Farveez Maharoof takes a heap of wickets

Farveez Maharoof took 6-14 for Sri Lanka today. The West Indies were all out for just 80 and Sri Lanka lost just the one wicket in overtaking that. It was pretty one-sided. No, it was massively one-sided.

6-14's really something. It was a slow wicket and it sounds like he just positioned men for the drive and then persistently landed the ball on the spot with a bit of seam movement. Easy.

Actually, it's not easy. It's simple. There's a difference.

Chaminda Vaas's day

Chaminda Vaas is a weird bowler. He's your archetypal consistent medium-pacer these days. He's not too tall, he's not too fast, he doesn't do a great deal with the ball, but he's accurate. He's not all that, really. Then every now and again, conditions are in his favour and he's absolutely unplayable.

He was rather overshadowed by Farveez Maharoof today, but really it was Vaas who set things in motion. As an opening bowler, he sets the tone. Look at his figures: 2-6 off six overs. That's not very one-day international, is it?

Other Chaminda Vaas days have been the day when he took 8-19 against Zimbabwe - the only time anyone's ever taken eight wickets in a one-dayer. There was also the day when he took a hat trick with his first three balls against Bangladesh in the World Cup. Good days. Days that anyone would look back on with pride.

Chaminda Vaas is tremendously sunblock-happy at times.

Chaminda Vaas knows something about bowling that most people don't know - we don't know what it is though

Sri Lanka lost, but it wasn't Chaminda Vaas's fault. He took 2-16 off all ten of his overs and was left stranded, 29 not out as Sri Lanka's batsmen captiulated.

We're just thinking that Chaminda Vaas must be approaching world authority status when it comes to bowling on slow subcontinental pitches. There have been other bowlers, like Wasim Akram, who've bowled well on these sorts of tracks, but no-one who's actually preferred them other than Vaas.

Next time we're called upon to remove a well-set batsman in Jaipur, we're going to ask Chaminda Vaas what to do.

Even more reckless optimism

Wait! We've got another one.

The favourites, with home advantage, choose to bat in the first Test. They amass a monstrous total leaving their opponents with over three days to try and bat out a draw. The visitors lose early wickets and it seems that all is lost. But it isn't. The visitors save the Test and draw the series.

Obviously there are a number of flaws in this line of thinking. England were on the receiving end for one thing. Also, England would have to find some way of disguising Mahela Jayawardene as Steve Harmison, which is a tough ask.

On the other hand, Sri Lanka's tour of England over the summer is a worthwhile template. They started like rank amateurs and found their way as they got used to conditions. It would be better if sides were acclimatised by the start of a series, but warm-ups seem to be frowned upon these days.

Tell you what we frown upon: Incompetent cricket as a result of unfamiliarity with playing conditions. That and 'being sociable'. We've no time for that.

Shane Bond takes three wickets (and so does James Franklin)

Shane Bond took 3-43. Fast-bowling-arama, or somesuch.

James Franklin actually finished with better figures, 3-30, but we're a lot less interested. Mostly this is because we don't much like James Franklin, whereas we love Shane Bond. However, having studied the scorecard more closely, we can actually justify our Shane Bond-centric focus.

Shane Bond took the wickets of Benevolent Uncle Sanath, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, which is some trio. James Franklin took the wickets of Upul Tharanga, who's not bad; Chamara Kapugedera, who's promising, but currently not-all-that-good; and some guy called L P C Silva, who we've never even heard of. Frankly, L P C Silva could be a woman. We're not even going to check due to the minuscule chance that this could in some way render James Franklin's performance more meaningful.

For those who don't know, our hatred of James Franklin springs from a really irritating hundred he once hit.

Sri Lanka were all out for 154, by the way. Everyone's forgetting how to bat this week.

Kumar Sangakkara - a futile hundred with a controversial end

There's been some great Test cricket going on in the Antipodes recently. Not that Ashes garbage - New Zealand against Sri Lanka.

New Zealand eventually won the first Test. It was a match where all four innings combined added up to roughly one Australia v England first innings - 649 to be precise. We love cricket like this. It's far more exciting than the run-fest drudgery that's usually served up these days. You also know that when a player hits a hundred, he bloody deserves it. Kumar Sangakkara hit a hundred.

Only one other player - Daniel Vettori - passed 50 in the entire match. Clearly Murali recognised how impressive Sangakkara's achievement was, because he ran to congratulate him on completing the hundredth run while batting as his partner. Unfortunately, he did this while the ball was still en route from the boundary. Brendon McCullum rather coldly ran him out, but you can't blame him.

Can you?

