An Oasis of Cricket

Northern California's best cricket ground, seen via satellite on Google Maps. I never actually had an occasion to go there when I lived in the region. I had heard rumors of its existence but did not know where it was.

Scenes from Bois de Boulogne - a large park in Paris

Lots of Job Openings

Of the 16 teams in this cricket World Cup, at least 8 will be changing coaches (so far we know about England, Pakistan, West Indies, India, Bangladesh, Ireland, Netherlands and Canada).

There are also at least 2 changes in captaincy, with Brian Lara and Inzamam Ul Haq bowing out. The world cup seems to encourage a certain amount of house cleaning.

Fletcher beats Lara by 1 wicket in swan song match

Yesterday saw the last international cricket match for Brian Lara, and the last match as England coach by Duncan Fletcher. Neither of the two departing men was at the center of yesterday's result, really. Lara was run out for 18, leaving Chris Gayle's blazing 79 off 58 balls as the dominant knock for the Windies. Lara doesn't have to prove anything to anyone, though. He retires as a batting superstar. In contrast, Michael Vaughan did have to prove himself. This match could have been Vaughan's swan song as well, at least in ODI cricket, but he showed that he can add real value to the team. England looked to be in real trouble, but Vaughan came through at the right moments.

I didn't even know Michael Vaughan could bowl at all, but his figures of 3 for 39 in 10 overs were easily the best of the lot and he kept the target from getting completely out of reach. Vaughan also came through with the bat, needing just 10 more balls to match Gayle's 79. Vaughan's contribution alone was not enough, though. It also took a fast 100 by the frequently impressive Pietersen, plus a fighting 38 by keeper Nixon, plus some brief pressure-packed batting for Stuart Broad and even 11th man James Anderson to overhaul the Windies' 300.

So what can we make of this result? England deserves their 5th-place spot. That's not really good enough for their critics, but it's actually a big improvement over their performance in the last World Cup. They one every match they played against teams which were not among the semifinalists, and they came very close to beating Sri Lanka. It was not always pretty, and there's plenty of room for improvement with both bat and ball but if they hadn't managed to rally and win the CB series in Australia this winter, I think the press might consider this 5th-place finish a step in the right direction.

It's been suggested elsewhere that the Aussies are #1 because their fans will accept nothing less. Maybe it's the other way around. It's good to complain about problems that can be addressed (and which are worth addressing), and no one with a competitive attitude will be happy with 5th place, but it's also important to appreciate what you have. Yesterday, Fletcher's England team were able to show that there is something there worth appreciating.

Stiff Upper Lip Time

Yesterday England had a chance to rise above mediocrity and sneak into the semifinals of the World Cup. Instead, they suffered a humiliating thrashing at the hands of South Africa. It was, as Jonathan Agnew described, England cricket "laid bare".

An amazing thing happens, though, when England's cricketers break the hearts of their supporters. It unleashes the brilliance of English sarcasm. While the match was pretty dismal cricket by all accounts, the BBC text narration (credited to Tom Fordyce) and associated comments were sometimes amusing. Here's a gem from the 7th over of England's innings:

Kaboom! Vaughan gets off the mark after a mere 20 deliveries, getting a thick edge through gully for one. You can't defend against those sort of fireworks. Bell does the same, and England are rampant.

I also like Fordyce's summary of the rivalry:

In case you're unaware of the history behind this particular showdown, Pietersen left his homeland for England because of the quota system - South African rules state that no team can field more than three massive egos in any one match.

The user comments were sometimes fun, too, such as one spectator who found a unique way of coping with the frustration of watching England's opening batsmen:

Why can I not shrug off the Benny Hill theme tune currently ringing in my ears?

The sarcasm only got sharper after a Mr. Rhodes complained about the negativity of the narration. This inspired some positive spin of the circumstances:

Rhodes version: "Huge, huge improvement from Mahmood - nine fewer runs off this over than his last one."


