Quarter final team previews

West Indies

Roach, Sammy, Benn, Russell, Rampaul and Bishoo have produced a number of good bowling performances.  A Gayle or Pollard onslaught is just the sort of thing that could cause the wheels could come off for Pakistan in the field, but my guess is that Afridi, Gul and co will stop that happening.

Pakistan
Anyone else noticed that Shahid Afridi often stands with his arms crossed when being interviewed at post-match ceremonies?  Is this in a vain attempt to look serious?  That said, while his batting is crazy, his bowling really is pretty serious, and Pakistan are pretty serious contenders.  They've cruised quietly  to the top of their group and now have a very winnable quarter ahead of them. I don't know why people didn't take more note of them earlier.  Be Afridi.  Be very Afridi.

India
Batting-wise, the top order's in top nick, but the middle order men can't middle it.  Here's what Zaheer Khan had to say yesterday about the bowling: "As a bowling unit, I think I am doing well."  You have to say that's a pretty entertaining Freudian slap in the face for Harbhajan, Sreesanth and co.

Australia
Likely to be presented with a juicy greentop in Ahmedabad, tailor-made for their speedsters.  Not.  Crumbled against Indian spinners in a warm-up game in Bangalore.  If Harbhajan remembers how to take wickets, I'd expect a repeat.  But beware Mike Hussey.  I repeat: beware Mike Hussey.

What now for Mohammad Amir?

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 94.

Since the turn of the millenium, no young cricketer has excited me more than Mohammad Amir. As a Sri Lankan supporter, I found Ajantha Mendis' emergence pretty thrilling but there was always the nagging worry that he would not be as effective once the mystery wore off, as has indeed proved to be the case. I've had no such worry about Amir, however, as his success has been due not to mystery but rather a precocious mastery of the fast bowler's art.

His 6-for last Friday made him - at age 18 - the youngest cricketer to earn an entry on the Honours Boards at Lord's. A week earlier at the Oval, he had become the youngest person to take a Test 5-for in England. In fact, he was also the youngest fast bowler to take a Test 5-for anywhere in the world when he ripped through the Aussie middle order last December in Melbourne.

Cricinfo published a blog post of mine about Amir in January. In it I tried to describe how uplifting I'd found it to watch him in action in both that MCG spell and the World T20 Final in 2009. As such, the most heartbreaking aspect of the spot-fixing scandal that has just hit the news is the fact that Amir is implicated in it. Kamran Akmal has already gained a reputation as a bit of an agitator in the Pakistan dressing room and Mr "A Class" Asif has hardly steered clear of controversy. Salman Butt's reputation as a leader has been growing until now but it is Amir who has undoubtedly been the star of what appeared to be a promising young Pakistan team.

Anderson’s ducks and Pakistan’s ProBatter

Jimmy’s acquired a taste for poultry

Jimmy Anderson’s first 54 innings in Test cricket were totally duck-free. The Lancastrian had looked on course to challenge AB de Villiers’ record of 78 Test innings without a duck when Ben Hilfenhaus brought his streak to an end in last summer’s Ashes-decider. However, it appears Anderson has since acquired something of a taste for poultry.

15 innings on, his duck-count has already risen to five. He’s bagged one in each of the first three Tests of England's series against Pakistan.

Incidentally, I wonder whether anyone pointed out to Anderson that coming into the recently concluded Oval Test, Yasir Hameed had managed 45 innings without a duck. Jim fixed that, dismissing Hameed for a first-baller on the last morning.

A better ProBatter

A few weeks ago, Simon Hughes wrote an interesting piece on England’s training methods, entitled "Ten reasons why England will be world No 1." Reason number one was ProBatter, a gizmo which is essentially a combination of a bowling machine and a projector screen. It “looks very futuristic and very funky,” according to Wing Commander Strauss. Apparently it has been used in baseball for over a decade but Andy Flower’s coaching team is the first to use it in cricket.



It’s early days yet, but it must be said that three Tests on, England’s top seven don’t look much better for having used ProBatter.

Pakistan belatedly decided to bring in their own pro batter for the third Test. It looked like this.

Royalists, Thomians and Stallions

The 131st Royal-Thomian

When IPL 3 gets underway this weekend, most of the cricket world will be on Youtube, watching the site's live webcasts of the goings on in Mumbai and Mohali. Over in Sri Lanka, however, virtually all cricket lovers will be following the climax of a different match. Saturday is the final day of the Royal-Thomian, the biggest event in Colombo's cricketing calendar. The annual schoolboy contest between Royal College and St Thomas' is older than the Ashes and unlike Eton vs Harrow has never been interrupted by war. This is 131st consecutive year in which the game has been played, with St Thomas' ahead 34-33 in the overall tally. Christopher Martin-Jenkins conveyed a sense of the atmosphere at the event in a Wisden Special Report in 1994, entitled "Sri Lanka's great game:"

Boom Boom bites balls because he can smell with his teeth

I wrote a few weeks ago that Shahid Afridi was making a big impression Down Under. Now it seems he has made an even bigger impression... on a cricket ball... with his teeth.

People do a lot of different things to cricket balls. Some spank them merrily, others tickle them cheekily. Many rub them vigorously and a few scratch them surreptitiously. People don't generally bite them, however.

Shahid Afridi is clearly no ordinary human being. I've always known there was something special about him, and after he attempted to take a chunk out of the match ball during the recent Perth ODI, the great man revealed to an Australian journalist that he does indeed have magical powers.

