Pressure on India and Dilshan’s genius

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The fact that we came back so strongly against Pakistan last week after the defeat to Holland gives us a good precedent in preparing to play India today at Lord’s. Seeing India lose to West Indies reminded us that they are beatable and that, as champions, there’s an enormous pressure on them to stay in this fantastic tournament. More than there is on England, I think. The expectations on India are very high. We certainly believe that if we go out with the same fearless approach we showed against Pakistan, we’ll beat India.

After losing to South Africa in the first Super 8s game on Thursday, we had Friday off. I’ve just moved into my new flat so I spent the day moving wardrobes and painting walls. I mean, I was taking it easy: I’m not going to get injured shifting furniture in the middle of a World Cup and end up as a quiz question.

The team are all together in a hotel but I live close to Lord’s now and since we spend so much time on the road anyway, it was nice to spend a day at home. It was relaxing to get out of cricket mode. And in a big tournament, that can be important.

Saturday, we trained. We had a good game of football to start with, then some individual preparation. Once you’re in the tournament it’s about mental preparation. The football brings a competitive edge out of people and helps us to relax and not get uptight. Who’s the best footballer in the England side? I’d say… Jimmy Anderson. He’s in the mould of, well, a Frank Lampard.

After football, we worked on our individual skills; I just work on my basics throughout the competition, keep me ticking over.

The tournament has been awesome. I love Twenty20 anyway – but turning up mid-afternoon and playing Twenty20 in front of a packed house every time, with the support we’re getting. It’s phenomenal. I’ve never experienced anything like it.

Looking at the other teams, Tillekeratne Dilshan is an absolute phenomenon. I was watching him a lot during the IPL. The way he plays, with so many unusual shots might make people bracket him with my style; I’m just fascinated to see a right-hander do it. I’m not sure he actually has all that many shots that I don’t have: I’ve used the flip that puts the ball straight back over the wicket-keeper’s head, for example. So I think it’s not so much how he plays his innovative shots, technically, that interests me, as the times that he plays them and the way he has uses them to string such a good run of innings together at this level.

He’s obviously a very good player at the top of the order, full-stop, but then given time, he can innovate too. I suppose people might associate those sweeps and flicks and flip shots with batting against the spinners in the middle overs but in some ways it’s easier to play them when there’s pace on the ball in the early overs.

Did we feel as if South Africa were playing a different game to us on Thursday? Not really. They’re not invincible. Beforehand we had talked about the last time we had played them, last summer when we beat them 4-0: as a team, you can take confidence from those sort of series. Obviously they’re a strong side but on a different day I think we could have beaten them.

After we lost Kevin and we were 25/3, Owais and Paul got a bit of a partnership going but after that we struggled. It can happen. Some people have said that our shot selection might have been better but I think that’s unfair. The wicket was pretty slow and losing wickets regularly meant that new batsmen had to work out a way of moving the game on as soon as they came in. And the South Africans have two very good one-day spinners, in Botha and van der Merwe. And you don’t want to come in and start smashing it about straight away – but as it happened, every release-shot we tried didn’t come off. That can happen in Twenty20 cricket.

Wayne Parnell is turning out to be one of the bowlers of the tournament. I played against him for Middlesex against Kent early in the season. He doesn’t swing it or reverse it like Umar Gul. He just hits the deck hard: in some ways, nothing out of the ordinary, but he bowls those angles, left-arm over the wicket, which makes the difference.

We had a debrief after the game. The captain and the coach both spoke and then other players chipped in. Having not played, it’s difficult to give an opinion or make a valid point so I tend to keep quiet.

On Sunday, I’ll get to Lord’s about halfway through the second innings of the first game. Ireland are playing Sri Lanka so maybe a little bit earlier. I’ve been in touch with a couple of the Irish guys during the tournament. The captain William Porterfield, is my best mate and we went for dinner the night before the South Africa game. We’ve known each other since we were nine or ten – I played for Ireland under-13s when I was 10 and he was the captain.

