All posts by h716a5.icu

Jerome Taylor’s career has been beset by injuries, but after yet another layoff he’s now playing in the IPL and raring to get back into the national side

Interview by Siddhartha Talya08-May-2011.”I’m still aspiring to lead the West Indies attack and be among the players who can bring back the glory days”•AFPHow much has the back problem hurt your aspirations?
It might have affected the goals I set early, but those can be altered as you go along. I’m still aspiring to lead the West Indies attack and be among the players who can bring back the glory days. Coming here will give me that boost mentally to go back and play again. I came here with an injury and to date that has been sorted and I’m happy to be bowling again.Is the IPL a platform for you to break into the national side?
Coming here is just to make sure that I give a good account of myself. I was supposed to play in the IPL in 2009 and 2010, but have only come here in 2011. I’ve had a belated start due to injury but since I’ve started playing here, I’ve felt better with each game. Coming here has been the best thing that has happened in the last two years. Since I’ve been here, the medical team and I have been working on it and I’m finding that I’m feeling much better after bowling. I just want to make sure I do the right things, and ensure the people who are looking on can see. As far as the national team is concerned, once I can make sure that I’m fitter and stronger and putting in the work to get back to full fitness, the rest will work itself out.How fit are you at the moment?
At this point my body is feeling good. I won’t say I’m 100% fit as yet but fit enough to play and will get fitter as I continue to play. You just can’t wait until you are totally pain-free and 100% fit to start playing. You have to gradually ease your way back in. You have to know your pain barrier and how much pain you can play with. I have never been 100% fit. I always have niggles but they are workable, so I manage them and play with them.Has the injury had an effect on your pace? Have you had to modify your action?
I’ve lost some pace and have tweaked my action a little bit, but that was way back in 2003. Since then there haven’t been any changes – though the injuries have recurred.Moving the ball is my main weapon right now. As a fast bowler, you need to bring something to the table on these surfaces. I do have to maintain a certain pace. I don’t want to get it too low. As you go along, age might take its toll on your body, and you focus more on moving the ball about.There have been differences between senior players, who were left out of the start of the limited-overs series against Pakistan, and the board. What do you think is the way forward?
West Indies cricket has been declining somewhat for a while. I don’t think it’ll help the situation if the seniors are left out and only juniors are playing. You are playing against tough teams. You have India going to the Caribbean soon. So you need to have some of the senior players, if not most, around, so that the youngsters can feed off their experience. We need to ensure that we have the right balance and combination.We’re not here to just play cricket and represent West Indies; we need people who can actually compete. We’re winning games but we need to start winning series and tournaments. We need to make sure that we’re seriously challenging teams and pushing them close. That’ll help us get better. The wins won’t be far away then, and it’ll help us repay the faith of our fans in the Caribbean.

“I’m always bowling at the death and in the Powerplay. I understand what it’s like to be under pressure when there are people coming at you. I’m prepared to deal with that.”

Was missing out on a WICB central contract a setback? There was also criticism from the board about you not taking your rehabilitation seriously.
It wasn’t a major setback since I had been playing without a central contract before. You need to be playing to earn that and maybe the performances were not up to the expected standards because I hadn’t been playing much due to injuries.As far as the comments about not being committed to rehab, I have the necessary proof to show that I have taken my rehab seriously. It’s always been my dream to play for West Indies. Whenever I get hurt and come home, I’d make sure I do what I have to do to get back on the park.In times when things are down, people are going to point fingers at somebody. My shoulders are broad enough, and I’ve experienced situations when I’ve been under pressure. I’m always bowling at the death and in the Powerplay. I understand what it’s like to be under pressure when there are people coming at you. I’m prepared to deal with that.Once you’re an international cricketer, you’ve got to be ready and prepared to deal with whatever comments people are going to make. You know whether that’s true or not true, and when it’s not true it makes no sense losing sleep over it. Michael Holding recently questioned why the WICB granted you a no-objection certificate for the IPL. Were you in touch with the WICB before coming to India?
I asked the WICB for an NOC since I wasn’t a contracted player with the WICB. I didn’t get selected in the 30-man preliminary squad for the World Cup, which none of the selectors said anything to me about, even though I was fit enough to be preparing for the domestic first-class competition. I wasn’t sure I was going to be selected, so I had to keep my options open. It was a case where I didn’t want to be at home, waiting to be selected, not get picked and let this opportunity pass me for a third year in a row.Was I in touch with the WICB? I had a chat with Robert Haynes [part of the WICB selection panel] during the Four Day Competition and an exchange of emails with the WICB CEO, Dr Ernest Hilaire, about the NOC. But no one contacted me about my injury before I came here.”Playing in the IPL is to give a good account of myself”•AFPThe Jamaica Cricket Association sent me to see Dr Akshai Mansingh, who is on the WICB medical panel, after I had trouble [with my back] during one of the games in the Four Day competition. He told me the injury was nothing to keep me out of playing for too long. That’s why I opted to come here.On April 7, 2011, after I had arrived in India, I received an email from Dr Hilaire – and the Pune Warriors management and medical staff also let me know – that he needed a report on my medical status for his purposes of informing the IPL [about my fitness].Why do you think the injury has been recurring?
The physios here with Pune Warriors know about biomechanics and how it works. Your body needs to be working in a certain sequence. As fast bowlers, though, we are aware when one’s body isn’t made for fast bowling. With a slim frame like mine, and exerting the kind of force that I do, bowling in the high 80s, you know these things are going to happen. So the most I can do is try to strengthen the body and try to prevent them.There are always going to be observations and speculations about who gets injured more than others, and that happens. You have batsmen getting injured regularly. I’m doing much more than standing and hitting a few balls, so when these things happen you just have to take it, be a man, and try to make things right again. In 2006, you took five-fors against India and Pakistan and a one-day hat-trick against Australia. Is that the best you’ve bowled?
I wouldn’t say that; it’s just that the results showed. I have bowled far better than that and haven’t had the results to show for it. You can think back to when I played against England in Sabina Park. Everything was just right while bowling at that particular time – the ball was landing in the right areas and the result just came my way. That year was a good year for me [2006] and it helped highlight Jerome Taylor somewhat. I’m looking forward to having even better years than that.Are you setting your mind to the Indian tour of the West Indies?
I am looking forward to it [trying to break into the national side]. Being here is to make sure that I get everything moving in the right direction and the body feels okay when I head back to the Caribbean. I am also an ambassador of Digicel, who is our main sponsor, and getting into the mix of things will help enable me to fulfill my obligations with them as well.Pune Warriors have had a difficult first season. How do you see things going from here?
We have youngsters as well as experienced players and what the youngsters have got to do is feed off the experience of the seniors. This is not only for this year but the next couple of years as well. Whatever’s happening now, hopefully we can learn from it. We just need more application and need to be thinking on our feet. We have to show that kind of commitment to being more precise and direct about what we’re doing on the field. It’s our first year, and this year’s a learning experience and we hope we come up next year and give our franchise a lot more to cheer about.

