Line and Length - Times Online - WBLG

So who did win in Bangalore?

The war of words between members of the India and Australia teams over the past few days since the first Test ended in a draw has been very amusing to an outsider. As these quotes reveal, both sides are desperate to prove that they were the more aggressive side and that the other is fading rapidly.

"This was a track on which 600 could have been made batting first. That the Australians took five sessions and more to make about 400 is a reflection on how wonderfully well our bowling unit performed. Harbhajan and Zaheer showed everyone that our tail can handle this Australian attack with ease. It may also be noted that our four senior batsmen, Sachin and Rahul, Sourav and Laxman, all played a part in this Test." - Anil Kumble

"They know they can't take 20 wickets and they are on the back foot. They are under pressure. I have never seen an Australian team play such defensive cricket." - Zaheer Khan

"We were the only ones trying to take the game forward. We played aggressive cricket." - Ricky Ponting

"It appeared they didn't want to go after the total and were happy to have a draw. It shows we're playing in the right style of cricket. They didn't take our 20 wickets either. Sometimes the tail wags, it wagged when we were batting as well." - Brett Lee

So who was closest to winning? India's strike bowlers were more effective than Australia's, but the only hundreds of the game came from two Australians (indeed, if you add in Katich's 66, the only scores above 60 came from Australians). If Kumble really thinks that his four senior batsmen played a part, with 56, 62, 42 and 73 runs in two innings respectively, then either that shows the low standards he expects of his leading players or it demonstrates that his claim that it was a 600-run first-innings pitch was rubbish. A 600-run pitch doesn't deteriorate that quickly.

The fact is that, batting-wise, Australia were a little slower than you would expect and India relied heavily on their tail to get within touching distance. Something that has been rather overlooked is how many extras - 52 - Australia gave India in the first innings. It is the most that Australia have ever given an opponent in a Test innings and accounted for a seventh of India's total. Sure, that doesn't reflect well on Australia (not least on Brad Haddin, who let 23 byes past him) but it also gives weight to the suggestion that India got out of jail to be only 70 behind on first innings. However, contrary to what Lee says, Australia's lower order failed: from 350 for five to 430 all out is not the sign of a wagging tail.

As for bowling, I'm not sure that India taking 16 wickets to Australia's 14 means that they have more chance of taking 20 wickets to win a match, but then again Australia are weakened by their lack of a spinner. If I were an Indian groundsman, I'd be producing a raging turner for the next match. However... should we be worried about how ineffective Anil Kumble was? The captain bowled 51 overs for 160 runs and was wicketless, making Cameron White's figures of 31-6-88-1 look almost impressive.

Questions, questions. The main fact is that 420-odd overs was not enough time for either side to force a win. We could have done with a sixth day to separate them and then what would the result have been? Would India have batted with more urgency in the final innings to go for what would have been a larger total? Or would Australia have capitalised on India playing some strokes and making mistakes? Australia should be chuffed that India are claiming that the fact they weren't thrashed makes it a moral victory. Either way, a draw it remains. Roll on the next Test.

The Line & Length Monday XI

Hello again. Sachin Tendulkar has failed to score the 77 runs he needed this Test to pass Brian Lara as cricket's top run-scorer, although no doubt he will get the runs soon, so the theme for this week's quiz is people who have held various records, welcome or not. Answers on Wednesday and, as ever, see how many you can get right without using Google or Cricinfo.

Question 1 The highest Test innings score, as any schoolboy knows, is Brian Lara's 400 against England. Lara also scored 375 against the same opponents, but name the four other men to have scored more than 350 in an innings.

Question 2 Until Don Bradman came along, which England batsman had the highest end-of-career batting average?

Question 3 Which Pakistan batsman holds the record for the most catches by a substitute fielder in a Test innings, taking four against Bangladesh in 2001?

Question 4 Which Australia all-rounder of the 1920s still holds the record for the most catches in a Test series (15 in the 1920-21 Ashes)?

Question 5 Which India spin bowler has taken the most caught-and-bowled wickets (34)?

Question 6 What is the most prolific bowler-batsman wicket-taking combination? The second most prolific, with 18 dismissals, is Alec Bedser dismissing Arthur Morris.

Question 7 And what is the most prolific bowler-fielder combination? Second place in this list is "Caught Gilchrist Bowled McGrath"

Question 8 Tendulkar is the leading run-scorer in one-day internationals, with 16,361. Name the six other men to have made more than 10,000 runs.

Question 9 Which Sri Lanka batsman has made the most ducks in one-day internationals, with 31?

Question 10 Which Pakistan batsman holds the no-doubt short-lived record as the leading run-scorer in Twenty20 internationals?

Question 11 And finally which South African, who has spent time playing county cricket in England, has taken the most wickets in all Twenty20 matches?

Australia, India enter final day

An interesting day lies ahead in Bangalore, with Australia 263 runs ahead with five wickets in hand. But my first thought on looking at the scorecard was how impoverished Australia's middle order is compared with a year ago. Brad Haddin and Shane Watson are no slouches, but if Adam Gilchrist and Andrew Symonds were at the crease you could start laying your house on Australia adding 90 in an hour and declaring with lots of time remaining.

