England on ropes as batting crumbles after Watson & Hussey set up big target: T3D3

England 187 & 5/81 (27 ov) need 310 more runs with 5 wickets in hand to defeat Australia 268 & 309 (86 ov, M Hussey 116, S Watson 95, C Tremlett 5/87) T3 D3 at WACA ground, Perth.

At the start of play I was hoping that Australia would be able to set England a reasonable target, by lunch hope had become expectation, which the subsequent loss of 6/57 only slightly changed. I didn't even contemplate the prospect of England losing 5 wickets before stumps...I hoped (with fingers crossed) for two or three, but couldn't see the England batting lineup, which in the first two Tests had carried all before it, crumbling on a pitch which while not quite a flat track wasn't a bowler's paradise either.

But it did, and Australia stand on the threshold of a remarkable victory which looked out of the question after Day1 .

Today's heroes were the four quick bowlers, who justified the selectors' decision not to play a specialist spinner, and Mike Hussey and Shane Watson who with their bats fashioned a silk purse out of what could have been a sow's ear.

Watson, perhaps because he hadn't had to bowl in England's first innings, looked on top of his game until, not for the first time, he approached his century when Chris Tremlett had him lbw for 95/174b (11x4). Hussey continued as the England attack, especially Tremlett, regrouped and was last out for a masterly116/172b (11x4). Remember all the calls for his sacking before the series began?

As in they'd done in the first innings, Andrew Strauss and Alistair Cook started well, but they only put on 23 before Ryan Harris broke through. Then it was Mitchell Johnson's turn , then Ben Hilfenhaus' (Kevin Pietersen a well deserved wicket caught at slip for 3), then Johnson and Harris each had a second bite of the cherry as the lineup which recovered from a poor start at the Gabba to look invincible at Adelaide fell apart.

The series has been re-ignited. The last rites of this match should be completed early tomorrow.

Scorecard

Fox Sports report

Exhibition T20 match belated reminder of cricket season

The televising of the exhibition T20 game from the Gabba on Channel 9 was a belated reminder to Australian cricket followers who aren't pay TV subscribers that the local season is underway.

The match itself appeared to attract a reasonable, though well short of capacity, crowd to the ground. This was probably due more to the presence of some recently retired greats than to any resurgence of interest in the game (though Shane Warne batting himself at no11 indicated that it wasn't being played for sheep stations).


How attractive the Tests against the West Indies and then Pakistan will be remains to be seen. A related question is whether the decline of Test cricket elsewhere, as manifested by minute crowd numbers and diminishing TV audiences, will continue here. I expect that it will, at least for this season when neither of the touring teams have much Test match crowd pulling potential. Without abandoning my preference for the long form of the game I hope that the ODIs, where over and fielding restrictions even things up a bit, continue to pull in reasonable numbers of spectators and viewers. I'll certainly be glued to the TV this and at the Adelaide Oval next week.

Where there's fire in his belly there's smoke

Peter Lalor in today's Australian

There is some talk that Shane Warne has been reincarnated in India as the vegetable-curry-eating, team-leading guru of Jaipur's Twenty20 cricket outfit, but it is reassuring to see that, deep down, he is still the same old Aussie Shane.

Just days after he sent waves of hysteria across the cricketing globe by suggesting he might come back and play in next year's Ashes series in England, he has been caught out in a predictable ashtray outrage.

The Hindustan Times caught Warne having a cigarette before the match against Kolkata at Eden Gardens on Tuesday. The stadium is a smoke-free zone, but the venerated leg-spinner, who was known to hang out of dressing-room windows for a cigarette in a past life, has apparently not changed that much.

Bollywood Shane is, it seems, very similar to the old Hollywood Shane, whose exploits dominated newspapers throughout his 708-wicket Test career. Warne was photographed by a schoolboy while having a puff on a tour of New Zealand in 1999 despite having signed a $200,000 deal with an anti-smoking lobby that required him not to inhale.

Social issues aside, the Kolkata match was something of a triumph for Warne, who has successfully combined the roles of captain and coach of the underdog Rajasthan Royals side in the Indian Premier League.

The Royals took on the Kolkata Knight Riders, who are coached by Warne's old coach and nemesis John Buchanan. Warne has been a critic of Buchanan over the years, but was caught out borrowing his former coach's tactics when The Hindustan Times published Warne's secret team-strategy sheet.

Buchanan was mocked by the bowler for his creative approach to preparation and strategies.

Lalor had another sharply observed piece yesterday on a related issue:

Shane Warne's fanciful suggestion of an Ashes comeback has been met with rolled eyes and laughter in Australian cricket circles, but was enough to send a shiver of fear down the spines of England's batsmen.

Those poor, long-suffering souls have seen enough horror movies to know that no matter how dead the bad guy looks, he always manages to reach a gnarly hand out of the grave one last time.

The news might also have Stuart MacGill reaching for the silver bullets. Warne is the body in the lake that has haunted MacGill his whole career.

The greatest leg-spinner of all time admitted the whole notion of an Ashes comeback is a "fairytale" and Cricket Australia treated it as something of a joke, but Warne has never tired of the spotlight and knows that even the peak of his nose through the velvet curtains is enough to raise excitement in the cheap seats

....

Even Warne himself had offered the odd qualifier and condition to his return.

"If Stuey MacGill fell over and broke his leg, and there were no other spinners around, and Ricky (Ponting) came out and said, 'Mate, can you please help us out for this one-off tour? We need you', that is something I would weigh up," Warne said.

He was not, however, finished with the fine print just yet. "The reason I retired was to spend time with my kids. I was also sick of international touring here there and everywhere, other commitments, and team meetings. If you could just turn up and play Test cricket, that would be cool. I would definitely consider that."

So there you have it: one broken leg (can be arranged), one call from the captain (a text would do) and he'd consider it - just as long as there were no team meetings, no travel, no commitments and, presumably, not too much training.

Oh, and he might have to mind the kids on Wednesdays.

Warne had been playing this same song about one-day internationals since being sent home from the 2003 World Cup because of a positive drug Test. Comeback? Oh, if they ask me I'd think about it, he'd say. And they'd say, if he wants to make himself available we'd think about it.

After you. No, no, I insist, after you ...

Update 24 May

In today's Australian Lalor has another piece about Shane "'Hollywood' Shane can't retire from the spotlight":

In the past month Warne had lured the spotlight to himself, this time via his efforts in the Indian Premier League. It seems the uber riche owners of the new Indian cricket franchises had made the terrible mistake of ignoring and underestimating Warne and he was not going to let them forget it.

During the insanity of the player auctions Warne went for a modest $450,000 and found himself plonked in charge of the bargain-basement Rajasthan Royals. The team had an op-shop feel, the $1m superstars had gone to the other brightly uniformed sides and the money was on the big spenders to dominate the league.

Warne, naturally, defied all logic. He roused his charges to great deeds against the champions of international cricket and in the middle of the Ashes-return story he lead them to a win over gold-plated Kolkata Knight Riders. Warne's op-shop XI was the first side through to the competition's semi-finals.

Making the finals was one thing for the leg-spinner, but beating the Knight Riders quite another. Warne had ensured this meeting was personal, taking aim at the opposition coach John Buchanan - a man he has spent much of the past five years criticising. Warne loathed Buchanan's coaching style when he was in charge of the Australia side and continues to moan about the number of team meetings and odd ideas his former coach was renowned for.

Still, when Warne's team tactic's list was leaked to the Hindustan Times it made interesting reading. Here was an approach that looked like it had come from the Buchanan cricket canon.

Players were given odd titles and roles. He was "the leader of the pack" his duty was "spin to win", show a "match-winning temperament in closing overs with the bat" and to "marshal the troops". Shane Watson was "the enforcer", Yusuf Pathan the "statement maker" and Mohammed Kaif the "guiding light" and so on.

The Warne comeback story had been sparked in part by an earlier Warne news cycle, this time about how the Rajasthan team's success was proof the leg-spinner was the best Test captain Australia never had.

Former Australia captain Ian Chappell had always been outspoken on the issue and decided it was time to speak out again.

"He makes the game exciting for his team-mates, which is part of the secret to successful captaincy. Keep them involved in an absorbing contest and the really competitive players will regularly produce their best," Chappell wrote in his Cricinfo column.

"Also, his captaincy creed, 'We can win from any position,' is like the common cold - it's contagious. If a team under Warne pulls off a stunning victory or two, the players start to believe that it wasn't a miracle, just an everyday occurrence. "

Cricket Australia, as everybody knows, got a little nervous in the bowels at the thought of Warne leading the national team. While CA had flirted with the idea and appointed him vice-captain it had eventually been forced to relieve him of this role.

Chappell had an interesting take on what might have been. The former Test captain invoked the Pythonesque notion that "Man has two major organs, brain and penis, but only blood enough to run one at a time".

Chappell suggested that the demands of captaincy would have kept Warne out of trouble.

All bets on as IPL "showers moolah"

In today's Australian Bruce Loudon reviews the IPL at the halfway mark.

A staggering $5.6 billion is likely to be wagered on the Indian Premier League competition, it was estimated yesterday, as a new survey showed that an astonishing 131 million Indians have been watching matches on television.

These latest statistics - published in one newspaper under the headline "IPL showers moolah" - came as detailed new performance tables disclosed that just past the halfway stage of the 44-day, 59-match series Australians Shane Watson and Shaun Marsh are firmly at the top of intricate assessments of which foreign players are providing the best value for money.

Watson heads the so-called MVP index, a collation of batting, bowling and fielding points. On 418 points, the Queensland all-rounder contracted to Shane Warne's Rajasthan Royals is way ahead of all the 128 other foreigners playing in the tournament - with Ricky Ponting, comparatively, listed in 110th spot with just 15 points.

A second so-called PV index, also published yesterday, lists the foreign players in terms of "value for money" and what each run costs on the basis of what they are being paid. On this index, Shaun Marsh, playing for a relatively paltry fee of $32,000, is at the head of the list, on $86 per run, with Watson, playing for a fee of $133,000, on $159 per run.

On this table, the disappointing performance by Ponting, playing for the Kolkata Knight Riders for a fee of $426,000, is listed as costing $7949 per run, though the cellar dweller on the index is South African Herschelle Gibbs, whose fee of $613,000 means that each run he has made for the poorly performing Hyderabad Deccan Chargers has cost $17,692.

Publications of the two performance indexes underlines, yet again, the importance of the financial aspects of the billion-dollar competition, with the leading business newspaper The Economic Times reporting estimates yesterday that $5.6 billion will be wagered in mostly illegal betting on the competition by the time it winds up on June 1.

Yesterday The Oz also published another piece by Loudon about the IPL's father figure:

Shane Warne, emerging as the father figure of the Indian Premier League, last night offered a helping hand to controversial spinner Harbhajan Singh and said he was ready to assist him in any way he could.

"Everyone has issues - on and off the field," Warne said when asked about Harbhajan, who faces a ruling today from the Board of Control for Cricket in India on his playing future after slapping fellow India player Shantha Sreesanth.

"He has admitted to his mistake, which is a huge thing," Warne said. "And when he returns to play for India, it'll be a different Bhaji.

"I'm ready to help Bhaji if he wants to talk about it, or in any other way," added Warne, the captain-coach of the Rajasthan Royals team, which leads the IPL table.

Warne's offer followed a statement by Ricky Ponting in which he said that after the slapping incident, "people should be making their own judgments about Harbhajan. He has again done something wrong."

.....

Warne's status in the competition was reinforced yesterday with reports appearing in Indian newspapers that highlight the fluency he has gained in Hindi, as disclosed previously in The Australian.

He has also, according to a report on the front page of The Pioneer, assumed the Indian custom of greeting people with folded hands, saying namaste, when meeting them, even welcoming fellow players and Royals officials in this way.

"Warne maintains a notebook and notes down one new word daily," the newspaper reported.

"Other than Hindi, he has become a gourmet of vegetarian dishes."

One Royals player said, "mostly, he decides our vegetarian menu". This is the same player who on an Australian tour of India had cans of baked beans shipped in to avoid the local food.

Not all is sweetness and light, though, according to today's Times of India:

In an apparent bid to cut cost, the Kolkata Knight Riders team management today "politely" asked five of its players, who are yet to feature in the side's 14-member squad in any match, to leave the team hotel.

The players are Ranadeb Bose, Cheteshwar Pujara, Sourasish Lahiri, Yashpal Singh and Hokkaido.

One of the players said they were "politely given the option of either staying at the team hotel or going home".

"It was clear what the the team managment wants. Apparently coach John Buchannon [ sic] feels that he has found his set combination and had no need for the fringe players," one of the players said.

Click here for a video report.

And of course there's been the controversy over cheerleaders , though this seems to have gone quiet for now.

What would Doug Walters think?

In his latest column in The Times Shane Warne acknowledges that there have been rumours about his position with Hampshire in 2008. "At the moment" he says, oblivious to the irony of using the same phrase which the Indian team management is using as a Damoclean sword over the ICC, "I am committed to coming back this season. I am in constant touch with Rod Bransgrove, our chairman, and needless to say, I would love to lift the championship in September."

But "There is a deal in the pipeline with a poker company that will involve playing in certain events through the year. I can fit what I do around the cricket. The World Series takes place in Las Vegas at the same time as the Twenty20 Cup. I definitely want to go to Las Vegas and I have not played Twenty20 for the past few seasons. It has always come at an ideal time to take a break. I am 38 and, after 20 or so years in the game, I need a rest at some point during a six-month campaign."

If he's spurning the Twenty20 comp because he believes it's Mickey Mouse, that's fine, but then might you not expect a county captain to be supporting, even if he's not actually playing for, his team in all forms of the game? Didn't he say something the other day how how captains were much more important than coaches? (He certainly was reported as saying that Ricky Ponting's "man management skills are good" and that Anil Kumble is "one of the gentlemen of the game")

And hasn't there been talk of him signing up for the ICL T20 competition (or is he waiting for them to change the rules so that he only has to bowl, and not field?).

