The ICC was hoping the Champions Trophy would come to the rescue of its troubled 50-over format, but they should look instead to the current one-day series being played in India. Australia and India are tied 2-2 in their seven-match series and the cricket has been absorbing.

At its best, one-day cricket offers a middle way between Tests and Twenty20s; there is enough time for ebb and flow and yet this is balanced by the tick-tocking of time pressure. There is a rich variety of pace to the cricket: runs dry up completely, they arrive in a torrent, and in between times they can be sought only from a trickling stream of opportunity.

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Phillip Hughes, Australia’s next big batting thing, had a torrid time against Andrew Flintoff in the Ashes, losing his place after two Tests of nervous jerking and hopping around the crease, avoiding short balls.

He next appears on the global radar forming an impressive opening partnership with David Warner for New South Wales in the Champions League. At the start of the semi-final against Victoria, he was the tournament’s leading run scorer.

But these two performances, once you see them in the flesh, are surprisingly similar. He’s got a big glitch in his technique – he got found out in the Ashes and is riding his luck for his state.

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In March this year, Australia picked a debutant legspinner at Cape Town against South Africa. This was Warne’s replacement, the answer to Australian spin troubles – Bryce McGain had had a number of solid seasons for Victoria and, despite being a week short of his 37th birthday and Australia’s oldest debutant, he had forced his way into the side. That was as good as it got. Kallis battered him, de Villiers cashed in, Australia lost by an innings and McGain took home figures of 18-2-149-0. It was a brutal introduction and swift ending to his international experience. Now, in the glamorous surrounds of the Champions League in Delhi, where he fights even to find a starting spot for the Victoria Bushrangers, he’s had a chance to digest the toughest and briefest of Test careers:

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Cricket is a professional game, we all know this. Some of us may not like it, others hate it with a fiery passion. This is big business now, sponsors are king, image rights are gold and TV deals are oxygen.

Do you know why this is a big business? Because of us. Each and every one of us is why this game is professional – we watch it, read it, smell it and breathe it. We make the game, the players, the officials and the sponsors money and what do we get for all this: slow over-rates. It’s a slap in the face.

Almost all teams do it, whether they have spinners or not. The half-an-hour extra on a Test day is automatic now and we are the ones who miss out.

Instead of watching cricket we see worried looking captains running up from slip pointing in all directions. Bowlers following through past the batsman and then dawdling back to their mark. People running onto the field with everything from moist face washers to complicated mathematical sums. And let us not forget the sightscreen, something that should be idiot proof, but instead we have to wait for faulty electronics to get rid of the ad that is promoting the series sponsor while it delays the series itself.

Enough.

The ICC could stop this. They could suspend captains. They could end people coming on the field between overs, they could initiate the old fool-proof sightscreens.

They don’t. They know how much we hate it but they apply small fines, let captains off the hook and generally contribute towards the problem.

So perhaps we have to do something. You can join the International Jihad on Slow Over Rates or IJSOR for short. Sign here.

Sign the petition and then tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell Tony Greig, just do something, because this is our game, it isn’t some faceless suit at the ICC’s game. We make the game special, without us the players would have no one to admire them and the sponsors would have to find another way to flog their products.

We deserve respect. We deserve cricket.

Jrod is an Australian cricket blogger, his site Cricketwithballs.net won July’s Best of Blogs in TWC

On the back of their first series defeat by more than one Test since 1988-89, we ask, are the Aussies really on the slide? Jrod has already lamented the current situation, but now it’s time for the summit to make a stab at consensus. Ponting’s captaincy blunders; a lack of wicket-taking; failure to seize the initiative … Australia’s problems have been manifold. But how bad has it got?

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This Australian side in India looked like England’s moribund set-up of the late 1980s and early 90s. Here are a few things that remind me of Bad England (as opposed to Crass England, which we have now):

Selection issues – Picking players for one Test (Siddle); scrambling around with old players who are a bit past it (Hayden); a desperate search for a spinner that leads to a player batting No.8, bowling 12 overs in the match while spinners clean up everywhere else (White in the last Test).

Run outs – Three in the final Test, all of them crucial. Bowlers only had to get Hayden, Ponting and Hussey out once in that match. It betrays hesitancy and a carelessness due to lack of direction. This is a serious symptom of a wider problem.

Basic, basic mistakes – Ponting getting it all wrong about the over-rates and not bowling Shane Watson; Haddin stopping the ball by throwing his glove at it (costing five runs); over-throws; dropped catches; serious wides. It felt like the 1989 Ashes but in a glorious reverse.