When Ponting does declare will depend both on how quickly his remaining batsmen score runs and on what faith he has in his bowlers. How they miss a decent spinner right now (although Michael Clarke may continue to weave his spell on India), not least because having more spin options would increase the number of overs that Ponting has to play with. My guess is that he will want to have at least half an hour at India before lunch and will want his team to score another 70 or so first.

Australia teams of late have tended to be quite conservative with their declarations but that is largely due to them batting so quickly that they need to consider how much time the opposition has to score an improbable total. Against England in the 2006-07 Ashes, they set targets of 557 and 648, when anything more than 250 was going to be a tough ask, regardless of time remaining.

The lowest target Australia have set of late was the 333 Ponting asked India to make in 71 overs in Sydney this year. Before then, the lowest target was asking Sri Lanka to score 355 in 2004 (they made 183). Yet only three teams have chased more than 330 to beat Australia - West Indies in 2003, South Africa in 2002 and England in 1928. There was also the tied Test with India in 1986, when the home side made 347 but were one run shy of winning. Is it too much to hope that we could have such a finale in store today?

Probably. India would have to score at five an over to chase such a total and no doubt Australia would be able to contain the runs if it looked as if the game was getting away from them. So come on, Punter, early declaration and let's have a game of it!

Kirsten rewarded for failure

I thought this sort of thing only happened in the City, where bankers still got large bonuses even if their company was facing bankruptcy, but Peter Kirsten has also shown a skill for coming up smelling of roses. Jersey, the side that the former South Africa batsman coached until today, have come last in the fourth division of the ICC World Cricket League but instead of hanging his head in shame he has headed off for a new job as batting coach to Kenya, a near-proper side.

In fact, Kirsten didn't even hang around to see how Jersey got on in their play-off match for last place against Fiji today (they lost by 27 runs) but was on a plane out to Nairobi. Could Kenya really not wait any longer, or were Jersey glad to be shot of him? Or maybe he was glad to be shot of them, going on comments that he felt they lacked ambition.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan, who qualified from division five with Jersey earlier in the year, move another step closer to their dream of a place in the 2011 World Cup. Unbeaten in six matches in division four, they progress, with Aftab Habib's Hong Kong, to the next level, where they will play Papua New Guinea, the Cayman Islands, Uganda and Argentina in January.

Australia enjoy slight lead

I've not watched a ball of the first Test between Australia and India so far. Actually, that's a lie, Sky in my hotel room here in Spain have shown one ball, the one in which Tendulkar prodded forward at Mitchell Johnson and was caught at point for 13. Guess Lara's record is safe for another day, then.

No doubt plenty of you have been following the series while I've been struggling to find my sea legs on a boat bobbing up and down in 28mph winds here in Alicante (I managed to keep control of my lunch but it was a close-run thing and even now in my hotel the walls are moving up and down). So let me know what I've missed.

It appears to have been Mitchell Johnson's day, with four wickets. Let's face it, he was the paceman we still had a few doubts about. Brett Lee is closing in fast on 300 Test wickets and Stuart Clark has been almost as reliable as Glenn McGrath, although his stats look mediocre today. I did wonder if an two-man attack (plus supersub Michael Clarke, who has the knack of taking Indian wickets) would be enough, but it looks like Mitch has stepped up to the plate well. No wicket on debut yet for Cameron White, has he looked remotely threatening?

And can India, with two wickets in hand and a deficit of 117, reduce the gap enough to give Kumble and Harbhajan something to lick their fingers about in the second innings? I'm surprised that Zaheer came in ahead of Kumble, who is close to 2,500 Test runs, but Zaheer has batted very well so far and if these two can add 30 together - and Ishant Sharma is no slouch at No 11 - then this could be an interesting second phase of the Test.

Ashes Heroes No 40: Alec Bedser

I'm in Spain at the moment for the start of the Volvo Ocean Race (that's sailing, not cricket), so blogging has been a little light but don't go thinking I've forgotten our Ashes project. Less than ten months to go and this week's entry at No 40 in the list, following Matty Hayden last week, is Sir Alec Bedser.

It is hard to attend a cricket dinner these days without seeing Alec Bedser. In 2008 alone, I have seen him at the Cricket Society dinner, the Wisden dinner, the Cricket Writers Club dinner and the Lord's Taverners nosh for Mark Ramprakash and those who have scored 100 hundreds. With all these dinners he is going to, how does Sir Alec not have the same problem I do shifting weight? It's not as if he is running around any more. Perhaps he skips pudding.

Each time, Bedser has been attended by Mickey Stewart, a spry 76 to Bedser's 90, who selflessly ferries his old Surrey friend around and scoffs all the free food and drink with barely a thought for himself. Jokes aside, though, it is great to see Bedser so full of life and he always has a good quip or story to retell when the obligatory microphone is passed his way. Telling Ryan Sidebottom to get his hair cut at this year's Wisden dinner was one of the best bits of coaching advice I've heard.

Bedser also has some straight advice for aspiring bowlers: "Remember," he said, "the stumps are only 28 inches high and if you don't pitch it up enough you won't hit the wicket and you won't get anyone out lbw." He added that you will never hit the stumps if you don't aim at them.

