Andy Zaltzman's Blog, page 3

Foothold, chokehold, body slam

India efficiently maximised their chances of failure, all in the interests of keeping the series good and alive
© BCCI



One-all after two is the ideal beginning to any series. Apart, perhaps, in a distinctly non-cricketing sphere, from the Rest of the World v Germany and Friends series that scarred the early 20th century. When a 2-0 scoreline was applauded by most neutrals. Particularly after the Rest of the World had gone one-nil up.

Yesterday morning, India seemed to want to take no chances of leaving the rubber unappetisingly almost secure by snatching a miraculous victory, and comfortably avoided setting England an awkward target of 130 or 140 that might have prompted some jitters and some flashbacks to their 72-all-out debacle at the start of the year in Abu Dhabi. When, to make the parallels even more pertinent, an inexplicably-left-out-of-the-first-Test Monty Panesar had taken six second wickets to put his side in a winning position.

Another 70 runs could have made the match a tense affair, although England would have still been strong favourites not to repeat their disastrous freeze against Ajmal and Rehman. However, after the top order had been cauterised by some excellent deliveries and one horrific mishit, Ashwin, Harbhajan and Zaheer perished with injudicious strokes when a calmer, more patient approach might have helped Gambhir set England at least a nerve-inducing target. Might have, or might not have. They probably would still been bowled out for not very much.

But they maximised their chances of failure, before Gambhir entrusted Ojha with the task of smashing a quickfire 40 whilst he kept one end safe and let Ojha, the notoriously flamboyant Indian Garry Sobers, farm the strike. (I may have misread that situation, but that is how it appeared. It was hot, though, and I have pale skin and a very English body-thermostat.)

India did not exactly go down fighting. Although England had been fully whooped in the first Test, at least Cook and Prior’s second-innings rearguard had given them a foothold against the Indian spinners, which the captain and Pietersen then transformed into a chokehold on the Indian spinners in Mumbai, and a full body slam as KP cut loose with awesome power and control on the third day.

England were duly able to wrap up one of their finest Test victories of recent years under negative pressure, a superb performance driven by four players ‒ their two best batsmen of the last 25 years, and their two best spinners since Derek Underwood’s 1970s peak.

When you see Pietersen bat as he did in Ahmedabad, you think: “How on earth does this guy have a Test average of just under 50?” Then, when you see him bat as he did in Mumbai, you think: “How on earth does this guy only have a Test average of just under 50?” This year has been an extraordinary one for England’s flawed, brilliant superstar.

India have major problems. Their batting looks frail, Pujara aside, and their bowling appears confused and worryingly blunt. Dhoni seems to lack faith in his two most experienced bowlers, the mystifyingly underused Zaheer, who extracted an edge from Cook late on day two and was economical throughout, and the returning Harbhajan. Between them, they bowled fewer overs than either Ojha or the decreasingly effective Ashwin.

● Panesar restarted the trend of bearded Englishmen taking ten or more wickets in Wankhede Tests. Admittedly this was a trend that lasted for only one Test, in 1980, when Ian Botham gave the cricketing world what is far and away the greatest single all-round Test match performance in the history of humanity – 13 for 106 (ten of them top-seven batsmen), and 114 runs off 144 balls, after coming in with England struggling at 57 for 4 (soon 58 for 5), in a match in which no other batsman reached 50.

Monty, not entirely unexpectedly, contributed rather less with the bat – although the abject failure of India’s tail to even contemplate wagging denied him the opportunity to smash a match-winning day five century (stranger things have happened) (let me correct that, stranger things have not happened). And, to be fair to the would-be-allrounder Monty did score at a faster strike rate even than the mighty Botham in his two-ball innings of 4.

● The Test matches in Mumbai and Adelaide have generated statistics like an out-of-control helicopter in a jelly factory generates mess. For example, India’s less-than-flawless second innings in Mumbai was the first time in Test history that seven batsmen have been out in single figures but for more than 5. Only once before in 7290 Test innings have more than five players been out for between 6 and 9, and the previous Indian record for “unconverted microstarts” is four. There you go. That’s one for you to use as a conversation-starter at a party.

Furthermore, in Adelaide, South Africa lasted 762 balls after losing their fourth wicket, obliterating the previous record fourth-innings middle-and-lower-order rearguard length, a barely noticeable 586 balls by Pakistan as they subsided in slow motion to defeat in Galle earlier this year. That nugget of information might be more appropriate in breaking the awkward silence at a wedding after the bride has sprinted out screaming, “No, no, I can’t do it, I know a bet is a bet, but this is the worst mistake I’ve ever made.”

These are just two of the deluge of stats emerging from the last few days of cricket. I will share more of them with you in the World Cricket Podcast later this week, when I attempt to set a new world record for Most Cricket Stats Delivered in 90 Seconds. Strap in. It will be like Usain Bolt in the Beijing Olympics, but more exciting.