Non-amazing debuts – Australia bring a new player in and they don’t score 100 and even if they do take 12 wickets in the match, they’re so expensive it costs them victory. This is what always happened to England – and the guy would usually get dropped for the next Test. For so long, the Aussies produced a new player who was great from the start. Now Haddin, White, Siddle, Watson are finding Test cricket hard. They probably found out they were playing on Ceefax.

Batting strong, bowling weak – And this led to both being weak with England. If Atherton had been born Australian, he’d have averaged 45-plus (but been a poorer writer). Watch those averages slide …

Taking their foot off the gas (or throat) – Australia got into a strong position and let it slip. England were world-class at this and Australia usually capitalised. In the past, it would take an exceptional performance to win a game once Australia had got in front (VVS Laxman). In this series, it took a tea-break.

Then again, India have been very good. Not only have they made the most of these Aussie failings but also they’ve scored serious runs right down the order and bowled intelligently and with patience. And they’ve had the world-class debutant in Mishra. One side has made another look poorer than it is – for once Australia are the victims.

There was a time when Australia were pretty good at cricket, you may remember back that far, they had a way of playing that was attacking, aggressive and brought their fans much joy.

Then it all went wrong, blame the credit crunch, global warming, or the advent of pink shirts on straight men but something changed.

Their gun, young quick needed a break from the game.

They suspended their superstar allrounder for missing a meeting he didn’t know was on.

They complained about sledging with a straight face.

Players became teetotallers.

And professionals who prepare like anal-retentive astronauts have replaced the team’s cricketers.

I stood by while all this happened, well not really, I sent an angry email to James Sutherland asking for our team back. No reply has been forthcoming.

Now Australia has gone even further down the path of the dreaded ‘P’ word.

Professionalism.

The team has now started playing to protect their captain’s next Test rather than winning this Test, drawing the series and keeping the trophy.

I mean how many overs should Michael Hussey bowl? Is less than none a number?

The Australians are already defending their actions, Tim Neilsen even went as far as to say: “I don’t think for a second we haven’t pressed for the win.”

I didn’t see him say it but unless he was wearing a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, this is unacceptable.

The Australian team are turning into a bunch of mindless corporate zombies and it is not helping their cricket.

I have had enough. I want my cricket team back.

I want them to be larrikins, drinkers, smokers, cheaters, tough bastards and people who will do anything to win. Including giving their captain a Test match ban to win a series.

That is how we have always played cricket in Australia and if I can’t have anything else I want, at least give me the “we will do anything to win” spirit back.

We need to stop this before it gets worse – next thing you know they won’t be claiming half volleys.

Jrod is an Australian cricket blogger, his site Cricketwithballs.net won July’s Best of Blogs in TWC

If you think you know how bad Australia’s spin options are – you really don’t. Forget about Cameron White’s straight’uns and Jason Krejza’s confusing cameo in this Test.

Back home the truth is even uglier. Three games into the domestic season and the number one spinning wicket-taker is Marcus North with six wickets.

Marcus North is a batsman, a good one and as a spinner is someone you bowl before a break, or when your state doesn’t want to pick a real spinner. His career first-class bowling average is 44.

Next on the list is Nathan Hauritz, occasional Australian tourist with a career first-class bowling average of 49 and he has five wickets halfway through his third game. How he still gets a first-class game for NSW is unclear.

Behind him is Andrew Symonds, the best-performed finger-spinner Australia has had since Colin Funky Miller and still in the doghouse over his fishing.

Then Adam Voges, another batsman, who gets a bowl when Marcus North is tired.

Rounding off the top five is Aaron O’Brien of South Australia, who has a career first-class bowling average of over 70 and a career batting average of 25. He proves if you can hold a bat you can get a game for South Australia at the moment.

That is what Australia has to pick from.

They haven’t had the best of luck with their spinners. Shane Warne retires to spend time with the ladies, Brad Hogg retires to tend to his sick lady and Stuart MacGill retires because the fat lady was singing.

Then they find Cricket With Balls own Nice Bryce McGain in an internet café searching dating sites, they offer him the job, he takes it but his arm is stuffed from all those years of moving his mouse around and he can’t bowl.

So what do they have left: a batsman who doesn’t bowl himself in White and an offspinner with a terrible record on the field and not much better off it in Krejza.

Not to forget Beautiful Beau Casson who went from being a Test cricketer to not being a regular in his state side without playing a game in between.

There are young spinners coming through, Jon Holland from Victoria has impressed in his first year and Steve Smith from NSW looks like a real talent.

Unfortunately Dan Cullen, Xavier Doherty and Cullen Bailey have been “coming through” for so long now it looks like they have gotten lost.

All Australia have are part-timers: White, North, Symonds and Voges. And journeymen: Krejza, Hauritz, Casson, and O’Brien. They do not have a spin dilemma; they simply don’t have any spinners.

