With the backing of the captain, Flintoff is back to being the nightmare batsman for the opposition © Getty Images

By being open about the mediocrity in the English cricket system, often alluded to but rarely taken head-on, he has sent out a message about the kind of players he wants to work with. “I want players who perform day-in-day-out” he said. He is looking for match-winners, not cosy players who do enough to stay in the side. When you apply that condition, it is not difficult to see who he is after ... With the backing of the captain, Flintoff is back to being the nightmare batsman for the opposition ... Next he worked on Harmison, a man of fragile temperament but enormous ability. England, much to everyone’s glee, were ready to give up on him. But sometimes the biggest brutes have soft cores, feel the same need for reassurance as average strugglers.

In the Guardian Duncan Fletcher writes that while England flourished against South Africa, their handling of India's pitches will give us a better idea of their progression.

We will find out about certain individuals' variations after the plane lands in India, where I expect Paul Collingwood and Luke Wright to do more bowling. The key to batting over there is the ability to gauge the pace of the pitch, play the ball late, and manoeuvre it into gaps with flexible wrists. Owais Shah - preferably lower down the order - and Pietersen are key and others will have to learn quickly, because the English tendency is to go hard at the ball. A shot in England that will bring you runs might go straight to a fielder in India because the ball comes off the pitch more slowly. Go too early at the ball on the subcontinent and you don't give yourself time to pick up the variations in pace and bounce.

Despite the losses to New Zealand in one-day cricket and to South Africa in Test cricket and the departures of Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood as Test and one-day captain respectively, the England who completed the summer were more settled and confident than the one who began it, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.

Pietersen has been a revelation. Very few people would have expected him to have such a positive and immediate impact, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.

September 4, 2008

A tribute to Len Hutton

Posted 4 days, 1 hour ago in English cricket

	Len Hutton died on September 6, 1990 © Getty Images

The Guardian unearths from their vault a column dedicated to Len Hutton by the Labour politician and Yorkshire native Roy Hattersley following the death of the legendary batsman. He wrote:

Perhaps Hutton was never quite the happy warrior whom every boy in pads would wish him to be. But in 1946 having adjusted to the short left arm and learned how to play with a bat of a size usually only to be found in youth clubs the whole burden of English cricket was piled on his shoulders. He had to open the batting against Lindwall and Miller. He had to hang on whilst more glamorous batsmen got themselves out with flashy shots.

Then he had to take on the England captaincy and win back the Ashes. He did it all with professional dedication. But, since he was not a boisterous man or noted for the wit of his after dinner speeches, we are entitled to ask ourselves how funny he believed his most famous indeed his only publicised joke to be? Whilst resisting one particularly savage spell of pace and lift, he walked down the wicket for what commentators undoubtedly called 'consultations' with Dennis Compton. 'There must,' said Hutton, 'be a better way of earning your living than this.'

A contest with plenty at stake

Posted 4 days, 1 hour ago in Indian Cricket

In his blog on the Guardian website, Dileep Premachandran looks at Australia A's tour to India and says it's unlike other similar contests, with many players in with a chance to make it the to the face-off between the senior sides later in the year.

A team games not involving Hannibal, BA Baracus, Murdock and Face tend to be pretty mundane affairs. Fans weaned on a steady diet of international cricket tend to treat them as a Premier League supporter does a League One game, and the players themselves are motivated by different things. For the young and ambitious teenager, it's a chance to press his claim to be the next Tendulkar, Ponting or Wasim. These days though, with U-19 games and tournaments so common, many of these tyros take the escalator straight to the top, ignoring the A team staircase altogether. For most on the wrong side of 25, unless you're an Australian with the initials MEKH, the A team call-up is usually a sop, a reward for steady domestic performances for those who lack the X-factor that separates the merely good from the exceptional.

One of a fading breed

Posted 4 days, 1 hour ago in English cricket

The jazz musician and cricket lover Benny Green once wrote that he knew he was heading for middle age the day Denis Compton, one of the greatest players of the mid-20th century, retired. The same sense of mortality will tickle thirty-something cricket fans with the retirement of Graeme Hick, who announced this week that this season would be his last, says Huw Richards in the International Herald Tribune.

The international failure and overseas origins have clouded the underlying truth, which is that Hick was a throwback, one of a perhaps dying breed. He has given 25 years of unstinting, exemplary service to a single club, Worcestershire, playing on long after international ambitions had departed, for the sheer enjoyment of the game and because he is still an asset - averaging 46 runs per innings this season. It will not be only Worcestershire fans who wish him well in retirement.

