2012 in review: The moans and groans

2012 has been another busy year for cricket with a lot of positives to look back on. But in this particular article I’ll look at some of the things which have got steam coming out of my ears over the past twelve months. There is only one place to start:

1. The weather

2012 was an absolutely shocking year weather-wise. Club cricketers, county cricketers and international cricketers spent most of the English summer watching weather forecasts and huddled inside pavilions. Whole rounds of Championship matches were virtually wiped out and, as a result, Yorkshire were promoted after drawing eleven matches. Edgbaston was underwater every time they tried to play an international. The club season was even worse hit. My local league surpassed the previous record for matches called off in a season before the half-way point had even been reached. Quite simply the rain wreaked havoc during the English season.

2. The schedule for England v South Africa

It was one of the most eagerly anticipated non-Ashes Test series for years but a combination of England’s performance, the Olympics and the schedule combined to make it a peripheral event in the 2012 experiences of most sports fans.  Whilst the ECB could do very little to change matters on the field, the schedule left a lot to be desired. For a start there were only three matches, making a mockery of the designation of matches between the two sides as an ‘icon’ series to be contested over five. In addition, the 2^nd Test at Headingley clashed directly with the most important sports event to hit British shores, ever. Even my eyes were elsewhere when Kevin Pietersen was producing one of his masterclasses. Finally, the two Tests either side of the Olympics were both held in London. Although good crowds turned up, it seemed odd to give the two most lucrative cricket matches of the year to a city who’s sports fans could not complain of a shortage of world class competition. The 30 seconds cricket got on Sports Personality of the Year showed how much this series had been marginalised. That could easily have been avoided with more sensible scheduling.

3. The BCCI’s stance on photographers

As somebody who’s Dad was a professional golf photographer, and campaigned extensively on behalf of photographers in all sports, it saddened me to see the BCCI withold accreditation from major photographic agencies and insist that the only published pictures came from their website.  The British press deserve a pat on the back for deciding not to take the BCCI pictures. The BCCI’s stance sets a dangerous precedent for press freedom. But more than that it is a tremendous kick in the teeth to the specialist photographers, who havemade a career out of being amongst the best in their field. Given that the BCCI have no real interest in how good the pictures are, it can only be assumed that their photographers are those willing to work for the lowest salary and won’t take any pictures which paint the board in a bad light. The industry is already facing challenges in the 21^st century environment, and it seems ridiculous that cricket’s administrators want to make life even harder for skilled professionals that deserve to make a living.

4.  The actions of the Sri Lankan board

Whilst the BCCI’s sins are well known, less attention has been paid to SLC. At the start of the year they couldn’t afford to pay their players. So they charged British fans extortionate prices to get into the Galle Test. Arguably fair enough. Then they hosted a World Twenty20, which should have brought in lots of cash. But they still felt the need to cancel or shorten Test series after Test series to make room for ODIs against India. This only gets worse next year, and is already starting to have an effect on other nations. West Indies had a thin schedule in the first place, but their series at home to Sri Lanka has now been cancelled to make way for guess what? An ODI tri-series involving India. Nobody would argue with Mahela Jayawardene when he says that he has “lost all confidence in dealing with SLC”.

5. Calls for a franchise system in England

Sorry if you’ve heard this one from me before - it’s a bit of a personal campaign of mine. This summer player after player, pundit after pundit, former player after former player, came out to pledge their support for an IPL or Big Bash-style franchise system in the UK. The justification was that it would spice up the competition, bring the crowds back and attract global stars. But every single person that wanted a franchise system was missing the point. In the long-run its unrealistic for domestic cricket in England to fill big grounds whoever’s playing and wherever its played. Franchises would surely be given to the big cities, robbing those grounds which actually do well out of Twenty20 of their main income stream. Meanwhile, its assumed that Yorkshire fans will suddenly want to support the Leeds franchise in the new T20, and that those who pour in for T20 at Chelmsford will head to The Oval. At the end of the day franchises can’t do anything about the rain either…

Too much rest for the wicked?

