Better Still, Until They Go Wrong

Fantastic - a perfect subject worthy of continuing our little "From Russia With Love" dialogue! Manchester United completed the signing of young Spanish goalkeeper David De Gea this morning to take their summer spending to around £50 million. There is also talk of them pinching Samir Nasri off Arsenal before the start of pre-season training, which will set them back at least another £20 million (incidentally, Arsenal are screwed next season - will patience with Arsene Wenger finally run out?). Fergie's intentions are clear - having been totally outclassed by Barcelona in the Champions League final last month, he needs to build the next golden era, cementing their place at the top of the English game and creating a team able to compete with Messi et al (and Real Madrid for that matter).

With De Gea, Phil Jones and Ashley Young, you undoubtedly have talented footballers worthy of wearing the red at Old Trafford. But are they actually an improvement to the current United side, which, whilst comfortably champions this year, are nowhere near the best that Ferguson has had at his disposal over the years? With De Gea, his hand has been forced. Edwin van der Saar, the best since Schmeichel, has finally retired having seemingly been playing football my entire life. He simply refused to go away and generally continued being excellent all that time. Thomas Kusczak and Anders Lindegaard could never dream of matching up to his standards, let alone those of the Great Dane. De Gea is a young pretender, with a big frame and superb reflexes making him an excellent stopper in one-on-one situations. Having just won the European U21 Championships with Spain, he is essentially the new Iker Casillas. But at half van der Saar's age, will he command both the penalty box and the language essential for boring through Rio Ferdinand's thick skull in the same way? Time will tell of course, but Fergie has put a lot of faith and cash into the long-term investment. My gut instinct tells me that there will be the odd clanger, but De Gea will be No.1 at Old Trafford for the next 10 years. By which time Fergie will be dead. Put money on it now - new signing still to be at United when manager dies. Good odds guaranteed.

Jones and Young are the ones that confuse me a touch. I just cannot see where the upgrade is despite the fact that they are most certainly amongst the best of the young English talent at the moment (which in itself says a lot). It is clear that Blackburn's struggles last season were primarily caused by their lack of attacking flair, so sought after was Jones, along with his defensive partner Chris Samba, who is currently being courted by Arsenal. Again, he has all the physical attributes to be a success, but is the centre of defense really somewhere that needed strengthening? Are Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic not the best all-round centre-backs that United have ever had? Would it not have been wiser to have invested in some full-backs who don't perpetually get caught out of position by any winger with a bit of pace and nous? Certainly, Ferdinand's body is on it's way to packing in altogether, so I suspect Jones will get some game time next season, but is mainly one who will come into his own in the future - another who could be at Old Trafford for a fair while. But his arrival will not be the difference between Champions League runners-up and winners.

Which brings us finally to Ashley Young, signed for that tantalisingly frustrating fee of "undisclosed". Just tell us OK, it makes life a lot easier when calculating team's net gain/loss in transfer fees during the close season (it gives me a break from calculating bowling averages etc). Who has he been signed to replace? Certainly not Paul Scholes, who liked to sit deep and distribute - Young is much more pacey and reliant on trickery in his creativity. Much has been made of the number of assists he created for Aston Villa's frontmen (known for the most part as the Darren Bent Show in 2011), so perhaps Fergie views him as a man to keep the chances coming for Rooney and Hernandez. But what about the investments made recently in Antonio Valencia, who looked resurgent on his return from injury, and Nani, who despite falling out of favour towards the end of the campaign was the Fans' Player of the Season? Perhaps he will play off the front two - but then what was the point in extending Ryan Giggs' contract for another year? To keep him out of trouble (Graeme will represent me in court)?

What I'm getting at is that I don't believe that Young is any better than any of those players. At Villa, he was the big fish in an ever shrinking pond. They no longer had ambitions for trying to break the top four and were more content with life in the top half. It's a move that will suit the player's ambitions more than it will suit United. In all likelihood, Nani, in my opinion the best of the current attacking midfielders, will be moved on to accommodate Young in the starting XI, with no further use for Park Ji-Sung's industry either. And I see no net gain from this for United and so I question why it was necessary to splashed out so many undisclosed millions on a man who will not be capable of singlehandedly lifting them above Barcelona in the European pecking order.

United have stated their intentions by splashing the cash so far this summer. However, the personnel they have brought in will not immediately give them their wishes. Now if they could get Nasri on the other hand...
RM

Sex Differences

(Before we start; Ryan, I use a lighter)

Wimbledon has now reached the stage where most of the matches are interesting. So far the tale of the tournament has definately been the discrepancy between the men's and women's tournaments. Basically, all the pre-tournament men's favourites are winning, while all the woman's favourites have already lost.

This year's opening rounds have gone by fairly anonymously. There has simply not been a memorable match to talk about in the early stages. Going back only as far as last year we had the Federer-Alejandro Falla near-upset and the Isner-Mahut physiology-defying encounter. No such excitement occurred this year.

Now that we are in the latter stages, though, things have started to pick up. We lost Robin Soderling, Stanislas Wawrinka, Gael Monfils and Andy Roddick before the 4th round, and last year's runner up Berdych fell soon after. We now have a quarter final lineup featuring Feliciano Lopez, Mardy Fish and young Bernard Tomic competing with the big favourites. Nadal's 'will it-won't it' injury might make the final stages even more interesting, and could provide Andy Murray with an actual, quantifiable chance of reaching the final. My tip is still Djokovic but, frankly, let's just see what happens.

The women, in stark contrast to the men, have been fucking up all over the place. The consistency in the women's game is terrible; witness Li Na, with the best form entering the championship and with the French Open in the People's trophy cabinet, crashing out early. Both Williams' are gone, proving that experience and testosterone can only take a rusty player so far. And daft old Caroline Wozniacki, upon finding out that her route to a first Grand Slam was wide open, promptly got herself beaten as well. It's looking very much like Sharapova and Azarenka will be competing in the final, but with the sheer random nature of this year's results, I reckon it is just as likely that Virginia Wade comes down from the commentary box and wins the damned thing herself.

GM

Known Knowns

Yes I've been incredibly lazy in the last few weeks - the second and third Tests were such damp squibs that I simply didn't bother to cover them and all the other Wimbledon coverage, a classic Canadian Grand Prix and some ludicrous transfer rumours have simply passed me by. But then I am on holiday. So I'm over it.

Regarding Graeme's analysis of Saturday's T20, the highlights of which I caught on my way back from Istanbul (I resisted the temptation to ask a man in a suit if he had a match), he felt that someone with a little more experience in cricketing matters needed to analyse where it all went wrong. So here I go:

Michael Lumb and Craig Kieswetter were the openers in the Caribbean World Cup victory last year. Since then, Lumb has been injured and overshadowed domestically by his Hampshire opening partner James Adams. To my mind, Bell should be in the side in his place - I have a very vested interest in Kieswetter, who offers that extra dimension with the gloves as well as a superior technique. But, like Lumb, he goes hard at the ball early doors. You can only really afford one opener to do that. Bell, in the form of his life, should have been there to help his less experienced colleague to keep his head.

Suranga Lakmal did not bowl shit. Thissara Perera did. Sri Lanka are a much better one-day outfit than they are a Test unit. As a unit, with the wiles of Malinga and Jayasuriya, they gave England nothing. The only man in the XI who is not worthy of selection is Luke Wright, who is an all-rounder in that both his batting and bowling are equally mediocre at best. Rather than looking at it as an inherent problem in English T20 cricket, let's just say they had a real off day. And I actually thought Jade Dernbach bowled pretty well. Even if his name is horrendous.

Finally Broad - I will defend him by saying that selection decisions are not made by him alone. But he must stopping bowling short deliveries all the time. Yes, he does bowl a very good bouncer but by persisting with it the element of surprise is lost and you can be lined up and dispatched. As he was here, along with the very average looking Chris Woakes (Tim Bresnan would have played if fit - but Woakes is young and needs to learn how to control the new ball better. His time will come again). And you cannot position yourself at fine leg as a captain, especially in T20 when you need to be constantly changing your fields. I've done it myself for half an over and felt totally isolated from the decision-making process and so swapped myself back into the ring. This was a chastening debut for him. But he may learn.

Or he may not...
RM

Confronting My Known Unknown's

The month of June is principally a holiday month here at BtC. Suffice to say that not much gets done when one of our writers is on a well-deserved holiday, chasing the sun in exotic lands, and the other has just finished working God knows how many days in a row in a demeaning 'job' and has just mustered the effort to write something tonight. I'm sure you won't need too much help working out who is the happier of the two of us just now.

