Andy Zaltzman's Blog, page 2

The Nagpur slab of compacted disappointment

Virat Kohli and Ian Bell decide the best way to deal with the Nagpur pitch is to drive a stake through its heart
© Getty Images



England wrapped up a deserved series win in Nagpur in what was effectively reduced to a three-Test series by an abomination of a pitch that produced a match of unremitting, merciless tedium. It reached even that level of intrigue only thanks to some delusional umpiring and a few careless pieces of batting that can be safely attributed to the players temporarily having the will to live sucked from their souls by a surface with all the vitality of a fossilised brick, 22 yards of cricketing mausoleum upon which the groundsman should have daubed the words, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”, or, at the very least, “I Hate Cricket”. Why he did not do so remains a mystery that may never be adequately explained.

It would have taken a superhuman effort of sustained incompetence for either side to lose this match. Neither side obliged, and, amidst one of the most anticlimactic conclusions to a sporting event imaginable, England gained significant consolation at the end of a disappointing year.

Alastair Cook’s captaincy tenure has thus begun with an impressive individual and collective triumph. England recovered from a woeful start, and ruthlessly exposed and exploited the seismic faultlines in the Indian team that were apparent in their humiliations in England and Australia last year, and could not be camouflaged by home advantage. Cook’s personal performance was monumental. His century in defeat in the first Test turned the momentum of the series, his hundreds in the second and third Tests ground down and dispirited an increasingly pallid opposition. The skill, craft and persistence of Panesar, Swann and Anderson, and the Mumbai magic of Pietersen, overwhelmed the home team, whose faint hopes of rescuing a drawn series were scuppered by that Nagpur slab of compacted disappointment, which offered nothing to bowlers, batsmen, spectators, commentators, sponsors, men, women, children, the elderly, the living, the dead, or anyone with belief in the existence of a benevolent god.

It was one of the worst Test matches of recent vintage. The match run rate was 2.27 per over, the second slowest of the 525 Test matches played since April 2001.

Only a late flurry of runs, when even the minimal pressure India had been able to impose had long since dissipated in the inevitability of a draw, raised it past the 2.25 per over of the Bangladesh v New Zealand Test in Chittagong in 2008-09, a game which had the decency to provide 37 wickets and a tight, low-scoring contest that ended with the Kiwis chasing down 317 to win by three wickets. The overall run rate in those 525 Tests is 3.26.

Bowlers struck on average once every 120 balls, the 19th worst match strike-rate of the 585 Tests since January 2000 which have lasted for at least 90 overs. The average strike rate in all Tests in that time is a wicket every 66 balls. So in the average recent Test, runs are scored almost 50% more quickly, and wickets taken almost twice as often, as happened in Nagpur.

The interminable drudgery was not helped by a soporific over-rate, plodding along at around the mandatory 15 over per hour despite fewer than a quarter of the overs being bowled by pacemen, or the innumerable needless interruptions that have been allowed to proliferate, or by the fact that England had no need to take the initiative, and India no apparent urge or ability to do so. Their batting at the start of day four was bafflingly pointless. And they then helped Cook set what must surely be yet another record – the first batsman in cricket history to have three men defending the legside boundary after scoring 12 off 90 balls.

Willy Shakespeare's famous words, and the RP malaise

Virat Kohli: his grumpiness surprisingly warms the heart these days
© AFP



India begin the Nagpur Test facing the possibility of a third consecutive home defeat ‒ an indignity they have not encountered since England won in Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai at the start of the 1976-77 series, and a prospect as ugly as a mistimed Graeme Smith cover drive.

They have already lost back-to-back home Tests for the first time since South Africa swept a two-Test series in 1999-2000. The Indian selectors, who had reacted to the recent 4-0 drubbings in England and Australia by springing into action like a coiled doughnut, finally wielded something at least slightly resembling an axe, and cut Zaheer and Yuvraj from the team, plus Harbhajan from the squad.

