It is the innovator against the luddites. While the ECB fight to prevent most of the UK from watching the Ashes, the IPL's chief announces that the tournament will be on Youtube.

This is a revolutionary move that will have repercussions beyond cricket; the IPL has just become the most accessible and fan-friendly sporting event on the planet.

Modi is foremost a businessman and this is a business proposal. He says "It is about broadening the fan base, after that everything follows". This understanding that everything is built on the fan base is something the ECB seems to struggle with.

The ball

A classic rip-snorter with a hint of 1980s Windies to it. Pitched on off and reared up at Bell who had nowhere to go.

Build up

Morkel was closing in. In his four previous balls to Bell, two of them had been similar lifters that the beleaguered Bell had done well to evade.

So?

Fast bowling made simple. A combination of good line and a bit of bounce was virtually unplayable.

Morkel does have a tendency to sometimes spray the ball around, but there are precious few other bowlers around who can bowl like this. Did England come up with a similar delivery throughout the entire South African innings?

There is more to life than swing.

Did anyone find any love for this tournament? From the start, it just had an overwhelming feeling of pointlessness.

Perhaps it could have been salvaged by some wonderful cricket from some of the superstars involved. Instead, all the games, bar possibly the second, were uninspiring one-sided affairs. A poor, poor advert for the 50 over game.

I cannot believe Dhoni or Sehwag will have sleepless nights over this.

Congrats to Mickey Arthur for taking a "gamble" on the wicket for the final test. The sight of Bell and Collingwood comfortably plodding along on a lifeless fifth day pitch at Cape Town was clearly too much to bear.

It is ages since we saw a proper bowlers' wicket in test cricket and we probably won't get a real beast at the Wanderers. But it would be great to see the batsmen having to fight really hard on a nightmare of a track.

There is the accepted mediaspeek way of saying that a player has been poor.

e.g. Andy Flower on KP after the 3rd test.

"He's got a superb record. He's had a dip just very recently and this last Test wasn't a good one for him personally."


I prefer Pakistan Coach Intikhab Alam on Kamran Akmal after his shocker in Sydney.

"He is one of our main batsmen which is why we continued with him but in this Test he was really bad".

When they are not sticking pins into voodoo dolls of Graham Onions, South Africa's administrators must get seriously angry about the strange and incomprehensible system of nationality-shifting.

They see England happily helping themselves. "Yes, I'll have two world-class batsmen. A KP and a Trott will do just fine thanks."

They try to get in on the act. Their demand certainly isn't greedy.

"Paul Harris is slowing killing us inside, so is it ok if we can have one very average legspinner? Please!"

How well do England's batsmen fight back after a bad test match?

I defined a bad test match as one where the player scored a total of 30 runs or less (i.e. an average of 15 or less). I excluded tests when the player had only batted once or had been not out.

Then I looked at the runs he made in the next two innings' after that test match.


"BOUNCEBACK" Averages

KP = 69.2 in 10 inns

Cook = 53.19 in 16 inns

Strauss = 51 in 14 inns

Collingwood = 42.67 in 15 inns

Bell = 40.96 in 23 inns


The difference between "BOUNCEBACK" Average and Test Average

KP = 20.17

Cook = 9.72

Strauss = 6.99

Ian Bell = 0.29

Paul Collingwood = - 0.4



So Collingwood and Bell do no differently after poor tests than they do in any other tests. Strauss and Cook both come back strongly.

The clear king of bouncebackability, however, is KP.

So England have reason to believe that he'll follow his failures in Cape Town with a big effort at the Wanderers.