Melbourne 2012: Day Two. The Watto Conundrum.

The difficulties that arise from the early to bed early to rise bit kicked in as I scrolled down the Twitter feed around four this morning to find a couple of comments on Shane Watson's fitness and future. That's an issue that had been given a fair pummelling on the radio commentary yesterday, and the first reaction was an ah, yes, more of the same.

Scroll down a bit further, though, and there's the report of the latest injury. That calf muscle is playing up again, and it raises questions on around four fronts.

So, with The Reader's indulgence, I'd like to explore them.

The first relates to potential, how we try to spot it at a young age and what happens when we think we've succeeded. Then there are the separate issues related to Watto's batting and bowling and, finally, there's the question of the vice-captaincy.

I'd need to get out the Bowen Schoolboys' scorebooks to check on it definitively, but I suspect my awareness of a Shane Watson may date back as far as 1991, when I took a busload of kids on a loop through south-east Queensland. This was something that had its origins four years earlier when two rather influential figures associated with Queensland Primary School Cricket approached me with a question about this idea they'd be kicking around.

One of them was the President of the State body, the other the State Coach (later the key powerbroker on the selection panel). Both came from the Ipswich Schoolboys coaching setup, which is, or was, from what I've seen a unique non-club-affiliated setup that offers Saturday morning coaching to primary school kids from Year One upwards. That bit is, I think, significant, because it means they've got the ability to look at kids from before they hit the Under-Eight group, which is where Junior Cricket tends to kick in.

It was also, and I think this also has some bearing on the way things turned out, a time when there was a genuine border war between the school cricket set-up and the state-wide Junior associations, and the war concerned priorities in the Under-Thirteen age group.

For years, the Juniors had selected representative sides in the Twelves, Fourteens and Sixteens, which left the schools free to do their thing in the Thirteens and Fifteens at a time when state carnivals run by the two separate bodies clashed, so kids had to go one way or the other.

There's also, in the south-east of the state, a couple of Sunday fifty over competitions, the Treloar (formerly Shell) Shield for the Year Sevens and McCasker Trophy for Year Sixes. The teams that play for these are one step below the regional sides that head off to the State Carnival, and the existence of the two competitions was, to put it rather bluntly, a pain in the neck when you weren't from the southeast corner and were looking to push kids towards State selection.

It was difficult to avoid the suspicion that the selection panel had already drawn up a list of players of interest (that was invariably denied, usually with some vehemence) and the NQ position tended to be that if we wanted to get our kids looked at properly we needed to get someone onto the selection panel, though there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Which is why, when Granty and Les cornered me and asked whether I reckoned they'd be able to get a game in Bowen if they put their Shell and McCasker sides on a bus and headed north, my response was an immediate and definite yes.

That first trip came in a marathon exercise in 1988, and involved games in Rockhampton, Bowen, Burdekin, Townsville, Pioneer Valley and Gladstone over the two week September vacation. They weren't going to repeat the exercise every year, which explains why, having hosted them in '88 and gone along for the ride while they headed to Townsville, I organised a bus trip for Whitsunday kids in 1989.

They repeated their exercise in '90 and that explains why I was back down there in '91, when there may well have been a Year Five kid with the surname Watson playing for their McCasker side against my bus trip kids.

There was definitely a Watson on the bus when they headed north on '92, because he belted my collection of local kids all around the park, scoring a substantial ton while I set about trying to get a wicketkeeper from Proserpine noticed in the other game, where an assortment of last year's Bowen kids, a couple of ring ins and a smattering of this year's side were taking on the Ipswich Shell side.

Watson was there in the West Moreton side when we went down to the State Carnival in Toowoomba later that year, and may have been the bowler Josh Movigliatti slapped for six off the last ball of the fiftieth over, securing the margin that eventually won us the game and put us on the road to winning the State Final.

He was there again when we went to Bundaberg next year, and went on to make that year's State side (which was obviously what he was being set for) and subsequently picked up a scholarship to Ipswich Grammar school, providing an education one suspects his parents may not have been able to afford to pay for. I'd organised something similar for a Bowen kid some five years earlier.

Watson subsequently made his way through the ranks, up to the point where he headed off to the Australian Cricket Academy and was subsequently lured for a spell in Tasmania before he headed back to the Sunshine State and subsequently relocated to Sydney.