They could have justifiably chopped at least a couple more batsmen, one wicketkeeper and/or one captain, two additional bowlers, and eight or nine fielders from the line-up that failed so dismally in all departments at Eden Gardens, although this would probably have constituted surgery too radical even for the ailing patient which showed so few signs of life in last week’s Test. In the immortal words of the legendary former world-No. 1-ranked playwright and allrounder W Shakespeare (Warwickshire & England), “Breaking up is never easy, I know, but I have to go” (authorship disputed; possible missing scene from the smash-hit 1590s rom-trag Romeo & Juliet; manuscript unearthed in a recording studio in Stockholm, 1976). And breaking up a team that reached the pinnacle in both long- and short-form cricket, and which still contains some of the greatest and most influential players in Indian cricket history, is even less easy.

The Indian media and public have not exactly been salivating at the legion of replacements tearing it up in the Ranji Trophy. There seems to be a particularly gloomy outlook on the bowling front. During my now-concluded two-Test trip to India, my queries about which new or recycled bowlers might successfully, or even adequately, replace the incumbents mostly met with a blank 1000-yard stare, a look of regret, wistfulness and occasional horrific flashbacks to RP Singh wobbling in to bowl at The Oval last year, seemingly selected as a one-man metaphor for the malaise in Indian cricket.

England have won the Ashes

”If anyone wants to take a shot at Boonie’s 52-cans record on the flight over next summer, I’m not going to stop them. The series is lost anyway”
© AFP



BREAKING… England were last night celebrating victory in the 2013 Ashes in their Nagpur hotel, after a panel of international historians declared that their triumph over Australia next summer is now an immutable certainty.

The UN Sporting Precedent Committee in New York has ruled that there are sufficient parallels between England’s 1984-85 series win in India, which presaged a 3-1 Ashes win for David Gower’s men in the ensuing summer, and this current tour, that “they might as well start the post-mortems in Melbourne now”.

Professor BS Kalhuke, the committee’s chair, explained: “England crashed to a heavy defeat in the first Test after being scuttled by Sivaramakrishnan, a spinner who became progressively less effective the longer the series went on. They bounced back with a thumping second-Test victory after dismissing the home team for just over 300, scoring just over 400 themselves, before chasing down a small target with loads of wickets in hand.”

High-fiving himself enthusiastically, Kalhuke, emeritus professor of sporting coincidence at the Nantucket Institute of Unarguable Facts, continued: “England then won the penultimate Test of the series to go 2-1 up, after again dismissing the Indians relatively cheaply, then posting a big lead with all of their top four passing 50, exactly as they have just done at Eden Gardens. They won that penultimate Test 28 years ago by knocking off a target of less than 50. So all things considered, you can start booking the open-topped buses for 26th August, the day after England clinch the urn at The Oval once more with a left-handed batsman as captain.”

Pressed by journalists about aspects of the 1984-85 series that do not provide exact parallels to the 2012-13 version, and the potential for all these parallels to be rendered invalid by the final Test not ending in a draw, Prof Kalhuke pointed out that the last match of the mid-eighties rubber was played in a city ending in the letters p-u-r ‒ Kanpur then, Nagpur this time. “If that game is not a draw, then I will have a tattoo on my face of the words ‘Ravi Shastri was the most exciting cricketer of all time.’”

He then stuck his fingers in his ears and pretended he was deaf to avoid answering further queries, before running away at high speed, shouting something about Alastair Cook being a left-handed opener making big scores in India, making him the new Graeme Fowler. “Cook will never play for England again after this series, mark my words,” screamed Kalhuke as he bundled himself into the boot of his car.

England captain Alastair Cook was unavailable for comment, but, had he been available for comment, and commented, he would have commented: “Yes, yes, yes. A third successive Ashes win for the first time since the 1970s – that’s an awesome achievement. I’m not fussed about being the new Graeme Fowler. This is about the team, not me.”

Cook continued: “Our whole strategy on this tour of India was geared towards mirroring the 1984-85 series here as closely as possible, so we are delighted with how things have gone. Leaving Monty out of the first Test in Ahmedabad was a masterstroke, as we knew the Indians were very vulnerable with bat, ball and in the field after their results and performances last year, so had to make sure we got the result we needed to set up the entire pattern of the series. It worked a treat.”