Over the last two days we have witnessed two Twenty20 Internationals. First, India beat England at the new ground in Pune on Friday evening, before tonight South Africa hammered New Zealand in Durban. Only one of the four teams involved was fielding anything remotely resembling a first choice XI, and even that wasn’t quite full strength. The prime reason for this is decisions taken by team managements to rest players, a practice which has become exponentially more popular over the last year. The rested list for just these two games would make a world-beating team of its own:

Virender Sehwag, Hashim Amla, Jacques Kallis, Kevin Pietersen, AB de Villiers (wk), Albie Morkel, Graeme Swann, Morne Morkel, Steven Finn, James Anderson, Lonwabo Tsotsobe

In addition to this lot New Zealand were missing a player refusing to tour because of issues with the hierarchy (Ross Taylor), and a player not picked because the hierarchy have issues with him (Jesse Ryder). Meanwhile, England captain Stuart Broad was on a lengthy injury list.

And its not just the shortest form of the game that is afflicted by this trend. England will return to India for ODIs in January without at least three first-choice players, and South Africa and Australia have also taken their best players out of action in recent 50-over matches.

Although players have been taking the odd tour game or domestic match off for years, it was Australia that pioneered resting players from full internationals. When at their mid-2000s zenith the policy kept McGrath and Warne fresh, whilst handing richly deserved international caps to the likes of Martin Love, Andy Bichel and Stuart MacGill.

It is still Australia that perhaps lead the way with their rest policy which, in the case of their quick bowlers, often verges on rotation. The key difference is that it would appear that they don’t have a set first-choice attack. Instead, they have a pre-conceived idea that bowler x will be withdrawn after a couple of Tests, to be replaced by bowler y. I think that this is proving dangerous, both for performance and for fitness. As I will come on to, resting is a good thing in moderation. But when somebody isn’t allowed to get a good amount of overs under their belt, they find themselves unprepared for the strains of playing Test cricket, where you have to push yourself for that final spell after a long day in the field. Pat Cummins and James Pattinson are both arguably victims of this policy.

That is not to say that resting players is a bad thing per se. With the amount of cricket that is now played everybody involved with the game, whether they be batsmen, bowlers, coaches or even mere punters need a break from time to time. The risk of injury and burnout ahead of the most important Test series is an unnecessary gamble to take on the very best players. It is, however, a little frustrating when people to buy pricey tickets on the premise that they will see the best players in the world in action, only to see virtual B-teams take to the field. It also takes matches out of their wider context, as whoever loses can always make the excuse that they weren’t at full strength.

So, resting must be a good thing in moderation. But too much of it can not only devalue international matches but also leave young players in particular undercooked. It is the job of team managements to ensure that they strike the perfect balance between rest and play so as that their greatest assets are fit and firing at the pivotal moments.

Test attendances in decline? Maybe, but not for lack of interest

In recent years many thousands of column inches have been filled by writers bemoaning declining attendances for Test cricket worldwide, and on that basis hypothesising about the impending death of the format. In this article I will attempt to explain why Test audiences vary so much. I will also argue that the chances of Test cricket ending any time soon is about as high as that of the Mayan prophecy being proved correct, and that there are in fact many reasons to be positive about continuing interest in the oldest form of the game.

So, what exactly is the current situation? The common conviction is that whilst grounds remain full in England and Australia, crowds are in serious and potentially terminal decline elsewhere.

The first part of that statement is largely true: most Tests in England still sell out, and large audiences are also common in Australia (although the current Test in Hobart is not a great example of that). One reason for this is that matches are played at a relatively small number of grounds, most of which have long traditions of hosting annual Test Matches. People get into the habit of buying tickets for a day of their local Test each year, and so there is less impetus to attract supporters who haven’t come along in the past. This filters down to younger generations, who first get taken along by their parents and then take on the ritual themselves. A second reason is that cricket supporters in these two countries perhaps have more flexibility to take days off work to watch the cricket than their Asian or West Indian counterparts, allowing grounds to be full on weekdays. Finally, scheduling is good on the whole, with a lot of Test Matches over the holiday season and weekends.

