Crucket

I struggle so much to find time to blog these days, so it is quite exasperating when a game finishes so early I don’t even manage to say a word about it.

There is a new Wellington-based cricket blog :

Livin’ on the Outside Edge: A social commentary on cricket, politics, and life in the Windy City…but mainly cricket

Written by some guy David Abricossow, who – Wellington being what it is – I probably know in some capacity.

It looks really good so far and I am looking forward to following it through the summer.

You could debate, if you wanted to, who had the better of the first two tests, India or New Zealand. But that would be rather missing the point. The big stories in this series are firstly that New Zealand has not been nearly as bad as everyone expected them to be and secondly the 8th ranked team is giving the first ranked team a run for its money.

In this context, the result of the third test is almost irrelevant. Even if New Zealand loses the last test, a 0-1 result was all we were hoping for. Win or lose next week, we’ve achieved. If India do win, they probably won’t be disappointed with the series result, though their confidence as the top team after the series win against Australia will have been dented.

Going back to the rankings, we can actually put all this in numbers. As you may be aware, the official ICC test rankings are based on points earned by winning tests and test series with half points for draws. The points are then weighted by the relative rankings of the two teams. It’s all very arcane, but the ICC have a webpage that calculates future ratings.

Putting in a 1-0 win to India shows that New Zealand will gain 2 ratings points from the series, whereas India will lose a point. In other words, two draws with India means more to New Zealand than two draws, a test win and a series win means to India. If you want to dream: a 0-0 drawn series will give us a full 5 ratings points, while a 1-0 win will give us a massive 9 points.

As it happens, there is not a lot of competition for the top spot at the moment. India are way out in front and even a 0-1 loss will keep them well clear of South Africa in 2nd place. However, places 6, 7 and 8 are pretty tightly contested. After this series, New Zealand is guaranteed of raising a ranking to 7. However, that could be lost if the Windies’ series against Sri Lanka continues to go well. So we could end up staying at the bottom of the table despite a favourable result, and have to wait until the series against Pakistan in January to make a proper move up the rankings.

Greatbatch: “We played like dicks”

No reports that Greatbatch has been banned for this outburst, so we can assume the “old fella” didn’t make an appearance.

Prospects of play in final – potentially face-saving – ODI currently not good. Thunderstorms forecast; 60% chance of rain.

The Compton Cricket Club:

Very cool.

It isn’t new or anything, but I have just recently been directed to it, and I was most surprised to see what must be Daniel Vetorri in his beardy phase playing drums. Here he is, the original left-arm orthodox gangsta:

Pakistan don’t like to be out of the headlines for long. However, the Clarke–Bingle circus had captured everyone’s attention so thoroughly, it was going to take huge story to get any traction. But the Pakistani management were up to the task. They have made a big splash by eviscerating their team. They have banned Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf indefinitely and banned Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan for a year, while fining three other players millions of rupees.

However, despite this monumental effort, the world’s attention remains on Michael Clarke’s private life. The sorry fact is, no amount of Pakistani self-mutilation surprises us any more.

What was Vettori doing in the long room while the boys were dealing to the Aussies:

Vettori hails most realistic video game ever

JRod sees the positives in John Howard’s nomination:

John Howard for President

I guess it will be fixed eventually, but the first headline I read about John Howard being Cricket Australia and New Zealand Cricket’s nominee for ICC president was “Howard gets the not for ICC role“, on the New Zealand Cricket website.

The “not” for “nod” is only a typo of course, but I would like to believe it represents some kind of subconscious unwillingness by New Zealand Cricket to accept that they are colluding with Australia to subject the cricket world to John Howard.

I also took some childish delight in selectively reading extra, unintended meaning in the press release, such as how “Australia and New Zealand considered a number of distinguished candidates of global stature” but decided to go with Howard rather than a distinguished candidate.

Peter Roebuck has made the case expertly, but John Howard is quite clearly a poor selection as ICC president, a joke almost. He knows little about cricket, his only contribution being to dissuade Murali to tour. And there was an eminently qualified alternative in New Zealand’s suggestion John Anderson. Furthermore, he is a divisive figure and is not going to be liked in the subcontinent.

Personally I despise Howard for being a nasty little racist, war-mongering conservative. His objections over the apology to the Stolen Generation is particularly offensive. So I am naturally unhappy to have him heading world cricket. I must admit though that I don’t expect him as ICC president to turn any boat people back to the sea or drag cricket into any illegal wars. Peter Roebuck is also trying to be philosophical about the selection, suggesting that Cricket Australia nominated Howard because the ICC needs a strong, uncompromising, bull-headed leader to give it some clout, for Australia’s benefit.