Australian skipper Michael Clarke tearfully acknowledged that England would be the better side in next summer’s showdown. “Ah, look,” he wept to a press conference in Sydney, Baggygreenland, “I will not discuss my position as Australian captain now, eight months before we lose the series. There’s no disgrace in losing to a team that will have just secured a come-from-behind 2-1 win in India, particularly when that defeat is made inevitable by a few historical coincidences. We’ll head to England having just lost a home series to the world’s top-ranked team, just as we did in 1985, so frankly we might as well just accept what’s coming to us. Well played, England. Enjoy your moment. But remember, you’re going to get whitewashed in West Indies early next year and you will not win a single Ashes series from 2017 to 2033.”

Ashwin administers CPR

Gautam Gambhir: wouldn't last a day in The Biggest Loser
© BCCI



India had their best session of the series yesterday morning. They sliced through the England tail, then, with Sehwag, reprieved by another slip-clanger in a series amply festooned with them, in increasingly Sehwagian form, and Gambhir, always fidgety outside off stump but positive against the spinners, managing to resist the urge to run out India’s key batsman for the second time in the match just to see the look on everyone’s faces. At lunch, they were 121 behind, with all their second-innings wickets in hand, and England, as England generally are, defending deep in the field, allowing a comfortable flow of runs.

One more session of Sehwag and the game would have been alive. One more session of both of them, and the game would have been fascinating. Instead, there was one more ball of Sehwag – insufficient time even for a fast-scorer such as the Delhi Now-Intermittent Destroyer to transform a game ‒ and 45 minutes of Gambhir, sufficient time for him to compensate himself for not doing the double on Sehwag by running out India’s best batsman of the series instead, flirt with danger a few times, then drive stupidly at a good away-reverse-swinger from the hostile and dangerous Finn.

The game was in the bag. The rest of the Indian batting top seven promptly filled up the bag with bricks and dropped it into a local canal to put it out of its misery. Ravichandran Ashwin bravely dived it to save it, slapped it back into life, shouted “Stay with me, stay with me,” desperately at it whilst giving it an unusually elegant bout of CPR, and left the game overnight in a hospital surrounded by its family, all aware that there is no real hope for it, but relieved that they were at least able to pay their last respects to it in a dignified manner.

England’s bowling throughout this match has been of the same high class that it was throughout their period of dominance in 2010 and 2011, and even in their difficult winter in Asia early this year. It has been significantly improved by the two changes made since Ahmedabad. Anderson bowled faster than he has for some time, and with all his considerable reserves of skill and craft, and Finn again looked like a bowler who will discomfort and dismiss good players for the next decade. Swann despatched India’s two remaining veterans with superb bowling, and Panesar, though not as good as in his previous three innings, continued to threaten and had some chances spurned. It was a searching cross-examination, and India cracked, admitted everything, and turned themselves in.

Get a move on, will you?

"Don't look now, but there's a bunch of people behind us waiting for us to hurry up"
© BCCI



Yesterday’s play was not the most riveting. India were improved but still, for the first half of the day in particular, mostly passive, unthreatening and devoid of expectation. England had no need or inclination to take the initiative until Pietersen came in, as Cook, batting with none of the fluency he showed on day two, and Trott, forcing himself back into form in a turgid but valuable innings, consolidated English dominance. Neither side took a single risk, and with no sense of contest, intensity, drama or jeopardy, the cricket was tedious. The game livened up later in the day with a few wickets, some belated Indian enterprise, and some enterprising batting by England’s fast-scoring middle order, but the sense remained that India were content to minimise damage and wait for either declaration or for ten wickets to materialise out of the ether.

All in all it was largely an unremarkable and predictable day, enlivened by a comically fluffed caught-and-bowled chance batted to the turf by the weird run-out of Cook, and good, brisk innings by Pietersen, Patel and Prior that snuffed out any hope India had of restricting the English lead to vaguely manageable proportions on a pitch showing increasingly inconsistent bounce and progressively sharper turn.