Years ago Doug Walters was renowned as a dressing room card player. I'm sure he didn't interrupt his cricket season to play cards. He saw the two activities as mutually compatible. Of course Dougie was, like Warne is, a confirmed smoker and drinker, but in his playing days he (at least as far as we know) kept his priorities in the right order. Or am I being too hard on the great leggie in the twilight of his career? He does have the right to make (or lose) a buck as he pleases, whether by playing cricket, playing poker or advertising beer.

More on Warne's rankings

When I recently posted about some current best ever selections I bit my lip about some of Shane Warne's top 50 (53) selections or, to be more precise, his rankings.

Now someone has publicly expressed views which are very similar to mine. Writing in The Weekend Australian Malcolm Conn takes Warne to task for displaying "immaturity and petty jealousies".

By ranking Adam Gilchrist at a lowly No.20 and Steve Waugh a laughable No.26 among the cricketers he played with or against, Warne has once again exposed his immaturity and petty jealousies. It is yet another example of why he was overlooked for both those players in leadership roles, much to his lasting anguish.

Waugh has already laughed off the schoolboy sledge and Gilchrist smiled broadly when asked about it in South Africa this week. "He's done enough in the game and played enough cricket to be warranted his own opinion on who he's played with and against," Gilchrist told The Weekend Australian. "As far as my position is concerned, to be in his top 20, given the amount of cricketers he has played with and against over the years, well it's a wonderful compliment."

Warne offered some wonderful theatre on the field and the game will miss that as much as his great bowling, but there is a compelling case to suggest that Gilchrist may just be the greatest entertainer the game has seen.

Not only are Gilchrist's batting achievements absolute world-class - 5353 runs at 48.66 with 17 centuries in 90 Tests - the way the potent left-hander has thrashed and bludgeoned those runs has left even the incomparable Don Bradman in his wake.

Gilchrist, 35, has scored more than 82 runs from every 100 balls he has faced in Test matches, by far and away the best of any batsman with more than 2000 runs.

Four years ago, a number of former Australian greats were asked to rank the 10 best centuries in Australian history. Greg Chappell simply said: "Adam Gilchrist has eight so far. Those are my top eight."

Conn also has a good word to say about Gilchrist's wicketkeeping, which Warne had damned with the faint praise of the "batsman wicketkeeper" tag. Gilchrist's own response was a model of diplomacy. I for one hope to see much more of him on the cricket field.

List making

It's always interesting to pick, or see other people's, "best ever" lists, whether of individuals, teams, types of players, or whatever.

The Times is currently providing plenty of food for thought, with Shane Warne's list of his 50 greatest players and the ultimate XI for each county (actually a best and a favourite XI) selected by a number of commentators.

Warne's task is easier, since he's limited to players of his generation. Even so, some of his selections (and the order in which he's placed them), are unexpected. For example, his no 50 Jamie Siddons never played a test, and only one ODI, though was widely considered to be unlucky not to have more international notches to his belt (he also played most of his first class cricket for S Aust, not Victoria).

Warne's interview with Parky economical with truth?

While I've always had the highest regard for Shane Warne's on-field ability, and for many of the cricket-related things he's done off the field, I don't think that it's possible to gloss over the dark side of his cricketing life. Overlook them perhaps, but not deny or falsify them.

Alas, this may have happened with his recent interview with Michael Parkinson, as today's Age claims.
According to the paper the program was pre-recorded and then edited, with the executive producers Warne, Parky and someone with a foot in both their camps (and a hand in both their pockets) having the final say.

Here's The Age's summary of some of the discrepancies between the interview and the O'Regan report into the betting allegations:

WHAT WARNE TOLD PARKINSON"… He never told me he was a bookmaker. I didn't know that."

WHAT THE O'REGAN REPORT SAYS

"… John said he was an Indian bookmaker but he did not then ask Warne to agree to provide information in the future".

WHAT WARNE TOLD PARKINSON

"I then found out later, that when Mark Waugh and I were called into Cricket Australia (in February, 1995), that he (John) was a bookmaker, and that I'd given him information."

WHAT THE O'REGAN REPORT SAYS"By (early October, 1994) they had both accepted money from John whom they then knew to be a bookmaker who betted on cricket."

WHAT WARNE TOLD PARKINSON

"Once I found out that (John was a bookmaker), I never took any call again from him."

WHAT THE O'REGAN REPORT SAYS

"Shane Warne was never contacted after a call to Perth in early February 1995 and it seems that he had nothing to do with the cessation of the calls. John must have decided for his own reasons not to continue the contact."

WHAT WARNE TOLD PARKINSON"The bookmaker stuff was 13 or 14 years ago. I was 22 years of age."

WHAT THE CALENDAR SAID

Warne turned 25 the month he met John.