Payback Time For England: ODI Series Update

Indian fans and pundits alike were hurt by their teams’ capitulation in England this summer to the extent they named the return series that began in India last Friday as the “Payback Series”.

And if teaching England a ruddy good lesson in One Day cricket was India’s primary objective for this tour and let’s be honest, it was a little bit, then India have succeeded, with devastating effect.

India have won the first two One Day Internationals of the tour by a mile and have been better than England in every facet of the game. The likes of Dhoni, Gambhir and Kohli have scored big runs, Umesh Yadav and Vinay Kumar look dangerous with the ball, a far cry from the impotent attack that toured England this summer, and perhaps most surprisingly India’s fielding has been razor sharp – much better than their English counterparts.

But for as good as India have been, and they have been very good, England have been poor and have gifted India these first two games.

Alastair Cook believes his sides problems are partly psychological, and certainly with only 1 win from their last 15 One Day Internationals in India, England may have a mental hurdle to overcome, but more worrying for Cooks’ side is that the balance of the team doesn’t look right and their tactics seem to be just scratched in the sand, changing from game to game.

England have lost wickets regularly in both innings in this series so far, and that is of particular concern. One has to question why for example, after his captain was out for a duck having won the toss and choosing to bat first, Craig Kieswetter elected to prod at a wide ball that did very little, giving his wicket away without troubling the scorers himself in Delhi?

Surely England’s batsmen know that if you lose a wicket, it’s best to be disciplined and consolidate for a period, rather than carrying on and losing further wickets in quick succession?

England’s bowlers are not completely absolved from blame here either. Apart from Bresnan, who has been the pick of the bowlers in both games, the rest have struggled.

England have played 3 quick bowlers in both matches but with no pace in the pitches or movement off the seam of through the dry Indian air, 30 pretty tame overs have been sent down which, once the new balls have worn soft, give the Indian batsmen time to set themselves before using the pace of the ball to earn easy runs. As bowlers tire, so the more expansive shots become easier.

England should have learnt all this from the World Cup here earlier this year. During that competition, the teams that fared best took pace off the ball almost all of the way through the innings to make it harder to score runs. Its fundamental stuff on the sub-continent.

England have Scott Borthwick in their squad, a young and talented leg-spinner from Durham, why not give him a go? Dropping a seamer for a second spinner may not rest that easily with England, but they have to adapt to the conditions and playing three seamers in a One Day International in India into opponents hands.

Cook mentioned a mental block that England need to overcome to triumph in India, but perhaps the issue is more deep-rooted than that. 40 overs-a-side cricket matches are played on the county circuit in England as opposed to 50 over matches at International level and perhaps that 10 over disparity has an effect on England players, to the extent they rush and panic when batting and try and force the issue when bowling?

It’s a theory, but by playing these One-Day-specific tours regularly going forward as the ECB plans to, England players will surely learn how to pace an innings better, when to push and when to consolidate, not to mention how to bowl to the conditions available to them; it still astounds me how few yorkers English bowlers bowl at the death when opposition attacks send down seemingly little else during the final few overs for instance.

There are fundamental flaws in the way England approach One Day cricket away from the comforts of home, particularly on the sub-continent, and these will take time to resolve. They might not win this series, in fact they might be on the end of a bit of a hiding from India, but if they can begin to develop a more savvy approach to One Day cricket, it won’t have been a wasted trip after-all.

Tom Huelin for DieHard Cricket Fans
Follow Tom on Twitter @tomhue1

Payback Series: Game 2 – Thoughts

The payback continues with interest. This time at the Ferozshah Kotla in Delhi.

• Again England did not pick Bell. Why is a mystery. Just hope that Bopara’s military medium isn’t the factor keeping him in the team ahead of Bell.
• An even bigger mystery is what is an underperforming Kieswetter doing in the team? They have Bairstow and Jos Butler is the reserves. In fact Butler is considered the better keeper by Somerset followers as well. Some re-juggling is certainly required.
• Good pace generated by Umesh Yadav. Maybe a bit wayward but the pace is there. As of NOW.
• And for a change India bowled well within time. Though I hardly see it getting mentioned anywhere.
• Gambhir should be opening. Can’t have makeshift openers like Parthiv Patel with Gambhir in the line-up.
• Good innings by Kohli. Nothing surprising from him in that. In fact, the partnership with Gambhir had a deja vu feeling written all over it.
• Indian conditions and the English seam bowling looks neutralized. On the basis of 2 games only. Still early days here.
• Victory by 8 wickets with about 80 balls to spare. One word. Comprehensive.

