Why England Will Win the Ashes

This winter sees the England cricket team go down under to defend the Ashes that they won back on home soil only last year. However, they’ve failed to come back from Australia with the treasured urn in almost a quarter of a century.

So, the question is, why should English cricket fans be getting so excited about this tour? It’s only four years since England suffered a 5-0 whitewash in Australia when they supposedly had their best squad and best chance of success in decades.

This time it really is different though. Since Andy Flower replaced Duncan Fletcher as coach in 2007 England have made nothing but forward strides in all three forms of the game. In that period Australia have only gone backwards. In fact for the first time in living memory England go to Australia while actually sitting above their Ashes rivals in the ICC World rankings.

Belief

For me, half the battle in beating the Aussies on home soil is actually believing that you can beat them. In the last Ashes series in Australia, England dominated the 2nd test match in Adelaide, with a 310-run partnership between Paul Collingwood and Kevin Pietersen putting the visitors into a real position of strength. However, England failed to do their jobs in the second innings and lost the test match. This, for me, was largely due to the fact that they lacked the bottle and belief to complete the job.

With this current set of players it’s a different story. Andrew Strauss as a leader has done a truly remarkable job and Andy Flower has instilled a belief into his players that they can beat whatever is put in front of them. There’s no sterner test of those characteristics that a trip down under.

It’s often about which individual players step up to the plate and put in the performances that’s needed. Indeed, England’s last Ashes success away from home was largely down to the performances of Chris Broad and Ian Botham. So, who should England look to for inspiration this time around?

James Anderson has been England’s number one strike bowler for some time now. However, I really don’t believe he will be the one to do the damage. As a bowler that relies on favourable, swinging conditions, Australia probably isn’t a place where he can shine as a bowler.

I’m really excited about Steven Finn. The more I see him, the more he reminds me of Glenn McGrath. He’s a tall, ‘bang it in’ sort of bowler who bowls a consistent line and length, frustrating batsmen and taking wickets. We’ve not seen much of him in England colours so far but I’d say he’s a certainty to play all five tests and he’s my tip to be England’s leading wicket taker.

Quality in every department

England are much stronger in the spin department this time around. They’re stronger than their last visit to Australia and for the first time in my lifetime I can say England have far better spin options than their opponents. While Graeme Swann doesn’t have the incredible skills and variations of a Shane Warne, what he does have is a superb cricketing brain and the ability to outthink the opposition. This is where he picks up most of his wickets and it’s why he’ll be England’s second top wicket taker in this series, with Stuart Broad close behind him in third.

From a batting point of view I really do think the stage is set for Kevin Pietersen to announce himself in the test match arena once again. He’s had a really poor year by his standards but class is permanent. He’s a big game player and in these 5 test matches I’m convinced he will return to form, holding England’s innings’ together and ending the series as England’s top run scorer.

Andrew Strauss has plenty on his plate as captain in trying to keep hold of the urn, but expect him to be in the runs. Not least because he too is a class act at the top of the England order, but because I simply don’t think Australia have the bowlers to cause damage at the start of England’s innings’.

As for Australia, man for man they clearly had the better squad four years ago. However, this time things look a little different. Several players have retired since then, such as Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Damien Martyn, Brett Lee, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath. The Aussie’s current bowling attack looks a little threadbare without the latter three and taking 20 England wickets will prove difficult.

Lacking experience

The loss of so many players hasn’t just made them weaker in terms of ability, they’re also badly lacking in players with Ashes experience. This is a big problem for Australia and it’s a big part of why I don’t think they’ll be able to stop England taking the urn home with them.

Captaincy is key and while doubts have surfaced over Ricky Ponting’s ability as captain in the last couple of years, Andrew Strauss’ reputation as a captain has done nothing but rise.

Of course it goes without saying that England need everyone fit and with as few off the field distractions as possible if they’re to achieve their goals. During the 2002/03 Ashes tour England lost Simon Jones, who ruptured knee ligaments in the field on the first morning of the first test.

During the last tour down under England player the entire series without their captain, Michael Vaughan, who was missing with a knee injury. Andrew Flintoff stepped into the role but it never really worked, and the extra responsibility on his shoulders seemed to affect his form with bat and ball too.

Furthermore, frontline spinner Ashley Giles was forced to return home to be with his ill wife. England really could do without these unhelpful events causing problems this time around.

England have all the key ingredients to make this series a success. They’ve got great players, players better than their opponents. An inspirational leader on the pitch in Andrew Strauss and a knowledgeable coach off the field in Andy Flower, who has instilled a belief into his players that they can win an Ashes series down under.

Series Prediction: Australia 1, England 3

Come on England – make the nation proud again and bring back those Ashes to where they belong!

