Today, at Lord’s, cricket saw the future. At least that’s what Manoj Badale, Chairman of the Rajasthan Royals, would have you believe. For Badale appears to have succeeded in his extraordinarily ambitious plan to create a global Twenty20 cricket franchise under the banner of the Royals 2020, with Hampshire, the Cape Cobras, Trinidad and Tobago and possibly Victoria all united by the Royals name.

Badale is a Cambridge-educated, British-Asian media mogul who acquired the Jaipur franchise to create the Rajasthan Royals back in 2008, delivering them Shane Warne and IPL success in their inaugural season. He has achieved in principle what has not happened in any other sport – a global network of teams. Badale may have the too-smooth looks and cut-glass voice of a James Bond villain but his CV suggests a man who matches word with deed.

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It’s becoming one of those little anomalies that everyone in cricket knows about. Jacques Kallis has hit 34 Test hundreds but none of them has been a double. I daresay he’s a bit pissed off about it with so many other people passing 200 these days. Hashim Amla was the latest, making 253 not out this weekend - many of those runs made while batting with Kallis, who fell for 173.

Many of the great names in cricket have hit double hundreds, but not all of them have been great batsmen. Bradman and Lara are names you expect to see in a list of players who’ve passed 200, but Wasim Akram hit a Test double hundred and so did Jason Gillespie. It would be fair to say that Kallis is more used to being mentioned alongside the first pair than the second.

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Almost two years ago Andrew Strauss was brought back into the England team for the Test series against New Zealand. He struggled at first, before a grinding hundred in the second innings of the final Test to seal England’s series win. But who was this Strauss? Few were the searing offside shots that were a trademark. No, a bad run insisted caution now came first. Bowlers had to err considerably in line or length for Strauss to attack. Then, of course, he got better. In fact he eventually found the form of his life, scoring runs with intimidating conviction.

Alastair Cook may be having his Strauss-in-New Zealand moment. There are differences of course. Cook has never been a quick scorer. He hasn’t been dropped from the team. Indeed, he’s about to become a stand-in Test captain.

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The transfer window dominates the sporting pages throughout January, so news that Chris Tremlett had joined Surrey on a three-year deal may well have been lost in the mayhem (or even lack of it). Yet, Tremlett isn’t the only interesting move made during this off-season.

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Well there goes England’s (very slim) chances of winning the World Cup next February*.

In a move that must have been taken with the widely cherished post-Ashes seven-match ODI series in mind, the ECB and Cricket Australia this morning announced that they have repeated the trick: that’s right, we’ve all got two Twenty20s and seven one-dayers to look forward to after the final Test at Sydney.

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The Wisden Cricketer
Newsletter. Issue No.79. February 4

“Me and the missus went to New York and went up the Empire State Building. We hadn’t been seeing each other long and I was all macho about it. I passed out.” Andrew Flintoff, in Dubai, heads up the world’s tallest building for an interview

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The world of cricket was abuzz with frenzied speculation last night as it emerged that a top county player has taken out a so-called “super injunction” to prevent a publication from printing lurid details about his private life.

Player X is described in legal papers seen by TWC Online as “a seamer on the verge of breaking into the outskirts of the fringes of the England set-up, given a bit of luck with injuries”.

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It’s hard to argue with Robin Martin-Jenkins’ best County Championship XI of the decade in the February issue of The Wisden Cricketer. So I won’t. Instead I’m going to offer an alternative team that I feel could compete with his.

For those of you who can’t be bothered to open the above link, here is RMJ’s team: Nick Knight, Rob Key, Mark Ramprakash, Murray Goodwin, Stuart Law, Chris Adams (capt), Nic Pothas (wk), Kabir Ali, Andy Caddick, Mushtaq Ahmed, Steve Harmison.

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Farewell, Ottis. Like another respected fast-bowling coach, Troy Cooley, you presided over an Ashes win. Cooley, like you, left the job in the same year as the return leg in Australia. And that’s where England supporters will be hoping the comparisons end. But the new man will have quite a task on his seam-marked hands. Here, humbly, are five issues he might like to address.

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How to measure Ottis Gibson’s two and a bit years as England’s bowling coach? There’s no easy answer. There rarely is with coaches. Who knows if a quiet word on the morning of a Test made all the difference, or if a tweak of a bowling action was the secret to success?

Moreover, how England’s fast bowlers have performed during Gibson’s 31 Tests with the team is subject to a myriad of factors. What stage have they been at in their careers? Has injury interfered? Who have they played against, and on what sort of pitches?

But measure Gibson’s contribution we must. And the performance of his bowlers is the only way to come to a speculative judgment.

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