Plays of the Day from the match between Somerset and Warriors in Bangalore

Siddarth Ravindran at the Chinnaswamy Stadium05-Oct-2011The single gear
Roelof van der Merwe always loves going for his shots. Two deliveries into his innings he tried to muscle the ball over mid-off for six. He mistimed it badly but survived as Nicky Boje couldn’t take a tough tumbling catch after running back to long-off. Did van der Merwe show a measure of caution after that? Nope. Off the very next ball, he tried the shot again, this time getting enough behind it to clear the rope.The disappointment
van der Merwe was constructing a typically entertaining innings, powering to 32 off 15 deliveries with consecutive boundaries in the sixth over. The next delivery, he miscued towards midwicket. As soon as he played the stroke, he knew he was going to be dismissed and slammed the bat on to the turf in frustration. He proceeded to whack his pads with his bat a couple of times as he stormed off towards the dug-out, still muttering to himself and angrily taking off his gloves.The six
Jos Buttler had a forgettable start to his Champions League Twenty20 campaign against Royal Challengers Bangalore, dropping Chris Gayle early and struggling to 4 off 12 deliveries when Somerset were chasing the tallest target of the competition. Today, he showed a glimpse of why he is so highly rated in England, with a momentum-injecting innings. The highlight was a monster hit over long-off, which landed on the roof of the Chinnaswamy Stadium.The second take
With the chase becoming increasingly tense, Johan Botha chipped the second ball of the 15th over towards long-off. Arul Suppiah had to run back from mid-off to collect it; he positioned himself under the ball but misjudged it slightly and could only get his fingertips to it as it fell behind him. The bowler Steve Kirby cursed and did the double-teapot. His mood improved considerably three deliveries later when Botha gave Suppiah another chance at long-off. Suppiah accepted this time and hurled the ball in the air in relief.The miss
Somerset’s attempts at direct-hits were off target against Royal Challengers, a problem they had today as well. In the 12th over, Kelly Smuts pushed the ball towards extra cover and was stuck in the middle after some confused calling between him and his brother Jon-Jon. Alfonso Thomas swooped in on the ball, had time to balance himself, and several stumps to aim at but his throw to the non-striker’s end missed, and Kelly survived.

The South Africans hope that Alviro Petersen’s calm, no-frills demeanour will translate to results with the bat, in Graeme Smith’s company at the top of the order

