Am I watching IPL or Babestation?

After turning on the IPL on Saturday to watch the Delhi Daredevils vs Kings XI Punjab I quickly had to check the TV channel I had turned on as at the point of my viewing the camera was fixed on one of the young cheer leaders who was cavorting in front of the camera with numerous pouts and hair flicks and wearing minimum amount of clothing possible. Once the camera returned to the cricket and then the game went for the time out period of play we were then treated to a slow motion show of this girl dancing in front of the camera.

How on earth the producer gets away with this I have no idea but fair play, the greatest part is the fact that no one is trying to be subtle with it. You could argue that nothing to do with the IPL is subtle so what’s the problem with a few young ladies dancing like they were performing at Stringfellows on A Friday night, if you ask me absolutely nothing, one of the better innovations in the game of cricket in recent times it could be argued.

Just in case you want to do your home work on this matter and research the similarities, Babestation is on channel 906 on Sky, well that’s what I’m reliably informed anyway.

Scotland’s Prospects

Scotland played a friendly on Thursday against MCC in a 50 over match in preparation for their 2011 Clydesdale Bank 40 campaign that starts on Sunday against Yorkshire. The first question that has to be asked is if it was in preparation for a 40 over competition then why was the format of the friendly a 50 over game, surely to gain maximum match preparation it would have been more beneficial to play the format that you are going to play.

To the game itself Scotland won the match at Lords by 4 wickets. Scotland will be delighted with the win and they most definitely got a contest during the game by the MCC who had players such as Mark Alleyne, Darren Bicknell, James Benning, Jamie Dalrymple and John Stephenson representing them. Ex Scotland captains Gavin Hamilton and Ryan Watson also represented the MCC.

MCC in their 50 overs scored 254-6 which was mainly due to 50’s from two of the young MCC players Mark Tomsett and Keith Wilkinson and then a hard hitting 65 from Mark Alleyne at the end of the innings. The big name players all failed with Hamilton scoring 21, Bicknell Retiring hurt early in his innings and James Benning only adding 1 before being bowled and Dalrymple being run out without troubling the score. It was a disappointing day for Dalrymple who to go with his duck was also expensive in his 5.5 overs which cost 42 runs which included two big sixes being hit off him.

Scotland’s bowling on the whole didn’t look all that threatening and the fielding in general was also poor and included numerous dropped catches, two in the space of a 5 minute period from Richie Berrington, both being very simple chances at mid wicket.

Scotland’s performance continued to disappoint as they slumped to 90-4 and you started to think that if they can’t beat a MCC team who’s bowling attack included Kevin Dean, former Derbyshire left arm seamer who is aged 35 and been retired from first class cricket since 2008 and John Stephenson who is 46 and is now working as the MCC Head of Cricket then what are their realistic opportunities in their upcoming Clydesdale Bank 40 campaign, at this stage it wasn’t looking promising.

This is where things started to look up for Scotland and a glimmer of hope for their summer prospects begun. Ewan Chalmers and Scotland’s Australian oversees player Luke Butterworth who was playing in his first game for Scotland shared a partnership of 130 which was the main reason for the eventual Scottish victory.

Luke Butterworth in particular looked a good prospect scoring a hard hitting 80 that included two big sixes hit into the top stand. The Tasmanian partner Ewan Chalmers was a perfect foil and looked a very good prospect scoring 109 and for Scotland to achieve any victories in future games will need these two in particular to carry on this form.

I believe that Chalmers will carry a lot of responsibilities onto his 21 year old shoulders and will need to contribute greatly as will Butterworth with the bat and ball. The bowling and fielding is still a concern and I will be surprised to see Scotland make much of an impact in this seasons competition but on the whole the Scottish team is made up of a lot of young and promising talent so the experience will do them the world of good and if Chalmers and Butterworth click again maybe a few surprises will occur.

Day at Lords

It was my first experience of visiting Lords yesterday watching a day of County Cricket and what a day it was. I was very excited especially at the prospect of seeing Alistair Cook and Ravi Bopara bat for Essex, well yesterday was my lucky day as I was fortunate enough to watch them bat twice. Essex it is safe to say had a nightmare day, the conditions suited the Middlesex bowling line up and they took full advantage. They were helped considerably by some very average batting, the batsmen didn’t show much fight, regularly wafting or hanging their bats out waiting for the edge, they duly came with 12 of the 20 dismissals falling to catches by the wicket keeper or slip cordon.

