Andy Zaltzman's Blog, page 12

The curse of premature momentum before the World Cup

Graeme Smith tries to calm his troops and remind them that choking now is better than choking in the World Cup semis
© AFP



England's flawless tour of Australia has continued impressively with two superbly constructed defeats in the opening two one-day internationals, confirming that the England management will leave nothing to chance in their pursuit of ultimate success.

The immaculate, all-encompassing preparation that helped secure the Ashes (where every detail, from sweatiness of fielders' hands, via Alastair Cook's four-year undercover operation as a middling Test opener, to injecting psychotropic substances into the Australian selectors' breakfast sausages) is now being applied to the World Cup campaign. Strauss and his team, well aware that they could not sustain their Ashes form until April 2, have tactically dipped at just the right time. They will be looking to endure at least a 6-1 drubbing in the Commonwealth Bank series, before slowly finding their game again during the month-long group stage of the World Cup, then exploding into form for the crucial quarter-semi-final week at the end of March.

England proved their mastery of the well-timed Test match defeat in Leeds in 2009 and in Perth in December, brilliantly allowing Australia to believe that everything was just fine, that England's brief and uncharacteristic dalliance with excellence was over, and that normal service had been thoroughly resumed. Then, with the Baggy Greens still high-fiving themselves in delight, they burst out of their tactical Trojan horse like the modern-day Odysseuses they are, and skewered Australia like a cheap kebab.

For their part, Australia will be delighted that, having underperformed with such determined persistence in the Ashes - or, as Cricket Australia has now officially rebranded them, "The Commonwealth Bank Series Official Six-Week Curtain-Raiser" - they are now proving that, at the business end of their international summer, they can still perform like the Australians of old. They too still have plenty of players nicely out of form two months away from the key games, as well as players in form who have not been selected for the World Cup, so whose inevitable drop-off will not affect the team as they push for a fourth consecutive trophy.

India and South Africa are also not quite bubbling under nicely. Both will be happy with not taking a decisive lead in the ODI series, and be hoping that rain in Centurion tomorrow removes the possibility of either of them winning. A notable victory against a strong opponent at this stage is likely to prove fatal for their World Cup hopes.

Both teams also took every available precaution to make sure they did not win the final Test of the three-match series recently concluded, avoiding the EPM (excessive premature momentum) that all coaches fear. (It was a disappointing end to a compelling series akin to Shakespeare writing Act V of Hamlet as a single scene in which Hamlet does a crossword, eats a packet of nachos, and twangs a ruler on his desk, or Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier concluding the Thriller In Manila by spending rounds 14 and 15 filling in their tax returns and phoning their accountants to check what they were allowed to claim as expenses.)

India's glut of injuries also bodes very well for the tournament favourites. Those players should be in peak condition come March 23.

New Zealand's win over Pakistan in Wellington (described as "worryingly comprehensive at this stage of our preparations" by Daniel Vettori) should not detract from their expertly crafted 11-match losing streak that preceded it, whilst their opponents know that, such is the fluctuating nature of their cricket, how they are playing now bears no relation to how they will play in late March (indeed, how they play in late March will have no impact on how they play five minutes later in March).

Sri Lanka and West Indies are no doubt practising half-heartedly to make sure they do not hit the ground running in their three-match ODI series beginning on January 31, whilst Bangladesh are keeping a low profile after whitewashing of New Zealand, desperately hoping they will not take that form into the early stages of the World Cup. All in all, the tournament is still anyone's.

The Ashes boot is truly on the other foot

Alastair Cook: Sure of where his off stump is, what his off stump is, and even what sport his off stump might be involved in
© Getty Images



Happy New Year, Confectionery Stallers, and welcome to the first ever edition of this crickoblog to have been composed when the words "England retained the Ashes by obliterating Australia with a phenomenal display of total cricket" could be written without being a rabidly deluded fantasy or a wilfully obscure cryptic crossword clue.

As I write, England, with Cook and Bell grinding the remaining slivers of spirit from the Australian bowling attack, are well placed to ensure their series victory, probably by 3-1 unless Australia's top order decide to stop batting as if they are trying to raise questions about their nation's right to Test status.