Firdose Moonda in Cape Town02-Jan-2012Very few people believe a problem can be solved through talking, rather than doing. Last week, Sri Lanka showed that sometimes it can. After their innings-and-81-runs humiliation in Centurion, it emerges that a team talk was one of the key factors that sparked Sri Lanka’s exponentially superior determination and commitment in Durban.Members of the Sri Lankan think tank had spoken – frankly, honestly and even harshly – about the reasons for their underperformance. They discussed areas that needed improvement, they tried to map out plans to ensure that improvement and they addressed other concerns, mostly mental ones, about playing in a foreign country. They also held two extra training sessions, gruelling as always, to get themselves ready for Durban. The result was a famous win, and now South Africa are trying to mirror the visiting team’s methods.South Africa’s first step towards recovering from a loss that Graeme Smith termed “embarrassing”, has been to address the concerns in the mind and the worries in the heart. “It’s been a pretty tough time. We needed to overcome a few emotions. You go through the down time where you start reflecting and then you start picking yourself up as a team,” Smith said. “We’ve had some really good chats about areas where we feel we’ve been poor.”South Africa held an extended three-and-a-half hour training session on Sunday but had to cancel their practice on Monday because of a nagging drizzle. The team spent the best part of two hours in their change room, chatting. The main topic of conversation was the mental shift that needs to be made when playing on wickets that are not tailor-made for the attack and are more like brown house snakes than green mambas.The Durban pitch fit that category, since it provided a more even contest between bat and ball rather than overly favour of quicks. South Africa’s batsmen fell apart, unable to adjust to slightly uneven bounce while their bowlers battled to make use of a pitch that did not assist them as much as they hoped. “We played on fairly juicy wickets throughout the season and then we got on one wicket that was a little different to that and we didn’t adapt well enough,” Smith admitted. “It’s more of a mental shift. When we are thrown out of the loop with a wicket that is not like that [green] we need to make that mental shift quicker.”Although dotted with tinges of green, the Newlands pitch is likely to be another good cricket wicket and South Africa will have to be ready for a five-day duel, instead of a straight shoot-out. One of the players who could assist them in getting accustomed to the long haul is the recalled opener Alviro Petersen. Since being dropped, Petersen has scored three first-class hundreds, the most notable of them against the touring Australians on a spicy pitch.The South Africans hope that Petersen’s calm, no-frills demeanour will translate to results with the bat, in Smith’s company at the top of the order. The two have a fairly solid record together. They have eight fifty-plus stands, including two century-partnerships, in the nine Test matches they have opened in together. Although Petersen has not progressed much after making a century on debut in India, he has shown immense development in the domestic game. Smith hoped they could resume their relationship successfully.”Opening the batting, you both front up to a lot of things so you need to be there for each other and understand each other,” he said. “We’ve got to know each other pretty well and we need to resurrect that pretty quickly. He is carrying some terrific form at the moment and hopefully we can gel that together.”When Petersen was dropped, he was thought to be a victim of another’s prolific form, since Jacques Rudolph stunned the SuperSport Series with 954 runs in his comeback season. Now, there is a perceived sense of justice in Petersen’s recall, after Rudolph’s failure to push on from his domestic successes. Rudolph and Smith opened together in four matches, with only one half-century partnership and Rudolph managed a top score of just 44. Petersen’s return means Rudolph will bat at No. 6 in Cape Town.Another player whose frame of mind could be important for this Test is Imran Tahir. After debuting in a cloud of hype, Tahir has not lived up to his domestic form and was substantially less successful than Herath in Durban. He is expected to make a bigger impact at Newlands, and Smith said the team management had put a lot of work to help him make the step up to international cricket.”It’s more that he needs an understanding of how to be successful at Test cricket. It’s not that he doesn’t have the ability,” Smith said. Paul Adams has spent a lot of time with him, talking about spin bowling so if he can have a mentor in that way to talk to about how to be successful, it will help. We’ll give him as much as time as possible to develop and to grow.”While time may on Tahir’s side, it is not on South Africa’s. This Test will be their last opportunity this season to break their jinx at home – they haven’t won their last four home series. Smith said he hopes all the talking will pay off. “We can play tougher cricket,” Smith said. “We can make Sri Lanka earn a few more things than what they earned in Durban.”

Not for the first time, the England captain has been left discussing Twitter, which he knows is important but has no intention of joining

David Hopps at Trent Bridge24-May-2012Andrew Strauss has always given the impression that if cricket had not intervened, he could already have forged a successful career in the diplomatic service. His discretion was to the fore as he considered the Twitter imbroglio involving Kevin Pietersen that has imposed itself upon England’s plans for the second Test against West Indies.Not for the first time, Pietersen is established as the rascal in the England set-up, his dismissive tweet about the Sky TV commentator, Nick Knight, viewed as improper conduct worthy of an undisclosed fine thought to be £3,000 ($4,700) and no doubt a private rebuke. His sin, for those who have been concerned over the past day or two by weightier matters, went thus: “Can somebody PLEASE tell me how Nick Knight has worked his way into the commentary box for Home Tests?? RIDICULOUS!!”Knight is an inoffensive chap. But he is an inoffensive chap with a modest Test record who when Pietersen’s one-day form was at its lowest, questioned his right to a place in the team. Pietersen respects stardom and celebrity and seems oblivious to the fact that Knight was one of the most effective England one-day players of his time. It is curious how long this has rankled.Strauss’ reflection on the balance between free speech and corporate responsibility will surprise those who still live under the illusion that our national sportsmen and women are untamed spirits, determined on the field and off to accept no limits, live life to the full, soar to the heavens, or whatever latest catchphrase their kit companies come up with.”That is the way of the world,” Strauss said of Pietersen’s fine. “If you sign an England contract you can have opinions on things but you can’t say them publicly.”Having laid down the boundaries, he defended them: “There are good reasons for that. Any employer would expect their employees to be aware of sensitive issues for their employer and that is the way it is.”Anybody who has worked close to the England set-up is aware how extreme that sensitivity can be. It takes a player of considerable character to refuse to become as anodyne as the ECB prefers, indeed trains, them to become: mouthing platitudes, sticking to set formulae, officially encouraged to drain the life from their own personalities. Strauss can speak intelligently within strict limits, so it suits him; Graeme Swann has a maverick’s ability to sail close to the edge; others are noticeably suppressed by their upbringing.Pietersen attempted to recover lost ground as the Trent Bridge Test approached, referring to Knight’s fellow Sky commentators, Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Ian Botham, David Gower and David Lloyd as “legends,” at every opportunity. Or, to adopt KP’s tweeting style, “LEGEEENDS!!!” might be more appropriate. The implication was clear: if the ECB had accused him of attacking Sky TV, the host broadcaster, it was simply not the case; it was far more personal than that.Pietersen assumed that Twitter gave him a convenient vehicle for retaliation in an intrinsically personal capacity, only to find like many before him that the corporate world is now so aware of social network sites these days that, if you are in a certain kind of job, you are no longer as free as you think you are. The illusion exists that you are sharing personal thoughts with your followers, but in actuality you are tweeting into a world awash with rules and regulations. The validity of the argument that you represent your employer at all times is a legal debate that runs far wider than England cricket.One of the more intriguing aspects of this foolish affair is that Strauss repeatedly referred to the fact it was the ECB board, chaired by Giles Clarke, that decided action was necessary. They had any number of codes to consider: the ICC code of conduct, England contracts, informal dressing room codes on Twitter, agreements with broadcasters, all of them precluding free expression to some degree.But it is quite possible that no one on the ECB board is on Twitter. Clarke should be, because it could be enormous fun, but that is another point entirely. The board has therefore passed judgement on Pietersen’s use of a social media platform that it does not fully understand. It has gained popularity as a looser form of communication, which seeks to capture a current, often transitory mood. Only by using Twitter, and appreciating its boundaries, can you intelligently judge whether these boundaries have been crossed.”It is obviously a difficult one,” Strauss said. “Twitter is a great way for individuals to express opinions on things and to garner positive publicity for the game of cricket. That’s where it can be really helpful.”But obviously we have conditions of employment that don’t allow us to talk about everything. We can’t criticise the ICC, we can’t criticise umpires, and in this case the board obviously wasn’t happy with Kevin’s comments about our broadcaster. That is their right as a board and so Kevin has received a fine because of that.”You can understand that the board is concerned with making sure that their sponsors and broadcasters are looked after. It was a tough one. There were shades of grey. But the truth is that the board were unhappy with it and that is the situation.”We also have our own informal code of conduct with regard to Twitter and generally it has worked very well. You are going to get the odd occasion when somebody oversteps the mark and somebody says, ‘Sorry mate, that’s outside the boundaries,’ and you are going to have to pay a price for us.”Pietersen was part of the group that accepted such guidelines, but then so was Stuart Broad when he called cricket writers during a recent Lancashire-Nottinghamshire match liars, jobsworths and muppets. He was not fined and few seriously thought he should be because such tension between the media and those they write about has occured since the first newspaper rolled off the press. In the blogging era, the readers pile in, too. For Pietersen, though, the rules seem tighter. Ever since he lost the England captaincy he has become to the authorities the individual who occasionally needs taming.For Strauss, it is just another situation to manage, one that he does not really care about. He does not tweet. “I am just too boring,” he said. “I can’t think of anything interesting to say. It wouldn’t be useful to me.”

