Should test matches be reduced to four days?

A couple of weeks ago, in an interview to India Today, ICC President David Morgan indicated that reducing test matches to being 4-day affairs was on the agenda.

Q: Other than merely re-emphasising its importance, what is being done on the ground to restrengthen Test cricket?
Another thought that many people have, that we are examining is whether Test match cricket can be played over four days rather than five.
Q: How quickly will we see a four-day Test? Has the mental shift been made?
The mental shift has been made in that it has been talked about and examined, I think that has already occoured. I would be very surprised if within a year you haven't seen some significant changes in Test match cricket. Over rates, pitches, daynight Test cricket … I think in a year's time you will see for yourself changes that have occoured in Test match cricket.

Let's examine if there is any evidence to support the ICC's stand. I took all tests that had been played after 1 Jan 2006 and excluded games involving Zimbabwe & Bangladesh. That's a total of 123 games. Surely that's a decent sample set. Then I excluded the Antigua farce and the terror-impacted Lahore test.

So now I had 121 tests and here're the results expressed in average duration of the test.

• The average duration of a game with a result (draws are 5-day affairs since the Antigua & Lahore tests have been excluded) has ranged between 4.2 and 4.4 days. It was 4.3 in 2006, 4.4 in 2007 & 2008 and 4.2 in 2009 [so far].
  
• West Indies and Pakistan win in the shortest period (average of 4 days), but that data is skewed because they've only won 2 & 5 tests respectively in the time period chosen. Among teams with at least 10 test wins, South Africa get things done in the shortest time - 4.1 days.
  
• The shortest tests also happen in South Africa, lasting 4.2 days on an average. Both these stats indicate that South Africa have been quite ruthless over the past 3.5 years.
  
• Australia have surprisingly taken the most time to win overall (4.6 days) and the number is identical for home games.

You can view the spreadsheet online, copy the data over to your local machine and play around with it to get more pivot reports.

The evidence does seem to suggest that more and more tests are getting over in around 4-4.5 days. So while David Morgan may not be quite right about getting to 4 day tests within the next year, I see it happening after the next 2-3 years for sure. Hopefully the changes include imposing overs restrictions on test innings, including giving toss-winning teams the option to pick the overs limit for their 1st and 2nd innings.

Of course, less than 4 years ago, this same ICC, in their infinite wisdom, staged a six day test! After the dreary draws at Lahore and Faisalabad Faisala-kabhi-nahin during India's tour of Pakistan in 2006, Pakistan's cricket establishment (captain, former players, administrators, etc.) began talking about the need for 6-day tests, especially in winter, since the weather conditions invariably interfered with play. Of course, they conveniently forgot that the Lahore and Faisalabad tests could have really gone on for perhaps another 2-3 days with no chance of a result because the fault was in the pitches used.

In other news, John Buchanan's comments in his soon-to-be-released book which focusses on the Twenty20 game, have surprisingly generated outrage in the Indian media & Indian cricket establishment. It's his book, he has a right to have an opinion. It could be right or wrong. When excerpts from Adam Gilchrist's autobiography caused a furore in India, I wrote:

Adam Gilchrist's autobiography, "True Colours: My Life", is to be released next week. As is to be expected, and as we've seen with cricketer autobiographies (Trescothick, Pietersen, Wright, Fletcher, Flintoff, Hussain or Lehmann), there is a tendency to selectively leak 'scandalous' portions of the book. The aim is to create a buzz around it, with the hope that it translates into more sales when the book is released.

Adam Gilchrist's revelations about Tendulkar are nothing but just that. He has his point of view, and others have theirs. Its his autobiography, and he has a right to choose what to say, and what not to say. If he reckons that the best way to sell his book, when there's an Australia v India series on, is to say things about India's cricketers that rile their fans, then that's his judgement.