Hand ODI gloves to AB

Posted 4 days, 2 hours ago in South African cricket

	Mark Boucher must pass the ball ... err gloves ... to AB de Villiers © Getty Images

Barend Prins looks at the 4-0 loss in the ODIs to England as a blessing in disguise for South Africa. While highlighting the exodus of potential international players via the Kolpak route, Prins gives a suggestion on iafrica.com:

If I were part of SA's ODI selection committee, one head that would roll is that of long-time wicketkeeper Mark Boucher. Not that he has done any worse than many of the other senior players (or for that matter any of the other players), but now just seems the perfect opportunity to hand the gloves — in the ODI side at first — to AB de Villiers. In an ideal world, De Villiers would give the Proteas something similar to what the dominant Aussies had in Adam Gilchrist — a genuine batsman behind the stumps, effectively opening up the side to play an extra bowler or batsman, depending on the make-up of the rest of the team.

On News24.com, Rob Houwing predicts a bumpy ride ahead for South Africa's ODI side.

Don Bradman: the serious Australian

Posted 4 days, 3 hours ago in Australian cricket

	Don Bradman: More English than the English? © Getty Images

In the August edition of the the Monthly, an Australian magazine, Gideon Haigh takes an in-depth look at the career of Don Bradman. Some of the issues the essay investigates are Bradman's early cricket in Bowral, how his attitudes "faithfully reflect the deeply English roots of Australia's sporting culture", his skirmishes with the Australian board, his views on Bodyline, and his anxiety about his financial security.

Still the most compelling aspect of the legend is The Average. One hundred is not the maximum possible arithmetic mean score in cricket, but 99.94, with its tincture of human fallibility, its hint of Oulipian constraint, could not have been more exquisitely contrived. To a generation addicted to measurement and saturated in numbers, The Average is monolithic, unassailable, totemic.

Yet by The Average, it would seem, are we largely to know him. There is a certain comfort in calling Bradman great and leaving it at that; there is a certain contrarian glee, too, in deeming him an old dead guy, especially given his unwitting implication in the Howard ascendancy, and the unevolving bien-pensant snobbery about sport. If only he'd been less popular, one is left to conclude, Bradman might have occasioned deeper interest.

No will to go with grace

Posted 4 days, 8 hours ago in English cricket

Ian Bell is probably the England player who receives the most criticism but behind most of the criticism lies respect for, and frustration with, an abundant natural talent, writes Rob Smyth in his blog on the Wisden Cricketer website.

Not since David Gower has an Englishman so gifted proved so exasperating. Bell will never elicit quite the same level of trust as more mundane, blue-collar batsmen like Paul Collingwood, because the nature of his talent is so unusual to us and more difficult to comprehend, but that does not mean his underachievement is relished. Quite the opposite. It is simply that many feel he does not have the will to go with his grace.

Long live Anglo-Australian dissing

Posted 4 days, 10 hours ago in English cricket

Marcus Trescothick's Murray Mints revelations ensured that Australians can still indulge in the atavistic pleasure of sledging the Poms, writes Gideon Haigh in the Guardian.

Rupert Murdoch's Australian, which can always be relied on for sober and dispassionate coverage of cricket issues, laid it out with typical restraint: "The secret behind the devastating swing bowling that took England to its historic 2005 Ashes win has been revealed. They cheated." What a relief for the country to be confirmed in its most deeply embedded prejudices - that any English ascendancy, however brief, must be an outcome of trickery or luck.

You might imagine that a grown-up relationship between England and Australia would result in less puerile point-scoring; but it's precisely because the relationship is so mature that it permits such harmless silliness. In fact, in this era of instant umbrage, it seems an almost unseemly luxury to be able to diss any country, and an act of delicious fun to give it back.

In the same paper Mike Selvey writes that Pietersen and the new England ODI side's real test will come in India:

Here, on sluggish pitches, it is the spinners rather than wrecking balls such as Flintoff and Harmison who boss the middle overs, while the capacity of seamers to take the pace from the ball is also crucial ... Ultimately, success, particularly in one-day cricket, will come in the development of a squad capable of adapting to all conditions and circumstances. One size does not fit all.

Cricket in China has a long way to go

Posted 4 days, 13 hours ago in Miscellaneous

	This photograph may have won an ICC Global Development award, but does it qualify as an achievement for Chinese cricket? © ICC

Michael Atherton thinks IS Bindra, the ICC's principal advisor, will have a tough task promoting cricket in China, which is one of his responsibilities. "China, like Russia, is an inhospitable place and it is likely that Bindra's army will suffer the same fate, falling well short of its target as the first snowfall of winter arrives," he writes in the Times.

