Telford Vice's Blog, page 371

Chucking shame reduces hard men to tears as ICC admit to ‘clamping down’ on crooked arms

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

GRANT Flower is no-one’s idea of a soft touch. He would punish himself for playing a poor stroke by running back to the Zimbabwe team’s hotel instead of taking the bus. His fingers are gnarled like tree roots from being broken “23 times”, he likes to say, while taking catches.

But, on September 16, 2000, in the middle of Queens Sports Club’s gracious, tree-lined oval, Flower sobbed tears of shame.

Three times in the eighth over of New Zealand’s second innings,...

Leading Edge: Why SA are not Australia

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

THE most impressive thing Australia have accomplished in Zimbabwe is not Glenn Maxwell impersonating AB de Villiers at the crease or Mitchell Johnson shattering windows. Instead, it involves their captain, a kid, and a cap.

While his team were playing the home side at Harare Sports Club on Monday, a metre two on the other side of the rope, Michael Clarke walked his dodgy hamstring around the boundary in the company of Darren Lehmann.

Captain and coach were in...

Anything SA can do, Zimbabwe can do worse

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

NOT even a hat-trick by Prosper Utseya could stop SA from winning their triangular series match against Zimbabwe in Harare on Friday.

SA, who were 142 without loss almost midway through their innings, crashed to 231 all out with Utseya and his fellow off-spinner, John Nyumbu, taking 8/78 between them on a dry, sharply turning pitch.

But anything SA could do, Zimbabwe could do worse – they were dismissed for 170 inside 40 overs to give SA victory by 61 runs.

Utse...

SA, Australia, India in ODI rankings snakes ’n ladders

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

RANKINGS matter. A lot. But don’t take a civilian’s word for it – according to Faf du Plessis, the rung a team occupies on the ladder carries a great deal of motivational weight.

“A lot of teams say the rankings don’t mean anything to them, but for us they’re very important,” Du Plessis said.

“To be the No. 1 test team in the world is a huge honour for us. We respect the hard work it took to get there.

“A year or two ago in the one-day set-up we were mid-table....

Affies too good for Aussies

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

AFFIES were too good for Australia in Harare on Wednesday, and SA earned a rousing seven-wicket victory into the bargain.

The triangular series match was decided with 20 balls to spare, when SA reached 328/3 in reply to Australia’s 327/7.

AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis, both graduates of the Pretoria high school and lifelong friends, scored more than three-quarters of the towering target between them with innings of 136 not out and 106.

Together they shared 2...

SA’s phony war ends

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

THE phony war SA have been fighting in Zimbabwe ends on Wednesday in the form of a one-day international against Australia in Harare.

But SA’s awakening is unlikely to be rude. In fact, all AB de Villiers needs to know his team face their stiffest challenge yet on their trip north of the Limpopo is his memory of last season’s Newlands test between Wednesday’s opponents.

With that series locked at a game apiece, the third test threatened to come apart at the sea...

Players taking to cricket by the numbers

http://www.GOcricket.com – http://www.gocricket.com/Players-taking-to-cricket-by-the-numbers/Telford-Vice/columnshow/40900333.cms

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

CRICKETERS can bat, bowl, field and run. But they can’t hide from the emotional triggers that snag the attention of players and public alike.

So, as much as the game’s stars will roll their eyes and protest with a stifled yawn that they could not care less about statistics and milestones or where they are in the pecking orders that litter the m...

Be afraid, SA – Mitchell Johnson is back

Times Media

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

BE afraid, SA. Be very afraid – the bastard’s back. Mitchell Johnson spent a good chunk of last summer scaring the bejaysus out of South Africans, and he was at it again in Harare on Monday.

This time his targets were not SA’s batsmen but a covey of SA-based television commentators perched just so atop the sightscreen at Harare Sports Club (HSC), where Australia played Zimbabwe in the first match of a triangular series.

Tinashe Panyangara loped in to bowl the 4...

Too many of Utseya’s revolutions televised in Zimbabwe’s twilight zone

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

NO Australian’s passport was stamped when Ricky Ponting brought his team to Bulawayo to play Zimbabwe during the 2003 World Cup, so grateful was Robert Mugabe for the illusion of normality that big cricket beamed live to the world could lend his twilight zone of a country.

But many spectators who used World Cup games played in Zimbabwe to protest the brutality of the regime were detained and tortured. Andy Flower and Henry Olonga got off lightly: the black ar...

SA batting beast has six months to stir, or be shaken

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Cape Town

NOT so fast, Lance Klusener said this week when the conversation turned to the batting worth to SA’s one-day side of players like Vernon Philander, Wayne Parnell, Kyle Abbott and Dale Steyn – bowlers to a man.

“The top six are there to score the runs. Then you can start to think about the bits and pieces from the other guys that can get you out of trouble occasionally.”

Occasionally? Klusener’s booming bat down the order got SA “out of trouble” with uncanny re...