William’s obviously with Gloucestershire, but most of the Irish team are still amateurs – they work all week and only play cricket on a Saturday, so that does give them a real passion about their cricket. To find themselves in the middle of this amazing tournament instead of working at their day jobs gives them a real drive: any ‘professional’ team that shows any weakness can come unstuck against that. I saw it when we lost to Holland – the sheer passion that the Associate countries can bring to a tournament like this. That’s how the upsets happen.

We’ve had a bad game, then a good game, then a bad game… so we’re due a good game again today against India. Everyone’s optimistic about the talent we have in the squad and our chances of getting things going again.

Previous entries

Losing to Netherlands, beating Pakistan

How and why I play those Twenty20 shots

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20 reasons to remember the 2009 IPL

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1 Bruno the police dog that held up play at the opening match at Newlands. Sachin Tendulkar was early in the process of grafting out a scratchy 59 when Bruno invaded the pitch. As many as 20 people attempted to catch the hound during an 11-minute break in play before he finally trotted off on his own terms.

2 The St George’s Park crowd. Surprisingly, it was the Port Elizabeth faithful who most embraced the IPL. Packed to the rafters for even most midweek games, St George’s Park went off the hook at every match. Led by the famous brass band in the cheap seats, it is possibly the only ground in the world where the crowd sing their way through every over.

3 The Super Over between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Rajasthan Royals, after the tournament’s only tie, was awesome. Shane Warne gave the ball to his youngest bowler, Kamran Khan, and Chris Gayle smashed him for 15 runs off the over. In reply, Yusuf Pathan blasted 18 runs off four balls to give the Royals their first win.

4 The look on Kevin Pietersen’s face after umpire Simon Taufel gave him out LBW for a duck to Muralitharan. KP was fined for dissent after his reaction to this, correct, decision from the world’s best umpire.

5 AB de Villiers’ 100 off 51 balls for Delhi v Chennai in Durban, the first ton of the tournament. De Villiers ended up the third highest runscorer, averaging 51.66.

6 The anonymous (and probably fake) blogger, claiming to be one of the floundering Kolkata Knight Riders, who created havoc with his insults of the likes of ‘Lordie’ (Saurav Ganguly) and ‘Dildo’ (team owner Shah Rukh Khan).  

7 Suresh Raina’s century that never was. The scoreboard showed 100 runs next to Raina’s name when his team, the Rajasthan Royals, took on the Chennai Super Kings at Centurion. Raina celebrated the ‘hundred’ then went for a big shot off the next ball and was caught on the boundary. By the time Raina got back to the dug-out, the scoreboard had been edited to show 98 runs, as the scorers realised they had made a mistake.

8 Warne’s on-field beer drinking. Not long after having a cigarette in the nets in Durban, Shane Warne was offered and accepted a large swig of beer on the boundary during a match against the Royal Challengers at Centurion. It didn’t seem to hinder his bowling or captaincy as the Royals restricted the opposition to 105 all out then chased it down with five overs to spare.

9 Dirk Nannes keeping Glenn McGrath out of the Delhi side. With a maximum number of four foreign players allowed in each team, Virender Sehwag couldn’t find a space for McGrath in his side. Instead, McGrath wound up coaching the Dutch/Middlesex bowler, still a relative newcomer to cricket after his previous career as a World Cup skier.

10 Matthew Hayden’s non-stop run-feast. Forced out of the Australian team earlier this year, the Big Fish was back to his old bowler-bullying self at IPL 2009. Hayden held the Orange Cap, which is awarded to the leading run scorer, for almost the entire IPL season. He finished with 572 runs, thereby keeping the cap despite playing only 12 out of a possible 16 matches.

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11 Yuvraj Singh’s hat-trick in Durban. Claiming the wickets of Test batsmen, Robin Uthappa, Jacques Kallis and Mark Boucher, the part time spinner took a hat-trick on the same ground where he hit Stuart Broad for six sixes in one over in 2007. Yuvraj then smacked 50 off 34 balls, but still ended on the losing side against Bangalore.

 

12 Rohit Sharma’s hat-trick at Centurion. Sharma, the Indian all-rounder and under-23 player of the tournament took a scintillating hat-trick that helped put an end to the campaign of Sachin Tendulkar’s Mumbai Indians.