China bends its knee to no one where individual pursuits such as diving, weightlifting and shooting are concerned, but it has not yet got the team thing. The Asian Cricket Council's website indicates where the mission to inculcate “shen shi yun dong” (“the noble game”) into the hearts and minds of the Chinese stands: against a population of 1,321,851,888, it lists zero turf pitches, zero cricket clubs, four cricket grounds and a blank next to the name of the national captain.

There are 153 coaches who have a “Level 1” certificate, which allows them “to assist more qualified coaches developing aspects of coaching under direct supervision”, but there is no information on how many better-qualified coaches there are to supervise them. Still it is good to know, under “recent achievements”, that China won the Global Development awards photo of the year in 2005, a sweet, staged picture of three Chinese children playing soft-ball cricket on the Great Wall of China.

September 3, 2008

Where did it all go wrong for Symonds?

Posted 4 days, 19 hours ago in Australian cricket

	Andrew Symonds' experience in an Adelaide courtroom was not a fulfilling one © Getty Images

Alex Brown, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, goes back to January to find the start of Andrew Symonds’ problems, which culminated in him being sent home from Australia’s one-day series in Darwin.

To this day, Symonds has not forgiven Cricket Australia for what transpired in an Adelaide federal courtroom eight months ago. It was there that Symonds and three team-mates were convinced by CA to downgrade a charge of racial abuse against Harbhajan Singh to one of mere verbal abuse - a ploy the Australian players were advised would help ensure a lengthy suspension after the Monkeygate scandal, but one which eventually resulted in Harbhajan escaping sanction altogether.

Harbahjan's reprieve infuriated Symonds, who felt abandoned by administrators he felt were more interested in kow-towing to the influential Indian board than protecting their own. Sources within the Australian team say Symonds has refused all of CA's subsequent attempts to appease him, and the lingering resentment has fuelled his deteriorating attitude to work.

What should Symonds do? The Courier-Mail asks six experts, starting with the former Australia coach John Buchanan.

The winner of a competition to go fishing with Symonds in Darwin will still get the prize, according to AAP’s Adam Cooper.

Tweak spot

Posted 5 days, 1 hour ago in Sri Lankan cricket

Ajantha Mendis, the latest spin phenomenon gripping the cricketing world, in an interview to Faisal Shariff of Cricketnirvana.com confesses the toughest Indian batsman he bowled to during the recently-concluded Sri Lanka v India series, was Virender Sehwag.

There was not much of a difference in bowling to most of the Indian batsmen. Their style was similar. But Virender Sehwag was the toughest to bowl to without doubt.

The run machine calls time

Posted 5 days, 11 hours ago in English cricket

	Graeme Hick: the great enigma © Getty Images

For more than two decades now, Graeme Hick has tormented county attacks all across England. On his retirement, the tributes are led by the Independent's Angus Fraser and the Telegraph's Derek Pringle, two bowlers who have first-hand experience of Hick's batting expertise. And in the Guardian, David Foot recalls one of Hick's totemic innings - the unbeaten 405 in 1988 - and wonders how Hick turned out to be a relative failure on the international stage.

Those of us privileged to watch him in his best years have marvelled at the risible ease with which he has played the game. At country level, he has made so many contemporaries look ordinary. His bat was broader than anyone else's. Nothing seemed to get past it. There was always a respect for orthodoxy; with an hypnotic efficiency he took on the bowlers in rotation. The strokes were always clean. For a big man, he was imposing rather than handsome in execution.

George Dobell writes in the Birmingham Post:

His reputation is impeccable; his record immaculate. He has been a credit to his family, his club and his sport. No cricketer can achieve more.

Hoping for that one chance

Posted 5 days, 12 hours ago in Indian Cricket

The Indian Express' Devendra Pandey catches up with Amit Mishra, the legspinner who is trying to gain an entry into India's Test side.

These days, hope is once again visible in his eyes as he gets ready to face Australia A in a three-day match starting on Wednesday. That’s why he can afford to joke about his perennial presence outside the door of the Indian dressing room. “I’m a veteran in the India A side now,” says the 25-year-old with a grin. Mishra’s mood symbolises the atmosphere at the India A practice session. This is the time of wishful thinking for the anxious fringe players of Indian cricket. “I have a gut feeling that if I perform against Australia A, I’ll have a chance to be in the Test team,” Mishra says.

