Andy Zaltzman's Blog

MS Dhoni: thrives when the knives are sharpened

Moises Henriques: coming soon to a pedestal near you
© BCCI



You did not need to be a qualified mathematician to calculate that – as of the close of play on day four of the Chennai Test - MS Dhoni had scored 224 runs in the series so far. At an average of 224. After one mesmeric innings, Dhoni has already posted his second highest ever series aggregate, his best having come more than four years ago, on Australia’s 2008-09 visit to India. Since then, Dhoni has played three Tests in seven separate series, and four Tests in two (as well as five two-Test rubbers). His previous highest series aggregate in those encounters was 220, in eight innings in England, as he led his team on their post-World-Cup “Back To Earth With A Splodge 2011 Comedown Special” World Tour. Even since his best period as a Test batsman ended in early 2010, his performances have been adequate rather than disastrous for a wicketkeeper, but, for a man who so regularly grabs ODI matches, series and tournaments by the scruff of their necks and barks at them until they call him “Sir”, he has often had little or sporadic impact on Test series.

Perhaps this is changing. In his two Test innings since he elevated himself from his customary No. 7 spot to bat at 6 (or was forcibly elevated from 7 to 6) (ask him if you see him), he has scored 99 and 224. Is this coincidence, or a man reacting to a fresh challenge and the deservedly increased pressure on his captaincy?

Over the course of his Test career, Dhoni has batted predominantly at 7 in Tests – 89 innings, with two centuries and an average of 31. Batting at both 6 and 8, he has hit two hundreds and averages over 70 (in 13 and 10 innings respectively). This pattern is repeated, to an extent, in ODIs. He has batted most often at 6 – 82 innings, averaging 42, with no hundreds and a strike rate of 81. In his 114 innings batting elsewhere in the order – most often at 5 and 7, but with striking success in his few innings at 3 and 4 – he averages 58, with eight centuries, and a strike rate of 92, and he has found or cleared the boundary rope 25% more regularly than when batting at 6.

Perhaps these are statistical coincidences. Perhaps not. Perhaps India’s captain is a man who thrives when out of his zone of comfort and familiarity, and thrust into novel scenarios, voluntarily or otherwise. Since the knives started being earnestly sharpened and waggled in his captaincy’s general direction after India’s abject subsidence in December’s Kolkata Test, he has scored his first ODI hundred for almost three years, after coming in at 29 for 5 against Pakistan, and, in Tests, played a dogged if ultimately pointless innings in Nagpur, and his match-grasping masterpiece in Chennai.

Australia’s green bowling attack, in which only Peter Siddle has taken more than 100 first-class wickets (but which should be far better suited to English pitches), presented less of a challenge than England’s seasoned pack of proven Test performers, who were themselves toothless in their first Test in November. It would, moreover, be simplistic to say that what we saw in Chennai was a great player seizing the moment when his team most needed it – there have been too many moments since his World Cup final apotheosis have not merely been unseized as barely even tickled. But Dhoni’s innings was a monument of skill and will, another spectacular chapter in one of 21st-century cricket’s most fascinating personal narratives.

Pakistan's anti-performance and other facts from Newlands

A century in South Africa in his 18th Test? No wonder Shafiq finds it hard to keep his feet grounded
© Getty Images



Fact illustrated by the Newlands Test #1: Cricket is a team game
Cricket is not as much of a team game as other team games. But it is a team game nevertheless. The Newlands Test proved this in enough spades to open a half-decent DIY store. Pakistan had individual performances that should have laid the foundations for victory. They also had collective frailties than made defeat almost inevitable. They posted the only two centuries of the match, and had the leading wicket-taker. But they still lost, and quite comfortably ‒ becoming just the third side in Test history to lose a Test in which they have had both (a) two or more centurions with the bat, and (b) a ten-wicket haulster with the ball.

This they achieved because they also had: (c) three significant batting collapses, (d) both openers out for ducks in the same innings, (e) a combined match analysis of 1 for 181 by their opening bowlers, and (f) Vernon Philander, with his Dickensian name and his 19th-century statistics, on the other team.

Thus, Younis and Shafiq’s outstanding twin 111s, and Ajmal’s ten wickets, ultimately came to nothing, and left those three players in elite company in the annals of Test defeats by teams with two tons and a ten-for. Gavaskar, Amarnath and Bedi were similarly let down by their team-mates at the WACA in 1977-78. No prizes for guessing which two scored the hundreds and which one took the ten wickets. Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Woolley all scored centuries at the SCG in 1924-25, but despite their efforts, and Maurice Tate’s heroic 11-wicket bag from 89 eight-ball overs ‒ in today’s squad-rotational game, he would have been rested for about 15 months after that kind of workload ‒ England were soundly walloped. Their problem was that they blended those three centuries with 13 single-figure scores (compared to Australia’s three – similarly, at Newlands last week, the single-figure dismissal tally was South Africa 2 Pakistan 11).