13 Yuvraj Singh’s second hat-trick in two weeks. This time his efforts were enough to give an unlikely win to his Kings XI Punjab team. Punjab had posted only 134/7 but, thanks to captain Yuvraj, the team were able to defend it as the Deccan Chargers fell short by a single run.

14 Munaf Patel’s sensational over.  Munaf Patel took one wicket for one run in the final over for Rajasthan Royals to beat Mumbai Indians by two runs in Durban. Mumbai needed just four runs off the last over with four wickets in hand when Patel bowled an extraordinarily tight over that included two run outs. Pandemonium ensued. 

15 Charl Langeveldt proved he should have played in every game when he took three wickets for 15 runs in Durban. Kolkata Knight Riders coach, John Buchanan, preferred Ajit Agarkar and even Mashrafe Mortaza to South Africa’s best death bowler. Buchanan’s team lost almost every game while Langeveldt sat on the bench. When the South African was finally given a chance in the last match, v Rajasthan, he took a wicket with the first ball of a beautiful spell. 

16 Manish Pandey’s century. The unknown Pandey was an integral part of India’s success at the 2008 Under-19 World Cup. Three days before the final, Pandey hit an unbeaten 114 runs off 73 balls against the Deccan Chargers at Centurion. Pandey’s 48 off 35, at the Wanderers semi final versus the Chennai two days later, was every bit as good. Watch out for this guy

17 Winning captain Adam Gilchrist’s destruction of every opening bowler in the tournament. Gilly hadn’t really played any cricket since the last IPL but that didn’t stop him from cracking 174 runs in sixes and 216 runs in fours. Gilchrist came second on the Orange Cap table and was a major part of every one of his team’s wins, with the exception of the final, where he was clean bowled by Kumble for a duck in the first over. No-one who saw it will forget Gilchrist’s 85 off 35 balls in the Centurion semi-final against Delhi.

18 Anil Kumble’s excellent bowling and captaincy. Spare a thought for the losing captain who bowled like a master and did everything except win the IPL. Kumble took five wickets for five runs in the first game of the tournament to crush Rajasthan, the defending champions. And Kumble’s four wickets for 16 runs in the final was almost enough to win it.  

19 The fireworks. Lalit Modi went to town on his explosives expenditure. I have never seen such awesome fireworks in my life as I saw every day over the last six weeks. Domestic pets near the stadiums can now re-emerge from under the table.

20 Eddy Grant’s “Gimme Hope Joanna”. The IPL organisers could not have found a better headline act to perform at the closing ceremony concert than the reggae legend, Eddy Grant. The entire capacity crowd stayed behind and sang along loudly along to the words of the ant-apartheid hit as they waved neon fluorescent sticks and hundreds of lanterns sailed off into the cold Jo’burg night’s sky.

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KP: is he really like Sir Viv?

Kevin Pietersen is routinely compared to Sir Vivian Richards, writes Gary Palmer. But what could England’s best batsman learn from Sir Viv? And why isn’t it a good idea for you to copy KP’s technique – unless you’re a batting genius?

Pietersen: looking to hit square 

KP has a good eye, is good at improvising and is not afraid of risks. These are similarities he has with Viv Richards.

However, he could minimise risks more than he does at the moment by fine tuning his technique, broadening his scoring options and becoming more consistent. 

His preferred scoring areas are square of the wicket on the leg side: higher-risk options, that involve playing across the line, with half a bat. Even when KP hits a ball through mid-on, it’s often a delivery he has dragged from off-stump by hitting across his front pad and the line of the ball. This makes him vulnerable to being bowled or trapped leg before. 

KP’s initial trigger movement causes his backswing to go back over leg stump. From that position, it’s difficult to hit the ball towards mid-off and straight extra cover. These are two safe scoring areas where he could hit the ball more consistently, with a minimum risk of getting out.

To hit the ball in the ‘V’, you must swing the bat in a straight line from the top of your backswing through to target area with a full blade of the bat. If you do this, you can hit length balls along the ground (or for six) more consistently; risks are minimal.

Because KP looks to score square, he tips to the offside. Then, when the ball is straight, he ends up around his front pad, playing with ‘half a bat’ and limiting his options to play straight.

This inhibits him, especially when he is occupying the crease or trying to milk the bowling – especially the spinners.

