When in a hole stop digging

FFS Nasser, the outfield is bad enough already without you digging holes in it!

Cracking title, shame about the rest of it

One of my old professors use to tell the story of the book he'd written that had made his name (and I suspect quite a bit of money for him). It was a cracking title - so good that the phrase entered into, aptly enough, popular culture. Shortly after the book had been published my old professor bumped into one of his contemporaries, a world renowned expert in the field. The expert rushed over and congratulated my old professor, telling him "cracking title Jim, shame about the rest of it."

Reading Simon Wilde's brilliantly titled Dumb-slog Millionaires in the Times I wonder if he ever had the same lecturer? If not, he probably had the same e-mail that I had with the dumb-slog millionaire pun in. It's so good that you've got to get a story out of it somehow. So what has Wilde to say.

Every cricket-loving child nurtures the dream of the hundreds they will score in Test matches. The dream is always capped the same way, a magical century brought up with a mighty hit into the stands.

This is the dream Kevin Pietersen still lives. Measured by his birth certificate,

Credit to Wilde here. No Pietersen article is complete without mention of his birth certificate, this is quite a cunning way to shoe-horn it into the article.

Pietersen is 28 years old but there is a part of him that is still eight, the little boy playing out his sporting fantasies.

Fair play to Pietersen is what I say. Why not enjoy what you are doing? Or is this just a sly way of getting a dig at Pietersen for not having dreamt of playing for England?


In one respect, he is doing a good job of realising them.

I'd say in just about every possible respect.

Averaging over 50 with the bat - check.
Scored hundreds against every nation except Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (mainly because he hasn't played against them) - check, check (as he has at least two against them all).
Hit the best bowlers of his generation for six - Warne, McGrath and who can forget that switch-hit off Murali? - check, check, check
Won the Ashes - check
Test double hundred - check

Of the 15 centuries he has scored in Test cricket, he has brought up 11 with boundaries. Last year, he ticked off a clutch of emotional highs by reaching a century at Lord’s (home of cricket) against South Africa (the land of his birth) with a boundary (Morne Morkel, crashed through point). No wonder his celebrations were so effusive: he whipped off his helmet and gave it a kiss.

So we can also tick off century at Lords, century against the land of his birth certificate and a boundary to bring up his hundred. Is Wilde going to suggest Pietersen has nothing more left to achieve and should retire forthwith?

But what of the times the adrenalin-rush went awry? When, in a frenzy of boundary-hitting, he threw away his wicket and stood accused of risking his team’s interests for the sake of his own?

Do Pietersen's runs not count to the team? Surely Pietersen scoring runs is in the team's interest and Pietersen getting out isn't in Pietersen's interest. Or have I missed something?

This recklessness has been on show too often for comfort. An analysis of Pietersen’s dismissals for scores in excess of 50 reveals that in 15 of 25 instances, 60%, he was out just before or soon after reaching a century, or having overreached himself as he tore a bowler to shreds.

Ooh, I like analysis. So, what about if he has passed fifty 25 times and we found out earlier he has 15 test centuries, doesn't that suggest his method of getting from 50 to 100 is actually quite successful? Do the names Alistair Cook and Ian Bell mean anything to Simon Wilde?

His first innings in Kingston was typical. Frustrated by a slow pitch and Sulieman Benn’s suffocating line, he lashed the giant left-arm spinner for four, four and six. That took him to 97. One more boundary and a century in his first Test since losing the captaincy was his. If Pietersen was not thinking rationally, his opponents were.

Coolly, Chris Gayle

Is this the same Chris Gayle who was later out for 104? You know, just after having reached a hundred?

stopped Benn mid-stride to adjust the field and allow Pietersen a moment to premeditate his shot at glory. Sure enough, Pietersen snatched at a slog-sweep and sent up the easiest of catches to the keeper. The ego had crashlanded again.

In the week in which he was valued by the Indian Premier League as the world’s most valuable cricketer, alongside Andrew Flintoff, “dumbslog millionaire” seemed the only appropriate name for him.

Hang on again. Wasn't it Flintoff who got out cheaply, recklessly slogging across the line in the second innings on Saturday. Surely that makes Flintoff a dumb-slog millionaire? Pedants might also note that Pietersen's attempted slog came before the IPL auctions, so before Pietersen was a millionaire.