India lost that high-scoring Perth game in 1977-78 due to a second-innings collapse after their two centurions were out, and because Bedi was left more unsupported than a county championship match on a wet Wednesday afternoon in April in the immediate aftermath of nuclear Armageddon. Chandrasekhar and Venkataraghavan could only manage three wickets between in the match, and those were the final three wickets in the first innings.

Multistat: 20

Dale Steyn: If his figures were taken to an ice-skating rink, they could do a cantilever-triple axel-backflip while reciting the names of United Nations secretary-generals in Entish
© Getty Images



This week, Confectionery Stallers, a Multistat. Back despite popular demand. Prompted by some idle research into the career peaks of great players (more of which in a future blog) (including exciting news on how Imran Khan took 154 wickets at an average of 14.8 in Tests from 1981 to 1986) (and thrilling revelations about how Martin Crowe was the universe’s best batsman over an eight-year period) (plus exclusive proof that, whilst the mechanised slaughter of the First World War might not have been a bundle of laughs for most of the planet, it transformed Australia’s Charlie Macartney into an unstoppable run machine).

20: The number of bowlers, other than Dale Steyn, who have taken 100 or more Test wickets since January 1, 2007. The year 2007 was Steyn’s first great year in Tests, since when he has taken 291 at an average of 21.2. Those are tidy figures in any era ‒ the legendary SF Barnes, often touted as the greatest bowler of all time, averaged 21.5 in his 20 Ashes Tests. They are extraordinary figures in Steyn’s era. None of the other bowlers to have taken 100 Test wickets since the beginning of 2007 has averaged under 28, and 12 of them have averaged over 30.

Clearly, only Steyn was inspired to great heights of bowling-average excellence by the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union. (Thanks be to Wikipedia.)

Excluding Steyn, the next 20 highest wicket-takers of the past six years one month and 11 days, have a collective average of 31.6.

20: The number of bowlers who took 100 or more Test wickets in the preceding six years, from January 2001 to December 2006. Three of them averaged under 22 (Murali, McGrath and Shoaib), three more under 28 (Warne, Pollock and Ntini), and six more under 30. Collectively, the top 20 wicket-takers of 2001-2006 averaged 28.3 – 10% lower than Steyn’s 20 leading contemporaries.

20: The number of bowlers who took 100 or more Test wickets in the six years that preceded those preceding six years, from January 1995 to December 2000. Of those 20, four averaged under 22 (Donald, Pollock, McGrath and Ambrose), four more under 25 (Walsh, Murali, Wasim, and Streak). Thirteen of the 20 averaged under 28, and nestled in just behind them was a tidy legspinner called Warne (28.4). Only three averaged over 30. Collectively, the top 20 wicket-takers of 1995-2000 averaged 25.2 – 20% better than the top-20 non-Steyn bowlers of the past six years.


Conclusion 1: Dale Steyn is a good bowler. Seldom, if ever, has a bowler been so pre-eminent over his contemporaries for such a long period as Steyn has been in his six-years-and-counting-long pomp. He has taken 46 more wickets than the next most wicketous bowler (Jimmy Anderson), and besides the Burnley Boomeranger, only Graeme Swann and Mitchell Johnson are within 100 victims of Steyn. None of the 27 next highest wicket-takers since 2007 (79 wickets or more) averages within six runs per wicket of Steyn’s figure – putting him almost 30% ahead of his nearest contemporary rival in terms of average.

Conclusion 2: Conclusion 1 will probably have to be rewritten after Thursday’s second Test between South Africa and Pakistan. Vernon Philander currently has 78 wickets at an average of 17.4, so he looks set to break the 80-wickets-since-2007-at-an-average-less-than-six-more-than-Dale-Steyn’s barrier – provided that he takes his next two wickets for fewer than 812 runs. On Philander’s current form, this seems a fairly safe bet. On the Pakistani batsmen’s current form, this seems the safest bet since Usain Bolt wagered Inzamam-ul-Haq that the great if rotund batsman could not beat him ‒ the proud owner of six Olympic gold medals for running very fast for not very long ‒ in a 100-metre race. On a track without a downhill slope. Or a big plate of lunch at the finishing line.

