Out with the New and in with the Old

Hello and welcome back to my blog

THE IPL IS OVER... for another year (unless you count the Champions League in October) and to be honest I am glad – now I can get some sleep. More importantly our attention can turn to the real cricket played in England from July 8th when Australia will defend their Ashes urn.
As for the IPL and its effects on Test cricket, my comments last time covered this but since then I’m glad to see many of them were backed up by articles in the NZ Herald by Dylan Cleaver (see his great line about cricket/rugby in paragraph two of his article) and Paul Lewis. Cleaver makes some good points about how little the Black Caps players influenced the IPL (written before Ross Taylor screwed up Bangalore’s Final victory) but unfortunately continues the media trend of inflating the Jesse Ryder ‘issue’.
However Lewis holds the standard of sports journalism above such pettiness with his balanced article about the fate of Test cricket. He draws attention away from the IPL – rightly pointing out that Tests were in trouble long before the BCCI captured the sport – to the fall of West Indians cricket and debacles like Stanford. I would recommend reading this article (especially the opening quip about cow urine).
This brings me to the Ashes. For Test cricket to survive it must be competitive and this series should be nothing but competitive in my opinion as two evenly matched sides will clash from July till September (although less star-studded than 2005).
Geoffrey Boycott expressed his opinions on his radio show last week, specifically the clear move away from the aging Andrew Flintoff and the tried-and-tested Ian Bell. I believe that for England to succeed they must have Anderson and Sidebottom leading the attack – Broad is not a Test bowler of high class yet – and Swann must be the first choice spinner. After seeing him operate against the West Indies I have no doubt that he is best suited to exposing Australian weaknesses against finger spin.
Of the Baggy Green, watch out for Stuart Clark, if he is fit, he is similar to Terry Alderman in the 1980s who picked up buckets of wickets in two tours of England where wicket-to-wicket seam bowling is devastating. The boy Hughes will be interesting as we will see just how far the comparisons with Don Bradman can extend.
As we draw closer to July 8th I will provide more prediction on this intriguing contest. As for the 20/20 World Cup – after so much IPL I couldn't care less to be frank and I intend to watch only the New Zealand games.

Leggies and Wrong’uns

The Leggie this week is Paul Lewis whose article on IPL and Test cricket was well written, balanced and provided plenty of thought-provoking information on that controversy.

The Wrong’un is, surprisingly, Ian Chappell whose piece on Cricinfo.com, while insightful when talking about the Australian squad, completely missed the point of this Ashes contest by raising the Flintoff vs. Lee factor as important this time round. I would point out to him that the Edgebaston photo was taken Four years ago and both men have passed the age of 30 since then – the age at which their fast-bowling art begins to decline. This Ashes series will be for the next generation of cricketers.
Also look out for my new posting on Thursdays each week when I will state a ‘Team of the Week’ for people to debate. Predictably I will have my IPL XL for 2009 so as to rap up that topic for the year (hopefully)

Well that’s it from and I hope to see you again
It’s good bye for now