Six against five

England's capitulation yesterday can be put down to attrition as much anything else. The six batsmen, four bowler equation has them trapped over long series: they require six batsmen to score all the runs that you need with four bowlers, but they have four bowlers because five batsmen can't score enough runs. 

History says that unless your four bowlers include names like Marshall, Holding, Warne or McGrath, you need five. England need five. The difference on the speedgun at the Wanderers between Anderson and Broad and Morkel and Steyn was telling. England's bowlers were knackered, and the resting of Onions actually made sense, even if there's a debate to be had over his replacement.*

The solution must lie with five batsmen. Six makes it too comfortable, too easy to phone it in for a match or two. Which five should now be the puzzle, starting in Bangladesh. My money is on Ian Bell opening with Cook... You read it here first.

* Matthew Hoggard must have been looking at Sidebottom's speedgun readings with a wry eye. Steve Harmison - from memory the last England bowler before Sidebottom to puke on the pitch - must be pondering his big red face. So what hold does Siders have over the selectors? He even gets to bat above Jimmy Anderson, which is an interesting choice, to say the least. 

Double jeopardy

The moon landings faked, Lady Di offed by Prince Philip the 12-foot Lizard, 9/11 as an inside job... now add Graeme Smith given not out caught behind off Ryan Sidebottom at the Wanderers, 15 January 2010. Remember where you were when it happened.

TMS were first with the information that Daryl Harper, the third umpire, was not given the sound feed by host broadcasters SABC, and thus failed to hear what the rest of the world was hearing via many replays - the beefy nick from the beefy edge of the beefy Saffer skipper's bat.

Boycott was on air at the time and was instantly engaging, pointing out that most systems take time to settle, and that the ICC's Dave Richardson had done a good job in progressing the UDRS from its shambolic beginnings. He added too, that its advance is as inevitable as its mistakes.

All is true, but equally, like the slightly shifty enquiries so beloved of the Brown Government, the reliance on broadcasters for the decision-making equipment does open a gap in which conspiracies, however unlikely, can prosper. Long before the UDRS, when technology was just a TV toy, there were whispers that producers were adjusting pitch maps inwards when home sides were facing leg before shouts.

It's a point made here several times - the game must provide and pay for the equipment. And if an umpire like Harper is told the sound feed or anything else isn't available, he should be able to ask why not.

Smith got away with one, as players have been doing since the dawn of the game. But somehow the injustice is compounded when a player gets away with it twice. Buy a lotto ticket this weekend, Graeme, because your luck's in...

NB: Boycott is on rambunctious form at the moment. As well as his duties for TMS, he occasionally provides a pre-play report for the breakfast show on Radio Five Live, where he's generally interrogated by Sheila Fogerty. There were some hair-raising moments when he started, usually due to his dismissive references to Fogerty as 'luv'. But lately they've become quite a double act, to the point that this morning Fogerty felt emboldened enough to ask Geoffrey if the rumour they'd just heard that he has 'Sir Geoffrey Boycott' printed on his cheques was true. 'Oo told you that?' The great man asked. 'A South African journalist did...? he must be a double agent...'

Update from the Grassy Knoll: 'Just hearing that third umpire Daryl Harper had his volume dial set on four out of 10 when Smith's caught behind appeal was referred to him this morning. This just gets more ludicrous by the hour. Expect statements from the South African Broadcasting Corporation and the International Cricket Council in an attempt to mollify this debacle' [BBC, thanks to Brit for the spot...]

Note to Graeme Smith, Mickey Arthur et al

Although it's rather confusingly known as international cricket, you're only allowed to pick players from South Africa* to play for you.

* So are England, though. 

How we hate it when our 'friends' become successful...

The sunday papers are awash with the glorious rehabilitation of Ian Bell [yes, him again], which highlights that quandary all followers of team sports will find themselves in from time to time: how does it feel when the player you don't think should be there does well?

It's a strange state of mind. Their success in some way rebukes your judgement, confronts your arguments against them, makes you feel dumb. And yet success it is, for the good of the team.

It depends a little on whether your dislike of the player is rational and reasoned or whether it's personal, whether it hurts. Prejudice is one of the natural states of fandom, after all. I can say with a clear conscience that I enjoyed watching Bell bat in both innings at Newlands. They showed his range as a batsman, and, as most innings do, provoked his weaknesses too. He came through for his team in a meaningful last afternoon's cricket, and it was not just an individual victory - it rather pleasingly reinforced the decision making of captain and coach. And it shoved it up the Saffers, too, of course...

It's notable also how success recasts Bell's efforts in the Ashes. His couple of patchy of fifties, especially the one in the first dig at the Oval, have a different glow; their positives, rather than the negatives, are reinforced.

A note of caution: Bell himself seems to be under the impression [in his interviews at least] that he has repaid the investment in him, a notion Andy Flower went to some lengths to disabuse him of yesterday.

NB: An insightful piece from Michael Vaughan [yes, really] on the KP conundrum today, too. Wonders will never cease...

Bell and Colly and the infinite sadness [of Graeme Smith]

In common with other outlets this column might have given the impression that Ian Bell was undeserving of his place in the England side, never scored runs unless other people did and responded to pressure a bit like Lance Kluesener used to. 

In fact, we're happy to acknowledge that Mr Bell is the new Steve Waugh, flint-hearted with gunslinger's eyes, the wicket the oppo want back in the hutch most...

Well sort of. Credit where it's due, Bell was tough, resilient and played the situation. I'll buy the rest when he does it regularly. There were many words on 'breakthrough innings' from Ramprakash and Hick, too.

Steyn's spell to Collingwood after lunch was supreme Test match cricket. Steyn was magnificent, Colly unyielding. It's how things should be. 

Smith made one mistake: not realising England were playing at a venue beginning with the letter 'C'. Cardiff, Centurian, Capetown...

NB: Credit too to England's captain, coach and selectors. They have fit the system to the available players, rather than vice versa. They will need five bowlers at some point, if only to stop Jimmy Anderson taking years off his life... 

Bo selector

England's selectors were last night said to be 'as united as ever' in their desire to continue to pick the iconic cricketer Ian Bell on the tour of South Africa and beyond. 

'People say it must be a decision of huge symbolism for the country,' commented Geoff Miller, 'but we don't shirk that responsibility. Ian's presence in the side sends a message of hope to all of those young kids who aspire one day to hold a central contract. Moving him up and down the batting order until he finally gets some runs says, 'once you sign that contract, you will not be dropped'. Ian represents that significant minority of Test batsman who find it hard to average 40 in this age of useless bowling and flat wickets'. 

In the back of Miller's mind was no doubt the lack of public outcry when Bell was uncontroversially dropped in the West Indies last year, and later when a man who'd played one game was handed his spot at number three. 'We do have the contingency to push Ian down as far as number eight behind Swann and Broad if we have to,' Miller concluded. 

Nelson Mandela sent a message to the ECB praising Miller's stand. 'It is a beacon of hope to our own country to see Bell walking out when the fourth wicket falls and there's a collapse on,' he said.