Line and Length - Times Online - WBLG

Abberton follow Purleigh's lead

Continuing a series of reports on unusual happenings in club cricket - and following hard on the heels of Purleigh making 499 last week - news reaches me of the exploits of Abberton this weekend against Gosfield. The village side, who play in division 1 of the PDQ North Essex League, made 438 for two in 45 overs, a pittance compared with Purleigh's effort, but then bowled out the opposition for only 27, giving Abberton a 411-run winning margin.

The star man with the bat was Steve Snell, a New Zealand import and as far as I can ascertain no relation of the Steve Snell who scored his maiden first-class hundred for Gloucestershire last month. Snell was out for 272 after hitting 14 sixes and 31 fours.

As ever, I'd be delighted to hear of any other fine club cricket feats. They don't even have to come from Essex clubs.

UPDATE: Another one for the record books, I hear that London County Cricket Club’s Development XI beat Cambridge University in a three-day match at the end of last week, scoring 468 for seven to win by three wickets after being bowled out for 168 in the first innings. Nick Compton, grandson of, made 132 and Ross Chadwick 127 to help London home with eight overs to spare. It is believed to be the biggest fourth-innings run-chase since Cambridge made 507 to beat MCC in 1896.

Runs, at last

Form is temporary, lack of class is permanent. Which is why I am not getting remotely carried away by my innings yesterday. Having written a few weeks ago about how hopeless I am at cricket, after making a three-ball duck, I approached my second innings of the summer yesterday with a fair degree of pessimism. However, for some reason I started to score a few runs, even hitting three balls to the boundary.

It was the annual Times over-40s v under-40s match and my eventual score of 26 was the fourth-best by the youngsters, who were bowled out for 259. I was knackered by the end of it, though (actually, I was knackered after about four balls). All that running around on a hot day isn't suited to a man of my build and fitness. Especially as I was wearing a woolly jumper (it seemed bad luck to remove it after I started to score). Eventually I was run out, calling for a suicidal single and, just to make sure that I would be out, jumping over the crease as the ball came in. I don't think I have ever been as relieved to be out in my life.

That 26 was my highest score since making 30 opening the batting for the Colchester Royal Grammar School Old Boys XI v the school seconds in 1996. Hopefully it won't be another 12 years before I have a similar innings. And at least it means that my average this season is about double Andrew Flintoff's.

Ramps-watch part 92

It has been so long since we last had a round of county championship fixtures that today's games came as something of a surprise to me. It will be interesting to see how the plaers slip back into bowling long spells and batting out sessions after almost a month of Twenty20.

Naturally, the story everyone is interested in is the same one as in May: when will Mark Ramprakash get his 100th first-class hundred? He has just gone in to bat for Surrey at the Oval against Kent and has so far reached 4. Will the pressure get to him again, or will he take advantage of the fact that few people are even aware he is playing? More later.

UPDATE: He made 48. Halfway there but no marks for halfway.

England v NZ LIVE

6.25pm And that is that. England all out for 215 as Anderson steers Gillespire to point. The Pietersen Era begins with a 51-run defeat. And it looked so promising after 30 overs of their innings and 20 of ours. New Zealand, as they have all series, were England's betters with bat and ball.

Geoff Boycott, like a rat leaving a sinking ship, was keen to get out before the rush. As the 48th over began he came dashing past in coat and hat with bag in hand, no doubt eager to reach the Tube station before everyone else. Sadly for Boycs, the final wicket fell as he stepped into the lift and it looks as if he will be mobbed by the hordes pouring out of the Compton and Edrich stands.

On another positive note: Andy Murray has just won at Wimbledon. Thanks to those who popped by this afternoon to read this blog and to both of you who left comments. If anyone else has a view on the game or series, do let me know.

6.15pm WICKET, Eng 209-9. With four overs to go and England needing 58, Shah has to attack but is caught at long off by James Marshall off Southee. Yeah, sure, his wicket-taking has been useful, but New Zealand would have been defending barely 220 if it wasn't for Styris - and his runs won the previous ODI, too. End can't be far away now.

6.05pm Breaking news: the man of the series, as voted for by the massed gentlemen of the press, is Tim Southee, who has taken 12 wickets. Personally, I went for Styris, who has made 60 runs more than the next best Kiwi batsman this series, but was outvoted. Asking rate now almost 13 an over.

