A Cricketing View

Is Australia this good? Or India that bad?

2012-01-27T18:44:00.000-08:00

Greg Baum asked this question just now, after Umesh Yadav was caught at the wicket off Nathan Lyon to end India's 2nd innings and give Australia a 298 run win in the 4th Test at the Adelaide Oval.

The answer to both questions is a qualified Yes. Australia is good, in that they have a good pace attack - a pace attack that does very little wrong. A lot of people talk about the inexperience of Australia's attack, but Peter Siddle, Ben Hilfenhaus and Ryan Harris all have plenty of control and are fine basic Test fast bowlers. Each of them can bowl long spells, rarely bowl a bad ball, can bowl to their fields, and Siddle and Harris can really bend their backs when the occasion demands it without losing too much control. Behind these three, are James Pattinson, Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins, three young bowlers who are still raw, but have great pace and surprisingly good control. Starc, as Sachin Tendulkar found out, possesses the priceless ability to swing the ball back into the right hander, while Pattinson and Cummins are both potentially genuinely quick.

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First Innings Lead Problems: Six Changes To The Ranji Trophy

2012-01-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

I have written previously about the absurdity of having a 20 over contest with 10 batting wickets allotted to each team, with the same number of fielders and the same rules for dismissal as in a Test Match. My argument was that making the innings so severely short while leaving everything else as it is, skews the contest between bat and ball, and hence, does not sharpen skills and abilities that are necessary for actual Test cricket. In this post, I argue that the idea of granting a "win" based on first innings lead (as the Ranji Trophy allows) also skews the contest between bat and ball, to the detriment of both batting and bowling skills.

Some Cricket related diagnoses of Australia's success

2012-01-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

Geoff Lawson, former Australian fast bowler, has offered this diagnosis of India's troubles in Australia. It comes as a pleasant surprise that someone has actually written about the cricket that has been played.

The Indian capitulation, and I use the word advisedly, has come through the agency of seam bowlers who actually hit the seam - sometimes after it has swung, sometimes without. The greats of the Indian order have been undone by accuracy, movement, discipline and some decent pace. Eight dismissals in every ten have been off the front foot; the tail have mostly got out to short stuff because that is just about all that is bowled to them. Agreeable pitches promote fuller bowling, and Craig McDermott has kept his tribe on the hymn sheet, with hallelujahs dotted on every line.

One More Loss

2012-01-15T18:29:00.000-08:00

It happened again. The batsmen were put in against an in form pace attack, got shot out on a bowler friendly pitch. The bowlers had no answer even though I heard comments to the effect that 10 wickets in 2 sessions was a good effort. Then, the batsmen, saddled with a hopeless 200 run deficit (which is nearly insurmountable on a wicket where every single batsman on both sides was beaten once an over if the over was bowled reasonably well), were bowled out again.

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Warner, "Intent" and Perth

2012-01-13T17:18:00.000-08:00

India were blown away at the WACA on Day 1 of the Perth Test. Dave Warner score a blistering century off just 69 balls in reply to India's 161 all out. This has been India's problem all along. The batting has been below par, and has typically been 50-100 runs shy of where they ought to be in a given set of conditions. After being put in to bat on a WACA pitch with plenty of juice, India's openers were separated early for the umpteenth time in recent overseas Tests and the middle order, while it showed glimpses of its old ability to produce periods of calm batting, kept making fatal errors, just when they were beginning to look good. The inclusion of Vinay Kumar, and the suspect batting technique of Mahendra Singh Dhoni meant that India have a longish tail in this game.

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Haddin Deserves ICC Sanction - II

2012-01-10T10:31:00.000-08:00

As you can see from the comments on my post about Brad Haddin's comments (and the response I had on my twitter feed), most people seem to see it in one of two ways. These are, I would wager, the usual, formulaic ways of seeing it.

1. The Aussies think this is a whinge - that India are losing, and hence looking for ways to get back at Australia.
2. That this is a severe reading of Haddin's comments, which, lets face it, are the usual Aussie fare about the opposition. After all, Australia have never been shy of offering their opinions about their opponents.

The first, I must dismiss out of hand. I have no affiliation with BCCI or India's Test team. Indeed, part of my point is that India are not likely to say anything to the referee. This is implicit in my claim that the ICC Code of Conduct be applied to Haddin, since, if you are familiar with the rules, this is possible if either the Umpires or the Indian team lodges a complaint.* India's preferred mode of responding, entirely predictably, seems to be to take the sporting high ground (in a manner of speaking anyway) and mock Brad Haddin's wicketkeeping.

