Aid to the Indian Subcontinent.

I welcome the severe sentences passed on the Pakistani cricketers for corruption. Apparently the corrupt betting industry on the Indian sub-continent is worth £50 billion.

Pakistan is a country noted for its corrupt practices according to Imram Khan, the former Test Captain and we know it is one that supports the Taliban in Afghanistan and also possesses a nuclear weapon.

India is a land with a space program and a nuclear weapon and the place where some of the richest people in the world live. The caste system condemns 37% of the population to abject poverty.

Sri Lanka is a country which has just emerged from a brutal civil war with dreadful human rights record.

All of these countries receive substantial British aid. Why?

Record breakers

We broke all sorts of records yesterday with 1508 page views of the blog - that was the first time over 1000.

England did with the cricket too. 710-7 finally beating India by an innings and 200+; the second worst defeat that India have suffered.

This ensures that England are now the No 1 Test playing nation: the first time for a very long time.

It was sad to see Sachin Tendulkar getting out. We all hoped that he might score his 100th Test century, but he was out for 40 in a freak dismissal. His partner drove the ball back towards the bowler who dived to try and stop it but merely succeeded in deflecting it on to the stumps. Tendulkar was unable to reclaim his ground and was run out.

Cricket in heaven; the triumph of Spirit over Law.

So England easily beat India at the cricket to take 2-0 lead in the test series. The match was chiefly memorable for an unusual incident just before the tea-break on the third day. Ewan Morgan had just whacked the last ball before tea to the boundary fence and the batsmen had run three. Kumar the Indian fieldsman made an heroic effort to save the boundary, but everybody thought he had failed and the ball had run over the boundary to become 'dead'. He threw in the ball to the wicket keeper very nonchalantly and Ian Bell the England batsman who had scored 137 not out began to stroll towards the pavilion for his cup of tea and cucumber sandwich.

However, Mukand the Indian fielder thought that he wasn't sure that the ball had run 'dead' and took off the bails with the ball in hand and then appealed for Bell to be given out, 'run out'. The umpires called for a TV replay and sure enough the ball had been still 'live' and strictly obeying the Laws of the game, they gave Bell out.

This incensed the crowd, since it seemed like gamesmanship. The Indians couldn't get Bell out and so had undertaken a subterfuge to pretend that the ball had gone dead when it was still alive. Of course, there was nothing intentional about it and Bell should have stayed in his crease until the umpires had indicated that the tea break had begun, but everyone's body language, including that of at least one umpire was giving that impression.

In the end, better spirits triumphed and the appeal was withdrawn so Bell could resume his innings after tea. In real life it didn't matter. Bell only scored another 22 runs before he was out, caught in the slips, and the margin of the England victory was over 370, but it did restore a good relationship between the two teams and most spectators are happy that the Spirit has overcome the Law. Which is why they say that cricket will be the only game played in heaven.

Family matters

The newspapers are full of the phone hacking fiasco and the public is bored by it. Newspapers think that their little world is important but nobody else does.

Let's talk about cricket instead. My son's team played in the 20/20 final of the South Northamptonshire cricket league. In a low scoring match on a rain affected pitch his team was all out for 82 of which he scored 22. Then the opposition were bowled out for 61 of which he took 4-17 in 4.2 overs. He got man-of-match, cut the grass and made the tea.

His team are top of division 5 and with only 5 more games before the end of the season look like being promoted.

He is off in Italy at the present preparing for the NASCAR series. It's a nice life if you don't weaken.

Today Karen returns from her holiday in Jamaica and Angela starts hers in the Lake District. Contrasting weather! Angela has taken her lap-top so I imagine that she will be writing up her PhD is the weather sets in.

Richard will be in the Isle of Wight when the school holidays begin.

We had a new front lawn laid over the weekend and today. Good weather for lawn laying - cool and wet.

Health has not been special these last few days. I'm very tired after meals and bloating has got worse.

Some rain-affected draw!

On yesterday's blog "Not that it matters in this match, which is heading for a rain-affected draw." How wrong could I be!

