Why KP should go

Those wicked guys at The Spin, are they really Englishmen? Bad enough they support Kevin Pietersen, but in the face of such incontrovertible evidence? After everything that has happened, The Spin argues that England needs to find a way to keep its only consistently genuine star as happy as possible ahead of the Ashes. But why? And at what cost?

The Spin will do well to remember that it operates from the land that introduced the wonderful game to all of us. The one game that embraces defeat as much as, if not more than, victory. It’s about playing the game, ain’t it? It’s about the spirit of the game, did I hear you say? Sign up here for an ECB life membership.

Look at what KP has done. Forget that he gave up his native South Africa and agreed to represent the English. Forget that he averages 51.09 after 50 tests and 46.65 after 91 ODIs, with a strike rate of 87.24. Mere numbers these. Even if they are better than that of any English player on display today. Playing the game is not just about batting and batting well, is it? The English of all people ought to know this better.

Look at what KP has done. He is bestowed the ultimate honour of the land, the English captaincy (rated above the knighthood in certain quarters) and he gives it up for petty reasons as conviction and not seeing eye-to-eye with the coach. So what if he still scores a century at the next opportunity? Hardly proves he is a team man, just plain a selfish one.

Look at what KP has done. He actually wanted to go home for a couple of days between two test matches. And when denied, he turns petulant child and punishes the West Indies with yet another century. Come on now, even the benevolent Englishmen can’t ignore this taunt.

Look at what KP has done. He speaks his mind, even if it is not the same mind as the wise ones who run the game. At the end of a tiring tour, he actually complains of tiredness. Surely he should know better? Surely he realises that cricket is not all about batting, not even batting better than any bugger in sight? It’s an all-round game, especially off the field.

The Spin’s argument is so self-serving it’s pathetic.

Yes, Pietersen contradicts himself; yes, his stream-of-consciousness interview technique throws up headlines; yes, he puts his foot in it. But, boy, can he bat: England's only hope of surprising the resurgent Australians is if he is in the right frame of mind.

What if England, God forbid, win the Ashes? How will they justify it?

Er, who’s the captain now?

(Drat, I knew I missed a trick when I discontinued ‘The future cricket’ series after just five musings. I touched on the toss and just when I was on to something big, I let go. And now this man has beaten me to it. I can’t prove that the idea crossed my mind earlier, so I won’t take him to court but I am compelled to share the conversation I had with John Buchanan sometime last year when I was in Kolkata.)

Me: Hi, John. Good we could catch up like this. I know I don’t have the kind of experience you’ve had, coaching one of the most successful cricket teams ever, but…

John: Hold on there, mate. Just get your sequence right – I wasn’t the coach of the most successful team, I made it the most successful team ever.

Me: Warney had me believe otherwise, just after the 2005 Ashes loss.

John: I knew you’d come to that. Read my book If Better Is Possible to understand the reasons for that defeat. I just let Jamie (Siddons) lose it for us. It was an important stepping stone for him.

Me: Oh yes, I remember reading that book. You also had some convincing explanations for the loss to India in 2001, didn’t you?

John: I don’t quite remember what I said then, my agent said that we needed a compelling explanation, and I think we came up with some reasons that night over a few drinks.

Me: Interesting… any way, John, I wanted to sound you out on an idea I had while I was working on a series of posts on my blog on cricket reforms.

John: Ah, you write a blog, do you? Do you think something like that will help my consulting business? I don’t mind re-releasing my book in the blog format if it helps.

Me: Er, I don’t think I’m quite the best person to answer that, being an amateur blogger myself.

John: Oh ok. I think I’ll check with my agent on this. Thanks for bringing it to my notice. Let’s move on. You were talking of some cricket reforms. What are you thinking?

Me: I am wondering, why should a team have only one captain? I can understand a team having one wicket-keeper, but just as there are three departments in the game, why can’t there be multiple captains?

John: What a crazy idea! Why would you want that?

Me: Well, I was just thinking. There used to be this criticism about bowling captains either under-bowling themselves or over-bowling themselves.

John: Nah, bowling captains are just too fat and obsessed with their cell phones.

Me: And some batting captains are so worried about the team, it tends to affect their personal performance as batsmen.

John: No no, Mark Taylor was a genuinely bad batsman, but go on.

Me: Moreover, nowadays there are so many roles captains have to play – selector, player, media relations…

John: Brand endorsement, representing the country in inane ICC meetings… I get the drift. But I still don’t know how it will work out.

Me: Me neither, but if there is one person who can carry this off, at least on an experimental basis, it’s you I reckon.

John: That is absolutely correct, mate. No one else can even talk of this with a straight face. Hmmm… these Englishmen don’t seem to want to win the Ashes – they’re not calling me to coach their team. They could’ve made good guinea pigs.

Me: Do you think you can perhaps write an article about it and get some views from other experts?

John: No, I’d rather leave copies of the article in hotel rooms accidentally, that strategy works better, but hey, wait! I wonder I can try it out with the Kolkata Knight Riders at the next IPL. I can kill multiple birds with this one stone.

Me: Er, how?

John (visibly excited): I can make Sourav the mascot captain. So he can wear those funny costumes (or may be take his shirt off) and cheer the team. That way I can get rid of him from the eleven. I can get Ponting to do some field placements. Now that should make the game more competitive and push our bowlers hard. Chris Gayle deciding the batting order should pose some problems for the fielding side – he will take so much time with his decisions on the batting order that it will affect the over-rate. Brendon McCullum can do some pitch reading, Brad Hodge can be the captain of the reserves… the possibilities are endless.