Now, that's a rather longwinded ay of getting to the point, but the point here is that we're talking someone who has obviously been identified as something special from a very young age and been carefully nurtured to bring him along.

You probably guessed that already, but the long windedness is my way of pointing out that I saw some of the early part, and I'm not Kerry O'Keeffe saying He went to Ipswich Grammar, didn't he? I know he did, and I know the boarding master who would have largely set those arrangements in place. He was driving the Ipswich Schoolboys' bus in '88, '90 and '92.

Significantly, by the time he hit secondary school Watson had succumbed to the first round of stress fractures in a lengthy list of injury problems.

This word of mouth thing is something that will seem very clannish to an outsider, but it was obvious Shane was being set for stardom, and it was obvious from the time he was twelve. In Bundaberg, if I recall correctly, he hadn't had a great Carnival, and I saw him being spoken to quite seriously as he waited to bat in the Final. Spoken to, in fact, by the most influential member of the selection panel and the State President, both of whom, of course, had known him since he was knee high to a grasshopper.

Now, anyone who has done any coaching at all has probably dreamed of finding a kid who's good enough to play for Australia, and there aren't too many who actually have, but you don't get into contention for an Australian side without picking up significant word of mouth along the way and that word of mouth can often influence people to persist with players in situations where someone else might get dropped.

I'm not suggesting Shane needed to make runs in that State Final to make the State side, but the game was delicately poised, and I think that if West Moreton or Metropolitan West were going to win that game they needed runs from their star batting all-rounder.

I don't think you can look at Watson's current situation without being aware of those factors running through his background. He was set for stardom a long time ago, and he's been thought of in that Botham, Kallis, Flintoff role since he was in short pants.

So, where are we going with this one? What about the batting, the bowling and the vice-captaincy?

Let's turn the attention to the batting, because that was what he was doing yesterday when the failure to turn fifties into hundreds was put under the microscope.

Since age eleven he's been rated good enough to play for Australia, and along the way he's picked up influential supporters on the basis that he's good enough to bat in the top six, and will be a very useful third or fourth seamer. It's that combination that counts here.

If he's just being looked at as a bat, the failure to convert is, indeed, a strong argument for someone else. On current form you may well be inclined to look elsewhere if you're just looking at the batting.

And if you're just looking at the batting then, yes, he might be better suited to opening. Fine. But if you head down that direction it seems you're putting a line through the bowling side of things. Maybe not ruling it out completely, but definitely limiting that fourth seamer's role.

For mine, he bats somewhere between Three and Seven if he's going to bowl, and if he isn't he can open, but the same form factors that apply to every other specialist bat apply.

But there's the bowling to consider as well, and in the current situation where injury problems are being associated with sending down more than fifty overs in a Test, Watto's overs are a very important consideration. Take them out of the equation and go into a Test with three specialist seamers and a spinner and you're back in the situation where Siddle and Hilfenhaus were ruled out of Perth after Pattinson broke down in Adelaide.

In the current situation there's definitely a place for a third or fourth seamer who can bat in the first seven. In fact, if you're going to play a spinner (and that's another kettle of fish) that's where he has to bat because his fast bowling confreres and the spinner will be Eight, Nine, Ten and Jack.

There's a further significant consideration. When you're talking Watto and adding fourth seamer to the equation you're not just getting a common or garden fourth seamer. When he's fit and firing he's bordering on the genuinely quick side of things with the genuinely quick temperament to match.

We might be looking for someone in the Kallis mould, and he might not be quite there, but throw in that temperament and you've arguably got someone in, say, the same class as Botham with a significantly lower crap ball quotient.

Or a Flintoff who bats a bit better...

Which, I guess, underlines the Bowling Watto goes somewhere between Three and Six argument. If he's not going to bowl he may be leaving a vacancy for someone who can bowl and bat Seven with Wade at Six, but that starts to bring in questions about Hussey, doesn't it?

Then there's the Vice-Captaincy which is, from where I'm sitting, a mistake. Assuming the Vice-Captain is the heir apparent to the Captaincy there's no point in giving it to somebody who is, increasingly, looking like a game by game proposition.

If he's forced out through injury the Vice Captaincy should go elsewhere, and it shouldn't be automatically restored when he's back in the fold again.