Conclusion 3: Conclusion 1 will basically still stand, even with a rewrite. Steyn is a phenomenon.

Conclusion 4: The world’s leading bowlers have had a tougher time in the last six years than at any point in Test history. I have the figures to prove it, and I will lodge them with the relevant legal authorities. Or ramble on about them in a future Confectionery Stall. Are today’s bowlers less brilliant than their predecessors, or more tired, or simply unlucky to be bowling in more batsman-friendly conditions and against opponents armed with unfairly boingy superbats, or already rectifying their statistics and wreaking vengeance on a batting generation rendered technically frail by a generation of placid pitches and the sultry economics of slogging the ball over midwicket? Or all of the above?

Conclusion 5: Batting was tough at the end of the second millennium. From the start of the 1992-93 season, when Warne, Kumble and Murali broke through to revolutionise the international game with their various revolutionary revolutions, to the end of the year 2000 (the last year in which the world posted a collective batting average below 30), 28 bowlers took 70 or more Test wickets at an average of under 30 - five Australians, four from England, South Africa and West Indies, three from Pakistan, New Zealand and India, plus Sri Lanka’s Murali and Heath Streak of Zimbabwe. Almost every team took the field with proven potent weapons in their bowling attacks. The two leading batsmen in the world over this period of extreme bowling excellence – Steve Waugh (average 57.3, 20 centuries in 87 Tests) and Sachin Tendulkar (61.3, 21 centuries in 63 Tests).

● This blog is suitable for use as a Valentine’s Day gift. It has been certified as providing a 75% probability of romantic success by the United Nations Committee of International Seduction Technicians (UNCIST).

What sub-50 innings scores teach us

Has modern Test batsmanship has gone irreparably to seed? Answer quickly, children
© AFP



Another month, another opponent skittled for under 50 by South Africa. At the start of January, Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel powerskittled New Zealand for 45. At the start of February, with the assistance of Jacques Kallis, they macerated Pakistan for 49. When you add in the disembowelment of Australia for 47 in November 2011, South Africa have now dismissed their opponents without even allowing them the token applause for reaching 50 on three occasions in their past 17 Tests and 32 innings.

That is the same number of times as the entire planet managed to bowl out an opposition for under 49 in the 1560 Test matches played, and 5659 innings bowled, between June 1958, when Jim Laker and Tony Lock humiliated New Zealand at Lord’s, and that eye-popping showdown between the Proteas and the Baggy Greens at Newlands 15 months ago, a statistical volcano that Vesuviused extraordinary numbers out so fast that several cricket statisticians were overwhelmed by the pyroclastic stats and preserved for eternity as they desperately sought shelter under piles of Wisdens. The three occasions in between were India’s 17-over capitulation at Lord’s in 1974 (all out 42), and the tit-for-tat skittlings of England by West Indies, and vice versa, in 1994 and 2004 (all out 46 and 47 respectively).

Quite what Vernon Philander thinks about Test cricket supposedly being the ultimate challenge is anyone’s guess. (Apart from his. He, presumably, has no need to guess, and is well in the loop on that one.) He has only played in 14 Tests, and has already contributed to three sub-50 eviscerations (taking 5 for 17, 5 for 7 and 2 for 16). You could make a list of 50 great bowlers who have never even been involved in one. And the only other bowlers to have bowled in three sub-50 all-out totals are Steyn and Morkel. These are good times to be a South African bowler. (Other than when they were being horsed for back-to-back 500 scores in Australia in November, but, since they were the prelude to a series-winning blitz in Perth, the pain presumably wore off fairly swiftly.)

What can we conclude from this? That modern Test batsmanship has gone irreparably to seed due to the necessary impatience and unorthodoxies of T20, and that even slight awkwardness in conditions now prompts an almost medieval level of mayhem in the batting side? That the Steyn-Philander-Morkel-Kallis quadrident is historically unplayable in home conditions? That the international schedule and changing nature of the game leaves touring sides more unprepared than ever for unfamiliar conditions? Or that statistics occasionally throw up coincidences of little historical meaning? Or something else?

Feel free to answer as many or few of those questions as you wish, as loudly or as quietly as you see fit. I cannot provide a definitive answer, partly because it would require even more Statsguru scrabbling, partly because it is already well past my bedtime. I’m only 38; I need plenty of sleep or I am a nightmare in the mornings.