Bedser was one of those cricketers whose best years were lost to war, but that didn't stop him from emerging six years later as one of England's most accurate and deadly fast bowlers. Saved from a life in a solicitors' firm when he was spotted bowling in his club's nets by the Surrey coach in 1938, Bedser made his first-class debut the next season but Hitler's escapades meant that Bedser did not play his first full season for Surrey until he was 28.

He was accompanied, as ever, by his twin brother Eric, who was just as keen on cricket. The story went that when they were first selected for Surrey they realised that they couldn't both be fast bowlers so they tossed a coin to decide whose life would take that path. Alec won and Eric became a batting off spinner instead. The only times they were ever separated until Eric's death in 2006 was when Alec won selection for England, an honour his brother never received.

Alec, who had taken six for 27 against the West Indies when playing for the RAF during the war, was selected by England in 1946 against the touring Indians and made an astounding debut. After two Tests, he had taken 22 wickets. His average for Surrey and England that summer was 128 wickets at 20.13. It was a no-brainer that he would be selected for the winter's Ashes tour.

That series, won 3-0 by Australia, was not as satisfactory as Bedser or England would have hoped. He did his bit, though, with 16 wickets in the five Tests. At Adelaide in the fourth Test he bowled Don Bradman for a duck, having dismissed Merv Harvey, brother of Neil, in his previous over. That put Australia 18-2 in reply to England's 460 but the rest of their phenomenal batting line-up saved the draw.

Bedser also dismissed Bradman, for 63, in Australia's fifth-Test run-chase at Sydney and he would get the Don's wicket four more times the next summer when Australia toured England, including for another duck, at Trent Bridge, meaning that for five consecutive innings Bedser was the only man who got Bradman out. Given that Bradman only made six ducks in his Test career, Bedser can be said to have had his number more than anyone else did.

In the 1948 Ashes, another painful story for England, Bedser took 18 wickets but greater glory awaited him on the next tour Down Under, when he took 30 Test wickets at an average of 16, ten of them in the final Test in Melbourne. It was the only Test England won on that tour but it signalled Bedser as the team's go-to man, the bowler to whom they looked to take wickets. He regularly bowled more than 1,000 overs in a season for club and country, conserving his energy (and the spectators' time) by taking a run up of only ten steps. If only he had some support. But Bedser went through 17 new-ball partners in his 51 Tests, which suggests an astounding failure of consistency on the part of the selectors.

He was a one-man band again in 1953 but at least this time his efforts were rewarded. England regained the Ashes for the first time since the Bodyline series 20 years earlier, thanks in no small part to Bedser's 39 wickets at 17.5, which began with 14 in the first Test at Trent Bridge. It remains the best haul in an Ashes series by an England fast bowler (Jim Laker leads the way with his 46 spin victims in 1956), which was no mean feat for a 35-year-old.

If war had not got in the way, Bedser could have been the first man to take 400 wickets. As it was, he got to 236, at an average under 25, before his body finally gave in. He suffered from shingles on the 1954-55 Ashes tour and played only one Test and with Fred Trueman, Frank Tyson and Brian Statham emerging to become England's leading fast bowlers Bedser was sent off to pasture, with gratitude. Against Australia alone he had taken 104 wickets in 21 matches. Only five bowlers (Underwood, Rhodes, Barnes, Willis and Botham) have done better.

There were still some golden years ahead with Surrey: 144 wickets at 19 in 1955, 131 more at less than 17 in 1957. After retiring in 1960 with five for 25 against Glamorgan at the Oval, he went on to be an England selector for 23 years, as well as managing them on two overseas tours. He was knighted in 1996.

Bedser remains a very popular character on the cricket circuit, although he now walks very stiffly and getting around is tough. John Woodcock, the venerable correspondent of The Times until the late 1980s, still meets his old friend every year at Lord's during the Test match, although given that there is a foot's difference in their heights and both are hard of hearing it must be tough to have a conversation, but what great stories they have to reminisce about!

Woodcock is probably the right man to give the last word on his old friend. "If his labours as a bowler could be collected and piled up around him in some visible shape," Wooders wrote, "he would be seen to be standing beside a mountain."

Brian Carpenter's Ashes Top Ten

I've turned to another blogger this week to supply an Ashes Top Ten to accompany this week's essay on Alec Bedser. After King Cricket last week, I present Brian Carpenter's choices. Brian is a Londoner who fled to Devon and watches Somerset. For the past two years he has written the Different Shades of Green blog, which is always a good read.

Brian writes: "I'm not old enough to remember anyone who played all their Ashes Tests before 1972. So, sorry Don, Denis, Colin, Peter, Keith, Ray, Richie and the rest, I'm going to restrict myself to players that I've seen play in Ashes Tests and have made a lasting impression on me for a range of reasons.

Tony Greig Brisbane, December 1974. With the new partnership of Lillee and Thomson at their frightening best, England were doomed. But the memory that has endured is that of Greig cutting, driving and pulling the Australian attack to distraction during his first-innings 110, pausing only to signal his own boundaries, something which I think annoyed Lillee.

Greg Chappell Chappell played in the first Test I went to, at The Oval in 1975, but he was overshadowed by his elder brother, then the captain, who made 192. By the time Australia next toured, two years later and in the shadow of Packer, Greg was captain and had to hold together a relatively weak batting side. His 112 in the second innings at Old Trafford in 1977 remains one of the most sublime examples of elegant acquisition I've seen.