Kumar Sangakkara 156 runs out of 268

Context is everything in cricket. Remember Paul Collingwood's 10 in the Oval Test in the last Ashes? That was some 10. Probably the best 10 we've ever seen. Wickets had been falling and the atmosphere was becoming hysterical. A dull, blocking 10 was the perfect antidote. Contrast that with a huge hundred against demoralised, substandard opposition when you've already got 500 on the board. We can't be bothered thinking of a specific example.

In the first Test between New Zealand and Sri Lanka, we described how the context of the game led us to believe that Kumar Sangakkara 'bloody deserved' his hundred. It was low-scoring and here's the post. We won't repeat ourself.

In the second Test, Sangakkara just made 156 not out in Sri Lanka's total of 268. That's some percentage. Not out, too. Maybe Sri Lanka's other batsmen were all off their mash on ecstasy pipes, you say? Not so. New Zealand are currently 66-4, so unless there's been a big party and only Kumar Sangakkara wasn't invited, the lad's a class above.

Full marks, Kumar. We respect batsmen who score when it matters.

Lasith Malinga's doing stuff that makes us happy

Yay. Fast bowling's not dead yet. Sri Lanka have absolutely walloped New Zealand in a one-dayer in Auckland. Lasith Malinga took 3-14. Chaminda Vaas took 3-10, but Malinga's the future. The future, you hear!

This is also good news for England in a seeing-what-you-want-to kind of a way. Sri Lanka absolutely battered England in the one-dayers over the summer. If Sri Lanka are THIS much better than New Zealand, maybe England aren't all that bad...

Benevolent Uncle Sanath got Sri Lanka off to a flyer like it was 1996 all over again, hitting 70 off 44 balls, which is just ludicrous really. He hit five sixes, which is quite a lot when you think about it. Sri Lanka made 262-6.

Then the fun REALLY started as New Zealand were bowled out for just 73 with only two players reaching double figures. We haven't seen a single ball of it, but we imagine Lasith Malinga looked serious and New Zealand's batsmen looked around pleading for help, but no-one answered their calls.

Bizarrely, Lasith Malinga has opted to have his hair cut like mum's was in 1983. Always ahead of her time, mum.

Murali took 2-7. It was a good match all round.

Lasith Malinga's bowling action

Lasith Malinga's bowling action is first-class. He slats it. He whangs it. He slings it. He doesn't chuck it. Better not use the word 'chuck'. No, what Lasith Malinga does is what all of us used to do when we were kids. He just tries to propel the ball as fast as humanly possible. It looks pretty weird, but it's effective. There are pros and cons.

Pros:

Lasith Malinga's action uses every part of his body in generating pace.

The ball is released from an unusually low point, which can catch out batsmen used to more conventional actions.

If he swings the ball in, it will also dip, due to the angle of the seam. Waqar Younis's inswinging yorker did this. Waqar Younis's inswinging yorker was just about the best delivery there's ever been.

If he swings it out, the ball will also rise, pitching fuller than the batsmen anticipates. This is likely to lead to false strokes.

Cons:

Accuracy. If Lasith Malinga releases at the wrong moment, the ball will either go full and down the leg side, or short and on the off-side.

Those of you with modern internet connections or at work can see a video of Lasith Malinga bowling against the West Indies here.

Go on Lasith Malinga. You fire your tennis ball into that piece of wood propped up with a brick. Your bowling action's purer than any in international cricket.


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Kumar Sangakkara hits hundred, wins match, raises expectations, probably loses us a pound

Kumar Sangakkara hit 110 today as a Murali-free Sri Lanka beat India in Rajkot.

Sri Lanka have been playing here there and everywhere this year and more often than not, they've been winning. We're particularly thinking back to the end of the English season, when they methodically dismantled England and left the pieces strewn from here to wherever you are.

We think it might be worth putting a quid on Sri Lanka for the World Cup.

Shakib al Hasan dropped

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that we're spelling our guy's name differently. That's because it changed on Cricinfo and we consider Cricinfo to be as close to a cricketing names dictionary as there is.

On the other hand, dictionaries don't tend to change their mind about spellings every once in a while. Consistency of spelling is something of a hallmark of the dictionary. Maybe we should look elsewhere.

However you spell it, Shakib al Hasan has been dropped from the Bangladesh team. As Miriam pointed out in her match report, he top-scored in the first Test against Sri Lanka, albeit with a less-than-modest 16.

Well how Bangladesh will be pining for his double-figure-scoring ability now. They've just been bowled out for 62 - a score that begs to be classed as paltry, but is actually slightly too low for that label.