Pietersen’s impetuosity was emphasised when Gayle moved to his own century by soberly fine-sweeping Monty Panesar for three. Gayle had just hit the England spinner for two mighty sixes but, unlike Pietersen, refused to get carried away.

Of course. I remember it well. Gayle hit Monty for six. And then, not getting carried away, he hit Monty for six again. And then played a shot which was full of contempt, nonchalantly flicking Panesar down to the boundary.

And then what happened? Oh yes, Gayle added another couple of runs and got out. Gayle made exactly SEVEN more runs than Pietersen. Had Pietersen's shot came off, there would have been exactly one run difference. An extra seven runs would have made the difference between losing by an innings and 23 and losing by only an innings and 16. Kevin, what were you thinking?

Blah, blah, blah

If Pietersen wants to be regarded as a truly great player he needs to throw off the excues (sic) and raise his game to the next level.

I suspect miscues are probably more of a problem than excues or even excuses.

To do that will require greater maturity than he now displays. He needs to accept he is not only an ordinary starter - whose first single is so often the notorious “Red Bull run” - but an ordinary finisher, too.

I've no idea what statistically being a good starter is, but I do know that The Don was out 18 times for single figures in 80 innings and he's normally a good starting point. Pietersen has been out 19 times for singles figures (and not one of them run out) in 85 innings.

As for being an ordinary finisher, this is a very interesting concept. Innings invariably end/finish when someone gets out, unless this is an oblique reference to the referral system and Darryl Harper.

This is, at the moment, the flaw in his genius.

Bradman's as well it appears.

He should remain aggressive but not be content with scores of 100, aiming instead for 150s, 200s and beyond. His average century score is 137, whereas Richards’ is 147, Graeme Smith’s 147, Brian Lara’s 173 and Don Bradman’s 186. He is selling himself short.

OK, so this is a bit more like it. In order to match up to Sir Donald Bradman, Brian Lara, Viv (presumably, rather than the equally gifted Barry) and Graeme Smith(!!!!) he needs to score bigger hundreds. I can buy that. It's not quite the same as saying his ego gets him out looking for the big shots to bring up his hundred though.

Kevin Pietersen may never regain the Test captaincy (though the leadership of the 50-overs and 20-overs sides could soon be his again) but, if he is serious about reclaiming the position he believes should be his, he must display a cool head under pressure.

Perhaps we should not hold our breath. In his seminal work, The Art of Captaincy, Mike Brearley quoted an academic who observed of sporting talent: “The ability to tap the boyhood sources of energy and illusion is essential in most highly competitive activities and one would hesitate to back a fully adult person (should one exist) in any serious contest. There is nothing like a sudden upsurge of maturity to impair the will to win.”

An upsurge in maturity on Pietersen’s part might just diminish his extraordinary game, not enhance it.

Wooooaah! So are you now going against every you've been saying? What is the point of me having bothered to read the preceding twenty paragraphs? Is this like the bit in Dallas, where it's all explained away as a dream?

Pietersen’s rushes of blood to the head

BOUNDARY FEVER
57 v Australia, Lord's, 2005 Out one ball after hitting Warne for six 71 v Australia, Edgbaston, 2005 Out two balls after hitting Brett Lee for six 87 v India, Nagpur, 2006 Out after taking 15 from previous five balls 158 v Sri Lanka, Lord's, 2006 Out the next ball after hitting Chaminda Vaas for four to equal his personal best score 142 v Sri Lanka, Edgbaston, 2006 Out two balls after reverse sweeping Muttiah Muralitharan for six 135 v Pakistan, Headingley, 2006 Holed out after taking 10 off three balls 70 v Australia, Perth, 2006 Holed out after taking 19 off six balls 226 v West Indies, Headingley, 2007 Out after hitting 14 from three balls

Got to say Pietersen was particularly rash when he got out for 226 against the West Indies. England were in all sorts of trouble at 556/6 when Pietersen recklessly hit 14 from 3 balls. What England, who declared immediately and went onto win by an innings and 283 runs, wanted was him to block that fourth ball, not get out. The situation called for a forward defensive. I can hear the ghost of Geoff Boycott already, and he's not even dead.