Personally, I've never had a great opinion of Buchanan. He's said enough stupid things (blaming losing opponents for his bowlers not executing their skills & predicting that Australia's 2007 World Cup side would have ambidextrous cricketers, just to take a couple of examples). If he really does point out in the book that Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly & Laxman aren't suited to Twenty20 cricket, then is that necessarily a wrong thing to say? In any case, none of them play Twenty20 internationals anymore (Tendulkar is the only one to have played a T20 international) and Laxman probably sat out all of the 2009 IPL edition.

I wrote before the BCCI announced the 2007 Twenty20 World Cup squad that Dravid & Ganguly shouldn't be in the squad while I was ambivalent about Tendulkar. If I had to arrange the 4 batsmen in decreasing order of ability in Twenty20, the order would be Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman. So exactly what's new about what Buchanan says? Is the outrage based on "How dare this foreigner tell us our greats aren't good enough at T20!"?

I'm guessing everyone who is outraged actually thinks the same way about Laxman and a lot of people would feel so about Ganguly & Dravid. The only questionable comment is about Tendulkar, and given he averaged 31 (strike rate 106) and 33 (strike rate 120) in the 2008 & 2009 editions of the Indian Premier League, there's enough evidence to suggest Buchanan is right! In any case, I haven't read the book, so I really can't comment on other issues.

Today at Cardiff, the venue for the first Ashes test, Ricky Ponting became the 2nd fastest to reach 11000 test runs, taking 9 innings more than Lara and one less than Tendulkar. Next in his sights - going past Border's Australian record of 11174. After that, he'll go on and get the test runs and centuries records for sure, unless injury strikes him down or he gets totally demotivated after being dismissed 8 times by Graeme Swann in this series.

Last week, India won the ODIs in West Indies to notch up 5 consecutive series wins. I was curious to find out other similar streaks and here's what I found.

• 6 by West Indies in 1985-1986
  
• 6 by Pakistan in 2001-2002
  
• 6 by New Zealand from 2007 to 2009

But the runaway victor in this category is Australia with a whopping 10 consecutive series wins between Dec 2002 and Sep 2004, including an unbeaten 2003 World Cup campaign.

I could have probably excluded series where there were lesser than 3 ODIs. But I couldn't have excluded series involving the minnow teams because they turn up at the various World Cup-like events. Even then, I don't think the results will differ too much from the ones above.

Labels: 11000, ashes, ashes 2009, autobiography, buchanan, innovation, ponting, statistic, streak, test cricket

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:47 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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Outside off left alone, through to Gilchrist

Adam Gilchrist's autobiography, "True Colours: My Life", is to be released next week. As is to be expected, and as we've seen with cricketer autobiographies (Trescothick, Pietersen, Wright, Fletcher, Flintoff, Hussain or Lehmann), there is a tendency to selectively leak 'scandalous' portions of the book. The aim is to create a buzz around it, with the hope that it translates into more sales when the book is released.

Adam Gilchrist's revelations about Tendulkar are nothing but just that. He has his point of view, and others have theirs. Its his autobiography, and he has a right to choose what to say, and what not to say. If he reckons that the best way to sell his book, when there's an Australia v India series on, is to say things about India's cricketers that rile their fans, then that's his judgement.

I don't believe there's any value in rebutting the allegation that Tendulkar changed his story from "I didn't hear what Harbhajan said" to "He said something that sounded like 'monkey'" during the Judge Hansen hearing. Perhaps it needs pointing out that Gilchrist wasn't directly involved at all. What he's saying is based on what he heard (or appeared to hear) Symonds, Hayden, etc. say.

He also writes that India's cricketers, and Tendulkar in particular, are hard to find after India loses a game. Does that make Tendulkar, or the rest of the Indian players, sore losers?

I don't think so. It's a cultural thing. Just because Aussies do so doesn't mean everyone else should follow. It doesn't make the Aussie refrain of "We play hard on the field, and have a beer off it" right either. It could just be the fact that whoever plays hard to get is extremely competitive.

