The beauty of monotony

It was interesting to see Monty Panesar bowling to the West Indies today, day 3 of the first test. Sure, this West Indies team does not possess the most frightening batting lineup in the world, but it was a great spell nevertheless. But the beauty of Monty’s bowling was the lack of variety. Just take a look at the tea-time scorecard.

C H Gayle b L E Plunkett 30

D Ganga lbw b M S Panesar 49

D S Smith b M S Panesar 21

R R Sarwan lbw b M S Panesar 35

S Chanderpaul not out 26

R S Morton lbw b M S Panesar 14

D J Bravo not out 14

Extras (2nb 14w 12lb) 28

Total (for 5 wickets) 217 (59.0 overs)

Plunkett set things going by sending Gayle’s off stump for a long walk. And Monty began as in a dream, bowling Smith with his first ball – a straight one that Smith played for the turn. But things got only better for Monty. He just kept bowling the arm ball – and what a golden arm it turned out to be today! All three batsmen who fell leg before to him, Ganga, Sarwan and Morton, were dismissed by arm balls, thrusting their pads in front of their bats. And there were a few more shouts of other arm balls as well. One of them almost went from Morton’s bat on to his boots before settling into the hands of the fielder at silly point.

A lot has been made about variety in bowling. But Monty today demonstrated that sticking to sameness can produce results as well. It’s a lesson Sir Richard Hadlee, Glenn McGrath and Shaun Pollock have demonstrated endlessly. Monty’s spell was one more lesson on the virtues of monotony.

New Stew at TMS

Alec Stewart is the newest blogger on the cricket circuit – he now blogs on BBC’s Test Match Special blog.

You’re not going to believe this, but the focus of Stewart’s first post (up yesterday) is on wicket-keepers, more specifically, England’s new wicket-keeper Matt Prior. “No wicket-keeper since I retired has put up an unanswerable case to be selected for England through weight of performance in either county or international cricket,” begins the Gaffer unselfconsciously. And goes on to a truly searing insight: “Whoever was selected therefore had to be picked on potential rather than results.” Ah, now that explains why England don’t seem to prefer youth – they need results before they get on to the playing field.

After a bit of praise for Prior, Stewart makes a small confession: “At this stage I must say I’m slightly biased towards Prior as he is a client of the management company I am part of,” sounding appropriately sheepish as he says it. Of course, his views on Prior are “based purely on my cricketing knowledge and not from any commercial viewpoint.” Stewart does seem to know Prior really closely though. How else would he “inwardly… know he is very nervous as any debutant will be”?

But Stewart saves his best for the unfortunate Paul Nixon. “I think deep down he will know that at the age of 36 it’s probably not the right time to make a Test debut,” he opines sagely. Patience, Nicko, may be 37 or 38 is like the right age.

Not Vaughan’ted?

After a small matter of six months, Michael Vaughan has mustered the courage to speak up about the establishment – he says he was shut out by the old England regime during the last Ashes.

He is an interesting man, is Michael Vaughan. “I'm an Ashes-winning captain with a huge amount of knowledge on a lot of things and I wasn't used at all,” he said. I could almost see him turn red with embarrassment . Such modesty, Michael. Especially after having won the Ashes so many times, your hands must be aching holding that urn for so long. And why was it that when Australia lost to Vaughan’s team (he’d prefer that usage, I reckon), a Steve Waugh or a Mark Taylor never made such statements? There was no old regime versus new regime then, I suppose. Or they hadn't won the Ashes often enough?

So is this Vaughan’s way of ensuring a smooth comeback to the side when (perhaps the word should be “if”) he recovers from his injuries? (I suppose I’ll be accused of initiating conspiracy theories for raising this question.)

I don’t remember England having any stipulations about players speaking to the media, so why is it that Vaughan chose to wait for so long to make these deeply insightful confessions? Well, I shouldn’t quibble about that – most revelations seem to come with more of an eye on the future than the past – sample the comments on Greg Chappell of late. I wonder what’s in store for Tom Moody after he moves on from Sri Lanka. And we are waiting for that eulogy on John Buchanan, aren’t we? Warnie, is your pen poised?

Players and roles

Allan Lamb has a novel suggestion: make Andrew Flintoff a selector. No, Lamb is not suggesting that Freddie’s playing days are over. He is just suggesting that Flintoff should be involved in the management of the team. Else, Lamb warns ominously, “Freddie he could drift off and not be the player he was.”

This is an interesting point: keep a key player involved in the team beyond his or her functional role. This tends to happen a lot in corporate circles. Apart from your regular job, quite often you are also part of some “company-wide initiative” or other – it could be a six-sigma project, a training or competency development assignment, the entertainment committee, the food committee… It is assumed that such involvement ensures the individual’s commitment to the company, makes them feel part of the company and gets them to think beyond the narrow confines of their roles. And for a large part, it works.

Can such an approach work in cricket? I reckon it can, and not just for the senior cricketers. And not just as an antidote to recalcitrance, as Lamb has suggested in Freddie’s case. It can be considered from a development angle, from an all-round team-building perspective.