Let the payback continue.

Nishant Kumar for DieHard Cricket Fans
Follow Nishant on Twitter @NishantSKumar

Payback Series: Game 1 – Thoughts

It was time for revenge and payback, proclaimed our TV channels promoting the current India – England series in India. But 5 ODIs and a T20 do not give enough opportunity to give payback for the happenings over the summer in England. Yet it was nice to start with a win in the 1st ODI in Hyderabad. I could only watch the England innings. Followed the Indian innings via online text commentary at work. Here are my thoughts for the match.

• Why did England not play the “Sledgehammer of Eternal Justice”? Cook as captain and having to fit in Trott, KP, Bopara, Bell in one lineup. Thats an interesting conundrum. Still feel that Bell should have been the first one to be picked in this lot.
• No debut for Varun Aaron as yet. When will I get to see a school alumnus play for India. (Aside – his Facebook fan page is here)
• On paper, the bowling looked weaker than in England except the conditions had been reversed. This game showed how big the difference can be. (I know it is only one game. Still)
• Do English batsman in general have a difficulty against left arm spin? Ravindra Jadeja’s success here and the successful county stints enjoyed by Pragyan Ojha this season & Murali Kartik over the years certainly does point to that conclusion.
• Random Factoid – Almost 3 years since India beat England in an international match in any format. Last victory was in the Chennai Test, 2008 post the 26/11 incidents
• In summary, England’s opening performance in India reminded of India’s performance in England.
• 126 runs – a comprehensive win

Nishant Kumar for DieHard Cricket Fans
Follow Nishant on Twitter @NishantSKumar

India vs England Series Preview – And The Point Is ?

Critics have said that the series between India and England starting in Hyderabad on Friday 14th October is little more than a money spinning extravaganza, taking advantage of Indian fans love of limited overs cricket with a meaningless procession of five One Day Internationals and a T20 during a 3 week tour that has been shoe-horned into an already hectic international schedule.

Indeed this tour isn’t even an obligatory one. The ICC demands that every major cricketing nation plays each other home and away over a nine year period, something known as the Future Tours Programme and England touring India is certainly not a series in danger of defaulting on that promise any time soon.

For me though, this tour is a great idea. Never mind the financial implications; this One Day series pits current World Champions India against an England side hoping to claim their crown at the next World Cup in New Zealand and Australia in 2015.

Since winning the Ashes in January, the first time England have triumphed Down Under in 24 years, Andy Flower has put success in One Day cricket at the top of England’s agenda. However after a disappointing showing at the World Cup in April 2011, losing by 10 wickets to Sri Lanka in the quarter finals, changes were needed and Alastair Cook has since replaced Andrew Strauss as captain in this format.

With home series wins over Sri Lanka and India already secured under Cooks captaincy the future looks bright for this young side, but this tour of India will be their toughest assignment yet and we will learn a lot about just how far England have come by the end of it.

Historically England have struggled in India, winning only one of their last 13 One Day Internationals here, so any success enjoyed in this series will be a real statement of intent from Cook’s men.

But regardless of how this series progresses, it’s just nice to see England and the ECB focussing their efforts on 50 over cricket, rather than annexing a One Day International series awkwardly to the end of long test schedule, as if it were a warm-down exercise to the main event.

Look at the Ashes schedule last year. Many people, including Sir Ian Botham, bemoaned the decision to play 7 ODI’s at the end of such a draining and intense test series. Those One Day Internationals were supposed to be a warm-up for England’s World Cup campaign but with players tired and unmotivated, poor performances and injuries were all England took home from that series.

Whether One Day cricket is your thing or not is up to you, but one thing’s for sure: for England to prosper in this format it is imperative that they play more series like this one, focussing specifically on the 50 over game, building a specialist squad to compete with the best teams around.

This series should tell us a lot about whether England’s masterplan for world domination in every form of cricket is on course, but it is unlikely to be one-way traffic. Given India’s strength at home, plus England’s appalling record there, even a narrow defeat may give rise to optimism in the camp, depending on how well the side performs.

My only concern is that in continuing the rotation policy that sees Jimmy Anderson rested for this series, will we actually see an England One Day side that is essentially the first XI regularly enough before the World Cup in 2015?