No more chit-chat, says Kev

Cap'n Kev takes charge tomorrow for England's must-win ODI against New Zealand. I'll be live blogging from the media centre at Lord's on my debut appearance at an international, so if you happen to be near a computer as the game winds on, do drop me a line even if it just to dare me to tickle Henry Blofeld.

Earlier today, KP promised that he wouldn't let the captaincy change him and that he would be the same chilled, go with your instincts sort of guy that he has always been. There will be little danger of England falling behind the over-rate with Pietersen in charge, too. KP promised that his team would be more action, less talk. "When a new batter comes in we must be in our places, no more chit-chat at the wicket," he said.

For some reason, "chit-chat" when spoken with a South African accent cracks me up. It's such a colloquial, English idiom, but sounds perfect when pronounced with clipped Sith Efrican vowels.

Captain KP

And so it came to pass that a talented but slightly egotistical South African-born batsman was made England captain. It may only be for the four matches of Paul Collingwood's suspension, but perhaps this will be regarded as the dawn of a new era. I wonder what sort of captain KP will make.

Pietersen joins Allan Lamb, Andrew Strauss and Tony Greig as an England captain who first drew breath on the African continent, although he shares more in common with Greig than the more modest former two.

"I'm humbled to have been handed the England captaincy," Pietersen said, which is surely a first for him. He didn't even mention how much extra money he could earn from the IPL and sponsors with this extra title.

I'm covering the final ODI against New Zealand from Lord's on Saturday and there will be a press conference with Captain KP tomorrow. Anyone have any questions they want me to put to him?

Incidentally, quite a lot of England captains - and some of the finest - were not born in England. Peter McGuinness calls them "Schminglishmen" (which is odd given his high regard for that famous Brummie, Andrew Symonds).

Ted Dexter was an Italian by birth, Freddie Brown was Peruvian, Plum Warner was from Trinidad, Douglas Jardine, Colin Cowdrey and Nasser Hussain were Indians (some more obviously than others) and Donald Carr, captain in 1951-2, was a German. We even, in the imposing shape of Gubby Allen, had an Australian captaining the side.

Collingwood's moment of weakness

We didn't quite get the same scene as at Adelaide in 1933, with one captain lying on the massage table complaining about there being "two sides out there, one is playing cricket and the other is not", but the atmosphere between Paul Collingwood and Daniel Vettori was certainly frosty at the conclusion of today's ODI at the Oval.

Never mind that New Zealand had just won, when Collingwood went to knock on the Kiwis' dressing-room door after the game he found it closed against him. New Zealand were miffed, understandably, at the incident near the end of the game when Ryan Sidebottom in retrieving his own bowling appeared to take out Grant Elliott as the New Zealanders scampered a single and then, with his opponent sprawled in the dust, threw down the stumps and appealed for a run out.

If only England's rugby players could have tackled so well against the All Blacks last weekend.

By the letter of the law, Elliott was out but the situation stank. The umpire asked Collingwood as England captain whether he wanted to reconsider the appeal but Collingwood declined. I wonder whether he was carried away by the pressure of a tight match and having his team-mates huddled around him. His mature and contrite comments later suggest that he wasn't happy with the decision.

Oh well, things happen in the heat of battle. In the grand scheme of things this is some way below Bodyline and the Trevor Chappell underarm ball in the list of things that "aren't cricket" and probably on  a par with Brendon McCullum's ungentlemanly running out of Muttiah Muralitharan when the Sri Lankan spinner had stepped out of crease to congratulate Kumar Sangakkara on reaching 100 two years ago.

All credit to Australia New Zealand for closing out the win, though, especially when with three needed off the last over and nine wickets down they could get only one off the first five balls that Luke Wright bowled. It was tense, glorious stuff to watch, a real reminder of how gripping 50-over cricket can be. New Zealand take a 2-1 lead in the series and roll on Saturday!

Napier has T20 record

You may have read about Graham Napier's assault on Sussex's bowlers at Chelmsford last night. The Essex all-rounder made 152 not out off 58 balls, with 16 sixes - a record number for a Twenty20 innings and the second highest score ever made in this form of the game.

For Napier it is a rare chance to make the headlines in a ten-year career that has never quite lived up to early promise. Napier was in the England side that won the 1998 Under-19 World Cup and like most of his team-mates has not kicked on as would have been hoped. Only Owais Shah and Graeme Swann have gone on to be regularly in the mix for the senior side and neither of them have quite cemented a place, while Rob Key, with 15 Tests, remains the most capped in five-day cricket of that team.