(To give you an insight into the immediate future of the blog, after a brief holiday of my own in July, Ryan and myself will both be back at the helm together, ready to once again give our usual combined 200% committment to Beyond The Cliche.)

This blog prides itself on consistantly covering as many sports as possible, and while Ryan and I can both write copiously about some things, there are a few topics that one of us clearly knows more about than the other.

This would be fine for 90% of the year, when we are both around to cover for each other. Sadly, as mentioned, we are currently in the 10% of the year that leaves me attempting to write about motor sport and (deep inhalation of breath) cricket.

So Sebastien Vettel has shown up the doubters who had started to predict the end to his dominant form with a strong win in Valencia. Other words to describe his performance would be canny, controlled and well thought-out. In other words, boring. To be truthful, it wasn't much of a watch, and I couldn't stay with it until the end.

The finishes of Mark Webber and Jenson Button were more interesting though. webber's 3rd place puts him equal to Button points-wise, and these two will be the closest challengers to Vettel from here on out. Not that this challenge will be particularly fruitful though; the German's 77 point lead equates to a lofty lead. Vettel will have to screw up at least two races and watch Webber or Button claim back to back wins to be in any way anxious.

On to cricketing matters. This will actually be the first time I have ever written about the sport in any capacity, so I am as interested as you about how this will pan out! Let's enter the Twilight Zone...

I've been given an easy topic with which to debut my cricket journalism; England's T20 performance against Sri Lanka. Ryan has already talked about the Sri Lankan's visit; this game in Bristol was a stand alone 20 over outing which seems to me to be no more than padding for the tour.

The main point of interest here was the captaincy of Stuart Broad, leading England's T20 side for the first time. Basically, he didn't do that well. I should probably write a bit more than that, shouldn't I?

The 9 wicket loss can certainly be described as a hiding. It really demonstrated the weakness of the English batting order. Broad's deployment of Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb to open things up, ignoring the better form of Ian Bell, failed when both men were retired quickly. Kevn Pietersen and Eoin Morgan worked out well together, punishing some shit bowling from Suringa Lakmal and Thisara Perera, but their dismissal led to the prompt collapse of English resistance. Bell in the middle order could have prevented this, but Broad chose to fit more options with the ball into the side. This didn't really help much though.

Chris Woakes and Jade 'Why mum, why' Dernbach were beaten up, and Broad failed to lead by example. With everyone else failing to threaten, Graeme Swann stayed on trend and contributed nothing either. Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara easily led the Sri Lankan's to their modest target.

This loss was partly down to bad luck; Kieswetter and Lumb leaving the party so quickly pretty much screwed up England's mindset, but their selections were both probably justifiable given their County form. The capitulation of the middle and lower order is of more concern though, and needs to be analysed by someone who knows more about cricket than I do. All I can say with certainty is that it really didn't work.

But hey, it was only one meaningless game, just as this is the only one time I'll need to write about cricket this year. It was just there to fill the void.

GM

ALex McLeish: One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Possibly Drunken Folly

I have no idea what is going through Aston Villa owner Randy Lerner's mind right now. Up to this point, he has been regarded as one of the best owners in football; he provides enough money to compete but not so much that the club is financially compromised, and he stays in the background.

It seems now, though, that he wants to come out and play. Signing McLeish up as the new manager has provoked a furious backlash from the Villa supporters, and their reaction is quite understandable. The man was in charge of Birmingham, he won them a cup and he got them relegated (ordinarily, that last fact would be cause for adulation in the Holte End, but not so much in this case. It would be like laughing at your hated next-door neighbour's hilarious penis operation complications, and then seeing that the incompetent surgeon responsible is scheduled to do your upcoming brain biopsy...).

This story is brilliantly encorporating various topical issues into one. There is rioting (popular in Greece) and a lack of consulation with ordinary people (popular with the Cabinet), and to top it off Birmingham are refusing to accept McLeish's resignation and are threatening to get an injunction to prevent him from taking his new job. It's a different kind of injunction to the Giggs kind, but maybe they could go down that route too. McLeish could be allowed to take the Villa job as long as he is referred to only as Mr. N.O.B whenever he visits St. Andrews?

All of this un-Lerner-like behaviour seems to have been triggered by Martin O'Neill. The man seems to be far more infuriating to work with than we thought. The appointment of General Charles Krulack as non-executive director was not enough to keep him in check (yes, Lerner appointed a freaking Marine Corps General). O'Neill seems to have driven poor old Randy from his previous sanity to madness. Although he is also the owner of the Cleveland Browns, so infer from that what you wish.

Either way, giving Gerard Houllier a job was, on the managerial appointment spectrum, somewhere between 'misguided' and 'fantastically hilarious'. Even discounting the man's health issues (side point; how shit at his job was the man who said "yeah, you'll be fine to manage again"?), he was several years removed from English football, and hardly suggested that he was particularly clued in when he was at Liverpool. This whole thing was bound to end badly, while Robert Pires randomly ambled about the midfield looking dazed.

And so the fans were a bit concerned. If Houllier was Lerner's choice, presumably from a pool of other blokes at least as good, then surely it suggested his decision was a little 'off'. And now we have men such as Martin Jol, quickly snapped up with little trouble by a reactionary Fulham, rejected in favour of a man who failed completely last season. With their biggest rivals. Seriously, the idea of immediately giving him your club to manage nstead is as bad as Inter deciding that breaking 100 years worth of traditional animosity was worth it for half a season with Leonardo. And that was bad, let me tell you.

So, again, I have to say that I have no idea what Randy Lerner is thinking. What is certain is that everyone has had to change their evaluation of him and his tenure. McLeish had better be worth it.

GM

Next Man Up...Wait, Where Is He?

Tennis is our immediate concern here at BtC Towers (that, and our impending relocation to The New Beyond the Cliche Towers At Edinburgh. A new age perhaps?). With the successful showings of Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray at Roland Garros, plus strong performances from guys like Del Potro who are coming back to their best, this year's Wimbledon looks to be a real cracker. Heck, even Serena Williams is back! Forgive me if I cheer on Wozniacki and Sharapova instead of the terrifying American though.

While I will be covering the upcoming events at the All England Club pretty thoroughly, right now I'm going to bring the spotlight back to the upcoming Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.

Ok, maybe the spotlight hasn't actually reached this event quite yet. A tournament held in a country literally the world away from us Europeans will always struggle with exposure, and the tragic earthquake earlier this year somewhat dampened the celebratory mood. One feels strongly for Canterbury, which now has no rugby to look forward to. On top of the whole earthquake thing.

A big issue for New Zealand rugby, besides winning the bleeding tournament, is the issue of player retention. We are now in the void between the latter stages of the Super 15 season and the start of the World Cup in September, and already a substantial number of players have signed up with teams in the Northern Hemisphere.

This number is sure to rise after the tournament itself; rugby down South essentially operates on a 4 year cycle, with players packing their bags after the World Cup and unions having the next 4 years to find their replacements. All three of the SANZAR countries operate in this way, for better or worse.



I fear New Zealand might be missing their priorities of late. We can all see the importance of keeping world class players like McCaw and Carter playing at home, but there is a point at which you start to fixate on keeping these players and start to neglect the other blokes on the team. These guys will start leaving, and the worrying thing is that the stars themselves aren't sticking around either.

The Hurricanes are losing Ma'a Nonu for example. But they are also going to be without Tialata, So'oialo, Schwalger and Hore next year. Likewise, the Blues are going to have Luke McAlister (who has been effervescent this year) leave, and so will John Afoa. These two teams are losing both All Black players and blokes who are around the national team setup; maybe they aren't quite the best option in the land, but they're a damn good spine to a team.

Most of the players on a New Zealand Super Rugby team are quality; certainly, they will be better than their equivalent squad member on an English Premiership side. This is as may be, but the Union needs to remember that these players are as finite as the star names. Fine, one or two leaving is manageable, but for entire backlines and scrums to leave as one is a concern.

The fact that Afoa, and men like Matt Berquist of the Crusaders, are being lost to Irish teams has really pissed New Zealanders off. But, frankly, if your players are being poached by a bankrupt Union to freeze their nuts off playing in glamerous Limerick (I was recently in Ireland, and wasn't that impressed. It's just like Britain, but with an undeserved international reputation. in fairness, that reputation means it is crawling with Americans, so swings and roundabouts I guess), you should be wondering why they're all so keen to go.

