The award for most entertaining cricket interview of the year has already been decided. Step forward Merv Hughes who spoke to 5 Live Sport last night.
If you missed it, you can listen to it on the i-Player here. It starts at 7 minutes 35 seconds. Do it now - if you miss it, you’ll regret it forever.
ps Was it only a coincidence that Cricket Australia announced today that Big Merv had been dropped from the country’s National Selection Panel?
Everyone seems to agree that England need an in-form Kevin Pietersen if they are to hold on to the Ashes this winter. In fact, it’s been said so many times, it’s getting boring. But is it actually true?
Since March 2009, when KP scored his last Test hundred, England haven’t lost a Test series, and have lost just three of nineteen matches. Pietersen missed three matches through injury in the 2009 Ashes, and averages a less-than-great 35 from the others.
During this time, England have played a number of teams significantly stronger than the current Aussies, including the 2009 Aussies and South Africa in South Africa. The absence of KP has allowed the likes of Eion Morgan and Jonathan Trott to break through and hit match-winning hundreds.
So perhaps England’s best chance of success in Australia is not to pick KP first, and then fit ten players in around him. Instead, they would surely do well to pick the best eleven players - it’s revolutionary I know, but it might just work.
By constantly repeating the mantra that KP will come good, as if there must be trouble if he doesn’t, the England management are showing a weakness rather than a strength. And they will need all the strength they can muster if they are to beat their oldest foe once again.
