England’s heroic efforts to reignite the 50-over game continued with another fluctuating, stomach-rumbling, rocket-propelled donkey ride of a match, replete with all the over-the-top melodrama and emotional mood swings of a teenage disco.

Andy Zaltzman

25-Feb-2013

Once again, Strauss and his men yanked Victory from the jaws of Defeat. Having seemingly wrapped Victory in a burrito and fed it to Defeat. After Defeat had vomited Victory back up onto its plate, saying, “I’m not hungry.” Which followed them teasingly putting Victory on a plastic spoon and whizzing it in and out of Defeat’s open mouth like a parent trying to amuse a baby and trick it into eating a vegetable.

England could have won all six of their group matches. They could have lost all six. They could have tied all six. So three wins, one tie and two defeats is probably a fair return. A team with mostly admirable rather than thrilling cricketers has contrived to give the cricket world one surprisingly good game, followed by five varying classics that would have had Victorian cricket fans munching through their umbrella handles like cheap hot dogs.

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Ball-dunking and grudge-dredging

Andy Zaltzman lies about the World Cup

Andy Zaltzman

25-Feb-2013

I arrived in Chennai this morning, ready to see England re-begin their World Cup campaign again, after a 24-hour journey from Colombo. You may well think that 24 hours is a long time to take over what most people manage in an 80-minute flight. And you would have a point. But I am an Englishman at the 2011 World Cup. I decided to take an unnecessarily convoluted route because I thought it would be more interesting – exactly as my nation’s cricket team has done through the group stage of the tournament. They could easily have won all five of their matches to date, but they chose to entertain the cricket-watching universe instead.

It should be another fascinating match against intermittently explosive opponents, and if they win, they will begin the knockout stages buoyed by the knowledge that only they and Australia remain unbeaten by top-eight ranked opponents in this tournament. England are amongst the best prepared outfits in sport – this must all be part of a scientifically-generated masterplan. All it will need is a few potent shots of espresso before matches to ensure they are battle-hardened rather than battle-weary. And some luck with the physics of rotating coins and gravity.

WORLD CUP LIES

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Unexpected and instant fame for the number 29

Andy Zaltzman

25-Feb-2013

This increasingly compelling World Cup has continued to prove far more exciting than anyone could reasonably expect of a tournament that, by this time next week, will almost certainly have sent eight of the world’s top nine ranked teams into the quarter-finals, as was almost universally predicted before it had even begun, and taken more than month to do so. A recipe that looked deeply unappetising on paper has transpired to be surprisingly tasty, to a cricketing palate if not an English one, and the dessert course looks set to be a champion pavlova of a knockout stage. Cricket has been lucky. In Group B, at least.

I have seen only snippets of the last few games, as I have been on holiday with my young family on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. One of the benefits of a holiday on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, or indeed anywhere in Sri Lanka, is that all the hotels come fully equipped with staff who are able to provide accurate and well-informed information about and in-depth analysis of international cricket.

From score updates to well-reasoned arguments explaining why Sri Lanka’s middle order could prove to be their Achilles heel, from potted player biographies to tactical critiques of captaincy, the service is exemplary, and far, far superior to anything I have experienced in Europe. Rome may be a magical city in many respects, but in terms of hotel staff cricket knowledge, it is to Galle what Jimi Hendrix is to Shane Warne in terms of leg-spin bowling.

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England share joy of winning with lesser teams

Apologies for the rather late posting of today’s blog

Andy Zaltzman

25-Feb-2013

Apologies for the rather late posting of today’s blog. This has been due to a number of factors:

1. I am on holiday for a few days with the family, and have yet to discover a satisfactory method of turning writing about cricket into a fun game in which a two-year-old boy and four-year-old girl can happily participate. Let alone a wife.

2. I was trying to describe how I imagine the scenes on the streets of Bangladesh must have been last night, without (a) the use of a thesaurus, or (b) my computer melting; this proved impossible.

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Lists on which both Chakabva and Boon appear

On the evidence of yesterday in Pallekele, Muttiah Muralitharan is quite popular in this part of the world

Andy Zaltzman

25-Feb-2013

On the evidence of yesterday in Pallekele, Muttiah Muralitharan is quite popular in this part of the world. A jam-packed stadium paid noisy tribute to the great man as Regis Chakabva and Chris Mpofu became the newest names on Murali’s Batsmen-I-Have-Dismissed list. There are not many lists on which Regis Chakabva and David Boon both appear, but that is one of them (although I admit that I write this in ignorance of Chakabva’s airborne beer-guzzling capabilities, nor have I ever seen anyone repeatedly attempt to shove him over in an effort to join Boon in the upper echelons of the Least Topplable Sportsmen chart).

