UPI Editors Krishnadev Calamur and Martin Hutchinson look at recent matches and upcoming fixtures in the cricketing world.
It's not cricket
By Krishnadev Calamur
Far be it for me to agree with Britain and Australia's imperialist foreign policy, but there is a case to be made for a boycott of next month's World Cup matches being played in Zimbabwe and the first team to announce its boycott should be India.
The Indian government says it will not play rival and neighbor Pakistan except at neutral venues because of Islamabad's "proxy war" in Kashmir.
Here's something to consider. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has seized land owned by white farmers who have lived in the country for generations and redistributed it to those he says are war veterans. He regards white Zimbabweans, among them the country's cricket captain Heath Streak, to be English agents and fifth columnists.
"To those who want to own this country for Britain, the game is up and it is time for them to go where they belong," he said last year.
Indians, who have also lived in the country for generations, are next.
"We want ... Indians to surrender a certain percentage of their land to the government," Andrew Ndlovu, deputy head of the infamous National Liberation War Veterans' Association, told the state-owned Herald newspaper last year. "Indians are not here to develop our country or to work with the government. They are economic looters."
Mugabe's actions have led to international condemnation and calls for a boycott of World Cup matches played in the country, but the Board of Cricket Control in India, the body that oversees cricket in the country, has dismissed those calls.
"How are we concerned with the boycott?" asked BCCI chief Jagmohan Dalmiya. "It's a non-issue for us."
In other words, India will not play in Pakistan because of militancy in Kashmir but will play in Zimbabwe despite warning Indians there may face a state-sponsored kick up the backside they way whites did. The stance seems especially peculiar given India's calls for moral equivalence in U.S. foreign policy.
New Delhi expresses surprise, no, shock, when Washington doesn't club Pakistan with other state sponsors of terrorism, but is making the same omission with Mugabe and Zimbabwe.
For a country that asks for an ethical foreign policy, it is time to put the money where the mouth is.
Next, Australia and England. The governments of both countries have asked their teams to boycott the matches in Zimbabwe but have said they don't have the power to stop the games if they go ahead. So let me get this straight, governments CANNOT tell teams that represent the country what to do. Perhaps that has something to do with their board's facing a $1.6 million penalty each if they pull out of the matches now not to mention the points they'll forfeit, which would cost the English more than then Australians.
The International Cricket Conference, the world body that oversees the game, says the game should not mix with politics, a stand that would make sense if it had forced India to play Pakistan. So evidently sports and politics should be kept apart only when it suits the ICC.
But politics and sports do mix, whether we agree with it or not.
The great English writer George Orwell called international sporting events "mimic warfare."
"I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield," he wrote. "Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles."
As the world's leading cricketers pack their bags and their kits for the African safari World Cup they would do well to remember that advice.
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England staggers through to victory
By Martin Hutchinson
In my last column, I was so disgusted at England's performance in the first three matches of the five-match England-Australia series that I retreated into fantasy. Losing the Ashes in only 11 playing days, against an Australian team that was unquestionably strong but seemed vulnerable on account of age made one discount even more than normal the abilities of the current England team.
Today, after a respectable performance (but yet another loss) in the fourth Test and a dominating victory in the fifth, England's poor performance early in the series seems the product more of bad luck than of a truly awful team. Yes, Australia was better, but it was also vulnerable, and old. In the fifth test, without master bowlers Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, Australia looked a tired side, as local commentators pointed out after England's win. Since England had played most of the series without fast bowler Darren Gough, spin bowler Ashley Giles and all-rounder Andrew Flintoff, however, the injury balance at the end of the series was still strongly tipped in their direction.
One is reminded of the Ashes series of 1950-51. In both series, Australia won 4-1, with England's best attacking batsman (Denis Compton in 1950-1, Marcus Trescothick in 2002-03) having a poor year. In both series, after losing the first four tests, England came back to win the final match. In 1950-51, this was a sign that the great Australian teams of 1946-50 were beginning to lose their edge; the next side to tour England, in 1953, had a number of new players, and remained competitive in the Ashes series until the last test only because the first and third Tests were ruined by rain.
