Alastair Cook and striking

Alastair Cook has been taking some stick for an interview he gave to the Times magazine on Saturday, in which he suggested that England’s cricketers may go on strike if the international schedule is not reduced.

However, what the detractors have missed here is that Cook was not complaining about his own workload, but that of his teammates.

He even acknowledged that he is ‘pretty much the only one who’s been able to play and to enjoy the experience of winning.’

I would say he is perfectly justified in his complaints. This is a team game, after all.

I have more of a problem with something he says later, that he wants to ‘retain his low-keyness.’ If he’s serious about this, perhaps it might help to avoid top celeb photographer Rankin and the cover of the Times magazine?

More on the World Cup schedule

There’s a very good article on the World Cup in today’s Independent by James Corrigan.

Bored yet? Or, like me, are you refusing to tune in until the quarter-finals, some time after the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival and a little before Easter?

I said something similar in my last post on this blog.

However, Mr Corrigan forgets one important thing in his criticism of the pared-down World Cup proposed for 2015.

Upsets in cricket are few and far between. He says that the ICC should ‘take a leaf out of Fifa’s book’, but there is a huge difference. The weaker side sometimes wins a football match. It almost never wins a cricket match.

World Cup bombshell–Sri Lanka beat Canada #cwc2011

I did my best to get excited about the World Cup, I really did.

I enjoyed listening to the tournament’s opener yesterday between India and Bangladesh. I even stayed up to watch the highlights, marvelling at the power hitting of Tamim Iqbal and a one-legged Virender Sehwag.

But the results of games 2 and 3 have quickly knocked on the head any thought that this tournament could be something more than a drawn-out, bloated cash cow, designed purely to ensure that the leading teams don’t get knocked out early.

In case you missed them, this is what happened earlier today:

Kenya 69 v  v New Zealand 72/0 (8 ov)
New Zealand won by 10 wickets (with 252 balls remaining)

Sri Lanka 332/7 v Canada 122 (36.5 ov)
Sri Lanka won by 210 runs

And we still must sit through another 39 games spread over more than a month before reaching the quarter-finals. My heart sinks.

Gloucestershire frustrated by rain

Play has been delayed in Rotterdam where Gloucestershire were due to play Holland in the Clydesdale Bank 40-over competition. This is bad news.

Seeing as this is the most ridiculously-scheduled domestic season of all time, I thought you may appreciate some clarity on the tournament’s current situation.

The facts are that Gloucestershire are desperately in need of maximum points from the game as they look to qualify for the semi-finals on September 11th.

Only the winner of each of the three groups qualify automatically, and they will be joined by the best-placed runners-up. Yorkshire are running away with Group B, but Gloucestershire and Essex are fighting it out for the second spot.

In Group A, Somerset look likely winners, with Sussex and Surrey still in contention. Group C meanwhile is much closer, with Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire, Hampshire, Kent and Durham still hopeful of qualifying.

So Gloucestershire will want to play today, but the forecast is not good.

Twenty20 - no going back

So the ECB are having their annual meeting to decide whether to completely rethink scheduling for the following season. Anything has to be better than the shambles that was this year’s calendar.

One of the things they are discussing is the Twenty20 competition, which this year expanded to sixteen group matches per county, and dragged on from June 1st to July 18th.

The counties aren’t keen on a reduction in the number of games. Richard Gould, chief executive at Somerset, said: “It would be financially disastrous for us if we lost three T20 matches next season. We would lose £250,000, It would be like asking the ECB to lose three Test matches.”

Uh? The Twenty20 Cup has expanded as follows:

2003, 2004: 5 group matches

2005, 2006, 2007: 8 group matches

2008, 2009: 10 group matches

Somerset survived in those seasons, didn’t they? What’s changed? Have they really budgeted on the ECB keeping sixteen group matches in place forever? If they have, they are even more short-sighted than the ECB itself.

And it’s nothing like asking the ECB to lose three Test matches. There have been Test matches in England for a hundred years. There have been Twenty20 matches in England for eight.

Anyway, Somerset have no need to worry - there’s no going back now. There is about as much chance of a reduction in the number of group matches in next year’s Twenty20 Cup as there was of Alastair Cook getting dropped for the third Test.

How to make things even more difficult for Pakistan

Dogs being allowed to crap all over my route to the train station. Arsene Wenger fielding Arsenal’s third team in the League Cup. People using hands-free mobile phones when both of their hands are free anyway. Just because these things happen all the time, it doesn’t make them right.

I would like to add a cricket-related item to this list – back-to-back Test matches. It was only a few years ago that a back-to-back Test was worthy of comment. In 2000, there was not one back-to-back Test in the English season – each of the seven matches that the two touring sides (Zimbabwe and the West Indies) played against England were punctuated by tour matches.

