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ESPNcricinfo handpicks from the archives a selection of articles on Graeme Smith’s rise as a leader

ESPNcricinfo staff04-Mar-20142008
Older, wiser, leader
Graeme Smith has come a long way but the road ahead of him is steep still. By Peter Roebuck2012
Respect to Biff
Graeme Smith has been a figure easy to misunderstand. That should not hide the fact that he is among the toughest, most intelligent cricketers around – and a great batsman to boot. By Telford Vice2009
War hero Smith shadows the pain of defeat
Graeme Smith’s hobble back to the dressing room after being dismissed must rank as the most moving moment of the 2009 ICC Champions Trophy. It helped the local crowd overcome their great sadness to rise to applaud the valiance of the man who had battled the odds all evening. By Sambit Bal2012
The brash lad who grew up right
Graeme Smith, at 22, was an unexpected choice to lead South Africa. He learned the hard way but emerged through the tough times as an accomplished leader of men. By Firdose Moonda2012
Fourth-innings hero
Graeme Smith has handled the responsibilities of opening the batting and leading the team remarkably well over the last ten years. By S Rajesh2013
Deconstructing Graeme Smith
How has South Africa’s captain lasted so long with a technique that shouldn’t work in Test cricket? By Aakash Chopra2007
‘It is tough being accountable for decisions made for you’
South African cricket has never been short of issues and controversy – and never more so than over the last few months. Graeme Smith presents his side of the story in a forthright interview with Neil Manthorp

For the king of television hosts, Michael Parkinson, Don Bradman proved about as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel

Ashley Mallett23-Jun-2014When Michael Parkinson was 13, he rode his bike from Barnsley to Leeds to watch the 1948 Australians.That day, July 27, Don Bradman hit an unconquered 173 to set up a famous victory, and to Parky it fired his lifelong love for the game of cricket.He, of course, went on to become a successful journalist and won global fame as a television host. Over the years he interviewed an amazing array of talented people. However, a number of others “got away”.Frank Sinatra and Bradman were two superstars who slipped Parky’s grasp. “I got closer to the Kid from Hoboken [Sinatra] than I did the Boy from Bowral [Bradman],” said Parkinson.”Sinatra was the greatest star of them all. At a party in Los Angeles I was introduced to him through a songwriting friend of mine, Sammy Cahn, who wrote 17 hit songs with Sinatra and got as close to him as anyone got. I wanted to have Sinatra on my show. When I was about to leave the party I went up to the great man and said, ‘Mr Sinatra I have to go.’ ‘That’s fine,’ Sinatra said, shaking my hand, ‘Goodbye, David.’ And I thought, ‘That’s me snookered, I’m not going to do any good here at all.'”I suppose I was aggrieved and a little annoyed that I never got to interview Bradman,” Parkinson said. By the time Ray Martin of Channel Nine did an interview with the Don, then in his 88th year, in May 1996, it was far too late for anyone to get the whole story, where Bradman could tell the cricket world his innermost thoughts about Bodyline and how he set about destroying bowlers.”The ideal time to do it was when I was in Australia in 1979. More’s the pity that he went to his grave without the world getting the chance to see the definitive Bradman interview on camera. On the odd occasion I have glimpsed him in the distance and he vanished before I could reach him, like a mirage. Once, a host showed me the tea cup Sir Donald had been drinking from. The liquid was still warm and I felt like an explorer who had just found a fresh imprint of the Abominable Snowman.”While Bradman never appeared on Parkinson’s show, the cricket and wine writer John Arlott most assuredly did, and Parky believes that was the best interview he did with anyone on cricket.”Cricket is taken too seriously and life too casually. There is an inevitability about sport today, regimented and very predictable,” Arlott said to him.

“If an interview with Bradman had occurred, I would have asked him about his fame. Being famous is a bit like having the measles. It is a minor affliction and the rash soon disappears, but for some it never goes away”