Finally, in both series, England's efforts were led by a magnificent Yorkshire opening batsman, Len (later Sir Leonard) Hutton in 1950-51 and Michael Vaughan in 2002-03.
England's fifth Test victory this week was the more impressive in that it followed an unusual pattern. After one innings each, Australia led by one run, with Mark Butcher's 124 in England's first innings negated by Steve Waugh's 102 (which equaled Sir Donald Bradman's record of 29 test centuries) and wicket-keeper Andy Gilchrist's whirlwind (121 balls) 133 not out. Then in the second innings, on a deteriorating pitch, England drew away; Vaughan's 183 held the innings together, and Australia were set 450 to win on a pitch whose bounce was uneven. Andy Caddick's admirable 7 wickets for 94 in Australia's second innings was simply a mopping up exercise.
That Vaughan can be mentioned in the same breath as Hutton is an indication of just how far he has come in the past year. Voted Man of the Series in the latest encounter, even though England lost the series 4-1, he scored 633 runs in the series, the most by an English player in Australia since Geoff Boycott and John Edrich in 1970-71. In a sense, Vaughan is a reversion to a type that disappeared on the retirement of Boycott in 1982, the great Yorkshire opening batsman, who holds the England batting line-up together by sheer determination, and is at his best in adverse circumstances. Together with Hutton and Herbert Sutcliffe, the line is a very distinguished one indeed, representing the difference between competence and disgrace in Ashes series after Ashes series for 57 years (1924-81). Vaughan's test batting average is now over 50; if he keeps that up he will play as central a role in England's performances as his great predecessors.
Apart from the further emergence of Vaughan, not much that was good was learned from England's performance, and some new question marks were opened. Steve Harmison (9 wickets in the series at 50) does not yet seem a top class opening bowler, so with Darren Gough injured (possibly ending his Test career) England are down to one bowler, Caddick, of true Test class. The spin bowling is even weaker; Richard Dawson (5 wickets at almost 80) did nothing to suggest he could take over from the injured but inadequate Ashley Giles. After Caddick, Craig White took the most wickets, but he is already 33, nearing senescence for a fast bowler.
On the batting side, there is a faint shadow over Marcus Trescothick (whose Test batting average is down close to 40) though his 261 runs at an average of 26 in this series were much better than Compton's 1950-51 disaster. If England are lucky, Trescothick, still only 27, and the 28-year-old Vaughan will form a formidable opening pair that will make England's batting task immeasurably easier for those that follow for the next decade. If not, and Australia has identified weaknesses in Trescothick's approach, as opponents did, for example, in Robin Smith and Graham Hick in the early 1990s, then it will be back yet again to the drawing board. The other batsmen, Mike Stewart, John Crawley, captain Nasser Hussain and Mark Butcher, performed more or less adequately but told us nothing we did not know (and Stewart, so useful for a decade as a wicketkeeper-batsman must surely at almost 40 be at the end of the road.) Robert Key, 23, the only new blood, was not particularly impressive.
Finding new and younger batsmen, and above all bowlers (and indeed a wicket keeper) must thus be a top priority for England in 2003. In the meantime, there is the one day World Cup, in South Africa and possibly Zimbabwe, to worry about.
Australia must end the series less confident than they began it, and certainly less confident than they were a month ago, after the third Test. The new players brought into the side, batsmen Darren Lehmann, 32, and Martin Love, 28, and bowlers Andy Bichel, 32, and Stuart MacGill, 31, have all been around a long time, and none looked more than moderately impressive. Mark Waugh has already been dropped, and Steve Waugh at 37 is close to retirement. By the next tour of England, in 2005, the side must inevitably have a very different look, though the magnificent spin bowler Shane Warne, 36 that year, may still be around, by then far ahead of all others in his total of Test wickets.
Of course, it doesn't help that England were also thrashed by Australia's "A" team. Still, one can hope. Next month, prospects for the World Cup!