It was a similar scenario at Edgbaston where Pietersen was out for 158 against Sri Lanka. The score was a precarious 502/4 when Pietersen got out, allowing Flintoff to come in and club 33* out over a run a ball and England to declare on 551/6. Block, block, block!

I'm not overly enamoured with the methodology here, but according to this article Pietersen has been out having just hit a boundary within the previous couple of balls (not even always the previous ball) a total of eight times. Kevin Pietersen has been out a total of 82 times in tests, so presumably he's been out 74 times when he hasn't just hit a boundary that over.

In all Pietersen has hit 46 sixes and 487 fours. By my possibly ropey maths, that's a total of 533 boundaries for 2224 runs. Even if we discount the 80 runs he hit when he got carried away and got out eight times, he's scored 2144 runs in boundaries when he hasn't got out. And you want to rein him in?

CHASING A CENTURY
96 v Pakistan, Oval, 2006 Caught chasing wide ball; hit six three balls earlier 94 v South Africa, Edgbaston, 2008 Holed out attempting a six off Paul Harris, whom he had hit for two fours in his previous over 97 v West Indies, Kingston, 2009 Out trying to hit Sulieman Benn for six after taking 14 off three balls

LOSING CONCENTRATION AFTER HITTING TON
100 v Pakistan, Faisalabad, 2005 Out the ball after reaching his century with a six 109 v West Indies, Lord's, 2007 Out reverse sweeping Chris Gayle 15 balls after reaching a hundred 101 v India, Oval, 2007 Out four balls after reaching his century 100 v South Africa, Oval, 2008 Out two balls after reaching his century

The fact that he's been out four times having just got a century compared to three times before getting that century suggests if anything that he does better on adrenalin. On the basis of the information put forward in this article, slog away KP, slog away!

Keep up Auntie!

It feels a little strange at this moment in time to be writing about anything other than the England captaincy and coaching shambles, and whilst the title of this moan could easily apply to the BBC's coverage of that fiasco, the subject of this post is actually the BBC web-site's predictions for 2008. Oops, I mean 2009.


Each year at the BBC Sport website they attempt to predict, in Oliver Brett's words: "players on the cusp of making an impact on the international cricket scene."


Now deciding these at the end of December or start of January is a little arbitrary. It would probably be better to wait until April and see what up and coming youngsters were making waves during pre-season or had put on a yard of pace over the winter, but if it is a chance to expand the BBC's cricket coverage beyond mere news to include some more substantial content and informed comment then we at FNK are all for it.

The criteria is a little restricting, like Wisden's cricketers of the year you can only appear once and they try to name one each from the touring sides, three from the county scene hoping to break into the England team that summer and a token female for political correctness.

Brett boasts of the Beeb having had some success over the years, including last year Dale Steyn. Quite how the Beeb pulled that one out of the bag, I don't know. His success in tests in England last summer (eight wickets at 36.25) obviously caught out a lot of people by surprise at where this bloke - who on New Year's Day 2008 when this brave prediction was made was ranked a lowly 6th in the world in the bowling rankings having taken 76 wickets at 25.25 - had suddenly emerged from.

The other 2008 choices seem nearly as inspired. Joe Denly followed up his 1003 runs at 41.79 in 2007 with a disappointing 905 at 30.16; Boyd Rankin managed just 12 wickets all season whilst Chris Jordan was an eccentric choice as a young England hopeful considering he'd said he wanted to represent the West Indies. No Kiwi was proffered as none stood out (Ross Taylor? Tim Southee?) instead Tim Ambrose was predicted. Ambrose did go onto play both test and one-day cricket for England that summer, but by the end of it had lost the gloves in both formats.

It is easy to criticise with hindsight and the author, Jamie Lillywhite had acknowledged that he was an awful tipster (which rather begs the question why did anyone ask him to write the piece?) so it is probably unfair to look too closely at the choices. It is worth asking again why Dale Steyn is still highlighted as a good tip when Oliver Brett reviews the 2008 selections. As we've already established it can't be on the basis of his English summer and it can't be on the basis of his sudden impact on world cricket because he'd already taken 44 wickets at an amazing 17.47 in 2007.

