Table of contents for November 2016 in Inside Cricket

ODDLY ENOUGH! In the first innings of the third Test in Colombo (SSC) in August, Sri Lanka started 5 for 26 and Australia with 1 for 267. Who won? Sri Lanka by 163 runs. At times, badly begun is half done! In this Test, Sri Lanka was rescued by their number six and seven batsmen, Dinesh Chandimal (132 runs) and Dhanajaya de Silva (129) who added 211 runs for the sixth wicket after that horror start to the innings. A week earlier in the Gros Islet Test, India were also rescued by their number six and seven batsmen, Ravichandran Ashwin (118) and Wriddhiman Saha (104) who added 213 runs for the sixth wicket after India was 5 for 126. Chandimal, de Silva and Saha are wicketkeepers. In the Colombo…

We are the lucky generation. We watched two of the greatest spinners in the history of cricket displaying their contrastingly entrancing skills in the same decades – the 1990s to 2000s. Although both were legendary spinners – the top two wicket-takers in Test annals – no two spinners were ever less similar. Australia’s spin king Shane Warne was a leg-break/googly exponent who snared 708 Test scalps. Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan was an off-break/doosra specialist who went on to become the only bowler to grab 800 Test wickets (795 for Sri Lanka, five for ICC World XI). Both were controversial figures: Warne on and off the field, Murali dividing the cricket world over whether some of his doosras were legitimate. Warne was classical in his action, Murali more unusual. Each respected…

“It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of mature age are already sunk into corruption.” Charles de Montesquieu He is the youngest man to have his name etched on the Lord’s honours board, having scythed through England’s top order at the home of cricket in 2010. On the second morning of the fourth Test, England versus Pakistan, Lord’s, on August 26 of that year, with brisk pace and pronounced movement, the whippy left-armer ripped out four batsmen in his first ten deliveries, sending nos. 4, 5 and 6 – Pietersen, Collingwood and Morgan – back to the pavilion for ducks, a feat never before achieved against England in its Test history. By doing so, the teenager became the youngest bowler to reach 50…

▶ The GEL-ODI is a lightweight highperformance cricket shoe designed to offer optimum support and comfort while batting. The Fluid Ride midsole delivers exceptional cushioning, while DuoMax technology provides superior support and stability for long stints at the crease. Available now at www.asics.com. RRP: $250 ◀ The SCG Guided Walking Tour takes you on a 90-minute behind-the-scenes tour of the world-renowned Sydney Cricket Ground and Allianz Stadium. You may be a regular spectator or even a member, but you’ve never experienced the venues like this! You’ll see the hallowed turf; sit in dressing rooms where countless sporting legends have sat before; visit the SCG museum to see its iconic sports memorabilia, including Don Bradman’s 1948 baggy green; and venture down the Allianz Stadium players’ tunnel and Walk of Honour. It’s…

A STEPPE FORWARD The Mongolian Cricket Seed Appeal has managed to raise funds for the country’s first-ever cricket ground. Locals are discovering, and loving, the game, and are turning up excitedly to net sessions to test their skills. Our photos show locals and expatriate players in the nets at MACA Mongolian Friendship Cricket Ground on July 16, in Ulaanbaatar. The local hero of this visionary movement is Battulga Gombo, who founded the Mongolian Amateur Cricket Association in 2007. In 2009, “Tulga” attended Cricket Australia’s Cricket Coach Accreditation Course in Melbourne while his wife studied at Monash University. Years earlier, on a trip to Australia, Tulga, a national judo champion, became intrigued by the game and its ethos. Seeing cricket’s potential for positive social change, Battulga began an outreach program,…

The 2016-17 Australian Test cricket summer is shaping to be as challenging and exciting as any in recent times. An early-season three-Test series against perennial powerhouse South Africa looks daunting enough for a shaky Australian side. Follow that up with the same amount of Tests against a wonderfully talented Pakistan and the home side has its work cut out. There will be challenges on all fronts, with world-class batsmen, fearsome fastbowlers and not least the number-one ranked spinner in the world. Not only will Australia have to fend off these two sides, but a difficult tour of India follows and Australia’s selectors will have become all too aware of the Sub-Continental frailties of certain players that became apparent on the recent tour of Sri Lanka. It makes for a fascinating…

The Flight of the Pigeon – Second Ashes Test, Adelaide, 2002 He may have been dubbed “Pigeon”, but the sobriquet had absolutely zero to do with a propensity for the big man to take flight. Of course he was athletic. How could history’s best-performed fast bowler not be athletic? And he had a safe pair of hands. We can’t recall him grassing many – and besides, the man had pride. It irked him enough that his “tail-ender” status was a lot more obvious in this all-time great side than it might have been in a lesser team. Still, no-one expected him to get near the ball that popped off Michael Vaughan’s bat when he attempted to sweep Warne. The mis-hit ball headed toward the square-leg fence. McGrath was at…

Jonty Rhodes once attributed South Africa’s – and Australia’s – superior fielding to superior fields, which were well-grassed and bounced relatively truly, even at the lower levels (though we suspect the South African grounds are better at suburban level). There are many great fielders we couldn’t include due to space or lack of images – this is, after all, a gallery. Between South Africa’s Bland and Rhodes, for instance was Gary Kirsten. Anyone who was at the SCG in the 1972-73 series against Pakistan will never forget Aussie Ross Edwards’ unbelievable intercept to dismiss Sadiq Mohammad after Sadiq rocketed one off to the boundary. Edwards was a wonderful cover fieldsman in the tradition of Australian middle-order batsmen. Here’s a selection of fielding fiends who ranked among the very best.…

“Faf du Plessis?” We unreconstructed Anglo-Australians, who’d never heard of him, felt entitled to mock the sort of name that might appear attached to theatre criticism in some poncy lefty rag, or maybe a witless slapstick French reality cooking comedy. The verb “to faff” had entered our vocabulary as a great way to describe vapid irresolution, inaction, procrastination, avoidance. Typical usage: “I spent my day faffing around when I should have been doing my taxes.” It serves as a noun as well. As a noun, “a faff” is an activity that uses up a disproportionate amount of time – but anyway, “du Plessis!” “Doo Plessee” Puh-leez! And getting back to Faf – you know what that’s short for? Get this! Francoise! I kid you not. France-wah. This fart-arse with…

When South Africa came back into international cricket at the 1992 World Cup, only they knew what Jonty Rhodes could, and would, do. We’d been warned by South African team manager Mike Proctor in a press conference, but it wasn’t news. “Every team has great fieldsmen,” we thought. Proctor meant they had a fieldsman worth at least one bowler with his ability to dismiss batsmen, and one batsman as he stopped a handy inningsworth of runs. It’s rare that a sportsperson is selected for a national team by sheer force of their pioneering passion for one isolated aspect of their sport. Among other things, they’d run the risk of being labelled a “one-trick pony”, and the only way around that would be to perform so consistently well as to make…

And so, here we are, heading into another “summer” of cricket that began in July and will finish towards the end of June, perhaps even later. That’s a lot of cricket when it can’t be contained by the Gregorian calendar and it even outlasts the very equinox. We live, friends, in a time of peak cricket. Or do we? Could we fit more in? Chock it up, baby, wall-to-wall, all formats, all nations, all franchises and consultants contracted thereto playing all the time, for everybody. And then the player profiles on Cricket Australia’s website can list Ashton Agar alongside Tanwir Afzal (of Hong Kong), Amir Ali (Oman) and Merissa Aguilleira, the wicketkeeper bats-woman from Trinidad and Tobago. (Which it actually already does. True story.) Now, there are those who’d argue…