I can vouch for it. I hated losing, especially at cricket. I've sulked so often after the team I played in (or captained) has lost, whether it was in inter-university games or intra-office cricket or inter-office cricket or league cricket. Does that make me a sore loser? I don't particularly care if it does.

In any case, if Gilchrist is taking the one example of the Sydney test to point out Tendulkar not shaking hands, there's no need to point out how acrimonious that game was. Given all that was said (or allegedly said), the spirit in which the proceedings went and the umpiring howlers, it was but natural to feel pissed off and robbed. The problem perhaps is that Gilchrist hadn't encountered defeat enough times across his career to feel that pissed off, or it wasn't in his nature to. Australia won a staggering 71% of all internationals in which Gilchrist played!

Update: Read this fantabulously hilarious riposte to Gilchrist's quotes!

Labels: australia, autobiography, gilchrist, tendulkar

Thus spake Jagadish @ 8:59 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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Quite a weekend, that!

The weekend was quite eventful.

First, Marcus Stresscothick Trescothick revealed in his newly published autobiography that during the 2005 Ashes, England tampered with the ball by using mints to polish the ball. Rahul Dravid must be wondering about how stupid he was, not for using a lozenge, but for getting caught while doing so!

Update: I came across Ricky Ponting's response when asked about Dravid being pulled up. He said

I don't think you'll see us doing anything like that.

Ricky's response confirms that Dravid's mistake was in getting caught. Notice that Ponting didn't say "We never do such things". What he said was "You won't see us doing anything like that". i.e. his team would never be caught by umpires, match referees, opponents (live or on television) doing something like that.

However, remember that the ICC, in July, altered the result of a test match two years after the game was completed! So it may not be a bad ploy for Australia to lobby the ICC to reverse the result of the 2005 Ashes series.

Then, the ICC decided that the ICC Champions Trophy would be postponed to Oct 2009, with the proviso that the environment is deemed fit for an international tournament to be staged and there are no security concerns. In case people didn't notice, the boards that wanted the tournament to be moved or rescheduled weren't all 'white'. South Africa and West Indies had concerns as well. In my opinion, this is certainly not an instance of a racial split in cricket, as is often made out to be!

The move is highly likely to cause a lot of ripples in international series scheduling. The ICC's Future Tours Programme doesn't seem to have too much flexibility to accommodate the tournament in 2009. Looking at the schedule, mid-Apr 2009 to early-May 2009 seems the only time period when there's very little international cricket scheduled. West Indies host Bangladesh in that duration, but come on, who cares about that series!

Amidst all the chaos, India have gone 2-1 up against Sri Lanka in the one-day series with a fairly comprehensive 33 run win in the 3rd ODI. But I still don't understand why Sri Lanka were allowed to recover from 59/6 & 94/7. For some bizarre reason, Yuvraj was persisted with despite having done his job in providing the breakthrough (Kulasekara). He's a part-time bowler, yet Dhoni got him to bowl 8 overs on the trot. Naturally, Yuvraj became less effective as his spell dragged on, conceding 16 runs in his last 2 overs. Dhoni should have brought back Munaf or Zaheer or Praveen (in that order of priority) to try and get the remaining 3 wickets (or at least get Jayawardene out).

Sangakkara needs to do something about Zaheer Khan's stranglehold on him. In 6 matches this year, he has been dismissed 5 times by Zaheer and has barely got a run. In the tests, he was driving away from the body and getting caught in the slips. In the one-dayers, he's been troubled by Zaheer getting the ball to cut in. I think this is because Sangakkara is moving a lot outside offstump when the ball is being delivered, possibly to cope with the swing or just as an attacking measure. As a result, he's forced to play at outswingers and when the ball does nip back, he's caught on the move. In any case, I hope he doesn't sort it out for the next couple of games at least!

Charles Davis, an Aussie statistician, seems to have misread his calendar. After a lot of meticulous & painstaking research, he claims to have discovered that 4 runs had to be added to Bradman's test run aggregate, which would give the Don an average of 100. But he seems to have sent in his report around 8 months too early - 1 Apr 2009 would have been the appropriate date for the story!