Plus, history tells us that the big names leaving is not usually much of a concern. Carter went to Perpignan and headed straight back home. Rocky Elsom of Australia became a better player at Leinster, and returned South to captain the Wallabies. Victor Matfield wasn't harmed too much by his spell at Toulon. In light of this, New Zealand have to ask themselves whether Richie McCaw is really worth the hastle if it means he's the only man left on the team.

GM

Playing through Pain - a History

A year ago, Graeme wrote about Andy Murray's departure from the French Open. In it he highlighted that whilst Murray has a great deal of talent and ability on a tennis court, it is the mental deficiencies that he seems to possess that have held him back from winning that elusive first Grand Slam. Indeed, there has been further evidence in the past 12 months that have fuelled this particular hypothesis - the dispiriting loss to Novak Djokovic in Australia being the prime example of this.

However, despite the fact that there still exists deficits in his game that separate him from the Holy Trinity of Djokovic, Federer and Nadal, you cannot fault the mental aspect of his game and his sheer guts after Nadal knocked him out in the semi-final at Roland Garros last weekend. This was the furthest Murray had progressed on his weakest surface and he had played the last three and a half games with a crook ankle. The resolve he showed to bounce back from two sets down and an overnight delay against Victor Troicki, when it looked like he wouldn't make it on court at all, was exceptional. His quarter-final against Juan Ignacio Chela was not a vintage performance but it was a straight sets victory all the same - Murray was able to utilise his patient rallying against a technically inferior, although more in-form, opponent, waiting for him to make the mistake, although able to attack if Chela began to dominate. He saved his best tennis for that semi-final against Nadal, but just came up against a man who will ALWAYS be better than him on clay, on any given day. But Murray can take a lot of comfort from this tournament all the same (although he still won't win Wimbledom). To honour his performance, here are five examples from other sports of people excelling in discomfort:

GOLF - Tiger Woods - US Open 2008: Who knows? This could be the last great moment on the golf course from Tiger. After announcing this week that he would not play in this year's US Open, it is clear that Manwhore-gate has left him a changed man. Just three years ago, he was able to play a major with a very dodgy knee and win. Now, I suspect most people will be thinking that injuries in golf wouldn't affect you that much. You try driving the ball over 300 yards, transferring weight onto the joint. Then try walking 4 miles in the sunshine for five days straight, excluding practise rounds. Then have the focus, determination and willpower to blank out the pain and play your shots. Oh and once you've tied for the top spot, play another 18 holes in a playoff against an underdog opponent (Rocco Mediate) who the whole world wants to win instead of you. And then beat him in sudden death once you've played that round. The man is/was a machine and the admiration for this tournament should never be lost.

CRICKET - VVS Laxman - Mohali 2010: The man just loved batting against Australia - 6 previous centuries, including two staggering doubles from the most aesthetically pleasing bat of his generation showed that Laxman could always get himself up for facing the world's best. This was not the best Australian side by a long shot (their next assignment was to get pumped in the Ashes) but the baggy green still acted as though a red rag to a bull. Australia held a slender first innings lead thanks to Shane Watson's 126 and Mitchell Johnson's staggeringly not wayward 5-64. However, as the pitch deteriorated, India gave themselves a sniff by bowling the visitors out for 192 second time around, giving them 216 to win. Laxman had pulled a groin in the Aussie 1st innings and had batted 10 for India, making just 2. However, he was called upon to try and rescue a near-impossible situation on one leg when India were reduced to 76-5. That was soon 124-8, but VVS led the counter-attack with nothing to lose and an unlikely ally in Ishant Sharma, who occupied the crease for the best part of two hours. Who needed to run when you could hit beautiful boundaries like Laxman? Sharma fell 11 runs short, no.11 Pragyan Ojha nearly ran himself out, leading to a scolding from VVS but they squeezed over the line with 1 wicket to spare - Australia's lack of ruthlessness had been exposed, Laxman proved he had true grit to go with the beauty of his strokeplay.