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Haddin Deserves ICC Sanction

2012-01-09T21:54:00.000-08:00

Update: I should add one clarification to what follows (please see Russ's comment below). I do not preclude the possibility that specific individuals can fall out when the going's tough. It happens all the time in every walk of life, and a high pressure environment like international cricket is especially prone to these tensions. However, Haddin's claim was aimed at a far more generic group - the Indian squad as a whole. He said it as though this is a property of the Indian team in general. As I say below, the claim, if made about specific individuals, could actually be shown to be true, and is thus eminently defensible. But the general claim about the team is not.

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Test Bowling Statistics

2012-01-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months, I published a couple of new statistical measures for international cricketers. I now have a reasonable complete set of measures, at least as far as my concerns go. These concerns were related to how a player's situation within his team (and his teammates abilities) can be brought in to any discussion about the player's quality or merit. My ambition is modest - it is to give readers and observers of the game some way to make sense of what Anil Kumble's bowling average of 29 in a team like India (1990-2008), might mean in comparison to Shane Warne's bowling average of 25 in a team like Australia (1992-2007)? Anil Kumble's qualitative limitations compared to Warne (lack of turn etc.) are well known.

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An Opinion About A Line Up In Disarray

2012-01-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

The verdict seems to be nearly universal. India's batting is in disarray. With the exception of Sachin Tendulkar, every batsman in the top 7 has struggled in Australia, and with the exception of a rapidly ageing (in a cricketing sense) Rahul Dravid, every batsman is in long term trouble. There may be signs that Gautam Gambhir is beginning to require some discipline around off stump. And there may be signs that VVS Laxman may be back amongst the runs with his 66. Lets not forget that he made 176 only 4 Tests ago. I wrote in my series preview that India have an age problem in their batting - their batsmen are all getting old.

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Dale Steyn At 50 Tests

2012-01-06T00:55:00.000-08:00

The Boxing Day Test at Kingsmead, Durban was Dale Steyn's 50th Test Match. Here is a look at the world's most prolific wicket takers at 50 Tests. This list includes all bowlers who had at least 100 Test wickets to their name in their first 50 Tests. It also shows their Performance and Value scores after 50 Tests. For comparison, I have also included the bowling averages (T Ave) and strike rate (T SR) for their respective teams over those 50 Tests, each bowler's workload WL (share of the total bowling by his team) and each bowler's share of his team's wicket WS.

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Tendulkar Is Surer When He Is Defending

2012-01-05T22:46:00.000-08:00

The argument, as I understand it, is that whenever Sachin Tendulkar starts to think about blocking everything, he gets out. I don't think this is true. He gets out far more often when he's playing shots. I suppose people think that getting out for 20 in 80 balls is far worse than getting out for 55 in 80 balls when you are trying to save a Test Match. The story for the England tour for Tendulkar was the story of pretty, strokeful innings (until the Oval Test, where he played a cussed innings) usually followed by an unforced error because he played one shot too many. This tweet from the blogger Mahek Vyas encapsulates the dominant view about this matter.

"8(43), 62(66), 10(32) The 3 phases of Tendulkar's innings. No prizes for guessing in which phase he looked least likely to get out."

The following is based on my recollection and Cricinfo's ball by ball commentary.

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Australia Return A Favor

2012-01-04T02:25:00.000-08:00

On Day 2 of the Sydney Test Match in 2004, India scored 366/2, progressing from an overnight score of 284/3 to end Day 2 on 650/5. VVS Laxman made 178 and Sachin Tendulkar reached 220 not out, on his way to an eventual 241 not out. On Day 2 at Sydney in 2012, Australia have returned the favor, taking advantage of a flat wicket and an Indian attack that couldn't find a pair of bowlers who could exert some control over proceedings even for a spell of play during the day. 366/1 on the day means that Australia's position in this Test is nearly unassailable after only six sessions of play. With India's batsmen in indifferent touch, it looks like India will go into the third Test of series in Australia with no hope of winning the series for the second series in a row.

