Selection Box

Just as a random midweek tit-bit, for no purpose whatsoever, a starting XI of my favourite international cricketers.
So many sportsmen are so very bland, as to think that they may well have offered up their personalities in some sort of diabolical pact, in return for sporting glory. This is no rag-bag XI, but neither does it necessarily include ‘the Best’, rather it is those current players who have just that little bit of something about them.

I) Alastair Cook (England)
Proper opening batsman. In full-flow, more elegant than a Mozart string quartet.
II) Mathew Hayden (Australia)
Brutal biffmeister, walks at fast bowlers – excellent.
III) Kumar Sangakkara (Sri Lanka & Warwickshire)
Pure and utter class. Better than Ricky Ponting.
IV) Kevin Pietersen (England)
Right handed? Left handed? Anything you like really.
V) Shiv Chanderpaul (West Indies)
Need quick wickets? Oh bugger here comes Shiv…
VI) Dwayne Bravo (West Indies)
Batting, bowling, fielding, is there nothing he can’t do better than the rest of the West Indies? Also has the best name in world sport.
VII) Mahendra Singh Dhoni (India)
Unfairly tagged as a bit of a slogger early on, actually a very, very astute cricketer, oh yeah, and 5000 people once followed him to the hair dressers…
VIII) Brett Lee (Australia)
Top man – Always plays hard and always plays fair.
IX) Andre Nel (South Africa)
Perfectly nice chap off the field, deranged on it. Has alter-ego called ‘Gunter’ who ‘has something wrong with his mind’ and ‘lives in Germany’. Andre Nel is not a well man.
X) Sohail Tanvir (Pakistan)
Bizarrely bowls off the wrong foot, which looks hilarious but he will probably need every joint in his body replacing after he retires. Beard designed by Desperate Dan.
XI) Monty Panesar (England)
Celebrates wickets like a drunken school girl country dancing. Can’t bat. Fielding getting worse. Legend.

And as night follows day and as Bangladesh follow on, here’s an XI of players with whom I would no more want to share the field of play than share a bath.

I) Graeme Smith (South Africa)
Standing in the slips shouting ‘you’re gay’ at the batsman is about as funny as knife crime.
II) Phil Jaques (Australia)
I can’t think of another opening batsman that I really hate (mainly because most teams seem to get through them like most Americans get through doughnuts), so it had to be an Australian by default.
III) Ricky Ponting (Australia)
Best batsman of his generation? Certainly. But as captain also a brazen cheat who is always the first to point the finger when another team breaches the ‘Spirit of Cricket’. Even the Australian public think he’s a c**t.
IV) Sourav Ganguly (India)
He was hated at Lancashire, useless at Northants (batting avg. 4). Lord Snooty is probably the most obnoxious man ever to set foot on a cricket field, but at least we can laugh at him for his fielding.
V) AB de Villiers (South Africa)
No, no, no – of course you ‘thought’ you’d caught it cleanly.
VI) Andrew Symonds (Australia)
‘Yeah – I hit it, ho ho ho’. Twat.
VII) Kamran Akmal (Pakistan)
Can’t bat. Can’t keep wicket. All topped off with that nausea-inducing, whining voice. ‘BOWLING DANNY!!’ he cries, even after six consecutive full-tosses have been dispatched to the boundary.
VIII) Ryan Sidebottom (England)
Miserable bastard. Always shouting at fielders when they make the slightest error (or in Monty’s case – catastrophic error), because Sidebottom never makes any mistakes – oh no, of course not.
IX) Shanthakumaran Sreesanth (India)
Absolute first-class burk. Tries to do the hard-man staring and swearing routine, then gets slapped by Harbhajan after an IPL game and promptly, and very publicly, bursts into tears. You’re not kidding anyone mate.
X) Shoaib Ahktar (Pakistan)
Total disaster of a sportsman. Probable drug-cheat. Certain cricket cheat – ‘hyper-extension’ of the elbow my arse. Has missed more games than he has played through suspension and injury. The only thing he deserves from the cricketing world is the hyper-extension of its proverbial middle finger.
XI) Mohammed Asif (Pakistan)
Makes Shoaib Ahktar look like ICC Player of the Year. Banned and then inexplicably un-banned for doping along with Mr Ahktar, busted in Dubai for carrying drugs and then mysteriously un-busted, now just about to be banned again for, yup, you guessed it, DRUGS! Seriously Mohammed, are you a moron? And to think he is supposedly one of the most exciting cricketers around. What a waste.