It is certainly true, however, that South Africa is currently the toughest place in the cricket world for visiting Test batsmen. Since the Proteas’ readmission to the Test arena in 1992, away batsmen have averaged 24.8 in the Republic, the lowest such figure for any cricket nation, ahead of Australia (26.2), and Sri Lanka (27.1).

Since 2006, when Steyn made his breakthrough, and shortly before the Warne-McGrath era of Australia bowlsmanship came to its glorious, England-annihilating apotheosis, the gap has widened. Away batsmen have averaged 24.9 in Steyn-era South Africa, with the next-toughest hosts being Australia, England and Sri Lanka (all 28.7, 15% less difficult / wicketous / outsome / failurferous).

The gap is even more pronounced when only top-seven batsmen are counted – they average 28.8 in South Africa since 2006, making South Africa 18.5% tougher for visiting top-order batsmen than the next-hardest host, England (where top-seven visitors have averaged 34.2 in the same period), and 34.5% tougher than the rest of the world combined (excluding series in neutral venues, because they confuse poor little Statsguru, and because it is now even further past my bedtime).

Wanted: more Powerplays, and warlocks as umpires

James Tredwell: the Kent Konniver
© PA Photos



Four of the six Test series played so far in the 2012-13 season have been followed by an ODI showdown between the teams involved, tagged on for the commercial and logistical hell of it, as so many ODI series are nowadays, like a bowl of porridge after a Michelin-starred meal. Bowls of porridge have their virtues. They can be tasty and nutritious. If properly prepared. And served at the right time. Which, most food-scheduling experts would agree, is at breakfast, before ‒ not after ‒ your main meal of the day.

All four Test series produced decisive, almost worryingly dominant victors. West Indies won both Tests in Bangladesh, averaging 64 runs per wicket and registering their third and fourth away wins in the 46 away Tests they have played since 2003 (one of the other two victories was also in Bangladesh, whilst the other, in South Africa in 2007-08, was one of their only two away Test wins against top-eight opposition since 1996-97). England, after a disastrously sluggish Ahmedabad beginning against a misleadingly potent India, soundly beat their decreasingly competent hosts in every facet of the Test game.

Australia clobbered a Sri Lankan team whose seam attack was statistically the third-least effective bunch of visiting pacemen to play a series of three of more Tests in Baggy Greenland in the last 85 years, averaging 59 against an Australian batting line-up that is by no means the third-best to play a home series in the last 85 years. South Africa eviscerated a weakened but nonetheless historically abject New Zealand, in one of the most imbalanced Test series of recent years, a cricketing equivalent of Shark v Baguette in a Who Has The Most Teeth? competition.

In the ODI series that followed, the best result any of the four triumphant Test nations secured was Australia’s slightly fortuitous 2-2 draw with Sri Lanka. West Indies lost 3-2 to Bangladesh. England began their series in India well with the bat, and ended it well with the ball, but were soundly curdled in the three decisive matches in between. The Kiwis bounced back from their record-breaking Test mauling to win the ODI series, and came within one ball of scoring a 3-0 whitewash. Sri Lanka thrashed Australia in Adelaide, humiliated their batting in Brisbane, and were in position to claim a 3-1 lead when rain intervened in the Sydney game, before losing in Hobart to end with a 2-2 series draw, and compensating themselves by claiming the best collective average (24) by a visiting seam attack on an ODI tour of Australia in 17 years. And by then winning the two T20Is.

We thus have the slightly peculiar situation of four teams who should be taking some long, hard baths with themselves over their performance in the Test arena, ending proceedings in triumph.

So what conclusions can we draw from all this? You decide, from the following options:

(a) That one-day cricket would be more exciting and relevant if it was played before Test series, as a rivalry-establishing curtain-raiser before the most important phase of the action begins. Test cricket is the Undisputable Pinnacle Of The Game As Everyone Keeps Saying, Even If That Is Not Always Obvious In The Way The World Game Is Managed, and needs and deserves to be scheduled as such.

(b) That one-day cricket would be less exciting and relevant if it was played before Test series. The underdog has a better chance of victory in the shorter formats, and this is further enhanced if the overdog thinks he has done his job already, and has settled down for its afternoon snooze. Besides, one-day cricket deserves more than to be relegated to a warm-up slot when more people want to see it than the supposed headline act.

(c) That it makes no difference when one-day series are played. It is a different format with different teams. As it T20. So relax. Besides, cricket is only a game. Or, to be more accurate, cricket is only three games. And we should appreciate each for its own qualities.

(d) None of the above. And none of anything else. These were just one set of coincidental results.