On the question of his replacement it's obvious Khawaja is the first cab off the rank, which, in turn, opens up other possibilities if and when Watto returns. If Khawaja fires and question marks remain beside the names of Cowan or Hughes, Usman can bat Three and the survivor can open with Warner.

Given the fact that we're heading into the final Test on Wednesday, with the short turnaround there's the possibility of further fractures in the fast bowling ranks, so Khawaja's inclusion may raise the question of who bowls Watto's overs. In that regard, I'd return to my earlier point that anyone with aspirations for a specialist batting spot in the Australian top six would be well advised to work on his bowling.

In any case, since we've got a couple of relatively inconsequential One Day series after this we can bowl Siddle, Johnson and Bird to the point where they'll need to be rested, can't we?

The key questions for today, for Hughesy's money:

Does Johnson get his ton? If he does, might that justify a move up the order to Eight or, dare I say it, Seven? With Wade slotting into Six when Hussey goes and the fourth seamer who can bat a bit (and I'm thinking Henriques, Christian or perhaps Mitchell Marsh here) at Seven or Eight?

Oh, and do Siddle and company get the day off tomorrow?

Melbourne 2012: Day One

You can say what you like about the rotation policy (whether the beast actually exists or not, which is, of course, an entirely different kettle of fish) but it's hard to imagine an Australian attack doing much better than Messrs Siddle, Bird, Johnson and Watson did against Sri Lanka yesterday.

True, it was against a side batting first on a track that had a little early life (as they should if we're not going to paint a line down the middle of the thing).

Yes, it was against a side that was brought up on flat decks who don't like it bouncy in the first place, even if they have chosen to bat after winning the toss.

Agreed, it wasn't the best trio plus Watson we could put on the park, but Pattinson and Cummins are injured, and Starc, if you can believe the word that's being put out, had some niggles so it wasn't a rigid enforcement of a policy that may not exist (that's according to the same sources that're suggesting Starc wasn't quite right).

That, however, is the point.

We have an issue with fast bowlers breaking down, so it's increasingly unlikely we'll have our best trio plus Watson on the park at any time in the foreseeable future, though it's always nice to dream. What we need is a viable bowling group that's capable of taking twenty wickets between them, and this one definitely looked the part yesterday.

They might not look the part tomorrow, or next week, or at some unspecified time in the future, but they looked the part yesterday, and that's what mattered.

Bird, the controversial part of the equation (assuming the final decision was based on Bird or Starc rather than Johnson or Starc) looked the goods and did enough to suggest he'll be an ongoing part of the group. He'll probably bowl better and do worse in terms of results in the wickets taken column, and he may not go on at all, but he did enough to suggest he's going to be around for a bit.

Siddle was Siddle, which is what we expect, and the issue where he's concerned is to ensure that he's there rather than sitting on the sidelines, which means he may need to be rested some time, and you'd think Sydney may be the occasion.

And if Siddle was Siddle, Johnson was definitely Johnson, leaking a few runs when Sangakkara got onto him, but I think you want the bats fancying their chances against him.

And when Lyon came on to help with the mopping up he obliged.

Generally, I thought, it was a tidy performance. Maybe not a great one, but as good as you're entitled to expect.

It's a pity you can't say the same thing about the batting.

Another run out that results from ball watching was what actually did the damage, of course, but I definitely heard echoes of Geoffrey Boycott suggesting things wouldn't look so cheery if you added three quick wickets to the score as we went from 0/95 to 3/117.

Warner went the way he's always likely to go, perhaps a little earlier than he should have done to a trap that had obviously just been set, but that's the way he bats and he's there with a licence to give it a go.

Cowan's dismissal wasn't that bad a shot snared by a very good catch, but that's what happens at the top level, so you take the good with the bad even if you do occasionally get the rough end of the pineapple.

Which brings me to Hughes, and a second run out in a fairly short time span since his recall to the side. This is what shouldn't happen at the top level, though it's hard to see how the fault can be rectified when it does.

If you were running a squad of juniors with a couple of coaches on the ground you could address this sort of thing in a centre wicket practice session, with bowlers bowling, batsmen batting and running between wickets and the coaching staff keeping an eagle eye on proceedings, dismissing batsmen for failure to call correctly, failing to respond, turning blind or using any other pernickety excuse to pounce on bad habits before they become ingrained. One mistake and you're out, next please, and you'd be looking to run through the side in about half an hour.