Darrell Hair, who had been reinstated to the ICC's Elite panel of umpires in March this year, has resigned and will be coaching umpires in New South Wales. There is some ambiguity about when his ICC contract actually expires - Oct 2008 or Mar 2009. In any case, the ICC is really messing up the quality of umpiring in international cricket.

PS: Forget Beefy, I want to know who the heck writes Pietersen's scripts! He got a 100 and England won his first test in charge. Last week, in his first ODI as the official captain, he scored 90, helped England get 270, got two crucial wickets and England won!

Labels: 2009 champions trophy, ashes, autobiography, ball tampering, champions trophy, england, icc, india, pietersen, sangakkara, security, sri lanka, zaheer khan

Thus spake Jagadish @ 5:07 pm | Sledge/Read 2 sledge(s)
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Marcus Trescothick's autobiography

Marcus Trescothick's story is quite depressing. He's probably (to date) England's best batsman in ODIs of all time, although Kevin Pietersen will undoubtedly get past him.

Yet, he retired from international cricket earlier this year after opting out of a pre-season tour with Somerset. This wasn't the first time the stress/depression related illness had struck though.

In 2006, before England's tour of India had really got underway, he quit the tour without any sort of explanation. He was then stupid enough to clarify in an interview a couple of months later that he did so because of a virus.

Later that year, he didn't make it to England's squad for the ICC Champions Trophy in India. A couple of months later, he was picked for the Ashes in Australia, but he then suffered a recurrence of the same stress-related illness and returned home.

He has now written about the illness in his autobiography, "Coming back to me". The 'News of the World' has published some extracts, as part of the serialization.

Labels: autobiography, england, trescothick

Thus spake Jagadish @ 6:30 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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Now its Shane Warne's turn

Tis the season of extracts from cricket books. First, there was Sachin Tendulkar. Then there was Kevin Pietersen. The latest addition to the bandwagon is Shane Warne, whose autobiography, Shane Warne: My Illustrated Career, will be out next week.

Excerpts from it.

Everything changed in 1989, when my beloved St Kilda decided I was not going to make the grade as an Aussie Rules player. I was too slow and not tall enough. The news struck me like a thunderbolt.

With nothing to lose, I decided to go to England with a mate called Rick Gough to play club cricket in Bristol. From then on cricket took over. Without planning a career, I just seemed to be playing all the time. I made some progress at club level, played for Victoria and found myself walking out at Sydney for my Test debut in the season of 1991-92. It all happened very quickly.

I think I have established my place in the history of cricket, but no matter how many Tests I play and wickets I take, I like to think my biggest contribution has been to make spin bowling exciting and even fashionable, and to attract young kids to play our great game.

Labels: autobiography

Thus spake Jagadish @ 7:01 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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Kevin Pietersen leaves Natal

In an extract from his soon-to-be-released autobiography "Crossing the Boundary: The Early Years in My Cricketing Life", England's current poster-boy, Kevin Pietersen, talks about the circumstances which led to him leaving Natal a few years ago.

I should not have been discriminated against because of something that happened years before my time. I must emphasise I am not racist. Apartheid was none of my doing and was now — thankfully — a thing of the past. Why should I be punished?

If you do well you should play on merit. That goes for any person of any colour. There should never be a case of someone who is not as good as you taking your place purely for political reasons. I don't see how that can do anyone any good. And that includes the person who is brought in. Surely if he knows he is not in the team on merit it can only be harmful to him and the team. It can create the very divisions you are trying to destroy.

It was heartbreaking. There had to be three non-white players in the team and one of the better ones at that time in Natal was Ghulam Bodi, also a young off-spinning batsman. He was to take my place.

When they told me I flew into a rage, flinging a water bottle across the Natal dressing room and shouting: "I'm leaving here." Perhaps not the wisest move, but I was so angry because I knew Ghulam wasn't as good as me.