The devastating self-restraint of Monty Panesar

Kohli: a hero to armchair cricketers everywhere
© Getty Images



A dramatic, series-swivelling day in Mumbai featured some of the best batting imaginable, and some considerably less good than that, as well as a pitch-perfect demonstration of how to bowl spin in Indian conditions, a masterclass that the Indian bowlers, apparently unfamiliar with such circumstances, would do well to take on board. Earlier, Kevin Pietersen played what Americans would describe as “an innings for the ages”. Whilst he was batting, it was patently an innings of incredible skill and boldness. When India started attempting to bat on the same pitch, Pietersen’s reintegration-accelerating 186 began to look like a work of unarguable sporting genius. I confidently predict any future dressing-room spats between KP and his team-mates in the build-up to crucial series-deciding Test matches are likely to be resolved without him being omitted from the side.

Here, then, are the Official Confectionery Stall Mumbai Test Day Three Awards.

GREATEST ACT OF SELF-RESTRAINT OF THE DAY: Monty Panesar, on taking his tenth wicket of the match
Panesar, who became one of the first England bowlers for some time to open the bowling with a long-off, took five wickets in a classic display of aggressive spin bowling on a helpful surface. He induced edges from Sehwag and Dhoni with perfectly pitched, dipping, fizzing away-tweakers, hurried a quicker, straighter one past Tendulkar to trap the fading magician leg-before, and took the left-handed Yuvraj’s glove with turn and bounce.

Monty’s most remarkable achievement, however, was the formidable self-control he showed on taking his fifth wicket of the innings, and tenth of the match, when he duped the charging Ashwin into misreading the length of a ball that had been held back slightly and skying a catch to cover. Somehow Monty managed to prevent himself from celebrating his personal triumph by sprinting straight into the dressing room and giving Andy Flower a cake shaped like the Sardar Patel Stadium in Ahmedabad with the words “Thanks for the week off work” iced sarcastically on the top, alongside Pragyan Ojha’s and Tim Bresnan’s bowling figures from the first Test. That is testament to the man’s remarkable equanimity.

England also erred on the side of seam in the first Test against Pakistan last winter, and duly lost on a turning pitch. Panesar returned for the second Test, and took 6 for 62 in the second innings to bowl England into a winning position, albeit one from which they absolutely and utterly failed to win. As the late 19th-century writer, wit, prison sceptic and possible cricket expert Oscar Wilde himself once wrote, “To leave Monty Panesar out of one subcontinental first Test may be regarded as a misfortune. To leave Monty Panesar out of another subcontinental first Test less than a year later looks like carelessness.”

NON-PIETERSEN SHOT OF THE DAY: Virat Kohli’s splooted honk to mid-off
(I have disqualified Pietersen’s various classical, innovative, surreal and sumptuous masterstrokes, to facilitate the judging process.)

Kohli, fast becoming an ODI great, still awaits his definitive breakthrough as a Test batsman. The stage was set for him to make that step yesterday, with his team in a dire but not irretrievable position. Kohli marched onto that stage, bowed nervously, then carried on marching across the stage before falling straight into the orchestra pit to a cacophony of clanging cymbals and angry trombonists. Metaphorically.

After a difficult start against Panesar, Kohli’s eyes lit up when Swann lobbed him a full toss so juicy that the batsman should still be drinking it for breakfast. In fact, they lit up so vigorously that they seemed to burn his retinas to a crisp, judging by how far from the middle of the bat the ball was when it made contact with the wood. A curious wooden clonk resounded across the Wankhede, somewhat reminiscent of an idiot headbutting a coconut. The ball, which by rights should have been pummelling the advertising hoardings, blooped apologetically to wide mid-off, where Root took a simple catch.

Kohli reacted with the disgust and self-admonishment of someone who had just realised that he had inadvertently taken a vegetable quiche back to the nursing home and popped his grandmother into the oven, and trudged off the field at an understandably funereal pace that suggested he did not particularly want to see his coach, captain, team-mates or own reflection in the mirror.

Around the stadium, low-grade amateur cricketers such as myself were struck by the strange familiarity of that wooden clonk. “What does that remind me of?” we thought. “Yes, that’s it. That is the sound of me, playing a rubbish shot in village cricket.” It is not often that the humble punter can watch elite sportsmen do something at the highest level of their sport, and think: “I could have done that.” But Kohli, heroically, gave us all that opportunity to feel a momentary connection with the hallowed confines of Test cricket.

Batsman are often criticised for playing a “stupid shot” when they are dismissed in a this fashion. Kohli’s was not a stupid shot. It was a sensible shot. Stupidly played.

Swann, meanwhile, celebrated as if he had just bowled Bradman with a square-turning pearler. Having snared Pujara in his first over with one of his many perfectly pitched offbreaks, Swann proceeded to bowl a clutch of wicket-taking deliveries that did not take wickets. He did, however, take a wicket with that rancid full bunger. Such is cricket. Such is life.

Captain Cook avenges his bowlers

Alastair Cook hurt a couple of Indians on his way to a half-century
© BCCI



The wrestle for supremacy in Mumbai continued on another taut day of spin-dominated cricket at the Wankhede. England applied a tight squeeze in the morning, whilst at times looking a little stroppier with the cricketing fates than a team who has their opponents at 300-odd for 7 should be. They constricted the previously rampant Ashwin, and finally dismissed Pujara at the 790th attempt, sending the Granite Gujarati’s series average plummeting from infinity to a disappointing 382, as Swann and Panesar generated more turn and bounce than India’s three-prong tweak-team were able to extract in England’s reply.