It has been one of England's greatest all-round performances, and almost certainly Australia's worst. Many predicted an England success. No-one predicted a drubbing. Albeit a drubbing that could still, theoretically, end 2-2, and one in which England's remorselessly determined and scientifically executed demolition of their opponents was punctuated by an oddly feeble capitulation in Perth. Strauss' men are on course to record England's biggest ever runs-per-wicket superiority in an Ashes series – so much for the too-close-to-call series almost everyone seemed to expect. This series has been the cricketing equivalent of turning up to see the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, only for one of the crews to be in a jet-propelled speedboat and the other to be in a leaking bath-tub.

Even fewer people than no-one predicted that Alistair Cook would score 750 runs in the series (and even that total may be horribly out of date by the time you read this). Of all the adjectives you could have used to describe Cook before this series, "undismissable" was some way down the list. Particularly if that list was being written by Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif. He has been phenomenally, bafflingly impressive – this is a player who had not averaged over 50 in a series against anyone other than Bangladesh or West Indies for over four years.

In six of those ten series, he averaged below 33. Cook turned up in Australia fresh from a domestic summer in which he breached the 30 barrier just once in ten innings, and then only with some major good fortune, and in which often looked unsure not just of where his off stump was, but unsure of what his off stump was, and even of what sport his off stump might be involved in. He then transformed into a slightly better version of Don Bradman. This constitutes one of the more remarkable individual triumphs in cricket history. Not quite as remarkable as Inzamam-ul-Haq winning the Olympic 100 metres would be, but remarkable nonetheless.

Rah rah England

The Confectionery Stall Perth Test Diary. Written in London, from in front of a television



Mitchell Johnson looks on in stoical horror as a mythical unnameable evil flying beast bears down on him, thereby brightening England's prospects in Melbourne
© Getty Images



Day 1
England rampaged to within a millimetre of Ashes victory today, obliterating the Australians for a paltry 268 and then blasting their magnificent, golden-tinged way to an imposing 29 for 0 at close of play. If the Australian cricket team were the Labrador they have always dreamed of being, they would have been taken to a vet and humanely destroyed.

As England progress serenely to their inevitable triumph, there is an unusual feeling amongst England fans. This Ashes has been like watching a lion toying with a zebra-print balloon. Yes, you can still admire the majesty of the great beast, but it would be more interesting to see him decimate a worthier foe than the zebralloon.

Their imminent crushing victory will be so conclusive, routine and majestic as to become rather boring, and not a little awkwardly embarrassing. And the dark, dark Ashes years of 1989-2003 and 2006-07 are receding into the murky swamp of history, as if being tugged underneath by an unusually peckish shark.

Day 2
Morning session: A characteristically brilliant start by Cook and Strauss, surely now England's greatest-ever pair of men, has put England in total, unremitting command of this game. Australia's bowlers seem more likely to find the Pope hiding in Ricky Ponting's kitbag than they do to take a wicket. In fact, it is all so one-sided, predictable and uninteresting that I think I'll pop off for a quick snooze. I'll just think of Geoff Marsh batting, that should do the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Afternoon session: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzz zzzzzzzzzzz. Zzzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Evening session: That was a good snooze. Hilfenhaus still has not taken a wicket since the first over of the series. Would you believe that? Phil Hughes looks all over the place. Ricky Ponting couldn't hit an egg in a chicken enclosure at the moment. Finn should pitch it up a bit more. I can't believe India played so poorly in South Africa – are these supposedly top-class batsman completely devoid of skill against the moving ball? England must be at least No. 2 in the world rankings now.

Day 3
I wonder what happens if you try to eat a sandwich whilst having a shower?

Day 4
It's nearly Christmas. Yippee. Sounds like Ricky Ponting will have to play on with a broken finger. Ouch. Nothing is going right for him this series.

I'm taking the family to Rome tomorrow. I wonder if we'll be able to catch the end of day five at the airport on the way out? Let's hope so.

Tendulkar's Christmas blues

"All right boys, I'll make the egg nog. Who wants to sing the carols?"
© AFP


It might have escaped the attention of all but the most eagle-eyed English and Australian cricket followers, but the two best teams in the world are about to face off in a potentially titanic showdown to decide which is currently the greatest cricket team in the known universe.

