Roy roving around in the wild

dcsiva — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:06:00 GMT

Ottayan has a thoughtful post on the treatment of Trescothick by the ECB:

In the macho world of sports, a player who exhibits mental fragility more often than not is treated dismissively and sarcastically. In Trescothick’s case, the English team management could have taken a similar path, treated his ailment flippantly, simply asked him to stop being a sissy and continue playing. Instead, they gave him the space to recover by keeping his ailment private. Sadly, he failed to overcome his neurosis.

The comments are worth reading, particularly scorpicity's. Is it possible that Andrew Symonds is in the same position. A man desperately in need of help as he wanders in the wilderness?

The Aussie press aren't exactly holding their punches. See Symonds' big-head and Symonds as a clowns. But, at the moment at least, the ACB will pick him for India on purely cricketing grounds and his teammates are supporting him:

Symonds' relationship with senior players and officials is icy after he was sent home for going fishing during a team meeting, but Bracken believes that a strong bond continues to exist between all players, and has offered to hear any of the all-rounder's concerns.

"Whatever he is feeling, how he is, if he wants to give me a call, I am happy to chat and talk about whatever he is going through," Bracken said. "I have sent him a text this week and received a reply, as have a lot of the other boys.
...
Australian selector Jamie Cox said Symonds' latest infringement would not count against him when he does make himself available. "As of now, Andrew has been given time to sort things out. But we will make a decision (about his selection) when that time comes around," Cox said.

"But the decision to pick him will surely be on cricketing grounds. It will have nothing to do with whatever has happened recently. Disciplinary issues will have no bearing on that decision."

See also a wonderful article by Sriram Veera on Sadanand Viswanath on finding some stability in life.

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"?

Cover Points : Marcus Trescothick

Roy roving around in the wild

Pakistan and English reverse swing