Board-player relations were at their most acrimonious during Dinanath Ramnarine’s time as the WIPA chief, but he was more than just the trouble-maker he was made out to be

Garth Wattley31-Mar-2012Two images come to mind when one thinks of Dinanath Ramnarine.One, from the Kensington Oval in 2001, when “Dinas” was still very much a player and engaged in a desperate battle to save a Test match against South Africa with Mervyn Dillon. With West Indies collapsing inexplicably on the final afternoon, the pair contrived to survive in farcical fashion, wasting time in the most obvious way, feigning serious injury even, so that treatment could come from the pavilion and more time could be frittered away at the crease. The match referee was unimpressed and Ramnarine was fined, but West Indies got their draw.Then there is Ramnarine the helper in times of need. The recipients of his aid range from players he represented as head of the players’ body, an ageing ex-player too old to have been an association member, or just some ordinary Joe in need of some kind of help.The last decade in West Indies board-player relations has been heavily influenced by the passion and pragmatism of the outgoing president and CEO of the West Indies Players Association (WIPA). Arguably no single player or administrator has influenced the direction of the game in the Caribbean as much as Ramnarine has done in that time. He leaves the WIPA ship a stronger vessel, if one that steers through rough waters.The players’ association is a transformed organisation from the one Ramnarine inherited in 2001. Before then, it was usually headed by the West Indies captain and run largely by active players. It now has its own office and paid staff, and a network of professional expertise to call on for legal and labour matters.Even though it is now one of many subjects before the courts, the WIPA, under Ramnarine, has been able to sign collective bargaining agreements and memorandums of understanding – perhaps not quite envisaged in 1973, when the association was first formed, with Rohan Kanhai as president and Deryck Murray as general secretary. The WIPA over the last ten years has forced administrators in the region to take the players’ issues more seriously. They have had no choice.The professional face of the WIPA has developed under Ramnarine’s stewardship as president and CEO. The many legal victories it has won over the WICB tell of an organisation sure of its position and committed to defending the rights of its members.Ramnarine, who retired from international cricket since 2002, has devoted his energies to getting players their dues; and that energy and passion were rewarded with successive terms in office. The players in general seem to trust in his methods, and in him.

The WIPA under Ramnarine has proved an effective pressure group whose skirmishes with the board have at least served to expose many of its inefficiencies. But it has also been clear for some time that the WIPA had gone as far as it was going to go under Dinas

Beginning in 2003, when the semi-finals of the first-class Carib Beer International Challenge were delayed by a day, West Indies cricket has been subjected to a series of strikes by players at the regional and international level. The sources of the disputes have ranged from match fees for first-class players to contractual disputes and image rights issues. In Test series in Sri Lanka in 2005, and in the Caribbean against Bangladesh in 2009, West Indies were forced to field under-strength teams. The 2009 side led by Floyd Reifer suffered the ignominy of being swept in the two-Test series and three-match ODI rubber.The 1998 standoff in London between senior players and the board ahead of the disastrous first tour of South Africa was perhaps the first indicator to the region’s administrators that they were dealing with a new, less compliant breed of player. But the militancy of the Ramnarine era is something the board still has not come to terms with.The venerable and charismatic Wes Hall, president when the 2003 strike broke out, never quite got over that action. And none of his successors – Teddy Griffith, Ken Gordon and the incumbent Julian Hunte – has been able to tame the WIPA tiger.Ramnarine and his colleagues, never afraid to go the legal route, have been like a persistent mosquito, continually jabbing at the board and drawing blood. The WICB’s response has been a mixture of conciliation, intransigence, and more often of late, arrogance, in the sense of attempting to bypass the WIPA, even when bound by agreements to consult. Last year when the Chris Gayle impasse was bubbling, the WICB even declared it was no longer prepared to deal directly with Ramnarine.For all the strides the players’ organisation has made in representing and educating players and raising funds for charity, the fact is that West Indies cricket is in a more critical state than it was ten years ago. The WICB’s archaic system of governance and lack of transparency – repeatedly pointed out by Ramnarine – has much to do with that. But the WIPA’s aggressive posturing has not helped either, not as far as the overall game in the region is concerned. Sometimes, even when you are right, it is wise, good strategy even, to give way. The WIPA under Ramnarine was not prepared to give much ground. Ramnarine’s acceptance of Hunte’s invitation to join the board in 2007 proved but a temporary ceasefire.So the perception of some in a region unaccustomed to the acrimony that has come into cricket in the last decade is that Ramnarine is a trouble-maker who has taken the game down. That is harsh.The WIPA under Ramnarine has proved an effective pressure group whose skirmishes with the board have at least served to expose many of its inefficiencies. But it has also been clear for some time that the WIPA had gone as far as it was going to go under Dinas.Ramnarine or not, there will still be a WIPA, and likely one that will continue to be proactive in defending the rights of its members. A change of face, however, may no longer allow the WICB to claim an obstructionist personality as a barrier to peace.Ramnarine did right to leave the attack at this stage. Good play.