It rained again in Cardiff yesterday morning. Play couldn't start until 3 pm. Andrew Strauss sent Ian Bell out to gather the two runs he needed to become the fourth centurion in the match. It seemed that no-one was taking the result seriously. 922 spectators turned up for the cheap last-day tickets to watch their heroes.

And what heroes! With plenty of time to spare England blew away the Sri Lankans, taking all 10 wickets for only 82 runs, winning by an innings and 14 runs.

Only a few weeks ago Sri Lanka beat England on the sub-continent in the quarter finals of the World Cup. It goes to show how different the one day game is from Test Matches. Test matches require the ability to concentrate for long periods. Exemplified particularly by Jonathon Trott's double century in Cardiff.

Should KP have been given out?

It was a sparkling weekend of sport. The headlines were made by Barcelona's victory over Manchester United in the Champions League Final at Wembley. One thinks of the great Real Madrid team or Ajax or AC Milan or even Brazil, but this Barcelona team must be the greatest football team in history. Iniesta, Xavi and above all Messi seemed to treat the ball as their personal possession and didn't allow the opposition to get near it. As a Man U supporter I have to concede that they were decidedly second best.

In golf we are beginning to see the post-Tiger generation emerging. By beating Lee Westwood at an extra hole at the PGA, Luke Donald has supplanted him as number one in the world.

World Tennis looks set in its ways with four top names, Nadal, Djokovic, Federer and Murray likely to contest the semi-finals of the French Open.

Saracens beat Leicester to win the Rugby Premiership, reversing last year's result.

Vettel won his fifth Grand Prix out of six at Monaco in a race interrupted by safety cars.

But it is the rather boring Test Match in Cardiff between Sri Lanka and England that I want to talk about. For those who find the LBW law boring, look away now.

Should Kevin Pietersen have been given out? The LBW law is a bit of a movable feast, but as currently written, to be given out leg before wicket, a batsman must prevent a ball from hitting his wicket with any part of his body except his bat, hand or forearm. In addition the ball must bounce or look as if it would bounce in line with the wicket or outside the off stump and it must hit the body part in line with the wicket unless the batsman was not playing a shot, in which case it may hit the body part outside the line of the off stump.

You may imagine that these things are quite difficult for the Umpire to work out, especially when the ball is traveling at 80+ mph. To aid the Umpire in certain matches, they have been given technical help in the form of 'Hawkeye' and 'Hotspot'. Hawkeye is a computer aided graphics package which can predict where the ball would have gone were it not interrupted in flight, and Hotspot uses infra-red to measure the heat generated when the ball hits the pad or other part or the bat. Because of the statistical uncertainty of Hawkeye, the Umpire still has the final decision. Each side has two failed appeals per innings when they can question the Umpire's decision. If Hawkeye shows the Umpire was clearly wrong then the decision is reversed, but if the technology shows uncertainty then the batsman is given the benefit of the doubt.

In the incident in Cardiff Pietersen was receiving a ball from a rather innocuous slow left-arm bowler. (This is not irrelevant. From being a batsman who just piled on the runs without effort, he has become vulnerable to not-very-good slow left-armers. He has been out 19 times to them in Test cricket.) Undoubtedly he should have played forward to this ball but he played back and only just managed to jam his bat down on the ball before it would have taken his middle stump. The bowler appealed, but Pietersen was given not-out. The Sri Lankans then appealed to the third Umpire to use the technology. Hotspot clearly showed that the ball flicked Pietersen's pad milliseconds before it hit his bat. The Umpire therefore reversed his decision and gave him out, LBW.

But I wonder if this is right. The point is that for a player to be out LBW, the batsman must interpose his leg (or other body part) so as to prevent the ball knocking over the wicket. But in no sense could the flick on the pad be said to have done this. It was the bat coming down that prevented the skittling of the wicket. In my view the Umpire's original decision should have stood.

Not that it matters in this match, which is heading for a rain-affected draw.

Fred Titmus RIP.

Cricket on the Indian sub-continent is a different game. The four semi-finalists in the World Cup comprise three teams used to the local conditions (India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and New Zealand who are not and did very well to defeat pre-tournament favorites, South Africa. Different types of cricketers are required for Indian conditions. Tall fast bowlers are a liability on these slow pitches and the atmosphere is generally too dry for swing bowlers. Slow bowlers are best suited to the conditions, but even they have to be unorthodox. Variation of pace and flight are essential, especially in the shortened form of the game.

One wonders how the great spinners of the past would have performed. Last week saw the death of Fred Titmus at the age of 81. He played for Middlesex from the age of 17 until nearly 50. He was a grammar school boy who was a self made cricketer. Only five first-class cricketers have scored 20,000 runs and taken 2,500 wickets: Rhodes and Hirst of Yorkshire, Tate of Sussex, WG Grace and Fred Titmus. He was in good company. He did the classic double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season eight times, a figure bettered by only four men, and his 2,830 wickets place him in the all-time top 10 of bowlers. Sixteen times he took 100 wickets, with a best of 191 in 1955, when he also scored his maiden century and topped 1,000 runs for the first time.

On a tour of the Caribbean in 1967-68, when on a boat trip out of Barbados's Sandy Lane Bay his left foot got caught in the propeller and he suffered the loss of four toes. His fellow tourists thought he might never play again, but two months later he was bowling for Middlesex, on his way to another haul of 100 wickets.

His last appearance was in late August 1982, nearing his 50th birthday. He popped into the pavillion at Lords and the Middlesex captain, Mike Brearley, playing his last game at Lords recruited him as a third spinner for a turning pitch. He took three vital wickets on the last afternoon and Middlesex clinched victory. On his second appearance for the county he had played alongside Brearley's father, Horace, who was making his last appearance.


All my boyhood heroes are dying.

Wisden's best

In the year 2000, Wisden chose 5 cricketers of the century. They were:

Sir Donald Bradman. No doubt about him. He had a test batting average of 99.94, streets ahead of anyone else. Had he not been bowled for a duck by Eric Hollies in his last test innings he would have averaged over 100 - the equivalent of making a century every time he went out to bat in a test match. Seeing as anything over 40 is regarded as a good average, his achievement is astonishing.

Sir Jack Hobbs. He is the only Englishman selected. His claim to fame is that he made 197 centuries in first class cricket, 98 of them when he was over-40 years of age. It was probably easier to score centuries in that era as Patsy Hendren scored 170 and Wally Hammond 167. Of modern day cricketers, Geoff Boycott scored 151 and Graham Gooch 128. But then Hobbs used to score centuries for fun and used to give his wicket away when he reached the magic three figures so someone else could have a go.

Sir Viv Richards. As captain, he led his all conquering West Indies for 50 test matches. In a different era he dominated world cricket in a way that Bradman did, but his test average was 50.23 and he scored 114 centuries, 24 of them in test matches. It was the way he scored his runs that was so impressive. He once scored 189 in an innings against England in a One-Day International.

Sir Gary Sobers. Perhaps the greatest all-rounder who has ever lived. He scored 8032 runs in 93 test matches at an average of 57.78, but also took 235 test wickets and 109 test catches. He bowled fast or slow and even wrist spin, such was his versatility. In 1957 he scored the then highest score in test cricket at 365 not out and in 1968 was the first to score a six off every ball in an over.

Shane Warne. The only one not to be knighted, and probably won't be given the tabloid headlines about him and Liz Hurley. He has taken 708 test wickets, the second most of all time. Clearly Wisden is still not convinced about Muttiah Muralitheran's action, since he has taken 723. Shane Warne's dismissal of Mike Gatting in 1983 by bowling him round his legs was named "ball of the century".