Cook, attacking and defending with formidable Pujara-like precision, survived some near misses against Ashwin, but was otherwise regally serene, as he has so often been since his Brisbane breakthrough two years ago to the day. He escaped a tough low chance to slip in the final over, when Sehwag’s hands unluckily missed the ball by about 18 inches, as he stood bolt upright in the manner of a man who either was trying to demonstrate the best way not to prepare for a slip catch off a spinner, or was mentally miles away, trying to think of a word that rhymes with orange for a new song about the international fruit pulping industry.

The England skipper, who, after several years of moderate returns against the world’s leading teams, is emerging as one of England’s greatest modern batsmen, also took the lead in implementing another new Pujara-neutralising tactic. Throughout his innings, he employing the sweep shot with a power, selectivity and control that was frankly almost unpatriotically un-English, and, having understandably reasoned that his bowlers’ 790 strike-rate against Pujara was less than optimal, got down on one knee and absolutely clobbered the ball straight into the Indian No. 3’s unamused ribcage.

Pujara was helped from the field. Cook was not finished. Concerned that Pujara might miss the next Test and be replaced by Indian 12th man and Ranji Trophy run-machine Ajinkya Rahane, he then executed another fielder-clouting hammerblow. Rahane also collapsed like a careless child’s matchstick replica Eiffel Tower which was wrongly selected in a rugby match, and hobbled back to the security of the dressing room. The flower of new-generation Indian batsmanship duly incapacitated, Cook returned to business.

What made this second thwack even more impressive was the fact that, before his injury, Rahane had displayed almost preternatural anticipation and bravery at short-leg, moving before the ball had even been hit to throw himself into the line of leather. So Cook had not only to perform the sweep shot to perfection, but also to guess where Rahane would guess he would hit the ball. It was a staggering piece of marksmanship by the captain, one of the most clinical snipings in batting history.

As Ashwin had yesterday, Pietersen transformed a slow-scoring day with a sublime last-session assault, demonstrating once again how his form fluctuates with such high frequency you could broadcast a radio station on it. He emerged from his first-Test funk with a clonking first-ball boundary, followed by two hours of controlled stroke-playing brilliance, punctuated occasionally by the calculated risks and technical uncertainties that make him so unremittingly compelling to watch.

England were assisted by some bafflingly cautious field-placing by Dhoni. When Cook had scored 40 from 111 balls, having hit one boundary in the previous hour, and with two wickets having fallen in quick succession, the England captain was faced with a long-on, a deep midwicket, and deep backward square-leg, and a sweeper on the cover boundary. I am not privy to the private coaching dossiers in which teams pinpoint their opponents’ weaknesses, but I imagine few of them would describe Cook as “likely to try to smash a six over three boundary fielders at a delicate knife-edge moment in the Test match, just to prove what a big man he is”.

England at times were guilty of the same defensiveness against the similarly-paced batting of Pujara. Most teams seem to take this option readily in cricket today. There may be a reason for it, but it is not glaringly obvious to the outside observer (albeit that outside observers tend to be unacquainted with the pressures of captaining a nation).

Cook, who had scored 30 of his first 36 runs in boundaries, and amassed the grand total of just one single in the first 73 balls of his innings, was thus granted risk-free accumulation into the cavernous in-field gaps for the rest of the day. Only 16 of his subsequent 51 were scored in fours, and England established parity, with the potential to take control this morning.

England still unscrambling the Pujara puzzle

'I am speculating, but Pujara clearly hates being in the dressing-room'
© BCCI



An intensely-fought first day in Mumbai even with India 266 for 6, and honours provisionally judged as “even, veering towards India” by the Confectionery Stall Momentumometer, a high-tech device which I have constructed in my hotel room, consisting of five budgerigars dressed in cricket kit, listening to commentary of the match on a bird-proof radio, and flapping up and down a miniature see-saw between porcelain figurines of Churchill and Gandhi.

This is, I must emphasise, a provisional verdict. I forgot to feed the birds yesterday morning and when I returned after close of play they were pecking vigorously at both of the great men’s noses. (Here endeth the lie. Amen.) Whether or not honours are indeed even will not be known until later in the match. A first-day total of 266 for 6 might prove to be woefully inadequate, match-winningly massive, or precisely par for the pitch. I suspect it will prove above par for this particular pitch. The guilty verdicts returned in so many of England’s recent trials by tweak, and the presence of three Test novices in what had until recently been an almost immovable upper order, suggests that India hold the upper hand.

However, they are not holding that upper hand in such a tight grip that it could not escape and slap them firmly in the chops. If Alastair Cook and Matt Prior play as they did in the 1st Test, if Jonathan Trott plays as he did in Galle, if Kevin Pietersen has one of his eenie-meenie-miney-mo good days, or even one of his randomly-allocated spell-bindingly amazing days, or if Monty Panesar finally builds on the promise of that sweep shot for six he hit off Murali in 2006, then the left-armer’s four excellent wickets could prove to have given England decisive control of the game. Time, the secretive and temperamental little witch, will tell. And she will start telling this morning.

Yesterday’s play was notable principally for the continued emergence of a new Indian cricketing superstar in front of an increasingly adoring public, the stirring but one-Test-overdue return of Panesar (still entrenched as England’s second most successful spinner of the last 30 years behind Graeme Swann, after Samit Patel’s failure in Ahmedabad to magically transform from the useful county support bowler he has always been into the new Hedley Verity), and an innings of striking class by India’s No.8 R Ashwin.