With a misfiring seam attack and the mystery absent from their chief spinner, West Indies must hope their batting can gun down all before them

David Hopps30-Sep-2012It was Poya day in Sri Lanka on Saturday and at dead of night, in the hills beyond the broad, slow-moving Mahaweli River, dogs were howling at the full moon. It was quite a concert, each howl or bark encouraging another until the luminous green hills were awash with noise.It was not a time for restful sleep and, if he heard the racket a couple of miles downriver in his Kandy hotel, West Indies’ captain, Darren Sammy, might have been tempted to emit a guttural cry of his own. The West Indies were many people’s favourites at the start of the World Twenty20, but after their convincing Super Eights defeat against Sri Lanka they, too, are howling at the moon, anxious, powerless, no longer having the strut of potential champions.Their batting can potentially overpower any opposition, especially if the chief attack dog, Chris Gayle, is in the mood, or if Kieron Pollard, hugely disappointing so far, begins to muscle the ball over the ropes, but if it takes a strong bowling attack to win Twenty20 then they might as well be discounted now.West Indies can still qualify for the semi-finals. They feel like they have the measure of their final opponents, New Zealand, after beating them heavily in the Caribbean in July, 4-1 in an ODI series as well as Test victories in Jamaica and Antigua. Victory would give them four points, enough to go through if Sri Lanka beat England, but leaving their fate to be determined on run rate if England discover the “perfect performance” against Sri Lanka that their captain, Stuart Broad, believes is just around the corner.Deep down, Sammy must know that his batsmen are best placed to fashion that victory, and that Gayle is more likely to fashion it than most. Sammy bristled during a qualifying match against Ireland when it was suggested that spectators just watched West Indies to watch Gayle – such suggestions undermine the team ethic he has fought so hard to implant – but Gayle’s influence on West Indies’ success is undeniable.Against Sri Lanka, for the first time in the tournament, Gayle failed, and West Indies failed with him, indubitably so. Even then attention remained with him. When he was dismissed, the Sri Lankan DJ dared to taunt him by playing Gangnam Style, the Korean rap song from which he has adopted his signature dance. The assumption in Sri Lanka’s celebrations was clear to see: get Gayle and you get West Indies.

To hide behind the enduring image of West Indies cricket as under-resourced and, as a result, slightly ramshackle, is hardly a vision for the future.

What was it someone once said about Sammy? That he was the sort of big-hearted, affable man they would gladly follow him into battle but they would not give much for their chances of survival? That remark sprang to mind at Pallakele on Saturday night as Sammy took it upon himself to bowl four overs of mundane medium pace while Sri Lanka eased their way past an inadequate West Indies total of 129 for 5, winning by nine wickets with nearly five overs to spare.His combined record in all formats produces a batting average of less than 20 and a bowling return in the mid-30s. In T20 cricket, he barely averages double figures with the bat. On West Indies’ tour of England last summer, he was persistently asked whether he was worth his place in the side and he would respond heartily that he was captain, he was in the side, showing no sense of ill will towards his inquisitor. When he made a rip-roaring maiden Test hundred at Trent Bridge, there can hardly have been a person in the ground who was not cheered by what they had seen.But his presence in the West Indies side at No. 8 adds further vagueness to a side that since their opening match of the tournament has omitted three specialist batsmen – Lendl Simmons, Dwayne Smith and Darren Bravo – and yet even with this imbalance still managed to field a bits-and-pieces attack in which it was difficult to place much faith.Tactically, West Indies came adrift against Sri Lanka. A dry pitch had the capacity to turn in the opening match between England and New Zealand. By the end of the night, it was a perfect surface for Sri Lanka’s spinners, but West Indies omitted Samuel Badree’s legspin (he will surely return against New Zealand) and, as Mahele Jaywardene batted much as he pleased, overlooked the spin options of Gayle and Marlon Samuels.As for the mystery spinner Sunil Narine, the only mystery at the moment is why there no longer seems to be much mystery. So far there has been more mystery in a bad episode of Agatha Christie. His success against New Zealand only two months ago will give him hope of better denouement on Monday.Jayawardene insisted, though, that as well as he and Kumar Sangakkara played Narine, he could not be discounted. “The bigger picture is we were just chasing 130 and we had a good start, so we didn’t have to take unnecessary risks against Sunil,” he said. “We just milked runs off him; he had a very defensive field. According to the situation we just handled him.”I have played him three or four times in the IPL but he is still a fantastic bowler. It is one thing to pick him; it is another thing to play him as well. Kumar played him for the first time and batted really well against him. When we bat against guys like Murali and Mendis in the nets we learn to watch the ball properly or those guys will have a web around us.”Either West Indies did not bowl much spin against Sri Lanka because presumably because they felt that, even if they picked Badree, they did not have the quality to trouble them or they simply misread the pitch. “I don’t think we have a pitch consultant,” Sammy said when asked how the decision had been reached. To hide behind the enduring image of West Indies cricket as under-resourced and, as a result, slightly ramshackle, was a jovial response but it was hardly a vision for the future.”I said the Sri Lankans would be a challenge in these conditions and they proved to be,” Sammy said. “The pitch definitely suited them but we are playing international cricket and in Sri Lanka we expect the wickets to turn. It is nothing new to us. But I don’t think we adapted quickly enough when we batted. Even though they had a lot of dot balls, normally they get the partnerships.”Against New Zealand, Sammy hopes for a substantial turnaround with bat and ball. “It will be good to have a big total on the board – 190 plus – so it gives our bowlers a little bit of leeway.” As the tournament progresses, the pitches tire and the scores potentially fall, that would certainly be some leeway, even with Gayle and co. at their most destructive. In fact, as the Sri Lanka hills were bathed in half-light, Poya day slipped away, and the dogs began to howl, 190-plus felt a little like moonshine.

