the scores just what a good contest it was. While the Kiwis ended up as worthy winners, the most significant aspect of the game in the long run was the brilliant debut of Umar Akmal, a player who, according to Osman Samiuddin, we're going to hear a lot more of.

This, from Iain O'Brien, captures the vibrancy and tension of the last day superbly from the viewpoint of a member of the victorious attack.

As Good As It Gets

After the first couple of days in Kanpur I was ready to join the chorus of anguish about the future of Test cricket in an age where pitches often seem only to come in various shades of dead. Today, though, we had a reminder that you can still make things happen pretty well anywhere if you bowl well enough. And the man who made it all happen was Kerala's finest.

Back in this blog's early days, in the summer of 2006, I wrote admiringly about Sreesanth's potential. But the volatility of his temperament and some injury issues hindered him to the point where, in the brave new Indian world of the ultra-fit Zaheer and the ultra-promising Ishant Sharma, he seemed little more than a dated afterthought, reduced to earning a crust on the county circuit with Warwickshire in a seemingly vain attempt to bowl himself back into contention for a place in his national team.

His bowling today comprised an alchemic mixture of reverse and conventional swing (sometimes, seemingly, with the same delivery), coupled with a quality of seam position rarely seen outside a coaching manual. The dismissals of Rangana Herath, bowled by a subtle away-swinger to the left-hander late in the first innings, and Dilshan, caught behind to begin Sri Lanka's follow-on slide, stood out, with the latter as good a piece of finely-honed seam-bowling as I've seen since Glenn McGrath, or even Richard Hadlee, retired.

In case anyone was in any doubt, today proved it. This is a man who can really, really, bowl.

Bottling It (and not bottling it)

The pros and cons of Paul Colingwood have been done to death in places such as this these past few years: Resilient batsman, handy seamer, truly exceptional fielder, but, equally, someone who, when out of form, can make the game look very difficult.

Which, in a sense, it is. It's hardly an original view to state that he doesn't possess the innate talent of the majority of his fellows, but I think it's a correct one. Of course, compared to the likes of me his talent is off the scale, but when you think about players like Mark Ramprakash, well, it's a different story.

Not for the first time, I found myself thinking yesterday about what would happen if you could bottle Collingwood's mental strength and imbue more fragile but more talented players like Ramprakash or Graeme Hick, with it.

Of course, you can't. In cricket, as in life, people are different. Colly will do to be going on with.