Boom Boom's rockin' the Big Bash

Shahid Afridi is making a big impression Down Under. While Pakistan's Test side have been finding amazing new ways of losing matches, the man they call "Boom Boom" has been rocking the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash, Australia's domestic 20-over competition.

Television viewers in Australia have just voted Afridi the Big Bash's number one overseas import. This year's tournament has drawn record crowds and television ratings over the festive period, despite clashing with the Boxing Day and New Year Tests. With Australia's top international players unavailable due to the latter, it's been left to the state teams' overseas players to bring a touch of star quality to the event. Dwayne Bravo, Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard are among those who have shone but Afridi has thus far eclipsed them all.

The Pakistani allrounder has picked up two man-of-the-match awards in three games and his team - the South Australia Redbacks - are in pole position to qualify for the final. He has only managed one entertaining cameo with the bat but has been consistently effective with the ball, intelligently bowling slower than usual to make use of the extra bounce and grip on offer, and combining leg-breaks to right-handed batsmen with orthodox off-breaks to lefties.

All this is further evidence of the new-found maturity that has already led to the 29-year-old's appointment as Pakistan's Twenty20 Captain. It's tempting to say Twenty20 cricket and Shahid Afridi are tailor-made for each other: a brief period of power-hitting or an economical spell of spin is all that is required to decide the result of a contest, and on any given day, Afridi could provide either or both. Such an assessment would be totally unfair, however, both to Twenty20 and to Afridi. The game is far more than a hit-and-giggle slog-fest, and the thing about Boom Boom these days is that he rarely seems to go bust.

At the first ICC World Twenty20, Afridi was named the Player of the Tournament for his exploits with the ball. At the second, in England last year, he started quietly but then finished with a bang, scoring match-winning fifties in both the semi-final and final. Thereafter, he has celebrated becoming Pakistan Captain by winning another man-of-the-match award in a one-off T20I against Sri Lanka in Colombo and a man-of-the-series award in a two match rubber against New Zealand in Dubai.

Consequently, he is a man much in demand, with South Australia by no means the only domestic side interested in his talents. Hampshire have just secured his services for their Friends Provident T20 campaign this summer and until it became clear that he would be on international duty in February, the Nashua Dolphins looked set to sign him for the upcoming Standard Bank Pro20 in South Africa. It would be a massive surprise if he didn't get snapped up at this year's IPL auction on January 19th, now that Pakistani players have been cleared to participate in the tournament once again.

Cricket pundits have mumbled and grumbled of late about the dangers of the emergence of "freelance cricketers." Since Andrew Flintoff chose to turn down an ECB contract after retiring from Test cricket, there has been speculation that he intends to peddle his wares in Twenty20 competitions around the world. Flintoff's agent, Andrew "Chubby" Chandler, appears keen to see his client become cricket's first globe-trotting gun for hire. If you ask me, Afridi could easily beat Flintoff to it.

But I don't think he wants to do that. Afridi's availability for competitions like the Big Bash has been due to the paucity of Pakistan's international commitments and his omission from their Test side. He has made clear that he would prefer to spend more of his time playing for his country. With a bit of luck, he may get his wish. Given Mohammad Yousuf's wretched showing in Australia and the ongoing saga surrounding Younis Khan, it is not inconceivable that Afridi will return to Pakistan's Test side as its captain. His next appearance at Lord's, the scene of his Twenty20 heroics last summer, could come against Australia, in the ground's first neutral Test match for 98 years. Improbable, perhaps, but stranger things have happened in Pakistani cricket.

For the moment, Afridi is busy entertaining the crowds Down Under, both on and off the field. He attempted to launch the very first ball he faced in the Big Bash out of the ground for six, but succeeded only in skying the full toss to long on for a golden duck. After responding with a match-winning spell of 4 for 19, he could afford to joke about his dismissal: "When I saw the ball coming in the air, I thought I'd go for a home run but I didn't get one."

Smells like teen spirit

(A version of this article appeared on Cricinfo's "Inbox" blog in January 2010)

Pakistan’s Mohammad Amir should bring a smile to the faces of cricket fans in the decade ahead

Six months ago, I was watching from the lower tier of the Grandstand at Lord’s as Mohammad Amir ran in to bowl the first ball of the ICC World Twenty20 Final. I nervously reminded my brother, who was sitting next to me, that I had earlier picked out Pakistan as the team most likely to halt Sri Lanka’s march towards victory. I knew that unlike the other semi-finalists (South Africa and West Indies), Pakistan were used to facing Sri Lanka’s unorthodox bowling attack, and although Sri Lanka had come out on top when the two sides met in the group stages, I was wary that Shahid Afridi’s sensational catch against New Zealand had sparked the kind of hot streak that always makes Pakistan a dangerous proposition at the business end of big tournaments.

But if I was nervous, how did Mohammad Amir feel? The left arm quick was just 17 and his international career barely two weeks old. Here he was in a major final at Lord’s. The outfield was a lush, brilliant green, but the stands were even greener, thanks to the masses of flag-waving, klaxon-sounding, Zindabad-shouting, Pakistan fans. Over in Pakistan itself, a nation deprived of international cricket after the Lahore attacks was no doubt in front of its TV sets, while up in the Sky Sports commentary box, Amir’s mentor Wasim Akram was at the microphone. On strike, awaiting Amir’s first ball was the Player of the Tournament, Tillakaratne Dilshan, who up until then had sliced, diced and daringly Dilscooped anything that had been served up to him.

How would the teenager begin?