Cook looked good in both innings scoring 19 and 25 and in particular in the 2^nd innings before falling to a decent return catch by Stephen Finn. Ravi Bopara on the other hand was very disappointing, he showed a glimmer in each innings of the stroke maker he is but in both it appeared as though he wasn’t prepared to show the grit that was so obviously required in yesterday’s conditions.

The only bright spots for Essex were Jaik Mickleburgh 41 in Essex second innings and Tom Westley who top scored in both innings and his 59 in the second innings showed that Westley has a more than solid technique as well as possessing a number of scoring shots, if he carries on in this manner he could well have a very successful summer.

That is very much where the positives finish, Middlesex bowled well, their bowling attack comprises of a consistent county pro in Tim Murtagh who has flourished since moving to Middlesex from Surrey. Corey Collymore nagging line and length is perfect for Lords and he could prove to be an excellent player this season for Middlesex. Finn bowled with ferocious pace especially in his 2^nd innings spell that saw him remove Cook and Bopara. That will be a very encouraging sight for England and for the summer international fixtures to come. Finn will obviously not play much cricket for Middlesex as soon as the international schedule begins but Toby Roland-Jones will be a suitable replacement as he performed well last year and Gareth Berg who bowled superbly in the Essex 2^nd innings to take 4 wickets has improved significantly. Middlesex showed on this performance that they could have a very realistic chance of gaining promotion this season.

On the other hand the beginning of the season has not started well for Essex, after last weeks defeat to Kent they would have hoped for a much improved performance this week which just didn’t happen. The Essex batting on paper looks very strong but four failures out of four with the bat will now cause major concern for the Essex coach Paul Grayson who himself stated that promotion was the aim and priority of the season. This is looking a distant dream at the moment but surely the batting will come good at some point soon. With Lonwabo Tsotsobe to come into the team soon and then Owais Shah and Ryan Ten Doeschate to come back into the side after the IPL to go with the young talent of Westley, Mikkleburgh and Reece Topley, the 17 year old left arm bowler who has been sensational in the opening two games Essex most certainly have the talent at their disposal to improve on their woeful start, at least they know that things can hardly get any worse, if they do then this is going to be a very long and hard season for Essex.

Fantasy Cricket

It’s that time of the year again where I get thoroughly over excited and start dreaming that I am going to win the fantasy cricket league. I think in the years since 1994 that I have been doing fantasy cricket leagues my highest league position was 18,500 which I was very impressed with at the time.

This year I’m pushing for a top 10,000 finish, if that happens then happy days. Picking my team this year I found to be very challenging, they have decided to have three different leagues, a county championship league, a Twenty20 league and an international league.

My County championship team has been selected and in a moment of weakness I asked my girlfriend if she wanted to do a team, to my shock she said she did. The next 10 minutes of her picking her team was what I can only describe as traumatic, there are many methods that can be used to pick a fantasy cricket team, her first method was to try and pick players that she had heard of but it means she would have only selected 7 players, then went for the ‘are they fit’ tactic again had to be abandoned as they were all England players and wouldn’t play that much. She was adamant that Cook and Broad had to be picked, she was having none of me trying to tell her that was pointless.

The final approach which was the one she decided upon was just a random selection process which she claims was based on last year’s performances. One of her selections Alviro Petersen from Glamorgan has made me think that was a super pick and made me think that I may add him to my team, maybe the aura of disdain that she shows towards cricket is all a front and in fact she’s a fanatic. I’m still confident my team will come out on top, I most certainly hope so or it really is a new low.

My Fantasy County Championship XI

Trescothick                    Somerset                       Capt

Shah                              Essex

Taylor                            Leicestershire

Maynard                        Surrey

Loye                              Northamptonshire

Davies                           Surrey

Stokes                           Durham

Panesar                         Sussex

Collymore                     Middlesex

Mendis                          Somerset

Tsotsobe                       Essex

Girlfriend XI

Petersen                       Glamorgan                    Capt

Cook                            Essex

Wagh                           Nottinghampshire

Smith                            Leicestershire

Nixon                            Leicestershire

Rashid                           Yorkshire

Broad                            Nottinghamshire

Woakes                         Warwickshire

Pattinson                        Nottinghamshire

Lucas                             Northamptonshire

Philips                            Essex

Amazing Shot

All I can say is that I have just seen the most amazing shot I have ever seen. AB de Villiers hitting Tim Southee for a reverse sweep six.

Take a look on YouTube, unbelievable. I’m sure by the end of today it will be on. Worth watching.

Should Ireland be in The Next World Cup?

