Six and out

Given the circumstances, it was maybe understandable that a remarkable stat slid beneath the radar last week: Shahid Afridi became the greatest hitter of sixes in international cricket. His 373rd panged over the boundary in Dubai, coming from just the second delivery he faced. Three balls later he was out, thus concluding perhaps the signature Afridi knock.

What the stat reflects, more than Afridi's mortal terror that he might, at some point in his career, play an innings open to the adjective 'boring', is how the methods of scoring are changing. Afridi's is probably not a record that is going to survive the career of say, David Warner or someone of his age and sensibility.

Viv Richards, the most domineering player of his era, hit 210 sixes, a total that Virender Sehwag skipped past in the Test against New Zealand. Bradman hit six in his career, Boycott eight, totals that Afridi exceeded in his first international innings.

The six is now central to limited overs batting, something intrinsic and totemic, and of course that filters into Test cricket too. It's been easier for batsmen to hit [shorter boundaries, better bats, less approbation on dismissal] and strangely, easier for bowlers to bear [face it, it's going to happen to everyone].

What brought it to mind was a question posed by elegantstroke in the post below about Barry Richards - who does Richards' game most compare to? Richards played in an era when a six was still not quite common currency. He did hit them, mostly via his early adoption of a type of elegant slog sweep, and when he would lean back, thrillingly, to get elevation over the bowler from his slim-edged bat, but they weren't his main scoring shot. Yet Richards powered along. He hit nine hundreds before lunch in his career. That's not a feat often replicated even now. Gordon Greenidge once remarked that it wasn't unusual for him to still be in single figures as applause for Richards' 50 rang around the ground [and Gordon didn't necessarily believe in holding back, either].

Richards, like Sehwag and Lara, just hit lots of boundaries. The artistry of batting is in hitting the ball where the fielders aren't. Therein lay his greatness and his genius, and theirs, too.

Sound advice

Tiger Woods finally meets the man who can guide him through this crisis...

Yin Yang, you're my thang...

Arrange the following adjectives against the players' names [answers below]: 'Overrated'; 'Overpaid'; 'Unpopular'; 'Overrated' - Callum Ferguson; Michael Clarke; Nathan Hauritz; David Warner.

It's deja vu all over again for this piece in the [Oz] Telegraph - or at least it is if you're English. Phrases so beloved of our journos for all of these years - 'why our cricket's in crisis'; 'age of the silver spoon'; 'players lack the ability to think for themselves'; 'whinges too much'; 'quite self-indulgent'; guaranteed seven-figure salaries'; 'structure that's 20 years behind the times' - come tumbling back. Only this time, they're not about us. [Yet].

However inconsistent your team, you can always rely on the papers...

Answers: Overrated - David Warner; Overpaid - Nathan Hauritz; Unpopular - Michael Clarke; Overrated - Callum Ferguson.

When he was king

Behold, Bad Bas, lost emperor of the game.

A wistful reverie awaits you there...

Dapper

With no need to take the hair shirt out of the wardrobe at least until England's young princes get a bloody nose from some plucky underdogs at the Gabba in a few weeks, why not avail yourself of a garment to get yourself in the mood? You know how much they love Mr Jardine, in word and deed.

There's this, too, if you want to feel like you're there. And best of all this, of course... Who did we beat in the final again?

Anyway, shameless plug over. As you were...

Sex, bribes, Marcus North...

Colin Cowdrey gets into a fight with his wife in the car on the way back from a party, and pulls out a clump of her hair... Len Hutton checks himself into rehab for alcohol abuse... Geoff Boycott 'forgets' that he's supposed to get out for less than 2o in a one-day international because Ray Illingworth's promised him $20,000 if he does... Don Bradman takes three girls back to his hotel room whilst on tour and then encourages one of them to 'jump ship' onto his roomie's bed because he's feeling 'a bit left out'... The Rev David Shepherd enjoys an encounter with a woman known fondly as 'The Perth Stripper'...

Not very likely, is it? Yet times change, and so do the kind of things that cricketers find themselves doing. Herschelle Gibbs has really raised the bar as far as the tell-all cricket yarn is concerned - To The Point is not exactly Don't Tell Kath. And no doubt agents are already approaching Jesse Ryder, Andrew Symonds etc.

But if you thought that Hershy had provided the most extraordinary thing you'd read this week, think again. Because the Sydney Morning Herald are reporting that the next captain of Australia could be... er, Marcus North. 'The team is not divided to the point of implosion, but a number of senoir players remain firmly opposed to the idea that Clarke will succeed Ricky Ponting...'

It has been generally accepted that an Ashes defeat this winter would mean the end of Ponting. With the kind of vacuum that might admit Marcus North to the job developing beneath him, that can no longer be considered a certainty. In a way, the decision to sack Ponting would smack of a kind of arrogance. If Australia lose, it will be because the team is not good enough any more, and that's hardly Ponting's fault. And unless he was prepared to swallow a demotion, it would also mean sacking Australia's best batsman.

It's easy to forget that England and Australia are the fourth and fifth best Test sides in the world. Both need to be pragmatic about winning and losing. The Australians might be best off regarding Ponting as more of a Border figure than a Waugh.

WG, Jubilee...

As a kid, I found an ancient but well preserved copy of Ranjitsinjhi's Jubilee Book Of Cricket in a junk shop and bought it. I can still see the cover now, the gold leaf of the title receding into the light blue hardboard covers. It was a great doorstop of a thing, almost entirely ghosted by CB Fry*, and I didn't read too much of its densely-set type, but nonetheless me and Ranji [and CB] connected because, essentially, the game is the game, in that century and in this.

The pictures were amazing. Because of the limitations of Victorian photography, the subjects had to stand still during the exposure. Thus the famous 'under leg shot' [ironically just about to be outmoded by Ranji's newfangled leg glance] saw a batsman balancing precariously whilst trying to look like he'd just raised his leg and belted the ball under it, and the man chosen as 'a bowler illustrating a doubtful delivery' looked like someone chucking wooden balls at a coconut shy. It was ace, and remains the only book I've ever owned that was written by a prince [or at least by a prince's mate].

There is obvious comedy about the game in that era, and obvious parallels with today too. It's what makes WG Grace Ate My Pedalo - a contemporary publication that in the interests of full disclosure was sent to me for nothing - demonically funny. The idea is slap-your-forehead simple: write about the modern game in Victorian style. You need to be good to get away with it, and Alan Tyers is. Thus he can pull off something like 'Letter From Oscar': 'My dearest Bosie, your sonnet was quite lovely, like sweet wine to me, as was the newspaper report of your 6-73 against Leicester. To read of those rough brutes groping in vain for your googlies was an exquisite joy', and also, on the book reviews page, nail 'No Boundaries, By Mr Ronald Irani': 'His views are as sickening as his prose, and indeed his medium paced bowling'.

The illustrations, by the enigmatic Beach, are superb, too - some of the 'Wisden Cricketer' covers are minor works of art. Send me one and I'd gladly hang it next to my picture of 'Bowler Illustrating a doubtful delivery'.

* It's obligatory to mention the essential CB Fry fact: his party trick was to jump backwards onto a mantelpiece. Not even AB de Villiers can do that. Neville Cardus called Ranji 'the midsummer night's dream of cricketers', too. That's good.