Write down your answer on a piece of paper, hide it in a hole in the ground for 50 years, then dig it up, consult with a passer-by over whether or not Test and ODI cricket still exist, and decide whether you were right, wrong, or somewhere in between.

Using over-rate fines for important research

Kane Williamson will soon be seen starring in the remake of I Am Number Four
© Getty Images



Yesterday, Graeme Smith wondered on Twitter ‒ that miracle of 21st-century communication that has enabled all people to communicate with their followers without having to go through the cumbersome logistical rigmarole of recruiting, training and editing a team of crack gospel writers ‒ what the ICC would do with the 100% dawdling tax levied on him and his team-mates match-fees for their funereal over-rate in the Paarl ODI.

“I hope it goes to a good charity,” Smith tweeted. The Confectionery Stall hopes so too. Perhaps a care home for all the retired England captains that Smith has ushered into the cricketing sunset. I fear, however, that the money will instead be ploughed into a feasibility study into whether it would be possible for Azhar Mahmood to represent 365 different Twenty20 franchises in a calendar year.

The Proteas took three hours 56 minutes to send down 45.4 overs as New Zealand snatched a stunning one-wicket victory. The over-rate that cost them all their wages for the day, plus the services of their captain, AB de Villiers, during a two-game suspension: 11 overs and four balls per hour.

Old-timers will no doubt shake their heads in disgust and reminisce on how they once saw Harold Larwood bowl an over in 34 seconds off his full run-up whilst quaffing a pint of restorative ale with one arm and mining some coal with the other, and how back in their day, three hours 56 minutes was time enough to play a full first-class match, run for parliament, and write a hit musical about the benefits of uncovered pitches.

Perhaps these fictitious people exaggerate. But if so, it is not by much. This scorecard suggests that when Australia’s Warren Bardsley carried his bat at Lord’s in 1926, against an attack containing three seamers – including Larwood – and one spinner, England bowled 154.5 overs in six hours 38 minutes. This equates to 23 overs and two balls per hour – precisely twice as many overs per hour as South Africa squeezed out in Paarl.

Perhaps a good charity could be set up to examine why cricket came to be played half as quickly as it was in the past. Looking at archive footage on historical documentaries about the 1920s, people did seem to scuttle around rather quickly. I had always assumed that was to do with the nature of the film and filming equipment at the time, but, if England could bowl 23 overs per hour, perhaps the aggressive waddle was simply the default method of movement in those days when the motor car was still a novelty. Perhaps, as Lance Armstrong used to claim was the secret of his astonishing cycling speed, 1920s bowlers used to listen to the Benny Hill theme music on headphones to make them move significantly faster than non-Benny-Hill-music-listening people are able to move.

Admittedly, there are more pressing charitable concerns that the Earth as a planet, the human race as a species, and the ICC as a sporting organisation and beacon of justice might think worthy of addressing first. But once those issues have been adequately funded and solved, whatever money is left from the South Africans’ match fees could be productively spent analysing how and why cricket allowed itself to be decelerated so markedly through the 1970s and beyond. If cricket loses another 11 overs and four balls per hour in the next 87 years, as it did between Lord’s 1926 and Paarl 2013, it will struggle for a TV audience in the increasingly competitive global marketplace of the year 2100.

Viva New Zealand

“Look on the bright side – 124 years ago, our batting average was two points worse than your team’s now”
© Getty Images



One of the joys of the unceasing smorgasbord of international cricket laid before the modern cricket fan’s groaning stomach is that, in any week, something will probably happen that has never, or seldom, happened before. Admittedly this is not necessarily a joy that cancels out the less alluring sensation that what you are watching is not always sport at its global pinnacle, the best against the best at their best, or anything much more significant than the fulfilment of a contractual obligation or the scratching of an eczematous commercial itch. But it is a joy nonetheless.

Carving each other’s names and numbers into the easily-erodable sandstone bench of history over the last seven days have been England and India’s top-order batsmen, some of their bowlers, plus the entire New Zealand team, and, by association, the South African bowling attack.

The first ODI in Rajkot was a compelling match for spectators, and a delectable one for fans of minimal-interest statistics. I, consequently, enjoyed it thoroughly. It was a truly historic game. Truly, if not relevantly. It was the first-ever ODI in which nine batsmen had scored 40 or more. Only eight times in the previous 3318 matches since the format was unexpectedly born in 1971 have eight batsman reached 40. Truly the universe tilted momentarily on its axis at the uniqueness of it all.

It was only the second time five England batsmen had passed 40 in an ODI innings (and the 17th time by any team, all in the last ten years), and their innings was one of the very few occasions in international cricket history on which the top six batsmen have all hit a six. (I will be honest, I have not checked this. If I find a fallow hour this week to mooch about with Statsguru ‒ a Mushfiqur-Rahim-sized “if” – I will find out if it has ever happened before.) (In the meantime, please try not to let the uncertainty disturb your sleep. I know you must be very worried about it.) (Someone else has probably already found this out. Ask him. Or her. If you know who he or she is.) (It was certainly the only time England’s top six have ever all hit a six in an ODI. There had never even been a game in which their top four had all cleared the ropes.)

The match also provided the first instance of three England bowlers conceding more than 60 in a one-day victory; and Tim Bresnan’s 8.37 is the second-highest economy rate by an England bowler who has bowled more than five overs in an ODI win (only Liam Plunkett’s 1 for 71 off seven against West Indies in the 2007 World Cup beats it, with 1377 other spells lagging behind, the 1377th of them being Mike Hendrick’s 1 for 5 off eight against Canada in 1979). For India, Ishant Sharma conceded the third most runs ever by an Indian in an ODI (86), and the most ever by an ODI bowler who has bowled two maidens (beating Dwayne Bravo’s 10-2-80-0, also against England, in 2004).

It was only the third time India have lost an ODI despite five of their top six passing 30, and if Ajinkya Rahane had scored three more runs, it would have been the ninth ODI in which all four openers scored half-centuries (the last instance was the previous ODI in Rajkot, at a different stadium, in December 2009). Instead, it was the 11th ODI in which all four openers scored 47 or more. And if Rahane and Gautam Gambhir had added four more runs, it would have been the 12th ODI in which both opening partnerships posted century stands. It could have been truly, epically, unforgettably, only-occasionally-precedentedly almost unique.

The conclusion we can draw from all this: both sides are better at batting than bowling.

All of this however pales into insignificance compared with New Zealand’s heroic efforts in South Africa to put a smile on the cricket world’s statistical face. On the positive side, the Kiwis have never batted better in their second innings in an away series against the Proteas. An open-top bus parade through Wellington surely awaits ‒ their collective second-innings average of 23.5 was their best performance in their seven visits to South Africa.

Sadly for that hamster of consolation, bouncing up and down on the negative end of the statistical see-saw are several rhinoceroses of ineptitude. Only a tenth-wicket slapabout, as BJ Watling and Trent Boult added 59 in the second Test in Port Elizabeth prevented them from recording the worst-ever first-innings series performance in the history of Test cricket.

Even that only lifted them into second-last place (out of 1187), averaging 8.3 per first-innings wicket in the two Tests, compared to South Africa’s 6.5 in their first ever Test series, way back in 1888-89, when a trip to that part of the cricketing universe was rather less intimidating for visiting batsmen than it is now. Given that the 1888-89 games were only retrospectively awarded Test status some years later, New Zealand can still unproudly claim to have compiled the most dismal first-innings performance in a Test series by a team that actually knew it was playing in a Test series. And they can still also anti-boast that no team has ever lost its first-innings wickets more rapidly in a series than their once-every-19.2-balls, a figure boosted by the 50 balls of marathon resistance that Watling and Boult put together last week.

New Zealand also proved the two age-old cricketing truisms: “If you go to South Africa with three of your best batsmen missing from a team that habitually gets thrashed by South Africa, the fact that you are also missing your best pace bowler and best spinner will become swiftly irrelevant”; and, “If only two of your batsmen average over 21, and none of your bowlers takes more than four wickets, then you will probably struggle to win a series against the world’s best team.” Wise words.

Aristotle’s predictions for 2013

Prediction No. 77 b: Phil Hughes to be approached by producers looking to revive the Friday the 13th franchise
© Getty Images



Two thousand and thirteen promises to be one of the least diverse years in England’s recent cricketing history. In the next 13 months, they will play 15 Tests, 25 ODIs (one or two more if they qualify for the semi-finals of the Champions Trophy), and ten T20Is. After the impending five-match ODI series in India, all but two of their remaining currently scheduled total of 105 potential days of international cricket will be against New Zealand (up to 37 days: five Tests, seven ODIs, five T20Is) or Australia (up to 66 days: ten Tests, 11 ODIs, five T20Is).