Those Tests which struggle to draw crowds in England and Australia are largely exceptions which prove the rule. Grounds like the Swalec Stadium, the Rose Bowl and to a lesser extent Bellerive Oval have a lesser Test Match tradition than Lord’s, Old Trafford and the SCG. Matches at these venues have also often been played off peak, and against less attractive opposition. Consequently, attendances are lower with weather less conducive to cricket-watching and people more likely to have to work. So, yes, Test attendances do remain good in Test cricket’s two most ancient dominions.

But what about elsewhere? The logical place to start is India, where a diet of limited-overs cricket has supposedly taken over, resulting in a significant in interest in Tests. I would contest this thesis. Interestingly, attendances remain highest where Tests have long been played – good numbers turned out for the recent matches at Mumbai and Kolkata, and Bengaluru also does well. Although we might not have the 100,000 that would watch at Eden Gardens twenty years ago, this can easily be explained by massive changes to Indian society. Back then going to the match was the only reasonable way for the then vast majority of poverty-stricken Indians to follow the cricket without waiting for the paper the next morning. Now, with the Internet, satellite television and an increase in wealth, less people feel the need to make the effort of spending a day at the cricket. A sufficient number still do though, particularly when England, Australia or Pakistan are in town. Despite not quite half-filling Eden Gardens, the crowd for last week’s Test would almost certainly have filled Lord’s and was almost certainly the highest in terms of total number of spectators for any Test Match in 2012. In line with the pattern identified in England and Australia, the worst crowds are at grounds in areas with no Test Match tradition – Nagpur and Mohali are key examples, both located some distance from large population areas and both experiencing large numbers of empty seats for Tests. In the recent past the BCCI have also often done themselves few favours, scheduling Tests to run Monday to Friday on some occasions, and thus robbing themselves of the days when most people attend.

The link to limited-overs cricket is worth examining in more depth. Although Indians undoubtedly have a greater love for the short formats than English fans do, it is worth considering that attendances for a Test are spread over five days. This is a simple fact which is often forgotten when commentators attempt to compare turnout for one-off ODIs and Twenty20 Internationals with attendances for individual days of a Test. The same spectator is unlikely to go to more than one day of a Test, so its surely logical that for an ODI, where all spectators have to attend at the same time, the crowd on that one day will be higher than for any individual day of Test cricket. In fact, this is far from being purely the Asian phenomena that people think it is. Even in England ODIs almost always sell out despite the perceived preference for Tests.

The pattern in Sri Lanka, West Indies and Bangladesh (a lack of recent home matches mean I’ve left out Pakistan, but they’d probably be in this group) is closest to that in India. It is in these countries and New Zealand where Test attendances are most embarrassing. However, in none of these were huge daily crowds commonplace at any point in the recent past. Economic constraints on supporters are probably the main issue here – in the West Indies, attendances are regularly considerably higher at weekends and on public holidays. But new stadiums built away from town also unsurprisingly do badly, such as the Sir Vivian Richards ground in Antigua and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. It should also be noted that even one-day matches don’t usually produce anything like a full house in these nations, so radical ideas like day-night Tests are unlikely to make a marked difference, particularly once the novelty wears off.

South Africa and New Zealand are outliers. New Zealand’s pitifully poor crowds are best explained by a pure lack of interest in the national team in a rugby mad country. It is here, more than anywhere, that you feel day-night Tests could actually make a difference. South Africa is more confusing. Their crowds are rarely as strong as England’s and Australia’s despite a good team, the popularity of cricket, and their grounds have hosted Tests for years. A potential explanation is that the Test-hosting tradition was interrupted by Apartheid, after which limited-overs cricket established itself as the fashionable format to take the family to. Economic factors may also play a part. But, overall, they also could do better.

We’ve established that crowds in England and Australia are better than elsewhere, and offered some explanations for the perceived decline. I’ll now turn my attention to why I think Test cricket has a bright future everywhere, with the possible exception of New Zealand.