Anyhow, let's look instead at Oliver Brett's selections.

First up is Mitchell Johnson.

On the cusp of making an impact in international cricket? He's just taken 63 wickets at 29.01 in the last calendar year and is rated the number FIVE bowler in the world. What is that if that isn't already having made an impact in international cricket? It's like picking Dale Steyn all over again. I tell you what, I reckon that Sri Lankan spinner is one to keep an eye out for, no not Mendis, that Murali.

I know it is one of their rivals, I know there is a danger of having to listen to Mark Nicholas on commentary, but will someone please give the Beeb a subscription to Sky Sports so they can watch some world cricket.

It's not even as if Australia are lacking newcomers. How about New South Wales' youngster, Philip Hughes? With Hayden's test career surely coming to an end, why not tip Hughes. Sure Jaques (another one who has played fewer tests than Mitchell Johnson) may return and partner Katich at the top of the order, but why not highlight a young up and coming cricketer who many won't have heard of yet? Then there are players like Peter Siddle, Shaun Marsh, Ben Hilfenhaus, Doug Bollinger (stop laughing at the back) who are all names many won't have heard much about. If BBC readers don't know about Mitchell Johnson, I'd suggest the BBC is failing in its coverage of world cricket.

Second is Xavier Marshall.

That's more like it. Marshall has a test average of just 22.09, a first class average of 26.97 and an ODI average of 17.85 (from 24 games!). That is brave punditry, none of this let's pick the 5th ranked bowler in the world malarkey. Brett could have gone for Andre Fletcher who made a good impression at the Stanford 20:20, but instead he's plumped for Xavier Marshall on the basis of his "ability to strike the ball cleanly" which "may make him one to watch at the ICC World Twenty20 in June." Fair play to you sir on this one.


Next up is Mark Davies.

Hmm, wasn't the criteria players on the cusp of the international scene? If Davies gets capped by England this summer I'll eat his test cap. Widely considered to lack the pace necessary to make an impact on the higher stage, Davies has not just the "very good" first class bowling record Brett attributes, but an excellent one. Whether that record would look quite so good away from the Riverside and playing on some flat test pitches is another matter. I suppose he could get a test call - no-one predicted Pattison last year - in the case of injuries to become the Headingley specialist (although these days that is more Trent Bridge) but it strikes me as a teletext selection. As Brett alludes to, Davies will invariably be injured anyway.

Is this really a prediction of who will get an international call-up, or is it a safe, boring prediction so you can turn round and say "well he might not have been selected, but he had a good year"?


Robbie Joseph is a more interesting call. For both Davies and Joseph to get the call in an Ashes summer, I can only imagine Brett is expecting a mass IPL defection. It is not inconceivable that Joseph breaks into the international team, particularly if the Ashes are quickly relinquished. Interestingly Brett talks only of his one-day form, so he may see him as only an one-day selection. The chances of him being picked and making an impact on the international scene are fairly minimal though, as bowlers in particular seem to rarely make an immediate impact on the international scene.


The final selection (other than the token female) is Will Smith.

Ignoring Brett's mistake as to how Smith left Notts (they wanted to keep him) I'd be astonished if Will Smith got an England call in 2009 ahead of the likes of Bopara, Shah, Key and Denly. Yet again this appears to be tipping for who to have a good county season last year. Picking a player who was player of the year at the champions to have a good 2009 is hardly a brave choice. It is however the first time I've heard Will Smith's name being mentioned as an England prospect, so I'll give some credit here, even though I suspect it might yet be the only time he does get mentioned in England talk.

If you were to insist on picking three players who might have a breakthrough year for England, the likes of Bopara, Shah (at least in tests) and maybe slightly longer shots Saj Mahmood or Tim Bresnan at their second bites of international cricket could be considered to be on the verge of breakthroughs. All four would however be unexciting choices considering that they've been around the England set up for some time. Of far more interest would be to make the focus instead on young English players in county cricket on the verge of making a name for themselves. Joseph and Smith would have been an excellent shouts in 2008, as would Johnson on the international stage. But who will be their counterparts in 2009? Surely this piece should be concentrating on asking whether the likes of Steven Finn and Danny Evans at Middlesex, Jaik Miklebrugh and Maurice Chambers at Essex, Josh Cobb at Leicestershire, Adam Lyth at Yorkshire can break through and trying to work out who is going to be the Robbie Joseph, Graham Napier, Luke Wright, James Harris or David Malan of 2009. It needs to be looking at who can be this year's Mitchell Johnson, not at who Mitchell Johnson is.