Bob Woolmer Bowler then all-rounder then batsman for Kent, batsman for England, ultimately one of the finest coaches of his era. But to me he has always remained the man who made the first complete Test century I saw live. Woolmer's 120 at Lord's in 1977 was a superb innings; it prompted comparisons with Cowdrey and lavish expectations. Although he never fulfilled those, he finished his Test career having made all his centuries against Australia at a pivotal time in the game's history.

Geoff Lawson Australia cricketers can be hard to like, but some you respect more than others. I always had a lot of respect for Lawson. After a successful series in Australia in 1982-83, he came to England in 1985 - when his head never dropped, despite the beating his side took - and, finally, in 1989, when his partnership with Steve Waugh at Lord's set up his side's victory.

Angus Fraser Gus was a miserly and intensely competitive seamer, who, in the right conditions, could mix it with the very best. I remember his eight wickets in England's Oval victory at the end of the 1993 series, when he hadn't played Test cricket for over two years, and I was there to see his five on the last day at Sydney in early 1995, when he took England to the brink of an astonishing victory.

Steve Waugh I grew up watching Allan Border and never thought I'd see a tougher Australia batsman, but Waugh was a man apart. Defying injury to make a hundred at the Oval in 2001 was one thing, but his century at the SCG at the start of 2003 - and especially the way he reached it - was as pure a piece of cricketing drama as you could ever see.

Ian Botham In 1981, I was 15 and obsessed with cricket. Therefore, the choice of Botham is inevitable and doesn't require any explanation.

Mark Taylor Taylor was the most personable and astute Australian captain I've seen. One of the gutsiest Ashes centuries I've been lucky enough to witness in person was the one made by Taylor on the Saturday of the Edgbaston Test of 1997. He hadn't reached fifty for 21 innings and was regarded by many as a spent force. With the hundred made he retained his place, and, four Tests later, his side had retained the Ashes.

Kevin Pietersen Pietersen's 158 on the last day at the Oval in 2005 seemed at the time like an innings of remarkable bravado for someone playing in just their fifth Test; with three years' hindsight it almost seems like a routine performance by an extraordinary player. It was Pietersen's first truly influential Ashes performance. It won't be his last.

Shane Warne It's hard to highlight a single performance from Warne's remarkable portfolio, but the one that made the most lasting impression on me was his hat-trick on his home MCG turf against Mike Atherton's England in 1994. I was there, and it remains the only Test hat-trick I've seen live. After the 1993 Ashes series we thought Warne was exceptional; after the 1994-95 series we knew he was.

Ponting takes control

Slowly, one of the great anomalies in cricket is being corrected. Ricky Ponting's average in 14 Test innings in India before the first Test today was a pitiful 12.28, which compares very badly with his averages just about everywhere else. In Australia it is 63, South Africa 66, West Indies 78. In England it is a more human 43, but in Bangladesh and New Zealand it is almost 100. And although Ponting has traditionally done badly against India spinners on their home soil - 13 of the 14 dismissals were to spin - he averages 54 on the Sri Lanka turners against Muralitharan, so that isn't an excuse.

Call it just a statistical blip. Ponting has certainly gone about rectifying it in the right way this morning. Having come in during the first over of the day, when Hayden edged behind for a duck, Ponting has steadily made his way to the threshold of yet another Test hundred. As I type, he is on 94 and should he get to his 36th century, he will be only three behind Sachin Tendulkar's record. Ponting is also creeping his overall average closer to 60 (it's just below 59 now). Some player, some captain.

Sorry for the lack of posts this week but it's been a busy one. This week's Ashes Hero will be posted later on today.

Sorry you weren't in when we called...

At the risk of setting my application for membership back even farther (I'll be 47 before I get to the end of the waiting list unless there is a particularly cold winter or an outbreak of botulism that contaminates the Long Room cucumber sarnies), has the MCC turned chicken?

I only ask because I received a press release this morning about MCC's latest tour to Fiji. The MCC side, which includes Mike Powell of Glamorgan and Josh Knappett of Worcestershire, will play a few friendly games before taking on the Fiji national side in three 50-over matches at the end of next week. All well and good - and MCC are donating $2500 to Fijian and Samoan cricket while they're out there - but it appears that they have picked the perfect time to tour.

At the moment Fiji's finest cricketers aren't actually in the country. They are in Tanzania, where apparently the heat is causing some players to collapse, competing in the ICC World Cricket League Division 4. And they are playing quite poorly, too. Beaten by Afghanistan in their opening game, when they were dismissed for 52, Fiji then lost to mighty Italy yesterday by the small matter of 254 runs (318-5 vs 64 all out).

They then face four more thrashings in the next five days before flying home early next week. So MCC will be taking on a team that is knackered and demoralised and vulnerable. Brilliant planning, lads. That should ensure that MCC don't get an embarrassing loss as they did against Afghanistan a few years ago.

The Line & Length Monday XI - answers

The theme of this week's quiz is encounters between India and Australia, given that they are about to start a four-Test series this week. Congratulations to Jagadish for almost getting them all correct, answers are via the link below.

Question 1 The first Test between the countries was in 1947, when a famous Australia batsman, who had made his Test debut the year before after a distinguished war, scored as many runs in his first innings as the entire India XI did between them in theirs (58). Who was he?

