Posts tagged with ‘Test cricket’

James Anderson has ambitions. One of them is to captain England someday. Those of you in the know, and some of you who aren’t are by now rolling around on the floor. That’s right, a fast bowler couldn’t possibly be the Captain of England.

The trend recently is of players retiring from Test cricket to prolong their Twenty20 careers, or at least professing a preference for the format limited in length but unlimited in financial inducement. But, Ricky Ponting isn’t going to be following that trend, having announced his retirement from Twenty20 internationals to prolong his Test career.

The ICC is not a world cricket governing body. It is a cosy front for the national boards. They can use it to appear to be doing the right thing by cricket whilst they sit about playing power games or congratulating each other on how much money they are raking in.

The MCC think that Test cricket is in danger of dying out. The cricket world is managing to wring it’s hands about the danger of IPL-alikes springing up all over the world whilst busily trying to rake in the money they bring at the same time. Are they missing a simple law of business?

Here are a couple of interesting links if you are fed up with the 2nd Test (if you are, I assume you are Australian).

The success of the recent World Twenty20 has intensified the debate surrounding the future of test cricket and what needs to be done to maintain it’s position as the pinnacle of cricket. There is little argument amongst players (Chris Gayle excepted) and officials that there is where it should remain. But how to achieve this?

Here is a report in the Wall Street Journal about the friction between T20 and test cricket. Always interesting to read the views of someone on the outside looking in, and this is reasonably balanced.

I had this post planned anyway, but the defeat by Holland in the World Twenty20 adds context and relevance. Yesterdays result should act as a huge wakeup call and a slap in the face with a wet kipper for all of English cricket. Likely it will not. Here is why.

The selectors need to be prepared for the fact that Flintoff’s days as an international cricketer are numbered. Excluding the abandoned test in Antigua, he has been fit for a mere 7 tests out of 28 since the last Ashes series in Australia. That’s just a quarter of all tests in which he could have played – on that ratio, he will break down sometime during the 2nd Ashes test this summer and miss the rest of the series.

As if we couldn’t tell by his on-field demeanor, Chris Gayle has announced he isn’t too bothered about test cricket or captaincy. Fair enough.