Here in England, South Africa hosting India has not received quite the same media frenzy as the Ashes (or, as it is being officially renamed in Parliament this afternoon by the cross-party Committee for Premature Triumphalism, 'The Heroic and Rightful English Vanquishment of All That is Baggy, Green or Evil in the World'). Not yet, anyway. It has some catching up to do.

It is, admittedly, understandable that the unofficial World Championship play-off has slipped under most English cricketing radars, amid the wild exultation about: (a) England being ahead in an away Ashes series for the first time since David Capel was still just a hopeful, Botham-resembling twinkle in the selectors' eyes; (b) more importantly, after two Tests of an away Ashes series, England not being bent over a desk in Cricket Australia's head office midway through a vigourous ceremonial spanking, for the first time since that 1986-87 triumph; and (c) England having gone ahead and, more importantly, not gone behind by absolutely shoeing their oldest rivals. And it was not merely a simple, regulation shoeing, but a shoeing administered with pointy steel toe-caps, stiletto heels and, to back it up, designer poison-tipped socks.

However, for those who have detected faint traces of the impending clash in South Africa, it is an enticing prospect, not least because this series will show how good MS Dhoni's India really are. History does not bode well for them – they have won only one of their 12 Tests in the land that has produced so many fine English cricketers, a Sreesanth-inspired skittling of the hosts in the first Test in Johannesburg four years ago. And – strap in stats fans - of the 34 Indians who have played Tests in South Africa, only six have averaged higher than their career average.

The Ashes adjective-swapping programme

Ricky Ponting is amazed at how tight and supple Andrew Strauss's skin looks
© AFP


One of England's greatest all-round performances has left Australia needing to win two of the next three games against an England team which has lost only three of its 24 Tests since their Kingston debacle in the Strauss-Flower regime's inauspicious debut game. The baggy greens (so called not due to their headgear, but because their captain's face is becoming baggier by the session, and greener with envy every time he sees Graeme Swann bowl) will have to do so with a bowling attack that has thus far been historically inept – averaging 84 runs per wicket in the series, compared with its previous worst figure of 63. On current form, Australia appear to have as much chance of regaining the Ashes as Rolf Harris would have of beating Mozart in a concerto-composing competition.

Few England teams can ever have played a more complete match. It helped that they took as many wickets in the first ten minutes than Australia were able to take in 17 hours of bowling in Brisbane and Adelaide before they finally removed Alastair Cook. I think most England fans would have accepted the offer of Katich and Ponting lasting an average of half a ball each in the first innings (the first instance in Test history of a team's Nos. 2 and 3 failing to last as many as two balls). As they would have accepted the offer of Cook scoring 450 runs in his first three innings, more than he had in his previous 17 Ashes innings put together.

After that initial Katich-and-Anderson-inspired blast, Strauss's men were unrelenting with the ball on a mostly placid pitch, close to flawless in the field, and sadistic with the bat against bowlers who, by the end of England's innings, were leaving the field at the end of their spells not for a rub-down from a masseur, but for a cuddle from their mummies. England were brilliant, ruthless and purposeful; Australia uncertain, undisciplined and brittle. At some point since 2006-07, the two nations have clearly participated in an adjective swapping programme.

Australia may find a barely edible morsel of hope from England's performances following a similarly majestic thrashing of South Africa in Durban a year ago – they struggled to narrowly avoid defeat in Cape Town before being obliterated in Johannesburg. As a matter of considerable urgency, however, Australia will have to set their top scientists to work in a secret Frankenstein-style laboratory to create at least two artificial fast bowlers capable of taking 15 wickets for not many in not much time, as Steyn and Morkel did at the Wanderers.

One assumes that the scientists responsible for creating Xavier Doherty have been fired. Of the nine spinners Australia have tried since Warne finally hung up his wrist, only Hauritz has played more than four matches. If Doherty becomes the second, the Australian cricketing public will not be scratching their heads so much as chainsawing their scalps off. The Australian seamers have scarcely provided their beleaguered tweaker with the ideal canvas on which to display his skills, but a selection that appeared odd at the time is now looking like the cricketing equivalent of asking a kebab-shop chef who had sliced your doner quite neatly to step up a couple of levels and perform open-heart surgery on you.