Question 2 Who was the first Indian to take an Australia wicket in Test matches? Fourteen years earlier, he had scored a hundred on his Test debut, against England, and would go on to become the national selector, manager and coach.

Question 3 India didn't win a Test against Australia until Christmas Eve, 1959, when they won by 119 runs in Kanpur. Jasubhai Patel took nine for 69 in Australia's first innings and five more wickets in the second to give him 14 in total, which remained a record match haul for a bowler in this series until who beat it with 15 wickets? And when?

Question 4 Who were the respective captains when India won their first series against Australia, in 1979?

Question 5 In 2004, Australia beat India away for the first time since 1969. Only one member of the Australia XI in that 2004 side was alive - and even then he would have been in the womb - when Australia last won in India. Who was he?

Question 6 What historic event happened in the Test between Australia and India on September 22, 1986?

Question 7 Harbhajan made a big impression on the most recent series between the countries but for the wrong reasons. His eight wickets earlier this year came at an average of more than 60 runs apiece, but overall he has taken 64 Australia wickets at an average of 29. Whose wicket has he taken most often (eight times)?

Question 8 Two Australians have taken more than 50 Test wickets against India. One is a leg spinner and one a fast-medium bowler. Name them.

Question 9 Sachin Tendulkar is unsurprisingly the most prolific India batsman in Tests against Australia, with 2,352 runs, but who has made the second most?

Question 10 Taking ten innings as a minimum, which Indian and Australian, whose careers spanned the same period (1985-92), are the only two batsmen to average more than 70 in matches between the countries.

Question 11 After which two batsmen is the trophy for this series named?

Krejza gets tonked (part 2)

The successor to Shane Warne (and to be fair to Jason Krejza, he has never made the claim) continues to baffle everyone as to why he was selected for Australia's tour to India. After his first innings return of nought for 123, Krejza was given a second bowl and was hit for 76 in 11 wicketless overs.

I wonder whether Krejza could become the Australian answer to John Warr. Warr, a Middlesex fast-medium bowler, was selected for England's Ashes tour party in 1950 on the back of taking 84 wickets that summer. In those days when they played far more often than today, 84 wickets only placed him 32nd on the leading wicket-takers list - and he was 86th on the bowling averages - but nonetheless Warr got the selectors' nod. Wonder who he knew?

When he arrived Down Under, his reputation had preceded him. He was greeted by a docker in Sydney with the charming message: "You have as much chance of taking a Test wicket on this tour as I have of pushing a pound of butter up a parrot's arse with a hot needle." Warr did take one wicket, but conceded 281 runs in doing so. The parrot never recovered.

To be fair to Warr, and to give hope to Krejza, the rest of his tour wasn't quite as bad, although his first two state matches resulted in two wickets for 196 runs. In total, he took 23 wickets at an average of 38, which was almost good enough to be called mediocre. There's your target Jason.

Aftab Habib and Hong Kong aim high

Sometimes the only way you can go from rock bottom is even farther down, yet it can be the making of you. Nine years ago, when Aftab Habib played his two Tests for England against New Zealand, he was part of a side that was about to slump to ninth place out of nine in the Test world rankings. Now, the former Leicestershire batsman is a coach in charge of the 25th best one-day side in the world, but it is a starting point for a career in coaching that he hopes will be highly successful.

Habib's Hong Kong side play Italy tomorrow on the first day of the ICC's World Cricket League Division Four at the Dar-es-Salaam University Ground in Tanzania. It is the latest stage in the road to the 2011 World Cup, which began earlier this year in Jersey when the host nation and Afghanistan progressed from Division Five.

The top two teams from Division Four, which also features Fiji and Tanzania, will compete in January in Division Three against Argentina, Uganda, the Cayman Islands and Papua New Guinea and so on until four sides are selected to compete in the World Cup on the Asian sub-continent.

Habib isn't getting ahead of himself, but his Hong Kong side, most of whom were born in Pakistan but schooled in the former British colony, should be the strongest side in the division. They were relegated from Division Three last year but have been impressive since Habib took the reins, winning the Asian Cricket Council Trophy for the first time this year (a biennial tournament won twice by Bangladesh and then, since they were given Test status in 2000, by the United Arab Emirates on each occasion until this year) and beating Fiji and Tanzania in warm-up matches for this league.

"We're in pretty good shape and I think some big things can happen," Habib said. "We had a pre-season tour in Sri Lanka and played some tough cricket there that showed the standard we should be playing at." Although they lost all four matches against a Sri Lanka Development XI, the fourth was lost by only 16 runs with one of the Hong Kong XI unable to bat.

The key to doing well in Tanzania will be to deal with the fairly ropey conditions. "The University ground looks the best but I'm not sure about the other two we play on," Habib said. "You have to bear in mind that Tanzania don't play a lot of cricket and the wickets will be quite slow and low."

Habib says that his main aim is to make his side professional in attitude, even if they remain amateurs. "They've got work commitments and training every day is quite hard but there is a big opportunity for these guys if they want to make it," he said. "I want them to show me they are professional in the way they work and analyse the game. They are slowly learning the trade and I reckon three of them could cut it in county cricket."