Whilst the multitude of ways to follow Tests in the 21^st Century, now including Cricinfo, Twitter, Satellite TV, Digital Radio and iPhone apps might be playing a part in keeping some people away from the ground, it can only be increasing interest in the game. Some years ago most England overseas tours were given only minimal coverage, and hence received little public attention. These days we can follow them as closely as we can home Test series. I have no reason to believe that this is not the case in India and also elsewhere. One observation of mine is that many of the micro-bloggers moaning about a lack of support for Test Matches won’t attend a Test Match themselves each year, despite following the format extremely closely. I’m willing to bet that they would have done twenty years ago.

Things can be further improved. This could be done by ensuring that every Test Match includes guaranteed play at the weekend, and so starts no earlier in the week than Thursday, with the exception of matches played over holidays. In addition, Test cricket should be kept away from big grounds with no Test Match tradition. Nagpur and Mohali should thus be consigned to one-day matches. This shouldn’t mean that Tests should exclusively be played where they always have been, but new grounds should be carefully picked and not be so big that they always appear half-full or worse.

Overall, I firmly believe that Test cricket has a bright future. Any perceived decline in attendances has been exaggerated, and should not necessarily be equated with declining interest in the longest form of the game. On the contrary, I believe that Tests are being followed by more people than ever before, and that this trend is unlikely to stop soon.

Time to hang up the sunglasses

The appointment of Duncan Fletcher as India’s coach following Gary Kirsten’s decision to return to South Africa after the 2011 World Cup success seemed strange at the time. And now, eighteen months and nine Test defeats later, it appears even more misguided. With the team having got worse rather than better under his watch, it is surely time to hang up his sunglasses, or else they could soon descent into freefall.

Quite what attracted India to Fletcher is unclear. Yes, he did a good job with England, and led the team to some landmark successes. But however good his record with England was, he just seemed unsuited to the Indian job from the outset. Nasser Hussain has said that Fletcher’s greatest skills with England were ‘planning’ and ‘man-management’. Neither would seem to be key attributes for the role in India: planning is in the hands of N. Srinivasan and the BCCI whilst those, such as Greg Chappell, that have tried to man-manage India’s superstars have found that that it’s the wrong way to approach things. Fletcher was also well passed 60 when given the Indian job, and it can be argued that he belongs to an earlier school of world-class coaches than current masters like Kirsten and Andy Flower.

Whilst Kirsten and in particular Flower would appear to have a say in every significant decision that needs making, its also very difficult to tell quite what Fletcher’s done since taking charge. His press conferences with England were often caricatured as dour and uninteresting. But at least he gave them. Since taking the job he has hardly faced the Indian media; fielding coach Trevor Penney was left to take the questions after Day 2 in Kolkata. Whilst Penney’s answers might have been more interesting, Fletcher’s absence raises questions of whether he’s willing to hold himself accountable for the team’s failings. Even were he not actually to blame, a strong leader would take it upon himself to not only take his share of the responsibility, but also to ensure that changes are made to put things right.

And it’s a reticence to change things which is perhaps been Fletcher’s greatest weakness in his time at the helm. After seeing the team annihilated twice in quick succession away from home, something needed to be altered. Perhaps in personnel – it strikes me as ridiculous that Ajinkya Rahane, a 24 year-old with a first-class average of 64 is yet to make his debut. But more pertinently in attitude. A hallmark of the whitewash in England was that Indian heads dropped early, leading to some woeful fielding and village bowling. At the time they at least had an excuse for fielding, but with Dravid and Laxman gone the average age is now significantly lower, and the same problems persist. Whilst Cook and Trott were going about their business, the Indian bowlers rarely looked like breaking through – and when they did they dropped the catches. A properly motivated team keeps going hard through the tough patches. Fletcher must be held accountable for these failings in part.