It is a view Parkinson subscribes to. “Imagine today’s coaches having to deal with the non-conformist Keith Miller,” Parkinson says. “As great as Miller was, I am not convinced today’s coaches would appreciate his great talent and match-winning ability, because he wouldn’t conform: he would always do it his way.”Parky first set eyes on Miller when he saw him play in the 1945 Victory Tests in England.”He became my hero and every kid’s hero in England. By 1948, when Bradman’s side arrived, England was a drab, dour place. We were still on rations. The US was continuing to help resurrect Britain after the long, exhausting war years. Bradman’s team lit up our summer, lit up our lives in a sense. There was Bradman himself, but also an array of super-talented players such as Miller, Neil Harvey, Arthur Morris, Ray Lindwall, Don Tallon and so on.”Once on his show, Parkinson asked Miller about the pressure of Test cricket and back came the immortal reply from the ex-Flight Lieutenant war hero: “Pressure? There’s no pressure in cricket. I’ll tell you what pressure is… pressure is when you are flying a Mosquito and there’s a Messerschmitt up your arse!””He was tall, long-legged, broad-shouldered and incredibly handsome,” Parky said of Miller. “When he batted, he hit the ball with great power and in classic style. He bowled like the wind and caught swallows in the field. He was my hero then and was from then on.”I got to know him, and one occasion, when I was working for the and he mentioned that Harold Pinter, the celebrated playwright, would be on the couch with him. Trueman asked about Pinter: ‘Who’s he play for?'”Fred was my hero,” Parkinson says, “and I think the best piece I ever penned was my obituary of him, which I wrote for . Because I watched him throughout his career, knew him and loved him, I was able to weave a lot of observation and love into that piece. As an all-round bowler he was the best I ever saw. He should have played a lot more Test matches, but he missed two Australian tours he should not have missed and he never toured South Africa.”He was left out of a tour to Australia after he had taken 187 wickets for Yorkshire at an average of 14 and they took a bloke named David Larter – a big bloke who couldn’t bowl – in his stead.”Are Australians like Yorkshiremen?”Yes, I think there is something in that. When I first went to Australia it was a bit like going to a rather large, sunny Yorkshire. After you’ve been here in Australia for a while you can see clearly that cricket has the same grip on the people that football has on the people in England. Cricket is the No. 2 game in England, very much in the shadow of football. In Britain football has all the money and the crowds and the immense following.”Had Parky managed to persuade Bradman to be a guest on his show, what other guests would he have invited to accompany Sir Donald?Parkinson at a Lord’s Test in 2008•Getty Images”None. Bradman stands alone.”If an interview with Bradman had occurred, I would have asked him about his fame. Being famous is a bit like having the measles. It is a minor affliction and the rash soon disappears, but for some it never goes away. They and their family are on public display, forever.”The female superstar who got away from him was Katherine Hepburn. “I adored her from afar,” says Parkinson.”However, my all-time favourite was Muhammad Ali. I had him on the show four times, spanning 11 years. Those four interviews I did with him represent a relationship we had. He was a deeply flawed man but an extraordinary human being.”Some of his less stellar interviewees perplexed Parky. Among them was Australian batsman Doug Walters.”I spent two hours with Doug on a Friday, interviewing him for ABC TV in Australia. Next day I played golf at Royal Sydney and as I walked on to the course off came Ian Chappell and Doug Walters. We exchanged ‘g’days’, as you do, and I overheard Doug ask Chappelli, ‘Who’s that bloke?'”

England consigned India to two reverse-swing-induced collapses whereas India bowlers mainly relied on the new ball’s movement and uneven bounce by hitting the deck hard