Wigan Athletic in Good Hands

It’s fair to say that the tenure of Roberto Martinez as Wigan manager has been a topsy turvy one so far. While keeping Wigan in the Premier League last season he was the brains behind marvellous home wins over Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal. At the same time, he put out similar teams that were thumped 9-1 at Tottenham, 8-0 at Chelsea, 5-0 (twice) by Manchester United, 4-0 at Championship-bound Portsmouth and his side were also dumped embarrassingly out of the Carling Cup by then Championship side Blackpool.

Over time things seem to be turning in the right direction. They key word here is ‘time’. Martinez has changed the whole ethos of the club from top to bottom. Under previous managers Paul Jewell, Chris Hutchings and Steve Bruce it was a case of adapting the team and the style of play in whatever way possible to keep the team in the Premier League.

Those methods clearly worked and in a couple of seasons respectable mid-table finishes were achieved. The trouble is it doesn’t take long for other teams to find out your strengths and weaknesses and those good seasons were often followed by relegation battles.

Roberto Martinez came to the club with clear goals and he’s well on the road to achieving them. He’s adopted a style of play which is more attractive, entertaining and pleasing on the eye. Admittedly, from the start this wasn’t always pleasing on the eye and some of the aforementioned results cast doubts over whether this would work in the long term.

To give credit to Roberto, he has always stuck to his guns and stuck to his beliefs. He continues to send out his team with those same instructions week in, week out, no matter what the previous result was. After two horrific results at the start of this season, Wigan are now really looking like a side that can have an impact on the Premier League in a way that they have never done before.

While I’m not saying that we’ll win the Premier League, I think some sort of regular mid-table finish would be a remarkable achievement for a club of our size. This especially when you consider that the top of the Premier League is getting richer and stronger and therefore making European positions harder to achieve for the likes of Wigan Athletic.

We’re not there yet by any means and I dare say there will still be the odd disastrous result along the way (there always is in this league). But finally the fans are starting to see what Roberto is trying to do here and seem to be a lot more patient with it.

He now appears to have the players he wanted, players that are capable of playing his way. If you were to watch any Wigan Athletic side at any level (first team, reserves, youth, etc) each team plays the same system and the same style of play.

Crucially for me, the reserve team is regularly full of players that sit on the bench each week, meaning they’re fit and ready to be called upon when needed and they have a wining mentality due to the fact that the reserves seem to win more than they lose as the side is now so strong. This was never the case under previous managers as they seemed too concerned with players picking up injuries in the reserves.

Another important point worthy of note is the strength of the squad nowadays. You only have to take a look at the bench every Saturday afternoon to see the healty state that the club is now in. Pretty much all of the players that now feature regularly on the bench would not be out of place in the starting 11 each week. This point was underlined in the 2-0 Carling Cup win over Swansea recently, when most of those players started the match but yet the team looked no weaker.


What has helped Roberto along the way is having such a helpful Chairman in Dave Whelan. These days, Whelan’s biggest strength that he was so badly lacking early on in his days as Chairman is that he has a lot of patience with managers and tends to leave them to do their job.

Also, the very fact that Roberto is a Wigan man through and through is the biggest factor in his success in my opinion. Had he come into the club ‘cold’ and with no feeling for the club or knowledge of what the club is about then I think we would have a different man in charge by now.

Roberto has always been a popular figure with the fans since ending his playing days in the town and has always been welcomed back with open arms. That respect which he built up all those years ago is now serving him well and is clearly helping him do the job.

Recently he’s made us much better to watch, more difficult to beat and, most of crucially of all, put pride back in the shirt. With the hard bit done, for me it’s now a case of improving the quality of the squad that bit more and building a successful team that the town can be very proud of.
Keep it up Roberto.

The Meteoric Rise of Wigan Athletic

Wigan Athletic are often criticised for their “poor crowds” but these comments usually come from uneducated fans of other clubs or lazy journalists who fail to look up the facts before they make such comments.

Therefore I thought it wise to write about the meteoric rise of Wigan Athletic, both on and off the pitch in the last 15 years or so. Just to point out some facts, you understand. Below is a table of just how much crowds have risen in that period. The 1994-95 season was my first as a fan of Wigan Athletic and I have seen first hand just how much crowds have risen over the years.

In that first season in 1994/95 the average crowd was just 1,841, which is a touch over 2% of the population of the town. Three promotions and 15 years later the average crowd is around 18,000, a staggering increase and when you consider that means almost a quarter of the population of the town inside the stadium on a Saturday afternoon I’m sure you’ll agree it’s an incredible rise over a relatively short period of time.

What’s even more remarkable about Wigan’s crowds is that for years the club has been competing for new supporters with the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City, Everton, Liverpool, Bolton and Blackburn, all of whom are in the same division and within a 25-mile radius of the town.