You'd then send 'em off for a drink, call them back, deliver the lecture and remind them of the way things are supposed to work, and then spend an hour on a similar exercise with slightly less stringent supervision.

I'm not sure you'd be able to do that with an international side. Maybe a return to the basics as per the coaching manual would be possible by invoking an automatic $10 (or 20, or 100, the amount probably isn't important) fine for the team slush fund if someone is spotted watching the ball rather than going on the partner's call).

In a competitive environment you'd expect the entire dressing room to be on the lookout once one or two of them had been pinged for the hundred or whatever. After all, once you've been pinged there's a score to settle with the blokes who pinged you...

But it's something that needs thinking about. We hear all sorts of justifications for things that don't quite fit into the conventional thinking and the coaching manual, such as Dean Jones' suggestion that turning blind gave him extra microseconds to turn ones into twos, twos into threes. I'm sure it did, but if it also happened to cost a wicket or two the extra couple of runs probably wasn't worth it.

In any case, at 3/150 casing 156, Clarke and Watson at the crease, Hussey, Wade and the tail to come you'd be looking towards something between 400 and 450 as a par score by stumps today, and a win by an innings and a bit around the middle of the last session on Day Four, but there's many a slip between the cup and the lip…

Melbourne 2012: Pre-Test Prognostications

You might think, given the quantity of column inches devoted to the fast bowling rotation policy and the question mark over Michael Clarke's hamstring, there's not much that can be added to what's already out there, but as I set off around the morning lap around town last Friday I devoted a fair bit of thought to these matters, and though it's close to a week later I'm still inclined to have a go at transferring those thoughts into digital data.

Now, I should make it clear from the start that I don't have an issue with the rotation policy, arbitrary and inconsistent as it would seem to be. That inconsistency, by the way, is largely an issue because there seems to be one rule for the trundlers and another for the willow-wielders.

But we already knew that, didn't we? As Freddie Trueman was wont to remark the last bowler to receive a knighthood was Sir Francis Drake. That's not actually true either, but the astute reader will catch my drift.

So, predictably, Starc makes way for Bird to make his debut, and a bit over three hours before the start of the Boxing Day Test a squiz at the ABC News website has Clarke 'positive' about Boxing Day Test.

So let's tick all the boxes beside the Clarke will play argument.

He's the captain, so he gets to decide his own fate, having watched while Ponting did the same thing. Check.

He's a batsman. Say no more. Check.

There's a chance he'll pass Punter's record for the number of runs scored in a calendar year if he plays, and there's an outside chance he can run down Mohammad Yousuf's record number of runs in a calendar year. He'll need a triple century to do it (or perhaps a double and a single) to do it, which would effectively rule out any niggling questions about his hammie if he managed to do it.

Along the way, even if he doesn't reach an aggregate of 1789 for 2012, he's sitting on 1489, and may well pass Ponting's 1503 from 2003 and 1544 from 2005, Tendulkar's 1562 from 2010, Graham Smith's 1656 from 2008, and possibly Viv Richards' 1710 from 1976.

So there are records out there that might be rewritten. Check.

And there's the question of whether Watto is the right man to fill in the captaincy if Pup doesn't play. See He's the captain above. Check.

But let's pause for a moment and consider what happens if he does play, scores that triple century and does the hammie again, ruling him out of India and The Ashes. Worth the risk?

From where I'm sitting the whole chamozzle is the result of long standing issues that run all the way back to that fateful morning in 2005 when McGrath trod on the cricket ball, turned his ankle and lost us The Ashes.

You might think that's drawing a long bow, but stop for a moment and consider what ensued out of that loss.

First, we had a whole slew of retirements that were postponed until after we got the urn back in 2007. Virtually every member of that 2005 side played on until things were put right, and when you're looking at the who else could do the job as skipper bit today question, the first thing you note is the absence of established senior players apart from Messrs Clarke and Hussey.

Then, when we'd got the urn back we promptly yielded it again in 2009, with the Mitchell Johnson issue influencing team selection (we might need Watto to bowl, so how do we fit him in the eleven? Well, I guess he has to open) and subsequent desire on Ponting's part to go over and bring the thing back again.

The result of all that is a batting order where One, Two and Three are still finding their feet, and while we've possibly got an adequate substitute waiting in the wings the uncertainty about the top means you might be tempted to play it sort of safe by giving Pup a run.