Furthermore, mistakes Duncan made with England are being repeated. When England went to Australia in 2006/07, Andrew Flintoff (as captain), Ashley Giles and Geraint Jones were all picked for the 1^st Test despite having either hardly played, in the first two cases, or lost form completely in the third case. Fletcher’s India are doing the same thing. Given the depth of talent in the Indian domestic game, particularly in the batting department, it is near impossible to justify the selections for this series of Gautam Gambhir (who last reached three figures almost three whole years ago) and Yuvraj Singh (who was not first pick before his cancer battle, and had played two first-class matches since). That Gambhir has since found some form is neither here nor there – he shouldn’t have been in the team. Meanwhile, Harbhajan Singh had done nothing in the Ranji Trophy or his stint with Essex last summer to earn a recall. Rahane, Manoj Tiwary, Rohit Sharma and Ravindra Jadeja are just a few of those left on the sidelines while the pampered one-time, and often one-day, heroes add to their cap tally. It would be wrong to lay the blame for this entirely at Fletcher’s door. But a good coach should surely have enough influence to get the XI he wants from the selectors.

A tour of South Africa awaits next winter, and without change a full house of overseas whitewashes against Test cricket’s big three is on the cards. Relying on a strong home record, which is itself in the process of collapsing, is simply not good enough. What India need is a coach who can deal with the media, take the lead in team selection and strategy, and instil belief in a team in transition. With Flower committed to England, that man could be Tom Moody. Moody was a well-received coach of Sri Lanka, perhaps the next most difficult job in the world game after the Indian one. His work in the media means he’s be sure to appear at press conferences, and he understands the game better than most.

So, this writer thinks its time for Fletcher to go. He served England well on the whole, and will forever be associated with the introduction of central contracts, and a bigger coaching staff. He will also be remember as the Ashes winning coach of 2005. But his spell with India has been one long nightmare, which he desperately needs to wake up from.

The great debate

Even as Ricky Ponting hangs up his baggy green, and Sachin Tendulkar struggles to accept a seemingly irreversible decline,  heralding the end of one of Test cricket’s greatest generations of batsmen may seem a little premature. After all, age would appear to be having few ill affects on Jacques Kallis. But the ongoing Test series’ featuring India and England, Australia and South Africa, do have a distinct feeling of the changing of the guard about them. Once immortals have become weak links, and with every Ponting poke outside off-stump or Sachin cloth to the man in the deep the realisation that their glittering careers are staggering to a close has become ever more apparent. Thus, now would seem the perfect moment to engage in one of modern cricket’s big debates – of all the wonderful batsmen of the past twenty years or more, who is the greatest?

One of the things which has made Test cricket such a joy to watch over the past generation is the huge variety of styles exhibited by the top batsmen. Compare the enticing majesty of Tendulkar, with Rahul Dravid’s unrelenting determination. Then take Brian Lara’s bludgeoning blade and ability to score the same number of runs in a day than many can muster in months. Finally, contrast that with Ponting’s competitiveness and Kallis’s versatily. The easiest conclusion to reach is that all are legends in their own ways, and leave it at that. But that wouldn’t be much fun on a cold December evening in London.

Pure statistics rarely tell the full story, and it must be said they give us few clues as we seek to differentiate between these six bona fide greats: Tendulkar has the most hundreds; Kallis the best average. Lara has the highest score; Dravid the fewest ducks.What is striking, however, is that they fill the first five slots on the Test runscoring charts. Some might say that this is the result of more Tests being played, and of course that comes into it. But the fitness involved in remaining at world class standard for the best part of 200 Tests, as Tendulkar has done, is an incredible achievement itself. Particularly when you add in all the one-dayers and most recently IPL that the modern cricketer has to fit into their schedule.

Enough fence sitting. Time to establish who the greatest of the great is. To do so I’ll assess each of the five legends mentioned above individually, before coming to a conclusion.

My instincts tell me that Dravid is the best defensive player of the lot - he wasn’t called ‘The Wall’ for nothing, after all. Although his castle was in fact knocked down more times than anybody else in Test cricket, he was more adept at squeezing out runs for India in challenging circumstances than any of his illustrious colleagues, Tendulkar included. The best example of this was the last tour of England where India were woeful but Dravid sublime, in spite of advancing age and a top class bowling attack to cope with. Aggressive strokes are not the enduring image of Dravid, and a possible weakness is that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he was never satisfactorily able to find an extra gear when his team really needed it. A further weakness is his record against the Australians, by far the best team of his era: against them he scored just 2 of his Test hundreds and averaged below 40. But one of those was perhaps his greatest innings - 233 at Adelaide in late 2003 which set up a rare victory for India down under.