NFL: Jack Youngblood - 1979 Rams post-season: I have to admit this story rather fell into my lap. Whilst doing a little journalistic research into this article, I saw the NFL.com had a "Top 10 Gutsiest Performances" segment of which this was No.1. So I delved a little deeper. And shuddered. LA Rams DE Youngblood broke his leg in the divisional game of the 1979 NFC playoffs, where the Rams upset the Cowboys. X-Rays showed a fractured fibula. Rather than calling the season there, the team captain decided he would just tape it up and get back out there with the troops. Everyone knew about his injury, so he could quite realistically have expected O-Linemen to take a shot at him to increase the pain. However, the Bucs were totally shut out by Youngblood's D-Line in the Championship game, who fell just short to the Steelers in Superbowl XIV. And then Youngblood went off to the Pro Bowl - you wouldn't see modern day footballers doing that if they had a slightly stiff back, let alone a broken leg. The ultimate lad.

Formula 1: Robert Kubica - Canada 2007, Italy 2011: So much bouncebackability he did it twice. First of all this crash in 2007:



Some things are better seen than explained. Kubica missed the next Grand Prix, but came back to finish strongly at the end of the season, beginning to establish the reputation as one of the sport's finest young drivers. Until he smashed into a church whilst rallying in Italy during the off-season, severing his right hand and spending a good couple of months in intensive care as a result. They even sent him some of Pope John Paul II's blood from Poland in an attempt to work a miracle. I would hope that that is not the reason that he is expected back testing before the end of the season and a return to racing in 2011 has still not completely been ruled out. Whatever, he is making a great recovery and clearly has great mental strength to overcome such horrible accidents and get back in a car.

FOOTBALL: Terry Butcher - England vs Sweden 1989: Yes I know it's lazy. But less lazy than citing Bert Trautman as the finest example of footballers playing through injury. We know Trautman broke his neck, but he was a Nazi goalkeeper and therefore was a bit of an idiot. But Butcher was so much cooler because he was fully aware of the extent of his injury, seeping blood out of a headwound. And yet he kept challenging for the ball in the air, soaking his white shirt in blood. England held on for the draw that sealed their birth at Italia 90, the tournament where they achieved most in the modern era - it was Butcher's fighting spirit that embodied the Three Lions on that occasion, and those fighting qualities have never really been replicated by those pulling on the shirt since.

RM

Clearing The Backlog

I haven't done anything on the blog for a while now, so I apologise. I came down with an acute case of 'can't-be-arsed-itis' last week, either because I was out in the sunshine, or because of the mind-numbing mundanity of my current life. Or maybe something in between.

Anyway, I've missed a couple of footballing stories and I think that they deserve to be covered. Therefore, sit back and enjoy one of my trademark rambling, meandering articles with no real structure or journalistic quality (if you want that, you've definately been reading the wrong blog for the past year).

So Manchester United lost the Champions League final to Barcelona. Completely unsurprising that the Reds were outclassed; they were fielding a team weaker than the one that lost to Barca two years ago, featuring a central midfield partnership of Carrick and Giggs, the men who were rubbish in that previous final. Would anyone be surprised to hear that they were equally rubbish this time. Love may be lovelier the second time around, but ageing, ineffective midfield combo's certainly aren't. Especially against the best team in the world.

It never ceases to surprise and annoy me how easily the English media are capable of collective sollipsism. Anyone could see that A: Man U were weaker than before and Barca were stronger, and B: The Premiership this season was of a crap standard. Those two facts did not add up to an English victory at Wembley. For some reason, though, even 'informed' and experienced writers like Henry Winter and Kevin McHarra are seemingly not allowed to point this out.

Speaking of Wembley, England were unable to beat Switzerland there yesterday. Enough said really, but suffice to say that Spain, Germany or the Netherlands would have won that match. If you are not even in the top three footballing nations on your own continent, you have fuck all chance of winning a World Cup boys. The biggest shame of yesterday was actually that, had results fallen for them, Montenegro would have topped England's qualifying group. The country has only existed for 4 and a half years for fucks sake! Bulgaria, pull your finger out!

Finally, ending things up in Switzerland (this happens a lot. Nazi gold, ill old people...), Sepp Blatter can be happy with his victory in the FIFA presidency election. Against himself. But hey, he was clearly ahead of Josef Fritzl, Fred West and the President of Yemen in the popularity polls, so I guess he would have won with opposition anyway. The most concerning thing that has happened at FIFA has not been the corruption scandal, or the corrupt election. No, it is the news that former US Secretary of State and Human SuperDeath Calculator Henry Kissinger has volunteered to personally sort out the FIFA mess. It seems that football truly has gone MAD...