Sir Viv: a better defence than Boycott

Richards batted at 3 and had the perfect technique: he was well balanced, well aligned and his finishing positions were excellent. I had the privilege of seeing him up close when we played together at Somerset. When he wanted to improvise there was nobody better. His flair was allied to a sound basic technique. Even when he hit a straight ball through mid–wicket, Viv did it by swinging the bat in a straight line towards the ball, with a high leading elbow. All he did was to close the face on impact with the ball, which is a low risk shot.

Viv could destroy top-quality bowling. But he also had a defence as good as
Geoff Boycott’s and was a master of milking the bowling with a minimum risk
of getting out. He used the full face of the bat and looked to score down the ground when possible: Viv’s preferred scoring option to half volleys and good length balls was down the ground. He would rather hit down the ground over a fielder’s head for six, with the full face of the bat, than aim at a leg side gap with half a bat. KP generally prefers the latter.

How KP could be more like Sir Viv

KP could become more consistent and versatile if his preferred scoring options were straighter down the ground. Ways in which he could adapt his technique include:

• Work on his initial trigger movement. This sees him tip slightly to the off-side. He also moves too early and ends up static before the ball is bowled. KP could try moving back and across in the instant before the ball is bowled,. His back foot should land outside the line of his head, which stays still. This trigger would open him up, thus giving him access to hit in the V. He could delay planting his front foot until he had slighted the line of the ball. This would allow him to align himself to the various lines of delivery so the bat could swing in a straight line through the target area, with a full blade. This would reduce his vulnerability to being bowled or caught lbw.

• The alignment of his feet and shoulders needs to improve so, when he plays a straight drive, his front foot is not across the line of his back foot. It’s better if his feet are in line, so the bat can swing in a straight line to the ball with the full face for the maximum amount of time. This lengthens his hitting zone and puts him in a great position to improvise.

• He could stand with his shoulders slightly more open, so his head is pointing up the wicket and directly above his body – thus improving his feet alignment. This will also help him pick the bat up over off stump more consistently, rather than over the leg as he does now. 

l When playing left-arm spinners, with the ball pitching on leg stump, KP could plant his feet inside the line of the delivery with both feet pointing straight up the wicket. This way, he can let the ball turn and arrive in line with his head and body, making him well aligned to hit over mid-on on the up with the full blade of the bat or to hit the ball over midwicket. Currently, he tends to put his left-foot out wide towards the legside and then plays away from his body after the ball has turned away from him.

Conclusion

KP works at his game, though he is reluctant to tamper with his basic instincts or technique. But being England’s best player does not mean he can’t improve. World class performers are constantly fine-tuning and KP could be even better if he took a few leaves out of Sir Viv’s book. 

These are small changes for a player of KP’s ability and would allow him to bat successfully at No 3; where all the best attacking players in the world bat. He could score big hundreds more consistently and be even more of an asset than he already is.

Gary Palmer has been batting coach to many county and international players and has helped a series of young players win county contracts. For info on courses and one-to-one coaching: ccmacademy.co.uk

Against the odds, a huge success: the IPL’s half-time report

We are now at the half-way point of the double round-robin stage of the second season of the IPL. 28 matches have come and gone and as much as I expected South Africa to host the tournament adequately, I believe the organisers have outdone themselves.

I laughed when Lalit Modi fibbed to us that 90% of tickets for the IPL had been sold within a couple of days. Doing the sums in my head, that is not far off a million tickets. But almost every game has indeed been packed to the rafters. In particular, the South African Indian community has embraced the tournament, turning up in large numbers at all six of the venues used so far.

The two venues that are yet to hold a game are Kimberley and Bloemfontein, both small and predominantly Afrikaans speaking cities. When I initially heard that these two cities would be hosting the Indian Premier League, I guessed that they would struggle to attract more than a few hundred schoolchildren at each game. 

Bloemfontein is the capital of the Free State, a province in which Indians were not allowed to sleep a night until the late 1980s. Ghandi was imprisoned there in 1913. The idea of the big Indian cricket jamboree coming to town seems something of an ironic joke.