Jacques Kallis is often spoken of as perhaps the greatest all-rounder of all time, but by my criteria his place in the batting pantheon is more secure. Not only does he have a phenomenal average, but he’s still going strong, and if anything improving his game. A few years ago, he’d have been very much a junior member of this club, but right now he has a strong case to be at the top of the pile. One by one he’s dismissed almost everything which people used to see as a weakness: the lack of a double-hundred, a perhaps selfish reluctance to expand his game, and a poor record in England. If any nagging doubt remains, it is over the fact that he’s often the supporting member of a partnership rather than the enforcer. Whilst Lara, Ponting and Tendulkar take it upon themselves to take the game away from you, Kallis has often sat at the other end, accumulating centuries in the company of Gary Kirsten, Graeme Smith or Hashim Amla. Compared to the others, defining moments also fail to spring to mind: four hundreds in successive Tests against West Indies was a mighty achievement, but he’s rarely been the only man to score runs at the difficult moments.

So to the man of the moment - Ricky Ponting. Us English have a love/hate relationship with him. The way he was booed to and from the crease in England reflects how he’s respected as a batsman, but also weaknesses of character which perhaps don’t endear him to the neutral. Compared to the unflappable Tendulkar, Dravid or Kallis, Ponting has been involved in his fair share of controversial moments. Who could forget him swearing at Duncan Fletcher about England’s use of substitute fielders after being run out by Gary Pratt at Trent Bridge, or elbowing Mohammad Amir, or wagging his finger at the umpires at the MCG. As a batsman, Ponting was also the most competitive of the quintet: when in full flow, as in his match-saving knock at Old Trafford in 2005, you could see the passion for his team in every perfectly timed hook shot. But he was not without weakness. Early on his innings teams reckoned that he fell across his stumps, and he often did. Its hard to identify such a regular manner of dismissal amongst the others. But he made sure he got in and made it count when it mattered. He’s the only one of the five to have scored a World Cup final century, and he’s made England hurt on the field countless times.

Ask most England players of the last twenty years for their take on the debate and they’ll say Lara. That might have been influenced by time spent watching him compile 775 runs over two innings in 1994 and 2004 - Nasser Hussain was on the field throughout both. But Lara undoubtedly had a destructive quality perhaps absent from any of the other stars of this generations: whilst you feel you can at least contain Kallis, Dravid, and even Ponting and Tendulkar, it would seem there was no way to contain an in form Lara. But he also appeared to be less consistent than the others and in some ways it could be said he cared less. As a captain he wasn’t particularly inspirational or at all successful, and he sometimes gave his wicket away when his team needed him to score tough runs.

The four listed above are all greats, but this writer thinks that one stands out above the rest. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Did Tendulkar have any weaknesses? At his best, I’d argue he didn’t, other that perhaps occasionally getting trapped lbw swinging one into his pads early on. He had a majesty about him which made a Tendulkar ton easier on the eye than any of his contemporaries. And then there is the longevity. To play Test cricket for at least 23 years is an incredible achievement in itself - to put that into context England captain, Andrew Strauss, who retired after 100 Tests, did not make his debut until Tendulkar has been playing Tests for the best part of 15 years. But to play Test cricket for that long and average in the mid-50s is simply incredible. He’s also produced countless match-changing contributions - the most memorable was perhaps the to ton he scored to win the Test against England in Chennai four years ago, just weeks after the devastating bombs in his hometown of Mumbai.

Overall, I feel that in their respective primes Tendulkar was harder to contain than Kallis, more composed than Ponting, more dynamic than Dravid and more consistent than Lara. Having said that it would be easy to argue for any one of these, whose names will surely endure like those of Hobbs, Bradman, Hammond and Sobers. As the changing of the guard continues, we should also look to the future: another generation of batsmen are fast producing fantastic figures. But they will have done incredibly well to match the one which is entering its final act.