Unfortuately, Sajid Mahmoud was a pretty easy target. On a good day he can be a very fine bowler, but yesterday, and probably too many other days in this World Cup, that was not the case. Even his fielding was grist for the mill:

Mahmood then produces a sublime moment on the point boundary by jogging across to Kallis's gentle cut and booting it accidentally over the rope for four, in the manner of a clown entertaining children.

England still have one more match to go, but they can look forward to facing more sarcasm and bitterness, as well as calls for change which are hard to dispute at this point. If you had asked me before the tournament whether it was reasonable to expect England to finish 5th or 6th, I'd have said "yes" without hesitation, but with the manner in which the batting crawled along and then collapsed against South Africa, a reasonable result has become a humiliation. It seems their style of play in one-day matches works well against the minnows but only work against the big boys when KP ignites, or if a couple of tailenders bat exceptionally well. Even in those cases, - when England batted well against Sri Lanka and Australia, for example - it wasn't always enough. England will leave this tournament having lost to all four of the semifinalists.

Beautiful Slow Motion Footage

Cricket's a difficult sport to film, since the camera crew is usually pretty far away from the action, and the most interesting things happen suddenly and unpredictably. So it's worth taking a look, if you haven't already seen it, of this lovely slowed-down footage from the 2005 Ashes:

Oh, England

England will likely have to live with some what-ifs. Against Sri Lanka and against Australia some great individual performances were wasted. I actually got to see them bat against Australia yesterday. I braved the second-hand smoke of an English pub with a Sky box. Kevin Pietersen was amazing, hitting his first one-day century with rather limited support from partners. Ian Bell deserves credit for an excellent, if somewhat slow 77 in his new role as opener. And Bopara batted well in the tail. You'd think a 50+ from an opener, a century from your middle-order star and a fighting 21 from a tailender would be enough to win, but this is England vs. Australia, and other than those 3, plus some of Andrew Flintoff's usual quality bowling, England was pretty bereft.

England has a hole in the batting lineup. A big hole which was not filled at all by Vaughan and Strauss, who made similar mistakes. Flintoff's dismissal was perhaps the worst, though. Bradd Hogg simply out-thought Flintoff, and it seems like maybe that's not such a big accomplishment these days. On one ball Hogg nearly pulled Flintoff into a stumping, and the next ball landed just a bit further out and did pull him out of his ground for the stumping.

On the bowling side, Flintoff has been excellent, and the others have been inconsistent at best. Mahmoud had a fine match against Sri Lanka. If he'd had a fine match against Austrlia England would have won, but he didn't. He didn't get much support from the pitch or the other bowlers, though (Flintoff aside).

Now England will have to fight for what's left of their hopes in this tournament against a Bangladesh team celebrating its shocking demolition of the world's top-ranked one-day side.

The Most Interesting Team in this World Cup

So far Sri Lanka has been the most interesting team in this World Cup. Their matches against South Africa, in which South Africa limped to victory after a near-fatal collapse (including the remarkable 4 wickets in 4 balls by Lasith Malinga), and against England, in which a great rearguard effort from England's tailenders Bopara and Nixon fell just 2 runs short. That's one-day cricket at its most exciting.

What makes them interesting? In part its that they have a really dangerous batting lineup. The formerly retired Sanath Jayasuriya is an excellent batsman, and Australia's Adam Gilchrist is the only other wicket keeper-batsman in the same class as Kumar Sangakkara. But what really makes them unique is their bowlers. They don't just have good bowlers, they have bowlers who are one-of-a-kind. There will never be another bowler like Muttiah Muralitharan - his deformed elbow makes him pretty much impossible to emulate. Now that Shane Warne has retired, he is undisputably the sport's premier wicket-taking spin bowler. Then there's the aforementioned Lasith Malinga. Not only does he have an unusual style of delivery, which has been much discussed, but now he's got hair to match. There's also Chaminda Vaas, who almost became a priest instead of a cricketer.

I can't predict that Sri Lanka will win the tournament, but I can say that they are the team to watch. Now, if only I could actually get some TV coverage of their matches...

Well, for now there's YouTube: