Prior cannot do it alone

Dear ECB/England selectors,

You may have noticed that England are not doing so well after a prolonged relatively good period extending from about 2005.  As a concerned cricket fan, I would like to help you out with your selections for the India tour, since you seem to have made so many bad choices recently.  The main issue I want to point out is that you are expecting far too much of Matt Prior. He cannot be expected to carry the team on his own.  You have asked him to try to achieve something that has not been done since Strauss in June 2005 against Bangladesh.  That was the last test that England won with only one South African born player in the team.  Can it really be a coincidence that England's best stretch of form in decades links with the presence of between two and four South Africans in the team?  Is it any wonder that Sri Lanka beat this English team when Prior is on his own?  Indeed no English team has won with less than three South Africans since August 2008, and the majority of test wins since then have required four South Africans.  

I realise that there is a little shortage of South Africans qualified and ready to play for England at the moment, but I can suggest a couple to help Prior with the heavy lifting against India.  There seems to be a place opening up at the top of the order with the form of Cook.  Thankfully there is a South African ready to step in.  Compton is both South African and an opener.  It seemed last year that he was dropped for the sole reason that he did not fit well into the Flower-Cook style (originally the Flower-Stauss style), but this would no longer be a concern as Flower is gone already, and this way Cook would be gone too.  

To get to three South Africans, and thereby give England a fighting chance there needs to be one more.  With Trott still not back this means that you will need to look elsewhere.  There is a little known player named Kevin Pietersen who looks a handy sort of player.  I believe he could even score 10000 runs in test cricket if given a chance. To squeeze him in, he could replace Joe Root.  Yes, I know Root recently scored a double hundred, but he can safely be dropped from any test not played at Lords.  In three matches at the English home of cricket he has accrued 512 runs at 102.4 including a 180 and a 200*.  His other 14 tests have only amounted to 702 runs at 28.08 with a solitary century.  So for any test at Lords he is a walk up start, but KP is a better bet overall.  And once again his main (though perhaps not only) detractors in the team were rumoured to be Cook and Flower.  

Yours almost sincerely

An Aussie Fan

Mankad sins:the Senanayake controversy.

Sri Lanka's Sachithra Senanayake committed the ultimate in cricket sins in the match against England on Tuesday.  Ever since he "Mankaded" Jos Buttler, controversy has raged.  However his sin was committed two overs earlier.  

Imagine if you will the following circumstance:  the bowler bowls, the non-striker starts to head down the pitch, the batsman hits it straight to a fieldsman who picks it up and sends it back to the bowler standing over the stumps.  The bowler doesn't break the stumps, but rather holds the ball and watches as the non-striker scrambles back to his crease.  That was a warning, don't do it again.

While it might happen in backyard cricket, especially if the non-striker was very young and the bowler very generous, if it happened in international cricket there would be an uproar.  Why did the bowler let him off like that?  He should be trying everything within the laws of the game to get the opposition batsman out, and anything less, like not running him out when he could, or deliberately dropping a catch is not acceptable.  And yet, Senanayake failed to get both Buttler and Jordan out when he had a chance.  They both were backing up too far, too early, and he did not run them out but gave them a warning.  If he sinned, it was in failing to dismiss the batsmen when it was well within his power to do so.  The next time he bowled, Buttler did it again and was run out.  For some reason that perfectly legal action is what has caused the controversy, not the fact that he did not try everything to get the batsmen out the previous two occasions.

It has been interesting to see the reaction.  The main objection it would seem is not to the legality of it, but to the violation of the "spirit of the game".  And this is mainly from the same people who were arguing strongly that Broad was well within the law not walking when he was given not out when he middled one last year.  For the record, I supported Broad on that one, like I support the Sri Lankans in this one.  Both of them were not entirely within the spirit of the game (though by giving a warning, or actually two, Senanayake comes far closer).  However, consistency means that if you supported Broad, you should support Senanayake.  Both of them acted legally (for those wanting to argue the point, it seems clear to me that 1- he was not intending to bowl by the time his back foot hit the ground, therefore he was not in his delivery stride, and 2- the umpires made the decision, so just like in the Broad incident, it is not the player that is at fault if there is any fault).  The error in both occasions was someone else's: the umpire in Broad's case (and the Aussies for having burned their referrals), and in this one, Buttler for backing up too far, too early.  The stupidity of Buttler is that he did it even after being warned, and seeing his partner warned just two overs earlier.  If the English players don't like what happened, the lesson is to stay behind the line until the ball is bowled.