Waqar Younis made a young English fan believe that the opposition could be dismissed in the space of balls, not days

Alex Bowden19-Nov-2012A good deal of my formative cricket-watching took place in the nineties, and an England supporter needed one quality more than any other during this time: blind optimism. Blind optimism was how you managed to endure your favourite sport. You needed hope that there could be more to cricket than a slow, predictable slog to a long-foreseen conclusion, and more specifically, you needed hope that the opposition’s 200 for 0 could become 250 all out. Waqar Younis gave me that hope.I first became aware of Waqar in 1991, in that most old-fashioned way – by looking in the paper. I was only 13 and I didn’t exactly read the paper – I just looked at the scorecards and the averages. I always read the bowling averages from the bottom up, saving the best until last. The averages slowly descended by fractions of a run, then suddenly, right at the business end of the table, there was a massive drop. Attached to this ludicrously low bowling average was always the same exotic name: .Waqar took 113 Championship wickets at 14.36 that year, but I didn’t see him play once, which only added to the sense of mystery. My team, Lancashire, had Wasim Akram. I’d seen him and he was awe-inspiring. What the hell could Waqar do that was even better? When Pakistan toured England in 1992, I found out.That series didn’t start with a bang, largely because Waqar was only just returning to action following the small matter of a broken back. In the first Test, he was understandably cautious and the match was drawn. Pakistan won the second Test and he got a five-wicket haul, but it wasn’t until the fourth Test, at Headingley, that he created the small shred of hope that was to falsely sustain me for the next ten years.England actually won the Test, but little things like that don’t matter a jot. England were 270 for 1 in their first innings, already 73 ahead, when Aaqib Javed dismissed Robin Smith. At this point Pakistan unleashed Waqar, who had taken no wickets and conceded over a hundred runs. Bowling obscenely fast, he took 5 for 13 in 38 balls and England were all out for 320. Three batsmen were bowled and two unfortunates endured the not-uncommon physical pain of being dismissed lbw Waqar Younis. England had fielded a horses-for-courses attack of Chris Lewis, Neil Mallender, Derek Pringle and Tim Munton. Waqar came on first change.With just a cursory look, the most striking batting collapses are those when a whole side’s been bowled out for double figures. What Waqar did was create batting collapses where none should have occurred. How many times during that largely miserable decade did I watch English seamers potter in under a clear blue sky and think to myself, “If we could get a quick seven wickets, we’d be right back in this”? Waqar Younis showed me that, actually, this wasn’t a totally delusional line of thinking, and he therefore gave me the priceless gift of mindless optimism.

It was a virtually unstoppable delivery, and one of Waqar’s greatest strengths was that he acknowledged that fact and was perfectly happy to bowl it again and again and again, where other bowlers might have held it in reserve as a surprise weapon

Yet watching Mark Taylor, Michael Slater and David Boon all hit hundreds in the same innings before Mark Waugh “fails” with 99 does more than just create a desperate longing for a bowler who’s at his best with the old ball on a dry day. It also creates a pretty deep-seated loathing of batsmen in general. If you’ve spent whole days watching them gambol about without a care in the world, waving their bats to the crowd with smiles plastered across their smug little faces, then you want to see them knocked down a peg or 40. You want to see their precious stumps spread from third man to fine leg, and you want them to be lying on the ground, not knowing what happened, with their dignity in tatters, when it happens. I don’t enjoy seeing batsmen hurt, but the occasional broken toe was collateral damage in an ongoing war.International batsmen generally have half-decent balance, but the Waqar Younis inswinging yorker made fools of them all. Given a choice between losing their toes or losing their dignity, most batsmen opted for falling flat on their face, a position from where they could better hear their middle and leg stumps going their separate ways. Where Wasim was an expert lock pick with a wide array of tools at his disposal, Waqar just burst through doors with a battering ram so immense he could just as easily have gone through the wall. Wasim could do a million and one devious things with a cricket ball, but Waqar essentially just did one. And he only needed to do one. The Waqar Younis reverse-swinging yorker might just be the most destructive delivery in the history of cricket.Maybe all of this is painting him as one-dimensional, but it was that yorker that grabbed me when I finally got to see him bowl, and it was that yorker that largely explains his phenomenal ability to run through a batting order in the time it took a dismissed opening batsman to say, “Mind your toes.” Delivered with a different, more round-arm action to the one he used when opening the bowling, it was a virtually unstoppable delivery, and one of Waqar’s greatest strengths was that he acknowledged that fact and was perfectly happy to bowl it again and again and again, where other bowlers might have held it in reserve as a surprise weapon. It didn’t need to be a surprise, because knowing what was coming simply didn’t help the batsman all that much.Waqar Younis cemented my enduring love for bowlers over batsmen. When batsmen are on top, the game develops. When bowlers are on top, the game changes, and it only takes a handful of searing inswingers to turn a match. By applying such mindless optimism whenever England were getting the runaround in the field, I managed to watch far more cricket than I should have done and got hooked on a wonderful game that was trying its damnedest to drive me away.This article first appeared in the Cricketer magazine. Subscribe here