Tait relates to Symonds stress

Posted 5 days, 16 hours ago in Australian cricket

	Shaun Tait says there is nothing wrong with taking a break © Getty Images

Shaun Tait went fishing to recover from his mental and physical exhaustion and he tells Malcolm Conn in the Australian he expects Andrew Symonds to do the same. Symonds is deciding what to do with his future after being sent home from Australia’s series with Bangladesh for wetting a line instead of attending a team meeting.

While their circumstances are different, Tait can relate to the pressure and stresses of international cricket which forced him to walk away from the game in January physically and mentally exhausted. "Symo has played a hell of a lot of cricket over the last few years and he's often played with injuries," Tait said.

"He's got a massive profile in Australia, which obviously puts him under a fair bit of pressure and last summer he copped a fair bit of flak, so it's probably put him off a bit. I'm sure he'll be right. Maybe a couple of months off will be exactly what he needs.

"If you're in that bad a place mentally and with your cricket, there's nothing wrong with having a bit of a break if you're seriously not with it. I'm sure there are enough players around to fill spots.”

Private Hussey hopes for public Tests

Posted 5 days, 16 hours ago in Australian cricket

David Hussey says he’s “a very dull, private person”. But he tells the Sydney Morning Herald’s Jamie Pandaram of his exciting aim.

Three games into his international one-day career, Hussey is already thinking three steps ahead towards a baggy green cap and is motivated by the perception he lacks the temperament for the longer form of the game. "Nothing is going to stop me playing Test cricket, and it doesn't matter what anybody says.”

September 2, 2008

Toast Mushie but raise a glass to the true greats

Posted 6 days, 13 hours ago in English cricket

No sooner had Mushtaq Ahmed announced his retirement from English cricket last week than the tributes poured like vintage hock. "Mushtaq Ahmed, the finest Sussex player ever" it was said, followed by another toast to "the finest of all overseas players". Michael Henderson, in the Guardian, too lauds Mushie for his feats but disagrees that he was finest ever. After sifting through a list of county legends, he lists five of his best.

Procter is one of the five men I submit for consideration. He gets in because English spectators saw him at his best over a decade, and best in his case means being one of the most supremely gifted - and watchable - all-round cricketers the world has known.

In the same paper, Paul Collingwood talks of the circumstances which led him quitting the captaincy and how the decision has changed his life.

"You're always being judged as captain and as hard as you try not to read or listen to what people say, it eventually gets back to you. I tried to laugh everything off but it seeps through and hurts. But that is what being captain of the England cricket team is about. Along with being manager of the England football team it is the most scrutinised job a sportsman in this country can have."

India's purple patch

Posted 6 days, 14 hours ago in Indian Cricket

In his column for cricketnirvana.com, South Africa's coach Mickey Arthur gushes at India's success in the one-dayers in Sri Lanka and believes the strategy of having separate Test and ODI squads has put them on the right track to the 2011 World Cup. Her also dwells on England's rise, the problems with his own one-day team, and dispels the myth that his players chickened out of touring Pakistan.

Like all sportsmen we don't believe it is worth endangering our lives in order to compete but we are not qualified to make judgements on security issues which is why we leave that to the experts. Personally I feel extremely sorry for Pakistan's fans and cricketers that they will now miss out on seeing the best cricketers in the world.

IPL riches are for a select few

Posted 6 days, 14 hours ago in Indian Cricket

In his column for the Hindu, Makarand Waingankar questions the Maharashtra Cricket Association's move to draft in two foreign players, who are not even regulars for their respective countries, at the expense of local players who are bound to get demoralised by this. On the issue of player earnings, he says the IPL riches only count for an elite few in India and it's high time corporates in cities other than Chennai, start employing cricketers.

The least the BCCI could do is have an inter-corporate tournament at the state level so that not only will employment opportunities for cricketers be generated, but also state associations will be prevented from ruining the cricketers’ careers.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to ... Symonds

Posted 6 days, 16 hours ago in Australian cricket

	Andrew Symonds is "angry and hurt" © Getty Images

In a wide-ranging article on player behaviour in sport, the Daily Telegraph's Tom Smithies looks at Andrew Symonds’ attitude following his fishing trip in Darwin.

You also have to laugh when someone such as Symonds, having broken his team's rules, then asks the world to "respect my privacy" as he contemplates walking away from the preposterous earnings and opportunities that elite sportsmen are granted. Teams require their members to respect each other, if no one else, and if you don't play by house rules then disharmony is sewn faster than onion weed.

