Pakistan and English reverse swing

dcsiva — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:18:00 GMT

The Champions Trophy has been "postponed" until October next year. There goes the end of non-South Asian teams touring Pakistan. Meanwhile, with some big doses of help from his seam bowlers, Dhoni continues to carry the Indian batting line-up:

His critics keep asking why he is shy of batting higher up the order – as if he were afraid of taking up responsibility. And each time he hears such a refrain, Team India's captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni keeps offering them many reasons, the most important of which happens to be taking up greater responsibility.

On Sunday at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, by holding himself back until the fall of the fourth wicket, Dhoni showed yet again that he is ready to bear the cross of marshalling the resources in the latter half of the innings. And he came up with another fine exhibition of his mature approach to keeping India's innings together.

And some big news from the 2005 Ashes, as Marcus Trescothick admits to drug mint use during the series. If it had been a Pakistani admitting to cheating with reverse swing...? Nestaquin expects that the MBEs to be returned at the very least:

In his new tome, Trescothick writes that he was in charge of a conspiracy to use mints to manufacture the shine on the ball to increase the efficiency and longevity of the deadly reverse-swing that rattled the Australian middle-order. No wonder McGrath and co. could not replicate the late swing that Flintoff and Jones regularly produced in the same conditions. The Australians played within the rules. The English did not.

Fletcher and Vaughan encouraged the ball tampering and Trescothick admits in his book that he even experimented before the series began until he found the right brand of mint. He also writes that the English team tried using sugary sweets to create a false shine during the 2001 Ashes series. Logic suggests that in the years between the English tampered with the ball against every opponent at home.

To put this incident in perspective for our loyal English readers I offer an analogy. Maradona’s hand of god goal was a spur of the moment decision. The English fraud was planned and executed by the coach, the captain and his deputy over many years, many matches and hundreds of net sessions.

Lastly, I may have suggested that he really should be the next great Jamaican fast bowler, but JC brings news that the person Usain Bolt most wants to meet in life is...Matthew Hayden. Perhaps he meant by "meet" something like "knock his head off with a 100mph bouncer"?

Vaughany takes on Aggers

dcsiva — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:06:00 GMT

Patrick Kidd writes about an interesting interview with Michael Vaughan in which the latter has a go at Jonathan Agnew:

"Well I got three good balls and Test cricket can be tough," Vaughan said, which is fair enough, but then added: "Anyway, you didn't bowl in any Test matches because you weren't good enough." The implication was clear: don't criticise me if you haven't been there yourself, unfortunately as well as rude it was incorrect.

"Look in Wisden," Agnew said, referring to his three Tests in 1984-85, yet still Vaughan carried on: "Well you weren't any good anyway."

Oh dear. Out first ball in the Test today too, as South Africa take some early wickets. Kidd has also started a countdown to the Ashes next year that's worth reading.

Cover Points : Ashes

Pakistan and English reverse swing

Vaughany takes on Aggers