For a working class town like ours to have increases in prices from around £5 per adult (94/95) to today’s prices where you can pay up to £30 per adult, to have so many bodies coming through the turnstiles each week is an incredible feat and one which should be celebrated both inside and outside of the town.

Unfortunately though, too many people comment on the negative side, such as “Wigan’s ground is only 2/3 full every week” and “aren’t their crowds low” If only everyone had access to some of these statistics because it really is an astonishing rise.

The peak was at the end of the 2005/06 season, when an average crowd of 20,610 meant an increase of over 1,000% in a little over ten years! For a town of just over 80,000 people I’m sure you’ll agree that’s quite remarkable!

Well done, little Wigan Athletic!!!

Season	Average Attendance	Percentage difference	Percentage increase on 94-95	Wigan population	Percentage of Wigan population
1994-95	1,841	-	-	85,819	2.15%
1995-96	2,856	+55.13%	+55.13%	85,819	3.33%
1996-97	3,899	+36.52%	+111.79%	85,819	4.54%
1997-98	3,968	+1.77%	+115.54%	85,819	4.62%
1998-99	4,252	+7.16%	+130.96%	85,819	4.95%
1999-00	6,989	+64.37%	+279.63%	85,819	8.14%
2000-01	6,861	-1.83%	+272.68%	85,819	7.99%
2001-02	7,783	+13.44%	+322.76%	81,203	9.58%
2002-03	7,288	-6.36%	+295.87%	81,203	8.98%
2003-04	9,526	+30.71%	+417.44%	81,203	11.73%
2004-05	11,155	+17.10%	+505.92%	81,203	13.74%
2005-06	20,610	+84.76%	+1019.50%	81,203	25.38%
2006-07	18,159	-13.50%	+886.37%	81,203	22.36%
2007-08	19,046	+4.88%	+934.54%	81,203	23.45%
2008-09	18,413	-3.23%	+900.16%	81,203	22.68%
2009-10	17,884	-2.87%	+871.43%	81,203	22.02%

Pakistan should be banned from international cricket

Since I last posted it seems cricket has plunged to new depths, if that’s possible. Previously I had tried to see reasons as to why Pakistani players would stoop so low as to deliberately bowl no balls and “spot fix” during matches. I raised a strong case for their defence while also pointing out that regardless of those reasons, it was still wholly unacceptable.

The latest set of allegations and counter allegations have left me feeling like I shouldn’t have bothered trying to see why Pakistan’s players did what they did. While I can see that the Pakistan players and the PCB are frustrated at being constantly bombarded with allegations (the latest without any firm proof), what is unacceptable is the counter-allegations raised by PCB Chairman, Ijaz Butt on Sunday.

I’ve heard cases for his defence over the past day or so. “The man is under incredible sporting and political pressure”...”the Pakistan government is pressing him for answers and resolutions” etc. That may be the case, but to point the finger of blame at the England cricket team and alleging that they deliberately lost the third one day international is nothing short of disgusting.

Pakistan’s inability to host international cricket matches in their own country has lead them to ask the ECB if they could host their home games in this country. The ECB accepted that proposal and have been nothing but hospitable in doing so. The ring leader in those negotiations was Ijaz Butt…and this is how he thanks the ECB and this country? It’s outrageous.

Furthermore, the fact he seems to think that going on Pakistani and Indian TV channels means that only people in those countries will hear his comments beggars belief. He’s now trying to deny that he made those comments, which speaks volumes of the man.

Worryingly, if Pakistan cricket is to clean up it’s act then the man that needs to be at the heart of it would be the Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board itself! It seems that man is as corrupt, blinkered and downright ignorant as everyone else who has so far been involved in this mess.

The ICC so far hasn’t helped the situation. Their statement over the weekend was very poor in that it didn’t specify who was under investigation from the 3^rd ODI at the Oval and what evidence there was to support the claims by The Sun newspaper. I find it hard to believe that the ICC would make such a statement in the middle of a one-day series. They should simply have gone back to The Sun and asked for evidence to support their allegations.

Instead, they’ve made matters worse and I feel this is what prompted the counter-allegations by Ijaz Butt. His comments may well have been borne out of frustration, but to aim that at English cricket, which has been so hospitable to his country and his team, is something the ECB should not accept.

So where do we go from here?

My view now is get this current ODI series out of the way and then take some serious action. The first thing to do is to put a ban on Pakistan playing ANY international cricket for the foreseeable future. That may be unfair on those that aren’t involved but until we know exactly who is involved what alternative is there?

The second thing to do is to oust Ijaz Butt (who couldn’t Chair a parish council, let along an international cricket team) and put an independent Chairman in place at the PCB.