A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
Sallust 'Jugurthine War,' 41 B.C.
Roman historian & politician (86 BC - 34 BC)

The Pietersen Principle

Despite it only being the middle of August, the last test of the summer has been played. The Oval test may have concluded with a consolatory victory for England under Kevin Pietersen’s one-test-old regime, but there is much to ponder.
The end of Michael Vaughan’s captaincy was not too much of a surprise, his failure to register a single meaningful contribution with the willow against the Saffers sealed his already signed death warrant.
Vaughan’s legacy will always be tied to the summer of ’05. His supposed genius was cemented there and then. But how much of a genius was he really? Was he a better captain than Mike Atherton, for example? During the 1990’s Mike Atherton had at his disposal what you call a mixed bag (or a load of shit – depending on how honest you are being). Remember England sporting the likes of Devon Malcolm, Phil Tufnell, Alan Mullally, Phil DeFreitas, Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash? How difficult, if not nigh on impossible must it have been for Atherton to captain this mercurial bunch? Some of them had their moments, Malcolm’s 9-57 is one that springs to mind, but by and large it was Atherton or death. He was the lynch-pin that just about held everything together. It is often written in articles that Atherton’s wicket was the most prized by the opposition, it was about the only one prized by the opposition more like.
By comparison, Vaughan had at his command during The Glory Years of English Cricket, an in-the-form-of-his-life Flintoff, reverse swing king Simon Jones, a fit, firing and mentally stable Steve Harmison, a bejewelled Kevin Pietersen and a sane Marcus Trescothick, to name a few. The question is, who do you think had the harder job, Atherton or Vaughan*?

You can be to cricket captaincy what Stephen Hawking is to theoretical physics, but if your average first innings total is still only 103, the chances of you winning anything beyond bugger all are slim to say the least. I’m not suggesting for a moment that Vaughan wasn’t a very, very good captain, but when you have world class cricketers in your team you would have to be a very bad captain for them not to perform.
What made Vaughan good, was his ability to squeeze that extra couple of percent out of his players and his refusal to concede defeat until the last ball had been bowled. All empires fall and for Vaughan his catastrophic lack of form prevented him from being able to do what all leaders must do to survive – lead from the front.
Strengths became weaknesses, for example, the tight-knit dressing room that fostered an impenetrable team spirit, in time, when results took a turn for the worse, became viewed as a closed shop, where Michael and his mates were content and unthreatened by outsiders. Ultimately, a captain is judged by how many games he wins and for Vaughan, he won plenty, so history will be kind to him. Will we see him under the banner of the three lions again? I hope so. At his best, with those effortless and elegant drives and pulls, there is no one in cricket I would rather watch bat. Maybe with the burden of captaincy lifted he can return to the side refreshed and with a clear mind.

As the Age of Vaughan passes into legend, the Time of KP has begun. A wise appointment? After week or so of consideration, I have come to the conclusion that it is. What Pietersen possesses in quantities previously un-dreamed of in English cricket, is unshakable faith in his own abilities. No shoe gazing introspection for Kevin, no ‘we tried our best, mummy’ excuses, more the ‘fuck you, you’ll never beat me’ attitude. This has, and will in the future, really put the wind up a lot of people. (Mainly fat middle-aged men in sartorially indefensible blazers.) Good! What we need, after the malaise of the later Vaughan era, is a tornado of fresh air. People accuse KP of being arrogant, selfish and even of being narcissistic. Guilty as charged. But these are not necessarily bad qualities to have as captain. He doesn’t have to be the most popular man in the dressing room, Flintoff can play that role, nor does he have to embody the almost entirely fictitious ‘spirit of cricket’. What he has to do is win and then regardless of his perceived failings, the public will love him.
He has already said, England are going to win the Ashes next summer, hubris this may well be, but at least he has the nerve to say it. He is the only England player that opposition are really frightened of, in fact, beyond his cricketing skills I suspect a lot of sides actively dislike him, fine, it will be no skin off his nose.
Pietersen has the ability to whip this crop of England players into shape. They are good players, but they should be better. England shouldn't be 5th in the test rankings, realistically they could be 2nd or 3rd or even 1st, but at every stage best laid plans are undermined by inconsistency, under achievement and at the risk of pointing the finger, Ian Bell. KP’s lack of captaincy experience shouldn’t be a problem either, he has a very good cricket brain and he won’t ever lack the confidence to make the crucial calls. Maybe this could be a new dawn?

‘Let them hate me, so long as they fear me’
Caligula

*It’s not Vaughan