GraceCricket

Backfiring blog - fresh predictions

Well, yesterday's blog seems pretty ironic now.  Since I wrote about top batsmen drying up in scoring centuries. We've had 159* from Kallis, (which he could develop further today) Ponting with 134 and Clarke on 251* plus Peterson scoring a ton and Hussey well set on 55*.

Given that Ponting, Clarke, Hussey & Kallis make up 4 members of my list of top 5 least favourite batsmen, my reflections and predictions yesterday have really backfired!

So given that track record, along with the numerous times my attempts at cricketting Nostradamus have been about as accurate as predictive text on my iPhone.  Here's a few more predictions I want to backfire in 2012.

Strauss' poor form to the early swining ball to become too much, he's removed from the England team, the team loses its quality captain, they appoint Cook too early and the pressure damages his batting irreperably and we slip backwards and our time as world number 1 is seen as a brief anomaly.

Pakistan's murky behind the scenes infrastructure gets murkier, their team falls apart again and the tabloids keep asking 'Is this the end of cricket'.

The ICC believe that ODIs will bring the game to more people and so decide all the 7 match series after gruelling, captivating test series are expanded to 9 games between nation's B teams, and therefore 1 test is dropped from each series.

Aussies continue their rise in form.

Tendulkar never gets this 100th 100 and the cricketting world never stops talking about it and uses it as a reason to parallel him with Bradman's final innings.  Better still he gets out in the 90s in his final international innings.

Jonathan Trott is diagnosed with OCD and decides he needs to mark his guard twice between each delivery.

Sehwag decides that 30 is the new 300 and keeps playing cameos and not moving his feet.

Those are my new predictions for 2012.  Here's to hoping they're as accurate as yesterdays.

What are yours?

What's ahead for 2012

2012 has begun in a surprising way for Test cricket.  

A few hours into the new year and India have been skittled out for a sub-200 score by a young Aussie attack, Ponting is batting assuredly.  Smith is out early against SL and his team ended 2011 badly against them.  So my predictions for these two series are by no means accurate.

The key new trends seem to be green tops and increased disdain for ODIs.

Green tops are good for test cricket.  They seem to end the matches within 400 overs, so there's almost a guaranteed result and even a bit of slack in the system for rain or the dreaded (& endlessly frustrating) bad light. (an ICC directive on common sense for umpires seems to be necessary)  In a world where Graeme Swann is the top spin bowler and India, Sri Lanka and Australia are struggling to replace Kumble, (Harbijhan out of favour) Warne and Kumble pitches are being prepared to suit quicks.  

My friend Rohan Kallicharan (@ro_jito) argues that the best batsmen are the best performers on green tops.  I agree with him, but the concern is that the top stars in test cricket need to adjust and knuckle down in order to re-proove their worth.  On the very shallow measurement of recent form.  Kallis, Smith, Dravid, Sehwag, Laxman, Tendulkar, Jayawardene & Hussey have all seen a dip in form.  (if you take a list of all their innings since their last ton - the number reaches 100!)

[talking of 100s & 100s Apparently Tendulkar is close to his 100th international hundred, but I'm not sure anyone has noticed. we're all too focussed on the race between Dravid and Ponting to 100 scores of 50+ in tests! - a race which Ponting looks poised to win, being 44NO overnight]

Taking those 100 innings since a 100:

29 of those have been 50+  So that's a big gap.  Interesting enough though if you take all the world's top batsmen's career stats, (apart from Chris Gayle, Strauss & Clarke) their average rate is >30% for scoring 50s. (Ian Bell is top with nearly 38%)

So the overall impression is that the world's best batsmen are struggling at the moment, we're in a lean period for run scoring by the big boys.  I think that's in part due to green tops, pitches are hugely important in test cricket.  There is the emergence of some good new bowlers too, but time will tell how good they are.

Will there be some sort of strike action from union of the world's best batsmen?

The other key subjects looming ahead for me in 2012 are universal use of DRS (India just get over yourselves and accept it) and the demise of ODIs.  I think ODIs need phasing out, but one tweeter who responded to my question on this wrote;

reduce ODIs to 3 per bilateral series top 10 ODI play each other home&away in 3 match series over 4 years top 8 qualify 4 WC [@TimTim1981]

That makes a lot of sense to me.  Trim them down and make each one count again, like they did in the old days when they were exciting.

 

The other key question I have about 2012, is how this new look Pakistan team fare against better sides? - They were in disarray after destruction by England in 2009 and then the spot-fixing scandal removed their best 3 players. Yet they seem to be bouncing back.

