Faultline Cricket

It is quite clear now that there is a white-man vs brown-man split emerging in international cricket today. This sounds crass especially as South Africa is a team currently fielding a majority of white players, and England is a team that has played up to 3 players of Asian origin in the past few months. The administrators of international cricket are split along these racial lines, however. (Note: the players get on fine themselves)

We have England, Australia & New Zealand on the one hand.

We have India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Zimbabwe Bangladesh

West Indies is the Switzerland in all this, though hover towards the brown block apparently.

Decisions about ICC base, Daryl Hair, World Cup hosts and the position of ICC chief have all been debated in the recent past, with these two sides broadly sitting on two sides of the fence, and the Asian-Afro bloc winning by majority vote.

For this reason of course it's the White-bloc who are most disenfranchised by this and increasingly amongst the press, particularly the antipodean press, there are articles coming out which base all cricketing problems on the shoulders of this cartel. Whilst sympathising with them on some issues, I feel some of this has been excessive and smacks of a resistance to cricketing traditions evolving / changing. They would rather have the game remaining static at the expense of commercial success. Again they have a point, there are far too many international one day games being played but not everything that is evolutionary or commercial is necessarily a bad thing.

In essence, there are faults on both sides. I see the disagreements widening but can not envisage a permanent split - that would kill the game off. So what do I see? more of the same. The Asian cartel outweighting the Anglo-pedian cartel and the latter continue to lay all blame on the former's shoulders. It is a pity as I think world cricket would benefit if both groups gelled better - a bonding weekend comprising media commentators as well as the administrators is what's needed!

A Tale of Two Captains

Todays semi-final between Sri Lanka and New Zealand, saw the former win and reach the World Cup Final for the 2nd time, whilst unfortunate New Zealand fail at the penultimate hurdle yet again.

Jayawardene had a blinder - he built the text book one day century and not for the first time in this world cup, made some decisive decisions on the field, to turn around his side's fortunes.

Alas for Stephen Fleming, generally touted as the best captain out there in the international game (English supporters would claim Vaughan is the best - and Australians could justifably say that their team's success hides the captaincy influence of Ponting) - today he could not kill off the Sri Lankan innings after fall of the 3rd wicket, and his team conceded 100 odd off the final 10 overs. When it came to bat, he fell for single figures.

Previously in this competition, Jayawardene led the field (no pun intended) in opting to play around with the timing of the 3rd power play (beyond the previous pattern of waiting for the fall of a wicket) - subsequently I noticed Ricky Ponting and others also did the same (re Tait in Aus vs England).

Thus the team which played better on the day, the team with more matchwinners, with more flair, the team captained better on the day won. New Zealand are a very decent one day outfit and creditably lost to another one.