Rather unfairly from an English point-of-view, Ashwin scored a rapid, momentum-shifting and often majestic 60 not out, batting like a laboratory Frankensteining of Wally Hammond, Mark Waugh and VVS Laxman, rather than like fellow Test No.8s such as Andy Caddick, Mohammad Sami, and Ajit Agarkar (who, excluding his bolt-from-the-extremely-blue Lord’s century, averaged 6.8 in 22 innings as a number at 8). One cover drive he eased melodiously to the boundary should have prompted the ICC to instantly revoke his licence to bat at 8.

Cheteshwar Pujara was again the critical force in the day’s play. He has swiftly batted himself into (a) the hearts of the Indian nation, (b) statistical nirvana, and (c) the nightmares of the England bowlers and supporters. He again displayed flawless technique, 360-degree run-scoring options, the ice-cold temperament of a multi-award-winning penguin, and a deep-seated desire to avoid spending any more time than is absolutely necessary with his team-mates. There must be ructions in the Indian camp. Or perhaps Yuvraj Singh has started learning the trumpet. Maybe Gautam Gambhir has developed a new in-match superstition of reciting the lyrics of Celine Dion songs through a loud-hailer. It is conceivable that Pujara is terrified of Zaheer’ Khan’s lucky crocodile. I am speculating, but Pujara clearly hates being in the dressing-room.

Why England must not learn from their mistakes

Gambhir: rather Mexican
© AFP



A few quick thoughts ahead of the Mumbai Test, which, personally, I am childishly excited about. It will be my first experience of watching Test cricket in Asia, and the cheapest per-minute entertainment I will have experienced since paying 10p to see the whole of War And Peace read aloud in a slow drawl by an ageing tortoise from Texas. My ticket cost Rs 500 rupees – just under £6. For the whole match. The same price as around 20 minutes of a Lord’s Test. In fact, an ill-timed toilet break at next summer’s Ashes showdown at HQ could in effect cost you more than the whole of the Mumbai match.

● Since the end of the Ahmedabad Test, much has been said, written, painted and sung about how England need to learn their lessons about playing in Asia (Lady Gaga been regularly addressing the issue in her live gigs, according to a well-placed source). Those advocating that England should belated learn the lessons they ought to have learned after the Dubai debacle at the start of the year are, however, chasing the wrong mongoose into the wrong exhaust pipe.

Recent history suggests that learning from their experiences is, in fact, the last thing that Alastair Cook and his men should be trying to do. Excluding two series wins in Bangladesh, England have lost six and drawn two of their last eight series on the world’s biggest and spinniest continent. They have won only two Tests in those series, drawn nine and lost 11.

They have toured Asia more regularly this millennium than at any point in their cricketing history. Their last successful series away in any of the three main Asian Test nations were when they scored back-to-back wins in Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2000-01. Before then, they had played four Tests in Asia in the previous 13 years.

In fact, England have played more Tests in Asia in 2012 than they did in the 15 years between their series wins in India in 1984-85 and Pakistan in 2000-01. In that time, England played just seven subcontinental Tests – three bad-tempered, finger-pointing, umpire-sqaubbling matches in Pakistan in 1987-88, and three ineptitude-fuelled selectorially nonsensical dodgy-prawn-aggravated games in India, plus a bonus defeat to Sri Lanka in 1992-93, which helped rectify the MCC’s erroneous assumption that Sri Lankans did not know which end of a cricket bat, or ball, to hold.

Clearly the best recipe for English success in Asia is not only to not learn lessons, but not to even turn up to school. Amongst the fundamental tenets of educational philosophy are that learning is pointless as we’ll all be dead within 100 years anyway, that it is better to learn no lesson than the wrong lesson, and that chalk has ballistic properties that the marker pen cannot hope to emulate.

England have a few winters off before their next Trial by Tweak in Asia. But when they next set foot there, they should do so with 11 debutants. They will romp to victory.

● The Mumbai Test begins today, with the two sides most recently deposed from the top of the Test rankings casting half an eye at the current leaders being battered like a suicidal calamari by the team who were No.1 before the whole rankings relay began. The No. 1 ranking seems to have been touch-passed from team to team like a volcano-roasted potato at a Fijian rugby practice, and on a staggering first day in Adelaide, South Africa started displaying several of the classic symptoms of a team suffering early-onset ranking slippage. Injuries, weaker links ruthlessly exposed, stronger links out of form.

The last few years of Test cricket have been, frankly, barking mad, with teams suffering wild extremes of form ‒ perhaps in an effort to raise global public awareness of how global warming could let to an increase in the amount of catastrophic weather. The world’s cricketers might be confusing their supporters, but they are selflessly safeguarding the long-term future of the planet that has been so influential in the development of the sport.

● Both teams at the Wankhede have their innings co-started by a left-handed batsman. England’s is so sure of his place in the team that, were the planet to be obliterated by a colossal asteroid strike tomorrow morning, he would probably still find a way of adding a few more Test caps to his collection. This is partly because the second Test would probably still go ahead despite the devastation of the world’s end ‒ the Wankhede Stadium would likely be the only part of the planet to survive the impact, after the BCCI refuse to allow the asteroid access to the ground.