Sidharth Monga15-Jul-2014There was a time when reverse-swing was a strictly Asian art. Well, Pakistani first, and then rest of Asia’s. The rest of the world has caught up with it now. Dale Steyn and James Anderson might even be the finest exponents of it. Still, when an England side outdoes India in almost Indian conditions on the reverse-swing front, it must hurt them as much as it should England or Australia if India or Pakistan bowl at top of off more often than them in green seaming conditions. In Nottingham, on a slow and low surface acknowledged by both sides as more Indian than English, the hosts out-reversed India.England consigned India to two reverse-swing-induced collapses whereas India bowlers mainly relied on the new ball’s movement and uneven bounce by hitting the deck hard. There are three aspects to a contest of reverse-swing, and India were short on all three: maintaining the ball, then actually bowling with it, and weathering the storm with the bat once the opposition starts getting it to go.Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane seem to be India’s designated ball shiners. They worked hard on it through India’s bowling, but there is more to maintaining the ball for reverse swing. Those commentators who were watching closely, looking for signs of reverse, say England simply maintained the ball better.Earlier in the year, a Test between South Africa and Australia, played in similar conditions in Port Elizabeth, got ugly because the umpires took an exception to the repeated banging of the ball into the ground by infielders. England were smarter here.They waited for the ball to go just far enough to justify that throw on the bounce. On occasions throws from mid-off or mid-on reached the stumps at the striker’s end on a half-volley, which forced Matt Prior to go back and collect them on the bounce. Stuart Broad didn’t mind sticking the boot out when fielding in his follow-through. In 2008, Wasim Akram, the king of reverse-swing, told ESPNcricinfo in an interview: “Sometimes bowlers used to stop the ball played back at them with their foot. If the boot spikes hit the rough side, it was Christmas. If it didn’t, you shone the ball and moved on.” Liam Plunkett bowled a spell made up almost exclusively of bouncers before lunch on day one, and the ball began to go just after lunch.The reverse might not have been a direct result of all this, but England were trying more than India. And this is not ball-tampering. Not until it gets so excessive that umpires start to take notice. You have to keep trying, and keep trying within reasonable limits. After maintaining it, though, you need to bowl well with it too. The England quicks do seem to have more pace and accuracy, than India’s, to be able to exploit reverse. At various stages, Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Shami have shown they can cause damage with reverse, but they are not quite Zaheer Khan with it. When Cheteshwar Pujara was asked if it was disappointing that England did more with the old ball than India, he bemoaned the lack of carry in the pitch, but isn’t the lack of carry the necessity in the first place?Also India are familiar with batting on such pitches, which is why their two periods of struggle against the reversing ball should come as a disappointment. In the first innings, Pujara went hard at one slightly slower inswinger from Anderson, and offered a catch to short mid-on. This was just when the ball had begun to go with the shine. Virat Kohli followed Pujara by becoming too mindful of inswing, and poked at a delivery wide enough to be left alone in normal circumstances.The second innings was worse. On the final day, which began with the ball reversing, Kohli committed the biggest mistake: a drive across the line. Ajinkya Rahane repeated Kohli’s first-innings mistake by looking to cover for the inswing, thus playing at a delivery wide enough to be left alone. It was a nervous shot, but also a better delivery than what Kohli got in the first innings. MS Dhoni became a victim of inswing later in that session, which could have cost India the Test.The conditions, by all popular expectations, are not likely to change drastically over the series. It is hard to tell if India are pleased or displeased: they will welcome the soft launch for their batsmen, but these conditions eliminate their spinners and their quicks have struggled to bowl sides out twice for a long time. Reverse-swing promises to be a big factor in the rest of the series, and India will need to get better at dealing with it both when bowling and batting. Watch out for those throws into the ground and stuck-out boots.

Keith Miller lived his life and played his cricket king-size

Ashley Mallett03-Nov-2014Arguably Keith Miller was cricket’s greatest swashbuckler. Larger than life, he leapt straight at you from the pages of .He was born in November 1919, named after airmen brothers Keith and Ross Smith, who were creating world aviation history with their first epic flight from England to Australia. He never lost his stamina or zest for life. Miller whacked sixes, backed horses, had film-star looks, bowled bouncers, caught blinders and attracted beauties.He flew night missions over Germany and Occupied France in his Mosquito, bombing and strafing Nazi rocket bases. The stories from his war days are legion.Michael Parkinson quizzed him about the pressure in the Test arena once. “Pressure?” Miller asked, “There’s no pressure in Test cricket. Real pressure is when you are flying a Mosquito with a Messerschmitt up your arse!”Flight Lieutenant Miller’s love of classical music compelled him on one mission to turn his Mosquito back to the war zone. Taking a slight detour, he flew over Bonn, Beethoven’s birthplace.One day at Great Massingham, Norfolk, Miller fought to control his plane as he came in to land. The starboard engine was spurting flame and Miller crash-landed the ailing aircraft, which lost its tail on impact with the ground.Miller once flew up the straight at Royal Ascot one clear Saturday afternoon and another day he buzzed the Goodwood track. His commanding officer gave Miller a dressing down, calling him an “utter disgrace to the air force”.How the worm turned.During the Australian team’s tour of England in 1953, Miller, resplendent in top hat and tails, drove to Royal Ascot in a gleaming Rolls Royce. As he drove into the car park he noticed that the attendant was none other than his old RAF Commanding Officer. Miller stepped from his vehicle and, pretending not to have recognised his ex-CO, said in his best official voice, “Ah, my good fellow. Park my Rolls in the shade, will you? That’s a good chap.”A week or two earlier Lindsay Hassett’s Australians had visited Buckingham Palace. Miller was rumoured to have been friendly with Princess Margaret, and when he emerged from the bus he began to wander from the vehicle and headed towards a distant building.”Nugget, where are you going?” Hassett asked.”Oh, it’s okay, skipper. I know of another entrance here,” came the reply.For much of the war, Miller was based near Bournemouth. Every Friday night it became tradition for Miller and his mates from the RAF base to meet at the Carlton Hotel in Bournemouth. One fateful Friday night, Miller couldn’t make the regular appointment and when he returned he found the town barricaded after a German raid. A Focke-Wulf fighter bomber had strafed the church next to the hotel, causing the church spire to collapse directly on to the front bar, instantly killing his eight mates.
Each year for more than 50 years Miller returned to England and spent time with a relative of each of his mates killed that tragic night in 1943.Miller’s attacking batting and brilliant fast bowling made an instant impact in world cricket when he impressed as an allrounder in the Victory Tests in 1945. He scored 514 runs in the series, including a brilliant 185 at Lord’s, where he hit Eric Hollies for seven sixes, one of the hits crashing into the top of the Lord’s pavilion.Miller bowls in the nets at Lord’s in 1948•PA PhotosJohn Arlott once wrote that Miller seemed to be “busy living life in case he ran out of it”. Miller found a classical-music soulmate in Neville Cardus and had an equally good rapport with the great conductor Sir John Barbirolli.Miller never captained Australia but he did lead New South Wales with distinction in the 1950s. Richie Benaud regards Miller as the best captain “never to have captained his country”, for the way he led by instinct and by example.In November 1955, Miller’s New South Wales struggled to 215 for 8 on the first day of a Sheffield Shield match against South Australia. At stumps Miller declared the innings closed and then partied long and hard to celebrate the birth of his first child. His NSW team-mates were already on the ground when Miller arrived the next morning, so he hurriedly tossed on his cricket gear, his bootlaces trailing as he wandered onto the ground. When he focused his bleary eyes on the wicket, they opened wide, for the wicket was green as a tree frog.Left-arm paceman Alan Davidson had already measured out his 15-paced approach and was eager to bowl the first ball. He was standing at the top of his mark when Miller approached.”Ahem, now Davo, I think you can do a job for us today,” Miller said before turning his back and walking down towards the stumps and the beginning of the green pitch. He stopped, turned around and waved to Davidson. “Ah Davo, try the other end, I’ll have a go here.”Within a few overs South Australia were dismissed for 27. Miller took a career-best 7 for 12. Davidson didn’t get a bowl.As NSW captain, Miller’s legend grew. Once, someone alerted him to the fact that there were 12 men on the field. “It seems we have too many men out here,” Miller said. “Will one of you blokes piss off?”In 55 Tests between 1946 and 1956, he took 170 wickets at 22.97 and scored 2958 runs at 36.97. He also pulled off some wonderful catches in the slips. He was agile, some said he possessed lightning reflexes and moved swiftly and gracefully, like a panther.

