Saturday 13 March 2010

Strictly Come Batting

IPL 3 is underway and I have an issue with it.

Season one got by on novelty value and season two consolidated that. Now, though, it just looks like old men having a knockabout with some kids they bumped into on a local field.

The big stars of IPL 1 were the recently retired Shane Warne, Adam Gilchrist et al. Now, however, they've been out of cricket for three years and their presence seems all the more unlikely and incongruous as a result. The backers would have you believe that this is supposed to be the best players in the world playing against each other, but the best players in the world are, in large part, involved in internationals elsewhere and won't arrive for a while, so instead you have this retirement home atmosphere and a competition featuring some of the best ex-players in the world.

It's much like the issues I have with Strictly Come Dancing. If I want to watch dancing, I'd like to see it done by people who know what they're doing and are at the top of their game. So it is with cricket. I'm just not interested in seeing long-retired players trundle in for four overs.

Bangladesh's problem summed up in four words

Too many one-dayers.


Simple, really. Watching the Bangladesh batsmen struggle against England at the moment, the rashness of the shots is the key to it all. There isn't much opportunity for the Tigers to play the longer forms of the game domestically and nobody seems to want to play them in Test matches too often either. That creates a vicious circle and it looks difficult, if not impossible, to address it as the riches on offer in a game of wham-bam-thank-you-mam outstrip Test glory.

Mind, that Tamim Iqbal can play.