Lasith Malinga took 4-25 and His Geniusness, Lord Muttiahford of Muralitharanshire took 4-14.

Sri Lanka v Bangladesh - day one match report

Miriam put this in the comments of the previous post. We're nothing if not lazy, so we're republishing the report in its entirety as a post in its own right. Thanks Miriam:

I watched this day of play on telly. Here is my match report (I know match reports are meant to be from live attendance, but it was a bit far to go given that I'm meant to be back at work tomorrow):

1) Michael Vandort has dyed his hair a reddish colour. As the day went on, the colour started to run onto his shirt collar. That shirt is now ruined - there's no way that's coming out in the wash.

2) There were lots of big crows / rooks / whatever they are called, on the field, being noisy, and being really quite indifferent to the cricket.

3) At one point the ball ended up lodged against Vandort's, erm, box.

4) Russell Arnold was commentating. He was quite good, I thought.

5) Jayawardene complained about Shahadat Hossain's grunt when he bowls.

6) Shakib Al Hasan top-scored for Bangladesh, but it was a very qualified success as his score was 16, out of a total of 89.

Five wickets for Murali

It's like someone's hacked out a big lump of our brain. We're thinking about what we're about to write and we're trying to come up with a title but nothing's happening.

We've forgotten how to use our mind. We just don't know how to get it moving. It doesn't come with any instructions or anything, so there's nothing to fall back on. Thinking's supposed to just happen, but what do you do when it doesn't just happen?

We also appear to be suffering from a touch of tunnel vision. If anyone thinks these symptoms add up to something serious can they let us know. We'd like to get comfy in time for rigor mortis to set in.

Now we've forgotten what we were going to write. Something about how Muralitharan's bowling figures against Bangladesh today (5-15) were the kind of figures you could be proud of.

It was something along the lines of: If they were your bowling figures, you could actually tell other people about them, unlike everything else you've ever done, which has been pathetically feeble and embarrassing.

Then we were going to say something about taking the bowling figures out for dinner, but that's when we started getting confused. Then our eyelids went all heavy.

Now we're really lost. This was actually even more confusing to write than it was to experience. Reading it through to check we'd written what we thought we had was more confusing still and re-reading this current sentence is probably going to break us.

Maybe we'll just click publish and hope that everything's okay. Hoping that everything's going to be okay worked for about an hour at some point in 2002 so we're sticking with it.

Australia v Sri Lanka - World Cup final 2007

Finally - FINALLY - we might get a match which isn't totally one-sided AND where the outcome actually matters. So far we've had even-but-meaningless contests or one-sided drubbings.

Australia drubbed South Africa so comprehensively yesterday, we don't really have anything to say about it. Australia were far, far better than South Africa - what can you add to that? It means Australia will play Sri Lanka in the final, which is the final we predicted (to ourself) after the first round of matches back in December or whenever it was.

Our money's literally on Sri Lanka, but Australia are favourites. Sri Lanka were far and away the best of the rest during the tournament and deserve their place, but, to us, Australia seem to have a stronger middle and lower order which should mean a decent total even if the top order fail for once. Sri Lanka's innings will be more dependent on one of the top four batting through.

Still, Australia haven't yet been tested. You can take this as a sign that they're miles better than everyone else, or alternatively you can take it that in spite of 500 matches, we still haven't seen them up against anyone decent. How can that be?

Australia beat Sri Lanka in the group stages, but Sri Lanka rested virtually their entire bowling attack for that game. Australia also missed out on facing another great bowler of merit during the group stages - Shane Bond. It'll be interesting to see how their top order cope with Lasith Malinga's pace, Chaminda Vaas's nous and Murali's retina-scorching brilliance.

So Australia's batsmen finally get tested; we finally have a decent game in the offing; and it's finally the final. It's been a long and uninspiring tournament. Hopefully the final match won't be representative of that.

Muttiah Muralitharan - four World Cup semi final wickets to go with the rest

It was nice to see the second-nicest man in cricket get a hundred in the World Cup semi final. Murali is of course the top man - in so many ways.

If anyone else had taken four wickets in a World Cup semi final, they'd be hoisted onto shoulders, showered with rose petals and then held there while someone painstakingly captured the moment with an oil painting. Muttiah Muralitharan takes four wickets and it isn't even news.

He's supposed to take four wickets in the World Cup semi final because he's a genius (a genial genius). To have been good enough to create that level of expectation is one thing. To live up to it so consistently as for it to become commonplace is another entirely. If we manage to get through a Saturday night without falling asleep at some point, people are impressed with us. That's the level of expectation that we've created.