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In 1969 I was invited by the NSW Cricket Association to take part in making a coaching film. The event was sponsored by the Rothmans Sports Foundation. I was rapt at getting the chance to spend time in the company of Alan Davidson and Keith Miller. Each of us was required to bowl a couple of balls at a set of stumps on the SCG No. 2 Ground.Miller borrowed some gear and as he walked past me, he said, “Ahem, I’ll pitch leg and hit off.” He did not measure out his run. He simply wandered back a few paces, turned and began his approach. Despite being 50, not having bowled a ball in a decade, he moved in with the grace and power of a finely tuned racehorse. The ball left his hand seam up. It came from a fair height, for Miller stayed “tall” throughout and the ball pitched on the line of leg stump and hit the top of off. He bowled three balls and two of his deliveries pitched leg and hit off. Then he walked away. It was the most amazing thing I’ve seen in cricket.Benaud once confessed to Miller: “You know, Keith, I wish I had been given the chance to bowl to Don Bradman. I came into the side just too late.” Miller coughed and replied, “Ahem, Richie, my boy, your not having to bowl to Bradman was your one lucky break in cricket.”Miller and Bradman chat during a charity event in London in 1974•PA PhotosLen Hutton, one of the greatest England batsmen of all time, always found Miller a handful. “He’d just as likely bowl me a slow wrong’un first ball of a Test match as he would an outswinger or a searing bouncer,” Sir Len told me in Adelaide in 1984. “Keith was the greatest bowler I ever faced in Test cricket.”Miller admired Hutton’s cricket too, and when I once pressed him about the relative merits of Hutton and Geoff Boycott’s batting, Miller said: “Both were fine players. Hutton had a far greater range of attacking strokes, but defensively I reckon they were pretty much on a par.” He then looked at me and smiled, “But for heaven’s sake, don’t tell Boycott!”Miller greatly admired the skill of Bradman, but he didn’t quite know how great the Don was until he bowled to him in a match after his retirement. “I decided to bowl a few short ones, “just to test his reflexes,” Miller said. “First one was a medium-fast bouncer. It didn’t get up too far, but Don was swiftly into position and he smashed it like a rocket past mid-on.”Fast bowlers don’t like that treatment, so I charged in for the next ball and gave it my all. It was a tremendous bumper, straight at his head, but he simply swung into position and cracked it forward of square, almost decapitating Sam Loxton on its way to the fence. If Bradman was ‘better’ in the 1930s he must have been some player.”So too Keith Ross Miller, Australia’s greatest allrounder.