Labels: autobiography, pietersen

Thus spake Jagadish @ 3:03 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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If it isn't transparent, someone else needs to shed some light on it

Having read far too many news articles/comments which punned on John being Wright etc., i.e. on the former India coach's name, I desist from doing the same thing :)

John Wright was the subject of the first ever post here. That, and of course his successful partnership with Sourav Ganguly, mean that I (and I dare say, Ganesh as well) rate him quite highly.

Now, with a huge controversy brewing over parts of what he's written in his chronicle of his five years as India's coach, he felt the need to chat with Cricinfo about it.

Naturally enough, the juicy bits from the book are being leaked on a daily basis. First, it was about the zonal selection policy and Gavaskar being brought in as a batting consultant on the eve of India's opening test against Australia at Bangalore in 2004. Yesterday, the revelation was about Tendulkar's reaction at being left high and dry on 194 when Dravid declared at Multan against Pakistan in 2004.

This is what I wrote then.

Sachin Tendulkar's comments on being surprised at the timing of the declaration, with him just 6 runs short of a double century, were jarring to hear on such a good day for Indian cricket. Tendulkar needs to understand that the team goals are always more important than individual goals. My understanding of the situation is that the management (presumably Dravid and Wright and perhaps Ganguly) conveyed to Tendulkar and Yuvraj that the declaration would happen around an hour before stumps and if a wicket fell around that time, then it'd be immediately enforced to save as much time as possible and avoid a new batsman walking out and taking time to get set. On a wicket as flat as the one at Multan, the Indian bowling would need as many overs as possible to get Pakistan out twice, in succession, over three days. Past Indian teams have been guilty of being obsessed with individual achievements. For e.g. Ganguly poking around in the 90s during the 1999 World Cup game against South Africa and ultimately not getting his 100, a few occasions in the recent past where Tendulkar has scored quite slowly between 80 and 100 and Tendulkar's persistent public comments on him wanting to open rather than bat in the middle order, even though for nearly a year the Indian team was experimenting with Ganguly and Sehwag opening with Tendulkar in the middle order.

Contrast this with Dravid coming off after being hit when he was in his 90s in the Sydney test to save time when he could have taken some medication/treatment and gone on to make a century, Ganguly coming in the middle order in onedayers even though he prefers to open, Dravid keeping in onedayers even though he hates it, Ganguly coming in at the fag end of the day's play at Melbourne, ahead of Tendulkar who was having a lean patch. All of Tendulkar's double hundreds have come in drawn games. So it may not be a bad idea to see if the decision turns out to be a good one in the end!

Shortly after that game, MTV India featured it as part of a spoof. A Sanjeev Kumar look-alike, in the role of the 'Thakur' character from Sholay, goes to an textile shop to buy trousers. A Sachin Tendulkar look-alike is also found there. Now since 'Thakur' has no hands, he realizes that he can't try out what he plans to buy. 'Tendulkar' guffaws loudly at his discomfiture. 'Sanjeev Kumar' responds with "194 not out! Ha ha ha!". 'Tendulkar' is shown sobbing. Superb!

The reaction from many quarters, especially within the BCCI and past selectors, has been fairly predictable, that of denial and Ad hominem. Why Wright didn't register his dissent or even resign isn't for me to know. But the fact is that the BCCI's selection system needs a revamp. The fact is also that the BCCI needs to become far more transparent with its functioning. As of now, I've not heard any reactions in the context of Wright's writings from those who played for India when he was coach. Maybe these administrators aren't that thick-skinned after all!

If you've followed Indian cricket especially closely over the past half-decade, this is one book you ought to lay your hands on. The other one of course will be Sourav Ganguly's autobiography!