I have nothing to add to yesterday's post about why I think this might be happening. What was notable about India's effort in this bowling innings is that the four specialist bowlers could not, between them cobble together even the first 80 overs of the innings. Virat Kohli and Virender Sehwag bowled a dozen overs between overs 60 and 80 in the Indian innings. This suggests a basic failing - that India's fast bowlers cannot be relied upon to bowl 20 good overs in a day. It would be easy to blame Dhoni for bowling Kohli and Sehwag. However, the fact is that come the 60th over, Umesh Yadav had bowled 14 overs for 74 runs, while Ishant Sharma had bowled 16 overs for 74 runs. Ishant had failed to bowl a maiden, while Umesh Yadav had bowled only 2. Zaheer, by contrast had bowled 18 overs for 58 runs, with three wickets to his name.

Fast Bowling remains a problem, not because they're not getting wickets, but because they're unable to control the scoring. India's limitations have been exposed in the last 12 months, and they are deep ones with no short term solution in sight.

An Analysis Of India's Current Predicaments: Playing For Off Stump

2012-01-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

If you are the type of cricket observer that is interested in finding out whose "fault" or "responsibility" it is that India are struggling, then this post is not for you. But if you are wondering why it is happening, then what follows might be of interest. I don't promise a definitive answer, but I will offer a way to think through it.

The figures are there for everyone to see. In the last 13 months, India have toured South Africa, West Indies, England and now Australia. I know a lot of people are saying that India won't play another overseas tour until December 2013, but even the most unsympathetic observer will have to admit that this has been a relentless set of tours, especially given the fact that they have come in the same period as a small tournament called the World Cup, which was played in India. The batting has not reached 500, has crossed 400 only once, and 300 thrice in these 11 Test matches (not counting Sydney). Three Tests have ended in a draw, two of them, because of rain. India have won 2 Tests and lost 6 in this period. Ten years ago, this would have been considered a very good record. in 2011, it is a cause for concern.

Nearly every single Test Match has been played on a result pitch. A result pitch is one which offers the bowlers something all the time, either off the wicket or in the air. More on this later. This string of 11 consecutive result pitches is unusual.
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The Test Year In Review

2011-12-30T22:56:00.000-08:00

Its been an eventful year of Test Cricket. 2011 began with India threatening to add supremacy in Test and ODI Cricket to its well established supremacy at Cricket's corporate high table. A emphatic triumph in the 2011 World Cup which included victories over every single previous World Cup winning nation appeared to confirm the optimism at the start of the year. Then came the IPL, and some IPL induced scheduled (including 5 Tests in 6 weeks over 2 separate continents), a predictable disaster in England (especially after Zaheer Khan limped off the field at Lord's), declining gate receipts and TV Ratings for the premier franchise tournament run by the ICC - the Champions League, and also for the subsequent limited overs series that India played at home after that. As Rahul Dravid said, there was a change in temperature in the second half of the year. Test wins at home have only seemed to magnify India's problems overseas. But even though India lost the Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to an embattled Australian side, it is notable that nearly 190,000 came to the ground to watch.

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India At MCG 2011-12 - Review

2011-12-29T17:30:00.000-08:00

Australia beat India in four days by 122 runs at the MCG. It was India's 5th consecutive overseas defeat, and their fifth consecutive defeat against Australia at MCG. Since Sachin Tendulkar started playing for India, India have lost 5 times out of 5 at the MCG. At no other overseas ground is India's record as bad as it is at the MCG. Lord's and the Kensington Oval at Barbados are close seconds - India have lost three out of 4 Tests there. But the MCG, be it the first Test of the series (a traditional weakness with India) or otherwise, has always brought defeat.

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Incompetent Reporting From Malcolm Conn

2011-12-28T10:46:00.000-08:00

Malcolm Conn seems to think that DRS and any use of the third umpire are synonymous. That is the only way to read this report from the award winning Australian cricket journalist. He writes,

Peter Siddle robbed Sachin Tendulkar of his 100th international century, bowling the little master for 73, but the local pace hero was dudded by technology denied to the Australians when they batted.

He continues

India's unjustifiable opposition to the umpire decision review system (DRS) has left this tour in a technological mess.

While umpires can use it to check line decisions such as no-balls, run outs and stumpings, and also to check disputed catches, players no longer have the right to review dodgy decisions.