India’s southpaw opener is rather less inkily inscribed in the selectors’ good books. Gautam Gambhir is not alone amongst Indian batsmen in having had a lean time in Tests of late, but the World Cup-final hero has not reached three figures in a Test since January 2010, a run of 23 matches in which he has averaged a less-than-impressive 28. In the ten Tests before that, he had scored eight centuries and averaged 91. This followed his first 18 Tests, in which he averaged 36, and which were adorned by a solitary hundred (against Bangladesh), and a 97 against Zimbabwe.

If you exclude the minnows, he had averaged a less-than-impressive 29 before his spectacularly purple patch. In terms of career graph, Gambhir has one of the most extreme and pointy “sombreros” in Test history, putting the likes of fellow purple-patchers Michael Vaughan and Mike Gatting in the most Mexican of shades.

The old cliché argues, “form is temporary but class is permanent”, which may be true, and applies equally to decent players in brilliant form as to great players in the middle of a slump.

Were England careless or strategically insane?

KP demonstrates his new technique for getting off to a flying start
© Getty Images



England, sticklers for tradition as always, have lost the first Test of a series in Asia for the 14th time in their last 20 attempts, dating back to the 1981-82 series in India. They have registered three wins – against Test novices Sri Lanka in their first-ever Test, and two against incorrigible defeat-magnets Bangladesh ‒ meaning that, in their last 17 first Tests of away series against established Asian Test nations, they have drawn three and lost 14. And one of those three draws was with one wicket remaining after a desperate tail-end rearguard. When they go to Asia, England hit the ground running. In the wrong direction.

The good news for England and their supporters is that, in all their other non-series-opening Asian Tests in that time, they have won more than they have lost. Nine triumphs (including two follow-up cloutings of Bangladesh), seven defeats, and 19 draws. The bad news is that two of those defeats are fresh in the memory from early this year, against a Pakistan side with a similarly structured bowling attack to India’s.

The other good news is that two of England’s batsmen have shown that they can prosper in Asian conditions, which is at least two more than in the UAE. The other bad news is that the English pace attack, which remained steadfastly excellent throughout last winter’s failures, was as toothless as an 103-year-old chocolate addict after an ill-advised 12-round pummelling by one of the Klitschko brothers. The supplementary good news is that, whilst the wheels might have come off the English wagon, at least their captain heroically curled himself up into a circle and bolted himself to the front axle. Seldom can a new skipper have emerged from the wreckage of a thrashing in his first match in the job with his authority so significantly enhanced. If only he could learn how to bowl. And field at slip to the spinners.

The additional bad news is that the Indian selectors, and the unstoppable march of time, have largely dismantled the team England completely destroyed just over a year ago. They have even replaced their solitary success in that series, Rahul Dravid, with a new No. 3, Cheteshwar Pujara, who looks as if he could carrying on batting until Silvio Berlusconi becomes a monk. The bonus good news is that they will have to try hard to field as poorly again. The free extra bad news is that Jonathan Trott’s audacious attempt to take a catch in his pioneering new leather-magnetic concave chest that enables him to roost on the ball like an egg without it actually touching the turf was hardly ruled out by the umpires.

Appendix 1 of the good news is that they are unlikely to be on the wrong end of so many dubious umpiring decisions in the second Test. The bad-news footnote is that they are also unlikely to be on the right end of so many dubious umpiring decisions. Cook’s near-flawless epic resistance could easily have been flawed and not particularly epic, had he not survived a leg-before appeal when on 41 that looked plumb enough to bake in a misspelt crumble. Samit Patel, the commentators agreed, was harshly triggered in both innings. But he only had the opportunity to be harshly triggered in the first innings because he had already been very generously not triggered. Two wrongs did not make a right. They made three wrongs – the two decisions, plus the absence of the DRS.

The novelists who ate bowlers

Ruthless bowler destroyer, Robert Ludlum
© Getty Images



Welcome to the fourth and final instalment of the Confectionery Stall Good-In-One-Format-But-Rubbish-In-Another XIs, already regarded in several leading academic establishments as one of the canonical works of scientific research and/or philosophy and/or anthropology in any field.

Here are numbers 7 to 11 in the ODI Legends But Test Match Muppets XI. (Qualification criteria: a minimum of both ten Tests and 20 ODIs.)


7. Chris Harris (New Zealand): 23 Tests, batting average 20.4, bowling average 73.1; 250 ODIs, batting average 29.0, bowling average 37.5
From the beginning of 1990 to the end of 2004, only six men played more ODIs than Chris Harris, Kiwi stalwart, hero to the balding, and six-time nominee for Inelegance magazine’s International Cricketer of the Year. The only men to appear more than Harris in that decade and a half were the useful squadlet of Tendulkar, Jayasuriya, Inzamam, Wasim Akram, Ganguly and Kumble.

Between them, those half a dozen cricketing legends also played 553 Test matches in that time, totalling 82 centuries and 50 five-wicket hauls. Chris Harris played 23 Tests in ten separate spells in the New Zealand side, had a highest score of 71, and best bowling figures of 2 for 16. He was the only one of the 18 most-capped ODI players from 1990 to 2004 not to play at least 50 Tests (the other 17 averaged 89 Test caps each over that time span). But for almost 15 years, Harris was one of the first names beiged into the New Zealand one-day team sheet.

