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Missing the woods for the tree (and the unfortunate Strauss)

As the battle rages on between the dunce (KP) and the idiots (the ECB and the England team management), its hard to shake off the feeling that England are trying their best to bring back their dark days of the 90s. I have never been the biggest fan of English cricket (not least because of the media here) but I was genuinely beginning to believe that they were progressing to be a consistently solid team that had charted out a course for being the best team they could be in all formats of the game. As that lovely blog Leg Side Filth points out (more eloquently than I ever could), things are falling apart faster than a routine service hold from Roger Federer. The best thing that can happen to England now is for them to get thrashed at the World T20 and then in India, patch up with KP and get on with the business of being a solid cricket team. An ounce of flexibility from Flower wouldn't be bad either.

Amidst all this (as noted in the blog post as well), its remarkable how little coverage the departure of Strauss has received. As a batsman, he would fall into the good rather than great category given he averaged less than 45 which in the modern day is somewhat middling. He did play several match-winning knocks though and significantly, averaged more away than home which is something of a rarity for post 1980s English batsmen. Of far greater note though was his record as captain which reached its highpoint in the 3-1 win in Australia followed by a 4-0 swamping of India in 2011 to herald England's rise to the #1 ranking. In doing this, he helmed Ashes victories home and away (the first to do so since Brearley) and in addition was part of the team in another seminal Ashes win in 2005. His last year in charge of the Test match team was a difficult one but he certainly deserved a better send-off than he received. But I guess its a fact of life (and not just sports) that the quiet, determined, no-frills folks always get less coverage than the more flamboyant, flighty ones. The last year has seen the departure from the game of three of the best in the former category (Dravid, Strauss, and Laxman). Tendulkar, Kallis, and Jayawardene are also getting ever closer to the exit so its not long before the game will largely be totally bereft of the type. Sometime back, the romantic in me might have said that it would be bad for the sport, but I've changed in the way I think. Partly because I think everything needs to change to keep up with the times, and partly because things go in circles and no doubt there will come a time again when the hard working, soft spoken cricketer (who's not so good at T20) will rise again. The dude abides :-)

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