This season, Pakistan will play six Tests in seven weeks. There were three days scheduled between the end of the second Test against Australia and the start of the first against England. The only break between any of the six games of more than three days is between the second and third Tests against England, in which one of those ridiculous two-day matches is due to be played against Worcestershire.

No time for rest or recuperation. No opportunities for fringe players to stay in form, or out-of-form stars to find some fluency. No chance for county supporters to see their local heroes pit their skills against a national side. Of all the many problems with the shambles known as the English cricket season, this is surely one of the most serious.

A dwindling audience

So, Gloucestershire thump Surrey at the Oval in the Twenty20. Only two Surrey batsmen hit boundaries in a feeble total of 97, and Gloucestershire win with more than half their overs remaining. The floodlights aren’t even required.

But beyond the predictable talk of (a) Surrey's pathetic capitulation, continued lack of success, and big name flops, and (b) Gloucestershire’s all-round excellence and Ian Butler’s figures of 3 for 8, one sobering statistic stands out.

The Guardian reports off-handedly that the match had an attendance of ‘a shade under 5000’. A shade under 5000? That’s awful. The ground must have been barely a quarter full.

Aren’t Twenty20 matches meant to be sold out, with queues around the block and ticket touts doing their thing? But then I remembered that that was when sides played only five group matches instead of the current fifteen, and it all made sense.

Does the stupidity of the cricket authorities know no bounds? Will the ECB ever put the interests of the game and the wider public beyond financial short-termism, and kowtowing to Sky?

The interest that has been generated in this year’s tournament, and particularly the attendance figures at matches, proves, beyond all reasonable doubt, that you can have too much of a good thing.

Summer’s here!

It’s difficult to believe, but the domestic cricket season is almost upon us - the traditional curtain-raising encounter of MCC versus Champion County starts on Monday. Yes, that really is March 29th.

A round of one-sided university games begins a week on Saturday (April 3rd), and the first round of Championship matches the week after. Before you know it, England will be playing Bangladesh in the first Test at Lord’s.

The fact that Monday’s game is in Abu Dhabi, and will be played under lights with a pink ball is beside the point. The domestic season is a bloated and confusing mess.

So where’s the decider?

‘2-match series drawn 1-1’ says Cricinfo. Well, there’s a surprise.

A two-match series is a strange idea in any form of cricket, but in Twenty20 it borders on the absurd.

For once, the authorities have made a series too short. Will they ever get it right?

England lose to England

So England lost earlier today to England A in Abu Dhabi.

It reminded me of the one-day World Series on England's tour to Australia in 1994-95, when Australia A made up the numbers in a four team tournament.

Except that was completely ridiculous, whereas this game looked like a decent warm-up for Friday’s opening Twenty20 against Pakistan. And, of course, Australia managed to avoid losing to their own second string.

Not long to go

It’s been a long wait, but we’re nearly there. After exactly a month of making do with news of Kenya v Zimbabwe and Kabir Ali leaving Worcestershire, England are back in action.

The second half of England's winter programme starts in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday with a game against the England Lions, before the squad moves on for two Twenty20s against Pakistan in Dubai and then Bangladesh. You can see the Bangladesh fixtures here.

I’m raring to go - it will be fascinating to see how the Bedford Choirboy™ Alastair Cook copes as captain.

A month without cricket is too long. Too long for everyone except Andrew Strauss.

Smoking, Samoa and the Scots

It's been a quiet few weeks in cricket - everybody says so. Even Andy Bull says so, and he is the author of the Guardian's weekly cricket email, The Spin. This week he resorted to cricketers who smoke, and a charity appeal. Last week, it was a history of cricket in Samoa.

Over on the BBC, things aren't looking much better. As I write, the headline at www.bbc.co.uk/cricket is 'Donald interested in England role'. 'Irish lose by four runs to Canada' and 'Scots beat Uganda after shoot-out' also get a prominent place on the front page.

I love it. Apart from the fact I'm quite interested in the history of cricket in Samoa, it really heightens the anticipation for the next big event. You can have too much of a good thing. A lot has been made of player burn-out, but just as important is fan fatigue.

Five match series

Is anyone else feeling a little short-changed, or is it just me?

We were promised a few years ago that all series between England and their two oldest enemies, Australia and South Africa, would be of a minimum five Test matches. Three years later, and we have an South Africa series ... of four Tests.

The situation is crying out for a decider. England somehow saved two matches, destroyed South Africa in one, and were destroyed themselves in the other. A victory for either team in a fifth match would be a fitting conclusion.

Instead we are left waiting for something that will not come, cheated of a full series in order to fit in more one-day internationals. Remember those? No, thought not.

Pointless warm-up matches, part 1

A good friend of mine is confused. He knows his cricket, yet he, like me, is struggling to understand what's going on in England's warm-up games in South Africa.