Only Zain Abbas, a 22-year-old batsman who has played for Aston-on-Trent in the Derbyshire league for the past four seasons, has played in Britain but Habib said that he was keen to arrange for some of his side to gain the experience of different conditions over here. Among the names to follow are Tubarak Hussain Dar, the 32-year-old captain (pictured with Habib), Nadeem Ahmed, a slow left-arm bowler who took four for 51 against Pakistan in the Asia Cup this year, and Butt Khalid Hussain, who made 219 in 191 balls against the UAE in 2006.

Habib, 36, who was born in Reading and averaged 42 over his 14-year first-class career with Leicestershire and Essex, decided to become a coach when playing and coaching during the winter months in New Zealand. "I loved doing it and decided that was where my future lay," he said.

His ambitions are lofty. "I have a three-year contract with Hong Kong but would love to come back home one day and become the first British-Asian county coach," he said. "It is great that there are so many young British-Asian players coming through — with four or five in the England set-up. I'd like to see if I can have the same success as a coach."

Play the drive like Alastair Cook

My colleague Doug sent me this link to the BBC's latest video masterclass: how to play the drive off the front foot like Alastair Cook.

I quite like this sort of thing (you can see more displays of fine batsmanship here) but as Doug points out rather cruelly, has the BBC got the right man for the job given Cook's favoured way of getting out of late? "Where's the six-man catching cordon rubbing their hands with glee?" asks Doug, before going on to suggest that other masterclasses in the wings are Harmison on handling the big occasion, Bell on building long innings, Pietersen's catching clinic and Inzamam on running between the wickets.

Ashes Heroes No 41: Matthew Hayden

We are a fifth of the way through our weekly countdown of the men who made the Ashes what it is, so here is a reminder of the list so far: 50 Gary Pratt; 49 Ken Barrington; 48 Chris Broad; 47 Richie Benaud; 46 Frank Tyson; 45 Craig McDermott; 44 Bill O'Reilly; 43 Andrew Flintoff and 42 Charlie Macartney. With the score standing 5-4 to England, it is an Australian who steps in at No 41 and who may yet have a few more Ashes stories to write.

Matthew Hayden has been around for ever, right? Those steely eyes, those beefcake forearms, that unbreachable forward defensive have been withstanding England bowlers since time immemorial. Or at least for a decade or so.

How the memory plays tricks. Assuming that Hayden makes it to the starting gate at Cardiff next summer, it will mark 15 years since his Test debut. Only Sachin Tendulkar of present batsmen has been playing for longer. Yet it will only be Hayden's third Test series in England.

In 1993, the 21-year-old Hayden was picked for Australia's tour party to England on the back of a couple of excellent Sheffield Shield seasons. He was travelling for the experience but on that tour he played 13 first-class county matches (ah, those were the days...), scored 1,150 runs at an average of 57.55 and yet DID NOT PLAY AN ASHES TEST FOR ANOTHER EIGHT YEARS.

Sorry about the capital letters, but I was gobsmacked when I found that out. In England, if a youngster showed promise on a tour, he would be in the Test side within a wink and then dropped, his career broken, a few months later. In Australia, being good enough is not good enough. You must have the maturity and strength of character to make it before you are selected. After all, it was only county sides that he was taking runs off. In 1997, Hayden wasn't even in the Ashes touring squad.

Hayden did get a Test debut, against South Africa, in early 1994, but after making 15 and five, he was sent back to Queensland for a year and a half. Recalled in 1996 against West Indies, he made his first hundred in his fifth Test innings and added a couple of forties against South Africa the next spring but was dropped again, this time for three years. Such was the school of hard knocks that was Australian Test cricket in the 1990s: hard to break into, even harder to impress your team-mates, but once you had made it you were in for good.

Would it rouse howls of anger from Down Under to claim that it was a few years learning about his game in English county cricket that turned Hayden into the run-scoring machine he would become? Possibly. After all, waiting for Mark Taylor, Michael Slater and Matthew Elliott to retire also had something to do with his long spell in the wings. And his eventual Test record in England suggests that he never quite got to grips with conditions here. But in other countries (OK, in England) a player would have got disillusioned if they had to spend almost their entire twenties waiting for their chance.

Hayden didn't brood or let his game fade. A proud Christian, he had faith that patience was a virtue and that his time would come. And while he waited, he accumulated. In 1997, he averaged 54 playing for Hampshire while his countrymen were winning the Ashes. In 1999 and 2000, he twice averaged 57 playing for Northamptonshire. He continued to build centuries, albeit not as prolifically as before, for Queensland.

The tour to India in 2001 was the making of him. In three Tests, he had first-innings scores of 119, 97 and 203. In the series, he made 539 runs at an average of 110. That massive success earned him the faith of the selectors and a place for the next seven years, before injury curtailed his run in the West Indies this year.

Yet his first Ashes series, in 2001, was modest, with only one fifty, but with his efforts in 2002-03 he started to turn potential into big scores. At Brisbane, put in by Nasser Hussain, he led Australia's punishment of the touring side with 197 in the first innings and 103 in the second. England might not have trailed in that first Test if they had got Hayden out earlier. His two innings put Hussain's side under intolerable pressure from Day 1. They were bowled out for 79 in the fourth innings and the series was effectively over. Hayden scored another hundred in the fourth Test as Australia went to a 4-0 lead.