From Arvind Panchal, United States Probably T20 is still in its nascent stage at the international level and probably things will change further in the years to come, but a few basic things that have emerged out of T20 world would probably

Cricinfo25-Feb-2013Probably T20 is still in its nascent stage at the international level and probably things will change further in the years to come, but a few basic things that have emerged out of T20 world would probably remain the same. And I hope so, because that is good for cricket. One of such things is the end of dominance of a few teams over others.Compare it to Test Teams and the One day teams, where we have definite favorites going into a series or tournament. Agreed, upsets are a part in those formats too, but not to the same extent as we have been seeing in T20. After all, the Australians have ruled the world of Test and One day cricket for almost a decade now.Only three days into the World Twenty20 and one of the Kings of cricket teams thus far is out of the tournament. An associate member of ICC, Ireland easily Pushed Bangladesh out of the second round and England the host team were galloped by the nascent Netherlands in the opening game. Another finalist for the last World Twenty20 is struggling to move to the second stage. So who is your favorite for World Twenty20?Yes, now you have the luxury to keep Australia out and probably by tomorrow you would also be comfortable to keep a few good teams out. But the question is, coming into this tournament, how many of us believed that Australia would crack like this? How many of us believed that Netherlands would punish a team that is considered to be the father of this format? How many of us thought that Pakistan would be so unsure about its place in the second stage? Do we still dare to have a favorite?One of my favorite writers, Harsha Bhogle, recently mentioned in his article about the impact of the duration of a game by saying “If football was played over 20 minutes Manchester United and Barcelona may not have been in the final.” This is the underlying difference between a T20 and other fatherly forms of cricket. When the game is reduced to shorter duration, the strategies must change and at the same time, it adds an element of surprise into it. It is easier to play at your top level for 3 hours, but not so easy when you have to stretch the same to over a day. At the same time, there is a little room for making mistakes when you are up in the short format, since there is a little room for recovery.In the longer format of the game, even if you make some mistakes, there is time for you to recover, your team and the captain can plan out counter attacking strategies. But such luxuries are not accepted by T20. Such basic things have allowed us to see surprises more often which in fact are not surprises, because there have been far too many. This probably is the core of T20. And probably this would be the reason for T20 to be a huge success.

