Sports Illustrated» Cricket News, Results & Scores

Mohammad Aamer The One Bright Spot

jaya — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:08:38 +0000

Pakistan's Mohammad Aamer successfully appeals for the wicket of England's Jonathan Trott during day one of the first power Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham.

People, it is said, are like their weather. With the Himalayas in the north and semi-desert in the south, Pakistan is a country of climatic extremes, and it is well known their cricket team blow hot and cold.

Natural talent underpins their performances, but naivety undermines them. Their lack of sophistication is one of the reasons they have won only three of their past 20 Test matches. It was beautifully encapsulated during Thursday’s play.

The precocious Mohammad Aamer posed a constant threat with his waspish left-arm swingers delivered at a brisk pace and with predatory intent. The ball that dismissed Alastair Cook, angled in at middle stump and then bending away late, had old swingers purring.

The other Pakistan bowlers let their country down.

Mohammad Asif, sometimes a fast bowling conjurer, making the ball suddenly disappear from the batsman’s view, was pedestrian with the new ball, clumsily messing up his tricks and giving the England batsmen a straightforward morning.

His repertoire looked jaded and Strauss and Co played him while striding up the pitch.

The strapping Umar Gul lumbered to the wicket and bowled too short or overstepped the front line.

Danish Kaneria, the feisty leg-spinner, offered up amiable full tosses to hit. The fielding was pretty lamentable, highlighted by the wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal’s two shocking misses, never mind failing to move a muscle as one ball down the leg side shot to the boundary unimpeded.

If he is a Test keeper then I am the poet laureate.

England

This all meant that England, 103 for two at lunch, soon had the upper hand. They looked on course for 400. That, on a very dry pitch already taking spin, would be game, set and match.

Typically, Pakistan struck back immediately afterwards.

Asif temporarily rediscovered his sleight of hand and Kevin Pietersen, uncertain, tentative, playing like a man who had not batted for a year, never mind a month, was soon reduced to a puff of dust.

Jonathan Trott fell shouldering arms to one of Aamer’s beautiful dipping inswingers. Bustling to the wicket, his long dark mane flapping, Aamer bursts with skill and youthful exuberance and his bowling is loaded with menace. He has already taken more wickets than Wasim Akram had at this age. The England innings was back in the balance.

With Eoin Morgan walking out for his first serious Test innings – with due respect to Bangladesh – this was the time to go for the jugular.

But Pakistan’s perennial lack of ruthlessness let England breathe again. Aamer bowled only one more over before being removed and was not seen again until a brief spell after tea.

Asif mislaid his bag of tricks once more. Gul was ill-disciplined, his overstepping a symbol of that. (The Pakistani bowlers do not adopt the modern practice of marking out their run-ups with tape-measures and spray paint, preferring to rely on the old imprecise method of pacing them out and scar the turf.)

The ball was still swinging, but now two spinners were operating in tandem. Paul Collingwood and Morgan milked them for runs and manoeuvred England out of trouble.

Kaneria was the real weak link. His second ball of the match, delivered in the 16th over of the innings, at just after midday, turned prodigiously and beat Trott all ends up. But he served up at least half a dozen full tosses in his first spell and leaked easy runs on both sides of the wicket. He was unable to apply any pressure and bowled not a single maiden over in the entire day.

He betrayed the danger of a four-man bowling attack based round three pacemen and a spinner. The spinner is the pivotal member of that attack, since once the new ball has lost its hardness, he is relied on to hold up one end while the quicker men rotate from the other. If this ploy fails, it leaves a captain exposed. Kaneria conceded five runs an over and racked up the day’s second hundred. Salman Butt resorted to using eight bowlers in the day.

None of them could dislodge Morgan, whose batting was the epitome of Pietersen’s – calm, assured, utterly convincing. His timing is so clean his shots are almost soundless. He is hot property. Pakistan, by contrast, were lukewarm. They need to find some insulation from somewhere, and fast.

Courtesy of The Telegraph

The Invincibles Of West Indies Cricket

jaya — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:24:52 +0000

West Indies cricket players Viv Richards, Jeff Dujon and Gordon Greenidge are jubilant at a wicket in the Test Match. Pic Adrian Murrell/Allsport UK

To select an all-time XI after 82 years and 465 Test matches, from among 285 players, is no easy task, and especially so when the team under the microscope has produced some of the world’s best players and was for a long time rated the best in the world.

