Shock of the new

400 - it's the new 300.

Although if you can get 200 in a T20 game, 500 will be the new 400 soon enough.

NB: Best bit of Cricinfo commentary from the game - '34.6 Kumar to Dilshan, no run, he has scooped it into his face'.

Wide of the mark

There was a quite extraordinary decision in the India-Sri Lanka T20 game yesterday. Jayasuriya was bowling to Sharma, who swept him behind square to short fine leg. The umpire called it wide. Jayasuriya, who has played a few games of cricket, turned round to the umpire and said 'wiiide?' in gobsmacked manner. Yup said the umpire, and the match carried on.

It reminded me of a game I played in many years ago, an away match umpired by their man at both ends with one of our blokes doing square leg. He was ancient. The bowler ran in, and I pushed the ball back down the wicket to him. 

'How was that?' he asked the umpire. 

'What?' I said.

'Out' said the umpire.

'Unlucky mate,' said first slip. 'He always does that'.

Oh does he, I thought, as I walked off...

Confessions of a man insane enough to live with beasts...

Jarrod Kimber is not a normal Australian. He doesn't live in Australia. He honours a non-Australian idol. He does un-Australian things, like write a book about the 2009 Ashes. For those reasons alone, it would be worth reading but I suspect it will be funny, too, and not just about Mitchell Johnson.

NB: The only other Australian to go into print about 2009 has been Gideon Haigh, another terrific writer. The England side of the ledger stands at Andrew Strauss, Andrew Flintoff, The England Team's Official Story, Stuart Broad, Mike Atherton, the official DVD and the back end of Michael Vaughan's autobiography. Not that the market is dictated by who won at all...

Sehwag: The Dream

Further to the post below, another measure of greatness could be the degree to which it penetrates the subconscious. Last night I dreamed about Virender Sehwag. We were at the top of a very high green hill, which opened out onto a spectacular valley, me, Virender and another nameless cricketer. Viru was dressed in his whites and still had his blue headband on. 

For some reason, we had to get to the bottom of the hill. It was wet and had deep, muddy furrows in it, but Sehwag said, 'come on' and simply ran through the furrows like a mountain goat. At the bottom, with the skyscrapers of a distant city before us, I found some cards of the kind kids are meant to collect. Imbedded in each was a bit of footage of Sehwag playing a shot. The one I looked at was filmed from behind a net, and Viru came down the wicket and smashed the ball hard at the camera. 

The dream ended there, argument settled...

NB: Thanks to Jrod in the comments on the post below for pointing out that the Don got six runs closer than Sehwag to the three triple centuries. But then they couldn't field in those days. Have amended the post. 

Se7en: in praise of Viru

What is greatness in batting? It's a question worth asking. Virender Sehwag was seven runs away from doing something no-one has done. No-one, from Grace to Bradman, from Gavaskar to Richards, Tendulkar to Lara, no-one who's ever picked up a bat has scored three Test match triple centuries. In all of the history of the game, Sehwag has got almost as close anyone has. If he had scored seven more runs, the question would be moot already.

There is a certain tyranny to statistics. Seven runs, in the context of nine hundred, are neither here nor there, and yet statistics are an undoubted measure of greatness. There are batsmen - Border, Waugh [S], Tendulkar, Boycott, Chanderpaul, Dravid, Jayawardene - who are made great [albeit not exclusively] by them. Then there are batsmen who are ostensibly players of great innings - Lara and Viv Richards for example [which is not to deny the reach of their overall statistics]. There are others - Gower, Mark Waugh - whose aesthetic beauty overrode their stats.  There are yet more who were denied the chance but whose brilliance has them accepted anyway - Barry Richards and Graeme Pollock spring to mind. There are great partnerships - Greenidge and Haynes, Hayden and Langer. 

Then there is the notion of personality, best illustrated by the equivalency in stats between Shiv Chanderpaul and Viv Richards. Chanderpaul would certainly be more highly regarded if he had some of Richards' brooding aura.

So where does greatness leave Virender Sehwag? He has come of age in an Indian team containing three batsmen over whom the nation has obsessed. He is an avuncular and humble presence; he is more Inzy than King Viv physically. His average sets him alongside the greats, yet fifty is the new forty. He seems unconcerned by protecting or valuing his wicket. He even feels sorry for the bowlers he flays, not an emotion Boycott or Bradman usually bothered with.

