England selection

Earlier this month I wrote about Chris Read, saying he deserved another chance with the gloves for England. It seems that Duncan Fletcher has come to his senses on that issue, but the Panesar v Giles issue still seems to be a puzzle to him. It seems he will be quite happy to pick an inferior bowler when Giles is fit. Giles, of course, being the inferior bowler. (Averaging over 40 with the ball in tests in England is not good enough!)

Even Ashley Giles has admitted that Monty is the number one spinner in England, so why on earth would would Fletcher not want to select Panesar, especially when his opposite number Bob Woolmer has said that Panesar has the potential to become one of the great spin bowlers. Woolmer played with Derek Underwood who, Phil Tufnell on his day aside, is the last match-winning English spinner, so he should know.

Fletcher needs to get over this obsession that bowlers have to bat. They don’t, look at Murali. Would Fletcher happily not pick Murali if he was English? If they want a bowler who can bat, drop one of the seamers and pick Glen Chapple, who should have been playing for England for the last ten years anyway. A first class bowling average of 28, and batting average of 25 (with a top score of 155) is very useful for a tail-ender, and they’re not light years away from the stats of the afore-mentioned Mr Giles. He has also averaged over 30 with the bat in four of the last six seasons, including the current one.

But will Fletcher learn? I doubt it.

Not good enough Warwickshire!

Scotland have recently announced their squad for next months European Championship Division One tournament. The squad has one notable absentee. Dougie Brown has not been release by Warwickshire, who have also made Navdeep Poonia available for just one game. This is not acceptable. I know the regulations only include compulsory release for ODIs against full member nations, but I think it should be for ALL ODIs.

Rankings

It’s been a while since I updated these with my main site being down, but I’m just going to give you an idea of the current top 20. No commentary on these I’ll let them speak for themselves.

1: Sri Lanka
2: India
3: Australia
4: Pakistan
5: West Indies
6: South Africa
7: New Zealand
8: England
9: Scotland
10: Bangladesh
11: Kenya
12: Netherlands
13: Zimbabwe
14: Ireland
15: Bermuda
16: UAE
17: Canada
18: Cayman Islands
19: Fiji
20: Nepal

Lowest Full Member: Zimbabwe (13th)

Lowest ODI Status team: Canada (17th)

Highest Associate: Scotland (9th)

Highest Affiliate: Bahamas (29th)

Lowest Associate: Israel (76th)

Bottom of the table: Costa Rica (84th)

Double standards from Crowe

Martin Crowe has given the latest annual Cowdrey lecture at Lord’s. As well as the usual ill-informed critque of the throwing laws, he has also complained about Zimbabwe and Bangladesh still being included as test playing nations.

Zimbabwe I almost agree with him on, but his case for Bangladesh rests on the fact that they have registered just one win in 44 tests. Guess how many tests New Zealand played before their first win. That’s right, it’s 44. Their first win came against the West Indies in their 45th test match.

Idiot.

A conflict of interest?

In August, Bermuda will be visiting Canada, to play an Intercontinental Cup game and two ODIs against Canada, plus two ODIs against Kenya. The problem is, if they progress to the semi final or final of the Stanford 20/20, they will have to be in two places at once. Their fixture list would be like this:

• 9th August: 1st ODI v Kenya (Toronto)
• 10th August: 2nd ODI v Kenya (Toronto)
• 11th August: Stanford 20/20 Semi Final (Antigua)
• 12th August: 4 day game v Canada (Toronto)
• 13th August: Stanford 20/20 Final (Antigua)

This is obviously impossible. So what will happen? Teams are obligated to send their best XI to ICC events, but would Bermuda really send a second XI to a tournament with a million dollar first prize? I highly doubt it.

West Indies join the Twenty20 club

Tomorrow will see the start of the first Twenty20 competition in the Caribbean, the Stanford 20/20. The billionaire businessman Alan Stanford has already invested $28 million into the event, which as well as featuring all the countries/territories that make up the West Indies, will also see participation from Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Cayman Islands.

There is a million dollars for the winner of the knockout competition, and an all-star team will take on South Africa in a one off match where the winners will take home a cool five million dollars later this year.

This leaves just three countries not to join the Twenty20 bandwagon; Zimbabwe, who’s domestic structure is in such a mess, a Twenty20 tournament wouldn’t even be worth bothering with, India, who have a severe phobia of Twenty20 in much the same way they avoided one day cricket for so long after it’s introduction (11 years), as well as Bangladesh.

It would be nice if Stanford could also get involved with the Twenty20 World Championship next year, especially if he could bring along his juicy prize money. Time will tell though wether Stanford is in for the long haul in West Indian cricket.

All we are saying…… is give Read a chance.

Imagine that you’re Chris Read and are dropped from the wicket keeping position for England for a player for whom it is acknowledged that he is worse with the gloves, but he strengthens the teams batting. (Gerraint Jones for those who don’t know) Then imagine you work your arse off to improve your batting, to the point at which you are averaging more in first class cricket than Jones was before he replaced you.

Then imagine how you’d feel if the chairman of selectors then said that Jones was the best wicket keeper after all, just after you’d scored 150 against the team England are about to play.

You’d be pretty pissed off right?

David Graveney told Sky Sports yesterday that Gerraint Jones was a better wicket-keeper than Chris Read. What has he been smoking? Watching Jones, he sometimes looks like a complete fish out of water behind the stumps. Sure, he makes some good catches, and has his moments. But he makes too many simple mistakes. Watching Read however, you see fluidity and prowess behind the stumps, someone who looks completely at home.

Just about everyone other than the England selectors sees this. They think Jones is better as a keeper and as a batsman. Chris Read was dropped because of his batting. Since he was dropped in 2004, Chris Read has averaged 50.14 with the bat. In the same time period before England selection, Jones averaged 44.31. Since the home series against New Zealand in 2004, which featured his one and only test century, he has averaged 23.54 in Test cricket. Surely it’s time for a change.

Welcome

Welcome to the Baseball On Valium blog.

The main Baseball On Valium site is currently down. We hope to be back up by the end of the month. Until then, I will be blogging at this site, and will continue to do so once the site is back up.

Some of you may have visited the old Baseball On Valium blog. I am switching from blogger to WordPress for my blog, as I’m having a problem with my blogger account, and they’re taking too long to sort it out. Once I’ve got that problem sorted out, I’ll be able to transfer the posts from that blog over to this one. Anyway, I’ll say goodbye for now, and will be posting shortly!