Another (totally accurate) Ashes prediction

'Anderson won't take a wicket in Adelaide' - Zaltzman
© Getty Images



Pay attention, Confectionery Stallers. I am about to tell you what will happen in the Adelaide Test. Admittedly, by the time you read this, what I am about to say will happen may already not have happened, or, at least, have started not happening. But, as I write it a couple of hours before play begins, it has not yet not happened, so it could still happen.

This will enable you to free up some extra family time by not having to watch my forecastings unfold live on your televisions (for any Europe-based readers following our continent's greatest cricket team take on the best Australasia has to offer, I realise this freed-up family time may be in the middle of the night; your children may not appreciate being woken up at 2 o'clock in the morning to play Scrabble/arm-wrestle with Daddy/Mummy (delete as you wish), but during an Australian Ashes series, you must take such opportunities as they arise).

Before unveiling the official Confectionery Stall 2nd Test forecast, I should admit that my Ashes-predicting form has not, thus far, been especially incisive. Indeed, my own personal Ashes began almost as disastrously as Mitchell Johnson's. I, too, was way off target. I watched the long-awaited opening-day skirmishes of the long-awaited first Test of this long-awaited series on the Test Match Sofa. During the lunch interval, I confidently predicted that Peter Siddle – who bowled reasonably in 2009, since when he had done little of note other than fail to remove his rather unnecessary facial topiary, and be injured − would pose little threat to England at any point in the series.

Good prediction, Andy. Bang, bang. Slight gap. Bang-bang-bang, bang. Nearly another bang. Six wickets for not many. There, in two stints of high-class fast-medium probery, went my chances of picking up next year's Nobel Prize For Cricket Punditry.

In my defence, there was not exactly a chorus of disagreement from my fellow Sofa-sitters – "Are we talking about the same Peter Siddle?", no-one asked. "The guy who has now limbered up in the morning session and is clearly about to scythe through England like a piping-hot chainsaw through suicidal butter?" they did not continue. In further mitigation, I also said that England might have more to fear from bowlers not playing in Brisbane − Bollinger, Ryan Harris, and, at a stretch, Lillee, or, at an even greater stretch, Lindwall (there's no substitute for experience). So I was potentially not entirely wrong on that score.

Siddle's hat-trick (unexpected on sofas on the other side of the equator as well judging by the pre-match build-up) was probably the best in the Ashes in terms of quality of batsmen splattered since England's Jack Hearne catapulted Clem Hill, Syd Gregory and Monty Noble back to the Headingley pavilion in 1899. Sections of the Australian press have been arguing that, if the Australian selectors insist on having a batsman in the team with the initials MN who can send down a few tidy overs of spin, they might as well pick Noble in place of Marcus North. Some have even suggesting ex-Panamanian despot Manuel Noriega for the role ahead of the beleaguered offspinner who can intermittently bat a bit.

In an effort to replicate and invert my Siddlecasting blooper of last Thursday, I should now predict that, on Day 1 of the second Test, Jimmy Anderson will take 0 for 180 off 25 overs of needlessly short-pitched garbage described by Richie Benaud as "the worst thing I've seen in any medium since Tony Greig's glove-puppet rendition of Verdi's La Traviata in the MCG toilets in 1979".

However, I will resist that temptation, and instead issue this forecast for England's first Test match in Adelaide since 2002-03 (neither I nor anyone in my immediate family can remember any Ashes Test there in the interim, least of all one exactly four years ago culminating in the longest all-night cricket-watching waking nightmare of my entire life): England will absolutely not declare at 550-odd for 6, have Australia in trouble, let them off the hook by dropping Ponting, still not really being in trouble despite Australia topping 500, before suffering one of the chokiest of team chokes in sport history and subsiding to an alarmingly easy defeat. That will not happen. That will not happen. That cannot happen. Please don't let that happen.

To conclude, some statistics on England's second-innings psychologislam in Brisbane:

• England smashed the Test record for the first two wickets of a team's second innings as if it were a cheap and brittle plate as a particularly exuberant Greek wedding between two Olympic discus champions during an earthquake. The previous highest total for the first two wickets of a second innings was 366, by India as they almost successfully chased 429 to win at the Oval in 1979.