Actually, if you take the building up the stocks argument that is used to justify rotating the quicks, Clarke should not play. Give Khawaja the run and spell Hussey for Sydney so either Khawaja gets a second go or Doolan gets a guernsey to see how he looks.

After all, Starc gets rested to make sure he's fit for India and England, and slots into a pace battery that reads (at the moment, fully fit) Siddle, Starc, Johnson, Bird, Watson with Pattinson, Cummins, Hilfenhaus, Hastings and any number of other contenders lurking on the fringes waiting for a chance to prove their fitness.

I'm fairly upbeat about getting a strong attack out of that bunch, a collective of seven to nine bowlers who can be mixed and matched without losing too much.

But when it comes to the batting, no, we have to play Clarke (or Ponting or Hussey, take your pick, the name's not important, it's the principle) because he's the best we've got for that job even if he's got a question mark over fitness, form or whatever.

I recently heard someone ask what happened to South Australia's Callum Ferguson, who seemed, at one point, to be the next cab off the batting rank. Well, it's obvious, isn't it? He might have been scoring runs at the time but we don't do rotations as far as the batting's concerned, because batsmen are less likely to break down...

But it is, and arguably has always been, a batsman's game…

Hobart 2012: Day Five

It took a bit longer than one would have liked, but in the end Hobart wound up delivering the 1-0 lead in the three Test series that should ensure Australia's spot in the Test rankings doesn't slip.

At the same time this wasn't the performance of a side that's going to be moving upwards in those rankings either. It's difficult to see us outgunning South Africa any time in the immediate future and England have done remarkably well on the subcontinent. If either is going to slip from their current spots in the pecking order it'll most likely be the result of failure to deliver their full potential.

That could happen, of course. Kevin Pietersen could have another spat with everyone else in the England dressing room, and the entire South African pace attack could be struck down with a case of food poisoning that leaves them incapable of hitting the 120kph mark for the next eighteen months, but those are the sort of factors you can't bank on.

The only things you can work on, in the long run, are the things you control, and the performances of teams playing in other games isn't one of them.

So, at this point, how do we look?

Well, it must be said, we're probably about where we could reasonably expect to be, with one or two major problems.

The first of those is that the attack needs to include Siddle since he's the one bloke who seems able to perform consistently. Take him out and the difference is obvious.

The second is that Lyon seems to have run into the wall in the Work in Progress department. Maybe there's a bit of the we're missing one of the quicks factor in there, but he's failed to deliver the last day knockout blow twice now. Alarm bells should be ringing.

As far as the batting order is concerned the top three look to be about as good as we can come up with, though none of them have concreted themselves into their spot in the order.

Warner looks secure in one opener's spot, Cowan looked ugly in the first dig and much better in the second and Hughes did enough to justify selection without staking a cast iron claim to Three.

I'm not entirely convinced Watson is the answer at Four either, but he can sort that bit out by scoring some runs. In any case I think he's better there than opening. He should be good enough to bat Four, Five or Six and at the moment we need his overs to round out the bowling attack. Twenty overs in the first innings (Starc 24, Siddle 25, Lyon 25) and twenty-seven in the second (Starc 28, Siddle 26, Lyon 32) are probably a bit more than you'd want him to bowl, but he's shown he can do his share of the workload, and there's a bit of snarl in there as well. That's always useful.

Clarke at Five and Hussey at Six are safe, though you can't help wondering if Hussey will be there come April next year.

I'm not sure about Wade behind the sticks, but then again we've moved on from Haddin, there's a question mark over Paine and there isn't an obvious next cab on the rank.

Of the bowlers a fit Siddle is a Shoo-in, Starc is coming along in leaps and bounds, and Lyon will be looking nervously over his shoulder if a spinner starts taking a swag of wickets when the Shield resumes. I don't see any in the leading wicket takers' table at the moment, and that starts with Bird on 27 and runs down to McDermott, Herrick and Siddle with 11, so you'd reckon he's safe for the moment, but still needs to deliver.

Still needs to deliver is, of course, a comment you can attach to Warner, Cowan, Hughes and Wade at the moment, so he's hardly Robinson Crusoe in that department. You'd throw Watson into that list as well if he didn't have the old two bites of the cheery when it comes to performing and there wasn't the issue of bowlers breaking down and the side needing Watto's overs.