But after seeing how South African cricket fans have taken to the tournament across the country, I have no doubt that even Kimberley and Bloemfontein will join the party. The IPL is not only boosting South Africa’s cricket and tourism industries; it is also highlighting the extent to which the country has moved on from the days of apartheid. 

I first had this thought a few days ago at a match in Centurion, Pretoria, where the press box seats are in the grandstand and not a glass box. The ground was full and as usual, boundaries were met with extremely loud music, fireworks and shooting flames. Much of the music was of the Bollywood variety and much of it was in Afrikaans. The DJ continued to alternate between the two and the crowd continued to go bananas. It was terrific.

On another matter altogether, it was pointed out to me that there has been an alarming number of golden ducks in the IPL so far. An explanation I can offer is that South African pitches are very very fast. Middlesex’s Dirk Nannes has looked like Alan Donald at Centurion and the Wanderers. Add this to the fact that Indian batsmen are used to slower pitches, and you get some cheap wickets.

Of course, not all the golden ducks have come from quick pitches. Kevin Pietersen was out LBW to the first ball he faced from Muttiah Muralitharan in Port Elizabeth. He got in trouble for showing dissent to Simon Taufel, who had made the correct decision. KP effected a golden duck himself when his Bangalore side had Brendon McCullum, of the hapless Kolkata Knight Riders, caught at point with the first ball of a match in Durban. 

It was also in Durban that I was lucky enough to witness a live hat-trick for the fourth time in my cricket watching career. I will never forget the first of those when I saw Brett Schultz rip through the old Transvaal at the Wanderers where, aged 11, I sold scorecards. Yuvraj Singh took a hat-trick returning figures of 3/22 before top scoring with 50 runs from 39 balls, in vain, as the Kings XI Punjab lost to the resurgent Bangalore Royal Challengers. 

After last night’s upset nine wicket win by Bangalore over the Mumbai Indians at the Wanderers, things really are heating up on the table. Four teams have eight points, three teams have seven points and the Kolkata Knight Riders languish at the bottom of the table with three points. 

Last night’s match saw Jacques Kallis prove that there is a place for him in the shortest form of the game. He smashed 69 runs off 59 balls at a jam-packed Bull Ring, thereby cementing his place in the South African Twenty20 World Cup squad that was announced today. 

It was the very same Wanderers strip where South Africa scored 438 runs to beat Australia in an ODI and, boy, it was a cracker. Any bat on ball races to the boundary but there is always something for the pace men too. Bangalore debutant, South African Dillan Du Preez, had veteran Sachin Tendulkar out with his third ball. He had Ajinkya Rahane caught in the off-side with his next ball. The double wicket maiden wicket over was followed up with the prized wicket of JP Duminy in his second over to round off the perfect start to an IPL career.

In their pursuit of 150, Bangalore’s Kallis and Uthappa added a record breaking 126 unbeaten runs for the second wicket. Uthappa walloped 66 of those runs off 42 balls against the side for whom he played last season. A straight inter-season swop between himself and Zaheer Khan had taken place during the transfer window period. Khan pulled up with a shoulder injury two overs into his spell.

Cricket is not usually played after the autumn in South Africa and at the Wanderers the press box is again outdoors, on the top floor of the highest stand. Johannesburg winter days are lovely and warm but the nights can be bitterly cold, and last night was no exception. At the highest press box in the world, I managed to contract a cold. I don’t think it is that swine flu hogwash because no-one in the press box has recently been to Mexico. Given the pace of T20 cricket growth, the game might arrive there before H1N1 gets here. 

I have put in a request to the Wanderers for a tender to sell jerseys, scarves, gloves and blankets at the ground. The revenue will surely far exceed that of writing about cricket and I will be able to stay safely on the ground floor. I have heard it said that tickets for the final on 24 May are trading hands at five times their face value, but there is a very real threat the cold winter puts some fans off coming.

John Buchanan, coach of the Kolkata Night Riders, has said that the maximum number of foreign players in each starting eleven should be increased from four, the status quo. Doing so would no doubt increase the standard of play on the field. Paul Collingwood and Owais Shah returned home without getting a game for their franchises and players like Dale Steyn and Daniel Vettori are consistently being left out of theirs.  

Each team is allowed up to ten international players and good money is being wasted to pay these chaps to sit on the bench while inexperienced Indian players drop catches and struggle to get bat on ball.