• Of the 12 times a team has reached 450 for 1 in all Test cricket, seven have been this millennium.

• On which point, the eight Tests played in November 2010 produced almost 9000 runs at an average of 43.6 runs per wicket, and 22 centuries, including one triple century, three doubles hundreds (equalling the record for most 200-plus scores in a month), and two more innings in the 190s. Seven of the eight games were draws, none of which even came close to producing a result. Commiserations bowlers. You should have paid more attention at school and got a proper job.

• Cook, who scored more runs in Brisbane than he did in either of his previous two complete Ashes series, became the seventh man (and first left-hander) to score 300 runs in a match against Australia, after three Englishmen from a long time ago (RE Foster, Herbert Sutcliffe and Len Hutton), and three Indians from no time ago (Laxman, Dravid and Tendulkar).

• Jonathan Trott now has the highest Ashes batting average in history – 108 in two matches − shunting the now-clearly-overrated Don Bradman (89 in 37) down into bronze medal position. In second place – Jonathan's much, much elder Australian brother Albert Trott, averaging 102 in his three Tests in 1895.

• England scored as many 180+ partnerships in their second innings as they had against Australia (a) in the three previous Ashes series combined, (b) in the entire 1990s, 1970s or 1960s, and (c) between the birth of Julius Caesar and the death of Queen Victoria.

Brilliantly underperformed, boys

"I've got some lovely sun-cream that also deep-cleanses and exfoliates. You want some?"
© Getty Images



The Brisbane Test was, in football terminology, A Game Of Two Halves – the first an intriguing old-fashioned Test match of wrenching tension, shifts of momentum, and hard-fought battle between bat and ball; the second a trademark 21st-century run glut on a featureless pudding pitch that appeared to have been rolled with Mogadon and told that if it did anything naughty it would have its Christmas presents taken away.

The first 130 overs brought 403 runs for 15 wickets (figures courtesy of ProperTestCricketTM Inc.). The next 284 overs gave the world 962 runs for seven wickets − two of which were tail-end hoicks, and two of well-set centurions trying to hit a six. There was some outstanding batting by the five hundred-makers, spectacularly, record-shatteringly dogged resistance by an England team ideally suited to digging in to save a game, some schoolboy fielding by Australia, and some pedestrian bowling and passive captaincy by both teams.

England claimed one of their greatest Ashes moral victories. Given that these have been as rare as actual victories in recent jaunts Down Under, this is not to be sniffed at. Reports are that those Australians who have tried sniffing at it sneezed violently and took themselves off to bed with a headache.

The real winners were the pitch and the slightly baffling Kookaburra ball, which rendered decent, if not world-class, bowlers utterly toothless, gumming away at Cook, Strauss and Trott like a somnolent baby on a week-old rusk. So much so that they must have ended the match feeling that having a medieval dentist yank their incisors out with a pair of rusty pliers, having used a crowbar to the face as an anaesthetic, would have been a preferable means of achieving toothlessness than bowling for two days on that Brisbane track. Indeed Mitchell Johnson ended the match seeming to be bowling like Shakespeare's seventh age of man – not merely sans teeth but sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Not one of the seven billion people or so on earth today would claim that this Australian bowling attack (for want of a better word) is the greatest in baggy green history, but even some of the greatest bowlers from Australia's cricket's pantheon would have been left tweaking their moustaches in frustration on this surface, which provided further evidence that the currency of the heroic rearguard has been seriously and artificially devalued in recent years. Indeed, a spokesman for the estate of 19th-century bowling whizz Fred "The Demon" Spofforth issued a statement saying that his client is "delighted to be dead, rather than bowling at Brisbane".

Thus the game drifted from cricketing fascination to statistical curiosity and psychological point-scoring, the pointiest of which were scored by England.

It all added up to a curate's omelette of a Test, which was ultimately glorious for England, agonisingly ominous for Australia, and, presumably, skull-crushingly tedious for the neutrals; and which, whilst confirming that there is little on paper between two teams who justified their current mid-table world rankings, will have left Australia far more concerned than England.

