MS Dhoni’s conviction isn’t swayed by anything so prosaic as evidence

1. I’m glad you explained up front which type of conviction you meant, as I was quite sure after reading the headline that you were prescribing crime and punishment as means to success in cricket.

   But common sense and erudition prevailed within a couple of sentences of that fine Mumbai Mirror piece.

   Such wisdom. If only I had my fair share.

   All hail King Cricket.

2. This is something that I’ve seen the odd foreign fan on Cricinfo complain about when it comes to English fans. We tend as a country to be somewhat world-weary about our cricketers, constantly criticising our national team and almost laughing when they fail, while fans from other countries prefer to type “india r gonna win the worl cup kohli dhoni scor 100s in the final GO INDIAAAAAAAA”

   Naturally, this also applies to our journalists, who tend to refrain from the sort of mad support that led an Australian paper to refuse to mention Broad for doing something the Aussies pioneered, preferring to concentrate on how hopeless England are and how they should be ashamed etc. etc.

   It’s foolish to think that the team don’t see or feel this – many are on Twitter, and I assume that most of the others read the papers or hear the radio. So where I’m going is, by not all being one great big Barmy Army, is the English attitude complicit in our cricketers’ downfall?

   1. Probably, but serves them right for being able to play cricket for a living, the bastards.

3. Top impression of a comment by a fan from the country whose fans post the most often on CricInfo. If it’s not that, it’s about Indian team selection. Even when the article being commented on had nothing whatsoever to do with India.

   1. To be fair, their fans post most on Cricinfo because they have the most cricket fans. Although their fanaticism certainly does verge on the ridiculous – a recent poll had India winning the World Cup by an absurd margin.

   2. Was that one of those polls that asks people to text their opinion? They only reflect the views of a certain type of fan.

   3. It’s one of the “click on which of the four options you think” polls. I think you can vote multiple times too.

   4. Indian fans were writing these same posts (in the official England cricket and Indian cricket team FB pages) during last summer’s test series, even when things were going from worse to previously-unbeknownst levels of diabolical for them – further evidence of this blind optimism. Seems to be working out ok for them, maybe we should try it for The Ashes?

   5. It’s not the blind optimism as much as the comments about India after articles having nothing to do with India.

4. On the back of the corker of a semi-final, it’s now obvious that England’s problem was not introducing more players into the side at the last minute.

   1. Especially players of Southern African origin, Balladeer?

      More importantly, neither side actually choked in that semi. It was simply a superb match which, by its nature, one side would “win” (i.e. go through to the final) while the other side would not.

      I did keep thinking that the deterministic outcome of the match would be New Zealand qualifying through a tie – for quite a while it looked as though that tie might well have been the outcome.

      There is a thing about Saffers and rain-affected World Cup knockout matches. When I rose and saw the rain delay score early this morning, I did imagine perhaps a Charlie The Gent Malloy type character in AB’s dressing room during that delay saying, “kid, this ain’t your night”.

   2. In fairness, they did controversially leave out a promising young right-arm fast medium allrounder with a penchant for big hitting as a left-hand batsman in favor of an older bits-and-pieces allrounder who bowls wobbly medium pace and can be asked to do just about every job there is to do in the batting side. They just never played him.

      Instead, they played four batsmen who all perform the same function in a one-day side and four bowlers who also all perform the same function in a one-day side. This strategy left several crucial functions, such as maintaining the run rate in the middle overs, containing the opponents’ run rate when they’re middling everything your right-arm fast-medium seamers are bowling, having a single clue what a one-day strategy is, and several others.

      If you look at each of the successful sides in this tournament, every player in their first XI has a role to play if things go well, and a role to play if things go poorly. Every side seemed prepared for what might happen if things didn’t go their way. In contrast, whenever things started not going England’s way, they looked simply clueless.

   3. I do like cricket. NZ to lose to Aus in the final.

   4. Also, not enough Leicestershire players. Or players who became Leicestershire players during the tournament.

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