Twelve years on from masterminding the introduction of professional Twenty20 that revolutionised cricket, Stuart Robertson says that full grounds are essential in any successful format

Interview by Freddie Wilde13-Jan-2015Ten years on from leaving the ECB, are you happy with the direction in which English T20 has gone?I’m happier now but I wasn’t happy for a while. I think the game got greedy. So we had a format. I think I am right in saying the first season of the competition lasted 11 days. It was a real short, sharp festival in the middle of the summer, which grouped all the best players together and all of that. Now the smaller grounds, who had huge gate receipts, thought ‘We want more of this’ and they could almost fill the ground all the time with 3000, 4000 seats. But the bigger grounds, even a really good cricket ground – a crowd of 15,000 at Lord’s, the ground is half empty. And as we got greedier and the game got greedier, we were asking the same customer to come two or three times in a wage packet … and it’s too many.

Tomorrow in our T20 debate

• George Dobell: How to make things work

• Mark Butcher: Change or die

• Jarrod Kimber: A night at the Big Bash

I think what we’ve seen is over the years, every year bar one, the total number of people watching T20 cricket has increased but the average attendance has been falling for a while because there’s been more and more of it. So yes, you’ve got more people coming, but the average attendance has been going down. And one of the beauties of sport and what makes people go to sport as a social occasion is feeling and looking popular and then it creates its own atmosphere and it becomes self-perpetuating. The minute you start losing the atmosphere at a live sporting event people become more fickle and they look for something else to perhaps spend their leisure pound on. So I wasn’t happy for a while, the game got greedy, they overegged it, they were playing too much of it and it was losing some of that fizz.I think there were two alternatives. One was to drastically cut the number of matches and concentrate it into a small period. Or, if they were going to play as much as they’ve been playing, then spread it out over the season and that’s what we’re now doing. So the last couple of seasons we have developed this schedule which is predominantly Friday nights and it is spread out a bit further and I think that’s a decent compromise and I’m really looking forward to seeing how that beds in. I think we can do something quite exciting with that.

Ten English inventions that saved cricket

1701: Seed drill (Jethro Tull): Tull, an Oxfordshire farmer, invented a seed drill pulled by a horse and the best cricket outfields began to benefit.
1823: Waterproofs (Charles Macintosh): Macintosh, an amateur chemist, invented the material that has been the salvation of cricket crowds; particularly invaluable in the English climate
1827: Lawnmower (Edwin Beard Budding): What could be more English than a neatly-striped cricket outfield. Buddings invention meant lawns were no longer the preserve of the rich and cricket misfields became less common.
1837: Electric Telegraph (Charles Wheatstone/William Cooke): Cricket reports were still being filed to England via telegraph from India in the 1970s.
1863: Steamroller (William Clark): France might say they have a prior claim, but William Clark’s design was the first to be sold commercially after tests in Hyde Park. Improved pitches, although not always as much as might hope.
1880s: Cricket bat (Charles Richardson): The current design of a cane handle spliced into a willow blade through a tapered splice was invented by Richardson, a pupil of Brunel and chief engineer of the Severn railway tunnel.
1892: Thermos Flask (Sir James Drewer): Dewer, a professor of chemistry at Cambridge University, invented it for his experiments on cooling gases. Little did he know it would sustain county cricket watchers through rain and shine.
1925: Television (John Logie Baird): Baird shares this claim with several, but he was the first to transmit moving pictures, only for rival versions to prove superior, no doubt imaging the Rights Deals for cricket that would one day ensue.
1989: Worldwide web (Tim Berners Lee): Where would you be without Cricinfo?
2003: Professional Twenty20 (Stuart Robertson): It had been around in amateur leagues for years but Robertson’s ambitions were the start of a revolution.

