Sitting in the ESPN studio with Navjot Singh Sidhu, whose voice is as booming and incessant as his bat was against spinners, it becomes fairly obvious where England went wrong.  Sidhu guffaws everytime an England batsman sweeps, ‘Oh look, another SWEEP!!’ he chants, ‘you’re a nation of Sweepers!’ . He chastises the batsmen for not using their feet, either to get down the pitch, or get right back on the stumps.

Look at Trotts wagonwheel from his innings against Sri Lanka, and you will see many nudged singles on the legside, a few sweeps and the odd late cut, but nothing driven down the ground for four. Whereas a ball in Swann’s second over was launched back over his head for six by Upul Tharanga, who had danced up the pitch, and Dilshan did the same to the England spinners twice later on.

Highly irritating though it is to admit it, Sidhu is right. Using your feet is a skill that doesn’t come naturally to English batsmen.  It is not easy to explain why. It is probably because of the fear of leaving your crease and the national obsession with sweeping. Graham Gooch made sweeping famous with his demolition of India in the 1987 world cup semi final, and slow pitches in English club cricket encourage the sweep. It represents the default option for any batsman stuck down a slow but accurate spinners end. The danger of being stumped inhibits an English batsman’s intentions.

Generally Asian spinners bowl a bit flatter and the pitches tend to skid through low which makes the sweep a difficult shot to execute. A better alternativen is to try and get to the pitch. Perhaps Indians and Sri Lankans are lighter on their feet than sturdy Englishmen. Because it is such a common occurance for a batsman to dance up the wicket in the sub continent, batsmen who miss and are stumped are perhaps  less castigated.

There are two benefits to using your feet and driving over sweeping. One you are usually using a straight bat rather than a crooked one, and two a sweep shot is hard to bail out of once a batsman is committed to it, whereas a batsman using his feet doesn’t have to follow through with a big drive. He can still check his shot, look to work the ball into a gap, or just block. Eoin Morgan  is able to do this. He uses his feet adeptly, and can then work or chip the ball over mid wicket, guide it over extra cover  or smite it straight. Interestingly he has spent time at the World Cricket Acadeny in Mumbai, specifically acquiring a greater range against spin. So has Strauss. It would be worth many of the next generation of English batsmen following suit.

Team   Runs   Wkts    balls fcd      S/r
———————————————
NZ           138      7        79          174.7
Pak          157     3         96          163.5
SAF         222     8       136         163.2
SL             211     6        142        148.6
Ire           147     5        105        140.0
WI           140      6       105         133.3
Aus         121       4      100          121.0
Ind          154      9       130          118.5
Ban            90      5         80          112.5
Zim         122      7       110          110.9
Eng         180    14      170          105.9

