Cricket - New Wisden debates Twenty20 (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Cricket - New Wisden debates Twenty20

2:37pm Monday 20th April 2009 in

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AFTER a year of frenetic Twenty20 infatuation – especially with the hugely popular, high-profile Indian Premier League – the Editor of the 2009 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack debates the flaws and the strengths of the shortest game.

The 146th edition of the Almanack, published this monthl, states that one of the main shortcomings of the 20-over format is the lack of opportunity for players to “manifest [their] personality.”

Scyld Berry, editing Wisden for the second time, says that due to the brevity of the matches, 20-over cricket lacked the “drama that a full day of intense cricket provides.”

Similarly, he notes that the lucrative nature of the IPL games has seen a worrying shift in players’ priorities, epitomised by Sri Lanka’s 13 leading players refusing to tour England for a Test series in May 2009 because they had already pledged themselves to the IPL.

As worrying, perhaps, is news that England’s top cricketers are due home from the IPL only four days before the start of the First Test against the West Indies.

Michael Vaughan has revealed his apocalyptic vision of the future cricketer as a mercenary flying from one 20-over tournament to another without ever playing Test matches for his country.

The country’s youth lose touch with cricket Scyld Berry warns that the absence of cricket on free-to-air TV is having a potentially disastrous impact on the public awareness of the game.

While he acknowledges that the ECB attracted top dollar for the sale of international TV rights to BSkyB, he draws attention to chilling research carried out among more than 26,000 schoolchildren in South London.

The Pro-Active survey asked secondary school students which three sports they would like more access to. Cricket came 21st on the list, behind archery and rounders.

Berry concludes that much of the impetus gained from winning the Ashes in 2005 has been lost – and also draws attention to the near total disappearance of British-raised Afro-Caribbean cricketers.

Test cricket must speed up Elsewhere in his Notes, Berry decries the funereal pace of Test cricket. In 2008, the average over-rate sagged to just 13.79 overs an hour. It’s not only the players who are to blame, he says, citing the instance of the fourth umpire taking out a banana for Billy Bowden during the India v England Test at Chennai last December.

To help remedy the problem, Berry urges two possible solutions: 1. During play, the boundaries should be sealed, with no one entering or leaving the field in any other than exceptional circumstances.

This, he argues, would also ensure that the cricketers would think for themselves, rather than receiving messages conveyed to the middle by batsmen unnecessarily changing their gloves, or fielders taking a comfort break.

“Let the field of play be sacrosanct again,” he says.

2. Lunch and tea should be delayed until 30 overs have been bowled in the previous session.

“The ICC should adapt this adage: the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

Soon enough, fielding sides that dawdle would become very unpopular with umpires who miss out on putting their feet up, commentators who want their lunch, and caterers who lose customers, while broadcasters and spectators are finally given full value for money.

Referral or Consultation?

Almost forgotten in the hoo-hah surrounding Sir Allen Stanford’s brash and brazen 20/20 for $20m was a genuine step forward that deserves a more extended trial.

While the ICC was promoting the referral (or review) system to weed out umpiring errors, Stanford – uncharacteristically – preferred a less dramatic alternative.

The consultation system involves the two on-field umpires conferring with the TV umpire to reach the correct, collective decision.

In his Notes, Berry calls for further trials of this system, arguing that it has a significant advantage: the authority of the umpires is not overtly challenged by the players – with all the dangerous messages that sends out to younger cricketers.

Lies, damned lies… and attendance figures In January 2009, the England and Wales Cricket Board trumpeted the fact that over 550,000 had been to County Championship matches last summer.

Wisden reveals the absurdity of that claim, which is built on erroneous figures – epitomised by a healthy crowd of almost 12,000 supposedly attending the Glamorgan v Worcestershire game in September.

In reality the match saw not a single ball bowled. The true figure for Championship attendance would, in all probability, have been under half a million. “At best, this was incompetent,” Wisden thunders; “at worst dishonest and deliberately misleading.”