And the idea of franchises? Basically cutting the number of teams in half – is that something that ever appealed to you?It absolutely did and there are lots of merits to doing that. If we did it properly, if we fully invested in it, if we had the best players in the world coming over to play, a la IPL and Big Bash, yeah I think that would be fantastic. I think the game could grow generally and there would be more cash to share out amongst everybody. Politically, though, with the way the game in the UK is set up, I can’t see it happening … there would be too many eggs broken. It’s 18 firsts-class counties and a franchise system would pretty much take out half of them and for all the sensible side of doing it I think the heart side of it, the emotional side of it and the political side of it would make it difficult.Initially T20 was seen as something to “save” county cricket but now tournaments in India and Australia generate their boards huge amounts of money, without the international market and reliance on the subcontinent. The purpose of T20 is shifting and perhaps the ECB should be considering a standalone TV deal for the domestic competition?Yes, I think there is now sufficient value in the format to think about it as a separate element. Whether it is a TV deal, which is the biggest part of where the money is, or the centralised sponsorships that the ECB do, the advertising packages – because there is a big audience and it appeals to a big demographic. One thing that I am still frustrated a bit with is that we as a game are yet to really attract a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sponsor into that space. There is KFC in Australia, Pepsi in India – we’ve got banks and services still. No disrespect to NatWest, they’ve put in huge amounts of money into the game over the years, they’re a good supporter of the game, as are most financial services and businesses that have been involved. But you’re thinking this should be on the breakfast table, on the supermarket shelf, as a partner to drive attendances and increase the popularity of this whole thing. A franchise system might be a better way … but are we maximising the commercial opportunities that T20 has given us? I don’t think we are.The original survey was targeted it at the demographics that weren’t interested in cricket. But a couple of years ago the ECB did another survey, which has produced the current format, and it was generally put to existing cricket fans. In 2002, you were looking for new demographics and it feels like they are running away from that idea. Is it not the point of T20 to attract new fans to the sport?Stuart Robertson was the driving force behind the creation of the Twenty20 Cup•Getty ImagesOf course it is. The ECB do laud that last piece of research as the biggest piece of customer research that the game has ever done – it usurped the one we did for T20. But you’re absolutely right, it was predominantly about people who were already involved in the game and they were asking some pretty technical questions in there as well, about start days of Championship cricket, all sorts of really thorough questions.What should drive the schedule? What is the most popular form of the game? If it is T20, after internationals, that should drive the schedule and fixtures. Which it is doing in part now – if you speak to Alan Fordham, head of first-class cricket operations at the ECB, the internationals go in the first part of the schedule and the next thing that goes in are the T20s. We need to think about what does the consumer want? What does the cricketer want? And we have to think of them because we have to make sure the playing programme means the quality of the on-field entertainment is as high as it can be. We don’t want to be burning players out but sometimes things were being scheduled because it was difficult for players, when actually, the players are the entertainers and it should be positioned to meet the expectations and requirements of the customer. They should come first in all that we think about.In the eyes of serial pessimists, 20 years down the line international cricket has receded away, the Ashes are played as a relic and T20 dominates, with players hopping from league to league. How do you see the future unfolding?I think there’s a danger of that. But what I usually say to that question is that market forces will determine it. We are a business at the end of the day, we have income and we have expenditure and we rely on people spending their money on cricket, whether that’s people subscribing to TV or paying for tickets, ultimately the customer will decided.I don’t want to see Test cricket disappear, I think it is a fantastic format of the game but I think it needs a bit more context. The contextual element of it seems to be missing. It becomes a bit of a treadmill. I really liked the idea of the World Test Championship and I was sad to see that dropped because I thought that would’ve helped give each series and each match context, if every game was working towards something where the top two teams play off for the World Championship of Test cricket, then fantastic. The flip side of that is, if the game is going to grow globally, is Test cricket the format by which the game will grow in Affiliate and Associate nations? No it is not. T20 is the format that will happen in, so you talk to Afghanistan and around the world … these smaller nations, these emerging nations, a format like T20 is perfect for them to cut their teeth in international cricket. So to protect the game and grow the game globally, I think that T20 should and will continue to dominate in that emerging context.I would love to see Test cricket always as the pinnacle of the game but I think it needs context to do that. But if Test cricket withered and died without T20 beneath it, and the game withered and died then that is disaster and carnage. But if Test cricket withered and died but another format stepped in behind it and kept the game flourishing, with 22 people involved, with a bat and a ball and some stumps – well, it might look a bit different and feel a bit different but if it keeps the game going for another 100, 150 years, then what’s wrong with that?

ESPNcricinfo staff15-Mar-2015After scoring 47 runs in the first Powerplay, Ireland suffered another blow when Wahab Riaz dismissed Ed Joyce for 11•AFPCaptain William Porterfield kept the innings going, but Niall O’Brien and Andy Balbirnie also fell for low double-digit scores•Getty ImagesPorterfield and Gary Wilson gave Ireland some stability with a stand of 48 for the fifth wicket to take them close to 200•Associated PressPorterfield brought up his seventh ODI hundred during the Powerplay to put Ireland in a strong position ahead of the death overs•Getty ImagesBut Sohail Khan removed both Porterfield and Wilson to peg Ireland back•AFPThe Pakistan quicks continued with a flurry of wickets in the death overs and Umar Akmal took four catches in all to restrict Ireland to 237•AFPAhmed Shehzad and Sarfraz Ahmed gave Pakistan a solid start with an opening stand of 120•Getty ImagesShehzad raced to his fifty off 52 balls, his second of the tournament•Associated PressIreland struck twice within two overs. They first removed Shehzad for 63…•Associated Press…And then had Haris Sohail run-out for 3•Associated PressJust when it looked like Misbah-ul-Haq and Sarfraz would take Pakistan home, the captain accidentally stepped on his off stump•Getty ImagesWith a bit of drama in the end, Sarfraz completed his maiden hundred in the 46th over and Umar sealed Pakistan’s quarter-final berth with the seven-wicket win•Getty Images