As far as Sydney and Melbourne are concerned, Hobart showed there's a bit of fight in this Sri Lankan side, but a 1-0 lead in home conditions with Melbourne next should be enough to bring home the bacon.

Hobart 2012: Day Four

So, on the basis of what unfolded yesterday we're looking at two substitutions and a change. Predictably, the speculation has already started, and one notes (with a certain amount of wry amusement) there's even a suggestion that Haddin may return to the side, playing as a specialist batsman.

Well, I suppose he could, and so, just as an emergency measure you understand, could Ponting (he wrote, tongue firmly in cheek). It all depends on whether you're looking at a stopgap measure or the next step in the evolution of the Australian side.

While I'm not suggesting we're already looking towards a long-term successor for Clarke let's start by looking at the captaincy, where there are three contenders: Watson, Hussey, or someone who's not in the current eleven.

Assuming he's still fit come Boxing Day, which isn't guaranteed, the captaincy has to go to Watson. As Vice Captain he's obviously next in line, so we may as well see what sort of a fist he makes of the role. This, of course, rests on the assumption that we take the last eight wickets today, and that Sri Lanka fail to score the 328 they need for their first victory on Australian soil.

Out of the current XI, the only other possibility is Hussey, who probably wouldn’t do a bad job but isn’t a long term prospect.

Take a look outside the current side, and assuming you don’t do something ridiculous like try to lure Ponting out of retirement, that suggestion of playing Haddin as a specialist bat might make sense if you’re really desperate and convinced Watto can’t do it.

The only other candidate would be Bailey, who could go into the Clarke slot if you were looking to provide a long term alternative to Watto, but he’d have to be able to cement his place in the side, which would only seem to be possible if you remove Hussey from long term considerations.

You'd expect Clarke will be back if injury rules him out of Melbourne, possibly as soon as Sydney, if not, then definitely before India, which seems to have been slotted in (or is in the process of being slotted in) between now and The Ashes in the middle of next year.

So, assuming Watto is fit he's the captain because we need to see what sort of fist he makes of the job.

On the same basis, you'd go Johnson for Hilfenhaus with one major proviso. I heard someone on the ABC commentary referring to a Mitchell Johnson statement that he's looking at a second phase of his career when he does a Lillee, slows down and concentrates on line and length.

Sorry, Mitch, if that's the case don't let the door hit your arse on the way out…

If he plays it has to be with a stern directive that he wangs down an average of around 1.8 really quick deliveries an over. At least one, sometimes two, occasionally three, but they need to be quick.

He can pace himself the rest of the time, operating no slower than fast medium, but there's got to be something there to make batsmen nervous, and it has to be there on a regular basis. Once he’s gone close to taking your head off early in the over you don’t want to be assuming you’re safe for the rest of it, and once he’s done it again...

Assuming Johnson into the eleven for Hilfenhaus you'd be looking for someone to fill his slot as twelfth man, and given the workload the remainder of the current attack will be going through today I'd go for two someones in the shape of Bird and Feldman (or maybe Cutting).

And I'd have both (or possibly all three) of them in an expanded squad of fourteen or fifteen for Melbourne.

On the batting vacancy, I'd go Khawaja or Doolan, and again, I'd have both of them lining up for the team prep in Melbourne, partly to be on the safe side but more particularly to ensure they're getting themselves into long form rather than Big Bash mode if necessary.

So, Hughesy's squad for Christmas lunch in Melbourne:

Warner, Cowan, Hughes, Watson, Clarke (assuming he hasn't been ruled out already), Khawaja/Doolan (both if no Clarke), Hussey, Wade, Siddle, Starc, Johnson, Bird/Feldman (preferably both), Lyon.

And for the rest of the Hobart Test?

Who knows?

If Sri Lanka can get through the first session without losing Sangakarra or Mahela they're actually a chance to win it, more so if that pair are still there at the tea break.

Long term survival on this track against a full attack is, however, highly unlikely.

If Siddle, Starc and Watson are all still firing at lunch and Lyon has been getting some assistance, you'd say the chances of Sri Lanka surviving the day would be slim.

If the three quicks are still on the paddock by tea and Lyon hasn’t been belted out of the attack, you'd say those chances were non-existent, but take just one of them out of the equation and things will become very interesting indeed.