Labels: autobiography, bcci

Thus spake Jagadish @ 8:51 am | Sledge/Read 2 sledge(s)
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Currently reading

A few months ago, I bought Mike Brearley's "The Art of Captaincy". I've so far got to around one-fourth of the book. It isn't exactly thrilling reading. But it is quite riveting, especially when he writes about the role of the coach, captain etc. Most of it, so far, has a county season as the context. I am sure there'll be insights from him in the context of international cricket soon. Brearley obviously is best known for getting Ian Botham to perform as he did in that 1981 summer. I haven't seen too many games from that period to conclude anything about his captaincy. Perhaps it is worth remembering that Brearley's captaincy coincided with World Series Cricket and he never captained against the West Indies, obviously the best side at that point in time.

Last week, in another shopping binge, admittedly thanks to a gift voucher, I bought Steve Waugh's new autobiography "Out of My Comfort Zone". Yes the same one he injured his arm writing. I haven't made too much progress there, probably a dozen or so pages. The forewords are written by Rahul Dravid and Tim May. While Dravid is all praise for Waugh's grit, defence and shot selection, May dwells on how Waugh transformed from being an introvert to being more outgoing sometime during Australia's tour of Pakistan in 1988.

The other book I bought was David Mortimer's "Classic Cricket Clangers". He rewinds all the way back to the early years of test cricket (and county cricket in many instances) and documents goofups by individuals, teams etc. I have probably crawled to the point where WG Grace's brother, Fred Grace was out for a pair in his only test and died of pneumonia a few days later. I think I saw Ajit Agarkar's series of ducks and Nasser Hussain's decision to insert Australia in at Brisbane in 2003 featured towards the end of the book. I am fairly sure Gatting's reverse sweep and Allan Donald dropping his bat in that 1999 World Cup semi-final are also described with a tinge of sarcasm. It has been enjoyable reading so far.

Labels: autobiography

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:57 am | Sledge/Read 3 sledge(s)
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Duncan Fletcher's story of the Ashes

The Guardian has a serialization running of Duncan Fletcher's book Ashes Regained: The Coach's Story.

In the first couple of extracts he has his take on happenings during the Ashes, including coach clashes, hurting Hayden and picking Pietersen over Thorpe.

Flintoff's autobiography is out on the stands now.

Update: Fletcher's views on how Ponting's outburst about England's usage of substitutes told him that Australia were under tremendous pressure and clutching at just about every straw which flew their direction.

Labels: autobiography

Thus spake Jagadish @ 8:10 pm | Sledge/Read 3 sledge(s)
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When a man is down ...

Kick him, and kick him real hard. The first set of skeletons spills out of the cupboard following the on-going drama in Indian cricket as Andrew Flintoff, basking in the glory of an Ashes win, spills the beans in his to-be-release autobiography about Ganguly being a 'royal' pain.

Fair enough, Freddie. It is no-one's case that Ganguly is an angel. His stint at Lancashire certainly did not earn him too many friends. Perhaps it maybe more relevant to ask those who played alongside Sourav Ganguly at Glamorgan earlier this year. Your experience with playing alongside Ganguly was in 2000.

After all, five years is a long time in cricket, as you've found out for yourself over the same period.

Labels: autobiography, ganguly v chappell

Thus spake Jagadish @ 12:27 pm | Sledge/Read 6 sledge(s)
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Michael Vaughan v/s Nasser Hussain: Andrew Flintoff

In his yet to be released autobiography (ok well, we know he didn't write it, so what?!), Andrew Flintoff compares Hussain's style of captaincy with Vaughan's. The Times has some extracts.

I found this para interesting:

I don’t think my start with England was helped by being labelled "the next Ian Botham" either, although it could have been a lot worse — Michael Vaughan was called the new Chris Tavare when he first broke into the side.

Poor Michael! Chris Tavare indeed!

Labels: autobiography

Thus spake Jagadish @ 9:18 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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Nasser Hussain offloads a few items off his chest in his autobiography.

Labels: autobiography

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:37 am | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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Darren Lehmann feels disappointed at CA officials not supporting him when he verbally abused the Sri Lankans and received a 5-match ban from the match referee Clive Lloyd - shouldn't there be a law on writing autobiographies ?

Labels: autobiography

Thus spake Ganesh @ 11:28 am | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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