Me: Er, that’s quite not what I was thinking…

John: I think I’ve cracked this. This innovation should take the cricket world by storm. I can see the next ICC captain’s conference being held at the pitch at Lord’s, just to ensure there’s enough for all the captains from the different sides. Thanks for being a sounding board for my ideas, mate. You want to pick up the tab?

(To avoid the public glare wherever we go, John and I were in disguise at an undisclosable bar in Kolkata. Hence I cannot prove this conversation happened. Lucky bugger, John!)

What a game!

It was riveting stuff, it really was. Two teams evenly matched in a low-scoring game. And a last over finish to boot, culminating in a two-wicket victory. A left-arm spinner decides the fate of the game (no, it’s not Monty Panesar, you poor Pom) with figures of 10-2-22-4 (that he made an unbeaten 23 in a chase of 125 adds to the impact). Other dream figures include 10-4-11-3 and 10-3-21-3, both from the losing team. It made me get back to blogging, so you can imagine how much it captured my attention. Pity the teams were evenly matched not in their intensity to win but in their inability to do so.

See the scorecard if you must here.

Oh for those days…

Some random surfing on an idle weekend led me to a certain Leslie Brian Taylor, one of an illustrious line of anonymous seamers to have played for England in the 1980s. The Leicester lad played just two test matches, against Australia in that glorious summer of 1985, when England won the Ashes on the back of David Gower’s dream run with the bat. England won both the tests Les played in, but that is not the point of this post.

Les was apparently a genuine No. 11. In a county game against Surrey, Les walks in after the 9^th wicket falls, with Leicestershire still needing 20 to avoid the follow-on.  The bowler is that gentle medium pacer, Sylvester Clarke. And what does the Leicester captain David Gower do? He says, “I just can't do it,” and declares.

Who’s next?

The happy season is on us. Ex-cricketers are realising that playing cricket is not a bad idea at all. First was dear old Harmy re-discovering some patriotism (and, to the surprise of every one including I reckon the man himself, form). He’s even gone to the extent of saying that his return is for the long term and not just for this one series. Whispers confirm that this decision has nothing to do with Stanford and other such trivial matters – Steve Harmison is just out to give his best for his nation.

Hardly had the champagne glasses moved off the lips than similar news shook the cricket world in the Southern hemisphere. Harmy’s Aussie alter-ego, Shaun Tait has put his hat into the ring, albeit on a slightly smaller scale, by agreeing to play in one-day internationals for the Australia A team on their tour of India, thus suggesting that he is ready to stake his claim for the big one – the main Australian team. Brett Lee, your time is up.

A bird apparently saw Marcus Trescothick lug a year’s supply of mint from the local supermarket, but the England team management said they’re not reading too much into it; it is believed that they could not confirm whether the brand name was Murray.

Cricket horror

(story picked up from Patrick Kidd)

No, this is not a reference to India’s batting form in Sri Lanka. A new horror film releases this week and it’s rather originally titled I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer. Here’s the IMDB on the film’s plot.

A cricket team are dismissed by a moustachioed serial killer with a razor sharp cricket glove and an arsenal of sharpened stumps. One by one the killer exacts revenge for the torment he endured 20 years earlier.

Sounds like a good way for England to handle Australia, except that the film surprisingly is from Australia.

Here’s a YouTube trailer of the film.

I’d rather watch Yuvraj Singh against Ajantha Mendis.

Oh captain my captain

It is no surprise that Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood have given it up – it is not easy captaining the English cricket team in today’s era. The demands are just impossible.

To begin with, the selectors, the media, the public all want their captain to score runs. Where would they have found Mike Brearley if that had been the condition in the 1970s? Or Mike Denness before him? Even Vaughan resigned because such inhuman demands were placed on him. There’s one of two things he can do: pat his bowlers in the back after grounding yet another catch or launch into a flowing cover drive. Which would make a bigger difference to his team’s fortunes you think?

The media in particular (and we know how they rule the selectors’ minds, don’t we?) wants the captain to be kind to their representatives as well. So when Vaughan questions the cricketing records of a journalist, he’s pilloried. There’s no place for a candid captain nowadays, is there? Now who else does this expectation rule out?

As I write this piece, national selector Geoff Miller comes up with a new demand: he wants one person for both the test and the limited overs captaincy. It’s a shame on Andrew Strauss, isn’t it? May be he can offer to keep wickets in one-dayers. He does have a successful precedent in India’s Rahul Dravid, doesn’t he?

Some sections of stakeholders (selectors, officials, media, the public, the blogerati, the neighbourhood dog) are beginning to ask for experience in a captain as well. Come now, imagine the kind of people whose services England would have lost out if such a silly demand had been taken seriously in the past – Tony Lewis and Chris Cowdrey are just two illustrious names I would like to mention. I fear we may have lost the services of that wizard, Robert Key, for good (or bad, come to think of it). Alastair Cook, as an extension of the same logic, may be deemed too green just now.

Finally, and this is surely the work of a Tony Greig baiter, there are ear-splitting whispers that the selectors should stick to true Englishmen as captains, not people who adopted England as their country. So that puts paid to the hopes of Kevin Pietersen – he can win matches for England with his bat, no problem, but he can’t use his brains to lead them to victory. The English have a nation to defend, what is a few losses on the field?

So who does that leave us with? Andrew Flintoff? Will he behave with the media? Ian Bell? Isn’t he likely to be too aggressive? Ryan Sidebottom? Now why is no one talking of his candidature?