GM

Respected By Those Who Got Rained On Too And Made It Through

I've taken to paraphrasing Barry Manilow this week. Life becomes pretty desperate at times eh? And all this after expecting use a lyric highlighting how shit rain was and how it makes life pretty dull - Travis would have sufficed. But despite of the drab weather and slow-going cricket for four and a bit days in Cardiff, England pulled off the unlikely in forcing a result in the most spectacular fashion. That bowling performance on the final evening was worthy of comparison with the other grandstand finish of two years ago at the SWALEC, when James Anderson and Monty Panesar defied Australia's bowlers to clinch an unlikely draw. Similar to that Ashes contest, the cricket in the lead-up to the finale was somewhere between attritional and tedious in the entertainment stakes. But I had nothing exciting to do other than revise for my exams, so I still manage to take in most of it. Here is the score and review:

1st Test (Cardiff) - England 496-5d (Trott 203, Cook 133, Bell 103*) beat Sri Lanka 400 (P Jayawardene 112, Paranavitana 66, Samaraweera 58, Dilshan 50) and 82 (Swann 4-16, Tremlett 4-40) by an innings and 14 runs. Lead 1-0 in the series with 2 matches to play.

Looking at the first innings scores, you really wouldn't have fathomed bowling a side out for just 82 in less than 25 overs (Sri Lanka's shortest completed innings in their history) would be possible. The pitch was slow and low, with only a hint of turn and variable bounce apparent towards the end of the interminable England innings. Graeme Swann and especially Chris Tremlett made use of whatever there was in a pitch that had failed to deteriorate due to the serious length of time it spent under covers to rattle a shellshocked Sri Lankan batting card. Tremlett made the initial breakthroughs with a fuller length than that which he found in the first innings, finding enough lift and seam movement to have the batsmen in all sorts of bother. After that, and the classical off-spin dismissal of Kumar Sangakkara to Swann, the tourists lost their heads. Thilan Samaraweera and Rangana Herath will be particularly ashamed of the ugly swipes that gifted England the game. All this without the injured Anderson, who really led the attack in the first innings, picking up 3 wickets with delightful swing bowling.

Not that their batting was without positives in this match. Any time you total 400, you can be happy as a unit. The risk in promoting the previously unspectacular keeper Prasanna Jayawardene to no.6, allowing the extra bowler to be played paid off handsomely with and aggressive and elegant century. Paranavitana and Dilshan also looked to be an opening partnership with resolve and patience to see of the new ball first time around, when conditions were difficult. The big guns of Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene must fire at some point in this series after twin double-failures in this match. And the tail, initially thought to be far too long at this level, looked as though they will be able to contribute with quick runs on occasion if needed. This collapse can probably be put down to some excellent bowling and lack of preparation in needing to fight to save the game, assuming like the rest of us that this match was destined for a draw. This lack of preparation is no excuse, but do not write them off, for they will regroup and come again.

Their bowling however is exactly as it appeared in this match - toothless and without any menace whatsoever. The seamers are not quick and the spinners do not spin it very much. I assume Dilhara Fernando, with his extra pace, and Chanaka Welegedara, with his left-arm variation, will be brought in to bolster the attack for the next test, possibly for Suranga Lakmal and Ajantha Mendis, in whom skipper Dilshan appears to have no faith. The lack of bite from the visitors made it very easy for England's best occupiers of the crease to make hay. Jonathan Trott and Alastair Cook ruthlessly and selfishly accumulated runs and drove the Sri Lankans into the dust. And then Ian Bell came in, struck a six early on and then serenely made his way to another beautiful hundred. These technical masterclasses were a stark contrast to Kevin Pietersen's skittish innings, which ended in him being given out LBW once again trying to prove that he can dominate a left-arm spinner and getting into a terrible tangle. He needs to admit he has a problem and knuckle down and deal with it.

Finally, the UDRS had a very good game, using HotSpot and Hawkeye to great effect to ensure the correct decision was always made - very useful when Billy Doctrove is standing at one end - the man never seems happy to give a decision out! Jade Dernbach has been called into the England squad to replace the injured Anderson, but it is more likely that Steve Finn will get the nod at his home ground Lord's on Friday.

Let's just hope the weather stays away this time!
RM