Where India beat England

England and India appear to be evenly matched sides and what proved decisive was how each side responded when things weren't going their way.

When the ball was swinging

In this Test, ball dominated bat at first. That England slumped to a small total was predictable, but it could have been so different, as India's innings showed.

Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer protected the Indian middle-order from the new ball and Tendulkar and Ganguly duly prospered. Another ten or twenty runs in England's opening partnership could have led to another 30 or 40 from their middle order or who knows what.

The second new ball

During India's innings, three wickets had fallen when the second new ball became available. England didn't manage to take a wicket for another 27 overs after taking it.

In England's second innings, India found themselves in the exact same position. Three wickets were down when they took the second new ball. Two wickets fell within a couple of overs and two more shortly afterwards. England's fightback had been unceremoniously halted.

Zaheer Khan's bowling secret

Zaheer Khan took 4-59 and 5-75 in the second Test against England. Just what is his secret?

• Swing the ball both ways
  
• Land the ball on the spot
• Keep doing it
• Do it a bit more
• Bit more
• ...Mmm... Bit more...

Also, don't discount his productive year in county cricket last season while in exile from the Indian national side.

Michael Vaughan's 'best' innings not enough

Several people have been saying that Michael Vaughan's 124 against India yesterday was his best innings.

Those people obviously never saw his frankly sublime 177 against Australia in 2002, when the next highest contribution in the innings was just 47. This was a batsman in total command of not just the bowling, but also himself, to paraphrase CLR James.

In that same year he can boast of 145 against the same opponents in Melbourne and 183 in Sydney. Just prior to that Ashes series during India's previous tour, a round 100 in the Lord's Test and 195 at The Oval were the bread of a gargantuan sandwich, the filling of which was 197 in Nottingham - so it's arguable whether yesterday's hundred was even Michael Vaughan's best innings at Trent Bridge against India.

He can swing a bat a bit though, can Michael. In a totally needless and embarrassing move, we're going to brand Michael Vaughan 'a dude'.

That's right. We're so delighted by Michael Vaughan's current form, we're pretending we're 12 again.

England v India, second Test at Trent Bridge, day four
England 198 all out (Zaheer Khan 4-59)
India 481 (Sachin Tendulkar 91, Sourav Ganguly 79, Dinesh Karthik 77, Wasim Jaffer 62, Monty Panesar 4-101)
England 355 all out (Michael Vaughan 124, Paul Collingwood 63, Andrew Strauss 55, Zaheer Khan 5-75)
England

Rob Key tonks 104 v Derbyshire

Rob Key played a superlative innings against Derbyshire yesterday, taking Kent to a deserved win.

One prominent expert was moved to comment:

"As soon as that brash young buck arrived at the crease, everyone sensed that something transcendent was about to take place.

"His first stroke was a blistering forward defensive and he never looked back, except when he edged through the vacant slip area on 14, 23, 65 and 78 - oh and once when he completely missed the ball.

"If my gramophone hadn't broken, I'd invite that red-faced right-hander round to my home for a celebratory waltz and some apple brandy."

Rob Key posts
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Kent v Warwickshire

Lemon Bella says:

Myself and Indian Skimmer saw three days of the Kent v Warwickshire match at the St Lawrence Ground. This report is late, because we spent the rest of the week going for walks and visiting the zoo.

I've also attached a photo of Simon Cook being conspicuously indifferent to cricket because cricketers are animals too.



On Saturday, we arrived ten minutes after Martin Van Jaarsveld scored his century, so we can't tell you anything about that. Also, we had to leave half an hour before Geraint Jones scored his century, so we can't tell you about that either. We're sure they were both very good. However, we can report that Andrew Hall is a lot smaller and rounder in real life than on the TV. We think he might have made himself smaller and rounder so he could fit in at Kent.

During the lunch break there was some sort of presentation. We have no idea what the presentation was for because the PA system was broken, making the announcer sound like a dalek. There was a lot of clapping, though, so we're sure the presentation must have been for something good.

Joe Denly ate a sandwich on the balcony. We were not close enough to see what kind of sandwich it was, even with binoculars. We had tuna mayonnaise sandwiches, so maybe he did too. We had coffee and walnut cake as well but Joe Denly doesn’t look like the type to eat cake. Andrew Hall does.