This is partly because Strauss's men are now 20% of the way to a triumphant 0-0 series final scoreline, and the evidence of this Test suggests that both bowling attacks may struggle to upgrade their 0 into a 1. Fortunately for Australia, the evidence of the 2009 series also suggests that the evidence of any Test between these two sides is of absolutely no relevance to the next match. The evidence from which should equally be shredded and buried before the following game. Eighteen months ago, "having the momentum", the much-prized, much-claimed momentum, proved to be almost entirely counter-productive, and ultimately for Australia, going to The Oval after obliterating England at Leeds, lethal.

Mirror, mirror, who'll win the Ashes?

With the world's top eight-ranked Test nations all in, or soon to be in, action,
I sat down in front of a mirror and interviewed myself about the current spate of Test cricket.



"Control room, this is Smithy. Danger averted, do not push the button, I repeat..."
© AFP



Confectionery Stall Hello Andy, thanks for talking to The Confectionery Stall.

Andy Zaltzman It's a pleasure. A lifelong dream fulfilled.

CS It's all happening on Planet Test Cricket. The unofficial quarter-finals of an as-yet-still-non-existent World Championships – top-ranked India against eighth-placed New Zealand, world Nos. 2 and 3, South Africa and Sri Lanka, against sixth-ranked Pakistan and seventh-ranked West Indies. All whetting the appetite for one of the all-time classic mid-table confrontations – fifth-ranked Australia against their statistical nano-superiors, fourth-placed England.

AZ What? Are you telling me, and the rest of the English media, that this is not the ultimate clash of the two greatest teams in the history of cricket, with the eyes of the universe fixed immovably on it?

CS It's fourth against fifth. Out of, basically, 8.

AZ Well, can you perhaps explain why, given that Australia (340) and England (312) have both won more than twice as many Tests as any other nation, they are not ranked 1 and 2?

CS I think it's because the rankings don't take into account how good teams were in the 1890s.

AZ I prefer to look at the big picture. It's One versus Two.

CS Let's start with batting. If it has been a good month for fans of engagements in the British royal family, it has been an even better one for the world's batsmen.

AZ Sure has. What is going on with all these triple-hundreds in Test cricket? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Chris Gayle's against Sri Lanka was the ninth in just 380 Tests since May 2002. There had only been eight in the previous 44 years and 1148 Tests.

CS You are wrong. You meant there had only been only eight triple-centuries in the previous 44 years and two months and 1149 Tests. But your point basically stands. Three hundreds are being scored at a breakneck rate of one every 42 Tests. Instead of once every 143 Tests in that 1958-2002 period you keep prattling on about.

AZ Crumbs. If that rate of increase in triple-hundreds continues, by the year 2643, roughly, every single Test innings will be a triple-hundred.

CS It's what the advertisers want. This millennium has been like the 1930s all over again, but less so – there were five triple-hundreds in just 89 Tests, all of which lead inexorably in 1939 to the start of the most devastating conflict in the history of the world. The ICC needs to clamp down on big scoring, or the world at large could suffer.

AZ Are you claiming that, if South Africa had not declared with AB de Villiers on 278, the world would have been shunted closer to Armageddon?

CS Yes, I am. Can you prove otherwise?

AZ No.

b>CS Point proved then. De Villiers and Morkel posted the 21st tenth-wicket century partnership in the history of history. Harbhajan and Sreesanth put up the 20th just a week before.

AZ
So you're telling me that almost 10% of all 100-plus last-wicket partnerships have been scored in mid-November 2010, whilst, as all schoolchildren know, there were only two such stands between 1903 and 1952 – the same number as there were World Wars in the same period.

CS Precisely. So a lack of century last-wicket stands is clearly linked to global war. De Villiers apparently asked his captain to declare even earlier than he did. So by deliberately avoiding scoring a triple-hundred, and by coaxing Morne Morkel to play his part in a 100-partnership, de Villiers has made himself hot favourite for next year's Nobel Peace Prize.

AZ Wow. What a man. The Henry Kissinger of South African batsmanship. Have you got any more statistics on rates of high scoring in modern cricket?

CS
Yes. But I'm not telling them to you now. You'll have to wait for another blog.

AZ
Oh shucks. That's ruined my week.

CS
Good stats come to those who wait.