Michael Vaughan reveals his acting skills Writing in Wisden for the first time, Michael Vaughan reveals the stresses and strains of being England captain. “A lot of captaincy is about acting: you want your team-mates to play naturally and be themselves, but the captain has to act. Your job is to lead with a calm authority.

On that Sunday morning at Edgbaston in 2005 when we won the Second Test against Australia by two runs, I was unbelievably stressed. I was flapping like hell inside, but couldn’t show it… The players in my last year as captain didn’t know I was struggling – and that is one of the things I will always be proudest of.”

Dealing with the media, he adds, was something he relished: “It got me down in the end, but in general I liked going to press conferences, and talking to TV when doing the toss and putting on a positive spin, or doing interviews after the game.

I would love to do that part of the job again. In a strange way I found it more difficult to explain the good times and the victories than the defeats.”

As part of Wisden’s detailed coverage of the England captaincy crisis, Mike Atherton analyses the KP affair, while Simon Barnes takes solace from the fact that not too long ago, things were even worse.

Wisden Test XI In this year’s edition, Wisden enters the world of fantasy cricket by naming its dream Test XI, based on performances throughout 2008. “Almost every international cricketer, when questioned, says the ultimate form of the game is Test cricket,” writes Berry as an explanation for creating Wisden’s Test XI. The aim is to endorse Test cricket as “the highest, most skilled, form of the game, and the least subject to the intrusion of time.”

The 2008 Wisden Test XI: · V. Sehwag (India) · G.C. Smith (South Africa) · R.T. Ponting (Australia) · S.R. Tendulkar (India) · K. P. Pietersen (England) · S. Chanderpaul (West Indies) · M.S. Dhoni (India) · Harbjahan Singh (India) · M. G. Johnson (Australia) · D. W. Steyn (South Africa) · Zaheer Khan (India) Sehwag is the world’s No. 1… Wisden 2009 names the Indian batsman Virender Sehwag as the Leading Cricketer in the World.

Facing nothing but the toughest teams in world cricket, he scored faster during the calendar year than any top-class opener has ever done on a regular basis. Sehwag becomes the sixth player to win the accolade – which identifies the first name on a World XI team-sheet to play Mars – since it began in 2004.

Previous winners include: South African Jacques Kallis, Australia’s Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne, England’s Andrew Flintoff and Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan.

A Wisden first – a woman among the Five There are two England players among Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year: the opening bowler James Anderson, and Claire Taylor, the first woman ever given the accolade. The other three are from South Africa, though Dale Benkenstein was honoured for his guiding Durham to their first County Championship title. Mark Boucher and Neil McKenzie helped . The South African majority is indicative of South Africa’s position as the new super power in the world of cricket, picking up after Australia’s fall from glory.

Young Wisden Schools Cricketer of the Year James Taylor, from Shrewsbury School, has been selected as the Young Wisden Schools Cricketer of the Year, following a phenomenal summer, scoring 898 runs in schools cricket at an astounding average of 179.60.

James is the second winner of this award, beating off fierce competition from Jonathan Bairstow, Young Wisden Schools Cricketer of the Year for 2007. Taylor’s potential has been noticed on both the county and international stages: in 2008 he made his first-class debut for Leicestershire, as well as playing four matches for England Under-19. During the winter, he made nine appearances for England Under-19 on their tour of South Africa.

Wisden Book of the Year Sweet Summers, a selection of the classic cricket writing of JM Kilburn, is the winner of the Wisden Book of the Year award. Kilburn, cricket correspondent of the Yorkshire Post for more than 40 years from before the Second World War until 1976, “possessed the eye of a reporter and the soul of a poet” according to Wisden’s reviewer, Patrick Collins. Sweet Summers is edited by Duncan Hamilton, who in 2007 won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year prize for Provided You Don’t Kiss Me – 20 Years with Brain Clough.

The 146th edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack - the hardback and soft cover versions have recommended retail prices of £45.