Off Stump

Much like the recession in 2009, it looks like the recovery for the Australian cricket team will be much quicker than anticipated. Their batting had shown a few cracks but the development of Shane Watson into a Test class opener and the rediscovered form of Hussey and North leaves them quite solid, though back-up is a bit thin. On the one-day front, though they've never really let up since the 2007 World Cup, the recent blooming of Cameron White and Ryan Harris coupled with the re-emergence of Nathan Hauritz has made them even more formidable. They've also finally found the right personnel for their T20 side with the likes of Shaun Tait, Dirk Nannes, David Warner, and David Hussey. However, it is the Test bowling line-up that leaves me most impressed. Any other team would struggle to replace men like Brett Lee and Stuart Clark but Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus did so almost seamlessly (no pun intended!). And now, with those two injured they've unearthed Doug Bollinger and...

There has been a lot of talk recently about the big hole in India's Test team that will be left by the imminent retirement of Tendulkar, Dravid, and Laxman and this article is another example of that. And while that is likely to be true in the near term, I think the batting line-up will recover far sooner than most people think. For one, in Sehwag and Gambhir there will still be two world class batsmen remaining and also the bench looks reasonably healthy with the likes of Vijay, Badrinath, Pujara, Kohli, and Rohit Sharma all fighting for spots. What has not been talked about much and has been a problem for much longer are the bowling stocks. Despite India's improving record in Test cricket over the last 5 years, there has not been a single new bowler who has managed to establish a permanent spot in the team as a world class performer. In fact in the last two decades, India has produced only three bowlers who consistently delivered Test class performances in Kumble, Srinath, ...

Very few team sports have as much time (and media focus) devoted to picking the captain as cricket does. I've always felt that the traditional Australian view of picking the best team and then the captain is a great one because unless the captain is respected for his abilities as a player its a difficult job to direct team-mates. They seem to be violating their own principles with their T20 team though by picking Michael Clarke as the captain. He averages less than 20 after 19 matches (which is not a small number in this format) and hits less than one boundary a game. Moreover he hasn't played the IPL and nor was he a part of the Champions League winning NSW team. And yet, he's been given the job of trying to win the Aussies the only global tournament they have not made the finals of even once. Granted that other captains (Younis Khan is a good example) have led their teams brilliantly without themselves being very suited to the format, but Pakistan had very few options. Au...

Amidst all the hoopla around Tendulkar's twenty years, Dravid's return to form, Sehwag's monstrous scores and India's ascent to #1 in the rankings, one man has been quietly forgotten. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has now become (statistically) the best Indian wicket-keeper batsman of all time in Test matches with more hundreds (3) than anyone else and with a better dismissals/innings rate than all Indian keepers with 50+ dismissals. He also has the highest ODI batting average amongst all Indian batsmen (who've played 20+ games), at a strike rate of just under 90. And of course he led India to its only World Cup after the seminal '83 win though it must be said that he hasn't done justice to himself in T20Is yet. Add to that the fact that he's now captained India to Test series wins against Aus, Eng, and SL plus a drawn series against SA at home and their first overseas win in NZ in 30 years and you have a modern Indian great in the making. Funnily enough he see...

So I've finally gotten down to doing some real statistical analysis. I will start out with Test cricket because that's the form of the game I find most fascinating. And (as most cricket lovers seem to be) being biased towards batsmen, my first few pieces will probably revolve around batting :-) I should also mention how indebted I am to Cricinfo's "godsend-to-geeks" Statsguru. Its probably what I devote the maximum number of my daily internet pageviews to, sometimes even more than email! Without it, most of the analysis I have ever done would not have been possible. So first up, I thought it would be worth looking at a simple stat that's slightly different from the more traditional batting average or its second cousin, runs per innings. There's a lot of analysis that's been done around number of innings per 100 but not for the number of innings per 50+ score. A look at that stat (using a minimum of twenty 50+scores) reveals some interesting facts. Brad...

The way this current India-Australia series is shaping up it seems that the second best ODI team in the World would be an Australian second XI! They are missing five first choice players in Clarke, Haddin, Lee, Bracken, and Hopes (six if you include Symonds) plus a near first choice in Ferguson and a back-up player in Paine. And now with Siddle and Henriques injured, they are further depleted. If you add in the fact that the two Davids (Warner and Hussey) haven't been picked, that's a full set of 12 players that could easily form a world beating team. And despite all this, the series score is at 2-2 against an Indian side that's missing only Zaheer Khan! This also goes to show how far behind the Indian team is that they can't seem to overcome a virtual second XI from Australia and at home to boot. The biggest worry will be the lack of consistency and improvement shown by the younger players (with Praveen Kumar a notable exception). Raina, Rohit Sharma, Jadeja, Yusuf an...

As has been written about quite a bit, the Champions Trophy showed up India's bench strength quite starkly. In the absence of Yuvraj, Sehwag, and Zaheer and with Ishant and Harbhajan being so off-colour, the second rung couldn't quite pull together a single performance worthy of a world-beating side. Both the batting and bowling are to blame but I think the former has not got as much attention as it merits because the bowling was so dreadful. An initial look at the potential line-up for the 2011 World Cup would suggest Tendulkar (assuming he's fit and still around), Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, and Dhoni as certainties. A strong batting line-up that but very often, the difference in crunch games comes from who's at 6 and 7. Suresh Raina and Yusuf Pathan currently occupy those spots but neither of them have made too much of their chances there. Raina averages 35 after 71 matches and while those are not bad figures, he has not played a match-winning hand often enough from tha...

So the Champions Trophy has brought upset after upset. My pre-tournament semi-finalists would have been Australia, India, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. Two of these teams are nearly out after today's results and India (unless they can bring about a very quick turnaround) will join them on the sidelines tomorrow. And on current form, it looks like an England-Pakistan final is a decent chance. Some tournament the bookmakers must be having :-) But its made for riveting watching, almost like the football world cup where one bad match can prove super costly for fancied teams. And I agree with the scribes who say that the cricket world cup should follow this format too. In fact, the format they had for the '83 and '87 World Cups was perfect. The top eight teams in two groups playing each other twice (to reward consistency) and then semis and a final. The only tinkering I would do is to make the finals best-of-three. Anyways, to go back to this tournament its come at a great time f...

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...