And yet no-one has batted like Sehwag. Eleven consecutive times he turned centuries into scores of 150+, five of them went over 200 and two over 300. Last August but one in Sri Lanka, he carried his bat for 201 out of 329. He has made the game's greatest wicket-taker his bunny. He has scored the fastest 300 of all time. This is not just the stuff of greatness, it's the stuff of legend.

He may yet get another 300. His rarest talent is the ability to go on and on, to 'see ball, hit ball' for days on end. But even if he doesn't, I think history will see Sehwag as the avatar of a new era in batting, a transition between Tendulkar and Ponting and whatever comes next. He is a genius. He is undoubtedly, indisputably, ineffably great.

Top 40 hit parade

Two stories of note in the press today, firstly, Dileep Premachandran's excellent piece on India's new generation of batsmen in the Guardian, and All Out Cricket magazine's list of 'The 40 Best Players In The World Now'.

'If you don't agree with us,' AOC writes, 'then you're just plain wrong'. Here's the list:

40. Jesse Ryder

39. Ishant Sharma

38. Brendan McCullum

37. Zaheer Khan

36. Ross Taylor

35. James Anderson

34. Shakib-Al-Hasan

33. Shivnarine Chanderpaul

32. Umar Gul

31. Chris Gayle

30. Younis Khan

29. Daniel Vettori

28. Ajantha Mendis

27. Dwayne Bravo

26. Mike Hussey

25. Mahela Jayawardene

24. Andrew Flintoff

23. Gautam Gambhir

22. Brett Lee

21. Yuvraj Singh

20. JP Duminy

19. Shahid Afridi

18. Harbhajan Singh

17. Tillakaratne Dilshan

16. Shane Watson

15. Stuart Broad

14. Muttiah Muralitharan

13. Jacques Kallis

12. Virender Sehwag

11. Andrew Strauss

10. Mitchell Johnson

9. AB De Villiers

8. Kevin Pietersen

7. Sachin Tendulkar

6. Dale Steyn

5. Kumar Sangakkara

4. MS Dhoni

3. Michael Clarke

2. Ricky Ponting

1. Graeme Smith

Wot, no Ian Bell? 

NB: A prediction on the major points of contention: Hussey above 25 people. Mitchell Johnson above Andrew Strauss. Shane Watson above Dilshan, Gambhir and Gayle. 

Criminally overlooked player: Thilan Samaraweera

Formless

Form - or more accurately the lack of it - is an ineffable link between the club player and the pro. For the amateur, much of the professional experience can only be guessed at; it's probably impossible, even on your best day, to really know what it's like to hit the ball as they do, to deliver when you really have to, to play with your future on the line.

The absence of form, though, is universal. Watching Kevin Pietersen scratch around like a mortal, I could almost feel the ball hitting the bat just slightly away from the middle, could sense the disconnect between brain and hand, could know with some certainty how he felt. We've all been there. 

Being able to do something one day and then not the next is in a way what makes us human. The subtlest of things affect us in the smallest of ways, and it all adds up. It's not really the absence of form that's remarkable, rather it's the huge and complex sequence of reactions and timing required for being in form that's the miracle.

There seems to be no transitionary state between the two, either. Form doesn't appear to come back over a period of weeks. It's absent and then present, sometimes after the proverbial shot 'hit straight out of the middle' and sometimes after a scratchy fifty that has you remembering how it feels to stay in. 

Boycott always recommended a return to basics - hit the ball in the V enough times and the rest will take care of itself. Bob Woolmer's magisterial Art And Science Of Cricket has this to say: 'Many coaches can confirm that after a shocking performance in the middle, a struggling batsman's glaring technical faults evaporate the minute he enters the nets. Because batting is a reflex that occurs at a subconscious level, the more the mind tends to override those reflexes the more likely it is that errors will develop. It is thus vital to help the failing batsman to correct the erroneous thinking patterns that have developed as a result of repeated failure. That is not to deny the need for constant vigilance on the technical side, rather to stress that a more holistic approach almost always pays off when addressing a lack of form'.

Those two approaches are not exclusive. The beautiful internal rhythm that striking the ball straight back past the bowler produces is a holistic, healing thing in itself - the heartbeat of batting.