The decision made by the ICC to limit the Cricket World Cup in 2015 to the 10 Test playing nations has caused a lot of controversy amongst the cricketing world especially amongst the Associate nations themselves, no where else has this decision been challenged more than by Cricket Ireland who argue that with their performances in the last two world cups they should be able to compete at the next world cup in 2015 or at least be able to have the chance of qualifying for the opportunity of taking part. This has not been granted by the ICC who have decided to go back to the format seen at the World Cup in 1992 where the 10 full nations will play in a round robin competition with the top 4 teams taking part in the semi finals.

The subject of Associate Nations at the World Cup is one that is often debated and everyone has different opinions. One of the opinions on the side of Associate Nations being able to take part in the World Cup is that how are these nations supposed to improve and aid their future development other than playing more competitive games against the best teams in the World. The main view in argument to this and one that is taken by former Australian captain Ricky Ponting is that regularly taking beatings by the big nations will not help these players develop as players and will ultimately make them lose confidence and belief and to aid their development it will be much more beneficial for them to play in more games against the other Associate Nations.

The argument by Ireland is that they are far more competitive than most of the Associate Nations, this can be seen by the fact that they have recorded victories against 3 full test nations in the last two World Cups. Even the games they lost were not embarrassing defeats like countries such as Kenya and Canada were receiving on a regular basis during this World Cup. The fact is in the ICC Official one day rankings Ireland are currently in 10^th positions meaning they are ahead of Zimbabwe who are 11^th, even with this statistic Zimbabwe are guaranteed a spot in 4 years time and Ireland are not.

The prevention of Ireland competing does seem to be very unfair, I agree that the format of the next world cup did need to be changed and the number of meaningless games was at an alarming level this world cup but to eliminate the 14 team format to 10 without what appears to be any warning does seem to be very harsh and unfair. The ICC are the governing body and if they believe that to limit the next tournament to 10 teams is the best way forward then that is fair enough but surely there should be some sort of qualifying system in place. No teams who play in the football World Cup except the host nation play without going through a qualifying stage. Obviously there are not as many cricket playing nations as there are football but one way to counter this is why don’t the top 8 ranked one day sides 2 years prior to the tournament in 2015 get guaranteed a place at the World Cup then the last 2 places available goes to the winners and runners up of a qualifying tournament. The other option would be to decrease the World Cup from 14 teams to 12, this would mean that there would be two less associate nations playing but ultimately still gives the nations a possibility to qualify to take part if they are good enough. This option would also give one of the quickest and promising associate nation Afghanistan the opportunity to qualify for the next World Cup, they have some very promising players with two of them playing for the MCC against Nottinghamshire in the English season opening fixture this year. The format for the next World Cup prevents these players from the opportunity of playing in a World Cup for at least another 8 years until 2019.

The ICC have in response to the format changes to the World Cup have changed the format in the Twenty20 World Cup increasing the number of countries taking part to allow Associate Nations the opportunity still to play international cricket against the elite nations. This is all very well but ultimately this will mean that the Associate Nations in the meantime may well develop in the shorter format of the game but preventing them from taking part in the longer forms of one day cricket will ultimately stop the development of the players and will also mean that it will be far less likely for these country’s to strive towards gaining full international approval and able to play in Test Matches.

The World Cup showed that even though both Kenya and Holland lost all their matches and Canada only won 1 match all these nations especially Kenya and Canada performances vastly improved as the tournament went on. In particular Canada performed very admirably against Pakistan and had the Pakistanis very concerned for a time before the Canadians middle order collapsed. Kenya also after a couple of humiliating defeats against Pakistan and Sri Lanka early in the tournament performed very admirably against the Australians where they scored 264-6 in response to Australia’s 324-6. The point here is that both nations seemed to improve vastly as the tournament went on which shows the more they were playing against the superior nations the more competitive they became which surely shows that for these country’s to develop further they need to play more games against the full test playing country’s and not less which is more than likely to take place now that they have been prevented from competing in the next World Cup.

Cricket Ireland has not taken the news well and have stated that they are more than likely going to challenge the ICC decision, they are not going to do this alone and there have been talks with the other 94 non test playing nations to form a 95 country strong challenge to challenge this decision as it isn’t only Ireland who have been prevented from the opportunity to play in the World Cup, all non test playing countries have and surely if we are to believe what the ICC say that that they want to develop the game of cricket World wide this decision is wrong and unfair.