A group-stage Champions Trophy game against Sri Lanka, and a one-off ODI versus Ireland, offer the only non-antipodean variety in this oversized blancmange of cricketing homogeneity. As Aristotle once sagely said: “You can have too much of a good thing.” Admittedly, the former professional philosopher said that after waking up naked on top of the Parthenon after a few too many flagons of cheap ouzo and an unsuccessful wrestle with a man in a pantomime lion outfit claiming to be Hercules (Source: The Complete and Incontrovertible Oxford History of Classical Philosophy [1875], by Prof VZ Snutterbuck OBE, Vol. VII, pp. 213-279). However, the famously wise old celeb had a point.

All the indications suggest that, had Aristotle been born in a cricket-playing nation at some point in the mid-to-late 20th century, he would have been a big cricket fan, and quite probably a journalist and/or commentator (Source: From Confucius to Wittgenstein: Dead Philosophers I Would Like To See Me Bowl [2012], by JW Dernbach).

As such, Aristotle would undoubtedly have sat down on New Year’s day and thought: “Emotionally and logistically, I am going to have to prioritise. Even I, as a hardcore fan of the great game and, more importantly, as the senior cricket correspondent of the Harvard Journal of Ethical Philosophy and Bat Sports, I simply cannot care about all of those days of cricket. And whilst I love the Ashes and everything it stands for, its traditions and its ancient rivalry that has carved a compelling narrative through the last 136 years of history, even I might struggle to be overwhelmingly excited by watching the 38th Trott v Siddle duel of the year. Ah well, beats having a proper job.

“Tell you what ‒ I’ll set myself a challenge,” the ace-class thinkster would continue. “I’ll try to write the words ‘Phil Hughes edged to third slip’ on fewer than 25 occasions this year. It’s going to be tough but I’ll give it a go. And I’ll try to enjoy the ODI series in India whilst I have the chance. Even if it is tagged on as a bit of an afterthought to last year’s Test series, and even if England are resting key players because they also have to prioritise what cricket they most care about ‒ because they have somehow scheduled themselves 103 days of cricket against just two countries from the other side of the planet in the next 13 months.”

Aristotle would conclude: “I am going to make two predictions for this year. Prediction One: if on 31 December 2013 you ask 100 randomly selected cricket fans what the scoreline was in the five-match ODI series between England and Australia in September, a maximum of three will give you the correct answer. Two of them will have guessed it, and the other one will only remember because he landed a 12,000,000-1 accumulator bet because of it (the other three bets in which were: the British media to get overexcited at the birth of the magic royal baby; at least one six to be hit in this year’s IPL; and Chris Martin to score a Test hundred at Lord’s).

“And Prediction Two: on current form, and with this schedule, effigies of Alastair Cook are going to be the biggest-selling Christmas gift of 2013 in 99% of all Australian shops.”

The Faisalabad Befuddler, and a collective tribute to Chris Martin

Marlon Samuels: pays money earned from the IPL and from moonlighting as a magician to play Test cricket
© AFP



Happy New Year to all Confectionery Stall readers. Here, in the brave new world of 2013, which has already seen New Zealand make a glorious contribution to the history of low scoring, is part two of the unremittingly and certifiably prestigious Confectionery Stall 2012 World Cricket Awards.

Confectionery Stall Planet Earth Cricketer of the Year: Marlon Samuels
Other cricketers could claim to have had more statistically impressive years than Samuels. Not many, but some. None of them, however, could also claim to have spent the preceding decade and a bit underachieving spectacularly. In 2011, Samuels had given flickering hints that he might belatedly fulfill his talents. In 2012 he batted like a timeless master in Tests, and a rampant annihilator in catapulting West Indies to the World Twenty20 title. His back-foot off-side play in the Tests in England is set to earn him a Nobel Prize For Classical Batsmanship, his innings in the World Twenty20 final – or, specifically, the 52-off-18 blitz phase of it that turned the final on its confused head ‒ could have knocked down a well-constructed medieval castle.

Confectionery Stall Cricketing Economic Revolutionary of the Year: Marlon Samuels
Samuels left the IPL in mid-season to join the West Indian tour party in England, thus effectively paying a vast wodge of his own money for the privilege of playing in the Test series. He promptly batted better than he had ever done before – possibly heralding a new age in cricketing economics, in which selectors will charge their players thousands of pounds to represent their country, hyper-incentivising them to justify their own personal financial outlay. If the BCCI has the courage to present Gautam Gambhir with an invoice for $3.5 million for playing in the forthcoming series against Australia, he will score three double-hundreds. At the very least. That is a fact.