It must have been a difficult choice. Other players who might have run them close include Sachin Tendulkar who is still playing and has scored the highest number of test centuries and one-day international centuries and has a test average of 55.57, Brian Lara, who has the second highest number of test centuries, as well as the highest score in first class cricket at 501, not out, Sir Len Hutton who was the first professional to captain England and in his day made the highest score In test cricket at 364, Wally Hammond who made 4 scores over 300 in first class cricket and was perhaps the greatest cover point fielder of all time, Peter May a great English batsman and captain who won the Ashes several times in the 1950s and captained Surrey to a decade of County Championships, Dennis Compton the most attractive batsman of his era who scored 123 first class centuries including one over 300 and in 1947 scored the greatest number of runs in a first class season. We should not forget Colin Cowdrey and Tom Graveney, stalwarts of a strong England team of the 1950s and 60s who between then scored 229 first class centuries, or Glen Turner, the greatest New Zealand batsmen and one of the few to score 1000 runs in May.

Then there are the all-rounders: Kieth Millar, Sir Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and Richard Hadlee; the fast bowlers: Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith, Ray Lindwall, Tyson, Statham and Trueman, Lillee and Thompson, Glen McGrath, Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Colin Croft and Michael Holding; and the spinners: Jim Laker, Ray Illingworth, Sonny Rhamadin, Bishan Bedi and Muralitheran himself. What about wicket-keepers? Godfrey Evans was the star of my youth and Les Ames must be mentioned since he scored 102 first class centuries. And this is to barely mention the great Australian team that dominated world cricket in the 1990s.

Did Wisden make the right choices? Send your comments if you disagree.

551-4

I haven't said anything about the cricket. For years Australia humiliated England, and even when we won at home we were thrashed away. Now having won the Ashes at home England are making mincemeat of Australia on their home turf. Australian bowlers have been abysmal and Cook, the supposed weak link in the English batting line up can't stop making runs. What I want to know is when should we start pitying the Aussies rather than crowing over them?

Pakistan and cricket

The cricketing story at the moment is the revelation in the News of the World that a betting syndicate had suborned some Pakistani cricketers to influence the outcome of the Lord's Test Match against England. The allegation is that the individual, Mazhar Majeed, offered to fix matches for a payment of £150,000. As an earnest of his ability to arrange this, he offered to predict three no-balls in particular overs.

A no-ball occurs when a bowler gets too close to the batsman when delivering the ball. To control this a whitewashed line is drawn in front of the wicket (called the batting crease) Some part of the bowlers front foot must be behind that line when the ball is bowled, and if it is not, the umpire calls, "No-ball!" and the ball has to be delivered again and an extra run awarded to the batting side. On most occasions when a no-ball is balled the bowler's foot is a fraction of an inch over the line and sometimes the umpire misses the offence, so difficult is it to judge. In fact the cricketers have this part of the game well sorted and no-balls are a rarity in the game. Fewer than 1% of the balls bowled are no-balls.

Unfortunately for Mazhar Majeed the people that he was trying to sell his influence to were undercover reporters of the News of the World. He was being subjected to a sting. He claimed on film that he had control of 7 members of the Pakistani team. His boast that he could produce no-balls at will was confirmed when no-balls were bowled at precisely the predicted points. Such a coincidence could not have been produced without collusion.

In this particular Test Match England scored 233 more runs in one innings than Pakistan scored in two innings, so the defeat was overwhelming and three no-balls hardly affected the outcome. It seems like a trivial offence and so it would be were it not for the advent of spot-betting. Rather than gamble on the outcome of a match. punters bet on trivial events like whether rain will stop play during the second session of the day, or whether a particular player will be wearing sunscreen of how many wide balls will be bowled in an innings. If you can predict that the third ball of the fifth over will be a no-ball, you could easily get odds of 50 to one with bookmakers from the Indian subcontinent.

At the moment three Pakistani cricketers, captain of the Test team Salman Butt and fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir have been interrogated by Scotland Yard detectives. We have to be careful to continue to refer to 'alleged' offences, but TV replays of the no-ball show that the fast bowlers were over-stepping the crease not by fractions of an inch but by feet, so that there was no question of the umpire missing the offence.