In selecting this side, the selectors came up with only one player, the immortal George Headley, who was on the scene before 1950. As good as they were, there was no place for allrounder Learie Constantine or for fast bowler Manny Martindale.

The team is dominated by the great players who represented West Indies during their glory days – in the 1960s when they were arguably the best in the world, and from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, when they were the undisputed champions. And even so, some great names have been omitted.

Gordon Greenidge and Conrad Hunte have been selected as the opening batsmen, but it must have been tough leaving out the dashing left-hander Roy Fredericks, just as it must have been difficult to go for the specialist wicketkeeper Jackie Hendriks instead of Jeffrey Dujon – who was a batsman in his own right.

With Garry Sobers around, a man who could get into any Test team as a batsman, a left-arm fast bowler, an orthodox left-arm spin bowler, or a back-of-the-hand spin bowler, the allrounder’s position was a cinch.

Not so, however, the selection of the spin bowler. Not when the decision was to select only one among Sonny Ramadhin, Alfred Valentine and Lance Gibbs. In the final analysis it was Gibbs, the tall, clever offspinner, the man who took 8 for 6 off 15.3 overs in an amazing spell during a Test against India.

From the beginning, great and exciting middle-order batting and hostile fast bowling have been the hallmark of West Indies cricket, and although to many the selection of Headley, Vivian Richards, Brian Lara, Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding and Curtly Ambrose may have seemed easy, it probably was not.

It would be a heartless man who would not feel a tinge of regret leaving out batsmen the quality of Everton Weekes, Frank Worrell, Clyde Walcott, and Rohan Kanhai, an allrounder like Constantine, spin bowlers like Ramadhin and Valentine, and fast bowlers like Wes Hall, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, and Courtney Walsh.

The XI

Gordon Greenidge
“If he was limping, watch out. And if he took a liking to a bowler, watch out some more. When he was in the mood, he could destroy a bowler almost at will, from the very first ball of an innings, if he took a shine to him.” Desmond Haynes

Conrad Hunte
“Hunte’s statistical record alone as an opener, and status alongside Sobers and Kanhai as successors to the legendary Three Ws, mark him as an exceptional talent in an all-conquering team. But his humanity, sense of fairness and contribution to the game – especially in South Africa – after his playing days elevate him to the ranks of the extraordinary.” Fazeer Mohammed

George Headley
Between the wars, when the West Indies batting was often vulnerable and impulsive, Headley’s scoring feats led to his being dubbed “the black Bradman”. His devoted admirers responded by calling Bradman “the white Headley” – a pardonable exaggeration.” Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack

Vivian Richards
“Viv Richards, more than any other cricketer in the post-colonial world, represented the compelling philosophy that it was necessary to place at the centre of all political life the idea of social justice and mutual respect in human relations, and was prepared to be activist about it.”Hilary Beckles

Brian Lara
“One of the best batsmen of my generation, if not the best ever.” Sachin Tendulkar
“Lara is the greatest batsman I have ever bowled to.” Glenn McGrath

Garry Sobers
“He is simply the greatest cricketing being ever to have walked the Earth…” Don Bradman
“The first complete Caribbean folk hero after George Headley.” Michael Manley

Jackie Hendriks
“Jackie Hendriks only played in 20 Test matches between 1962 and 1969. But his is a case of quality over quantity. Technically outstanding, he was what all bowlers want, a consistent keeper; one who has the distinction of not conceding a bye in three innings that crossed 500 runs. Adept to the pace of Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith and the spin of Lance Gibbs, and a capable batsman, there has probably not been a better all-round wicketkeeper for West Indies.” Garth Wattley

Malcolm Marshall
“He was my fast-bowling idol. He picked the mistakes of batsmen straight away and spotted their weaknesses. He was a nice fellow off the field, but a fierce competitor on it.” Wasim Akram

Michael Holding
“Michael Holding was the fastest I ever faced. I don’t think anyone can bowl as fast as he did. I cannot imagine a human being with such a smooth action and with so little effort being able to bowl 95mph-plus, ball after ball.” Sadiq Mohammad

Curtly Ambrose
“All I will say about Ambrose is that he could have bowled in any era and been admired. He is quick, he knows what he wants to do with the ball and he is pinpoint accurate. One of the best.”Fred Trueman

Lance Gibbs
Lance Gibbs used his great height, lean, athletic build and long, supple fingers to become not only the greatest West Indian spin bowler (309 Test wickets) – but one of the most combative of all West Indian cricketers. Frank Birbalsingh

Courtesy of Cricinfo

HAVE YOUR SAY: If a test match is being played between the All Time Australian Xl and All Time West Indies XI, who would be on the team?