Of course, a two-day match is ridiculous. That's obvious. Number one, unless you're playing on a pitch teleported from 1892, the simple truth is that two days isn't long enough for four innings. Number two, a two-day match cannot have first-class status.

But then, during the first match against a South African Invitational XI, it dawned on me - these matches will be one innings per side! Maybe this isn't as ridiculous as it seems. It even got quite exciting at the end, as Swann took six wickets and England finished three wickets short of an excellent victory.

And then what happens? In the second match, England bowl out the South African Invitational XI for 263, 54 runs short of England's total, and yet the game finishes early as a draw, by "captains' agreement". So it was two innings a side, after all.

I feel cheated. Have I and my friend missed something here?

The Real Deal

The lack of recent posts on this blog is indicative of the low-key start to England's tour of South Africa. Even cricket die-hards seem unaware that the first international match of this winter tour is on Friday (the first of two Twenty20 matches). What chance does the average sports fan have when the impressive victories against the Diamond Eagles and the Warriors (love those names!) have hardly been mentioned on the BBC or in the papers?

Yet this tour is the real deal. England, on a high after their Ashes success, are about to come up against the number one ranked Test side in the world - we will learn a lot over the next few months. Do the doommongers who point out that England should never have won the Ashes anyway, after scoring two centuries in the entire series, have a point after all?

And we will learn a lot about Stuart Broad, England's poster boy, the heartbeat of the team, the future, the new Ian Botham. He may be an 'Ashes hero and all-round good bloke' according to the Independent on Sunday, but can he continue where he left off in the summer? Can he bring that bowling average down from 35.78? At the same stage in his career, Beefy's average was 19.27.

At least, for once, we have something approaching a decent schedule to work with. Three, yes that's right, three one-day warm-ups before the Twenty20s, and another before the first of five ODIs, then two two-day matches (okay, nothing's perfect) before four Tests. Now I am excited.

The ECB needs YOU!

It didn't get much attention, but the format of next season's domestic limited overs tournament was announced this week. The word that springs to mind is 'hopeless'.

For the ECB to put all its one-day eggs into the 40-over basket was always difficult to fathom. But to then have a format in which the competing sides are divided into three groups of seven, with a composite side of players without a professional contract (a 'Recreational XI') making up the numbers, almost beggars belief.

It gets worse. The tournament seems to be called the 'ECB 40 League'. Or maybe it's the '40 League'? Or maybe the 'ECB 40'? The BBC report that members of the public have been invited to suggest a name for the Recreational XI. Perhaps they would be more usefully employed in thinking of a name for the tournament itself.

The future of the County Championship

Perhaps the ECB are tinkering with the wrong domestic competition. Amidst all the recent talk about the abolition of the Friends Provident Trophy, and the reprieve for the 40-over game, little has been said about the ultimate test for the county cricketer, the County Championship.

The Championship is held in more affection by the cricketing public than the ECB realise. Rather than treating it like the black sheep of the domestic game, the following modifications would give it the prominence it deserves:

1. Each county should start the season with an equal chance of winning the title. Replace the first and second divisions with two or three equal groups.

2. Let the season culminate with a showpiece final at Lords between the two best first class teams of the season - the winners of each group or (in the case of three groups) the winners of two semi-finals.

3. Each game in a round of matches should start on the same day to make the table more meaningful and easier to follow, with weekends included wherever possible. Play less matches to allow centrally contracted players to appear.

4. Simplify the scoring system. It is absurd that the points column currently requires the use of decimal points. Three or five points points for win, one for a draw and none for a loss.

5. Ensure that grounds are more spectator friendly. Keep ticket prices down and the crowd informed with decent public address systems.

We mustn't give up on the County Championship. The implementation of all, or some, of these points could even turn it into a money maker. They would certainly make for an even more vibrant competition and improve the standard of the national team.

More tinkering to the domestic structure

The ECB have revealed that domestic 50-over cricket will be dumped from next year. I haven't heard a more absurd and ill-thought out proposal since the previous ECB announcement on the future of the county game about three minutes ago. What about the recommendations of the Schofield Report? What about the bizarre second Twenty20 tournament that never got off the ground?

The ECB agreed to abolish the 40 over domestic competion in July of last year. Now it has been given a stay of execution. What exactly has happened to change the situation so radically since then? The ECB give the impression of coming up with these plans after a night in the Lord's Tavern with one too many lager shandies.

Who's ready for some one-day action?

It is excellent that England look set to play Ireland more regularly in one-day internationals. It is ridiculous that today's game was scheduled to take place 72 hours after the last day of an Ashes series.

Perhaps if only one Twenty20 game had been timetabled against the Aussies (or, even better, none at all) and only three or five one-day internationals (rather than the absurd seven), the England side would have been allowed a decent amount of time to reflect on their magnificent victory.

Even better, play the one-dayers between the two test series, one triangular tournament if the sides are of similar stature (like this year), two separate series if not.