Overall it is hoped that the ICC will re-think their decision and look at alternatives but this appears to be very unlikely which looks like that Ireland, Afghanistan and the rest will have to do with playing just Twenty20 World Cups for the time being. The big question is that will this affect the development of the Associate Nations, the answer must surely be yes, everyone’s dream is to play in a World Cup, if you have a chance to qualify and you are not good enough then a player will except that but to not even have the chance to qualify and earn the right to participate is surely wrong and not the kind of system the ICC wants to implement. Let’s hope they see sense, I won’t hold my breath.

Muttiah Muralitharan – One of the Greatest of all Time?

I recently read a book called ‘In a League of Their Own’ and in this it had 100 ex and current international cricketers picking their all time world X1. An easy concept yes but nether less a very interesting one and one I found fascinating to see various top class cricketers pick their favourite players of all time. Every player had a different way of picking their team, some were more than happy to vary the eras of the players they chose where some decided that they were only going to pick players they played against or with. The three most selected players were Sir Garfield Sobers (73), Viv Richards (64) and Shane Warne (61). Sir Donald Bradman was only selected 53 times but the main reason for this was that players said that due to not seeing him play they couldn’t select him.

To me the biggest surprise was the number of votes Muttiah Muralitharan received, out of the 100 players he was only selected 7 times. I found that very hard to comprehend. I appreciate that one of the main reasons for the low numbers picking Muralitharan is the existence of Shane Warne but is Warne really 54 votes better than Muralitharan. The thing that surprised me even more than the fact that he only received 7 votes was the low number of players who even considered Muralitharan in their sides, this I found quite simply baffling, am I missing something? Don’t get me wrong I am a huge fan of Muralitharan, have been ever since I saw him play live vs England at the Oval where he took 9 for 65 in the England 2^nd innings and 16 for 220 in the match but his records speak for themselves. This man is the first person to have ever got 800 test wickets and he did this at an average of 22.72, this compared to Warne 708 wickets at an average of 25.41 in 145 test matches, 12 more test matches than Muralitharan. Just taking a quick look at Muralitharan figures in all forms of cricket is quite simply amazing, his overall first class average with the ball is 19.64.

This man is just a wicket taker, he bowls a lot of overs but he produces, this is because Muralitharan has a thirst for wickets. Some of the players who selected their world XI even claimed they were basing their team on statistics hence why Bradman was selected but even those players didn’t pick Muralitharan, if ever there should be a reason where you can’t fail but to select Muralitharan then it is on statistics. One argument is that Warne was a better batsman and fielder, point taken, he was a better batsman and was a very good slip fielder but don’t pay too much attention to Muralitharan fielding in this World Cup, he was severely struggling with injury but in his younger days he was also a terrific fielder, very agile and a superb fielder of his own bowling.

There is one reason why Muralitharan wasn’t selected in more teams and one reason alone and that is the question marks over his bowling action. All the way through his career he has had to face a lot of raised eye brows from players, ex players and media people saying that he threw the ball. He even faced criticism from a number of umpires including Darrell Hair no balling him in a test match in 1995 and Roy Emerson no balling him in 1998. He was also stopped from bowling his doosra in 2004 for a period as it was believed that he bent his arm too much in delivery. He faced constant criticism all the way through his career, opinion is mixed, some say he is a cheat, others say he is a one off or even a genius. I firmly belong in the genius group, he has been provided with an extraordinary gift but no other spin bowler has been able to spin the ball as much as him. It has often been labelled at him that he is fortunate to have bowled a lot of his cricket in the sub continent but his record proves that he has got wickets in every country that he has played in.

When you compare Warne and Muralitharan with regards to wickets in each country they both struggled in India and Muralitharan struggled in Australia but apart from that his record in all other country’s was amazing. One thing said about Warne was that he was more adaptable than Muralitharan but Muralitharan didn’t have to be adaptable because of his god gifted ability and what he did have was an amazing thirst and will to bowl and get wickets.

Overall I don’t think there is much between Warne and Muralitharan, most certainly two of the best bowlers of all time not just two of the best spin bowlers. It is very unlikely there will ever be a player like Muralitharan again given his unorthodox style of bowling but as well as that he was also a very likable player, you never seem to hear a bad word against him and secondly he always had a smile on his face  even with all the criticism he received all the way through his career, it could be argued that no other player has received more criticism or scepticism about there ability than this man which says even more about how great of a player he is. Finally, yes Muralitharan would make my greatest world XI of all time, I find it impossible to leave him out.

My Team:

Jack Hobbs

Sunil Gavaskar

Donald Bradman

Sachin Tendulkar

Viv Richards

Garfield Sobers

Adam Gilchrist

Richard Hadlee

Shane Warne

Malcolm Marshall

Muttiah Muralitharan