Hobart 2012: Day Three

Yesterday, being rather bullish about an Australian victory, I concluded:

On the other hand, although we often suspect there's a script in operation, real life tends to have fate lurking around the corner slipping the lead into the boxing glove, so I suspect both declaration scenarios will prove inoperative...

The lead, predictably came in the form of yet another breakdown from yet another Australian fast bowler, and all scenarios promptly went out the window when Hilfenhaus trudged off the field shortly before the Frockster and the Affianced arrived to whisk us off to Monte's for lunch.

An hour to get there, an hour for lunch and an hour to come back took a fair chunk out of the day, and when the neighbour fronted seeking assistance with a network problem that coincided with the Siddle burst that wound up the Sri Lankan innings, so I didn't get to see much of the day's proceedings, and was thinking of giving a Day Three blog entry the big flick pass until I spotted this article in this morning's online edition of The Australian.

I'm not in the habit of grabbing quotes off newspapers for blog entries, but in this case I couldn't help myself.

Team physiotherapist Alex Kountouris said the spate of injuries was a complex problem.

That was followed by a longer quote that could've been cut and pasted, and a listing of the injury toll covering Pattinson, Cummins, Harris, Hastings, Hazlewood, Copeland, Cutting and Mitchell Marsh and goes on to point out that Kountouris has completed a number of studies on fast bowlers along with the team doctors, and that their research suggests anyone under 25 is almost guaranteed to break down once a year.

Hmmm.

Looking down the list of walking wounded there are a couple of side strains apart from the one that took out Hilfie yesterday, back soreness and stress fractures and a serious hamstring injury (Marsh).

So there are recurring themes, and we need to figure out what's causing them. I spent most of the morning walk contemplating these matters and around half way around had reduced the possibilities to three basic factors. The actual cause of each injury issue probably lies in the interaction of the three of them, and that, I guess, is where the complexity comes in.

One possibility, of course, is that it's wear and tear, which is the explanation that brings out the it was different in the old days crowd. Wear and tear becomes a management issue, and we're already heading along that path, but the injuries keep coming.

We've been very careful to limit the workloads of kids on the way up, and we're a long way from the times when there were no bowling limits and I saw twelve-year-old kids sending down as many as twenty-two overs in a fifty over game. Workload limits have progressively been lowered, which may be a contributory factor to the current situation where you might question the core strength of some of these blokes, but those limits aren't going to go away.

And, in any case, if there are going to be wear and tear issues they're probably also going to reflect problems with the other two likely areas of concern.

One of those concerns bowling technique, and the other involves physiology and some of the associated biomechanics. There's almost certainly a degree of interaction between those as well, but let's look at the two of them separately.

You'd reckon that the technical issues that were identified with the bowling action would have been well and truly sorted out by now, but they might be worth a cursory glance just to remind ourselves of things that used to be important around thirty years ago.

At that point, there was a problem with what was termed a mixed action, which was seen to be a contributory factor in stress fractures and involved the correlation between the use of the front arm and the position of the back foot as the bowler lands in his delivery stride. The theory was that if you bowled in the classical side on manner your back foot should land parallel to the popping crease and your front arm should be high and come down straight rather than falling across the body.

If you've got a more front on action (a la Malcolm Marshall) your feet should have been pointing down the track. Land with your back foot parallel, the theory went, and you're setting yourself up for back problems.

Bowling techniques, of course, are an individual thing, and no two actions are exactly the same, but I suspect there are little issues that creep in and need to be addressed, but the key issue in this regard is who spots them and how they get addressed.

And, more significantly, when they get addressed.

There are a number of highly rated coaches out there doing their thing at various levels and it goes without saying they're not going to agree on everything. Dennis Lillee might look at someone's action and say it's fine while, say, Geoff Dymock might look at James Pattinson (and there was something on the ABC radio about this, so it's not something that I just plucked out of the air) and identify an issue here that might have implications there.

Given the nature of the beast, anyone trying to incorporate all of this often-contradictory advice is going to be reminded that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, but if there are highly rated coaches out there and they're identifying things that seem likely to be causing an issue these things should be noted.

Beyond the wear and tear and technical issues, there's the issue of basic physiology and the way it interacts with the bowling action, and here, I suspect, is where the problem lies, particularly if you're looking at the up and coming quickie and suggesting kids today don't have the same core strength they used to have.

The obvious way to overcome this is to set them to work in the gym, which is, I think, fine in theory, but tends to put muscle and bulk in areas where it wouldn't normally be, or places where there wouldn't normally be so much of it.