Alastair Cook: my 2008

“KP taking over was like a cold shower on a sticky day”
“Vaughany had been there for a long time and he was an unbelievable captain in terms of his achievement. But life moves on. That said, we should really have beaten South Africa at Edgbaston. It was only an unbelievable innings from Graeme Smith that condemned Vaughany. In terms of Test cricket, that innings was the best I’ve seen. It was 90/4 and South Africa managed to get 280/5. Smith played unbelievably well.
“You saw the emotion of Vaughany giving it up. You saw how hard it was. It shows the pressure he was under. The job just took its toll. And maybe sub-consciously we all felt that too. None of us was giving any less effort under Vaughany than we did under Kev. But sometimes it’s good to have a freshen up: if you’re hot and sticky and you have a cold shower… that’s kind of the feeling we had at the Brit Oval. We’d lost the series and Vaughany had gone, so we all decided it was a one-off Test, a new start and we had to win it. There was no point dwelling on what happened before. Under KP, it was new and it was exciting and it was different.”

“Getting picked for Stanford? Sometimes you get lucky.”
“Sometimes you get quite lucky in life. And you have to accept that. And the selectors have looked at the theory: last year England took a whole new side to the Twenty20 World Cup and it didn’t work. It’s about continuity. Sides take time to gel and the one-day squad had done so well against South Africa: everyone knew their roles and we were using Stanford as a warm-up for bigger things.
“Am I looking to develop my one-day game? It’s already happening. I was leading runscorer in the one-dayers in Sri Lanka last year and then again in New Zealand. The biggest challenge for me is to expand my game. It takes a while. You can’t just click your fingers and have one net and start smashing it everywhere and say, ‘Yeah, I’ve sorted it’. These are quite big things to try and change.” 


“You always feel you’re not far away from getting it right.”
“We were bowled out for 83 in Galle last December – but we did hold on for the draw, even if we were helped out by the rain. Then, getting bowled out for 110 and losing to New Zealand in our next Test in Hamilton in February… it was frustrating. You always feel you’re not far away from getting it right. The feeling after that Hamilton game was ‘Let’s prove them all wrong.’ And we won the next two Test matches and won the series. So there’s not much else you can say about that. In my opinion. It’s like a football team: if you lose one game and then win the next nine then it’s all okay.”


“KP is all about constant improvement”
“Experience helps you improve. I know my game has improved against spin. But then again I got 100 on my debut in India in 2006, so that improvement is quite hard to measure… It’s weird how you improve. It’s such a gradual thing. Take our batting coach Andy Flower – towards the end of his career he was probably playing his best cricket. But five years before that he had been No 1 in the world.
“And that’s Kev’s big thing as a captain. He’s like that as a player himself: keep improving, keep improving. There’s so many good batters out there waiting to take my place. And I don’t want that to happen. So you’re prepared to put in the extra hard yards. If I do get dropped, I’ll know it wasn’t because I went to a film premiere or whatever. I’d know I’d given it my all.”

“Winning in New Zealand was the highlight of the year”
“We proved people wrong after getting written off again. That night after winning the third Test in Napier was a very good night as a team. And then beating New Zealand at home too. Everyone will go, ‘Ah boring’ but there’s no better feeling than winning a Test series, after you’ve slogged your guts out for 15 or 20 days. It’s special, no matter who you beat. That’s the true feeling of success as a team.
“If you look at the statistics, not many sides win Test series in New Zealand. New Zealand have a very underrated attack. Yes, they didn’t have Shane Bond but they never gave you much to hit. We all found that. The only time we really broke that was in NZ when we were chasing and when we turned that Test round at Old Trafford. The NZ attack bowled very well at us: not relentless wicket-taking balls but they never gave you much to hit: Kyle Mills, Chris Martin and Jacob Oram – who has got the lowest economy rate in Test cricket – and obviously Vettori is an excellent spinner. So that was probably a surprise to me just how good they were.”

