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.

Photo Retro: 2006-03-18 - SA vs Aus at Newlands

 

One of the first cricket photos I took. Pictured is Shane Warne bowling to Jacques Rudolph, taken from the Railway Stand at Newlands.

SA had won the preceding ODI series 3-2, with the last ODI on 12 March being the famous 438 game in Joburg. This was the third day of the first Test.

The Proteas had batted first and folded for 205 with Stuart Clark taking a fiver on debut. A creditable effort by a Proteas bowling lineup in transition restricted Aus to 308. SA second innings went no better ending on 197. Aus chased a target of 95 down with seven wickets in hand and would go on to win the series 3-0.

I can't say I remember the day clearly, but it's likely I would have spent it drinking Bosun's Bitter and getting sunburnt.

Shot was taken with a Fujifilm FinePix A350. I'd bought the camera in December 2005 at the beginning of a summer road trip back to the Eastern Cape. EXIF tells me it was taken at f4.7, 1/500s, ISO64, and a focal length of 17.4mm. The latter can't be right - it would surely have been more like the 105mm maximum supporting the advertised "3x optical zoom".

World Test XI, June 2025

What better time than the end of a WTC cycle.

1. YBK Jaiswal
2. UT Khawaja
3. KS Williamson
4. JE Root
5. HC Brook
6. RR Pant (wk)
7. RA Jadeja
8. PJ Cummins (c)
9. NM Lyon
10. KG Rababa
11. JJ Bumrah

12. SPD Smith

It's a tough era for opening batters. I maintain that specialist openers are important. Resisting the urge to make like most teams and just shuffle your other batters into the position means that an unproven Jaiswal and a fading Khawaja get the spots, Ben Duckett being the next in line.

The rest of the team is a lot simpler. Williamson, Root and Brook are an easy middle order to pick. Steve Smith just misses out and carries the drinks instead.

The Indian pair of Pant and Jadeja are the top ranked keeper and all rounder respectively. Yes I want a specialist keeper, Mohd Rizwan misses out.

Lyon beats Noman Ali to the spinners spot. Bumrah, Rabada and Cummins would surprise nobody as the pace lineup, with Hazelwood the man missing out.

I've been won over to Cummin's captaincy so he gets the arm band ahead of some other strong candidates in the team.

WTC Winners 2025

Honestly, my best day as a cricket fan since Kepler's Eastern Province beat Clive Rice's Transvaal (by an innings) to win the Currie Cup for the first time in 1989, a match in which my childhood batting hero Philip Amm (RIP) made 214.

Life as ever is busy with various other priorities and projects. I'm going to try and make more regular updates here. After all opinions are for free, and I've got a bunch.