In Australia last year, Alastair Cook shined the ball for the whole of the test series. Why? Because out of all the England players, he sweated the least (sweat on the ball reduced the chances of getting the ball to reverse swing).

To be the best, that level of detail needs to be considered, and I just hope that England remember to hone a winning first XI as well as amassing a huge pool of players from which to choose from.

Or perhaps I’m just being pedantic now?

Tom Huelin for DieHard Cricket Fans
Follow Tom on Twitter @tomhue1

The Mumbai Indians win the CLT20: stats and other stuff

For the first time in the T20 Champions League’s rich, three-year-old history, a team that didn’t win its domestic competition has been crowned the champion of champions. Just in case you doubt the accuracy of that fact, I’ve compiled a list of all the winners. Please take your time to go through it, however long and tedious it may seem.

Year	CLT20 Champions	Domestic Champions
2009	New South Wales	Yes
2010	Chennai Super Kings	Yes
2011	Mumbai Indians	No

Source: Brain

Sarcasm aside, this is actually a half-decent achievement for the Indians (Mumbai Indians, that is… I will never get over how stupid a name that is for the franchise). I would have taken any sort of win after, you know, that series. A pretty exciting CLT20 was exactly the sort of thing most Indian (Team India, not Mumbai) fans needed after being battered in Tests and ODIs. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it was… actually, I’m not going to say it at all, I’ll have someone do it for me.

Thanks, Cliche Correspondent Ravi Shastri.

Nope, not until you’ve perfected faking laryngitis. (terrible execution of dark humor here)

Anyway, it was a good tournament, mostly because I only tuned in towards the latter stages – my first game was RCB’s record chase. It’s quite the underdog story for Mumbai, actually, once all the talk about flouting the rules or whatever has been extinguished. No, Somerset, you weren’t the underdogs, because you really should have been the favorites to beat Mumbai. I know it’s a hard pill to swallow, but you’ve gotta accept that, despite having a well settled team, you really did lose to an IPL side missing half its regular XI.

The India-England ODI’s are a few days away, which is another post for another day. I’ll leave you with some stats relating to Mumbai’s CLT20 performance.

• Mumbai took the idea of T20 being a batsman’s game, and bitchslapped it into unconsciousness. Their highest run scorer was Kieron Pollard, who scored 123 runs at 20.5, just over one-third the number of runs scored by David Warner, the top-scorer (328).
• Pollard also scored one of Mumbai’s two fifties, the other one coming fromAiden Blizzard.
• Among those who actually made runs, Lasith Malinga had the second-highest strike rate (183.78) in the CLT20, with the highest being Kevon Cooper’s 191.17.
• Lasith Malinga made exactly as many runs (68) as Yusuf Pathan andSuresh Raina, in the same number of innings.
• Mumbai’s bowling stats, on the other hand, are pretty impressive. Malinga(10) and Abu Nechim Ahmed (8) are both among the top five wicket takers, and Harbhajan (7) sits just outside that.
• In that top five wicket takers’ list, though, Malinga (20) and Ahmed (17.4) are the only ones not to bowl 24 overs.
• This has nothing to do with Mumbai, but Trinidad’s spin duo of Badree andNarine have a combined economy rate of 4.46 rpo in the 48 overs they bowled. Wow.

Contributed by DHCF Rishabh Bablani
Rishabh’s personal blog

CricLit – The Sum-erset Of All Fears

SCCC-IA agent Alfonso Thomas

Tom Clanc-ingdownthewicket comes to the fore in this CricLit entry, lending his pen to a thriller that would put the world on a precipice. Perhaps one from which it might not recover as a new world order threatened to break into existence…

Chapter 17

The days were shorter now back home, Alfonso told himself. It wasn’t that the season had gone on late in India, just that days were shortening back in England. The earth’s orbit around the sun, and the way the axis of rotation was not perpendicular with the plane of the… ecliptic? Something like that.

The team coach dropped them off in front of the Chennai stadium, and he walked in, wondering when the last cup had been, aside from the 2005 Twenty20 Cup, when Graeme Smith was in flight and outlined by the Oval floodlights. Blackbirds.

About the only good news was that he didn’t bring the video of the CB40 final or the Friends Life T20 Finals Day – but that wasn’t quite true either, was it. He brought no videos home, but it was less easy to clear out the mind than to clear out the dressing room at Lord’s or the Rose Bowl or wherever…

Alfonso heard the sounds of the Chennai crowd, the TV was tuned to ESPN Star. The Mumbai dressing room was making noises. Toshiba Power Sixes. He walked into the Somerset dressing room to announce the team.