Ishant’s drop was truly spectacular. Was it a moment of heroic incompetence, or the first sign of the Indian fightback, a renewed determination to avoid defeat and battle for the draw? Cook mistimed a defensive push, and the ball looped slowly back towards the bowler. Ishant had enough time whilst the ball was somnolently parabolising towards him to have a nightmarish vision of being carted to all corners of Eden Gardens by a rampant Pietersen, and England’s total cavorting to 600 by close of play. He swiftly, and understandably, decided that he would rather be more controllably dinked to all corners by a remorseless Cook, and duly spannered the catch. Strategic brilliance, or rank fielding ineptitude? You decide.

Play overran by only five minutes yesterday, but given that there were 18 overs bowled in the first hour, not many wickets fell, and 63 of the 90 overs were bowled by spinners ‒ including 31 by Ojha, who has almost no run-up ‒ it took a frankly superhuman effort by all concerned to slow the pace of play down sufficiently to avoid giving the spectators any bonus overs that they had not paid for.

Manfully leading the time-wasting charge, as so often, were the umpires, moving at such a sub-funereal pace that it seemed they were trying not to disturb any pregnant worms that might be resting in the Eden Gardens soil, walking in from square leg in between overs with the demeanour and pace of a 95-year-old shuffling to his medicine cabinet in the middle of the night. They stood idly by, wondering about the origins of the universe whilst action-unpacked minutes were taken slightly resetting the field, or 40 seconds of everyone just standing around doing nothing for no reason at the start of an over, apparently waiting for the blue sky above the stand behind the bowler’s arm to move away, or some kind of divine intervention to help the persevering but thoroughly conquered Ashwin take a wicket.

Midway through the afternoon session, the cricket almost reached a point of suspended animation. The Indian 12th, 13th and 14th men sauntered onto the field with drinks for the team. Twelve minutes before the scheduled drinks break. Everyone stood around having a nice chat. The umpires watched this happen, thinking, “Oh, look at that. They’re having a drinks break they shouldn’t be having. That looks nice. They seem to be having a lovely time.” Then, just as the Indians were finishing their subsidiary drinks break, England’s 12th and 13th men, concerned about missing out on the fun, also trotted into the arena with drinks for Trott and Cook. The umpires eventually seemed to suggest to the players that they should perhaps maybe, at some point in the not-too-distant future, consider getting on with the cricket. No one took any notice. Played eventually restarted.

Two balls later, Trott was out – a tactical masterstroke by Dhoni, clearly, applying the age-old if scientifically unproven adage “Drinks break always takes a wicket”, by calling an unscheduled extra drinks break.

A few minutes later, the scheduled drinks break was taken. It took precisely six minutes and five seconds, the last 40 seconds of which appeared to involved the umpires waiting for TV clearance to restart. Shortly after this, Zaheer came on to bowl. He and Dhoni spent two minutes setting the field at the start of the over. Then, between balls three and four, they reconvened for 90-second conference to reset the field. Ball five brought the Cook run-out. Perhaps he was discombobulated by the action having slowed to a crawl and assumed that Kohli’s throw would also be in slow motion. Perhaps he was the victim of an intricately planned and perfectly executed Indian masterplan over eight hours of low-octane out-cricket, an ambush strategy that lulled Cook into ruling out a brilliant piece of fielding from his mental calculations, leaving him fatally vulnerable to this isolated moment of vigour and accuracy by an Indian fielder.

That single Zaheer over, with all the fiddling around, then the assorted earnest discussions about the run-out, took 11 minutes. Including a bit of time for Umpire Tucker to forget that it should only have six balls in it, rather than allowing it to go on for ever, as it seemed destined to, and almost allow a seventh ball, then spend another half a minute or so having a natter with the third umpire to clarify the situation.

All in all, cricket has greater issues to address than slow play. What makes it so frustrating as a spectator, however, is that it is so unnecessary, so easily resolved, and is becoming progressively worse with the infinite range for needless microbreaks in 21st-century play. The endemic dawdling in top-level cricket could easily be resolved, and, if it were, the spectacle of the game would be improved for spectators both in the grounds and on television. The authorities evidently care little for this. The umpires even less. Players, in all sports, generally do what they are allowed to do.

