Gloucestershire batsmen in six-hitting bonanza - T20 v Middlesex

It’s a terrible quality video, but stick with it!

Why the ICC is right to shrink the World Cup

The ICC has been savaged by almost the entire cricket-writing fraternity for its decision to make the next World Cup, in Australia and New Zealand in 2015, a ten-team competition.

Instinctively I want to support the Associate nations too, who will now be deprived of a chance to compete at cricket’s top table. I even almost joined this Facebook group.

But then I looked at the facts, and, for perhaps the first time ever, I sided with the ICC. Only one of the lesser teams has actually made any positive impression in this tournament – Ireland. The rest have been mostly hopelessly outclassed.

Match 2 set the tone – New Zealand needing only eight overs to overhaul Kenya’s risible score of 69 - and it hasn’t got much better since. Apart from Ireland, of course.

The presence of Canada at cricket’s premier tournament reminds me of the 2000 Rugby League World Cup, which included a team called New Zealand Maori. Like both codes of rugby, there is no point in cricket trying to pretend that it is a world game - comparisons to the behemoth that is FIFA’s Football World Cup are pointless.

And it should be remembered that while the ICC are removing four slots from the 50-over World Cup, they are adding four to the 20-over version. The shorter the game, the more likely it is that the lesser-skilled team will win.

It pains me to say it, but, for once, the short-sighted, money-grabbing buffoons of the ICC may have done something sensible. The only danger now is that the World Twenty20 might lose its concentrated thrill. But that surely is a risk worth taking.

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.

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.

It took me ages to make this list, but it was worth it

Due to overwhelming public demand, here they are - all England's opening pairs in their long history of Twenty20 cricket (25 matches). I did it, so you don't have to.

Joe Denly/Alistair Cook
Jonathon Trott/Joe Denly
Ravi Bopara/Luke Wright
Ravi Bopara/Joe Denly
Ian Bell/Luke Wright
Ravi Bopara/Steve Davies
Phil Mustard/Luke Wright
Darren Maddy/Matt Prior
Luke Wright/Matt Prior
Darren Maddy/Vikram Solanki
Alistair Cook/Matt Prior
Ed Joyce/Michael Vaughan
Marcus Trescothick/Geraint Jones
Marcus Trescothick/Ian Bell
Marcus Trescothick/Andrew Strauss

And just to make it absolutely clear, none of these are made up. Even the one featuring Michael Vaughan.

Last year’s World Twenty20 (Wisden review part 2)

Page 537 of Wisden 2010 describes England's loss to Holland in last year’s World Twenty20. A ‘wretched nadir in the painful saga of England’s one-day humiliations’ is its verdict.

The match report is hard to read – with Holland needing seven to win, a last over with three missed run outs and a dropped catch does not bring back happy memories.

However, what really stands out is England’s line-up that day. James Foster kept wicket, Adil Rashid was England’s new, young hope, and Owais Shah and Rob Key (yes, Rob Key) were failing in the middle order. Not one of these players even makes the squad this time.

Even more damning is the choice of opening batsmen. That day it was Ravi Bopara and Luke Wright. Presumably Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb will be given the job for England’s opening match on Monday against the West Indies.

Kieswetter and Lumb will be England’s 17th opening partnership in 26 Twenty20 internationals. My favourite pairing is Ed Joyce and Michael Vaughan. Or maybe Darren Maddy and Vikram Solanki.

England. Your country does not expect.

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?

Morgan does it again

The new issue of the Wisden Cricketer asks on its cover why England have never worked out how to play one-day cricket.

They did okay today, easily beating Pakistan in Dubai, with Eion Morgan (below) playing a starring role.

What a contrast with some of the performances on the England tour of Australia in 1994-95, mentioned in my last post, which featured such one-day luminaries as Joey Benjamin, Phil Tufnell and Mike Atherton.

How that England squad must have wished for a player like Eoin Morgan.

Alastair Cook and criminality

Much has been made of South African coach Mickey Arthur's comments after the second Twenty20 at Centurion earlier in the week. "They've put a lot of effort into Adil Rashid," Arthur is reported to have said, "but for him to bowl one over I thought was criminal and it showed he doesn't have too much backing".

And yet can you really blame stand-in captain Alastair Cook? He wanted to win the game, not show faith in a bowler. Rashid (above) was smashed for 25 off that one over, including four sixes.

Of far more importance is another question - why was Rashid playing in the first place? The young Yorkshire all-rounder has made his name in Championship cricket, so why pick him in Twenty20s?