I remember a couple of seasons ago, in the Indian team an Anil Kumble was “nominated” a bowling “captain” and someone else (Kaif? Yuvraj?) a fielding “captain” in the practice sessions. A good idea, I wonder why it seems to have been jettisoned.

May be we can look at different roles for different players outside the playing area as well. Why do we expect the captain to be the best person in the team to handle the media and to analyze the pitch, to name just two roles?

Bev or Viv?

Today’s issue of Mint (the financial newspaper of the Hindustan Times group, in association with the Wall Street Journal) carries a story on how two actuaries have come up with a new system to calculate batting averages of batsmen in limited over internationals.

The most significant change that has been introduced is the treatment of unbeaten innings. The two actuaries Sanchit Maini and Sumit Narayanan argue, and rightly so too, that adding to the numerator but not to the denominator is not quite fair. Sanchit and Sumit use insurance principles like risk and exposure to play with the calculations.

“According to the new method, if a not-out batsman has played fewer balls than his own average (number of balls faced on an average in his career) up till that game, it is not counted as a not-out. For instance, if a cricketer has played 10 innings, facing an average of 41 balls in each innings, and remained not-out in four, but faced at least 41 balls in only one of these four innings, then he is counted as having been out in three of his ‘not-out’ innings. His average will fall because his score in this 10 innings will now be divided by nine (the number of innings in which he is considered out), and not six as it would have otherwise been.”

It doesn’t sound as complex as Duckworth & Lewis, for sure, so that’s a start. But if the ICC does take it up and starts adding more variables to it, you never know what may come out.

However, the question really is this: Do we really need different statistics to evaluate batsmen? Michael Bevan’s average is much higher than that of Sir Vivian Richards, but does even a rabid Australian think Bevan was better than Sir Viv? Sure, Sanchit’s and Sumit’s formula puts this pecking order in place, but isn’t that retro-fitting?

Any way, let me not quibble. The fun in cricket analysis lies in looking at the game through different lenses – and the number lens is perhaps one of the more interesting. Good shot, Sanchit and Sumit. Now if only you could find a useful way to measure fielding averages…

Breaking news! Winning is important!

In one of the most amazing turnarounds in sporting history, David Graveney has openly stated that winning is important for English cricket, at least in the upcoming series against the West Indies. A BBC report quotes Graveney, who, in a moment of staggering originality, said, “It’s vitally important to start the season with a victory. It’s important for Peter Moores in his first match as coach, for the fans, for the players, for everybody to start well.”

I never… So England has changed with the change of guard, after all. They think (blasphemy!) that winning is important.

Well, just to even things out, I hope the West Indies management believe they need to win too. At least the spirit of the game will be balanced out. And yes, we could be in for a fascinating contest this summer.

A Service or a Profession?

I used to like Dinesh Mongia in his early days with the Indian ODI team. He had that tough, Aussie-like demeanour about him, his batting was crude but aggressive, and his bowling had a look of uselessness about it that made batsmen take one chance too many against him.

But that was long ago. Really long ago. When I saw him get out yesterday against Bangladesh, holing out to mid off, and in the first game, spooning a catch to midwicket, I wondered. Mongia just does not seem to put a price on his wicket. Sure, we don’t want him to become a grafter and just occupy the crease (and thus save his place, as a few others are alleged to have done). But surely, he has it in him to play a long innings? Unlike in the case of a Sehwag, who “just plays that way,” Mongia does not have a big enough image to be trapped in. So what accounts for his repeated failures?

As I replay the dismissals in my mind, what sticks is what happens after the dismissal. Mongia doesn’t seem to regret getting out. I wonder, is he not too keen to turn out in the national colours? No, I don’t mean to suggest that he is not patriotic. May be Mongia is happier just turning out for Leicestershire, where he has performed consistently well, where the pressures are much less, where the pulls and pushes of politics perhaps not as pronounced, and where he has a more stable place in the squad. He seems to be a regular, happy, journeyman, whose interests in the game are truly professional, in a personal sense. (As an aside, I watched a replay of a one-day game between Worcestershire and Nottinghamshire yesterday, and I can understand why Mongia may prefer the English county scene to turning out for India.) It’s a job for him, and he prefers an employer like Leicestershire rather than one like India.

For followers of English county cricket, this may not sound unusual – there are players legion who prefer the sanguine atmosphere of a game in the countryside to the hustle and bustle of international cricket. Why did a certain Steve Harmison retire from the international one day game at such a young age? May be the sub-text in Mal Loye’s interview recently also suggests something.

So is playing for the country important? Is cricket a profession or a service? (The days when it was just a game is way behind us, so let’s not even go in that direction.) Are you conscripted to play for your country if you take up the game? Can you choose to play only for a county and not for your country? As with any profession, don’t cricketers not have freedom of choice?

Are these actually considerations for the national selectors when they sit down to select the team to represent the country? Do they actually conduct interviews to find out whether players are really interested in playing for the country? Is it that difficult to figure out? In the corporate world, there are many ways in which the behavioral aspects of potential recruits are assessed. Is it worth thinking on the same lines for cricketers?