On Sunday we had some fantastic chocolate from Aldi. It didn't taste like you'd expect cheap chocolate from Aldi to taste. We did some internet research about the chocolate when we got home. The company that makes it was expelled from Germany in 1939, so it's actually anti-Nazi chocolate.

In the afternoon we went for a walk instead and found some cake in the members' lounge, but we weren't sure if we were supposed to eat it. We just used the coffee machine and snuck out before someone important demanded to see our members' pass and we had to try and find it. If anyone knows what the cake was for, and if we can eat it next time we see it, please let us know.

On Monday it rained a lot and we went to the pub. We bought some crisps and a man told us it was nice to see young ladies like us at the cricket.

Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer show the way

The start of this Test was dominated by swing bowling. The feeling that England's batsmen had rather meekly submitted was born out by the performances of Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer.

Never mind that Tendulkar and Ganguly outscored both of India's openers, that first partnership was key. This was when England's bowlers were bowling at their best, but with each delivery that went by, the pair were making life easier for the middle order.

Tendulkar and Ganguly both batted well, but Dinesh Karthik and Wasim Jaffer gave them the best opportunity to do so.

Karthik's not a batsman we know all that well (we've heard he's a superior wicketkeeper to Dhoni, which is handy) but Jaffer's an opener of some talent. He's been in and out of the side with clockwork regularity and we still fear for him.

A good old-fashioned blunting the new ball innings of 62 here will soon become just an innings of 62 shorn of context. Some other opener will thrash a one-day hundred against Zimbabwe and steal his place.

We know this post's dry and humourless. It's Monday morning - we're just getting our eye in. We don't want to be making any loose jokes outside off-stump when we're still vulnerable to the moving view of what's funny.

Monty Panesar wins 'spot the Andrew Flintoff' competition

There he is!

Cricket Captain 3 demo

EA Cricket installments come out to great fanfare with celebrity endorsements. The Cricket Life people email us and keep us abreast of things. Empire Interactive however, don't tend to bother telling anyone when they release a new version of International Cricket Captain - or Cricket Captain as it's now more pleasingly known.

We rather bad-mouthed the original International Cricket Captain. We were right. We weren't right about International Cricket Captain 2006 though. It turns out it wasn't just a database update. We played it and it's still believable in 2019. Batsmen can still score runs and Gavin Hamilton was never at any point the best bowler in the world.

The graphics were still garbage though, which is where Cricket Captain 3 comes in. It looks much nicer and appears to include Hawkeye, the tracking thing that shows the path of each delivery.



The game looks to be much the same, but if Hawkeye's included, it must be for a reason. Maybe you can examine each player's ability to swing the ball. That adds another dimension.

Get the free demo here for nowt.

Get the full game here for more than nowt.

More cricket games

A match report from ages ago with no picture

We were away when this was sent. It doesn't matter though. All of the match reports thus far have been timeless - this one included.

This is from Liz who has conspicuously omitted a Graham Onions joke towards the end.

Surrey v Durham, The Oval, Sunday 8th July

I am unable to comment on the play as I got there two hours late, left two hours early, and spent much of the interim reading the paper. I can report on the food though.

Poorly planned picnics at the Oval are limited in what foodstuffs can be included. We had imagined maybe some baguettes with grapes and stilton - ooh, maybe dolcelatte. We forgot of course that these levels of groceries are unavailable in the immediate environs of the Oval. You'd probably have to go to Kennington Tesco for that kind of thing.

The nearest 'Food and Wine' to the tube yielded vacuum-packed chorizo and jarlsberg though, slightly stale bread, some greasy kabano and spicy plantain chips, washed down with cans of John Smiths. Ideal.

Lots of small boys were getting the players to autograph their tiny souvenir cricket bats. One of our co-spectators wished she had brought some parmesan for Steve Harmison to sign - 'What a caesar salad that would be - Harmison Parmesan'. Phil Mustard probably gets fed up of people asking him to sign their Colemans.

14.26 points for Rob Key in the Pro40

That puts him eighth! That's in the top ten! Being in the top ten is the best anyone can do, so Rob's the best.