AZ Hey, here's a question for you. What do the three Test double-centurions of November 2010 – Gayle, McCullum and de Villiers − have in common?

Australia? Don't make me laugh

Mitchell Johnson: the all-time highest tattoos-to-bare skin ratio of any left-arm Australian paceman who has lost his mojo
© Getty Images



As the cricket match-fixing scandal pinballs around between annoying, disappointing depressing and alarmingly sinister, this blog will ignore for now the murky morass that threatens to swamp the international game, forget about the potential implications of Zulqarnain's unscheduled London jaunt, and distract itself from the grim realities of reality with an altogether chirpier topic (from a pre-Ashes England supporter's point of view) – Australia being not very good anymore. Not bad – just not very good.

I have outlined in previous blogs the reasons why England are unbeatable and heading for a thrashing, and why Australia are in prime position to administer that thrashing, like a grumpy 19th-century headmaster who has been doing strength and conditioning work on his caning arm in readiness for the arrival of a particularly objectionable and naughty boy. Here, to conclude this decisive proof that England or Australia will win or lose the Ashes, is unarguable, laboratory-tested, player-by-player evidence that Australia are definitely going to lose.

Simon Katich
Bums-off-seats left-hander has scored just 134 runs at an average of 22 in his last three Tests, and red-facedly owns up to a 1980s-Australia-throwback Ashes average of just 33 in 11 Tests. Furthermore, he has scored fewer Ashes runs in Australia than Monty Panesar.

Katich is also reported to be suffering from an existential crisis of confidence after accidentally seeing video footage of himself batting (Cricket Australia had successfully protected him from seeing himself for years, using a series of increasingly convoluted distractions, including puppet shows. Katich loves puppet shows. Can't get enough of them. He owns DVD box sets of all TV puppet shows. And if that is not true, let him sue me.) "Oh my god, no," he said, dumbfounded, after watching himself ungainlily nudge a leg-side boundary. "I thought I played like David Gower."

Shane Watson
Like most of his team-mates, Watson is on the slide. Admittedly he has not slid as far, fast or slidily down that slide as some, but after averaging 65 in 2009, he has posted a figure of only 38 so far in 2010. This clearly does not bode well for the New Year Test in Sydney, and the less said about Watson's 2012, when he looks set to average 16, the better.

He averages only 30 when Australia lose the toss (compared with 47 when they win it), suggesting that Ponting's coinflipwork and Strauss's head-or-tail preferences could be crucial to Watson's success or failure. He also has the third worst conversion rate of any Australian top-six batsman with 10 or more Test fifties – he has turned just two of his 14 scores of 50-plus into centuries.

Rumours that he is an allrounder may prove unfounded. As a bowler, he has never taken more than two wickets in a Test innings in Australia, and has no Ashes wickets under his belt. He bowled just eight overs of purest garbage in 2009, so will have some persuading to do to convince England that he is not rubbish. Mind you, Glenn McGrath was in a similarly unconvincing position after his wicketless Ashes debut in 1994-95. If only Australia had done the decent thing and permanently jettisoned McGrath after that match, as England sportingly disposed of the obviously superior Martin McCague (two wickets in the at Brisbane Test)... if only England had stuck with Gloucestershire left-armer Mike Smith after his wicketless Ashes bow in 1997... if only, if only...

Ricky Ponting
Anyone telling you that Ricky Ponting has not declined over the last few years is either talking about a different Ricky Ponting, or has been poisoned with a mind-altering potion, or has seriously misheard the question, or is Ricky Ponting, or is trying to wilfully engage you in an unwinnable argument whilst their accomplice steals your electrical goods and/or priceless collection of David Boon memorabilia.

Australia's "Best Since Bradman" has, for the last four years, been approximately Australia's 27th-best since Bradman – he has averaged 43 in his 41 Tests since the pivotal Adelaide Test of 2006-07, with six centuries (stats eerily similar to Ian Bell's over the same period, a time in which Ponting proudly boasts the 43rd best Test batting average in world cricket, behind, amongst others, willow-wielders extraordinaire Darryl Tuffey and Brad Hogg, and current table-topper Kane Williamson).