Moreover, the Christchurch Quirkster, who matched the raging unorthodoxy of his career statistics with a almost surreal and definitely biomechanically inadvisable bowling action, averaged 38 with the bat against Australia in one-dayers, the seventh-highest of the 41 batsmen who played 20 or more ODI innings against the non-baggy-canary-yellows from 1990 to 2004.

He scored 130 in his nation’s World Cup quarter-final defeat to Australia in 1996, the highest score by a batsman in a losing cause in a World Cup knockout match. By career-confirming contrast, in three Tests against the baggy greens, Harris scored 30 runs in six innings.

As a bowler, he was awkward and economical in one-day matches. In Tests he proudly boasts the fourth worst average of the 880 Test bowlers who have taken ten or more wickets, behind Bangladeshi cannon fodder Rubel Hossain and Mohammad Sharif, and misleading-debut specialist Ian Salisbury. With a wicket every 26 overs and four balls, Harris can also lay claim to the equal fourth-worst strike rate. In the five-day game, he was an almost mind-blowing 32% less penetrative than Russel Arnold.

Harris was one of the most persistently low-impact all-round Test cricketers of all time – he is the only player ever to have both batted and bowled in at least 20 Test innings without either scoring 75 or taking three wickets in an innings.

8. Ajit Agarkar (India): 26 Tests, 58 wickets, average 47.3; 191 ODIs, 288 wickets, average 27.8
Agarkar is a statistical treasure trove. His Test career was almost unremittingly meaningless. But he scored a century at Lord’s, and bowled India to a victory in Australia with 6 for 41. Apart from those two hermetically lonely landmarks, he never scored another half-century or took four wickets in an innings in seven years of alarmingly consistent five-day mediocrity. Over the course of his ODI career, however, he was the world’s fourth-highest wicket-taker, behind Muralitharan, Pollock and McGrath, who collectively took 1726 more Test wickets than the Mumbai Mystery.

Agarkar’s 288 ODI wickets put him 113 scalps ahead of India’s next most-wicketous one-day bowler during the period of his international career. Even if he cannot be considered a great ODI bowler – his record in tournament knockout matches was pitiful and his economy rate was verging on Greek ‒ comparing the one-day Agarkar with the five-day Agarkar is like comparing Château Latour with Walmart Economy Grape Juice. They both allegedly come from the same fruit, but are at best extremely distant cousins.

9. Farveez Maharoof (Sri Lanka): 22 Tests, 25 wickets, average 65.2; 104 ODIs, 133 wickets, average 26.8
One of the two Farveez Maharoofs who have represented Sri Lanka was almost heroically useless as a Test bowler. He took little more than a wicket per match, at a pitiful average of 65 ‒ the worst of any bowler who has taken 25 or more Test wickets, and with a considerable margin of ineptitude to spare. Maharoof’s inability to dismiss batsmen has also ripened dangerously with time, like a long-forgotten Stilton in a garden shed. In his most recent 13 Tests, he has harvested 11 wickets at 90 runs apiece.

The other Farveez Maharoof has a better ODI bowling average than Dale Steyn and Malcolm Marshall. The real Dale Steyn and Malcolm Marshall. Not pretend ones. That Maharoof’s ODI average, which is only fractionally inferior to Lasith Malinga’s, also outdoes those of Courtney Walsh, Chaminda Vaas, Anil Kumble, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev and Stuart Broad, and, in total, 76 of the 109 bowlers who have taken 100 ODI wickets. His Test average is worse than Mohammad Ashraful’s. In both bowling and batting. Which is a considerable all-round anti-achievement.

Some so-called experts are still claiming the two Maharoofs (or Maharooves?) are, in fact, one and the same. It is barely credible that history will support this outlandish theory.

Saleem Elahi and the rich man's Saleem Elahi

Boeta Dippenaar: a statistical marvel who can win you many a trivia contest
© AFP



Welcome to Part Three of the smash hit Confectionery Stall Good-In-One-Format-But-Rubbish-In-Another XIs, a series of learned treatises that has in many ways overshadowed the American presidential election in the global media, and utterly stolen the publicity thunder of the newly launched James Bond film. Following the announcement of the Test-Stars-But-One-Day-Flops XI, which has been the talk of nightclubs, libraries and opium dens from Aarhus to Zhengzhou, here is the top six of the ODI-Legends-But-Test-Match-Muppets XI.

The qualification criteria are that a player must have played a minimum of ten Tests and 20 ODIs, and – preferably – have certifiably failed in one of the formats.

1. Nick Knight (England): 17 Tests, average 23.9; 100 ODIs, average 40.4.
In 1996, Knight scored three centuries against the Pakistan of Waqar, Wasim and a Mushtaq Ahmed at his brief international peak – one in a Test, two in ODIs. Wise judges saw his dashing strokeplay, dexterous hands and ability to attack both pace and spin, and confidently predicted that he would prove to be an England lynchpin in both forms of the game. They were half-right.

In his first seven Tests, he scored four half-centuries as well as that Headingley hundred. He added a disappointing zero more centuries and nought more fifties in his remaining ten Tests, splattered over five years, as the world’s quick men exploited his Achilles throat against short-pitched bowling.