For those of you who are ignorant of the totally straightforward and utterly transparent rankings system that leads to the Most Valuable Player award, here's the low-down.

In the Pro40 league, Rob has accrued 11.86 points for batting. This comes about exactly as you'd imagine. He has no points for bowling because he's too cool to exert himself in any great way. He also has 0.8 points for fielding.

11.86 points and 0.8 points lead to a total of 14.26 obviously, because cricket statistics are WAY MORE COMPLICATED than traditional mathematics.

Of course any fool can see that Rob's the best simply by looking at him. However, empirical evidence is always welcome. It will aid us when convincing the blind.

Rob Key posts:
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Chris Schofield in provisional Twenty20 World Cup squad

When we're here, we have to make the best out of 'three wickets for Lee Daggett'-type non-news. We go away for two weeks and records are being broken left, right and centre.

We'll have to ignore all of that because reporting old news would sully our immaculate reputation. So, er, here's some ongoing news... Chris Schofield's in England's 30-man Twenty20 World Cup squad.

This is an unbelievable turnaround for Schofield who, until recently, sent the ball down like a bowling machine set to 'long-hop' while resembling the kind of person who acts as a beacon warning you from entering certain public houses (see right).

While his County Championship form's been atrocious, in Twenty20 he's taken more wickets than anyone at an average of just 8.82. No one knows what a good Twenty20 average is, but only ten players have taken 10 wickets or more this season and of those Schofield's average is the best. He can field too.

What do you make of it?

Chris Tremlett returns to international cricket

Chris Tremlett's back. Great. We rate Chris Tremlett.

Being freakishly tall doesn't make you a good seam bowler. However, being freakishly tall is an asset and it's one that can't be acquired through practice. We're not even sure what you'd do to practice. Stilts maybe.

We've a reservation though - and it's not at an all-you-can-eat jalapeno jerky restaurant. It's to do with the number of young pace bowlers lining up to play for England. Everyone's agreed that it's good to have options and 'backup', but we're worried things might start getting confused.

We've got James Anderson and Chris Tremlett from the last Test; there's Stuart Broad champing at the bit (and it is 'champing' by the way, not 'chomping'); and Liam Plunkett's been quietly reassured that he's gifted while simultaneously being dropped. There's a chance that they might deny each other international experience. There's only so much international experience to go round, after all.

It's all well and good identifying players for the future, but at some point you have to be specific and identify which player exactly is the best of the bunch.

Canada's ace by the way

Some of you live in Canada and are therefore aware of this fact. The rest of you: Seriously, it's really good.

It's big and roomy, they've got loads of good beer now and there are even parts that are hot and sunny. They don't tell you about those bits.

Canadians are great too. For some reason they're not all surly and stupid like normal people are. They'll delight in accurately guessing where you're from as well - based on the Australian accent that you've apparently developed of late.

The only downside as far as we can see, is that there's no cricket. We know that you can get all sorts of stuff on the internet, but that's not enough. You, like us, need to live in a proper cricket culture. So we've got a solution.

We'll all move to Canada and set up our own community.

Wait. Don't run away. Think about it at least. There's bags of room in Canada. We can probably even find a warm bit with no-one in. We'll buy up the whole valley and create a new town. A glorious place where the sun beats down on white-clad autistic-types who deal in a strange currency of runs and wickets.

Now: Can anyone do anything - anything at all - remotely useful. It's just that obviously we can't and we kind of need someone to build all the houses and find a place to keep the electricity and work out how to make water and stuff like that.

We return with important lessons learnt

Never entrust the running of your site to one of your more deviant readers as it enables them to moderate their own comments.

Those sorts of swimming costumes are MANDATORY in certain parts of France. We will say no more on the matter.

Lou Vincent successfully defends both of his stumps

In 2005, plagued by an inability to know where his off stumps was, Lou Vincent did the logical thing and made a series of appearances in the World Two Stump Cricket League in which the off stump does not feature.

Vincent was a roaring success and buoyed by his newfound form, returned to three stump cricket a much-improved batsman.

Graham Gooch however, confronted his weakness head-on, taking up French Cricket after being on the receiving end of one too many Terry Alderman lbws.

A really quite staggeringly offensive picture of Andy Bichel

The title says it all really.