And how teams are trying their best to avoid it

Andy Zaltzman25-Feb-2013England’s flawless tour of Australia has continued impressively with two superbly constructed defeats in the opening two one-day internationals, confirming that the England management will leave nothing to chance in their pursuit of ultimate success.The immaculate, all-encompassing preparation that helped secure the Ashes (where every detail, from sweatiness of fielders’ hands, via Alastair Cook’s four-year undercover operation as a middling Test opener, to injecting psychotropic substances into the Australian selectors’ breakfast sausages) is now being applied to the World Cup campaign. Strauss and his team, well aware that they could not sustain their Ashes form until April 2, have tactically dipped at just the right time. They will be looking to endure at least a 6-1 drubbing in the Commonwealth Bank series, before slowly finding their game again during the month-long group stage of the World Cup, then exploding into form for the crucial quarter-semi-final week at the end of March.England proved their mastery of the well-timed Test match defeat in Leeds in 2009 and in Perth in December, brilliantly allowing Australia to believe that everything was just fine, that England’s brief and uncharacteristic dalliance with excellence was over, and that normal service had been thoroughly resumed. Then, with the Baggy Greens still high-fiving themselves in delight, they burst out of their tactical Trojan horse like the modern-day Odysseuses they are, and skewered Australia like a cheap kebab.For their part, Australia will be delighted that, having underperformed with such determined persistence in the Ashes – or, as Cricket Australia has now officially rebranded them, “The Commonwealth Bank Series Official Six-Week Curtain-Raiser” – they are now proving that, at the business end of their international summer, they can still perform like the Australians of old. They too still have plenty of players nicely out of form two months away from the key games, as well as players in form who have not been selected for the World Cup, so whose inevitable drop-off will not affect the team as they push for a fourth consecutive trophy.India and South Africa are also not quite bubbling under nicely. Both will be happy with not taking a decisive lead in the ODI series, and be hoping that rain in Centurion tomorrow removes the possibility of either of them winning. A notable victory against a strong opponent at this stage is likely to prove fatal for their World Cup hopes.Both teams also took every available precaution to make sure they did not win the final Test of the three-match series recently concluded, avoiding the EPM (excessive premature momentum) that all coaches fear. (It was a disappointing end to a compelling series akin to Shakespeare writing Act V of Hamlet as a single scene in which Hamlet does a crossword, eats a packet of nachos, and twangs a ruler on his desk, or Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier concluding the Thriller In Manila by spending rounds 14 and 15 filling in their tax returns and phoning their accountants to check what they were allowed to claim as expenses.)India’s glut of injuries also bodes very well for the tournament favourites. Those players should be in peak condition come March 23.New Zealand’s win over Pakistan in Wellington (described as “worryingly comprehensive at this stage of our preparations” by Daniel Vettori) should not detract from their expertly crafted 11-match losing streak that preceded it, whilst their opponents know that, such is the fluctuating nature of their cricket, how they are playing now bears no relation to how they will play in late March (indeed, how they play in late March will have no impact on how they play five minutes later in March).Sri Lanka and West Indies are no doubt practising half-heartedly to make sure they do not hit the ground running in their three-match ODI series beginning on January 31, whilst Bangladesh are keeping a low profile after whitewashing of New Zealand, desperately hoping they will not take that form into the early stages of the World Cup. All in all, the tournament is still anyone’s.Meanwhile, the Chairman of Baggy Green Selectors, Andrew Hilditch has, after an investigation lasting two weeks, issued the Official Cricket Australia List Of Positives To Be Taken From The 2010-11 Ashes. It reads as follows:1. Selectors seek consistency from their players. Many of the team provided us with admirably, almost unprecedentedly, consistent performance levels. The captain, as so often, led the way, churning out a series of scores that were so consistent as to be barely discernible from each other. He was ably supported in this by his vice-captain, whilst Ben Hilfenhaus set new standards for reliable, guaranteed consistency with the ball.2. Sportsmen are never more determined than when they set out to “prove the critics wrong”. By garnering for themselves a record number of critics, Australia’s cricketers will be more motivated than ever, and will play for the next 25 years in an almost hypnotic trance of critic-disproving frenzy.3. The pain of defeat in 2005 and 2009 was exacerbated by the the fact that had one ball happened differently in each series, the result would have been reversed. If Lee had slapped Harmison’s full toss either side of the fielder at Edgbaston in 2005, or if the umpire had given Kasprowicz not out to a marginal caught-behind appeal moments later, and if one of the 35 balls bowled to Panesar in Cardiff in 2009 had, as might reasonably have been expected, cleaned him up, then Australia would have triumphed gloriously. Life is too short for “what ifs”, so, by being obliterated by an innings in three Tests and conceding a record statistical superiority to England, the Australians will now be able to proceed happily with the rest of their lives, unencumbered by nightmares of the ones that got away.4. Since the retirement of the irreplaceable Shane Warne in 2007, Australia have been trying to replace him, and find a spinner who is indispensably crucial to the side’s success. Over the course of the Ashes, Nathan Hauritz grew into that role.5. The international game is short of star names. In this series, Australia created a new generation of potential world superstars – Cook, Trott, Bell, Anderson, Tremlett, Bresnan, to name but six.6. Taking positives from abject defeat is long-established as a method of helping captains avoid breaking down in tears of humiliation at post-match interviews, no matter how spurious and desperate those supposed silver linings dully glistening around the mushroom cloud of defeat may be. Australia helped prove that taking negatives from victory is an equally valid procedure. As Ricky Ponting said in Perth, after leading his team to a thumping victory: “Well, obviously we’re delighted with the win, but let’s not forget we can still take a lot of negatives away from this victory. Our top-order batting was useless, we were bailed out by Hussey yet again, and there is absolutely no way he can do that for five Tests in a row, and only two of our bowlers took any wickets, one of whom blows notoriously hot and cold, the other of whom picks up injuries like Warren Beatty used to pick up women in his prime. So, all in all, whilst we cannot deny that we did win this game, there is still much to be downbeat and pessimistic about, and we’ll focus on that carrying that forward to Melbourne.”

From TS Trudgian, Canada

Cricinfo25-Feb-2013
Expect Michael Hussey to deliver in the Ashes•Getty ImagesIn terms of most recent Ashes form, M.E.K. Hussey is at the top of the batting pile: his 121 in the fifth Test at The Oval was the highest score in the final three matches of the 2009 series. It was an innings which kept alive the slim optimism of an Australian jail-break. Set an improbable (my Dad would of course say ‘impossible’ — see Vol I) 546 runs to win, Australia were 2 for 90 when Mike Hussey joined Ricky Ponting. This was early in day four of the Test, on a Sunday. On day three I had enjoyed the magnanimity of breaking the spirits of young fifteen-year-old bowlers by uncouthly belting them back over their heads — in other words, I was playing village cricket. All the pundits there, and village teams are full of sagacious musings over a post-game pint, agreed that if Australia batted out the rest of the Test, they would win. Easy game from the pub!Once Ponting and Hussey put on a century stand without glimpse of being dismissed, I declared to my wife that it was all getting too exciting to stand around to try to help her with the Sunday roast. I had been dithering betwixt kitchen benches to sort out the rebellion of the roast veges and attend to the precious demands of the chicken to be basted every so often. But, and I’m sure most cricket fans can relate to this, as the reception in my house is poor, my moving from one bench to another induced machine-gun fire static from the radio. I had to time my moves to coincide with a boundary or the end of an over. But even my shrewdest endeavours were not able to permit unmolested listening. The game was getting far too exciting to miss a small tit-bit of wisdom from C.M.J.So I went upstairs, with the radio, and lay down on a camp bed. If, instead of Test Match Special, I had Barber’s Adagio for Strings playing, the scene would resemble one from Platoon. Ponting was dismissed — quick singles are all well and good, but why tempt fate when embarking on chasing down 500+? — but the Huss batted on. Determined? Sure. Patient? Of course. Punishing of loose bowling? Naturally. And Hussey was pretty good too.He was perhaps not able to exercise his powerful off-side stroke play, particularly backward of point, in India. Unless England post four slips and three gullies, I should think that Hussey will make no fewer than two centuries, and four over-fifty scores in the series.