“We work like mad on our fielding”
“When I first started playing I dropped a few catches. But Peter Moores, being an ex-keeper, is an excellent catching coach. And I’ve made a massive effort. Our catching in the England side has improved a helluva lot. It’s one of Mooresy’s areas of expertise. Watch a warm-up and the amount of catching we do, not so much as a group but as individuals, especially now Richard Halsall has come in as our fielding coach. It’s just that little 0.1 per cent improvement every time you do something. Of course some catches stick just because it’s your day. But all that practice gives you the best chance of success.”

Alastair Cook’s autobiography, Starting Out: My Story So Far, published by Hodder and Stoughton, is in shops now

‘I’m a terrible Twenty20 player!’

From SPIN, October, 2007

SPIN: Are you expecting to get a hostile reaction when you walk out to bat in South Africa?
KP: I got a hostile reception when I walked out to bat in England yesterday [at an Edgbaston ground packed with India supporters] yesterday! It doesn’t faze me one bit. I don’t even think about it.

Will your knowledge of the local conditions an advantage?
Not really. International players travel round the world all the time now. They’ve all experienced the conditions. Besides, I’ve never played there in September. It’s a bizarre time to hold the tournament: it’s the start of their summer and the ball will move all over the place. Still, it’s the same for everyone. I love the country. It’s an awesome place.

England’s established players haven’t played much T20. Can you learn from the county specialists who have been drafted in?
They’ve more to learn from us. Playing international cricket is very different. There are completely different pressures. It’s much more intense.

How do you feel the format suits your game?
I’m a terrible Twenty20 player! I’ve not really taken to Twenty20; it’s not really my game. People think I’m suited to it because I’ll just go out and smash the ball straight away, but I’m at my best when I take 20 overs to build an innings. My best innings have all been like that. I prefer not to rush my game.

Looking at England’s ODI cricket, we’ve seen some real improvements since the World Cup, particularly with the fielding. What’s changed?
It was a long winter. I think maybe we were just out of energy. We were battered and battered by the Aussies and then battered by everyone else in the World Cup.
We knew things had to change. We knew we weren’t fulfilling our potential on a regular basis. We knew we had to be open and honest. We had to stop saying how good we are and start actually being good. We knew the fielding needed to improve. We needed regular runs from the batsmen and wickets from the opening bowlers.
Everyone has brought into it. Our performance in the field at Edgbaston was one of the best of any England team I’ve been involved in.
Colly has been chucked in the deep end as captain, but he’s doing really well. He’s fresh and he has a good approach. He’s similar to Vaughany in that he is very approachable and anyone can talk to him. I’m really conscious of helping ‘Colly’ out as much as I can. It’s a happy dressing room.

Colly seems to consult you a fair bit on the field…
I just try to help out as much as I can. I wouldn’t say I’m vice-captain or anything like that but Colly is heavily involved in the game, so he talks to me a lot and asks my opinions. Basically we just chuck a few things at each other like bowling changes and fielding positions. We read off a similar script.
We’re still a young team. The exciting thing is how much potential and talent the team has. We definitely went into the series against India as underdogs. They have three batsmen with 36,000 runs between them. None of us will get that amount in our whole careers between us. But I’ve said in a [team] meeting that if we fulfil our potential I don’t think anyone can beat us. We just need consistency to fulfil that potential.

How do you rate your own form?
It doesn’t matter how many runs I score: when we win I’m happy. I’ve scored so many runs for England in one-day cricket and we just keep losing and it’s just the worst thing ever. Personal performances don’t really bother me; they’re good for stats. But everyone wants to be in a winning dressing room. Anyway, I feel fine. I’ve scored quite a lot of runs this summer – close to 1,000 in all competitions. I take pride in my performances and want to be the best player I can be. But winning is the most important thing to me. If I get 0, 0, 0 and 0 but the side win, I’ll be the happiest bloke.

KP was announcing the 2008/9 opening of a new npower Urban Cricket Arena in Birmingham. Last year, npower Urban Cricket, run with the ECB, distributed over 40,000 Urban Cricket kits.




Episode 7: Female streakers and slide trumpets

The Third Umpire, Rob Smyth and Jono Russell discuss Michael Vaughan’s resignation, KP’s promotion and England’s 2-0 hiding at the hands of South Africa. Also: Colin the Janitor on slide trumpets and, last but not least, the Mark Butcher Band. Really.

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