India show how it shouldn't be done

England’s new standalone record century maker and the Somerset Sedative thrived against a deflated fielding unit
© BCCI



Things You Should Try To Avoid Doing Early On The Second Afternoon Of A Test Match, Number 1: When fielding at slip, after your team has posted an inadequate first-innings total, and with a rampantly in-form run-machine facing your primary pace bowler early in his innings, drop a straightforward catch.

Cheteshwar Pujara has not had a good match so far. He followed his first-day failures, clean bowled by Panesar, with a fielding blooper of disastrous consequence yesterday. With Cook already settling with ominous care, the one Indian to have advanced his reputation so far this series shelled a low but relatively simple catch, when the England skipper edged during a fine spell by Zaheer.

The reaction of the Indian players and crowd – a disappointedly irritated wheeze, as if they had just accidentally dropped their great aunt’s ashes into the pancake mixture at her funeral (rendered even worse by the fact that she had suffered from a lifelong flour allergy) ‒ suggested that everyone in Eden Gardens knew that Cook would now inevitably score a large, untroubled and subsequently-chanceless century.

This he did with alarming ease, perfect shot-selection, and an impregnable authority, as India meekly subsided with some minimal-intensity cricket. This Indian team is unlikely to feature in too many Greatest Fielding Units Of The 21st Century documentaries, and they appeared resigned to what they seemed to accept as their fate as soon as the great-aunt-ash-fumbling shock had subsided.

Over the last 18 months, Dhoni’s team have been embarrassingly easily deflated in the field in Test matches. Yesterday’s play was reminiscent of the 2011 series, when they often seemed to be doing little more to force the fall of a wicket than hoping that the batsmen would be so relaxed by the lack of pressure being applied on them, that they would hallucinate that there was a poisonous anaconda crawling up their middle stump, and try to thwack it off with their bats. The hit-snakewicket dismissals have not materialised, however, partly because their opponents have maintained their concentration, and partly because anacondas are not poisonous, so even in the event of the hallucination being successfully provoked, the batsmen would correctly write it off as a figment to be ignored.

Dhoni again did little to try to force errors from the batsmen. Compton began his innings defiantly but strokelessly, offering nothing to the bowlers and even less to the spectator. When he had scored 10 off 47 balls, he was facing Zaheer – with a deep backward point. Had Dhoni seen something in the Somerset Sedative’s demeanour that suggested he was about to unleash an upper-cut for six, or try to reserve sweep India’s lead pacer over the fence?

Maybe he had. In which case, the strategy worked. Compton did not attempt to upper-cut or reverse sweep Zaheer for six. So, in hindsight, it was clearly tactically sound. Although it did not immediately appear so at the time.

When a previously-hideously-out-of-form Trott came to the wicket late in the day, he was not greeted by a ring of close catchers trying to prey on the doubts that were so patent in his previous innings in the series. Granted, this was the first time this series he had come in to bat with England in a position of dominance, but he must have been delighted to face a field of one slip, a short leg, and a ring of bizarrely-placed fielders set too deep to save the single. Trott also resisted the temptation to chip a ball half-way to the boundary.

Cook, meanwhile, is the kind of ice-hearted batsman to take full toll of such generosity. In current form, expecting him to give more than one chance to a fielding side is like waiting for the Pope to moon the crowd in St Peter’s Square. It is not going to happen.

He (Cook, not the Pope) now tops the list of Most Test Hundreds By An England Player. Such landmarks are of academic interest, given the vastly increased amount of cricket played by Cook’s generation compared to some of the men he has overtaken, and the increased frequency with which hundreds are scored – 2.04 per Test since 2000, 23% higher than the 1.65 per Test scored between 1945 and 1999. Of more relevance is the fact that he is in the middle of one of the purplest patches an England batsman has ever enjoyed, playing with a technical certainty that escaped him earlier in his career, a range of shots that means he can score at a good rate whilst primarily playing defensively, and an authority that suggests that he will establish himself as one of England’s all-time cricketing greats, as well as the statistical phenomenon he has already become. That said, in England’s two toughest series of the last two years since he found form in Australia, he failed in the UAE against Pakistan, and, after a superb first-day-of-the-series century, at home against South Africa. He is not impregnable. But India are making him look so, with bowling that is as toothless as an orange, and fielding with the fervour of a long-forgotten boiled lettuce.

