England get bummed

Plenty written on this, but this and this summarise my thoughts. Particularly struck by the line in Steve James' blog: 'to play a turning ball with a straight bat is to play across the line.'. When a spinner is bowling length and extracting big turn, clearly the gaps you need to be looking for are the ones in the direction it's spinning - when they get the length wrong you want to try and hit it into the ones that would be riskier off a length ball, usually against the turn. Another one of those little technical details that it's incredibly easy to forget when you're in bat and see the red floating towards, begging to be repatriated over the boundary.

Cricket is an odd game, in that players around the world play according to the conditions within which they're brought up. Would India ever produce a Vaughan or a Bell? Would South Africa ever produce an Ashwin? When all teams are relatively weak, as they are now, the status quo in favour of the home team - always a huge factor - is even more pronounced.

The truly great teams find ways around this, particularly in the bowling department. West Indies in the 80s did it through having fast bowlers of such quality they could take wickets on any track. Australia did it through having three freaks, essentially (and Gillespie was freakishly good - the fact he always seems to be remembered here for his poor 2005 tour is a bit of a tragedy).