India Tests take aways

2-0 in India is indeed an epic Test series win. The Protea's first since 2005. The records and accolades have been amply enumerated elsewhere. Moaning about the easy run to the WTC final last cycle may stop now, or at least once the English and Aussies are done with the other Test tour ongoing and take some notice of results in other parts of the world.

What other takeaways can we call?

Shukri Conrad has found his inner P-Div
The 'grovel' comment was as cringeworthy as anything said in a presser by everyone's least favourite Snor. Bavuma and Conrad have been walking on water for a couple years now, but WTF Shukri?! I can only hope that when the time inevitably comes to eat those words, you take it as in your stride as well as Tony Greig did.

Picking allrounders
Both coaches loaded the team with allrounders. It worked for Conrad, less so for Ghambir. One coach got a lot of heat for the selections, and it wasn't the one who was winning.

Rabada misses out
Visiting quicks in India usually don't really mind missing out injured. But this time KG may have experienced a tiny amount of regret. For someone already in the GOAT discussion a record of 9 wickets at 44 in India stands out as a low point, and chances to rectify those numbers don't come along every day.

WTC cycle is ... progressing fast
Seems it's barely started, yet we're nearly halfway through? These away points will surely help the Proteas greatly.

Long wait for the next Test action The world champion Proteas play again soon... as soon as September 2026, when Australia come and visit. India on the other hand are in a hurry and head to Sri Lanka in ... August next year.

What a crowded Test calendar we have.

Photo retro: 2007-09-12 - Aus vs Zim at Newlands

This was the first match in Group B of the inaugural ICC T20 World Cup. Australia batted first and meandered to 138/9, Symonds and Hodge scoring most of it. T20 was pretty new but even then it was clear this was a below-par score. Still with an attack of Lee, Bracken, Clark and Johnson Australia wouldn't have been unduly worried.

Brendan Taylor had other ideas, and hit 60 (45) to take the Zimbos to a memorable 5 wicket win. Australia still qualified top of Group B by thrashing England in their next game. Pictured are the scenes shortly after the victory - the Zimbabweans about to launch into a victory lap, the Australians stunned, and the ground staff rushing to cover the pitch under overcast skies.

This was one of two games I attended during that tournament. My middle brother was in town and came along; we were somewhat coincidentally joined by two young ladies. At least one of them was a cricket fan. We were seated in the lower stands just between the WPCC and the sitescreen. Not my favourite viewing location, but it did put Bro in position to catch one of Taylor's two sixes (not clean as it rebounded off a hand in front of us). We were expecting a low key encounter and were pleasantly surprised at being at such a memorable victory.

Afterwards we went for milkshakes because the ladies wanted to, then we dropped them off and went drinking in Claremont.

Photo was taken on my Fujifilm Finepix A350, without too much zoom.

On The Nature Of All Rounders

All rounders are crickets most valuable players. Arguments over them rage longer than plain batsmen and bowlers.

One of the reasons is that all rounders are hard to pidgeon-hole into buckets. After all, every cricketer is an all rounder to some extent. Everyone can bat and bowl, that's how we learn cricket growing up. We've all played in school cricket teams where half the team bats in the top order and bowls all the overs while the other half can't bat or bowl at all.

Another reason is that all rounders are so vital to team composition. Generalising across formats, a team usually needs at least five guys who can bowl, one guy to keep wicket, and as many guys as possible who can bat. How you optimise team composition given those constraints and the varying skills of the players available is a key problem facing coaches and captains.

I've had this post parked in draft for years, not quite able to put my thoughts into words without sounding like a rambling reddit fanboi as I categorised the different types of all rounders and then speculated on the nature of team composition.

Luckily Jarrod Kimber has laid this all out way better than I could. Enjoy:

Two Tier Cricket, in the news

Here we are, some years later, and two out of three WTC champs have gone teams outside the big three.

The big brains at the ICC have decided that this isn't really what they intended from this format. So inevitably two tier Test cricket is again on the agenda. A "working group" has been formed.

Lots of corporate speak in that article. I decided to post a helpful table of translations.

Pundit	Corpo Jargon Quote	Translation into English
Richard Thompson ECB Chairman	"There has to be a sense that common sense needs to play out here."	"Playing anyone other than India and Australia is stupid of us."
	"The World Test Championship could work better than it does."	"Can't have the freeloaders winning the thing, can we?"
	"What you do need is a schedule that makes a lot more sense than it currently does."	"Why spend valuable match days playing minnows when we could be making bank playing the Ashes twice a year?"
Todd Greenberg CA CEO	"The real challenge here is what role do we [the big three] all play."	"Why spend valuable match days playing minnows when we could be making bank playing the Ashes twice a year?"
	"It's incumbent on all of cricket to help."	"F*ck 'em, and the devil take the hindmost."
	"...everyone's got a very open mind to this because they know that we're going to need some level of change in order to extract value."	"Those guys know who calls the shots, and it ain't them. Bring me some more caviar and champers."

Photo retro: 2023-12-21 - SA vs India at Boland Park

This was the third of three ODIs. India had batted first and put up a good 296. Photo was taken from the south western grass bank near the score board. I wouldn't swear to who was batting there but it was near the start when there was still hope, so likely de Zorzi and one of Reeza Hendricks or Aiden Markram.

Hope didn't last and India went on to take the game by 78 runs and the series 2-1. Both teams moved to Newlands next to start the Test.

More memorable for me was solo parenting three small kids through the event. The daytime temp hit 38C, and dropped sharply at sundown. One child lost a tooth midway through the first innings. Two got in trouble with security for sneaking out to fetch a ball hit too far (yes, this is thing one can do at Boland Park). I spent most of the second innings queueing to buy pizza (maybe not a bad thing given the RSA collapse), and overall spent way too much on confectionary and bottled water and way too little on beer.

As you can tell from the horrendous focal length the pic was taken with my smart phone at the time. It was a Samsung A73.

Zim tour take aways

So the Proteas played some games in Zimbabwe. What can we take away from this? In no particular order...

Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo is a beautiful venue
Glorious to see red ball cricket in a venue like that. Village charm etc. The crowds looked to be having a good time too.

Wiaan Mulder and Brian Lara disagree about batting records
Was the declaration the right decision? I don't know, but I think we all know that if Mulder was batting against Australia, 1-0 up in a two match series, he sure as hell wouldn't have declared.

L-Dre Pretorius is a pretty good batter
At least for biffing first class bowlers on a flattish pitch. Still, I liked what I saw so far. He seems to have loads of time and all the shots.

Corbin Bosch is a pretty good all rounder
At least ... you know. Although looking at the list this is still a great achievment. It's a short list, and plenty others are against the minnows of the time.

Zim have got some money to spend
Why else would they be playing all this Test cricket? Cool, cool. They have some promising young players, I hope it works out for them.

There is also T20 tri series. It's not quite done yet but I guess my takeaway from that will be that tri-series were kind of weird in the 90's and have not improved since. And that NZ are much better than the Protea's B team and Zimbabwe's A team.

Two tier cricket - update

Is Test cricket still two-tier?

Let's go look at the FTP.

Jul '25 - Jun '26
TESTS
T1 v T1	10
T1(h) v T2	6
T1(a) v T2	3
T2 v T2	6

The answer is: largely yes.

The big 3 are playing each other a lot. England are just gonna stick with that.

India graciously host WI, NZ and RSA.  

Australia are somewhat surprisingly visiting the Caribbean, slumming it there for 3 whole Tests. I assume the WTC is to thank for this.

Some T2 series happen.