Muttiah Muralitharan Was A Batsman’s Nightmare

jaya — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 07:42:38 +0000

Muttiah Muralitharan

If you asked any leading batsman from the Eighties their least favourite opponent you would get one from an intimidating list of West Indian fast bowlers as the answer.

The dispute as to who was the most fearsome – Marshall, Holding, Clarke, Ambrose, Garner, Roberts or AN Other – would rage long into the night.

Ask any batsman of the last 20 years the same question, however, and there would be universal agreement: Muttiah Muralitharan is the man they would least like to face and most often experience nightmares about. It is the ultimate testament to his incredible skill.

The West Indies pacemen terrorised their victims, challenging their courage as well as co-ordination. Muralitharan tortured his with teasing, indecipherable questions, tying his prey in knots, causing hulks of men who devoured moderate bowling in large gulps to fall flat on their face.

And whereas the end was usually swift against Marshall and Co, the suffering could be prolonged against Murali. He left no scars on their body, not a scratch, but their limbs and mind in a horrible tangle.

His 709th Test wicket, overtaking Shane Warne’s world record of 708, was a case in point. Murali wheeled away over after over on the Kandy pitch that was just an off-break away from his father’s biscuit factory. England batsmen pushed and poked and prodded, playing for time to unravel his mysteries, to no avail.

The doughty Paul Collingwood hung around for more than three largely runless hours before a doosra – the ball that Murali did not invent but he did perfect – slid stealthily past his hopeful block and tickled his middle stump. A giddy Collingwood stumbled off.

On a wearing pitch Murali was cricket’s version of a slow death, the process agonising, the end inevitable. All applied with those hoodoo eyes and bewitching smile.

That achievement reinvigorated the debate as to who was better, Murali or Warne. The comparison was always tricky because they were so different. We are talking here about a freak versus a genius.

Murali was born with extraordinary joints – not just the permanent kink in his elbow but also a double-jointed wrist which could rotate virtually 360 degrees and allow him to bend his hand so far back his middle finger touched his forearm. He should have been a contortionist rather than a cricketer.

It enabled him to impart exceptional and deceptive spin on the ball. There was nothing exceptional about Warne’s body – apart from an ability to exist mainly on a diet of pizza, beer and fags.

Warne’s raw materials were orthodox, utilising the traditional tricks of the wrist spinner: the leg break, the top spinner and the googly. Murali was entirely unorthodox, whirring down befuddling off breaks and top-spinners from out of the back of the hand.

Even in the early stages of his Test career, he was unique, utterly bamboozling England’s batsmen at the Oval in 1998 with huge spin to take 16 wickets in the match. A first Test victory in England resulted, a defining moment for Sri Lankan cricket.

Once Murali’s quirky biomechanics enabled him to develop the doosra – the ball that literally spun the other way – he became doubly effective (though not on the durable surfaces in Australia where his 12 wickets have cost 75 apiece) and, for a time, doubly controversial.

Age, meanwhile, withered Warne’s physical attributes, but he remained omnipotent because of a mastery of his art, a brilliant cricket brain and an insatiable desire to win. He outwitted batsmen, conning them out of their wickets, even in totally unfavourable conditions. He was the ultimate confidence trickster.

Analysis of the statistics place Warne marginally ahead. Murali has 166 wickets against the combined frailty of Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Warne has just 17.

He would say, privately, that that gives him 691 scalps against ‘proper’ Test countries to Murali’s 634. Warne was also at least as deadly abroad as he was in Australia, while Murali took 61 per cent of his wickets at home. Neither was particularly effective in India.

Two things united them. They both spun the ball miles and were deadly accurate.

