Reverse Swing

Who should captain England in the test series against Pakistan?

Will Flintoff be fit enough to do it?

Will Strauss be told “no thanks’ after the hammering from Sri Lanka in the ODIs?

Trescothick has said he’s up for it again but could there be another round of “personal reasons” reappearing in the busy winter schedule?

With Vaughan out for the foreseeable future we’re looking at more than a temporary fix: it’s no hold the fort job, it’s really about who will be captain for the Ashes and World Cup. There’s also a pressing need to repair morale after the recent stuffing from Sri Lanka. Nine months ago who would have thought England would be in this situation? It can only get better as they say.

Anyway there’s a captaincy poll in the right-hand margin if you’d care to cast your vote.

crowd

Originally uploaded by Spiderpops.

Spiderpops has captured this Mexican wave at Old Trafford in the Eng v Sri Lanka ODI. Looks like you needed protective headgear for this one.

The public’s appetite for twenty20 cricket is till strong judging by the crowd at Taunton for Somerset’s match against Gloucester. The idea of a defined twenty20 season built around July was a sharp marketing move, giving the competition some shape and substance.

The Taunton crowd saw Somerset score a record 250 off the 20 overs with a 90 from Justin Langer and a 116 not out from Cameron White. You could see Langer was enjoying it out there.

And there was even something for those who enjoy bowling. Richard Johnson’s delivery that took Adshead’s wicket was swinging down legside when it straightened and took his leg stump.

Just like last year when they won the trophy Somerset have a young team and a young enthusastic overseas captain, so they must be hoping that the same script runs its course. This time of course they will be helped by the addition of Justin Langer.

At the weekend we finally got round to sorting through the cricket gear that’s been accumulating. The quality stuff has been identified and is now on ebay.

There’s some rather nice youth’s cricket pads that look very smart with the Hex Tex sidewings – I wish I’d made up that phrase.

There’s also a Slazenger V600 Supreme that has been diligently knocked in and oiled but only used around 8-10 times in winter nets.

These items and a Slazenger holdall and youth’s cricket sweater can be found here.

Get yourself a bargain as they say.

The England team management must be delighted that the World Cup is relegating cricket to the odd item on the back pages. If there was no football going on some pretty vitriolic stuff would be served up at this moment as England stumble to five successive losses in three different formats to Sri Lanka.

What cricket news there is focuses on injury: knee, hip, failed operation, ballet dancing and delayed comeback, concerning Giles, Vaughan, Flintoff, Jones : just perm any combination of these and you’ll get a story.

There’s disquiet about the failure of the top order to cash in and make hundreds and about the wicketkeeping and batting of Geraint Jones, but it was Mike Selvey who honed in on the bowling. After noting that Harmison often bowls badly at Lords, but  had improved by the Oval with an opening burst of 6 overs for nine runs, Selvey said:

He’s right, the technical aspects of the bowling have to improve but what is significant is the relative inexperience of Mahmood and Plunkett, as well as Bresnan. It does seem to take a couple of years for bowlers to bed down at international level whether it’s in tests or ODIs. Both Harmison and Flintoff rarely looked dangerous in their first year of bowling at international level, and in the 2004-5 South African tour it was noticeable how Vaughan turned to Simon Jones only releuctantly. The potency of the Ashes winning quartet took several years to develop, and the four of them had international experience under their belt before Cooley started working with them.

Advocating Gough as tactical adviser is an interesting one. There’s always the possibility that his ebullient self-belief – remember he still want to play for England at 36 – would destroy the fragile confidence of the current crop of bowlers. In addition his role could clash with that of the fast-bowling coach Kevin Shine, although Selvey probably envisages a divvy up of the technical and tactical advice.

On the other hand, Steve Waugh was once asked if he would pick any members of a losing England team for the Australian side. His answer was that he would pick none of them, although he would have Darren Gough as 12th man for dressing-room morale. Perhaps it’s reached that stage.

Review – Ian Pont :The Fast Bowler’s Bible. Crowood Press £12.99
Published 9th June 2006.

