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Shahid Afridi bites into a cricket ball

Shahid Afridi, really what the hell were you thinking, he took a bite of the cricket ball in the 5th ODI against Australia. Watch the video, it takes a while to get to the interesting part… it’s unbelievable. Afridi received a two match ban for this moment of stupidity, I would have given him two months.

South Africa India

The Proteas cricket team left for India this past weekend for a series that consists of three ODI games and two Test matches. For the Proteas this series offers the opportunity to regain the number 1 ranking in Test cricket.

The recent news of the resignation of coach Mickey Arthur and the temporary appointment of Corrie van Zyl must have added pressure to the team. It’s going to take a massive step up from the senior players to pull this team together. Winning a test series on the sub-continent is not to be taken lightly. Our spin bowlers are going to have to perform if we have any chance. Paul Harris had a shocking series against England, the answer from Cricket South Africa to the spin conundrum is the call up of Johan Botha into the test team. I’ve mentioned before that Botha can not bowl the doorsa, which I believe makes him predictable.

Good news from a South African perspective is the injury concerns from the Indian squad. It’s reported that Rahul Dravid has recently had surgery to his cheek bone, and will more than likely not play in the series. Yuvraj Singh and Sreesanth have also been ruled out of the series due to injury.

Related articles:

South Africa India tour schedule

South African squads to tour India

A quick wrap of the test series

It’s a little late, but rather late than never, here’s my quick wrap of the series. I love my stats so I went through some statistics from the South Africa / England test series and this is what I found:

	Test	1	2	3	4	Total
England
	Runs	584	574	569	349	2076
	Wickets lost	19	9	19	20	67
South Africa
	Runs	738	719	476	423	2356
	Wickets lost	17	17	20	7	61
Most Runs	Smith	427
Highest score	Smith	183
Most Wickets	Swann	21
Highest Partnership	Smith/Amla	230

So over the four test matches South Africa scored more runs and took more wickets than England. I’ll claim that as a victory.

The most exciting yet also the most disappointing aspects of the test series was the South African bowling attack. We’re all too aware how they couldn’t finish off England on two occasions, but the selectors acted, and the tough decisions were made. It’s the re-emergence of Morne Morkel which stands out the most to me. International bowlers are reliant on their bowling partners, and who better to have then the world no1, Dale Steyn. If the selectors keep these two bowlers together for a long time then we’re in for a return to a great pace bowling attack that we had when Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock and more recently Ntini brought to world cricket.

It was great sitting at the wanderers watching South Africa truly dominate England, what a pity we couldn’t take those two wickets, and win the series 3-1 as I believe we deserved.

Below is a picture that I took at The Wanderers on the 3rd day, many people dressed up and were in a festive mood, South Africa’s biggest stadium was sold on the Saturday. To think that Cricket South Africa were going to cancel this test match…….

Champions Trophy kick off

The ICC Champions Trophy 2009 kicks off today at SuperSport Park Centurion. Sri Lanka will take on the hosts South Africa.

There is some talk about there being some spin in the pitch which should see both teams fielding two spinners, in Johan Botha and Roelof van der Merwe for South Africa and off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis for Sri Lanka. The inclusion of the second spin bowler will probably keep Wayne Parnell or Mhakaya Ntini out the side.It would be difficult to leave Parnell out, remember how he took Australia apart at the same ground a few months back?

The home ICC Champions Trophy is probably South African crickets best opportunity to win an ICC trophy, and shake the tag of ‘chokers’ and ‘nearly boys’.

Uncertain future for ODI cricket

The future of One Day International (ODI) cricket seems to be very uncertain. The effects of Twenty20 cricket (a.k.a Pro20 or T20) seem to be having a negative influence on the ODI game. Cricket Australia has said that the 2015 Cricket World Cup scheduled for Australia is not marketable. The England Cricket Board has scarped their domestic 50-over competition and replaced it with a 40-over game, while in South Africa we play a 45 over game in the MTN Domestic Championships.

Some people have suggested that the ODI game be split into two innings of 25 overs. I think this is a terrible idea; we’re just going to land up with two Twenty20 games in one.

There is simply too much Twenty20 cricket on the go, this year we’ve watched our domestic Twenty20 competition (the Standard Bank Pro20), the Indian Premier League (IPL), the ICC World Twenty20, and we’ll soon watch the Champions League and a few Twenty20 Internationals. That simply is more that a cricket enthusiast can absorb. I do believe there is a place for Twenty20 cricket, it should be use to grow the game and be used as an exhibition, the IPL, Champions league and world cups should be played where cricket is young and needs to be developed.

I have been watching cricket for about twenty years now, and I am a purest at heart. If we allow Twenty20 cricket to impact the ODI game, then it will surely have an impact on the format of test cricket, and we simply cannot allow that to happen.

The following article is a good read on the subject, and a source of some of the above: ODI Cricket on death row

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