It is odd that having established himself as such a force at the top of the Australia innings, Hayden's second Test series in England should also be poor. The 2005 Ashes began with Hayden being castled by Hoggard for 12 at Lord's and it wasn't until the Oval that he made a hundred. He struggled with the swing that England were getting, but even so he almost turned the series Australia's way with that opening stand of 185 with Langer. If only Warne had caught Pietersen...

Yet again, a poor series in England was followed by a decent one in Australia. There was no shortage of Australians queuing up for revenge in the 2006-07 series and Hayden was a little slow to make his mark, but come the third Test his second innings of 92 provided the platform for the middle order to construct a huge match and series-winning total. In the next Test, he almost outscored the entire England XI on his own. The touring side made 159 and Hayden made 153. In the final Test, he hit the winning runs to deliver a 5-0 series win.

It is true that Hayden's position in this list is owed more to indvidual moments of brilliance - as well as overall impression - than to an oustanding series record. His Ashes record at home (909 runs at 57) is more attuned to his overall averages than his record in England (552 runs at 35). His position is also based on the overall impression he leaves, given that this list is partly based on statistics and partly on the recommendations of the experts we have consulted in forming this list, whose top tens accompany each entry. Perhaps his achievements as a slip fielder - the dismissal ct Hayden bld Warne happened 13 times in Ashes Tests - have also embellished his reputation.

Hayden needs a good Ashes series in England to right a few blips in his overall record, but one thing is certain: England will be relieved when he is gone. As a keen chef, who has produced two cookery books, Hayden no doubt has a couple more recipes he wants to try out on the Poms first.

(all pics: Getty)

King Cricket's Ashes Top Ten

This week's guest writer to accompany our latest Ashes Hero is the mysterious man behind the King Cricket blog. One of the more popular and amusing blogs out there (far yellower than this one for a start), the King has been entertaining readers with his adulation of Rob Key for a couple of years. And knowing how much he likes Matty Hayden I thought this would be the right week to run his list of the most influential Ashes characters:

Ian Botham For defying all reason.

Shane Warne Announced his arrival in some style. Even more miraculously, he managed to live up to that entrance. The man could paralyse a whole batting line-up. He grew with every Ashes Test and the Ashes grew with him.

Michael Vaughan Captained a winning side in 2005, but this has much to do with the front-foot pull of 2002-03. Where did it go?

Glenn McGrath and Mike Atherton McGrath to Atherton … and he's gone!

Steve Harmison 1-32 doesn't seem much of an opening spell, but at Lord's in 2005 Harmison cut or bruised each of Australia's top three on the first day of the first Test. While England lost, they had actually succeeded in imposing themselves for once. The opening spell of the next Ashes was just as significant.

Steve Waugh Everything that's great about Australian cricket. Resourceful when they needed him. Remorseless even when they didn't. He knew the illusion of invincibility was the most important ingredient in actual invincibility. An utter sod - and that's meant as a compliment.

Darren Gough A hat-trick at the SCG and a man who never seemed suffocated by Australian dominance - possibly because he was totally oblivious to it. A competitor England supporters could count on.

Adam Gilchrist Australia seemed unstoppable with six batsmen averaging 40 or 50. Then came a seventh. But it was how he scored those runs that kept England down. Deliberately played the ball over the keeper's head to reach a hundred, the piss-taker.

Douglas Jardine Any good rivalry needs a healthy dose of enmity. This man did more than any to provide that. "They don't seem to like you very much over here, Mr Jardine," Patsy Hendren said. "The feeling's f***ing mutual," Jardine replied.

Krejza gets tonked (part one of 94)

I'm worried about Shane Warne's heir. As opposed to Shane Warne's hair, which I just find amusing.

Australia are about to start a Test series in India, a country noted for having slow, turning, spin-friendly pitches, with only one front-line spinner after Bryce McGain, the elderly gentleman who was accompanying them on this tour, injured a shoulder, possibly while putting the cat out for the night. And Jason Krejza is a front-line spinner in the same way that Kitchener's men were front-line soldiers. He is being put up to be ripped to shreds by heavy artillery.

Krejza's career first-class bowling average of 45 is worse than that of that noted Lancashire bowling stalwart and Times head honcho Mike Atherton (seriously, go and check the stats) and his average this season of 47 would have made him the fourteenth best spinner in the county championship.

Expectations aren't high, therefore, and his first outing with Australia today lived down to his billing: twenty overs, one maiden, nought for 123 against the Indian Board Presidents XI. This could be a long tour...

The Line & Length Monday XI - answers

To celebrate Durham winning their first County Championship title, this week's quiz is all about the lads from the North East. For the answers click below

Question 1 In what year were Durham admitted to the County Championship, 110 years after the county side was formed?

Question 2 Two other counties joined the County Championship in the 20th century, one in 1905 and one in 1921, who were they?

Question 3 Durham's first captain as a first-class county was a 39-year-old former Gloucestershire and Somerset slow left-arm bowler, but he was to achieve greater fame in what role after leaving Durham?

Question 4 Which Australia batsman was Durham's first overseas player?

Question 5 Which future England opening batsman was the only member of the Oxford University side to take a Durham wicket in their first first-class game?

