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.