Short pitch: Unexpected consequences of rotation

There are many sequelae to Cricket Australia's revolving door selection policy, but one that has gone unnoticed until now is the volume of run-outs seen in all formats of cricket.

It stands to reason: every player has their own style of running.  They might call early or late, be hesitant or direct or pigheaded.  Seeing as batting practice occurs mostly in the nets where partnership running is difficult to trial, there is a consequent lack of training afforded to running between wickets.  This is only magnified when viewed through the prism of inconsistency: how can a player know the running tendencies of his teammates when so many partners are dropped in and out of the lineup?

In International cricket this season, David Warner has batted with 13 different partners ranging from Ed Cowan to Nathan Lyon.  With the paucity of First Class games available to international teams - tour matches being a thing of the past - and a crowded schedule, communication suffers and run-outs quickly follow.

It takes time for players to bed into a team, both emotionally and stylistically.  The flurry of players we see short of their crease is just testament to the changing environment batsmen particularly are forced to endure.

Short Pitch: Zakuani hugs the man who broke his leg

In front of a typically vocal northwest crowd on Saturday, Steve Zakuani made a touching return to MLS. He appeared as an eighty-sixth minute substitution and impressed: the first pick in the 2009 draft looked his usual energetic self. Zakuani had missed the past fourteen months after sustaining multiple fractures to his right leg, courtesy a reckless tackle by the Colorado Rapids' Brian Mullen.

His return wasn't special because he further increases depth in a formidable front line, nor because the occasion snapped the team out of a nine-match winless streak. His return was special because when the final whistle shrilled, Zakuani and Mullen searched each other out and hugged, exchanging jerseys in one of the most touching moments in MLS history.

Century Link Field achieved a small claim to fame in 2011 when the crowd set off seismographs during an NFL playoff game. On Saturday, reverberations were felt around the league as first Seattle, then the league offered Zakuani a warm welcome.

Sportsmen are often expected to display a stoic aggression that touches on bluster. Occasionally, decency is lain at the altars of gamesmanship and achievement. However, often the most powerful gestures on sports arenas aren't dripping with machismo but those where a player takes the opportunity to do the right thing. On Saturday, MLS was fortunate to see one of those moments.

Short pitch: Sheffield Shield Efficiency

(c) Balanced Sports, click to enlarge

The chart above maps the combined batting/bowling prowess of each of last year's Sheffield Shield teams.  It forms a very rough guide to each state's efficiency by mapping the cumulative batting and bowling averages of each state's specialists against each other.  Please note the curious wording (batsmen/bowlers) - only recognised  batsmen and allrounders were used to calculate each state's cumulative batting average, while the same is true of bowling averages.  This means that the universal averages (used as axes to divide the graph into quadrants) are somewhat different.

With bowling average forming the X axis and a low number desired and a high Y value indicating a more efficient batting lineup, we can surmise that the top left-hand quadrant denotes the most efficient teams.  The opposite is therefore true of the inferior right quadrant.

Finally, the chart indicates that no matter how good a batting attack may be, it's much more beneficial to have butt-kicking bowlers - the most efficient bowlers came from Queensland, who won the Shield.  Tasmania had the next most efficient bowling outfit, who ended the season as runners-up.  Victoria managed third place.

Short Pitch: Occupy Cricinfo

Cricinfo, the arbiter of finality for all oval-based pub discussion, is a necessary evil.  It exists almost entirely to disseminate information about a game played where a cork ball enveloped in leather is flung at at someone wielding a ruddy great lump of willow.

The interweb - and through the magic of Google, its affiliation with ESPN and Search Engine Optimisation - is where an awful lot of us 6.8 evolved primates go in order to find out more.  As a case in point - Encyclopaedia Britannica last week published their final  - ever - hard copy of their 244 year old tome.  And ESPN Cricinfo, is often the first - and only - site you'll see.  Only cricket tragics know of sites like (the magnificent) Idle Summers. Click on Wisden's "Archive" and suddenly, you're linked to Cricinfo.  It is omnipresent, omniscient - and increasingly partisan.

courtesy: telegraph.co.uk

 The internet, by its very nature, is almost all partisan. from the most - eg. Sarah Palin's SuperPAC - through the intentionally "homer" (The Sports Guy), to focus sites like the (again excellent) Allhabs.net.  It is a simple matter of knowing your audience; only a few sites have managed to keep the hardcore fans satisfied while also expanding to encompass a broader, more global audience.  Even with a good product, expanding your "market" without offending your existing niche customer base is hard to do - ask Linux.


Given the nature of international cricket - where its largest audience is from one country - Cricinfo, especially since former UK editor Andrew Miller moved on to The Cricketer magazine, has become increasingly subcontinental and T20-centric in tone.  Perhaps this is because I view Twenty20 as the tabloid version of a beautiful, nuanced event, but the result is - and this is very much a personal opinion - as the site becomes more small-pages-big-print and divests itself of keen insight, I find there is little of interest on Cricinfo without serious searching.

(OK, you got me - I'm newspaperist).

This is (probably) simply a matter of catering to dominant market demands, but by doing so Cricinfo has become part of the internet's 99%.  With the needs of a diverse populace Because there is no other site with the ability/backing to present the information they do, it behoves Cricinfo to remain as impartial as possible.

Corporate responsibility is a funny thing.  If you ask any company what comes first, most will answer "our clientele" or "providing the best service".  However, that stands true until the company faces decreasing revenues or being left behind in the marketplace - where those statements of intent should read "our clientele, until it becomes inconvenient".

Adapting Cricinfo to suit the needs of remarkably diverse network of populations has to be more than providing tacit acknowledgement of what goes on in the cricket world that's not sparkly - because that already happens.  Personally, I'm not sure how to correct the problem.  However, what I do realise is that as others become equally unenamoured with Cricinfo's "insight", they'll begin to search the blogosphere and find the 1% like World Cricket Watch, 99.94 and Alternative Cricket.