Ultimately this isn't so much a preview of who will breakthrough in 2009, as an unispiring review of who broke through in 2008. Come on Beeb, you can do better than this.

Happy New Year

Fire Nick Knight would like to wish both its readers a Happy New Year.

Here at FNK mansions we had a most enjoyable Christmas watching the Australians fall to yet another defeat in what has been a gripping test series.

What says 'Merry Christmas' more than hearing the desperation in Ian Healy's voice as he unsuccessfully claims a leg-side catch off the pad as the Aussies stumble to yet another loss? The icing on the cake (or should that be the brandy liberally applied to the Christmas pudding?) was when the replay showed the ball was no closer to the bat than Nathan Hauritz is to being a test class bowler; Healy could only reply "well I've seen them given."

Ho ho ho Merry Christmas indeed.

Botham has nothing to declare but his ignorance

Sky viewers might recall Sir Ian Botham's calls shortly after lunch yesterday on the fourth day of the first test against India for England to declare as they had enough runs on the board and no-one ever scores that many runs to win a test.

Obviously that worked out well, and with hindsight England could have done with declaring earlier leaving them more time to work out before the second test just how to dismiss Indian batsman on a turning 5th day pitch, and just as importantly leaving the good knight more time to go fishing or boozing round at Ravi Shastri's.

This has become something of a Beefy tradition. In recent years as soon as one team has built up a 2nd innings lead of around 300 runs, there at the back of the box is Beefy getting twitchy and wanting to get away from his (presumably well-paid) job as soon as possible. Viewers are then subjected to numerous "I really don't know what is going on here"s as the man who captained his country 12 times (no wins, 8 draws - clearly should have declared a little earlier) sees his day off rapidly vanishing before his own eyes. In fact, Botham's track record for wanting quick get-aways stretches back at least to Headingley 1981, when he checked out of the hotel along with his team-mates on the morning of the 4th day.

Botham's argument in Chennai was that only five times in the history of test cricket had a team chased more than 350 to win. If it only happened 5 times in all test history, Beefy said his maths wasn't very good but he'd take his chances on England having enough runs.

Forget his maths, his first problem is that he is asking the wrong question.

What about teams who were chasing mammoth targets and fell just short? Botham only had to go back to March, when New Zealand scored 431 runs. Scores of 553 runs may be impossible to chase down, but it was clearly possible to score 431 runs in the 4th innings. Botham should remember this test as he spent much of it questioning what on earth Michael Vaughan was doing allowing England to bat on with a lead of over 350.

Secondly, there may have been 1897 test matches prior to this one, but how many of them provided an opportunity for a team to chase over 350 in the 4th innings?

• He only had to look as far as the weather interrupted 1897th test match, which finished earlier the same day in Dunedin in a draw halfway through the third innings, without it ever getting as far as a 4th innings.

• Or he could have looked at the last test on the ground, back in March, when 1498 runs were scored for the loss of just 25 wickets on a track so flat South Africa didn't even get round to setting India a total.
  

• Neither would you expect Bangladesh to chase down 350 against Australia and you wouldn't expect Australia to be set 350 against Bangladesh. Does Bangladesh not reaching 350 against Australia in the 4th innings actually tell us anything?

It is clear that nowhere near 1897 teams have not had a chance to chase 350+ runs in the fourth innings.

The first question he should have been asking how many teams have scored more than 350 in the 4th innings and then how many teams have been set more than 350 in the 4th innings.

His third issue was that he was not noticing trends. Thirty-seven times teams have scored 350 or more in the 4th innings. More revealingly, sixteen times has been in the last decade, a decade during which he has been employed to sit and watch test cricket. In other words in the first 1468 test matches, teams scored 350 or more in the 4th innings 21 times, or at a rate of about once every 70 test matches. However in the last decade, the one where Botham has been a regular in the Sky commentary box and you know might actually pay attention to what is going on in world cricket, teams have scored 350 or more in the 4th innings in16 out of 519 tests - one every 32 test matches. In the last 5 years it is 11 times in 210 tests matches - once every 19 test matches, take it to the last 3 years and it is eight times in 121 tests, or once every 15.125 tests.