In the Symonds case consider the words of Michael Clarke, vice-captain of the Australian team and for rather longer a close friend to the all-rounder. Their history counted for little when Clarke questioned Symonds' attitude and his commitment and spoke of things that Symonds wasn't fulfilling. A lack, in short, of respect.

The Australian’s Malcolm Conn says the decision to send Symonds home probably saved the allrounder from himself. Conn also talks about Symonds’ “moody side”.

Having travelled to all of cricket's most difficult and dangerous locations over the past two decades I have only felt physically threatened twice. One was when a guard outside the palatial residence of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe, which is across the road from the cricket ground in Harare, held me up at bayonet point while two army officers interrogated me for 20 minutes. The other was when Symonds saw me in a bar during the 2004 Sri Lanka tour and shaped up before team security grabbed him and moved him on.

Jamie Pandaram, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, reports Symonds is considering quitting and is "angry, hurt and embarrassed".

In the India-based Daily News and Analysis, Stephen Gray the co-author of Roy: Going For Broke, tells Vijay Tagore of Symonds' passion for fishing, a childhood hobby.

“I’ve no doubt how he would spend his superannuation. He will have a house near the sea and will buy a good fishing boat. He will also go swimming and farming but fishing will be his primary activity after he has done away with cricket.”

September 1, 2008

Perfectionist Hussey wants to lose 'battle' tag

Posted 6 days, 20 hours ago in Australian cricket

Michael Hussey, the man with the second best sustained average in Test history, underwent a critical assessment of his batting in the off-season so his time at the crease wasn’t such a “battle”. Adam Cooper, from AAP, talks to Hussey about the changes in technique.

"To be honest I feel like my batting's been a real battle for two years," he said. "I've just been sort of hanging in there and grinding away and it feels like every innings has been a real vigil and it didn't feel like I could play a lot of shots with a lot of power or conviction."

Pietersen indebted to Flintoff

Posted 1 week ago in English cricket

"Kevin Pietersen is a great England cricket captain." That bold statement comes courtesy of Simon Barnes in The Times, and doubtless others, but Pietersen's golden start to his tenure is owed to one man.

Freddie's back. And when you have Andrew Flintoff at the top of his game, you tend to look good if you are standing anywhere within shouting distance.

Time and again Flintoff has been the difference between England and the opposition. Others have played well, but they cluster around him, they draw inspiration from him, he is their rallying point, their mascot and their go-to guy. As a result of his resurgence, the most remarkable thing has happened - England are giving a fair impersonation of a crash-hot one-day team.

The Centurions – the world's greatest run-makers

Posted 1 week ago in English cricket

	Tom Graveney on the attack against the West Indies in 1966 © Getty Images

Members of the 100-hundreds club are to be honoured in London on Monday. In the Independent, Tom Graveney, the oldest member of that exclusive group, recalls his dangerous hooking instincts, a never-to-be-repeated stint as England wicketkeeper and how he was almost sent home from West Indies.

"South Africa at Old Trafford in 1955," he recalls. "I scored nought and one, and caught three and dropped four at first slip. So when Godfrey Evans broke his finger in two places, Peter May said, 'You might as well keep wicket'. And the first ball I caught, down the leg side off Frank Tyson, that's what happened." Chuckling, Graveney shows me the little finger on his left hand, which he can bend back almost to the horizontal. "Can you see? The middle knuckle doesn't operate any more."

Over in the Telegraph, Bill Frindall pays tribute to the 25 men who have reached the landmark, and dubs Don Bradman the Usain Bolt of the group.

Trescothick on his personal battles

Posted 1 week ago in English cricket

Marcus Trescothick has given an in-depth interview to the BBC's Jonathan Agnew where he talks on everything from his struggles with the long-term illness, to the Indian Premier League and Kevin Pietersen's captaincy. And after the furore over the use of Murray Mints, he says it isn't proven that they help the ball swing more.

No more sport for sport's sake?

Posted 1 week ago in English cricket

Derek Pringle deplores the decision to strip university matches of first-class status from the next season. He fears bright cricketers will henceforth almost surely choose college over county club. He argues in the Telegraph that the contribution of the universities to cricket is being under-estimated:

Nasser Hussain, John Crawley, Ed Smith, Jason Gallian, James Dalrymple, Andrew Strauss, James Foster, Jeremy Snape, Alex Loudon and Monty Panesar all played for their country after benefiting from a university education on and off the field. How many counties can claim as many England cricketers in the last 20 years? Not many.