 

Balls faced, the stats!

With Cook batting for long innings and Dravid breaking the record for most balls faced and going past 30000 in his career, I thought I'd look at the stats for that.

Here's what I found for the top batsmen. (all those who have faced more than 10000 runs on this list http://bit.ly/ok4AEY)

I've rated highest those who have faced the most balls/innings.

Name	Matches	Innings	balls faced	B/Inns
Dravid	157	273	30090	110.22
JH Kallis (ICC/SA)	145	246	26418	107.39
G Boycott (Eng)	108	193	20412	105.76
AR Border (Aus)	156	265	27002	101.89
JG Wright (NZ)	82	148	14619	98.78
S Chanderpaul (WI)	133	227	22226	97.91
MA Atherton (Eng)	115	212	20709	97.68
MA Taylor (Aus)	104	186	18140	97.53
AN Cook (Eng)	72	125	11959	95.67
G Kirsten (SA)	101	176	16783	95.36
DC Boon (Aus)	107	190	18116	95.35
DPMD Jayawardene (SL)	119	196	18370	93.72

 

World number 1 XIs

There’s been a lot of chat about best XIs since England’s excellent performance at Trent Bridge (not least from me). Starting with comparison between the Ashes squad of 2005 vs the current England team, then as conversation turned to how good this England squad is, comparisons and combinations of other teams came along, notably the Windies of the 80s and the Aussies of mid90s-mid00s.

 

This is the sort of hypothetical analysis I love, it feels odd to be including England in such conversations, but let’s see how we can include them.

First of all my original ‘best of’ England squad from a combination of 2005 & 2011;

Trescothick

Cook

Trott

KP

Vaughan (skip)

Bell

Prior

Freddie

Broad

Swann

Anderson

 

Pratt 12^th man.

 

But someone pointed out that Freddie as part of a 3-man seam attack is dodgey and I agree, so my thought is to drop Trott and play Tremlett.  Freddie might be tedious on twitter (I unfollowed him within a week) but he was a great bowler, he was our highlight and poster boy for a few years and lifted the nation.  I think Prior is good enough to bat at 6, especially if there’s Fred, Broad and Swann after him.  Tremlett, Jones, Hoggard, tricky to choose between them, but I do think Tremlett has been awesome since he came in.

 

The Strauss or Vaughan captain conversation is probably the trickiest part of the selection.  Both excellent captains, Strauss comes across as a classy guy with a great off-the-field relationship with Flower.  Vaughan was a hero of mine until I read his book on the Ashes, (made me appreciate the depth of Jeffrey Archer’s prose) but he did get the best out of some players.  When you have a choice between the two, then it comes down to their batting and that doesn't help because their career records are pretty similar.  So then it comes down to places in the batting line up.  I think Tres and Cook are better than Strauss and so the only slots are down the order and for that reason I'm going to select Vaughan. (I won't make Strauss 12th man, although a real gent he's too much of a leader to have around but not involved & so a specialist fielder is the best option and after that run out, Pratt is the obvious choice)

 

So let’s move up higher, we have an England team which has the potential to become world #1 and if well led go on to become dominant for quite a time.

So if we look at the Windies of 80s and Aussies of mid90s-mid00s, then what’s the team we get and could any Englishmen get into that?

Here’s my selection. (I was of course very young in the 80s, but did watch most of the 84 series & can still remember the Windies team)

 

Hayden

Greenidge (in a few years I hope I can replace with Cook)

Ponting. (Ouch, but he has been good)

Richards

Bell !!! (helped by the absence of a legendary no.5 for either team)

Lloyd (capt.)

Gilchrist

Warne

Marshall

Garner/Holding

McGrath

 

Some hard people to leave out there, and its always tricky to select between the Windies pace bowlers, but as a 9year old it was Marshall and Garner I remember best from 1984 and both could bat a bit.

So what XI would you select?

 

WC star Gul's unusual technique

I know this image featured last year, but humour me here.

Umar Gul may be the leading bowler of the 2011 edition of the World Cup (so far) but he shelters a little known secret: after every match, the man is in a lot of pain. But he does it for his country...

Check out this image from last year's Oval game against England.

Cook & Clarke

As well as having names starting with the same letter, these two have been around a similar length of time and both are 'heir apparent' of their national captaincy. - Clarke now in that role and Cook has had a go.

Today looks like a good day to compare their career aggregates.

Let's do a deal with the Aussies.

Ok, I'm as against match fixing as the next cricket fan, totally against anything corrupt.