The mercilessly squeezed goose and other stories

The Nagpur Test: anaesthetists rejoiced
© BCCI



Greetings, Confectionery Stallers, and welcome to part one of the Official Confectionery Stall 2012 World Cricket Awards. There will be a full awards ceremony in my garden shed next week, to which all the winners and their families are cordially invited.

Most Annoying Phenomenon in Cricket: Workload Management
The final splutterings of 2012 have seen England omit Kevin Pietersen from their almost-impending ODI series in New Zealand, and Australia ditch Mitchell Starc from the unquestionably impending Boxing Day Test against Sri Lanka.

Both men are having their workloads managed. I have no idea what Mitchell Starc asked Father Christmas for this year, but being left out of a Test match was presumably some way down the list below, for example, a new iPad, a pet iguana and a Spiderman outfit. Pietersen has had a particularly fascinating year in the field of workload management. After attempting to unilaterally manage his own workload, he then found himself having his workload forcibly managed for him, before an agreement was reached that has resulted in his workload being managed largely as he would probably have managed it anyway, and everyone has had a good, cathartic squabble along the way.

Both England and Australia are thus entering international matches voluntarily weakened. This is not to suggest that they are wrong to do so. The modern international cricket schedule, however, is a merciless taskmistress, who brandishes a forbidding-looking whip and demands that everyone address her as “Mistress Supreme”. Selectors sometimes have to grit their teeth and take their punishment.

International sport is supposed to pit the best performers a nation can muster against each other. Not the best performers a nation can muster, minus a few players they would rather preserve for future engagements, whilst trying to avoid overhearing anyone asking: “What was the point of that? Was that an international cricket match or an exhibition hit-about?”

It happens in many sports now. It is not an entirely new phenomenon but it is increasingly widespread as the demands and appetites of professionalism grow ever more insatiable. Two thousand and thirteen will see cricket continue to squeeze its various golden geese, and squeeze them where it hurts, until they honk for mercy. As Aristotle once wrote: “When you have a golden goose, and it is not laying the golden eggs you want it to lay, beware of lopping off bits of its anatomy that look a bit like eggs. It will probably leave you with an angry, unproductive goose.”

Worst Cricket Match of the Year: India v England, fourth Test, Nagpur
I have not seen all cricket matches played at all levels in the world this year. In fact, I have seen relatively few, either live or on television. But it would take a game of epoch-defining dreadfulness to knock the Nagpur Test off its miserably grey perch. On a good pitch, this could have been a thrilling match. It might not have been a thrilling match, as Dhoni’s India had shown few signs of Lazarusing themselves into action and breaking England’s stranglehold, but it might have been. But any possibility of an intriguing climax to the series was clattered round the back of the head with a tedious frying pan, as the cricket world was treated to five days of historically uninteresting nothingness, a competitive oblivion, a sporting vacuum into which all excitement, unpredictability and intrigue was sucked, played on a pitch that could have found a job in a controversial Swiss euthanasia clinic. Even watching it on television, at a safe range of more than 4500 miles, it felt like a cross between a jail sentence and a funeral.

Most Annoyingly Short Series of the Year: England v South Africa
Irritatingly curtailed Test series are one of the innovations in modern cricket that have proved curiously popular with administrators, along with torpid over rates, dull pitches, balls that don’t swing, piddling around with the regulations in 50-over cricket before settling on ones that seem designed to make the game less interesting, knackered bowlers, and empty stadiums. England’s main summer series was only three matches long, for various reasons (including the Olympics, the Mayans predicting the end of the world for December 2012 and cricket’s authorities wanting to give the players more time to spend with their families, a pandemic of tetraphobia that swept across Europe at the time the season schedule was being finalised, and the unarguable and sacred duty to conclude the international summer with an anticlimactic and unrememberable two-week ODI series).

Fortunately South Africa had the decency to go 2-0 up after the three Tests, so for once a needlessly brief showdown between leading teams was not sawn off in its prime when tantalisingly poised, like a horse race in which, just before the final furlong, a cheese wire has been strung across the track at horse-shin height. But the point, unlike the fictitious horsies, still stands. The rivalry between the new world No. 1s and their immediate predecessors was then, like the fictitious horsies, hidden behind a tarpaulin and humanely destroyed – there will have been a gap of well over three years before their next Test series.

Part two will follow at some point shortly before or after 2012 consigns itself tearfully to the history books. In the meantime, have a phenomenal Christmas (if [a] Christmas is your bag, and [b] that means anything coming from a second-generation-lapsed-Jewish atheist), and enjoy India v Pakistan. It’s good to have it back. Even the golden goose still squeezes out the odd worthwhile nugget.