Full analysis: the Sehwag run-out

Gambhir and Sehwag: readers of unlicensed coaching manuals
© AFP



Things You Should Try To Avoid Doing On The First Morning Of A Test Match, Number 1:
When batting with Virender Sehwag, on a pitch clearly to his liking, and when he has begun to clop along at a run a ball, dozily ignore the fundamentals of running between the wickets you should have been taught as a schoolboy, and run him out.

Gautam Gambhir ignored this basic tenet of opening the batting for India, when Sehwag neatly turned a ball towards the midwicket boundary. Patel and Finn hared after it at high speed, Sehwag and Gambhir began running at medium speed. Perhaps the batsmen assumed, not unreasonably, that, given that the ball had come off Virender Sehwag’s bat, it would inevitably go for four. Perhaps they were assuming there would be an unending series of overthrows that would require them to run 80 to 100 runs for the shot, so were pacing themselves accordingly – why knacker yourself out on runs 1, 2 and 3 and risk missing out on runs 75 to 80? Who knows. In any case, there was something of a lack of urgency.

With two runs duly trotted, Patel dived and saved the ball from the rope, and Finn picked it up. There was clearly a third run available. It was Sehwag’s call. He made that call. Unfortunately for him, at that very moment, Gambhir appeared to be otherwise mentally engaged. He was, as all the worst, unlicensed coaching manuals advise, standing still, with his back to his partner, not even contemplating the possibility of a third run.

ESPNcricinfo’s in-house mind-reading and psychoanalysis team, based in an underground bunker in Geneva, Switzerland, have various theories about what Gambhir was thinking about at this moment. The most likely subjects flickering through his brain are considered to be: 1. A solution to the Middle-East crisis; 2. The feasibility of a manned space jaunt to Mars; 3. His future career as a Formula 1 driver; 4. The purpose of existence; 5. Whether he should buy a domestic power drill to put some shelves up, or employ a professional shelfman to do it; and 6. How Aleem Dar’s hair always looks so lustrous.

In the left-hander’s defence, he has batted with Sehwag on many occasions. Sehwag is renowned for many things. Scampering quick third runs is not especially high on the list of Classic Sehwagian Batting Traits. It is certainly well below, for example, cutting loose on the first morning of a Test match and giving his side immediate control of the game. Which is what he appeared to have allocated as his Plan A yesterday. But Gambhir’s inattention was nevertheless instrumental in Sehwag having to resort to Plan B: trudging back to the pavilion and spending the rest of the day checking his emails and wondering why India were not scoring at 4.5 per over.

England were given control of the game, and never relinquished it throughout another gripping day of hard Test cricket. No other batsman was able to score with freedom thereafter. Gambhir himself became less fluent, battled to 60, then played a loose cut at Panesar. Tendulkar played an outstanding innings of patience, restraint, craft and delicate deflections, ended by a similarly excellent piece of bowling by Anderson, who was persistently threatening all day.

Had Sehwag not been needlessly run out, the day could have been very different. It might have been almost the same. He might have been out to the next ball he faced. But he might have been 90 not out at lunch, and had a double-century on the board by tea. So it is with Sehwag, in home Tests at least. He remains India’s most important wicket. The scope of possibilities is significantly diminished as soon as he is out. Whether he is out due to good bowling, his own error, or Gautam Gambhir having a mid-morning snooze.

Things You Should Try To Do On The First Morning Of A Test Match, Number 1: Clean-bowl Cheteshwar Pujara.

Monty Panesar did this. It was a sound strategic move, and not an easy one to pull off. In a fascinating duel, Panesar had induced the first signs of uncertain footwork in Pujara so far this series, with his improved variations of pace and flight. Pujara had twice skipped out of his crease and, with a whip of the forearms, sent perfect on-drives scuttling to the boundary rope. Then Panesar deceived the Rajkot Rock with one that went straight on. The crowd was surprised. Pujara was surprised. The stumps themselves were presumably not expecting to be disturbed whilst he was batting. Monty unleashed a dance that is still being studied and interpreted by the world’s leading choreographers.