In ODIs, he was comfortably England’s best one-day batsman over the course of his seven-year career, scoring more and averaging more than any other regular player, and passing 50 on 30 occasions, 11 more than England’s next-best half-century poster in that time. In the midst of this, he was the victim of one of the wonkiest selections in an era of crackpot cricketer culling, when he was dropped from the England squad before the home 1999 World Cup, after a disappointing winter in Australia, despite two years of regular success and having averaged 61 in his 11 ODIs in England.

He was replaced as opener by Nasser Hussain, who had never opened in his sporadic, unsuccessful and slow-scoring ten-year ODI career up to that time. The soon-to-be-fortune-transforming skipper scored unbeaten half-centuries in easy run chases against Kenya and Zimbabwe, but failed – along with the rest of England’s batting ‒ in two tournament-ending thrashings by South Africa and India, as England constructed a remarkably well-executed attempt to claim the Most Inept On- And Off-Field Performance In A Home World Cup title.

Knight was instantly restored to the team, and remained a consistent scorer until a disappointing 2003 World Cup, after which he retired from ODIs with what was, at the time, the highest ODI average by an English batsman who had played more than 20 matches. His Test career ended in 2001 with one of the poorest Test averages of any English specialist batsman who has played 15 or more Tests – only Mike Brearley, Bill Athey and Jack Ikin have out-failed him in the last 100 years. Curiously, Knight averaged more for England in ODIs than he did in county one-day cricket. He also averaged almost twice as much in first-class cricket as he did in Tests.

The Don Bradman of bowling unpenetratively in ODIs

Jeff Thomson: coloured clothing did not suit him
© Getty Images



Welcome to part two of the Confectionery Stall Good-In-One-Format-But-Rubbish-In-Another XIs. Last time, the Test-Stars-But-One-Day-Flops XI top five was announced as: Slater, Vaughan, Kim Hughes, Viswanath and Samaraweera. This has understandably left some of Test cricket’s leading practitioners ‒ amongst them, Border, Gower and Laxman ‒ weeping salt tears of devastation that they had been overlooked. They have only themselves to blame, for not having been quite ordinary enough, consistently enough, in the shorter form of the international game.

Joining the aforementioned five batsman are:

6. Ian Botham (England): 102 Tests, batting average 33.5, bowling average 28.4; 116 ODIs, batting average 23.2, bowling average 28.5.

Botham is selected for his performances in the ODI arena when he was at his peak, destroyed bowling attacks and batting line-ups in Test matches as if brought to life from the pages of a comic book, whilst being just about adequate in ODIs.

Botham’s Test averages (particularly his bowling average) took a gradual pounding as the effects of injury and age diminished him over the course of his cricketing career. They had also taken a pounding for a year when, in the midst of his Himalayan Test peak, he failed to respond to a captain with whom he clearly did not gel harmoniously – himself.

In considerable mitigation, Botham made the schoolboy error of being offered the chance to become the youngest England captain since the 1880s, with little if any captaincy experience, ahead of back-to-back series against a useful West Indies outfit which vigorously eschewed the temptations of the medium-paced dibbly-dobbler. West Indies arrived in 1980 with a four-pronged bowling attack comprising Roberts, Garner, Holding and Marshall (and Croft returned in the series in the West Indies early in 1981), and a batting line-up containing Greenidge, Haynes, Richards, Lloyd and Kallicharran. Mike Brearley, who had led England for the previous three years, shrewdly consulted the fixture list, the opposition’s team sheet, and his own 38-year-old birth certificate, coughed nervously, and stepped aside.

Botham’s England performed creditably enough in the circumstances, losing 1-0 at home and 2-0 away, with a total of six mostly rain-aided draws – the next three series against West Indies would bring England a considerably less impressive haul of draws (one in 15 Tests, to place proudly on the mantelpiece next to the zero wins) ‒ but Botham’s individual form nose-dived like Pinocchio in the penalty area in an Italian football match. The captaincy removed, he instantly recovered his previous form and blasted himself into English sporting immortality.

It is the peak-era non-captain Botham who walks triumphantly into this team. He was a marvel of statistics and personality in Tests, a leviathan who routinely shaped and decided matches through his extraordinary range of skills and an aura that has seldom been matched in the history of the game. At the same time, in ODIs he was a useful bit-part player who chipped in every now and again with a handy wicket or two.

At the end of the 1981 Ashes, excluding his unhappy stint as captain, Botham had a Test batting average of 42, with eight centuries in 29 matches, and a bowling average of 18, with 17 five-wicket hauls and four ten-wicket matches (plus 46 catches). He had played 27 ODIs in the ranks, averaging just under 17 with the bat, and a decent if not world-shattering 25 with the ball, but with best innings figures of just 3 for 16 (and only seven catches).

Thereafter Botham declined in the Test arena, whilst remaining capable of sporadic acts of wonder at least until 1987, but he remained bizarrely irrelevant in ODIs – between January 1983 and December 1986, he did not take more than two wickets in an ODI innings, and scored more than 30 only once. Overall, he never took an ODI five-for (and took four wickets only three times in 115 innings), and made just nine half-centuries, with a highest score of 79.

What makes it all so puzzling is that Botham clearly had the range of talents to be one of the greatest ODI players of any era. He had skill and power with the bat, craft and explosive swing with the ball. His performances in the ODI arena are one of cricket’s more curious failures.