The self-styled "Tasmanian Ian Bell" has averaged over 50 in just three of his last 12 series, having done so in nine of the previous 10, and has scored only one Test century in 16 Tests since the Ashes opener of 2009 − a double against Pakistan after Mohammad Amir dropped a possibly-with-hindsight-although-equally-plausibly-perfectly-above-board-but-still-suspiciously-easy sitter when the Australian captain was on 0.

And if the series gets tight, Australia might as well drop their captain for the final two Tests – over the last four Ashes series, he has averaged under 30 in Tests 4 and 5.

No Australian captain has ever lost three Ashes series. Ten years ago the prospect of Australia losing three Ashes series in the rest of eternity seemed remote. But then again, they said man would never walk on the moon. Ponting is all set to become Australia's Neil Armstrong.

Michael Clarke
Beset by media and public grumblings, largely due to insufficient runs and insufficient Aussieness, Clarke has averaged just 21 in his last four Tests, including only one score above 15 in his last seven Test innings. After a golden period from 2006-07 up to Headingley 2009, in which he averaged 62, he has averaged only a middling 42 since the Oval Test.

Dravid's humanitarian gesture

Bollinger: A vengeful Halloween pumpkin seeking retribution for having its flesh ripped out and replaced with a cheap candle
© AFP



With three weeks still to go before the much-awaited mid-table clash of the hemispheres begins in Brisbane, between Europe's No. 1-ranked cricket nation and one of Oceania's strongest teams, attention turned once again to India, and Virender Sehwag's continuing campaign to make the world's bowlers wish they had been born in a non-cricket-playing country, as a woman, to parents who disapproved of all sport as a worthless and flippant pursuit, in the mid-15th century.


Sehwag's eventual dismissal, to a concrete-footed, cross-batted, across-the-line prod reminiscent of a young Alan Mullally, ended another masterclass of twhackmanship from one of cricket's greatest treasures. The greatest praise, however, must be reserved for Rahul Dravid's extraordinary display of humanitarianism at the other end.

Dravid is a gentleman. He knew New Zealand's bowlers were fragile after a testing couple of years, he knew the wicket would offer them little assistance, and he had seen Sehwag bat before. Therefore, Dravid, cleverly using the cloak of supposed poor form, sportingly minimised the trauma of Sehwag's onslaught by stodge-blocking for a couple of hours, comforting the bowlers like an award-winning priest until the worst was over. Thereafter, he unfurled Chapter 2 of the MCC Coaching Manual, and humanely finished off the job like the master surgeon he would have been if he had been given a scalpel for his fifth birthday instead of a cricket bat.

Australia, meanwhile, have continued their Ashes build-up with another perfectly judged defeat in the first ODI against Sri Lanka. This was clearly part of a wide-ranging tactical masterplan that has included:

1. Striving ceaselessly to engender complacency in the England ranks. This will not be easy in the modern, professional, hyper-prepared age of English cricket, but you can only admire the persistence with which Australia are going about their task, throwing away winning positions like an attractive but committed nun discards Valentine's cards. The English press have taken the bait, hook, line and over-excited sinker. Will the team be so easily duped?

2. A long-term economic scheme concocted by the Australian government and Cricket Australia, to unnaturally strengthen the Australian dollar, thus pricing out all but the barmiest of England's Barmy Army from travelling south. Due to UK government cutbacks, the real army is no longer in a position to supply reinforcements or air support to the Barmy Army, who may be reduced to relying on the Territorial Barmy Army and mercenary sports fans from Serbia and Colombia, and disillusioned former members of the French Foreign Legion.

3. Hoping that Nathan Hauritz is hit on the head by a piece of falling masonry, and wakes up thinking he is Bill O'Reilly.

4. Hoping that the falling masonry then ricochets onto Michael Hussey's head and he wakes up thinking he is Michael Hussey, 2005-2007 version.

A few weeks ago, I outlined the statistics that prove that England (a) will, and (b) won't, win the Ashes. I will now do the same for Australia, who can be shown to be either (a) a collection of world-beaters about to explode into life, who, with a small amount of luck, would have won the Ashes in England and drawn an away series in India; or (b) a ragtag baggy-green band of has-beens, haven't-beens, crocks and losers barely fit even to try to spell the word Bradman.