The ultimate guide to seduction

Faf du Plessis' recent success help you gain lifelong bliss
© Getty Images



There is no point pretending today’s blog is something that it is not. It will not tell you who will win the Kolkata Test, and why. Nor will it even attempt to preview that much-anticipated match. This blog will not throw shafts of revelatory light onto the intricate Shakespearean drama of five-day cricket. It will not make enliven your morning with wistful paeans to the timeless beauty of the cover drive, or the wondrous majesty of the well-organised drinks break. No. This blog is a deluge of stats.

If you do not think that you can handle the numerical onslaught that I am about to unleash, please turn your computer off, and move slowly away from your desk with your hands on your head. This blog is not for you. But if you have the intestinal fortitude to be power-hosed with a concentrated statistical shower, then read on. These stats will not only bring irrelevance to your soul, but they will also enable you to successfully seduce an intended romantic partner. If – and only if – you follow the seductory strategy outlined below, The Confectionery Stall guarantees you at least a first date.


Phase 1: The foundation
Approach your intended date. Make eye contact – not physically, unless you are a French rugby player marking out your territory ‒ then announce your name, age, reference number (if you do not have one, make one up; most people in the world today want their romances to be administratively sound), favourite cricketer, and annual salary. Then, before they can reply, unleash the following stats about the recent Mumbai Test match, using these exact words, and whilst retaining a close-range visual on your target throughout:

Stat 1: Hello. Pay attention. In Mumbai, Kevin Pietersen moved to joint-top of the list of Most 150-plus Innings By An England Batsman. His Wankhede Wowitzer was his 10th, placing him alongside Wally Hammond and Len Hutton.


Stat 2: Those three England stars are 13th equal on the all-time world list of 150-plus scorers, which is led by Tendulkar (20), Lara (19) and Bradman, who score 18 in 80 innings. That is a rate of one 150-plus score every 4.4 innings. Do you agree that that is the hallmark of a handy batsman? Good, otherwise we have no future together.

Stat 3: In successive Tests, Alastair Cook and Pietersen became the 5th and 6th Englishmen (and the 27th and 28th overall) to make four century-and-a-halfs in away Tests, and the first since underappreciated 1970s stalwart Dennis Amiss.

Stat 4: What is more, sir/madam (delete as you consider applicable), just days later, Hashim Amla and AB de Villiers became the 29th and 30th names on the world list.

Stat 5: Hey, you look like the kind of girl/guy/person/crone (delete as advised by friends) who has a hankering for some more stats on England’s perfect partnership, the Cook-Pietersen left-hand-right-hand-accumulato-aggressive-utilitarianioflamboyant pairing. Their match-marmelising stand of 206 in the second Test was just the fifth double-century partnership by English batsmen in Tests in India.

Stat 6: Of the 84 pairs of batsmen who have batted together in 20 or more partnerships for England, Cook and Pietersen have the third highest average partnership, 65.9 in 52 stands (in half of which they have added at least 50 (that’s another one), behind Barrington and Dexter (66.6 in 36) and Hobbs and Sutcliffe (87.8 in 39).

Stat 7: Let’s pop another lump of sugar in that frothy stattuccino. Of the 49 pairs from any nation who’ve batted 50 times together in Tests, Cook and Pietersen have the second best average stand, only just behind Hayden and Ponting, who averaged 67.1 in 76 partnerships.

Stat 8: But enough about England. Did you know that India’s mistimed soufflé of a second innings in Mumbai was only the fourth time that ten Indian batsmen have failed to pass 11 runs in a Test innings.


Stat 9: Let’s take a magic bus to one of the more irrelevant suburbs of Statsville. It was also only the third time in all Tests that ten players in a team have all failed to reach 12 without any of them bagging a duck.

Stat 10: We’ll take a quick break after this one. Those ten Indians between them scored 68 runs ‒ the most by ten batsmen who have all failed to reach 12 in an innings. So, in the little-discussed realm of teams who failed dismally to support a lone player by all not scoring more than 11, India actually batted superbly.