There is some sympathy especially for Mohammad Amir who is only 18 and a fine prospect, but this is not the first time that the Pakistani team has been involved in cheating. Tampering with the ball to make it behave unpredictably when it is bowled has become very common, leading to Pakistan forfeiting a Test Match in 2006 and in 1987, before they introduced neutral umpires there was an an outrageous incident of partisanship by Pakistani umpire Shakoor Rana.

One feels for Pakistan. Following the machine-gunning of the bus of the Sri Lankan Test team, Test Matches are no longer played in Pakistan. With terrorists controling the North West frontier and an area the size of England submerged beneath the flooded Indus river, Pakistan is not a happy place. Cricket is the national game in Pakistan and for many years one of their players, Hanif Mohammed, held the world record for the highest score (365) in Test cricket. They are a proud nation and this incident has been the final straw in a bleak year.

The background to this story is that gambling is illegal in Pakistan - which does not allow bookmakers legal redress. Pakistani cricketers earn much less than their counterparts in other cricketing nations, which leaves players more open to temptation. Corruption is rife in Pakistani life. It is said that fifty families exert feudal control over everything that happens in Pakistan and each has its fingers in the corruption pie. In the past Pakistan has made examples of individuals with life bans for cheating cricketers, but by toppling a fallen idol, the authorities are not dealing with the foundations of the problem.

I might imply that this problem as its roots in Islam, but that would be unfair. The most notorious example of match fixing was by the South African captain Hansie Cronje, who was supposedly a devout Christian.

Muttiah Muralitharan - best cricketer in the world?

In his last Test Match Muttiah Muralitharan has taken his 800th Test wicket. Playing for Sri Lanka against India he needed two more wickets when I woke up this morning but since then he has managed to pick up the last two batsmen in the Indian innings. When I was young the record number of Test dismissals stood to Alec Bedser with 237 wickets, so 800 is astonishing, although they do play more Test Matches now.

Muttiah Muralitharan was born in the village of Nattarampotha in Kundasale (near Kandy), the eldest of the four sons. He is the first and only Tamil of Indian origin to represent Sri Lanka in international cricket. When he was nine years old he was sent to St. Anthony’s College, Kandy, a private school run by Benedictine monks. He began his cricketing career as a medium pace bowler but on the advice of his school coach he took up off-spin when he was fourteen years old. He soon impressed and went on to play for four years in the school First XI.

After leaving school he joined Tamil Union Cricket and Athletic Club and was selected for the Sri Lanka A tour of England in 1991. He played in five games but failed to capture a single wicket. On his return to Sri Lanka he impressed against Allan Border's Australian team in a practice game and then went on to make his Test debut at R. Premadasa Stadium in the Second Test Match of the series.

Muralitharan is the first wrist-spinning off-spinner in the history of the game. He bowls marathon spells, yet he is usually on the attack. His unique bowling action begins with an open-chested short run-up, and culminates with an extremely wristy release which had him mistaken for a leg-spinner early in his career by Allan Border. Aside from his off-break, his main deliveries are a fast topspinner which goes straight on, and the doosra, a surprise delivery which turns from leg to off (the opposite direction of his stock delivery) with no easily discernible change of action. His newest variation is a version of Shane Warne's slider, which is flicked out the side of his hand and rushes onto batsmen like a flipper. His super-flexible wrist makes him especially potent and guarantees him turn on any surface.

During the second Test between Sri Lanka and Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Boxing Day 1995, Australian umpire Darrell Hair called Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan for throwing in front of a crowd of 55,000. The off-spinner, was no-balled seven times in three overs by Hair, who believed the then 23 year old was bending his arm and straightening it in the process of delivery; an illegal action in cricket.