Pakistan needs to relive glory days — Part II

Posted 1 week ago in Pakistan cricket

In Part 2 of Ehsan Mani's observations on Pakistan cricket in Dawn, he talks about the security situation in Pakistan and feels the PCB should have anticipated a mass pull-out from the Champions Trophy and swapped the tournament for the 2010 or 2012 ICC tournaments. However, he strongly feels it's a misconception that Pakistan is largely unsafe to tour. On the functioning of the PCB, he says it's important all cricketing matters be handled by former players, and that it isn't always necessary to appoint a former national player as the chairman.

While I was President of the ICC, before an ICC Board meeting in Lahore in 2004, I took a number of directors including the then Chairmen of the Boards from Australia, West Indies, South Africa and Zimbabwe to Gilgit and Hunza. We drove up the KKH and flew back. It was an eye opener for them. It showed them a Pakistan very different from the perception they had. To this day they all consider it the highlight of their cricketing travels anywhere in the world. Each one of them would come back to Pakistan at the first opportunity.

For Part 1, click here.

August 31, 2008

Symonds situation leaves Australia in limbo for India

Posted 1 week ago in Australian cricket

	Six weeks on the road would test Andrew Symonds © Getty Images

Jon Pierik, writing in the Herald Sun, wonders about the options for Australia’s tour of India in October if Andrew Symonds is not there.

With Symonds now contemplating his future in the wake of the embarrassing fishing fiasco in Darwin, Australia's national selectors will have to at least discuss other options ahead of naming the touring squad in a fortnight. Even if Symonds does make himself available, it's questionable whether he will be in the right frame of mind to deal with six strenuous weeks on the road.

Meanwhile, Clayton Murzello in the Mid-Day recounts other instances of player indiscipline, with Doug Walters featuring prominently.

Pakistan needs to get its prioirities right

Posted 1 week, 1 day ago in Pakistan cricket

Ehsan Mani, the former president of the ICC, writes in the Dawn that the frequent changes at the helm of the Pakistan Cricket Board has contributed to damaging the fundamental structure of cricket in the country. He laments the decline of the Wazir Ali league in Lahore, calls for increased wages for domestic players and wants the PCB to spend more money on the personal development of players in the national team.

Rawalpindi had a number of grounds apart from the Pindi Club Ground on the Mall Road. Gradually these grounds have disappeared. The Army ground is now the parking lot for the GHQ, the T&T ground is now a housing estate; others have simply disappeared as commercial and residential developments took over the vacant spaces where children could just turn up and play. Regretfully, this has been the case throughout Pakistan ... Without investment in playing facilities a large pool of talent will be lost.

New England in rude health, bar a few excess pounds

Posted 1 week, 1 day ago in South Africa in England 2008

	The emergence of Samit Patel has been a revelation © Getty Images

Steve James, in the Sunday Telegraph, is awestruck by England's one-day renaissance, thanks in no small way to Kevin Pietersen's captaincy, Samit Patel and the rejuvenated Matt Prior.

Goodness, that is still hard to believe. This is one-day cricket after all. This is just not supposed to happen. England are wonderfully woeful at one-day cricket: that has long been written in the stars.

In the same paper, Scyld Berry identifies the key areas in which Pietersen has excelled as captain, such as keeping wickets intact in the Powerplays and not overloading his players with training sessions. The Sunday Times' Simon Wilde is impressed by England's run and ponders whether they have hit upon a XI that's likely to last.

Over in the Natal Witness, Peter Roebuck writes that South Africa's failings in the one-day series indicate a lack of ambition.

Rightly, the team celebrated (after winning the Test series) and its praises were sung. After a few days rest, though, it was important to get back to work. Instead, the players went walkabout. As much could be seen for the defeat at the Oval.

Suddenly, batsmen were swishing away outside off-stick or lifting catches to cover. Far from kicking their prostrate opponents, they assisted in their resurgence. Obviously the new captain also inspired England, but he must have expected stiffer resistance.

In his blog on the Times website, Archie Henderson raises a question: Was [Shaun] Pollock allowed to retire, or was he pushed, like Lance Klusener?

The many faces of Darren Gough

Posted 1 week, 1 day ago in English cricket

After 19 years, Darren Gough - England bowler, ballroom dancer and all-round personality - is set to retire from cricket. Observer Sport Monthly followed him as he played his final season for Yorkshire - and launched a new career i