Next, a ban on agents for professional cricketers. This is something I feel very strongly about. Cricketers are vulnerable to outside interference from anyone, as has been seen many times before. Allowing them to pick their own agent leaves them open to choosing someone corrupt who doesn’t have their best interests at heart. Instead, why not allow the Professional Cricketers Association act on their behalf? It’s something footballer James Milner does (with the Professional Footballers Association acting as his agent) and it’s something that can only be admired.

Finally (and this is a very tough one to implement) I’d put a blanket ban on bookmakers and spot betting in cricket. I just don’t see how it can continue to be allowed. With the low sums of money available to cricketers around the World they’ll always be open to bribery and threats against themselves and their families.

Furthermore, I’m aware that most of cricket’s spot betting is done via illegal Indian bookmakers (gambling in countries such as India and Pakistan is illegal full stop) but surely these illegal bookmakers can be hunted down, made an example of and thus preventing anyone else from taking up this poor excuse of a career in future?

Those are my views anyway. They’re views I feel really strongly about. Cricket is a sport I love dearly. I always have, I always will. It simply can’t continue to have it’s name dragged through the mud like this any longer because of selfish outside influences.

I simply can’t wait for this current ODI series to end and to wave good riddance to the Pakistan team when they leave the country later this week. And I for one am looking forward to this winter and the Ashes series down under. A series which you can guarantee will be played will total honesty, integrity, passion and a desire to beat the opposition fairly and squarely. It’s how cricket should be played.

Pakistan cricket in crisis…the reasons why

Allegations of corruption within the ranks of the Pakistan cricket team have plunged the game of cricket into its darkest days over the past couple of weeks. These allegations appear to have plenty evidence to back them up too. Pakistan cricket has been here before with allegations of match fixing, ball tampering and corruption a regular occurrence over the past couple of decades.

A period of change followed and Pakistan cricket has worked hard to clean up its act in recent years. Issues away from cricket now dominate the headlines as Pakistan has been banned from hosting international cricket events for the foreseeable future due to security issues in their country.

The England and Wales Cricket Board offered them hope by allowing them to play their ‘home’ matches in England. With the allegations that have been brought to light by the News of the World recently, my guess is that Giles Clarke and his cronies at the ECB wish they hadn’t bothered.

So why has Pakistan cricket slumped to new depths? While it’s important not to make excuses for the acts of the Pakistan players involved, a closer look makes it easy to see why they did what they did.

Wages: A recent study of international cricketers revealed that Pakistan’s international regulars were among the poorest paid players in World cricket. At around £20,000 per year, these cricketers are never going to become wealthy fast. This figure is around ¼ of what the English equivalent earns in a year.

This for me needs addressing by the PCB and the ICC. While living costs are much less in Pakistan, there still ought to be a more level playing field and more sponsorship money filtered down to the players. It’s only a year ago since West Indian cricketers went on strike over how little sponsorship money was being passed on to them.

Indian Premier League: Since the invention of Twenty20 cricket, Pakistan has been one of the front-runners in the game. They won the World Twenty20 at Lord’s in 2009 and have some of the most explosive batsmen in World cricket.

For two years running Pakistani players haven’t been allowed to compete in the IPL, the reasons for which are unclear and open for debate. Put yourself in the shoes of a Pakistan cricketer. In what is a relatively short career he wants to represent his country while earning money to set him up for the rest of his life. He can see players from all over the World earning tens of thousands of pounds playing in the IPL, he’s one of the best Twenty20 players in the World…but he has to watch from home on his meagre £20,000 salary. Unfair? Definitely.

The reasons stated above may seem like excuses, but for me they are facts. Again I’ll say that what these cricketers have taken part in is totally unacceptable and they should take whatever punishment comes their way. However, I can’t help but feel that had they not been treated so badly over the above issues then cricket might not be in this mess right now.

Would Salman Butt have really taken any notice of an offer of £10,000 for spot fixing if he was paid the same as England players, or if he was fresh from a lucrative spell in the Indian Premier League? No, because £10,000 would seem like small change.

That said, it’s been far too easy for spot fixing to take place. The person behind it all is the player’s agent. Surely the PCB and the ICC should be vetting who exactly is allowed to represent players?

One of the few players not implicated is Shahid Afridi. He’s not represented by the agent in question and he has no reason to get involved in spot fixing. Why? Because he has played in the IPL in the past and he has lucrative sponsorship deals to make him a wealthy man for the rest of his life. He was given the nickname ‘Boom boom Afridi’ for his big-hitting style of batting. Pakistan’s kit is now sponsored by a company adopting that name, making Afridi one of the wealthiest sportsmen his country has ever seen.

With Afridi an inspiration to the players in and around the Pakistan team, they aspire to be the next ‘Boom Boom Afridi’ and will seemingly do whatever it takes to match what he, and so many others are earning on the international stage.