The drama unfolded midway through the second session of play. Muralitharan had bowled two overs before lunch from umpire Steve Dunne's or the Members' End of the ground with umpire Hair at square leg and these passed without incident. At 2:34pm he took up the attack from umpire Hair's or the southern end. Muralitharan's third over was a maiden with all deliveries again passed as legitimate but in his fourth Hair no-balled him twice for throwing on the fourth and sixth balls. The umpire continued to call him three times in his fifth over on the second, fourth and sixth balls. While the bowler stood with his hands on his hips perplexed, the five calls provoked an immediate response by the Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga who left the field at 3:03pm in order to take advice from his team management. He returned at 3:08pm and continued with Muralitharan who was called two more times in his sixth over on the second and sixth balls. At 3:17pm Ranatunga removed the bowler from the attack, although he reintroduced him at 3:30pm at umpire Dunne's end. Although Hair reports in his book, "Decision Maker", that at the end of the tea break he stated that he would call Muralitharan no matter which end he bowled he did not do so. Muralitharan completed another twelve overs without further no-balls.

The controversy bubbled on during the two-day long Australian innings. After being no-balled Muralitharan bowled a further 32 overs from umpire Steve Dunne's end without protest from either Dunne or Hair, at square leg. The Sri Lankan camp was outraged after the incident, but the ICC leaped to Hair's defence, outlining a list of steps they had taken in the past to determine, without result, the legitimacy of Muralitharan's action. By calling Muralitharan from the bowlers' end Hair overrode what is normally regarded as the authority of the square leg umpire in adjudicating on throwing. Dunne would have had to break convention to support his partner.

At the end of the match the Sri Lankans requested from the ICC permission to confer with Hair in order to find out exactly how to remedy the problem with their bowler. Despite the game's controlling body agreeing to it, the Australian Cricket Board vetoed it on the grounds that it might lead to umpires being quizzed by teams after every game and meant that the throwing controversy would continue into the World Series Cup during the coming week. The Sri Lankans were disappointed they didn't get an explanation and decided they would continue playing their bowler in matches not umpired by Hair and wanted to know whether other umpires would support or reject Hair's judgement.[40]

Muralitharan's action was cleared by the ICC after biomechanical analysis at the University of Western Australia and at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology in 1996. They concluded that his action created the 'optical illusion of throwing'. Doubts about Muralitharan's action persisted however, on the 1998–99 tour to Australia he was once again called for throwing by Ross Emerson during a One Day International against England at the Adelaide Oval in Australia. The Sri Lankan team almost abandoned the match, but after instructions from the President of the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka, the game resumed. The Sri Lankan captain at the time Arjuna Ranatunga, was later fined and given a suspended ban from the game as a result. It later emerged that at the time of this match Emerson was on sick leave from his non-cricket job due to a stress-related illness and he stood down for the rest of the series. Muralitharan was sent for further tests in Perth and England and was cleared again. At no stage was Muralitharan requested to change or remodel his action, by the ICC. Up to this point in his career (1999) Muralitharan primarily bowled two types of deliveries, namely the off-break and the topspinner. He had not yet mastered the doosra.

Muralitharan continued bowling, taking his 500th Test wicket in the second Test against Australia in Kandy on 16 March 2004. At the end of the series his doosra delivery was officially called into question by match referee Chris Broad. At the University of Western Australia (Department of Human Movement and Exercise Science), three-dimensional kinematic measurements of Muttiah Muralitharan’s bowling arm were taken using an optical motion capture system while he bowled his doosra. Muralitharan’s mean elbow extension angle for the doosra delivery was 14°, which was subsequently reduced to a mean of 10.2° after remedial training at the University. The findings reported to ICC by the University of Western Australia's study was that Muralitharan's doosra contravened the established ICC elbow extension limit of 5° for spinners.

Under the original throwing Laws of Cricket, the umpires officiating were under an obligation to call "no-ball" to a delivery that they were not entirely happy was absolutely fair. This Law gave the umpires absolutely no discretion. In 2000, the Laws were changed to put an allowable figure of straightening of 5° for spinners, 7.5° for medium pacers and 10° for fast bowlers in an attempt to more clearly define what was legal. But these figures proved difficult to enforce due to umpires being unable to discern actual amounts of straightening and the differentiation between the three different allowable figures. Testing in Test Match conditions is not currently possible "when the identification of elbow and shoulder joint centres in on-field data collection, where a shirt is worn, also involves large errors. Due to the overwhelming scientific findings, researchers recommended that a flat rate of 15° tolerable elbow extension be used to define a preliminary demarcation point between bowling and throwing. A panel of former Test players consisting of Aravinda de Silva, Angus Fraser, Michael Holding, Tony Lewis, Tim May and the ICC's Dave Richardson, with the assistance of several biomechanical experts, stated that 99% of all bowlers in the history of cricket straighten their arms when bowling.