The only five losses that were larger than Kings XI’s 97-run defeat to CSK

ESPNcricinfo staff25-Apr-2015Rajasthan Royals beat Delhi Daredevils by 105 runs in 2008
Royals’ fairytale debut season continued as Shane Watson hammered Daredevils in the semi-finals. First he clobbered 52 off 29 to lead Royals to an imposing total, then he sent back Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and Shikhar Dhawan in the Powerplay•AFPKings XI Punjab beat Royal Challengers Bangalore by 111 runs in 2011
Adam Gilchrist had been retired from international cricket for over three years, and was pushing 40, but that didn’t prevent him from destroying an in-form Royal Challengers. He blitzed a 55-ball 106 and put on 206 with Shaun Marsh for what remains the largest partnership in T20 history•BCCIRoyal Challengers Bangalore beat Pune Warriors by 130 runs in 2013
On a flat Chinnaswamy track, Chris Gayle laid waste to the record books and the hapless Warriors bowling. The milestones he set: highest individual T20 score (175 not out); the most sixes by a batsman in a T20 innings (17); and helped Royal Challengers reach the highest total in T20 cricket (263).•BCCI

The pitch against New Zealand, just a couple of months ago, was a brilliant Test surface that brought fascinating action so what has happened?

George Dobell at Lord's16-Jul-2015It is ironic that, in the week in which the MCC World Cricket Committee warned that Test cricket “will not survive” if “left as it is,” the pitch at the ground they own should provide such a poor advert for the game.While it is often said that some players “empty bars” with their exciting play, this was a surface to fill bars. It was a surface to pour cold water over the growing excitement in English cricket. A surface that might have been acceptable a generation ago but which now, in the age of T20 and more leisure opportunities, presents a danger to the future viability of the game. It is a poor surface.

Ricky Ponting on the Lord’s pitch

“It’s a very, very different pitch than what we saw against New Zealand only about a month ago so that’s a bit of a worry to me. It sounds like the administrators or team captains or coaches might be getting to the groundsmen and asking for certain pitch conditions. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think that should ever happen in the game.
“There’s such a thing as home ground advantage but I think that’s taking it a little bit too far. What we saw today is a very uncharacteristic Lord’s pitch. I think all anyone wants to see is the character of that ground come out and the character of the pitch come out.
“You think back a month ago to that Test match against New Zealand, there was the most runs scored ever in a Test match at Lord’s, it went into the last day, it ended up being a terrific Test match. This one, look it could turn out to be a great Test, who knows?
“But for me today the balance between bat versus ball was nowhere near what it needs to be for a Test match.”

