The flat pitches

There is a lot of hue and cry in English media about flat pitches being made in WI in the current series. Media has been blaming defensive attitude of WI team bemoaning that they are interested in playing for draw only and pitches and playing tactics are designed just to achieve that.

One could understand the frustration of English media with how the series has shaped up so far. Nobody expected WI to give any fight to England. But now WI has a very strong chance of winning the series, leave alone drawing it. English media has not been able to come to terms with reality of its team’s strength and looking for excuses to downplay pathetic display of English cricket team.

I am not sure why would people blame pitches in WI. We had one result, one game had very close finish and it was defensive tactics by England which led to WI escaping with draw. In the current match also, England made a very slow start when they knew they need to win this match to square the series. They just managed to score just 258 on first day in 90 0vers. There was clear lack of intent on their part, so how is this fair to blame WI pitches and team for defensive tactics.

WI had series lead before the final test and it was expected that they would be content with draw and onus was on England to force the pace and look for result. They have clearly failed in doing so. 

And why would having dull draws in test cricket lead to death of test cricket. There have been more results in Test crickets in this decade than ever before. Teams score quickly resulting in higher scores and bowlers getting more chances to get wickets resulting in more results than draws. Test cricket did not die when we used to see more draws so how come these draws are going to cause death of Test cricket. I can understand English media’s grief on losing the series but England losing the series does not lead to death of cricket esp. when we had some great test cricket last year between India-Aus and another great match is in progress between Aus-SA.

Instead of bemoaning WI tactics, English media should question team preparedness and players’ attitude. When was the last time the super heroes – Flintoff & KP played a match winning inning – be it tests or ODIs? They are merely showmen who play a good inning once in a while and the whole media goes ga-ga over them.

From a  neutral observers’ attitude this series was between two teams ranked 5 & 7 respectively in the world and cricket was of the quality of the lower rungs team as expected and result is not surprising as though teams are looking closely matched but WI has shown more intent and hunger to win.

 

<Update> On the last day of the last test, England showed some intent and aggression to force a result and they nearly got the required result. Had they applied themselves more in the earlier part of the series, the result could have been different. But as  things stand today, they are #6 ranked team in test cricket.

What wrong did ECB & Giles Clarke do?

ECB and Giles Clarke have been pillored a lot in last few days due to their decision of aligning with Stanford for sponsorship and generating cash for english cricket. I do not understand why are they being treated in this way. Clarke and ECB did what they thought was an excellent way of generating cash for players and board and also help in revival of WI Cricket. Any person in their capacity would have loved this idea. A few days effort every year which would make them richer by $3.5 m and give English players a strong chance to become millionaires. They would have been fools to reject such an offer. Why do people expect them to verify Stanford's credentials? They are in no position to validate Stanford's accounts and check if he is a fraud. This is something that SEC or similar organizations need to do and none of them had raised any red flag at Stanford when this deal was made. ECB even added clauses in their contract with Stanford which gave them "get out" options in case they cannot continue to handle this type of exigency. So, In my opinion, they did no wrong and this move would have been hailed as a master stroke had English players not made a mockery of themselves on Nov 1 against Stanford XI.

I do understand that they were trying to get even with BCCI and also trying to prevent English players from participating in IPL - this motive is something that I do not agree with and this was probably only fault that Clarke's and ECB's thinking had while signing up with Stanford.