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.

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.

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

At Least No One Can Say We Choked...

... because on the night, India was clearly the better team. The Proteas were outplayed, man for man.

~

This review by the estimable Firdose Moonda really says all that there is to say about our T20 (and ODI) sides: less than the sum of the parts. I'm not sure what the problem is, but by now I would say that it's become chronic and is a much worse problem than the old "chokers" tag. At least "choking" meant only losing a couple of high-profile games. This new mediocrity results in a lot more losses.

~

Sri Lanka went on to win it. It's a good send off for some of their legends. Hard times lie ahead in transition for them, but for now they are deserving T20 champions.

~

As the lands here under the Southern Cross begins to slide into winter darkness there isn't much cricket in the immeadiate future. The Protea's next date is with the Lankans in July, over at their place. I have a selection of ideas to write about during the slow news days, but we'll just have to see how it goes.

On the South African limited overs team

For a while now I've been asking myself:  

What the hell's wrong with our limited overs side?

This question is usually muttered while turning away from another dismal TV broadcast, or glumly following another cricinfo commentary feed from my office desk. Once it felt like we were the team to beat in ODIs. Pundits marvelled at our home ODI series record. When T20 came around it felt like we were ahead of the curve, ready for this new format where other sides were still groping for answers.

How valid is this feeling? For a change I rolled up my sleeves and spent some time working up some numbers for you (and even this paltry exercise took too long - the child woke up, suddenly it was food, bath, etc and hours before any more cricket blogging took place).

ICC ODI ranking for South Africa in January of each year

The ICC rankings seem to back up that feeling. The Proteas ODI side seems to be in the worst mid-table slump since the years directly following readmission. I haven't done the same for the T20 rankings - you do it, gentle reader - but I bet you'd find the same.

So, why is this? I have some theories. Prop yourself up against the bar, get another beer, and I'll run them past you.

Focus on the Test side
This current golden age of South African Test cricket didn't come without a price. The performance of the Test side has been put at a premium over the limited overs teams. Players critical to Tests have been rested for ODIs and T20's; future generations will look at Steyn's record and wonder why he player so few of them. Limited overs games have been used to try out promising youngsters and likely "transformation players". The captaincy has changed hands more often and more experimentally. On the whole it's been taken a lot less seriously, and the results show it.

Other teams have gotten better
Especially at T20. These days the top sides seem to be playing a different game to the Proteas. Once upon a time the men in green and gold revolutionised ODIs with their fielding and running between wickets. T20 has come and the game has moved on. Teams around the world have identified new tactics and skill sets that are needed for winning, while we're still trying to play the same game. I have some theories about the team composition needed to win T20's (maybe worth a whole blog post), and it includes beefy baseball-style hitters, unconventional pacemen and mystery spinners. We have none of the above, instead we have...

An obsession with all rounders
All rounders have always a South African strong point. But you only need so many in a team, and we've had a lamentable tendency to pack our sides with three or four bits-n-pieces players (in addition to Kallis) instead of the best specialists available. Ever since Pollock and Klusener we've expected every provincial all rounder to deliver match-winning performances. Vernon Philander managed to escape that trap, although we're all slowly remembering that the guy can bat too. Others like Justin Kemp and Albie Morkel were victims of the expectations of the past. Cricket is a game where specialists shine - wicket takers and run makers need no extra skill (well, these days they do need to be decent fielders too). All rounders are a bonus, not a strategy.

Choking
The choking rep hasn't helped either. But the enough has already been said about that all over everywhere, which is probably part of the problem.

~

So as the Proteas proceed into the semis of the World T20, I'll be watching with low expectations. I think this team has done well to get as far as it has. Anything further will be gravy, especially against an unbeaten Indian side in their (almost) home conditions. I think there are some signs that our limited overs teams are coming out of this current funk, but there's a ways to go still until the glory days are back.
 

World Test XI, Q1 2014

Because there's no Test cricket for a while, and because the World T20 hasn't really fired my interest yet, and because we were AFK this weekend and this is a quick one to whip up... it's time for a snapshot of the World Test XI! This exercise amuses me, and it'll be a regular feature of this blog.

1. DA Warner
2. AN Cook
3. HM Amla
4. KC Sangakkara (cpt)
5. AB de Villiers (wk)
6. S Chanderpaul
7. VD Philander
8. MG Johnson
9. RJ Harris
10. DW Steyn
11. Saeed Ajmal

12th man: R Ashwin

Like some teams around the world, this XI finds itself in a state of some transition. It's hard times for specialist openers, with only Warner really putting his hand up. Cook sneaks in as the next best specialist. Smith is still listed but was not considered following his retirement.

No so with the middle order. Amla, Sanga, AB and Chanders would stand up to any in history. Taylor is unlucky to miss out. AB is still keeping for the Proteas so he gets the gloves here too. With no current captain selected I'm handing the arm band to the ever-classy Sangakkara.

Philander earns himself a promotion to 7 by topping out the all rounder ratings. Ashwin is hot on his heals but only makes the reserve slot.

Johnson, Harris and Steyn round out the fast bowling options. Along with big Vern that makes quite a pace battery; Sanga's only problem will be deciding who gets to open the bowling. Ajmal retains the spinners spot, just edging Herath out.

There we have it. We'll take a look at a World T20 XI as soon as the tournament wraps up, like next week or something.