And to think we spoke to the man.

West Indians 'disappointed' in England's on-field behaviour

Tino Best pointedly ignores Steve Harmison and Nasser Hussain as the pair indulge in their favourite pastime of "jumping".



The whole West Indian team lodged a formal complaint about England's on-field behaviour during the 2004 series in the Caribbean. The West Indians felt that some of England's joyous shenanigans were tantamount to time-wasting.

"Jumping" came in for particularly heavy criticism.

Michael Vaughan sent to bed without any tea

Here we see a snapshot of that infamous day when Michael Vaughan and Ashley Giles played cricket down the drive using Michael's dad's Jaguar as a set of stumps.

Michael's dad brought the case to the ICC who ruled that Michael Vaughan had 'acted contrary to the spirit of the game'.

Michael's mum was also moved to tell Ashley's mum, because the pair had foolishly been playing 'in their best clothes'.

Sachin Tendulkar square cuts Nasser Hussain to the boundary

Literally.

This was the famous 1996 Edgbaston Test when the ball was pocketed by a member of the crowd. Nasser Hussain gamely offered to act as a replacement.

Unfortunately for Hussain, Alan Mullally was unable to make him swing. Sachin Tendulkar consequently doled out punishment. Here we see him deliberately smashing Hussain over backward point.

Allegations that Ronnie Irani lifted Hussain's seam during this innings were unproven.

The greatest shot ever played

Picture the scene: Several of us are playing cricket down the driveway of a semi-detached house. The stumps are on the garage door. From the batsman's point of view, the wall of the house runs along the on-side. Behind the bowler's arm, on the opposite side of the road, is a large tree. Behind that is another house.

J was batting...

The ball was quick and full. It spat off the irregular concrete, but J's eye was good. He launched a lofted straight drive.

Having travelled the length of the on-side building, the ball swerved as it crossed the road, passing the tree to the left from the batsman's point of view.

Now here's the really remarkable part. Having swerved one way to avoid the tree, it then swerved back again, behind the tree. The ball had now reached its zenith and began its descent.

Having wowed us with its bizarre powers of swing, the ball now revealed the level of its precision. It continued its journey through the open upstairs window of the house across the road.

There was a brief pause as we all drank in the magnitude of the achievement - a heartbeat perhaps - before the most alert of our number gathered his wits and cried 'scat!'.

And scat we did. For the devil in a red cardigan inhabited that house.

ICC to investigate shocking three-way tie

The world of international cricket was thrown into disarray today after the ICC's corruption unit announced it was investigating the astounding three-way tie that came about during a game of scissors, paper, stone between England players.



The players in question were James Anderson, Ashley Giles and Darren Gough, who each opted for 'stone'.

The ECB responded to the allegations saying that while there was only a one in 27 chance of this specific outcome, there were also two other outcomes - namely 'all scissors' and 'all paper' - that would equally have aroused suspicion.

The ECB therefore considers this to be within the bounds of expectation for a sporting event such as this and does not consider that anything untoward has occurred.

Shoaib Akhtar uncovers VVS Laxman's deception

The third Test between Pakistan and India in 2004 was dogged by controversy. VVS Laxman had led a seemingly charmed life during his innings of 71 when ball after ball from Shoaib Akhtar beat him for pace, without ever once striking the stumps.

This picture depicts the moment when Shoaib Akhtar extended his follow-through, giving him a glimpse of VVS Laxman's stumps for the first time.



Laxman had been defending only two stumps without bails the entire time having pocketed the middle one on his arrival at the crease.

Shoaib Akhtar's rage is clear for all to see. He points at Laxman, correctly indicating that he suspects the batsman has done this himself.

Faisal Iqbal dematerialises at Headingley in 2006

During the 2006 Headingley Test between England and Pakistan, Faisal Iqbal momentarily dematerialised.

Here we see Mohammad Yousuf checking inside Faisal Iqbal's helmet to see whether maybe he'd just shrunk or something.



Alas, no. Faisal Iqbal had not merely shrunk. He had completely vanished.

Fortunately, he rematerialised moments later, but was promptly given out lbw to Paul Collingwood for a golden duck.