Umpires have been able to ask for the assistance of the third umpire since the year 1992. For at least a couple of years now, they have also been able to check for no-balls when batsmen are dismissed. Conn pulls of a neat trick here, playing on the disappointment of Australian fans over the reprieve that Rahul Dravid got to hit India's opposition to DRS. He denies the utterly radical nature of allowing players to review "dodgy" decisions by casually equating it with the Umpire's ability to review decisions.

At this point, he could have chosen to take the argument to its logical conclusion and asked the really interesting questions - Would we account for the overwhelming majority of bad decisions by allowing on field Umpires to ask for help? Would we do even better by allowing the third umpire to offer help, unprompted if he sees something obviously wrong? Do we really need hotspot and ball-tracking if we do this?

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India At MCG 2011-12, Day 2

2011-12-27T11:23:00.000-08:00

India 214/3 plays Australia 333 all out.

This is what the scorecard tells us after the first two days at the MCG. Two days in which India's best players have reasserted themselves. Two days which give us a glimpse of what might have been had India's best players been fit in England. Two days which possibly also tell us the difference between England and Australia.

Test Cricket, it appears has gone crazy. A look at some of the shots batsmen have played in the last few months would suggest an epidemic of loose batsmanship. The early performances of a number of debutants - R Ashwin, James Pattinson, Vernon Philander, Pat Cummins, Umesh Yadav, Doug Bracewell and Marchant de Lange, have all played less than 5 Tests each. Yet, their returns have been spectacular - 106 wickets at 18.1, with a strike rate of 34. To be fair, the wickets have not been flat. But the old method of defending for an hour and seeing off a spell seems to have been abandoned.

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To DRS Or Not To DRS, That Is Not The Question

2011-12-26T13:47:00.000-08:00

Two Australian batsmen - Michael Hussey and the impressive debutant Eddie Cowan were given out, apparently incorrectly by Umpires Erasmus and Gould respectively on Boxing Day 2011 at the MCG. Both decisions were not howlers in my view, Cowan's decision even less so, even though in both cases, Hotspot showed nothing. Later in the day, Zaheer Khan was denied a very close LBW decision.

Hotspot has its problems. Warren Brennan, chief executive of BBG Sports (who provide the technology), recently said that "BBG Sports is disappointed at how the Hot Spot performed in the UK during the England vs India series." In a report from November 2011 after the Cape Town Test between South Africa and Australia (96 all out, 47 all out and all that), Brennan also said that Hotspot has had problems with blurring. This problem, as Brennan explains, arises when the player swings quickly. The appeal against Eddie Cowan falls in this category. In July this year, Brennan told Cricinfo that Hotspot's accuracy (about 90-95%) was also affected by whether the impact was on the bat or the glove.

"Things off the glove can be a bit hit and miss... There is padding on the gloves, which is obviously quite soft and other parts of the glove probably have some metal, usually on the side of the fingers. We get different heat impressions from the glove. While the metal can heat up, it'll be quite hot and when the ball strikes the soft part of the glove, it doesn't leave a great heat signature."

India In Australia 2011-12

2011-12-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

Australia is a peculiar place to play cricket. Contrary to popular notions about Australian wickets (fast, bouncy etc), these tend to defy stereotypes far more so than Indian, English or South African wickets have in recent years.

Melbourne could be a very good batting wicket, or it could be slightly green, which, combined with the notoriously temperamental Melbourne weather could produce periods of fierceness along with other periods of relative calm.

At Sydney, traditionally seen as a spinners pitch, spinners have returned 41 wickets at 42.75 apiece in the last 5 years, all in result matches. In contrast, fast bowlers have returned 122 wickets at 32.08. The spinners who played at Sydney in the Tests in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 have been no mean spinners - they include Shane Warne, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Graeme Swann and Danish Kaneria - with the exception (and not for long) of Swann, all 200 wicket men. England's innings victory last year was delivered by James Anderson (7/127), Chris Tremlett (4/150) and Tim Bresnan (5/140). Graeme Swann, in contrast, returned 2/112.

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On Cricketers and Orations

2011-12-15T02:18:00.000-08:00

Like a venerable typewriter salesman addressing the National Association of Typewriter Manufacturers, Rahul Dravid told his profession that it must do its best by its customers if it wants to survive. He was speaking yesterday at Australia's War Memorial in Canberra. The occasion was the rather grandiosely named "Bradman Oration".