Despite the scientific investigations the controversy has continued to rumble on. Then in July 2004 Muralitharan was filmed in England, bowling with an arm brace on.
Initially, Muralitharan bowled three balls – the off-spinner, the top-spinner and the doosra – as he would in a match. Then he bowled the same three balls with a brace made from steel bars, which were set into strong resin. This brace was moulded to his right arm, was approximately 46 centimetres long and weighed just under 1 kilogram.

TV presenter Mark Nicholas who tried the brace himself, confirmed that "There is no way an arm can be bent, or flexed, when it is in this brace." All three balls reacted in the same way as when bowled without the brace. With the brace on, there still appeared to be a jerk in his action. When studying the film at varying speeds, it still appeared as if he straightened his arm, even though the brace made it impossible to do so. His unique shoulder rotation and amazing wrist action seem to create the illusion that he straightens his arm.


Bruce Elliott, the professor who is also the ICC biomechanist said that he had found that a lot of bowlers from the Indian subcontinent could bowl the doosra legally, but not Caucasian bowlers. Since there are now so many cricketers from the subcontinent playing for different sides, I doubt that this matters, but it is an interesting fact to lie alongside something else I read yesterday that no white athlete has ever broken 10 seconds for the 100 meter dash.

Sir Alec Bedser R.I.P.

Alec Bedser has died at the age of 91. He has a claim to be the greatest swing bowler of all time. He and his identical twin brother, Eric, had their cricketing careers abbreviated by the war in which they served in the RAF. but in 1946 after playing only 7 County matches for Surrey, he was selected to play for England against India. In two test matched he took 22 wickets.

He played in 51 test matches, taking 236 wickets at an average of 22.9. His best season was 1953 when he took 39 Australian wickets at an average 17.48. England beat (a Bradman-less) Australia for the first time since the 1932-3 'Bodyline' tour. Bedser was the master of the leg-cutter, a ball that started outside the off stump, swung in the air to the leg and then cut back after hitting the pitch to take the off stump. Even Bradman had no answer to it.

After his retirement he and his brother set up an office stationary company that was later assimilated into Rymans. It left them fairly well off. They had started life more humbly in Reading, the sons of a bricklayer. They lived first in two rooms belonging to an aunt on Horsell Common, and then at Knaphill. They were the third generation of the family to live in the Woking area. Very far from spoilt, the twins grew up with a cautious attitude to life which allowed no scope for frills or frivolity. From the age of five they walked a mile each way to Maybury Junior School. Later, at Monument Hill Central School, they impressed with their industry.

At 14, they began work as clerks in a solicitor’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which left them with little spare time; even on Saturdays they were not free until 1.30pm. Alan Peach, a former Surrey all-rounder, opened a cricket school at Woking. The twins devoted every moment to the school, learning their trade with long stints of bowling. Peach recommended the Bedsers to the Oval, and in April 1938 they abandoned the law to join the Surrey ground staff. In the summer their wages were £2 a week plus minimal match fees; in the winter they were paid £1 per week as a retainer. There was a rigid hierarchy: young players were not allowed to start a conversation with, or even to enter the dressing room of senior professionals.

It was a sterner age and it rubbed off on Alec Bedser. Later, when he became Chairman of the England selectors he dropped the master batsman, Tom Graveney, for daring to play in a Charity Match on the Sunday that was the rest day in the middle of a test match. Graveney never played for England again until Bedser retired as Chairman. His time as chairman was marred by their failure to select Basil d'Olivera for the MCC against South Africa after receiving threats from the South Africans that a 'colored' player would not be welcome. He somewhat redeemed his position by choosing d'Olivera as a replacement when Tom Cartwright withdrew injured. Prime Minister Vorster, thereupon cancelled the tour.

