Two-Tier Cricket Has Arrived

It's been discussed and rejected before, but like it or not Two Tier International Cricket is here. It was coming anyway and the Covid-19 pandemic has made it the de facto reality.

The Tier 1 teams play each other, and the Tier 2 teams play each other. Occasionally a Tier 2 team gets an Exhibition Tour over at one of the Tier 1 nations place, where they are expected to provide spirited but ultimately futile resistance.

State of play at the time of writing: England's brave venture into Sri Lanka is the only T1 visit to a T2 team. And that was clearly intended as a warm up in Asian conditions for the upcoming English visit to India.

	Mar 20 - Feb 21
TESTS
T1 v T1	4
T1(h) v T2	6
T1(a) v T2	2
T2 v T2	7

 

Is it likely to change?

Nope

	Feb ‘21 - ‘22
TESTS
T1 v T1	5
T1(h) v T2	2
T1(a) v T2	0
T2 v T2	3

Happy 2019

My it's been a while. Let's do Alan's World Test XI!

1. FDM Karunaratne
2. D Elgar
3. KS Williamson (cpt)
4. V Kohli
5. CA Pujara
6. Shakib al Hasan
7. Q de Kock (wk)
8. R Ashwin
9. PJ Cummins
10. K Rabada
11. JM Anderson

12th man: RA Jadeja

With Warner banned, Karunaratne sneaks in to join Elgar as the specialist openers. Williamson captains from number 3. And with Smith also banned Pujara joins Kohli in the middle order.

Shakib gets the all rounder slot at 6, one above de Kock who only gets the gloves because both Buttler and Bairstow don't seem to be keeping in Tests any more.

The pace attack of Rabada, Cummins and Anderson picks itself. Honestly you could pick the next three in line (Philander, Abbas, Boult) and not lose much at all.

Ashwin actually lags Jadeja on the rating table right now, but already having included Shakib (and a good dollop of personal preference) means I'm picking the offy in the spinner slot. Ravi carries the drinks.

Anniversary Post

Being one year since I posted last.

Not much has changed for my IRL, but some has changed in the world of Cricket.

Let's cop out on creating content and look at Alan's World Test XI!

1. DA Warner
2. AN Cook (cpt)
3. SPD Smith
4. JE Root
5. KS Williamson
6. JM Bairstow (wk)
7. R Ashwin
8. SCJ Broad
9. HMRKB Herath
10. DW Steyn
11. JM Anderson

12th man: HM Amla

Warner and Cook the best two specialist openers. Cook for captain over Smith because I reckon he's grown into it. The middle order of Smith, Root, Williamson could be reordered; Amla just misses out and is carrying the drinks.

Bairstow keeping and batting at 6, Ashwin provides an interesting spin option in the allrounder slot.

Steyn, Anderson and Broad are the pace spearhead. Ashwin is also the top rated spinner but since he's already in we have the pleasure of picking everyone's favourite green grocer HMRKB Herath to round out the bowling attack.

Forgotten but not gone

Life's been too busy for cricket blogging. Until I can pipe my thoughts direct, typing the input will continue to be a barrier to entry.

Yet cricket goes on. Let's look at Alan's World Text XI, just for fun.

1. DA Warner
2. CJL Rogers
3. SPD Smith (cpt)
4. HM Amla
5. JE Root
6. AB de Villiers (wk)
7. Shakib al Hasan
8. Yasir Shah
9. SJC Broad
10. TA Boult
11. DW Steyn

12th man: AD Mathews

Rogers gets a temporary recall from early retirement to partner Davey at the top. It's that or go digging for Cook way down the list.

Smith, Amla, Root and AB for the middle order. Smith to wear the armband as a nod to the new generation. AB to take the gloves, another compromise since next in line is Sarfraz Ahmed.

Shakib beats out Mathews to the all-rounder slot, and backs up Yasir's leggies. Broad, Boult and Steyn form the pace spearhead.

Fair Play and Good Behaviour

"But we understand there's a line you can't cross. You can go close to it, but you can't cross it. I think generally Australians play cricket extremely fairly, and play sport extremely fairly."
 ~ Michael Clarke

Clarke has come out in defence of his team's behaviour. I think this deserves some calling out.

Drawing a line between fair play and good behaviour is a red herring. Clarke and his men certainly do play fair, in that they don't cheat. If anything they tend to play fairer than average. Australian teams tend to see fewer match fixing scandals, fewer bent-elbowed spinners, and more walkers than other teams.

But good behaviour is not the same as fair play. Over the last two years Clarke's team has regularly crossed the line into unacceptable behaviour for a cricket field. There's prior here. Australian sledging has always been legendary, and Steve Waugh's doctrine of mental disintegration was well known. Both skirt the line bordering on boorish behaviour; neither are against the rules of the game. Clarke's men have physically confronted umpires and opposition players en mass, which crosses way over the line of what's acceptable. That behaviour might be tolerated on soccer fields, but it has no place in a game of cricket.

The Australians get away with this because of their place in the Big Three and because the morality of world cricket is still overwhelmingly Anglo-centric. Imagine if the Bangladeshi team massed to confront an umpire about a decision. If a Pakistani player sprouted some of David Warner's lines to the media. If the West Indian fielders broke out in dog howls to see a batsman off (and if it was a Muslim batsman?). Those players and teams would have been instantly and heavily disciplined.

The rest of the cricketing world is going to need to put up with Clarke and his team's ugly and ungentlemanly behaviour, because the authorities are on his side. That sword cuts both ways, so the most that the rest of us can look forward to is watching some disrespectful bad behaviour from Virat Kohli when India visit the land of Oz.

T20 World XI

Following the conclusion of the World T20 we're in a bit of a doldrums in world cricket. What better time to pick a World T20 XI!

I guess if you're going to follow the IPL closely it's not really a doldrums. For me, only Super Rugby exceeds the IPL for drawn-out pointlessness. Which is a pity because there is actually some decent cricket played each IPL, it's just buried amidst endless other dross.

Enough chit chat. Here's Alan's current World T20 team:

1. AJ Finch
2. V Kohli
3. AD Hales
4. BB McCullum (cpt)
5. MDKJ Perera (wk)
6. F du Plessis
7. Mohammad Hafeez
8. KMDN Kulasekara
9. SP Narine
10. MA Starc
11. S Badree
12th man: Shakib al Hasan

Unlike Tests and ODIs I'm not hung up on specialist openers here. The best six in the world can line up in pretty much any order. This one works for me, although I think JP's unlucky to miss out to Faf at 6. Baz to captain, and we'll hand Kushal the gloves.

Hafeez gets the all rounders slot, relegating Shakib to drinks-carrier.

Narine and Badree select themselves, and that's enough spinners for me. Ajmal, Ashwin, Senanayake and Nat McCullum are the spinners to miss out as we scan down the list for the top two pacers. Starc and Kula to open the bowling.

World T20 Team Of The Tournament

The stooges over at the ICC have announced a team of the tournament.

The team was picked, quoth the good selectors, "on the basis of performances in the tournament only. Statistics were used but were not the sole basis for selections."

Other than statistics, the overriding criteria appears to have been to pick Indian players.

Taking into account only performances in the games, with no selection quotas applied, the team would look like this:

1. RG Sharma
2. SJ Myburg
3. V Kohli (cpt)
4. TLW Cooper
5. JP Duminy
6. Shakib al Hasan
7. W Baressi (wk)
8. MA Jamil
9. S Badree
10. Imran Tahir
11. Al-Amin Hossain
12th man: R Ashwin