It is easy to understand Murali’s popularity. An even shorter list than the list of Lists Containing Boon and Chakabva would be the catalogue of people in the world who argue that Murali is not the finest spin bowler the Kandy area has produced. This features only crackpot North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who claims that honour for himself (and, as well as stating that he shot 38 under par in a round of golf, I like to think that Kim also lists 1,243 Test wickets at an average of 6.34 in the ‘Other Achievements’ section of his CV, with best figures of 11 for 3 against West Indies in 1985-86), a couple of gratuitously argumentative Australians who claim that Shane Warne was in fact born there, and hardcore fundamentalist fans of 1990s off-tweaking all-rounder Ruwan Kalpage.

And perhaps the shortest of all is the list of cricketers who have played an international in a stadium named after themselves. Perhaps ex-Worcestershire opener Gordon Lord used to play with an extra spring of pride in his step whenever he played against Middlesex at Lord’s, but he must have known he was kidding himself, and it is doubtful that he had 25,000 people cheering his every move.

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Twenty utterly crazy minutes

The words “spectacular” and “New Zealand batting” have not always sat comfortably together in the same sentence

Andy Zaltzman

25-Feb-2013

The words “spectacular” and “New Zealand batting” have not always sat comfortably together in the same sentence. Yesterday, for twenty utterly crazy minutes, they were amorously smooching each other on the sofa at Pallekele, their clothes flying off in all directions whilst Barry White crooned in the background.

We must first pay tribute to the man who made it all possible – the Maharajah of Missed Chances, the Don Corleone of Dropped Catches, the Earl of Err, the Pharaoh of Fumble, Lance Corporal Granite Hands himself, Kamran Akmal. Shoaib Akhtar’s opening spell had been a microcosm of his career, a mixture of brilliance, wastefulness, and underachievement. He clean bowled Brendan McCullum with a perfect off cutter, beat a clutch of outside edges, touched 90mph, bowled three no-balls and conceded 14 from the resulting free hits, and needlessly hurled a ball so far over Kamran’s head for 4 byes that the beleaguered gloveman would have needed both a giraffe on a ladder and a functioning pair of hands to stop it. Neither of which, sadly, were at his disposal.

Afridi brought Shoaib back to bowl at Ross Taylor when he was not yet off the mark. Shoiab instantly found the edge. It flew just to Kamran’s right. It was perfection – shrewd captaincy and fine bowling had ensnared a dangerous opponent. And Kamran, a renowned lover of beauty, did not want to spoil the aesthetic of that perfection by moving half a step to his right and interrupting the majestic parabola of the edged ball. One chance missed. Oops. No matter – Taylor was looking like a wicket in waiting.

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Unravelling the mystery of Kamran Akmal's chirps

Today’s blog consists of the first batch of responses to the Ask Andy questions that you, the reader, have submitted

Andy Zaltzman

25-Feb-2013

Today’s blog consists of the first batch of responses to the Ask Andy questions that you, the reader, have submitted. I have endeavoured to answer them as honestly and truthfully as possible.

Hi Andy. Please can you find out what Kamran Akmal constantly chirps through the game? Could he just get a T-shirt printed? Kicker of Elves, UK

I have made extensive enquiries through my network of sources throughout international cricket, and there is some disagreement over exactly what Kamran is chirping. Some believe it to be a dictation of the latest chapters of his epic autobiographical novel, The Wicketkeeper Who Came In From The Cold. Some literary critics have accused him of being “far too easily influenced by British spy writer John le Carré”, but Kamran finds it easier to write whilst wicket-keeping, then he goes home, watches the TV coverage of the day’s play, and transcribes the latest thrilling plot twists onto his typewriter.

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With England, appearances are deceiving

What an odd team England are

Andy Zaltzman

25-Feb-2013

What an odd team England are. They are comprehensively prepared, and admirably focused. They are honed with scientific exactness, and led with calm assurance by an irrefutably level-headed captain-and-coach combination. And they are wildly inconsistent. They are like a man who dresses like an accountant, talks like an accountant, lives in a comfortable suburban house, and sleeps in spreadsheet-print pyjamas. But who is actually the lead singer of a thrash metal band, with an unrivalled collection of exotic snakes.

I did not see much of yesterday’s match, as I was travelling from Colombo to the hills near Kandy, past innumerable impromptu cricket games (few of which, it must be sadly reported, were being played with ICC-regulation equipment, accurately measured creases, or properly qualified umpires). We left Colombo as Ian Bell was trudging back to the pavilion, and the cricket world was wondering whether Robin Peterson had been injected with a special serum made out of the DNA of Hedley Verity, Bishen Bedi and Derek Underwood. We stopped for lunch in time to find out that Jonathan Trott and Ravi Bopara’s steady recovery had evaporated in a nostalgia-tinged England collapse against leg spin. We departed post-lunch with Graeme Smith and Hashim Amla seemingly intent on securing a merciless 10-wicket drubbing, against an England team looking more stony-faced than an Easter Island statue.

So it was with considerable surprise and, from an English perspective, delight, that I discovered that England’s hitherto struggling bowling attack had turned the game on its head, with Stuart Broad and James Anderson, arguably England’s two most important players in this tournament, to the fore.

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On the Road with Zaltzman

Explainer - what's wrong with the T20 World Cup pitches in New York?

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