However, desperation can cause extreme measures and with the Ashes safely packed into the hand luggage, (its ok, they never actually left HQ) I think we could use the Sydney test as an opportunity to bargain a few things with the Aussies.

Given that its not kind to kick a dog when its down, how about we offer to go soft on them and even gift Johnson and Beer a couple of wickets and Clarke 30runs or so, (hopefully lulling their selectors into picking them for another few years) in exchange for the following promises;

1. They promise to never start a reply to an interview question with the phrase 'Awww Look'. (it sounds so patronising and they're hardly in a position to sound superior right now)

2. They start giving the scores in the Correct order. - Runs -for- wickets, and not wickets-for-runs.

3. Given the audacity of their Big Ben projection stunt, they're happy to have photos of Strauss & the boys holding the Ashes projected onto the Sydney Opera house until they win them back.

If they agree to those 3 promises, then I think we could be willing to go soft for Sydney, (but not as soft as we went briefly in Perth)

Dear Santa

An Australian postman picked these up from the England hotel & passed them onto GraceCricket, (expecting that this is where Santa looks for all his Cricket insights!!)

Dear Santa, please could I have a flat dry pitch at the MCG & win the toss on Boxing Day. I've been a very good skip this year Lv Andrew

 

Dear Santa, as my birthday is on Christmas day, 2 requests; I'd like my form back and 336 runs at MCG to overtake ST for this year. Lv Cooky

 

Dear Santa, I'd love some sort of mini plough, or pneumatic drill or even a spade or trowel for Christmas please, Love JT

 

Dear Santa, I've pretty much got everything I could ever need in life, so is there anything you'd like? Lv KP

P.S. I've been a good boy this year and tried to learn to bat responsibly - Lv KP

 

Dear Santa, What I want for Xmas is 1 more chance please. (I'm lucky to be writing this before Belly) we English batsmen always score tons when we’re about to be dropped

Lv Colly

P.S. if you could fix it for Swanny to stop reminding me that NUFC beat Sunderland 5-1, that would be great.

 

Dear Santa, could you have a quiet word with the selectors & show them my recent scores next to Colly's? Lv Belly

 

Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth...to be a bit closer together Love Matthew

(Broady says I've not just been good this year but best in the world)

 

Dear Santa, it's pretty obvious really what I want for Christmas. YOUR VOTE for Sports Personality of the Year. Love The Swanster

 

Dear Santa I'd love some Duke balls with Kookabura labels please & could you drop them off in the umpires office at MCG, Love JimmyA

 

Dear Santa Got my pressie, thanks really appreciate it. That pitch was lovely. - Love CT (P.S. please don't show this to the batters)

 Dear Santa For Christmas I'd like Swanny to stop being mean to me. I've not just been good, I've been much better behaved than him. Love SF

 

 

Techniques that really need to change

Well, GraceCricket loves cricket. Especially Test cricket. Of that, we are completely and utterly convinced. 

The problem is that cricket is always a lot more pleasant when our teams are doing really well. And our teams right now are in the dumps.

So if you have not already been able to guess, yes, Grace Cricket has a soft spot for two team. We are talking about England, and India. Superficially, both are about as much behind their opponents by the end of the second day in their tests, which is to say about 200 runs. But this coincidence of numbers is entirely superficial, because it hides the fact that although England and India have both suffered dreadful batting collapses, at least England have claimed 13 Aussie wickets so far, while India have put paid to a grand total of two Protean batsmen.

Which means that England can still find a way out of their hole by bowling well tomorrow, and batting long after that. But India's pain has no easily identifiable remedy.

The deep need is for a prompt change of mood. And what better to bring about a change of mood than to hold a competition. All you have to do is contribute a comment, a picture or a cartoon depicting some kind of cricketing technique that absolutely needs to change - either because the player looks foolish, or because they can do themselves some serious harm.

To get the competition started, here is my own contribution. All I can say is that bowling must be a particularly painful exercise for Umar Gul, unless something changes fast...

Interesting stat % scores of 50+

As Kallis passes 50 against India, this is the 92 time he's done it.

Only Tendulkar and Ponting have passed 50 more often.

But Kallis has the best percentage of innings in which he passes that little (for these guys) marker.

Kallis 38.02%

Viv Richards 37.91%

Tendulkar 37.89% (has a better record for going on to get 100s though)

Ponting 36.96% (That was higher a few weeks ago Mwahahaha!)

all pretty close really, 

oh and Bradman - 52.5% (as always a complete class apart)