Question 6 Durham's first century stand in first-class cricket came in their second innings, with the No 4 and No 6 batsmen adding 178 runs together. The two men in question had played together in one Test match in 1981 against Australia. Who were they?

Question 7 Which future England fast bowler was born in Co Durham in 1949 but moved first to Surrey and then Warwickshire to fulfil his ambitions of playing international cricket?

Question 8 Who were the first international sides to play at the Riverside, in 1999?

Question 9 Who was the first Durham player to be selected by England while playing for the county?

Question 10 Since the answer to No 9, five other Durham players have been picked by England. Who are they?

Question 11 What other trophy did Durham win this season?

"I wouldn't have picked me": Darren Pattinson

There is a refreshingly honest interview with the 640th cricketer to play Test cricket for England in today's Melbourne Age. Darren Pattinson received a fair amount of stick after England's rather odd selection of him for the Headingley Test against South Africa this summer and, as he quite reasonably points out, he was as surprised as the rest of us.

"I probably didn't agree with the selection, as it was," Pattinson said. "I don't think I'd be picking someone to play the one Test when they haven't really played that many first-class games and weren't in the squad. It was a left-field selection. If I was in [the selectors'] situation, I wouldn't have picked me to play for England when there were guys like Steve Harmison waiting in the wings."

Pattinson, who had 11 first-class games behind him when Geoff Miller came a-calling, goes on to say that he would be OK with never playing another international, but that the personal criticism had affected his wife. "I was just trying to take wickets and get on with it but — and you know what the British press can be like — it was tough for my wife."

It is a fair point. No one can accuse Pattinson of not trying his hardest once he was selected. He bowled as well as he could in conditions that probably weren't as ideal as the selectors had hoped and he took the notable wickets of Hashim Amla and Ashwell Prince. Furthermore, in all he took 49 wickets at an average of about 25 this season, which is nothing to be sniffed at. Let the sneering end.

England's Test selection

In just under four hours, England will announce the tour party for the Test series in India before Christmas (if we can really call two matches a series). There seem, as ever, to be three main questions: who will be the spare batsman, who will be the second spinner and who will be the wicketkeeper? UPDATE: They've gone for Swann, Shah and Ambrose/Prior but keep voting.

With Michael Vaughan having been already ruled out, it appears that the spare batting place is between Owais Shah and Ravi Bopara. The former has played well in India before, the latter has promise and offers a bit of extra bowling. For the keeping slot, everyone expects Matt Prior to take over the Test gloves from Tim Ambrose, but who will travel with him? No one has kept better than James Foster this season but there are other contenders.

The spinning slot as back-up to Monty Panesar is surely between Graeme Swann, Adil Rashid and Samit Patel. Oddly, Swann is being widely touted because he can also bat a bit. Yet on paper Rashid and Patel are much better batsmen (they average 32 and, get this, 49 in first-class cricket respectively to Swann's 27). England should pick the better spinner and with 62 wickets this year Rashid has been near unmatched. But who would you pick?

Online Surveys & Market Research

Online Surveys & Market Research

Online Surveys & Market Research

Durham: county champions

Many congratulations to Durham, who won their first County Championship yesterday after only 16 years as a first-class side. Somerset, Gloucestershire and Northants are still waiting for their first after a rather longer wait. I was away this weekend so didn't get the chance to comment on this, but I will run a special Durham-themed quiz tomorrow to mark the occasion.

I don't mind admitting that I was premature when, after only a session of the final round of games, I called the Championship in Nottinghamshire's favour (well, I said they were very well placed, which goes to show that you should always wait until both sides have batted before making any claims). So much for Kent's celebrated batting, which failed twice in the final match to ensure that they pipped Sussex and Yorkshire to relegation.

Durham's route to the title has been due to their excellent team spirit, with various people stepping forward to take responsibility and few stand-out performers. Only Michael di Venuto, and he only just, passed 1,000 runs in the Championship and only three batsmen who played more than half the fixtures finished with an average above 22. In bowling, they relied on Mark Davies, Callum Thorp and especially Stephen Harmison for most of their wickets but their rotation system brought forth other wicket-takers. They claimed fewer batting points than four of the eight teams below them and fewer bowling points than five others. But most importantly they won more games than anyone else.

Harmison's return of 60 wickets in 12 matches at an average of 22 is brilliant. My friend Will Luke says that we journalists (including himself) should be eating humble pie because we doubted Harmison's ability to perform in the lower game, having been dropped by England. But to be fair to the media, Harmison himself had said at the start of the season that he was thinking about walking away from the first-class game all together if England didn't recall him. His mind wasn't on taking 60 wickets for Durham then.

"Do we owe Harmison an apology?" Will asks. Well, no, I don't think we do. As I wrote at the time, Harmison at the start of the season did not look like someone who was enjoying his cricket, at all levels of the game. A return to county cricket could have killed the final trace of motivation, but instead it reinvigorated him. He discovered that he could take wickets a bit more easily than at Test level and he liked being slapped on the back. It had a snowball effect that led to his revival as an England player. But he would never have come again for England if he hadn't started enjoying his time with Durham.

So we don't owe him an apology for questioning his application. But we certainly owe him an immense "hurrah" and lots of praise for the way he has played himself back into form. Durham backed him and so England recalled him and he delivered for them as well. We are all winners. So much for county cricket being pointless.