This Lord’s pitch is not poor in the way that Cardiff was poor. This surface, at least, has not offered variable bounce and, when the edge of the bat was found, the ball did just about carry to the slip cordon. It is a pitch that is fair to both teams.But whether it is fair to both skills – batting and bowling – and to spectators is far more debatable. There has always been a place in Test cricket for attritional play and there have always been pitches of which bowlers had nightmares. But if the MCC are to lead by example rather than simply pontificate, they really do need to sort their own house out first.It does not matter if there is, at some stage, a dramatic finale. A rock fall can be dramatic: it does not mean the 30,000 years of erosion that preceded it is great television. If the administrators are really serious about combating falling attendances and worrying viewing figures, they must combat the pitch problem.Might Lord’s have been following orders from the ECB? Perhaps. The England management insist not – they say there have been no specific instructions this summer – and the groundsman, Mick Hunt, points out that the days immediately before the game were full of rain. There was simply not, he says, the sun to bake the pitch into a quicker surface.It is an explanation that may raise eyebrows from those who recently enjoyed an almost uninterrupted Wimbledon Tennis Championships only a few miles down the road. But, until the last year or so, most Lord’s pitches were like this.It does seem a coincidence that the last two Tests on this ground – against New Zealand and India – have seen more lively surfaces. It does seem a coincidence that, once Mitchell Johnson is around, the two pitches prepared for this series have been painfully slow.If England asked for such pitches – if Andrew Strauss was on the grassy knoll, insisting the grass was cut and the knoll rolled flat – they can have no complaints.That would be a shame, though. After weeks of telling us how aggressively they were going to play, England were given little opportunity to “express their talent” or “show off their skills” on this surface. It was so slow, so flat, so lifeless that they had little option but to revert to more traditional tactics.Moeen Ali (left) pronounced himself fit for Lord’s, Adil Rashid did not•PA PhotosThey didn’t bowl quite as tightly as they might, but Alastair Cook was all but faultless in the field. After the excitement of Cardiff and the drama of the New Zealand series, this was a hugely anti-climatic day for English cricket. The game really does have a problem with self harm.Credit where it is due: Chris Rogers and Steven Smith batted with the hunger and application to take advantage of the situation. But this really was the sort of surface which any batsman would want to take home and introduce to their parents?Maybe it was a shame, too, that England did not have Adil Rashid available for them. On such a flat surface, perhaps his leg-breaks may have been able to coax more out of this surface.For a while on Tuesday, it looked as if he was going to be in the side. With Moeen Ali struggling with a side strain, Rashid was told that there was a good chance he could play and asked to ready himself.He then reported a finger problem – what is described as a relatively minor abrasion on the ring finger of his right hand – and ruled himself out of contention.It seems that some in the England camp are underwhelmed by that development. Not only are they surprised that he did not report the problem until Tuesday night, but there were some raised eyebrows when he considered the injury bad enough to rule himself out of a Test debut against Australia at Lord’s.To be fair to Rashid, he could be forgiven for not wanting to be judged when anything below 100% fit and only he can say with certainty whether he is ready. But many is the spinner who has gone into a game with ripped, blistered fingers – most would consider it an occupational hazard – and he may come to rue this decision as a crossroads moment in his career.If he is deemed fit to play for Yorkshire in their Championship match against Worcestershire at Scarborough on Monday – and at present the England camp expect him to be available for it – it will be a surprise if he is in the third Test squad.

ESPNcricinfo staff05-Nov-2015Zulfiqar Babar did not take long to remove James Taylor…•Getty Images…Yasir Shah then picked up his second wicket with another lbw decision against Jonny Bairstow…•Getty Images…and Samit Patel’s dismissal meant England had lost 4 for 11 inside the first hour, their hopes in tatters•Getty ImagesOnly Alastair Cook resisted as Pakistan closed in•Getty ImagesCook and Adil Rashid put on 49 for the seventh wicket but Rahat Ali parted them before lunch•Getty ImagesAfter Stuart Broad fell to Yasir, Cook was ninth man out for 63…•Getty Images…Ben Stokes was also stumped by Sarfraz Ahmed as Pakistan completed a comfortable 127-run victory•Getty ImagesPakistan needed just 38.3 overs on the final day to extend their excellent record in the UAE•Getty ImagesThe 2-0 margin of victory also meant Misbah-ul-Haq’s team rose to No. 2 in the ICC rankings•Getty Images

Some easy ones were put down, some cost their team a lot, and some came with a second chance. A few drops from the three Tests between Sri Lanka and India

ESPNcricinfo staff02-Sep-2015Saha puts down a sitter
Sri Lanka were already reeling at 66 for 5 in Galle, and it would have become 66 for 6 had Wriddhiman Saha held on to a simple chance after Dinesh Chandimal edged one off Ishant Sharma. Boosted by the drop, Chandimal went on to score 59, putting on a stand of 79 with Angelo Mathews to steer the team to relatively safer shores.Mubarak drop makes Rahul a centurion
Probably the costliest drop of the series. Sri Lanka had taken two wickets within five overs on the first day at P Sara Oval before Dushmantha Chameera had KL Rahul edge one straight to gully, but Jehan Mubarak let this one pop out of his hands. Rahul, then on 11, scored his second Test hundred and earned himself the Man-of-the-Match award.Dhawan drops Silva before catching Silva
A straightforward catch to Shikhar Dhawan at first slip, in Galle, which didn’t cost India much. Kaushal Silva sent an outside edge flying to Dhawan, who tried to pouch it with his fingers pointing up, but did not succeed. Thankfully for India, Silva fell in similar fashion, caught by Dhawan off Varun Aaron, soon after.Rahane’s rare drop
Ajinkya Rahane was having a dream run in the slips. Then, in Sri Lanka’s first innings at the P Sara, Sangakkara edged a ball off R Ashwin that flew to first slip where Rahane tried to grab it with his left hand and then again on second attempt, but failed. Sangakkara, however, added only eight more before edging another one from Ashwin to Rahane.Thirimanne gives Dhawan a life
Dhawan had marched on to his hundred in Galle and was on 122 when he struck a full toss firmly into the covers towards Lahiru Thirimanne. The fielder leapt to his left, went almost parallel to the ground, and got both hands to it, but it wasn’t enough.