Alec Bedser was appointed OBE in 1964, CBE in 1982, and in 1997 became the only England bowler ever to be knighted. He was President of Surrey County Cricket Club in 1987-88.
Eric died in 2006. Neither of the Bedser twins married.

The art of captaincy

Yesterday was the day I was supposed to be going to the Test Match. My son had bought me a ticket. This was the first Test Match that I was to be going to since I was a child. Alas, I was not well enough to make an eight hour there-and-back journey and I was reduced to watching it on TV.

Test Cricket is the prince of games, and Tests in England rank higher than anywhere else because of the uncertainty of the weather. A match lasting over five days requires strategic thinking as well as tactics, and for that reason it is worth playing a c aptain even if he is not the best batsman or bowler. Several players in the past have been selected even when they were not worth their place in the team on cricketing excellence alone. The captain must direct the play, choose whether to bat or bowl, when to declare, whether to enforce the follow-on, in which order to deploy his bowlers, how to set the field and what tactics to employ against particular batsmen. Mike Brearley was the last player to be picked purely as a captain. In Andrew Strauss, England may have another. Interestingly, since he has been appointed captain his batting has improved. Australians always feel that they were cheated by the bodyline tour of 1931-2, when Jardine had Harold Larwood, Bill Bowes and Voce bowl at the batsman rather than the stumps, but it was within the rules and kept Don Bradman, their star batsman, relatively quiet. Bradman retired with a batting average of 99.4 runs in every test innings. No-one before or since has got above the 60s and anything over 40 is regarded as very good. The West Indian bowlers between 1960 and 1980 were more effective at bowling at the man - it was they that prompted batsmen to kit themselves out like motor bike riders - but nobody complained that it was unfair.

But to return to the current test series. Australia have been world beaters for a very long time. Only India playing at home could threaten them. Cricket in India is a different game; hot, dry and dusty conditions call for different skills, particularly in spin bowling, that are not mastered except in the sub-continent. The rise of Sri Lanka as a test team bears witness to that. Australia had a strong batting line up, but their supremacy was based on their two bowlers, fast-man McGrath and leg-spinner Warne. In 2005, England beat Australia to everyone's surprise, though the same team lost in the return rubber in Australia a couple of years later. England's triumph in 2005 was put down to the performance of captain, Michael Vaughan, and the all-round performance of the giant, Andrew Flintoff (known as Freddie). This year Vaughan has retired but so have McGrath and Warne. Freddie has a dodgy knee and the other English giant to emerge, Peterson, is out with a damaged ankle. Australia have also lost their third best bowler, Bret Lee, to injury.

In the first Test, at Cardiff, it was Australia's game, but a last ditch batting performance meant that England held out for a draw that they didn't deserve. In the second Test at Lord's, England had an easy win. This is an inexperienced Australian side, with only their captain, Rickie Ponting, remaining from their years of dominance. The third Test in Birmingham is going to be heavily affected by rain, so that on the first day only 30 overs were bowled, which Australia negotiated easily. Yesterday, on what should have been my day, England bowled splendidly. They took 9 wickets on a day perfect for swing bowling - damp, overcast and not too cold. Swing bowling is an art particularly suited to English condition. Ideally, the ball should appear to be straight, but late in its flight veer to the left or right to catch the edge of the bat and give a catch to the slips or miss the bat completely and crash into the stumps. Jimmie Anderson is probably the best swing bowler in the world at the moment, and he took 5 wickets, while Graham Onions is not far behind him.

I remember watching Reg Perks bowl for Worcestershire in the 1950s. He could make the bowl swing for yards, but it was uncontrolled and while spectacular to watch, he took no wickets. No, the art is to move the ball inches so that the batsman must play at it, but is likely to miss. Alas for the Australians they do not possess great swing bowlers at the moment. England are on top so far but it is pouring with rain here this morning and the Test has all the hallmarks of a Draw.