Warne never quite imposed the kind of hypnosis that Murali achieved in the AD (after-doosra) years. His eight for 70 at Trent Bridge in 2006 to bowl Sri Lanka to victory and tie the series, was mesmeric, as the ball spun like a top past groping bats making fools of serious test batsmen.

And in Colombo in 2008 he destroyed India’s monolithic batting order – boasting 106 Test centuries between them – twice, taking 11-110 to hasten his country to a crushing innings victory over their colossal neighbours.

All this has been achieved with relentless energy and incessant hard work and the widest smile in cricket. There is no strut or swagger, just total enthusiasm from the moment he twirls down the first of a hundred practice deliveries on a neighbouring pitch half an hour before play to the last spinner in the nets at dusk.

He might have sent down 44,000 balls during the hours of play. Make that 444,000 in rehearsals. Never was retirement so richly earned, never was relief to a generation of bewildered batsmen so total.

Courtesy of The Telegraph

Ricky Ponting’s ‘Shocking Decision’ To Bat First

jaya — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:10:15 +0000

Ricky Ponting

Umar Gul described Ricky Ponting’s decision to bat first in the second Test at Headingley as ‘’shocking” after the Australia recorded their second lowest Test total against Pakistan.

Australia’s batsmen were left humiliated as they scrambled to 88 all out in 33.1 overs, just eight runs more than the previous lowest mark set in Karachi in 1956.

Teenage left-armer Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif claimed three wickets apiece while Gul chipped in with two of his own as Australia failed to deal with the swinging ball under cloudy skies.

Ponting’s decision to bat came as an added surprsie because his side were the beneficiaries of similar conditions 12 months ago, when they skittled England for 102 on the opening day of the fourth Ashes Test at the same venue.

Gul admitted he had expected to be batting when the Australians won the toss.

”The wicket looked a bit light this morning – it looked a bit like a batting wicket but there was a bit of moisture from last night when it was raining,” the Pakistan seamer said.

”There was moisture under the wicket so I think it was a shocking decision, especially for Australia.

”I don’t know what the captain and coach’s decision was going to be but if we won the toss we (the Pakistan bowlers) were ready to bowl first.

”When the clouds come it starts swinging and when the sun comes it is a bit flat and good for the batsmen. It all depends on the clouds when you can get some swing and seam.

”This morning it was swinging a lot and the ball was seaming. So there was pressure for everyone. It was good for us and I hope the batsmen will do well.”

Pakistan’s batsman set about the task of building a commanding first-innings lead as they reached stumps on 148 for three to open a lead of 60 runs.

Australia’s bowlers failed to find the same sort of movement in the air to match Pakistan’s threat, and Gul believes it was simply because his team-mates bowled better.

”So far in the first and second Test we are bowling better than Australia because we are bowling a fuller length. Our line and length is better than Australia,” the 26-year-old assessed.

”It was a good day for us. The bowlers did very well. Aamer, Asif and myself did very well as we planned before the game.”

Pakistan will begin tomorrow looking to build on their lead and Gul said they would be aiming for nothing less than a 200-run advantage as they look to claim a first Test win over Australia in 15 years.

”We are planning to put on another 150 to lead by around 200. We need to bat well to get that and then we will have a good chance,” he added.

Courtesy of The Telegraph

Tendulkar’s Blood Used In Biography

jaya — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:17:58 +0000

Sachin Tendulkar

Sachin Tendulkar’s blood is to be used in a special edition of a mammoth biography of the Indian cricket great, its publishers said.

The Tendulkar Opus is coming out in February, with 10 copies being printed using his blood.

The book is designed to be the ”ultimate tribute to a living sporting legend”, publishers Kraken said.

”The signature page will be mixed with Sachin’s blood – mixed into the paper pulp so it’s a red resin,” Kraken chief executive Karl Fowler said, according to The Guardian newspaper.

”It is what it is – you will have Sachin’s blood on the page. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea.”

The 10 ”blood” copies have all been pre-ordered and cost about $US75,000 (R567,000) each.

About 1000 regular copies, each numbered and personally signed, will go on sale at $US2000 to $US3000 (R15000 to R22000).

Each of the 852 pages are half-a-metre square and edged in gold leaf. The publication weighs 37 kilograms.

Previous Opus works have been published on Ferrari, Manchester United, Diego Maradona and Michael Jackson.

Courtesy of Stuff.co.nz