So. Glass of wine? Red or white?

Like an unloved pancake in a hippopotamus-rolling competition

Or how Australia were flattened in the Perth Test. Also, your burning questions answered re bearded cricketing brothers, whether Ponting retired to give Sachin a hint, worm-vomit analysis, and dressing up as farm animals



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What do cricketing retirements have in common with Stalinist Russia?

For whom the rooster crows: Cheteshwar Pujara is set to endure a heartbreaking farewell in 2025
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The India-England series moves to Eden Gardens in the coming week, amidst increasing frenzy over the pitch and what it might or might not do, and over one of the men who will attempt to play on it.

Sachin Tendulkar has been one of the greatest cricketers, and one of the most extraordinarily long-lasting elite sportsmen, of all time. Admittedly the first 13 billion years of time did not feature too much cricket or sport, give or take the occasional outbreak of Catch the Asteroid in the dinosaur community, but the last 140 years have been full of it, and Tendulkar’s achievements and career span will stand out whether he plays one more Test or another 192. His batting in this Indian season has been stripped of its former certainties and precision. He deserves some kind of glorious ending, but the mysterious sporting scriptwriters about whom commentators are so fond of inquiring have an irritating habit of writing a dull, anti-climactic, inappropriate or rubbish final chapter. Bradman scored a duck in his last Test innings. Nasser Hussain blasted a match-clinching hundred and hit the winning runs. Jason Gillespie scored a double-century. Cricketing retirements are like Stalinist Russia – devoid of logic and justice.

India have opted not to drop any of the players who failed so strikingly in Mumbai, and instead have chosen to drop the curator of the ground where the next Test is to be played. To the neutral observer, this did not immediately seem to be entirely appropriate. Were the tentative prods and pokes at the Wankhede caused by the celebrated giants of Indian batsmanship worrying about what pitch the Eden Gardens groundsman was plotting for them? Who knows. In any case, the Indian batting folded like a tentative origami poker player, and the pressure had to tell on someone. Even if that someone had nothing to do with it.

Home-pitch advantage leading to skewed and unequal cricket is an age-old problem in cricket. I am sure you all agree that, in Kolkata, it would be grossly unfair for a turning wicket to be specially prepared. Particularly after the Mumbai Test quite clearly showed that one of the teams involved cannot play spin. Let us at least have a surface without such intolerable bias.

Petty squabbles over the surfaces prepared for cricket could easily be avoided, simply by removing home advantage from pitch preparation. A much fairer means of ensuring a surface that provides a just and equitable chance to both teams is to allow the home team and the away team each to prepare one end of the pitch. Furthermore, this would make for far more interesting cricket – if alternate overs were played on a green seamer flown in from Worcester and a rank dustbowl turner specially grown in the Gobi Desert.

The Indian camp have, additionally, sent the toe-end of Virat Kohli’s bat to a private health resort, where it can be treated for post-traumatic stress.

World exclusive cricketer retirement breaking news
India’s Cheteshwar Pujara has announced plans to retire after the Ahmedabad Test against Australia in December 2025. Pujara, currently 24, said: “I know in my heart of hearts it will be time to go in 13 years’ time.”

Visibly emotional, a choked Pujara added: “It will be the perfect way to bow out, in front of my home crowd versus the team I made my debut against two long years ago. After much thought, I have realised that, come 2025, it will be the right moment for me to step aside. By then, players like Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane will have earned their chance.”

Opponents and team-mates queued up to pay pre-emptive tribute to the Indian future stalwart. South Africa’s Jacques Kallis said: “Pujara will have been a top, top player, and one of the most formidable opponents I will have encountered during the middle third of my career ‒ both whilst I am still playing for South Africa, and, subsequently, for England.”

Indian legspinner Piyush Chawla commented: “It will be sad to see Pujara leave in 13 years, but it will have been a privilege to play with him in most of my 127 Tests for India, and to captain him in 70 of them. I will never forget the 350-run stand we will share for the third wicket at Lord’s in 2021.” Chawla was later taken away for psychiatric evaluation.