Off Stump

There's been a lot of talk recently about the ICC Test rankings and the seismic shift with Australia dropping to No. 4 and Sri Lanka moving up to No. 2. However a closer look at the relative performances of the top 5 teams since 2007 (the last two years) leads to lots of questions. South Africa can be indisputably said to be No. 1. They have won nearly 64% (50% excluding Bangladesh) of their matches and importantly won matches away in almost every country. Their only weakness has been a slight inability to battle to draw matches where they fall behind. Sri Lanka at No.2 are certainly ranked higher than their performance deserves. 54% of matches won looks good but when you take out Bangladesh, it falls to less than 32% which is not great by any standards. Moreover only one of the non-Bangla victories have come away from home. To be fair, they have lacked opportunity and its high time they got more three match series as well as the chance to play the top teams regularly. At No. 3,

A couple of interesting selectorial decisions recently by England and India (and actually as its turning out Australia as well!). For once I think the England selectors didn't panic and showed the right thinking by not picking either Key or Ramprakash for the Oval Test. And luckily for them, both Bell and Trott have performed well enough to vindicate the decision. India on the other hand have actually gone the other way bringing Dravid back to the one-day squad. I'm a bit ambivalent on that one. While the decision to leave out Rohit Sharma and retain Raina was certainly the right one, bringing back Dravid is questionable. It would have been a bolder decision to pick someone like Kohli or Rahane who both played really well in the Emerging Players Trophy recently, mainly because Dravid is quite unlikely to feature in the 2011 World Cup so why bring him back now? As for the Aussies, they will certainly be regretting not picking Nathan Hauritz for the Oval. A defensive decision if

The ebbs and flows of the 2009 Ashes have been very interesting to follow, even for a neutral observer like myself. And for once I found myself totally neutral at the beginning of the series, probably mainly because I haven't seen a lot of the people involved play enough to have strong associations/preferences. Its been absorbing to watch so far even if both sides have been quite inconsistent with the quality of their cricket. The one thing that does continue to separate the two teams (and indeed the Aussies from most teams on a consistent basis) is the mental strength and temperament that the players exhibit. Any team that has had to deal with the retirements of players like Warne, Gilchrist, McGrath, Hayden, Langer, Martyn, Gillespie and MacGill in the space of two years would struggle enormously and so its to their great credit that Australia continue to perform so competitively. And a large part of it is down to belief and mental strength. The Aussies believe they are good and