Remember, that is once every 15 tests but that includes the rain interrupted tests such as Dunedin, or the flat-track no result pitches that means teams run out of time (not likely to be an issue for India in the last test) like the last test in Chennai, or the one-sided contests involving Bangladesh, who have played 17 tests during the last 3 years. Fifty-four of those 121 games saw 30 or fewer wickets fall (the equivalent of three innings games), if these are eliminated as (almost certainly) rain-affected, non-result pitches or mismatches where the weather/pitch/match situation didn't allow a team the opportunity to chase 350plus - and this is certainly a conservative estimate - we can conservatively estimate that a team would, given time, reach 350 in the fourth innings once every eight opportunities. It becomes clear that 350 runs shouldn't be an automatic declaration in order to allow Beefy to go off fishing.

Fire Nick Knight

An occasional blog, in homage to baseball's excellent http://www.firejoemorgan.com/
web-site, which is sadly no longer criticising bad sports journalism, picking up on their misuse of statistics and bad food metaphors. When I am similarly enraged/can be bothered, I might add my own comments on bone-headed cricket commentators/"experts" stuck in the past, and actually backed up with logic and where possible statistics rather than a knowledge of what the conventional wisdom was twenty years ago.

Joe Morgan was probably the greatest second baseman in baseball history, but as a commentator for ESPN he gathered a cult following for his awful commentary and his JoeChat specials, in which he'd (a) try and answer every question using the word consistency at least twice in every sentence; (b) mangle the English (well, American) language; (c) refer back to his day, his only point of reference - as despite being the face of ESPN baseball he didn't appear to watch any modern baseball; and (d) rubbish (and misrepresent) baseball statisticians and the use of modern statistics. So hypnotically bad was he, that it attracted my attention from the other side of the Atlantic through the scribblings of FJM.

If his cricketing equivalent is Ian Botham, it is only because Nick Knight doesn't have the career to match Morgan's. Regardless both Knight and the knight are likely to feature heavily on this blog going on past performance in the commentary box. Botham is well known for his sense of humour, and there is a possibility that his "I just don't understand what they are doing, in my day we didn't do it like this" routine might actually be a big joke, playing on the disdain he held during his on field career for the out of touch likes of Fred Trueman (RIP) and Ray Illingworth. I'm however beginning to suspect it isn't.

This is a shame as Beefy is my all time hero. I was once fortunate enough to be in the presence of a lifesize cardboard cut-out of Sir Ian and I found the 'tache and mullet combination awe inspiring. A few years later I bumped into the real thing, maybe it was because he was shorn of porn star 'tache and dyed mullet that screamed "look how good I am, I can get away with looking like this because I'm going to slog a hundred before lunch, sink 10 pints and then take 5 Convict wickets before tea" but whatever the reason the real thing just didn't have same impact. This experience convinced me that Sky should replace Beefy with a cardboard cut-out and we should save the knight of the realm for his magnificent charity work and diplomatic duties down under, both of which Fire Nick Knight fully endorse.

Nick Knight's redeeming qualities are far less obvious. How he got chosen it somewhat of a mystery. The Sky producers were presumably after a "safe pair of hands with international playing experience" for a commentary vacancy, but someone had got the wrong end of the stick and had recommended him based on his fielding expertise. I for one don't believe this rumour, not least because Sky would surely have learnt from the Colin Croft "we need a high-flyer" misunderstanding.

As a player Knight had risen to prominence as the first English pinch-hitter to use his feet to dance down the pitch and make the most of the fielding restrictions by hitting over the top. Sri Lanka had Jayasuriya (career strike-rate of 91.03), Australia responded by selecting Adam Gilchrist (strike-rate 96.94) so England had Nick Knight selected especially to capitalise on what would become powerplays, with his forays down the wicket and hitting over the infield allowing him to score at a heady strike-rate of 71.52. A stalwart of the England side from 1996-2003, he was the perfect choice to explain to the Sky viewers how English one-day cricket had failed to keep up with the times.