Off Stump

Sometime this November (or possibly December), its very likely that Zaheer Khan will pick up his ninth wicket of the series against England and so become only the fourth Indian bowler (and only the second fast bowler) to join the 300+ Test match wicket club. Given that this club is now 24 strong , it may not seem like a big achievement in an all-time context but from an Indian perspective, its massive and MS Dhoni is not over-reaching at all when he says that Zaheer deserves as much acclaim as Tendulkar for his contributions to Indian cricket. As always, sample the stats first. Amongst the 25 Indian bowlers who have taken 75+ Test match wickets (100 would have been too high a threshold for India), Zaheer has the best strike rate (though admittedly only the 12th best average). And if you then look at away matches only (excl Zim and Ban) and reduce the cut-off to 45 wickets, he continues to be top of the pile in terms of strike rates and behind only Subhash Gupte on bowling avera...

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 c...