This is the most open world cup since 1992, when West Indies dominance had begun to fade and Australia and Sri Lanka were not quite established as new one day powers (they are the only teams who’ve won it since 1992.) The main development is that Australia do not possess their two great bowlers any more (Shane Warne, and Glenn McGrath who is the leading wicket-taker and has the best strike rate in world cup history.) Consequently they have lost their extraordinary unbeaten world cup record.
Another development since the last world cup which is enhancing the tournament’s unpredictability is the batting powerplay. This batch of five overs fielding restrictions chosen by the batting team has brought unforseen confusion to many relatively calm situations. Well that was the idea – to drag the middle overs out of their boring, formulaic mundanity – but it was expected to produce a glut of runs, as five men on the boundary was compulsorily reduced to three.
Instead the batting powerplay – to be known henceforth as the BP – has precipitated a crash of wickets – certainly as far as England and india are concerned – and with very little productivity. Its introduction has shaken batsmen out of their leisurely, single-waltzing torpor into attempting unorthodox shots many of them would not normally play. It is an intriguing case of something that was brought in to help batsmen, actually helping bowlers instead. Hallelujah!
What the BP does is challenge the batsman’s ego. Invariably they are taken around the 35th over, ideally when two batsmen are well set. They are easing the ball into the myriad gaps (with five fielders on the boundary) and coasting along at six an over. Suddenly the field is brought in (usually on one side, ie the offside sweepers come inside the ring to save the one, with the three deep men on the legside.) Batsmen past 50 feel insulted by this imposition of extra men in the ring and try to hit the ball over them.
The batsmen are forgetting two things. One, the lofted drive over extra cover is difficult to play and may not be their ‘shot.’ Two, they are now facing the opposition’s best bowlers, some of whose overs were deliberately saved for this scenario. They are stepping outside leg and trying to carve 90mph in-dippng yorkers over cover, not one of the game’s percentage shots. Twice in two games India have come a cropper doing this, losing 5 wickets for 30 (and the match) during the BP against South Africa, and being bowled out with 20 balls to spare against West Indies. England’s experiences have, if anything, been worse, losing three wickets on average in every BP.
This is partly because they can’t decide when to request it, and end up taking it by default in the 45th over with tailenders at the crease. It has got to the stage where teams have developed a sort of neurosis about the BP. They daren’t take it because they’ve seen the statistics about loss of wickets and they don’t want to disrupt a batting partnership from its sedate rhythm. So they end up postponing taking it until the last possible moment, and then not using it properly. Or in the case of India, barely using it at all.
New Zealand sit atop the BP tree with an impressive strike rate and only seven wickets lost during it in this world cup . Those figures are skewed somewhat by Ross Taylors astonishing assault on the full-toss-offering Pakistanis in the match on Sri Lankas new Pallekelle ground. The most consistently effective BP teams are the Pakistanis and the South Africans. The Pakistanis because they have some fluent, wristy middle order players and they make sure they call for the powerplay before the man formerly known as an allrounder, Shahid Afridi, comes in. South Africa, meanwhile, base their strategy around the highly adaptable AB De Villiers and fast running between the wickets.
The key is not to get too agitated by the BP, either when to take it or how to bat in it. Go with the flow. Take it in the 15th over if things are going well. The ball is still relatively hard and clean at that point. Around the compulsory ball change at 34 overs is another obvious time in the sub continent when the old ball has become barely visible never mind unhittable. Ultimately just bat. On batsmen’s greed do bowlers feed.

Not chokers any more then. South Africa dug deep to sneak home by three wickets with two balls to spare but India remain top of group B after a hot night at the VCA stadium.

If any England players had seen last summer’s one-day international between Ireland and Australia in Dublin they might have had an inkling of what was about to happen.

It is early days but Andrew Strauss is currently the leading run scorer in this World Cup.

Before yesterday there were many people who still had reservations about Andrew Strauss as a one day batsman. Those people will be silent now.

But yesterday’s crowd is indicative of a more disturbing trend. General lack of interest. Much has been written about the decline in crowds for Twenty20 matches – partly due to the number of matches virtually doubling – but its been true of test matches too this season. Lords and the Oval had disappointing crowds and Edgbaston was embarrassing, though it was (and still is) a building site. Never mind that the punters are voting with their wallets but Paul Collingwood agreed last night that England play too much international cricket – ‘I’ve been saying that for 10 years’ he commented, and don’t forget he was rested from the Bangladesh test series!

But is anyone listening? It doesn’t appear so. Next summer there are 12 one day internationals (including two T20 s) against Sri Lanka and India, in addition to the 7 tests, and the season again drags into September with a series of one dayers when you sense that both the players and the spectators would rather be at home. A sequence of seven one day internationals overlapping into late September after a hard fought test series is one to endure not enjoy.

So who is responsible for this mess? Its all self inflicted. In 2000 when a new summer scheduling was being drawn up to accommodate the new TV deal, a group of ‘influential’ journalists and broadcasters were assembled by the ECB to debate the ideal number of international games in a summer. I was one. We universally agreed that the proposed number of tests (7) and one day internationals (13)  was too many, particularly on the ODI front. The latter were subsequently reduced to 10 for a couple of years, before more were gradually slipped in. Broadcasters paying top dollar require a lot for their money.

This summer there have been 15 one day internationals, (5 against Australia, 3 against Bangladesh, and 5 against Pakistan plus two T20s) and that doesn’t include the ODI against Scotland or the two T20 matches between Pakistan and Australia. Admittedly there has been one less test match this summer (though there were two extra tests between Australia and Pakistan) but still. This is madness.

The argument for back to back T20 games at Cardiff this week was that it saved the players moving hotels with only a day between matches. Well why not space them out a bit more then?  There are five days between ODIs next week (from Leeds to the Oval.) Its all weirdly lopsided. And no games on Saturday. There can only be one reason for that. Premiership football. Who covers that? Sky? Who has the exclusive contract to cover English cricket? Sky. I have nothing but total respect for Sky’s hard working broadcasting team but I’m afraid this whole shemozzle is another example of sport in total submission to its TV paymasters.