Jrod is an Australian cricket blogger, his site Cricketwithballs.net won July’s Best of Blogs in TWC

Most non-Australians agree, and – through gritted teeth – a few Aussies too, that we’re on the verge of a New Era. Apologies for ignoring Sirallen and the Stanfords for a moment, but if Australia fail to beat India in the fourth Test starting at Nagpur tomorrow, we’ve been assured that the resultant regime change will make what’s happening in the US look like small fry. Australia, goes the wisdom, will no longer be the best side in the world. An empire will crumble and the sun will set over Wagga Wagga forever.

Well hold on just one minute and cast your mind back 14 years to Australia’s tectonic-plate-shifting win in the Caribbean. On that occasion, the demarcation of power lost and gained was crystal clear as the baton was handed smoothly from Richie Richardson’s West Indians to Mark Taylor’s Australians. Taylor and his successors have run with it ever since, give or take the odd stumble. But who will pick up the baton now if Australia drop it at Nagpur?

The conventional answer is India, mainly – you suspect – because they are the first team to benefit from life after Warne and MacGill. But they have just lost a leg-spinning legend of their own in Anil Kumble, and by Monday evening will be without Sourav Ganguly. How much longer will the 35-year-old Rahul Dravid (two half-centuries in 15 Test innings) last? And what about the 35-year-old Sachin Tendulkar, especially now that Brian Lara’s record has gone? VVS Laxman is 34. Yes, the bowling can be devastating, but India may soon need to unearth an entirely new middle order. Momentum could be tricky.

South Africa have been touted too thanks to their 2-1 win in England, but do they have the mentality to last the cause? It seemed rude to point it out at the time, but Graeme Smith was out at least once to Monty Panesar during his series-winning epic at Edgbaston: had the umpires agreed, England might have won the series instead and the chokers rosette would have been gleefully slapped on Smith’s lapel once more.

It may also be rude to point out that South Africa have just as big a mental block against the Australians as the English did before and after 2005. Since Hansie Cronje’s demise, Australia have a 10-1 Test-match advantage against the South Africans. The six Tests the sides play against each other home and away in the coming months may merely serve to reinforce an old failing, especially if Dale Steyn isn’t fit.

England? Pull the other one. Let’s see if they can avoid a 2-0 defeat in India first. Pakistan, because of circumstances beyond their control, appear not to play Test cricket these days; New Zealand have just struggled to beat Bangladesh; West Indies need not apply.

Which leaves us with perhaps the most credible alternative: Sri Lanka. Their nucleus of top players may be small, but it is unrivalled in its quality: Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene score most of their runs; Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis take most of their wickets. So what a shame it is that Sri Lanka’s next scheduled Test match was May in England, a tour that will almost certainly not now take place.

Yes, if Australia do drop the baton in Nagpur, the sad truth is they may just be able to pick it straight up again. World champions by default – it’s not exactly the tag-line Test cricket needs if it is to survive these helter-skelter times.

Lawrence Booth writes on cricket for the Guardian. His third book, Cricket, Lovely Cricket? An Addict’s Guide to the World’s Most Exasperating Game is out now published by Yellow Jersey

Is Tendulkar the most overrated batsmen since Bradman?

I know what you are thinking, fair point Jrod, glad someone finally said it.

Scoring the most runs in Test history is impressive but it means you stuck around for a long time and could bat, I mean Boycott did it, so it can’t be that special.

It’s not that I don’t like Tendulkar – it’s just that, since the new millennium he has just been pretty good. Not great.

Definitely not God-like.

He was great in the 90s, oh how great he was, but in this millennium he was weighed down with the expectations of a nation, middle age, celebrity and chunky bats.

Statistically there is very little difference, from 89 to 99 he averaged 56, and from 2000 to now he averages 52.

But this isn’t about averages.

Watching Sachin in the 90s was like heaven – sticky sticky heaven.

In 1998 when he took Australia apart, he was like Genghis Khan, pure brutal elegance.

In 2004 he made a double hundred against Australia in which he put his cover drive away because it wasn’t working. It was like watching a dentist pull teeth, except without the cool teeth hitting-the-floor moments or lots of blood.

Every now and then old Sachin comes out, and it is glorious, but then the new one takes over and asks if you have any deductibles.

So does someone who is great in one millennium and pretty good in another deserve all the acclaim? Probably not, but if he doesn’t get it, people will have to acclaim Jacques Kallis.

As for Bradman, the Michael Hussey of his day, we all know that had he played in the 1940s more, his average would have dropped to 45.

Can you imagine watching Bradman, hitting the ball on the ground, playing it safe, and always making runs?

Boring.

Jrod is an Australian cricket blogger, his site Cricketwithballs.com won July’s Best of Blogs in TWC