Napier went on an England A tour four years ago but that is as close as he has got to the big time. At 28 he still has years on his side and I wonder whether his big hundred yesterday will give him the impetus to become a top-flight one-day player.

It also raises the pertinent question of whether England should be selecting Twenty20 specialists instead of 50-over experts when they play the shortest form of the game. I know they tried it and it didn't quite work in the World Twenty20 last year so they have now decided to have the same one-day side for 50-over and 20-over games. But is that right?

If England want to select an XI made up of those who have proven themselves as masters of Twenty20 then it would include the likes of Murray Goodwin, Anthony McGrath, James Tredwell, Tim Murtagh and, even though he is in his forties, Graeme Hick. Perhaps the team who compete in the Stanford Twenty20 for half a million quid apiece should include some of these names rather than just being made up of the already well-earning England ODI side.

The Line & Length Monday XI: answers

Here are the answers to Monday's quiz, click the link at the bottom to reveal them.

Question 1 Tim Southee shattered England's hopes of a 2-0 lead in the one-day series when he took four for 38 at Bristol on Saturday. How many ODIs has Southee now played? A: 3; B: 5; C: 7

Question 2 Grant Elliott made a crucial half-century in that one-day win in his first ODI innings for New Zealand (he didn't bat in his previous ODI three days earlier). Yet the Johannesburg-born all-rounder's rise into the New Zealand national side has been a long time coming. He made his Test debut in March against England, one day after which birthday? A: his 28th; B: his 29th; C: his 30th

Question 3 Middlesex's winning run came to an end on Friday when they lost a Twenty20 to Kent that was reduced to eight overs a side. How many consecutive matches in all competitions had they won to that point? A: 8; B: 9; C: 10

Question 4 West Indies beat Australia in a Twenty20 game this week that was reduced to 11 overs a side. Australia made 97 for three, but how many runs did Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and Mike Hussey make between them? A: none; B: 24; C: 53

Question 5 Graeme Hick broke Graham Gooch's record of 1,195 matches in senior cricket when he played in the Twenty20 Cup against Somerset last week but that includes limited-overs matches. Who, with 1,110, holds the record for the most first-class matches ever played? A: WG Grace; B: Jack Hobbs; C: Wilfred Rhodes

Question 6 What is the biggest partnership for any wicket in Twenty20 cricket so far, made by Justin Langer and Cameron White for Somerset in 2006? A: 148; B: 155; C: 186

Question 7 Who got into trouble for saying this about the Indian Premier League last week: "You only had to work hard if you felt like it, which is probably why we finished second-last"? A: Jacques Kallis; B: Dale Steyn; C: Mark Boucher

Question 8 After which great Australia and New South Wales batsman has the new grandstand at the Sydney Cricket Ground been named? A: Steve Waugh; B: Victor Trumper; C: Mark Taylor

Question 9 The Asia Cup begins on Tuesday, the ninth time it has been held. Who has won it the most times? A: India; B: Pakistan; C Sri Lanka

Question 10 Like Grant Elliott (see question 2), Alec Bedser also made a late entry to international cricket, 62 years ago this week, although his delay was due to war. In his first Test innings, at the age of 27, Bedser took seven for 49 as England beat India. How many seven-fors in total would he go on to take over his 51-Test career? A: 2; B: 3; C: 5

Question 11 Twelve years ago yesterday, Sourav Ganguly made 131 in his debut Test, at Lord's against England. Who was the home side's top scorer in their first-innings score of 344? A: Graham Thorpe; B: Jack Russell; C: Mike Atherton

World Twenty20 tickets

Now this is strange. A governing body has decided to stage a sporting event to attract as many fans as possible, rather than just to squeeze money out of them.

The ECB released details today of the ticketing for the World Twenty20 next June, which will run concurrently with the women's competition. Tickets will go on sale from 10am next Monday from the ICC website and the pricing seems quite reasonable.

The best seats at Lord's and the Oval will be £60 for a double-header pair of group games, £75 for a Super Eight and £90 for the semi-final and final, with Trent Bridge being a little cheaper, but there will be reduced prices in less attractive parts of the grounds and designated "family stands", where alcohol and lairiness are banned and tickets start at £30 for adults, £10 children (£20 and £8 for Trent Bridge).

All of which seems quite good, or at least better value than the £100 that the Oval is charging for the best seats for tomorrow's ODI against New Zealand. Women's matches are £6 for adults and one shiny pound coin for children.

You can read more about how to get tickets here.