The other factor that might be contributing is the fact that bowlers in the modern era are trying to do too much in terms of variety of deliveries. Time was you had your quickie bowling a stock ball with one or two variations, but in the era of Twenty20 cricket I've heard suggestions that you need to be able to send down six different deliveries each over to keep the batsman guessing which could well be a recipe for disaster as far as the physiology is concerned.

But enough of that. With Sri Lanka having clawed their way back into the match with 336 in reply to 450, and with 27 added to the 114 run margin, that's a handy lead, and you'd expect, at around a hundred a session, under normal circumstances we'd be looking at around a 250 lead by lunch, 350 by tea and 400 an hour or so into the final session.

Allow for the extra half hour to make up for time lost through rain, and you'd adjust those (and modify again with Warner at the crease and Hughes to come). Hughesy's prediction: 290 ahead by lunch, 410 at tea. Half an hour into the final session before a declaration that sets the visitors 450.

So let's see how the wheels fall off this time...

Hobart 2012: Day Two

Apart from the rain interruptions it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Day Two in Hobart went pretty much according to the script, though for a while I wasn't sure whose script we were using.

When Clarke went early it could have been Sri Lanka's, the one that called for a brisk run through the Australian tail, presumably by removing Wade before he got started and then would have involved keeping Hussey off strike and maximising the exposure of Eight, Nine, Ten and Jack to Herath while maintaining pressure at the other end.

Instead, Wade got started, Mr Cricket stuck around and the scoring rate ticked over nicely enough to add around 150 before Clarke could declare with enough time for a decent go at the Sri Lankan top order before stumps.

Actually, you have to suspect the declaration came, more or less (and allowing for the extended playing time to make up for the rain delays) where the Australian script would have called for it.

Half an hour before tea would, after all, give you two goes at them with the new ball, one short sharp nasty session before the Tea break, and the two hours after it, and if they'd been on the field all along and scoring around 3.5 to 4 an over (and that'd be a conservative figure when you're batting for a declaration off around 55 overs) they'd have been looking at around 500 to 520 as a target.

On that basis 450 was a pretty fair compromise in the runs/time equation.

The breakthrough didn't come before the break, though there were signs it wasn't far away (then again, with the new ball there are always signs it's lurking just around the corner) but Hilfenhaus got Karunaratne caught behind in the third over after the resumption (tick the script item that indicates local boy gets the breakthrough).

The Australian script also called for an early departure from Sangakarra, and Hussey's catch in the gully fitted nicely with the welcome back workhorse Siddle bit that would have been in the script as well.

2/42 became 3/70 when Watson trapped Jayawardene in front. Decision reviewed, umpire's verdict upheld probably also featured in the script and having Lyon strike early (he'd already bowled an over before tea in a neat little move that squeezed in another one before the break) was another box ticked.

With an early start to Day Three you'd guess 4/87 with Dilshan on 50 and Mathews next in will translate into around 200-240 all out just before tea, raising an interesting question about enforcing the follow on.

The Michael Clarke as aggressive captain script would  call for enforcement, but I'd guess we'll bat again with a lead of over 200, declare midway through Monday and have four and a half sessions to knock them over again.

On the other hand, there's a give the boys an extra day off with close to a week and a half till Boxing Day factor that'd always be likely to tempt Clarke to enforce the follow on, and would also do a bit to (a) establish dominance for the rest of this series and (b) deliver a result that might be worth a bit more in the calculations regarding the rankings leading into The Ashes next year.

On that front one notes India are 8/297 in reply to England's 330 at the end of Day Three in Nagpur, which will make for an interesting two days over that way. A 1-0 series win away from home will presumably boost the England ranking, but one suspects there isn't enough time to build a lead and roll India a second time, so you'd guess 2-0 is out of the question.

One notes that three days have yielded around 630 runs and 18 wickets, so from those figures you'd guess England will set out to bat time, maybe declare with something to bowl at just after lunch on the last day, maybe setting a target of 300 in just under two sessions, which could be interesting.

Particularly if the follow on is enforced in Hobart and proceedings are brought to a close midway through Monday…

On the other hand, although we often suspect there's a script in operation, real life tends to have fate lurking around the corner slipping the lead into the boxing glove, so I suspect both declaration scenarios will prove inoperative...