“Alfonso!” Kieswetter ran over to deliver his bat, followed by a plaintive appeal. “Alfonso, you promise we can win this tournament?”

Oh, shit… the kids were back in school and there was the matter of the other game up in Bangalore. Somerset had to, had to, had to… when! When could the run break loose. The semi finals were now half-done, and Somerset were currently his baby and the England players had come out a week behind, and he had to get them over the line if it was going to end this trophy-less run.

“I’m going to try, Craig,” Alfonso promised his wicketkeeper, who was too young to understand about any obligation beyond Somerset’s promise.

“Alfonso, you promise?”

“I don’t know.”

“Game time,” Trego announced. ” And tomorrow’s the Final day.”

Alfonso hugged each of his team mates, but the exercise in affection merely left a nervy spot on his conscience. What sort of a captain was he turning into? The start of the 2012 season was next April or May, and who could say if Somerset might have a trophy, finally, to their name for that? Better find out

Better find out the date of the Friends Life T20 and CB40 finals so that he could schedule it now. Try to schedule it now. Alfonso reminded himself that little things like promises to his team mates on the matter of trophies were – little things!

God, how did this ever happen. He watched the players talk in their dressing room, then himself headed out to the umpire. The toss was won. He elected to bat, before walking back to his team. He was banking on Trego and Kieswetter now. It was much more likely they’d get a good start, and his other batsmen were also more selective in their shots of late. The cool boxes held a bag full of – Red Bull, wasn’t it.

About where Lucozade Sport had been twenty years earlier. The taste in question was very fruity, to mask the amount of sugar it had, and lack of alcohol content, which wouldn’t have done any favours.

Alfonso looked at the scoreboard. If he were very lucky, Somerset might get 140/150 on the board before the Mumbai Indians chased. He needed those runs. At the ground, he lived on the hope that Somerset might win and his system was becoming saturated with expectation. Once he’d been able to nap in the dug-out, but no longer. By the start of play, his system was wired, and by late afternoon his body played a strange melody of fatigue and nerves that sometimes left him wondering if he were going a little bid mad.

Well. As long as he asked himself that question… A few minutes later, a wicket had fallen. Pity the sun had dried out the pitch. Trego had beaten himself for pace – he’d planned to be there for at least an hour, but… it was always something for Somerset, wasn’t it?

When he walked, there was that look of discomfort from the dug-out. On the way into the dressing room, he opened the locker door to pull a Jelly Bean from his kit bag. These he chewed and washed down with an energy drink, starting off his third bottle in less than 13 overs.

Trego was no longer there, though he’d left some foundation on which for Somerset to push on in the powerplay. Alfonso watched and saw some good running between the wicket. It was fine. He took the team sheet and flipped the batting order around, making the power-hitters his priority. Jos Buttler was now coming in next.

Alfonso settled back into his chair and allowed himself a smile. It was working. Going hard at the start would be the resurgence of Somerset’s trophy hopes. Shop owners in Chennai were loading up Scrumpy in anticipation of the extended stay of their English tourists. The team, explained Tresco who’d opted to stay in the town of Taunton, was after all of fairly decent potential with good players. The Champions League was a tour that would prove this. Champions League? Alfonso thought. Well, why not?

It’s worth it, Alfonso told himself. You helped bring that about. You helped make that happen. You took tickets, and if nobody else knows it, the hell with it. You know. God knows. Isn’t that enough? No, Alfonso told himself in a quiet flash of honesty.

So what if the idea of Somerset winning a trophy had not been completely original? What idea ever was? It had been his thought that would make it happen in Chennai, his captaincy had gotten the team through this far, his… he deserved something for it, some recognition, enough for a little footnote in Somerset’s history book, but would he get it?

Alfonso snorted into his Red Bull. No chance. Kieron Pollard, that clever chap, would be hitting everybody to all parts when Franklin, Symonds, Kanwar were all done with it. If Alfonso ever tried to get his bowlers to get them to play straight, it’d look like a poor line, bowling either to leg or off side – and not a good length.

Cheer up Alfonso. You’re still alive. You have the CB40, you have the Friends Life T20. You have the County Championship.

Pete Hayman for DieHard Cricket Fans
Follow Pete on Twitter @petehayman