Many years from now, some mainstream historian will probably see Kumar Sangakkara's address to those old conservatives at the MCC (some of whom probably still regret South Africa's isolation due to apartheid), and Rahul Dravid's address at the Bradman Oration, and see one more reason to conclude that the 2000s were the moment when the game went global. But perhaps he will read these two staid, formulaic - im-from-a-place-thats-foreign-to-you-all, diversity, money, fans, moments, what-a-great-game - speeches, and also see the moment in which the game's primary identity as a global business, and its demise as a great 20th century sport, was cemented.

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On The Lyon LBW Decision At Hobart

2011-12-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

This was a peculiar decision. It had all the makings of a very complicated LBW appeal. The batsman was on the move, he fell over across the width of the stumps, and the ball was an outswinger to the right hander that started on leg stump. When I say it started on leg stump, I do not mean that it pitched on leg stump, I merely claim that it started around the line of leg stump, rather than around the line of off stump or middle stump.

Further, the batsman was hit on the back pad, and the ball may have brushed the front pad on the way.

All of these things make it a decisively marginal decision. If I was the Umpire, I would have given it not out, simply because there was too much happening, the ball seemed perilously close to missing leg stump in real time. But I can see that other Umpires might give it out, because of the impact on the back pad (much closer to the stumps, than when the impact is on the front pad), because it was clearly straightening, and may well have broken the leg stump.

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Sehwag 219

2011-12-08T11:05:00.001-08:00

I missed this innings. Today, he was apparently thinking about being patient.

There is much to be said about the limits of Sehwag's virtuosity in conditions where the ball is swinging or seaming. But I ask you to spend a minute or so observing two shots in that video.

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Bizarre Analysis From Sanjay Manjrekar

2011-12-05T01:22:00.001-08:00

Sanjay Manjrekar has written a puzzling article on Cricinfo today. I say "puzzling", because it is not clear to me what his claim in it is, and what it is based on. Several events are at issue.

First, India's squad for the upcoming Australia tour has been announced, and it does not include Harbhajan Singh.

Second, Harbhajan Singh missed the next Ranji Trophy game that Punjab played after the team was announced, because of a shin injury.

Third, it subsequently emerged that the shin injury was worse than initially imagined, and that Harbhajan Singh is now likely to miss the remainder of the league stage of the Ranji Trophy.

Based on these three events, Manjrekar says the following:
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On Great Batsmen

2011-12-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

Whenever a once prolific batsman goes through a lean patch, especially on the wrong side of 30, commentators begin to suggest that maybe it is time the batsman moved on. I've never quite understood the kind of thinking that would cause someone to ask Sachin Tendulkar or Rahul Dravid or Ricky Ponting to quit. In this post I'll try to explain why. I will do so by trying to explain why Tendulkar or Ponting or Dravid averaging 30 in Tests for a year, is not the same as some 25 year old in his 4th year in Test Cricket averaging 30 after 3 moderately successful years.

What is a great batsman?
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India's Selection Dilemma In Australia

2011-12-04T13:48:00.001-08:00

Praveen Kumar will miss India's tour of Australia due to a fractured rib. Three players, according to Cricinfo, are in serious contention for Praveen's slot. Vinay Kumar, Abhimanyu Mithun and Irfan Pathan. Irfan has been in very good bowling form this season, with 21 wickets in 4 games so far. Mithun and Vinay Kumar have had less success. But there are a couple of other aspects that are relevant to this selection decision.

First, there is the value of the swing bowler. India will play Ishant Sharma as one of the three pacemen in any event. Zaheer, should he stay fit, is a brilliantly versatile bowler these days. He can attack with a fuller length, move the ball both ways, and when required, throttle back and bowl back-of-a-length. Given that the new ball usually swings, and given that reverse swing is not unheard of in Australia, a swing bowler, or, more specifically, a bowler who delivers a swing bowler's length, is a valuable commodity. There seems to be a general trend away from the tall back-of-a-length bowler in Test Cricket, in favor of bowlers who pitch the ball up and swing it at high pace. The age of the tall, front on bowler who depends on finding a good length around off stump is at an end. The rise of Morne Morkel and Ishant Sharma has turned out to be an anomaly in an age defined by Dale Steyn, Zaheer Khan and James Anderson and now, possibly by Pat Cummins, Umesh Yadav and Stuart Broad.

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