7 & wicketkeeper. Matt Prior (England): 58 Tests, average 42.6; 68 ODIs, average 24.1.

For the last four years, Prior has been one of the highest-value cricketers in the Test game, scoring important runs regularly, and with considerable style, his reliability with the gloves increasing seemingly in direct correlation with the shininess of his pate.

His batting in Tests is a pyrotechnic cocktail of classical strokeplay and 21st-century innovation, all delivered with mellifluously classy timing, and often at its best in pressurised match situations. It is a blend that ought to have transferred seamlessly to ODIs. Instead, it has transferred to ODIs as seamlessly as Inzamam transferred to the Atkins diet.

In ODIs, Prior has failed in various incarnations over several years, and in multiple places in the batting order, leading to allegations that the Sussex Swashbuckler has a secret twin who takes the field in ODIs whilst the real Matt Prior attempts to execute a Houdini-style escape from a cricket bag to alert the confused ECB.

Prior’s Test strike rate of 64 runs per 100 balls is the seventh best of the 67 players who have scored at least 1000 Test runs since his 2007 debut. His ODI strike rate of 76 is the 74th best of the 130 batsmen who have scored more than 1000 ODI runs since Prior first donned the sacred blue of England eight years ago.

Of wicketkeeper-batsmen in Tests since May 2007, Prior has the best average, challenged closely only by Dhoni. In ODIs in the same period, even discounting Prior’s early ODI struggles before his Test career began, he is tucked in towards the back of the pack, in between Mushfiqur Rahim and Carlton Baugh. Aged almost 31, Prior still has time to rectify this, but the clock is ticking increasingly loudly.

Good in Tests, rubbish in ODIs XI - part one

Fed up of Vaughan's one-day ineptitude, the ECB allowed him to use a metal bat - though, only a miniature version - in the format, hoping it would change things around. It didn't
© Getty Images



Welcome to part one of the official and unarguable Confectionery Stall Good-In-One-Format-But-Rubbish-In-Another XIs.

England’s coach, guru, spiritual leader, bicker-mediator, and ego-guidance-counsellor Andy Flower suggested after the World Twenty20 that international players would increasingly specialise in one format or another, as the time-guzzling hydra that is the world cricket calendar, and its increasingly numerous and ravenous heads, make more and more demands of Planet Earth’s leading cricketers.

Several top-level cricketers have pre-empted this by failing to replicate world-beating performances in one format of the game in another. Garfield Sobers, for example, who appears on no one’s list of Most Useless Test Cricketers Of All Time – he is, at the very worst, approximately the 2675th Rubbishest Ever Test Cricketer, and some argue that he even challenges Don Bradman for the currently-prestigious 2682nd spot on that hotly-contested chart. However, the Bajan Beethoven had an ODI batting average of 0 – worse than the heroically, indefatigably inept Chris Martin.

Admittedly, Sobers played in just one ODI, compared with Martin’s 20, and batted just once, compared to Martin’s seven glorious innings, so can perhaps be forgiven for falling an agonising eight runs short of the Kiwi’s career total. Sobers’ solitary one-dayer was West Indies’ first, and he compounded his duck by conceding the winning runs to England batting legend Bob Willis. Had the West Indian not made the crucial error of almost completely pre-dating the ODI era, however, I think it is fair to assume he would have proved a more than useful ODI operator, and that batting average of 0 would have risen. Significantly. It is also fair to assume that, had Martin not been congenitally allergic to willow and with a lifelong phobia of having padding strapped to his legs, he might have had a more productive batting career.

Some ground rules for these XIs:

● I have ignored T20Is due to lack of evidence. When more T20Is have been played, I may revisit this. However, a third corner to this selectorial see-saw would complicate matters considerably – XIs of players who were adequate in Tests, awesome in ODIs and atrocious in T20Is, plus all the vices and versas involved, is a project for a very rainy day. Or the next Ice Age.

● Players must preferably have definitively failed in one format and unquestionably succeeded in the other, rather than just being significantly better in one. Lance Klusener, for example, was one of the most effective ODI allrounders ever, averaging 41 with the bat and 29 with the ball, and, whilst his equivalent Test averages of 32 and 37 are not in the same league, they still qualify him as a decent Test cricketer. Saqlain Mushtaq, Brett Lee and Andrew Flintoff were all statistically far more effective with the ball in the shorter game, but still formidable Test bowlers. Amongst the numerous top-class Test batsmen who did not fully replicate their five-day successes in the one-day arena, Allan Border (Test average: 50), David Gower (44) and VVS Laxman (almost 46) all averaged 30 in ODIs,
but cannot be said to have completely failed as one-day players. Leonardo da Vinci was notoriously good at drawing. He made an adequate spaghetti bolognese. Probably. That did not make him an appalling chef.

● Minimum Test appearances: 10. Minimum ODI appearances: 20.

● The above rules can be flouted at the discretion of the selectors if, for example, they are struggling to find a wicketkeeper who completely flunked his Test career but was a one-day superstar.

● The selectors’ decision is final and legally binding. All selected players must report for winter endurance training in Verkhoyansk, Siberia, next Monday.

We begin with the Test-Stars-But-One-Day-Flops XI, a keenly contested selection, for which many players have made persuasive cases through years of dedicatedly failing to replicate their five-day form in the one-day arena.