After all those years of failures, it seems that the England selectors are still not taking limited overs cricket seriously. Rather than learning about the pressures of international cricket (which was presumably the intention), Rashid's confidence could now be permanently scarred.

Surely we should be picking the best eleven Twenty20 players in the Twenty20 side, not using it as a breeding ground for 'bigger' things?

Flexibilty not required

To complain about the inflexibilty of England's batting order after their pummelling earlier today by South Africa misses the point entirely. This is a twenty over thrash we're talking about. If Alistair Cook and Joe Denly are not judged capable of scoring at over twelve an over, then they shouldn't be in the team to begin with. Sixes, not flexibility, matter most in Twenty20 cricket.

Middle order nurdlers

According to The Guardian on Friday, the Sri Lankan Twenty 20 template is 'an explosive opening partnership, nurdlers in the middle order and mystery spin to bamboozle the opposition.' This formula may have served the Sri Lankans well up to now, but wouldn't they be even more successful if they had an explosive middle order as well?

Of course, it's one of the major complaints with the 50-over format - those middle twenty overs in which the batsmen are happy to run every ball to long-on for a single, and the fielding captain is happy to let them. Twenty 20 was meant to do away with that, but, as Sri Lanka have demonstrated, it hasn't.

The fact is that it doesn't matter how many overs you play in a limited overs match, there will always be boring (or, at least, less exciting) middle overs. A team playing a one-over-a-side match would probably still have room for a nurdler for the third and fourth deliveries.

So it's not Sri Lanka that are to blame, it's the limited over format. Together with artificial fielding restrictions, those tedious middle overs are a symbol of the difficulty the shorter format will always have when challenging Test cricket as the primary version of the sport.

A very good cricket shot

It was soon after Rishi Persad got a large orange hat placed on his head by a group of Dutch cricket fans at Lord's, that I came to an important conclusion - the Twenty 20 commentator's phrase du jour, 'a very good cricket shot', is absurd.

What do commentators mean when they use this phrase? A classical shot that might appear in the MCC coaching manual? But in what way is this synonymous with 'very good'? How is a cover drive with checked finish 'better' than a reverse ramp over the wicketkeeper's head? Surely if they both go for four, they are as good as each other.

All the use of the phrase does is keep alive the now-outmoded view that somehow Twenty 20 isn't 'proper' cricket. As long as it is the result of a premeditated stroke, a four is a four no matter what the stroke looks like.

England lose to Holland ... at cricket

I was surprised by a number of things during England's miserable loss to the Netherlands on Friday. Of course, the fact that England were thumped by the Netherlands was very surprising. An England XI captained by Mark Benson may have been beaten by Holland at Haarlem in 1993, but this was on a whole new plane of ineptitude.

But what I found most surprising was that I actually found myself wanting the Netherlands to win. As Darron Reekers and Tom de Grooth smashed England's attack to all parts of The Oval, I was willing them on. I actually smiled as the entire Dutch squad ran on to the pitch to congratulate Ryan ten Doeschate and Edgar Schiferli as they scrambled through after Stuart Broad's now-infamous shy at the stumps.

I first considered that this surprising development was perhaps because I didn't really care. This is Twenty 20 cricket after all. It's nothing more than a souped-up slog - none of the players take it seriously, so why should I? Didn't New Zealand play in comedy Seventies afros in a Twenty 20 game against Australia a couple of years ago? But then I remembered that I actually love Twenty 20 cricket, and cried when Gloucestershire lost on Twenty 20 finals day at Edgbaston in 2003. And this is England. I always thought I would support England in any sporting contest, from wife-lifting to cheese-rolling.

I have concluded that my non-support of England was actually to do with the opposition. Sure, England have sporting rivalry with Holland, but that comes from football. A history of mould-breaking tactics, skilful individual players (including the great Johan Cruyff), and success at the highest level - the Dutch aren't just good at football, they are very good.*

But cricket is different, isn't it? Don't we have the European monopoly on the great game? I imagine Dutch net sessions in scrubby parks, during which a passerby runs off with the only ball, and one of the bowlers is playing in black tracksuit bottoms because he lent his only set of whites to a mate the week before and he hasn't got them back. How can you not warm to a team like that? And they play in orange.

And also I still think England have a decent chance of winning the tournament. If Holland can beat England at cricket, surely anything can happen, however ridiculous.

*See Brilliant Orange by David Winner for an excellent study of Dutch football. Simon Kuper has a long piece on Johan Cruyff in this month's FourFourTwo magazine.