Younis Khan perfects 'bullet time'

Here we see Younis Khan demonstrating his ability to use 'bullet time'. Younis makes everything move really slowly except himself. This gives him ample time to react to whatever's bowled.



In order to combat this, Steve Harmison has taken to bowling from only one yard away from the batsman, but still Younis is untroubled.

He hovers, watching the ball closely, before spanking the ball back past the bowler for four using a peculiar stroke akin to the action of chopping wood with an axe.

It's also a no-ball.

Don Bradman v Garry Sobers - the greatest cricketer ever

It's Garry Sobers. And here's why:

In a fictional Test match of unlimited overs, 11 Don Bradmans face 11 Garry Sobers... Soberses... Whatever. Captain Bradman wins the toss and elects to bat.

So we have a batting line-up of 11 Don Bradmans. Each has a Test batting record of 6,996 runs at the unparallelled average of 99.94 featuring 29 centuries. Faced with the task of dismissing this nightmarish batting side are 11 Garry Sobers, each with a Test bowling record of 235 wickets at 34.03.

Sobers goes at the Bradmans with seam bowling as the pitch is a little green. After a matter of days, the Bradmans are all out for 1,200. Now it's Sobers' turn to bat.

Each of the batting Garry Sobers has a Test record of 8,032 runs at a whopping 57.78. Unfortunately for the Bradmans, they are, at best, mediocre bowlers. Their Test bowling record features just two wickets and an average of 36. The Bradmans aren't bowlers.

Untroubled by any of the Bradmans' ineffectual pies, the Garry Sobers XI eventually declare their innings closed at 2,000-6.

For the Bradmans' second innings, Sobers starts by bowling seam-up, but soon switches to slow finger spin at which he is equally adept. After a while, he mixes it up and bowls wrist-spin at one end and finger spin at the other end. This is all backed up by some ferocious fielding. On a wearing pitch the Bradmans are all out for 800, leaving the scores tied. Sobers then hits a single to emerge victorious by ten wickets.

A streaker's arse

Are we really the kind of website that would publish a picture of a streaker?



It would appear so.

It cost him a £1,000 fine for this, so we're just trying to give him his money's worth.

We didn't take this picture, by the way. We just published it on the internet.

Where are we going?

We're going away for a couple of weeks, but don't worry, as usual we've got someone publishing stuff we've written in advance. As we look over what's to come over the fortnight, it occurs to us that maybe the site's going to be better than when we're here.

We'll still check in when we can and put up a couple of news-related updates. We'd hate to abandon you all - even when we're on holiday.

A player from the country we're visiting held the record for the fastest-ever World Cup hundred until this year. It took him 72 balls. Weirdly, this same nation had recorded the lowest ever total in one-day internationals just four days prior to that feat.

Mohammad Ashraful conquers Murali again

"Sri Lanka crush brave Bangladesh" is the BBC's faintly patronising, but perhaps justified headline.

Bangladesh got thrashed. Again by an innings. This time they put up a bit more resistance however. Mushfiqur Rahim hit 80 and Mohammad Ashraful hit a wonderful 129 not out.

This isn't the first time that Mohammad Ashraful's scored runs against Sri Lanka. Nor is it the second time. Ashraful now averages 43.2 against Sri Lanka with three hundreds and a fifty.

To use Mohammad Ashraful as an exhibit in our defence of Bangladesh for a moment, he's 23 next week and this was his fourth Test hundred. Guess how many Test hundreds Steve Waugh, Mark Waugh, Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist and Mike Hussey had scored between them by the time they were 23.

None. This is slightly contrived because a couple of those players didn't make their debuts until after they were 23, but this doesn't dilute our point. There's a long, long way to go in the career of Mohammad Ashraful and he's by no means the youngster in this Bangladeshi team. He's actually one of the old-timers.

Give 'em a bit yet.

Cricket Life 2007 released (maybe)

Cricket Life 2007 is due to be released on Saturday, although being as we haven't received a press release or a review copy and being as Cricket Life's official website's down, perhaps it's been put back again.

In the event that it hasn't been put back, here's some stuff:

Our Cricket Life 2007 preview
Some of Cricket Life's features
A few more of Cricket Life's features
The reason why Gamebience, the manufacturers of Cricket Life won't ever again be welcome in the North-West of England