Mahela Jayawardene's World Cup semi final hundred

Mahela Jayawardene's run of scores in the last World Cup reads as follows: one, five, nine, one, duck, duck and five.

That's 21 runs at the heady average of 3.5. By any stretch Mahela Jayawardene failed at the last World Cup.

During this current World Cup, Mahela Jayawardene has now hit 530 runs at 66.25. By any stretch it's a success.

Yesterday's 115 not out in the World Cup semi final was magnificent. His arrival at the crease seemed to coincide with the period of the match when players from both sides were paralysed with the enormity of the situation. Jayawardene said after the match that yes, it was a World Cup semi-final, but it was still just a game of cricket. Good thinking, that man.

He batted slowly for what seemed like an age, before lashing out in time-honoured World Cup tradition. It was the archetypal one-day innings. He reached his 50 from 76 balls - he'd hit three fours at this point. 33 balls later, he'd added 65 more runs made largely out of seven further fours and three sixes. This is how to bat in one-day cricket.

Mahela Jayawardene's been batting brilliantly for quite a while now. It's just unfortunate he's been overshadowed by Ricky Ponting and Mohammad Yousuf for most of that time. It would be hard to overshadow him if he wins the World Cup with another hundred though. Even an oversized replica of Matthew Hayden's chest positioned directly in front of the sun couldn't produce enough shadow for that. Not that there are any such plans, as far as we're aware.

Murali-free Sri Lanka lose to Australia

Australia beat Sri Lanka, but Murali wasn't playing, so it doesn't count.

Ricky Ponting says there's no point hiding Muralitharan for a later match because the Aussies play him as well as anyone.

That's only partly true. The fact is that the Australians haven't seen as much of Murali as some other sides because he didn't go on Sri Lanka's last tour Down Under because the Aussie crowds are too annoying.

Besides, if even Mahela Jayawardene gets out to Murali having faced him in the nets and watched him from the slips for eight years, it kind of implies that maybe you can't know everything there is to know by watching a bit of telly and having once got 50 against him.

Wouldn't it be intriguing if Australia lost the World Cup due to unfamiliarity with the great man because of their own supporters. And by 'intriguing', we do of course mean 'ace'.

Sanath Jayasuriya - opener, pinch-hitter, pirate

This might be a fairly redundant statement, but isn't Benevolent Uncle Sanath great?

He'll be 38 soon and we're guessing he'll retire after the World Cup. It's sad, but at least he seems to be raising his game for this final hurrah. Yesterday he hit 115 off 101 balls against the Windies.

Despite all the predictions, rapid hundreds haven't exactly been ten-a-penny. Sanath Jayasuriya however, was one player you'd expect one from. At least one.

In our head, when he plays that magnificent, aerial swat off the back foot outside off-stump, he shouts 'ha-haaa'. He does this every time he plays the shot - which is often.

Maybe it's how frequently he's been described as 'swashbuckling' that's given us this idea. It's almost pirate-like this exclamation. The campaign for more pirates in cricket starts here.

Video of Malinga taking four wickets in four balls

Well this was some bowling.

If you're not a fan of Lasith Malinga's, why not add some outraged comments to our post about Lasith Malinga's bowling action.

For the record, we think that his arm isn't any lower than Shane Warne's was. Call Malinga a chucker and you call Warne a chucker. It's also a straight arm. Straight as a Roman road.

Lasith Malinga's hat-trick-and-a-bit is in vain

How can one so seemingly puny, propel the ball so fast? With masses of effort it can be done, it seems. Lasith Malinga took four wickets in four balls, but Sri Lanka failed to beat South Africa as the Proteas got home with only one wicket to spare.

We still think that Sri Lanka have got a good chance in this World Cup, but they do have some weaknesses. Their most glaring is that their four best batsmen occupy the first four batting slots. This is true of many sides, but it's more true for Sri Lanka. Take four wickets early on and they're stuffed.

That's essentially what happened against South Africa, although Tillekeratne Dilshan and Russel Arnold pulled it back against South Africa's 'spinners'.

Chasing 210, South Africa were what is always described as 'cruising' at 206-5. 'Cruising' sounds so much better when you put it in inverted commas. What are we saying about the South Africans? We're just saying that they were 'cruising'. The South Africans won't mind us saying that, will they? Why would they? They WERE 'cruising'.

Anyway, it was at this point, with South Africa needing just four to win, that Lasith Malinga decided it was time to take a hat trick and then another wicket, the very next ball, just for good measure. Watch a video of Lasith Malinga's four wickets in four balls here.

South Africa were no longer 'cruising', but unfortunately for Sri Lanka and Sri Lankophiles the world over, they couldn't take that final wicket.