Spit and The Vulcan Grip.

Judging by the search strings for this site there’s a tremendous interest out there in the techniques and how tos of fast bowling. “How to bowl fast,” “biomechanics,” “reverse swing” are the kind of terms that frequently crop up on the site-stats for Reverse Swing, all of them scoring a large amount of hits.

The problem is that published information on these newer developments in fast bowling has been either rare, sporadic or non-existent, so the publication of Ian Pont’s book “The Fast Bowler’s Bible” is indeed timely.

While the old MCC coaching manual always referred to “ sideways on” the new fast-bowling buzz-word is “biomechanics” and this is often bandied around when talking about the latest developments in the art. Ian Pont gives a much-needed simple explanation of biomechanics: it’s all to do with “improving the bowling action.”

In the chapter, “Fast Bowling Coaching Made Easy,” which is probably the most valuable one in the book, he breaks down the bowling action into its constituent elements, explaining what happens in each one and the part it plays in fast bowling. This is the meaty must-read section of the text, where he starts with the run-up and moves on to “ The Gather,” through “Hang time” and “Front-arm Load up,” dealing with each successive element before finishing on the “Follow-up on the Ball.” It’s impressive stuff.

(more…)

I was wondering when this one was going to be openly mooted. In Richard Hobson’s preview of the England V Sri Lanka ODI to be played today in Durham, there’s little mention of the players and the cricket on the field. Instead he focuses on the possibility of Tom Moody becoming the next coach of England.

It’s not difficult to come up with a list of reasons why the ECB could be interested in Moody:

• Sri Lanka’s fight back
• Development of younger Sri Lankan players
• English wife, house in Worcester
• He applied for the Academy post

But then again with John Buchanan out of contract afer the World Cup, it could be Australia who will attract Moody’s interest.

Duncan Fletcher’s contribution to English cricket has been immense, and there will certainly be no change in the coach until after the winter tour of Australia and the World Cup. But with England’s continued lack of progress in the ODI format, and the tail-off in test form, the speculation on the succession will only increase.

Not to be outdone by injuries to England footballers Kevin Pietersen chimes in with one of his own. It’s not quite in the league of a broken metatarsal or cruciate ligament damage:

a bruised left knee on Tuesday when he was struck on the pad by seamer Lasith Malinga.

Pretty painful stuff no doubt but he’s not going to let it get him down.

He said: “We’ve lost Flintoff, Giles, Jones, Vaughan and Anderson so if I went down as well it’s not going to help matters is it?”

It certainly isn’t. Pietersen represents England’s best chance of retrieving something from the ODI series against Sri Lanka. Luckily, Pietersen has plans to deal with the injury.

He has already had his pads reinforced but said they may have to be looked at again.

It’s good we’re all up to speed with this one.

Interesting overview from Stumpcam on Aussies playing for English counties this season. It seems there’s some surprise at Cameron White doing so well for Somerset. I must admit I hadn’t picked up that he’d only scored one first-class century in Australia – his other three first-class centuries have been for Somerset this season.

He’s certainly been a great success for the county – given the captaincy as well as making runs. Lets hope he’s a long-term acquisition providing some overseas continuity.

Great innings from Jayasuriya – whatever the field, whatever the delivery, I’ll place it where I want. There’s no one quite like him when he’s at the top of his game.

Good bowling from Harmison too as the senior pro:- 10-2-31-3 is impressive economy in a total of 320.

But why oh why did Strauss keep on bringing Mahmood back? It’s always good to give a bowlers another chance but you could see it wasn’t going right for him from the start – 7-0-80-2 – was that in four spells? You could see his confidence was dropping, and he didn’t even take pleasure in his final wicket, which is always the worst sign. They’ve really got to nurture these bowlers and with plenty of bowling options around Strauss could have done that so much more effectively.

Harmison was bullish at the end of the Sri Lankan innings – “it’s a 320 pitch and we’ve got the names in the dressing-room.” We shall see, as they say.